Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise

Description

A timely defense of religious diversity and its centrality to American identity America is the most religiously devout country in the Western world and the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. In today's volatile climate of religious conflict, prejudice, and distrust, how do we affirm the principle that the American promise is deeply i

Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit organization that promotes interfaith leadership on college campuses. He is the author of Interfaith Leadership: A Primer; Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America; and Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. He lives in Chicago.

"Building on his prowess as an interfaith pioneer in American colleges, Patel offers a vision of pluralism that aims to guard against religious preference and particularism, advances everyday ethics, and invites Americans of many religious persuasions into civic participation. . . . Readers will be rewarded with Patel's rich perspective on religious diversity in America as he champions the strength of its civic identity and the possibility of religious pluralism in the years to come." * Publishers Weekly, starred review * "Patel provides a thoughtful and passionate response to contemporary social and civic ills grounded in his experience as a Muslim American. . . . For a compelling portrait of pluralistic optimism in the early decades of the twenty-first century, sociologists of religion in America could ask for no better primary source."---Elizabeth Dolfi, Sociology of Religion "Patel portrays civil religion as a potluck supper where the food on the table diversifies and palate widens as demographics change but lately from the countryside to the inner city, the unchanging inventory of food items placed on top of grocery store shelves and behind a fast food restaurant counters feeds Americans."---Sher Afgan Tareen, Politics, Religion, & Ideology