Stephen Prothero

Here in Albany, the story about the school teacher who assigned a “think-like-a-Nazi” essay brought the region into a collective gasp. In turn, the school district  issued an apology and put the teacher on leave. However, the story suddenly turned national as the USA Today and Washington Post picked up the story.

Just about everyone who read the story thought the assignment was a bad idea. However, Boston University religion scholar, Stephen Prothero thinks that no harm was done when the teacher gave the Nazi related assigned. He writes:

I think it’s Greenfield [New York City Councilman] who is lacking in common sense here. And it’s the superintendent who is being illogical.

I suppose it is possible that the teacher is a closet Nazi attempting to reconstruct the Third Reich in Albany. But isn’t it more likely that he or she is trying to teach students about the dangers of propaganda and the horrors of the Holocaust?

Consider the student who felt “horrible” about doing this assignment. Is that really a bad thing? How are high school students today supposed to feel about Nazism and the Holocaust?

Apparently, what they are supposed to feel (and think) is nothing, because the lesson high school teachers are going to take away from this fiasco is to avoid this topic at all costs, lest they risk losing their jobs.

When I was an assistant professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, I used to teach Nazi theology. My students read sermons by Nazi theologians arguing that Jews were evil and were responsible for killing Jesus. They also read a book called “Theologians Under Hitler” by Robert P. Erickson, who tried to explain how and why Christian thinkers could come to believe that exterminating Jews was somehow Christ-like.

What do you think? Is Prothero on target here?