13. The World Ecumenical Movement

Eranos Conferences 

Everywhere he went, Abdul Baha preached the necessity of abolishing nation-states, existing world religions, and national borders. The conception of a “new world order” found in the Bahai teachings were pronounced by Bahaullah, who taught that throughout history humanity has experienced periods of progress and regression in a process of social evolution towards its destined collective maturity: the realization of a just and peaceful global polity into a single human family under one religion.[1] After Abdul Baha’s death in 1921, the leadership of the faith fell to his grandson Shoghi Effendi, who envisaged a series of intermediate stages of global governance eventually leading to an interdependent world commonwealth, the “Most Great Peace.”[2] This was to be a global civilization, a system “infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units,” where international rule of law agreed to by the world’s leaders would have as its sanction an immediate and enforced intervention from “the combined forces of the federated units.”[3]

If a single institution could be identified as linking all the most important occult currents of the twentieth century, it would be the Eranos conferences—connecting Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasonry, Neo-Vedanta, the School of Wisdom, the Gorge Kries, the Sohlberg Circle, the German Conversative Revolution, the Frankfurt School, and the Italian occult society the Ur Group, Zionists and Kabbalah scholars—all leading up to the founding of the Esalen Institute, which gave birth to the New Age Movement. The various personalities involved were linked to the World Congress of Faiths, which was founded to succeed the Parliament of the World’s Religions of 1893, and would play a central role in the emerging Interfaith Movement. Despite claims of a benevolent objective of bringing about world unity under one religion, open collaboration with Zionists suggests an agenda far more devious, perhaps along the lines of the plot outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

 

When we come into our kingdom it will be undesirable for us that there should exist any other religion than ours of the One God with whom our destiny is bound up by our position as the Chosen People and through whom our same destiny is united with the destinies of the world. We must therefore sweep away all other forms of belief. If this gives birth to the atheists whom we see to-day, it will not, being only a transitional stage, interfere with our views, but will serve as a warning for those generations which will hearken to our preaching of the religion of Moses, that, by its stable and thoroughly elaborated system has brought all the peoples of the world into subjection to us.[4]

 

Islamic Studies professor Henry Corbin, as related by his friend, Sohlberg Circle member Denis de Rougemont, once evoked the Eranos ideal with the slogan, “Heretics of the World Unite!”[5] Swiss scholar De Rougemont wrote the classic work Love in the Western World, which explores Sufi influence on the psychology of love from Courtly Love and from the legend of Tristan and Isolde to Hollywood. The Eranos conferences have brought together some of the most influential cultural scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first century, including Martin Buber, Joseph Campbell, Ernst Benz, Károly Kerényi, Heinrich Zimmer, Traditionalists like Louis Massignon and Henry Corbin, as well as Gilles Quispel and D.T. Suzuki, among many others.[6] The theme of first Eranos conference, which took place in 1933, was “Yoga and Meditation in East and West.” Discussions were opened by the first scholar that Froebe-Kapteyn invited, Heinrich Zimmer (1890 – 1943), with an address on “The Meaning of Indian Tantric Yoga.”

The name Eranos, as Froebe-Kapteyn herself acknowledged, was suggested by the scholar of religion Rudolf Otto (1869 – 1937), whose influence in the area of the history of religion, and in particular on the scholars of religion who spoke at Eranos, was considerable.[7] According to Magda Kerényi, it was Jung who had advised Froebe-Kapteyn to contact Otto, whom she met visited in November 1932 at Marburg an der Lahn for expert advice on organizing a less esoteric and more academic type of summer school.[8] Only a month after Froebe-Kapteyn’s visit to Marburg, Otto went for several weeks to Ascona.[9]

Otto was best known for his book The Idea of the Holy, to create an Inter-Religious League as a parallel to the League of Nations.[10] As early as 1913, Otto had conceived the idea of a Religiöser Menschheitbund (“Interreligious League of Mankind,” RMB) which would bring together representatives of all the world’s religions to work towards international peace. Under Otto’s leadership the RMB, established in 1920, flourished for a time and attracted participants from Asia and North America as well as many European countries. However, the league had not achieved the success he had hoped for. As Froebe-Kapteyn later recalled:

 

Hardly had we been talking together for five minutes when he [Rudolf Otto] handed me a box with hundreds of names and said, I am handing over to you the card index of my project, the League of Mankind, which I am not able to bring to fruition. Perhaps you will now do with Eranos what I wanted to do and could not.[11]

 

Otto was the first scholar of religion to acquaint himself directly with Zen Buddhism in Japan. Otto also exercised a strong interest in India, especially as evinced in his work West-Östliche Mystik (“Western-Eastern mysticism”), which first appeared in 1926. Otto was also in contact with Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. He mingled with the circle of people around Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, who was a central figure in German Theosophy and editor of the long-standing occult periodical Sphinx. There exists a photograph, taken on Otto’s trip to India, where he is seen together with Annie Besant. He even appears to have known Krishnamurti.[12]

Speaking at the conference in 1934 was Jung’s friend Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881 – 1962), who a year earlier had joined both the Hitler Youth and Alfred Rosenberg’s Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (“Militant alliance for German culture,” and was subsequently inducted by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich personally into the SS and the SD.[13] In 1920, Hauer formed the Bund der Köngener, led for a time by Rudolf Otto, and became attracted to the ideals of the völkisch movement, especially as Hauer began to move more towards developing his own religion.[14] Hauer had initially hoped that his cult might be adopted as the state religion of the Third Reich. Hitler, however, thought little of Hauer and laughed at his followers who “made asses of themselves by worshipping Wotan and Odin and the ancient, but now obsolete, German mythology.”[15]

Jung had met Hauer at Keyserling’s School of Wisdom in the late 1920s, where they discussed their common interest in yoga. Jung attended Hauer’s lecture on yoga at a conference of the International Society in Baden-Baden in 1930. Jung invited Hauer and Zimmer to collaborate with him on an international journal with the publisher Daniel Brody, who later published the Eranos volumes. Keyserling also took part. Hauer also became close to Jung’s “muse” and mistress, Toni Wolff.[16] A discussion between Martin Buber and Hauer was recorded in the files of the Nazi SD, about a possible agreement between the Third Reich and the leaders of the Zionist movement, according to which the Jewish influence in Germany would be restricted.[17]

