peace

The 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions was, perhaps, a turning point in interfaith work. The question was no longer whether people of faith could or should meet together, but what could they do together for the benefit of the world. Of course some interfaith activists had asked that long before. There was, for example, in the eighties an Interfaith Colloquium against Apartheid and there were various interfaith gatherings on ecological issues as well as interfaith prayer and work for peace, but the Parliament for a moment captured the attention of the world and sought to show, at a time of intense conflict in former Yugoslavia and of communal troubles in India, that religions need not be a cause of division but could unite on certain basic ethical teachings.

The document called ‘Toward a Global Ethic’ was signed by most members of the Parliament Assembly. It affirmed that this ethic, based on the fundamental demand that every human being must be treated humanely, offered the possibility of a better individual and global order. (More about the Global Ethic Directives)

In the years since 1993, the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions has attempted to see how these ethical demands can affect the life of our whole society. At the 1999 Cape Town Parliament ‘A Call to Our Guiding Institutions’ was issued. This invited those engaged in government, business, education, arts and media, science and medicine, intergovernmental organisations and the organisations of civil society, as well as those in positions of religious and spiritual leadership to ‘build new, reliable, and more imaginative partnerships towards the shaping of a better world.’ It was a call to find new ways to co-operate with one another and to reflect together on the moral and ethical dimension of their work. It was a pity that too few leading members of the Guiding Institutions were there.

Dialogue now needs to be inter-disciplinary as well as interfaith.