B 9781350251410

i
The Bloomsbury Handbook

of Religion and Heritage in
Contemporary Europe
ii
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY:
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Edited by Erica Baffelli, Andrea Castiglio, and Fabio Rambelli
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Migration,

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature,

Edited by Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman
iii
The Bloomsbury Handbook

of Religion and Heritage in
Contemporary Europe
EDITED BY
Todd H. Weir and Lieke Wijnia
iv
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Copyright © Todd H. Weir, Lieke Wijnia, and contributors, 2024
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weir, Todd H., editor. | Wijnia, Lieke, editor.

Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of religion and heritage in contemporary
Europe / edited by Todd H. Weir, Lieke Wijnia.
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023017945 (print) | LCCN 2023017946 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781350251380 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350251403 (epub) | ISBN 9781350251397 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Religious pluralism–Europe–History–20th century. |
Religious pluralism–Europe–History–21st century.
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v
Contents
List of Illustrations x
Acknowledgments xii
Teaching with the Handbook Kjelda Glimmerveen xiv
Introductory Essays 1
1 Religious Heritage between Scholarship and Practice Lieke Wijnia and Todd H. Weir 3
2 What is Religious—about—Heritage? Birgit Meyer 15
3 Heritage Discourse and Religious Change in Contemporary Europe Todd H. Weir 22
Part I Heritage and Diversity
Muslim Heritage in a Diverse Context
Challenge
4 Restoring Muslim Heritage in Europe Humayun Ansari 37
Analysis
5 Present Politics of a Multireligious Past: The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba Case

Study Mar Griera 42
Case Study
6 Muslim Heritage Trails: Making Visible Britain’s Muslim Past Tharik Hussain 52
Jewish Heritage in a Diverse Context 61
Challenge
7 European Jewish Heritage Today: An Interview with Emile Schrijver, General

Director Jewish Cultural Quarter, Amsterdam Todd Weir and Lieke Wijnia 63
Analysis
8 The Complicated Heritage of the Jewish Country House: Transcending Traditional

Heritage Categories Abigail Green 69
Contents
Case Study
9 Interreligious Tours as Bottom-Up Heritage Practice: The Routes of Dialogue in

Barcelona Victor Sorenssen and Julia Martínez-Ariño 79
10 The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral—a Cathedral Heritage Reinterpreted

Marcus R. Roberts 89
Negotiating Diversity and Interreligious Heritage 101
Challenge
11 Religious Architecture and Interreligious Relations: The Politics of Memory in

Bosnia Amra Hadžimuhamedović 103
Analysis
12 Synagogues, Churches, Mosques, and Multifaith Spaces: Germany’s Dynamic

Religious Landscape Kim de Wildt 112
13 Counterhegemonic Heritage and Diversity in Berlin’s House of One: Designing

Abraham’s Legacy Marian Burchardt 124
Case Study
14 Repurposing the Church in a Diverse Town: Making All Souls Bolton a Church
Space for All Souls Peter Aiers and Inayat Omarji 134
15 Heritage Management by Churches: Developing for Eternity in Sweden

Maria Nyström 139
Politics of Religious Heritage 149
Challenge
16 Peace and Conflict in Kosovo’s Orthodox Monasteries: Common or

Divisive Heritage? Lejla Hadžić 151
Analysis
17 Religion in Central European History: How Christian Has It Ever Been?

Árpád von Klimó 156
18 Mobilizing Religious Heritage in Politics: Inclusivity in a Pluralistic Society

Christoph Baumgartner 163
vi
Contents
19 Religion, Gender, and Heritage: Who Is Commemorated in the Dutch Cityscape?

Mathilde van Dijk 171
Case Study
20 Inclusivity and Religious Heritage in a Dutch St. Martin Celebration: A Helmet

without a Cross Welmoed F. Wagenaar 186
Sacred Texts as Heritage 197
Challenge
21 Questioning Scriptural Heritage: Interpreting Abraham Carol Bakhos 199
Analysis
22 Hasidic Heritage in Europe and Israel, Past and Present Zohar Maor 206
23 Heritage and Intercultural Education: Teaching Islamic Foundational Texts for

Empowerment and Reconciliation in Israel Ayman Agbaria 217
24 The Talmud in Contemporary Culture Malachi Hacohen 226
Case Study
25 Safeguarding Written Heritage: The Ecosystemic Approach of the Hill Monastic

Museum and Library Andrew J. M. Irving 234
Part II Heritage between Religion and the Secular
Religious Communities and Their Heritage in Secularizing Societies
Challenge
26 Challenges for Religious Communities and Their Heritage in Secularizing

Societies Becky Clark 249
Analysis
27 The Role of Religion in Rural Heritage and Memorial Culture Jacobine Gelderloos 253
28 Religious Archives as Heritage: Catholic Documentation and Heritage Formation

in the Netherlands, 1969–2019 Hans Krabbendam and Chris Dols 262
29 Conservation Professionals and Religious Heritage Eva Löfgren and Ola Wetterberg 271
vii
Contents
Case Study
30 Tradition and Innovation in Rural Churches: New Practices on Ancient Grounds

Jolanda Tuma 280
Postsecular Meaning-Making 287
Challenge
31 Postsecular Meaning-Making? Why Contestations about Church Heritage Matter in

the Study of Society Ernst van den Hemel and Irene Stengs 289
Analysis
32 The Village Church as Intangible Cultural Heritage: European Ritual Innovation

Seen from a Japanese Perspective Aike P. Rots 295
33 Spiritual Tourism: Religion on the Road Harald Schwillus 308
Case Study
34 New Monasticism in Old Churches: The Case of Nijkleaster (New Cloister) Hinne
Wagenaar 319
35 Christian Heritage and Intercultural Education: The School Church in

Garmerwolde Inge Basteleur 326
Repurposing of Religious Heritage 335
Challenge
36 De-churching as Crisis and Opportunity: The Response of the Dutch State Frank
Strolenberg 337
Analysis
37 The Ecclesial Reuse of Catholic Heritage: The 2018 Guidelines of the Pontifical
Council for Culture Andrea Longhi 340
Case Study
38 Religious Heritage across Generational Divides: A Dutch Experiment to Fight

Church Fatigue Sander Ummelen, Stephan Ummelen, and Ankie Petersen 355
viii
Contents
Part III Heritage and Creativity
Contemporary Art and Religious Heritage
Challenge
39 Art, Heritage, and Power Aaron Rosen 367
Analysis
40 Negotiating Diversity with Heritage: Making the Case for Artistic Engagement
Brenda Bartelink and Gabriela Bustamante 371
Case Study
41 Making Art in Medieval Churches: Conversations with Silence in the Monk’s Work
Project Anjet van Linge 381
Religious Heritage in Museums 393
Challenge
42 Making Room for Religious Minorities in National Heritage Narratives Marie

Vejrup Nielsen 395
Analysis
43 Conflict and the Museumification of Religious Sites: Mosque and Church in Divided
Cyprus Rabia Harmanşah 400
44 Minority Heritage within a National Framework: The Jewish Museum in Denmark

Hilda Nissimi 409
45 Venerating Musealized Religious Objects: St. Patrick’s Hand between Display Case
and Altar Emma J. McAlister 418
Case Study
46 Teaching in Musealized Religious Spaces: Lessons from an Amsterdam Seminar

Paul Ariese 427
List of Contributors 436

Index 447
ix
x
Illustrations
1.1 The holy door at the Church of St. Anselm and St. Cecilia, London 12
6.1 The Woking Muslim War Cemetery (1915), also known as the Peace Garden, in
Woking, Surrey, England 54
6.2 The Shah Jahan Mosque (1889) in Woking, Surrey, England—Britain and North
Western Europe’s first purpose-built mosque 57
8.1 One of the church windows designed by Marc Chagall for Tudeley village church 74
8.2 The altar at Tudeley village church, Kent 75
10.1 A plan of the main Jewish heritage locations in Lincoln Cathedral 93
10.2 Philo-Semitism versus anti-Semitism 95
11.1 Zabrdje, a cultural landscape where Muslim and Christians celebrated St Eliyah
Day for centuries on August 2nd 105
11.2 Banja Luka waste landfill with the excavated fragments of the sixteenth-century
Ferhadija mosque 107
11.3 The Russian style complex of Eastern Orthodox churches and a bishop’s palace
with gilded domes, Bijeljina 108
13.1 Gertraudenstrasse 126
13.2 Archaeological Hall 131
14.1 All Souls, looking south east 137
15.1 Hamra Church in winter 142
16.1 The Dečani monastery, Kosovo 154
19.1 Street sign for the Söllepad 172
19.2 Theresia van der Pant (1988) 178
22.1 Starbucks Coffee, Uman, Ukraine 213
23.1 Arab and Jewish educators in a joint activity in 2021 222
28.1 KDC employees Nol van den Boogaard, Diel Mohrmann, and André Maes
engaging in heritage formation, 1975 265
30.1 Medieval church in Westernieland 282
Illustrations
32.1 “Church open” sign at the entrance to the anonymized church in Midwerd 299
33.1 Consoles for explaining the interiors of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg
(Germany) 315
34.1 The Radboud Church in Jorwert 320
34.2 Restoration of Nijkleaster—Westerhûs in progress 322
35.1 Bird’s eye view of the church in Garmerwolde 328
35.2 Interior of the tower with stairs 330
35.3 A school child interacts with the Christmas section of the holiday exhibition 331
37.1 Sala Santa Rita, former Church of Santa Rita da Cascia in Campitelli, Rome
(seventeenth century, rebuilt 1940) 346
38.1 Board with Church: Joanne Vrijhof, Daniël Toebes and Ciska Rouw, 2020 358
38.2 Pride Photo/Adult Alternative exhibition opening, 2020 360
40.1 Figurine painted with Delft Blue technique by Haimanot. Processional cross
from Amhara Region, Ethiopia 376
40.2 Model showing a design by Bahia Kihondo. Maasai necklace. The Regentesses of
St. Elizabeth Hospital, Haarlem 377
41.1 Anjet van Linge working in Eenrum in 2018 387
41.2 Installation by Marc de Groot in Leermens in 2019, cardoon seeds on paper 388
42.1 Mosque materials on display at Roskilde Museum 397
42.2 Meet the Sikhs—an exhibition at the Immigrant Museum 398
43.1 The Saint Barnabas Icon and Archaeological Museum, 2014 403
46.1 Jewish Museum, “Religion” 430
46.2 Attic Mass at Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, September 2020 432
xi
xi
Acknowledgments
This handbook is the culmination of a collaboration that began in 2017, when the Center for
Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen and the Historic Church Foundation
Groningen decided to organize an international conference under the title Religious Heritage in a
Diverse Europe. More partners joined in the course of the organization of this conference, which
was co-convened by the editors of this handbook. We owe many debts of gratitude to all those
who have accompanied us and supported the project along the way.
We would like to thank those who helped in the organization of the conference and the volume,
including Inge Basteleur, Agmar van Rijn, Peter Breukink†, and Patty Wageman of the Groningen
Historic Church Foundation. At the Jewish Cultural Quarter, we had the pleasure of working with
Emile Schrijver and Anat Harel. Lilian Grootswagers of the Future for Religious Heritage was
an important interlocutor. At the Dutch Agency for Cultural Heritage, we have been supported
by Jorien Kranendijk and Frank Strolenberg. At Museum Catharijneconvent, Dimph Schreurs,
Frank van der Velden, and Sebastiaan van der Lans were important conversation partners and
contributors to the conference. As part of this 2019 conference, we cohosted a university summer
school with the International Network for Interreligious Research and Education. Among the
many members who participated in that summer school, we would like to recognize Malachi
Hacohen, Zohar Moar, and Hilde Nissimi for their contributions. All these partners have also
helped in the creation of the book, both in terms of written work and financial support. Without
their partnership and commitment, these projects would not have come to fruition. We are pleased
to be able to make this book available as an open access volume with the help of our sponsors and
the Open Access Book Fund of the University of Groningen.
The scope of a handbook is quite ambitious, something, in our enthusiasm about the project,
we underestimated when we started. It meant the resulting volume needed to address many topics,
different geographical areas, forms of heritage, and religious traditions. It meant we have invited
many to collaborate with us in the making of this book, conference participants and other authors
alike. Gladly, so many of the authors who were invited to contribute agreed to do so and have fully
embraced the project. We are grateful to all the contributors to this volume for their willingness to
share their ideas and research, their patience during the pandemic, and their trust in the end result.
The first stages of this handbook were aided by Dr. Jacobine Gelderloos and towards the end
we were grateful for the editorial support we received from Peter Murray. Lily McMahon from
Bloomsbury Publishing has been a wonderful support throughout the process of turning this
volume into an actual book. We thank Andrew J. M. Irving for his feedback on the Introduction.
Our biggest source of support in this entire process has been Kjelda Glimmerveen, who began
with us as a student assistant. Through her organizational and editorial talents she rose to become
a co-creator of the volume. We truly could not have done this without her. Thank you.
Todd H. Weir and Lieke Wijnia
Groningen, January 2023
Acknowledgments
The publication was made possible with the support of the above partners.
xiii
xvi
Teaching with the Handbook

KJELDA GLIMMERVEEN
In addition to providing a resource for heritage experts and scholars, this handbook is intended
for university teaching and professional training. Its very design was conceived with the needs
of teachers in mind. The book is divided into twelve sections, each of which comprises three
types of contributions. The sections begin with a challenge chapter that outlines a key concern
in a particular field of heritage and alerts readers to its significance. This is followed by one or
more scholarly articles written by academics in the field of religion and heritage that provide
theoretical frameworks for analyzing these themes. Each section ends with case studies that
explore concrete examples from the field, often written from the personal experience of museum
staff, artists, or heritage conservators. This design allows for several approaches to teaching.
Here are a few suggestions for classroom use:
1. Working by theme: Have students read all of the chapters in a certain section. Ask them to
use the theoretical points and arguments from the scholarly reflections to interrogate the case
studies. Or, conversely, ask them what evidence they find in the case studies to support or
contradict the more theoretical arguments made in the challenge or analytical chapters. What
revisions to the previous analyses would they propose?
2. Searching for best practices: One of the unique features of this handbook is that it contains
contributions from museum directors, policy makers, and grassroots organizers. The case
studies are especially suitable for assignments related to heritage practice. How could the
findings of the case studies and the normative questions raised in challenge and scholarly
chapters be taken up in policy?
3. Working comparatively: From the introductory essays to the case studies, many chapters of
the handbook open up the possibility of comparison across the European region. Ask your
students to investigate heritage comparatively across divided societies, such as Cyprus or
Bosnia, or between European regions characterized by different religious traditions.
4. Facilitating fieldwork: Ask students to study a local heritage organization or project and to
apply insights or theories from a chapter to a real-life situation. What challenges arise in their
own case study? What differences or similarities occur? How could their case study serve to
refine existing theories?
One of the key challenges facing the heritage sector is finding ways to encourage and educate
young students and professionals. This handbook is meant to offer their teachers insights,
information, and inspiration.
1
Introductory Essays
2
2
3
Chapter 1
Religious Heritage between

Scholarship and Practice
LIEKE WIJNIA AND TODD H. WEIR
This Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe was prompted
by the convergence of two recent developments. In the realm of scholarship, heritage has
now advanced to become a core concept in the study of religion. At the same time, national
and international cultural agencies increasingly take into account the religious dimensions of
heritage. By illuminating the space of convergence that lies between scholarship and practice,
this handbook makes its specific contribution. Whereas other publications have generally
approached religious heritage from a critical perspective standing at somewhat of a distance
from the object of study (e.g., Choay 2001 [1992]; Isnart and Cerezales 2020; Meyer and
de Witte 2013; Stengs and Van den Hemel 2019), our starting point for this volume is the
interaction we see taking place between university scholars and those in museums, government
agencies, and church and heritage foundations who actively contribute to the making of
heritage. Scholars and heritage professionals are not working in separate worlds but have
jointly developed ethical and normative concerns and share many of the same intellectual
curiosities. This insight has previously informed comparable works in, for example, museum
studies (e.g., Buggeln, Paine, and Plate 2017; Ter Horst 2012) and is expanded here into the
study of religious heritage.
Our exploration of the convergence between the worlds of the academy, heritage institutions,
and public policy began at the conference Religious Heritage in a Diverse Europe convened in
2019 by the Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen, in collaboration
with three Dutch heritage institutions (Groningen Historic Churches Foundation, Jewish
Cultural Quarter, and Museum Catharijneconvent) and two transnational associations (Future
for Religious Heritage and the International Network for Interreligious Research and Education).
The conference brought together leading scholars and professionals, who were asked questions
such as: How should Europe’s plural religious pasts be represented? How can a heritage site be
made relevant for audiences who may not identify with its religious traditions? What dangers
and opportunities for religious heritage does secularization offer? Can or should heritage
organizations foster dialogue between groups in multireligious societies? We purposefully
3
4
Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe
phrased these questions to elicit normative discussions that could contribute to shaping future
heritage research, policies, and practices.
The reciprocal interaction of scholarship and practice also informs the organizational structure
of the handbook. Each of the twelve thematic sections begins with what we have titled challenges,
in which experts, drawing from experience in the field, presents a short tour d’horizon or a
provocation regarding that particular theme. These are followed by analyses, written by researchers
in diverse fields ranging from museum studies to history, religious studies, art history, sociology,
and anthropology. Each section is concluded by one or more case studies, most of which have been
penned by heritage professionals, who reflect on the way their organizations have attempted to
understand and solve a challenging problem. The intended audience of the book is similarly broad.
We hope to provide best practices and relevant examples to professionals and deliver cutting-edge
critical studies that can foster research in emerging fields. Finally, the handbook is intended to offer
learning resources for teaching the next generation of students of religious heritage.
While drawing attention to common developments across Europe, the contributions to the
volume highlight significant differences between regions and religious traditions. To capture
this diversity, the handbook features contributions on Central Europe (Germany, Hungary, and
Poland), Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden), the British Isles (Northern Ireland and England),
North-Western Europe (Belgium, France, and the Netherlands), South-Eastern Europe (Kosovo
and Bosnia), and the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, Israel, and Cyprus). Given the project’s
origin in collaborations between Groningen, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, a significant number of
contributions deal with Dutch examples. At the same time, our focus on Europe is not meant
to be provincial, and many contributions point to the global dimensions of processes shaping
European heritage.
The handbook is organized around three central areas of inquiry. The first is Heritage and
Diversity and investigates how scholars and professionals are responding to the diversity
of religion and culture in European societies. The second part examines Heritage between
Religion and the Secular and asks how developments in religious heritage relate to the declining
participation in traditional religions in many parts of Europe, but also to new secular-religious
configurations. The third part investigates Heritage and Creativity and enquires how artistic
means and curatorial practices are contributing to a new understanding of heritage as meaning
making. In the following, we take up each of these themes and discuss them with reference to the
individual chapters (whose authors are mentioned in brackets).
Whose Heritage, for Whom?

Representation is a key concern facing heritage work in Europe today. Whose past is represented
in public, who gets to decide this, and for whom is it displayed? These questions become more
pressing as European societies become more diverse. Whether a minority community can see
itself represented in public heritage has a bearing on its sense of national and local belonging.
As contributions to this handbook illustrate, politicians are aware of this and use the discourse
of religious heritage to either include or exclude minorities from the national community
(Baumgartner). Populists, such as Hungarian President Victor Orbán, frequently claim “Christian
heritage” as a foundation of their nationalist projects (von Klimo). More subtle forms of exclusion
4
Religious Heritage between Scholarship and Practice
have been baked into the heritage landscape of cities across Europe, for example, in naming
streets after many male, but just one female theologian.
One of the tenets of the Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural
Heritage for Society of 2005, known as the Faro Convention, is that heritage should help foster
European social cohesion through more inclusive, democratic policies. Museum curators, heritage
organizations, and activists are seeking ways to enact this norm by recalling marginalized and
sometimes painful histories and giving them the breath of public life through acknowledgement
as heritage. Pressure to draw past and present representatives of minority communities into the
heritage-making process is expressed through both top-down and bottom-up initiatives. An
example of the former is the project Jewish Country Houses, a collaboration between Oxford
University and the National Trust. The affluent manor houses made available to the public
through the National Trust are jewels in the crown of British national heritage. Highlighting the
Jewish identity of some of their previous owners diversifies national heritage, broadening what
is perceived as British and fracturing the implicit identification of manor houses with a Christian,
white gentry, an idea familiar to viewers worldwide through films and television series like Pride
and Prejudice and Downton Abbey (Green).
Jewish and Muslim activists have also developed bottom-up, grassroots heritage efforts.
A walking tour of Lincoln Cathedral encourages viewers to consider both negative and positive
depictions of Jews in the cathedral sculptures, thereby integrating Jewish history in the larger
history of medieval England prior to the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 (Roberts). This route in
Lincoln connects to efforts to insert Jewish heritage into a network of pilgrimage-tourist routes
across Europe, helping to recover the historical and contemporary presence of Jews (Martinez-
Ariño and Sorenssen). In order to debunk the “myth of Muslims as eternal outsiders” (Ansari;
see also Puzon, Macdonald, and Shatanawi 2021), activists designed a series of Muslim Heritage
Trails in South England, allowing visitors to discover Islamic built heritage in and around the
town of Woking. By inscribing these sites in the national heritage map, the project gives British
Muslims a purchase on the symbolic past of the country and disrupts the notion of national
heritage as solely white and Christian (Hussain).
Religious buildings are sites of intense negotiations between faith communities. As postconflict
Bosnia illustrates, these communities have sometimes come together to rebuild damaged
religious buildings, but at other times have been divided again by new constructions sponsored
by transnational religious actors (Hadžimuhamedović). The shared use of religious buildings by
different faiths has often proven problematic. Some Dutch Christian congregations have objected
to the reuse of underutilized churches by, for instance, Pentecostal or Muslim congregations
(Kroesen 2010: 190–1). Conflicts have also flared over buildings with interreligious histories.
The Hagia Sofia in Istanbul had been inscribed with universal cultural heritage value as the
site of shared Christian and Muslim histories, but was recently also redesignated a mosque by
Turkish authorities. And notwithstanding the Spanish celebration of the interreligious heritage
of the convivencia of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in medieval Spain, the Catholic Church has
resisted efforts by some Muslim activists to allow dual use of the former mosque turned cathedral
in Cordoba (Griera). Despite such conflicts over shared religious use of historic buildings, there
are important counterexamples, such as the German tradition of the Simultankirche jointly
serving Catholic and Protestant congregations (De Wildt).
5
Stimulating cooperation between groups of different religious backgrounds is crucial for the
future maintenance of religious heritage. Without the help of non-Jewish volunteers, many of the
historic synagogues across Europe could not remain open to the public (Schrijver). An analogous
situation is faced by underutilized or unused churches in immigrant neighborhoods in European
cities. As Christian congregations dwindle and residents with past ties to the churches move
away, the question of who will care for the churches raises a major challenge. A pioneering
example to address this challenge is the collaboration between the Churches Conservation Trust
and a local Muslim activist in the English town of Bolton. Together they have transformed the
All-Souls church into a vibrant community center (Aiers and Omarji).
Heritage can be used to either foster or hinder interreligious conversations. Sacred texts of
the so-called Abrahamic religions offer a relevant case. Many derive hope from the fact that
biblical narratives are shared across Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Yet the assumption of a
textual common ground has sometimes occluded important differences (Bakhos). For example,
it led non-Jewish scholars to prioritize the Torah and impugn the Talmud, thereby misrecognizing
the centrality of Talmudic study to Jewish tradition (Hacohen). Thus, as efforts in Arab-Israeli
dialogue have shown, the method utilized for the joint reading of sacred texts must include the
willingness to discuss conflicts that arise (Agbaria). The success of efforts to preserve sacred
texts has depended on communication and trust across religious and geographical divides
(Irving). Even within religious communities, respect for textual traditions is required. Hasidic
texts have played a crucial role in the heritage politics of Jewish intellectuals, but only recently
have the ultraorthodox been given control of their own narratives in wider Jewish intellectual
circles (Maor).
Religious heritage sites are increasingly used for interreligious educational projects. In 2020,
the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation inaugurated its School Church in the town of
Garmerwolde. It features an exhibit in the church tower that uses Muslim and Christian holidays
as a way to entice school age children to engage with these two religious cultures and to open up to
each other about how they celebrate feasts within their families. The focus on holidays highlights
the cultural side of immaterial religious heritage (Basteleur), but the exhibition creators did not
shy away from a conceptual design that evokes reflection on spiritual matters either. Because
Islamic and Christian religious content flows together and is mediated by contemporary design,
this exhibition offers an example of how some heritage makers are moving in a postsecular
direction. In this case, the designers used aesthetic means to evoke in children an imaginative,
yet potentially spiritual response to religious traditions. Such a playful engagement with spiritual
content may, however, raise the eyebrows of some parents who are religious adherents, or, by
contrast, ardently secular (Ter Borg, Nijdam, and Vroom 2020).
The Garmerwolde School Church presents a display that moves beyond the majority narrative
of Christian presence in the Netherlands, by integrating Islamic ritual as well. A growing consensus
exists among heritage organizations and funding bodies (both private and governmental)
that heritage institutions should do more to critique dominant majority narratives and instead
promote minority heritage. Especially in ethnographic museums, long-held curatorial practices
and modes of representing non-European heritage have come to be seen as products of colonial
power dynamics. This has led to fierce debates about the future of these types of museums and
their collections (Harris and O’Hanlon 2013; Hicks 2020). As Birgit Meyer’s contribution to this
volume indicates, such self-assessment taking place in ethnographic institutions is relevant for
6
the wider field of religious heritage. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford has removed some of the
previously displayed human remains and, in their place, installed a placard that asks, “Have you
come to see the ‘shrunken heads’?”, and explains why the museum no longer sees it as acceptable
to display human remains gathered from formerly colonized, indigenous communities: “Rather
than enabling our visitors to reach a deeper understanding of each other’s ways of being, the
displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that goes against the Museum’s values today.”1
Such communicative efforts are meant to have a didactic effect, to attune visitor experiences to
the societal, cultural, and political implications of exhibiting objects gathered and organized
under colonial conditions. The Grassi Museum in Leipzig uses even more emphatic means to
make this point, turning its vast remodeling project into an exhibition of its own. In spring 2022,
the entrance was marked by yellow construction tape emblazoned with the imperatives “WE
CHANGE! WE CHANGE!”, “#REINVENTING”, and “NOW! NOW!, NOW!” Visitors were
encouraged to take smiley faces from a dispenser and like the placards explaining the new norms
of inclusive heritage. There was no option to dislike, which indicates the extent to which the
critique of the authorized heritage discourse (Smith 2006) has by now itself attained a morally
hegemonic position in the museum and cultural heritage sectors. This has completely reoriented
the underlying assumptions of museum display, which Carol Duncan termed civilizing rituals
(1995). Whereas Duncan found that art museums of the 1990s primarily reflected the ideals of
liberalism and capitalism, today’s driving (and civilizing) notions are diversity, decoloniality, and
democratization—in ethnographic, art, and cultural history museums alike.
The overwhelming governmental and institutional support of inclusive heritage leads to further
questions: How should the requirements for inclusion be balanced with the need felt by many
Europeans to honor dominant religious traditions? Might inclusive heritage ironically reproduce
some of the restrictive qualities of the authorized heritage discourse it set out to democratize,
such as normative control of process, content, and purpose? Is there a way to bring together
minority and majority conceptions of heritage without alienating either? Or should practitioners
adhere to the ideal formulated by anthropologist Talal Asad of a “Europe in which everyone lives
as a minority among minorities” (2002: 226)? Such questions require consideration, if heritage
practitioners are to successfully navigate the polarization between the camps of today’s culture
wars. One project that foregrounded inclusion and diversity, while still implicitly honoring the
dominant tradition was Hemelsbreed (Under the vast heavens), which documented the heritage
of five minority communities in Flanders. It was a joint production of Kadoc, which began life
as the Catholic Documentation and Research Center in 1977, and Parcum, initiated by Flemish
bishops in 1997. Thus, heritage organizations whose own histories are intimately linked to the
dominant public religion of the region have sought to help religious minorities locate themselves
in the past and thereby gain purchase in the landscape of national heritage (Lamberts 2002).
Cultural historian Willem Frijhoff has likened heritage to a buoy that anchors the present
to events and places in the historical past. Yet, as heritage is jostled by the waves of memory,
culture and politics, it drifts from this anchor. In other words, at the same time that heritage is
historically rooted, it is also constructed and subject to competition and negotiation (Frijhoff
2003). Critical research can uncover the dynamics of authority exercised by religious and
heritage institutions and also shed light on neglected or suppressed histories. These, in turn,
can help minority communities create public space for their heritage or enter into the imagined
national heritage. But these developments are not being solely or even largely driven by the
7
scholarly quest for more accurate understandings of historical reality. This would be to confuse
the buoy with the anchor. The chief reason why the diversification of heritage has become
a “best practice” for heritage organizations is because a diverse society requires a diverse
heritage.
Heritage between Religion and the Secular

In her essay for this volume, Birgit Meyer notes that heritage has long been understood as a
“secular frame” on the past and then asks what happens when “religious” is appended to it. Does
heritage become a “placeholder for religion” in a secular age, and, if so, what precisely does
this entail? Does it make possible a new “sacred secular” (Stengs and van den Hemel)? As Todd
Weir explores in his contribution, the relationship of heritagization and secularization is a hotly
contested subject in heritage studies (see also Rico 2021). After the end of the Cold War, voices
arose worrying that secularization was leading to a crisis of European identity. Philosopher
Jürgen Habermas argued that the secular culture and political norms underpinning the European
Union were threatened by loss of meaning. Supporters of these norms needed to open up to
a postsecular dialogue with religion, in which religious content could be translated and made
relevant for public debate. Taking up this line of reasoning, some have argued that heritage offers
a translation strategy that preserves relevant aspects of religion, while permitting a simultaneous
adaptation to changing circumstances (Wijnia 2018).
In their recent volume, Cyril Isnart and Nathalie Cerezales challenged assumptions about
secularization and proposed instead that religious heritage evolves meaning in a multidirectional
“complex” in which secular and religious actors interact but do not necessarily fuse (2020). In
order to describe the contemporary elaboration of the cult of St. Anthony in Lisbon, Isnart invoked
the metaphor of the “braid,” in which the strands of various interests—state actors, tourists,
clerical leaders, and local worshippers—form an entangled whole, in which each still remains
discernibly separate.2 By contrast, several Dutch examples found in this handbook suggest that
secular and religious elements are combining in what often appears as a postsecular form of
spirituality. The Netherlands is one of the most secularized regions of Europe, a development
that continues to challenge the government and the churches (Strolenberg). Among the variety
of Dutch Protestant denominations, some are quite liberal and amenable to experimenting with
heritage in dialogue with adherents of secular or spiritual beliefs.
Given such widely divergent patterns set by religious traditions across Europe, scholars may
require different models of secular-religious interactions. Recent church guidelines on heritage
give a useful starting point for comparison. In 2019, the Pontifical Council of Culture affirmed that
once a Catholic church is deconsecrated and becomes a heritage site, future use of the building
must still appropriately reflect its past spiritual manifestation as a divine place of “indwelling”
(Longhi). A guideline issued by the Protestant Church of the Netherlands in 2021 echoes this
sentiment. It states that “our church buildings should always have something prophetic.” It goes
one step further, however, when it invites the creation of new religious meanings in connection
with heritagization: “The closing of church buildings for services does not therefore mean that all
holiness disappears from our society. Rather this trend impels us to go in search of new forms of
holiness … within the walls of the church building … and at the same time outside these walls”
(van Dijk et al. 2021: 8).
8
Evidence of such potentially postsecular experimentation can be found in a growing number of

Dutch Protestant projects that seek to use heritage to simulate village church life. In the northern
Province of Groningen, for example, the church of Hellum inserted a medieval Catholic passion
play into its Protestant Easter service, while the pastor of the town of Den Andel created new
rituals involving processions as a way of linking church and village (Gelderloos, Tuma). In the
neighboring province of Frisia, a project called Nijkleaster (New Cloister) obtained seed money
from the Dutch Protestant Church, as part of its Pioneer Sites program, which supports church
experimentation to stem the tide of dechurching. Having already set up a center for spiritual
experience in the town’s medieval church under the motto “silence, reflection, connection,” the
congregation now has plans for a monastery that will be a communal living experiment open to
spiritual seekers of all stripes, including non-believers, who are willing to follow the monastery’s
rule (H. Wagenaar). Striking in such examples is the incorporation of elements of Catholic ritual
in Protestant churches. This does not portend a re-Catholicization of the region. Rather, it is
the particular materiality of Catholic ritual that appeals in a largely secularized, post-Protestant
environment. Whether in the form of new rituals or joint efforts to repair and care for ancient
church buildings, heritage is approached as a place where secular and religious villagers can
enter an open-ended dialogue over meaning, and where evangelization usually takes a back seat
(Rots). Whatever the religious background, across Europe, places of past and present worship are
increasingly becoming travel destinations in which the line between pilgrimage and sightseeing
blurs, and many travelers engage in spiritual tourism (Schwillus; see also Vidal-Casellas, Aulet,
and Crous-Costa 2019).
Secular heritage organizations are also venturing in a postsecular direction. The 2020 exhibition
on miracles across cultures and religions at Museum Catharijneconvent, the national museum
of Christian art and heritage in the Netherlands, was advertised through the slogan “Call for a
miracle,” accompanied by a phone number. When called, a woman narrated a personal event she
experienced as truly miraculous. The Groningen Historic Church Foundation names the spires
of its churches “beacons of meaning” in the countryside. While these are sunny, inspirational
marketing slogans, the postsecular is not a conflict-free zone. Although heritage provides a site
of increasingly open dialogue between churches and secular heritage entrepreneurs (Petersen,
Ummelen, and Ummelen), underlying conflicts remain (Nystrom). When church buildings pass
from liturgical to heritage use, they frequently change ownership, and the new owners, whether
governments or church foundations, assign new uses and meanings from a secular perspective.
In fact, they generally feel obliged to adhere to this perspective as a normative consequence
of the separation of church and state that structures all European societies to varying degrees.
This means that secular and governmental actors are occasionally insensitive to the religious
significance of objects and spaces, and that religious congregants, for their part, are sometimes
shy when it comes to engaging with the new secular owners of the buildings. The paradoxical
result is that Christians and Jews can feel sidelined in the decisions that determine the meaning of
historic churches and synagogues. When Dutch national newspaper Trouw published a series of
articles on church heritage in 2019, it included few voices of active church members (Oosterdijk
and Irving 2020; Tuma 2019). The complex negotiations now taking place around the religious
content of heritage are illustrated by the annual St. Martin’s Parade in Utrecht, which over the
past decades has become an established new urban ritual, attracting participants—adults and
children alike—from across this Dutch city. While taking inspiration from the story of a Christian
9
saint, the parade organization is cautious of treading into the field of religion. Organizers have
restricted Christian references or language in the parade, for fear of alienating nonbelievers or
members of other minority religious communities (W. Wagenaar).
One objection to the application of the notion of the postsecular to heritage is that it might obscure
conflicts between religious and secular interests, as well as the differing cultural, governmental,
and societal concerns that play out in the formation of heritage (Burchardt 2021). Indeed, many
examples of postsecular meaning making in heritage imply new forms of exclusion. Some religious
traditions are amenable to working within the frame of the postsecular, while others are not. Liberal
strains of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism may enter relatively easily into collaboration
with powerful secular actors who potentially share the same cultural habitus. This can leave other
religious actors out of the public meaning-making process if they, for example, are unwilling to
accept the idea of shared liturgical or sacred space. This may be the unintentional outcome of the
House of One, a multireligious space being built in Berlin with state support (Burchardt). Christian,
Jewish, and Muslim co-religionists who oppose elements of this experiment in joint heritage may
be left to appear intolerant and outside the supposedly inclusive postsecular fold.
Heritage and Creativity

Both in scholarship and practice, there has been growing attention to the fact that the meaning
of heritage is made as much as it is preserved. Art is relevant here in two dimensions. First,
throughout history, artistic means have been utilized to manifest the presence of religion.
Throughout the Middle Ages, objects mediated the sacred, while with the dawn of the modern
notion of art, presence changed into representation, as art objects were understood to manifest
religion’s likeness (Belting 1994). With the shift into abstraction, the dynamic partnership of art
and religion changed yet again. Now less concerned with representation, many artists began to
explore how abstract aesthetic means could be used to communicate or evoke forms of presence.
Contemporary artistic production offers a means to engage with the past presence contained
in religious heritage. At the same time, and this is the second dimension, the creative process
can generate new meanings that connect with religion or spirituality in a broader sense. The
project Monnikenwerk (Monks work) offers an example of both these dimensions. The invited
artists create new work spending one day a week for six consecutive weeks in medieval churches
throughout the Northern Dutch provinces of Groningen and Frisia. They labor in complete
silence and at the end of each day, the churches are opened for visitors to experience the work-
in-progress and talk with the artists about their experiences (Van Linge).
Monnikenwerk used artistic practice and social interaction to tap into the reservoir of meaning
contained in religious heritage. This was also the departure point for the socially engaged
research project Designing the Body, in which a Mexican artist and a Dutch researcher worked
with women of African descent in The Hague. By painting aspects of their own life stories onto
blue Delftware, the porcelain with iconic significance for Dutch national identity, the women
brought together their cultural roots with their lives in the Netherlands. The ceramic objects
functioned as cultural intermediaries between migrant experience and national heritage with the
aim of stimulating a sense of ownership and visibility. Within the project, the amalgamation of
creativity and heritage opened room for the participants to discuss and give shape to various
dimensions of identity, including religious belonging (Bartelink and Bustamante).
10
While Designing the Body fostered the entanglement of identities into multilayered creative
expression, the transfer of religious objects into the museum context is often regarded through
a unidirectional lens. It tends to be seen as an irreversible change (Paine 2013: 3), whereby
functional objects become exhibition objects, or, in the words of Walter Benjamin, these objects
shift from having cultic value to possessing display value (2008: 12). Others view the process
of musealization as a transformation of objects into vessels of meaning that contain an amalgam
of alternative layers of signification (Pomian 1990). Museums are not necessarily the final
destination for religious objects, something demonstrated by the sharing of the relic hand of St.
Patrick by the Ulster Museum and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Belfast. Once a year, the reliquary
is transferred from the museum to the cathedral for veneration during the mass dedicated to
Ireland’s patron saint. Although museum conservation rules prohibiting touching or kissing the
object are in place, the object’s presence in the cathedral makes it reassume its function as a
vehicle of a religious experience (McAlister).
Such collaborative efforts, in which religious communities get some say in practices of
musealization, indicate the extent to which the autonomy and authority of curators and other
heritage professionals are increasingly being called into question. Creating collections has become
relational work. Going beyond traditional academic research, new resources of knowledge are
being developed with the source communities, whose heritage is on display and stored in the depot.
Heritage institutions have become contact zones (Clifford 1997) that can allow for encounter
and reconciliation. Yet, as Kavita Singh has argued, heritage-making should also be seen as a
conflict zone (2015). She explored cases in the global south, in which heritage practices elicited
societal conflict. For example, in Chandigarh, India, a Sikh community demanded treatment of
their sacred books according to their ritual customs, until then openly displayed in the museum’s
manuscript gallery. This resulted in a covering of the books with cloth and the requirement that
visitors take off their shoes before entering the room in which the covered books were displayed.
In response, the Muslim minority also demanded ritual treatment of their heritage objects in the
museum. Yet Singh brought up a problematic aspect of such protests, which is that they were
motivated less by a concern with curatorial practices than by the politics of identity activism.
She questioned the limits of inclusivity in collaboration between museums, perceived as secular
spaces, and religious communities, which may not necessarily embrace inclusivity themselves.
She encouraged museum professionals to maintain their ideals and to not submit to undemocratic
or orthodox rules of religious groups within the walls of the museum. “In a multicultural world
of shifting perspectives and relative values,” she wrote, “let us fight, then, for a corner in which
we can keep hold of our shared enlightenment” (2015: 73). This is a noteworthy stand, given that
the foundations of the museum in the universalism of the European Enlightenment are also under
contemporary scholarly and activist scrutiny.
The modification of museum practices to suit religious rules brings up the larger issue of
how power relationships are continuously under negotiation in cultural institutions (Rosen). For
example, when the open-air museum Den Gamle By (The Old Town) in Aarhus added a Somali
women’s apartment to their street of Danish twentieth-century housing examples, it met with
a mixed response. Some members of the public considered the addition unsuitable within the
panorama of Danish national history, while others welcomed the expansion of national identity
achieved through this acknowledgment of the cultural and religious presence of the Somali
community (Vejrup Nielsen). The same act of heritage-making can simultaneously be perceived
11
as inclusive and exclusive. Similarly, while the Jewish Museum in Copenhagen has inscribed
Jewish presence into Danish national history, Hilda Nissimi asks in her contribution, whether it
does justice to the history of Jews in Denmark.
Negotiations extend outside the museum walls, particularly in relation to the heritagization
of places of worship. When Cyprus was divided in 1974, the resultant forced migration, left
many mosques in the south and churches in the north largely vacant. As these underutilized
sites were turned into museums, they became subject to political struggles between states,
heritage organizations, and religious communities (Harmansah). The changing and complex
societal position of religion, as well as declining familiarity with religious practices make
the interpretation of religious heritage a challenging responsibility for the next generation of
heritage professionals. The final contribution in this volume casts an eye toward the future with
its examination of a religious heritage course, in which future curators and cultural professionals
engaged with a musealized synagogue and a hidden Catholic church in Protestant Amsterdam
(Ariese).
As a final note to this introduction, we would like to draw attention to the cover image of this
handbook (Figure 1.1.). The Holy Door featured on it embodies the complex constellation of
religion and heritage in contemporary Europe. A total of thirteen Holy Doors were granted for
churches throughout the Diocese of Westminster, including the depicted door of the Church of
St. Anselm and St. Cecilia, a listed building on Kingsway, London. The Holy Door was installed
in 2015, prefiguring the start of the 2016 Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, a Roman Catholic year
of prayer focusing on God’s forgiveness and mercy. During this year, the door functioned as a
locus of prayer and a symbol of hospitality. It indexed Christ’s description of himself as a gate;
walking through was considered an express signal of faith. At the end of the jubilee year, the door
was formally closed by Bishop Nicholas Hudson and will remain closed and out of practical use
until the next jubilee, which generally occurs every twenty-five years.
As part of an existing heritage complex, the closed door draws out one’s imagination. Located
on one of the busiest streets in central London, it prompts the question of how passersby relate
to this building and to this special door in particular. In a super-diverse city like London, the
FIGURE 1.1 The holy door at the Church of St. Anselm and St. Cecilia, London. Source: Todd Weir.
12
door has a complex presence. It speaks to Catholics who may have a routinized relationship to
their faith, or may have wandered from the fold. At the same time, the chiseled words “Holy
Door” can speak to those outside of the Catholic community, inviting questions about what they
deem holy and what it might mean to cross the door’s threshold. As a door that beckons, yet
remains shut, it functions as a work of art that uses aesthetic means to create a productive tension
between ritual and culture, past and present, as well as religion and the secular. As such, it invites
reflection on the position of religion and its heritage. Like many examples presented in this
volume, it contains multiple layers of meaning that have been and are being produced within the
European context of diversity and secularization. The closed door also points to the fundamental
challenges of indifference and nescience that face many sites of European religious heritage
today. Understanding and responding to the dynamic interaction of old and new meanings will
remain major tasks for religions, for heritage institutions, and for those who study them.
Notes
1 Sign seen in the collection displays on May 21, 2022.
2 The metaphor of the braid was introduced in Cyril Isnart’s keynote lecture titled “What’s in Religious
Heritage: Beyond the Heritage and Religion Divide,” delivered on November 4, 2021, during the NGG
Conference “Religion and Heritage: Futures for Religious Pasts” hosted by the University of Amsterdam.
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15
Chapter 2
What is Religious—about—Heritage?
BIRGIT MEYER
Certain tangible and intangible matters from the past are preserved as heritage for the future,
while many more fall into oblivion or are disposed of as waste. Rather than being “given,”
heritage-making depends on an authorizing frame that selects certain objects and vests them with
a value. They are deemed worthy to be kept, maintained (even at high costs), and transmitted
to subsequent generations. The preservation of certain valuables—such as holy buildings,
relics, images, objects, or books—is a long-standing feature of religious traditions. And so is
the destruction of heritage—be it to assault religious others or to mark a break with one’s own
religious past—in acts of iconoclasm. Heritage-making and breaking are intrinsic to religion.
The religion-heritage nexus became more complex in Europe’s “secular age” (Taylor 2007),
in which religious affiliation is a matter of personal choice while the state has the power to
regulate religious institutions by curtailing their direct involvement in state affairs and protecting
their right to worship. Heritage arose as a new, secular category that was employed by modern
nation-states to instill a sense of authentic belonging and cohesion among citizens. Indebted to
the “migration of the holy” (Bossy 1985; see Isnart and Cerezales 2020: 1–3) from the church
to the modern nation-state, heritage is a resource employed by modern states for the genesis of
common values, civil religion, and political theologies.
How heritage differs from, yet also contains, and continues religion is an important issue
for research. The challenge is to think through how heritage, as a secular category, is heir to,
yet also transcends, religion. Doing so opens fresh possibilities to explore the transfiguration of
religious elements into the secular realm. Has heritage, after the “death of God” proclaimed by
Nietzsche, become a placeholder for religion, offering a new secular-sacred (Balkenhol, van den
Hemel, and Stengs 2020)—for instance, in the form of a flag, a national monument, or a house
of parliament—that is invoked for the sake of grounding identities in appealing, or even awe-
inspiring, matters transmitted from the past? How can the study of heritage along this line open
up deeper insights into the resilience of the sacred and its survival in secular forms (Kearney
2015)?
Acknowledging that heritage is harnessed to produce a new secular-sacred, however, should
not make us forget that in the secular age, religion—in the sense of institutions that provide
a set of practices and ideas geared to a meta-empirical sphere, and followers who live these
15
practices and believe that sphere to exist, albeit to varying degrees of participation, intensity, and
conviction—does not disappear. Contrary to what one might assume on the basis of a superficial
understanding of secularization as implying the decline of religion and the concomitant rise of
heritage as the prime secular resource for identity formation, in modern societies, heritage and
religion exist side by side. The category “religious heritage” around which this volume evolves
testifies to the enduring relevance of religion—on multiple levels—to the formation of heritage
in our time. Given that heritage operates in a secular regime (Bendix, Eggert, and Peselmann
2013) of explicit and implicit rules and regulations implemented by monument boards, heritage
institutions, and museums, the question arises what the attribute religious does to heritage and,
conversely, what the noun heritage does to the religious things it sets out to preserve. What
happens when religious things are transferred from a religious to a secular regime? How
religious is “religious heritage”? How secular does religious heritage become in the process of
its heritagization? To what extent might a secular museum accommodate the sacrality of items
with a religious provenance?
I propose to address the questions arising around religious heritage from a material approach
(Meyer 2012) that takes things as an intrinsic and constitutive aspect of both religion and heritage.
This approach enables us to analyze religion and heritage not simply as abstract categories but
as actual institutionalized regimes that work with the same material forms, yet according to
the ways of their respective institutions and logics. From this angle, it is possible to explore
in detail how particular things are valued and handled in both regimes, as well as to trace the
implications of their transition from one regime to the other—be it a Renaissance statue of Mary
that moves from church to museum, or a Nkisi figure taken from the mission field in Africa into
an ethnographic collection.
How does such a transition affect the “cult value” of a religious object that is put on display for
its “exhibition value” (Benjamin 1999 [orig. 1936])? To what extent does the heritage regime into
which religious objects are transposed neutralize their religious value (and power) or, conversely,
revitalize it in a new manner? In other words, how resilient is the religious dimension—enshrined
in the “cult value”—in the frame of heritage? In the following I will address these questions by
turning, first, to the move of religious objects into the domain of heritage and, second, to the
accommodation of heritage in the domain of religion. While I find it illuminating to distinguish
between religion and heritage as regimes that value and handle the very same thing differently,
my aim is not to insist on their separateness, but to explore how they fold into and possibly mess
up each other. In this way, I hope to spell out some of the challenges ensued by the category of
religious heritage, which this volume is all about.
Heritage and Religion

Throughout time and across the globe, religious traditions begin, transform, dissipate, and
eventually end (Stausberg, Wright, and Cusack 2020), and—perhaps—become recognized as
heritage along the way or as a second career. European museums are filled with the sacred things
of extinct religions from, for instance, ancient Egypt, Greece, or the Roman Empire. Long taken
to represent the cradle of the Occident, they are now claimed, alongside sites such as Machu
Picchu or Angkor Wat, as instances of the universal heritage of humankind. Museums also display
Christian statues and images that came to be valued as high art, yet originated “before the era of
16
art,” when art and religion were not separated in the same way as is the case in our time (Belting
1994). Moreover, museums display objects and figures from indigenous religious traditions
that were appropriated through looting, trade, or missionary work during the colonization of
the Global South. Mission societies, in particular, were keen to assemble what they perceived
as “fetishes” and “idols” so as to document the triumphant superiority of Christianity over
“heathendom” (Jacobs, Knowles, and Wingfried 2015). While the term religious heritage may
apply to all these instances, in Europe—especially in the Netherlands, where approximately one
church closes per week—it gained prominence in relation to the current, rather dramatic process
of decline of Christianity as a “lived” religion and its rise as a resource for heritage formation.
Currently, there is a great deal of Christian “waste”—defunct buildings, crucifixes, monstrances,
reliquaries, and images of Mary, Jesus, or Saints who lost their original users—that is reframed
as religious heritage. The attribute “religious” refers to their past rather than their present use. In
the same vein, the current claims laid to Europe’s Christian (or even “Judeo-Christian”) heritage
and the concomitant heritagization of Christianity do not require active belief and participation
in a Christian church. The point is that things qualified as religious heritage fall into the domain
of secular heritage, with its own custodians, logics, and regimes for preservation and display (see
also Burchardt 2020: 155–97). Exactly for this reason, the state and other secular instances can
invest in its upkeep without trespassing the proverbial separation of church and state, in a way
that would be more difficult to implement if the material forms would still be part of the regime
of a church. Employing heritage as a secular frame allows to bestow value on churches and other
Christian things as relevant to society even though the churches themselves are shrinking and
people are losing their faith (see Meyer 2019: 70). In the same vein, museums are not bound
to treat items from the Christian past in a religious manner, even though they may opt to show
some courtesy, just as the reuse of former churches by new secular owners is sought to occur
in a respectful, befitting manner, so as to respect the religious history of the building and the
sentiments it still evokes (Reinstra and Strolenberg 2020: 15–17). The idea is that Christian
sacred buildings and things may be deconsecrated, but not be desecrated.
As part of a secular heritage regime, heritage institutions and museums have the possibility
to engage with formerly Christian things in their own manner. They can take the risk to trigger
a sense of offense in (Christian) visitors or even charges of blasphemy, as was the case with
the exhibition Recycling Jesus (2017) in the Noordbrabants Museum that displayed all sorts of
artworks made of discharged and defunct Christian material forms (Meyer 2019: 75–81). Such
playful work with the “sacred waste” (Stengs 2014) left behind as material reminders of the
decline of Christianity spotlights the extent to which religious heritage has been severed from its
Christian roots and thus become effectively secularized. At the same time, beholders may feel
offended because they do not experience these Christian material forms as artworks or heritage,
but as sacred things that were mistreated or even desecrated in the process of being reframed as
art and heritage (Kruse, Meyer, and Korte 2018; Verrips 2008).
These sensibilities indicate that the process of heritagizing religion is not as smooth a transition
from a religious to a secular regime as one might think. As pointed out by Crispin Paine (2013),
religious objects in museums are not easily subsumed fully under a secular regime. Museums in
the UK, he reports, have opened up possibilities to engage in devotional viewing on the part of
those visitors for whom the objects are part of their living faith. The question how to deal with such
objects—regarding preservation, display, and the ways in which visitors are invited to engage
17
with them—is a matter debated hotly in heritage and museum circles. The urgency to address this
issue is enhanced by the increasing religious plurality of European societies due to migration,
with many people from former colonies now standing face-to-face with items from their religious
world on display in a museum. They may not apprehend these items as instances of religious
heritage displayed in a secular frame, but as religious in their own right, and possibly call for a
more befitting treatment or their repatriation. For instance, I am currently conducting research on
a missionary collection of legba figures (so-called “fetishes”) and dzokawo (so-called “charms”)
from the Ewe in current-day Togo and Ghana that were handed to the Übersee-Museum Bremen
by Protestant missionaries active among this group around the turn of the twentieth century
(Meyer 2021). In this context, I spoke to a contemporary Ewe priest in Ghana and showed him
some photographs of these figures and objects in the depot. For him, they were likely to be alive
and hungry, eagerly awaiting to be called by a priest and fed. He found it problematic to leave
these items in the limbo of the depot and cared about their state and whereabouts.
It would lead too far here to explore such cases in more detail. The point I want to make is
that in the transition from the regime of religion to that of heritage, things do not necessarily lose
their “cult value” in favor of a new, secular “exhibition value.” Instead, their display may trigger
all sorts of responses that insist on the original use of these things as mediators of the divine
or the spirit world, and thus feel offended by their present secular display. So, the qualification
of things as religious heritage may well imply that their religious value, meaning, and power
survive in a secular frame. This frame appears to be unable—or perhaps is not even intended—to
fully neutralize their religiosity. This resilience—or “sacred residue” (Beekers 2016)—may even
be the main reason for the continuing value and appeal of religious things in the secular heritage
domain.
Religion and Heritage

As pointed out in the beginning, heritage—in the sense of passing on tangible and intangible
matters from the past to subsequent generations—is an intrinsic part of religion. This being so,
how do religious traditions relate to heritage in the secular age, when religion and heritage are
differentiated into separate domains? Examples abound that show that religious institutions—
with the Roman Catholic Church at the vanguard—accommodate the heritage frame easily and
successfully. Just think about the plenitude of churches in Rome that host exquisite artworks
by Bellini, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, or Raphael, and combine offering services to Catholic
believers and display their artworks for tourists. In contrast to a secular museum, certain rules
and restrictions, for instance with regard to dress codes, apply. The Roman Catholic Church also
runs the Vatican Museum, with the Sistine Chapel as its supreme highlight. Certain concerns
about the negative impact of mass tourism on Catholic art works notwithstanding, the Church
clearly takes pride in the fact that its rich devotional material culture simultaneously features as
secular heritage that appeals to worldly beholders and art lovers. It has a long-standing expertise
in negotiating the copresence of believers and tourists who all feel attracted to the same artefacts,
albeit partly for different reasons. What does religious heritage mean in this setting? My hunch
is that here the capacity of Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic tradition, to bring forth
masterpieces that are recognized from the secular angle of heritage and art is emphasized, while
at the same time claims are laid to the religious roots of presumably secular heritage.
18
The accommodation of heritage, as a secular frame, also occurs in the Netherlands, where,
next to many churches being closed down (about one each week), remaining congregations
open their doors for other, non-religious purposes and users. One prominent example for this
trend is the project Dutch Museum Churches launched by the Museum Catharijneconvent in
2017. Spotlighting the beauty and artistic value of fifteen “religiously active” churches (plus two
synagogues) across the Netherlands that would deserve a “Michelin Star,” this project seeks to
appeal to tourists interested to witness religious heritage in situ (https://www.grootstemuseum.nl/
en/). This initiative resonates with the broader trend of the reframing of Christianity as religious
heritage, which is deemed important for Dutch national identity, even and especially for those
who do not see themselves as Christian believers any longer. Right-wing populist movements
also tend to embrace Christianity as a culturalized form (Balkenhol and van den Hemel 2019).
De-churching implies the refashioning of Christianity as religious heritage in a secular frame.
Many congregations are able to survive and generate sufficient funds for the upkeep of their
buildings, by sharing the building with secular instances that are attracted to the space. As the latter
use it in their own terms as an exhibition venue or a concert hall, the congregations are to negotiate
which activities are compatible with their religious convictions and uses of space, and which are
not. As Elza Kuyk shows in her research on common interests and tensions between multiple
users of the same church building (2017, 2019), the framing of a church as religious heritage
may ultimately hamper the religious life of the congregation, yet also be the sole condition under
which the use of the building as a church can be retained. Framing a church and its interior as
religious heritage means that more parties are able to claim it and have a say with regard to its use
and maintenance. In this sense, the study of the embracement of religious heritage offers a prime
instance to study Christian negotiations of the secularity of Christianity in its heritagized form.
While the Netherlands offer a rather dramatic example of de-churching and the rise of
Christian heritage in its wake, it is important to realize that the negotiation of the category of
heritage by religious groups occurs across the world, enhanced by the global heritage industry and
tourism. Events such as the voodoo festival in Benin (Ciarcia 2020) or the activities of Brazilian
Candomblé terreiros to open up to outside visitors and found museums, actively embrace the
category of heritage (Adinolfi and Van de Port 2013). These are intriguing examples of the global
currency of religious heritage. The use of this category by religious groups is part of their attempt
to assert public presence and gain esteem—certainly important for the protagonists of vodou and
Candomblé who have long been demonized by Christian and secular authorities.
So, for all sorts of reasons and from various angles, religious institutions embrace the secular
category of religious heritage. The fact that they operate in a religious regime that has the power
to sacralize religious things to act as harbingers of the unseen does not preclude the incorporation
of their sites and artefacts into the secular frame of religious heritage, or the running of museums
(Orzech 2020). Doing so not only opens up new opportunities to speak to a broader, secular
audience but also comes with its own problems—especially with regard to the negotiation of
access to the sacred and its protection against profanization.
To Conclude
The category of religious heritage appears to be an intriguing hybrid. While heritage is secular, it
contains things from the religious domain that still carry along their previous religious or “cult”
19
value. This containment, through which the original religious identity of heritagized things is still
present, suggests that secularization is not a linear but rather a dialectical process (Weigel 2017).
Religious heritage retains and remains indebted to the religious dimension of the things that are
heritagized; the noun “heritage” is haunted by the attribute “religious,” which cannot be fully
contained but serves as a reminder of the “real” religion from which the heritagized religious
things originate. This opens up for the possibility of reversibility, as the examples of desecrated
church buildings in post-socialist Eastern Europe that are in the process of being reconsecrated
or that of the Hagia Sofia that has just been turned from museum to mosque, show plastically.
Studying religious heritage exposes the indebtedness of the secular to the religious in the past
and present and holds open all sorts of possible futures. Conversely, the adoption of the category
religious heritage by religious institutions and groups as a way of self-representation possibly
limits their power to confine their sacred things and sites to the regime of religion and protect them
against profanization and pollution. The embracement of the secular frame of heritage may turn
out to be a Trojan horse for religious institutions, which induces them to incorporate a secular logic
into the heart of religion and makes them lose control over their religious things (Kuyk 2023).
What we call religious heritage enshrines a complex entanglement of religion and heritage
that can play out in multiple ways. Exactly for this reason, it forms such a suitable entry point
for the study of religion beyond a facile view of secularization in terms of religious decline.
Calling scholars to pay detailed attention to things, the study of religious heritage is not only a
privileged field to study the conversion of Christianity into heritage but also the conversion of
religious objects from colonized people into musealized objects in colonial collections (Modest
2017). While a likely future for Christianity in Europe may lie in its being recast as heritage,
the objects in colonial collections on display in exhibitions or kept in depots may call for being
reanimated and brought back into a religious regime. In all these investigations, the pursual
of the question what is religious—about—heritage will lead us into the complex entanglement
of religion and heritage, in which neither the regime of religion nor of heritage is able to fully
contain the material things they protect and display.
Acknowledgment
With thanks to Elza Kuyk, Irene Stengs, and Pooyan Tamimi Arab for their stimulating comments
on an earlier version of this essay.
References
Adinolfi, M. P., and M. van de Port (2013), ‘‘Bed and Throne: The ‘Museumification’ of the Living
Quarters of a Candomblé Priestess,” Material Religion 9 (3): 282–303.
Balkenhol, M., E. van den Hemel, and I. Stengs (2020), The Secular Sacred: Emotions of Belonging and
the Perils of Nation and Religion. Cham: Palgrave.
Balkenhol, M., and E. van den Hemel (2019), “Bedfellows, New Alliances: The Politics of Religion,
Cultural Heritage and Identity in the Netherlands,” Trajecta: Religie, Cultuur en Samenleving in de
Nederlanden 28 (1): 117–41.
Beekers, D. (2016), “Sakrale Residuen/Sacred Residue,” in S. Lanwerd (ed.), The Urban Sacred—Städtisch-
Religiöse Arrangements in Amsterdam, Berlin Und London/How Religion Makes and Takes Place in
Amsterdam, Berlin and London. Ausstellungskatalog/Exhibition Catalogue, 36–41. Berlin: Metropol.
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Belting, H. (1994), Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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in R. F. Bendix, A. Eggert, and A Peselmann (eds.), Heritage Regimes and the State, 11–20.
Göttingen: Göttingen University Press.
Benjamin, W. (1999), “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in H. Arendt (ed.),
Illuminations, 211–44. London: Pimlico.
Ciarcia, G. (2020), “Contemporary Vodun Memories of the Slave Trade Past in Southern Benin,” in
C. Isnart and N. Cerezales (eds.), The Religious Heritage Complex: Legacy, Conservation, and
Christianity, 157–72. London: Bloomsbury.
Isnart, C., and N. Cerezales (2020), “Introduction,” in C. Isnart and N. Cerezales (eds.), The Religious
Heritage Complex: Legacy, Conservation, and Christianity, 1–13. London: Bloomsbury.
Jacobs, K., C. Knowles, and C. Wingfield (2015), Trophies, Relics and Curios? Missionary Heritage from
Africa and the Pacific. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Kearney, R. (2015), Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God with James Wood, Catherine
Keller, Charles Taylor, Julia Kristeva, Gianni Vattimo, Simon Critchley, Jean-Luc Marion, John
Caputo, David Tracy, Jens Zimmermann, and Merold Westphal. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kruse, C., B. Meyer, and A. Korte (eds.) (2018), Taking Offense: Religion, Art, and Visual Culture in
Plural Configurations. München: Fink Verlag.
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September 6. https://religiousmatters.nl/multiple-used-church-buildings-and-religious-communities/
(accessed November 15, 2021).
Kuyk, E. (2019), “Wie beschermt de Oude Kerk in Amsterdam,” Religious Matters, November 26. https://
religiousmatters.nl/wie-beschermt-de-oude-kerk-in-amsterdam/ (accessed November 15, 2021).
Kuyk, E. (2023), Tussen erfgoed en eredienst. Meervoudig gebruik van vier monumentale stadskerken.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Meyer, B. (2012), Mediation and the Genesis of Presence. Towards a Material Approach to Religion.
Utrecht: Utrecht University Press.
Meyer, B. (2019), “Recycling the Christian Past. The Heritagization of Christianity and National Identity
in the Netherlands,” in R. Buikema, A. Buyse, and A. Robben (eds.), Culture, Citizenship and Human
Rights, 64–88. London: Routledge.
Meyer, B. (2021), “Legba-Figures and Dzokawo. Unpacking a Missionary Collections in the Übersee-
Museum Bremen,” July 9. https://boasblogs.org/dcntr/legba-figures-and-dzokawo/ (accessed May
31, 2023).
Modest, W. (2017), “Pressing Matter: Reckoning with Colonial Heritage,” Inaugural lecture, November 7,
VU University, Amsterdam.
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Reinstra, A., and F. Strolenberg (eds.) (2020), Kerkgebouwen: 88 inspirerende voorbeelden van nieuw
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Cultureel Erfgoed.
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Desecration and Defamation,” Presentation Workshop, “Blasphemies”: Media, History, Affect, Paris,
May 29–30.
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22
Chapter 3
Heritage Discourse and Religious Change in

Contemporary Europe
TODD H. WEIR
Introduction
In 2020, two Belgian heritage institutions presented the findings of “Hemelsbreed” (Under the
Vast Heavens), a multiyear research project that surveyed the material and immaterial heritage
of the largest minority religious communities of Flanders. The concluding report made clear
that the impetus for this project came from the region’s changing religious landscape, which
“had evolved over the course of the twentieth century from a principally Roman-Catholic to a
multicultural and multireligious society” (Aerts, Ettourki, and Prins 2020: 7). Yet, its aim was
not to simply document the heritage of religious minorities. Rather, it hoped that by providing
“knowledge of the rich heritage of the various religions and worldviews in Flanders,” the project
might “stimulate polyphony, inclusion and mutual understanding” (5, 8).
Hemelsbreed illustrates a trend observable across Europe today. Deliberations about how best
to maintain and manage religious heritage are taking place within a wider discussion about the
changing religious landscape. Heritage projects, such as many of those discussed in the chapters
in this handbook, are increasingly proposed as self-conscious interventions in this landscape,
whereby religious heritage is given the task of fostering social cohesion and interreligious
dialogue. In order to provide historical context for this development, this article lays out, in
broad strokes, how the discourse of religious heritage became caught up in key transformations
of Europe over the past half century. These transformations require a wider definition of diversity
than that conceptualized by Hemelsbreed. For, while it is certainly true that immigration has
stimulated the growth of new religious communities since the 1960s, there have also been other
processes that have added to diversity. For one, this period has been marked by a significant
growth in the portion of the European population that considers itself nonreligious. Second,
spiritual practices, from mindfulness to forms of esotericism, have proliferated among secular
and religious individuals alike. In order to accommodate all these changes, this essay investigates
religious diversification along three axes: secularization, pluralization, and spiritualization.
Taking each in turn, it charts the complex ways that religious heritage has appeared in polemics on
religion and politics, as well as in the normative stances regarding heritage practice that scholars,
22
Heritage Discourse and Religious Change
church organizations, museums, and government agencies have adopted. It offers evidence that
in some regions of Europe, the divide between secular cultural heritage and religious tradition
is eroding and meaning making around heritage is moving in a postsecular direction, parallel to
certain developments in the religious field.1 Finally, it asks whether heritage itself is becoming
a laboratory in which religious and spiritual movements are developing new resources and
theologies.
Secularization and Heritagization

Whether or not the overall direction of recent European religious history can be described as
“secularization” has been hotly contested for at least three decades. Nevertheless, statistics on
overall declines in church participation provide one concrete measure of secularization as a
clear historical trend across most of Europe. Church participation was suppressed under state
socialism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe beginning in the late 1940s, and North-Western
Europe registered a dramatic fall in church membership and attendance beginning in the 1960s.
Despite regional countercurrents of renewal after the fall of communism, the trend in the twenty-
first century has become clear. A 2015 Eurobarometer survey found that in Great Britain, the
Czech Republic, Sweden, and the Netherlands, a greater portion of the population identified with
nonreligion than with the major churches.2 In Flanders in 1967, over 50 percent of the population
attended mass at least once a month (Hooghe, Quintelier, and Reeskens 2006: 5). The figure had
dropped to less than 10 percent by 2004 and has since fallen even further. In Catalonia, Catholic
church participation dropped from 33.8 percent of the population in 1980 to 18.7 percent by 2007
(Burchardt 2020: 5).
Coinciding with the decline in church attendance has been the rise of public attention to
heritage. Since the 1970s, local activists, national agencies, and international heritage conventions
have expanded the varieties of heritage worthy of protection, from nature reserves to folkloric
customs, to shuttered factories (Smith 2006: 5). In many countries, religious buildings form
the single most important type of protected heritage, if measured by government spending or
UNESCO world heritage appellations.3 What is the relationship between secularization and
heritagization? This question has been vigorously debated in the burgeoning field of heritage
studies.4 In their recent book The Religious Heritage Complex, editors Cyril Isnart and Nathalie
Cerezales argue against the notion that secularization simply produced heritage, that is, that the
holy “migrated” from religious practice to “secular” heritage. Instead, they describe a “complex”
comprised of “the habitus of conservation of the past within religious traditions” and “a conscious
policy regarding the care of the past.” (Isnart and Cerezales 2020: 6) This means that religious
heritage is generated by the interaction of religious traditions and practices, on the one hand,
and strategic interventions by political and economic forces, on the other. As discussed in the
introduction to this handbook, the result of this interaction is, according to Isnart, a “braid” rather
than a merging of the religious and the secular (see discussion in Wijnia and Weir).
Isnart and Cerezales provide a useful warning to scholars not to assume that secularization
is the most important factor driving the development of religious heritage and heritagization
more broadly. Yet, when we look at developments on the ground, there is a direct connection
between de-churching and the material growth of the heritage sector. Secularization is
changing the function of religious buildings, turning historical sites of liturgical practice into
23
travel destinations, performance spaces, or cafes. When Europeans enter churches today, it is
increasingly as concert goers, passersby, or tourists, many of whom experience Christianity and
church life principally through the past, as something their parents or even grandparents engaged
in (Brown 2001: 181–6). Declining memberships and disaffiliation have led to financial burdens
on churches and synagogues. In much of the UK and the Netherlands, Protestant churches
were traditionally maintained by congregations rather than by the state or the episcopal see.
The winnowing effect of secularization that began to empty out the pews in the 1960s has now
reached the parish church councils, which have trouble recruiting younger members. When local
council members grow too old to care for the buildings, new management and even new owners
are needed (Kroesen 2010a: 189) The secular organizations that sprang up in the 1960s and early
1970s, such as the Churches Conservation Trust in England and the Historic Church Foundations
of Groningen and Frisia, for example, now own or maintain in trust between 50 and 355 churches
and synagogues each.5 In some regions of Europe, this transformation of church ownership can
only be compared to that ushered in by the Reformation, the Napoleonic Wars, or the Russian
Revolution.
Sociologists of religion theorize about the impact of de-churching and other secularization
processes on the viability of the immaterial heritage of European Christianity. French sociologist
Danièle Hervieu-Léger proposed that religion is more than the “expression of believing.” It relies
on a “chain of memory” comprising “the memory of continuity and the legitimizing reference to
an authorized version of such memory, that is to say a tradition.” According to Hervieu-Léger,
modern social processes, from capitalist innovation to scholarly criticism, break this chain of
memory and tradition and lead to anomie and religious fragmentation (Hervieu-Léger 2000: 97).
The Methodist minister and sociologist David Martin expressed similar concerns about the
growing religious illiteracy of British society. Martin feared that the intellectual and spiritual
heritage of Christianity would be made unintelligible to future generations. He compared
the passages of the Bible to depth charges buried in the cultural fabric of European society.
Periodically and in unexpected ways, these depth charges explode, as, for example, when the
egalitarian movements of the English Civil War drew inspiration from the “Sermon on the
Mount.” Without transmitting knowledge of these texts, even in a secular form, Martin worried
that the spiritual seeds contained in the immaterial heritage could perish (Martin 2020: 186).
The analyses of Hervieu-Léger and Martin suggest that the growing interest in religious heritage
may be a response to the social and spiritual dislocation now facing many regions of Europe and
that, as such, it is related to widespread anxiety about the sustainability of communities. It is
worth noting that grassroots activists doing industrial heritage work have similarly argued that
restoring mines and factories might help mend the social fabric rent by the loss of industrial
work (Strangleman 2017). Church heritage projects may be playing a comparable role in socially
vulnerable regions undergoing de-churching.
Yet another model of the understanding relationship between secularization and heritagization
has arisen from what is called “secularism studies.” This approach, taking its inspiration from
postcolonial studies, proposes that ideas associated with secularization, such as separation of
church and state, are techniques developed by modern states and global elites to manage religious
communities. In a recent work, sociologist Marian Burchardt argued that religious heritage
has become a key site at which secularist and religious positions vie over definitional control
of the national culture. In Burchardt’s view, this contest explains why secularization has the
24
paradoxical effect of “not so much lessen[ing] as heighten[ing] the role of religion in nation-
states” (2020: 155).
Burchardt’s fieldwork is contemporary. But his approach can be applied to the historical
development of heritage concepts that have been favored by Christian conservatives, such as
“Christian civilization” and “Western culture.” At the end of the nineteenth century, Dutch
theologian and later prime minister Abraham Kuyper described the struggle to save “Christian
heritage” as a mighty contest between secular “modernism” and “all those who reverently bend
the knee to Christ and worship Him as the Son of the Living God” (Kuyper 1899: 4). The trope
of Christian heritage was repeatedly mobilized in the twentieth century to forge international
alliances and transnational identities. Following the Russian Revolution and amid the political
turmoil of the Weimar Republic, for example, German conservatives sought alliances with
former French foes in a “Christian front” to save “Western culture” from the pernicious effects
of Soviet “godlessness” and domestic “cultural Bolshevism” (Weir 2015). The conservative
and often antisemitic rhetoric of the “Christian front” spread across Europe and North America
in the interwar period, but the growing awareness in the late 1930s that National Socialism
was not a viable ally led some Christian conservatives to broaden their definition of “western
civilization” to include Jews as well. After the Second World War, “Judeo-Christian culture”
suited the foreign policy of the newly dominant United States, which enlisted religion in its
struggle against the atheistic Soviet Union. Furthermore, the phrase “Judeo-Christian culture”
fit with the loose, non-denominational commitment to religion that was America’s “civil
religion” (Silk 1984). Heritage in postwar Europe functioned to remove religion from the hands
of any particular faith community and make it a marker of national or transnational identity. It
was also used to stake a Christian claim on other aspects of European history. Thus, in a 1948
polemic against his political rivals, Tory politician David Maxwell Fyfe stated that “All over
Europe, Socialism is proving no defense against Communism’s attack on the triple heritage of
Christianity, mental freedom and even-handed justice” (Moyn 2015: 159). Historian Paul Betts
describes how international agreements on heritage underwritten by UNESCO were linked to
the discourse of “Christian civilization” (Betts 2021: 311–44). The relationship of civilization
to religious heritage was front and center in the debates in the mid-2000s over whether and
how to include religion, and specifically Christianity, in the new European Union constitution.
Supporters of religion’s inclusion faced off against advocates of laïcité and secularism, who
wanted “humanism” identified. The final draft of the preamble contained the compromise
position that the European Union “draws inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist
inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable
and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of
law” (Accetti 2015: 37; Bossuat 2005). In the middle of these debates, Pope Benedict XVI
published an essay titled “The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,”
in which he blamed secularist domination for having “hollowed out” European culture,
leaving it “internally paralyzed,” “unsure of its identity,” and bored “with its own principles
and values” (Benedict XVI and Pera 2006: 66, 6). His solution was a “spiritualization” of
Europe achieved by “reintroducing the religious dimension through a synthesis of residual
Christianity and the religious heritage of humankind” (68). Here, the Pope suggested that the
diminution of Christianity in the wake of secularization had increased the relative importance
of the immaterial legacy of the Christian past, interwoven as it was with aspects of European
25
civilization. And, with both Christianity and its wider civilizational fabric threatened by
continued secularization, Benedict suggested that heritage might become a site of religious
renewal in the form of a spiritualized culture. The logic of his argument parallels that made at
the roughly same time by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Habermas had earlier held
that the public sphere should ideally be a secular space, but, after the Cold War, he began to
worry that secular rationality was not a strong enough foundation to sustain democratic values
and identity. Habermas called for the inclusion of religious voices and values and popularized
the term “postsecular” as a normative framework that could encourage dialogue between
religious and secular actors (Habermas 2008). Reflecting their common ground, the soon-to-be
Pope Benedict and Habermas entered into a public dialogue in 2004 that was published a year
later as The Dialectics of Secularization (Habermas and Benedict XVI 2005).
Pluralization
Benedict XVI’s “The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” largely
followed the arguments he made in an article published in 1980 (Ratzinger and Winling 1980).
But his 2006 essay placed the threat of secularism in a new frame, namely the resurgence of Islam
in and around Europe. This brings us to pluralization—the second process of the transformation
of the European religious landscape since the 1960s. What began with intra-European migration
from Southern Europe to the booming economies of the North blossomed into a global movement
of populations. New arrivals from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East brought their
religious traditions with them. Missionaries, whether North American Mormons or Brazilian
and Nigerian Pentecostals, planted new churches and attracted European converts. Since the
1990s, patterns of immigration extended beyond former colonies and became global and
multidirectional, creating a European society characterized by what sociologist Steven Vertovec
called “superdiversity” (Vertovec 2007).
Migration has altered the political discourse around religious heritage. Until the 1990s,
opponents of immigration generally mobilized the supposed cultural differences between
“native” and “foreign” populations for their polemics. Since the 1990s, however, religion has
increasingly become the chief marker of difference. The case against Turkish or North African
migrants has centered on their Muslim identity (Beck 2013). Yet, an examination of recent anti-
Islamic rhetoric makes apparent that opposition to these populations revolves around the tension
between Christian heritage and Muslim religion. For example, during the 2019 elections to
the European parliament, Marine Le Pen referenced the Duomo in Milan, Leonardo Da Vinci,
and Jeanne d’Arc and stated, “We will never accept to be dispossessed of this material and
immaterial patrimony.” And Hungary’s prime minister Victor Orban called fellow right-winger
Matteo Salvini his ally in the fight for the “preservation of European Christian heritage and
against migration.”6 The heritage discourse has also helped form rhetorical alliances with non-
Christians against Islam; Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage have spoken frequently of the heritage
of “Judeo-Christian culture.”7 The early intellectual leader of Dutch anti-Islamism, Pim Fortuyn,
extended this idea of a shared national-religious culture further when he spoke of the Netherlands
as “a country based on Jewish, Christian and humanistic cultural sources” (Fortuyn 1996: 57).
This allowed Fortuyn and subsequently other Dutch conservatives to claim that tolerant, liberal
attitudes toward homosexuality, for example, were ultimately achievements of a Christian
26
culture.8 Heritage has made possible the return of religion in secular form and has permitted the
inclusion of secular values within the logic of religious antagonism.
Using heritage to forge a political alliance between secular and religious forces is most
pronounced in populist right-wing rhetoric, however, it has also been widely employed by
mainstream politicians to oppose the supposed Islamization of European culture. Since the
1990s, leading German intellectuals have used arguments about cultural differences rooted
in religion to lobby against the integration of Turkey into the European Union. According to
historian Heinrich August Winkler, for example, the division of spiritual and temporal realms in
medieval Christianity was fundamental to the modern era’s separation of church and state and to
secularization. Turkey, he protested, was bereft of a parallel cultural achievement.9
Religious studies scholar Ernst van den Hemel has shown that the Dutch prime minister
Mark Rutte (elected 2010) has used the rhetoric of Christian heritage to curry favor with
latently xenophobic voters. Rutte, for example, linked the debate over the sale of Easter eggs
in department stores to the question of whether too many Muslims have immigrated to the
Netherlands (Van den Hemel 2017: 6–9) Even before being elected prime minister, he led
the conservative-liberal party Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) to move away
from its traditionally secular position. In 2008, the party program was rewritten to include
the following: “Dutch society finds its origin in the Judeo-Christian tradition, humanism
and the Enlightenment.” Rutte has gone so far as to present himself as the embodiment of a
half-religious, half-secular Dutch identity. In an interview, Rutte said, “I myself was raised
Reformed. And I belong to the group that has great doubts, but which stands with 51% in the
faith” (13).
Whether voiced by social democrats, liberals, or conservatives, the use of the terms “Christian,”
“Judeo-Christian,” or “Judeo-Christian-Humanist heritage” is meant to create a front against
certain ethnic, political, or religious populations; it nearly always signifies opposition to Muslim
communities. As scholars of religion and politics have pointed out, separation policies and even
secularism as a political ideology are not neutral in their treatment of religions (Scott 2009;
Beaman 2013). According to Burchardt, heritage is a space in which political and religious actors
seek to “regulate difference” between the religious and the secular, and between the majority
and minority religions (2020). Anthropologist Mónica Cornejo-Valle points to the example of
conservative elites in Madrid who have used their political clout to block changes to festival
culture. Their aim has been to naturalize the dominant position of Catholicism in the largely
secular order of the city (Cornejo-Valle 2021) Elayne Oliphant has argued similarly that in
France, Catholicism has become “equated with the secular … through practices that make it
isomorphic with the history and culture of France and Europe.” The apparent “banality” of
Catholicism is the measure of its success in blending into the heritage background of the French
historical landscape. Islam, largely excluded from the realm of national heritage, remains marked
as exclusively religious (Oliphant 2021: 5).
Spiritualization
The third major process of religious change since the 1960s may be described with the term
“spiritualization.” This term is derived with direct reference to the movements, practices, and
philosophical systems that we today recognize as “spirituality,” from shamanism and astrology to
27
mindfulness, transformational psychology, and yoga. Historians have identified the emergence of
modern spirituality within nineteenth-century movements such as theosophy, whose architects,
Helena Blavatsky and Annie Besant, blended traditions of Western esotericism with Asian
philosophy and offered forms of religion that were deemed compatible with modern science
(Viswanathan 2012; Hanegraaff 1996).
While it is undeniable that interest in spirituality has grown since the 1960s, scholars diverge
on its significance in European religious history. The British sociologist Steven Bruce links
spirituality with membership in New Age sects and finds that it remains marginal and does not
fill the void left by the general disaffiliation with religion in Europe (Bruce 2017). Other scholars
see the New Age as a broader, albeit diffuse, shift in religious belief and practice away from
formal religious belonging and toward individual spiritual practices. Because these practices aim
at personal transcendence rather than salvation through God or church, religious studies scholar
Paul Helaas has referred to them as “self-religions” (Heelas 1991). Christopher Partridge proposes
that esotericism has become dispersed throughout modern society, forming an “occulture” that
not only lives within but also resists the secular order (Partridge 2016). Backed by survey data,
Linda Woodhead argues that a sizable portion of the European and North American population
(10%–20%) identifies as “spiritual but not religious” though only a small portion are committed
to spiritual movements. This group is characteristically holistic in its approach to “body, mind
and spirit.” For them the individual is integrated into a system of “greater wholes, ranging from
intimate others to the whole universe” (Woodhead 2010: 38). In short, since the 1960s, spirituality
has become symptomatic of the wider changes in subjectivity that place increased importance on
individual experience and transformation. It is thus warranted to name spiritualization as a major
force in the recent history of religion in Europe.
Reflection on the cultural practices of spirituality can open up insights into recent developments
in religious heritage. Already in the nineteenth century, spiritual movements borrowed selected
practices from world religions and integrated them piecemeal into European spiritism, as a sort
of bricolage (Altglas 2014). Key to the breakthrough of spirituality into popular culture in the
mid twentieth century, was the stripping away of dogmatic or culturally complex aspects of non-
European religious traditions. Spiritual leaders became adept at marketing simple practices to
individuals in a consumer society. The neo-shamanism popularized in North America and Europe
in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, offered a bare bones version of South American indigenous
practices that could be assimilated in a few workshops (Znamenski 2007: 233–73). Thus, although
many forms of spirituality rely on heritage to provide their novel practices with the legitimacy
of an ancient pedigree, in practice, this heritage is continually being reshaped. The mutability of
spirituality has contributed to the rise of the theory of “meaning making” in the psychology of
religion. This theory holds that when existing beliefs fail in times of crisis, individuals often
undertake spiritual journeys that lead them to pop psychology or New Age tracts—something
that enables them to make new meanings that can help cope with the crisis (Westerink 2013). The
language of “meaning making” is increasingly permeating the study of heritage. For example, in
2019, when the Dutch National Research Agenda asked, “What do we understand under cultural
heritage?” it noted a shift. Whereas “the classification of cultural heritage used to always be a
task and prerogative of experts,” this had broadened considerably. The Research Agenda noted
that “the way individuals and groups attach meaning and significance [zin- en betekenisgeving]
to immovable heritage is subject to change.”10
28
A second aspect of spirituality useful to the study of heritage is the location of meaning making
in the space between the secular and the religious. Phenomena, such as yoga or mindfulness, are
neither entirely secular nor entirely religious. They are bodily practices that can offer followers
“small transcendences” or, at the very least, lend an aura of greater purpose to physical exercise
(see Hjelm 2018: 97). As such, modern spirituality may also be considered “postsecular.” So
too are many contemporary heritage practices, such as the popular St. James’s pilgrimage route
that begins in various locations and ends at Santiago de Compostela in Spanish Galicia. The
“postsecular” has been invoked to describe the spiritual experience of many of the non-Catholic
hikers, tourists, and pilgrims who flock to this path annually (Nilsson and Tesfahuney 2016; Van
der Beek 2021).
Religious buildings are also being interpreted in a postsecular frame. No longer the sites of
liturgical practices that establish a relationship between the believer and the deity, heritagized
churches may offer small transcendences for visitors. They can be places of silent reflection,
aesthetic experience, or community gathering. The buildings are also the repository of
“sacred residues” or “sediments,” that is, those memories and traces of former religious use
that continue to stimulate visitors’ emotions (Beekers 2016; Kroesen 2010b). Recalling these
sediments to contemporary viewers through the creative act of storytelling is essential, “if we
wish to preserve old churches beyond our secular age,” argues church historian and heritage
scholar Justin Kroesen. “Once people start saying ‘this is my place’ again,” he concludes, “then
there is no doubt that embracing churches and caring for their future will follow suit” (Kroesen
2021: 18).
Conclusion
The growth in public attention to religious heritage since the 1960s has coincided with significant
changes in the religious landscape of Europe. This chapter has examined how the discourse of
heritage has been influenced by and has responded to the processes of secularization, pluralization,
and spiritualization. Secularization in the form of de-churching has raised church reuse to one of
the central questions facing heritage policy in Europe today, while the narrative of secularization
has been used by many observers to diagnose a weakening of the social and cultural fabric of
national polities. At the same time, opponents of immigration have made religious heritage into a
key trope, when they present themselves as defenders of a supposed “Judeo-Christian-humanist”
heritage against the growing Muslim population of Europe. Finally, this chapter has explored
how meaning making has emerged as an area of conscious action by heritage professionals.
Particularly in formerly Protestant-dominated societies marked by advanced secularization,
growing religious diversity, and widespread interest in spirituality, this meaning making often
takes on a postsecular quality. The extent to which this trend pertains to other European regions
and religious traditions requires further study.
The underlying assumption of this essay has been that knowledge of the processes of religious
transformation is crucial for understanding recent developments in the field of heritage. This
assumption can also be reversed and used to formulate a different question: Does heritage
help explain what is happening in the field of religion? The essay advances the idea that new
religious meanings are being elaborated as communities and municipalities, secular and religious
townspeople, curators, and priests engage with the issues of heritage. Future researchers may
29
ask further questions: what role is heritagization playing in religious change today? And in what
way does the immaterial heritage of European religion provide a resource for new religious
development? How finally does Europe’s built religious heritage form a physical laboratory for
new directions in religion?
Notes
1 This essay began as a keynote speech given at the presentation of the Hemelsbreed report in 2020. As such,
it does not offer a complete picture of religious change nor of heritage discourse and practice in Europe
today, but rather retains the original lecture’s scope and public orientation. A longer version can be found
in Weir 2021: 217–42.
2 For the University of Lucerne interactive map on religious affiliations in Europe,
see: “Religious Affiliation,” Universität Luzern, SMRE data. European Commission 2015.
3 Between 2009 and 2018, church buildings in the Netherlands received 44 percent of all government
subsidies for monumental buildings. Breggen 2020.
4 See the volume that appeared too late to be incorporated into this article: Salemink, Stengs,
and van den Hemel 2022.
5 At present, the Churches Conservation Trust holds in perpetual trust over 350 churches, the Groninger
History Church Foundation has 98 churches and 2 synagogues, while the Frisian Historic Church
Foundation has 51 churches (https://www.visitchurches.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us.html; https://www.
groningerkerken.nl/nl/home; https://aldefrysketsjerken. nl/) (accessed June 14, 2021).
6 ‘ “Le jour de gloire’ des patries ‘est arrivé’ lance àMilan Marine Le Pen” 2019; “Hungary’s Orban
Commiserates with ‘fellow Combatant’ Salvini” 2019.
7 Roberts 2015.
8 See, for example: Redactie politiek 2015.
9 Winkler 2002.
10 “Wat verstaan we onder cultureel erfgoed?”
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PART I
Heritage and Diversity

34
34
35
Muslim Heritage in a Diverse Context

36
36
37
Challenge
Chapter 4
Restoring Muslim Heritage in Europe

HUMAYUN ANSARI
Challenge
In many European non-Muslim imaginations, there exists a stubbornly rooted idea that the
Muslim presence on European soil is a recent import, dating from post-Second World War waves
of immigration. While the history of Muslims in Europe is considerably older, thanks to the fact
that the Ottoman Empire was conceived as an Islamic, Asiatic, “Other” from the Renaissance
onwards, Muslims came to be perceived as the “mirror of Europe,” a threatening homogeneous
mass, unresponsive to change, and inherently unable to integrate. Hence, the Ottoman inheritance
has often been understood to be “in” but not “of” Europe, and this has contributed hugely to the
discursive erasure of European Muslims from a heritage perspective. The notion that Europe and
Islam are fundamentally condemned by the vicissitudes of history to coexist uneasily remains
firmly engrained and, hence, represents a challenge to a more integrated heritage.
The myth of Muslims as eternal outsiders, with cultures and customs that make them forever
inauthentic Europeans, endured in the Balkans with particularly catastrophic effects. Lowenthal’s
comment that “conflict is endemic to heritage” (1996: 234) points to the shattering developments
in Bosnia and Herzegovina—like the Republic of North Macedonia and Albania possessing a
significant Muslim heritage reflecting c. 500 years of Ottoman rule—where cultural and religious
property was systematically obliterated in pursuit of creating visibly Slavic spaces during the
early 1990s. This destruction was aimed not only at removing the living unwanted “Other”;
material traces of the Muslim historic presence, as symbols both of ethno-religious affiliation and
of a historically diverse Bosnian identity, were also erased. When a Croat militiaman belonging
to the unit that destroyed the Old Bridge in Mostar in 1993 was asked why he had participated
in the annihilation of this historic monument, he replied: “It is not enough to clean Mostar of
the Turks, their relics must also be removed” (Riedlmayer, cited in Shatzmiller 2002: 121). The
Arnaudija Mosque, built in Banja Luka in 1595, was one of 927 mosques destroyed or damaged
by Serbian forces during the conflict (Daily Sabah 2017).
And in due course, restoration in this part of Europe became a battle for justice and human
rights—including the right to equality in the public space through the reconstruction of the
physical markers of a community’s identity. The reconstruction of intentionally destroyed
heritage assemblages became almost imperative for the returning ethnically cleansed. It not only
formed part of reestablishing a sense of home and belonging but also represented a powerful
37
act of remembrance and bearing witness to ensure that the attempted rewriting of history by the
perpetrators of ethnic cleansing was overturned. Restoration of key heritage sites also became
a potent way of bearing witness to the historic prewar existence of those communities that had
been ethnically cleansed of reestablishing a visible Muslim presence.
In 2017, the exhibition “Islam, It’s Also Our History! Europe and its Muslim Legacies” was
mounted in Sarajevo, the defiance of its title directly rejecting the perception of Muslims as
outsiders. Covering 1,200 years of Muslim heritage in Europe, it reaffirmed that far from being
a new arrival, Islam virtually since its inception had never been absent from Europe. Offering a
cascade of evidence, it served as a counterpoint to the fears and misinformation toxifying politics
across Europe. But museums today can still find themselves caught between, on the one hand,
what some critics regard as the provocative exhibiting of Islamic art and material culture and, on
the other, the desire to bring people together through encouraging greater tolerance and mutual
respect. Such dilemmas raise key questions about how heritage institutions can contribute to an
understanding and appreciation of Europe’s Muslim experiences.
In current European museum practice, tension between Islamic artistic heritage and orthodox
Muslim views seems to be most prominent in relation to contested images. In the wake of the
2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Islamophobic sentiments fuelled a resurgent “clash of
civilizations” discourse with Muslims again homogenized and denounced. Stereotypes of Islam
as uniquely iconoclastic abounded. But these did not go unchallenged (Meyer and Stordalen
2019). When scholars specializing in Islamic paintings of the Prophet were called upon to
explain whether his images were banned in Islam, they categorically stated that the Quran
did not prohibit figural imagery, referring to the variety of historical devotional images of the
Prophet (Gruber 2015). They pointed instead to numerous artworks bearing the Prophet’s image
on display in museums around the world; for instance, on the bronze medallion in Amsterdam’s
Tropenmuseum; in a miniature painting in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden;
and in a Persian miniature in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Gruber 2019; Malik
2021). Here arguably we see heritage institutions, through open-minded engagement, seeking
to encourage greater tolerance. Importantly, such images can challenge orthodox theological
assumptions underlying conceptions of Islamic art and material culture. By negating normative
Islamic prohibitions, they not only resist popularized puritan zeal among many Muslims but also
accusations of cultural intolerance leveled against Muslims.
As Muslim populations grow across Europe, contestation of their heritage is being played out
in different ways. Demands increase for Islam to be fully incorporated into the European narrative
increasingly challenging the opposition between “us” and “them.” We see this, for instance, in
Spain, where the 2009 commemorations of the 1609 expulsion of Muslims suggested that official
public memory was beginning to make Islam an increasingly visible part of Spanish heritage.
Commentators pointed to an engagement with the legacy of the Moriscos that challenged old
binaries, allowing instead for the possibility of Islam becoming integral to Spain rather than
being reduced to a long forgotten or disparaged historical phenomenon. And yet controversies
surrounding the religious status of the Mezquito-Cathedral of Cordoba point to how far the
character of heritage space remains politically contested. Originally a Visigoth church, the city’s
Great Mosque was constructed on the orders of Abdul-Rahman I in 785 ce, when Córdoba was
the capital of the Muslim-controlled region of Al-Andalus. In 1236 the Christians reconquered
Cordoba and reconsecrated the mosque as a church, with architectural and symbolic changes
38
made to the building. Ever since then, there has been a daily performance of the Catholic liturgy.
In contrast, Muslim prayer is a criminal offence. In 2010, when visiting Austrian Muslims
decided to infringe the ban, they were immediately arrested by the police. Controversy around
the status of the Mosque-Cathedral had been simmering since 2006, when a prominent convert
to Islam, Dr. Mansur Abdussalam Escudero (1948–2010) wrote to the Pope asking him to allow
Muslims to pray there. The plea to share this religious space was rejected by the Spanish Church.
Ruggles (Silverman 2011: 57) contends that this opposition to Muslim devotion is less about the
act of praying itself than resistance to the potential political power of Spain’s growing Muslim
community desiring recognition and legitimation.
Developments in Cordoba have had international ramifications too. The building’s contested
status was deployed by Turkish authorities as justification for the conversion of Hagia Sophia
from a museum into a mosque. Constructed as a cathedral in 537, under Ottoman rule the Hagia
Sophia was converted in 1453 into Aya Sofia Mosque, with minarets added in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. In 1934, President Ataturk, a secularist, turned it into a museum and
religious services were banned. In July 2020, the Turkish state revoked its museum status and
converted it back into a mosque. This decision sparked international condemnation from Western
governments and Christian leaders, including Pope Francis, who expressed his great “distress.”
Ironically, so far there has been no response from the Vatican to Spanish Muslim requests to
pray in Cordoba’s Mezquito-Cathedral. (Interestingly, the Brick Lane Mosque in the East End of
London—which was originally built in 1743 as a French Huguenot Church, then converted into
a synagogue in 1898 before taking on its current use as a mosque in 1975—has not experienced
any contestation despite its unambiguous shared heritage [Historic England n.d.a.)
These and other instances of disputed heritage have been caught up in highly polarized
political debates. Such developments reinforce the critical need to challenge narratives that
appeal to fear and hostility toward minority communities. Likewise, they create pressure to
deliver a more inclusive past, using heritage in group identity maintenance strategies as well as
encouraging minorities to participate in the heritage of the majority populations. As Stuart Hall
noted, “The National Heritage is a powerful source of such meanings. It follows that those who
cannot see themselves reflected in its mirror cannot properly ‘belong’ ” (Hall 1999: 4). Including
excluded communities creates opportunities for them to connect with the notions that influence
contemporary European ideals and cultural norms. In heritage sites, a sense of collective memory
and shared belonging is created “when collectives come together to recall significant events,
events which tell them who they are as a group” (Winter 2006: 154). Hence, a shared, more
inclusive, history of “contribution and sacrifice” can be mobilized through memorialization.
Take, for instance, the 2014–18 centenary commemorations of the First World War, which
offered an important opportunity for British Muslims to recover and share their collective
heritage. In the restoration of the town of Woking’s neglected early twentieth-century Muslim
burial ground, we see the living struggle of Muslim heritage-making in Britain and, thanks to
support for this initiative, Muslims’ symbolic inclusion in the national community. Responsibility
for the maintenance of this small cemetery—completed in 1917 as the First World War took
its catastrophic toll of fighting men (including hundreds of thousands of Indian Muslims)—
passed into the hands of the then newly formed Imperial War Graves Commission in 1921. Over
subsequent years, however, the site fell into disrepair, apparently due to the Commission’s policy
of differentiating between the treatment of so-called white graves and those of “natives” (Barrett
39
2007: 451). As the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s own 2021 report acknowledged,
“pervasive racism” meant that non-white casualties were commemorated “unequally”
(Commonwealth War Graves Commission 2021: 10). The burial ground’s derelict condition was
in stark contrast to the pristinely maintained Brookwood Military Cemetery nearby. In 1969,
with anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise, its Muslim graves were vandalized, and the racist
National Front defaced the dilapidated commemorative plaque at its entrance. Fears that further
desecration of these graves might take place led to exhumation and transfer to Brookwood. The
original site remained neglected until in 1984—following concerted campaigning by Woking’s
growing community of Muslims with support of culture preservation groups—Historic England
recognized it as a structure of “special historic interest” (Historic England 2010), though little
attention continued to be paid to its crumbling condition. Only when the First World War centenary
loomed on the horizon did Historic England have a change of heart and undertake to fund its
renovation. In November 2015, with much fanfare, the site was reopened as a memorial garden.
Since then, an annual ritual dedicated to an inclusive remembering of the past validates Muslim
belonging within wider British society. The Last Post is sounded, reprising the military honours
originally paid—at the request of the imam of Woking’s Shahjahan Mosque (built in 1889, it
is accredited by Historic England as a site of special architectural interest)—to a gallant First
World War Indian Muslim soldier interred at Brookwood following his demise at the Western
Front (Historic England n.d.b). And while this historic space has its roots in colonial memory,
local Muslim residents have imbued it with twenty-first-century meaning and value. No longer
a marginal memorial located “outside” the mainstream narrative, the former burial ground is
now a shared heritage site, one that directly challenges engrained histories of empire and creates
opportunities for decolonizing British minds more broadly.
As these cases reiterate, the important first step when it comes to acknowledging and preserving
Muslim heritage in Europe is to challenge misconceptions about Muslims as the historical
“Other,” that make them forever “untrue” Europeans. Rather, more ecumenical narratives need to
be articulated. Recognition of its plural religious heritage could constitute the point of departure
for building a more inclusive Europe. Heritage provides us with the means through which to
share memories in ways that integrate and attune different perspectives. The challenge, however,
is to develop histories that establish Islam not as an alien (and threatening) presence for European
identity (whatever this may mean), but rather as an integral and valuable element within Europe’s
past, its present, and its future.
References
Barrett, M. (2007), “Subalterns at War,” Interventions 9 (3): 451–74.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (2021), “Report of the Special Committee to Review
Inequalities in Commemoration (2021).” https://www.cwgc.org/media/noantj4i/report-of-the-special-
committee-to-review-historical-inequalities-in-commemoration.pdf (accessed April 26, 2021).
Daily Sabah (2017), “Mosque Destroyed During Bosnian War to be Rebuilt with Turkish Initiative,” April
20. https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2017/04/20/mosque-destroyed-during-bosnian-war-to-be-rebu
ilt-with-turkish-initiative (accessed April 26, 2021).
Gruber, C. (2015), “The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet,” Newsweek. https://www.newsw
eek.com/koran-does-not-forbid-images-prophet-298298 (accessed April 26, 2021).
40
Gruber, C. (2019), The Image Debate: Figural representation in Islam and Across the World.
London: Gingko.
Hall, S. (1999), “Un-Settling ‘the Heritage’, Re-Imagining the Post-Nation. Whose Heritage?,” Third Text
13 (49): 3–13.
Historic England (n.d.a), “Brick Lane Jamme Masjid (Former Neuve Eglise).” https://historicengland.org.
uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1240697 (accessed April 26, 2021).
Historic England (n.d.b), “Shah Jahan Mosque.” https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/
list-entry/1264438 (accessed April 26, 2021).
Historic England (2010), “Muslim Burial Ground.” https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/
list-entry/1236560 (accessed April 26, 2021).
Lowenthal, D. (1996), Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History.
New York: Free Press.
Malik, N. (2021), “Compulsory Worship of National Symbols is the Sure Sign of a Culture in Decline,”
Guardian, April 19. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/19/worship-national-symb
ols-culture-decline-flags-statues (accessed April 26, 2021).
Meyer, B., and Stordalen, T. (eds.) (2019), Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam: Contested Desires. London: Bloomsbury.
Ruggles, D. F. (2011), “The Stratigraphy of Forgetting: The Great Mosque of Cordoba and Its Contested
Legacy,” in H. Silverman (ed.), Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure and
Exclusion in a Global World. New York: Springer.
Shatzmiller, M. (ed.) (2002), Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic
States. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Silverman, H. (ed.) (2011), Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure and Exclusion in
a Global World. New York: Springer.
Winter, J. (2006), Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth
Century. New Haven: Yale University Press.
41
42
Analysis
Chapter 5
Present Politics of a Multireligious Past: The

Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba Case Study
MAR GRIERA
Analysis
Introduction
The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1984,
and nowadays is one of the most visited historical sites in Europe. Its popularity and publicly
recognized value lie in two major aspects. First, it has characteristics that allow it to be identified
as an “architectural icon,” whose magnificence, beauty, and uniqueness generate an aesthetic
power that cannot be reduced to what it represents (Bartmański and Alexander 2012). Second, it
is considered as an emblematic evidence of the Al-Andalus legacy and a material testimony of
an exceptional historical period of multireligious coexistence (Arigita 2013). This double value
makes the Mosque-Cathedral a highly attractive destination for global tourism and a powerful
symbolic marker of identity at the local level and beyond.
However, there is also another aspect that contributes to the singularity of the Mosque-
Cathedral. It is a regular Catholic Cathedral where Catholic liturgy is performed each day. In
addition, the Catholic character of the monument is emphasized by the high number of Catholic
ornaments that decorate the edifice. However, in architectural terms, the building is easily
recognized as a mosque, and due to its artistic value is considered one of the most important
Islamic monuments in the Western world. This blending of the Christian and Islamic tradition
in the same building, and the intertwining of Christian and Islamic past, bestows a character of
uniqueness to the site.
In the past two decades, the Mosque-Cathedral has acquired new visibility as the object of
passionate controversies (Astor, Burchardt, and Griera 2019; Fiorin, 2019; Lamprakos 2016).
The Catholic Church has fiercely asserted its real and symbolic proprietorship of the Mosque-
Cathedral, and has reinforced a narrative and a tourist dispositive reaffirming the Christian
character of the building. In parallel, local and national secularist groups have leveled at the
Catholic Church the accusation of attempting to erase the Islamic past and voiced the ambition of
turning the monument into a public museum managed by the local and/or regional government.
Simultaneously, the Mosque-Cathedral has increasingly featured in multiple global forums as a
powerful icon of aspirations for religious pluralism in contemporary Europe, and it is attracting
42
Present Politics of a Multireligious Past
more and more tourists seeking out traces of authentic cross-religious, diverse encounters.
Anchored in these discourses, there have been (unsuccessful) proposals to convert the Mosque-
Cathedral into a space of interreligious encounters.
The controversy around the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba is particularly interesting to analyze
since it reveals the complex intertwining of issues of identity, religious diversity, memory, and
politics in the configuration of contemporary regimes of religious heritage in Europe. The conflict
has not emerged by coincidence but is the result of the transformation of the European religious
landscapes with the spread of secularization, the growth of Islamic minorities in Europe, and
the repositioning of Christian groups in the public sphere (Höhne and Meireis 2020; Casanova
2001). In this context, debates about the role of religious—mainly Christian or/and Judeo-
Christian—sources of national and European identities have gained political traction and public
visibility. Amid this scenario, cultural and religious heritage sites, such as the Mosque-Cathedral
of Cordoba, acquire new currency through their use as illustrations of specific narratives on
European religious pasts, as well as shedding light on possible futures (Griera, Burchardt, and
Astor 2019). However, the meaning and historical significance of heritage is neither objective
nor stable. Narratives around heritage sites are contingent, context-sensitive, and subject to the
interpretation of multiple observers. In addition, the characteristics of the present times, and of
current political-cultural constellations, shape how the past(s) are being perceived, interpreted,
and used in contemporary controversies around heritage sites such as the Mosque-Cathedral of
Cordoba. The past is not objective, but open to negotiation and transformation in line with the
dominant cultural narratives circulating in the present.
In the following pages, I examine the main narratives about the historical meaning, legitimate
ownership, and possible future(s) of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba. My main argument
is that we can distinguish between three competing political-cultural narratives, each of them
articulated around a specific network of events, actors, and things, and each of them engaging
simultaneously with the past and the future of the Mosque-Cathedral as well as, more broadly, the
past and the future of Spain and Europe. The chapter describes how these narratives are mobilized,
enacted, negotiated, and contested, and shows how they are woven around very specific, symbolic
elements, which are used not only to anchor the discourse but also to validate the claims being
made. The three narratives are embedded into a more general process of heritagization of the
Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba and of its surroundings, and reveal the tensions related to the
demarcation of value, and around the processes of management of the monument in terms of
architectonic preservation, tourist infrastructures, and control of economic revenues.
The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba: Presentation and Main Controversies

UNESCO first included the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba on the World Heritage List in 1984,
and in 1994, this designation was extended to the entire old city center of Cordoba. Currently, the
Mosque-Cathedral is one of the most important tourist attractions in Spain. More than two million
people visited the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba in 2019 (Navajas-Romero et al. 2020), and the
number of visitors has been regularly increasing over the last ten years. The Mosque-Cathedral
has been rated as one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions in several rankings, (see
Chalasani 2016) and has been recognized with several awards, such as the Tripadvisor Travelers’
Choice Awards.
43
According to UNESCO, the “outstanding universal value” of the Mosque-Cathedral of

Cordoba lies in two major aspects. First, it “represents a unique artistic achievement due to its
size and the sheer boldness of the height of its ceilings” (UNESCO n.d.). The Mosque-Cathedral
has been considered an “architectural icon” (Bartmański and Alexander 2012), and its beauty has
been considered its foremost asset. Despite the common difficulties associated with objective
assessments of beauty, consensus on the magnificence of the Mosque-Cathedral edifice has been
unanimous (Anderson 2002; Arigita 2006), as has the estimation of the quality of its interior,
which, with “its multitude of double-tiered, interlacing arches, offers one the distinct feeling of
entering a vast, incomprehensible, and divine forest of columns” (Luber 2020: 44).
However, the Mosque-Cathedral also owes its “outstanding universal value” to its important
historical significance. As it is described on the UNESCO webpage, “It is an irreplaceable
testimony of the Caliphate of Cordoba” and one of the most emblematic representations of
Al-Andalus civilization. The Mosque-Cathedral is a symbol of the Mediterranean cultures and of
the fluidity of social, geographical, and religious boundaries over the centuries. To some extent,
the beauty of the monument is also linked to its civic value (Forte and Fusco 2009) and serves to
illustrate and give a material dimension to a complex and non-unitary past.
The Umayyad dynasty established a powerful empire in the Iberian Peninsula (eighth to
eleventh centuries) (Lamprakos 2018), and the Great Mosque of Cordoba was built under this
reign. The mosque was constructed in several phases but its first promoter was the Umayyad
Emir of Cordoba, Abd al-Rahman I in 786. The mosque was initially planned to serve as a Friday
Mosque (masjid jamai) but it was transformed and expanded by his successors, reaching the
current size by the end of the tenth century (Monteiro 2011). As Michele Lamprakos states: “The
result is a fantastic, maze-like interior that presents the visitor with endless and constantly shifting
vistas” (Lamprakos 2018: 65).
However, the so-called Christian Reconquista changed the situation. The Reconquista was a
political and military campaign led by Christian kings with the aim to take over the territory of the
Iberian Peninsula, which was occupied by the Moors in the seventh century. The last phase was
the invasion of Andalusia by the King of Castile, Ferdinand III, who conquered Cordoba in 1236
and Seville in 1248. Soon after the conquest, strongly influenced by the spirit of the Christian
“crusades,” the Mosque-Cathedral was converted into a church through the ritual of purification
and consecration, and dedicated to the avocation of the Virgin Mary (D’Arcy 2013: 116).
Initially, the architectural Islamic form of the mosque was left almost intact. Nevertheless, during
the sixteenth century, several architectural interventions were developed. For example, under
the reign of Carlos V interventions were made to convert it into a more clearly recognizable
cathedral. Especially remarkable is the traditional cruciform built in the center, in which the mass
was performed (Monteiro 2011: 316).
The historical relevance of the Mosque-Cathedral goes beyond the specific architectonic
edifice and also relates to its location within the historical center of the city of Cordoba. Numerous
traces of the complex, vivid, and singular multireligious past are embedded in the city center’s
urban fabric and materiality. The UNESCO description of the site reflects and reinscribes this
multilayered past when it says: “The Historic Centre of Cordoba creates the perfect urban and
landscape setting for the Mosque. It reflects thousands of years of occupation by different cultural
groups—Roman, Visigoth, Islam, Judaism and Christian—, that all left a mark” (UNESCO n.d.).
However, the UNESCO description of the site is rather generic and totally omits the strong
44
controversies surrounding the legality and legitimacy of the Mosque-Cathedral’s ownership that
have taken place in recent decades, and that have intensified in the last few years. The history
of the ownership controversy contains many twists and turns, but crystallizes in four distinct
moments.
First, in 2006, through an obscure legal procedure known as “immatriculation” (Astor,
Burchardt, and Griera 2019) facilitated by the Spanish conservative government of José Maria
Aznar, the Catholic Church was able to register the Mosque Cathedral as its own property, paying
the small amount of thirty euros in fees.
The second important moment occurred in 2010 when a group of members of the association
of Austrian Muslim Youth who were visiting the Mosque, went on their knees in front of the
mihrab, and “were immediately obstructed by the security guards, and eventually the police were
called to forcibly remove them from the site … Six individuals were later charged with crimes
against public order, and two more were jailed, facing additional charges, including ‘crimes
against religious sentiment’ ” (Monteiro 2011: 315). The incident was widely reported by the
global media, and the legitimacy of the Catholic Church was publicly questioned.
The third moment is when Europa Laica (a Spanish secular organization) organized a
campaign against the immatriculation, which brought the case of the Mosque-Cathedral
to public attention. In this context, the role of Antonio Manuel Rodríguez, a professor of
law at the University of Cordoba and a charismatic local figure, was key in amplifying the
campaign, and in giving it public visibility. However, he was not the only one. Many other
local activists also raised concerns, and all together decided to found an organization to protest
the immatriculation and to campaign for the building to be turned into a public museum. The
local organization promoted a public petition on change.org named “Save the Mosque of
Cordoba. Mosque-Cathedral. Everyone’s Heritage,” which obtained 390,000 signatures and
contributed to making the controversy highly visible. The platform bolstered another petition
when, in 2014, Google Maps deleted the name “Cordoba Mosque” and substituted it with
“Cathedral of Cordoba” (the two petitions were subsequently blended into one). After the
petition and the media attention attracted by the issue, Google Maps once again changed the
designation.
Fourth and finally, in 2016, a public commission chaired by UNESCO’s former president,
Federico Mayor Zaragoza, and commissioned by Cordoba City Council, published an expert
report on the appropriateness of placing the building under public ownership, as has been effected
with other historical sites. This report has been discredited by the Catholic Church and by other
conservative actors.
These are the basic elements that describe the controversy and that allow one to understand
its grammar,1 but this is still an open dispute from which new episodes are constantly emerging.
Uses of the Past, Imaginations of the Future

Bartmanski and Alexander observe that “icons are not only aesthetic/material representations”
(2012: 3), but they are also symbols in which affective and ideational meanings resonate. In other
words, “their concrete materiality points beyond itself to the elusive but very real domains of
feeling and thought” (3). On some occasions, what sociologists consider the “very real domains
of feeling and thought” might take different shapes and become contested arenas for different
45
populations. The analysis of the Mosque-Cathedral controversy reveals that the monument
resonates very differently depending on which audience approaches it. While for some actors
the Mosque-Cathedral is the emblem of Al-Andalusian pluralism and convivencia, for others it
represents the victory of Christianity over Islam, while for others it is a symbol of the identity
of the city and of the Andalusian community. These different resonances are mobilized through
stories, artifacts, and metaphors, articulated in a political narrative, and play a key role in the
heritagization process of the monument.
The Christian Narrative

The Christian narrative unfolds and takes shape through the idea that before the mosque there
was a Visigoth Christian church, known as the Church of San Vicente Martir. Therefore, the
central argument is that the Mosque was erected over “Christian soil,” and thus the first historical
layer of the site is Christian and not Islamic.
As Rosa and Jóver-Báez suggest, this explanation fosters the idea that the Reconquista of
“Andalusia by King Ferdinand III was, first and foremost, a victory of Christianity over Islam”
(2017: 141). From this perspective, the conversion of the mosque into a church is considered and
explained as being a legitimate process, and the construction of the mosque and its functioning
as a mosque during the Al-Andalus period are read as only one of multiple historical layers in
a complex evolution of long duration. The official website for the site clearly illustrates this
strategy of downplaying the Islamic period by endowing it with equivalent symbolic relevance
to previous and subsequent changes.
Archeological material and the exhibition of this material play a central role for this Christian
narrative. The initial excavations, focused on finding traces of the original church, that were
undertaken by Félix Hernández between 1920 and 1930 are taken as an anchor point from which
to develop and display these ideas. Yet there are strong and increasing scientific claims against
the idea that there was a previous church on the site (Arce-Sainz 2015), or at least one in the
form currently envisaged by the Catholic Church. Despite this, in 2005, the Church created the
Museum of Saint Vicente, which, through the exhibition of the ruins seeks to validate claims of
the “true Christian nature of the site.” The most symbolic element of this display is to be found
“near the entrance of the oldest part of the Mosque Cathedral: a Plexiglas viewing window on
the floor, in which visitors can gaze down three meters beneath to view a mosaic floor described
as being from a building attached to the Visigoth church” (Rosa and Jover-Báez 2017: 142). The
Catholic Church has invested considerable effort and money in the display of these archeological
ruins because from the existence of these ruins the official Catholic discourse on the monument’s
legitimate ownership is derived, as well as the discourse on its cultural meaning. To some extent,
the existence of the ruins supplies the Catholic Church with the possibility of creating a Christian
foundational myth and a narrative of continuity from the distant past to now, presenting the
Islamic presence as a momentary disruptive and alien incursion. In this narration, the everyday
performance of Catholic mass stands as a symbolic, but also tangible, illustration of such
continuity. This narrative is also embedded into a more general discourse of the Spanish Catholic
Church on heritage, which is built around the idea that the maintaining of the “religious life” of
church buildings is the more successful mechanism to preserve the monuments and protect the
Catholic heritage.
46
The Secular Narrative

The second narrative is the one that has assumed relevance, and public visibility, around the
controversy over the immatriculation of the Mosque-Cathedral. This is a narrative initially
developed and mobilized by local leftist activists gathered around the “Mezquita-Cathedral
Platform. Patrimony for all” (Plataforma Mezquita Catedral, Patrimonio de Todxs). The platform
has actively campaigned for the recognition of the public character of the building, drawing from
a number of repertoires of mobilization and protest. The most popular was the organization of an
online public petition through change.org, which, as I already mentioned, was signed by almost
400,000, and widely reported on by the media. The petition also won the support of four former
mayors of the city, and of many public personalities. In the dissemination and legitimization
of the “secular narrative,” the online petition marked a symbolic turning point. The grammar
of the petition, as a democratic, participatory, transparent, and modern form of truth claiming,
encapsulates the same values and ideas that this narrative advances.
The manifesto, and the platform’s discourse, is articulated around three parallel points: first,
the need to transfer the ownership of the monument to the public authorities and return the
building to the “people” of Cordoba. Second, to promote measures to ensure the transparent and
accountable management of the patrimony. Third, to arrest the process of (re)Christianization of
the site, to use the name Mosque-Cathedral (instead of simply Cathedral) and to not undermine
the Islamic past in the descriptions of the monument in brochures and the like.
The main argument behind these claims is that the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba has played
a central role in local history as an important space of encounter for the city’s inhabitants and as
a symbolic marker of local identity. The building is entangled, and historically has been deeply
entangled, with local memories, urban dynamics, and city events. In their view, in a secular
society where the Catholic Church holds no monopoly over public life and no longer represents
the majority of the population, the Mosque-Cathedral should not belong to a private entity such
as the Catholic Church. According to this line of argument, the state is the legitimate actor to take
the role of the owner of the monument, to organize and manage its maintenance, and to retain
control over the narrative that it articulates. It is also proposed that the revenue obtained from the
tourist exploitation of the monument should revert to the benefit of all the people of Cordoba,
and not to the Church alone.
Attempts to turn the Mosque-Cathedral into a public institution are not new. During the
1930s, a proposal was made along these lines, and during the 1970s, this was even mooted as
a possibility by the state. In addition, as mentioned earlier, a public commission initiated by
the City Council with the aim of clarifying the ownership of the mosque and presided over by
former UNESCO President Federico Mayor Zaragoza issued the same recommendation (Astor,
Burchardt, and Griera 2017).
The Pluralistic Narrative

There is a third narrative that has gained currency in recent decades, which emphasizes the role
of the Mosque-Cathedral as an emblem of the past multireligious coexistence and as a source of
inspiration amid the religious diversification of European landscapes. The Mosque-Cathedral is
taken as a material illustration of the idea of “convivencia,” and as a material anchorage for plural
conceptions of the past. The basic idea behind this narrative is the development of what Ramin
47
Yahanbegloo calls the “Cordoba Paradigm.” This paradigm, according to the anthropologist
Elena Arigita, is based on the vision that “the history of Al-Andalus plays a central role as a
model and reference point for a counter-narrative designed to welcome Islam and subvert the
powerful image of Islam as the historical ‘other’ for Europe and the West” (Arigita 2013: 22).
From this perspective, Islam should not be considered as an alien and threatening presence for
European identity, but on the contrary, Islam must be recognized as an integral part of European
history.
This plural narrative has been mainly developed by public intellectuals from Spain and
elsewhere, and locally mobilized by the Spanish Muslim Community. The role of a group of
Muslim converts has been essential in the public dissemination of these ideas, while new and
recent Islamic communities—mainly consisting of economic migrants from Morocco—have
largely remained aloof from the controversy. Mikaela Rogozen-Soltar notes that:
Spanish converts to Islam … are flocking to Andalusia from
all over Spain in search of the religious and cultural legacy of
Al-Andalus (Dietz 2005). The rhetoric they espouse about Islam
and Andalusia reflects a nostalgic, romantic longing for a return
of Islam, not through terrorism or exclusionary fundamentalism of
any kind, but through conversions, leading to a gradual return of
the “convivencia” during which supposedly Jews, Muslims, and
Christians co-existed peacefully in order to cross-pollinate each
community’s advances in cosmopolitan liberalism (2007: 875).
The aspirations of the Muslim convert community have been publicly voiced not only in the
Andalusian and Spanish arena but also beyond. The local convert association, Junta Islámica,
has even sent open letters to the Pope petitioning for the Mosque-Cathedral to be converted
into an “ecumenical temple” in which both Muslims and Christians can pray. The narrative has
triggered expressions of solidarity from Muslim communities all over the world and has also
won the affiliation of public intellectuals and proponents of cosmopolitanism. The narrative
has received global media attention every time that a group of Muslims has tried to pray in the
premises of the Mosque-Cathedral, and the guards have aggressively chased them away. The
global diffusion of specific episodes where Muslims have attempted to pray and have been
expelled from the temple or even fined and detained by the police has made this a famous
and widely commented-upon issue. The majority of press articles appearing in global media
such as The Guardian, the BBC, and Al Jazeera offer detailed explanations, with testimonies
and examples, of this prohibition. These episodes conform to a grammar of storytelling that is
very powerful in the images it conveys. To some extent, the prohibition of praying endows an
embodied shape to the perceived intolerance of the Catholic Church and generates solidarity
and empathy with those arguing for another understanding of the monument’s history, and of
the meaning of the monument.
Not by coincidence, Junta Islámica in their campaigns to turn the Mosque-Cathedral into
an ecumenical temple have also organized several “prayer protests” in front of the building as
a mobilization tactic to gain public attention and make their claims. In the last decade, many
interreligious associations have also taken sides, and supported the idea of transforming
the Mosque-Cathedral into a symbol of religious coexistence in contemporary Europe. The
48
organization of several international interreligious forums in the city of Cordoba (Griera 2020)
has contributed to giving more weight to this narrative.
However, it is also important to state that the Islamic community is not homogeneous, and
there are also several voices that are not represented in this perspective. On the one hand, the
perspective of most of the migrant Islamic communities of Andalusia has not been heard, and
they have not actively participated (nor have they been asked to) participate in the debate. They
are usually economic migrants belonging to the lower levels of the social strata, with high legal
and economic insecurity, and most of them do not want to engage in public controversies. There
are also the voices of Al-Qaeda or ISIS that in some of their discourses have claimed their dreams
of conquering Al-Andalus and the Mosque-Cathedral again. However, these types of claims are
strongly confronted, and dismissed, by the local Muslim community (Jiménez 2015).
Concluding Reflections
Historical landmark buildings, such as the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, are “material
objectivations” (Steets 2017), the iconicity of which lies in their combination of symbolic and
phenomenological power. The materiality and sensory qualities of the building—from its beauty
to its magnificence—interact with its symbolic dimension, and with the narratives that interpret
its meaning and relevance. In line with Bartmanski and Fuller, it is possible to state that “meaning
cannot be reduced merely to discursive structures, as it is not reducible to pure phenomenological
input. Instead, it emerges out of the process of reciprocal conditioning between experience and
discourse, sensory encounter and articulation” (2018: 3). However, in this case, this process
of “reciprocal conditioning” between the phenomenological and the discursive dimension has
become a contested terrain in which distinct actors mobilize different resources (legal, artistic,
historic, etc.) to advance a specific interpretation of the symbolic but also of the moral meaning
of the building.
Heritage is relational and monuments such as the Mosque-Cathedral are embedded in a dense
web of cultural, political, economic and religious forces. The three narratives that have emerged
in recent years are dependent on the changes, and challenges of contemporary Europe and on
debates about its future. As Mukerji (2012) notes, architectural heritage can become a tool
for “political pedagogy” as it offers a materiality that is able to embody ideas, and materially
articulate abstract imaginations. However, in this case, three very different political projects
compete to use the Mosque-Cathedral as a tool for “political pedagogy”; three different projects
that, as already mentioned, are tied to a contemporary political constellation of ideas, which
builds its arguments over particular conceptions and moral evaluations of historical and cultural
developments. In this regard, the Christian narrative is historically articulated around the idea
of the “Christian nation,” which has gained public visibility with the rise of extreme right-
wing populist parties and movements in Spain and Europe. In this case, the strong efforts to
authenticate the Christian origin of the Mosque-Cathedral are closely linked with the aim
of advancing an agenda emphasizing the Christian character of the European continent. On
the contrary, the secular agenda is based on a historical reading that outlines the public and
communitarian dimension of a monument like the Mosque-Cathedral, and that considers
that public bodies should be the ones to guarantee the preservation and management of the
monument. In this case, arguments revolve around ideas such as democracy, accountability, and
49
transparency. Finally, the third narrative is the one articulated through the idea of pluralism.
The recognition of the plural past, and the richness of this plurality, constitutes the point of
departure for building a more inclusive and cosmopolitan Europe. From this perspective, the
Mosque-Cathedral symbolically condenses ideas of tolerance, dialogue, and coexistence and
becomes the material illustration of a possible future. These narratives are not stable but evolve
in dialogue with a changing present and imagined futures, and are dependent on the political
atmosphere and the evolution of identity politics in Europe.
Note
1 For a more detailed analysis see, Monteiro (2010); Lamprakos (2016, 2018); Rosa and Jover-Báez (2017);
and Astor, Burchardt, and Griera (2019).
References
Arce-Sainz, F. (2015), “La supuesta basílica de San Vicente en Córdoba: de mito histórico a obstinación
historiográfica,” Al-Qanṭara 36 (1): 11–44.
Arigita, E. (2006), “Representing Islam in Spain: Muslim identities and the contestation of leadership,”
The Muslim World, 96(4), 563.
Arigita, E. (2013), “The ‘Cordoba Paradigm’: Memory and Silence around Europe’s Islamic Past,” in
F. Peter, S. Dornhof, and E. Arigita (eds.), Islam and the Politics of Culture in Europe: Memory,
A Esthetics, Art, 21–40. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Anderson, G. (2002), “The Cathedral in the Mosque and the Two Palaces: Additions to the Great Mosque
of Cordoba and the Alhambra during the Reign of Charles V,” Thresholds 25 (Fall 2022): 48–55.
Astor, A., M. Burchardt, and M. Griera (2017), ‘The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to
Religion as Culture in Spain,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56 (1): 126–42.
Astor, A., M. Burchardt, and M. Griera (2019), “Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s
Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage,” Qualitative Sociology 42 (3): 337–60.
Bartmański, D., and J. C. Alexander (2012), ‘Introduction: Materiality and Meaning in Social
Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology,” in D. Bartmański, J. C. Alexander, and B. Giesen
(eds.), Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life, 1–12. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bartmanski, D., and M. Fuller (2018), “Reconstructing Berlin: Materiality and Meaning in the Symbolic
Politics of Urban Space,” City, 22 (2): 202–19.
Casanova, J. (2001), “Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization.” Sociology of Religion 62
(4): 415–41.
Chalasani, R. (2016), “The World’s Most Popular Tourist Attractions,” CBS News, May 20. https://www.
cbsnews.com/pictures/worlds-most-popular-tourist-attractions-landmarks/15/ (accessed February
20, 2021).
D’Arcy, S. (2013), “An ‘Unbecoming’ Cohabitation? Reconsidering the Narrative of the Cathedral-
Mosque of Cordoba,” Idea Journal 13 (1): 114–29.
Fiorin, F. (2019), “Owning the Past, Controlling the Present: The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba.” MA
Diss., Unpublished manuscript. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331408302_Owning_the_
Past_Controlling_the_Present_The_Mosque-Cathedral_of_Cordoba (accessed October 5, 2022).
Forte, F., and L. F. Girard (2009), ‘Creativity and New Architectural Assets: The Complex Value of
Beauty,” International Journal of Sustainable Development 12 (2–4): 160–91.
Griera, M., M. Burchardt, and A. Astor (2019), “European Identities, Heritage, and the Iconic Power of
Multi-Religious Buildings: Cordoba’s Mosque Cathedral and Berlin’s House of One,” in G. Giordan,
and A. P. Lynch (eds.), Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 10: Interreligious
Dialogue, 13–31. Leiden: Brill.
50
Griera, M. (2020), “The Many Shapes of Interreligious Relations in Contemporary Spain: Activism,
Governance and Diplomacy,” Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in
Contemporary Society 6 (2): 317–41.
Höhne, F., and T. Meireis (eds.) (2020), Religion and Neo-Nationalism in Europe (vol. 7). Berlin: Nomos
Verlag.
Jimenez, Gema N. (2015), “Los musulmanes niegan que en Córdoba exista ‘caldo de cultivo’ para el
terrorismo,” El Dia de Córdoba, January 18. https://www.eldiadecordoba.es/cordoba/musulmanes-
Cordoba-exista-cultivo-terrorismo_0_881612160.html (accessed June 2, 2023).
Lamprakos, M. (2016), “Memento Mauri: The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba,” in N. Rebbat, and P.
Karimi (eds.), The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoleon to ISIS, Aggregate Architectural
History Collaborative, Online resource. http://we-aggregate.org/piece/memento-mauri-the-mosque-
cathedral-of-cordoba (accessed October 5, 2022).
Lamprakos, M. (2018), “Arquitectura, memoria y futuro. La mezquita-catedral de Córdoba,”
Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte 17: 43–74.
Luber, D. W. (2020), A Prolegomena to a New Study of Ornament: Architecture as Embodied Ornament in
the Great Mosque of Córdoba. PhD Diss., Department of Art History, University of Texas, Austin.
Monteiro, L. D. (2011), “The Mezquita of Córdoba Is Made of More Than Bricks: Towards a Broader
Definition of the ‘Heritage’ Protected at UNESCO World Heritage Sites,” Archaeologies 7 (2): 312–28.
Mukerji, C. (2012), “Space and Political Pedagogy at the Gardens of Versailles,” Public Culture 24
(368): 509–34.
Navajas-Romero, V., R. D. Hernández-Rojas, A. Hidalgo-Fernández, and J. A. Jimber Del Rio (2020),
“Tourist Loyalty and Mosque Tourism: The Case of the Mosque-Cathedral in Córdoba (Spain),” PLOS
ONE 15 (12).
Rogozen-Soltar, M. (2007), “Al-Andalus in Andalusia: Negotiating Moorish History and Regional
Identity in Southern Spain,” Anthropological Quarterly 80 (3): 863–86.
Rosa, B., and J. Jover-Báez (2017), “Contested Urban Heritage: Discourses of Meaning and Ownership of
the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, Spain,” Journal of Urban Cultural Studies 4 (1–2): 127–54.
Steets, S. (2017), “Seductive Atmospheres, Conflicting Symbols: Religious Landmark Buildings in
Diverse Societies,” Eurostudia 12 (1): 125–35.
UNESCO (n.d.), “Historic Centre of Cordoba,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/313 (accessed November
20, 2019).
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52
Case Study
Chapter 6
Muslim Heritage Trails: Making Visible

