Published:
June 27 - July 1, 2011
Source: USHMM
The Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust (CRC) of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum announces its annual faculty seminar. Applications from professors from all disciplines will be considered, but the seminar is designed particularly for professors of theology, ethics, and religion at theological schools and other institutions of advanced education. The seminar will take place from June 27 to July 1, 2011. This year’s seminar is titled: Transforming Troubling Tellings: The History of the Deicide Charge and the Holocaust.
This seminar will explore the “shadow side” of Christian teaching and preaching about the Passion story: interpretations of this event that blamed the Jews and constituted the core of a polemic against Judaism. Topics to be discussed will include the historical development of the deicide charge in church life and popular culture, analysis of its role in fueling antisemitism across Europe, assessment of its influence among Christian populations during the Holocaust, and a historical overview of church responses during the Holocaust. The seminar will conclude with a review of post-Holocaust readings of the relevant texts and an exploration of how teachings and traditions can be transformed.
The seminar will be taught by Dr. Mary C. Boys, Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, with Victoria Barnett, Staff Director of Church Relations, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Professor Boys is the author of numerous articles and books, including Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding (2000) and Christians and Jews in Dialogue: Learning in the Presence of the Other (2006; co-authored with Sara S. Lee of Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles). Long active in the field of Jewish-Christian relations, Professor Boys served as co-director of the Lilly Endowment-sponsored Religious Particularism and Pluralism project that involved Jewish and Catholic educators and academics. She is a member of the boards of the Tanenbaum Foundation for Interreligious Understanding, the Suenens Foundation, and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education. Ms. Barnett has helped create academic and public programs, panels, and symposia on Christianity and the Holocaust with institutions around the country. Her publications include Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (1999) and For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (1992).
Candidates must be faculty members at accredited, degree-awarding institutions in North America.
Applications must be submitted no later than Tuesday, March 1, 2011.