Froebe-Kapteyn invited Hauer to come again in 1935, but he was obliged to refuse. As Froebe-Kapteyn later explained, Martin Buber’s participation in the 1934 Eranos conference led to difficulties with the German Ministry of Education, which in 1936 forbid German speakers to travel abroad. In 1935, Hauer was forced to issue a press communiqué denying his membership in the Eranos circle, and he stated that he had not been aware of any “Judaeo-Masonic machinations or occult exercises.” A critique of Eranos was published by H. Rehwaldt in the Ludendorff’s journal Am Heiligen Quell Deutscher Kraft (“At the sacred spring of German strength”). Rehwaldt mentions Froebe-Kapteyn’s opening speech, placing it the context of Hermetic, Gnostic, Pythagorean, alchemical, and Rosicrucian traditions. The text then goes on: “So it is these occult teachings that are the basis of the learned Eranos Society, which perpetuates the venerable tradition of a “Count” of Saint-Germain, a Cagliostro—or whatever the names of these Rosicrucian and occultist swindlers may be—in the shape of Freudian psychoanalysis and the form given to it by C.G. Jung.”[18] However, she travelled to Berlin to meet with the Ministry and succeeded in convincing them to reverse their decision.[19]

 

Ostrau Castle 

Another attendee of Eranos was the German Indologist and occultist Hans-Hasso von Veltheim (1885 – 1956), a friend of Muhammed Iqbal, one of the leaders of the All-India Muslim League (AIML).[20] In 1916, Veltheim married Leverkusen Hildegard Duisberg, the daughter of Carl Duisberg, Director General of IG Farben. In Munich, Veltheim came into contact with the George Kreis. Alfred Schuler, founder of the Cosmic Circle, died in his arms there in 1923. In 1925, himself a homosexual, he supported prominent Jewish sexologist and homosexual Magnus Hirschfeld (1868 – 1935) financially, with whom he had been in contact since 1909.[21] In 1902, Schuler was one of the founding members of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Munich, alongside with Magnus Hirschfeld.[22] Along with other sexologists like Albert Moll and Harry Benjamin, Hirschfeld was also a friend of Aleister Crowley’s collaborator, George Sylvester Viereck.[23]

In 1927, Veltheim inherited the Ostrau estate and castle from his father, which he restored and developed as a place for intercultural meetings and intellectual exchange. He was attracted above all to the philosophical teachings of China and Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. He was brought into contact with Steiner in 1918 by the alchemist and anthroposophist Alexander von Bernus (1880 – 1965).[24] Bernus met Karl Wolfskehl in 1905, with whom he remained closely connected until the latter’s exile and death in New Zealand.[25] Veltheim attended sessions of Hermann Keyserling’s School of Wisdom, where he made the acquaintance of some of his most important colleagues, including the sinologist Richard Wilhelm.[26] Among Veltheim’s friends was also Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873 – 1956), leader of Reform Judaism in his native country and internationally, and later represented all German Jews during the Nazi era.[27] Veltheim became a member of the Theosophical Society in England in 1927. In 1929, he joined Annie Besant’s Order of the Star in the East (OSE), which was founded to support Jiddu Krishnamurti, proclaimed a new “World Teacher,” stayed in Ostrau for a week in 1931.[28] Veltheim remained a member of the Evangelical Church, belonging to the Protestant Order of St John.[29]

In Berlin, Veltheim frequented the salon of Edith Andreae (1883 – 1952), the sister of Walther Rathenau, where he met numerous important personalities and introduced others.[30] Regarded as “the most intellectual woman in Berlin,”[31] Andreae was friends with numerous intellectuals of her time, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann.[32] Another of her friends was President of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht.[33] Andreae was a member of the Theosophical Society.[34] Among her many friends and acquaintances were Leo Baeck, Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Charles W. Leadbeater, Max Liebermann, Eleonora von Mendelssohn, Gustav Meyrink, Rainer Maria Rilke, Max Reinhardt, Rabindranath Tagore, and from the Cosmic Circle, Melchior Lechter  and Karl Wolfskehl.[35] Eleonora von Mendelssohn’s father was the Berlin banker, Robert von Mendelssohn, a great-great-grandson of Moses Mendelssohn. Her godmother was the famous Italian actress Eleonora Duse (1858 – 1924), who had an affair with Gabriele D’Annunzio.[36] The celebrated Jewish theater and film director Max Reinhardt (1873 – 1943) became one of the loves of Eleonora’s life.[37] In 1920, Reinhardt established the Salzburg Festival with Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.[38]

Andreae had been invited to witness the “psychometric gift” of the hand-reading skills of the Dutch medium Coba Akkeringa-Kromme at a meeting organized by Magnus Hirschfeld.[39] Hand-reading, or chiromancy, also known as palmistry, is the art of fortune telling from the lines and configurations of the palms of a person’s hands. Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem, a member of the Forte Kreis and Brit Shalom, was also apparently interested in chiromancy, a subject he discussed with three women he called “witches,” all of whom were associated with Eranos: the graphologist and student of Jung and Ludwig Klages, Anna Teillard-Mendelsohn; Hilde Unseld, first wife of Siegfried Unseld, the influential publisher of Suhrkamp; and Edith Andreae’s daughter, Ursula von Mangold, and later director O.W. Barth publishing house, which in 1928 had planned the publication of a journal with the title Kabbalistische Blätter.[40] From 1923, O.W. Barth had published a series of publications from the Pansophische Gesellschaft, a neo-Rosicrucian study circle led by Heinrich Tränker (1880 – 1956), a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). The study circle was later transformed into a lodge, which was intended to draw on the ideas of Pan-Sophy of Comenius, a member of the Hartlib Circle, also known as the Invisible College. Tränker was also the founder of the Pansophia Loge in 1921, from which Fraternitas Saturni emerged on May 8, 1926. According to Stephen Flowers, the order “is (or was) the most unabashedly Luciferian organization in the modern Western occult revival, and its practice of sexual occultism perhaps the most elaborately detailed of any such lodge.”[41]

In March 1930, Andreae herself organized a sessions at her home with Akkeringa-Kromme that was attended by Veltheim and Albert Einstein, who had been on very good terms with Walther Rathenau.[42] Apparently impressed, Einstein had Akkeringa-Kromme and Andreae to his own home, and also allowed the palmist Marianne Raschig to read his hands. Einstein also offered to endorse Mental Radio by American author and Forte Kreis member Upton B. Sinclair (1878 – 1968), a book about experiments with his wife’s psychic abilities, to his own publisher, even proposing to write a foreword to the book’s German translation.[43] Then seven years later, in early 1938, in New York, Einstein had his hands read again,  this time by Margaret Mamlok-Stern, a student of Jung and Julius Philipp Spier (1887 – 1942).[44] At the end of 1930 Albert and Elsa Einstein travelled to the United States, where they befriended Sinclair and attended a séance that was apparently ruined by “hostile forces” of “doubting witnesses.”[45]

