New York, Aug 28 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The first Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders opens today at the UN General Assembly in New York and concludes Aug. 31. More than 1000 religious leaders from around the world and from many religions have come together for this unique global religious meeting.
This is the first of three extraordinary international meetings scheduled to take place in New York over the next two weeks. The State of the World Forum runs from Sept. 4-10 (see “State Of The World Forum To Convene With Millenium Summit”) and the United Nations Millenium Summit will occur Sept. 6-8 ( see “Millennium Summit Outcome Shrouded In Secrecy”)
Honorary Chairman and a major source of funds for the World Peace Summit is U.S. media mogul Ted Turner. Turner, environmental extremist and intense advocate of population control has often expressed hostility and ridicule towards organized religion. According to Bawa Jain, Secretary-General of the Secretariat’s office for the World Peace Summit, “Mr. Turner was key to the summit’s creation”. New World Order guru Maurice Strong is chairman of the International Advisory Board for the World Peace Summit.
Michael Horowitz, director for the Hudson Institute’s Project for International Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., suspects the summit will “make some effort to reduce all religions to some lowest-common-denominator pap” that could strip its participants’ credibility with their followers.
The August 28 call for dialogue among religions will be given by the senior pastor of the prominent New Age Riverside Church of New York. The highly controversial Earth Charter will be presented on Aug. 29, preceded by a talk on Global Responsibility given by leading Catholic dissident Hans Kung. See LifeSite’s important report on the Earth Charter.
Summit organizers plan to produce a Declaration for World Peace that will condemn all violence in the name of religion. They also hope to establish a permanent International Advisory Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders that will advise the UN Secretary-General on conflict prevention and resolution.
For more, see today’s LifeSite Special Report, a reprint of the lead story on the Peace Summit in the latest issue of Report magazine.