Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Travel and Religion
Against Burgeoning Anti-Semitism

Against Burgeoning Anti-Semitism

Last updated on: August 25, 2026 at 5:32 pm by Dan Peterson

0 Comments

Against Burgeoning Anti-Semitism 2026-08-25T17:32:24-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

But, first, an urgent message:

The flyer that went out earlier today.

I recognize that most of my three readers live nowhere near my neighborhood, but I want to cover all the bases on this matter (I’ve already been out looking under the bushes in my front and back yards, just in case): A member of my ward apparently went out for a walk yesterday around the noon hour and hasn’t been seen since. We’ve been asked to distribute the flyer immediately above, and so I’m putting it up here. If he was walking with real determination and not just out for a leisurely stroll around the block, Brent could easily have gone well beyond my little neighborhood, into (say) Provo or Pleasant Grove or even further, within a rather short time.

King David, in a 1902 stained glass image by Edward Burne-Jones, located in Glasgow (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Up today on the long-moribund website of the Interpreter Foundation: Come, Follow Me — Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps: August 31 — September 6, 2026: Psalms 102-103; 110; 116-119; 127-128; 135-139 — “Let Every Thing that Hath Breath Praise the Lord”

As he regularly does, Jonn Claybaugh has generously provided a set of concise notes for students and teachers of the Come, Follow Me curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Parthenon in Athens, Greece (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I call your attention, once more, to the Interpreter Foundation’s upcoming twelve-day eleven-night cruise tour focused on the journeys of the apostle Paul. It’s slated to run from 12 April 2027 through 23 April 2027, aboard the Celebrity Infinity. Bountiful Travel’s goal is to have eighty people on the cruise — two forty-passenger buses — and the current registration puts us at sixty-nine. For anybody out there who wants to go and who might be interested in the least expensive cabins (inside), there are still some of those available. But probably not for long.

The focus of the Come, Follow Me curriculum for next year is the New Testament, and our cruise is perfectly timed to enrich your reading of the epistles of Paul when we come to that portion of the lesson-year. Or, if you choose, to allow you to be the show-off ward expert during Sunday School.

Steve Densley and I would love to have you along.

A nighttime view of the Western (or Wailing) Wall, the Temple Mount, and the Dome of the Rock (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

With the kind permission of my former student Dan McClellan, I share here a couple of messages that I read on his Facebook page. You may have noticed that I often feel called upon to respond to expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry that I encounter online and elsewhere. I’m every bit as opposed to manifestations of anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish bigotry, which seems, with its anti-Islamic sibling, to be troublingly on the rise in America (and elsewhere) today.

The first message, immediately below, was written by Marc Zvi Brettler, who is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University. The proximate inspiration for what he has written here is the (perhaps somewhat surprising) recent election of Amy-Jill Levine (who, as her name suggests, is Jewish) as president of the Catholic Biblical Association:

I am copying below a statement posted by my dear academic colleague and collaborator for close to 20 years–AJ Levine. The reactions to her becoming president of the Catholic Biblical Association–the first Jewish president of this august association–have largely been very positive and affirming. Yet, some reactions to this, compounded by the recent publication of the third edition of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, have been horrific, as she notes below. I will offer one quote (that I need to clean up for FB), sent to her personal email, that gives you a sense of what some are saying: “Your Zi*nist a** doesn’t belong in our religion. Keep yourself to the Talmud and keep eating babies. STAY THE F*** AWAY FROM CHRISTIANITY ” AJ’s comments below are very eloquent and speak for themselves, and I can vouch for her sincerity. Few have done so much for Jewish-Christian relations, specifically for offering Jews a sympathetic and historically accurate (and honest!) description of Christianity, or have combatted anti-Judaism so extensively. I am honored that she is my friend.

I am finding all of this upsetting not only because AJ is my friend, but because these comments are indicative of a significant rise in antisemitism–what people have thought but kept to themselves for many years, many are now, due to our political climate, comfortable stating out loud. I hope that all of you will continue to combat this scourge–and all forms of racism and religious bias, and those of you who teach religion will make a special effort to teach Judaism accurately (see the essays by AJ [“Bearing False Witness”] and by Eva Mcoczek [“Stereotypes about God in the Old and the New Testament”] –and that we will all find the strength to call out such biases whenever we see them. Marc

James Jacques Tissot (d. 1902), “Jésus enseigne dans les synagogues”/ “Jesus Teaches in the Synagogues” (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

The second note is from Amy-Jill Levine herself. She is currently, by the way, Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace and University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University:

Dear Facebook community:

It has come to my attention that hateful comments are being posted to this page.

