Mohammed Jibriel is a 4th-year PhD student in Public Health with a concentration in Community Health Education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. His research explores the intersections of minority stress, religion/spirituality, and mental health outcomes. He also investigates how religion, gender, and the environment function as determinants of public health. In addition to his academic pursuits, Mohammed is an active interfaith leader. He co-founded the Belk Chapel Muslim-Jewish Interfaith Initiative and serves as co-chair of the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance. Mohammed just completed an Interfaith Innovation Fellowship with Interfaith America, where he led efforts to build bridges and understanding among diverse communities. Mohammed holds an M.Sc. in Biohazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases from Georgetown University and a B.S. in Molecular Biology from Queens University of Charlotte. He was recognized as a North Carolina Scholar of Global Distinction by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his globally focused academic work and intercultural experiences.
Mark Juergensmeyer
Mark Juergensmeyer is professor of Sociology and director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Juergensmeyer is the winner of the Grawemeyer Award for his book Terror in the Mind of God (2000). He is the editor of Global Religions: An Introduction (2003) and is also the author of The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State and Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution (1994), both from University of California Press.
Kile Jones
Kile Jones is working towards a Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Society at Claremont Lincoln University. His interests include religious studies, secularism, liberal religion, and unbelief. Mr. Jones considers himself influenced by secular humanism, atheism, and Unitarian Universalism. He is the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Claremont Journal of Religion and is a Contributing Scholar at State of Formation.
Robert Jonas
Robert A. Jonas, Ed.D. (Harvard University), M.T.S. (Weston Jesuit School of Theology), is the director of The Empty Bell, a contemplative sanctuary in Northampton, MA. He is a retired psychotherapist, a theologian, retreat leader, musician, and spiritual mentor. The Empty Bell website is an internet resource for contemplative Christians. A Christian in the Carmelite tradition, he has also received spiritual formation with Buddhist teachers.
Dr. Jonas is a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies and the Eckhart Society, a past Board member of the Henri Nouwen Society, a Trustee of Trustees of Reservations, and the Board Chair of the Kestrel Land Trust in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts. His books include Rebecca: A Father’s Journey from Grief to Gratitude (1996), Henri Nouwen (1998), and The Essential Henri Nouwen (2009).
Robert is also a student of Sui-Zen, the Japanese bamboo flute (shakuhachi). He has shared his music in many secular and spiritual contexts and has played at three Buddhist-Christian retreats with the Dalai Lama, most memorably under the Bodhi Tree in India. His CD’s, Blowing Bamboo, New Life from Ruins and Many Paths, One Joy are available at: www.contemplative-life.org, and on iTunes. His playing is featured in the new DVD, “Jesus & Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions” (Old Dog Productions). Visit The Empty Bell’s Facebook page for more information.
Lyla June Johnston
Lyla June Johnston is a Fellow with the Original Caretakers Initiative at the Center for Earth Ethics. She was raised in Taos, New Mexico and is a descendent of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages.
She is a co-founder of The Taos Peace and Reconciliation Council, which works to heal intergenerational trauma and ethnic division in the northern New Mexico. She is a walker within the Nihigaal Bee Iiná Movement, and is the lead organizer of the Black Hill Unity Concert. She is the also the founder of Regeneration Festival, an annual celebration of children that occurs in 13 countries around the world every September.
In 2012, she graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in Environmental Anthropology. She is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet. Lyla June ultimately attributes any achievements to Creator who gave her the tools and resources she uses to serve humanity.
Trebbe Johnson
Trebbe Johnson is the founder and director of Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places. She is the author of The World Is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved (2005). Her articles on nature, spirit, and myth have been published in Orion, Sierra, The Ecologist, Spirituality and Health, and many other publications. She is a consulting editor and frequent contributor to Parabola. A lifelong adventurer in inner and outer worlds, Trebbe has camped alone in the Arctic; studied classical Indian dance; worked as a model, street sweeper, and award-winning multimedia producer; and led contemplative journeys in a clearcut forest, at Ground Zero in New York, and in the Sahara Desert. She lives with her husband in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, currently under exploitation by gas fracking. She is working on a new book, Aphrodite at the Landfill: Beauty as Earth Activism.
Kurt Johnson
Kurt Johnson is co-author, with David Robert Ord, of the forthcoming book The Coming Interspiritual Age (2012). A comparative religionist and also a monastic for many years, Kurt was a long-term associate of Brother Wayne Teasdale (author of the terms “interspiritual” and “interspirituality”) and founded, with Bro. Wayne and others, Interspiritual Dialogue in 2002. Its vast “Interspiritual Multiplex” resource website is at www.isdna.org. Kurt is a trustee of One Faith Interfaith Seminary.
Kurt also holds a doctorate in evolution and ecology and recently retired from a 30-year high profile career in the sciences. His best-selling book Nabokov's Blues (co-authored with journalist S. Coates) was named a "top 10 book in science" in 2000 by the Washington Post and Library Journal, More can be learned about Dr. Johnson’s dual careers at Wikipedia (Kurt Johnson, entomologist).
