IRF and the Assembly

The establishment of IRF

True Parents established the International Religious Foundation (IRF) on April 25, 1983. Two years later, from November 15 to 21, 1985, IRF sponsored the inaugural meeting of the Assembly of the World's Religions at the Americana Great Gorge Resort in McAfee, New Jersey.

The purpose of the assembly was to create an integrated movement of the world's faiths. True Parents said that in a world characterized by sudden change, to lead humanity in the right direction, religions must work together to substantiate God's Will on earth.

1. The age of individual nation-states has passed. If nations do not enter into alliances with other countries, they cannot survive. It is the same for religions. Science, technology, and new ways of thinking are rapidly transforming society.

So if you hold to the doctrine of any one religious system, you absolutely will not be able to keep pace with the rate of sudden social change. You will constantly be left behind.

As society's vision develops and expands; therefore, the different religious groups should form themselves into a protective hedge to the north, south, east, and west to survive and to keep from losing their position.

The religious world should form a united front. No matter how much the leaders of a particular faith tradition insist that they are the best or that they represent a conservative tradition that does not need to cooperate with other faiths, the world is flowing toward unity.

Religions are continuously being re-examined and rejected and, if they cannot work with others, they will falter and fall out of favor with young people and intellectuals.

Humanity is interwoven and interdependent. We are at a stage at which we cannot survive unless we have the option to assess global issues and change direction based on a unified perspective.

Opposing communism or removing deeply embedded corruption is the kind of work that cannot be done without forming alliances. This is why I created the International Religious Foundation. (174-064, 1988/02/17)

2. I began the International Religious Foundation to bring the religious world together, even though some have called this effort foolish. They have dismissed me in their minds, saying, “For thousands of years, Christianity has never been able to coalesce, so how does Reverend Moon think he can unite all the religions of the world?” The media outlets have paid me no attention, but my results in this are wonderful and on a global scale.

Now you must begin a religious coalition movement on university campuses, focusing your energy on professors and university students, as well as on high school and middle school students.

This is the era of the younger generation, and unless we focus on the young and generate energy with a religious coalition movement, all religions will begin to lose their ability to contribute to the good of humanity.

Therefore, the large, all-encompassing purpose around which religions can unite must be more distinct and compelling than that offered by individual denominations. If we can do that successfully, religions will be drawn to that purpose. (205-276, 1990/10/01)

3. I have emphasized that harmony among religions is the one indispensable condition for the realization of world peace. To this day, it has been impossible for any one religion to speak for the totality of God's Will, with the result that the different faiths inevitably have varying views.

But we are brothers and sisters in one great family under one Heavenly Parent, and conflict and hatred among religions are wrong.

I have already met God in the spirit world, as well as the founders of the great religions. I have spoken with them many times on my path of spiritual investigation.

To this day, I experience the presence of God and have deep inspirational communication with Him in my daily life. If God does not exist, how could such a person as me, who was born in a remote village, among a weak, oppressed, and exploited people, create a worldwide spiritual foundation in the face of misunderstanding and unspeakable persecution?

How could I come to convene meetings of the world's top religious leaders and be standing here offering this address to you?

The purpose and the means of the Unification movement were decided upon and brought to fruition based on guiding principles given by God. Our activities and the clear content of our teachings originated from God.

The International Religious Foundation is planning to hold the Assembly of the World's Religions in 1993, for the sake of commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Parliament of the World's Religions held in Chicago in 1893.

A series of events will prepare for this global, interreligious exposition by making clear the universal Principle immanent in all living beings and thoroughly uplifting the variety of its revelations. The purpose of the Assembly of the World's Religions is to advance the world of peace that all human beings desire.
(133-275, 1984/08/13)

4. The Grand Mufti of Syria has been working for 40 years to bring Judaism, Christianity,y and Islam into oneness. In the course of this, he was opposed and became discouraged. He suffered imprisonment several times and was unable to accomplish his vision.

When he heard through the Council for the World's Religions that I am engaged in the same work, he asked to meet me. He was surprised by the scope of God's vision for the world's religions, saying things like “Surely such a work can be done if this person takes the lead.”

