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Interfaith America’s Leadership Model
Effective pluralism leaders use interfaith leadership skills and strategies.
Interfaith America’s Leadership Model
In communities, organizations, workplaces, and institutions across the United States, people increasingly interact with others whose identities, beliefs, values, and perspectives differ from their own. For our institutions and communities to thrive, these interactions need to go well. Building respect, relationships, and cooperation across differences is one of the central leadership opportunities of our time.
For nearly 25 years, Interfaith America has worked alongside leaders in higher education, business, healthcare, philanthropy, civic life, and community organizations to create the conditions for people to work together on shared goals and build genuine relationships across America’s religious and worldview diversity.
Interfaith America’s Leadership Model defines the specific interfaith leadership skills and strategies that effective leaders use to build pluralism—that is, to build cultures characterized by respect, relationships, and cooperation across difference. Grounded in both social science research and decades of practical experience, the model helps leaders identify and strengthen the capacities needed to foster thriving communities across difference.
Effective pluralism leaders use interfaith leadership skills & strategies. They can…
Scroll down to read more about each skill or strategy.
Skills
- Communicate their own Ethic of Pluralism
- Scan for religious, spiritual, and ethical diversity, across and within groups
- Share inspiring stories that communicate the value and aspiration of pluralism
- Connect pluralism to the mission, strategy, or priorities of their institution
Strategies
- Normalize disagreement and deeply held (often immovable) beliefs
- Surface and center shared religious, spiritual, and ethical values
- Build durable structures (practices, programs, policies, norms, traditions, etc.) that regularly enable people to cooperate on shared concerns while learning about one another’s deeply held values and beliefs
- Build durable structures (practices, programs, policies, norms, traditions, etc.) that enable frequent, low-stakes opportunities to develop relationships and appreciative knowledge
Effective pluralism leaders use interfaith leadership skills & strategies. They can…
Communicate their own ethic of pluralism.
What It Means
Identifying and expressing the particular ways in which building respect, relationships, and cooperation across differences is consistent with a leader’s own religious, moral, or ethical worldview commitments. Pluralism leaders articulate this ethic in ways that are accessible, authentic, and context-appropriate, helping others understand that cooperation is not a compromise of identity but an outgrowth of deeply-held convictions.
Why It Matters
This skill enables leaders to build support for pluralistic engagement within their communities and institutions. Research on moral framing and leadership suggests that people are more responsive to collective action when it is connected to values they already hold.[1], [2] Leaders who can articulate how cooperation across differences reflects their own moral, ethical, or religious commitments are often better positioned to sustain engagement and navigate challenging moments in the work.[3]
Scan for religious, spiritual, and ethical diversity, across and within groups.
What It Means
Intentionally accounting for and seeking to learn about the religious, spiritual, and ethical identities that shape people and their experiences. Interfaith America talks about having a “radar screen” for this diversity, recognizing that these dimensions of diversity exist both across groups and within them.[3] Leaders actively seek out information (and remain curious) about what could shape how community members contribute. This might include, for example, curiosity about holidays, dietary needs, language, and other practices that are rooted in different traditions.
Why It Matters
Leaders cannot effectively engage differences they do not see. Religious, spiritual, and ethical identities are significant sources of meaning, belonging, and motivation, yet they are often overlooked.[4], [5] By keeping religious and worldview diversity on their radar, leaders are better equipped to anticipate needs, avoid preventable barriers to participation, and create opportunities for people from different backgrounds to feel included and valued.
Share inspiring stories that communicate the value and aspiration of pluralism.
What It Means
Identifying and sharing stories that illustrate what cooperation across differences looks like in practice and that inspire others with a vision of what’s possible. These stories may come from personal experience, a leader’s institution or community, history, current events, or the experiences of others. They help make pluralism inspiring, tangible, relatable, and achievable.
Why It Matters
Stories are often more memorable and persuasive than abstract concepts or statistics alone.[6] By highlighting examples of people building mutually inspiring relationships, working toward shared goals, or navigating differences respectfully, leaders help others imagine what pluralism can look like in their own communities and inspire them to participate in building it.[7]
Connect pluralism to the mission, strategy, or priorities of their institution.
What It Means
Drawing the link between pluralism and existing goals that a community or institution has already embraced. Rather than treating pluralism-building as a separate initiative, effective pluralism leaders show how a Respect-Relate-Cooperate approach can advance existing priorities such as student success, community engagement, civic participation, workplace belonging, employee retention, or organizational effectiveness.
Why It Matters
New approaches gain traction when people understand how they support existing goals.[8] By connecting pluralism to an institution’s mission and priorities, leaders can increase buy-in, build broader support, and help ensure pluralism becomes embedded in the organization’s work, rather than being seen as an additional responsibility or a distraction.
Normalize disagreement and deeply held (often immovable) beliefs.
What It Means
Communicating and demonstrating that disagreement is expected, normal, and even an asset to our institutions and communities. Rather than treating differences in beliefs, values, or worldviews as problems to solve, leaders help people engage and cooperate with one another while honoring distinct convictions and identities.[3], [9]
Why It Matters
Pluralism-building efforts often become more difficult when community members view disagreement as a threat to be eliminated rather than a reality to be navigated constructively.[10] Communities are better positioned to sustain engagement across deep disagreement when people have opportunities to work through differences without requiring consensus on every issue.[11] Ultimately, effective pluralism leaders recognize that people are often more willing to engage, collaborate, and remain in relationship across difference when they believe their identities and core commitments will be respected.[3]
Surface and center shared religious, spiritual, and ethical values.
