Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 315

Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 11: Ecumenical Initiatives
Chapter 2: The Interreligious Peace Movement and the Blessing Ceremony
Section 1: IRF and the Assembly, Paragraph 18
Section 2: IRFWP and IIFWP, Paragraph 08

17  We must create a scripture of oneness for the sake of averting conflict among religions. We must create a composite scripture. During the past six years, from 1985, we brought together distinguished theologians from all religions who identified the core teachings and texts of their faiths. After completing the preparations for this composite scriptural text, academic specialists started the work as expert advisers four years ago. Under their supervision, we will publish a scripture that fosters oneness. It is not good that there are so many scriptures. Muslims should not know only about Islam. The Islamic sphere must understand the Christian cultural sphere as well, and vice versa. The population of the realms of religions comprises two-thirds of all humankind. You must understand that the time has come when God will be able to have dominion over the earth. We must quickly create such a world.

18  I advocated publishing World Scripture. This project was announced at the conclusion of the first Assembly of the World's Religions in 1985, and it will be published in 1991. As a leader of Islam, you should know about other religions and not just Islam. You must also understand Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism and the Unification Church. If this is the case, why am I suggesting that you learn the doctrine of the Unification Church first? I proposed this and asked you to learn this first because, when seen from the perspective of sustaining a coherent worldview, the Unification Church is at the forefront.

I never think about converting you and making you into Unification Church believers. If there is anyone among your group who says they want to become a Unification Church member, I would be the first person to send them back. Do you think it is an easy thing to publish a scripture for the oneness of the world's faiths? After creating a global committee of scholars from each religion, I said, "We are compiling one global scripture that will include your religious tenets, so we ask you to choose all the content that you would like us to present." We compiled the texts into World Scripture, with core content that anyone would perceive to be fair-minded and appropriate.

19  On August 16, 1990, at the second Assembly of the World's Religions, which convened in San Francisco, I presented the newly published World Scripture. A God-centered purpose comes from the Absolute Being, and the purposes of this Absolute Being cannot be contradictory. God's Will cannot be at cross-purposes with itself; there is but one Will. From this perspective, the providential view is that we should pursue an ideal spirituality based on God as the Absolute Being.

If we believe that, then education is by all means necessary. Scriptures are like textbooks, and textbooks cannot be at cross-purposes with each other. So we have been preparing this global textbook for the past six years. For the first five years, I asked globally celebrated scholars of all religions to choose the best content from their own scriptures, content they thought should not be omitted from World Scripture. When published, it can be bequeathed to the world. Everyone will experience the depth of the teachings and their similarity to each other.

20  Scriptures are for the sake of all people. I officially recognized World Scripture as a project that reflected the careful supervision of religious leaders, eminent scholars and professors. Under their supervision, it underwent many corrections in the process of developing into a scripture of oneness. They made it by gathering representative scriptures from a total of 12 religions, including Buddhism, Confucianism, and other faiths. Scriptures that have existed up until now have been indefinite on the beginning and end of humanity. Therefore, we organized this compilation based on the Unification Church worldview, which offers a logical explanation starting from the creation of the world and moving through all stages of history. This being the case, we could not possibly exclude the Unification Church teaching from the compilation. World-famous theologians were in charge of compiling this text, and they offered it to me on August 15, 1991.

Section 2. IRFWP and IIFWP

Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace

On August 27, 1991, True Parents established the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace (IRFWP) in Seoul at an event with 2,000 religious leaders from 34 countries. True Parents gave IRFWP the mission to unite religions and lead humanity on the path to peace. Immediately after that, they gathered former and current presidents and prime ministers from 51 nations and founded the Federation for World Peace. True Parents stated that the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace, which represented the religious realm, and the Federation for World Peace, which represented the political realm, must become one like mind and body and take the lead in realizing world peace.

1  In His providence to save the world, God founded different religions among peoples from different cultural backgrounds. Some are servant-type religions and others are child-type religions. People have not understood this. These religions must become one with a parent-type religion. Therefore, the servant-type religion is required to teach us how to serve in the household. When the age of the parent-type religion comes, the child-type religion must teach us how to become one body with the parents in the household. Therefore, we must come to attend God as our Parent. Serving eminent religious leaders is preparation for attending God as our Parent.

