c. 1999 Religion News Service
CHICAGO _ Leaders of the Chicago-based Interfaith Parliament of the World’s Religions say they expect to draw 6,000 people to Cape Town, South Africa, Dec. 1-8 and to challenge the world’s faith bodies to create”a more just, peaceful and sustainable world in the new millennium.” Adherents of major world faiths _ and many smaller faiths _ will travel to Cape Town, near the southern tip of the African continent, for the third Parliament of World Religions, one of a host of current interfaith efforts to promote tolerance and religious understanding if not agreement.
On Oct. 18, representatives of 20 Christian and non-Christian religious faiths gathered at the Vatican for a four-day meeting exploring ways of cooperating in the next millennium.
The first World Parliament of Religions was held in 1893 in Chicago. The second, convened a hundred years later to mark the historic meeting’s centennial, attracted a crowd of 8,000 and promoted organizers to institutionalize the movement.
Participants at the South Africa meeting will include Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and adherents of other faiths and spiritual groups. Representatives of each major faith group are included on the council sponsoring the parliament and planning the events.
Earlier this month (Oct. 20), parliament leaders unveiled a 50-page document,”A Call to Our Guiding Institutions,”detailing the meeting’s focus _ a challenge to religious people and to those involved in what organizers called seven”secular spheres of influence”to cooperate in working for peace and justice in the new millennium.”We find ourselves at a moment when people everywhere are coming to recognize that the world is a global village,”the document declares.”The perils and promises of this new reality bring to mind several ancient understandings,”it added, including that”human beings are interdependent and responsible for the care of the Earth.”””What is needed now,”it added,”is a persuasive invitation to our guiding institutions to build new, reliable, and more imaginative partnerships toward the shaping of a better world.” Howard A. Sulkin, president of Spertus Institute in Chicago and chair of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, called the document a”significant blueprint”for the world’s future.”It is not meant to rest on library shelves, but to guide us”into the new millennium, he said.
During the Cape Town meeting, a 400-member nonlegislative”parliament assembly”will meet separately to consider and then propose some 100 concrete projects whereby religious and spiritual traditions, working with secular institutions, can affect major global issues.
The”call”document emerged from a three-year drafting project, Sulkin said. Four draft versions were circulated for review and comment to an international group of more than 500 assembly members, religious leaders, scholars, and leaders in other”guiding institutions.”(The document is available online at http://www.cpwr.org).
Other features of the assembly will include from 600 to 800 workshops, daily hours for meditation and prayer, a variety of seminars, major presentations and performances, and a daily”celebration.” The Dalai Lama has agreed to speak at the parliament’s closing session. Other speakers include a not-yet-named representative of the Vatican, and Abdulluh Omar Nasseef, president of the Muslim World Congress and former head of the World Muslim League. Nelson Mandela, post-apartheid South Africa’s first president, is also expected to make an appearance.
The Rev. Dirk Ficca, executive director of the Parliament’s council, which has planned, publicized and raised funds for the event, said that at the 1993 meeting one of every seven participants was from outside the United States. One hundred faith traditions were represented.”We decided then to hold one every five years (in a different country). We chose South Africa because of the role the Spirit played in overcoming apartheid,”Ficca said.
planners expect 1,000 South Africans to attend to attend the 1999 meeting, said Mim Neal of the council staff. Ficca said he anticipates 3,000 to 4,000 registrants from all of Africa.
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Ebrahim Rasool, a member of South Africa’s parliament, told the news conference a highlight of the December gathering will be a special outdoor interfaith service on Table Mountain, a flat-topped geographical feature he described as”the biggest symbol of Cape Town and the Western Cape.” Krisann Rehbein of Chicago, a young union organizer, told the news conference about the parliament’s Young Generation initiative, for young people between the ages of 15 and 26. Rehbein said she had been impressed by the work of the Youth League of the African National Congress.”Cape Town will place my social-justice work in a larger context,”she said.
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Sulkin said the budget for the event is $3 million, including planning. Although individual contributors, foundations, and receipts from an annual dinner in Chicago pay part of that figure, the principal source is registrations, he said.
As of Sept. 22, registration stood at 1,900. Relying on their experience with the 1993 event, planners said participants tend to register at the last minute.
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