by Thomas Albert Howard
It is hard to find today a major city that does not have an “interfaith” or “interreligious” council or a university that does not sponsor some sort of “dialogue” among world religions. But when and where did “interreligious dialogue” begin? Most scholars would point to Chicago in 1893 when the first “Parliament of the World’s Religions” met in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition of the same year. But most things in history have antecedents.