NBTS International Summer Study Opportunities, July 6-18, 2026: The Netherlands and Poland
January 31, 2026
In July, a group of students, alumni, and others from around the RCA and the Reformed tradition will travel to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for the twenty-fifth International Summer School of Theology. In 1974, Dr. Paul Fries, professor of systematic theology and later dean of the Seminary, led the first group of students to the Netherlands to give participants an introduction to the Dutch traditions of theology and church life that are part of the Seminary’s historic roots (see John Coakley, New Brunswick Theological Seminary: An Illustrated History, Eerdmans, 2014, page 103). John Coakley, Allan Janssen, and Matthew van Maastricht have helped to carry the program into the present, with biennial trips and study sessions except when interrupted by the COVID pandemic.
In recent years, the school has moved beyond being just a Dutch-American collaboration with the involvement of the International Reformed Theological Institute (IRTI). NBTS prepares the program in cooperation with IRTI and the Protestantse Theologische Universiteit (PThU). This year’s theme is “Being Reformed in the 21st Century.” In nearly every corner of the world, there has been a tidal wave, of sorts, of change that has upended the previous consensus. Politics, the economy, the digital world, and the environment are particular topics that impact all of us to varying degrees. The Reformed tradition has, since its sixteenth-century beginnings, been in dialogue with and often challenged the social order. This year’s school will continue in this vein, exploring questions of politics, economics, the digital world, and the environment. Presenters will include NBTS faculty—including Micah McCreary, Charles Rix, Nathan Jérémie-Brink, and James Hart Brumm, among others—as well as faculty from the PThU and other European schools. Scholars and students from around the world will gather to offer unique perspectives on each of these so that students can gain a more global perspective on these challenges.
The school will meet from July 6 through 10, but the NBTS group will gather in the Netherlands beginning on July 3 and have the opportunity to remain through worship on July 12. Participants will be responsible for their own travel to and from Amsterdam as well as most meals, but lodging—think budget-hotel-style—breakfasts, and many lunches while the school is in session will be covered in registration. Current NBTS students will receive a discount on the cost of registration and can get credit for the school. Watch for an announcement with more details in the next couple of weeks, or be in touch with James Hart Brumm at jbrumm@nbts.edu.
Following the week in Amsterdam, Charles Rix will provide a five-day experiential travel Holocaust Study trip in Poland, July 13-18. This course was inspired by the call of Marion Turski, a Polish Auschwitz survivor, who at the 75thanniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz delivered a speech entitled “The XIth Commandment: Thou Shall Not Be Indifferent.” (see Rix’s article on this topic on the NBTS website)
Through the Johannesburg Genocide and Holocaust Center, Rix is a certified Holocaust travel guide for Polish sites and was a speaker at the International Association of Genocide Scholars this past October, 2025. The study trip is open to current students, alumni, and adults who wish to actively engage in the way in which the Holocaust provides a compelling perspective on how one engages faith and social action in today’s turbulent, often dehumanizing, polarizing climate. If students would like to take the trip for course credit, they may do so by enrolling in the accompanying online study course in this summer semester, “Reading the Bible after the Shoah.”
The trip and the course cover not only the key historical dimensions of the Holocaust, but also the political, social, religious, and economic factors that gave rise to systematic othering, social polarization, hate speech, indifference to human suffering and, denial of atrocities. The trip will take place over 5 days of travel throughout Poland to study how Jewish life, then and now, portrays, remembers, and counters these factors and how we identify similar factors that give rise to abuses of power and privilege in today’s social, economic, and political contexts.
The trip begins in Warsaw and ends in Krakow and includes key sites in Warsaw such as the POLIN museum (a review of one thousand years of Jewish history in Poland), the Jewish Historical Museum (artifacts from the Warsaw Ghetto), the Jewish Cemetery, the Treblinka killing center and environs including the Tykocin forests in Eastern Poland, sites in Krakow such as the Schindler factory, and finally, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The tour also includes lectures at key sites from Holocaust historians and scholars. At the end of each day, there will be time available for personal and community sharing of observations and learning.
This course builds upon the work of several twentieth and twenty-first-century artists, musicians, theologians, biblical scholars, and clergy of multiple faiths who explore sacred texts, contemporary ethics, theologies, and genocide prevention in the wake of the Holocaust and other similar humanitarian disasters.
-Drs. James Brumm and Charles Rix