The American Jewish Committee and National Conference of Christians and Jews announced today the beginning of a year-long study to determine how Protestant educational material has taken into account recent important developments in Christian-Jewish relations. The research project seeks to ascertain how Protestants have revised textbooks, lesson materials and have changed curricula in light of an earlier study of Protestant textbooks of the 1950s. That study probed Protestant attitudes toward minorities. A volume entitled “Faith and Prejudice,” it pointed up distortions, inadequacies and biased selection of Biblical source material, according to its author Dr. Bernhard E, Olson. He is the NCCJ’s inter-religious affairs director. The work was published in cooperation with the AJCommittee.
Dr. Olson said the new study of current educational materials will also focus on their contents in light of the Catholic Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Jews and statements by major Protestant denominational and inter-denominational bodies on anti-Semitism and relations with Jews. Joining him in the announcement was Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, director of the AJCommittee’s inter-religious affairs department.
Other events figuring into the study are the increase of Jewish-Christian dialogue and the Arab-Israel crisis. The Leonard M. Sperry Research Center Fund of Los Angeles is underwriting the study together with matching funds from the two agencies.
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