A New York school bus driver has been suspended after reportedly evangelizing a group of elementary school students and holding them “captive” while claiming that “Jews” killed Jesus, causing them to be around 30 minutes late to school.
The incident reportedly occurred during a morning route to Brooklyn Prospect International Elementary Charter School, a tuition-free K-5 public charter school in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant/Clinton Hill neighborhood, reported The New York Post.
Parents and students — some of whom were Jewish, according to one parent — told the newspaper that the driver abruptly pulled the bus over and proclaimed Jesus as the only savior and encouraged the children to accept Christian beliefs.
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“The only one who can deliver you isn’t religion; it’s Jesus,” the driver reportedly said.
When a student asked if Jesus was Jewish, the driver reportedly said that Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death.
“Yes, he was a Jew, and basically Jews — his own kind — killed him,” the driver said, according to an unidentified parent who spoke with the NY Post. “They basically killed him because he said he was the son of God. … These were religious leaders who killed him.”
The driver reportedly handed out white baseball caps emblazoned with a black cross and the words, “I Am With You Always.” He allegedly asked the children to join him in prayer and spoke at length about sin, salvation and the afterlife.
He also reportedly mocked atheism and raised questions about creationism and the Big Bang Theory.
“Well, who created the ‘Big Bang’?” the driver allegedly asked students. “They ain’t going to be able to answer you. They’re going to get stuck.”
According to The NY Post, the school told parents last Friday that the driver “stopped the bus for a period of time to make religious remarks and distribute religious merchandise to students” but did not offer any additional details.
Neither Brooklyn Prospect International Elementary Charter School nor the New York City Department of Education responded to The Christian Post’s request for comment. This story will be updated if a response is received.
Administrators told the newspaper that they filed a formal complaint with the driver’s employer, Jofaz Transportation, and requested a new driver for the route.
The Catholic Church, in its 1965 Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), condemned claims that “Jews killed Jesus” by stating the crucifixion of Jesus “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”
Likewise, Messianic Jews such as Rabbi Ari Waldman of the Dallas-based Baruch Hashem, say the New Testament, and even Jesus Himself, contradict such a claim.
“Yeshua, in His own words, said about His life in John 10:18, ‘No one takes it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again,'” Waldman told CP Thursday.
Other commentators, like Samuel Sey, disagree, pointing to other texts in the gospels that lay responsibility for Jesus’ execution with both Jews and Romans.
“God says the Jewish leaders arrested Jesus because they were secretly plotting to kill him (Matthew 26:3-4). God also says they persuaded the Jewish crowd to demand the Romans to crucify him (Matthew 27:15-23),” Sey wrote in a May 2024 CP op-ed. “When a person says it’s wrong to say Jews killed Jesus, they’re saying what God says in the Bible is wrong.”
Earlier this month, Congress amended a bipartisan bill aimed at addressing rising antisemitism on college campuses with a religious liberty clause to protect statements claiming Jews killed Jesus, a move seen as a concession to Christian conservatives.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act would require the U.S. Department of Education to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
Under the said definition, claims of “Jews killing Jesus” used to “characterize Israel or Israelis” or “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” can be considered antisemitic and punishable by law.
