2024 Festival of Faiths
“Sacred Imagining”
The 2024 Festival of Faiths celebrated the beauty of creativity and the power of ideas to change the world. Sacred Imagining served as an opportunity to lean into our highest potential, explore our authentic selves and reimagine what the future might hold.
SPEAKERS & ARTISTS
Teddy Abrams, Grammy Award winner and Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, has been the galvanizing force behind the Louisville Orchestra’s artistic renewal and innovative social impact since his appointment as music director in 2014. His work has been profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, the New Yorker, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and PBS NewsHour.
This season, Teddy makes his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with return guest conductor appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra and Curtis Symphony Orchestra. A prolific and award-winning composer himself, Teddy — as part of the Emerson Collective Fellowship — will compose an orchestral work to premiere in the Louisville Orchestra’s 2025–26 season that tells the story of the state of Kentucky. The raw material for the piece will come from community sessions Teddy leads on visits around the state: time spent with Kentuckians music-making, storytelling, and sharing local history.
Jose Arellano is vice president of operations at Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit youth program was founded by Father Greg Boyle in 1992.
Raised in Los Angeles, Jose first joined a gang when he was 12 years old. He was in and out of prison over the years, and eventually he sought help from Homeboy Industries — and they gave him a job. In addition to his current role at Homeboy Industries, he also co-owns Tepito Coffee, which provides jobs to former gang members and previously incarcerated individuals.
Muhammad Babar, M.D. is a physician who practices internal medicine and geriatric medicine. He is a local interfaith and peace advocate who strives to bring people together by breaking down human-made barriers.
Muhammad is currently serving as a board member at Dare to Care, Family Community Clinic, Center for Interfaith Relations, Muhammad Ali Center and Council for Postsecondary Education. He is a founding member of Compassionate Louisville and is acting as its chair of the board of trustees. He is also a founding co-chair of the Muslim Jewish Advisory Council. Muhammad is founding president of Muslim Americans for Compassion, an interfaith and charitable organization based in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also founding president of Doctors for Healthy Communities, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting health equity.
Stephanie Barnett is a “Compassion Warrior,” business solutions architect and spiritual companion.
For more than three decades, Stephanie has shown up as a strong and compassionate business creator, community-builder and corporate leader. Her greatest joy comes from accompanying leaders, seekers and other “beacons of light” who are trailblazing new paths in their work, family, personal and spiritual lives.
Sara Callaway believes music belongs to everyone. As executive director of the Louisville Academy of Music, she has launched a need-based scholarship program that has awarded over 100 students financial aid, reached thousands of people through new community programs, and led renovations to LAM’s historic main campus. Sara holds bachelor’s and master’s Degrees in Violin Performance from the University of North Carolina and attended programs at the Berlin University of the Arts, the International Music Academy at Pilsen, the Heifetz Institute, and Appalshop.
A constant innovator and creator, Sara co-curated SONIC-Bernheim, a performance series that explores the relationships between sound, music and nature, and has recorded with musicians such as Will Oldham, Stephen Vitiello, Tim Barnes and the NouLou Chamber Players. She is inspired by the young people in her life — the students at LAM and her 4- and 5-year-old sons who remind her “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” (Annie Dillard)
Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own path as a composer, Grammy-nominated flutist and entrepreneur whose works have garnered many awards. The Washington Post called her one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” and Performance Today named her 2020 Classical Woman of the Year. Commissions include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony, Library of Congress, and Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater, and her work has been performed by many of the world’s most prominent orchestras. Valerie began her appointment as part of The Juilliard School’s composition faculty in the fall of 2024.
Former flutist of the Imani Winds, Valerie is the founder of this acclaimed ensemble whose 24-year legacy is documented and featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Committed to arts education, entrepreneurship and chamber music advocacy, Valerie created the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in 2011, a summer mentorship program in New York City welcoming young leaders from over 100 international institutions.
