Toward A Global Ethic

A Milestone For Interreligious Dialogue

Abstract

This issue of the MRI Journal is focused on the challenge of “Redefining Spiritual Transformation and Holiness in Asian Contexts in Times of Crisis.” How, then, is this agenda to be advanced by recalling the development of the 1993 Parliament of World Religions’ Declaration: Toward a Global Ethic? After all, whilst there was significant Asian participation in the Parliament, the Declaration was written by a Swiss theologian, Hans Küng, for a meeting organized and held in Chicago, USA. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate the continued relevance of Toward a Global Ethic by showing how its basic principles and “irrevocable directives” are grounded in a vision of spiritual transformation and holiness, emerging from dialogues among the world’s major religions and their devotees. The Declaration, initially drafted by Küng, was endorsed by the Council for a Parliament of World Religions (CPWR), was discussed and formally signed by some 240 participants and religious leaders at the 1993 Parliament in Chicago, among the most prominent of them, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago. Their achievement was to demonstrate that interreligious dialogue could not only remain faithful to the spiritual traditions that brought them together, but also could produce a statement outlining a minimal moral consensus helping to set an agenda for global change that continues to inspire people even to this day.