Texas A&M event blames CHRISTIANITY for Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia (AUDIO)

A late April roundtable event at Texas A&M University cited the phrase “Where [sic] your Sunday best,” as well as Christian traditions, as causes of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in America. 

Called “Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Prejudice and Discrimination,” the roundtable discussion occurred a few days after the California synagogue shooting. 

“We...felt the Pittsburgh massacre was not just about anti-Semitism, but it was also about immigration,” Texas A&M professor Ashley Passmore told The Battalion. “If we look at the kinds of issues the attacker was going after, they were also anti-Muslim and kind of Islamophobic. We decided we wanted to talk about anti-Semitism in the United States and its connections with other types of hate discourses [by] looking at it intersectionality between anti-Semitism and other struggles in this country.”

Three Texas A&M professors from the philosophy, humanities, and international studies departments, as well as a political science undergraduate, presented at this event hosted by The Working Group in Jewish Studies. 

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Texas A&M philosophy professor Claire Katz, who also researches feminist theory, referenced “exclusionary practices” in America that are to blame for anti-Semitism, according to a handout obtained by Campus Reform. In a section, titled “Where [sic] your Sunday best,” Katz lists “religious holidays and school,” “prayer and school -- praying before events, e.g. athletics and band,” “dress codes and religion,” and even references Christmas concerts.

“‘Wear your Sunday best,’” Katz told attendees. “This is what my kids are always told at school for some kind of event. ‘Wear your Sunday best’...this is in a public school and so the view is everybody goes to church, right? But that’s not true, whether you’re religious or not. Not everybody goes to church.”

She claims that this statement is not “innocuous,” but instead encourages “a larger framework of ‘you may go to a public school but this is really a Christian school.” 

Regarding Christmas music programs in public schools, Katz complained that her children’s school terms a “winter concert” a “Christmas concert” in an “unabashed, unashamed way,” does not cater to any other religion, and creates “a kind of hegemony and [is] closing down and [is] really approprialism in the worst sense of that term.” 

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The professor then uses a personal instance of her daughter quitting the marching band at a public school because “she got tired of the prayers that were said before the events.” 

Katz includes a statement from Lila Corwin, a history and Jewish studies professor at Temple University, in her handout. 

“I am noticing that many Jewish organizations in their well-intentioned statements of mourning about the synagogue shooting in San Diego are not using the words white supremacy or white Christian nationalism, only the word anti-Semitism,” Corwin said.

Katz said during the roundtable that the word “Christian” inserted between “white” and “nationalism” “is often left out” in reporting and is “the part of the discussion that we often don’t have.” 

“When does white nationalism also appropriate certain tropes within Christianity?” the professor asked attendees.

“It’s not only that it’s the targeting of non-white bodies, it’s also the targeting of two religions within the monotheistic or Abrahamic tradition that are now viewed as enemies of, or outside of, or not within the framework of whatever Christian values are.”

Texas A&M lecturer David Brenner bolds a statement derived from an interview Adolf Hitler did with The New York Times in 1931 in a handout. Brenner’s quote claimed Hitler said, “It was America that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all races.” 

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However, the exact opposite was said by Hitler in the interview. 

The correct statement reads, “Moreover, it was America, in spite of its enormous territory, that was the first country to teach us—by its immigration law—that a nation should open its doors equally to all nations.” 

Katz and Brenner did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time for publication.

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