“Who Is the Israel of God?”

When you’re three years old and get lost on your own street, it can mark you for life.

For Ellen Charry, it did.

She told me how, as a little Jewish girl in a row of identical Philadelphia houses, she wandered to the corner, realized she couldn’t tell which house was hers, and broke down in fear until a neighbor found her and brought her home. That neighbor was Roman Catholic.

That single moment became the seed of her lifelong question:
If God made this big, diverse world, how does God want us to live together in it?

Ellen would go on to Hebrew school early (after coming home reciting the Baltimore Catechism), become the star student, speak modern Hebrew, marry a rabbi’s son, and raise fully Jewish children. She loved Judaism from the inside.

But she also knew her Christian neighbors—and their history.

“I knew from studying Jewish history,” she said, “that Christians had not treated us well. To put it mildly.”

Across centuries, Christian theology often moved in one direction: convert the Jews or erase them. If successful, there would be no Jews left. “Christianity,” she observed bluntly, “has always wanted Jews not to exist as Jews.”

That realization, plus a deep conviction about God’s universal love, propelled her into what has become the defining project of her life: a serious, theological peace proposal between Judaism and Christianity.

Not an armistice. A reconciliation.

The Problem: A Tiny “Chosen People” and a Superseding Church

Judaism’s classical claim is clear and unflinching:
The Jews are the elect people of God. No one else is.

As Ellen put it on the show:

“Judaism claims that the Jews are the elect people of God and no one else is. Since Jews are about 0.02% of the world’s population, that didn’t quite compute to me. What about all the rest of the people in the world, including billions of Christians?”

Let’s pause on that number. Today, Jews comprise roughly 0.2% of the world’s population (about 15 million out of 8+ billion). Whether you take Ellen’s older figure or the current estimate, the point stands: a tiny fraction of humanity is being claimed as uniquely beloved, covenantally favored, the Israel of God.

Christians, for their part, responded with a mirror-claim:
Yes, Jews were once God’s people, but now we are the “true Israel.” The Church, in many classic formulations, has replaced Israel—not only in mission, but in God’s affections. The old covenant is seen as obsolete, the new as all‑encompassing.

So on one side:

“God loves us (Jews), not you.”

On the other:

“God now really loves us (Christians), not you. Your role was preparatory; ours is permanent.”

Ellen’s blunt summary: both Judaism and Christianity became exclusive traditions, each claiming God for themselves and, in function if not always in formal doctrine, denying God’s embrace of the other.

A Call to Love the “Worst Enemy”

At a certain point, Ellen faced a double realization:

Judaism’s exclusive claim didn’t square with her conviction that the one Creator loves all peoples.
Christian theology and practice, historically, had often been bent toward eliminating Jews as Jews—primarily by conversion, sometimes by coercion.

“I was raised to think Christians were my worst enemy,” she said, “because they want me not to exist as a Jew.”

And then she kept hearing one line from the New Testament:

“Love your enemies.” – Jesus

She became convinced—reluctantly, honestly—that God was calling her to solidarity with her “worst enemy.” She was baptized as a Christian, and then spent decades “redoing” her whole life as a theologian: writing on Christian doctrine, teaching systematic theology, and insisting that doctrine exists to form beautiful, virtuous people devoted to the flourishing of God’s creation.

Not brains on sticks. Not a ticket to heaven while the world burns.

And all the while, under the surface, the original call remained:
What would it take for Christians and Jews together to live faithfully before the one God?

“Who Is the Israel of God?”

Ellen’s current book project—ten years in the making and nearly complete—is titled, tellingly, Who Is the Israel of God?

Her answer, in essence:

Judaism alone is not the whole Israel of God.
The Church alone is not the whole Israel of God.
Together, in their distinct identities, Judaism and Christianity are the Israel of God.

This is not syncretism. It’s not “melting” Jews into Christians or Christians into Jews. She is emphatic on that point:

“I am not talking about merging Christianity and Judaism. Absolutely not. What I am talking about is:
They retain their integrity. But once they realize that each one has gifts to offer the other to strengthen the other, they walk following God alongside one another. No longer dithering, fighting about who belongs to God, because they both equally belong to God.”

In her schema:

Judaism must widen its practical horizon:
If there is truly one universal God, then that God’s covenantal love cannot be limited in practice to 0.2% of humanity. Through one of their own—Jesus of Nazareth, “flesh of my flesh” as she put it—millions and billions have come to love, worship, and serve the God of Israel. That is not a loss for Judaism; it is a spectacular gift: the God of Abraham now known across the nations.
Christianity must relinquish its supersessionist impulse:
If Gentiles have come to Israel’s God through Jesus, then they remain, in Paul’s own metaphor, wild branches grafted into Israel’s tree. The root is still Jewish. The Church needs Israel—not as a museum piece or a foil, but as a living partner—to understand the God it claims to worship. And therefore, Christians must once and for all stop trying to erase Jewish identity “for their own good.”

