This is a curious coincidence. I was reading TUAW (a must for any Mac geek) and noted a comment by the author, Mike Rose that his wife was studying to be a rabbi and his father-in-law had just been elected as a Lutheran Bishop. That caught my eye. (BTW, the TUAW piece is about “iGod” from the Prairie Home Companion. Very humorous. iGod “plays sermons and you just delete the parts you don’t like.”) So, I followed the link Mike provided to this story:
An eye to faith, family, the future. It turns out that Mike’s wife converted to Judaism and is now studying to be a rabbi. Meanwhile, his father has just been elected bishop by the Lower Susquehanna Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In the interview for Penn Live came this question.
Q: What else should people know about you personally?
A: I have a multiethnic family: a biracial son (who was adopted) and my daughter, Heidi, is studying to be a rabbi. So I have a large and growing commitment to interfaith dialogue.
She and Mike met at Carnegie Mellon University. They made plans to get married. Heidi had no intention then of converting. But somewhere along in there, not because she felt pressured, she found a very warm relationship in Central Synagogue in Manhattan.
I did not go to her conversion service. I said, ‘I can respect your decision. I can embrace your decision. But I can’t celebrate your decision.’ Now I do, in fact, celebrate her life and the choices she has made.
This is obviously not the same as Rev. Redding who is herself a priest and now a practicing Muslim since the Bishop’s daughter actually converted to Judaism. But I find it an interesting coincidence nonetheless.
2 thoughts on “More Interfaith Clergy”
many in the chaplaincy are interfaith – you’ll find folks of all stripes and colors in nearly any given clinical pastoral education (cpe) program. I took a class from a professor at Duke and he grew up AG is now methodist, his daughter is episcopalian and the list went on. it’s not uncommon.
Brian- True although the examples you gave are not interfaith, rather than are ecumenical, across denominations. I still think the sort of story above is less common, even in CPE circles.