Month: June 2026

On Sunday, July 12 at 3:30pm in Meredith Hall 101 (1316 28th Street), we will screen the digital stories created by our campers at our 2026 Interfaith Youth Leadership Camp. A brief reception will follow.

Below please find information about this year’s camp:

This year (July 8-12) marks the 10^th consecutive year of the interfaith youth leadership camp that we program in partnership with the Des Moines Area Religious Council. Campers at the camp learn about religious traditions and interfaith leadership, visit places of worship throughout the metro area, and create digital stories about personal faith experiences (that are screened for the public the last day of the camp). Through generous funding from Drake and DMARC, we provide housing (in the dorms at Drake), food (through Drake’s food service and the places of worship we visit), and a $250 “scholarship.” 

Below, you can find a short “teaser” video from past camps and flyers for this year’s camp.

On Thursday, October 15 at 6:00 pm in Aliber 101 (2847 University Ave), Dr. Jill DeTemple, Professor and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Southern Methodist University, will lecture on “Capabilities: What International Economic Development Models Explain about Health, Wealth, Religion, and Community in the Early 21st Century United States.”

Is the United States healthy? Is it wealthy? How do we know? This lecture employs approaches used to measure well-being in “developing” nations to explore the relationship between health, wealth, flourishing, and community in religious and economic contexts. While Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Robert Putnam worried about the instrumentalized, rationalized place of religion or its absence in capitalist systems, economists, philosophers, and practitioners of international economic development proposed integrated models of economic advancement that framed prosperity in terms of flourishing, community, and capabilities often tied to religious ideals. What might this mean for the contemporary United States when religious, financial, and social systems are struggling in the face of political polarization, globalization, and demographic and environmental change?

Dr. Jill DeTemple is Professor and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University.  She received her B. A. in Asian Studies from Bowdoin College, her M. T. S. in Christianity and Culture from Harvard Divinity School, and her Ph.D. in Religion and Culture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Her research interests include faith-based economic development, Latin American religions, Pentecostalism, and the use of dialogue in classrooms to promote intellectual humility, conviction, civic engagement, and deep learning.  She is the author or co-author of three books, most recently The Dialogic Classroom: Revolutionary Listening for Curiosity, Engagement, and Deep Learning (Taylor & Francis, 2025), which focuses on a dialogic pedagogy that she hopes will help make college better for everyone.

On Thursday, April 22 at 6:00 pm in Aliber 101 (2847 University Ave), Dr. David Loy, professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism, will lecture on “Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes? Buddhist Reflections on Capitalism and Consumerism.”

The Buddha said that all he taught was how to end dukkha (suffering in the broadest sense). How much does our economic system relieve our dukkha? How much does it aggravate it? 

David Robert Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

He is a prolific author, whose essays and books have been translated into many languages. His articles appear regularly in the pages of major journals such as Tikkun and Buddhist magazines including Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, and Buddhadharma, as well as in a variety of scholarly journals. Many of his writings, as well as audio and video talks and interviews, are available on the web. He is on the advisory boards of Buddhist Global Relief, Zen Peacemakers, and the Ernest Becker Foundation.

David lectures nationally and internationally on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues. A popular recent lecture is “Healing Ecology: A Buddhist Perspective on the Eco-crisis”, which argues that there is an important parallel between what Buddhism says about our personal predicament and our collective predicament today in relation to the rest of the biosphere. You can hear David’s podcast interview with Wisdom Publications here. Presently he is offering talks and workshops on Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis”, his latest book published in 2019. He also leads meditation retreats. (To find out about forthcoming lectures, workshops and retreats, please see the Schedule page.)

Loy is a professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy (now retried from academia). His BA is from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and he studied analytic philosophy at King’s College, University of London. His MA is from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and his PhD is from the National University of Singapore. His dissertation was published by Yale University Press as Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy.(A second edition was published by Wisdom Publications in 2019). He was senior tutor in the Philosophy Department of Singapore University (later the National University of Singapore) from 1978 to 1984. From 1990 until 2005, he was professor in the Faculty of International Studies, Bunkyo University, Chigasaki, Japan. In January 2006, he became the Besl Family Chair Professor of Ethics/Religion and Society with Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, a visiting position that ended in September 2010. In April 2007, David Loy was visiting scholar at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. From January to August 2009 he was a research scholar with the Institute for Advanced Study, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. From September through December 2010 he was in residence at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, with a Lenz Fellowship. In November 2014, David was a visiting professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands. In January through April 2016, David was visiting Numata professor of Buddhism at the University of Calgary.

In June 2014, David received an honorary degree from Carleton College, his alma mater, during its 2014 Commencement. A video of his remarks on that occasion is available here. In April 2016 David returned his honorary degree to the College, to protest the decision of the Board of Trustees not to divest from fossil fuel companies. His letter to the Trustees is available here. You can read press coverage here.

David Loy is one of the founding members of the new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado. Please visit the website at rmerc.org for more information. An article about the Ecodharma Center recently appeared in the local newspaper, the Daily Camera, which you can read here.

David is married to Linda Goodhew, a professor of English literature and language (and co-author of The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons). They have a son, Mark Loy Goodhew.

Note: Unless he is traveling, every Wednesday morning David leads an online meditation [35 minutes] followed by a “dharmette” [brief dharma talk] starting at 8:00am Colorado [mountain] time. It’s free and everyone is welcome. Please use this Zoom link for Meditation with David for access. To confirm the zoom link for each week (there’s a substitute when I’m traveling), check here