Arrivals

By: Katherine Marshall

September 20, 2007

The streets of Monterrey were clogged this evening as Mexico's president arrived to open an 80 day named the Universal FORUM of Cultures, Monterrey 2007. The hotel lobby of the Holiday Inn swarmed with bagpipe groups in kilts, and a group that looked like medieval troubadours. I am here to participate in a first event of the Forum, which is an interfaith meeting, called the International Interreligious Encounter. A group of about 40 people from all over the world, scholars, practitioners, preachers, from a feast of different faiths, are arriving. We received a program book with a dizzying array of events – plenaries, performances, panels, life stories, introductions to religious traditions, and so on. Some 15,000 people, we were told, will attend a program with up to 15 sessions running in parallel.

There are two different stories here which link in the Encounter. The first is a dream of creating a world cultural forum. A group of passionate advocates looked to the World Economic Forum (which meets in Davos) and the World Social Forum (which began in Porto Alegre, Brazil), and conceived the idea of a World Cultural Forum. Their idea was to create a sort of Olympics where the meetings would move from city to city, with some continuity in theme. This is the second such venture – the first was in Barcelona in 2004. So it will be interesting to see how this forum unfolds between now and December.

The interreligious event is happening here because a Parliament of the World’s Religions took place in Barcelona as part of the World Cultural Forum there in 2004. The Parliament has a fascinating history – it grew from an 1893 interreligious meeting in Chicago, a pioneering effort to bring religious leaders together and launch a process of mutual education and common efforts for good. Grand intentions there took off in various directions but it was not until 1993 that, again in Chicago, a “Parliament” met again. Interreligious thinking and politics has changed a good deal since then, but the Parliament is one of the leading global interfaith organizations, with a variety of activities including parliaments on a roughly 5 year cycle. The next full Parliament will be in Melbourne, Australia in December 2009.

The Parliament and the Cultural Forum thus are continuing on a road together, with the ambitious forum in Monterrey kicking off with the interreligious event. I expect it to be full of symbolism, expressions of good will, muted but significant discussion of tough issues (I am on a panel on reproductive health issues), pageant, and education. An interesting feature will be the significant part played in the group by indigenous religious leaders – something that is of keen interest in Mexico.

The Encounter opens with a grand plenary tomorrow, Friday evening.

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