INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

In the long history of Christianity there exists no more tragic development than the treatment accorded the Jewish people on the part of Christian believers. Very few Christian communities of faith were able to escape the contagion of anti-Judaism and its modern successor, anti-Semitism. Lutherans belonging to the Lutheran World Federation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America feel a special burden in this regard because of certain elements in the legacy of the reformer Martin Luther and the catastrophes, including the Holocaust of the twentieth century, suffered by Jews in places where the Lutheran churches were strongly represented.

The Lutheran communion of faith is linked by name and heritage to the memory of Martin Luther, teacher and reformer. Honoring his name in our own, we recall his bold stand for truth, his earthy and sublime words of wisdom, and above all, his witness to God's saving Word. Luther proclaimed a gospel for people as we really are, bidding us to trust a grace sufficient to reach our deepest shames and address the most tragic truths.

In the spirit of that truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther's anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews. As did many of Luther's own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations. In concert with the Lutheran World Federation, we particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther's words by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day.

Grieving the complicity of our own tradition within this history of hatred, moreover, we express our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people. We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us. Finally, we pray for the continued blessing of the Blessed One upon the increasing cooperation and understanding between Lutheran Christians and the Jewish community.

Statement on Lutheran-Jewish relations as adopted by the Church Council of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on April 18, 1994

In 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a statement repudiating Martin Luther's anti-Jewish writings and expressing regret for their historical consequences (see page 6). In so doing, the church committed itself to reconciliation and building relationships with Jewish people.

But long before guidelines for an interfaith or Christian-Jewish dialogue were eventually developed by the ELCA in 1998, Christians and Jews in many communities had been talking. One such community was Evanston, Ill., a diverse village bordering Chicago. Nearly 20 years ago, Evanston's Jewish and Christian clergy formed an interfaith association with the purpose of meeting monthly as a first step toward the building of relationships. From those early meetings, friendships began to form and some very exciting things began to happen.

First, Christian and Jewish church leaders were invited to guest preach at each other's houses of worship. Then a synagogue hosted a Friday night dinner, service and educational experience for its Christian neighbors. And now this community holds an annual interfaith Thanksgiving eve service with upwards of 850 people in attendance. They even recently joined forces in solidarity to protest a Ku Klux Klan rally at city hall in neighboring Skokie, a community with a large Jewish population.

In a conversation with the Epistle, four of these church leaders from Evanston came together to discuss Christian-Jewish dialogue in their community. Hosted by Mary Anderson, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, the rest of the group included David Handley, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Ted Miller, pastor of First Congregational Church of Evanston, and Brant Rosen, rabbi at Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation.

EPISTLE: Evanston just celebrated its second annual interfaith Thanksgiving service. How did that come about?

Mary Anderson: This community of Christian congregations has always had a relationship with the Jewish congregations in Evanston, especially in the ministries with the homeless and hungry. That defines who we are as a community. But interfaith worship is a growing edge for us and since Dave has the longest history in Evanston, maybe he can give us a little background.

David Handley: I’ve been here 19 years. Already when I came here we had an interfaith clergy association that met monthly and because relationships were sound, Rabbi Peter Knobel from Evanston’s Beth Emet was invited to speak at a Good Friday service at First Congregational. While that was pressing some boundaries for us, he gave a very compelling history of Good Friday through the European experience, the American experience, and explained why the Jewish community has great concern with the language of the New Testament, particularly as it is presented on Good Friday. About the same time, Rabbi Knoble and I began to do dialogues, and annually for several years I would preach at Beth Emet one Friday night and he would preach at First Presbyterian on that Sunday.

EPISTLE: Were these regular worship services or did you plan special services to accommodate your Jewish guests?

Handley: That really framed one of the issues that we struggled with. While Christians can participate fully in a Jewish service, Jews cannot pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

Anderson: That’s so true. It seems easy because you say, ‘Well, the Christians just have to eliminate certain members of the Trinity.’ Some are willing to do that, and some are not.

Handley: But we didn’t try and meet a common denominator. When I would preach at Beth Emet, I would talk about my belief in Jesus as the Messiah. I would speak to that enthusiastically. When Rabbi Knoble came to First Presbyterian he was very articulate about what Jews believe. We didn’t tone things down. The model is dialogue, it’s not accommodation.

EPISTLE: What are some of the tensions you’ve encountered in Christian-Jewish dialogue?

Handley: I think that there are many levels, but before you can begin to learn of someone’s tradition you need to get past the defensiveness of trying to prove you are right. In Evanston there is a combination of churches from the spectrum of Pentecostal, faith assemblies and many kinds of Baptist groups—AME, liberal and black and white. And one of the things that strikes me is that we still are working on developing trust amongst ourselves in that community, which kind of rears its head when we talk interfaith.

