Can The World's Religions Bring Peace?

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from Zenet News Service, August 23, 2006, with the “Inter-religious Meeting Planned in Assisi.”The following are excerpts.Twenty years after the World Day of Prayer for Peace, the Italian city of Assisi will again be a point of inter-religious meeting and prayer on September 4^th through 5^th.The World Day that Pope John Paul 2 convoked in St.FrancisCity in October 1986, was unprecedented.It saw gathered along the side of the pontiff representatives of the great world religions from the Dalai Lama to the Anglican Arch Bishop of Canterbury.A process got under way there which the community of St. Auzedo took especially to heart engendering in turn the international encounter of religions.These meetings have progressed year after year across Italy’s main cities and European capitols, and recently Washington D. C., offering an opportunity for dialogue and for religious differences to be surmounted.The theme of the nextinter-religious world meeting, and of the Day of Prayer for Peace, which the St. Auzedo community and the Umbrian Bishops Conference are promoting is, Religions and Cultures in Dialogue for World Peace.The Rome based ecclesial movement explained that at a time marked by terrorism and war, as well as efforts towards dialogue and reconciliation, religion has assumed a prominent role in public life, and in the conflict of identities.Religions are evermore exposed to the danger of becoming instruments of extremism.Therefore, from Assisi the reflection of the world’s great religions on dialogue between cultures will be highlighted as a key to defuse the conflict of civilizations and to provide an axis of a globalization that is not merely market-driven.

Tom:

Dave, twenty years after the World Day of Prayer for Peace in the city of Assisi, we wrote about that, and what’s happened?

Dave:

We even show it in our video, A Woman Rides The Beast, there they are.

Tom:

You know, it seems to me, Dave, that you could go back to that meeting and bring together all of the imams, the religious clerics of Islam---

Dave:

And the witch doctors.

Tom:

Well, just these guys, and say, Hey, how is it going, guys?What have we accomplished?Because it’s not the Roman Catholic Church that’s creating the problems with regard to wars and conflicts, it’s not the Baptists, it’snot the Hindus.O, well, in some areas there are these little conflicts, and so on, certainly Northern Ireland and India.Dave, my point here is, Islam is the problem.There were many representing the Islamic faith at Assisi.They had another one after Assisi.I don’t know how many years later it was, but now in effect, is the third one.And why don’t they just, Benedict the 16^th, pull these guys aside and say, Hey, what’s going on here, let’s get with it.Rather than pray for it let’s take some action here.

Dave:

Well, Tom, we have a problem because Pope John Paul 2---we have many problems---but he said we are all praying to the same God, first of all.Now, they are not praying to the same God, you’ve got Hindu’s there.He had his good friend the Dalai Lama there who doesn’t even believe in God, Buddhism is basically atheism, but he is going through some hocus pocus.In fact he let him put his Buddha on the altar in St Peter’s there in Assisi, and have his monks going through their rituals.You have the Shinto’s tinkling their bells outside, and then you---We show in our video, North American Indian shaman, walking to the microphone praying to the Great Spirit, and so forth.The Pope said we are all praying to the same God, and he said our prayers are creating a spiritual energy that is bringing about a new climate for peace.Now, since then things have only gotten worse, the terrorism especially.So, but now we are going to come back and we’re going to dialogue.

Tom:

Dave, many people believe that religions are at the cause of most of the deaths throughout the world, and the wars, and so on.Well, that’snot true, yet today we certainly can point to Islam and the terrorism that it has promoted as the problem, so it’s a religious issue.Why can’t these guys who claim to be the religious leaders solve the problem.

Dave:

Tom, right there my ire rises, because this is what they say:“Religions are evermore exposed to the danger of becoming instruments of extremism.”Now, as you said, not the Presbyterians, not the Baptists, not even the Catholic church today.Religions?Which religion?Not Buddhism, not Hinduism, which religion?Islam.Well then why don’t we say it like it is?Why do we skirt around this, and President Bush keeps saying, Islam is a religion of peace.Well, Tom, we’ve talked about that a lot in the past.They’re dodging the issue.It’s not going to get them anywhere.Furthermore, it doesn’t come about by dialogue, it comes about by truth, by submission to Jesus Christ as the Savior of sinners, it’s the only hope for this world.But this gathering of these religions denies that.

Tom:

Dave, the last line:“Therefore, from Assisi the reflection of the world’s great religions on dialogue between cultures will be highlighted as a key to defuse the conflict of civilizations and to provide an axis of a globalization that is not merely market driven.”What does that mean?What does that have to do with prayer?But again, Dave, I think what they need to do is hustle all of these Islamic clerics that come to this and say, Come on, guys, let’s take care of this.