{"id":2555,"date":"2022-11-14T16:28:26","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T16:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/eboo-patel-leading-interfaith-america-into-the-new-era-of-religious-diversity\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T18:20:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T18:20:38","slug":"eboo-patel-leading-interfaith-america-into-the-new-era-of-religious-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/eboo-patel-leading-interfaith-america-into-the-new-era-of-religious-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Eboo Patel: Leading Interfaith America Into The New Era Of Religious Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Eboo Patel: Leading Interfaith America Into The New Era Of Religious Diversity<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Kimberly Winston<\/strong>\n \n November 14, 2022<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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This article was originally published by\u00a0Religion Unplugged<\/a>, with the support of CRCC\u2019s global project on\u00a0engaged spirituality<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

CHICAGO \u2014 By his own telling, as a young man Eboo Patel was something of a jerk.<\/p>\n

In high school, he failed to defend one of his closest friends from racists. In college, he lectured his fellow classmates on identity politics and called those who disagreed with him \u201csellouts.\u201d And once, at a gathering of Catholics, he proclaimed, \u201cIf I had as much money as the Catholic Church, I\u2019d just do good with it. I\u2019d start hospitals and schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even his father found him unbearable. \u201cIf you use the word \u2018bourgeois\u2019 in my house one more time,\u201d he told Patel, \u201cyou can find some other bourgeois dad to pay for your bourgeois college tuition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back, Patel now jokes, \u201cI was seeking the gold medal in both flippance and scorn.\u201d<\/p>\n

But by his mid-20s, Patel \u2014 now in his 40s \u2014 put aside his angry young man persona to become one of the leading lights of interfaith work in the U.S. In 2002, he founded Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on building religious understanding between students. It now has 52 employees, an entire floor of lake-view offices at the Chicago Board of Trade and an annual budget of $13 million.<\/p>\n

How did this one-time rebel with more causes than courtesy become the king of kumbaya? How did Patel go from sleeping on other people\u2019s couches to a place at the table in two Democratic administrations?<\/p>\n

The answer, of course, is that Eboo Patel grew up. And Interfaith Youth Core has grown up, too. In an acknowledgment of that maturity, IFYC was rechristened this year as Interfaith America<\/a>. The dropping of the word \u201cyouth\u201d is another signal that both the organization and its founder have wider goals than changing the world one kid at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were 22, 23, 24 when we started this organization, and it’s not like the pope took our phone calls,\u201d Patel said from his corner office, which is just across the hall from a sunlit prayer room. \u201cI joke when I say that, but we did have access to world leaders in the first few years because we were such a counterpoint to young people involved in religious extremism. I went to Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative and blah blah blah, right?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we were a feature. We weren\u2019t driving the narrative. We were a character in somebody else\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Patel plans to not only drive the narrative of American religious cooperation but change it altogether. \u201cWe are coming to the end of Judeo-Christian America,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time for us to welcome new voices into the discussion. Hence, Interfaith America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You should build that\u2019<\/h2>\n

In the late 1990s \u2014 fresh out of college and making only about $12,000 a year as a teacher \u2014 Patel found himself at an interfaith conference at Stanford University when he was gobsmacked by a great idea.<\/p>\n

He and a friend had been making the rounds of various interfaith events, often introduced as \u201cnew blood\u201d who were going to build a new youth-based interfaith movement. One problem, though \u2014 the pair didn\u2019t really have any concrete plans or a following.<\/p>\n

But at the Stanford event, Patel was revved up by an evening spent away from the endless talking and presentations. Instead, he joined a band of young social entrepreneurs like himself for an evening full of big talk, bigger passion and a lot of encouragement.<\/p>\n

And in the middle of the night it just came to him \u2014 why not create an organization that would gather religiously diverse young people to work on community service projects? Patel borrowed the service aspect of Teach for America,<\/a> the faith factor of Lutheran Volunteer Corps<\/a> and a sprinkling of Avodah\u2019s<\/a> leadership building \u2014 all service organizations with a focus on youth \u2014 to create something new: Interfaith Youth Core.<\/p>\n

Bursting with excitement, Patel stood up during the conference the next day and shouted, \u201cThere\u2019s no action here, no young people, no edge,\u201d he recalls in \u201cWe Need To Build,\u201d<\/a> his latest book. \u201cYou people are killing me, you are so boring!\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the attendees were embarrassed by his outburst, but one elder in the interfaith movement there said to him, \u201cThat\u2019s powerful. You should build that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple of years later, in 2002, Interfaith Youth Core was born when it received its first grant \u2014 $35,000 \u2014 from the Ford Foundation. It had a staff of three, including Patel, and only one was full-time. It initiated a Chicago-based training course for \u201cinterfaith fellows\u201d who learned about each other\u2019s different faiths as they worked on community projects together. Graduates passed on what they learned when they returned to their various campuses.<\/p>\n

