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Our History [World Conference/Congress of Faiths]
by worldfaiths.org
Accessed: 4/7/19
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
WCF has been leading the way in building a community of individuals who want to create and enjoy the benefits of interfaith dialogue since 1936. In the early days its slogan was 'Faith Meeting Faith: a rich resource for life', and this still holds true.
The organisation has its roots in the Parliament of World Religions, first held in Chicago in 1893 and the Religions of Empire Conference, held in London in 1924. Inspired by these movements and his own spiritual experiences, explorer Sir Francis Younghusband, once described as ‘the last great imperial adventurer’, organised two international conferences in London, and after the second of these, in the shadow of a looming World War, WCF became established as an independent body.
Younghusband stressed that the primary aim of the initiative was to promote fellowship between faiths: there was no intention of formulating a new religion through convergence, nor of seeking the lowest common denominator, nor of appraising the value of existing religions and discussing respective merits and defects. Through discussion and reflection, and by coming closer to each other, members of different religions would deepen their own spiritual communion and the concept of God was strengthened.
The 1936 event from which WCF came into being was remarkable for attracting a galaxy of distinguished speakers from around the world, and from all the main faiths. Many of the papers emanating from it were groundbreaking, and remain of great interest today.
Particularly enlightening are the different attitudes which they display towards the relationship between religions. Several speakers, such as the Chief Rabbi and Canon Barry, stressed the differences between faiths, whereas others such as Ranjee G Shani believed these were trivial.
Some people claimed that their faiths must be accepted by the whole of mankind while by contrast, the paper prepared by Professor Haldane, who had died shortly before the conference, included this passage:
by worldfaiths.org
Accessed: 4/7/19
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In 1970 it was decided to take steps to re-absorb the Movement Trust, which was formed to administer the affairs of the Union for the Study of the Great Religions, into the parent Trust which originally endowed it, and which had financed its projects. From that date the Union was to function as before, with its branches, book-lists, and news letters, but after the amalgamation there was to be one set of Trustees and one set of accounts instead of two (NUSGR 27, Summer 1970, p. 1). The history of the two trusts was outlined in a lecture delivered at Younghusband House in London, in December 1969. The lecture was printed in World Faiths, the journal of the World Congress of Faiths, Spring number (79), 1970....
KDDH's outline of the history of the two Trusts was given in a lecture at Younghusband House, the centre of the World Congress of Faiths in Norfolk Square, London, on 1 December 1968. It was published in World Faiths, Spring number (79), 1970....
A.J. Arberry in his obituary of H. N. Spalding, in Forum, published by the World Congress of Faiths, no. 19, December 1953, p. 17....
In the Summer of 1975 ... Henderson wrote the following note:I have been used to think how remarkable it was that a Hindu philosopher should have proved a more successful statesman than Plato or Aristotle, and when I was asked last February to draft a citation for the bestowal on Dr Radhakrishnan of the Templeton Award I tried to illustrate this side of his message by a quotation which I shall repeat below. Its keynote is Relevance, the relevance of reason to the interpretation of religious experience and the relevance of that interpretation to the human condition. Zaehner's last book, Our Savage God, stresses both these relevances, ranging as freely through the slums and alleys of our contemporary conturbations as over the high citadels of metaphysics. It is perhaps not strange that two such different men should have reached similar conclusions. [39]
The quotation to which Henderson refers above was taken from something Radhakrishnan said as Spalding Professor elect. In the discussion that followed his talk on Religion and Religions at the first World Congress of Faiths (held in London from July 3-17, 1936, and organised by Sir Francis Younghusband), Radhakrishnan said:....The question has been raised that those who believed in intuition tried to exclude the operation of the intellect. The way the leader of the debate put it was that those who practise do not investigate, and those who investigate do not practise. But if you go to the really great mystics, whether in the Upanishads, or to a man like Buddha, or one like Plato, or any of the great mystics of the world who may be regarded as examples of saintly life, you will find in them an intellectual eminence and comprehensive knowledge. And it would have been impossible for them to practise those things unless their intellects had been satisfied. The life of the spirit is an integral life, a life where you sanctify your body, illuminate your intellect, and obtain a complete kind of manhood. There should, in any complete life, be an equal emphasis on the intellect and the intuitions. [40]
On 12 June 1972 he [K. D. D. Henderson, Spalding Trust] attended an 'All Faiths Service' organised by the World Congress of Faiths (WCF) in the Central Baptist Church in Bloomsbury. The WCF was founded by Sir Francis Younghusband in 1936.... H. N. Spalding was a member of the Continuation Committee. Both HN and Henderson supported its work. Henderson ... was to become its Associate President in 1966. He was sometimes referred to as a 'Vice-President' of the WCF. The Inaugural Younghusband Memorial Lecture was delivered by Henderson in King's College, the Strand, London, on 11 May 1976. The title of the lecture was 'Francis Younghusband and the Mysticism of Shared Endeavour'....
