I questioned URI staff member Paul Andrews about the URI stance on persecution of Christians in China and Sudan, the restrictive religious law in Russia, and the bill proposed during 1997 in the U.S. House of Representatives to impose sanctions on nations that engage in religious persecution. There should be a place where faith communities can gather. We are matchmakers in that effort. He wished to make a distinction between the URI role as matchmaker and facilitator, and the role of a future United Religions as a body which would make decisions on these matters. These questions would be handled by the members of the United Religions itself, after the organization is launched.
People can disagree in good faith.
There should be a place where the religions determine on spiritual grounds what are authentic ways to engage each other. This should be decided on a spiritual basis, not on a political basis, as the House is trying to do. However, the URI is already forthright in condemning war, poverty, persecution of Tibetan Buddhists, and population growth. Internet document citations are based on research done between September 1997 and August 1999. Web citations are accurate as of the time the Web page was printed, but some documents may have been moved to a different Web site since then, or they may have been removed entirely from the Web.