Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (March/April 1996)

From 1991 to 2005, I had the pleasure of interviewing a fascinating array of writers, theologians, politicians, artists, and musicians for the Wittenburg Door, the original--only?--magazine of religious satire. From the preparation required to conduct them to the editing required to make them both clear and funny (the Door's two requirements, although not necessarily in that order), these interviews changed my life (mostly for the better). Although I conducted most of the interviews by phone, I was on several occasions able to hop a plane and question my subjects in person thanks to the generosity of Bob Darden and the late Mike Yaconelli, the editors who underwrote my adventures. It was a generosity made all the more special by the fact that the Door was usually deep in the red. For such acts of genuinely Christian charity (or fiscal insanity, I'm not sure which), I remain intensely grateful. Several of my interviews--R.C. Sproul, Chris Yambar--are still online in their entirety. What's posted below is one of the ones that's been MIA for awhile.

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When we interviewed Richard John Neuhaus in 1984, he had just published The Naked Public Square, a book about religion and public life that many have come to regard as the definitive work on the subject. Sensing its importance at the time, we cracked as many "naked" jokes as we could. Then we made fun of him for having three names. Ah, the '80s! Anyway, since then Neuhaus has busied himself by heading up the Center for Religion and Public Life, publishing the scholarly interfaith journal First Things, and trading in his Lutheran collar for the much more stylish Catholic kind. In other words, as if three names weren't enough, we now have to call him Father, too.

In 1994, Fr. Neuhaus, his fellow Catholic George Weigel, the not-quite-Catholic Charles Colson, and the Nazarene Kent Hill drafted another landmark document, the official charter of the unofficial ecumenical movement known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, or ECT. In the document--which was signed by forty supporters, including Bill Bright, Pat Robertson, and J.I. Packer--the drafters outlined a plan for interdenominational cooperation that would both strengthen global evangelization and tear down divisions within the Body of Christ.

Not everyone has greeted ECT warmly. R.C. Sproul has accused the movement of "trivializ[ing] the reformation," and Dave Hunt has accused it of "overturning the Reformation." The Door sent its Catholic mole Arsenio Orteza to Fr. Neuhaus's offices in Manhattan to get the whole story. That Neuhaus gave us an hour-long interview even though Orteza showed up forty-five minutes late after getting lost in Chinatown should merit the good father, in our opinion, some serious time off in Purgatory, especially since what he had to say in that hour constitutes one of the most lucid and optimistic visions of the Church's future we've ever encountered.

DOOR: Some have accused Evangelicals and Catholics Together of trying to "overturn the Reformation." As a Catholic who used to be a Lutheran, you must have overturned the Reformation in your own mind at some point.
NEUHAUS: Oh, I don't know about "overturning the Reformation." I'm a Catholic because I was, and am, a Lutheran.

DOOR: Isn't that like saying, "I'm a vegetarian because I did, and do, eat meat?"
NEUHAUS: No. I became a Catholic in fulfillment of my commitment and theological and spiritual motivation as a Lutheran.

DOOR: Emulating Luther led you to join the Church that he spent so much time escaping? What are we missing?
NEUHAUS: Well, most people have become accustomed to Lutheranism's having become a separated ecclesial community, which was never the intention of the Lutheran Reformation.

DOOR: Never?
NEUHAUS: If one reads, for example, the central, constituting document of Lutheranism--the Augsburg Confession of 1530--it's clear beyond doubt that the Reformers understood themselves to be leading a movement of reform within the Church of Christ. It is one of the great tragedies of history--and the blame can be amply shared by Catholics and Lutherans alike--that this movement of reform became a separated ecclesial community. This would certainly scandalize, disappoint,
and drive to tears Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon.

DOOR: Who was Philipp Melanchthon?
NEUHAUS: He was the chief aide of Luther and was the chief author of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology for the Augsburg Confession. There's no question but that the Reformers died in the belief that they were good, Catholic Christians.

DOOR: But didn't many of them behave in distinctly non-Catholic ways?
NEUHAUS: They made emergency provisions, especially in Germany, for continuing the ministry of the Church. The Catholic bishops in Germany, unlike the Catholic bishops in most of Scandinavia, had not come over to the Reformation. But, as many Lutheran scholars have pointed out, these provisions were viewed simply as temporary, emergency provisions.

DOOR: What did these provisions include?
NEUHAUS: Ordaining people to the ministry without the involvement of bishops in Catholic succession. But the point is that Lutheranism as a separate ecclesial communion was meant to be a temporal phenomenon. Unfortunately, over the last 460-plus years, Lutherans have become
accustomed to the emergency and mistaken it for a permanent state of affairs.

DOOR: You're implying that the work of the Reformers was legitimate.
NEUHAUS: Much of it, certainly. Pope John Paul II has, on a number of occasions, referred to Luther as a religious genius. The personal, spiritual, and theological insights of Luther, which are very similar to those of Bernard of Clairvaux before Luther with regard to what came to be called sola gratia and sola fide--this is a very deep and profound interpretation of the gospel, by which the entire Church has been enriched. And Catholics at the highest levels, including the Pope, have
said this.

DOOR: So, again, you're saying that, as far as Rome is concerned, the Reformation had a place.
NEUHAUS: Yes, but it should have been contained in continuity with the Catholic Church. There was no necessity for the schism. And the step that I took in entering into full communion with the Catholic Church--as I did in 1990--is intended to bear witness to the fulfillment of what is best and truest in the Lutheran Reformation, within contemporary Catholicism.

DOOR: What have your former fellow Lutherans made of your conversion?
NEUHAUS: Some of my Lutheran friends think that I acted prematurely. That is, they think that the story is not yet told, that Lutheranism has not, in fact, decided simply to be a Protestant denomination among Protestant denominations. But by the end of the 1980s, it seemed clear
to me that Lutherans, both in this country and worldwide, had willy nilly made the decision to remain a permanent and separated Protestant denomination.

DOOR: "Willy nilly"?
NEUHAUS: Did I just say "Willy nilly"?

DOOR: Yes.
NEUHAUS: -----

DOOR: Um, where were we? Oh yeah. So far you've been using the terms "Catholic," "Lutheran," and "Protestant." Are you familiar with plain ol' "evangelical" Christians?
NEUHAUS: Oh, yes. For years I've been in close and cordial conversation with many evangelical Protestants and their major national and international leaders. And in my writing, in The Naked Public Square, for example, I have consistently lifted up the importance of evangelicalism, not only for religious and cultural change in this country, but also its importance on the whole world stage of the Christian movement. I've celebrated it critically, to be sure, but I'm convinced it's one of the most important phenomena within the world-historical Christian reality at the edge of the third millennium.

DOOR: Then you must know that evangelicals consider anything besides Jesus and the Bible--like the Church or the sacraments--mere aides at best and hindrances at worst. What bridge can be built between evangelicals and Catholics in such a situation?
NEUHAUS: Well, it's difficult. We see this in the response to Evangelicals and Catholics Together and in the controversies it has engendered among evangelicals. But if one asks, "What bridge can be built?"--well, surely, in Jesus Christ, the bridge of reconciliation is already in place.

