Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 11 June 2026
Busy summer!
I was honored to participate for five days (15-19.6) in a meeting of Muslim and Christian scholars in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia.
For more than 20 years, the Building Bridges Seminar has brought together a range of internationally recognized Christian and Muslim scholars for intensive study. These annual convenings, each lasting three or four days, have explored many of the most significant themes in the interface between Islam and Christianity—among them, scripture; prophecy; the common good; justice and rights; human nature; interpretation; science and religion; tradition and modernity; prayer; death, resurrection, and human destiny; community; God’s creativity and human action; monotheism and its complexities; and divine and human power. Proceedings of most convenings have been published, with others in production. Texts from the Christian and Islamic scriptures plus theological reflections and significant documents from both traditions become the basis for discussion in a program that includes public lectures and private sessions.
The Building Bridges Seminar is an initiative of Georgetown University’s Office of the President, with additional support from the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Georgetown is a Jesuit university in Washington DC in the United States.
View a short video on the Seminar here:
I gave the opening address at this conference, which focused on the theme of hope.
Then I went to Berlin to participate in a two-day seminar (22-24.6) entitled “Refiguring Jewish–Christian Dialogue in the Wake of Gaza.” The workshop was jointly organized by Marianne Moyaert (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven), Azar Dakwar (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven) and Elad Lapidoth (Université de Lille and Katholische Akademie, Berlin).
See the program here:
The aim of the workshop was twofold:
1. To critically explore the limits of the current setup of Jewish–Christian dialogue; and
2. To constructively create space for dialogue otherwise—for refigured, decolonial, and justice-oriented forms of theological encounter.
As Gaza’s destruction intensifies and global protest mounts, the silence of many Jewish–Christian networks is striking. This workshop examined the roots of that silence and the possibilities of dialogue beyond it. Across Europe and North America, the structures of interreligious dialogue have been decisively shaped by the perceived moral imperative to respond to the Shoah and the legacy of Christian anti-Semitism. While this has led to important theological reconfigurations, it has also produced a discursive framework determined largely by Euro-American concerns.
As Marc H. Ellis, a Jewish theologian critical of Zionism, has noted, post-Holocaust Jewish–Christian dialogue has often been governed by what he terms an “ecumenical deal”: Christian support for Zionism functioning as the theological price of repentance for anti-Semitism. This arrangement has generated a dominant grammar in which Jewish sovereignty in Israel is sacralized, Palestinian dispossession is marginalized, and solidarity is shaped less by commitments to justice than by a politics of guilt qua an affirmation of Judeo-Christian values.
This workshop interrogated whether such a framework must remain the horizon of Jewish–Christian dialogue, or whether alternative forms might be envisioned. It began from the recognition that silence regarding Gaza is not a neutral omission but a theologically and politically significant stance. Hence, it sought to unsettle the dominant post-Holocaust grammar of dialogue and to open space for decolonial, non-Zionist, and otherwise marginalized perspectives.
A further concern was the scope of participation. Historically, Jewish–Christian dialogue has functioned as a bilateral conversation between predominantly Ashkenazi Jews and predominantly white, Western Christians, frequently excluding those whose perspectives are central to the entanglements of theology and geopolitics in the region—such as Arab Christians, Palestinians, Jews from Arab countries, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews.
By inviting contributions that critically re-examine the history, structures, and possible futures of Jewish–Christian relations in light of Gaza, this workshop aimed to broaden the field of dialogue. It sought to create room for new modes of solidarity, critique, and theological imagination, asking what it would mean to center not only Jewish–Christian reconciliation but also shared responsibility for settler-colonial violence, racialization, and the enduring logics of Christianity itself.
At this seminar, I reflected on the need today to retrieve the dynamics of the Second Vatican Council that gave birth to a Catholic dialogue with both the Jewish people and with Muslims as well as to a commitment to equality, justice and peace in Palestine/Israel.