CHICAGO, IL—This past weekend, August 8-10, Interfaith America (IA) hosted the annual Interfaith Leadership Summit. This summer’s event, the biggest Summit in IA’s history and the largest national interfaith gathering of 2025, brought together more than 700 college students, higher education professionals, emerging leaders, healthcare experts, workplace innovators, and bridgebuilders for a weekend of connection, conversation, and collaboration.
The event’s theme, The Chords of Democracy, offered a useful lens for thinking about the work of building pluralism.
“You are the composers and the performers of a new kind of American music,” offered IA CEO Adam Phillips in his opening remarks. “One grounded in faith, driven by a moral imperative for a new way of belonging, and even neighborliness, rooted in relationship.”
Phillips set the tone for an opening conversation between Eboo Patel, Rahul Sharma, Allison Briscoe-Smith, and Mark Rodgers which explored the role of pluralism in a diverse democracy.
Specialized training cohorts and breakout sessions covering topics across Interfaith America’s higher education, workplace, health and civic sectors offered space for attendees to practice what Briscoe-Smith named in the opening panel as key to navigating pluralism: “identifying where our light shines the brightest and how we can coordinate” to build together.
Over the course of the weekend, attendees witnessed compelling musical performances and were invited to engage creatively with the conference space, contributing to a visual representation of the impact of their work across the country through features like a map of an interfaith America.
Student leaders in pursuit of shared belonging on campus learned and built on the foundational skills of interfaith leadership. Returning to the Summit for a second year, Muhlenberg College junior Gideon Israel reflected on the deep listening practices explored in the “Respect, RELATE, Cooperate” training track.
“One thing that’s really sticking with me is the idea of listening to understand,” said Israel. “You can’t build trust if the other person doesn’t feel heard. You have to use those deep listening skills to really understand them, and I think that can be really powerful.”
Attendees of the “Pluralism at Work: Unlocking Hidden Talent” business roundtable, co-hosted by Accenture, met with other interfaith leaders in corporate spaces, discussing questions like: “how are we going to engineer the capacity of tech to reflect human values ” and “what role can interfaith leaders play in conveying the role religion plays in understandings of what makes people sacred?”
“There was something for everyone with the different tracks,” said Alexandria Gurley, senior manager of intercultural student engagement at Dallas College and first-time Summit attendee. “It was so inclusive, but still everybody felt like they could identify with specific groups.”
Tracks also included opportunities for senior campus leaders and administrators, as well as faculty in health professions.
After two days of connecting with and learning from their training cohorts, attendees closed out the weekend with a final plenary.
Invoking an impactful story of how relationships built in pursuit of pluralism reduced opioid-related deaths in Harnett County, North Carolina, IA’s Senior Director of Faith & Health Suzanne Watts Henderson set the stage for the conversation with a powerful reminder that pluralism is not only life-giving but can be life-saving.
Moderated by IA’s Mike Whitenton and featuring Paul Lambert, Abhinav Krishnan, and Sudha Wadhwani, the closing plenary explored the difficulties and opportunities of pluralism in campus settings and sent interfaith leaders forth with inspiration to continue this work.
“Harmonizing is really hard,” said Wadhwani. “Staying true to your own voice part while hearing and honoring all the other voices and getting synchronicity is hard work … and I feel so grateful to be here in this community where we’re all doing the work.”
