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Author Archives: Fred Yi
Catholics and Paul Ryan
KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor and Guest Host): Campaign 2012 heated up this week after Governor Mitt Romney selected Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate. Ryan is a Roman Catholic, and with Vice-President Joe Biden on the Democratic side this is the first time that both parties have Catholics on the ticket. Ryan agrees with his church’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage, but he has generated debate in some Catholic circles for his economic views. As chief author of the Republican budget plan, Ryan supports funding cuts for many social programs. Some Catholics, including bishops, argued that would hurt the poor. Ryan’s response:
Rep. Paul Ryan (speaking April 26, 2012 at Georgetown University): “As a Catholic in public life, my own personal thinking on these issues has been guided by my understanding of the church’s social teaching. Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government.”
Joining me with more on this is Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. Kevin, a lot of Catholics disagreed with how Paul Ryan applied his Catholic faith to his budget plan.
KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor-in-Chief, Religion News Service): Right, and what’s interesting is Paul Ryan has been on the Catholic radar screen for a long time, and you know when the nuns on the bus went out this summer to advocate for social justice, it wasn’t a mistake that they actually stopped at his congressional office in Wisconsin. It’s interesting, because the church for the last couple of years has really put a priority on the life issues, abortion and gay marriage, and they’ve said that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are completely wrong on this issue. But in recent months, as the budget becomes a bigger issue and more in the news, they’ve really put an emphasis on the economic stuff, and they have been very pointed in their criticism of not only the Republican plan but also Paul Ryan, who was the architect of that plan. So it will interesting to watch the sort of church’s divided loyalties on this one.
LAWTON: And I have heard some Catholics say that faithful Catholics can indeed disagree on some of the economic issues. Paul Ryan talks about the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which is not one we hear a lot in politics, but this notion that all decisions should be made at the most local level and action should be taken at the most local level possible. He uses that to justify his opposition to what he calls big government, and there are Catholics who agree with that interpretation even though others say that’s a misreading of Catholic teaching.
ECKSTROM: Right, and what the bishops are saying and what a lot of Catholics are saying is that’s fine. If you want us to do it on the local level, we’ll do that. We’ll run the soup kitchens and we’ll run the adoption clinics or whatever, but we need the government’s help to do that and don’t make it worse for us by throwing people off of, you know, making their economic conditions worse that they’re going to need more services, because there’s only so much that we can do, so if you’re going to do this fine, but don’t sacrifice the poor at the expense of the rich.
LAWTON: And some church leaders have called abortion the paramount issue and, of course, Joe Biden, while he says he’s personally opposed to abortion, certainly does favor abortion rights. And in a way the two of them, Ryan and Biden, reflect the divisions in the Catholic voters as well among these different ideological perspectives.
ECKSTROM: Right, and, you know, this is a pocketbook election. It’s all going to be about the economy and jobs and it will really come down to, you know, what people’s priorities are. I don’t know that a lot of people are going to be voting on abortion and gay marriage but a lot of people will be voting on the economy, and if they look at Ryan and say I think he’s going to possibly make it worse or he’s going to cut my Medicare benefits, among Catholics in key states like Florida, Ohio, that could have a big enough difference to actually make a difference.
LAWTON: And, indeed, Catholics have been swinging back and forth overall, showing how deeply divided they are, and in fact they voted, the majority of Catholics have voted with the one who actually won the presidency, so it will be interesting to watch.
Kevin Eckstrom, thanks as always.
ECKSTROM: Thank you.
Surrogate Mothers in India
FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Minutes after delivering a slightly premature infant by C section, Dr. Nayna Patel was back in her office and on the phone to the parents.
Dr. Nayna Patel: Congratulations, it’s a baby girl. Where are you, in Mumbai right now?
DE SAM LAZARO: They were en route from their home in England and didn’t reach the small town of Anand, India in time to watch a surrogate mother give birth to their child.
Dr. Patel: Surrogate is also fine. The baby is also fine. We have taken the picture.
DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Patel has delivered some 400 surrogate babies since 2004. Her clinic implants embryos in surrogates she recruits from the area and pays around $7,000 for a pregnancy carried to term. Biological parents come from across India and around the world. Kirshner Ross-Vaden came here from Colorado to pick up her baby girl named Serenity. She was born four weeks premature, but after a week in neonatal intensive care she was ready to be discharged. Serenity’s 46-year-old mother traveled here with her nine-year-old son. She had tried unsuccessfully in recent years to conceive. Surrogacy was her last hope and India her first choice. The cost—$10,000 to $15,000 all told—is a fraction of what it is in the United States, and in America, she added, surrogacy contracts are not always air-tight.
KIRSHNER ROSS-VADEN: You can sign a hundred documents. It doesn’t matter. If that surrogate changes her mind she can sue you for that child, and oftentimes she will win, and coming here to India, these women, they don’t want my child. It’s very cut and dry. They do not want my child. They want my money, and that is just fine with me.
DE SAM LAZARO: It’s not fine with everyone.
DR. ARTHUR CAPLAN (University of Pennsylvania): The contracts usually are written, to be blunt, to protect the wealthy people who are commissioning the baby, so that if the woman suffers an injury, if the woman has a health problem due to childbirth, if there’s a long-term chronic condition, then what?
DE SAM LAZARO: University of Pennsylvania ethicist Arthur Caplan worries the relationship is inherently lopsided between poor, minimally literate women and well-heeled couples who commission them to have their children. For example, surrogates in India are routinely implanted with up to five embryos to improve the chances of a pregnancy. In the US, clinics usually implant no more than two, sometimes three.
DR. CAPLAN: Why would you use three, four, five embryos in India? Because you don’t want the couple to have to come back. It’s expensive, even for a rich person so you’re trying to maximize the chance of pregnancy, even if it might compromise the interests of the babies.
DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Patel concedes that implanting five embryos heightens the risk for infants and mother and says she is now lowering the number to three or four. But she says the downside of fewer embryos is a lower pregnancy success rate. When multiple embryos develop into viable pregnancies, Dr. Patel’s policy is to reduce them by selective abortion. Aside from possible religious concerns, this process could present medical risk to the surviving fetuses.
DR. PATEL: Parents—yes, there are some who say right from the beginning, “Doctor, put less embryos because we are not for reduction, and we don’t this to happen.” So in those cases we definitely never transfer more than two. But there are certain parents who don’t have any objection to this, and surrogates—we don’t allow them to carry more than two.
DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Patel insists that her facility protects the interests of surrogates as much as the clients of her commercial surrogacy program and the infants she delivers.
DR. PATEL: We do a lot of psychological counseling for the surrogate and the family before we recruit them. We explain to them the procedure of IVF, what all they’ll have to undergo. If she has had any complications during her previous pregnancy, we will ask her not to become a surrogate, because the same can repeat this time, to make it very sure and safe for her.
DE SAM LAZARO: The moment their pregnancies are confirmed, surrogates are required to move into this home run by Dr. Patel. They’re offered skills training in things like tailoring, but mostly it’s a quiet, sedentary life. The women who spend nine months in this surrogate hostel have all experienced childbirth with their own biological children. It’s a prerequisite for becoming a surrogate. What very few of them have experienced with those previous pregnancies is any kind of prenatal care. That’s in sharp contrast to the pampering they get here: meals provided and medical attention, should they need it, round the clock. Dr. Patel acknowledges the irony but says it is part of a thorough surveillance to ensure smooth pregnancies, for both surrogate and parents’ sake.
DR. PATEL: We have a fetal medicine specialist who checks all the surrogates every three weeks. We have been able to detect minor congenital malformations which we inform the couple can be treated post-delivery without any impact on the baby. We have had patients whose surrogates had babies with Down syndrome, which was detected, which was confirmed with amniocentesis, and we have aborted those babies after the consent of the couple.
DE SAM LAZARO: Well in advance, she says, parents are consulted on decisions like pregnancy termination. Similarly, parents must accept their babies, once born, whether healthy or not. Surrogates we spoke to talked about building a new home and using their money for their children’s education. The money—$7,000-$8000—would otherwise take them decades to earn. Most say they were happy to have helped infertile couples. The woman who bore baby Serenity who we met earlier, admitted to some sorrow at her separation.
