Gopal D. Patel is co-founder and director of FutureFaith, a new faith-based think tank that aims to bring wisdom and insights from faith and spirituality to address global challenges. He works to bridge the gap between the world of faith and spirituality and the secular world of technocrats and public policy, and he joins the Interfaith Lecture Series at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, opening the Week Eight theme of “Water: A Metaphor for Life.”
“Every religion came out of nature in some way,” Patel told Shreya Agrawal in a piece written for USC Annenberg’s Journalism program. “Every religion is steeped in stories about caring for the natural world.”
At the time, Patel was director of Bhumi Global, an international Hindu organization that promotes environmentalism. After graduating university, Patel studied at Hindu ashrams in India and England for two years, exploring the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and applying them to contemporary concerns. Two decades later and he’s still asking himself the same question: How are the wisdom, values, and knowledge of faith traditions and spirituality relevant to the world and its challenges?
For the last decade, he has advised global interfaith and environmental initiatives and worked for the inclusion of faith voices in local and international policy. In that time, he’s served as co-convenor of Faiths for Biodiversity; co-founder and director, Bhumi Global (previously Bhumi Project); lead author of the World Economic Forum Faith in Action Report; co-chair of the United Nation’s Multi-faith Advisory Council; co-chair, Advisory Board to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and adviser to the WWF International’s Beliefs and Values Initiative.
And, he’s given a TED Talk: “The Unexpected Way Spirituality Connects to Climate change.”
“Coming from the faith sector, I’ve always been interested in other ideas that are rooted in religion and spirituality that can support the broader environmental movement,” he said in his TED Talk. “I started looking into the history of religious and spiritual groups, and started thinking that they could be some of the most enduring social movements in the history of the world. They’ve been able to survive through multiple generations, adapt to changing situations, reform and revive themselves when needed.”
For many in the climate movement, their “big idea” is one of being part of and connected to nature, Patel said in his TED Talk. It can also be a sense of connection to their ancestors, or the responsibility they feel to future generations. Or, it could be a belief “in something bigger than ourselves that we can’t quite fully understand,” like faith.
“We have all these teachings of how to live in balance or harmony with the natural world,” Patel told Agrawal. “But the real issue is to learn how to apply these concepts and principles in the world today.”