After Hitler’s rise to power, numerous members of Veltheim’s circle of friends emigrated from 1933, like the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer. Among his guests were leaders of the Indian Independence Movement like Ambalal Sarabhai, Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy, Ram Nath Chopra and many other Indian visitors. Outside Ostrau and on his travels he came into contact with personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi, Aristide Briand, Anthony Eden, Walther Rathenau, Gustav Stresemann, with numerous scientists and artists such as Hans Blüher, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Richard Strauss, Arno Breker and Oswald Spengler.[46]

 

Tokyo International Lodge

Sir Herbert Read (1893 – 1968), co-editor of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, said, for example, that he had not really been able to understand oriental art until meeting D.T. Suzuki (1870 – 1966) at Ascona in 1935.[47] Suzuki, a Japanese author on Buddhism, Zen and Shin who was instrumental in spreading interest on the subjects in the West, had been in contact with Rudolf Otto since the 1920s.[48] Suzuki translated the speech of his teacher, Zen master of Suzuki’s temple, Soyen Shaku, which was read by John Henry Barrows at the Parliament of The World’s Religions in 1893.[49] Suzuki also devoted an entire book to Swedenborg, describing him as the “Buddha of the North.”[50] The two other possible sources of Suzuki’s personal interest in Swedenborg, were the Parliament of Religions and his wife, the Theosophist Beatrice Erskine Lane Suzuki.[51] Together they joined the Tokyo International Lodge of the Theosophical Society[52] in 1907, before they were married, Beatrice and Suzuki attended the Greenacre summer retreat in Eliot, Maine, where they would have encountered Bahais. One history records that Beatrice knew Agnes Baldwin Alexander (1875 – 1971), who at the request of Abdul Baha in 1914 pioneered the Bahai faith in Japan, and claims that Suzuki told Bernard Leach (1887 – 1979) “that his wife was a Baha’i.”[53] A periodical in 1912 claimed that Beatrice also translated the Bahai Message, the declaration that we are living in the Day of Resurrection and Fulfillment, into Japanese.[54]

Suzuki was a close friend of Gestapo officer Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim (1896 – 1988), a Rothschild descendant and chief assistant to Joachim von Ribbentrop.[55] Dürckheim helped Suzuki introduce Zen Buddhism to the western world. Dürckheim, also a noted expounder of Japanese Zen philosophy in the West, was a committed Nazi and had been a Gestapo officer in Tokyo during the war. During the 1930s he was close friends with Karl Haushofer, Else Lasker-Schüler, Paul Klee, Romano Guardini and Rainer Maria Rilke. Because Dürckheim was considered a Mischlinge, due to his part Jewish heritage, and therefore politically embarrassing, Ribbentrop decided to create a special mission for him to Japan. Dürckheim was arrested by the Allies during their occupation of Japan and served more than a year in prison as a member of the Gestapo.[56]

Alan Watts, who known for interpreting and popularizing Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience, met Dürckheim, whom he described as “…a true nobleman—unselfconsciously and by a long tradition perfect in speech and courtesy Keyserling’s ideal of the grand seigneur.”[57] Politically, Watts belonged the right, having also spent his spare time under the tutelage of Dimitrije Mitrinovic, from the circles of Alfred Orage’s New Age magazine. Watts had been an enthusiastic member of Mitrinovic’s New Britain.[58]

In 1938, Froebe-Kapteyn had applied for financial support to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, but was turned down. Her fortunes changed when she met Mary and Paul Mellon (1907 – 1999), of the influential Mellon family, thanks to her friendship with Jung.[59] Paul was the son of Andrew Mellon (1855 – 1937), who through the bank established by his father, Thomas Mellon, the patriarch of the family, had developed some of the leading American industries, including Gulf Oil, Standard Steel Car Company, and the Aluminum Company of America. Paul Mellon served with the OSS in Europe during World War II, working in Berne with Allen Dulles, who worked closely with Jung. Jung had a devoted student in Mary Bancroft, who became Dulles’ mistress. In early 1943, Froebe-Kapteyn once again came under accusations of pro-Nazism. On Jung’s advice, she turned to Dulles, who investigated the case and found no evidence, thus putting an end to the suspicions once and for all. Mary Bancroft is also said to have spoken out in Olga’s favor.[60] Paul and his wife Mary were founders of the Bollingen Foundation, which funded Gershom Scholem’s writing of Sabbatai Zevi the Mystical Messiah.[61] Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen Buddhism was translated into German by Heinrich Zimmer, and appeared in 1939 with a foreword by Jung. Thanks to a subsidy from the Paul and Mary Mellon’s Bollingen Foundation,  Suzuki was able to afford the trip to Ascona as a guest of honor for the Eranos Conference.[62] 

 

World Congress of Faiths

Hans-Hasso von Veltheim attended the Congress of Faiths (WCF) at the University of London in 1936, where Watts met Suzuki. WCF was organized as a successor to the Parliament of World’s the Religions Congress of 1893.[63] A Second Parliament of Religions was held in 1933 in Chicago, organized by Kedar Nath Das Gupta—a Bengali and friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and author of a History of Indian Philosophy—and Charles Weller. Das Gupta collaborated with Laurence Binyon (1869 – 1943), whose work on ancient Japanese and Chinese cultures inspired, among others, the poets Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. Binyon belonged to a circle of artists, as a regular patron of the Vienna Café in Oxford Street, that included William Rothenstein and Walter Sickert.[64] Gupta was involved in forming the Union of East and West in 1914, to promote better understanding and collaboration between India and the West. Together with Weller, he decided to merge Weller’s League of Neighbours and the Union of East and West to create The Fellowship of Faiths. In 1929, the Fellowship of Faiths arranged a meeting in Chicago, where it was suggested to hold a second parliament to coincide with the coming Second World Fair, which was already being planned for 1933.[65] Some three hundred people agreed to serve on the national committee of what then became The World Fellowship of Faiths (WFF). Weller and Das Gupta were the General Executives.[66]

Another source of influence for the founding of the WCF was the Wembley’s Conference of Living Religions, also called the Religions of Empire Conference, as part of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, but conducted at the Imperial Institute, in 1924.[67] The idea for the conference was first hatched in a letter from the theosophist, socialist, and Quaker-sympathizer William Loftus Hare (1868 – 1943) to Sir Denison Ross (1871 – 1940), director of the University of London’s School of Oriental Studies, and joint author of The Heart of Asia.[68] The Buddhist speakers, for example, were the Sri Lankans Dr de Silva, W. A. de Silva (1869 – 1942), who socialized with Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore and Lord Donoughmore; and Gunapala Malalasekera (1899 – 1973), who later became a Vice-President of WCF and Ceylon’s first Ambassador to the Soviet Union; and Shoson Miyamoto (1893 – 1983) who came from Japan. Speakers included a Parsi Zoroastrian, a Jain, a Sikh, Hindus, including both a member of the Arya Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj. There was a Sunni and also a Shiah Muslim speaker.[69] As Loftus Hare explained, from 1878 to 1881, the Arya Sama had attempted to attempted to partner with the Theosophical Society, “but differences of belief with regard to the personality of God, and other difficulties, made the arrangement unsatisfactory to both parties, and the alliance was dissolved.”[70]

