Many evangelical Christians now celebrate Jewish holidays
But today's evangelicals and Pentecostals have built upon this long-standing practice in a distinctly modern way: by fusing religious observance, general support for Israel and public denunciations of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Christians are not only reviving Jewish holidays and practices in their own faith in recognition of the Jewish roots of Christianity. They also are responding to the seismic events in modern Jewish history, most especially the horrors of anti-Semitism, some of it perpetrated by Christians.
In a way, they are engaging in these practices to atone for past sins. American evangelicals and Pentecostals do not have the same history of denouncing anti-Semitism or grappling with Christian contributions to the Holocaust that other Christians do. Catholics, for instance, have Vatican II's "Nostra Aetate" in 1965, which focused on the church's relationship to Jewish people....