The Institute Volume 11, Autumn 2001
Over the past fourteen years, the ICJS has engaged a significant number of Jewish and Christian clergy in a variety of programs. From Preaching Colloquia to Scripture Forums, ICJS programming has increasingly sought to develop alternative strategies for teaching and preaching New Testament texts that preserve an anti-Judaic bias, and to provide opportunities for rabbis, Christian clergy, and Jewish and Christian educators to study together sacred texts from Genesis to Paul.
Over and over again clergy have underscored the transforma-tive nature of sustained interfaith text study. Little in their seminary education had prepared them for the rich and powerful learning that they experienced on so many levels when studying with, and in the presence of, the Jewish or Christian other. Their professional training did not provide them opportunities to experience such learning, nor did it equip them with the skills needed to sustain it. Indeed, their seminary education had provided them with little more than a caricature of the Jewish or Christian other, and they had few, if any, opportunities to encounter the other on the other's terms. In short, the challenges that only the "other" can raise, precisely because he/she is other, had been all but neglected in their professional education. Participating clergy told the ICJS that learning these skills had an urgency that could neither be ignored nor delayed.
In response to these promptings, the ICJS began a two-year study and consultation with Jewish and Christian seminary faculty and administrators from Boston to Atlanta. In the process, we learned that seminaries face multiple pressures and challenges, that curricula are stretched to the limit, that seminarians need, first and foremost, a solid grounding in their own tradition, and that there was neither time in the program nor room in the curriculum to introduce one more "essential" experience.
At the same time, seminary personnel recognize that few of their graduates will serve "parochial" congregations insulated from the challenges, and perhaps even the threat, that the post-modern world presents to women and men who desire to live a Torah- or Gospel-observant life. They all agreed that they needed to do a better job equipping graduates with the knowledge and skills necessary to exercise leadership in a complex and religiously plural world. They were enthusiastic about the prospect of a gathering that might bring together seminary faculty and deans to discuss in particular how they might better provide opportunities whereby students could ex-perience both the challenge and the blessing that the Jewish or Christian other embodies. They encouraged the ICJS to provide such an opportunity.
That study and consultation culminated in the National Sem-inary Project, an initiative that addresses the concerns raised by ICJS clergy participants and seminary personnel. The ICJS launched the first phase of that Project, the Consultation on Seminary Education, during this past programming year.
On May 30 - June 1, 2001, the ICJS brought together a group of forty-five distinguished faculty and deans representing twenty-three Jewish and Christian seminaries for a three-day meeting to discuss the contemporary challenges seminaries face as they prepare students for leadership in a religiously diverse world. Funded in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, the Consultation provided an opportunity for scholars who are deeply committed to theological education in a seminary setting to consult together about the challenges of seminary education. The Jewish-Christian encounter provided the framework for the Consultation, which focused specifically on the theological issues of religious particularity and pluralism that lie at the heart of the encounter. How might seminaries educate men and women such that they embody two qualities deemed essential for religious leadership in the twenty-first century: (1) a strong and thorough grounding in one's own particular tradition, a knowledge-base that might afford them both a strong sense of their own unique religious identity as well as an aptitude for and openness to adaptation and change; and (2) an openness to religious pluralism and an aptitude to see an other's religious convictions not as a threat to one's own tradition, but rather as a source of divine blessing.
Consultation participants identified and addressed three areas of particular concern: (1) the ways in which seminary educa-tion might become more self-conscious and self-critical in its attention to the Jewish-Christian encounter, (2) the ways in which a sustained encounter with the Jewish or Christian other might become a more vital force in the formation and educa-tion of seminarians, and (3) the challenges raised by the Shoah both to theological understanding and to religious identity-formation.
In addition to a variety of opportunities for intensive text study and discussion, the Consultation included the following sessions: A Critical Discussion of the Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity: A Case Study in the Formation of Religious Identity, with Donald Juel, Princeton Theological Seminary; Alan Segal, Barnard College/Columbia University; Philip Cunningham, The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College; and Sara Lee, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles; The Shoah, the Self, and the Other, with John Pawlikowski, Catholic Theological Union; Racelle Weiman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Insti-tute of Religion, Cincinnati; Denise Dombkowski Hopkins, Wesley Theological Seminary; and Ruth Langer, The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College; Interfaith Engagement in Theological Terms, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, The Divinity School, University of Chicago; and David Novak, University of Toronto; Worship, Ritual, and the Perception of the Other: A Case Study Session; and Why It Matters, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, The Divinity School, University of Chicago; and Walter Harrelson, Vanderbilt University and Wake Forest University Divinity School.
The following issues and concerns generated some of the most spirited and fruitful discussions:
(1) In ever-increasing numbers, candidates entering seminary come with a wide variety of life experiences. Some possess a robust knowledge of their religious tradition, while others come with only a cursory understanding. Indeed, many are still in the process of claiming their religious identity. Few come to seminary equipped to address the challenges posed by a society that is increasingly pluralistic in its religious composi-tion. In light of these realities, how might seminaries better educate students so that they become deeply rooted in their own religious tradition, have a strong sense of their religious identity, and are adaptive and open to the challenges of reli-gious leadership in an increasingly religiously plural world?
(2) How might seminaries better enable students to deal with conflicts between religious communities, especially those that arise from competing religious truth claims? Can the skills needed to respond to these inter-religious concerns be adapt-ed so that they might serve as a model to deal with conflict within one's own religious community?
(3) Since the world in which seminarians will exercise leader-ship is an increasingly complex one, engagement with the religiously other is inevitable. That encounter can frighten, or it can enrich; it can be a source of blessing, or a source of conflict. What is beyond question, however, is that interaction with the religiously other will destabilize one's religious identity before it might be seen as a blessing. What more might our seminaries do to make the religiously other a familiar presence in seminary life so that seminarians can experience the destabilizing effects of the encounter with the other and learn ways to address the challenges raised by the other in a "safe" environment?
(4) In educating persons in their own religious tradition, sem-inaries are also educating them, oftentimes implicitly, in an understanding of the religiously other. Is there a growing need, and perhaps a responsibility, to be more self-conscious and self-critical regarding how this happens in our institutions? Does this happen differently for Christians and for Jews?
(5) Is there a connection between the manner in which we are present to the Jewish or Christian other and our openness to the transcendent OTHER? Is it possible that the presence of the Jewish or Christian other might disclose something of the truth, power, and beauty of both our and the other's com-mitments of faith?
Seminary faculty and administrators also spoke of the specific challenges within their own academic disciplines raised by recent scholarship in the area of Jewish-Christian studies. Whether it be questions concerning the emergence of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity out of the matrix of first-century Palestinian Judaisms, or issues surrounding portrayals of the other in our respective histories, a consensus emerged around the need to find more effective ways in which to introduce and incorporate this scholarship into the seminary curriculum and classroom.
Participants evaluatd the Consultation as an important begin-ning to a conversation both vital and imperative to the future of religious leadership. In response, the ICJS is in the process of securing funding for a second phase to the Consultation, one that will seek to consolidate an on-going partnership among and between participating seminaries and the ICJS to continue the work begun at the May Consultation.
The Institute asked a number of participants to reflect on their experience of the Consultation. See the Responses to the Consultation from Walter Harrelson, Deidre Good and Judy Newman, Richard S. Sarason, Daniel Aronson, and David Kraemer. See also a list of Participating Institutions.
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