Anti-semitism at Texas A&M
Thu, 21 Nov 1996 17:15:43 -0500
Last week a preacher invited to the Texas A&M University by a student
organization slurred two Jewish students to their faces.
Tom Short, an itinerant evangelist brought to campus by the A&M Christian
Fellowship, told one student that, because she is Jewish, she is going "to
burn in Hell." He told another Jewish student that "Hitler did not go far
enough."
The incident has been reported to the Houston office of the Anti-Defamation
League of Bnai Brith and to Ray M. Bowen, president of the University. The
Faculty Senate has also been asked to condemn Short's comments and to
demand a stop to all Christianizing activities at Texas A&M.
The Battalion, student daily at Texas A&M, reported the incident in a
letter to the editor over the headline "Preacher violates common courtesy."
With an overwhelmingly Protestant student population of over 40,000, Texas
A&M is a common locus for Christianizing activities that would be deemed
inappropriate at most American universities and colleges. The weekend
before Short's appearance, for instance, a revival meeting called
Gospelfest was held in Rudder Auditorium, the largest theater on campus. In
the spring, an annual Passion Play is staged in the quadrangle outside the
Memorial Student Center. Every semester a group of Christian faculty
purchases a full-page ad in The Battalion, urging students to seek their
aid in coming to Jesus. (The faculty list their department affiliations,
and the names are then alphabetized by department.) Student government
meetings are routinely opened with a non-denominational Christian prayer,
and local bookstores sell T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like "Aggies for
Christ," which some students make a point of wearing to Jewish professors'
classes.
The antisemitic preaching of an evangelist brought to campus by a student
organization, in short, might be interpreted as the culmination of a clear
pattern of religious intolerance at Texas A&M.
Subscribers to the H-Holocaust list are urged to protest this outbreak of
antisemitism to the Regents of Texas A&M University, members of the Texas
state legislature, and Texas representatives to the U.S. Congress. I would
welcome other suggestions for courses of action.
This was posted by:
David Gershom Myers
Department of English
Added several days later:
From: D G Myers
Subject: Antisemitism on campus, cont.
Subscribers may be interested to know that I have spoken with both the
adviser and student president of the A&M Christian Fellowship, the
organization that invited the antisemitic preacher Tom Short to campus.
Both claimed that his comment about Hitler was "taken out of context," and
that Short "is not that kind of man." "He thinks that what Hitler did was
wrong!" I was told. That is big of him, I was tempted to respond. Instead,
I responded by arguing that Short's theology is not Christian at all, but
Nazi. The logic runs like this. Since all Jews are going "to burn in
Hell"--that is, since God Himself has condemned all Jews to burning--it
follows that "Hitler did not go far enough," because he only managed to
condemn *some* Jews to burning. The second comment is unnecessary to
establish that Short is an antisemite. In the aftermath of the Holocaust,
anyone who tells a Jew that she will "burn"--anyone who uses "Jew" and
"burn" in the same sentence--is an antisemite.
One correspondent has suggested privately that I distinguish "the comments
of this one lunatic from the other proselytizing activities on campus,
which the Christians should be free to pursue and the non-Christians free
to ignore, as long as the activities are not intrusive."
Let me be clear, so I am not accused of "censorship." That Christians
should be free to pursue their proselytizing activities is something with
which I agree, and I would never call upon the University to use its power
to coerce Christians into stopping. At the same time, I think
Christians--on campus and off--should voluntarily forego their efforts to
convert the Jews.
In The Fatal Embrace, Benjamin Ginsberg argues that there is
nothing very
mysterious about antisemitism; it is merely a form of xenophobia. But in
contemporary America, where the Jews are not visibly strangers--where
neither speech nor dress nor eating habits nor even conviction separates
Jews from the majority culture--one means of forcibly identifying and
therefore isolating Jews is by targeting them for conversion. Jews are
considered ripe for conversion on no other basis than that they are Jews.
And so the Jews must be seen as--must be treated as--different. In other
words, conversion efforts are the first step toward a reawakening of
antisemitism in the way that Benjamin Ginsberg understands it. When
American Jews have been identified as strangers by attempts to convert
them--and especially when they, a stiffnecked people, resist the
attempts--xenophobic hatred is the likely consequence.
From: "Richard L. England, Jr."
David Meyers' article "Anti-Semitism at Texas A&M", dated Nov. 21, 1996
(sorry I didn't find it sooner), which you have posted on your Web site,
is
pure crap. I was not a member of A&M Christian Fellowship, but I had many
friends who were. They are NOT anti-semitic.
The following statement was also way off base:
"Student government meetings are routinely opened with a
non-denominational
Christian prayer, and local bookstores sell T-shirts emblazoned with
slogans like "Aggies for Christ," which some students make a point of
wearing to Jewish professors' classes. "
This is also crap. I was a member of the Aggies For Christ for 6-1/2
years, and we were definitely not anti-semitic in any way. I doubt
seriously that most of us would have any way of knowing which professors
were Jewish and which were not. We wore our T-shirts because we LIKED
them, not because we thought it entertaining to offend anyone. Also, our
T-shirts were NEVER sold in bookstores. Most of them were printed for use
in our service projects and fellowship activities, much like fraternity
and
sorority T-shirts are printed to commemorate their activities.
Please place some sort of disclaimer online with that libelous article.
Thank you,
Richard L. England, Jr.
TAMU Class of '90
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