At a gathering of 25,000, he announced, “Since Father Moon is already putting into practice the plan for the unification of religions that I have been developing for 40 years, I ask all people who follow me to mobilize fully and support Father Moon!” This is how the world is changing. (205-216, 1990/09/02)

5. To unify Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is not easy. What do we have to do to bring them into oneness? We must endure, all the while maintaining a parental heart and having a mind of love greater than that of Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, and Abraham. How to be able to persevere is an important issue.

A leader must emerge who can say, “I love Muhammad and Islam. I also love Jesus and Christianity. And in addition, I love Moses and the people of Israel.” If such a person does not appear, the world's religions will not be able to become one.

We held the second Assembly of the World's Religions beginning August 16, 1990. Why do you think I created this organization, which stirred up controversy in the religious world?

Since we cannot find unity even within one Christian denomination, my insistence that I will create a unity of the world's religions from a perspective transcending particular religions made it seem as though I had lost my mind.

Even though I am fully engaged in the work of harmonizing religions, most Unificationists around the world still need to learn more about the importance of this.

For religions to come together, there must be common key points within the differing views of the various faiths. There must be such key starting points and philosophical teachings that all religions share. I have to arm the members of the Unification.

Church with such understanding, giving them the conviction that they will be able to overcome the difficulties they face in the world. While determining how to do this, I had to go all the way to God's throne, the source of ideas.
(210-120, 1990/12/17)

New ERA

True Parents invited 280 theologians and respected religious scholars to New York in January 1981 for the sake of creating a global interreligious movement, which they called the New Ecumenical Research Association (New ERA).

In December of that year, they held a conference in Hawaii entitled “God: The Contemporary Discussion” (the “God Conference”), attended by 160 theologians, son, son to energize, and philosophers. On the foundation of discussing God from various religious perspectives, this conference fulfilled True Parents' desire for religious solidarity for the first time.

In 1982, True Parents invited young people representing 12 religions to attend a training session and a religious coalition building. At this first Youth Seminar on the World's Religions, in which these young people made a pilgrimage to the holy sites of their various faiths, True Parents taught them the value of harmony and understanding among religions.

In addition, in 1985, True Parents guided the development of the Religious Youth Service (RYS), a new service movement in which young people from all religions worked hand in hand doing public service activities in areas of need.

6. Now in the United States, New ERA is working as an interreligious movement. We are working quickly to gather as many distinguished theologians as we can, hoping to activate as many as 1,000.

How different this is from the annual meetings of American theologians where, in 1975 and 1976, Unification Church scholars were not allowed in! The people of the Korean theological world who are opposing us today cannot understand how, in a few short years, Unification theology has risen to hold such a respected position, and how we have been able to sell so many volumes of Unificationist books.

Why are we doing this kind of work? If you ask God, “What is Your hope regarding this world?” He would reply, “I hope that you can join all the religious leaders and theologians who are fighting one another, and bring them into oneness so that they will be able to accomplish my Will.”

Because I understand the reality of this desire of God, I do this work without ceasing, even while I am persecuted and hounded and as accusations of heresy are hurled at me. God needs someone to open the path to religious harmony.
(121-305, 1982/10/30)

7. I founded the God Conference in 1981. As indicated by its title, this is a gathering where people are invited to speak about God. It is where practitioners of Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism gather to discuss God.

We created the God Conference out of the understanding that humanity will be able to fulfill the providence of God only if we can transcend the boundaries of our respective religions.

Let's bore a hole through which the religious world can pass so that we all can work together in harmony.

Taking a stance beyond particular faith traditions, we must remove barriers. We need to connect to an interreligious, interdenominational standard for the sake of saving the world and completing the providence of God.

It is unimportant to me how much I am abused, or told I am foolish, along the way. I have understood that someone must pioneer this course in the fulfillment of God's Will. I have done this, and I was prepared for the enormous sacrifices that were required. Through this, I have been gaining renown, even in the religious world. (121-307, 1982/10/30)

8. The Unification Church is a religion that exists for the sake of saving the world. We have appeared with a tradition of thinking that we must save the world even if we have to sacrifice Christianity and America.

