Christian ‘seders’
Photograph by RadRafe via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Perlei Toor
Last year, I celebrated seder with my Jewish peers. We ate the bitter herbs, sang Hebrew songs, and drank wine. When asked, I told my friends that it was my first seder. I lied.
In reality, I first celebrated seder at 19 years old with my Christian youth group in Los Angeles. We attended a ‘Jews for Jesus’ seder. Learning about the festivities for the first time, I was led to interpret the cups of wine as the Eucharist, the Pesach as representing Christ as the sacrificial lamb, and the piercings in Matzah as the piercings in Christ’s body. The ritual where Matzah is broken, wrapped in cloth, and hidden for children to find? That was an obvious reference to Christ. “Jesus was broken, wrapped in a mourning cloth, hidden in a tomb for three days, and then found alive.”
Explaining this to my youth group, the volunteers at Jews for Jesus were sympathetic. Every year, they said, when they celebrate with their Jewish family, they are reminded of the fact that Jews are still waiting for their Messiah. They leave a cup out for Elijah and think they have not been saved. Judaism, it was explained to me, is a religion of constant longing and waiting, blind to the ‘truth’ that Christians know - that we have been saved, and we don’t need to long anymore. The message, they said, was embedded in the ritual itself - if only Jews would open their eyes to Jesus.
Jews for Jesus, founded by Baptist minister Moishe Rosen in 1973, was among the first to start commercially celebrating the Christian Seder. It was a way for Jewish converts to Christianity to continue practicing their cultural/ethnic traditions whilst simultaneously acknowledging their belief in Jesus as the Messiah.
However, the practice as performed by Christians — not converted Jews — was largely popularized by Rev. Billy Graham, who played a large role in taking on Jewish traditions within his Christianity. In his attempt to combat antisemitism, he took trips to Israel and encouraged Christians to start participating in Jewish holidays. This, alongside the Jews for Jesus movement, which provided a template for the Christian interpretation of seder, propelled the practice of Seder meals for Christians as a core part of evangelical worship in the 1970s. But there are examples of Christian seders emerging right after WWII as part of Jewish-Christian dialogue. Here, a “knowledgeable Jew” would lead a ‘model Seder’ to teach Christians about Judaism through the connection between Passover/Easter.
So why practice a Christian seder? What explains the impulse?
Part of it is an attempt to draw closer to the ‘kind of Judaism Jesus practiced’ — a form of philosemitism whereby Christian love for Judaism stems primarily from the fact that Jesus was Jewish. Resources on the Christians United for Israel page read, “Judaism is the root which supports Christianity, and Christians are to be grateful toward our Jewish friends and neighbors for their contributions to the Christian faith.” This belief drives a lot of Christian Zionism and similarly drives the ritual of the Christian seder.
Religious traditions are meant to be lived, not repurposed to serve someone else’s narrative. This Passover, let Jewish rituals belong to those to whom they have always belonged.
However, the attempts to draw closer to the ‘kind of Judaism Jesus practiced’ are largely in vain. The seder as we know it today first appears in the Mishnah between 180 and 200 CE. “Most of the rituals that we know of from today's Seder were invented long after Jesus was ever even alive,” observed Jewish day school instructor Robbie Medwed in a 2021 Salon feature. “So, the main thing is that [Christian Seder is] taking something that is now entirely Jewish without any Christian roots whatsoever — or any joint roots — and it's completely changing its meaning.”
This interpretation of Judaism lacks religious literacy, which understands that religions are influenced by their cultural context and change over time. It assumes that Jews still observe the Passover exactly as they did before the time of Jesus, and that Jewish ritual has remained static since his arrival.
Participating in “Christian seders,” you are reinforcing the idea that Judaism is a static set of rituals you can draw upon to inform your own Christianity, to learn more about Jesus, or to enhance the sympathy you have for Jews who are ‘stuck’ in time. It does not come from a true desire for interfaith relationships, but from a need to claim a tradition you perceive as “yours” simply because Jesus was Jewish.
This belittles and fetishizes Jewish culture as a historical artifact Christians can borrow from to strengthen their own religious experience. This fetishization of Jewish culture for Christian gain is strange, especially since the Seder itself is so focused on the Jewish experience. It is problematic to see Christian experiences as identical to Jewish experiences, playing into a narrative of supersessionism.
In fact, the early Christian churches went to great, violent lengths to remove themselves from their Jewish peers. As a result, around Jewish holidays in Europe, this time was a perilous one for Jews, where antisemitic conspiracy theories accused Jews of killing Christian children, drinking their blood, and putting it in matzah. Co-opting a ritual that has historically been used to justify antisemitic persecution and conspiracy theories about Jews and the crucifixion — a core source of Christian antisemitism — is deeply problematic and amounts to cultural appropriation.
