Board of Directors
Imam Yahya Hendi, at CBB's December 2009 conference
Imam Yahya Hendi
Imam Yahya Hendi, founder and president of Clergy Beyond Borders, is the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University, the first United States university to hire a full-time Muslim chaplain. Imam Hendi is the Muslim Chaplain at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. He also serves as a member and the spokesperson of the Islamic Jurisprudence Council of North America. He serves as adjunct faculty member at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. He has written numerous publications on many topics, including women in Islam, women and gender relations in Islam, the coming of the Messiah, and religion and Islam in the United States. A sought-after speaker, Imam Hendi has presented a multitude of interfaith and general lectures in the USA, Asia, Europe, central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East over the past eight years. Mr. Hendi was one of the Muslim leaders who met with the President of the United States in the aftermath of the September 11 tragedy and has advised the president many times. Imam Hendi often visits and lectures at churches and synagogues hoping to create a new positive relationship between the followers of the three Abrahamic religions.
Rabbi Gerald Serotta (right), with Imam Arafat, at an interfaith iftar
Gerald Serotta
Rabbi Gerald Serotta served as a university chaplain and Hillel Rabbi for 28 years, the last twenty at The George Washington University where he was Chair of the Board of Chaplains. While on Sabbatical from Hillel he held the position of Senior Rabbinic Scholar-in-Residence at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, working on issues of globalization and economic justice from a Jewish perspective. He currently serves as a spiritual leader for Shirat HaNefesh, a Jewish community in Southern Maryland and from 2000-2008 also served Temple Shalom of Chevy Chase as Associate Rabbi. Rabbi Serotta has been involved in interfaith work through the Fellowship of Reconciliation (beginning with a reconciliation mission in 1975 to Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Palestine, and Israel) and the Interfaith Committee for Peace in the Middle East. He served as the first Rabbi on the board of the Faith and Politics Institute, an interfaith, bi-partisan effort to bring spiritual reflection to the work of the US Congress, and serves as a clergy representative on the Workers Rights Board of the District of Columbia, and the Compassion Forum, a bipartisan, interfaith effort to bring important spiritual issues to the fore in the recent presidential campaign. He lectured in the International Conflict Resolution program at Eastern Mennonite University. He is currently the Executive Director of Clergy Beyond Borders.
Imam Mohamad Bashar Arafat
Imam Mohamad Bashar Arafat
Imam Mohamad Bashar Arafat, founder of the Civilizations Exchange and Cooperation Foundation. He was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. He attended Damascus University and graduated with a degree in Islamic Studies and Arabic Language in 1987 and a degree in Islamic Law in 1988. He served as Imam in Damascus, Syria from 1981 to 1989, and was then invited to the United States to lecture in various Islamic Centers. He served as Imam of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, Maryland from 1989 to 1993, and founded An-Nur Institute for Islamic Studies and Arabic Language in Baltimore in 1993. He co-founded An-Nur Mosque in Carney, Maryland where he was the Imam from 1995 to 1997.
He served before as Campus Imam at Johns Hopkins University, Adjunct Chaplain at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Muslim Chaplain for Baltimore City Police Department. Taught courses on Islamic Studies at the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary's Seminary & University, the University of Maryland in Baltimore County (UMBC), Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, the Renaissance Institute, as well as Comparative Religions at Potomac College in Washington, DC. Currently he is teaching at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.
Father Bunnell at a recent Blessing of the Animals
Rev. Dr. Adam Bunnell
Father Bunnell is a Conventual Franciscan Friar and Roman Catholic priest. He currently serves as Special Assistant to the President for International and Interfaith Relations at Bellarmine University. Before deciding to "sink some roots" in Louisville, KY, Father Bunnell traveled the world through his teaching, scholarship and ministry career.
Bunnell served for several years as General Delegate for Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue for the Conventual Franciscans. He has taught the history and spirituality of all three Abrahamic faiths and served as chaplain at universities in the U.S. and around the world. He is the author of Before Infallibility: Liberal Catholicism in Biedermeier Vienna as well as articles on pastoral topics.
Reverend Carole Crumley
Reverend Carole Crumley
Rev. Carole A. Crumley is an Episcopal priest who has served as Senior Program Director at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation since 1997. She directs Shalem's Soul of the Executive, a program for executives seeking to deepen the spiritual grounding of their leadership. Rev. Crumley is an experienced pilgrimage guide to sacred and secular sites throughout Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. and has led numerous pilgrimages for Shalem. She also directs Shalem's Clergy Spiritual Life and Leadership: Going Deeper Program, an ecumenical program to nurture the spiritual heart and leadership of congregational clergy, and is Senior Guardian for the Shalem Society for Contemplative Leadership.