Britain’s Muslim Past
THARIK HUSSAIN
Case Study
This case study details how a British grassroots heritage organization called the Everyday
Muslim Archive and Heritage Initiative (EMAHI) developed a pioneering project that makes
visible and accessible a neglected and marginalized segment of Britain’s religious past. The aim
is to describe the challenge this type of heritage faces in the wider national and European context
before detailing the rationale and development of EMAHI’s project and identifying best practices
for students and professionals in the interdisciplinary fields of religious heritage.
Context
The history of Islam in Europe can be traced back to the very first generation that lived at the time
of the Prophet Muhammad. A Muslim fleet is known to have successfully landed on the island
of Cyprus around 649 ce within fifteen years of Muhammad’s death (Ekaterini 1995: 7–8). Less
than a century later, in 711 CE, Muslims from North Africa made their way across the Straits
of Gibraltar to establish an Islamic presence in the Iberian Peninsula that would last more than
seven centuries (Menocal 2002: 6). At around the same time, at the opposite end of Europe, on
the small island known by the Romans as Provincia Britannia, an Anglo-Saxon king named Offa
held the throne of a territory that corresponds geographically more or less with today’s England.
King Offa minted a curious gold coin that would come to be known as “Offa’s dirham.” The coin
pays homage to Al Mansur, the Muslim Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, features part of the Islamic
declaration of faith, and is dated to the Islamic year 157 AH (approximately 774 CE)—all in
Arabic. The naive nature of the script suggests the minter was not familiar with Arabic. The
coin also has the Latin inscription “Offa Rex” on it (Beckett 2003: 1–2, 58). The true purpose of
Offa’s dirham remains a mystery, but what is clear is that Britain had encountered Islam just over
a century after it was “born.”
This means that some Britons have been familiar with Islam and Muslims for at least thirteen
centuries. Over that time, a number of extraordinary incidents and exchanges have taken place
between British and Muslim cultures of which there are narratives; yet very little, if anything,
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Muslim Heritage Trails
appears in the popular or authorized histories of Britain. Even Offa’s dirham sits in the British
Museum’s Anglo-Saxon coin gallery, not its Islamic section. Thus, despite the early encounter
with Muslim culture, Muslims and Islam are not a part of Britain’s historical cultural landscape,
except when many arrived en masse during the period of postcolonial immigration from the
1950s onwards. The rest of Britain’s lengthy Muslim past remains hidden and invisible. There
have been some efforts to engage with this history, but this has been largely confined to academia.
This “omission” of a Muslim past from the authorized, popular, national heritage is not just a
problem in Britain but also across Europe.
To take one example, visitors to Lithuania can embark on an easy-to-follow Jewish heritage
trail in the capital city Vilnius, which educates them about historical Lithuanian Jewish
personalities and leads them to sites and spaces where they can connect with the community’s
narrative in an area dubbed the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” However, visitors are unable to
access the narrative and heritage of another Lithuanian minority that also has a long and storied
national history—the Lithuanian Muslims. There is no tourist trail to educate visitors about the
pivotal role Muslims played in the survival of historical Lithuania (and Poland and Belarus)
when they arrived in 1398 to help save what was then the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The
Muslims were Crimean Tatars who were brought in by Lithuania’s Grand Duke Vytautas to
fight by his side against the aggressive threat of the Christian German Teutonic Knights. After
helping to successfully defend the Duchy, the Muslims were invited to stay and set up home in
small villages south of the medieval capital, Trakai. They did this, and over the course of the
following six centuries or so went on to make considerable cultural and social contributions in
their adopted nations of Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus (parts of which once made up the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania) (Norris 2009: 36–8). In fact, many of the descendants of the original migrant
community still live in the same villages six centuries on. Three of the Lithuanian villages, as
well as two in Poland and two in Belarus, are home to distinctly Baltic wooden mosques built
by the community, with at least one of them having a foundation date in the sixteenth century.
Close to all the mosques there are also ancient Muslim cemeteries (Norris 2009: 201). Despite
this chapter in the Baltic region’s history being so pivotal to the survival of medieval Lithuania,
very few Lithuanians outside of the country’s indigenous Muslim community are aware of the
role these Muslims played.
Britain’s Muslim history has a number of parallels with the Lithuanian example. It has also
been largely ignored by Britain’s authorized historical narrative. This is why the EMAHI project
aimed to make visible an important segment of it. In particular, it focused on the founding of
the country’s first purpose-built mosque in 1889 in the town of Woking, called the Shah Jahan
Mosque, and two historic Muslim cemeteries, the Muhammadan1 Cemetery, founded in 1884—
Britain’s first exclusively Muslim burial site—and the Woking War Cemetery, the country’s
only Muslim soldiers’ burial ground, established in 1915 (Figure 6.1). Similar to the Lithuanian
example, there is still a living Muslim community here.
The project in Woking, which began in June 2017, was called “Archiving the History and
Heritage of Britain’s First Purpose Built Mosque.” It was supported by national heritage funding
and also by important local partners. The project had several key objectives, which included the
creation of a professional archive system at the Shah Jahan Mosque; recording oral histories of
the mosque’s community, past and present; developing a mobile heritage exhibition; developing
educational resources; publishing a one-off special edition of the historical Islamic magazine,
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FIGURE 6.1 The Woking Muslim War Cemetery (1915), also known as the Peace Garden, in Woking,
Surrey, England, where Muslim soldiers that fought for Britain and France in the First and Second World
Wars were once buried. Source: Tharik Hussain.
The Islamic Review, and most innovatively, creating Britain’s very first Muslim heritage trails. It
is the latter that will be the focus of this case study.
Britain’s First Muslim Heritage Trails

The trails appear in physical form on two A2-sized printed maps that provide directions,
estimated walking and driving times, as well as detailed background information about each stop,
supported by images. The maps are free to pick up from the various partners’ offices and can also
be downloaded from their websites as well as from that of the EMAHI.
The first trail is called “The Woking Trail” and connects all three major sites by revealing
their shared history and narrative. This details how the mosque and the cemetery were founded
by a scholar of Jewish background, Dr. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, when he established the
Oriental College. It explains that his project received financial support from two of the major
Muslim dynasties of British-ruled India: the Begums of Bhopal and the Nizams of Hyderabad
(Geaves 2019: 77). It then explains how, after the college’s demise, the mosque was taken on
by an Indian lawyer and various white British converts to become the center of Britain’s first
truly flourishing Muslim community. The map also includes trivia, revealing that the mosque
was “destroyed” by aliens in H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds (Wells 1898: 61) and the fact
that the mother of the successful British musician Paul Weller was once the mosque’s cleaner
(Evans 2022).
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The second trail is called “The Muslim Cemetery Walk” and is centered on the historical
burial ground originally called The Muhammadan Cemetery, found inside the Brookwood
Cemetery, which was also established by Dr. Leitner on behalf of his Oriental College. The trail
acknowledges the site as the first Muslim burial ground in Britain, before leading visitors to a
number of famous graves, including that of Dr. Leitner as well as several notable British and
international figures and a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
Methodology
The trails were part of a wider heritage project, which decided on their development for
a number of reasons: self-guided trails are relatively easy to develop as they require only
the creation of good-quality, well-researched, and simple to follow maps; self-guided trails
are highly accessible, as normally there is a limited cost to the visitor—usually the cost of
purchasing or downloading a map or the entry fee to a space featured on the trail (this is
not the case with the British Muslim Heritage Trails); a guide is not needed, thus further
reducing the cost to the user and the developers; self-guided trails can be highly interactive,
requiring users to physically seek things out, the health benefits of which add to their appeal;
once set up, self-guided trails help to establish and affirm the heritage of a physical place
or monument; trails can easily take into account diverse users, for example, they may have
elements specifically aimed at children; trails connect spaces through a narrative or theme
that highlights the common elements between otherwise seemingly independent spaces,
people, or items; and after the initial investment, self-guided trails generally require very
little maintenance or upkeep. This final factor was very important to the EMAHI, which had
limited funds for the development and launch of the trails but no additional resources for any
long-term maintenance.
The creation of the trails broadly fell into four stages. First, the preliminary stage, which
focused on examples of good practice, such as the famous self-guided walk at Highgate
Cemetery in London. Second, this was followed by the research stage, which was the longest
and most time-consuming stage. One of the main reasons for this was the fact that the research
being carried out concerned neglected and marginalized heritage about which there was very
little established information in popular and accessible domains. Third, this was followed by
the production stage, which involved the design, proofing, and printing of the actual maps and,
finally, the postproduction and launch stage.
All of these phases were informed by primary and secondary research carried out by members
of the EMAHI team, project advisors, consultants, and volunteers. The primary research carried
out for the trails fell into two broad categories. The first of these concerned discussions and
interviews with focus groups and formal and informal interviews with established trail developers,
trail guides, users of the mosque, local residents, cemetery community leaders, members of the
Brookwood Cemetery Society, historians, and relevant academics. The second form of primary
research was observational and involved the detailed analysis of existing trails, existing self-
guided maps, each of the relevant heritage sites, and several historic graves.
The key aspects of the secondary research carried out for the trails involved looking at existing
trail maps and literature; Brookwood cemetery records; lectures; relevant archives (Islamic
Review and The Crescent magazines); national and regional newspapers; TV footages; journal
55
articles; military records; government census; radio and TV documentaries; historical photos;
and a number of relevant books.
The research phase was completed over a period of approximately one year, before the project
moved into the production stage. The draft trail and a list of potential graves for the Muslim
Cemetery Walk were then shared with all the stakeholders and advisors. The final drafts were
then proofed and relevant images sourced before an external design team was commissioned to
create the actual trail maps. Once the final designs were approved, they were sent to print and
converted into PDF files to be easily hosted on partner websites. A total of 1,000 high-quality
A2-sized maps were printed and made available at important locations, including the Shah Jahan
Mosque and the Brookwood Cemetery Society offices.
The final stage involved a formal launch of the trails. This was carefully planned with a
comprehensive marketing and PR strategy. First, a date in the middle of the English summer
was chosen to minimize weather disruption. The date was set during the working week to ensure
journalists could attend as part of their formal working hours. Then, in the months leading up to
the launch, time was invested in nurturing relations with media professionals and creating a press
pack complete with an embargoed press release, PR images, and PDFs of the trails.
A full program of events was developed for the day of the launch. This began with a series of
short talks and presentations by special guests and contributing staff, followed by a light lunch
and refreshments before a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for each trail as well as a guided
“highlights” tour by the Trail Project Manager. The launch also included time allocated for the
media to engage with the creators and attendees. This itinerary was consciously designed to
present the launch as an exciting and exclusive event, enhanced further by securing the Chair of
Historic England, Sir Laurie Magnus, as the guest of honor, who revealed at the launch that he
was in fact a descendant of one of the most famous converts found on The Muslim Cemetery
Walk, the highly respected Qur’an translator, Marmaduke Pickthall. Sir Magnus performed the
ribbon-cutting ceremonies on the day and securing his presence heightened media interest in
the event.
Contested Heritage
As with any heritage project, the development of the trails was not without its challenges.
One of the most difficult obstacles that the developers faced concerned the contested nature
of the heritage that was central to the trails. The Shah Jahan Mosque was founded as part of a
wider interreligious project by a man who was born a Jew, converted to Anglicanism, and was
known to have often used the Muslim name, Abdur Rasheed Sayyah (Roberts and Dovoli n.d.)
(Figure 6.2). It was therefore inevitable that this heritage would be contested. Yet, the biggest
challenge the EMAHI faced was not of an interreligious kind, but a sectarian issue. This was due
to the fact that the current custodians and the majority of the users of the Shah Jahan Mosque are
followers of mainstream Sunni Islam, while one of the primary actors in the reestablishment of
the mosque as a functioning place of worship after Leitner’s death was Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din,
a prominent member of the Islamic movement known as the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
(Geaves 2019: 100). Many Muslims around the world deem this group to be outside the Sunni
fold of Islam, and in some extreme cases regard its followers as non-Muslims. As a result, it
became immediately clear to the developers of the trails that the mosque’s Ahmadiyya heritage
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FIGURE 6.2 The Shah Jahan Mosque (1889) in Woking, Surrey, England—Britain and North Western
Europe’s first purpose-built mosque.
Source: Tharik Hussain.
57
was not something the current custodians wished to make overly visible, while members of
the local Ahmadiyya community expressed their concerns that their role in establishing one of
Britain’s first flourishing Muslim communities would be overlooked and denied.
Negotiating this was not easy and was only made possible by two key factors: the religious
and cultural sensitivity and expertise of the project developers, and their success in garnering
the support and trust of both communities. This allowed the project to move forward, with
EMAHI assuring all stakeholders that the integrity of the project would be guaranteed by
sound and transparent research and evidence. The narratives that emerged around the historic
mosque and cemeteries would be based on sound research and evidence devoid of sectarian and
religious bias.
Criteria of Success
The launch of the trails was covered by a number of national and international media outlets,
including BBC radio, The Times newspaper, Arab News, Lonely Planet, My Salaam, SaudiAramco
World, and various niche Muslim media. In the first nine months after the launch in July 2019,
data held by the EMAHI suggests over 2,000 independent visitors experienced the trails. In 2019,
the trails were also shortlisted for the Best UK and Ireland Tourism Project at the International
Tourism Awards in London, and the developers of the trails have given talks to universities and
heritage conferences across the globe.
In spring 2020, the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History was given a guided tour of the
trails and published an article on their website about the experience. The article said the visit
had “taught us more than any of us had expected about Britain’s multicultural past … for those
of us teaching modern British History it provided an unexpected window onto the evolution of
multicultural Britain, and one that will certainly inform our teaching as we set about ‘decolonising
the curriculum’ ” (Green 2020).
This success has prompted the Brookwood Cemetery to take on the cost of printing future trail
maps, thus ensuring physical copies of the maps remain freely available to visitors. In addition,
the Brookwood Cemetery Society has now established a Muslim walk inspired by the trails, and
there is now an official blue heritage plaque on the site of the original Muhammadan Cemetery
that acknowledges it as “Britain’s First Muslim Cemetery.” Furthermore, Brookwood Cemetery
has installed signage based on the trail literature highlighting some of the most important
historical Muslim figures buried in the cemetery.
Key Takeaways
The success of these trails was built on several key factors that are summarized below. These
were essential to the development of the trails and should be carefully considered by any entity
keen to develop future heritage projects around minority heritage:
• Staff: The project recruited staff who identified as Muslims and as Brits, this allowed them to
inspire the host community and convince it of the need to deliver the project. This is extremely
important, as often the long-term marginalization of minority heritage can lead to the host
communities also becoming convinced that the said heritage is not important.
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• Advisory Board: The project’s advisory board had a mix of local and relevant experts from
various disciplines. This allowed the developers to understand how heritage works, how to
extrapolate it, and how to find the best ways to make it visible.
• Local Partners: The EMAHI partnered with several local institutes and organizations to
ensure the project’s leadership had a strong local presence and perspective. The partners were
also sources of primary and secondary research and important gatekeepers. Finally, some of
these partners went on to inherit the trails’ legacy and essentially “own” them.
• Gatekeepers: These were individuals who facilitated contact and access to the host
community and were essential to foster trust, effective engagement, and ownership, as well as
retain integrity in the eyes of the local community.
• Local Involvement: Volunteer locals were given a host of roles ranging from primary research
to leadership. This was done to eradicate notions of “tokenism” and ensure locals developed
genuine ownership of the project.
• Creative Outputs: It was essential to find an interactive and engaging solution but also one
that worked well in the space and environment specific to this heritage.
• Accessibility: Ensuring that anybody and everybody could potentially access the trails was
paramount to this project. This was why the trail maps were made freely available and careful
attention was paid to the language (nonacademic and accessible) of the map text and the final
designs.
• New Technology: Developers used new technologies for a number of purposes including,
increasing the accessibility of the final maps by hosting them on various websites;
making global research calls using social media; working with researchers across the
globe using cloud technology (Dropbox/Google Drive); carrying out remote interviews
(Skype/FaceTime); and enhancing marketing and PR via social media (Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, etc.).
• Launch: Having a formal, structured, and interesting launch supported by a well-planned
marketing and PR strategy was one of the major factors in gaining effective media coverage
that led to the high uptake and interest in the trails.
Britain’s Muslim Heritage Trails are the first such trails dedicated to Islamic heritage in Britain,
and in this respect, they are truly pioneering. This case study has shown that the ambition
to make minority heritage visible is often confronted with challenges and obstacles that are
both external and internal, which require highly sensitive approaches and carefully considered
methodologies. Many of these, although familiar to most practitioners and students involved in
the field of religious heritage, must be employed in distinct and specialized ways. The project’s
unparalleled success, as well as its national and international recognition, offers irrefutable
evidence that minority religious heritage is not only of huge interest to the general public but
also thoroughly appreciated. This case study has shown that if a carefully planned methodology
and approach are used to develop an accessible trail that highlights minority heritage, it can
tangibly engage the very communities it seeks to represent in its development, execution, and
success.
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Note
1 “Muhammadan” is an archaic term historically used to describe a Muslim, but it is deemed derogatory and
offensive by some Muslims today.
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Menocal, M. R. (2002), The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a
Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. New York: Back Bay Books.
Norris, H. (2009), Islam in the Baltic: Europe’s Early Muslim Community. London: Tauris Academic
Studies.
Roberts, M., and S. Dovoli (n.d.), “The International Dr. G. W. Leitner Trail,” JTrails. http://www.jtrails.
org.uk/trails/international-dr-g-w-leitner-trail/history?page=1 (accessed March 1, 2021).
Wells, H. G. (1898), War of the Worlds. London: William Heinemann.
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Jewish Heritage in a Diverse Context

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Challenge
Chapter 7
European Jewish Heritage Today: An Interview

with Emile Schrijver, General Director Jewish
Cultural Quarter, Amsterdam
TODD WEIR AND LIEKE WIJNIA
Challenge
Todd Weir: The 2005 Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society continues
to gain approval across Europe. This has raised inclusivity to be the norm of good heritage
practice. But inclusion is a two-edged sword. Since the French Revolution, European Jews have
wrestled with the terms of their inclusion in the modern nation. Inclusion brings with it the threat
of assimilation, while autonomy can mean invisibility and exclusion. Your institution, the Jewish
Cultural Quarter manages two historic synagogues in Amsterdam, one of which functions as
the Jewish Museum. Your organization is largely sponsored by the government. This poses the
question: whose interests does the Jewish Cultural Quarter serve? The Jewish community or the
Dutch nation? How do you see that dual role?
Emile Schrijver: That’s an interesting question. The one that precedes it is the question of
who owns this heritage. You refer to the two synagogues we manage; one of them is a former
synagogue, but now a museum complex. The other is a living synagogue that, as a result of the
community becoming smaller and smaller, was no longer capable of taking care of its heritage.
We combine the work of sustaining a heritage community with the protection of heritage. So,
for example, a particular piece of ritual silver is a museum object for most of the year, but
sometimes we put it in the use of the community and then it is returned to us again after use. So
there’s an interesting tension between the buildings that we work in, the living community, and
the things that we are supposed to be doing as a heritage organization. And another question is
about the buildings that are heritage sites, but where there is no religious life anymore. There is
always the Second World War, always the Shoah, the Holocaust, that is always talked about as
the reason why the use of Jewish heritage sites is declining—the people were murdered. And
Jewish communities will often stress the fact that the Holocaust was a defining moment in the
change of heritage and the status of the heritage. But part of the truth, for example if you look at
small towns in Germany or central Europe, is also that many of these regions were already in the
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process of being abandoned by the Jewish communities since the end of the nineteenth century.
They were moving to the cities and the world was changing, industrialization caused a huge part
of the decline. This is not often heard because there is this strong relationship with the war. The
Second World War also has a claim for the non-Jewish community to help the Jewish community
to take care of the heritage. So there is this tension between the enormous catastrophe of the
Second World War but also the regular process of secularization. All that is coming together, and
that defines the changing position of Jewish heritage.
For whom do we do that? We define ourselves as a foundation, funded by the state as you say.
The state pays most of the salaries and the upkeep of the building and the collections, but we raise
substantial additional funds.
More than half our visitors are non-Jewish. We don’t ask about it specifically, but that’s what we
think. Our staff is 50/50, perhaps less, it’s not necessary to be Jewish. Only in some positions—in
my position, it might be uneasy if someone wasn’t Jewish, but other than that, anyone is welcome
to work with us. I want the Jewish community to feel at home, also in the Holocaust museum, and
to be represented. Their history is represented. To give them a safe space where they can learn
about their history and heritage. But we are not a Jewish institution as such. A large amount of
the funding—the private funding is mostly Jewish—is from the private sponsorships we have.
But we also get money from non-Jewish foundations, like all other museums. It is, as you say, a
balancing act. But we have relative independence. There are so many Jewish museums that are
under the expectation and influence of public opinion, under stress. I cherish our independence,
and we develop relationships with all groups within the Jewish community. But our slogan is
open voor iedereen, open to everybody. If that means that more traditional Jewish communities
raise an eyebrow and ask, is it really necessary that you do this?, we say yes, it’s necessary. We
had signs in the city center that said, Zijn joden wit? “Are Jews white?” Confronting, also since
we referenced the design of BLM for these billboards. But I think it is necessary.
TW: Your institution has been tasked with the initiative of a new National Holocaust Museum
and memorial site. I have a question particularly relating to the Holocaust as Jewish heritage. In
The Holocaust in American Life (1999), Peter Novick expressed the concern that the American
Jewish community was too focused on the Holocaust. He thought it would be healthier to focus
on Jewish religion and ethics as identity and heritage points. There has been a wave of Holocaust
memorialization for three decades now in Europe. How do you see the Holocaust in relation to
Jewish heritage?
ES: One of the things I always state is the fact that my predecessors, when they opened up
the Jewish museum, settled in these synagogue buildings. That was the moment the museum
became a major institution- before it was a very small setup. And their main concern was not to
reduce over 400 years of heritage and history in the Netherlands to 5 years of catastrophe. That
principle is still valid. There is the risk of defining Jewish identity by murder on the Jews, which
is extremely cynical to say the least. There was an enormous discussion in 1990–1992 when
the museum was asked to take over the memorial site, whether to do that or not—for that very
reason. But the Jewish Museum is housed in those buildings because of the lack of people—that
would not be the case, at least not to this extent, if the Holocaust had not happened. We are now
in a different moment in time, in which the national owners of the history of the Holocaust, the
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European Jewish Heritage Today
survivors, are hardly alive. Even young children in the war are now older than 80. People who
lived through the Holocaust are mostly in their nineties. In a matter of years, the actual survivor-
owned Holocaust history will be over. We said, we then have to take on the responsibility to tell
the story of the Holocaust, with the ownership of the JCQ. This part of the history of the Jews in
the Netherlands will be told in a larger context of Jewish culture, religion, as it has been present
in Dutch society. That is for us a very important point, a point we started to make after a visit we
made to the Imperial War Museum in London seven years ago. That’s a generic museum that had
a good permanent Holocaust exhibition. The makers of the exhibition said they struggled with
questions of ownership: “how can we tell the story of the Holocaust, as a generic institution?”
That’s a question of feeling confident enough to tell the story and to have an answer to the
question why now.
TW: So why now?
ES: One of the main reasons why I embraced the idea of the Holocaust museum is that it allows
us to make the connection to the future and to today. That was also when the board embraced the
idea. There are a lot of themes, like the themes of inclusion, diversity, discrimination, racism,
and antisemitism, in today’s society that are connected to the defining moment that the Holocaust
has been. Also think of all current crimes against humanity and genocide. The fact that we will
also stress this connection, both in the permanent exhibitions and in the temporary exhibitions,
underscores the importance we give to combating inequality. It’s important that we do that, and
we try to base ourselves on the ethics of Judaism.
At the same time, our mission is universal. The first stage of the Holocaust museum, we
opened just to see if it works and to support fundraising. If you look at the visitorship, we see that
most of the foreign visitors are Jewish, but most of the Dutch visitors are not Jewish. It depends
on the exhibition, of course. But it’s part of the tourist package of the Jewish tourists. The truth
of the matter is that the urgency in what we do is in the universal warning, the universal message.
The universal notion that there are difficult things in our society that we can actually deal with.
What better place than a Jewish environment, an institution with a Jewish background, to deal
with those topics? We take on that role and I am convinced that is the only way we can stay
relevant.
Lieke Wijnia: You already touched on it a bit when you said that the Holocaust museum should
also become a place where Jewish people feel at home, which is intended to offer a safe space
to them. To what extent were members of Jewish communities involved in the making of the
museum? Was there any community engagement in the development of the museum?
ES: We cherish our independence and an actual involvement in the creative process of
building the exhibition is something you don’t want. But we have been collecting stories and a
program with eye witnesses and we concentrate a lot on individual stories. One of the goals of
the museum is: if the goal of the Nazis was to dehumanize the Jews, the goal of this museum
is to “rehumanize” them. Do not reduce people to their status of being a victim. They lived
full lives. And I think that can only be done by concentrating on the individual people: you
give them back their individual identity and their humanity. That is a leading principle in the
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museum. Not forgetting what happened, not only the big numbers—you see that a lot in the
US and in some museums in Europe. The number of deaths, and the number of survivors.
That’s not the way we do it. We concentrate on the Netherlands, but it’s an international story.
Of course, many members of the Jewish community provided us with input, and we also
specifically reached out to them. Hollandsche Schouwburg has been a memorial site for so
long already that we have involved the representatives of the Jewish community in a number
of decisions there. There was a wall of names with thousands of family names and we need that
space for something else, we will be redesigning the space. And we had the discussion: what is
the position of the names in the memorial, also considering that there is now a monument around
the corner with all the individual names on individual bricks. We feel that we are trusted by the
Jewish community to make the right decision. Of course we get disconcerted phone calls or
WhatsApp messages, that’s part of the deal. We try to involve them but then the person you don’t
involve will object to what you’re doing. You can only do it by being independent, believing in
what you do, explaining why you did it, and hope that not too many people will jump at it. In
today’s world Holocaust museums should have a clear signature, in my view.
LW: And in the development of the National Holocaust Museum, did you have a particular target
audience in mind? A type of visitor? And how have you considered future generations of visitors,
for whom this history becomes increasingly distant?
ES: The number one target group is anyone who’s learning. Not only school children. We do
take children of high school age, because the complexity of the topic prevents primary school
children from dealing with it. But the learning person can also be the Amsterdam police or railway
employees. We are developing programs for them too. So the audience is anyone who wants to
learn. It’s easier to raise money for Holocaust education because we don’t have to explain why
it’s important. But it also needs to be attractive to the target audience. And again, that can only
be done by making the connection to today. The connection can be more subtle, because the
question often becomes: what would you have done? Would you have hidden someone away in
your attic? That’s not enough. You really need to understand the complexity of politics, human
behavior and the circumstances. The Anne Frank house has been very successful in combining
Holocaust history with the topic of citizenship. That’s something we also intend to do. In addition,
the Jewish community is also a target group; people interested in war history; and the tourists.
We have a very refined marketing strategy that’s part of the launching of the museum. We’re a
bit more than a year from the opening and we are gearing up the campaign towards launching the
initiative. We had the Buitenmuseum which were 3D prints of objects from the museum which
we showed in bus stops and tram stations, with a QR code that connected people to the history of
the object. Those were small and personal objects but putting it in the public space was powerful.
TW: If we zoom out from this particular case into the domain of Jewish heritage in general, how
do you see the role of Jewish heritage in this field of minority heritage in general in Europe?
Because heritage can separate groups, but it can also bring groups together. In the UK, for
example, there have been Muslim heritage activists who have learned from and worked with
their counterparts in Jewish heritage. What experience have you had or how do you wish to see
your institution in minority heritage in general? I am particularly curious about cooperation with
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European Jewish Heritage Today
Muslim groups, since there is a lot of tension in Europe between Muslims and Jews because of
Middle Eastern politics.
ES: That is one of the most relevant questions for Jewish museums and museums in general. There
was a discussion in the US about whether Jewish museums can be seen as identity museums. By
concentrating on the one identity you empower the group, but you exclude the other groups who
don’t belong to that identity. I strongly object to that approach, but I can say that from the relative
peacefulness of running a Jewish museum in the Netherlands. In Poland, where the government
has an enormous influence, that stance becomes way more difficult. Hungary: same thing. In
Berlin the museum director was fired for a program that was too political and too left-wing for
the Jewish community in Germany.
Another prominent example is the question of how to deal with antisemitism. To some
extent, there is still this old-fashioned feeling that antisemitism is the problem of the other, of
the non-Jews, so why should we deal with that topic? Let’s concentrate on the beauty of Jewish
culture instead, on the positivity. I don’t believe in that narrative personally, but in other political
constellations it may just as well be impossible to deal with antisemitism. So all in all, we can
move relatively freely here in the Dutch context. We have done our best in the last years to
program in such a way that what you mention is being addressed. There have been exhibitions on
Jews in Morocco and on Jews in the Caribbean, which also touched on the aspect of slavery and
the roles of Jews in slavery. These exhibitions had a cultural-historical approach. As a contrast,
we tried to curate more political projects in recent years. The project Face It!, for example,
addressed the ways in which people look at each other. Through playful, humorous installations,
the exhibition dealt with complex subjects like prejudice and stereotypes. This type of project
has also taught us that the audience can deal with more complexity and sensitive issues. We have
been experimenting and pushing, and the audience accepts a lot more than you would think.
About Jews in the diversity debate. How is it possible that all minority groups express solidarity,
but antisemitism is excluded from that solidarity? If you wear a Star of David on your rainbow
flag, you may first have to identify that as anti-Israel before you’re allowed into certain LGBT
events. Let’s open up such discussions in the museum.
LW: I can imagine the dimension of religion in Jewish heritage can also be regarded as a sensitive
topic. How to deal with religious or spiritual experience as a heritage institution, how do you
consider that in the exhibitions that you make and the buildings you work with?
ES: First of all, we have the perspective of a living experience in the Portuguese Synagogue
which is still being used. It’s closed during weddings and Jewish holidays. People can see it’s
a living community which outsiders are allowed to visit. In the Jewish Museum itself we have
three permanent exhibits, one is religious, two are historical. After the opening of the National
Holocaust Museum, we are going to work on a revision of these exhibitions. I believe, what this
moment in time that we live in asks for, is not a permanent exhibition on religion only, but on
the role of religion in the identity of Jewish people. That’s way more relevant while at the same
time answering the questions, what are the festivals? What is Shabbat? Combining the factual
knowledge that people want to pick up, but at the same time staying away from the idea that
the only aspect of a Jew is their religion. 95 percent of Dutch Jews don’t go to synagogue. The
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same with Catholics, they never go to church. This is true in more communities. That is a very
important aspect and I believe that it can define how you deal with the objects. You can do two
things when showing, for example, a wonderful piece of textile: you can concentrate on why
religious services used it, but also what the role is in culture; how in other cultures, in other
communities, there were different interpretations. How some of these objects are alien to a large
number of Jews as well. I’m close to the point where we will call the exhibition a display on
Jewish identity and not just Jewish religion.
LW: We’ve talked about reaching a variety of audiences, basically anyone who wants to learn
about Jewish heritage is your target audience. This also has to do with marketing, making
accessible, and to a certain degree the popularization of the topic. As a final question, this does
not only relate to your work as museum director, as well as university professor, but you have
recently also taken up the writing of literary thrillers in which Jewish manuscripts play an
important role. How do you relate this activity to heritage work?
ES: There is a connection. The goal is not that; the source is too much courage and vanity. But
what it does do, it does hit the general interest of the audience in well-presented historical stories,
story-telling and narratives. There is Jeroen Windmeijer, he’s also a thriller-writer, for example.
He brings complex religious narratives to a larger audience by telling them in a relatable context.
We discussed this together after I published my novel. The publisher said I’m the Dutch Dan
Brown, but then Jeroen tweeted that I can’t be, because he’d already been labeled that way.
Turns out we basically write the same books but I do in the context of Judaism and he, mostly,
in Christianity.
But for me, there was another incentive: I have come into so many striking situations. You
have meetings with special people who are on the fringe of what we do as heritage people,
especially when it comes to the topic of looting art. This is also relevant to Jewish heritage, of
course, the theft of it and who owns it. I tell the people who work on looting: don’t forget that the
real knowledge is not with the institutions, but the dealers. They know exactly where it’s from—
they won’t tell you, but they know. The Jewish market is difficult because it’s often mediocre
pieces but enormous prices are paid, because it’s a small market with some wealthy buyers. It
inspired me to come up with a story that takes place in those circles. At the same time, you can get
a lot of your actual knowledge, which no one would otherwise be interested in, into the narrative,
and people will be interested and enjoy it.
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Analysis
Chapter 8
The Complicated Heritage of the Jewish

Country House: Transcending Traditional
Heritage Categories
ABIGAIL GREEN
Analysis
Country houses are rarely identified as sites of religious heritage. Although many boast private
chapels or places of worship, the country house is primarily understood as a site of worldliness
rather than spirituality, a symbol of wealth, and of the power and prestige that came with certain
kinds of landownership in a preindustrial world. This essay challenges that understanding
through a focus on the complicated heritage of the “Jewish country house”: an important
sociocultural phenomenon in modern European history, and a neglected feature of the European
heritage landscape (Green, Carey, and Rechter 2019; Carey and Green forthcoming). As sites of
European and Jewish memory, Jewish country houses transcend the categories we use to think
about heritage because, while they are inevitably rooted in a specific locality and national culture,
they can only be understood as part of a bigger European and Jewish story. This is an insight with
broader applicability since religious heritage has an inherently transnational quality. Yet Jewish
country houses also force us to think more deeply about what we mean by religious (or secular)
heritage, and how that relates to the lived experiences of Europe’s religious minorities. In short,
rather than relating to these houses as a historic anomaly, we should embrace the ways in which
they prompt us to think differently about the past.
Country houses are a ubiquitous feature of the European heritage landscape. In Britain, the
country house has become a symbol of identity and a central actor in the idea of a national
heritage, thanks in part to the unique status and popularity of the National Trust, a voluntary
organization and registered charity with a membership of some 5.6 million that looks after over
500 historic houses, castles, ancient monuments, gardens, parks, and nature reserves, of which
146 are accredited museums—and a great many of these country houses (National Trust 2021).
In continental Europe too, historic houses have come to evoke the lost world of ancient lineages
and landed society—although without the support of an institution like the National Trust many
of these houses lead a precarious existence as independent, local museums. Like the houses, the
National Trust has “saved for the nation” in Britain, these houses too tell a story about continuity
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and rootedness that emphasizes the ties between a noble family and a particular rural community,
and the rise (and fall) of a great aristocratic dynasty (Mandler 1999).
It is a story in which—ostensibly—there is no room for Jews. Even in Britain, the legality of
Jewish land ownership was precarious well into the nineteenth century. In many other parts of
Europe, Jews were historically confined to urban ghettos and barred from owning land at all. In
the modern era, moreover, Jews came to be seen as a quintessentially urban population in many
places—certainly in Britain, where London was both a center of Jewish finance and a magnet
for Jewish immigrants. Consequently, it comes as a surprise to discover that quite a number
of “English” country house museums have a Jewish story to tell. Some of these houses, like
Ascott House (owned by the National Trust, hereafter NT), Strawberry Hill House, Upton House
(NT), and Waddesdon Manor (NT) belonged to prominent Jewish-banking families like the
Rothschilds, the Sterns, and the Bearsteds. Others tell more complicated stories of integration,
assimilation, and belonging, like Mottisfont Abbey (NT), where German-born Maud Russell
indulged her avant-garde artistic taste and agonized about the fate of her relatives under Nazi
rule, or Houghton Hall, now celebrated as one of England’s finest Palladian houses and renewed
with the money and art collection of the heiress Sibyl Sassoon (Russell 2017; Stansky 2003).
Rarely, if ever, is this Jewish heritage as tangible as it is at Nymans (NT) in Sussex, where
perceptive visitors often remark on a stone shield decorated with a star of David that is embedded
into the wall of the entrance courtyard (Hilary 2001).
These issues lie at the heart of the Jewish Country Houses project, a major collaborative
initiative based at the University of Oxford that has been working for some years now with
properties and heritage organizations across Europe.1 For it transpires that the Jewish country
house museum is not a phenomenon restricted to Britain. In Belgium, for example, the Château
de Seneffe, which now houses a sumptuous collection of secular silverware, was once home
to the Jewish Philippson family (Brion and Moreau 2016). In France, the Château de Champs
sur Marne—now the main office of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux—is celebrated as the
residence of Louis XV’s mistress, Mme de Pompadour (Legé 2020). Yet it only survives thanks
to the money and loving care lavished on it by the Jewish banker Louis Cahen d’Anvers and
his Italian-born wife, Louise de Morpurgo. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the most visited
historic house in the country is none other than Kasteel de Haar, a ruin that was comprehensively
rebuilt after Baroness Hélène de Rothschild married into the van Zuylen family, complete with
Rothschild arms on the hearth and stars of David in the balconies of the knight’s hall (van der
Veen 2022). Even in Germany, the Prussian royal palace restored by Walter Rathenau in Bad
Freienwalde clings on as a site of memory (Sabrow, forthcoming; Carey and Green, forthcoming).
Some Jewish country houses, then, have become museums of international importance,
attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. Many more have been demolished or
repurposed as care homes, schools, hotels, or event venues. Only a few trade explicitly on the
titles and connections of their former owners, like James de Rothschild’s Château de Ferrières
(which advertises a Salon de la Baronne), or the safari park hotel at Port Lympne, where you can
book a Sir Philip Sassoon suite. The destruction of the country house was, of course, a significant
social phenomenon in the postwar era, and if the memory of both houses and owners has faded
with time then that is hardly surprising.2 Yet a few of these houses still stand as modern ruins,
whose devastated condition seems a metaphor for the fate of the European Jewish dynasties
to which they once belonged. Ravaged by fire, Schloss Schenkendorf, the former home of
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The Complicated Heritage of the Jewish Country House
publishing magnate Rudolf Mosse, is now listed as one of Berlin-Brandenburg’s “lost places,”
while the crumbling, graffiti-covered Château Rothschild in Boulogne-Billaincourt has been
derelict for forty years.3
Those properties that do survive as museums speak to a different kind of erasure, namely the
failure to engage with their specificity as sites of Jewish heritage. Sometimes, as Upton House
in Warwickshire, home of the Bearsteds, the Jewishness of the house’s owners receives barely
a mention in the official guidebook, with the result that it is easy to overlook (Power 2009).
Sometimes, as at Strawberry Hill or the Château de Seneffe, the “national” style of the eighteenth
century has been the sole focus of interpretation, although through their involvement with the
Jewish Country Houses project, the curators and custodians of these properties have recently
begun to consider how to tell their Jewish stories as well (Strawberry Hill House n.d.)
The problem is that Jewish country houses sit awkwardly within preexisting frameworks for
interpreting the national past. These are opulent houses, but they do not fit Downton Abbey
narratives about the glamorous lives of the English aristocracy any more than they can be easily
shoehorned into more radical and less celebratory interpretations of the country house that focus
on race, class, gender, and colonialism (Colonial Countryside n.d.; Huxtable et al. 2020; National
Trust n.d.a; National Trust n.d.b; Wills and Dresser 2020). Take Port Lympne Mansion and Trent
Park House, two of the most intriguing Jewish country houses to survive into the twenty-first
century: both belonged to Sir Philip Sassoon, a man who played with the orientalizing stereotypes
that were so often applied to him because his grandfather, Sir Albert Sassoon, had been both
an intimate of the Prince of Wales and a Baghdadi-born Jew from Mumbai. In other words,
Jewish country houses cannot simply be understood as sites of wealth, power, and exploitation
because, uniquely, they served as a vehicle for the emancipation of a historically persecuted and
disadvantaged minority. That is as true of Broomhill (now the Salomons Estate) near Tunbridge
Wells, a house purchased at a time when the right of Jews to own freehold land in England was
still uncertain that proclaims proudly its owners’ role in the campaign for emancipation, as it
is of Schloss Rothschild in Waidhofen an der Ybbs, which still dominates a town in Austria
historically closed to Jews. In a rural landscape deeply marked by Christianity, Jewish country
houses had—and still have—a transgressive quality.
It transpires that Jewish country houses do not sit well within the established framework
of Jewish heritage either. Superficially at least, these houses represent a fundamentally secular
heritage, which speaks to the social and cultural integration of the European Jewish elite. By
contrast, existing Jewish heritage paradigms tend to focus on explicitly religious manifestations
of Jewish heritage like synagogues and cemeteries, on sites of Jewish separateness like the
Venetian ghetto or the East End of London, and on histories of persecution, oppression, and,
indeed, extermination. That paradigm is well captured by the “Visit Jewish Italy” project,
which groups sites of Jewish heritage under four categories: Jewish neighbourhoods; museums,
exhibitions, and memorials; synagogues; and cemeteries. Paradoxically, however, the Jewish
country house was a particularly pronounced sociocultural phenomenon in Italy: many have
survived, and quite a number are still open to the public—often speaking not just to the Jewish
lived experience of their owners but to specifically Jewish wartime histories of persecution and
expropriation (Brasca, Furhmeister, and Pellegrini 2019).
In Britain too, Jewish country houses are notably absent from the conventional view of
Jewish heritage promoted, for example, by Jewish Heritage UK, which focuses exclusively
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on synagogue and cemetery architecture (Kadish 2015). They are absent too from the less
conservative approach taken by JTrails, a grassroots Jewish heritage organization founded by
Marcus Roberts. These Anglo-Jewish “heritage trails” are ordered by place in ways that convey a
geographically diffuse, chronologically ambitious, and thematically rather varied understanding
of the Jewish past in Britain, which includes localities as different from one another as the Lake
District, Bradford, and the City of London. Yet, with the exception of the sites associated with Sir
Moses Montefiore’s country estate at Ramsgate, Jewish country houses are, for the time being,
absent from this vision. It is a striking omission in a country where so many of these houses are,
in fact, important public museums.
Individually, the fate of palaces, villas, and country houses owned, built, and renewed by Jews
and those of Jewish origin tells a story of social forgetting and the problematic place occupied
by even the most spectacular Jewish country houses within nationally constructed heritage
cultures. Taken together, they illuminate the transformative impact of Jewish emancipation on
modern European politics, society, and culture. This is a story that can be interpreted through the
framework of national experience, but is in fact a properly European phenomenon (Green 2020).
It is also a “difficult” history—and certainly a difficult history to tell well.
In continental Europe, the fate of Jewish country houses inevitably intersects with the memory
of the Holocaust, and on both sides of the Channel, the history of rich Jews is deeply connected
with the history of antisemitism. Consequently, at the first conference organized by the Jewish
Country Houses project, Sharman Kadish of Jewish Heritage UK argued that it was inadvisable
to promote tourism focused on heritage sites that were likely to reinforce antisemitic tropes about
Jewish wealth, power, and influence (Kadish 2018). That view contradicts the trend of recent
work in the heritage sector toward telling more diverse histories as a means of promoting social
inclusion. It also fails to engage with the reality that sites like Waddesdon Manor—a Rothschild
château in the Vale of Aylesbury—already attract antisemitic visitors. Since this is the case, it
makes sense to train volunteers and staff in the Jewish aspects of its history so that they have the
confidence to engage that history in an appropriate way.4
Unquestionably, then, Jewish country houses should be understood as sites of Jewish heritage.
But is that heritage specifically religious? On the one hand, these houses appear to be resolutely
secular. On the other hand, their histories as Jewish homes suggest that they were, in fact, sites of
Jewish religious practice. Take Gunnersbury House in west London, a regency property acquired
by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1835 that remained in the family for three generations (Davis
2019). The British Rothschilds were not known for their religious observance, but we know that
the Pink Saloon at Gunnersbury witnessed the wedding between Lionel de Rothschild and his
cousin Charlotte (a high-profile society event presided over by the Chief Rabbi) that the family
habitually celebrated the High Holydays here rather than in their central London townhouse, and
that occasionally they even held Friday night prayers here when observant relatives came to visit.
There are traces of that history in the excellent local museum now housed in the property, but
nothing more. That is hardly surprising; Jewish religious observance is inherently portable, and
when Gunnersbury ceased to be a Jewish home, that dimension of its past vanished along with its
former owners’ more personal effects.
This history is by no means atypical. As Leora Auslander has argued, Judaism occupied an
episodic place in elite Jewish homes like these, but even the most resolutely secular families
were usually more connected to Judaism than might appear (Auslander 2019). Indeed, the
72
introduction to Mrs. Nathaniel L. Cohen’s Children’s Psalm Book suggests that the “habit of
Domestic Services” was widespread among the network of elite Anglo-Jewish families known
as the Cousinhood—although little trace of this practice now remains in the houses they once
inhabited (Bermant 1971; Cohen 1907). In continental Europe too, it is clear that when rich
Jews had country houses, many expected to pray in them at least occasionally. The Château de
Ferrières, which was built by the English architect Joseph Paxton for Baron James de Rothschild
near Paris, included a modest private prayer room. In Naples, meanwhile, Jewish travelers
passing through the city were often invited to attend services at the grand private oratory of Villa
Pignatelli, another Rothschild property (Barella 1996; Mazzoleni 2007).5
The privacy of Jewish country houses, their distance from established Jewish communities,
and the wealth of their owners, also facilitated more idiosyncratic forms of religious observance
and hybrid expressions of spirituality and identity that may be easier to understand as varieties of
“religious heritage.” That is most obviously true of the private synagogue and mausoleum built
by Sir Moses Montefiore in Ramsgate, within walking distance of East Cliff Lodge, to which he
attached an institution of higher Jewish learning called the Lady Judith Montefiore Theological
College (since destroyed) (Cardozo and Goodman 1933). This, we may best understand as a
traditional rabbinical kollel, modeled on institutions that Montefiore had encountered on his
travels to Jerusalem, but resembling in form if not in content a conventional British institution
of higher education—an Oxbridge college, perhaps, or the Royal Dramatic College at Woking
(Green 2018). We know that the Montefiores celebrated many Jewish festivals, and certainly
the Sabbath, in the privacy of East Cliff Lodge. Once that house passed out of the family’s
hands, only this explicitly religious institution remained: still a rabbinical training school in the
immediate postwar period, and even now a functional synagogue—and a site of annual pilgrimage
for the Hasidim of Stamford Hill. The destruction of East Cliff Lodge and the preservation of the
Montefiore synagogue mean that Ramsgate is well-known as a UK Jewish heritage site, but never
features in histories of the English country house, although its inclusion would radically shift
our understanding of that history and of the capacity of this important sociocultural institution to
absorb social and religious diversity.
The traditional Judaism associated with the Montefiore synagogue and rabbinical college at
Ramsgate sits at one extreme of the spectrum of Jewish religious practice associated with country
house living. Villa Kèrylos on the French Riviera speaks to a very different kind of Jewish spirituality.
Kèrylos was built between 1902 and 1908 for the archaeologist, politician, and polymath Theodore
Reinach, whose family was among the richest and most prominent Jews in France. The house
is a painstaking but modern interpretation of classical Greek prototypes that makes a series of
very specific historic claims about the nature of civilization and beauty by presenting a selective
vision of classical antiquity compatible with modern life. Jewishness is explicitly included within
that vision by the stars of David that are integrated into the mosaic of the library floor. Yet the
presence of an “altar to an unknown God” in a different room is suggestive of a more self-conscious
spirituality in which religious Judaism and the universalism Reinach associated both with France
and with ancient Greece could come together (Lavagne, forthcoming).6
Such an interpretation of the Villa Kèrylos would certainly be consistent with Reinach’s
role as one of the founders of France’s first liberal synagogue, the Union Libérale Israélite de
France, in precisely this period. Yet few visitors are aware of the history of Kèrylos as a Jewish
home—a history that is mentioned by the audio guide when visitors pass through the library, but
73
FIGURE 8.1 One of the church windows designed by Marc Chagall for Tudeley village church. The
commission was inspired by the Chagall windows at the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in
Jerusalem, which depict the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Source: Joseph Plumb.
74
75
absent from the printed material available about this property. That absence reflects the particular
sensitivities of post-Holocaust France, where foregrounding the Reinachs’s Jewishness might
seem to violate the principles of state secularism. At the same time, it highlights how problematic
those principles are when applied to a private home that has become part of the public realm as a
museum. In practice, moreover, Jewish heritage organizations in France do understand Kèrylos
and other houses like it as part of the French Jewish heritage landscape, even if they do not
understand them as forming part of the community’s religious heritage.
Acculturated forms of Jewish spirituality were, most likely, the norm rather than the exception
in the households like these. Yet acculturation sometimes went both ways, and even families
that abandoned Judaism may have retained a residual Jewish identity that was not devoid of
spirituality. An excellent example of this phenomenon can be found in the village of Tudeley
in Kent, where the small medieval church boasts twelve stained-glass windows created in the
1960s by Marc Chagall, the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century (Figure 8.1). For
over a century before, Tudely had formed part of the estate of the Goldsmid family, who lived
at Somerhill, a grand Jacobean mansion that is now a school. Sir Henry d’Avigdor Goldsmid
(1909–1976) was the last of this line. He remained Jewish, but his wife, Rosemary, and his
FIGURE 8.2 The altar at Tudeley village church, Kent, is embroidered with the words of the “Shema”
in Hebrew and English, clearly referencing the Jewish heritage of the d’Avigdor Goldsmid family, who
owned the surrounding area.
Source: Joseph Plumb.
75
two daughters were Christians who prayed regularly in the little local church. Rosemary and
their daughter Sarah had seen the windows Chagall designed for the synagogue of the Hadassah
Medical Center in Jerusalem and been enraptured by them. When Sarah died in a sailing accident
two years later, Sir Henry commissioned Chagall to make a memorial window, eventually
expanding the commission to include all twelve windows in this little church. Only the memorial
window itself is explicitly Christian; the rest tell the Biblical stories of creation and recreation
that were common to both traditions. This, then, is a Christian religious site that can be read as a
site of Jewish heritage as well (Figure 8.2).
In heritage terms, then, Jewish country houses present something of an anomaly. They alert us
to the presence of Jews and Jewish culture in places we do not necessarily expect to find them,
and they speak to a history of prejudice, exclusion, and difference that is a history of belonging
and of social and cultural integration as well. Above all, they suggest that the complexity of the
European Jewish experience is not well captured by either national or religious heritage cultures.
Perhaps there are broader lessons here for the study and practice of religious heritage in Europe,
which relies on a distinction between the religious and the secular that is grounded in a Christian
distinction between “the church” and “the world” but has no clear parallel in the other religious
traditions that are indigenous to Europe, namely Judaism and Islam.
Notes
1 This Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research project (AH/S006656/1A) is led by Abigail
Green from the University of Oxford, with the support of Jaclyn Granick (Cardiff), Tom Stammers
(Durham), Silvia Davoli (Strawberry Hill House/Oxford), and Juliet Carey (Waddesdon Manor). The
European Association for the Promotion and Preservation of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ), the
National Trust, Strawberry Hill House, and Waddesdon Manor are all official Project Partners.
2 A landmark exhibition held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1975, entitled “The Destruction of the
English Country House, 1875–1975,” included a “Hall of Destruction” decorated with falling columns and
illustrations of some of the thousand country houses demolished during the previous century.
3 There are now plans to restore it: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/19th-century-Fre
nch-ruin-chateau-Rothschild-near-Paris-to-be-restored-to-glory (accessed May 21, 2021).
4 JTrails conducted volunteer training at Waddesdon Manor on June 18, 2018. Several feedback forms
referred to the problem of antisemitic visitors.
5 On Ferrières see the forthcoming contribution by Pauline Prevost-Marcilhacy to Carey and Green, Jewish
Country Houses.
6 See Henri Lavagne, “Kerylos, the Greek Villa,” in Carey and Green (forthcoming).
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Brion, R., and J. Moreau (2016), Franz Philippson. Aux Origins de la Banque Degroof. Brussels: Didier
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May 23, 2021).
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79
Case Study
Chapter 9
Interreligious Tours as Bottom-Up Heritage

Practice: The Routes of Dialogue in Barcelona
VICTOR SORENSSEN AND JULIA MARTÍNEZ-ARIÑO
Case Study
Introduction
Interreligious dialogue is often seen as the cure to many contemporary problems in increasingly
diverse European societies (Admirand 2019). Politicians frequently consider interreligious
dialogue an useful tool to handle “wicked policy problems” (Poppelaars and Scholten 2008: 338),
such as those linked to terrorism and radicalization, immigrant integration, and poverty. This is
particularly the case in urban centers, where most of these issues emerge and become politicized.
Interreligious initiatives, such as dialogue groups and interreligious events, are becoming popular
in many European cities as instruments of governance (Fahy and Bock 2019; Griera and Nagel
2018; Martínez-Ariño 2019).
Similarly, heritage is invested with multiple political objectives, particularly in highly diverse
cities. These range from reaffirming national identity and establishing particular readings of the
past to recognizing certain cultural or religious minorities to incorporate them in a majority
narrative (Weiss 2007). As such, heritage is often used politically as a source to promote contact
between groups and generate social cohesion. Moreover, heritage tends to be understood as an
enterprise that looks backward, where the past is brought forward in an attempt to preserve
certain historical elements. However, following the work of scholars in critical heritage
studies, we understand heritage as first and foremost a present- and future-making endeavor.
The consideration, and often reconstruction, of certain elements of the past as worth being
kept as heritage of a particular society, group, or culture is more revealing of the contemporary
interests, anxieties, and values than it is of the time those historical elements supposedly come
from. Moreover, heritage is often used to foster certain ideas, views, and desires about how
future society should look like and what it should value and promote. For Rodney Harrison, a
heritage scholar interested in heritage as future-making practices, “heritage actually has very
little to do with the past, but instead emerges out of the relationship between past and present
as a reflection on the future” (2013: 228). Linked to this idea is the fact that heritage is usually
a practice of making new things, of transforming existing things rather than preserving them
79
(Zetterstrom-Sharp 2015). Following this line of thinking, we understand heritage as an ongoing

process, as something that is in the making rather than something that is a finished product.
It is precisely at the complex intersection of these two key developments—the promotion of
interreligious dialogue and the use of heritage as tools for social cohesion—that this chapter is
located. In it, we examine the making of an interreligious heritage project in the city of Barcelona as
it is developed and implemented on the ground, to later become more institutionalized. However,
rather than focusing on state-led interreligious heritage projects, we analyze a community heritage
project. Similar to heritage projects led by state institutions, community heritage works are “a
means to mould and communicate histories, understandings of identity, and definitions of culture
and cultural relevance within groups and to others” (Crooke 2010: 28). Drawing on the concept
of “bottom-up heritage practices” (Brandellero and Janssen 2014: 232), understood as practices
that have the potential to enhance new interactions and produce novel narratives across cultural
and religious groups, we discuss a project of intercultural and interreligious heritage routes in
Barcelona. Born out of grassroots Jewish and Muslim associations in 2018, this initiative aims to
generate mutual knowledge and recognition of these two traditions.
The way this chapter is written might appear quite unusual. It is a collaboration between
a Jewish heritage practitioner (Victor Sorenssen) and a non-Jewish scholar (Julia Martínez-
Ariño). Although such collaborations have become more common over the years, it is still quite
uncommon to produce publications together. This aspect is particularly important because it has
shaped the way we have written our contribution as well as the style we have used. While the
introduction and the conclusion follow a more standard approach to academic writing, the main
empirical section, where the heritage project is described (how the idea came into being, who the
actors involved were, how the project has evolved, etc.) is kept in first person. This is so because
we wanted to reflect how Victor Sorenssen, one of the main creators and promoters of the project,
experienced heritage-making firsthand. Where appropriate, we have added analytical reflections
that help us either to contextualize this experience in its larger context or to connect this case
study with broader theoretical debates in the fields of religious studies and heritage studies.
“Routes of Dialogue”: The Origins

“Routes of Dialogue” is a project for intercultural and interreligious dialogue that originated
in Barcelona in 2019. However, to get a better glimpse of the context in which this initiative
developed, we go back to 2017, the year in which Salam Shalom Barcelona was created. This
brief historical excursion will enable a better understanding of the conceptualization of this
activity as well as offer some relevant brushstrokes on the attempts to translate the wills and
objectives of this interreligious group into a practical activity.
It was thanks to a friend of mine and member of the youth group of Audir (the UNESCO
Association for Interreligious Dialogue), Verónica Sartore, that the idea of Salam Shalom
Barcelona began to take shape. Verónica, the daughter of an Italian man and a German woman,
brought from her time in Berlin a particular type of activism, closely linked to breaking down
social walls in our city that are, at first sight, invisible. Verónica was active in two interreligious
engagements in Barcelona. On the one hand, she proposed the celebration of the Night of
Religions, inspired by the Lange Nacht der Religionen in Berlin (Burchardt and Griera 2020).
On the other hand, and similarly inspired by Berlin’s Salam Shalom Initiative—a civil-society
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Interreligious Tours as Bottom-Up Heritage Practice
organization aiming to oppose racializing and stigmatizing discourses that perpetuate distrust
and favor the social and institutional exclusion of minorities in society—Verónica fostered the
creation of Salam Shalom Barcelona. She invited me to have coffee with Zouahir Haissan,
a member of the Barcelona association EuroArab: Uniting Europe and the Arab World from
Barcelona. At that time, I was working professionally as the director of the Comunidad Israelita
de Barcelona (CIB), the central institution of Judaism in Barcelona. Simultaneously, together
with other colleagues, I was trying to get the Jewish cultural platform Mozaika off the ground, the
main objective of which was the promotion of Jewish culture and history in Barcelona. Especially
oriented to a non-Jewish audience, the Mozaika platform sought to actively participate in the
social and cultural fabric of our city, without any complex and in an inclusive way.
My experience in the field of interfaith dialogue was certainly limited. Despite having
participated actively in the Jewish community framework from an early age, I had only
experienced interreligious dialogue in its most institutional facet, as director of the CIB, in the
Stable Working Group of Religions (GTER). This interreligious platform, which brings together
the leaders and representatives of the “historically relevant” religions, as the group defines itself,
constitutes a key institutional actor in the field of interreligious dialogue in Catalonia (Griera and
Forteza 2011). The meetings within the framework of the GTER were formal, with a very specific
agenda, with the participation of senior officials of the institutions represented there. Meetings
were organized, representatives participated in colloquiums, the group published communiqués,
and it became a pioneer in Spain in the dissemination of dialogue and coexistence. The group
even received several awards, including the Sant Jordi Cross, one of the highest recognitions
that an organization can receive from the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan government.
While the development of this group was key for the creation of a broad strategic alliance
among the city’s religious institutions, its representativeness of, and social impact within, the
religious communities themselves is rather limited, something that is not exclusive to the case
of Barcelona (Chapman and Lowndes 2009). From the perspective of the Barcelona Jewish
community, belonging to this group did not represent the development of initiatives where the
coreligionists could have direct contact with the social, cultural, and political realities of the other
religious communities. Although the GTER has managed to project to society an image of union,
fellowship, and celebration of religious plurality, this has not translated into a broad awareness of
the need for dialogue in the participating communities.
These are some of the reasons that I gladly accepted to join Zouhair and Verónica for a coffee.
For me, this meeting with them represented a unique opportunity to turn around the perspective
of interreligious dialogue that I had experienced thus far and imagine and dream of creating
a different, more participatory, and horizontal framework without the weight of institutional
representation. For this reason, I decided to go to the meeting wearing the Mozaika hat, and not
the CIB hat. I was very curious and I had the feeling that the three of us would understand each
other. I confess that I was excited about the meeting. A bit vain perhaps, I felt like a diplomat
on my way to close the great deal that would bring peace and harmony to our society. And the
meeting was one of those that you keep in your memory, but also in your heart.
We agreed to explore new avenues for interreligious dialogue and to jointly combat
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Moreover, we identified the need to make the local Jewish
community known to the local Muslim community and vice versa. For us, it was important that
the two would get to know each other, their stories, traditions, and concerns. We also agreed
81
on adopting a bottom-up approach. The Salam Shalom Initiative in Berlin would become our
reference and we articulated our own group through the two nonprofit associations we represented,
EuroArab and Mozaika. Salam Shalom Barcelona was thus born to dismantle prejudices, fight
hate speech, and work against structural, cultural, and direct violence between our communities
and toward our communities from a starting point of inclusivity, visibility, and solidarity. These
were ambitious goals that would require tireless work by the volunteers of the two associations
to be implemented.
The members of the Mozaika team celebrated this initiative and many responded to the call
to join Salam Shalom. The same thing happened when Zouhair communicated our decision to
the EuroArab members. With Veronica’s help, the first activities of Salam Shalom Barcelona
began to take place. Their main focus was to make youngsters familiar with what it means to
be Jewish and Muslim in Barcelona today. Once Salam Shalom Barcelona was founded, a first
working team was created to coordinate the initiative, that is, (1) to define its scope of action,
strategy, and communication; (2) to discuss its presentation in Jewish and Muslim institutions
in the city; and (3) to look for funding to cover the costs of the proposed activities. Salam
Shalom’s first public activity was the joint celebration of the New Year (Rosh Hashanah/Ra’s
As-Sanah), which in 2017 coincided in date. The two religious calendars provided us with a
unique opportunity to organize a first festive event, full of music and flavors, which reaffirmed
our conviction that we needed to work together. Next to this event, Salam Shalom organized
other activities, such as workshops where members from both the Jewish and the Muslim
communities would share their experiences in order to find common ground (El-Hairan and
Martinez-Cuadros 2019).
In the mid of this process, a terrible event shook Catalan society. On August 17, 2017, a
terrorist cell drove a van into pedestrians in La Rambla in Barcelona, killing 13 people and
injuring at least 130 others, one of whom died ten days later. Hours later, the Islamic State
claimed responsibility for the attack. Social reactions to the attacks ranged from shock to
incomprehension, and Islamophobic discourses gained prominence. The people of Barcelona
took to the streets to protest the attacks and the Salam Shalom group decided that this would be
the first time we would march together, with a clear message: “Jews and Muslims stand together,
we refuse to be rivals.” This was a message for society at large, but we addressed it particularly
to our communities. This was important for us in a context where trust between communities had
to be restored after this event.
However, an unexpected reaction occurred within the CIB. One day after the terrorist attacks,
in an inopportune interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, an international Jewish media
outlet, the rabbi of the community affirmed that the Jewish community of Barcelona was doomed
and that the police authorities were not facing the Islamist threat. This is a dangerous and
decontextualized narrative, as one can read from the article in which the interview was presented:
I tell my congregants: “Don’t think we’re here for good. And
I encourage them to buy property in Israel. This place is lost. Don’t
repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better
[get out] early than late.” (Liphshiz 2017)
I do not doubt that the press magnified and exaggerated the rabbi’s words. They had made a great
headline, and it didn’t take long for it to reach the main international and Israeli Jewish media.
82
The local press also echoed the news. The CIB, even though I was no longer working there,
asked me to act as a spokesperson to counter the interview. I felt I could not reject that request.
The rabbi’s message was running out of control. It was damaging the Jewish communities. For
the board of directors of the CIB, the message circulated through the media was not the image
the community wanted to give at that delicate moment. In fact, this Jewish community was
working in a completely opposite direction: to encourage Jews to build their lives in Barcelona.
I published an article shortly after the interview with the rabbi, where I directly contradicted his
postulates and his invitation for the Jewish people to leave Barcelona (Staff and JTA 2017). This
article also circulated quickly; it was very controversial that the rabbi and the spokesman of the
Jewish community publicly confronted each other.
Beyond the specific reactions this affair provoked, it revealed the need to lose the fear of
expressing positions publicly. It was time to seek alliances between communities, it was time for
responsibility and social and political commitment. Therefore, more than ever, we reaffirmed our
commitment to carry Salam Shalom forward. The next challenge was the public presentation of
the initiative in January 2018.
The First “Routes of Dialogue”

For the public presentation of Salam Shalom Barcelona, we prepared a series of activities that
took place in different areas of the city, including the urban space itself. We wanted to do the
public presentation somewhere outside our institutional spaces to show others that contact
between Muslims and Jews was a living reality in the streets of Barcelona. This is how the idea
of the first “Route of Dialogue” was born. We promoted it in our social media as follows:
Salam Shalom Tour:
In this tour we want to emphasize the importance of our histories
(Jewish and Muslim) in the urban space. Knowing our realities is
the first step to fight prejudice.
We invite you to two guided walks through the center of Barcelona
to live and understand the history and reality of the Jewish call
[medieval Jewish neighborhood] of Barcelona and the Muslim
communities of the Raval neighborhood.
Through our media campaign, we presented our mission; we wanted to show that dialogue
had no boundaries and that the Muslim and Jewish presence, both socially and historically, are
more deeply rooted in the city than one might think. Planning the tours was not an easy task.
The Raval neighborhood in Barcelona has a significant Muslim presence, visible through the
existence of multiple Islamic oratories, bakeries, and halal butcher shops, but the Gothic quarter,
where the old Jewish quarter of Barcelona is located, has no Jewish families living there, and the
Jewish presence is limited to some Jewish heritage initiatives (Martínez-Ariño, 2020) that try to
complement the insufficient work of Jewish heritage preservation done by public institutions.
Therefore, our approach was twofold: in the Raval, we would seek to make known a tangible
social reality, while in the call (the medieval Jewish quarter), we would work on the non-tangible
heritage of the neighborhood, taking the opportunity to introduce the contemporary history of the
Jewish community of Barcelona. It was no coincidence that the Muslim guide for the “Salam”
83
part of the tour was a social activist and journalist, while the guide for the “Shalom” part was an
activist and medievalist historian.
The first “Route of Dialogue” was conceived of as the sum of two already existing tours
rather than as a tour with a predefined narrative structure created through the joint work of the
two guides. We hoped that a good understanding between the two would guarantee the correct
implementation of the activity and facilitate dialogue between them and with the public. Despite
the lack of planning and the limitations of adding the two already existing tours, the result and
its public reception were very positive. The fact that the tour was free may have helped to have
the tickets sold out days before the event took place. The public of the first tour was largely a
local, non-Jewish, and non-Muslim audience interested in learning about other perspectives and
histories of their city. Some members of the Jewish and Muslim communities also participated.
Some of the first conclusions we extracted from this first experience revolved around the
opportunities that this type of initiative offered us and the participants. First, our tour offered
a specific narrative of our city concerning its Jewish and Muslim realities, which are not
represented in other city tours organized for both locals and tourists. In this sense, our tour offered
an alternative narrative about the city’s past and present that challenges the “authorised heritage
discourse” (Smith 2006: 11) presented by official touring agencies and private companies.
Second, a guided tour is a cultural experience with a high potential to explain the history and
reality of our communities, allowing the public to dive in an open and pleasant way into complex
historical, social, and religious contents. This creates a more direct and dynamic interaction with
the participants in comparison to a conference, for instance. Third, the development of such
guided visits, once framed in a structured program, would serve to reinforce the promotion and
valorization of the tangible and non-tangible heritage of our communities. Moreover, these tours
would allow participants to not only access content about our two communities but to be able
to construct their own interpretation. In this sense, the tours could serve as a sort of laboratory,
where organizers and participants together could explore certain historical elements and their
representation, as well as reflect upon its present and future meanings. In this way, the routes
would allow space for discussion, different perspectives, and disagreement to emerge. Finally,
the development of this type of activity had the potential to become a source of income to ensure
the sustainability of the Salam Shalom Barcelona project.
This positive assessment of the first tour required a work plan for the dialogue tours to become
a more stable reality. However, as the Yiddish saying goes, “Der mentsh trakht un g.t lakht”
(humans plan and G[o]‌d laughs). This work plan was never developed, due principally to the lack
of operational capacity and funding of the Salam Shalom initiative, which continues to be based
on volunteer work. Thus, the “Routes of Dialogue” was limited to the January 2018 experience
and it was not until September of the following year that a second opportunity opened up for the
strengthening of the interreligious tours: the Night of Religions.
The Night of Religions is a yearly interreligious initiative of Audir, supported by the City
Council of Barcelona and the social work foundation of Catalan bank “La Caixa.” It consists of
a multi-sited event in which a variety of places of worship in Barcelona open their doors to teach
the general public about their religions. This allows citizens to get a first-hand experience with
religious traditions they might have never been in contact with. This event offered a favorable
context for the organization of the tours. Interestingly, next to the guided tour led by Salam
Shalom, the program of the 2019 edition of the Night of Religions included three other tours
84
that had been proposed previously but they differed from ours in that they consisted of visiting
places of worship. Two of them were interreligious tours, and the third one was connected to
Hinduism, yoga, and meditation. However, the fact that they involved places of different religious
denominations and were presented as visits that promoted interreligious dialogue showed us the
potential of this type of methodology and encouraged us to explore its further implementation in
the future. It was in 2020, this time in the framework of a European project, that a new opportunity
opened up for the “Routes of Dialogue” to develop and consolidate.
The European Days of Jewish Culture Festival:

Toward the Expansion of the Routes
The European Association for the Promotion of Jewish Heritage and Culture (AEPJ), where
I have the pleasure of working as director at present, is located in the same working space as
the cultural platform Mozaika, along with other institutions in the city that also promote Jewish
cultural projects. Casa Adret, where all these institutions are located, serves as a kind of “hub”
of Jewish culture and heritage in Barcelona. Being in touch with each other on a regular basis
made it possible for us to seek synergies between the various institutions and join forces to
develop projects together. One among such projects was the decision to collaborate jointly within
the framework of the European Days of Jewish Culture Festival (EDJC), a yearly initiative
coordinated by the AEPJ. The 2021 festival is part of the European NOA (Networks Overcoming
Antisemitism) Project,1 funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship
Programme (2014–20).
The AEPJ proposed that the 2021 edition of the European Days of Jewish Culture be carried
out around the central theme of “Dialogue.” The intention was to invite different cultural groups
to become aware of the richness of the existing diversity, represented by their own religious,
national, and ethnic identities. The ultimate aim was to achieve positive and nonviolent
coexistence, and to open a door to work thoroughly on antisemitism issues through the diversity
of events that took place simultaneously in almost thirty countries. By September 2021, the more
than 250 cities participating in the festival carried out activities revolving around dialogue, in
collaboration with institutions as varied as city councils, cultural centers, Jewish communities,
museums, and foundations.
In the summer of 2020, the AEPJ began to design the working plan in order to coordinate
the 2021 European Days of Jewish Culture Festival. The “Routes of Dialogue” were presented
as one of the main activities of the event. In collaboration with Anna Szczesniak and Pawel
Lukaszewicz (Taube Foundation, Poland) and Michael Schreiber (Burgenland Society Research,
Austria), the idea was to benefit from the experience of Salam Shalom Barcelona with the two
“Routes of Dialogue” that we had organized previously in Barcelona. Given that, historically,
guided tours have been the main activity of the EDJC, this framework offered a good opportunity
to develop the “Routes of Dialogue” as a key activity for the 2021 edition. To explore their
full potential and ensure that they could be designed successfully in the different cities, clear
guidelines were established that could serve as a working tool for those coordinators interested
in implementing this initiative.
As part of the institutionalization of this initiative, born out of the grassroots work done in
previous years in Barcelona, it was proposed that the two guides who would carry out the activity
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within the festival in each city would coordinate the content instead of simply putting the two
routes next to each other. Therefore, it was the task of the guides in each city to define the
itinerary, content, and scope of the route. This would include decisions about the different stops,
and the historical, religious, and cultural aspects that they would like to pay special attention
to. Moreover, these visits were planned in such a way that they would encourage the active
participation of the public attending them. Through the production of support material to be
distributed among participants beforehand, the objective was to encourage conversation between
them. The proposal of the “Routes of Dialogue” was presented at the meeting of the EDJC
coordinators (150 of them attended this meeting), where it was received with enthusiasm. In
June 2021, there were already several institutions working to implement the tours within the
framework of the festival in September 2021. Salam Shalom Barcelona offered a “Route of
Dialogue,” this time following the new recommendations set out by the AEPJ.
The analysis of this case shows how grassroot heritage-making born out of local initiatives
can become established heritage practices. This may contribute to generating heritage discourses
with which the communities concerned feel more closely connected and better represented.
Moreover, by drawing on relationships that emerge organically, as the example of Salam Shalom
Barcelona illustrates, rather than on state-imposed networks, such as is often the case with state-
led interreligious initiatives, bottom-up heritage projects can produce enduring interactions and
connections. However, one cannot ignore the broader context in which this initiative takes place,
where suspicion and prejudices between Jewish and Muslim communities occupies a prominent
position.
Conclusions
The diversification of the religious landscape of Barcelona (Martínez-Ariño 2018), like that of
many European cities (Henkel 2014), has raised concerns about the interaction between different
religious communities. This is even more so the case since terrorist attacks in various urban
areas have exacerbated anxieties around the presence of Muslim communities. While the general
approach of states to address these issues has been one of the securitization of Islam (Edmunds
2012), resort to interreligious fora and activities has become quite common at the urban level. In
parallel, in the context of the secularization and religious diversification of European societies,
heritage has become crucial to dealing with diversity. As Astor and colleagues explain, the
heritage discourse has allowed majority religions to reaffirm their privileges by claiming the
centrality of their tenets for the nation. Simultaneously, though, this development has opened up
opportunities for religious minorities to claim their place in society by generating, in our case,
“alternative heritages from Spain’s multicultural past” (Astor, Burchardt, Griera 2017: 140).
The “Routes of Dialogue” that we have presented in this chapter are a clear example of practices
of minority groups that produce their own alternative heritage discourses. While drawing on
tangible and intangible Jewish and Muslim remnants in the city of Barcelona, the interreligious
routes discussed in this chapter produced novel narratives aimed at promoting encounter and
knowledge across traditions in the present and enhancing interreligious conviviality in the future.
In other words, we have shown the future-making dimension of heritage: thinking of ways to
promote awareness, knowledge, and respectful interaction between groups for the present and
the future.
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Moreover, by discussing how these routes came into being, step by step, we have shown the
dynamic nature of heritage and the relevance of considering the actors involved and the broader
contextual circumstances. While initially a quite modest initiative, literally born out of a meeting
of friends, the production of these heritage tours benefited from the contextual opportunities
that allowed for their institutionalization at the European level. The framework provided by the
European Days of Jewish Culture Festival facilitated the expansion of the routes beyond their
original cradle and generated some sort of standardization and professionalization. As such, our
example shows how bottom-up heritagization can generate broader practices and discourses
that establish links between communities at larger scales. However, the dependence on public
funding, volunteer work, and the reliance on personal contacts, as well as suspicion between the
local communities and the larger context of Muslim-Jewish mistrust, demonstrate the precarity
of this type of events to offer solid and stable alternatives that promote conviviality from below.
This, however, does not invalidate the potential of such initiatives to both generate bridges across
communities and strengthen the public visibility and recognition of minority identities in the
public sphere (El-Hairan and Martinez-Cuadros 2019).
Note
1 In 2020, the AEPJ was invited to participate in a project of the European program REC (Rights, Equality,
and Citizenship Programme). The NGO CEJI (a Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe), based in
Brussels, together with the European Union of Progressive Judaism, B’nai B’rith Europe, World Jewish
Congress, European Union of Jewish Students, and the Association for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage,
are teaming up on the two-year project called Networks Overcoming Antisemitism (NOA). The word
“noa” means “in motion” in Hebrew, referring to the constant movement and evolution of ways to combat
antisemitism and also to the progress in highlighting Jewish contributions to Europe. Together, the partners
represent 756 national affiliates.
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The European Days of Jewish Culture: Dialogue. https://jewisheritage.org/edjc/2021-dialogue
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Astor, A., Burchardt, M., and Griera, M. (2017), “The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to
Admirand, P. (2019), “Humbling the Discourse: Why Interfaith Dialogue, Religious Pluralism, Liberation
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Brandellero, A., and Janssen, S. (2014), “Popular Music as Cultural Heritage: Scoping Out the Field of
Practice,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 224–40.
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Chapman, R., and Lowndes, V. (2009), “Accountable, Authorized or Authentic? What Do ‘Faith
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Edmunds, J. (2012), “The ‘New’ Barbarians: Governmentality, Securitization and Islam in Western
Europe,” Contemporary Islam 6 (1): 67–84.
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Possible?,” in E. Aslan, and M. Rausch (eds.), Jewish-Muslim Relations. Historical and Contemporary
Interactions and Exchanges, 199–213. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Fahy, J., and J. J. Bock (2019), The Interfaith Movement: Mobilising Religious Diversity in the 21st
Century. London: Routledge.
Griera, M., and Forteza, M. (2011), “New Actors in the Governance of Religious Diversity in European
Cities: The Role of Interfaith Platforms,” in J. Haynes and A. Hennig (eds.), Religious Actors in the
Public Sphere—Means, Objectives, and Effects, 113–31. London: Routledge.
Griera, M., and Nagel, A.K. (2018), “Interreligious Relations and Governance of Religion in
Europe: Introduction.” Social Compass 65 (3): 301–11.
Harrison, R. (2013), Heritage: Critical Approaches. London: Routledge.
Henkel, R. (2014), “The Changing Religious Space of Large Western European Cities,” Prace
Geograficzne 137: 7–15.
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Doomed,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, August 18. https://www.jta.org/2017/08/18/global/following-
terrorist-attack-barcelonas-chief-rabbi-says-his-community-is-doomed (accessed May 17, 2021).
Martínez-Ariño, J. (2018), “The Evolution of Religious Diversity: Mapping Religious Minorities in
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Martínez-Ariño, J. (2019), “Governing Islam in French Cities: Defining ‘Acceptable’ Public Religiosity
Through Municipal Consultative Bodies,” Religion, State & Society 47 (4–5): 423–39.
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ons-of-doom-after-attack/ (accessed May 17, 2021).
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Case Study
Chapter 10
The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral—a

Cathedral Heritage Reinterpreted
MARCUS R. ROBERTS
Case Study
Lincoln is a classic “gem” city—a walled city, with a great cathedral and a castle surrounded
by outstanding Roman and medieval built heritage, particularly along the famous Steep Hill.
Lincoln Cathedral is one of the iconic Christian landmarks of England and, indeed, Europe. The
city was also home to England’s second-largest medieval Jewish community before the General
Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. When I first researched the Jewish heritage of
Lincoln in the 1990s, few took interest in “minority heritage.” Lincoln’s rich Jewish heritage
was little known, apart from its three famous medieval “Jews’ Houses.” These were typified as
“Jewish moneylenders’ houses” by their association with Aaron the Jew of Lincoln, England’s
greatest medieval moneylender. They are the most substantial physical relics of the medieval
Anglo-Jewish Community.
Better known was the Shrine of Little “Saint” Hugh of Lincoln in the Cathedral itself,
containing the remains of a young boy, Hugh, whom the Jews was falsely alleged to have ritually
murdered during the Lincoln “Blood Libel” of 1255. In the 1990s, there was limited public
information on the Jewish heritage of Lincoln, which was mainly provided by the Cathedral
Information Desk. There was a faulty historical interpretation next to the Shrine of Little Hugh
itself, which, until as late as 1955, had stated the Libel story to be a historical fact, while tour
guides would speak of greedy Jewish moneylenders and repeat the Blood Libel story to their
groups in front of the window of the synagogue during services. At that time, the modern Lincoln
Jewish community was very small and young, having only refounded itself in 1992 for services
on the site of the medieval synagogue at Jews’ Court on Steep Hill.
Lincoln’s Jewish heritage is an important example of what is called dissonant heritage, but
of a special sort. Internationally, religious faith is a principal source of heritage contestation,
and dissonance is a key part of that discussion (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). Ashworth and
Tunbridge argued that all heritage is potentially divisive, in the sense that all heritage is possessed
by one particular group or another and is used as a vehicle in constructing a shared identity and
narrative linked to place and a claim to ownership of a place in the present. Therefore, one
predominant heritage is in essence a rebuke to another (usually minority) heritage and can be
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used, consciously or unconsciously, to marginalize a minority group by denying them a narrative

and identity linked to a place.
This effect can be particularly powerful where it is linked to a dominant group or to powerful
vested interests of a group, and it can even be manifested as a deliberate act of cultural and heritage
confiscation. The dissonance of Anglo-Jewish heritage is often manifested in its invisibility or
its degraded state. However, in a few locations, selected (and misused) elements of the medieval
Jewish heritage have become a prominent part of the heritage of a town or city and a part of local
historical consciousness. This heritage was never selected or affirmed by the original or modern
Jewish communities, and the narratives nearly always emphasize the “otherness” and noninclusion
of Jews, frequently dwelling on murder, mayhem, and anti-Jewish prejudices and stereotypes. In
2008, of the first 200 books listed on the internet about the Jews of Lincoln, all, bar three, only
talked about the Blood Libel or usury. Only one exceptional book imagined what the everyday life
of a medieval Jew in Lincoln would have been like. Therefore, in Lincoln, there was a prima facie
issue of “contested meaning.” It was clear that certain “tangible” and “intangible” aspects of Lincoln
history and heritage were being narrated and marketed to the exclusion of others (Court 2006).1
I founded JTrails (the National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail) in 2005, in partnership with
English Heritage, who were starting to address minority heritage at the time, and I contacted the
Lincolnshire Jewish Community (LJC) to propose a heritage outreach project with them. The
chair of the LJC, Richard Dale, agreed with my aim of promoting a more realistic and historically
accurate portrayal of the city’s Jewish history and wanted representations of Lincoln’s Jews to
go beyond the “notoriety” of Aaron of Lincoln, the archetype of the “greedy” medieval Jewish
usurer, as well as address the slur often repeated on the street—that the Jews of Lincoln had
actually committed a ritual child murder. He also specifically wanted the faulty, maladroit,
interpretative signage at the Shrine of Little Hugh to be changed, as it appeared to suggest that
God should overlook the sins of the Christians who executed local Jews falsely accused of the
murder. These issues—the Blood Libel and the interpretation of the Shrine of Little Hugh—
grated more than anything else in the consciousness of the small modern Jewish community and
caused continued distress. These were not abstract matters of the past, but had a contemporary
impact, and Richard Dale felt that if a heritage project could redress these causes of distress, it
would be welcomed by the community.
From 2008 to 2020, I worked with the LJC on a sustained series of linked Jewish heritage
projects, following an outreach plan of March 2008, based on the English Heritage model of
community outreach (Bloodworth 2011). This project relied on the quality of the partnership
with the LJC, leading to the unusually sustained and productive project work. Achieving changes
in local perceptions about Jewish heritage is best pursued by such sustained and comprehensive
outreach. The object of the plan was to normalize the Jewish history and heritage in Lincoln,
to overcome the dissonance, to address stereotypes and prejudices, and to ensure that it found
its proper place in the public historical narrative. We also wanted to improve the understanding
and enjoyment of the local heritage landscape, while enhancing the local sense of place and
identity and contributing to social cohesion. We followed the model proposed by Tunbridge and
Ashworth and others—believing that the divisive reality of dissonant heritage can be turned into
a powerful force for social cohesion when diverse or alternative heritages linked to a particular
space are acknowledged and integrated, and if power is no longer seen as vested solely in one
particular group. I also felt that the Jewish heritage in Lincoln embodied the UK national story,
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The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral
which has always been more global and multicultural than acknowledged in the received national
narrative (Ashworth and Graham 2005; Hall 2008: 225; Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996).
The project was supported by English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the LJC and the
Muriel & Gershon Coren Charitable Foundation, Dale & Co., the Lincolnshire Methodist Circuit,
and the local Methodist Bishop, Rev. Bruce Thompson. The use of national agencies helped give
authority to the project, while the moral and financial support of smaller patrons has also been
critical. The outputs of the project have been:
• An online Jewish Heritage Trail of Lincoln’s Jewish Heritage on JTrails.org.uk.
• A partnership project with the LJC and Lincoln Cathedral to reinterpret the Shrine of
Little Hugh.
• A printed trail leaflet for local tourists.
• The publication of a book, The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral (Roberts 2015).
• The formal training of 100 Cathedral guides, volunteers, and staff on the Jewish heritage of
the Cathedral.
• An online short Jewish Trail now part of the official “Visit Lincoln” website.
• The in-depth training of a group of local tour guides, both from the local Jewish community
and other guides to give accredited tours of local Jewish heritage.
• Regular participation in the official “Days of Jewish Heritage” and “Heritage Open Days”
national programs, offering tours.
• The production of a seven-pod mobile exhibition on the Jewish heritage of Lincoln.
• Promoting the presentation of the Jewish heritage of Lincoln in documentary films. In 2010,
I set-up and provided the history and locations for a ten-minute segment in Simon Schama’s
internationally released BBC documentary, The Story of the Jews.
• Reidentifying and interpreting overlooked medieval Jewish artefacts in The Collection,
Lincoln’s leading museum, includes reidentifying the Lincoln Lamp, one of the oldest Jewish
ritual artefacts in Europe.
• Commissioning an exact replica of the Lincoln Lamp and researching its origins, manufacture,
and significance for publication.
• Planning for a major exhibition on the medieval Jews of Lincoln and England (pending).
All of these initiatives have worked together to significantly address the Jewish heritage
dissonance of Lincoln, and today the Jewish heritage of Lincoln is a matter of civic pride.
The Cathedral as Jewish-Christian Heritage

The most important and innovative aspect of the entire project was an exploration of the Jewish
heritage of Lincoln Cathedral (see Figure 10.1), combined with facilitating an interfaith dialogue
between the Jewish community and the Cathedral, in order to revise the Cathedral’s interpretation
of the Shrine of Little Hugh, the key example of dissonant and misused Jewish heritage in
England. The guidebook that resulted was edited by the Cathedral, as I was anxious for them to
support the thesis that it presented.
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The offer of the Cathedral to edit it was important, as they shared their knowledge and
expertise on their own building, correcting obvious factual errors, and allowing a dialogue about
contentious issues, such as how far the Cathedral was complicit in the Blood Libel. The resulting
publication would hopefully be considered fair and one that they would be happy to stock on
the shelves of the Cathedral Shop. However, after publication, the guide was not stocked in the
Cathedral Shop on the justification that it “contained three mistakes,” even though the Cathedral
had fully edited the book. The mistakes were trivial and were actually not factual, but matters
of emphasis and interpretation. The Bishop then intervened in favor of the guide and could see
no reason why it could not be stocked in the shop, but this illustrates how unexpected issues can
arise in otherwise harmonious interfaith projects.
A New Paradigm—Jewish Heritage in a Christian Space

The guidebook was inspired by the realization that there was an unprecedented range of Jewish
heritage in the building; that the meaning of the Cathedral was Jewish as well as Christian; and
that evidence of mutual influence (and, to some degree, mutual self-definition) between the faiths
and the community was very strong. The heritage reflects the modern view that the medieval
Jewish and Christian faiths influenced each other and that Jewish and Christian identities were
not monolithic. This guidebook may well be the first effort to reinterpret an iconic Christian
heritage space as, in actuality, a dual Jewish-Christian heritage space. This may be challenging
to both Jews and Christians in some respects, and to the sense of heritage ownership of the
building, but it is a challenge that creates great opportunities for dialogue, mutual understanding,
and transformation as well. The imagery discovered in the Cathedral covers a very wide range.
While there was much anti-Semitic imagery (thirteenth century), there was also other imagery
which was either benign or, remarkably, even philo-Semitic (late eleventh to twelfth centuries).
There were many artworks depicting Judaism, Jews, and stories about Jews, with some drawing
indirectly, or even directly, on Jewish tradition itself. The following explains what was found
with a few selected examples.
Neutral and Philo-Semitic Imagery

The Cathedral fabric evidences significant assimilated historical Jewish and Judaic influences
on Christianity. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, there was an evident general love
of Old Testament material. This is probably linked to the fact that the Cathedral used Judaic
elements in its rituals in the late eleventh century and early twelfth century, as did other major
English churches, which also used religious apparel and regalia based on those of the Aaronic
Priesthood. Lincoln is asserted to have had a seven-branch candelabrum based on the Menorah
in the Temple in Jerusalem.
These do not demonstrate that the Cathedral was drawing on anything other than an assimilated
Jewish tradition, although the Judaic ritual suggests sympathies in the church that might have
favored dialogue with Jewish scholars and Jewish tradition before Jewish-Christian relations
were radicalized by the surge in anti-Semitism in the thirteenth century. The benign or positive
imagery is explained by the fact that in the twelfth century, clerical attitudes toward Jews were
originally shaped by a more tolerant Augustinian theology. This changed, partly because the
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FIGURE 10.1 A plan of the main Jewish heritage locations in Lincoln Cathedral.
Source: Marcus Roberts.
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Church vigorously pursued the Doctrine of Transubstantiation after the Lateran Council of 1215,
as well as advocating stricter separation of Christians and Jews. The attitudes were also influenced
by Jewish converts who zealously condemned their former faith and co-religionists and offered
more insight into Rabbinical Judaism, particularly where it was antipathetic to Christianity, such
as in its doubt about the virginity of the Virgin Mary and opposition to the cult of Mary by
English and French Jews.
Discussions of philo-Semitism at the Cathedral must reference Bishop Hugh, Saint Hugh of
Avalon (1186–1200), the most famous of all Lincoln’s bishops and one of the great medieval
philo-Semites. He saved the Jews of Lincoln and Northampton in 1190, when he personally
intervened to stop local Jews from being slaughtered. When he died, there were remarkable
scenes of grief as the local Jews wept and tried to follow the funeral as closely as possible.
However, there is evidence of a cult directly influenced by Judaism in the Cathedral, as some
of the most significant and unique artworks in the Cathedral, the sculptures on the West Front
Frieze, are based on Jewish legends, both directly from contemporary Jewish tradition and through
a longer historical assimilation into the Christian tradition. The art historian Zarnecki first showed
that iconography on the famous twelfth-century West Front Frieze of the Cathedral was partly based
on Jewish legends (midrashim), suggesting a remarkable cross-influence between contemporary
Jewish and Christian traditions and evidence that there may have been direct (and perhaps even
local) Jewish input into the design of the frieze itself! The panel showing the “Giants at the Flood”
(see Figure 10.2) is demonstrably a dramatic working of a Jewish legend recorded in written form
in the ninth and tenth centuries, which had not been previously assimilated into Christian tradition.
The “Giants at the Flood” panel in the Ringers’ Chapel shows how the immortal Giants
(Nephilim) of Genesis 6:4 escaped the destruction of the Flood already suffered by mere mortals.
Because they mocked God, He responded by scalding them to death by making each drop of
water from the Deluge pass through the fires of Gehenna (Hell) before they fell to the Earth
(see Figure 10.2 left). The story of Theophilus and the Virgin (see Figure 10.2 right) shows a
Jewish wizard (wearing a pointed Jew’s hat) acting as an intermediary of the Devil, arranging for
Theophilus to sell his soul using a contract. The contract, or charter, is labeled using a remarkable
caricature, a pseudo-Hebrew demonic script, to make the point that the Jews were “in with”
making the pact with the Devil (Zarnecki, 1988).
Additional research uncovered more possible Jewish influences on the West Front Frieze. Its
exceptional extended treatment of the Noah narrative is very similar to that at Bourges Cathedral
in France, which was probably commissioned by a Jewish convert. Extensive sequences depicting
Genesis 6–9 are rare in medieval England, and in c. 1200 more piecemeal presentations of Old
Testament and New Testament scenes were preferred. At Bourges, a Jewish convert, William of
Bourges, became Deacon at Bourges Cathedral in c. 1211 and is believed to have directed the
designs there, including the Noah sequence, enriched with reference to Jewish legends. Noah
prefigures Christ’s salvation in medieval Christian thought, and this idea is significantly enhanced
by the inclusion of the additional details from Jewish tradition at both Lincoln and Bourges. It is
possible that it may also reference the Jewish notion of the universal Noachide Covenant, the first
covenant between God and humanity (Broughton 1996; Jennings 2002).
The Cathedral archivist expressed doubt about the idea of a direct Jewish influence, as he
“could not find evidence for it in the Cathedral Archives.” This overlooked both the evidence
in the Cathedral fabric and the obvious purge of the records of nearly all of their extensive
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FIGURE 10.2 Philo-Semitism versus anti-Semitism. Left: the “Giants at the Flood” panel in the Ringers’
Chapel; right: the story of Theophilus and the Virgin.
Source: Marcus Roberts
financial dealings with local medieval Jews, bar a single medieval Hebrew Charter, which the
archivist found.
Further research showed that some medieval Christian scholars were skilled in Hebrew,
particularly in the twelfth century, and some consulted with Jewish rabbis and scholars and read
their religious and secular books, particularly with regard to the interpretation of the Bible. Bishop
Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, most famous after Bishop Hugh, was a keen student of Hebrew and
encouraged the study of Hebrew. Tradition states that Grosseteste was taught Hebrew by an Oxford
Rabbi while a student. Grosseteste advocated the study of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, and,
it is said, he wrote to the university to commission the publication of new Hebrew and Latin parallel
texts (“Lincoln Superscript”) to help clerics learn Hebrew, which was vital for medieval Biblical
exegesis. Some of these remarkable collaborative works produced by Christian and Jewish scribes
survive in Oxford and are vital evidence of the sharing of religious learning by Jews and Christians.
Other books in the Cathedral indicate Grosseteste’s interests as well as those of other bishops
in the Diocese of Lincoln. Bishop Grossteste’s later work, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
(1242), is believed to have been written specifically with disputation with Jews in mind. He also
wrote On the Cessation of the Laws, which was directed toward Judaic sympathizers, possibly
in his diocese and probably toward Jews. This interest in dispute is further bolstered by a copy
of an anonymous theological dispute between a Jew and Christian, found in the Library, entitled
Dialogus inter Christianum et Judaeum de fide catholica, which was dedicated to Alexander,
Bishop of Lincoln (1123–48). This “dispute” may be a literary invention, but its presence indicates
an interest in this form of Christian-Jewish interaction in Lincoln. Grosseteste’s encouragement
was very important for noted Franciscan Hebraists, such as Roger Bacon and Nicholas of Lyra
(the “ape of Rashi”). However, Grosseteste was not a philo-Semite and was hostile toward actual
Jews. He forbade the killing of Jews but advised instead a program of persecution so that they
would live miserable lives.
95
Other recent literary and archaeological evidence supports the idea of mutual influence. I found
evidence indicating that Jewish converts did retain some sort of Jewish identity. Some Hebrew
books had both Christian influences and audiences, such as the “Northern French Miscellany,”
which presents both Jewish and Christian calendars, or used Christian iconography, such as in its
representation of Noah’s Ark. Some Jewish scribes were commissioned to produce manuscripts
for Christians. Various archaeological finds support this idea of mutual influence. The thirteenth-
century Lincoln Lamp, which I reidentified after it had gone missing for over sixty years, is an
artifact of distinctive Jewish use and meaning, but these star-shaped lamps essentially repurposed
obsolete Christian bronze lamps (and in this sense they are not Jewish at all).
A recent find of a senior cleric’s talismanic signet ring also suggests real Jewish-Christian
influences and contacts between the Jewish community and senior church clerics. A gold ring
from the twelfth or thirteenth century was found on the site of the Abbey of Pilton and included a
prominent Hebrew inscription, which was almost certainly engraved by a Jew (Barnstaple, North
Devon Athenaeum, Inv, NDA 1976.1). A personal seal of a “John Massod” from Basildon in
Berkshire (1200–1400) combines Stars of David with an Ichthus and crosses, and thus suggests
a Christian convert retaining a Jewish identity. I also found a small graffiti Star of David pilgrim
mark carved into the fabric of Lincoln Cathedral. This might indicate a Jewish convert leaving
his mark on the Cathedral. The National Archive shows the continuing presence of both Jews
and converted Jews in England after the Expulsion of 1290, who sometimes occupied influential
positions as functionaries of the King, Church, or University, or were able to live lives integrated
into the Christian community, with residence in the Domus Conversorum (House of Converts in
London) merely seeming to be an option if one was aged or had fallen upon hard times. Some of
these families continued to be known as “converse,” or “le Jewe” for nearly a century after the
Expulsion.
There are also remarkable stories indicating an unexplored hinterland of popular Jewish-
Christian religious interaction and hybrid belief, which has not been taken seriously. The
Chronicle of William of Newbury tells the story of a converted Jew from London living in
Lincoln, who was widely credited with the powers of prophecy and respected because of his
conversion. He foretold, to widespread popular Christian belief, that there would not be another
Bishop of Lincoln during the effective period of seventeen years interregnum (1168–83)
between Bishop Robert and Bishop Hugh of Avalon and the eventual consecration of Bishop
Walter of Constance (Jacobs 1893: 264). This suggests more nuanced relations between local
Christians and Jews than often assumed and, indeed, some intersection of faith. This story is
not unique. In the thirteenth century, the “life” of St. Robert of Knaresborough relates that
he was a holy man and hermit who lived in the vicinity of York (100 km from Lincoln). He
employed a Jew as his almoner and gathered a substantial Jewish following, to the extent that
they made up the group that gathered around his deathbed asking for his last blessing at his
expiration, and they then defended his body from being carried off by the local Franciscan
monks (Seville 1787: 8, 11).
The evidence suggests that the twelfth-century iconography of the Cathedral represents a
period lasting into the early thirteenth century when there was at least some constructive
and positive theological engagement between Jews and Christians, leading to greater mutual
understanding and cultural enrichment and perhaps even some significant encounters in the
twelfth century between Christians and Jewish scholars, as well as hybrid Jewish-Christian
96
identities. The existence of such hybrid identities does not seem to have been previously noted,
or at least taken seriously.
Hostile Imagery
Scholarly opinion agrees that most of the hostile religious imagery concerning Jews occurred
from the late twelfth century onward in areas where medieval Jews lived. This was particularly
so in the North, where a number of towns and cities, such as York and Lincoln, had a troubled
Jewish history, but also in the east, in Norwich, Bury St. Edmunds and the south and southeast,
in Oxford and Canterbury, among other locations where anti-Semitic imagery has been recorded.
These hostile images occurred for complex reasons at a time in which the Church in Rome
sought to curb heresy across Europe. Jews were also victims of anti-Semitic propaganda (fears
of an anti-Christ and allegations that Jews were hostile to the Virgin Mary) and violence related
to the Crusades. Also, the edicts of the Council of Oxford in 1222 forced English Jews to wear
the Jewish badge (as their dress or appearance was too similar to the rest of the population) and
restricted relations with Christians (not dissimilar to the 1930s Nuremberg Laws). The kings of
the period increasingly acted to impoverish the community and to take away their livelihood.
Periodically, there were attacks against English Jews and the recurrent false allegations of ritual
child murder.
This led to some dramatic instances of extreme clerical anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in the
thirteenth century. In the Cathedral, there are virulent anti-Semitic stained-glass versions of the
“Legends of the Virgin Mary,” which present literally demonizing narratives about local Jews
and their use of legal contracts in lending. As mentioned above, in one panel of the “Legend of
Theophilus,” a Jewish Necromancer hands over a contract to the Devil, effecting the sale of the
soul of the Christian cleric, Theophilus, to the Devil. Later, Mary is able to persuade the Devil to
cancel the contract. A telephoto lens revealed for the first time that the scroll is inscribed with a
pseudo-Hebrew demonic script. This scene seems to be a specific warning against the contracts
of local Jews who lived down the hill, a form of devilish bureaucracy that could be countered by
faith in the miraculous Mary.
In “Legend of the Jew of Bourges,” the theme of Jews as childkillers is also explored. In
the stained glass, a Jewish glassmaker is shown throwing his son into a flaming glass furnace,
enraged to discover that his son had attended church and communion, but the boy is saved by the
miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary. The image suggests that if Jewish children are not
safe from their parents, how much less so are Christian children from Jews.
The remains of the Shrine of Little Hugh of Lincoln are the most chilling of all of the
monuments of anti-Semitism in England and still dramatically evidences the Lincoln Blood Libel
allegation, which led to the judicial murder of eighteen innocent local Jews. From July 2008 to
September 2009, the existing and unsatisfactory signage was entirely rewritten in a profound,
interfaith collaboration, and in the spirit of reconciliation, by the Lincoln Jewish Community, the
Cathedral, and JTrails, and then relaunched in a major ceremony at the Cathedral. The Jewish
community wanted the new signage to make clear that the allegations were false, that innocent
lives were lost, that Hugh was never canonized (which tended to support the allegation), and to
remove wording seeming to ask God to overlook the sins of the Christians. Kaddish was sung
at the shrine in memory of the eighteen innocent Jewish victims of the libel. Senior clergy at
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the Cathedral stated that hearing the Kaddish sung at the shrine was one of the most profound
spiritual experiences they had experienced in the Cathedral. The Jewish community reported
a sense of a long-term uplift in their already good relations with the Cathedral, with even the
Bishop dropping into one of the Shabbat Services.
Conclusion
This case study is an example of both the divisive reality of “dissonant” and “contested heritage”
and how it can be turned into a positive force for social cohesion using community-based projects
and outreach. The heritage outreach project in Lincoln was able to positively link the Christian and
Jewish heritages of the Cathedral and address the history of “pain and shame” experienced by
the Jewish community that was still vested in the Shrine of Little Hugh. Its power to continue to
cause division and hurt has now been ameliorated by making it into a place promoting tolerance
and understanding, which has improved local people’s experience of the local heritage space.
A search on the internet on the Jews of medieval Lincoln now presents a much transformed and
more positive range of resources on this local history, including the disappearance of the Blood
Libel as the major focus.
It is clear that Lincoln Cathedral cannot be solely considered as a site of Christian heritage, but
has a mediate religious heritage, with the Cathedral having assimilated indirect and direct Jewish
influences and having important meaning and significance for both the Christian and Jewish
communities. This provides a new paradigm for understanding certain Christian buildings,
although it can be challenging for the Christian community to cede that, to some degree, the
Jewish community may be a stakeholder in the heritage of “their” churches and that the meaning
may be, to some degree, contested, or shared, due both to history and Church theology. There are,
of course, many other religious buildings that have been directly used by two or more faiths over
their histories, and it is vital to assimilate all of their religious phases.
This study illustrates the current trend in heritage, which argues that there was a process of
cultural and religious exchange between Christians and Jews in medieval Western Europe, at
least reminiscent of “La Convivencia” in Spain, and while not in the scope of this study, medieval
English Jews were also much sought after for their knowledge of Arabic, medicine, and the
sciences. The Jews of England did not live in ghettos, but had Christians as neighbors. The idea
of a highly distinctive and separated Jewish life and identity is far more relevant to the Jews of
the later ghettos of Europe. This study shows there was a degree of mutual self-definition and
influence between Christians and Jews in both tolerant and hostile periods. It was surprising
that the art and fabric of the Cathedral was so sensitive to the impress of its times, perhaps even
responding to the presence of a numerically small group of local Jews who lived just down the
hill from the Cathedral and mirroring the relationship between clergy and local Jews.
The artworks and relics serve as a testimony to the essential historical and theological
relationship between Jews and Christians. This also demonstrates that there is no simple formula
for understanding the relationship between the two communities, but that the possibility of
positive dialogue and a relationship was even present and operative in the medieval period. This
study also indicates the need to understand the neglected Jewish-Christian religious identities
of medieval converts and the involvement of Jews with local charismatic holy men and women.
The evidence suggests that converts did choose to retain a positive Jewish identity in many cases.
98
Much of this history remains completely relevant to contemporary times, as it still speaks
to interfaith relations, and how we treat our “neighbors,” and the need to combat myths,
misconceptions, and allegations of conspiracy by learning from one another.
Note
1 Pers. Comm. Director JTrails.
References
Ashworth, G. J., and B. Graham (2005), Senses of Place: Senses of Time. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bloodworth, C. (2011), Outreach, Engaging New Audiences with the Historic Environment.
London: English Heritage.
Broughton, L. (1996), Interpreting Lincoln Cathedral: The Medieval Imagery. Lincoln: Lincoln Cathedral
Publications.
Court, E. N. V. (2006), “Invisible in Oxford: The ‘Public Face’ of Medieval Jewish History in Modern
England,” Shofar 26 (3): 1–20.
Hall, S. (2008), “Whose Heritage? Un-settling 'The Heritage', re-imagining the post-nation,” in G.
Fairclough, R. Harrison, J. H. Jameson Jnr, and J. Schofield, P. (eds.), The Heritage Reader, 219–28.
London: Routledge.
Jacobs, J. (ed.) (1893), The Jews of Angevin England: Documents and Records from Latin and Hebrew.
London: D. Nutt.
Jennings, M. (2002), “Prophesy in Glass and Stone, Jewish Influences on the Cathedral at Bourges,”
in Colum Hourihane (ed.), Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-fifth
Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, 182–210. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Roberts, M. (2015), The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral. Oxford: Oxford Heritage Press.
Seville, A. (1787), Piety display’d, in the Holy Life and Death of St. Robert, the hermit at Knaresborough.
Also the abstemious life of Henry Jenkins. Knaresborough: M. Broadbolt.
Tunbridge J. E., and G. J. Ashworth (1996), Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a
Resource in Conflict. New York: Chichester.
Zarnecki, G. (1988), Romanesque Lincoln. The Sculpture of the Cathedral. Lincoln: Honywood Press.
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Negotiating Diversity and Interreligious

Heritage
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Challenge
Chapter 11
Religious Architecture and Interreligious

Relations: The Politics of Memory in Bosnia
AMRA HADŽIMUHAMEDOVIĆ
Challenge
Introduction
Historical landscapes across the world have been shaped by both interreligious harmony and
conflict. Bosnia is a country with a religiously plural tradition, in which no single religion is
dominant—neither in the society nor in its contributions to cultural memory. Through its
entwined heritage of diverse Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions and the painful memories
of genocidal territorial purifications from the two world wars and, most recently, the war after
the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia, Bosnia poses a challenge for the discourses of “unity in
diversity” and “clash of identities.” The postwar construction of new buildings, much like the
attitude toward the religious built heritage, is a dramatic and unambiguous expression of the
continuation of the memory work of Bosnian society, which has been processing the societal
trauma caused by the succession of violent nationalist program.
Bosnia has now become a locus classicus for postconflict studies. Restoring destroyed
heritage places has been described as a means of rebuilding interethnic and interreligious trust.1
However, the relation of postwar politics to heritage is more complicated and reflects the slow
extinguishing of the smoldering embers of war. The heritage-based recovery of destroyed cities
and cultural landscapes has been confronted with two challenges of their further aggressive
reconfiguring. Both of them harness religious places as their agents. The first is a form of cultural
cleansing through reformation of architectural styles. This reformation is expressed through
alleged reconstruction of the ancient, imagined forms of sacred places (often churches), which
may have never existed, as well as through building churches or mosques over sacred cultural
landscapes and changing common folk religious traditions associated with them. The second
is through the imposition of new architectural styles of mosques and churches, the eclecticism
of which is informed by current trends in the declared centers of a religious tradition, often by
borrowing forms or decorative elements from the religious heritage in the same centers. These
new buildings are often erected to express the domination of one religion in cultural landscape
and to enhance politically driven discrimination between each other.
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This article explores some of the processes of political and societal instrumentalization of
interreligious relations and coexistence in recent Bosnian history, which offer examples of the
challenges, potentials, and risks that heritage practices may play in plural societies. I propose three
receptions of Bosnia’s religious heritage in relation to the question of identity. The first utilizes
religious heritage as complex, intertwined identity that forms a foundation for peacebuilding
and social healing of conflict-induced traumas; the second frames heritage as an unsustainable
expression of mutually exclusive identities; and the third denies Bosnian religious heritage and
conceals its remains through the construction of three rival and competing identities. While
the first manifests itself through holistic approach to recovery of people, natural, and cultural
heritage, aimed at keeping the thread of continuity and inclusiveness, the second acts through
its destruction, discontinuity, and religious purification, and the third becomes apparent in the
rearticulation of religious architecture, the aggressive forms of new structures without regard for
their cultural and natural contexts, as well as the religious, gender-based, and even intra-religious
sectarian exclusivism and discrimination.
Bosnia’s Religious Heritage as Intertwined Identity

Accepting Bosnian plurality as an intertwined identity implies that its cultural traditions are
indivisible, and none of them separately are viable. The intertwined identity, which can be
demonstrated in many instances of the shared use of religious spaces and motifs reflects the
nature of social givens in Bosnia and respect and concern for the sacred space and tradition of
one’s neighbor. The religious buildings and sites, their spatial and temporal structure, and the use
made of them coalesced into the unique heritage places and cultural landscapes. This structure
reflects not only their distribution but also that of their significance and meanings, their historical
overlaps, correspondences and continuity, and their association with one or more religious groups
in Bosnia. One can go even further and speak of a religious encounter in this entwined culture
based on the underlying religion of essential truth. This ability to meet also on the religious or
spiritual plane rests on the mutual legibility of built forms, ornaments, and symbols present in the
architecture of Bosnia; on language but also on rituals and customs, including sacred events and
the honoring of saints, which may or may not fall into syncretic practices.
The Bosnian sacred map has been drafted through topoi integrated in an official sacral calendar
either of Islamic community or one of the Churches, though, often, to more than one at the same
time. These phenomena of shared sacred sites in the diverse, sometimes overlapping, religious
calendars stand upon the universal power of nature and tradition. This has been most evident in
rituals linked with natural phenomena and seasonal feasts—such as the St. George/Al Khidr—
celebrating spring, sawing, and germination, or the Birthday of John the Baptist/prophet Yahja
ibn Zekeriyah—celebrating summer solstice and ripening, or St. Elija/prophet Ilyas—praying for
abundance and celebrating harvest. However, lots of sites and dates are impressed in the local beliefs
without any organized or institutional ritual. An example of such an unofficial, unprotected, and
yet still venerated site is Svetinja (The Holy) in Bužim. That is a place of interreligious encounter
where water bursts out of the top of a rock every year on May 6 at noon, on the day of St. George.
Sufism has been one of the most important formative factors of Bosnian cultural memory and
the ferment of the persistence of the shared sacred calendars and landscapes. The Sufi orders whose
presence has remained significant in Bosnian tradition are the Naqshbandi, Halveti, Bektashi,
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Religious Architecture and Interreligious Relations
Qādiri, Mawlawi, Tabani, Rifā῾īyah, and Hamzavi—the Bosnian branch of Bayramiye-Melamiye

order. Although the words syncretism and heterodoxy have been attached to the practices of some
of them—especially Bakthashi and Hamzavi orders—the phenomenon embraces far deeper roots
in tradition, which have always persisted through perpetuation, inheritance, and transmission of
vernacular worshiping practices and forms.
Although tekkes and the Sufi rituals were banned in Bosnia during the period under the
socialist rule—when atheism was proclaimed as the public policy—the religious symbols,
rituals, and customs, especially those of the “calendar” marking in associative landscapes were
used as the popular folk festival places without religious rituals, which maintained, forged, and
affirmed ties between the three communities. While the mosques and many active tekkes were
systematically destroyed during the war, those sacred landscapes, whose religious association
had been benumbed from 1948 to the last decade of twentieth century, remained untouched.
Their potential of shared religious sites reemerged in the postwar time and was initially harnessed
for peace-building through spontaneously established folk practices (see Figure 11.1).
Even after the destructive war, Andrea Schlenker-Fischer (2011) found in Bosnia precisely the
type of multiple identity that constitutes the desirable relationship between European nations and
FIGURE 11.1 Zabrdje, a cultural landscape where Muslim and Christians celebrated St Eliyah Day
for centuries on August 2nd, recovered by students of International Summer School organized by
International Forum Bosnia.
Source: Dervis Hadzimuhamedovic, 2022.
105
the demos of the European Union. Just as it was possible in Bosnia, in the late twentieth century,
to be both a Serb, Croat, or Bosniak—Orthodox, Catholic, or Muslim—and a Bosnian, so too the
model of multiple identities allows for the European ideal of “unity in diversity” to be achieved.
The refugees and displaced persons from the 1990s war linked their return with the
reconstruction of religious heritage places. Through the rebuilding of mosques and churches,
they reclaimed their right to a place of belonging as well as to publicly express their identity.
Wherever a participative restoration of destroyed religious heritage took place in postwar
Bosnia, it pointed to the processes of healing the cultural trauma, reconciliation, and building
social resilience. The reconstruction was not restricted to national monuments, but included
minor sites which were central for urban recovery and whose significance was recognized in the
peacebuilding process. The Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established after the
Dayton Peace Accord, designated sites and remains of religious buildings as national monuments
and established strategy for their reconstruction. The examples include the Old Bridge in Mostar
(which originally served as a minaret to the mosque located at its left foot); the Čaršijska mosque
in Stolac; the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka; the Aladža mosque in Foča; the mosques in
Trebinje, Počitelj, Prijedor, and Čajniče; the Orthodox Christian monastery in Žitomislići; and
the churches in Mostar, Blagaj, Trijebanj, Bosanska Krupa, Zavala, Nevesinje, and many other.
The inclusiveness of the processes was important to counter a number of projected
discriminations justified with the zeal of religious reformation and purification, to mention
gender-based exclusivism, among the others. The restoration of cultural heritage maintained the
long-existing gender-inclusive spatial organization of churches and mosques, where no separate
places and strict divisions between men and women had existed.
Destruction of Religious Heritage

The entwined identities, places, and practices that together made the internally plural Bosnian
heritage became a target in the 1992–6 war, during which Croat and Serb nationalist forces sought
to implement their vision of mutually exclusive cultural spheres. Bosnian Muslim heritage did
not fit into any of the two visions. This war was one of the best studied cases of European conflict
studies, yet the role of religion was omitted from many early works. A possible explanation is
that the war took place in a time period in which Islam entered the public imagination as the
rising threat to European Christian identity foundations, as declared by many far-right political
groups and even as part of the official policies of some European governments. The destruction
of religious symbols and sacred buildings and the celebration of violence and atrocities through
religious rituals by both Serb and Croat forces in the first two years of the war speak to the
centrality of religious cleansing, which certainly amounts to genocide. Religious mythologies,
clergy, and rituals were harnessed to frame and legitimize ethnic cleansing during the war, as a
sacred act of fighting the “other,” whose “evil” rested on religious difference.
The exclusivist ideologies insisting that the identities were in conflict manifested themselves
through cleaving the Bosnian society into simple component parts—xenophobic religious
communities, each negating the others. The clash of identities was expressed in the destruction
of heritage, and especially in the methodical destruction of the Bosnian mosques. Some of the
statistics render the figures of destroyed or severely damaged places as follows: 1,186 mosques,
15 tekkes, and 90 türbes (see Riedlmayer 2002: 99); 350 Roman Catholic parish and other
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FIGURE 11.2 Banja Luka waste landfill with the excavated fragments of the sixteenth-century Ferhadija
mosque, one of sixteen mosques destroyed in the city in 1993. All sites were cleansed and fragments
thrown into the landfills or lakes.
Source: Tina Wik, 2005.
churches and chapels, as well as 22 monasteries and 61 graveyards (Živković 1997: 357); 121
Eastern Orthodox parish and other churches (Mileusnić 1994: 235–6); 5 Jewish places, with the
heaviest impact on the famous Sarajevo Sephardic graveyard. While new lavishly decorated
monumental churches were being constructed in Banja Luka and elsewhere, not a single minaret
was left intact at the territories occupied by Serb armed forces since 1992. In August 1992, a Serb
high police officer and a regional warlord declared: “With their mosques, you must not just break
the minarets. You’ve got to shake the foundations because that means they cannot build another.
Do that and they’ll want to go” (Sudetic 1992) (see Figure 11.2).
New Religious Buildings and Cultural Oblivion

Religious buildings of grandiose form, with their deliberate message of dominance over “others,”
are the most common formal factors in the project to lay new, exclusive urban landscapes over
the palimpsest of Bosnia’s destroyed unity in diversity. The destroyed religious heritage was to
be replaced by a newly constructed and distinctive Roman Catholic (Croat) or Eastern Orthodox
(Serb) identity in Bosnia. In the scattered pieces of the jigsaw, Muslims were faced with the
107
startling option of choosing an exclusivist Bosniak identity, as different as possible from the
Bosnian Serb or Bosnian Croat identities. Consequently, the inspiration for the new religious
architecture was not derived from Bosnian heritage; it was created by the cumulation of elements
from diverse foreign models.
There are many examples of this, of which I select just three by way of illustration: (1) the
construction of historicistic Orthodox churches based on the model of “Serbo-Byzantine” or
“Moravan” types, replicas of the churches from Kosova, and in a number of cases on a “Russian”
model; (2) the erection of gigantic, triumphalist Catholic buildings, deprived of their link with heritage
forms and encroaching on public spaces with the installation of crosses and shrines; (3) the erection of
detraditionalized mosques based on Arab, Turkish, or other non-Bosnian historicistic shapes. Many
of these forms reflect influences of proselytists and political agendas of the transnational actors.
The phenomenon highlights the promotion of the “fundamentalistic” exclusivity by powerful
transnational actors, whose influence is manifest in recent architecture. The Russian state has
utilized the Russian Orthodox Church to pursue its geopolitical interests in Bosnia; a number
of churches have not only been designed in a “Russian style” but were also fully financed (see
Figure 11.3). Protestant Evangelical and Roman Catholic groups from different parts of the world
have competed in their activities in the country. A particularly strong influence of the Opus Dei
during the postwar period in the south of Bosnia—which had been controlled and devastated
during the war by the Croatian military forces—was expressed through installing a number of
FIGURE 11.3 The Russian style complex of Eastern Orthodox churches and a bishop’s palace with
gilded domes, built after the war in the ethnically cleansed city of Bijeljina, where seven mosques were
levelled to the ground in 1993.
Source: Cikajoca, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia
Commons.
108
so-called Ways of the Cross (a succession of gigantic crosses along dominant public paths),
which, in some cases damaged protected archaeological sites without evidenced links to the
Catholic Church. On the other hand, several Middle Eastern countries have supported mosque
building designed to encourage the spread of Salafism/Wahhabism, which at the early postwar
period resulted in the removal of decorative elements from surviving mosques and an anti-
heritage zeal for “purified” Islam in Bosnia. Although dressed in humanitarian activities, those
intentions to reconfigure Bosnian identity were recognized and stopped early by the organization
of Islamic community. They were, however, substituted by intensified Turkish political affinities,
which were mostly expressed through not only financing but also controlling and harnessing
reconstruction and construction of mosques for their own geopolitical agendas.
Construction of separate places for women in mosques was a new phenomenon, unknown to
Bosnian architectural heritage. Such places are regularly small and of secondary quality, not easily
accessible and sometimes without windows and natural ventilation. Their invention, construction,
position, and design may be understood as yet another type of exclusivism—an attempt of
instrumentalizing religion for the kind of toxic masculinity that was expressed in wartime gender-
based violence. The production of these new hierarchical relations was meant to suggest a tradition
altogether different from the one exemplified by old mosques, which had been targeted for destruction.
The size and formal expression of the new churches and mosques in Bosnia derive from
their role in the contemporary social environment. They express the power of each religious
community over its “others” and are designed to project the authenticity of its distinct and alleged
fundamentally pure original ethno-religious identity. The result is that churches compete with
mosques and crosses with the adhan—the call to prayer—as signs of supremacy and rivalry.
The sacred landscapes, associative sites, and places in nature have been exposed to political
and institutional occupation. Vernacular inclusive interreligious tradition has been submitted
to authorized, religiously or politically exclusive rituals, often dominated by either Russian
or Spanish or Turkish, or some other customs and dress codes. Places in nature that have an
inclusive power for different religious denominations and rituals are exposed to different forms
of their reshaping and artificialization, which includes installment of either churches or mosques
or religious symbols to mark the religious.
While the Eastern Orthodox Church aligns its new architecture with the aggressive, exclusive
politics of ethnic and religious cleansing without a hint on inner disputes about it, some parts of
both the Catholic Church and the Islamic Community were vocal in opposing the reconfiguration
of Bosnian cultural landscapes through such new religious architecture. A number of public
figures in the Catholic Church, and particularly among the Franciscans, who have had a long-
standing attachment to Bosnian tradition, have recognized the occupation of space by the new
architectural forms of gigantic Catholic churches, and especially the towering crosses in the public
spaces, as an unacceptable aggressive continuation of conflict over the cultural landscapes. The
disputes over the architecture of new mosques and discussions concerning its non-reconciling
self-destructive social impacts are even stronger inside the institutions of Islamic Community.
The Challenge
What is the significance of Bosnian sacred heritage in the process of understanding religion and
religious plurality in contemporary societies globally? What are the alternatives to the postwar
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cacophony of religious architectural forms, which depict social discord, cultural oblivion, injustice,
and disrespect for nature? How the universal language of symbolism from religious heritage
can inform the new postwar religious architecture to act as an agent of inclusive, religiously
plural, sustainable, and resilient society? I argue that the life-centerd recovery and reconstruction
of destroyed religious heritage—more as a participative process than as an ultimate heritage
conservation outcome—is a powerful peace-building tool. The Bosnian traumatic experience
of the destruction of religious heritage is not the only one, although it is possible to talk about
differences in relation to other such phenomena around the world, before and after the war against
Bosnia. The questions arising from it, which may have a universal meaning, are numerous and
complex. Defining them and seeking answers to them through research and practice is important
for understanding religion in contemporary conflicts, in their resolution, and in building and
sustaining peace.
Mosques and churches have the most significant formative role not only in the structure of
Bosnian cultural landscapes but also in the structure of individual mental maps. That paradigm
is undoubtedly universally applicable. Religious cultural heritage—churches, mosques, and
synagogues—with their position, minarets, towers, domes and roofs, rituals, bells, call to prayer,
and the sound of the horn determine the symbolic and spatial foci of cities and settlements
regardless of religious conviction or the lack of it. When such sacred heritage is destroyed,
spatial, temporal, and wider social relations are damaged; the collective memory and individual
memoryscapes are shattered. The emptiness and absence caused by the interruption of their
duration can be alleviated by participatory, inclusive recovery and reconstruction based on the
needs and traditional knowledge of the people. The reconstruction of the building fills the void.
The recovery of intangible components and expressions of heritage and the participatory process
ensure its re-presence. The re-presence of the people establishes the broken threads of continuity
and interpersonal relations through that process.
Is Bosnian religious heritage—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Roma, and so on—European
heritage? This is a question that, in the case of Bosnia, but also in any other case of the
instrumentalization of religion for the disenfranchisement and persecution of people and
the destruction of their cultural memory, calls for a reconsideration of universal responsibility
and the universal values. The question, although of a rhetorical nature, brings us back to the
beginning of this text. What is needed so that, instead of looking for threats and constructing a
politics of fear, instead of justifying demolition and killing as a holy struggle between good and
evil, the legacy of the still persistent “other” to Europeans’ prevailing self-perception comes to be
recognized as an opportunity to deepen the knowledge of one’s own values?
The intertexture of all the components of Bosnian identity still exists, together with the
palimpsest character of Bosnian cultural landscapes in which the forcibly scratched-out layers
emerge under the recent additions of the newly constructed “purified” identities. But, the force of
destruction and the multitude of the spreading forms of exclusiveness are also undeniable.
The connecting forms inherent to Bosnian religious heritage are still at disposal as reminders
of a possibility of reconciliation. Some actions of establishing cross-confessional heritage
communities through participative reconstruction of destroyed heritage places have turned into
means of healing the social trauma. The strategy to harness the memory of intertwined identity
in peace building through rebuilding of religious heritage is an alternative to the bewildering
architecture of new postwar churches and mosques, which, are often emptied of any sacredness
110
and serve the conquest of the cultural landscapes as symbols of triumphalism and oblivion of the
Abrahamic commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mk 12:31; Mt. 22:39,
King James Version; cf. Qur’an 4:36, Bukhari: 6014).
Note
1 Through a succession of identity program, from the Ottoman millet, through the Austro-Hungarian,
Yugoslav, and post-Dayton Peace Agreement governance, ethnic and religious identities in Bosnia have
been steadily mapped onto each other to the point where they are almost indistinguishable in public
discourse.
References
Mileusnić, Slobodan (1994), Duhovni genocid: pregled porušenih, oštećenih i obesvećenih crkava,
manastira i drugih crkvenih objekata u ratu 1991–1993. Beograd: Muzej srpske pravoslavne crkve.
Riedlmayer, Andras J. (2002), “From the Ashes: The Past and Future of Bosnia’s Cultural Heritage,” in
Maya Shatzmiller (ed.), Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic
States, 98–135. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Schlenker-Fischer, Andrea (2011), “Multiple Identities and Attitudes towards Cultural Diversity in
Europe: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis,” in Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann
(eds.), Cultural Diversity, European Identity and the Legitimacy of the EU, 86–122.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Sudetic, Chuck (1992), “Conflict in the Balkans; Serbs’ Gains in Bosnia Create Chaotic Patchwork,” The
New York Times, August 21.
Živković, Ilija (1997), Raspeta crkva u Bosni i Hercegovini: uništavanje katoličkih sakralnih objekata u
Bosni i Hercegovini (1991–1996.). Banja Luka, Mostar and Sarajevo: Biskupska konferencija Bosne i
Hercegovine, Hrvatska matica iseljenika Bosne i Hercegovine.
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12
Analysis
Chapter 12
Synagogues, Churches, Mosques, and

