Parliament Participant: "We Have to Get Together and Talk"

By Jim Reilly
Post-Standard
August 28, 1993

Religion and politics are topics wisely avoided at most dinner parties, for the sake of group harmony and the digestion of all.

But Central New Yorkers attending the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago this week say if there's one thing the religions of the world need to do, it is talk to one another. The other is listen.

Making peace between religions may be more essential to peace on Earth than many people realize or are willing to admit, they say. And many political problems ultimately may have religious solutions.

"One of the major components of controversy in the world today is religion," said Jay Williams, a professor of religion at Hamilton College. "Look at Ireland, India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Bosnia. Everywhere you look, there's that big religious component. There is a growing concern that somehow we have to get together and talk."

That's the basic idea behind the conference in Chicago, which begins today and continues through next weekend. It will bring together more than 5,000 religious leaders and scholars from around the world.

The goal is to promote harmony and acknowledge the diversity among the world's religions and to assess the role religion should play in the world today and in the future.

This week's parliament also marks the centennial of the last time the world's religions got together for a chat, at the Chicago parliament in 1893, which introduced Americans to Zen Buddhism and Hinduism.

James Wiggins, chairman of Syracuse University's Department of Religion, is going to the conference as the representative of the American Academy of Religion, which he directed for a decade. He now is chairman of its international connections committee. He is a scholar with a particular interest in religious diversity.

"This enormous variety and diversity of religious perspective available in the world today," Wiggins said, "is every bit as important as ethnic, economic and other kinds of diversity - gender, race and so on.

"I believe that people's religious loyalties are often as powerful in their lives as are gender or race or economic status," Wiggins said. "The fact that people are willing to be martyrs for their religions is something we barely understand in this country. And I think the series of disasters in Waco is illustrative of that."

David Miller, who also teaches religion at SU and is going to the conference as the representative of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, will be talking about mythological traditions in various religions at the conference. But he'll also be talking about respect, tolerance and generosity.

"The problem I'm addressing is pretty obvious. It's in every day's newspaper," Miller said. "How can we talk about global harmony in a world where, precisely, people are fighting over religion?"

Miller doesn't believe all the world's religions must come together and affirm each other's beliefs in order for the world to get along.

"But if we can just get to the point where one honors difference, rather than everybody arguing for the ultimate truth of his or her own tradition, why then I think there might be some hope," he said.

The Rev. Roy Drake, a Jesuit priest who is the administrator at Christ the King Retreat House in Syracuse, was heading to Chicago with a blueprint for cooperation tucked into his head.

Drake and Roy Serafini, who also planned to travel to Chicago, are on the board of directors of Gobind Sadan, an interfaith retreat center and farm between Palermo and Central Square. They plan to talk about how the center has brought together Sikhs, Catholics, Jews, alcoholics, drug abusers, criminals, doctors, lawyers, politicians, the National Guard and others to grow vegetables. Other things have been growing at Gobind Sadan, Drake said, such as understanding and individual souls.

"Everybody gets dirty, everybody works, everybody prays," Drake said. "There's no rank up there. We all sit on the floor and dine together."

Oren Lyons, a chief and faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, is on the agenda in Chicago, but doesn't know if he'll get there.

"I might make it out there, I might not," Lyons said. "With what's been going on with the Nation and with these problems we've been having here, it seems impossible for me to be away right now." Lyons was referring to the dispute between the nation and some Onondaga business owners that recently flared and led to the blockading of Route 11 through the nation. But the blockades are down and people are talking at Onondaga.

Wiggins, Williams and Miller all said the 1893 parliament was a seminal event in the history of religion in America. None would predict what might come of this one.

"Who knows? This may be a dud," Williams said. "It may be everybody gets together and nothing happens. Or it may be that out of this come some fresh ideas of religious cooperation."