Lee
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Today, our guest is Eboo Patel. Mr. Patel served on President Obama's inaugural Faith Council, and is the founder and president of Interfaith America, headquartered in Chicago.
Eboo
When there is a fire on the Muslim side of the city of Mostar, the Catholic fire department does not respond. There's a fire on the Catholic side of Mostar, the Muslim fire department does not respond.
Lee
Eboo
...is a description of most of human history. Now you read that as an American, and it's like you're reading about Mars.
Lee
But in our pluralistic society...
Eboo
...we don't have Catholic and Muslim fire departments.
Lee
Mr. Patel argues that religious diversity is an asset to democracy and provides third ways to frame divisive issues around religion, race, and politics.
All, coming right up.
[00:01:00] I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Historically, this has entailed a prohibition on the government establishing a national church or some such. The U. S. is thus a country of religious pluralism.
This hotly contested legal doctrine evokes a great variety of competing responses. There are some who see only particular religions as a threat, and want, of course, to favor their own. Then there are those who lump religion in the same bucket and find them all a threat to democracy and civic life. And then, there are yet others who lump religion in the same bucket, but insist that all religions, they might say, are saying the same thing - namely, some sort of notion of peaceableness and getting along with one another.
But our guest today refuses any [00:02:00] of those simple categories. He insists that different religious traditions actually do disagree with one another on important matters. And at the same time...
Eboo
...we are helping America realize religious diversity as a treasure.
Lee
He insists that we need that diversity to do the work of building healthy civic institutions and contributing to the common good.
Eboo
This is actually simple: which is, people from different religions are going to disagree on salvation, and they can work together on earth. And isn't that obvious, right? And actually, don't our religions call us to do that?
Lee
Today, our conversation with Eboo Patel.
Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith America, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that aims to promote interfaith cooperation, he has a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, was a member of President Barack Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
Eboo is the author of numerous [00:03:00] books. We'll especially be, today, working out of his memoir, Acts of Faith, and his most recent book, We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy.
Today, we're sitting together on a beautiful day in downtown Chicago at the offices of Interfaith America. Eboo, thanks for having us.
Eboo
It's great to be with you, Lee. And it is indeed a beautiful day!
Lee
So, would you begin with perhaps a synopsis for the kind of work that you all are doing with Interfaith America?
Eboo
So, the goal of Interfaith America, the organization, is to help build interfaith America, the nation. And in fact, the nation is already Interfaith America, which is to say, we are the political entity in which the most people in the most different religions have gathered. We're the most religiously diverse nation in human history.
We don't yet have that self conception of ourselves. We think of ourselves still as a Judeo-Christian nation. Well, now we have as many Muslims in America as we have ELCA Lutherans. Twice as many Muslims as we have Episcopalians, right? Something like a quarter of the nation says they're [00:04:00] atheist or agnostic or secular humanist.
Our demographics have grown significantly since the 1930s. It's time for our concepts to catch up.
So we like to say that we are helping America realize religious diversity as a treasure. It's here. It's a treasure. Let's make sure that we implement the idea that cooperation is better than division, that religious diversity is a treasure, that faith is a bridge of cooperation.
Lee
And what are your, kind of, day to day projects or initiatives look like?
Eboo
Yeah, so we are a 50, 55 person organization. We have roughly a 13 million dollar budget. We are, by orders of magnitude, the largest organization in the United States that deals specifically with religious diversity issues.
The difference that the NCCJ, the National Conference for Christians and Jews, made in the 20th century, they're the organization that really ushered in the paradigm Judeo-Christian, we hope to make a similar difference in the 21st century.
I would say roughly half of our work is in higher education. We have a network of something like 600 college campuses that we [00:05:00] work with. We're doing everything from helping college presidents develop interfaith strategic plans to helping freshman orientation advisors include religious diversity in their freshman orientation.
We also work with religious diversity issues in private companies, in healthcare institutions, and in democracy issues more broadly. So, we have a project called Faith in the Elections to make sure that the election is both safe and trusted. We have a project called Team Up, which brings together some of the largest civic organizations in America - Catholic Charities, Habitat for Humanity, and the YMCA, to be places that widen their welcome of diversity and strengthen the bridges amongst diverse people.
And a huge part of what we do is we tell the story of interfaith America. We tell it as an inspiring story, and kind of as an aspiration that the nation is slowly understanding that it already is, but that it can manifest in reality.
Lee
When you think about some of the success stories, what are some that stand out to you through those 20 plus years?[00:06:00]
Eboo
I'm really proud of what some of the leaders we've nurtured have done. I'm really proud of a guy named Greg Damhorst who, you know, back in the, in the mid 2000s, after the terrible earthquake in Haiti, gathered 5,000 people in Champaign-Urbana to pack meal kits for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti.
