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 10th 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 authoror 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, November 19 at 6:00 pm in Aliber 101 (2847 University Ave), Dr. Sudev Sheth, Senior Lecturer of International Studies at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School and Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, will lecture on “Who Owns Wealth? Gandhi’s Answer to Capitalism.”
Who owns wealth, and what responsibilities come with creating it? While modern debates about capitalism often focus on markets versus government, Gandhi offered a strikingly different perspective. He argued that wealth should not be viewed as absolute private property but as a trust held on behalf of society. Drawing on the stories of some of India’s most influential business families, this lecture explores Gandhi’s idea of “trusteeship” and how it shaped generations of entrepreneurs. It concludes by considering what Gandhi’s vision might contribute to contemporary debates about business, inequality, and corporate purpose.
Dr. Sudev Sheth is Senior Lecturer of International Studies at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His research explores the history of capitalism in India through the lives of merchants, entrepreneurs, and business families. Combining literary sources, archival manuscripts, and business records, he investigates how commerce has influenced culture, politics, and urban life. His current work traces merchant life in Ahmedabad across centuries while exploring the ways business gives form to cities and ideas. He is the author of Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India(Cambridge University Press, 2024).
On Thursday, March 25, 2027 at 6:00 pm in Aliber 101 (2847 University Ave), Nimi Wariboko, Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston University, will lecture on “Global Dollar and War: Trump’s Resignification of America’s Empire.”
Dr. Nimi Wariboko is a public intellectual, poet, and scholar with multiple dimensions of competence: philosophical, economic, political, historical, literary, and theological. His scholarship is innovative, impactful, and prodigious. He is the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston University School of Theology and Director of the African Studies Center at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. He is a transtylistic poet and a transdisciplinary scholar. Before his academic career began decades ago, he was an investment banker in Lagos and on Wall Street.
