ICJS History

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Cardinal Augustine Bea, who were instrumental to the creation of Nostra Aetate. Image via American Jewish Committee

ICJS was founded in the context of historic changes in Jewish-Christian relations that began, in part, with the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and its seminal 1965 document, Nostra Aetate. This statement transformed the Church’s relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people.

Cardinal Lawrence Shehan of Baltimore, accompanied by a young priest, Fr. P. Francis Murphy, played a key role in the drafting and adoption of Nostra Aetate, which repudiated antisemitism and rejected the charge that Jews were collectively guilty for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Years later, then-Bishop Murphy assembled a Catholic study group to consider the implications of Vatican II, particularly for the Church’s stance toward Judaism. Shortly thereafter, two other Baltimore religious leaders—the Rev. Robert Patterson, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, and Rabbi Mark Loeb of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation—formed a similar Protestant interfaith study group. The two groups eventually merged, creating a truly interreligious gathering.

A pivotal moment came in 1984, when representatives of the Murphy, Patterson, and Loeb group attended the 8th National Workshop on Christian-Jewish Relations in St. Louis. When the next city slated to host the conference dropped out, the Baltimore contingent seized the opportunity. The 9th National Workshop on Christian-Jewish Relations was held in Baltimore in May 1986 and drew the workshop’s largest participation to date, with more than 1,200 attendees. Its focus was more theological than in previous years, and major presentations were delivered by nationally and internationally recognized scholars. Those presentations were later published in two volumes by Paulist Press.

To build on the momentum of the national workshop, a group of clergy, lay congregants, and Baltimore business leaders created the Institute of Christian & Jewish Studies in 1987, electing Richard Berndt, Bernard Manekin, and Charles Obrecht as its first co-chairs. After a national search, the Rev. Dr. Christopher Leighton was appointed executive director and led ICJS for the next three decades.

Genesis Resource Guide

In its early years, ICJS focused on combating antisemitism and anti-Judaism in Christian communities by facilitating dialogue between Christian and Jewish clergy.

From 1988 to 1991, ICJS sponsored the Maryland Interfaith Project, in which 200 clergy and lay leaders from Christian denominations met monthly to examine the “teaching of contempt” in their own traditions, teachings, and scriptures. Dr. Leighton developed curricula for the 10 participating denominations, and ICJS also led clergy and lay participants from the Maryland Interfaith Project on study trips to Israel and Palestine.

In 1994, ICJS inaugurated the Scripture Forum, where local Jewish and Christian clergy studied their scriptures together. The forum continued for more than two decades.

In 1996, journalist and producer Bill Moyers launched the PBS series Genesis: A Living Conversation and selected ICJS and Baltimore to develop a pilot project hosting interfaith, multiethnic educational events using the series and viewer’s guide. Baltimore-area congregations formed study partnerships that brought together one predominantly white church, one predominantly African American church, and one synagogue to discuss the Genesis curriculum over several years.

Full-page Dabru Emet ad in the New York Times

In the late 1990s, ICJS convened a working group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders to form the National Jewish Scholars Project. In 2000, the group produced Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity, a groundbreaking document in Jewish-Christian relations. Dabru Emet—Hebrew for “Speak the Truth”—was published on Sunday, Sept. 10, as a full-page statement in The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, and other major newspapers and religious websites.

Rabbi Joel Zaiman, an ICJS founding board member, played a key leadership role in the conception and publication of Dabru Emet. As past chair of the Synagogue Council of America, Rabbi Zaiman used his local and national contacts to generate interest and raise funding to bring Jewish scholars to Baltimore. There, they studied and discussed how Jews might respond to late 20th-century Christian efforts to examine their own tradition’s teachings and perceptions about Judaism.

Dabru Emet was written by four interdenominational Jewish scholars and ultimately signed by more than 220 rabbis and Jewish intellectual leaders. Organized around eight claims that identified areas of common ground between Christians and Jews and affirmed the legitimacy of Christianity from a Jewish perspective, Dabru Emet generated both praise and criticism. It served as a significant, if contested, moment in modern Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian relations, and interfaith and interreligious studies.

