Church's Ministry Among Jewish People

[1] The society began in the early 19th century, when leading evangelical Anglicans, including members of the influential Clapham Sect such as William Wilberforce, and Charles Simeon, desired to promote Christianity among the Jews.

[1] In 1836, two missionaries were sent to Jerusalem: Dr. Albert Gerstmann, a physician, and Melville Bergheim, a pharmacist, who opened a clinic that provided free medical services.

[3] It supported the creation of the post of Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem in 1841, and the first incumbent was one of its workers, Michael Solomon Alexander.

[3] The society's historic archives are stored by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and University College London.

[18] It currently has branches in the United Kingdom, Israel, Ireland, France, the US, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong and Australia.

[20] The missionary focus of CMJ attracts criticism from the Jewish community who regard such activities as highly detrimental to Jewish-Christian relations.

For example, Rabbi Shmuel Arkush of Operation Judaism, a Jewish organisation dedicated to opposing missionaries, has called for CMJ to be disbanded.

[22] Subsequent reports confirmed that the Archbishop, the most senior figure in the Anglican Church, did not wish to endorse the organisation's missionary work, which he felt was damaging to interfaith relations.

[23][24][25] In addition, CMJ has often adopted a Zionist position, and expressed the view that the Jewish people deserved a state in the Holy Land decades before Zionism began as a movement, in accordance with the Restorationism of its founders.