The only thing we teach in the Unification Church is the tradition of God. It is your destiny to inherit the tradition of God and the tradition of Parents. Walking the path of this tradition is the way to heaven.

No matter how much Christianity says to believe in Jesus, that alone will not get us there. The same goes for adherence to any other particular religion. This is why I am making a giant investment to hold the Interdenominational Conferences for Clergy, as well as the conferences of the International Religious Foundation. I am expending great effort to unite Christianity and all religions.

If I do not do this work on earth, eventually the leaders of all religious groups, all the denominations, and the entire spirit world will accuse me. To accomplish this work, I am bringing together a great many scholars representing the world's peoples. (130-240, 1984/01/29)

9. At the end of 1981, we held our first international gathering of theologians, entitled “God: The Contemporary Discussion” (the “God Conference”).

We are transcending all the barriers of the many religions and denominations across the world. We brought together Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucians across the barriers of faith. We invited the great scholars of the world. That was the first time in history for a conference of this scope to be held.

The objective of the God Conferences was to discuss God. Based on the theme of these interfaith conferences, I made the statement that “The Hindu denominations are divided and are fighting among themselves.

Similar situations exist with other religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Confucianism. If there is a conference to bring them together, y will provide financial support.”

Naturally, they would be ashamed if they were to quarrel with each other at a conference such as this. It would be a disgrace, such that they would be unable to look each other in the eye.

While holding the God Conference, we created a worldwide youth organization with activities to provide multi-religious leadership to young people during their summer vacation. When those young people come to the Middle East, we will gather the best-known scholars of Islam to give lectures, and when they come to Asia, we will bring distinguished Buddhist and Confucian scholars.

When they come to America, we will inspire them by bringing the most respected Jewish and Christian scholars to speak to them. If this kind of movement takes root, the conflicts between religious groups and denominations will gradually diminish.

When the top tier of world scholars have attended the Assembly of the World's Religions, the era of denominational and religious infighting will pass.
(117-046, 1982/01/31)

10. By now, since I have been holding conferences of scholars, such as ICUS, few have come to know of me. I built a foundation that employs and supports the talents of excellent scholars.

Now I have gathered scholars from the religious field and held the God Conference, asking them to share whatever they had to say about God. To rediscover God together, we begin with the most basic question,

“Does God exist?” Then we comment on historical events and processes from the perspective of providential history, and provide theoretical support for the proposition that God is alive and is involved in the world's present situation. We must also enlighten those theologians who think God does not exist.

This, together with connecting leading scholars from all the world's religions with one another, is part of the work of the God Conference.

Thereafter, we began to bring together young leaders and intellectuals, who will inherit the world in the future. We are providing an excellent educational opportunity for 160 young leaders each summer.

We select 20 students from each of the major world religions, students who are recommended by their professors. They participate in pilgrimages not just to their holy land but to each religion's holy land. (126-171, 1983/04/19)

11. I founded New ERA and the God Conference as two ecumenical projects coming out of the Unification Theological Seminary in the United States. The results confirm that these efforts to foster harmony and unification among Christian denominations and other religions can succeed through patience, sacrifice, and the natural process of true love.

I started the Assembly of the World's Religions and the Council for the World's Religions to realize a world of peace and to advance God's Will on earth using earnest dialogue to build harmony among the followers of each religion. It turns out that these organizations are achieving miracles within the often stagnant religious world.

I founded the Youth Seminar on the World's Religions and the Religious Youth Service to help establish an ideal world of peace in the name of God, and to prevent racial strife and religious conflict among young people.

Through these organizations and conferences, I am presenting an alternative path of cooperation and harmony to the religious world. (167-099, 1987/06/30)

12. A movement for religious coalition must arise in university communities, bringing the leading young scholars together as one.

