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Chicago

Also Known As Chicagoan
United States

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Chicago's place in religious history rests largely on the World's Parliament of Religions, held there in 1893 alongside the World's Columbian Exposition. It was the first large gathering to put representatives of many traditions on a single platform, and the occasion of Vivekananda's introduction of Vedanta to an American audience. A centenary parliament in the same city in 1993 produced the declaration Towards a Global Ethic, and the Newberry Library in Chicago holds manuscript collections important to the study of religion.

Facts
Origins
Founded
Incorporated in 1837 at the portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi system, and rebuilt after the fire of 1871 1
Origin of the Name
Derives from a Miami-Illinois word for a wild garlic or onion that grew abundantly along the river, first recorded in French explorer accounts of the late seventeenth century. 1
Attributions
Tradition
The Catholic and Lutheran churches of its European immigration; the Black Protestant churches of the Great Migration, in which gospel music took its modern form; the Nation of Islam, headquartered in the city; and the World's Parliament of Religions, held there in 1893 2
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
English, with Latin, German, Polish and Church Slavonic long used in the immigrant congregations 3
Learn More
The World's Parliament of Religions, 1893

The Parliament sat for seventeen days in September 1893, in the newly built hall on the lakefront that is now the Art Institute, as one of the congresses attached to the World's Columbian Exposition. Nothing on that scale had been attempted: delegates of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Islam, Judaism and a long list of Christian bodies addressed the same audience from the same platform, and the proceedings were published and read far beyond the city.

Two things are usually remembered about it. The first is the reception of Vivekananda, a young Bengali monk with no delegation behind him, whose opening address was received with an ovation and who spent the following years lecturing across the United States, founding the first Vedanta societies in the West. The second is that the meeting introduced an American public to Buddhism through speakers including Anagarika Dharmapala of Ceylon and the Rinzai abbot Soyen Shaku, whose connection to Chicago publishing later carried D. T. Suzuki to the United States.

The Parliament's frame was less neutral than its billing. It was organised by liberal Protestants, opened and closed with Christian prayer, and its chairman assumed that comparison would demonstrate the superiority of his own tradition. The Archbishop of Canterbury declined to take part on the ground that Christianity is not one religion among many. Delegates from Asia used the platform to answer missionary accounts of their traditions directly, which is a large part of why the event mattered.

A City of Foundings, from Gospel Music to the Nation of Islam

Chicago's religious importance did not end with the Parliament. The Great Migration brought several hundred thousand African Americans north between the wars, and their churches remade the city's religious life. Thomas A. Dorsey, a blues pianist who turned to sacred music, worked from Pilgrim Baptist Church and, with singers including Mahalia Jackson, established gospel as a composed and published form rather than only a congregational one; the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses was founded in the city in 1933. Storefront congregations multiplied alongside the large churches, and the tension between the two shaped what black Protestant worship in northern cities became.

The same migration carried new movements. Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam from Chicago from the 1930s, and its headquarters and principal mosque remain there, so the organisation's doctrinal and institutional centre has always been this city rather than New York, where its best known minister worked.

Other traditions built their American centres nearby. The Bahai House of Worship at Wilmette on the lakeshore north of the city, begun in 1920 and dedicated in 1953, was the first in the western hemisphere and is still the faith's principal temple in North America. Moody Bible Institute, founded in 1886, became a central institution of American evangelicalism and of the fundamentalist movement that grew out of it. The centenary Parliament of 1993, held in the same city, issued the declaration Towards a Global Ethic drafted by the theologian Hans Kung.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Chicago directly: "pastored Southside Alliance Church in Chicago from 1928 to 1959, served on the CMA Board of Managers from 1941, was elected the denomination's vice president in 1946 and 1949, edited its own..."

Source A. W. Tozer (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "Made at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago in 1944 by Glenn Seaborg and colleagues and, with curium, first disclosed to the public in November 1945 not in a journal but on a children's radio..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois."

This source names Chicago directly: "and Hudson with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1998, is a scholarly edited volume, produced to accompany a museum exhibition."

This source names Chicago directly: "George Kheiralla's 1894 move to Chicago, where interest generated by the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions gave his teaching classes their first significant American audience; not the right..."

Source Baha'i Faith In The United States (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "People, published by University of Chicago Press in 1985, is a peer reviewed ethnographic and historical study of Zionist church practice among the Tshidi of South Africa, including the ritual..."

