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Ellen and Tim Pitts say they aren't the kind of Jews who go around preaching about Jesus Christ. Although they are self-described "messianic Jews" - the term of art preferred by those who accept Christian theology and assert a Jewish identity - the couple, who live with their three young children in an 18th-century farmhouse 40 miles northeast of North Carolina's Chapel Hill, keep mostly to themselves, growing vegetables and raising chickens and goats. It is an inward-focused existence that seems aptly summed up by the name they've given to their homestead: HaTeva, or "the Ark."
Still, in the past several months the Pittses have quietly launched a unique religious experiment in a deeply Southern community, where the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway is the main road and Baptist theology dominates. Using the Internet, they have offered themselves up as informal tour guides in the hope of attracting other messianic Jewish families to the area and building a small community that, like them, celebrates a Saturday Sabbath and prays in Hebrew.
In its own small way, the family is on the leading edge of the new face of messianic Judaism. With roots in both Christianity and Judaism - Tim, 37, was raised in a mainline Christian church, while Ellen, 32, was raised in a minimally observant Jewish family before converting to Christianity - the Pittess are among a growing number of so-called "interfaith" couples that have found a home in the messianic movement. Unlike many of their messianic compatriots, who view proselytizing to Jews as a central purpose of their faith, the Pittses and families like them have embraced the movement primarily to satisfy their own, admittedly unconventional, religious needs.
"There really is a debate, and a very lively one, within the messianic world about the fundamental nature of messianic Judaism," said Richard Nichol, who has led Congregation Ruach Israel in Needham, Mass., for a quarter-century and...