When non-Christian religious leaders around the world were invited to attend the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, the letter asked them to come and share the wisdom of their traditions. It also promised that at the Parliament they would be able to perfect that wisdom through Jesus Christ. As the 20th century approached, in other words, the most open, liberal, progressive people of faith in America shared the assumption that their tradition was the truest and most important. Historically, the Catholic doctrine of “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus,” or “outside the Church there is no salvation,” makes the point categorically. But Catholics have had no corner on the notion that salvation is exclusively theirs, a claim ripe for setting people of faith and practice against each other.