!. Beginnings in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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The spread of the British empire forced contact with other cultures and religions, and began the first real interests in other faiths.
10. Pages Enriched by Lives Dedicated to Truth in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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The World Conference of Faiths has published innumerable publications, papers, journals and lectures, many of which are detailed in this chapter.
11. From Aids to Yoga: Working With Others in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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Braybrooke examines the WCF’s efforts to encourage local interfaith activity in Britain, its support for the Inter Faith Network of the United Kingdom, its educational work and its contact with some other societies.
12. A Year of Inter-religious Understanding and Cooperation: </P> in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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The World’s Parliament of Religions set aside the year 1993 to mark the centenary of it’s organization, and the WCF became active in it’s drive for a good response despite its lack of funds
13. A Worldwide Interfaith family </P> in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
Although Younghusband quickly took steps to establish the World Congress of Faiths as an international organization, the Second World War largely destroyed his efforts. Subsequently, small WCF groups have come into being in some other countries. The journal has had a small international circulation. WCF has also had friendly links with organizations with similar aims in several parts of the world, such as, in the fifties, the World Alliance for International Friendship Through Religion and subsequently with the International Association for Religious Freedom, the Temple of Understanding and the World Conference on Religion and Peace.
14. In the Great Unity, We are Members One of Another: Conclusion in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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The WCF has not become the world organization of which Younghusband dreamed or has it received great popular support, nevertheless, there have been significant shifts in attitudes about the relation of religions to each other.
15. Interfaith Witness in a Changing World:: 1996 – 2006 in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
The Twin Towers attack of 9/11/01 has made many changes in interfaith matters. Nevertheless the WCF has continued with lectures, conferences and publications. There has been little growth in WCF’s membership probably because of the rapid and welcome growth of local interfaith councils and groups.
1984: Orwell and Barmen
Article
When George Orwell published a novel about totalitarianism in 1948, he arrived at its title by simply reversing the last two digits of that year, so that the date became 1984. Ever since, 1984 has been more than just a date; it has been a symbol. Orwell’s book describes a hideous world of thought control, …
2. ‘A Man of Action and of Ideas’: Francis Younghusband in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
Because the WCF both in its origins and throughout its history has been inspired by Francis Younghusband’s visions, his contacts, travels and inspirations are outlined in this chapter.
3. World Fellowship Through Religion: The 1936 Congress in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
The author describes in detail the beginning of organizing interests in the various religions and the foundations of gatherings between 1934 and 1936 ultimately leading to the World Congress in 1936.
4. Hoping for a New World Order in the Midst of War: 1936-1942 in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
After the World Congress was finally organized, Younghusband immediately began planning for the future and the hopes of a new world order despite the disruptions of the World War II
5. Carrying On: 1942-52 in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
The war along with the death of Sir Francis caused numerous problems in organization, and along with the problems of the Cold War, many difficulties in keeping the movement active were faced.
6: New Shoots: 1952-1967 in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
There have been, over the past thirty years, many changes of officers and repeated attempts to redefine WCF’s role in a changing world. The following chapters will consider the main activities of the Congress.
7. Keeping Up With a Changing World: 1968-96 in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
There have been, over the past thirty years, many changes of officers and repeated attempts to redefine WCF’s role in a changing world. The following chapters will consider the main activities of the Congress.
8. ‘Lectures, Chat and Lukewarm Coffee’: Conferences and Lectures in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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The author summarizes various conferences, and outlines and gives examples of the differences between people of different faiths.
9. Truly Extraordinary: Foreign Religions in a Christian Church in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
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We worship the same God, but in interfaith gatherings worship is difficult and especial prayer. The author discusses the various criticisms and conflicts.
A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 – 1996
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) The story of The World Congress of Faiths as one attempt to realize the vision and dream that all religions of the world might become one in spirit or at least forgo prejudice and hostility and work together for a happier world. NOTE: The Notes for all chapters will be found in the Notes at the end of the book.
