ARTICLES

Re-Building Babel

IS UNITED RELIGIONS RELIGIOUS?

By George Neumayr

United Religions, an organization headquartered in San Francisco's Presidio, is neither unifying nor religious, say critics. "It is going to divide the Catholic Church," warns Tal Brooke, president of the Spiritual Counterfeits project, a nondenominational think tank in Berkeley. "You guys should be worried about this.... It is man-centered, Babel-building.... It is cosmic ecumenism; it is not true ecumenism."

Formed as an idea in 1993, United Religions exists to form a "global soul" through the creation of a "safe space for spiritual partnerships in which the people of the world pursue justice, healing, and peace, with reverence for all life," says its official literature.

The organization's name and inspiration derive from the United Nations, according to its founder William Swing, a San Francisco Episcopalian bishop. "Three and a half years ago, a telephone call arrived in San Francisco from the United Nations asking if we, at Grace Cathedral, would host a great interfaith worship service honoring the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the U.N. Charter in our city," Swing told a Dallas audience in 1996. "The experience inspired the thought of a United Nations-style organization for the world's religions.... I got out of bed the next day determined to commit the rest of my life to an initiative that would create a United Religions which would, in appropriately spiriutal ways, parallel the United Nations."

Today, United Religions enjoys considerable support globally, thanks to an assortment of Catholic officials (three locals serve on its board: Father Gerard O'Rourke, the director of ecumenical affairs for the San Francisco archdiocese, Father John Lo Schiavo, chancellor of the University of San Francisco, and Deacon William Mitchell), mainline Protestants, Reform Jews, New Age enthusiasts, and "California pagans," as the San Francisco Chronicle puts it. Its roster of secular allies include: pro-euthanasia George Soros, whose foundation donated $20,000 to the United Religion's youth branch, Dee Hock, the creator of Visa, and the pro-population-control Gorbachev Foundation.

United Religions has held conferences and summits on five continents, leading to a draft charter, which states five issues as priorities of the organization: ending "relgious violence," promoting "sustainable, just economics," advancing "ecological imperatives," nurturing a "culture of healing and peace," and "sharing the wisdom and cultures of faith traditions."

According to Bishop Swing, promoting a traditional understanding of God is not a purpose of the organization. "I don't think we will ever agree on the theology," he has said, emphasizing the need to honor all spiritual approaches. ("I doubt if we're going to spend a lot of time talking about theology or prayer," he said of an early United Religions meeting; more recently, however, he said that the organization needs to find "spiritual momentum.") Nor does it appear that the United Religons will promote traditional morality. Abortion, for example, is a taboo subject for the organization, Swing has said.

What is being emphasized by supporters of the United Religons is the need for a new "spirituality," one which goes beyond traditional religion.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, who participated on the United Religion's "Organizational and Design Research and Development team," is an exponent of this movement. In a work called "Conscious Evolution," she writes that "When our potential is fully realized we can foresee that there will be no more 'religion' as we know it."

Hubbard argues that the new religion "will be what Sidney Lanier calls the 'sovereign person,' free-standing and responsible, freely joining with others in love to co-create a new world.... Each of us will experience ourself as a unique expression of the Creative Intelligence, a vital member of the whole, expressing his or her creativity in unique vocations that evolve ourselves and our world. As whole persons, we will embody the Tao of Taoism, the unitive state of Hinduism, the enlightenment of the Buddha, the godlike capacities of Christ for love, healing, resurrection and ascension in new bodies. We will be advanced beings 'ourselves,' as were the founders of each great religion."

Bishop Swing has described the United Religions as a historical inevitability -- the next plateau in human living: "Humanity has always stretched to find its soul in new and foreign settings. The reason that religions are so impotent today in the face of this brand new, emerging global civilization, is because religions have shrunk from the challenge of discovering a common voice, a global voice. Young people know this in their deepest being."

Traditional religion has failed the young, owing to its narrowness, according to Swing: "They are moving into this global civilization with all of its contradictions and challenges, realizing the cowardice and quiet of the religions in their abandonment of the global family in favor of exclusivity of parochial families. Religions gave birth to a world they orphaned when the world grew up. They have become deadbeat fathers and mothers while their modern children walk around trying to piece enough religion together to make decisions about the future. They add a little yoga to the words of The Prophet. A little Catechism to a little Dharma. They will find their way eventually because humanity has always stretched to find its soul in new and foreign settings. One way or another, in Bangalore or in your grandchild, a United Religion will happen."

