Read this article in full for yourself from Insight Online; below are excerpts interspersed with my comments.

U.N. Faithful Eye Global Religion 

10/02/2000

By James Harder
harder@insightmag.com

In the name of world peace, the United Nations appears to have embraced a sort of religious universalism that views all religions as equals and is seeking to ban proselytizing. 

Bawa Jain, secretary-general of the Millennium Peace Summit, says he thinks all religions and spiritualists, as well as assorted witch doctors, sha-mans and medicine men, draw their wisdom from the same source. But he applauds efforts to outlaw proselytizing since it matters little whether one worships a downed World War II airplane with a cargo cult, is a snake-handling Baptist or a Roman Catholic. That view has been met with strict opposition from the Vatican and mainline Protestants, who oppose the notion that all religions are equal.

As host of the U.N.'s Millennium Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual  Leaders, Jain told an international meeting of 1,000 delegates that religions  need to accept the validity of all beliefs to attain world peace. The summit,  the first of its kind to be sponsored by the United Nations, was held in New York City Aug. 28-31 just before political leaders gathered for the U.N. Millennium Assembly. The timing was perfect, says Jain, as it allowed religious leaders to update their political counterparts on how to usher in the peace of the new world order through religious universalism.

According to Francis Cardinal Arinze, president for interreligious dialogue at the Vatican and a speaker at the summit, the Catholic Church also would  favor one religion in the world -- if it were Roman Catholicism. Assorted  grand muftis and other true believers hold the same view, again so long as it is their faith that is universally recognized. That each is out to convert the world is to be expected, so the proposed ban on proselytizing is surprising.

Less than a week after the summit the Vatican released a 36-page declaration rejecting what it said are growing attempts to depict all religions as equally true. A spokesman for the National Association of Evangelicals says they were astonished that a U.N.-endorsed summit would take a stand against proselytizing when the U.N. charter proposes to guarantee the human right to choose one's own religion.

The goal of world peace has been sought by religious leaders, philanthropists and philosophers alike throughout the centuries. However, for a decade there has been a resurgence among postmodern scholars and liberal theologians to try to achieve that goal through religious partnerships, even unification. The peace summit is their latest attempt to gain legitimacy at an international level with hopes of securing U.N. funding and endorsement.

Commentary by Mike G:  After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, an old word began to find new significance:  Hegemony.  This word has been used to label the potential control that the United States could wield over the entire world.  If you want to know what it might feel like to be a citizen in a small country on the other side of the world, with this mammoth potential power of the U.S., all you have to do is imagine the United Nations with the same mammoth potential power, while you are a citizen of the U.S.

That's right, as a U.S. citizen, you may not realize just how much "out of control" you could be of your own life, if the U.N. is awarded the kind of power that many people (most of them in the U.S.) want the U.N. to have.

Did you catch the irony and the hypocrisy in the movement being considered at the U.N.?

This philosophy being espoused by Bawa Jain (et. al.), that you shouldn't force your religion on others, is hypocritical because that's exactly what they want to do to you!  The Christian religion includes the Great Commission (spreading the Gospel to the entire world), so when the politically correct police of the world says that Christians must not proselytize, these PC police are aiming to restrict the practice of Christianity and thus force a belief system on you! One of the tenets of the PC belief system is that all religions are equal, and thus Jesus is NOT the only way--this is NOT what we believe as orthodox Christians, and so the PC police would thus not allow us to practice our religion.

Don't they see the hypocrisy?  Don't they see the skewed logic?  When they say "all must be free to believe their own religion" and in the next sentence they say "all must BELIEVE that every religion is equal" this second statement is forcing a belief system, and thus contradicts the first statement!

With the financial backing of such heavyweights as media mogul Ted Turner and Canadian billionaire Maurice Strong, this interfaith movement has had no shortage of cash. Turner, the honorary chairman of the peace summit, addressed the 1,000 delegates on the second morning of the convention after being praised by Strong as the man who has done more for peace, the environment and the United Nations than any other.

So now for us Christians to practice our religion, we must battle against the most powerful governments in the world via the United Nations, and even the most powerful economic forces like these billionaire people/corporations.

According to Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, or C-FAM, and one of those in attendance at the summit, Turner took the opportunity to denounce his own childhood faith. The vice chairman of Time Warner said he turned away from Christianity when he discovered "it was intolerant because it taught we were the only ones going to heaven." The crowd responded with laughter and approving whoops, says Ruse.

The question of tolerance is a central issue for those aligned with the peace summit and its objectives. Summit organizers say religious and spiritual groups need to realize what they believe is part of a greater wisdom and not unique to them.

"What we need to engage in is an education factor of the different religious traditions and the different theologies and philosophies and practices. That would give us a better understanding, and then I think [we have to deal with] the claims of absolute truth -- we will recognize there is not just one claim of absolute truth, but there is truth in every tradition. That is happening more and more when you have gatherings such as these," Jain tells Insight.

