God as therapist, courtesy Shutterstock
Tenth-grade students at Albany (N.Y.) High School were given an alarming writing assignment last week: How do I convince my teacher that I think Jews are evil? The superintendent of the school system has apologized and the unnamed teacher has been placed on leave.
Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero defends the teacher and says he too gave out a similar assignment as a way of teaching about the dangers of Nazi propaganda.
Can’t help but wonder how Jews in the classroom might have felt.
The Wall Street Journal has a new e-book, “Pope Francis: From the End of the Earth to Rome” that chronicles the unlikely ascension of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy. An excerpt appeared in Saturday’s paper. What Bergoglio offered was new narrative, the story says.
“He was telling a story of modern Catholicism that focused less on its complex inner workings and more on its outreach to those most in need.”
Our own Alessandro Speciale reports that the pope has set up a working group of eight cardinals from all over the world to advise him on running the church and reforming the scandal-ridden administration, known as the curia. Boston Archbishop Sean Patrick O’Malley is one of the eight.
Meanwhile, the world’s tallest statue of former pontiff Pope John Paul II has been unveiled today in Poland.
Culture warrior Richard Land has a new job: president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, N.C.
The provisional bishop of The Episcopal Church in South Carolina has sent out letters to an estimated 140 clergy seeking clarification as to whether they will be departing the denomination.
Fifty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged white church leaders to confront racism, an ecumenical network has responded to his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
In weirder news, teen pop star Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and wrote in the guest book that he hoped the young Holocaust victim would have been a “belieber,” aka a fan.
Overseas, an Irish constitutional convention has voted in favor of a referendum on civil marriage for same-sex couples. The government will now decide whether to accept the recommendation.
The leader of Cairo’s small Jewish community and the driving force behind the restoration monuments of Egyptian Jewish history has died. The New York Times has a nice tribute.
Concert pianist Fazil Say was given a suspended jail sentence in Turkey on Monday for insulting religious values on Twitter, a case that has become a cause celebre for Turks alarmed about creeping Islamic conservatism
And finally, some interesting reflections this weekend.: Jana Reiss wrote a loving tribute to Brennan Manning, former priest and author of “All is Grace.”
Anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann said many evangelicals treat God like a therapist, someone who will listen to their concerns and help them to handle them.
11 Comments
Scott Elliott
Significant error on the South Carolina story: the bishop asking for clarification of the clergy is the one loyal to the Episcopal Church. The one who is trying to steal TEC’s clergy and property is Mark Lawrence.
Yonat Shimron
Article authorThe error has been corrected. Thank you.
Monday's Religion News Roundup: Evil Jews? * Ca...
[...] Tenth graders in Albany were asked to write a persuasive argument to a fictitious Nazi government official arguing that "Jews are evil." Pope Francis offers a new church narrative of outreach to those in need. [...]
Lisa Kayser
The teacher that gave the assignment to support the Nazi justification to murder six million Jewish people, and thousands of others, should be fired from his or her teaching post. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, especially in Europe, and it must stop. It is bad enough with terrorist groups trying to murder more Jewish people, with out adding fuel to the “fire”. Enough is ENOUGH!!!!
Old Dude
Some years ago my daughter (was in middle school) learned that 100% of the Japanese Americans were rounded up and forced into a concentration camp by no there than liberal FDR and Earl Warren. So she and I drove up to Manzanar and sure enough there was the camp. We walked in the graveyard and there were infants and old people so we considered: were 100% of them spies? Well no dad .. not babies. But FDR and Warren never considered that .. never tried them .. never gave them recompense; stole their land, their lives, their rights. This was supposedly why we were fighting Nazi’s .. but Nazi’s are not the only ones and kids DO need to see that (and never forget it). I saw mass graves in Europe (Meligalas): and it was communists who did it. Kids need to know .. and adults ought to know too (but ignorance IS bliss .. isn’t it?)
Kevan Scott
My apologies to Jews worldwide for the insensitivity of Christians like the teacher’s writing assignment and the remarks of Justin Beaver. I no longer use the word Christian in relation to me. Comments and actions like in today’s roundup leave me dumbfounded and sad. The Jews are no more or no less evil than any other race or religious group in the world today. Get it thru your head Christians Jesus WAS a Jew! To hate the Jews, or anyone else for thhat matter is to hate Jesus himself. I try to follow Christ’s teachings as best I can but to call myself Christian any longer when Christians are doing things like this is something I can no longer do. I’ll follow Christ’s teachings and leave my eternal ‘salvation” as well as Anne Frank’s up to God. He is much more qualified to make that judgement than me. By the way, if you had a 14 yr. old daughter who had experienced what Anne Frank did could you really send her to “hell” especially if yu say you love her as much as Christ says he loves us? No, me neither. I’m not an atheist, yet, but Christians today with their weirder and weirder beleifs are moving me in that direction quite nicely.
Old Dude
Apologize for yourself and then try to be a better Christian. Don’t accuse the rest of us for being like you. You’ll do. If you ate hating .. you stop hating. Get the telephone pole out of your eye Mr. Kevan Scott and you will probably find that challenging enough. Don’t judge everyone else as culpable for your acts (because that is a form of false sterotyping against Christians .. which is ALL TOO COMMON these days). Clean up you own mess .. you are not allowed to declare yourself a saint .. God will make those decisions.
Old Dude
I stand corrected. I read your post further. Gosh you really are hateful. All I can say to you after having read it a little further is: I fell sorry for you. I hope you are not young and have to live a long life with that kind of hatred. But you never can tell. Maybe you will need that time to get good terms with your mirror. That’s gotta be a hard face to shave. I’ll pray for you.
Wise Gentile
Apologize for yourself if you must. In my opinion, Gentiles are not the ones who need to be doing the apologizing…
Monday's Religion News Roundup: Evil Jews? * Catholic reform * God as therapist - Religion News Service | Jews TorahJews Torah
[...] Religion News Service [...]
Wise Gentile
And let’s not forget how the so-called “jews” have usurped the land that belongs to the good Palestinians. The Palestinians are the true chosen people of God.