Title: “Partners in Mission: Being a Muslim teaching theology at a Jesuit university”

Description: He will talk both about his training as a scholar of religion and his work with the AAR to help better integrate theological voices into the study of religion. He’ll also discuss his work at LMU, and how his being a Muslim connects with and advances the Jesuit mission of the university.

Bio: Dr. Amir Hussain is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, the Jesuit university in Los Angeles. His own particular specialty is the study of contemporary Muslim societies in North America. His academic degrees (BSc, MA, PhD) are all from the University of Toronto where he received a number of awards, including the university’s highest award for alumni service. He served as President of the American Academy of Religion in 2023, the world’s largest scholarly organization for the study of religion. The author or editor of seven books and over 60 scholarly articles about religion, his latest book, One God and Two Religions, came out in February from Fortress Press.

Title: “Interfaith Education: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and the Virtue of Wisdom”

Description: In this paper, I argue that exploring shared understandings of the nature and purpose of the virtue of wisdom can provide opportunities for Christians, Jews, and Muslims to find common ground in religious higher education, while also highlighting the value of faith-based education.

Bio: Elisabeth Rain Kincaid is the Director of the Institute of Faith and Learning, where she works to develop programming that integrates Christian faith and academic excellence. She is also Associate Professor of Ethics, Faith, and Culture at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary and an Affiliate Professor of Management at the Hankamer School of Business. Dr. Kincaid’s research focuses on the intersection of theological ethics, legal ethics and business ethics, virtue ethics, natural law, early modern theology, and theology of work and vocation. Dr. Kincaid recently published Law From Below: How the Thought of Francisco Suárez, SJ, Can Renew Contemporary Legal Engagement (Georgetown University Press) which explores different models for Christian engagement with law. She is currently working on a second monograph exploring the relationship between business ethics, theology, and human flourishing. She is currently a Research Fellow for the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy and serves on the Board of Directors for the Society of Christian Ethics.

Title: “Between ‘Am I Wrong?’ and ‘Calmer Than You Are’: Interreligious Leadership in a Diverse Disagreement Society”

Description: This paper asks whether religiously affiliated universities are well poised to serve not merely as sites for interfaith engagement, but as critical contexts for cultivating interreligious leadership in a pluralistic and secular world. It examines models like “Rooted and Open” and “Det Livssynsåpne Samfunn” to explore how these institutions can leverage their religiously rooted missions and identities to foster context-rich approaches to worldview diversity, moving beyond passive accommodation to structurally embedded interfaith leadership and a deeper sense of belonging.

Bio: Hans Gustafson, Ph.D., is Director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), where he also teaches courses in (inter)religious studies, theology, dialogue, and leadership. His recent books include Everyday Wisdom: Interreligious Studies in a Pluralistic World (Fortress, 2023) and Everyday Encounters: Humanizing Dialogue in Theory and Practice (Fortress, 2025). He serves as Past President of the Association for Interreligious / Interfaith Studies (AIIS) and is a member of the steering committee for the Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion.

Title: “Why Is There a Non-Christian Professor of Religion on the Faculty?”

Description: Drawing from my experience of being the first person from outside the Christian tradition appointed to teach in the Religion Department at Saint Olaf College, an institution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I will describe and assess arguments, on both sides, for teaching about other religions in faith-based institutions. I will consider the educational and theological significance of these arguments.

Anantanand Rambachan is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Saint Olaf College, Minnesota, USA (1985-2021). He was also Forum Humanum Visiting Professor at the Academy for the Study of World Religions at the University of Hamburg in Germany (2013-2017). His books include Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Ṡaṅkara; The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda's Reinterpretation of the Authority of the Vedas, The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity, A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two is Not-One; Essays in Hindu Theology and, most recently, Pathways to Hindu-Christian Dialogue. Prof. Rambachan has been a leader in interreligious dialogue an activism for over 40 years, as a Hindu contributor and analyst. He has worked in the dialogue programs of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican. He is a Co-President of Religions for Peace.

