Tom Levitt writes on food, environment and anything outdoors for the Guardian and is a former deputy editor of the Ecologist magazine. He has an MSc in food policy from City University and tweets at @tom_levitt
Rev. Dr. William Lesher
Rev. Dr. William E. Lesher has a long and distinguished career in promoting global interreligious dialogue. Before becoming an interfaith activist, he spent 20 years as president of Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he helped establish the Chicago Center for Religion and Science. As a Chicago religious leader, he was active in the centennial celebration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 and has been closely connected ever since. He served as an ambassador for the Council in preparation for the 1999 Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, was convener of the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona, Spain, and stepped down as chair at the end of 2009 Melbourne Parliament. Along the way, Bill Lesher has been an adviser, trustee, consultant, and chair to numerous international educational, ecumenical, interfaith, and human rights organizations.
Kyle Lemle
Kyle Lemle is a community forester, with experience working for international and grassroots NGOs on participatory natural resource management projects across the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, and California. Working with forest communities around the world, he has witnessed the power of tree planting to build ecological resilience while preserving culture.
Kyle is an inaugural recipient of the Spiritual Ecology Fellowship, through which he is working with leading practitioners from South Dakota to Northern India to empower diverse moral imperatives for conservation. In partnership with another SE Fellow, Brontë Velez, he co-designed and launched the project LeadtoLife.org which is transforming guns into shovels to use in ceremonial tree plantings at sites of violence and sacred sites across Oakland and Atlanta.
Kyle is also a recipient of the Princeton in Asia Fellowship to conduct research with RECOFTC – the Center for People and Forests on community forestry and climate change adaptation across Southeast Asia. After returning to the USA, he served as Community Project Manager with Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF), where he organized and implemented 30 neighborhood-level greening campaigns and the planting of over 2000 trees across the streets of San Francisco.
When he is not planting trees, Kyle serves as founder and co-director of the Choir for ThriveEastBay.org, where he is writing and performing original gospel-for-social-change music in a growing, purpose-driven community-based in Oakland. He is a former resident of Green Gulch Farm, and continues to draw inspiration and energy from his practice in the Soto Zen tradition.
Deborah Lee
Deborah Lee is the director of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Founded in 1993, it is a program of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, which believes that all people are sacred across all borders. Lee is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and a long time peace educator and activist working on a range of different, intersecting social justice issues.
John Paul Lederach
Widely known for his pioneering work in conflict transformation, John Paul Lederach is involved in conciliation work in Colombia, the Philippines, and Nepal, plus countries in East and West Africa. He has helped design and conduct training programs in 25 countries across five continents. In August 2013, Lederach was appointed director of the Peace Accords Matrix, the Kroc Institute's unique source of comparable data on all comprehensive peace agreements that have been signed since 1989.
Lederach is the author of 22 books, including When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation, (University of Queensland Press, 2010), The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005), The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997), and Preparing for Peace: Confliction Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse University Press, 1995).
Lederach holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado (1988).
Robyn Lebron
Robyn Lebron's most recent books, "20 World Religions & Faith Practices --The Search for Peace in Times of Chaos-- Vol 1 & 2" have been Awarded the prestigious DeRose-Hinkhouse Award for Excellence in Religious Communication for 2017, by Religion Communicator Council.
Robyn was recently a presenter at the NAIN Convention for 2017 at a Workshop titled "Is Interfaith becoming just another Religion?"
She is Manager and Moderator for LinkedIn's "Interfaith Professionals" group, which supports over 4700 members of all faiths and creeds. A place where all can talk about their faith openly and freely in an effort to find common ground.
In an effort to create more understanding and peaceful discourse between different faith practices, she starting researching for her books in 2008. She currently resides in Harshaw, WI with her dogs and cats.
Leslie Leasure
Leslie Leasure is Program Director of the Ignite Institute. She recieved an M.Div. from the Pacific School of Religion and an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University. Prior to seminary, Leslie worked as a fundraiser for nonprofit organizations.
Joseph P. Laycock
Joseph P. Laycock is an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State University. He teaches courses on world religions, religion in America, new religious movements, and the intersection of religion and popular culture.
He is the author of several books including Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds (2015) and The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle to Define Catholicism (2014). He is also a blogger for Religion Dispatches.
Dr. Charles Ian McNeill
For 30 years, Dr. Charles Ian McNeill has been a leader in the United Nations building innovative multi-sector partnerships to solve global environmental challenges. He played a key role in transforming UNDP from a development organization into a leading global environmental actor. He is currently the Senior Advisor on Forests & Climate for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and is overseeing the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, an international alliance bringing faith-based leadership to local and global efforts to end tropical deforestation. Previously, Dr. McNeill managed UNDP’s work on forests, biodiversity, climate change, sustainable energy, stakeholder engagement and public-private partnerships. In that capacity he founded and led catalytic global initiatives, including the UN-REDD Programme, the Equator Initiative, the global coalition that delivered the New York Declaration on Forests at the 2014 UN Climate Summit, and the Indigenous Peoples Initiative for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. He also served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Forests. Dr. McNeill received his Ph.D. in Genetics with a focus on conservation biology, from the University of California at Davis.
