Cultural Anthropology’s discussion of worldview helps us understand that supersessionism (the conviction that the church is the new Israel, replacing the old in the purposes of God) must be abandoned. This will revolutionize the church’s mission at a rate of speed determined by the church’s level of awareness, willingness, and cooperation.

Worldview may be defined as “the central assumptions, concepts and premises which are shared by a particular group of people and upon which they base their activities.”¹ Because worldview assumptions are subconscious and therefore unquestioned, they are powerful, pervasive, and determinative of the behaviors, perceptions, evaluations, decisions, and actions of members of any given social group, culture or subculture.  Worldview assumptions are the “of courses” of a social group, culture, or subculture.  When someone questions or points out a worldview assumption to members of a given group, the members of the group will respond reflexively, “Of course!  That’s the way things are!  Anyone knows that!”

There are two classic models for describing the relationship between the ecclesia (church) and Israel. Supersessionism, a view advocated by many of the early church fathers, maintains that the ecclesia is the new spiritual Israel and replaces carnal Israel, the Jewish nation, as the people of God. For centuries, the negative justification for this displacement was that, by rejecting Yeshua, the Jewish people violated their covenant with God, which was conditioned on faithfulness. Texts in Scripture that refer to God’s promises to Israel and Israel’s eschatological role are, therefore, now to be interpreted allegorically in reference to the ecclesia. This ecclesiological perspective has been termed “punitive supersessionism.”

In recent years, a less negative justification for supersessionism has become widespread in New Testament studies: All the promises to the Jewish people are fulfilled exclusively in Israel’s representative, the Messiah Jesus, the quintessential Jew. As N. T. Wright states, “Paul explicitly and consciously transfers blessings from Israel according to the flesh to the Messiah, and thence to the church . . . Gal. 2–4 argues precisely that the worldwide believing church is the true family of Abraham, and that those who remain as ‘Israel according to the flesh’ are in fact the theological descendants of Hagar and Ishmael, with no title to the promises.” This outlook has been termed “economic supersessionism.”