Blunt Exchange by Christians, Jews : Project: Scholars at new center try to find similarities--and disagreements--of each other’s theological concepts.

At long last, those biblical kinfolk, Jews and Christians, are getting together for extended, concentrated examination of each other’s religious beliefs.

The project is described as their first for regular interchange that is focused on theological concepts.

“There hasn’t been any mechanism for it, no organization doing it,” said Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the new Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, based at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

Although Jewish and Christian organizations have cultivated friendly relations, worked to eliminate prejudice and often cooperated in community tasks, there has been scant mutual exploring of religious thought.

“Either it wasn’t discussed, or it was just one of a hundred other things,” Bemporad said. “It got lost. Most of the attention was on other matters.”

But he said the new center, established in June, with participation by Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox scholars, is devoted solidly to digging into their basic theologies.

Among the questions: What beliefs do they share? Where do they differ? Have they known each other authentically or in distorted ways? In what respects? In what ways can they learn from and enhance each other?

The goal, intended to be spread to grass-roots congregations nationwide, is for people of each tradition to get to understand the other realistically--just as they understand themselves.

“We can’t just have sweet, superficial kind of talk,” Bemporad said. “It’s necessary for each of us to be absolutely blunt about our own religious convictions, instead of just being nice and polite.

“We’ve reached the stage where there’s enough goodwill on both sides to deal together with the truths conceived about our own respective traditions and with attitudes toward each other.”

Bemporad, 59, rabbi of Temple Israel in Lawrence, N.Y., for five years managed inter-religious affairs for the Synagogue Council of America, representing Judaism’s three major wings, prior to heading the new center.

He is experienced in ecumenical affairs, has taught at Protestant and Catholic universities and speaks several languages. His fluent Italian gives him special rapport with Rome.

Up to now, he said various reasons have kept theology pushed aside in Jewish-Christian relations, such as the Orthodox Jewish prohibition against including theology in inter-religious talks and Christianity’s historical view of superseding Judaism.

But that superior attitude of displacement of the “mother” religion has been abandoned in Roman Catholicism and in much of Protestantism--by church policies and in the evidence of centuries.

Most Christian scholars have “developed a theology of a living Judaism instead of a dead Judaism,” Bemporad said. “They recognize it as a continuing, creative religion, that the covenant between God and Israel is ‘irrevocable’ (as Romans 11:29 says).”

Bemporad said the center has a budget of about $1 million annually, provided by individual donors. Sacred Heart University, an independent, lay-run institution, is providing office space and other cooperation, including extensive publishing and film facilities for disseminating results of joint studies throughout ranks of believers.

The center already has sponsored several scholarly consultations, with others planned.

Bemporad said Christians need to clarify the place of Judaism in their salvation account, and Jews need to clarify the role of Christians in the Jewish understanding of salvation.

He said varying concepts of messianism need to be clarified. He also said Jews need to review their attitude toward Christianity in light of changing attitudes toward Judaism.

At a scholarly conference sponsored by the center in November, Catholic theologian Joseph A. Di Noia of Washington said: “In studying each other’s religion we must not be afraid to challenge one another and learn to accept the differences that do exist.”

United Methodist theologian Schubert Ogden of Dallas said: “We must accept that one religious tradition cannot take over another. . . . We must also learn our right to be wrong and accept the other’s viewpoint.”

Episcopal theologian Paul van Buren, of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, said: “We share a common Scripture and must remember that Jesus lived Israel’s story from beginning to end according to the Hebrew Scriptures.”

Bemporad said: “Our central task is to find a way in which we can be true to our own faith and not be false to the faith of others.”

Although scholarship has overcome many misconceptions, he said little of the change has filtered down to grass-roots members.