Among the first cheerleaders of IFYC was Diana Eck,<\/a> a Harvard University professor whose focus is on American pluralism. She remembers meeting Patel in the early 2000s and sitting with him on her patio as he outlined his vision for IFYC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he touched on something that for students was liberating and educating,\u201d Eck said recently. \u201cThey could articulate their religious tradition without claiming to be a representative of it, but rather as a person for whom their tradition is grounding and nourishing as they engage with the wider society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lightning struck the organization in 2009 when it was tapped by former President Barack Obama \u2014 another Chicagoan \u2014 to be part of the White House\u2019s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Patel was part of the president\u2019s religion advisory council.<\/p>\n

Twenty years and a name change later, the organization\u2019s reach is far beyond Chicago. To date, it has programs, curricula and chapters on almost 700 U.S. college campuses, and it hands out grants to emerging interfaith leaders, educators, students and \u201cstrategic partners\u201d \u2014 to the tune of $3.7 million in 2021 alone.<\/p>\n

And its been welcomed back to the Biden White House, too. In September, the White House announced<\/a> Interfaith America, the YMCA<\/a> and Habitat for Humanity<\/a> are collaborating on a program that will bring 10,000 Americans of different faith backgrounds together on community projects and bridge-building in 300 communities \u2014 the basic IFYC and Interfaith America model.<\/p>\n

A few days before the White House announcement, Patel was sitting in his office, with pictures of his wife, his two sons and his parents to his left. On the wall were photos of Patel and the Aga Khan,<\/a> the spiritual leader of the Isma\u2019ili branch<\/a> of Shiite Islam,<\/a> of which Patel is an adherent. Lake Michigan twinkled 50 shades of blue outside the east-facing windows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think I could have guessed in my early 20s that I would be doing this,\u201d Patel said, office casual in maroon pants and a blue-checked shirt, no tie. \u201cOr that 20 years later this would still be my passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018They saved me.\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Patel didn\u2019t exactly grow up in an interfaith world. His parents, also Isma\u2019ili Muslims, came to the U.S. in the 1970s so Patel\u2019s father could attend the University of Notre Dame. The family settled in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. The family prayed together and attended the local jamaat \u2014 an Isma\u2019ili congregation. \u201cI led the Chicago jamaat in prayer before I could ride a bike,\u201d Patel writes in his memoir, \u201cActs of Faith.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s father was a marketing executive, and his mother was an accounting professor. The demands of making a living soon took precedence over regular observance.\u00a0By high school, Patel was more concerned about getting good grades so he could eventually become a lawyer with a fast car and lots of women than with religion.<\/p>\n

Patel entered the University of Illinois in Champaign in the mid-1990s and very quickly discovered identity politics. He soon became the campus gadfly, organizing protests and crashing meetings and clubs to quote bell hooks<\/a> and Malcolm X<\/a> on oppression and the ills of capitalism. \u201c\u2018America is bent on imperialism\u2019 was the first thought I had every morning and the last thought I had every night,\u201d he writes of this time.<\/p>\n

But it was also at university that Patel discovered Dorothy Day,<\/a> founder of the Catholic Worker movement.<\/a> When he heard there was a Catholic Worker house near campus, he checked it out.<\/p>\n

It changed his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere is what I had been seeking for so long,\u201d Patel recounts in his memoir. \u201cA vision of radical equality \u2014 all human beings living the abundant life that could be achieved through both a direct service approach and a change-the-system politics. For so long, those two things had existed in separate rooms in my life . . . Here was a movement that combined them. Finally, the two sides of myself could be in the same room.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, he eventually came to feel something was missing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Catholic Workers asked about my religion,\u201d he writes. \u201cI told them that I didn\u2019t really have one.\u201d Nonetheless, \u201cthey saved me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You are a Muslim\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 1996, Patel was teaching during the days and spending his nights on the couch in a Catholic Worker house in Chicago when someone there suggested he meet Brother Wayne Teasdale.<\/a><\/p>\n

Teasdale was a Catholic monk on the board of the Parliament of the World\u2019s Religions,<\/a> an international interfaith organization founded in Chicago in 1893. Teasdale, who died in 2004, was frustrated with the glacial pace of interfaith relations and wanted to recruit \u201cnew blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patel and a Jewish friend started attended local interfaith events with Teasdale. At each gathering, Teasdale introduced the pair as \u201cthe leaders\u201d who are \u201cbuilding the interfaith youth movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was news to the two young men; they were just exploring world religions together \u2014 a little meditation here, some Scripture reading there. But Teasdale seemed to think an idea would present itself.<\/p>\n

