Who We Are

The OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership trains religious and civil society leaders -- clergy and lay, women and men -- to counter religious extremism and religion-based oppression, domination and violence. OMNIA has trained over 4500 peacemakers around the world, who are organized in to Interfaith Peacemaker Teams. In Bangladesh, Indonesia, Liberia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Togo and Uganda there are 226 Interfaith Peacemaker Teams with 20 religious and civic leaders in each.

OMNIA was established in 1976 as the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE), as an organization of 12 Christian seminaries. It trained seminary students to take the context of the city seriously, and to build a theology from the bottom-up. After 40 years of training thousands of pastors to take their context seriously, SCUPE decided to take its learning to religious leaders across the world, particularly those in situations of religious extremism. With this expanded mission, in December 2016, SCUPE changed its name to OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership.

Please click here to read a statement on OMNIA's Mission, Values and Method.