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beliefs of all others, no matter how different or strange. We were urged to allow the other to share, and allow the other to listen. This reigning philosophy goaded those of us who are used to disguising our religious affiliation--notably Urantia Book readers--to come out of the closet. After 19 years of reading the Book, this was the first religious gathering I have attended where I felt quite uninhibited about sharing my belief in The Urantia Book.
The spirit of the Parliament was one of general openness, but I was able to identify at least four distinct models for interreligious dialogue that seemed to animate the participants: exclusivist, inclusivist, pluralist, and functionalist.
Exclusivism
We all know that many religions have spawned fundamentalist movements which find intolerable the relativism implied in interfaith dialogue. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention sent no representatives to the Parliament, nor did any of the strains of Islamic fundamentalism. My own mother church, the Eastern Orthodox, surprised many by withdrawing on the third day of the Parliament, on orders from the Patriarch in Istanbul, Turkey. The Orthodox were offended by the presence of several small "neo-pagan", notably WICCA and the eco-feminist group called Covenant of the Goddess.
It was an embarrassment for me to realize that my two religious affiliations, the Greek Orthodox and the Urantian, were not represented at the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions.
Others of the exclusivist strain were more pragmatic. There was no shortage of proselytizing organizations who used the Parliament as a platform to promulgate "truth." I personally met many attendees who held forth on the superiority of their tradition over others, or who had considerable difficulty allowing me to share my own peculiar faith.
The exclusivist approach might be described as "exoteric", as opposed to the "esoteric" tendencies that exist within these same traditions. Generally, exoteric religionists identify as "absolute" some feature of the external form of their religion. A revealed text, a ritualistic practice, or some definition or symbol of God, is seen as superior to all others, in some sense. To permit relativism would cause an unacceptable insecurity in the faith.
Inclusivism
By contrast with the exoteric, the esoteric's faith is based on a direct mystical or personal experience of the Ultimate. Symbols and beliefs are experienced as transparent--an expedient way to mediate the encounter with God. "The esoteric finds the Absolute within traditions, as poets find poetry in poems," says Frithjof Schuon, who has elaborated the distinction between exoteric and esoteric in The Transcendental Unity of Religions and elsewhere.
Esoteric believers in any tradition have an obvious basis for dialogue that is grounded in their common mystical experience. This would imply that there are only two types of religions: the exoteric and the esoteric, and these divergent approaches are to be found in each tradition. Schuon says the real divisions in world religion are not between the many religions, but these two very different types of religious persons.
I suppose I am an inclusivist. The Urantia Book seems to endorse this position in the "Second Discourse On Religion," (1732), where we read that "the religion of the spirit requires only unity of experience...only unity of spirit feeling."
The ultimate meaning of the Parliament for me was in the growing sense of the unity of religious experience as the ground for inter-religious dialogue. A unity of religious feeling was always palpable at the interfaith meditation sessions held each morning and evening. This sense of unity was especially true of the plenary sessions--grand events with several thousand people often in attendance, some watching by closed-circuit TV in adjoining ballrooms.
The culminating experience of spirit unity for me was the plenary on "The Inner Life," held on the fourth night. Representatives of the major religions spoke--each one a master of the esoteric path within their tradition. As each intoned his or her experience of transcendent realities, the audience seemed to become more still. An unspoken consensus of the unity of spiritual experience hung in the air. I felt this especially in the poignant silences between their presentations, in the dignified demeanor of each representative, and in the ardor of the listening audience.
Pluralism
The meetings of the academics and theologians were concurrent with the popular workshops and lectures. They were open to any lay observers who could fit into the crowded ballrooms.
The academics wrestled with more exacting models for creation of a legitimate basis for interfaith dialogue. A dominant model among today's theologians is "pluralism." Raimundo
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