When it did, while Patel was at the Stanford interfaith event, Teasdale was enthusiastic. \u201cYou have to go to Dharamsala and tell (The Dalai Lama) about Interfaith Youth Core,\u201d he said. Teasdale made some calls and made it happen.<\/p>\n

In India, Patel was still not fully anchored in any single faith. He knew religion was important to him, but he was still exploring Buddhist meditation.<\/p>\n

But the Dalai Lama looked at him and said, \u201cYou are a Muslim.\u201d It was a statement, not a question. And he repeated it: \u201cYou are a Muslim. You are a Muslim.\u201d<\/p>\n

That statement \u2014 made by a Buddhist in a predominantly Hindu country to a young Muslim man traveling with his Jewish friend \u2014 moved something in Patel.\u00a0 A door that was once closed was now ajar.<\/p>\n

It was kicked wide open a few days later at the Bombay home of Patel\u2019s grandmother. There was a strange woman in his grandmother\u2019s kitchen \u2014 a refugee from an abusive home who came to Patel\u2019s grandmother for help. It turned out his grandmother \u2014 a woman whose visits to America embarrassed the young Patel \u2014 had helped scores of women escape dangerous situations for almost 50 years.<\/p>\n

When Patel asked his grandmother why she endangered herself to help others this way, she looked at him in surprise and replied, \u201cI am a Muslim. This is what Muslims do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the next few years, Patel bounced between setting up Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. And he was reconnecting with Islam.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was embarking on an intensely personal journey,\u201d Patel writes of this time. \u201cI had no interest in Islam until my recent trip to India. … I knew nothing of Islam except that it lived in my bones. I desperately wanted it to be magnificent.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Oxford, he had a sort of reconversion experience. He began reading the Quran and soon found the prayers of childhood came back to him. He began studying Islam with Azim Nanji,<\/a> then the director of the Institute of Isma\u2019ili Studies<\/a> in London. He decided his Oxford doctorate would be about Isma\u2019ili religious education programs.<\/p>\n

By the end of his time in Oxford, Patel was ready to say it himself: \u201cI realized that I was now facing and understanding the part of myself that was both first and final,\u201d he writes. \u201cI am a Muslim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018What is mine to do?\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Rabbi Or Rose<\/a> first met Patel on a cold call.<\/p>\n

Someone had given Rose, founding director of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership<\/a> at Hebrew College in Boston, a copy of Patel\u2019s memoir, \u201cActs of Faith.\u201d Rose felt like the two were living parallel lives.<\/p>\n

So Rose called Patel in Chicago and found out he was actually on his way to a speaking engagement in nearby Hartford. Rose drove more than an hour to hear Patel speak. In a coffee shop after the talk, Rose pulled out his copy of \u201cActs of Faith\u201d \u2014 dog-eared, underlined and highlighted throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs two people who were relatively young and for whom 9\/11 was equally shocking, I felt he was responding to that shock creatively and instructively,\u201d Rose remembered. \u201cAnd that was exciting because, given the relationship between Jews and Muslims, here was someone whose life was different than mine but who was committed to the same values interreligiously and civically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the two men are close friends. They call each other before their respective religious holidays and greet each other as brothers. They also work on projects together, including an off-the-record dialogue between Jewish and Muslim leaders about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a hot-button issue.<\/p>\n