Dr. Jim Garrison, the director of the Gorbachev Foundation (which co-sponsored a United Religions event in 1996), has argued that the world's new religion must bypass religious traditionalists. "One of the things I find very exciting about spirituality in the world today is that it is disengaged from religion. Religious orthodoxy is becoming less and less relevant to more and more people," says Dr. Garrison. "I think that Judaism and Christianity and Islam have done real damage to the planet because they have too many answers. I prefer to live in the questions.... I believe deeply in the Christian truths, but I think that they are partial. I think it's important that whatever we conceive of as God is the God of the whole not God of the part."

"The deepest issue around the world today is the global crisis of the spirit and search for meaning.... There is a malaise, there's an alienation, people have no sense of calling. People know that whatever doctrines they were taught when they were young aren't relevant to the 21st Century.... In an age when women are being liberated, how can the Pope be excluding women from the priesthood and talking about contraception as an evil...it makes no theological sense."

To create an effective new religion, according to Garrison, people need to say: "If my theology is an impediment I have to get rid of my theology." Skepticism, not religious certitude, should be the basis of world peace: "I think the world needs to live in a spirit of inquiry and its out of inquiry that we learn tolerance. It's out of answers that we get dogmatic and we get violent and destructive with each other. I think history is moving beyond dogma."

"During times of transition orthodoxies fall and the heretics and the mavericks are the people creating the new orthodoxy. We're in one of these precious moments when we get to think out of the box."

These messianic, syncretistic noises coming from the United Religons circle are sounding alarms among orthodox Anglicans and Catholics.

The Vatican provided early criticism of United Religions. In 1996, Swing met with Cardinal Arinze, head of the Vatican's Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. He was not impressed, says Swing: "Emphatically he said that he did not want my words to reflect that he was excited about the United Religions. He said that a United Religions would give the appearance of syncretism and it would water down our need to evangelize. It would force authentic religions to be on equal footing with spurious religions.... He said that he would take the Gamaliel approach to the United Religions (Acts 5:38-39). Leave these people alone. If it comes from man, it will fail. If it comes from God, it can't be stopped."

San Francisco Catholic Lee Penn, writing in the January New Oxford Review, agrees with Arinze's analysis. United Religions' left-wing cast, emphasis on feminism and "earth" spirituality, and implicit relativism should deter Catholics from supporting it. According to Penn, the group represents the false ecumenism which Vatican II urged Catholics to reject.

He writes, "The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church states that 'Each disciple of Christ has the obligation of spreading the faith, to the best of his ability.' The Decree on Ecumenism -- which deals with unity among Christians, not unity among all religions -- says, 'Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures its genuine and certain meaning.' The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions states that the Church 'is in duty bound to proclaim, without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life.'

"The Declaration on Religious Liberty says that the Church's support for religious freedom 'leaves intact the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one Church of Christ.' In the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, John Paul II says that in Church-sponsored dialogue with 'the leaders of the great world religions,' care will always be taken to avoid 'the risk of syncretism and of a facile and deceptive irenicism.' And in Ut Unum Sint, an encyclical dealing with unity among Christians, John Paul II says, 'The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth.'"

With its New Age undercurrents, United Religions smacks of gnosticism, writes Penn. Catholics should heed the Pope's words on this subject in Crossing the Threshold of Hope: "We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practicing gnosticism -- that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words." Gnosticism "has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian."

Doug LeBlanc, editor of the Anglican Voice, responding to this reporter's questions, didn't disparage the motives of Bishop Swing but said his idea is fundamentally flawed. "Any attempt at uniting all the world's religions is simply doomed to failure, although the United Religions initiative could nevertheless attract thousands of adherents," he says. "The most elementary understanding of the world's religions, and how their doctrines differ so profoundly, indicates that they are ultimately irreconcilable."

"Logic alone makes it clear that there is one God (as taught by Judaism, Christianity and Islam), many gods (Hinduism) or no God (some strains of Buddhism) -- but that all three propositions cannot be equally true."

"I don't question Bishop Swing's motives or his desire to bring about peace through dialogue. I don't believe, however, that the choice is merely between a lowest-common-denominator interfaith movement or 'religious' bloodbaths. The biblical alternative to the United Religions initiative is for Christians to proclaim the Gospel faithfully and compassionately, living at peace with our neighbors without sacrificing the truth of God's self-revelation through the Lord Jesus."

Tal Brooke of the Spiritual Counterfeits project emphasizes that United Relgions should concern not just Catholics and Anglicans, but all Christians who believe that Jesus Christ is the final revelation. "The URI is so syncretistic and so broadminded that they will take anything.... The only thing they hate is exclusive orthodoxy. They want to blast that bridge to pieces with theological and philosophical dynamite."