But this cultural appropriation is more than just a religious ritual. The practice of Christian seder is political. Modern-day conservative Christian Zionists — who uphold a theologically driven, unwavering support for Israel and interpret the ongoing occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza as part of end-times prophecy — frequently engage in and fetishize Jewish traditions and culture. The Christian Zionist “A Million Women” march in October of 2024, for example, was held on Yom Kippur and called for Christians to fast for God to save America and Israel along with their Jewish brothers and sisters on the Jewish holiday. It included Christian protestors participating in Shabbat prayers led by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, and blowing the shofar to save America.
Similarly, Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White frequently brings Jewish rituals into her megachurch, including the Christian seder, during which she made a direct link between the blood that was placed on the doorposts of Israelites to protect them from the angel of death, and the blood of Christ that saves Christians from that same angel of death. The Executive Director of Christians United for Israel UK bragged in a blog post about hosting an annual Christian seder at his church, and the CUFI guide to Passover writes that “almost every aspect of Passover has an intricate connection with the death and resurrection of Jesus and the wonderful way that God brought salvation to the Gentiles through the Jewish people.”
The practice of the Christian seder is not just religiously insensitive — it actively reinforces supersessionism, the fetishization of Jewish culture, and the political ideology of Christian Zionism.
What complicates Christian Zionism is that it is more than a political ideology that theologically justifies an ongoing genocide. And what complicates the Christian Seder is that it is more than a religious tradition. Christian Zionism is, in many ways, its own specific religion with unique religious rituals and customs. It often looks like layering Jewish practices onto Christianity, interpreting them from a Christian lens, and transforming them into highly politicized rituals. For example, Christians United for Israel now offers donors a mezuzah shaped like Israel – a striking appropriation of a distinctly Jewish practice that is both Christianized and politicized.
It is paramount to put the religious practice of Christian Zionism in conversation with growing cultural secularism - or more accurately, the perception of growing cultural secularism. Especially amid the American commercialization — and therefore seeming ‘secularization’[1] — of many Christian holidays like Easter or Christmas, some devout Christians feel they have to go back to the drawing board to find authentically religious traditions and holidays that remind them of the time Jesus lived.
While keeping a healthy critique of the cultural and religious insensitivity of the practice of the Christian seder, understanding it through the lens of emotion — as a craving for connection, ritual, and ‘authenticity’ — might help us understand the pull towards the practice as a push away from commercialism and the perceived threat of secularism.
And yet, this does not excuse the practice. Christians can honor their own traditions and seek meaningful worship without appropriating rituals from religions they have historically oppressed.
It is problematic that my first experience with Passover was through a Christian seder. It would have been even more concerning if my understanding of Judaism and other religious traditions had stopped there. The seder I attended was filtered through a Christian lens, reframing its ritual elements to emphasize the supposed obviousness of Jesus as the Messiah. There was a sense of astonishment — almost incredulity — toward Jews who participated in this tradition year after year without recognizing what was framed as an undeniable “truth.”
The practice of the Christian seder is not merely religiously insensitive — it reinforces supersessionism, fetishizes Jewish culture, and advances Christian Zionism. At the same time, it implicitly mocks Jews for ‘missing the point’ of these rituals by not recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. A deeply rooted Jewish ritual becomes a tool for Christian self-discovery, often while remaining detached from Jewish voices or the history of antisemitic violence associated with Passover.
If you feel yourself craving connection, ritual, and authenticity this season, ask yourself: why are these missing from your faith tradition? Why do Jewish rituals seem like the answer? Instead of taking from a tradition that is not yours, try to revitalize Christian practices that already exist. If you are genuinely curious, attend a public seder at a synagogue — on Jewish terms, not through a Christianized lens.
Religious traditions are meant to be lived, not repurposed to serve someone else’s narrative. This Passover, let Jewish rituals belong to those to whom they have always belonged.
Perlei Toor is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School, where she is pursuing a degree in Religion, Ethics, and Politics. She recently graduated from University College Utrecht with a specialization in Philosophy and Religious Studies. Originally from the Netherlands, Toor’s research focuses on the impact of political and cultural secularism on society.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[1] Although this is complicated due to the Christian roots of what we consider secular or not. Secularization here refers to a cultural secularism — specifically the perceived loss of religiosity within religious rituals, which is sometimes felt by Christians for whom Christian culture can be interpreted as synonymous with secular culture, and leads to the feeling some Christian nationalists have that Christianity is being “persecuted” and religion is being “lost” in America. For instance, while Easter of any form is religious, some will see the commercialization of Easter — via Easter eggs, bunnies, candy — as a way to take Jesus out of Easter and therefore ‘secularize’ the holiday.
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