LEWISTON – A new course examining the 2,000-year “clash of civilizations” between Judaism and Christianity will be offered this summer at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College.

Titled “Jews and Christians from the Crucifixion to the Passion’,” the course will analyze the “teaching of contempt” by both the Catholic and Protestant churches toward Jews and Judaism, the sea change in Christian-Jewish relations since the end of the Holocaust and the controversy over Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and its implications for the future.

Some of the issues that will be explored in the course include the following:

How did a negative image of Judaism develop in Christianity and why?

Is there a relationship between Christian anti-Jewish teachings, anti-Jewish teachings, anti-Jewish violence and anti-Semitism? Is there a corresponding anti-Christian hostility within Judaism?

What effect has the Mel Gibson film, “The Passion of the Christ,” had on future Jewish-Christian relations?

Class members will also seek to answer an important question based on the Vatican II Council Nostra Aetate (Declaration on Non-Christian Religions): How can Christians and Jews study their religious history and develop a theology of “the other” that is not triumphalist but empathic?

The course (HUM 299) will be offered from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, May 18 through July 1. The instructors will be Abraham Peck and Carey Walsh.

Peck is an adjunct professor in USM’s History Department and also serves as the director of the Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian and Jewish Studies. He is the founder of the African American/American Jewish dialogue.

Walsh is a graduate of the Yale Divinity School and the University of Chicago and served as an assistant professor of religion at Rhodes College in Tennessee. She also served as an instructor at the Harvard Divinity School.

Registration is open through the first week of classes. Call 753-6530 for registration information. A complete summer and fall course listing is available on-line at usm.maine.edu/lac/schedules/.