Generating the most attention was Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad (1889 – 1965), the eldest son of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and leader of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. As soon he set out from India, newspapers started publishing the news about Mahmood Ahmad with his entourage. Abdul Rahim Nayyar (1883 – 1948), who was initially sent by the Mahmud Ahmad to London in 1919, appointed British convert Khalid Sheldrake as secretary to inform the British press and political figures about the upcoming visit.[71] In 1924, accompanied by twelve leading Ahmadis, Mirza Mahmood Ahmad visited various Middle Eastern and European countries, travelling from Port Saeed to Cairo and from there to Jerusalem, Haifa, Akka, Damascus and then Rome before arriving in London, where he led some 300 Muslims in a lengthy prayer outside the entrance of St Paul’s Cathedral. In London, he also laid the foundation stone of the Fazl Mosque, also known as The London Mosque, the first purpose-built mosque in London,  founded with the help of Khalid Sheldrake.[72] Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, founder of the Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, came all the way from India to deliver a speech on Islam. On Sufism, Khawaja’s son, Khwaja Nazir Ahmad (1897 – 1970), who was the Imam of Woking at the time, was to present a paper.[73]

Also generating significant attention at the 1924 conference was the Bahai movement, as there was much interest in the “new” religion.[74] It was originally hoped that Shoghi Effendi would attend, and in the event, he sent a paper which was read for him.[75] Ruhi Afnan, the grandson of Abdul Baha and Secretary of the Guardian of the Bahai Faith, did attend. Mirza Hussein Ali Irani, a follower of the Bahai faith, nearly dominated the Conference.[76] Avalonian Bahai Lady Blomfield participated in the conference. Mountfort Mills (1874 – 1949), a Bahai delegate from Canada, was especially invited to deliver an address.[77] As summarized by Walter Walsh (1857 – 1931), was a Scottish religious leader and peace activist, in his speech for the conference:

 

While the political leaders of the world—quite sincerely no doubt, for they are all terribly frightened—are striving to substitute for the old war-provoking “Balance of Power” a pacific League or “Concert of Nations,” it is for the religious leaders of mankind to create a Symphony or Sisterhood of Religions. That is the thing which presses. It calls for an early and far more representative Conference of Religions to consider the one vital question of the Peace of the World. I can think of no one better qualified to convene such a World-Conference of Religious Representatives than is the Head of the Bahá’í Movement, Shoghi Effendi.[78]

 

Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889 – 1982)—who was later to found The Men of the Trees, an international, non-profit, conservation organization, and was also to become a Vice-President of WCF—spoke about the religion of East Africa.[79] Baker, who was introduced to Bahaism at the conference, converted to the faith shortly after.[80] Baker set up a chapter of the Men of the Trees where he met and won the support of Shoghi Effendi, who became the first life member of the Men of the Trees in Palestine.[81] Speaking at the Religions of Empire Conference was Francis Younghusband, who led the British expedition in Tibet in 1904, and who was first president of the British chapter of the Men of the Trees.[82] Younghusband studied Eastern philosophy and Theosophy.[83] Derived from the influence of Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution, he developed a philosophy of cosmic spiritual evolution was outlined in his books Life in the Stars (1927) and The Living Universe (1933). With regards to the mission of the Bab, Younghusband wrote:

 

The story of the Báb… was the story of spiritual heroism unsurpassed… If a young man could, in only six years of ministry, by the sincerity of his purpose and the attraction of his personality, so inspire rich and poor, cultured and illiterate, alike with belief in himself and his doctrines that they would remain staunch though hunted down and without trial sentenced to death, sawn asunder, strangled, shot, blown from guns; and if men of high position and culture in Persia, Turkey and Egypt in numbers to this day adhere to his doctrines; his life must be one of those events in the last hundred years which is really worthy of study…[84]

 

With regard to the upcoming World Congress of Faiths in 1936, Younghusband wrote and invitation to Shoghi Effendi which stated, “Now I wish to ask a great favour of you. Once more I want to try and persuade you to come to England to attend the Congress. Your presence here would carry great influence and would be highly appreciated. And we would most willingly defray the expenses you might be put to.”[85] On September 11, 1934, representatives of the Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish faiths gathered at the Grace Episcopal Church, in New York, to celebrate the Jewish New Year under the sponsorship of the World Fellowship of Faiths (WFF). The list of speakers included the Rev. Charles S. Macfarland of the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram, Kedar Nath Das Gupta, Cai Tingkai of the Republic of China’s National Revolutionary Army, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi Israel Goldstein and the Rev. Theodore Parker Ferris. The FCC was the successor organization to the World Evangelical Alliance, founded Freemason Hall in London in 1846.[86] Rabbi Israel Goldstein (1896 – 1986) was head of the New York Board of Rabbis and the Jewish National Fund of America, and would eventually lead the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and American Jewish Congress (AJC). In 1927, Goldstein helped found the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which promoted a “National Brotherhood Day” in the 1930s. “The Christian church,” Rabbi Wise stated, “stands as a living token of the Western world’s indebtedness to the Jew.”[87]

Through discussions at the Second Parliament in 1933, the idea arose to have a further Congress in London in 1936. A number of international speakers were invited to the Congress, which sought to discuss spiritual matters. While the British National Chairman was Sir Francis Younghusband, the committee for the Congress was headed by the international president, Sayajirao Gaekwad III (1863 – 1939), the of Baroda State. Gaekwad was known to openly support the Indian National Congress (INC), but was awarded a GCIE in 1919, and represented his state of Baroda at the First Round Table Conference in London in 1930 and then the Second in  1931.[88] Other participants included Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888 – 1975), future president of India, and Abdullah Yusuf Ali, of the Woking Muslim Mission (WMM).[89] Shoghi Effendi, declined the invitation, but sent a paper on the “Ground Plan of World Fellowship” that was read for him.[90]

