Judeo-Christian ethics

Judaeo-Christian ethics (or Judeo-Christian values) is a supposed value system common to Jews and Christians. It was first described in print in 1941 by English writer George Orwell. The idea that Judaeo-Christian ethics underpin American politics, law and morals has been part of the "American civil religion" since then. In recent years, the phrase has been associated with American conservatism, but the concept—though not always the exact phrase—has frequently featured in the rhetoric of leaders across the political spectrum, including that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The current American use of "Judeo-Christian" — to refer to a value system common to Jews and Christians — first appeared in print on 11 July 1939 in a book review by the English writer George Orwell, with the phrase "… incapable of acting meanly, a thing that carries no weight the Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals." Orwell repeated the term in his 1941 essay: "It was the idea of human equality—the "Jewish" or "Judeo-Christian" idea of equality—that Hitler came into the world to destroy."

Orwell's usage of the term followed at least a decade of efforts by Christian and Jewish leaders, through such groups as the U.S. National Conference of Christians and Jews (founded in 1927), to emphasize common ground. The term continued to gain currency in the 1940s. In part, it was a way of countering antisemitism, with the idea that the foundation of morals and law in the United States was a shared one between Jews and Christians.

Orwell was not the first to publicly speak about the moral commonality of Christian and Jewish traditions. On May 19, 1939, Albert Einstein, in a speech at Princeton Theological Seminary, explaining the importance of moral principles for modern science, emphasized: "The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition."

And back in 1884, three years after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia, Vladimir Solovyov (Soloviev), a prominent Russian philosopher and Christian writer, wrote in his essay "The Jews and the Christian Question":

"Our religion begins with a personal relationship between God and man in the ancient covenant of Abraham and Moses, and is confirmed in the closest personal unity of God and man in the New Testament of Jesus Christ, in which both natures exist inseparably, but unmerged as well. These two covenants are not two different religions, but only two stages of one and the same Divine-human religion, or speaking in the language of the German school, two moments of one and the same God-human process. This single and true Divine-human Judeo-Christian religion proceeds by a direct and magisterial path amid the two extreme errors of paganism, in which first man is absorbed by Divinity (in India), and then Divinity itself is transformed into a shadow of man (in Greece and Rome)."

The first inaugural address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), in 1933, the famous speech in which FDR declared that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself", had numerous religious references, which was widely commented upon at the time. Although it did not use the term "Judeo-Christian", it has come to be seen by scholars as in tune with the emerging view of a Judeo-Christian tradition. Historian Mary Stuckey emphasizes "Roosevelt's use of the shared values grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition" as a way to unify the American nation, and justify his own role as its chief policymaker.

In the speech, FDR attacked the bankers and promised a reform in an echo of the gospels: "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." Houck and Nocasian, examining the flood of responses to the First Inaugural, and commenting on this passage, argue: