EASTERN NEWSROOM

Skyler Oberst celebrates the interfaith community

March 20, 2017 By easternmagazine
Skyler Oberst outside with prayer beads

Skyler Oberst is easy to pick out of a crowd of young professionals. It isn’t his fashionable eyeglasses, his watch and matching leather shoes, or the geometry of creases on his shirt and slacks that could only come from an ironing board. It’s something else – an unmistakable sense of purpose multiplied by passion.

Trim and bright-eyed, he looks young for a late 20-something. When asked to define his work, Oberst grinned and said, “I remind people to love their neighbor.”

This, of course, is the simple version.

“If we are truly a community,” he said, “we should try to live into that.”

The truth is, he’s been a catalyst for renewed interfaith awareness and cooperation in the Spokane community.

As an EWU alumnus, Oberst has published articles on interfaith issues in the Huffington Post, interned with the Pluralism Project at Harvard University and delivered an address on pluralism at the White House. He has also been a part of the Millennial Values project at the Berkeley Center at Georgetown University.