Catholic university professor blames history of 'Christian supremacy' for modern racism

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Fordham University, which touts itself as a "Jesuit, Catholic university" employs a professor who condemns Christianity as a racist religion from its early history. 

Professor Magda Teter, who serves as the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham, recently published a book that vilifies Christianity and White people throughout history. Teter explains in her bio that she has written multiple books about the oppression of Jewish people by Christians. 

Her newly released book, Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism, "demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world’s violent white supremacy movements," according to publisher Princeton University Press' website.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) said the book condemns Saint Paul the Apostle - a Jewish convert to Christianity himself - for allegedly laying the groundwork for spreading antisemitism and bigotry throughout history.

A view of Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus on August 22, 2020 in New York City. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

"She traces this idea from the writings of the early church fathers like Paul the Apostle, though [sic] centuries of Catholic and Protestant debates over the status of Jews in Europe, to the hardening of racist attitudes with the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade," JTA managing editor Andrew Silow-Carroll wrote.

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Silow-Carroll commented to Teter in an interview, "The common thread here is that whiteness and Christianity become inseparable. You write that ‘freedom and liberty now came to be linked not only to Christianity, but to whiteness, and servitude and enslavement to blackness.’"

"That’s right," Teter replied. "White Christian ‘liberty’ becomes embedded and embodied in law."

Teter told JTA, "I hope that maybe because the book deals with law and power, it may create bridges among people who care about ‘We the People’ as a vision of people who are diverse, respectful and equal, and not the exclusionary vision offered by white and Christian supremacy."

A silhouette of a crucifix and a stained glass window inside a Catholic Church in New Orleans.  (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Princeton University Press noted the book covers "two millennia" of Christian oppression, as well as how the foundations were laid for "tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority." 

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"With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World," the summary continued. 

"Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution," it concluded.

This appears to be the latest of at least 4 books from the author calling out Christianity’s past, particularly the Catholic church, across the centuries, including Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland, Sinners on Trial and Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth.

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An article on Fordham University’s website said that her passion for "teaching and preserving the Jewish past" was inspired, in part, by her father who grew up in Poland: "As a young child, he witnessed the destruction of the Jewish ghetto in his hometown in Poland during World War II. Wandering into an abandoned synagogue, he found sacred Torah scrolls strewn about the floor."

"Teaching Jewish studies here will illuminate aspects of Catholic history," she said in the entry. "in ways that would not have been illuminated without thinking of Jews as part of that mutual history."

Fordham University said in a statement to Fox News Digital, "Pope John Paul II led efforts by the Church to apologize for its history of anti-semitism and involvement in slavery. Learning the hard lessons from our history is important work done in the Christian tradition with the blessing of the Catholic Church."