The Fruits of the WARP Summit
29 July 2015
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An Innovative Approach to Religious Dialogue, The World Alliance of Religions’ Peace Office
According to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (IBMR), there are 500,000 religions existing and out of 7.2 billion people over 85% of the population identify themselves as being religious. Seeing this current status, the different principles and values in each religious scripture have played an important role in people’s search for peace. However, ironically, it also resulted in religious conflicts and atrocities because more than 80% of wars are caused or motivated by religious misunderstandings. The misinterpretation of religious texts and biases built due to different faiths have led to religious hatred, persecutions, and conflicts involving physical violence. Thus, religious leaders have an integral role to educate their congregations that differences in religious beliefs must not hinder the progress of establishing world peace.
Realizing such phenomenon, Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL, Chairman Man Hee Lee) created the World Alliance of Religions’ Peace (WARP) Office, a forum for dialogue centering on world peace in interfaith relations and scriptural texts. Many religious leaders who participated in the WARP Summit 2014 have voluntarily established the peace offices in their home countries, advocating for true values and unity in religions and peace.
HWPL’s WARP Office aims to prevent the conflicts caused by religious misunderstandings and bring forth peace through gaining deeper understandings of the standards and teachings of each religion and the concept of peace spoken in each scripture. The Peace Offices that engage the local and regional communities of all religions are arising all over the world through 76 offices in 46 countries covering all continents, Europe, Oceania, America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and CIS and the numbers are increasing. Among various nations, the global conflict zones such as the Middle East, Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria have also opened the WARP Office and actively gather to take a proactive step toward peace.
Religious leaders assemble and participate in office meeting especially the event titled, “O” or “X” (Yes or No) Question Session about their respective sacred texts. Through the series of questions presented, leaders are able to compare and contrast scriptures and express their beliefs in a non-traditional way. This innovative task has stirred the discussion among the leaders of various faiths and increase interaction. It has deemed to be an effective tool to break the wall between religions and achieve our common goal, peace.
These peace office meetings are becoming a way to bridge the religions in all areas of the globe. With each successive peace meeting which became the global movement, an increasing number of influential religious leaders go beyond their roles, but work as the messengers of peace with sincere duty.
 
Monument to the Success of the World Alliance of Religions’ Peace Summit

  • Design Description

The dove represents peace itself and the Peace Advocate. The way the dove embraces the earth symbolizes that through the Peace Advocate, wars on earth are put to an end and the world changes into a world of peace. The twelve gemstones that surround the earth symbolize the IWPG, IPYG, large ethnic groups, and various religions who have become one family with the Peace Advocate. The rainbow represents the heavenly culture, the spirit of HWPL and its avenue to achieve peace. The twenty-four stars inside the rainbow symbolize the members of the HWPL Peace Advisory Council and leaders of the world who have become one in the heavenly culture.

  • Front and back of the monument

The world map located in front of the monument shows that the waves of peace begin from Korea and spread throughout the world, transforming it into a world of peace. On the back of the monument, the forever-shining sun, moon, and stars are inscribed on the sea which together symbolize the everlasting peace.
The monument specially commemorates the pledge of peace and the agreement that the attendees of the WARP Summit signed for “the Cessation of Wars and World Peace” in the sight of the Creator, all people of the world, and the Peace Advocate. The signatures of heads of state, chief justices, UN representatives, and religious leaders from around the world are inscribed on each plate. These signatures surrounding the earth represent the promise of peace and the power to achieve peace.

  • Monument Components


The World Alliance of Religions’ Peace Summit, the Greatest World Peace Festival
The World Alliance of Religions’ Peace (WARP) Summit 2014 was an unprecedented peace conference held from September 16th to 19th 2014 in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Over 200,000 people from various sectors of society, including heads of state, religious leaders, and representatives of youth and women’s organizations, from all over the world gathered together with the aim of putting an end to all wars and achieving world peace.
Through the WARP Summit, HWPL created a forum for dialogue centering on the creation of a commonly acceptable value-system between secular and religious communities in all socio-political sectors of our diverse societies. Such value system that creates peace agreements and interfaith relations has continued to be practiced through the World Alliance of Religions’ Peace (WARP) Office since the summit ended.

The 1st commemoration of the WARP Summit
This year marks the 1st commemoration of the success of the WARP Summit. While last year’s summit was a comprehensive peace conference with a variety of in-depth workshops covering all segments of society: people, history, policies, religions, culture, environment etc., this year’s summit will highlight HWPL’s grassroots experiences in peace-building and its proposal in the enactment of an international law for the cessation of war and world peace.
HWPL defines that the root causes of war is the absence of an international constitutional law that prohibits non-peaceful activities. Thus, through encouraging world leaders to sign the agreement of an international law for the cessation of war and drafting the proposal, HWPL hopes to strengthen social cohesion, solidarity, and peace in the world. This is in line with the Declaration of World Peace, a milestone in the history of world peace.

To that end, for the WARP Summit 2015, HWPL will bring together experts, policymakers, diplomats, nongovernmental organization leaders, and religious leaders to draft an international law for the cessation of war and introduce practical peace activities and efforts made throughout the year such as Mindanao Peace Agreement and the African WARP Summit.
The 1st commemoration of the success of the WARP Summit will make huge strides and bring a new wave of peace.