In 1893, few young people learn today in school, the World’s Parliament of Religions met in Chicago, the world’s first attempt at global faith dialogue. Included with representatives of the world’s ten major religions were those from Japanese Buddhism. The welcome address by Charles Carroll Bonney, a Chicago judge and author—he wrote a book on the Parliament—included these inspiring but ironically exclusionary words:
When the religious faiths of the world recognize each other as brothers, then will the
nations of the earth yield to the spirit of concord and learn war no more. (Note: not as brothers AND sisters, whereas the Swami Vivekananda began with the words: "Sisters and Brothers of America!" accompanied by an eruption of applause.)
Bonney's additional statement that the delegates are the “children of one father, whom all profess to love and serve” also seems, from our vantage point of more than one hundred years, a problem. The Catholics demurred from attending, but not from the above. Archbishop of Canterbury’s “letter of disapproval” asserted that “the Christian religion is the one religion. I do not understand how that religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament of Religions without assuming the equality of the other intended members.” This frank statement of democracy from its assumed birthplace, without a recognition of its irony, speaks volumes for the dream of a “spirit of concord.”
Richard H. Seager, a professor of religious studies, wrote a book on the Parliament, The World’s Parliament of Religions: the East/West Encounter, and is considered an expert on the subject. One hundred and ninety-four papers were delivered at the Parliament, 152 by English speaking Christian representatives and only 12 by Buddhists, but, still, given the “paucity of scholarship” on the Parliament, and the lack of students studying it, its “significance grows.” At the time, he writes, some asserted that the Parliament was supposed to "prove the superiority of Christianity, but it was also said to prove the superiority of the religions of the East."
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