This source names Chicago directly: "World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where Soyen Shaku and Anagarika Dharmapala presented Buddhism to a wide non-Asian audience for the first time; not the right source for a contested claim..."

Source Buddhism in the United States (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where the Rinzai Zen teacher Soyen Shaku and the Sri Lankan revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala presented the tradition to a wide non-Asian audience for the..."

Source Buddhism in the United States (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "of the World's Religions convened in Chicago, one hundred and thirty years after its first gathering there in 1893, drawing more than seven thousand attendees from over ninety five countries and..."

This source names Chicago directly: "by Janet Lloyd, University of Chicago Press, 1991, English translation first published by The Harvester Press in 1978, French original by Flammarion in 1974, is the founding study of metis, or..."

Source Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and SocietyMarcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, translated by Janet Lloyd

This source names Chicago directly: "by Wole Soyinka, The Goodman Theatre, Chicago, October 5-November 11, 1979." It documents an exact production run and confirms Soyinka both wrote and directed this Chicago staging himself."

This source names Chicago directly: "distributed by the University of Chicago Press, is an academic state formation history of medieval Norway across that period, covering Olaf Haraldsson's death at Stiklestad, his canonisation, and..."

This source names Chicago directly: "musician, and this University of Chicago Press book is his standard scholarly ethnomusicological study of Central Javanese gamelan, including the Sekaten ensembles maintained by the royal courts of..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Dai session held 14 August 2023 at its Chicago gathering, presented by Hoang Le, Tham Le and Vincent Thi."

This source names Chicago directly: "volume 24, by the University of Chicago Press in 1985, is an anthropological study of Greek Orthodox icon devotion built on Kenna's own fieldwork on a small Greek island and among island migrants in..."

This source names Chicago directly: "the main body of Mormons west to Utah. Chicago grew into one of the country's most religiously diverse cities through immigration, home to a large Catholic archdiocese built on Polish, Irish and..."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)

This source names Chicago directly: "Given to the Art Institute of Chicago by the Alsdorf Foundation and held today in its Arts of Asia department, accession 1996.699."

This source names Chicago directly: "history from the University of Chicago Press, is a full length academic history of Khama III, Bathoen and Sebele's 1895 deputation to London against Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company, by a..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Held today by the Art Institute of Chicago, a gift of Mrs."

This source names Chicago directly: "organized on April 26, 1847, in Chicago, when twelve pastors representing fourteen congregations across Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin signed a constitution founding the..."

This source names Chicago directly: "meeting on 27 September 1920 in Chicago."

Source Mennonite Central Committee (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "published by the University of Chicago Press in 1996, is a scholarly study of messianic currents within modern Zionism and the religious radicalism they have sometimes produced."

This source names Chicago directly: "station, WMBI, went on the air from Chicago on July 28, 1926, as the broadcast voice of the Moody Bible Institute, founded by engineer H."

This source names Chicago directly: "two years later, toward the same 1893 Chicago Parliament of Religions this atlas's own separate United States arrival event already records him presenting at."

Source Henry Steel Olcott (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 2002, is a multidisciplinary academic collection, spanning sociology, anthropology, political science, religious studies and theology, on John Paul..."

This source names Chicago directly: "of religion and culture in Black Chicago from 1915 to 1952, drawing on church, migration and cultural records from the period."

This source names Chicago directly: "As a scholarly translation from University of Chicago Press with critical introduction, it gives reliable access to the text's actual content and its transmission history."

This source names Chicago directly: "and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1993, is a scholarly study of the third century Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus by one of the twentieth century's leading historians of ancient..."

Source Plotinus, or The Simplicity of VisionPierre Hadot (trans. Michael Chase)

This source names Chicago directly: "Held today by the Art Institute of Chicago."

This source names Chicago directly: "online exhibit, Portrait of Black Chicago, captioning a March 1974 photograph of Nation of Islam Fruit of Islam bodyguards with an uncited description of the group's holdings as a '75 million dollar..."

This source names Chicago directly: "is a scholar of Buddhist studies, and this University of Chicago Press book is his academic critique of how Tibetan Buddhism has been imagined and misrepresented in the West, including its close..."

This source names Chicago directly: "priest, godhi of Thor's Oak Kindred in Chicago."

This source names Chicago directly: "book, published by University of Chicago Press, examines BaKongo religion in the lower Zaire region, including cosmology, ritual specialists and the movements of religious renewal that periodically..."

