Religion as a World Force: A Jewish View

Abstract

This conference could only have held in the Twentieth Century. We are able to gather from all parts of the world because of technical advances which have occurred in this century. Rapid and mass communications systems now enable us to cover distances of space and language. But the same forces which have made for the technical and scientific conditions which have brought us together, have also created a new ethical situation for man. Science which has conquered space has also produced Hiroshima. Man has the capacity to eradicate malaria but also to annihilate his neighbor. The blessing and the curse of progress hang over us all. United by the promise and the threat as never before, we who take our respective theologies with some seriousness have become a little more humble about our religious certitudes, a little more conscious of the fact that perhaps our truth is not necessarily the truth of others. Slowly we are opening our minds to modes of thought and faith of which we have been hitherto innocently ignorant or which we deliberately ignored. This conference will fail if we come here to press our truth against the truth of those who do not worship as we do. It will not succeed if we merely learn to tolerate one another. It will achieve its purpose only if we try to grasp for the truth that underlies all systems which strive for the redemption of man.