Working Relationship Has Deepened Respect, Forged Friendships in Irvine

Everything moves at Irvine United Church of Christ.

Religious icons appear and disappear for each service. In the dome-shaped sanctuary, the walls are bare of all but houseplants. The stained-glass windows are of abstract design and a tapestry and inscribed quotation are taken from the Old Testament.

The aesthetic spareness of the place was vital to accommodating the two congregations that share it--one Christian, one Jewish.

The arrangement is hardly novel--many churches share buildings. But the relationship between the church and University Synagogue goes well beyond interfaith lip-service.

“What makes this so unique is the extent to which we share our time together, our ideas, our hopes, our dreams, our desire to create a better world,” said the Rev. Fred C. Plumer of United Church of Christ.

It began 10 years ago when a fledgling congregation approached Plumer about renting space in the church. Relations quickly moved beyond the financial.

“We wanted to get to know them and worship with them,” Plumer said. “What I teach here is that Jesus was a Jew and if you take him out of his Judaism, you really mess up the story.”

The small Jewish study group just coalescing into a synagogue was not so sure. With hundreds of years of Christianity’s attempts at conversion in mind, members were leery.

It took one preliminary Thanksgiving service, where they shared their stories, to begin to cut through the wariness.

Now the congregations share a complex friendship unusual for its depth and longevity.

“We began by living side by side, and now we live together,” said Rabbi Arnold Rachlis, who has led the synagogue for seven years. “What began as a rental agreement has emerged into a pervasive and profound relationship.”

Besides sharing the building, the congregations join in study groups and participate in each others’ confirmation classes. They have joint choirs and share a number of social events and community activism.

When Plumer went on sabbatical early this year, he asked Rachlis to fill in for him, an act the rabbi joked as being the “ultimate Jewish fantasy--speaking to 90% of the population instead of 3%.”

Both rabbi and minister said they were personally drawn to each other, and the intellectual curiosity of their highly educated congregations helped their relationship grow.

But they also found, as they discussed their faiths, that their theologies had common ground.

The United Church of Christ is a liberal denomination in which social activism plays a large part, Plumer said. Congregants view biblical stories as mythology and share historic roots with Quakers and Congregationalists.

Rachlis’ congregation is made up of Reconstructionist Jews, who put more emphasis on traditional observance than Reform Jews but are philosophically more liberal than Conservatives or Orthodox Jews.

God is not a supreme being who hears prayer, in this view, but a force inside the individual as well as in the universe who moves people toward fulfillment and empathy, Rachlis said.

“We take the best elements of Reform and Conservative Judaism and add into the mix religious humanism,” he said.

Both groups reach out to couples of mixed faiths, to those who ceased practicing religion and even to agnostics and atheists.

So theology was less of a barrier than the practical matters of sharing space.

Both Plumer and Rachlis compare their groups to a large family living in a small home, complete with little irritants.

Plumer likes to tell of the time some synagogue members took a Sunday trip together. When his Christians arrived for church, all of the best parking spaces were filled with cars.

Rachlis ribs him back, recalling that his group took maybe 10 spaces.

A more serious potential for dispute had to do with the icons--how could two very different congregations display symbols of worship without offending each other?

The Christians said they did not mind if the ark, the elaborate cabinet that holds the Torah, was displayed all the time. But they knew that the cross held many awful symbolic memories for the Jews.

“The problem is the menorah was never a tool of torture, never a symbol of oppression for us,” Plumer said.

But the relationship has been more about collaboration than resolving conflicts. For example, members of the University Synagogue joined other investors in buying the bonds that financed the sanctuary, and each year they buy the Christians their Christmas tree.

“It’s little courtesies like these, little generosities, that over time have created such a strong relationship,” Rachlis said.

Congregants said the mixing and mingling of the groups have made worship a fascinating experience.

“I think I’ve become more tolerant of other people’s views, which is no mean feat,” said Chris LaBarthe, an Irvine attorney and church member. “It’s a matter of being more tolerant every day of the year.”

Marc Alexander, vice-chairman of the Anti-Defamation League in Orange County and Long Beach, said he hadn’t been in a synagogue since his bar mitzvah. Then his wife found Rachlis’s synagogue and now they are immersed in joint affairs.

“It enlarges the sense of community, and it also involves personal relations,” he said of the church-synagogue connection. “My wife sings with our choir, but she also sings with Plumer’s choir. It’s an important network of friends.”

The relationship has made deep impressions.

“There is an anxiety that Jews sometimes feel among Christians--because of a history of anti-Semitism, because of forced conversions, because of the terrible things said about Jews in terms of rejecting Jesus--Jews remember that hatred,” Rachlis said. “We have learned that the world is full of Christians who feel neither animosity nor a desire to convert us to the ‘true’ faith. You learn even more deeply that we are more the same than different.”

Rachlis said that churches, synagogues, mosques and temples should all attempt to talk: “Then we really come to believe there are different paths to the divine, but they all lead there.”

For the Christians, it is the social statement of the relationship that is so meaningful, Plumer said.

“We stand in solidarity with people still being persecuted in this country--and that’s where faith should start,” he said. “As a Christian pastor, you have to look at the inquisitions, at what happened between Jews and Christians. If we don’t look at that and somehow repent, we’ll never be fully healed.”