This source names Chicago directly: "published by the University of Chicago Press in 1992, is an anthropological study of capoeira built on Lewis's own fieldwork training within the Brazilian martial art and game, examining how its..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Line, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011, is a scholarly study tracing how the Jordan River functions across the Hebrew Bible and later tradition as a symbolic boundary, separating..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Held today by the Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia department, under accession 1970.520."

This source names Chicago directly: "Held today by the Art Institute of Chicago under main reference number 2024.591."

This source names Chicago directly: "for decades at the University of Chicago, explains the collection's own title in his afterword: the poems "all speak of Siva and speak to Siva," meditative, personal addresses to the god that draw..."

This source names Chicago directly: "of a major 2000 Art Institute of Chicago exhibition, written by the show's curators drawing on loaned objects from museums across China and the West."

Source Taoism and the Arts of ChinaStephen Little with Shawn Eichman

This source names Chicago directly: "of Bishops had first put forward at Chicago in 1886: the Scriptures as containing all things necessary to salvation, the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, the two sacraments Christ himself ordained, and..."

Source The Chicago-Lambeth QuadrilateralThe Lambeth Conferencethe holders' own account

This source names Chicago directly: "A seventeen-day congress held in Chicago from 11 to 27 September 1893 alongside the World's Columbian Exposition, organized by the Swedenborgian lawyer Charles Carroll Bonney and chaired by the..."

This source names Chicago directly: "convened at the Palmer House hotel in Chicago in 1993 by the newly formed Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions and drawing more than 8,000 participants from dozens of traditions."

Source Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial DeclarationDrafted principally by Hans Kung, endorsed by the Parliament of the World's Religions Assembly of religious and spiritual leaders

This source names Chicago directly: "book, published by University of Chicago Press, examines the Siddha traditions of medieval Indian tantric alchemy and hatha yoga, arguing that these traditions' physical and alchemical practices..."

This source names Chicago directly: "held its constitutional convention in Chicago in May 1943, with more than a thousand delegates from nearly fifty denominations."

This source names Chicago directly: "on December 17, 1939, over WJJD in Chicago, a 20,000 watt station, as the radio ministry of the Christian Reformed Church, with Calvin College professor Henry Schultze as its first speaker."

This source names Chicago directly: "classes in New York before moving to Chicago in 1894, where the religious enthusiasm generated by the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions gave his teaching its first substantial American following."

Source Baha'i Faith In The United States (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "studies, and this University of Chicago Press book is his academic history of Ledi Sayadaw, the Burmese monk whose reforms helped shape the modern vipassana meditation movement, situating that..."

This source names Chicago directly: "and published by University of Chicago Press in 1984 as the English edition of his 1981 La Naissance du Purgatoire, is a landmark scholarly study by one of the twentieth century's most prominent..."

Source The Birth of PurgatoryJacques Le Goff (Arthur Goldhammer, trans.)

This source names Chicago directly: "Tooth, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2021, is a scholarly study of Western accounts and receptions of the Sri Lankan Buddha's Tooth relic held at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth..."

This source names Chicago directly: "The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is the Anglican Communion's own foundational statement of the essentials required for church unity, adopted as Resolution 11 of the 1888 Lambeth Conference from..."

Source The Chicago-Lambeth QuadrilateralThe Lambeth Conferencethe holders' own account

This source names Chicago directly: "study, published by the University of Chicago Press, arguing that sharply bounded religious identity within the Sikh tradition, as distinct from earlier more fluid and shared devotional practice..."

This source names Chicago directly: "and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1989, presents the influential Paris school reading of ancient Greek animal sacrifice as fundamentally a system of cooking and meat distribution..."

Source The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the GreeksMarcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (eds.)

This source names Chicago directly: "1988 study from the University of Chicago Press, is a major scholarly account of the South Indian Draupadi cult and its mythology."

This source names Chicago directly: "published by the University of Chicago Press in 1984."

Source The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Obeyesekere)Gananath Obeyesekere

This source names Chicago directly: "The Cult of the Saints, University of Chicago Press, 1981, is a scholarly study."

This source names Chicago directly: "in 1922 and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock on 29 October 1920."

This source names Chicago directly: "the score's premiere details (Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock, 29 October 1920) and the composer's own extensive prefatory programme note."

This source names Chicago directly: "the Free Methodist Publishing House in Chicago, reprinted in 1896, and used as the standard songbook of Free Methodist worship through the end of the nineteenth century."

This source names Chicago directly: "published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005, is a widely cited work of religious studies scholarship arguing that the standard modern list of world religions, the category itself, is a..."

