Vice President , Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies

Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D. is the Executive Director and Roman Catholic Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. She is responsible for advancing the organization’s vision to build an interreligious society in which dialogue replaces division, friendship overcomes fear, and education eradicates ignorance.

Heather is an experienced teacher, public speaker, facilitator, and scholar-practitioner of interreligious learning and dialogue. She develops educational initiatives that foster interreligious learning and conversation for the public in the Baltimore-Washington corridor and online. In her research and writing Heather creatively focuses on the theoretical, theological, ethical, and political implications of affirming religious diversity and building an interreligious society. She is currently working on a book entitled In Good Faith: An Argument for the Interreligious Society.

Heather is a member of the Committee on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is an invited member of the Christian Scholars Group and she has also served in leadership positions with the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations and the Catholic Theological Society of America. She holds degrees from Georgetown University (B.A.), the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (G.Dip.), and the University of Chicago (A.M. and Ph.D.).

She has taught at Lewis University, DePaul University, and St. Mary’s Seminary, and she served as a Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Treasurer, Emory University Candler School of Theology

Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler joined the Candler faculty in 2024 as assistant professor in the practice of leadership and administration. Hessler was formerly director of recruitment and admissions and adjunct assistant professor of the practice of church leadership at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. In addition to these roles, he was an instructor of Christian and interreligious studies at Hebrew College in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, and a faculty mentor in the doctor of ministry program at Drew University Theological School.

Hessler holds multiple advanced degrees from Boston University (BU), including a PhD in practical theology with a concentration in leadership and administration and a master of divinity from the BU School of Theology, a master of education in policy, planning, and administration from the BU School of Education, and a bachelor and master of arts in church administration from the University Professors Program at BU. He is an ordained elder in full connection in the West Ohio Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.

Secretary, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace

Lucinda Allen Mosher, Th.D., is Professor of Interreligious Studies, director of the Master of Arts in Interreligious Studies program, senior scholar for Continuing and Professional Education, and an affiliate of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. She teaches courses on religious diversity, interreligious concerns, ethics, and spiritual caregiving. She is also the senior editor of the Journal of Interreligious Studies and the rapporteur of the Building Bridges Seminar (an annual dialogue of Christian and Muslim scholars under the stewardship of Georgetown University). Dr Mosher is vice-president/president-elect of the Association of Interreligious/Interfaith Studies, chair of the Religion and the Arts book award jury for the American Academy of Religion, and secretary of the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations. She is the author of six books, including Personhood, Illness, and Death in America’s Multifaith Neighborhoods: A Practical Guide (2018) and Toward Our Mutual Flourishing: the Episcopal Church, Interreligious Relations, and Theologies of Religious Manyness (2012). She is the solo or co-editor of ten volumes in the Building Bridges Seminar series from Georgetown University Press, including Naming God: Christian and Muslim Perspectives (2023)—plus The Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies (2022); the award-winning Hindu Approaches to Spiritual Care: Chaplaincy in Theory and Practice (2020); and With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps and Mistakes (2023)—plus guest editor of thematic issues for four peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Mosher’s publications also include numerous book chapters and many journal articles on multifaith matters, plus a contribution to Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibligraphical History (University of Birmingham).

Dr Mosher lives in northeast Florida, where she serves an Episcopal parish as its organist and choir director. She and her husband have four children and nine grandchildren.

Member, Boston University School of Theology

Peng Yin is a scholar of comparative ethics, Chinese Christianity, and religion and sexuality. He is completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Persisting in the Good: Thomas Aquinas and Early Chinese Ethics. The volume explores the intelligibility of moral language across religious traditions and rethinks Christian teaching on human nature, sacrament, and eschatology. Yin’s research has been supported by the Louisville Institute, Political Theology Network, Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, and Yale’s Fund for Gay and Lesbian Studies.

A recipient of Harvard’s Derek Bok Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Yin teaches “Comparative Religious Ethics,” “Social Justice,” “Mysticism and Ethical Formation,” “Christian Ethics,” “Queer Theology,” and “Sexual Ethics” at STH, as well as “Gender & Sexuality: An Interdisciplinary Introduction” at the College of Arts and Sciences. At the University, Yin serves as a Core Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and as an Affiliated Faculty in Department of Classical Studies and Center for the Study of Asia.