COMMENTARY: A pastor attacked for advocating pluralism

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) (RNS)-A bitter dispute currently unfolding in a small Michigan town has profound implications for Christian-Jewish relations everywhere. Richard Rhem, the 61-year-old pastor of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, may be expelled from his denomination, the Reformed […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(RNS)-A bitter dispute currently unfolding in a small Michigan town has profound implications for Christian-Jewish relations everywhere.


Richard Rhem, the 61-year-old pastor of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, may be expelled from his denomination, the Reformed Church in America (RCA), because he does not believe that faith in Jesus is the sole pathway to salvation.

In late February Rhem was issued an ultimatum by his ecclesiastical authorities: Publicly change your views or leave the RCA. But Rhem, who has served his 3,000-member church for more than 25 years, has refused to back down from his conviction that God’s love is so pervasive that it offers salvation to every person. But many of his colleagues think otherwise and assert that Jesus represents the only true way to God.

One of Rhem’s critics, the Rev. Gerhard Veneestra of Muskegon, Mich., puts the dispute in the starkest terms:”If Dick Rhem’s position is correct, then why did Jesus need to die … if, in fact, the Jews have their own way and Muslims have their way and Buddhists find their way?” The attempt to force Rhem to renounce his pluralistic view of salvation is a serious setback to interreligious relations. The argument being used against him is that Judaism stopped being valid after the rise of Christianity. This theological battering ram has been employed for nearly 2,000 years to attack Jews and Judaism, and has provided a hunting license for many Christians to persecute and forcibly convert Jews.

The fact that a major Protestant denomination is attempting to expel a respected member of its clergy over this issue shows that the recent gains in Jewish-Christian understanding have not sufficiently changed the thinking at the grassroots level.

In his early career, Rhem was a self-proclaimed Christian”exclusivist,”but his studies and prayers have led him to a far different view of God and the world. When I recently spoke with Rhem, he said his congregation is solidly behind him. He declared he would not repudiate his views.

Rhem has been active in Christian-Jewish programs in the Muskegon area, and at one of those interreligious meetings he was stunned by a question posed by Israeli scholar Rabbi David Hartman:”Do I have to deny your truth to celebrate my truth, and do I have to deny your joy to experience my joy?” Rhem’s answer to Hartman was:”Of course not.” Rhem said he was deeply influenced by Pope John Paul II’s historic 1986 address in Rome’s Great Synagogue in which the leader of the Roman Catholic Church said that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is”irrevocable”-theological language meaning that Judaism was not replaced or supplanted by the new and younger faith called Christianity.”Even the pope agrees with me on this issue and so do many, many others,”Rhem told his critics.”So I’m not really that far off in this area.” Rhem also is following in the spiritual footsteps of the late Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who urged Christians to abandon attempts to convert Jews to Christianity. Niebuhr’s position was not based on simply being polite to Jews or merely being a good neighbor who does not engage in conversion activities.

Instead, Niebuhr held the strong belief that Jews are already with God and need no conversion from their religious faith.

The teachings of the pope and Niebuhr have had a profound influence on many non-Catholic religious leaders, but apparently not upon Rhem’s RCA colleagues.


Ironically, Rhem’s views on religious pluralism were not what got him into trouble with his denomination. It was only when Rhem allowed a group of homosexuals to meet in his church’s chapel that an investigation of his beliefs began.

Charges of heresy or unconventional theological views frequently reflect intense unresolved issues within a group. Heresy hunters always believe that a public recanting by a”deviant”member of the faith will make everything right again.

There are only two things wrong with this strategy: People like Richard Rhem do not bend to ecclesiastic authority. And even if Rhem did renounce his theological pluralism, the issue of Christians coming to terms with Jews and Judaism after 20 centuries of harassment and persecution will not disappear.

Pluralism is a spiritual truth whose time has come. The pope, Niebuhr and Richard Rhem are among the many Christian leaders of this century who already have recognized this reality. Rhem’s antagonists may win the battle and expel him from his denomination. But ultimately they will lose the larger war.

MJP END RUDIN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!