My mom—the lady with her finger on the pulse--saw Eboo Patel’s Interfaith Youth Core on one of the morning shows and told me I should check it out. As someone fascinated by youth and political culture and spirituality, it’s totally my cup of chai.

The Core, according to the website:

aims to introduce a new relationship, one that is about mutual respect and religious pluralism. Instead of focusing a dialogue on political or theological differences, we build relationships on the values that we share, such as hospitality and caring for the Earth, and how we can live out those values together to contribute to the betterment of our community.
The Interfaith Youth Core is creating these relationships across the world by inspiring, networking, and resourcing young people, who are the leaders of this movement. We provide young people and the institutions that support them with leadership training, project resources and a connection to a broader movement.

Hard to argue with that.

Through the site, I realized that Eboo Patel, the founder of the Core, has a new memoir out called Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. It is a rare and beautiful intertwining of a person, a conscience, and a big idea all coming of age at the same time.

Eboo Patel looks back and reflects on his own journey as a Muslim and a politically conscious activist throughout the 80s and 90s. For those of us pushing 30, there will be much to recognize here—from the denial of religious difference in our younger years to the almost freakish focus on it in college. He writes:

In college, I had understood identity as a box to lock myself in and a bat to bludgeon America with. I was seduced by the nation that we belonged to a tribe based on the identity of our birth, that our loyalty rested exclusively with the tribe, and that one day my tribe of dark skinned third world would rise over our white oppressors.

His intercultural relationships, classes, and adventures in community activism are all laid out in a way that makes clear how a consciousness is formed. Eventually he comes to a more complex understanding of his identity and interdependence:

In college, I had viewed it [America] as my responsibility to expose America’s shadow side. But too much emphasis in that direction risked seeing only shadow in the America story and, worse, believing that there was nothing but darkness in its future. That’s a cop-out, Baldwin was saying. I realized that it was precisely because of America’s glaring imperfections that I should seek to participate in its progress, carve a place in its promise, and play a role in its possibility. And at its heart and at its best, America was about pluralism.

So beautifully put. I encourage anyone interested in activism, religious journeys, pluralism, and globalization to check this book and Patel’s work out. He’s—no doubt—going to go down as one of the enlightened leaders of the twenty-first century.

Next week: The Delivery Man by Joe McGinnis Jr. and then The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer.