Ex-Congressman Says Parkland Students ‘Need A Belief In Jesus Christ’
Image by Getty Images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis March 2, 2018
Former Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz told Fox News that the survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting “need a belief in God, in Jesus Christ.”
Parkland is in a heavily Jewish part of Florida, and many of the victims and their classmates are Jewish. Media Matters highlighted the clip, which was part of a conversation about the funeral of evangelical leader Billy Graham.
Chaffetz, who was born Jewish but converted to Mormonism in college, said on Fox News that he believed that a belief in Jesus Christ “would help” the students returning to Stoneman Douglas High School two weeks after the shooting.
The massacre at Stoneman Douglas killed 17 people, many of them students, and has set off a new wave of calls for gun control. Chaffetz had an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, and the endorsement of its associated political action committee in his last election.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
