#524: David Brickner

David Brickner is an ordained Christian Baptist minister author and musician. He is not Jewish, but has been head of the Christian missionary group Jews for Jesus since 1996. Jews for Jesus is, as you’d expect, an Evangelical organization focusing on the conversion of Jews to Christianity, and its members – including Brickner – count themselves as hardcore fundamentalist (Biblical literalist) Christian Jews … or whatever. Part of their thing is to provide a Christian interpretation of Passover, Sukkot and Hanukkah, and explain what they consider messianic elements and how they believe these festivals are related to Jesus.

You can sort of imagine that such an organization would have plenty of room for crazy. And Brickner does indeed deliver. In 2008 he argued that the deaths in the Jerusalem bulldozer attack were ”God’s punishment” for Jews having failed to convert to Christianity (full transcript here). That would be controversial in itself, and it didn’t help that they were made at the Wasilla Bible Church, Sarah Palin’s church, a week before Palin was chosen as vice-presidential candidate for McCain (Palin was present). More here.

Diagnosis: Apparently his organization remains rather popular (though a google search reveals plenty of conflicts), so Brickner cannot be completely dismissed as unimportant. I am not sure it is necessary to point out that he’s batshit insane.