Pentecostalism and Antisemitism

Abstract Critical Pentecostal studies increasingly chart racism in the movement’s history, while racialization of Jews remains largely unexplored. This article contributes by analyzing Christian Zionism and political antisemitism in the teachings of Lewi Pethrus (1884–1974), a key figure of formative Pentecostalism during the Holocaust era. By examining his publications, editorials, sermons, and correspondence, the article reveals an ambivalent racialization of Jews as both threat and promise: Jewish power posed a cultural threat by its degenerative and anti-Christian agenda while relocation of Jews to Palestine bore the promise of God’s plan for world redemption. With this theological outlook, Pethrus rallied against alleged attacks on Christian values in Sweden while promoting Jewish migration to Palestine. The dispensational Jews-to-Palestine call—based on Jeremiah 16:16 prophesying about fishers of Zionism and hunters of antisemitism—answered the so-called Jewish question in this Pentecostal vision of national rebirth.