The annual Surjit Singh Lecture in Comparative Religious Thought and Culture fosters interreligious and cross-cultural communication and understanding. This year's speaker will be Eboo Patel, founder and president of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), which is a national nonprofit that partners with institutions of higher education to make interfaith cooperation a priority. He is the author of Acts of Faith, which won the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, Sacred Ground, Interfaith Leadership: A Primer, and Out of Many Faiths. Eboo’s recent academic work is helping to shape the emerging field of Interfaith Studies. He is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer at colleges and universities across the United States and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.
Patel's lecture will be entitled "How Religious Education Can Make America Great: Reflections on Diversity, Tribalism and Interfaith Leadership."
The world for which seminaries and divinity schools were built is fading fast. How will these institutions – and the enterprise of religious education more generally – remake themselves for the world we have and the future we face? In this talk, Patel will discuss a path forward that keeps faith with the historic identity of these important institutions and serves a rapidly changing society characterized by marginalization, tribalism and deep difference.
A reception located in the GTU Richard S. Dinner Boardroom (2400 Ridge Road, 3rd Floor) will follow the lecture.