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Pamphlet promoting a Jewish state and deriding Anti-semitism by Rev'd Dr. James Parkes (1896-1981), one of the most remarkable figures in British Christianity in the twentieth century. Born in Guernsey, he graduated with a degree in Theology from Hertford College, Oxford in 1923. In the same year he was ordained a deacon, becoming a priest in 1926. Although he was never to acquire his own parish, he became affiliated to the Student Christian Movement and the International Student Service, Geneva, through which he began to confront the growth of nationalist and racialist organisations in Europe during the late 1920s. Thereafter, he devoted his career to fighting antisemitism and seeking out its origins.
Closely related to his academic interest were his campaigning activities. He was involved in the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion trial in Geneva in 1935. During the 1930s and 1940s he helped to mobilise British opinion on behalf of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, playing a leading role in helping refugees escape from the 'Third Reich' and in the formation of the Council of Christians and Jews in 1942.
Parkes believed that in order to establish future dialogue between Christians and Jews it was essential to understand what Christians had thought about Jews and the Jewish religion throughout the ages, and he began to collect all that he could on the subject. In 1956 the Parkes Library was officially established and eight years later it was transferred to the University of Southampton where it has increased in size to over 20,000 printed items and over 500 collections of manuscripts, containing over one million items.
Throughout his life, Parkes wrote extensively on Judaism, Christianity and antisemitism both under his own name and under the pseudonym, John Hadham.
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