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CONFUSED ABOUT CULTURE EDITORIAL

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS: A BRAKE ON ECUMENISM AND INTERFAITH DIALOGUE?

JULIO SAVI

LOULAN BEAUTY: ENCOUNTERING THE XINJIANG MUMMIES

GARY L. MORRISON

PAUSING FOR POETRY PETER E. MURPHY

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World Order

VOLUME 32, NUMBER 2

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN

THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPO-

RARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

BETTY J. FISHER ARASH ABIZADEH MONIREH KAZEMZADEH DIANE LOTFI

KEVIN A. MORRISON ROBERT H. STOCKMAN JIM STOKES

2 Consultant in Poetry: HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN 4 WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by 7 the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091-1811. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily re-ect %6

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In This Issue

Confused about Culture: Editorial

Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

The Declaration Dominus Iesus: A Brake on Ecumenism and Interfaith Dialogue? by Julio Savi

Vahid 2 poem by Marlaina B. Tanny

On Síyáh-Chál poem by C. Reid

Lillie poem by Anne Lawton Lunt

Loulan Beauty: Encountering the Xinjiang Mummies by Gary L. Morrison

Full Circle poem by Monica Reller

Pausing for Poetry: A Review of Americans’ Favorite Poems review by Peter E. Murphy

Authors & Artists in This Issue

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Confused about Culture

H™“ beings all-too-often react to their cultures and communi- ties as if they are metallic billiard balls. Their boundaries are sharply defined. They clash when they meet, not without a few sparks. If the sparks melt different cultures and communities into one, the resulting “alloys” are often perceived to be weaker, less naturally authentic, less precious, and, above all, more confused than the “pure” entities they replace.

The idea that mixture, hybridity, and diversity create confusion has a long pedigree. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in 1772 that the stron- gest nations would be ones that were “unalloyable,” ones whose citi- zens would refuse to mingle with strangers, lest their culture and com- munity “melt” away and the resulting mixture strike confusion into their hearts. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the fathers of Romantic nationalism, offered in 1808 sophisticated philosophical reasons for why importing “foreign”—that is, Latin—words into the German tongue would sap the German spirit, rendering the German language as good as dead. In 1855, Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, put forth the doctrine that the “pure” races of antiquity had been corrupted and weakened by interbreeding, providing a pseudobiological justification for antimiscegenation laws in the Americas directed against so-called racial mixing. Even today, we are all familiar with the widespread fear that marriages uniting two individuals from different cultures or communities—whether ethnic or religious—however much founded in love, will result in children who are (sadly but inevitably) confused.

Nor have suspicions about mixing been confined to Europe or the Americas. The view that importing European scientific ideas into Persia, simply because they were foreign ideas, would ruin Persia's Islamic civilization was widespread at the end of the nineteenth cen- tury, when ‘Abdul-Baha addressed His Secret of Divine Civilization to the Persian king and people. ‘Abdu’'l- Baha’s argument puts the concept of mixing into its proper perspective. He not only urges the Persians not to refuse good ideas just because of their foreign origins, but He also undermines the idea that different cultures are wholly foreign to each other in the first place. In short, His treatise calls into question the metallic-billiard-ball theory of communities and cultures, for the boundaries of neither are neatly defined. There is no such thing as �[Page 3]EDITORIAL 3

a “pure” material with which something “foreign” is mixed to get an alloy; rather, cultures and communities are hybrids from the start. If mixture creates confusion, there is no hope: We always have been and always will be confused. But the premise is false.

One of the examples that ‘Abdu’l-Bahé invokes is rich in allusions. He points to Islamic Spain, a major conduit for Greek and Islamic ideas into Europe. His explicit purpose is to demonstrate that Euro- pean modernity was infused at its very origins with “non-Western” currents. Spain, moreover, is also a remarkable testimony to the fact that mixture is not tantamount to confusion. The old Spanish poetry written in Hebrew characters conveys a beauty even to those who can neither understand the words nor read the script. The Spanish lan- guage itself abounds in Arabic words the sounds of which today echo throughout the Americas—for example, in the cries of “Olé!” that linguistically invoke God in the Arabic tongue. Anyone who has witnessed Spain’s architectural treasures will be struck by the sight of Jewish synagogues, built by Muslim architects, with their signature arches and with Christian motifs, a visual reminder of the flourishing civilization that, without perhaps intending to, Jews, Christians, and Muslims molded over time into one of the lights of the world. The cultural sparks that flew from those exchanges are luminous. The community living in that melting pot of visual splendor did not fare so well. The Muslims and Jews were either expelled or forced to convert to Christianity, and the dominant culture continually tried to undermine and stamp out the others.

Thus the object of our concern should not be mixture but rather the global inequities and injustices that often make today’s exchanges between cultures and communities so one-sided. Bahd’u'llah exhorted us to consort with peoples of all creeds and communities in a spirit of fellowship, to look on others with a bright and friendly face. Such openness leads inevitably to mixture, which is the essence of culture and community—not of confusion—and the very possibility for human creativity and joy. With a touch of divine inspiration, both in individuals and cultures, mixture will not leave behind a syncretic mass of confusion and weakness but forge an alchemist’s true gold. �[Page 4]4

WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

Inter change LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

THIS ISSUE of World Order explores iden- tities and the competition among them and raises an important question: Are our ethnicities distinct, or are they inextrica- bly intertwined?

In “Loulan Beauty: Encountering the Xinjiang Mummies,” historian and edu- cator Gary L. Morrison argues in a per- sonal essay of discovery that the coming together of people, the much-discussed process of globalization, has been many thousands of years in the making. The haunting and extraordinarily well-preserved Xinjiang mummies “speak” through so- phisticated technological and historical methods, revealing far-reaching cultural interconnections and interchanges that give new meaning to ancient China, moder- nity, and the oneness of humankind.

Closer to home, poet and teacher Peter E. Murphy reviews Americans’ Favorite Po- ems, the Americans’ favorite poem project, looking at the United States—with its religious and cultural differences—and the power of poetry to bring diverse people together as they respond to basic spiritual themes that unify their souls.

Author, poet, and translator Julio Savi asks us to confront a basic question: Do different religious identities make inter- faith dialogue impossible? In his essay “The Declaration Dominus Iesus: A Brake on Ecumenism and Interfaith Dialogue?” Savi argues that they do not and points instead

to the prospects and necessity of interre- ligious unity.

The Declaration Dominus Iesus is the latest in a long line of statements, encyclicals, and other documents designed to refine the understanding of the metaphysical and social relationships that religions have to each other. Throughout history, such re- lations have been dominated by polemics if the religions bothered to talk to each other at all. The Mughal Emperor of India, Akbar the Great (1542-1605), sponsored some of the earliest known interfaith debates, based on the innovative notion that all religions were partners.

In spite of the separation of church and state and the absence of religious warfare, nineteenth-century America’s views were far less advanced. Yen Great Religions, America’s first textbook on world religions, authored by Unitarian and Transcenden- talist James Freeman Clarke and published in 1871, did not include Christianity because it was the truth, not a mere reli- gion. By 1893, when the first World’s Parliament of Religions was held in Chi- cago, little additional progress had been made. The vast majority of the speakers were evangelical Protestants, the sessions all began with the Lord’s prayer, and Christian triumphalism was a dominant

�[Page 5]INTERCHANGE

5

theme (even in “The Religions Mission of the English Speaking Nations,” the Rev- erend Henry H. Jessup’s paper that closed with the first public mention of Baha’u'll4h in North America).

Attitudes became considerably more enlightened in the 1920s and 1930s, and several interfaith gatherings were held in Europe. The second Vatican Council in 1962 revolutionized Catholic attitudes in a document (one of hundreds issued by the council) that recognized the existence of some truth and salvific efficacy in other religions. Hinduism and Buddhism were mentioned, Islam was discussed briefly, and a section of the statement addressed the church’s relationship with Jews and Judaism, specifically renouncing the claim that modern Jews had any responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. Vatican II also influenced Protestant attitudes toward other religions and helped strengthen the inter- faith movement, involving local, national, and international gatherings and interfaith associations, which gained momentum steadily throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Interfaith conferences and publica- tions went far beyond Vatican II, asserting the metaphysical equality of all religions as valid paths to the divine. The Parlia- ments of the World’s Religions held in Chicago in 1993 and in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999 helped transform the in- terfaith movement into a truly interna-

tional effort attracting widespread popular support.

Dominus Iesus represents the Catholic Church’s attempt to correct the opinions of some of its faithful that Catholicism does not occupy a superior rank among the religions. As Julio Savi notes, many people—Catholics and non-Catholics— have criticized the statement strongly. Yet Savi sees many possibilities for interfaith dialogue and even pluralism in spite of, or perhaps because of, the church’s new views.

• kK OX

We have two apologies to offer. In our Summer 2000 issue there is a typographi- cal error on page 32 in the poem “Tao” by Druzelle Cederquist. In the fourth line in the fourth stanza, the word “as” should be “at.” The stanza should read as follows: Now that silver runs its fingers through my hair, even when I do not stand in moon- light, I ponder more on mysteries, wonder at the fruit that sleeps in trees— In our Fall issue we inadvertently printed two photographs by Steve Garrigues up- side down: the ones appearing on pages 24 and 42. We offer our profoundest apologies to our readers and to our two faithful con- tributors.

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�[Page 7]The Declaration Dominus Iesus: A Brake on Ecumenism and

Interfaith Dialogue?

BY JULIO SAVI

N 5 September 2000 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congrega- tion for the Doctrine of the Faith and the highest officer responsible for the theological ideology of the Catholic Church, presented in the Vatican Press Office a Declaration of that Congregation entitled “Dominus Iesus: on the unicity and the salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.” The Declara- tion bears his signature, but Pope John Paul II had ratified and confirmed it “with sure knowledge and by his apostolic authority /certa scientia et apostolica Sua auctoritate]” (§23) and had ordered its publication.!

The thirty-six-page Dictum, completed after two years of study by a large group of theologians, consists of an introduction, six brief sections, and a conclusion. Addressed to “Bishops, theologians, and all the Catholic faithful,” it recalls “certain indispensable el- ements of Christian doctrine” to help its addressees answer “new questions” that may

Copyright © 2001 by Julio Savi. I wish to thank the World Order editors for their kind encouragement and precious assistance.

1. Dominus Iesus contains an introduction, six chap- ters, and a conclusion. The paragraphs in the chapters are numbered sequentially from 1 through 23. Passages from the Declaration are cited in the text by paragraph number.

arise in the practice of interreligious dialogue (§3). The document has been mostly inter- preted as proclaiming the need for Catholics to return to the theological position com- monly held before the developments in the ecumenical movement during the last thirty years: that Christianity is unique among religions as the repository of divinely revealed truth and that Catholicism and its ecclesias- tical institutions are the authoritative inter- preters of that truth. It certainly calls for Catholics to pull back from theories inspired by theological relativism and religious plural- ism. The response of other religionists and interested parties, within and outside Chris- tianity, was universally and emphatically nega- tive, labeling the document a return to a kind of fundamentalist thinking that, if accepted, could mean the demise of ecumen-ism. What follows analyzes the contents of the Decla- ration, summarizes world opinion, and com- pares the positions expressed in the docu- ment with those found in the Baha’{ teachings.

After the presentation by Cardinal Rat- zinger, Monsignor ‘Tarcisio Bertone, secre- tary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, explained that “the Document... reafirms and summarizes the doctrine of Catholic faith defined and taught in earlier documents of the Church’s Magisterium; and it indicates the correct interpretation thereof in the face of doctrinal errors and ambigu- ities that have become widespread in modern �[Page 8]8 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

theological and ecclesial circles.”? Issued by an institution inferior to the Pope and to the College of Bishops in communion with the Pope, the Declaration is not an infallible document. But, as it was ratified by the Pope with a formula of exceptional authority, “the assent required from the faithful,” according to Monsignor Bertone, “is definitive and irre- vocable.”* Thus the document needs to be read carefully and fully understood.

Its Contents Dominus Iesus holds that at the close of the second Christian millennium, the evangeliz- ing mission of the Catholic Church is not only “still far from complete (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 1: AAS 83 [1991], 249-340),” it is also endan- gered, within the Church itself, by theories inspired by the theological relativism and religious pluralism espoused by some uphold- ers of the ecumenical movement and con- ceived to justify religious pluralism “not only de facto but also de jure (or in principle)” (94). In presenting the Declaration at the Septem- ber 2000 press conference Cardinal Ratzinger summarized these theories as being: the conviction of the elusiveness and in- expressibility of divine truth; relativistic attitudes toward truth itself, which would hold that what is true for some would not

2. Intervention of Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, sec- retary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Press Conference for the presentation of the Declaration Dominus Iesus, the Holy See press room, 5 September 2000 (hereafter referred to as “Press Confer- ence.” The Italian text of the Press Conference may be retrieved from the website <http://www.vatican. va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/ re_con_cfaith doc 2000905 dominus-iesus ratzinger_it.html>.

3. Intervention of Monsignor Bertone, Press Con- ference.

4, Intervention of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Press Conference.

be true for others; the radical opposition posited between the logical mentality of the West and the symbolic mentality of the East; the subjectivism which regards reason as the only source of knowledge; the metaphysical emptying of the mystery of incarnation; the eclecticism of those who, in theological research, uncritically absorb ideas from a variety of philosophi- cal and theological contexts without re- gard for consistency, systematic connec- tion, or compatibility with Christian truth; finally, the tendency to read and to inter- pret Sacred Scripture outside the Tradi- tion and Magisterium of the Church.‘ These theories, he said, imply the denial of some fundamental verities of the Church, such as: the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the nature of Christian faith as compared with that of belief in other religions, the inspired nature of the books of Sacred Scripture, the personal unity between the Eternal

Word and Jesus of Nazareth, the unity of

the economy of the Incarnate Word and

the Holy Spirit, the unicity and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the universal salvific mediation of the

Church, the inseparability—while recog-

nizing the distinction—of the kingdom

of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the

Church, and the subsistence of the one

Church of Christ in the Catholic Church.

