Daniel Freitag: "Christian Antisemitism on Social Media: Russian-Orthodox, Lutheran, and Catholic Narratives on Jews and Israel"

Wednesday, March 12, 2025. In this episode, PhD student Daniel Freitag discusses, "Christian Antisemitism on Social Media: Russian-Orthodox, Lutheran, and Catholic Narratives on Jews and Israel."

Through a detailed content analysis of Facebook posts and comments (2012-2021) on prominent Roman Catholic, Lutheran World Federation, and Russian Orthodox Church pages, Daniel Freitag examines how these confessional online spaces — encompassing both official media and private commentary — discuss Judaism, Jews, and Israel. His research reveals both anticipated and surprising antisemitic themes.

One of the more surprising findings comes from the social media account of the Russian Orthodox Church. Not only does it revive the conspiracy theory of Jewish Bolshevism as a threat to Russia's Christian identity, but also spreads narratives depicting Israel and the United States — alongside the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — as secret puppet masters responsible for the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Meanwhile, in the discourse space of the Lutheran World Federation, some reductive and one-sided interpretations of the Middle East conflict emerge, with post-colonial thought patterns being theologized in ways that are hostile to Israel.

This research contributes to the broader study of theological antisemitism, which grapples with the persistent legacy of Christian anti-Judaism and its influence on contemporary antisemitic discourse. While acknowledging the historical roots of Christian antisemitism, this talk explores how traditional tropes are being reconfigured and disseminated in digital spaces today.

Daniel C. Freitag (Mag. theol.) is a PhD student and research assistant at the Institute for Ethics and Related Social Sciences at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Münster (Germany). He studied Protestant Theology in Münster, Jerusalem, and Heidelberg. He was also a member of the Graduate School of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster and worked for the interdisciplinary “Centre for Religion and Modernity”. Currently, he is a visiting affiliate of IU’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. His dissertation project explores contemporary manifestations of Christian antisemitism on the social media platform Facebook. For more information and contact details, please click here.

Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/