© 1994 Byron Belitsos
© 1994 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Significant Books: Jesus–A New Vision by Marcus J. Borg | Spring 1994 — Index | The Obsolescence of Religious Imperialism |
This is the first of a two part report on the 1993 Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago.
For anyone interested in the future of religion, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Chicago last September, was a central event of our times, a jubilee for interreligious dialogue. It also marked the centennial of the world-historic 1893 Parliament of World Religion, now recognized as the founding event in the interfaith movement. The 1993 Parliament heralded a new beginning for the movement toward religious unity in a postmodern world.
I attended the Parliament as a member of the press corps, but I was gladly swept up in the spontaneous religious fervor of the event. It was indeed a watershed in my own religious growth. My concepts of unity were so deepened, my inspiration from the event was so powerful, that in certain moments the ground on which we stood became sacred, became for me a mythic world center, an axis mundi. Through this place — the mundane Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago — was poured a unifying spirit manifesting itself in a dazzling array of forms of human expression of the divine.
Beauty is a matter of “the harmonic unification of contrasts,” and “variety is essential to the concept of beauty” (UB 56:10.3). Because 125 faiths were united there, the Parliament was an epiphany of the beauty of religious unity — albeit a brief experience of sharing crowded into a week in September.
In actuality, religious unity is a distant dream for our world. We have not even achieved peace and non-violence among the religions; it is depressing to realize that many of the 40 or so wars and conflicts in the world today are religiously-motivated. The war in Bosnia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the conflict in Northern Ireland are sad examples of the breakdowns that occur when diverse religions are not in dialogue. But the eight days of the Parliament last September were an inspiring model of where we are headed. With a few exceptions, it was marked by unity, tolerance, and loving dialogue among the myriad of faiths represented.
To adequately summarize the events of this historic week is a nearly impossible task. Consider that each day, the 6000 total attendees had a choice among: morning and evening interfaith meditation sessions; two plenary sessions; dozens of major presentations in large ballrooms by some of the world’s leading religious figures; more than 100 seminars and lectures on every conceivable topic; an extensive video/ film festival; special symposiums on religious pluralism, science, business ethics, and media; and numerous artistic events. Choosing from this rich menu of options was in itself a religious experience!
The plenary sessions were the major events of the week. These covered such topics as “Interfaith Understanding”, “What Shall We Do?,” “Visions of Paradise,” “Voices of the Dispossessed,” “The Inner Life,” and “The Inner Life in the Community,” Deep exchanges of religious thought and feeling occurred in these large forums, and scores of smaller sessions and panels. Many sessions, such as “What Shall We Do?” and “Voices of the Dispossessed,” also provided an unprecedented encounter of the world’s religious leaders with the political and ethical issues raised by science and technology, the global environment, and problems of overpopulation, war (including religiously-motivated violence), politics, media, and economics.
An innovative forum called “The Parliament of the People” provided a vehicle for lay religionists to communicate their concerns about critical global and religious issues to the formal “Assembly of Religious and Spiritual Leaders.” The Assembly was comprised of 150 of the most important religious and spiritual leaders in the world. It met on the last three days of the week at the Art Institute of Chicago, site of the original Parliament.
A “Concert for the 21 st Century” was held in Grant Park on the final day. The closing ceremony (held on the same stage) was keynoted in a speech by the Dalai Lama of Tibet, with 20,000 in attendance.
The PWR was more than an opportunity for interfaith sharing. It also produced some concrete results: foremost was probably the adoption by the Assembly of a common statement, the Declaration of a Global Ethic. It also produced an unprecedented challenge to the religionists of the world in the form of the report to the PWR from the secular/scientific community, the Global 2000 Report Revisited: What Shall We Do? In addition, it witnessed an encounter among specialists and theologians in the “Conference on Pluralism”.
Let us hope that the many lessons of the 1993 Parliament of World’s Religions take root among the peoples of the world. Can we envision a day when the progressive religionists of the world will acquire the interfaith understanding which will inspire spiritual unity amid our cultural and theological diversities? When that day comes, The Urantia Book will surely help lead the way. The book is studded with progressive teachings on the need for tolerance, religious unity, and interfaith dialogue. On page 1012 we read, “There is not a Urantia religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths in every other faith, for they all contain truth…” In the Urmia lectures, Jesus himself advocates that all religions “…completely divest themselves of all ecclesiastical authority and fully surrender all concept of spiritual sovereignty.” (UB 92:7.3) The Parliament was an historic step in this direction.
Byron has been a journalist and television producer and is presently a consultant in the telecommunications industry.
| Significant Books: Jesus–A New Vision by Marcus J. Borg | Spring 1994 — Index | The Obsolescence of Religious Imperialism |