Rev. Claire Goodman

Rev. Claire Goodman OUnI grew up in an interfaith (Christian and Jewish) but non-observant family in wonderfully diverse New York City.  Her parents left her on my own to explore and over the years she found her way to every cultural and faith community within walking distance of her home: Episcopal, Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Quaker, and more! She first became involved in a faith community at age 13 at one of the oldest Quaker meetings in the country. It was there that she took her very first Yoga class which eventually led her to Integral Yoga, a synthesis of many of the world’s great faith traditions, emphasizing that “Truth is One, Paths are Many.”

Goodman received her undergraduate degree in 1981 in Cultural Anthropology and Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and although she loved her studies, she found she was more attracted to a heart-centered, practical approach than an academic one.

In 1999 Goodman completed Life Coach training and was blessed to find her way to One Spirit Interfaith Seminary, a 2-year program of study in New York City leading to ordination as an Interfaith Minister. Seminary curriculum provided a firm knowledge base in ancient and contemporary faith traditions and spiritual paths and their practices as well as ongoing experience of practical ministry. Through a workshop elective she discovered the wonderful world of creating beautiful, heartfelt wedding ceremonies for couples from varied backgrounds, and that set her on the path to the wonderful work she does now. In 2013 Goodman was privileged to be co-ordained by the Order of Universal Interfaith (OUnI) and in March 2014 she co-hosted the Big I Conference for Inclusive Theology, Spirituality and Consciousness in Phoenix.

Andrea Goodman

Rev. Andrea Goodman is an interfaith minister and co-founded The Interfaith Peace Project in 2007. Her leadership role as the President of the Board of Directors is part of her active interfaith ministry that includes Sacred Visits to various faith centers; interfaith spiritual direction; officiant of life events, retreat leader; and academic advisor to students at the Chaplaincy Institute. Andrea has a long career in employee relations and diversity, bringing spirituality to corporate work places. Her interfaith spirituality is founded in a Buddhist practice and Catholic social justice teachings.

She can be contacted at goodandrea@comcast.net.

Vincent Gonzalez

Vincent Gonzalez is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is writing on Evangelical Christian video games.

Elías González

Elías González studied philosophy and social sciences at ITESO and is currently doing his thesis, titled “Encuentro, re-ligación y diálogo. Reflexiones hacia un diálogo inter-re-ligioso” (“Meeting, Religion, and Dialogue: Reflections for an Interreligious Dialogue”) where he approaches the interreligious dialogue as a religious act. He collaborates with Carpe Diem Interfaith Foundation and its program, the Universal Multicultural Dialogue. He is the creator and coordinator of the “Microdiálogos” for Carpe Diem.

Elías or “Elahas,” as his friends call him, has participated in various interreligious events and rituals and has coordinated spirituals retreats and interfaith ceremonies. He has been involved in dialogue with Buddhists, Hindus, and Shamans. Elías studied Latin-American philosophy in Ecuador, and he worked in Cusco, Peru as a shaman assistant in Ayahuasca ceremonies. He has lived in spiritual communities like Janaj Pacha in Bolivia and worked with indigenous people in Rarámuri, Wixárrika, Shipibo and Quechua communities. He has written for various magazines and been a speaker at interreligious conferences.

Daniel Gómez-Ibáñez

From 1991 to 1993 Daniel Gómez-Ibáñez was the Executive Director of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, which he and others founded in Chicago in 1988. The 1993 centennial event in Chicago was probably the largest and most diverse gathering of world religious and spiritual leaders ever assembled. Dr. Gómez-Ibáñez worked with Dr. Hans Küng to produce the document Toward a Global Ethic; an Initial Declaration, signed by over 100 religious and spiritual leaders at the Parliament.

Afterwards he founded the Peace Council and served as its Executive Director until he retired in 2007. The Peace Council was a response to the many appeals at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions for effective, practical interfaith collaboration in areas of conflict.

