Jerry Klein
Jerry Klein: I understand the perception among some people that I have, as you said, lambasted the Christian community. I don’t see it quite in the same terms. First of all, to put it in some context, I have to remind folks that I grew up here in the 50s and 60s when this was still a very small, very homogenous – as far as religion was concerned – Southern town. My parents moved me here when I was three from Philadelphia. So as a northern born Jew moving to Charlotte in 1955 there was some discomfort, some alienation, and I’ve said before without reservation that I was chased on the playground at Pinewood Elementary with kids calling me "Christ killer." So certainly that had in impact on me early.
But I was also one of the few kids, one of the few Jewish children in town at that time who went around at Hannakah with a Minnorah and at Passover with a box of matzas and would explain to folks what Passover and Hannakah were all about. So from my earliest time here I was about making an effort to get people to know that there were other folks who didn’t believe quite the same ways that they did.
So that’s basically continued for 45 years, the 45 years that I’ve been in town. The distinctions I see are that there is a disconnect at times between what some folks in the evangelical community say Christianity is and what quite a lot of other people say is Christianity. And how that manifests in behavior and attitude and opinions and day to day life.
WS: Can you be specific about that?
JK: I’ve spent a lot of time studying Christianity, along with all the other religions of the world. I have a problem with the perspective that says it’s OK to isolate one group of people that you don’t like – in this instance I’m talking about homosexuals – and demonize them. As a Jew, asking myself how I would have reacted as a Jew if I had grown up as a Jew in Germany in the 30s and 40s, I’m very sensitive to any one group being demonized and singled out for criticism. That is a tacit endorsement of – or can lead to – violence.
WS: Why is an attempt by one person to prevent another person from engaging in destructive behavior prima facie "demonization"?
JK: That’s your assertion. I don’t agree that homosexuality per se is destructive. And that’s part of the attitude that concerns me, Warren. Evangelical Christians condone or promote criticism and sometimes wrong action against the homosexual community in much the same way that evangelical Christians justified slavery. You can find references to whatever you want in the Bible. You can justify just about whatever you want in Scripture. There are, to me, hundreds of instances where – whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament – things that were culturally relevant 2000 or 3000 or 4000 years ago we’ve dropped. We’ve moved on. I’ve considered that attitude about homsosexuality the same as the attitude about slavery.
WS: Of course, Christians – William Wilberforce, for example – a Christian activist, was instrumental in the eradication of slavery in the North. I’m having a bit of trouble making the connection. Certainly, there are extremists who use Scripture for their own purposes, but I’m having trouble with you representing evangelical Christianity as an extremist point of view.
JK: You’re putting words in my mouth.
WS: What do you mean, then?
JK: Evangelical Christianity is not, per se, an extremist point of view, any more than any other strain of religious thought is. It’s how that gets translated into day-to-day actions. In my understanding of Jesus, Christians were told to love each other. They weren’t told to separate out one set of people or judge on one set of moral guidelines.
WS: And you believe that this is what the evangelical community is doing. They are segregating out homosexuality as a unique sin?
JK: Well, let’s talk about sin for a second. There’s a list of sins a mile long in the Bible. And yet, the evangelical community, for the past decade or so, has spent an awful lot of time focused on homosexuality. What about the sins of greed? What about the sins of selfishness?
WS: I think that many in the evangelical community would answer that question by saying that homosexuals are the only group that has organized into political lobbies. There is not, for example, the People Who Are Selfish Political Action Committee. There is not an Adulterers Legal Defense Fund. But there is a Gay and Lesbian Legal Defense Fund. And there are homosexual political action committees.
JK: I would strongly disagree. There are political action committees ad nauseum who promote consumerism.
WS: Can you name a couple of them? I mean, I appreciate what you’re saying, but that’s sort of a broad stroke.
JK: As far as I’m concerned, a lobbying group that works to keep us from having universal health care because it’s in the interest of a private insurance industry to keep it privatized, that to me is an advocacy group for greed.