Multifaith Spaces: Germany’s Dynamic
Religious Landscape
KIM DE WILDT
Analysis
As in other European states, the past decades have seen a significant transformation of
Germany’s religious landscape, and this has impacted its religious heritage as well. The country
is still characterized by the impact of the different Cold-War experiences of the East and West
Germany states. Since the reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former West Germany
(Federal Republic of Germany [FRG]) has maintained a culture of denominational affiliation
(Konfessionszugehörigkeit)—even though there has been a steady decline in church affiliation
and church attendance since the 1970s. In the territory of the former East German Democratic
Republic (GDR), there has been a culture of religious unaffiliation (Konfessionslosigkeit).
A sizable Muslim community lives in West Germany, whereas in East Germany Muslims make
up a small minority of the population (Pickel 2020). Many of the examples of sacred space
discussed in this essay are relatively new and may not constitute built religious heritage in
the traditional sense of the word, as something from the past that needs to be preserved for
the future. The fact, however, that religious buildings are not only something from the past
but that they have contemporary relevance as living and dynamic heritage is what I want to
stress in this chapter. New religious architecture is being constructed, while existing religious
buildings can be demolished or reused. The contemporary relevance of religious buildings as
living heritage comes to the fore if we, for instance, take a look at church reuse. The idea of
heritage conservation is often at odds with the current phenomenon of church reuse. Obsolete
church buildings induce the question of how these buildings can be reused so that they can
be preserved for the future as living heritage. In this chapter I will highlight some noticeable
sacred space dynamics, categorized as making, unmaking, and remaking sacred space by
example of synagogues, churches, mosques, and multifaith spaces (MFSs) in order to show
how the dynamics of religious buildings as living religious heritage shape contemporary
German society.
112
Germany’s Dynamic Religious Landscape
Shared Sacred Space: Past and Present

Certain forms of sacred space usage are often perceived as modern, western phenomena, for
instance, the shared use of one religious space by more than one denomination or religion,
as exemplified by contemporary MFS concepts. In fact, such practices of the shared use of
sacred space are actually well known throughout history and throughout the world (Biddington
2020: 24–36; Verstegen 2015). In many of such historical cases, local and social circumstances
were important reasons for the shared use of a religious building, for example, when a new
ruler came into power in a region or when new religions or denominations were on the rise. The
preference to make use of existing religious sites and structures could be ascribed to the idea that
such a place already had a “sacred aura” (Verstegen 2015: 97–8). In other instances of shared
sacred space, sites may be considered sacred by the adherents of more than one denomination.
Sometimes the shared use functioned harmoniously, whereas in other cases it was a source of
conflict when one group made exclusive space claims or placed religious objects within the space
that offended believers that did not adhere to that specific worldview (Biddington 2020: 27–9).
Not only historically, but nowadays as well, there are several examples in which the practice of
placing objects in a shared MFS as a means to take control of that space known, as well as the
practice of imposing “rules” to prevent “others” from using the room (Gilliat-Ray 2005: 298–9;
Nagel 2015: 45–6).
Germany has a relevant history of shared usage of religious space with its Simultankirchen,
that is, churches that were simultaneously used by Roman Catholics and Protestants.
Simultankirchen arose in the wake of Reformation and Counter Reformation, predominantly in
Germany’s southwest from the sixteenth century onward (Kersken 2006). Approximately 2,000
Simultankirchen have been in existence in Germany, of which there are over sixty still in use
as such today (Binaghi 2015: 23). The shared liturgical use was enabled in diverse ways, for
example, by using partition panels in the form of grids, drapes, or even brick walls. In some
cases, the use of certain liturgical objects or spaces within the church was reserved for one
denomination. In most cases, however, the church space was not materially divided and different
groups made use of it at different times. The phenomenon of Simultankirchen can be regarded
as an expedient solution to the problem of not having a space to celebrate liturgy, since if there
were adequate funds, the preferred solution would be that one of the denominations moved into
a new building (Binaghi 2015: 23–5; Verstegen 2015: 94–8). In this sense, these shared sacred
spaces differ from contemporary MFS, which are usually built with the explicit intent that people
of different religious and non-religious worldviews make use of them.
Most religious buildings in Germany are used by people who more or less adhere to one
shared belief system. In cases in which the use of a worship space is shared by people adhering
to different worldviews, certain rules are usually imposed or evolve during its use in order
to prevent conflicts from arising. Not only in the case of Simultankirchen but also regarding
contemporary shared religious spaces regulations are often prescribed, for instance removing
liturgical objects after their use to keep the space “neutral”, or imposition of a time schedule to
prevent worshippers/visitors from getting in each other’s way. Some concepts of contemporary
shared sacred space take this a step further and provide several separated monoreligious worship
spaces under one roof, for example, at Frankfurt Airport, where ten chapels and prayer rooms
are at the disposal of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and nondenominational people (Gebetsräume
113
2017), or in the case of the planned House of One in Berlin (see the contribution of Marian
Burchardt in this book). In those cases, the worship spaces are in fact not shared, but divided and
reside under one roof. Although many concepts of shared usage of religious space actually aim at
bringing people of different worldviews closer together, in many cases, divisions are constructed,
spatially and temporally, that impede the dialogue between the diverse groups. And even though
much effort is put into the prevention of any form of religious conflict, they sometimes do arise.
For example, in 2016, the rectorate of TU Dortmund University decided to close its MFS due to
some male Muslim students who imposed their beliefs of gender segregation onto female visitors
and placed room dividers, thus creating divided spaces for men and women (Rektorat 2016).
Not only the shared use of sacred space may evoke conflict, the mere presence or even the intent
to build a religious space can induce strong feelings of rejection and adversity. In the case of
the Cologne Central Mosque, there has been a lot of media coverage regarding the protests and
opposition to its construction (e.g., Kuppinger 2014).
A Transforming Religious Landscape: Making, Unmaking,

and Remaking Sacred Space
Regarding sacred space in Germany the processual character, transformative, and dynamic
qualities of sacred space seem to stand out (De Wildt et al. 2019). Sacred spaces nowadays
undergo all kinds of transformations, they are for instance remodeled, newly built, translocated,
demolished, or reused (De Wildt 2019: 43). Within this last transformation form, the reuse or
conversion of sacred space, three main categories may be discerned: sacred to profane, sacred to
sacred, and profane to sacred (Glossary 2020). Another way to differentiate within the category
of reuse is, for instance, to focus on the kind of functions reused churches become: churches can
be reused into private property, into financial, cultural, educational, and social institutions, and
for retail, sports, and leisure activities. The Protestant and Catholic churches employ a usage
hierarchy in which some forms of reuse are preferred to others and some forms of reuse, such as
the reuse as a mosque, are prohibited (De Wildt and Plum 2019: 11–15; Duttweiler 2011: 190;
Schmitt and Klein 2019).
The transformational characteristics of religious buildings can be clarified with the help of
the categories of making, unmaking, and remaking of sacred space. According to the cultural
geographer Veronica Della Dora, a lot of attention for sacred space in a postsecular age has been
devoted to its “making,” whereas “transformations of extant official sites of worship have largely
remained out of such debates despite increasing public attention and a burgeoning literature in
the humanities.” She proposes a new spatial paradigm: “infrasecular geographies,” which “are
characterized by the contemporaneous co-habitation and competition between multiple forms of
belief and non-belief.” Infrasecular geographies are constituted and expressed by “processes of
desacralization, desecration and resacralization … They are tangible manifestations of social and
cultural transformations and of transformed attitudes towards sacred space and the sacred itself.”
(Della Dora 2018: 1). The categories of making, unmaking, and remaking of sacred space can be
applied to the processes of sacred space transformation that have taken and are still taking place
in Germany.
Della Dora describes the making of sacred space as its “sacralization” (2018: 50), and as
“its production, enactment and contestation” (54). The unmaking or desacralization of sacred
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space is “the return, or transformation, of a sacred place to a secular use” (45). Another form
of unmaking sacred space is its desecration: “A violent breach of the rules of behavior towards
sacred things, including defilement of shrines, sacrilege and willful destruction” (54). Remaking
or resacralization of sacred space is “the appropriation of a formerly sacred place by a new group
and its transformation into a new site of worship” (54). “In a more specific (and less abstract)
sense, however, the term [resacralization] can also be applied to the physical reconversion of
desacralized sites of worship into new sacred spaces, often belonging to different religious
groups” (55).
In Table 12.1, the transformations of sacred space in Germany are categorized within
this framework of making, unmaking, and remaking sacred space. For clarity purposes,
I incorporated the threefold subdivision sacred to profane, sacred to sacred, and profane to
sacred (Glossary 2020) when applicable. In this categorization, the category making of sacred
space applies to newly built structures and former secular constructions that are reused as
sacred space (profane to sacred). The category unmaking of sacred space encompasses the
desecration, destruction, demolition and reuse (sacred to profane) of sacred spaces. Whereas
demolition can be understood as “the complete elimination of all parts of a building at a
specific location and time – typically it is the end of life for the building,” the destruction
of a building is its demolition with a clear cultural intent: “Certain buildings are destroyed
with the intent of erasing the (collective) memory or identity related to these buildings (or
what they stand for)” (Thomsen, Schultmann, and Kohler 2011: 327, 331). Although some
demolitions of sacred spaces can also be considered as a destruction, and hence, a desecration
of the space, this obviously does not apply to all of the cases of demolition. Whereas the willful
destruction and desecration of synagogues during the so-called Reichskristallnacht in 1938
(see Synagogues below) was undeniably an act of destruction and desecration, the demolition
of church buildings as a result of coal mining activities could be viewed by its proponents as
a demolition. The reuse category sacred to profane can be categorized as a form of unmaking
sacred space as it is defined by Della Dora. It remains, however, debatable if this form of
reuse is actually an instance of unmaking sacred space since the idea that a change in its
function can unmake the sacredness of a building is debatable (De Wildt 2020). The category
remaking of sacred space entails former sacred spaces that are reconsecrated—taken anew
in liturgical use—by the same religious tradition, demolished sacred spaces that are (planned
to be) rebuilt—a very literal way of remaking sacred space—and also sacred spaces that are
remodeled in order to adapt them to a new religious function. The use of a sacred space by
members of another religious tradition can not only be categorized as a form of remaking but
also as a form of reuse (sacred to sacred).
Table 12.1 shows the dominant themes along the lines of making, unmaking, and remaking
sacred space in Germany that can be discerned.
Synagogues
During the Reichskristallnacht or Pogromnacht, in 1938, more than 1,400 of the approximately
2,800 synagogues were destroyed and desecrated throughout Germany (Keller 2013: 576). The
buildings that were not destroyed were often reused War in an unworthy manner during the
Second World, for example, as an armory for weapons, and some of the remaining synagogues
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TABLE 12.1 Transformation Categories of Sacred Space

Synagogues Churches Mosques Multifaith Spaces
Making Since the From the 1950s till the Since the 1980s: the Since the 1970s, an
of Sacred 1990s: the 1970s: church building construction of increase in diversity
Space migration of Jewish boom in West-Germany representative of worldviews led to a
people from the mosques began in rise in MFS
former Soviet West Germany and
Union to Germany West Berlin
has led to the Profane to
construction of sacred: In the
new synagogues 1960s and onwards
Profane to Turkish labor
sacred: After the migrants in West
Second World Germany made
War some secular use of so-called
structures such backyard mosques,
as factories have which were usually
been reused into reused factory or
synagogues retail buildings
Unmaking During the After the Second World Attacked mosques No significant number
of Sacred Pogromnacht War, the decline in can be regarded of MFS have been
Space approximately churchgoing has led in as an act of unmade or attacked
1,400 synagogues some cases to church desecration
have been demolition in West
destroyed and Germany
desecrated Anti-church politics led
After the Second in some cases to church
World War many destruction in East
synagogues have Germany, which can
been demolished be viewed as an act of
Attacked desecration
synagogues can be Contemporary church
regarded as an act demolitions are often
of desecration the result of coal
Sacred to mining activities
profane: after the Attacked churches can
Second World War be regarded as an act of
synagogues have desecration
been reused as Sacred to
companies, stables, profane: predominantly
etc. in West Germany
churches are reused for
secular purposes
(Continued)
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Table 12.1 (Continued)
Synagogues Churches Mosques Multifaith Spaces

Remaking After the Second In East Germany some Sacred to Sacred to
of Sacred World War some of the demolished sacred: only in sacred: Monoreligious
Space synagogues have churches have been rare instances have prayer spaces such as
been reconsecrated or are planned to be churches been hospital chapels are
to function as rebuilt reused as mosques occasionally remade
synagogues Sacred to because this is or remodeled into
once again sacred: Some churches usually prohibited MFS
Sacred to have been reused
sacred: After the by other Christian
Second World War denominations or as
some synagogues synagogues
have been reused
as churches and
some churches
have been reused
as synagogues
were sold under their actual value during the war years (Hahn 1987: 62). Hundreds of synagogues
after the Second World War are assumed to have been demolished to make space for car parks,
companies, or residencies, and many synagogues have been reused into companies, horse
stables, or churches (Goldmann 2020b). On the topic of the reuse of synagogues as churches,
Hubert Krins, the former head of the state monument office in Tübingen, wrote the following in
1987: “Some synagogues are nowadays used by the church,—a path that was already pursued
in the first post-war years and which can be regarded as a very meaningful continuation of the
old purpose, as well as a sign of reconciliation”1 (Krins 1987: 66). The reuse of synagogues as
church buildings is highly questionable, to say the least, since the use of sacred spaces by another
religion throughout history can be regarded as a sign of conquest by the “new” religion, and
defeat of the religion that used to own the space. The use of former synagogues as churches is
even more problematic when considered against the background of the Second World War and
the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. The symbolic meaning of sacred spaces being reused by other
religions is still a very delicate subject. The fact that the use of former churches as mosques is
prohibited by the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches for exactly this reason is a perfect
illustration of this fact.
Germany’s policy since 1988 to stimulate the migration of Jewish people from the former
Soviet Union has led to an increase in synagogue building (De Wildt 2019: 41). While between
1945 and 1989, a time span of forty-four years, only thirty-eight synagogues were taken into
liturgical use, from the 1990s till today, a time span of thirty years, comparatively many more
synagogues, actually fifty-four, have been taken into liturgical use. Currently, there are new
synagogues under construction or planned to be built, such as the synagogues in Berlin, Dessau,
Potsdam, and Magdeburg (Guski 2020; Schmedding 2019). Nowadays, 133 synagogues and
Jewish prayer halls actually function as worship spaces. Since 1990, twenty-four synagogues
have been newly built and twenty-three are reused buildings, such as factories or churches. Six
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former synagogues have been reconsecrated (for specific details, see, De Wildt 2019: 43). The
newly constructed synagogues, such as the ones in Dresden, Munich, Ulm, Duisburg, or Mainz
have been described as spectacular (Keller 2013), as celebrating their otherness (O’Connell
2018: 173), and as testifying of a new Jewish self-awareness (Köhler 2010).
Churches
Current church building activity is modest in comparison to the church building boom of the
1950s and 1960s in Germany (Pantle 2003: 333). Present themes concerning church buildings
deal more with closure, reuse, and, in rarer cases, also demolition. In the past fifty years, sixteen
villages and their churches have been demolished for coal mining purposes (Brödenfeld 2018)
and this has led to activism against energy concerns (e.g., the initiative: Die Kirche(n) im Dorf
lassen). The destruction of the 1985 heritage-listed “Immerather Dom” shocked many and even
made international headlines (e.g., Rahman 2018). Nowadays, there are approximately 24,000
Roman Catholic churches and chapels in Germany, of which 22,800 are listed as heritage. The
complete sum of heritage-listed properties owned by the Catholic church is about 60,000 and
also includes monasteries, convents, and rectories (Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz
2020: 27). Between 2000 and 2018, the liturgical use of 540 Roman Catholic churches and
chapels had been terminated, 160 had been demolished, and 142 had been sold. Also, 49 new
Roman Catholic churches had been constructed, mostly to replace the churches that were
destroyed because of mining activities (Katholische Nachrichten Agentur 2018). Currently, there
are 20,416 Protestant churches and chapels in Germany, of which 16,831 are listed as heritage
(Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2020a: 33). Between 1990 and 2018, 315 churches had
been sold, 111 had been demolished, and 395 had been newly constructed (Evangelische Kirche
in Deutschland 2020b). Approximately sixty intact and some already damaged churches have
been demolished in the former GDR, according to a website that is completely devoted to the
theme of the blowing up and demolition of churches in the former GDR (Köppe 2018). The
main political party in the GDR, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity
Party of Germany), started its anti-church politics after tensions between the church and the
state rose in the formative years of the GDR. The politician Walter Ulbricht said in 1953 about
the newly planned city of Stalinstadt: “When I am asked if we will have towers in this socialist
city, I will answer: Yes! We will have towers, for instance one tower for the town hall, one
tower for the cultural center. We have no use for other towers in the socialist city”2 (Pollack
2007: 58). In later years, however, by means of a program for special buildings, financed by the
churches in West Germany, several new churches were built in the 1970s and 1980s in the GDR
(Härig 2017). Between 1945 and 1989 about 350 new Roman Catholic churches have been built
(Schädler 2015). Some churches that have been demolished in the former GDR, have been or are
planned to be rebuilt, such as the Potsdamer Garnisonkirche, the Paulinerkirche in Leipzig, the
Ulrichskirche in Magdeburg and the Johanniskirchturm in Leipzig (Köppe 2018).
Mosques
Buildings for Muslim worship in Germany were traditionally characterized by
inconspicuousness. Worship took place in so-called Hinterhofmoscheen (backyard mosques)
118
or Ladenmoscheen (storefront mosques), which were usually buildings, such as former

warehouses that were reused into prayer spaces (Schmitt 2015: 46). In the 1980s, two decades
after the arrival of Turkish labor migrants, the building of so-called representative mosques—a
term frequently used to denote mosques that can be identified as such because of a noticeable
dome and/or minaret—began, predominantly in industrial areas in West Germany, Hamburg,
and Berlin (Schmitt 2015: 46–7: Schmitt and Klein 2019). There are only estimations on how
many mosques or Muslim prayer spaces are actually in existence in Germany today. It is
estimated that there are 2,500 worship spaces for Muslims, of which 900 are recognizable
as such (Deutscher Bundestag 2020: 6). The dominant discourse on mosques in Germany
seems to be on the theme of conflict. Conflicts often seem to focus on the way in which the
mosque displays its physical presence, for instance minarets that are perceived as too high
(e.g., Kuppinger 2014).
Attacks on Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques

Attacks on religious buildings are not always easily distinguishable as hate crimes. In some
cases, the conclusion that attacks are hate crimes may be obvious, for example, the smearing of
swastikas on the walls of a synagogue or a mosque. In other cases, the reason may be vandalism,
for example, when church property is damaged or stolen. Noteworthy is the fact that, contrary to
common assumption, attacks on religious buildings are not restricted to synagogues or mosques.
In 2015, there were twenty-five attacks on religious buildings in Berlin, seventeen thereof
concerned churches, five concerned synagogues, and three concerned mosques (Unabhängiger
Expertenkreis 2018: 43). In some cases, the attacks on religious buildings can be considered as
forms of desecration, for instance if a pig’s head is dumped near a mosque.
In the years 2008–14 there have been 138 attacks aimed at synagogues, such as damaging the
property, the smearing of SS runes or swastikas on the building, incitement to hatred, theft, or, in
rarer cases, arson (Unabhängiger Expertenkreis 2018: 43).
There are no exact numbers on how many Roman Catholic or Protestant churches have been
attacked in Germany. On the basis of an analysis of the data of the state criminal investigation
office, the Catholic News Agency came to the conclusion that cases of thefts and burglaries in
churches since 2010 exceed the number of 2,000 on a yearly basis (Bohl 2020).
The website #brandeilig.initiative gegen moscheeangriffe has made it their mission to make
mosque attacks visible. Between the years 2014 and 2018, they registered 420 attacks such
as arson, property destruction, damage to buildings, swastika smearing, desecrating religious
objects, dumping animal carcasses, and bombings (#brandeilig 2020). The German Bundestag
reported that in 2017 forty-five and in 2018 forty-eight mosques were attacked (Deutscher
Bundestag 2020: 45).
Multifaith Spaces
The term multifaith space denotes those concepts of religious space that are usually intended for
people of “all faiths or none” (Gilliat-Ray 2005: 288), and is mostly used for lack of a better word
(Brand 2012: 219–20), since there are MFSs, such as hospital chapels, which can be denoted as
MFS on a conceptual level, but are in fact mono-religious spaces. In Germany, MFS are usually
119
referred to as Räume der Stille (silent rooms or rooms of quiet). Since the 1970s,there has been
an increase in worldview plurality, which has led to a rise in new concepts of sacred spaces in
western Europe (Post, Molendijk, and Kroesen 2011: 4–5). Mono-religious prayer spaces such
as hospital chapels are occasionally remade into MFS (Gilliat-Ray 2005). MFSs are often located
within secular spaces, such as shopping malls, airports, companies, and so on. The increasing
worldview diversity coincides with an increase in such new concepts of sacred space. One of the
latest forms of such spaces are the Houses of Religions (Rötting 2021), such as the planned House
of One in Berlin, spaces that can be understood as multireligious rather than interreligious spaces
(De Wildt 2021).
Conclusion
Religious buildings belong to the most prominent ways in which religious presence
manifests itself in the public domain. Emotion-laden debates and conflicts concerning
religious buildings testify to the societal meanings these buildings have as present-day
living religious heritage. Highly mediatized conflicts concerning their making, unmaking,
and remaking (e.g., debates on church demolition or reuse, minaret height, the location of
a planned construction, the use of MFS, etc.) express that these spaces are not only shaped
by society, but also shape society. Living religious built heritage is dynamic: it is used,
reused, and rebuilt, but also desecrated, destructed, and demolished. Not only the processes
of making, unmaking, and remaking sacred space express the dynamics and transformational
characteristics of these spaces, but the built environment and, to state it more boldly, even
society as a whole is transformed because of the increase in diversity of religious buildings,
such as the emergence of synagogues, mosques, reused churches, and MFS. Although in
some cases this transformation is not always very visible—for instance, in the case of new
mosques, which are still often built at industrial estates at the outskirts of urban life, or in
the case of most MFS that are built within other secular structures and therefore remain
inconspicuous—the mere presence of such spaces and the visitors or believers they attract
give testimony to a transforming living religious heritage.
Acknowledgments
I want to acknowledge Robert Plum, Beate Löffler, and Dunja Sharbat Dar for their very helpful
suggestions regarding this chapter.
This research is the result of two research projects I am affiliated to which are funded by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation):
1. Transformations of Sacredness: Religious Architecture in Urban Space in 21st Century
Germany (SaWa): a research collaboration between the Center for Religious Studies
(CERES) at the Ruhr University Bochum and the Chair for the History and Theory of
Architecture at TU Dortmund University (project number 390367964).
2. New Sacred Spaces by Example of Multifaith Spaces (project number 387623040).
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Notes
1 “Einige Synagogen werden heute kirchlich genutzt,—ein Weg, der schon in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren
beschritten wurde und der als eine sehr sinnvolle, auch Zeichen der Versöhnung setzende Fortsetzung der
alten Zweckbestimmung betrachtet werden kann” (transl. KdW).
2 “Wenn ich gefragt werde, ob wir in dieser sozialistischen Stadt auch Türme haben werden, so antworte
ich: Ja! Wir werden Türme haben, beispielsweise einen Turm fürs Rathaus, einen Turm fürs Kulturhaus.
Andere Türme können wir in der sozialistischen Stadt nicht gebrauchen” (transl. KdW).
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124
Analysis
Chapter 13
Counterhegemonic Heritage and Diversity

in Berlin’s House of One: Designing
Abraham’s Legacy
MARIAN BURCHARDT
Analysis
Introduction
In 2011, representatives of a Protestant parish congregation, an Islamic organization, and a Jewish
congregation decided to erect a multireligious sacred building at St. Petri Square in the heart of
Berlin’s historical center.1 Baptized by the initiators the House of One, the building is claimed to
be the world’s first mosque-synagogue-church and is envisioned to become a symbol of tolerance,
mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence in a world bedeviled by religious prejudice, terrorism,
and racism. Importantly, the building is supposed to be erected on a site that is highly symbolic.
According to historical and archeological evidence, St. Petri Square is the site of the earliest
human settlement in Berlin and, in historical debates, therefore often framed as the founding site
of the city.2 At the same time, the square was historically marked by the parish church St. Petri.
Archeological excavations produced evidence of the existence of no fewer than five different
church buildings at the square. Initially built in 1230, the church was remodeled several times
and finally, after being severely damaged during the Second World War, demolished in 1964.
The multireligious House of One is supposed to be built precisely on the perimeter of the last
Protestant church building that stood there, on its debris, as it were.
This historical legacy has deeply shaped the debates on the House of One, and in fact, calls forth
a complex politics of religious and urban heritage. I take the analysis of this case as a springboard
to raise a series of interrelated questions: What are the political meanings of religious heritage in
contexts of religious diversity? How are liberal notions of tolerance and religious pluralism and
diversity addressed and translated in the medium of architecture? And what do we learn from
the dynamics surrounding the House of One about the ways in which interreligious heritage is
negotiated, brought into material form, and imbued with political significance?
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Counterhegemonic Heritage and Diversity in Berlin’s House of One
Centering on the debates about the House of One, this chapter explores iconic multireligious
architecture as a form of imagining, producing, and enacting religious pluralism and the way
it challenges our understanding of how religious heritage is framed in public discussions and
materially manifested in European cityscapes. Chiefly, much of the debate on the links among
religion and heritage in Europe pivots on questions of how the secularization and religious
pluralization of European societies potentially diminish the hitherto dominant role of Christian
material patrimony in anchoring national identities and as collective points of reference. In the
process, religious symbols, artifacts, and places are often redefined as culture, or “culturalized”
(Astor et al. 2017), which allows them to occupy central positions in national repositories even
after their religious meanings have ceased to shape the subjectivities of secularized majority
populations. And in many instances, the framing of claims to religion as culture and the
concomitant rise of heritage religion as a new social form whereby religion acquires social force
by shaping sentiments of belonging work to relegate counter-memories to the background and to
minoritize other, non-native heritages (Burchardt 2020).
Against this backdrop, the House of One points to a more complex scenario, one in which
multiple claims on heritage intersect. The reconstruction of St. Petri Square in its historical
shape has been made possible by the hegemonic desire to unmake the legacy of Berlin’s socialist
urbanism. The House of One is thus discursively and geographically embedded in a whole
series of urbanist and architectural projects that seek to recover Berlin’s pre-Second World War
urban heritage. At the same time, the House of One is not only enabled by the dismantling of
the remnants of socialist heritage—the urban highways and concrete blocks in its vicinity are
now torn to the ground—but it also disrupts the square’s Christian history of almost 800 years.
If, as van de Port and Meyer (2018: 1) suggest, cultural heritage is “the self-conscious attempt
of heritage-makers to canonize culture, to single out, fix and to define particular historical
legacies as ‘essential’ and constitutive of the collective,” the House of One clearly diverts from
the readings of “heritage as cultural defense” mentioned earlier. As I will argue, it embodies
the Protestant legacy and at once indexes the emergence of a potentially counterhegemonic,
interreligious heritage, a heritage in-the-making that operates as a metonym for liberal values of
tolerance and respect, which it consecrates and canonizes as a legacy for the future. Officially
framed as intercultural dialogue set in stone, I suggest that the discursive practices surrounding
the House of One seek to fix it as a “multiculturalist place,” as an emblem of tolerance and
diversity (see also Walton 2015: 107).
During the past two decades, there has been a rising scholarly interest in the relationships
among religion, space, and materiality. This interest was driven by the ways in which, across
Europe, urban spaces are increasingly framed as sites where claims to national and urban
belonging are articulated; where cultural hierarchies that shape citizenship and social inclusion
are contested, defended, and reconfigured; and where multicultural and multireligious forms of
urban citizenship are imagined and materialized. In European cities, such contestations chiefly
stem from three sources: secularization, religious diversification, and new forms of nativist,
and sometimes racist, nationalism. Secularization has produced churches without worshippers;
migration and religious diversification have produced, first, worshippers without places of
worship and later on the construction of mosques and temples; and both processes together have
contributed to animated nativist backlashes against multiculturalism (Vertovec and Wessendorf
2010) and a fraught embrace of religious heritage by sections of post-Christian majorities.
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Revamping Urban Space, Planning Heritage

The idea for the construction of the House of One arose in the context of the reassignment of
the building plot on Berlin’s St. Petri Square to the local church community in the 1990s (see
Figure 13.1). As mentioned earlier, several church buildings marked the square’s history. The last
one was erected in 1847, embellished with a spire of 111 meters, which for a long time turned
the church into the highest building in Berlin. This last building was severely damaged during
the final days of the Second World War. Given that East German socialist authorities showed
no interest in supporting repairs to the damages, the parish council approved the demolition of
FIGURE 13.1 Gertraudenstrasse.

Source: © Kuehn Malvezzi, Visualization: Davide Abbo-nacci, Kuehn Malvezzi.
126
the building in 1960. In 1964, the last remains had been removed. The square was subsequently
inserted into multilane street ensembles in accordance with the guidelines of socialist urban
planning.
The fate of the post-Cold War city changed significantly when, in 1999, Berlin’s government
voted in favor of the so-called Planwerk Innenstadt. As an urban planning directive that was
inspired by the conservative historicist ideology of “critical reconstruction,” the Planwerk
Innenstadt basically overlaid the current material surface with the pre-Second World War street
grid, which became the basis for all subsequent constructions. While this implied the refashioning
of St. Petri Square according to its historical shape, it also came along with numerous iconic
projects of historical reconstructions in its vicinity, such as Berlin’s Royal Palace and the
Bauakademie (architectural academy).
In fact, the House of One is located just a few blocks away from the urban core of Prussian
Berlin with the reconstructed Royal Palace as its centerpiece (see Bartmanski and Fuller 2018).
In the perspective of the House of One architect Wilfried Kuehn, whom I interviewed in 2017, the
House of One is positioned as a major counterpoint to the Royal Palace and the way it gestures
toward historical continuity and flattens the unevenness, chaos, violence, and destruction that
characterize much of Berlin’s twentieth-century history. The Royal Palace hosts the so-called
Humboldt Forum, which has become the new exhibition center for ethnographic collections,
which are mainly made up of non-Western art and artifacts. It thus imports a whole host of
problems and discussions related to acquisition, ownership, provenance, and legitimate display
with which these collections are fraught in virtually all former colonizing countries. In addition,
the palace’s reconstruction also involved the placing of a golden cross on top of its dome, a
decision that some observers criticized as possibly jeopardizing the intercultural dialogue to take
place in the palace (Steets 2017).
In the eyes of Kuehn, the House of One conjointly addresses these heterogeneous histories,
those of Prussian militarism, Nazism, East German communism, and the failure of contemporary
society to incorporate migrants. After all, as Bartmanski and Fuller (2018: 4) usefully remind
us, buildings are “nested in specific sites that are constituted through a series of morphological
relations and layered historical meanings.” In addition, the architects situated the project in
the broader context of colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonialism. And it is precisely by
drawing on the discourse of postcolonialism that he posits the House of One as signaling a kind
of counterhegemonic heritage; one that interrogates existing, postcolonial forms of cultural
domination.
Until the establishment of the Foundation House of One—Prayer and Teaching House Berlin
(Bet- und Lehrhaus) in 2016, the project was carried out by a registered association of the same
name, in which the congregation of St. Petri represented the Protestant side, the Abraham-Geiger
Kolleg Potsdam the Jewish side, and the Forum for Intercultural Dialogue the Muslim side.
The state of Berlin was also a partner. Since around 2010, the religious actors involved in the
project have been engaged in a variety of activities such as interfaith meditations, information
events, interfaith city walks, joint peace prayers, and mourning services, which often refer to
recent events such as terrorist attacks. At the same time, they popularize the project through
public discussion events in places such as the stadium of the Bundesliga soccer team Union
Berlin, the police headquarters, and the German Theater, where aspects specific to each target
group (cohesion, violence, etc.) are addressed. While the House of One thus has an impact on
127
urban space even before its construction, these activities are consistently fashioned as media
events and visually documented via photos and video recordings. Shared via the House of One’s
social media channels, these events dramatically amplified media attention among transnational
publics.
This eventization and mediatization of the House of One are central pillars of the financing
strategy for the construction, estimated at €47 million, via a fundraising campaign organized
as crowd-funding. As part of the campaign, donors can symbolically purchase bricks for €10
each through the project’s online shop and thus “help build” the House of One. However, the
willingness to donate was lower than expected, so that the building is now mainly financed by
state funds.
Since the initiative was founded, the House of One has attracted worldwide media attention
and is regularly in the focus of leading global media outlets such as the New York Times, the
Guardian, the BBC, and Al Jazeera. Historical references play a central role in this, referring
to the history of Berlin, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, the history of the Cold War
and East German communism, as well as the history of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Berlin’s
status as a contemporary beacon of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. In the corresponding
discourses, Berlin and the House of One are addressed as focal points of intercultural encounters
that exemplify the possibility of overcoming political, cultural, and religious boundaries. Against
the backdrop of a checkered history of violence and human rights violations, these media
discourses developed the promise of a peaceful future, which the architecture of the House of
One articulates in a specific way.
Over the last several years, the frequency of interreligious activities at the site has strongly
increased, and since 2018, there have been several interreligious meditations and prayers each
month. Animated by such performances of interreligious peace, public, and political responses to
the project were overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Politicians, religious leaders, and other dignitaries
hailed the project as a lighthouse of tolerance in a world of conflict and extolled the efforts of
its advocates as visionary. In 2019, for instance, the local newspaper Berliner Abendblatt wrote
that the Senator for Culture, Klaus Lederer, called the House of One a “worldwide role model
for tolerance, openness, successful dialogue and constructive togetherness of the religions in a
plural city.”3 Mobilizing lofty fantasies of peaceful interreligious coexistence, the House of One
was thus greeted with almost unanimous public support, inscribed into narratives of Berlin as a
cosmopolitan city, and thereby turned into a new temple of multiculturalism.
However, the project was subjected to repeated criticisms. One of these criticisms centered
on the close association of the Islamic partner, the Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, with the
influential Turkish preacher Fetullah Gülen and his revivalist Islamic movement. Sections of
Berlin’s Jewish community, but also of the Christian public, hold reservations about the Forum for
Intercultural Dialogue, given that Fetullah Gülen, who is exiled in the United States, is known to
have made anti-Semitic comments during the 1990s and endorsed the death penalty for apostates,
though he later claimed to have revised these views. More importantly, many Muslims of Turkish
origin are critical of Gülen because of his alleged involvement in the attempted military coup
of July 15, 2016. In its aftermath, the Turkish AKP government carried out a massive campaign
against presumed members of Gülen’s networks, efforts that also spread into Turkish diaspora
communities in Germany. As a result of this campaign, Gülen’s followers were criminalized and
stigmatized and in the eyes of Sunni Muslims, the legitimacy of Forum Dialogue as the Islamic
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representative in the House of One was undermined. A considerable number of Sunni Muslim
activists felt disaffected because, although they were formally represented in the House of One,
they saw themselves as misrepresented.
However, there were also other criticisms voiced not only in public media but also in
numerous conversations I had in the context of my ethnographic research with interfaith activists
and residents. Activists who had been engaged in interreligious relations in Berlin were wary of
the huge amount of public funds spent on an iconic multireligious building whose real usefulness
in building interreligious harmony they questioned. They felt that in some way, the massive
public visibility of the House of One invisibilized their work and engagement, pinpointing how
visibility can become a contested public good. More importantly, there was a sense among part
of my interviewees that the House of One was an elitist project, far removed from everyday
interreligious encounters, and therefore something that generated media attention for a desirable
goal but that eventually had little purchase on their lives. Criticism of the House of One was
even more pronounced among members of communities that are not part of it. This was the case,
for instance, with Alevis, an ethno-religious community of probably around 70,000 members in
Berlin, who arrived in Germany in the context of guest worker migration from the 1960s onward
and that has a problematic relationship with Turkish Sunni Islam due to its violent persecution
in Turkey. In conversations, Alevi activists fully rejected the idea of the House of One being a
symbol of diversity given that it only involved three out of the 250 religious communities that
officially exist in Berlin.
The Making of Interreligious Heritage

As an iconic instance of interreligious, potentially counterhegemonic, heritage-in-the-making,
the discourses surrounding the House of One are marked by divergent references to history,
which emphasize ruptures with Berlin’s history of violence and continuities with traditions of
tolerance. Epitomizing such notions of heritage-making through architectural interventions, early
on, Protestant pastor Hohberg suggested: “Following the archeological excavations we quickly
agreed that something visionary and forward-looking should be built on what is the founding site
of Berlin” (Hafiz 2014).
Yet, it was also clear that each of the project participants had his own perspective on Berlin’s
history. Thus, Rabbi Tovia Ben Chorin told the British newspaper The Guardian: “We will take
Berlin from being the city of wounds to being the city of miracles” (Paterson 2014). And to
the BBC he said: “From my Jewish point of view, the city where Jewish suffering was planned
is now the city where a center is being built by the three monotheistic religions which shaped
European culture” (Evans 2014). Imam Kadir Sanci (a representative of the Forum of Intercultural
Dialogue) explained to the same media outlet that the House of One is “a sign, a signal to the
world that the great majority of Muslims are peaceful and not violent,” adding that it is a place
where different cultures can learn from each other. He further demanded, “We want our children
to have a future in which diversity is the norm.”
Politicians, on their part, often converged on the notion that because Berlin and its residents
have managed to tear down the wall that had historically separated the two parts of the city and,
by implication, the Iron Curtain that divided the Cold War world, it was also in this city that
people would begin to tear down the wall that separated religious traditions. Such references to
129
history appeared compelling and were quickly taken up in media representations of the House
of One, which more or less unanimously echoed the celebratory discourse in which the House of
One was greeted with near unconditional approval and extolled as a beacon of tolerance.
While metaphorical references to walls to be torn down and divisive pasts to be transcended
abound, the House of One is also inscribed into philosophical lineages of liberal tolerance. The
date of the foundation stone ceremony was April 14, 2020, the day on which, in 1783, Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing’s play “Nathan the Wise” premiered in Berlin’s Döbbelin Theater. The centerpiece
of the play is the so-called Ring Parable, an allegorical narrative about the truthfulness of the
three Abrahamic religions, which is a main point of reference in the conceptual history of liberal
tolerance and in pedagogical practice. Cited in virtually all media debates on the House of One, this
gesture toward religious enlightenment signals how contemporary interreligious heritage-making
harkens back to earlier, historical encounters among Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, which are
viewed as exemplary and pathbreaking. It also reverberates with how references to medieval
notions of convivencia are mobilized in contemporary debates around the Mosque-Cathedral of
Cordoba (see, Griera et al. 2019; Astor et al. 2019 and Griera in this volume).
In their sociological theory of iconicity, Bartmanski and Alexander (2012: 1) suggested that
“objects become icons when they have not only material force but also symbolic power. Actors
have iconic consciousness when they experience material objects, not only understanding them
cognitively or evaluating them morally, but feeling their sensual, aesthetic force.” Interreligious
heritage-making via iconic architecture unfolds through social discourses in which objects
such as buildings are signified and coded as, but also through design. Design bundles physical
properties of objects—their weight, shape, inner structure, and so on—in particular ways and is
an indispensable dimension of the socio-material practices out of which heritage is made.
From early on, the advocates of the House of One placed maximum emphasis on their
architectural vision, which gave precedence to aural and aesthetic qualities over practical
concerns linked to the site’s later usage. In public talks as well as in my interviews with them,
Protestant representatives proclaimed the building to be a public sculpture that was supposed to
afford residents an experience of radical alterity vis-à-vis the building’s surrounding post-socialist
urban space. In their vision, the building was meant to “breathe transcendence,” a rendition that
gestures toward the ways they imagined its osmotic relationship with the secular spaces in its
vicinity and the city as a whole.
Four points about the design are particularly noteworthy. First, unlike other multireligious
buildings that have emerged since the beginning of the twentieth century, House of One is
fundamentally design-driven. It thrives on its spectacular sculptural design, which turns this
project into a new urban emblem and affords it a compelling iconicity. The House of One thereby
carries the idea of iconic architecture, hitherto mainly used in relation to spectacular cultural
(such as Sydney Opera House) or commercial buildings, into the field of multireligious places
and interreligious heritage.
Second, consisting of three separate rooms for each of the participating religious groups as
well as a fourth room intended to be a place of encounter, dialogue, and mutual learning, the
design relates the religious traditions with one another as it keeps them separate. It thus cannot
avoid to fix particular understandings of diversity and to materially constrain alternative forms of
encounters, thereby separating itself from more fluid diversities occurring outside institutionalized
settings of interreligious dialogue.
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FIGURE 13.2 Archaeological Hall.

Source: © Kuehn Malvezzi, Visualization: Kuehn Malvezzi.
Third, the design draws on the idea of encoding time through depth. In the building’s
basement (see Figure 13.2), the history of the place becomes visible as the remnants of earlier
buildings, which the archeological excavations unearthed, are openly visible and exhibited. In
their decision, expert members of the jury had placed major emphasis on a design that does not
musealize the ruins by separating them from the main body of the building. Instead, the building
was supposed to literally “stand” on the ruins. The House of One therefore highlights both the
Protestant and urban material remnants as heritage, even as it engrafts them into the interreligious
structure that supersedes them.
Fourth, and strikingly, all of the important architectural features that will later shape the ways
in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims interact in the building and share space in it were already
prescribed in the tender documents to the architects who participated in the competition. Thus,
131
the specifications included the building’s height, the basic material (raw brick), the fact that
the remains of historical churches be visible throughout several stories, that technical demands
be minimal and secondary vis-à-vis aesthetic criteria, and that the religious traditions be made
“recognizable” via the building’s design. Significantly, even the distribution of space among the
religious communities was regulated with parity to be realized not through the equal allocation
of square meters of floor, but of the rooms’ volume (to be realized via varying heights). There
was a complex set of aesthetic practices that sought to retrieve and make tangible the heritage of
the Abrahamic religions even as it was integrated into a new architectural form (see, Meyer and
de Witte 2013).
By way of conclusion, I argue that the question of whether the House of One signals a
form of counterhegemonic heritage (Hall 2005) needs to be answered in relation to specific
ideological points of reference. It can be construed as counterhegemonic in that it undermines
linear, nativist, and religiously exclusivist lineages of cultural heritage, which foreground the
elementary significance of Christianity for European identities and presumably transcend the
changes wrought by migration and secularization (Burchardt 2019). However, the House of One
may also be construed as writing forth a hegemonic heritage as it fosters state ideologies and
governmentalities of diversity and multiculturalism and deprivileges the fluid and contingent
identifications that weave the textures of culture in people’s encounters in everyday life. This
seeming contradiction is the result of numerous paradoxes on which the House of One is
premised: as a religious building that is erected in a highly secularized city; as a project that
has emerged from interreligious dialogues but is largely funded by the state; as an interreligious
endeavor that seeks to showcase diversity, but willy-nilly enshrines a monotheistic notion of
heritage. It is this set of paradoxes that turns the House of One into an instance of hegemonic
counterhegemony and that is at the bottom of the complex politics of heritage in our multicultural
societies.
Acknowledgments
For incisive comments on earlier versions of this text I wish to thank Todd Weir, Lieke Wijnia,
and Birgit Meyer.
Notes
1 This chapter involves some observations that I first developed in Burchardt (2022).
2 The construction is intended to begin in April 2021.
3 Own translation from http://www.abendblatt-berlin.de/2019/03/15/plaene-fuer-house-of-one-werden-
immer-konkreter/.
References
Astor, A., M. Burchardt, and M. Griera (2017), “The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to
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Astor, A., M. Burchardt and M. Griera (2019), “Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s
Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage,” Qualitative Sociology 42 (3): 337–60.
Bartmanksi, D., and J. Alexander (2012), “Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn
in Cultural Sociology,” in J. Alexander, D. Bartmanski, and B. Giesen (eds.), Iconic Power: Materiality
and Meaning in Social Life, 1–15. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bartmanski, D., and M. Fuller (2018), “Reconstructing Berlin: Materiality and Meaning in the Symbolic
Politics of Urban Space,” City 22 (2): 202–19.
Burchardt, M. (2019), “Religion in Urban Assemblages: Space, Law, and Power,” Religion, State &
Society 47 (4–5): 374–89.
Burchardt, M. (2022), “Multi-Religious Places by Design: Space, Materiality and Media in Berlin’
House of One,” in M. Burchardt and M. Giorda (eds.), Geographies of Encounter: The Making and
Unmaking of Multi-religious Spaces, 231–53. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Evans, S. (2014). “Berlin House of One: The First Church-Mosque-Synagogue?” BBC News, June 22.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27872551 (accessed February 20, 2021).
Griera, M., M. Burchardt, and A. Astor (2019), “European Identities, Heritage, and the Iconic Power of
Multi-Religious Buildings: Cordoba’s Mosque Cathedral and Berlin’s House of One,” in G. Giordan
and A. P. Lynch (eds.), Volume 10: Interreligious Dialogue, 13–31. Leiden: Brill.
Hafiz, Y. (2014). “Berlin Plans ‘House of One’.” Huffington Post, June 14. https://www.huffpost.com/
entry/house-of-one-berlin-interfaith_n_5489444 (accessed February 20, 2021).
Hall, S. (2005), “Whose Heritage? Un-settling ‘The Heritage’, Re-Imagining the Post-Nation,” in J. Littler
and R. Naidoo (eds.), The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of “Race”, 23–35. London: Routledge.
Meyer, B., and M. De Witte (2013), “Heritage and the Sacred: Introduction,” Material Religion 9
(3): 274–80.
Paterson, T. (2014), “Welcome to Berlin’s House of One—A Church, Mosque and Synagogue.”
Independent, June 8. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/welcome-berlin-s-house-one-
church-synagogue-and-mosque-9507002.html (accessed February 20, 2021).
Steets, S. (2017), “Seductive Atmospheres, Conflicting Symbols: Religious Landmark Buildings in
Diverse Societies,” Eurostudia 12 (1): 125–35.
Van de Port, M., and B. Meyer (2018), “Heritage Dynamics: Politics of Authentication, Aesthetics
of Persuasion and the Cultural Production of the Real: Introduction,” in B. Meyer and M. van de
Port (eds.), Sense and Essence: Heritage and the Cultural Production of the Real (vol. 9), 1–39.
New York: Berghahn Books.
Vertovec, S., and S. Wessendorf (eds.) (2010), Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies
and Practices. New York: Routledge.
Walton, J. F. (2015), “Architectures of Interreligious Tolerance: The Infrastructural Politics of Place and
Space in Croatia and Turkey,” New Diversities 17 (2): 103–17.
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134
Case Study
Chapter 14
Repurposing the Church in a Diverse

Town: Making All Souls Bolton a Church
Space for All Souls
PETER AIERS AND INAYAT OMARJI
Case Study
The Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) is one of the largest church foundations in Europe, with
the de-churching of Britain bringing more and more historic churches into its fold, so that today
it has over 350 church buildings in its portfolio. The decline of church congregations has been
caused in large measure by secularization but also by the migration of traditional church goers
and their replacement by new, often non-Christian communities. One challenge that is not only
faced by the CCT but also by church heritage organizations across Europe is how to encourage
these new communities to utilize and take an interest in the Christian heritage that they find in
prominent locations in their neighborhoods.
This case study investigates one such effort, in which the authors of this chapter—Peter Aiers
of the CCT, and a community organizer in the town of Bolton, Inayat Omarji—attempted to find
a new use for the historic All Souls’ Church, which, as a Grade II* listed building, is among
the most protected buildings in England. Today, the church building soars above the terraced
streets just off Blackburn Road, about a mile north of the center of Bolton. When the project to
redevelop All Souls began, this was one of the poorest wards in Bolton, an area of deprivation.
The church building was the inspiration of two brothers, Nathanial and Thomas Greenhalgh,
who had made their fortune from cotton spinning. The brothers came from an evangelical tradition
of the Church of England, which not only informed their actions in creating the church building
and accompanying school but also the shape that the church buildings, in particular, took. While
Nathaniel died in 1877, in memory of him, his brother decided to continue on with the plans
they had made. That year work began on the school and in the following year the architects were
appointed for the church and the foundations laid. This was undertaken without any fuss in 1878,
and the building was consecrated on June 30, 1881.
The church building was designed by Paley and Austin, architects from Lancaster. Paley had
designed St. Peter’s in Bolton before Austin joined the practice and they then went on to build
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Repurposing the Church in a Diverse Town
The Saviour on Deane Road in 1882, also funded by Greenhalgh. By the time the final form of
the practice was wound up in 1944, the firm had undertaken nearly 600 church commissions.
The commission from Greenhalgh for All Souls’ Church was very specific. There were to
be uninterrupted internal views, free seating for 800 people, and no draughts. As a result of this
brief, the building has a nave width of 16 m with no aisles and therefore no columns interrupting
the view. To create this span, the roof structure, although apparently made of timber, is in fact a
combination of timber and ironwork. The interior is plain, although there is a little exuberance
with the reredos, and each of the six bays is lit by a three-light window set high up in the wall.
The tradition seems to reflect the evangelical views of the donor; however, the chancel layout is
a little at odds with this as it seems to reflect a Tractarian arrangement.
The textile industry in Bolton started to attract workers from across the world in the 1960s
and 1970s. Consequently, the Asian population of the area around All Soul’s grew so much that
in 1986 it was estimated that 80 percent of the local community were Asian Muslims. This had
consequences for the church, which saw the congregation decline, and it was clear by 1986 that
the small congregation could not continue to support this vast building, so it was closed to regular
worship. In 1987, the building was transferred to the care of the CCT.
The CCT is the national charity that protects historic churches in England. The trust was
set up as a partnership between church and state. Originally named the Redundant Churches
Fund, this organization arose out of the Church of England’s Pastoral Measure and was approved
by Parliament, including by the Redundant Churches and Other Religious Buildings Act 1969.
The 1960s were a challenging time for historic churches in England, with such buildings
sometimes seen as an impediment to progress rather than a benefit to society. There was no
formal mechanism for caring for churches when parishes felt they could no longer afford to keep
going. Many churches fell into disrepair and were threatened with demolition, and it was only
due to successful action by church enthusiasts that the CCT was set up, saving many important
church buildings from this fate.
The first church in the collection was St. Peter’s at Edlington in the coalfields of South
Yorkshire, which came into the CCT’s care in 1971. By 1979, the CCT had 147 churches, rising
to more than 250 by 1990. The collection has now reached 356, with three churches taken on in
2019 and still more in the pipeline.
As the collection of CCT churches grew, it became clear that there needed to be greater
community engagement and fundraising to augment the statutory funding that was available,
which has, in fact, shrunk in real terms over the life of the CCT. To this end, the CCT began to
look at how it might support communities and develop funding packages through the National
Lottery Heritage Fund (previously the Heritage Lottery Fund). In particular, the CCT had a
collection of urban churches that had significant repair needs and little community engagement;
this was where the program began.
Following the successful repurposing of St. Paul’s in Bristol, where a fine Georgian church
was repaired and made into a circus-training school complete with trapeze, the CCT was looking
for other projects that it could develop. All Souls Bolton became the ideal candidate in 2005,
thanks to the initiative of Inayat Omarji.
Omarji grew up in the local neighborhood of All Souls after his parents had moved from
Gujarat to work in the Bolton textile industry. Walking past the church most days, Inayat, who is
a Muslim, felt that All Souls had lost its connection with the local community. The building was
135
in disrepair and a real target for vandalism, lead thieves, and arsonists. Nevertheless, he believed
the building could be used for the benefit of the local community and contacted the CCT to see
what could be done. This was an important moment in the campaign, as the building had a repair
liability of over one million pounds, and the local initiative thus required broader support to
access resources dedicated to ensuring the protection of such buildings.
With Inayat as the local advocate, the CCT could begin to build a project team and develop
ideas about how the church building could be used and how to raise the funding needed to
transform the building. This was the beginning of a long process of engaging with the local
community, developing a business case, and raising the finances needed to make the project a
reality.
Early on, a local committee was set up to support the project and ensure that local views were
understood and reflected. The initial group was drawn from both the local Muslim community
and the local Christian community. One aim of the project at this stage was to set up a charity that
could independently run the building for local people, as there would be a better understanding
of the needs of the local community. From the very start, the local Muslim community members
who engaged in the project saw the church building as a house of God and considered that this
should be respected, while being keen to see that it was brought back into use for the benefit of
the whole community.
It took ten years to raise the funding, undertake the design work, and gather community
support before the doors reopened in December 2015. The majority of the £4.9 million in funding
invested in All Souls came from the National Lottery Heritage Fund along with funding from
the CCT, many other trusts and foundations, and Bolton Council. It took considerable time to
understand and overcome the practical building issues and to raise the funding necessary to
support this ambitious project. There were many issues to resolve, some relating to the building
and some to the funding. There were also many suggestions for the proposed use of the building,
from a doctor’s surgery to a police station to a restaurant, with even cricket nets considered at one
time. However, what remained consistent throughout the project was how much support there
was from local people—of all faiths and none—to use the building again. It is also important to
note that the building today remains consecrated for Christian worship.
Prior to the opening of the building, a great deal of project time was put into increasing the
capacity of the All Souls Charity, which was to be the body that employed staff and operated
the building. This was a new charity, to be chaired by Inayat, who worked tirelessly to make
his vision a reality. The name “All Souls” was kept, as this seemed most apt, the project being
dubbed, “All Souls for All Souls.” The genuine ambition of the project was that everyone from
the local community, no matter what race, religion, gender, or belief, could use the building and
that this would better bind the community together.
The design work for All Souls was undertaken by OMI Architects from Manchester, and the
conservation building repairs were specified by Alan Gardner Associates (see Figure 14.1). The
design for reimagining the use of this vast church building needed to include floor space, which
would ensure that a business plan for the building could be fulfilled; that the historic building was
respected; and that any modern intervention was contemporary and not a pastiche. The result was
a pair of bold modern structures within the historic envelope of the church building, retaining the
strong east-west axis but providing a route around the interior on three levels, giving a whole new
perspective on the historic building. This design and the resulting activity brought the building
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Repurposing the Church in a Diverse Town
FIGURE 14.1 All Souls, looking south east.

Source: Andy Marshall.
back to life and created a place that is useful to the local community, thus ensuring this landmark
has a viable future.
As well as providing for the alterations and repair of the building, the funding also allowed for
the employment of staff to operate the business plan, which was based on the rental of offices,
conference facilities, and the delivery of events. A café was placed in the building and there was
also a heritage and community program for local people. The project also had to work out how
to develop the revenue needed to operate the building in the future. What was an outstanding
success was the investment, which created a very high-quality community building from a very
high-quality historic building for one of the poorest neighborhoods in the town.
Once the building opened, however, there were problems from early on, and this seemed to
stem from poor internal communication and perhaps a lack of empathy from the staff for local
137
feelings. As mentioned above, All Souls is located in a predominately Muslim community,

with several mosques situated nearby. However, the All Souls staff team insisted that there
should be an alcohol license for the building, in order for the staging of events to be a viable
option for the venue. It was argued that as the place was for “all souls,” some users of the
building would drink and some would not. As an alcohol license has to be publicly announced,
this then created a point of tension between some in the Muslim community and the operation
of the center.
The unfortunate consequence of the decision to persist with the alcohol license was that
it placed Inayat, as the Chair of the All Souls Charity, in a very difficult position. In the end,
Inayat resigned from the board, and this was a real blow to the project. A new Chair was found
for the charity but it subsequently struggled with the operation of the building and the Centre
Manager also left. The lesson from this was that, although there was a case that the building
was for all souls and that all ways forward should be tolerated, there was also a need to have a
greater sense of local sensitivity and that the staff should have noted the position of the board
of trustees.
A new business plan was then developed with the support of the National Lottery Heritage
Fund and the CCT’s Regeneration Team. It became clear that the charity formed to run All Souls
was not sufficiently established and resourced to adequately deal with the complexity of running
the building. Following comprehensive work on the business plan and a thorough understanding
of the risks, the CCT decided that the best option was to take over the direct management of All
Souls. This was a difficult decision as the running of the building had always been envisaged to
be a local undertaking and there was concern that the CCT taking over the responsibility would
affect relationships on the ground. However, one of its first acts was to cancel the alcohol license.
After the transition in management took place, there was an inevitable period of settling down,
but, with a new centre manager appointed, the building was soon operating as always envisaged.
Solid work on local community relationships means that the building has genuinely become a
place for all souls, and prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for office space was driving
thoughts of how more space could be created in the building. The weekly Curry Club was full of
local people from all backgrounds eating together and many local support groups took advantage
of the space as a place to meet.
Even before the CCT took over direct management of the building, Inayat was back in touch
with the project, supporting and championing the opportunity that the building represents. This
engagement has increased over time, and the fact that the building is thriving again is in no small
part due to Inayat, reminding us of the fundamental importance of such local advocacy. Moreover,
the knowledge gained from this project is already being put to use in a new endeavor—to build a
new mosque within sight of All Souls.
This case study was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which All Souls, like so
many community buildings across the world, faced a considerable number of practical challenges,
but it has done so with an optimistic air. Where possible, the offices have remained open, and the
café has either operated as normal or has worked on a take away and delivery basis. The team
has made the building Covid safe, as required, and they have worked to keep the building in the
heart of the community. It is hoped that as the world emerges from the Covid-related lockdowns,
buildings such as All Souls become a real focus of community activity once more and that the
ethos of All Souls for all souls continues.
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139
Case Study
Chapter 15
Heritage Management by Churches:

Developing for Eternity in Sweden
MARIA NYSTRÖM
Case Study
Introduction
Elevated above time’s swift passing, and still part of contemporary life. Tradition and
renewal, safeguarding and change, these are concepts that have always characterized
the Cathedral and its surroundings. (Parish of Strängnäs and Aspö 2017:3)
This passage introduced the call for applications to the 2017 architectural competition to design
a new landmark building adjacent to the medieval Cathedral of Strängnäs in Sweden. Almost
a hundred proposals were submitted by architects hoping to make their mark in the historic
city center of a small Swedish city. It may be surprising that a high-profile project like this was
launched at a time when the number of worshippers is declining in Sweden. Despite increasing
secularization, the ecclesiastical heritage has an established position within the Swedish heritage
field and receives notable state funding to cover preservation and management. In recent years,
an increasing number of projects that aim to find new models to protect and develop the heritage
of historic churches have emerged, where the heritage field and the Christian congregation are
collaborating to different degrees. Professional heritage actors and the Christian congregations
both aim to safeguard historic churches, but difficulties in balancing use and protection may
occur in real-life situations.
This chapter describes and analyzes how notions of heritage and professional roles within
the field of heritage management are being negotiated through contemporary projects with
historic churches. The empirical material is based on two case studies of Swedish development
projects. Drawing on a qualitative approach, in-depth interviews and documentation such as
plans and project reports are analyzed. This chapter departs from Ashworth’s (2011) notion of
an incomplete paradigm shift in heritage management and conservation. Ashworth argues that
different approaches to management have not replaced each other over time, but rather exist in
parallel among different actors in the present. As parallel notions of heritage and management
139
appear in a context of transformation and development, tensions may occur or values can be
negotiated to reach consensus (Oevermann and Mieg 2014).
The management of ecclesiastical heritage is a shared responsibility between actors from the
heritage field and the church. The professional roles of these groups imply different responsibilities
and scopes of action. As actors from the heritage field and the religious congregation collaborate,
a number of values, strategies, and objectives are verbalized. Through statements of key
actors, parallel conceptions of ecclesiastical heritage are identified and their implications for
contemporary heritage management in Sweden are described.
Management and Governance of Ecclesiastical Heritage in Sweden

The Church of Sweden ceased to be a state church in the year 2000. Despite this, the Church of
Sweden and the Swedish State share the responsibility to manage and safeguard the ecclesiastical
heritage. The term “ecclesiastical heritage” is used throughout the chapter when referring to
the cultural heritage of the Church of Sweden. In the Church—State agreement on a shared
governance model, one finds the following definition:
The ecclesiastical heritage has been constructed during the course
of nearly a millennium and has been shaped through continuous
interaction with other parts of society. Through the historical
position of the Church, the ecclesiastical heritage has come to
reflect and represent a major part of our history. It is of great
importance that this common cultural heritage is preserved for
future generations. (Ku2000/470/Ka:1)
Considering this statement, the heritage is defined beyond its religious significance, and
reflects the historically strong bond between the Church and the State.
The Church of Sweden has the formal responsibility of management and protection of churches
in accordance with the Heritage Act, while the Swedish State recognizes the significance of the
ecclesiastical heritage through state funding. The shared responsibility entails that the regional
government heritage agencies (the county administrative board) need to be informed of, and
approve, any material transformations of churches.
Although the Church of Sweden continues to be the largest religious congregation in Sweden,
the membership and visitor numbers are declining. In 2019, 56.4 percent of the Swedish
population were members of the Church of Sweden (Church of Sweden 2019), and according to
recent predictions based on this trend the number will be down to 45 percent in 2030 (Church of
Sweden 2015: 32).
The Case Studies

The chapter is based on field studies of two cases of development projects in Sweden. Both cases
feature a consecrated church of the Church of Sweden, and join actors from the public heritage
field and the congregation. The two projects aim to transform and develop management practices
of ecclesiastical heritage. While the key approaches of the projects are similar, their scope and
strategies differ.
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Heritage Management by Churches
The Hamra Project

In 2017, Hälsinglands Museum, a regional museum in mid-Sweden, approached the Parish of
Ljusnan to engage in a new partnership. This marked the beginning of the regional development
project, from now on referred to as Hamra Project.
Hamra Church and village are located in mid-Sweden, in Gävleborg County. The forest
industry has historically been, and continues to be, the main source of employment in the region.
Due to the industry’s transformation, employment and population numbers have decreased.
The village has about seventy-five permanent residents today. In the center of the village stands
Hamra Church, a wooden, gothic-revival style church consecrated in 1872 (Åman 2010: 70;
Sjöström 2010: 63) (Figure 15.1). The church is owned by the Parish of Ljusnan, and is used for
services monthly.
Hälsinglands Museum initiated a pilot study in late 2017 (Hälsinglands Museum 2017) to
find new strategies for the regional development of Hamra and options for extended use of
Hamra Church(Hälsinglands Museum 2017). Findings from the pilot included different project
scenarios, focusing on tourism through partnerships with local ecotourism and cultural actors
(Churches Conservation Trust 2018: 3–4).
Hälsinglands Museum has worked with the management and development of ecclesiastical
heritage since 2016 (Hälsinglands Museum 2016). The museum came in contact with the English
Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) in connection with the 2016 plans on regenerating historic
churches. Community-based regeneration plays a major part in CCT-managed churches, and
has influenced the approach of Hälsinglands Museum (Wetterberg 2017). While established in
England and also other countries, the strategy adopted by Hälsinglands Museum to collaborate
with a religious actor to find new approaches to ecclesiastical heritage was until then uncommon
in Sweden.
In early 2018, the project was granted funding by the County Administrative Board of
Gävleborg. The project changed its name to “Natural and Cultural Values as a Basis of Touristic
Development” (County Administrative Board of Gävleborg 2018). The objective was to achieve
regional development in Hamra and the surrounding area, focusing on cultural and natural
tourism (County Administrative Board of Gävleborg 2018). The project ran between 2018 and
2020, divided into two stages.
In the first stage, Hälsinglands Museum aimed to create a new professional network in the
region by approaching local businesses and actors in the cultural and natural tourism sectors. The
Parish of Ljusnan was included as a central partner in the network, offering a more comprehensive
and coordinated tourism package. Hälsinglands Museum functioned as a coordinator and
facilitator for collaborations and new tourism initiatives. In the second stage, Hälsinglands
Museum researched and presented “new stories” of the region (County Administrative Board
of Gävleborg 2018). The stories were based on contemporary life in Hamra and local heritage.
During the course of the project, a number of events and activities were arranged in Hamra
and the region. Hamra Church was a venue for several exhibitions where the “new stories” of
the project were presented. The stories included historical crafts, the woodland colonization of
the area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and photography featuring contemporary
everyday life in Hamra village. In addition, craft workshops were held in collaboration with the
local weaving society. The activities were arranged by Hälsinglands Museum in partnership with
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FIGURE 15.1 Hamra Church in winter.

Source: Maria Nyström.
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143
the Parish of Ljusnan. The project was well received locally in Hamra, as villagers contributed to
activities that raised local pride. However, no tangible economic effects were noted. At present,
the Covid-19 pandemic has halted most efforts, but the Parish of Ljusnan plans to host future
activities in the same spirit as the original project (Conversation with Ljusnan Parish Respondent
2, 2019).
The Cathedral Hill Project

The second case study concerns a project aimed at regenerating the Cathedral of Strängnäs.
The vision for this site includes the exploration of extended religious and secular use of the
Cathedral and other buildings at the site, and the construction of a new multipurpose building.
Another central strategy is to strengthen and develop the site’s cultural-historical values (Parish
of Strängnäs and Aspö 2017).
The cathedral is located in the city of Strängnäs in Södermanland county. The city and the
cathedral have medieval origins, with the oldest part of the cathedral constructed around 1250–
1340 (Bohrn, Curman, and Tuulse 1964). At present, Strängnäs has about 14,000 inhabitants.
The project was named after the cathedral’s location on a small hill, the “Cathedral Hill”
(Domkyrkoberget). On this hill, the cathedral is joined by a number of other historical buildings.
It is an important tourist destination, listed as one of Strängnäs’ top attractions (Municipality of
Strängnäs 2020).
The project includes a material and conceptual transformation of the Cathedral Hill. The
material transformation focuses on the construction of a new multipurpose building, and the
interior transformations of the existing spaces of the Cathedral. The conceptual transformation
includes activities and events connected to the Parish and new partnerships with nearby civil
actors, with particular attention given to educational and social activities (Strängnäs Diocese
Respondent 1, 2018).
In response to an international architectural competition, a total of ninety-seven proposals
were submitted. The winner of the competition was announced in June 2020; AART architects
and Bach arkitekter with the proposal: Stora och små möten – för stora och små (“Big and little
meetings—for the big and the little”). The new building was envisioned as a “functional and
sustainable landmark building, which meets high architectural standards and where people can
gather” (Parish of Strängnäs and Aspö 2017: 14). It is planned to include a visitor’s center and
flexible spaces for the Parish and Diocese of Strängnäs.
In the other part of the project a number of civil actors were approached, based on their location
in the historic buildings on the Cathedral Hill. The new partnerships include collaboration on the
site’s development and shared use of the existing buildings, introducing common activities, and
contributing to regeneration and place branding. At the time of writing (2021), the project is
not finished. Still, the architectural contest and its winner have garnered nation-wide attention.
While no constructions have been made yet, the attention has been both negative and positive.
Concern has been raised about the architectural quality of the planned buildings and potential
negative effects on the historical environment (Kilström 2018; Mähler-Onnered 2017). However,
architects have defended the artistic quality of the winning proposal, and the preparatory work
carried out by the project (Strandberg 2020).
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14
Exploring Notions of Ecclesiastical Heritage

The case studies reveal different conceptions of heritage and approaches to management and
development. Three principal themes are discerned through the statements and strategies of the
involved actors.
Firstly, ecclesiastical heritage was perceived as a continuous process by the parishes and
Hälsinglands Museum. In the Hamra Project, one respondent from the Parish of Ljusnan stated:
Sometimes I feel like cultural heritage is restrictive because [to
me] it is broader than culture. It’s sustainability as a whole, where
social, economic, environmental and existential sustainability is
included. (Ljusnan Parish respondent 1 2018).
The quote reflects how ecclesiastical heritage is intertwined with wider societal processes and
sustainable development according, to this actor. The creation of “new stories” in the same project
illustrates how the past and present of the local community are integrated into the heritage of the
Church. A similar notion was expressed in the Cathedral Hill Project:
When talking about “cultural heritage” you run the risk of only
relating it to the past. If you were to talk about “culture” instead,
you could connect with the past while also shaping the future.”
(Strängnäs Parish respondent 2018: 1).
The architectural competition of the Cathedral Hill Project is framed through notions of creating
a continuous heritage. Rather than a new addition to the hill, the parish perceives the future
building as a “growth ring” in the history of the Cathedral. When adopting this stance, the
parishes include their contemporary roles as heritage managers and Christian congregations in
the ecclesiastical heritage.
Secondly, the conception of heritage as a resource appears frequently. Hamra Church was an
asset to the project by providing a venue for various cultural events that are framed through the
objective of regional development. One respondent described Hamra Church as
a centre, maybe even a nave. In a tangible, but also spiritual
sense, in the development and preservation of history, but also
the development and creation of new stories. (Ljusnan Parish
respondent 1, 2018)
The contemporary use of the church is emphasized in the projects. One parish respondent in the
Cathedral Hill Project said that he would like the Cathedral to become a “living room” for the
community of Strängnäs that is open and welcoming. The county administrative board noted that
the heritage of the Cathedral could be used to strengthen the place-brand of the Cathedral Hill,
and by extension the city of Strängnäs.
Third, the tangible features of the ecclesiastical heritage are perceived in different ways
by the actors. Hamra Church was selected as a suitable case to explore new approaches to
management and development as it was considered not to hold significant tangible heritage
values (HM-respondent 1, 2018). In addition, the project did not strive to accomplish a material
transformation of the church. In the Cathedral Hill Project, on the other hand, the value of the
144
tangible fabric of the Cathedral is central to the arguments made by the parish and by the county
administrative board. The competition brief reads that the new building “will add qualities to the
historic environment of the Cathedral and the city of Strängnäs” (Parish of Strängnäs and Aspö
2017: 6). While the parish emphasizes historic continuity, the county administrative board calls
for the protection of the authenticity and medieval roots of the Cathedral.
Opportunities and Challenges for Practitioners

The approach to heritage, management, and development reflected in the statements of the
parishes and the regional museum finds support in policy objectives. The recent Communication
on Ecclesiastical Heritage by the Swedish Government defines ecclesiastical heritage as “ a living
heritage that is shaped by and evolves through the use of people” (Skr 2018/19 122: 4). The
government objectives show an inclusive approach to the definition and use of heritage, including
the integration of heritage in societal development and a pronounced resource-perspective.
In a time of transformation in the heritage field and of Christian congregations, the case studies
demonstrate how heritage practitioners and the Church of Sweden attempt to expand notions of
heritage and professional roles. Hälsinglands Museum strives to adopt a facilitating approach to
regional development. Their statements reflect how they chose to expand their role to engage
in contemporary issues that rural churches and communities are facing. They also used their
position within public heritage management to garner exposure to the other actors of the projects,
and arranged exhibitions to attract tourism to the region.
Drawing on the notion of heritage as a continuous process, the parishes integrated their
secular management responsibilities with the religious practices of the Church, in the past and
the present. The two featured parishes strived to be an active part of the local community and
society as a whole, and used heritage to motivate their stance.
When exhibiting “new stories” in Hamra Church, the project connects to an established
notion within Swedish cultural heritage of the parish church as a symbol of local history. By
emphasizing local heritage, secular and religious values are merged. This approach facilitated
the dialogue between the regional museum, the county administrative board, and the Parish of
Ljusnan, without a potential tension between secular and religious interests.
The management of ecclesiastical heritage is governed through heritage legislation and
the objectives of political policy. According to the parishes and the museum, the overlapping
frameworks provide contradictory perspectives when applied in practice. Such difficulties are
seen through the preservation-centered objectives of legislation and the flexible and multivocal
approach in heritage policy. The conflicting frameworks illustrate the “incomplete paradigm shift”
in heritage management (Ashworth 2011). The organizational structure and legal requirements of
public heritage management do not reflect the developments of policy.
Concluding Remarks
The case studies demonstrate some of the challenges that practitioners face when exploring new
approaches to ecclesiastical heritage. The professional field of heritage requires practitioners to
navigate multiple governing frameworks and objectives, representing different approaches to
heritage. In order to reach consensus among various actors, their different responsibilities and
145
capacities need to be understood. The Swedish context demonstrates how the Church of Sweden
adopts an active and broad stance toward heritage management. While the church has come to
be an established actor within the field, the collaboration and dialogue with civil heritage actors
are still evolving.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/
S006656/1).
References
Åman, A. (2010), “Kyrkorna 1860–1950,” in I. Sjöström (ed.), Dalarna: Landskapets kyrkor, 69–76.
Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet.
Ashworth, G. (2011), “Preservation, Conservation and Heritage: Approaches to the Past in the Present
through the Built Environment,” Asian Anthropology 10 (1): 1–18.
Bohrn, E., S. Curman, and A. Tuulse (1964), Strängnäs domkyrka—medeltidens byggnadshistoria.
Stockholm: Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalts Förlag.
Churches Conservation Trust (2018), Extended Use Exploration for the Church of Hamra, Gävleborg
Region, Sweden.
Church of Sweden (2015), Gemensamt ansvar—en utredning om fastigheter, kyrkor och
utjämningssystem. Svenska kyrkans utredningar 2015:1.
Church of Sweden (2019), Mötesplatser i tiden - Svenska kyrkans redovisning till regeringen angående de
kyrkoantikvariska frågorna inför kontrollstationen 2019, Rapport från Svenska kyrkan.
County Administrative Board of Gävleborg (2018), Beslut om projektverksamhet inom den regionala
tillväxtpolitiken, SFS 2003: 596, Ärende id 00205879
Hälsinglands Museum (2016), Utkast. Programförklaring: Samarbetsprojekt kring långsiktig användning
av kyrkobyggnader. (Unpublished draft)
Hälsinglands Museum (2017), Inbjudan till temadag om kyrkans roll i lokalsamhället. (Personal
communication).
Ku2000/470/Ka Överenskommelse mellan staten och Svenska kyrkan i frågor som rör de kulturhistoriska
värdena inom Svenska kyrkan (Agreement between the state and the Church of Sweden regarding
issues on cultural-historical values within the Church of Sweden).
Kilström, L. (2018). “Nästan samtliga bidrag i arkitekttävlingen sågas: Gräsliga.” Eskilstuna-Kuriren,
March. https://ekuriren.se/strangnas/nastan-samtliga-bidrag-i-arkitekttavlingen-sagas-grasliga
Mähler-Onnered, A. (2017), “Att ändra i en kyrka kan väcka oro.” SVT Nyheter Sörmland, September
27. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sormland/att-andra-i-en-kyrka-kan-vacka-oro (accessed October
29, 2020).
Municipality of Strängnäs (2020), “Sevärdheter i Strängnäs.” October 19. https://www.strangnas.se/uppl
eva-och-gora/turism/se-och-gora/sevardheter/sevardheter-i-strangnas (accessed June 16 2023).
Oevermann, H., and H. A. Mieg (2014) Industrial Heritage Sites in Transformation: Clash of Discourses.
Florence: Taylor and Francis.
Parish of Strängnäs and Aspö (2017), Strängnäs domkyrka med Domkyrkoberget. Tävlingsprogram steg 1.
SFS 1988:950. Kulturmiljölag. https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattn
ingssamling/kulturmiljolag-1988950_sfs-1988-950 (accessed June 16, 2023).
Sjöström, I. (2010), “Kyrkorna 1760–1860,” in I. SjSjöströström (ed.), Dalarna: Landskapets kyrkor,
57–68. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet.
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Skr 2018/19:122, Det kyrkliga kulturarvet. (Government report on ecclesiastical heritage)https://data.

riksdagen.se/fil/70D99D22-6A7A-465D-AF94-6F4B69DCE9A3 (accessed June 16, 2023).
Strandberg, B. (2020), “Visst går det att bygga nytt vid Strängnäs domkyrka!” Eskilstuna-Kuriren, June
15. https://ekuriren.se/kultur/kultur-och-noje/artikel/visst-gar-det-att-bygga-nytt-vid-strangnas-domky
rka/7rk82vzr (accessed June 16, 2023).
Wetterberg, O. (2017), “Churches Conservation Trust i England,” in M. Hillström, E. Löfgren, and O.
Wetterberg (eds.), Alla dessa kyrkor, 71–90, Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet.
Interviews
HM (Hälsinglands Museum) respondent 1, May 29, 2018.
Ljusnan Parish respondent 1, May 23, 2018.
Ljusnan Parish Respondent 2, October 25, 2019.
Strängnäs Parish respondent 1, May 12, 2018.
Strängnäs Diocese respondent 1, April 12, 2018.
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Politics of Religious Heritage

150
150
151
Challenge
Chapter 16
Peace and Conflict in Kosovo’s Orthodox

Monasteries: Common or Divisive Heritage?
LEJLA HADŽIĆ
Challenge
Heritage features—structures, objects, intangible heritage—are socially powerful because they

have the ability to trigger the memories of the people who contributed their culture to them,
even if those people are no longer there. And, because heritage also represents the culture of
others, during times of conflict, it becomes a key target of aggression (Hadzic, and Eaton 2017).
As Robert Bevan describes, “it is as if the very bricks and stones are guilty of being the other as
well as being a representative of the others’ presence” (2007: 14). One only has to look at the
historical assets of Syria and Iraq that came to the world’s attention after having been destroyed.
The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan) and the Ferhat Bey Mosque in Banja Luka (Bosnia and
Herzegovina) were eliminated because they were the clear signs of the religious and cultural
presence of others in a disputed territory.
When politics are polarized to the extent of leading to war, the identity politics around heritage
become heightened, and the question of how the heritage of others is treated can become an
existential one. In this contribution, I open up this question in relation to a case that I have
worked on, namely the Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo. Although these monasteries were not
destroyed in the same way as the aforementioned sites, due to their history, these religious sites
continue to be an element of polarization between majority Albanians and minority Serbians in
Kosovo.
In my professional career as a conservation architect, I have been collaborating with
institutions and people across the Western Balkans. These remain areas marked by continued
tensions, despite the fact that most of its worst conflicts officially ended in the 1990s. Through
my work with the organization Cultural Heritage without Borders, I have had to consider the
challenge of dealing with different views over history, nationality, guilt, and responsibility. As an
organization, we see our task as an important part of conflict resolution. The question we ask is
whether heritage, and in this particular case of the religious heritage of the Orthodox monasteries,
can become a springboard for the teaching of peace rather than remaining a site of conflict?
Kosovo is the smallest country in the Balkans, yet perhaps the one with the most turbulent
and diverse history. Geographically positioned between Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia,
151
and Albania, Kosovo is inhabited by 1.81 million people. Nine tenths of the population are
ethnic Albanians, who are predominantly Muslim, and a little under one tenth are Serbs, who
are predominantly Orthodox. The rest of the population comprises minority communities of
different origins (Roma, Egyptian, Ashkali, Turkish, etc.). The country was profoundly shaped
by its shifting fortunes under the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Serbia, and then Yugoslavia,
before it declared independence in 2008. These political regimes have all left their marks on the
political, social, and built landscape of the country. This history left Kosovo both diverse and
unstable, and today the country is grappling with the process of building a democratic and open
society. And as with every society in transition, it faces many challenges along the way. In the
area of cultural heritage, one of the biggest challenges for the authorities of independent Kosovo
is the management of the four Orthodox monasteries situated in different parts of Kosovo, being
Dečani, Peć, Gračanica, and Prizren.
These four monastery churches are ascribed to Byzantine-Romanesque ecclesiastical
culture, and their interiors are covered in paintings of a distinct style that was developed in the
Balkans between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Dečani Monastery, serving as a
mausoleum of King Stefan Dečanski, was commissioned by him in the mid-fourteenth century.
The Patriarchate of Peć Monastery consists of four domed churches built in the mid-thirteenth
century, and served as the residence of Serbian Archbishops. The Gračanica monastery was built
in the mid-fourteenth century and is considered an example of the masterful building practices of
the region in this period. The church of the Holy Virgin of Ljevisa in Prizren, built in the fourteenth
century with frescoes representing the appearance of the new so-called Palaiologian Renaissance
style, combines the influences of the eastern Orthodox Byzantine and the Western Romanesque
traditions. All four gained world heritage status between 2004 and 2006, while Kosovo was still an
autonomous province of Serbia and Montenegro (UNESCO Nomination File 2004).
The monasteries have withstood the test of time and remained relatively safe and in use
throughout the area’s long history of political and social changes. This changed in the early
2000s, when tensions in Kosovo rose as a result of the conflicts that ravaged the former
Yugoslavian republic from the early 1990s onwards. A particularly tense moment took place
in mid-March in 2004. Known as the “March unrest,” widespread violence occurred across
the territory of Kosovo. The United Nations reported at the time: “Most disturbing and
reprehensible, the extremists had looted, burned and damaged or destroyed Serbian Orthodox
churches, monasteries and religious, as well as cultural sites” (Security Council Press Release
2004). Particularly badly damaged was the church of the Holy Virgin of Ljevisa in Prizren,
which was burnt to the ground. As a result, the mediaeval monuments in Kosovo sites were
added to the List of World Heritage in Danger. NATO forces have surrounded the sites since
then and have set up permanent protective missions.
Prior to the declaration of Kosovo independence in February 2008, former President of Finland
Martti Ahtisaari brokered a settlement agreement between Serbia and Kosovo. This agreement
laid down the rights and obligations Kosovo would have in relation to the preservation of Serbian
Orthodox churches, including the four mediaeval monasteries. Yet, the agreement was never
presented at the UN Security Council and it was rejected by both Serbia and Kosovo. Since
independence in 2008, the mediaeval monasteries are in a rather complicated administrative
situation. Looking from the position of the World Heritage declaration, the principal caretaker
and a party state to their designation remains the Republic of Serbia, but all four of the sites are
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Peace and Conflict in Kosovo’s Orthodox Monasteries
now in the territory of independent Kosovo. The monasteries remain on the List of Endangered
World Heritage to this day, with two out of four still having military forces protecting them.
The Republic of Serbia still does not recognize the independence of Kosovo, and the relations
between two states remain in constant tension, despite repeated attempts by international
authorities to bring both parties to the negotiating table. The political nature of the heritage
designation of the monasteries could not be clearer. From the point of view of the Serbian state,
the Orthodox UNESCO heritage sites in Kosovo remain symbolic territorial markers. From the
point of view of the Kosovan state, the presence of some of these sites on the list of endangered
heritage undermines its claim to represent the entire population of Kosovo and to act as responsible
steward for all heritage irrespective of religious-ethnic identification.
Today, the monasteries are still actively used: priests hold services, provide shelter, and help
the poor and weak. Many tourists, pilgrims, and school children visit the sites. The Orthodox
church, together with the Serbian government, is actively engaged in regular maintenance and
conservation. The institution leading these efforts on behalf of the Serbian government is the
Republic Institute for Protection of the Natural and Cultural Heritage of Serbia. The Institute’s
work remains essential in everyday upkeep and conservation. However, given the complicated
relationship between two states, I wonder about the future of their upkeep. Will the government
of Kosovo start taking part? Could the relationship of cooperation be established for the benefit
of the preservation of these valuable heritage assets? And more importantly, can one work toward
a narrative that tells the story of what they are: heritage of universal value?
Political controversies continue to erupt. In 2020, the Government of Kosovo found itself facing
the fact that Dečani Monastery (see Figure 16.1) was announced to be on the list of the seven most
endangered monuments in Europe by Europa Nostra. The main reason for this announcement was
the road that was being built to connect Kosovo to Montenegro, which would cross the declared
protected zone surrounding Dečani Monastery. As a response to the declaration of Europa Nostra and
the decades-long struggle over ownership, the prime minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, invited the Abbot
of Dečani Monastery, Fra Janjić, for a meeting. The prime minister stated that he strongly believed that
only through direct and honest communication one can set foundations for mutual understanding and
the removal of prejudices, and he affirmed that he would protect all the cultural heritage of Kosovo,
especially Orthodox churches and monasteries (Albin Kurti, Balkan Transitional Justice). The Serbian
Orthodox Church responded by demanding recognition of their ownership of the property around
the Monastery (and on which the road was to be built), as decided by the Constitutional Court. To
date, there has been no conclusive agreement by the parties. Instead, what followed was an official
letter sent by the Prime Minister and the President of Kosovo to UNESCO asking for the mediaeval
monuments in Kosovo to be removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger. In the same statement
they reaffirmed their commitment to protect the cultural heritage of Kosovo.
As a conservation professional working with Cultural Heritage without Borders, in 2019
I was invited by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to develop
educational toolkits to promote interactive education for children about the importance of
Kosovan cultural heritage. The toolkits were to be site-based. One of the sites we were asked to
incorporate was the Church of Holy Apostles in the town of Gračanica. We produced a toolkit
based on a theme of frescoes, in which children learn about fresco painting techniques, pigments,
and artists. It included a coloring activity where children cocreated their own icons based on
examples of icons from the Church of Holy Apostles. Once we finished, we went to Kosovo and
153
FIGURE 16.1 The Dečani monastery, Kosovo.

Source: Lejla Hadzic.
met an ethnically diverse group of Turkish, Roma, Serbian, and Albanian children aged between
ten and sixteen years, who tried out the toolkits and gave us comments and suggestions. After
classroom work, a site visit for children was organized, and one of the sites visited was the
Church of Holy Apostles.
There are a couple of things that remain in my memory from our visit to the Church of Holy
Apostles. One was the explanation of the Church given by a priest. He talked about the beauty and
the complexity of the structure, which made a great impression on everyone present. Another was
the reaction of the children. Impressed by frescoes and the dome, which looked as if they were
suspended in the air, they ran through the church’s courtyard, thoroughly enjoying themselves.
This left me with the question of whether the children, the majority of whom were Muslim,
felt the Church of Holy Apostles is something they could identify with. I did not ask them this
question, because I was not sure whether they would understand what I meant. Yet, looking at
how they “owned” the place with their presence, made me think that they felt at home.
Many political issues still need to be sorted out in today’s Kosovo. The solutions are not
simple, and compromises need to be made on all sides. The mediaeval monuments in Kosovo are
superb pieces of art and architecture, and as such it is beyond any question that they have to be
preserved. They certainly have the ability to divide Kosovans, but they also contain a potential to
unite them as a common cultural heritage.
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Peace and Conflict in Kosovo’s Orthodox Monasteries
References
Bevan, R. (2007), The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War. London: Reaktion Books.
Hadzic, L., and J. Eaton (2017), “Rebuilding the Broken: Regional Restoration Camps as a Meeting
Platform in the Western Balkans,” in D. Walters, D. Laven, and P. Davis (eds.), Heritage and
Peacebuilding. London: Boydell & Brewer.
Security Council Press Release (2004), SC/8056 United Nations, “March Violence on Kosovo ‘Huge
Setback’ to Stabilisation, Reconciliation, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping tells Security
Council.” https://press.un.org/en/2004/sc8056.doc.htm (accessed July 10, 2022).
UNESCO Nomination File (2004) Mediaeval Monuments in Kosovo, Description of property. https://whc.
unesco.org/en/list/724/
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Analysis
Chapter 17
Religion in Central European History: How

Christian Has It Ever Been?
ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ
Analysis
In the 1990s, the idea of “Central Europe” became a prominent point of reference in the
attempts to justify the inclusion of countries like Czechia, Hungary, Poland, or Slovakia, into
the political, military, and economic structures of the West (European Union, NATO). One of
its main components was the notion that Central Europe has been part of “Western Civilisation”
since the eleventh century, when the regional rulers integrated their kingdoms into the realm of
Western Christianity, or Roman Catholicism, to distinguish it from the Orthodox East. Today, this
Christian tradition of Central Europe has become a trope used by politicians to define the national
identity of their countries and the region, sometimes in contrast to a secularized, “decadent”
Western Europe. This echoes similar tendencies after the First World War, when these countries
presented themselves as “bulwarks” against Bolshevism and against the Jewish minority, which
was regarded as “alien.” One example was the Polish term “Polak Katolik,” which claimed
that only Catholics could be regarded as “true” Poles in a country that had large non-Catholic
(Lutheran, Orthodox, or Jewish) minorities (Porter Szücs 2011).
One of the self-declared defenders of Europe as a “Christian civilisation,” Hungary’s
Prime Minister since 2010, Viktor Orbán, spoke in 2017 about Christianity as “a culture and a
civilisation” (Quoted in: Schmitz 2020). However, Orbán understood Christianity not as religion
but rather as heritage, emphasizing that “the essence is not how many people go to church,
or how many pray with true devotion.” The Hungarian government’s defense of Christianity
therefore includes the preservation of tangible Christian heritage, including church buildings,
or the support of church-run schools, which have increased in the last decades. Similar notions
about the Christian heritage of Central Europe have been expressed by representatives of the
Polish state. On April 2016, at the occasion of the 1,050th anniversary of the baptism of Duke
Mieszko, President Andrzej Duda declared that this was “the most important event in the entire
history of the Polish state and nation … , for the decision taken by our first historical ruler had
predetermined the whole future to come for our country” (National Catholic Register, n.d.). In
this sense, the Christian heritage of Poland is defining not only the history but also the future of
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Religion in Central European History
the country. Similar ideas about the importance of the Christian heritage have been expressed in
Croatia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
However, the idea of Christian national heritage or even Christian national identities in
Central Europe is based on a simplified picture of history that has at least three major flaws:
First of all, “Christian national heritage” suggests an unbroken continuity of a history that was
in reality very complex and marked by ruptures and discontinuities. Secondly, the idea is based
on the assumption that Christianity or even one Christian denomination enjoyed an uncontested
religious national monopoly, which was never the case. Finally, the mere idea of “Christianity”
is more complex than this idea suggests: What a “Christian” is and was has been constantly
contested and changed since the beginning of Christianization of Central Europe. In this context,
we need to distinguish between the dominating institutions, the monarchies, republics, and
churches that were often (also) based on Christianity, and the religious beliefs and practices of
average persons and groups within their various social and cultural environments. This chapter
will offer insights into the complexity of Central Europe’s Christian heritage, a complexity
that is often forgotten in today’s political and cultural debates. “Central Europe” here includes
the territories between France, Belgium, and The Netherlands in the West, and Russia and the
Balkans in the East.
Christianization: A Slow and Complex Process

The Christianization of Central Europe was a long and winding process. It took about one thousand
years until all monarchies between the Adriatic in the South and the Baltic Sea in the North had
declared themselves to be “Christian” and most of the subjects were practicing some form of
Christianity. It was not until the late fifteenth century, when Lithuania, the last non-Christian
state, adopted Christianity as its state religion. However, this moment when Western Christian
unity seemed to be accomplished, only concealed the existence of religious tensions and conflicts
between these monarchs and states and within these states, between the rulers and the aristocracy
and urban elites. Finally, the underlying divergences between the monarchs, the urban elites,
and the papacy would soon break out in the form of the Reformation that destroyed the image
of Christian unity in a series of bloody wars and civil conflicts that created a confessionally
fragmented Central Europe where strong Catholic forces, in particular the Habsburg dynasty, had
trouble containing strong Protestant areas.
The fact that people were subject to the Christian monarchs did not necessarily mean that
they were all more or less believing and practicing Christians. Recent research challenged
this image of religious uniformity. New concepts—such as religious “hybridity”—have been
proposed to better understand the complex process of religious transformation between Late
Antiquity and the Reformation in Europe. Christianization was “a complex, active and extended
process of interaction and negotiation by which Christianity mapped itself onto the inherited
sacred topography of the pagan past” (Thomas 2017: 318). Ancient temples and other religious
sites were not simply transformed into churches. Rather, Christianity itself was transformed
in the process, drawing from Slavic, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Mediterranean religious
influences (Christensen, Hammer, and Warburton 2013). In other words, Central Europe was
a vast area where older and newer religious beliefs and practices mixed with myriads of local
traditions.
157
Before the eleventh century, Christianity was mostly restricted to the Mediterranean and north-
western regions of Europe, mostly areas that had been part of the Roman Empire. Thereafter, it
was slowly brought eastward by monks from the British Isles and Ireland. In the south east,
the Byzantine Empire extended Orthodox ideas and institutions north through the Balkans.
After the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire by Charlemagne around 800, new Catholic
monarchies emerged in the east, that is, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary. The Christianization
of these kingdoms was slow, and religious minorities, most of all Judaism, marked an important
presence. Jews had lived in the Ancient Roman Empire since the second century BC and
their presence in Antiquity has left traces in many parts of Central Europe including today’s
Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia. Jewish communities existed in the Christian
kingdoms throughout the Middle Ages. Since the thirteenth century, pogroms and atrocities,
but also economic opportunities, forced many Jews to move away from France and the Holy
Roman Empire toward eastern Central Europe. Expulsions from Spain, Austria, and Hungary
in the late fifteenth century strongly increased the Jewish population in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, which became the center of Jewry in Europe (Chazan 2018).
The centuries of Christianization of Central Europe mark also the establishment of most of the
region’s architectural, cultural, and political medieval heritage. A good example of this would be
Charlemagne’s Imperial Chapel (Kaiserkapelle) in Aachen, Germany, built in the ninth century,
or the twelve Romance churches of Cologne, and numerous monasteries and convents from
the eleventh century onwards. They all testify of the close entanglement of the worldly and the
heavenly realms, of religion and politics of that time.
Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reform: Confessionalization

in Early Modern Europe
When the process of Christianization of Central Europe appeared to be complete, new religious
conflicts broke out, which destroyed every illusion of Christian unity. The conflicts between
Catholics and Protestants and between the Protestant denominations had drastic consequences
for Central Europe; indeed, they changed the region’s politics, society, and culture in ways
that remain visible today, particularly when looking at the modern idea of the nation and
how this was shaped in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The enormous impact of the
Protestant Reformation on Central Europe was, to some extent, concealed by the successful
re-Catholicization campaigns carried out by the Habsburgs in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, which resulted in a Catholic domination of most of the region. In short, we can speak
of an age of confessionalization, in which the modern understanding of different Christian
denominations was shaped. The process was closely related to the formation of nationhood in
Central Europe in so far as many national communities were constructed around ethno-religious
descriptions.
In general, all Christian denominations, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, attempted to
increase their control over believers, often inspired by enlightenment ideas, and sometimes in
cooperation with a modernizing and centralizing state (Lehner 2016). They tried to improve the
overall education of priests, introduced disciplinary tribunals in order to strengthen the juridical
system of the churches, and printed and distributed catechisms to improve religious education.
At the same time, “re-awakenings” strengthened or even reinvented Protestant communities,
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as did popular forms of piety and educational reforms among Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish
communities. This period marked also the first major transformation of the religious heritage
of the region when many Catholic churches were stripped of their artwork or destroyed and
monasteries and convents were secularized in Protestant areas.
In the Habsburg lands, the ruling dynasty closely connected counter-reformation, Catholic
reform, and other religious policies with the propaganda of the Pietas Austriaca, a broad concept
of elite and popular beliefs and practices focusing on the Eucharist, the cult of the cross, of Saint
Mary, and other saints (Coreth 2004). As a consequence, many movements that fought for more
independence from Vienna, allied themselves or even identified with Protestantism, for example,
the Hungarian Calvinist nobility, or Eastern Orthodoxy in the case of the Serbian elites, and later
with anti-clericalism (Klimó 2003). When Joseph II realized that the religious uniformity of the
Habsburg Empire was “an illusion,” he launched the Edict of Toleration in 1782, which removed
a number of restrictions on Protestants in the Habsburg Empire (Lehner 2016: 55). At the same
time, the emperor also lifted some of the regulations that had constrained the life of Jews, although
not in Galicia, where the majority of the Jewish population of the Empire lived. Joseph’s curbing
of the transnational character of Catholicism might also have contributed to a heightened sense of
nationality among Poles, Slovenes, Croats, and others in the Empire (Evans 2011: 14). Similarly, the
end of the persecution of heretics and witchcraft in the early eighteenth century contributed to the
legalization of religious pluralism (Kippenberg 2008: 143). The Josephinian reforms of the Catholic
church in Austria also included the secularization of religious institutions, the abolition of religious
holidays and practices. In urban areas, the emperor had many new churches built and new institutions
like seminaries for the education of priests established. Similar reforms all over Central Europe can
be understood as a second, enlightenment-inspired transformation of its Christian heritage.
In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Catholic Church had also regained a hegemonic
position. Attempts by the Russian Czarina Catherine the Great in 1764 to strengthen the influence
of Protestant nobles in the Polish parliament were rejected by a majority of the Polish nobility
“as an insult to and degradation of the Holy Roman Catholic Faith” (Lukowski 2010: 66). In the
context of the partitions of Poland in the last third of the eighteenth century, Polish intellectuals
striving for independence declared Catholicism to be a marker of “Polishness,” particularly in the
Protestant Kingdom of Prussia and the Orthodox Russian Empire. This rather crude simplification
of Polish realities would become common practice in the nineteenth century.
Religion, Nationalism, and Anti-Clericalism since the Nineteenth Century

The period between the early nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century was marked by a profound
transformation in the relationship between individuals, groups, and the state. The efforts to
centralize the large empires in the eighteenth century had unintended consequences leading to
the creation and growth of nationalist movements within these multinational and multicultural
entities. For example, as the empires worked on the transformation of imperial subjects into
active citizens (with more duties and more rights), by introducing censuses, population statistics,
elections, press freedom, and other opportunities for political engagement, they necessarily
contributed to the erosion of older, often hybrid, local identifications that had allowed people
to use a variety of languages and to avoid clear-cut identifications with a specific ethnic or
national group.
159
However, the importance of nationalism for the transformation of the political landscape of
the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should not obscure the fact that most conflicts
around religion at this time related not to nationalism but to the secularization of the state. In
Switzerland as well as in Austria and Hungary, Catholics began to organize in associations, trade
unions, and political parties and participated by the thousands in pilgrimages and other public
events that were often regarded as manifestations against the national-liberal zeitgeist (Zimmer
2003). Although the “culture war” between the state and the Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary
was never as violent or traumatic as it was in Prussia, in some parts of the Empire large numbers
of Catholics were mobilized to protest against the introduction of a more secular elementary
education, civil marriage, or the full emancipation of Jews (Clark and Kaiser 2003).
Finally, the nineteenth century also saw the rise of a new group of believers. These were
radical secularists of various political orientations, a group that Todd Weir has called the
“fourth confession” after Catholics, Protestants, and Jews (Weir 2014). Mostly radical liberals,
democrats, socialists, or anarchists, these secularists shared a rejection of Christian and other
religious beliefs. Interestingly, however, the decline of the traditional churches in Central Europe,
particularly since the 1960s, did not lead to a noticeable strengthening of organized atheist groups
of which some gained support from the communist regimes. Instead, it is religious pluralism and
religious indifference that have gained ground in large parts of Central Europe.
After two world wars and a long political crisis, the moral collapse of European society
because of the Holocaust lingered on and would break out again a generation later right across
the region, keeping in mind that the Cold War and the different political systems of east and
west framed the discussion variously. Since the 1980s, as the communist dictatorship began to
decline, Central Europeans have examined their involvement in the Nazi occupation in contrast
to earlier narratives of victimhood and resistance. And even Switzerland, a neutral country and
a safe haven for refugees during the Second World War was brought up short by a discussion of
the country’s banks and their role as clearing houses for the Nazi Empire.
It is hard to measure the impact of such debates on religion in Central Europe, but in many
cases, the traditional role of the churches, especially the once dominant Catholic Church, was
seriously questioned because it had failed to become a force of resistance against National
Socialism, racism, and nationalism during the dark years. The church(es) had opposed modern
liberal democracy which they had often viewed as a threat to religion, tradition, and family, while
liberals, socialists, and nationalists attacked the Catholic Church. Christian democracy tried to
bridge the tension between these two extremes, representing both the social and cultural needs
and the hopes of millions of Catholics in the new era of mass politics.
Only after 1989, could Christian democratic parties be reconstructed in the former Communist
countries, but they were unable to acquire the same strength as they did in 1945. This was hardly
surprising given the decline in organized religion all over Central Europe. The long-term decline
of religious institutions, which has been dramatic in Europe since the second half of the twentieth
century, and which distinguishes the continent from other parts of the world, went hand in hand
with other social and cultural developments of that time: first industrialization, then urbanization,
and finally individualization and pluralization. This, however, is not a linear trend and no-one
can predict how the relationship between society and religion in Europe will evolve in the future.
Secularizing trends in the communist part of eastern Europe resulted from urbanization and
the decline of village communities just as they did in the west. The brutal suppression of religious
160
institutions that were regarded as bastions of reaction and conservatism was, however, unique
to communist countries even if the extent of the oppression varied from country to country. In
Hungary, almost all religious orders were dissolved in 1950. Only four were allowed to continue
their activities legally, working mostly in education; about 3,000 nuns and monks were interned,
and about 12,000 (of which 9,000 were women) were forced to leave their monasteries and
convents. Only 950 men and 2,500 women religious were left in Hungary in 1989, at which point
they were able to resume their activities (Bögre 2010).
Religion and Heritage

Religious architecture and traditions as well as secularized ideas have remained central to the
national and local communities of Central Europe, although very often in a new form. It should
also be mentioned that most churches that are still standing today have been built in the nineteenth
and, mostly, the twentieth century, which had to do with the general trends of urbanization.
Even communist regimes of the area, which had started with repressive anti-religious
campaigns during their Stalinist periods in the 1950s, later began to embrace and support some
traditions related to religion, including the restoration of churches or monasteries, which they
regarded as precious examples of “national architecture.”
One point is abundantly clear: Communism failed to suppress religion completely in the public
sphere, permitting the Catholic Church, the Protestant churches, and, most of all, the Orthodox
churches in the east to regain some ground (Tomka 2010). Ironically, communist state-funded
atheism remained a small minority all over Central Europe. Instead, many young people have
rediscovered both traditional as well as new forms of religion (e.g., Evangelicalism, Buddhism,
and New Age) as alternatives to both the failed beliefs of socialism and communism and to
the new, cold world of capitalism. Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1979 was a pivotal
moment (Kosicki, ed. 2016). Here the Catholic Church became the key institution not only
to express opposition to the communist dictatorship but also to embody a new Polish identity
(Ramet 2017: 3). Indeed, in retrospect, it seems as if the trend toward religion regaining strength
was strongest in the chaotic 1990s and has waned since. Even in Poland, church attendance has
decreased and the percentage of Poles who say that they are “religious in their own way” has
risen from 32 to 52 percent since 2000 (Ramet 2017: 2). In the same period, however, traditional
churches and religious education have regained both prestige and political support, especially
in Croatia, Hngary, and Poland. The religious national heritage, which is so often celebrated by
certain politicians today, as outlined in this chapter, has a very complex history that contradicts
simple narratives of thousand-year-old traditions and heritage.
References
Bögre, Z. (2010), ‘“We Changed Our Clothes but We Did Not Change Inside.’ Hungarian Nuns and
Sisters Before and After 1950,” Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe, 3 (1): 16–28.
Chazan, R . (2018), “The History of Medieval Jewry,” in B. Visotzky (ed.), From Mesopotamia to
Modernity: Ten Introductions to Jewish History and Literature, 103–26. New York: Routledge.
Christensen, L. B., O. Hammer, and D. A. Warburton (2013), The Handbook of Religions in Ancient
Europe. Durham: Acumen.
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Clark, C., and W. Kaiser (eds.) (2003), Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century
Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coreth, A. (2004), Pietas Austriaca: Austrian Religious Practices in the Baroque Era. West Lafayette,
IN: Purdue University Press.
Evans, R. J. (2011), “Confession and Nation in Early Modern Central Europe,” Central Europe 9
(1): 2–17.
Kippenberg, H. G. (2008), “Europe: Arena of Pluralisation and Diversification of Religions,” Journal of
Religion in Europe 1 (2): 133–55.
Klimó, Á. von (2003), Nation, Konfession, Geschichte. Zur nationalen Geschichtskultur Ungarns im
europäischen Kontext (1860–1948). München: Oldenbourg.
Kosicki, P. (ed.) (2016), Vatican II behind the Iron Curtain. Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press.
Lehner, U. (2016), The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lukowski, J. (2010), Disorderly Liberty: The Political Culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in
the Eighteenth Century. London: Continuum.
National Catholic Register (n.d.), “Polish Eucharistic Miracle Approved amid Nation’s 1050th
Anniversary of Christianity.” https://www.ncregister.com/news/polish-eucharistic-miracle-appro
ved-amid-nation-s-1-050th-anniversary-of-christianity (accessed October 5, 2022).
Porter, B. (2001), “The Catholic Nation: Religion, Identity, and the Narratives of Polish History,” Slavic
and East European Journal 45 (2): 289–99.
Ramet, S. P. (2017), Religion, Politics, and Values in Poland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schmitz, M. (2020), “Viktor Orbán and the trouble with ‘Christian identity,” Catholic Herald, February
20. https://catholicherald.co.uk/orban-and-the-trouble-with-christian-identity. (accessed June
16, 2021).
Thomas, G. (2017), “Religious Transformations in the Middle Ages: Towards a New Archaeological
Agenda,” Medieval Archaeology 61 (2): 300–29.
Tomka, M. (2010), “Religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe. Facts and Interpretations,” Religion and
Society in Central and Eastern Europe 3 (1), 1–15.
Weir, T. H. (2014), Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth
Confession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zimmer, O. (2003), A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891.
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Analysis
Chapter 18
Mobilizing Religious Heritage in

Politics: Inclusivity in a Pluralistic Society
CHRISTOPH BAUMGARTNER
Analysis
While concepts like citizenship, justice, participation, and sovereignty are core terms of
political philosophy, the same cannot be said for cultural and religious heritage. The political
significance of cultural and religious heritage, however, has become increasingly important both
in politics and in scholarly debates about the public presence of religion in liberal democracies.
This contribution focuses on political work that is done by religious heritage, and on ethical
dimensions of controversies about religious heritage in the context of democracies that are
characterized by religious diversity and committed to political equality. Following a discussion
of the concept of religious heritage, the article sketches two controversies in which Christian
holidays and the symbol of the cross were mobilized as religious heritage for political purposes.
I use these controversies to analyze possible implications and effects of politics of religious
heritage for members of both majority and minority religious communities. In the concluding
section, I propose a direction for scholarship on inclusive politics of religious heritage that
takes seriously the transformation and pluralization of the religious landscape in countries like
Germany, on which I focus in this contribution, since the 1950s.
Religious Heritage
Concepts like cultural or religious heritage are difficult to define, since they need to be sufficiently
inclusive to capture the heterogeneity of objects and practices one associates with them (see
Matthes 2018). The Faro Convention1 of the Council of Europe deals with this challenge by
defining cultural heritage in broad terms as “a group of resources inherited from the past which
people identify, independently of ownership, as a reflection and expression of their constantly
evolving values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions” (Council of Europe 2005, Article 2a). Related
to that, the Convention describes a “heritage community” as consisting “of people who value
specific aspects of cultural heritage which they wish, within the framework of public action, to
sustain and transmit to future generations” (Council of Europe 2005, Article 2b). Consequently,
I suggest understanding religious heritage as those components of cultural heritage that also
163
belong to, originate in, and derive at least part of their meaning from particular religious
traditions (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, or Islam) and/or that currently are or were in the past used
for religious purposes such as communal worship. This applies, for instance, to cathedrals like
the Notre Dame de Paris, to practices like the singing of Christmas carols, or to historical events
like the Reformation. In many cases, the status of such religious heritage is formally recognized
by official authorities and state institutions, for example, provinces, the government, or heritage
agencies.
Heritage making selects and defines certain objects or events from the past as particularly
significant in the present and for the future of a collective, the heritage community. By doing
so, religious heritage objects are not only remembered and preserved but also a specific secular
value is conferred onto them that is important for the collective identity and self-understanding
of a group (see Meyer, this volume). The composite nature2 of heritage—involving reference
to something in the past, while also propelling it into the future as especially valuable (Seglow
2019: 13)—is evident in monuments and commemorations that are erected and organized with
the stated aim to deliberately mark the importance of something or somebody of the past. Think
of national holidays like the 4th of July in the United States that commemorates the passage of
the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or monuments like the Luther Monument in Worms that
invokes not only the historical event of Luther’s defense of his writings at the Diet of Worms in
1521 but also the continuing importance of Martin Luther and the Reformation for Europe and
Germany in particular. In public debates, however, the status of heritage is not limited to those
things that are deliberately created to commemorate past events in the present and mark their
significance for the future (as in the case of public monuments) or that are officially declared
as heritage objects by state authorities (e.g., Notre Dame de Paris). Rather, it is sometimes also
ascribed to and claimed for informal and relatively elusive entities like values, traditions, or
culture at large that are described, for instance, as Christian heritage or Judeo-Christian tradition
of a country or region. Such informal and elusive forms of religious heritage deserve particular
attention because they are often mobilized for political purposes, which can raise issues related
to democratic ideals of equality. To illustrate this, the following section briefly describes two
controversies from Bavaria, a federal state in the south of Germany.
Holidays and Crosses: Controversies about Religious Heritage in Bavaria

The first case concerns a controversy in 2017 that was sparked by the then Federal Minister of
the Interior Thomas de Maizière, who stated at a campaign event that one could think about
introducing a local public Islamic holiday (see FAZ 2017), in regions where many Muslims
live.3 He compared this to All Saint’s Day, which is a public holiday only in regions with a
largely Catholic population. De Maizière’s statement was received very positively by the Central
Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland) whose chairman Aiman
Mazyek pointed out that such a holiday could grant “Muslims a sense of being taken into account
at school and in the workplace” (Wagener 2017). Some representatives of Christian churches
also supported an introduction of an Islamic public holiday. The spokesperson of the Central
Committee of German Catholics Thomas Sternberg argued that Christian public holidays like
Easter and Christmas expressed that German society is connected with Christian tradition. This
cultural connection would not be threatened by the introduction of an Islamic holiday, according
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Mobilizing Religious Heritage in Politics
to Sternberg, but rightly and publicly “take note of the Islamic holiday culture” (ZEIT online
2017). Conservative politicians of Thomas de Maizière’s own party Christian Democratic Union
(CDU), however, swiftly rejected the idea of introducing an Islamic holiday even on the regional
level. The Christian Social Union (CSU)—the Bavarian counterpart of the CDU—as well as
the Free Voters of Bavaria (Freie Wähler [FW]), another conservative party, initiated a formal
intervention when both parties submitted to Bavarian State Parliament urgent motions to pre-
emptively disallow the introduction of an Islamic public holiday in Bavaria. Clearly, the CSU and
the FW in Bavarian State Parliament assumed that an Islamic public holiday was incompatible
with the existing holiday culture in Bavaria and would undermine what they described as “the
Judeo-Christian values and traditions” (BayLTDrucks 17/18718), “the Christian imprint of
Germany and Bavaria,” and “Christian-occidental heritage” (BayLTDrucks 17/18705).
The second case concerns a decision of the Bavarian government in 2018 to decree that all
government offices prominently display a cross in their entrance halls. This happened only six
months before the Bavarian state election, in which the populist far-right political party Alternative
für Deutschland (AfD) was gaining political momentum, rallying against migrants and what
they described as a threat of an “Islamization of Germany.” As in the previous case, a Christian
form—here the cross—was described as “an expression of the historical and cultural imprint
of Bavaria,” as the text of the so-called Bavarian Cross Decree puts it (Langner-Pitschmann
2019: 310). Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) defended the decree against the
accusation that it would violate constitutional rules about the religious neutrality of the state by
declaring that the cross was not a religious sign, but a symbol of “Bavarian identity” (Knight
2018). Representatives of the Christian churches, however, expressed different opinions. The head
of the German Bishop’s Conference Cardinal Reinhard Marx criticized Söder for “expropriating
the cross in the name of the state” (DW 2018), and Protestant Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
emphasized that the cross had first and foremost a religious meaning, which should not be used
to exclude people by mobilizing it as regional heritage (Bedford-Strohm 2018). Moreover, and
crucial to an analysis of ethical dimensions of politics of religious heritage, Jewish historian
Michael Brenner pointed out that for Jews, the crucifix has been a symbol that stood for many
centuries of intolerance, persecution, and Christian missionary zeal, and that it is effectively
exclusionary even today, since it is “solely the symbol of Christianity” (Brenner 2018: 45). Jews,
Muslims, and atheists cannot relate positively to the crucifix, according to Brenner. Rather, “it
makes them outsiders. Perhaps they belong a little, but not really” (45).
So what do these controversies tell us about the political work that is done by religious
heritage in pluralistic societies? In the following, I want to distinguish two directions into which
religious heritage and controversies about it can influence political processes: one, in which
religious heritage functions (for members of the majority) as a component of collective identity
and contributes to social cohesion, and another, where it contributes (for members of religious
minorities) to alienation from society and processes of othering and informal exclusion.
Religious Heritage as Marker of Collective Identity or National Culture

From the perspective of the cultural majority in a society, cultural, and religious heritage can
function as a marker of national (or regional) identity and culture. Such collective identities,
Aleida Assmann points out, are important for the construction of groups, nations, and states and
165
are usually “based on chosen key events, significant places, and cultural artifacts and practices
that offer the group … both a sense of their uniqueness and a historical orientation” (Assmann
2020: 210). Heritage objects are particularly important, because they are construed as things
from the past that matter for how the respective heritage community imagines its own future. We
construct and come to know a nation’s meaning—its culture, values, and ideals of belonging—
“partly through the objects and artefacts which have been made to stand for and symbolise its
essential values” (Hall 1999: 5, emphasis in original). Because of its selective character (only
certain things are defined as heritage), heritage production authorizes only particular histories as
being especially significant to the collective identity of a group or nation.
Such motives are present in the Bavarian controversies explored above. In both cases,
conservative politicians described Christian symbols as heritage, declaring them worthy of
preservation and normative for the future development of Bavaria. Consequently, the symbol of
the cross and the holiday culture that includes Christian, but not Islamic holidays are construed
as essential parts of the collective identity of Bavaria and Bavarian people, respectively. The fact
that both controversies concern religious forms and that the state clearly privileges Christianity
in both cases raises questions about state neutrality with respect to religion and political equality
in contexts of religious diversity. To deal with such issues, heritagization of religion is used as a
strategy that transforms religion in a traditional sense into a “secular sacred” (Balkenhol, van den
Hemel, and Stengs 2020), while at the same time maintaining a close relationship between (stated)
collective identity and traditional majoritarian religion as heritage. However, the contributions by
representatives of Christian churches to the controversies in Bavaria described above and Michael
Brenner’s response to the Bavarian cross decree indicate that the political work of construing
these things as heritage does not erase their potentially divisive connotations. Consequently, it
is not a matter of course that a heritagization of majority religious forms contributes to a shared
and inclusive collective identity. This brings me to the second direction of religious heritage’s
influence on political processes.
Religious Heritage Fostering Alienation from Society and

Othering of Religious Minorities
While the previous section concerned politics of religious heritage with respect to members of
the cultural majority in a society, this section addresses the effects that heritagization of majority
religion can have for members of minorities. In the context of religiously pluralistic societies,
two potential problems can be distinguished: alienation on the one hand and othering on the
other.4
People can be alienated from the state and society, respectively, if they feel unable to identify
with them or if they feel excluded from the polity. The presence of religious heritage that is
authorized as such by the state or state institutions can contribute to such alienation if it only
includes the religious forms (e.g., holidays, symbols, or literature) of one particular religion and
denies the forms of other (usually minority) religions. If that is the case, members of minority
religions lack opportunities to see themselves with their religious traditions as fully included in
the “we” of the collective identity; “what is worth preserving does not belong to them and does
not originate with them” (Beaman 2020: 19).
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Two objections have been made to the claims of alienation due to exclusion from authorized
religious heritage. One objection points out that the sense of alienation is strongly dependent
on subjective experiences and sensibilities of people who feel alienated and does not say much
about whether the thing that causes one to feel alienated (here: religious heritage) is morally
or politically problematic (see Laborde 2017: 135). Another objection can be derived from
Aleida Assmann’s observation concerning the formative role of cultural memory for collective
identities in a democracy. Here, Assmann argues, official references to and commemorations
of past events—that characterize religious heritage as well—can only “create possibilities for
identification and structures of participation that enable individuals as well as collectives to make
the past their own” (Assmann 2020: 211); people are not obliged to relate to heritage objects in
an affirmative or supportive manner. Accordingly, members of religious minorities could use
other components of collective identity to develop a sense of belonging. With respect to the
controversies about religious heritage in Bavaria, for instance, people who do not identify with
the cross or with Christian holidays could use other components of “Bavarian culture” to build a
positive relation to their society, for instance, cuisine, landscape, or language.
These arguments, however, can only solve part of the problem because relations like belonging
to a society can only be stable if the respective person is also recognized by others as a full
and equal member of society. The politics of religious heritage can impede this process if they
contribute to processes of othering by publicly construing minority religions as not being part of,
or even at odds with national (in the cases above: Bavarian) culture. In this context, the concept of
“religious heritage assemblage” that was coined by Marian Burchardt is especially useful, since
it describes not only particular heritage objects (cathedrals, the cross, holidays etc.), but “the
totality of heterogeneous discourses, sites, and practices in which claims to religion as a national
culture are articulated, authorized and institutionalized” (Burchardt 2020: 3). An analysis of the
controversies described above utilizing the religious heritage assemblage framework reveals
that influential contributors like Bavarian prime minister Söder and members of Bavarian State
Parliament connected the discussion of heritage to the fierce public discussions about people
migrating to Germany from predominantly Muslim countries like Syria or Afghanistan. In such
a political climate, authorizing the symbol of the cross as heritage and ordering its public display
in government offices while rejecting the idea of a public Islamic holiday with reference to a
“Christian-occidental heritage” contributes to construing Islam as somehow “not really” part of
the Bavarian “we.”
Taking stock of the considerations about politics of religious heritage, one can describe
religious heritage as a potentially ambivalent phenomenon, especially in religiously pluralistic
societies. On the one hand, it can function as a medium for a collective identity and foster
bonding ties between people who may not even know each other, but who still feel connected in
an imagined community (Anderson 2016). On the other hand, there is a danger that such bonding
primarily connects those people who belong to the cultural and religious majority. In this case,
religious heritage contributes to marking boundaries between the imagined community and those
who are construed as “other” and somehow “foreign.” The resultant alienation caused among
members of minority religions can indirectly form an obstacle to realizing political equality and
social inclusion. In the following section, I want to sketch some thoughts about an inclusive
politics of religious heritage for pluralistic democracies.
167
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Toward Inclusive Politics of Religious Heritage

As a remedy for the possible challenges raised by religious heritage to inclusive democracies
in general and political equality in particular, I want to suggest a reconceptualization of the
understanding of heritage that guides politics of religious heritage-making in pluralistic societies.
At the beginning of this article, I introduced a definition of the Faro Convention that characterizes
heritage as resources inherited from the past that people identify as a reflection of their constantly
evolving values, beliefs, and traditions. Some of the most pressing political issues of religious
heritage result from a “mismatch” between the heritagized past of a society that is construed as
largely homogeneous and dominated by one religion, and a religious heterogeneity in the present
situation. To overcome this predicament, an inclusive politics of religious heritage, so I suggest,
should turn its gaze not only to the past and historical narratives of grandeur but also incorporate
more recent changes in society. What does that mean?
To remove impediments to inclusion and political equality, politics of religious heritage
should also enable members of religious minorities to actively contribute to religious heritage
so as to reflect not merely constellations of some time in the past but also in the present or even
the foreseeable future. This invites not only a more inclusive retelling of history, but at times a
conceptual disentangling of the notion of “heritage” from the past. Though this might appear a
surprising proposal, Irene Stengs’s anthropological scholarship on Dutch institutions collecting
relics from national tragedy provides conceptual tools that can be useful here. Stengs introduces
the notion of “anticipatory heritage” to describe “the ways that societies seek to construct the
future memory of their time” (Stengs 2018: 267). They do so in the present, by identifying
things that are especially important to current members in society and taking seriously how such
things are invested with meaning and emotional power. Recalibrations of the concept of heritage
that include notions like anticipatory heritage could guide the politics of religious heritage in
its efforts to take seriously the significant but relatively recent transformations of the religious
landscape in societies like Germany and regions like Bavaria.
Acknowledgments
This publication is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement
no. 665958. I want to thank the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies
Erfurt where I held a Fellowship in 2019–20.
Notes
1 The term Faro Convention is used as a shorthand for the Council of Europe Framework Convention on the
Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, which was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of
Europe on October 13, 2005. The Convention entered into force in 2011.
2 Chong-Ming Lim describes commemorations as “composite” in the sense that “they are remembrances
of certain people or events, accompanied by the expression of some evaluative view (or views)” (Lim
2020: 187). Many forms of heritage share these characteristics and one could even argue that heritage
always has commemorative dimensions, though they may often remain implicit.
168
3 This section follows, partly verbatim, Baumgartner 2022.

