Eboo Patel Kicks Off Saint Martin’s Lecture Series with a Message of Tolerance

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By Gail Wood

eboo patelThe message can be found in two books – “Acts of Faith” and “Sacred Ground.” Instead of focusing on religious faith as a divider, the message is to use it as a bridge, bringing people together.

Eboo Patel, an interfaith leader and respected speaker who has written an award-winning book about his experience of growing up Muslim in the United States, will kick off the Benedictine Institute Lecture Series at Saint Martin’s University (SMU).

“One of the core Benedictine values is hospitality,” Saint Martin’s says in a release about Patel’s lecture.

And that is a theme of Patel’s message. He shares in other Benedictine values – service, community and respect for all people. Patel’s challenge is to commit to a “common action for the common good.”

“Because of this close alignment with Saint Martin’s Benedictine mission and identity, Dr. Patel will be the inaugural speaker for the Benedictine Institute Lecture series,” according to the University’s release.

The goal of the lecture series is to engage the region in the “spirit of interfaith cooperation and dialogue.”

Patel’s lecture is scheduled for October 3 at 7:00 p.m. in the Hal and Inge Marcus Pavilion on the Lacey campus at 5300 Pacific Ave. SE. The event is free and open to the public.

eboo patelPatel has shared his message of interfaith cooperation at the TED conference, the Clinton Global Initiative and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, as well as on college campuses across the country.

While attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Patel became interested in religious diversity and was inspired by Dorothy Day, a leader of the Catholic Worker movement. Later, as a doctoral student at Oxford, Patel’s idea of uniting youth with different religious backgrounds to encourage service and dialogue was spurred by his contact with Br. Wayne Teasdale, a Catholic monk.

That led to the establishment in 2002 of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), an organization that focuses on interfaith cooperation. Patel was still a student at Oxford when he co-founded the IFYC with a Jewish friend and a $35,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. Patel now serves as president of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, which employs about 30 people and has a $4 million operating budget.

Patel has blogged for the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, USA Today and Sojourners. He is on the Homeland Security’s Faith-based Advisory Council. In his 2007 autobiography, “Acts of Faith,” Patel talks about how he became interested in religious diversity while in college.

eboo patelPatel says his inspiration for writing “Acts of Faith” was to show how “my struggle to forge an American Muslim identity inspired me to start the Interfaith Youth Core.” He says one of his models was Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father,” a book about how Obama’s identity struggles led him to become a community organizer, civil rights lawyer and politician.

Patel says the take-home message of his book is there is “no peace in the world without religious pluralism.” And there is “no religious pluralism without the engagement and leadership of young people.”

During the Fall 2013 semester, first-year students at Saint Martin’s will be required to read “Acts of Faith.”

In his second book, “Sacred Ground,” Patel talks about how the United States has produced leaders with visions of tolerance, showing how Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been interfaith leaders. Patel says our commonalities are more important than our differences.

Patel defines religious pluralism as a world characterized by: a respect for people’s diverse religious and non-religious identities, relationships between people of different backgrounds, and common action for the common good.

“Pluralism is not a birthright in America,” Patel says. “It’s a responsibility. Pluralism does not fall from the sky. It does not rise up from the ground. People have fought for pluralism. People have kept the promise. America is exceptional not because there is magic in our air, but because there is a fierce determination in our citizens.”

eboo patelBenedictine Institute Lecture Series

Dr. Eboo Patel

Thursday, October 3

7:00 p.m. at Marcus Pavilion

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