Summit of the Gods
Ted Turner's Millennium World Peace Summit
by Austin Ruse
Ted Turner has called Christianity a religion for “losers.” He also has urged that adultery be tossed out of the Ten Commandments. And once at a black-tie dinner he made an offensive joke about the pope. Yet Ted Turner also recently convened a world conference of religious and spiritual leaders in New York City.
Turner set the tone of the four-day August meeting on the opening day, bounding energetically toward the main podium in the UN General Assembly Hall to thunderous applause from the reported 800 religious leaders and 1,000 observers. Their adoration grew as he vigorously denounced his childhood Christian fundamentalism. Everybody laughed when Turner said he had wanted to be a missionary. He said his little Christian sect, however, was “intolerant” because it taught that no one else was going to heaven. “It just confused the devil out of me because I said heaven is going to be a mighty empty place with nobody else there. So I was pretty confused and turned off by it. I said it just can’t be right.”
Given his past pronouncements, Turner’s remarks were not as surprising as the reaction of the “religious and spiritual leaders” from all over the world, who rose and vigorously applauded, fists and clapping hands pummeling the air. They hooted and hollered like it was an old-time revival meeting. While this was supposed to be a meeting in which all beliefs were equally respected, it was clear that at least Evangelical Protestants were not welcome.
He Has a Dream
Turner’s meandering, off-the-cuff speech praised “indigenous” religious faiths and then wandered through a paean to the things that all humans have in common—“culture, language, love of birds, butterflies, wives and flowers.” Turner dreams that all the sharp edges of strong religious faith can be pared away, that all theological differences can be dialogued out of existence or at least set aside so we can get on with the real work of mankind. He dreams of a group of religious leaders of the world who can serve, not souls, but the United Nations, which Turner believes is the real hope for mankind’s salvation.
Turner is not alone in this dream. He shared it with former US Senator Tim Wirth, who ran the Clinton administration’s population control negotiations at the International Conference on Population and Development at Cairo in 1994. He shared it with New Age Canadian billionaire Maurice Strong, who spearheads the Earth Charter initiative, which proponents call a “new Ten Commandments.” And finally, when Turner shared it with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, they all agreed to hold the Millennium Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders this year.
But the summit, called to advance the causes of peace, love, and understanding, was little more than a confab between the Far East and the far Left. While it brought together hundreds of religious leaders, observers noted that it lacked proportional representation of the two largest faiths, Christianity and Islam. And most of the Christians present were politically left of center. Numbers aside, the meeting ignored or insulted the traditional beliefs of Christians and Muslims.
A Far Eastern Majority
While the meeting was born from the mind of Ted Turner, the principal organizer was Turner’s hand-picked “Secretary General” Bawa Jain, member of an Indian religion called Jainism (members frequently take the name of the sect), which believes in karma and reincarnation. The dark-bearded Bawa Jain has been a longtime fixture in UN spiritual circles and is connected to something called the Temple of Understanding, as well as the Very Reverend James Morton’s Interfaith Alliance, and the Vatican-condemned United Religions Initiative.
Austin Ruse writes from Washington, D.C., where he is president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (www.c-fam.org) and the Culture of Life Foundation (www.culture-of-life.org). He is the editor of C-FAM?s "Friday Fax" report on life and family issues at the United Nations.
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