by Takeshi Kawabata

In a certain sense, all religions since their inception have engaged in public relations activities. This is because public relations are part of missionary work itself. Naturally enough, missionary work was originally based on face-to-face conversations in which one person transmitted religious teachings to another. However, as times have changed, the range of methods for transmitting religious teachings has broadened.

Technological innovation has been the main driver of these changes. In former ages, Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and the first printing of the Bible allowed missionary work to be pursued through the printed word. There seems little doubt that the religious works most often printed from the fifteenth century to the present are the Bible and the Qur'an.

As we entered the twentieth century, technological development took off, and various types of media other than the printed word were created and used for missionary work. Photography, cinema, and recorded sound became available as media for missionary work, and radio and television came to serve as new ways to communicate religious messages. Some religious groups and organizations put particular emphasis on the use of commercial advertising as a medium for missionary work.

Now, in the twenty-first century, it is no exaggeration to say that the Internet is the most quickly developing medium for advertising and public relations. I expect there are very few religious groups and organizations today that do not have their own Web sites. On a global level, the amount of information now being offered must be immense. The provision of information by religious groups and organizations with Internet access will probably accelerate, and the Internet will no doubt become one of the predominant media for missionary work.

However, the problem with this scenario is, how far will provision of information in this way function as missionary work, and how far will it function as public relations? And what exactly is the difference between missionary work and public relations?

An extreme view of missionary work sees it as activity to win new converts by emphasizing that one's own religious group or organization is the most correct and most superior available. On the other hand, public relations activities as practiced by religious groups and organizations offer more objective information and thus aim to be more of a contribution to general public welfare.

At the very least, information provided for public relations should not aim at emphasizing that the group or organization offering the information is exclusively the most correct and most superior. In other words, I think the criteria for evaluating religious public relations activities should be based on how well the group or organization suppresses its sense of exclusivism and achieves objectivity. From this standpoint, Rissho Kosei-kai makes a very clear distinction between its dissemination work and its public relations activities.

After attaining enlightenment, Shakyamuni preached the Middle Path, which eschews imbalanced thought and extreme action, and he advocated thought and action based on observation of how things interact. One of the scriptures that most accurately communicates the spirit of Shakyamuni's teaching in this respect is the Lotus Sutra, which expounds the spirit of the One Vehicle.

The spirit of the One Vehicle teaches us to leave behind the exclusivism of religious groups or organizations that encourages members to value only their own particular spiritual beliefs. Instead, it teaches tolerance of other religious viewpoints, approaching them as allies in the effort to contribute to world peace and human happiness. It is in this spirit that Rissho Kosei-kai promotes interreligious dialogue and interreligious cooperation. Its public relations activities are also quite naturally based on this approach.

In public relations activities, at present Rissho Kosei-kai distributes pamphlets, leaflets, and other printed material; puts up posters; places advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and in other printed media; holds press conferences and briefings on its events for the mass media; and posts information on its Web site. However, it does not really disseminate enough information through these outlets. We hope to be active in the use of the Internet to make more widely known the Dharma as taught by Shakyamuni, naturally including the Dharma talks of Rissho Kosei-kai Founder Nikkyo Niwano, from a standpoint consistently based on the Middle Path.

Dharma World magazine is of course one of our printed public relations materials; we are hoping to communicate its contents to a great many more people as part of the redesign of Rissho Kosei-kai's English-language Web site, which has gone online recently.