Redeeming Jesus’ Name

Description

Having spent the majority of her ninety-plus years as a member of a religious order that defines its mission as “to witness in the Church God’s faithful love for the Jewish people,” and having lived in Jerusalem for over thirty years and become an Israeli citizen in 1992, Sr. Maureena Fritz delivers in this book a final testament. She appeals to her fellow Christians to recognize, honestly and humbly, that the roots of the antisemitism that has persisted throughout the history of the West are to be found in the New Testament itself and in the traditional Christian theology of “supersessionism”–i.e., Christian supremacy over Judaism and all other religions. She seeks to redeem the name of Jesus by recognizing that he was and remained a faithful, though critical, Jew and that the distinctive way that he calls his disciples to follow always remained “a way that is open to other ways.” She endorses recent efforts by Christian theologians to forge a pluralistic Christology that will ground both commitment to one’s own tradition and dialogue with others. Such an understanding of Jesus will enable the affirmation of the irrevocability and ongoing validity of God’s covenant with Israel.