There's been dozens and dozens of projects like that. Greg just happens to come to mind because he grew up in the Chicagoland area as an evangelical Christian with friends who were Hindu and Jain, and he was constantly trying to figure out how he could be rooted in his own identity and in positive partnership with people of other identities, which is so much of what we do.
And I'm proud that during the Obama years, we ran the president's Interfaith Challenge. In partnership with the White House, 500 campuses would gather every year to make a commitment to interfaith cooperation and to develop plans to actually execute on that commitment.
I'm really proud that in-- when the vaccine came out, we had a project called the Faith in the Vaccine Ambassadors, [00:07:00] which were people located in communities across the United States, roughly 2,000 people emerging from 200 different institutions, many of them evangelical colleges, actually, who were trained to positively engage people's religious identities about the vaccine. They weren't convincing people to take the vaccine. They were encouraging people to consider how their religious identity would encourage them to consider the vaccine. Like, is this, is this part of being a good neighbor? Kind of a thing. Is this part of treating your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit?
Lee
I mean, it already strikes me as somewhat counterintuitive, perhaps, to some who are listening, to hear two things being held together that seems, from what I can tell, precisely one of the things that you've tried to do with your vocation - namely, you're pointing to certain kind of progressive ideals, while also being very explicit about engaging people's particular religious identities.
Commentary on that?
Eboo
You know, I mean, I think that that's the American project right there, [00:08:00] right? I think that we have to realize, like, we live in a nation that, for the vast majority of Western civilization, for sure, people thought was impossible, which is to say, people thought it was impossible for different identities to gather in a single political entity, particularly a democracy. And what makes a democracy distinct? It's people get to participate in public life, right?
So you could have religious diversity in a dictatorship or in an empire, because the dictator would basically curtail or contain your identity. But in a democracy, you actually get to articulate your identity. You get to say you're pro-life or pro-choice. You get to say where you think the line should be drawn in the Middle East. And you get to try to affect public discourse and policy.
And so, the idea that you would live alongside people who were literally trying to enact a policy that was opposite of your, not just politics, but your identity, people thought that was impossible. And here we are attempting that in the United States.
I have to say, you know, people say all the time about how terrible things are [00:09:00] going, and I think things could be a lot better in the United States, let me be clear. But I read a New York Times article 10 or 12 years ago that I write about in my book, We Need to Build, which begins with the image: When there is a fire on the Muslim side of the city of Mostar, in the nation of Bosnia Herzegovina, the Catholic fire department does not respond. There's a fire on the Catholic side of Mostar, the Muslim fire department does not respond.
Now you read that as an American, and it's like you're reading about Mars, because we don't have Catholic and Muslim fire departments, right? But what you're actually reading is a description of most of human history. In most of human history, groups that convene around a particular identity build institutions that serve their own community.
And in the United States, we have a civil society that is largely built by people of particular [00:10:00] identities that build institutions that serve people of all identities.
Lee
You've indicated that this vision wasn't a vision, necessarily, which you saw in your early life. You say, you say at one point: "I'm an American Muslim from India. My adolescence was a series of rejections, one after another, of the various dimensions of my heritage. In the belief that America, India, and Islam could not coexist within the same being. If I wanted to be one, I could not be the others."
Eboo
Listen, I grew up in the white western suburbs of Chicago, in the 1980s, with a name called Eboo, right? Amidst a bunch of, like, Sams, Jacks, Johns, JJs, and Adams, right?
Let me tell you something. Like, it is both a joke, but also like a profound moment of alienation, when your mother puts a samosa in your [00:11:00] lunch and you spend the day being ridiculed for it.
So it's a joke. But actually, it is a profound moment. Because your mother lovingly put that samosa in your lunch, right? That is your heritage. That is the food that has nurtured your ancestors for generations. And you go to school and it is ridiculed. And you're 9 years old. And you look at your mother, and you say, "You are the source of my ridicule." Right?
So, look, I have to say something. I am over that. I'm 48 years old. And if, like, you can't get over, you know, things that happened to you when you were 9, there's some growing up that happens. But it is useful to remember that. It's useful to remember that. And it's useful to say no 9-year-old should have to go through that, right?
That is not the center of my existence. I don't think that should be the center of, like, American politics, but I don't think that that should happen.
So, growing up, for me, was like a series of kind of figuring this stuff out. And where I come to, is actually, like, very much kind of on the side of James Baldwin and Jane Adams and [00:12:00] Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr., which is, like, people should be proud of their identities.
