United in Godlessness
by John F. McManus
Can you imagine an interfaith organization designed to accomplish in the field of religion what the United Nations was designed to do to the nations of the world? While the UN targets national sovereignty for destruction, an organization called United Religions (UR) would have all faiths abandon their core beliefs and join together in a worship-the-earth form of religiosity. Already on the drawing board, UR is gathering supporters, raising funds, and setting its sights on opening a world headquarters in San Francisco.The prime mover behind the United Religions concept is Episcopal Bishop William Swing of San Francisco. Swing claims he dreamed up the idea during a sleepless night just prior to leading an ecumenical worship service coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the UN in 1995. "It struck me profoundly that the nations of the world have been moral enough to get together to struggle for moral good for 50 years," he enthused, "but in those same 50 years, the religions of the world hadn't spoken to each other."
"Sacred" EarthAt his "religious" celebration of the UN's 50 years, Swing attracted such global notables as Britain's Princess Margaret, Poland's Lech Walesa, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that at Swing's ecumenical service, these luminaries "sat in the front pew as Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jews filed past in an eclectic parade of mitres, turbans, vestments and saffron robes." Reverend Alan Jones, dean of the Episcopal cathedral where the eclectics paraded, called on participants to labor "as workers for peace, as guarantors of the sacredness of the earth."
Swing would like to see the UR structured just like the UN, with a general assembly, a security council, a secretary-general, "peacemaker teams," and a "Value Bank" to help people invest in "corporations or nonprofits that further their spiritual values."
With $150,000 of seed money from unnamed private foundations, Swing took off in February 1996 for a three-month pro-UN world tour during which he met with Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, the Archbishop of Canterbury, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and an array of leaders from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh faiths.
Taming the FundamentalistsBack home in June 1996 after circling the globe, Swing gathered 60 backers for an important planning session. Support for the entire undertaking came from former UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, now chancellor of the University of Peace located in Costa Rica. Muller is so enthused about the UN that he has written: "If Christ came back to earth, his first visit would be to the United Nations to see if his dream of human oneness and brotherhood had come true." Muller told Swing's assembly, "Peace will be impossible without the taming of fundamentalism through a United Religions that professes faithfulness only to the global spirituality and to the health of the planet." It is obvious that the same kind of pantheism evident at the UN's 1992 environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro will undergird UR. And fundamentalism is indeed its target.
The UR's June 1996 session produced plans for creating its charter by June 1997 and for establishing its headquarters at San Francisco's Presidio by the year 2000. The organizers hope to have UR fully functioning by 2005. According to the Los Angeles Times, Swing claimed that "more than 700 people have already expressed an interest in attending the charter writing." Swing told the gathering, "We are on the threshold of a new global civilization."
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Swing's UR allies include the Gorbachev Foundation — which is also located at the Presidio. Writing for the Buffalo, New York-based Catholic Family News, Cornelia Ferreira listed Gorbachev Foundation backers as former Secretary of State James Baker, George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Brian Mulroney of Canada, Tansu Ciller of Turkey, Vaclav Havel, George Shultz, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Muller, and Ted Turner.
In saner times, this sort of nonsense could have been laughed off as the harebrained scheming of crackpot extremists. But these aren't sane times. These godless people are targeting human behavior and religious beliefs. What they are planning is no laughing matter.
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