For those who think that my being elected president of the Catholic Biblical Association is a sin, a shame, or a sign of satanic control, please know that none of this is the case. Those who think that public insult is an indication of Christian grace are sadly mistaken. A friend told me after seeing these nasty comments, “These comments prove that your election is needed because you are committed to ending antisemitic teaching and preaching.”

In over 50 years of teaching and writing, I have also worked to combat hatred of Catholicism, whether expressed by Protestants who think of the Pope as the antichrist or find Mariology offensive, liberals who denounce a tradition that does not ordain women or that would restrict access to abortion in any circumstances including rape or catastrophic fetal anomalies, people who call themselves “recovering Catholics” because they see themselves as having been harmed by the Church or by its representatives, Jews and Protestants who see Catholics as epitomizing antisemitism, or people who see the Church as responsible for pedophilia. None of this is helpful, and all of it is hateful.

All of this is based on a combination of ignorance, stereotyping, self-defensiveness, and a tendency to demonize rather than to see people in the Catholic Church as individuals, all in the Divine image and likeness.

Ironically, while I have worked to defend Catholic teaching and Catholic individuals, members of the Church are now demonizing me.

I am being demonized because, as an historian, I recognize that the biblical texts differ on whether a fetus has the same status as a person, how Jewish and Christian tradition have differed on understanding abortion, how tradition changes over time with new knowledge (here we might also consider Thomas Aquinas’s view of ensoulment along with discoveries in fetal and maternal care).

I am being demonized because I see queer people as also in the divine image and likeness, and I work to show how they too can find comfort hope in the biblical text.

While I do not believe in Jesus as Lord — a concern for some of the hate-filled messages — I do take him seriously as a teacher based in his own Jewish tradition. My historical work shows that we do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. If those who see Jesus as Lord feel compelled to say hateful things about me, I do wonder what will happen when the judgment of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) comes about.

Belief is not a matter of logic, as if one connects the dots from Genesis through the prophets through the Psalms and one gets to Jesus. As Marc Brettler and I noted in our book, The Bible With and Without Jesus, Jews have read the same texts Christians cite, but we have different interpretations. Reading the Bible is not a zero-sum game. If one reads through Christian lenses, one will see Jesus on every page. If one reads through Jewish lenses, one will not. The need now is to read together, again without demonizing.

Hate and demonizing, name calling and slandering, are not good forms of evangelism. And now, ironically again, I have to explain that these nasty posts are not indicative of the best of the Church.

Dear friends:

A good colleague suggested the following be added to my earlier note:

And of course I’m being demonized by some for the simple fact I am Jewish, which is, sadly, not surprising today, but should, for Catholics, be off limits. Catholics should have been aware of this since at least the Second Vatican Council. No less an authority than St. John Paul II said, bluntly, anti-semitism is a sin. I’m sad and sorry to see it in evidence here.

Samuel anointing David, from the third century AD synagogue at Dura Europos, in Syria
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I hope that it isn’t necessary for me to say this, but I want to exhort my fellow Latter-day Saints (and any others whom my words my reach) to stay far away from anti-Jewish bigotry (as also from anti-Muslim bigotry). This doesn’t mean, of course, that disagreement with Jewish or Islamic teachings is, in itself, bad, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we cannot be critical of policies of the State of Israel or of unfortunate trends in parts of the Muslim world. But it certainly means that we should absolutely reject hatred of Jews and Muslims as such.

And, finally, I point out once again that, so far as I am aware, the Book of Mormon is the only significant world-scriptural text that explicitly condemns anti-Semitism:

But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.

Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews? (2 Nephi 29:4-6)

Travel and Religion

History and Religion

Uncategorized

Amy-Jill Levine

anti-Semitism

Catholic Biblical Association

Jew

Marc Brettler

Mormon

Previous Post

August 24, 2026

How many divine beings appeared in Joseph's First Vision?

Next Post

August 26, 2026 Without Moroni statues, is the Church rejecting its past?

How many books are in the New Testament?

Select your answer to see how you score.

27 13 30 21