4 The considerations presented in the following section are informed by Modood and Thompson 2021;
Lægaard 2017, and Laborde and Lægaard 2020. These authors discuss “symbolic religious establishment,”
with the exception of Laborde and Lægaard 2020, however, the phenomenon of culturalization and
heritagization of religion is rarely addressed in these contributions.
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Analysis
Chapter 19
Religion, Gender, and Heritage: Who Is

Commemorated in the Dutch Cityscape?
MATHILDE VAN DIJK
Introduction
Occasionally, religious heritage surfaces in unexpected places, as is shown by the Groningen

neighborhood of Gravenburg. Built in the first decades of the twenty-first century, it takes its
name from a nearby farm, the roots of which reach back into the fifteenth century at least (“Oude
Grandeur” 2002: 13). In their wisdom, the city government’s committee for the names of streets
decided to give the twenty streets the names of theologians, an unusual choice in the secular
Netherlands. The streets are neatly divided according to historical periods: Saint Augustine as
a sole representative of Late Antiquity as well as six medieval, seven early modern, and seven
modern theologians. Four have a clear connection to Groningen, although all of them may be
regarded as examples of European or even world heritage. The committee consisted of city
government civil servants as well as experts, such as the city archivalist.1
Dorothee Sölle (1923–2003) is the only woman who made it into this illustrious company
(Figure 19.1). A German and a Lutheran, she wanted to make radical changes to much of the
theology as it had been practiced under the Nazi regime, which either collaborated with it, like
the Deutsche Christen had done, or looked the other way in the face of Nazist oppression and
persecution. Instead, she advocated a theology that originated in societal situations of oppression
and that was, essentially, political. Mystics, especially Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), who also
has a street in Gravenburg, were an inspiration for her. Contrary to what is often supposed, medieval
mystics always worked in and for society, putting their insights to pastoral and political uses. Sölle’s
choice for the oppressed put her in close connection with the liberation theology as developed in
Latin America—Gravenburg honors the Salvadorian archbishop Óscar Romero (1917–1980) by a
street. Eventually, her stance led to a connection to feminist theology (Hawkins 2005; Sölle 1999).
Sölle’s street is a cycle path just outside the neighborhood, taking the rider on a lovely route
through the fields between several parts of Groningen. In a Dutch context, in which cycling is a
very important way of transport, her relegation to a cycle path is no sign of marginality in itself.
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), generally seen as one of the most important theologians ever,
also has a cycle path. Yet, his path, misnamed as “Of Aquino path” (in Dutch: Van Aquinopad)—
“Of Aquino” is not a last name—is a central thoroughfare, connecting the three parts of
171
FIGURE 19.1 Street sign for the Söllepad.

Source: Kjelda Glimmerveen.
Gravenburg to each other. Its prominence is in line with Groningen’s longstanding policy of
promoting cycling over driving (Wijkstreefbeeld 2003: 8–9). Yet, due to its position at the fringes,
actually outside the neighborhood, Sölle’s path appears to be the result of an afterthought or,
possibly, criticism of the selection of theologians, which consists of the usual dead white males,
who, except for Romero and Saint Augustine, were all from Europe.
As far as the latter is concerned, Saint Augustine was appropriated so thoroughly as the most
important Western church father that few take into account his roots in the Roman province of
Africa, along with several other theologians, who shaped Christianity and whose impact can
still be felt today (Wilhite 2017: 3–5). Yet, over and against this construction of Augustine as a
Western, obviously white, theologian, African American and African theologians reappropriated
him, and claimed a dark color for his skin, from the nineteenth century (Wilhite 2013: 126–34).
Given the low familiarity of so-called Black and African theologies in the Netherlands, it is
doubtful whether the Committee for the Names of the Streets was aware of any of this. Thus, the
presence of one African theologian is a fortunate bycatch.2
The street naming in Gravenburg also illustrates the marginality of women, when it comes to
heritage. Even more so than history, heritage is the tale of the winners, the tale of those elements
in the past that the dominant groups regard as constitutive of society. This includes happy and
unhappy memories: on the pavement of Groningen and many other European cities, so-called
172
Religion, Gender, and Heritage
Stolpersteine, concrete stones with copper plaques engraved with names, dates, and places are
set. These commemorate the Jewish individuals, who used to live next to those stones and who
were murdered under Nazism. They have become an important part of the official memory of
the Netherlands, after a long history of being marginalized before the Second World War. In
the Netherlands, the latter, usually referred to as “the War,” is seen as a defining moment in
Dutch history. Only recently, other persecuted groups such as Roma, Sinti, and homosexuals,
came to be remembered in official commemoration ceremonies, the one in Amsterdam being
the most important. On May 4, traditionally, the king lays the first of several wreaths at the
National Monument on Dam Square. In the same city, a separate gay monument, the so-called
Homomonument, was installed as late as 1987. In 2021, comedian André van Duin (1947–)
was invited to give the official speech at the Dam Square event. Recently widowed, he told
the audience that he had never attended the official ceremony, as he and his husband had felt a
stronger sense of belonging at the unofficial ceremony at the gay monument.
In this article, the complexity of coming to a truly inclusive perspective of the defining past
will be studied. The question is whether creating special interest narratives or including more
women, gays, and ethnical or religious minorities into “normal” narratives actually helps in
engendering a more inclusive and pluralist view of what constitutes a community’s heritage. Two
heritage practices will be juxtaposed: street naming and the creation of special interest walks, in
this case women’s and feminist walks in particular. Street naming offers a clear perspective on
the dominant view of a city’s past, usually in connection with the national, European, and global
past, in so far as it commemorates events, organizations, or people. Except for members of the
royal house, women are seldom included. The same goes for other marginal groups, although,
in all fairness, Groningen does have a gay neighborhood, De Held (The Hero), named after a
local mill and built around the same time as Gravenburg. Three out of De Held’s eleven streets
commemorate women. James Baldwin (1899–1961) is the only non-white among them and as
such a rarity in Groningen street names. Unlike street naming, the creation of special interest
walks tends to be a bottom up action of marginalized groups who feel that their heritage is not
acknowledged. In the following, I will concentrate on the Groningen women’s walk and compare
it to similarly-themed tours in Glasgow (Scotland) and Perth (Australia), of the few that have
been studied under the aegis of heritage studies.
Usually, the debate is whether marginal heritage should be included in the large narrative of a
community’s heritage or remain separate. The Nottingham heritage scholar Ross J. Wilson rejects
attempts to inscribe marginal heritage into the wider heritage of a community. Marginality should
be kept alive because of its critical, society-changing potential, rather than being ironed into a
flat, safe, unchallenging narrative (Wilson 2018). This is what could happen when, for instance,
in the commemoration of the Second World War, new groups of oppressed people are simply
added to the list of those who should be remembered, without attention to their special fates or
the specific reason why they were persecuted. In this case, difference is forgotten, and there is no
real discussion of the status of “deviants,” why they were targeted specifically, possible guilt of
the “normals” in this, and so on. In contrast, the American archeologist Patricia Kim warns that
it is not much better when marginal heritage is celebrated, for instance, by creating a monument
for a marginal group, like a gay monument. Creating additional, separate heritage could keep
such “deviants” in their niches and domesticate them without impacting the dominant narrative
at all, in which gays as gays are largely absent, except making those who decide what is heritage
173
and what is not, feel better about themselves, for their tolerance in creating a space for “them.”
In this case, “their” fate becomes something that has nothing to do with the dominant discourse.
Inspired by Foucault, she coined the term “carceral heritage” to describe such heritage, safely
locked into a separate cell (Kim 1997). Focusing on gender, but occasionally including other
forms of difference, I will attempt to find a route between the Scylla of incarcerating marginal
heritage or the Charybdis of the flatness of a general narrative. In both cases, “deviants” become
invisible, either by submerging them into the wider heritage or by putting them into a ghetto, into
which the dominant groups need never venture.
Except for detours to Sweden, Scotland, Australia, and the rest of the Netherlands, the city
of Groningen will be the main case study. Located in the North of the Netherlands, it is a city of
some 202,900 inhabitants, about a quarter of whom are students in the University of Groningen
and the Hanze University for Applied Sciences. Traditionally, Groningen has a strong sense of
regional identity, as evidenced and enhanced by its distinctive dialect and the cultivation of a
habitus of sobriety, restraint, and outspokenness. A diversity of material will be studied: selected
literature about heritage, especially in Groningen; conversations with heritage professionals
and civil servants; and, finally, by walking and cycling through the city. First, it is necessary to
explain the concept of heritage as used in this article, and, second, why acknowledgment of and
access to heritage is so important, especially when one is marginalized.
Heritage is a Narrative
Heritage is not a monumental building such as a church or, if one includes intangible heritage,
a social practice such as a procession. First and foremost, it is a narrative, a discourse, around
a historical phenomenon. It is heritage because it supposedly defines who “we” are, what
constitutes “our” identity, which values “we” adhere to, and what is remembered as important
(Smith 2006: 29–34). It is authorized memory, a selection of what “we” remember as the defining
instances or objects from “our” past. As the Stolpersteine show, it includes the glorious moments
of a community’s past as well as its traumas, although, traditionally, there is a tendency to focus
on the former.
Largely, what was heritage and what was not, used to be determined by what the Australian
scholar Laurajane Smith defined as “authorized heritage discourse (AHD)” (Smith 2006: 29).
In conversation with the powers that be, experts determined what is worth preserving: which
churches to restore, which monuments to erect, and which practices to protect. Because of its
connection to “us” as a society, be it in the scope of a city, a country, or another unit, it is political.
The result of AHD is presented as “general” heritage, shared by the entire community. It privileges
dominant groups: cisgender male, white, and heterosexual. Thus, it is a classic development
of Simone de Beauvoir’s theory that males are the “first sex” to women’s “second sex” and
constitute the normative humanity as opposed to women as “the other.” The same goes for other
groups that do not participate in normative humanity, as De Beauvoir already hypothesized (De
Beauvoir 1950: 15, 26). Smith, and this has become the shared opinion of many scholars working
in heritage studies, views challenging, and criticizing this “general,” authorized discourse as a
primary assignment for scholars in heritage research.
Lately, the top-down AHD is not as omnipotent as it used to be. Increasingly, marginal groups
claim their own heritage, adding new materials, or attacking the dominant heritage. The causes
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for this are manifold. Undoubtedly, under the influence of globalization and migration, societies
became more diverse. In addition, emancipation movements such as feminism increased the
self-awareness of marginal groups. Those who were a part of such groups felt that their past was
as memorable as what was recorded in the official narrative about it, in which they had no or
only a minor part. Internationally, the value of non-dominant heritage has been recognized by
resolutions of UNESCO and the European Council, which acknowledge access to it as a human
right. Quoting article 4 of the European Council’s Faro Convention:
a. everyone, alone, or collectively, has the right to benefit from the cultural heritage and to
contribute towards its enrichment;
b. everyone, alone, or collectively, has the responsibility to respect the cultural heritage of
others as much as their own heritage, and consequently the common heritage of Europe;
c. exercise of the right to cultural heritage may be subject only to those restrictions which are
necessary in a democratic society for the protection of the public interest and the rights and
freedoms of others (Council of Europe n.d.).
The Faro Convention puts forward a vision of Europe as a diverse, pluralist society, in which
what is seen as heritage must also be pluralist and diverse. Although the Netherlands, along with
several other countries, has not yet ratified this agreement, it still created an awareness that a
society’s heritage should be as diverse as the society itself. A recent example of an attempt to
include “other” perspectives is the renaming of the Rotterdam Witte de With-Museum. This
is a modern art museum named after an admiral from the seventeenth century, an era that is
traditionally seen as the Dutch Golden Age. Witte de With (1599–1658) came under fire for being
too closely connected to colonialism and the slave trade. His name was replaced with Melly,
referring to a work of art, placed on the outside of the museum. This is an image of a young,
smiling Asian woman, working in an office, under the title of “Melly Shum hates her job (About -
Kunstinstituut Melly 2021) Increasingly, the notion of the Golden Age itself is criticized as
referring to a period of wealth for some and of oppression, poverty, and colonialism for others, in
and outside the Netherlands. This led to the cancellation of the term in at least one museum, The
Amsterdam Museum, from September 12, 2019 (Pontzen 2019).
These examples show that official heritage can be hurtful. In the Netherlands, the debate
around the figure of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) is the best-known example. Zwarte Piet is an
important character in the feast of Sinterklaas, which is widely celebrated on the eve of Saint
Nicholas’s Day, December 5.3 The saint, casually known as Sinterklaas, supposedly gives presents
to children and grown-ups, usually accompanied by a self-made poem or a so-called surprise,
an original way of wrapping it up, which mildly mocks the receiver, for instance, by hiding a
present for a train-buff in a self-made locomotive. Next to the saint’s bishop’s attire, white beard,
and unpainted face, Piet appears in a kind of Renaissance page-costume and blackface, featuring
pitch-black skin, an Afro-wig, and red lips. Usually, he is played by a white person, whereas a
Black person playing Nicholas is unthinkable, except in mocking situations. The Sinterklaas
tradition got its present form fairly recently, in the nineteenth century, and underwent several
adaptations since. Nowadays, after a previous history as the devil and a demon, Zwarte Piet is
cast as Saint Nicholas’s comical servant (Rodenburg and Wagenaar 2016).
Zwarte Piet had been under intermittent fire from the 1960s, but the debate turned virulent
when the poets Quincy Gario (1984–) and Jerry Afriyie (1981–), both dark-skinned, were arrested
175
for wearing “Zwarte Piet is racisme” (Black Pete is racism) T-shirts during a Sinterklaas parade
in Dordrecht in 2011. This was not just any Sinterklaas parade, but the official one, aired on
national television. It did not help that the arrest was heavy-handed, unusual in the Netherlands,
as the police tends to cultivate a friendly attitude, especially during demonstrations. In addition,
there is the inflammatory effect of social media to consider. A heated debate about Zwarte Piet
ensued, which led to threats, rioting, and court cases. Thus far this controversy shows no sign
of ending soon, resurfacing every year around Sinterklaas. Against Zwarte Piet’s opponents, his
supporters argued that he is a part of their heritage and therefore of their identity as being Dutch.
In a context of rising right-wing populism, many appropriated a discourse of suffering, in which
Dutch heritage is under threat from both outsiders and leftist intellectuals, ready to sell out all
that is valuable in Dutch culture (Hilhorst and Hermes 2016). Apparently, as far as these Zwarte
Piet supporters were concerned, this trumps the opponents’ discourse of suffering under racism,
colonialism, and slavery (Helsloot 2012).
The Zwarte Piet debate shows that his supporters regard heritage as a fixed set, unchanged
over the centuries. They are not alone in this vision. Few realize that, in fact, like any discourse,
what is a part of heritage and what it means is highly flexible (Brienen 2014). The changing
narratives around Zwarte Piet, the Golden Age, and Witte de With are cases in point. Because
of its flexibility, heritage has a close connection to the concept of lieu de mémoire as developed
by the French historian Pierre Nora and his research group, a connection that they did not
make, incidentally. Nora defined a lieu de mémoire (site of memory) as a site, a person, or
a concept that summarizes the identity of a group (Nora 1984: xvii–xliii). In the three hefty
volumes of Les lieux de mémoire, he and his collaborators investigated how different groups in
France appropriated certain historical sites, objects, concepts, and people how these came to be
a cornerstone of their identities. Primarily, their discourses are about today, about what certain
facts from the past mean in the present day. The connection with what actually happened in
the past and what this meant at the time may be tenuous. Claiming a lieu de mémoire as one’s
heritage is in the interest of the group that claims it as heritage, and always excludes of non-
participants in that group, as the Dutch historian Willem Frijhoff later specified (Frijhoff 1997,
2003, 2007).
Heritage Empowers
The above already shows the importance of heritage. Discovering and highlighting one’s heritage
empowers and enhances identity and self-esteem, as shown by the enthusiastic response to
certain findings about marginal groups’ pasts. This is not a new thing. The women who headed
the suffragist movement sought inspiration in the abbesses and queens from the Early Middle
Ages, who made crystal clear that women were just as able rulers as men were (Eckenstein
1896). The furore after the publication of new data around a mysterious Viking warrior grave in
Sweden is a more recent example. From the excavation in the nineteenth century, this individual
puzzled the archeologists as it was fully armed, but still wore female accouterments such as a
specific type of brooch. Originally, it was labeled male, as the grave clearly was a warrior’s
and therefore a male’s, as the reasoning went. It is true that Norse sagas frequently referred to
female warriors, the so-called shieldmaidens, but these had always been seen as strictly fictional
characters. Recently, after initial suggestions that the pelvis pointed to a female figure rather than
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a male, DNA-analysis confirmed that this was indeed so. Further projections showed that she
must have been stronger than female Olympic rowers today (Colwill 2021). News and social
media exploded, not in the least because shieldmaidens had acquired new currency through the
popular television series Vikings, which features the redoubtable Lagertha (played by Katheryn
Winnick), and her many female comrades in battle.4 If anyone still doubted that women could do
what men did, they needed to think again, was the general feeling.
Heritage can be wielded as a weapon in the struggle for empowerment of marginal groups.
This is the obvious aim of the website sekswerkerfgoed.nl (Sex Workers’ Heritage), recently
recognized as digital heritage by the Royal Library in the Hague, definitely a speaker of the AHD.
This site was created by historian and philosopher Sietske Altink (1954–2020), an expert in the
history of prostitution (Altink 1983). Throughout her life, she defended the rights of sex workers,
arguing against both the vision of them as morally substandard and as pathetic victims of pimps
and sex traffickers. Instead, she advocated an acknowledgment of prostitution as a profession like
any other and campaigned for better working conditions. In addition to information on practical
matters, the site is filled with items about how sex workers stand or stood up for their rights, citing
medieval and contemporary examples. Moreover, it commemorates famous prostitutes, such as
Sybilla Alida Johanna Niemans (1927–1959) from The Hague, known under her professional
pseudonym Blonde Dolly. Her murder caused a considerable stir in the Netherlands as she was
reported to have many clients in high places, including government circles. It was never solved,
which led to the inevitable theories about how one of these powerful men must have killed her
and how his status had ensured that the matter was hushed up. The sex workers’ website provides
a rounded picture of this woman, by detailing how she worked independently, without a pimp,
and got rich off the proceeds; how she was a shrewd investor into real estate, owning several
buildings at the time of her death. Every weekend, she read poems to the people in homes for the
elderly (Sekswerk Erfgoed 2020).
Bottom-Up: The City Walk

Returning to Groningen, the interest in discovering gendered, especially female heritage, started
bottom-up, from women engaged in feminist projects such as the women’s library Savante or
the history students in the women’s history group. At first, the interest was to add women to the
city’s history, for instance, in its reaction to the so-called Groningen Canon (Dijk 2008). This led
to the creation of a thematic walk in the city of Groningen, focused on women: “Women on the
map” (Wilts 2009).
The Groningen Historical Canon was created in response to the first version of the so-called
Canon of Dutch History, alongside other regional canons and special interest canons, such as the
so-called Bètacanon that commemorates Dutch achievements and people in the natural sciences
(Dijkgraaf et al. 2008). The Canon of Dutch history was the result of an effort by the national
government to standardize history in school, so as to make sure that all children would know
about the essential historical developments that made The Netherlands into The Netherlands.
A learned committee was charged with the task to determine what this essence was and to create
an authorized framework for the history lessons in school. It is a classic example of the AHD at
work. The committee created lists of events and people as well as “windows” to newly divided
historical periods. Only three women, all from the Modern Age, made it into the list of essential
177
FIGURE 19.2 Theresia van der Pant, Aletta Jacobs (1988), in Groningen city centre.
Source: Kjelda Glimmerveen.
people: Aletta Jacobs (1865–1929), Anne Frank (1929–1945), and Annie M. G. Schmidt
(1911–1995).
Aletta Jacobs was the first woman ever to graduate from a Dutch university, that is, the
University of Groningen (Figure 19.2). A medical doctor, she worked at ensuring better healthcare
for women and was an internationally renowned activist for the women’s suffrage. Anne Frank
needs no introduction: through her world-famous diary, she became an icon of the Shoah.
Annie M. G. Schmidt became famous for her children’s books, musicals, TV scripts, and other
works, because of her signature stance against all forms of bourgeois stuffiness, for instance, by
representing a child’s tantrum in a poem without moral judgment, instead sympathizing with its
mood (Schmidt 1955). As for the more general framework of the windows, these appear to be
rather male defined, for example, “knights and monks” for the Early Middle Ages.
As far as diversity was concerned, the Groningen Canon did only slightly better than the
official national canon, because it included one woman from the Early Modern Age. Beetke
of Rasquert († 1554) had the manor of Nienoord built, in Leek, west of Groningen. A shrewd
businesswoman, she continued the success of their peat digging business, after her husband died
at an early age. Moreover, she considerably increased her family’s wealth by strategically buying
land. Her intriguing portrait in the collection of the Groninger Museum may have helped her
appeal (Figure 19.3). She had such an influence on the imaginations of the people around her
178
FIGURE 19.3 Anonymous portrait of Beetke of Rasquert, Groninger Museum, between ca. 1520–
ca. 1530.
that, supposedly, she still haunts Nienoord (Nip 2004: 50–64). The total number of women in the
Groningen canon was three, following the standard set by the official Dutch canon. In addition
to Beetke, national celebrities Aletta Jacobs and Marianne Timmer (1974) were included. As the
first alumna of the University of Groningen, Jacobs had an obvious connection to Groningen.
179
Timmer is a speedskating champion, a gold medalist in the Olympics and other competitions. Her
presence illustrates the high status of this sport in the Netherlands. Compared to other regional
canons, Groningen belongs to the better kids in class: very few succeed in finding at least three
essential women. Some canons lack women entirely.
In preparing for this article, I made the walk “Women on the Map” with Groningen city guide
Paulien Ex. She told me that it is one of the more popular walks in her portfolio. Given the many
women who have been uncovered since the first version, it is available in several versions of
varying lengths. As the weather was freezing that day, we did a short version. Yet, I encountered
many forgotten women, some of whom I, a historian, knew, others, whom I had never heard of.
The map included a world famous mezzo-soprano, Julia Culp (1880–1970), known as the Dutch
nightingale: the first female professor of the University of Groningen, botanist Jantina Tammes
(1871–1947); feminist Etta Palm (1743–1799), an advocate of women’s rights in the French
Revolution; resistance fighter Sieta Tammens (1914–2014), and others, connected to the sites
where they used to live or in Tammens’s case, the Sicherheitsdienst headquarters where she was
questioned (Stadswandeling n.d.).
Perhaps as a consequence of its connection to the official historical canons, “Women on the
Map” highlights individual heroines. As far as people are focused on, this bias toward outstanding
individuals also goes for “general” canons. Most of the women in “Women on the Map” are from
upper-middle- or upper-class families; all of them are from the nineteenth and twentieth century.
An additional reason for their dominance would be that the walk concentrates on visible signs of
female activity, as marked by a statue, a plaquette on a wall, or the enduring presence of a building
connected to a famous woman. It stands to reason that elite women from the Modern Age would
have the best chance of such visibility as working class women would have left fewer individual
traces. The same is true for medieval and early modern women. The original guidebook made an
effort to include them, for instance, by mentioning working-class women’s careers as domestic
servants and as seamstresses in the many local clothing workshops, but without pointing to specific
sites. Ex told me that, like the original guidebook advised, she usually includes the Doorgangshuis
(Transit House), which could also serve as a working-class site. This was a refuge for children
and girls, usually poor, who were “morally neglected.” Aristocratic founder Magdalena de Ranitz
(1837–1919) sought to protect them from a fall into further depravity, that is, a career as a prostitute
(Swaan 1965: 6–20). By way of medieval and early modern heritage, the original guidebook also
mentioned the several béguinages and other female religious communities in the city as well as
almshouses, some which were founded by women (Wilts 2009: 10). The latter are included in Ex’s
almshouses’ walk, the most popular of her thematic walks.
The feminist bus tours in Perth and Glasgow follow a different strategy than the Groningen
walks. The makers specifically targeted the heritage of working-class women and others, who
did not conform to the white, cis-gender, heterosexual norm. In Glasgow, women were included
by pointing to the contribution of groups of women, for instance, by using the central mosque
as a site for a narrative on female initiatives in interreligious dialogue. In Perth, the bus took the
usual tourist route, but like in Glasgow, it explained the female contribution to the various sites.
A special interest was to highlight indigenous women, for instance, Fanny Belbak (1840–1907),
who persisted in taking traditional paths, ignoring the fences that white Australians had erected.
In contrast to the Groningen walk, both tours were primarily about sites that are no longer there,
where women’s contributions were no longer visible (Bartlett 2020).
180
Scholars in women’s history, and its more inclusive successor gender studies, always insisted
that adding women would fundamentally change dominant historical narratives. As far as the
Canon of Dutch History is concerned, this seems underway. In 2019, the Minister of Education
ordered a reboot, with the express assignment to take care that the diversity of Dutch culture
would be acknowledged. The new canon increased the number of women to eight. In addition to
Jacobs, Frank, and Schmidt, it now included Trijntje (c. 5500 BC), the oldest skeleton ever to be
excavated in the Netherlands; Duchess Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482), the first female ruler of
the Low Countries; Sara Burgerhart, the first novel to be published in the Netherlands, written
by two female authors, Betje Wolff (1738–1804) and Aagje Deken (1741–1804); and Marga
Klompé (1912–1986), the first female minister and the first woman to receive the honor of being
appointed as a permanent counselor to the Crown, a “minister of state.” The renewed canon also
included a non-white man: resistance fighter Anton de Kom (1898–1945). Thus far, the national
government’s initiative has not been followed by rebooted regional and special interest canons.
Highlighting female or other non-dominant heritage could indeed lead to a different vision
of a community as being pluralist and inclusive. Yet, as Wilson and Kim show, it is a challenge
to accomplish a pluralist and inclusive heritage practice. Groningen street naming provides an
example.
Top-Down: Naming the Streets

Street naming clearly shows the complexity of coming to inclusive heritage, which mirrors
the pluralist city, in which many voices can be heard. Recently, inspired by similar research
in Amsterdam, University of Groningen scholars investigated the division of street names,
concentrating on differences in sex, nationalities, and temporalities (see Bol 2018; Langeler
2021; Slager 2018). About a third was named after a person. White, presumably heterosexual,
cis-males, are in ample evidence. Preferably, these are dead, as to avoid the naming of figures
who go astray later in life or in whose closets skeletons are found after their demise. Male and
female members of the royal house and, in one case, a former player of the local football team in
the streets on the grounds of the former stadium are exceptions.5 Almost half of the streets were
named after a nineteenth-century figure. People born or flourishing in the Netherlands were an
overwhelming majority.
Downtown, the oldest part of Groningen, roughly retains its medieval street plan and traditional
names. Several streets are named for the aristocratic families who owned a city house in those
streets. In the newer areas, which were created after the demolition of the city’s ramparts, the
names are assigned thematically. In addition to neutral names such as the nautical terms used in
the neighborhood of Lewenborg, matching its shape as a moored ship, several are connected to
historical events. These celebrate either these events or the important people who participated in
them. Some are geographical, for instance the neighborhood, which focuses on the Netherlands’
former colonies in East Asia and the West Indies.
The neighborhood of Laanhuizen commemorates the Second World War, which is so
important in Dutch culture. In addition to the Bevrijdingslaan (Liberation Avenue), it also
has a Verzetsstrijderslaan and a Koeriersterweg, the former honoring resistance fighters, the
latter the couriers who delivered messages and materials to resistance groups and safe houses.
Predominantly, the latter were young women. For a long time, their work was seen as the most
181
important way of resistance for females, as it did not involve male-defined actions, which required
using violence. Historians like Marjan Schwegman and the sociologist Jolande Withuis corrected
this image, but at the time of building these streets, it was the dominant narrative about the roles
of men and women in resistance (Schwegman 1980; Withuis 1996). In retrospect, the division
of male and female in Laanhuizen, in which the supposedly female form of resistance was even
highlighted, was ahead of its time.
The creation of a gay neighborhood in De Held connects to the status of homosexuality
in the Netherlands, in which acceptance and inclusion have become the dominant narrative
about “ourselves,” as evidenced by the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2001, as the first
country in the world. The power of this discourse is also clear in other ways, for instance, in
the fact that prominent men and women, including ministers, are open gays and that, after
an incident in which a gay couple was beaten up, several male, presumably heterosexual,
politicians showed themselves in public holding hands. Like it is with any discourse, there
is a gap between the narrative and the actual practice: thus far, in contrast to their female
colleagues, no male footballers came out of the closet. Moreover, the acceptance of people
preferring their own sex is always conditional, even in supposedly liberal environments.
A discussion of this important subject lies beyond the scope of this article. Here, I stick to gay
representation in heritage.
The streets in the gay neighborhood of De Held are named after authors and political activists.
Although undoubtedly engaged in out of the best intentions, it struck me as diminishing to
honor figures like Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), James Baldwin, and Anna Blaman (1905–1960)
as gays, whereas their primary claim to fame is their work as authors. In Wilde’s case, it is
doubtful whether we would even “know” (in so far such knowledge is possible, as though
sexual preference is a fixed thing) about his gayness, if he would not have had the misfortune of
running into a marquess’s son, whose father started legal action against him. Baldwin, although
open about his sexuality and writing about it, was at least as important as a politically engaged
writer about African American life. The same is true about some political activists, such as
the anti-Zionist activist and author Jacob Israël de Haan (1881–1924), who just happened to
prefer his own sex. To celebrate them as homosexual icons runs the risk of forgetting about
their groundbreaking work as authors or political activists of incarcerating them into a narrow
niche. The former, after all, is why we still remember them. It is also arbitrary: for instance,
the authors’ neighborhood in a different part of the city contains gays as well, but these are not
celebrated as such.
Toward a Polyphonic Heritage

Until recently, the concept of heritage was policed by the experts speaking the authorized heritage
discourse. The examples of the women’s walks or the naming of streets show that there is no
strict distinction between experts and non-experts. The problem of the young female historians
who did the research for “Women on the Map” was that they had not yet penetrated into the halls
of authority, where the AHD was created, not having a position yet as a university professor, a
museum curator, or a policy advisor. Although their heritage was not yet recognized as a part of
this, they still played the traditional part of experts in heritage, by doing research into history and
by advising on which women were worthy of a pin on the map.
182
What matters most in determining what counts as heritage and what does not, are power
relations and changing mentalities in a given culture, such as the Netherlands. As shown by
recent developments in the Dutch canon and Groningen street naming, those in power have
come to feel that these should reflect society’s diversity and give marginal groups a platform
to celebrate their pasts of achievement, despite a history of denial, oppression, and persecution.
Such good intentions do not preclude contestation. Also, it is hard to get rid of the flavor of “us”
being nice to “them,” priding oneself about one’s tolerance. Another problem is that the inclusion
of the one leads to the exclusion of the other, as Frijhoff argued (Frijhoff 1997, 2003, 2007). The
defenders of Zwarte Piet would certainly endorse his observation, feeling as they do that, in the
current climate, they are the ones who are being oppressed.
If the above shows anything at all, it is that it is devilishly hard to come to a truly inclusive
heritage, a polyphonic heritage in which many voices can be heard. I do not have a magic recipe
for this, except for a few recommendations. On a practical level, such as when streets need to be
named, it would help to have diverse committees that include members of marginalized groups.
In the case of the theologians in Gravenburg, more specialized expert knowledge of the way in
which traditional histories of theology tend to exclude non-white, non-male, and non-cis-gender
theologians might have resulted in a more diverse list of theologians, including, for instance, great
mystics such as Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) or the thirteenth-century Hadewijch of Antwerp.
In short, the temporary addition of a feminist theologian for the purpose of a neighborhood of
theologians might have helped. A gay, or for that matter women’s or dark-skinned neighborhood
creates even more problems as sexuality, sex, or skin-color is what one is born with, whereas
one qualifies for a street by other achievements, such as becoming a successful author. This also
causes me to have very mixed feelings about the recent plan of the city council in Spring 2021
to create a women’s neighborhood in the third section of De Held, yet to be finished. Authors
belonging to these minorities are certainly underrepresented, but in those cases, it would help a
little if there were a byline to a street name, for example, “Oscar Wilde Street. Author” or “A.
Jacobs Street. First woman to graduate in university, suffragist.” Yet, it remains difficult to avoid
ghettoization.
These practical and, admittedly, self-evident measures are not enough, obviously. A precondition
is more awareness of the diversity of a community’s past and, consequently, heritage. History
should not be seen as an antiquarian hobby, but as a most relevant force in society and culture
today. The level of emotion that arises around heritage issues makes this clear. After a long
tendency of cutting down on history lessons, these should become far more prominent in school
curricula as a most important tool in the education of its members into citizens. This history
should not just be about whatever is currently in the canon as important people, events, and facts
but also about how history works as a discipline, how it is an ongoing discussion of what makes
a community to this community and what counts as its identity-defining heritage. I may be too
idealist, but more awareness of the flexible nature of Zwarte Piet might have prevented a lot of
the bother, which still plagues Dutch society.
Generally, I would second inscribing marginal heritage into the wider heritage of a community
more than putting it into a ghetto. The latter incarcerates marginal groups in their separate niches,
which makes their heritage something with which the non-marginals do not need to engage.
However, if one inscribes, it is indispensable to continue showing and discussing the diverse
experiences of different groups within society to avoid the flattening that Wilson fears.
183
Acknowledgments
I thank Philip Broeksma, Tineke Frederiks, Paulien Ex, Johan de Boer, and Daniella Vos for their
help with the research for this article.
Notes
1 Information from current chairman, Johan de Boer.
2 Unfortunately, the minutes appear to be lost, making it impossible to follow the discussions in the Committee
for the names of the streets.
3 Similar figures are present in versions of the feast in other countries, but here I concentrate on the situation
in the Netherlands.
4 Vikings (History Channel 2013–).
5 Information from Johan de Boer.
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Case Study
Chapter 20
Inclusivity and Religious Heritage in a

Dutch St. Martin Celebration:
A Helmet without a Cross
WELMOED F. WAGENAAR
Case Study
St. Martin on the Rise

Every year in the early evening of November 11, the streets of various Dutch villages and
neighborhoods are lit up by moving little lights. It is the evening of St. Martin’s Day, where—
similar to Halloween—young children go from door-to-door while carrying paper lanterns,
singing special songs in exchange for candy or a tangerine.1 Over the ages, St. Martin celebrations
have taken various shapes and forms throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, the tradition became
common in the northern and north-western provinces, as well as some locations in the south. In
recent decades, however, there is a surprising rise in the popularity of St. Martin: more and more
places celebrate the feast, and in several cities the celebrations are rapidly expanding.
In the context of religious heritage, Dutch St. Martin celebrations provide an interesting case
study. In the Netherlands, the St. Martin feast has long since lost its religious connotations.
Rather, the lantern walking is viewed as a “real Dutch” folk practice. Yet, as this chapter shows,
the Christian provenance of St. Martin turns out to be rather tenacious in that heritage custodians
feel they need to deal with it in some way—especially in the highly political heritage landscape
of today. Looking at the local Utrecht St. Martin celebrations specifically, I describe how its
heritage custodians deal with the Christian history in their quest to make the feast an inclusive
heritage for all. I reflect on the choices they make, the reasons behind those choices, and their
effects. Specifically, I aim to show how a secular stance of “a-religiosity” is neither neutral nor
fully inclusive, as it leaves more room for some meanings and interpretations than others.
The Heritagization of Religion

One of the best examples of the current popularization of St. Martin can be found in Utrecht,
the biggest Dutch city with St. Martin as its patron saint. Under the header “Feast of Sharing,”
the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations have become an important, week-long event on the city’s
186
Inclusivity and Religious Heritage in a Dutch St. Martin Celebration
annual festivities calendar. An increasing number of children go “walk the lights” (lichies lope)
on November 11, and a variety of rituals and practices take place throughout the city in the weeks
leading up to St. Martin’s Day. Next to the traditional lantern walking, festivities include lantern
and music workshops, guided St. Martin city walks, concerts, lectures, theatrical performances,
and story-telling events. Dialogue sessions are part of the program too, as are solidarity
awards and charity events like collection campaigns for local food banks. The highlight of the
celebrations is the Saint Martin Parade, a spectacular event drawing in thousands of people every
year since its first edition in 2011. Over the course of two hours, this extravaganza travels through
Utrecht’s medieval city center, parading brass bands, choirs, performance acts, and enormous
light sculptures made from willow branches and white rice paper, carried around by the city’s
local communities who made them.
The Utrecht St. Martin celebrations are remarkable not just because of their size; in 2012,
the celebrations became inscribed on the UNESCO-associated Inventory Intangible Cultural
Heritage in the Netherlands. This development fits a broader trend in Europe where religious
objects, practices, and places become valuable because of their heritage status. Once important
because of their religious meanings, they are now valued for the historical and cultural meanings
they carry for specific communities or even humanity as a whole. In this context, the meaning
of religious feasts, traditions, and rituals in the Netherlands is changing. Feasts like Christmas,
Easter, and Pentecost are increasingly lifted up as “(Judeo-)Christian heritage” and perceived as
being intrinsic to Dutch culture and identity (Van den Hemel 2017a, b; Meyer 2019). In addition,
both heritage formations and religious traditions are increasingly the subject of heated debates
about what (and subsequently, who) counts as “truly Dutch.” In part as a consequence of this, the
Netherlands sees a broadly shared sense of protectiveness toward Christian holidays, including
a growing anxiety about a perceived decline in knowledge about the “true meanings” of these
holidays.2
These and similar developments in both the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe spurred the
international research program HERILIGION: The Heritagization of Religion and Sacralization
of Heritage in Contemporary Europe.3 In the context of this project, I did ethnographic research
on the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations in the period from September 2018 to August 2019.
I participated in a variety of activities and events, talked informally to practitioners and organizers,
conducted interviews with key stakeholders and custodians, and analyzed policy papers and
promotional material of parties involved in the celebrations, such as subsidy providers. Before
moving on to present the challenges the heritage custodians of this particular heritage face and
their responses to them—which includes the rather surprising comeback of religion as a topic of
concern—first some background is provided about the St. Martin feast as it has developed in the
Netherlands.
The History and Secularization of St. Martin

St. Martin of Tours (c. 316–397) is a Christian saint who was widely worshipped throughout
Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages. He is probably best known for the legend of
him sharing his cloak with someone in need. When the young Martin was stationed in the French
town of Amiens as a soldier of the Roman army, he saw a beggar sitting by the city gates. The
weather was dreadfully cold, and so Martin grabbed his sword, cut his cloak in half, and gave half
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of it away to the shivering man on the ground. The story goes that in the night that followed, Jesus
revealed himself to Martin in a dream, wearing the piece of cloak Martin had given away. In awe
of this experience, the young soldier got baptized and left the army not long after. In the years
that followed, he is said to have traveled through Europe to convert people to Christianity and
destroy pagan temples and imagery. Ultimately, Martin settled as a monk near the area of Poitier,
established several monasteries, and became bishop of Tours around 370. He would maintain that
position until his death on November 8, 397. His name day would be celebrated for centuries to
come in various European countries on or around the date of his burial, November 11 (Nissen
and Rose 1997: 12–15, 20).
Many of the rituals and practices that take place on November 11 are a symbolic reflection of
St. Martin’s charity. But whereas in the Middle Ages this charity was viewed as a Christian virtue,
the St. Martin feast lost its religious character in the Netherlands after the sixteenth century. As a
result of the Reformation, Protestant ministers sought to bring a halt to all Catholic celebrations.
They failed miserably in their attempts, however, as popular feasts continued to be celebrated
among the people. Unsurprisingly, the massively popular St. Martin was one of these feasts. The
once Catholic celebration came to be viewed as a public folk festival, with St. Martin as “saint
of the people” (volksheilige) rather than a Catholic figure (Helsloot 2001: 502, 508). Because
of this, St. Martin’s denominational character and the accompanying religious connotations
gradually disappeared to the background: St. Martin became secularized.4
In the beginning of the twentieth century, folklorists started to describe St. Martin as part of
Dutch folklore. St. Martin songs and lantern walking (preferably with hollowed beets) came to be
viewed as authentic folk practices that had nothing to do with religion, instead being meaningful
and worthy of respect because of their long history. From the 1920s onward, the feast developed
from an event for the poor into an exciting evening for children. Kids were allowed to enter the
streets to collect candy as soon as evening fell. At first, this happened freely, but after various
disturbances in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s by older youth, St. Martin became more organized
and focused on young age groups (Helsloot 2001: 498–503). The feast had become a locally
celebrated tradition characterized by lanterns, special songs, and bags full of candy—religious
connotations were nowhere to be found.
A New Meaning as Inclusive Heritage

The city of Utrecht has a remarkable relationship with St. Martin. While St. Martin is the city’s
patron saint and big celebrations were held in his name in the Middle Ages, the feast had almost
completely disappeared from the highly Calvinist city in the eighteenth century. Interest gradually
returned in the twentieth century, but it would take until 1986 before the city’s cathedral, Dom
Church (dedicated to St. Martin but in the hands of Protestants since 1580), would officially
reinstate the feast (Breij 1988: 35–6). The popularity of lantern walking grew, but there was not
much that distinguished the celebrations in Utrecht from those in other places in the Netherlands
where St. Martin was celebrated. This, however, changed in the twenty-first century.
Chris van Deventer (1938–2016) was a pastoral worker from Utrecht who had always felt a
deep affinity toward St. Martin. He believed that many of Utrecht’s inhabitants no longer knew
the story of the saint and worried about St. Martin losing its meaning in the city. In an attempt
to change this, Van Deventer established the St. Martin’s Assembly in 2001. The Assembly
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developed into a working group of volunteers5 that started organizing special events and began
promoting St. Martin activities that still existed within the city, such as lantern walking and small
lantern processions that were organized in some neighborhoods. They are still doing this today,
with the goal to “preserve the tradition and philosophy (gedachtegoed) of St. Martin and translate
them to contemporary, modern society” and deploy them as a “unifying element in modern,
pluriform society” (Sint Maarten Utrecht 2019; translation WW). For the Assembly, the choice to
make this translation has been essential. In an interview published in the magazine Immaterieel
Erfgoed, Van Deventer explained:
Saint Martin was of course a Catholic saint from the fourth
century, long before the church split. But we believe his meaning
transcends the religions. Saint Martin stands for the universal
values of solidarity, peace, sharing together and is a feast of light.
Feasts of light exist in many religions. We try to propagate that the
spirit of Saint Martin goes beyond religions and politics. (Meier
2014: 47; translation WW)
In other words, the St. Martin’s Assembly views St. Martin as someone who is of value to
everyone, regardless of class, ethnicity, or religious background—a source of inspiration for an
inclusive and meaningful folk feast.
What does this translation look like in practice? The Assembly chose to put the moral value of
sharing, as materialized in St. Martin’s act of sharing his cloak, at the heart of the celebrations.
This, they argue, is the essence of St. Martin and the foundation of his heritage. It also has the
added advantage that it opens the door for a large variety of parties to join in on the celebrations.
The Assembly actively approaches other organizations to organize activities and join what they
call the “Feast of Sharing.” In 2007, this resulted in two of the city’s music centers organizing a
small parade in one of the city’s districts. The event formed the basis of the Saint Martin Parade,
as the city now knows it. In 2011, a broad range of city institutions cooperated in organizing
the Parade’s first official edition, which in the years that followed quickly grew in prominence
and size and turned St. Martin into a central event on the city’s annual festivities calendar. By
expanding St. Martin with activities surrounding topical issues like diversity and economic
inequality (e.g., via dialogue sessions, workshops in neighborhoods, and charity events), the
Assembly has succeeded in turning the St. Martin celebrations from “just” a candy-focused
children’s festivity into a dynamic and relevant event.
This brings us to the celebrations’ heritage status. In light of the expansion of Utrecht’s St.
Martin feast since 2001, the Assembly managed to lobby for and successfully admit the Utrecht
St. Martin celebrations to the UNESCO-associated Inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage in the
Netherlands in 2012. This Inventory is a list of cultural practices, rituals, and events recognized
by the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage, which is the organization that by order of
the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is responsible for putting into practice the
2012 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The center
coordinates on a national level who is admitted to (and remains on) the Inventory and monitors
the safeguarding of the listed heritage, whereas the actual safeguarding is being done by the
heritage communities themselves. In the case of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations, the official
custodian of this—now formally recognized—heritage became the St. Martin’s Assembly.
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The Politics of Heritage and the Burden Called Religion

The heritagization of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations should be understood in relation to
a broader (inter)national heritage landscape in which specific discourses, vocabularies, and
(emotional) registers dominate (Bendix 2009; Van de Port and Meyer 2018: 12). Academics see
heritage formation as a dynamic process in which a community—often via representatives, such
as the St. Martin’s Assembly—repeatedly has to answer the question which buildings, artefacts,
or practices are valuable to their own culture and therefore in need of preservation. This can result
in custodians being required to translate material and immaterial aspects of a site or practice into
cultural heritage values within broader societal or even global frameworks (see, e.g., Van den
Hemel, Salemink, and Stengs 2022: 5–6).
It is in the process of establishing St. Martin’s broadly shared history and relevance that the
subject of religion makes its remarkable comeback in the Utrecht celebrations. Even though
the majority of Dutch people no longer view St. Martin as a religious feast, the St. Martin’s
Assembly and its partners are deeply concerned with St. Martin’s Christian origins and history.
Van Deventer’s quote earlier, for instance, shows how he explicitly mentions the saint’s Catholic
provenance, only to mirror it against the story of the Assembly in which, St. Martin stands for
universal values. In interviews I held with Rien Sprenger, one of the central figures of the current
St. Martin’s Assembly, and Paul Feld, artistic leader of the Sharing Arts Society (SAS), the art
center responsible for the organization of the Saint Martin Parade, religion also got mentioned as
an influential factor in the formation of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations as inclusive heritage.
And a complicated one at that: both described St. Martin’s Christian provenance as an “obstacle”
or potential “limitation.” Crucially, this notion got shaped by the current heritage landscape.
Firstly, the Assembly and the SAS worry that openly Christian elements and interpretations
of St. Martin risk ostracizing non-religious or non-Christian people. Dutch society is one of
the most secularized societies in the world. Since the 1950s, there has been a steady decline of
organized religion; only 49 percent of the Dutch population today says they belong to a religious
group and no more than one in six people regularly attends religious services (CBS 2018). These
numbers include people who are not Christian, but Muslim or of other religious affiliations. In
addition, it is a broadly shared view in the Netherlands, especially among those who experienced
obligatory church attendance as a burden, that “religion” is synonymous with dogma, restriction,
and religious institution. For many Dutch people, religion is—or at the very least has a serious
inclination to be—exclusionary. Painting a too Christian picture of St. Martin Sprenger, and
Feld fear, could result in exclusion and with that, potential controversy. This is something they
absolutely want to avoid.
Secondly, there is the importance of finances. Religious elements can quickly become risky
for the existence of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations due to what I call the “politics of funding.”
Briefly put, heritage custodians like the Assembly and the SAS are highly dependent on subsidies
obtained from institutions such as the municipality of Utrecht, the national Dutch Cultural
Participation Fund, and local funding associations. To receive funding from these parties,
organizations are required to pay attention to cultural diversity or need to make events accessible
to a broad public. Religious activities, from the viewpoint that religion is exclusionary, do not
match this criterium. Moreover, state-related institutions generally do not financially support
religious activities on the premise that it goes against the Dutch separation of church and state.
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Custodians therefore have to carefully manage the topic of religion in order to reduce the danger
of being associated with or understood as religious practice.
In other words, to safeguard the broad societal relevance and financial resources—and with
that, the existence—of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations, the Assembly and the SAS have to
play it smart. They need to continuously navigate existing viewpoints and criteria surrounding
religion and have to carefully think through any religious element or (potential) religious
interpretation St. Martin may have. How does this manifest in practice?
A Secular Veil of Universality

The Assembly and its partners explicitly frame St. Martin as an “a-religious” feast. For them, this
does not mean they are anti-religious, as they would never deny St. Martin’s religious origins
and welcome religious communities to participate in the celebrations. Instead, they view this
a-religious stance as a neutral position in which Christian expressions can be present, but should
never figure too prominently or be overtly visible in ritual events like the Saint Martin Parade. In
their attempt to be neutral toward religion, they have created what could be described as a “veil”
to conceal religious elements just enough to keep them confined to the background. The veil that
hides religion is, as argued below, a secular framework of universality that is only perceived as a
political and social neutrality, which can lead to its own tensions.
The secular framework reveals itself most clearly in the Saint Martin Parade. Every year, the
start sign of the Parade is given by a government official (in 2018, it was the Dutch Minister
of Education, Culture and Science) and its yearly theme is based on one of seventeen United
Nations Global Goals: sustainable development goals that, according to the UN website, are
meant to “build a better future for everyone” (The Global Goals 2019). Furthermore, the website
of the SAS describes St. Martin as the “Roman soldier Martin,” a “worldwide icon” (Sharing
Arts Society 2019). There is no mention of his saintly status, Jesus’ appearance to him, or any
other religious element. This secularized interpretation of St. Martin becomes materialized in the
pièce de résistance of the Parade: a larger-than-life light sculpture of St. Martin on horseback.
The sculpture portrays an abstract representation of Martin as a soldier with a helmet and cloak.
Any signs of Christianity, such as a cross or clerical clothing, have deliberately been left out. As
Sprenger explained in an interview, “For a moment the cross does not go on the helmet, because
for a moment, he [Martin] belongs to and is there for everyone.”
The careful, almost apprehensive attitude toward religion in the Christian, institutional sense
of the word was something that kept emerging during the fieldwork. One relevant example is
the story-telling event in the Utrecht Archive on November 10, 2018. Here, an actor gave a
colorful account of St. Martin’s life story, including the dream encounter with Jesus. The actor
explained this as Martin “hearing a voice” that told him that he had “done well.” When I asked
him about it afterward, the actor explained that the appearance of Jesus was “too Christian” for
his taste. During a guided tour of the city’s famous cathedral Dom Tower, I encountered yet
another form of apprehensiveness. The guide told visitors openly about St. Martin’s religious
past, but afterward explained to me that it is important to “not present certain things as fact,”
because “you don’t want to preach.” Similarly, when I was present at the first official meeting of
the network of Dutch St. Martin cities, representatives discussed tactics for applying for funding,
concluding that it is sometimes better to refer to St. Martin as a “schutspatroon” (a patron) rather
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than a “beschermheilige” (a patron saint). This is in order to prevent the possibility of triggering
religious associations.
Thus, the custodians of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations and their associated parties
approach St. Martin’s religious history cautiously and appear to be constantly on guard for an
overtly Christian approach. However, a secular frame of meaning is not neutral and can result
in complex situations and challenges just as much as religious frames of meaning (e.g., Engelke
2012).6 When the Utrecht based Dutch national museum for Christian Art and Heritage, Museum
Catharijneconvent, proposed that two of the St. Martin relics they have on display be incorporated
into the Saint Martin Parade, the SAS and the Assembly reacted hesitantly. One problem was
that one of the relics, the Hammer of St. Martin, reminds of St. Martin’s past as a destroyer of
pagan imagery—not exactly fitting to the narrative of Martin as an open and inclusive figure.
More importantly, however, Sprenger clarified to me that incorporating relics might result in an
event too similar to a religious procession. At the same time, references to religious traditions
without Christian roots, such as the Hindu light feast Diwali, were enthusiastically embraced
from the perspective of inclusivity. This seems to indicate a religious bias. Moreover, the strategy
of a-religiosity sometimes resulted in anachronistic statements about St. Martin’s religious past.
In the minutes of a meeting between stakeholders of the Parade of 2019, for example, Feld was
quoted stating that the medieval St. Martin feast was “the biggest annual outdoor feast … owned
by the guilds, thus owned by the city and therefore secular.” This was a misconception that had
to be corrected afterwards.7
Conclusion: Religion and Inclusive Heritage

The Utrecht St. Martin celebrations demonstrate that religion continues to play an important
role in contemporary heritage management, even when it concerns heritage that has long since
lost its religious connotations. In a society where many associate religion with institution and
dogma, where religious feasts and traditions have become the subject of heated public debates
about national identity, and where a heritage’s (financial) right to exist depends on broad societal
relevance, religion has become a risk factor. In the case of the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations,
it is Christianity in particular that causes hesitance and that does not seem to resonate with the
custodians’ perception of what it means to create an inclusive form of heritage in the Netherlands.
In other words, even though the Netherlands sees a growing anxiety about a perceived decline
of knowledge about Christian holidays, religious dimensions of heritage are also treated with
extreme caution.
Again and again, the parties behind the Utrecht St. Martin celebrations have to answer the
question: how do we deal with St. Martin’s Christian provenance in an inclusive immaterial
heritage? What does it mean to be truly inclusive? Their solution has been to centralize the
moral value of sharing and to translate and incorporate this value in a variety of St. Martin
activities, giving the feast an alluring meaning and relevance and opening it up to a broad range
of participating organizations. Moreover, in the attempt at making it a heritage for all, they feel
the need to explicitly frame St. Martin as an “a-religious” feast, presenting it instead through
a secular framework of universality. While this in many ways turned out to be a successful
and sometimes necessary move, the attempts to veil religion sometimes lead to situations and
challenges that seem biased against Christian interpretations and meanings of St. Martin. Despite
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this being in no way the intention of the celebrations’ custodians, as a case study it does reveal
the power with which secular frames of reference impose themselves upon the contemporary
heritage landscape and shows how challenging it is to create a truly inclusive heritage. It asks
heritage custodians to adopt a dynamic approach that is not just dynamic but also dares to push
the boundaries of a landscape where specific registers and frames of meaning are privileged over
others, shaped by the economics and politics of heritage.
Acknowledgments
This chapter is an adaptation of a Dutch article previously published in heritage magazine Vitruvius: “Een
helm zonder kruis. Religie, erfgoed en inclusiviteit in de Utrechtse Sint-Maartenviering,” Vitruvius, 53
(2020): 11–17. I would like to thank HERA for financing the HERILIGION project that provided the context
for this study and Irene Stengs for her valuable comments on earlier versions of the Dutch article. I am also
grateful to all those who were willing to participate in this research and would like to thank Rien Sprenger from
the St. Martin’s Assembly in particular for his collaboration.
Notes
1 The lantern walking also occurs in the form of processions, and bonfires too were for a long time part of
Dutch St. Martin celebrations, for example, in and surrounding Amsterdam (Lauvrijs 2004: 260–2).
2 Cultural elements increasingly became symbolic of national identity after the Second World War.
Sociologists Jan Willem Duyvendak, Peter Geschiere, and Evelien Tonkers (2016) call this process the
“culturalization of citizenship.” Citizenship has become less understood in terms of political and social
rights and more as being about cultural values, norms, and practices. Because of this development, ritual
practices and feasts have become extra powerful in establishing group identity and defining the boundaries
of groups (e.g., Stengs 2012).
3 For more information about the project and the different (inter)national case studies, see www.heriligion.
eu. The Dutch research team partnered for this project with Museum Catharijneconvent, the Utrecht-based
Dutch national museum for the art, culture, and history of Christianity in the Netherlands.
4 The development of St. Martin is in this regard comparable to that of the Dutch Sinterklaas or St. Nicholas
feast, although in contrast to St. Martin, Sinterklaas would become a nationwide celebration (see, e.g.,
Balkenhol and Van den Hemel 2018: 9–10).
5 Initially, the St. Martin’s Assembly consisted of representatives of different cultural and religious
organizations, such as the Utrecht Archive, the Tourist Information Office, and protestant and catholic
church parishes. Over time, this model disappeared, and at the time of this research the Assembly was run
by eleven volunteers, many of them with personal religious backgrounds but primarily active in the city’s
cultural sector. The Assembly is part of the Association Saint Martin, a (slightly) broader organization that
also organizes the annual Open Garden Day Utrecht.
6 Although secular positions are often viewed as politically and socially neutral rather than as anti-religious
(Engelke 2012: 161), this viewpoint is not a universal one. Rather, it is a perspective deeply grounded in
the typical European, post-Enlightenment separation between church and state. This separation resulted
in religion being viewed as something that belongs to the private domain, whereas the public domain is
assumed to be secular (Asad 2003; Casanova 1994).
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7 When the minutes of the meeting were sent around, Museum Catharijneconvent rightfully commented on
this statement by saying: “This is factually incorrect, in the Middle Ages the concept ‘secular’ did not yet
exist, everyone and everything (thus also the city) was Christian.” Feld agreed to remove the “and therefore
secular” from the minutes; the “statement without the conclusion” was fine.
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14 (1): 5–30.
Bendix, R. (2009), “Heritage between Economy and Politics. An Assessment from the Perspective
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18, 2019).
Duyvendak, J. W., P. Geschiere, and E. Tonkens (eds.) (2016), The Culturalization of
Citizenship: Belonging and Polarization in a Globalizing World. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Engelke, M. (2012), “Angels in Swindon: Public Religion and Ambient Faith in England,” American
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beleid en overheid,” Tijdschrift voor Religie, Recht en Beleid 8 (2): 5–23.
Hemel, E. van den (2017b), “The Dutch War on Easter. Secular Passion for Religious Culture & National
Rituals,” Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies 33: 1–19. https://doi.org/10.21827/5a2e42
4cb591e.
Hemel, E. van den, O. Salemink, and I. Stengs (2022), “Introduction: Management of Religion,
Sacralization of Heritage,” in E. van den Hemel, O. Salemink, and I. Stengs (eds.), Managing
Sacralities: Competing and Converging Claims of Religious Heritage, 1-18. Oxford: Berghahn.
Lauvrijs, B. (2004), Een jaar vol feesten: oorsprong, geschiedenis en gebruiken van de belangrijkste
jaarfeesten. Antwerp: Standaard.
Meier, E. (2014), “In het voetspoor van Sint Maarten. Twee jaar op de Nationale Inventaris,” Immaterieel
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in the Netherlands,” in R. Buikema, A. Buyse, and A. Robben (eds.), Cultures, Citizenship and Human
Rights, 64–88. Oxon: Routledge.
Nissen, P., and E. Rose (1997), Introduction to Het leven van de heilige Martinus, by Sulpicius Severus,
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Sacred Texts as Heritage

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Challenge
Chapter 21
Questioning Scriptural Heritage:

Interpreting Abraham
CAROL BAKHOS
Challenge
The interpretation and appropriation of biblical stories to address and shed light on social issues
and contemporary concerns is as old as the Bible itself. Preachers, philosophers, and activists alike
turn to the Bible. As a textual and cultural artifact, over the centuries it has been adapted, adopted,
and appropriated in separate yet at times overlapping processes of heritagization, particularly
in western society, where it is deemed a cornerstone of its civilization. Indeed, exceeding the
bounds of religious and theological discourse, the Bible flourishes in a host of arenas. It was
mobilized to advance opposing points of view: to support and abolish slavery, to suppress and
advance women’s authority, and to sanction and prohibit violence. The popular use of “Abrahamic
religions” to refer to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the notion of the family of
Abraham, is a good illustration of how the biblical heritage is drawn into contemporary political,
social, and cultural discourse. In this case, heritage is not only textual but also genealogical.
It’s about patrimony, and what better patrimony than that of Abraham, the biblical patriarch par
excellence. Yet what do we actually mean when we invoke “Father Abraham”?
The current trend to be inclusive and to celebrate diversity pervades nearly all sectors of
western society, not least of which the approach to scriptural interpretation, whether in pulpits,
seminaries, or academia. The use of “Abrahamic religions” to refer to Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, as well as the notion of the family of Abraham, is a good example of relatively recent
concerted efforts to attenuate the Bible’s exclusivism and to serve as a means to unify these three
monotheistic traditions.
The descriptor “Abrahamic” has seeped into common parlance and secured its widespread
usage in academic, ecumenical, and political circles. University course catalogues teem with
classes on the Abrahamic religions. Institutions committed to interfaith dialogue sponsor
Abrahamic trialogues, and nonprofit and interfaith organizations, invoking the patriarch, have
emerged over the past two decades: Abrahamic Alliance International, Abrahamic Initiative, and
Abrahamic Faiths Initiative, to name but a few. The term is also part of the political discursive
landscape. The 2020 joint statement between the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and the
State of Israel is titled the Abraham Accords.1 The agreement was followed by the establishment
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of the Abraham Fund, a US$3 billion endeavor to promote “regional economic cooperation and
prosperity in the Middle East and beyond” (DFC 2020).
Like the similarly distorting term “Judeo-Christian,” “Abrahamic” was first developed among
those committed to interreligious rapprochement and is employed for the purpose of emphasizing
common roots (Silk 1984: 65–85). The French scholar Louis Massignon (1883–1962), a devout
Roman Catholic equally drawn to Islam and Arabic culture, was one of the initial proponents—
and perhaps the most influential proponent—of the notion in the mid-twentieth century (see
Bakhos 2014: 221).2 Especially after 9/11 and the rise of Islamophobia, ecumenists recognized
the need to include Islam, and thus “Judeo-Christian” was replaced with the more inclusive
“Abrahamic.”
However, is the theological price of such ecumenism too high? This desire to underscore
common spiritual rhythms, a shared scriptural heritage, and ethical teachings can potentially
obscure major differences and comes at the cost of traducing the traditions themselves. In this
instance, inclusion within the “Abrahamic” penumbra seems to undercut diversity; particular
characteristics of each religious tradition are suppressed, overshadowed, and distorted in order to
highlight commonalities, and promote scriptural patrimony.
We can therefore very well appreciate its practical application, how and why the term has
gained greater purchase in scholarly and ecumenical circles to refer to Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, and how its purchase in these arenas has bled into everyday usage. At the same time,
however, we cannot ignore its deficiencies as a category of analysis. Herein lies the problem.
Indeed, its deployment to serve cross-purposes—as a practical shorthand and as an analytical
lens—in large part contributes to its fraught nature and attenuated usefulness. As Rogers
Brubaker notes, the heavy traffic between categories of analysis and practice, in both directions,
thus makes it important for scholars to adopt a critical and self-reflexive stance toward them
(Brubaker 2013: 1–8).
In what follows, I hope to deconstruct the term Abrahamic as an object of analysis, rather
than simply using it as a tool of analysis. I do so by first critiquing its usefulness as a category
of analysis within the study of religion, and then I will consider its employment as a category of
practice. And here, I will consider not only the term itself but also the notion of the Abrahamic
family, and attending implications conveyed therein. Let me state at the outset that I will not offer
a grand alternative to employing the term, but I do hope that having problematized its uses, we
may consider its suitability as both a practical and analytical category.
Abrahamic as a Category of Analysis

Two more or less concomitant trends have contributed to the use of “Abrahamic.” One is the
reevaluation of descriptive categories such as “Western monotheisms.” Islam, Christianity, and
Judaism were commonly referred to as the monotheistic, or Western monotheistic, traditions, as
opposed to Eastern religious traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Shinto. In an
effort to avoid misguided assumptions that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are the only three
monotheisms and that they are practiced only in the West, scholars have suggested alternative
nomenclature. Martin Jaffee’s term “elective monotheisms” is an attempt to illuminate the
ways these religions are “equally rich, historical embodiments of a single structure of discourse
that underlies the historically developed symbol systems specific to each community,” while
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Questioning Scriptural Heritage
recognizing that that single structure is one form of monotheism (Jaffee 2001: 757). Thus, Jaffee
discusses “metaphysical” monotheism as distinct from “elective” monotheism. Whereas the
first gives voice to the relationship between the eternal and the ephemeral world of beings, the
second makes specific claims about a specific creator, God, who desires a relationship with a
specific community that is commanded to love and serve him. Throughout history the latter
form of monotheism has benefited from the former, Jaffee notes, but they are nonetheless
“phenomenologically distinct” (760).
There are many advantages to using Jaffee’s “elective monotheisms” to associate Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam and set them off typologically from other forms of monotheism. It is
not just that these faiths all acknowledge the belief in one God; it is that they all espouse the
belief in and worship of the one God who created ex nihilo, who revealed God’s being to a
distinct community, and who requires that community to live according to God’s will. The
descriptor “elective” emphasizes the selective nature of God’s revelation and also draws attention
to unsettling aspects of this form of monotheism. For even though each of these monotheisms
gives voice, whether stridently or sotto voce, to universalism and inclusivity, there is, to varying
degrees, an inherent exclusivity that runs through them. We would not refer to them as the
exclusive monotheisms, yet election is also essentially a form of exclusion.
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are also referred to as the Semitic monotheisms. “Semitic”
relates to or denotes a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, as well as
ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian. “Semitic” can also refer to peoples of the Near
East and northern Africa. An argument can be made that the term is appropriate because it was in
the region where Semitic languages were spoken that these monotheisms originated and because
their scriptures, the New Testament notwithstanding, were originally disseminated in a Semitic
language—Hebrew, Aramaic, or Arabic. But this argument, too, is problematic, for it disregards
the wider Greco-Roman cultural context in which Judaism developed and from which Christianity
emerged. If not western monotheisms, elective, or Semitic monotheisms, then perhaps Abrahamic?
In the person of Abraham, we are introduced to a new conception of the divine—the one
and only God who has called his people to worship him. According to all three traditions, he is
the father of monotheism, the true Urmonotheismus. But in each faith, he plays a major role as
well. To Jews, he is the father of the Jewish people; to Christians, Abraham is the father of the
Christian family of faith; and to Muslims, he is the father of prophets in Islam. Thus he is at once
a unifying and divisive figure with respect to how we conceive of these religions.
Central to all three is the belief in the one true God, but the articulation of God’s attributes is
manifestly distinct in each religion. Even the common scriptural heritage—the bedrock of each
religion—and even similar beliefs and practices are given unique expression. What is common
is at once different; the very familial feature that permits comparison is that which demands
contrast.
To illustrate, in the Hebrew Bible Abraham’s name is Avram, prior to Genesis 17:5, and then it
is Avraham; in the Qur’an his name is Ibrahim. I have chosen to use the English “Abraham”—but
is Abraham the same as Ibrahim? Are Ishmael and Ismaīl one and the same? Yitzhaq and Ishāq?
By adopting English usage, have I created a new figure unlike the biblical Avraham and qur’anic
Ibrahim? If I were to adopt their Hebrew and Arabic names, would I run the risk of obfuscating
the shared narrative elements that make aspects of the story recognizable across traditions? And
what aspects of Avraham would be familiar to Christians who know him as Abraham?
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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam present Abraham as a believer in the one true, creator God,
and yet at the same time each tradition casts Abraham in another light, such that he is also a
father of a nation for Jews, the father of believers in Christ for Christians, and a model Muslim
in the Islamic tradition. His role is fashioned by and fosters particular beliefs and teachings
of each monotheistic tradition that rub against one another. The shape Abraham’s role takes in
each tradition is significant and significantly different. The difference, however, is obfuscated
when we reduce the three to misconceived notions of shared origination, and in fact undermines
the desideratum of interfaith dialogue, that is, to arrive at a deeper understanding of traditions
other than our own. The often-evoked “Father Abraham” gives one the impression that Abraham
established one religion with three denominational variants. As members of the Abrahamic
family of religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are considered siblings, but nothing could be
more foreign to Judaism and Islam than the notion of a triune Godhead. For that matter, the belief
that Muhammad is the Seal of Prophecy could not be more alien to Judaism and Christianity. The
theologies, liturgical calendars, scriptural traditions, and ritual practices of the three religions are
different, and in some instances radically so.
The point is that the reception of the biblical story reflects major theological differences.
If anything, Abraham is a contested figure. Like all categories, even those such as “Jewish,”
“Christian,” and “Muslim,” Abrahamic has its share of deficiencies and limitations. The
term artificially cordons off Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, thus potentially blinding us
to other connections and exigencies with respect to religious traditions relegated beyond the
Abrahamic pale.
Abrahamic as a Category of Practice

The shift in nomenclature to “Abrahamic” is not only a reassessment of analytical categories such
as Western monotheisms, but is also an outgrowth of the well-intentioned attempt to underscore
nodes of commonality. To reconcile differences and to bridge fundamental theological gaps,
Jews, Christians, and Muslims committed to interfaith dialogue turn to Abraham.
There are many examples of the multifarious uses of the patriarch Abraham as an emblem
of confraternity of religious and political communities. One instance is Abraham’s Vision that
describes itself as “a conflict transformation organization that explores group and individual
identities through experiential and political education.” According to its website, its purpose
is to examine “social relations in and between the Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, and Palestinian
communities.” The organization aims to empower participants to practice just alternatives to the
status quo. And, Abraham Initiatives “strives to fulfill the promise of full and equal citizenship
and complete equality of social and political rights for Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.”
These organizations take as their starting point the notion that Abraham is the progenitor
of Jews and Palestinians, and Jews and Arabs. The beloved ancestor, the monotheist who rails
against idolatry and obeys the will of the one true God, the father of a multitude of nations, is
pressed into the service of promoting goodwill among divergent political groups. (Here I use
the term “divergent” intentionally, because the assumption is that Abraham or that which is
Abrahamic is the common point of origin from which the groups diverged.)
As a category of practice, that is, a category of everyday social experience, developed and
deployed by ordinary social actors (as distinguished by the experience-distant categories used
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by analysts), Abrahamic jettisons difference. The Abraham Accords, seeking to normalize

diplomatic relations illustrates the point.
The document’s second declaration reads as follows: “We encourage efforts to promote
interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic
religions and all humanity.” The statement’s aspirations are commendable, to be sure, and
the practical application of the term Abrahamic is prima facie appropriate. After all, locating
resemblances and commonalities among members of different groups is necessary in situations
where differences loom large and serve as barriers to better living conditions, as in the current
political situation among Palestinians and Jews, and also in social settings where Islamophobia
is perniciously rampant. Yet at the same time, it ironically reinforces negative stereotypes and
potentially undermines irenic efforts. In fact, on a subconscious, implicit level, reference to
Ishmael and Isaac maintains deeply entrenched misconceptions of Islam and on some level
aggravates the very antagonism one hopes to ameliorate. To flesh this out, let’s turn to Ishmael,
Abraham’s firstborn son.
Many, many years ago, while I was explaining to someone that I was working on the reception
history of Ishmael in Jewish literature, my interlocutor asked, “So, your work is not about Rabbi
Ishmael?” He was referring to the great sage Rabbi Ishmael of the first and second centuries of the
Common Era. I replied, no, to which he replied, “So, you’re working on the Ishmael of Islam?”
Though Ishmael is a prominent figure in Islam’s theological history, and in Arab genealogy, the
question reveals a widely held assumption about the figure of Ishmael, namely that he plays no
role—positive, neutral, or negative—in the Jewish tradition.
Today more than ever before, the notion of the brotherhood of Ishmael and Isaac is often
invoked to represent Arabs and Jews, respectively, or Islam and Judaism, but here too we run into
obstacles that impede our desires for greater bridge-building among Jews and Muslims.
Ishmael evokes a variety of associations from nomads to Moby-Dick, from Arabs to Islam.
The metonymic use of Ishmael to represent Islam or Arabs, however, is heavily fraught with
misunderstanding. Many non-Muslims consider Ishmael the rejected son of Abraham, the one
who, according to popular Jewish interpretations, tried to fornicate with Isaac, who practiced
idol worship and was a shedder of blood. Attempts to bring about peace and understanding
between Palestinians—the Arab descendants of Ishmael—and Jews, who count Isaac among the
patriarchs, refer to Ishmael as the sibling of Isaac. But such attempts do not take into account
the accretion of negative associations with Ishmael. And while such endeavors to recognize the
Semitic heritage of Arabs and Jews are well-intentioned and indeed commendable, they result, in
a distancing of Ishmael and a privileging of Isaac. After all, Isaac is the chosen son and Ishmael
is sent away. Even though God hears Ishmael, blesses him, and makes him the father of twelve
nations, one son is privileged over another. One son inherits the Promised Land; the other is cast
off into the wilderness. Within a Jewish-Christian religious frame of reference, who really wants
to be called Ishmael?
So, when we mention Ishmael, or even allude to him as in the invocation of the family of
Abraham, are we referring to the son who built the Ka‘bah in Mecca with Abraham, or the
brother who according to rabbinic sources attempted to kill his brother, who raped women and
was an idol worshipper? Is Hagar, for that matter, the honored wife of Abraham who gave birth to
Ishmael through whom the prophet Muhammed’s geanology is traced, or the biblical maidservant
exiled with her son into the desert? Where does Ishmael reside in the family of Abraham?
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That Ishmael and Isaac are biblical and qur’anic brothers does not mitigate the negative images
associated with Ishmael. We must reconsider the extent to which evocations of confraternity
serve a meaningful purpose in advancing political and ecumenical aspirations. If anything, they
whitewash the interpretive traditions and misconstrue the biblical narratives. There is a need to
liberate the image of Ishmael from the stronghold of polemical discourse and the accretion of
negative readings of the biblical story, and efforts to point to common ancestry might assist in
bridging cultural and theological differences, but we should be mindful of how they at the same
time enforce deeply entrenched negative assumptions and perpetuate misunderstanding about
the members of the family of Abraham, the scriptural as well as contemporary members, that is,
those who claim to be Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.
Conclusions
We may have no good alternative to using analytical categories that are heavily loaded and deeply
contested categories of practice, but as scholars, it behooves us to disaggregate and disentangle
the functions such terms as Abrahamic serve. In adopting a critical and self-reflexive stance
toward Abrahamic it is also important to note what makes it possible for us even to consider
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as belonging to a category. That is to say, for example, when we
use a wider lens and consider the spectrum of religions globally, we come to see that despite their
enormous differences, these three religions do share many ritual rhythms and theological beliefs.
While their sacred canons are vastly different, common narratives permeate the Jewish and
Christian Bibles, as well as the Quran. In a group of religions that includes those of Indian origin
(Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism), as well as those of Chinese origin (Confucianism, Taoism,
and Chinese Buddhism), one cannot help but notice the striking resemblance of Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam. Theirs is a monotheistic, omnipotent, omniscient, creator God, who reveals
godself in history and who in the future will judge the righteous and the wicked accordingly;
they share a scriptural heritage (mutatis mutandis), engage in similar practices, and espouse a
two-pronged ethical system based on one’s relationship to God and fellow creatures. Thus, as
an analytical category, “Abrahamic” leaves much to be desired, however, we cannot ignore the
elements that gave rise to its coinage, elements that evoke comparisons. To do so is as egregious
as emphasizing them at the cost of recognizing distinctions.
Constant attentiveness is required in order to move beyond stereotypes and generalities, and in
order to encourage appreciation for the different religious systems, not only because of the common
rhythms found in all three but also because of their richly hued textual, and cultural traditions. We
should encourage public educational initiatives that promote learning about why “Abrahamic” is
and is not a useful descriptor of the relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Relations between Jews and Muslims, Christians and Jews, Christians and Muslims are best
fortified when we have a deeper understanding and appreciation for what is held in common
and what makes each tradition distinct from the others. A good example of such initiatives is
the “From the Wells” program discussed in Agbaria (see Chapter 23 of this volume). “From
the Wells” encourages participants—Jewish and Arab principals and educators— to engage in
critical reading of scriptures, thus recognizing both the common scriptural heritage, its different
inflections in religious traditions, and how those traditions, in turn, play out culturally and
politically.
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As we turn to the biblical heritage for insights into our cultural and political climate, as we
refer to biblical stories in order to make a case for inclusivity and diversity, we need to be mindful
of the extent to which our interpretations foster or undermine our endeavors. The goal of those
engaged in comparative biblical and qur’anic interpretation as well as ecumenical initiatives
is to contribute to greater understanding of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Our aims are best
achieved not by homogenizing and whitewashing differences but rather by exploring those
differences in light of what they have in common vis-à-vis scriptural interpretation.
Notes
1 The term also refers to subsequent signed agreements between the UAE and Israel, Israel and Morocco, and
Israel and Bahrain.
2 This essay incorporates and expands upon content in my Family of Abraham (Bakhos 2014).
References
Bakhos, C. (2014), The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Interpretations. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Brubaker, R. (2013), “Categories of Analysis and Categories of Practice: A Note on the Study of Muslims
in European Countries of Immigration,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (1): 1–8.
DFC (2020), “U.S., Israel, UAE Announce Establishment of Abraham Fund Following Accords
Commitment,” October 20. https://www.dfc.gov/media/press-releases/us-israel-uae-announce-establ
ishment-abraham-fund-following-accords-commitment (accessed January 11, 2022).
Jaffee, M. (2001), “One God, One Revelation, One People: On the Symbolic Structure of Elective
Monotheism,” American Academy of Religion 69 (4): 753–76.
Silk, M. (1984), “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America,” American Quarterly 36 (1): 65–85.
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Analysis
Chapter 22
Hasidic Heritage in Europe and Israel,

Past and Present
ZOHAR MAOR
Analysis
The case of Hasidic heritage demonstrates some of the intriguing challenges of the modern
process of making elements of a religious tradition into a usable heritage. First, intangible
heritage is generally related to practices and objects of religion rather than to religious texts
and ideas. Yet, in the case of Hasidism, the intangible heritage that has attracted Jewish
scholars since the nineteenth century is largely textual. Second, Hasidism was heritagized by
early nineteenth-century intellectuals and cultural activists (such as Martin Buber, one of the
protagonists of this chapter) while still flourishing. What does it mean to turn a living religion
into a heritage? Third, this article looks at efforts by Jewish figures, largely from Western
Europe, to transform Hasidism into heritage at a moment in European history characterized
by secularization, nationalism, and neo-romantic attachments to the “people.” It charts an
ambivalent process: the heritagized religious past is simultaneously cherished and degraded
by these intellectuals and cultural activists. How do secularization, nationalization, and
“spiritualization” (factors discussed in Todd Weir’s introduction to this volume) affect the
heritagization process?
This contribution begins with a succinct introduction to Hasidism and the ambivalent attitude
of secular historians toward it. It then explores the process of making Hasidism a cultural and
national heritage during the twentieth century. The focus is on the adaptation of Hasidic stories
and ideas in Central Europe as part of a new Jewish heritage, with a comparative look at parallel
processes in Israel during the second half of the twentieth century. The contribution ends with
a discussion of the transformation of Hasidic graves and synagogues in Eastern Europe into
heritage sites in the 2000s.
Hasidism: A Spiritual-Social Popular Jewish Movement

Hasidism was a popular religious movement, spreading in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in
Russia and Poland in the eighteenth century. Its mysterious founder, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov
(literally: master of the good name), also known by the acronym, Besht (c. 1698–1760), preached
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Hasidic Heritage in Europe and Israel
a new theology, accentuating the authority and vocation of the Zaddik, the charismatic religious
leader, favoring devotion and prayer over the study of the Torah (Jewish canonical texts and their
interpretations), and broadening the borders of holiness beyond the confines of Halacha (religious
laws). This innovative creed attracted masses of simple, illiterate Jews—hitherto disengaged
from Jewish tradition—in the wake of the 1648 massacres and the ensuing theological crisis
manifested in the propagation of Sabbatian heresy. These crises also drove many young Jewish
rabbis to assent to the Hasidic call for spiritual regeneration. Nonetheless, Hasidic theology,
social organization, and deviation from Jewish tradition sparked fierce opposition from various
Jewish leaders, and Eastern Europe Jewry was gradually divided into two hostile camps: Hasidim
and Mitnagdim (literally “opponents”).
Hasidism flourished during the nineteenth century. The third generation of Hasidic leaders
consisted of many charismatic figures, some of whom were also brilliant theologians. They
established distinctive Hasidic dynasties, including Habad, Bratzlav, Ruzhin, and Karlin.
From the Russian Pale of Settlement, Hasidism spread to the Habsburg Empire (Galicia and
Hungary), Romania, Lithuania, and the big cities of Poland. Even at the end of the century,
Hasidism continued to develop, and new innovative schools appeared: the more rational and
existential approach of Pshischa (Polish Przysucha) and Kotzk, as well as the Kotzk school’s
radical offspring, Izbiche and Radzin, and the more moderate and popular school of Gur. The
latter was the largest Hasidic group before the Shoah and it has regained its numbers in the State
of Israel in the last two decades (see Biale et al. 2018; Rosman 2013; Wodzinski 2018).
With the rise of the Jewish Enlightenment in Western and Eastern Europe during the nineteenth
century and the dissolution of the traditional Jewish way of life in the wake of modernization and
emancipation, Hasidism lost much of its radical and anarchistic character. After initially despising
tradition, at the end of the nineteenth century, Hasidism championed tradition—including the
customs it had invented itself. Thus, it joined Orthodoxy and fought modern movements such as
Zionism and socialism (Brown 2013; Green 2013).
During the twentieth century, Hasidism confronted two severe crises. First, the crumbling of
the Pale of Settlement following the First World War and the shift from traditional, monarchist
empires to modern nation-states suspicious of the Jewish minority, as well as the anti-religious
USSR. Second, and more dramatically, the Shoah, which nearly destroyed many Hasidic
communities and dynasties.
Interestingly, after these two crises, Hasidism was divided into two distinct modes of being.
The first concerns a flourishing set of traditional communities, mostly espousing voluntary
ghettoization in postwar USA and Israel, while the second concerns Hasidism as heritage,
produced by Westernized (and often Zionist) Jews for modern Jews (and non-Jews). While
traditional Hasidism saw those who took the heritage view as apostates and the latter disparaged
traditional Hasidism as “degenerated” and devoid of the thrust and radicalism of its ancestors,
both parties, as we will see, nourished and influenced each other.
The Ambivalence of Heritage

Hasidic heritage is primarily intangible. Such heritage has been defined, following the UNESCO
framework, as
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a living force that is transmitted from generation to generation

and constantly recreated by communities and groups in response
to their social and physical environment. Intangible heritage is an
essential aspect of community identity and promotes respect for
cultural diversity and human creativity. (Ruggles and Silverman
2009: 2)
The study of intangible heritage has mainly focused on aspects such as rituals, cultural traditions,
and festivals, that is, practices embodied in specific sites and associated with certain objects,
which can be preserved and musealized. This chapter is concerned, however, primarily with
textual traditions, the heritagization of which is not centered on the processes of preservation,
presentation, and publicity, but rather on anthologizing, adaption, and recontextualization.
The concept of heritage is inherently ambivalent. On the one hand, heritage is about preserving
the past and has been defined as “culture and landscape that are cared for by the community” and
“passed on to the future to serve people’s need for a sense of identity and belonging” (Merriman
1991: 8). In this sense, heritagization can be seen as the process of preservation and continuation
of a certain cherished past for the sake of the future. On the other hand, many heritagized
objects subsist in their original form but are, at the same time, appropriated and transformed by
governments and other heritage agents; an act justified by an overt or covert critique or disregard
of this original form. Therefore, heritagization is not merely about protecting a concrete piece of
the past but also about erasing it in its authentic form. This negative aspect of heritage-making
has especially been discussed by scholars of colonial heritagization (Harrison and Hughes
2010: 238–40).
Religious heritage is characterized by this ambivalence, shaped and sharpened by the
corresponding ambiguity of secularization (see Meyer here). Secularization entails the disavowal
and ensuing marginalization of religion and, in the same breath, the appropriation of religious
symbols, property, energies, and ideas and their replanting in a secular soil (see Casanova 2009;
Lübbe 2003). Heritagization initiatives are deeply steeped in secularization processes. They
endeavor to preserve religious buildings, artifacts, books (tangible heritage), music, and ideas
(intangible heritage), thereby highlighting their relevance and import to contemporary society, but
they do so in a secular context and with a secular interpretation. Frequently, the original religious
use, meaning, and context of the “preserved” item are ignored, disregarded, or even sharply
criticized (Gilchrist 2020). Therefore, when exploring the heritagization process of religious
items (including texts), the critique, if not contempt, of the religious phenomenon that often
accompanies—or even enables—this process should be considered. This point, as demonstrated
below, is crucial for the understanding of the rendering of Hasidism into heritage.
The Alleged “Degeneration” of Hasidism and the Need for Hasidic

Heritage in the West
Until the 1950s, Hasidism had never succeeded in striking roots in Western Europe. Furthermore,
as a rule, Western Jews orientalized Hasidism and despised it as an emblem of primitive,
irrational, and unproductive Ostjudentum (the traditional communities of Eastern Europe).
Western Jewish scholars portrayed Jewish Kabbalah and its Hasidic offshoot as a perversion
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of Jewish monotheism and rationalism. Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), the foremost nineteenth-
century Jewish historian, is a case in point. As David Biale puts it, for Graetz, Hasidism was
“un-Jewish,” it was a pack of ignorant superstitions and thus not a fitting subject for a history of
the Jews (Biale 2018: 2). Graetz even warned:
We have no guarantee that in our day in the bosom of the modern
adherents of the Zohar, among the Hasidim in Poland, Galicia,
Hungary …, whose propaganda becomes increasingly more
intensive, a false messiah will not burst forth some fine morning
and sow new confusion. There would be no shortage of mindless,
believing masses, not even of standard-bearers for any Hasidic rebi
who could bring them to believe in him. (Graetz 1975: 169)
Yet, as Steven Aschheim has shown, the fin-de-siècle crisis of Enlightened culture also yielded a
second approach: an inversion of the image of Ostjudentum and Hasidim. Among neo-romantic
Jewish (and some non-Jewish) youth at the beginning of the twentieth century, Hasidism stood
for simplicity, true community life, authentic religiosity, and mysticism, the opposite image of
their parents’ bourgeois values and way of life. In short, neo-romantics retained the orientalist
representation of Hasidism but reversed its valuation (Aschheim 1982: 127–38).
In Franz Kafka’s renowned speech on the Yiddish language, this updated attitude to Eastern
Judaism is clearly formulated in Freudian terms: Eastern Judaism embodies the concealed,
subconscious content of Judaism. Once the Western Jew overcomes his natural anxiety aroused
by the repressed Jewish substance, he will encounter his authentic essence and overcome his
homelessness. Yiddish is his true home. Many Western Jews—including Kafka himself—
implemented this attitude to Hasidism (Kafka [1912] 1989: 263–6; Robertson 1985: 148–50).
Hasidism was also rehabilitated by some Jewish nationalist thinkers. Moses Hess (1812–
1875) lauded the Hasidic populist orientation. Hess argued that Hasidism shared the Jewish
Reform movement’s critique of Rabbinic Judaism but without its anti-national stance. Hasidism
knew that a true reformation in Judaism would be grounded in a national revival: “The pious Jew
is above all a Jewish patriot” (Hess [1862] 1995: 62). Hess was attracted not only by Hasidism’s
combination of populism and de-traditionalism but also by its pantheistic conception, which was,
for him, the authentic belief of Judaism. He also held this belief in cosmic unity to be the only
sound basis for true socialism (Volkov 1981).
Historian Simon Dubnow (1860–1941), an advocate of Jewish Autonomism (i.e., a nationalist
movement struggling for Jewish cultural autonomy in the various countries of residence),
suggested a much more positive account of Hasidism than that of Graetz. Hasidism embodies
the national and religious vitality of Eastern Judaism, which, if modernized, could well assist in
founding Jewish autonomous life. This was Dubnow’s solution to the Jewish misery in Eastern
Europe (Dubnow 1931).
Buber and the Hasidic Renaissance in the West

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Hasidism has been rendered into a workable
heritage for modern Jews and non-Jewish seekers of spirituality (on the modern phenomenon of
spiritualism; see, Weir’s introduction). Among the architects of this venture were Eastern Europe
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born writer Micha Yosef Berdyczewski (1865–1921), essayist Shmuel Aba Horodetzky (1871–
1957), and, in a different way, the Nobel laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1887–1970). However,
the most influential was Martin Buber (1878–1965) (Biale et al. 2018: xiii–xxii; Breslauer 1978;
Cutter 2000: 165–7; Laor 1993; Ross 2010, 2013).
As Hasidic books are usually enigmatic and many Hasidic tales were kept as oral traditions,
all these pioneers of heritagization were required to streamline, collect, translate (from Yiddish),
and adapt authentic Hasidic materials—and, as shown below, transform them from a religious,
authoritative creed into a source of inspiration for secular society (Guesnet, Matis, and Polonsky
2020; Sholokhova 2009).
Buber’s rendering of Hasidism into a modern heritage was twofold: general-cultural and
Zionist. He published two successful collections of Hasidic tales and sayings in German,
adapted in a neo-romantic fashion, as part of a larger project of collecting various mystical
traditions from all religions and epochs (Hacohen 2008; Urban 2008). Hasidism, in this respect,
was contextualized as an “Eastern” mystical creed and employed to critique the mechanized,
alienated, and individualistic Western rational culture. Buber gleaned ideals of community life,
embeddedness in nature (to be discussed below), and charismatic leadership from Hasidism and a
belief that every human deed can be holy. Hasidism was not only a source for a Weltanschauung
but also for folktales. His adaptation of Hasidic stories on the Baal Shem Tov, and the legends
written by Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, enabled their integration into modernist culture. As Paul
Mendes-Flohr has shown, among the readers of Buber’s take on Hasidism were Franz Kafka,
György Lukács, Walter Rathenau, and many other intellectuals (Mendes-Flohr 1991: 96–109).
Hasidism was also turned into a heritage in the Zionist context. “The Hasidic teaching is
the proclamation of rebirth. No renewal of Judaism is possible that does not bear in itself the
elements of Hasidism” (Buber 1955: 12–13). Buber proposed that Hasidic thought could serve as
a source of national ideals; he argued that they are vital for Jewish rebirth and the renunciation
of exilic degeneration—for him, the main goals of Zionism. Furthermore, Buber saw Hasidic
religiosity as crucial for the Jews’ return to their religious roots because of Hasidism’s distance
from shallow secular assimilation, on the one hand, and fossilized traditional religion, on the
other. However, as Buber disdained the two pillars of Jewish religion—ritual law (Halacha)
and belief in a transcendent God—he avowed Hasidic “teaching” (Lehre) as part of “Jewish
religiosity,” which he considered should be an existential, anarchic way of life rather than a
defined set of religious norms and cults (Schatz-Uffenheimer 1967; Scholem 1961).
Buber repeatedly argued that Hasidism embodied authentic life, true community, and a lived
relationship to God, but simultaneously stressed that in his day it had degenerated and been
distorted by its recent subordination to traditionalism and rigid halachic norms. Hasidism, then,
could only be revived by discerning between its “true” essence and its “degenerated” aspects—
often precisely what Hasidim saw as the core of its theology, such as pious observance of
Halacha. Thus, Buber’s championing of Hasidism dovetails the affirmation and disrespect that
comprise the abovementioned ambivalence toward Hasidism by Western Jewish scholars. Buber
argued that Hasidism can—and indeed must—be heritagized in the West because of its decay in
the East: “Groups of Hasidim still exist in our day; Hasidism in a state of decay. But the Hasidic
writings have given us their teaching and their legends” (Buber 1955: 9).
As argued above, Buber’s transformation of Hasidism into a modern cultural heritage entails
its modification according to contemporary values, such as the then prevailing neo-romantic cult
210
21
of nature, which criticized lifeless, alienated city life, and advocated a return to rural, simple,
communal life instead (Mosse 1964: 52–65). Buber’s revision of a Rabbi Nachman tale is a case
in point. Here is the original Hasidic text from the tale “The Rabbi and His Only Son”: “The son
would sit upstairs and study, as was the custom of well-to-do people. He was always studying and
praying, yet he still felt that something was missing within him, but he did not know what. His
studies and prayers were dull and lifeless” (Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav 2011: 105, translation
altered).
In his retelling of the tale, Buber clarifies what the son misses:
The son grew up and became great in the wisdom of the holy
books. … but his soul could not stay focused when learning, and
his glance did not stay on the endless surface of the rigid letters,
but again and again flew out over the yellow billow of corn to the
dark streak of the distant fir woods. His soul flew thither with his
glance and lulled itself in the silent air like a young bird. Yet again
and again he forced his eye and heart back into the narrow prison,
for he wanted to know, and knowledge was certainly in the books.
(Buber 1956: 49–50, translation altered)
Buber’s additions do not distort Rabbi Nachman’s creed, as the latter’s writings are replete with
the deification of nature, à la Romanticism (Green 1979: 34, 152–3). Where Buber misrepresents
Rabbi Nachman’s message is in its secularization, as the son no longer yearns for the true Zaddik
but for authentic life.
Thanks to Buber (and other pioneers of Hasidic heritage), Hasidic tales, ideas, and sayings
became part of the interwar Jewish cultural renaissance in Central Europe, especially in youthful,
post-liberal Zionist circles (Brenner 1998; Lappin 2000: 342–56). After the Holocaust and the
ensuing destruction of the Hasidic communities in Eastern and Western Europe, Buber was further
convinced that the Hasidic fire could only be sustained by its metamorphosis into a universal
ethical heritage. In his interwar and postwar writings on Hasidism, it no longer embodies
mysticism, natural life, and community based on mystical unity transcending individuality, but
rather it requires the realization of dialogical life, the striving for true I-Thou relationships, and
minimizing instrumental I-It relationships typical of Western utilitarianism. The significance of
Hasidism for modern man is presented in a 1958 essay:
The kernel of [Hasidic] life is capable of working on men even
today, when most of the powers of the Hasidic community itself
have been given over to decay or destruction, and it is just in the
present-day West that it is capable of working in a special manner.
After the rise and decline of that life in the Polish, Ukrainian,
Lithuanian ghettos, this kernel has entered into a contemporaneity,
which is still, to be sure, only reminiscent, only an indication in the
spirit, but even so can accomplish something in this manifestation
that was basically foreign to the reality of this time. From here
comes an answer to the crisis of Western man that has become fully
manifest in our age. (Buber 1958: 27)
211
As in his youthful, “mystical” phase, in Buber’s mature, “dialogical” phase, Hasidism is a source
not only for an ideal way of life but also for tales. After his immigration to Palestine in 1938, he
published a vast collection of Hasidic tales and sayings, more varied, and authentic than his earlier
ones. However, this impressive project of heritage is also marked by a blend of contempt and
adoration. On the one hand, Buber stressed the distorted transmission of the Hasidic tale: “The
second half of the nineteenth century marks the corruption of transmitted motifs. They appear as
thin and wordy narratives patched with later inventions and worked into a cheap form of popular
literature” (Buber 1947: vii).
On the other hand, he saw in the Hasidic tales a true embodiment of the life of dialogue. They
are not about glorification of the Zaddikim, but rather about the encounter between them and
their devoted Hasidim: “The contact between those who quicken and those who are quickened,
the association between the two. That is true legend and that is its reality” (Buber 1947: 26).
Buber stresses that he does not intend to “preserve” the Hasidic legend; his aim is to reproduce
the encounter inherent in the legends so that it can enrich the lives of his readers.
Hasidic Heritage in the State of Israel

The destruction of the flourishing Hasidic communities in the Shoah and the establishment of
the State of Israel in 1948 under the leadership of a socialist and secular elite resulted in three
diverse approaches to Hasidic heritage. The Hasidic leaders toiled to restore their communities as
part of the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) sector. For them, reestablishing Hasidism—modeled after the
Hasidic way of life that was destroyed in Eastern Europe—was its true commemoration, rather
than its documentation or heritagization in a manner that made it accessible to a wider Israeli
audience (Biale et al. 2018: 673–805). For the Israeli educational and cultural establishment,
Hasidism was a superfluous relic of a degenerate exilic Jewish past that should be erased. Official
Israeli heritage policy mostly consisted of unraveling the Biblical past in the land of Israel and
preserving Zionist sites of heroic settlement and combat. Nevertheless, Hasidic heritage was
cultivated by circles that rebelled against the Zionist “negation of the exile” and anti-spiritualism,
such as the adherents of the elderly Buber and Joseph Schechter (an adored educator and thinker
in Haifa). For many secular immigrants from Eastern Europe, Hasidism was part of their cultural
roots and they consumed its reworking into popular culture. As a result, Hasidic melodies gained
sway—transformed into Israeli folk songs or, in its original religious context, integrated into
musicals intended to introduce the “destroyed” Jewish spirituality to the Israeli audience, such as
Dan Almagor’s 1968 Once There was a Hasid (Mazor 2005).
The 1973 Yom Kippur War badly damaged the prestige of secular-socialist Zionist ideology,
and the ensuing rise to power of the Likud party, with its traditional sentiments and political
cooperation with the Haredi parties, altered the role of Hasidism in Israeli culture of the 1980s
and 1990s. The successful restoration of the Hasidic community and a sense of confidence in a
more pro-religious Israeli public atmosphere enabled Hasidic leaders and activists to embark on
their own projects of heritagization. Anthologies and adaptations of tales, sayings, and melodies
gained popularity, especially for religious audiences, and more interestingly, Hasidic gatherings
and festive events led by the “Rebbe,” the Zaddik, attracted many secular and traditional Israelis.
Until the end of the twentieth century, Hasidic heritage consisted principally of texts. Sites,
such as the graves and synagogues of Hasidic rabbis, so central to Hasidism itself, were almost
212
FIGURE 22.1 Starbucks Coffee, Uman, Ukraine: Thousands of Jewish pilgrims visit the grave of Rabbi
Nachman every year.
Source: Roni Barlev.
totally ignored by the Western trailblazers of Hasidic heritage. After the Second World War and
until the fall of the “Iron Curtain,” potential Hasidic heritage sites were largely unreachable for
Western Jews. Nonetheless, after 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a drop in airfares,
a surprising shift took place. These sites became highly popular among religious and non-religious
Jews from Israel and the rest of the world, in particular the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav in
Uman, Ukraine (Keren-Kratz 2016; Persico 2014; Savu 2014) (Figure 22.1).
Additionally, Hasidic sites have become part of high school Holocaust tours to Poland, which
play a prominent role in building Israeli contemporary national identity (Feldman 2008). The
Israeli government now assists with the diplomatic and logistical arrangements of the Hasidic
pilgrimage to Ukraine and sponsors Holocaust tours. As a result, Hasidic religious sites have
been integrated into the formal Israeli heritage for the first time.
The heritagization of Hasidic Eastern European sites in the early twenty-first century was
grounded in a multicultural approach that gained sway in Israel at that time. Unlike the early
twentieth-century Central European heritagization, marked by a critique of Hasidism’s orthodox
aspects, and its Israeli mid-century counterpart, centered on Hasidic folklore, twenty-first-century
heritagization included Hasidic aspects that had hitherto been rejected. Hasidic heritage now consists
not only of melodies and sayings but also of traditional Hasidic dress and rites such as the Tisch,
213
which is a gathering led by the Zaddik with special melodies and a meal (Muchawsky-Schnapper
2012). Secular Israelis can join the Tisch as part of a heritage tour or even as a post-secular spiritual
encounter. What was once degraded as “primitive” and “superstitious” is now seen as exotic and
fascinating. Thus, this phase of heritagization brings together Hasidim and secular Jews.
Concluding Remarks: Hasidic Heritage—Universalism,

Subversion, and (Anti-)Fixation
A traditional Hasidic pilgrimage, especially to Rabbi Nachman’s grave in Uman, often serves to
fuel hostility from the local non-Jewish inhabitants, while the educational tours to Poland have
a clear nationalist accent, as they largely focus on the long Jewish history of discrimination,
persecution, and massacre. Nevertheless, the interreligious potential of Hasidic heritage also
deserves attention. It is not only Buber’s reading of Hasidism—long ago a universal spiritualist
classic—but also “authentic” Hasidic thought and practice that has this potential. Many
Hasidic leaders have held that redemption could be enacted not by leaving the diaspora but
rather by uplifting the divine sparks within it. Countless Hasidic melodies are original local
folk songs transferred to the realm of holiness, while some Hasidic leaders have looked for a
more harmonized relationship between Jews and non-Jews (Magid 2020; Wodziński and Tworek
2020). Thus, Hasidic texts, melodies, and sites could be part of an interreligious and multicultural
heritage, if their roots in a concealed Jewish-Christian dialogue and in an Eastern European
cultural context were studied and presented. Like the innovative tours that are now integrating
an overlooked Jewish and Muslim past into British heritage, as explored by Roberts, Green, and
Hussain in their contributions to this volume, heritage tours in Eastern Europe can demonstrate
the Hasidic past as part of local religious history.
In her contribution in this volume, Carol Bakhos aptly warns us to be cautious in our use of
seemingly interreligious resources, such as the figure of Abraham in Christianity, Islam, and
Judaism. Abraham, she reminds us, can indeed serve as a unifying symbol for shared values such
as charity and hospitality, but he also alludes to a sense of election and the exclusion of the other.
This warning is indubitably applicable to the Hasidic heritage as well. Nevertheless, it need not
hinder the use of Hasidic heritage as an interreligious resource.
Hasidic heritage is characterized not only by its interreligious potential but also by its subversion.
In the first third of the twentieth century, it was part of youth culture opposing the hegemonic Central
European bourgeois culture. In the 1950s and 1960s, Israeli Hasidism attracted opponents of the
dominant materialistic, secular, and anti-exilic cultural policy of the young State of Israel. Finally,
in the 2000s, Hasidic heritage came to stand for an opposition to Western rational and scientific
ideals. This aspect is also of great import to contemporary culture, Jewish, and non-Jewish.
However, the most outstanding characteristic of Hasidism is its frequent resistance to
a key aspect of the heritagization process, which is the fossilization of a living and dynamic
practice—in the form of buildings, artifacts, customs, tales, creed, or melodies—as the price of
preservation. When musealized, the heritagized object is put into a specific context, it represents
a concrete moment of the past bequeathed with a certain meaning. It is believed that in order to
save the object from oblivion and decay and to make it accessible to the wider public, it must
be embalmed. As Birgit Meyer demonstrates in this volume, religious viewers of musealized
religious objects resist their petrification and claim their ongoing worship.
214
There is no doubt that Hasidism can also be musealized, but it also summons us to consider
a more dynamic form of heritagization. Buber, for instance, yearned to open the Hasidic saying
or tale to a dynamic encounter with its reader, which takes place in the readers’ context and
illuminates their doubts and the challenges they face. In the same vein, contemporary visitors to
Hasidic gatherings or to Rabbi Nachman’s grave expect a religious or existential experience and
not just an encounter with an intriguing past. In this respect, Hasidism is a challenging model for
heritage workers worldwide if they see themselves obliged to its dictum that God’s revelation is
eternal, actual, and personal.
What are the implications of the history of Hasidism for the normative questions that surround
the heritagization of living religious faiths and their sacred texts? Hasidism demonstrates the
advantages and disadvantages of heritagization for a living religious movement: on the one
hand, it has rendered Hasidism accessible to a wider audience and enabled its universal and
interreligious potential to surface; on the other hand, heritagization has sidelined essential aspects
of Hasidism and largely obstructed many Jews from establishing a vibrant religious relationship
to Hasidic culture.
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Analysis
Chapter 23
Heritage and Intercultural Education: Teaching

Islamic Foundational Texts for Empowerment
and Reconciliation in Israel
AYMAN AGBARIA
Analysis
Introduction
In countries where national identity and religion are closely interwoven, discourses of religious
heritage provide the “myths, metaphors and symbols that are central to the discursive or iconic
representation of the nation” (Brubaker 2012: 9). In this regard, Israel is an instructive example
not only of such countries but also of conflict-ridden countries in which heritage policies and
politics are highly contested.
As part of its colonial nation-state building policies, the State of Israel has sought to form a
hegemonic cultural heritage of unifying narratives and sites, and they have been resisted by the
Palestinian minority, which has struggled to claim a voice in the political arena and recognition
of their historical heritage.1 Where the Israeli authorities have consistently canonized Jewish
biblical “historical” narratives as a unifying official cultural heritage, the Palestinian minority
has persistently turned to Islamic and, to a lesser extent, Christian resources to form counter-
hegemonic narratives and strengthen their collective identity and belonging.
Both the Jewish majority and the Palestinian minority in Israel draw on religious language,
theological frameworks, and justifications to frame sociocultural and political conceptions of
statehood, peoplehood, citizenry, indigenousness, and commemoration in public discourses
(Agbaria 2018). In doing so, both groups are engaged in a twofold process: the heritagization of
the sacred, and the sacralization of heritage (Meyer and De Witte 2013). Religious traditions, be
they Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, are represented and contested as “heritage,” making them a
central aspect of the politics of identity and belonging, while heritage is imbued with religious
meanings that make them appear authentic and irrefutable. These entangled interfaces between
religion, politics, and heritage formation in Israel make it increasingly difficult to promote
dialogue between Jews and Palestinians without taking into account the influence of each group’s
religious heritage on the prospect of such a dialogue.
217
In what follows, I will present the initiative “From the Wells [Min Habe’erot]—Jewish-Arab
Education toward a Shared Society,” an educational program for Jewish and Arab principals
and teachers in Israel. Initiated and facilitated by the Shalom Hartman Institute, the program
aims at transforming the study of traditions, civilizations, faiths, and religions in Israel’s public
education system into a more pluralistic and inclusive type of education. In doing so, the program
seeks to contribute to the establishment of a new shared society that guarantees equality and
recognition for all, Jews and Arab-Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike. Specifically,
the program brings participants together to jointly study foundational texts, both modern and
classical, from the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish traditions in an intellectual environment that
promotes critical, yet empathetic engagement and interpretation of these texts. Through lectures,
workshops, seminars, and projects, the participants are encouraged to examine their worldviews
and assumptions regarding identity; the meaning of otherness; the possibilities and sensibilities
of multiculturalism; the dilemmas of social justice; and the significance and conditions of respect,
reconciliation, and dialogue. This method of jointly studying seminal texts has proven to be very
successful in fostering mutual understanding and respect and has served to inspire the initiation
of further educational projects; all designed to create a more just, cohesive, and respectful society.
It’s worth noting that the program includes visits to religious sites and monuments. However,
it overtly emphasizes the non-physical aspects of the various religious heritages (e.g., communal
bonds, rituals, ceremonies, and collective memories). Specifically, it uses religious texts as
entangled heritages of cultural memories and cultural visions (Vryhof 2012). A cultural memory
of a religious group refers to its story, identity, and cultural anchor points, whereas a cultural
vision of a religious group refers to its imagined future and its worldview. In this regard, the
program invites the educators to deliberate and reflect on the cultural memories and cultural
visions embedded in and embodied by each other’s scriptures in an attempt to reveal how Jewish
and Palestinian believers explain the arc of their lives and the arc of history (see more on religion
as heritage in Lehmann 2013).
The Initiative “From the Wells”

“From the Wells” (FTW) was launched in 2015. Since then, the program has 300 graduates,
teachers, and principals, and about seventy schools are involved in it. It started out with the
conviction that in order to make a real impact on society it is necessary to work with “agents
of change” over a significant period. Therefore, FTW was designed as a two-year program for
principals and teachers of history, civics, religion, and tradition. These were identified as agents
of change due to their influence on schools and communities. To ensure consistency, the groups
meet approximately ten to twelve times a year, for five to six hours each time, in addition to two
to three field study tours at the community level. The participants come mostly from schools in
the central and northern regions of Israel. FTW involves almost an even number of Palestinians
and Jews both groups are citizens of Israel. FTW does not operate beyond the green line in the
occupied territories of 1967 (see more on this program in Agbaria and Statman 2022).
The program draws on the method of “scriptural reasoning,” in which participants are
encouraged to engage in a critical reading of texts from their own traditions and those of other
participants. Kepnes (2006) provides general guidelines for conducting sessions using scriptural
reasoning. These include selecting a text that focuses on a common figure, theme, or issue from all
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Heritage and Intercultural Education
traditions; facilitating small group discussions; creating a sense of equality among participants;
ensuring that all traditions are represented in the study groups; and avoiding to privilege a single
methodological approach to the scriptures.
Through this methodology, participants encounter the texts directly without mediation by
authorities and they are encouraged to examine them critically. Participants are exposed to
different perspectives and interpretations of the text by members of other religious and cultural
groups. “Scriptural reasoning” is known as havruta in the Jewish tradition and halaqa in the
Islamic tradition. It is structured around topics that are considered relevant for all participants
such as human dignity, forgiveness, and pluralism. The study texts are always provided to the
participants in Hebrew and Arabic. They include significant extracts from the Quran, New
Testament, and Tanakh.
Most meetings have the following format: the first part focuses on deliberating about a
foundational text in small and mixed groups. Invited academic lecturers and religious leaders
(e.g., a sheikh, priest, or rabbi) provide introductory remarks and guiding questions as to how
to approach the selected text, while linking it to universal themes and values and highlighting
interfaces and possibilities of the intertextuality of philosophical, theological, and literary texts
(Figure 23.1). Then participants divide into smaller groups of three to five people and study the
sources in the handouts, focusing on a few guiding questions. This is followed by a group discussion
about participants’ insights. The second part consists of workshops that provide opportunities for
participants to get to know each other, to discuss the study text’s relevance to Israel’s sociopolitical
reality, and how to incorporate the text into their teaching or schools. The program also designates
hours and curricula for teaching FTW content. To facilitate the translation of FTW content into
schools’ curricula and pedagogy, the FTW team collected and edited study texts, handouts, and
guiding questions into study units and lesson plans for middle and high school teachers, including
a special curriculum on family relations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The FTW team is persistently challenged to ground and justify the programs’ goals not only
in terms of their contribution to cultural recognition and multiculturalism but also in adherence
to religious values and norms. Teachers and principals keep questioning whether it is religiously
permissible or theologically legitimate to draw on other religious traditions’ foundational texts
to enrich one’s own religious experience, expand religious imagery, and interpret sacred texts.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore this dilemma in all traditions. Therefore, as an
example, this chapter will illustrate the use of Jewish and Christian literature in the interpretation
of the Holy Quran from an Islamic perspective, which is my own tradition, focusing on the
understanding of the tales of the various prophets.
An Islamic Perspective on Intertextuality

Devout Muslims often believe in the divine nature of the Quran. This belief resulted in accepting
the historicity of the Quranic narratives as undeniable, making it almost impossible for teachers
in Islamic education to question the choices and decisions of the Quranic narratives. For
example, in the Quranic tales of the prophets who preceded Prophet Muḥammad, like Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Yusuf, and Jesus, these prophets are depicted as divinely inspired and
idealized individuals, who have immunity to sins and mistakes. This religious belief in the
impeccability or infallibility (Ismah) of the prophets makes it difficult for teachers in Islamic
219
education to go beyond literal, absolute, and definitive interpretations. Thus, teachers of Islamic
education have little room, legitimacy of you will, to deliberate on missing information in these
tales, elicit insights regarding mistakes, and misjudgments of the prophets, compare these tales to
the Jewish and Christian biblical narratives, express critical stances, and be engaged in reflective
discussions. Yet, despite this inherent theological difficulty to reflect on the prophets’ behaviors,
the absence of detailed context of the prophetic tales in the Quran invited believers to fill gaps
reflectively and creatively. These gabs are filled with much, sensitivity, imagination, and even
humor by Muslim exegetes.
Tafsirs, Muslim exegeses and commentaries, including those authored by al-Tabari (839–
923), al-Zamakhshari (1075–1144), al-Razi (1149–1209), and Ibn Kathir (1301–1373), provide
excellent examples of how the tradition of the Israiliyat has been accommodated in interpreting
tales of various prophets. In brief, Israiliyat refers to the traditions and reports that contain
elements of the legendary religious literature of the Jews but also to Christian, Zoroastrian, and
other Near Eastern elements, including folklore (Albayrak 2012). Generally speaking, the study
of the Israiliyat stirred three debates: first, whether it is permissible for a Muslim to read Jewish
and Christian religious texts; second, whether it is permissible for Muslims to translate from
them; and third, whether it is permissible for a Muslim to question and consult with Jews and
Christians in searching for meaning and significance of Islamic religious texts.
There is a strong tradition that forbids questioning of Islamic religious texts and avoids the use
of information from Jewish and Christian sources. This tradition draws on various Islamic texts,
for example, the Hadith, in which one report states that Umar, the second caliph, found some part
of the Torah in Arabic and read it in the presence of the Prophet Muhammad. According to this
report, the Prophet addressed Umar saying:
Are you being reckless O son of Khattab!? By the oath of Allah!
I have brought it (religion) to you in a state that is bright and clear.
Do not ask them (People of the Book) about anything, because it
should not be that you end up denying the truth they tell or you
believe the falsehood that they tell. I swear that even if Moses was
alive among you nothing would be opened to him but to follow me.
(The Hadith, Musnad Ahmad, vol. 3: 387)
On the other hand, however, according to another report: “The people of the Scripture (Jews)
used to recite the Torah in Hebrew and they used to explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. On that
Allah’s Messenger said, “Do not believe the people of the Scripture or disbelieve them, but
say: We believe in Allah and what is revealed to us” ’ (The Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 6, Book
60, hadith 12).
According to this report, Muslims should adopt a non-committal attitude to what they hear and
are asked to delay their judgment. This moderate approach, according to which the discussion
of religious texts with Jews and Christians seems to be permitted, reveals itself also in another
known Hadith: “The Prophet said, ‘Convey (my teachings) to the people even if it were a single
sentence, and tell others the stories of Bani Israel (which have been taught to you), for it is not
sinful to do so. And whoever tells a lie on me intentionally, will surely take his place in the (Hell)
Fire’ ” (The Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, book 55, hadith 667).
220
The various approaches toward Jewish and Christian texts and scholars can be classified
into three types based on the widely used categories propped by Ibn Kathir, who clarified that
Israiliyyat is to be referenced or quoted only for supplementary attestation, not for full support.
According to him (Dogan 2015: 181), these categories are:
1. Those that are known to be true because they are attested to in the quranic revelation and thus
should be accepted.
2. Those whose falsehood is certified from the Quran and thus should be rejected.
3. Those that fall into neither of the other classes and thus can be read and learned in search of
personal lessons and significance.
This spectrum of approaches resulted in a wide inclusion of Jewish and Christian references
in Muslim exegesis and commentaries, while it also demonstrates its limitations. Interestingly,
the rejection of Israliyyat did not become a major concern of quranic exegesis until the reformist
movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They promoted not only the development
of new methodological approaches to the Quran but also political transformations. As a result,
for Muslims, especially those who are critical of the political developments in Israel, the term
Israliyyat in quranic exegesis has negative connotations. Nevertheless, we argue that the reference
to Israliyyat literature in Muslim exegeses and commentaries forms a potential bridge between
Islam and the other Abrahamic religions. Most importantly, this literature provides evidence
for Muslims that they are encouraged to examine other scriptures, learn from their wisdom,
and enrich their religious experience, yet without having to compromise or relinquish their own
Islamic beliefs.
Concluding Thoughts
Palestinians form a substantial national minority in Israel that continues to be affected by
institutional and public discrimination and marginalization vis-à-vis Jewish citizens, despite
improvements of their situation. Although most of them seek to integrate into Israeli society,
especially in terms of the workplace, they often feel unwanted and unwelcome. This sense of
marginalization applies not only to the individual but also to the collective. As Palestinians
feel that their culture and religion are ignored and disrespected, they constantly struggle for
recognition of their national, cultural, and religious identity.
Furthermore, the marginalization of the Palestinian minority has been propelled in recent
years by a series of provisions and policies that promote and prioritize a strong Jewish national-
religious ideology. I characterize this ideology as “based on a transcendent set of ideals that gives
populist politics and ethnonational identities a seal of sanctity and inevitability … an all-explaining
ideology that imbues national identities with zeal, absolutism, and historical justifications in the
name of an imagined collectivity that is often conceived as superior, sacred, pure, and with a
longstanding historic mission” (Agbaria 2018: 23). The promotion of this ideology resulted in
increased rates of undemocratic attitudes and hate speech in Israel’s educational institutions.
Unsurprisingly, the 2016 Report of the State Comptroller on educating for coexistence and
preventing racism heavily criticized the Ministry of Education’s failure to take action on the
issue (see more in Agbaria 2018).
221
Against this backdrop, there have been several interventions and activities seeking to bridge
the Jewish-Arab chasm. Yet, these interventions either focus on folkloristic or political aspects
of the intergroup relations between the Jewish majority and Arab minority in Israel. As much
as these initiatives are sincere in their intentions and important in their orientation, they rarely
engage with deep questions and dilemmas that are raised in one’s own tradition or faith about
identity, the purpose of life, relations with others, and spheres of belonging.
Therefore, it seems safe to argue that FTW instates a counter-hegemonic heritage discourse
that challenges the “authorized heritage discourse” (Smith 2006) in the educational system in
Israel, which is put in service of the Zionist ideology to constitute the Jewish majority as a gated
ethno-religious community (Agbaria 2018) by fostering separation, exclusiveness, and isolation
between the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic heritages. In this context, FTW promotes a counter-
hegemonic heritage discourse by promoting dialogue and reconciliation. To do so, it convenes
Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) and Jewish educators to study each other’s religious heritage,
and highlights the entwined relationships and reciprocal influences between the different religious
heritages in Israel.
Another important insight concerns Islamic education in Israel. The program exposed the
shortcomings of education about Islam in Israel, which is taught as a generic, monolithic, and
ahistorical religion. For many Muslim educators, the program functioned as a remedy for the
light version of Islam that they find in the curriculum. It provided them with the opportunity to
learn more about denominational differences, the intellectual debates in Islamic theology and
jurisprudence, to go beyond literal interpretations, and to question manifestations of fatalism,
FIGURE 23.1 Arab and Jewish educators in a joint activity in 2021, Mahmood Mosque of the
Ahmadiyya community, Haifa.
Source: Ayman Agbaria.
222
conformity, and hyper-solidarity. The Israeli curriculum of education about Islam can be best
described as detached from the impoverished sociopolitical reality of the pupils, as ignoring the
significance of many holy places for the Palestinians in Israel, and as strict and dogmatic in its
emphasis on rituals instead of values and ethics.
To be more specific, the literature is full of research accounts aimed at demonstrating how
the Arab-Palestinian education system in Israel has been controlled through policies and
practices that result in unequal allocation of state resources, lack of recognition of the Palestinian
minority’s cultural needs, and marginalization of the influence of Arab leadership on education
policy (Agbaria 2016). Mar’i (1978) argued that the Arab education system in Israel is set
“to instill feelings of self-disparagement and inferiority in Arab youth; to denationalize them,
and particularly to de-Palestinize them; and to teach them to glorify the history, culture, and
achievements of the Jewish majority” (Mar’i 1978: 37).
As for the study of Islamic religious education in Arab schools, Israel, similarly to other
countries, has fashioned its own closely supervised school-based normative version of Islam.
Israel allows confessional religious education into Islam by “insiders,” in that Islamic religious
education is provided through Arab Muslim teachers, with the unequivocal objective of socializing
pupils in the religion of Islam and strengthening their commitment to it. However, Israel has
fashioned its own depoliticized version of a school-based Islam. In this version, Islam as a set of
religious norms, civic virtues, and personal qualities needed to function as a loyal, reconciled, and
disciplined citizen (Agbaria 2012). Examining how the Muslim teachers locate themselves and
their pedagogy within a continuum of salafi (conservative) versus liberal conceptions of Islamic
education, Saada (2020) argued that teachers tend to be more salafi (conservative) than liberal in
their understanding of Islamic education while conceptualizing their role in teaching the moral
aspects of Islam in terms of naql (the transmission of religious knowledge) rather than aql (rational
thinking). Saada (2020) highlighted that teachers avoid the dealing with the intellectual diversity
within Islam, the discussion of contemporary issues, and the tenets of other Abrahamic religions.
That said, FTW seems pioneering in its attempt to reclaim critical and humanist voices from
within the religious traditions to employ them in resisting racism, segregation, xenophobia, anti-
Semitism, and Islamophobia and in advancing openness, reflexivity, and dialogue. This attempt
involves indeed a selective re-creation and re-interpretation of the religious heritage based upon
contemporary values and concerns. In this sense, FTW’s religious heritage discourse is akin to
what Hobsbawm and Ranger (2012) have coined as “invented traditions,” which highlight and
foreground certain time periods, historical events, and collective narratives while obscuring and
downplaying others. Most importantly, as in FTW’s case, “invented traditions” are often tied to
identity politics and projects of nation building.
As it seeks to counter racism, segregation, and prejudice, it endeavors to transform the
instruction and learning of culture and tradition in the Israeli education system to be more
humanistic, inclusive, and critical. The program encourages not only the study of foundational
texts—religious and philosophical, poetic, and fictional—from the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim
traditions, but also trains educators to deliberate on the relevance of these texts for their personal
growth, sociopolitical reality, and professional practice. FTW believes in shared hermeneutics
and the fusion of horizons between Jewish and Arab educators. It advocates personal and group
empowerment through the study of one’s own culture and an open engagement with the cultures
of others.
223
Throughout the FTW’s process, we found that the Jewish Israeli participants, who mostly
identify as secular, developed a more sensitive approach to their own tradition as they encountered
the Palestinian participants for whom their religion tends to be more foundational to their identity.
Conversely, the Israeli Palestinian participants developed a more critical and reflective approach
toward their own religion as they encountered the Jewish participants, who tend to be less
committed to religious language and ideals. Generally, we observed that participants developed
a form of intimacy and mutual trust that seemed to enable these processes. The dynamics of this
mediation process merits further research and exploration.
Despite the program’s achievements, a few limitations and challenges surfaced along the way.
First, the textual dialogue between religions and traditions is a risky business, as it might lead
to idealization on the one hand and relativism on the other. Second, although some participants
and alumni have become active in the initiation and implementation of various FTW programs
in their schools, most of them have not. The way they think about Jewish-Arab relations might
have changed, but the expectation of how they address these relations in the classroom is yet
to be seen. Third, given that Israeli society is de facto segregated in ways described above and
influenced by politics that sustain the conflict, it is hard to know how much promise programs like
FTW carry for building lasting bridges between Arabs and Jews and for overcoming prejudice
and hostility—a critique that has been already raised about other peacebuilding initiatives. Yet,
educators have always been notoriously optimistic when dealing with problematic children or
with troubled societies, and FTW is no exception. Whether or not FTW makes a real impact on
the Israeli educational system and can contribute toward a shared society remains to be seen and
requires further research.
Note
1 Palestinian citizens of Israel are Arab residents of Mandatory Palestine who remained within Israel’s borders
following the 1948 War and the establishment of the state of Israel. At the end of 2020, the population
of Israel stood at approximately 9,289,760, including 1,957,270 Arabs, representing 21.1 percent of the
total. This figure includes Arabs in the Arabs in the occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The
large majority of Arab citizens of Israel are Muslim (82.9 percent), and the remainder are either Druze
(9.2 percent) or Christian (7.9 percent) (The Israel Democracy Institute 2022).
References
Agbaria, A. (2012), “Teaching Islam in Israel: On the Absence of Unifying Goals and a
Collective Community,” in H. Alexander and A. Agbaria (eds.), Commitment, Character, and
Citizenship: Religious Education in Liberal Democracy, 181–98. New York: Routledge.
Agbaria, A. (2016), “The New Face of Control: Arab Education under Neoliberal Policy,” in N.
Rouhana (ed.), Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State, 299–335.
Agbaria, A. (2018), “The ‘Right’ Education in Israel: Segregation, Religious Ethnonationalism, and
Depoliticized Professionalism,” Critical Studies in Education 59 (1): 18–34.
Agbaria, A., and Statman, D. (2022), “ ‘From the Wells’: Teaching Openness in Judaism and Islam
towards a Shared Society in Israel?,” British Journal of Religious Education 44 (1): 87–97.
Albayrak, I. (2012), “Reading the Bible in the Light of Muslim Sources: From Isrāʾīliyyāt to Islāmiyyāt,”
Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 23 (2): 113–27.
224
Brubaker, R. (2012), “Religion and Nationalism: Four Approaches,” Nations and Nationalism 18
(1): 2–20.
Dogan, R. (2015), Usul Al-fiqh: Methodology of Islamic Jurisprudence. Clifton: New
Jersey: Tughra Books.
Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger (eds.) (2012), The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kepnes, S. (2006), “A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning,” Modern Theology 22 (3): 367–83.
Lehmann, D. (2013), “Religion as Heritage, Religion as Belief: Shifting Frontiers of Secularism in
Europe, the USA and Brazil,” International Sociology 28 (6): 645–62.
Mar'i, S. (1978), Arab education in Israel. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Meyer, B., and M. De Witte (2013), “Heritage and the Sacred: Introduction,” Material Religion 9
(3): 274–80.
Saada, N. (2020), “Teachers’ Perceptions of Islamic Religious Education in Arab High Schools in Israel,”
in M. Huda (ed.), Global Perspectives on Teaching and Learning Paths in Islamic Education, 135–63.
Hershey: IGI Global.
Smith, L. (2006), Uses of Heritage. New York: Routledge.
The Israel Democracy Institute (2022), ”Statistical Report on Arab Society in Israel: 2021.” https://en.idi.
org.il/articles/38540 (accessed April 7, 2022).
Vryhof, S. (2012), “Between Memory and Meaning: Schools as Communities of Meaning,” in H.
Alexander and A. Agbaria (eds.), Commitment, Character, and Citizenship: Religious Education in
Liberal Democracy, 46–59. New York: Routledge.
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26
Analysis
Chapter 24
The Talmud in Contemporary Culture

MALACHI HACOHEN
Analysis
The Talmud has entered academic life only in recent decades, but it holds a great promise
for both the university and the interreligious dialogue among the Abrahamic religions. The
Talmud’s popularity nowadays is surprising. The struggle over biblical interpretation shaped
Christian–Jewish relations for two millennia, but Christian culture was hostile to the Talmud
since it “discovered” it in the high Middle Ages. Muslims have traditionally shown no interest
in the Talmud. Antisemites made the Talmudjude an emblem of the Jew they despised. Liberal
Jews, too, with their eyes set on cultural integration, sought to redefine the Jews as the biblical
people, away from the Talmud. In recent decades, however, scholars have tracked in the
Talmud modern legal concepts, a critical rationalist philosophy, and religious hybridity. The
Talmud has become popular in diverse global cultures. This essay projects the surprising turn
in the Talmud’s fortunes against the long-term history of relations among the three Abrahamic
religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I suggest that our historical moment represents an
opportunity for deploying the Talmud to enhance interreligious dialogue and renovate liberal
education.
We live in an extraordinary age, offering opportunities for dialogue among the Abrahamic
religions. Conversations among Jews, Christians, and Muslims nowadays often display
civility, understanding, and knowledge of each other’s culture rarely seen in earlier times. Such
conversations are all the more remarkable as they take place against the background of continued
religious conflict, misunderstandings, and fanaticism. This essay seeks to advance the prospect of
the interreligious dialogue by introducing the Talmud, the major work of Rabbinic Judaism, and
tracing its history in the three Abrahamic religions.
The Talmud, the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakhah), is often marginalized in the
interreligious dialogue. Given the centrality of the Bible, this is understandable, but unfortunate.
For two millennia, the Talmud encountered hostility and misunderstanding, primarily but not
exclusively from non-Jews. Recently, however, it has emerged as a subject of interest and
admiration in both academic and public culture. The Talmud’s current popularity represents an
anomaly in its history—and a promise. This essay will project the flourishing Talmudic culture
of the present against two millennia of hostility. It will outline the expanded possibilities that the
rise of the Talmud in non-Jewish culture could open for education and interreligious dialogue.
226
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The First Millennium: Talmud as an Oral Culture

The Jews are known, especially to Christians, as the biblical people. Yet, Jews have read the
Bible for two millennia as interpreted by the Rabbis, hence through Talmudic eyes. Verily, the
Jews are as much the people of the Talmud as of the Bible. The Talmud first emerged in Late
Antiquity as an oral tradition of legal discourse and homiletics in Babylonia and Palestine. It
consisted of extensive legal debates and biblical hermeneutics among the Rabbis in study groups
and study halls. The rabbinic discussions ostensibly focused on the Mishnah, the earliest legal
code edited about 220 ce, but were interlaced with homiletic literature (Midrash) and folkloric
exempla. The shorter Palestinian Talmud (Yerushalmi) was edited about the turn of the fifth
century ce, but the elaborate and more well-known Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) did not reach
anything resembling its current state for another three centuries. The Babylonian Talmud’s sixty-
three tractates hold, in the standard printed edition, which was first published in 1523 in Venice,
over 2,700 double-sided pages. It is primarily written in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic with the
mishnaic and midrashic material in Hebrew. Known as the Oral Torah (teaching) passed down
through the ages, the Talmud elucidated the meaning of the written Torah (Pentateuch) and
became the centerpiece of premodern Jewish life and culture. Jews believed that it embodied the
rule of the Torah, obedience to which sanctified life. Its study was considered a religious duty,
and became a major source of authority and intellectual distinction in Jewish communities.
Reception of the Bible and the Talmud in non-Jewish culture diverged radically. The Hebrew
Bible is part of all Christian bibles, and it served to legitimate the Jews as the single tolerated
religious minority in medieval Christian Europe: the Jews testified to the truth of Christianity as
living letters of biblical law (Cohen 1999). Well into the modern era, the Hebrew Bible remained
for many Christians the definitive version of the Word of God, Hebraica Veritas. The Jewish
origins of Christianity, and the source of its ambivalence toward Judaism, were encapsulated in
the Jews as the biblical people. In stark contrast to the Bible, the Talmud was a subject of derision
and persecution. When Christians became familiar with the Talmud in high-medieval Europe,
it undermined Jewish legitimacy. The Jews, reasoned Christians, were not faithful to the Bible.
They had a “second Torah” and were heretics.
The biblical heritage also shaped Muslim relations with Christians and Jews. Muslims see
Muhammed as the last and the greatest in the chain of prophets leading from Abraham to Moses
to Jesus, and the Qur’an reworked major biblical motifs. Early Muslims suggested that Jews
and Christians had corrupted the biblical text—particularly the Torah, Psalms, and Gospels—
but all remained omnipresent in Islamic literature and traditions. To be sure, Muslims first
became familiar with the Bible through the liturgy and rituals they observed in Arabian Jewish
and Christian communities. Scholars discover nowadays rabbinic traces in early Islamic works,
and rabbinic culture may have contributed to the Muslim reception of the Bible.1 All the same,
whereas biblical motifs are pervasive in the Qur’an, the Talmud is veiled. Until the modern era,
the Talmud did not figure out in a major way in Islamic traditions—for good or bad.
The Middle Ages: The Talmud on Trial

The Talmud’s history in Christian culture was more public and more painful. Unlike the Bible, the
Talmud did not become a subject of study in the medieval university. Christians considered the
227
Talmud blasphemous, superstitious, and irrational. Its few anti-Christian passages in particular
corroborated their worst fears about the Jews as an internal enemy. The Talmud was put on trial,
and the Jews were forced to defend it in “Disputations” that made mockery of dialogue. The
Talmud was condemned and consigned to burning as part of a campaign to convert the Jews or
expel them. Only a single complete manuscript of the Talmud survived the Middle Ages.
Paradoxically, Dominican missionary schools, where Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic were
taught as part of the missionary effort, advanced at the same time an opposite Christian claim
about the Talmud: Like the Bible, the Talmud contained Christian truths, testimonies about
Jesus and his mission that the Rabbis either failed to understand or suppressed. Friar Pablo
Christiani, a Jewish convert to Christianity, first advanced this claim in 1262 in the Barcelona
Disputation (against the Jewish rabbi and biblical commentator Naḥmanides) and again in Paris
in 1272 (Caputo 2017: 90–133; Shatzmiller 1994).2 Raymond Martini’s Pugio Fidei (Dagger
of Faith, 1278), a polemic against Jews and Muslims, deployed midrashic and Jewish biblical
commentary, and read Christ into the rabbinic vision of redemption, thereby forming a Christian
midrash (Martini, Voisin, and Carpzov 1967). The irony of the condemned Talmud, consigned
to burning, being deployed to demonstrate Christ reflects the strange ambivalence of Christian-
Jewish relations across the ages. It also shows the Talmud becoming, albeit in a mutated form,
part of a Christian—Jewish dialogue, however constrained.
Christian Hebraism and the Talmud in Early Modern Europe

Early modern Europe saw a novel Christian-Jewish modus vivendi: the Jews were not to give
offense to Christianity (as they did in medieval polemics), and Christians were not to force
conversion on the Jews. Jewish books were now jointly censored by Christian and Jewish officials,
and printed versions of the Talmud were purged of paragraphs offensive to Christians. In Venice,
a Christian publisher, Daniel Bomberg, working with a Jewish staff, brought out the first printed
edition of the Babylonian Talmud in 1523 with papal authorization. It set the standard, including
pagination, for printed editions still used today (Raz-Krakotzkin 2007).3
Christian knowledge of Jewish culture, aided by expanding Hebrew presses, increased
exponentially in early modern Europe. University professors, rather than missionaries, became
the purveyors of knowledge of Jewish texts and traditions. Beginning in the second half of the
sixteenth century, universities established chairs of Oriental languages, and, over the next century,
massive Hebrew libraries were created in universities, royal courts, and the Vatican. Christian
Hebraists prepared dictionaries and bibliographies of rabbinic literature, and offered selective
Latin translations of Talmudic tractates “the way the Jews used [them] themselves, each Mishnah
portion together with relevant parts of the Gemara” (Buxtorf 1640; Burnett 1996; Carlebach
2005: 79–88, quote on 87). Still, the Talmud remained the Jewish corpus Christian Hebraists
found most difficult to negotiate, both technically—most had to employ Jewish scholars for
help—and emotionally. One sees them struggling with conflicting feelings for the Jews—respect
and contempt, anger, and pity. The Hebraists ended up erecting, at one and the same time, the
largest compendium of Jewish anti-Christian polemics—Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judenthum
(Judaism exposed), a mine for future antisemites—and the first society for cross-cultural
understanding among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, founded in 1730 in Halle as a precondition
for missionary work (Eisenmenger 1711; Rymatzki 2004).
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In the eighteenth century, Hebraist interest in rabbinic literature waned. Enlightenment and
nascent nationalization redefined the Jews as a nation rather than as a religion. “The Jewish
Question” became political and racial more than religious. With the growing consciousness of
the historicity of ancient Hebrew culture, biblical historical criticism took the place of Hebraist
interest in the Talmud. The foreignness of the Talmud in Christian culture increased once again.
Modern Antisemitism and Colonialism: The Talmud in

Europe and the Arab World
The nineteenth-century struggle over Jewish citizenship in Western and Central Europe, and
European colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa reshaped the place of the Talmud in
the modern era. In German-speaking Central Europe, and elsewhere, wherever the Jews were
emancipated, the people of the Talmud endeavored to remake themselves as the people of the
Bible. This reflected a Jewish strategy for integration. A wide swath of modern Jews from liberal
to Neo-Orthodox endeavored to stage the Jews as the original biblical people, formative for
the European heritage, and the national culture. The Jews, they also argued, were the ultimate
monotheists, and represented the best universal ideals. The antisemites, who sought to reverse
emancipation, countered by recrafting old Christian anti-Talmudic polemics into a new racial
stereotype: the Talmudjude (the Talmudic Jew), who embodied the corrupted Jewish character
and had pernicious effect on Western civilization. European colonialism carried this racial
stereotype into Muslim cultures. The Talmud, which the colonized Egyptians discovered, was not
an outgrowth of Islamic learning and local traditions but an import of the colonizers’ Christian-
inflected antisemitism—a thoroughly distorted document.
Traditional Jews never went through Western-style remodeling as a biblical people.
Russian Jews remained unemancipated until the Russian Revolution, and among them, and
other traditional Eastern European Jews, Talmud study retained its central place in the Jewish
curriculum. Indeed, it became a site for intellectual innovation, best manifested perhaps in
the Volozhin Yeshiva (1803–1892) and the Brisk method. Western Jewry, in contrast, waged
the battle of emancipation over the Bible. Protestant theologians and historians presented the
Hebrew Bible as an artifact of a narrow-minded priestly elite. The priests, they said, sapped
the Hebrew national spirit, locked it in empty rituals and dead laws, and turned the Jews,
who rejected the spiritual regeneration of Christianity, into a historical fossil. Western Jews
responded by presenting the Hebrew Bible as the fountain of the three Abrahamic religions. As
the Talmud appeared to vindicate the Christian view of Judaism as particularist and ritualistic,
Western Jews marginalized it, and highlighted instead the biblical heritage they shared with
Christians and Muslims. They presented the Jews as the best exponents of biblical prophecy,
national fraternity, and cosmopolitanism.
Unwilling to acknowledge a shared heritage, the antisemites restored the Talmud to the center.
August Rohling’s Der Talmudjude, a rehash of Eisenmenger, became in the 1880s a rallying
cry for the antisemites and galvanized the Jewish struggle against antisemitism (Rohling 1877).
Unlike Eisenmenger, Rohling, a German Catholic theologian and professor in Münster and
Prague, could not read a page of the Talmud. Jewish leaders mobilized for a court fight against
Rohling. Aided by Christian theologians opposed to antisemitism, they won most court battles
against the antisemitic agitators. But, in the popular imagination, the figures of the Talmudjude
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and the Weltjude, the international Jew of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, converged, shaping
the worldview of National Socialism.
This racialized image of the Talmudic Jew was the one Arab scholars encountered as they were
responding to the growing European influence in the Arab world. Traces of Christian antisemitism
could be discerned in Middle Eastern Arab communities from the seventeenth century on. They
culminated in ritual murder charges, most famously in the 1840 Damascus Affair. In 1899, a
book on “the Laws in the Talmud,” published in Cairo, advanced the ritual murder charge (Naṣr
Allāh 1987). The book consisted of a translated excerpt from the French edition of Rohling,
joined together with protocols from the Damascus Affair. The book elicited limited response but,
significantly, a Zionist author, Shimon Moyal, defended the Talmud against it. He published an
introduction to the Talmud, intending it to be the first of a multivolume translation of the Talmud
into Arabic, a project that never came into fruition (Hartwig n.d.; Gribetz 2010: 1–30; Moyal
1909). The Zionist–Palestinian conflict was only in its infancy but the place of the Talmud in
Muslim culture was undergoing a radical shift.
Jewish Studies and its Talmudic Paradoxes

Proponents of Jewish emancipation highlighted the Bible, but, paradoxically, their foremost
scholarly project, Wissenschaft des Judentums (science of Judaism; Jewish Studies), focused
on rabbinic literature. The founders of Jewish Studies found themselves navigating narrow
straits: They sought to defend the Talmud against the antisemites as a cultural monument and
a model of legal reasoning, yet they had to reject its religious authority, so they could reform
Judaism and make academic study of the Talmud possible (Schorsch 2016: 68).4 Jewish
“theology” and scholarship were at variance with each other. Liberal Jews highlighted the ethical
core of Judaism, and diminished its legal obligations. Their heroes were the Jewish prophets,
not the Rabbis. Emancipation and antisemitism required that they preach the Bible but study the
Rabbis.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Jews made valiant efforts to make Jewish Studies, the
provenance of rabbinic seminaries and independent scholars, part of the academy. Biblical
historical studies flourished under liberal Protestant aegis. Why not appoint a Jewish professor
and expand the curriculum? Jewish efforts encountered stiff resistance and failed. Jews (or
Catholics) could not objectively study the Hebrew Bible, argued academic authorities (Wiese
2005). The Talmud remained outside the provenance of the university altogether. Ironically, the
Nazis had no qualms about “integrating” Jewish Studies into the university as Judenforschung, a
“racial science.” Under the Nazis, with the universities purged of all Jews, Jewish Studies finally
became an academic field (Rupnow 2011).

