Manifest Destiny: Christianity and American Imperialism [The World's Parliament of Religions 1893]
Excerpt from Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition
by Judith Snodgrass
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
-- Manifest Destiny: Christianity and American Imperialism [The World's Parliament of Religions 1893], Excerpt from Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, by Judith Snodgrass
-- Parliament of the World's Religions, by Wikipedia
-- Parliament of [the] World Religions, by David Livingstone
From the time of the Crystal Palace Exposition in London in 1851 the great expositions of the nineteenth century were preeminently displays of material and technical progress. The Chicago fair, symbolized as it was by the steel-supported structures of the White City and the engineering genius of the great Ferris wheel, was no exception. What made the Columbian Exposition unique was the inclusion of the "Auxiliary Congresses," an exhibition of the spiritual, intellectual, and social progress of mankind. The largest and most acclaimed of the Auxiliary Congresses was the World's Parliament of Religions, which not only epitomized the antimaterialist theme of the congresses but enshrined the motivating force of them all, American Protestant Christianity.
American rivalry with Europe might have been satisfied by an exhibition of material progress, but this material progress was itself subsidiary to and dependent on America's distinctive society and its resulting institutions. "The freest land must in the end create the most perfect machinery .... The American railroad is a product of the Constitution of the United States,"1 and the Constitution, in turn, derived from the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-determination of Protestant Christianity brought to the New World by the early colonists.
The Columbian Exposition, celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage, was permeated with a revived sense of America's predestined mission and an awareness of America's special place in the unfolding of Providential history. As Merril Edwardes Gates, delegate to the Auxiliary Congresses, explained in his paper "The Significance to Christianity of the Discovery and the History of America," God had kept the American continent undefiled until "the Reformation had taught the Christian world afresh the value of the individual man, standing erect, the Bible in his hand, fearless before priest and king, reverent before God .... When a new light for the social and political life of mankind began to ray out from the open Bible in the hands of Luther, God opened the way to the new continent."2
God had planted the seed of the new religion in the pristine soil of the new continent, had chosen the people and the government to bring it to fruition,3 and had bestowed upon the people of America the duty to share the light of the Gospel and the benefits of the civilization "springing into life on the continent ... here to grow until it should overshadow the kingdoms of the world."4 Providence had ordained the Americanization of the world. The Auxiliary Congresses within the Chicago exposition demonstrated this interdependence of material progress, American civilization, and religion. The two hundred distinct congresses organized under twenty general departments "considering the greatest themes in which mankind is interested"5 named the intellectual categories through which material progress was manifested.6
The World's Parliament of Religions, in spite of its name and the international recognition it subsequently acquired, was essentially an American event, both in its vision of evangelical mission and in its predominant concern with domestic issues. The Parliament grew out of a liberal Christian vision of U.S. Christian ecumenism (i.e., an ecumenical union of the Judeo-Christian religious communities of the United States), a bid to assimilate the rapidly increasing number of immigrants from diverse religious backgrounds into the Protestant ideal. It was a statement of Christian confidence, a bid for liberal Christian reform within the United States, and an exercise in reinforcing the dominance of Protestant Christianity in response to the rapidly changing social environment of the late nineteenth century.7 The original proposal dealt exclusively with these essentially domestic issues but, once accepted, it was developed as the World's Parliament of Religions, an international event to match the international scope of the exposition of which it was an intrinsic part. The original domestic emphasis remained, but the Parliament also became a platform for the expansionist aspects of the American Protestant ideal, the "messianic heritage." In the early years of the colony, the sense of evangelical purpose justified continental expansion westward. In 1893, with American consciousness of its Pacific future revived by the takeover of Hawaii, the obligation was to share the light of the Gospel and American ideals with "those who are nearest to them but are without God and without hope in the world."8 In the less generous terms of historical reality, the messianic heritage appeared to demand the Christian conquest of Asia.9
Asian delegates to the Parliament had long been familiar with aggressive evangelism. They anticipated its presence at the Parliament and came prepared to deal with it. It nevertheless contributed to the shaping of the representation of Buddhism by demanding reiteration of Buddhist apologetics, forcing the discussion of Buddhism toward topics raised by Christian attack. Far more difficult for the Buddhist delegates to accommodate was the essentially American preoccupation of the Parliament that set the parameters of the discussion. The themes suggested and officially endorsed by the organizing committee were directed toward encouraging Judeo-Christian tolerance in the United States, combating growing interest in materialist philosophy, and uniting the various religious communities to solve the social problems of the United States. The aim of the Parliament was to demonstrate the essential unity of human aspiration. In this project, the various religions were assumed to be related by a shared dependence on a patriarchal God and their hierarchically apportioned share in his revelation. These were Christo-centric assumptions of the essentially theistic nature and function of religion into which Buddhism could not easily be accommodated. The aspects of Buddhism that could be discussed at the Parliament were restricted by this American and Christian agenda of the program. The representation of Japanese Buddhism was constrained by the role assigned to it in a discourse generated by the religious debates and intellectual assumptions of nineteenth-century America.
