'We're Trying to Change World History.'

William Edwin Swing, 64
Bishop
Episcopal Diocese of California
San Francisco, California

It isn't as unusual as it sounds: The Episcopal Bishop of California traveled all the way to Wisconsin to address a group of high-school students. Regardless of the audience, be it fellow clergy, interfaith groups, venture capitalists, Rotarians, or curious teenagers, William Edwin Swing rarely turns down an invitation to share his vision for groundbreaking cooperation among the world's religions. His grassroots campaign is relatively young, with more seeds to plant and more souls to stir. He can't predict if the reaction will be favorable, but he can usually count on this: It will be impassioned.

Wisconsin didn't disappoint. Following Swing's talk on the United Religions Initiative (URI), an international interfaith network inspired by the United Nations, one of the students chased down the bishop as he was leaving for the airport. "My father thinks you're the Antichrist," the boy said.

"Well, what do you think?" Swing asked.

The student said that he didn't agree, even though his father was an Episcopal priest.

"Well, good."

"I just think you're nuts."

A "head case." A "heretic." An "egomaniac." During the seven years since Swing began pursuing his vision of religious unity worldwide, he's heard his share of insults and accusations. Of course, it helps that he receives encouragement too. Numerous interfaith groups, as well as luminaries like Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, have embraced his ideas. Naturally, his supporters call him names at the other end of the spectrum, praising him as a "visionary," an "inspiration," and a "devout servant."

After 21 years of overseeing the diocese of California, which once included the entire state but now covers only the Bay Area, Swing, 64, is not only one of the longest-serving and most-respected Episcopal bishops in the country, he is also one of the more outspoken. During the early days of the AIDS epidemic, he says he was the first bishop to speak publicly on behalf of victims and the first to organize a conference exploring how the church could support those victims. (Conservatives called him the Antichrist then too.) So as Swing set out on a new cause to unite the religions of the world, religious and interfaith communities took notice.

In a sense, he's an unassuming activist, a man whose gentle ways belie passionate beliefs. He doesn't raise his voice, fidget, or rush his thoughts. He lingers in the moment, never glancing at his watch -- because he doesn't wear one. He has a quick wit that he doesn't show off, and he has an 8 handicap that he doesn't brag about. (If you press him, however, he will tell you about the time that he shot a hole-in-one in the Pebble Beach National ProAm.) He looks like the last person who'd want to shake things up. And yet he's very much a change agent in a field that seems impervious to change. It sounds corny, but it's true: He's a man on a mission.

As far as he can tell, there's never been a group quite like the URI -- a global, grassroots religious network. Unlike interfaith organizations that only admit the most well-established religions, the URI includes every spiritual expression on the planet. Unlike groups that meet just once a year and whose members rarely interact, the URI develops an ongoing conversation among its interfaith members through steady email and frequent small-group gatherings.

It's no great mystery why such an organization never has existed before, Swing says. Since 1893, when the idea for an international interfaith body was first broached at a meeting of the World's Parliament of Religion, a dozen similar attempts have failed to get beyond the proposal stage. No matter how many times that religious leaders have expressed support for meaningful cooperation, they've been unable to overcome profound theological differences or deeply conflicting opinions about how to run such an unusual assembly. Too many divisive questions tripped them up. How can religions that feel threatened by the existence of other faiths sit at the same table as people who represent those faiths? Who gets to join -- and who doesn't get to? How do members agree on anything when they disagree on so much? Who's in charge?

Swing still is figuring out many of the answers, but he believes that the URI will succeed where others have failed largely because of how he and his colleagues are building it. A radically new group needed radically new thinking, so they sought solutions outside religious circles. "Religions know a great deal about competition, but they don't know much about cooperation," Swing says. "If it were left up to religions, they wouldn't get together. They would keep right on doing their own thing. It's like Albert Einstein said: 'Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.' You have to rise above them to the next level."