When they have achieved unity with one another, crossing over the lines of their differing faith traditions, they must step forward and lead the creation of a religious coalition. Through the activities of the Youth Seminar on the World's Religions and the Assembly of the World's Religions, we stimulated the imagination of religious leaders.

The title for the second Assembly was “Transmitting Religious Tradition to Society and the Next Generation.” The current era is not one in which the next generation and society as a whole can easily accept religion.

Who will take responsibility for educating people and overcoming this problem? It is not the leaders of the religious existing state of affairs but the laity and the children of those in authority in each religion.

Therefore, for eight years beginning in 1982, we deployed, in strategic places, intelligent young people whose hearts were moved through the youth seminars. Through them, we now have relationships with leaders in each of the major world religions. The direction has been set. (205-271, 1990/10/01)

13. I initiated conferences for New ERA in 1977 to prevent a race war. We began educating university students in 1982, starting with the Youth Seminar on the World's Religions. The seminar began with a week of education on world religions, followed by pilgrimages to holy sites around the world, including my birthplace, Jeongju in North Korea.

The young adults in their 20s and 30s are intelligent people who one day will be the leaders of their faiths. Over the past ten years, these people have come to know who I am and why I am doing this. Those among them who aspire to be religious leaders must have the same heart as I do. (214-174, 1991/02/02)

14. What has the Youth Seminar on the World's Religions, that multi-religious coalition with 12 religions at its core, been doing for the last eight years? These seminars have been helping the university students who have been involved to realize that it is the responsibility of religious groups to save the world.

Many of these young intellectuals from diverse faith traditions have expressed that their religious leaders' views and their doctrines differ from ours, but they hope to embrace the concept of transcending their religious group and saving the world as I am trying to do.

I built this foundation, and it developed into the Assembly of the World's Religions. If the religions bind themselves together in harmony, eventually they will be able to eliminate the current trends toward polarization and distrust in the world and move toward a world of peace.

The absolute God has one Will, not two. As ideal families centered on God, let us leave behind on earth the model of a unified family, the pattern for the heavenly kingdom. (210-127, 1990/12/17)

World Scripture

Eminent theologians and religious leaders worldwide participated as members of the editorial committee and advisory committee for the publication of World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts, selecting 160 themes common to the scriptures of the various religions.

These themes were compiled into one unified scriptural text. It was published first as an English edition on August 15, 1991, and, after being presented to True Parents, was published in Korean on May 1, 1994. Later, it was also published in Japanese.

The second volume, World Scripture and the Teachings of Sun Myung Moon, which included more excerpts from True, was published on January 28, 2009.

15. On August 16, 1990, the second Assembly of the World's Religions will be held. The purpose is to support interreligious unity in every nation. With such harmony, they can live as brother and sister faiths, establishing the model of a unified nation.

If the Council for the World's Religions were to issue visas, those visas would enable people to go anywhere. So, what are we doing now? We are making a scripture for the oneness of all religions.

To achieve this, we need a historical perspective. It is crucial to organize the contents based on a unified doctrine, a proper theoretical and philosophical system that can uncover the root problem that humankind faces. (202-045, 1990/05/01)

16. Religion has no nation. There is no such global country. Where can you find the nation of the Owner of all religions? Through the Assembly of the World's Religions, we proposed an interreligious perspective that would digest the evil ideology of humanism, which destroys morality, and also of communism, which excludes religious truth.

We must turn around and go up. A scripture that shows the oneness of all religions is needed to fulfill such a grand ideal. Because we have so many sacred scriptures, we fight one another.

Let us therefore compile one world scripture by identifying the moral principles of heavenly law within each scriptural work and extracting the core tenets of the great faiths. Let us make these core principles the foundation of that single scriptural work. (191-086, 1989/06/24)

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.
(206-277, 1990/10/14)

18. I advocated publishing World Scripture. This project was announced after 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 in 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 faith?

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. (210-125, 1990/12/17)

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 certainly 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 scriptures, the 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. (212-322, 1991/01/11)

20. The 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 until now have been indefinite at 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 responsible for compiling this text, and they offered it to me on August 15, 1991. (224-242, 1991/11/24)