c. 1996 Religion News Service

SAN FRANCISCO _ As delegates assembled here this week (June 24-28) for meetings to create a global, interfaith”United Religions”organization, three conference participants showed just how difficult a task they are confronting.

California Episcopal Bishop William Swing, who is hosting the United Religions summit, said the initiative aims to establish a permanent deliberative body of religious leaders modeled after the United Nations.

A United Religions would make religions a more potent force for global peace, organizers says. The goal of this week’s meeting, which ends Friday (June 28), is to plan a charter-writing conference in San Francisco in 1997.”We are on the threshold of a new global civilization,”Swing said. However,”when people look around, religion has just not been at the table.” But barely had the first press briefing of the summit begun before sharp differences emerged among Swing and two other participants-the Ven. Chung Ok Lee and Robert Muller.

The first dispute surfaced between Swing and Lee over who should get credit for the United Religions idea and where its headquarters should be.

Swing has long said that he conceived the United Religions initiative during a sleepless night last year after he was invited to host an interfaith worship service during the United Nations’ 50th anniversary ceremonies.

But Lee, a Korean Buddhist nun of the Won tradition who is president of religious non-governmental organizations at the United Nations, said leaders of her denomination have been pushing a United Religions initiative since 1970.

Won Buddhism, a Korean reform movement founded in 1924, has worship practices some scholars compare to Protestant sects, with Sunday and Wednesday worship services and an emphasis not on monastic practices, but rather on efforts to make the faith relevant to ordinary people.”Won Buddhists have been promoting a United Religions for the past 25 years and have prepared a possible place in Korea, where a similar number of Christians and Buddhists live,”Lee said.”Moreover, as the United Nations is located in the United States, a United Religions organization should be located somewhere else.” Swing rejoined that”for a United Religions in this day and age, there would have to be one central, symbolic place, with many, many (auxiliary) gathering places throughout the world.” But Swing also held out the diplomatic olive branch to Lee, quipping that”when Chung Ok Lee is talking about Korea, she’s absolutely right. When I’m talking about San Francisco, I’m absolutely right.” Likewise, Swing clashed with Muller, a retired U.N. assistant secretary-general, over how United Religions should deal with fundamentalism in its peacemaking initiatives.

Muller said that fundamentalism, resting on inflexible belief systems, tend to play an incendiary role in global conflicts. Peace will be impossible, Muller said, without the taming of fundamentalism through a United Religions that professes faithfulness”only to the global spirituality and to the health of this planet.” While Swing agreed that fundamentalism is a challenge to peace, he took issue with the suggestion that fundamentalists are the enemies of peace _ or that they would join a United Religions that substituted a”global spirituality”for fundamentalist beliefs.”When the fundamentalists join the family of the world, they will bring great gifts,”Swing said.”They are not the enemy.”Interreligious dialogue will only be strengthened”when they bring their strong convictions to the table and we have a dialogue on those.”

MJP END AQUINO