Each year, diverse religious scholars and academics from across the country convene at ICJS to participate in Faculty Seminar—an intensive weeklong gathering designed to foster creative scholarly collaboration and generate provocative questions that advance the field of Interfaith/Interreligious Studies.
This year’s gathering was a little different.
Ten board members from the Association for Interreligious/Interfaith Studies (AIIS) joined four ICJS scholars to begin drafting a five-year plan for AIIS. If list-filled whiteboards, emphatic hand gestures, and full days of spirited discussion are barometers of successful strategic planning, there is a lot to anticipate from the fifth annual ICJS-sponsored Faculty Seminar. But even more, the face-to-face time fostered personal connection among these university faculty during a time when interreligious work and embracing differences can be polarizing, attract suspicion-fueled scrutiny, or even worse—de-funding in higher education.
“It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in this work,” said Hans Gustafson, Ph.D, AIIS board member and director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Gustafson said the field of interreligious study is still emerging, but also expanding. He hears regularly from professors —new and experienced—who face growing religious diversity in their classrooms. Their students raise questions about religious diversity and teachers want to meet them where they are.
“My students are no longer all Christian, and I feel the need to learn about other religions to be prepared,” he recalled one teacher saying.
“So they come to us,” Gustafson said. “As North America becomes increasingly religiously diverse, scholars are reckoning with this in many disciplines, and AIIS is trying to get ahead of that.”
Slow, Steady and Far-Reaching Work
AIIS president-elect Kevin Minister, Ph.D., takes the helm in November.
“During this week we cast a vision together,” Minister said. “It’s clear what we want to keep doing as we expand our impact and support the diversity of people doing this work.”
Minister is a senior scholar-in-residence at the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas, an academic associate with community builder nonprofit Essential Partners, and the founding partner of Ask Better Questions Together—they offer teaching tools to navigate differences with curiosity, compassion and confidence.
“This is work that is not solved in the short term. These are all folks who have devoted substantial portions of their lives, passions, and tears to building connections across religious difference,” said Minister.
Linda Sauer Bredvik, Ph.D, a board member at large and head of Endless Sky Consulting, frames the organization’s mission at an even larger scale.
“The work of AIIS is absolutely vital to the United States, to democracies, to creating productive conversations around difference and around honest disagreement,” she said.
In the Room Where it Happened
“There’s still a hunger to do this kind of work, despite flagging support and resources,” said current board president Ben Sax, Ph.D, who is also ICJS Head of Scholarship and Jewish Scholar.
Sax said the face-to-face meeting strengthened relationships and fueled collaborative idea generation among academic colleagues, “leveraging the intelligence in the room. People were actively rolling up their sleeves and getting the work of planning done.”
In November, AIIS will convene during the American Academy of Religion annual conference in Denver.
“We’re going to bring a lot of energy into that room and I think our colleagues are going to feel it,” said Sax. “They’re going to want to be a part of it.”
Supporting Early Career and Future Scholars
Valeria Vergani is a Ph.D. student in American religious history at Stanford University in Northern California. She is an AIIS board member and a coordinator of the organization’s Emerging Scholars Network, which provides community, and professional opportunities and mentorship. She feels the work of AIIS is urgent.
“There is a sense of isolation or discouragement that especially scholars and educators may be feeling right now as they deal with challenges in the classroom or in finding professional opportunities,” Vergani said. “So we are finding ways to keep hope together, to encourage each other and to share guidance and mentorship.”
Vergani is coming away from the week with a renewed passion and commitment to the mission and vision of AIIS. She sees interreligious work as essential, and pluralism as a strategy for community building.
“Our work with pluralism is trying to draw individuals out of isolation, out of vulnerability, out of a need to defend themselves or justify what they believe,” said Vergani. “When a person feels proud of who they are, they feel safe, and then they want to lead and to contribute to society. And those are the conditions under which any society flourishes.”
Making Space for Expansive, Creative Thinking
Over the past year, AIIS has been deep in the weeds completing the process of becoming a non-profit organization. ICJS executive director and Roman Catholic scholar Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D, wanted to provide its board a much-needed opportunity to take a break from that important institution-building work, and to step back in order to envision a bigger, bolder future for this important field of study.
“Teaching in universities and colleges can be an isolating experience. Faculty are often alone with their books, their email inboxes, and their online classrooms. The enthusiasm, creative thinking, and camaraderie that a week of in-person meetings produced has accelerated the dynamic work of the AIIS board,” said Rubens. “Crafting this new strategic five-year plan will allow AIIS to support this growing network of interfaith/interreligious scholars, including vital outreach to the next generation of academics asking urgent questions around religious pluralism in society. I am honored that ICJS can create the space for faculty to do this necessary dreaming and building.”
August 2026