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Dr. Myers,
As a Lutheran Pastor I am apalled but not surprised by the recent
events at
Texas A&M. Please know that there is more than one Christian coalition,
and
their agenda is antithetical to what you are encountering. Could you e-mail
the e address for the regents. At least one letter is coming from New Jersey.
Murdoch MacPherson
MurdochMac@msn.com
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From: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust on behalf of D G Myers
Sent: Friday, November 22, 1996 10:54 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list H-HOLOCAUST
Subject: Antisemitism at Texas A&M
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.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
David Gershom Myers
Department of English
Texas A&M University
College Station TX 77843-4227
409 845-8345 (office)
409 862-2292 (fax)
409 823-8142 (home)
dgmyers@tamvm1.tamu.edu
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