ICJS hosts scholars, authors, clergy, activists, and educators to bring you information and knowledge on the intersection of religion in the arenas of history, theology, politics, education, or interpersonal relationships. Click below to use the Resource Finder to see all past, current and upcoming events.
Author Maeera Shreiber contends that although recent decades have seen great strides in Christian-Jewish relations, many interreligious encounters have become rote and predictable. Demonstrating how such emotions as shame, envy, and desire can inform these encounters, Shreiber’s book Holy Envy: Writing in the Jewish Christian Borderzone charts a new way of thinking about interreligious relations. By focusing on modern and contemporary writers (novelists and poets) who traffic in the volatile space between Judaism and Christianity, the book calls attention to the creative implications of these intense encounters.
The imagery and vocabulary of the Crusades inhabit our interreligious imaginations and structure our conceptions of violence, including in video games like Assassin’s Creed, in pop literature like “The Da Vinci Code,” and in President Bush’s invocation of a crusade against terrorism in the wake on 9/11. In this course, the instructors will excavate the origins of these narratives and also call into question whether they are applicable to our interreligious encounters in the present. This course will be taught be ICJS scholars Ben Sax and Matthew D. Taylor and visiting scholar Halla Attallah.
Chaplains provide spiritual care in a time when religious affiliation is declining. According to a Gallup poll in 2022, 25% of people in the US have been counseled by a chaplain at some point in their life. Amy Lawton of Brandeis University and Alisha Tatem, ICJS Program Director for Religious Leaders, will paint a portrait of chaplaincy by sharing groundbreaking research conducted by the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (Brandeis University) in partnership with ICJS. This research maps Maryland chaplains’ interreligious work and their challenges. Join us and learn how to support chaplains and spiritual caregivers—champions of religious pluralism in our society.
Watching the eerie footage of the January 6 insurrection, Brad Onishi wondered: If I hadn’t left evangelicalism, would I have been there? Onishi, a religion scholar and former evangelical insider, believes the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture’s preparation for war. In this online forum led by ICJS Protestant scholar Matthew D. Taylor, taking place on the second anniversary of the Capitol Riot, Onishi will talk about his new book “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next,” in which he maps the origins of White Christian nationalism, with its steady blending of White grievance politics with evangelicalism, and traces its offshoots.