A saying Neville took from James Pike, Episcopal Bishop of California, and adopted as his own: I am a Jew because I am a Christian; I could be a Jew and not be a Christian, but I can't be a Christian and not be a Jew. He usually gives the biography with it, because the reversals are the point - born and raised a Catholic, ordained a Catholic priest, gave it up and became an agnostic, practised corporate law in New York, returned to the church as a Protestant and rose in his forties to the highest office in the Protestant world. Neville uses the saying to insist that Christianity is the fulfilment of Judaism and not a departure from it: the whole thing comes out of Israel, salvation is of the Jews, and the Judeo-Christian scripture is the only revelation of God's plan of salvation, the others resting on secular history. In the tellings that press it further, the true Jew is defined by faith rather than descent - the sons of Abraham are the men of faith, and no one is a Jew by belonging to Levi or Benjamin. Neville's own claim follows the same form: I am proud to say I am a Jew because I am a Christian - I have been born from above, and I could not possibly be, unless I were a Jew.