There have been several meetings referred to as a Parliament of the World's Religions, the first being the World's Parliament of Religions of 1893, which was an attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths. The event was celebrated by another conference on its centenary in 1993. This led to a new series of conferences under the official title Parliament of the World's Religions with the same goal of trying to create a global dialogue of faiths. Organization The Parliament of the World's Religions was incorporated in 1989 to organize the centennial conference of the first Parliament. The Parliament is headquartered in Chicago, led by a board of trustees elected from various faiths. History 1893 Parliament Another principal organizer was the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, a Unitarian. In 1893, the city of Chicago hosted the World Columbian Exposition, an early world's fair. So many people were coming to Chicago from all over the world that many smaller conferences, called Congresses and Parliaments, were scheduled to take advantage of this unprecedented gathering. One of these was the World's Parliament of Religions, an initiative of the Swedenborgian layman (and judge) Charles Carroll Bonney. The Parliament of Religions was by far the largest of the congresses held in conjunction with the Exposition. John Henry Barrows, a clergyman, was appointed as the first chairman of the General Committee of the 1893 Parliament by Charles Bonney. The Parliament of Religions opened on 11 September 1893 at the World's Congress Auxiliary Building which is now The Art Institute of Chicago, and ran from 11 to 27 September, making it the first organized interfaith gathering. Today it is recognized as the birth of the worldwide interfaith movement, , with representatives of a wide variety of religions and new religious movements, including: The Jain scholar and jurist Virchand Gandhi was invited as a representative of Jainism. Virchand talked about the doctrines of Jainism- code of conduct, way of life and cosmology in such an eloquent and coherent manner that Buffalo Courier, an American newspaper reported, "of all Eastern scholars, it was this youth whose lectures on Jain Faith and Conduct was listened to with the greatest interest and attention." The Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala was invited as a representative of "Southern Buddhism", the term applied at that time to the Theravada. Soyen Shaku, the "First American Ancestor" of Zen, attended from Japan. An essay by the