People should view their identities as assets. People should bring their assets to the table in the same way that you might bring a dish to a potluck. What makes a potluck special is not just the diversity of dishes, it's the way the dishes are in combination, and the way the people are in conversation.
Lee
So, I, I appreciate your, your saying, "I'm over that," but I also think that if we could dig into that just a little bit more, because I think it would get very instructive for folks, because I think we find ourselves in a context in which so many are still in a position of rage or carrying about the pain of such circumstances.
You've indicated, both in your early memoir and also in your most recent book, that as you went to college, that move began to kind of move you from accepting / not seeing the kinds of pain or difficulties that some of those childhood experiences were causing, and then you kind of move into a place of, of rage?
Eboo
Yeah. So, in high school, there was literally no language. [00:13:00] There was no framework which helped me make sense of that samosa experience, okay? I thought that was my dirty little secret, right? And I thought the problem was me. I thought the problem was with my skin and with my food, not with other people's eyes or with other people's noses, or with other people's, like, racism, right?
That's racism.
Lee
And to be fair, you tell quite a number of other stories in both of those books about things that you experienced as a high schooler, multiplicity of sorts of offenses and so forth.
Eboo
So, there is a story to tell about the racism that I experienced, and I've written like it is a thread. I've written five books. It's a thread through every single one. It would be an incomplete story of my life if I didn't say those things, right?
And I get to college, and actually, the frameworks in college - white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, institutionalized racism - it encourages me to tell those stories.
Now, all of a sudden, the stories that I thought were my dirty little secret were a microphone for me. And I was the kid in class talking all the time. I was the student [00:14:00] activist in the quad telling these stories all the time. And at some point, like, I think I realized, like, this has become all of who I am. I am now only telling the story of my being a victim of racism. And actually, the truth is, that is not how I grew up. That is not how I was raised.
So I'm a Ismaili Muslim. I'll tell you something about being an Ismaili. So we are a small community of Shia Muslims, and the distinguishing feature of Ismailis is that we have what's called a present and living Imam, kind of like a Pope figure, right?
So Ismailis have been chased out of many countries. Ismailis developed a practice called taqiyya, which is like secrecy, which is basically, like, we are so accustomed to being persecuted that we developed a legal doctrine where we can secretly pretend we are not Ismailis so that we wouldn't be persecuted. There's about 15 million of us in the world, about, about the same number as Jews.
So, I did my PhD on Ismaili religious education, beginning with the teachings of the Imam. I have not found [00:15:00] in 60, 70 years of the imams that-- our current Aga Khan, the current leader of the Ismaili tradition, in reading 60 to 70 years of the Imam's teachings to the community, a single place where he has called us victims. Or the oppressed, or the marginalized.
So, I come from, like, a religious tradition, and I come from a culture, and I come from a household, that acknowledged things can be hard. Let's not be blind to that, that you know, it is harder to have brown skin than white skin. It is harder to be a woman than to be a man. It is harder to be gay than to be straight.
And if you allow yourself to think of yourself as a victim rather than an agent, you are doing yourself the greatest harm that you could do. Because what God gave you is agency. Like, literally... that is what God gives you, is agency, right? So, it's kind of a violation of a spiritual ethic, but it's also, honestly, kind of a violation of, like, just basic [00:16:00] knowledge about the world.
So, I'll tell you a story that I don't think I've ever told before. This is summer of 1998. And we're at an ice cream shop in Bombay, right? And like, honestly, only rich people in Bombay can afford ice cream. So we're there with a bunch of rich people. And it's the summer, so it's the monsoon season. And it starts to rain, just like out of-- monsoon means, like, just out of nowhere, it will just pour buckets, right?
And across the street from the ice cream shop, I see this family that's sleeping on the street. And I look out and this 10-year-old kid, like, wakes up, and just starts to wail.
And the father looks at the kid, just helplessly. You just can't do anything, right? And I'm, I'm like 23, actually. And like, I've like, cultivated this sophisticated intellectual self of being oppressed, like reading Frantz [00:17:00] Fanon and Foucault and whatever. And I look out at this family suffering this monsoon on the streets, and just thinking to myself... I feel gross. I feel grotesque, for like, thinking to myself, like, I'm the oppressed one.
Actually, more of humanity lives closer to that person's life than to my life. Like, when the rain falls, I don't get wet. I am under shelter.
To only tell a victim story of myself is not again just a violation of, like, a spiritual ethic. It is to, like, literally erase that person's existence. And we live in a world of 8 billion people. One and a half billion people have parasitic worms in their systems. 4 billion people live on less than $7 a day. If I call myself oppressed, what word do I have for them?[00:18:00]
Lee
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our conversation with Eboo Patel.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a PDF of my complete interview notes, and a full transcript.
