The World Parliament of Religions 1893

The development of religious liberalism and the rethinking of the relationship among religious traditions were framed in a symbolic moment in Chicago in 1893. As part of the great Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair celebrating American intellectual and material progress on the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage, liberal Protestants led by John Henry Barrows hosted 5,000 delegates to a congress of “World Religions” to celebrate and promote spiritual progress.

Among the notable attendees were a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, Dharmapala, Muslim Sufis, Japanese Zen monk Shaku Soyen, and Swami Vivekenanda. American Jewish leaders participated, among them rabbis Isaac Meyer Wise, Kaufman Koehler, and Henrietta Szold. American Christian participants notably included delegates from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, among them Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. There were Orthodox leaders of Syrian, Greek, and Armenian traditions as well.  Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, who led a plenary session in prayer was present, and with him Archbishop John Ireland of Minnesota. Gibbon’s articulate ally in the liberal wing of the American Catholic hierarchy, Ireland also enthusiastically engaged Catholic presence at the parliament and attended himself, though he did not directly address the assembly. Ironically, the parliament concluded with the Lord’s Prayer, curiously led by a Chicago rabbi, Emil Hirsch.

One historian likened the Parliament of Religions to the Olympic Games where everyone was invited to compete where there was little question who would score all the gold medals.¹ A far cry from the more thoroughgoing pluralism to which religious liberals aspire today, the Parliament opened the door to fuller dialogue, and its savvy participants opened the door further to their own ends. Swami Vivekananda, for example, presented Hinduism, not Protestant Christianity, as the culminating tradition because from his view it had always been inclusive of the manyness of religions. Vivekananda remained in the U.S. for months, and returned multiple times, founding the Vedanta Society in New York and elsewhere and which continues to this day.

Vivekananda made at least two connected visits to Minneapolis. In late November 1893, he gave two lectures at First Unitarian Church, Minneapolis: “Hindu Religion” and “An Oriental View of Religion.” Recordkeepers noted that he met with the minister of First Universalist Church, took delight in his first sleigh ride and marveled at a frozen Minnehaha Falls."

His recordkeeper noted that the December lecture was to a packed house, and becoming the talk of the town could extend Vivekananda’s influence beyond Unitarian or university elites. The Minneapolis Star reported that he returned to Minneapolis in December, this time sponsored by University of Minnesota luminary William W. Folwell. Another source notes his visit was sponsored by the university’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, and that he returned to First Unitarian to lecture on “Manners and Customs in India.”²

Perhaps a passing comment suggests the reach of liberal Protestant engagement with non-Christian religions: on the train to Des Moines, on which he met a “Presbyterian cowboy who believes in reincarnation.”³ If Minnesota was not as cosmopolitan as the Chicago of the World’s Parliament, some Minnesotans, too, were hungry for the fruits of a cosmopolitan embrace of religious diversity.