What prompts a 19-year-old college student to set a historic synagogue on fire in Jackson, Missouri? (This happened on January 10, 2026.) What prompts another 19-year-old college student to carry a rifle into a synagogue in Poway, California and begin shooting at random, seeking to kill as many Jews as possible? (This happened on April 27, 2019.)
It appears that both of these young men were infected by a deadly virus, a virus known as antisemitism, a virus that affects one’s ability to think rationally. But in both these cases, it was an especially insidious strain of antisemitism that affected them, one that is completely oxymoronic: “Christian” antisemitism.
This is an antisemitism that cloaks itself in Christianese, often citing biblical verses in support. It is an antisemitism that parrots the standard (or latest) antisemitic tropes but adds in alleged theological support.
Yet the Christian faith is based on the teachings of a Jewish rabbi named Yeshua and grounded in documents written almost entirely by Jews/Israelites. This makes it all the more tragic when the tenets of this faith are used to kill Jews or destroy places of Jewish worship. It is an absolute perversion of the gospel of love and kindness and compassion and forgiveness.
Stephen Spencer Pittman, the alleged arsonist of the Beth Israel synagogue in Jackson, Missouri, grew up in a practicing Catholic home and claimed to be a “follower of Christ” in his Instagram bio. He was on the honor roll of his Catholic high school, was described as an “all-American boy,” and some of his social media posts were overtly and unashamedly Christian.
Some of his friends pointed to changes in his behavior in recent years, “But it wasn’t until around a week before the arson that Pittman began making antisemitic comments, according to FBI Special Agent Ariel Williams, who testified at a court hearing Tuesday during which Pittman pleaded not guilty to the arson.”
For Pittman, this synagogue was “the synagogue of Satan” (based on a misuse of Revelation 2:9 and 3:9) and it needed to be set on fire because of its “Jewish ties.”
According to an affidavit, “once Pittman was confronted by his father about what happened Saturday morning, Pittman confessed to the crime. Pittman also allegedly ‘laughed as he told his father what he did and said he finally got them.’”
When asked by the court if he understood his rights, he replied, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
As for John Earnest, the Poway synagogue shooter in 2019, he attended an Orthodox Presbyterian Church and spoke plainly about his Christian faith in his 6-page manifesto. This was his justification for murdering Lori Gilbert-Kaye, a 60-year-old Jewish woman, as well as wounding an 8-year-old girl and the synagogue rabbi. (Had his gun not jammed, the numbers would have been much higher.)
In the manifesto he left behind, Earnest wrote, “I did not choose to be a Christian. The Father chose me. The Son saved me. And the Spirit keeps me. Why me? I do not know.”
But for Earnest, that Christian faith required him to hate God’s alleged enemies: “There is no love without hatred. You cannot love God if you do not hate Satan. You cannot love righteousness if you do not also hate sin. You cannot love your own race if you do not hate those who wish to destroy it. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin.”
And for “Christian” antisemites, no enemy is more hateful or vile than the Jew.
As expressed by the Jewish philosopher Eliezer Berkovitz, “A straight line leads from the first act of oppression against the Jews and Judaism in the fourth century to the holocaust in the twentieth.”
Of course, there are always other factors at work when a seemingly normal, well-adjusted 19-year-old commits an act of arson or murder, and God alone knows the full motives of the heart.
And the churches associated with Pittman and Earnest categorically denounced their actions and the antisemitism they expressed.
Yet there is no denying that the very ancient virus of “Christian” antisemitism is spreading rapidly again today, perhaps affecting young white males more than any other group.
It behooves us to continue to call it out, expose it, and denounce it, doing our best to understand why it is becoming so popular again and uprooting its faulty ideological, theological, and intellectual foundations.
After Earnest was sentenced, the daughter of the slain woman in Poway, Hannah Kaye, told a local Los Angeles radio station “that it was ‘beyond comprehension’ how Earnest — reputed to be an accomplished student, athlete and musician who was studying to be a nurse at California State University, San Marcos — had ‘traveled down the rabbit hole’ of violent antisemitism.”
We do best to comprehend the nature of this rabbit hole and why it is so appealing before more lives are destroyed.