document updated 21 days ago, on Mar 25, 2026

The phrase "Judeo-Christian values"

American Christians throw out the phrase "Judeo-Christian values" without really understanding what it means. They often seem to just mean "Christian values", while glossing over the real ways that Jewish traditions differ from theirs:

Abortion — Jews, especially American Jews, are often neutral on abortion, or even pro-abortion rights. [2] [3]
Nuclear family vs multigenerational living — Jews do sometimes live in single-generation home, but they don't tend to look down on multigenerational homes like American Christians do. [1]
It suggests a certain level of unity and continuity between Jews and Christians that ignores history:
- When Christians talk about some kind of continuity between Jews and Christians, often they mean that Christianity has superseded Judaism. For obvious reasons, Jews really don't like that.
- There's a long history of persecution between Christians and Jews, with Christians often being the perpetrators of antisemitism through the centuries. This includes:
  - During the Crusades, pogroms of European Jews.
  - In Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries, there were forced conversions, part of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. [2] [3] [4]

It also almost seems designed to exclude the other Abrahamic religion, and so is likely Islamophobic as well.