We would be delighted if you'd tell your friends about No Small Endeavor and invite them to join us on the podcast, because it helps extend the reach of the beauty, [00:19:00] truth, and goodness we are seeking to sow in the world.
Coming up, more on what anger can and cannot do when seeking to fight oppression, and Eboo makes the case for the public goods of a religiously pluralistic democracy.
Also, in Need to Build, you speak of the dangers of making generalizations and speaking for others.
Eboo
Lee
Would you unpack that for us some?
Eboo
Yeah. I mean, I really can't stand this.
So there's a, there was a congresswoman who said, "We don't need any more Black faces in Congress who are not going to be Black voices."
Alright. So there are... 13% of America's Black. Okay? So that's roughly... what? 40 million people? So tell me, tell me, is there one voice that represents 40 million people? I mean, like, there's not one voice that represents me in any given day, [00:20:00] right? Like, like, in other words, I have, like, six different views that are contradictory in any given day, right?
And so this notion of, like, there is, like, an essentialist Muslim view, or an essentialist female view... And by the way, you have it, you know what it is, you can demand it of others, and you can, like, erase or cancel or marginalize people who don't say that. That just seems like it's so offensive, right?
And part of what gets me is, at a time in which, like, representation is such a, kind of, vaunted notion... "Are you represented? Are you--" Right? Wouldn't we be careful in speaking for others?
Like, here's the image, right? What happens if you're at the head of the rally, and let's say it's a, you know, just to use my own identity, it's a rally of Ismaili Muslims, and there's 10,000 of us, and you have the microphone, and you're saying, "We want A, B, and [00:21:00] C," and 5,000 people in the crowd is like, are like, "That's not what I want."
[Lee laughs]
Right? Like, that's the image in my mind.
Lee
Yeah.
I think your language was, "it drives me crazy." What's the source of that being such a sore spot for you?
Eboo
Well, I mean, I think that it is a huge part of the discourse now. You know, "People of color think..." "Black people think..." "Muslims believe..." right? Like, it's a dominant dimension of the discourse now, to create a category, which is actually extremely internally diverse, extremely heterogeneous--
I think that there is such a thing as, there's a coherent thing called the African American experience. But coherent doesn't mean univocal.
Lee
Eboo
Lee
Eboo
And I think that there are categories which, honestly, like, don't, don't make any sense. I think the category 'people of color' makes no sense.
There's 8 billion people in the [00:22:00] world. What percentage of them are people of color?
Lee
I don't know, but certainly the majority.
Eboo
Yeah.
So, let's just roughly call it 75%. So that's, what, 6 billion people? So are you going to tell me that you can put 6 billion people into a single category? That just seems, I don't know, crazy?
But here we are, using the category all the time. And assuming that it has a single view that you, with the microphone, on the soapbox, can articulate.
Lee
I would presume that the, the best presumption behind use of such categories or language is purportedly trying to [00:23:00] lean into some sort of good for that group. Uh, some sort-- there's a case typically being made for pushing back against oppression or pushing back against injustice, purportedly for the good of the group being spoken about.
Is that, is that fair?
Eboo
I think the intention around these things often starts in a positive place. And I think the first couple steps down the path. are useful steps, right? Getting to step 20 down that path, right, where now you have reified this category 'people of color,' and essentialized it--
So the first couple of steps are exploratory. They're not dogmatic. I think that that, this, this is one of the kind of big distinctions. I say to my teenage sons all the time, "Be in a mode of inquiry, not in a mode of judgment," right? When, when something begins with an inquiry, that's very useful. When you're making an observation and making an inquiry, that [00:24:00] is very useful.
We shouldn't be afraid to do that around categories related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality. We should, you know-- We, America's had, what, 44, 45, 46 presidents. Two Catholics, one Black guy, 40... Right, like that's like, hmm... Like, that's, we should observe that. Like that's a, that's a moment of observation and reflection.
Lee
Eboo
Right? We should have a conversation. But for it to lead to a different kind of dogma? Not useful.
Lee
Well, you say in, uh, in your most recent book, you close with a letter to your sons. And you say that, uh, things like rage or critical theories and seeing themselves as oppressed is not, is not the way you want them to move forward.
And then you say, quote, "Generally, I'd like for you to give people the benefit of the doubt."
Eboo
Lee
So it's just a different-- it's seeing something like critical theory as a helpful diagnostic, then leaning into additional sorts of postures or disciplines to try to find ways forward?
