Countering traditional views of the World's Parliament of Religions as primarily an event of religious pluralism, this paper examines how the African Methodist Episcopal Church transformed the Parliament into a world court of opinion regarding racial equality. Using Higginbotham's idea of the Black church as a 'discursive, critical arena', I show how Black religionists constructed a rhetoric of equality, challenging the themes of unity that pervaded the Parliament. I argue that in locating their challenge at the world's fair, a major event of cultural self-examination, Blacks acted out some of the most original purposes of a church, working with symbols to generate reform.
1996 Academic Press Limited
A Rhetoric of Equality
'But Religion, like the white light of Heaven, has been broken into many-colored fragments by the prisms of men. One of the objects of the Parliament of Religions has been to change this many-colored radiance back into the white light of heavenly truth'. 1 The World's Parliament of Religions, a part of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, is regularly presented by historians as a signal event for the development of religious pluralism, interreligious dialogue, and the launching of 'eastern' religions in the United States. Even the recent centenary celebrations of the Parliament emphasized its uniqueness as a gathering of diverse religious lay people, officials and scholars. The watchword of the Parliament, however, was not pluralism or diversity, but unity. As reported by the Reverend John Henry Barrows, Parliament promoter and historian, '. . . it was felt that the tendencies of modern civilization were toward unity. Some came to feel that a Parliament of Religions was a necessity of the age'. 2