Michael Jitosho
Michael Jitosho, is a second-generation Japanese American born and raised in southern California. He graduated from University of California, San Diego with a major in biology and is currently an optometry student. In 2013 he received first ordination from the Higashi Honganji, a Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist organization in Kyoto, Japan, and is currently assisting the resident minister at the West Covina Buddhist Temple in California. Jitosho enjoys his involvement with the temple because of the variety of guest speakers and lecture series that add contrast to Jōdo Shinshū. He feels that when guests share their different faiths, they provide one another with an opportunity to think about Jōdo Shinshū in a different light and the chance for discussion, learning things they never thought about before. When Jitosho is not in the university library studying for exams, he enjoy helping at temple fundraisers, yet another way to experience the Dharma with others who also put effort in supporting the temple and its future as a Sangha.
Zola Jesus
Zola Jesus is the stage name of Nika Roza Danilova, a Russian-American singer/songwriter who combines industrial, classical, electronic, goth and experimental rock influences. Raised in the Wisconsin wilderness, Zola Jesus took an early interest in music. A classically trained opera singer with a penchant for noisy, avant-garde sounds, she launched her career with a series of lo-fi releases that pitted her soaring vocals against harsh industrial clatter and jittery synths. The signature Zola Jesus sound became more hi-fi as she began to explore her own skewed vision of pop music on releases like Stridulum, Valusia, and Conatus. Learn more about her work and listen at zolajesus.com.
Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor, and serves as co-director for the Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is one of the world’s leading religion scholars. A historian by training, Jenkins’ work has been lauded in many different disciplines including sociology, criminology, and religious studies.
Dr Jenkins’ major current interests include the study of global Christianity; of new and emerging religious movements; and of twentieth century U.S. history, chiefly post-1970. He has published twenty-four books, which have been translated into ten languages. Some recent titles include Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (2000), Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (2010), and Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (2011).
Jenkins holds a Ph.D. in History from Cambridge University, where he spent an additional three years working with Sir Leon Radzinowicz, the pioneer of Criminology at Cambridge. In fact, Jenkins has an enduring interest in issues of crime and deviance, and the construction of social problems. He is considered an international expert on the subject of terrorism. The Economist magazine has called him “one of America’s best scholars of religion.”
jem Jebbia
jem Jebbia is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Stanford University. In her studies, jem focuses on interfaith pedagogies, race and gender in interfaith communities, and material religion in California. Her current projects include an ethnographic study of the #TacoTrucksatEveryMosque Movement and a pop-up exhibit called Golden State Sacred, depicting the religious history of California.
Uroosa Jawed
Uroosa Jawed joined the Tri-Faith Initiative in October of 2018. A graduate of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, she earned her bachelor’s of science degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in May 2002. Uroosa has worked in philanthropy over the past ten years, and began her career as Planned Giving Coordinator for the Islamic Society of North America. She has been instrumental in raising funds for both local and national non-profit organizations through capital campaigns and corporate sponsorships. Uroosa is passionate about serving her community through volunteer work and advocacy. She proudly serves on the board of directors of Omaha Girls Rock.
A first generation immigrant, Uroosa moved to Indiana from Karachi, Pakistan at the age of five years old with her parents. A lifetime Hoosier, she now finds herself thriving in the Dundee community of Omaha with her daughter Laila and her son Oliver. A writer by avocation, she has served on the board of the Indiana Writers Center since 2013. Her poetry has been published in Hoosier Lit magazine and she is currently working on her first manuscript.
Julia Jameson
Julia Jameson was born and raised in Boulder City, Nevada, a small town south of Las Vegas. She attended Vivian Webb, a boarding school in Claremont, California, where she began her appreciation for the importance of diversity and its acceptance. She is currently studying Religion and Sociology at Bryn Mawr College. She is co-president of the Mawrter Multifaith Alliance, the interfaith group on campus and she also leads the LGBTQ Bible Study. She hopes to cultivate an atmosphere of religious and peaceful understanding on her campus. She has participated in summer Internships for the Council for the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago and the United Religions Initiative in San Francisco. She is an artist and a musician in her spare time.
Gard Jameson
Gard Jameson received his Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2005. He teaches Chinese and Indian Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Prior to his tenure at UNLV, he spent 25 years practicing as a Certified Public Accountant and Financial Planner at Piercy, Bowler, Taylor & Kern and Touche Ross.
He is the author of three books, Footprints on the Sands of Time (1985), the story of his mentor, Dr. Raymond M. Alf, Phaethon: Our Mythic Moment (2009), an ancient Greek tale that illuminates our current predicament, and Monkey: Our Mythic Moment (2012), the grand epic of China.
Gard helped found and chairs the boards of the Children's Advocacy Alliance and the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada. He is the Treasurer of VMSN (Voluneer in Medicine in Southern Nevada). He also helped found the Nevada Community Foundation.
Gard also serves on the board of the Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development and the Alf Museum of Life in Claremont, California, and is the associate pastor at Grace Community Church in Boulder City, Nevada. His great joy is his wife, Florence, and his two children, Michael and Julia.
Sabrina N. Jafralie
Sabrina N. Jafralie is a recognized specialist on the Quebec Ethics and Religious Culture course and has more than 17 years of teaching experience at the secondary and university levels, with experience in the Canadian and British educational systems. Dr. Jafralie is also the co-founder and the regional director in Quebec for the Centre for Civic Religious Literacy (CCRL). Her teaching background d and research on teachers’ challenges in teaching religious literacy bring a wealth of knowledge to her role at the Centre. In 2018, she was awarded the Prime Minister’s Teaching Award of Excellence.