DHANA: You can’t help it when you’ve carried a baby for nine months. I’d like to see how she does in the future.
ROSS-VADEN: I do have her address, so I can get a hold of her. And I hopefully will be able to maintain some kind of a relationship with her.
DE SAM LAZARO: We caught up with Serenity’s mother in Mumbai, about 500 miles from Dr. Patel’s clinic. She and son Brandon were holed up in a hotel awaiting DNA test results and myriad documents to satisfy the Indian and US governments that the infant could leave the country.
ROSS-VADEN: Am I living happily ever after now? I certainly hope so. I hope that I can get her home, and I hope that she is a happy, healthy little baby, and that is what I will have—a healthy, happy little girl.
DE SAM LAZARO: But will every surrogacy story end happily? Right now, India has only voluntary guidelines, and it’s not clear whether future laws would be adequately enforced, and standards vary widely. For example, Dr. Patel says she only serves infertile patients. But some clinics offer surrogates to healthy parents who, for career or convenience, want to avoid pregnancy. Ethicist Caplan worries about where all this is leading.
DR. CAPLAN: We may get into situations where people start to say, as genetic knowledge improves, you know, I’m not infertile but I’d like to make a baby with traits or properties that I want to avoid or that I desire. That day is coming. I think it’s important to keep in mind, as we watch the evolution of surrogacy as an international activity, what is really something that a tiny handful of people use who suffer from infertility tomorrow can be what more people are interested in because they have a more eugenic, more perfectionist interest in making their children.
DE SAM LAZARO: For her part, Dr. Patel plans a major expansion of her one-stop surrogacy shop, a leader in what’s now a half-billion-dollar industry in India. She makes no apologies for making a lucrative living and insists that she, the surrogates, and the new parents all come out winners.
For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Anand, India.
Mormon Singles Chapel
LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Mormon Church’s Crystal City Chapel just outside Washington, DC. There are several others in the area, but this one is unique: the 800 members who attend here are all single. Along with worshiping, they’re here for one other very important reason: to find a partner and get married.
This is Bishop Lewis Larsen, who leads a congregation of older singles aged 31 to 55.
BISHOP LEWIS LARSEN: If you were to look across the general spectrum of single adults, the trend in America is not to even marry at all but to cohabitate. That is not a trend in the Mormon Church.
SEVERSON: If there’s any doubt, talk to some of the singles here.
ADAM NILSEN: I know that God wants that for me. I know that man was not meant to be alone, nor was woman, but that we complement one another.
SEVERSON: Were you ready at 22-23 to get married?
DARLA MARBURGER: I sure think I was. I think I’ve been ready for a long time, but I haven’t been plucked from the vine yet.
BEVERLI JO DEWALT: My grandma offered to find someone to pay someone to date me, because she was fairly convinced I was not able to do that on my own.
PROFESSOR BRAD WILCOX: Mormonism is the marriage religion.
SEVERSON: Sociology professor Brad Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He says the marriage rate in the US has seen a dramatic decline since the 1970s at a 14-fold increase in couples cohabiting. But among practicing Mormons, marriage is still sacred.
WILCOX: They sacralize marriage, obviously, and they view marriage as an eternal institution that exists beyond this space and time.
SEVERSON: Professor Wilcox is speaking about temple marriages, where members in good standing are sealed together for time and all eternity.
LARSEN: When you die and your spouse dies, you will be united as a husband and wife. When your children die, they will be united with you as a family and that the family unit continues on, and I know that that’s a concept that is not generally taught in the Christian world, but it’s very sacredly held concept in Mormonism.
SEVERSON: Marriage has always been a sacred principle of the Mormon Church, but it took on an added dimension when church president Thomas Monson, who is considered a modern-day prophet, expressed alarm at the church’s most recent general conference that not enough members are getting married.
PRESIDENT THOMAS MONSON: Now I have thought a lot lately about you young men who are of an age to marry, but you have not yet felt to do so. I see lovely young ladies who desire to be married and to raise families, and yet their opportunities are limited because so many young men are postponing marriage.
SEVERSON: One reason church leaders are pushing marriage so urgently is that so many young men in the mid-20s are falling away and becoming inactive, focusing on the kinds of things that occupy other young men—getting an education, a job, and having fun.
It’s important to the church and to its young men that they get married, because only married men can hold high leadership offices, and the church says only Mormons who marry can reach the highest realm in the afterlife.
Since serving a church mission, many young Mormons in the DC area have spent their time pursuing advanced degrees. Beverli Jo DeWalt has been working on a career at the State Department.
DEWALT: Most of the folks out here are people that have pursued an education, pursued a career and not with the purpose of delaying marriage, but with the idea that we want to have a full life that includes all of those things.
SPENCER WILLIAMS: I’ve been just very busy with business, and it wasn’t until about six months ago when I really decided I do want to get married.
SEVERSON: How about you, Steve, what’s your excuse?
STEVE ARCHIBALD: Well, beyond the obvious or…?
SEVERSON: Steve Archibald is 28, has a master’s in accounting.
ARCHIBALD: There’s definitely a lot of pressure to get married, but at the same time there’s not pressure to rush into any kind of decision. We can all say that we’re looking. We’re doing our best to try and find the potential “10” out there.
SEVERSON: One high church leader suggested that in looking for a mate, young Mormons like Steve should stop reaching for a “10.“
LARSEN: It’s my job as bishop is to bring a little reality on this, that what they thought they were going to marry probably never did exist. You know, people have faults. Some might be a little overweight, some might be losing their hair, and that doesn’t mean that they are not a fantastic person.
SEVERSON: This is an annual social event in Washington for single Mormons aged 31-55. Washington may not be the hub of the church, but there are between 50,000 and 70,000 members living in the area, the largest concentration East of the Mississippi. For women in their mid-30s who want to start a family, more and more are taking the initiative.
LARSEN: We are a traditional church, and you would say women don’t initiate. But I think that changes when you’re around 30. Yeah, women are much more proactive in my ward.
NILSEN: Having lived in other places I’ve seen other cultures, that women that do take a lot of the initiative.
SEVERSON: So have you had it happen to you?
NILSEN: Have I had women take the initiative with me? Yeah, absolutely.
SEVERSON: Thirty-four-year-old Beverli Jo DeWalt says she is now ready.
DEWALT: I had the opportunity to be married when I was 21—a great guy, a fantastic guy—but I didn’t feel ready, and I think had I gotten married at that point I wouldn’t have been happy.
SEVERSON: Do you think there’s a downside to getting married too young?
LARSEN: Don’t ask me, because I married in my mid-30s, so I’m kind of like my own congregation.
SEVERSON: Bishop Fonz Allen has a congregation of 21-to-30-year-old singles. He says getting married young and struggling can be a good thing.
BISHOP FONZ ALLEN: Many of us in the earlier years, we got married while we were still going to school, and we had children while we still going to school, and we look back on those times today, now when we’re older, as the best times of our life, when we were struggling. So we don’t encourage people to wait to get married.
WILCOX: Folks who get married in their teens are more likely to get divorced, and that’s true across the board. It’s true for Mormons; it’s true for secular folks. People who get married in their mid-20s are pretty safe when it comes to the risk of divorce.
SEVERSON: Nationally, the divorce rate is down, from 50 to 43 percent. Among Mormons it’s about 20 percent. Church leaders say it’s because of the strong emphasis on family—one night is set aside each week for family home evenings—and also because of the church’s teachings on chastity.
LARSEN: In our faith we don’t allow for premarital sex, and I’m sure that does happen, but it’s a rarity, and we are teaching them to hang onto their values.
SEVERSON: Twenty-six- year-old Megan Baer recently got engaged. She says she’s glad she waited.
MEGAN BAER: We have sex drives just like everybody else, so of course it’s very hard, but I love what we call the law of chastity, which is no sex before marriage and complete fidelity when you’re in marriage, and I think it’s kept me from a lot of regret and pain.
SEVERSON: Professor Wilcox says 85 percent of Americans have sex before marriage.
WILCOX: Individuals who have more sexual partners prior to marriage are more likely to get divorced compared to those who do not. It’s something about forming a bond with someone that is then broken, and the way in which that may lead to a certain distrust of the opposite sex or a certain kind of loss of faith in relationships or in romance.
