...Jenkin...in Chicago...became the minister of the almost-extinct Fourth Universalist Church. Under his leadership the church, re-named All Souls, grew and grew, eventually constructing a church building that would not only seat more than a thousand people on Sunday morning (although people still had to be turned away for lack of room), but which also served as a school and a center for many activities that served the people of Chicago.
When the great Chicago World's Fair came along in 1893, Jenkin Lloyd-Jones saw it as an opportunity to fulfill a dream that may have started with his international journey when he was just a baby. Jenkin wanted to bring together religious leaders from all around the world—not just Christians and Jews, but also Buddhists and Hindus and Shintos and people of many other religions that most Americans of the time had barely heard of.
In spite of objections from some ministers, who felt that Christianity was the only true religion, Jenkin stirred the religious people of Chicago to action, raising money to make the great Parliament of World Religions possible. And so for 17 days, for three sessions per day, each session more than two and a half hours long, more than 3000 people sat and listened to speakers from around the world. They learned that people who looked very different might feel very much the same, and that all these different religions had at least as much in common as different. As Jenkin Lloyd-Jones wrote in the introduction to a book which published bits of speeches from the Parliament: “The Parliament has made it easier for a man to think his own thoughts, to love truth and to follow it even though it cross the barriers of an adopted creed.” For those 17 days the people of the Parliament of World Religions truly achieved the goal of world community, and the work they did was the foundation of world-wide religious sharing that continues to this day.
http://clf.uua.org/quest/2010/06/ungar.html
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