If you want to talk simply in economic terms there’s no question that in the last 20 years more of the wealth of this country has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. I don’t think that’s Christian in its nature. And yet I don’t hear evangelicals anywhere near as much concerned about that and its effects on our children as they are on homosexuality.
WS: Well, then, if you were a consultant to the evangelical community….
JK: [Laughter] Heaven forbid.
WS: What would you say to the evangelical community? Is there anyone in the evangelical community who you think is beginning to "get it right," according to your lights?
JK: Of course. You’ve criticized some of the evangelicals who have participated in activities here at the Stella Center – and let me make sure that everyone understands that in this interview I don’t speak for the Stella Center; I speak for myself, and that’s an important distinction. But you’ve criticized several evangelical ministers who’ve made concerted attempts to bridge some divides with those of use who believe differently. I had lunch yesterday with Tom Hawkes. We spent almost 2 hours together having a wonderful lunch. He’s the pastor of Uptown Christ Covenant Church which meets here at the Stella Center and has offices here.
I’ve gotten to know and admire Tom Henry enormously. He’s the pastor at Christ Covenant in Matthews. I had lunch several times with Harry Reeder before he left. We agree to disagree on certain points, but I think we both found a level or respect for each other. Those relationships, which I value highly, are things that I’ve worked at for quite some time. When Ross Rhoads was let go at Calvary Church he had already been on my old show on WBT. He came on with me about a month after he had been released. That was the only public interview he did. He spent three hours with me and with callers calling to thank him for his service. He and I found quite a strong level of brotherhood with each other.
Those folks who are willing to not see everyone else one dimensionally I have enormous respect for and will spend all the time in the world with. It’s those who see the world in "us against them" terms that cause me problems. I said to someone a couple of months ago – actually, I think I said this when I was invited to speak to the staff at Christ Covenant back in October of last year – that aside from my history growing up here, about 20 years ago, with the launch of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, I felt as though evangelicals or fundamentalist Christians had declared war on me.
That movement was clearly an effort to bring America back to a modality, a style of living, of moral grounding as they understood it that had been lost in the 60s and 70s. Well, I’m a product of the 60s and 70s. I felt as though they had declared war on people like me.
WS: Do you still feel that way?
JK: Yeah.
WS: The reason I ask that question is not that I’m trying to box you in, but you said that you respect people who didn’t feel that life was "us against them," and you say you…
JK: Let me finish.
WS: Go ahead.
JK: What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t think it’s hard to understand where some of my passion in responding to what I felt was an attack came from.
WS: The point that I would try to make is – if you’ll forgive me – that sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. You are accusing the evangelical community, and I think there is some validity in that accusation. But you yourself are confessing that you feel some of the same impulses. In other words, in this era of what you might call radical polemics, it’s hard not to feel "us vs. them."
JK: That’s exactly the point. It takes an effort to get beyond that. It takes as much effort or more to get beyond that as to succumb to it. And I’ve succumbed to it plenty of times.
Let me give you a concrete example.
When I began dating a woman back in the early 70s, when I was a student at UNCC. The woman was what we called then a "Jesus Freak."
WS: So you dated a Jesus Freak?
JK: I dated a Jesus Freak and was shown letters written to her by members of her group warning her that by spending time with me she was moving into the devil’s circle. I didn’t deserve that. That was a one-dimensional way of thinking. There are people to this day who think I’m the devil. I’ve been called every name in the book. I would be glad to show you my file of death threats, 95% of them written by people who first identified themselves as Christians, over the past seven or eight years. Yeah, I felt attacked, and responded out of that quite a lot. I have also been willing to criticize evangelicals who spend – if memory serves me right – hundreds of thousands of dollars five years ago to put up billboards to advertise Christianity. That’s not what I think Jesus would have wanted that money spent for.
WS: By the way, we criticized that campaign as well.
JK: Good, then we found something to agree upon. But I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few years, Warren, trying to let go of my own sense of anger and I guess pain at having been attacked and I’ve been trying to reach out. Those efforts have been rewarding.
