Prophetic Friendship, Sacred Space, and the Healing of Medicine
Imam Abdullah Antepli, President, Rothko Chapel
Rev. Laura Mayo, Senior Minister, Covenant Church Houston
In a time of moral injury, institutional strain, and cultural fragmentation, medicine and faith stand in need of witnesses who can speak truth with compassion, imagination, and courage. This plenary brings Rev. Laura Mayo and Imam Abdullah Antepli together in prepared reflections and conversation on what it means to speak prophetically at the intersections of religion, health, and public life. Drawing from Christian and Islamic traditions, and shaped by their shared leadership at the Rothko Chapel, one of the world’s most iconic spaces for contemplation, art, and justice, Rev. Mayo and Imam Antepli will explore how sacred space itself can function as a form of prophetic witness. The Chapel’s architecture, silence, light, and abstract imagery serve as a subtle frame for reflecting on how beauty, presence, and mystery hold grief, resist polarization, and invite moral imagination when words and policies fall short.
Together, they will consider how religious traditions speak prophetically not only through critique, but through creative practices - ritual, music, story, lament, hospitality, and shared silence - that rehumanize systems under duress and sustain those who serve within them. Their dialogue will engage medicine’s deepest challenges: burnout, scientific distrust, institutional collapse, and the longing for meaning in clinical work. This plenary models what the conference itself seeks to cultivate: prophetic friendship across difference, a form of witness that invites communities to dwell together in complexity, hold suffering with tenderness, and dare to imagine a more humane future for healing.
Imam Abdullah Antepli joined the Rothko Chapel as its President in September 2025, following prominent teaching and administrative roles at Duke University, where he served as associate professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy, with a secondary appointment at the Divinity School as associate professor of the practice of interfaith relations. He previously served as Duke University’s first Muslim chaplain and director of the Center for Muslim Life, and later as the university’s chief representative for Muslim affairs. Professor Antepli is also a senior fellow in Jewish–Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he founded and co-directs the widely recognized Muslim Leadership Initiative. In 2019, The NonProfit Times named Imam Antepli to its Power & Influence Top 50 list, recognizing him as one of the most prominent Muslim leaders today.
The Rev. Laura Mayo is a graduate of Carson-Newman University and the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Ordained to ministry in 2007, Rev. Mayo is sought after as a speaker for her knowledge on topics such as women’s roles in the Bible and within communities of faith, LGBTQAI+ rights and inclusion, atonement theologies, religious diversity in healthcare settings, and immigration and Biblical ethics. Her articles have appeared in The Houston Chronicle, Baptist News Global, and publications of the Alliance of Baptists.
Together, they will consider how religious traditions speak prophetically not only through critique, but through creative practices - ritual, music, story, lament, hospitality, and shared silence - that rehumanize systems under duress and sustain those who serve within them. Their dialogue will engage medicine’s deepest challenges: burnout, scientific distrust, institutional collapse, and the longing for meaning in clinical work. This plenary models what the conference itself seeks to cultivate: prophetic friendship across difference, a form of witness that invites communities to dwell together in complexity, hold suffering with tenderness, and dare to imagine a more humane future for healing.
Imam Abdullah Antepli joined the Rothko Chapel as its President in September 2025, following prominent teaching and administrative roles at Duke University, where he served as associate professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy, with a secondary appointment at the Divinity School as associate professor of the practice of interfaith relations. He previously served as Duke University’s first Muslim chaplain and director of the Center for Muslim Life, and later as the university’s chief representative for Muslim affairs. Professor Antepli is also a senior fellow in Jewish–Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he founded and co-directs the widely recognized Muslim Leadership Initiative. In 2019, The NonProfit Times named Imam Antepli to its Power & Influence Top 50 list, recognizing him as one of the most prominent Muslim leaders today.
The Rev. Laura Mayo is a graduate of Carson-Newman University and the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Ordained to ministry in 2007, Rev. Mayo is sought after as a speaker for her knowledge on topics such as women’s roles in the Bible and within communities of faith, LGBTQAI+ rights and inclusion, atonement theologies, religious diversity in healthcare settings, and immigration and Biblical ethics. Her articles have appeared in The Houston Chronicle, Baptist News Global, and publications of the Alliance of Baptists.