The Holocaust constituted, as in everything else, a chasm. Postwar Christian–Jewish relations
went through revolutionary changes, and a growing global acceptance of Jewish culture opened
new possibilities for the Talmud in the university and in public culture. It took two decades for
these changes to register in the academy and even longer in public culture. Meanwhile, German
and English translations with commentary that had been completed in the interwar and early
230
postwar years, respectively, made the Talmud accessible to wider scholarly audiences. The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, founded in 1925, was the first to have rabbinic literature on
its curriculum. Beginning in 1969, Jewish Studies became an academic field in US universities,
and the European academies followed suit. Jewish Studies programs were organized as separate
departments, interdisciplinary programs, or centers, and, in Europe, they could also be part of
larger departments of religion and theology. These programs have expanded rapidly, and continue
to grow today. With them, the Talmud entered the university.
The final decades of the twentieth century saw the proliferation of new editions and translations
of the Talmud with elaborate commentaries and study aids that take the reader step-by-step
through Talmudic arguments. With digitization in the twenty-first century, the Talmud has
become globally accessible and searchable at the touch of a button. Tasks that previously required
long years of learning and enormous erudition have now become manageable for beginners.
Accessibility alone cannot explain, however, the Talmud’s global popularity among Jews and
non-Jews. Jews of all ages, including many who are not religiously observant, have begun daily
study of a Talmud page (daf yomi). Introductory editions of the Talmud, with selected translated
passages, appear now in many languages. Unlike earlier Christian compendia, they are purported
to represent the excellence of Jewish reasoning, not its depravity.
To be sure, wider acceptance of Jewish culture has had also a darker side. Stereotypes of
Jewish talent and success, which are incipiently antisemitic, help explain the Talmud craze.
For half a century, compendia of Jewish texts and traditions, inspired by the Talmudic corpus
but taking on a life of their own, have appeared in South Korea under the title “Talmud.” Often
translated from the Japanese, they are marketed as comics and children’s literature, purported
to contain the secrets of ancient wisdom, and carrying the promise of success (Kattan Gribetz
and Kim 2018: 315–50). Once the subject of derogation and fear of corruption, the Talmud
has become an emblem of Jewish culture and educational distinction. This is historically
unprecedented.
The Arab and Muslim worlds could not participate in this celebration of Jewish culture. The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict created deep rifts between Israelis and Arabs, Jews, and Muslims.
Rohling’s “Talmud” and Talmudjude have gained circulation in Arab cultures, reinforcing
antisemitism. There are, however, opposite currents. Over the past fifteen years, Arab scholars
have produced complete translations of the Mishnah and the Talmud, aiming to make them
accessible to the Arab public. In Cairo, Jewish literature scholars translated the Mishnah (ʻAbd
al-Maʻbūd and Ḥasan 2007–9). In Amman, at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, ninety
Jordanian scholars, Muslims, and Christians, several with Aramaic expertise, labored over six
years to produce a twenty-volume translation of the Talmud, including a dictionary of Talmudic
terms (Al-Talmūd al-Bābilï 2011). The introduction underlined the importance of the Talmud
for understanding Israeli culture and Zionism, and reaffirmed the charge of Talmudic racism.
This may have been the price for bringing the Jewish tradition into play in a world dominated
by conservative clerics. The translation, even if uniformed by rabbinic readings, is reputedly
unobjectionable. The way is now open to a better understanding of the role Judaism and Islam
played in each other’s life.
Increasing religious literacy is the major contribution that scholars can make to the interreligious
dialogue. Conventions of “biblical reasoning,” bringing representatives of the three Abrahamic
traditions around the table to read the Bible, are inspiring. But, if they do not recognize tradition’s
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diversity, and, specifically, the Talmud’s formative role in Judaism, they will not speak to
contemporary life. Over the last decades, scholars have highlighted the Talmud’s contemporary
relevance. They have retrieved, or reconstructed from the Talmud models of open-ended
critical rationalist philosophy, an ethics of discourse, modern legal conventions, explorations
of religious and cultural hybridity, and probes of ethnic and species boundaries (Boyarin 2004;
Fisch 1997; Hayes 2015; Wasserman 2017). Protestant theologians have advanced the use of
Midrash in Protestant sermons (Deeg 2006). The Talmud has broken out of the provenance of
rabbinic institutions and practitioners, who pride themselves on their technical skills, and into
the academic and public spheres. It now appears as a postmodern project ready to address plural
audiences and play a role in the interreligious dialogue.
Scholarship is indispensable to interreligious dialogue. This historical essay on the Talmud,
emerging from the conference and summer school of the International Network for Interreligious
Research and Education (INIRE) in Groningen (2019), intends to fulfill precisely such a role.
Facilitating the interreligious dialogue, the Talmud may also help scholars rescue their academic
traditions. In a university overwhelmed by corporatization and preprofessional education,
Talmudic culture represents one of the few hopes for the renewal of liberal arts education. No
other book—not even the Socratic Dialogues—presents as compelling a vision of free, critical,
enriching inquiry—of learning for its own sake—which simultaneously shapes character. Could
the Talmud, the book that Western civilization excoriated for a millennium, become the source of
interreligious understanding and intellectual renewal?
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Dirk Hartwig of the Corpus Coranicum project, https://corpuscoranicum.de/en, for his
help with Islamic literature.
Notes
1 Work on tracking later rabbinic influences in Islamic literature has barely begun.
2 Caputo’s edition of the Barcelona Disputation includes both Naḥmanides’ Hebrew account and the Latin
account.
3 Christian hostility toward the Talmud continued, however. The Talmud was condemned and burned again in
Rome and other Italian cities in 1553, and the Council of Trent permitted the publication of an expurgated
version under a modified title.
4 Research by George Yaakov Kohler of Bar-Ilan University advanced my understanding of liberal
ambivalence.
References
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the Talmud text [the Mishnah]), 6 vols., Jïzah. Egypt: Maktabat al-Nāfidhah.
Al-Talmūd al-Bābilī (The Babylonian Talmud) (2011), 20 vols., ʿAmmān. Jordan: Markaz Dirāsāt
al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Boyarin, D. (2004), Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
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Burnett, S. (1996), From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and
Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century. Leiden: Brill.
Buxtorf, J. (1640), Lexicon chaldaicum, talmudicum et rabbinicum, 2nd edn, Basel: Ludwig König.
Carlebach, E. (2005), “The Status of the Talmud in Early Modern Europe,” in S. Liberman Mintz and G.
M. Goldstein (eds.), Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, 79–88. New York: Yeshiva
University Museum.
Caputo, N. (2017), Debating Truth: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263: A Graphic History.
Cohen, J. (1999), Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Deeg, A. (2006), Predigt und Derascha: Homiletische Textlekture im Dialog mit dem Judentum.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Eisenmenger, J. A. (1711), Entdecktes Judenthum. Königsberg.
Fisch, M. (1997), Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gribetz, J. M. (2010), “An Arabic-Zionist Talmud: Shimon Moyal’s At-Talmud,” Jewish Social Studies 17
(1): 1–30.
Hayes, C. (2015), What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Hartwig, D. (n.d.), “A Highly Modernist Talmudology? Reading the Talmud in Present-Day Cairo with
Eisenmenger & Friends,” unpublished paper.
Kattan Gribetz, S., and C. Kim (2018), “The Talmud in Korea: A Study in the Reception of Rabbinic
Literature,” AJS Review 42 (2): 315–50.
Martini, R., J. de Voisin, and J. B. Carpzov ([1687] 1967), Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos,
Raymundi Martini. Farnborough: Gregg Press.
Moyal, S. (1909), Al-Talmūd: Aṣluhu wa-tasalsuluhu wa-adabuhu (The Talmud: Its Origins,
Transmission, and Ethics). al-Qāhirah: Matba‘at al ‘arab.
Naṣr Allāh, Y. ([1899] 1987), Al-Kanz al-marṣūd fī qawāʿid al-Talmūd (The Awaited Treasure Concerning
the Laws in the Talmud). Dimashq: Dar al-Qalam.
Raz-Krakotzkin, A. (2007), The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping
of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Jackie Feldman. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Rohling, A. (1877), Der Talmudjude: Zur Beherzigung für Juden und Christen aller Stände.
Münster: Adolph Russell.
Rupnow, D. (2011), Judenforschung im Dritten Reich: Wissenschaft zwischen Politik, Propaganda und
Ideologie. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Rymatzki, C. (2004), Hallischer Pietismus und Judenmission: Johann Heinrich Callenbergs Institutum
Judaicum und dessen Freundenkreis (1728–1736). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Schorsch, I. (2016), Leopold Zunz—Creativity in Adversity. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Shatzmiller, J. (1994), Le deuxième controverse de Paris: Un chapitre dans la polémique entre Chrétiens
et Juifs au Moyen Age. Paris: E. Peeters.
Wasserman, M. B. (2017), Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud after the Humanities.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Wiese, C. (2005), Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine
Germany. Leiden: Brill.
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Case Study
Chapter 25
Safeguarding Written Heritage:

The Ecosystemic Approach of the Hill
Monastic Museum and Library
ANDREW J. M. IRVING
Case Study
The very abstraction, compactness, and portability that have made written documentation
and the book in various formats particularly adept instruments of cultural memory and of its
transmission also contribute to their vulnerability. Whether due to natural environmental factors
such as humidity and pests, or the man-made violence of arson, theft, censorship, and vandalism,
archives and libraries and the cultural memories they are instituted to retain are as fragile as the
materials on which these memories are recorded. The sheer concentration of cultural knowledge
within the pages of a book and on the seried shelves of the archive makes them both obvious
targets in intercultural and interreligious conflicts: from the gradual destruction of the Library
of Alexandria under both Christian and Muslim authorities in late antiquity and the burning of
the Talmud and other Jewish holy writings in Paris in 1242, to the destruction of the library
of Moctezuma II by Spanish conquistadores in the early decades of the sixteenth century. The
recent destruction of libraries in Mosul, the extraordinary efforts undertaken by local librarians
to save Timbuktu’s manuscripts in 2012, and the salvaging of books and the construction of
mini-libraries in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria in the early 2020s (Minoui 2021), remind us that such
bookish techniques of religious and cultural erasure and resistance are not things of the past.
How can a religious community and memory institution appropriately respond to these threats?
And what issues arise when the written heritage the institution and community is attempting
to safeguard is not its own? The following case study presents a brief historical sketch of the
development of the Hill Monastic Museum and Library (HMML), from its founding in the 1960s
by monks of St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota, USA, until the present day. The Library is now an
internationally renowned heritage institution and center of scholarship that has archived in a
single site images of over 300,000 manuscripts, working in close collaboration with over 800
libraries, and repositories around the world. The Library is an American institution, housed at
a Benedictine Abbey. It began its work of preservation of written heritage in Europe, however,
and, while maintaining this work, it has, as we shall see, gradually extended its work beyond the
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Safeguarding Written Heritage
boundaries of Europe, following lines of contact, coincidence, and need to work with heritage
communities in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. HMML therefore provides a particularly
rich case study in interreligious written heritage preservation extending across religious and
geographical boundaries. I will necessarily focus on turning points rather than attempt an in-depth
critical account of the history of the Library, which is beyond the scope of this handbook. This
chapter will trace some stages in the evolution of HMML’s approach to its role as a written
heritage institution, which I will characterize as the development of ecosystemic thinking. The
chapter concludes with some general tenets that can be distilled from HMML’s approach, and a
consideration of the role of ecosystemic thinking in heritage discourse and practice.
A Safe Haven, Close to Home

In many ways, the location of HMML’s vast collection of images of manuscripts, dedicated
especially to the preservation of at-risk manuscript collections, in a monastic and rural setting
was not merely coincidental. Christian monasticism has, of course, long been associated both
with ascetic withdrawal on the one hand and, on the other, with the careful and often laborious
preservation and transmission of written cultures—both those originating within the Christian
tradition, and those from outside it. It is not hard to imagine that the Benedictine abbey’s location,
away from urban centers and amid farmland, forests, and lakes in central Minnesota, also
informed Fr. Coleman Barry’s idea in 1964, as president of St. John’s University, to undertake
the microfilming of monastic manuscripts in Europe (Coleman 1990).
The project, known at that time as the Monastic Manuscript Project, was doubtless also
inspired by two similar American Catholic initiatives to preserve microfilm copies of the
manuscripts of important religious libraries in Western Europe in the wake of the Second World
War. As early as 1951, Fr. Lowrie Daly S. J. of St. Louis University initiated negotiations with the
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, which would lead to one of the largest microfilming projects of
its day and the creation of the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at St. Louis University.
Daly’s project was grounded in a desire to assure preservation of the precious Vatican manuscript
collections on the one hand, and, on the other, to facilitate access to manuscripts for North
American scholars (Krohn 1957: 317). The rise of microfilming technology had itself received
a significant boost during the Second World War by microfilm’s use for military correspondence
and in projects such as the Rockefeller-funded British Manuscripts Project borne out of concern
for preservation and/or access to British manuscript sources for American scholars during the
War (Born 1960: 353–4). It afforded unprecedented possibilities for “preservation” through
duplication, and, simultaneously, for access to manuscripts for North American scholars.
The St. Louis University initiative also served to foster the Jesuit university’s relationship
with the Vatican and its own reputation as a center of Catholic learning in the American Midwest.
The University of Notre Dame’s project to microfilm the collection of the Veneranda Biblioteca
Ambrosiana in Milan (itself damaged during Allied bombing during the War), was conceived
during a visit of the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Battista Montini (later Paul VI),
to the University of Notre Dame in 1960 (Smyth 1994: 221). This project played a significant
role in the plans of the then director of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, Astrik Gabriel, to
establish the international reputation of the Institute as a North American center for research
on medieval manuscripts and Catholic intellectual tradition. Once funds were secured from the
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National Science Foundation, filming of manuscripts began in 1962. Both projects illustrate how
European religious heritage was used, through new imaging technologies, to burnish American
religious and academic reputations and research.
Fr. Barry’s initiative at St. John’s University in 1964 should be understood as born out of a
like awareness of the devastation wrought by the Second World War to cultural heritage and
memory institutions in Europe and genuine concern about the risk of still greater destruction
during the Cold War, of a sense of an opportunity to facilitate North American scholarly access to
European manuscript sources, and of a friendly reputational rivalry among Midwestern Catholic
universities. The St. John’s project soon garnered the financial support of the Louis W., and Maud
Hill Family Foundation, and the intellectual backing of, among others, the Medieval Academy
of America. In contrast to the Vatican and Ambrosiana projects based on the collections of single
albeit substantial libraries, from the outset the Monastic Manuscript Project at St. John’s Abbey
ambitiously aimed to gather in a single repository images of monastic manuscripts from a large
number of libraries that are geographically scattered and often difficult to access. It was this
gathering in a single site of images of scattered sources of divergent dates, and contents, which
shared origins as manuscripts in a common religious tradition (Roman Catholic monasticism in
its various forms) that leant this heritage project its unique character.
Working in a Shared Milieu

After meeting with some initial resistance in Italy and Switzerland, the project leaders turned to
Austria, a neutral state located between the NATO countries and those of the Warsaw Pact, and one
where significant collections of manuscripts were still preserved in situ in monastic libraries, having
avoided the relocation of ecclesiastical collections to central repositories that occurred elsewhere in
Europe in the wake of nineteenth-century secularization. Convincing Austrian librarians to entrust
their collections to be photographed for a new project led by Americans less than twenty years after
the end of the Second World War was not, however, going to be an easy matter.
Three things appear to have been key in the project’s striking roots in their host country. First,
the shared religious and monastic culture of the American guests and the Austrian hosts: this
shared culture helped to nurture, or at least provide the ground for a sense of shared endeavor, and,
significantly, a feeling of joint ownership of the project that focused initially on monastic written
heritage.
Second, the appointment of Fr. Oliver Kapsner as the first field director in Austria in 1964 seems
to have been highly significant for the project’s initial success (Heintzelmann 2012). Kapsner
was born in a German-American farming family in Minnesota, and spoke German fluently: this
assisted in the building of trust. Further, as a monk Kapsner was highly trained: he had studied
philosophy, theology, and library sciences at numerous institutions including the University of
Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, and the Pontifical University of S. Anselmo in Rome, and
had served as Advisor to the Library of Congress for Theological Headings. During the Second
World War, Kapsner served as a US Army chaplain in Europe, and in its aftermath had attended
part of the Nuremberg Trials. In sum, with a German-American background, as a monk, scholar,
and librarian of considerable professional experience, and having a personal understanding of the
horrors of war, Kapsner shared a good deal in common with the communities with whom he was
to negotiate, and later work.
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The third key factor in the success of the project, and one which remains characteristic of
HMML initiatives around the world to this day, was the decision from the beginning to use and
support local technicians and expertise in work in the field in the various local repositories in
Austria. The organizational breakthrough would finally come in 1965, when a newly elected abbot
of the Abbey of Kremsmünster in Upper Austria welcomed his American confrere forthrightly
with the words: “Willkommen … Sie werden in Kremsmünster anfangen” (“Welcome … You will
begin your work in Kremsmünster”). The openness of this young abbot of the prominent Austrian
monastery to the microfilming project unlocked doors to libraries in other monastic houses across
Austria: first Benedictine, then Cistercian and Augustinian libraries signed agreements with the
project, and soon the team would be at work in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.
From there, their work would spread across Europe.
Transplants
Not all growth within a landscape is spurred by the natural connections endogenous to the ecosystem.
The next major turning point in the history of what was now known as the Monastic Manuscript
Microfilm Library, was to come serendipitously from outside the monastic networks. In the early
1970s, Walter Harrelson, a professor of Old Testament from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee,
approached the Library with the idea to microfilm manuscripts in Ethiopia. Obviously, Harrelson’s
interests did not lie in a shared Catholic monastic manuscript heritage. Rather, the professor’s
research centered on ancient texts that were later deemed non-canonical in Latin and Byzantine
religious traditions, but which had been preserved and transmitted in the living heritage of Ethiopian
liturgical practice, and manuscript production and use. Working with Harrelson, and the Ethiopian
Orthodox Patriarchate, HMML director Julian Plante secured start-up funding from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and in 1973 the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library was
founded; it now contains images of 8,000 Ethiopian manuscripts, the largest collection of its kind in
the world. Again, throughout the tumultuous circumstances of the civil war, HMML worked with
local technicians and scholars. In 1973, the project involved the philologist Getatchew Haile (†
2021), then associate professor at Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa. Having been forced
into exile for political reasons, Haile was appointed in 1976 to St. John’s University, where he would
contribute foundational scholarship on Ethiopic studies, and prepare catalog entries of over 6,000
Ethiopic manuscripts. In so doing, HMML committed not only to preservation-through-duplication,
but through research and teaching, fellowships, conferences, and publications, led by Ethiopian
scholars, it supported a sustainable environment of on-going learning by African and international
scholars of Ethiopic languages, art, and religious thought and practice. If images of Ethiopia’s
Christian manuscript culture were transplanted to an American Catholic Midwestern abbey, care
was taken to ensure that the indigenous environment of learning in which these manuscripts live was
not only supported in the host institution, but also nurtured, despite the not inconsiderable diplomatic
tensions that existed between the various political and ecclesiastical parties involved.
Becoming Part of a New Heritage Environment

From this first step outside the original focus on monastic Latin Christianity in western
European contexts, has grown HMML’s Eastern Christian Manuscript Collection, built in
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collaboration with over seventy diverse religious communities, and containing images from
more than 75,000 manuscripts from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. The
broadening of the religious scope of the collection in Ethiopia also went beyond the written
cultures of Eastern Christianities. Initially less by design than by fortuitous coincidence, the
microfilming of manuscripts in Ethiopia led to the inclusion of Islamic manuscripts in the
collection for the first time. The actions of the Library for collaborative preservation, and
scholarship of the written heritage of non-Western and non-Christian cultures, reflecting
both their specificities and their complex exchanges would grow significantly in the ensuing
decades.
First, even as work continued in projects in Europe—notably the development from 1973
of the Malta Study Centre focusing on both the preservation and conservation manuscripts in
Malta and to foster the study of the manuscripts and archives of this center of Mediterranean
cross-cultural exchange—HMML’s attention increasingly turned to at-risk collections in the
Middle East, an important focus of Fr. Columba Stewart’s tenure as Executive Director since
2003 (Geary 2019; Peede 2019). As technology shifted to digital reproduction, a digital studio
was opened at the Antiochene Greek Orthodox Monastery of Our Lady of Balamand in Lebanon
in 2003, in an increasingly tense political situation, just days before the US invasion of Iraq. The
Library’s work as a memory institution supporting the work of communities employing written
heritage as a means of remembrance and survival, already begun in Ethiopia, was extended
with a project to digitize surviving manuscripts of Armenian and Syriac Christian communities
devastated by the 1915–22 massacres in Turkey. Since 2009, Fr. Stewart and the Director of
Field Operations in the Middle East Walid Mourad have worked extensively on the ground
with Iraqi Christians to digitize their community’s manuscript collections. These precious
manuscripts were often hidden or spirited away by individuals at considerable personal risk, in
order to preserve them, and their community’s heritage from the threat of destruction by Islamist
extremists.
Not always have the initiatives to work in and with heritage communities across sometimes
tense religious lines been prompted by external threat, however. Indeed, by Fr. Stewart’s account,
an important expansion of the scope of the Library’s focus, was prompted in 2013, by a chance
conversation between the Middle East Field Director and friends and acquaintances in the Old
City of Jerusalem (Stewart 2019). Mourad had been recounting the work of HMML to digitize the
collections of the Syrian Orthodox monastery of St. Mark, in Jerusalem. His friends, members of
the al-Budeiri family who lived just a few minutes’ walk from the monastery, listened carefully,
before replying, “Well, what about us? We have a library too!”
Thus began HMML’s collaboration to digitize and make accessible one of the most important
family libraries of Old Jerusalem, the al-Budeiri Library, founded in the eighteenth century by the
Jerusalemite sharif, Sheikh Budeir (1747–1805), and containing approximately 900 manuscripts,
some as early as the twelfth century, and the first project to preserve, reproduce, and make
accessible, Islamic sources set up as such. As was the case among monastic networks in Austria
in 1965, earning the trust of one important local written heritage institution led to an expansion
of trust within the Muslim communities in Jerusalem. HMML would, in turn, undertake the
digitization of the Islamic collections of the Khalidi Library, the Dar Issaf Nashashibi Library,
and the library of the Uzbek Cultural Centre in Jerusalem, al-Zāwiyah al-Uzbakīyah, containing
manuscripts in Persian and Turkic.
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Collaborative Safeguarding
Having gained an international reputation as a trusted partner working across cultures and
religious traditions, and with experience in working with at-risk collections, sometimes in active
conflict zones, HMML began to be actively approached by organizations and communities facing
violent threats to their survival. In 2011, the Library received a substantial grant from the Arcadia
Fund, dedicated to the preservation of endangered cultural heritage and ecosystems, and to the
promotion of access to knowledge. On the strength of this funding, the Library was able to
formalize an agreement to work with the Malian NGO Sauvegarde et valorisation des manuscrits
pour la défense de la culture islamique (SAVAMA-DCI). Together, they would work to digitize
manuscripts that had been evacuated from Timbuktu to Bamako by the librarians of Timbuktu,
when Timbuktu briefly fell under the control of Tuareg rebels of the National Movement of
Azawad and the Salafi jihadist group Ansar Dine in 2012.
In these, and other projects, in which Library’s assistance is sought, HMML continues to
depend on and support local expertise and knowledge, as partners and coworkers with the
heritage communities to whom the manuscripts belong, whose past and living heritage they
represent and preserve. The manuscripts of Timbuktu, for instance, potentially numbering more
than 250,000 in total, are being digitized by young Malians, many of whom themselves, like the
manuscripts they evacuated, had to flee Timbuktu in order to escape violence and kidnapping
during the extremist occupation. Here, and in other danger zones, the digitization project
provides equipment, training, and ongoing support, guided by the local field worker, in order
to facilitate the communities’ own initiatives of preservation of their own written heritage. By
means of digital copies of manuscripts, and the generous support of training and scholarship,
control of the process is resolutely shared, and access can be preserved to manuscripts that have
been destroyed, lost, or sold into private hands, in the turmoil and desperation that attend war and
violent political upheaval. Not infrequently, lost manuscripts have been able to be identified on
the basis of HMML images, and returned to their former owners; in this way HMML serves not
only as a repository of images and point of access for the study of manuscript cultures but also
as an instrument for the restoration of the manuscripts to the communities to which they belong.
Seven Tenets for Trust-Building between Religious Written Heritage

Communities
Can some general guidelines be distilled from this remarkably successful ongoing collaborative
initiative? Leaving aside divine providence, and traditional monastic economic savvy, what has
been characteristic of HMML’s approach, from the beginning of the project in the 1960s to the
working with Muslim heritage communities in Mali, is the establishing of a bedrock of mutual
trust between heritage communities. But how exactly is that trust to be built? In an interview
I conducted with Fr. Stewart in 2021, the current director shared his knowledge and recollections
of the ways in which HMML has developed, and his own insights into the tenets that guide
the institution (see also Stewart 2019). What follows are my own paraphrases of what emerged
from that conversation: what we might term the heritage principles of HMML, which show the
relevance of monastic tradition for the work of the modern global and interreligious heritage
institution.
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Respect
First, it should always be clear that the parties are entering into conversation on the basis of
profound respect, especially when a North American, or European memory institution is
approaching a community in another cultural and political context.
Monastic Ecumenism
Religious affiliation need not be seen as a barrier to effective intra- and interreligious collaboration.
Quite the contrary. Often, Fr. Stewart notes, the monastic habit, and the monastic foundations of
HMML, have been advantageous inasmuch as they have served to communicate wordlessly to
the religious community’s partners a foundational mutual respect—across religious traditions
and often in the midst of and despite the political tensions that lie between the countries in
which the heritage institutions are based. Between diverse Christian communities, this may be so
because monasticism antedates many of the splinterings that have occurred since late antiquity.
In HMML’s work with communities that are not Christian, the Christian monastic habit and ethos
are often, Stewart notes, perceived as the very personification of “not-for-profit.”
Values beyond Preservation, Extraction, Consumption

In the case of HMML, a strong groundedness in a premodern monastic tradition that places a
high value on written heritage has helped to reduce potential fears of foreign exploitative heritage
extraction. At the same time, the monastic foundation of HMML’s on-going work has suggested
to many partners inside and outside Europe both a respect for traditional/premodern ways of
knowing, and a native ability to understand the identity-related heritage value of a community’s
written tradition. This has helped HMML to avoid a preemptive suspicion that an American-
funded university-linked project would necessarily benefit only its host institution, a clear danger
of some early photographic reproduction projects.
Dependence on Local Networks, Expertise, and Partnerships

Fundamentally, trust is nurtured between heritage communities and institutions by concrete
practices. From the earliest days, HMML has worked with and in local networks, and has supported
local needs and aims with funding, training, equipment, local expertise, and technicians. Local
project managers are, Fr. Stewart underlines, absolutely crucial, not only for the practical matters
of ground-knowledge but also to interpret, mediate, and build trust between the heritage partners
in both directions. These local managers are the ones who do the real work.
Listening and Hospitality

Fr. Stewart associates the foundational trust-building inherent in HMML’s approach to written
heritage conservation with the Benedictine disciplines of listening and hospitality. The former is
underlined in the first words of the monastic Rule of Benedict—“Listen, o my son!”. It fosters
a special attentiveness to what the heritage partner is saying (and not saying), and a willingness
to allow oneself to be transformed by that communication. The latter, which is embodied in
the Benedictine monastic emphasis on welcoming and taking care of guests, is supported at
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the Abbey of St. John by the provision of funding, accommodation, training opportunities,
learning tools, and support to enable nourish students, scholars, and collaborators from around
the world and across religious and cultural traditions to spend time at the Library. These stays
inevitably transform the heritage institution itself, and are intended to do so. In the field, however,
the monastic discipline of being transformed by one’s guests has been inverted, such that the
HMML team itself practices being the guest, dependent on the hospitality of its host heritage
communities, for whom it must demonstrate respect, and on whom it depends. The approach-as-
guest helps to bridge the cultural, linguistic, and religious gaps between memory institutions and
across religious boundaries, and serves to establish a relationship of hospitable codependence
and collaboration in the interreligious and intercultural heritage project.
Stability: Trusting the Resources of the Local Heritage Community

I would add one further monastic discipline that I believe has led to the strength of the project,
and may serve as a model even for those of us in heritage work who are not monks: stability
of place. In Benedictine tradition, monks take a vow of stability of place (stabilitas loci), by
means of which they bind themselves not only to the monastic order but also to the particular
monastery where they take their vows. It may seem odd to refer to this very site-constrained
discipline for a project that has from the outset entailed monks spending a great deal of time in
airplanes, and which has extended from Minnesota to Europe to eventually become truly global
in scope. Central to the vow of stability, however, is the trust that a particular community, with
all of its limitations and imperfections, is enough: it is in this community, after all, that, for the
monk, the divine will be revealed. We may perhaps translate this principle as follows: growth
is not premised on constantly looking for some better resource, or in extracting resources to
add them to one’s own pile. Rather, sustainable growth lies respecting and dealing realistically
with the local resources where one is. In this frame of monastic discipline, working with local
expertise, becoming part of what we might term the local heritage ecosystem takes on a still
deeper significance.
Ecosystemic Thinking about Heritage and Challenges on the Horizon

Two things stand out in Fr. Stewart’s account of his own first experience of the Benedictine
Abbey of St. John in Collegeville, in the summer of 1980. First, he recalls, he was welcomed by
“a community of a common purpose,” who accepted him, and could use his talents as a young
scholar within it, not least at St. John’s University, located on the abbey’s grounds. Second,
he was struck by the beautiful environment of which the abbey forms a part, with its lakes
and trails, its calling loons, and a certain quality of silence, brushed still through the leaves of
the surrounding forests and the vast monastery lands in which the abbey is nestled. Given the
bucolic and monastic setting of the library, and his own love of the outdoors, it is perhaps not
surprising to regularly hear the word “ecosystem” on Fr. Columba’s lips when he describes both
the work of HMML today, and the complex intellectual and cultural exchanges between religious
communities in the past, exchanges expressed in and facilitated by manuscripts.
There is, however, something more radical in Fr. Columba’s use of the term “ecosystem” to
describe the work of a memory institution than mere situational or recreational allusion would
imply. As Françoise Choay has argued, in many respects, the origin and history of heritage as
241
a concept and practice, is, in fact, directly opposed to such interconnection. Bound up with the
identification, imposition, and defense of distance (“la prise de distance”) the heritage object as
such was born in fourteenth-century Italy in the moment in which objects of classical antiquity
were safely placed on the isolating pedestal of (élite) history, artistic value, or conservational
need (Choay 2007: 25–48). Thus elevated and decontextualized, heritage monuments were easily
turned into objects to be acquired, and instrumentalized in displays of individual and collective
power. With an approach that anticipated foundational aspirations of the 2005 Framework
Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe 2005) regarding
heritage’s role in social inclusion, HMML has approached its work, from the outset, as a fellow
participant in an interdependent heritage ecosystem, thereby breaking with this long and, it must
be said, persistent tradition, of isolation, objectification, and instrumentalization of heritage.
Its practices favor resourceful connection rather than instrumentalizing distance, and mutually
dependent exchange rather than separation, and extraction.
It should be noted that this is not the only approach taken to cultural heritage that employs
the notion of “ecosystem” as a guiding principle. The publication of the United Nations’
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005) has recently stimulated widespread scholarly
and policy-maker interest in what has been called “Ecosystem Services” (Høllelaand, Skrede,
and Holmgaard 2017). The term describes the many services that ecosystems provide for human
beings, from supporting services (such as nutrient cycling), to provisioning services (e.g., food
and fuel), regulating services (e.g., climate regulation, disease regulation, and water purification),
and “cultural services” such as aesthetic, spiritual, educational, and recreational services supplied
by the ecosystem.
The term “ecosystem services” was first developed in the 1980s, in part to raise awareness
of the need for the protection of ecosystems (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981; Ehrlich and Mooney
1983), and to provide a means for developing a framework for the identification, valuation,
and management of theses “services.” In practice, it has proven challenging, however, to
appraise “Cultural [Ecosystem] Services” within this framework. Not only is it often unclear,
for instance, how precisely material cultural heritage fits into the ecosystem—in service of it,
part of it, or as benefiting from it—but also, this approach implies that cultural systems are
derivative of ecological services, whereas ecologies are themselves the products of a long history
of cultural modification. Graham Fairclough has advocated for a cultural-systems approach to
the environment, in line with the Faro Convention’s emphasis on the social value of heritage
(Council of Europe 2005) according to which heritage and landscape are understood “as drivers
not receptors, and human beings as a core part of the ecosystem, not as impacts on it” (Fairclough
2012: 10). This approach to heritage ecosystems is, it seems to me, in line with HMML’s own
monastic inspired, collaborative approach to sustainable, living, written heritage preservation
grounded in mutual interreligious respect.
The adoption of digital technologies, now central to HMML’s work with written heritage
communities around the world, both in situ, and at the Research Centre in Minnesota, is raising
new possibilities and new ethical questions for the digital ecosystem (Manžuch 2017). On
the one hand, local access to images of a heritage community’s own written resources can be
facilitated to an unprecedented degree by HMML’s platforms. On the other, the provision of
stable access to the internet itself and to the skills to use the resources provided, is unequally
distributed within local heritage communities. Secondly, it remains a challenge to involve diverse
242
community members in the selection of heritage items, the determining of relevant metadata, in
the development of information systems and maintenance processes, in such a way as to respect
the heritage communities as equal partners in digitization, in what Gilliland and McKemmish
have called a “participatory archive” (Gilliland and McKemmish 2014). Michele Pickover has
reminded us that, even with good intentions, foreign funders of digitization projects influence the
interpretation of the digitized content, in a way that may marginalize the interests and voices of
the very heritage communities they are attempting to support (Pickover 2014). HMML will need
to continue to face these real challenges. Its ecosystemic thinking will help it to do so.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the executive director of HMML, Fr. Columba Stewart, for his
generous willingness to be interviewed in preparation for this article, on October 4, 2021. The
author was recipient of a Heckman Stipend in 2012 and undertook research at HMML in June–
July of the same year.
References
Born, L. K. (1960), “History of Microform Activity,” Library Trends 8 (3): 348–58.
Choay, F. (2007), L’allégorie du patrimoine. Paris: Seuil.
Council of Europe (2005), “Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society.” CETS
No. 199. http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/199.htm (accessed June 1, 2022).
Coleman, B. (ed.) (1990), A Sense of Place II: The Benedictines of Collegeville.
Collegeville: Liturgical Press.
Ehrlich, P. R., and A. H. Ehrlich (1981), Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearances
of Species. New York: Random House.
Ehrlich, P. R., and H. A. Mooney (1983), “Extinction, Substitution, and Ecosystem Services,” BioScience
33 (4): 248–54.
Fairclough, G. (2012), “The Value of Heritage for the Future,” in D. Ünsal (ed.), Heritage in Society.
Cultural Policy and Management (KPY) Yearbook 3, 34–41. Istanbul: Bilgi University Press.
Geary, P. J. (2019), “A Monk of the Secular Age,” Humanities 40 (40): 28–31.
Gilliland, A. J., and S. McKemmish, “The Role of Participatory Archives in Furthering Human Rights,
Reconciliation and Recovery,” Atlanti 24 (1): 79–88. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/346521tf
Heintzelmann, M. (2012), “Father Oliver Kapsner, OSB (1902–1991): A Life in Libraries,” Theological
Librarianship 5 (1): 4–6.
Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (n.d.), “History.” https://hmml.org/about/history/ (accessed April
1, 2022).
Hølleland, H., J. Skrede, and S. B. Holmgaard (2017), “Cultural Heritage and Ecosystem Services: A
Literature Review,” Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 19: 210–37.
Krohn, E. C. (1957), “Music in the Vatican Library at St Louis University,” Notes 14 (3): 317–24.
Manžuch, Z. (2017), “Ethical Issues in the Digitization of Cultural Heritage,” Journal of Contemporary
Archival Studies 4 (2), article 4. https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol4/iss2/4 (accessed June
1, 2022).
MEA (2005), Ecosystems and Human Well-Being Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. http://www.
millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf (accessed June 1, 2022).
Minoui, D. (2021), “Hunting for Books in the Ruins: How Syria’s Rebel Librarians Found Hope.”
Guardian, March 16. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/mar/16/words-have-the-power-to-heal-
syrias-rebel-librarians (accessed June 1, 2022).
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Peede, J. P. (2019), “Becoming Columba,” Humanities 40 (4): 10–13, 49–54.

Pickover, M. (2014), “Patrimony, Power and Politics: Selecting, Constructing and Preserving Digital
Heritage Content in South Africa and Africa,” IFLA Lyon 2014. http://library.ifla.org/id/epr
int/1023/1/138-pickover-en.pdf (accessed June 1, 2022).
Smyth, M. (1994), “The Medieval Institute Library: A Brief History,” in M. Gleason and K. J. Blackstead
(eds.), What Is Written Remains: Historical Essays on the Libraries of Notre Dame, 211–29. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Stewart, C. (2019), “Cultural Heritage Present and Future: A Benedictine Monk’s Long View.” 2019
Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Washington, DC, October 7. https://www.youtube.com/embed/s-
kcZ50nn5M (accessed June 1, 2022).
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PART II
Heritage between Religion

and the Secular
246
246
247
Religious Communities and Their Heritage in

Secularizing Societies
248
248
249
Challenge
Chapter 26
Challenges for Religious Communities and

Their Heritage in Secularizing Societies
BECKY CLARK
Challenge
To the incumbent the church is a workshop; to the antiquary it is

a relic. To the parish it is a utility; to the outsider a luxury. How to
unite these incompatibles?
—Thomas Hardy, Memories of Church Restoration (1906)
This quotation comes from a speech that Thomas Hardy gave to the Society for the Protection
of Ancient Buildings in England in 1906. Hardy is most famous as an English author and poet,
but he also trained as an architect and served in Arthur Blomfield’s practice, working on many
churches. Hardy did not believe that restoring churches in the Victorian fashion with a high
level of intervention was at all the right approach (Cannon 2014: 202). He was concerned that
restoration too often led to a loss of continuity of tradition and memory. Hardy’s question is still
relevant today. How do we recognize and reconcile the many different ways that people see and
value religious heritage—the buildings, the art, the intangible practices of rituals, and memories?
In this chapter, I would like to sketch a provisional answer from my perspective as the former
director of churches and cathedrals for the Church of England.
To begin, we must recognize that, unlike Hardy, we are seeking answers in a world that is
increasingly disinterested in religion. Between 2014 and 2017, the Pew Research Centre carried
out interviews in thirty-four European countries. They asked people to describe their religious
adherence by four factors: religious service attendance, prayer frequency, belief in God, and self-
described importance of religion in one’s life. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of variation, with
“Central and Eastern Europeans more likely than Western Europeans to be highly religious. …
Meanwhile, only about one-in-ten people in Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom qualify
as highly religious by these criteria” (Evans and Baronavski 2018). The attitude to religion
appears to have a direct bearing on religious heritage. As societies move at varying speeds toward
more secular belief structures, places of religious observance have been increasingly defined
as “heritage” and “culture.” The challenges and opportunities of religious heritage are directly
related to secularization—it could even be argued that in some ways they were invented by it.
249
Therefore, the views of “secular” people and partners are as important, if not more so, as those of
the religious groups who may feel they should have the loudest voice in deciding what happens
to their religious heritage.
Two aspects are important here. First, secularization is not a single vector. While in some
parts of Europe a general move away from organized religion can be seen as a consequence of
gradually changing societal circumstances, in other areas programs of deliberate oppression and
destruction of religion and all its artifacts are part of very recent history. Dealing with deliberate
ruination presents very different questions about current treatment and preservation than a site
that simply is not used anymore. For example, the work of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage
has identified over 3,300 pre-Second World War synagogue sites, of which less than a quarter are
currently functioning synagogues (Foundation for Jewish Heritage n.d.). The reason for this loss,
the horrors of the Holocaust, pogroms, and deliberate annihilation, is so widely different from a
neglected rural chapel in the Italian countryside that a completely different set of principles of
conservation and tools of engagement is needed. Similarly, in areas where particular faiths, or
faith in general, were repressed or persecuted, the cultural impact of preserving religious heritage
has a different flavor.
Second, demographic changes have a significant impact on religious heritage. In many areas
of Europe, the populations who would have traditionally used and maintained religious traditions
and buildings have moved away. To give an example from the UK, the Church of England cares
for the largest single block of historic buildings in the country: 16,000 churches, of which 12,500
are protected under heritage legislation—known as “listing.” In 2015, the Church commissioned
the “Church Buildings Review” to look at how changes in patterns of attendance and use of
buildings was affecting our ability to care for and maintain this huge inheritance. It conveyed that
the way churches are managed cannot stay as it has always been. Over 57 percent of churches
are in rural areas, where only 17 percent of the population now lives. Nearly 91 percent of
rural churches are listed, compared with 63 percent in suburban areas and 55 percent in urban
areas. The general population moving toward cities disproportionately affects highly significant
historic English churches. The Church of England is responsible for around 45 percent of the
grade I listed buildings (the highest category of protection) in England and almost three-quarters
of these are in rural areas (Inge 2015).
Maintenance of church buildings directly relates to the challenge of funding. The question of
how faith groups fund the care of their religious buildings is a problematic one. Some groups
take on the whole responsibility themselves, but this not infrequently leads to poor levels of
maintenance. Many rely on congregational giving and other philanthropy. Additionally, faith
groups have looked to the state for help. Governments—local, regional, national, and, where
applicable, the EU—take very different attitudes to how religious heritage should be cared for.
In the UK, the government has no formal, ongoing role in funding any religious buildings apart
from a very small set of Church of England churches, closed for formal worship and cared for
by the Churches Conservation Trust, a national charity that works closely with the Department
for Culture. Instead, the government finds various short-term ways to provide funding, in
particular for capital repairs. Religious heritage helps to deliver other government priorities—
generating income at beautiful tourist sites, providing social services at places of worship, giving
work to skilled craftspeople via the repairs to historic places of worship, and preventing rising
unemployment. It is a delicate and largely unwritten code of interaction, to mutual benefit. From
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Challenges for Religious Communities and Their Heritage
the perspective of church organizations, however, money is, frankly, never enough. There are
always more repairs needed than can be funded this way, and the unpredictability of available
sources is a big challenge to proper planning.
By contrast, France has a very different model; government funding of religious groups was
outlawed in 1905 by the same law that made all religious buildings property of the state and local
governments, available for free to the community to use (Légifrance 2021). However, ownership
here does not come with the requirement of care, and many religious buildings in France still
suffer from lack of repair and maintenance. Norway is in the process of formally disestablishing
church from state and is proposing a sizable endowment to enable the continued care of historic
church buildings (those of other faiths are not specifically included). Each country has its own
arrangements, some more interventive than others.
In addition to the reliance on state funding, the will and energy of people are also vital for
keeping a church building in existence. Not just for fundraising, where that might be necessary,
but also to avoid the “fate worse than death”—a historic building with no community. The Covid-
19 pandemic has shown how a sense of community can be established with people far and away,
through technology. In the UK more than 20,000 services and other online events were made
available between March 2020 and February 2021. The Archbishop of York described it as “a
digital coming of age” while at the same time saying “of course we long to meet in person”
(The Church of England 2021). Many churches have reported that they have more people
participating in online services than they used to meet in person during church events. Attending
online worship is not the same as caring for religious heritage, of course, but the Covid-19 crisis
has shown that technology is a source of genuine human connection and that people who have
an interest in religion—however tentative—will engage through it. The lockdowns and social
distancing during the pandemic have forced churches to explore options through digital tools. It
has broadened their horizons in establishing new modes of connection between those affiliated
to the church sites. The notion of community moved beyond the physical site of the church,
significantly changing the nature of encounters but remaining valuable and worthwhile for those
participating.
Religious buildings are often a focus for identity and place-making. What happens in a
place of worship, what is allowed, both conceptually and in reality, can make or break a place.
The theological beliefs of the religious group will often dictate which of the different types of
uses is an option at all. Many branches of the Catholic Church, for example, will not permit
complementary or alternative uses, as these are seen to breach the sanctity of the space. Within
the Church of England using the church building for additional, especially community-led work,
is encouraged. For example, in Peterchurch, in the Diocese of Hereford, the church has become
a center of community life by first providing the venue for a children’s center, then, after that
closed, opening a café and food market. It addresses issues of social poverty, the need for public
services, and the desire of the people who live there to keep the church open. In St. James, West
Hampstead, in the Diocese of London, the chancel remains a sacred space for worship and prayer.
The nave holds the local post office, a café, and a children’s play area. Most English cathedrals
have a shop and café, some even inside the main cathedral building itself.
What is the impact of either allowing or not allowing these sorts of expanded uses of
religious heritage buildings? Encouraging community use increases feelings of ownership of
religious heritage and, therefore, a commitment to protecting and even funding it. Voluntary
251
support associations, such as friend groups operating within the Church of England, can be
entirely secular, but they also play on the appreciation of the benefits of a particular religious
building for its wider community. The converse argument is that by allowing many different
uses and groups into religious heritage spaces, the sanctity that they possess is lost. Charging
for entry is often a particularly controversial subject; in England, only eight cathedrals (and
Westminster Abbey) charge tourists for entry and two (Chester and Coventry) have recently
stopped charging out of principle. Someone who wanted to pray quietly and found their church,
for example, being used for school dance practice or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, could
well feel the primary purpose of the building had been forgotten in a rush to give new relevance
to what some see as an outdated organization. Yet, often these extra uses are needed to keep the
church alive as a communal site. Mutuality and interdependence are about the way that religious
communities relate to non-religious ones, locally, nationally, and internationally. Partnerships
show that religious heritage can continue to capture the imagination and give space to different
communities.
As a national church organization, we cannot rely on awareness of religious stories, or on fond
childhood memories. More and more people across Europe are growing up with no religious
background at all. In light of increasing secularization, the way we manage our religious heritage
cannot stay as it has always been. This means that there should be an assumption that the things
a community needs—a place of gathering; services such as post offices, local shops, citizens
advice, and child care; the opportunity to get to know one another—could just as much take place
in religious heritage buildings as elsewhere. In the middle ages there are records of churches
being used for everything from livestock markets to ale festivals. Churches were quite literally at
the center of life. The sacred and the secular lived alongside one another. Historically, churches
have not only been places of worship, but functioned more broadly as a community center. There
is no reason, in my view, why this dynamic cannot be translated into contemporary practices of
shared usage by people of all faiths and none.
References
Cannon, B. (2014), ‘“The True Meaning of the Word Restoration’: Architecture and Obsolescence in Jude
the Obscure,” Victorian Studies 56 (2): 201–24.
Evans, J., and Baronvaski, C (2018), “How do European Countries Differ in Religious Commitment?
Use Our Interactive Map to Find Out.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/
fact-tank/2018/12/05/how-do-european-countries-differ-in-religious[1]-commitment/ (accessed
January 5, 2022).
Foundation for Jewish Heritage. (n.d.), “Mapping the Historic Synagogues of Europe.” https://www.foun
dationforjewishheritage.com/historic-synagogues-of-europe (accessed January 5, 2022).
Inge, J. (2015), Report of the Church Buildings Review Group. London: Church of England. http://www.
hrballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/church_buildings_review_report_2015.pdf (accessed
January 5, 2022).
Légifrance (2021), “Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Eglises et de l’Etat.” https://
www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/LEGITEXT000006070169/ (accessed August 26, 2021).
The Church of England (2021), “Millions Join Worship Online as Churches Bring Services into the Home
in Pandemic Year.” Press release. https://www.churchofengland.org/news-and-media/news-releases/
millions-join-worship-online-churches-bring-services-home-pandemic (accessed May 16, 2021).
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Analysis
Chapter 27
The Role of Religion in Rural Heritage and

Memorial Culture
JACOBINE GELDERLOOS
Analysis
Introduction
Hellum lies in the rural north-eastern part of the Netherlands.1 It is a village of c. 600 inhabitants,
there are no shops, but there are some businesses, farms, a village hall, and a church. The village
feels the effects of an ageing population; in 2016, the school had to close, because there were
not enough pupils. Increasing mobility has also changed rural life, since a large part of many
people’s lives now takes place outside the village. They live in Hellum and go elsewhere for
their work, shopping, social contacts, and cultural activities. This means that village life becomes
fragmented. Still, the overlap between various circles of family, friends, and local associations
ties the village community together. There is a choir, a theatrical society, and a cultural committee
that aims to broaden the function of the Walfridus church. It was built in the eleventh century as a
Catholic church, but after the Reformation all Catholic elements were removed and the building
became a Protestant church.
Secularization and decline of institutionalized religion is noticeable in Hellum. The
congregation is ageing and shrinking, which led the church council to seek cooperation with
neighboring churches. The church community is part of a multi-parish ministry, consisting of
four villages, who share one part-time clergyman and work together in one church council.
Church life is regionalizing, which affects its relationship with the village. From the c. 520
church members, 30–60 people gather on a typical Sunday in one of the four village churches.
This means that the church is used once or twice per month for worship, while a large part of the
church life takes place elsewhere. This raises the question: what should happen to the medieval
church building?
It might seem that the old church plays a marginal role in Hellum. However, on closer
observation it becomes clear, firstly, that the medieval church building remains important in
village life. Churchgoers and villagers together maintain the church yard and the cemetery
and 75 percent of the villagers support the church financially. The sextons, employed by the
congregation, say that they need the village for the preservation of the medieval building. And
the village needs the church to hold social and cultural activities. Secondly, village life is not
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entirely devoid of religiosity. During my PhD research, I discovered a “religious village life,”
which encompasses on the one hand Christian feasts, such as Christmas celebrations in schools,
replacing the traditional Christmas service and Good Friday concerts. People who visit Good
Friday concerts say, “That is what Easter is to me.” On the other hand, there are memorial
practices to remember deceased loved ones and to commemorate the victims of the Second World
War. We see here a development that is reflected in Dutch society more broadly. Despite rapid
secularization, ritual repertoires are shifting to spaces outside the walls of the church, especially
in the field of remembrance and life rituals (Tonnaer 2010: 154).
Although ritual repertoires are developing outside the ecclesial domain, I also observed
that some of these repertoires actually are brought back within the walls of church buildings
(Gelderloos 2018: 297). Memorial events, such as the yearly commemoration of villagers
who died, are visited by many villagers out of respect and because they value the moment
of contemplation. Religious repertoires, such as rituals and music, are recurring in memorial
practices. Although most villagers are not regular churchgoers, they tend to visit Christmas and
Easter celebrations. They also feel a responsibility to keep the church building alive, as part of
the historic-cultural heritage of the village, as a place for reflection and contemplation or for
aesthetic reasons. From this, it would seem that religious village life is rooted in memorial culture
on the one hand and in the heritagization of religion on the other.
As a theologian I am wondering what the role and meaning is of Christian religion in this
religious village life. Does the heritagization of religion reduce religious places and repertoires
to cultural-historic objects with only decorative meaning? To what extent is memorial culture
able to function as a substitute for church life? To answer these questions, I will analyze
two moments in the religious village life of Hellum. Firstly, the Remembrance service to
commemorate the Second World War, a secular gathering in the village church. Secondly, the
performance of the Helmster Easter Play, which revisits the medieval history of the village.
Firstly, however, I will explore several developments in the fields of religion, heritage, and
memorial culture.
Religion and Memorial: Fields of Practice in Transition

In a differentiated society, people are constantly moving around in various fields of practice,
such as education, care, sport, and culture. These fields are not isolated; multiple fields of
practice intersect with each other in any given social space. According to Piere Bourdieu, a field
of practice
demarcates an interrelated network of social positions that different
agents (people, organisations, institutions) can take up in different
ways. Within a field of practice certain rules (doxa) are followed
that are not explicit and codified. People conform their behaviour
to these social norms and can also work creatively with and
from these norms creating new strategies of thought and action.”
(Bourdieu 2000: 11, 182–8)
It is worthwhile to investigate how, in the fields of religion, memorial, and heritage, new
repertoires and discourses are developing where crossover takes place between the fields.
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The Role of Religion in Rural Heritage and Memorial Culture
Church and Religious Life

The general attitude toward church and religion has changed drastically in the last decades.
Dechurching leads to a marginalization and regionalization of ecclesial life, raising practical
questions about the future of congregations and empty-standing church buildings (Bisseling 2011;
Gelderloos 2012). Processes of secularization and individualization have social consequences.
People tend to believe without belonging to a church, they shape their own vision on life and
society (Davie 2002: 5). And when people are churchgoing, they do not necessarily visit a church
in the village where they live. This means that villagers relate to the village church in various ways.
Theologian David Walker distinguishes between belonging through people, activities, events,
and places (Walker 2012, 2017). People can feel connected with the church through the bond
they have with the community. Second, participation in regular activities enhances the feeling of
involvement. Third, it also occurs that people feel connected with the church through incidental
events, such as weddings, funerals, Christmas services, and village gatherings, which form the
backbone of religious village life. Finally, even when people hardly ever visit the church, they
often attribute meaning to the church building. In the religious village life, the church building is
meaningful to the community as an historic place, important for the identity of the village, and
experienced as a non-ordinary, sacred space. In Hellum, a secular village foundation Helmster
Klokkenluiders organizes cultural activities in the church building, because they wish “the church
to become alive.” A board member explains:
We would like the church to become a building where people
who don’t come for a worship service do want to enter. The first
time people come for the music, which happens to be inside the
church. We hope that gradually the church will come to belong
to everyone—that would be beautiful—so that when the church
community disappears, the church can continue. If you want to
maintain such a building for the community, you need more
visitors and more people who say: “I want to organize something
in that church.”
It seems that by continuation of the church the foundation refers to the upkeep of the church
building and the social-cultural function of the church. The committee seems ambivalent about
the religious function of the church; they want to avoid organizing religious activities, but at the
same time they do not want the building to be reduced to a decorative background, because this
denigrates the sacrality of the building.
Although religion is individualizing and tends to be localized in the private sphere, there
is an increase of ritual practices in the public sphere. According to Danièle Hervieu Léger
secularization has led “to a fragmentation of religion across an array of specialized spheres
and institutions.” She states that because of the deinstitutionalization of religion, traditional
religious institutions are faced with the challenge “to give serious attention to the flexible
nature of believing as it affects them” (Hervieu-Léger 2000: 33, 168). We have seen that even
though the Protestant church in Hellum is marginalizing as an institution and as a community,
many villagers visit the church around Christmas and in times of personal or community crisis,
such as funerals and Remembrance Day. These are important moments for ritual, community
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building, and meaning-making. Sociologist Nancy Ammerman points out that people still
search for and create places where sacred consciousness is socially created and sustained.
With the concept of sacred consciousness, Ammerman brings into view religious practices in
everyday life, which shape people’s lives and give meaning to them. It enables us to see the
presence of religion in places and situations that are also secular, such as work, health, family,
and politics. In these fields “actions, relationships, motives and meanings” can be recognized
as religious, because they carry a “more than ordinary dimension.” This more than ordinary
dimension comes in various forms: it can be found in the “awesomeness of nature, the ideal of
an inner self, the call of a meaningful life or the value of the bonds between people.” According
to Ammerman this “consciousness of transcendence and the recognition of a sacred dimension
that goes beyond the ordinary” is of fundamental importance to how people see and attribute
meaning to the world around them (Ammerman 2014: 292–3, 298–9). It seems to me that
churches can feed the sustenance of sacred consciousness, while at the same time they question
what is held sacred.
Memorial Culture and Heritage

Memorial culture is one of those areas where rituals are emerging and religious practices are
being reinvented. Judith Tonnaer observes that “in new ways people are seeking to connect the
sacred and profane dimensions of their existence” (Tonnaer 2010: 54). Whereas earlier people
went to church for life events such as weddings and funerals, they are now creating new ritual
repertoires. There is a desire for belonging and collective ritual around disasters and national
festivities, which leads to national solidarity, intercultural fraternization, and informal help and
support, a kind of stand-by solidarity (De Hart and Dekker 2006: 158). This could be described
as civil religion: events that bring people together around a communal source of inspiration
that generates enthusiasm, such as football matches, memorials, and royal weddings (Lukken
1999: 192). According to Inez Schippers the “civil sacred refers to places and objects that are
named sacred by groups of people not because of their connection to the divine, but rather because
of their relationship with worldly institutions and natural processes” (Schippers 2015: 57). Civil
religion seems to form an alternative to traditional religion as a social binder, because it has
the ability to encompass several groups. Churches also participate in this field, offering rituals,
concepts, and narratives to interpret events (Bernts and Berghuijs 2016: 41). It is interesting to
note how in various secular spheres, activities with religious traits develop, around which ad hoc
communities grow. This shows that the lines between sacred and profane practices are not as
fixed as they were thought to be (De Groot 2011: 250; Klomp 2017: 388).
Willem Frijhoff points out that historic events are nowadays not only remembered with a
monument but increasingly also with events and rituals. Narratives and rituals are important
not only to remember historic events but also to experience and understand how certain events
from the past are shaping the present and the future. More generally, there is a growing interest
in the past, in genealogy, and local history. Around the preservation of historic places, material
artefacts, cultural traditions, and narratives a whole heritage industry has developed (Frijhoff
2012: 176–81). However, not everything can be remembered and preserved. It depends on the
operative power structures, who decides about what is protected and on the cultural context how
heritage is interpreted. In the case of religious heritage, negotiations are going on between people
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to whom religion is a living reality, which shapes their way of life and people who are primarily
interested in religious heritage because of its aesthetic and cultural-historical value.
What do we understand by religious heritage? Religious heritage are religious remnants, both
material and immaterial, from the past which a local society finds important to preserve (Van
Beusekom 2008: 10). Immaterial heritage are traditions and practices that can be very physical,
tangible, and appeal to the senses. The narratives connected to the material heritage and the
practices are key to the process of meaning-making, connecting with the heritage, and grasping
the value of the heritage or what it symbolizes. In the field of heritage preservation, there is
a growing awareness that religious heritage, such as church buildings, should not be seen as
a Gesamtkunstwerk, which has to be passed on in the same way we have received it, but that
religious heritage should be lived and should be approached as an ongoing story, a narrative to
which each generation adds a new chapter (Walter and Poulios 2021). In Hellum, the appropriation
of religious heritage in a postsecular context gives insight into the future of religious village life.
Helmster Easter Play: Church as a Place of Living Religious Heritage

The performance of the medieval Helmster Easter Play is a clear example of keeping religious
heritage alive. In the Catharijneconvent, museum for Christian art and heritage in Utrecht, lies
a missal from around 1200, which was used in the church of Hellum. The missal contains three
prayers to Saint Walfridus and an Easter play (Barels et al. 1985: 26). In the choir of the church is
a long, low niche, which is thought to have functioned in the Middle Ages as an Easter sepulchre
or burial niche for passion plays. In the niche, a cross and/or a pyx, in which the host was
kept, were symbolically buried during the Mass on Good Friday. The host represents the risen
Christ. “The Easter sepulchre was locked and guarded until Easter morning, when the objects
in it were raised in the elevation ritual” (Kroesen 2004: 290, 294). In 2001, the Easter play was
reconstructed on the occasion of an exposition about the Middle Ages in the Groninger Museum
(Grimme 2008: 17–21).
On a Sunday morning after Easter in April 2015, the Helmster Easter play was performed
once again. The worship service was attended by a number of villagers who would normally not
visit church services. The event was a kind of frame story. During the service the Easter play was
performed as one of the readings. The Protestant minister led the service, while an Old-Catholic
priest performed the role of priest in the play. A table covered with a white cloth represented the
altar, on which was placed a cross with palm branches and a plate with a host. This meant that
in the context of a Protestant service a reinvented Catholic liturgy was carried out. Although the
Catholic rituals evoked feelings of estrangement with some churchgoers, they also welcomed it
from an ecumenical point of view.
In the Easter play, a religious tradition is revived, as a ritual practice in the liturgical context
of worship. Within the context of the church building, where this Easter play was performed
centuries ago, it also tells the history of the village. In the Helmster Easter play, the religious
and historic-cultural worlds almost completely overlap with each other. The performance of the
Easter play is a mixture of re-enactment with the choir and the congregation following in the
footsteps of the community centuries ago (Grimme 2008: 17–21). Liturgy and cultural heritage
form two sides of the same coin referring to an invisible world, which becomes tangible in
the space of the church. The result is a rather hybrid event of living liturgy and religious
257
heritage brought to life. A regular churchgoer might have felt both a participant in a liturgical
practice and a spectator of a theatrical performance. The play itself was a living reality for
the Old-Catholic priest who was performing the role of the priest elevating the host. And for
a villager the whole gathering may have been primarily folklore, although the actualization
of the play in the sermon aroused emotional appropriation. This means that it depends on the
individual how the Easter Play is experienced and appropriated as liturgy or theatre (Lukken
1999: 198–212). Atthe same time, the liturgical context makes a difference and places the play
in a different light.
Church as a Place for Remembering

On May 4, people who died during the Second World War are commemorated all over the
country with two minutes of silence and the laying of wreaths (Lukken 1999: 192). In Hellum,
Remembrance Day has been organized for a couple of years now. In the beginning, there were
some doubts about using the church for the service. People wondered whether the church building
was neutral enough for an event that should be open to everyone. People from other denominations
or with a strong antipathy toward the church could be put off. This is also the reason why the
organizers are still hesitant to ask the village minister to deliver the commemoration speech. In
their view, “it is a matter that needs sensitive handling,” although it was not doubted that the
vicar is capable of delivering a contemplative and edifying story that is more philosophical than
religious and not too heavy. Their reasoning is an example of how a discursive distinction is
made between religious and secular, but a closer look at the practices during the service reveals
that the secular and the religious are intertwined.
Although the Remembrance service takes place in the church, it is not a religious gathering.
“On Remembrance Day many people come to the church, it enjoys wide support in the village
and there is a lot of fellowship.” According to the chairman of the May 4 committee, the service
is about the commemoration of peace and freedom in the present, the past, and the future. This
is personified in the participation of schoolchildren, who have adopted the monument near the
church and are responsible for the maintenance. The monument is erected in memory of twelve
Jewish villagers who were deported and did not return. The children also participate in the
memorial service by singing songs and reading poems.
The church building is not the only religious aspect. A secular choir sings Christian songs such
as “Notre Père,” “Ave verum corpus,” and “Abide with me.” The songs sung by the schoolchildren
do not refer to God or Jesus, but have Christian connotations, about being faithful, living in
kinship with each other, and peace. Explicit references to God or the transcendent are avoided,
to prevent people feeling excluded. An important difference with an ordinary worship service
is that the possibilities to participate in song are limited to the singing of the national anthem
outside the church. Still, the service is clearly drawing on religious repertoires in the structure of
the program, themes, and songs. Ideas about another world, life as it should be, community, and
freedom are explicated and even celebrated. Furthermore, questions are raised not only about the
social state of affairs in the past and present but also about contingencies in life like violence,
oppression, and injustice, but not in relation to a divine reality.
The school teacher observes how the children are aware of the significance of the remembrance
and how they prepare for Remembrance Day:
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259
They become aware of things they otherwise hardly think

about. Some children find it difficult, others are very keen. You
are surprised to hear what they come up with. You don’t realize
because a lot of children do not know these little rituals, but they
are actually very valuable to children, it’s nice to see.
This remark draws attention to the fact that for many people moments for ritual and contemplation
are rare in everyday life. It is not something they are used to. Secularization has not only left
an open space in churches but also in personal life. Some people have found their personal
replacement in meditation, nature walks, going on holiday, visiting concerts and museums,
reading books, or following TV programs. Although these forms of re-creation can also be
carried out in groups, these are highly individualized forms of reflection and ritual. Moments
of collective contemplation for a whole village community do not often take place. It seems
necessary to create the time and the place for it, like the remembrance service or the Easter play.
The Remembrance Service can be seen as an example of civil religion with Christian traces.
It fulfils an important function in village life, by binding people together. Not only by drawing
a diverse group of people of various (religious) backgrounds together but also because it has a
strong intergenerational aspect. One of the aims of the whole project is to tell the children about
the war and how it affected the village. For some people, village history is closely related to
family history and they have vivid memories of the departure of Jews. The generation of the baby
boomers realizes how the war has also influenced their life. While for newcomers without family
ties within the village community, the Remembrance service helps to feel connected with the
village, as a place and as a community. In a way, the Remembrance service takes over functions
the church used to fulfil in binding people together and offer a moment for reflection.
Religion in Heritage and Memorial Culture

In a village such as Hellum where institutional religion is becoming ever more marginal, the
Remembrance Service and the Easter Play are places where sacred consciousness is socially
created and sustained. In these practices an intriguing cross-pollination is taking place between
the fields of religion, memorial culture, and heritage, which creates the possibility to transcend the
divide between the religious and the secular. This is a result of the parallels that appear between
the various fields. In both the religious and the memorial fields of practice, rituals and music
are important to develop coping strategies, offer support, to convey meaning, and to physically
participate in a process. An important similarity between religion and heritage is passing on
practices, narratives, and places to future generations. The Christian religious tradition is a very
dominant aspect of cultural history, which makes knowledge of Christianity indispensable to
understand the history of a village such as Hellum.
The question arises whether the relation between the fields is equal? In both the fields of
memorial culture and heritage there is a great risk that religion is being reduced to either its
aesthetic or historical meaning. References to God are not always made explicit, which reveals
an ambiguity on a fundamental level. People draw on the Christian tradition, narratives, and
notions such as inclusivity and support, or in the performance of ecclesial music. However,
explicit commitment to the Christian faith is avoided to prevent feelings of exclusion. So what
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meaning does the Christian heritage have in these contexts other than as part of the cultural
tradition? Does the heritagization of religion mean that the stories from the Bible, the liturgy, and
theology are seen as relics from a time gone by, to see and to admire, but not to shape people’s
personal worldview or way of life as an individual and as a community? If that is the case, then
the Christian tradition loses much of its transformative power. However, it also becomes clear
that memorial and heritage offer opportunities to become acquainted with the Christian heritage.
Could it be that here we stumble upon a paradox? In a secularized, individualized society,
people embrace the possibility to believe without belonging, to develop their own worldview
and way of living without having to justify oneself in confession or otherwise. The reverse of
unlimited freedom of choice is that people can feel lonely and need to rely on themselves. So,
people want to belong to a community without the obligation to adhere to a certain way of
believing. Secularization has led to up-rootedness with regard to identity and sense of belonging.
Maybe heritage and memorial culture can provide some substitute in discovering where you
come from and how the past has made you who you are. In the Remembrance Service, the
past is also used as a mirror for our present life and moral actions. Paraphrasing the remark
of the sextons of Hellum who said that the church needs the village as much as the village
needs the church, I would say that the fields of memorial, heritage, and religion strongly depend
on each other. In the context of memorial and heritage, religious practitioners are challenged
to reshape and rethink religious practices, while memorial culture and heritage draw on the
religious repertoires, which help to interpret circumstances, give meaning, words, and form to
what transcends ordinary life. The notion of religious heritage does not only relate to the question
of what should happen with empty, standing church buildings but also to how the immaterial
heritage of traditions, narratives, and rituals is kept alive and meaningful, a question that actually
relates to the future of religious life.
Note
1 This article draws on my PhD research: Meaningful in the Margins, Churches and Quality of life in the
Dutch Countryside, Protestant Theological University Groningen, 2018. The fieldwork was carried out in
2014–15.
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Beusekom, J. W. van, Lydia Jongmans, et al. (2008), Handreiking religieus erfgoed voor burgerlijke en
kerkelijke gemeenten, van kerkelijk gebruik tot herbestemming. Leiden: Vereniging van Beheerders van
Monumentale Kerkgebouwen in Nederland.
Bernts, A. P. J., and J. P. Berghuijs (2016), God in Nederland, 1966–2015. Utrecht: Ten Have.
Bisseling, H., Henk de Roest, and Peet Valstar (2011), Meer dan hout en steen, handboek voor sluiting en
herbestemming van kerkgebouwen. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum.
Bourdieu, P. (2000), Pascalian Meditations. Translated by Richard Nice, Cambridge, Cambridge
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Davie, G. (2002), Europe, the Exceptional Case, Parameters of Faith in the Modern World.
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Gelderloos, J. (2012), “Liever een boekwinkel dan een disco, Ratio en emotie rondom her- en
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Sengers, and Sake Stoppels (eds.), Levend lichaam: Dynamiek van christelijke geloofsgemeenschappen
in Nederland, 240–80. Utrecht: Kok.
Hart, J. de and Paul Dekker (2006), “Kerken in de Nederlandse civil society: Institutionele grondslag
en individuele inspiratiebron,” in W. B. H. J. van de Donk et al. (eds), Geloven in het publieke
domein: Verkenningen van een dubbele transformatie, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
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Liturgie-onderzoek, 28, 169–82.
Hervieu-Léger, D. (2000), Religion as a Chain of Memory, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Klomp, M., and Marten van der Meulen (2017), “The Passion as Ludic Practice—Understanding Public
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Kroesen, J., and Regnerus Steensma (2004), The Interior of the Medieval Village Church, Leuven: Peeters.
Lukken, G. (1999), Rituelen in overvloed, Een kritische bezinning op de plaats en de gestalte van het
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Schippers, I. (2015), Sacred Places in the Suburbs: Casual Sacrality in the Dutch VINEX-district Leidsche
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Tonnaer, J. (2010), “Collective Memorial Rituals in a Dutch Landscape,” in Paul Post and Arie Molendijk
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Analysis
Chapter 28
Religious Archives as Heritage: Catholic

Documentation and Heritage Formation in the
Netherlands, 1969–2019
HANS KRABBENDAM AND CHRIS DOLS
Analysis
Introduction
In the early 1990s, prominent Franciscan priest and sociologist Walter Goddijn wrote to historian
Jan Roes, the director of the Nijmegen Catholic Documentation Centre (KDC), joking that his
home increasingly looked like a “mini KDC” as a result of his efforts to organize a sheer mountain
of documents.1 Goddijn was clearing the archives of the institutes he once managed from his
home. He informed the KDC director that he was preparing thousands of letters, memoranda,
and minutes of meetings for transportation to Nijmegen. Goddijn put pressure on Roes to act
quickly or he would deposit them elsewhere, and this worked. Roes immediately sent a minibus
to Goddijn’s home. Thus, private documents became public sources for research purposes thanks
to their transfer to a specialized academic institute, and could function in the formation of cultural
heritage.
This chapter describes and analyzes the stages in Catholic documentation and heritage
formation in the Netherlands since the late 1960s. It seeks to accomplish two things. First, it
broadens the concept of the Religious Heritage Complex (Isnart and Cerezales 2020) beyond
artistic and monumental objects by including the paper trails of religious institutions, which
include religious orders and congregations, as well as social movements built on religious
principles. These sources provide additional building blocks for the creation of religious heritage.
They are often less explicitly religious than artistic or cultic objects, but even so, they infuse
religious ideas and practices into society. As sources of identification, they helped to shape
heritage. They demonstrate the dialectical nature of “secular” practices when religious institutions
created a habitus of conservation. These institutions justified their activities in (secular) society
on the basis of religious inspiration, and hence are relevant examples of the religious-secular mix
that is meant to be examined through the lens of the Religious Heritage Complex. The dialectical
nature of this process becomes visible in comparing a public (but not state) archive hosted by a
university (which is legally private, but publicly funded) and a truly private archive controlled
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Religious Archives as Heritage
by religious institutes. Each institute was the result of negotiation as far as acquisition and access
were concerned, a process that is still ongoing.
Second, this chapter shows how the historical development of these kindred but distinct
institutions widened the concept of diversity in the collections, which might be seen as a secular
impulse, but actually is a mix of religious and secular developments. Heritage institutions that
emerged from value-communities guided by religious traditions are often regarded as either
protective or propagandist, and might be placed on the opposite side of advancing diversity. Yet,
the examination of two heritage institutions connected to each other, but founded in different
periods, reveals the nature of expanding diversity in the different stages: the KDC, established in
1969 in a time of rapid cultural change that spurred various new religiously underpinned heritage
institutions, and the Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastic Life and Culture (ENK), founded in 2004.
International archival reflection has raised questions about power structures shaping collections,
and advocates paying attention to different perspectives and unheard voices (Caswell 2013). In
itself, this attention to religious archives has enlarged the diversity in the recent historiography on
heritagization in the Netherlands that focuses on the secular (Bockxmeer 2014; Sanders 2019).
The exploration of organizational development, the role played by the key protagonists and old
and new stakeholders, and the main scope of the archives and the collections will show how
diversity is part and parcel of these operations and constant in motion.
The particular chronology of this dynamic process fits into the sequence indicated by spatial
planning expert Joks Janssen and colleagues (Janssen et al. 2017). They argue that (spatial) heritage
formation follows three stages, each of which continues to be present when a next phase is opening
up. In the first stage, altering circumstances and changing functions make objects and buildings
redundant and reduce paper trails to rubbish. Heritage is born when the artefacts are recognized
as having historical or symbolic meaning, and rescue operations salvage what is deemed valuable
and irreplaceable. Their survival is secured by putting them into institutional care. In the second
stage, objects are valued, selected, catalogued, and presented to larger audiences as “heritage.” In
the third phase, new values and new meanings are attached to what is kept in order to pass it on
to future generations. In the following, we will use this three-stage theory to understand how the
content of diversity changes over a period of time as a result of ongoing negotiations.
Catholic Documentation Centre (KDC)

“Perhaps we are too late,” professor of history and cofounder of KDC Ad Manning (1929–91)
asserted in the Catholic daily De Tijd on March 15, 1969 (Haas 1969). Drawing an analogy with
the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century, he stated that a self-afflicted paper iconoclasm
had started sweeping through the Dutch Catholic landscape in the immediate post-war years,
in particular in the libraries of orders and congregations and in the offices of civil society
organizations. He rang the alarm bells and admonished Catholics to rescue the paper evidence of
the process of their social and political emancipation (Thompson 1979).
The establishment of KDC under the umbrella of the Catholic University in Nijmegen in 1969
marked the transition in the self-understanding of Dutch Catholics resulting from the generational
turn in society and among Catholic scholars. Whereas the first generation of Catholic academics
had to prove the credibility of its acting in the wake of the foundation of the Catholic University
in 1923, and postwar historians aimed at reclaiming the intellectual position of Catholics in the
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history of the Dutch nation, the next generation had been raised in the emancipated situation. From
the 1950s onward, they faced a loss of existing traditions and a reassessment of the meanings of
religious identity (Bornewasser 1980; Schreuder 1998). Even though the intellectuals in charge in
the 1960s had their disagreements about these meanings, a sense of urgency united them in a call
for a safe haven for the rapidly growing remnants of their active subculture. Manning urged for
this preservation in order to comprehend the causes and the trajectory of the secularization process.
Also outside the academic community, the rank and file of the Catholic community realized,
with mixed feelings of nostalgia and relief, that the old days were gone. It was time for a new
perspective on the past, which caused a renegotiation of the access to this heritage (Haas 1969).
Similar to the well-organized Calvinists, Catholics looked back on the lives of previous generations
as a means to position themselves in a period of rapid cultural change. In 1963, journalist Michel
van der Plas published Uit het rijke Roomsche leven (From the Rich Roman Life), which turned into
a bestseller because of its double message (Plas 1963). It evoked a nostalgic recognition of past
idiosyncrasies, but this documentary record of popular media expressions from the 1920s and 1930s
also carried a critical undertone and a sense of relief that those days were over. Van der Plas expressed
his surprise that it had taken such an enormous effort to find, let alone secure, the documentation
necessary to write his book. In an interview published in a leading Dutch Catholic newspaper on
Christmas Eve 1963, he therefore called for “a central library of Catholica, let’s just call it a Roman
Catholic Warehouse. There is still so much material, but it is spread all over. What is worse, though: so
much valuable material is already gone” (“Michel van der Plas over zijn ‘Rijke Roomsche Leven’”,
1963). This idea of a watershed was nurtured by the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) that had set
out to modernize the Catholic Church. Vatican II justified and encouraged reflection in terms of the
“old” and the “new” as a means to revitalize tradition (Ziemann and Dols 2012).
The organizational development of the KDC and its scope of archives and collections can be
divided into three periods (Figure 28.1). The first fifteen years (1969–84) witnessed a steady influx
of primary sources. The direct link to the university enabled the institute to grow into a full-fledged
academic center that produced hundreds of dissertations, articles, monographs, and biographies,
as well as in-depth sociological studies about the integration of Catholics in Dutch society and
the recent changes in the Catholic subculture (Meerjarenplan KDC 1975). Its collection profile
did not imply a restriction to the official records of high cultural or political causes. True, it is
not hard to find sources related to powerful institutions such as the labor movement, the Catholic
People’s Party (KVP), or the Catholic Radio Broadcasting Company (KRO). But a certain form
of diversity was secured by casting a wide net that also caught the materials of less prominent
players, less structured, or even improvised movements, and collections of grey literature, films,
photographs, and sounds. By collecting all these different kinds of sources and publishing new
insights about their roles, the KDC popularized the notion that religious activity in history was
much broader than the history of the Church alone (Frijhoff 1981).
During the second period (1984–2004), the effects of the controversies between the
progressive and the conservative factions in the Catholic community on heritage formation came
to the surface. The example of Goddijn illustrates the trend that reformist actors were keen to
preserve their stories by taking their archives and collections to the KDC. Representatives of the
traditionalist networks mostly kept their distance to the academic depository. In an effort to bridge
the differences, the KDC organized an exhibition of cartoons to celebrate its quarter-century
existence in 1994. One of the surprising findings was that cartoons by Dutch Catholics about
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FIGURE 28.1 KDC employees Nol van den Boogaard, Diel Mohrmann, and André Maes engaging in
heritage formation, 1975.
Source: KDC Nijmegen.
themselves were only a recent invention (Winkeler 1994). These cartoons revealed divergence
and a growing variety in the Catholic world in the 1980s. As of the 2000s, the collection profile
of the KDC has been tailored toward global aspects of cultural diversity (Winkeler 2007).
The levels of diversity in the archives and collections of the KDC became gradually more
explicit in a response to recognized mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. In the first two
decades, (class) diversity and labor history received a large share of the institute’s attention,
since Catholic labor leaders sought a return on the financial sacrifices of its constituency that had
enabled many Catholic educational institutions (Roes 1980). Next came a focus on the progressive-
conservative spectrum, and also on regional variety, gender distinctions, and sexual orientation.
From the early 2000s onward, ethnic and religious pluralism gained prominence, leading to
active acquisition of collections on Catholics in minority positions, women’s organizations, and
gay networks. This trend matches recent calls to revise the Dutch historical canon, the selection
of historical events, and people that represent main trends in Dutch history, from looking inward
to looking outward, by including more global aspects of culture. Drawing in ethnic diversity as a
factor of relevance is a clear expression of this development.
Somewhere around the turn of the millennium, the balance between the supply and the demand
sides seems to have shifted. Whereas until 2000 suppliers of redundant collections approached
the KDC, since then the institute began to actively enrich its collection by gathering materials on
international diversity (Dings and Winkeler 1999; Kuijk 2020). This development shows that the
265
KDC has arrived in the third stage of heritage formation, in which strategies of attributing meaning
are deployed. This runs parallel to the policy of the Catholic University in Nijmegen, now Radboud
University, to reflect on its (Catholic) heritage and its role in society by exploring new meanings as
it approaches its centennial (Door collectie naar connectie 2019; Zichtbaar erfgoed 2018).
Centre for the Culture and Heritage of Dutch Monastic Life (ENK)
The Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastic Life—briefly known as ENK—was an indication of
growing organizational diversity when it began under the wings of the KDC as an archival
service center for a dozen religious orders and congregations. Dropping numbers of religious
vocations and increasing figures of closed monasteries had spurred these institutions to secure
their heritage for the future, threatened by clearance of premises or poorly equipped basements
or attics (Dols 2015, 2018; Schepens, Spruit, and Knegting 2002).
The first sign of concern occurred within a year of the publication of Van der Plas’s book.
In 1964, Capuchin priest-historian Gerlach Schummer organized a kick-off meeting of convent
archivists in order to share best practices associated with collection management and promote a
well-organized archive as a serious responsibility, vital to history writing (Lankhorst 2015). Soon
alarm bells started to ring because several archives of Dutch orders and congregations were on
the brink of being transferred abroad or even destroyed. In the 1980s, the volume of these alarm
signals rose to unprecedented levels, albeit behind the closed doors of the policymakers. The
Working Group for Ecclesiastical Archives sent a memorandum to the Episcopal Conference
and the Conference of Dutch Religious (KNR) in 1982, urging for quick response, preferably by
founding a service center.2 They met the full support of Nijmegen academics, who underlined
the relevance of the archives of the orders and congregations for documenting the diversity of
their contribution to Dutch sociocultural history. Ironically, the strong international ties of many
orders and congregations posed a threat to the preservation of their heritage in the Netherlands.
This and related phenomena were indicated in a round table meeting:
Many religious see themselves confronted with the issue of
ageing: monasteries, yes even Dutch Provinces and entire
congregations will soon cease to exist as a result of a lack of
members. Decision makers will have to deal not only with attached
emotional and personal problems, but also with the question of what
to do with their archives, spanning through from shoe boxes filled
with photographs to the official documents … Numerous orders
and congregations no longer dispose of the expert knowledge and
the manpower needed to maintain their archives in the right way.3
In 1988, historian Manning needed to draw the attention of forty religious superiors to the
value of their collections: “Perhaps to a far greater degree than you are aware of, your archives
are stacked with treasures connected to the history of your order or congregation, as well as to the
sociocultural history of the Netherlands and its colonies” (Lankhorst 2015).
Twenty-five years after the first alarm bell, in 1989, the stakeholders established the
Dienstencentrum Kloosterarchieven in Nederland (Service Centre for Monastic Archives in
the Netherlands) or KAN. This institutionalization combined two goals. Religious superiors
266
had the histories of their own orders and congregations in mind, while Nijmegen academics
envisioned a wider horizon. They highlighted the significant contribution that the sources could
make to understanding vital developments in the Netherlands and its colonies in the fields of
education and health care. Studying and using these sources from an external perspective is what
they promoted. In the formative years of the KAN, the institute’s figureheads invested much
energy in building relationships of trust among the stakeholders—eighteen in 1989 and fifty-
seven in 2013—and forge strategic alliances with academics and other interest groups. Its primary
aim was to familiarize the gradually growing number of religious orders and congregations with
archival practices and assist them in organizing their archives and collections (Vugt 1991).
The transition to the next phase of heritage formation took place when space proved to be a
second key issue. From the year 2000 onward, a number of leading religious superiors worked
toward the establishment of an autonomous heritage center: ENK. The fact that the future of the
KDC seemed uncertain at that point and the possibility to host a heritage center in a working
monastery led to the decision to leave Nijmegen and build a climatized archival vault attached to
the monastery of the Fathers of the Holy Cross in the village of Sint Agatha in 2004. Some sixty
archival collections were moved there in 2006 (Arendsen and Lankhorst 2012). The KAN and
ENK institutes merged in 2013. The number of “participants”—as the primary stakeholders are
officially called—in this heritage enterprise increased rapidly to more than one hundred orders
and congregations in 2020. Most of these participants continue to own their collections, and grant
or deny access to third parties. They govern the ENK through a board and a council. Even though
the new premises show that this initiative entered the second stage of heritage formation, most
of the work carried out by ENK employees is part of the first two stages, that of rescuing and
processing collections (Beleidsplan ENK 2011; Beleidsplan ENK 2019).
At least three forms of diversity can be found at the ENK. First, on the institutional level,
the “participants” and in consequence their archives and collections have both an active and a
contemplative character. Communities of members of religious orders are usually structured in
a similar manner, and its members have carried out tasks in comparable and sometimes even
the same fields, but significant and meaningful distinctions come to the fore in terms of spiritual
embeddedness and other aspects of monastic life and culture. Hence, when it comes to diversity,
the concentration of sources helps to identify a certain level of institutional variation. As a result
of active acquisition, the last few years have increasingly witnessed an influx of materials of
organizations associated with the orders and congregations, such as Youth and Mission. A second
level of diversity is the way in which the archives and collections reflect the constituency of
these communities, some of which had a handful members only, others up to a few thousand. Of
course, all of them had to follow common rules and unwritten codes of behavior. Still, individual
experiences of religiosity within a group could vary enormously. A third level of diversity is
geographical of nature, covering sources from the entire territory of the Netherlands and
several international stations served by missionary congregations, including intracultural and
intercultural contact of various sorts.
Conclusion
The history of Catholic documentation in the Netherlands shows that the focus on diversity is not
a recent one. On the contrary, this focus was negotiated at each stage of heritage formation. The
267
preservation of archives, libraries, and objects in the wake of the profound socioreligious change
of the 1960s appeared to be the starting point. An attached sense of crisis, further nurtured by the
Second Vatican Council, fueled a desire to preserve these objects for the next generations. By
promoting heritage formation, Nijmegen academics sought to tell the story of a diverse nation
and a diversifying subculture.
Our comparative approach has demonstrated that religious heritage formation was not
necessarily a linear process, not even in one coherent subculture, and that it did not block parallel
developments. In that sense, new transformations were possible even in the second stage, as the
case of the ENK has exemplified. KDC and ENK were part and parcel of a larger cultural sector
in which various Catholic centers or institutes with religious roots became aware of the diversity
present in their institutional choices. This awareness enabled additional claims on this heritage.
The archives and collections of the KDC and the ENK seem to have a highly homogeneous
character, but just below the surface their diversity is rich, if the category of diversity is
approached in an open manner. The unity Catholic leaders aspired to in the first half of the
twentieth century did not rule out pluralism. At the KDC, academic trends have prompted an
openness to alternative perspectives, postcolonial ones, for instance, and to an enrichment of
the collection profile in the form of ethnic and religious variation. At the ENK, the sources
especially reflect internal diversity on the institutional and individual levels within the orders
and congregations. These histories also reveal that changing mechanisms of inclusion and
exclusion are closely connected to the various constituencies. Incorporated into the Nijmegen
University Library, professors, researchers, and students, as well as the legal owners of archives
and collections, are the primary stakeholders of the KDC. The main stakeholders of the ENK
are the “insiders”: the religious superiors who established the institute. They determine, to a
considerable degree, what is perceived as heritage and treated as such. In addition, they influence
the institute’s policies through a board and a council. This diversity has not prevented both
institutes from linking their holdings, connecting them to larger projects of digitization (such
as the preservation project of Metamorfoze), and from exploring further means to enter the
third stage of heritage formation and searching for new meanings in an increasingly entangled
religious-secular context.
Notes
1 Letters by Goddijn to Roes, August 20, 1992 and January 9, 1993: KDC, KDC, 6566.
2 Memorandum “Advies van de initiatiefgroep Kloosterarchieven,” August 19, 1986: ENK, SNPR, 59;
Memorandum “Naar een gemeenschappelijke commissie kerkelijke archieven en bibliotheken,” September
1988: ENK, SNPR, 50.
3 Memorandum “Gaat het verleden verloren?”: ENK, SNPR, 59.
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Analysis
Chapter 29
Conservation Professionals and

Religious Heritage
EVA LÖFGREN AND OLA WETTERBERG
Analysis
Introduction
Theoretically, in a secular political system, legislation and governance are to be free from
religious content, neutral to different religious affiliations, and should uphold the citizens’ right to
religious freedom. Sweden took a critical step in this direction when formally separating the state
from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the year 2000. However, the remaining institutional
and legal bonds indicate an ongoing relationship that few appear willing to break (Beckman
2017; Harding 2015; Hillström 2017). Today, as society is confronted with a great variety of
religious belongings, the profound and very practical intertwinement of what is perceived as
“culture” and “religion” has become clear (Tsivolas 2014). The field of heritage conservation
is no exception. Conservation professionals in public service are, in their everyday practice,
continuously managing this intertwinement—while at the same time, they are expected to follow
legislative frames based on a clear-cut boundary between culture and religion.
This chapter aims to take the Swedish situation as a point of departure to explore some of
the critical challenges that conservation professionals face when handling church buildings as
the cultural heritage of a secular state. It starts with a brief depiction of the historically close
relationship between religious sites and professional heritage conservation in Sweden. It explores
how contemporary post-colonial critique and bottom-up, user-oriented ideology have merged in
the so-called living heritage approach now used in heritage practice. Finally, it delves into the
legislative situation that shapes how conservation professionals view ongoing religious worship
as a prerequisite for but also as a potential threat to safeguarding historic church buildings.
Conservation from Habitus to Policy

Before the Swedish state-church separation in 2000, the significant difference between defining a
church building as a historical monument, based on academic studies, and defining it as a place of
worship, based on religious beliefs, dissolved within the common cultural framework. Authorities
handled the state-owned churches and the different aspects of their management. Although there
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were some high-profile conflicts between church representatives and conservation professionals,
the changing ideals and wishes of the two parties mainly went hand in hand (Löfgren and
Wetterberg 2020).
The close relationship between the church and heritage conservation has a long history. The
rise of conservation professions took place against a backdrop of church restoration projects,
which in turn were directly related to political movements in nineteenth-century Europe
(Swenson 2013). Churches were the first buildings in use to be conceived and treated as cultural
heritage (Löfgren and Wetterberg 2020; Morisset and Noppen 2005; Wetterberg 1992). At the
time, heritage conservation partly reflected strategies within religious organizations. However,
this era also saw cultural heritage rise as an independent concept shaped by modern notions of
linear time and development (Choay 2001). It has been argued that cultural heritage discourse
took over the role of religion, a process described as “a migration of the holy” from religion to
nation and heritage (Cavanaugh 2011).
Today, public policies define heritage conservation as a secular and knowledge-oriented
professional practice based on legislation and state funding. This practice is expected to
distinguish historical values and qualities from religious ones. Some voices argue that a clear
distinction is fictitious and instead suggest that we describe the intermingling of cultural heritage
and religion in terms of a “religious heritage complex” (Isnart and Cerezales 2020). By using this
concept as an analytical tool, Isnart and Cerezales wish to address “the continuity between the
habitus of conservation of the past within religious traditions and a conscious policy regarding
the care of the past in heritage contexts” (6, original italics). Their approach entails delving into
the convergence and permanence rather than the conflicts and disruptions.
Living Heritage Approach

Applying the notion of a religious heritage complex and understanding the relationship between
conservation ideologies and religious use is of political importance. The idea of a clear-cut
separation between culture and religion developed in highly secularized Western countries and
has been depicted as a colonial conservation approach that has been forced upon contrasting
and competing belief systems (Burris 2001; Byrne 2014, 2019; de Jong and Rowlands 2009;
Harrison and Hughes 2009; Sully 2007, 2015; Swenson and Mandler 2013).
In the past decades, the colonial legacy, which merges conservation principles with a lack
of involvement with living religious practices, has met similar critiques from the conservation
professions and their organizations (Stovel, Stanley-Price, and Killick 2005; ICCROM 2015).
The critique goes hand in hand with an increasing focus on intangible aspects of heritage.
A corresponding discussion emphasizes the relationship between the heritage expert on the one
hand and the users of heritage on the other. It points at the differences between an authorized,
expert-driven, and designated cultural heritage and a user-centered, community-driven one (Faro
Convention 2005; Zagato 2015: 34).
As for the safeguarding of historical churches, the most important outcome of these discussions
is the so-called Living Heritage Approach, which stresses the continuous use of heritage by its
associated community (Alexopoulos 2010; Stovel, Stanley-Price, and Killick 2005;Wijesuriya
2018). According to this approach, cultural heritage is fundamentally connected to a specific
community and, therefore, like any culture or community, subject to a continuous process of
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Conservation Professionals and Religious Heritage
change. The change is what makes it living (Walter 2017). Living heritage was launched as
a program at ICCROM in 2003 and commenced with a Forum on Living Religious Heritage
(Stovel, Stanley-Price, and Killick 2005). The expectation was to increase sensitivity and
support for social and religious activities and functions of sacred places among professionals
(Wijesuriya 2018).
Behind the theoretical and political declarations of the approach remains a plenitude of
unresolved questions, which may explain why it is rarely thoroughly applied in European
contexts. In a Swedish context, the first question is how to delimit the community—is it the active
Evangelical Lutheran congregation that should take precedence in all processes that concern the
use and future of the parish churches, or the culturally Christian Swedish community as a whole?
Second, if the heritage status of a site depends on its association with a community, an essential
aim for professionals must be to support the continuity of this association (Poulius 2010). Yet, the
question arises: what can conservation officers do to support the association between community
and church building without compromising their role as representatives of a secular state? Should
similar measures be offered to support the association between other religious communities and
their places of worship? Surprisingly enough, as architectural historian Samidha Mahesh Pusalkar
points out, there are no guidelines discussing ethical considerations in conservation decision-
making relating to living religious heritage sites (Pusalkar 2021). Conservation professionals,
specifically those in public service, are left alone to deal with practical ethical considerations and
conflicts of interest.
Decisive Labeling—As Cultural-Historical or Religious?

One of the many commissions that preceded the Swedish state-church separation states that it
is “rarely possible to draw a definite line between maintenance costs related to religious use [of
church buildings] on one side, and costs related to cultural heritage use on the other” (SOU
1994: 42, 129, italics and translation by authors). Nevertheless, this very line is the main principle
when significant state funding is allocated to support the maintenance of parish churches. The fact
that the line is strict in theory and thoroughly blurred in practice puts conservation professionals
in an intricate situation. How is it possible for a Swedish conservation officer to attend only to
the historical values of the church building and its artifacts?
The parish churches were a primary concern for all stakeholders in the Swedish state-church
divorce. For an extended period, the question of who owned the church buildings remained
unresolved (Hillström 2017). When it was eventually decided that the parishes should take over
the formal ownership, the crucial question was whether they had the capacity and economic
resources to maintain these legally protected and valuable buildings. The unique historical value
of the Evangelical Lutheran church buildings had been established in a separate chapter of
the Heritage Act of 1988 (SFS 1988:950/Swedish Code of Statues). Although built for and by
the local communities, the parish churches were thus considered as much a national as a local
matter.
The goal of the divorce was to create a secular state, “neutral in relation to its different
religious denominations”, but the ambition was also to keep the traditional denomination,
the Evangelical Lutheran Church, economically unharmed (Hillström 2017: 163, authors’
translation). Hillström suggests in her analysis that these two seemingly incompatible outsets
273
converged in the parish churches. Since they were defined as a shared national heritage and a
societal resource belonging to all citizens, it was logical that the state should compensate the
parishes for the maintenance costs.
There was, however, one decisive condition. The substantial compensation should only cover
costs related to the safeguarding of cultural-historical values. Public means cannot subsidize the
upholding of only one particular denomination’s places of worship without compromising the
notion of a secular state. Drawing a line between cultural use and religious use allows the secular
state to support the maintenance of these buildings, although they are intended for religious
worship. For example, a medieval crucifix may be used for religious purposes, but the secular
society maintains it for its historical value.
Conservation Professionals Advocating Use and Preventing Change
“The church of Danderyd is a historical document dating from the

12th century. But it is not a museum. The most important thing in a
church is always the people.”
“The church [of Habo] is not a museum, it is a meeting-place
with God.”
“We are not a museum. We will change since our society has
changed.”1
Judging from these and other citations from web pages and media, Swedish parishes seem
compelled to emphasize the present-day religious relevance of their church buildings, especially
if they own a publicly valued historic church. Any conservation professional would agree that
church buildings should first and foremost be used for continuous religious worship. There is no
conflict of interest in this respect, although the motives differ. While worship (fira gudstjänst) is
one of the fundamental tasks of the Church of Sweden, conservation professionals see worship
conducted in a church as a factor adding to the historical value of the building. Harshly put, it is
a means to an end, the end being the safeguarding of cultural heritage.
The established heritage conservation ideal of maintaining continuous use resembles the
previously presented notion of living heritage. However, there is a difference in focus. While
the living heritage approach stresses the involvement of the user and is open or affirmative to
change, continuous use is fundamental to conservation ideology as it is considered to preserve
the authenticity of the artefact, building, or place (Egede Nissen 2014; Munoz-Vinas 2005). This
importance of use in conservation practice is exemplified by the twentieth-century scholars who
took action to reestablish abandoned church buildings as places of worship in Sweden (Löfgren
2020; Elmén Berg 1997). Many of the buildings were medieval churches preserved as cultural
heritage by local history societies or even the national state (Liepe 2018; Löfgren and Wetterberg
2020). The heritagization process that followed the preservation actions slowly changed the
local public’s regard for the buildings and turned decrepit constructions into something valuable.
Considered to lack utility value at that point, these heritagized churches were later reinaugurated,
and religious use resumed. There were several motifs for reestablishing religious use, but one was
the ambition to safeguard cultural heritage, which demanded the buildings regain their church
character. Cultural heritage interests and religious interests thus seamlessly merged.
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Another verification of continuous religious use being a decisive factor in the assessment
of historical value was the delimitation of Swedish church buildings selected for the strongest
legal protection. Only buildings used and owned by the Church of Sweden on January 1, 2000,
are included. This construction of the law might be explained by a practical need to draw a
boundary; nonetheless, it resulted in buildings in continuous religious use being designated a
higher historical value than those previously abandoned by the Church.
Conservation practice dealing with churches that belonged to the Church of Sweden—but
were sold to serve new functions—also illustrates how fundamental continuous religious use is
to the historical value. According to the Swedish Heritage Act (SFS 1988:950, ch. 4), all exterior
and interior changes to Evangelical-Lutheran churches included in the law must be reviewed,
approved, and monitored by conservation officials. Changes are permitted only if the historical
values are believed to remain intact.
Interestingly, the law continues to apply after a sale; that is, the new owner cannot modify the
building if it reduces the historical values. Yet, in practice, more radical architectural changes
are approved and carried out once a church has lost its religious purpose. Studies indicate that
conservation professionals’ attitude toward change becomes more generous, and preventive
actions decrease when church buildings are sold and lose their original religious function
(Löfgren 2017). Conservation officers are more reluctant to endorse material changes when a
church building is owned by a parish and used for worship than when the building has been sold
to function as a private residence.
The Paradox of Legislation Counteracting Public Significance

Conservation professionals keep coming back to the uniqueness of churches compared to other
heritage objects. In a publication on church fires, representatives from the national authorities of
Sweden, Norway, and Finland described the unique significance in terms of the ineffable: “There
is something special about old churches, something that people long for and love. Our academic
discussions should take this side of things into consideration in order to find what touches the
hearts of people, even if it does not follow accepted rules and practices” (Laurila 2004: 63).
The legislation relies on the idea that church buildings belonging to the Church of Sweden
are meaningful to everyone in Sweden, irrespective of beliefs, age, and background. The
Heritage Act acknowledges historical values and the churches’ importance as centuries-old local
cultural centers (Unnerbäck 1972: 168). Furthermore, national surveys show that (Evangelical
Lutheran) churches are regarded as important beyond their religious connotations (Bäckström
and Bromander 1995; Kyrkbussen 2014). There are reasons to believe that many Swedes remain
members of the Church, not out of religious conviction but to preserve the buildings as an
essential cultural heritage. The Church of Sweden also highlights preservation as a reason to
become a member of the Church (Church of Sweden 2021).
The public significance of church buildings as ineffable or transcendent and locally bound,
which conservation professionals often refer to, is in a paradoxical way counteracted by their
strong legal protection. The exclusiveness of the law, aiming only at one religious community,
supports a strict separation between religion and heritage and favors expert interpretations
of historical values, as these values are easier to reconcile with such a separation. An active
engagement with local communities and a bottom-up approach that exposes community-based
275
values and in which the line between religious and cultural motifs is blurred seems contradictory
to legislation and state funding. The need to separate is also amplified by the fact that active
interaction between the interpreters of the law (the conservation professionals) and the owners
of the church (the parishes) is considered to create inappropriate dependencies in the decision-
making processes (Nyström 2021).
As Maria Nyström has recently pointed out, current policies and advocated approaches are
challenging to implement in practice due to the long-lasting institutional roles embedded in
the Heritage Act (Nyström 2021). As a result, the Church of Sweden is free to assume a more
active and open position in the heritage preservation processes compared to state authorities. The
Church can depict the values of the church buildings in broader terms than the Heritage Act. This
more comprehensive approach appears to align with the underlying political rationality of the
strong protective measures covering church buildings (Wetterberg and Lindblad 2017). They are
also well in line with contemporary, international approaches to heritage management discourse,
where people-based perspectives dominate over strict protective preservation measures.
The Ultimate Challenge—Acting as a Facilitator

Pastness plays an important role in both religion and heritage conservation. People visiting
church buildings relate to the past differently and for different reasons. Keeping these motives
apart is rarely possible.
To conservation professionals, use has long been the crucial yet most demanding issue to
handle when managing church buildings. One reason that applies to all heritage objects is that use
wears on precious materials and opens possibilities for damage or theft. Yet the most important
reason is that decisions taken by conservation professionals inevitably interfere with religious life.
Safeguarding is not a status quo act as it enables certain practices and delays or impedes others.
Today, although continuous religious use is recognized as beneficial to preservation and increases
historical value, it is also well known as the point where secular and religious interests tend to
collide. Conservation officers refer to the Swedish Heritage Act when they prevent parishes from
replacing pews with mobile chairs, changing the position of the pulpit, turning historical funeral
parlors or medieval vestries into kitchenettes or toilets, or providing the church choir with a new
stage in the chancel. When preventing change by safeguarding religious structures and artefacts,
heritage conservation affects religious practice.
Contemporary conservation professionals are expected to defend the historical values and
care for the material status of heritage while at the same time respecting the current needs of the
users as well as their relationship to the heritage in question. Applied to a Swedish context, the
living heritage approach would propose that conservation officers working with religious heritage
rather turn their attention toward the congregations. If keeping heritage alive is about keeping
alive the connection between heritage and heritage users, the main task of the professional is to
act as a facilitator—in this case of Evangelical Lutheran religious practice.
Continuous use is an established heritage conservation ideal, but as it commonly entails
change, it also collides with the interest to preserve specific remains from the past. Although
Christian worship has been the constant purpose of the existing Evangelical-Lutheran church
buildings, Swedish religious life has changed many times since the buildings were erected.
Liturgy and social norms have transformed, and with them the parishioners’ spatial practice
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and architectural demands. According to Swedish national authorities, the Heritage Act allows
changes required to continue or renew religious use, but there are still a few cases where it has
been legally tried.
To conclude, the situation suggests that Evangelical Lutheran church heritage, as secular as it
is in a secular country like Sweden, relies on continuous religious use. Apart from contradicting
the idea of heritage being born out of loss, this would imply that a church building, once bereaved
of its religious content, eventually de-heritagizes. Lack of funding is not the key. The generous
funding system in Sweden illustrates that underuse, or, more particularly, religious underuse,
rather than lack of financial means, represents the main threat to the interests of heritage
conservation. The decisive question is whether church-buildings can stay significant without
their religious content.
Note
1 The two first quotes originating from Swedish parish information: Församlingsblad [Parish paper]
Danderyds församling 2016, webpage of the parish of Habo, September 11, 2015, the third quote is from
Swedish radio, radio P4 Blekinge, “Svenska kyrkan: Vi är inte ett museum,” broadcast August 8, 2016.
Authors’ translation.
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Case Study
Chapter 30
Tradition and Innovation in Rural

Churches: New Practices on Ancient Grounds
JOLANDA TUMA
Case Study
“In one generation we saw medieval churches increasingly left empty. It is the task of our
generation to take care of the future of this irreplaceable religious heritage.” These words, spoken
by the director of the Stichting Alde Fryske Tsjerken (Foundation for Historic Frisian Churches) in
an informal meeting, inspired me to develop a project that was called “Kerk in het Dorp” (Church
in the Village). The aim was to find ways to keep the churches in three villages in the northern
part of the Netherlands open and vital, despite a dramatic decline in their congregations. This
region of the Netherlands, especially the provinces of Groningen and Friesland, is characterized
by an open and flat landscape. In the countryside, it is easy to have a panoramic view, and when
looking around, one will often see the spires of several medieval churches. This religious heritage
determines the skyline and character of much of the North.
Although these churches were the center of Christian life for centuries in many villages of
Groningen and Friesland, they are being increasingly left empty because of a dramatic decline in
the Christian congregations due to secularization. Secular church foundations were established
about fifty years ago to prevent the loss of this valuable heritage. Christian congregations, as the
owners of most medieval churches in the region, could then hand over their buildings to these
well-equipped organizations to preserve them as heritage for the times to come.
In 2008, the medieval churches of three small villages in the northern part of Groningen, Den
Andel, Eenrum, and Westernieland, were signed over to the Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken
(Foundation for Historic Groningen Churches). With this transfer, the ownership of the churches
moved from a religious to a secular organization. However, although ownership changed, the use
of the churches remained constant, as the local Protestant congregation encompassing these three
villages rented the churches for their own use. In this way, the religious congregation still almost
entirely determined the use and therefore the meaning of the churches in the three villages.
In 2016, this situation changed. Due to a decrease in congregational involvement and
the subsequent difficulties, the local Protestant congregation for Den Andel, Eenrum, and
Westernieland merged with the Protestant congregation of the neighboring town of Winsum. It
was in this context that an attempt was made to maintain cohesion and cultural-historical heritage,
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Tradition and Innovation in Rural Churches
with the Kerk in het Dorp project initiated by the newly founded local Protestant congregation.
The author of this chapter, a pastor with an open mind with regard to religion, culture, music, art,
nature, and spirituality, was named project leader. Village inhabitants who were not members of
the church were invited to join the Christian congregation to discuss the function and meaning
of the churches. The goal of the project was to keep the churches open and vital, as a place
for worship, for cultural activities, and to foster spirituality and meaningfulness. This chapter
presents the practices of the first four years of the Kerk in het Dorp project.
A Change of Mind
The start of the Kerk in het Dorp project represented a change in mindset for the local Protestant
congregation, which, for many years, had been working on the question: “How can we survive as
a Christian institution in our villages?” After initiating the Kerk in het Dorp project, which was
financed by the local Protestant congregation, the question changed to: “How can the church (as a
building and an institution) contribute to wellbeing in the villages?” Therefore, it was essential to
open the doors literally and metaphorically to invite people in to think about the religious heritage
in their own village, whether they were believers, indifferent, or even averse to Christianity or
its institutions. As a result of this invitation, a committee was formed in each village to organize
cultural activities in the churches.
The church council of the newly formed local Protestant congregation established a
policymaking group to consider the organization and financing of the project, and, as mentioned,
a committee of local inhabitants was founded in each of the three villages. The author, as
pastor and project leader, was the official liaison point between the Christian congregation, the
policymaking group, the village committees, the churches, and the church wardens. I was also the
initiator of activities related to spirituality and meaningfulness. As mentioned above, the project
focused on three areas of interest: (1) the church as a place for worship, (2) the church as place
for cultural activities, and (3) the church as place for spirituality and meaningfulness.
Three Churches, Three Villages, and Three Cultures

Despite the merger with Winsum prompting the project, it remained focused on the three
medieval churches of the three villages of Den Andel, Eenrum, and Westernieland. Due to
historical, political, and cultural factors, there are remarkable differences between the three
villages, which also determine the attitude of village inhabitants toward religious heritage and
religious institutions. Subsequently, personal experiences with religious congregations, which in
this secular society can be quite negative, influenced the way the village committees answered
the question of “how to keep the church in our village open and vital.” The committees in the
three villages were looking for their own identity in organizing cultural activities that they
considered appropriate to the building, the village culture, and the personal interests of the
committee members.
The church of Den Andel is small and has an intimate atmosphere, making it a perfect place
for small-scale activities. In comparison to the other villages, the social context of Den Andel
is striking, as many artists and people seeking an alternative lifestyle came to reside there in
the 1960s. Today, this social context still characterizes the village community. Members of the
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committee in Den Andel were personally interested in classical music and were connected to
a network of musicians. Combined with the intimate atmosphere of the church, the committee
decided to focus on small-scale classical concerts.
The church of Eenrum is about three times the size of the church of Den Andel and is very
different in atmosphere. Eenrum is historically known as one of the socialist villages in the
northern part of Groningen province. This historical fact still influences the attitudes of many
village inhabitants in relation to Christianity. The committee in Eenrum focused on ways to open
the church to village inhabitants who were generally not used to visiting it.
The church in Westernieland is (Figure 30.1), like the church of Den Andel, small and has
an intimate atmosphere. The social context of Westernieland, which is situated close to the
coast on the Wadden Sea, is characterized by farmers, workers, and some artists. Cooperation
between these groups of people seems to be difficult due to historical elements. For example, in
Westernieland, a cultural committee had already been present for over ten years, organizing two
or three cultural activities per year in the church. The members of this cultural committee were
not inclined to work with members of the Christian congregation, which led to the formation of a
separate committee for Kerk in het Dorp alongside this cultural committee. This Kerk in het Dorp
committee focused less on culture and more on activities related to specific seasonal or religious
moments of the year, such as Easter, Christmas, and the summer solstice.
The reason for the Kerk in het Dorp project concentrating on the churches in these three
villages is linked to the history of the local Protestant congregation. Due to secularization, the
FIGURE 30.1 Medieval church in Westernieland.

