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Don Feder, a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist, is president of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, an advocacy group that started in April. Stan Guthrie, CT's senior associate news editor, interviewed him.

The Jewish people have the Anti-Defamation League, and you have started an "anti-defamation league" for Christians. Why?

The Anti-Defamation League has come up before. It was started more than a hundred years ago to respond to anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, it's changed over time. It's one of many "mainline" organizations that basically have been taken over by liberals. And today, rather than fighting anti-Semitism, per se, a lot of what it does has nothing to do with combating anti-Semitism, but rather promoting the Left's agenda.

When you say "liberals," do you mean political liberals?

Oh, I mean people on the Left. Perhaps I shouldn't even use the term liberal, because they're not liberal in the historic sense of the word—certainly not 19th-century liberals. They're not even liberals in terms of the New Deal. I guess, like many people, I fall into the habit of using the term liberal loosely. Leftist is probably a more accurate description.

At any rate, we formed Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation because we felt a real need for Jews as Jews to respond to attacks on Christians. Oftentimes when Christians are attacked and Christian organizations object, the response is, "Well you're thin-skinned. You're overly sensitive. Unless people are completely complimentary, you think it's an attack. There's self-interest involved."

With a Jewish organization or a group of Jews taking this position, no one can accuse us of self-interest, because we're not Christians, but we're objecting to attacks on Christians, or discrimination against Christians.

So we thought it would useful in that regard. Beyond that, as American Jews we're concerned about the moral decline of America, and we view attacks on Christians basically as attacks on biblical morality and part of the moral deconstruction of America. And since Christians are being attacked for adhering to Judeo-Christian morality, which of course includes our morality, we felt that we had to respond.

This seems to be part of a larger trend in which Jews and Christians are finding areas of common ground.

Conservative Christians and conservative Jews are finding more and more to agree on. The area of common concern seems to get broader all the time. Same-sex marriage, of course, is probably the most prominent issue, but there are others as well.

The whole question of Israel is a major one.

Certainly that's an area that both groups are intensely interested in. Conservative Christians are probably the strongest supporters of Israel in America. In fact, by and large, Israel today is getting more support from Christians than from the Jewish community in this country.

Now, I want to make it clear that we're not doing this as a quid pro quo. This is not our way of thanking Christians for supporting Israel, although we do appreciate Christian support for Israel. If evangelical Christians weren't pro-Israel, then the Jewish state would really be in a perilous position—even more than it is. We're appreciative of Christians' support for Israel on a scriptural basis.

Who is part of your group?

This is coming from the Jewish right of the political spectrum. Now, in terms of religion, the people involved span the spectrum of Judaism. We have six rabbis who are involved: three Orthodox, two Conservative, and one Reform. We're united more politically than we are in a religious sense. We're all Jews. Most of us are practicing Jews. Some are, you might say, secular or non-involved. What unites us, though, more than anything, is our political perspective, which tends to be, obviously, very similar to that of traditional Catholics and evangelical Christians.

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June (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49