DOOR: At the risk of sounding cynical, what practical difference does that make?
NEUHAUS: I agree with you that the conceptualization and the experience of Christian existence is dramatically different for most evangelical Protestants from what it is for most Catholics. Nnetheless, it is the same Christ to whom we surrender ourselves, whom we follow, and whom we
declare to be Lord. That's the beginning. The beginning always has to be Christocentric. And I think it's very important, for evangelicals and for Catholics, to lift up Christ in such a way that we are, at least to a degree, freed from our primary Christian identity, in terms of whether we are evangelical or whether we are Catholic. Which is not to say that such a difference isn't important.

DOOR: How important is it?
NEUHAUS: It's very important. One of the things in the ECT declaration that we say again and again is that there are these major differences. It's been somewhat frustrating, but not untouched by amusement, to see how many critics of ECT say that we try to brush differences under the
carpet. What we do want to say--and the most important thing that the declaration says--is that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, however imperfect our communion with one another and however different our understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

DOOR: Historically, though, we Christians have been pretty good at keeping the family feud going.
NEUHAUS: Yes, but the fact is that all of us see ourselves in continuity with the historical event of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and the Christian community, as testified to in the Scriptures that we
share. One of the critics of ECT said to one of the evangelical signers, "What you're doing is agreeing with the Catholics that the whole tradition of the Church is normative for us, whereas we Baptists began in the sixteenth century." What a peculiar thing for a Baptist to say! To be a Christian is to have begun in the first century! That's where God revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and that's where the community of faith was started and the whole Christian movement was launched.

DOOR: Why do you think such Christians take pride in cutting themselves off from the first 1600 years of the Holy Spirit's work?
NEUHAUS: Well, we live in a culture of presentism, which says, "The only thing that's real is what's immediate, what's now." Certainly, there are strong streams of that in evangelical piety. You know, it's Jesus and me and my experience of Jesus now. And then somehow the Bible gets in there. But everything else is deemed utterly irrelevant by comparison. It's also a question of identities, and when identities get threatened, you get all kinds of peculiar behavior. Besides, an
evangelical Protestant is sometimes difficult to define. What's evangelical? What isn't?

DOOR: What's evangelical? What isn't?
NEUHAUS: The identity is in large part, and maybe at its critical center, based upon a negation.

DOOR: How so?
NEUHAUS: Well, you can debate what it means to be a Protestant until the cows come home, but at the end of the day it means you're durn sure not a Catholic. So it's a negation: "I am a Protestant, I am not a Catholic." Then to be an evangelical Protestant is a double negation because you're saying, "I am not a mainline Protestant or a liberal Protestant or an ecumenical Protestant." So if I say I'm an evangelical Protestant, I'm essentially saying two negative things: "I'm not a Catholic, and I'm not a mainline Protestant." Mark Noll, perhaps the premiere church historian of American evangelicalism, thinks that's one of the reasons for why ECT has caused as much commotion as it has.

DOOR: Why?
NEUHAUS: ECT clearly threatens that identity, leading to this sometimes hysterical polemic about selling out the Reformation. xNoll has pointed out that it's been 140 years or so since evangelical Protestants have seriously been provoked or invited to think about their relationship to the Catholic Church. For most evangelical Protestants, even to suggest that there might be some Christianly serious way in which you had to engage Catholics and Catholicism was considered off the wall.

DOOR: So because ECT does engage Catholics--
NEUHAUS: Well, when you add such major movers as have associated themselves with ECT--Bill Bright, Charles Colson, Jim Packer--this comes as an enormous theological shock to some.

DOOR: Do you know J.I. Packer well enough to call him "Jim"?
NEUHAUS: Did I just call him "Jim"?

DOOR: Yes.
NEUHAUS: -----

DOOR: Um, you were saying something about an enormous theological shock.
NEUHAUS: Actually, it could be more accurately described as a culture shock because there is a culture of evangelicalism in which the Catholic question had no place. Therefore, it's profoundly disturbing when it is inserted into that culture.

DOOR: Two places in which evangelicals and Catholics seem to be increasingly chummy are the pro-life movement and the Republican Party.
NEUHAUS: And in the charismatic renewal.

DOOR: Oh yeah. We forgot about them. Anyway, could it be that the Body of Christ has been allowed by God to endure abortion and other side effects of liberalism in order to expedite reunification?
NEUHAUS: Well, I certainly wouldn't want to attribute the abortion culture or liberal apostasy to the workings of God.

DOOR: That's not exactly what we meant.
NEUHAUS: Has God used this circumstance of crisis in order to bring Christians of very different religious cultures to a common recognition of one another as fellow believers and as co-belligerents in the great cultural tasks of our time?

DOOR: Uh, that's what we meant.
NEUHAUS: Oh, yes. I think that's happened. And in that sense ECT was really catching up with what was already happening in what Chuck Colson has called the ecumenism of the trenches, especially in the pro-life movement and in the increasing awareness that cultural conservatives--
who are religiously, Christianly grounded--have a life-or-death struggle on our hands.

DOOR: Do you know Charles Colson well enough to call him "Chuck"?
NEUHAUS: Did I just call him "Chuck"?

DOOR: Um, you were referring to ecumenical trenchmouth or--
NEUHAUS: I think evangelicals and Catholics--in the trenches, so to speak--have been discovering one another as brothers and sisters in Christ for a long time now. ECT simply gave a kind of formal framework and articulation for that which the Holy Spirit was already doing.

DOOR: You mentioned "Christianly grounded" cultural conservatives. Do you see a place for religious Jews in these trenches?
NEUHAUS: Yes. I think the involvement of Jews is something to be very grateful for and to nurture and develop carefully.

DOOR: Why?
NEUHAUS: I think it's important for Christians to be reflecting ever more carefully--in a theological, spiritual, and biblical manner--on the place of Jews and of living Judaism in God's covenantal purposes in history.

DOOR: Do you think most Christians can reflect on all that?
NEUHAUS: I think all of us need to be alert to what God may be up to in history. I mean, God has not withdrawn from history. He's working out His purposes in ways that transcend our sure discernment, but we are always to be alert. In terms of Christians and Jews, especially here in the United States, it would be a good and urgent thing for us to revisit, in a fresh way, Romans 9-11, St. Paul's reflections on the mystery of living Judaism in God's providential purposes.

DOOR: Does a wise response to the increasingly conservative profile of religious Americans include the alarm voiced by politically moderate or left-wing believers?
NEUHAUS: The minority of Americans commonly described as "secular humanists," the "cultural elite," and the "Pagan Left" are understandably in a state of utter shock and disarray at what's
happening in America now. If one can enter into their construal of reality, he'll see that they have every reason to use terms like the "Christian Right" and the "Religious Right" in order to paint with a broad brush the cultural conservative resurgency in America as an instance of religious fanaticism, unbridled fascism, anti-Semitism, etc. One can understand why they're in a state of panic.