($4)

To clarify such claimed errors, the Declara- tion itself reaffirms concisely the official doc- trine of the Catholic Church on six funda- mental issues.

The Fullness and Definitiveness of the Rev- elation of Jesus Christ. Chapter 1 of Dominus Tesus denies the conception whereby “the truth about God cannot be grasped and mani- fested in its globality and completeness by any historical religion, neither by Christian- ity nor by Jesus Christ” (§6), and confirms �[Page 9]that Jesus’ revelation is full and definitive. It is not complementary to that of other reli- gions; rather, it is definitive, and there will be no future revelation before Christ’s mani- festation in the glory of the Father.

The reasons for the two positions, the Declaration explains, are, first, that faith in Jesus, defined as “the acceptance in grace of revealed truth,” is quite different from “be- lief in the other religions,” defined as “that sum of experience and thought that consti- tutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious aspiration, which man in his search for truth has conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God and the Absolute (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio, 31— 32).” The former is “the acceptance of the truth revealed by the One and Triune God” — that is, the one God, Who is also the tripar- tite God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; the latter is “religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals himself” (§7). Second, only the Books of the Old and New Testaments are of divine origin and, therefore, are teach- ers of the truth. The scriptures of the other religions simply “receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain” (98).

The Incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit in the Work of Salvation. Chapter 2 of Dominus Tesus refutes the theory whereby “Jesus would be one of the many faces which the Logos [the Word of God] has assumed in the course of time to communicate with humanity in a salvific way” (§9). It confirms that the Logos and Jesus are one and the same thing, that Jesus is forever the only incarnation of the Logos, that the Holy Spirit acts only through Jesus, “the mediator and the universal re-

5. Intervention of the Reverend Angelo Amato, S.D.B [Society of St. Frances de Sales], Press Confer- ence.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 9

deemer” ($11), and that there is no salvation if not through him.

While commenting upon the Christological contents of the Declaration during the Sep- tember 2000 press conference at the Vatican, the Salesian Reverend Angelo Amato, secre- tary of the Pontifical Academy of Theology and consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, explained that Domi- nus Iesus upholds the unicity of the salvific economy of the Incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit and refutes three erroneous theses upheld by relativists “in order to give theological foundations to religious pluralism.” The first of these erroneous theses claims that Jesus is “one of many historic-salvific incarnations of the eternal Word and his revelation of the divine was not exclusive, but complementary to other historical figures.” Conversely, the Reverend Amato said, the Declaration states that Jesus alone is the incarnation of the Word. The second erroneous thesis “supposes a double salvific economy, that of the Eternal Word as distinct from that of the Incarnate Word.” The Declaration rejects this distinc- tion and reaffirms that “[i]f there are ele- ments of salvation and grace outside Chris- tianity, they have their source and center in the mystery of the incarnation of the Word [that is, in Jesus].” The third erroneous thesis “separates the economy of the Holy Spirit from that of the Incarnate Word: the former would be of a more universal character than the latter.” However, the Declaration confirms that “[t] here is but one trinitarian divine econ- omy that reaches all humankind, wherefor ‘[InJo one... can enter into communion with God except through Christ, by the working of the Holy Spirit” (§12).°

The Unicity and Universality of the Salvific Mystery of Jesus Christ. Chapter 3 of Dominus Tesus confirms that “the universal salvific will of the One and Triune God is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of

the Son of God” (§14). Therefore, it is proper �[Page 10]10 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

to use “in theology terms such as unicity, universality, and absoluteness” as referring to Jesus and his redeeming mission, because, the Reverend Amato explained, “[t]he Church, from the beginning, has believed in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father who through his incarnation gave the truth of revelation and his divine life to all human- ity’ (§15).° Those who consider that use, Cardinal Ratzinger noted, as “a kind of fun- damentalism that would be an outrage against the modern spirit and would represent a threat to tolerance and freedom” are wrong.’ How- ever, the meaning and the value of the posi- tive figures and elements in the other reli- gions are still to be ascertained. As the Reverend Amato remarked: “The theological debate . . . remains opened.”®

The Unicity and Unity of the Catholic Church. Chapter 4 of Dominus Iesus explains that there is but one Catholic Apostolic Church, founded by Jesus himself, entrusted by Jesus to Peter, and by Peter to his Succes- sors and to the Bishops in communion with them. There are also particular churches that, although they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome, have “the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucha- ristic mystery (cf. Second Vatican Council, Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 22)” and ecclesial communities that are deprived thereof, and

6. Intervention of the Reverend Amato, Press Con- ference.

7. Intervention of Cardinal Ratzinger, Press Confer- ence,

8. Intervention of the Reverend Amato, Press Con- ference.

9. Although no name is mentioned in the Declara- tion, it seems evident that the former are the Greek Orthodox Churches and the latter the Protestant Churches.

10. Intervention of Monsignor Fernando Ocariz, Press Conference.

yet share with the Catholic Church the benefits of the Baptism.’ This lack of unity among Christians is recognized as “a wound for the Church” (§17).

Monsignor Fernando Ocariz, the vicar general of Opus Dei and consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, explained during the September 2000 press conference at the Vatican that

the only Church of Jesus Christ continues to exist despite the divisions among Chris- tians; and more precisely . . . only in the Catholic Church does Christ’s Church subsist in all her fullness. Nonetheless, outside the Catholic Church ‘elements of truth and sanctification’ exist that are of the Church (cf. 17)... . Therefore Domi- nus Jesus rejects an interpretation that today is widespread—but contrary to the Catholic faith—according to which all religions, of themselves, are ways of salvation together with Christianity.”

The Close Relationship between the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Christ, and the Catho- lic Church. Chapter 5 of Dominus Iesus ex- plains that the Catholic Church has been en- trusted with the mission of announcing the Kingdoms of Christ and of God and of establishing them in the world. Although the scriptures do not clearly specify the relation- ship between the kingdom of God, the king- dom of Christ, and the Church, the three spiritual realities are strictly interconnected. It is clear that the kingdom of God “is the manifestation and the realization of God’s plan of salvation in all its fullness” (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 15). Thus “the kingdom of God—even if considered in its historical phase—is not identified with the Church in her visible and social reality” (§19). However, the Church is “the seed and the beginning of that kingdom (Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Consti- tution Lumen gentium, 5)” (§18). To work for the kingdom of God means to work to elimi- nate evil from the world and, in view of the �[Page 11]close relationship between the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Church, to work for the Church.

The Relationship between the Catholic Church and the Other Religions in Relation to Salva- tion. Chapter 6 of Dominus Iesus confirms that the Catholic Church is the only way to salvation. The Church is not only a social reality but also a spiritual reality. It is from this spiritual reality that salvation comes, in mysterious ways, also to those who follow other religions, which, in Monsignor Océriz’s words, cannot be “in as much as they are religions, of themselves . . . ways to salvation together with Christianity.”" The Declara- tion explains in this regard:

This truth of faith does not lessen the

sincere respect which the Church has for

the religions of the world, but at the same time, it rules out, in a radical way, that mentality of indifferentism “characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another’ (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 36).” If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objec- tively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation. (cf. Pius XII, Encyc- lical Letter Mystici corporis: DS 3821). (§22) The Declaration, however, warns Catholics not to think that they are better than others. Their privileged condition does not depend on their merits but only on the grace of God. The duty of announcing the Gospel to all

11. Intervention of Monsignor Océriz, Press Con- ference.

12. Intervention of Monsignor Ocariz, Press Con- ference.

13. Intervention of Cardinal Ratzinger, Press Con- ference.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 11

peoples remains in all its urgency, but the evangelization, Monsignor Ocariz noted, “is not, and cannot be, a self-assertion. It is a due service to the others through the saving truth. And we are neither the origin nor the owners of this truth, but only undeserving beneficiaries and servants. And this truth must always be proposed in charity and respect for freedom (cf. Ephesians 4:15; Galatians 5:13.).” As to the proper attitude in interreligious dialogue, Cardinal Ratzinger commented that, according to the relativists, dialogue means “to put on the same plane one’s position or one’s faith and the beliefs of the others, so that the whole dialogue is reduced to an exchange between essentially equal, and thus relative, positions, in view of the superior aim of reaching the highest level of coopera- tion and integration between the different religious conceptions.” But he made clear that, for Catholics, interreligious dialogue is “the way toward truth, the process whereby one discloses to the other the hidden depth of that which he has encountered in his religious experience, and is waiting to be ful- filled and purified in his encounter with the definitive and full revelation of God in Jesus Christ.” The Declaration states that [e]quality, which is a presupposition of inter-religious dialogue, refers to the equal personal dignity of the parties in dialogue, not to doctrinal content, nor even less to the position of Jesus Christ—who is God himself made man—in relation to the founders of the other religions. Indeed, the Church, guided by charity and respect for freedom (cf. Second Vatican Council, Declaration Dignitatis humanae, 1) must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of ad- herence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments, in order to participate fully in communion with God,

the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (§22) �[Page 12]12 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

Reactions throughout the World AS SOON as the Declaration was issued, it unleashed an intense debate in the media. Archbishop Marcello Zago, the Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, pointed out that the aim of the doc- ument is “to recall forgotten theological as- pects, to return to the heart of the faith and to what it means to be Christians wherever we are.”'* However, in the words of Karen Armstrong, one of the foremost British com- mentators on religious affairs, this same con- cept is the basis of Christian fundamentalist thought: “to go back to basics and reempha- size the ‘fundamentals’ of the Christian tra- dition, which . . . [the fundamentalists] identif[y] with a literal interpretation of Scripture and the acceptance of certain core doctrines.”"* For that reason, the Dictum has been judged as fundamentalist and rejected by most non-Catholic Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

La Repubblica, one of the foremost Italian newspapers of the left wing, announced the Declaration through an article by Marco Politi, an Italian journalist who is an expert on Vatican issues. The tone of the article is symp- tomatic of the general atmosphere:

The latest Dictum of the Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith . . . is causing

a storm of polemics. The other Christian

Churches protest, because they feel declas-

sed by the peremptory proclamation in

Ratzinger’s Dominus Iesus that Catholicism

has a primary and superior role... .

14. Archbishop Marcello Zago, quoted in Interna- tional Fides Service, n. 4213, NE 511, 8 Sept. 2000.

15. Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (New York: Knopf, 2000) x.

16. Marco Politi, “Ratzinger: ‘Salvezza solo nella Chiesa cattolica,’ [“Ratzinger: ‘Salvation only in the Catholic Church’”],” La Repubblica 25.206 (6 Sept. 2000): 11.

17. R. Jeffrey Smith, “Vatican Claims Church Mo- nopoly on Salvation,” Washington Post Foreign Service 6 Sept. 2000: A13.

In point of fact, nothing is left to the other Christians but “returning to the fold.” ... The same attitude is maintained to- ward other religions. Although their fol- lowers may receive divine grace, “they are in a gravely deficient situation in compari- son with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation [Dominus Tesus, $22]... .

The Declaration rails at relativism, eclecticism, the thesis whereby there are other “ways of salvation” beside Christian- ity or that the Word, that is Christ in his divinity, may be manifested outside the event of Christ in his historical incarna- tion. Heaven help you if you think that all religions are equal... .

Fixing its barriers, the Declaration comes to correct and make meaningless the re- peated brotherly acts of the Pope toward the Christian Churches and his open- mindedness toward other religions. When the Pope says that God does not fail to be present also in the spiritual heritage of the other religions, new horizons are opened. When Ratzinger emphasizes the fact that the other beliefs are essentially a human religious experience still in search of the absolute truth, it is a call to order.'® The tone is similar in other articles in the

international press. The Washington Post states that, whereas Pope John Paul II had “notably embraced a handful of dicta dating from the famed Second Vatican Council meetings of the mid-1960s, which called for religious liber- ty and explicitly supported ecumenism, or religious cooperation and unity,” . . . today’s declaration is concerned more with establishing limits than breaking barriers, and its tone at times seems closer to the inhibiting orders of the First Vatican Council, in 1870... . Then, the council lent its support to a “Syllabus of Errors,” which explicitly challenged any notion that other religions were as “true” as Catholi- cism.'” �[Page 13]Negative reactions of the Catholic world have been variously described by the media. Il Resto del Carlino, an Italian newspaper pub- lished in Bologna, announced the Declara- tion with an article entitled “Wojtyla gets rid of the ‘sister Churches” and remarked that “It must have not been easy to draft the document Dominus Iesus. Which could be criticized even within the Catholic world. In particular, by some Pontifical university.”'8

A number of Catholic personalities also reacted negatively. Politi writes that, accord- ing to the Australian Edward Cardinal Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter- religious Dialogue, “[t]imes and manners... are wrong in Ratzinger’s document. The language is not right for ecumenism.” Politi also quotes Cardinal Cassidy as saying that the Declaration is

“a text written by professors for other

professors. We have a sensitive ear for ecu-

menical dialogue, and when we are on the point of offending someone, we perceive it. But when they (the members of the

Holy Office, e.n.) Say “This is true, this

18. Giuseppe Di Leo, “Wojtyla scarica le ‘Chiese sorelle’ (“Wojtyla gets rid of the ‘sister Churches’”],” // Resto del Carlino 115.243 (6 Sept. 2000): 2.

19. Marco Politi,“Vaticano, prime crepe sulla linea Ratzinger [“Vatican, early splits in Ratzinger’s line”],” La Repubblica 25.221 (26 Sept. 2000): 18. Cf. John Paul Il, Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be One), Encyclical letter on ecumenical commitment (Vatican City: 25 May 1995) $3.

20. Smith, “Vatican Claims Church Monopoly on Salvation,” Washington Post Foreign Service 6 Sept. 2000: Al3.

21. Enzo Bianchi, “II difficile dialogo con le Chiese sorelle [“The difficult dialogue with the sister Churches”],” La Repubblica 25.208 (8 Sept.2000): 16.