When you look at the doctrines of different religions, you see they have similar core principles. It is an error to think that the oldest religion is the best. The parent-type religion appears with the purpose of gathering together the people of the world. Why do the faithful of each religion serve their founders? It is to gain training to serve the Parents. This teaching we are setting forth can lead to a revolution of higher dimension within the religious sphere.

With this, we have openly proclaimed that my wife and I are the ones who received the call of heaven as the representatives of the religion of the True Parents. Religious leaders signed a statement launching the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace. Until today, no one thought that religions could be combined into one framework. This is a historic occasion.

2  Until now politics and science have opposed religion, but now for the first time the unification of human thought is possible centering on True Parents. The realms of religion, politics and science are coming together. We can see from an external viewpoint that communism and democracy, representing Cain and Abel, are fighting for control over the world of politics. We founded the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace centering on the religious realm, and the Federation for World Peace centering on the political realm, to bring us into the age when Cain and Abel will end their conflict.

3  From the viewpoint of God's Will, most of the things I have to accomplish are done. The rest is to be done by the Federation for World Peace for the external world and the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace for the internal world. The IRFWP represents the standard by which the mind can bring about mind-body oneness. In God's providence, history progressed based on sacrifices made in wars involving religion and politics.

These two should strive to achieve oneness. The fulfillment of that purpose is close at hand. Who can bring together the religious and political worlds? There must be a nation and people in a position to do that. This should be done either by a country or by a coalition of religious organizations. This task remains before us.

4  Parents are necessary for the world's religions. Judaism has conflicts with Islam, Buddhism fights its rival religious groups, and Christian denominations fight with each other. We observe that people of those faiths will stop fighting when they attend events together and cultivate relationships. However, if the True Parents do not initiate meetings like this, such relationship building is completely impossible. Therefore, renowned scholars and government leaders have realized that without True Parents nothing can be accomplished. Focusing on this reality, we brought these leaders together, and on August 27, 1991, we created the worldwide institution called the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace.

5  Religions have developed from servant religions, adopted-child religions, stepchild religions and child religions to a mother religion and the parent religion. The mother religion is Christianity, and the parent religion is the Unification Church. It began as the religion of the father and then became the religion of the True Parents.

To teach the theory behind this, we gathered the leaders of religious groups to create the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace. We must teach this theoretical viewpoint to everyone, because countries and their leaders do not know how to advance. Politics and religion are in conflict, reflecting the mind-body division wrought by the human Fall, with politics representing the body and religion the mind. Unless we can unite them, there will be no way to achieve world peace.

6  To end the division of the mind and body brought about by the Human Fall, True Parents emerged from the sphere of religion, representing the heart, and have now extended themselves into the sphere of politics. On August 27, 1991, the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace noted that politics traditionally has sacrificed religion, just as the body defies the mind. It is said that until now the world of the body has always dominated the world of the mind, but now the world of the mind must shape the world of the body. The era is dawning when the world of the mind can influence the world of the body. Once we take control of our body with our mind as the center, the path to peace will unfold before our eyes. This must happen in the realm of our daily lives. Throughout history's course, religion, science and politics could not be harmonized. We must be able to bring them into oneness.

7  There should not be incongruent roads to world peace. Politics and religion must come to move in the same direction. It is a fundamental principle that the mind, guided by the religious realm, should control the body. Therefore, religion must lead. The Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace was founded on August 27, 1991, and included 12 major religions. Next, religious representatives from more than 40 countries are to be included. We must set sail to a world of peace under the navigation of the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace.

8  In order to solve the bitter sorrow in history that resulted from the division of mind and body, we must connect the communist world to the democratic world and make them as one. Religion represents the world of the mind and politics represents the world of the body. By clarifying the great moral principles of heavenly law and ending the fight between mind and body, centering on the mind, we will establish the absolute oneness of human nature and values and, centering on perfected Adam, who possesses those values, we will establish the perfection of Eve and a unified value perspective. This creates a peaceful order at the family level.

Centering on the worldwide perspective, which is connected to the national perspective, and the national perspective, which is connected to the people perspective, and the people perspective, which is connected to the tribal perspective, and the tribal perspective, which is centered upon the subject-partner perspective of that peaceful family, we are going to bind together the cosmos by means of actual relationships of love. When such a world and cosmos are a reality, we naturally will live by the public laws, regulations and social systems of love and true freedom.