Eboo
I think that's exact.
So, so I think [00:25:00] critical theory, anti-racism, et cetera, et cetera... a very useful critique. A very useful voice to have around the table. As a paradigm, it is useless.
Here's why it's useless. The definition of a critique is, a voice or a lens that's pointing out things that the paradigm doesn't explain. That's extremely useful, right? Hey, you're not talking about race when it comes to policing. You are missing something, okay?
But a paradigm is an explanatory framework that says it can explain everything, right? So the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, that here's the science of how the galaxy works, is meant to explain everything. It's meant to explain how, not just the earth works, but all the planets in the Milky Way, and the moons, etc, etc, right? That's a paradigm.
So anti-racism as a paradigm doesn't work, because there's a million things it doesn't explain.
It doesn't explain the success of Asian Americans in [00:26:00] elite education and in professional life. It doesn't explain the success of African Americans in the high arts and entertainment, right? There's all kinds of things it doesn't explain.
But we've actually gone a step further than, than anti-racism as a paradigm. We are now at anti-racism as a social order, or an operating system. That's where you get, like, bias response teams. Right? That's where you have the ability to punish and coerce.
Now we're beyond, this is useless. Now we are, this is odious. Right? When you can punish people, when you can coerce people, based on a paradigm that doesn't explain an awful lot of facts in the world, now we're in a problem.
But I don't, like, my work is not principally critiquing anti-racism.
My work is principally advancing pluralism. One of the reasons I talk about anti-racism is because it is a different kind of diversity paradigm that I [00:27:00] think creates an 'us versus them-ness' that is not, not a positive force in a diverse democracy.
Lee
Well, related to this, you also talk about, in your most recent book, the importance of having more than just one story to tell. That is, that there's a diversity of ways that we want to think about ourselves individually, and that that gives us a richness to think about how we might relate with one another.
Eboo
Right. I mean, I remember-- it's funny, like, I quote people you might call anti-racist all the time, because I find some of their, some of the theories useful. I like that, right? So, in other words, my critique is not a total critique. It's, it is principally about, like, we need to be building pluralism.
But let me, let me quote somebody who might be considered an anti-racist, and that's Cornel West.
I remember seeing Cornel West on C-SPAN once, this was many, many, many years ago. And this guy calls in, it's like a book TV, and it's a call-in show. And somebody calls in and says, "You know, I disagree with all of your political theory and economic theory, Professor West. But I'm a big jazz head."
And Cornel West kind of leans in and says, "Let's talk about Miles. Let's talk about 'Trane."
And I thought that was [00:28:00] such a beautiful moment, right? Like, like this guy saying, "I disagree on this stuff... but I like this stuff." And Cornell was like, "Well, let's talk about, let's start talking about what we like together," right?
There's a million stories like that.
We typically do not start conversations with the area of the most profound disagreement. You lead with the commonality. You-- and the commonality is often, like, the thing you got to get done together. Like, if you are giving me four bucks, and you're ordering a double scoop and I run an ice cream store, I'm going to give you ice cream. That's, that's actually a relationship.
Lee
That sort of looking for the complexity and nuance in the people around us, I think is just so compelling.
And one way you do this, in some of your own storytelling, just about your own grandmother, is striking, because you... it seems to me as I, as I kind of read it, you know, and maybe in some of your earlier years, you weren't quite so sure about your grandmother, but then you had this experience with her when you're in India, and you discover that she had been up to kind of some [00:29:00] risky work of serving other, other human beings, that was very striking.
Eboo
Yeah, so I'd always thought of my grandmother as, like, the person wagging her finger in my, in my face and, you know, telling me to marry an Ismaili when I'm 9 years old, you know?
And when I go back to India in the summer of 1998, you know, I realized that my grandmother is like, taking all these women into her home, women who are being abused, and my-- she's basically running like a women's shelter out of her home. Right?
Now, it's, it's not like a dozen women, it's like two or three women, but she's been doing this for 50 years, right? And this is like, this is her work, right? And, you know, "Why are you doing this?" You know, she's like, "I'm a Muslim. I'm in Ismaili. This is what we do." This is part of our, this is our social ethic, right?
And she doesn't say it with any sort of pride. She just says it as if she's being like, "Do you want two chapatis or three chapatis for dinner?" Right? It's just like, this natural thing.
And I think I just, that's one of the things about religion I just find so moving. So many of the people who just do [00:30:00] important things in the world, do it out of a religious commitment, and they just think it's a natural thing. They're not especially impressed with themselves. They just, you know, like, it's just like the most natural thing. And I just find that so, so moving.
