by Lee Pierre
America is in a state of unrest: multiple as well as mass shootings killing children and the elderly; pandemic and unemployment continuing; higher prices for food, gas, and other necessities! The last several years have tilted the United States and much of the world toward a kind of chaos that has historically often led to some form of authoritarianism.
Author Eboo Patel hopes the U.S. can emerge from these uncertain times into an even more robust pluralistic democracy than we have now, rather than descending into a tyranny born of disorder. Early this month Patel, president of Interfaith America, says one way to do this is to make religious faith more welcomed in public life, not less so.
Surveys show that Americans are becoming less religious and that this growing secularism has provoked a reaction among some on the right who want Christians to take control of the government and enforce moral codes.
Patel says making the United States “more Christian” is not the answer to what ails the country. The path forward, according to Patel, is to recognize the power of religious faith, acknowledge that faith can be a force for good but also sometimes for ill, and build a culture that respects all faiths and solicits contributions from adherents of each.
“Interfaith work occurs in the United States all the time. That most people consider it to be positive, they just don’t consider it interfaith work,” Patel said in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast. “When your grandfather is going through a triple-bypass surgery at a hospital started by Jesuits, with a physician team that is Muslim and Jewish and the anesthesiologist is Hindu and the person sanitizing the room is a Jehovah’s Witness, and the person who runs the hospital is a secular humanist who grew up Buddhist, that’s interfaith work!”
Upon hearing Patel’s statements, it brought to mind the book, “Parable of the Sower,” by Octavia Butler, written in 1993 about a futuristic America. The protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, enters her first journal entry on July 20, 2024.
Amazingly, Butler’s depiction of the United States is very similar to what is actually occurring today. In Olimina’s world, children no longer attend schools due to the fear of violence; no one goes out alone for fear of abduction and/or death; the food supply is limited and unaffordable to those who don’t have a significant source of income; jobs are limited and pay the bare minimum.
She speaks of how global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos, creating a world full of dangers from pervasive water shortages to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day.
Though Olamina’s father is a preacher, she states that her “father’s God is no longer her God.” Her God has another name, creating “Earthseed: The Books of the Living” based on the mantra: “All that you touch you change, and all that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is “Change.” God is Change!” She sees beyond the chaos to a better world involving change.
Reading Patel’s words regarding interfaith ties closely to Olamina and what she hopes to accomplish to save her world.
“Responsible citizenship in a diverse democracy is not principally about noticing what’s bad; it’s about constructing what’s good. You need to defeat the things you do not love by building the things you do,” Patel wrote in the New York Times in May about how he built an identity in college around being a “victim of racism.”
Patel’s hope is that out of the chaos of the last several years, the United States can experience a “refounding” that moves the country toward greater religious and ethnic diversity and tolerance that “respects identity, that builds relationships between different communities and that cooperates to have a common life together.”
Interfaith America creates curricula for educators aimed at increasing student awareness and dialogue around the role of faith and the importance of pluralism for a healthy democracy, along with courses for nonprofit and for-profit organizations to help them value the ways that employees can draw on their faith constructively.
Patel and Olamina share much in common, stating there is a need for an open awareness of what is wrong and what can/should be done to correct situations. Hopefully, this will be completed prior to “July 2024” when matters have worsened.
