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The United Religions Initiative

Thread ID: 19155 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-07-15

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albion [OP]

2005-07-15 02:15 | User Profile

The stated purpose of the United Religious Initiative is [color=navy]"to promoting enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, ending religiously motivated violence and creating cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings."[/color] URI, the brainchild of Episcopal Bishop William Swing of San Francisco, and patterned after the United Nations, envisions [color=navy]"a world where the values and teachings of the great wisdom traditions guide people's service, where people respect one another's beliefs, and where the resourcefulness and passion of people working together bring healing and a more hopeful future to the Earth community."[/color]

Through its uncritical acceptance of the claims and practices of all religions, URI's [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/i06.html"][color=#0000ff]interfaith[/color][/url] approach promotes [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/p14.html"][color=#0000ff]religious pluralism[/color][/url]. URI's charter expressly forbids [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/p00.html#proselytism"][color=#0000ff]proselytizing[/color][/url] (evangelism) among URI's members.

[QUOTE] Along the way, a few organized religions have endorsed the effort, but the Roman Catholic authority, the fundamentalist Southern Baptists, and even Episcopalian leadership -- some have called Swing a "[url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/h27.html"][color=#0000ff]heretic[/color][/url]" -- have not given the initiative their blessings. Religions summit focuses on ending violence worldwide, Post-Gazette, June 26, 2000 [/QUOTE]
URI condones and cooperates with the [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/i00.html#interf"][color=#0000ff]Interfaith Center of New York & Temple of Understanding[/color][/url], and the [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c00.html#cpwr"][color=#0000ff]Council for a Parliament of World Religions[/color][/url].

While some of URI's objectives may be worthwhile, its attempts at creating religious unity through compromise cannot be endorsed by [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c94.html"][color=#0000ff]Christians[/color][/url].

Homepage of United Religions Initiative: [url="http://www.uri.org/"]http://www.uri.org/[/url]

albion

2005-07-15 02:28 | User Profile

[img]http://www.apologeticsindex.org/graphics/dotblue.gif[/img] [url="http://fatima.freehosting.net/index.htm"][color=#800080]The case against the United Religions Initiative[/color][/url][color=#800080][img]http://www.apologeticsindex.org/graphics/out4.gif[/img][/color] by Lee Penn. [url="http://fatima.freehosting.net/index.htm"]http://fatima.freehosting.net/index.htm[/url] This is the introduction to his proposed book about the United Religions Initiative (URI) and the New Age movement. Portions of his article have been published in the New Oxford Review and the Journal of the [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/s00.html#scp"][color=#0000ff]Spiritual Counterfeits Project[/color][/url]. See also this [url="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/u06.html#leepenn"][color=#800080]collection[/color][/url] of Lee Penn's articles about URI.

Interview with Lee Penn [url="http://www.soundwaves2000.com/rammaker.asp?id=155a&d=07-07-05a"]http://www.soundwaves2000.com/rammaker.asp?id=155a&d=07-07-05a[/url]

False Dawn has an expanded website: [url="http://www.falsedawn.us/"]http://www.falsedawn.us/[/url]

albion

2005-07-15 02:41 | User Profile

[img]http://www.sophiaperennis.com/images/penn_falsedawn.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.sophiaperennis.com/images/sp_title_books.gif[/img]

The interfaith movement, which began with the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, has grown worldwide. Although this movement has been largely unknown to the public, it now provides a spiritual face for globalization, the economic and political forces leading us all from nationalism to ‘One World’. The most ambitious organization in today’s interfaith movement is the United Religions Initiative (URI), founded by William Swing, the Episcopal Bishop of California. Investigative reporter Lee Penn, a Catholic ex-Marxist, exhaustively documents the history and beliefs of the URI and its New Age and globalist allies, the vested interests that support these movements, and the direction they appear to be taking. The interfaith movement is no longer merely the province of a coterie of little-heeded religious idealists with grandiose visions. The URI’s proponents have ranged from billionaire George Soros to President George W. Bush, from the far-right Rev. Sun Myung Moon to the liberal Catholic theologian Hans Küng, and from the Dalai Lama to the leaders of government-approved Protestant churches in the People’s Republic of China.

The interfaith movement, including the URI, is being promoted by globalist and New Age reformers who favor erosion of national sovereignty, marginalization of traditional religions, establishment of ‘global governance’, and creation of a new, Earth-based ‘global spirituality’ – in effect, a one-world religion. Therefore, the URI and the interfaith movement are poised to become the spiritual foundation of the New World Order: the ‘new civilization’ now proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.

In The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, French metaphysician René Guénon spoke of the ‘anti-tradition’ (the forces of materialism and secular humanism) finally giving way to the ‘counter-tradition’ (the satanic inversion of true spirituality), leading to the regime of Antichrist. The ‘anti-tradition’ weakens and dissolves traditional spiritualities, after which the ‘counter-tradition’ sets up a counterfeit in their place. Since Guénon’s time, as is well known, anti-traditional forces have greatly advanced worldwide. It is less well-known that counter-traditional movements have also made great strides, and now stand closer to the centers of global political and religious power than ever before. The ‘counter-tradition’ is making inroads on the political and cultural Right, as much as it is doing on the Left.

False Dawn painstakingly documents these trends, and speculates on their future development. In so doing, the author takes investigative reporting to the threshold of prophecy, and gives us a stunningly plausible picture of the global religious landscape of the 21st century.

"When a bishop of a Christian church happily worships alongside a Wiccan invoking other gods, something has gone horribly wrong. In False Dawn, Lee Penn has produced a comprehensive and critical history of the United Religions Initiative. This book sounds a clear warning: Anyone who makes theological truth subservient to utopianism denigrates all religions."

– Douglas LeBlanc, Editor, GetReligion.org