SEVERSON: Another reason for the low divorce rate is that Mormons usually try to date someone of their own faith. Some we spoke with said they had dated outside the church, but it hadn’t worked out. Others are like Steve.
ARCHIBALD: I do not date non-Mormons just because we’re pretty lucky in this area. The numbers are in our favor, speaking for us guys. In our congregation alone here today will have 300 individuals, and close to 200 of them will be women.
SEVERSON: After the church service, the search for a lifelong eternal mate continues in earnest. Bishop Larsen predicts that by the end of this year, at least 20 couples in his congregation of 200 will be engaged or married.
For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Crystal City, Virginia.
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Response to Sikh Temple Shooting
KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor and Guest Anchor): There has been an outpouring of interfaith sympathy and support for the US Sikh community after last Sunday’s attack (August 5) at a temple near Milwaukee that took the lives of six worshipers. In what officials called an act of domestic terrorism, a gunman with neo-Nazi ties opened fire as local Sikhs—or “sicks” as some adherents call themselves—had gathered for a worship service. Religious groups across the spectrum condemned the attack. Many communities held prayer services and vigils to remember the victims and to pray for religious tolerance. Groundswell, the social action initiative of Auburn Seminary in New York, gathered thousands of messages of hope and healing for Milwaukee’s Sikh community. They called the project “We Are All Sikhs Today.” Groundswell’s director, Valarie Kaur, who is Sikh, delivered the messages in person. She joins me now from Milwaukee.
Valarie, thank you for being with us. Why did you feel it was important to bring these messages?
VALARIE KAUR (Groundswell, Auburn Seminary): Well, this is a tragedy not just for the Sikh community, but for all Americans, and I know that many Americans were hungry to express their love and support in some way. They understand that this is deeply personal for every Sikh American in this country. That when we see the television screen we see our own gurdwaras, we see our own aunts and uncles, our own brothers and sisters, our own children caught in the gun fire. And so every message sent, every prayer whispered, every candle lit has meant so much, not just to the Sikhs in Milwaukee but across the country. And we felt it was important to deliver those messages in one piece to the people here on the ground.
LAWTON: And there in that community, a week later how are people doing? How are they coping? How are they trying to rebuild?
KAUR: Well, people are in deep grief and sadness, but they’re not letting that grief paralyze them. They’ve understood that this moment is unprecedented in the history of the Sikh community. You know, my grandfather came to this country one hundred years ago, and in one hundred years we have never entered the national spotlight like we have in the last few days. So the family members, community members are finding the courage to step before the sea of cameras, to tell the story of the Sikh faith to the American public, many of whom are not, have not known about Sikhs before. And they are also finding the courage to call for an end to hate violence, not just against the Sikh community but all Americans still struggling in this country. It’s been deeply inspiring to be here to witness that.
LAWTON: And what is there in the Sikh faith, in the spiritual tenets, practices, that people are really calling upon during this time of tragedy?
KAUR: The spirit of resilience or chardi kala is deep in the heart of the Sikh faith. I was just at the gurdwara when it reopened and allowed community members to step inside and when they stepped inside it was still a crime scene. There was blood on the carpet. There were bullet holes in the walls and in an instant I saw Sikh men and women jump into action. They were scrubbing the floors. They were painting over the bullet holes. They were repairing the broken windows, listening to prayers as they worked together. I was literally watching a community rebuild itself before my eyes, just hours, just days after the attacks. And so I think that spirit of resilience is something that we’ve drawn upon from not just a hundred year history in this country, but a five hundred year history where Sikhs have died for their turbans, died for their faith, but drawn from their faith in order to rise up again and not be afraid, and that’s what I’ve seen here on the ground in amazing ways.
LAWTON: And what does this moment mean for the entire Sikh community across this country?
KAUR: At the town hall meeting the other night, Sikh community members spoke to the White House, to the Department of Justice and the FBI, and every single one of them said, you know, what happened on Sunday was not an isolated incident. This is part of a struggle that we are experiencing, that we have undergone for so long, to be seen as Americans in this country. Our children are still bullied, our men are still searched, profiled at airports. We’re still facing discrimination in workplaces, in the U.S. military, for example. And we still face racial slurs. We still face hate violence, so they’re calling upon our nation’s leaders to help this community and all communities who are struggling for full rights and recognition in this country. So this is the work going forward after this week.
