All in Good Faith

Author(s): Jean Potter, Marcus Braybrooke
Publisher: World Congress of Faiths

Page 12

2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERFAITH SERVICES
and A HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION ABOUT THEM
Marcus Braybrooke
Beginnings
The beginning of modern interfaith activity is usually dated to the World's Parliament of Religions, which was held in Chicago in 1893. It was there too that the first recorded 'act of common worship' took place. Members of different religions have, of course, interacted in various ways for centuries and perhaps on occasion prayed together.
The common worship at Chicago in 1893 was a spontaneous occurrence at the opening ceremony of the Parliament. The organist was playing the tune of the One Hundredth Psalm, when the crowd, most of whom were Christian, started to sing the familiar words. Following this, 'the hearts and voices of the multitude were led by Cardinal Gibbons in the Lord's Prayer' (1).
During the Parliament, several devotional meetings, which included readings and prayers from many religions, were held early in the morning. At the final session, after President Bonney's closing address, 'the great assembly joined with Rabbi Dr Emil G Hirsch in the Lord's Prayer. This was followed by a prayer of benediction delivered with great earnestness by Bishop Keane' (2)
Well before the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions at Chicago, leaders of the Brahmo Samaj - a Hindu reform movement dating from the early nineteenth century - had added readings from the scriptures of the world to the reading of Hindu texts. In the Theosophical movement, passages from all the scriptures were treasured.
In the early part of the twentieth century, some Christian missionary colleges in India, in order to make it easier for their Hindu and Muslim students to participate, broadened their daily worship by choosing mainly theistic rather than Christocentric readings and hymns. Already, at Mahatma Gandhi's ashram, it was the regular practice to include in the daily prayer services hymns and readings from many traditions. When Gandhi founded the Phoenix Settlement in
- 5 -