Tulsa World: Faiths cooperating: A vision

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Faiths cooperating: A vision

Eboo Patel talks with teenagers about interfaith understanding during a meeting in the penthouse of the Mayo Hotel. MICHAEL WYKE / Tulsa World

By BILL SHERMAN World Religion Writer
Published: 11/21/2009 2:23 AM
Last Modified: 11/21/2009 5:35 AM

Eboo Patel has a dream.

In it, Christians, Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths or no faith are working side by side to improve society without compromising their own beliefs.

Patel is a young Muslim interfaith leader in President Barack Obama's White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Last month, U.S. News and World Report named him among America's best leaders, a select group of 19 individuals.

He was in Tulsa this week promoting his vision and helping the YMCA of Greater Tulsa celebrate its 100th anniversary.

"I see interfaith cooperation and service being a movement just as inspiring as the environmental movement or the civil rights movement," he said over lunch Thursday at the Stonehorse Cafe in Utica Square.

Tulsa, which has an active interfaith movement, could serve as a model for the rest of the nation, he said.

Born in India and raised in Chicago, Patel said the foundation for his interfaith work was laid between the ages of 8 and 18 when he spent many hours each week at a local YMCA. There, as a Muslim working at a Christian-based organization, he learned principles of leadership and interfaith service.

Later, working on his Ph.D. at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, he traveled the world organizing young people from diverse faiths to work together on projects benefitting their communities.

In 1998, he conceived the Interfaith Youth Core, which now has 30 employees and a $4 million budget. The organization works on college campuses and elsewhere to involve young people in interfaith service work.

On Thursday afternoon at All Souls Unitarian Church, Patel told Tulsa interfaith leaders that America is high in "social capital," a term sociologists use to describe civic pride, volunteerism, service clubs, religious organizations and other things that bind communities together.

Religious communities are the single largest source of social capital in the United States, he said.

But a Harvard study shows that as diversity goes up in a society, social capital goes down.

And America has become the most religiously diverse nation in history, as well as the most religiously devout nation in the West.

"When diversity is unengaged, it leads in a drop in social capital," he said. "The challenge we face with American religious diversity is to engage it positively, which means bridging across religious diversity, respectful of theological differences, to multiply social capital."

The goal should be to make interfaith cooperation the norm in American society, not the exception.

He said interfaith leaders should have a vision of a society based on pluralism, in which people of all faiths respect others and are committed to the common good.

People should know what their own faith tradition teaches about doing good to others, and should know their own history of working together for social justice.

And they need to develop skills to bring together people from different backgrounds, he said.

Asked about the difficulty of working with evangelicals not interested in pluralism, Patel said he has "unbelievable" evangelicals working at his organization.

"Evangelicals aren't extremists," he said. "The service efforts of evangelical communities help save and improve millions of people's lives, and before anyone starts to judge another community, we should be mindful of their positive contributions.

"What progressives do to help others is minuscule compared to what evangelicals do."

He said he does not appreciate it that evangelicals believe Muslims will not go to heaven.

"But do I have a right to change them? No. They have a right to that interpretation. ... But they don't control heaven," he said.

People's views of salvation do not need prevent them from working together for the common good, he said.

"The question is, how do we get them involved in interfaith cooperation?"

Bill Sherman 581-8398
bill.sherman@tulsaworld.com By BILL SHERMAN World Religion Writer

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Proud Muslim, Tulsa: Coolest place in the world (almost) (11/21/2009 1:24:08 PM)

Interesting. May we all learn to work together for the common good.

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