In 2021, ICJS curated and co-published an online forum of 32 essays revisiting the statement two decades later, offering both commemoration and critique.

The Bunting-Meyerhoff Center at 956 Dulaney Valley Road in Towson

After 20 years of using office space at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church, ICJS completed a capital campaign and, in 2008, built the Bunting-Meyerhoff Center in Towson.

In 2012, ICJS marked its 25th anniversary and inaugurated the annual Manekin-Clark Lecture, which brings nationally known religious leaders to Baltimore to speak on relevant interreligious issues.

In 2013, ICJS collaborated with the Washington Theological Consortium to develop the Emerging Religious Leaders Intensive, a one-week program of education and dialogue for Christian seminarians and Jewish rabbinical students.

That same year, a group of secondary school teachers approached ICJS seeking greater professional development and training for educators who teach about religion. In response, ICJS created programming to offer resources, training, and cross-institutional support for teachers in public, independent, and religious schools.

In 2014, ICJS began Reclaiming the Center, a program that guided Christian and Jewish congregations in interreligious study and dialogue. The program was piloted in Atlanta in partnership with First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta and The Temple. ICJS also developed Abraham’s Children, a teaching program created in partnership with World Pilgrims to guide Jews, Christians, and Muslims in interfaith dialogue.

Christopher Leighton and Heather Miller Rubens

In 2016, ICJS formally changed its name to the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies while retaining the familiar moniker ICJS. The transition had begun three years earlier, when the Board of Trustees approved expanding the organization’s mission to include Islam.

That same year, founding executive director the Rev. Dr. Christopher Leighton stepped down after 29 years of leading ICJS, and Heather Miller Rubens, ICJS Roman Catholic Scholar, was named executive director. In 2024, Leighton completed his memoir, A Sacred Argument: Dispatches from the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Encounter.

Also in 2016, in response to the citywide unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, ICJS launched two interconnected programs: Imagining Justice in Baltimore, a series of citywide conversations grounded in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim teachings; and the Justice Leadership Fellowship, a yearlong cohort of nonprofit, civic, and community leaders exploring how diverse religious teachings can frame local justice issues.

In 2016, Trustees approved changing the name to the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, although keeping the moniker ICJS. This transition actually began three years prior, when ICJS Trustees approved the expansion of the organization’s mission to include Islam.

Members of the 2026 Fellowship for Teachers

In 2018, ICJS launched the Teachers Fellowship (now known as the Fellowship for Teachers, an eight-month cohort designed to equip educators to become leaders in advancing interreligious literacy and developing new approaches to teaching about religion in secondary schools.

In 2021, ICJS welcomed its first Congregational Leaders Fellowship (now known as the Fellowship for Congregations) cohort, bringing together clergy and lay leaders from congregations across the Greater Baltimore region for a six-month intensive process of deepening relationships and understanding across religious traditions.

In 2022, ICJS instituted the annual Faculty Seminar, which brings together academics and practitioners for a week of intensive study and discussion through an interreligious lens. Each year focuses on a single topic, including genocide studies in 2022, international manifestations of Christian nationalism in 2023, and death and dying in 2024.

ICJS launched its chaplaincy program in 2023, following a statewide survey of chaplains in Maryland that helped identify the skills and resources they needed to carry out their ministries. The findings guided ICJS in creating programming specifically tailored for chaplains and spiritual care providers, including spirituality groups, monthly online Lunch & Learn events, and topical workshops.

The inaugural Silber-Obrecht Lecture, the first endowed lectureship in the emerging field of interreligious and interfaith studies, was delivered in April 2023 by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., a theologian at Harvard Divinity School and a leading scholar in interreligious studies.

In 2024, the ICJS Board of Trustees and staff adopted a revised Strategic Framework naming four goals that will guide the organization’s work in the years ahead.