Lee
You speak often of the ways in which, as you've already begun to allude to, you have these kind of heroes of the faith, and yet they're, they're very diverse. They're, they're Christian, they're Muslims, they're Jews, Hindus.
And I'm especially struck by the way Dorothy Day kind of stands out in your early story. She's moved me for many years. Um, but, but talk about how some of the, how your exposure to some of the stories, these sorts of stories began to shape your work.
Eboo
So the story is, this must be, like, the middle of the year of my sophomore year in college. So this is 1994, early 1995, and I am, like, a ball of [00:31:00] rage.
Like, I have, like, swallowed the pill on critical theory, and, like, way beyond what my professors, who were using it as a provocation, wanted me to do, right? I went to school in an era where it was kind of an identity politics era of the, of the, of the mid 1990s, and professors would, would do things with-- through provocation, but it wasn't, they didn't mean to indoctrinate. They just meant to provoke. But I just, like, swallowed the pill.
And I was, you know, I was a social justice warrior before the name comes into fashion. And it was not good. I was not healthy for other people. I was not healthy for myself. Like, my house, my roommate at the time, would like stay away from the room for weeks on end, because he just could not deal with another long lecture on people of color consciousness and the workers of the world uniting kind of thing, you know? And I joke about it now, but it was not, it was not healthy.
And somebody out of the blue, I literally think of this person as an angel. I don't even know the person's name, right? Says to me, [00:32:00] "Have you ever heard of Dorothy Day?" And I never had. But I looked her up, and she seemed, like, pretty amazing, right? Like, this woman, this Catholic woman, who believes you should live as Jesus lived, and starts this thing called the Catholic Worker Movement, where people actually lived as Jesus lived, right, in solidarity with the poor and not just in service to them.
Turns out there's a Catholic Worker House in my hometown, Champaign-Urbana. I go to it. And, you know, I was a kid who used to volunteer at all kinds of places. The Salvation Army and the Men's Emergency Shelter and the Women in Transition Shelter. But the Catholic Worker House was a community. And you literally couldn't tell who was there because they needed shelter and who was there because they were in solidarity, right?
And a bunch of the people who were Catholic workers were, like, former grad students at Illinois. In other words, like, they were doing just fine in the kind of material and educational path, and they wanted to live in a way consistent with their idea of God. I was just so moved by that.
And so [00:33:00] that becomes my off ramp to anger. The, you know, I was on the, I was on the anger highway. That was my off ramp. And it was an off ramp to a different kind of way of of doing social change work, or civil society work, right? And so Dorothy Day becomes, like, my first lantern on that path.
And then, I actually spent a summer in Catholic Worker Houses. That's how kind of taken I was by the movement. I lived at the St. Francis Catholic Worker House for my first months living here in Chicago when I graduated from college. But I never, I never wanted to become Catholic. I was very moved by the tradition, but I never wanted to become Catholic. And I kind of knew that.
And so I started to, like, read in other religions. And quickly you find that there are other heroes, you know? Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mahatma Gandhi. You realize that there's very much an ethic of social action and pluralism across different religions. And that's the kind of bubbling up of this idea that becomes Interfaith Youth Corps in [00:34:00] 1998 and then more recently changes its name to Interfaith America.
That, that's the source of it.
Lee
We're going to take a short break, but coming right up, Eboo argues that pluralism enhances both democracy and religious traditions, and insists that one can hold rightly to one's convictions and still work for the good of the world alongside those who hold differing convictions.
Another very significant piece that we've only alluded to so far, at the very top of the interview, is that you have a strong conviction that America is an idea worth fighting for.
Eboo
Lee
Unpack that for us a bit.
Eboo
This is a diverse democracy, right? It's the world's first attempt at diverse democracy.
It is not [00:35:00] easy to do. It is not easy. There is a reason that lots of smart people, for many, many centuries, believed you can't have people of different identities in a society in which they're participating in public life together. Because people of one, one identity will never allow people of another identity to elect a social order that they're not a part of.
So I think building that is absolutely worth fighting for.
Lee
Yeah.
You've also talked about the way James Baldwin has kind of helped you have a larger vision, perhaps, for America, which I think might be counterintuitive to a lot of folks.
Eboo
Lee
Eboo
I mean, so, it's funny, it is interesting to me that it would be counterintuitive, because I actually think that what I have is a straightforward reading of Baldwin, at least in the Fire Next Time days.
Right, and so, Fire Next Time takes place actually here in Chicago, and it's a three part story.