During the fifteen years of its existence the Peace Council provided seed money for bread baking and weaving cooperatives in Mayan refugee camps, equipped indigenous health workers, helped establish a shelter for victims of child prostitution and rape in Thailand, walked with Buddhist monks through heavily-mined combat zones in Cambodia, provided medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in North Korea, worked with international organizations to advance women’s rights and opportunities, promoted the peaceful return of Muslim refugees to Kosovo, and worked with the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, sharing the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with many other NGOs. Other programs took the Coiuncilors to Palestine and Israel, Canada, South Korea, Northern Ireland, Mozambique, the Sudan, and even New York.

Henry Goldschmidt

Henry Goldschmidt is the director of programs at The Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY). Dr. Goldschmidt is a cultural anthropologist, community educator, interfaith organizer, and scholar of American religious diversity. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and has taught religious studies and cultural anthropology at Wesleyan University and elsewhere. He is the author of Race and Religion among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights (Rutgers U. Press, 2006) and the coeditor of Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas (Oxford U. Press, 2004).

Philip Goldberg

Philip Goldberg has been studying India’s spiritual traditions for about fifty years, as a practitioner, teacher and an author. He is the author or coauthor of more than twenty books, including Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path(2006); American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West (2010), which was named one of the top ten religion books of the year by both the Huffington Post and the American Library Association’s Booklist; and his latest, The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru (2018).

As a public speaker and workshop leader, he has given presentations at venues throughout the US. India and other locations, and has appeared in national media. An ordained Interfaith Minister and spiritual counselor, he is cohost of the popular podcast Spirit Matters, leads American Veda Tours to India, and blogs regularly on Spirituality & Health and Elephant Journal. His websites are www.PhilipGoldberg.com and http://www.spiritmatterstalk.com. He serves as secretary of the founding Board of Directors of The Interfaith Observer (TIO).

Mike Goggin

Mike Goggin serves the Ignatian Volunteer Corps as Regional Director for Washington, DC and Suburban Maryland after more than 20 years of working in the DC faith-based non-profit community. Highlights include six plus years of youth ministry at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in the Archdiocese of Washington, nine years of directing programs and coordinating special events for the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington (IFC), and four years as National Executive Director of the St. Vincent Pallotti Center for Apostolic Development, a lay missionary organization. He contributed a chapter to Dr. Eboo Patel’s book Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), became the youngest President in the history of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN), also in 2006, and earlier won the Outstanding Adult Leadership Award from the Office of Youth Ministry/CYO in Washington.

Ted Glick

Ted Glick has devoted 44 years of his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism Grinnell College, he left in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973 he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon.

For the last nine years Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a clean energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December 3rd actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May, 2006 he became the national coordinator of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council and is currently National Policy Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. For three and a half months in the fall of 2007 he ate no solid food as part of a climate emergency fast focused on getting Congress to pass strong climate legislation, one of 20 extended fasts for social justice.

He has participated in and led hundreds of actions and been arrested seventeen times for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. His prolific writing on the movement to which he devotes his life includes his 2000 book, Future Hope: A Winning Strategy for a Just Society (2000) and his column, "Future Hope," distributed nationally since 2000. His book Love Refuses to Quit: Climate Change and Social Change in the 21st Century (2009) is free for downloading.

Todd Glacy

Rev. Todd Glacy is an Interfaith Minister who describes himself as an Enlightenment
Advocate, Spiritual Explorer and an Instigator of Joy. He travels extensively as a
speaker, musician and workshop facilitator sharing his passion for empowering people
to live happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives.

