32. The Parliament of the World’s Religions

Chicago World Fair

“We can discern certain spiritual movements,” wrote Arnold Toynbee in 1948, “which might conceivably become the embryos of new higher religions. The Bahai and Ahmadi movements… will occur to the Western observer’s mind.”[1] The expansion of the Bahai Faith to America was warmly encouraged by Abdul Baha.[2] Rev. Henry Harris Jessup (1832 – 1910), an American Presbyterian missionary and author who devoted his career to evangelical missionary work in Syria, wrote a paper on how the world’s religions could work together, which was read during the plenary session at the Parliament of the World’s of Religions in 1893, for the occasion of World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an early world’s fair, just one year after Baha Ulla’s passing, being the first mention the Bahai Faith itself in the United States. The speech quoted these words from Baha Ulla, originally recorded by E.G. Browne:

 

That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religions should cease and differences of race be annulled. What harm is there in this? Yet so it shall be. These fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come. Do not you in Europe need this also? Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.[3]

 

The Parliament’s notable speakers included James Cardinal Gibbons for Roman Catholicism, Isaac Mayer Wise for Judaism, Mary Baker Eddy for Christian Science, Annie Besant for Theosophy, and reformer Frances Willard. During his tenures in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, Cardinal James Gibbon (1834 – 1921) established cordial relationships with local rabbis. In an 1890 letter, Gibbons said:

 

For my part I cannot well conceive how Christians can entertain other than most kindly sentiments toward the Hebrew race, when I consider how much we are indebted to them. We have from them the inspired volume of the Old Testament which has been consolation in all ages to devout souls. Christ our Lord, the Founder of our religion, His Blessed Mother, as well as the apostles, were all Jews according to the flesh. These facts attach me strongly to the Jewish race.[4]

 

Charles C. Bonney (1831 – 1903)—former judge of the Supreme Court, member of the New Church that developed under the influence of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg and the president of all the World’s Congresses in Chicago, who called to order the Parliament—formulated the general goal of the congress: “To unite all Religion against all Irreligion; to make the Golden Rule the basis of this union.”[5] John Henry Barrows (1847 – 1902), an American clergyman of First Presbyterian Church in Chicago, was appointed as the first chairman of the General Committee of the Parliament, who announced, “Welcome, most welcome, O wise men of the East and of the West!”[6] Barrows received his theological training from Yale Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary, and became a member of Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims and a student of pulpit oratory from its first minister, Henry Ward Beecher, a major spokesperson for New England Transcendentalism, who joined several rabbis in signing an invitation to Chaim Tzvi Schneerson 1869, and bother to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.[7]

Numerous luminaries accepted the invitation or expressed support for the project, including Cardinal James Gibbon, archbishop of Baltimore, Reform rabbi and Mason Isaac Mayer Wise who founded the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR); Lyman Abbot; the leader of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy; Philip Schaff, Daniel Offord, spokesman for the Shakers; Bishop John J. Keane, rector of the Catholic University of America; Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale; Washington Gladden, champion of the Social Gospel; suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Willard; Sephardic Rabbi H. Pereira Mendes; former British Prime Minister William Gladstone; and poets John Greenleaf Whittier and Alfred Lord Tennyson.[8] Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes (1852 – 1937) of Shearith Israel was a founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA). It was Moses Gaster (1856 – 1939)—later Hakham, or Chief Rabbi, of the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, and founder of the British Zionist Federation, which was to be the recipient of the Balfour Declaration—who introduced Mendes to Theodor Herzl, who then asked him to spread the Zionist cause in America and became one of the founders and president of the Federation of American.[9]

 

Theosophical Society

With funding and encouragement from fellow Freemason Ajit Singh of Khetri, Vivekananda—who preached Ramakrishna’s universalist message of Vedanta—attended the Parliament where he delivered his famously delivered the opening speech, greeting the audience with, “Sisters and brothers of America!.” The response was a standing ovation from a crowd of thousands, which lasted for two minutes. When silence returned, he continued with: “I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world [Vedic sannyasin]; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.” In his speech read at the Parliament on September 19, Vivekananda stated:

 

The Hindu may have failed to carry out all his plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being, from the lowest grovelling savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognise divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be created in aiding humanity to realise its own true, divine nature.[10]