Adopting Realism: The Century 1962-1971
Article
“Nach Amerika gehen? Das ist für Brunner, aber nich für mich!” The Christian Century quoted that statement (which may be apocryphal) from Karl Barth in preparing its readers for the eminent Swiss theologian’s 1962 visit to the United States. Barth and the Century had viewed the world quite differently during the previous 35 years, a …
After Twenty Years
Article
I am the only living man in the Senate who voted against the declaration of war with Germany. In my service of about thirty-five years in Congress I have undoubtedly made many mistakes, but my vote against the declaration of war was not one of them. On that April day twenty years ago when the …
All Agnostics Here
Article
BOOK REVIEW: The American Religion: the Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. By Harold Bloom. Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $22.00. Theologians, sociologists, historians and other standard commentators on religion are not likely to grow insecure reading this account of “the American religion.” by Harold Bloom, who according to the dust jacket and a wide …
Azusa Street Revival
Article
On April 9, 1906, at a prayer meeting in a modest home on Bonnie Brae Street in Los Angeles, a few men and women spoke in tongues. They had been meeting to pray for "an outpouring" of the Holy Spirit. The tongues speech convinced them that they had "broken through." News of the event spread …
Beginning at Jerusalem
Article
No one could have attended the meeting of the International Missionary Council at Jerusalem during the two weeks ending on Easter Day without discerning that momentous changes are taking place in foreign missions. To one whose eyes are riveted on the past or even on the present these changes may seem confusing; to one who …
Breadlines and Storm Clouds: The Century 1930-1937
Article
When the stock market crashed in October of 1929. The Christian Century was not unduly distressed; in fact, it viewed what had happened on Wall Street as potentially salutary, offering the American public “the privilege of sobering up” after a two-year “speculative debauch.” But the Century was hardly alone in thinking that the crash could …
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Charles Atlas with a Halo: America’s Billy Graham
Article
A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story. By William Martin. Morrow, 735 pp., $25.00. Someone has quipped that an evangelical can be defined as anyone who really likes Billy Graham. If so, there are a lot of evangelicals out there. The number of people who have seen him in person or on television, …
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Charles Clayton Morrison: Shaping a Journal’s Identity
Article
The year 1984 is a very special one for The Christian Century: it marks the original founding of the magazine (then called the Christian Oracle) in 1884. Although the July 4-11 issue will be our official centennial number, celebration of the event began with our January 4-11 issue and will continue throughout the year. One …
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Christian Faith and the World Crisis
Article
It is our purpose to devote this modest journal to an exposition of our Christian faith in its relation to world events. This first article will seek, therefore, to offer a general introduction to the faith that is in us. We believe that many current interpretations have obscured important elements in that faith and have …
Christianity and the Status Quo
Article
After World War I there emerged a form of international “idealism” which was gravely weakened by legalistic and pharisaical heresies. It involved a system which was very convenient for the French and the British: It outlawed any attack by external powers on existing empires; it vetoed even international action on issues which such empires might …
Days of Protest
Article
Part of the fabric of public life in America during the post- World War II years, perhaps the cross-stitch that held the symbolic boundaries in place, was anticommunism. Most mainline church editors were part of it. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 provoked a “crisis” and, explained a Century editorial, exploded the “assumption of a …
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Vision
Article
On April 9, 1945, 55 officers in the Flossenburg concentration camp carried out Hitler’s orders to execute some of the last remaining “enemies of the Reich.” Among their victims was the 39-year-old theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who went to his death, according to a witness, “brave and composed. I have hardly ever seen a man die …
Dietrick Bonhoeffer
Article
Book Review: Conspiracy and Imprisoninent, 1940-1945: Dietrich Bonhocifer’s Works, Volume 16. Edited by Mark Brocker. Fortress, 882 pp . This book documents a life interrupted. It might be argued that every life knows interruption, though we rarely look at it that way. For all of us human fallibility, accidents, illness, political events and death overtake …
Forward By The Reverend Dr Edward Carpenter, President of the World Congress of Faiths in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
We are living during one of the most creative periods in the bringing together of all religions, although tentative and hesitant, but more significantly than at any other period. The World Congress of Faiths has been a significant part of this process.