DOOR: Why are they in a state of panic?
NEUHAUS: They've lost touch with the American experience. This is new for them because they'd persuaded themselves, over a forty or fifty-year period, that they were running America, that, in fact, they were setting the pace and determining the agenda for the development of national life. Now, all of a sudden, they find themselves sidelined, and it's a terrifying experience, not unlike what has happened in the last thirty years to the liberal mainline churches in America.

DOOR: Make the connection for us.
NEUHAUS: Not long ago they really believed they were the voice of responsible religious opinion and conviction in American public life. It's hard to imagine, but in 1981, when some of us launched the Institute of Religion and Democracy and took on what we believed to be some of the very wrongheaded directions of the National Council of Churches, the NCC was a central pillar of the American establishment. Like the American Medical Association or the American Bar Association, the National Council of Churches mattered.

DOOR: It doesn't matter now?
NEUHAUS: It's collapsed! It's just holding on by its fingertips, maintaining a little office in what used to be called the "great God box" at 475 Riverside Drive, which is now all rented out to
non-church-related business and government organizations. The NCC is desperately trying to maintain a skeletal corporate existence.

DOOR: Have they acknowledged defeat?
NEUHAUS: Oh, no. They blame their radically diminished status on conservatives, and in their world, "conservative" is a dirty word.

DOOR: Excuse us, but you almost sound as if you're gloating.
NEUHAUS: No. In fact, one has to try to understand. It's very important to enter into other people's worldviews. And at 475 Riverside Drive, in a poignant and touching way, there's still the feeling that this is an aberrant moment, a glitch on the cultural and religious screen that has somehow put these conservative, religious evangelicals and Catholics into a position of unwarranted influence. "This will pass. We just have to wait it out." I think that's their mindset. It's very sad.

DOOR: Aren't you painting mainline churches with the same broad brush that you accuse them of using against religious conservatives?
NEUHAUS: Well, one has to, in all fairness and accuracy, add that within many of the mainline churches, there is a vibrant Christian life and mission going on.

DOOR: Whew! For a minute there, we--
NEUHAUS: In the local churches.

DOOR: Oh.
NEUHAUS: You can take the Episcopal Church or the United Methodist Church or the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. in almost any city in this country and find vibrant communities of Christian faith and witness. But almost every study and report we have underscores that those
churches have almost totally disengaged themselves from their regional and national bureaucracies. And from institutions such as the NCC.

DOOR: What practical help can Catholics give evangelicals who, having accepted the legitimacy of Catholic worship, nevertheless remain wary of doctrinal unity with a tradition so different from their own?
NEUHAUS: We have to invite our evangelical friends to think seriously about the Church--the concept of the Church and the doctrine of the Church. We have to invite them to take the New Testament seriously and, in turn, to take the Old Testament seriously, to take seriously the
whole understanding of God's story of salvation as the election, calling, and sustaining of a people. The corporate nature of Christian salvation is, I think, largely missing from Protestantism generally and evangelical Protestantism in particular.

DOOR: But can't the individual's relationship to God get lost amid all this talk of "a people"?
NEUHAUS: Well, evangelical Protestantism tends to be highly individualistic in a way that simply cannot be squared, it seems to me, with the biblical understanding of the story of salvation as the calling of a people "out of darkness, into the wonderful light of Christ."

DOOR: Wow! That was beautiful.
NEUHAUS: It's 1 Peter.

DOOR: Uh, we knew that.
NEUHAUS: The "Body of Christ," the "Bride of Christ," the Church as the bride, Christ as the bridegroom, the corporate sacramental images of salvation--Cardinal Ratzinger has said, I think very insightfully, that the difference between the Protestant and the Catholic understanding of Christian existence is that, for the Protestant, faith in Christ and faith in the Church are two different questions, and most Protestants never even get to the second question.

DOOR: And for Catholics?
NEUHAUS: For Catholics it is one question, one act of faith. I think that is clearly truer to the biblical witness and certainly to the apostolic tradition within which, after all, the New Testament was formed.

DOOR: You're implying that if the Church is the Body of Christ, then incidental corruption--like a bad Pope or an overemphasis on indulgences--is merely an example of the tares among the wheat.
NEUHAUS: Exactly. The Church is a community of sinners, of forgiven sinners, and finally the only qualification for membership is the acknowledgment that one is a sinner in need of the Saviour and in need of the community of salvation.

DOOR: For a minute there, you sounded almost evangelical.
NEUHAUS: I think many of our evangelical friends have distorted, inadvertently, precisely what the Reformation wanted to assert, namely, the radical gratuity--or gift quality--of salvation.

DOOR: How?
NEUHAUS: By concentrating so much upon the individual conversion experience--the "born-again experience"--that they end up resting their confidence of being saved upon their own experience.

DOOR: But they attribute that experience to the Holy Spirit.
NEUHAUS: It doesn't matter. The fact is that you find evangelical Christians saying, "How do I know I'm saved? Because this and that happened to me." And that's exactly what the Reformers railed against! Works righteousness, but also experience righteousness. One of the ironies in the reception of ECT is that its critics say, "Well, ECT betrays the gospel. Why? Because it says we
are justified by faith, but it doesn't say we've been justified by faith alone. And the article by which the Church stands or falls, according to the Reformers, is justification by faith alone."

DOOR: Well?
NEUHAUS: Here is delicious irony. The phrase "the article by which the Church stands or falls" comes from a Lutheran writer in 1718--two hundred years after the beginning of the Reformation--whose point was to condemn what Lutherans called the "enthusiasts," or those who placed their confidence of salvation upon a conversion experience. So the very phrase that some evangelicals are using to condemn ECT is, in fact, a phrase that historically was used to condemn a key component of what today is called evangelicalism. Very strange.

DOOR: Upon what do Christians base their confidence of salvation?
NEUHAUS: Our confidence is in the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ and enacted in the proclamation of the Church and the sacramental enactment of grace in holy baptism. This is evangelical Christianity, and this is Luther who, when he was tempted by Satan and made to endure his great struggles of doubt, said to Satan, "Get away!" And what was his trump card?

DOOR: We give up.
NEUHAUS: He said, "I am baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! You can't touch me!" That's Reformation Christianity, and it's also good Catholic Christianity.

DOOR: With more and more people coming to see as common to both Catholics and Protestants these fundamental convictions, could your Lutheran friends have been right?
NEUHAUS: About what?

DOOR: About your having jumped ship too early? That, in fact, a formal reunification is inevitable?
NEUHAUS: I would thank God if it turned out that my judgment in the late 1980s was wrong. If a hundred years from now, say, there really is an ecclesial, corporate reconciliation between Lutheranism and the Catholic Church--and if I am around the throne of grace, as I hope I will be--I will join the angels and saints in rejoicing at that, hoping that the decision I made in 1990 contributed to it. But that's all in God's hands, which is exactly where it should be.