Title: “The Implicit and Explicit Interreligious Curriculum across the Association of Academic Divinity Schools”

Description: The project undertakes a curricular analysis of implicit and explicit interreligious curricula in Master of Divinity programs across the Association of Academic Divinity Schools. As the MDiv continues to be the coin of the realm in many chaplaincy contexts, especially for board certification and other kinds of credentialling, and as many of these divinity schools seek to be centers of formation for religious leadership for non-Christians and Christians alike, the paper observes the ways in which curricular objectives now identify a desire for students to work across various kinds of difference in a vibrantly religiously diverse world and how those aspirations are scaffolded across a three-year Master of Divinity experience.

Bio: Soren M. Hessler is Assistant Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Administration at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Trained as a practical theologian at Boston University School of Theology, his research emerges at the intersections of theological education administration, interreligious studies, and Methodist studies. He serves as treasurer of the Association for Interreligious/Interfaith Studies and as treasurer of Interreligious Studies Media, the parent organization of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. He is a co-general editor of Methodist Review and serves as co-convener of the Christian Education, Faith Formation, and Leadership Development Convening Table of the National Council of Churches. Hessler previously served as Director of Recruitment and Admissions at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, taught at Hebrew College’s Rabbinical School, and spent nine years on the ministry/chaplaincy staff of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel.

Title: "Becoming Otherwise to Know Otherwise: Cultivating a Therapy of Desire for the Post-Truth Crisis"

Description: We are in a post-truth crisis; this is widely recognized. There is also a widely recognized solution in the literature: return to Enlightenment values of critical reason. This paper argues that this solution is well-intentioned but shortsighted. We see the world not as it is, but as we are. This means simply put: no transformation, then no truth. Only practices that cultivate in us a love for truth and transformation will lead us to seek the truth.

Bio: John J. Thatamanil is Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He is the author of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity (2020) and The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament; An East-West Conversation. His areas of research include theologies of religious diversity, comparative theology, philosophical theology, and ecotheology. He is committed to seeking interreligious wisdom by learning from the practices and insights of other religious traditions. He is also a Past President of the North American Paul Tillich Society. John is also an Anglican Priest in and the Diocesan Theologian for the Diocese of Islands and Inlets (Vancouver Island).

Title: “The Rev. Howard Thurman & Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: Religious & Vocational Affinities”

Description: In this presentation, I explore the shared intellectual, spiritual, and professional priorities that undergirded an unlikely modern master-disciple relationship between Rev. Howard Thurman (d. 1982) and Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi (d. 2014). In so doing, I make use of previous scholarly work on each figure (the two have not yet been studied together in depth) with a focus on their common self-understandings as mystics and applied theologians. This will lead to a discussion of their work as religious educators, speakers, writers, and pastors informed by critical-historical scholarship in service of spiritual renewal for their particular communities and across religious traditions.

Bio: Rabbi Or N. Rose is the founding Director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College and a senior consultant to Interfaith America. He previously served as the Associate Dean for Informal Education at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College and as co-founder and director of CIRCLE, a center for interreligious education co-sponsored by Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College. Rabbi Rose is a publisher of The Journal of Interreligious Studies and the co-editor of the award-winning anthologies, My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (Orbis, 2012) and With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps & Mistakes (Orbis, 2023). His latest publication is My Legs Were Praying: A Biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel for teen
readers (Monkfish, 2025). He is currently completing a contemporary multifaith commentary on the Book of Psalms (Paraclete Press, 2026).

Title: “Interfaith Friendship and the Legacy of Universalism at Tufts”

Description: While the closing of the Crane Theological School in 1968 marked the end of the Universalist connection to Tufts University, the legacy of Universalism continues. Our mulitfaith chaplaincy’s commitment to religious pluralism reveals Universalist DNA on campus. For five years, I have directed Be-Friend, an interfaith friendship program for students, faculty and staff. Accordingly, this paper explores the theological heart of Universalism’s legacy and how it can inform contemporary interfaith engagement through models of interfaith friendship - at Tufts and beyond.

