'We're Trying to Change World History.'

The bishop found that "next level" of ideas in the business world: in the ideas of David Cooperrider, 46, an associate business-school professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and of Dee Hock, 71, the founder of Visa and a world-renowned organizational-design guru. Cooperrider helped participants at the URI's early gatherings avoid inflammatory dogma and endless debate, and instead helped them engage in constructive dialogue. Hock convinced Swing and the design team to abandon hierarchical thinking in favor of a flat organization with an evolving architecture.

Consequently, Swing doesn't run the URI. Neither does anyone else at the top -- because there is no top, per se. There is no centralized authority. The people who join the URI organize themselves into "cooperation circles" and then decide how best to serve the group's overarching purposes of promoting daily interfaith cooperation, of ending religious violence, and of creating "cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the earth and for all living beings."

The results? Swing's vision is becoming a reality, even though that reality bears little resemblance to the United Nations model that he originally had in mind. In June, after several years of networking, fund-raising, designing, and redesigning, the bishop addressed more than 275 people -- Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs, among others -- who came from five continents to participate in a charter signing, the group's official kickoff. The site was Pittsburgh, for symbolic reasons: That city has more bridges than any other city in the United States -- and the URI is devoted to building bridges across spiritual boundaries.

Swing also points with pride to the 72 Hours Project, which was carried out at the beginning of the year. In its first global peace-building effort, the URI invited religious communities around the world to perform an interfaith activity focused on peace during the 72 hours from December 31, 1999 to January 2, 2000. More than 400 communities in 60 countries conducted peace marches, prayer vigils, and interfaith services on Australian hilltops, in Sri Lankan villages, and in California prisons. Afterward, local organizers emailed descriptions of what they'd done to the URI's San Francisco office. Many of the missives sounded like those of the Reverend James Channan, OP, who coordinated a 1,500-mile "Journey for Peace" across Pakistan. "What happened in Khyber Pass was something that never, ever happened before in the history of Pakistan," he wrote. It was just the kind of message that Swing was hoping to hear. After all, he says, "We're trying to change world history."

One Message, Many Cultures

William Swing started out with far more modest ambitions. He was a small-town priest who simply wanted to serve his congregation. After graduating from Virginia Theological Seminary, he was assigned to two churches in West Virginia. Both were located in mill towns -- one steel, the other pottery -- and on Sunday mornings, he drove back and forth between the two. One day, he stopped at a local racetrack and volunteered to lead a weekly service there. Those three congregations were a blend of nationalities, denominations, and personalities. The jockeys and trainers, for instance, preferred a lively debate to a sermon. Swing enjoyed the give-and-take. Among the three, he says, "I learned how to translate one message into different cultures."

When he became rector at St. Columba's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, the challenge was to energize a suburban congregation that numbered around 90 people per Mass on Sunday. He took a chance and completely revamped one of the weekly services for the youngest members of the congregation. There were more songs, a shorter sermon, and Bible stories acted out by adults and children. It was unorthodox, but Swing didn't ask anyone's permission. He just did it. And it worked, filling the pews with children and their parents. The congregation swelled to about 600 at that service.

Swing insists that the United Religions Initiative came out of the blue and not out of some lifelong commitment to interfaith work. But it definitely tapped into the compassion and the devotion that he has applied to other ministries over the years. When Senator Dianne Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, she asked Swing how local churches could help to address the city's homeless problem. His solution was to put 40 beds in the basement of majestic Grace Cathedral, located in Nob Hill, that very night. It was the beginning of the church's homeless ministry, which now provides 950 beds per night in various San Francisco shelters. "If you do it one night, it's romantic," he says. "If you do it every night, it's hard work."