Countless examples of ugly anti-Semitism have been the norm at so many Western university campuses. And very few of those in charge have lifted a finger to bring this to an end and ensure that all students can safely go about getting the education they have paid for. In his new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (Spiked, 2024), English commentator Brendan O’Neill has spoken to this matter in some detail.

All over the Western world, especially since the horrific October 7 attack, we have seen universities pushing radical Islamist and pro-Hamas hate speech. Radicals have set up tent cities and occupied classrooms as they shout ugly anti-Israel chants. All the while Jewish students feel increasingly threatened and unsafe on their own campuses.
Examples of this are legion. One of the most recent and despicable cases involves an American academic who spoke at a pro-Palestine rally in Sydney a week ago. Khaled Beydoun of Arizona State University actually said October 7 was a day of “considerable celebration, considerable progress and considerable privilege”!
Not only have the Australian sponsors not called this out, but the American university where he teaches at has said there was nothing wrong in what he said, and that it is all good because it is “free speech”. As one media outlet reports:
Beydoun was also quoted as saying at the rally, “I want to talk about some good things because it’s a good day, and we’ve got to mark some of the good news that comes about that we often times neglect.” In response to inquiries from Sky News Australia, a spokesperson on behalf of Arizona State University said, “The university is aware of the professor’s remarks and is respectful of the First Amendment privileges associated with academic freedom and free speech.” https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/arizona-state-university-defends-american-professor-who-told-sydney-rally-october-7-was-a-day-of-celebration/news-story/cdc85ef23a92c6233f793819999501fd
Countless examples of ugly anti-Semitism have been the norm at so many Western university campuses. And very few of those in charge have lifted a finger to bring this to an end and ensure that all students can safely go about getting the education they have paid for.
In his new book, English commentator Brendan O’Neill has spoken to this matter in some detail. I have already penned two articles on his brief but valuable volume, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (Spiked, 2024). My earlier pieces can be seen here:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/13/clear-thinking-on-october-7-and-beyond/
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/12/feminists-duplicity-and-hamas/
Chapter Seven of his book looks at how so-called safe spaces at campuses are certainly not of any use for Jews being targeted by the militants. Indeed, the double standards of the radical left is apparent to all. Consider his opening paragraphs:
So, we live in an era when you can be banished from a university for saying women don’t have penises, but you’ll be fine if you say ‘kill all Jews’. We live in a time when asking someone where they’re from is considered a ‘racial microaggression’, but hollering ‘Globalise the intifada’ in the aftermath of an ‘intifada’ in which a thousand Jews were slaughtered is apparently okay. We live in a culture in which students will demand access to ‘safe spaces’, complete with colouring books and bean bags, if a speaker they hate turns up on campus. And yet these same students who fear words like the rest of us fear death, will happily cheer the invasion of Israel and the murder of hundreds of its citizens. No safe space for Jews, it seems.
This was one of the most unsettling revelations in the aftermath of the 7 October pogrom: that snowflakes have a secret genocidal streak. That student activists who wail about feeling ‘erased’ if you fail to use their preferred pronouns don’t seem to have much of a problem with the literal erasure of hundreds of citizens of the Jewish State.
Overnight, students who had bristled at such ‘micro-aggressions’ as ‘Don’t you want a family?’ – it is an act of unforgivable ‘heteronormativity’, apparently, to assume everyone wants a family – (p. 114)
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Christians often give the impression to the watching world that the rules matter the most. We give the impression everyone else should also follow the rules we do, even though they don’t trust in Jesus. That doesn’t make sense and turns people off Christianity. If all outsiders see is restrictions, where is the attraction in that? We need to explain the wonder of being saved and the security from being in God’s family as the primary thing; how we respond to that comes second.