Bio: Lynn Cooper is the Associate Director of the University Chaplaincy and Catholic Chaplain at Tufts University. She holds a Doctor of Ministry from Boston University School of Theology and an M.Div from Harvard Divinity School. Working in a multifaith chaplaincy context in higher education has been one of the great gifts of her life. At Tufts, she runs an interfaith friendship program for students, faculty, and staff, facilitates the interfaith student council, and directs an intergenerational oral history that magnifies the wisdom and stories of lay folks. Lynn's first book, Embracing Our Time: The Sacrament of Interfaith Friendship, came out in May 2025 from Fortress Press.

Title: “Reflective Believing as Formative Education: Strengthening Interfaith Dispositions in Faith-Based Higher Education”

Description: This presentation explores “reflective believing” as a pedagogical model that integrates theological reflection with moral and interfaith formation in faith-based higher education. By reframing interfaith engagement as an expression of religious tradition rather than a threat to it, the session highlights how students can be formed for both deepened faith and pluralistic leadership.

Bio: L. Callid Keefe-Perry, Ph.D. is director of Contextual Education and Assistant Professor of Public Theology at Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry. He is an endorsed public minister in The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) whose scholarship is deeply rooted in the Brazilian liberation tradition, particularly the works of Paulo Freire and Rubem Alves. His published work engages themes of public theology, critical pedagogy, moral injury, and theologies of imagination and theopoetics. Most recently, he is the author of Sense of the Possible: An Introduction to Theology and Imagination and the forthcoming Tending Call: A Liberation Theology of Vocation, with Orbis Press. As a religious educator, retreat leader, and workshop facilitator he usually offers insight into the use of creative practices in spirituality, vocational discernment, organizational change, or Quaker spirituality.

Title: “The Interfaith Center as Symbol and Setting on a Faith-Based Campus”

Description: Since the late 1990s, the religious and philosophical diversity present on college and university campuses in the United States has been increasing, demanding new resources for the support of spiritual practices as well as learning, dialogue, and engagement among faith traditions. Increasingly, universities, including faith-based institutions, have been reevaluating their existing resources including personnel, programs, and spaces to provide support for this new religious diversity. This paper will explore the role of the university Interfaith Center as a resource for supporting diverse religious practices, dialogue, learning, and engagement at faith-based and other universities.

Bio: The Rev. Dr. Gregory W. McGonigle is dean of religious life and university chaplain at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has built a multifaith chaplaincy team and opened the Emory Interfaith Center. An internationally recognized leader in interfaith and chaplaincy studies, he is the author of Religious Diversity and University Chaplaincy (Wipf & Stock, 2024). Prior to joining Emory, he served in higher education chaplaincy at Tufts University, Oberlin College, and the University of California at Davis, as well as serving in congregational, healthcare, public health, and legal advocacy ministries. He is a past researcher for the Harvard Pluralism Project and past president of the National Association of College and University Chaplains, and he serves as secretary of the International Association of Chaplains in Higher Education. He is a Unitarian minister and holds degrees in religious studies and divinity from Brown University, Harvard Divinity School, and Boston University.

Title: “What can Poetry teach us about Interfaith Education?”

Description: What can poetry teach us about interfaith education? That spiritual experience unites what religion divides, that how we attend to religious topics can determine what we see, and that complementary faith and its creative expression helps us build our relationship with God.

Bio: Matthew Wickman is Professor of English at BYU, Utah. Author of two monographs, dozens of articles, and the spiritual memoir Life to the Whole Being, he presently serves as coordinator of BYU’s Faith and Imagination Institute, host of the Faith and Imagination podcast, and editor of the academic journal Literature and Belief. Since 2022, he has also served on BYU’s Council for Interfaith Engagement.