Quote of the Day (Patel)

“While the color line has not yet been resolved, the greatest challenge acing the 21st century is the faith line….The faith line does not separate Muslim from Buddhist or orthodox from liberal religious practice, but religious totalitarian from religious pluralist.”—Eboo Patel, “An Attack on Any One Group Is an Attack on Everyone,” The Chautauquan Daily, August 7, 2008

(Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Corp and author of Acts of Faith, spoke on “The Faith Line” from the podium of the Amphitheater at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York yesterday morning. Though all the morning speakers this week were polished, he was, I believe, the most inspirational, as evidenced by the standing ovation he received from the crowd at the conclusion of his talk. I would imagine he would be excellent indeed in speaking to youth.

Patel spoke of the common values (e.g., mercy) that people of all faiths have. He warned that if they did not unite to foster understanding among each other, they would leave a vacuum that would be filled by the religious totalitarians. To counteract these destroyers, he offered up the example of religious heroes of his own youth: Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshel, Dorothy Day, Aga Khan, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama.)