The CCJ was founded, in 1942, by Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz and Archbishop William Temple during a time of all-out warfare and Nazi persecution of Jews.
[2] In 1924 the Presbyterian Church of England General Assembly agreed to form a sub committee to discuss the lack of understanding between Jews and Christians.
In 1924 the Social Service Committee of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue convened a meeting for Jews and Christians to confer together on the basis of their common ideals and with mutual respect for differences of belief'.
By the middle of the decade various groups made up of Jews and Christians were involved in giving aid to Jewish refugees from Germany, whose number rose sharply after Kristallnacht.
[8] Out of the diverse groups that marked Jewish-Christian dialogue and aid during the 1930s a proposal was circulated with a view to forming an organization built on a national network.
[10] At a meeting chaired by William Temple, now the nominated Archbishop of Canterbury, on 20 March 1942 the formation of the Council of Christians and Jews was agreed.
The Roman Catholic prelate, Cardinal Hinsley, agreed to be a Joint President subject to the condition that any statements be approved by him prior to publication.
[13] In 1942 deputations were sent to the Foreign Office and Anthony Eden regarding the accounts then emerging about the Nazi extermination process, followed by a letter published in The Times on 5 December speaking of a 'horror beyond what imagination can grasp...burning indignation at this atrocity, to which the records of barbarous ages scarcely provide a parallel."
[15] Archbishop Temple addressed the House of Lords in March 1943 in which he referenced the massacre of Jews taking place, urging all means of action and condemned the procrastination of officialdom.
"[16] In November 1943 the Council issued the first of its "Occasional Reviews" which contained a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the "Basis of Co-operation between Jews and Christians."
[17] In June 1944 the Council published a declaration affirming that "the moral law must govern world order " followed by six related principles.The Council said: "The significance of the afocument lies in the fact that it is the first statement of its kind to be published in this country with the approval of the heads of the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish communities and on behalf of a representative hody of Christians end Jews."
[22] The American group had not been formed to counterattacks on Jews, as was the case in London, but rather through anti-Catholicism agitation stirred up by the Ku Klux Klan at the time when Catholic Al Smith was standing for president.
[24] A public meeting held on the eve of the conference included as guest speakers the Archbishop of Canterbury, Reinhold Niebuhr, R. A. Butler and Rabbi Leo Baeck, a survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp.
[24] Jacques Maritain was elected to serve as co-Chairman with Dr. MacCracken of U.S.A. and the Marquess of Reading on the board of the proposed International Council of Christians and Jews.
Pere de Lopinit who had worked in Italian camps in which Jews had been interned during the war took the document back to the Vatican and a form of nihil obstat was received.
Everett Clinchy of the NCCJ now directed his efforts into the "World Brotherhood" and the plans for an International Council for Christians and Jews were stalled.
[28] Enthusiasm for an international organization was also limited through fears of religious indifferentism from a Roman Catholic perspective and a lack of sympathy to interfaith understanding in the prevailing Protestant theological climate.
[29]In the early 1950s a directive was sent to all national Catholic hierarchies from the Vatican warning against involvement in the International Council of Christians and Jews for fear that it was tending towards religious indifferentism - see following section.
[27] They held a conference in 1966 which issued a critique of the Vatican II Declaration Nostra aetate, the WCC's New Delhi statement on Christian-Jewish relations and a definition of dialogue: In 1974 the NCCJ did join and at their suggestion the name of the organisation was changed to the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ).
[33] See also Pope Pius XII and Judaism During the pontificate of Pope Pius XII "a heavy blow fell on the Council" when in November 1954 Cardinal Griffin announced that the Roman Catholic Church would be withdrawing from the CCJ following an instruction received from the Vatican indicating that the educational work being done by the council could result in religious indifferentism.
[36] The Catholic periodical "The Tablet" expressed the view that the public resignations ought to have been avoided, further discussions held, and that the Vatican should have made the reasons for the withdrawal explicit.
Annual lecturers have included Sir Isaiah Berlin (John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life, 1959), Abba Eban (The Final Solution, 1961), Dr Michael Ramsay (The Crisis of Human Freedom, 1962), Henry Chadwick (Some Reflections on Conscience: Greek, Jewish and Christian, 1968), Gregory Baum (Christian Theology After Auchwitz, 1976)[46] In 1979 the CCJ established the annual The Sigmund Sternberg Award for individuals who had made a contribution to furthering Christian-Jewish relations.