‘Billy Graham’s Final Crusade’

In reporting on Billy Graham’s “crusade,” which is basically an evangelical exhibition and proselytizing exercise on a grandiose scale, The New York Sun states that the Reverend Robert Johansson, chairman of the crusade’s pastoral committee, acknowledges New York to be a “hotbed of secularism” [“Billy Graham’s Final ‘Crusade’ Invigorates City’s Christians,” Meghan Clyne, Page 1, June 15, 2005]. Perhaps readers should digest comments like that with additional information not provided by your article.

In the year 2002, the National Archives released hundreds of hours of taped conversations of Richard Nixon when he was president of the United States. Included on those tapes were conversations in the Oval Office between Nixon and Rev. Graham. As reported, Rev. Graham’s comments could only be characterized as anti-Semitic. Nixon’s comments could also be so characterized. It is true that Rev. Graham subsequently apologized for those comments. The apology was made 30 years after the statements were made and resulted from the required revelation of the Nixon tapes. I do not know whether Rev. Graham’s comments in the White House in 1972 are more or less sincere than his apology 30 years later in 2002. Perhaps it is that large Jewish population which makes New York a “hotbed of secularism.”

JOSEPH B. MARGOLIN
Valley Stream, N.Y.

‘The Turning Tide’

David Gelernter’s thoughtful essay regarding the teaching of the Bible as literature in public schools is good, but too vague on what he calls making the curriculum “lawsuit proof” [“The Turning Tide,” Opinion, June 1, 2005]. First, it is not true that all teaching of the Bible was swept from public schools after 1948. I was born and raised in Texas and attended public schools where in my senior year of high school (1972) I took a biblical literature class. In some ways, my experience reflects the difficulty of many of the issues that Professor Gelernter addresses in his essay, and I can attest to the reality of how they often are played out “on the ground.”

Before high school I had already endured classroom prayers and the forced singing of Christmas carols (not just “Jingle Bells,” either), and I had hoped that this would be different. My teacher was an earnest young woman in our school’s English department who had volunteered to teach this course out of her own conviction. The first portion of the course was devoted to the Old Testament, and the second to the New Testament. She was well prepared to teach and extraordinarily careful to be respectful of the beliefs of her students. So far so good, and exactly what Professor Gelernter would want to see in the classroom.

There were, however, the students, myself among them, who had ideas of their own. Some in the classroom had been taught that their fundamental Christian beliefs were the sole way to salvation and that their job was to evangelize others to their faith. This was a golden opportunity to “prove” to their classmates the veracity of their beliefs since, after all, “it’s right here in the Bible.” Moreover, the very texts which separate religions like Judaism and Christianity – those that purportedly deal with the messiah, good and evil, sin and punishment – require a subtle and complex analysis that was just not possible in a high school classroom, given the relative qualifications of the teacher, regardless of her good intentions.

I was one of only two or three Jewish students in a class of around 30. There were days when it felt oppressive to be there. Finally, perhaps a case of poor judgment on the teacher’s part, we had a series of guest lectures by local ministers, pastors, and a rabbi. While I do not recall any great textual insights, what I clearly remember are a couple of the ministers opening their teaching session with a prayer in the name of Jesus. I was horrified, and I complained to the teacher about this but with no sympathy or support from anyone else.

The constitutional issues addressing religion in public life are certainly not meant to curtail in any way its free practice by Americans. Indeed, there are permissible occasions when religion does enter into the public sphere as well, such as in the military, state universities, the prisons, and at some public events, and the courts have set these parameters. The fundamental principle, however, is that our Constitution protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority, and when it comes to religion in public schools, I can hardly think of a better example of this axiom in action. We should not jump to the conclusion that every constitutional protection against religious encroachment is necessarily hostility to religion, but instead an insurance policy of sorts against turning the United States into a theocracy.

Professor Gelernter is absolutely right that understanding the Bible is a key to understanding English literature and America culture. Even if curricula can be “painstakingly tweaked to be lawsuit-proof,” they still fall into the hands of individual teachers, students, parents, and school boards, many of whom have other agendas. Perhaps in some enlightened places in America his plan can work and not trample on the Constitution, but I come from a place where unfortunately I believe it would fail. The issue is not if we should teach the literature of the Bible, but how it should be taught and ultimately who should teach it.

RABBI JOSEPH S.TOPEK
Stony Brook University (SUNY)
Stony Brook, N.Y.