Source: Peter Sauermann.
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number of members of Christian congregations declined dramatically. To survive, local Christian

congregations had merged. For several decades, the local Protestant congregations of Den
Andel, Eenrum, and Westernieland merged and formed a new local Protestant congregation.
The members of this merged local Protestant congregation used the three churches in the three
villages for worship. Thus, from the perspective of the local Protestant congregation, there was
a clear connection between the three churches and villages. However, from the perspective of
the village committees, whose members were not all familiar with the Protestant congregation,
there was no clear affiliation between the different villages, so each village committee initially
focused on their own church. Greater connection between the three churches, committees, and
villages was fostered through a joint website, a joint financial source, and coordination by the
project leader. Moreover, a meeting of all three committees and the policy-making group of the
Protestant congregation was organized once a year. It was in these meetings that people from
different village committees became acquainted with each other and members of the Protestant
congregation.
Worship, Culture, Spirituality, and Meaningfulness

As mentioned, the goal of the Kerk in het Dorp project was to keep the churches open and vital
as places for worship, cultural activities, spirituality, and meaningfulness.
The Church, a Place for Worship

For several decades, the local Protestant congregation encompassing the villages of Den Andel,
Eenrum, and Westernieland organized weekly services in one of the three medieval churches
of the villages. After the Kerk in het Dorp project started—around the same time that the local
Protestant congregation of the three small villages was combined with the neighboring town of
Winsum to form a new congregation in 2016—weekly services were organized in the modern
church in Winsum, and once a month another service was organized in one of the medieval
churches in the three villages. The union with Winsum thus resulted in a strong decline in the
number of services in the three medieval churches. Although the frequency of services was
thus very low, their religious function remained, and this also played a vital role in the Kerk in
het Dorp project. In fact, the number of people attending the monthly services in the medieval
churches increased by about three to four times: before 2016, about ten people attended the
services, while after 2016, the numbers increased to about thirty or forty.
The Church, a Place for Cultural Activities

As suggested above, the kind of cultural activities that were organized by the village committees
depended on the characteristics of the church building, the social context of the village,
and the interest of the members of the committees. Den Andel focused on organizing music
performances by (semi)professionals and local musicians, with about five classical concerts by
(semi)professional musicians taking place on Sunday afternoons each year. The audience for
these concerts came partly from Den Andel but mostly from outside the region. In addition,
once a year, an activity was organized that was of special interest to the village of Den Andel.
For example, a locally made documentary or a recently written book was presented, combined
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with performances by local musicians. In some cases, this was also combined with an activity in
the village house, or the documentary or book would be incorporated into the religious service,
resulting in a diverse range of activities based on a theme.
Because of the special acoustic features of the church of Eenrum, the committee of Eenrum
opened up the church to everyone who wanted to “resound in the church.” Many people found
their way to the church and were impressed by the sound of their own voice or instrument. Once
a year, all “resounders” were invited to sing or play again, but this time in front of an audience: an
open-stage midsummer concert was born. The monthly opportunity to “resound in the church”
not only attracted some of the inhabitants of Eenrum but also people from other parts of the
Netherlands.
The committee in Westernieland focused on seasonal rhythms and traditional religious feasts
throughout the year. For example, children were invited to make Palm Sunday sticks, decorate
Advent candles, or join a Christmas play. In addition to the children’s activities, an adult event
was organized for midsummer, with a special focus on music, nature, and storytelling. Each year,
on the evening of June 24, people were invited to the church, where the story of the summer
solstice was told: how the hours of sunlight grow until this moment and how they decline from
this moment on until midwinter. This seasonal aspect fits perfectly with the stories of the births
of John the Baptist (Saint John) and Jesus Christ, connected to the summer solstice and the
winter solstice, respectively. The gospel of John even states: “He (Jesus Christ) has to grow and
I (John Baptist) have to decline,” which relates beautifully to the seasonal growth and decline
of the sunlight. After hearing this story, people were invited to go for a walk during the sunset
and afterwards, they could return to the church where a fire was burning and music played. The
combination of a bible story, the seasonal changes, the Roman Catholic aspect of Saint John, and
the twilight walk attracted a diverse group of participants in terms of background and philosophy.
The Church, a Place for Spirituality and Meaningfulness

Alongside religious and cultural activities, medieval churches are beautiful sites to foster
spirituality and meaningfulness. Three activities that were closely related to the religious heritage
of the churches will be described here.
Once a year, a one-day pilgrimage to five medieval churches was organized. Early in the
morning, people gathered in the church of Eenrum. After a cup of coffee or tea, the pastor invited
the pilgrims to attend a short ceremony marking the start of the pilgrimage. The journey was meant
to be walked (20 km) or cycled (30 km), and for people who were not able to do either, a gypsy
caravan was made available. Along with the churches of Eenrum, Den Andel, and Westernieland,
two more medieval churches were visited during the pilgrimage. The churches served as resting
places where the pilgrims could meet each other. In each church, there was music, silence, or art.
After a day of pilgrimage, the journey was completed with a short church service.
In addition, in the summer season, the churches of Den Andel, Eenrum, and Westernieland
became studios where visual artists could work in silence over six consecutive Wednesdays. This
activity was born out of a simple question by an artist living in one of the villages: “Is it possible
to work in the church and experience what it means to be in that sacred place in silence for one or
more days?” This question prompted a very successful project called “Monks Work,” involving
ten medieval churches, ten artists, and many visitors. After each silent working day, the doors of
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the churches were opened, enabling visitors to walk in and experience the church, the art work in
progress, and the artists. The title “Monks Work” referred to the influence that a sacred place may
have on the artist, the regularity of a working schedule, and the way the artist works (repeating
movements, minimal art). (See the chapter in this volume by Anjet van Linge).
A third example of the church as a place of spirituality and meaningfulness focused on All
Souls Day on November 2. Originating in the Roman Catholic tradition, it has increasingly been
adopted by secular society as a day of remembrance. During the first four years of Kerk in het
Dorp, the doors of the churches were opened on November 2 to give people the opportunity to
come in and light a candle to remember their loved ones. While only a few people came to light a
candle in the first year, in the following years more and more people found their way in and were
grateful to discover a place for remembrance.
These three examples of pilgrimage, Monks Work and All Souls D ay, as well as the connection
of Saint John to the solstice gathering described above, are all closely related to Roman Catholic
tradition. This might be a surprise considering the Kerk in het Dorp project was initiated and
financed by a Protestant congregation. However, the intention of Kerk in het Dorp was to be open-
minded, not only with regard to the villages but also with regard to what characteristics the age-
old churches suggest. As all three medieval churches were originally Roman Catholic churches,
the fact that aspects from this tradition arose during this project might not be so surprising.
Moreover, deeply rooted rituals or symbols might be helpful for people looking for their own
way to find spirituality and meaningfulness in a society where the established congregations are
in decline.
New Ways on Ancient Grounds

Reflecting on the first four years of Kerk in het Dorp, an interesting shift can be detected in the
significance of the churches for the local community. For many years, actually for centuries,
religious institutions determined the meaning of these medieval churches. In the context of
Eenrum, Den Andel, and Westernieland, the local Protestant congregations had determined what
happened in the medieval churches, with religious services being the central and most important
activity. From the start of the Kerk in het Dorp project, however, the doors of the churches
were opened for people who were not connected to the religious congregation and for activities
other than religious services. By opening these doors literally and metaphorically, the meaning
of the churches changed. It was determined more by the building itself than by the religious
congregation. After four years of Kerk in het Dorp, it can be concluded that the church building
itself, as an inspirational place, might function as a shared interest and a factor in determining
meaning at the local level.
In addition to the characteristics of the church building, the social context of the village where
the churches are located and the shared interests of people who are involved in the organization
of the cultural activities are also strong determinants of the meaning of the specific churches.
Since the religious services were still part of the activities, this factor prevented the churches
from becoming completely separated from their original religious significance. The most striking
part of the project appears to be the activities originating in and around religious heritage with
regard to spirituality and meaningfulness. The combination of these sacred spaces with the
natural surrounding area, with the seasonal and traditional religious rhythms, as well as music,
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art, rituals, and symbols, has proven to be a fruitful way to support people in their personal and
spiritual development.
The Kerk in het Dorp project began as an experiment aimed to keep the churches in the
three villages open and vital. In the first four years, the project developed in an organic way,
without clear goals, but open to the organization of all kinds of events and encouraging people
to meet each other. This way of working resulted in many different activities, involving people
with diverse orientations. In turn, these activities influenced the culture of the local Protestant
congregations, fostering a more open atmosphere. The mindset changed from “how to survive
as a Christian congregation in our villages” to “how can the church as a building and institution
contribute to the wellbeing of our villages and towns.” The ideas and practices resulting from the
Kerk in het Dorp project have been adopted more broadly by the local Protestant congregation,
which will hopefully continue to support the work in the villages for years to come. Perhaps Kerk
in het Dorp represents one way to answer the plea quoted at the start of this chapter and “take care
of the future of this irreplaceable religious heritage.”
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Postsecular Meaning-Making
28
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Challenge
Chapter 31
Postsecular Meaning-Making? Why

Contestations about Church Heritage Matter in
the Study of Society
ERNST VAN DEN HEMEL AND IRENE STENGS
Challenge
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 annual village fair of the Dutch village of Lievelde had
to be cancelled. Instead, the fair committee organized an alternative program in the local Catholic
church. The program included live-streamed performances—without audience—of the regionally
famous cover band “The Sjefs” and party DJ Pim Pam Pompen on Saturday evening, June 6. The
church council (locatieraad) had agreed with the use of the church. After all, the local woodwind
and brass band also held its annual performance in the church, and the event was, in the eyes of the
church council, a good platform to foster a sense of village community spirit.
The next Monday, all inhabitants of Lievelde received a letter from the church parish
stating that the performances had desacralized the church. The letter generated outrage, and
subsequent reporting on the matter made the “Lievelde village fair performance” a more
widely debated topic geared toward questions around the nature, ownership, and purposes of
church buildings. According to the pastor in an interview with a regional newspaper, the church
council should have never given permission in the first place. “A Roman-Catholic church is
a sacred building. A church is not a building for holding performances or drinking beer”
(Esselink 2020).1 In another interview, this time in a national newspaper, the pastor further
explained his outrage: “I was terrified by what I saw … the chanting of the slogan ‘God is a
DJ,’ the content of the lyrics, the tarnishing of the chancel. There was beer. The smoke screen,
the light effects, all in all it was an affront. I could draw only one conclusion: the church was
desecrated” (Fens 2020). The direct consequence of the pastor’s desecration verdict was that
the church could not be used for religious services until a penitential rite (boeteritus) would
restore the building’s sacredness. In the meantime, the body of Christ, the hosts, had to be
removed from the church.
The organizers and the church council were taken aback. In their experience, they had taken
care not to overstep any boundaries: “We rather liked it … we asked the DJ and musicians not
to play heavy metal, which they didn’t. All in all it was a rather tasteful affair” (Fens 2020). The
289
church council ended up (temporarily) resigning over the affair, citing irreconcilable differences
in opinion about how to go about managing the church (Ebbers 2020).
By and large, to the eye of the general public, the controversy was the local outcome of a
clash between conservative religiosity and secular party-culture, and herewith an affirmation of a
more general narrative of the ongoing secularization of the Netherlands, shared by both religious
and “anti-religious” proponents. The tendency to frame contestations in clear-cut dichotomies,
however, does not do justice to the complexities involved. The Lievelde church controversy
is but one instance of more general societal issues, in the Netherlands as elsewhere in Europe,
that in particular revolve around questions such as: What meanings does a church building
generate? To whom does a church building belong? To local, (supra)national church authorities,
local volunteers, or to “the village community?” In various forms, these questions have been
the topic of concern in a vast, and growing, body of scholarly literature (Beekers 2017; Hemel,
Salemink, and Stengs 2022; Isnart and Cerezales 2020; Meyer 2019; Oliphant 2015). Also for the
Lievelde church, these questions are all the more pressing as, due to dwindling church numbers,
the building is in the process of being repurposed, possibly becoming formally acknowledged as
heritage.
Repurposed Church Buildings and “Usage Contestations”

The case of the Lievelde church is exemplary for wider issues in relation to (future) claims of
ownership and (im)proper use of Catholic, Protestant (see Basteleur, Rots, and Wagenaar in this
section), and Lutherian (see Lofgren and Wettenburg, this volume) church buildings. At the time
of writing this piece, the future maintenance of Dutch Catholic church buildings became topical
after the publication of an inventorization report conducted by the church itself (De Fijter and
Den Boer 2021).
Increasingly, the Catholic Church and most of their parishes simply do not have the funds for
the upkeep of the buildings, and many may await an uncertain fate in the near future. Protestant
churches may await a similar threat (see Löfgren and Wetterberg on heritagization of Swedish
Lutheran churches in this volume). Whether a church building will be repurposed, heritagized,
or destroyed depends on a combination of circumstances, involving stakeholdership, issues of
ownership, and the emotional value—whether that be “religious” or otherwise—attributed to the
building by local and national communities. A Dutch newspaper suggested the establishment of
a national fund for the rescue of churches, highlighting the importance of church buildings as
symbols of social cohesion (De Waard 2021).
The Lievelde church controversy highlights “usage contestations” that may arise when a church
is in the process of becoming repurposed. A closer focus on the nature of these contestations helps
us to understand the ambivalent role religion and heritage play in times in which the meaning of
religion and its remnants are unclear.
First, clearly, the controversy brings to light the different meanings the church building has
for different people. In Lievelde, the villagers, the local Church council, the pastor, all articulated
what the church meant to them, and formulated ideas and concerns about what activities would
do justice to the importance of the building. This implies that for an understanding of the diversity
of stakeholders and their claims management structures and ideologies of ownership as they take
shape on the ground need to be studied.
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Postsecular Meaning-Making?
Second, the case demonstrates the complexity inherent in the notion of sacrality. The Church
council and volunteers saw the “not-playing of metal” as a respectful gesture that would
acknowledge the sacrality of the building. A statement made by DJ Pim Pam Pompen that he,
by playing the song “God is a DJ,” precisely aimed to combine dance music with the building’s
sacredness in a respectful manner, shows a perspective in which profane and sacred activities
do not exclude each other. However, to the pastor, the playing of any dance music was an act of
sacrilege. In other words, the church building evokes different practices of usage, protection, and
restriction among different people, something that should not be taken for granted but requires
ethnographic investigation
Third, the broad, even national interest in the affairs of a local, provincial church indicates
more general and deeper concerns with the present and future usage of religious buildings. Again,
such popular and political concerns are often flattened into binary oppositions of religious versus
secular claims, whereas both religious and secular actors express concerns over sacrality and the
role of religion in public life. On a national level, “religion” and all things religious, can become
symbols for a wide range of anxieties about present and future developments in society. These
include concerns about the roots and future of cultural, national identities, and its others.
Fourthly, other than the outrage of the Lievelde church pastor seems to suggest, religion
and entertainment have always been entangled dimensions of church activities. The fact that a
village fair gave rise to such consternation fits in a longer tradition of fairs and festivals clashing
with religious authority. We may think here of markets and country fairs, often connected with
the annual name-days of popular Saints, as events where “high” and “low,” “heavenly” and
“mundane” registers intersect and frequently clash (Roodenburg 1990). Churches have never
been islands of loftiness in a sea of profane platitudes. So even though the priest lamented the
loss of sacrality (“the sense of the holy has disappeared among these people”) the truth of the
matter is that, now and in the past, churches belong to people’s lifeworld, including seemingly
mundane or profane aspects. Though it might be tempting to frame present profane usage of
church buildings as following from contemporary processes of secularization, a more nuanced
understanding through contextual historization is necessary.
Summarizing, investigating contesting claims of ownership, and the different conceptualizations
of what church buildings mean for different people and the various parties involved, help us to
highlight how church buildings are entangled in clashing and overlapping imaginaries. These
dimensions make the (re)use of church buildings a relevant object of study for social scientists
and religious studies scholars alike.
A Postsecular Conundrum
The issues outlined earlier—stakeholders, notions of sacrality, religious and cultural identity,
and contextualized historization—help to shed light on the riddle of why precisely seemingly
redundant church buildings are at the center of complex developments and clashing imaginations
in societies broadly understood as secularized. Such riddles have been interpreted by scholars as
indicative of a condition called “the postsecular.” As outlined by Todd Weir in his introductory
essay to this volume, the postsecular can be taken to mean two things. First, following Habermas,
the postsecular is seen as a frame that allows open dialogue between the religious and the
secular. Second, the postsecular can be taken to mean a process of spiritualization, describing
291
“meaning-making in the space between the secular and the religious” (30). Weir sees the
postsecular as containing a positive potential for an “a creative process,” allowing for a diverse
society to find new ways of meaning making. Repurposing of church buildings can become
an opportunity for inclusive innovation: heritage “is approached as a place where secular and
religious villagers can enter an open-ended dialogue over meaning, and where evangelization
usually takes a back seat” (9).
We would like to add that notions of postsecularity invariably entail ambiguous relations
and tensions. There is invariably a profound and often conflictual negotiation on how places,
practices, or people that were previously called secular or religious are to interrelate. It might
even be a defining feature of the postsecular. In an insightful debate on the weblog The Immanent
Frame, John Boy formulated it succinctly: “ ‘postsecular’ implies that things that were formerly
taken to be ‘split’ or consigned to separate spheres are now recognized as intrinsically linked”
(Boy 2011). “Postsecular” is, in other words, short-hand for a conundrum.
The chapters in this section provide ample illustrations of the potentialities and problems
of postsecular meaning-making. Their connecting theme is that they present worlds in which
people are invested in rendering repurposed church buildings (and religious heritage in general)
meaningful in what is generally perceived as a secularized society. The examples help to see the
multiplicity of forms and strategies local groups, organizations, the state, or individuals may
employ in their efforts to further or to obstruct the (re)use of a particular church building. In
this way, actors aim to attribute to or to control processes of meaning-making. Recognizing that
the topic of repurposing church buildings is connected to moral issues, the authors explicitly
or implicitly align their analysis with a morality involving heritage, spirituality, and diversity.
Both Rev. Hinne Wagenaar and Inge Basteleur present an insider’s perspective of the challenges
and objectives met during the process of repurposing a church building. Basteleur addresses
the goals of the foundation Stichting Groningen Kerken to promote a central role of church
buildings in society. Similarly, the site of Nijklaester, in the words of Wagenaar, aims to translate
the previous sacrality of church buildings into new forms more befitting the diversity of spiritual
practices. Central concerns for both Basteleur and Wagenaar are notions of translation: how to
translate the meaning of the building in new ways, befitting the many meanings church buildings
can take in present-day society. Analogously, Aike Rots is concerned with how to conceptualize
ritual practices in light of the realization that “belief” is not the guiding principle in matters of
meaning-making.
Such matters of translation are always complex affairs, as illustrated by Eva Löfgren and Ola
Wetterberg. Through a discussion of how state-led heritagization clashes with confessional use
of church buildings in Sweden, they show that postsecular meaning-making might not always
be an oecumenical affair but instead might lead to incommensurable clashes between different
registers.
These concerns are particularly urgent as in the twenty-first century notions of heritage,
religion, and culture function as floating signifiers in an often polarizing and intensifying
reconfiguration of who is seen to belong and who does not. Scholarly work as well as the work
of heritage brokers perpetually run the risk of obscuring postsecular conundrums. “Heritage”
can be a practice of inclusive meaning-making, but it can also be the handmaiden of a nativist
conceptualization of humanity. Christianity-as-heritage is also part of considerable anxiety about
identity. The politically potent discourse that speaks of national identity in terms of cultural
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Postsecular Meaning-Making?
heritage, Judaeo-Christian values, and the importance of safeguarding cultural identity is part of
a polarizing debate in which diversity and inclusion are hotly contested.
Scholars and heritage brokers are challenged to address these issues while keeping a keen
eye on matters of inclusion and exclusion. It is a continuous demand to explore the paradoxes,
limits, and pitfalls of postsecular meaning-making. What happens when imaginations of proper
usages of a church building clash? How do the limits of heritagization come to the fore, when
do the challenges to be inclusive in polarized times become apparent? Clashes and contestations
(like the example of the desecrated Lievelde church with which we started this discussion) are
particularly productive to highlight assumptions that would otherwise remain hidden from view.
It will be an important task for scholars and brokers alike to present meaning-making not as a
seamless inclusive affair but as a dynamic and risky practice in volatile times. This requires
profound ethnographic research that pays equal attention to dissonant and less prominent actors,
in order to better understand the social dynamics of religious heritage.
Note
1 During the performance, only one single bottle of Grolsch beer—a beer brand known for its origin in the
same region—was placed on the altar. One may wonder whether the bottle’s explicit visibility was a veiled
advertisement, serving both the promotion of the brand and the localness of the event.
References
Beekers, D. (2017), “De waarde van verlaten kerken,” in Oskar Verkaaik, Daan Beekers, and Pooyan
Tamimi Arab (eds.), Gods huis in de steigers: religieuze gebouwen in ontwikkeling, 161–92.
Boy, J. (2011), “What We Talk about When We Talk about the Postsecular,” The Immanent Frame, March
15. http://tif.ssrc.org/2011/03/15/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-the-postsecular/ (accessed
June 1, 2023).
De Fijter, N., and H. den Boer (2021), “Door vergrijzing en ontkerkelijking lijden acht op de tien
parochies verlies,” Trouw, November 30. https://www.trouw.nl/religie-filosofie/door-vergrijzing-en-
ontkerkelijking-lijden-acht-op-de-tien-parochies-verlies~b479b410/ (accessed April 4, 2021)
Ebbers, M. (2020), “Optredens in Christus Koningkerk leiden tot conflict in parochie,” Groenlose Gids,
June 15. https://www.groenlosegids.nl/nieuws/algemeen/314788/optredens-in-christus-koningkerk-lei
den-tot-conflict-in-parochie- (accessed June 1, 2023).
Esselink, D. (2020), “Pastoor haalt hosties uit de kerk Lievelde na ‘ontheiliging’ door optreden,” Omroep
Gelderland, June 12. https://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/is-er-al-een-deltaplan-voor-de-katholi
eke-kerk-in-de-maak~b4bedee9/?fbclid=IwAR3CZ9QvsTqkl0gC5FOd-uG0XFHDMAUk7IPjvKyx
ioF91y0KcLYAc7jTAD4&utm_campaign=shared_earned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=faceb
ook (accessed June 1, 2023).
Fens, S. (2020), “Hoe een dj de kerk van Lievelde ontheiligde,” Trouw, July 1. https://www.trouw.nl/reli
gie-filosofie/hoe-een-dj-de-kerk-van-lievelde-ontheiligde~b709486e/ (accessed April 4, 2021).
Hemel, E. van den, O. Salemink, and I. Stengs (eds.) (2022), Managing Sacralities. Competing and
Converging Claims of Religious Heritage. Oxford: Berghahn.
Isnart, C., and N. Cerazales (eds.) (2020), The Religious Heritage Complex: Legacy, Conservation, and
Christianity. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Meyer, B. (2019), “Recycling the Christian past. The Heritization of Christianity and National Identity
in the Netherlands,” in R. Buikema, A. Buys, and T. Robben (eds.), Culture, Citizenship and Human
Rights, 64–88, London: Routledge.
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Oliphant, E. (2015), “Beyond Blasphemy or Devotion. Art, the Secular and Catholicism in Paris,” Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21 (2): 352–73.
Roodenburg, H. (1990), Onder Censuur: De Kerkelijke tucht in de Gereformeerde Gemeente van
Amsterdam, 1578–1700. Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren.
Waard, P. de (2021), “Is er al een Deltaplan voor de katholieke kerk in de maak?,” Volkskrant,
December 2. https://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/is-er-al-een-deltaplan-voor-de-katholi
eke-kerk-in-de-maak~b4bedee9/?fbclid=IwAR3CZ9QvsTqkl0gC5FOd-uG0XFHDMAUk7IPjvKyx
ioF91y0KcLYAc7jTAD4&utm_campaign=shared_earned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=faceb
ook (accessed April 4, 2021).
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Analysis
Chapter 32
The Village Church as Intangible Cultural

Heritage: European Ritual Innovation Seen
from a Japanese Perspective
AIKE P. ROTS
Analysis
It is common practice in religious studies, as in other social science disciplines, to analyze

non-European worship practices by using theories and concepts developed within European
or North American contexts. Social scientists and historians often refer to non-Western cases
to verify Western theories and claim their universal validity—or, alternatively, to challenge
or falsify them. This is clearly visible, for instance, in the scholarly literature on secularism
and secularization: while the main theories were developed in Western academia, drawing on
European and American historical trajectories, scholars of Asia have applied, tested out, and
adjusted those theories based on their knowledge of specific Asian societies (e.g., Bubandt and
Van Beek 2012; Dean and Van der Veer 2019; Rots and Teeuwen 2017). The opposite is far less
common: using Asian (or African, or Indigenous) ideas and practices not as cases that are useful
for verifying or falsifying Eurocentric theories, but as bases for developing new theoretical and
conceptual frameworks that can help us understand developments elsewhere, including Europe.
This is certainly the case for heritage conservation: although the concept originated in Europe,
in the last decades Asian societies have taken the lead in redefining and reshaping (notions of)
heritage, and insights from Asia may help us understand contemporary European developments.
Michael Puett rightly pointed out that “many of our current theories are implicitly based
at least in part upon Christian, or more specifically Protestant, assumptions. Bringing more
indigenous theories into our discussions—in other words, taking non-Western traditions
seriously from a theoretical perspective and not simply as objects of our analyses—will help us
to overcome the potential biases in our current theoretical understandings” (2010: 365). Using
Asian theoretical insights to analyze Western cases could shed new light on the significance of
rituals in contemporary society (Seligman et al. 2008), the corporate nature of modern religious
institutions (McLaughlin et al. 2020), or the transformation of lived religion into state-sanctioned
“intangible cultural heritage” (Salemink 2018). Perhaps Europe is not the model of all things, and
not the trendsetter it is often imagined to be—but rather, in some crucial respects, a provincial
295
backwater (Chakrabarty 2000; Mahbubani 2008). Following Puett’s lead, this chapter raises
the question if it would be possible to use East Asian theories or concepts to analyze ritual
practices not only in Asia itself but also in Western Protestant contexts. What would happen if we
defamiliarize the familiar by analyzing a Dutch cultural practice from a decidedly “non-Western”
and “non-Abrahamic” theoretical perspective? Put differently: what would a non-Eurocentric
ethnography of a European ritual innovation look like?
This chapter offers some tentative suggestions, zooming in on one particular case: a newly
created, non-confessional community Christmas ritual in a historic village church in the
Netherlands, which I will analyze from a Japanese theoretical perspective. In order to understand
the significance of this ritual innovation, I argue, we need to sideline the issue of “belief,” which
has long been central to theological and sociological inquiry in the Protestant West, and instead
look at the church Christmas service as a type of intangible cultural heritage: a temporally and
spatially embedded collective ritual that is not contingent upon faith and that primarily serves to
establish a sense of belonging among community members. The event in question is functionally
similar to a Japanese ritual community festival (matsuri), which in Japan is commonly associated
with Shinto shrines and their deities (see Foster and Porcu 2020). For the village discussed in
this chapter, turning the Christmas gathering into a shared ritual event independent of faith or
confessional identity—that is, turning it into intangible heritage—was central to a larger initiative,
started in the late 1990s by a group of volunteers, to improve living conditions and social relations
in the village. In postwar Japan, matsuri are seen as important vehicles for “community-making”
(komyuniti-zukuri) and a means to counter the negative effects of urbanization, depopulation,
and social isolation. The ritual innovation discussed in this chapter constitutes a type of non-
confessional celebration akin to a Shinto matsuri, drawing actively upon the ritual and symbolic
heritage of Protestant Christianity while bracketing questions of belief and soteriology, which
ultimately serves to “make a community” in the Japanese sense.
In the last few years, numerous scholars have identified the “heritagization of religion”—the
discursive, physical, and legal reconfiguration of worship sites and ritual practices as “heritage”—
as an important global trend in need of academic inquiry (e.g., Johannsen and Ohrvik 2020;
Rots and Teeuwen 2020; Salemink 2016; Van den Hemel and Stengs 2019; Wang, Rowlands,
and Zhu 2021). This trend did not originate in Europe. Although European notions of heritage
were highly influential during the formative years of the UNESCO World Heritage List and
associated knowledge regimes—characterized, among other things, by a strong focus on the
historical authenticity of building materials and remnants—the 1990s and 2000s have seen a
dramatic paradigm shift in global heritage preservation and conceptualization. In particular, the
influential criticism of Eurocentric notions of heritage that was expressed in the Nara Document
on Authenticity (1994) and the establishment of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) led to significant changes in UNESCO practices and priorities
and, consequently, in heritage conservation and legislation worldwide. Japanese diplomats and
heritage experts played a large part in these developments (Akagawa 2015; Hølleland 2020;
Teeuwen and Rots 2020).
Throughout East and Southeast Asia, the category “heritage” today serves as a useful device for
state and religious actors to deprivatize religion, gain new sponsors and audiences, and overcome
the limitations of modern legal and political secularism (Rots 2019; Salemink 2016, 2018). But
Asian countries and institutions have not merely implemented and adapted European notions of
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The Village Church as Intangible Cultural Heritage
heritage; they have also shaped and transformed understandings of heritage globally. In particular,
East and Southeast Asian models of reconfiguring ritual practices and sacred sites as intangible
cultural heritage have gained paradigmatic status worldwide, with significant consequences for
religious institutions. If “cultural heritage” no longer denotes material remnants of the past but also
lived practices—including ritual ceremonies and celebrations—it is no longer only the church or
temple buildings and sacred objects that constitute heritage but also what people are doing with
those objects inside those buildings. Clearly, this is a paradigm shift with potentially far-reaching
implications for (the study of) religion. Prayers, storytelling, and ritual offerings are no longer
merely expressions of individual or collective faith; they have become intangible heritage. And,
crucially, identification with this heritage is not necessarily dependent upon religious belief or
institutional membership. When these Asian models of ritual-as-intangible-heritage gain traction
in Europe—which, I believe, is the case today—we can expect far-reaching implications for
European religious institutions that were previously faith-centric and membership-based. On the
one hand, the heritage model can provide opportunities for institutional reinvention and survival.
On the other, however, such survival is only possible if people are willing to accept that faith is
optional and no longer a condition for participation. The heritagization of religion in northern and
western Europe thus goes hand in hand with its deconfessionalization, which may be deplored by
some religious actors, but perceived as liberating by others. This deconfessionalization does not
necessarily imply institutional decline; it can shape new opportunities for collective belonging
and ritual participation.
A key feature of the heritagization of religion, then, is the focus on practices instead of faith as
a marker of belonging. Simply put, one can take part in the heritage of a local religious tradition
(e.g., a Reformed church service, a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox procession, a Shinto
ceremony, or a Hindu festival) without adhering to a particular creed or belonging to a faith
community. When ritual events are redefined as non-confessional “intangible heritage,” and
belonging and participation are no longer contingent on the profession of faith in a particular
creed, scholars of religion are forced to reconsider some of their discipline’s central theoretical
biases, including those associated with the centrality of “belief.” Perhaps we are moving away
from a society where people were “believing without belonging” (Davie 1994) to a society where
people can once again belong to a ritual community without necessarily believing in the deity to
whom the rituals are addressed—just like in Japan, China, or Vietnam. Ritual, then, is no longer
primarily an expression of faith, but has become local intangible heritage, and belonging without
believing is no longer problematic.
An “Ordinary” Village Church in Groningen

Midwerd is a small village in the countryside of Groningen, surrounded by dairy farms. It has
a population of several hundred inhabitants. A sizeable proportion of the villagers work in
agriculture; most of the others work in the city of Groningen, which is located within commuting
distance. The last bus stop, grocery store, and primary school disappeared many years ago. The
village has no places of interest other than a community house with a small bar that opens once a
week and is run by volunteers, a new playground with some basic sports facilities (subsidized by
the municipality and some nonprofit organizations after active lobbying by a village committee,
a decade or so ago), and a small church dating from the mid-nineteenth century. The village has
297
no restaurants or tourist accommodations and sees few visitors, other than some recreational
cyclists and walkers.1
Despite its nondistinctive appearance and lack of facilities, however, the village has a long
religious heritage. The first church was built in the fourteenth century, a few hundred meters
from the present-day church. It was not only associated with a nearby monastery but also
constituted a minor pilgrimage destination in its own right, housing a relic of an ancient saint.
The relic disappeared during the Reformation; the church building was replaced much later, in
the nineteenth century. Today, only an old graveyard remains at the location of the medieval
church. Once a year, members of the Russian Orthodox Church in the city of Groningen organize
a procession to this graveyard to pay their respects to the saint. The village community is not
actively involved in this event, but local volunteers do invite members of the Russian Orthodox
Church for coffee and cake after their procession. In return, several years ago, they received
a Russian icon, which is now on permanent display next to the pulpit—an unusual sight in a
Reformed church.
The current church building functioned as the main center of worship for Dutch Reformed
villagers until the early 1980s. At the time, the village community was still relatively “pillarized”
(Bryant 1981): the Dutch Reformed (Nederlands Hervormd), the more orthodox and conservative
Liberated Reformed (Vrijgemaakt Gereformeerd), and the non-confessional villagers each had
their separate subcultures and sent their children to different schools.2 However, the Dutch
Reformed community was constantly shrinking, and weekly services were discontinued in the
1980s. In subsequent decades, the church was used only sporadically, for instance for funerals;
it was mostly closed, except for the annual “Open Monumentendag” (European Heritage Day).
By the turn of the century, not only had the congregation ceased to exist but the church building
itself was also in bad condition. The church authorities, however, did not have the financial
means to cover the considerable costs of the repairs, and the building was in danger of being
demolished. A group of concerned villagers—some members of the Dutch Reformed Church3
and some non-members—came together to discuss fund-raising possibilities. With the help of
municipal politicians (from the Labour Party as well as the Christian Democrats and a smaller
conservative Protestant party) and the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation (Stichting Oude
Groninger Kerken; SOGK),4 they eventually managed to secure enough provincial and European
subsidies to pay for the repairs, which took place in 2010. Subsequently, in 2011, management of
the church was formally transferred to SOGK.
The villagers were not merely concerned about the state of the building, however. They wanted
something more: a church that could function as a community center, where people could meet,
exchange ideas, and learn. In other words, they wanted their church to be everything a church
should be—not only a meeting place providing people with a sense of community cohesion,
but also a place where they could be inspired—but without clergy, confession, or communion.
They started organizing art exhibitions, classical music concerts, and second-hand book markets,
most of which attracted large numbers of visitors from within the village and beyond. In 2019,
they were included in the “50 Churches Open” (50 Kerken Open) project (see Figure 32.1)—an
initiative by SOGK to celebrate its anniversary and attract more visitors to rural churches—and
in one of the newly invented “pilgrimages in Groningen.”5 Thus, in the 2000s and especially
2010s, the church was successfully revitalized; not as a Protestant congregation but as a local
community center with significant social and cultural value.6 In other words, the church was no
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299
FIGURE 32.1 “Church open” sign at the entrance to the anonymized church in Midwerd.
Source: Aike P. Rots.
299
longer merely material heritage; it also became lived heritage. This is nowhere as visible as in
the annual Christmas gatherings.
Reinventing the Christmas Service

It is the end of 2019, the last Saturday before Christmas. More than a hundred Midwerders come
together in the church. It is full, and those who arrive late have a hard time finding a place to sit.
The atmosphere is festive; people greet each other heartily and speak loudly. They are a diverse
bunch, ranging from farmers and construction workers to artists and teachers, as well as many
children and pensioners. The majority of them are not religiously affiliated. Some are atheists,
while others are agnostics. Some have a Reformed or Roman Catholic background; they may still
believe in the Christian God, or “something” derived from it, but they no longer attend church
services or mass regularly. Quite a few have embraced New Age and related “spiritual” practices
and beliefs. Not all attendees are institutionally unaffiliated, however. Some are active members
of a Reformed congregation and attend weekly church services in one of the neighboring villages.
Even some of the more orthodox Protestant villagers have made it to this Christmas gathering;
there are members of the Liberated Reformed Church as well as some Seventh-day Adventists.
Most long-term residents know, more or less, who belongs to which denomination. They know
who is a professing Christian, a self-declared shaman, or a staunch atheist. But on this day,
nobody talks about matters of belief. Nobody mentions God.
The annual Christmas gathering has become a popular village tradition. It is organized by a
small group of dedicated volunteers from within the village, this year for the twentieth time. All
attendees receive a printed program that looks very similar to the paper liturgies handed out at
mainstream Protestant church services. The structure of the event is strikingly similar, too: we all
sing Christmas carols together (Christian carols like “Silent Night,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and
“Midden in de winternacht” are combined with secular songs such as “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish
You a Merry Christmas”); there is a village choir performing some more musically challenging,
lesser-known songs (a rather eclectic mix of gospel, pop, and classic); and local children perform
a nativity play. The highlight of it all is a moving, somewhat moralistic Christmas story, written
and read aloud by one of the villagers, which is reminiscent of a church sermon. The only aspects
that are missing, ecclesiastically speaking, are an ordained priest, reading from the scriptures, the
Lord’s Prayer, and a ritual blessing. Instead, there are music performances, poetry, and even a
drone demonstration. It is all wonderfully diverse and inclusive—and yet, despite the eclectic and
non-confessional character, it is undeniably a Christmas event, containing nativity references,
Christian songs, spiritual guidance, and a sense of fellowship that extends beyond the everyday.
At the end of the gathering, the choir and attendees sing “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, before
walking to the community house where they eat soup and bread together, and drink conspicuous
amounts of mulled wine. It may not be Holy Communion, but it most certainly is a communal
meal, and the Christian references are hard to miss even if they are not explicit.
What is so special about this? Certainly, Midwerd is not the only village in the Netherlands
where a church building that no longer serves a congregation acquires new meaning as a
community space, used for art exhibitions, concerts, or second-hand book markets. According to
research by the national newspaper Trouw, in 2019 approximately 1,400 out of 6,900 churches in
the Netherlands were no longer in use as a place of worship but had been given a new function
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(Van der Breggen and De Fijter 2019). Thus, the innovative character of the initiative in Midwerd
lies not so much in the use of space, but in the creation of a new community ritual—in other words,
in the making of intangible rather than material heritage. Of course, there is nothing unique about
secularizing Christmas: children at non-confessional public schools throughout Europe join in
the heritage of Christmas by learning carols with Christian lyrics and performing nativity plays,
without taking part in prayers or learning about Christian theology. What is special about the
Christmas gatherings in Midwerd, however, is that they take place within the decidedly Christian
space of a church; that they are fully secular events, institutionally speaking, yet do not deny
or negate confessional understandings of the holiday; that they are not merely cultural events
like school plays or concerts, but have all the characteristics of a ritual, including a collective
affective and morally significant experience; and, last but not least, that they successfully bring
together devout Christians, atheists, and New Age aficionados, who can all share in the cultural
and spiritual heritage of Christmas without having to agree on its soteriological significance.
In other words, unlike a football match, a rock festival, or an Evangelical family day, all of
which attract like-minded people with similar interests, the Christmas gathering in Midwerd is a
community ritual that brings together people with profoundly different worldviews, ideologies,
and interests, strengthening the social bonds between them. It draws upon the rich heritage of
Christianity both symbolically and ritually, but successfully brackets the question of “belief”—
no mean feat in the context of Reformed Protestantism, where Luther’s sola fide has long been
a guiding principle. Thus, although the church gathering resembles mainstream Protestant
church services in both shape and contents, there is one crucial difference: contrary to church
congregations, belonging is here contingent upon ritual participation, not upon a shared faith.
In other words, the Christmas gathering has become a type of intangible community heritage.
Ritual is central; belief is optional, and mostly evaded. It is almost like a Japanese Shinto festival.
The Matsuri and the Kyōdōtai: or, Ritual as Intangible

Community Heritage
In this section, I argue that the transformation of the Christmas church service in Midwerd into
an inclusive community ritual—containing many of the traditional elements of a confessional
Protestant church service, combined with some innovations—constitutes a type of intangible
heritage-making that corresponds to a common pattern in Shinto.7 More specifically, the
Christmas church service has become a type of matsuri: a festival, where belief is private, while
ritual participation and belonging are communal and, hence, of primary importance. The god(s)
may still be present—in symbols and storytelling if not in the flesh—but they are peripheral. What
matters is the performance of tradition as a means to create a sense of community belonging.
The term “Shinto” refers to religious institutions named jinja or jingū (translated as “shrines”
in English) and the rituals that take place there, mostly in Japan. Importantly, one does not
have to be affiliated with a shrine in order to worship there. Shrine communities (ujiko) are not
membership-based; the income of shrines and their priests comes from corporate sponsorship,
ritual fees, and private donations, not from membership fees. Shrine rituals are performed for
deities named kami. It is not necessary to know the name of a kami, or their characteristics, in
order to worship them, and faith is no condition for ritual participation. Some worshippers are
devout and have a personal relationship to the kami they worship; others are atheistic, and simply
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perform the ritual as a “social custom”; many others are agnostic and perform the ritual because
“you never know.” Shrine authorities prescribe proper ritual behavior (e.g., washing hands before
entering; clapping and bowing in front of the main hall), but they do not usually tell visitors what
to believe.
According to postwar and contemporary Shinto scholars and leaders, the shrine and its sacred
grove historically constitute the social, spiritual, and economic center of a village community
(Sonoda 1998; Tanaka 2011; Ueda 2004).8 They use the English loan word community as well
as the Japanese term kyōdōtai, which literally means “collective body.” In the minds of these
scholars, a well-functioning community operates as a single body. Accordingly, shrines have a
public function: they must preserve the social body (McLaughlin et al. 2020; Rots 2017a). In
other words, they are simultaneously sacred, in the Durkheimian sense—that is, set apart from
the ordinary and perceived as nonnegotiable—and secular—that is, not religious. Postwar Japan
has constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion, but “religion” and “belief” are private and
optional. Shinto, by contrast, is communal; it is concerned with the public good and with the
establishment and preservation of social cohesion.9
This community-centrism shapes Shinto theories of ritual, which arguably have relevance
beyond Japan as well (e.g., Sonoda 1998; Tanaka 2011). Shinto scholars like Sonoda Minoru
and Tanaka Tsunekiyo stress that making a collective body is not a one-time occurrence, but a
continuous enterprise. After all, social bodies are vulnerable and must be preserved in order not
to fall apart. How does this happen in practice? How is the community created, cultivated, and, if
necessary, revitalized? The answer they give is: through ritual. Seasonal rituals connected to the
New Year or the rice harvest all play a part in establishing a sense of community, as do coming-
of-age rituals. Most important, however, is the matsuri, the annual village festival. The festival
has a solemn, spiritual element, involving the ritual veneration of the deity by a shrine priest; but
the efficacy of the ritual is not contingent upon the presence, let alone faith, of the community
members. For them, it is the ludic and liminal character of the festival that matters: participation
in processions, ritual dances, and collective feasts, which are not merely entertainment but also
serve to relieve tensions and resolve conflicts between community members (Sonoda 1998; see
also Schnell 1999). Belief is optional and private, but participation is expected.
If a community is created and recreated through ritual action, it follows that its collective
identity is not primarily dependent upon material heritage—although material heritage and
physical location certainly matter—or upon a shared set of beliefs—there is no such thing as a
village in which all members share the same worldview!—but in its intangible traditions: crafts,
performing arts, festivals, and shared worship practices. This, precisely, is the rationale behind
the establishment of the UNESCO intangible heritage lists, and the growing appreciation of
intangible heritage by national governments worldwide: preserving these lived traditions as
a means to protect cultural diversity and corresponding social identities. Shinto rituals lend
themselves perfectly for this type of “intangible heritagization”—indeed, they were among the
first ritual traditions in the world to be reclassified as such (Foster 2013; Kikuchi 2020). Such a
reconfiguration fits neatly with contemporary Shinto ideology, as it places shrine rituals in the
center of public space, turning them into a type of “secular sacred” that is no longer bounded by
the modern legal category “religion” (Rots 2019). In other words, when ritual becomes intangible
heritage, it becomes public property. You may believe whatever you want, but faith in divine
agency is no condition for participation and for community belonging.
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None of this is unique to Shinto or to Japan. Of course, the idea that ritual plays a central role
in the creation of a community is hardly original; it is a core Durkheimian tenet, and by no means
limited to Shinto. But for Durkheim, as for other social anthropologists, ritual functions within
the context of a shared belief system and shared symbolic language (see Morris 1987: 106–22).
By contrast, Shinto theory reminds us that, for a ritual to be effective, it is not necessary that
all participants have a shared understanding of its meanings, or even believe in the existence
of the deity. As long as the ritual specialists know what they are doing, and other participants
fulfill their practical tasks, it does not matter what everyone believes. Ritual is collective, but
belief is individual—or, at least, it is something that is only discussed in circles with like-minded
believers. The village is not a congregation or other faith community, but a social unit, and the
matsuri can serve its role by virtue of the participants not discussing divine matters.
Conclusion: Matsuri in Midwerd

Needless to say, the church in Midwerd is not a Shinto shrine, and the villagers are not Japanese.
Shinto rituals differ significantly from Reformed Protestant ones, in shape, appearance, and
theological justification. Moreover, there are some noteworthy differences between modern
Dutch and Japanese configurations of the category “religion” and its relationship to the state.
Despite those differences, however, I argue that the ritual innovation in Midwerd is in complete
accordance with Japanese patterns: worship becomes heritage, belief is optional, and communal
belonging is created through shared participation in a ritual that carries profoundly different
meanings to different participants—and that difference is accepted, tacitly if not explicitly.
Although the villagers are not aware of it, by creating a new collective ritual for the entire village
community regardless of personal belief or religious affiliation, they have done the exact same
thing as Japanese community leaders: they have created a matsuri. While institutionally secular—
that is, no church authorities or clergy are involved in this process—this Christmas matsuri is
by no means a mundane, disenchanted affair. Quite the opposite: by creatively recombining
elements from confessional Christmas services, the villagers have created a Christmas gathering
that is part of Protestant Christian heritage yet significantly more inclusive than regular church
services. Creating a ritual that is palatable for orthodox Protestants as well as outspoken atheists
is no easy task, but they appear to have succeeded in this remarkably well.
It is precisely because of the focus on ritual participation—in storytelling, singing, and of
course the communal meal—and because of the shared, unspoken consensus that matters of belief
are not to be discussed during this event that it has acquired such an inclusive character. Bluntly
put, by bracketing God, the villagers could ensure the continuation of local Christian heritage,
albeit in a somewhat altered form. And by creating their own inclusive ritual, drawing on this
tradition, they have achieved something that is quite rare in the “secularized” Netherlands: every
year, they manage to get their church full of people, and all of them sing Christian songs. In sum,
the villagers have created something akin to a Shinto matsuri, centered on shared communal
rituals, which draw on tradition but are simultaneously subject to continuous adaptation.
Religious belief is optional, and some villagers may take it very seriously, but it is not a condition
for participation, and it is not discussed explicitly during the event. As a space for matsuri, the
church has become a symbolic and literal center for the creation of a local community (a kyōdōtai
or collective body), similar to a Shinto village shrine.
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Much of the research on the “heritagization” of religion in Europe to date has focused on
material heritage, such as church buildings, synagogues, and religious art. Sociologically
speaking, however, the transformation of ritual celebrations into intangible heritage is at least
as important a topic of inquiry. This applies not only to large-scale, newly invented “post-
Christian” events such as The Passion in the Netherlands or Trondheim Internasjonale Olavsfest
in Norway, which likewise create a sense of “belonging without necessarily believing,” if only
temporarily. It also applies to small, bounded village communities such as Midwerd. The potential
implications of this type of “community-making through a non-confessional Christian gathering”
for Protestant Christianity are far-reaching, as it suggests that Christian institutional decline is not
inevitable. Churches can survive and even be revitalized, if its members are willing to bracket
faith, celebrate heritage, and accept ideological diversity within the community. This also means
that sociologists of religion should stop trying to quantify and assess the “level of religiosity” of
societies by looking at data on “belief in God” and “religious membership,” because these data
tell us increasingly little about actual ritual participation and belonging. We should acknowledge
that people can take part in the heritage of Christianity, willingly and self-reflexively, without
believing in God or being affiliated with a particular denomination.
In sum, the transformation of religion into intangible community heritage in Europe may have
a significant impact on the institutions and actors involved, as well as on the academic study of
religion. As I have shown in this chapter, it is not novel, but follows a common Japanese (and,
indeed, East Asian) pattern: the continuity of ritual traditions and religious institutions is ensured
by their reconfiguration as (intangible) heritage, and this plays an important role in creating
or preserving a sense of community belonging. These developments are not an indication of
“believing without belonging,” as Grace Davie described European religiosity in the 1990s, but
its exact opposite: belonging without (necessarily) believing. The category “heritage” is central
for maintaining and recreating this sense of belonging, as it allows community members to
sideline the question of “belief” and come together for celebrations. In times of uncertainty,
crisis, economic inequality, and political fragmentation, such collective ritual celebrations are
essential for preserving community cohesion, and perhaps more important than ever.
Acknowledgments
Research for this chapter was conducted in the context of the project “Whales of Power: Aquatic
Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia.” This project
is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant
agreement no. 803211 (ERC Starting Grant 2018).
Many thanks to the editors for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of this chapter. And
thanks to the hardworking and creative volunteers of “Midwerd,” who saved their church and
brought their village back to life.
Notes
1 The name Midwerd is a pseudonym. Although I do not present any sensitive material or personal data in this
chapter, I have decided to be cautious and anonymize the village in order not to cause any unwanted attention.
There are many such villages in the province of Groningen, and many attractive village churches—some
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significantly older and more aesthetically pleasing than the one in Midwerd. The ritual innovation discussed
in this chapter, however, is rather unique, not least because of its explicit non-denominational and non-
confessional character. I have grown up in this village and known many of its inhabitants since I was a
child, and I have returned repeatedly as an adult, witnessing the transformations and attending several of
the Christmas gatherings discussed in this chapter.
2 Since the seventeenth century, the village was long home to a Mennonite (Doopsgezind) community as
well. They had their own church on the other side of the village, which was converted into a carpentry
workplace in the 1970s and serves as a regular house today.
3 In 2004, most congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church merged with the Reformed Churches
(Gereformeerd) and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, becoming the Protestant Church in the Netherlands
(Protestantse Kerk in Nederland; PKN).
4 This foundation currently manages ninety-one churches. It was established in 1969 in order “to preserve
historic churches in the province of Groningen and to promote an appreciation of them.” For an overview,
see https://www.groningerkerken.nl/en/home (accessed January 31, 2021).
5 In recent years, the Pilgrimage Foundation in Groningen (Stichting Pelgrimeren in Groningen; SPiG) has
created approximately 250 short- and medium-distance walking routes (“pilgrimages”) throughout the
province. This corresponds to a wider northern European trend: in various majority Protestant countries
without pilgrimage traditions (at least not in post-Reformation times), church and secular authorities are
now reinventing and creating “ancient” pilgrimage routes as a means to attract visitors, apparently meeting a
demand on the part of recreational walkers. Examples include the St. Olav Ways in Norway (Johannsen and
Ohrvik 2020) and the Scottish Pilgrim Routes Forum (Bowman 2020). For the pilgrimages in Groningen,
see https://www.spig.nl/ (accessed January 31, 2021).
6 Not surprisingly, the years 2020 and 2021 saw fewer events and visitors than previous years because of the
Covid-19 pandemic. I believe that this is a temporary dip, and that the post-pandemic period will bring an
increase in the number of activities and even more community participation. The future will tell.
7 The Japanese worship tradition Shinto is notoriously difficult to define, and I do not have the space to
discuss it in much detail here. For academic discussions of different conceptions of Shinto, see Breen and
Teeuwen (2010); Rots (2017b). For a historical overview, see Hardacre (2017).
8 For a more elaborate analysis of these ideas and their implications for state-religion boundaries, see Rots
(2017a).
9 This is a normative ideal rather than an accurate description of reality. Legally speaking, shrines are
religious institutions, just like temples or churches. Moreover, Japanese Christians, members of popular
Buddhist lay movements, and communists are likely to disagree that they belong to a community centered
around a Shinto shrine and its festival. But the focus on community is a core aspect of priestly discourse
and it does function as a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least to a certain extent.
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Analysis
Chapter 33
Spiritual Tourism: Religion on the Road

HARALD SCHWILLUS
Analysis
Traveling to religious sites and events is nothing out of the ordinary: churches, chapels,
monasteries, mosques, synagogues, temples, and other places of worship belonging to existing
and long-gone religions are part of the standard program when on the road for leisure and
education. Celebrations with religious origins also belong to these kinds of journeys, for example,
the Oberammergau Passion Plays in Bavaria, Germany; the Easter Celebrations in Rome, where
the Pope himself is part of the performance; or the spectacular processions held during Holy
Week in Spain. In Europe, the vast majority of religious places or events visited are connected
with Christianity.
The tourists making their way to these places or events, however, are not only members of
the faith community. Especially within the framework of cultural tourism, many non-believers
or members of different religions are attracted to these places and events, not only because of
a historical or cultural interest but increasingly for unspecified religious or spiritual interest. It
is with good reason that the tourism industry as well as regional and local travel providers are
interested in such travelers. Among the variety of the tourist products, one increasingly finds
travel itineraries offering so-called spiritual travels. With this, a new segment of tourism has
emerged in the last fifteen to twenty years, which is expected to continue its expansion (cf.
Schwillus 2013a, 2016).
These observations reflect more general insights uncovered by research on European tourism.
In the 2009 Flash-Eurobarometer, 26 percent of the people surveyed named culture as an important
reason for their vacation, and especially referred to religious cultural heritage sites. Visiting cities
with a spiritual significance has also become an increasing trend. This is clearly illustrated by the
rapidly increasing numbers of tourists recorded by the Pilgrim and Tourist Office of the Vatican,
which, furthermore, for some time now, has been cooperating with airlines to coordinate its more
than six million annual visitors (Reinhard 2016: 107).
While religion and tourism are thus connected to each other in multifaceted ways, this
connection is not without the risk of some tension. Misunderstandings and disappointments of
expectations are not unusual—both on the side of tourists and that of providers. To prevent this
from happening, an exploration of visitors’ expectations about the religious sites is required, as
well as a clearer understanding of the different reasons people travel to religious sites and events.
308
Spiritual Tourism
This chapter first explores several facets of tourism at religious or former religious sites. It then
distinguishes between two particular modes of travel in relation to religion. Throughout, the
chapter connects travel related to religion to the heritage field in order to explore benefits and
challenges.
Tourists at Religious Sites

Tourist encounters with tangible or intangible religious and spiritual heritage offer a huge
opportunity to strengthen societal unity, despite all the problems and difficulties connected
with them. During these encounters, travelers meet testimonies of religion, sometimes at places
that are still used by a religious community today, and sometimes at places that are used in a
different way today (e.g., as a museum or a cultural institution). Through their architectural
design or their location, even the latter still references the religion or spirituality of the religious
community that resided there in the past. They are places in which the language(s) of the
religion(s)—and therefore also the language(s) of spirituality—are concretely embodied and
communicated through architecture, aesthetics, and furnishings. In the context of Spiritual
Tourism, the encounter is not with the practice of faith but with the traditions and customs that
religions encompass.
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has pointed out the importance of such an encounter
with religious traditions and their rational semantic potential that can support the foundation of
a free and pluralistic society. Tourist destinations such as places currently and formerly used by
churches and religious groups can be spaces in which non-religious people also experience a sense
of the power of articulation that religious languages have (cf. Habermas 2001: 22). Following
Habermas, the task arises to communicate these semantic potentials in the form of religious
heritage such that they can be observed and bear fruit. Spiritual Tourism can make a contribution
to society by incorporating religious heritage into public awareness and fostering a pluralistic
societal discourse. At the same time, it offers churches and religious groups the opportunity to
remain a visible part of a pluralistic society—and in a context where people encounter them in a
relaxed recreational situation: tourism.
The fear of interference with their own spiritual life—which is voiced by many people
responsible for religious sites—can also be challenged by pointing to the advantages of such
encounters. According to the French sociologist Michel de Certeau, through the presence of a
stranger, a new perspective on one’s own religious heritage can emerge. This stranger, this other,
this tourist, becomes a constitutive element of introspection in these places of religious heritage.
The tourists who come to these religious sites do not usually belong there. As strangers, they may
question the (religious) routines simply due to their lack of knowledge and familiarity, and thus
encourage a change of perspective. Tourists thus have the potential to be healing questioners of
the apparent certainty of one’s own knowledge (cf. de Certeau 1987). Spiritual Tourism can also
help prevent the self-ghettoization of religious groups. By remaining open, such groups allow
themselves to be exposed to the rest of society and respond to the pressure to reflect on what their
own religious heritage might mean for everyone today.
Places of religious heritage that are now under secular management must also ask themselves
about the relevance of their preservation and communication—albeit in a different way. Here,
the goal is to share with strangers and tourists the religious-cultural knowledge embedded in the
309
buildings and objects. In this way, the buildings, formerly used for religious purposes, partake
in the societal process of integration and communication that is connected to religious heritage.
In general, churches and monastery buildings fascinate a wide range of people—even if
they are not members of a church or religious community. These sacred places offer a unique
opportunity for people to find inner peace, take time to explore, think about themselves and the
world, ponder deeper questions about life and possibly God, or simply to leave daily life behind
for a while. However, they can also communicate the richness of the religious heritage connected
to the locations. Such needs have been taken seriously, for example, by the Church of England
as well as by the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. These institutions keep churches
open and develop programs for believers and spiritual seekers, as well as non-Christians and
even people who consider themselves nonbelievers.
In this way, churches and religious communities are important partners in Spiritual Tourism in
preserving religious heritage and making it accessible to the public at the same time. Moreover,
in the context of Spiritual Tourism, buildings that are no longer used by a religious community
today, such as former churches, synagogues, or monasteries, which now serve as museums or
cultural assets, also have the potential to maintain and communicate the religious heritage of a
society. Within the framework of Spiritual Tourism, this can happen in two different ways.
Two Manifestations of Spiritual Tourism: Spiritual Voyage

and Religious Tourism
The term “Spiritual Tourism” describes, on the one hand, a scientific research field between
religion and tourism. On the other hand, from the perspective of travel agencies and states and
municipalities, it means a specific travel segment, in which different perspectives on religion
meet: religiousness, religion, theology, belief, and faith. However, how do we view these
elements of religion from a tourist’s point of view? For authentic local providers—mostly
churches and monasteries—this point of view opens both new opportunities for and challenges
to communication and cultural education about religion (cf. Antz 2020). From the perspective of
tourism studies and practical theology, Spiritual Tourism should be observed as a phenomenon
that includes two different forms of travel, even though it is sometimes not possible to clearly
separate them in the field of tourism. I have previously designated these two forms as “spiritual
voyage”1 and “religious tourism”2 (cf. Schwillus 2013b).
This distinction refers to what Michael Stausberg has called “religious (or religiously
motivated)/spiritual tourism” and “religion in tourism,” respectively (cf. Stausberg 2010: 21).3
In his differentiation, religious/spiritual tourism primarily includes journeys made for religious/
spiritual motives (why?), while religion in tourism concerns travel destinations that are connected
with religion in some way (where to?). This distinction matches a classification of travel motives
that tourism research uses for travel in general: “away from” and “toward” motives. While the
former motive emphasizes a movement of escape and at the same time implies a search for
a different world, in the latter, curiosity and the urge to enquire are central. In this way, it is
possible to distinguish the two specific manifestations of travel, which can be summarized under
the umbrella term of Spiritual Tourism: The spiritual voyage designates “why” travel as having
a religious motivation with an “away from” direction, in which the travelers hope to immerse
themselves in the narrative and memory space of the “church” or “religious body” in order to
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expand, question, or newly develop their own religious and spiritual possibilities. In this case,
religious heritage is especially sought out in a personal search for meaning. Religious tourism, in
contrast, designates “where to” travel, having a cultural motivation with a “toward” directionality,
in which the opening of interpretation of the domain of “religion” is integrated or at least made
possible. Here, religious heritage is opened up as an educational subject and can be experienced
as relevant to the self-image and the solidarity of a pluralistic society. Both forms of Spiritual
Tourism contribute in different ways to ensure religious heritage remains relevant to one’s own
life and the societal discourse and to make it accessible.
Examples of Spiritual Voyage

In Europe, many churches and living monasteries offer tourists opportunities as spiritual
voyagers. These include temporary residencies in abbeys, retreats to religious places, as well
as the simple expectation of quietness in a convent, which, for example, executive managers
might seek out before making important decisions. These places often offer an escape from the
noise and stress of everyday life. In addition, participation in pilgrimages and processions for
religious motives also belongs to this mode of travel (cf. Sommer and Saviano 2007: 138). From
a theological perspective, opportunities to undertake a spiritual voyage are connected to questions
about religion, belief, and faith. They are open to believers and non-believers. Spirituality in this
context means a specific, not necessarily denominational, religious approach to the life of a
person concerning the transcendent or immanent Divine Being.
For example, “bike lane churches” and “highway churches” belong to this category. Such
church destinations are not conceived as the goal of long pilgrimages, but rather as spiritual
destinations frequented during a trip taken for other reasons, offering an opportunity for recess
and reflection along the way. In this manner, they are short-term pilgrimage destinations, which
sometimes span only the length of the trip between the highway exit and church (“away from”
the actual travel route). Moreover, they are usually not frequented because of their religious-
touristic content, but predominantly for what the site itself has to offer in terms of an experience
for the visitor.
Highway Churches
Highway churches4 and chapels are Christian places of worship in close proximity to these roads.
The first highway church opened in 1958 in Adelsried (Bavaria, Germany) near Augsburg, close
to German Highway #8. Today, there are forty-seven highway churches in Germany, two in
Austria, and one in the Czech Republic. Criteria for a highway church are very strict. Such a
place of worship must have a direct connection to a highway stop or a highway exit and be less
than 1,000 meters from the highway. Parking lots and washrooms are mandatory. The responsible
body normally has to guarantee opening hours between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and bear the costs for
energy and cleaning. The inner rooms have to be big enough that a whole group traveling by
bus can visit at the same time. Additionally, the approval of the German Federal Ministry of
Transport and Digital Infrastructure, as well as of the local church or bishopric, is required.
Sometimes highway churches are parish churches that are open for travelers during the
day. Sometimes these churches and chapels explicitly serve only this purpose. They offer the
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opportunity for individual and anonymous reflection and contemplation for those traveling by
car. Church services and direct contact with priests and other official personnel are not necessarily
part of this. All German highway churches are members of the Conference of Highway Churches
supported by the Academy of Insurances regarding Churches (Akademie der Versicherer im
Raum der Kirchen). The homepage of this umbrella organization for all these churches and
chapels explains the concept:
Rest for body and soul. Highway churches in Germany. Highway
churches invite you to take time for relaxation, reflection, and
devotion. Travelers can reconnect with themselves—and their
senses and souls can find rest. Someone who rests at a highway
church usually resumes driving in a calmer, more considerate,
and safe fashion. A visit to a highway church thus also contributes
to road safety. German highway churches invite you! (cf.
autobahnkirche.de)
The religious denomination of visitors to these churches is not of importance. The invitation
to come in and find a calm place to relax, and to submit private concerns to God if desired, is
essentially extended to everyone.
Bike Lane Churches

Similar to highway churches, bike lane churches5 are a special kind of church that are reliably
open (cf. Sauer 2019: 176–320). The first bike lane church in Germany, the Johanniskirche
(St. John’s Church) in Klosterpark Reinhardsbrunn in Thuringia, opened in 2001. In 2009, the
Protestant Church agreed on the standard label of “bike lane church.” Today, this label is granted
to more than 280 Protestant and Catholic churches, and it guarantees some basic standards for
visitors on bicycles. You will find such a church in direct proximity to a bike lane accessible
everyday between Easter and Reformation Day (October 31)—in many locations, they are also
open throughout the winter period—all functioning as spiritual places. For this purpose, the
regular duties of opening and closing the building have to be organized, which is mostly done
by volunteers. In addition, cyclists can collect folders in the church that provide information
about the church building itself and the bike lane church campaign in general. This concept
has also been adopted in Switzerland,6 which currently has twenty-three such churches. Like
highway churches, the bike lane churches also invite to spiritual contemplation and devotion.
They also guarantee the bicycle tourists a suitable place for rest, access to washrooms, as well as
information about the location and sights in the area.
Examples of Religious Tourism

In contrast to the spiritual voyage, religious tourism is not necessarily undertaken due to a spiritual
or faith-based motive. Within the framework of cultural tourism, places, celebrations, and rites
that have a religious significance might also be visited. Travelers visit places with a special
aura and atmosphere, and usually do not expect a lasting impact on their lives (cf. Sommer and
Saviano 2007: 149).
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However, religious tourism offers special opportunities to bring these culturally interested
tourists into contact with living or former traditions of spirituality and religion at the site
visited. This religious aspect is usually not sought by the visitors in the first place, but mostly
accepted when offered. Connected with this, churches and religious communities can create
educational opportunities for a broad audience, such as experiencing a church, chapel, or shrine
in its religious dimension too. This opens up an additional perspective of understanding and
interpreting a “holy” place in a multidimensional way and not only as an example of art, culture,
or architecture. If this perspective is neglected, a crucial element in our understanding of these
places would be lacking and an opportunity to explain the importance of religious heritage
would be overlooked.
Opening a Church for Leisure Tourists

A rather unconventional example of the new use of a church in a tourist region in Northern
Germany is Federow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). After
its parish lost members and believers and no longer needed the church for Sunday worship, it
remained open and held on to all its equipment for divine service and prayer. However, in the
1990s, the church building had become nearly dilapidated. Fortunately, an innovative concept
for a widened use as a place of performance for radio plays allowed the repair of the building.
Finally, in 2005, the Federow church opened for its inaugural season as the first radio play church
in the world (cf. https://www.stmarien.de). From July to September, visitors can now experience
“Cinema for the Ears,” with radio plays for children in the afternoon, and literature, features,
and crime stories for adults in the evening. The audience for these performances sits in a fully
furnished church building. Therefore, the church could still serve the purpose for which it was
built at any time, that is, prayer and service. In addition, some of the tourists who had enjoyed
a radio play there returned to celebrate their weddings or other events of faith in the building.
If it had been converted entirely into a secular hall this would not have been possible anymore.
Therefore, the specific religious atmosphere of the former parish church offers additional value
to the audience of the radio plays, as a unique location that might also have personal religious
and spiritual significance.
The Idea of a Network: The Center for Spiritual Tourism in Thuringia (Germany)
The creation of networks involving partners from various fields is a much-used strategy for
connecting different opportunities for religious and spiritual tourism and making them more
visible. One example of this use of networks can be found in the Center for Spiritual Tourism
in Thuringia,7 which opened in 2011 (cf. Schwillus 2016: 271–2). This center was developed
at the location of the first bike lane church in Germany, Reinhardsbrunn in Thuringia, by the
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, in cooperation with the Ministry of Economics of
Thuringia. Here, tourists receive information about different networks and routes that hint at
the rich religious heritage of Thuringia, including churches as well. The design of this center
is reminiscent of a tourist fair, with eight stands providing information about eight bundles of
spiritual destinations and their respective tourist routes and clusters in Thuringia.
Destinations that can be found at the center are:
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1. Mysterious Inheritance. Deep Roots: Places of pre-Christian religiosity in Thuringia.

2. Felling Oaks—Building Churches. Boniface brings Christianity: Locations of Origin of
Christianity in Thuringia.
3. To Go Beyond. Traces of Elisabeth and Meister Eckhart: Living places of Elisabeth and
Eckhart in Thuringia.
4. Monasteries in the Country. In Reinhardsbrunn and elsewhere: monasteries with spiritual
offers.
5. In Front of God and Men. Reformation in Thuringia: Life stages of Martin Luther, Thomas
Müntzer, and Andreas Bodenstein, called Karlstadt, in Thuringia.
6. Spiritually on the Road. Pilgrimage paths and bike lane churches: Pilgrimage routes for
pedestrians and cyclists through Thuringia.
7. Sound and Music. Bells, cantatas, and organs: Places where the traces of Johann Sebastian
Bach and Heinrich Schütz can be found, and locations of organs and bells.
8. Tradition and Plurality. An Invitation to Take a Break: Locations of the three big monotheistic
religions that invite to interrupt your day and contemplate.
A Guidebook for Tourists that Includes Religious Aspects

One way to describe the meaning of religious buildings is through a guidebook, of which The
Monastic Landscape of Saxony-Anhalt (Beier 2011) is an example. This guidebook emerged
from a corresponding research project at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. It contains
all the information one would expect: history, visiting the site, address, opening hours, and
entrance fees. In addition, at every location, the reader can find a section called “something to
think about”8 with a spiritual dimension.
Religious Education: Explaining a Church’s Rites and Interior

Many tourists visiting a church do not know the meaning of interior elements such as the
altar, pulpit, or stoup, and their role and importance in church services. However, this allows
opportunities for religious education in the frame of religious tourism. A great example of this
is the exhibition “Do as Catholics do”9 (cf. keb.bistumlimburg.de/beitrag/so-geht-katholisch/),
commissioned by the diocese of Limburg (Germany) in 2017 as an exhibition that travels to
different churches. It consists of eight transparent panels, each of which shows the silhouette of a
person performing a religious act. A text explains the act and its meaning for practicing Catholics.
Another exhibition that is designed differently but with the same intention can be found at the
Catholic Church in Wittenberg (Germany) (Figure 33.1). It concisely explains the interior of the
church in lay terms and its meaning for liturgy. This exhibition has been displayed permanently
since 2017 and is titled “Catholics Celebrate Their Faith.”10
Conclusion
Religion and tourism are interconnected in manifold ways. An innumerable number of
architectural and cultural sites in Europe bear reference to religion, and frequently to
Christianity. From an economic perspective, this means that religion can add a surplus selling
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FIGURE 33.1 Consoles for explaining the interiors of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg (Germany).
Source: Volker Willhardt.
315
proposition for tourist agencies to attract people to these places. However, simply focusing on
tourism as an economic factor would fall short if it did not take other aspects into consideration.
Diverse opportunities for cooperation arise for churches and other religious providers as well
as government and regional tourism stakeholders. The distinction between the two kinds of
travel subsumed under the term Spiritual Tourism may be helpful here, because it considers the
different motives of tourists visiting a religious site. In this way, religious sites and events might
be opened up to the needs of diverse visitors, also preventing disappointment, and at the same
time developing opportunities based on the manifold needs.
However, beyond the narrow touristic correlation, the framework of Spiritual Tourism opens
up multiple perspectives, which will most likely gain in importance. It emphasizes the meaning
of religious education for discourse in a free and democratic society: churches and religious
communities can contribute their own perspectives, especially in the area of religious tourism,
which can be considered input into a broader education and indispensable to understanding
Europe’s religious heritage. Furthermore, it encourages the preservation of Christian church and
monastery buildings, as well as buildings of other religions that are no longer used for regular
religious services due to a decreasing number of believers, or out of other reasons.
Opening up these buildings for tourism is an opportunity to expand their use, as has been
occurring in England, for example, for a long time (cf. Elders 2021). In addition, it allows for
the development of research programs and application-oriented academic projects that can
foster the connection between religion and tourism. The cooperation of churches, other religious
institutions, the local, regional, and national tourism industry, and academic partners will be
important in the future to open the rich religious heritage to all kinds of journeys connected with
religion—for spiritual voyages as well as for religious tourism.
Thus, the term Spiritual Tourism can be connected to very different expectations, touristic
orientations, and modes of travel. However, in using the term, it becomes clear that it is often
narrowed down to aspects of a spiritual search for meaning as a motivation for travel (cf. Knop
2015: 74–9). On the other hand, the relation of religion and spirituality to tourism also has other
connotations that are less focused on personal self-discovery. They concern making religion
and its spiritual concretization accessible as a domain for interpreting the world, which is of
true interest to tourism. Spiritual Tourism in this context is an umbrella term for two kinds
of travel: one made based on motives of experiencing self, the world, and God, and one that
connects people with the testimonies of living and formerly practiced religion. Both travel modes
contribute to preserving religious heritage and to opening up its meaning in the pursuit of self-
understanding and social cohesion in a pluralistic society.
Notes
1 In German: “Spirituelles Unterwegssein.”
2 In German: “Religionstourismus.”
3 In German: “religiöser (religiös motivierter)/spiritueller Tourismus” and “Religionstourismus” (translation
by the author).
4 In German: “Autobahnkirchen.”
5 In German: “Radwege-Kirchen.”
6 There called “Veloweg-Kirchen.”
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7 In German: “Zentrum für Spirituellen Tourismus in Thüringen.”

8 In German: “Denkanstöße.”
9 In German: “So geht katholisch.”
10 In German: “Katholiken feiern den Glauben”; these panels originated in a research project at Martin
Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2016/17 (lead by Harald Schwillus).
References
Antz, Christian (2016), “Spiritueller Tourismus: Wachstumsmarkt für Kirchen und Tourismus,” Wort und
Antwort 57 (3): 117–23.
Antz, Christian (2020), “Spiritueller Tourismus,” in Axel Dreyer and Christian Antz (eds.)
Kulturtourismus, 3rd edn, 209–16. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Beier, Stefan (2011), Klosterlandschaft Sachsen-Anhalt: Mit Denkanstößen von Katrin Czerwitzki und
einer Einführung von Harald Schwillus. Wettin-Löbejün: Stekovics.
Certeau, Michel de (1987), La Faiblesse de Croire, Luce Giard (ed.). Paris: Seuil.
Duda, Tomasz (2019), “Does a Religious Tourist Need a Guide? Interpretation and Storytelling in Sacred
Places,” in Dolors Vidal-Casellas, Silvia Aulet, and Neus Crous-Costa (eds.), Tourism, Pilgrimage and
Intercultural Dialogue: Interpreting Sacred Stories, 105–14. Wallingford: CABI.
Elders, Joseph (2021), “Re-Thinking England’s Churches as Community Assets as well as Places of
Worship,” in Harald Schwillus (ed.), Religiöses Kulturerbe im Wandel. Nutzung und Umnutzung des
religiösen Erbes in Europa, 179–92. Berlin: Logos.
Habermas, Jürgen (2001), Glauben und Wissen: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2001.
Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.
Kanaan-Amat, Maia/Crous-Costa, Neus/Aulet, Silvia (2019), “Interpretation Tools for Religious
Heritage,” in Dolors Vidal-Casellas, Silvia Aulet, and Neus Crous-Costa (eds.) Tourism, Pilgrimage
and Intercultural Dialogue: Interpreting Sacred Stories, 85–95. Wallingford: CABI.
Knop, Meike (2015), Urlaub im Kloster: Eine empirische Analyse der Übernachtungs—und
Kursangebote deutscher Klöster. Lohmar: Josef Eul.
Paschinger, Elena (2019), “Pilgrimage Tourism and Social Media. A Way Forward in the 21st Century?”
in Dolors Vidal-Casellas, Silvia Aulet, and Neus Crous-Costa (eds.), Tourism, Pilgrimage and
Intercultural Dialogue: Interpreting Sacred Stories, 155–20. Wallingford: CABI.
Reinhardt, Ulrich (2016), “Zur Zukunft des Freizeit- und Reiseverhaltens,” Wort und Antwort 57
(3): 102–8.
Sauer, Kathrin (2019), Unterwegs mit Gott: Radwegekirchen, Gottesdienste im Grünen und christliche
Reisen als Gelegenheiten für “Gemeinde auf Zeit”. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Schwillus, Harald (2013a), “Religion im Museum zwischen Tourismus und Bildung,” in Harald Schwillus
(ed.), Wallfahrt ins Museum? Die Kommunikation von Religion im Museum mit Blick auf die
Besucherinnen und Besucher, 11–23. Berlin: Logos.
Schwillus, Harald (2013b), “Religion und Tourismus. Erzähl- und Erinnerungsräume öffnen,” in
Konstantin Lindner et al. (eds.), Erinnern und Erzählen: Theologische, geistes-, human- und
kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven, 453–60. Berlin: Lit.
Schwillus, Harald (2016), “Auf spirituellen Wegen: Spiritueller Tourismus zwischen Religion und Reise,”
in Andreas Ranft and Wolfgang Schenkluhn (eds.), Kulturstraßen als Konzept: 20 Jahre Straße der
Romanik, 271–8. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner.
Sommer, Aline, and Marco Saviano (2007), Spiritueller Tourismus—Religiöses Reisen in Deutschland.
Berlin: Uni-Edition.
Stausberg, Michael (2010), Religion und moderner Tourismus. Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen.
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Stausberg, Michael (2011), Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations and Encounters.
London: Routledge.
www.autobahnkirche.de
https://keb.bistumlimburg.de/beitrag/so-geht-katholisch/
www.stmarien.de
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Case Study
Chapter 34
New Monasticism in Old Churches: The Case

of Nijkleaster (New Cloister)
HINNE WAGENAAR
Case Study
After growing up largely unchurched, I searched in my late teens

and early twenties for a place that I could have a spiritual home.
While I found a place that served some of my spiritual needs,
I was still looking for the real spiritual encounter. I have traveled
to Vietnam, Brazil, and Guatemala and I saw glimpses of spiritual
encounters in these places but it was not until I sat in a 1,000-year-
old unheated church in the Frisian countryside under a blanket
amid a windy-rainy day, listening to songs, prayers, and scripture
in Frisian, Dutch, Latin, and English that I witnessed God’s real
presence in my awareness. But why was that? Why did it take for
me to go to the countryside of a far northern European land in
order to feel God? In some strange way, I feel that my encounter in
that Frisian village-church at Nijkleaster was this place. This was
a place for silence and reflection, a place to refocus, and a place to
simply be loved. In this old place, there was a transformation of
my life.1
These words were written by a seminary student on retreat in response to an experiment
undertaken by a new monastic movement in the northern Netherlands called Nijkleaster, which
settled in an old monumental church in the Frisian village of Jorwert, offering a place of silence
and retreat from a hectic modern society. This case study explores how several major challenges
of today’s society were met by Nijkleaster, not only the issue of secularization and spirituality
but also of the ongoing challenges of rural life, local language, sustainability, and heritage. In all
of these domains, the challenge pertained to transposing the valuable baggage of the past into the
contemporary context in the interest of the future.
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The Context
Jorwert is a small village of about 300 inhabitants in the central countryside of Fryslân, one of
the northern provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Fryslân is the historical successor of
the Frisian Lands of the Middle Ages, a chain of territories in the northwestern part of Europe
located around the North Sea, whose once seafaring people became a society of farmers over
the course of several centuries (Pye 2015). The Frisian language was preserved in the course of
this development and today still embodies an important component of Frisian identity.
The church of Jorwert (Figure 34.1) was built in the early twelfth century as a Roman Catholic
church and was probably erected on a site that had significance in the pre-Christian era (Noomen
1996: 30–3). During the Reformation, the parish of Jorwert joined the protest movement and
became Protestant in 1580. Subsequently, the interior design of the church changed drastically,
with a Protestant focus on the preaching of and listening to the Word of God, and the building
remained in the hands of the Dutch Reformed Church until the parish transferred it to the Old
Frisian Churches Foundation in 1994.
The handing over of the church of Jorwert to this secular foundation was part of the wider
process of secularization that occurred across Western Europe in the second half of the twentieth
century (Taylor 2007). In Jowert’s case, the local parish had declined to such an extent that it
was not able to maintain the monumental church. The name “Jorwert” even became proverbial
for the miserable state of Church and religion in the Netherlands, after the Dutch journalist and
FIGURE 34.1 The Radboud Church in Jorwert.

Source: H. Wagenaar.
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New Monasticism in Old Churches
historian Geert Mak published a widely popular book in 1996 entitled Hoe God verdween uit
Jorwerd, literally meaning “How God Disappeared from Jorwerd” (Mak 1996). This biography
of the village described the enormous cultural shift in Jorwert, in many ways a typical European
village, where shops and farms were shutting down; the church, school, and pub were barely
surviving; the younger generation had left, escaping to the city; and where the local language
seemed to have become a relic of the past.
To this day, Jorwert is little more than a small enclave of houses and farms grouped around a
“stumpy church”—as Geert Mak called it—bearing the marks of time and history. This constitutes
the context for the case of Nijkleaster.
Nijkleaster
Even though the church of Jorwert had earlier merged with two nearby Protestant parishes, the end
of church activities was dawning at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Church attendance
had declined, and filling leadership positions was difficult. However, against all odds, the parish
made a radical decision. They invited Nijkleaster to develop a place of “silence, reflection and
community” and asked the author, as one of the founders of Nijkleaster, to be their pastor. The
assignment was: “Don’t try to revive the traditional church. Create a new place of community
and spirituality.”
Nijkleaster (literally “new monastery” in Frisian) was in the process of establishing a new
monastery in the province of Fryslân and gladly took up the challenge to use the old church of
Jorwert as a physical starting point (see Figure 34.2). This new monastic movement also adopted
the “old” Protestant tradition as its spiritual starting point, intending to use and revive the wisdom
of the Christian tradition in the contemporary context. From a broader perspective, Nijkleaster
is part of a worldwide movement called New Monasticism (Mobsby and Berry 2014; Wilson-
Hartgrove 2008). It draws its inspiration from the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who
wrote in the first half of the twentieth century that the renewal of the Church should be expected
from a new type of monastic who lives radically according to what Jesus preached in the Sermon
on the Mount:
The restoration of the church will surely come only from a new
kind of Monasticism, which will have nothing in common with the
old but a life of uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the
Mount in imitation of Christ.2
Inspiration is also drawn from the “old” monastic traditions and a diversity of new monastic
movements such as la Communauté de Taizé in France, the Iona Community in Scotland,
the Simple Way, and Holden Village in the United States. They are all open and ecumenical,
offering a space for prayer and reflection, and they are all deeply concerned about issues of
peace, justice, and reconciliation. Nijkleaster identifies itself as offering a quiet place where
people may withdraw to find breathing space, while simultaneously having the opportunity to
meet other people in liturgy and conversation, study and work, enjoyment and recreation. The
project is characterized by the keywords “silence, reflection and community,” with a focus on
pilgrimage, hospitality, simplicity, discipleship, sustainability, identity (Frisian), and human
equality (Wagenaar 2019).
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FIGURE 34.2 Restoration of Nijkleaster—Westerhûs in progress.

Source: H. Wagenaar.
Nijkleaster rented the church of Jorwert for its small-scale activities in 2012. However, it
soon became clear that the movement was in need of a real physical monastery as well, in order
to receive guests for a week or weekend retreat. In 2016, an extraordinary opportunity presented
itself in the vicinity of Jorwert, as a monumental Frisian farmhouse, called Westerhûs, became
available, situated on an archeological site. Both the farmhouse and the surrounding grounds
were in a dilapidated state. The farmhouse was almost a ruin, and the yard and adjoining plots
were neglected and polluted. Since then, the board of Nijkleaster has been working to develop
the site as a modern place of retreat, a new monastic site. Major restoration and construction
are planned for 2021–3, with the farmhouse to be fully restored and developed for common use
by the community as a whole (permanent monastics, volunteers, and guests), while housing for
guests and monastics will be newly built around a cloister garden in the center (Figure 34.2).
Opposition
Overall, the Nijkleaster movement has been received with approval. Many people in both the
Church and society understand the necessity for new places of retreat and reflection, and the
press has given the development broad coverage. However, the project has also been confronted
with opposition, which was to be expected given that both the church and the farmhouse needed
322
reconstruction to suit their new uses. Both projects were met with the common criticism that
monumental buildings should remain as they are or be faithfully restored. In the context of
change and transition, some people wanted to hold onto the old. In the case of both buildings,
local residents were also concerned that Nijkleaster would attract outsiders, with the associated
problems of traffic, parking, and disturbance of the quiet surroundings. Some were also concerned
about a return of ecclesial influence in the village.
Nijkleaster also experienced some resistance from official authorities, although in general the
support of the local, provincial, and national authorities was one of encouragement. One issue that
raised discussion concerned the architectural design of the windows in the farmhouse. The architects
had unified the design of the old farmhouse with the new buildings, using similar materials and
forms, including the windows. The council’s planning department, however, was of the opinion
that the windows of the farmhouse should be restored according to the traditional design, despite
having been removed decades before. At this point, the classic tension arose between a desire to
restore the original appearance of the monument and the view that the continuous development of
monumental buildings could be done with integrity. The general question was raised as to whether
monumental buildings should mainly provide a glimpse back into history or whether they could
also be carefully developed and designed to become useful buildings for the future. It became
apparent that with both the church building and farmhouse, Nijkleaster would have to strike a
balance between restoring the past and moving forward into the future.
Grand Hotel Europa

The issue at stake in Jorwert is superbly articulated by the Dutch poet and novelist Ilja Leonard
Pfeijffer in his novel Grand Hotel Europa (Pfeijffer 2018). The clash between tradition and
modernization plays a decisive role in this book. The main character, Ilja, is exasperated by the
fact that Europe is becoming a giant theme park, with Venice being a frightening example. He
contends that the beauty of monuments and an illustrious historical past alone are no longer
relevant: “I don’t want to have to conclude that my best years are behind me and that my only
real prospect for the future is to live off my past” (Dutch Foundation for Literature n.d.). For him,
Venice is the metaphor for Europe as a whole in becoming a museum that is only of interest to
tourists, with little room for ordinary daily life, technological advance, economic development,
or creative thinking. The paradox is that Europe’s historical wealth will enhance Europe’s
dependency on tourism and in the end prove to be its poverty. To paraphrase Clio, the book’s
other major character: “Europe is strangled by its monumental past. That’s the consequence of
such a rich history” (Pfeijffer 2018: 45, 128, 485–6).
This may be true when we merely want to preserve the past but, at the same time, monumental
heritage offers great opportunities. The province of Fryslân, for example, harbors the highest
density of monumental Middle Age churches in the world. These church buildings are well
maintained but are used less and less for religious purposes. Their doors are usually closed but
do open occasionally for a church service, a concert, a lecture, or for sightseeing. From the
religious perspective of a pastor, the nightmare scenario is that these monumental churches will
bit by bit be turned into museums. Thus, part of the intention of Nijkleaster is to develop new
perspectives for their reuse as spaces of spirituality, of silence, and reflection, of refuge and
protection. From pre-Christian times, these sites have been sacred places, where the community
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met in silence and prayer, celebration and mourning. They were places that fostered the local
language and created spaces of learning, offering comfort in the present and hope for the future.
These monumental buildings were built for such purposes and could be used again—transformed
for similar purposes in our times (Wagenaar 2019: 157–81).
Hermeneutical Process
We might compare the repurposing of monumental buildings with the hermeneutical process
that “monumental texts” undergo in order to be understood today, as part of the daily work
of theologians and pastors. Ancient texts from the Scriptures are read from a contemporary
perspective in a continuous hermeneutical exchange between text and context. The text of the
Bible as such receives renewed significance in that hermeneutical process when the ancient
words are translated and understood in the context of people’s lives today, enabling them to face
the issues of today and tomorrow. The same may be true for a monumental building itself. The
building also receives renewed significance when “translated and understood” in today’s context.
The goal is not to maintain the past by placing it in quarantine but by engaging it in the ongoing
process of transformation, as has occurred throughout the ages.
Nijkleaster’s approach is thus to “read and understand” the monumental buildings, both
church and farmhouse, in this manner. Each offers a sacred and meaningful context. They
provide a story and a history for this new monastic project, which Nijkleaster has taken up
in a process of translation and transformation into today’s context. The church is presently
used for worship, meditation, singing, dancing, discussion, eating, and meeting. The farmhouse
will offer hospitality and protection in a modern way and become a safe haven for people and
animals, with the soil regenerated and the building restored into a sustainable greenhouse for
body and soul.
It is important to observe a dual process at this point. The buildings not only offer wonderful
accommodation for Nijkleaster. In addition, a project such as Nijkleaster also offers a new
meaning and opportunity to the monumental building. The buildings are not left to history alone,
but receive a renewed place in it through their use in the present. The spirit of a modern monastic
project such as Nijkleaster is in fact supported and elevated by the history of meaning-making
belonging to the monumental buildings, while the monumental buildings are supported and
elevated into the present context, in a synergy of old and new.
Toward the Future

The main challenge for owners of monumental buildings will be to not only make use of them
with due respect to the past but to also commit them to the process of transformation toward
the future. Nijkleaster provides one example of how this might be achieved, being committed
to offering a modern monastic environment that provides space to people who need time and
silence to reflect on their personal lives and spirituality in present day society. By using and
cherishing the monumental landscape surrounding Jorwert, including the monumental church
and farmhouse, Nijkleaster demonstrates the potential for the conjunction of new movements
within old buildings. The seminary student quoted at the beginning of this article captures how
the elements of a modern spirituality can be invoked by the monumental church setting, leading
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to a profound experience and a moment of transformation. This shows the synergic power of a
new movement within a transformed old building.
Notes
1 Ryan Lucas, unpublished paper written as a requirement for the course Church Amidst Secularization
(including a study tour to the Netherlands) at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, US (2017: 1–2).
2 Dietriech Bonhoeffer, letter to Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, 1935.
References
Dutch Foundation for Literature (n.d.), “Grand Hotel Europa.” https://www.letterenfonds.nl/nl/boek/1235/
grand-hotel-europa.
Lucas, G. (2017), “Church Amidst Secularization (Including a Study Tour to the Netherlands’),”
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh (unpublished paper).
Mak, G. (1996), Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd. Een Nederlands dorp in de twintigste eeuw.
Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Atlas.
Mobsby, I., and M. Berry (2014), A New Monastic Handbook. From Vision to Practice.
Norwich: Canterbury Press.
Noomen, P. (1996), “Jorwerd. Moederkerk in de kleistreek,” in G. de Langen, H. Mol, P. Noomen, and
Oldersma (eds.), Verborgen Verleden Belicht. Introductie tot het historische en archeologische archief
van Friesland, Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy.
Pfeijffer, I. (2018), Grand Hotel Europa. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij de Arbeiderspers.
Pye, M. (2015), The Edge of the World. London: Penguin Books.
Taylor, C. (2007), A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wagenaar, H. (2019), Zalige Eenvoud. Nijkleaster: Noordboek.
Wilson-Hartgrove, J. (2008), New Monasticism. An Insider’s Perspective. Grand Rapids,
MI: Brazos Press.
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Case Study
Chapter 35
Christian Heritage and Intercultural

Education: The School Church in Garmerwolde
INGE BASTELEUR
Case Study
The Groningen Historic Churches Foundation (Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken) is the owner
of one hundred listed churches in the province of Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. It
was founded in 1969 with the aim of preserving historic church buildings and increasing interest
in them. This is done in many ways, from restoration and reuse to education, cultural, and tourist
activities.
The churches are all situated in a unique cultural landscape. Monasteries were founded
in this region in the Middle Ages, and trade found its way to Germany via the sea. Many
churches were built along this route, often on hills to protect them from periodic flooding from
the Wadden Sea. Until today, the region still has the highest density of medieval churches in
Europe.
Due to secularization and depopulation, many churches were on the verge of becoming
derelict by the 1960s. However, the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation put a halt to this
decline and now has a high reputation for its work in material and immaterial preservation and
new uses of the buildings. As a result, many church communities have turned their church over
to the foundation to keep their monument full of life and safe for the future.
Challenges for the Future

One of the increasingly important goals of the foundation is education, in part because the
churches require participation by the next generation for future support and use. For this reason
and to inform young people, educational projects have always been included in the Foundation’s
policy as “beacons of meaning.” In recent decades, the focus has shifted from material heritage
education to its combination with immaterial heritage. People add value and importance to these
buildings through time, by giving their own new meanings to and finding new uses for these
ancient buildings. Without people, a church is not alive.
The challenge that the foundation is facing is to find the link between a diverse society—
including schools—and religious heritage. This requires answers to questions such as: How do
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Christian Heritage and Intercultural Education
we make these buildings relevant to children (and adults) from all backgrounds? And how do we
work on a sustainable future for our heritage?
This chapter examines how the Foundation has attempted to tackle these questions in its “School
Church” project by means of its approach to heritage education, which has an interdisciplinary
character involving experts and religious communities, educators and teachers, and the locals.
Approaches to Heritage in Education

Over the years, the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation has developed several educational
programs for various age groups. In the Netherlands, heritage is part of the curriculum in primary
schools, but how they implement this is not prescribed.
In education, there are different views on and approaches to heritage. According to the historic
view, heritage sites and objects can be used as sources to learn about the past. Another heritage
approach, the “save and pass on” attitude, not only regards places and artifacts as heritage but
also stories and traditions (immaterial heritage). In these approaches, heritage is changed as
little as possible. According to the process view, by contrast, heritage is something that can be
discussed as subject to change: it is dynamic. In this latter approach, heritage is used to teach
us something about contemporary society. In other words, heritage only has meaning if people
actively make it their own, and it is thus intertwined with their identity (Vroemen 2018).
In educational practice in schools, as well as in the Foundation’s educational work as a heritage
organization, “heritage as a process” is increasingly becoming the starting point. To remain
relevant to young people, it is essential to show them that this ancient heritage is connected
to contemporary society. In order to do this, the Foundation connects old ideas and objects
with elements that young people recognize from their own lives, for example, connecting vault
paintings with comics, or wood carvings of noble family crests with avatars in social media.
The School Church in Garmerwolde is a good example of our approach. In this church,
which is dedicated to an educational purpose, the subject of religious holidays and traditions is
used to create knowledge about religious heritage and understanding among children from all
backgrounds, as will be described below.
The Church of Garmerwolde

The medieval church of Garmerwolde—a village situated just east of the city of Groningen—is
one of the best examples of late Romanesque architecture (Figure 35.1). The oldest parts of the
church date from the thirteenth century. The building is constructed of red brick, characteristic
of churches in the north. Their various shapes and patterns give the church its distinctive look, as
does a large bell tower that stands next to it. Inside, the vaults are decorated with paintings from
around 1520. Depictions of stories from the Bible, such as the lives of Maria and Jesus, alternate
with flower motifs and fantasy figures.
In addition to these medieval features, many other layers of time are visible. During the
Reformation, the vault paintings were covered with plaster and only rediscovered in the 1940s.
Wooden pews were also installed, as was a pulpit with the then fashionable wood carvings, while
the famous organ builder, Van Oeckelen, produced a custom-made organ for the church in 1851,
and the local nobility left their mark in the form of family crests and gravestones. The church is
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FIGURE 35.1 Bird’s eye view of the church in Garmerwolde.

Source: Groninger Kerken.
surrounded by an ancient churchyard and the remains of the old foundations. All these elements
make the church of Garmerwolde a fascinating place—and thus, a rich learning environment.
The Aim of the Project

Holidays as a Way to Discuss Difficult Subjects
In 2014, the Foundation was approached by Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. This
museum for Christian art had developed a special program and exhibition for children called
“Holidays! Know what you are celebrating” (Feest! Weet wat je viert) to increase knowledge
of religious holidays, as religious literacy in the Netherlands is declining due to secularization.
More than half of the Dutch population is not religiously affiliated (Schmeets 2018) and as a
consequence, knowledge about Christian holidays and traditions is disappearing, despite them
being national holidays and still widely celebrated. For many children, they are simply a day
off school. In addition, over the past decades, Muslim communities in the Netherlands have
grown, with Christianity and Islam now being the two largest religions in the country. Therefore,
Muslim holidays are also now widely celebrated, as well as many other celebrations from diverse
religious and secular traditions.
To preserve religious heritage, it is essential that people have religious knowledge; religious
illiteracy is a threat to its preservation. Often information about religion or religious heritage is
written for academics, specialists, or from a religious point of view. Additionally, teachers often
feel insufficiently qualified to discuss these topics. Moreover, because religious literacy is low,
information about religion and religious heritage must be made readily accessible. Here lies a
task for heritage organizations.
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By introducing holidays and traditions through low-threshold information and experiences, Museum
Catharijneconvent wanted to contribute to the creation of mutual understanding among communities.
The underlying idea was that the more you know about someone else, the easier it is to understand
them. A common heritage may be lacking, but the notion of a holiday or a celebration is something
everybody understands: we all celebrate our birthdays or have small traditions in our families. The
way we celebrate reflects our identity, it says something about our family, our background and what
we regard as important. The idea of “celebration” suggests a positive way to address difficult topics
such as religion and identity. Children recognize concepts related to celebrations very well, such as
coming together for a special reason, eating traditional food, making music, or receiving or giving
presents. In speaking about their own traditions, they become experts themselves. Many traditions are
shared and familiar, but differences in how we celebrate also come to light.
By discussing these differences, we created an exercise dealing with differences in society.
Museum Catharijneconvent sought collaborations with other museums throughout the country to
ensure every child in the Netherlands was able to visit an exhibition about religious holidays in
their own region. The Groningen Historic Churches Foundation joined the network, consisting
of ten Dutch museums and one in Suriname, and decided to develop an exhibition in the church
of Garmerwolde because its vault paintings depict the lifecycles of Mary and of Jesus, which tell
the story of the Christmas and Easter holidays.
Although the Foundation is a secular organization, religion is inextricably linked with its
buildings. However, in its educational programs, religion has often only been addressed
superficially. The collaboration with Museum Catharijneconvent provided an opportunity to
learn from their expertise, teach about the religious origin of the Foundation’s churches in an
accessible way, and to also keep the churches at the heart of a diverse Dutch society.
“Holidays! In the East and West” in the School Church

The exhibition “Holidays! In the East and West” was the result of collaboration by an
interdisciplinary creative team consisting of three representatives of the Groningen Historic
Churches Foundation (policymaker, engineer, educator), MX13 Architects, and Design Studio
212 Fahrenheit (now known as Paul&Albert). It also included liaison with a member of the local
church committee in Garmerwolde.
Local support is essential for the success of all of the Foundation’s projects. From the very
start of the project, the volunteers at the Garmerwolde church were thus involved in the plans.
They functioned as a bridge between the foundation and the community.
The challenge for the creative team was how to develop an exhibition about the immaterial
heritage of holidays in combination with the historical church in Garmerwolde. The team started
with research into the content of holidays and religious traditions, heritage, and engineering, as
well as addressing the challenges of sustainability. This interdisciplinary way of working led to
something completely new: a vertical exhibition with a new set of icons.
The Exhibition Design

As the team was dealing with a listed church, it did not have a traditional exhibition space
available. Therefore, the bell tower next to the church was chosen to become a vertical museum
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wing. In this way, the church itself remained untouched, and could still be used for multifunctional
purposes. In addition, a new sustainable reception building arose on the grounds, and a new
entrance to the church itself was put in place. The exhibition, entrance, and reception building
were built after a period of extensive fundraising, during which nearly two million euros was
raised. The exhibition opened in 2020 and has a minimum lifespan of ten years.
In the tower, an Escher-like staircase was designed, passing ancient beams and a massive bell,
culminating in a viewing point at the top (Figure 35.2). En route, the visitor encounters eight
Christian and Muslim holidays: Christmas, Easter, Night of the Decree, Ascension/Lailat-ul-
Meraj, Ramadan, the Feast of Breaking the Fast, the Feast of the Sacrifice, and Pentecost. The
presentations of these celebrations are intertwined with the architecture of the stairs, and immerse
the visitor in each particular holiday.
We chose these holidays because Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the
Netherlands. Although not part of this exhibition, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist holidays are
addressed in the accompanying teaching material. During the development of the exhibition,
an expert team was installed as an advisory board, including an Arabist and translator of the
Koran, a theologian, a museum educator, a professor of contemporary Islam, and members of
the Islamic and Jewish communities. In the design process, the review sessions were crucial
for the end result. For example, the design for the Muslim holiday Laylat Al-Qadr (Night of
the Decree) initially involved a birthday cake, as this holiday is sometimes referred to as the
birth of Mohammed. However, when the Arabist reviewed the design, it was pointed out that
FIGURE 35.2 Interior of the tower with stairs.

Source: Peter de Kan.
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two holidays had been combined. While the actual birth of Mohammed is celebrated by certain
Muslims, the Night of the Decree, in which the angel Djibriel transferred the first Koran verses
to Mohammed—the religious “birth” of the Prophet Mohammed—is in fact a different holiday.
Therefore, the original design was incorrect, even more so because a birthday cake is a typical
Western symbol. The result was a totally new design focusing on the theme of “being the chosen
one.” This experience stressed the importance of allowing experts from outside to review the
plans of the creative team.
The holidays are all presented in a contemporary way, they are interactive and require
visitor participation. Each design conveys something of the essence of the holiday as touching
on universal values. For example, the notion of “new beginnings” in the Easter presentation
is imagined as a beating heart, which can be found in many other spring traditions around the
world. When looking at Ramadan, visitors try not to touch the food on the nerve spiral, evoking
the concentration and control one needs to fast. The presentations leave room for the visitors’
own interpretation, with the accompanying audio tour asking questions to nudge the visitors to
think about the themes at hand (Figure 35.3).
While one aim of the exhibition is to provide visitors with some knowledge of these holidays,
its main goal is to start a dialogue. The way the Christian and Islamic holidays are presented in this
exhibition intends to achieve this by offering visitors a platform to speak about interculturalism
FIGURE 35.3 A school child interacts with the Christmas section of the holiday exhibition.
Source: Paul&Albert.
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at an accessible and recognizable level. The aim is to emphasize similarities, not differences,
between different communities and to stimulate visitors to have an open mind.
The School Program

The school program, “Holidays! In the East and West,” revolves around the exhibition and is
targeted at children between nine and thirteen. Bus transportation to the exhibition is included
in the program, which lowers thresholds for rural schools to visit the School Church. The group
process on site is facilitated by applying the “I ASK” teaching method, which was developed by
the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. In this approach, the thoughts of the pupils are used
as the material to work with and form the basis of this method, through which a true dialogue
can be established. The children visit the exhibition in the tower guided by an audio tour, while
back at school, teaching material connects the eight holidays depicted in the exhibition to other
holidays from across the world, and elements to which the children can relate. For example, for
Ramadan, the children are invited to start a fundraiser with their classmates, as charity work
(zakat) plays an important role during this fasting period; for Christmas, children think about
what impact one’s place of birth has on one’s life and identity.
There is still some urgency for schools to provide programs about diversity and identity,
and teaching material on these topics is not abundant. With this in mind, to create a strong
educational program, pilot lessons were organized in the church, aiming to gain experience
regarding the content of the program and practical issues. An ongoing dialogue with educational
institutions and other museums allowed the Foundation to keep up with developments and
trends in the educational field. Moreover, to reach the schools in the region, partnerships were
established with school organizations, which also provided the School Church with a steady
stream of visiting schools. By working with educational institutions in this way, the Foundation
aims to create meaningful programs that are needed by the people who work with children on
a daily basis.
Responses
A classroom can be considered as a mini-society. Every child has their own background, family
composition, experiences, and stories. Diversity is their daily reality. School Church teachers have
noticed this in the introductory dialogues they have with children, who are intrinsically curious
and often do not have the prejudices that adults have developed. They accept differences when
each holiday and tradition is discussed on an equal footing. The teachers are thus aware of the
importance of creating a safe environment to allow pupils to speak freely about their thoughts and
beliefs. By being truly curious as a group supervisor, children also become more curious about
their peers.
We have found that after visiting the exhibition, the children have endless questions and want
to share their experiences. For example, for two Muslim pupils who wore traditional clothing
especially for their visit to the program, it was a revelation to see Islam in the spotlight, because
Muslim traditions were seldom addressed in their school. Thus, we found that it is not only
important to teach children about “other” traditions but also to provide a stage for them to speak
about their own. Moreover, some teachers admitted that they had been too “shy to act” because
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of a lack of knowledge, but stated that the holiday program provided them with a tool to speak
about challenging topics in the classroom.
The School Church—a Concept to Share

The churches of the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation have changed tremendously
through the ages and have had many different uses: as places of worship, somewhere to shelter
from approaching floods, places where the nobility demonstrated their power, or the locations of
funerals and school plays. Churches, like other heritage sites, do not reflect a unitary past. The
changes in use of the buildings throughout the ages reflect changes in society.
The church in Garmerwolde now has a particular educational profile with its own name: the
School Church. The project encompasses much more than the holidays program, aiming to infuse
the term “church” with many different meanings by developing a great diversity of projects about
and around religious heritage. The concept of “School Church” is now linked to Garmerwolde.
However, this idea—a church as a site for addressing diversity in education—is transferable
to other places. Working in an interdisciplinary team and involving experts, communities, and
teachers from the start has proven its value, with Garmerwolde an example of the successful
development of a project designed to foster diversity awareness. This was recognized in May
2021, when the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation received the European Heritage
Award/Europa Nostra Award for the School Church in the category of “Education, Training
and Awareness-raising,” with the jury praising the project for its “child-centered” approach that
“gives agency to children which is the best way to promote togetherness” (Hogan et al. 2021).
This recognition by the European Commission underlines the importance of finding the
link between a diverse society—including schools—and religious heritage, in order to create
a sustainable future for the latter. The case of the School Church offers innovative and creative
solutions to this challenge, demonstrating that churches can be used as places to foster dialogue
and diversity in education and thus play a central role in society at large.
References
Hogan, A., E. Mineur, J. Pinheiro, L. Aldana Ortega, and E. Bianchi (eds.) (2021), 2021
Laureates: European Heritage Awards/Europa Nostra Awards. Den Haag: Europa Nostra, https://www.
europanostra.org/our-work/publications/.
Schmeets, H. (2018), Wie is religieus, en wie niet? Den Haag: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek.
Vroemen, J. (2018), Educatie in Erfgoed. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum.
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Repurposing of Religious Heritage

36
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Challenge
Chapter 36
De-churching as Crisis and Opportunity:

The Response of the Dutch State
FRANK STROLENBERG
Challenge
Over the past decade the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, has led a coalition of
government agencies on all levels, church representatives, and heritage organizations to develop
a project that we called “Future for Religious Heritage.” This project was a response to a
crisis of church ownership and use in the Netherlands, which meant that we could no longer
manage religious heritage in a piecemeal fashion and had to come up with a new approach. In
the Netherlands, four out of ten church buildings are listed monuments, and take up roughly
40 percent of our yearly budget available for maintenance and support of all listed monuments.
So, the state itself has a great interest in creating a sustainable future for these buildings. Together
with our partners, we devised and in 2018 launched an instrument of local church visions with
the aim of planning for the future of all churches with the involvement of all key parties. In this
chapter, I outline how the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency understands and has responded to the
challenges facing built religious heritage in Europe today.
Dutch heritage is very much founded on religion, which is reflected in the high number of
churches: internationally, the Netherlands is among the countries with the highest number of
churches compared to inhabitants. Nowadays, though, less than half of Dutch people consider
themselves to be religious. The Netherlands is at the forefront of secularization. The consequence
of this trend is noticeable in the use of church buildings. For example, studies done in 2021
indicated that eight out of ten catholic parishes are in financial need. Years before this enquiry, the
archbishop of the Netherlands had already indicated that he probably would have to close around
265 of the 280 churches in his own diocese. This signal, among other things, was a clear call for
action, to which the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency, together with our partners, responded by
introducing a new nationwide strategy.
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38
A Future for All

A key element in this new approach is to promote that local governments, together with the
churches and local stakeholders, pro-actively design a strategic plan for all church buildings
within the city limits. In essence, this strategy is built upon five principles:
1. It is crucial that a long-term perspective is developed for church buildings. Society should
not only (re)act when problems arise. Such a long-term strategic plan is in Dutch called a
kerkenvisie (church vision).
2. This strategic plan should involve all church buildings within the borders of a local
government, regardless of the denomination of the churches (so also including synagogues,
mosques, or temples), age, current use, ownership, or possible status as a monument. Where
parties previously mainly spoke about their own subset of church buildings, be it the churches
of their own parish or be it the churches that are listed monuments, the basic principle now is
that all religious buildings must be viewed in conjunction.
3. The strategic plan is not only about the churches that will close and must be repurposed. Even
if in the coming years churches in the Netherlands will have to close, most of the buildings are
still being used as places of prayer. Many of these buildings will have issues regarding energy
efficiency in combination with sustainability. Other churches may want to consider multiple
uses and must think about how to fit in the facilities needed. This means that almost every
church building faces its own combination of challenges.
4. Local support is crucial. Just as the churches were founded and maintained locally, the future
of church buildings also rests on local shoulders. Therefore, it is important that all relevant
parties have a seat at the table to ensure sufficient support for future use.
5. The task is complex and unique for every city or village. For example, in some cities, local
committees must consider 10 church buildings of the same denomination, while in other
cities more than 150 buildings of dozens of different religions are objects of reflection.
Two examples of this are compared below. This requires customization in drawing up
strategic perspectives and not applying predefined formats. That is why our partnership
supports local parties with tools, knowledge, and experience without forcing blueprints
on them.
Local Differences among Cities

To illustrate the diverse approaches taken by local governments when creating their church
visions, I here compare two examples of a church vision: the urban city Rotterdam and the
rural community of Southwest Fryslân. Despite their differences, they have the same number of
church buildings. Both cities formulated a strategic plan, a church vision, that took them around
one and a half years to create. Both did research on the buildings, held surveys, and organized
plenary and round table meetings. However, in the multireligious city Rotterdam with more than
half a million inhabitants, a lot of time went into finding out what different religious groups were
involved and how to address them. In rural Súdwest-Fryslân, on the other hand, every church is
well known within the community, and they are almost all of Protestant nature. An overview of
the results can be found below.
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De-churching as Crisis and Opportunity
TABLE 36.1
Rotterdam Southwest Frisia
The second largest city in the Netherlands with The largest community in the Netherlands with
580,000 inhabitants and 158 church buildings of 83 villages and 6 small towns. Around 90,000
which 129 are still in religious use. inhabitants in all with 158 church buildings of
which one-third already have been repurposed.
Some results Some results of the strategic plan:
1. Around eleven church buildings are not used 1. Twenty-seven churches will possibly lose their
anymore or are intended to be demolished religious use
2. Rotterdam has set up a one-stop counter for the 2. Súdwest-Fryslân has set up a helpdesk for
churchcommunities churchcommunities
3. All the churches and their data have been put on 3. A practical guideline with tips and tricks and
a digital map (rotterdam.nl/monumenten) useful information has been set up for the
4. All of the local listed churches have been church owners
offered a collective subscription on annual 4. For every church building a passport has been
maintenance of their building while expertise on set up in which the future possibilities of the
restoration or reuse is freely available. building are indicated
5. A pilot on sustainable transformation has been 5. The church vision has become part of the
set up for ten church buildings heritage policy of the local government
Harvesting
The promotion of this strategy, backed by a national subsidy scheme directed at local governments,
started in January 2019 and ended in December 2021. Participation was voluntary. By the end of
April 2021, we could conclude that 68 percent of local governments are working on a “church
vision.” Even more important, together they are thinking about the future of 76 percent of the
7,110 church buildings that are present in the Netherlands.
In the process of creating a church vision, the churches indicated that it not only helped them think
about the future of their buildings but it also gave them a chance to meet other church organizations,
share experiences, generate new ideas, and create initiatives. For communities, it is important that
they are heard and can bring their commitment, ideas, and knowledge to the table. Most importantly,
they should be involved in what is going to happen with their churches, so that they will not face
too many surprises. The local governments, who are the ones that organize the planning process,
discovered not only properties with possibilities but also found out that the churches gave them access
to solutions to several policy issues, such as social cohesion, the vitality of urban neighbourhoods
or rural villages, touristic profiling, creating a green and healthy environment, and working on
sustainability goals. All in all, the instrument of a church vision is ensuring a better future for church
buildings and creating a better environment for inhabitants at the same time.
To Conclude
Looking back, for a long time we considered the future of church buildings to be an exclusive
issue for the heritage sector and or the churches. But since the dialogue has been organized
between the churches, governments, the heritage sector, and the public we found out that the
future of the church buildings addresses all kinds of actual questions. It now has become an
important issue for society as a whole.
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340
Analysis
Chapter 37
The Ecclesial Reuse of Catholic Heritage:

The 2018 Guidelines of the Pontifical
Council for Culture
ANDREA LONGHI
Analysis
Since the early public life of Christianity, the arts have been instruments of apostolate and cultural
formation for local communities. Wherever the different Christian denominations root, a wealth
of architectural and artistic works rose up to express pastoral needs and ecclesiological visions,
according to the cultures of each place and time. These needs and visions have been constantly
revised and updated throughout the history of Christianity. Consequently, the impressive heritage
stratified over time has undergone processes of reuse or abandonment, alienation, and destruction,
according to different legal, political, and cultural contexts.
Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of the redundancy of church buildings has manifested
itself with particular intensity in the secularized West; it has challenged the ecclesiastical
hierarchies and the communities that are most exposed and affected. To ensure that the issue is
not sidestepped, the Vatican agency responsible for culture and cultural heritage—the Pontifical
Council for Culture1—promoted in 2018 two international enquiries (one ecclesial and one
academic), culminating in the international conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University
(November 29 and 30, 2018), which led to the drafting of Guidelines, approved by the delegates
of the Episcopal Conferences concerned, and issued a few weeks later by card. Gianfranco
Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture,2 accompanied by a pronouncement by the
pope (Capanni 2019: 19–22).
Cardinal Ravasi himself remarked in 2019 upon the document, emphasizing the fact
that the problem of decommissioning and reuse has to be approached both from a historical
perspective and with thorough attention to different contemporary spiritualities. In his words,
decommissioning and reuse are a “constant and multidirectional phenomenon” and question the
relationship between the acceptance of a certain “desacralization” and the rejection of radical
“desecration” (Traversa 2018). This reveals theological questions underlying the practical
problems addressed by the Pontifical Council; above all the relationship between the sacred and
the profane: how much can a church—even after canonical deconsecration—become a profane
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The Ecclesial Reuse of Catholic Heritage
space? And how much can any church—albeit consecrated—be inhabited and put to uses that are
not liturgical or devotional?
The 2018 Guidelines and the pope’s message were the first statements by the Vatican on the
matter, but why were they necessary and how are we to interpret them? This chapter attempts to
answer these questions in two directions. First, there will be a brief historical contextualization
of the document, which will also be useful for professionals and scholars who are unfamiliar
with Catholic theology and Magisterium. It offers a brief exploration of the theological culture of
architecture, on the relationship between ecclesiastical institutions and preservation practices, on
the relationship between canonical regulations and the social dynamics of ecclesial heritagization.
Second, the institutional process that led to the drafting of the document is explained, with a
presentation of its structure. Particular attention is paid to the themes of resilience, sustainability,
and planning, which are the mainstays of future local experiments: the Guidelines have no
immediate legal value, but will be the tools with which local Catholic communities will work for
the next few years, in a participatory and shared way.
Overall, this chapter presents an exploration of the guidance offered by the Vatican for
Catholics grappling with the growing challenge of managing their churches both as sites of
heritage and as homes for living communities.
Adaptivity and Resilience in the History of Christian Architecture

Long before churches become objects of heritage, they are objects of everyday use by
communities. It is therefore useful to consider the relationship between architecture and social
practices in the ecclesial context, in order to understand how the adaptability of churches—
now discussed in terms of reuse—is deeply historicized in Christian architecture. The theme is
mentioned in several paragraphs of the Guidelines (in particular nos. 8–9, and 243) and deserves
some introductory considerations.
A first question concerns the relationship between ecclesial life, architecture, and
remembrance. The processes of liturgical reordering and recurring adaptation of pastoral spaces
characterize the history of Christian architecture. Architectural transformations follow changes
in ecclesiological models, rites, devotions, and community sensitivities; they are punctuated
by councils and reforms but also affected by incessant daily transformations. Churches bear a
variety of testimonies and memories that illustrate the wealth of architectural forms taken by
the principle of incarnation, on which the message of the Gospel is based. The stratifications
of European religious heritage narrate the “official” history of Christian denominations and
the multiple histories of local communities. This vast heritage constitutes a functional asset
for pastoral activities when churches are active, but it becomes a theological problem when
churches acquire value as heritage in a secularized context: what meaning can the constructive
activity developed by the Church throughout its history have today? And which values does this
immense material heritage currently represent? Awareness of the material dimension of memory
is the main prerequisite for adequate conservation strategies for places of worship, considered as
heritage sites.
While the theology of liturgical space is widely present in religious literature and in the
ecclesiastical Magisterium (Chenis 1991), to the point of being able to define architecture as
“theology in stones” (Kieckhefer 2004), a theological vision of the significance of the built
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environment was not a priority in the history of Christian thought. Attention to a supposed
sacredness of the material consistency of buildings has always taken second place to attention
to the celebratory dynamism of liturgical assemblies. Has this implied a lack of interest in the
material aspects of churches? Of course not. The metonymic superimposition of the “church of
stones” and of the “church of the faithful” (the “pétrification” of the church; Iogna-Prat 2006: 609)
has bestowed theological thought on the materiality of architecture and its relationship with the
sacred. The most monumental forms of the sacredness of places are clearly represented by early
Christian Martyria, but, according to artistic historiography, the divine sacred presence is widely
and pervasively entrusted to the material culture of Christian places of worship (Hadley 2015). In
the current debate on the decommissioning and reuse of churches, the material mediation of the
divine is an important dimension, as it is an integral part of community practices and memories.
Another matter concerns the relationship between form, rite, and reuse. Liturgical action and
rites have always theologically shaped churches, but not determined their forms (De Blaauw
2016: 555–6). In every different culture, Christian communities have identified architectural forms
hospitable for liturgy, which were also able to absorb the subsequent changes in the rites: inclusive
architectures, capable of renewing themselves, while offering continuity of memory. Now, can
this traditional sense of liturgical hospitality become a new form of hospitality, inclusive of other
new ecclesial, social, and cultural functions, without losing or betraying the religious history of
the community?
In short, the stability of the memorial aspect and the dynamism of the celebratory aspects have,
until now, defined the two poles between which the resilience of buildings of worship has been
expressed. On one hand, the adaptive and resilient nature of churches guarantees the possibility
of liturgical and artistic transformations, along with the adaptation to new social practices. On
the other hand, attention to the preservation of selected material and memorial aspects defines
the recognizability and permanence of churches, their stability albeit in a theological system of
“temporariness” and “temporality” (Longhi 2022b).
The resilience of churches also becomes the support of the resilience of local communities faced
with social, environmental, or political transformations, whether in the form of traumatic events
(revolutions, schisms, earthquakes, epidemics, floods, etc.) or everyday stress (demographic or
migratory dynamics, economic crises). The resilience of buildings of worship is a key value in
ensuring community resilience; adaptability fosters perpetuation.
Heritagization Processes and Ecclesial Life

So, what is the actual relationship between resilience and heritagization in ecclesial life? Is the
theological framework outlined above in history compatible with current conservation practices
as outlined in the Guidelines?
The dialectic between conservation and continuous transformation is the basis for the processes
of heritagization, which began to take hold in the Roman Catholic Church in the seventeenth
century (Roca De Amicis 2015). However, this transformative expression of living communities
came into conflict with the affirmation of state protection of artistic heritage between the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the historical stratification of churches was almost sacralized
by the secular protection authorities, precisely when the integrity of the churches was threatened
by secularization and anticlericalism. The lay doctrines of church restoration were secularly
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constructed and self-validated outside of theological doctrines or ecclesial involvement: religious

heritage was protected only because of this intrinsic artistic value, not for its religious legacy.
The knowledge of the forms had become detached from the awareness of theological, liturgical,
and social values that had constituted their raison d’être, and which the Church itself had always
recognized and protected. At the same time, there was “a sort of deliberate process of self-
exclusion of the Church from the debate on the matter and regression to a-historical stances”
(Carbonara 2018: 340).
Two contradictory dynamics appeared. If Christian communities remained active, the
necessary liturgical and social renewal activities were considered with suspicion by the state
preservation services for historic buildings. If, by contrast, churches were abandoned, secularized,
or desecrated, the final liturgical layout of the building had to be conserved as a sort of museum,
due to its artistic value, making subsequent reuse activities less compatible or affordable. On one
hand, there was the “civil scandal” of monuments’ alteration, in the name of a functional update;
on the other, there was the possible “religious scandal” caused by disrespectful uses of “sacred”
buildings (Musso 2017). The “ethical jurisdiction” over reuse processes was contested between
ecclesiastical institutions and institutes for monuments protection. What is the outcome of this
conflict of values between governments and the Church, a conflict that the 2018 Guidelines
aimed to prevent and avoid in the future?
Every country defined its own legal framework during the twentieth century to manage both
liturgical adaptations (where communities are alive) and to govern the processes of disposal and
profane reuse, as well as transformation into museums. After all— and quite paradoxically—
imposing volumes of religious heritage have been saved precisely because of processes of
nationalization or privatization and secular reuse, which nonetheless demonstrate “a long
tradition of reallocating religious building” (Coomans 2019: 65). Adaptive reuse is not an
emerging theme or a trend, but the constitutive nature of religious heritage, just as resilience is
not a recent challenge, but the way of life of Christian communities and their heritage.
Ecclesiastical Rules, Magisterium, and Sociological Interpretations

Practitioners and worshippers are now faced with guidelines and unprecedented Vatican
statements about heritage, and these documents have rightly aroused public interest because of
their novelty. However, the Church has a long juridical tradition regarding the care of art and
architecture, of which the recent documents are only the latest—and by no means final—step.
Indeed, Pontifical legislation on the protection of antiquities has, since the fifteenth century
(Emiliani 1978), been the regulatory instrument used by the Church to bear witness to the role of
art, monuments, and remembrance in the institutional and cultural history of Christianity. The papal
laws form a corpus that constitutes the main repertoire of protective norms from which modern
national states have taken inspiration since the nineteenth century (Bedin, Bello, and Rossi 1988).
After 1870, the reduction of the Papal States to the Vatican alone reduced the ability of
pontifical offices to engage in heritage protection, but widespread attention to Christian art did
not cease, and it increasingly became a topic of broad ecclesial interest, through the establishment
of specific institutional bodies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the attention
of the Church was focused primarily on the production of new Christian art, on its liturgical and
pastoral value in comparison with the artistic avant-garde (de Lavergne 1992).
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The pastoral dimension of heritagization processes finds its place in the ecclesial Magisterium
in the second half of the twentieth century, when the decommissioning and the de-heritagization
of historical churches in many contexts had already begun. While the production of new art and
new churches did not stop (think of the “young” Christian communities outside Europe, or of
the metropolitan suburbs), the abandonment of historical churches became evident in Western
Europe as of the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, in many Eastern bloc countries state atheism
led to the closure—and sometimes demolition—of religious heritage.
Even in Italy, a country where Catholic culture and art are a widespread and popular
phenomenon, the abandonment and possible profane reuse of historic churches have been clearly
tackled since the 1960s by the PCCASI (Central Pontifical Commission for Sacred Art in Italy)
(Gruppo esterno 1967). At the international level, in 1971, a circular sent by the Congregation
for the Clergy to the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences—fearing hasty liturgical reordering
after the Second Vatican Council (1963–5)—stressed the “testimonial” value of the heritage and
stated that “ecclesiastical buildings of artistic value should not be neglected, even if no longer
used for their original purpose. Should it become necessary to sell them, preference should be
given to people who are able to take good care of them” (Sacra Congregatio pro Clericis 1971).
The matter of the abandonment of historical churches was analyzed by the studies collected by
the PCCASI (Fallani 1974) and by the first document on heritage issues of the Italian Episcopal
Conference in 1974 (Conferenza 1974).
According to shared interpretations, the phenomenon of decommissioning was due not
only to secularization, the decline of church attendance, and sacramental practice but also to
demographic and migratory movements, and consequently to the depopulation of rural and
mountainous areas, or the abandonment of decaying historical town centers. The situation has
been exacerbated by a combination of other factors, such as the lack of reconstruction after
disasters and events (earthquakes, floods), reduced availability of funds for maintenance work,
and therefore the dependence on uncertain public resources, as well as the variety of legal
ownership and management systems, and so on (Bartolomei et al. 2017). The idea, however,
that religious heritage can be used not only for worship but also for cultural and civil functions
emerged in the last decades of the twentieth century. The 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici establishes
the rules for deconsecration, disposal, and reuse on a universal level.
The expansion of canonical norms in pastoral terms was proposed in 1987 by the PCCASI,
which drew up a Charter on the use of ancient ecclesiastical buildings, legally valid for the
Italian territory, but which took on wider resonance (the document is also referred to in the
introduction to the Guidelines, no. 3). It is perhaps no coincidence that the Council of Europe
in 1989 approved a resolution about redundant religious buildings, promoting systematic
surveys and in-depth investigations (Council of Europe 1989). Some European Episcopal
Conferences have recently begun to address the problem, suggesting possible cultural and
social reuse if communities are no longer able to ensure adequate maintenance of their
redundant churches.4
While the documents of the Magisterium are still infrequent and concise, a broad spectrum
of sociological and anthropological interpretations is developing within the sphere of ecclesial
reflection (Diotallevi 2020). They range from the most defeatist self-representations to the
most positive readings of the signs of the times: the desacralization of Christianity has been
seen as a return to the centrality of assemblies and the liturgy, within the framework of a brave
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rethinking of the division between sacred and profane, extended to the “secular use” of churches
(Davies 1968).
Moreover, ecclesial vitality continues to require new churches in areas of dynamic
Christianity, or in metropolitan areas lacking social and pastoral facilities. Reuse and new
constructions will coexist in the twenty-first century: “Will the walls, roofs, windows and doors
of those new or refreshed churches be able to communicate—to both people inside and people
outside—that people outside are not excluded and that people inside do not hold the power and
are not authorized decide the difference between inside and outside?” (Diotallevi 2019: 48). This
relationship between new places of worship, historical religious heritage and social inclusion
is especially evident in countries where various Christian denominations have been very active
throughout architectural history and where secularization and a wealth of different religions now
coexist (de Wildt et al. 2019).
The complexity of the challenges makes it clear that the canonical norms alone (specifically
mentioned by the Guidelines in nos. 12–16) are not sufficient to manage the decision-making
processes: the communities show growing challenges in consciously discussing the problems,
due to a widespread artistic and religious illiteracy (what is more, also recorded in those who
claim to be Christian), and widespread pedagogical attention to the issue is urgently required
(Gerhards 2019: 138). When communities are called upon to make choices about heritage, in the
absence of shared lexicon and criteria they risk a “selective protection” without analytical and
critical foundations (Coomans 2019: 63), and the application of canonical norms alone cannot
give persuasive answers: this is the risk that the Guidelines wish to avoid, by offering guidance
rather than new prescriptions.
Religious Communities and Heritage Communities

The debate on the value and use of religious heritage, besides considering canon law and the laws
protecting cultural heritage, cannot underestimate the social context in which the interventions
take place. Which social stakeholders are addressed by the 2018 Guidelines? Not only the clergy
or the ecclesiastical owners of religious properties. The different owners (not just Church bodies
but also governments, municipalities, or private individuals) are not necessarily also the managers
or users. Who are the local stakeholders to be engaged in dialogue with? Only worshippers
involved in liturgical or pastoral activities?
The transformation of ecclesiastical heritage is also the result of a profound transformation of
a plurality of ecclesiastical subjects, commissioners, and clients. Redundancy, therefore, exists
in many cases from the origins of building processes—“since construction” (Mace 2014)—as an
expression of different ecclesial agencies, lay patrons, and policymakers, and not only as a result
of liturgy and pastoral needs. Actual redundancy of religious heritage originates, therefore, from
the extinction of a number of founding bodies (lay guilds and congregations, religious orders, etc.)
and the reduction of competent and proactive bodies currently able to take care of it. This reduction
has strongly concentrated the management responsibilities in the hands of the diocesan clergy,
who are themselves now scarce or busy on many pastoral fronts. A historical overabundance of
grace—alluding to the lexicon of St. Paul—now entails an overabundance of concerns.
Redundant cultural properties of religious interest can therefore survive only thanks to the
initiative of new bodies that can take care of them. To use the words of the Faro Convention
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(Council of Europe 2005, mentioned under no. 21), heritage communities in many contexts no
longer correspond to any territorial religious communities.5 Consequently, new communities
must be based on new criteria and values. Religious properties attract the attention of scholars,
tourists, and lovers of both art and landscape, and do not necessarily include only the faithful or
those involved in pastoral activities. Christian communities, on the other hand, do not necessarily
appreciate and use historical structures to promote current initiatives, due to their maintenance
costs and their fragility; in any case, the focus of their activities is usually on social and pastoral
issues, not historical-artistic aspects. The regeneration of heritage, however, can bring together
different sensitivities and new types of religious communities. Such new communities will not
necessarily be of a territorial-parochial kind, but of an elective nature (specific spiritualities
or charisms) or referred to the various Christian diasporas (linguistic and regional migrant
communities).
New types of heritage communities can only be built on shared values; the prerequisite for
this process is a careful exploration—neither ideological nor dogmatic—of the religious and civil
values on which the ecclesial heritage has historically been built and recognized (Longhi 2022a),
and an in-depth knowledge of local social practices, mentalities, and personal experiences (Kilde
2008: 200). In any case, the discussion of decommissioning and reuse cannot avoid community
FIGURE 37.1 Sala Santa Rita, former Church of Santa Rita da Cascia in Campitelli, Rome
(seventeenth century, rebuilt 1940); winning photo, by Francesca Viganó, of the photography contest
#nolongerchurches, initiative accompanying the international conference “Doesn’t God Dwell Here
Anymore?”, held in Rome, November 2019. At the time of the shot, the building housed the installation
“Genesi” by NONE collective.
Source: Francesca Viganó.
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conflicts; while legal relationships can always be formalized, dialogue is still essential in order
to heal the inevitable lacerations of personal and collective memories (de Wildt and Plum 2019).
Two Surveys, a Conference, and the Guidelines (2018)

