MPR’s Kerri Miller to moderate panel at Saint John’s on religion and politics
COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – Minnesota Public Radio host
Kerri Miller will be the moderator for the panel program “Religion and
Politics in Today’s America: An Interfaith Conversation” at 8 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 25, in the Stephen B. Humphrey Theater
at Saint John’s University.
Pastor Leith Anderson, Imam Makram Nu’Man El-Amin, the Rev. Bill Vos and Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman will be the panelists.
The program, jointly sponsored by the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at Saint John’s University and the
Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning, is free and open to the public.
“Religious ideas and convictions have had an
historic and important role in shaping political discourse, elections
and public policy,” said Matt Lindstrom, director of the McCarthy
Center. “This year’s political campaigns at the national
and state levels are no different as religious leaders and faith
communities play myriad roles.”
According to John Merkle, director of the Jay
Phillips Center, “the panelists will discuss how their religious faith
influences their political ideas and commitments, the impact this
election season is having on their faith communities
and how they deal with apparent and real contradictions or tensions in
their religion’s sacred texts and traditions concerning issues found in
contemporary politics.”
Miller is host
of MPR’s weekday news program “The Daily Circuit.” She has been a radio
and television news reporter since 1981 and joined MPR in 2004.
Anderson is president of the National Association
of Evangelicals. He served as senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden
Prairie, Minn., from 1977 until 2011.
El-Amin is resident imam of Masjid An-Nur Minneapolis. He is co-founder of the Muslim American Society of Young Adults.
Vos, a priest of the Diocese of St. Cloud, is
director of Catholic Relief Services for central Minnesota and chair of
the board of directors of Maryknoll Lay Missioners.
Zimmerman has been the senior rabbi of Temple
Israel in Minneapolis since 2001, where she holds the Alvin and June
Perlman Senior Rabbinic Chair.