22. Smith, “Vatican Claims Church Monopoly on Salvation,” Washington Post Foreign Service (6 Sept. 2000): Al3.

23. The Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, quoted in Antonio Polito, “‘Cosi il cardinale sabota le aperture di Wojtyla [““Thus the Cardinal sabotages Wojtyla’s open- ings” ],” La Repubblica 25.207 (7 Sept. 2000): 27.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 13

is false,’ they express themselves in a quite scholastic way... . The Pope did not sign the Declaration Dominus Iesus, whereas he has signed in his own hand the encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint. . . . 1 was not there, because I was sick.””

Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit scholar and editor of the Catholic weekly magazine America, is quoted by the Washington Post as having said that he was “dismayed that the statement had ‘practically no reference to the dialogue go- ing on for the past 35 years between Catho- lics and Protestants.’ . . .” ““The danger,’” he continued, “‘is that this document will be seen as a rejection of that dialogue,’ a mes- sage he said he did not think was intended.””° Enzo Bianchi, a theologian, a Biblical scholar, and the founder and Prior of the Monastery of Bose, an ecumenical community in the Italian region of Piedmont, wrote: “In the present winter of ecumenism between the churches this document will not be an unsur- mountable obstacle on the way, but undoubt- edly its reception will be difficult in the ecu- menical circles, and it will raise questions, suspicions and disillusions among the other Christian Churches.”

The reaction of other Christian Churches was also negative. The archbishop of Canter- bury, George Carey, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, as quoted in the Wash- ington Post, complained that “the idea that Anglican and other Churches are not ‘proper churches’ seems to question the considerable gains we have made.”” The bishop of Roch- ester, England, Michael Nazir-Ali, a member of the Commission for the relations between Catholics and Anglicans, was quoted as hav- ing said: “‘I was shocked. Also many Catho- lics are shocked. Apparently someone in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not love ecumenism and wants to sabo- tage the dialogue.’”*? The Reverend Manfred Koch, head of Germany’s Lutheran Church and president of the Council of the Evan- gelical Churches in Germany, who recently �[Page 14]14 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

spoke about the need to recognize the Pope as a symbolic unitary figure of Christianity, is reported by the international news agency Zenit as having said that Dominus Iesus rep- resents

“a step backwards for ecumenical relations

... [and] a questionable attempt put the

[szc] reinstate the defeated absolutist im-

age of the Church from the First Vatican

Council, with its limitless primacy of the

Pope. It stands in stark contrast to the

hopeful concern for inter-Christian ecu-

menism and interreligious dialogue initi- ated by the Second Vatican Council.

[However] . . . the Declaration has many

affirmations that the Reformed Churches

could approve without reservations, be- ginning with the salvific universality of

Christ.”

The Reverend Valdo Benecchi, president of the Methodist Evangelical Churches of Italy, was quoted as declaring:

“It’s a jump backwards in terms of ecu-

menism and with dialogues with other

24. The Reverend Manfred Koch, quoted in “Reli- gious leaders comment on ‘Dominus Iesus’ Declaration criticize Catholic theology but are grateful for clarity,” a dispatch by the international news agency Zenit, which may be found at <Zenit.org>.

25. The Reverend Valdo Benecchi, quoted in Smith, “Vatican Claims Church Monopoly on Salvation,” Wash- ington Post Foreign Service 6 Sept. 2000: A13.

26. Monsignor Netchaev Konstantin Vladimirovich Pitirim, quoted in Marco Politi, “Pit lontano il viaggio in Russia [“The voyage (of the Pope) in Russia is more remote”],” La Repubblica 25.216 (17 Sept. 2000): 9.

27. Pastor Jean-Arnold de Clermont, quoted in Giuseppe Di Leo, “‘Ma questo é un macigno sul dialogo’ (“‘But this is a stumbling-block in the dialogue’”],” Z/ Resto del Carlino 115.243 (6 Sept. 2000): 2

28. Smith, “Vatican Claims Church Monopoly on Salvation,” Washington Post Foreign Service 6 Sept. 2000: Al3.

29. Di Leo, “‘Ma questo é un macigno sul dialogo,”” Il Resto del Carlino 115.243 (6 Sept. 2000): 2.

>

religions. There is nothing new about this, but we had hoped they had taken another road. This is a return to the past... . The salvation through Christ is not deposited in one religion only. This puts not only the Catholic Church at the center, but especially the Catholic hierarchy.””

The Russian Orthodox Monsignor Net- chaev Konstantin Vladimirovich Pitirim, a metropolitan of the dioceses of Volokalamsk and Juriev, and a former officer of the World Council of Churches, was quoted as stating: “J think that the declarations of Mr. Cardi- nal [Ratzinger] are rigorist and selfish. The ecumenical dialogue requires more balanced judgments. . . . His statements on the exclu- sive role of the Catholic Church could cause, in certain Orthodox circles, accusations against the ecumenical dialogue, accusations of her- esy against those who practice ecumenism.””*°

Pastor Jean-Arnold de Clermont, the presi- dent of the French Protestants, was quoted as saying: ““This new Declaration of the Vati- can... stands in singular contrast with the call to humility and open-mindedness to- ward the others launched by the Catholic Church in the Jubilee year.’”””

Finally, the World Council of Churches is quoted as observing that “it would be a ‘trag- edy’ if Christian cooperation were ‘obscured by the Churches’ dialogues about their rela- tive authority and status—however impor- tant they may be.’”*8 As a consequence, non- Catholic Churches, except the Orthodox, withdrew their representatives from a com- mission that was planning an event entitled “Marching Religions for Peace,” to be held in Rome on 1| January 2001.

The reaction of other religions was equally negative. The Italian journalist Giuseppe Di Leo wrote: “The ‘hierarchization of religions,’ effected, according to Jews and Muslims, by the Vatican is . . . unanimously condemned: the Catholic Church cannot claim the right of establishing which religion holds salva- tion.””° As to the Jews, Politi writes: “A chill �[Page 15]has descended over the Church and the Jews. Elio Toaff, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, has sent word ‘across the Tiber’ [to the Vatican] that it was inconceivable that they [the Jew- ish and the Catholic hierarchies] could meet as if nothing had happened.”*° Di Leo wrote that Amos Luzzatto, the president of the Union of the Italian Jewish communities, said that if “the only possible mediator for salvation is Jesus Christ,” Jews who do not accept the New Testament are removed from all dialogue. Di Leo also quoted Luzzatto as saying: ““‘How can a person speak of “sincere respect” .. . and then say that other rites or Holy Books serve just as a preparation to the Gospel? No, I am sorry, I do not agree at all

. . that I should always and only be con- sidered by the Church as a human being to be converted to Catholicism.’”™ Tullia Zevi, former president of the Italian Jewish Com- munities, is quoted by Politi as saying that “the Jews are quite dismayed because of ‘the contradictions within the Church between an openness to dialogue and a resurgent triumphalism. Any dialogue is difficult when a religion defines itself as first class and con-

30. Marco Politi, “Strappo tra ebrei e cattolici [“A split between Jews and Catholics”],” J/ Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.38 (25 Sept. 2000): 22.

31. Di Leo, “‘Ma questo é un macigno sul dialogo,”’ Il Resto del Carlino 115.243 (6 Sept. 2000): 2.

32. Politi, “Strappo tra ebrei e cattolici,” I/ Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.38 (25 Sept. 2000): 22.

33. Cf. Politi, “Strappo tra ebrei e cattolici,” // Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.38 (25 Sept. 2000): 22.

34. Di Leo, “‘Ma questo é un macigno sul dialogo,”” I Resto del Carlino 115.243 (6 Sept.2000): 2.

35. Pope John Paul II, quoted in Orazio La Rocca, “E Wojtyla esalta il dialogo “Chiesa senza arroganza [“And Wojtyla exalts dialogue: ‘A Church without ar- rogance’”],” Jl Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.39 (2 Oct. 2000): 9.

36. Sarah Delaney, “Other Faiths Not Denied Sal- vation, Pope Says,” Washington Post 2 Oct. 2000: A18.

37. La Rocca, “E Wojtyla esalta il dialogo,” J/Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.39 (2 Oct. 2000): 9.

?

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 15

siders the others as second class. . . . Clarity is required . . . the Church must get out of her ambiguities.” A Jubilee Day of Dia- logue, scheduled in Lateran for 3 October 2000, was canceled because of the defection of two rabbis.*? Hamza Piccardo, the secre- tary of the Union of Italian Muslim Com- munities, is reported by Di Leo as saying that “salvation is a divine prerogative. Who is entitled to take the place of God and say, “with us, yes, with them, no”?... the [Catho- lic] Church has no right to claim to be the only religious institution which holds the truth, ”*

On 1 October 2000, Pope John Paul II defended the Declaration from St. Peter Square, asking that it not be misunderstood. He asserted that the Declaration does not express “‘either arrogance or contempt to- ward the other religions, but simply reaffirms Gospel verities in the light of the teaching of Christ and of a sincere will of dialogue with all.” He observed that salvation that for Christians comes only from Christ may be found in other religions as well. He argued, moreover, that “‘[w]hen the Document de- clares, with the Second Vatican Council, that the only Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, it does not intend to ex- press a disrespect for the other Churches and ecclesial communities.’”* Pope John Paul II’s personal intervention is explained by the Washington Postas an attempt “to repair dam- age to relations with other religions caused by” Dominus Iesus.*° However, even after the Pope’s declaration, many still consider the Dictum as “a brake on ecumenism and inter- religious dialogue.”

The nearly universal reactions of dismay may be explained in several ways. First, in- dications by the Pope, with his growing interest in interreligious dialogue, from the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in 1986 to the Interreligious Assembly held in the Vatican City late in 1999, had suggested that he was personally oriented toward a pluralistic atti- �[Page 16]16 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

tude. This idea had been further encouraged by his many acts of repentance to those whom the Church had offended in the past. All these actions had created great hopes for the future. But now the inclusivist Dictum, signed by Cardinal Ratzinger and ratified by the Pope himself, has disappointed the expecta- tions of everyone.

Second, as the strongest Church in the Christian world, the Catholic Church is inex- tricably connected with Western civilization that has been predominant in the world during the last few centuries. Western peoples have often perpetrated acts of conquest and tyr- anny against other peoples and religions in the name of Christianity. Many had hoped that the Catholic Church would renounce any attitude that might be reminiscent of the former arrogance of the Western Christian world toward the “others.” And they had been expecting that this renunciation and a soft- ening of the most rigid points of Catholic doctrine would be done not only in words, but also in deeds.

Finally, the dimensions of the Catholic Church are so large that even an internal measure such as Dominus Iesus receives great attention from the press. What is addressed to the Catholics alone often comes to be considered as public, thus causing perplexity, dismay, and criticisms. Few people realize that the Church itself may be afflicted with internal tensions. As the American journalist

R. Jeffrey Smith remarks:

38. Smith, “Vatican Claims Church Monopoly on Salvation,” Washington Post Foreign Service 6 Sept. 2000: Al3.

39. “Eumenical Dialogue Is Intensified on Basis of Catholicism’s Very Identity: Reverend Angelo Amato Comments on ‘Dominus Iesus’ Declaration,” a dis- patch by the international news agency Zenit, which may be found at <Zenit.org>.

As such, it [Dominus Iesus] reflects age-old Vatican anxieties about the dilution of Catholic authority, which Church officials maintain comes directly from God through the pope. It also may grow from a height- ened concern by Church officials that Catholicism must remain competitive with Islam and other expanding faiths, particu- larly in East Asia and other battlegrounds for religious adherence in the developing world.*®

Thus a document meant “to clarify Catholic

identity” can be misunderstood as an expres-

sion of disrespect toward the other religions.”

A Baha’t Perspective: A Comparison between the Doctrinal Contents of the Declaration and the Baha'i Teachings

As a religion that accepts the relativity of divinely revealed truth and strongly supports the world’s efforts on behalf of ecumenical principles, the Baha’{ Faith has a keen inter- est in the implications of such statements as Dominus Tesus. A Bahai may read the Dec- laration in two ways: in its doctrinal contents as compared with the Baha’{ teachings and in its meaning in view of interreligious dia- logue.

If one compares the doctrinal contents of the Declaration with the Baha’{ teachings, it becomes apparent that the two Faiths have quite different perspectives. Some of the ideas that the Declaration condemns as “relativistic theories which seek to justify religious plu- ralism, not only de facto but also de jure (or in principle)” (§4) are among the basic prin- ciples of the Baha’i faith. Like the Catholic Church, the Baha’i Faith also disproves

the radical opposition posited between the

logical mentality of the West and the

symbolic mentality of the East; the ex- tremist subjectivism of those who regard reason as the only source of knowledge;

... the eclecticism of those who, in theo-

logical research, absorb ideas from a vari-

ety of philosophical and theological con- �[Page 17]texts without regard for consistency, sys-

tematic connection, or compatibility with

Christian [or any religious] truth.“

But unlike the Catholic Church (as reflected in the Declaration), the Baha’{ Faith approves “the conviction of the elusiveness and inex- pressibility of divine truth; the relativistic attitudes toward truth itself, according to which what is true for some would not be true for others”; and obviously the Baha’i Faith does not condemn “the tendency to read and to interpret sacred scripture outside the Tradition and Magisterium of the Church” (94). Therefore, the Baha’f attitude toward the six issues dealt with in the Declaration is quite different from that of the Catholic Church, as a brief examination of a few points may serve to illustrate.

The Fullness and Definitiveness of the Rev- elation of Jesus Christ. The Baha’ beliefs on the fullness and definitiveness of the revela- tion of Jesus Christ are openly relativist and pluralist. Human beings cannot know abso- lute Truth. “The door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days [God] . . . [is] closed in the face of all beings,” writes Baha’wll4h.” However, the Baha'i scriptures teach that God guides humankind toward Truth, gradually, throughout the ages, through His messen- gers—that is, the founders of revealed reli- gions, including, for example, Moses, Zara-

40. Intervention of Cardinal Ratzinger, Press Con- ference.

41. Baha’u'llah, Kitab-i-Igan: The Book of Certitude, trans. Shoghi Effendi, 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, IL: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1983) 99.

