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For Religious Leaders in Training

The Emerging Religious Leaders Intensive

The Emerging Religious Leaders Intensive (ERLI) is a week-long residential immersion experience in interreligious learning and dialogue for Christian, Jewish, and Muslim students training for leadership roles. ERLI fills a key gap in seminary education as few institutions offer such in-depth interreligious experiences.

For more information about ERLI 2025, contact your school’s ERLI coordinator or email info@icjs.org.

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ICJS is an Associate Member of The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS), but not an Accredited Member with the ATS Commission on Accrediting.

Emerging Religious Leaders Intensive Rosters

What is ERLI?

Testimonials from ERLI participants and leaders

It’s not always easy to come to places where you’re not sure if you’re going to be targeted. There was a great deal of effort in this organization to really create safe spaces for everyone.

Hafsa Abdul-Hakeem

Rabata

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Two of us had to leave the room, we needed a break. The other person was in tears. I asked her, ‘May I hug you?’’ And she asked me why? And I said, ‘Because you are in pain.’ She said that was the moment that she realized that I, too, was feeling what she was feeling. That was a sincere experience for both of us.

Chana Stein

Academy for Jewish Religion

To hear the whole room filled with each of us taking on the other people’s perspectives, it really moved me because it made me feel like interreligious dialogue was really possible, even on the hardest things. That if we could actually take the perspective of someone else, the person who’s not us, then maybe we could actually work for peace together

Jordan Wesley

General Theological Seminary

Not only is the work of ICJS essential; it is crucial to the fabric of our society. In a world often divided by religious differences, their efforts to foster understanding and collaboration are vital to realizing the American dream of unity in diversity. Now more than ever, we must come together to shape a future that embraces all faiths, perspectives, and communities.

Bushra Sugrio

Boston Islamic Seminary

It’s good to be in a space where the discomfort can happen and you can know that ultimately you are safe and that it’s going to be okay.

Reuven McCullough

Aleph Ordination Program

It’s been transformational. To quote from Plato’s dialogues, in a book called the Symposium, Socrates says, ‘Let’s exchange beauty for beauty.’ And in this space, this is what we were able to do, exchange beauty for beauty, see each other’s tradition, and then turn ugliness and whatever was perceived as ugly into beauty.

Kenny Solis

Shenandoah University