Book Review: Embracing Interfaith Cooperation: Eboo Patel on Coming Together to Change the World

Abstract

Embracing Interfaith Cooperation: Eboo Patel on Coming Together to Change World. By Eboo Patel with Tim Scorer. Denver, Co.: Morehouse Education Resources, 2012. 93 pp. $12.95 (paper). $39.95 (DVD: five chapters, ca. 30 minutes each).Eboo Patel is well known for strategies for collaboration that have proved useful well beyond Interfaith Youth Core, which he founded and directs. Paul Chaffee, editor of The Interfaith Observer, has declared him the preeminent voice of movement. While Patel receives top billing on cover, this resource is but one installment in a series developed by Canadian education and spiritual formation expert Tim Scorer. It employs Scorers method for group engagement with books that offer a potential for spiritual transformation. Embracing Interfaith Cooperation serves as a platform to invite discussion of Patels Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and Promise of America (Beacon Press, 2012). Embracing's design presumes that a group will covenant to meet five times, an hour or more each session, to work their way through DVD, guided by a handbook.Each video chapter follows a pattern. Scorer sets stage and Patel then expounds for some fifteen minutes. In session 1, for example, he offers a history of cooperation in America, arguing for making cooperation a social norm. He defines and encourages interfaith literacy. Drawing on sociological research, he explains the science of cooperation, delineates the art of leadership, and describes specific roles for colleges, seminaries, and houses of worship as arenas of collaboration. The camera provides occasional glimpses of a diverse panelmostly Interfaith Youth Core alumni-giving him rapt attention. (The panel includes a Muslim, two Episcopalians, an Evangelical Christian, one who identifies Jain and Hindu roots, and one who states that-while she was raised Jewish-she appears individually, not representing any organization, religious group, or association, a disclaimer that would seem to apply to all of panelists.) After a brief transition provided by Scorer, panelists respond to Patels lecture with comments, anecdotes, and questions. These fifteen-minute segments, while uneven, do succeed in a stated objective of this project: modeling small group interaction that is personal, respectful, and engaged. Scorer closes each segment by encouraging his viewers to continue conversation.And that is ultimate intent of DVD: to stimulate structured conversation. …