The relations of power mapped in the previous chapter -- New World challenge to Europe; the tension between the dominant West and the Orient; dominant white America's attempt to preserve the status quo against the challenge from social changes in the late nineteenth century; Japan's bid to disassociate itself from other Asian nations and establish itself in the international arena -- also traversed the congress on religions. In spite of the organizers' professions of tolerance, of respect for other beliefs, and the stated aim of bringing about international understanding of religious ideas, the World's Parliament of Religions also provided evidence to support the themes of Social Darwinism so evident in the main exhibition. The Parliament, the first great attempt to bring together religious specialists of the world, was also a sideshow, an ethnological display of the various religions of the world. The non-Christian religions played a role parallel to the exotic displays of the Midway Plaisance and were similarly arranged as "object lessons" pointing to Protestant Christianity as the culmination of religious evolution.
The World's Fair Auxiliary Congresses
The Auxiliary Congresses were the inspiration of Chicago lawyer and civic leader Charles C. Bonney. His vision was of a series of conferences on matters of spiritual, intellectual, and social concern of the time, "a series of congresses for the consideration of the greatest themes in which mankind is interested."10 His initial proposal, launched in the Statesman Magazine, September 20, 1889, argued that "the crowning glory of the World's Fair" should not be the material and industrial achievements of man, however magnificent that display may be. "Something still higher and nobler is demanded by the enlightened and progressive spirit of the new age." His proposal was for a series of international conventions in the areas of "government, jurisprudence, finance, science, literature, education and religion," discussed not by academics but by practitioners, "statesmen, jurists, financiers, scientists, literati, teachers, theologians." It was to be more widely representative of "peoples, nations, tongues" than "any assemblage which has ever yet been convened." The benefits as he initially perceived them would be nothing less than to "unite the enlightened people of the earth in a general cooperation for the great ends for which human society is organized." Although in Bonney's opinion "it would not be easy to exaggerate the powerful impetus given by [the material exposition] to commerce and all the arts by which toil is lightened, the fruits of labour increased, and the comforts of life augmented," the benefits of the congresses would be "higher and more conducive to the welfare of mankind."11
Bonney spoke for the United States, but his sentiments also reflected the particular concern of Chicago, the brash new commercial center that had very recently established its first university, to counter its aggressively commercial image. The congress theme, "Not Things but Men; Not Matter but Mind," stressed this reordering of priorities. Barrows, opening the Evangelical Alliance, observed that Chicago, "celebrated for its big warehouses, big railroads, big newspapers, big expectations and big achievements," would henceforth be known for its equally impressive spiritual achievement.12 Addressing the Asian delegates, he said, "I want you to think of Chicago not as the home of the rudest materialism but as a temple where men cherish the loftiest idealism."13 The Congress on Religions was not funded by the churches but by the U.S. government and the commercial community. It was, therefore, a platform for America rather than for Christianity, and the prominence of the World's Parliament of Religions reflected the centrality of religion in the American national vision.
