Research in Progress
Ephraimites, 2-House Movement

Definition and Basic Theology

History

Organizations

Leaders

HISTORY:

The notion of Messianic "Israel" (as opposed to Messianic "Jews") appears to have begun as a perceived corrective to the increasing sense of division between ethnic Jews and non-Jews within the Messianic Jewish/Hebrew Christian movement that began in earnest in the U.S. during the youthful countercultural revolution of the 1960s-1970s.

As ethnic Jews began to organize their own Messianic synagogues, there was the unexpected influx of a large number of non-Jews who wanted to emulate Jewish traditions in worship and lifestyle, and couple this with belief in Jesus (now Yeshua) as the Jewish Messiah and personal savior. This threatened to create "Jewish" congregations with few Jews and a large majority of Gentiles. This in turn gave ethnic Jews in the movement a reason to be concerned about their ability to retain leadership roles in these ethnically distinctive congregations. Not surprisingly, as ethnic Jews asserted their independence and claimed a 'natural' right to lead the movement, the largely non-Jewish constituency began to feel some sense of discrimination. Now concerns about an unhealthy and, it was claimed, scripturally prohibited 'division' within the body of Christ (or Messiah in Messianic terms) based on ethnicity were voiced.

Non-Jewish Christians were increasingly being drawn to live a more Jewish or Hebraic lifestyle because of (a) an increased level of awareness of the "Jewishness" of Jesus, Paul and their first-century CE following, and (b) the rise of "Hebraic Roots" ministries that encouraged and taught non-Jews to model themselves after their now thoroughly "Jewish" Messiah.

One of the first (if not the first) systematically articulated theological solutions to the growing Jew/Gentile divide within the Messianic movement was formulated and committed to writing by Batya Wootten in the late 1990s. The minstry that she and her husband, Angus Wootten brought to life, the Messianic Israel Alliance, was the first attempt to organize the Judaized but non-Jewish followers of Jesus into a corporate identity that would not be perceived as inferior in the way that "Gentile" had come to be seen. [last updated 10-24-08]