Source in the Spotlight
The Church of Saint George in al-Salt as a Co-Produced Religious Site
Located on what local residents refer to as the ‘Harmony Trail’ in the city of al-Salt in Jordan is the three-hundred and fifty-year-old Church of Saint George also known to Christians as al-Khader Church, and known to Muslim visitors as Maqam al-Khidr.
Latest Case Study
“Zealousy”. A Shared Emotion to Divide Abraham’s Children
Emotional ideology plays a vital role in the history of religion. This case study shows how the rivalrous emotions—envy and jealousy—gained a peculiar importance in the way both Christians and Jews came to feel about God and religious conformity.
Event: Workshop
"Judaism and Islam: Co-produced Religions"?
with Miriam Frenkel, Katharina Heyden, David Nirenberg, Sarah Stroumsa, Guy Stroumsa, and Shlomo Zuckier
Event: International Conference and Workshop
Insular Entanglements: Malta, 300-1700
International Conference in Valetta, June 16-19th, 2026
Organizers: Mohamad Ballan (Stonybrook University) and Katharina Heyden (University of Bern)
Our upcoming conference "Insular Entanglements: Malta, 300-1700" examines Malta as a case-study of Mediterranean entanglement from Late Antiquity through the Early Modern period. The notion of entanglement that we propose is quite capacious, encompassing not only (nor even primarily) quotidian interreligious interactions but ideas of connections, polemics, memory, histories, and texts more broadly. This will include intellectual networks, economic and political connections, language, cultural encounters, religious thought and polemics, as well as the relationship between the local (Malta) and regional (Mediterranean). The idea of frontiers and borderlands will constitute an important theme of the conference, but we will also explore questions of materiality and material culture in early Christianity, the complex (and ever-changing) relationship between religious and cultural traditions, and the larger political transformations taking place across the medieval and early modern Mediterranean world.
Latest Publication
Co-produced Religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Harvard Theological Review 118 (2025), 159-180.
About
Who we are
The project is coordinated by Katharina Heyden, Professor for Ancient History of Christianity and Interreligious Encounters at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and David Nirenberg, Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (U.S.), and includes a network of collaborators across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.