The American Pilgrimage Project (APP), a university partnership with StoryCorps, invites Americans of diverse backgrounds to sit together and talk to each other one-to-one about the role their religious beliefs have played at crucial moments in their lives. As the project launches its new website, we are convening participants for a live event in which they’ll consider the issues they discussed in their StoryCorps conversations and point them toward the present.

In a conversation at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, divinity school students Chandra Crane and KeNosha Whitehead discussed their struggles with Christian faith and racial identity. Now the two friends are both ordained ministers, and they’ll revisit the topic in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests of summer 2020. At Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, Afif Latif and Hamzah Latif—brother and sister, both observant Muslims—reflected on their encounters with Islamophobia in the period after the 9/11 attacks. In this live event, they’ll revisit the issue of Islamophobia and speak about the experience of being American Muslims in 2020. The event builds upon a January 2017 APP event, “Faith and Race: True Stories from Everyday Life.” Paul Elie, Berkley Center senior fellow and director of the American Pilgrimage Project, will moderate the discussion.

The Zoom Webinar link and instructions to join the call will be sent via email at 10:00 a.m. EDT on September 25 to anyone who has filled out the RSVP form here. This event will be recorded and a captioned video will be posted to this page after the event date. Please RSVP to receive an email notification once it is posted.