Fr. Neuhaus passed away in 2008 at the age of seventy-two.

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This interview is also contained in The Door Magazine Interviews--Take Two (Bob Darden, ed.).

Bob Briner (July/August 1996)

From 1991 to 2005, I had the pleasure of interviewing a fascinating array of writers, theologians, politicians, artists, and musicians for the Wittenburg Door, the original--only?--magazine of religious satire. From the preparation required to conduct them to the editing required to make them both clear and funny (the Door's two requirements, although not necessarily in that order), these interviews changed my life (mostly for the better). Although I conducted most of the interviews by phone, I was on several occasions able to hop a plane and question my subjects in person thanks to the generosity of Bob Darden and the late Mike Yaconelli, the editors who underwrote my adventures. It was a generosity made all the more special by the fact that the Door was usually deep in the red. For such acts of genuinely Christian charity (or fiscal insanity, I'm not sure which), I remain intensely grateful. Several of my interviews--R.C. Sproul, Chris Yambar--are still online in their entirety. What's posted below is one of the ones that's been MIA for awhile.

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At first glance, Bob Briner does not resemble a typical Door interviewee. Having never undergone ordination, he has never found himself defrocked by a major denomination and jarred into a realization of the church's hypocrisy. Neither has he ever sought to maximize his sensitivity to the oppressed by studying liberation theologians like the Clash or by subjecting his innards to a steady diet of roast dog. He hasn't even spent the hours from midnight to dawn downing hard liquor with Door editors, gradually peeling away his many layers of defensiveness and reserve until his raw, throbbing, real self lay exposed and hemorrhaging enough vulnerability for a month's worth of Oprah.

No, Bob Briner is that least likely of Door interviewees--a solid citizen, a happy family man, and a regular guy. Um, make that a solid citizen, a happy family man, and a regular guy who in the course of making his living in the world of professional sports has served as the first GM of the San Antonio Spurs (back when folks called them the Dallas Chaparrals), as chairman of the Men's International Professional Tennis Council, and--since 1979--as the president of ProServ Television, a company that, in addition to marketing major sporting events to far-flung countries, has made and marketed such award-winning specials as Dravecky: A Story of Courage and Grace and A Hard Road to Glory, which Briner wrote with the late tennis legend Arthur Ashe.

He has also recently become one of the few Christian authors to write big-selling books without the help of a ghost. Roaring Lambs (Zondervan), Briner's challenge to the Evangelical church to actually get off its pews and "be salt" in the world, was a surprise Christian-bookstore hit, not only spawning Briner's latest career--that of a traveling speaker--but also invigorating his book output. Squeeze Play, subtitled "Practical Insights for Men Caught Between Work & Home," came next, followed by Lambs Among Wolves, Briner's celebration of twenty-two high-profile Christians who are "influencing American culture."

Briner's latest books, however--The Management Methods of Jesus: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Business (Thomas Nelson) and Deadly Detours: Seven Noble Causes That Keep Christians from Changing the World (Zondervan)--may test his readers' charity, especially since all the "deadly detours" that Briner mentions only happen to be the most popular Evangelical causes of the day. Because we've always liked guys who focus on Jesus so much that they make other Christians mad--and because Briner doesn't identify the Door as a deadly detour--we sent Arsenio Orteza to the nearest phone to await the man's call. And since, as of this writing, Briner still hasn't sent us the bill, we've come to like him even more.


DOOR: How are your two new books doing?
BRINER: Well, The Management Methods of Jesus has already gone into its second printing.

DOOR: What about Seven Noble Detours?
BRINER: The name of it is Deadly Detours--

DOOR: That's what we meant.
BRINER:--Seven Noble Causes That Keep Christians from Changing the World.

DOOR: Can you let us in on one or two of these "detours"?
BRINER: The one that people are most interested in, and the one that I'm getting the most questions and disagreement about, is politics.

DOOR: What about politics?
BRINER: That politics, for Christians, really is a deadly detour.

DOOR: Really?
BRINER: Another one is school prayer.

DOOR: Politics and school prayer?
BRINER: Another one is family values. But you only asked for two.

DOOR: Let us guess why people are upset: For years Christians were apolitical, and society decayed. Now that they finally have some political momentum going, you come along and tell them they're wasting their energy.
BRINER: That's pretty much it.

DOOR: What's wrong with Christians wanting their guys in power?
BRINER: During the times when we've had "our guys" in--whether our guys were Carter or Reagan or Bush, all Christians to some extent, at least--all the bad things that we cringe over increased: divorce, drug use, pornography, child abuse. That should tell us something.

DOOR: What should that tell us?
BRINER: The same thing that Jesus kept telling his disciples: "I'm talking about a kingdom not of this world." To ever think that politics is going to be the answer to the things that Christians care most about--or should care most about--is a deadly detour.

DOOR: What should those of us caught up in the deadly political detour be doing instead?
BRINER: First, you should be obedient to Jesus and do what he asked you to do, which is to be salt and to make disciples. After that, if you have time to be involved in "good causes," O.K. But to think that you're being obedient by supporting candidates and organizing takeovers of your local precincts and going head-to-head in strident ways with the people who disagree with you-- well, thinking that that is being obedient is the big problem.

DOOR: In both Roaring Lambs and Lambs Among Wolves, you talk about the need for Christians to become "salt" in their world--to both sting and preserve those elements of society still sensitive to the gospel. When did you first realize that "salt" and "Briner" are etymologically connected?
BRINER: -----

DOOR: Uh, we mean when did the metaphor of "salt" first come alive for you?
BRINER: When I was living in Dallas.

DOOR: What happened in Dallas?
BRINER: In Dallas, you had this "Christian Mecca," with huge traditional churches like the First Baptist Church, the biggest Baptist church in the world. You had two world-class seminaries. You had the single biggest market in America for Christian music. You had the most powerful Christian radio stations in America. You had all the parachurch organizations with headquarters or big operations there. Even the football team had a Christian quarterback in Roger Staubach and a Christian coach in Tom Landry, who's a good friend of mine, by the way.

DOOR: Sounds pretty salty to us.
BRINER: But that's just one picture of Dallas.

DOOR: What's the other?
BRINER: The other is that Dallas is the divorce capital of America and often the murder capital of America. The race relationships there are just as bad as anywhere else. So I began to focus on the salt metaphor.

DOOR: Meaning?
BRINER: Meaning that the real power of the gospel was bottled up in these Christian institutions. There was a lot going on "for the Kingdom" in Dallas, but the heartbeat of the city went on oblivious to it. No stream of salt was making any difference.

DOOR: If we remember correctly, Laundry and Staubach peacefully coexisted with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, who peacefully coexisted with very skimpy costumes. Is that the kind of incongruity you're talking about?
BRINER: In a microcosm, yes.

