The Baha’i faith

(Part 1)

 

By: Eric Stetson

A former member of the Baha\'i Faith community

Eric Stetson

I was a Baha\'i from 1998 to 2002 and was an active member of the mainstream Baha\'i Faith organization. However, I disagreed with the Baha\'i belief in infallibility of the Universal House of Justice (the head institution of the Baha\'i community) and I considered some of its policies to be too restrictive. I left the Baha\'i Faith and felt called to become a Christian. Over time, my Christian beliefs became liberal and pluralistic, and in 2007 I began attending a Unitarian Universalist church. In 2009, I reevaluated my view of the Baha\'i faith and decided that I agree with most of the teachings of its founder, Baha\'u\'llah – but I still disagree with how the faith has been interpreted in a conservative way, emphasizing unquestioned obedience to religious leaders. I hope someday the Baha\'i organization will become more liberal and open-minded like the Unitarian Universalist church.

Bahai-Faith.com has presented my views on the Baha\'i faith over the years, and it has gone through various incarnations as I have continued my spiritual journey and my perspective has changed. Several years ago I was known as an outspoken critic of the Baha\'i faith, but I long ago moved beyond any feelings of anger or an oppositional stance toward my former religious community or its leaders. When I expressed disagreement with the religion I used to believe in, I generally did so in a fair and reasonable way – especially after I had been an ex-Baha\'i for more than a couple years. Now that I have regained some degree of belief or support for the Baha\'i faith, my aim is to provide a more liberal perspective on this religion that is compatible with my Unitarian Universalist beliefs.

Like all religions, the Baha\'i faith has its weak points and flaws – but it also has its beautiful and brilliant aspects. I think Baha\'is need to be more open to consider that their religion, its organization and leadership are not perfect. They need to accept that some former Baha\'is may have legitimate concerns or criticisms which led to their withdrawal from the religion or its community; that some Baha\'is have different interpretations of the faith than the official views; that some, despite believing in the prophethood of Baha\'u\'llah, choose not to belong to an organized Baha\'i community; and that some belong to Baha\'i communities which are not affiliated with the Haifa, Israel-based organization. These disagreements are normal and acceptable phenomena for any significant religion, rather than something that mainstream Baha\'is should get angry about or oppose.

Even though I am not a Baha\'i, per se, I would describe myself as a friend of the faith and one who cares deeply about its future development. I believe the world is a better place because the Baha\'i faith exists – but I also believe this religion is desperately in need of reform.

Introduction: What Is the Baha\'i Faith?

The Baha\'i Faith (with a capital \"F\") is a religious organization representing most Baha\'is around the world. This organization claims there are 6 million adherents of the Baha\'i religion, most of whom are found in Iran, India, and the United States, with others scattered among many other nations. The Baha\'i faith (the religion, not the organization), is also commonly spelled Bahai and sometimes called Baha\'ismor Bahaism, especially by non-Baha\'is and liberal Baha\'is. It was founded byBaha\'u\'llah (1817-1892), a Persian aristocrat in exile who in 1863 declared himself to be a new messenger of God. Baha\'u\'llah was born Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri, was raised a Shi\'ite Muslim, and in his young adulthood followed the radical millennarian movement of another contemporaneous Persian claimant to prophethood known as the Bab.

The Baha\'i faith is above all an attempt to build a more universal spiritual paradigm out of the foundation of Islam. Much in the way Christianity emerged as a Jewish reform movement and a project to spread the core principles of Judaism into the Greco-Roman world, Baha\'ism was born from an Islamic matrix as a project to modernize and spread the central ideas and practices of Islam to the whole world.

I would recommend to any Muslim, or anyone interested in new religious movements, to study the Baha\'i faith as an example of one possible way that people have attempted to update Islamic spirituality for a more progressive and globalized age. Based on my own study and on conversations I have had with Muslims who have looked into Baha\'ism, I can say it bears a striking resemblance to Shi\'ite Islam while going in somewhat of an esoteric Sufi direction, and it rejects the finality of Muhammad\'s prophethood as a way of introducing new ideas such as including followers of non-Abrahamic religions as \"people of the Book\" and expanding the rights of women.