The Chicago organizers planned to display the full progress of man. Here "the most comprehensive and brilliant display of man's material progress," the usual object of an international exhibition, was complemented by an equally extensive display of intellectual, social, and moral progress. There were congresses covering "all areas of intellectual and moral concern," the official history by Rossiter Johnson records, listing in order by way of example, "women, medicine, temperance, commerce, literature, education, religion, art, philosophy and evolution." (Other lists include such diverse subjects as the public press, engineering, government and law reform, religion and Sunday rest, public health, and agriculture.) The message of the Auxiliary Congresses was that America had reached maturity not only in industry and commerce but in social, intellectual, and spiritual development as well and stood poised to lead the world into the twentieth century.
Bonney expressed the millennial splendor of his vision, the United States as the culmination of post-Renaissance progress, at the opening of the first of the congresses on May 15, 1893: "A single week of years stands between us and the twentieth century. If the causes now in operation shall go on unchecked, the world will witness in these seven years the crowning glories of more than seven centuries of human progress."14 He declared the event formally open with the hope: "To make the whole world one in sympathy; to make the whole world one in mental aim; to make the whole world one in moral power; learning and virtue passports to all lands."15
The sincerity of Bonney's desire for universal peace and brotherhood cannot be questioned. He was himself a Swedenborgian and spoke as representative of the goodwill of liberal Christianity. However, as any number of supposedly liberal papers showed, the assumption of a single, uniform human nature upon which this attitude of Eurocentric humanism is based leads too easily to interpreting the undeniable observable differences in the thought and action of other peoples as irrational or false versions of one's own -- at the very least, as imperfect, preliminary attempts at achieving the same ends.16
The World's Parliament of Religions and Messianic Mission
The Parliament, though only one of the many Auxiliary Congresses, was generally perceived to be "the splendid crown," the epitome of the concept. Its prominence depended on more than religion's obvious position as the ultimate expression of "spirit," the natural opposition to mundane "matter" and the material world, the spiritual balance to the gross materiality of the general exposition that was so much commented on. The Parliament was as fundamental to the expression of American aspirations as the White City itself. Domestically, the Columbian Exposition was viewed by Americans as both Rome, the culmination of republican democracy, and the new Jerusalem, the site of religious renewal. Both images were intrinsic to the "enduring Protestant American dream" which was the dominant statement of the quadricentennial celebration.17 America was not simply the site of post-Reformation progress and achievement, but also the divinely appointed agent of its universal dissemination. Bonney, opening the Congress on Women, introduced this recurring theme: "The nineteenth century, richer in manifold wonders than any which has preceded it in the august procession of the ages, crowns its greatest achievements by establishing in the world the sublime idea of a universal fraternity of learning and virtue. This idea, long cherished by the illuminati of every clime, descends at last from the luminous mountains of thought to the fertile fields of action, and enters upon the conquest of the world."18
Bonney here articulated the ideal of American mission and the fundamental problem of American imperialism, the tension between the ideal of converting the world through a self-denying "messianic example," providing a living demonstration of the advantages of its civilization that would inspire emulation and desire for membership in the union, and the more aggressive alternative, "messianic intervention," which was associated with the European model of imperialism that America, as a former colony, rejected. Evangelism -- offering the gift of Light -- provided a justification for territorial expansion and very frequently aided in the process. The quadricentennial celebration of Columbus's voyage revitalized the American Christian sense of predestined mission. America, the theater for achieving millennial perfection, was the model for the rest of the world, the "chief motor" for the conversion of the world to Protestantism.19 Ideally, then, the mission depended on realizing the objective within the United States.
The first problem with this vision was that, as Seager remarks, "the World's Parliament of Religions marked the passing of an era in which the United States could be called, however inaccurately, a Protestant or even a Christian nation."20 The optimism of these ideals was in contrast with the reality of increasing labor opposition to the growing power of industrial capitalists, disruption due to the breakdown of the traditional rural economy, the racial problems of recently emancipated blacks (whose form of worship was not orthodox although they were Christian and even Protestant), and the urban slums teeming with Jewish and Roman Catholic immigrants. While liberal and fundamentalist Christians attempted to consolidate their position, Roman Catholics, Jews, and black Americans were staking a claim as legitimate heirs to the prerogatives of the Republic. 21
The visions that emerged from the rhetoric of the Parliament -- "a blueprint for the kingdom of God on earth," a "latter day Pentecost," the "New Jerusalem," "the Babel tongues of the world ... coming back to speak the one dialect of Heaven"22 -- are those of subsuming and assimilating all religions within the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. American delegates spoke of "manufacturing a republic -- taking the black material of humanity and building it up into noble men and women; taking the red material, wild with every savage instinct, and making it into respectable men."23 With the increased immigration of the late nineteenth century, American society similarly, at least in theory, transformed immigrants from diverse cultures into a citizenry supporting and enhancing the essentially Protestant ethos of a Christian American republic. The guiding principle of the Parliament, in which the majority of organizers and delegates was of the dominant Protestant groups, was that all the religions of the world would find their completion and fulfillment in the spiritual values of Protestant Christianity.
One of the problems at this time, however, was the failure of the ideal within the United States itself. The difficulty, from the point of view of at least one Protestant leader, was not just the increase in the volume of immigration but the different type of people involved by this time. In a paper on "The Problems of Our Multifarious Population and Their Probable Solution," the Reverend Wm. C. Roberts, D.D. LL.D., wrote:
If it were made up, as in former years, of people from the British Isles, Holland, Germany, France and Northern Europe, the increase in numbers would probably excite no special alarm, for multitudes of them spoke our language, professed the Christian religion, admired our civil and social institutions, revered our Bible and respected our Sabbath. They came in order to be of us. But those who flock hither in these days are largely different in character and purpose. They are Jews from Russia, Italians from the Siciles, Bohemians, many of whom are of the baser sort, Poles, long taught to dislike every kind of regularly constituted government, Hungarians looked upon as revolutionaries, Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians who have had the best elements of their nature stamped out by the iron heel of Turkey, British trade-unionists, French socialists, Austrian nihilists, German anarchists, and idol worshippers from China, India and the Islands of the Sea.24
The speaker clearly associated religious diversity with the social problems of the time, and the "material of humanity" he described was less malleable than he desired. The presence of these large numbers of Jews and Roman Catholics in the society, if not the nihilists, socialists, and "idol worshippers," forced debate on the interpretation of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. Did it allow a denial of God? Expressed from a Protestant point of view in the previous century, the controversy had been whether the Constitution guaranteed freedom from all old religions and the establishment of a new universal (Christian) faith, or the freedom to persist in a false or partial religion until the establishment of the universal reign of Christ on earth.25 Both of these interpretations assumed that all religions would be assimilated into Protestantism. This was, after all, part of the perceived reason for the existence of America. It was the site of the growth of the new revelation and the place of refuge for all those who sought its consolations. Under the still dominant Protestant ideal, as the Reverend Roberts put it, they came in order to be of us.
Bonney's Vision: The Origin of the Plan
The Parliament, as it was originally conceived by Bonney, was essentially a Christian conference, a gathering of the various religious communities of the United States, which, as a generous gesture of brotherhood and a recognition of the growing importance of Judaism in America, included believers in Jehovah as "Old Testament Christians."26 The Christian parameters of the discussion are clear from the first four of the twenty-two themes proposed for discussion, which were: "a. The idea of God, its influences and consolations. b. The evidences of the existences of God, especially those which are calculated to meet the agnosticism of the present time. c. That evils of life should be shunned as sins against God. d. That the moral law should be obeyed as necessary to human happiness, and because it is the will of the Creator."
