TUPELO – Talking about religion often drives people apart, but in a world where people of faith tend to talk past each other, Ron Baker is trying to get them to sit down, to listen and to learn.

Baker, a Tupelo native, will soon take over as the executive administrator of the Bat Kol Institute, a Jerusalem-based non-profit that helps Christians study the word of God within its Jewish context.

The 60-year-old convert to Judaism has dealt with some of life’s uglier situations, like the carnage of war and the ravages of disease, and he’s convinced that dialogue is the silver bullet for defeating ignorance and misunderstanding.

“The idea is to invite people into discussion without an agenda, without them going on the defensive or trying to manipulate the other person,” said Baker.

The discussion of which he speaks takes place on several levels – Baker works as a psychotherapist in addition to his religious endeavors – but his passion is bringing together people within the Judeo-Christian tradition to talk about their beliefs.

“A wise person realizes that he doesn’t have all the answers,” said Baker. “He’s eager for someone to show him the missing pieces of the puzzle.”

Same difference

Ask any Christian why his faith is different from Judaism and the first thing he’ll say is that he believes Jesus is the son of God. That’s not a stumbling block for Baker, not so long as “son” is broadly defined.

“I agree with that statement absolutely,” he said. “I just mean ‘son’ in a different way. We’re all sons of God.”

For centuries the difference between the Old Testament focus on the Mosaic Law and the New Testament focus on grace has created different outlooks Jews and Christians.

Jesus’ followers replaced animal sacrifice with the offering of a contrite heart, and while Jews have also jettisoned many of the literal expressions of the law, they have retained a sense of the symbolic power of those expressions within the life of each believer.

In sum, Jews expect the promises of Yahweh to be fulfilled in the future. Christians see that fulfillment as having already reached its ultimate expression in the person of Jesus.

For Baker, the pattern of disagreement that plagues this discussion is the real point of interest.

“These are dogmatic principles. They’re statements. They’re rarefied things,” he said.

Christianity, Baker believes, isn’t about statements. It’s about an encounter with Jesus and the transformational power of that encounter in the life of each believer. “It is an experiential thing,” he said. “It’s not a matter of creeds.”

The same is true, Baker believes, of Judaism. “It’s not about believing a concept,” he said. “It’s about trusting a person – the person of God.”

Jews have the experience of being God’s chosen people. They have been embraced by a deity completely concerned with their history and well-being. Christians have encountered that same God in the person of the risen Christ. Both religions testify to the power of meeting God in the span of history and to being radically changed by that meeting.

This isn’t just high, theological speculation for Baker. His life is an example of the transformational power of God’s love.

After attending a Baptist seminary, Baker moved to Israel in the early 1970s. He had begun to drift into atheism. He worked on a kibbutz and even got briefly involved in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He questioned God’s existence in the face of the hatred and brutality he saw all around him.

Over the next two decades, Baker worked with AIDS patients in New Orleans, and alongside Catholic priests and brothers ministering to the poor in Haiti.

He watched legions of people – black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight – wither from disease and from society’s indifference.

“There was a lot of guilt, a lot of recrimination,” he said.

After years of unrest it was there, in the squalid slums of Haiti and in the lonely hospital wards filled with the dying, that Baker again saw the face of God. He recommitted himself to Judaism and to humanitarian causes.



Jewish roots

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Baker moved to Israel because, as he puts it, “I realized there was a new kind of war to be fought.” It would be a worldwide war of religious ideologies, one in which dialogue and mutual understanding would be in short supply.

In conjunction with American and Israeli friends, Baker began working as a counselor. His clients included English-speaking Jews and Muslims, as well as consecrated Christian religious persons and civilian and military contractors. As best he could, he tried to help them find peace in a world that was cordoning itself off along religious lines.

“For the Christian, the challenge was – and is, as always – to set Jesus free in the unconscious,” said Baker. “We have to get past these rules we’ve created for ourselves and allow the healing Jesus to work in the life of the Christian.”

Baker’s work dovetailed nicely with the mission of Bat Kol, an organization that was started in 1983 by a Catholic nun in Toronto, Canada.

In Hebrew, Bat Kol means “daughter of a voice,” and each July the organization invites Christian religious leaders and teachers, as well as other qualified applicants, to come to Israel and to learn about the Jewish roots of their faith.

The students visit archeological sites, such as the remains of what is believed to be the biblical town of Beersheba, as well as Jewish cultural sites, like the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem.

They visit synagogues and study with the Bat Kol’s expert, multicultural staff. In short, participants immerse themselves in Jewish culture and learning.

Patricia O’Reilly was first introduced to Bat Kol in Ontario where she works as a Catholic religious educator.

Since then, the 57-year-old laywoman has attended several sessions in Jerusalem, and she said it’s hard to overstate the power of actually walking in the land where the Christian faith was born.

“Bat Kol is not a pilgrimage,” said O’Reilly. “It’s an academic experience. It’s about faith development.”

For O’Reilly, there was no more powerful moment than being in the storied “upper room” where the Bible says that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus’ followers after his death.

“The house is on Mt. Zion,” she said. “And, in the evenings the wind rises and it becomes quite chilly. You can easily imagine yourself in that story, and you can understand why the biblical writers would speak of the Holy Spirit descending upon those gathered. It has so much to do with the physicality and the geography of the area.”

That’s the kind of experience Baker is hoping more American Christians can enjoy in years to come.

He’ll start working on that as soon as he returns to Israel in April. In the meantime, he’s enjoying the familiar comforts of his hometown, attending services at Temple B’nai Israel, where he first practiced the Jewish faith, and even going to Sunday school classes at Auburn Baptist Church with his brother-in-law.

In the last days of winter Baker is working on a book about the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, whose work he credits with shaping his passion for inter-religious dialogue.

Bat Kol, Baker said, is the kind of unique, inter-religious experience that can change people’s hearts, and he wants to make it accessible to a wider audience.

Beginning with Paul, the Christian church has used the language of being grafted onto the tree of Judaism. Baker wants to see if Christians still consider that tree alive and viable, and, if so, what new growths might sprout from deeper, mutual understanding between the two faiths.

“Buber speaks of the ‘I and Thou’ relationship between God and man, one in which change – we might even call it learning, on both sides – takes place through the encounter,” said Baker.

This thirsting for relationship, Baker believes, is a beautiful way in which humans imitate God. And the sacred encounter, the holy moment of embracing and trusting the other, “carries us through the vicissitudes of life.”

Contact Daily Journal religion editor Galen Holley at 678-1510 or galen.holley@djournal.com.