42. Baha’u'll4h, Kitdb-i-[gdn 142-43. In the Baha’{ scriptures, the locution “Sun of Truth” is the Logos, the Word of God.

43, Bahd@ull4h, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahdullah, trans. Shoghi Effendi, 1st ps ed. (Wil- mette, IL: Baha’{ Publishing Trust, 1983) 87.

44, Baha'u'llah, The Hidden Words, trans. Shoghi Effendi with the assistance of some English friends (Wilmette, IL: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1939) AG7.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 17

thustra, the Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, Baha’u lah.

The messengers of God, in the Baha’ view, are perfect creatures in their ability to comprehend and to convey the will of God to humanity in a given age. In the words of Bah@u'llah, they

are the recipients and revealers of all the

unchangeable attributes and names of God.

They are the mirrors that truly and faith-

fully reflect the light of God. Whatsoever

is applicable to them is in reality appli- cable to God, Himself, Who is both the

Visible and the Invisible. The knowledge

of Him, Who is the Origin of all things,

and attainment unto Him, are impossible save through knowledge of, and attain- ment unto, these luminous Beings who proceed from the Sun of Truth. By attain- ing, therefore, to the presence of these holy Luminaries, the “Presence of God”

Himself is attained. From their knowl-

edge, the knowledge of God is revealed,

and from the light of their countenance, the splendour of the Face of God is made manifest.”

The messengers of God certainly know absolute Truth. But none of them has con- veyed or will ever convey that Truth to hu- mankind in absolute terms. They reveal in- crementally as much of it as is suited to the growing spiritual capacity of understanding of human beings. Bahd’u'll4h writes: “Know of a certainty that in every Dispensation the light of Divine Revelation hath been vouch- safed unto men in direct proportion to their spiritual capacity.”** He also writes: “O Son of Beauty! ... All that I have revealed unto thee with the tongue of power, and have written for thee with the pen of might, hath been in accordance with thy capacity and understanding, not with My state and the melody of My voice.”** Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’f Faith, explains that

religious truth is not absolute but relative,

. [and] Divine Revelation is orderly, �[Page 18]18 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

continuous and progressive and not spas- modic or final. Indeed, the categorical rejection by the followers of the Faith of Bahd’u'llah of the claim to finality which any religious system inaugurated by the Prophets of the past may advance is as clear and emphatic as their own refusal to claim that same finality for the Revelation with which they stand identified.* Therefore, the message of each messenger is perfectly calculated for the realization of its divinely assigned mission, but the capac- ity of each messenger is infinitely greater than those of other mortals. Bahd’u'll4h describes Jesus as “the face of God,” “the Essence of Being and Lord of the visible and invisible.”“° He writes of Jesus as possessing more spiritual potency than the “deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent of rulers.” All these, He says, “are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His [Christ’s] transcen- dent, His all-pervasive, and resplendent Spir-

45. Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah: Selected Letters, new ed. (Wilmette, IL: Baha’{ Publish- ing Trust, 1991) 115.

46. Baha'u'llah, Kitab-i-Iqdn 19; Baha’u'llah, Glean- ings 57.

47. Baha’u'llah, Gleanings, 85-86.

48. Baha'u'llah, “Stiriy-i-Sabr” (Surih of Patience), quoted in Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Baha'u'llah 116.

49, ‘Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdul Baha Abbas, vol. 3 (New York: Bahai Publishing Society, 1909-16) 549.

50. ‘Abdu’l-Baha, quoted in Baha’u'llah and ‘Abdul- Baha, Baha i World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahd’ullah and Abdu'l- Bahd, 2nd ed. (Wilmette, IL: Baha’f Pub- lishing Trust, 1976) 364.

51. ‘Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks: Addresses Given by Abdu'- Baha in Paris in 1911, 12th ed. (London: Baha’{ Pub- lishing Trust, 1995) 58.5.

52. Abdu'l-Bahd, Abdul Baha on Divine Philosophy (Boston: Tudor Press, 1918) 41.

it.”*” Baha'u'llah also describes the revelation of Jesus as perfect, absolute, and full in itself, although it gave only a prescribed measure of divine guidance to humanity. Like all the other messengers of God, Christ revealed only what human beings could understand at that specific moment of their collective evolution on earth. Therefore, Jesus’ revela- tion, while perfect, is not definitive or final; actually, three divine messengers of equal magnitude (Muhammad, the Bab, and Baha’- ullah) have come to the world after Christ. And other messengers will come to the world “till “the end that hath no end”; so that His [God’s] grace may, from the heaven of Divine bounty, be continually vouchsafed to man- kind.’”*®

Thus, from the Baha’i perspective, there is no reason to consider the faith in God of the Catholics as being different in quality from that of the followers of the other reli- gions. Like the faith of the followers of any other religion, the faith of Catholics also in- volves a commitment to divinely ordained spiritual values, demonstrated in actions. As ‘Abdu'l-Baha, the eldest surviving son of Baha'u'llah and His designated successor, succinctly puts it, whatever the religion, faith is for each believer “first, conscious knowl- edge, and second, the practice of good deeds.” In the Baha’f view, it is “true knowl- edge of God and the comprehension of divine words.” It is “the love that flows from man to God .. . attraction to the Divine, en- kindlement, progress, entrance into the King- dom of God, receiving the Bounties of God, illumination with the lights of the King- dom.”* Indeed, “[fJaith does not consist in belief, it consists in deeds.” Therefore, in the Baha’{ religious experience, the accep- tance of metaphysical verities and dogmas fades into the background in comparison with any action consciously and willingly performed for the love of God in compliance with spiritual laws revealed in any of the Scrip- tures. Thus the Baha'i concept of faith is �[Page 19]quite different from that of Dominus Jesus, where faith in Jesus Christ, understood as the wholehearted assent to His revealed truth as formally and authoritatively explained by the Catholic Church, is preeminent in compari- son with any good deed performed in the absence of such faith. As to the meaning of the Scriptures of revealed religions, Shoghi Effendi states that the Revelation identified with Baha’u'llah . . . preserves inviolate the sanctity of ... [the] authentic Scriptures [of the ancient religions], disclaims any intention of low- ering the status of their Founders or of abating the spiritual ideals they inculcate, . reaffirms their common, their un- changeable and fundamental purpose, .. . readily and gratefully recognizes their re- spective contributions to the gradual un- foldment of one Divine Revelation, unhesi- tatingly acknowledges itself to be but one link in the chain of continually progres- sive Revelations. . . .** Discussion of those ancient scriptures is acceptable to Bahda’fs, insofar as it aims to establish the extent to which surviving scrip- tural texts accurately convey the teachings of the various Messengers of God (always prob- lematic because, with the exception of the Koran, the texts that survive were either not written down during their Messenger’s life- time, have been changed over the course of time, or are copies of lost originals). But, in the Baha’{ view, such discussions should re- main purely academic, rather than be used to call into question the legitimacy or the great and positive influence exerted by all

53. Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, intro. George Townshend, (Wilmette, IL: Baha’{ Publishing Trust, 1974, 1999 printing) 100.

54. Baha’u'llah, Kitéb-i-Igdn 153-54.

55. Baha'u'llah, Kitdb-i-[qdn 139, 140.

56. Bahd’u'llah, Kitdb-i-Igdn 142.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 19

scriptures on the development of human civilization. Baha’is desire that all sacred scriptures receive the deep, scientific, and respectful study that has been accorded the books of the Old and New Testament and the Koran. In the Baha’i view, the authentic- ity and validity of Scriptures spring from the validity of their teachings and the fruits that they have produced in the hearts of their followers as well as in the societies that adopted them as their source of spiritual guidance. The Incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit in the Work of Salvation. From a Baha'i perspec- tive, Jesus and the Word are one and the same, but according to the Baha’i teachings the same station is also true of the other Messengers. Baha'u'llah writes that all the Prophets are the Temples of the Cause of God, Who have appeared clothed in divers attire. If thou wilt observe with discriminating eyes, thou wilt behold them all abiding in the same tabernacle, soaring in the same heaven, seated upon the same throne, uttering the same speech, and proclaiming the same Faith. Such is the unity of those Essences of being, those Luminaries of infinite and immeasurable splendour. To Baha’is, the Holy Spirit operates in the world in at least two ways. The first is a “universal” way in which all things are “the recipients and revealers of the splendours of that ideal King,” and “nothing whatsoever can exist without the revelation of the splendour of God, the ideal King.”” The second is a particular way, channeled through all the Messengers of God, all of whom are “the recipients and revealers of all the un- changeable attributes and names of God.... [and are] the mirrors that truly and faithfully reflect the light of God,” so that “[t]he knowledge of Him, Who is the Origin of all things, and attainment unto Him, are im- possible save through knowledge of, and attainment unto, these luminous Beings who proceed from the Sun of Truth.” �[Page 20]20 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

The Unicity and Universality of the Salvific Mystery of Jesus Christ. Regarding the unicity and universality of the salvific mystery of Jesus Christ, Baha’is believe that each divine epiphany is a unique, universal and absolute historical event in relation to the age in which it is manifested and to its specific divinely assigned mission. However, it is not unique, universal, and absolute in relation to the other divine epiphanies, of which it is one part. Baha’u'll4h explains that the messengers of God have two different aspects—“the station of essential unity” and “the station of dis- tinction.””’ In their station of essential unity, the Messengers of God “are regarded as one soul and the same person. For they all drink from the one Cup of the love of God, and all partake of the fruit of the same Tree of Oneness.” In their station of distinction (or humanity) that

pertaineth to the world of creation and to

the limitations thereof. . . . each Manifes-

tation of God” hath a distinct individu-

ality, a definitely prescribed mission, a

predestined Revelation, and specially des-

ignated limitations. Each one of them is known by a different name, is character- ized by a special attribute, fulfils a definite

Mission, and is entrusted with a particular

Revelation.”

Therefore, Jesus had a unique role in relation to that of the other messengers. But He also shares his divine nature with the other mes-

57. Baha’u'llah, Kitdb-i-Igan 176.

58. Baha’u'lldh, Kitdb-i-Igdn 152.

59. The locution Manifestation of God, generally capitalized, is the most frequent term whereby the Baha'i scriptures refer to the messengers of God, the founders of revealed religions.

60. Baha’wllah, Kitéb-i-Iqgdn 176.

61. ‘Abdu'l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, trans. Marzieh Gail in consultation with Ali-Kuli Khan, Ist ps ed. (Wilmette, IL: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1990) 82.

sengers and in this respect is identical to them. He is both the Son of God and the son of man. ‘Abdu'l-Baha wrote that Jesus “founded the sacred Law on a basis of moral character and complete spirituality, and for those who believed in Him He delineated a special way of life which constitutes the highest type of action on earth.”

The Baha’{ teachings uphold religious pluralism not only de facto but also de jure. They consider each revealed religion as the fruit of an authentic divine revelation, equal to all the other religions in its essential as- pects, such as the law of love and compas- sion, and different in its secondary aspects. The Baha'i teachings uphold the unity of religions. They consider religious conflicts and disputes as the result of misunderstand- ings—misunderstandings that are often re- ferred to as “religious prejudices.” They call upon the followers of all religions to study with greater attention, respect, and objectiv- ity the scriptures and the historical develop- ment of the other religions. They recom- mend that peoples of different religions cooperate with one another and establish strong ties of reciprocal friendship. They see harmony among religions as a goal the at- tainment of which is worth working for, in view of the benefits that will accrue there- from to human civilization.

The Unicity and Unity of the Catholic Church and the Close Relationship between the King- dom of God, the Kingdom of Christ, and the Catholic Church. The issues of the unicity and unity of the Catholic Church and of the close relationship between the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Catho- lic Church are of such a specific Catholic nature that it is difficult to express an opinion from the perspective of the Baha’ Faith. Doing so would create the risk of engaging in an invasive discussion on religious issues of the kind that Baha'u'llah strongly recommends avoiding. He says: “The purpose of religion as revealed from the heaven of God’s holy �[Page 21]Will is to establish unity and concord amongst the peoples of the world; make it not the cause of dissension and strife.”

The Relationship between the Catholic Church and Other Religions in Relation to Salvation. The Baha’f perspective on the relationship between the Catholic Church and other re- ligions in relation to salvation is that all religions present a legitimate path to salva- tion. Followers of all religions might better spend their time answering those people who question the whole value and necessity of religion itself in the development of human civilization. On this issue John H. Hick, a leading philosopher of religion and interfaith dialogue, has written:

Whether . . . [the various religious tradi- tions] were more or less equally valid human responses to the Real cannot be answered a priori but only on the basis of observing their fruits. In my opinion the true answer is that, so far as we can tell, the great tra- ditions exhibit a rough salvific parity. They seem to be more or less equally productive of the outstanding individuals whom we call saints, more or less equally effective in providing a framework of meaning within which spiritual growth can take place, and also more or less unsuccessful in trans- forming societies on any large scale—for it is, alas, so much easier for evil than for good to be institutionalized.%

A Bahda’{ response to the claim that all religions have been “more or less unsuccessful in transforming societies on any large scale”

62. Bahd’u'llah, “Ishragdt” (Splendors), Tablets of Bahd'ulléh revealed after the Kitdb-i-Aqdas, comp. Re- search Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Habib Taherzadeh et al. (Wilmette, IL: Baha’s Publishing Trust, 1988) 129.