The 1936 event was attended by such scholars and members of the clergy Frank Russell Barry of Westminster Abbey, Halide Edib Adıvar from Turkey, and Rom Landau.[91] Halide Edib Adıvar (1884 – 1964) was a Pan-Turkist and several of her novels advocated for the Turanism movement, and some sources indicate that she had some responsibility during the Armenian genocide.[92] Landau was the author of the best-selling God is My Adventure (1935), a collection of his encounters with Hermann von Keyserling, Rudolf Steiner, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba, and Gurdjieff. Among those who have promised their co-operation either from the chair, as readers of papers or by opening debate are Aga Khan III; Sir E. Denison Ross, the first director of the University of London’s School of Oriental Studies; the Chief Rabbi; Nikolai Berdyaev; and Sir Abdul Qadir; and neo-Caliphate agent Mustafa al-Maraghi.[1] In 1901, Sir Abdul Qadir (1874 – 1950) launched the magazine Al-Makhzan, an Urdu language publication which published the early works of Muhammad Iqbal. Radhakrishnan and Gandhi’s book Mahatma Gandhi contains a chapter by Qadir. Louis Massignon, a scholar on Islam from the Sorbonne, also read a paper.[93]

Swiss Protestant theologian Adolf Keller (1872 – 1963), who was a delegate at the 1936 congress, wrote to his friend Carl Jung, “much talk of you at the Congress of Religions where Indian and Chinese delegates are taking part.”[94] Keller was also a friend of Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, and Albert Schweitzer. In 1919, he was invited by the Federal Council of the Churches (FCC) in America to visit the United States. “On this trip” wrote Keller,” I became one of the pioneers of what was to become the ecumenical movement.”[95] In 1920, he was among the co-founders of the ecumenical movement “Life and Work (for Practical Christianity),” which would become a constituent part of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948. The WCC grew out of the World Conference of Life and Work of 1925 in Stockholm, where Keller was elected as one of the two general secretaries. Keller moved to Geneva with his family in 1928, where developed a “leadership program” funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.[96] Again, it was Keller who was the chief instigator in the founding of the Swiss Protestant Council of Churches (SEK) in 1920, and he served this body as general secretary for many years The Inter-Church Aid which Keller had led from 1922 was incorporated into the provisional WCC in 1945.[97]

The Stockholm conference was held on the initiative of Church of Sweden archbishop Nathan Söderblom (1866 – 1931), under encouragement from his friend of Rudolf Otto, best known for his book The Idea of the Holy, to create an Inter-Religious League as a parallel to the League of Nations.[98] As early as 1913, Otto had conceived the idea of a Religiöser Menschheitbund (“Interreligious League of Mankind,” RMB) which would bring together representatives of all the world’s religions to work towards international peace. Under Otto’s leadership the RMB, established in 1920, flourished for a time and attracted participants from Asia and North America as well as many European countries. The RMB was dissolved in 1933 but was revived by Friedrich Heiler and Karl Küssner in 1956 and thereafter became the German branch of the World Congress of Faiths.[99]

 

World Government

The organizations leading the campaign to merge America into a world government included the Federal Union, Inc., Atlantic Union Committee, United World Federalists, and the World Fellowship of Faiths, later rebranded as the World Fellowship, Inc.[100] It was agreed that all who presented papers, acted as chairmen, or led discussion at the 1936 congress, should form a council, and that a continuation committee be appointed to determine next steps. The members then elected included Younghusband, the Zionist and High Commissioner for Palestine Sir Herbert Samuel, Radhakrishnan, H.N. Spalding and Sir Abdul Qadir, with Arthur Jackman as secretary.[101] Jackman had close links with the Theosophical Society.[102] The Chairman suggested that the next Congress might be in Oxford.[103] After the success of the 1936 Congress, the WFF based in the England decided to break away from the American parent organization and ran annual congresses such as in Oxford in 1937, Cambridge in 1938, and Paris in 1939.[104] In 1929, WFF had founded an inter-religious organization, bringing together the League of Neighbors, the Union of East and West, and Fellowship of Faiths.[105] The “World’s Need of Religion” was the subject of the WFF Congress of Faiths held at Oxford at Balliol and Somerville Colleges from July 23-27, 1937, which was a continuation of the Congress held in London in 1936.[106]

Also in 1937, at the urging of Reverend Roswell Parkhurst Barnes (1901 – 1990), his family minister, and one of the leaders in the movement that created the WCC, John Foster Dulles attended the second Conference of the “Life and Work” branch of the Ecumenical Movement that was held at Oxford under the title of “Church, Community, and State,” from July 12–26.[107] According to Samuel Cavert (1888 – 1976), onetime General Secretary of the FCC, the conference was devoted to the idea that “the churches of the different nations have a basic spiritual unity that transcends their national relationships.”[108] In 1937, the Life and Work Conference at Oxford and the Faith and Order Conference at Edinburgh, a plan to create one council was accepted. A conference of church leaders subsequently met in 1938 in Utrecht, to prepare a constitution, but World War II intervened, and the first assembly of the WCC could not be held until 1948.[109]

While in New York in 1936, J.H. Oldham (1874 – 1969), secretary of the Commission of Research of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work and a leading British churchman, met Dulles and invited him to write one of the preparatory papers for the conference.[110] In later work, Oldham was influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach and Martin Buber.[111] After the Oxford conference, Dulles’ reputation as a churchman and an international lawyer became intertwined, growing his influence and prestige.[112] In the weeks after the false peace of the Munich Agreement, a treaty signed in 1938 that allowed Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia, Dulles outlined his basic analysis of the causes of the war in a book entitled War, Peace and Change, in which he argued for the need for change in international relations. Mankind, he believed, required a religion devotion, which he hoped might eventually dilute the growing nationalism of the twentieth century and thus reduce the degree of violence happening around the world.

In February 1940, Dulles attended an FCC-sponsored National Study Conference on “The Churches and the International Situation,” held in Philadelphia. As summarized by Albert N. Keim:

 

The war, he argued, was a result of international irresponsibility on the part of all the sovereign states. The need now was to attempt to find a new solution to that problem. The solution was the Wilsonian program: the internationalizing of colonial areas, the assumption by industrial nations of responsibility for the effect of their monetary and trade activity, the creation of an international court to settle disputes, and the acceptance of the idea of collective security. The obstacles to such a program were twofold: the elevation of the personified state to the level of a quasi-deity and the exaggerated sense of moral superiority held by the contending nation-states. The churches could help to solve both problems by reasserting the supremacy of God, thereby diluting the virulent statism of the times.[113]

 

