A quiet passion to redeem Christianity: An interview with Dr. Mary C. Boys.

Dr. Boys is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary She is the author of many books, most recently the acclaimed Has God Only One Blessing: Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding. This book reflects her twin focus on the intersection of biblical study and pedagogy and on the educational implications of Jewish-Christian dialogue. This focus underlies her passion for justice: to make amends for centuries of Christianity's anti-Judaism and, in stripping away encrustations of supersessionist language, liturgy and ritual, to renew Christianity, with its original impulse. A Roman Catholic, Dr. Boys has been a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names for over three decades.

I first encountered Mary Boys as part of my effort to identify teachers and a broad conceptual context for my organization, the Interfaith Community -- which serves those in Jewish-Christian marriages, the intimate daily microcosm, and perhaps the ultimate testing ground of interreligious dialogue. She has since taught our adults and become a thoughtful adviser to our work.

I interviewed Mary for this article on a mild late winter day at her apartment on Morningside Heights. Always solicitous, Mary had come outside to greet me to be sure I had no difficulty getting into the building. As she walked toward me on Claremont Avenue, she greeted neighbors and joshed with little boys on skateboards. Her simple but attractive dress, her careful coif accented with cheery earrings, gave no hint of the deeply committed woman she is.

Mary Boys has fun and a zest for life. A sought-after speaker for her wit as well as her intellect, her passions and values simmer below a jocular surface. She offered me tea and a comfortable chair, chuckled her hearty laugh, joked that I could blackmail her if she said anything too outrageous...or interesting. And we began....

Sheila Gordon: In your writing and your teaching and so much of what you do, you are working to redefine Christianity and reclaim it from its anti-Judaism. What are the implications of this?

Mary Boys: We have made a lot of progress, but we can't say "it's all over, it's finished, we know how to redefine Christianity." So much of Christianity has been premised on a distorted notion of Judaism that, as we untangle those distortions, we are really forced to come to new understandings that are much more complex. As Daniel Harrington, the great New Testament scholar, says in regard to Jesus, "the more we know, the less we know.... Or at least we are less confident about simple and neat pictures." This is true of some of the views we have about Jesus of Nazareth, the historical figure, as well as later theological aspects.

Not only do we need to understand Christianity with a more accurate understanding of Judaism -- purging the distortions anti-Jewish teachings bequeathed us -- but we need to understand it in the context of the new world we live in -- a world of globalization, of postmodernism. Even if there is such a thing as absolute truth, it is so transcendent that we who are mortals can never possess it. Because we live next door to people we never would have lived next door to in another era, and because we are much more involved with each other, religious pluralism is a part of our everyday reality today. And that raises some very healthy questions, which can also be scary at times. I think that interreligious encounter can strengthen religious identity if serious engagement with the other -- including study -- is part of it.

SG: Why do you do this work?

MB: I hope it will strengthen Christianity. I hope it will make it more viable and responsive. But the main reason I do it is because it is the right thing to do. It may not be as dramatic or compelling as building a house for the poor, but righting the wrongs that in many ways have corrupted our vision over the centuries is important; it is the Christian thing to do -- and I do it for the sake of, to achieve justice.

SG: You talk about stripping away the anti-Judaism piece. What then do you see?

MB: You see the shadow side of the church. In some ways, the picture of Jesus gets clearer--and, with it, the need for continuing the work that has been done in Christian origins. The harder thing is really facing the way the Church so betrayed its own gospel. You see less of that in the early church, when it was still a minority. But once the church gets political power and majority status, you can see it was not just this bad Pope or this council or that country or that bad ruler. It is so consistent, although it takes on various forms and is more virulent in particular times and places.

SG: How did you come to be engaged in this kind of work?

MB: Well it may have to do with my background. For example, as far back as I can remember, I never thought that salvation comes only through following the way of Christ. When I was very little, I had a teacher who taught that. But I just knew our teacher was wrong, because that would have meant that my father was not going to go to heaven. In some ways, I came from an "interfaith" family. My mother was Roman Catholic, but my father -- whose background was Protestant -- doesn't have any religious faith. Certainly growing up in the Northwest, the most religiously variegated and least churched part of the country, and coming from the family that I did gave me a certain sort of critical perspective. And in the past twenty years or so, I have been sustained by deep friendships with Jews; I consider friendship between Jews and Christians the principal catalyst for reconciliation and its sweetest fruit.

SG: What kinds of changes will be required to implement your ideas?

MB: We are engaged in reversing nearly two thousand years of church teaching and popular understandings. Work has to be done on many levels. I think I am particularly aware of the very practical, detail-oriented work of this transformation -- as it relates to theology and to our understanding and use of scripture, the liturgy, symbols and ritual. We have to discard some, reinterpret and modify others, and create new approaches.

Christians need to move beyond the formulas we were taught to what our faith claims mean today. A lot has already happened; for example, most Catholic and some Protestant textbook companies have revised their textbooks to eliminate oversimplified notions of the relationship to Judaism. This kind of work, the cleaning up of textbooks, is very important; but it is even more important to help teachers rework their understandings. And, as one who thinks of herself as a "teacher of teachers," that is one of my greatest interests.

SG: Is this transformation do-able?