Whenever I ask someone with no experience of church what they think a Christian is, they usually tell me that they think a Christian is someone who tries to be good. Someone who follows a complex set of rules to try and obey their God. It is easy to see why people get that impression. After all, Christians do tend to avoid getting drunk and they do tend to go to church and read their Bibles. There are things Christians do that others do not and things Christians avoid that others think are fine.
Many kids who grow up in church circles might have a similar view to this! After all, their parents are always telling them things they shouldn’t do that their friends are happy to do.
Yet that idea of Christianity as following a set of rules misunderstands things completely. Like most half-truths, it ends up being a whole lie. A Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus as the One who saved them from disaster and rules their life. A Christian is someone who belongs in God’s family, and because of that is secure and blessed. It’s not to do with rules at all.
So why do Christians live differently to those who don’t believe? Well, that is a response to what Jesus has done for us. That sounds kind of abstract, so let me explain it using an important part of Biblical history and an analogy.
At the start of the book of Exodus, the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt.
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Scripture is clear that faith unites us to Christ, and through faith in him we receive all that he has to give us–namely the forgiveness of sin accomplished by his death, and the gift of righteousness based upon his life of faultless obedience. Through faith in Jesus, our sin is imputed to him so that he pays for these sins on the cross and through that same faith his righteousness (his merits and holy works) becomes ours (via imputation). This is what we mean when we speak of being justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. This is the gospel! God freely gives us in Christ’s merits what he demands of us under the law.

Reformed Christians affirm without hesitation that the doctrine of justification is the article of faith by which the church stands or falls. Although the oft-cited comment is attributed to Martin Luther, it was actually a Reformed theologian, J. H. Alsted (1588-1638), who first put these words to paper–echoing Martin Luther in doing so.
The reason why the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, is important is because it is so closely tied to the gospel and the saving work of Jesus Christ. If we do not understand how it is that we as sinners are declared to be righteous before a holy God (which is what it means to be “justified”), we may not only misunderstand the gospel–and therefore risk standing before God on the day of judgment expecting that our own righteousness will be sufficient–but we will miss out on the wonderful comfort which this doctrine provides for us.
The good news of the gospel is that through faith, our sin has been reckoned to Christ, and Christ’s righteousness has been reckoned to us (Romans 5:12, 18-19). But now we possess the greatest gift imaginable, a conscience free from fear, terror, and dread (2 Tim. 4:18). The knowledge that our sins are forgiven and that God is as pleased with us every bit as much as he is with his own dear Son (2 Corinthians 5:21), not only quiets our conscience and creates a wonderful sense of joy and well-being, but it also provides powerful motivation to live a life of gratitude before God (2 Corinthians 1:3-7). A proper understanding of this doctrine is the only way we will be able to give all glory and thanks to God, which is the ultimate goal of our justification.
We need to be perfectly clear here–we are justified by good works. Not our good works, mind you, but Jesus Christ’s good works which, just like his sacrificial death, were done for us and in our place. Jesus Christ not only died for our sins, but through his life of perfect obedience to God’s commandments he fulfilled all righteousness (Romans 5:18-19). In Philippians 3:4-11, Paul speaks of this righteousness of Christ which comes from God through faith alone.

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

But how is it that our sins are imputed (reckoned, credited) to Christ and his merits are imputed to us? This occurs only through the means of faith, which is why we cannot be justified on the basis of anything we have done or even could do since all of our works are tainted by sin and always done from sinful motives (Galatians 2:16; Romans 3:9-20). Faith is the instrument which links us to Christ so that all his righteousness becomes ours. In Galatians 3:23-26, Paul states “before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”
It is important to understand that faith is not that one work God expects us to perform. Faith is not something which God sees in our hearts which he then rewards with a status of “justified”–a view widely held throughout American evangelicalism. Rather, as J. I. Packer so helpfully puts it, faith is “an appropriating instrument, an empty hand outstretched to receive the free gift of God’s righteousness in Christ.” Paul speaks precisely in these terms in Romans 4:4-5 when he writes, “now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Scripture is clear that faith unites us to Christ, and through faith in him we receive all that he has to give us–namely the forgiveness of sin accomplished by his death, and the gift of righteousness based upon his life of faultless obedience. Through faith in Jesus, our sin is imputed to him so that he pays for these sins on the cross and through that same faith his righteousness (his merits and holy works) becomes ours (via imputation). This is what we mean when we speak of being justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. This is the gospel! God freely gives us in Christ’s merits what he demands of us under the law. In Romans 3:21-26, Paul makes this very point.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

If we are not clear about this great doctrine, we have no assurance of our salvation, no foundation for living the Christian life, and we have no gospel to preach to the unbelieving world around us. Apart from this doctrine, ours is a fallen church. But once we embrace this doctrine, Paul reminds us in Romans 8:31, “what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Once Christ’s merits are reckoned (imputed) to us through faith, we are declared righteous before him, and therefore able to approach the holy God without fear or terror, because we are clothed with the righteousness of his own son.
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