Author: James Harder
Publication: Insight
Magazine
Date: October 2, 2000
In the name of world
peace, the United Nations appears to have embraced a sort of religious
universalism that views all religions as equals and is seeking to ban proselytizing.
Bawa Jain, secretary-general
of the Millennium Peace Summit, says he thinks all religions and spiritualists,
as well as assorted witch doctors, sha-mans and medicine men, draw their
wisdom from the same source. But he applauds efforts to outlaw proselytizing
since it matters little whether one worships a downed World War II airplane
with a cargo cult, is a snake-handling Baptist or a Roman Catholic.
That view has been met with strict opposition from the Vatican and mainline
Protestants, who oppose the notion that all religions are equal.
As host of the U.N.'s
Millennium Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, Jain told an
international meeting of 1,000 delegates that religions need to accept
the validity of all beliefs to attain world peace. The summit, the
first of its kind to be sponsored by the United Nations, was held in New
York City Aug. 28-31 just before political leaders gathered for the
U.N. Millennium Assembly. The timing was perfect, says Jain,
as it allowed religious leaders to update their political counterparts
on how to usher in the peace of the new world order through religious universalism.
According to Francis
Cardinal Arinze, president for interreligious dialogue at the Vatican and
a speaker at the summit, the Catholic Church also would favor one religion
in the world -- if it were Roman Catholicism. Assorted grand muftis
and other true believers hold the same view, again so long as it is their
faith that is universally recognized. That each is out to convert
the world is to be expected, so the proposed ban on proselytizing is surprising.
Less than a week after
the summit the Vatican released a 36-page declaration rejecting what it
said are growing attempts to depict all religions as equally true.
A spokesman for the National Association of Evangelicals says they were
astonished that a U.N.-endorsed summit would take a stand against proselytizing
when the U.N. charter proposes to guarantee the human right to choose
one's own religion.
The goal of world peace
has been sought by religious leaders, philanthropists and philosophers
alike throughout the centuries. However, for a decade there has been
a resurgence among postmodern scholars and liberal theologians to try to
achieve that goal through religious partnerships, even unification.
The peace summit is their latest attempt to gain legitimacy at an international
level with hopes of securing U.N. funding and endorsement.
With the financial backing
of such heavyweights as media mogul Ted Turner and Canadian billionaire
Maurice Strong, this interfaith movement has had no shortage of cash.
Turner, the honorary chairman of the peace summit, addressed the 1,000
delegates on the second morning of the convention after being praised by
Strong as the man who has done more for peace, the environment and the
United Nations than any other.
According to Austin Ruse,
president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, or C-FAM,
and one of those in attendance at the summit, Turner took the opportunity
to denounce his own childhood faith. The vice chairman of Time Warner
said he turned away from Christianity when he discovered ''it was intolerant
because it taught we were the only ones going to heaven.'' The crowd responded
with laughter and approving whoops, says Ruse.
The question of tolerance
is a central issue for those aligned with the peace summit and its objectives.
Summit organizers say religious and spiritual groups need to realize what
they believe is part of a greater wisdom and not unique to them.
''What we need to engage
in is an education factor of the different religious traditions and the
different theologies and philosophies and practices. That would give
us a better understanding, and then I think [we have to deal with] the
claims of absolute truth -- we will recognize there is not just one claim
of absolute truth, but there is truth in every tradition. That is
happening more and more when you have gatherings such as these,'' Jain
tells Insight.
Summit organizers hoped
to have religious leaders sign a Declaration for World Peace, a goal that
was realized, says Jain. But their second objective was not.
The original intention was to create ''an International Advisory Council
of Religious and Spiritual Leaders that is designed to serve as an ongoing
interfaith ally to the U.N. in its quest for peace, global understanding
and international cooperation,'' according to summit documents. The
summit failed to appoint such a council when delegates were unable to agree
on who should represent their individual faiths.
Instead, Jain tells Insight,
he has been mandated to structure a steering committee for the new group
with the help of what he calls ''strategic partners.'' He says these will
be ''some members of our international advisory board and some of the key
people who have been helping me in the process.'' During the next 90 days
Jain also will start tapping religious leaders the world over, putting
together his cadre.
A soft-spoken Indian,
Jain worked for two years with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
and his office to arrange the peace summit. He is one of the founders
of the World Movement for Nonviolence, vice chairman of the Council for
the Parliament of the World's Religions, vice president of the Interfaith
Center of New York and a leader of the United Religions Initiative, or
URI.
Upon whom is Jain likely
to call to give direction to the United Nations and help steer the course
to unified religion in the interest of world peace? A front-runner is said
to be Episcopal Bishop William Swing, a prominent figure in the interfaith
movement, coming off a summer in which he realized a seven-year dream:
This summer Swing gathered 300 people representing 39 religions for a charter
signing in Pittsburgh, officially launching the URI. This group is
an anticipated melting pot of religious belief, for which a 1998 draft
charter declared that all religions draw their wisdom from one ultimate
source. In 1995 Swing said the world is moving toward ''unity in
terms of global economy, global media and global ecological system.
What is missing is a global soul.''
So who will fund this
quest for a global soul? Men such as Turner and Strong seem willing to
lay a few extra dollars down for such movements and lend their support
at the podium of conferences and conventions. Neither is a stranger
to the interfaith scene --particularly Strong, who has plenty of influence
with the leading global organizations. Chairman of the Earth Council
and senior adviser to both the secretary-general of the United Nations
and to the president of the World Bank, Strong is an international figure
of such prominence that New Yorker magazine recently sighed that, ''The
survival of civilization in something like its present form might depend
significantly on the efforts of a single man,'' referring to Strong.
He always is on the short list of candidates for U.N. secretary-general.
Turner's wealth is better
known than Strong's, and the billionaire media mogul has gone even further
to promote the United Nations. In 1997 he donated $1 billion in support
for U.N. causes, the most recent being the Millennium Peace Summit
at which he expressed his disdain for Christianity. He remains chairman
of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund, the organizations
that manage his grant.
So what is the objective
here? Is it religious tolerance, unification or subversion of religious
faith? Jain tells Insight that he looks forward to a day when religious
people no longer insist on a single truth. And the URI, in which
Jain is active and which was one of the partners for the summit, takes
it even further. URI president Swing says, ''There will have to be
a godly cease-fire, a temporary truce where the absolute exclusive claims
of each [religion] will be honored but an agreed-upon neutrality will be
exercised in terms of proselytizing, condemning, murdering or dominating.
These will not be tolerated in the United Religions zone.''
While Swing does not
elaborate on what territory that zone might encompass, sources say he is
prepared to follow the U.N. lead. And certainly the guest list
at the peace summit was impressive, including Cardinal Arinze, Russian
Orthodox Metropolitan Kirill, Israel's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Sheik
Ahmad Kuftaro of the Muslim World League, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Anne
Graham Lotz, daughter of Billy Graham.
The guests represented
a broad spectrum of faith traditions, including Ba'hai, Buddhism, Christianity,
Confucianism, Hinduism, Indigenous, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism,
Taoism and Zoroastrianism.
While Jain and others
are calling the summit a success, other delegates still are uncomfortable
about it. Ruse complains that it was manipulated by the left-leaning
agenda of Turner and Strong. Richard Cizik, director of the National
Association of Evangelicals office in Washington, says, ''There was a whole
premise which I don't accept, which came from the keynote address by Ted
Turner and was manifested throughout the programming -- namely, the premise
that all religions are equal.'' Equal at the summit perhaps, but assuredly
not the same.