MB: It's very hard. You can't just pull out this one thread of anti-Judaism in Christian teaching. The thread of anti-Judaism is so deeply interwoven that we need to reweave the whole fabric in a new pattern. It is important to have enough time to work; Christians cannot reconstruct their self-understanding overnight. Consider, for example, the claim that Jesus is the messiah. We need to teach people what this title meant in first-century Judaism, to show its many layers and then what the first disciples might have meant when they assigned the title to Jesus. Doing this means rooting out the simplistic notion that Israel's prophets predicted the messiah in specific ways that "the Jews" should have recognized.

SG: Once anti-Judaism is eliminated, why shouldn't we reintegrate the faiths into a renewed and merged monotheistic religion?

MB: Because we've gone down very different paths over two thousand years. We don't share some fundamental beliefs: for example, in how we understand who Jesus is--or image God as Trinitarian. We probably could agree on a lot of the historical claims, but the significance we would assign to Jesus is different. I see Jews and Christians as "partners" in working and waiting for the full redemption of the world.

I think, for example, the death of Jesus, the way he died, is edifying in the very best sense of that term. Here is a person who was betrayed by one of those closest to him, a man who spends the night before his arrest in prayer trying to discern the will of God. Here is the very one we claim as one with God, and yet he doesn't know the way. The death of Jesus gives us our basic metaphor in Christian life -- from death to life, the metaphor that is the Christian equivalent of passing through the Red Sea -- from slavery to freedom. The passion of Jesus has great meaning for me in thinking through what one is willing to die for. Jesus spent the night of wrenching prayer in Gethsemane. He could have decided to go underground; but he accepted the consequence of what he believed. Spiritually, to give one's life to a great project is something deeply meaningful.

Jesus also embodies some of Christian practice that resonates most deeply for me--and perhaps is most essentially Christian. For example, the Maundy Thursday service of foot washing recalls Jesus as he washed the feet of his disciples. I have been powerfully touched (and tickled!) in observing a most elegant Park Avenue matron washing the feet of a scruffy, counter-culture young man. It is a beautiful, humbling, fundamentally equalizing act

We will keep the distinctiveness between our two traditions, but we will also laugh our way into mutual understanding as we see the deep similarities. One of my favorite stories was told to me by a Jewish friend. Visiting a non-sectarian nursing home, she was chatting with an elderly Jewish woman who had attended her first Roman Catholic service, the funeral of someone who had been in the nursing home with her. The elderly woman, having partaken of the sharing of bread and wine in communion, exclaimed: "And you wouldn't believe it! The Catholics have kiddush right during their service, not afterward like we do!"

SG: Beyond your book, how are you working to encourage these changes that will remove anti-Judaism and renew Christianity?

MB: My formal teaching is the primary way...and I relish opportunities (even though I don't necessarily relish all the travel!) to speak to large and diverse audiences of those who are engaged in religiously related work--and not just to talk to so-called opinion leaders.

Also, I am engaged with a group of some twenty ecumenical Protestant and Catholic scholars in developing a statement about Christianity's relationship with Judaism. It is modeled on and, in part, a response to "Dabru Emet: A Jewish statement on Christians and Christianity" published in September of 2000 and signed by an interdenominational group of scores of Jewish scholars -- which states that "it is time for Jews to learn about the efforts of Christians to honor Judaism...[and]...to reflect on what Judaism may now say about Christianity...." Dabru Emet spoke both to a Jewish audience and to a broader audience.

I think that our statement of Christian outreach, which will include critical issues such as the importance of not trying to convert the Jews, will be a shot across the bow of many Christian denominations.

I am also working with a small group of Jews and Catholics on an expanded edition of a monograph for Christian educators called Within Context. The wonderful thing about the project is the mutual work we Jews and Catholics are doing together.

I am also working on a new book, tentatively entitled Questions That Touch on the Heart of Our Faith.

And throughout nearly all my activities, I aim to get Jews and Christians to read sacred texts together. It is so important -- sharing what in the tradition speaks most powerfully to you through a text. It isn't that beliefs aren't important, but it is more important to understand what this practice, what that tradition means to the person who holds it. When we understand why particular practices and teachings are life-giving, why they sustain and challenge us to be better persons, then we will have fruitful dialogue.

As I rose to leave Mary's airy, comfortable apartment, she paused to show me -- with uncharacteristic pride -- the beautiful and powerful sculpture of "Synagoga" which had been commissioned for her book. She sees earlier representations of "Synagoga" and its counterpart "Ecclesia" as epitomizing the traditional anti-Judaism of the Church. Images of synagogue and church were commonly represented as two women in the Christian iconography of the ninth through the sixteenth centuries. As Mary's book observes, typically Ecclesia is "erect and triumphant, symbol of the church of the victorious Christ. Synagoga, in contrast, is a conquered figure, symbol of Judaism's defeat and obsolescence. God has only one blessing to give--and now, Ecclesia, not Synagoga received it.... Our history would have been radically different if we could have seen that God's relationship with one tradition does not diminish the sacredness of the other's." But, Mary Boys's Synagoga is strong and tall, the image of a redeemed and equal Syna goga. proudly proffering the Torah.

Sheila C. Gordon is the director of the Interfaith Community. Affiliated with CrossCurrents, the organization is an independent voice for understanding and supporting the role of religion within interfaith families.