Eboo Patel

The Faith Line: The Need for a Different Conversation on Religion

Sponsored by the College of Social Sciences; arranged by the Claude Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue; funded by the Shepard & Ruth K. Broad International Lecture Series.

The Interfaith Youth Core is a Chicago based international organization that brings young people from different faith communities together to build understanding and cooperation. "The local is where the global happens" write Eboo Patel and Patrice Broudeur in Building the Interfaith Youth Movement, the book they have co-edited. Particularly in the realm of interfaith youth service, it's a principle that has guided Patel's work since he was in school; look around at what you can do about an issue or a problem locally, figure out a way to make a difference on that scale, and bit by bit a larger global impact becomes possible. "Our faith traditions provide guidance not only for why we are involved in interfaith work; they guide us as to how we conduct this work," Patel and Brodeur write.

Patel earned his doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.