Loving Our Neighbors Without Caveats
A Letter from the Wisconsin Council of Churches*
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mt 22:34-40, NRSV)
Beloved Siblings, Fellow Children of God -
We offer our grief and distress at the cascade of antisemitic violence that continues in word and deed. We offer our anger that Jewish holy days and festivals have been violated, compounding the loss of safety by adding spiritual injury to physical and emotional pain.
We must be free to pray in peace, eat together, rest and seek healing, come together as communities and share our ideas, debate without degradation, and disagree without fear of destruction.
The atmosphere of violence that has built around Jewish communities for so long seeks to take away speech, voice, breath, identity, and being. This we cannot abide. We do not tolerate the disappearing of our kin.
We offer these words to our Jewish friends and colleagues: We, your siblings, see you. We breathe with you in this time of pain. You are seen and known and loved. There is no punctuation to this – no but or however. You are loved, seen, and heard, and will not be set aside for safety or convenience. Antisemitism has no place among us.
Responding in Our Own Communities
We reiterate to our members the resources we have at hand to reflect on interfaith relations. We cannot emphasize enough that violence has isolation at its foundation. The remedy begins with meaningful connection with real people in proximity to you.
In 2014, the Wisconsin Council of Churches created a Statement on Interfaith Relations, spurred by religious violence in our own communities.** This statement recalls us to love of God and love of neighbor.
These loves urge us to work with all people for the common good: my good, my neighbor’s good, and the good of the whole creation. Such love upholds unreserved respect for others as neighbors and equals.
The Statement sets forth virtues for respectful dialogue, each founded in the work of relationship. We invite our fellow Christians in Wisconsin to reacquaint themselves with this document and its invitations.
We offered many of the recommendations below in the wake of the horrors of October 2023. We believe they can still be helpful:
Undertake behaviors that reduce the risk of violence. Antisemitism and Islamophobia are real and terribly dangerous realities in the lives of our friends and neighbors. We must interrupt rising violence against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and other marginalized religious communities in the US. In the same terms as our interfaith statement, we ask you to:
Condemn all forms of intolerance that turn religious differences into excuses for defamations, stereotyping, and violence; defend their victims; challenge and rebut statements about other faith groups or individuals that embody religious stereotyping, prejudice, and bigotry.
Uphold religious freedom for all persons, defending the rights and liberties of cultural, racial, and religious minorities in the same manner we defend our own.
If you have the opportunity to seek training in bystander intervention or violence interruption, and feel it is within your capacity, we encourage you to pursue it. These skills can aid in defusing everyday events before they become fuel for future incidents.
Focus, as much as you can, on the relationships before you. In this age of social media, it is easy to be caught up in the news as an abstraction. Even in this globalized reality, we are called to ask, “How do we love our neighbors well? How do we care for those closest to us, and how can we be in relationship with them as the strands of war connect right into our own communities?” Conflicts in countries on the other side of the world have real impact on people in our own backyards. Be aware of generational trauma; old wounds are being torn open again. People are fearful for friends and relatives facing war and also of violence erupting here.
Double Down in Love. When we are fearful, we often shut down. Interpersonal and interorganizational conflict arises easily. It is in these moments that we must double down in love. Check in on your interfaith colleagues, and those in interfaith relationships. Seek after their wellbeing. Be willing to be uncomfortable, for the sake of those who are particularly vulnerable at this time. When you are unsure, lean into curiosity so as not to jump to conclusions. Be patient, and persistent in loving and staying connected in undemanding ways.
The Wisconsin Council of Churches
3 June 2025
*We write in the wake of an historic rise in antisemitic incidents in the US including (but not limited to) a Passover arson at the PA governor’s mansion, the killing of Israeli Embassy staff outside the Jewish Museum in Washington DC, and the flamethrower attack in Boulder CO – and shortly after the 2024 antisemitism audit was released by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. https://www.milwaukeejewish.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2024-Audit-of-Antisemitic-Incidents_release-052125.pdf
** “Loving Our Neighbors: A Statement of the Wisconsin Council of Churches on Interfaith Relations,” adopted by the Board of Directors November 17, 2014.