Part one is Baldwin's increased, not just awakening to, but kind of experience of the brutality of American racism in the early '60s, right? And his [00:36:00] connection of how his church, which is a Black church, was kind of complicit in that. And part of this is Baldwin's being gay, and how the Black church must have made him, at that time, must have made him think about being gay. Right? So that's part one.
And part two is Baldwin accepting an invitation to the home of Elijah Muhammad, here in Chicago. Again, I think this is summer of 1963. And what he wants is Elijah Muhammad's anger. He understands the anger. And he comes to his home because he understands the anger. And what he experiences in that home is not the world he wants to live in, right?
So he experiences this, like, very stark gender segregation. He experiences, like, every time Elijah Muhammad would say something, no matter how unhinged, everybody would nod and basically say yes, he experiences this kind of, like, this ugliness of, like, the white devil this, the white devil that.
Elijah Muhammad said, you know, "We're going to drive you home so you [00:37:00] have no risk of, like, meeting a white devil and getting poisoned by his alcohol." And Baldwin's thinking, I'm on my way to see a white friend and have a drink, right?
And so the realization is, like, I don't want to live in this world.
And I actually think that's a, that's such a useful point of reflection for any activist. It's not just about being angry against something. It's the question of what world you want to live in, right? So you can understand Elijah Muhammad's anger. Do you want to live in that world? Right? Like be, be careful how you get rid of the Shah because you might be installing the Ayatollah, right?
And so, Baldwin then does something enormously courageous in part three. He's basically like, okay, so what, what do we want? Well, our best chance is to advance America.
It's not America where it's at, it's America what it could be. But we have to affirm America what it could be. If we want to build a world [00:38:00] where more of us have dignity, then you have to give it its best chance, which means you have to take a hope-filled understanding of America. And so he's got these just stunningly poetic lines, right?
"I am not a ward of this state. I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores." I mean, that line, like, changed my life. I might have read it first in India in the summer of 1998, right? "I am not a ward of this state. I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores." Right?
Like, basically, I am going to assume an ownership stake. I've been here longer than the rest of you. I'm going to assume an ownership, ownership stake. Right?
Lee
Eboo
I arrived in chains, but the part of that story I'm going to emphasize is I arrived.
Lee
You quote the, the poet Edwin Markham, early 20th century poet voice, [00:39:00] especially for those who, who labor. The poem is: "He drew a circle that shut me out. Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win...
Eboo
...We drew a circle that drew him in."
Lee
Eboo
Yeah, I love that. I love that poem.
Lee
Eboo
Yeah. It's beautiful. It's simple. It says so much, which is basically, like, if you are going to have an ethic which marginalizes me, I have a couple of choices of how to respond.
Number one, I can just accept the marginalization. Number two, I can respond in kind and say, no, no, no, I'm going to marginalize you. You're going to call me an ugly racial epithet, I'm going to call you a white supremacist, right?
Edward Markham's like, why don't you just do the Jedi move of like, saying, actually, the opposite of you calling me a racial epithet is not me calling you a racial epithet, it's saying let's live in a world without racial epithets.
Lee
What resources fuel, sustain that sort of posture for you?
Eboo
Yeah, so, you know, the Prophet at [00:40:00] Hudaybiyah, the Prophet Muhammad at Hudaybiyah, it's a famous Muslim story. It's a long story, so I won't get into it. Read the book, We Need to Build, I tell it there. There's another famous story about the Prophet that's shorter, where, where a woman is throwing filth at the Prophet day after day, and one day she doesn't appear on the balcony, and the Prophet inquires after her health, like is concerned about her, you know?
And stories like that exist in every religion, right? But here's a, here's another story that I learned about in South Africa, where when Mandela is in prison in Robben Island, he's there for 26 years. That is a long time, okay? That is a long time.
He learns the language of his jailers.
And Mandela's Xhosa, right, from a, the Xhosa tribe, which has a language, but his jailers are white Afrikaners, there's a language called Afrikaans. He learns the language, as a sign of respect for his jailers.
He learns the names of his jailers' kids. Mandela cannot see his own kids, and he's [00:41:00] asking questions about his jailers' kids.
So, who's in prison? Mandela is basically saying, I mean, just overtly saying, you will not make my dignity small. I will not allow you to do that. And my dignity calls on me to be in this kind of a relationship with you.
Lee
I mean, one way you kind of summarize what you're describing there is, you say, quote, "This, it seems to me, is what effective activism looks like. A positive engagement of the people with whom you disagree."
Eboo
Yeah.
And look, I think, I think that, you know, one of the things I write about at the end of We Need to Build-- so first of all, I think that that is the moral thing to do. Right? Now, I think that there are limits. I don't think you can do that with Nazis. But Gandhi does this with the British, right?
