Tibetan Buddhist Sand Mandela. Photo by QCT
It’s a great “social gathering”, said the Dalai Lama in his address to the closing plenary of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Melbourne from 3 to 9 December 2009 – “but,” he continued, “not very active.” He called for more attention to “implementation,” encouraging participants and organizers to take stock of progress at the next Parliament.
His words echoed those of Uncle Bob Randell of the Yankunytjatjara people, one of the listed traditional owners of Uluru. Uncle Bob challenged us all to be serious about addressing poverty and the environmental crisis if we are “real” about our faiths.
For most participants, steeped as they are in consumerist conditioning, the pattern of listening to panel after panel, with the occasional question from the floor, would have seemed normal. I believe, however, that as valuable as the many contributions were, there were some missed opportunities. It is to be hoped that future parliaments will take on a genuinely workshop character in which models, e.g. for interfaith education, can be initiated at the event itself, or that the sessions at least allow more active participation through techniques such as role play.
Inter-Faith Action in Africa
And yet many of the presentations showed us priceless examples of interfaith cooperation. I attended a session entitled “Interfaith and the future of Africa” and learned there about the Inter-Faith Action for Peace in Africa, which organizes interventions in diverse situations of conflict in Africa. The founder is Rev. Dr. Ismael Noko, President of the Lutheran World Federation. At different times since 2002 representatives of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Bahai Faith and the African Traditional religion have shown a joint presence in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya, Togo and other countries. In Liberia, women donned white T-shirts and staged a protest in front of the government building, thus helping to open up the path to a peace process. In Kenya faith representatives visited the warring fractions in areas hit by violence associated with the election and asked people why they were fighting. People then realized they were fighting someone else’s war, and according to Prabhudas Pattni, General Secretary for the Hindu Council of Africa, the violence then died down.
IFAPA was acknowledged at the Parliament by being granted the Paul Carus Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Interreligious Movement. This award comes with a sum of USD $100,000, no doubt a very welcome contribution to the work of IFAPA.
Colourful spirituality
Five hundred volunteers had been recruited for the Parliament by the local organizers – a mammoth task. For the most part the organization worked very well in the new Melbourne Convention Centre. A total of approximately 1500 events were hosted, including a number of very large plenaries with multiple and diverse performances. It was fascinating to watch Dervish dancers whirling in their white costumes and Balinese mythical figures prancing across the stage. There were in fact many expressions of spirituality in music, dance and visual symbolism. One of the most powerful visual expressions of meditation and the sheer joy of colour was the sacred sand mandala constructed in painstaking work over several days by the Tibetan Buddhist monks of the Gyuto Tantric University. On the last day, upon completion of the mandala, the monks led a procession down to the Yarra River, into which the mandala was poured. It was a good reminder not to clench our fingers around the things we create, no matter how much love and skill we invest in them.
The first Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in 1893 in Chicago. It is an amazing fact that as early as the nineteenth century faith representatives saw the need to link hands and hearts for peace. The next Parliament was held 100 years later, again in Chicago. Then followed Cape Town (1999) and Barcelona (2004). Now Melbourne will be added to the list.
The themes
“Make a World of Difference: Hearing each other, Healing the earth” – that was the title of the 2009 Parliament. Subthemes highlighted urgent global issues: Healing the Earth, Overcoming Poverty, Indigenous People, Food and Water, Building Peace in the Pursuit of Justice, Creating Social Cohesion, Sharing Wisdom. Panels, workshops, films and talks were the predominant formats, with different spiritual and creative spaces provided in the morning meditations and “open spaces” of the late afternoon, then the evening plenaries.
Message to Copenhagen.
Photo by QCT
With the beginning of the climate summit in Copenhagen coinciding with the Parliament, climate change and our links to the earth were bound to play a prominent role. A message was sent to Copenhagen urging the negotiators to act decisively. It was signed by many participants. In one session Mary Evelyn Tucker, a leading lecturer and scholar at Yale University in the fields of theology and environmental studies and member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment (UN), emphasized that conferences on climate change were waiting for religions to speak, since moral and ethical transformation was seen to be the greatest challenge of all.
Ethics took centre stage in many sessions, not just due to the contributions of Prof. Hans Kung. Globethics.net is an ethics initiative begun in Switzerland, while the Charter for Compassion also received considerable attention.
Indigenous participation
For the first time Indigenous peoples were encouraged to take part in the Parliament on a broad scale. I was moved by the contribution of some Ngarinyin people from the Kimberley, not to mention the words of senior Wurundjeri elder, Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, in several plenaries, among other Australian Indigenous contributions. However, it was puzzling that the organizers had allowed for several workshops featuring non-Australian Indigenous presenters, with the Australian presenters holding separate sessions. There seemed to be little opportunity for connection between them.
QCT hopes to include more information about individual events at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, including several events focussing on women and faith, in the coming months.
To view photos and videos, as well as to find out more about the content of the 2009 Parliament, click here.
See also the ABC Religion and Ethics website. Note that at least two programmes on Radio National will be devoted to this theme on Sunday, 20th December. 2009.
