Judeo-Christian

[Anthony]

An excerpt but well worth reading the whole article on Wiki.

The earliest use of the term "Judeo-Christian" in the historical sense dates to 1829 in the missionary journal of Joseph Wolff,[1] and before that as "Judeo Christian" in a letter from Alexander M'Caul dated October 17, 1821.[2] The former appears in discussions of theories of the emergence of Christianity, and both are used with a different sense from the one common today. "Judeo-Christian" here referred to Jewish converts to Christianity.[3]

The term "Jewish-Christian" had been used in this sense as early as 1785 in Richard Watson's essay "The Teaching and Witness of the Holy Spirit",[4] and "Jewish Christian" (as an adjective) as early as 1644 in William Rathband's A Briefe Narration of Some Church Courses.[5] "Jewish–Christian" is used in 1841 to mean a combination of Jewish and Christian beliefs,[6] and by 1877 to mean a common Jewish–Christian culture, used in the phrase "the Jewish–Christian character of…traditions".[7]

Early German use of the term judenchristlich ("Jewish-Christian"), in a decidedly negative sense, can be found in the late writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who emphasized what he saw as neglected aspects of continuity between the Jewish world view and that of Christianity. The expression appears in The Antichrist, published in 1895 and written several years earlier; a fuller development of Nietzsche's argument can be found in a prior work, On the Genealogy of Morality.

The present meaning of "Judeo-Christian" regarding ethics first appeared in print on July 27, 1939, with the phrase "the Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals" in the New English Weekly.[8] The term gained much currency in the 1940s, promoted by groups which evolved into the National Conference of Christians and Jews, to fight antisemitism by expressing a more inclusive idea of American values rather than just Christian or Protestant.[9][10] By 1952 Dwight Eisenhower looked to the Founding Fathers of 1776 to say:

"all men are endowed by their Creator." In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion with all men are created equal.[11]

The term became especially significant in American politics, and promoting a "Judeo-Christian values" in the so-called culture wars, which in a usage surged in the 1990s.[12]

James Dobson, a prominent conservative spokesman, said the Judeo-Christian tradition includes the right to display the following documents in Kentucky schools, after they were banned by a federal judge in May 2000 as "conveying a very specific governmental endorsement of religion":