Tireless interfaith champion, Eboo Patel, gave the annual Ware Lecture last night. It was profoundly moving and directly relevant to us.
Program Description
There is no better time to stand up for your values than when they are under attack.
In the decade following the attacks of 9/11, suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims and alarmist, hateful rhetoric invoking the specter of Islam as a menacing, deeply anti-American force have become commonplace rather than being relegated to the fringes of political discourse. This prejudice is a challenge to the ideals of American life. This evening, renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel will discuss the art and science of interfaith work, showing us that Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been “interfaith leaders.” Sharing stories from the frontlines of interfaith activism, he’ll bring to life the growing body of research on how faith can be a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier.
Dr. Patel is founder and President of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement. He was appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. Patel writes “The Faith Divide” blog for The Washington Post and has also written for theHarvard Divinity School Bulletin, The Chicago Tribune, and other prominent journals. He has been featured on a range of media, including CNN Sunday Morning, NPR’s Morning Edition, the PBS documentary Three Faiths, One God, The New Republic, American Public Media, the BBC, and CNN. Patel is a sought-after speaker whose addresses include the keynote speech at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum with President Jimmy Carter. He is the author ofSacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America, and Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, which was the 2011-2012 Unitarian Universalist Association Common Read and 2010 winner of the prestigious Louisville Grawemeyer award in religion
An Ashoka Fellow, Patel was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America, was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch, and was selected to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic Forum. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
You can watch video of the sermon or read the script of the lecture here.