How do people of different religions live together in peace? 

This website is dedicated to churches that were shared between two or more Christian religions – Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed. The oldest were established in the mid-1500s; eventually, their number grew to nearly 1,000; some 120 still exist today. Together, the shared churches of Europe open a window on the lives of ordinary people in pre-modern times, their beliefs and religious identities, and how they experienced diversity and toleration in everyday life – its rituals and celebrations, but also its conflicts and politicking.  As such, the “Shared Churches of Europe” offers a prehistory of religious pluralism and coexistence, the conditions that made them possible, and the everyday practices that sustained them for generations, even centuries.

News and Events

Andrew Spicer has been awarded a 2022/2023 Research Excellence Award from Oxford Brookes University to develop research collaborations for the Shared Churches Project with German colleagues and institutions during the next academic year.

The University of Arizona was awarded an NEH Collaborative Research Grant for Shared Churches Project for 2023-2025. Marjorie Plummer, project director, will be working with Chris Lukinbeal and Bryan Heidorn at the University of Arizona and with project research team members David Luebke (Oregon) and Andrew Spicer (Oxford Brookes) to develop an interactive map and searchable web-based database of shared churches for the Shared Churches Project.

Shared Spaces: Cultural and Spatial Interactions within and beyond German-Speaking Europe, FNI Conference to be held at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 2-4 March 2023

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