Journal of Interreligious Studies

From the Editor-in-Chief

2026-07-30T14:06:45+00:00

The first four articles are part of this special issue on Co-Produced Religions. The last two are rolling submissions articles unrelated to the special issue topic.

When Theology and History Think Together about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

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This article explores the mutual co‑production of theology and history within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, themselves co‑produced religions. Theology, understood as constructive thinking about God, has long drawn on historical claims to refine religious self‑understanding, while modern historical research has often deconstructed such claims. We argue, however, that history not only destabilizes theological narratives but also generates constructive theological possibilities. By tracing how each tradition re‑interprets its own past and that of the others, we show that history has functioned as a shared theological resource across these religions, such that they can be understood as “historical religions.” Through examples such as the transmission of Josephus’ Jewish War and its Christian, Muslim, and Jewish re‑appropriations, we illustrate how interpretive struggles over the past have shaped overlapping visions of revelation, authority, and hope. These dynamics reveal that the three religions cannot be adequately understood in isolation, as their self‑definitions and theologies of history emerge through rivalry, borrowing, and mutual imagination. Recognizing this shared archive of co‑production challenges segregated historical and theological approaches while opening new possibilities for engagement. We further suggest that thinking about these traditions as historical religions points to the existential significance of time, in which past, present, and future are constantly reconfigured in relation to the eternal. Attending to their interdependence can cultivate both critical care and constructive creativity, fostering humility before the diversity of the archive and hope for renewed theological reflection in interreligious thought today.

Lego-lego and the Co-production of Religion

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Katharina Heyden and David Nirenberg argue that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are co-produced religions—faiths that have historically formed and transformed through mutual interaction, imagination, and contestation. This paper extends their framework to Alor-Pantar, Indonesia, where interreligious life unfolds not only in textual or theological forms but in oral traditions, ritual performance, and embodied practices. Drawing on Izak Lattu’s oral-based interreligious engagement and Mery Kolimon’s exploration of boundary negotiation and hybrid identity in Timor Barat, this study examines Lego-lego, a traditional mass dance in Alor-Pantar with pantun adat, moko drums, and communal movements. Lego-lego functions as a living site where Islam, Christianity, and Indigenous traditions encounter and reshape one another. While Christian and Muslim influences appear in lyrics and gestures, the dance’s Indigenous form sustains local epistemology, ensuring that co-production occurs on community-defined terms. Beyond illustrating hybridity or syncretism, Lego-lego enacts an embodied epistemology rooted in orality, kinship, and performance. It demonstrates that religious tradition in Alor-Pantar is not fixed but negotiated through communal practices. Lego-lego also mediates Muslim-Christian relations, facilitating ethical interaction and shared cultural participation. This study situates Indigenous ritual at the center of Religious Co-Production (RCoP), showing how world religions are continually co-produced in practice through performance, narrative, and relational engagement.

Interposed Christology and Primal Sacrifices

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This paper explores religious interactions beyond the Abrahamic traditions and the Mediterranean Basin, focusing on the encounter between Christianity and primal religion (sakhua) among the Mizo tribe in India. The missionary engagement with the Mizo tribe during the late 19th to mid-20th century, and the revival movements (harhna), serve as a historical case study, highlighting how contextual theology built a bridge between the two religious traditions. In the absence of shared scriptures and history, the shared worldview between the two religious traditions played a decisive role in their interactions. Precisely, this paper examines how interposed Christology functioned as a point of contact between the Christian doctrine of atonement and Mizo. Primal Sacrificial Interposed Christology therefore refers to the contextualization of Christ as the conqueror of evil spirits and death within local sacrificial systems, particularly khal (sacrifice to evil spirits) and khuangchawi (eschatological feast and rituals). This involved both a reinterpretation of Christology through indigenous lenses and its insertion into local religious frameworks, realized through two modes of contextualization—intended and unintended (organic adaptation). Additionally, this paper considers how these modes challenge and nuance Heyden and Nirenberg’s co-production theory, as the encounter primarily involved Christology transforming local religious frameworks, even as indigenous elements were incorporated to express it.

Power Structure, Hegemony, and Marginalization in A Case of Religious Co- Production

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Through the application and expansion of the concept of “religious co-production,” this paper aims to interrogate the co-producing dynamics between state-acknowledged religions (Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism) and an Indigenous belief (ancestral religion) that is not formally acknowledged by the state as a “religion” (Sapta Darma) in the East Javan village of Sukoreno. The paper focuses on two main questions, namely, how do we utilize “religious co-production” to understand the interreligious relations in the here and now, especially those practiced not through doctrinal discourses, but rather through the embodied, everyday lives? And how does the concept of “religious co-production” engage with the question of inequality of power in interreligious relations? In answering both questions, the paper argues that contemporary dynamics of religious co-production are not only shaped by doctrinal exchanges among different religious believers, but also through the combination of governmental policies, and majority-minority sociological dynamics in a locale. The paper also argues that power inequality within religious majority-minority relations normativize specific ways of living religiously, whilst alienating others. This means that an analysis of religious co-production cannot presume that religions shape and re-shape each other in an equal manner, but rather should see that ritual, theological, and social adjustments are demanded more from a minoritized religion and not from a dominant one. Furthermore, it also means that observations about power dimensions in religious co-production can shed light on how the hegemonic presence of a religion is buttressed by socio-political, and economic processes that are often missed from a strictly theological and/or historical analysis.

Ghazali and Aquinas for a Posthumous Dialogue on the Possibility of an Eternally Created World

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This article is a comparative study between arguably one of the greatest Christian theologians and philosophers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and one of the greatest Muslim theologians and philosophers, Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. I engage in a textual, analytical, close reading of the classical texts written by Aquinas and Ghazali on the Aristotelian argument of an eternal world. I explore the possibility of posthumous interreligious dialogue that begins in the classical tradition of both Christianity and Islam and aim to create parallels between Ghazali and Aquinas even where perhaps they were silent, resulting in an exercise of comparative theology. Both Ghazali and Aquinas were dedicated to the integrity of human reason which is evidenced through their writings on the creation of an eternal world. They were not against philosophy, rather, their arguments were against the falāsifa who rendered God without a divine will. Through their commitment to reason and divine revelation, Quranic and Biblical respectively, the argument is made that perhaps Ghazali and Aquinas were closer to each other as theologians of differing religions than either of the two were to the Avicennian or Aristotelian philosophical tradition which they were immersed in.

The Logistics of Faith and Reason in Anselm and Ādi Śaṅkara

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This paper examines the role of faith and reason in the works of St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), an 11th-century Benedictine monk, Archbishop, philosopher, and theologian and Ādi Śaṅkara, an eminent 8th-century CE pedagogue and systematic theologian in the Hindu world. As such, it seeks to uncover and define the contours of Hindu-Christian studies in terms of its raison d’etre for engagement, which consequently effects its modus operandi. Understanding the role of faith and reason enables us to see how the academic study of comparative theology (CT) and interreligious dialogue (IRD) proceeds compared to Hindu theological inquiries. In this paper, first, I examine the definition of “faith seeking understanding” in the works of St. Anselm. Then, I explore the understanding of faith and reason in the writings of Ādi Śaṅkara. Their perspectives have significant implications for CT and IRD, as Anselm’s framework emphasizes rationality apart from scriptures, is theistic and dualistic, whereas Śaṅkara’s non-dual understanding of faith and reason challenges Western theological assumptions of faith and knowledge by cultivating an attitude of receptivity. Engaging Śaṅkara’s paradigm offers an alternate universal epistemological model, enriching Hindu-Christian dialogue by transcending doctrinal assent to a transformative, experiential, understanding of liberation.