DOOR: So you began writing books. Considering how busy you've been with ProServe TV, where have you found the time to write five of them?
BRINER: I wrote the first three almost totally on airplanes. At the time I wrote Lambs, I was flying back and forth to Asia regularly because, as far as sports television is concerned, the markets in the sixteen western European democracies and out on the Pacific Rim are so unbelievably dynamic that even dummies like us can make a lot of money. So I was on the airplane even more than usual. Some people think that I wrote some of that stuff when I'd been flying too long and gotten taken over by jetlag.

DOOR: Some people think we've been taken over by jetlag, and we hardly ever fly.
BRINER: -----

DOOR: Um, has the feedback from any of those first three books provided you with what you'd call eye-opening experiences as far as the Evangelical church is concerned?
BRINER: Yeah. I've done almost two hundred radio shows about Lambs, the vast majority of which have been call-in shows. Fielding those questions has made me realize what an unbelievable degree of homogeneity there is in the Evangelical church.

DOOR: Homo what?
BRINER: Homogeneity.

DOOR: -----
BRINER: I can almost tell you what the questions and comments of the callers are going to be before I hear them. And, in a lot of ways, those questions and what I've found in moving through all kinds of Christian colleges and church conventions and men's retreats over the last three years are what's lead to the Deadly Detours book.

DOOR: In what way?
BRINER: I kept seeing people who thought they were talking about Jesus, but they were really talking about some cause. As Os Guinness says, we've forgotten the first things of the Gospel, and we've traded those in for a lot of very good--even noble--causes. But the trade is not a good one for the Kingdom.

DOOR: We interviewed Os Guinness one time.
BRINER: -----

DOOR: Um, a common thread running through all your books is that Christians should get involved in their culture. Since you're writing mainly for Evangelicals, an audience defined in part by their cultural separatism, could it be that you're casting your pearls before swine?
BRINER: I think one of the reasons that Lambs seems to be written for the Evangelical community is that that's pretty much all I knew. Even though I'd been out there in big-time sports and big-time television, when the ballgame was over and the little red light went off, I hustled back to the Evangelical world. I thought I knew so much when I wrote it, but I knew so blinkin' little.

DOOR: “Blinkin'“?
BRINER: And it's embarrassing because everywhere I go to talk about Management and Detours, I still end up answering questions about Lambs: "Why didn't you write about this?" "How could you have left this out?" I wish I had written a broader book. I'm actually trying to do that now. And although I'm not sure I can, I'm going to try really hard because I don't want to give the advance money back.

DOOR: Let's get back to those seven deadly detours. One of them wouldn't be abortion, would it?
BRINER: Next to politics, abortion is the biggest deadly detour. It may be the one that's ultimately the most dangerous for the church.

DOOR: Why?
BRINER: The whole abortion deal just drives you crazy because it's so bad and so evil and so rampant, and we seem to be so ineffective in dealing with it. We see it almost as belonging to a different category than any other evil does, and we tend to think that that gives us license to act in any way possible to stop it. So we go to all kinds of extremes instead of understanding that Jesus is the only answer to that situation as well as to every other one.

DOOR: But isn't abortion different from lots of other sins?
BRINER: In degree, but not in kind.

DOOR: In one of your books, you say that professional sports--especially the NFL--isn't as corrupt as Hollywood because there's a strong Christian presence there.
BRINER: Right.

DOOR: So why isn't a strong Christian pro-life presence in politics similarly desirable?
BRINER: I think it is. Christians should definitely be good citizens. Some of us are called to be in politics in the same way that some of us are called to be screenwriters or humor-magazine writers. The problem is that because we see political ends as ends in themselves, we end up being involved in tactics that drive people away from the Savior instead of to him.

DOOR: You've mentioned politics, abortion, and school prayer. Would one of the four remaining deadly detours be church-bulletin art?
BRINER: One of the really big ones is thwarting the homosexual agenda.

DOOR: Our Promise-Keeper readers will love to hear that.
BRINER: The homosexual agenda shouldn't be any concern of ours. Our concern should be to minister to homosexual people in exactly the same way that we would minister to any other group. It's not a worthy goal to thwart the homosexual agenda. That's not our calling. Our calling is to proclaim Jesus to these people and to love and minister to them.

DOOR: What would you say to parents who don't like the fact that their grade-school child has a teacher who lives and advocates an openly homosexual lifestyle?
BRINER: I wouldn't like it either, but if my home and my church are not efficacious in that area, I can't blame the school. What I'd want to do is pray for that teacher every day and pray for all the kids in that school and minister to that teacher in the best way I can. I'm not going to be up there picketing the school and yelling.

DOOR: Have you, in your years as a sports entrepreneur, encountered many homosexuals?
BRINER: Probably because of my naiveté, I wasn't aware of ever coming into contact with homosexuals until my friend Arthur Ashe got AIDS. He got really involved--particularly during the last couple of years of his life--in fighting AIDS. Arthur was not a homosexual. He got the virus from a blood transfusion down in Atlanta. But it was only then, as I began to try to help him in his anti-AIDS work, that I knowingly came into contact with very many homosexuals.

DOOR: And your word to Christians as far as homosexuals are concerned would be what?
BRINER: We have done worse for the homosexuals than maybe any other group around. At one extreme, the church has portrayed them as worse than the scum of the Shanghai gutter. We've tried to get the worst pictures of them that we could so we could put them on television and raise more money to fight their agenda.

DOOR: What's the other extreme?
BRINER: At the other extreme, the church has said, "Come on in! Do whatever you want to do. It's not a problem." And the poor homosexual doesn't know where he is. He's consigned to hell at both ends. In Deadly Detours I talk about Chuck Colson, who's a guy I admire tremendously. He goes into prisons and takes a big portion of the evangelical church in there with him to minister to rapists, child molesters, armed robbers--the whole spectrum of criminals--which is great. But where is the Chuck Colson who's going to lead the church into a loving ministry to homosexuals?

DOOR: When Colson goes into a prison, he makes it clear to the prisoners that the effectiveness of what he has to offer depends upon a change in their lives.
BRINER: Yeah.

DOOR: And since they're already in jail, they must have already admitted their guilt to some extent.
BRINER: That's not necessarily true. I just had dinner with a prison doctor, and what he tells me is that very few prisoners admit that anything went wrong with them. The system screwed them or something else.

DOOR: Nevertheless, one gets the impression that homosexuals don't even want help, that they don't think they need it.
BRINER: Every homosexual that I've developed any sort of trusting relationship with--and that's not a lot--every one of them has told me, in one way or another, mostly right out, that they're the saddest, most troubled, beat-up-inside people you can imagine, and that "gay" is probably the biggest misnomer ever. Now, what you see is the complete opposite of that: the strident, in-your-face, this-is-fantastic, I'm-great routine. But I think they behave like that because they don't see any other way. They see that blatant exhibitionism as their only choice.

