WASHINGTON, D.C. – Institutions of higher learning should serve as models of interfaith cooperation, and college students should be at the forefront of the movement, a prominent proponent of interfaith initiatives on campus stressed Wednesday in a speech at Georgetown University.
“We’re the ones who have to build interfaith cooperation,” said Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based organization that seeks to build an interfaith youth movement through community service.
Patel made his remarks at the historic Dahlgren Chapel at Georgetown University for the college’s year-end symposium on the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge.
Among other things, Patel—who has served on President Barack Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships—defined the interfaith movement as one that is civic in its essence as opposed to being spiritual or political.
The key idea, he said, is for people of different faiths to better understand one another through cooperation on common goals.
That is precisely what students at Georgetown University have sought to do over the past year since President Obama—through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships—issued the Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, which called on institutions of higher learning to build on existing interfaith cooperation and community service initiatives—or build new ones—during the 2011-2012 academic year.
Final reports on the programs are due May 1, and exemplary initiatives will be recognized by the White House this summer.
