Interfaith work is crucial to overcoming our country’s divisions. Ep. 156

By the time you listen to this episode, we may already know who the
46th president of the United States will be. But whoever wins,
there is one thing we can say with certainty now: We remain a
divided country. So this week, we wanted to talk to someone who has
been working across divisions for over a decade: Dr. Eboo Patel. In
2002, Eboo founded the Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that
works with colleges, governments and social service agencies to
increase interfaith cooperation. He also served on President Barack
Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood
Partnerships. Eboo believes that it is impossible to understand
what is happening in our world—and in the 2020 election—without
paying attention to and engaging with people’s diverse religious
commitments. We ask Eboo what lessons he has learned from his
interfaith work that might help us to heal the fractures of our
body politic. With the election results very much still up in the
air at recording time, we decided it didn’t make a lot of sense to
try to read the signs of the times this week. But stick around
after the interview for our (non-election related) Consolations and
Desolations. A reminder that we are discussing Pope Francis’ latest
encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” in reading groups (over drinks) with
all members of our Patreon community throughout the month of
November. Even if you missed the first meeting, there’s still time
to sign up to support the show and guarantee a spot in the reading
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