Annie Besant was particularly impressed by Vivekananda’s appearance at the Parliament. As noted by Elizabeth De Michelis, in A History of Modern Yoga, Vivekananda’s popularity

 

…capitalized on the interest in Indian religions generated by the academic study of religion and, even more so, by the popularization of Oriental ideas carried out by occultist groups such as the Theosophical Society.[11]

 

As the Washington Post  reported at the time, “All Kinds of Theosophy will be Represented at the Parliament of Religions: Buddhists and the Like.”[12] The Theosophical Society was represented by the vice-president of the society, William Q. Judge and Annie Besant. Representing Jain was Virchand Gandhi (1864 –1901), a friend of Mahatma Gandhi who was admired by Vivekananda. Invited was the Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala (1864 – 1933) who along with Olcott and Blavatsky was a major reformer and revivalist of Sinhala Buddhism and an important figure in its transmission to the West. He also inspired a mass movement of South Indian Dalits including Tamils to embrace Buddhism, half a century before B.R. Ambedkar.[13] An essay by the Japanese Pure Land master Kiyozawa Manshi (1863 – 1903)was read in his absence. G.N. Chakravarti (1861 – 1936) an Indian member of the Theosophical Society advocated for Brahmanism.[14]

Representing Islam was Alexander Russell Webb (1846 –  1916), a member of the Theosophical Society of New York who was introduced to Islam by the works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, which was similar to the Bahais.[15] Around 1872, Webb read Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton which ‘‘excited his curiosity’’ in Islam.[16] Webb joined the Theosophical Society in 1880-81 and converted to Buddhism. At one point Webb traveled to India, the place where the Theosophical Society moved its headquarters, and met numerous Theosophists, some of whom were Muslim. Webb initiated a correspondence with Ghulam Ahmad after discovering his invitation in Olcott’s journal The Theosophist or in a newspaper The Scotsman.[17] Their two letters were published then in Ghulam Ahmad’s book Shahne-e-Haqq. While the correspondence was brief, lasting from 1886–1887, it was influential on Webb who seemed to decide that Islam was the best eastern religion to manifest the Ancient Wisdom of referred to in Theosophy.[18] In 1887, Webb was appointed by President Cleveland to the post of Consular Representative of the United States at Manilla in the Philippines. Webb accepted Islam there the following a year. When Webb accepted Islam as understood by the Aligarh Movement, and his indebtedness to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Syed Ameer Ali, and Chiragh Ali suffuses the entirety of his work.[19]

In 1892, Webb resigned from his position in Manila and traveled to India where he met up with Maulvi Hassan Ali and other Muslims—who would alter join the Ahmadiyya movement—to raise funds for American missionary work.[20] Webb finally returned to America, arriving in New York City in February 1893. It was in Manhattan that Webb began promoting his faith, publishing a book entitled Islam in America. Webb’s best-known attempt to promote Islam was as the only representative for Islam at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, where he criticized the bigotry against Muslims by Americans. At the Parliament, Webb met the pioneers of the American Bahai movement, one of whom, Anton Haddad, later assisted him in New York.[21] At the Parliament, Chairman John Henry Barrows made reference to Webb’s recent fame in the press, referring to the headlines of the New York Times, that had announced Webb’s arrival with the title ‘‘Muhammad Webb’s Mission to Establish the Faith of Islam Here: The American Mohammedan Sent by Wealthy Mussulmans of the East.’’ The article quoted Webb’s statement about his mission:

 

I will seek to introduce practical and not esoteric Mohammedanism, although I am as deeply interested in the one as the other. I am myself a member of the American Theosophical Society and a firm believer in the knowledge and honesty of the late Mme. Blavatsky. Theosophy and esoteric Mohammedanism are almost identical, but practical Mohammedanism is quite another thing. It is a sensible, pure, every-day religion which we believe to be far superior to Christianity.[22]

 