WS: Rewarding in what way? To you personally? In terms of the relationships you’ve created?
JK: I believe that someone who is involved on a spiritual journey is required to make the effort to see the presence of God in those he might have considered enemies. I think that’s a very Christian attitude.
WS: There are some in this town who believe that you are on a spiritual journey and that you are seriously considering the claims of Christ. To Jerry Klein, who is Jesus?
JK: Jesus to me [cell phone rings]. OK, how do I stop this? [Laughter.] I just got this a couple of days ago. [More laughter. Cell phone stops ringing.]
JK and WS together: Was that God calling? [Laughter.}
WS: A providential moment….
JK: OK. As a reformed Jew growing up here I was taught that Jesus was a wise sage. A prophet. In many ways no different from Abraham, or Moses, or Elijah.
WS: Except – and I’m sure you’ve heard this before – this prophet claimed to be the Son of God.
JK: In that respect I disagree. The historical record doesn’t justify that claim.
WS: So when Scripture says, "I and the Father are one." Your rebuttal to that claim would be…
JK: We all are. We are all made in God’s image. We are all children of God. We are all God’s sons and daughters. I suppose that this is the essence of the disagreement I have with Christianity. The exclusivity claim, which I believe is going to cause this world the most trouble over the next century unless we figure out how to get past it. There aren’t a whole lot of religions who claim to be the one and only way. I consider it, to be perfectly honest, an arrogant claim. A self-centered one. I don’t think it’s likely, any time in the near future, that the majority of the people of the world who are not Christians – and the majority of this planet is not Christian – are going to give up Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Islam, or Judaism, or any of the new strains of thought that are called "New Thought" are about to abandon them for an acceptance of Christ as you understand Christ.
That leaves us with two options. Either we have another set of religious wars, which could be the last wars, and to some evangelicals that could be a good thing if it pre-sages the Last Days. Or we’re going to figure out – and to me this is the much more important and difficult path – what are the commonalities of what we believe and how can we get to some sense of reconciliation with each other.
There’s an awful lot of work going on in the world, Warren, that not a lot of people in this part of the country know about, to get beyond the frameworks of the religions of your birth to understand common spirituality.
WS: All that said, and duly noted, but it was Jesus – not just Christianity, not just the accumulation of tradition – it was Jesus himself who made some fairly exclusive claims. I mentioned one to you already. Another is Jesus statement: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father but by me." How can you say that Jesus is a great prophet if he makes these claims of exclusivity that you patently reject?
JK: It’s not difficult at all. First of all – and this is another fundamental difference between us – who wrote the New Testament? When? With what motivation?
WS: In short, you reject the idea that Jesus actually said those words.
JK: Absolutely. And I think that there is a strong and growing group of Christians, including some of the top academic scholars in the world, who…
WS: You’re talking about the Jesus Seminar people?
JK: Not just the Jesus Seminar, which I think has gotten a terribly bad rap. I these people. I’ve read their books. They’re doing important work.
I would wager that I know more about early Christianity than a lot of Christians in this town. I know more about the history, about the culture of the times. For instance, people get angry and assume that I’m attacking Christianity when I ask them if they know when Jesus was born. The common answer is December 25. That’s not when Jesus was born. That’s what Constantine….
WS: I think most Christians know that, Jerry.
JK: But do they know that the reason he picked that time is that it corresponded with the Roman pagan winter solstice holiday? And that Easter is the same thing? Do they know that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder? And it’s only in the past few years of hearing people talk at length about the fact that Jesus was a Jew and strongly grounded in Jewish tradition….
WS: Well, Jerry, I hear you say that you think Christians think you’re attacking them when you ask these questions. Some might. But some others might think that this is a pretty superficial argument. OK, so Constantine picked the for Easter because it corresponded with the re-birth of spring. Duly noted. Fine. That’s not particularly an argument for or against Christianity.
JK: I’m not arguing against Christianity. I’m arguing against what humans have done to Jesus.