How can this guy say that "there is truth in every" religion, and then at the same time say that the truth of Christianity, which includes spreading the Gospel, and that Jesus is the only way, is intolerant?

Summit organizers hoped to have religious leaders sign a Declaration for World Peace, a goal that was realized, says Jain. But their second objective was not. The original intention was to create "an International Advisory Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders [IACRSL] that is designed to serve as an ongoing interfaith ally to the U.N. in its quest for peace, global understanding and international cooperation, according to summit documents. The summit failed to appoint such a council when delegates were unable to agree on who should represent their individual faiths.

Sounds like this IACRSL would be the politically correct police force that would probably operate just like our liberal media that demonizes any person or group that doesn't bow down to the politically correct mantra.

Instead, Jain tells Insight, he has been mandated to structure a steering committee for the new group with the help of what he calls "strategic partners." He says these will be "some members of our international advisory board and some of the key people who have been helping me in the process." During the next 90 days Jain also will start tapping religious leaders the world over, putting together his cadre.

A soft-spoken Indian, Jain worked for two years with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his office to arrange the peace summit. He is one of the founders of the World Movement for Nonviolence, vice chairman of the Council for the Parliament of the World's Religions, vice president of the Interfaith Center of New York and a leader of the United Religions Initiative, or URI.

Upon whom is Jain likely to call to give direction to the United Nations and help steer the course to unified religion in the interest of world peace? A front-runner is said to be Episcopal Bishop William Swing, a prominent figure in the interfaith movement, coming off a summer in which he realized a seven-year dream: This summer Swing gathered 300 people representing 39 religions for a charter signing in Pittsburgh, officially launching the URI. This group is an anticipated melting pot of religious belief, for which a 1998 draft charter declared that all religions draw their wisdom from one ultimate source. In 1995 Swing said the world is moving toward "unity in terms of global economy, global media and global ecological system. What is missing is a global soul." 

So who will fund this quest for a global soul? Men such as Turner and Strong seem willing to lay a few extra dollars down for such movements and lend their support at the podium of conferences and conventions. Neither is a stranger to the interfaith scene -- particularly Strong, who has plenty of influence with the leading global organizations. Chairman of the Earth Council and senior adviser to both the secretary-general of the United Nations and to the president of the World Bank, Strong is an international figure of such prominence that New Yorker magazine recently sighed that, "the survival of civilization in something like its present form might depend significantly on the efforts of a single man," referring to Strong. He always is on the short list of candidates for U.N. secretary-general.

Turner's wealth is better known than Strong's, and the billionaire media mogul has gone even further to promote the United Nations. In 1997 he donated $1 billion in support for U.N. causes, the most recent being the Millennium Peace Summit at which he expressed his disdain for Christianity. He remains chairman of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund, the organizations that manage his grant.

Are you seeing some of the motivations for this Universalism?  See, how it comes out of Ted Turner?  He HATES Christianity.  This Universalism has as it's principle objective the destruction of Christianity (and by this I mean orthodox Christianity--the Christianity of the ages--the Christianity that believes the Bible is the Word of God).  Is this the ultimate expression of jealousy?  People like Ted Turner just HATE the fact that devout Christians have such faith that they are certain of their own destiny and security in eternal life.  People like Ted Turner are confused in life; they don't know what is ahead for them; they are anxious for what happens to a human after death.  This total confusion causes extreme jealousy for some who are so insecure in their own religious belief.

So what is the objective here? Is it religious tolerance, unification or subversion of religious faith? Jain tells Insight that he looks forward to a day when religious people no longer insist on a single truth. And the URI, in which Jain is active and which was one of the partners for the summit, takes it even further. URI president Swing says, "there will have to be a godly cease-fire, a temporary truce where the absolute exclusive claims of each [religion] will be honored but an agreed-upon neutrality will be exercised in terms of proselytizing, condemning, murdering or dominating. These will not be tolerated in the United Religions zone."

Isn't the "United Religions zone" intended to be the entire world?  Isn't that the objective?  These guys are such "con men" it's scary.  They won't come out and tell you they want to control you entirely, because then you'd know you must resist them.  It's just so much double-talk.

While Swing does not elaborate on what territory that zone might encompass, sources say he is prepared to follow the U.N. lead. And certainly the guest list at the peace summit was impressive, including Cardinal Arinze, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Kirill, Israel's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Sheik Ahmad Kuftaro of the Muslim World League, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Billy Graham.

The guests represented a broad spectrum of faith traditions, including Ba'hai, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Indigenous, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism. 