Todd holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston and a
Master’s Degree in Counseling. After working for a decade as a School Counselor, he
enrolled in the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME) where he received his ordination
as an Interfaith Minister. He is a certified life coach, yoga instructor, drum circle
facilitator and the creator of the Gong Journeywork™ Wisdoming process. He has
recorded a number of CD’s and shares his passion of Sacred Sound and Living with
spiritual and wellness focused communities and organizations. Find out more at
www.sacredsoundandlving.com

Karl Giberson

Karl Giberson, Ph.D, is a leading scholar of science & religion and has written several books and hundreds of articles, essays, reviews, and blogs. He is the former president of the BioLogos Foundation, founded by Francis Collins to help Christians make peace with science. He is an active participant in America’s creation/evolution controversy and has published in outlets including Salon.com, Edge.org, Discover, The Weekly Standard, and Perspectives of Science & Faith. He has also written or co-authored seven books, including Worlds Apart: The Unholy War Between Science and Religion (1993); Species of Origins: America's Search for a Creation Story (2002); Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion (2006), published in Italian and Spanish; and Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (2008), which was recognized by The Washington Post as a “Best of 2008” book.

Giberson is a popular speaker and has lectured about science-and-religion at Oxford University, MIT, the Venice Institute for Arts and Science, the Etore Majorana Center in Sicily, and colleges and universities in the United States. In 2006 he spoke at the Vatican on "America's Ongoing Hostility to Darwinism.” Dr. Giberson is a professor at Stonehill College and a fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation. Feel free to visit his website.

Rev. Canon Charles Gibbs

Rev. Canon Charles Gibbs has served as United Religion Initiative’s founding executive director for the past 16 years, from URI’s gestation to the present international network of more than 500 cooperation circles in 78 countries. Charles has worked with religious, spiritual and other leaders in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, been a featured speaker internationally, and written extensively about interfaith cooperation. With colleague Sally Mahé, he co-authored Birth of a Global Community (2003), a book on the birth of the United Religions Initiative. His essay “Opening the Dream: Beyond the Limits of Otherness” appears in the anthology, Deepening the American Dream. As an Episcopal priest, Charles brings to his work a strong commitment to spiritual transformation and to work for peace, justice and healing, as well as an abiding belief in the sacredness of all life on this planet.

Catherine Ghosh

Catherine Ghosh is an artist, writer, mother and editor of Journey of the Heart: An Anthology of Spiriutal Poetry by Women (2014). She has been an active practitioner and student in the Bhakti Yoga tradition since 1986, studying under Damodar Goswami of Jagannatha Puri, Orissa, India, and later trained in Svarupa-asanas with Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati in La Jolla, California. Catherine is co-founder of The Secret Yoga Institute, together with her life partner, Graham M. Schweig, PhD, and develops teaching materials for yoga workshops, such as meditation videos, which have been shown at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Catherine has served as a contributing editor for Integral Yoga Magazineand is a regular contributor to Mantra, Yoga + Health Magazine She is passionate about inspiring women to share their spiritual insights and honor their valuable voices, and does so through a Women’s Spiritual Poetry Blog she founded in 2012. A lover of nature, Catherine divides her time between her two homes in Northern Florida and Southern Virginia, delighting in the mothering of her two sons, painting, quilting, and writing poetry, among other artistic activities. You may connect with her on Facebook or email. her.

Ilona Gerbakher

Ilona Gerbakher is a scholar and author. After completing her degree as a Presidential Scholar of Islamic Theology at Harvard Divinity School, she moved to Qatar as a Georgetown Arabic Language fellow. She then moved to Morocco to complete her studies of advanced Classical and Moroccan Arabic. She is currently working in Jerusalem as a Comparative Religions fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studies Hebrew, Aramaic, and literary Arabic. Ilona is committed to building bridges between disparate communities – Muslim and Jew, religious and secular – and believes that this will be the century of peaceful co-existence and empathic understanding among all peoples.

Jeff Gunung

Jeff Genung is a graduate of Cornell University (B.S. in Business Management). He is the co-founder and president of Contemplative Life, a non-profit organization that helps connect people with transformative practices and helps them build community with others of like mind. He has previously served as a senior executive for TechTurn, the nation’s leading computer recycling and refurbishing company. Jeff also served as a senior executive for Mutual Mobile, one of the nations’ largest and fastest-growing mobile application and design agencies. He has created strategic partnerships with some of the world’s largest companies.