DOOR: The Catholic Church has an organization called Courage that helps homosexuals to live chastely. Ironically, some bishops have been hesitant to give their blessings to it for fear of seeming hostile to Dignity, an organization of homosexual Catholics who do not want to live chastely.
BRINER: There's no question that a healthy homosexual ministry is probably the hardest of all ministries to form, to get support for, and to get people to understand. And it's probably the hardest one in which to see results. But nobody promised it was going to be easy.

DOOR: In what way do you see ProServ TV as having lived up to the roaring-lambs standard?
BRINER: One Thanksgiving we sold NBC on doing Thanksgiving specials called Athletes Who Care, and what we did was take high-profile athletes who were doing good things in their communities rather than knocking over filling stations, and we told their stories. We asked them on camera, "Why are you doing this?" And the answer was always "Because of Jesus."

Arthur and I wrote a television program called A Hard Road to Glory, which won three Emmies. Arthur and I both got Emmies for writing it. The centerpiece of that program told the story of a Christian cyclists back at the turn of the century, so people got the gospel message there. The third thing that I feel good about that's on film is the story that we did on Dave Dravecky called Dravecky: A Story of Courage and Grace.

DOOR: Was Arthur Ashe a Christian?
BRINER: He became a Christian after he got sick.

DOOR: Did he not want to make a big deal about it?
BRINER: He didn't have the time to make a big deal of it.

DOOR: Did you play a role in his conversion?
BRINER: Here's what happened: One day Arthur called and asked me to come up to see him. At that time he was living in an old farm house in upper New York state. And that didn't seem to be too unusual because we'd fished together and done a lot of other things together over the years.

DOOR: What happened when you got there?
BRINER: He sat me down and told me that he had AIDS, and he asked if I would begin to try to build Scripture into his life and to minister to him during this time, and also to watch for signs of dementia, which was his biggest fear about AIDS at that time. As it happened, the dementia that hits some people with AIDS never hit Arthur.

Then he also said he was going to tell Stan Smith, who was his great rival and great friend and the most mature Christian of all the tennis players about this. Arthur was going to ask Stan and his wife Margie to meet with him on weekends and at tournaments to really be with him in an intense course. I was to be in touch with him daily. So we had this deal that, for months, every day, wherever I was in the world, I would fax Arthur Scripture and explanations in the morning, and then we would talk about it on the phone in the afternoon.

After about six months of this, Arthur made a real commitment and accepted Jesus into his life. One of the last television appearances he made was with Larry King. Larry asked him about that, and Arthur was very straightforward about it. The sad deal about it was that he didn't get to finish his book, and the guy who finished it, not being a Christian, excised all the Christian stuff from the book.

DOOR: This is all news to us.
BRINER: I have written about this in a couple of different publications. The Dallas Morning News, for example, had a big story about how Stan and I had ministered to him. But it wasn't widely known, and it didn't make it into Arthur's book.

DOOR: In Lambs Among Wolves, you praise politically active conservatives like Fred Barnes and Cal Thomas, but now you're calling a lot of what they do "deadly detours." What has changed?
BRINER: The scary thing for me--with the House and Senate both--is that Dick Halverson, the chaplain, isn't there any more.

DOOR: We interviewed him once, too.
BRINER: Very few people know that he, more than anybody else, was the single biggest force for keeping the Christians in all branches of government really focused on the person of Jesus. That's not a pejorative statement about the current chaplain. I just don't know him. Halverson was just an unbelievable force there, and now he's gone.

DOOR: We asked you this earlier, and you dodged it. In writing to a predominantly Evangelical audience, do you ever feel as if you're casting your pearls before swine?
BRINER: Sometimes. But of the more than three thousand individuals who have contacted me about Lambs, most of them have simply wanted help in applying the ideas in that book to their lives.

DOOR: No complaints?
BRINER: One paragraph in the book generated almost one hundred percent of the negative criticism.

DOOR: Which paragraph was that?
BRINER: The one in which I wrote well of Amy Grant.

DOOR: You caught flak for writing well of Amy Grant?
BRINER: I wrote, "Those who criticize her for 'crossing over' forget one thing. Her music takes up the airtime that could have gone to one of the multitude of recordings offering only degradation and moral rot .... We need more Amy Grants much more than we need more reactionary sermons."

DOOR: Oh.
BRINER: You asked me what I've discovered from the feedback I've gotten from Lambs. I've discovered that if people want to say something nice about your book, they'll do it through your publisher or they'll go through your office. But if they want to blast you, they'll find you at home. And--somehow--they always know to call when you're asleep.

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Bob Briner passed away in 1999 at the age of sixty-three.

Rabbi Jacob Neusner (May/June 1996)

From 1991 to 2005, I had the pleasure of interviewing a fascinating array of writers, theologians, politicians, artists, and musicians for the Wittenburg Door, the original--only?--magazine of religious satire. From the preparation required to conduct them to the editing required to make them both clear and funny (the Door's two requirements, although not necessarily in that order), these interviews changed my life (mostly for the better). Although I conducted most of the interviews by phone, I was on several occasions able to hop a plane and question my subjects in person thanks to the generosity of Bob Darden and the late Mike Yaconelli, the editors who underwrote my adventures. It was a generosity made all the more special by the fact that the Door was usually deep in the red. For such acts of genuinely Christian charity (or fiscal insanity, I'm not sure which), I remain intensely grateful. Several of my interviews--R.C. Sproul, Chris Yambar--are still online in their entirety. What's posted below is one of the ones that's been MIA for awhile.

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Jews and Christians, Christians and Jews--they can't live with each other, and they can't live without each other. Or at least that's how it's seemed for, oh, the last 2000 years or so.

Actually, the two can live with each other. Just ask the Rabbi Jacob Neusner, currently a Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa and one of the world's foremost authorities on Judaism, not to mention one of the best friends Christianity has at the moment.

If you're thinking that no good friend of Christianity can also be a foremost authority on Judaism, then explain how anyone but such an authority could write and publish more than five hundred books on the subject in his four decades as a professor of religious studies. And that's no typo: Neusner really has turned out over five hundred books, or about one hundred more than all the people on our masthead combined have ever read.

And we're not talking fluff, as a glance at the following titles will show: A History of the Jews in Babylonia; Form Analysis and Exegesis: A Fresh Approach to the Interpretation of the Mishnah; Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah; Where the Talmud Comes From: A Talmudic Phenomenology--Identifying the Free-standing Building Blocks of Talmudic Discourse; Fiddler on the Roof, and Yentl. (O.K., we're not sure about those last two, but considering his influence in the Jewish community both here and abroad, it's a good bet he had something to do with them.)

