The first God Conference, entitled “God: The Contemporary Discussion,” was held from December 26 to 31, 1981 on the island of Maui, Hawaii. Dr. Frederick Sontag, distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Pomona and author of Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church (Abingdon, 1977), suggested the conference as an “internal” equivalent of the annual International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS). The conference attracted 170 participants from 33 countries and all major religions traditions. Seventy-five papers were presented, twenty-two of which were selected for inclusion in a resulting book,God: The Contemporary Discussion (1982).
The Youth Seminar on World Religions (YSWR) emerged out of the first God Conference. From 1982 to 1984 it sponsored annual seven-week around-the-world pilgrimages to sites associated with the religious traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Unificationism for 150 students and professors. This expanded the movement’s ecumenical and inter-religious network and involved religious scholars of the highest rank, including Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions and one of the country’s foremost authorities on world faiths, who with his wife co-chaired the first two Youth Seminars and served as chair of the fourth God Conference.
God: The Contemporary Discussion by Frederick Sontag (Editor), M. Darrol Bryant (Editor)
Available in paperback at Amazon.com for $USD7.59. Papers by theologians from the world’s religions as well as by philosophers related to the contemporary discussion of God.
God: The Contemporary Discussion Paperback – December 1, 1982