Rev. Hugh Robert Orr: Judaism vs. Christianity– A Unitarian View
“And so there came to be what was know to be a ‘Christianity as a system’ — Christianity as a system is not and never was the religion of Jesus. Christianity as a system is an agglomeration of absurd theological dogma infiltrated with all kinds of Pagan superstition, all gathered about the person of Jesus, so surely obscuring the great teacher with its falsehoods, that it is only with difficulty that the probable Jesus can be discovered at all.
“What Christian theology has done to Jesus is worse for the world than what his crucifiers did. It stole Jesus the Jew from Judaism, dressed him up in a strange and bewildering costume more disgraceful than any crown of thorns, fabled a false pedigree for him and then audaciously insisted that the Jewish race must accept this impossible caricature in place of their kinsman of Nazareth. And if the Jews would not fall down and worship this strange Pagan Christ that the Christians had substituted for the real Jesus, then they and their children should be sought out and tortured unto death.
“Many orthodox Jews, knowing little of the real Jesus, but knowing well how for centuries their race has been excluded and hounded and murdered in the name of Jesus Christ, have a horror of that name as of some spectral devil who is responsible for all their centuries of suffering. Can you blame them? And who fault is it?
“To be sure, Christianity does profess to embody the teachings of Jesus, and in a way practices them; that way may be judged, in part at least, from some of the things I have already pointed to. And true it is today, Christian theology is beginning to divert itself very cautiously of some of its Pagan superstition. Some of its younger and better educated ministers do come dangerously near repudiating some of the falsehoods of the Christian theology at times. But when you remove from Christianity all the ignorant superstitions, what do you have left? Why you have left simply the teachings of Jesus, which are no more Christian that they are Jewish, for they are Judaism at its best. Is it not about time that Christendom should lay aside its superstitions and be converted to the religion of Jesus? When it does it will then realize how far it was from the way of the great teacher when it was murdering his kinsmen.”