Higher Love | Jessica Jackley & Reza Aslan | TEDxStanford

With nearly half of American marriages today made up of interfaith couples, deciding how and whether to integrate religion into the family, and how the kids will be raised is an ongoing issue for many. For scholar, TV host, commentator and author Reza Aslan and his wife, Jessica Jackley, founder of Kiva and also a well-known author, the question of how their two religions would intersect at home has been central. The bottom line, though, say Aslan and Jackley, who have three young sons, is that all couples are inter-belief. The Christian mom and Muslim dad share their unique approach to respecting all faiths - “home church.”
Jessica Jackley is an award-winning social entrepreneur and author of the widely acclaimed book CLAY WATER BRICK: Finding Inspirations from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least. She is best known as the co-founder of Kiva, the world’s first and largest P2P micro lending website. She also co-founded Pro-Founder, a crowdfunding platform for U.S. entrepreneurs, and Kin & Co., a consultancy helping organizations support women and working families. She is an investor and advisor with Collaborative Fund, a board member for Habitat for Humanity, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Jackley holds degrees from Bucknell University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, as well as a certificate in Global Leadership and Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their three sons, where she currently serves as Social Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Southern California.
Reza Aslan is an internationally renowned scholar of religions and writer whose books include the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, and the International Bestseller, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Aslan teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His writing has been published in The New York Times, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post, and he makes frequent appearances on TV and radio shows as a religions and political analyst. He is also a Consulting Producer for HBO’sThe Leftovers, and the host and executive producer for the CNN original series, Believer. His fourth book, god, will release this fall.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx