Interfaith America Founder and President Eboo Patel gave the following remarks today (May 10, 2022) at an event celebrating the official launch of Interfaith America. The Center on Faith and Justice in the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy hosted the event in the university’s historic Riggs Library.
I believe this is an important day in the history of American religion, and it is made even more special by the fact that this event is being hosted by the Rev. Jim Wallis at Georgetown University.
Georgetown is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit University in the United States. It expresses its faith by inviting students and faculty of all faiths to gather and thrive. It is committed to being the kind of civic community that nurtures not just coexistence, but cooperation and a common life together. Georgetown hosted our first Interfaith Leadership Institutes over a decade ago and also several of our gatherings of college presidents. This campus is a laboratory for Interfaith America, and a launching pad for leaders who will bring that vision to the nation. We cannot think of a better place to help inaugurate the next chapter of our Institution.
And Rev. Wallis, I read “The Soul of Politics” when I was a second-year student at the University of Illinois in 1995. I came to Washington, D.C., that summer, stayed at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House and showed up to Sojourners without an appointment, looking to meet you. The receptionist told me that you were too busy, but I wasn’t discouraged. I looked up your address, went to your house and sat on your porch, waiting for you to arrive home. That was the first chapter in a conversation that has lasted nearly three decades. You have shown me – and the nation and the world – what faith in action for the benefit of all looks like.
The United States is the world’s first attempt at religiously diverse democracy — and the most religiously diverse nation in human history.
We are trying to do something that has never done before: become a truly inclusive multiracial, multiethnic, interfaith nation.
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