A Multi-Faith Mission for the Millennium

Religious people from around the world are gathering in the southern port of Cape Town to celebrate their shared spirituality and debate the moral foundations of the coming millennium.

Delegates to the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which convened Wednesday for the third time in 106 years, represent most major faiths, including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism and Taoism. The Dalai Lama of Tibet will deliver the session’s main address this Wednesday.

Scores of smaller spiritual communities, some heavy with tradition and others only recently formed, have also sent representatives. Organizers expect more than 4,000 delegates during the eight-day assembly, which is being billed as the ultimate networking opportunity for the world’s spiritually minded.

“It is a matter of exposure,” said Michael Hamilton, a delegate from Chicago and a follower of guru Adi Da Samraj, leader of a small religion known as Adidam. “They all have their philosophy they want to share with as many people as possible. In the back of everything, there is always hope for conversion.”

The parliament has no legislative authority, but several hundred delegates will debate a document intended to set the moral tone for the 21st century. The 48-page report calls on influential religious and secular institutions to cooperate in creating a “just, peaceful and sustainable world.” The targeted institutions range from the World Bank to local churches.

“Unique to this moment is the possibility of a new level of creative engagement between the institutions of religion and spirituality and the other powerful institutions that influence the character and course of human society,” the document says. “Without spiritual grounding, visions of a far better world cannot be realized.”

The deliberations on the “Call to Our Guiding Institutions” are among 700 seminars, presentations, celebrations and other events planned for the assembly. Former South African President Nelson Mandela is scheduled to address the group Sunday, but most sessions are being led by religious leaders, scholars and ordinary believers.

Huston Smith, an author and UC Berkeley professor, is moderating discussions on religious freedom and Native Americans. Cheyenne leader Suzan Shown Harjo is scheduled to join him. Other offerings included workshops on topics ranging from homosexuality to the spirituality of mathematics.

“We are not out to create one religion,” Dirk Ficca of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, which organized the assembly, told reporters. “We want convergence of purpose, not consensus.”

Delegates are meeting for the first time outside the United States. The two previous parliamentary sessions--in 1993 and 1893--were held in Chicago, where the interfaith council is based. The nonprofit organization encourages inter-religious cooperation and traces its roots to the original parliament, which was the first formal meeting of religions from the East and West, according to the council.

Organizers say newly democratic South Africa provides an ideal setting for the millennium discussions, which focus on many of the ethical and social issues confronting South Africans since the end of the apartheid system of racial separation.

“South Africa was selected for 1999 because its historic struggle to end apartheid underscores the Parliament’s focus on applying faith convictions to social realities,” Jim Kenney, an official for the Chicago council, said in announcing the parliamentary gathering.

Delegates have walked the streets of Cape Town to commemorate the deadly destruction of AIDS and tour once multiracial neighborhoods that were brutally cleansed by security forces of the former white minority regime. They also have had close-up views of how contentious--and dangerous--life remains here.

On Sunday, a pipe bomb exploded in a beachfront pizza restaurant in a Cape Town suburb popular with tourists, injuring more than 40 people. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, but South African Minister for Safety and Security Steve Tshwete said police suspect that the bombers meant to disrupt the parliament and other millennium activities.

“It is the biggest drawback of this whole thing,” said Hamilton, the Chicago delegate. “It is such a beautiful country, but you keep having to worry about security. You don’t feel safe walking around at night.”

There has been religious dissent too. During the opening of the parliament Wednesday, a small group of Islamic protesters denounced the meeting as including Zionists and allegedly furthering the work of Satan. Some fundamentalist Christians have raised objections to the gathering, complaining in particular about a program by Elizabeth Stewart of DePaul University in Chicago titled, “Holy Foolishness--A Christological Paradigm for the New Millennium.”

Some South African legislators were so offended by that program that they put forward a motion of condemnation in the South African Parliament. It was unsuccessful. Organizers of the religious assembly said the legislators misunderstood the program: “Holy fool,” they said, refers to public perceptions of great spiritual leaders during their lifetimes.

“Jesus, like John before him and Paul after, was dismissed as a fool by many who failed to understand that his unusual behavior--his humor and gentleness--was not a mark of foolishness, but of holiness,” said Gordon Oliver, co-director of the assembly, in a written response to the motion by the African Christian Democratic Party.