Rose said Patel has an innate gift for storytelling that people respond to.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe asks what is mine to do?\u201d Rose said of Patel. \u201cWhat is yours to do? How do we do that thoughtfully, deeply, diligently together? I think that is one of his gifts. None of us thought we were going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we had to ask how are we working together or not, why or why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenn Hoos Rothberg<\/a> has also known Patel since the first days of IFYC. As executive director of the Einhorn Collaborative,<\/a> a nonprofit that focuses on \u201cthe crisis of connection\u201d in the U.S., she advised Patel on growing and nurturing his nonprofit baby. She calls Patel \u201cone of the most remarkable visionaries and moral leaders of our day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you get with Eboo is the ability to brilliantly articulate and flesh out an ambitious vision and demonstrate what the work needs to look like on the ground,\u201d Rothberg said. \u201cHe knows building bridges across our differences is the kind of work that you have to feel, you have to fully experience with both your heart and your mind, so that interfaith cooperation ultimately isn\u2019t something that we do; it\u2019s who we are. And that\u2019s what Eboo inspires. His work inspires.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work inspires Patel, too. On a quick break between phone calls \u2014 including one from the White House \u2014 an interview with PBS, a recording session for a new Interfaith America podcast, two or three one-on-one staff meetings and two Zoom brainstorming sessions with partner organizations, he reflected on why he does what he does.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is spirituality in this,\u201d he said, spreading his arms to take in Interfaith America\u2019s offices, recently updated in shades of cool grey, lime green, turquoise blue and tangerine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it’s the Islamic concept of \u2018ishan,\u2019<\/a> which means excellence. I think bridge-building is a craft, and you should do it excellently. Organization building is a craft, and you should do it excellently. There is a spiritual value in excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was the briefest of pauses before he continued, \u201cThere’s a line in the Islamic tradition: \u2018God is beautiful and loves beauty.\u2019 I think building an organization, having a podcast, writing a book, building an organizational partnership and building a coalition that launches at the White House \u2014 I think all of these things are part of a craft. And the way a carpenter thinks of her craft, the way a musician thinks of his craft, I think of this as my craft.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interfaith America<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In March 2022, Interfaith Youth Core officially became Interfaith America. The name change is not so much a rebranding as a signal that Patel and his cohort have more than American youth in their sights. They want to change the way organizations \u2014 both for- and not-for-profit, in everything from health care to tech to local governments \u2014 \u201cdo\u201d bridge building.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think religious diversity and interfaith cooperation are relevant to virtually every aspect of American life,\u201d Patel told The Deseret News<\/em><\/a> earlier this year. \u201cWe want to be the vital civic institution standing up and taking responsibility for helping the United States to become interfaith America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, dropping of the word \u201cyouth\u201d caused some ripples in interfaith circles. But, according to people familiar with IFYC\u2019s work and history, the change is not a turn away from the source that has nourished it so richly.<\/p>\n

Eck, the Harvard professor, said IFYC had to admit that the majority of its leaders, including Patel, had grown up and grown beyond. \u201cThey all have much wider portfolios in terms of their responsibilities and engagement with American life,\u201d she said. \u201cBut their emphasis is still on the energies of younger people, on education and leadership training. So I think Interfaith America is going to continue to draw up on the spirit and alumni of IFYC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tahil Sharma<\/a> first met Patel when he was an IFYC fellow 10 years ago. He said the name change is making \u201cthe point that the world \u2018interfaith\u2019 is not separate from America\u201d \u2014 what it is, who it is and how it progresses. Sharma, now the North American coordinator for the United Religions Initiative,<\/a> attended a recent Interfaith America alumni event and said the foundation built by IFYC is still strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the concern about the name change sits there,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they are still very much centered on young people and making sure they are equipped to go out in the world and make change through interfaith work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other interfaith leaders familiar with the organization say Interfaith America will move into areas IFYC should have tackled before.<\/p>\n

Sabrina Dent<\/a> first encountered Patel at a session for young people held at the 2015 Parliament of World Religions in Salt Lake City. Afterwards, she asked an IFYC staffer about the nonprofit\u2019s engagement with Historically Black Colleges and Universities for a critique of IFYC in her doctoral work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was so significant what IFYC was doing,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the problem was it left out young people who did not go to college. My thing was and still is, how can Interfaith America make this accessible to everyone? I think the direction it is going in now will see these conversations take place not just on college campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, Dent said, Interfaith America will emphasize something that IFYC initially did not \u2014 racial equity. In December 2021, IFYC announced<\/a> it received $1 million from the Henry Luce Foundation for the Black Interfaith Project.<\/a> It includes a fellowship program for 80 emerging leaders and a partnership with both the Smithsonian Institution and the American Academy of Religion to stage conferences, presentations and public engagement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t enough storytelling within IFYC around how racial and religious minorities are impacted\u201d by racial injustice and religious freedom in America, Dent continued. \u201cThat is something I look forward to seeing Interfaith America address.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a challenge Patel says both he and Interfaith America are ready for.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to take the barriers of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, etc., seriously,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the model has to be how do you bring your distinctiveness to a space where it can be in positive relationship with other people’s distinctiveness?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he used a metaphor that he has returned to frequently in the past year in his interviews, writings and public speaking appearances. I heard him use it at least a dozen times in the course of a single day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s what happens at a potluck,\u201d he said. \u201cYou bring a dish in order to see how it is in relationship with other dishes. You expect there to be interesting and creative combinations. We’re all distinct and yet we all make contributions to the American potluck. And you nurture creative combinations amongst people’s distinctive dishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to read the article on Religion Unplugged.<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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