Chosen people

Sponsorship the way you would do it

Throughout history and continuing to the present day, various social, religious, cultural and ethnic groups have considered themselves chosen by God. Sometimes this chosenness is viewed as marking them as superior; other times it is viewed as giving this group a special responsibility or purpose. Views of being a chosen people are closely connected with ethnocentrism.

The idea of a chosen people can be used to justify or create cultural imperialism, racism, and xenophobia.

Table of contents

1 Jewish views
2 Christian views chosenness

2.1 Latter Day Saints
2.2 Christian Identity groups

3 Islamic views
4 Nationality

Jewish views

This topic is described in Jews as a chosen people.

Christian views chosenness

Supersessionism is the Christian belief that Christians have replaced Israel as God's Chosen people. In this view, the Jews' chosenness found its ultimate fulfillment through the message of Jesus; Jews who remain non-Christian are no longer considered to be chosen, since they reject Jesus as the Messiah and son of God. Related topics include Predestination, and Predestination (Calvinism).

Latter Day Saints

In Mormonism, the Latter Day Saints are viewed as a chosen people. Like the Jewish people, the Latter Day Saints were the subject of persecution in their formative years, and they began to think of themselves as apart from the rest of the world. In the mid-1800s, the faith attempted to establish a temple and a New Zion on the American continent.

In contrast to supersessionism, Latter Day Saints do not dispute the "chosen" status of the Jewish people. Indeed, some Latter Day Saints view themselves as chosen because they are Israelites, in one of two ways: (1) some European and Asian Latter Day Saints claim literally to have Israelite blood, usually from the lost tribe of Ephraim; (2) others claim that when they accept Mormonism, they become an adopted Israelite.

See Mormonism and Judaism.

Christian Identity groups

Christian Identity groups, based on a fusion of Nazi ideology, white supremacy, and fundamentalist Christianity, have developed a theology which holds that God hates the Jews, and that only white Christians are God's chosen people. These groups are rejected as non-Christian by the great majority of mainstream Christian churches.

As an example, The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord is a Christian Identity movment which preaches that "Jews of today are not God's chosen people, but are in fact an anti-Christ race, whose purpose is to destroy God's people and Christianity through its Talmudic teaching, forced inter-racial mixings, and perversions."

Islamic views

According to Islam the leaders of both Judaism and Christianity deliberately altered the true word of God, and thus led all of their believers down a false path. In the Quran, Mohammed charges the Jewish people with "falsehood" (Sura 3:71), distortion (4:46), and of being "corrupters of Scripture."

Some parts of the Quran attribute differences between Muslims and non-Muslims to tahri fi-manawi, a "corruption of the meaning" of the words. In this view, the Jewish Bible and Christian New Testament are true, but the Jews and Christians misunderstood the meaning of their own Scriptures, and thus need the Quran to clearly understand the will of God. Other parts of the Quran teach that many Jews and Christians deliberately altered their scripture, and thus altered the word of God in order to deceive their co-religionists. This belief was developed further in medieval Islamic polemics, and is a mainstream belief in much of Islam today. This is known as the doctrine of tahrifi-lafzi, "the corruption of the text".

Ye People of the Book! Why do ye clothe Truth with falsehood and conceal the Truth while ye have knowledge? Surah 3.71

Can ye, o ye men of Faith, entertain the hope that they will believe in you? Seeing that a party of them heard the Word of God and perverted it knowingly after they understood it. Surah 2.75

Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands and then say: "This is from God", to traffic with it for a miserable price! - Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they make thereby. Surah 2.79

"Abraham was not a Jew, nor yet a Christian; but he was an upright man who had surrendered (to Allah), and he was not of the idolaters." (III - The house of Imran 67)

Islamic supersessionism presents Muslims as the only people chosen to carry the true word of God.

Nationality

American exceptionalism and Americentrism