“The Competition for Souls”

An International Conference, Jerusalem, 13-14 June 2011

The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Christianity at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, and the French Center for Research in Jerusalem (CRFJ) – is organizing an international conference to be held in Jerusalem in June 2011.

The conference is part of the activities of the ongoing research group on "Contemporary Christian Communities in the Holy Land". It aims to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to discuss issues related to contemporary Christian communities, that concern not only inter-religious, but also intra-religious competition. Moreover, it seeks to overcome the crude polemics and simplified explanations that often accompany discussions of religious rivalries, aiming to develop a more nuanced picture of current realities.

Proposals are invited on a variety of themes, including:

· Conversion and Proselytism

· Inter-Christian relations.

· Legal and economic perspectives on conversion

· Gender, ethnicity and factionalism

· Conversion of sacrospaces

· Conversion narratives