Greetings

[BruceDLimber]

Hi again, Chris! :-)

Amy mentioned in passing the "end of the world" passage you asked about.

This is, in fact, a mistranslation of the original Greek! The word used in the original was "eras," which means "world" or "age." And in the Baha'i view, the King James translators picked the wrong term: this in fact refers to the end of the Age (which as already happened)!

And as others also mentioned, we don't go around "converting" people. We think these big changes will come about on their own, one person at a time....

You're correct, BTW, that Islam is the fastest-growing religion overall. But it might also interest you to know that the Baha'i Faith is the fastest-growing religion AMONG THOSE ALREADY ESTABLISHED IN OVER 100 COUNTRIES! (And as you may know, we're also the second most widespread religion in the world, second only to Christianity, with adherents in more places than Islam.)

BTW, if you'd like a better understanding of Baha'i theology, I recommend especially "The Book of Certitude" (aka "Kitab-i-Iqan") and "Some Answered Questions," both of which you'll find in Ocean.

Good hunting, and do keep the questions coming! :-)

Bruce

[Gnosticagape]

Dear Amy and Art,

The link you shared with me Art to do with pluralism was interesting in itself but a credit from that paper has led to even more interesting stuff. I do like to surf the net!

I did a search under the M.Momen that is listed as a credit as well as Bahai plus pluralism and came up with the following by Moojan Momen which states his belief that the Baha'i Faith is actually a metareligion but that because "This distortion is caused by the fact that up to now, all of the leaders and intellectuals of the Baha'i community have come from a narrow cultural and intellectual basis (an Iranian-European-North American axis). They have interpreted the Baha'i teachings in accordance with their cultural perspectives and the result is what we see today. "

I have found some other papers by Mr.Momen that are quite interesting as well.

He seems to be quite highly respected as a Baha'i scholar so I'm looking forward to reading more of his insights into the Baha'i Faith.

Cheers Chris

http://bahai-library.com/essays/metareligion.html


[ Momen posted this in response to a discussion on the listserv Talisman in April, 1995. -J.W. ]

...Yes, I believe that there is, for Baha'is, a world beyond pluralism. I have not fully worked out these ideas but I gave a preliminary account of them in an "Is the Baha'i Faith a World Religion?" which I wrote for Senn McGlinn's magazine Soundings. I will try to summarize and develop these thoughts further here.



The Baha'i Faith at present appears as yet another religion, a competitor in the world's religious market place. But I would argue that this is a distortion of its real nature, a result of the present stage in its historical development. This distortion is caused by the fact that up to now, all of the leaders and intellectuals of the Baha'i community have come from a narrow cultural and intellectual basis (an Iranian-European-North American axis). They have interpreted the Baha'i teachings in accordance with their cultural perspectives and the result is what we see today.



The Baha'i Faith is, however, I would argue, in reality, a metareligion. It is not another religion that has come to take the place of the existing religions but rather a way of looking at the religious experience of the whole of humanity. Philip Smith presents an interesting diagramatic view of this in the first issue of the Baha'i Studies Review, a diagram which, unfortunately, due to the limitations of the Internet, I am unable to reproduce here.



I cannot believe that several thousand years of human religious experience and knowledge are now all redundant because Baha'u'llah has come. Are the insights produced by the great philosophers and mystics of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism all going to put aside? No, rather I believe that, in the future, people from other cultures, Hindus, Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists, Chinese religionists, and native peoples, will produce their own interpretations and developments of the Baha'i Faith from their own cultural and religious viewpoints. These new views of the Baha'i Faith will, I am sure, be scarcely recognizable to us who know only the Baha'i Faith today. They may in fact possibly be much more recognizably Hindu, Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist, Chinese, and native religionist than what we today call the Baha'i Faith--in the same way that the Baha'i Faith in Iran is recognizably close to Shi`i Islam in ethos, when compared with the Baha'i Faith in America.