The complexity of the dynamics at work and their different geographic declinations led
the Pontifical Council for Culture, in 2018, to implement an international survey in the most
secularized regions (Europe, Canada, the United States, and Australia) with the aim of identifying
practices to reactivate an ecclesial use of underused religious heritage, through new players,
stakeholders, and patrons. The historical religious heritage is proposed therefore not only as a
container of new functions but as a framework of meaning and community values.
The survey involved the Episcopal Conferences of the various countries to identify the
specificities of their respective ownership and laws for the protection of heritage. It also
understood the study of the geographies of the phenomena, to enquire, for example, whether
decommissioning is more frequent in rural areas or towns and cities. (Capanni 2019: 155–249)
This ecclesiastical survey was accompanied by a survey of scientific literature, which revealed
the most studied topics in the academic world, such as research into design methods related
to the reuse of historic buildings, the relationship between sacred buildings and landscape,
and the economic and environmental sustainability of reuse. The responses served as the basis
for a call to scientific research centers engaged in the field6 to select and highlight the most
promising programs and to facilitate collaboration between local communities and scientific
communities (de Wildt et al. 2019); an international photo contest (#nolongerchurches)
accompanied the approach to the event (see Figure 37.1). The outcome of the surveys, the
activity of the scientific committee, and the debate during the international conference at the
Pontifical Gregorian University led to the drafting of Guidelines, discussed, amended, and
approved by the delegates of the Episcopal Conferences concerned and issued on December
17, 2018.
Discernment Criteria and Decision-Making Processes

In view of the need to respond to a very diverse range of juridical and social frameworks, the
document intends to consider discernment criteria rather than propose new norms. Moreover,
the existing canonical norms deal primarily with the right of believers to the cura animarum,
rather than with the fate of buildings (except for the aspects of material sacredness envisaged by
the Codex Iuris Canonici).7 Canonically speaking, once disposed of, churches become “mere
buildings devoid of their destination for divine worship … meaning that decommissioned
churches are withdrawn from the control of ecclesiastical authority” (Malecha 2019: 49).
Ecclesiastical institutions are therefore deprived of the tools to govern further transformations
and the social dimension of the phenomenon, which concerns more the collective memory than
the theological dimension. Regional surveys record a variety of situations of de facto or de
jure disposals, with or without the sale of the property, with hybrid uses or with radical reuses.
Uncertainty does not, therefore, so much concern law, but pastoral experience. For example,
deconsecration rites continue to be infrequent, because sometimes hierarchies do not sense the
urgency of formalizing de facto abandonment. However, proper use of the rite would not only
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be a legal or liturgical formality, but also a form of pastoral care intended to help parishioners
cope with the loss of their church building (de Wildt 2020), a form of mourning for the loss of
a space of life and memory.
The Guidelines, therefore, do not reconsider the legal aspects of divestment and reuse, but
propose a preliminary reflection, for example, the definition of shared methods of historical
interpretation and assessment of religious heritage that precede and guide the decision to divest
or decommission. They propose the management of shared processes to help communities read
the signs of the times “not with anxiety,” as suggested by the pope himself.8 The document
encourages the intersection of pastoral planning, community participation, and professional
skills, envisaging a planned social use in a unified territorial vision. In societies that risk the
affirmation of incompetence and improvisation, it is clearly stated that professional expertise and
community participation must come together, each with its own goals and methods.
The document is structured in five chapters: (1) The socio-pastoral context of the
decommissioning of churches; (2) The sphere of canon law; (3) Points for reflection in the
international norms on cultural heritage; (4) Guiding criteria for heritage of sacred buildings;
and (5) Guidelines for movable heritage: fittings, fixtures, and associated heritage other than
buildings, followed by eleven final recommendations.
The reflection about building moves from a broad view of history, time, and the relationships
that make a place “habitable”:
The cessation of the liturgical use of a space in no way automatically
brings about its reduction to a building devoid of meaning and
freely transformable into anything different; the significance it
has acquired over time and its real presence within the community
are not, in fact, reducible to technical or financial statistics. The
challenge of its transformation is expressed then in terms of the
re-composition of a “promise of indwelling,” without overlooking
what was the primary use of the space. (no. 24)
Local communities—both religious and civil—can once again inhabit the places of their
history that have remained temporarily uninhabited “with discernment in the dialectic between
faithfulness to memory and faithfulness to their own time” (no. 25). The reuse is religious
in method and spirit, not solely in terms of a new function, and will always be “people-
centered” in keeping with the Christian tradition and also with recent stances of international
institutions.9
In this perspective, the Christian identity in architecture will not therefore be the preservation
of something fixed, or the re-proposition of something assumed to be original—often mythicized
or idealized—but a dynamic journey, an uninterrupted narrative experience. According to Walter
(2014: 645) “seeing a building as an ongoing and developing narrative is to acknowledge the
relevance of the community’s story to date—the buildings’ biography—but also invites us to
wonder where the ‘story’ might go next.” Therefore, any proposals for reuse can become a further
transformative perspective, subsequent to the many previous transformations that have already
taken place: “The identity of the church will then result from the constitutive set of elements
that are the fruit of successive transformations, alterations, and choices made by communities or
individuals over time” (no. 26).
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Four keywords summarize the reflection and the method mentioned above: resilience,
sustainability, co-responsibility, and planning. The category of resilience may help understand
the balance between permanence of recognizability and response to change by cultural heritage.10
Resilience is, indeed, a category that can be applied to religious heritage not only to cases of
reconstruction following disasters but also as an everyday response to the social, economic, and
cultural pressures that generate abandonment. The document enhances to foresee, for historical
churches, “a state of dynamic equilibrium that is not identical to their starting point, but which
has recognizable foundational elements” (no. 27a).
The second key concept is sustainability. If buildings for worship—whether in use or
decommissioned—are subject to the same energy and environmental sustainability criteria as all
the other types of built heritage, special attention must be paid in terms of social and economic
sustainability (Fusco Girard and Gravagnuolo 2018), which could run into difficulties as a result
of the demise of collective interest in the recovery process. Consequently, every operation shall
be planned not on the wave of enthusiasm generated by spontaneous popular action, but “on the
basis of agreements that identify precise responsibilities and interests, cases of articulated use
over time and space, control by competent managers, and clear rules of use” (no. 27b).
Two more key concepts are underlined by the document: co-responsibility and planning.
Participatory processes are the best tools for gaining an in-depth knowledge of both the resources
of a territory and the different levels of responsibility for the governance of heritage and
institutions. Participation makes it possible to systematize the needs that emerge spontaneously
from communities and stakeholders, often expressed in a fragmented or sporadic manner. The
comparison between the needs and the potential of the context becomes the basis for large-
scale planning, which identifies both the most appropriate functions for each building and the
related responsibilities, time schedules, and necessary resources. The document underlines the
pluralism of ecclesial stakeholders that may be held co-responsible: churches that no longer
have pastoral care over their territory “in light of a vision of co-responsibility and diversification
of strategies, could be entrusted to lay aggregations (associations, movements etc.) that would
guarantee churches remain open and with better management of the heritage” (no. 27c).
Experiences such as the Church policy plans drawn up in Flanders in partnership between the
Church, government, and local communities (Collin and Jaspers 2019; Donkers et al. 2019) can
become a legacy of replicable experiences, even in different regulatory contexts. Moreover, the
participatory dimension does not imply unanimous agreement at all costs, but identifies dialogue
(Longhi 2013) as an instrument of resilience for communities: debate can reasonably lead “to
achieve a natural and sustainable dissensus” (Lens 2017: 167), which nevertheless consolidates the
validity of participatory processes. The bravest choices shall be supported by a farsighted and long-
term “unified territorial vision” (no. 27d and 34.4) that includes assessments of social dynamics,
pastoral strategies, and conservation emergencies, the latter being particularly serious in cases where
the territory shows numerous signs of vulnerability (natural or anthropic, such as hydrogeological,
seismic, or fire hazards), representing risks for the cultural heritage and settlements.
Outlook
The dissemination of the contents of the Guidelines has just begun (Longhi 2019; Santi 2019),
but it is important to remember that the implementation of the Guidelines is now entrusted to
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national episcopal conferences, in order to assume a more cogent juridical relevance in each
different ecclesial context.11 Although the implementation is left to the Church bodies, the
document encourages the protagonist role of ecclesial communities in consciously guiding
the transformation of their heritage. The reflection particularly invites us to carefully consider the
numerous diversities that will characterize Europe in the coming decades, religious, social, and
even juridical and economic diversities. The creation of new heritage communities represents an
opportunity to diversify the range of stakeholders and cultural values involved, develop inclusive
mechanisms in relation to different forms of spirituality, and cultivate deep dialogue.
If—as Richard Vosko proposes with regard to new church buildings—art and architecture can
be used as a way of coming to a common ground, this is even more true for religious heritage: the
sharing of social activities, pastoral initiatives, and maintenance programs will lead even more
effectively to “personify” church buildings “as one body that welcomes, forgives, heals, unites,
and remember” (Vosko 2019: 181). Nevertheless, the complexity of such phenomena requires an
investment in study and research that cannot come about without essential cooperation between
owners, administrators, and scientific institutions—secular and religious, public and private—
working toward the identification of common values and criteria for the interpretation and
activation of communities.
Notes
1 The Pontifical Council for Culture has inherited the tasks of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural
Heritage (1988–2012), international follow-up of the Pontificia Commissione Centrale per l’Arte Sacra in
Italia (1924–88): Capanni 2018; Chenis 2002; De Marchis 2013.
2 The document Decommissioning and Ecclesial Reuse of Churches is available in Italian, English, and
French in: http://www.cultura.va/content/cultura/it/pub/documenti/decommissioning.html (Capanni
2019: 257–87). The surveys and the symposium were organized in cooperation with Pontifical Gregorian
University (Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church, Department of Cultural Heritage
of the Church, Rome) and the Italian Episcopal Conference (National Office for Cultural Heritage and
Worship Buildings). The scientific committee of the initiatives was composed of: Carlos Alberto Moreira
Azevedo (Pontifical Council for Culture); Ottavio Bucarelli (Pontifical Gregorian University); Fabrizio
Capanni (Pontifical Council for Culture); Andrea Longhi (Politecnico di Torino); Paweł Malecha (Supreme
Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Città del Vaticano); Valerio Pennasso (Italian Episcopal Conference);
and Lydia Salviucci Insolera (Pontifical Gregorian University).
3 The Guidelines are quoted from the official English version (see note 2), according to the official
numbering of the paragraphs.
4 Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, I beni culturali della chiesa in Italia. Orientamenti, December 9,
1992, in particular § 35, Mutamento di destinazione (https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/wp-content/uplo
ads/sites/25/1992/12/Orientamenti_Beni_Culturali_1992.pdfhttps://bce.chiesacattolica.it/wp-cont
ent/uploads/sites/25/1992/12/Orientamenti_Beni_Culturali_1992.pdf); Sekretariat der Deutschen
Bischofskonferenz, Umnutzung von Kirchen. Beurteilungskriterien und Entscheidungshilkìfen, October
24, 2003; Conférences de évêques suisses, Recommandations en cas de réaffectation d’églises et de
centres ecclésiaux, September 8, 2006 (https://www.schweizerkirchenbautag.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/fak_
theologie/mico_kirchenbau/content/e547963/e825799/e825835/e825839/CES_Raffectation_ger.pdf);
Conférence des évêques de Belgique, Charte de bonne gestion des biens d’église, April 6, 2017 (https://
350
www.cathobel.be/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/17-05-11-Charte-de-bonne-gestion-Contenu.pdf) (all sites

accessed June 6, 2021); see also documents gathered by Secrétariat Général de la Conférence des Évêques
de France in Documents Épiscopat, July 6, 2017.
5 About the responsibility of religious communities in heritage preservation see the documents of the
ICCROM 2003 Forum on Living Religious Heritage (Stovel, Stanley-Price, and Killick 2005) and
the Statement on the Protection of Religious Properties within the Framework of the World Heritage
Convention (Kiev, 2010, and following sessions of World Heritage Committee: https://whc.unesco.org/en/
religious-sacred-heritage).
6 The call for papers was organized in cooperation with Responsible, Risk, Resilience Centre of the
Politecnico di Torino http://www.r3c.polito.it/project/decommissioning-and-reusing-churches-iss
ues-and-research-perspectives (accessed June 1, 2021); the board was composed of Kim De Wildt (Ruhr
Universität Bochum), Daniela Esposito (Sapienza Università di Roma), Andrea Longhi (Politecnico di
Torino), and Sven Sterken (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven).
7 Canon Laws about the topic were recently summarized by Congregation for the Clergy 2013, and by two
documents issued by the Congregation for institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life
in 2018: http://www.cultura.va/content/dam/cultura/docs/pdf/beniculturali/carisma/CORORANS_IT.pdf
and http://www.cultura.va/content/dam/cultura/docs/pdf/beniculturali/carisma/CIVCSVA%202018_Or
ientamenti_Economia%20a%20servizio%20del%20carisma%20e%20della%20missione.pdf (accessed
June 6, 2021).
8 From the Message of the Holy Father Francis to participants at the conference:
The observation that many churches, which until a few years ago were necessary, are now no longer
thus, due to a lack of faithful and clergy, or a different distribution of the population between cities and
rural areas, should be welcomed in the Church not with anxiety, but as a sign of the times that invites
us to reflection and requires us to adapt. It is what in a sense the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
gaudium affirms when, claiming the superiority of time over space, it declares that ‘giving priority to
time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs
spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of
return’. (223). http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2018/documents/
papa-francesco_20181129_messaggio-convegno-beniculturali.html.
9 The Guidelines (nos. 19–21) refer to the Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban
Areas by (ICOMOS, Washington Charter 1987), the Principles for Conservation and Restoration of Built
Heritage (Krakow Charter 2000), the Xi’an Declaration on the conservation of the setting of heritage
structures, sites and areas (ICOMOS 2005), the Québec Declaration on the Preservation of the Spirit of
Place (ICOMOS 2008), the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (UNESCO 2011) and
the Burra Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (ICOMOS Australia 2013). See the last Resolution
20GA/19 People-Centered Approaches to Cultural Heritage approved by the Twentieth General Assembly
of ICOMOS (December 3–16, 2020).
10 The relation between resilience and cultural heritage is stated by recent international documents; see, that
is, the outcomes of the conference Heritage and Resilience, organized in 2013 by ICOMOS, ICORP, and
ICCROM (https://www.undrr.org/publication/heritage-and-resilience-issues-and-opportunities-reducing-
disaster-risks).
351
11 Among the first documents published: Les Evêques de Belgique, Le bâtiment d’église. Signification et
avenir, June 27, 2019 (https://www.cathobel.be/2019/06/le-batiment-deglise-signification-et-avenir/)
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Case study
Chapter 38
Religious Heritage across Generational

Divides: A Dutch Experiment to
Fight Church Fatigue
SANDER UMMELEN, STEPHAN UMMELEN, AND ANKIE PETERSEN
Introduction
In the Netherlands, there are around 6,900 church buildings. According to research published in
2019 by newspaper Trouw, around one-fifth of these buildings do not have a religious function
any more. Experts predict hundreds or even thousands of church buildings will become vacant
due to secularization and an aging population (van der Breggen and de Fijter 2019). At the same
time, societal interest, and dialogue around the (secular) search for meaning and purpose in life
is on the rise. Research has shown, for example, that up to 94 percent of millennials want to use
their skills to benefit a particular cause (Gurchiek 2014). They are searching for meaning in their
lives and—being unencumbered by the religious institutional restraints of the past—are often
more open to spirituality and even religiosity than their parents.
At a time when many churches are being forced to redefine their own relevance to avoid
closure (and ultimately demolition), it can be a challenge to formulate a real sustainable future
for these buildings. The initiative De Kerkvernieuwers (Church Innovators), founded in 2018,
is looking for new ways to build broad support for the continued use of these buildings by
reconnecting these spaces to younger and more secular generations based on their search for
purpose, their experiences, and their values.
Currently, the initiative is supported by different governmental organizations through
subsidies aimed at solidifying diverse networks around church buildings and securing their
continued use in the future. Funders have stated their appreciation for the communication style,
and innovative approach of De Kerkvernieuwers in a world of religious heritage, which is
often seen as rather conservative. The profile of the project’s initiators sets it apart from most
church building management: relatively young, not religious, and a diverse mix of professional
backgrounds (change management, marketing, cultural entrepreneurship, and sustainable
heritage management). This makes the founding members interested in, and comfortable
355
around, innovation, organizational development, branding, and communication with a variety of

audiences (De Kerkvernieuwers 2021).
In two years, De Kerkvernieuwers has built an online following of people who are
professionally or personally engaged with different aspects of church innovation. They organize
quarterly online meetups to host discussions on different ways to innovate; on a societal level,
programmatic level, financial level, or within the internal organization of a church board itself.
Since 2018, the initiators have spoken with many different church boards about the future of their
organizations and the church buildings in question.
This chapter lays out the vision behind De Kerkvernieuwers initiative by sharing the
experiences with, and results of, organizational and programmatic innovations within the St.
Stevenskerk, the biggest church in Nijmegen. By zooming in on the project “Board with Church”
and its role in facilitating the Pride Photo/Adult Alternative exhibition, it aims to provide a new
perspective in finding answers to the following questions:
1. How can managing organizations of church buildings create room for social innovation?
2. What are organizational challenges standing in the way of structural change?
3. How can churches become more inclusive and attract new audiences?
While illustrating key findings in the Netherlands, De Kerkvernieuwers argues that the
preservation of religious heritage, and of church buildings in particular, comes down to
repositioning them in the collective consciousness of a post-secular society. This can be achieved
by involving younger generations from the inside out, embedding their influence within newly
formed management structures, and thereby creating the space necessary for experiment and
change. The insights offered in this chapter can be applicable in other countries that struggle with
ensuring sustainable futures for church buildings as well.
Church Just Isn’t for Me

“How many of you have ever seen the inside of the St. Stevenskerk?” a member of De
Kerkvernieuwers asked during a guest lecture in 2018. The respondents were between twenty and
twenty-five years old and studied communication sciences at Radboud University in Nijmegen.
From the roughly thirty students present, only three raised their hands. In the follow-up question
about why so few of them had attended this particular church, the answer was as concise as it was
clear: “I am not religious.”
The lecturer and the students briefly discussed what could collectively be identified as a
problem of the perceived position of the church. The defined problem was not necessarily that St.
Stevenskerk lacked a public program that could connect with these students, but that the church
had failed to convey its central message to them effectively.
The St. Stevenskerk aims to present itself to the city as an “inspiring meeting point
for culture and reflection.” In addition to hosting ecumenical services on Sunday, it also
offers a space for concerts, art expositions, lectures, and student associations’ activities (St.
Stevenskerk n.d.). Therefore, it would not be necessary for people to “be religious” to think
of a reason to visit the church. Even if it were only for a guided tour by one of the enthusiastic
volunteers who can tell a thousand and one stories about the city they live in and the history
of the church within it.
356
Religious Heritage across Generational Divides
Upon further inquiry, the communication students in question and many of their peers
responded that they had never heard that message before. At the end of the lecture and after
conveying the position of the church as a meeting place for the city’s inhabitants, the students
were again asked about their interest in visiting the St. Stevenskerk. Now the result was the
opposite: almost everyone raised their hand.
The Problem
This anecdote is exemplary for how De Kerkvernieuwers have acted as coaches and facilitators
of social innovation in the Dutch landscape of church building management. Many church boards
or owners struggle with finding a new connection between the church as a space for their original
religious community and a younger, more secular generation. This difficulty in reaching and
engaging a younger audience is in a large part due to the fact that members of this target audience
are not included in the decision-making processes on church buildings. Decision makers in the
field of cultural and religious heritage are mostly having conversations about younger audiences
rather than with them. This understandably results in a feeling among younger generations that
church buildings are simply “not theirs.”
Many churches are governed by either a church council or a foundation board. For obvious
reasons, young secular members on church councils are very scarce. But even when a church is
not managed by a religious body, boards of foundations that manage churches rarely have young
people among their ranks. Due to both the voluntary and socially prestigious nature of these
functions, church foundations tend to attract board members over the age of fifty.
In the experiences of De Kerkvernieuwers, two reasons have come to the fore as to why there
is a barrier for younger people to get involved. First, most students are financially unable to
spend a significant amount of time away from their studies on positions without pay. This could
be surmounted by either hiring students or paying board members a fee, but most churches do
not have the financial means and most government subsidies prevent paying volunteers for their
time. Second, the formal culture in which meetings are held and decisions are made is not one
that is attractive to students. De Kerkvernieuwers have tried to get young people onto boards with
senior members on several occasions, only to be told that the absence of a cultural fit from the
point of view of the student prevents a long-term commitment.
Such conditions result in a latent inaccessibility, and thus an exclusion, of young people
(not just students) in the decision-making processes regarding both the form and function of
church buildings in a post-secular society. This in turn makes forming new and rejuvenating old
networks very difficult, which is ultimately detrimental in building and maintaining relationships
between church buildings and a younger audience.
Bridging the Gap: Shadow Boards of Innovation

De Kerkvernieuwers experimented with a new way to facilitate the involvement of a younger
generation at the decision-making table of the St. Stevenskerk in Nijmegen, in which one of its
members was actively involved as a consultant. Nijmegen is a large university town, and it was
imperative to involve members of the student population in shaping the future of the church for
the long term. Unfortunately, the problem of not being able to pay these students for their time
357
proved difficult to overcome. A solution was ultimately found by focusing on circumventing the
cultural gap in the management structure instead: the installation of a “shadow board.”
The idea of a shadow board is to create a secondary, independent board which operates under
the mandate and responsibility of the main board of the foundation governing the church building.
While the main board deals with business as usual such as upkeep, budget, insurance, and so on,
the younger board is there to bolster innovation and network, with an emphasis on reaching
young audiences by developing exciting new programs that cater to their and their generation’s
values, needs, and experiences.
Even though the members of the shadow board did not get paid for their time, the social aspect,
the mandate, and the freedom to operate independently from the main board were enough to keep
them actively involved. Other than standardized meeting times, formal agendas, and planned
monthly board meetings, the younger shadow board often met ad hoc in bars and other public
places, developing their ideas organically. Soon after the initial formation, the informal shadow
board materialized as a legal foundation, consisting of a theology student studying to be a pastor, a
philosophy student, and a young communications teacher at the university (Figure 38.1). Seeking
to increase the church’s cultural relevance toward their peers, in other words, to reach those who
are “bored with the church”, they gave themselves the ironic name “Board with Church.”
The name “Board with Church” was chosen as a deliberate play on words, signifying both
its role as an informal shadow “board,” as well as their intention to make the perception of this
particular church less “boring” in the eyes of the city’s student population (Stichting Board with
Church 2021).
FIGURE 38.1 Board with Church: Joanne Vrijhof, Daniël Toebes, and Ciska Rouw, 2020. Courtesy of
Pride Photo Nijmegen.
358
Inclusivity: Leaving Your Comfort Zone

Not long after, Board with Church obtained its legal status as a foundation, a request from the
organization Pride Photo/Adult Alternative arrived with the main board of the St. Stevenskerk.
Their question was whether the church could be rented as a location for “the very first Dutch
erotic exhibition about transgender people and their love life.” The organization’s core idea was
to break through sexual stigma and challenge social taboos. The church as a location was central
to their concept, as many of these taboos sprung from religious convictions in the first place,
according to the organizing party.
The St. Stevenskerk board felt, at the time the request reached them, a certain tension. On the
one hand, their vision is to have the St. Stevenskerk be a “temple without a threshold” and “a
living room of the city for everyone,” on the other hand, it is also the home of an active religious
community. Creating space for the transgender community to feel welcome in the city’s largest
and most prominent church building through an erotically themed exhibition could be deemed
unfitting, or might raise objections from a religious standpoint. Initially, the reasons to decline the
request outweighed the will to say yes.
As the shadow board for innovation, the Board with Church intervened and jumped at the
chance to investigate further. They saw the request as an ideal opportunity to promote inclusivity
through the church’s activities and to further solidify the idea of being a living room of the city for
everyone. Board with Church adopted the project and convinced the St. Stevens board to allow
them to proceed as organizing partners. Because of the distance created between the exhibition
and the main board, they could deflect possible negative feedback from their stakeholders toward
Board with Church. With the support and hard work of the Board with Church members, grants
totaling around €100,000 were secured.
The exhibition was officially opened in 2020. The project received national media attention
on prime time (SBS6 2020) reaching over 650,000 viewers, with the church opening its doors to
a new audience consisting of the transgender and LGTBI+ communities (Pride Photo Nijmegen
n.d.). The church drew many more visitors than expected, and several transgender people were
visibly moved by the warm welcome in the church. As one transgender visitor expressed during
the exposition’s opening: “I never expected a church to feel like home to a person such as myself.”
(Figure 38.2)
So what was ultimately needed to make this happen? Nothing too difficult or extreme, as
it turns out. An open attitude, an alternate form of organization, and the will to search for an
additional narrative about why and for whom a church building exists. Aside from the money to
make an exhibition like this possible, it was the existence of a distinct innovation board made up
of young people that allowed the more traditional St. Stevenskerk board to transfer ownership
of the project and the risk of criticism to a separate entity. This structure turned out to be an
important step in providing the regular board with enough insulation from the perceived risk to
reputation and stakeholder management to give the go ahead for social innovation.
This model could serve as a blueprint for mitigating risks to board reputation based on
traditional values and norms could be useful in creating room for social and programmatic
innovation in other churches as well. This in turn, can serve as a strategy to increase the relevance
of religious heritage to a new generation, as they tend to have different values and norms.
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FIGURE 38.2 Pride Photo/Adult Alternative exhibition opening, 2020, Courtesy of Pride Photo
Nijmegen.
Innovation: Untapped Potential

Secularization in the Netherlands has led to a situation in which there are more nonreligious than
(registered) religious people in the country (CBS 2018). People’s interest in things like mindfulness,
purpose, meaning-making, social topics, spirituality, and even religiosity is alive and well (Rozema
2020). A Millennial and Generation Z revaluation of religiosity, purpose, and spirituality is not
leading to a return of the position of the traditional church within society, however. Still, De
Kerkvernieuwers started out from the assumption that church buildings have the potential to play an
important role in society as meaning-making places. While a new generation is growing up that just
“is not into religion” in the institutional sense, it becomes even more important to look beyond the
original stakeholders and management systems of churches by thinking of new ways on how these
spaces can be meaningful to others. In this process, it is not enough to only focus on the inherent
importance of the spaces themselves (for conservation purposes, for example). It is necessary to be
able to explore and explain, clearly and concisely, why they can be important for new audiences.
According to De Kerkvernieuwers, it is up to the administrators and managing parties of
church buildings to actively bridge the gap and present themselves as a relevant location for
engagement with younger generations by providing both space and programming that fits their
search for meaning, in a way that they understand and appreciate. To do so, it is important to
invite members of these generations in the discussion about the future of these buildings and
include them in decision-making processes. That requires leaving comfort zones and reaching
out to unusual suspects for an equal dialogue about values and norms. It requires innovation
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strategies and leaps of faith to turn church buildings from echo chambers on how things ought to
be, into idea labs in which people are able to experiment and explore.
Even though every encounter revolves around a different case with a different context, many
of them have the common denominator of lacking a future perspective, not only due to society’s
secularization, individualization, or an increasing generational gap. It is also often linked to
internal barriers in how the church building’s governing is organized. Think of ingrained patterns
of the organization hampering new ideas and innovation; an often homogeneous composition of
the board; and the prevailing organizational culture and the reluctance, on an organizational and
at an individual level, to make necessary changes.
Conclusion
De Kerkvernieuwers focuses on assisting organizations such as church boards in innovation by
addressing social structures. One of the ways they attempt to realize this is by creating shadow
boards in existing organizations. The case study of Board with Church and their work, including
the Pride Photo/Adult Alternative photo exhibition, shows that the inclusion of members of
a new generation in the practice of church management and programming can lead to new,
innovative, and even taboo-breaking projects that convey the relevance of church spaces for
new, appreciative audiences.
On a final note, true inclusivity is difficult to achieve. For example, in recruiting students
who can financially afford to spend their time in a shadow board, the viewpoints of people in a
different economic position are, unintentionally, being excluded. If church buildings are to be
a community’s living room, it is imperative that the process of creating inclusivity is set up to be
a continuous effort aimed at serving and representing all members of these communities.
References
Breggen, M. van der, and N. de Fijter (2019), “Een op de vijf Nederlandse kerken is geen
kerk meer.” Trouw, June 25. https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/een-op-de-vijf-nederlandse-ker
ken-is-geen-kerk-meer~b033cc0f/ (accessed May 14, 2021).
CBS (2018), “Meer dan de helft Nederlanders niet religieus.” CBS, October 22. https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/
nieuws/2018/43/meer-dan-de-helft-nederlanders-niet-religieus (accessed May 2, 2021).
De Kerkvernieuwers (n.d.), “Over ons.” https://www.kerkvernieuwers.nl/overons (accessed May 2, 2021).
Gurchiek, Kathy (2014), “Millennial’s Desire to Do Good Defines Workplace Culture Examine
Community Service Programs to ‘Seal the Deal’.” SHRM, July 7. https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesA
ndTools/hr-topics/behavioral-competencies/global-and-cultural-effectiveness/Pages/Millennial-Impact.
aspx (accessed May 14, 2021).
Pride Photo / Adult Alternative (2020), “Hart van Nederland,” September 3. Available online: https://tvb
lik.nl/hart-van-nederland/3-september-2020
Pride Photo Nijmegen (n.d.), “Terugblik Adult Alternative,” Pride Photo Nijmegen. Available
online: https://pridenijmegen.nl/terugblik-adult-alternative/ (accessed 14 May 2021).
Rozema, H. (2020), “Vraag naar zingeving groeit door corona. Kerken moeten daarop inspelen.”
Nederlands Dagblad, April 16. https://www.nd.nl/geloof/geloof/966488/vraag-naar-zingeving-gro
eit-door-corona (accessed May 14, 2021).
Stichting Board with Church (n.d.), “Wie wij zijn”. https://www.boardwithchurch.nl/ (accessed May 21, 2021).
Stichting Stevenskerk (n.d.), “Over ons.” https://www.stevenskerk.nl/over-ons/vrienden-van-de-stevensk
erk/index.html (accessed May 14, 2021).
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PART III
Heritage and Creativity

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Contemporary Art and Religious Heritage

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Challenge
Chapter 39
Art, Heritage, and Power

AARON ROSEN
Challenge
“More great than human, now, and more August, / New deified she from her fires does rise.”
John Dryden wrote these optimistic words in 1666 in his poem “Annus Mirabilis: The Year
of Wonders.” Only a poet of Dryden’s immense imagination—not to mention a keen desire to
please his monarch—could find signs of divine favor in that year, when London was struck by
both the Great Fire and the Great Plague, all amidst a naval war. Writing under the long shadow
of 2020—a year marked by its own pandemic, environmental catastrophes, and conflicts—it is
hard to identify many blessings. Yet contemporary artists are already confronting the challenges
rendered excruciatingly visible in this annus horribilis, and will continue to do so in the coming
years. While few would opt for Dryden’s miraculous suppositions, there remain good reasons to
turn to the resources of religious heritage in order to formulate a vocabulary of lament, critique,
and hope that befits the present. In turn, such efforts will reshape the contours of religious heritage
for the future, in powerful but unpredictable ways. Without forecasting specific outcomes, in this
essay I want to sketch out some key challenges I see at the intersection of contemporary art and
religion, especially within a European context (although many of these challenges are global,
and the implications will be as well). For heuristic purposes, I will divide these challenges into
subject, medium, and reception.
The great subject of art today, and certainly religious art, is power. If there was any doubt
before, 2020 made this painfully clear when the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and
other African Americans by police unleashed a moral outcry for racial justice. The raw anguish
expressed in signs, graffiti, memorials, murals, and performances not only made powerful visual
and ethical statements but also deeply religious ones, often channeling traditional iconography.
These interventions quickly spread beyond America. In Berlin, Jesus Cruz Artiles (aka Eme
Freethinker) depicted Floyd on a section of the Berlin Wall in Mauerpark, in effect applying one
critique of oppression to the embodiment of another. Art historian Nausikaä El-Mecky argues
convincingly that the defacing and toppling of monuments also represent acts of profound moral
and visual creativity, which should be seen in the context of events like the Iconoclastic Fury in
sixteenth-century Europe (El-Mecky 2020). In the UK, activists dragged the sculpture of slave
trader and “benefactor” Edward Colston off his pedestal and (un)ceremoniously dumped him
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into Bristol Harbour. Not only was this act akin to performance art but it also symbolically
condemned Colston to the fate of the thousands of slaves who died aboard his ships.
Such public reckoning with the shameful, persistent legacy of European colonialism has injected
fresh urgency into debates about objects of religious and artistic heritage stolen or otherwise
dubiously acquired by European museums. French and German governments have made some
strides toward repatriation of objects from former territories in Africa, but many activists remain
dissatisfied with officially declared good intentions, and have taken matters into their own hands,
such as the attempt to seize a Bari funerary pole from the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac
in Paris. Looking ahead, a central task will be not only how to recognize but also to sustain anti-
racist critiques of institutions. This will involve debates regarding how best to preserve protest
art (both in situ and in major collections), commission new public monuments, and incorporate
critique into museums through revised pedagogies and interventions from contemporary artists.
The essay in this section by Brenda Bartelink and Gabriela Bustamante provides a compelling
example of an effort to meet this challenge in relation to Dutch heritage, specifically through the
use of historic Delft Blue by women of African descent.
While museums have a key role to play in such debates, so too do religious institutions,
especially churches, which have often been willing collaborators in colonialism’s mythmaking
and exploitation. Contemporary art, at its best, can help religious heritage sites morally disentangle
themselves from the fabric of white supremacy, and build new forms of community in conjunction
with activists and organizers. Theaster Gates’s Sanctum (2015) provides a palpable example of
what this might look like. Within the shell of Bristol’s Temple Church—destroyed during the
Blitz—Gates assembled a temporary chapel from discarded building materials around the city,
which became a stage for twenty-four days of round-the-clock performances by local individuals
and groups. “In some ways this project was attempting to make space inside of a sacred space
that people might connect with,” commented Gates. “Sanctum is primarily a platform on which
the people of Bristol have an opportunity to hear each other” (Klingelfuss 2015). Projects like
Sanctum offer a blueprint for how sustainable art and architecture can also foster more sustainable
communities. As the twenty-first century progresses, environmental sustainability—including
efforts to achieve environmental justice—will become even more crucial, and there is an opening
for religious spaces to play a prominent role. Initiatives like Ocean Space, an “embassy for the
oceans” supporting research and exhibitions, based in the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, or
the multicultural and multifaith Gärten der Welt in Berlin, offer hopeful signals for the future.
As religious heritage sites hope to retain—or more optimistically increase—their relevance,
many have turned to technology. Cathedrals and other large institutions, for instance, have
increasingly employed smartphone apps for tourists to learn about their history, or splashed
out for surround sound or high-lumen projectors to embellish worship services. There has also
been growing interest in site-specific works of art utilizing new media. Bill Viola has been a
pioneer in this field, creating a number of video installations for historic churches as well as a
permanent video altarpiece for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, titled Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire,
Water) (2014). While the medium is bracingly contemporary, its polyptych format is centuries
old, as is the artist’s ambition for the piece, which he hopes inspires “traditional contemplation
and devotion” (Jones 2014).
Recently, another wave of new media artists has pushed the technological and conceptual
horizons of ecclesial art even further. In the Netherlands, Arent Weevers has utilized virtual
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Art, Heritage, and Power
reality, holograms, and three-dimensional video, bringing cutting-edge digital capture and display
to bear on abiding theological themes like vulnerability, grief, and responsibility. Drawing on his
expertise as a practicing pastor, Weevers has deployed a deep understanding of liturgical space
to activate unusual features in heritage sites. In Well (2017), for instance, viewers peered through
a grate on the floor of the crypt in St. Lebuïnus Church (Deventer, The Netherlands) in which a
stereoscopic video played of an infant floating in a black void. While Weevers uses technology
to bring singular, uncanny visions to life, Michael Takeo Magruder uses digital tools to analyze
and visualize data in response to urgent social issues. For the historic St. Stephen Walbrook
Church in London, Takeo created Lamentation for the Forsaken (2016), a digital sculpture in
which images of Syrian refugees gradually emerge and fade from the surface of a tomb-like
structure, trading places, or indeed faces, with the visage from the Shroud of Turin. The top,
transparent layer of the piece is etched with names of some of the millions who have died in the
Syrian Civil War, in effect weaving together names and faces into a new shroud, a new icon. For
all their formal differences, Weevers and Takeo each use the latest digital technologies in ways
that spur deep reflection, especially about social responsibility. The challenge ahead, as digital
technologies become increasingly affordable and accessible, will be for religious institutions
to avoid using new media in merely opportunistic ways to refresh or update their offerings, or,
to put it biblically, to pour new wine into old wineskins. Technology offers the most promise,
aesthetically and theologically, when it is deployed by artists who appreciate the unique demands
of religious spaces and respond to them—and the communities they serve—with sensitivity and
imagination.
Museums, unlike most religious sites, have been displaying digital art and utilizing digital
technologies for pedagogy for decades. Nonetheless, technology, art, and religious heritage can
collide in fresh and challenging ways for museums, especially when it comes to reception. This
was on full display in 2020 in a controversy surrounding mega-influencer Chiara Ferragni’s
photoshoot for Vogue Hong Kong at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. When the Uffizi posted
an image of her in front of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (c. 1485) on Instagram, its
accompanying text mused that Ferragni constituted “a sort of contemporary divinity in the era
of social media” (Dominioni 2020). Revealingly, Ferragni also posed in front of Botticelli’s
Adoration of the Magi (c. 1476), in effect turning the picture—and the act of adoration being
performed—inside out. While the incident caused a furore among cultural commentators, for its
part, the gallery pointed to its sharp uptick in young visitors soon after, many in pursuit of selfies
for their own Instagram feeds, in imitatio Ferragni. In a prescient reflection on advertising, John
Berger seems to anticipate such developments. “The quoted work of art,” he writes, “says two
almost contradictory things at the same time: it denotes wealth and spirituality: it implies that the
[experience] being proposed is both a luxury and a culture value” (Berger 1972: 135). However
unwelcome for the gatekeepers of religious heritage, the pursuit of the perfect selfie in front of
a work of religious art might well constitute a form of pilgrimage; and in the hands of the right
influencer might inspire untold numbers of “followers.” Rather than simply lamenting the fall
of high culture and the depreciation of spiritual values in such episodes, it is up to curators to
generate additional modes of engaging religious and artistic heritage.
Alain de Botton frames this dilemma well. “Art museums,” he opines, “often abdicate
much of their potential to function as new churches (places of consolation, meaning, sanctuary,
redemption) through the way they handle the collections entrusted to them. While exposing us
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to objects of genuine importance, they nevertheless seem unable to frame them in a way that
links them powerfully to our inner needs” (de Botton 2012). Unfortunately, when given the
opportunity to do just this at the Rijksmuseum in 2014, de Botton and John Armstrong simply
pasted truisms from pop-psychology next to masterpieces. Art is Therapy, their exhibition
declared, while offering little more than placebo in return. De Botton’s challenge is better met,
I think, by turning to what David Morgan calls “visual piety”—complex, textured, embodied
modes of religious looking (Morgan 1998). As director of the National Gallery and the British
Museum, Neil MacGregor offered compelling examples of such an approach, with exhibitions
that evoked experiences like praying before Christian relics in Treasures of Heaven (2011) or
circling the Ka’ba in Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam (2012). It will be exciting to see how
new generations of curators—including Lieke Wijnia, editor of this volume and curator of the
transhistorical Mary Magdalene exhibition (2021) at Museum Catharijneconvent—build upon
such trailblazing exhibitions. One challenge will be how to show contemporary works of art
in ways that enable both piety and critique, or indeed one in service of the other. In an era in
which artists are speaking publicly and persuasively about identities that have been historically
suppressed or misrepresented in the art world, many changes may well be driven by artists
themselves, who demand new forms of exhibitions. In this handbook, artist Anjet van Linge
offers a sensitive exploration of medieval churches as spaces for open studios. She leaves me
wondering whether one of the most important challenges ahead is not only how to get viewers
to explore religious subjects or modes of viewing more deeply, but also to experience religious
making for themselves. As we move into an increasingly uncertain future, the historic rhythms
and rituals of both art and religion can be precious sources of both stability and hope, especially
when braided together.
References
Berger, J. (1972), Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin.
de Botton, A. (2012), “Should Art Really Be for Its Own Sake Alone?” Guardian, January 20. https://
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/20/art-museums-churches (accessed October 1, 2020).
Dominioni, I. (2020), “Things a Single Photo Can Do: How Chiara Ferragni Prompted Debate on the
Cultural Sector in Italy.” Forbes, July 30. https://www.forbes.com/sites/irenedominioni/2020/07/30/
things-a-single-photo-can-do-how-chiara-ferragni-prompted-debate-on-the-cultural-sector-in-italy/
(accessed October 1, 2020).
Dryden, J. (2001), “Annus Mirabilis,” in S. Zwicker, and D. Bywaters (eds.), John Dryden: Selected
Poems. New York: Penguin.
El-Mecky, N. (2020), “Don’t Call It Vandalism.” Image Journal, June 11. https://imagejournal.
org/2020/06/11/dont-call-it-vandalism/ (accessed October 1, 2020).
Jones, J. (2014), “Hallelujah! Why Bill Viola’s Martyrs altarpiece at St Paul’s is to Die For,” Guardian,
May 21. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/may/21/bill-viola-mat
ryr-video-installation-st-pauls. (accessed December 6, 2020).
Klingelfuss, J. (2015), “Theaster Gates hits all the high notes in Bristol’s Temple Church,” Wallpaper,
October 30. https://www.wallpaper.com/art/theaster-gates-sanctum (accessed December 1, 2020).
Morgan, D. (1998), Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
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Analysis
Chapter 40
Negotiating Diversity with Heritage: Making

the Case for Artistic Engagement
BRENDA BARTELINK AND GABRIELA BUSTAMANTE
Analysis
Cultural Encounters
How can artistic means be utilized to foster encounters between the different heritages of different
communities? Why is art an important way to engage with cultural or religious heritage in
addition to museum visits? What is lost in a secular approach to heritage? What is the problem of
a cultural project of “inclusion” that focuses on passive engagement with the dominant culture?
This chapter explores how African Dutch women in the city of The Hague interacted with
heritage in the context of a participatory project in which they engaged with heritage in an artistic
manner. The Hague, much like other European cities, has become increasingly diverse in the course
of the twentieth century. As de-churching and secularization unfolded among the Dutch majority
population, new forms of spiritual practice emerged outside and in response to institutional religions
(Berghuijs, Pieper, and Bakker 2013). Immigration simultaneously contributed to a rise in non-
European Christianities, Hinduism, Buddhism, and in particular Islam. This means that “Europe’s
others, who were ideologically and conceptually distanced through colonialism and deemed to be
far away, are now co-present with secular atheists, protagonists of Christian religion ‘as we know
it’ and spiritual seekers” (Meyer 2018). The copresence and entanglements of different religious
and secular groups challenges Western European understandings and experiences of the world,
as these can no longer be assumed to be universal. Contemporary European cities can therefore
be seen as frontier zones (Meyer 2018). In such contexts, religious heritage can be considered as
boundary objects (Leigh-Star 2010), or “objects at the intersection of different and often competing
communities of interpretation, practice, and association” (Chidester 2018).
Yet, the potential of religious heritage to create space for active engagement with diversity
matters is contested. So-called secular guardians, for example, museums and galleries, struggle to
connect with diverse communities in society and the complex and layered meanings of religious
heritage for them (Wijnia 2018). In addition, as Meyer notes in her introductory essay to this
handbook, religious heritage is increasingly being co-opted by dominant narratives about Dutch
national identity. This means that a secular, seemingly neutral, and distant approach to religious
heritage may lead to privileging the loudest voices, while overlooking or sidelining the voices of
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communities not in the position to engage with religious heritage and art. A secular approach to
heritage may perpetuate fundamental historical inequalities, while heritage and art also have the
potential to bring to live the multiple histories of religious experience and practice and the power
relations in which these are embedded (e.g., Rosen, this volume).
In this chapter, we consider the potential of religious heritage to elicit conversations between
people of diverse cultural, religious, and nonreligious backgrounds on how they understand
themselves in relation to diverse communities in society. We understand this potential as threefold,
following three related challenges we observe for religious heritage as outlined below: reflexive,
explorative, and artistic.
Heritage “explorative” potential as its visual and material entry into the diverse meanings
people attach to the visibility and meaning of religion (Beekers and Tamimi Arab 2016, Beekers
2017). While religious heritage is seen as a reflection of the historical formation of religion and
society, engagement with religious heritage in the present creates space for exploring various
and diverging sensibilities. As Wallace notes, “Implicit in the notion of heritage is a richness
of some kind—traditions earned, trades passed on, a sense of pride, things worth having and
rights to these things. These terms have an emotional quality to them and relate to things that
strike a chord with us at a fundamental level” (Wallace 2013). Religious heritage visualizes and
materializes diverse and changing forms of religious and ritual praxis around life and death. As
such it holds potential to explore how religion comes into play in the everyday lives of people in
diverse contexts (Ammerman 2007; Knibbe and Kupari 2020). Heritage, in other words, is not a
form on which meaning is projected, but an entry point for experiencing and giving meaning to
religious diversity through forms of storytelling and dialogue that are elicited.
In addition, religious heritage has “reflexive” potential that brings in more fundamental
questions of power around, and in relation to heritage and art. Religious diversification
in Europe takes place in the context of secular formations, which often include that religion
is thought to be a largely private affair. When visible in the public domain religion is easily
becoming subject of ridicule, contestation, and conflict. This happens against the background
of a longer protestant/secular history that has advocated a strict separation between the material
and immaterial, immanent, and transcendent dimensions of life (Chidester 2018). Christian
colonial and missionary projects have profoundly influenced the religious and secular formations
of contemporary societies across the globe, as well as the particular histories and positions of
white Christian communities in The Netherlands (e.g., Stegeman 2021). Religious heritage
bears witness to these complex and violent histories. It holds potential for reflection on one’s
situatedness in relation to these histories, as well as how this informs current power relations.
Finally, we argue that religious heritage has artistic potential. Art, more than heritage, inspires
new and alternative imaginaries (e.g., Wijnia 2018: 32). This case study looks at what emerges
in the context of engaging with heritage in a creative and artistic manner. As we will demonstrate
below, from such artistic engagements with heritage new imaginaries of living together in
diversity can emerge. Our case study engages with Delft Blue, which is not a “religious” form
of heritage. This was a conscious choice at the time, given that the project focused on women.
Following the lived religion approach introduced earlier, we were interested in religion when and
how women themselves would bring it up avoiding working with heritage that had a particular
gendering (e.g., Bartelink et al. 2020). While this means that this particular case study does not
speak directly to religious heritage, it offers the religious heritage sector an example to think on
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Negotiating Diversity with Heritage
how religious heritage can become hybrid and inclusive. As we will argue, artistic engagement
offers great potential for this.
Delft Blue as Method

This chapter presents findings from a research project entitled Designing the Body, which
centered around a process of making Delft Blue porcelain figurines with participants in the study,
to elicit stories and conversation in a playful manner.1 Designing the Body introduced diverse
material and visual forms while inviting participants to bring in the aesthetics and stories from
their own lives. The figurines themselves were inspired by Mexican Lupita Dolls, a local Mexican
translation of Spanish porcelain dolls that Bustamante uses in her design practice (Esparragoza
2011). The painting technique, inspired by the Dutch tradition of Delft Blue, played a central
role in the project. It offered a visual language for working on the embodied experiences and
representations of the roles of women in society, and a narrative that allowed for further reflection
on the interaction of mixed heritage and identities by the participants.
Delft Blue porcelain, which is now considered typically Dutch, started to be produced by the
ceramic workshops in Delft from 1620. At that point the import of Chinese porcelain dropped, and
a market emerged for local production and distribution of the blue and white ceramics that were
so fashionable among the bourgeoisie (Eliens et al. 2003). Transitioning from a Chinese import
to a domestic product, the visual language of Delft Blue changed over the centuries. Chinese
landscapes or motifs were replaced with different aspects of Dutch lifestyle such as sea and
landscapes, folkloric wisdom, music, sentiments of patriotism, religion, and also about royalty
and war (e.g., Eliens et al. 2003: 28). Delft Blue ceramics became connected to Dutch identity,
currently mostly visible in the tourist industry, where Delft Blue windmills, wooden shoes, tulips,
as well as the kissing couple are today sold as souvenirs to visitors to the Netherlands.
The research project entitled “Designing the Body” was a participatory project initiated by
researcher Brenda Bartelink, designer Gabriela Bustamante and community organizer Lerina
Kwamba. We created it as a process in which engaging with visual and material forms such
as fabric and objects elicited storytelling in a material, visual, and embodied way. After an
introduction workshop (Let’s Meet), we organized an excursion to the Royal Delft Museum to
explore various aspects and dimensions of Delft Blue and its history (Let’s Talk). This initiative
led to various new activities proposed and planned by the participants in collaboration with the
project team. These activities included a workshop to paint the figurines (Let’s Create), and a
closing with an exhibition of stories and figurines (Let’s See), as well as a fashion show, various
workshops, and cultural activities.
In the following section, we will describe the explorative and reflexive moments that emerged
when the participants interacted with Delft Blue, followed by a section devoted to the artistic
engagement with Delft Blue in which they replicated its aesthetics in their own manner.
Engaging with Delft Blue

For participants in Designing the Body, their first encounter with Delft Blue often predated their
arrival to the Netherlands as they were familiarized with the designs on commercial or practical
products:
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“Delft Blue, that is what you see in rich people’s houses in Congo,
does that come from the Netherlands?”, says a participant. “Yes,”
says another participant, “I always buy it before I go to Zambia
to visit my family.” Glancing over the tiny pair of Delft Blue
“wooden” shoes on the table, a participant from Sierra Leone
shares that she has seen women, white nuns from Europe, wearing
those shoes when they worked their gardens. She only now realizes
these nuns might have been Dutch.2
These examples suggest that the content of these products was more interesting than the packaging
or branding itself. Only after arriving in the Netherlands, when they bought souvenirs, participants
reported that they experienced a connection between the Delft Blue design and the Netherlands.
At that point their own relation to these objects fundamentally changed, as they now bought it
to mark their residence in The Netherlands when traveling back to their countries of origin. The
anthropologist Tim Ingold refers to this “process in which beings or things literally answer to
one another over time” as correspondence (Ingold 2017: 14). Correspondence emphasizes the
importance of going along in the relationship between people and things to observe which forms
of becoming emerge from within these experiences.
When the participants first related to the Delft Blue objects we introduced, we observed that
new associations and stories emerged from within. Experiences with similar related products
now established a connection between Dutch and African cultures, and the objects became part
of participants’ histories. Engaging with the objects and their aesthetics allowed for exploring the
various meanings participants attach to Delft Blue in particular phases of their lives.
The relation to the Delft Blue objects changed, when we decided to organize a visit to Royal
Delft, a museum on the history of Delft Blue. The blown-up Delft Blue images and beauty of the
pieces and museum engaged the participants in the project in a very direct and visual manner. The
visit to Royal Delft created a positive connection to The Netherlands and Dutch history for many
of the women that participated. One participant expressed the following:
I really enjoyed this visit to Royal Delft, I think that if I had been
brought here when I arrived to The Netherlands, it would have
been easier for me to want to learn more about the country and be
less busy [worried] about why I am here. I didn’t know that Delft
Blue was used to tell about Dutch History. In this way I find it more
beautiful to see and easy to learn.
During the visit the group stood immersed in Delft Blue. Participants pointed at objects that
reminded them of a memory or story they wanted to share about themselves or that helped them get
a better grip about a part of the history of the Netherlands. This elicited conversations on beauty,
personal taste, and aesthetics, as well as on the history of colonialism and international trade of
The Netherlands as well as on the challenges in (re-)building their lives in The Netherlands. It
seemed as if reading its beautiful white and blue narrative invited the participants to be with the
inherent complexity of integration.
In addition to the explorative conversations, more reflexive conversations on how participants
understood themselves in the context of The Netherlands were elicited. As we have argued
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elsewhere (Bartelink et al. 2020), the realization that Delft Blue has Chinese origins and the
designs have changed overtime, invited reflections on Dutch culture as hybrid and open. As
the women “corresponded” with Delft Blue, the contrast between integration and citizenship
procedures and women’s lived experiences with “becoming” Dutch alongside Tanzanians,
Ethiopians, Congolese, or Zambians became apparent. In the first the focus is on intentionality,
acquiring enough knowledge (on Dutch society) and skills (language) to pass citizenship
exams. In the latter the emphasis is on attentionality, or “the process of going along with things,
opening up to them and doing their bidding” (Ingold 2017: 23). As we observed this process of
attentionality emerging among the participants, it also became apparent that this required the
project to evolve along with this. This included a soft focus on intended outcomes (e.g., the Delft
Blue figurines as the intended art work), and a lot of space for building relations between people
and the material. This included space for watching the Delft Blue, sharing associations, and
stories, for sharing food, for creativity, and for attention for each other.
Making and Playing with Delft Blue

When visiting Royal Delft Blue some of the participants showed up in blue and white dresses,
signaling that exploring something new is not only done by action but that it is also embodied.
Through these embodied dimensions of storytelling, participants engaged with Delft Blue in an
artistic manner even before we invited them to do so more explicitly through painting a figurine
in Delft Blue technique (Figure 40.1).
Haimanot Belay, for example, who loved Delft Blue before the visit to the museum, decided
to paint Dutch symbols such as the tulip as well as Ethiopian symbols such as the Ethiopian
Orthodox crucifix on her figurine.
I made a Delft Blue representing my Ethiopian and my Dutch
identity. Using Ethiopian and Dutch symbols. I used to be
Ethiopian, but I have lived in the Netherlands for twenty years, and
now people do not see me as Ethiopian anymore. Migrants always
have this problem. I am both and you can see that in how I love the
Delft Blue colors.
For her Delft Blue is a language in which she expresses her belonging in two cultures, the
Netherlands and Ethiopia: “Delft Blue is a symbol for the encounters, the friendships and the
loving dimension of Dutch society” (Bartelink et al. 2020).3 The personal meanings Haimanot
attaches to Ethiopian orthodox religion found their way on her figurine, expressing that
this is entangled with her everyday experience of being Ethiopian. This process of bringing
together apparently unrelated things, for example, Delft Blue objects, cultural and religious
identifications and experiences of becoming part of Dutch society, is conceptualized as making
bisociations (Koestler qtd. in Sanders and Stappers 2013). In the following we will demonstrate
how bisociations transform existing ideas through the engagement with material and visual
objects.
While Haimanot’s figurine is in many ways the kind of outcome we envisioned at the start of
the project, other participants moved in different directions with their creations. Bahia Kihondo,
for example, was not interested in making a figurine, but chose to design dresses instead. We
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FIGURE 40.1 Left: Figurine painted with Delft Blue technique by Haimanot. Right: Processional cross
from Amhara Region, Ethiopia.
Source: left, Brenda Bartelink, right: Wikimedia Commons.
want to explore her story in more detail here. Bahia, who migrated to the Netherlands from
Tanzania, explained that she was immediately impressed by hand painted tiles at the entrance
and in the main room inside the museum. Like other participants, she enjoyed learning about her
‘new home country’ through such beautiful things. Bahia was fascinated in particular, by a couple
of dresses exhibited in the museum’s shop made from silk with a contemporary version of Delft
Blue prints. An experienced tailor and designer herself, she could establish a personal connection
with the material and visual culture of Delft Blue.
Bahia learned the basics of cutting and sewing from a tailor living next door to her in Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania. In the Netherlands she began making clothes because she felt a need to
engage in something creative, that would distract her from the difficult times she was going
through as a refugee. She also saw it as a means to generate some income for her household.
After the visit to Royal Delft Museum, Bahia indicated that—instead of painting a figurine—she
was interested in designing dresses with Delft Blue printed fabric under her new fashion brand
“Holland Wax Fashion.” Following her visit to Royal Delft Blue, Bahia’s aesthetic ambition
was to search for the similarities between Dutch traditional garments and those of Tanzania and
combine them into wearable dresses. The bright white collars, worn by Dutch in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and exhibited in the museum reminded her of the colorful-beaded collars
traditionally worn in Tanzania (Figure 40.2). Furthermore, the diverse tones of blue used in Delft
Blue reminded her of the tie-dye technique used to make the “khanga” (traditional Tanzanian
garment). She integrated these aspects from both cultures into the dresses she made, which were
shown at the closing event of the project. Different from Haimanot, her identification as a Muslim
did not emerge as a theme in her artistic work.
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FIGURE 40.2 Left: Model showing a design by Bahia Kihondo. Top right: Maasai necklace. Bottom
right: The Regentesses of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Haarlem.
Source: left: Brenda Bartelink, right: Wikimedia Commons.
Both Bahia and Haimanot demonstrated that Delft Blue became a visual language that they
could make their own and utilize in a way to express their multiple belongings. In other words,
Delft Blue turned out to be an accessible aesthetic. Yet this only happened when they were
introduced to Delft Blue as a visual and material form that was at once clear enough in terms of
its “Dutchness” and hybrid enough to be used as a way of representing their multiple identities.
Building on the previous section, we can see that Haimanot and Bahia were able to transform
existing ideas on Dutchness (a form of belonging they work hard for but never fully arrive
at) into a new Dutchness that is a becoming, as it brings together their multiple identities and
multiple senses of belonging. Aesthetics in particular, seemed to invite the attentionality that
elicited reflections on how participants experienced themselves as part of a new culture with its
own histories of becoming. The concrete, material, and sensory experience in relation to Dutch
heritage was crucial in this process.
Religious Heritage as Space for Diverse Conversations

In this case study we have demonstrated how creative engagement with the heritage of Delft Blue
elicited conversations between African-Dutch women, about Dutch history, identity, and multiple
belongings. The visit to Royal Delft Blue, the informal interactions while walking through the
museum, taking pictures, sharing food afterwards, the making of Delft Blue objects, viewing and
presenting them, were all part of the process of engaging with Delft Blue. Relating to heritage
in a process of attentional, creative engagement—as was visible in Bahia and Haimanot’s visual
and storytelling work in particular—confirms that thinking happens through making (e.g.,
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Ingold 2013). The case study has furthermore demonstrated heritage can offer “ways in” to
conversations between societal actors from diverse religious, irreligious and secular backgrounds
to understand and experience religious diversity (Wallace 2013). As the visit to Royal Delft
Museum demonstrated, the exploring of how heritage was shaped and adapted historically,
opened up conversations about the histories of colonial trade and colonization, as well as about
the hybridity of culture.
In the introduction we have outlined the potential of religious heritage to elicit conversations
between people of diverse cultural, religious, and nonreligious backgrounds on how they
understand themselves (and each other) in the context of society. We have introduced this
potential as threefold: reflexive, explorative, and artistic. The Delft Blue project demonstrates
that these three happen in interaction. It was not only seeing Delft Blue objects that sparked off
the interaction and reflection. The possibility of replicating its beauty, of identifying as part of
it, and using it to tell a meaningful story that can be shared with others, were fully part of the
explorative and reflexive conversations and stories that emerged out of it.
The question that emerges is whether engaging with religious heritage could elicit conversations
about religion, identity, and diversity? As a boundary object in a religiously diverse society,
religious heritage has the potential of bring the religious/secular history of The Netherlands into
conversation. Bartelink has worked intensively with African religious leaders in The Netherlands
(e.g., Bartelink 2020), who often expressed their surprise and curiosity about the Dutch history
of religious transformation and secularization. Religious heritage offers a unique and important
material and visual space for exploration and reflexive engagement with diverse groups on the
cultural formations of religion and secularity in The Netherlands.
However, engagement with religious heritage may be challenging. Haimanot’s visualization
of the Ethiopian crucifix demonstrates that religion did come up because it was important to her.
In a casual conversation on “hoofddoekjes” (head coverings) following a demonstration by one
of the women on tying a headscarf the Congolese way (e.g., Bartelink et al. 2020) religion was
notably absent. This casualness is important. If religion would have been more directly part of
the project, the conversation probably would not have happened in this way, as conversations on
religion in relation to gender are often politically charged and tend to obscure women’s everyday
religiosities. Furthermore, it is the question whether religious boundary objects allow for such
playful and creative engagement. Religious heritage easily becomes subject of contestation
within and across religious communities, as well as in a broader secular dominant context
(Verkaaik, Beekers, and Tamimi Arab 2016). Would Bahia’s conversation between Delft Blue
and Tanzanian visual and aesthetic been possible when this happened with religious boundary
objects from the Netherlands and Tanzanian contexts?
Posing this question, we do not suggest that secular heritage would then be more useful in
bridging differences or circumventing politics within and around religions in secular societies.
The exhibition with multicultural Delft Blue kissing couples by Bustamante during Dutch Design
Week 2017 is a case in point, as it was followed by a short media storm that included racist
and sexist comments questioning the Dutchness of the couple of which the female figurine was
wearing a headscarf (To Kiss or not to Kiss n.d.). This example speaks to the importance of
being aware that heritage is not equally owned by all populations in society. However, we would
argue that it is precisely because heritage leads us into reflecting on these sensibilities that it has
potential to enable broader conversations.
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One of the advantages of Delft Blue was perhaps that it has an easy aesthetic read. This
invites the type of engagement that enables a process of co-creation with and between various
groups and people. It is up to the heritage sector to determine which forms of religious heritage
can be creatively experienced by everyone, regardless of their religion, culture, gender, class,
ethnicity, or other positionings, while opening up to reflections on this at the same time. Based
on the Delft Blue project, we suggest this requires an attentional and relational process without
a predetermined outcome.
Notes
1 The project has received funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific funding in the KIEM
program (stimulating collaborative projects between designers and researchers). Project partners Bustamante
and Kwamba (via her community based organization Kariboe Bibi) offered material contributions to the
project. The closing event and exhibition obtained additional funding for activity costs that could not be
covered under the research grant from small private fund Stichting Vrienden van Oikos.
2 Notes from the Let’s Meet workshop, BB.
3 C.f. Bartelink et al. (2020) for a more extended analysis of Haimanot’s story.
References
Ammerman, N. T. (2007), Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Bartelink, B. E., G. Bustamante, L. Kwamba, and S. Lowe (2020), “Embodied Stories: African- Dutch
Women Narrate (in-)visibility and Agency in the City of The Hague,” LOVA Journal 41: 8–32.
Bartelink, B. (2020), “The Personal is Political: Pentecostal Approaches to Governance and
Security,” Review of Faith and International Affairs 18 (3): 69–75.
Beekers, D. (2017), “De waarde van verlaten kerken,” in O. Verkaaik, D. Beekers, and P. Tamimi Arab,
Gods Huis in De Steigers: Religieuze Gebouwen in Ontwikkeling, 161–92. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press.
Beekers D., and P. Tamimi Arab (2016), “Dreams of an Iconic Mosque: Spatial and Temporal
Entanglements of a Converted Church in Amsterdam,” Material Religion 12 (2): 137–64.
Berghuijs, J., J. Pieper, and C. Bakker (2013), “Conceptions of Spirituality among the Dutch Population,”
Archive for the Psychology of Religion 35 (3): 369–97.
Chidester, D. (2018), Religion: Material Dynamics. Oakland: University of California Press.
Eliëns, T. M., M. Groen, S. Ostkamp, and L. Schledorn (2003), Delfts aardewerk. Geschiedenis van een
nationaal product III: De Porceleyne Fles. Zwolle: Waanders.
Esparragoza, C. (2011), “Miss Lupita Informa General de Actividades (Report).” FONCA CONACULTA.
Ingold, T. (2013), Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2017), “On Human Correspondence,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23
(1): 9–27.
Knibbe, K., and H. Kupari (2020), “Introduction: Theorizing Lived Religion,” Journal of Contemporary
Religion 35 (2): 157–76.
Leigh Star, S. (2010), “This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept,” Science,
Technology, & Human Values 35 (5): 601–17.
Meyer, B. (2018), “Frontier Zones and the Study of Religion,” Journal for the Study of Religion 31
(2): 57–78.
Stegeman, J. (2021), “The Bible and the Dutch Empire,” in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), The Oxford
Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, 296–328. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Verkaaik, O. (2017), “Het gewone en iconische van religieuze architectuur,” in O. Verkaaik, D. Beekers,
and P. Tamimi Arab (eds.), Gods Huis in De Steigers: Religieuze Gebouwen in Ontwikkeling, 7–24.
Wallace, J. (2013) “Interaction Design, Heritage, and the Self,” Interactions 20(5): 16–20.
doi: 10.1145/2500247.
Wijnia, L. (2018), Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular. Leiden: Brill.
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Case Study
Chapter 41
Making Art in Medieval Churches:

Conversations with Silence in the
Monk’s Work Project
ANJET VAN LINGE
Case Study
Introduction
Monnikenwerk means monks’ work: work that is sometimes simple, often repetitive, needing
great care and attention, and is generally carried out in silence. It is work that frequently requires
a particular craft or skill, and that sometimes seems an endless task. The word was adopted as
the title for a project where artists use the space of a medieval church as their studio for six
consecutive Wednesdays in summer. They work in the church during the day, mainly alone and
in silence, and host visitors in the early evening.1
The churches of the Monks’ Work project are all in the Northern part of the Dutch Province of
Groningen where the landscape has been dotted with monasteries and priories in medieval times.
Only a few of these buildings are still to be found today. What remains though is an incredible
number of, often small, medieval churches. In 2018 Monks’ Work was born from a longing to
simply be making art in these places, held by the silence within these ancient walls. Two artists,
the author and her husband Marc de Groot, pondered:
What would it be like to use these special buildings as a studio for
a period of time? Would that make our work different? Would the
work have an impact on how the building was being experienced?
Could we create a project that used these churches in a new, different
way, yet honor their history? And what if we tried to do that in a
way that touched – lightly – on some principles of the monastic
tradition?
In this case study, I offer some reflections on these questions, exploring the experience of
Monks’ Work from the perspective of the artists as well as the visitors. When setting out, we did
not think of these churches as “religious heritage,” but mainly as precious medieval buildings
with thick walls and a special atmosphere. They are, of course, of religious heritage and I will
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offer a few thoughts on how that aspect impacted the artists, their work, and its reception. In
preparation, I asked fifteen artists and visitors of the 2020 edition about their experiences. The
main trends and reflections in their responses are included in this case study. I will first outline
the principles of the project and then reflect on specific aspects: rhythm, the impact of silence,
and the role of the building. In an exploration, I will offer some thoughts on why churches and
making are a precious combination and how these medieval churches, especially, can act as a
holding space for the vulnerable work of making.
Intention of Monks’ Work

Monks’ Work started in 2018, initiated by two artists and in collaboration with the organization
Kerk in het Dorp (Church in the Village, described in the contribution by Jolanda Tuma).
Kerk in het Dorp is a small organization that was created when two protestant congregations
merged, and as a consequence, the village churches were only used on average once a quarter
for a church service. The organization works to keep the churches as an active part of village
life by not only opening them for visitors, but also by organizing concerts and lectures. The
two initiating artists approached the organization to explore the possibilities of using the
churches as a temporary studio and subsequently co-created Monks’ Work together with Kerk
in het Dorp.
In 2018 artists worked in four medieval churches—Den Andel, Saaxumhuizen, Eenrum, and
Westernieland—on six consecutive Wednesdays in July and August, alone and in silence. At
the end of the day, between 5 and 8 p.m. the artists opened the doors to surprisingly high
audience numbers. Local and national press wrote about the project, regional and national radio
covered it, and visitor numbers were above expectations. It was as if merely putting a sign on
the door saying “here: an old church, silence, art” invited people to come and experience what
has become scarce in our current times. And so in that first year a project was born. In following
years more churches were added and it now stretches across fifteen churches in the north of The
Netherlands.
The principles remained simple. Each artist was given a medieval church, where they worked
six Wednesdays in a row. During the day the artists worked mainly in silence. In the early
evening, visitors were welcome to experience church and art. Two bicycle routes connected the
churches.
Artists were asked to explore the possibility of making art that touches something that is
bigger than we are, and to commit—lightly, it is not a monastery—to three principles which were
borrowed from the rules of Benedictine monks (Derkse 2003): obedientia—listening to what is
being offered, to what emerges in the space of their church and responding to that in their work
or way of working; stabilitas loci—the art of staying with it, of stability of place, and connecting
with that one church in that one village for six weeks; and conversio morum—intending to
improve a little day by day, in the work of making, in the listening and in the attention for the
visitors at the end of the day.
Artists were invited on the basis of the quality of their work, the extent to which it evoked
stillness, and their craftsmanship—the need for and ability to master a craft and apply it in the
process of making in a mindful way, to create with the same care and attention the word Monks’
Work evokes in Dutch.
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Making Art in Medieval Churches
Three Aspects that Characterize Monks’ Work

Reflecting on Monks’ Work with the benefit of hindsight, three aspects seem to characterize the
project. Rhythm mattered, both across the period of six weeks but also in the day; and for both
artists and visitors. Secondly, stillness and silence were key aspects of the work of the artists
inside the churches. They are also an aspect of the project that becomes more difficult to maintain
as the region where the churches are located becomes more popular with tourists. And thirdly,
this project was about working in a place of religious heritage, a medieval church carrying a
history of many centuries with thick walls that keep the world outside.
A Rhythm
Artists were asked to commit to a period of six weeks, working in the church each Wednesday.
The rhythm offered them a clear structure, there was a time to start and a time to stop; a time
for solitude and a time for visitors; and there was the time between stopping and starting again.
Artists reported that they experienced the rhythm as something that held them and that it offered
them the space for intimate detachment, a mix of involvement and non-judgment (Gregucci et al.
2014)—staying close with their creative process, yet detached enough to see from a distance what
needed to happen next. The conversations between 5 and 8 p.m. fuelled the further development
of the work. Wianda Keizer, one of the 2020 artists commented: “In the beginning I thought
I wouldn’t like the gap between the Wednesdays. But actually I came to appreciate it. It enabled
me to reflect on what I had made, to ponder what I talked about with visitors and to start again,
to continue the following week.” This is obedientia in some way. Artists also said that the rhythm
allowed them to make their own rituals during the day, and as the six weeks progressed they
became better at transitioning from the silence of making to the sharing with others (conversio
morum, little gradual improvements), at stopping and starting. Artist Marijk Gerritsma mentioned
that she would time her work to the rhythm of the church bells, which rang every half hour. She
was a printmaker and printed bird feathers. One half hour she would print, and the next half hour
she would stitch earlier made prints into a book, and she repeated that pattern during the day. It
calmed her, she said, and it helped her to not spend time wondering what to do next.
Some visitors also found a rhythm. Many of them who live in the region made the Wednesday
evening visits a fixed feature of their week while the project lasted, some choosing to see a few
churches each Wednesday evening, engaging in a conversation in each church they visit. Others
made sure they visited each church two or three times to see the work evolve. “It is almost a
pilgrimage,” said one visitor. Some visitors came from across the country each year to gather up
on their “annual dose of reflective silence and art in beautiful places.”
Stillness and Silence

Silence and stillness form another key aspect of Monks’ Work. In the years leading up to 2018,
the churches were normally closed for most of the week, except for an hour on Saturdays or
during special events. In that first year, the silence within the church walls invited a stillness in
the artists, a contemplative state not unlike what monks must have experienced in contemplative
monasteries in medieval times. It did not need to be negotiated, these medieval churches seemed
to hold a silence and stillness that was beyond time. Since 2019 most churches have opened
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during the day in the summer months and signs at the entrance ask visitors to allow the artists
to work in silence. And yet the silence mattered. The building’ thick walls blocked out most
of the sounds of the outside world, the humid air inside the churches made the stillness nearly
palpable, and when you entered a church you walked into it. One artist described it as a filled
silence, something bigger than the absence of words. It evoked a sense of timelessness. Where
the walls held the silence inside the church, it in turn held the artists and enabled them to deepen
their concentration. Artist Marc de Groot said, “Most of the day all I hear is the ticking of the
clock, the passing of time. I make my work, a repetitive process of sorting and gluing seeds into
a collage. There is just the clock and the seeds and me.” Other locations can be still, remote
or silent, yet the silence in these medieval churches has its own character. It carries history, a
heritage that hangs in the atmosphere of the church, the hundreds of years of pain and sorrow,
joy and repentance, weddings, baptisms, funerals, and more. When visitors arrived, after five
o’clock, often the silence was broken. People expect interaction and conversation, even when
these contain an element of stillness that remained. Some early visitors would simply sit and
listen, watch, and feel, taking in the work and the church. Some consoled themselves with the
reflection of the silence in the work that had been made that day.
The Church as a Place of Work

A third critical aspect of Monks’ Work is of course the church building itself, a place of
religious heritage that often dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Churches are spaces
that differentiate themselves from other buildings in purpose and character. Most villages in the
northern part of the Province of Groningen have a church. Only a few have more than one. Often
the church has been built on the highest point in the village, on the wierde, a man-made mound in
the center of the village, built in times when there were not yet any dikes and the wierdes served
as a dry refuge in case of floods. Some wierdes date back to a period even before the first century.
When dikes were introduced from roughly the twelfth century, they lost most of their function,
but in many villages, the church still proudly stands on this high point. In the Christmas flood of
1717, most of the village of Westernieland was washed away, but the church remained standing.
The artist who worked in this church in 2021 gave expression to this dramatic history with local
materials like clay from the nearby fields.
Both artists and visitors talked about the beauty of not having been given an address to go
to, of looking for that highest point and finding the church, of walking along paths towards the
wierde, circumnavigating the church, and then entering through the unlocked doors. The path
seemed to lead to an opening into another space where today’s world could be left behind. The
thick walls and high ceilings formed a kind of shelter. All churches are oriented on the east-west
axis, like was common in these days. The morning light rises in the eastern apse of the church,
and the movement of the light through the space becomes an important factor in the artists’
experience of this special work space. And somehow, the shelter of the church equipped artists
with the ability to share unfinished work with visitors when they arrive.
For the artists, the visible heritage in the church mattered. Unlike in modern buildings, all
elements in a medieval church have been made by hand, by craftspeople with no access to today’s
equipment. Woodcarved bench decorations can be irregular, consecration crosses on walls are not
quite a circle, letters on gravestones carry small differences between them. In a fair few churches,
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ceiling paintings have been uncovered from underneath the reformists’ plastering. For some
artists, sharing space with so many elements of handmade heritage contributed to their ability to
concentrate on their own work, to value their process of slowly making by hand. Visitors too saw
links between the handmade medieval work and the artists’ work of today, making them see one
in the light of the other and (re-)appreciating both.
Working in a medieval church can feel like connecting centuries, being both without and of a
time. Many visitors reported a sense of timelessness when entering the church, and simultaneously
an acute sense of time passed. Artist Leen Kaldenberg sums it up when saying that the most
important moment in the project for him was to be trusted with the heavy key to the church. As
if the key holder had said, “Now it is your space.”
Examples of Monks’ Work

Saaxumhuizen—Wianda Keizer (2020)
Wianda Keizer arrived on the first day of Monks’ Work 2020 in the church of Saaxumhuizen with
boxes of rope and a ladder and no plan. She chose this church because of its cross beams. During
the six Wednesdays, she used the rope to create what could be called curtains. They divided the
space, and yet made it bigger. They filtered the light ánd made it visible. For some Christian
visitors, the work referred to the tearing curtain in the temple on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. For
the non-religious artist, it didn’t, but it still evoked a sense of magic.
Eenum—Lisette Durenkamp (2020)

Lisette Durenkamp is a paper artist with a religious background. In the church in Eenum, she
made paper with old sheets brought by people in the village. The paper was stitched into booklets,
purposely left empty, and distributed across the church pews. People felt drawn into the paper-
making process, textiles turning into paper, and the sounds of water dripping in the silence of the
church. Slowly during the six weeks the pews filled with empty white booklets, just lying there,
waiting. Some visitors felt insulted, sad about booklets with no prayers or words of faith. Others
cherished the possibility of adding their own or opened a conversation about open spaces in liturgy.
Westernieland—Leen Kaldenberg (2020)

Leen Kaldenberg is a painter and a devoted Zen Buddhist. He meditated and worked in the church
of Westernieland. The humidity of the air inside the building and the subsequent lengthened
drying times gave him space to explore other work. What started as a side project became a
crucial part of his connection with visitors. He captured his breath with ink on paper—making
aerosols visible in the first year of Covid-19. Visitors were welcome to choose a piece and take it
home. It inspired conversations about breath and living and dying, about who we are now, about
contagion and exchange, and about spirit.
Eenrum—Anjet van Linge (2018)

Anjet van Linge (author of this chapter) is a sculptor with a Christian background but is not
currently a member of a church. In the church, she carved words in stone, one kyrie and fourteen
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eleison. (Figure 41.1) This Greek phrase means “Lord, have mercy” and is a preliminary petition
before formal prayers in the liturgies of many Christian churches. The sounds of the carving
resonated in the church. During the weeks eleisons were added. Many people with a Christian
upbringing did not perhaps remember the meaning of these words, but often they seemed to
recall their sound and sentiment. And so conversations explored the meaning of mercy and who
is authorized to offer it in a world where God becomes less and less important. Some people
sneaked in before 5 p.m., to sit and listen to the sound of the chisel on the stone. Some people
cried, remembering how these words had meaning in their childhood, and noticing their struggles
with what they mean now.
Saaxumhuizen—Marc de Groot (2018)

Marc de Groot works with seeds and buds. He is amazed by their beauty and the power they hold.
In the church of Leermens, he glued thousands of cardoon seeds (an artichoke thistle) to paper,
a true monks’ job (Figure 41.2). The thistle seeds opened up to reveal softness and gentleness.
Visitors reflected on the often overlooked beauty in small things and talked about the meaning of
light and darkness in their lives. One visitor came back after a few weeks to show how she had
worked with seeds from her own garden, saying her eyes had been opened to something that had
been visible all along.
Exploration
Both artists and visitors talked about how witnessing the process of creating inside a church
enabled conversations that are not usually had in galleries or studios. While initial interest was
often in the process of making—how do you do that? What tools do you use? Does that take
long? What if you make a mistake?—once past that point, a deeper meaning could be explored,
about the nature of mercy in one’s own life, the importance of open space in liturgy, the impact
of our breath once visualized on paper, the beauty of a seed that looks dead yet can hold all the
information needed to grow a tree, how something as thin as a curtain of rope can divide a space
ánd make it bigger, and so forth.
This exploration touches on three aspects: the role of (the psychoanalytic concept of) potential
space in the church; the importance of making and sharing what is half finished; and the way
in which this project seems to be nurturing the original meaning of these places of religious
heritage.
Potential Space
“It is like the walls of the church create a space where other things are possible,” said one visitor.
Thomas Quartier, in his book Liturgische Spiritualiteit, describes how in monasteries
everything is liturgy (Quartier 2017). Perhaps something comparable holds true for the churches
of Monks’ Work. All these churches have been used for service and ceremony for up to ten
centuries, and are still in use as churches, albeit infrequently. They are still considered sacred
places by the communities that use them. This is a key aspect of what makes them different from
a studio or a gallery. Perhaps that aspect extends the invitation to both artist and visitor to engage
with something that is bigger than us as mortal individuals. Quartier uses the word kiemcellen
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FIGURE 41.1 Anjet van Linge working in Eenrum in 2018.

Source: Jim Ernst.
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FIGURE 41.2 Installation by Marc de Groot in Leermens in 2019, cardoon seeds on paper.
Source: Anjet van Linge.
(germ cells) to describe places, moments, and interactions that harbor the potential for a new
reality, but, he says, they can only unfold their force for you when you are prepared to enter into
that space wholeheartedly (Quartier 2016).
In a way he describes, from a religious perspective, what British pediatrician and psychoanalyst
Donald Winnicott calls potential space. Potential space, he says, is an intermediate space where
playing takes place, between mother and child and also a more metaphorical playing between
adults. It is the place where inner reality can be found through a personal way of experiencing outer
reality (Davis and Walbridge 1981). Maybe the church walls enabled such a potential space. The
outer world stayed out—mostly—so the inner world could be more available and a potential space
opened up for play, for new meaning to emerge, in this case in an interplay between the artist, her
material, and the church as container or canvas. This seems to also shed some light on why silence
during the day inside the church mattered: it enabled the artist to deepen their inner journey.
Engaging with Monks’ Work for six weeks, committing to the process of sharing work in
progress seemed to be entering a germ cell, a potential space. Following that invitation, for
most artists and visitors, leads to something magical. Artists experience making something they
have not made before, “and it doesn’t just develop through me, there is more.” As artist Lisette
Durenkamp said, “Making paper is a collaboration between water, the fibers and me. It feels like
going back to the essence of creation, it touches on the core of life, of existence. And it makes me
realize my part in the process of creation is very small.”
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In the last two years, where the silence inside the church has been harder to maintain, artists
have reported needing to make a deeper effort to maintain the potential space that the church
walls provide. A longing existed for the days when the boundaries of that space were still a closed
door instead of a sign asking for silence and a rope barrier.
The Importance of Making

Making emerges as another key aspect of Monks’ Work. The work of making matters. In today’s
world, we do not often witness it, apart from watching documentaries about “the making of”.
Things need to be finished and ready to go. In a potential space, making is possible, and
engaging with the process of making, with not knowing, with searching and not yet finding.
Factories are also places of making, and yet it is hard to imagine that a similar project in a
series of old factory buildings would have opened up the same depth of exploration in artists
and visitors. In the potential space of the medieval church, the making—and visiting something
that is in the process of being made—can become perhaps more easily a process of engaging
with not knowing, of exploring a liminal space between what is and what is not yet. This ability
to stay with not knowing—also a form of how I understand stabilitas—is maybe the heart of
spirituality (Quartier 2016) and perhaps it is exactly this that makes Monks’ Work a spiritual
experience for artists and visitors. In the potential space of the church, in the germ cell, it
was possible to be with the vulnerability of the unfinished, to be with the searching without
immediately needing to find. And because the work was not finished (except, generally, on
the final evening) there was space left for exploration and conversation. The artist shared
what she was not yet sure about, the visitor inquired, felt a contributor more than a spectator,
felt privileged to be allowed into the work process of the artist, to share in the process of
creation. As a consequence of the vulnerability of the artist, many visitors also felt invited to
share beyond a judgment about the beauty of the work, and shared curiosity became possible;
as artist Flos Pol said, conversations became “more meaningful than I usually have in my
studio or a gallery.” The church acted as a holding environment for that experience, created
the potential space for it; and it did that very differently from, for example, an artist’s studio
during an open studio event because it excluded the outside world to some extent, there was no
finished work by the artist on view, and the church by its nature permitted exploration of what
was seen as bigger than self.
All of this seemed especially important toward the beginning of the six weeks, when not much
could be shown yet, and often the direction of the work was still to emerge. Sharing at that stage
was vulnerable, and most artists reported that they would normally prefer not to do that. Visitors,
however, appreciated exactly that, the vulnerable sharing of unfinished work that was made in
response to time and place.
Nurturing
“Everybody agrees that these old buildings need to stay. But if they are merely empty old
buildings, they become dead bricks, dusty spaces. We can keep them alive by giving them a
new meaning,” said an artist. The architect Christopher Alexander describes how every place is
given its character by the patterns of events that keep on happening there (Alexander 1979), and
that more patterns bring more energy, which contributes to what he calls “the quality without
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a name.” I like that description because it captures both what happens and why it is so hard to
describe.
At the same time, while museums and galleries are often described as the new cathedrals,
churches seem to be becoming places of secular pilgrimage. Aaron Rosen suggests that art
can provide a way to recover and potentially reactivate lost histories (Rosen 2015). While the
reactivation of lost histories would be too grand a claim for Monks’ Work’s purpose, it seems that
some of this might play a role in the project. Local committees that take care of their church and
plan its activities conveyed enthusiasm about the project for precisely this reason. “It brings this
building back to life,” one committee member of the church in ‘t Zandt reported. The sacristan
of the church in Baflo talked about the church being given back some of its original function.
What happened in 2021 may serve as an illustration. In that year, many of the participants
were returning artists, who had learnt to trust their interaction with the potential space the church
offered. More than in other years, they found the courage to engage with the themes present
on the walls, ceilings, and gravestones of the church. In their work, they explored birth and the
source of all living things, angels and demons, suffering, and the beauty in that. Without the artists
agreeing on themes in advance, visitors experienced poems about fallen angels and depression,
photographs of angel wings, fragile eggshell works, and solid stone sculptures that captured birth
and origins, and a woolen cross on the church floor that made suffering somehow softer. Visitors
welcomed this unexpected thread and engaged with the themes in long and personal explorations,
with the artists and between themselves. Meaning was made and discovered in a way that a
similar project in a series of studios could not have done.
Maybe one can say that in some way these explorations brought back to the church a stream
of events, symbols, visuals, and interactions that make a church a church and nurtured what the
building was designed to be about. In a time where religious heritage risks becoming only that,
heritage, projects like Monks’ Work can contribute to rediscovering the purpose of these sacred
places, or at least contributing to them being used occasionally for as they were intended, by
attending to the existential aspects of human life.
Nurturing Religious Heritage as a Potential Space for an

Encounter with not Knowing
Quartier suggests that spirituality for Benedict was not about finding but about searching, not
about knowing but about asking (Quartier 2016). Those words seem to appropriately capture
what also happened here.
Maybe this is what nurtured artist, visitors, ánd these old buildings in this project: awe about
a process of creation, a journey of not knowing and knowing, a preparedness to open up to
something bigger than us, engaged in by artists and visitors together, and possible within the
potential space held by the silence and history inside the walls of a medieval church.
One visitor described visiting Monks’ Work as a mystical experience – entering the church,
meeting the art in progress, engaging with the vulnerability of the artist, noticing her own
response. In Monks’ Work, by combining contemplation and art making as an open experiment,
the church becomes a space where artists and visitors can share a precious moment of making,
and in that they make new meaning. Like another visitor put it, “I think this is what churches
have been built for.”
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Note
1 While visitors were being asked to let the artist work in silence, staying quiet appeared hard for many of
them. Chattering, click-clacking cycling shoes on the stone floors, loud whispering in an attempt to be
silent, or simply ignoring the request and bending over the artist’s bench inquiring what she is doing, all
these were not uncommon disturbances.
References
Alexander, C. (1979), A Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Press.
Davis, M., and D. Wallbridge (1981), Boundary and Space, an Introduction to the Work of D.W. Winnicott.
London: Karnac
Derkse, W. (2003), Een levensregel voor beginners. Tielt: Lannoo.
Grecucci, A., E. Pappaianni, R. Siugzdaite, A. Theuninck, and R. Job (2014), “Mindful Emotion
Regulation: Exploring the Neurocognitive Mechanisms behind Mindfulness,” Biomed Research
Interrnational, 670724. doi: 10.1155/2015/670724. Epub 2015 June 7. PMID: 26137490;
PMCID: PMC4475519. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26137490/.
Quartier, T. (2016), Kiemcellen, Van Klooster naar Wereld. Heeswijk: Berne Media.
Quartier, T. (2017), Liturgische Spiritualiteit. Heeswijk: Berne Media.
Rosen, A. (2015), Art + Religion in the 21st Century. London: Thames & Hudson.
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Religious Heritage in Museums

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Challenge
Chapter 42
Making Room for Religious Minorities in

National Heritage Narratives
MARIE VEJRUP NIELSEN
Challenge
Public fora in which European societies can explore, represent, and discuss their own increasing
religious diversity are needed today. While the media and politics are often divisive and can
aggravate tensions, museums can provide arenas where issues of representation and the
boundaries between secular and religious interests can be explored in a less fraught manner.
Naturally, museums are not neutral spaces because they are also ruled by interests and represent
certain values. However, as this contribution shows, using museums involved in the Danish
research project “Religion—Living Cultural Heritage” as examples, something new can emerge
when visitors are invited to take part in conversations about religion and traditions in a museum.
Challenging Majority Narratives

The collections and practices of museums in Western Europe have historically mirrored the cultural
narrative of the majority population. When it comes to religion, it is often the dominant version
of Christianity that has been given space. This majority narrative can sometimes assume a form
in which the dominant religion is simply represented as part of an unquestioned national cultural
history. As Peggy Levitt has shown, two neighboring countries, Sweden and Denmark, can have
vastly different national narratives, which affect the way in which their museums tell stories about
nationhood and related stories about majorities and minorities (Levitt 2015). With this in mind, one
key challenge for museums today is how to present exhibitions and material related to religious
heritage that challenge their own understanding of religion (Paine 2000, 2013; Reeve 2012).
It has also been observed that “the most obvious and important thing to be said about making
histories of religion in museums is that they don’t do it very often” (O’Neill 2005: 188). In the
project “Religion—Living Cultural Heritage,” we became aware of some of the reasons behind
this. Sometimes there is a concern that the theme of religion will cause unnecessary conflict
or involve a museum in unwanted public debates. However, the primary reason based on our
experience is that museum staff feel a need for professional knowledge about religion before
it makes sense to them to engage with such new perspectives. Therefore, this led the project to
focus on identifying ways that would ensure professional integrity while working with the theme.
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Museums are particularly well equipped to tell complex stories about religious traditions
and display objects that engage visitors in religion as part of societal and cultural heritage. The
following sections will present the challenges, approaches, and solutions to working with religion
faced by three separate museums involved in the “Religion—Living Cultural Heritage” project.
Telling New Stories Together in Aarhus

The open-air museum known as Den Gamle By (The Old Town) in Aarhus tells the story of Danish
towns from the seventeenth century to the present by displaying a large number of reconstructed
homes. In 2017, a group of local women of Somali background contacted the museum and asked
if it would be possible to exhibit a contemporary Danish-Somali household in the museum. The
museum was open to the idea but did not initially include religion as a key theme in the Somali
home. Religion primarily emerged through the women themselves, when they were present in the
rooms or through pictures, as they wore Muslim headscarves. Even so, the exhibition gave new
insights into the challenges of working with religion in the museum.
The exhibition was perceived positively by visitors, but questions were raised on the museum’s
social media platforms regarding the extent to which this home belonged in a museum devoted
to exhibiting historical Danish dwellings. Although only a few people expressed negative views
about the Somali home, the significance of their responses lay in the discussion of this home in
relation to what some saw as the general narrative of Danish culture and the underlying theme of
being a Muslim in Denmark.
The museum responded by stating that it had an obligation to show a variety of Danish homes,
and it also offered guided tours of the home. Ultimately, the exhibition demonstrated the potential
of the museum to tell a new story about a pluralistic Danish society. At the same time, it also
raised new questions, as the museum had to consider the complex power relations underlying
the visibility they provided for particular faith communities, and even for some voices within a
faith community and not others. There was also the question of how to extend the perspectives of
religion into new areas of the museum’s work.
Cathedral, Mosque, and Museum in Roskilde

When Roskilde Museum was approached by members of a local Muslim community and asked
if it would like to add a number of objects to its collection because the old mosque was being
rebuilt, this provided a special opportunity for the museum to transform its presentation of
religion by including the mosque’s heritage alongside the majority narrative describing Roskilde
as a Christian cathedral city (Figure 42.1). However, a question arose: If a museum agrees to
display Muslim artefacts, is it obliged to contact other religious communities to ensure that they
are also represented? Moreover, how can a museum decide which individuals should be chosen to
represent a given faith community in the best way? These questions inspired the development of
a series of city walks focusing on diverse faith traditions and experiences, as well as workshops
in the museum context, with objects being brought in by various local people.
The issue of representation is a key challenge when working with religion in the context of
museums. When a museum chooses to focus on the religious aspects of an object or to provide new
activities that teach people about religion, the question of whose religion to include immediately
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Making Room for Religious Minorities
FIGURE 42.1 Mosque materials on display at Roskilde Museum.

Source: Trine Sejthen.
arises. Roskilde Museum succeeded in presenting a new element in the overall narrative of
Roskilde and Denmark, as well as extending its own boundaries by engaging with the town as
a whole. It explored new ways of teaching people about history, and stimulated learning about
different stories, as presented by the citizens of Roskilde. Here, the historical development of
the country and the role of religion in this development was key. It was not sufficient to simply
include more objects related to religion in the exhibition spaces—the museum also had to include
new perspectives and accept challenges relating not only to the tangible objects but also to
curatorial formats and existing presuppositions about the intangible heritage that the objects also
represent. As Roskilde Museum demonstrated, moving beyond the museum walls is a good idea.
Meetings in and through Museums—Immigrantmuseet

In 2020, the Immigrantmuseet in Farum presented an exhibition titled “Meet the Sikhs,” which
opened just before the lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic began. Developed in
collaboration with Danish Sikh communities, the exhibition told the story of how Sikhs arrived
in Denmark and showed aspects of Sikh culture and everyday life. The exhibition itself was an
example of working closely with a source community, and the opening event reflected this, with
the food, music, and speeches provided by the community members.
There are relatively few Sikhs in Denmark (in fact, fewer than 1,000). Even so, on opening
day, Sikhs were in the majority at the local community center. For the Sikh community, this
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FIGURE 42.2 Meet the Sikhs—an exhibition at the Immigrant Museum.

Source: Mikkel Arnfred.
collaboration meant that, in the context of the museum, Sikh heritage was recognized as a part
of Danish national heritage (Figure 42.2). This resonates with what one Danish-Somali woman
said in Aarhus: “We are part of history now.” Thus, it became apparent that museums should
not only disseminate knowledge about religion but can also function as actors in a changing
culture, fostering a sense of belonging and providing recognition and acknowledgment of the
communities involved.
Engaging Complex Narratives

It is important that museums understand the history and heritage of religions in their local,
national, and global contexts. Fostering an understanding of religion and religious heritage
as part of living cultural history and heritage will provide a new source of inspiration for the
development and presentation of exhibitions and collections. Taking this perspective, museums
can also be important places for awareness-building related to the different experiences of
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Making Room for Religious Minorities
minority and majority religious communities, as well as demonstrating how religion is perceived
and managed in various sectors of society, such as schools and healthcare, for example.
One way in which museums can find the tools to identify local religious histories is by
collaborating with research projects on religion (Ahlin et al. 2012). Specific studies can also
shed light on the changes in heritage management related to societal perspectives (Christoffersen
2015). One of the key challenges involves developing and providing relevant resources on
religion for staff working at cultural heritage institutions.
Museums can invest in change through collaborations that ensure that their work can be shaped
through new eyes. The case studies discussed here present a number of attempts to challenge
national and majority narratives, thereby providing opportunities to raise new questions, both by
staff and visitors. Museums are unique spaces—they can be used not only to inform people about
religions historically but also to generate dialogue with museum visitors. What is religion to them
and others? What are the stories behind the objects on display? And what are the often surprising
backgrounds of the traditions seen today? Yet, working with religion is not easy, because it is
accompanied by controversy and strong emotions. The changing religious landscape in Europe
has posed key challenges regarding how to understand and develop pluralistic societies. These
difficulties, however, should really motivate museums to move forward, rather than causing them
to shy away from the subject of religion altogether.
References
Ahlin, L., J. Borup, M. Q. Fibiger, L. Kühle, V. Mortensen, and R. D. Pedersen (2012), “Religious
Diversity and Pluralism,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 27 (3): 403–18.
Christoffersen, L. (2015), “From Previous Intertwinement to Future Split in Governance Structures in
Cultural and Religious Use of Buildings: On Danish Funding of Religious Heritage,” in I. A. Fornerod
(ed.), Funding Religious Heritage, 75–102. Farnham: Ashgate.
Levitt, P. (2015), Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display.
Oakland: University of California Press.
O’Neill, M. (2005), “Making Histories of Religion,” in I. G. Kavanagh (ed.), Making Histories in
Museums. London: Continuum.
Paine, C. (2000), Godly Things: Museums, Objects and Religion. London: Leicester University Press.
Reeve, J. (2012), “A Question of Faith: The Museum as a Spiritual or Secular Place,” in R. Sandell and E.
Nightingale (eds.), Museums, Equality, and Social Justice (Museum Meaning). New York: Routledge.
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40
Analysis
Chapter 43
Conflict and the Museumification of Religious

Sites: Mosque and Church in Divided Cyprus
RABIA HARMANŞAH
Analysis
Introduction
With the opening of the partition line in 2003, thousands of Cypriots flocked to the checkpoints
to cross the border and see the other side of the island for the first time since 1974. Refugees
visited the villages they had left, looked for their houses and other properties, met with friends
and neighbors, made new connections, and shopped. These journeys usually included, especially
at the beginning of the crossings, the efforts to restore the sacredness of their sites. They cleaned
their destroyed churches and cemeteries, venerated the icons, and lit candles. Both Greek and
Turkish communities expressed sorrow for their sacred sites that were vandalized, neglected, or
transformed. The protection, restoration, and management of religious-cultural heritage has been
one of the primary areas of dispute between the two parts for decades.
Cyprus presents interesting possibilities for studying the political and cultural conflict over
the ownership and functioning of the sacred sites. Independence from British colonial rule and
the creation of a new independent state in 1960 brought increasing political tensions between the
majority Greek and minority Turkish populations. Turkey’s military intervention resulted in the
division of the island in 1974. Today, the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus controls
approximately two-thirds of the island, which is inhabited overwhelmingly by Greek Cypriots.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), a de facto state recognized only by Turkey,
was proclaimed in 1983 and controls the northern third of the country, inhabited primarily by
Turkish Cypriots and Turkish settlers. During and after the ethnic conflict in the 1950–60s, the
religious heritage was destroyed, manipulated, accommodated, and reimagined. Since 1974, the
unification attempts have been proved unsuccessful due to various unresolved issues, including
the destruction of cultural-religious heritage.
Drawing on a comparison of two sacred sites that remained on the “wrong” side of the border
and currently function as museums, this chapter explores the contesting claims and efforts to
control the discursive and physical possibilities of religious heritage in a zone of conflict. The
Saint Barnabas Monastery in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was converted into an
icon and archaeological museum after the division of the island. In the Republic of Cyprus, the
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Conflict and the Museumification of Religious Sites
Muslim shrine Hala Sultan Tekke is run as a museum under the Department of Antiquities. How
does the political environment affect and shape the ways in which these converted museums are
perceived and used? I will show how they function neither completely as museums nor as sacred
sites, and how the users of the sites challenge museum regulations by their practices inside and
impose their own interpretations of the places. The material discussed in this article is based on
multisited ethnographic research I conducted in 2010–12 and 2018–19 in Greek and Turkish
parts of the island, utilizing participant observation, structured, and unstructured interviews, as
well as informal discussions.
Religious Heritage in Conflicts

In many historical and geographical contexts, the destruction, transformation, and appropriation
of landscape and material culture has been acknowledged as a significant component of political
violence. Tangible cultural remains are valued as traces of history and symbols of culture;
therefore, they have the potential to serve as flashpoints of conflict and/or as places in which
religious tolerance is exhibited. The manipulation of religious heritage may take different forms,
including physical and symbolic changes in the buildings, such as their desecration, conversion,
certain forms of conservation-restoration, reshaping of their interior and exterior parts, and other
kinds of architectural changes, as well as transmutations in their symbolic meanings. There are
many examples of utilization of religious sites, such as military camps and hospitals, cultural
centers, museums, galleries, sports clubs, restaurants, as well as barns, stables, wheat-chambers,
storerooms, and even toilets. Such changes and obliterations might stem from political power
struggles and result in disregarding, discarding, reinterpreting, or even forgetting the presence of
other group(s), and in defamiliarizing or decontextualizing the heritage as an intervention to its
past, present, and future.
Managing the other community’s cultural and religious heritage is a complicated process.
There are many practical difficulties in providing systems of management that can make sites open
to members of all communities. UNESCO’s advisory bodies (ICCROM, ICOMOS, and IUCN)
have carried out research studies and analyses of religious heritage and sacred sites to define
the appropriate measures to preserve the value of religious properties. Most importantly, it is
emphasized that stakeholders need to work together to preserve sacred heritage. The stakeholders
are identified as religious communities, made up of believers, traditional and indigenous peoples,
as well as political authorities, experts, property owners, funding bodies, and so on. Usually,
both taking and not taking action toward such sites is troublesome for governments. Since it is
not possible to restore all religious sites or keep them in good conditions without using them, the
conversion of sites into “acceptable forms”—acceptable for those who practice these policies but
might not be acceptable to all members of the group that originally owned/built the sites—such
as museums, schools, and so on, may be offered as a solution, especially if the preservation of
the material culture is the main target.
One way to facilitate the access by multiple communities might be to turn the religious sites
into museums, run by museum professionals employed by the state, rather than by religious
officials, a course of action that may appear promising as a way to facilitate ending competing
claims on them by granting access to all. However, transforming religious sites into museums
will not guarantee the neutralization of sacred sites, and this practice might assert state control
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over religious practices. The policies employed by the governments are not perceived as neutral
solutions by the members of the communities who claim the right to be able to use the sites.
Displaying Belief: Museums and Religious Spaces/Objects

There are critical studies of and different approaches to the relation between museums and
religion, including the display of sacred objects in museums, museums acting as religious
sites (Duncan 1995; Goethe 1881), and vice versa (Robson 2010). They provide insights into
alternative ways of displaying religion in a museum setting. Many of them point out the problem
of museums decontextualizing and alienating objects, turning them into displays devoid of their
original meanings and functions, and call for their repatriation (O’Neill 2004; Shelton 2000).
Curators attempt to explore different forms of display in order to transmit the meanings and
significance of the religious objects within museum settings. Religious objects are argued to
lose their traditional values (Silva 2010), and the emotions attached to them are neutralized in
museums (Hall 2008).
Religious objects are aestheticized in museums in such a way that veneration of the sacred is
forcibly transformed into veneration of art or portrayed solely as historic or local objects (O’Neill
2006: 189). In some cases, museumification renders the objects and the sites as static markers of a
past that has passed into the realm of history. They are, in a sense, taken as fixed in those past times.
Reflecting on the challenges living religious heritage poses to contemporary museum ethics with
his study of the monastic community of Mount Athos in Greece, Georgios Alexopoulos points
out the reluctance of the Athonite community to place artifacts and collections behind a glass
case, “that would turn them from liturgical and ecclesiastical objects to ‘dead’ museum exhibits”
(2013: 9). Museumification takes the site and the objects out of their living environments and
confines them to a world of the past. In a museum environment, objects and buildings turn into
historical testimonies. Alex Stock argues that “the museum appears as the agnostic shrine of a
cosmopolitanism that sends all the monuments of the individual religions into the retirement of
times past so that they can serve humans as documents of humanity on this earth” (2011: 65).
However, while museums send this message of cosmopolitanism and universality, they underline
ownership, not only the possession of material culture but also the control of values, meanings,
and memories attached to them.
The repurposing of religious heritage in conflicts and the conversion of religious sites into
museums have received relatively scant attention in the literature. As symbols of culture and
traces of history, religious heritage is mobilized to articulate political claims, and they easily
become a battleground for conflict and competition among rival and exclusionary visions of
collective identities. Museums in the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus aim at inculcating in the
inhabitants of the island the separate official standpoints regarding the Cyprus problem and the
relevant histories of their respective nation-states.1 In addition to their educational and cultural
functions, museums are political institutions that serve the interests of modern nation-states and
mirror the power relations and cultural dominance in a given society. They have powerful roles
in controlling and shaping the collective memories through deciding what to preserve, store,
and how to represent and interpret them. Museums anchor official memory (Davison 2004) and
official memory is selective. In the Cypriot case studies, museumified religious places, and the
lack of sensitivity and empathy to the needs of the user community denotes a nationalist-flavored
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political narrative. Yet, despite these political aims, the meanings and functions of these sites are
continuously transformed by contestations and negotiations between the state, the visitors, and
the museum staff.
Museums or Sacred Sites?

The Saint Barnabas Icon and Archaeological Museum
The Saint Barnabas Monastery (Figure 43.1) is located very close to the Salamis Necropolis near
Famagusta in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It is one of the few Greek Orthodox sites
that were not subject to destruction during the ethnic conflict. Saint Barnabas is the patron saint
of Cyprus and one of the founders of the independent Greek Orthodox Church. The site has been
a prominent place of pilgrimage for the Christian population. The monastery was established on
the site of the saint’s tomb in the fifth century. It was destroyed by Arab raiders in the seventh
century, but was rebuilt later. The present church is dated to the mid-eighteenth century (1756).
The church operated until 1976 when the three monks of the church moved to Southern Cyprus.
Only in 1991, the site was reopened as a museum. The museum complex consists of a church,
serving as an icon museum, the monastery, housing an archaeological collection, and a tomb
housing the remains of the saint. The icons exhibited in the museum were collected from various
local Greek Orthodox churches, most of which were looted after 1974. The tomb, which is outside
of the museum complex, is more accessible for religious practices, such as lighting candles.
FIGURE 43.1 The Saint Barnabas Icon and Archaeological Museum, 2014.
Source: Rabia Harmanşah.
403
Greek Cypriots and the international community have been critical of the Turkish authorities
for not protecting the Greek heritage in the North, for not allowing the Greek part to carry
out urgent repairs and restoration, and for not respecting the religious freedom of Orthodox
Christians. Saint Barnabas has been one of the main Orthodox Christian sites used by the Turkish
government to demonstrate that they take care of the Greek heritage in the North. It is argued
by the museum officials that all visitors are thankful to the Ministry of Culture for restoring and
protecting the site as a museum. However, the majority of the Greek Cypriots complain about the
way in which the site is functioning, and especially about the entrance fee.
Inside the museum, visitors are expected to act in accordance with the rules of the museums,
including entrance fee and restricted access due to the museums’ hours of operation. In museums,
visitors are usually discouraged from touching the objects, which is, in fact, different from
spiritually experiencing religious space and objects that give priority to touching, passively
contemplating, and praying instead. I witnessed many examples of Greek Cypriots visiting the
sites who prefer not to enter to protest the entrance fee, but rather just visit the free part of
the complex, which is the tomb of Saint Barnabas located across the museum complex. Greek
Cypriots find it unacceptable to pay or get permission from the Turkish administration to use their
own religious sites. For them, they are churches, not museums, and they should be free to Greek
Cypriots who are the “real” owners of the site. As one of my male Greek Cypriot interviewees
from Famagusta in the North said, “When you go to Apostolos Barnabas and they ask you for a
ticket … This is a slap in your face” (2012).
When they pay for the fee and enter the museum, many Orthodox Christians do practice
rituals inside. Icons are not viewed as paintings or pieces of art; they are venerated and used in
religious services and feasts. Christian visitors kiss the icons, cross themselves and pray in front
of the icons, meditate, and touch the walls of the church. There seems to be a silent agreement
between the visitors and the museum officials that as long as the visitors do not harm the artifacts
or the building, nobody stops them from prayer or veneration. The museum officer who gave me
a tour in the church told me that both Greek and Turkish Cypriots pray at this place since it is a
“house of God.” Even the museum officer seemed to be accepting the fact that local people see
this place as a worship space, and there was nothing inappropriate about this. Interestingly, there
was no specific officer responsible for keeping an eye on artifacts and protecting them inside the
churches, which normally exist in museums. This practice itself explains a lot about the lack of
care for these “foreign” objects and the museum practices in the North.
Regular religious services are strictly prohibited inside the complex, except for communal
worship, which is allowed only two times a year with special permission from the Turkish
authority. The museum is turned into a religious space during these ceremonies. Greek Cypriots
hold liturgical services on the saint’s name day of June 11, and hundreds of Orthodox Christians
turn out to a second service held in April at the site. Bus services are arranged from the main
Southern cities to Famagusta to bring people who would like to attend the ceremonies, and it
is possible to see the influx of many Christians on these days to the North. However, there
have been reports accusing the Turkish side of obstructing, sabotaging, and preventing these
ceremonies (see PIO 2008; US Department of State 2010).
The site lacks the minimum requirements for proper displays expected from museums (such
as security, lighting, providing information on artifacts). On the one hand, the icons are organized
thematically, in a way that could not be found in an Orthodox Christian church, which gives
404
the feeling that the place is a museum. On the other hand, there is no special lighting or much
information about the icons or about which church they come from, except for short labels in
Turkish and English. Thus, the site fits neither into a proper museum form nor into a proper
Orthodox Church form. Balderstone claims that “as a tourist site it is well done. But for Greek
Cypriot pilgrims there is no sense of the venerability of the place” (2010: 235).
Although some Greek Cypriots think that it is relatively better to see their churches as
museums, which at least provide some kind of protection from damage and attacks, most of them
complain about the restrictions over the use of their churches. Moreover, touristification of their
churches bothers Orthodox Christians, not only because they perceive this as commodification
of their religious and spiritual values, but also because they seem to hate the idea that the Turkish
administration is making money out of their cultural heritage and then not letting the owners of
the sites use them freely. For some, paying the entrance fee is equal to recognizing the illegal
state in the North.
Hala Sultan Tekke

Another liminal space is Hala Sultan Tekke, being neither completely a mosque nor a museum.
It is located on the shore of Salt Lake in Larnaca in the Republic of Cyprus. It has been both a
symbolically important worship site for the Muslims of the island and also a place of recreation
and socialization (and economic exchange in the past), as is often the case for religious sites
on the island (Harmanşah 2014). The Tekke is under the possession of the Pious Foundations
(Evkaf) in the North, whereas in practice it is controlled by the Department of Antiquities in
the South.
The complex consists of a mosque with a minaret, a mausoleum, a cemetery, living quarters,
and a fountain. The mosque was built in the classical Ottoman style; it has a central dome and
four small half-domes at the corners linked by pointed arches. The tomb is widely recognized
as belonging to an Islamic figure, Umm Haram, who came to Cyprus with the first Arab raids
in the seventh century (648–9), fell from her mule at the spot of the grave and was buried there.
The tomb was discovered in the eighteenth century; the fame of the sanctuary spread throughout
the island and the site became a regular place of worship. The mosque, along with dwellings
and water-cisterns, were built in a series of stages in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, and the complex was completed around 1816–17. The site was extensively restored
in 2001–5 with the support from the Bi-communal Development Program funded by USAID
(United States Agency for International Development) and UNDP (United Nations Development
Programme) along with the restoration project of Apostolos Andreas Monastery in the North.
The site functions as a museum. It has strict hours of operation for winter and summer
announced at the entrance. At the same time, people pray inside the mosque, despite the fact that
the mosque is not open for all five prayers during the day. The operating times do not cover the
morning, evening, and night prayers. Moreover, ezan (call for prayer) is not allowed. However,
the Turkish Cypriot Imam of the site claimed that the site is run relatively more like a religious
site now compared to its past situation. He told me the stories of his efforts and struggle with the
Department of Antiquities for having a sign hanging on the entrance wall saying that this is a
worship site and visits to the mosque is not allowed during Friday prayer times. This sign didn’t
exist when I first visited the site in 2010. The mosque is closed to visitors also during prayer times
405
on special days, such as religious feasts. Namely, the site stops being a museum during prayer
times, the tourists are not allowed to enter the site when people perform namaz inside, and it goes
back to its touristic character in the rest of the time. I should note here that any religious activity
beyond these times and beyond individual scale is subjected to permission from the Department
of Antiquities.
There are two spots inside and outside the complex that have been used for the ritual of tying
fabric, which is a widespread practice in the Mediterranean for making wishes. One of the two
was a carob tree behind the tomb. The museum staff has been cleaning the tree regularly. The
second wishing spot is the bushes along a small path outside the wire fence of the complex.
Apparently, people visited the site out of its functioning hours, prayed, and made wishes outside.
The Imam also told me that people were performing namaz outside of the complex before it
became accessible after 1974.
Hala Sultan Tekke is different from the Christian case in terms of admission to the site; it is
free of charge. This provides a legitimate excuse for Greek Cypriots to claim that they respect
the religious freedom and rights of Muslims. They ask why they have to pay for visiting their
churches in the North while they don’t ask for money at Hala Sultan Tekke. However, these
cases are not seen as comparable by some Turkish Cypriots. One of my male Turkish Cypriot
interviewees from Morphou told me that Hala Sultan Tekke is different since there is a Turkish
Cypriot Imam working there. However, for him, no Greek Cypriot priests are working in the
churches in the North, so there has to be a price for the maintenance of the churches (2012).
Still, the Muslim community does have other reasons to complain regarding access to and
utilization of their site. One of these problems was, as mentioned, that daily prayer is restricted
by the operating hours of the museum. Another problem is that Muslim Turks in the North, who
do not have a passport of the Republic of Cyprus, are not allowed to cross the border and visit the
site. They are stopped at the border when they wish to attend the services on particular religious
holidays. Some Turkish Cypriots refused to visit the site due to this policy of the South.
Conclusion
Tension and competition over the ownership and management of the sacred sites might rise
with different interpretations and expectations of various groups, specifically after conflicts and
changes in political dominance. In certain ways, the states protect and preserve the complexes
as museums. At the same time, they also limit the ritual utilization of the sites by the religious
communities. Despite the professed intentions of the state to run these sites as secular institutions,
to most visitors, the museums continue to be important and emotionally charged pilgrimage and
ritual sites.2
For some Cypriots, museumification is seen as a preferable option when compared to other
alternatives of seeing the religious sites destroyed, neglected, or converted into less appropriate
forms such as barracks, animal barns, or toilets, which is the case especially for many churches
and monasteries in the North. As the Bishop of Morphou told me, “Now, when there is no solution
for the Cyprus problem, converting churches into museums is sufficient enough. Because this
way, they continue to be churches. They are not used for religious purposes, but at least the walls
will remain churches. I prefer that it [the Turkish administration] does not restore them” (2012;
emphasis added).
406
For Greek Cypriots, deconsecration (the act of removing a religious blessing) is not as bad
as desecration (disrespect) of the sites. Despite their perception of the museums as a violation
of their religious rights and disrespect to their religious sites, some Greek Cypriots do not think
that this temporary situation is undermining the holy character of the icons and the sites. Instead,
this “captivity” of the sites makes them more sacred, since they suffer at the hands of non-
believers, and wait for the day of freedom, which coincides with the freedom of the occupied
area. For Turkish Cypriots, who are relatively more secular and do not regularly go to mosques
(Beckingham 1957; Harmanşah 2021), the destruction and conversion of their heritage are
regarded as erasure of their historical presence from the island. Although sacred sites are not as
essential and definitive for Turkish Cypriots as much as they are for Greek Cypriots, they also
criticize the ways in which their religious heritage is treated and run by the Greek government.
The sites I examined in this article spread rather indirect, vague messages, blurring the lines
between sacred space and museum. They tend to be closer to being living religious sites than to
museums. Their “indoctrination” applies not only to the narratives created inside the museums but
to the ways in which the sites themselves are handled. Moreover, the policies toward the cultural
and religious heritage of the Other speak both to the local people, and probably specifically, to
the Other or the “enemy.” Museumification is a political statement of the demonstration of power
since it prevents the Other from using their own space for its original purposes. The response of
the visitors is also a political decision, as they refuse to comply with the secularizing practices
of museums.
Notes
1 For a comparison of two national struggle museums in either side of Nicosia, see Papadakis (1994).
2 For two similar case studies from Turkey, see Harmanşah, Tanyeri-Erdemir, and Hayden (2014).
References
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from the Monastic Community of Mount Athos,” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 11
(1): 1–13.
Balderstone, S. (2010), “Cultural Heritage and Human Rights in Divided Cyprus,” in M. Langfield, W.
Logan, and M. N. Craith (eds.), Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights: Intersections in
Theory and Practice, 226–42. London: Routledge.
Bağışkan, T. (2009), Ottoman, Islamic and Islamised Monuments in Cyprus. Nicosia: Cyprus Turkish
Education Foundation.
Beckingham, C. F. (1957), “Islam and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus,” Die Welt des Islams, New Series 5
(1/2): 65–83.
Davison, P. (2004), “Museums and the Re-shaping of Memory,” in G. Corsane (ed.), Heritage, Museums
and Galleries: An Introductory Reader, 202–14. London: Routledge.
Duncan, C. (1995), Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. London: Routledge.
Harmanşah, R. (2021), “Fraternal Other: Negotiating Ethnic and Religious Identities at a Muslim
Sacred Site in Northern Cyprus,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 50
(2): 334–52.
Harmanşah, R. (2014), ‘Performing Social Forgetting in a Post-Conflict Landscape: The Case of Cyprus,”
PhD Diss., University of Pittsburgh.
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Harmanşah, R., T. Tanyeri-Erdemir, and R. M. Hayden (2014), “Secularizing the Unsecularizable: A

Comparative Study of the Hacı Bektaş Veli and the Mevlana Museums in Turkey,” in Elazar Barkan
and Karen Barkey (eds.), Choreographies of Shared Sacred Spaces, 336–67. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Hall, M. (2008), “Meditations for Lent: Can Museums Promote Greater Understanding between Faiths
When by Their Definition They Separate Art from the Religious Cultures that Created it?” Apollo 167
(552): 23.
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London: Leicester University Press, 188–99.
O’Neill, M. (2004), “Enlightenment Museums: Universal or Merely Global?” Museum and Society 2
(3): 190–202.
Papadakis, Y. (1994), “The National Struggle Museums of a Divided City,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17
(3): 400–19.
Press and Information Office (2008), “Government and Church denounce imposition of fee to enter
occupied Monastery.” http://www.cyprus.gov.cy/moi/pio/pio.nsf/All/6A8858864096DCD4C22574820
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PMLA 125 (1): 121–8.
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Silva, N. D. (2010), “Religious Displays: An Observational Study with a Focus on the Horniman
Museum,” Material Religion 6 (2): 166–91.
Stock, A. (2011), “Temple of Tolerance. On the Musealization of Religion,” in P. Post, A. L. Molendijk,
and J. E. A. Kroesen (eds.), Sacred Places in Modern Western Culture. Leuven: Peeters, 61–70.
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Analysis
Chapter 44
Minority Heritage within a National

Framework: The Jewish Museum in Denmark
HILDA NISSIMI
Analysis
Introduction
When it first opened, the Danish Jewish Museum (DJM) in Copenhagen presented a complicated
approach to heritage. It reflected a process of remembering while using that memory to shape an
imagined Danish national community (Smith 2006: 44). Museums are effective agents for such
change. Bennett considers a museum to be a “civic laboratory” that “brings objects together in
new configurations, making new realities and relationships both thinkable and perceptible,” and
thus as a space that can influence the reconstruction of society (Bennett 2005: 525–6).
This chapter explores the DJM’s first design—pre-refurbishment—as a text or a treatise by
a cultural agent contributing to the discourse between Jewish minority heritage and non-Jewish
national heritage. This discourse strives to reconstruct the image of national society in a way that
can accept migration as a phenomenon that does not “hurt” the nation. Within this discourse, I focus
on the question of how the museum engages with a religious heritage in a diverse, multicultural,
and post-secular Europe. I show that the museum’s location in the national hub indicates that it
is a national-cultural institution, a physical embodiment of how the Danish national community
incorporates the Jewish community, which is presented as a migrant community. The chapter
examines how the cultural heritage that is presented in the DJM and its surroundings have the
effect of combining a national space and a realm of Jewish memory. The chapter also assesses
whether the museum incorporates the Jewish experience within a multicultural perception of the
national body or maintains the Danish myth of national cohesion. Finally, I will briefly reflect on
the new design of the museum, which was planned to reopen in May or June 2022 (The Danish
Jewish Museum n.d.a).
The DJM—Description
The DJM, located in the Old Royal Library building and the Royal Boathouse, is positioned
opposite the Danish National Archives, not far from the National Museum of Denmark and
the National Parliament. The current entrance is inconspicuous, almost hidden within a large
409
courtyard. On its heavy metal door appears DMJ’s logo, a design of the word mitzvah inscribed
on it in Hebrew letters. The word, which literally means “(religious) commandment,” is not
translated into Danish. The museum’s walls are clad with Scandinavian timber, and the floors are
covered with oak floorboards, and both the walls and floor are set at angles.
The DJM was designed by Daniel Libeskind, the world-renowned American-Polish Jewish
architect, well known for the design of the Jewish Museum Berlin. Libeskind’s design of the
DJM logo described above also informs the layout of the corridors. Each space symbolized
a signpost in the Israelites’ biblical journey to redemption—beginning with the Exodus from
Egypt, wandering through the wilderness, the giving of the Law and, finally, reaching the
Promised Land (Libeskind 2004: 43). The five exhibits in the DJM were labeled: (1) Exodus—
going out from Egypt—arrivals; (2) Wilderness—the desert wandering—standpoints;
(3) Mitzvah—the good deed; (4) The Giving of the Law—receiving the Law—traditions; and
5) The Promised Land. Thus, each biblical signpost is interpreted in terms of Jewish integration
into Denmark.
A Jewish Heritage Commemorated and Challenged

The DJM houses a center devoted to Jewish heritage—the crux of the museum—within a
Danish national heritage building located in the midst of the nation’s administrative center. Thus,
it expands the significance of a site with obvious national meaning to include the story of a
migrant community—a Danish space that encompasses a migrant heritage. Hosts and migrants
come together in this place to coproduce a new narrative of nationhood and belonging (Buciek,
Bærenholdt, and Juul 2006: 195). However, in the process, the migrant heritage also changes and
adapts to the hegemonic culture.
The DJM sprang from an initiative of the Danish Jewish community. The exhibitions “Kings
and Citizens” (1982–3), “Danish Jewish Art,” and “You Must Tell Your Children” (1984), which
celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Jewish community in Denmark, were a great success,
attracting large numbers of visitors and later traveling to New York City (Laursen 2004: 8). This
strong interest in Jewish heritage encouraged the Society for Danish Jewish History to appoint a
planning committee and start fundraising for a dedicated Jewish museum. Securing funding and
finding a home for the museum took many years, finally culminating in the museum’s opening
in 2004.1
The idea of the DJM as a space for Jewish religious heritage was enhanced by the museum’s
logo and layout, as mentioned earlier, based on the Hebrew letters for mitzvah and on Jewish
sacred history as the iconographic blueprint (Libeskind 2004: 43). In the permanent exhibition
before refurbishment, immigration was presented as a central feature of Jewish history in the
DJM brochure on the first space in the museum (“Arrivals,” representing the Exodus) and on the
signage for the first display in the museum, which presented immigration as a central feature of
Jewish history: “Jewish history is full of departures, migrations and new beginnings. Jews have
left many countries to start a new life somewhere else after being driven from their homes, but
also in order to pursue better careers or business opportunities in other countries” (DJM 2004b).
Instead of the biblical Exodus, this text was about the various migrations of Jews to Denmark and
their reception there. It portrayed the voyage as a common Jewish experience and immigration as
a Jewish and European phenomenon with shared patterns.
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Minority Heritage within a National Framework
The second space, “Standpoints,” which represented wandering in the wilderness, presented
current and past differences within the Jewish community after various immigration waves. Its
main message was, “Religion is not the most important denominator for the Danish Jews” (DJM
2004b). In stark contrast was the third and most impressive space, “The Giving of the Law—
Traditions,” which presented the Jewish traditions of the Jews of Denmark (Laursen 2008: 46).
This was the largest presentation space in the DJM, exhibiting various religious artifacts. While
Janne Laursen, former director and founder of the DJM, asserted that Judaica (as representations
of Jewish religion) should not be considered the basis of Jewish homogeneity, the museum’s
website presented religious tradition under the caption “Cohesion.” The fourth space presented
the rescue of Jews by Danes during the Second World War and the Holocaust experience of
Danish Jews. The fifth and last space, “Promised Lands,” which referred to the Israelites’ arrival
in the Land of Canaan, was dedicated to the successful integration of Jews in Denmark.
Each of these spaces challenged Jewish traditions and Jewish cohesion. In relation to the
first space, “Arrivals,” it is clear from the museum’s brochure that immigration and immigrants
were diverse: “some chose Denmark as their destination, others ended up here by chance” (DJM
2004a). This suggested a diversity in the Jewish community and this diversity was emphasized
over cohesion. In fact, it made one visitor wonder if it “does … really make sense to try to tell
one common story about Jews?” (Larsen 2018: 42).
Furthermore, despite making immigration a central feature of Jewish history, the diasporic
nature of Jewish life was visually challenged by minimizing the representation of transnational
ties (Laursen 2008: 12). This was particularly obvious in the last space, “Promised Lands,”
where the United States and Israel were mentioned but not addressed in any depth. Support for
Zionism and any connection to the Land of Israel were presented mostly as having religious or
“personal” motives. Even the blue collection boxes and tree-planting certificates from the Jewish
National Fund represented—according to the museum—an “affinity” with Zionism not support
or affiliation. In this way, the Danish character of the community was emphasized (DJM n.d.b).
The visitor was expected to interpret this as the elimination of a “competitive” promised land,
leaving Denmark as the only possibility for redemption.
The “Danishness” of the Jewish community was also reflected in the DJM’s former director’s
insistence that Denmark did not need a Holocaust museum. Since the “majority of the Jews
escaped to Sweden in 1943,” the museum was not to be identified as a Holocaust museum
(Laursen 2008: 44). Danish Jews were assumed to have experienced the Holocaust as a “local”
phenomenon, and the Holocaust trauma was downplayed, presumed to be determined by the small
number of local victims; neither deaths nor suffering were highlighted. Denmark’s collaborationist
policy was only mentioned in a context where it was asserted that Denmark had helped save the
Danish Jews from the fate suffered by the Jews in the rest of Europe (DJM n.d.b). Their acceptance
by the Danes was underlined by recalling the evacuation of the Danish Jews from their homes,
their lives having been saved by their Danish fellow citizens. Indeed, they were saved as Danes.
Non-Danish Jews were not treated in quite the same way (Kjørup 2008: 62).
Jewish heritage was generally presented as somewhat in danger of disappearance, with the
community’s integration and assimilation hailed as its greatest success. The museum’s brochure
went so far as to mention some Jewish Danes whose Jewish identity was less important to
them than their profession, giving the example of a Latin teacher.2 Visitors would be justified
in wondering what Jewish tradition and identity meant in such a case. This was the opening
411
to, and perhaps the price paid for, integration into a Danish social environment where one has
a “Christian ‘identity’ without personal belief or active participation” (Storm, Rutjens, and
van Harreveld 2020: 17). In this way, Jewish tradition was celebrated for its integration and
acceptance into wider society.
Opening Up Denmark: A Danish Museum of a Migrant Variation

