Meeting of World Religions Leads to Ethics Rules

Warning that the world is in the throes of economic, environmental and political crises, representatives of the world’s religions signed an unprecedented declaration of global ethics Saturday to guide human behavior into the new millennium.

The draft document issued at the Parliament of the World’s Religions marked the first time in history that representatives of all the world’s religions--Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and 120 other religious groups--reached common ground on ethical behavior.

Among the leading religious figures who signed the document were the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism; Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, and the Rev. Wesley Ariarajah, deputy general secretary in Geneva of the World Council of Churches, which represents most major Protestant denominations.

Parliament leaders on Saturday, however, stressed that the declaration was subject to change and must be considered an “initial” draft. That was a concession to delegates who protested during closed meetings that the declaration failed to take into account what David Ramage, chairman of the parliament board, called “hurts about which they care passionately.”

Ramage said others complained that the document needed to be “less Western.” He declined to elaborate, but it was believed to be a reference to racial and ethnic conflicts in the world.

Ramage said he believed that all but a handful of the parliament’s 250 members would sign the final document.

The declaration calls on people to live by a rule that respects all life, individuality and diversity so that every person is treated humanely. It condemns sexual discrimination and “limitless exploitation” of the environment and forsakes violence as a means of settling differences.

At the same time, it exhorts religions in whose name wars and atrocities have been committed to dismantle “mutual arrogance, mistrust, prejudice . . . and hostility.”

The agreement was due in part to the statement’s deft drafting, drawing on common ethical teachings while avoiding specific differences that could incite opposition. For example, nowhere in the document is the word “God” mentioned because to do so would exclude Buddhists, who do not believe in a divine being. Nor is there any direct mention of the population explosion or Catholic insistence on prohibiting artificial birth control.

Primarily authored by famed Swiss Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung and refined over a three-year period, the document contains striking, sometimes apocalyptic language, warning that unless humans are guided by an overarching global ethic, the future of the planet and the human race will be bleak.

“We have here a minimum ethic which, I believe, is necessary for the survival of this earth,” Kung told reporters.

The signing was a highlight of the parliament, the second such gathering in 100 years, which drew 6,000 delegates. This year’s event attracted not only the major world religions, but various sects and neo-pagans, including goddess worshipers and witches.

Priests in Roman collars talked with saffron-robed Buddhist monks, and Rastafarians engaged in animated discussions with turbaned Sikhs. The hotel was filled with a cacophony of sounds, from Christian Orthodox Gregorian chants to the otherworldly strains of Hindu sacred music. On one night, followers of the neo-pagan Wicca religion performed a full-moon ritual in nearby Grant Park.

In signing the global declaration, delegates were personally endorsing the document; their actions were not binding on their religious bodies. Nonetheless, participants hoped that the number, religious diversity and “moral credibility” of those signing would lead to formal institutional recognition.

“At this point the matter of (institutional) endorsement is less important than whether this document captures people’s imagination,” said Father Thomas A. Baima, director of the Chicago archdiocese’s Office for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs. Baima, a member of the parliament’s board of trustees, noted that representatives from the Vatican and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops were present and had made “very favorable” comments about the document.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of 6 million Tibetans, on Friday described the signing as a “historical event.”

The parliament was not without controversy. The presence of the neo-pagans prompted the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Chicago to abruptly pull out, saying it did not want its participation to be construed as a relationship with “quasi-religious groups.”

At another point, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith withdrew as a participant because Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam spoke at the gathering. The ADL said Farrakhan “continues to espouse and promote classic anti-Semitic notions of Jewish domination and control.”

None of the Jewish groups at the parliament signed the document Saturday. In not signing the declaration, Jewish leaders were protesting Farrakhan’s presence, not quarreling with the document’s content, they said.

Farrakhan at a news conference criticized the ADL’s withdrawal and said “we have not even bloodied a nose of one Jew or has a Jew bloodied one of our noses.”

The declaration comes at a time when religious, scientific, political and environmental leaders are talking of a “paradigm shift” toward the development of a “global consciousness”--the realization that all things are interconnected.

“We had to answer questions that Jesus or Moses never thought about,” Kung said. “We are at a transformation of consciousness with regard to nature. Nobody thinks anymore as we thought 30 years ago.”

One leading participant said he was surprised to find agreement on upward of 20 ethical principles.

“It is a statement of ethics, not creeds,” said Kung, who in 1979 was censured by the Vatican for challenging church doctrines. “We have to live together in spite of different creeds.”

“On the basis of personal experiences and the burdensome history of our planet,” the global ethics statement explains, “we have learned that a better global order cannot be created or enforced by laws, prescriptions and conventions alone. . . . The minds and hearts of women and men must be addressed.”

The parliament stressed that the declaration does not advocate a single ideology or the domination of one religion over others.

Among the pressing concerns of the 20th Century unknown to ancient sages and religious figures are global environmental problems, from ozone depletion and deforestation to climate change and the loss of biological diversity.

One delegate, Gerald O. Barney, who led a team that produced a disturbing 1980 report on worldwide environmental distress for then-President Jimmy Carter, questioned whether religion was up to the task.

“I must tell you honestly,” Barney told delegates a week before they signed the ethics statement, “that many people now wonder if any of our faith traditions have the wisdom we need for the future. . . . Many feel that our faith traditions have become a very central part of the human problem.”

In drafting the statement, the authors clearly admitted the failings and shortcomings of religions.

“Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate and xenophobia--even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts,” the declaration said. “Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war. We are filled with disgust.”

It also condemns sexual exploitation and sexual discrimination “as one of the worst forms of human degradation. We have the duty to resist wherever the domination of one sex over the other is preached--even in the name of religious conviction,” the statement says.

Despite religious shortcomings and failings, the declaration affirms the religious wisdom of the ages and holds that much can be learned from it and applied to modern circumstances.