Lion Dancers at the Parliament of the World's Religions, Melbourne, December 2009 (Photo: Mike Lowe)

The fifth Parliament of the World’s Religions, attended by over 6000 people from 200 countries, took place in Melbourne, Australia, the first week of December, 2009. Among the U.S. participants were Paul Wee, Adjunct Professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, in Washington, DC, and Kay Lindahl, founder of the Listening Center in Long Beach, CA, which fosters the practice of sacred listening.

Lindahl had been invited to give a workshop on “The Sacred Art of Listening: Hearing from the Heart." at IofC’s Creators of Peace (COP) conference, held in Sydney at the beginning of October. On her return to Australia in December, she picked up her connections with the COP network at the Parliament, where Creators of Peace offered a workshop on “Learning to forgive: healing our past, creating our future.” Lindahl, who attended the Parliament with a team from the Listening Project - a special collaboration among three groups to promote listening during the Parliament.

Jewish, Christian and Muslim peacemakers from the Holy Land (Photo: Rahul Kapadia)

Dr. Wee, a Lutheran minister, has worked to resolve conflict in Guatemala, Eastern and Central Europe. As as a program officer in the Religion and Peacemaking unit of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Nigeria, he worked closely with Imam Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye, of The Imam and the Pastor film. In Melbourne, he showed the film in two separate sessions at the Parliament and, together with an Imam from Baltimore, facilitated discussions afterwards.

Speaking at a brown bag lunch in the IofC Washington office in January, Wee expressed gratitude to the Washington IofC for facilitating “a most helpful collaboration with IofC community of Armagh,in Melbourne.” He noted that “the hospitality was overwhelming throughout the week.”

Wee reported that the Obama administration had sent three senior staffers to the Parliament to gather people from different countries to listen and learn from them—especially about how to interact with the Muslim world. Wee stressed the importance of understanding the “unconscious, deeply religious sense that people have in their whole way of being in the world.” If we approach people on a purely rational and empirical basis, we will fail to appreciate their real concerns and needs.

Among the things which characterized the Parliament, he said, were “1) an acknowledgement of the integrity of every faith community and 2) an awareness that every faith tradition brings unique gifts for addressing the issues of the day.”

The Parliament provided attendees with unique opportunities to build understanding across religious traditions and to develop partnerships and collaboration to address the pressing needs of the world. While religion is often perceived as a cause of conflict, it can also provide an impetus to heal conflict and spark the motivation to address the needs of humanity, including the threats of climate change and a degraded environment. Coming as it did just before the Copenhagen conference on climate change, the Parliament had a major focus on the role of religions in addressing this impending global crisis.

Martin Frick, the Director of the Global Humanitarian Forum attended the Parliament, according to Michael Lowe, writing on IofC’s global web site, “to engage with faith groups over climate change, with the help of Initiatives of Change, before heading to Copenhagen. He was able to do a series of video interviews . A 60 meter scroll was also sent to the Copenhagen conference inscribed with messages and prayers from participants at the Parliament.”

The Asia Pacific Center for IofC in Melbourne, Armagh, hosted two evenings which provided an opportunity for people attending the Parliament from different parts of the world and a diverse group of Melboune residents to come together. On one evening Michael Henderson, author of several books about the power of acknowledgment, apology and forgiveness, spoke with Sulak Sivaraksa, the Thai founder of the International network of Engaged Buddhists on the theme “Can anybody be a peacemaker?”

In an age of division, of competition and clash, it is heartening to see these signs of coming together from different faith traditions, different cultures, and different organizations to celebrate and hold up what is of true value in life and to find ways to learn from one another and to work together to bring healing to people and to our world.