At the outset of World War II, the Protestant churches created a Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, to give expression to the post-war goals and hopes of American Protestantism. Dulles was chairman of the commission, which included Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971), professor at Union Theological Seminary (UTS), and two of its future presidents, John Coleman Bennett (1962 – 1963), and Henry Van Dusen (1897 – 1975), as well as many other leading Protestants.[114] In 1933, Van Dusen organized the Theological Discussion Group, a seminar for younger theologians, that included such members as Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (1886 – 1965), another admirer of Rudolf Otto.[115] Tillich, a member of Keyserling’s School of Wisdom and eventual speaker at Eranos, was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher and Lutheran Protestant theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century.[116] From 1924 to 1925, Tillich served as a Professor of Theology at the University of Marburg, where he met and developed a relationship with Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger.[117] When Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933, Tillich was dismissed from his position at the University of Frankfurt, Niebuhr travelled to Germany and convinced him to join the faculty at UTS. There has, however, been criticism of Tillich as belonging to the “Conservative Revolution” and for having anti-democratic ideas.[118]

In June 1941, Dulles, now actively in charge of the FCC’s newly formed Commission, invited a group of European refugees, including Jacques Maritain, H.K. Hambro, Joseph Hromadka, and Adolf Keller, to a commission meeting, for the purpose of preparing a new FCC statement on the international situation.[119] Josef Hromádka (1889 – 1969) member from its foundation in 1918 of the unified Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB), eventual member of the WCC. The ECCB was established in 1918 by the unification of all Lutheran and Calvinist churches in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. It was intended to be a successor of the Unity of the Brethren, originating with Jan Hus, and which was partially renewed outside of Czech territory in the 1720s as the Moravian Church. It was during his time with Action Française that Jacques Maritain (1882 – 1973) made the acquaintance of his close friend, Jean Cocteau.[120] In his early twenties, Cocteau had become associated with Ernst Jünger, Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès. In 1904, Maritain married Raïssa Oumançoff, a Russian Jewish émigré. They underwent a spiritual crisis which was resolved when they attended the lectures of Henri Bergson at the Collège de France. Bergson’s critique of scientism dissolved their intellectual despair and instilled in them “the sense of the absolute.”[121] They converted to the Catholic faith in 1906. Maritain was a friend and supporter of René Guénon, with whom he corresponded frequently on philosophy and metaphysics.[122]

In a Chairman’s letter, Younghusband quoted words from Henri Bergson: “God common to all mankind, the mere vision of Whom, could all men but attain it, would mean the immediate abolition of war.”[123]As World War II broke out, Younghusband and others began planning a Conference which they hoped would be held in the Hague in 1940. At the beginning of the first Chairman’s Circular letter, Younghusband wrote:

 

Now in fact is our great opportunity. Now is when we are most needed. Lord Halifax spoke of building an international order based on mutual understanding and mutual confidence. And on the day of National Prayer the King and his people prayed that the nations of the world might be united in a firmer fellowship for the good of all mankind. Now you will remember that to create that firmer fellowship between nations and individuals has been our one great object from the very first. Here we are, an organisation already in being designed especially to carry out the precise object which our Government have in distant view.[124]

 

Younghusband insisted that a religious basis was essential for the new World Order. “No reconstituted League of Nations,” he stated, “will be of the slightest avail unless it is inspired by an irresistible spiritual impulse.” In his Chairman’s letter, he refers to the efforts of Rudolf Otto. Younghusband invited Rabbi Salzberger, Rabbi until 1939 of Frankfurt’s Westend-Synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis on Kristallnacht, and who had known Rudolf Otto, to speak to the Members’ Meeting in April. A subsequent letter refers to a book by Professor Norman Bentwich (1883 – 1971)—the British-appointed attorney-general of Mandatory Palestine and a lifelong Zionist—called The Religious Foundation of Internationalism, in which Bentwich expounded in detail the idea of a League of Religions. At a subsequent meeting, Bentwich said the idea had a long history, tracing it to Leibnitz Rousseau. Bentwich maintained an interest in World Congress of Faith, as did his brother, Joseph Bentwich (1902 – 1982), who settled in Israel.[125] Unable to meet in the Hague, the 1940 conference was held at Bedford College, London. Its theme was “The Common Spiritual Basis for International Order.” Speakers included Herbert Samuel, Bishop Bell of Chichester, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, and Joseph Hertz (1872 – 1946) Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, who was the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA). Hertz expressed “his deep conviction that without a common spiritual basis for International Order we shall all be labouring in vain.”[126] Lord Zetland, he served as Secretary of State for India in the late 1930s, presided at the inaugural meeting and stressed the need for “a spirit of religious unity.”[127]

In 1940, Clarence Streit (1896 – 1986), together with Percival F. Brundage (1892 – 1979, an American accountant who later served as the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget for Eisenhower; and Melvin Ryder (1893 – 1979), publisher of the Army Times, formed Federal Union, Inc., to work for the goals outlined in Streit’s book, Union Now, published the year before. In 1929, Streit was foreign correspondent for The New York Times, covering League of Nations in Geneva, where he witnessed the League’s slow demise. That experience, coupled with the emergence of totalitarianism in Europe, caused him to write Union Now, which proposed a federal union of democracies, modeled on American federalism. The book, which was published in 1939, eventually sold more than 300,000 copies by 1972.[128]

In late 1941, the WFF changed its name again and incorporated as World Fellowship, Inc. (WFI). The WFI presented a Joint Resolution which urged Congress to adopt on or before January 30, 1942—as a birthday present to President Franklin D. Roosevelt:  “That the Congress of the United States of America does hereby solemnly declare that all peoples of the earth should now be united in a commonwealth of nations to be known as the United Nations of the World.” Congress rejected the world-government resolutions urged upon it in 1942 by WFI and by Federal Union, Inc.[129] On January 5, 1942, Streit’s Federal Union, Inc. bought advertising space in major newspapers for a petition urging the US Congress to adopt a joint resolution favoring immediate union of the United States with several specified foreign nations. Signing the ad were such people as Harold L. Ickes (1874 – 1952) was responsible for implementing much of Roosevelt’s New Deal and had been the president of the Chicago NAACP; Owen J. Roberts (1875 – 1955), an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; and John Foster Dulles, who actually wrote the petition.[130]

 

 


[1] Robert. H Stockman. The World of the Baháʼí Faith (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), p. 469.

[2] Ibid., pp. 353–354.

[3] Ibid., p. 357.

[4] Victor E. Marsden (trans). Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Protocol 14.

[5] Steven M. Wasserstrom. “Defeating Evil from Within: Comparative Perspectives on “Redemption Through Sin.” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Vol. 6 (1997), p. 50.

[6] Ibid. p. 51.

[7] Hakl. Eranos, p. 49.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Harry Oldmeadow. “Rudolf Otto, The East And Religious Inclusivism.” In Religion and Retributive Logic (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010), p. 240.

[11] Hakl. Eranos, p. 50.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., p. 79.

