Chismar:  Regarding Jewish people, some Christians view them as “brethren” and even saved or set apart. Should we witness to Jews? What are some key misunderstandings about Judaism?

Olasky:  Sure and Christians again in a polite way, in a thoughtful way should witness to everyone that particularly is what evangelism is all about.  I think it’s one misunderstanding a lot of Christians have is that most Jews are orthodox and so Christians who are preparing to talk with a Jewish neighbor or co-worker may feel the need to immerse themselves heavily in Old Testament prophesies and so forth as if that’s going to prove it.  That’s totally irrelevant to most Jews in America.  Most Jews tend to be highly secularized, theologically very liberal and basically a Jewish person can be approached the way any secular person can be approached where the in a sense the added burden, but there’s going to be a lot of prejudice and I guess animosity towards Christianity.  So that’s a great degree of difficulty but in essence the evangelistic approach can be the same.  

Now, a minority of Jews in the United States are orthodox and that’s actually a growing minority because orthodox Jews tend to have big families whereas refrap Jews who are the theological, liberal Jews, secular Jews, tend to have really small families if any families at all.  So according to current projections it’s quite likely that in a generation or two, again a lot of things can change in the process, but if things keep going the way they’re going, the orthodox will be in the majority minority of American Jews.  But right now they’re not.  And that’s something to understand.  Another thing to understand the way that in fact it comes to all kinds of social issues such as abortion and homosexuality and others orthodox Jews and Christians can and should work very closely together.  Those are just several things we’ll have to keep in mind.