Every culture and religion sees the spiritual world in different ways and has its differing emphases on the path to spiritual progress. If, as I have argued in "Relativism: a basis for Baha'i Metaphysics" (SBBR 5), these are all merely different viewpoints on "the Truth", then the Baha'i Faith should embrace them all.



What I see the Baha'i Faith doing is taking the religious traditions of the world and developing these along their own traditional paths of spirituality. What then is the role of the Baha'i Faith? If each religious tradition is going to carry on its own path, is there any point in the advent of the Baha'i Faith? The answer to these questions I would see as being three-fold.



1. There is the matter of eliminating religious conflict and prejuduices, and the unity of humanity under the umbrella of the Covenant. Also, although each tradition will in a sense be developing along its own lines, they will be bound in by ties of loyalty to the Centre of the Covenant, the Universal House of Justice.



2. The Baha'i teaching will act as guidelines to keep the development of these different spiritual paths along the "correct" lines. What I mean by this is that there are certain principles in the Baha'i teachings, such the abolition of priests and other religious professionals, the equal spiritual station of all humanity, the spiritual equality of men and women, etc. These Baha'is principles would act as constraints on the ways in which any particular group could develop. No group would be permitted (by its own members awareness of these Baha'i principles, if nothing else) to develop in ways that contravened these principles.



3. The world-wide Baha'i community would act as a medium in which these different spiritual pathways would become globally available. But much more than this, there would be a cross-fertilization of religious ideas and practices such that, for example, Baha'i mystics from Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and other backgrounds would meet and discuss their experiences and learn from each other. This cross-fertilization of religious experience will be the basis for the further spiritual evolution of humanity. Needless to say that we are at present completely unable even to hazard a guess as to what form this might take.

Moojan Momen

[arthra]

Chris,

Thanks for your notes on this topic. Very exciting!

The Faith has had various stages of growth where the American community contributed some of the administrative aspects and there are sure to be other contributions from other communities in the future. I look to to India where some of this can happen as more Baha'is live there than anywhere else... also I also think changes in the middle east in the future could have significant effects on the Faith.

- Art

[smkolins]

Originally Posted by Gnosticagape

Dear Amy and Art,

The link you shared with me Art to do with pluralism was interesting in itself but a credit from that paper has led to even more interesting stuff. I do like to surf the net!... http://bahai-library.com/essays/metareligion.html


[ Momen posted this in response to a discussion on the listserv Talisman in April, 1995. -J.W. ] ...

The Baha'i Faith at present appears as yet another religion, a competitor in the world's religious market place. But I would argue that this is a distortion of its real nature, a result of the present stage in its historical development. This distortion is caused by the fact that up to now, all of the leaders and intellectuals of the Baha'i community have come from a narrow cultural and intellectual basis (an Iranian-European-North American axis). They have interpreted the Baha'i teachings in accordance with their cultural perspectives and the result is what we see today.

While is a respected scholar Moojan Momen, his thoughts are no more than his own.

I can see some of what he says, yet every I also see evidence of what it sounds like isn't present in the above comment. Everyone comes to the Faith from their own background. It is unescapable. Dominant populations of any persuasion will widely present some of those biases. Yet studious and sincere efforts to look towards the Scripture will tend to rid us of those biases, albiet only to the the extent we actually try to follow them.

In some cases I would say that Baha'is have struggled far down that path - farther than what might sound possible given the above statements. For example, recognition of the equality of women and men and among the peoples of the world (noting the preponderance of race in modern thinking.) These concepts are not native to the "Iranian-European-North American axis" and yet they have been causes championed, and involving self-transformation, among Baha'is.

As for religious exclusivism, I would note that no less than Jesus was forced to seperate from Judaism rather not His aim I would suppose, but in rejecting Him, the creative nature of Revelation setup a new mansion, when there was no room in the inn. This isn't to say that's the way it has to be, or always will be. I think we will have a most interesting future as some far stronger than ecumenical feelings forge a united future, diverse and harmonized.