In Ellen’s vision, Jews and Christians do not become one religion, but they do become one people before God—two forms of fidelity standing side by side under the same divine claim.

Cain and Abel, the Prodigal Son, and the Favorite Child

During our conversation, I shared a set of observations that, for me, ground this theologically.

We’re familiar with the story of Cain and Abel:

Both brothers bring offerings.
God looks with favor on Abel’s, less so on Cain’s.
Jealousy grows.
Cain kills Abel.

It has always looked, to me, like a dark parable of what can happen when one sibling is perceived as more “favored”—even if both are, in fact, loved.

In Christian history, we’ve often let that script run unchecked:

“We are Abel now; the Jews are Cain.”
Or from the Jewish side, “We are Abel; the Church is Cain.”

Jesus, in my reading, rewrites that dynamic in the parable of the Prodigal Son.

The younger son (let’s call him “Abel‑gone‑wild”) demands his share, squanders it, ends in a pigsty, and finally comes home in shame.
The father runs to him, embraces him, and throws a feast.
The older son (our “good Cain,” if you will) has stayed, worked, obeyed—and now seethes in resentment.

The father’s words to the resentful son are crucial:

“My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” (Luke 15:31)

In other words:

Your status as my beloved, faithful child has never been in question.
Your inheritance is secure—more so, in fact, now that your brother has blown his.

But:

My joy over the return of your wayward brother does not diminish my love for you.
This is not a zero‑sum game.

Ellen quite naturally read the “good son” as Israel—the people who had borne the covenant, kept the law, stayed “home” with God. And the prodigal as the Gentiles—those who, after squandering their way through various idols, at last come to the God of Israel through Christ.

Within the New Testament’s own context, that mapping makes sense.

My point was this: the parable itself never names the parties. Jesus leaves it open. It can be mapped onto all sorts of sibling rivalries:

Jews and Christians.
Catholics and Protestants.
Any group who:
- Has long faithfulness behind them,
- Sees latecomers suddenly celebrated,
- And is tempted to interpret that celebration as a threat.

In that sense, Jesus has taken the dark energy of Cain and Abel and turned it inside out:

The “good” son is invited away from jealousy into joy.
The “bad” son is restored without displacing his brother.
The real center of the story is not either son, but the father’s stubborn, overflowing love.

As I put it to Ellen, whatever Jesus’ first intended referent, the parable’s deeper move is clear:

We are all God’s children. We are all, in different ways, “favored”—and none of us has the right to treat the others as disinherited.

Ellen offered a disarming little metaphor:
Imagine Judaism and Christianity as children in a sandbox. The big toy is God.

For centuries, each child has been clutching that toy, saying:

“God is mine, not yours. If you want God, you have to become like me.”

Her proposal is, on one level, very simple:

“It’s time to put down the feud and share the toy.”

Or, in more theological language:

Let Jews acknowledge that God’s covenant love has embraced Gentiles through Jesus, without ceasing to be the God of Israel.
Let Christians acknowledge that God’s covenant with Israel endures; the Church adds branches, it does not uproot the tree.
Let both traditions help each other see the blind spots and distortions in their own theologies, so each can become more fully obedient to the one God.

This is what she means by post‑polemical, post‑apologetic, inter‑theological work: not debating who’s right, not defending turf, but each tradition letting the other strengthen its own faithfulness.

Only together, she argues, are Judaism and Christianity truly the “Israel of God.”

Messengers of Reconciliation

As we neared the end of our time, Ellen shared two New Testament texts that have anchored her vocation:

“The dividing wall of hostility has come down.” (Ephesians 2)
“Through Christ… we have been made messengers of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5)

Those are not vague, sentimental ideas for her. They are her job description.

“For me,” she said, “this is how I can look myself in the mirror every day: by trying to live out that calling to be a messenger of reconciliation—in this case, between two traditions that each love God and have wounded each other terribly.”

Her work is not finished. The book is still in manuscript. Theologies on both sides are still bristling with old defensiveness. Real wounds, especially on the Jewish side, remain tender.

But the invitation she embodies is the same one that runs through the best of both scriptures:

To refuse the easy satisfaction of being the “favored” child at someone else’s expense.
To lay down the sword of “God loves us, not you.”
To accept the Father’s insistence: “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours”—and so is your brother, so is your sister.

If we are all created in the image of God, then perhaps our holiest work right now is to act like it:

As Jews and Christians.
As sons and daughters who have all, in our own ways, left home and come back.
As people learning, at last, to share the toy in the sandbox.

Ellen called it a peace proposal. I would add: it’s also a family reunion—long delayed, desperately needed, and, if it ever takes root, a joy to heaven.

Until then, her reminder stands for us all:

“We have been made messengers of reconciliation.
Wherever that calls us.”

And as I closed the show:
Whatever your tradition—Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or none—
You are created in the image of God,
and God loves His creation.