63. John H. Hick, “Interfaith and Future,” Bahd? Studies Review 4.1 (1994): 7.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 21

is that each religion has its own mission and that the transforming effect of each should be judged in the light of its particular mis- sion. Given the characteristics of earlier ages, no ancient religion seems to have had the mission of bringing peace and unity to the whole of humankind, a goal that was, if anything, part of an eschatological vision intended for a remote end of time. However, over the course of the centuries the organi- zation of society has undeniably improved. Whereas humanist philosophers would as- cribe this development only to the growth of the human rational faculty, Baha’is ascribe it mainly to the precious contributions of all the revealed religions of the world. According to the Baha’{ teachings, without the assis- tance and the inspiration of the teachings of all the messengers of God, the best spiritual principles and virtues of humankind would have remained hidden and unattained for the human race. The three Zoroastrian command- ments (goodly thoughts, goodly words, and goodly deeds), the “ten words” of Moses, the words of Jesus’ Sermon on the mount, in- deed, the spiritual teachings of all the re- vealed religions are the outcome of divine revelation, not the fruit of human conscience. Rather, in the Baha’{ view, human conscience is the fruit of the divine knowledge taught by all the messengers of God, absorbed by human beings, and deposited in such deep strata of their memory that it almost seems an inborn asset.

A Bahai Perspective: The Meaning of the Declaration in Respect to Interreligious Dialogue CompaRING Baha’i beliefs with those in the Declaration is not intended to open a theo- logical discussion or to polemicize but to emphasize the meaning of the author’s, and no doubt other Baha’is’, position supporting continued interreligious dialogue. Baha’is do not feel “declassed” because the Declaration says that Catholicism is the only �[Page 22]22 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

way toward salvation; that all the other re- ligions are human creations, at most reflecting

a glimmer of the light of Christ; and that all

ye

the other scriptures, by implication the Baha’ scriptures among them, were not revealed by God but are the fruit of human minds. These statements are a matter of internal affairs of the Catholic Church. As Politi remarks: the darts of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seem directed mainly against European and Asian theologians, who in the last years have been trying to understand how the “salvific power” of God operates also in the other religious traditions. It is an intricate theological issue and in point of fact the declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of

64. Politi, “Ratzinger: ‘Salvezza solo nella Chiesa cattolica,” La Repubblica 25.206 (6 Sept. 2000): 11. Enzo Bianchi mentions theologians like “Knitter and Hick” (“Il difficile dialogo con le Chiese sorelle,” La Repubblica 25.208 (8 Sept. 2000): 16. Paul F. Knitter is Professor of Theology at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, and an eminent proponent of liberation theol- ogy. The Italian journalist Luigi Accattoli suggests in particular three names: “a number of Asian theologians like Aloysius Pieris and Tissa Balasuriya from Sri Lanka, or Raimundo Panikkar (half Spanish and half Indian)” (“Dal ‘peccato originale’ al rito del battesimo: Le idee dei teologi asiatici che Roma contesta [“From ‘original sin’ to the ritual of baptism: The ideas of Asian theolo- gians called in question by Rome”],” J/ Corriere della Sera 125.211 (6 Sept. 2000): 11. Aloysius Pieris is an Indian Jesuit theologian. The Sri Lankan Father Tissa Balasuriya is a member of the monastic order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, excommunicated in 1997 and reinstated in 1998 after he had partially recanted his doctrines. Raimundo Panikkar is a Spanish-Indian religious scholar.

65. Bahd’u'll4h, “Lawh-i-Dunya” (Tablet of the World), Tablets of Baha'u'llah 87.

66. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 55; cf. 56 and Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, 53 (48).

67. Intervention of the Reverend Amato, Press Con- ference.

the Faith does not introduce anything

new.

The Catholic Church has simply reaffirmed well-known concepts, in front of her believ- ers. The Declaration is not addressed to the leaders or the followers of other religions. It has reached them simply because the dimen- sions of the Church are such that her official acts, be they internal or external, are always widely covered by the press.

The basis of the intense Baha’{ support for continuing interreligious dialogue is a state- ment by Baha'u'llah that says: “‘Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.’””® This attitude of “friendliness and fellowship” is not taught as conditional upon any previous agreement on theological issues. Interreligious dialogue is now a viable process, but it is important that all those who want to promote this dialogue remember that their starting point, not so long ago, was religious exclusivism, a position that has lasted for centuries and has implied that other religions must be abhorred, shunned, and fought. While the Declaration reminds its addressees that the other religions “contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors’”® (98), it also states that the Church considers these religions with “sincere respect” (422). Moreover, the Declaration calls for a con- tinuing theological debate on the meaning of the other religions. As the Reverend Amato says: “only the roads leading to blind-alleys have been closed.”®

With the Second Vatican Council of 1963- 65, the Catholic Church advanced from exclusivism toward inclusivism. In other words, inclusivistic Catholics said: “Our religion is the best among all, and it is worth bearing witness to its beauty, but a seed of truth may be found in the other religions as well.” The Declaration signed by Cardinal Ratzinger occurs within this new stage of interreligious dialogue. However, many people are anxious to see all religions and their institutions proceeding to a third stage, that of pluralism: �[Page 23]the view that all religions come from the one God of all humankind.®

But even the inclusivistic second stage has many advantages. Ideally, the followers of all religions could even now accept each other’s inclusivistic attitudes, in the name of the common spiritual ethical principle in all Scriptures (“Do not do unto others, what you would not be done to you”) that reli- gious scholars have discovered, though worded in slightly different terms. In other words, each believer could say: “As I believe in my religion, love my religion, and consider it as the best among all, thus, in the name of the Golden Rule that my own religion teaches, I willingly accept that the ‘others’ may have the same attitude toward their own religion, even if I think that they err.” This attitude would contribute to ending interreligious conflict without disclaiming the missionary spirit typical of most religions. While all religions say that their believers should bear witness to their faith, no religion teaches that its believers should impose their faith upon the others in their behavior; all believers are enjoined to perform their missionary activi- ties with courtesy, respect, and love and to

68. Knitter writes that pluralism has become “a common perspective among Catholic theologians to- day. In different forms it is represented by H. Kiing, H. R. Schlette, M. Hellwig, W. Biihlmann, A. Camps, P. Schoonenberg” (“La teologia cattolica delle religioni a un crocevia [“Catholic theology of religions at the crossroads”],” Concilium 22 [1986], 138).

69. Politi, “Strappo tra ebrei e cattolici,” //Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.38 (25 Sept. 2000): 22.

70. The Parliament of the World’s Religions, 7o- wards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration, Parliament of the World’s Religions, August 28—September 5, 1993, Chicago, IL, U.S.A. The text can be retrieved from the website of the Stiftung Weltethos in Germany in En- glish or in German. See also: http://astro.temple.edu/ ~dialogue/Center/kung.htm

71. The official name of the worldwide Baha’{ com- munity in its relationship with the outside world.

THE DECLARATION DOMINUS IESUS 23

profess only to those who show themselves inclined to this kind of dialogue.

The consequences of religious disputes and disagreements are ruinous. These disputes have caused many people to turn their backs on religion: to think that religion is a divisive force that cannot guarantee individual free- dom and that it should be strictly kept away from the political domain. It is a lesson to all believers that a secularist, the Italian political leader, Giuliano Amato, should have reminded them of their foremost duty:

For war to be abandoned . . . the staunch

commitment of all believers is required.

“Religions know the ways of the hearts.

They are requested to root out hate and

fear of the Others, which are the ultimate

cause of all wars. It must not happen...

that in the name of religion someone may

see the Others as a sign of the evil, instead

of recognizing them as a sign of God.”® But if all believers could now respect each other’s beliefs and give the freedom to profess them, they could finally achieve together what the world is wanting from them: that they set aside their theological disputes and cooper- ate to promote their highest common reli- gious values (the law of love and compassion and, at least, the four ethical principles on which most of them agreed during the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions: do not kill; do not steal; do not lie; and do not com- mit sexual immorality.”

The power of faith is very great. Great results could be expected if believers of all religions would merge their various personal faiths into one common effort: to bear wit- ness to these common values in their actions and to promote them throughout the world. The need for interreligious cooperation is urgent in that many of the problems that cause great suffering among the peoples of the world occur because those principles are mostly being ignored. As Albert Lincoln, Secretary-General of the Baha’j International Community,’ said in a statement to the �[Page 24]24 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

Millennium World Peace Summit, held in New York on 28-31 August 2000: “If there must be competition among religions, let each strive to excel in guiding people to peaceful coexistence, moral rectitude and mutual understanding.”

The urgency of interreligious dialogue is apparently perceived by all who advocate it and persist in their activities undeterred by any doctrinal consideration. As the Reverend Amato himself said in the course of an in- terview on Dominus Iesus disseminated by the international news agency Zenit: “Dialogue is founded . . . on reciprocal identity: this does not mean a lack of respect in relations with other religions, but only an expression of our own identity. The dialogue can then converge on many aspects: on peace, coop- eration, international solidarity, harmony

72. “Ecumenical dialogue is intensified on basis of Catholicism’s very identity: Reverend Angelo Amato comments on ‘Dominus Jesus’ Declaration,” a dispatch by the international news agency Zenit, which may be found at <Zenit.org>.

73. A lay movement of the Roman quarter of Trastevere active in the field of interreligious dialogue and peace. Sometimes Italian journalists refer to it as “Trastevere’s UN.”

74. Politi, “Strappo tra ebrei e cattolici,” l/ Lunedi de La Repubblica 7.38 (25 Sept. 2000): 22.

75. Politi, “Vaticano, prime crepe sulla linea Ratzinger,” La Repubblica 25.221 (26 Sept. 2000): 18.

76. ‘Abdw'l-Bahd, Abdul-Baha on Divine Philosophy 153.

among peoples, ecology, etc.”” Politi, while describing an interreligious meeting promoted by the Community of St. Egidio” held in Lisbon after the Holy See had issued Domi- nus Iesus, relates that Andrea Riccardi, the leader of St. Egidio, evoked “the dream of a ‘celestial council of religions,” whereas Jose Policarpo, the Patriarch of Lisbon, proclaimed “during the Mass that ‘there is but one true God, in whom all of us believe, whose face all of us are looking for, in the hope of finding the definitive light which emanates from harmony and peace.’”” The Italian jour- nalist also relates that Monsignor Lubomyr Husar, the Greek-Catholic Bishop of Leopolis, pronounced, in the course of the same meet- ing, a view that:

The plurality of religions and confessions

is not a religious, but an historical fact.

My opinion is that all existing monothe-

istic religions, which accept one God as

the origin, the legislator and the father of all humankind, are in reality one religion,

which has experienced a number of divi-

sions in the course of time.”

To the Bahd’is who observe them, these efforts can seem to be an early realization of the condition described by ‘Abdu’l-Baha in 1913:

When the devotees of religion cast aside

their dogmas and ritualism, the unification

of religion will appear on the horizon and the verities of the holy books will become unveiled. In these days superstitions and misunderstandings are rife; when these are relinquished the sun of unity shall dawn.’° �[Page 25]

25 �[Page 26]26 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

Vahid 2

On the back lawn a bush electric

with white, charcoal-tipped wings. Great Northerns in chaotic bliss

swoon and flutter, flutter and swoon

at the dripping nectar of sudden bloom. Whisper movements of antennae

sing of a superior joy:

We are many and we are alive.

We are the miracles of your life.

—Marlaina B. Tanny

Copyright © 2001 by Marlaina B. Tanny

On Sty4h-Chal

I hear them roar, then sometimes hushed,

I hear voices carried on the wind,

By decades, by distance, by some miracle undimmed, In Him let the trusting trust.

Seductive, like a harlot’s smile enticing, They stir my breast, they make me weep, And somewhere in the night, a monarch does not sleep,

He, verily, is the All-Sufficing.

What then to mortals shall remain a mystery,

Is the anthem of a witness bursting into flight, For a shattered mirror casts forth myriads of light, God is sufficient unto me.

—C. Reid

Copyright © 2001 by C. Reid �[Page 27]LILLIE

Lillie

Holding you,

in my heart here, Lillie, dear.

Cherished always, you

left

roses wherever you

were.

The

flowers

of your care,

live in loved

ones, everywhere.

—Anne Lawton Lunt

Copyright © 2001 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’{s of the United States

27 �[Page 28]oN oo

ees ey Seal AWN "

ee i te

ear! Sela eesti av ete

et: cole, ee

ara ee

4 a oS ay grt ie? een

�[Page 29]29

Loulan Beauty: Encountering the Xinjiang Mummies

BY GARY L. MORRISON

\ | OTHING quite prepares one for the first

encounter with the Xinjiang mum- mies. They lie individually encased in glass in the eerily pale light of the exhibition hall specially created for them within the stately Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Mu- seum in Urumai in the farthest northwestern province of modern China. When first en- tering, one is immediately astonished by the sheer number of them entombed in their glass enclosures and systematically arranged for orderly viewing. A sudden quiet descends upon those who enter the hall, as if the merest murmur in the almost palpable phan- tasmal silence will awaken these beings from their timeless sleep. Upon closer inspection, one is awed by the almost perfectly preserved human forms, each caught unawares in an individual pose. So lifelike and intact are these mummies that one can read expres- sions in their faces. The physical details of hair and whiskers, fingernails, skin, and tat- toos complemented by the design and tex- ture of the fabrics of their clothing belie their antiquity. Only gradually does one realize

Copyright © 2001 by Gary L. Morrison.

1. B.c.z. (before the common era) is an alternative designation equivalent to B.c. (before Christ). To view photographs of the Xinjiang mummies, see <http:// www.discovery.com/stories/history/desertmummies/ desertmummies.html>.

that the oldest of these is four thousand years old, contemporary with the mummies in Egypt of approximately 2500-2000 B.c.£.!

That singular moment when I gazed on the faces of perhaps the oldest human beings to have survived the ravages of time and to bear witness to their existence at the dawn of recorded history is a moment that is indelibly etched in my memory. Who were these people who looked so lifelike and so related to us? Where did they come from? How did they come to be here in Central Asia? How is it that Caucasian and Mongoloid peoples co- existed in settled communities four thousand years ago?

