THE BEGINNING

3. The 1936 Congress.

Formal preparations for the World Congress of Faiths began on 16th November 1934. It opened less than two years later at University College, London, on July 3rd and lasted until July 18th, 1936. The Congress was not residential and this restricted the social intercourse between participants. Discussion was encouraged and was carried on in good humour. The chairmen and leaders of debate were carefully chosen.

Younghusband persuaded a galaxy of distinguished people to speak - for the most part they were scholars rather than religious leaders. They included Yusuf Ali, Principal of the Islamic College at Lahore and a translator of the Qur’an into English; Dr D T Suzuki, Professor of Buddhist philosophy at Otani University, Kyoto; Professor Malalasekera, from Ceylon; Professor Nicolas Berdiaeff (Berdyaev), a Russian philosopher; Dr S N Das Gupta, author of a History of Indian Philosophy; Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was about to take up the Spalding Chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at Oxford; Professor J L Magnes, President of the Hebrew University; Sir Abdul Qadir, a High Court Judge and a Member of the Council of the Secretary of State for India; Sirdar Mohan Singh, from the Punjab; Mr S I Hsiung, who gave a talk on the teachings of Confucius; Dr J S Whale, President of Cheshunt College, Cambridge and Rev P T R Kirk, who was Director of the Industrial Christian Fellowship. Shoghi Effendi, the Head of the Baha’is, sent a paper that was read for him. The chair was taken by distinguished scholars, such as Sir E Denison Ross and Professor H G Wood or leading figures, such as the Chief Rabbi, the Aga Khan, Dr C E M Joad and Lord Samuel. Two women were asked to chair sessions: Dame Elizabeth Cadbury and Dame Ogilvie Gordon.

Many of the published papers are of a high quality. Of greatest interest, perhaps, is the different attitudes which they display towards the relationship of religions to each other. On the one hand, Rev P T R Kirk claimed that Christianity must be accepted by the whole of mankind and Mr Moulvri A R Dard made a similar claim for the Ahmadiyya community. By contrast, the paper prepared by Professor Haldane, who had died shortly before the conference, included this passage: ‘Many Christians entertain the ideal of converting non-Christian peoples to Christianity. I think that a much higher ideal is to understand and enter into sympathy with the religions which exist in other countries and to use this understanding and sympathy as a basis for higher religion’ (1). Several speakers, such as the Chief Rabbi and Canon Barry, stressed the differences between religions, whereas Ranjee G Shani said the differences were trivial. ‘Jesus and Buddha, Shakespeare and Ramakrishna - are in essence “members one of another”’(2).

In general it was agreed that the aim of the Congress was not to create one new synthetic religion, but to generate understanding and a sense of unity between the religions of the world. Several speakers hoped that the world religions could together work for peace and spiritual uplift.

In his foreword to the published papers, Faiths and Fellowship, Sir Francis Younghusband stressed that the one aim of the Congress was to promote the spirit of fellowship. He ruled out certain misunderstandings. There was no intention of formulating another eclectic religion, nor of seeking the lowest common denominator, nor of appraising the value of existing religions and discussing respective merits and defects. It was not maintained that all religions were the same, nor equally true, nor as good as one another. The hope was to ‘intensify that sense of community which is latent in all men’ and to awaken a livelier world-consciousness (3). Sir Francis mentioned that through discussion and reflection, the conception of God grew greater and that by coming closer to each other, members of different religions deepened their own spiritual communion.

By the Revd. Marcus Braybrooke.

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