Brant Rosen: That’s sort of built into the system with interfaith dialogue and worship. It is based on a liberal premise that you can come to the table and respect the other side for who they are. So it’s very self-selecting. It’s kind of an ipso facto group of liberal congregations. That can be very challenging when you want to put together a service that represents the face of Evanston and you only have the liberal religious community.

Anderson: Yes, and one of the fears of being an inclusive community is, ‘I’m going to be asked to give something up—something that is important to me.’ And then there are people who think that for purposes of inclusion, there shouldn’t be any boundaries.

Rosen: Absolutely the enemies of inclusion or diversity come from both ends. One is saying ‘If only the rest of the world looked like me we’d all get along,’ and the other is saying ‘If we only broke down all the boundaries and created this new paradigm we’d all get along.’

Ted Miller: But it’s not about taking down boundaries. It’s about defining and respecting boundaries. It’s OK and good to have boundaries. You have to be very clear where they are.

EPISTLE: So for dialogue to be successful, you need to define boundaries and get past defensiveness. How have you been able to do that?

Rosen: My approach has always been to own up to the complications at the onset. We need to discuss them. That’s how we extend boundaries as far as possible without giving up a big piece of who we are. To me, who you are can become deeply enriched by learning from someone who is different from you. It reinforces your self-hood, reminding you why you love what and who you are in the first place.

Miller: That’s right, Brant, and it’s in the tensions that relationships are hopefully deepened. We can’t avoid the real tricky stuff. We have to appreciate the importance of owning our own traditions and talking about our differences.

Handley: And some of the tensions are creative tensions. But, it can only happen if relationships are strong—if we trust each other and respect each other.

Miller: I agree. It’s not only the final product that is important, it’s also the relationships that build in the process of working issues out. So by the time we reach the service itself we have dealt with practical issues, and our sense of fellowship and community shines through no matter what we end up doing.

EPISTLE: Relationships seem to be key to successful dialogue.

Miller: The relationships are really key!

Handley: I think this is all about relationships. A stumbling block of any kind of ecumenical or interfaith work is putting the time into the relationships before anything effective can really happen. It’s those levels of trust that need to be developed.

EPISTLE: How do you involve your congregations in the interfaith dialogue?

Anderson: We teach them. We teach them all the time. I teach a class here at St. Paul’s that is the most appreciated class I’ve ever done. I’ve been using a resource called ‘Honoring Our Neighbor’s Faith’ [Augsburg Fortress]. It’s a nice summary of 32 different Christian denominations and some other religions like Judaism and Hinduism. People know that we are not all the same. I think in their heart of hearts, they wish we were because it would be so much easier. But, people are actually relieved to get the information. It helps them articulate their own faith—why they believe what they do, what it means to be a Lutheran Christian. And last year I taught a series at Beth Emet called ‘Show Me Your God, Christians and Jews Compare Notes.’ I talked about who God is from the Christian perspective and Rabbi Smith talked about who God is from the Jewish perspective. The nice thing was that I built relationships with lay people at Beth Emet and they would say ‘We consider you to be our pastor,’ and a number of them came to our Christmas Eve service.

Miller: And I think for all of us the more we do this, the more we build it into our sermons.

EPISTLE: Professionally, or even personally, why do you invest energies in interfaith dialogue when you have so many leadership responsibilities in your own congregations?

Rosen: It really takes super human effort to pull ourselves out of the home front.

Anderson: It really does.

Rosen: But I don’t necessarily see a tension between the work I do in my congregation and the work I do in the greater community. My congregants identify with their rabbi, and they want someone who is out there in the community. It allows them to know that the values they cherish are being advocated outside the small four walls of our synagogue.

Handley: It’s kind of my journey. In order for me to be faithful in my ministry, building community across broader lines is an absolute must. That’s what motivates me. I can’t be faithful to the Gospel as I understand Jesus having preached it and isolate myself from other people.

Anderson: I keep saying to myself that I’m just a tiny, little piece of this, and I have no idea what our contributions will end up facilitating. It’s tough to say what the measure of success is. But the more I do this, the more critically important it is. When something like a Ku Klux Klan march happens in a community, it doesn’t help to have everyone scrambling around doing their own thing. It expedited our actions so much because we all had a relationship of trust and could just pick up the phone and cut right to the issue. These are issues in America-at-large—global issues—and this is where peace really takes place, in communities like ours. If we can’t build it here, nobody is going to be able to build it from the top down and impose it. As clergy, we need to be leaders in this.

While the focus of this conversation was on Jewish-Christian dialogue, our religiously plural society includes many other traditions. Being sensitive to this, Evanston's interfaith service this year included a mix of Christian, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim people.

If you would like information on promoting dialogue with people of other faiths, you may visit the ELCA W eb site at www.elca.org/ea/interfaith. For articles, church statements, reports and many other resources on interfaith dialogue, you may visit the World Council of Churches Web site at www.wcc.coe.org.