Like, basically, can you speak to what a person could be? I mean, one of the ways I'm starting to say this now, and this is a dangerous thing to tweet, which is why I haven't tweeted it, but I think it's a less [00:42:00] dangerous thing to say on a podcast, which is, we have to learn how to disagree with people's politics without denigrating their identity.
In fact, I think the way to convince somebody, is to basically say, I had a higher view of you than the manner in which you are acting. I view you and your identity with more magnificence than the manner in which you are acting, right?
And I don't know why we have devolved into a politics where you disagree with somebody's politics and then you insult their identity. What do you expect them to do if you insult their identity? And it's this idea that I am going to confront everything and I'm going to eliminate it. Well, you are probably not going to eliminate it, right?
And part of the genius of a King and a Mandela is the recognition of, [00:43:00] the day after I win, the day after the day after that, I'm going to have to live with you. So I'm not going to tell myself a story in which you are subhuman, because the day after the day after, I'm going to have to unstitch that story.
Lee
Eboo
Right?
So it is in my interest. First of all, it's part of my dignity to tell a story where you are human. And, you might not be living up to that ideal, but I'm not, I'm not going to be the one that denigrates you, right? That is like the moral thing to do. That's the virtue ethics thing to do.
But it's also in my enlightened self interest to not create a framework in which a future citizen of a democracy, in South Africa or the United States, I have created an image of being as a subhuman.
Lee
Yeah.
Before we close, there's one, I think there's [00:44:00] one big question that I can imagine some people perhaps wanting to ask, and that is how you think about religious pluralism, because you're making an extended case for pluralism, and it's common trope around some forms of pluralism that it's a sort of, especially in religious pluralism, that it's a sort of posture that says, well, all the religions are just saying the same same thing. But, but you're insisting that's not the kind of pluralism that you're looking for.
Eboo
You know, this is actually simple - which is, people from different religions are gonna disagree on salvation, and they can work together on earth. And isn't that obvious, right?
And actually, don't our religions call us to do that, right? So in every religion, there is a theology of service. So if the Catholics have a theology of service, which inspires them to start a disaster relief agency, and the Mormons have a theology of service, which inspires them, the Southern Baptists have it, shouldn't those disaster relief agencies work [00:45:00] together?
I mean, what are you gonna do, show up at the earthquake and be like, I'm not working with the people going to hell?
Lee
Eboo
But I'm actually being totally serious!
Lee
Eboo
Right? I'm being totally-- Like, you show up at the earthquake and you're like, my faith calls us to do this. And the people over there are like, my faith calls us to do this too. Alright, well we'll, might as well do it together, right? We can go to separate churches at the end.
Lee
Eboo
Right? So that's, that's simple. I don't think anybody disagrees with that.
The second part of it is a little bit more complicated, but also, I think something that people don't disagree with, which is all of our religions also have a theology of interfaith cooperation.
The Good Samaritan story is the central part of the theology of interfaith cooperation for Christians. Who is the Samaritan? Samaritan is not just some random other. The Samaritan is the religious other.
Lee
And a religious hated other.
Eboo
Yeah. And actually, Samaritans are people that Jesus disagrees with elsewhere in the Gospels, right?
The [00:46:00] conversation with the woman by the well. "You pray to the wrong God. You pray at the wrong temple." It's a doctrinal disagreement. Fine, right?
So what's the Good Samaritan story? Okay, well, who are the, like, characters who did the wrong thing? The people who are part of your own religion. They might have been ritualistically right... right, in fact, part of the story is they were ritualistically right. They were legally right. Who's the person who's ethically right? It's the person who's ritualistically wrong, right? It's the Samaritan. And Jesus at the end says, "Go and do likewise." And the beginning of the story is, who is my neighbor, right?
And so, that is the perfect example of a theology of interfaith cooperation.
Lee
Yeah. Yeah, that's very helpful.
Eboo
By the way, we don't have to agree on doctrine, and we don't have to think doctrine is unimportant. We just have to agree that doctrine is not the only important thing.
Lee
Yeah. Thank you for your time and thank you for your good work in the world.
Eboo
Thanks, Lee. I appreciate you. Thank you for spending the time with us.
Lee
Yeah, it's [00:47:00] great to be here.
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America and author of numerous books, including We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion.
And the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom [00:48:00] Anderson, Kate Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Cariad Harmon, Jason Sheesley, Ellis Osburn, and Tim Lauer.
Thanks for listening. And let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life, together.
No Small Endeavor is a production of PRX, Tokens Media, LLC, and Great Feeling Studios.