But the two that really caught our eye were Conservative, American, and Jewish (I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way) (Huntington House, 1993) and A Rabbi Talks with Jesus: An Intermillennial, Interfaith Exchange (Image 1993), the latter of which took him all of a week to write. What also caught our eye were the jacket blurbs--apparently everyone from Jonathan Sachs, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, to Fr. Andrew Greeley and the Vatican's own Cardinal Ratzinger thinks the world of Neusner. Indeed, Neusner greeted almost every name that came up during his ninety-minute conversation with the Door's Arsenio Orteza by saying, "He's a good friend of mine" or "He's an awfully dear fellow." He even politely put up with Orteza's constant attempts to get him to respond to the ol' Josh McDowell-by-way-of-C.S. Lewis riddle, "Was Jesus a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord?"

We don't know about you, but from where we stand Christianity can use all the friends it can get. We also think you'll agree with us that Neusner is the sort of friend that only a church more hell bent on self-destruction than ours would dare do without.


DOOR: We found so much to digest in A Rabbi Talks with Jesus that it probably took us four times as long to read it as it took you to write it.
NEUSNER: There's a moment in the book, which, when I wrote it, I had tears in my eyes. And the first one hundred times I reread it, I was still very moved by it.

DOOR: Which part was that?
NEUSNER: When I go back to the village and Jesus is there with his disciples. We've agreed to part in a friendly way. I go into the synagogue, and I recite my prayers, and he's meeting with his disciples, and he recites his prayers--and they're the same prayers. I was very moved when I wrote that.

DOOR: Elsewhere in that book, you write, in reference to Christ's teaching, "It is one thing to say on one's own how a basic teaching of the Torah shapes the every day. It is quite another to say that the Torah says one thing, 'but I say,' then to announce in one's own name what God set forth at Sinai."
NEUSNER: Yeah.

DOOR: You also once told Christianity Today that at some point you would've liked to ask Jesus, "Who do you think you are--God?"
NEUSNER: (Laughs) Yeah, that would do it. That does seem to get to the heart of matters.

DOOR: What is the Judaic understanding of "Messiah"?
NEUSNER: What you need to do is put together the Messiah prophecies of Isaiah and the Mishna and the Talmud's teachings about the end of days into a coherent picture. In Maimonides' Principles of Faith, one of the principles is "I believe, in perfect faith, in the coming of the Messiah, and though he may tarry, yet will I trust in him." Simply expressed, that's the Judaic belief.

DOOR: So Messiah is still being looked for?
NEUSNER: Absolutely. Everyday. The Hasidim, for example, some of them will send one saying, "The wedding will be held in Jerusalem, the Holy City, on such-and-such a day and in such-and-such a place, but if the Messiah doesn't come and bring us all back there, it'll be in Brooklyn on such-and-such a day and place."

DOOR: Wasn't there a rabbi in New York a few years back who was thought by his followers to be the Messiah?
NEUSNER: Yeah, the Lubavitch rabbi.

DOOR: What was that all about?
NEUSNER: I wrote a column in the London Jewish Chronicle in which I said that he was the most successful false messiah in the history of Judaism, because--you'll forgive me--Jesus made it, but not among the Jews.

DOOR: We forgive you.
NEUSNER: Thanks. But here, in the heart of authentic Torah faith, is a rabbi declaring himself a messiah and getting people to believe in him as an act of authenticity to the Torah. I wrote, "No prior messiah who announced himself to the Jews ever succeeded in making such a claim stick. And for his followers he did."

DOOR: But he died.
NEUSNER: And you know that when he died, for a little while, some of his followers were expecting him to rise from the dead.

DOOR: Sounds familiar.
NEUSNER: So finally the Orthodox rabbis who were not his followers said, "Come on! There is no basis in any Torah text for such an expectation." They said, "You have your religions confused. That's not Judaism, it's Christianity."

DOOR: In what sense did this rabbi fail the Messiah test?
NEUSNER: Well, he died.

DOOR: That's a no-no?
NEUSNER: That'll do it.

DOOR: But if he had come back to life --
NEUSNER: Well, that certainly would've done him some good.

DOOR: -----
NEUSNER: It would've made it much more plausible. But, you see, the Messiah is supposed to do certain things about certain things.

DOOR: What didn't he do that he should've done?
NEUSNER: Read Isaiah.

DOOR: Um, we think we have.
NEUSNER: Understood. But read it as if it's not talking about Jesus. Read it as a Jew would read it, as God's prophecy not yet fulfilled. Then you'll see what the Messiah is supposed to do. And the Lubavitcher rabbi didn't do those things. What happened was, you had a remarkably successful sectarian movement within Judaism that just took the logical next step for itself.

DOOR: You're saying they went power-mad?
NEUSNER: They have many good qualities.

DOOR : You're saying they went power-mad and they have many good qualities?
NEUSNER: I'll tell you something: first of all, it's an authentically religious Judaism. There's nothing ethnic about them. Second, they value every Jew as a medium of sanctification. They don't care if you're rich or poor, stupid or smart. You're important to them because you are Holy Israel, and that's a fantastic thing. Third, because of that same conviction, they go into prisons and reach out to the Jewish prisoners. The only religious people who do this, in your world and mine, are the fundamentalists. They go into the prisons and say, "I care about your soul."

DOOR: You're saying they went power-mad and they reach out to Jewish prisoners?
NEUSNER: The Lubavitch do this all the time. They reach out to Jews, however few and however isolated. They're like diamond prospectors, and the diamonds they're looking for are Jews. So they will organize their communities in places where no other Jewish movement has bothered to go. I think that's a remarkable record.

DOOR: You're saying they--
NEUSNER: They've done an awful lot of good and still do. This is this rabbi. So if he wasn't the Messiah, he still did an awful lot of good things.

DOOR: Do you think he was consciously misleading his followers?
NEUSNER: No. There were some people around him who took the position that he was the Messiah. There were people around him who did not. And there was a conflict. I'll tell you what he did wrong, in my view: It's not that he said he was; it's that when people said he was, he didn't stop them. It's a sin of omission.

DOOR: Isn't that the same as claiming it?
NEUSNER: In my opinion it is. But he was pretty old, and he may not have been as alert.

DOOR: Now, this rabbi--
NEUSNER: Menachem Schneerson.

DOOR: Gesundheit.
NEUSNER: -----

DOOR: -----
NEUSNER: That is, by the way, the name that the Messiah is supposed to have. The Talmud says, "The name of the Messiah will be Menachem." It means "the Comforter."

DOOR: Isn't the only way to excuse this Lubavitch rabbi to say that he was either deliberately misleading people or that he really thought he was the Messiah when he wasn't?
NEUSNER: You're asking me the C.S. Lewis question.

DOOR: We're asking you the C.S. Lewis question.
NEUSNER: If he had not been ninety years old when these statements began to surface, I would be less reluctant to express an opinion. But you don't know what a guy that age is hearing or how he's understanding it, so I really don't know the answer. Had he himself said, "I am the Messiah that you've waited for since 586 B.C.," then the answer would've been "Go rebuild the Temple." That's not an unfair expectation in the context of the history of Judaism. But he never did. As I say, what he didn't say was more important.

