Greed was the villain at the once-every-five-years Parliament of the World's Religions that wound up last week in Melbourne's cavernous new convention center. More than 6,000 people attended.
In session after session greed got the blame: for the destruction of nature, for conflict, for inequality, for the erosion of values. Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, made a passionate plea for moderation and balance, especially in what we consume. Swami Agnivesh from India, Sulak Sivaraksa from Thailand, Dr. A.T Ariyaratne from Sri Lanka, Mary Evelyn Tucker from Yale, the Dalai Lama, Hans Kung: they and other leaders from all over the world and from different faiths agonized over the human desire to consume more and more. The "market", globalization, and capitalism are seen as flawed. And greed and America are seen as going hand in hand. Yet this was hardly an anti-American gathering.
(Read more about religion and greed at
Patheos.com.)
The Parliament organization is Chicago-based and a good share of participants are Americans. Three Obama administration representatives--Mara Vanderslice from the White House Office of Faith-based Initiatives and Neighborhood Partnerships, and Quinn Mecham and Peter Kovach from the State Department--organized two sessions to ask what the U.S. could and should do to support interfaith initiatives, and what should it not do. They got a barrage of answers. They heard from a Native American about protecting sacred sites, from several people about fixing America's horrendous visa processes, about addressing discrimination of many sorts. People were hungry to engage and exuded a sense of pent up, frustrated ideals looking for a hearing.
The change in tone from and towards the U.S. from earlier years is startling and heartening. There's positive energy galore, eager requests and demands, and sky high expectations. As an American, I feel both hope and relief. We have a chance to do so much, and we must not blow it.
Three broad topics kept coming up: conflict and peace, global warming, poverty and social justice. The hope is that we can stop wars, save the earth and guarantee every world citizen a decent life, if we have the will.
Yet in Melbourne, the tensions among (as well as within) the different factions were striking, as advocates pressed their singular visions of what must be done. I left with an uneasy sense that dueling narratives are detracting more than adding to the obvious will to do good.
Bombarded as we are, especially in this pre-Christmas season, with pressures to buy, it's hard not to pause and reflect on this compelling critique of the consumer lifestyle. The call for more moderation and simpler lifestyles makes eminent sense.
But what's frustrating is that the solutions are so unconvincing: give to good causes, temper your consumption, fly less. All well and good but the admonitions just don't take account of the complexity of a world where jobs and production are tied, where the capacity to end poverty is linked to sound economic growth, where creativity and competition are linked. Surely, I devoutly hope, we have moved beyond a simple faith that unfettered markets work best. And beyond a hope that the world will return to the imagined simplicities of the past. We need to grapple with ferociously complex problems and come up with complex solutions.
