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Report from the 2004 Parliament of the World’s Religions

Most of us didn’t get a chance to attend the 2004 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain, July 9th through 13th. We can, however, travel to the Parliament’s website (www.cpwr.org/2004Parliament/) and get a thorough rundown of what happened. The theme of the 2004 Parliament was “Pathways to Peace: The Wisdom of Listening, the Power of Commitment” —a timely topic and appropriate for religions to be addressing since religion and/or “God’s call” are being used by too many to justify violence and war. The section devoted to the 2004 Parliament includes the press release issued at the event’s conclusion, day-by-day highlights of the entire conference, and a special invitation. For complete information, please surf on over to the 2004 Parliament section. For a brief overview, read on.

The 2004 Parliament was attended by 8,000 religious leaders and lay people who addressed the issues of religious violence, access to safe water, the fate of refugees worldwide, and the elimination of developing countries’ debts. The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religion’s Executive Director Dirk Ficca said that one fundamental difference between this gathering and others discussing the same subjects was that, “when people of faith commit to address religious violence and other pressing issues facing the global community, they follow through.”

For example, during the 1999 Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, Andre Porto, a 34-year old social activist from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil pledged to organize an interfaith coalition to address the illegal gun trade in the Favelas of Brazil. That pledge and subsequent coalition actions resulted in the passage of a strong law halting illegal gun sales.

The Barcelona Parliament Commitments include the following:

Religious Violence: Vjekoslav Saje from the Center for Religious Dialogue, Catholic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, pledged to “organize the interreligious community in Sarajevo to bring Palestinians and Israelis to the House of Peace in Ratna Monastery in Bosnia, and develop approaches to building relationships in order to provide peace and prevent future conflicts.”

Water: Rev. James Trapp from Unity, USA, pledged to “engage the Unity Community and our interfaith group to plan and implement a project to make clean water accessible to communities in Haiti and West Africa.”

Refugees: Dr. Inderjit Kaur from All India Pingalwara Charitable Society, Sikh, India, pledged to “engage the spiritual leaders of the Hindu and Sikh communities of my country in making people aware of the refugees and telling their stories of suffering so that hearts are touched and people have an irresistible urge to help them. We will mobilize the community to volunteer in the medical facilities of refugee camps with the help of other doctors.”

Daily highlights included, on July 8th, Deepak Chopra, participating in the session “Going Beyond Cultural Ignorance and Dualistic Thought,” declaring, “we all have part of Bush and Bin Laden’s souls.” Chopra stated, “The transformation that religion needs to undergo must be a qualitative change, a leap towards creativity. All ways of thinking are interconnected, they are not outside the universe but within us.”

On July 9, Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, said, “We are all interconnected, what happens in Iraq affects us all, and as a result, if we have an interdependent vision of life, that inspires us towards non-violence.” Kevin Boyle, professor at the University of the Center of Human Rights, pointed out that the majority of victims of religious violence are women and advocated the creation of a Religious Freedom Day.

During a talk in the July 10th session, “Principal Discussion About Interfaith Education,” Raimon Panikkar, professor of Indian culture, history and philosophy of religions, pointed out, “We know how to use computers, but we do not know how to understand one another, as to do so, we have to speak in the language of the other person. To understand this abundant symphony, we cannot listen with our reason, but with our hearts.”

During the symposium on July 11, “Religion and Human Rights,” Wande Abimbola, the spokesperson and ambassador of the Yoruba religion, spoke against religions that use proselytization to gain converts and advocated the recovery of African languages and traditions. He pointed out that the Yoruba religion goes beyond human rights and defends the rights of all living creatures.

On July 12th, the founder and president of the Cultural Foundation of the Zarathustra World, Homi Dhalla, said that interreligious dialogue is fundamental for the new era of globalization. For Dhalla, there are diversities in dialogue. Firstly, there is the dialogue of life that is given everyday, secondly there is a dialogue of action that makes a reference to the collaboration and defense of human rights, thirdly, the spiritual dialogue that has religious components, and finally the dialogue of the theological experience which shares common values of the different religious traditions.

An Invitation to Become Part of a Community

The 2004 Parliament is over, but the work has just begun. The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) is forming an interreligious community and everyone is invited to join. To support the vision that has been developing since 1993, CPWR has committed to develop an infrastructure that will support the ongoing connections and initiatives of the thousands of people who have participated in Parliament events and who care about what CPWR has begun. By joining the CPWR network, you will be able to contact and interact with people from 109 nations who are part of this work. To join, go to www.cpwrglobal.net and fill out the form.

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Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Ms. Montgomery-Clifford has a Master's Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in June 2002 and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues in the Fall of 2002. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at 773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com.

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