LAWTON: And, very briefly, is there a message for all America here?
KAUR: Yes. This is—this moment calls us to do much more than put up tougher laws against gun violence. This moment calls us to have a national conversation about the rise of hate, fear, and discontent in this country. The difference between the coverage of Aurora and Oak Creek shows that this is a harder conversation for our nation to have, but this means that everyone, every American listening right now is called upon to join us, to recommit to a vision of a country without terror, without fear.
LAWTON: Alright, Valarie Kaur. Thank you very much for being here.
KAUR: Thank you for having me.
Jewish Jesus
Filmed in part on location at New York’s 92nd Street Y.
PROFESSOR AMY-JILL LEVINE (Co-Editor The Jewish Annotated New Testament): Jesus argues with fellow Jews. You can’t be more Jewish than to argue with fellow Jews. It’s not a problem.
KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the 92nd Street Y in New York, Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Amy-Jill Levine is making the case that Jews and Christians alike need to pay more attention to the Jewishness of Jesus, and the best way to do that, she believes, is by reading the New Testament from a Jewish perspective.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: If I want to understand Jewish history, the New Testament is one of the best sources that I’ve got.
LAWTON: Levine, who is an observant Jew, is co-editor of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, a version of the Christian scripture with footnotes and commentaries written entirely by Jewish scholars.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: The New Testament does have extraordinarily beautiful and profound material in it. Paul’s hymn to love in First Corinthians or the parables of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, or comments such as “God is love,” which is First John. This is magnificent material, and everybody ought to appreciate it. I find for myself the more I read the New Testament, in fact the better Jew I become.
LAWTON: The Jewish Annotated New Testament is one of several new projects urging Jews especially to take a new look at Jesus. Bestselling author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s latest book is called Kosher Jesus. That notion, he says, is a radical departure from what he learned as a child.
RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH (Author, Kosher Jesus): When I grew up Jesus’ name, his very name, was off limits. Jesus was seen as the arch-enemy of the Jewish people. He was really seen as an apostate and traitor to his people.
LAWTON: Boteach believes the time is ripe for a new paradigm.
RABBI BOTEACH: We can’t ignore the 600-pound gorilla in the room, which is Jesus. Christians and Jews come together, and they can never mention Jesus. Christians are afraid of offending the Jews, the Jews are uncomfortable with the mention of Jesus.
LAWTON: Growing up in a predominantly Roman Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts, Levine had the impression that the Christianity of her friends was just a different form of her family’s Judaism, and then she heard otherwise.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: When I was in second grade, a little girl accused me of having killed her Lord, because she had been taught that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. And I couldn’t fathom how this religion that had such beautiful attributes, and a Jewish man named Jesus, and the same Bible, was saying horrible things about Jews. So I started asking questions.
LAWTON: She says her lifelong study has shown her how embedded Jesus was in the Jewish tradition.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: He teaches like a Jew. He talks in parables, and Jews then knew that parables were not simple banal little stories. They were designed to shake us up, to get us to see the world in a new way, to challenge us. And Jesus is just a fabulous Jewish storyteller.
LAWTON: She says his teachings, such as in the famous Sermon on the Mount, are expansions of teachings in the Torah.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: He’s going to the law and bringing out the heart of it, which is also what Jewish teaching does. So he says not only don’t murder; he actually says you have to love your enemy, and he’s the only person in antiquity I’ve found who says that. But I think that gets to the heart of scripture.
LAWTON: Levine doesn’t shy away from what she calls the “problematic” passages in the New Testament, passages that have been used by Christians over the centuries to persecute Jews.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: We need to know what the New Testament says about the Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus; how the New Testament characterizes Jewish groups, particularly the Pharisees; and we need to know that within historical context. That doesn’t mean we erase them. It doesn’t mean we fudge the translation. It means we deal with them just as Jews have dealt with those problematic passages in the shared scriptures.
LAWTON: Levine believes Christians too can benefit from studying the Judaism of Jesus.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: Jews have been arguing about the law since Moses came down the mountain.