Rabbi Matt moved from Rochester, New York, to Louisville in 2014 after completing undergraduate studies in religious studies. He completed a Master of Divinity at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary while working at The Temple as Senior Rabbinic Assistant. During his time at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Matt served as solo rabbi for a wide array of synagogues, as well as Senior Rabbinic Fellow for Hillel at Ohio University. During his summers at HUC and beyond, he served as a Chaplain Candidate for the U.S. Air Force. Over the past year, Matt served as rabbi for Congregation Beth Shalom in Columbia, Missouri, where he led services in both the Reform and Conservative traditions to meet the needs of the diverse Jewish community he served.
Rabbi Matt has a passion for making experiences and education accessible and meaningful to all. He loves the challenge of relating anything and everything to the Jewish experience and cultivating deep joy in Jewish life. He and his wife run a rescue for dogs with challenging medical conditions, called Luna Bell’s Moonbows.
Wu Fei is a classically trained composer, singer and master of the guzheng — the 21-string Chinese zither. She has taken her music around the world, appearing at venues such as Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall, Shanghai’s Expo 2010, New York’s MoMA, the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, and the Big Ears Festival in Tennessee. Wu plays in the guzheng’s vernacular — a musical language at least 2,500 years old — mixing Western classical and Chinese traditions with a contemporary sound.
Her chamber composition “Hello Gold Mountain” earned her a MAP Fund award and was inspired by the real stories of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from Europe in World War II. Her work in television has included compositions for AMC’s Hell on Wheels and PBS’ web series The History of White People in America. She has collaborated with artists from varied disciplines, ranging from Emmy-winning directors to Grammy-winning musicians such as Béla Fleck and percussionist Billy Martin (Medeski-Martin-Wood). Wu has released two solo recordings and two collaborative albums — one with classical guitarist Gyan Riley, and the other with singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn.
Gaylon Ferguson is a faculty member in both Religious Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies at Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado. He is an acharya, or senior teacher, in the Shambhala International Buddhist community.
After studying meditation and Buddhist philosophy with Tibetan master Chögyam Trungpa in the 1970s and 1980s, Gaylon became a Fulbright Fellow to Nigeria and completed a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology at Stanford University. After several years of teaching cultural anthropology at the University of Washington, he became teacher-in-residence at Karmê Chöling Buddhist Retreat Center, through 2005, when he joined the faculty of Naropa University.
Anne Harrington is a Harvard University professor specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Oxford University. Interdisciplinary collaboration across science and the humanities has been an important goal of her work as a scholar for many years.
Anne previously co-directed Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative; was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mind-Body Interaction; and served on the board of the Mind and Life Institute, dedicated to collaboration between the sciences and various contemplative traditions. She is the author of four books: Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain; Reenchanted Science; The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine; Mind Fixers: Biology’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt is an award-winning author, naturalist, ecophilosopher and speaker whose work explores the beautiful, complicated connections between humans and the wild, natural world. The Seattle-based writer is acclaimed for combining scientific knowledge with literary, poetic prose.
Lyanda’s work is grounded in observation and interweaves personal experience with science, myth, spirit, craft and art. She’s written six books; her latest — Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit — came out in 2021. She is a winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Nautilus Book Award, a finalist for the Orion Book Award, and a two-time winner of the Washington State Book Award. In addition, Lyanda has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont, and as a seabird researcher for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific.
Dr. Christine J. Hong is the associate professor of Educational Ministries at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, where she focuses on the intersection of interreligious education and spiritual formation. Her research includes anti-colonial approaches to religious education, and at the center of her scholarship is a commitment to storytelling as a decolonial practice. She guides students and spiritual communities through decolonizing their religious traditions.
With years of experience in the field, Christine has worked on numerous research projects and has published articles and books on pedagogy, spirituality and decoloniality. She is a frequent workshop leader and conference speaker on decolonial pedagogy, spirituality, and JEDI (Justice Education, Diversity and Inclusion) in educational and spiritual spaces.
Silas House is a bestselling author whose works include several novels, most recently Lark Ascending; three plays; and a book of creative nonfiction. Lark Ascending won the 2023 Southern Book Prize in Fiction and was chosen as a Booklist Editor’s Choice, one of Salon’s books of the year, and as a top 10 most recommended book by independent booksellers.
