In this extract from Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome, edited by Robert George and RJ Snell, the Dominican theologian Fr Thomas Joseph White talks to Hope Kean.
HOPE KEANWhat was your religious upbringing, if any?
FR THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, OP I grew up in south-east Georgia as the only child of a Jewish father and a Presbyterian mother. My parents were nominally or moderately religious. My father could be characterised as a somewhat secularised Jew and my mother was a modestly practising Presbyterian, so I had some exposure to both traditions but was neither baptised nor Bar Mitzvahed. And, of course, I’m not Jewish in the Jewish understanding of the term because that passes through the lineage of the mother.