All those who have seen the Xinjiang mummies for the first time seem to have had similar experiences. J. P. Mallory, professor of prehistoric archaeology at Queen’s Univer- sity, Belfast, describes how his research part- ner, Victor Mair, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Pennsylvania, first saw the Xinjiang mum- mies in the Urumqi museum:

He had been to the Uriimchi Museum many times in the past, but the summer of 1988 was different. As he walked through the old, familiar exhibition halls, he was totally unprepared for what he would encounter in a new gallery that had been opened at the end of the archaeological section. Parting the hanging curtains of the doorway, he entered another world. �[Page 30]30 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

The room was full of mummies! Life- like mummies! These were not the wizened and eviscerated pharaohs wrapped in yards of dusty gauze that one normally pictures when mummies are mentioned. Instead, they were everyday people dressed in their everyday clothes. Each one of the half- dozen bodies in the room, whether man, woman or child, looked as though it had merely gone to sleep for a while and might sit up at any moment and begin to talk to whomever happened to be standing next to its glass case.’

Since his first encounter with the Xinjiang mummies in the Urumqi Museum, Mair has returned annually to continue his research on the mummies. A specialist in Sino-Indian and Sino-Iranian cultural relations whose work has focused on Chinese literature and the Eastern Central Asian Bronze and Early Iron Age peoples, he approached his subject with a certain scepticism. He first questioned the authenticity of the mummies and sought to build a research team to unravel the mysteries surrounding he Xinjiang mummies. Both he and Mallory brought together their expertise in cross-cultural studies and archaeology, but to fathom the nature and origins of the Xin- jiang mummies clearly required a much greater range of scientific expertise.

Mair secured the services of the renowned geneticist, Stanford professor Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who was subsequently replaced

2. J. P Mallory and Victor H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies—Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earli- est Peoples from the West (London: Thames, 2000) 8.

3. See Mallory and Mair, Tarim Mummies. Recently at least one hundred well-preserved mummies were found in a sand dune in Lop Nur, Xinjiang (China: China Tourism 250 [May 2001]: 8).

4, See Dolkun Kamberi, “The Three Thousand Year Old Charchan Man Preserved at Zaghunluq,” Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 44 (Philadelphia: U of Penn- sylvania, 1994).

due to ill health by Paolo Francalacci of the University of Sassari in Sardinia. Mair sought and received substantial grants from the Alfred P. Sloane Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. He gained a Chinese partner, without which joint projects in China appear to languish and linger on uncompleted. Wang Binghua, director of the Institute of Archae- ology in Urumgi, became a vital link, secur- ing official permits and required permissions from the responsible Chinese authorities to pursue this multifaceted project. In the end Mair and Wang crafted a truly international collaborative project with both Chinese and Western archaeologists and geneticists to uncover, preserve, protect, and discover the origins of Xinjiang mummies.

There were lasting benefits for all con- cerned with the project. Technology transfer to the Chinese scientists took place in the form of training in Western analytical tech- niques. The Chinese built the special mu- seum in Urumdi to preserve the mummies for future scientific analysis, to protect them for posterity, and to provide a safe haven for those mummies yet to be recovered. Between 1993 and 1998, literally hundreds of the an- cient desert grave sites were opened in vari- ous areas of Xinjiang, and the newest and most advanced analytical techniques in car- bon dating, DNA testing, and forensic pa- thology were employed in the unique research project.?

As Mair’s project in Xinjiang continued through the 1990s, increasing attention was focused on the mummies. Dolkun Kamberi, formerly of the Xinjiang Museum, published in scholarly papers his research on some of the more remarkable archaeological finds as they were uncovered in Xinjiang.‘ In the West the first major popular article on the Xinjiang mummies, with photographs by Jeffery New- bury, appeared in the April 1994 issue of Discover magazine. Over the next few years articles appeared in Archaeology and National Geographic. With the 1999 Discovery Chan- �[Page 31]nel International television production “Riddle of the Desert Mummies” awareness of the existence of the Xinjiang mummies became more extensive.”

During the last decade of the twentieth century, experts from many scientific disci- plines were drawn to investigate every aspect of the remains and artifacts of the Xinjiang mummies. Elizabeth Wayland Barber (an expert from Occidental College in California on ancient textiles) and Irene Good (a spe- cialist from the University of Pennsylvania in the laboratory analysis of ancient fibers and textile fragments) have studied the remark- ably well-preserved textile fragments and clothing found with the mummies. Together they provide compelling evidence of the Indo- European origins of these peoples with links to Central Europe and the European Celts.° In 1996 Mair organized a major conference

5. See Evan Hadingham (photographs by Jeffery Newbury), “The Mummies of Xinjiang,” Discover 15.4 (Apr. 1994): 68-77; Victor Mair, “Mummies of Tarim Basin,” Archaeology 48.2 (Mar.- Apr. 1995): 28-35; Thomas Allen, “Xinjiang,” National Geographic 189.3 (Mar. 1996): 2-51; and “Riddle of the Desert Mum- mies,” Terra Nova Television, A Production for Discov- ery Channel, Discovery Communications, Inc. 1999.

6. See Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, with Special Reference to the Aegean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1991); Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Mummies of Uriimchi (London: Macmillan, 1999); Irene Good, “Notes on a Bronze Age Textile Fragment from Hami, Xinjiang, with Comments on the Signifi- cance of Twill,” Journal of Indo-European Studies 23 (1995): 319-45; and Irene Good, “Bronze Age Cloth and Clothing of the Tarim Basin: The Charchan Evi- dence,” in Victor H. Mair, ed., The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia (U of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropol- ogy, and Journal of Indo-European Studies mono- graph series, 1998): 656-68.

7. Mair, ed., The Bronze Age and Iron Age Peoples.

LOULAN BEAUTY 31

in Philadelphia and in 1998 published the conference papers under the title The Bronze Age and Iron Age Peoples in Eastern Central Asia.’

The drive to bring together and organize research studies on the mummies and the Xinjiang region culminated with the publi- cation in 2000 of Mallory’s and Mair’s The Tarim Mummies—Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. This will undoubtedly serve as a classic text because it summarizes and synthesizes all the research to date that casts light on the ob- scure origins of the Xinjiang mummies. Mallory and Mair provide varying perspec- tives on the region and the world of the Xin- jiang mummies. They look at patterns of human migrations across Europe, Central Asia, and Asia. They study the research on linguistics, word origins, and ancient lan- guage groups. They bring together what is known about the development of farming and herding and their relationship to human migration and human settlements. They analyze, compare, and contrast textiles, cloth- ing designs, and weaving styles. They use genetics to provide information about the nature and origin of the mummies. Overall, they give us a clear view of the Xinjiang region and its significance in world history.

Western adventurers and archaeologists have known about the Xinjiang mummies for more than a hundred years. Swedish and German explorers in the nineteenth century gave written accounts of their discoveries of desiccated bodies found in shallow graves in the Xinjiang deserts, but they brought back to Europe only artifacts of Bronze-Age cul- tures that indicated the existence of ancient civilizations. Later they published drawings and photographs of the bodies they uncov- ered but left behind in the desert wastelands while seeking valuable artifacts that they considered to have more commercial allure in Europe. It was not until the late 1970s, how- ever, that Xinjiang archaeologists excavated �[Page 32]32 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

forty-three tombs in the Tarim Basin yield- ing mummies the oldest of which dated from 2000 B.c.E. From the mid-1980s through the 1990s burial mounds and mass graves or primitive cemeteries were uncovered in both the Tarim and Turpan Basins and in the vast Taklamakan Desert. With the international project coordinated by Mair and Wang giv- ing impetus to scholarly studies, articles, con- ferences, and video documentaries, knowl- edge of the existence of the Xinjiang mummies is changing our view of world civilization by increasing our understanding of the history of the migrations of homo sapiens and the spread of human settlements.

What makes the excavation of the Xinjiang mummies rank among the great archaeologi- cal undertakings of the twentieth century is that they are the oldest and, for the most part, the most perfectly preserved specimens of the human race ever unearthed. The old- est among them are contemporaneous with the Egyptian mummies; yet the ones buried in elaborate shelters that allowed the air to circulate are vastly different. The Egyptians were obsessed with embalming, removing inner organs, and coating the bodies of their dead with substances that, over the ages, contributed to the decay rather than to the preservation of human tissue. The result is that today the Egyptian mummies, wrapped in materials that have barely survived the centuries, are greatly desiccated and shriv- eled. The earliest Xinjiang mummies, in contrast, are almost completely intact. Un- like the plain cloth used to wrap the Egyptian bodies, the cloth in which many of the Xinjiang mummies are dressed, presumably everyday clothing woven with vibrant de- signs and vivid colors, is surprisingly well preserved. Because the Xinjiang mummies were found in more or less natural states, as if they had been buried where they died rather than transported to ceremonial tombs, they offer visible evidence of life and customs of four thousand years ago. They provide

preserved tissue samples that allow research- ers to study their DNA. Their clothing, imple- ments, personal accessories, and body deco- rations reveal hitherto unknown secrets of our prehistoric ancestors.

The oldest Xinjiang mummies were not preserved by artificial means with liquid preservatives or other embalming methods. Among the mummies dating a thousand years or more later, some have been found with a dust covering their bodies. Researchers sug- gest it was some form of protein substance originally painted on the bodies to help preserve them. Whether this is related to cross-communication or knowledge transfer between the Egyptians and the Central Asians we do not know. What we do know is that the preservation of the Xinjiang corpses was caused not by artificial means but rather by the happenstance of their burial that left them exposed to intense arid heat that bakes the Taklamakan Desert and the Tarim and Turpan Basins. In some areas of the Turpan Basin, around the ancient Chinese garrison town of Gaochang, temperatures as high as 150 de- grees Fahrenheit (around 50 degrees Celsius) have been recorded. Some of the corpses were originally placed in wood coffins. Many were found buried in deep graves. Some were found in a kind of vault within a slatted wood casing that allowed dry hot air to circulate and preserve the body and to protect it from dirt. Many bodies have been found with burial objects such as pots, baskets, bowls, mirrors, combs, needles, and even bread. Everything was dried out, baked, and preserved in the ovens of the Xinjiang deserts. Consequently, the mummies on view in the Urumqi Mu- seum are dressed almost exactly as they would have been on the day of their deaths. Some are wearing moccasins or boots. Some are wearing accessories. Their perfectly preserved clothing has enabled experts such as Barber and Good to study patterns of weaving and to do a design comparison among ancient

peoples in the Middle East and Europe to �[Page 33]determine the origins of the textiles, if not of the mummies themselves.*

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation is that DNA testing has verified that the ma- jority of the earliest mummies were Cauca- sian, that later mummies were of mixed Caucasian and Mongoloid origin, and that even later in many graves Caucasians and Asians were buried together. Study of the artifacts and textiles surrounding the mum- mies strongly suggests direct links to the Caucasian Indo-European peoples of the Middle East and Europe. The presence of certain herbs, such as harmeland ephedra, in many of the grave sites and of tall black pointed wizard-like hats appear to suggest a direct relationship with ancient Iranian peoples.

Linguistic studies seem to verify the link to ancient Iran. From his research into the ancient Chinese language, predating the earliest historic dynasty, the Shang (1500— 1100 B.c.£.), Mair has developed a long list of probable early linguistic borrowings from the West—words such as those for “magic” and “chariot,” for example. In her studies Barber notes that the European words for silk are ultimately related to the oldest Chinese word for silk.? Evidence from the Xinjiang mummies such as the use of leather boots for desert walking and the fiber, design, and twill weave of the extant textiles strongly links the Xinjiang mummies to Indo-Iranian and Caucasian Europeans. Horse riding, the wheel, and the chariot are known to have been used by Indo-Europeans as early as five thousand years ago but were used in China

8. See Barber, Mummies of Uriimchi, and Good, “Bronze Age Cloth and Clothing of the Tarim Basin: The Charchan Evidence,” in Mair, ed., The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples 656-68.

9. Barber, Mummies of Uriimchi 197-214.

LOULAN BEAUTY 33

only in the Shang Dynasty. Such evidence suggests that communication and commer- cial links among European, Indo-Iranian, Mongolian, and later Han Chinese peoples were actively forged in the ancient Xinjiang region and that the genetic pool in the region is far more diverse than once surmised, with a highly probable overflow and mixing over time into the multiple ethnic groups that now inhabit China. Hence studies of the Xinjiang mummies are altering our view of the ancient world and of our own origins and genetic endowment.

It was this sense of discovering something utterly unknown but supremely consequen- tial that gripped my imagination as I slipped into the tomblike quiet of the exhibition hall of the mummies in the Urumqi Museum in the heart of Xinjiang region. Scanning the room, my gaze drifted to a better-lighted corner and lingered on “Charchan Man,” named for the location where he was found in the Taklamakan Desert. Lying next to Charchan Man is the woman known as “Ur- David” and another woman DNA-tested as of mixed Mongoloid and Caucasian racial characteristics. Charchan Man still holds the power to seduce the viewer by the incredible detail of his countenance. Even in the sleep of death, his expression and physical charac- teristics become indelibly imprinted in the memory. His long hair in shades of ochre and brown merges with a beard that still covers his cheeks and chin. His defined eyebrows accentuate his closed eyes. A tattoo of geo- metrical design adorns his forehead close to the temple. But it is the obviously European Caucasian facial features that surprise the viewer expecting a more Asian type. Charchan Man and his two Asian female companions suggest that Caucasians and Asians coexisted easily among these early inhabitants of the settled communities in this remote region.

Nearby, next to Charchan Man and his companions, is an infant in swaddling clothes with large blue stones covering the eyes, �[Page 34]34 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

reminiscent of a Margaret Keane painting of a lost child abandoned in a desolate land- scape. Giving no clues about their purpose, the stones over the eyes seem to suggest something spiritual, something ceremonial or ritualistic. Close by, a replica of a burial mound shows stones on the surface in a carefully laid-out design of concentric circles around a central mound. The design triggers thoughts of Stonehenge or early Celtic or Druid rites in distant Europe. Whether these concentric circles represent something ritu- alistic, ceremonial, symbolic, or magical, no one yet knows. The discs covering the infant's eyes and the system of concentric circles around burial mounds seem to attest to our distant ancestors’ yearning for some connec- tion with the divine, to have some counter- balance to the fearful eternality of the un- known.