[14] Hans-Christian Brandenburg & Rudolf Daur. Die Brücke zu Köngen. Fünfzig Jahre Bund der Köngener (Stuttgart, 1970).

[15] Petteri Pietikainen. “The Volk and Its Unconscious: Jung, Hauer, and the ‘German Revolution’.” Journal of Contemporary History 35, No. 4, p. 527.

[16] Hakl. Eranos, p. 85.

[17] Ibid

[18] Ibid., p. 87.

[19] Ibid., p. 98.

[20] Karl Klaus Walther. Hans Hasso von Veltheim: Eine Biographie (Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2005), p. 152-153.

[21] Ibid., p. 30.

[22] Franz Wegener. Alfred Schuler, der letzte deutsche Katharer. Gnosis, Nationalsozialismus und mystische Blutleuchte (Gladbeck 2003), p. 13.

[23] Carlson. Under Cover, pp, 457-460.

[24] John Palatini. “The Grave-altar-chapel of Hans-Hasso von Veltheim.” In: Reinhold Fäth, Peter Voda (ed.). The Aenigma Constellation – One Hundred Years of Anthroposophical Art (Prag: Arbor vitae, 2015), p. 333.

[25] Alexander von Bernus. “Meine Begegnung mit Karl Wolfskehl.” In: Die Wandlung. Eine Monatsschrift, Vol. 3 (1948), p. 416

[26] Palatini. “The Grave-altar-chapel of Hans-Hasso von Veltheim,” p. 334.

[27] Karl Klaus Walther. Hans Hasso von Veltheim: Eine Biographie (Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2005), pp. 255–266.

[28] Palatini. “The Grave-altar-chapel of Hans-Hasso von Veltheim,” p. 334.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Walther. Hans Hasso von Veltheim, p. 259.

[31] Petra Wilhelmy. Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert (1780–1914). (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), p. 586.

[32] Ursula Herking. Danke für die Blumen: damals, gestern, heute (München/Gütersloh/Wien 1973).

[33] Stottmeister. Der George-Kreis und die Theosophie, p. 317, n. 7.

[34] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 57, n. 26.

[35] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 57, n. 26.

[36] “Eleonora von Mendelssohn: The Tragic Diva.” The Mendelssohns Society. Retrieved from https://www.mendelssohn-gesellschaft.de/en/mendelssohns/biografien/eleonora-von-mendelssohn

[37] “Eleonora von Mendelssohn: The Tragic Diva.” The Mendelssohns Society. Retrieved from https://www.mendelssohn-gesellschaft.de/en/mendelssohns/biografien/eleonora-von-mendelssohn

[38] “Max Reinhardt: The man who ‘invented’ modern theatre direction.” Royal Opera House (June 26, 2014). Retrieved from https://www.roh.org.uk/news/max-reinhardt-the-man-that-invented-modern-theatre-direction

[39] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 68.

[40] Hakl. Eranos, p. 158.

[41] Stephen Flowers. Fire & Ice - The History, Structure and Rituals of Germany’s Most Influential Modern Magical Order: The Brotherhood of Saturn (Llewellyn Publ. 1994), p. xv.

[42] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 68.

[43] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 74.

[44] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 75.

[45] Alexandra Nagel. “The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein’s Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic.” Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, 9: 1 (2021), p. 75.

[46] Udo von Alvensleben. “Hans Hasso von Veltheim-Ostrau.” In: Harald von Koenigswald (ed.). Besuche vor dem Untergang, Adelssitze zwischen Altmark und Masuren (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin 1968), p. 144.

[47] Hakl. Eranos, p. 194.

[48] Ibid., p. 52.

[49] Rick Fields. How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (Shambhala Publications, 1992), pp. 126-7

[50] D.T. Suzuki. Swedenborg: Buddha of the North (West Chester, Pa.: Swedenborg Foundation, 1996).

[51] Thomas A. Tweed. “American Occultism and Japanese Buddhism: Albert J. Edmunds, D.T. Suzuki, and Translocative History.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 32: 2 (2005), p. 256.

[52] Kenta Kasai. “Theosophy and Related Movements in Japan.” In Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012), p. 437.

[53] Tweed. “American Occultism and Japanese Buddhism: Albert J. Edmunds, D.T. Suzuki, and Translocative History,” p. 256.

[54] Ibid., pp. 256–257.

[55] Gerhard Wehr. Karlfried Graf Dürckheim: Leben im Zeichen der Wandlung (Freiburg, 1996), p. 75.

[56] Levenda. The Hitler Legacy.

[57] Alan W. Watts. In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915–1965 (Vintage, 1973), p. 321.

[58] Andrew Rigby. “Training for cosmopolitan citizenship in the 1930s: The project of Dimitrije Mitrinovic.” Peace & Change, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 1999, p. 389.

[59] Hakl. Eranos, p. 109.

[60] Ibid., p. 131.

[61] Wasserstrom. “Defeating Evil from Within,” p. 49.

[62] Hakl. Eranos, p. 196.

[63] “World Congress of Faiths.” Making Britain. Retrieved from https://www5.open.ac.uk/research-projects/making-britain/content/world-congress-faiths

[64] “Binyon, Laurence.” Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved from https://arthistorians.info/binyonl

[65] Marcus Braybrooke DD. “1. Beginnings.” A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996 by Marcus Braybrooke (Religion Online). Retrieved from https://www.oldsite.religion-online.org/showchapterba96.html?title=3378&C=2771

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Thomas Albert Howard. “‘A Remarkable Gathering’: The Conference on Living Religions within the British Empire (1924) and Its Historical Significance.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 86: 1 (2018), p. 131.

[69] Braybrooke DD. “1. Beginnings.”

[70] Hare William Loftus. Religions Of The Empire (London: Duckworth, 1925), p. 276.

[71] “A journey of divine fortune and grace: Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II’s tour of Europe 1924.” Al Hakam (June 7, 2024). Retrieved from https://www.alhakam.org/a-journey-of-divine-fortune-and-grace-hazrat-khalifatul-masih-iis-tour-of-europe-1924/

[72] “A Brief History of Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam: First Journey to London.” Alislam. Retrieved from http://www.alislam.org/library/history/ahmadiyya/61.html

[73] “A journey of divine fortune and grace: Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II’s tour of Europe 1924.”

[74] Braybrooke DD. “1. Beginnings.”

[75] Ibid.

[76] “A journey of divine fortune and grace: Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II’s tour of Europe 1924.”

[77] Ibid.

[78] Walter Walsh. “Living Religions and the Bahai Movement.” The Bahá’í World, Vol II (Wilmette, Illinois: Bahai Publishing Trust), p. 247.