Hans Küng and Tübingen: Compromise and Aftermath
Article
The Tübingen compromise, which allowed Hans to remain on the university faculty and to retain his status as director of the Ecumenical Institute but at the same time removed him from the Roman Catholic theological faculty, appeared initially to resolve a delicate situation. It relieved all parties concerned from a lengthy and costly court hearing; …
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How Baptists Assessed Hitler
Article
On August 4, 1934, thousands of delegates to the Baptist World Alliance congress in Berlin filed into the Tagungshalle, where Adolf Hitler had recently addressed as many as 15,000 Germans. John W. Bradbury, delegate and Boston pastor, wrote of his journey into the Fatherland: Crossing the border was a dreaded experience. After all I had …
Impasse in India
Article
Last summer Foreign Affairs, Time, Newsweek, and The Economist highlighted a major shift in American perceptions of India when, in cover stories that appeared almost simultaneously, they described the country as a rising economic power and a likely “strategic ally” of the United States. In 1991, India partly opened its protectionist economy to foreign trade …
Integration and Imperialism: The Century 1953-1961
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The Christian Century centennial history series moves now into what we could call the “modern era.” That designation is relative since “modern” means recent, and recent covers more time for some of us than for others. But as the current editor, I am exercising an administrative prerogative by beginning the “modern” years in 1953 — …
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Irony of Ironies: Evaluating the Moderns
Article
Book Review: Modern American Religion (Vol. I): The Irony of It All: 1893-1919 by Martin E. Marty (University of Chicago Press, 385 pp., $24.95.) One of the striking features of the late decades of the 20th century is the extent to which we are still recapitulating the debates of the century’s first decades. This is …
John Bennett on Oxford ’37
Article
The 1937 Oxford Conference “Church, Community, and State” of the Life and Work movement brought together many representatives of the ecumenical community. In the shadow of Nazism, it addressed the churches with words of hope and courage regarding social witness. Its concerns — war, racism and economic strife – have proved enduring, and many of …
John XXIII: His Council and Achievement Remembered
Article
Twenty years have passed since that October 11, 1962, when Pope John XXIII looked across the transept of the Basilica of St. Peter and saw, to his immense satisfaction, the living sign of the Catholic Church’s break with the unholy tradition of ecclesial exclusivism. The 39 human components of this sign were the separated brethren …
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Keep It Religious!: The Morrison Era at the Century
Article
On a propitious day 70 years ago, the new minister of the Monroe Street Christian Church in Chicago was asked to become the owner and editor of a small, insolvent journal called The Christian Century. As Charles Clayton Morrison (1874-1966) later recalled his response: “The proposal to ‘purchase’ flattered me more than the proposal to …
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Memories of Martin Niemöller
Article
A chief reason that the U.S. War Department immediately after World War II granted accreditation to a special correspondent for religious affairs was the desire to find and support the Christian leaders who had resisted Hitler and survived. Thus I was offered accreditation as a correspondent for Religious News Service. Funding was provided by the …
Nazism and Communism
Article
You think it would be advisable if I stated expressly why I do not want the logic of my letter to Hromadka applied to the present East-West conflict, why I do not find the present situation analogous to that of 1938. One could put the question even more clearly: Why do I not write to …
No Communion Without Compassion: Visser ’ t Hooft , An Interview
Article
Willem A. Visser ‘t Hooft’? Never heard of him!” We Can picture members of younger Christian generations thus responding to the too brief interview which follows. Sad to say. Christian heroes — and Visser ‘t Hooft is an authentic one — do not stay long in the public eye. We have a way of taking …
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Notes in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
NOTES. The quotation on the dedication page is from a hymn by F.W. Faber, ‘Souls of men’. Hymns Ancient and Modern, No 364. The quotation in the Preface is from Arnold Toynbee, ‘End and Beginning’ in The Observer, 24.10.54. Beginnings 1. From Will Hayes’ paraphrase of Tennyson’s poem in Will Hayes, Every Nation Kneeling, published …
On Anti-Semitism
Article
I have already spoken of anti-Semitism many times. I never would have thought that I would have to do so in connection with anti-Semitic laws promulgated by a French government—which are a denial of the traditions and the spirit of my country. I am well aware that these decrees have been adopted under German pressure …
Peace and Pluralism: The Century 1946-1952
Article
Historians must learn and teach others to judge the past in the context of the possibilities open to those living within it. To expect 16th century people to be at home, for example, with modern interfaith relations or feminism is unrealistic and anachronistic. However, grading is still possible, where it is advisable or necessary: some …
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Planning ahead: The Enduring Appeal of Prophecy Belief
Article
The young woman said that she urgently needed to see me. No, she was not having difficulty in my religion course. The problem was more serious. She explained through tears that she had just broken up with her fiance, and since I purportedly knew something about fundamentalism, she hoped that I might be able to …
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Preface in A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936 - 1996
Book Chapter
This history of the World Congress of Faiths demonstrates that the issues of the nature of inter-religious co-operation is of interest far beyond the members of the WCF.
