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.

Helene Ijaz

Helene Ijaz, Ph.D., is a consultant and mediator in the areas of cross-cultural, interracial and interfaith relations. She has worked in the areas of multiculturalism and antiracism at the school board, university and provincial levels and has lectured and written on a variety of related topics, with a special emphasis on interreligious marriage, drawing on her experience as a Roman Catholic, who has been married to a Muslim for close to 50 years.

Husna Ibrahim

Husna Ibrahim is a student at the University of Minnesota. She serves as the secretary of the University’s Multi-Faith Student Council. She has had an interest for learning about other faiths from a young age. Having grown up in a household that really valued faith and tradition, she is very interested in exploring both her own faith journey and the faith journey of others. Ibrahim is a Muslim, and the holy book that she follows speaks of the same prophets that the other Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity, have. She sees interfaith dialogue as a way to get to know her fellow college students on a different level that is important and fascinating to them. She finds spirituality an incredible topic of conversation, especially in interfaith dialogues, and a great way to gain different perspectives from people.

Justine Huxley

Justine Huxley, director, has been with St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London for nine years. ”It is a tremendous privilege to work here. I am constantly inspired by the dedication and creativity of our team and the amazing range of people we work with and who walk through our doors. I see my role as sensing the conversations that are waiting to happen, bringing people together from diverse backgrounds and ideologies, and allowing new ideas and ways of working to emerge collaboratively.” Justine has a PhD in psychology and a diploma in integrative counseling. Previously she worked as a research and communications consultant. She has been responsible for developing our dialogue methodology, training programs and resources, for building our work with narrative and personal story, and for developing the conflict resilience, conflict coaching, and re-imagining the sacred programs. She brings a wealth of experience in deep listening, facilitation, and working with emergent process.

Aamir Hussain

Aamir Hussain, a native of Farmington, Connecticut, graduated from Georgetown University with a Government major and Theology minor in 2013. He is a Muslim of Indian background and speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Hindi-Urdu. Aamir is an alumnus of the Interfaith Youth Core's programs, was the president of the Georgetown Interfaith Council, and a research assistant at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs in Washington, DC. Aamir is currently a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and an Ambassador with the Parliament of the World's Religions.

Mary E. Hunt

Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist Catholic theologian and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland. Dr. Hunt lectures and writes on theology and ethics. She is the editor of A Guide for Women in Religion: Making Your Way from A to Z (Palgrave, 2004) and co-editor with Diann L. Neu of New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views (SkyLight Paths, 2010).

Rev. Sandra Hulse

Pastor of St. John’s UCC in San Francisco, the Rev. Sandra Hulse spent 15 years in taxable fixed income trading and as an officer with EF Hutton and other brokerage firms before being ordained in 1995. A graduate of Muhlenberg College, Dr. Hulse earned an MA in Counseling from Montclair State University, an MDiv from Drew Theological School, and a DMin from the University of Creation Spirituality. In addition to pastoring churches across the UCC, Dr. Hulse has served on the budget and finance committees of the Central Atlantic, New York, Florida and Northern California Nevada Conferences.

Rev. Robert Hrasna

Rev. Robert Hrasna is a lifelong resident of the New Jersey shore. Previous to entering ministry full time, his professional career ranged in many positions and responsibilities within construction management and the trades. His Christian upbringing guided him into active membership of the Point Pleasant Presbyterian church as a Deacon and director of several initiatives including community service and presenting alternative services.

Acting on a call to ministry, his ministerial education began with a Holistic Studies program at Georgian Court University. Ordination as an Interfaith Minister in 2004 was through The New Seminary in NYC, and an advanced certification in Spiritual Counseling. His studies continue today through the American Institute of Holistic Theology. Robert has served from 2007 to 2014 on the Board of Directors for A World Alliance of Interfaith Clergy, serving the Board as Chairman for three years. During this time he was named as an Ambassador to the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain.

Today, Robert works with Wisdom Circle Ministries as the director of the Language of Interfaith project. His work there began with creating the Wisdom Ministries Multi-Region Cooperation Circle of the United Religions Initiative. He went on to conceive of, plan, and implement the Language of Interfaith project. Robert guided Wisdom Circle Ministries in a series of five Pre-Parliament events and an exhibition at the October 2015 Parliament in Salt Lake City, Nevada.

Thomas Albert Howard

Thomas Albert Howard is professor of humanities and history and holder of the Duesenberg Chair in Ethics at Valparaiso University. His God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide (Oxford, 2011) was winner of a Christianity Today Book of the Year Award. His recent publications include Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism (Oxford, 2016); and, edited with Mark A. Noll, Protestantism after 500 Years.  Currently he is working on a project provisionally titled The Riddle of the Religious Other: On the Past, Present, and Purpose of Interfaith Dialogue.