While Jain and others are calling the summit a success, other delegates still are uncomfortable about it. Ruse complains that it was manipulated by the left-leaning agenda of Turner and Strong. Richard Cizik, director of the National Association of Evangelicals office in Washington, says, "there was a whole premise which I don't accept, which came from the keynote address by Ted Turner and was manifested throughout the programming -- namely, the premise that all religions are equal." Equal at the summit perhaps, but assuredly not the same.

              Copyright © 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
                Web site developed by Griffin Strategy Group

One aspect of many religions (like Christianity) is to believe so deeply in the religion that you are certain that what the religion teaches is absolutely, 100% correct.  Now, if you hold to this universalistic "belief system" then, by definition, you say that ALL religions' belief systems are valid, yet at the same time you say that no one who holds to any of these religions' belief systems may actually hold to any rigid belief systems of their own religion--thus, the illogic!

How many different ways can you say that this entire line of thinking has no logic to it whatsoever.  A person has to be entirely without any logic to be able to make an argument in favor of this Universalism.  In addition, it seems to me that the only way a person can be a Universalist is to have no religion of their own.
________

Read the following New York Times article on the same subject to see how the PC police in the liberal media present it.  A bit of a brainwashing piece, isn't it, compared to the above unbiased report?

Click below to read the entire article (following are excerpts):

Keeping Friends and the Faith

September 17, 2000

By GUSTAV NIEBUHR

How should religious believers respond to the plurality of faiths around them? It's a question that has grown in urgency as waves of immigration and emigration around the world have brought people of very different theologies into the same work places, schools and neighborhoods.

The question becomes especially pointed when it comes to a faith with a missionary imperative, like Christianity, whose gospels teach that salvation comes through faith in Jesus.

In many areas around the globe, Christians continue to follow Jesus's command, recounted in Mark 16:15, to preach the gospel to every living creature. (That this can cause great tension is evident these days in India, where Hindus have accused Roman Catholics of proselytizing, and in Latin America, where Catholics have complained of similar pressures from evangelical Protestants.)

Recent events have illustrated the conflicting responses that pluralism can arouse.

A week [after the U.N. meeting], the Vatican published a statement by an even  higher-ranking Vatican official, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, saying that the church is the guardian of religious truth and that the ultimate aim of interfaith dialogue ought to be conversion.

It was only a month earlier that an international gathering of 10,000 evangelists, who had been meeting in Amsterdam under the auspices of the Rev. Billy Graham's organization, released their own declaration, which dealt partly with the issue of pluralism. (A statement last week by Jewish scholars and rabbis urging Jews to relinquish their fears of Christianity dealt less with issues of ecumenism than with dogma long seen as prejudicial.)

The two recent Christian statements shared the view that only through Jesus Christ is salvation possible. "Jesus is, in fact, the Word of God made man for the salvation of all," Cardinal Ratzinger wrote. The authors of the "Amsterdam Declaration" agreed: "The only way to know God in peace, love and joy is through the reconciling death of Jesus Christ the risen Lord."

And, like Cardinal Ratzinger, the evangelists reaffirmed the necessity of conversion: "As we enter into dialogue with adherents of other religions, we must be courteous and kind. But such dialogue must not be a substitute for proclamation."  Some might argue that interfaith dialogue need not be an either-or proposition, a choice between a defense of the claims of one's own religion or a mushy relativism. Instead, the search for common ground may be undertaken for goals as readily understood in a secular sense as they are in a sacred one.

That seemed to be the message of the Millennium Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, the remarkably diverse gathering at the United Nations that produced a document signed by several hundred religious leaders pledging them to work for world peace, against poverty and for the protection of the environment.

One of those present was James Kenney, international coordinator of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, a Chicago-based organization that has twice convened large-scale interfaith gatherings in the last seven years. The Millennium Summit had its share of tensions between faith groups, but, he said, "it was a very good symbolic moment, and I'm really a believer in those."

At the same time, Mr. Kenney remains a critic of what he calls "lightweight pluralism," the desire to claim that all religions are really the same, and that differences do not matter.

As a counter to that tendency, he said, as awareness of global religious pluralism has increased, there has developed also "an increasingly articulate body" of religious believers, especially among Christians, who appear ready to grant that enlightenment can be found in other faiths, while still affirming their own religion as utterly unique.

[How can this guy be a critic of "lightweight pluralism" when he makes this statement?  I guess what he prefers is "heavyweight pluralism."

But the recent statements by the Vatican and the evangelists' meeting strongly suggest that such an approach is a long way from displacing Christianity's view of its exclusive claim to salvation. Instead, as the world grows smaller and as more and more people have increasing contact with those of other faiths, the debate over how to respond to religious pluralism is likely to be just beginning.

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Click here for background on the above article.

Click here for another critically important article in which the liberal media is pushing paganism as a "movement of individuals seeking community and higher consciousness beyond the bounds of traditional Christianity."