Christopher Leighton

CHRISTOPHER LEIGHTON: Christians and Jews may discover that God isn’t going to fix the world on his own. That in a fundamental way, that task demands something of Christians and Jews and Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, others. And we can’t do it alone; we’ll have to do it collaboratively.

ALEISA FISHMAN: Since 1987, Christopher Leighton has served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. A Presbyterian minister, Leighton is deeply committed to disarming religious hatred and establishing models of interfaith understanding.

Welcome to Voices on Antisemitism, a podcast series from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum made possible by generous support from the Oliver and Elizabeth Stanton Foundation. I'm your host, Aleisa Fishman. Every other week, we invite a guest to reflect about the many ways that antisemitism and hatred influence our world today. From Baltimore, Maryland, here's Reverend Christopher Leighton.

CHRISTOPHER LEIGHTON: I came to Jewish-Christian relations in large measure because my closest friends belonged to different religious traditions. And they had a way of raising doubts and generating confusion that simply had to be addressed if I was going to hold fast to what my ancestors had passed on to me. Christians and Jews share some of the same narratives. And the question that haunts us is whether we can learn to honor the distinct ways that we each read these stories, and dismantle those understandings that have given rise to very serious and anguished relations between our communities. And so, the challenge of living in a religiously plural world is developing the habits and reflexes that allow us to celebrate that diversity and be enlarged and expanded by understandings that don’t belong to us.

For centuries, Christians have made triumphal claims that were profoundly dismissive of those who do not agree with them. And as a result, the church can become ingrown. It can fail to develop an aptitude for self-criticism. And if there is not an ability to see oneself through the eyes of the other, then one ultimately ends up blinded to larger truths that might inspire us to do better and to improve and to ennoble our tradition.

I think that what happens through the interfaith dialogue when it’s done well, is that one has the rude realization that the tradition that one thought one knew, that one has been living, is far more mysterious and complex than one ever imagined, and that one may have to go back and learn how to reread and reinterpret it anew. So in a sense, to live in a tradition is always to call it into question.

In this day and age, for Jews, Christians, or Muslims to act as though they can live in isolation from one another is to go down a road of self-delusion. We need to find ways in which we can break the suspicions and distrust and fears that have accumulated over the centuries. Can we really open ourselves to recognize that God has different ways of being in relationship with different peoples and expose ourselves to the wisdom and beauty that reside within those different communities? That’s the challenge that continues to lay claim to my heart and mind to this day.

ALEISA FISHMAN: Voices on Antisemitism is a podcast series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Join us every other week to hear a new perspective on the continuing threat of antisemitism in our world today. We would appreciate your feedback on this series. Please visit our website, www.ushmm.org.