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Resources > Speaker Bios > Joseph L. Cumming
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Joseph L. Cumming
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Joseph Cumming is Director of the newly established Reconciliation Program at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School. The Reconciliation Program focuses on reconciliation with the Muslim world, rooted in the Abrahamic faiths and the teachings and person of Jesus.
Joseph has spent the bulk of his adult life in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where he continues to oversee a substantial humanitarian program. During his 15 years in Mauritania – one of the poorest nations on earth – he served as Director of a Christian humanitarian organization working in nutrition, public health, agriculture, microcredit and emergency relief. Their largest program provides food and health education to 30,000 malnourished children and mothers. He also served as president of the national Federation of NGOs in Mauritania (Fédération des ONG en Mauritanie).
Joseph has taught Islamic Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and is completing his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and Christian Theology at Yale University. He speaks fluent Arabic, as well as several other languages. He is also an ordained Christian minister (Assemblies of God).
In recent years Joseph has been involved in high-profile Muslim-Christian dialogue in several nations around the world. This has included, for example, lecturing in Arabic at al-Azhar University in Cairo (the chief seat of Sunni Islamic learning worldwide), as well as meeting with the chief Shi’ite Ayatollah in Lebanon and numerous other interfaith dialogue events in Turkey, India, Mauritania, the Philippines and the U.S. Most recently he participated in a small meeting on peacemaking which brought together the President and Vice-President of al-Azhar, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Islamic Court of Jordan, and the President of the International Islamic Forum for Dialogue, with a select group of leaders from all major branches of Judaism and from the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, conciliar Protestant and evangelical branches of Christianity.
Joseph’s bachelor’s degree (in Religion) is from Princeton University, and his M.Div. (concentration: Cross-Cultural Studies) is from Fuller Seminary. Joseph and his wife Michele, a registered nurse, are parents of 13-year-old boy-girl twins.
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