Progress and ‘Relapse’: The Century and World War I
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Before the outbreak of World War I, the Century, not unlike many other American journals, regularly expressed an idealistic and basically isolationist position when considering America’s role in the world. In this approach, the magazine reflected the attitudes of Presidents William Howard Taft (1909-1913) and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), both idealists who were shaped by the …
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Rauschenbusch Today: The Legacy of a Loving Prophet
Article
Modern American Protestantism has not, for the most part, focused on the lives of the saints. The psychic energy of contemporary pastors, theologians and church leaders has more often centered on the kerygmatic Word as it encounters "the problem of history," on struggles against the idolatries of fascism and Stalinism abroad and racism, classism and …
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Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis
Article
In the 1880s Walter Rauschenbusch was a Baptist pastor in the Hell’s Kitchen district of New York City, where he served a poor, hurting, immigrant congregation and where he converted to the social gospel. His searing encounter with urban poverty, especially the funerals that he performed for children, drove him to political activism and a …
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Remembering Rwanda
Article
April marks the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of the genocide in Rwanda, a catastrophic mass slaughter which claimed 850,000 lives in three months. Ten years later, Christian reflection must focus on the role Rwandan Christians played in the swiftest and in some ways most brutal genocide of the 20th century. Rwanda was the most …
Schism Memoirs
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Book Review: Memoirs in Exile: Confessional Hope and Institutional Conflict, by John H. Tietjen. Fortress, 384 pp. paperback. John H. Tietjen became president of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis on May 19, 1969. Two months later, to Tietjen’s surprise, Jacob A. O. Preus was elected president of the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, the …
Seventy Years of the Century
Article
It does not diminish a man or a magazine to believe that 1908 was, in the providence of God, precisely the right time for Charles Clayton Morrison to become an editor and for The Christian Century to become an “undenominational” magazine devoted to church and public affairs. Many Protestants were tiring of provincialism; their churches …
Socializing Capitalism: The Century During the Great Depression
Article
In the decade following World War I, Americans confronted a rapidly changing cultural context. Prohibition took effect in 1919 and gave birth to an era characterized by the frustrations of law enforcement and a booming business for “bootlegging” and organized crime. Throughout the decade, the CENTURY underestimated the strength of voices opposing prohibition. Editors condemned …
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Survivor of the First Degree
Article
I have counted seven separate phases in my personal survivorship of the Holocaust. Some of them overlap. Others have left vestiges throughout several or all of the subsequent phases. Only during the last two have I been made conscious of the fact that a Holocaust survivor is a distinctive kind of person, not just one …
The ‘Unnecessary Necessity’: The Century in World War II
Article
At first the editors of the Century, like most others who viewed the situation from afar, failed to appreciate the threat posed by the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. By May 1933, a few months after Hitler assumed the position of chancellor, editorials began to take the rise of fascism more seriously. But …
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The Century and Civil Rights: Indirect Action
Article
During the early 1950s, the Century’s editors could hardly be classified as strategists in the war for civil rights, but they tried their hand at analysis and expressed sympathetic support for both the commanders and the ground troops. As Supreme Court decisions moved toward desegregation, editors urged “Christian forces” to assume their responsibility in assuring …
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The Century and Women Feminist Gains
Article
In the late 1980s, Barbara Brown Zikmund lamented the failure of churches prior to the 1960s to understand and help working women, women who had first moved into the workplace during World War II. The indices of the Century during the ‘40s and ‘50s demonstrate how little attention mainline religion gave to women’s issues during …
The Century in Transition: 1916-1922
Article
From the time it was established in 1884 in Des Moines. Iowa, The Christian Century had been published by and for members of the Disciples of Christ denomination. One day in 1916, as Editor Charles Clayton Morrison, an ordained Disciples minister, was making his rounds through the magazine’s southside Chicago office, he stopped at the …
The Barbaric 20th Century
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Book Review: Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. By Jonathan Glover: Yale University press, 464 pp. War killed an average of over a hundred people an hour through the 20th century,” writes Jonathan Glover. One can only wonder what the 21st century will bring. Glover, director of the Centre of Medical Law and …
The Church Faces Its World
Article