What It Means
Identifying values that are held across different religious, spiritual, ethical, and philosophical traditions and creating opportunities for people to reflect on and discuss them together. Such values—like a dedication to serving others, caring for the environment, and offering hospitality, to name a few—are important because they allow people who might disagree profoundly on certain issues to still find common ground for joint action in other areas.[3], [12]
Why It Matters
Shared values can bind communities together, even across deep differences. By helping people identify values they hold in common—especially when those values emerge from different religious, spiritual, ethical, or philosophical traditions—leaders create space for genuine relationships across difference and concrete opportunities for cooperation.[13] Plus, research suggests that values-based framing can increase cooperation and reduce defensiveness, creating conditions that make it easier for people to work together while maintaining their distinct identities and beliefs.[1]
Build durable structures (practices, programs, policies, norms, traditions, etc.) that regularly enable people to cooperate on shared concerns while learning about one another’s deeply held values and beliefs.
What It Means
Implementing lasting structures that make meaningful collaboration across differences a regular part of organizational or community life. Leaders create practices, programs, policies, traditions, and norms that intentionally pair sustained cooperation on issues of shared concern with opportunities for participants to share and learn about the deeply held values, beliefs, and traditions that inspire their commitment to the work.
Why It Matters
Working toward a shared goal can transform how people see one another. This is particularly true when people – in the course of working together – have opportunities to learn about each other’s deeply held values and beliefs.[14] Research on social capital and intergroup relations consistently shows that sustained cooperation across groups strengthens trust, reduces polarization, and increases civic capacity.[13], [15] Further, communities with robust intergroup networks are significantly more resilient in the face of conflict.[16]
Build durable structures (practices, programs, policies, norms, traditions, etc.) that enable frequent, low-stakes opportunities to develop relationships and appreciative knowledge.
What It Means
Proactively implementing and sustaining regular practices, structures, and norms that provide recurring, day-to-day, even casual opportunities for people to get to know one another and share and learn about one another’s identities and beliefs in accurate, affirming, and humanizing ways (Appreciative Knowledge). Leaders often feel pulled to focus reactively on places in a community where there is conflict, with an emphasis on repairing something already broken. While those efforts can be valuable and necessary, effective pluralism leaders know that connected and resilient communities are developed proactively, across many intentional, quotidian moments of interaction.[17] Whether built into meetings, events, classes, social gatherings, or beyond, over time these types of small, low-risk encounters facilitate genuine relationships and build knowledge about the beautiful dimensions of people’s deep convictions and traditions.
Why It Matters
To start, strong relationships rarely emerge from a single interaction. Knowing accurate and positive things about others’ traditions or worldview reduces prejudice and increases openness to relationship, especially when paired with interaction and reflection.[18] There is a crucial link between appreciative knowledge, positive attitudes, and cross‑group relationships over time.[3], [19]
Explore the Research
[1] Feinberg, M., & Willer, R. (2015). From gulf to bridge: When do moral arguments facilitate political influence? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(12), 1665-1681.
[2] Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.
[3] Patel, E. (2016). Interfaith leadership: A primer. Beacon Press.
[4] Mayhew, M. J., Rockenbach, A. B., Correia, B., Crandall, R. E., Lo, M. A., Selznick, B., & Associates. (2020). IDEALS: Bridging religious divides through higher education. Interfaith America.
[5] Pew Research Center. (2025). People who say religion is very important in their lives. Religious Landscape Study. Pew Research Center.
[6] Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701-721.
[7] Ganz, M. (2011). Public narrative, collective action, and power.
[8] Kotter, J. P., Akhtar, V., & Gupta, G. (2021). Change: How organizations achieve hard-to-imagine results in uncertain and volatile times. Wiley.
[9] Eck, D. L. (2006). A new religious America.
[10] Ripley, A. (2021). High conflict: Why we get trapped and how we get out. Simon & Schuster.
[11] Coleman, P. T. (2021). The way out: How to overcome toxic polarization. Columbia University Press.
[12] Patel, E., & Davis, A. (Eds.). (2007). Hearing the call across traditions: Readings on faith and service. Skylight Paths Publishing.
[13] Putnam, R. D., & Campbell, D. E. (2010). American grace: How religion divides and unites us. Simon & Schuster.
[14] Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice.
[15] Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.
[16] Varshney, A. (2001). Ethnic conflict and civic life: Hindus and Muslims in India. Yale University Press.
[17] Merolla, A. J., Neubauer, A. B., & Otmar, C. D. (2024). Responsiveness, social connection, hope, and life satisfaction in everyday social interaction: An experience sampling study. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25(7), Article 7.
[18] Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(6), 922-934.
[19] Davies, K., Tropp, L. R., Aron, A., Pettigrew, T. F., & Wright, S. C. (2011). Cross-group friendships and intergroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(4), 332-351.
Related Resources
Whether you’re a learner, an educator, or a practitioner, Interfaith America offers a suite of educational resources to help you realize your goals. Use our Learning & Action Bridge to find opportunities based on your role.
