MOUNT PLEASANT, IOWA -- Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with two programs by a nationally-known advocate of interfaith religious cooperation.  Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, will present two programs on the Iowa Wesleyan campus.

Patel was appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  U.S. News and World Report named Patel one of America’s Best Leaders for 2009.

On Monday, January 18, at 7:30 p.m.  Patel will speak on “Martin Luther King Jr.: An Unabashedly Baptist Interfaith Leader”. This program will discuss King’s work with leaders of many faiths in the Civil Rights Movement. He will explore the issue surrounding this generation’s global struggle and how diverse communities will engage one another.

On Tuesday, January 19, at 11:00 a.m. his topic will be "Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership Amid Global Religious Crisis". Patel will address the global issues and opportunities at the heart of the work by the Interfaith Youth Core to build a world in which religiously diverse people live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty. Both programs are free and open to the public. They will be held in the Iowa Wesleyan College Chapel Auditorium.  They are sponsored by the Clifford and Maxine Manning Annual Speaker Series.

The Interfaith Youth Core (www.ifyc.org), founded in 1998, was designed to inspire and train college students to build understanding, in an effort to create college campuses that are models of interfaith cooperation. The organization’s focus is on inspiring, networking, and resourcing young people and providing them and the institutions that support them with leadership training, project resources and a connection to a broader movement.

Patel  writes "The Faith Divide", a featured blog on religion for The Washington Post and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, The Clinton Journal, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, The Sunday Times of India and National Public Radio.  He is the author of a memoir, "Acts of Faith." Patel holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.