The capital "G" and references to God as "Creator" guaranteed the Christian connotations of the term. Another of the proposed themes demanded acceptance of the Christian revelation, the "influx from God into the mind of every man teaching that there is a God and that he should be worshipped and obeyed." The final and culminating theme indicated the Judeo-Christian limits of Bonney's liberal vision of the Parliament: "That those who believe in these things may work together for the welfare of mankind, notwithstanding they may differ in the opinions they hold respecting God, His revelation and manifestation; and that such fraternity does not require the surrender of the points of difference. The Christian believing in the supreme divinity of Christ, may so unite with the Jew who devoutly believes in the Jehovah of Israel; the Quaker with the High Church Episcopalian; the Catholic with the Methodist; the Baptist with the Unitarian, etc."27
There can be no question of Buddhists being included among "those who believe" in Bonney's vision. His concern was for the religious tolerance among the major religious groups represented in the United States in the late nineteenth century and for contemporary, local problems, which included, as point b noted, increasing agnosticism. The proposals for topics for discussion were all concerned with the value of religion as a social force in North America. They specifically excluded discussion of doctrine except where "common aims and common grounds for union may be set forth." Among his proposals he stressed the importance of religion for "virtuous and pure" family life and in answering "the alleged prevalence of infidelity." For Bonney, the substantial fruits of sincere religion included "improved personal character, better business methods; nearly all works of charity; improved domestic order; greater public peace" (point j). The "indispensability of the weekly rest day," another of the proposed topics, was a matter of such contention among Americans at the time that the financial viability of the exposition was threatened by protests against opening the exposition on Sundays and an entire congress was eventually given over to the issue. Temperance was also considered of sufficient importance to deserve a separate congress.
Regardless of this domestic focus, several of the proposals were of direct and particular concern to the Buddhists. The first was the basic assumption that religion must necessarily be theistic. Japanese Buddhists targeted this as the point to which they must pay particular attention.28 It was a familiar point of Buddhist vulnerability. Because Buddhism was not based on theistic principles, it risked being excluded from the category of religion altogether and linked instead with Western philosophic atheism, an association they vehemently protested. Because the proposal actually listed this as an important point "calculated to meet the agnosticism of the present time," there was a real risk that Buddhism would be called upon, as it frequently was in missionary literature of the time, to stand as the example of the fundamental error of such a view.29 On the other hand, it was precisely the promotion of Buddhism as an example of the viability of a nontheistic system of ethics that had brought it prestige and respect. Consequently, point p, "the actual harmony of science and religion; and the origin and nature of the conflict between them," was also of particular relevance to the Japanese Buddhist delegates. This was a critical issue in Christian debate during the second half of the nineteenth century. A religion that depends on revelation was incompatible with science's denial of the supernatural. The form of Bonney's proposal here suggests that by the time of the Parliament, liberal Christians at least had resolved the issue. Nevertheless, it was on this point that the Japanese Buddhists perceived Christianity to be most vulnerable. Their confidence was increased by the knowledge that Western scholars had already established the harmony of Buddhism with science and modern philosophy.
North American Ecumenism to Christian Universalism
Once the initial proposal was accepted, the Parliament was organized by a committee of sixteen representatives of the various religious communities of the United States-including one Catholic archbishop and one rabbi -- under the direction of the Reverend John Henry Barrows, D.D., a liberal Christian pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago.30 As chairman, Barrows exerted a strong influence over the organization of the Parliament, particularly in the management of the non-Christian religions. He personally hosted the Asian delegates, edited and in several cases delivered their papers, and after the Parliament compiled and published the official version of its history, an act that has consequences in knowledge of the event to the present time.31 Although Bonney's American and Christian vision of the World's Parliament of Religions still formed the core of the proceedings, under Barrows and his committee the event was expanded, given a universal scope in keeping with the world's exposition context. In this process, the Protestant Christian ideal of Westward progress was extended beyond the bounds of continental America to the vision of universal Christianity.