[79] Braybrooke DD. “1. Beginnings.”

[80] Hugh C. Locke. “Richard St. Barbe Baker, O.B.E. 1889-1982.” The Baháʼí World, Vol. XVIII. (Baháʼí World Centre, Universal House of Justice, 1986). pp. 802–804. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030816022018/http://bahai-library.org/books/bw18/800-825.html

[81] “Man of the Trees.” The Bahai World (November 6, 2018). Retrieved from https://bahaiworld.bahai.org/library/man-of-the-trees/

[82] Braybrooke DD. “1. Beginnings.”

[83] Peter J. Bowler. Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 391–393.

[84] The Gleam (1923); Cited in “The Bábí Movement — Some contemporary appreciations.” The Bahai Faith. Retrieved from https://www.bahai.org/documents/essays/various/the-bab-appreciations

[85] Rúhíyyih Khánum. The Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith (London: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1988). Retrieved from https://bahai-library.com/khanum_guardian_bahai_faith&chapter=all

[86] Richard D. Challener & John M. Fenton. “Recent Past Comes Alive in John Foster Dulles ’08 ‘Oral History’.” Princeton Alumni Weekly (March 14, 1967). Retrieved from https://paw.princeton.edu/article/recent-past-comes-alive-john-foster-dulles-08-oral-history

[87] “Religions Unite at Grace Church for New Year.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (September 12, 1934). Retrieved from https://www.jta.org/archive/religions-unite-at-grace-church-for-new-year

[88] “Sayaji Rao.” Making Britain. Retrieved from https://www5.open.ac.uk/research-projects/making-britain/content/sayaji-rao

[89] “World Congress of Faiths.” Making Britain.

[90] Marcus Braybrooke. “A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996.” 3. World Fellowship Through Religion: The 1936 Congress (Religion Online). Retrieved from https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/3-world-fellowship-through-religion-the-1936-congress/

[91] Tomoe Moriya “D.T. Suzuki at the World Congress of Faiths in 1936: An Analysis of His Presentation at the Interfaith Conference.” Journal of Religion in Japan, 10: 2-3 (2021), p. 135-160.

[92] Harriet Julia Fisher. “Adana. Inquiry Document 813.” In James L. Barton (ed.). Turkish Atrocities: Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915–1917 (Gomidas Institute, Ann Arbor. 1998), p. 164.

[93] Marcus Braybrooke. “A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996.” 3. World Fellowship Through Religion.

[94] Marianne Jehle-Wilderberger. On Theology and Psychology: A Conrespondence. C.G. Jung and Adolf Keller (Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 121.

[95] Ibid., p. 67.

[96] Ibid., p. 67.

[97] Ibid., p. 134, n. 84.

[98] Harry Oldmeadow. “Rudolf Otto, The East And Religious Inclusivism.” In Religion and Retributive Logic (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010), p. 240.

[99] Ibid.

[100] Dan Smoot. The Invisible Government (The Dan Smoot Report, 1962). Retrieved from https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=smoot&book=invisible&readAll=true

[101] “World Fellowship.” Nature, 138, 155 (1936). Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/138155c0

[102] Marcus Braybrooke. “A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996.” Religion Online. Retrieved from https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/3-world-fellowship-through-religion-the-1936-congress/

[103] Marcus Braybrooke. “4. Hoping for a New World Order in the Midst of War: 1936-1942.” A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996 (Religion Online). Retrieved from https://www.oldsite.religion-online.org/showchapterf867.html?title=3378&C=2774

[104] “World Congress of Faiths.” Making Britain.

[105] “About WFC.” World Fellowship Center. Retrieved from https://worldfellowship.org/about-wfc/

[106] Braybrooke. “4. Hoping for a New World Order in the Midst of War: 1936-1942.”(Religion Online). Retrieved from https://www.oldsite.religion-online.org/showchapterf867.html?title=3378&C=2774

[107] Richard D. Challener & John M. Fenton. “Recent Past Comes Alive in John Foster Dulles ’08 ‘Oral History’.” Princeton Alumni Weekly (March 14, 1967). Retrieved from https://paw.princeton.edu/article/recent-past-comes-alive-john-foster-dulles-08-oral-history

[108] Ibid.

[109] Editors. “World Council of Churches.” Encyclopedia Britannica (January 30, 2025). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Council-of-Churches.

[110] Albert N. Keim. “John Foster Dulles and the Protestant World Order Movement on the Eve of World War II.” Journal of Church and State, 21: 1 (1979), p. 73–74.

[111] J.H. Oldham. Life Is Commitment (1959). Retrieved from http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Sui-Generis/Berdyaev/essays/lic.htm

[112] Keim. “John Foster Dulles and the Protestant World Order Movement on the Eve of World War II,” p. 76.

[113] Ibid., p. 81.

[114] Richard D. Challener & John M. Fenton. “Recent Past Comes Alive in John Foster Dulles ’08 ‘Oral History’.” Princeton Alumni Weekly (March 14, 1967). Retrieved from https://paw.princeton.edu/article/recent-past-comes-alive-john-foster-dulles-08-oral-history

[115] Mark Edwards. “The ‘Ecumenical Statesman’: Henry Pitney Van Dusen.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle, 71: 1 (2009), p. 39.

[116] Ted Peters & Carl E. Braaten (ed.). A map of twentieth-century theology: readings from Karl Barth to radical pluralism (Fortress Press, 1995).

[117] Hue Woodson. Heideggerian Theologies: The Pathmarks of John Macquarrie, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Karl Rahner (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2018), pp. 94–107.

[118] Hakl. Eranos, p. 368 n. 297.

[119] Keim. “John Foster Dulles and the Protestant World Order Movement on the Eve of World War II,” p. 87.

[120] Richard Francis Crane. “Surviving Maurras: Jacques Maritain’s Jewish Question.” Patterns of Prejudice (Vol. 42 , Iss. 4-5, 2008).

[121] Martha Hanna. The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers During the Great War (Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 39.

[122] Robin Waterfield. René Guénon and the Future of the West: The Life and Writings of a 20th-Century Metaphysician (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2002) p. 36.

[123] Braybrooke. “4. Hoping for a New World Order in the Midst of War: 1936-1942.”

[124] Ibid.

[125] Ibid.

[126] Ibid.

[127] Ibid.

[128] Warren F. Kuehl and Lynne K. Dunn. Keeping the Covenant: American Internationalists and the League of Nations, 1920-1939 (Kent State University Press, 1997), pp. 102-03.

[129] Dan Smoot. The Invisible Government (The Dan Smoot Report, 1962). Retrieved from https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=smoot&book=invisible&readAll=true

[130] Ibid.

Divide & Conquer