Despite the liberalizing inclinations of Baha\'u\'llah, and of his son and successor Abdu\'l-Baha who spread Baha\'ism to Europe and America, these men nevertheless were firmly rooted in a 19th century Middle Eastern paradigm – as one would expect considering their upbringing in that time and society. They literally believed and taught ideas such as direct divine revelation of the Qur\'an and their own verses and books; strict obedience to prophets and religious law codes; and total opposition to \"vices\" such as alcoholic beverages and sex outside of marriage.

On the other hand, Baha\'u\'llah and his successors criticized the Islamic concept of military jihad or holy war; promoted the idea of peaceful cooperation among nations; advocated the use of one global auxiliary language to help people from different backgrounds communicate and understand each other; and made strides in the direction of gender equality – though in a noteworthy departure from this principle, Abdu\'l-Baha refused to allow women to serve on the highest leadership institution of the Baha\'i Faith organization, a prohibition which remains to this day.

Why I Joined and Left the Baha\'i Faith

I was introduced to the Baha\'i faith during my first year in college, by my next-door neighbor in my dorm. I decided to attend a Baha\'i meeting because it sounded interesting. I had always been very interested in various religions and philosophies ever since I was old enough to begin exploring these things for myself. The Baha\'is I met at the meeting seemed like nice people, and they held an idealistic view of human potential, emphasizing ideas such as world peace, racial reconciliation, and respect for all major religions. I would say that two things attracted me most to the Baha\'is and their religion: the people themselves and their optimistic spirit about the future of humanity.

I decided to believe in Baha\'ism and join the organized Baha\'i Faith after a few months of studying the religion and socializing with Baha\'is. Looking back, I would say that there were many details of Baha\'i beliefs and practices that I wasn\'t aware of when I joined, which if I had known about might have prevented me from joining their religious organization. It was the overall spirit of the Baha\'is and their faith – the big picture view – that drew me in, and at that time I probably would not have even wanted to know anything about the Baha\'i Faith that would have turned me off from it!

Throughout my college years, I was an active and serious Baha\'i. I participated in local Baha\'i community meetings and Baha\'i college club meetings. I followed the religion\'s rituals of daily prayer and the annual period of fasting. I enthusiastically tried to share my Baha\'i faith with other people, because Baha\'is place a great emphasis on \"teaching\" the faith (trying to educate people about the existence of the Baha\'i faith and encourage them to study it and join). I even went on two Baha\'i \"teaching trips\" to a rural, impoverished area where we attempted to befriend and evangelize Native Americans and other people living in poverty. I also wrote a draft of an introductory book presenting the Baha\'i faith for a Christian audience (but I left the faith before seeking a publisher).

As I became more and more involved in the Baha\'i Faith community, I began to notice some things that bothered me. There were two things in particular that troubled me the most: first, that Baha\'i Faith members overemphasize obedience to their religious institutions and believe the highest leadership organ of their religion is directly guided by God and infallible in all its decisions; and second, that they tend to have an unhealthy liking for bureaucracy and downplay the importance and benefits of individual free thought and activity. I strongly disagreed with the long-standing policy that all Baha\'i scholars and writers must submit everything they write about the faith to a Baha\'i \"pre-publication review committee\" for official approval. I was also frustrated by the fact that the Baha\'i Faith organization prohibits its members from participating in politics, since political activism had previously been an interest of mine.

After a few years, I decided to leave the Baha\'i Faith for these reasons as well as others. At the time, I regarded the Baha\'i Faith organization and the faith itself to be basically synonymous – as most Baha\'is do – so I didn\'t think much about the possibility of remaining a Baha\'i without in some way supporting the dominant Baha\'i tradition (which is sometimes called \"Haifan\" Baha\'ism, because the organization representing this tradition is based in Haifa, Israel). I did briefly feel compelled to try to promote some ideas for reforming the religion and its institutions, but I did this in an arrogant and ineffective way and soon gave up on it.

I began to feel attracted to Jesus more than any other great historical religious leader, so I decided to become a Christian, got baptized, and joined the Assemblies of God church. However, my broad-minded attitude prevented me from fully buying into Evangelical Christianity, and over the years I have grown increasingly liberal and universalist in my understanding of the Gospel. I can say that the Baha\'i faith had a positive influence on me in helping me to see the value in all religious paths, but that I found organized Haifan Baha\'ism to be too fundamentalist and restrictive for my free-thinking mind and mystical heart.

http://www.bahai-faith.com/