Gathering.

The liberal religious temper of the 1880s and early 1890s was reflected in a meeting of the leaders of all the world's major religions at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The World's Parliament of Religions was inspired by Charles C. Bonney, a Chicago attorney, and organized by John Henry Barrows, pastor of Chicago's First Presbyterian Church. They promoted the event as an unparalleled opportunity for ecumenical discussion, and it attracted hundreds of delegates and thousands of observers to solemn meetings in the "White City" fairgrounds during September 1893. Many Christian religious groups were represented, as were small but unprecedented delegations of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Shintoists, Confucians, Taoists, and Jains.

Impact.

The parliament was an essentially liberal project—conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Jews all objected vigorously to a meeting that seemed to place all religions on an equal plane. Indeed...