This source names Chicago directly: "creation chant, and this University of Chicago Press book is Martha Warren Beckwith's scholarly translation and study of it, drawing on multiple textual sources including Queen Liliuokalani's own..."

Source The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation ChantMartha Warren Beckwith

This source names Chicago directly: "Michigan, New York and Ohio met in Chicago and signed a constitution founding the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States, the body that later took the name the Lutheran..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Parva, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1978 as part of van Buitenen's multi-volume translation project, is a scholarly primary text translation of the epic's account of the Pandavas'..."

Source The Mahabharata (Book 4, Virata Parva)trans. J. A. B. van Buitenen

This source names Chicago directly: "a Social Creed drafted chiefly by the Chicago pastor Harry F."

This source names Chicago directly: "account, covers its 1887 founding in Chicago and the 1911 Edward E."

Source The Newberry Library (institutional record)the holders' own account

This source names Chicago directly: "modern Britain, and this University of Chicago Press book is her academic study of British occultism, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its associated figures, read as a genuine expression..."

This source names Chicago directly: "of the Hidden Moon, University of Chicago Press, 1966, is a scholarly study."

This source names Chicago directly: "Church, Missouri Synod, organized in Chicago in 1847, also recorded here, the Prussian crown dissolved Lutheranism's separate legal identity within its own territory."

This source names Chicago directly: "pastor of Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, an elected CMA vice president, and editor of the denomination's own Alliance Weekly."

Source A. W. Tozer (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "published by the University of Chicago Press, treating it as both a real laboratory practice and a system of allegory, correcting older popular accounts that treated it as either purely mystical or..."

Source The Secrets of AlchemyLawrence M. Principe

This source names Chicago directly: "Imam, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1984, is a major work of scholarship."

Source The Shadow of God and the Hidden ImamSaid Amir Arjomand

This source names Chicago directly: "is a historian, and this University of Chicago Press book is the standing scholarly history of the legal repression of Haitian popular ritual, tracing colonial-era law through the postcolonial penal..."

This source names Chicago directly: "1989 study from the University of Chicago Press, is a scholarly translation and study of a Srivaisnava commentary by two established scholars of South Asian religion with direct command of the Tamil..."

Source The Tamil Veda: Pillan's Interpretation of the TiruvaymoliJohn Carman and Vasudha Narayanan

This source names Chicago directly: "Verellen edited this University of Chicago Press reference work, a three volume scholarly companion describing and dating every text contained in the Zhengtong Daozang, the 1445 Ming dynasty Taoist..."

Source The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the DaozangKristofer Schipper and Franciscus Verellen (eds.)

This source names Chicago directly: "Its origin traces to Chicago around 1911, when the physician William S."

Source The Urantia Book (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "civilization, and this University of Chicago Press volume is the first of his landmark three-volume history, published posthumously, covering the formative and classical periods of Islamic..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Religions, The East, West Encounter, Chicago 1893, published by Indiana University Press in 1995, is a scholarly study of the landmark 1893 gathering in Chicago that brought representatives of the..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Advanced Thought Publishing Company in Chicago, is the work that put the phrase Law of Attraction into circulation in its modern New Thought sense."

This source names Chicago directly: "Church, Missouri Synod organized in Chicago in 1847, and twenty nine years before the Lutheran World Federation formed in Lund, Sweden in 1947, both already recorded here, American Lutheranism's..."

This source names Chicago directly: "Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1993, is the primary document itself, signed by more than two hundred religious and spiritual leaders representing over forty traditions, stating..."

Source Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial DeclarationDrafted principally by Hans Kung, endorsed by the Parliament of the World's Religions Assembly of religious and spiritual leaders

This source names Chicago directly: "performance, and this University of Chicago Press book is his scholarly study of devadasis, temple dancers of South India, and how their history is remembered and contested in modern India."

Vivekananda addressed the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.

This source names Chicago directly: "Practicing in Chicago with his physician wife Lena Kellogg Sadler, he investigated a neighbor exhibiting unusual sleep talk from around 1911, and by the 1920s the case had grown into extensive..."

Source William S. Sadler (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "in 1910, his psychiatric practice in Chicago, and his role in the origin and publication of The Urantia Book."

Source William S. Sadler (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Chicago directly: "and published by the University of Chicago Press."

Contained In

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
The World's Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893
Richard Hughes Seager, Indiana University Press, 1995
Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915-1952
Wallace D. Best, Princeton University Press, 2005
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