Moving beyond the replica of a burial mound toward the end of the exhibition hall, one first sees her from afar and then ap- proaches her in a spirit of awesome connec- tion. She is more perfectly laid out than any of the other mummies, more perfectly pre- served, with a countenance at once still, serene, unperturbed by the passage of time. She is the Loulan Beauty. Initially one notices sim- ply the dark, dried, desert-baked complex- ion, giving a certain irony to the name given to her by her discoverers. Then her exquis- itely chiseled facial features come into focus and captivate the eye. There is something starkly beautiful, natural, and timeless about this Loulan Beauty lying serenely with her long hair arranged neatly around her ears, one feather jutting upward near her left ear hauntingly reminiscent of the first inhabit- ants of the North American continent. While her features suggest her Caucasian origin, the feather and her clothing look as if she has already moved from her Indo-European roots and adapted to a more Asian style. In spite of her Caucasian features, one sees her as Asian,

THE LOULAN BEAUTY Found in the Tarim Basin of Sinjiang Prov- ince in China, the Loulan Beauty is, to date, the oldest of the mummies discovered there.

She was found in the area known as Loulan in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang province. To date she is among the oldest of the mummies discovered there. Her remains bear witness to a real time, place, settled society, and culture that would seem to be but a step away from the twenty-first century, although a chasm of four thousand years separates us in time. Through modern computer imagery, her reimagined face has adorned postal stamps. She has been declared the mother of the Uygurs, even though no evidence exists to link her to the Uygur peoples.

The myriad burial mounds and cemeter- ies and the sheer number of exhumed bones, bodies, and mummies, as well as artifacts and ceremonial sites scattered throughout the vast desolate Taklamakan Desert and the Tarim �[Page 35]and Tarpan Basins challenge past assump- tions and raise countless questions about hu- man migrations between East and West. What do the Xinjiang mummies reveal to us of the world of the Loulan Beauty? Was her world static or dynamic? Was it shaped by outside influences? Where did these Caucasian peoples come from? What were the patterns of mi- gration and interchange from West to East and East to West? What were the cultural and technological gifts introduced into China by these Caucasian peoples? What gifts did they receive from China to filter back into the West? With scientific research into the world of the Xinjiang mummies still in its infancy, it may be years before a coherent and conclusive picture of this vital region in hu- man history emerges.

Xinjiang province today is one of the most culturally diverse landlocked population ar- eas in the world. It shares borders with Mon- golia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It covers one-sixth of the total area of China. It was the heart of the famed Silk Road that cut across China, Cental Asia, and the Middle East and provided a link to the market cen- ters of Europe. Through China it stretched from Xi’an, the ancient capital of the Qin dynasty in what is now Shaanxi province, to Dun Huang, an oasis in the Gobi desert of what is now known as Gansu province. From Dun Huang, the Silk Road split into three routes across the vast expanses of today’s Xinjiang province. One jutted up across the ‘Tarpan Basin, through the high desert waste- lands of the Gobi to Hami, rounding the northern side of the Tianshan mountains down to Urumgi and on to the great markets of Kashgar. Another cut through Tarpan down to Korla in the Tarim Basin with oasis stops in Korla, Kuqa, and Xinhe on the way to the Kashgar market center. Yet another mean- dered through one of the three largest sand deserts in the world, the Taklamakan, with oasis stops at Ruogiang, Qiemo, Minfeng,

LOULAN BEAUTY 3D

and Hotan on the way to Kashgar. With mummies recovered from major oasis sites along all routes crossing the Taklamakan Desert and the Tarim and Tarpan Basins, it seems evident that migration, communica- tions, and commerce helped forge paths between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia long before the routes came to be known as the Silk Road.

For the migrating Indo-Europeans, Xin- jiang would seem to be an inhospitable en- vironment. On the one hand, Xinjiang has all the geographical and geological features unlikely to attract nomads and settlers. On the other hand, those who came and stayed found its rich resources—water, fertile oases, vast grasslands—optimal for human settle- ments. Xinjiang contains the vast sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert, the windy dust- lands of the Tarim Basin, and the high desert wastelands of the Tarpan Basin and the adjoining Gobi Desert. In stark contrast to the basins and deserts are the great mountain ranges of Xinjiang—the Pamirs along the western border, the Altay mountains to the north, the Kunlun mountains at the south, and the Tianshan mountains, the largest mountain range in Asia, cutting across the center. It is a world of opposites and con- trasts—from the snow and glaciers on magnificent mountain peaks to the lower depths of hot, dusty, arid desert wastelands. But Xinjiang also contains more than three hundred lakes and rivers fed by melting snow, which also feeds an underground water sys- tem. These water resources create habitable, fertile, and productive oasis villages within the desert lands and vast grassy plains stretch- ing north across to Mongolia. Alternating geography of mountains and basins, barren deserts and fertile oases, arid wastelands and vast grassy plains would have made Xinjiang since ancient times a magnet attracting the Caucasian Central Asian nomads from the West and the Mongolian and Han peoples of the north and East. More than anywhere �[Page 36]36 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

else in the region, Xinjiang was always a gathering place of those from the West and the East, a veritable cauldron of diverse cultural, ethnic, and language groups.

DNA testing of the Xinjiang mummies provides the strongest evidence to date that Caucasian peoples arrived in Central Asia and settled in China at least as early as 2000 B.C.E., long before the Shang dynasty [1500— 1100 B.c.£.] began to dominate the region. A large number of these people were mixed Caucasian and Mongoloid types. Besides DNA testing of bodily remains, Barber's analysis of the fabrics and Mallory’s and Mair’s study of the artifacts, burial pottery, imple- ments, and the burial mounds themselves suggest that the Loulan peoples led a no- madic life based on fishing and agriculture along the main rivers and waterways of the region. Studies of the textile designs and the particular type of weaving and stitchery in the preserved fabrics of the mummies is directly linked to the twill weave of fabrics found only in Europe during this time. The great quantity of textiles found at the burial sites suggests that the Loulan peoples, having brought with them the colors and designs of their Western origins, may have settled in the region and developed something of a textile production center.

The vast number of burial sites scattered throughout Xinjiang suggests large numbers of settlements of peoples of mixed origin interacting peacefully. The written reports of General Zhang Qian from the beginning of the Han dynasty (202 B.c.£.-220 c.£.), fifteen hundred years after the death of the Loulan Beauty, provide the earliest historical infor- mation about the region and suggest the arrival from the East of the Han Chinese in the time of the Shang. In the Xinjiang Museum one stares into the face and at the mummified

10. See Mallory and Mair, Tarim Mummies 319-22.

body of General Zhang, who, as the museum’s identification card reads, served as Com- mander of the Left Guardians and Minister of National Defense in the ancient Kingdom of Gaochang in the Tarpan Basin. Here is one of the recent arrivals, bearing witness to the existence of an active, thriving fortified provincial city of the Han Chinese from the East. It is from this period that we find Caucasian and Chinese bodies side by side in scattered grave sites in the Tarim Basin. It seems evident that from the earliest times into the first era of a recorded history, this region continued to be a center of racial and ethnic diversity.

Without in any way diminishing the high achievements of the Chinese civilization, perhaps the most advanced in the world for more than two thousand years, the discovery of the Xinjiang mummies casts new light on the two-way flow of technological innova- tions. It would take a book to cover all the technological advances and inventions that came from China and transformed the West: the plough, the stirrup, paper, printing, gun- powder, the compass, wheelbarrows, and so much more. But there is no evidence of wheeled vehicles in China before the Shang dynasty around 1500 B.c.£. Nor is there evi- dence of any extensive metallurgy in China before 2000 B.c.£. Mallory and Mair hypoth- esize that the chariots of the Shang dynasty were derived from the chariots of the Central Asian Caucasian nomads, who, by the fourth millennium B.C.E., were already using four- wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts. They were dispersed through Eastern Europe from where the Caucasian nomads appear to have come into Xinjiang. The researchers also argue that, if one follows the path of bronze metal- lurgy and iron smelting, these technologies clearly came from the West through the east European steppes into Central Asia and into China through Xinjiang.”

Whatever new evidence emerges, recreat- ing the world that archaeologists have uncoy- �[Page 37]ered with the Xinjiang mummies indicates that diverse peoples of Caucasian and Mong- loid origins met in this Central Asian heart- land and intermingled, commingled, prob- ably bartered, traded, and lived in mixed settled communities to a far greater extent than researchers ever imagined. As they came into China in their wheeled carts with their cloth fabrics, their plants and wheat, their horses and sheep, their technologies and ideas, these early Caucasian pioneers from the Cen- tral Asian steppe lands entered into China and settled along the rivers and in the oases of the vast expanses of Xinjiang. Here East and West joined together.

The Xinjiang mummies provide dramatic and visible evidence that the migrations of ancient peoples were far-flung and progressed steadily across Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia and into Mongolia and China. They created settlements in an alien land, but gradually through adaptation, intermar- riage, and assimilation left an imprint through a genetic heritage that survives today in the physical diversity among peoples in Central Asia and China. The interchange between European and Asian peoples, the Xinjiang mummies have taught us, has been in progress since at least 2000 B.c.z. With such wide- spread expansion across Europe and Central Asia, when Egyptian civilization was at its zenith, it is not unreasonable to infer that contact, communication, trade, and cultural and technological exchanges among widely scattered prehistoric peoples were highly probable.

More extensive explorations in search of new sites for excavations in Xinjiang and further study of the thousands of mummies, relics, artifacts, and burial sites already un- covered will provide a firmer foundation for further research into the dynamic processes of early human settlements. Increasing our understanding of human migrations, the origins of inventions, and technological trans- fer may help us to reconceptualize the study

LOULAN BEAUTY 37

of history and develop a world-centric per- spective of the oneness of humankind that we can use to study the development of human civilization as an organic whole, not as iso- lated parts. The people who became the Xin- jiang mummies crossed geographic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries and united with others for survival and de- velopment.

Standing in the dim primordial light of the hall of the mummies in the Xinjiang Museum, one is overwhelmed in the pres- ence of these ancient people by the certainty of one’s connection as human beings sharing common origins in the spread of human settlements and the rise of world civilization. Viewing the museum’s replica of the concen- tric circles marking the burial mounds from the Tarim Basin, one senses that through centuries and epochs there is a kinship in beliefs about the divine, the unknowable essence, that humans found ways to express. The Xinjiang mummies were human beings with individuality and basic drives to know, to love, to create, to cultivate, to nurture, to reach out, to connect, and, ultimately, sim- ply to be. Staring at the calm serenity reflected in the face of the Loulan Beauty, as much a look of today as of four thousand years ago, I wonder who is this Loulan Beauty? How did she live? What was her life like? What burdens did she bear? What language did she speak? What did she see? What secrets and mysteries lie hidden in the fathomless depths of this ancient Mona Lisa whose world is still waiting to be reimagined in the gradual accumulation of the archaeological fragments scattered across the deserts of Xinjiang?

As I see these beings lying in state in the Xinjiang Museum, I think of our links to the early human called Lucy, and I begin to real- ize how ancient is our line of human beings. From the time of our obscure origins we learned to survive, acquired knowledge, de- veloped technology, and migrated to popu- late the earth with human settlements. We �[Page 38]38 WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

moved out over the landed areas of Africa, Europe, Central Asia, Asia, and the vast Arctic, down through the Americas, and across vast seas, populating islands along the African coasts; through the Indian Ocean; off the coasts of South and Southeast Asia; and throughout the Australasian Pacific and the Atlantic. I imagine the Indo-European and Central-Asian migrations, the small bands of settlers, the settlement and evolution of so- cieties, and the caravans of explorer no- mads passing over mountains in search of new grounds for settlements. I imagine how first encounters between these various hu- man societies must have taken place over millennia. I feel the longevity of time. Before leaving the exhibition hall of the mummies in the Xinjiang Museum, I glance around one last time to encompass the quan- tity, the quality, and the variety of the hu- man shapes and forms on display, noting the dress, the style, the general look of these timeless beings. I see Charchan Man and his companions, the baby with the mysterious stones over the eyes, General Zhang, the Loulan Beauty, among many, and I feel a sense of kinship. Emerging from a past stretch-

ing back eons into the remotest reaches of human existence, the oldest of these Xinjiang mummies, the Loulan Beauty, lies at the threshold of the relatively recent beginnings of the recorded collective history of our species. She gives us perspective, for however shrouded in the unknown is our past, the Loulan Beauty is with us today not simply as skull and bones but as an intact, visible image of a fleshed- out real person from the dawn of our history. Because we can relate to the enigmatic ex- pression on her face, her hair style, her dress and accessories, she becomes an individual human being. Encountering the Xinjiang mummies expands the consciousness not only of how vast and varied was the ancient world of our ancestors but of how their world was an integral part of the warp and woof of hu- man civilization. As I leave the Xinjiang Museum, I know that no genetic, linguistic, geographic, historic, or cultural barriers can ever prevent me from feeling a profound sense of the oneness of our human species. The Loulan Beauty enshrined in all of her mys- teries seems to be a key to expanding our consciousness of how vast and varied, in- deed, was the ancient world of our ancestors. �[Page 39]39

Full Circle

We are the progeny

Of hydrogen and helium Bonded in the alchemy Of a sun’s explosion.

Through time and space and matter, Ancestors of many forms,

We greet the Uncreated Light

And bid the stars good-night.

