In 1657, Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas in England, a Pagan festival
As Lord Protector, Cromwell was aware of the Jewish community's involvement in the economics of the Netherlands, now England's leading commercial rival. It was this—allied to Cromwell's tolerance of the right to private worship of those who fell outside evangelical Puritanism—that led to his encouraging Jews to return to England in 1657, over 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the Civil Wars.[102] There was a longer-term motive for Cromwell's decision to allow the Jews to return to England, and that was the hope that they would convert to Christianity and therefore hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, ultimately based on Matthew 23:37–39 and Romans 11. At the Whitehall conference of December 1655 he quoted from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 10:12–15 on the need to send Christian preachers to the Jews. Cromwell's long-term religious motive for readmitting the Jews to England should not be doubted, after all he was serious enough to ban Christmas as a pagan festival. William Prynne the Presbyterian, unlike Cromwell the Congregationalist, was strongly opposed to the latter's pro-Jewish policy.[103] @Curionic
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