At such a gathering as the World Conference on Church, Community and State — the title currently used almost to the exclusion of “Life and Work” – in such a place as Oxford, it requires a little time for the mid-American participant, even if he is not unfamiliar with the scene, to adjust his mind …
The Conference at Stockholm
Article
“Christianity is the name of a number of different religions,” says the cynic. And indeed there are times when the differences between the groups within the Christian Church seem quite as great as those which divide the groups outside. There are men who believe that Christianity is an immutable body of absolute truth. There are …
The Holocaust’s Lessons for the Church
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Book Reviews: Constantine’s Sword. The Church and the Jews: A History By James Carroll (Houghton Mifflin, 756 pp.) The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 By Michael Phayer (Indiana University Press, 301 pp.) Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy By Susan Zuccotti (Yale University Press, 352 pp.) Controversy about the …
The Making of Taizé
Article
Almost everyone engaged in the search for Christian unity has at some point received important impulses from the Taizé community. And whoever speaks of Taizé is bound to speak of Roger Schutz (1915-2005), whose intuitions and initiatives turned the community into a focus and center of the ecumenical movement. The origins of Taizé lie in …
The Menace of the New Paganism
Article
The adversary who is challenging Christianity today is a rival religion — a single rival religion. True, this anti-Christian faith is coming into action under different names in different parts of the world; but the more these alternative versions of the postwar paganism insist upon their points of difference — the more they abuse and …
The Origins of the Christian Century, 1884-1914
Article
The Christian Century emerged from rather humble origins. It started as just another local denominational publication speaking for the Disciples of Christ in Des Moines, Iowa, and surrounding regions. Those connected with its founding chose the name Christian Oracle for the journal and adopted the motto “Speak as the Oracles of God” True to Disciples …
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The Quest for Unity
Article
The Conference on Faith and Order which has been in session in this city since August 3 seems, in outward appearance, like an adjourned sitting of the Oxford Conference on Church, Community and State. I would guess that more than one-half of the personnel is the same. The vice-chairmen, representing, as well as four men …
The World Missionaiy Conference, 1910
Article
Edinburgh, June 20, 1910 “About the biggest thing that ever struck Scotland,” said my Edinburgh host as we sat together in his drawing room talking over the conference which had brought me to his city, and on account of which a thousand Edinburgh homes have been thrown open to entertain delegates from all parts of …
The World Missionary Conference
Article
Edinburgh, June 20, 1910 “About the biggest thing that ever struck Scotland,” said my Edinburgh host as we sat together in his drawing room talking over the conference which had brought me to his city, and on account of which a thousand Edinburgh homes have been thrown open to entertain delegates from all parts of …
Tutu’s Story
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Book Review: Rabble-Rouser for Peace: The Authorized Biography of Desmond Tutu. By John Allen. Free Press, 496 pp. Americans have sometimes seen the campaign against South African apartheid as a reprise of their own civil rights movement. P. W. Botha and other Afrikaners with clipped accents seem to have inherited the Bull Connor …
War’s Dilemmas: The Century 1938-1945
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One could draw a figurative line through the topics covered in most weekly issues of The Christian Century from the year before World War II through the end of that war. On one side would be all evidences of the war: conscientious chronicling of its main events — especially where religion had a bearing — …
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When History Is All We Have
Article
They say that Baptists have always fought among themselves. And that there is no fight like a family fight. The latter is true. But the original Baptists, whether the Anabaptists of sixteenth century Europe or the English Separatists of the seventeenth, were too busy struggling for physical survival to engage in internecine squabbles. However, on …
Who’s Great
Article
Billy Graham and John Paul II are indisputably great men. However much of what they accomplished should be attributed to their own actions and however much is due to other factors, these two must be considered significant actors in 20th-century history. For Billy Graham in 1957 to invite participation at his New York City evangelistic …
Why I Did Not Leave Nazi Germany in Time
Article
The life of a Jew of my generation and background is most fittingly divided into a pre-, during- and post-Holocaust existence. Any other periodizing, such as peacetime/wartime/new beginning, or childhood/youth/adulthood, becomes insignificant measured by the criterion of the Holocaust. Already the third, the post-Holocaust, phase has for someone of my age lasted longer than the …
Wide-angle Historian
Article
Jaroslav Pelikan was not a historian easy to characterize. Most historians of Christianity pick some small subfield from the past, which becomes the focus of their research and writing. The really good historians will push back the boundaries of what is known in their subfield or find new and imaginative ways to read old evidence …