In 1975 Henderson attended the remarkable 'Spiritual Summit Conference', One is the Human Spirit organised in New York City by the Temple of Understanding to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations....
One of the lesser known but most devoted servants of the Union's cause was Henderson's colleague, Fr Lev Gillet, 'a Monk of the Eastern Church' [one of 5 original Spalding Union Trust area secretaries, Lev Gillet in the Near East] It was he who was responsible for producing the 'Book Lists' and the book reviews, which first appeared as appendices to so many of Henderson's Union News Letters and then as publications in their own right. The amount of reading necessary to fulfil this task, in what Fr Gillet was in the habit of calling 'the world of compared religion', was prodigious. His last contribution to the series appeared shortly before his death on 29 March 1980. Fifty of Fr Lev's 'Book Lists' were to appear. A highly competent linguist, he was able to review books in several different languages..... For some years the Trust had helped to provide him with accommodation in retirement in St Basil's House, Ladbroke Grove, London ... For some time he had been assisted by Miss Joan Dopping, librarian of the World Congress of Faiths and a keen supporter of the Union for the Study of the Great Religions. In the 1950s Henderson arranged for Fr Lev to help her in the library at Younghusband House in Norfolk Square....
For some years he [Fr Lev Gillet] had felt what he called 'a violent attraction' for the Slav world and for Russia in particular. This was the land of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Soloviev and other writers, whose works he so much admired. The conviction grew in him that he was called to work for the restoration of unity between Eastern and Western Christians. Much of his life henceforward was to be spent in the Ukraine, France, Switzerland, and other parts of the Near and Middle East. His work as a spiritual counsellor and a leader of retreats was highly regarded. Few in this country knew of his tireless efforts with the Uniate Churches, with Youth movements in the Near East, with the World Council of Churches, with the World Congress of Faiths, or of his personal contacts with men such as Louis Massignon and Martin Buber.
-- The Spalding Trust and the Union for the Study of the Great Religions: H.N. Spalding's Pioneering Vision, by Edward Hulmes
WCF has been leading the way in building a community of individuals who want to create and enjoy the benefits of interfaith dialogue since 1936. In the early days its slogan was 'Faith Meeting Faith: a rich resource for life', and this still holds true.
The organisation has its roots in the Parliament of World Religions, first held in Chicago in 1893 and the Religions of Empire Conference, held in London in 1924. Inspired by these movements and his own spiritual experiences, explorer Sir Francis Younghusband, once described as ‘the last great imperial adventurer’, organised two international conferences in London, and after the second of these, in the shadow of a looming World War, WCF became established as an independent body.
Younghusband stressed that the primary aim of the initiative was to promote fellowship between faiths: there was no intention of formulating a new religion through convergence, nor of seeking the lowest common denominator, nor of appraising the value of existing religions and discussing respective merits and defects. Through discussion and reflection, and by coming closer to each other, members of different religions would deepen their own spiritual communion and the concept of God was strengthened.
The 1936 event from which WCF came into being was remarkable for attracting a galaxy of distinguished speakers from around the world, and from all the main faiths. Many of the papers emanating from it were groundbreaking, and remain of great interest today.
Particularly enlightening are the different attitudes which they display towards the relationship between religions. Several speakers, such as the Chief Rabbi and Canon Barry, stressed the differences between faiths, whereas others such as Ranjee G Shani believed these were trivial.
Some people claimed that their faiths must be accepted by the whole of mankind while by contrast, the paper prepared by Professor Haldane, who had died shortly before the conference, included this passage:
‘Many Christians entertain the ideal of converting non-Christian peoples to Christianity. I think that a much higher ideal is to understand and enter into sympathy with the religions which exist in other countries and to use this understanding and sympathy as a basis for higher religion’.
Of Haldane, Buchan wrote: "What chiefly attracted me to him was his loyalty to Milner. Milner thought him the ablest man in public life, abler even than Arthur Balfour, and alone of his former Liberal allies Haldane stood by him on every count." Haldane, with Rosebery, Asquith, and Edward Grey, had formed the Liberal League to support liberal imperialism, with which Milner was closely associated.
-- The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, by Carroll Quigley