DOOR: Speaking of power-mad nice guys, what do you make of the Christian Coalition and Pat Robertson?
NEUSNER: Well, since I defended Pat Robertson on a nationally televised Firing Line debate on PBS, I think I'm pretty sincere in saying I think he does an awful lot of good in the world. I also think that the Christian Coalition stands for a lot of good things in the world.

DOOR: Pat Robertson has also done some pretty kooky things.
NEUSNER: Look, I also met Ralph Reed. We did a program together. These are people who have an authentic religious faith, who treat my faith with great respect, and who go out into the world and do a great many things that they believe are in God's service, and who also do real good in the world. I mean, I do not see Pat Robertson as a man who wants to impose his religion on the country. I believe--I know--he's a man who has religious ideals that he's trying to realize in the world. Well, that's what religious people are called upon to do! If he could persuade people that he's right and if they could translate their ideals in appropriate ways into public policy, I think this would be a better country.

DOOR: One of your opponents on the Firing Line debate you've referred to was Barry Lynne, the head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
NEUSNER: Yeah, he's an awfully dear person.

DOOR: It seems that the logical conclusion of Lynne's position was recently summed up in another such debate, in which the lawyer Alan Dershowitz said he didn't think parents should be allowed to teach their religion to their children.
NEUSNER: No, Dershowitz couldn't have made such a statement.

DOOR: Because he's an awfully dear person, too?
NEUSNER: No, because I don't think he thinks that. Ira Glaser, from the ACLU, would not take that view. He made a statement a couple of weeks ago that if there was a child who was told that he couldn't say a blessing before food in public school because of the separation of church and state, that he personally would take the case. What you say Dershowitz said is an appalling statement.

DOOR: But isn't it the logical conclusion of the separation-of-Church-and-State? If the government knows what's best for everyone, and religion is not allowed to enter into a determination of what's best, then religious parents are a threat to the government's doing what's best for everyone.
NEUSNER: I don't know what the logical conclusion of that position is because I find that position on its own illogical. But I think that, on the whole, we've beaten that position--which is a very extreme position--down, both in the courts and public opinion. As long as there's fairness to everyone--and there certainly is in this country, and certainly Christians are the ones who have gone out of their way to make sure that everyone has the same rights--there's no reason in the world to say, "You cannot celebrate your religion in the public square." I think that the position of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has been repudiated.

DOOR: Does nothing in the political agenda of Christian fundamentalists concern you?
NEUSNER: By the way, I don't like the term "fundamentalists."

DOOR: What term do you prefer?
NEUSNER: "Bible-believing Christians."

DOOR: Does nothing in the political agenda of Bible-believing Christians concern you?
NEUSNER: What concerns me is that no religion should impose itself on the children of other people in the public schools. That's a very separate issue. There I think that the conservative Christians have to think through their position on prayer in schools a little bit more carefully.

DOOR: Explain.
NEUSNER: First of all, non-sectarian prayer isn't prayer. I mean, a Christian praying not in the name of Jesus Christ--as I understand Christianity--has simply repudiated his religion in its most basic form. Our liturgical tradition is very different. We're doing something different when we pray.

DOOR: In what sense?
NEUSNER: We have the "we" who speaks to God, and it's the "we" of a holy community, namely Israel--Israel the holy people, not to be confused with the state of Israel. When we pray publically, our prayer is communal. You can't remove the insignia of authentic prayer in favor of non-sectarian prayer and still have prayer going on that Judaic, Christian, or Moslem believers can take seriously. What you're doing is going through the motions of a lowest-common-denominator religion that I don't think advances the cause of authentic religiosity as all of us want to advance that cause.

DOOR: How about making it an issue of personal prayer in public?
NEUSNER: If you want to make it personal prayer, then it can't be public any more. In other words, if you say, "Well, we understand there's no 'we.' just an 'I'"--O.K. But this is no longer what they're doing. By the way, I know that the impatience and the frustration that they feel toward the radical secularization of everything public spills over into wanting a non-sectarian rule allowing religion. And I think that can be right for some things.

DOOR: Like what?
NEUSNER: There should be Christmas on public property, as there should be Hanuka and other things, as well. And when it's Christmas, it should be a Christ and not a Santa Claus. But prayer is not the same thing as a display of religious art.

DOOR: By the way, we interviewed Dennis Prager a few years ago. Do you know him?
NEUSNER: Oh, sure. He's a good friend.

DOOR: And a few years before that we interviewed Fr. Andrew Greeley, who contributed a blurb to A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. How do you know him?
NEUSNER: Around 1988 he celebrated his sixtieth birthday, and he invited me to Chicago for the celebration. We had corresponded over the years because I think he's a very smart man and I've read a lot of his articles, so I went. One of his publishers was there, and I said, "Gee, Andy and I should write a book together. I'll give you three ideas." They chose the common-scripture idea, The Bible and Us: A Priest and a Rabbi Read the Scriptures Together, and that's the book we did. It worked quite nicely. At any rate, we've become very close friends.

DOOR: Have you read his books?
NEUSNER: I've read every book he's written since 1988 and, I think, all of his novels that were done prior to that time.

DOOR: Even his dirty ones?
NEUSNER: The first novel of Andy's that I read had a moment when there was an authentic supernatural intervention that he was trying to express and did express. And I waited for the naturalistic explanation to follow, because in many novels writers will refer to religious experience and then explain it away. But Andy didn't explain it away. It was something that he took seriously. And I said, "A-ha! Here is an authentically religious person who's not ashamed to believe that God is in the world." I wrote him and said, "I trust you. I would not have trusted you if you had explained it away in naturalistic terms."

DOOR: At one point when we interviewed Dennis Prager, the topic of taking the Lord's name in vain came up. He said that Christians err in seeing that as applying to little more than shouting "God damn!" when they hit their thumbs with a hammer.
NEUSNER: Well, you can easily trivialize religious forms, as you know, and that might be a trivialization of something that has much more to it. But I wouldn't disagree entirely with those Christians. For example, there are Orthodox Jews who will not write out the name of God, either in Hebrew or English. So in English they'll write "G-d," and that would come under the same rubric. You need to take seriously the language that you use. That's an important lesson, and it's very rarely taught any more. Your language matters. Therefore, think about what you're saying.

DOOR: What should the person who wants to begin taking his language seriously do?
NEUSNER: In terms of child raising--at which I'm adept because I raised four--you have to listen very carefully to what your children say and to the language they use, then respond by saying to them, "In my presence this is not language I want you to use, and I'll tell you why." Otherwise they'll never think of it. This will come as a great surprise to them.

DOOR: Is this an example of what you call in Conservative, American, and Jewish a "lost continent of knowledge"?
NEUSNER: No, this is simply a lost continent of sensibility and character. I mean, children will use language that they really don't realize is improper or inappropriate. What parents tell them may surprise them, but they do listen.

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This interview is also available in The Door Magazine Interviews--Take Two (Bob Darden, ed.).