A native of Tennessee, Carole has a BA from Duke University and a Master of Divinity from INTER/MET Seminary. In 1982, she joined the staff of the Washington National Cathedral and served as the Cathedral's canon pastor and canon educator until 1997. In her capacity as senior staff, she pioneered programs in spirituality for the Cathedral and managed the Cathedral's pastoral ministry. She established the Cathedral chaplain program for clergy volunteers and founded the Cathedral's Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage. She also founded and directed the Cathedral Volunteer Service Community, a ministry for young adults. Besides her work at the Cathedral, she has served in inner city, small town, Capitol Hill and Georgetown parishes in the Washington, DC area. She also has served as leadership dean for Trinity Episcopal Church's Clergy Leadership Project and as a Wesley Seminary Distinguished Faculty in the Theology and Practice of Ministry.
Imam Talal Eid
Imam Talal Eid
Imam Talal Eid is an Imam from Quincy, Massachusetts. He studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. In 2005, he received his Doctor of Theology degree from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the spiritual Director of the Islamic Center of New England from 1982-2005, aslso serving as the Imam of Quincy Mosque. Eid Later became the Imam and Executive Director of the Islamic Institute of Boston. After the September 11th attacks, Eid visited many high schools, churches and community organizations to combat the portrayal of Muslims as terrorists. On May 15, 2007, he became the first Muslim cleric appointed to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer
Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, Ph.D., is the Director, Religious Studies Program and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She received a bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan University, a master of arts from the Yale Divinity School, rabbinic ordination from RRC and a doctorate in religion from Temple University. She served as director of the Kaplan Institute for Adult Jewish Studies and as rabbinic director of the Jewish Identity Program of Jewish Family and Children's Service of Philadelphia. She has been a board member of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life and the Maternity Care Coalition of Philadelphia, and currently serves on the boards of the Metanexus Institute for Science and Religion and the Interfaith Center of Philadelphia. She also was a member of the Ethics and Executive Committees of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and served as its president.
She is the author of Parenting as a Spiritual Journey (Harper Collins, 1996; Jewish Lights, 1998) and of articles in Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Religious Education, Cross Currents, Lilith, The Reconstructionist, and Jewish Social Studies, among other journals. She contributed chapters to Broken Tablets: Restoring the Ten Commandments (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999), Christianity in Jewish Terms (Westview Press, 2000), Union for Reform Judaism Women's Torah Commentary (contemporary section) and other volumes in the fields of inter-religious dialogue, religion and social science, and Jewish thought.
Rabbi Marc Gopin
Rabbi Marc Gopin
Marc Gopin, Ph.D., is the James H. Laue Professor of Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, and the Director of the Center on Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (CRDC) at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR).
Gopin has lectured on conflict resolution in Switzerland, Ireland, India, Italy, and Israel, as well as at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and numerous other academic institutions. Gopin has trained thousands of people worldwide in peacemaking strategies for complex conflicts in which religion and culture play a role. He conducts research on values dilemmas as they apply to international problems of globalization, clash of cultures, development, social justice and conflict.
Gopin has engaged in back channel diplomacy with religious, political and military figures on both sides of conflicts, especially in the Arab/Israeli conflict. He has appeared on numerous media outlets, including CNN, CNN International, Court TV, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, Israel Radio, National Public Radio, The Connection, Voice of America, and the national public radios of Sweden, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. He has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and his work has been featured in news stories of the Times of London, the Times of India, Associated Press, and Newhouse News Service, regarding issues of conflict resolution, religion and violence.
Gopin's research is found in numerous book chapters and journal articles, and he is the author of Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking (Oxford University Press, 2000), and Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2002), a study on what was missing from the Oslo Process, and what will be necessary culturally for a successful Arab/Israeli peace process. His latest book, Healing the Heart of Conflict was published in 2004 by Rodale Press. Dr. Gopin was ordained as a rabbi in 1983 and received a Ph.D. in religious ethics from Brandeis University in 1993. Gopin is now working in partnership with the Fetzer Foundation to create a web-based video series and book on enemies who become friends and close partners. Filming began in the summer of 2008. He is also the author of To Make the Earth Whole: Creating Global Community in an Age of Religious MIlitancy (forthcoming, Rowman Littlefield). Gopin is creator and principal author of www.marcgopin.com,a weblog dedicated to addressing the transformation of conflicts facing humanity.