I was privileged enough to be able to travel with Dr. Eboo Patel to the Wesley Foundation at the College of William and Mary. He stressed the importance of being an interfaith leader and harnessing the youth movement. 

“What happens when a flash point occurs? And what happens when the people that are willing to speak about religion are the ones that want to push hate.  Just because you don’t talk about religion it does not mean that religion is not being talked about. 

There are four prominent trends that we must understand:
1) Youth bulge - 70% of Iran is under 30.  There are more youth in India than the entire population of the United States. 
2) We live in age of religious revival - The whispers of faith are everywhere. Religion is a powerful tool.
3)  We are watching the breakdown of socio-economic lines. The lives your parents lead is no longer available to you. This is of concern to those who had a very traditionalist lifestyle. 
4)  We live in the more interactional time than any other time. Communication technology has broken down these lines. If you were an evangelical in Virginia Beach, a few years ago you only knew of people going to church on Sunday.
 
So what happens when a Buddhist comes to your school?  So when you are faced with these changes you ask, “Who am I and what I am meant to do?”

The intersection of these four trends, who understands that energy best? Al-Qaeda does as does the Christian Identity movement in America. These groups are attracting people to the vision of religious extremism. We need to push back against this. 

As Dr. Martin Luther King spoke about the “color line” we now have what I call the faith line. It is no longer black vs. white or red vs. yellow.  We need to define the line.  The line is now religious pluralist vs. religious totalitarians.