When the Shepherds Built a Bridge
How Churches Helped Lay the Ground for the Noahide Movement
Before reading the following article, please read my piece titled “How the Noahide Laws Crept into America’s Public Life and Why It Matters.”
It is shocking to realize that the yearly presidential proclamations called Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A. did not appear out of nowhere. Long before American presidents stood beside Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis praising the Seven Noahide Laws as the moral foundation of civilization, the ground had already been tilted by the churches themselves.
For decades, both Catholic and Protestant leaders spoke in one voice about shared moral law and universal ethics. What sounded like reconciliation became the slow redefinition of righteousness. The vocabulary of theology turned into the language of politics. By the time presidents began speaking about the “moral code of Noah,” the idea had already been sanctified by the pulpit.
I am not a Catholic, yet I must acknowledge that one of the earliest and clearest warnings about this came from within the Catholic world itself. Around 2003, a traditional Catholic writer published an essay on the website FishEaters titled “The Laws of Noah: One World Religion?” The essay, translated from the French Dominican review Le Sel de la Terre(Autumn 2003), reads today like prophecy. It described how inter faith enthusiasm after the Second Vatican Council opened a path for rabbinic moral law to enter Christian vocabulary and, eventually, civil life.
“The Noahide Laws,” the author wrote, “are presented as a form of natural morality revealed. The danger is to substitute for the unique Law of Christ a universal moral code, independent of the Gospel, in which mankind is judged righteous without the Cross.”
That sentence captured the whole movement in one breath: the replacement of revelation with moral code.
The article went further, warning that such a code could form the skeleton of a coming world religion. It said that the aim of this “Noahide project” was nothing less than to “reconstruct civilization under a single moral law,” one in which “nations will acknowledge the God of Israel without embracing Christ.” According to the author, this transformation would take place not by persecution but by persuasion, using inter-faith dialogue as the instrument.
Everything began, as the essay explained, with the Vatican’s 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate. It urged reconciliation with Judaism and said that the Jewish people “remain most dear to God.” From that moment the Church established the International Catholic–Jewish Liaison Committee, where Jewish scholars presented the Noahide Laws as a moral covenant for all humanity. Catholic theologians, encouraged by the new openness, compared these laws to the Church’s own doctrine of natural law, the moral sense said to be written on every heart. The intention was peace; the result was a theology of morality without redemption.
In 2002 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops published Reflections on Covenant and Mission, affirming that Judaism’s covenant “is eternally valid” and describing the Jewish moral tradition as “enduring.” The FishEaters piece saw this as confirmation that a “two-covenant theology” was already in place, one covenant through Christ, and one through Noah and Abraham. It warned that such reasoning “prepares men to accept a global moral code that does not require faith, only obedience.”
The article noted, with eerie foresight, that “world organizations and governments will eventually use this code as a basis for their own laws.” Reading that now, in light of America’s Education Day proclamations, feels chillingly accurate.
Protestant bodies soon followed the same pattern. Through the World Council of Churches and national associations like the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, they began issuing joint statements about “our shared ethical responsibility before the Creator.” Phrases such as “the moral law of humanity” and “common covenant of conscience” became standard language. Mainline denominations like the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) began hosting Jewish-Christian conferences where rabbis explained the Noahide Laws as universal ethics. Their Christian counterparts nodded approvingly, describing the laws as “foundations for global peace.”
Evangelical movements, eager to defend modern Israel, added emotion to the same script. Pastors began teaching that supporting Israel was supporting Jesus, because “Jesus was a Jew.” Without realizing it, they built a bridge between political Zionism and Christian faith, and upon that bridge the same words appeared: The Noahide Laws. The FishEaters author foresaw this danger too, writing:
“The nations will believe they are honoring the God of Scripture while rejecting the Cross of His Son.”
Only a few years before that article appeared, the United States had already taken its first official step. As I wrote earlier, in 1978, Congress and President Jimmy Carter issued the first proclamation of Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A., drafted in cooperation with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. It praised the “heritage of morality and charity” rooted in the Seven Laws of Noah. Every president since has renewed it. The phrasing, shared values, moral foundation, heritage of mankind, mirrored the inter-faith language that had been polished for decades by churches and councils.
By the time the proclamation reached Washington, the bridge between church and synagogue had already been built. The political world simply walked across it.
No one in the pews realized what had happened. Pastors and bishops kept signing resolutions and smiling for photographs. Evangelical leaders used the same phrases of “shared values” and “common morality,” convinced they were doing God’s work. Few noticed that the covenant of grace had been replaced with a covenant of ethics.
The FishEaters writer closed with a plea that sounds even more urgent today:
“Only one law saves, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. All others may organize the world, but they cannot sanctify it.”
Two decades later those words have come true. Presidents still stand each spring surrounded by rabbis, proclaiming America’s commitment to the Noahide code, believing they are defending virtue. They do not see that the soil for this was prepared long before, in church documents, in inter-faith committees, in words that once seemed harmless.
The warning from 2003 was clear. What began as friendship became fusion. What began as dialogue became dogma. What was meant to bring peace now feeds a movement that replaces redemption with regulation.
And still the bridge stands, gleaming in polite phrases, connecting faiths that no longer share the same foundation. Across it shine the same golden words: The Noahide Laws. They promise unity, but they lead to a world where the Cross is no longer needed. They lead us to a place from which there is no return.
Sources :
FishEaters: “The Laws of Noah – One World Religion?” (c. 2003) based on Le Sel de la Terre, No. 46 (Autumn 2003) – https://www.fisheaters