Compared to other faiths, Islam received little attention at the Parliament. The blame for the minimal participation of Muslims was attributed to the opposition of Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid II.[23] Invitations were extended to Syed Ameer Ali and to Hyderabad acquaintance, Nawab Syed Hussain Bilgrami, but neither accepted. Ameer Ali praised the idea of the parliament as ‘‘marking an epoch in the history of religious development’’ but politely declined to attend.[24] As no world-class Muslim scholars from the Islamic world was found to speak or submit a presentation in absentia, the Parliament then selected only Webb and Afghani’s friend and Blavatsky disciple James Sanua, who submitted a short paper to be read in his absence.[25]

According to K. Paul Johnson, the Parliament of the World’s Religions gave the Theosophists “a breakthrough into public acceptance and awareness which had hardly seemed possible a few years before.”[26] In his 1921 history of the Theosophical movement, René Guénon wrote that after the 1893 Parliament, “the Theosophists seemed very satisfied with the excellent occasion for propaganda afforded them in Chicago, and they even went so far as to proclaim that “the true Parliament of Religions had been, in fact, the Theosophical Congress.”[27] Several of the World Parliament’s speakers on behalf of international religions had been Theosophists, such as Dharmapala and Kinza Hirai, who represented Buddhism, Mohammed Webb for Islam, and Chakravarti for the Hindus.[28] Soon after, early American converts began embracing the Bahai religion. Thornton Chase (1847 – 1912), a distinguished officer of the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War was the most prominent among the first American Bahais and made important contributions to early activities. One of the first Bahai institutions in the U.S. was established in Chicago and called the Bahai Temple Unity, incorporated in 1909 to facilitate the establishment of the first Bahai House of Worship in the West, which was eventually built in Wilmette, Illinois and dedicated in 1953.[29]

After the Parliament of Religions, Vivekananda spent nearly two years lecturing in the eastern and central United States, primarily in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and New York. He founded the Vedanta Society of New York in 1894. Vivekananda was offered academic positions in two American universities (one the chair in Eastern Philosophy at Harvard University and a similar position at Columbia University. he declined both. Vivekananda travelled to the United Kingdom in 1895 and again in 1896. In May 1896, Vivekananda met Max Müller. In Germany, he met Paul Deussen (1845 – 1919), an Indologist and a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche. Vivekananda attracted followers and admirers in the US and Europe, including Sarah Bernhardt, Nikola Tesla, Emma Calvé. Hearing Vivekananda speak, Harvard psychology professor and Theosophist William James (1842  – 1910) said, “that man is simply a wonder for oratorical power. He is an honor to humanity.”[30]

 

World Evangelical Alliance

Philip Schaff (1819 – 1893) delivered an address, “The Reunion of Christendom,” calling for a “federal or confederate union” between churches.[31] In 1870, Schaff became a professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City in 1870, which in 1964 would establish an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary (JTSA). Schaff was a representative of the American branch of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). As noted in its own history, the founding of the WEA can be traced back to the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant religious revival during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century in the United States.[32] Like the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening was led by religious revivalists largely influenced by the crypto-Sabbatean Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian Church.[33] When Scharf visited the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he described them as “this most amiable of all the Protestant sects.”[34] As Scharf  noted in “The Reunion of Christendom,” an essay published in The World’s Parliament of Religions,

 

The Brotherhood of the Moravians, founded by Count Zinzendorf—a true nobleman of nature and of grace—is a glorious brotherhood: for it is the pioneer of heathen missions and of Christian union among Protestant Churches.[35]

 

In response to calls for a “united and powerful Christian Church,” British meetings starting in 1843 led to the watershed gathering in August 19 to September 2, 1846, at Freemason Hall in London. Representatives joined from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Sweden, Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland, the US and Canada.[36] By 1908, the World Evangelical Alliance had virtually dissolved. A new alliance, the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), was formed with some 30 denominations. The Moravian Church were founding members of the FCC and again in 1950 when it regrouped under the title National Council of Churches, and world-wide as the World Council of Churches (WCC).[37] Member churches of the WCC include the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, almost all of the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Lutheran Churches; the Anglican Communion; some Old Catholic Churches; the Methodist churches; the Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, some Baptist and Pentecostal churches, and the Moravian Church.

 


[1] Toynbee. Civilization on Trial, p. 204.

[2] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 98.

