The seminary professor hears the titters at the start of every semester: What is a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a Christian seminary like this?
Pamela Eisenbaum, a practicing Jew whose specialty is the Apostle Paul, has been turning heads in the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, a United Methodist seminary, for nine years. And Dr. Eisenbaum says that after a period of adjustment, each semester's students come to accept her.
"While most of the students find it peculiar at first," she said, "they come to appreciate that I love the subject and am not there to slam them or debunk it."
Megan Ramer, a second-year student at the seminary, said her first reaction to Dr. Eisenbaum was surprise and intrigue.
"It defies all normal ideas of what a seminary is," Ms. Ramer said, "and it's one of the first things you hear when you arrive, that there is a Jewish professor of New Testament in the seminary."
Though precise numbers are impossible to determine, Dr. Eisenbaum is certainly not alone in being a teacher in a religious school while not a member of the religion. A shortage of priests and nuns means that many Roman Catholic schools that used to be staffed by members of religious orders now hire lay people and even non-Catholics.
One such case is that of John Hynes, who was reared as a Catholic and graduated from a Catholic school, Chaminade College Preparatory, in West Hills, Calif., in 1983. In college, he became a Protestant but returned to teach at his alma mater 10 years ago and is now its assistant principal.
"I no longer take Communion in the Catholic Church and there are times, at Masses, when the pew empties and I'm the last one there and the students notice it," Mr. Hynes said. "It makes for awkward moments."
Beyond that, though, it is a nonissue, Mr. Hynes said, because he is a spiritual person.
The school, which he said tries to hire only Catholics, has a policy of not hiring agnostics because they might not be comfortable in a spiritual environment. As for his own career, Mr. Hynes said that as vice principal he had hit "a ceiling."
"I would not — even if offered — become principal of a Catholic school," he said. "I think the leader of an institution should be of the faith."
Samuel Estreicher, professor and director of the Center for Labor and Employment Law at New York University Law School, said courts had consistently granted religious schools broad leeway in making religious affiliation a bona fide occupational qualification because so much that the schools do is determined by religion.
Religious schools hire staff members of different faiths for many reasons. Some are searching for diversity or an outsider's perspective. Others want the most qualified teacher in a secular subject, and still others, with limited salaries or few potential teachers among members of their faith in driving distance, are forced into it.
When it came to hiring Dr. Eisenbaum, the Rev. Thomas H. Troeger, the dean of academic affairs and senior vice president at Iliff, said there was some "bafflement and resistance among the faculty — not an ugly resistance, but a resistance that was part of a wide range of initial feeling."
But Mr. Troeger said Dr. Eisenbaum's scholarship and her perspective as an outsider made her valuable as a teacher. Her expertise, in the New Testament, made the job right for Dr. Eisenbaum, he said.
Sometimes, however, it is the applicant who is hesitant. Dorothy Bowser, the principal of Solomon Schechter High School, a Jewish institution, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the faculty includes Christians, agreed that applicants could have misgivings. Though the school does not bring up religion in interviews, Ms. Bowser said, prospective teachers frequently do, asking if they will be comfortable.
At another Solomon Schechter school, this one in East Brunswick, N.J., Charlene Lemiska, a Catholic, started teaching six years ago because she wanted to work in a private school where the curriculum was not shaped by mandated testing. Ms. Lemiska taught social studies and even a remedial Judaic studies class on the Book of Prophets. Outside class, she always went to the school's religious services, out of interest and respect for the children. She said her Catholicism was frequently a subject of curiosity.
Around Christmas, Ms. Lemiska said, the students would deluge her with questions like what Santa Claus had to do with Jesus Christ and what Christian thinking was about gift-giving. Her faith also came up at surprising times, for example when her social studies classes were studying ancient Egypt and the students needed a quick primer on embalming. Jews do not embalm the dead.
Ms. Lemiska recently left the school to have a baby, but not before students had to navigate a tricky issue. Many Jews believe that baby showers can bring bad luck, as they appear to assume that a baby will be born healthy. But Ms. Lemiska's students knew that as a Roman Catholic, she had no problems with baby showers. Wanting to celebrate with her, but wishing her no bad luck, the students decided on a compromise. They gave her a goodbye party at which they happened to bring her a pile of baby presents.
For Ms. Ramer, a Mennonite from Wakarusa, Ind., who went to Goshen College, Dr. Eisenbaum was her first non-Christian teacher. In terms of scholarship, Dr. Eisenbaum has taught her to "really wrestle with the texts," Ms. Ramer said, "instead of relying on distilled knowledge, the kind you have when you think you learned the story perfectly in fourth grade Sunday school."
It is not her goal, Dr. Eisenbaum said, to impart to her students the fashionable thought that we are all, in the end, alike.
"These interfaith services water everything down to a generic level," she said, "and you can never be religiously generic. We all come from a particular position, and it is difficult to be passionate about your faith and believe there are other valid experiences of religiosity," but people must try.
The Iliff school's legitimacy is called into question, too, said Mr. Troeger, by fundamentalists Christians who do not support having a practicing Jew on the staff.
"We are sometimes seen as a nonfaithful school," he said, "that we're not following Christ, but in opening up to others, we are."
Academically, he added: "Christians can read back Christian history. But Pam brings the fresh eyes of a Jewish scholar. She comes at it as a scholar and not just a Jew, but also a Jew. This brings the students, with dazzling clarity, the deep Jewish roots of the church."
It also, Mr. Troeger said, may give them perspective "on the history of anti-Semitism, especially in the church."
Ms. Ramer said that her contact with her first Jewish teacher had better prepared her for the future, whether that future is as a pastor at a Mennonite church or a professor in a rabbinic school.