Catalyst for Controversy: Paul Carus of Open Court

5. The World's Parliament of Religions

CD The Worlds Parliament ofReligions "The Parliament of Religions, which sat in Chicago from September 11 to September 27,1893, was a great surprise to the world," wrote Paul Carus (1916,1) shortly after its adjournment .! Carus himself was not taken by surprise: since the middle ofJuly he had been scheduled to read a thirty-minute paper before one ofits sessions. But he did not expect to be so moved-almost overwhelmed-or to redireet his lifework as a result of this unprecedented gathering. The parliament proved to be one of the high points of Carus's career, even though his role in it was relatively modest. It brought together speakers representing most varieties of Christianity, as well as Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Confucianism, Shintoism, Parseeism, and Jainism. Over the seventeen days of meetings it may have drawn as many as 150,000 people to the building that now houses Chicago's Art Institute (Seager 1987,87; Bonney 1895,337; Barrows 1897, 301). The cosmopolitan speakers, the receptive audiences, and the (usually) tolerant spirit combined to make up a meeting at once affirmative and universal, intellectual and emotional, and seemingly amenable to the ideas of the religion of science. Surely, wrote Carus in its afterglow, the parliament signified "the extinction of the old narrowness and the beginning of a new era of broader and higher religious life" (1916, 19). Here Carus met the people who stimulated him to help popularize Eastern philosophies and religions in the United States-one of the works for which he is best remembered today. Here he became convincedthat the parliamentwas "The 64 The World's Parliament ofReligions o 65 Dawn of a New Religious Era," as he titled his essay on it. For the next several years he donated much magazine space to the amorphous "Religious Parliament Extension" movement, of which he was secretalY. Unfortunately, as Carus finally acknowledged in 1916 (19n), "all attempts to continue the Parliament of Religions were failures." In part the problem was organizational: the successor groups were loosely structured and had vague objectives; some key people made strategic mistakes; others became sick and died. But even a better-organized effort might have borne little fruit, as significant portions ofthe Western Christian community decided that the parliament was one surprise they didn't need repeated. Carus's own profound faith in the inevitability ofreligious progress sustained his efforts against all reverses hut it also clouded his vision of the Religious Parliament Extension movement. Even before Congress awarded the World's Columbian Exposition to Chicago, the prominent city attorney Charles C. Bonney wrote that such a fair should include "something higher and nobler" than the mere "material triumphs, industrial achievements, and mechanical victories of man." He proposed a "World's Congress" of "statesmen, jurists, financiers , scientists, literati, teachers, and theologians" to discuss a number of themes, among them religion. The World's Congress Auxiliary that evolved from this proposal ultimately oversaw twenty different congresses during the summer of 1893, ofwhich the Parliament of Religions proved the largest. In preparation, the General Committee on Religious Congresses -ably headed by Rev. John Henry Barrows of Chicago 's First Presbyterian Church- sent out some ten thousand letters promoting the parliament (Druyvesteyn 1976, 10-13, 17-18; Barrows 1893,1:30). From the beginning the Congress was structured both to placate those who feared too much from it and to encourage those who expected too little. The planners made it clear that they were not trying to force any unity on the invited religions. 66 0 Catalystfor Controversy And they discouraged debate, controversy, or speaking negatively of any other person's religious views. These rules (although not always adhered to) set a mostly peaceful tone for an unprecedentedly diverse gathering (Bonney 1895,323-33). Carus did not ignore the World's Congress Auxiliary, but his part in it was limited. He did some work for the Committee on Folk-Lore (P. Cams to Bonney, 31 Oct. 1892) and the Committee on Philosophy, but he and Bonneywere not then in close communication. When the summer of the fair arrived, Carus attended several of the congresses and spoke at three. On 18 July 1893 he delivered a lecture, "The Philosophy ofthe Tool," to the Department ofManual and Art Education. On 24 August he presented "Our Need of Philosophy" to the Philosophical Section. (Both addresses were published in The Open Court and in separate form by...