Re: Another little Baha'i cuckoo trick.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> in article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Susan Maneck
> at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 27/11/03 8:09 pm:
>
> >>
> >>> Bahaism does not believe in Religious pluralism. like the World
> >>> parliament of religions (founded 1893 ) does.
> >>>
> >
> > As usual George, you don't know what you are talking about. The first World
> > Parliament of Religions was dominated by missionaries who believed their
> > religion was the only way. Read Jessup's entire talk, rather than just the
> > snippet on Baha'u'llah and you will see what I mean. The missionaries were
> > rather appalled to see people like Vivekananda included.
>
> Were is the evidence for this?  Or is that your usual spin  about
> something Baha'is  had no control over? Since when did Unitarian
> missionaries believe their religion was the only way?  The world
> Parliament of religions in 1893 was organised by Unitarians, who Abdul
> Baha was only to happy to befriend and use their churches to give his
> talks when he visited the west in
> 1912..................................Errol
>
> The 1893 Parliament had marked the first formal gathering of
> representatives of eastern and western spiritual traditions. Today it
> is recognized as the occasion of the birth of formal interreligious
> dialogue worldwide.            http://www.cpwr.org/who/history.htm

Sure, the WPR at the Columbian Exposition _did_ mark the birth of the modern
inter-religious dialog movement.  Even so, some of the missionaries are not happy
w/ it.

xxx from The Trojan Horse in the Temple xxxxxxx
It is important for us to realise that the process leading from the World
Missionary Conference in 1910 to the formation of the World Council of Churches
and its offspring did not develop in a vacuum. In September 1893, only seventeen
years before the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, the First Parliament
of World Religions was held in Chicago. Virtually every religion in the world was
represented there. To demonstrate the ‘ecumenical’ nature of this gathering, John
Henry Barrow, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Chicago, was head of the
organising committee, while the proceedings were opened with the Lord’s Prayer by
the Roman Catholic Cardinal Gibbons. For seventeen days the Parliament continued,
as 140,000 visitors were exposed for the first time to the teachings of Eastern
religion. The importance of this event for the development of syncretism can be
seen in the fact that one occultist organisation, the Theosophical Society,
rejoiced in this Parliament as being a fulfilment of its aims and ‘distinctly a
Theosophical step’.  During this gathering, there can be no doubt that the star
of the show was the Hindu mystic, Swami Vivekananda (1862-1902), who came over
from India with a deliberate missionary objective. His influence on the
subsequent development of interfaith dialogue cannot be over-estimated. As one
writer has put it:
    ‘It is true that Emerson and others had paved the way towards “transcendental
religion”, but it was left to Vivekananda to give this idea a practical
application for people of widely divergent opinions and temperaments’.
    In his blasphemous book, The Sea of Faith, the Anglican priest Don Cuppitt
writes approvingly of Vivekananda, while informing us of the significant fact
that
    ‘Two of his doctrines became part of the consciousness of the West. He spread
the idea that all religions are one, treading different paths to the same
goal...the union and indeed the identity of the soul with God. Secondly, he
rejected the Christian idea of sin, and taught that by living a virtuous life you
can realise God in yourself ’.
    In the same section of his book, Cupitt had also spoken approvingly of
theosophist Annie Besant and her Society’s ‘dreams of founding a universal Church
of Man that would draw together socialists, radical Christians and
freethinkers’.32 Is it conceivable that Christians — who have a commission from
Christ to evangelise the unbelieving nations (Matthew 28:19), and who know that
salvation cannot be attained through personal endeavour (Ephesians 2:8-10) —
could have a genuine ‘dialogue’ with those who hold such antichristian beliefs?
xxxxxxxx end of quotation xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 http://www.diakrisis.org/The%20Trojan%20Horse%20in%20the%20Temple.pdf

I would not say that a parliament has a belief, though.  Though parliaments may
pass motions which would indicate their corporate opinion, I don't think this was
that sort of parliament.

Best wishes!
- Pat
kohli at ameritel.net