History of the Organization

The mission to support and advance harmony and cooperation among religions and faith traditions is the raison d'etre for the Inter Religious Federation for World Peace (IRFWP). IRFWP does not view this work simply as a good activity, but rather as an obligation implicit in the sacred roots of each religion.

IRFWP had its origins in several distinct interfaith initiatives beginning with the founding of the Unification Theological Seminary in 1975. This seminary was designed not only as an "interfaith seminary," but further as an "interfaith project." Each religion was taught by a believer. Judaism by a Rabbi, Christianity by a Dutch Reformed leader, and so forth. The notion was not only that the students would inherit the wisdom and the benefits of each religion taught with a believer's heart and passion, but further that care and concern for the students would push the faculty to transcend their religious differences for the sake of a higher good, and a common concern. This interfaith heartbeat was to expand beyond the faculty so that UTS would become a hothouse for the blossoming of interfaith activity.

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This happened. A number of independent interfaith initiatives arose and became institutionalized at UTS. The first of these was New ERA (1979), the New Ecumenical Research Association, an interfaith community comprised primarily of scholars. These men and women are the ones whose imaginations and inspiration led to the founding of many new and imaginative interfaith initiatives and organizations.

One of the first projects generated by New ERA leaders was the YSWR (1982), the Youth Seminar on the World.s Religions. The Youth Seminar was an annual pilgrimage of youth. Each year over 150 youth leaders, representing every religion and denomination would travel the world together on a pilgrimage to the holy sites of each religion. At each site believers from the religion of that site would become the host of their friends from the other religions. By traveling together, and experiencing the many faces of the sacred and the eternal, these young people forged life-long bonds of love and affection across lines once marred by historical hatred.

New ERA continued its vigorous schedule of dialogue conferences, and publications, and in 1981 introduced a conference series of uncommon impact entitled, conferences on .God the Contemporary Discussion,. or .the God Conferences.. There was an air of excitement and challenge to the status quo there, as hundreds of scholars from around the world and from every tradition gathered on a regular basis to do what philosophy and theology had declared no longer possible, namely.... talk about God. The published .God Series. remains seminal to this day.

In 1984, a distinct point of orientation arose. Until that time, the leading force behind this interfaith was primarily scholarly leadership. At this point the Council for the World.s Religions (CWR) was founded with the express purpose to work with clerical leadership from all traditions. This new organization had the mission to engage religious leaders, while New ERA engaged religious scholars. Of course important cross-fertilization constantly occurred.

The CWR broke important new ground in the history of religious affairs through its series of .intra-religious. conferences, in which classical forms of .ecumenism. (traditionally thought of as a Christian enterprise) were introduced to every living faith on earth. Each religion thus began with steps towards internal harmonization of its own inner factions.

As the work expanded beyond New ERA to include other free standing interfaith organizations IRF, the International Religious Foundation, was incorporated to serve as an umbrella under which these many types of interfaith work could develop and flourish.

In 1985 IRF convened the largest international gathering of religious leaders on American soil (and perhaps the world) in human history. This was the AWR, the Assembly of the World.s Religions. By inviting members from the various IRF projects and beyond, the AWR gathered over 1,000 top religious leaders, scholars, and young people in McAffee, New Jersey, for over a week of interfaith encounter and activity of every sort, including experiential and theoretical aspects.

At this first Assembly, organizers announced the founding of a new project, the RYS or the Religious Youth Service. This program incorporated the best elements of the YSWR pilgrimages, but added to that the component of social action. In RYS projects, the young people, instead of touring to pilgrimage sites, spend their time together laboring in areas of need. During the work days inter-religious teams of young people would work in areas of poverty, natural disaster (both rural and urban) and so forth on such tasks as digging fresh water wells, building schools or medical treatment centers, re-forestation and so forth. This labor is paired with educational time in which the young people study the world.s religions and customs both from each other, and from invited faculty and experts.

Activity over the next years was massive. All projects proceeded vigorously. Interfaith conferences, work projects, pilgrimages, summits, marches, and all forms of investment abounded literally in hundreds of projects. Each year an Assembly was held for the hundreds of participants and activists who had been involved through out the year.

In 1991 the entirety of this massive and diffuse fountain of interfaith work came under the single namesake, The Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace (IRFWP). From 1991 until the present time, each of the initiatives and orientations described above persisted either under its original name (as was the case with the RYS), or within the newly defined brief of IRFWP itself.

In addition to maintaining the on-going work described above, the IRFWP has been instrumental in areas of emergency and conflict resolution. The IRFWP has been active among leaders and decision makers at the very highest levels on such occasions as the Gulf War, the Ayodya Mosque outbreak, the Bosnian War, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere.

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