Silas was chosen for the Duggins Prize, the nation’s largest award for an LGBT writer, and in 2020 was chosen as Appalachian of the Year in a nationwide poll. He’s a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and recipient of three honorary doctorates. He serves as the NEH Chair of Appalachian Studies at Berea College, on the faculty at Spalding University’s School of Creative Writing, and as an editor for the University Press of Kentucky. He is a former commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered, and his writing has appeared recently in Time, The Atlantic, Garden and Gun, and Oxford American. Silas was a producer and one of the subjects of the award-winning documentary Hillbilly, and as a music journalist, he’s worked with artists such as Kacey Musgraves, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell.
Gabrielle Jones, vice president of content at Louisville Public Media, has a passion for serving diverse audiences. She came to LPM in 2019 from KERA in Dallas, Texas where she served first as digital news editor then audience editor. Previously she worked at Richmond, Virginia’s PBS and NPR affiliate, VPM. Gabrielle joined VPM in 2015 and worked in a variety of roles in the fundraising, digital and news departments.
Gabrielle completed her undergraduate work in English and mass communications at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., where she finished her bachelor’s degree in just three years. She earned her master’s degree in journalism and public affairs from American University. Gabrielle is a former vice president of the board of directors of the Public Media Journalists association and currently serves on the organization’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee.
Adam Kane began exploring Buddhism after graduating from Duke University with a degree in neuroscience in 2000. He first studied the Buddha-Dharma in the Theravada lineage, then took the Anagarika ordination in the Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah in 2003.
After two years in a forest monastery, he began practicing Tibetan Buddhism under his teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He moved to Nepal in 2008 to study Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy, and stayed there for seven years, gaining a master of arts degree in Buddhist Studies from Rangjung Yeshe Institute. Adam also helps mentor some of Khyentse Vision Project’s translator trainees. He has been interpreting, translating, writing and developing curriculum for his root lamas and various other lamas and khenpos since 2013. He is based in Crestone, Colorado, and enjoys walking in the mountains in his spare time.
Justin Klassen is professor of Theology & Religious Studies at Bellarmine University, where he teaches philosophical theology and religious ethics. His scholarship focuses on religion and ecology, and he is especially interested in the spiritual significance of the natural world among religiously unaffiliated people. He enjoys hiking, camping, and taking pictures of birds in the woods of Kentucky.
The Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield (she/her) serves Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary as interim director of Field Education in Kentucky. Before returning to her home state of Kentucky, Lauren served as worship director at Riverside Church in New York City and held pastoral leadership positions in Baptist, Mennonite and United Church of Christ churches. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, Lauren completed her Doctor of Ministry degree, with distinction, at the Pacific School of Religion, where she focused her research and ministry on social justice and transformation. As part of her doctoral project, she created liturgy for the communal work of advocacy, considered the role of faith in the public square, and led Highland Baptist Church’s (Louisville, Kentucky) innovative Anti-Racism Team and Reparations Task Force as associate pastor of Care and Justice. During her tenure at Highland Baptist, the church voted to darken the image of Jesus in one of the sanctuary’s stained-glass windows and began paying reparations to local Black organizations. Lauren finds ongoing nourishment at the local, independent bookstore, by celebrating the art of Georgia O’Keeffe, and in wondering about the compassionate mystery of the Divine at work in the world.
Dr. Michael Brandon McCormack is associate professor of Pan-African Studies and Comparative Humanities and former director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville. He earned his Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University. His research explores intersections between Black religion, popular culture, the arts and activism. He teaches courses in African American religion, religions of the African diaspora, and religion and hip-hop culture. He is an inaugural Ascending Stars Fellow at UofL and a research fellow at the University of Memphis. He is also a member of the Black Interfaith Project, a network of academics, artists, and activists engaged in research and action around the role of Black religious practices in social justice movements.
Melvin McLeod is editor-in-chief of Lion’s Roar, a nonprofit media organization offering contemplative wisdom and techniques to benefit our lives and create a more just, caring and sustainable world. He is the author of Mindful Politics and the Best Buddhist Writing series. Melvin’s current project is the Complete Path of Mindfulness, a comprehensive and transformative path bringing together mindfulness meditation, insight, ethics, compassion and community.
