The World's Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893 by Richard Hughes Seager (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 317 children. In a period of great centralization and federation of religious organizations , it was not unusual that in 1892 a committee of several prominent lay leaders along with the clergy decided to unite the brotherhoods in their common interests under the name "Union of Greek Catholic Rusin Brotherhoods ." The book pushes into the background many of the issues that the noninstitutional historian would like to see treated: the complexity of the interaction of the religion, politics, and culture of the Old World as it was brought as baggage to the New World; the exportation of democracy and nation-building to a newly-emerging Czechoslovakia; the role of religion, liturgy, and doctrine on the sensibility of the ordinary worker and member and parishioner. This work is a valuable resource, nonetheless, for immigration and ethnic historians. Thomas F. Sable, SJ. University ofScranton The World's Parliament ofReligions: The East/WestEncounter, Chicago, 1893By Richard Hughes Seager. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1995. Pp. xxxi, 208. $35.00.) The World's Parliament of Religions is well known to historians. Held in Chicago during the 1893 World's Fair in a hall that was later to become the Art Institute, it brought together representatives from religious traditions throughout the world. Its goal was "to unite all religion against irreligion."As the author put it,"the Parliament was a liberal, western, and American quest for world religious unity that failed" (p. xxviii). It failed, according to the author, because "the God of the organizers of the Parliament turned out not to be quite the same as the Gods of the Asians" (p. xxix). This encounter between East and West is the perspective from which the author interprets the 1893 Parliament of Religions. By using concepts from the history of religion he is able to offer a new and insightful interpretation that enriches our understanding ofthis religious gathering. The 1893 World's Fair was America's quadricentennial salute to Christopher Columbus. Centered along the lake shore of Chicago a new city, labeled the White City, emerged within the old. Designed by Daniel Burnham, it evoked a mythic past that represented the United States as the New Rome, "heir to the western tradition and as apogee ofhuman civilization" (p. 13). Seager views this Columbian myth ofAmerica and the White City as typical of the cultural imperialism present at that moment in American history. As grand as it was, the Columbian myth was not very inclusive. Most of all it excluded many of those cultures that were exhibited along the Midway Plaisance. A major feature of the exposition, the Midway was a "living ethnographic display" of the world's peoples . Along with people from the West were people from the East;it was the culture and religion of these people from the East that challenged the validity of the Columbian myth and the superiority of the Judeo-Christian tradition. 318 BOOK REVIEWS After analyzing the Columbian myth present in the White City and the contrast presented by the exhibits of the Midway, the author then examines the papers presented at the Parliament of Religion. His perspective in this analysis is always the East/West encounter. As he puts it, the talks served "as a broad ideological landscape against which the East/West encounter can be read" (p. 46). First,he studies the papers presented by theWestern delegates. Consciously endorsing a theme of inclusivism, the Protestant and Catholic speakers considered all the world's religions as good in their own way, but they "found their ultimate fulfillment in Christianity" (p. 54). It was this exclusively Christian focus that severely limited the inclusivism and quest for religious unity that the Parliament sought to promote. In another chapter the author analyzes the papers delivered by the Asian delegates; they too promoted the ideal of world religious unity while selectively endorsing American patriotic ideals and placing them at the service of their cause. But their theology only intensified the intellectual ambiguities that mingled with the grand visions and dreams that the Parliament encouraged. The goal of world religious unity never resulted from the Parliament despite the hope of the delegates. The reality oftheological differences and the conflict that this engendered shattered...