Jeff has studied the contemplative practices of many great traditions as well as the development of contemporary secular practices. He is experienced in working with all age groups in engaging contemplative practices, including the development of a rite-of-passage program for young contemplatives transitioning to adulthood. He has also served many years as a hospice volunteer, integrating end-of-life practices and programs that address the contemplative needs associated with those experiencing grief and loss.

Lucy Gellman

Lucy Gellman is a reporter for the New Haven Independent and the station manager of
WNHH-LP Radio New Haven. From July 2013 through July 2015 she served as the Florence B. Selden Fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Francis Geddes

Francis Geddes, D. Min., has studied and taught a variety of spiritual disciplines during the past forty years. He teaches healing in the context of contemplative prayer and interfaith spiritual exercises at retreat centers, conferences, congregations, and seminary classrooms. The title of his doctoral dissertation is Healing Training in the Church, completed at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California, in 1981. He is a retired minister in the United Church of Christ and a graduate of The Program in Spiritual Direction at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington D.C.; Stanford University; and the Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Contemplative Healing: The Congregation as Healing Community (2011). Dr. Geddes believes there is a natural, God-given “healing force” abroad in the universe and latent within every person. He suggests that we are all healers, but most of us are not aware of that potential.

Vicki Garlock

Vicki Garlock is the founder of World Religions for Kids, a company dedicated to improving religious literacy in children and their adults. Her kids’ books, geared to kids aged 4-10, include the award-winning We All Have Sacred Spaces, Embracing Peace: Stories from the World’s Faith Traditions, and ABCs of the World’s Religions (due out January, 2023).

Over the years, she has also written extensively for both The Interfaith Observer and Multicultural Kid Blogs, and she regularly presents at conferences for Social Studies teachers across the southeastern U.S.

Vicki received her Sc.B. in Psychology from Brown University before attending the Univ. of AL – Birmingham for her Ph.D. with dual specialties in neuroscience and cognitive development. After serving over a decade as a full-time Psychology Professor at Warren Wilson College, she accepted a position as Nurture Coordinator and Curriculum Specialist at Jubilee! Community Church in Asheville, NC. While there, she developed a multifaith curriculum for kids aged 4 through 8th grade and was ordained as their Minister of Education.

Vicki and her husband live in Asheville, NC, and they have two almost-grown children. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok (@learnreligions).

Gary Gach

Gary Gach is a Jewish Buddhist, ordained in the Order of Interbeing, practicing mindfulness in the tradition of Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. He is author of the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buddhism (3rd edition, 2009), the editor of the American Book Award-winning What Book!? Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop (1997), and translator of three books by Ko Un, hailed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as “Korea’s greatest living Zen poet.” Gary’s work has appeared in Buddha Dharma, Evergreen Review, European Judaism, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The New Yorker, Patheos, and Religion Dispatches. He hosts an online haiku forum for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He’s also Western advisor to the Buddhist Channel. Gary can be reached at his website. 

Nancy Fuchs Kreimer

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Ph.D., is on the faculty of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and directs its Department of Multifaith Studies and Initiatives. For more than 30 years, she has explored what joins and separates religions in their practice and approach to holy texts. She creates workshops and retreats bringing emerging religious leaders together.

“I look on interreligious study as part of the spiritual formation of rabbinical students,” she says. "In addition, we want to prepare our students to be proactive leaders in a religiously diverse society.” Kreimer regularly hosts visiting Muslim scholars and initiates programs that offer joint text study of Torah and Qu’ran. She organizes service-learning projects where rabbinical students work in interfaith settings, then bring their experiences back to the classroom. She envisions a generation of Jewish leaders able to forge alliances with their Muslim and Christian counterparts in the community to create understanding and catalyze change.

Rabbi Kreimer’s blog is Multifaithworld.org, and she is regularly published in The Huffington Post.