Dorianne Laux
Dorianne Laux’s fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Laux teaches poetry in the Program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University and is a founding faculty member of Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program. Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected, was released by W.W. Norton in early 2019.
Peter Laurence
Dr. Peter Laurence is executive director of the Education as Transformation Project at Wellesley College. He was the founder and director of the Westchester Interfaith Council in Westchester County, New York; executive director of the Temple of Understanding; national interreligious program officer for the National Conference of Christians and Jews; and developer of the U.S. Chapter for the World Conference on Religion and Peace. He has served as chair of the Board of the North American Interfaith Network and was a member of the Assembly of Religious and Spiritual Leaders for the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 and 1999. He was an advisor in the initial stages of those two Parliaments and in the formation of United Religions Initiative. Peter has written and edited numerous books, including Education as Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and a New Vision for Higher Education in America (2000). He serves on the editorial boards of the Religion and Education journal and the Journal of College and Character.
Phil Lane Jr.
Phil Lane Jr. is an enrolled member of the Yankton Dakota and Chickasaw First. National Indian Magazine named Phil named a Modern Indian Sports Great for his record-breaking accomplishments in track and wrestling in 1977. For 44 years, he has worked with Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America, Micronesia, South East Asia, India, Hawaii, and Africa. For 16 years he taught at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, Canada. With elders from across North America, Phil co-founded the Four Worlds International Institute (FWII) in 1982.
Today he chairs the Four Directions International, an indigenous-owned economic development company incorporated in 1996, focusing on the importance of culture and spirituality in development. Phil is an award-winning author and film producer, whose credits include “Images of Indians, “Walking With Grandfather,” and “Healing the Hurts.” He has been honored by Indigenous elders as Hereditary Chief through a traditional headdress ceremony. He was the first indigenous person to receive the Windstar Award, and has been honored by the Foundation for Freedom and Human Rights, in Switzerland, and the Center for Healing Racism in Houston.
Yehezkel Landau
Yehezkel Landau is associate professor of Interfaith Relations at Hartford Seminary. After earning an A.B. from Harvard University (1971) and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School (1976), Landau made aliyah (immigrated) to Israel in 1978. A dual Israeli-American citizen, his work has been in the fields of interfaith education and Jewish-Arab peacemaking. He directed the OZ veSHALOM-NETIVOT SHALOM religious peace movement in Israel during the 1980s. From 1991 to 2003, he was co-founder and co-director of the OPEN HOUSE Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in Ramle, Israel. He lectures internationally on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations and Middle East peace issues, has authored numerous journal articles, co-edited the book Voices from Jerusalem: Jews and Christians Reflect on the Holy Land (Paulist Press, 1992), wrote a Jewish appraisal of Pope John Paul II’s trip to Israel and Palestine in 2000 for the book John Paul II in the Holy Land: in His Own Words (Paulist Press, 2005), and authored a research report entitled “Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine” for the United States Institute of Peace in 2003. At Hartford Seminary, Prof. Landau directs an interfaith training program for Jews, Christians, and Muslims called “Building Abrahamic Partnerships.”
Jerusha T. Lamptey
Jerusha T. Lamptey is Assistant Professor of Islam and Ministry at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Her research focuses on theologies of religious pluralism, comparative theology, and Muslima theology.
Dr. Lamptey earned a Ph.D. in Theological and Religious Studies with a focus on Religious Pluralism at Georgetown University in 2011. She also received an M.A. in Islamic Sciences at the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, and an M.A. in Theological and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. Before joining the Union faculty in July of 2012, she was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University.
Dr. Lamptey’s first book, Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism (Oxford University Press, March 2014), explores the Qur’anic discourse on religious ‘otherness’. In this book, she draws upon feminist theology and semantic methodology to re-interpret the Qur’anic discourse and challenge notions of clear and static religious boundaries by distinguishing between and illuminating the complexity of multiple forms of religious difference.
Her current book project focuses on comparative feminist theology. In this project, she aims to articulate a comparative Muslima (Islamic feminist) theology in conversation with various Christian feminist theologians. While Islamic feminism has typically distanced itself from other ‘feminisms’ due to their entanglements with colonialism and imperialism, in this project she argues that comparative theological engagement is essential to the development of a Muslima theology that moves beyond exegetical and legal reformulation and toward constructive theology.
Her other publications focus on religious pluralism, Muslima theology, ecumenical relations, Vatican II, and African traditional religions. include “Embracing Relationality and Theological Tensions: Muslima Theology, Religious Diversity, and Fate” in Between Heaven and Hell: Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013); “Lateral and Hierarchical Religious Difference in the Qur’an,” in Understanding Religious Pluralism (forthcoming 2013); “John Paul II and Islam” in The Interfaith Theology of John Paul II (forthcoming 2013); “From Sexual Difference to Religious Difference: Toward a Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism” in Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians (Peter Lang, 2013); “‘Mapping’ the Religious Other: The Second Vatican Council’s Approach to Protestantism,” (Journal of Ecumenical Studies 45:4 [Fall 2010]); and “Mysticism in African Thought” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Scribner & Sons, 2004).