WS: So you would not argue against the notion that Jesus was a historical figure.
JK: Of course.
WS: You accept him as a historical figure?
JK: Yes.
WS: What about the resurrection?
JK: I don’t accept the resurrection.
WS: You don’t think it happened?
JK: I don’t accept it as physical truth. No. I see Jesus as a mystic and as a social and political figure of his time, and – clearly – Jesus was a Jew who was incensed at the institutionalization of Judaism by the rabbis of his time who were cooperating with the Romans, who had declared themselves to be the only ones who could decide what was and wasn’t Jewish law.
Jesus basically said you don’t need that intermediary. But then he has been made into an intermediary.
WS: You know, I really resonate with and appreciate what you said, that many Christians don’t understand the first century culture out of which Jesus came, and out of which the early writings came. But one of the things that personally I had trouble getting past can be seen by using the resurrection as an example. The resurrection is testified to by people who were willing to die for that testimony. It’s one thing to say that I don’t believe the resurrection exists, and – on one level, here in the 20th or 21st century – I can see that as an intellectually honest response. But how do you deal with the guys who were there? Who were willing to die for the words they wrote?
JK: Who do you believe wrote the four books of the gospels?
WS: Well, I believe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote those books.
JK: That’s not what history says.
WS: Well, setting aside all the technical and textual criticism for a moment. At least consider this: There were disciples of Jesus who died for their belief in a literal, physical resurrection. If the resurrection didn’t happen, they were either seriously deluded, or – when threatened with death – they could have recanted.
JK: Well, what about Elijah? Didn’t he ascend to heaven? What makes him different?
WS: One difference would be Jesus’s claims of divinity.
JK: That’s what you understand Scripture to say, but there are those – serious, studied people -- who disagree with you.
WS: But you would agree that the mainstream of orthodox, evangelical thought is that Jesus is God become man, and that the resurrection was a real event. These are not radical, fringe ideas. On one level, perhaps they’re radical, but they are at the core of evangelical thought.
JK: And that’s where our differences are. And I think you will find over the coming decades that that position will become more and more difficult to justify. I know lots of dedicated Christians who will privately tell you that they have long since abandoned those notions.
WS: Jerry, that’s pretty broad generalization. Who? Not that I want you to name names. That’s not my point. My point is that – once again – there’s that radicalizing polemic. You say that these "dedicated Christians" deny the resurrection. My response would be "well, if they deny the resurrection, what makes them Christians?"
JK: What Jesus really intended for our lives. And that was compassion, concern for the weak, the poor, and the sick. Not concern for – and this is another place where I get called anti-Christian – building palatial churches and spending huge sums of money on buildings. And I can give you a list of what I think Jesus would be offended by if he were back here right now. And I think a lot of it would from looking at those who consider themselves to be the most committed.
WS: Jerry. We’re running out of time. Is there anything else you’d like to say?
JK: Yeah. I think I would like people to understand that I am not trying to ask people to do anything else other than to understand that a. I may be someone who is concerned about spirituality to the same extent that they are, b. that we may have fundamental differences in how we see that, but that c. if we are not going to end up fighting each other we’re going to have to figure out how to talk to each other.
I’m not leaving this town. I’ve been here too long. My children were born here. I’m not gong away, in spite of what lots of people have wished and prayed for. And neither are you. That leaves us with the reality that this is an increasingly diverse community with an increasingly broad range of understanding of the nature of God and what God intends for us, and anyone who sits behind a wall and says, "I’m right, that’s all there is to it," those are the folks who are going to cause us the most difficulty. I’m doing what I can both here in my job and in my personal life to overcome those barriers.
If it makes folks uncomfortable when I challenge them, I guess I want people to understand that during my whole life here it has been quite OK for people who identify themselves as Christians to believe that everything I believe and everything I was taught was wrong, and that’s offensive to me. And yet when I ask the same questions in return about their frame of reference, I’m somehow evil. That’s not a formula for reconciliation and living together.
WS: Thanks, Jerry.
