The incredible World's Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893: A comparative and critical study

It is incredible than an open conference with speakers representing all religions would have convened during the staid Victorian era, and certainly it could have occurred--in the Western Hemisphere--only in the United States. The World's Parliament of Religions was held at the Art Institute of Chicago at the beginning of fall in 1893. There were 250 major talks given before an audience of thousands distributed between two large halls. The governing committee, headed by a local Presbyterian minister, sought to prove the superiority of Christianity over other religions, which--to their satisfaction--they did. Had they been able to grasp the significance of unlooked-for concepts that surpassed their own limited beliefs, the convocation would have served a more exalted purpose. But for such an assembly to rise above the ingrained convictions of its leaders, and themselves, and to reach a higher plane of comprehension would have been, indeed, incredible. The most significant idea presented at the World's Parliament of Religions was defining Buddhism as a philosophical religion. Other contemporary religions in Farther Asia belong to the same classification. The rest may be designated mythological religions. They are the older, having originated and been handed down from remote antiquity. They feature the worship of personified deities, whereas philosophical religions recognize the reality of Nature and deal with immediate problems. This book contrasts the two types of religion in the preface through ten categories, and it structures discussion in the text proper on these distinctions. A grasp of their meaning is the first step to understanding the essentials of the various religions themselves. History bears out analysis in showing that mythological and philosophical religions are not headed in the same direction, and that they have and propagate more differences than similarities. *The Incredible World's Parliament of Religions* is a milestone in Clay Lancaster's thinking about religion, carried further in *The Breadth and Depth of East and West* which came out eight years later. Meanwhile, the earlier book was updated by *Dharmapala's Key to Religion* and *The Inception of Universal Ethics.*