Mary Blye Howe is a Southern Baptist with a taste for Torah, a former evangelical whose idea of a good time is davening with Chabad on Shabbat morning.
Ten years after her first tenuous approach across the Judeo-Christian divide, Howe is now a welcome guest at most synagogues in her hometown of Dallas. She’s also the author of “A Baptist Among the Jews,” a book about her long spiritual journey.
She will talk about that journey in a sermon delivered from the bimah of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El on Friday, July 2.
“I’ll be talking about the effect Judaism has had on me as a non-Jew,” says Howe of her upcoming talk. “Judaism changed my life, my theology, everything about me.”
She is not a convert to Judaism. Not even a convert-in-waiting. Howe says it’s because she’s enjoying her First Amendment rights too much. “I never had freedom in my spiritual life. Now I do, and I want to explore it. I want to look at God through many different lenses.”
A native of Illinois, Howe grew up in a deeply religious Christian home, though her parents didn’t always toe the line of Baptist orthodoxy. “My dad took me to see the Beatles on their last tour,” recalls the 47-year-old Howe. “There were Baptist churches that didn’t allow card playing or dancing. My church wasn’t like that.”
However her church did believe that anyone who rejected the basic tenets of the faith was hell-bound. And that included Jews. Howe, who never knew any Jews growing up, was taught that the Hebrew Bible was merely a precursor to the new and improved Christian Bible (what she calls today the Greek Testament).
As a teen, Howe went through a period of rebellion, falling into drug and alcohol abuse. She married young and, with her husband, returned to what she calls a “strict fundamentalist group. If we had anything other than King James Bible we were told to get rid of it.”
After many years of playing a subservient Christian woman, the pressure finally got to her. Church leaders “took the Bible and manipulated it to conform to their own beliefs,” says Howe. “When I challenged them, they teased me, saying, ‘You have a submission problem. Women should be silent.’ After that, the dam broke.”
She went to a psychologist who suggested she join a more moderate church. She did, and while a member there, she attended an interfaith service, thus experiencing Jewish worship for the first time.
Her curiosity piqued, she decided to learn more. In 1993, after reading a newspaper article about an ongoing local Orthodox study group, she mustered the courage to knock on the door of Dallas Chabad Rabbi Asher Goldschmidt. Rather than spurn her, the rabbi opened his door and welcomed her into the group.
“It was all Orthodox men at study,” she remembers, “yet when I was there, Rabbi Goldschmidt encouraged and respected my questions, asked me about my life and never put the slightest pressure on me to convert. I could just tell that he liked me.”
From there, Howe became a regular at Torah study. She branched out, attending services at synagogues of every major Jewish movement, regularly celebrating Jewish holidays as well as Shabbat. Today, she says she feels as comfortable inside a synagogue as she does a church, and probably knows more about Judaism than many Jews.
With it all, she has decided not to convert, though she doesn’t rule it out forever. Otherwise, she has turned her back on some of the fundamental beliefs of traditional Christianity, from the virgin birth to the existence of hell.
“I have rejected all orthodox Christian doctrine,” she says. “I do not believe in hell at all. I reject the idea that you have to accept Jesus to go to heaven. But I consider myself a Christian because Jesus is still attractive to me as something more than a teacher.”
Still, she is wary of the recent phenomenon of evangelical Christians claiming to be best friends with the Jews and Israel. “They sound so supportive, but there are always going to be ulterior motives in fundamentalist evangelical circles,” says Howe. “I’m positive they have no respect for Judaism in and of itself. They still believe God does not hear the prayer of the Jew.”
Howe admits she feels freer to share her message in Jewish settings than in Christians ones, but like a reverse missionary, she continues to travel the country, sharing her love of Jews and Judaism with all comers.
“Judaism changed everything about my life. It brought God out of the box he had been in for me, and brought the Bible to life for me. I don’t love Judaism in relation to my own religion. I’m engaged just because I love it.”
Mary Blye Howe will deliver a sermon 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 2, at Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., S.F. Information: (415) 751-2511.