(to audience):Thank you for that “Amen.” That’s lovely. I wish that happened in my synagogue more often.
LAWTON: On this day, she was a guest lecturer at the evangelical Oral Roberts University.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: Unless Christian preachers, teachers, Bible study leaders know about first-century Judaism, often what happens is Jesus gets yanked out of his Jewish context, and he becomes the only Jew who’s compassionate toward women, interested in adapting Torah, interested in adapting the law to the needs of the contemporary community, the only Jew interested in peace among a group of very bellicose, warlike Jews.
LAWTON: She says when Christians don’t understand Jesus’ Jewish context it can lead to misunderstandings about his message, which in turn can lead to harmful stereotypes.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: What I hear in a number of sermons and read in a number of sermons is that Torah is difficult to follow, it’s an impossible burden that weighs people down, and then Jesus comes along and says basically “Don’t worry, be happy.” In actuality, Jews in the first century and Jews who practice Torah today did not find Torah a burden. They found it to be a delight.
LAWTON: Or, she says, many Christians will talk about the angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament in contrast to a New Testament God of love.
PROFESSOR LEVINE: It’s the same God: merciful, compassionate, generous, loving, but not inclined to take sin lightly either.
PROFESSOR BRAD YOUNG (Oral Roberts University): It’s crazy that for 2,000 years Christians have followed a faith in Jesus while rejecting the faith of Jesus.
LAWTON: Oral Roberts professor of Judaic-Christian studies Brad Young agrees that Christians must understand the Jewish roots of their faith. He admits many Christians have been too busy trying to convert Jews to try and learn from them.
PROFESSOR YOUNG: Be honest about your beliefs, share them, but be willing to listen to the other side, and maybe that will change some of your beliefs. Maybe our beliefs will change. We need to share it with one another to go to the next step.
LAWTON: And, he acknowledges, the question of whether or not Jesus was the messiah can’t be glossed over.
PROFESSOR YOUNG: We should recognize when we talk about two great traditions of faith, Christianity and Judaism, that there are very sharp differences, and sometimes understanding the differences are even more important than understanding the similarities.
LAWTON: Rabbi Boteach’s new book does not accept that Jesus was the messiah. Nonetheless, Kosher Jesus has been denounced as heresy by some of Boteach’s fellow Orthodox Jews who worry that the ideas in it could make Jews vulnerable to missionary efforts. Boteach argues that Jews need to reclaim Jesus.
RABBI BOTEACH: Why are we allowing the Christian community to teach us about the Christian Christ in order to convert when Jesus was a Jew and we should be teaching them about the Jewish Jesus in order to enrich their Christian experience?
PROFESSOR LEVINE: For people who are afraid that if Jews were to read the New Testament and find some of this truly magnificent material the next thing we know they’re going to line up at the baptismal font and say, “Please convert me”: I don’t think the way we prevent Jews from wanting to convert is to keep them ignorant of the New Testament.
LAWTON: Looking at Jesus through Jewish eyes, she believes, not only strengthens the individual faiths but can also bring them together.
PROFESSOR LEVINE (lecturing to audience): In learning more about each others’ traditions, we come better to respect our neighbors, and if we are really lucky, for Jews reading the New Testament would give us deeper insight into our own Judaism, and for Christians reading the New Testament with Jewish annotations will give Christians deeper insight into the Lord and Savior they worship. Thank you very much.
LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in New York.
Amy-Jill Levine Extended Interview
We all choose how to read religious texts, says Vanderbilt Divinity School New Testament and Jewish studies professor Amy-Jill Levine, co-editor of “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” (Oxford University Press, 2011) . “And what we can do is read graciously in the presence of our neighbor.” Watch more of our interview with her about the Jewish story of the New Testament.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Extended Interview
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of “Kosher Jesus,” says “Jesus was not coming to innovate and start a new religion. He was coming to reinforce the Torah.” Watch more of our interview with him about the Jewishness of Jesus.
Brad Young Extended Interview
Brad Young is an associate professor of Judaic-Christian studies at Oral Roberts University. Watch more of our interview with him about interfaith dialogue and the Jewish roots of the Christian faith.