The Parliament, as described in its published objectives,32 sought answers not simply to domestic issues but to "the great problems of the present age," although even here the centrality of America is apparent in the repetition of Bonney's listing of, as examples, "temperance, labour, education, wealth and poverty." It aimed not just for domestic harmony but for "securing permanent international peace." The World's Parliament of Religions had grown from Bonney's vision of a fellowship of liberal, humanist theists to a great international event bringing "together in conference, for the first time in history, the leading representatives of the great historic religions of the world." He specifically desired representatives not simply of Judaism but of "the Brahman, Buddhist, Confucian, Parsee, Mohammedan" faiths as well. In this expanded vision the heathen were now welcome, but for what purpose? The text adopted for the World's Parliament of Religions had been suggested by the Reverend H. Adler, chief rabbi of the British Empire: "Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?"33 It confirmed Bonney's ecumenical vision for the United States of America but did nothing to accommodate Buddhists.
Although representatives of most religions, Christian and non-Christian, came from all over the world, the Parliament was essentially an American Christian event. Foreign Christians played their part by contributing to ecumenical discussion, by clarifying points of difference between denominations, and, most important, by simply coming from all corners of the world and thereby giving witness to Christianity's claim for universality.34 Non-Christian delegates were invited for a number of reasons, none of which, in spite of high-minded protests to the contrary, involved a serious desire to learn what they might offer. The stated aim, "To inquire what light each religion has afforded, or may afford to other religions of the world,"35 must be weighed against the chairman's reassurance that "[t]he non-Christian world ... has nothing to add to the Christian creed."36 The aim of the organizers might more accurately have been rendered to the general public as it was to the Christian congregation: "To inquire into what light Christianity has afforded, or may afford, to other religions in the world." After his experience of the Parliament, Barrows, now claiming to know Oriental religions, "both ideal and practical," concluded that "the very best which is in them, the very best which these well meaning men have shown to us, is often a reflection of Christianity, and that which they lack, and the lack is very serious, is what the Christian Gospel alone can impart."37
Quite clearly, when Christianity was used as a measure of worth, not only did other religions necessarily fail to measure up but, to the extent that they did, they were unoriginal and derivative. Anything Barrows admired in Buddhism he assumed to be the result of its contact with Christianity. The idea that a new universal faith, a new religion for the twentieth century, might emerge out of the debate, an idea that Asian delegates spoke of frequently, convinced that they did indeed have "light" that they could contribute, was not envisaged by the chief promoters of the Parliament. They believed that "the elements of such a religion are already contained in the Christian ideal and the Christian scriptures." Their attitude allowed for reinterpretation and reform within Christianity but afforded no opening for intellectual input from Asian religions.
Exhibiting Spiritual Progress
The nineteenth-century study of comparative religion, whatever it may be now, was unashamedly Christo-centric and closely allied with the imperative of Christian missions to know the enemy. The presence of non-Christian religions was, of course, essential to give the event its international status. As Barrows himself recognized, "A World's Parliament of Religions in which only a few were interested would be a misnomer."38 Asian religions were also essential as a contrast: "[S]uperiority cannot be shown without comparison."39 Their presence was deemed necessary to display the relative excellence of Christianity. The difference in the quality of the exhibits would demonstrate the progress of Christianity.
The evolutionary lesson of the fair, the place of each nation in an international hierarchy, was most definitely also to be drawn from the Parliament. Ninety-seven nations participated in the Columbian Exposition, including "aborigines from the arctic circle and the Pacific" and other such materially undeveloped countries as Venezuela and the French Congo. The organizers had decided to arrange the exhibits throughout the fair in categories rather than by nation so that the relative merit of entries from different nations placed side by side would be apparent. It was considered one of the valuable lessons of the fair, Johnson records, that each nation could see its position in the hierarchy thus displayed.40 At the World's Parliament of Religions "each country was, in the same spirit, invited to exhibit their [sic] religions."41 Or as Barrows himself expressed it, employing the frequently used metaphor of reflections of the light of truth, the Parliament aimed "to study all the exhibits in the spectrum."42 The result was that the "products displayed by the United States, Great Britain and Germany were immensely superior."43 Spiritual superiority was established through the dubious authority of democratic competition and scientific comparison. Note that the claim to immense superiority is restricted to the three Protestant nations of the West, explicitly connecting material advancement with the Protestant Christian vision of spiritual progress.