Suzy Lamoreaux
Suzy Lamoreaux is a recent graduate of Rutgers University. She became interested in religion, interfaith dialogue, and the role religions play in societies through her studies of history and French culture. Her undergraduate honors thesis researched the history of North African immigration in 1970s and 80s France, the effects of which have contributed to contemporary French Islamophobia. She gained first-hand knowledge of the issue as a mentor of Maghrebi youth in Paris. In her spare time, Suzy enjoys baking, playing and watching hockey, doing crossword puzzles, and running.
Gary Laderman
Gary Laderman is the chair of the Department of Religion, Emory University, professor of American Religious History and Cultures, and the editor of the publication Sacred Matters. Dr. Laderman is the author of Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States (2010). He is the author of two books on death in America: The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883 (1999) and Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (2003). He has co-edited two encyclopedias, Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions (2003) and Science, Religion, Societies: Histories, Cultures, Controversies (2006). Laderman has been interviewed on topics ranging from death and funerals to horror films and televangelists in a variety of media, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers and television programs. He writes for various publications, including Huffington Post.
In addition to serving as chairperson of the department, Laderman is a founder of the online religion magazine, Religion Dispatches. He is continuing to research, write, and teach on the sacred in American life generally, and is currently working on a book project exploring American religious history from a global perspective. He has received funding from the Lilly Endowment, Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, and the Ford Foundation. And he has organized numerous conferences at Emory University.
Fr. James Kurzynski
Fr. James Kurzynski is a priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin and a hobby astronomer. Originally from the small town of Amherst in rural central Wisconsin, Fr. James completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, majoring in Applied Music (Saxophone, Voice, and Composition). After graduating from UW-SP, Fr. James worked at the University of Nebraska at Kearney as a Hall Director and pursued an M.S.Ed. in Group Counseling. After a year at UNK, Fr. James left his position to attend the University of Saint Mary of the Lake - Mundelein Seminary to discern his priestly vocation. He was ordained in 2003 and is currently the pastor of Saint Joseph Parish in Menomonie, Wisconsin and Saint Luke Parish in Boyceville, Wisconsin. In addition to these assignments, Fr. James is also the Chaplain of StoutCatholic, a student outreach organization to the students of the University of Wisconsin–Stout, and teaches Philosophy for the Diocese of La Crosse’s Permanent Deaconate Program.
Tom Krattenmaker
Tom Krattenmaker is a Portland-based writer specializing in religion in public life and author of the award-winning Onward Christian Athletes (2009), on Christianity in professional sports. Krattenmaker’s second book, The Evangelicals You Don’t Know (2013), was released in April 2013.
Krattenmaker writes regularly for USA Today’s op-ed page as a member of the newspaper’s editorial Board of Contributors. His column-writing was honored by the American Academy of Religion in its 2009 Journalism Awards program, receiving praise for challenging popular misconceptions about evangelicals “and showing that something new, something more complex and subtle is going on — a great goal for religion commentary.” His work has also appeared in recent years in Salon, the Los Angeles Times, the Oregonian, Beliefnet, the Huffington Post, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. His numerous media appearances include National Public Radio, the New York Times “Idea of the Day” website, and ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.”
Krattenmaker was a presenter at the 2010 and 2013 “Q” gatherings and the 2010 conference of the American Humanist Association. Named the 2009 Mendenhall Lecturer at DePauw University, Krattenmaker has also spoken at college campuses including Georgetown, Baylor, Lewis & Clark, Willamette University Law School, the University of Portland, Portland State University, Missouri State University, and Springfield, Swarthmore, and Haverford Colleges. He was a recipient of the 2009 “Friend of MET” award from the Portland-based Muslim Educational Trust and, this year, the Hunderup Award for religious education from the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.
Jennifer Kogan
Jennifer Kogan is a clinical social worker and writer who helps parents identify and create what is meaningful to them so they can feel more connected and joyful. She offers individual, couple, and family counseling and support in her Washington DC practice. Jen is a mom of two school-age children and is one half of an interfaith couple herself. Check here for more about her work and writing.
Paul F. Knitter
Paul F. Knitter, Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary since 2007, is a leading theologian of religious pluralism. He holds a licentiate from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and a doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany. Knitter’s journey into interfaith dialogue began in 1964 when he was a seminarian in Rome and experienced the Second Vatican Council firsthand, as the Roman Catholic Church declared its new attitude towards other religions.
Most of Dr. Knitter’s research and publications have dealt with religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue. Since his ground-breaking 1985 book, No Other Name?, he has been exploring how the religious communities of the world can cooperate in promoting human and ecological well-being. This is the topic of One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility (1995) and Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (1996), and his critical survey of Christian approaches to other religions:Introducing Theologies of Religions(Orbis Books, 2002). In 2005, Knitter edited a multifaith exploration titledThe Myth of Religious Superiority(Orbis Books). His latest publication is Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian: A Personal Journey of Passing Over and Passing Back(Oneworld Publications, 2009).
