WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance was followed on stage at a religious freedom conference last week by Rainn Wilson, who became gained fame playing Dwight Schrute on the hit TV comedy, “The Office.”
It was no surprise that Wilson had jokes before sharing an inspiring story about the members of his persecuted faith at IRF Summit 2025. He thought, for example, that his own “incredibly gorgeous, beefy face” is, in his words, a very JD Vance-esque face.
“I’d love to play JD Vance in ‘The JD Vance Story,’” joked Wilson, who did not mention that his home was severely damaged in December by the California wildfires.
The actor is performing now on Broadway in New York, but between the dress rehearsal and opening night he appeared by live video to say the religion summit was a great example of people setting aside differences in faith to focus on the universalities of spiritual and religious belief. That was one subject in his recent book, “Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.”
“You guys are doing God’s work,” Wilson said at the summit. “This is the most important work that can be had right now, which is people of all faith gathering, working shoulder-to-shoulder to build unity, cohesion, social justice, international justice, healing, bringing souls together, transcendence, building community.”
Wilson said that, whether one is Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or Jewish, “We are seeking to find transcendence. We are seeking to heal one another. We’re seeking to be of service to one another. We’re seeking to set aside our egos in a kind of a selflessness, and we’re seeking to serve something far greater than ourselves — God, the great spirit, whatever you want to call it, Allah.”
The actor was raised in the Baháʼí faith. He didn’t practice for a time but has returned to the faith and spoke at the summit about the persecution his fellow believers face in Iran. The government does not permit the Baháʼí to obtain higher education, marry, own religious literature or be buried in Baháʼí cemeteries.
Some 1,200 followers now face court proceedings because of their beliefs, Wilson said.
There is something to learn from them, he said.
“Out of this 180 years of persecution, tens of thousands of deaths, thousands and thousands of imprisonments, Baháʼís are fostering something that we call constructive resilience,” he said. “What is that? Instead of merely taking it, instead of merely suffering, how do we take this kind of persecution and transform it into gold? How do we transform it into survival?”
Wilson said one example of constructive resilience is the faith’s creation of the Baháʼí Institute of Higher Education. The online school provides Baháʼí the opportunity to access a university education “in secret and in basements,” Wilson said, “to build community and thrive as a community, even as it is being actively sought to be stomped out.”
The IRF Summit has regularly featured celebrity Baháʼí speakers over the past five years.
“I hope all of you will look into the plight of Baháʼís in Iran,” Wilson said, “and a big shout out and huge love and a heartbreaking shout out to all my brothers and sisters in Iran that are being so poorly treated.”