As integration and assimilation were so closely connected, it is not difficult to understand how
the DJM could fulfill two ostensibly conflicting roles: as a custodian of Jewish heritage and as a
Danish national heritage site. The DJM’s name, its location in the national hub, and its budgetary
inclusion in the national museums’ law all indicate that it is a national museum.3 Fittingly, the
DJM was first opened in 2004 in the presence of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe. In 2011, the
museum was recognized by the Danish government, and it is supervised by the Heritage Agency
of Denmark (Laursen 2008: 42).
Proviantgården, the building within which the museum is housed, comprising the old library
building and the Royal Boathouse, is part of Danish heritage and the national cultural-political
center. It was built in 1603 on Slotsholmen, the island that is now Denmark’s administrative
center, as part of Christian IV’s Arsenal Dock. Beginning in 1994, Proviantgården was converted
into offices for the Danish Parliament, together with a reading room for the National Archives. It
was within the walls of this national building that Libeskind designed the DJM. Jewish heritage
was incorporated into this structure as a physical expression of the diversification of the national
heritage in one urban space (Buciek, Bærenholdt, and Juul 2006: 185–7). The same convergence
was expressed by the logo, which tied mitzvah to Danish-Jewish memory. Libeskind interpreted
this concept as “the good deed” of “the rescue of the Danish Jews in 1943,” namely the evacuation
of most of Denmark’s Jews to neighboring Sweden in contravention of the Nazis’ order for their
arrest and deportation.
This event was also celebrated by the DJM’s third space, “Giving of the Law.” Thus, the
Danes’ “good deed” was represented by a Jewish religious concept and seen to be played
out within Jewish sacred history and the biblical story of their wandering from Egypt to the
Promised Land. The museum was thus a celebration of the Danes’ finest hour—the rescue of
Danish Jews. This was not only celebrated as an ethical deed, as Libeskind noted but was also
meant to epitomize the acceptance and integration of the Jewish community into Denmark.
It was supposed to illustrate just how far Danes were willing to go to save Jews. The DJM’s
interior design, with its Scandinavian slanting wood-covered walls and sloping floorboards,
gives the visitor the impression of locality traversed by dynamic migratory movements that have
destabilized its foundations.
The centrality of the rescue story embodied the tension between assimilation and particularity,
while the entrance and architecture presented the contradictory message of Holocaust and
salvation. Not only did the reminder of the Holocaust challenge the visitor’s sense of security,
but the hidden entrance door evoked feelings of loss and a desire to hide (Kjørup 2008: 56;
Bechmann 2008: 12). For the architect, the museum’s entrance was intended to evoke an entry to
a treasury or a vault. The treasury Libeskind had in mind was the unimpeded continuous heritage
of Danish Jews, preserving therein what was lost in the destruction of the Holocaust. This
metaphor fitted well with the museum’s ensconced position, while also serving as a center for
412
research and dissemination of Jewish history and culture. The modest exterior stood in profound
contrast to the nationalist atmosphere of its location and the celebratory mood of its internal
architecture. The anteroom to the museum was a cinema space where visitors could watch a film
propounding Libeskind’s idea for the museum, and in which he praised the outstanding behavior
of the Danes who had carried out the rescue (Bechmann 2008: 12). However, the emphasis
on the Second World War experiences also served as a reminder of the threat of extermination
that the Jews had faced as “others.” Moreover, the resemblance of the sloping floor in the DJM
to the Jewish Museum Berlin created an association with the expulsion of the Jews (Eirene 2013;
Kjørup 2008: 58).
The interior resembled the deck of a boat, and the visitors’ program was designed as a sea
voyage: the reenactment of the rescue/evacuation of the Jews. However, the DJM went far
beyond Libeskind’s vision for the celebration of the rescue and promised immigrants a new
home in a new Promised Land. Therefore, the voyage of the visitor was also a reenactment of the
long road from immigration to full integration of Jews into Denmark. The simulation of the sea
voyage was a means of destabilization, not only of one’s physical foothold but also of identity.
Visitors walked in the footsteps of Jewish immigrants, starting with their exodus from their
original countries, through the immigrants’/visitors’ arrival and then redemption as equal citizens
in Denmark (Laursen 2008: 16). Along the way, visitors were expected to absorb the idea that
the Danes had already successfully absorbed the immigrant group in the past as a “good deed.”
A Museum as a “Civic Laboratory”

The combination of Danish national heritage and national administration with Jewish heritage
resolves the tension and dilemma of whose heritage is to be preserved (Buciek, Bærenholdt, and
Juul 2006: 186). The interplay between the Jewish content, the various connections to the Jewish
community, the Danish national cultural context, and government support make this museum a
space of negotiated heritages: Jewish heritage meets Danish self-conception. As we have seen,
the DJM’s layout virtually conflated Danish and Jewish identities. The Danish good deed was
reflected in Jewish sacred history, and this was interpreted as the road from immigration to
integration.
The DJM aimed to challenge the visitor to accept the introduction of new content into a living
heritage location. This is unusual for Danish museums, most of which engage with the global
to reassert the national by displaying national experience and preserving common memory. The
national museum, for example, does not include minorities, whether Germans, Greenlanders,
Roma, or Jews (Levitt 2012: 40). The story of Jewish migration at the DJM is recruited to
destabilize Danish-Christian homogeneous identity, making Danes more willing to accept other
cultures. At the same time, the focus of the museum on the salvation of the Jews was intended to
make the Jewish visitor see Denmark as the land of redemption. For the Danish visitor, the myth
of the 1943 rescue acted as justification and affirmation, which could make acceptance of change
easier (Smith 2017: 86).
The educational aim of the original DJM exhibit was immediately clear in its presentation
of the Jews as a community of immigrants who had been successfully integrated. The museum
was designed to educate the public to adopt a more positive attitude toward immigrants through
the positive example of the Jewish experience (Kjørup 2008: 64).4 The museum’s four-year plan
413
presented Jewish cultural history as providing “a comparative European perspective that enables
us to illuminate both specific and general terms for coexistence between the minority and the
surrounding community” (Museemes n.d.). Janus Møller Jensen, the current director of the DJM,
explained that “you can change the museum guest. You do not become another human being,
but if you leave here with a feeling of being surprised, then you have created something that can
germinate. And something that can grow” (Rachlin n.d.).
The ethical call to accept migrants positions Jewish Danes as an archetype. While this could
potentially relegate the Jewish community to the position of “the Jew” as a stranger (Bauman
1991: 59), it did not do this. Rather, it celebrated integration as having been achieved due to Danish
acceptance and through the convergence of Jewish and Danish history, values, and memory. In
2017, the museum invited the public to watch the documentary film Flotel Europa by Vladimir
Tomic. The documentary is about Tomic’s own experience as a refugee from Bosnia living on the
ship The Europa, which housed refugees for two years. Although this experience is not Jewish,
the picture illustrating the event on the museum’s website is of the hotel ship St. Lawrence, which
was docked in Copenhagen Harbor and housed hundreds of Jewish refugees in the late 1960s.
The rescue acted as a reaffirmation of the past but also as a forceful encouragement for the future.
Indeed, most of the effort to achieve acceptance was presented on the side of the Jewish
community. The external appearance of the DJM was symbolic. Its modest exterior communicated
the entire message: migrants can be integrated into the body politic to such an extent that they
are almost imperceptible. Likewise, the DJM emphasized the diversity of the community and,
thereby, its diffusion throughout society.
A New Museum—a New Visibility

Just as the museum’s original design was well expressed in its inconspicuous entrance, thus
reflecting the invisibility/integration of Jewish migrants, the new version’s major change
in orientation is expressed in its new entrance. The new, large, and impressive granite stone
entrance is designed to “create a better and much more visible entrance to the museum” (DJM,
n.d.c) commensurate with the new aim of the museum to become “an even more visible point of
departure for exploration and dissemination of Danish Jewish history.”5 The new entrance, unlike
the former, relates directly to the design language of the interior, with its vertical dimension of
two obliquely inclined walls that intersect to shape the entrance space. This and a pilot project
will be opened to the public in the spring or early summer of 2022.
The new version creates an almost entirely new museum. The inner architecture is left intact,
although the old walls are planned to play a more prominent part in the exhibition. The layout
is designed to take visitors on a 400-year journey through Jewish Danish history in four distinct
spaces, each representing one century from the seventeenth to the twentieth. The space dedicated
to the eighteenth century is already completed and was the first to be opened in 2022, allowing
the museum to evaluate the new design and programs.
The planning brochure, especially the part for the section on the eighteenth century, offers
important hints about the change the museum will undergo, beyond the move from the thematic
structure of the first version to a chronological one in the new design. One major change is the
critical view it takes on Danish acceptance of the Jews. The acceptance and even defense by the
government are well contrasted with legal discrimination, along with popular and theological
414
antisemitism. The section that will present the twentieth century highlights the most radical
difference between the two versions of the museum: 1943 is no longer a mythical salvation. It
is problematized and contextualized within the broader frame of antisemitism of the period and
the resulting Holocaust. It offers a criticism of Danish society and, through this, hopes to have
the “courage and strength to challenge the audience and address difficult dilemmas”6 and thereby
encourage change.
Therefore, the general intention of utilizing the DJM as a civic laboratory for today’s society
is still apparent. For example, it addresses the difficult topic of circumcision and its problematic
part in anti-Jewish feelings throughout the ages (including today). However, in general, the
Jewish experience is portrayed as relevant to a “contemporary perspective in relation to modern
issues and ideas about integration, cultural heritage, national and religious affiliations and
identities.”7 Indeed, the strongest visual impression that the DJM creates is of the difficulties
of immigration—suitcases are positioned everywhere, used as information stands, as bases for
changing exhibits, as resting spaces. Unlike its predecessor, this new version of the museum
celebrates the Jewish immigrants in and for their difference, calling for integration of diversity,
rather than assimilation.
Conclusion
Kevin Lynch warns that the major “danger in the preservation of [an historical] environment
lies in its power to encapsulate some image of the past, an image that may in time prove to be
mythical. … We should expect to see conflicting views of the past, based on conflicting views
of the present” (Lynch 1976: 53). A boathouse basement of the Royal Library constructed in the
early seventeenth century by King Christian IV is a place of Danish heritage, and Libeskind,
a modern well-known Jewish architect, planned it as a shrine to the rescue ethos. However,
while the outside is material heritage, the content inside is not about the architecture and not
entirely about the rescue. It is about housing the intangible cultural heritage of those depicted
as an immigrant minority. Ostensibly, in the first version of the museum, it was a house for
Jewish history, culture, and religion as manifest in Denmark; in reality, it aimed to reconstruct
Danish heritage (Smith 2006: 11). The newly planned version even more emphatically contrasts
a Danish exterior with a Jewish interior. As such, both versions reinforce the past but challenge
contemporary society in its present attitudes toward immigrants.
The DJM celebrates integration yet emphasizes immigration. In its first version, the museum
presented a common heritage: the story of the rescue was meant to construct a common memory
for Jews and Danes. At first glance, the DJM appeared to glorify the past by unreservedly
celebrating this event. However, by casting the celebration of the Danish deed in the Jewish
realm of memory, the experience was objectified and turned into a challenge for present society
rather than a self-complacent commemoration. The new version goes further, in an attempt to
criticize past discrimination and challenge and change current society.
It also holds out a promise. The DJM now sets out to illustrate a combined heritage that
provides space for a minority’s heritage and the acknowledgment of pluralism. Previously, visitors
were made aware of how well integrated the Jewish component was, while now the museum
emphasizes its distinctness with the aim of facilitating greater acceptance of immigration through
an awakening to human diversity.
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Notes
1 A collection of art and religious artifacts was displayed for many years in Ny Kongensgade in Copenhagen
since 1952 until the 1970s when the collection was dispersed to smaller locations; Laursen (2004: 9).
2 This obscure example is given in the brochure Arrivals (2004: 1, 5). Buckser speaks of “Viking families” in
Buckser (2003: 104). No mention is made of the discouragement of the new immigrants by the police after
the Russian Revolution; see Kisch (1998: 220–1).
3 It also receives a grant from the city of Copenhagen and from various foundations.
4 Perhaps also by holding up the great example of 1943. Lack of homogeneity of the Jewish community is
also meant to lessen fear of immigrants: Kjørup (2008: 64).
5 Ny udstilling på Dansk Jødisk Museum, 3. I was given access to the brochure courtesy of the DJM director
Janus Møller Jensen.
6 Ibid., 5.
7 Ibid., 32.
References
Arrivals (2004), Museum Brochure, Danish Jewish Museum.
Bauman, Z. (1991), Modernity and Ambivalence. Oxford: Polity Press.
Bechmann, S. (2008), ‘“Now We Should All Acknowledge our Holocaust Guilt’: Denmark and The
Holocaust as European Identity,” CFE Working Paper Series no. 37.
Bennett, T. (2005), “Civic Laboratories: Museums, Cultural Objecthood and the Governance of the
Social,” Cultural Studies 19 (5): 521–47.
Buciek, K., J. O. Bærenholdt, and K. Juul (2006), “Whose Heritage Immigration and Place Narratives in
Denmark,” Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography 88 (2): 185–97.
Buckser, A. (2003), “Religious Practice and Cultural Politics in Jewish Copenhagen,” American
Ethnologist 30 (1): 104.
The Danish Jewish Museum (n.d.a), “The Museum.” https://www.jewmus.dk/en/the-museum/ (accessed
February 21, 2021).
The Danish Jewish Museum (n.d.b), “Promised Lands.” http://jewmus.dk/en/education/ (accessed May
13, 2017).
The Danish Jewish Museum (n.d.c), “A New Entrance for the Danish Jewish Museum.” https://www.jew
mus.dk/fileadmin/files/webpage/documents/Presse/Pressemeddelelser/PRM_DJM_new_entrance.pdf
(accessed January 24, 2022).
The Danish Jewish Museum (n.d.d), “Holocaust in Denmark.” http://jewmus.dk/en/exhibition/the-five-
dimensions/mitzvah/holocaust-in-denmark/ (accessed January 24, 2022).
The Danish Jewish Museum (n.d.e), “Visit.” https://www.jewmus.dk/en/visit/ (accessed January 26, 2022).
The Danish Jewish Museum (n.d.f), “What’s On?—The Invisible City—Copenhagen Architecture
Festival.” http://jewmus.dk/en/whats-on/news-detail/the-invisible-city-copenhagen-architecture-festi
val/ (accessed May 5, 2017).
Eirene (2013), “A Place Called Space—the Danish Jewish Museum.” July 7. http://a-place-called-space.
blogspot.co.il/2013/07/the-danish-jewish-museum.html (accessed May 25, 2017).
Kisch, C. (1998), “The Jewish Community in Denmark: History and Present Status,” Judaism 47
(2): 220–1.
Kjørup, S. (2008), “Cultural Minorities in Danish Museums: The Danish Jewish Museum,” in
K. Goodnow and H. Akman (eds.), Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity, 54–67.
Oxford: Berghahn Books.
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Larsen, J. W. (2018), “Religious Encounters at the Danish Jewish Museum.” Course Cultural Encounters
and Differences. http://culturalencountersanddifferences.dk/religious-encounters-at-the-danish-jewish-
museum/ (accessed January 24, 2021).
Laursen, J. (2004), “The Danish Jewish Museum and Daniel Libeskind,” in H. Sten Moeller (ed.), Daniel
Libeskind: The Danish Jewish Museum, 8–18. Copenhagen: Danish Jewish Museum.
Laursen, J. (2008), “The Danish Jewish Museum: A New Museum Asserts Its Character,” Scandinavian
Museums and Cultural Diversity: 42–53.
Levitt, P. (2012), “The Bog and the Beast: Museums, the Nation, and the Globe,” Ethnologia
Scandinavica 42: 29–49.
Libeskind, D. (2004), “Mitzvah: The Concept for the Danish Jewish Museum,” in H. Sten Moeller (ed.),
Daniel Libeskind: The Danish Jewish Museum, 40–51. Copenhagen: Danish Jewish Museum.
Lynch, K. (1976), What Time Is This Place? Cambridge: MIT Press.
“Museernes 4-Årige Arbejdsplaner” (n.d.). https://jewmus.dk/fileadmin/files/webpage/documents/Om_
museets/Dansk_Joedisk_Museum_arbejdsplan.pdf (accessed December 21, 2021.)
Rachlin, M. (n.d.), “Museet Skal Have en Mere Aktiv Stemme.” Det Jodiske Samfund I Denmark. https://
mosaiske.dk/museet-skal-have-en-mere-aktiv-stemme/ (accessed November 9, 2020).
Smith, L. (2017), ‘ “We Are … We Are Everything’: The Politics of Recognition and Misrecognition at
Immigration Museums,” Museum & Society 15 (1): 69–86.
Standpoints (2004), Museum Brochure, Danish Jewish Museum.
Storm, I., B. Rutjens, and F. van Harreveld (2020), “Personal Experience or Cultural Tradition: The
Difference between Christian Identity in the Netherlands and Denmark,” Religion, Brain & Behavior
10 (4): 428–43.
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Analysis
Chapter 45
Venerating Musealized Religious Objects:

St. Patrick’s Hand between Display Case
and Altar
EMMA J. MCALISTER
Analysis
Introduction
“Do not touch” signs and objects protected behind glass are a familiar sight in museums. Museum
objects are constructed as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant and restricting touch
for visitors is an accepted response to an artifact’s perceived value and fragility. From a comparative
perspective, the museum’s regulations work to create historically sacred objects. These regulations
show relevant parallels to rules applied to sacred objects in Christian spaces. In other words, rules,
taboos, and protective glass displays can elevate an object from the mundane to the extraordinary.
Scholars have argued that the museum can “neuter” and therefore erase the sacrality of objects
intended to be used in ritual because they have been removed from their religious contexts
(Branham 1994: 33–47). However, this argument assumes that religious objects have a singular
meaning or purpose. It does not consider the value some Christians place on heritage and tradition,
how meanings can change over time and how secular ideas can influence contemporary religious
practice. Indeed, historical religious objects have multiple and nuanced meanings.
To illustrate the complexity of meaning attached to historical religious objects, this chapter
will examine a reliquary displayed for most of the year in the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern
Ireland. The object in question is “The Shrine of St. Patrick’s Hand,” which is returned annually
to St. Patrick’s Church in Belfast. There, a corporal relic of St. Patrick (a piece of bone) from
the church’s treasury is reinserted into the shrine’s relic chamber. In the Catholic tradition, relics
can be human remains from a saint (typically small pieces of bone) or textiles handled by a holy
person and are usually presented in ornate reliquaries. Once the relic is inside, the reliquary
is charged with the same sacred power considered of the relic it holds. Through the ritual of
relic veneration, a believer feels physically connected to the holy event in which the relic bore
witness. Believers have strict rules to follow to venerate relics. With the correct investment of
ritual veneration, the relic is believed to grant good luck, strength, or even a miracle to the person
venerating it. In the case of the shrine, this artifact has accumulated numerous meanings, several
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Venerating Musealized Religious Objects
of which are articulated in its handling. Today, tactile engagement with the shrine is limited to
museum staff and priests, who wear gloves while handling it so that their hands do not damage
the artifact’s condition. The carefully prescribed handling protocols of the shrine result in the
object simultaneously accruing a religiously sacred (a connection to a spiritual world or higher
being) and historically sacred status (a priceless value due to its age and prestige). Moreover,
this case study demonstrates how secular ideas of value connected with historical objects can
influence ritual performance within sacred spaces.
“The Shrine of St. Patrick’s Hand”

Today, the shrine is owned by a Catholic Diocese and has been on loan to the Ulster Museum
since 1986. Since the Museum’s refurbishment in 2009, the shrine has been displayed on the
second floor in a permanent exhibition entitled the Saints and Scholars Gallery. It is presented
among other Christian objects in an upright, freestanding case to allow a 360-degree inspection.
The exhibition provides visitors with historical context around early Irish Christianity and the
life of fifth-century St. Patrick. Like many religious objects displayed in museums, the shrine’s
religious and spiritual meaning is absent from its textual interpretation. Instead, the object is
presented as an artifact of Ireland’s Christian heritage.
Examining how the shrine was used and handled in the past reveals its intended ritual
and religious purpose, as well as the different meanings attributed to it during its lifetime.
The provenance of the shrine is difficult to determine from the written records available.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the shrine was manufactured between the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries (Bourke 2019). The Shrine is a Gothic-style arm reliquary made from
silver gilt and stands at forty-eight centimeters high. It was cast into the shape of a right hand,
giving the sign of benediction, and a sleeve of a forearm.1 Its shape is that of a traditional
bishop’s hand, gloved and decorated with a ring with semiprecious stones or colored glass
adorning the cuff and bottom of the sleeve. The wrist is decorated with a bracelet of fleur-de-
lis, and the sleeve is intricately embossed with animals symbolic of kingship, such as griffins,
stags, lions, and birds. Its expensive material and composition suggest that the Catholic Church
likely commissioned it. The shrine was manufactured to be light and easy to lift, indicating
the object was created to be tactile and regularly touched. Hagiographies often describe
saints’ healing hands, which had the power to heal sickness through their holy touch (Hahn
1997: 22). Hand reliquaries were used as “prosthetic devices” to touch parishioners seeking
good fortune or healing qualities (Maniura 2018: 67). The thumb on this shrine has a small
hole in it, suggesting it was used as a spout to administer holy water to parishioners. The shrine
may have also been used for civic purposes, as such sacred objects were often used to swear
oaths in community trials, much like the bible in courtrooms today (Lucas 1986: 6). Between
1695 and 1778, a series of laws were imposed by the English Parliament on Ireland called
the Penal Laws, prohibiting the practicing of Catholicism and excluding Catholics from most
public offices. During the penal period, the shrine was hidden and protected in a private home,
passed down through inheritance over the years (Heatley 1978). It likely continued to be used
clandestinely throughout this time in healing rituals. There is a record of a similar relic and
reliquary, “The Shrine of St. Patrick’s Jaw,” being used in Ireland during this period to cure
epilepsy by touching the bone relic (Bourke 1993: 55).
419
420
Nineteenth-Century Christian Heritage

Once the Penal Laws were repealed, the shrine could be used again in public rituals. In the
nineteenth century, political ideas about archaeological heritage and cultural identity were
circulated in antiquarian groups and the print press in Ireland (Crooke 2000: 1). Archaeological
objects were used to emphasize a nationalist Irish identity linked to “pre-invasion Ireland” before
Ireland was under English rule (64). Ancient objects, including Catholic objects hidden and
protected for more than a century, were now coveted artifacts for their historical and cultural
value. Around 1840, the shrine caught the attention of “some protestant gentlemen” who were
eager to purchase it for the “Museum of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin”; possibly the same
gentlemen who acquired “The Shrine of St. Patrick’s Bell,” which is now on display in the
National Museum of Ireland. At this time, it was evident that the shrine’s appeal went beyond
its ritual purpose. However, in 1840 a Catholic Diocese prevented this purchase and bought the
shrine for ten pounds (O’Bryne 1982: 338).
The purchase of the shrine by a Catholic Diocese was not only a pious decision but also
a pragmatic one. The importance of cultural heritage did not escape the institutional Catholic
Church in Ireland. Heritage and material cultures were considered valuable tools to illustrate an
Irish identity distinct from Britishness (Crooke 2000: 64). Additionally, archaeological objects
were used to strengthen and promote devotional practices in the Catholic Church and bolster the
Catholic and Celtic revivals (Godson 2003).
The internal cavity of the shrine was opened for inspection in 1856 by Bishop Dr. Cornelis
Denvir, who discovered only a long piece of yew wood and no corporal remains. Dr Denvir then
wrote to the Vatican to request a relic of St. Patrick. A small bone authenticated to be St. Patrick
was sent to Dr Denvir to be inserted into the shrine and placed in the treasury of St. Patrick’s
Church on Donegall Street, Belfast (Heatley 1978: 76).
Ireland was partitioned in 1921 into two states: Northern Ireland, which had a Protestant
majority who wanted to remain in union with Britain, and the predominantly Catholic Irish Free
State, later the Republic of Ireland, from 1949. In 1932, the shrine was on loan to the National
Gallery of Ireland for the thirty-first Eucharistic Congress hosted in Dublin. For the Congress,
the Irish Free State displayed the material culture of St. Patrick to claim that Irishness and
Catholicism were now legitimized and intertwined in a single identity.
The Loan Agreement and the Troubles

Prior to the loan agreement, a former parish priest of St. Patrick’s Church giddily reported that in
the 1970s, altar boys used the shrine for games and practical jokes after Mass (Carryduff Parish
2019). These games included throwing it to one another and sticking it up the sleeves of their
robes to pretend it was their own hand (Carryduff Parish 2019). The games may explain why
a couple of holes in the object are visible today, probably resulting from dropping the object
on a hard surface. When describing the reckless nature of this object handling, the conservator
in charge of the shrine at the Ulster Museum gasped, exclaiming, “No way, oh my goodness!”
(Ulster Museum 2019). The rough handling of the shrine contrasts sharply with how the shrine
is carefully handled today. Indeed, the thought of an object of this kind of historical value being
thrown around appalled that museum staff member.
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Since the loan agreement between St. Patrick’s Church and the Ulster Museum began in 1986,
there has been limited handling of the shrine. The Diocese decided that the relic should be removed
and kept in the church’s treasury when the shrine is in the museum. Without its sacred relic, the shrine
is not believed to be religiously sacred, but it can still be interpreted as a distinctly Catholic object;
therefore, it could be construed as representative of an Irish identity. When the loan agreement
began, it was at the height of the conflict, known as the Troubles, in Northern Ireland. The political
identities associated with being Catholic, Protestant, Irish, or British frequently sparked violence
during this time and continue to cause tension today. The Ulster Museum endeavors to be a shared
space and tries to avoid causing offense where connotations of the Irish or British identity may
be perceived as contentious. The Curator of Archaeology during that period was acutely aware of
displaying an object that may be interpreted as promoting a set of Catholic values (Bourke 2019). In
1986, the interpretation of the shrine focused on its rarity and materiality, sidestepping its status as a
sacred object of the Catholic faith. The current object label does not mention the shrine’s continued
use in Catholic ritual or its standing as living religious heritage.
Fieldwork in the Museum

Museum visitors experience and engage with the shrine in various ways. During interviews
with visitors in the Saints and Scholars Gallery in 2019, one participant commented that this
object is evidence of the “continued importance of the Church to Irish everyday life” (Visitor
Interview: February 18, 2019). Therefore, the display of the shrine in a historical context
emphasizes to this person the continuity of Christianity in Ireland. The display of a historical
Christian object may be a source of comfort to those with Christian beliefs. They can believe it
signifies that their religion is rooted in a particular place with lasting relevance. Another comment
expressed surprise that the shrine is displayed in the Ulster Museum. The visitor asserted, “I
thought you would see a shrine like that in a cathedral or somewhere like that,” indicating that
this visitor felt that the shrine had been de-contextualized in the Ulster Museum and belonged
in a sacred space (Visitor Interview: December 2, 201, Visitor 01). Conversely, many of the
comments suggested that visitors do not understand its ritual purpose, and their comments did
not mention religion. The gallery displays various Christian objects, such as crosses, which are
perhaps more recognizable as religious objects. Three visitor comments suggest the shrine “stood
out” for negative reasons, such as being “out of place” in the museum. They did not indicate
whether they felt the shrine is out of place because they believed it belongs in a church or because
it is a Catholic object presented in a national museum situated in the divided society of Northern
Ireland. One commented that the shrine indicated a “high level of idolatry in the past,” perhaps
implying an underlying fear of what this object represents (Visitor Interview: February 18, 2019,
Visitor 20). This visitor may imagine this kind of ritual is much more marginal today. They may
think this kind of religious object is no longer in use, resigning it to a distant past, as they are
unaware that it is still actively used in church life.
Transporting the Shrine

Before the St. Patrick’s Day Mass, the shrine is taken from the Museum to the parochial house
and given to the parish priest. There, the parish priest takes it to the treasury, where the relic of
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St. Patrick is stored, to reinsert it into the shrine’s relic chamber, ready for the St. Patrick’s Day
Mass celebrations. For the object’s protection, a team of four museum staff undertakes the annual
transporting of the shrine to and from the Museum. The shrine is handled by a conservator wearing
latex gloves and placed carefully into a padded, custom-made case. Although the Diocese owns
the shrine, the museum exerts control over how the object is used, even while it is on temporary
loan to the church (Paine 2013: 20). Inside the shrine’s case, the conservator includes written
instructions to tell the priests how to handle it. It is significant that these instructions are given
to the priests, especially when the Diocese owns the object and, as such, suggests that they
could handle the shrine in whatever way they wanted. Nevertheless, as described later, the priests
comply with the instructions and are equally concerned with preserving the shrine’s material
historical value.
Fieldwork in St. Patrick’s Church

The church setting and the lack of a display case rendered the silver gilt of the shrine more golden
than when it is viewed at the museum, perhaps offering a sense of how it was initially intended
to look. The Mass, which I attended on March 16 and 17, 2019, began with a procession of three
priests, with one priest wearing white gloves holding the shrine above his head. Beside the altar,
a small table was covered in a blue velvet cloth and decorated with potted shamrocks2. The shrine
was placed on the table, which was a focal point of the church, positioned where the majority
of the congregation could see it. It was framed by the church’s interior, consisting of a backdrop
of marble moldings, large stained glass windows, painted ceilings depicting biblical scenes, and
large lit candles supported by golden candlesticks.
The shrine’s importance was emphasized repeatedly throughout the Mass, as well as in the
weekly parish bulletin, boasting: “St. Patrick’s Parish is the proud custodian of an ancient relic
of St. Patrick which is housed in a world-famous Shrine. We display the Shrine of St. Patrick at
all Masses.” Additionally, the parish organizes for an especially charismatic priest to fly from his
parish in Liverpool, England, to say this celebration Mass and raise the day’s festive tone.
The special guest priest began the Mass in Irish and then switched to English to introduce
the shrine, stating that this was “the hand that wrote those letters” and “the hand that brought
Christianity to Ireland.”3 He referred to the shrine as though it were St. Patrick himself, in other
words, as if St. Patrick was present at the Mass. Personifying the object in this way underscores
the belief that relics are not merely symbolic of a saint but “an actual physical embodiment” of
them (Walsham 2010: 12). The priest stated that this was not only a holy day of obligation but
a special Mass because of the “bonafide” relic authenticated by the Vatican inside of a world-
famous reliquary.
Collective Veneration
After communion, the priest announced his intention to bless the congregation with the relic.
To perform the blessing of the congregation, the priest put on the gloves, carried the shrine to
each section of the congregation, and made the sign of the cross with the shrine above his head.
The priest completed the blessing by making the sign of the cross before the tabernacle, placing
the shrine back on the table, and sitting down for silent contemplation. Before the priest blessed
422
the congregation, a person in front of me whispered, “he’s going to do what?” highlighting that
relic veneration is unfamiliar to some practicing Catholics today. Regardless of their reaction,
when the priest blessed our section, this person, with everybody else, fell to their knees and
blessed themselves. The congregation’s response to being blessed with the relic reveals how
communal behavior in a ritual setting is often imitated to maintain unity. Most examples of ritual
performance rely on “assumptions and inclinations, habits and routines”; therefore, those who
had never witnessed relic veneration could easily emulate the rest of the congregation through
obedience and without much independent thought (Morgan 2005: 3).
Individual Veneration
The Catholic Church prescribes a two-step process of relic veneration. First, a priest uses the
relic and reliquary to bless the congregation with the sign of the cross, after which believers may
touch or kiss the reliquary (O’Neill 2019). Through physical contact with the relic, the devotees
believe they are physically connected to that holy person and ask them to answer their prayers.
However, today, in Northern Ireland, many Catholics would be unfamiliar with the tactile nature
of relic veneration while being well-versed in lighting candles and praying to statues. Indeed,
some practicing Catholics would be more in awe of the historical nature of the shrine than its
holy qualities.4
After the Mass had ended, the shrine was open to individual veneration. It was left on the
table while the priests went outside to talk with their parishioners. Some of the congregation did
not stay to venerate the shine, demonstrating that some Catholics do not place any weight on
relic worship outside of the ritual Mass. Most people who queued to see the shrine and relic only
wanted to photograph it as if it were a celebrity. To take a photograph, they blessed themselves
and genuflected, publicly showing respect to the object and those around them. This behavior
conveys that there are expected gestures that Catholics adhere to in a church, even if they are not
engaging in prayer or veneration. Furthermore, parishioners taking photographs demonstrate that
the parish encourages this kind of non-worshipping engagement with the shrine.
However, parishioners who wanted to touch the shrine’s relic window to connect with the holy
could not do this because of the shrine’s museum object status. The shrine was closely guarded
by a member of the laity, who ensured that no one succeeded in touching it. Even with the guard
there, some devout parishioners were drawn to touch the relic, signifying that they wanted to
obtain its sacred power. When a parishioner reached to touch the relic window, the guard shouted,
“Don’t be touching it. It is historical and valuable!” The guard’s loud objection reveals that his
job was to protect the materiality of the shrine rather than allow access to the relic’s immaterial
holy connection to the devoted. To compensate for the lack of tactile engagement with the relic,
the devotees were allowed to gently lay their hands on the table while praying for a few minutes.
There were a few people who knelt and spent an extended amount of time praying to the relic. The
act of prostrating illustrates the “intense human response” that some people have in the presence
of something that they consider sacred (Walsham 2010: 14). Observing parishioners venerate
saints like this is particularly moving as praying reveals real emotions. As Alfred Gell stated, “The
essence of idolatry is that it permits real physical interactions between persons and divinities. To
treat such interactions as ‘symbolic’ is to miss the point” (1998: 135). Perhaps through touching a
surface physically connected to the relic, the parishioner could feel connected to St. Patrick.
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The extraordinary performance of this Mass is noteworthy because, along with its religious
significance, the priests have chosen to amplify the historical and cultural importance of the
shrine. It appears their main concern is with the historical status of the object because they will
not allow the parishioners to venerate the relic fully. Indeed, regulating touch and guarding the
shrine reveals that the church reinforces the idea that the shrine is a historically sacred artifact
and that secular ideas can influence ritual performance in sacred spaces. The shrine’s historical
qualities are further emphasized because the priests imitate “what historians do in television
documentaries” by wearing white gloves to handle the shrine, thus conveying the appearance
of historical authenticity to their congregation. The parish priest stated, “We hold it (the shrine)
in trusteeship for Ireland, for it is part of the patrimony of our country” (O’Neill 2019). In this
statement, the priest illustrates why, rather than purchasing a new reliquary to house the relic of
St. Patrick to enable tactile veneration, the historical shrine is returned to the church every year.
Using the historical shrine implies that heritage has become an integrated part of how
Catholicism is performed and experienced. At the same time, the religious significance of this
shrine is not diminished, as demonstrated by the priest blessing the congregation and allowing
time for prayers and veneration close to the object. The priests employ all the tools available to
ensure their St. Patrick’s Day celebration is memorable for their congregation. The valuable shrine
and the special guest priest work to elevate the celebratory experience on Ireland’s national day.
Conclusion
Following the journey of “The Shrine of St. Patrick’s Hand” offered an opportunity to witness a
religious object in a museum space and its intended sacred space. It is clear that there is ritualized
control of the shrine in both the museum and church spaces, which seemingly uphold two sets
of cultural values. Moreover, the behavior of visitors and parishioners is noticeably different,
implying that the shrine has two distinct meanings in each space. It could be argued that the
museumification of the object has redefined the shrine, making it a historical object that glosses
over its religious function and sacredness, as shown in the performance in the church. To some
degree, this is true; however, this chapter has highlighted that it is much more complex than a
secular meaning erasing an object’s religious status.
The priests also want to preserve the materiality of the shrine, knowing that the lived Catholic
faith is not homogeneous. Like the decision to purchase the shrine at the end of the nineteenth
century, returning it annually and showing it off to their parishioners is both pious and pragmatic.
The priests use the shrine’s historically sacred status for their celebration Mass to appeal to their
parishioners, who have varying degrees of interest in relic devotion. They want to emphasize to
their parishioners the value, fragility, rarity, and historical sacredness of the shrine through their
performance of wearing white gloves and restricting tactile interactions with it. The artifact’s
cultural and historical meaning broadens its appeal to a larger audience. Furthermore, rather than
being hidden in the church’s treasury, its display in a public museum reinforces this appeal.
The museumification of this object has made the rules surrounding it stricter, in the sense that
altar boys can no longer play with it and parishioners cannot touch it. Preservation of the shrine’s
materiality governs how it is handled today since the museum staff place the materiality of the
shrine far above its immaterial meanings. The priests consider the shrine’s civic, historical, and
economic value and, consequently, place it in the care of a museum. Both spaces continually
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highlight the object’s vulnerability and, therefore, its tangible antique materiality through
regulated touch. Through coordinated heritage performances in both spaces, it is clear to visitors
and parishioners that this artifact requires special attention.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the staff at the Ulster Museum and the clergy at St. Patrick’s Church.
Notes
1 The gesture of benediction is a symbol of divine blessing within the Roman Catholic Church. The hand
gesture is recognized by a right hand being raised while the ring and small singer are held down.
2 The flower of Ireland, used as a tool by St. Patrick to illustrate the Holy Trinity.
3 It is unknown whether the relic is a fragment from an arm or a hand bone, therefore the priest is referring
to the shape of the reliquary here. For more information about body part reliquaries please see the research
of Cynthia Hahn.
4 There are a myriad of reasons why relic veneration has lost its popularity, some of which I can speculate
here. During the height of its devotional popularity, there were accusations of manufacturing false relics
for profit; some accusations were based in truth, while other charges were criticisms of the church. Many
people are now detached from death and human remains. Dividing human remains challenges ideas of
respecting the dead. The mass production of plastic devotional objects has allowed people to buy cheap and
attractive looking sacred objects. Vatican II (1962) placed less importance on relics in the liturgy, which
means that some lay people are more devoted to relics than some people with religious orders. Finally,
many Catholics today have moved away from particular practices that have been labeled as “superstitions.”
Further study is required.
References
Bourke, C. (1993), Patrick: The Archaeology of a Saint. Belfast: HMSO.
Branham, J. (1994), “Sacrality and Aura in the Museum: Mute Objects and Articulate Space,” Journal of
the Walters Art Gallery 52/53 (1): 33–47.
Crooke, E. (2000), Politics, Archaeology and the Creation of a National Museum in Ireland: An
Expression of National Life. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
Gell, A. (1998), Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Godson, L. (2003), “Catholicism and Material Culture in Ireland 1840—1880,” Circa Art Magazine.
103: 38–45.
Hahn, C. (1997), “The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries,” Gesta 36 (1): 20–31.
Heatley, F. (1978), The Story of St. Patrick’s, Belfast, (1815–1977). Portglenone.
Lucas, A. T. (1986), “The Social Role of Relics and Reliquaries in Ancient Ireland,” Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 116: 5–37.
Maniura, R. (2018), “Agency and Miraculous Images,” in G. Jurkowlaniec, I. Matyjaskiewicz, and Z.
Sarnecka (eds.), The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art, 63–72. Oxon: Routledge.
Morgan, D. (2005), The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. California.
University of California Press.
O’Bryne, C. (1982), As I Roved Out. Belfast: Blackstaff Press; Facsimile of First Edition.
Walsham, A. (2010), “Introduction: Relics and Remains,” Past & Present 206 (suppl. 5): 9–36.
425
Interviews
Bourke, C., Queen’s University Belfast, February 28, 2019.
Conservator, Ulster Museum, Belfast, March 19 2019.
Parish Priest, Carryduff Parish Parochial House, January 29 2019.
O’Neill, Eugene, St Patrick’s Parochial House, Donegall Street, May 23 2019.
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Case Study
Chapter 46
Teaching in Musealized Religious

Spaces: Lessons from an Amsterdam Seminar
PAUL ARIESE
Case Study
Introduction
When religious buildings and objects are labeled as “heritage,” a shift in function and a
rearrangement of values take place. The transition of items from the religious realm to the secular
heritage domain evokes diverse emotions: some consider this development a sign of progress,
others experience a sense of loss. The meaning of religious heritage is thus rarely univocal.
Heritage professionals involved in the interpretation of religious heritage must anticipate the
questions and expectations of a diverse, contemporary audience; at the same time, they may be
expected to be aware of the value systems and practices originally associated with the spaces
and objects for which they have become responsible. To this end, it is essential to address the
theoretical, practical, and ethical questions raised by the heritagization of religious materiality
during the training of future heritage professionals. Considering that cultural heritage studies
“must teach to induce change and also teach to understand” (Dubuc 2011: 507), the Reinwardt
Academy (Amsterdam University of the Arts) decided in 2018 to introduce the subject of
religious heritage into the undergraduate curriculum, with special attention to the transformation
and reuse of religious buildings and the musealization of religious objects.
The vast majority of the current generation of Dutch students did not grow up within
institutional forms of religion. For cultural heritage students, this means that they often approach
religious heritage from an outsider perspective, making the knowledge and sensitivity that the
interpretation of religious spaces and objects requires not self-evident. The course Cultural
Heritage & Religion, initiated by the author, encourages students to explore and recognize
the diverse emotions, ideas, and interests associated with religious buildings and objects in a
heritage context, through a combination of concept-oriented lectures, practice-based tutorials,
and discussions with academics, heritage professionals, and representatives of various religious
communities. This chapter discusses the rationale and the design of the course and analyzes the
learning outcomes. Particular attention is paid to interpretive interventions that students proposed
for two musealized religious spaces in Amsterdam: the permanent presentation “Religion” in
the Great Synagogue, one of the sites of the Joods Museum (Jewish Museum), and the attic
427
church that is part of Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Museum Our Lord in the Attic).
The chapter shows how the course, and these cases in particular, stimulate a new generation of
heritage professionals to reflect on the question whether religious heritage could prompt more
than a reference to a distant past or a short-lived aesthetic experience.
The Challenge of Interpreting Religious Heritage

The Second World War left many synagogues deserted, damaged, or destroyed. In some cases,
this led to a process of musealization, whereby synagogues were turned into museums and
exhibits in one (Knufinke 2018: 12). In the Netherlands, such examples are found in Amsterdam
(Ashkenazi Synagogue Complex), Elburg, and Kampen. There are also synagogues in Amsterdam
(Portuguese Synagogue), Enschede, and Groningen, where religious use has continued
alongside the development of the buildings as heritage sites. For historic churches, meanwhile,
secularization and de-churching have formed a catalyst for conversion into museums or heritage
sites. A visit to a historic church or synagogue can evoke a “wow-experience”; Daan Beekers
argues that even after a religious site has lost its original function, it may be ascribed a “sacred
surplus”: the quality that results from the fusion of perceptions and experiences of material forms
with memories, knowledge, and imagination of the previous use of the space (2016: 39). The
hybrid character of these spaces allows for different interpretations, facing heritage professionals
with the question of how to position the religious past in the present.
Different from museum buildings designed as such, musealized religious spaces often
contain tangible signs of past activity, from a spatial layout based on liturgical practices and
walls embellished with images or texts to the dents and patina on benches and floors. These
characteristics might evoke affective connections with people from other times and ways of life.
Buggeln and Franco argue that museums “can help visitors understand how religion operates as
a common motivating force, for both good and ill, across a wide spectrum of belief” (2018: 185).
They suggest that carefully thought-out interpretive interventions may act as windows onto the
spiritual dimensions of place, objects, and practices. Positioned at the intersection of religious
and heritage spheres, musealized religious spaces provide an ideal setting to learn how to deal
with multivocality and ambiguity, especially when exhibition makers dare to avoid a distancing
or normative approach to religion. Explaining the circumstances and situations in which spaces
and objects were used and connecting them to personal stories, rather than forcing them into
abstract themes, creates a diverse and dynamic picture of how people do religion.
However, incorporating references to religious ritual and practice into the museum narrative
requires a careful balancing of visitors’ needs and expectations. Whereas some visitors may
hunger for the spiritual, others prefer purely secular, aesthetic, or educational experiences
(Buggeln and Franco 2018: 189). Reeve notes that the increasing interest in religion, even among
non-believing visitors, focuses not on what people believe but on how and with what people
believe (2018: 274). Reeve makes a crucial distinction here. Whereas the museum setting offers
rich opportunities to explore religious places, things, people, and practices, a public museum is
not the place to proselytize or immerse visitors in theological debates. At the same time, heritage
offers an opportunity to make religion a topic for discussion. Although some students are reluctant
to discuss matters related to religion at the beginning of the course Cultural Heritage & Religion,
this feeling gradually gives way for an openness to share personal experiences and learn about
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Teaching in Musealized Religious Spaces
different points of view. Instrumental to this shift in thinking is the design and approach of the
course, which is discussed in more detail below.
Taking Up the Challenge: The Cultural Heritage & Religion Course

The didactic approach of the course builds on Fink’s “Taxonomy of Significant Learning,” a
model that aims at creating an interactive learning experience and that combines knowledge
acquisition with the teaching of relevant skills and the development of a professional attitude
(Fink 2013: 35). The course design1 involves a combination of integrated learning activities. The
first half of the eight-week program offers an introduction to the material culture of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, and their representation in museums. Simultaneously, students discuss a
selection of key texts on the heritagization of religion (such as Buggeln, Paine, and Plate 2017;
Meyer 2019; Paine 2013). Visits to exhibitions on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic art and culture,
and to services in a synagogue, a church and a mosque make students familiar with insider
and outsider perspectives on religious “things.” The second half of the course focuses on two
practice-oriented assignments: students develop a proposal for an interpretive intervention in an
existing museum display on religion, and write an “opinion column,” which challenges them to
formulate a personal view on the interpretation of religious heritage.
Students’ motivations for joining the course are diverse. For some, a lack of personal
experience with religion and interest in the stories behind religious buildings and objects are
the main reasons for taking part. Others are interested in the relationship between secularization
processes and heritage formation, or are curious to what extent religious source communities
feel represented in museums. Students are also well aware of the challenges and chances facing
the Dutch heritage sector given the repurposing of thousands of historic churches in the coming
years, and therefore want to understand what drives the different stakeholders involved in
this transition. Given the diversity of the group and the subject’s complexity, creating a safe
and welcoming learning environment is considered of vital importance. Students are invited
to question anything they want to know about the subject. Although the majority of students
enrolling in the course Cultural Heritage & Religion are unfamiliar with any form of religious
practice, over the years it has become clear that they all approach the subject of religious heritage
with a curious and open mind (Ariese 2021).
Interpreting a Synagogue and an Attic Church

The course explains religious space as a manifestation of how a group of believers relate to God,
to each other, and their surrounding area. In the interior, what matters is not just decoration—
or its absence—but also spatial organization. An ark, altar, or pulpit reflect the community’s
religious identity and practice. Designated areas for sitting and standing, sightlines, and walking
directions facilitate and promote liturgical performances and contribute to the congregants’
experience (Keßler 2007: 20; Soen and Van Bruaene 2017). The interplay of architecture,
objects, people, and practices create a sense of sacredness and togetherness, distinguishing the
space from the everyday. However, as both religious space and museum space are loaded with
meanings, merging the two appears to be a complicated issue. The absence of liturgical uses of
space and objects, and the absence of an active community of users present heritage professionals
429
with challenges in the interpretive process: How can contemporary audiences experience a sense
of togetherness in a musealized sacred space? And how can the idea of sacredness, which the
space originally was meant to produce, be explained? To further explore these questions, the
students are assigned to develop an audiovisual or interactive medium that could be integrated
in an existing display in a musealized religious space. I describe here two of these proposals,
developed by the class of 2019/20.
One of the spaces students focused on was the Great Synagogue (1671), part of the synagogue
complex that was home to Amsterdam’s Ashkenazi community until it was closed by the Nazis in
1943. It was not until 1987, after extensive restoration, that the ruined complex reopened as the
Joods Historisch Museum (Jewish Historical Museum).2 The Great Synagogue was made the site
of a permanent presentation on “Religion”; however, at that time, the museum staff cautiously
avoided in the exhibition design a reference to the original ritual functions of the space and the
religious objects, out of respect to the sense of loss among Shoah survivors. In contrast, the
centerpiece of the current display (exhibition design by Donald Janssen, 2004; Figure 46.1) is a
reconstructed bimah (elevated reader’s desk); an evocative reference to the synagogue interior, it
includes a showcase with a Torah scroll that is pasul—no longer fit for liturgical use. Multi-media
presentations on the synagogue benches around the bimah show historical and contemporary
footage of Jewish religious life. The marble aron hakodesh (ark), the sole part of the interior
to survive the war, is now a showcase for Torah mantles, finials, and breastplates, a reference
to its original use as the place for keeping Torah scrolls. Next to the ark, the ner tamid (eternal
FIGURE 46.1 Jewish Museum, “Religion.”

Source: Jewish Cultural Quarter.
430
light) has been reinstalled. However, the light is extinguished to stress that this is no longer a
functioning synagogue (Berg 2014: 44–6).
The team of students working on the Great Synagogue wanted to clarify the meaning of the ark,
which they considered the display’s core object. They proposed installing an augmented reality
device, in which a short movie, virtually merging with the actual ark, would show a rabbi and a
chazan (cantor) performing the rituals associated with the Torah scrolls. From my viewpoint as
a lecturer, the discussions that were triggered by this proposal were as least as important as the
proposal itself. The students discussed the ethical concerns about the suggestion of continuity, the
use of objects, and the people acting in the film. When the students presented the proposal, they
argued that the hybrid nature of the augmented reality medium emphasizes the fate of the absent
Ashkenazi community while also revealing the meaning of the place, the objects, and the related
rituals. The presentation raised further questions: Is it appropriate to stage a sacred ritual in a
secular museum? Should the film include the actual reading of the kosher Torah scroll (without
such a scroll currently being present in the exhibition space)? Would only male adults participate,
privileging Orthodox Judaism over Liberal Judaism? Working in a real-life situation confronted the
class with a range of dilemmas and decisions, which were not all solved sufficiently. Nevertheless,
the discussions increased the students’ awareness of the complexity of the subject.
The second site that students explored was the museum known as Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder,
named after the hidden house church established here in 1663. Located a fifteen-minute walk from
the Great Synagogue, it is a lieu de mémoire that embodies Catholic life in Amsterdam through
the ages (Pollmann 2006: 306). When Amsterdam became Calvinist in 1578, the authorities
prohibited public celebration of Mass, but pragmatically allowed the installation of Catholic
house churches. Today, most house churches have disappeared, Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder being
one exception. The complex was made a Catholic museum in 1888, when the newly built St.
Nicolas Church was consecrated nearby. Today the attic church—the museum’s main object—is
framed as a symbol of religious tolerance in the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The hybrid character of Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder is particularly apparent
from the monthly “Attic Masses,” which were begun in the 1950s by a group of progressive artists
seeking to evade the control of the parish clergy (307). To this day, the Attic Mass periodically
transforms the space into a lively church. The deconsecrated but still-functioning church space,
the historical house museum, and the educational programs on tolerance in the new annex coexist
in a fruitful tension (De Bock, Custers, and Pool 2020).
Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder has chosen an audio tour as its main form of interpretation,
as text panels would interfere with the historic interior. The audio tour explains the construction,
restoration, and layout of the space and describes prominent interior elements such as the altar
and the organ. The students proposed to use a multimedia tour instead, shifting the focus from
material forms to personal stories. Via short films and sound fragments, partly fictive historical
characters such as a priest, an organ player, and different congregants would introduce visitors
to a celebration of Mass. An interactive plan of the church with characters linked to different
spots would stimulate visitors to move around, transforming the otherwise unconscious visitor
movement into a performance revealing different perspectives on the service. In the students’
opinion, this multi-vocal, site-based narrative would portray the attic church as “a place of faith,
togetherness, holiness, and adoration,” thereby distancing themselves from the more neutral idea
of “contemplation and reflection” propagated by the museum. While the museum frames the
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FIGURE 46.2 Attic Mass at Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, September 2020
Source: Paul Ariese.
Catholic faith as something from the past, projecting over its materiality a secular narrative of
tolerance, the students expect to trigger a secular audience by immersing them in the immateriality
of Catholicism, using contemporary exhibition techniques.
Lessons Learned
The course evaluations show that students understand the secularizing effect of musealization
on religious spaces and objects, including the tensions this shift brings. At the same time, they
become more critical of museum presentations that simply omit the religious story behind these
spaces and objects. The encounters with representatives of faith communities in particular are
experienced as an eye-opener. The class of 2020/21, for example, met with priest Ben de Bock,
who introduced them to the liturgy of the monthly Attic Mass in Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op
Solder. One of the students commented: “The passion with which he shared his experiences,
made me finally ‘understand’ what religion is about. I became aware of what faith means to him
personally, whereas in the past I have always watched it from a distance, as something of a group to
which I did not belong.” These encounters also give students insight into the diversity of thinking
within religious traditions and reveal the values that people place on religious buildings, objects,
or practices. The inclusion of both the expert’s outsider perspective and the believer’s insider
perspective in the course program influences the students’ interpretation of the assignments: both
sides are mentioned in the individual opinion columns and the group proposals.
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433
In general, students take the hybridity of musealized religious spaces and objects not as a
cause of confusion or a condition that needs further clarification. In what could be characterized
as a postsecular approach, they do not want to put religion at a distance but allow the “fruitful
tension” to exist, taking this as an impetus for dialogue. Students do not focus on the grand
narratives of religious traditions nor put the spotlights on the craftsmanship from which objects
emerged; instead, they aim to breathe new life into the spaces and objects by connecting them
with personal stories. While museums often avoid controversy in their exhibits, most students
believe that a museum should be a safe place to discuss controversial topics; for example, objects
can be exhibited that shed light on the different handling of gender issues or the ban on images
of living beings. However, the proposals also reveal how the students are struggling with these
idea(l)s. Their approach to storytelling has its limitations in that it reconstructs only a particular
moment in the history of religious use. Could musealized religious space also be used for critical
reflection on what contemporary society considers to be of ultimate, sacred value? Raising such
questions in class and on-site can eventually lead to a stronger identification with the search for
meaning that once inspired faith communities to create these places.
Putting Faith in Future Heritage Professionals

At the intersection of heritage and religion, heritage professionals have to fulfil a balancing act.
The course Cultural Heritage & Religion prepares a next generation of professionals to anticipate
the dynamics of heritage-making and the competing values and emotions underlying this. More
than the sharing of knowledge, encounters with curators, academics, and designers, as well as
with people of different faiths stimulate the participating students to put themselves in the shoes
of the other and to reflect on their own role, in order to determine what the way forward is.
The students’ contributions reveal the influences of new forms of spirituality on the experience
and use of heritage, strengthening the awareness that approaches to religious heritage serve as
indicators of the values that a society deems vital. Ultimately, the course challenges not only
students but also heritage professionals to rethink the “precarious balance” between the values of
the museum and the values that religious spaces and objects embody (Mairesse 2019: 21).
If museums indeed aspire be places of dialogue, both the heritage classroom and the museum
back office must be polyphonic spaces in which religion is not considered as taboo: “Museums’
mission is to help as many people as possible to understand the world, and understanding religion
is a key part of that” (Paine 2019: 159). At the same time, museums should leave visitors the
space to interpret religious heritage according to their own values. Engaging students in a
dialogue about the meaning of religious heritage, rather than providing them definitive answers,
is just what the course aims to do. The questions of how to transfer religious materiality from the
realm of faith to the domain of heritage and how to open up religious buildings and collections
for increasingly diverse audiences will continue to challenge the heritage sector over the coming
decades. For this reason alone, the theme of religious heritage deserves a solid place in the
training of future heritage professionals.
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank Ben de Bock (priest of the Attic Mass), Dr. Hermine Pool (Head of Collections,
Research and Presentations and Curator of Religious Heritage) and Anouk Custers (Head of
Education) at Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder for their willingness to share their insights on
the attic church. I also thank the members of the Reinwardt Academy Cultural Heritage Research
Group for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
Notes
1 The article “Interpreting Religion with Cultural Heritage Students” (Ariese 2021) provides an extensive
description of the outline and outcomes of the course in the academic years 2018/19 and 2019/20.
2 In 2021, the name was changed to “Jewish Museum.”
References
Ariese, P. (2021), “Interpreting Religion with Cultural Heritage Students,” Museum & Society 19
(1): 1–16.
Beekers, D. (2016), “Sacred Residue,” in S. Lanwerd (ed.), The Urban Sacred: How Religion Makes and
Takes Place in Amsterdam, Berlin and London/Städtisch-Religiöse Arrangements in Amsterdam, Berlin
und London, 39–41. Berlin: Metropol.
Berg, H. (2014), “Developing Concepts at Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum,” Studia
Rosenthaliana 45: 37–55.
Buggeln, G., and B. Franco (2018), “Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites. The Work
Ahead,” in G. Buggeln and B. Franco (eds.), Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites,
181–89. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Buggeln, G., C. Paine, and S. Brent Plate (eds.) (2017), Religion in Museums: Global and
Multidisciplinary Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.
De Bock, B., A. Custers, and H. Pool (2020), Interview by Paul Ariese at Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op
Solder, Amsterdam.
Dubuc, É. (2011), “Museum and University Mutations: The Relationship between Museum Practices
and Museum Studies in the Era of Interdisciplinarity, Globalisation and Technologies,” Museum
Management and Curatorship 26 (5): 497–508.
Fink, L. D. (2013), Creating Significant Learning Experiences. San Francisco: John Wiley.
Keßler, K. (2007), Ritus und Raum der Synagoge: Liturgische und Religionsgesetzliche Voraussetzungen
für den Synagogenbau in Mitteleuropa. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag.
Knufinke, U. (2018), “Synagogues in Museums, Synagogues as Museums, Synagogues and Museums -
Introductory Reflections on an Ambivalent Subject” in K. Keßler, A. von Kienlin, U. Knufinke, and A.
Weber (eds.), Synagogue and Museum, 11–21. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag.
Maraisse, F. (2019), “The Sacred in the Prism of Museology,” ICOFOM Study Series 47 (1–2): 1–22.
in the Netherlands,” in R. Buikema, A. Buys, and T. Robben (eds.), Cultures, Citizenship and Human
Rights, 64-88. Abingdon: Routledge.
Paine, C. (2019), “Beyond Museums: Religion in Other Visitor Attractions,” ICOFOM Study Series 47
(1–2): 157–69.
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Pollmann, J. (2006), “Amsterdam: Ons’ Lieve Heer Op Solder. Paapse Stoutigheden op de Wallen,” in
M. Prak (ed.), Plaatsen van Herinnering. Nederland in de Zeventiende en Achttiende Eeuw, 297–307.
Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker.
Reeve, J. (2018), “Beyond Belief,” Material Religion 14 (2): 274–7.
Soen, V., and A. Van Bruaene (2017), “Sacrale Ruimtes in de Vroegmoderne Nederlanden: Perspectieven
en Dwarsverbanden,” in L. Geevers and V. Soen (eds.), Sacrale Ruimte in de Vroegmoderne
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435
436
List of Contributors
Ayman Agbaria is a Palestinian researcher, poet, playwright, and social activist. He serves as
Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership and Policy in Education at the University
of Haifa. Additionally, he works for the Mandel School for Education Leadership as a faculty
member and the Shalom Hartman Institute as an academic advisor. He has published many
scientific articles and chapters in academic journals, and as an influential public intellectual, he
has appeared in many television and radio shows. His areas of expertise include: education among
ethnic and religious minorities, policy and pedagogy for civics education, Islamic education, and
teacher training.
Peter Aiers is the thirty-fourth master and chief executive of the Charterhouse. He was previously
the chief executive of the Churches Conservation Trust, a national charity caring for historic
church buildings across England, and had worked there for fifteen years. His background is in
historic building conservation and has always had a particular interest in how historic buildings
can best serve contemporary society. He has a track record of significant historic church building
development projects and also invented Champing™. He is a trustee of the Heritage Alliance, the
CIO of Goodwill Solutions, and also a member of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation.
Humayun Ansari is Professor of the History of Islam and Cultural Diversity in the Department
of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He lectures and supervises undergraduate
and postgraduate students. His academic research embraces ethnicity, identity, migration,
multiculturalism, Islam in the West, Islamism, and Islamophobia. He has written extensively on
Muslims in South Asia and Western societies. He is author of “The Infidel Within”: Muslims in
Britain Since 1800, The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North Indian Muslims (1917–
1947); Islam in the West; The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951; “The Muslim
World in British Historical Imagination: ‘Re-thinking Orientalism?,’ ” and “Attitudes among
British Muslims to Jihad, Martyrdom and Terrorism.” He was awarded an Order of the British
Empire (OBE) in 2002 for his services to higher education and race relations in the community.
Paul Ariese is Senior Lecturer at the Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam University of the Arts. He
lectures on religious heritage and exhibition development. Ariese is affiliated as a fellow with the
Centre for Religion and Heritage at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Ariese is currently working
on his PhD research, titled “The Sacred in Musealised Synagogue Space: Representations of
Jewish Religious Life in the Synagogues of the Amsterdam Jewish Cultural Quarter,” at the
Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, University of Amsterdam.
Carol Bakhos is Professor of Religion and Near Eastern Languages at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Since 2012, she has served as director of UCLA’s Center for
the Study of Religion. She is the author of several monographs and edited volumes: Islam and its
Past, edited with Michael Cook (2017); The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian and Muslim
Interpretations (2014); the coedited work, The Talmud in its Iranian Context (2010); Ishmael on
the Border: Rabbinic Portrayals of the First Arab (2006); winner of a Koret Foundation Award,
Judaism in its Hellenistic Context (2004); and Current Trends in the Study of Midrash (2006).
Bakhos is currently editing Emerging Judaism, the second of the ten-volume Posen Jewish
Anthology of Culture and Civilization.
Brenda Bartelink is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies
and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Groningen. She conducts qualitative
and ethnographic research on cultural encounters between people from diverse backgrounds,
in particular from sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe. She is interested in how people in
everyday practice navigate problems and issues related to diversities that tend to become morally
contested. Much of her research focuses on the intersection between religion, secularity, gender,
and sexuality. In addition, she contributes to a fruitful exchange between the domains of research,
policy, civil society, and arts.
Inge Basteleur is Project Leader Education at the Groningen Historic Churches Foundation,
the Netherlands. As project leader she is responsible for all things connected to education for all
ages, such as development of teaching and visitor materials and programs, supervising research
projects, and organizing events. She also played a role in the development of the project School
Church and the exhibition “Holidays! In East and West.”
Christoph Baumgartner is Associate Professor of Ethics at the Department of Philosophy and

Religious Studies at Utrecht University. His main research areas include: political philosophy of
religious diversity, freedom of religion, toleration, political secularism, democracy, citizenship,
environmental ethics, and ethics of climate change.
Marian Burchardt is Professor of Sociology at Leipzig University, senior research partner of

the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and associate fellow of
the Humanities Center of Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities—Beyond the West, Beyond
Modernities.” As a cultural sociologist, he is interested in how diversity shapes institutions
and everyday life. His research engages with the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of
religion, urban sociology, and theories of modernity, and draws on qualitative and ethnographic
methods. He is especially interested in how notions of diversity influence social life and public
space through nation-state regulations, law, and urban policy. He is the author of Regulating
Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West (2020) and Faith in the Time
of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa (2015).
Gabriela Bustamante is a designer at Design That Matters and a design teacher at The Hague
University of Applied Sciences. She addresses social challenges through design practice,
combining visualizing power with craftsmanship techniques. Her work draws on design to create
a solution space for questions around cultural diversity. Her Mexican heritage and migration into
the Netherlands are a source of inspiration. Her project “To Kiss or Not To Kiss: A New Souvenir
for a Multicultural Country,” in which she used Delft Blue as a technique and visual language to
represent cultural diversity in the Netherlands, is an example: http://tokissornottokiss.com.
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Becky Clark was the director of Churches and Cathedrals at the Church of England and
Secretary of the Church Buildings Council and Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England.
She trained as an archaeologist and has an MA in Heritage Management from the Ironbridge
Institute and an MBA from Warwick Business School. Becky previously worked for English
Heritage in the planning policy team and chief executive’s office, and before that at the National
Trust’s Stourhead estate. She is a council member of the European network Future for Religious
Heritage, and treasurer of the Society for Church Archaeology. Becky grew up in Birmingham
and now lives in the Falklands Islands.
Mathilde van Dijk teaches Cultural History of Christianity, Gender, and Heritage Studies in
the University of Groningen. She is an expert in Late Medieval Reform, concentrating on the
appropriation of the Early Church in the Devotio Moderna and the Carthusians. Her second
interest is the presence of the Middle Ages in contemporary culture. Recent publications
include: “Beyond Binaries: A Reflection on the (Trans) Gender(s) of Saints” (2021) and “Inventing
Secular Devotion: Dionysius the Carthusian and Dirc of Herxen on the Life of Married Folk”
(2020). Van Dijk is an associate director of the Centre for Religion and Cultural Heritage in
Groningen.
Chris Dols is Curator of Academic Heritage at Radboud University, Nijmegen. He formerly

worked at the Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastic Life and Culture, and has published extensively
on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century history of Catholicism in the Netherlands.
Jacobine Gelderloos studied theology at the University of Groningen and specialized in the use
of church buildings and religious heritage. In 2018, she finished a dissertation at the Protestant
Theological University on village churches and quality of life. She worked as a rural officer for
the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, and is currently working in pastoral care.
Kjelda Glimmerveen is a research master’s student of Religious Studies at the University of

Groningen. She specializes in religious heritage and popular culture and has completed archival
annotations on medieval manuscripts for the University Library in Groningen and the Dutch
Church in London. As an expression of her interest in education in heritage, she has designed a
lesson series for Dutch high schools regarding religion and cemeteries.
Abigail Green is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oxford and Tutorial
Fellow in History at Brasenose College. She is the author of Fatherlands: State-building and
Nationhood in Nineteenth Century Germany (2001) and Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator,
Imperial Hero (2010), which won the Sami Rohr Choice Award and was a TLS Book of the Year
and a New Republic Best Book of 2010, and of numerous articles, book chapters, and edited
volumes. As principal investigator of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project,
“Jewish Country Houses: Objects, Networks, People,” she works closely with heritage partners
across the UK and continental Europe, including the National Trust, the European Association
for the Promotion of Jewish Heritage and Culture (AEPJ), and the Centre des Monuments
Nationaux.
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Mar Griera is Director of the research group ISOR (Research Center for the Study of Religion)
and Associate Professor in the Sociology Department Faculty of Political Science and Sociology
at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She is also vice-dean in the Faculty of Political
Science and Sociology of the UAB and holds an ICREA research fellowship (2021–6). Her main
research expertise lies at the intersection of religion, spirituality, identity, and heritage regimes in
contemporary Europe. Mar’s primary academic background is in sociology, but she has engaged
intensively with other disciplinary fields in the course of her career, in particular, religious
studies, political science, and anthropology. She has coordinated several competitive projects in
these fields and has published their results extensively in leading academic journals and books.
Lejla Hadzic is a conservation architect with almost twenty years’ experience in architectural
conservation and cultural heritage management. She has worked extensively in Bosnia and
Herzegovina with postwar reconstruction; in Montenegro and Serbia with conservation,
community involvement, and conservation education; in North Macedonia with cultural heritage
management; in Kosovo with maintenance and management plans, as well as with heritage
education for professionals and children.
Amra Hadžimuhamedović was the leading expert in the implementation of Annex 8

of the Dayton Peace Accord for Bosnia and Herzegovina, managing the diverse projects of
integrating the cultural heritage into postwar recovery. She has taught history of architecture
and architectural conservation at the International University of Sarajevo since 2010 and guest
lectured on heritage in war and postwar, on theory and philosophy of conservation, and cultural
heritage management at universities and at international specialist courses across the world. She
has worked on postwar conservation projects and cultural heritage management plans, and has
published on Bosnian architecture and the rights-based approach to cultural heritage conservation,
including the monograph Heritage, War and Peace (2015) and the edited volume Human Rights
and the Destruction of Cultural Memory (2005).
Malachi Haim Hacohen is Professor of History, Jewish Studies, and Religion at Duke
University, and director of the Religions and Public Life Program. His research interests focus
on Central Europe and include social theory, political philosophy, and rabbinic culture. His Karl
Popper—the Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna (2000)
won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the AHA and Austria’s Victor Adler State Prize. His
Jacob & Esau: Jewish European History between Nation and Empire (2019) won the Center for
Austrian Studies’ Biannual Book Prize. He has published on the European Jewish intelligentsia,
Cold War liberalism, and cosmopolitanism and Jewish identity in leading professional journals.
He was a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the Center for Advanced
Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, and the Internationales
Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, and will be Leibniz Professor in Leipzig
in Spring 2023.
Rabia Harmanşah is Mellon Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. She holds
a Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of Pittsburgh and specializes in political anthropology,
ethnoreligious conflict, memory studies, and religion with a geographical focus on Southeast
Europe. She has conducted long-term ethnographic research on ethnoreligious groups in Turkey
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and Cyprus and involved with NGO projects addressing challenges of social conflict and cultural
heritage. She taught classes at University of Pittsburgh, Lafayette College, Bilkent University,
METU Northern Cyprus, and University of Cologne.
Ernst van den Hemel is a researcher at the Meertens Institute. In 2019, he joined the
interdisciplinary research group NL-Lab, at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on religion, heritage, and national identity.
He coedited The Secular Sacred. Emotions of Belonging and the Perils of Nation and Religion
(2020, with Markus Balkenhol and Irene Stengs).
Tharik Hussain is a fellow with the Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of
Groningen and an author, journalist, broadcaster, and consultant specializing in Muslim heritage
and culture. He is the creator of Britain’s Muslim Heritage Trails and has produced award-winning
radio on America’s earliest mosques and Muslim communities. His work is regularly published
across the globe, and his debut book Minarets in the Mountains: A Journey into Muslim Europe,
about Europe’s indigenous Muslim culture, was longlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize
in Non Fiction, shortlisted for the 2022 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award, and
named a Book of the Year by, among others, the Times Literary Supplement. Tharik has a masters
in Islamic Studies and has been named one of UK’s most inspiring British Bangladeshis. He is
also an advisor to the Foundation for Jewish Heritage and the Institute of Islamic Art Thailand.
Andrew J. M. Irving is Assistant Professor of Religion and Cultural Heritage at the

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and member of the Centre for Religion and Heritage. His research
centers on the cultural history of liturgy, with a particular focus on material approaches to
the production and use of liturgical manuscripts, and on liturgical objects, rituals, and spaces,
especially in Southern Italy. In addition to publications in Scriptorium, Bibliologia, Worship,
and Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, he has critically edited a commentary of Erasmus on the
schoolbook text known as the Distichs of Cato for the Erasmus Opera omnia. At Groningen, he
teaches critical approaches to heritage studies, museums, and material culture. With Groningen
colleagues, he is part of two Erasmus+ projects on religious heritage and social inclusion.
Árpád von Klimó is Professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
He has done research in different fields of Modern and Contemporary European history. His
recent publications include The Routledge History of East Central Europe, co-edited with Irina
Livezeanu (2017), Hungary since 1945 (2018), and Remembering Cold Days: The Novi Sad
Massacre, Hungarian Politics and Society since 1942 (2018).
Hans Krabbendam is the director of the Catholic Documentation Center, Radboud University,
Nijmegen. He was trained as an Americanist and has published on migration, religious exchange,
and mission.
Anjet van Linge is a sculptor. Her work has been labeled spiritual minimalism, and it explores
the questions that life raises: Where do I belong? Does hope have a shadow? Does my name
determine who I am? She works mainly with hammer and chisel. Her material took its time to
form and she works at a pace that invites noticing and attention. The physical contact between
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chisel and stone and the destruction that is needed to create are essential for her work. The
sculpture that emerges slowly invites her time and again to be still and watch, to see what is
already present. Van Linge is also an organization consultant, drawing on the processes of
noticing and not knowing, of attending to the here and now in her work with clients. She has
recently started studying theology, and with her husband she runs a tiny farm.
Eva Löfgren is Senior Lecturer in conservation, with a specialization in the built environment,
at the University of Gothenburg. Her research concerns changes in everyday use and meaning
of built environment, in particular, public space. Having for a long time focused on places of
worship as cultural heritage and contemporary cases of burnt and reconstructed church buildings,
she is currently leading the interdisciplinary project “Just Room? Architecture, Technologies and
Spatial Practice of the District Law Court,” which addresses effects of spatial changes of court
settings.
Andrea Longhi is Associate Professor of the History of Architecture at the Politecnico di Torino,
and deputy head of the Interuniversity Department of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning,
where he teaches history and criticism of territorial cultural heritage. His research activities focus
on liturgical Christian architecture and the heritagization processes of religious heritage. He is the
author of Storie di chiese, storie di comunità. Progetti, cantieri, architetture (2017), Architettura,
Chiesa e società in Italia (2010), and Luoghi di culto. Architetture 1997–2007 (2008). He is
a member of the scientific committee of Congresos Internacionales de Arquitectura Religiosa
Contemporánea and advisor to the Italian Bishops’ Conference (National Office for Cultural
Heritage and Worship Buildings) and the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Zohar Maor is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Bar Ilan University. In 2016, he published the
first Hebrew biography of Martin Buber; he also published “Kohn’s Buber, Buber’s Kohn: Hans
Kohn’s Biography of Martin Buber Revisited” (2018). He coedited with Yochi Fisher the
Hebrew collection Nationalism and Secularization (2019), and is currently working on the Israel
Science Foundation-sponsored project “The Anti-Secularist Theology of Martin Buber, Friedrich
Gogarten, Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessey.” Maor is one of the cofounders of
International Network of Inter-religious Research and Education (est. 2017) including scholars
from fifteen universities worldwide.
Julia Martínez-Ariño is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion and, since September

2022, the director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization at the University of
Groningen. She has conducted research in Spain, Canada, Germany, France, and Argentina.
Her main research interests include the Spanish contemporary Jewish communities and their
heritage practices, the governance of religious diversity in different institutional and urban
contexts, and apostasy and nonreligion in Catholic-majority countries. She is the author of Urban
Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe (2021) and coeditor of Urban Religious
Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces (2021).
Emma J. McAlister completed her PhD at Queen’s University Belfast. Her thesis, titled “Beyond
Materiality: Religion and Ritual in Museums and Heritage Sites,” examined how architectural
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space, display, and ritual performance affect the perception of religious objects in museums.
Outside of academia, she has worked in several art galleries and museums.
Birgit Meyer is Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University. Trained as a cultural

anthropologist, she studies religion from a material and postcolonial angle, seeking to synthesize
grounded fieldwork and theoretical reflection in a multidisciplinary setting. Her research is
driven by an urge to make sense of the shifting place and role of religion in our time, and to show
that scholarly work in the field of religion is of eminent concern to understanding the shape of
our world in the early twenty-first century. Awarded with the “Academy professor prize” and the
“Spinoza Prize” in 2015, Meyer initiated the comprehensive research program Religious Matters
in an Entangled World (www.religiousmatters.nl), which she is currently conducting.
Marie Vejrup Nielsen is Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at
Aarhus University. Her research field is contemporary religion with a special focus on Christianity
in Denmark. Publications include “Transforming Churches: The Lived Religion of Religious
Organizations in a Contemporary Context” (coauthor, Kirstine Helboe Johansen) (2019) and
“Religious Change and Continuity in a Danish Town: Results from a Mapping Project” (2018).
She is the coeditor of the online publication Religion in Denmark. She led the project “Religion—
Living Cultural Heritage” with support from the Velux Foundation.
Hilda Nissimi is Senior Lecturer of Modern History and was chair of the General History
department at Bar Ilan University, Israel. She has published The Crypto-Jewish Mashhadis: The
Shaping of Religious and Communal Identity in their Journey from Iran to New York (2007). Her
interest in the identity preservation of the Mashhadi Jewish community has led to her current
research on the presentation and shaping of identity in Jewish museums, on which she has
published several articles.
Maria Nyström holds a PhD in Conservation from the University of Gothenburg. Her thesis
“Managing Ecclesiastical Heritage—Transformation of Discourses, Roles and Policy in Sweden”
deals with the contemporary management and development of religious heritage, with a particular
focus on political policy and professional roles. Her research interests include religious heritage,
cultural heritage politics, urban development, and expertise within the heritage field. She has a
professional background in the museum field, and teaches art and architectural history.
Inayat Omarji was instrumental in leading the development of All Souls Bolton, one of the
Churches Conservation Trust’s flagship projects and has been a strong advocate for the work
of the trust in the local community. He has a passionate interest in community engagement and
was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to Built Heritage and the
Community in Bolton. He has strong strategic leadership experience gained from his career as a
senior manager in the statutory and charity sector, in particular working with Black and minority
ethnic communities, and supporting many local and national partners and organizations to make
a difference at grassroots.
Ankie Petersen is an independent researcher and project manager in the cultural heritage field.
She currently works as an officer in the field of Cultural Property Protection in the Dutch Armed
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Forces, having previously worked at the National Committee for UNESCO in the Netherlands
in several capacities.
Marcus R. Roberts is the founder and director of JTrails.org.uk, the official UK section of
the “European Route of Jewish Heritage.” JTrails was originally founded in partnership with
the National Trust in 2005 and it promotes research into Anglo-Jewish history, heritage, and
archaeology, and promotes the UK’s rich Jewish Heritage through the creation of Heritage Trails,
working with museums and heritage sites, publications, exhibitions, and Jewish heritage tourism,
while carrying out community-based heritage projects. He is also a heritage manager, consultant,
and a historian, and is a member of the team running the “Oxford University Jewish Country
House Project” and researching the history of the Jewish Country House. He researches the
Holocaust in the Channel Islands and campaigns for the preservation of Holocaust graves on
Alderney.
Aaron Rosen is a writer, curator, and non-profit leader, respected internationally for his work in
the public humanities, interfaith dialogue, and the arts. He is Executive Director of the Clemente
Course in the Humanities, a national non-profit delivering transformative college courses to low-
income adults. Dr. Rosen is also Visiting Professor in Sacred Traditions & the Arts at King’s
College London, where he taught previously. He served as Director of the Henry Luce III Center
for the Arts and Religion in Washington, DC and began his career as a fellow at Yale, Oxford, and
Columbia Universities. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Rosen has
curated dozens of exhibitions around the world and directs the not-for-profit Parsonage Gallery
in coastal Maine. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including What Would Jesus See?,
Art and Religion in the 21st Century, and Journey through Art.
Aike P. Rots is Associate Professor at the University of Oslo. He is the author of the monograph
Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: Making Sacred Forests (2017), and the
coeditor of Sacred Heritage in Japan (2020) and Formations of the Secular in Japan (special issue
of Japan Review, 2017), both with Mark Teeuwen. In addition, he has written articles and book
chapters on a range of topics, including whale worship in Japan and Vietnam, corporate religion,
Okinawan sacred groves, Asian heritage politics, modern Shinto, religious environmentalism,
contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism, and Japanese Christianity. He is currently leader of the
European Research Council-funded project “Whales of Power: Aquatic Mammals, Devotional
Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia,” a comparative study of changing
human-nature relations and ritual practices in Asia.
Emile G. L. Schrijver is General Director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam. It

includes the Jewish Museum, the Jewish Museum junior, the Portuguese Synagogue, the
Holocaust memorial site Hollandsche Schouwburg, and the National Holocaust Museum.
He is also professor of the “History of Jewish Heritage, in Particular of the Jewish Book” at
the University of Amsterdam. Schrijver is the curator of the private Braginsky Collection of
Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books in Zurich, Switzerland, and the executive editor of the
Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures, the first online volume of which published in November
2021. He is chair of the board of the Association of European Jewish Museums and serves on
boards and advisory committees of numerous Jewish cultural organizations inside and outside
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the Netherlands. In October 2021 he published his first work of fiction, De Hillel Codex, a literary
thriller.
Harald Schwillus is Professor of Catholic Religious Education at the Martin-Luther-University

Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. During the years 2005–7, 2009–11, and since 2015, he has served
there as an executive officer of the Institute of Catholic Theology and its Education; from 2010
to 2014 he was dean of the Faculty for Philosophy III at Halle-Wittenberg University. His
research interests are “Museums and Exhibitions as Places of Communicating Religion, Faith
and Theology” and “Religion between Culture and Spiritual Tourism.” He is the author of
several monographs and edited volumes, among others Religion ausstellen. Interdisziplinäre
Perspektiven zu (Re-)Präsentation und Kommunikation christlicher Inhalte und Objekte
im Kontext Museum und Ausstellung (2010), Wallfahrt ins Museum? Die Kommunikation
von Religion im Museum mit Blick auf die Besucherinnen und Besucher (2013), Religiöses
Kulturerbe im Wandel. Nutzung und Umnutzung des religiösen Erbes in Europa (2021), and,
together with Markus Globisch, Klostergärten und Spiritueller Tourismus. Eine qualitativ-
explorative Studie (2022).
Victor Sorenssen has been the director of the European Association for the Promotion of Jewish
Heritage and Culture (AEPJ) since 2017, where he coordinates the European Days of Jewish
Culture and the European Routes of Jewish Heritage, certified by the Council of Europe. He
studied political science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he did a stage at the
Observatory of European Policies. He has been director of the Comunidad Israelita de Barcelona
and founder of the Jewish cultural platform Mozaika, where he has helped develop projects such
as Sefer Barcelona, the Jewish Book Festival or the Salam-Shalom initiative, and Casa Adret, the
first Jewish Cultural Centre in Catalonia. Since 2022, Sorenssen has been working as a tutor at
the European centre for Jewish studies, Paideia, in Stockholm, Sweden, in the Project Incubator
programme.
Irene Stengs is a senior researcher at the Meertens Institute and professor by special appointment
of “Anthropology of Ritual and Popular Culture” at Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam). Her
publications include: Managing Sacralities. Converging and Contesting Claims of Religious
Heritage (2022; coeditors Ernst van den Hemel and Oscar Salemink); The Secular Sacred.
Emotions of Belonging and the Perils of Nation and Religion (2020; coeditors Markus Balkenhol
and Ernst van den Hemel).
Frank Strolenberg studied at Radboud University in Nijmegen and has worked in the culture
and heritage sectors for about thirty years. He was a program manager for the Cultural Heritage
Agency of the Netherlands from 2010 to 2022, during which time he led the program Future
Religious Heritage, among other things. He now works for his own company, which develops
strategies related to heritage, culture, and education.
Jolanda Tuma is a project leader of Kerk in het Dorp, a spiritual caretaker, and freelance pastor.
After her PhD (2000) in Biology, she took a bachelors in Theology (2006) and a masters in
Spiritual Care (2012). She was the village church ambassador for the Protestant Church of the
Netherlands (2018–20). Her interest in, and love for, spirituality, nature, and music provides a
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fertile ground for working in and studying the medieval churches in the rural environment of
Groningen, a northern province of the Netherlands.
Sander Ummelen has a passion for bringing people together in meaningful ways, and applies
his communication and organizing skills to do just that. He forms the other half of the consulting
agency Waardengedreven.
Stephan Ummelen consults with organizations on identity and ethics with his agency
Waardengedreven. He has been involved in several successful projects that cross boundaries
between religious heritage and a postsecular search for meaning.
Hinne Wagenaar is an ordained minister in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Formerly,
he was a chaplain to international students and taught African Theology in Cameroon. Presently,
he is the leader of the Nijkleaster community. He has authored several books and articles on
theology and spirituality in Frisian, Dutch, and English.
Welmoed F. Wagenaar is a PhD researcher at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands).

Her PhD project, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), examines processes of ritual
and sacralization in the everyday, online practices of media fans. Prior to this, Welmoed was a
junior researcher at the Meertens Institute, where she conducted research on the Utrecht St. Martin
celebrations as part of the international, HERA-funded project HERILIGION: The Heritagization
of Religion and Sacralization of Heritage in Contemporary Europe (www.heriligion.eu). She has
also written about open church projects in the context of the Dutch Museum Churches initiative.
Todd H. Weir is Professor of History of Christianity and Modern Culture at the University of
Groningen, where he is Director of the Centre for Religion and Heritage. He is the author or
editor of three books, including Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The
Rise of the Fourth Confession (2014), which won the 2016 Jacques Barzun Prize for Cultural
History. His most recent monograph is Red Secularism: Socialism and Secularist Culture in
Germany 1890 to 1933 (2023).
Ola Wetterberg is Professor in Conservation at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. One of

his research interests focuses on the formation of religious heritage as a professional field. He
has not only published on the history of the conservation profession but also on urban planning,
heritage, and infrastructure. He is the director for the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies at
UGOT and UCL. His latest book was an edited volume on churches as heritage, Alla dessa
kyrkor: Kulturvård, religion och politik (All These Churches: Conservation, Religion and
Politics) (2017).
Lieke Wijnia is Head of Curation and Library at Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. For her
research on the sacred in art museums, she received the 2017 Teylers Theological Society golden
medal. Her recent publications include Resonating Sacralities: Dynamics between Religion and
the Arts in Postsecular Netherlands (2022); Mary Magdalene: Chief Witness, Sinner, Feminist
(2021), and Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular (2018). She is the curator of
exhibitions on Mary Magdalene (2021) and Religion and Science (2024).
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Kim de Wildt completed her PhD at TU Dortmund University. She was a lecturer at the universities
of Bonn, Cologne, Dortmund, and Nijmegen, and worked at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr
University Bochum in the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaftfunded project “Transformations of
Sacredness: Religious Architecture in Urban Space in 21st Century Germany.” Currently she
is the principal investigator of the DFG-funded project “New Sacred Spaces by Example of
Multifaith Spaces” at Bonn University. Her research fields are Transformation of Sacred Space,
Multifaith Space, Church Reuse, Ritual Studies, Liturgical Studies, and Religious Education.
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by “n.” refers notes in the text.
Abraham Accords 199, 203 national 161

Abraham Fund 200 Romanesque 327
Abrahamic/Abraham art 367–70
as category of analysis 200–2 contemporary 368
as category of practice 202–4 in medieval churches 381–90
religions 199 Artiles, Jesus Cruz 367
Abrahamic Alliance International 199 Art is Therapy exhibition 70
Abrahamic Faiths Initiative 199 artistic engagement 371–9
adaptivity and resilience, Christian architecture 341–2 Delft Blue 373–7
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli) 369 religious heritage as space for diverse
Afriyie, Jerry 175 conversations 377–9
Agnon, Shmuel Yosef 210 Ashworth, G. J. 90, 139
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community 56 Assmann, Aleida 165, 167
Ahtisaari, Martti 152 Astor, A. vi, 86
Al-Andalus 42 attic church 429–32
civilization 44 Audir 84
mosque during 46 Auslander, Leora 72
Alan Gardner Associates 136 Austin, Hubert 134
Alexander (Bishop of Lincoln) 95 Austrian Muslims 39, 45
Alexander, Christopher 389 authorized heritage discourse (AHD) 174, 178,
Alexander, Jeffrey Charles 45, 130 182, 222
Alexopoulos, Georgios 401 Aya Sofia Mosque 39
alienation from society 166–7
All Souls Charity 136 Bacon, Roger 95
All Souls’ Church 134–8 Baldwin, James 173, 182
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) 165 Banja Luka waste landfill 107
Altink, Sietske 177 Bartmański, D. 45, 127, 130
al-Zamakhshari 220 Bavaria, Germany
Ammerman, Nancy 256 religious heritage in politics 164–5
Angkor Wat 16 Bavarian Cross Decree 165
“Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders” Beauvoir, Simone de 174
(Dryden) 367 Beekers, Daan 428
anti-clericalism, Central Europe 159–61 Beetke of Rasquert 178–9
anti-religious 161, 191, 193 n.6, 207, 290 Beier, Stefan 314
anti-Semitism 81, 92, 95, 97, 223 Belay, Haimanot 375
d’Anvers, Louis Cahen 70 Belbak, Fanny 180
Aquinas, Thomas 171 Benedict XVI (Pope) 25–6
Arab World 229–30 Benjamin, Walter 11
d’Arc, Jeanne 26 Berdyczewski, Micha Yosef 210
Archaeological Hall 131 Berlin, Germany
architecture House of One 124–32
Christian 341–2 museum director fired for program 67
48
Index
Royal Palace 127 culture war between the state and 160
Salam Shalom Initiative 80 Dutch 290
synagogues in 117 as heritage site 8
Besant, Annie 28 intolerance of 48
Bètacanon 177 investment in archeological ruins 46
Betts, Paul 25 in Ireland 420
Bevan, Robert 151 Josephinian reforms in Austria 159
Biale, David 209 not permitting complementary or alternative
Bi-communal Development Program 405 uses 251
bike lane churches 311, 312 proprietorship of the Mosque-Cathedral 42
Birth of Venus (Botticelli) 369 in Protestant Amsterdam (Ariese) 12
Blaman, Anna 182 register the Mosque Cathedral as its property
Blavatsky, Helena 28 45
Board with Church 358–9 resisted efforts by Muslim activists 5
Bock, Ben de 432 Roman 18, 118, 285, 320, 342, 425 n.1
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 321 in secular society 47
Bosnia 103–11 Spanish 46
cultural oblivion 107–9 usage hierarchy 114
destruction of religious heritage 106–7 in Wittenberg (Germany) 314, 315
identity programs 111 n.1 Catholic Documentation Centre (KDC) 263–6
mosques and churches role in cultural Catholic People’s Party (KVP) 264
landscapes of 110 Catholic Radio Broadcasting Company (KRO) 264
new religious buildings 107–9 Central Europe 156–61
religious heritage as intertwined identity 104–6 anti-clericalism 159–61
Sufi rituals banned in 105 Catholic reform 158–9
Botticelli, Sandro Christianization 157–8
Adoration of the Magi 369 confessionalization 158–9
Birth of Venus 369 heritage 161
bottom-up heritage practices 80 nationalism 159–61
Botton, Alain de 369 protestant reformation 158–9
Brenner, Michael 165–6 religion 159–61
Brookwood Cemetery Society 55, 58 Centre des Monuments Nationaux 70
Brookwood Military Cemetery 40 Cerezales, Nathalie 8
Bruce, Steven 28 The Religious Heritage Complex 23
Buber, M. 206, 209–12 Certeau, Michel de 309
Budeir, Sheikh 238 Chagall, Marc 74–6
Burchardt, Marian 24–5, 167 Children’s Psalm Book (Cohen) 73
Byzantine-Romanesque 152 Choay, Françoise 241–2
Chorin, Tovia Ben 129
Canon Laws 351 n.7 Christian Hebraism 228–9
Canon of Dutch History 177 Christianity 156–7
carceral heritage 174 architecture 341–2
Carey, Juliet 76 n.1 church life and 24
Carlos V 44 civilization and 25–6
Casa Adret 85 congregations 6
Cathedral Hill Project 143, 144 culture 26–7
Cathedral of Strängnäs 143 ecclesial vitality 345
Catholic Church 109, 264, 312 in Europe 20
artwork destruction in 159 heritage in nineteenth-century 420
in Catalonia 23 heritagization of 17
Communism and 161 historical Jewish and Judaic influences on 92
448
Index
national heritage 157 paradox of legislation counteracting public

Protestant 296, 304 significance 275–6
refashioning of 19 contemporary art 368
Semitic monotheisms 201 contemporary culture 230–2
Christian IV (King) 415 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible
Christianization in Central Europe 157–8 Cultural Heritage 296
Christian-occidental heritage 167 convivencia 5, 46–8, 130
Christian Reconquista 44 Cordoba Paradigm 48
Christian Social Union (CSU) 165 Cornejo-Valle, Mónica 27
Christmas 300–1 country houses, Jewish 69–76
churches. See also specific types Covid-19 138, 251, 289
buildings repurposed 290–1 creativity, heritage and 10–13
Germany 116–18, 119 Culp, Julia 180
Lutheran 271, 273, 275–7, 290, 305 n.3 cultural Bolshevism 25
as place for remembering 258–9 Cultural Heritage without Borders (organization) 151
as place of living religious heritage 257–8 culturalization of citizenship 193 n.2
as a place of work 384–5 cultural memory 218
policy plans 349 culture war 160
religious life and 255–6 cult value 16, 18
rites and interior 314 Cyprus 400–7
Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) 6, 24, 30 n.4, Hala Sultan Tekke 405–6
134–8, 141, 250 museums and religious spaces/objects 402–3
church fatigue 355–61 Saint Barnabas Icon and Archaeological
church heritage 289–93 Museum 403–5
postsecular 291–3
repurposed church buildings 290–1 Dale & Co. 91
“usage contestations” 290–1 Damascus Affair 230
Church of Holy Apostles 153–4 Danish Jewish Museum (DJM), Copenhagen,
Church of San Vicente Martir 46 Denmark 409–15
Church of Sweden 140 as a civic laboratory 413–14
citizenship, culturalization of 193 n.2 Danish National Archives 409
civic laboratory 413–14 Da Vinci, Leonardo 26
civilizing rituals 7 Davoli, Silvia 76 n.1
Cohen, Leonard 300 Dayton Peace Accord 106
Cohen, Nathaniel L. Dečani Monastery, Kosovo 153–4
Children’s Psalm Book 73 Dečanski, Stefan 152
collective identity 165–6 de-churching 19, 24, 337–9. See also churches
collective veneration 422–3 local differences among cities 338–9
colonialism 71, 127, 176 local governments 339
European 368 principles of 338
international trade and 374 secularization and 371
modern antisemitism and 229–30 decolonization 7, 40, 58
slave trade and 175 Deken, Aagje
Colston, Edward 367–8 Sara Burgerhart 181
Commission to Preserve National Monuments 106 De Kerkvernieuwers (Church Innovators) 355–61
Commonwealth War Graves Commission 40 Delft Blue 373
community ritual 301 engaging with 373–5
Comunidad Israelita de Barcelona (CIB) 81–4 making and playing with 375–7
confessionalization, Central Europe 158–9 Della Dora, Veronica 114
conservation professionals 271–7 Den Gamle By (The Old Town), Aarhus 11, 396
living heritage approach 272–3 Denvir, Cornelis 420
449
450
Index
Der Talmudjude (Rohling) 229 Muslims heritage in 29, 37–40

Designing the Body (research project) 10–11, 373 secular age 15
Deutsche Christen 171 European Association for the Promotion of Jewish
Dialogus inter Christianum et Judaeum de fide Heritage and Culture (AEPJ) 85, 87 n.1
catholica 95 European Council 175
Dienstencentrum Kloosterarchieven in Nederland European Days of Jewish Culture Festival
(KAN) 266 (EDJC) 85, 87
discernment criteria 347–9 European NOA (Networks Overcoming Antisemitism)
Dom Church 188 Project 85
Dryden, John European Union
“Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders” 367 Christianity in 25
Dubnow, Simon 209 integration of Turkey into 27
Duda, Andrzej 156 Evangelical-Lutheran Church 305 n.3
Duncan, Carol 7 Everyday Muslim Archive and Heritage Initiative
Durenkamp, Lisette 385, 388 (EMAHI) 52–9
Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency 337 contested heritage 56–8
Dutch Museum Churches (project) 19 creative outputs 59
Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlands Hervormd) 298, gatekeepers 59
305 n.3, 320 launch 59
dzokawo (charms) 18 local partners 59
The Muslim Cemetery Walk 55
Early Middle Ages 176 The Woking Trail 54
Early Modern Europe 228–9 exhibition design 329–32. See also specific entries
East Cliff Lodge 73 exhibition value 16, 18
Eastern Orthodox Church (Serb) 107–9
ecclesiastical heritage Face It! (project) 67
in Sweden 140, 144–5 Fairclough, Graham 242
tangible features of 144 Farage, Nigel 26
ecclesiastical rules 343–5 Faro Convention 5, 163, 168, 175, 345
Eckhart, Meister 171 Feast of Sharing 186, 189
ecosystem services 242 Ferdinand III (King of Castile) 44
education. See religious education Ferragni, Chiara 369
Eenrum 280–5, 382, 385–6, 387 First World War 39, 40, 156, 207. See also Second
elective monotheisms 200–1 World War
El-Mecky, Nausikaä 367 Flotel Europa (Tomic) 414
English Civil War 24 Floyd, George 367
English Heritage 91 Fortuyn, Pim 26
Episcopal Conferences, survey of 347 Forum for Intercultural Dialogue 128
Escudero, Mansur Abdussalam 39 Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural
ethical jurisdiction 343 Heritage for Society 242
EuroArab (nonprofit association) 82 Free Voters of Bavaria 165
Europa Laica (Spanish secular organization) 45 Frijhoff, Willem 7, 256
Europe 4–5 Frisia, the Netherlands 339
Central 156–61 “From the Wells” (FTW) 218–19, 222, 224
Christianity in 20 Fuller, M. 127
culture 25, 27 Future for Religious Heritage 337
Early Modern 228–9 Fyfe, David Maxwell 25
Hasidic heritage in 206–15
heritage discourse and religious change Gabriel, Astrik 235
in 22–9 Gario, Quincy 175
modern antisemitism and colonialism 229–30 Garmerwolde School Church 6
450
Index
Gates, Theaster Harrelson, Walter 237

Sanctum 368 Harrison, Rodney 79
Gell, Alfred 423 Hasidic heritage 206–15
Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan government) 81 Hasidic renaissance 209–12
German Democratic Republic (GDR) 112, 118 Hasidism 206–9
Germany 112–20. See also specific cities Hebraica Veritas 227
churches 118, 119 Helaas, Paul 28
making, unmaking, and remaking sacred Helmster Easter Play 254, 257–8
space 114–15 Helmster Klokkenluiders 255
mosques 118–19 Hemelsbreed (Under the Vast Heavens) (research
multifaith space 116–17, 119–20 project) 7, 22, 30 n.1
shared sacred space 113–14 HERILIGION: The Heritagization of Religion and
synagogues 115–18, 119 Sacralization of Heritage in Contemporary
transforming religious landscape 114–17 Europe 187
Gerritsma, Marijk 383 heritage 4–8, 367–70. See also specific types
Geschiere, Peter 193 n.2 ambivalence of 207–8
gesture of benediction 425 n.1 Central Europe 161
Giants at the Flood (panel) 94, 95 communities 163, 345–7
Goldsmid, Henry d’Avigdor 75 conservation, defined 272
Goldsmid, Rosemary 75–6 creativity and 10–13
Goldsmid, Sarah 76 in education 327
Graetz, Heinrich 209 empowers, Netherlands 176–7
Grand Hotel Europa (Pfeijffer) 323–4 as narrative, Netherlands 174–6
Great Britain as a process 327
legality of Jewish land ownership 70 professionals 433
Muslim Heritage Trails 54–5, 59 religion and 16–19
Great Synagogue 429–32 between secular and religion 8–10
Greek Cypriots 400, 404–7 trails, Anglo-Jewish 72
Green, Abigail 76 n.1 Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastic Life
Greenhalgh, Nathanial 134 (ENK) 266–7
Greenhalgh, Thomas 134 Heritage Lottery Fund 91
Groningen, church in 297–300 heritagization 199, 208, 304
Groningen Canon 177, 179 of Christianity 17
Groningen Historic Churches Foundation (Stichting of Hasidic Eastern European sites 213
Oude Groninger Kerken) 6, 9, 326–7, 329, 333 negotiations and 12
Groot, Marc de 383 pluralization and 26–7
Saaxumhuizen 386, 388 processes and ecclesial life 342–3
Grossteste, Bishop Robert of religion, St. Martin 186–7
On the Cessation of the Laws 95 secularization and 8, 10, 23–6
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs 95 spiritualization and 27–9
Gülen, Fetullah 128 hermeneutical process 324
Hernández, Félix 46
Haan, Jacob Israël de 182 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle 24
Habermas, Jürgen 8, 26, 309 Highgate Cemetery, London 55
Hagia Sofia, Istanbul 5, 39 highway churches 311–12
Haissan, Zouahir 81 Hill Monastic Museum and Library (HMML) 234–43
Hala Sultan Tekke (Cyprus) 405–6 Eastern Christian Manuscript Collection 237–8
Hälsinglands Museum 141, 144 listening and hospitality 240–1
Hamra Church 141–3, 144–5 monastic ecumenism 240
Haram, Umm 405 Hinterhofmoscheen (backyard mosques) 118
Hardy, Thomas 249 Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd (Mak) 321
451
452
Index
“Holidays! Know what you are celebrating” (Feest! Jewish Cultural Quarter 63–4
Weet wat je viert) 328–9 Jewish heritage 5, 53, 63–8, 70–3, 75–6, 80, 83,
The Holocaust in American Life (Novick) 89–98, 206, 250, 410–12, 413
64 Jewish Heritage UK 71–2
Holocaust in relation to Jewish heritage Jewish Museum 12
64–5 Jewish Telegraphic Agency 82
Holocaust museum 65–6 Joods Historisch Museum (Jewish Historical
Holy Door 12–13 Museum) 430
Homomonument 173 Joseph II 159
homosexuality 26, 182 Jover-Báez, J. 46
Horodetzky, Shmuel Aba 210 JTrails (Jewish heritage organization) 72, 76 n.4,
House of One (Berlin) 124–32 97
eventization and mediatization of 128 Judeo-Christian 17, 27, 200, 293
interreligious heritage 129–32 culture 25, 26
urban space 126–9 humanist 29
Hugh of Avalon (bishop) 96 Junta Islámica 48
Iberian Peninsula 44, 52 Kafka, Franz 209, 210

Ibn Kathir 220, 221 Kaldenberg, Leen 385
Immerather Dom 118 Westernieland 385
Imperial War Graves Commission in 1921 39 Kamal-ud-Din, Khwaja 56
inclusive heritage 188–9 kami 301
infrasecular geographies 114 Kapsner, Oliver 236
Institute for Protection of the Natural and Cultural Keizer, Wianda
Heritage of Serbia 153 Saaxumhuizen 385
intangible heritage 296, 301–3 Kepnes, S. 218
intense human response 423 Kerk in het Dorp (Church in the Village) 280–1, 283,
International Network for Interreligious Research and 285–6, 382
Education (INIRE) 232 Kihondo, Bahia 375–6
interreligious dialogue 79–87 Kim, Patricia 173
interreligious heritage 129–32 “Kings and Citizens” exhibition 410
intertextuality, Islam perspective on 219–21 Kom, Anton de 181
invented traditions 223 Kosovo, Orthodox monasteries in 151–4
Inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Kuehn, Wilfried 127
Netherlands 187, 189 Kurti, Albin 153
Islam Kuyk, Elza 19
perspective on intertextuality 219–21 Kuyper, Abraham 25
Spanish converts to 48 Kyōdōtai 301–3
“Islam, It’s Also Our History! Europe and its Muslim
Legacies” (exhibition) 38 Ladenmoscheen (storefront mosques) 119
Islamophobia 81 Lady Judith Montefiore Theological College 73
Isnart, Cyril 8 Lamentation for the Forsaken 369
The Religious Heritage Complex 23 Lamprakos, Michele 44
Israiliyat 220–1 Lange Nacht der Religionen 80
lantern walking 186–8, 193 n.1
Jacobs, Aletta 178, 180 Laylat Al-Qadr (Night of the Decree) 330–1
Jaffee, Martin 200–1 Lederer, Klaus 128
Janjić, Fra 153 legba (fetishes) 18
Janssen, Joks 263 Legend of the Jew of Bourges 97
Jewish-Christian heritage space 91–2 leisure tourists, church for 313
Jewish country houses 5, 69–76 Leitner, Gottlieb Wilhelm 54
452
Index
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Hebrew Charter 95

Nathan the Wise 130 Helmster Easter Play 257
Levitt, Peggy 395 Jewish and Christian faiths 92
Liberated Reformed (Vrijgemaakt Gereformeerd) Jewish community 89
298, 300 Jewish heritage 90
Libeskind, Daniel 410 Jewish quarter 83
Lincoln “Blood Libel” of 1255 89 Jewish usurer 90
Lincoln Cathedral 89–99 Jews’ Houses 89
hostile religious imagery 97–8 Lithuania 53
Jewish-Christian heritage space 91–2 mystics 171
neutral and philo-Semitic imagery 92–7 Spain 5
plan of Jewish heritage locations in 93 synagogue 89
Lincolnshire Jewish Community (LJC) 90–1, 97 Western Europe 98
Lincolnshire Methodist Circuit 91 “Meet the Sikhs” exhibition 397–8
Liturgische Spiritualiteit (Quartier) 386 memorial culture 256–7, 259–60
living heritage approach 272–3 metaphysical monotheism 201
Louis XV 70 Meyer, Birgit 6, 125, 214
Lukaszewicz, Pawel 85 Mezquita-Cathedral Platform. Patrimony for all
Luther, Martin 164 (Plataforma Mezquita Catedral, Patrimonio de
Lynch, Kevin 415 Todxs) 47
Middle Ages 227–8
MacGregor, Neil 70 Midwerd 297, 299, 300, 301, 303, 304–5 n.1
magisterium 343–5 migration 26, 117, 129, 175, 410–11, 413
Mahmood Mosque of the Ahmadiyya community, minorities. See religious minorities
Haifa 222 minority heritage 409–15
Maizière, Thomas de 164–5 Mishnah 227
majority narratives 395–6 mission societies 17
Mak, Geert monasticism 319–25
Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd 321 Nijkleaster (New Cloister) 321–2
Mandatory Palestine 224 n.1 opposition to 322–3
Al Mansur 52 The Monastic Landscape of Saxony-Anhalt
Mar’i, S. 223 (Beier) 314
Martin, David 24 Monastic Manuscript Project 235–6
Martini, Raymond Monk’s Work project 381–90
Pugio Fidei 228 church as a place of work 384–5
Marx, Reinhard 165 Monnikenwerk (Monks work) 10. See also Monk’s
Massignon, L. 200 Work project
matsuri 296, 301–4 Montefiore, Moses 73
meaning making 28 Montini, Giovanni Battista 235
medieval era 97 Morgan, David 70
Anglo-Jewish Community 89 Morpurgo, Louise de 70
Biblical exegesis 95 Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba 42–50
Cathedral of Strängnäs, Sweden 139 Christian narrative 46
Catholic 9 inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage
Christian Europe 227 List 42, 43
Christianity 27 pluralistic narrative 47–9
Christian scholars skilled in Hebrew 95 political pedagogy 49
church 9, 10, 75, 253, 274, 280, 282–5, 298, presentation and controversies 43–5
327, 381–90 secular narrative 47
England 5, 94 mosques 396–7. See also churches
English Jews 98 Germany 116–19
453
454
Index
Mosse, Rudolf 71 Ocean Space 368

Moyal, Shimon 230 Offa (Anglo-Saxon king) 52–3
Mozaika (nonprofit association) 81–2, 85 Old Frisian Churches Foundation 320
Muḥammad 52, 219, 220 Old Testament 94. See also New Testament
Muhammadan Cemetery 58 Oliphant, Elayne 27
multiculturalist place 125 OMI Architects 136
multifaith space 116–17, 119–20 On the Cessation of the Laws (Grossteste) 95
Muriel & Gershon Coren Charitable Foundation oral culture 227
91 Orbán, Viktor 4, 26, 156
musealized religious space 427–33 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
Museum Catharijneconvent 19, 194 n.7 (OSCE) 153
museumification of religious sites 400–7 Orthodox Church 109, 404–5
Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Museum Our Bijeljina 108
Lord in the Attic) 428, 431–2 Bosnia 108
The Muslim Cemetery Walk 55, 56 communism 161
Muslim Heritage Trails 5 Groningen 298
Muslims Kosovo 108, 152, 153
activists 5 Orthodox monasteries (Kosovo) 151–4
Bosniak identity 107–8 Ostjudentum 209
in Europe 37–40 othering of religious minorities 166–7
from North Africa 52 Oxford 70
Nachman of Bratzlav 210–11, 213 Paine, Crispin 17

Napoleonic Wars 24 Palestine 212, 224, 227
Nara Document on Authenticity 296 Paley, Edward Graham 134
Nathan the Wise (Lessing) 130 Palm, Etta 180
National Holocaust Museum 66 Parish of Ljusnan 143, 144
nationalism, Central Europe 159–61 participatory archive 243
National Lottery Heritage Fund 136, 138 Partridge, Christopher 28
National Trust 69 Paul II, John (pope) 161
Natural and Cultural Values as a Basis of Touristic Paxton, Joseph 73
Development 141 PCCASI (Central Pontifical Commission for Sacred
Nazism 173 Art in Italy) 344
Netherlands 171–83, 262–8 Peace Garden in Woking. See Woking Muslim War
Catholic Documentation Centre (KDC) 263–6 Cemetery
city walk 177–81 Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard
heritage as a narrative 174–6 Grand Hotel Europa 323–4
Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastic Life Pietas Austriaca 159
(ENK) 266–7 Pilgrimage Foundation in Groningen 305 n.5
naming the streets 181–2 Pim Pam Pompen 289, 291
polyphonic heritage 182–3 Pioneer Sites program 9
Networks Overcoming Antisemitism (NOA) 87 n.1 Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford 7
New Testament 94. See also Old Testament Plante, Julian 237
Nicholas of Lyra 95 Plas, M. van der
Niemans, Sybilla Alida Johanna 177 Uit het rijke Roomsche leven (From the Rich
Night of Religions 80, 84 Roman Life) 264
Nijkleaster (New Cloister) 9, 321–2, 323 pluralization 26–7
Nora, Pierre 176 politics 163–8
Notre Dame de Paris 164 alienation from society 166–7
Novick, Peter controversies in Bavaria 164–5
The Holocaust in American Life 64 of funding 190
454
Index
of heritage and religion, St. Martin 190–1 religious buildings, attacks on 119
inclusiveness of 168 religious communities 345–7
as marker of collective identity or national challenges in secularizing societies 249–52
culture 165–6 religious education 314
othering of religious minorities 166–7 The Religious Heritage Complex (Isnart and
polyphonic heritage 182–3 Cerezales) 23
Pompadour, Mme de 70 Religious Heritage in a Diverse Europe conference 3
Pontifical Council for Culture 340–50, 350 n.1 religious hybridity 157
2018 Guidelines 341, 347, 350 n.3 religious minorities 395–9
discernment criteria 347–9 cathedral 396–7
ecclesiastical rules 343–5 challenging majority narratives 395–6
sociological interpretations 343–5 Den Gamle By (The Old Town) in Aarhus 396
survey of Episcopal Conferences 347 engaging complex narratives 398–9
postsecular church heritage 291–3 Immigrantmuseet in Farum 397–8
power 367–70 meetings in and through museums 397–8
Prayer and Teaching House Berlin (Bet- und mosque 396–7
Lehrhaus) 127 Roskilde Museum 396–7
Pride Photo/Adult Alternative exhibition 359–60 religious sites, museumification of 400–7
Protestant Churches 8–9, 24, 117–19, 255, 290, religious spaces/objects 402–3
300–1, 312 religious tourism 310–11, 312–14
Protestant Reformation, Central Europe 158–9 repurposed church buildings 290–1
Proviantgården 412 resilience 15, 18, 106, 341–3, 349
Puett, Michael 295–6 Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme 85
Pugio Fidei (Martini) 228 Robert (bishop) 96
Roberts, Marcus 72
Quartier, Thomas Rodríguez, Antonio Manuel 45
Liturgische Spiritualiteit 386 Roes, Jan 262
Rogozen-Soltar, Mikaela 48
Rabbinical Judaism 94 Rohling, August
Racism 40 Der Talmudjude 229
Radboud Church in Jorwert 320 Romero, Óscar 171
al-Rahman I, Abd 44 Rosa, B. 46
Ranitz, Magdalena de 180 Roskilde Museum 396–7
Rathenau, Walter 70, 210 Rothschild, Hélène de 70
Räume der Stille (silent rooms or rooms of quiet) 120 Rothschild, Schloss 71
al-Razi 220 Rotterdam 339
Recycling Jesus (exhibition) 17 Rotterdam Witte de With-Museum 175
Reformation 24, 113, 157–9, 188, 253, 298, 320, 327 Routes of Dialogue 79–87
Reformed Churches (Gereformeerd) 305 n.3 European days of Jewish culture festival 85–6
Reichskristallnacht 115 origin of 80–3
Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam University of the Royal Library in the Hague 177
Arts) 427 Royal Palace 127
relic veneration 425 n.4 rural churches 280–6. See also churches
religion Kerk in het Dorp project 281, 285–6
Central Europe 159–61 as place for cultural activities 283–4
as chain of memory 24 as place for spirituality and meaningfulness 284–5
as expression of believing 24 as place for worship 283
heritage and 8–10, 16–19, 256–7, 259–60 villages and cultures 281–3
rural heritage 254–7 rural heritage 253–60. See also heritage
“Religion—Living Cultural Heritage” project 395–6 church as place for remembering 258–9
religious affiliation 303 church as place of living religious heritage 257–8
455
456
Index
Helmster Easter Play 257–8 of St. Martin 187–8

memorial culture and religion heritage 256– self-religions 28
7, 259–60 Semitic monotheisms 201
religion and memorial 254–7 Serbia 152–3
Russian Orthodox Church 108, 298 Serbian Orthodox Church 153
Russian Revolution 24 Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking 53, 56, 57
Rutte, Mark 27 shared sacred space, Germany 113–14
Sharing Arts Society (SAS) 190
Saada, N. 223 shieldmaidens 176
Saaxumhuizen (de Groot) 386, 388 Shrine of Little “Saint” Hugh of Lincoln. See Lincoln
Saaxumhuizen (Keizer) 385 Cathedral
sacralization 114–15 “The Shrine of St. Patrick’s Hand” (Ulster Museum in
sacred residue 18 Belfast, Northern Ireland) 418–25
sacred space, resacralization of 115 collective veneration 422–3
sacred waste 17 shrines 108, 115, 296, 301, 302, 305 n.9
Saint Barnabas Simultankirchen 113
Icon and Archaeological Museum (Cyprus) 403–5 Singh, Kavita 11
Monastery (Cyprus) 400, 404 Sinterklaas 175–6, 193 n.4
Saint Hugh of Avalon 94 Sistine Chapel 18
Saints and Scholars Gallery (exhibition) 419, 421 Smith, Laurajane 174
Salam Shalom Initiative (civil-society organization) sociological interpretations 343–5
80–2, 84 Söder, Markus 165, 167
Sala Santa Rita, Campitelli, Rome 346 Sölle, Dorothee 171
Salvini, Matteo 26 Soviet Union 213
same-sex marriage 182 Spanish Muslim Community 48
Sanci, Kadir 129 spiritualization 27–9
Sanctum (Gates) 368 spiritual tourism 308–16
Sara Burgerhart (Wolff and Deken) 181 religious tourism 310–11, 312–14
Sartore, Verónica 80–1 spiritual voyage 310–12
Sassoon, Albert 71 Stammers, Tom 76 n.1
Sassoon, Philip 70, 71 Starbucks Coffee, Uman, Ukraine 213
Sayyah, Abdur Rasheed 56 State of Israel 212–14, 217–24
Schenkendorf, Schloss 70 “From the Wells” (FTW) 218–19
Schippers, Inez 256 Islamic perspective on intertextuality 219–21
Schlenker-Fischer, Andrea 105 Stausberg, Michael 310
Schmidt, Annie M. G. 178 Sternberg, Thomas 164
School Church, Garmerwolde 326–33 Stewart, Columba 238
exhibition design 329–32 stillness and silence 383–4
heritage in education 327 St. Martin 186–93
responses 332–3 heritagization of religion 186–7
Schreiber, Michael 85 history and secularization of 187–8
Schwegman, Marjan 182 inclusive heritage 188–9
scriptural heritage 199–205 politics of heritage and religion 190–1
Abrahamic 200–4 Stolpersteine 173
Second Vatican Council 344 St. Petri Square 124–7
Second World War 25, 126, 128, 160, 173, 181, 213, subversion 214–15
235–6, 254, 413, 428. See also First World War Sufism 104
secularism studies 24 sustainability 349
secularization 125, 208, 250, 259 Sweden 139–46
de-churching and 371 case studies 140–3
heritagization and 8, 10, 23–6 Cathedral of Strängnäs 139
456
Index
ecclesiastical heritage in 140, 144–5 Urmonotheismus 201

opportunities and challenges for practitioners in 145 “usage contestations” 290–1
Swedish Heritage Act 275–7 Utrecht St. Martin. See St. Martin
synagogues, Germany 115–18, 119
Szczesniak, Anna 85 van de Port, M. 125
van der Pant, Theresia
al-Tabari 220 Aletta Jacobs 178
Tafsirs 220 van Deventer, Chris 188–9
Talmud 226–32 van Linge, Anjet
Christian Hebraism 228–9 Eenrum 385–6, 387
in contemporary culture 230–2 van Oeckelen, Petrus 327
in Early Modern Europe 228–9 Vatican II 425 n.4
in Europe and the Arab World 229–30 Vatican Museum 18
Jewish studies 230 Victoria & Albert Museum 76 n.2
Middle Ages 227–8 village church 9, 253, 255, 295–305 n.1, 382
modern antisemitism and colonialism 229–30 Christmas service 300–1
oral culture 227 in Groningen 297–300
paradoxes 230 ritual as intangible community heritage 301–3
on trial 227–8 secular gathering in 254
Talmudjude (the Talmudic Jew) 229 tradition and innovation in 280–6
Tammens, Sieta 180 Tudeley 74, 75
“Taxonomy of Significant Learning” model 429 Viola, Bill 368
Taylor, Breonna 367 Virgin Mary 44, 94, 97
Teresa of Avila 183 Visit Jewish Italy project 71
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (Grossteste) 95 visual piety 70
Teutonic Knights 53 Vogue Hong Kong 369
“The Giving of the Law—Traditions” exhibition 411 Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) 27
Thompson, Bruce 91 Volozhin Yeshiva 229
Timmer, Marianne 180–1 voyage, spiritual 310–12. See also spiritual tourism
Tomic, Vladimir Vytautas (Duke of Lithuania) 53
Flotel Europa 414
Tonkers, Evelien 193 n.2 Wallace, J. 372
tourism. See religious tourism; spiritual tourism Walter, N. 348
tourists War of the Worlds (Wells) 54
church for 313 Warsaw Pact 236
guidebook 314 Ways of the Cross 108–9
at religious sites 309–10 Weevers, Arent 368
Trijntje 181 Weir, Todd 160, 291
Tunbridge, J. E. 90 Wells, H. G.
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) 400 War of the Worlds 54
Weltanschauung 210
Uit het rijke Roomsche leven (From the Rich Roman Western Christianity 156. See also Christianity
Life) (Plas) 264 Western Civilisation 156
Ulbricht, Walter 118 Western culture 25
Umayyad dynasty 44 Westernieland (Kaldenberg) 385
UNESCO 23, 25, 43–5, 47, 153, 175, 187, 189, 207, Western monotheisms 200
302, 401 Wetterberg, Ola 292
Union Libérale Israélite de France (synagogue) 73 Wijnia, Lieke 370
universalism 214–15 Wilde, Oscar 182
UN Security Council 152 Wilders, Geert 26
urban space, revamping 126–9 William of Bourges 94
457
458
Index
Wilson, Ross J. 173 Yahanbegloo, Ramin 47–8

Winkler, Heinrich August 27 Yom Kippur War 212
Winnicott, Donald 388 “You Must Tell Your Children” (exhibition)
Wissenschaft des Judentums 230 410
With, Witte de 175
Woking Muslim War Cemetery 54 Zabrdje (cultural landscape) 105
Woking Trail 54 Zaragoza, Federico Mayor 45, 47
Wolff, Betje Zarnecki, G. 94
Sara Burgerhart 181 Zwarte Piet 175–6, 183
458

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The Bloomsbury Handbook

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY:

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions,

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Migration,

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature,

The Bloomsbury Handbook

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

First published in Great Britain 2024

Copyright © Todd H. Weir, Lieke Wijnia, and contributors, 2024

Cover image by Todd H. Weir

This work is published open access subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Weir, Todd H., editor. | Wijnia, Lieke, editor.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-5138-0

Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks

Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India

2 What is Religious—about—Heritage? Birgit Meyer  15

3 Heritage Discourse and Religious Change in Contemporary Europe Todd H. Weir  22

Part I Heritage and Diversity

Muslim Heritage in a Diverse Context

4 Restoring Muslim Heritage in Europe Humayun Ansari  37

5 Present Politics of a Multireligious Past: The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba Case

Jewish Heritage in a Diverse Context  61

7 European Jewish Heritage Today: An Interview with Emile Schrijver, General

8 The Complicated Heritage of the Jewish Country House: Transcending Traditional

9 Interreligious Tours as Bottom-Up Heritage Practice: The Routes of Dialogue in

10 The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral—a Cathedral Heritage Reinterpreted

Negotiating Diversity and Interreligious Heritage  101

11 Religious Architecture and Interreligious Relations: The Politics of Memory in

12 Synagogues, Churches, Mosques, and Multifaith Spaces: Germany’s Dynamic

13 Counterhegemonic Heritage and Diversity in Berlin’s House of One: Designing

15 Heritage Management by Churches: Developing for Eternity in Sweden

Politics of Religious Heritage  149

16 Peace and Conflict in Kosovo’s Orthodox Monasteries: Common or

17 Religion in Central European History: How Christian Has It Ever Been?

18 Mobilizing Religious Heritage in Politics: Inclusivity in a Pluralistic Society

19 Religion, Gender, and Heritage: Who Is Commemorated in the Dutch Cityscape?

20 Inclusivity and Religious Heritage in a Dutch St. Martin Celebration: A Helmet

Sacred Texts as Heritage  197

21 Questioning Scriptural Heritage: Interpreting Abraham Carol Bakhos  199

23 Heritage and Intercultural Education: Teaching Islamic Foundational Texts for

24 The Talmud in Contemporary Culture Malachi Hacohen  226

25 Safeguarding Written Heritage: The Ecosystemic Approach of the Hill Monastic

Part II Heritage between Religion and the Secular

Religious Communities and Their Heritage in Secularizing Societies

26 Challenges for Religious Communities and Their Heritage in Secularizing

28 Religious Archives as Heritage: Catholic Documentation and Heritage Formation

30 Tradition and Innovation in Rural Churches: New Practices on Ancient Grounds

Postsecular Meaning-Making  287

31 Postsecular Meaning-Making? Why Contestations about Church Heritage Matter in

32 The Village Church as Intangible Cultural Heritage: European Ritual Innovation

33 Spiritual Tourism: Religion on the Road Harald Schwillus  308

35 Christian Heritage and Intercultural Education: The School Church in

Repurposing of Religious Heritage  335

38 Religious Heritage across Generational Divides: A Dutch Experiment to Fight

Part III Heritage and Creativity

Contemporary Art and Religious Heritage

39 Art, Heritage, and Power Aaron Rosen  367

Religious Heritage in Museums  393

42 Making Room for Religious Minorities in National Heritage Narratives Marie

44 Minority Heritage within a National Framework: The Jewish Museum in Denmark

2 What is Religious—about—Heritage? Birgit Meyer 15

3 Heritage Discourse and Religious Change in Contemporary Europe Todd H. Weir 22

4 Restoring Muslim Heritage in Europe Humayun Ansari 37

Jewish Heritage in a Diverse Context 61

Negotiating Diversity and Interreligious Heritage 101

Politics of Religious Heritage 149

Sacred Texts as Heritage 197

21 Questioning Scriptural Heritage: Interpreting Abraham Carol Bakhos 199

24 The Talmud in Contemporary Culture Malachi Hacohen 226

Postsecular Meaning-Making 287

33 Spiritual Tourism: Religion on the Road Harald Schwillus 308

Repurposing of Religious Heritage 335

39 Art, Heritage, and Power Aaron Rosen 367

Religious Heritage in Museums 393

List of Contributors 436