The 10th Poet Laureate of Oregon and two-time champion of the National Poetry Slam and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis Mojgani has been awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Caldera, AIR Serenbe, The Bloedel Nature Reserve, The Sou’wester, and the Oregon Literary Arts Writers-In-The-Schools program. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Anis has done commissions for the Getty Museum and Peabody Essex Museum; and his work has appeared on HBO, National Public Radio, and as part of the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day series. His work also has appeared in the New York Times and many magazines.
Anis has performed at hundreds of universities across the U.S.; festivals around the globe; and for audiences as varied as the United Nations and the House of Blues. The author of six books of poetry and the opera libretto for Sanctuaries, his first children’s book is forthcoming from Holiday House/Neal Porter Books. His latest poetry collection is, The Tigers They Let Me. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
Josh Moss has served as editor of Louisville Magazine since 2014, and he began working at the publication upon graduating from OhioUniversity in 2006. He’s written about Pappy Van Winkle mania, the city’s oldest Black-owned funeral home, Louisville’s last abortion clinic, the divide between east and west Louisville, and how the city has changed since March 2020. He spent a year working on a profile of rapper Jack Harlow. In 2013, he ate 38 burgers in 31 days on a quest to find the city’s best. In 2020, the magazine won a General Excellence award from the City and Regional Magazine Association.
Will Oldham is an acclaimed singer-songwriter who has performed and recorded music under numerous names including Palace, Palace Brothers and, in recent years, Bonnie “Prince” Billy. The Louisville-born musician is also an accomplished actor, having appeared in films such as Matewan, Junebug, Old Joy, The Guatemalan Handshake, Wendy and Lucy, and A Ghost Story.
In 1992, Will released his first single with the iconic indie label Drag City Records, and he’s since recorded dozens of albums. He’s collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, and in 2000, country music legend Johnny Cash covered and recorded his song I See a Darkness.
Joe Phelps is a minister in greater Louisville — for 22 years as pastor of Louisville’s Highland Baptist Church, and since 2018 as Justice Coordinator for the Earth & Spirit Center. Joe helps lead “Listen, Learn, Act,” a movement of white allies for racial justice who listen and learn from Black leaders in Louisville, then discern appropriate ways to act.
Joe came to Louisville in 1997 after 18 years as a minister in Austin, Texas, where he founded the Capital Area Food Bank, now called the Central Texas Food Bank. He served on Kentucky Refugee Ministries’ board; founded No Murders Metro, an interracial group that met weekly at murder sites in Louisville; founded the Black/white clergy coalition EmpowerWest, which elevated the discussion of race in our city; and began Friday Church, a lively gathering bent toward recovery and restoration. Joe’s views have been carried regularly by TV and print media, and he has been recognized by groups including the Center for Women and Families’ 2019 Joan E. Thompson Lifetime Award for Peacemaking, Interfaith Paths to Peace’s 2018 Peacemaker of the Year award, and the Jewish Federation of Louisville’s 2020 Oppenheimer Award. Louisville Magazine featured Joe in an article titled, “The Heretic.”
Sadiqa Reynolds is the CEO of Perception Institute, where she leads a consortium of researchers and strategists to implement mind science solutions to reduce inequities affecting people of marginalized races, genders, ethnicities and other groups. Reynolds, an attorney and former judge, has spent most of her life advocating for access for all. Because of her work, she has twice addressed the NGOs of the United Nations on the subjects of global poverty and racism. Before joining Perception Institute, Reynolds served as president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League, where her appointment made her the first woman to hold the title in the affiliate’s 102-year history.
Luke Russert is an author and Emmy Award-winning journalist who served as an NBC News correspondent from 2008 to 2016. Primarily covering politics, he was seen on outlets such as NBC Nightly News, Today, NBCNews.com and MSNBC. In addition, Luke co-hosted the critically acclaimed 60/20 Sports with political pundit James Carville. In 2012, Luke reported for Dateline on the potential wrongful conviction of Jon-Adrian Velazquez at New York’s Sing-Sing Prison. Velazquez was freed in 2021, and Luke’s report was cited as a catalyst for overturning the conviction.