[3] The Baha’i World, Volume 2, p. 169; cited in Jaellayna Palmer. “Parliament of World Religions: When Faiths First Came Together.” Bahai Teachings (October 26, 2018). Retrieved from https://bahaiteachings.org/parliament-world-religions-faiths-first-came-together/

[4] William Rosenau. “Cardinal Gibbons and His Attitude Toward Jewish Problems.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 31 (1928), pp. 219–224.

[5] Timothy L. Hall. Religion in America (Infobase Publishing, 2007), p. 7.

[6] Rev. John Henry Barrows. The World’s Parliament of Religions, Vol. I (Parliament Publishing Company, 1893), p. 73.

[7] “Rabbi H. Z. Schneersohn…” The American Israelite (February 12, 1869), p. 6. Retrieved from https://www.newspapers.com/image/531505295

[8] Thomas Albert Howard. The Faiths of Others: A History of Interreligiou Dialogue (Yale University Press, 2021), p. 95–96.

[9] Jewish Daily Bulletin (May 24, 1934).

[10] Swami Vivekananda. “Paper on Hinduism.” Addresses at The Parliament of Religions, Vol. 1. Retrieved from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_1/Addresses_at_The_Parliament_of_Religions/Paper_on_Hinduism

[11] De Michelis. A History of Modern Yoga, p. 154.

[12] The Washington Post (September 10, 1893), p. 10

[13] “Taking the Dhamma to the Dalits.” The Sunday Times (September 14, 2014).

[14] Sri Madhava Ashish. “Mirtola: A Himalayan Ashram with Theosophical Roots.” Quest, 100: 3 (Summer 2012), pp. 98-105. Retrieved from https://www.theosophical.org/publications/quest-magazine/mirtola-a-himalayan-ashram-with-theosophical-roots

[15] Bashr Ahnad. Ahmadiyya Movement: British-Jewish Connections (Rawalpindi: Islamic Study Forum, 1994).

[16] Umar F. Abd-Allah. A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 54.

[17] Shahna-e Haqq Ruhanai Khazaen, Vol 2, p. 373; cited in “Alexender Russel Webb & The Theosophical Society’s introduction to Islam Ahmadiyyat.” The History of Ahmadiyyat. Retrieved from https://history.ahmadiyya.uk/alexender-russel-webb-the-theosophical-societys-introduction-to-islam-ahmadiyyat/

[18] “America’s First Muslim Convert: Alexander Russell Webb.”

[19] Abd-Allah. A Muslim in Victorian America, p. 274.

[20] Basharat Ahmad. The Great Refomer, Vol. 1 (Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam (Lahore) USA Inc., 2007), chapter 21.

[21] Abd-Allah. A Muslim in Victorian America, p. 242.

[22] ‘‘Muhammad Webb’s Mission to Establish the Faith of Islam Here.’’ New York Times (February 25, 1893), p. 1; cited in Abd-Allah. A Muslim in Victorian America, p. 170.

[23] Abd-Allah. A Muslim in Victorian America, p. 221.

[24] Ibid., p. 228.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Johnson, Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 97

[27] Guénon. Theosophy.

[28] Penn. False Dawn, p. 40.

[29] Linfoot. “In Memoriam; Corine Knight True” (PDF). The Baháʼí World; An International Record. Vol. XIII, 1954–1963 (Universal House of Justice, 1970). pp. 846–849. Retrieved from http://bahai-library.com/pdf/bw/memoriam_bw_13.pdf

[30]  Sushmita Dutta. The Biography Of Swami Vivekananda: “Messenger Of Indian Wisdom” (True Sign Publishing House, 2023).

[31] “Councils of churches.” World Council of Churches. Retrieved from https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/councils-of-churches

[32] “Our History.” World Evangelical Alliance. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20210422082619/https://worldea.org/en/who-we-are/our-history/

[33] “Great Awakening.” Encyclopedia Britannica.

[34] David Schaff. The Life of Philip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), p. 141.

[35] Philip Schaff. “The Reunion of Christendom.” In Rev. John Henry Barrows. The World’s Parliament of Religions, Vol. II (Parliament Publishing Company, 1893), p. 1200.

[36] “Our History.” World Evangelical Alliance.

[37] “The Moravian Church” Roots Moravian Church. Retrieved from https://rootsmc.org/moravians/

Divide & Conquer