—DMoonica Reller

Copyright © 2001 by Monica Reller �[Page 40]40

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Pausing for Poetry

A REVIEW OF Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology, ED. ROBERT PINSKY AND MAGGIE DIETZ (NEW YORK, LONDON: NORTON, 1999) xIxX + 327 PAGES, INDEX, PERMISSIONS

BY PETER E. MURPHY

HEN Robert Pinsky was appointed the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1997, he

began what he thought would be a modest undertaking. He invited Americans to tell him about a poem that mattered to them. Pinsky hoped his request would result in one hundred or so Americans recording on videotape poems that have been important to their lives. Two years and thousands of letters later, Pinsky’s undertaking has become a significant literary and social movement called Americans’ Favorite Poem Project resulting in hundreds of commemorations and public readings, a video and audio archive accessible through the internet (www.favoritepoem.org), and an impressive anthology of poems and comments by the nominators who love them: Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology.

Pinsky writes in the introduction to the anthology: “I began the Favorite Poem Project with the goal of recording an audio archive of a few hundred Americans saying aloud for the tape recorder a poem the person loves, along with a few sentences explaining that poem’s personal significance.” He was surprised by the success of his program, which received more than twenty thousand letters and e-mails from people in each of the fifty states. The writers, he notes, include a professional acrobat, a ballpark beer vendor, a belly dancer, a pet groomer, a ship’s pilot, a U.S. Senator, and a zookeeper.

The Lands’ End Company highlighted Americans’ Favorite Poems in a special feature of its May 2000 catalog (Vol. 38, No. 5). The three poems printed in the catalog were “First Memory” by Louise Gliick, “‘Hope’ is the thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson, and the following poem by Robert Hayden, a Baha’i, a former poetry editor of World Order, and Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress:

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached

Copyright © 2001by Peter E. Murphy.

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from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, hed call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

“Those Winter Sundays” is accompanied by several comments including one from Phyllis Becker of Kansas City, Missouri: ““Broke my heart and restored it.” Pinsky writes (in the Lands’ End catalog) how moved he was by the letter writers. “Voices like that one [Becker], showing me how much certain poems mean to people, have inspired and encouraged me.”

Sadly, poetry does not sell much in the United States, and poets are mostly ignored. I suspect that more people may have seen Hayden’s poem in the widely distributed Lands’ End catalog than in A Ballad of Remembrance, where it was first published in 1962, and in his posthumous Collected Poems, which came out in 1985. However, Americans’ Favorite Poems does affirm that many Americans do care about poetry. Their eloquent comments make the anthology a dis- tinctive and fascinating book.

The collection of almost two hundred works by poets from across the millennia and around the world is both typical and surprising. Not only are many luminaries from the Western tradition here, including Bishop, Brown- ing, Catullus, Keats, Rimbaud, Rilke, Sappho, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Whitman, and others, but there are many poets who will be new to most readers. They include Julia De Burgos, Sandra Cisneros, Hussein Elhami, Haki B. Madhubuti, Carl Phillips, and Sone No Yoshitada. Supporting the anthology’s populist nature, it even includes Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus” with its famous “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. . . .” I doubt that there exists another collection of poems that includes both Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” (submitted by an eleven year old from Georgia), representing opposite ends of the literary spectrum.

While the poems are arranged alphabetically by author, it is natural to see clusters emerge, together with the great poetic themes: love, death, identity, family, loss, nature, and so on. Men have frequently glorified war, and poets

have written about it from ancient Troy to Vietnam. (Yes, there is an excerpt from The Iliad.) Poems by Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, both of whom

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died in the World War I, show a startling difference in their point of view. In “The Soldier,” Brooke writes an unabashedly patriotic poem about how his bones, buried in a foreign field, will create in that spot a bit of England forever:

THE SOLDIER If I should die, think only this of me, That there’s some corner of a foriegn field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed, A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given, Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Owen, who survived the war and its horrors three years longer than did Brooke, writes more graphically and realistically about human suffering in “Dulce et Decorum Est” (the title is used ironically; literally, it means “It is sweet and noble”). Mike Gleason, aged twelve, from East Northport, New York, writes that “The third and fourth stanzas were the ones that really got me going. The poem connected to me by means of life itself.” Mary McWhorter, a thirty- nine-year-old accounting manager from California, explains her connection to Owen’s poem by describing her father who had been blinded in World War II and how he raised her and two sibling single-handedly after their mother died: “The poem made me realize that my perception of my parents’ lives was based on the short time I had known them, and that they had a prior life about which I would never know.” A visit to the Favorite Poem Project website (www.favoritepoem.org/archive/index.html) provides a brief video in which McWhorter talks about her father and reads the poem.

Perhaps the most moving book and video experience is inspired by the following poem by Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who writes about the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., where the losses brought about by his service in that war still haunt him.

FACING IT

My black face fades,

hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn’t,

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dammit: No tears.

I’m stone. I’m flesh.

My clouded reflection eyes me

like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn

this way—the stone lets me go.

I turn that way—I’m inside

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light

to make a difference.

I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find

my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap’s white flash. Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse but when she walks away

the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s wings cutting across my stare.

The sky. A plane in the sky.

A white vet’s image floats

closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I’m a window. He’s lost his right arm

inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman’s trying to erase names: No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

Michael Lythgoe, fifty-eight, a foundation director from Gainesville, Virginia, quoted in the book, says, “I served in Vietnam with a USAF tactical unit in 1965 and again in Saigon in 1971. For years I could not face the Memorial ‘Wall.’ This poem opened my emotions and | always think of it when I visit the wall.” At the web site, a three-and-a-half-minute video, complete with helicopter noise and clips from news footage, shows Lythgoe visiting the wall, counting the casualties of his personal history, and then reading Komunyakaa’s poem aloud. It is this interaction between the paper and ether that make Americans’ Favorite Poems such an unusual and pleasing experience.

Fifty poems and video commentaries in the book are currently on line, while fifty more video recordings are planned before the project is completed. There are also favorite poems on line that do not appear in the book. For example, Frank O’Hara is represented in the anthology by his poem, “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island.” In the video archive, we see and hear Richard Samuel, a glass blower from Seattle, talk about a different O’Hara

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poem simply titled, “Poem.” Also not in the anthology are both former Pres- ident Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, who read and discuss their favorite poems on line. He chose “Concord Hymn” by Emerson; she, “The Makers” by Howard Nemerov.

Perhaps my favorite poems are those that manage to praise and transform, an ambitious task when the world is usually “too much with us.” Andrew Nagen, forty-eight, a Navajo dealer in antique textiles from Corrales, New Mexico, discusses “Who Says Words with My Mouth,” by Rumi (whom Bahd’u'llah quotes throughout His Seven Valleys). “Who says words with my mouth?” asks the poem. “Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? / I cannot stop asking.” Nagen writes that “This poem speaks to a space inside me that causes my life to be in its proper perspective. I can’t live without it and I can die with it.”

In addition to Rumi, Americans’ Favorite Poems includes three of the most beautiful religious poems in the English language: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur,” “Pied Beauty,” and “The Windhover,” all written in the nineteenth century. I fell in love with Hopkins shortly after becoming a Baha’i in my twenty-first year. Although I was not expecting to be moved by “tra- ditional poems” written by a Jesuit priest, I was intoxicated by the sounds of Hopkins’ words, which my mouth was happy to pronounce. I was a construc- tion worker at the time. One day I called in sick and went to a park where I spent hour after hour walking and reading his poems aloud. On the website, Stanley Kunitz, ninety-five years old and current poet laureate, reads “God’s Grandeur” after explaining how he had discovered it while in his twenties.

GOD’S GRANDEUR The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights of the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Kunitz and myself are not the only ones who were captivated by Hopkins. Don Levy, seventy-three, retired teacher, screenwriter, and actor from Cali-

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fornia writes that he discovered Hopkins as a nineteen year old who had just

entered Fresno State College at mid-term: The Man was drunk with words! “The Windhover” blew me away. I read it aloud in my bedroom over and over. The words were chewable. It was syncopated; it was Gershwin; it was Cole Porter; it was de-lovely. I had no idea what half the words meant and only the vaguest realization that it was about a bird that, to Hopkins, was a big deal. He had dedicated it “To Christ Our Lord.” I was a Jew who had never been in a synagogue, but, hey, if that was Hopkins’ cup of tea, Mazel Tov. . . .

THE WINDHOVER I caught this morning, morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plé6d makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-beak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

I was also pleased to read again a poem by Nazim Hikmet, who, in “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved,” recollects the simple pleasures of a life interrupted by a Turkish prison where he was sentenced for his writing. The poem, in part, reads:

I didn’t know I loved the sky

cloudy or clear

the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino in prison I translated both volumes of War and

Peace into Turkish

I hear voices

not from the blue vault but from the yard

the guards are beating someone again

I didn’t know I loved trees... .

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PAUSING FOR POETRY

47

Chad Menvile, a twenty-four-year-old student from New York City, writes: “T identify with this poem about imprisonment, censorship, longing, and belief in oneself more than any other poem I have read. This poem needs to be heard! Please.” Unfortunately, it is not (yet) heard on the web site, but it is printed in the anthology.

Another poem of imprisonment is by Anna Akhmatova, whose son was incarcerated by the Soviets for “Crimes against the state.”

THE SENTENCE

And the stone word fell

On my still-living breast, Never mind, I was ready. I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:

I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone,

I must learn to live again—

Unless . . . Summer’s ardent rustling Is like a festival outside my window. For a long time I’ve foreseen this Brilliant day, deserted house.

Nancy Neressian, fifty-one, a professor of Cognitive Science at Georgia Tech, talks movingly in a video clip about how the brother she loved who went off never really returned. The stranger who came back was sentenced to a life of addiction and mental illness that finally killed him. She says that he “was never going to learn to live again because the struggle was too hard.”

Americans are busy people who are proud of how busy they are. Americans make things happen, good things mostly, but bad things too. The Favorite Poem Project and Americans’ Favorite Poems, its accompanying anthology of poetry, introduce us to people who invite us to pause from our busyness and become engaged in artful language that has excited and energized humans since they first learned to speak. Angelo Baldo, thirty-three, a geneticist from Henderson, Nevada, says about a poem by Marianne Moore: “As a scientist trained in molecular genetics, I find truth in many things, including my data. I like this poem because it expresses in emotional terms the connection I see between my work and life.” How does Moore’s poem titled “Poetry” begin? “I too dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. / Reading it however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.” It is this desire to sojourn in the “place for the genuine” that will keep Americans reading poetry till the end of time.

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WORLD ORDER: WINTER 2000-01

Authors & Artists

ANNE LAWTON LUNT makes a first appear- ance in World Order with a poem that reflects a time of caring, some thirty years ago, for an elder and a grandmother, in

Neah Bay, Washington.

PETER E. Murpuy has published poems and essays in numerous journals including The American Book Review, Atlanta Review, Commonweal, and the Shakespeare Quar- terly. An occasional contributor to World Order, he writes not only about poetry but poems as well and was recently awarded a poetry writing fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Gary L. Morrison is head of Interna- tional Education Services for the Yew Chung Education Foundation Interna- tional Schools in Hong Kong (where he resides), Shanghai, Beijing, Yantai, and Chongqing. His dispatch from China in this issue is informed by both his educa- tional training, including a Master’s de- gree in Southeast Asia Studies from Yale University and an Ed.D in international education from the University of Massa- chusetts, Amherst, and his lifelong famil- iarity with the region where he has lived or traveled throughout most of his life. He has been an occasional contributor to World Order for more than twenty years on top- ics ranging from the films of Jean-Luc Godard to the early history of the Ameri- can Baha’{ community.

Curis REID, an earth scientist and career civil servant working as a pollution con- trol officer, contributes a poem in memory

of a family friend, Dr. Monib Collestan.

When not working or working out, Reid

travels, traces his Irish roots, and serves as a mentor in a program encouraging mi- norities and girls to pursue science careers.

Monica RELLER, a poet and award-win- ning collage artist, writes newspaper ar- ticles, teaches piano and voice, reflexology, and natural-vision techniques.

Jutio Savi, who received his M.D. from the University of Bologna in 1964, is a lecturer in the Department of Ethics and the Department of Religious Studies in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Landegg Academy and is also a practicing gyne- cologist. He is the author of numerous articles on Baha’i scripture and spirituality as well as The Eternal Quest for God (1989), published by George Ronald. His interests include religious scriptures, poetry, spiri- tuality, and the spiritual development of individuals and society.

Mar aina B. TANNy, who lived in Barba- dos for five years where she tutored the National Dance Company of Barbados, now resides in her beloved New England. Her poetry has appeared in several jour- nals including World Order, Poetry East, Seattle Review, and the Caribbean Writer.

e

ART CREDITS: Cover design, John Solarz; cover photograph by Susan Reed; pp. 1, 6, photographs by Steve Garrigues; p. 25, photograph by Darius Himes; p. 28, photograph by Allegra Kazemzadeh; p. 34, photograph of the Loulan Beauty by Jeffery Newbury / © 1994. Reprinted with per- mission of Discovery Magazine; p. 40, photograph by Steve Garrigues.

�[Page 49]

FORTHCOMING

Not to be missed in World Order's Summer 2001 issue: a review of the recently published Century of Light, a major scholarly work, written under the supervision of the Universal House of Justice, that looks back over the twentieth century, surveying both “the tumultuous forces that influenced the life of the planet” and the growth and development of the Baha’i community. The review, by Firuz Kazemzadeh, noted author and historian, professor emeritus of Russian history at Yale University, and former editor of World Order, will add dimension to the review essays, published in our Spring and Fall 2000 issues, on significant works published during the last one hundred years.

Also forthcoming in future issues . .

= June Manning Thomas looks at the relationship between urban planning and racism

= Leila Milani considers the role of women in peace

= Jia-Yi Cheng-Levine scopes out “Dangerous Intersections”

= Erin Murphy-Graham discusses rags, petrol, matches, and Virginia Woolfe

= Richard Thomas looks at the rich history of intercultural and interracial col- laboration in the United States

�[Page 50] �