After leaving media, Luke embarked on a three-year travel expedition that took him to nearly 70 countries. His first book, Look For Me There, is a reflection of his deeply personal journey. New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand said of the book: “Luke Russert’s story of heartbreaking loss and hard-earned self-discovery captivates from start to finish. This is the memoir of the year, if not the decade.” Luke is a recipient of the “Marlin Fitzwater Award for Leadership in Public Communication,” which honors individuals whose contributions to public discourse strengthen the spirit of democracy. He graduated from Boston College with a double major in communications and history, and is the son of the late Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press and Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth.
Clifford Saron is a research scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and the MIND Institute at the University of California at Davis. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999 and has had a longstanding interest in the effects of contemplative practice on physiology and behavior. In the early 1990s, he conducted field research investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training under the auspices of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Clifford directs the Shamatha Project, a multidisciplinary longitudinal investigation of the effects of intensive meditation on physiological and psychological processes central to wellbeing. In 2012, he and his research team were awarded the inaugural Templeton Prize Research Grant in honor of H.H. the Dalai Lama. Currently his team is investigating how meditation experience may mitigate the effects of the pandemic on chronic stress and cellular aging, as well as examining consequences of compassion vs. mindfulness training on engagement with suffering. His second research area concerns sensory processing and multisensory integration in children with autism spectrum development.
Dheepa Sundaram (she/her) is a professor in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Denver, where she specializes in hate politics, performance, ritual and digital culture in South Asian contexts. Her research examines the formation of Hindu virtual religious publics, online platforms, social media, apps, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
Her current monograph project, Globalizing Dharma: The Making of a Global Hindu Brand, examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively branding religious identities and marketing caste-privileged religious norms as a default, cosmopolitan Hinduism that anchors the Hindu nationalist political project. She is also a contributor to Religion News Service on Hindu perspectives, a founding member of the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective, and a trainer for Sacred Writes (public scholarship training program for religion scholars).
The Rev. Adriene Thorne is the eighth senior minister of the historic and history-making Riverside Church in New York City and the first African American woman to hold the position. She received her Master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion and completed post-graduate studies in pastoral care and counseling at the Blanton-Peale Institute. Adriene is a healer, Presbyterian minister and classically trained dancer who uses movement to heal bodies in the church and community. When she is feeling open, though, Adriene will tell you that she has learned more about God from nature, art and her child than from any classroom or book.
Adriene’s background in the performing arts includes credits with The Dance Theatre of Harlem, The Metropolitan Opera, and the world-famous Radio City Rockettes among others. NY Times best-selling author and renowned coach, Resmaa Menakem, is her teacher and guide in the study of Somatic Abolitionism, which she brings to her personal and public work.
Anam Thubten grew up in Tibet and at an early age began to practice in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the founder and spiritual advisor of Dharmata Foundation, teaching widely in the U.S, Europe and Asia. He is the author of several books, including Embracing Each Moment, No Self, No Problem, and The Citadel of Awareness. Through sharing his wisdom and personal experience on the spiritual path, Thubten brings alive the timeless teachings of Buddhism.
Jemar Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the Church’s Complicity in Racism, along with the works How to Fight Racism (including a Young Reader’s edition) and The Spirit of Justice.
He is also a professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville.
Jemar has been a co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast since its inception seven years ago, and his writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic and the New York Times, among others. He is a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN’s New Day program, and he speaks nationwide on the topics of racial justice, U.S. history and Christianity. Jemar earned his PhD in history, and he studies race, religion and social movements in the 20th century.
Tahj Vaughn is a sophomore attending Louisville Collegiate School. His life is filled with athletics, physical movement and a love for beautiful music. This summer, he premiered his very first composition piece, “Falling Blossoms,” during the 2024 Louisville Academy of Music Summer Symposium. Tahj strives to grow not only as musician and composer, but also an intellectual and Child of God.
