[ p. 81 ]
In as much as a fellowship of faiths is at once the dearest hope and ultimate goal of the Bahai Movement, it behooves us to take cognizance of it and its mission. So modern is this movement that the first public news of it to reach the United States was only thirty-two years ago at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. There, at that mammoth convention, a Presbyterian missionary from Bayreuth, Syria, closed an appeal for missionary support with these impressive words: “Just outside the fortress of Acca on the Syrian coast there died a few months ago the famous Persian sage and Babi saint named Baha ’Ullah (the Glory of God), who has given utterance to sentiments so noble, so Christlike, that I cannot do better than close my address with these his words: ‘These fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away [ p. 82 ] and the most great peace shall come; all nations shall be one in faith and aU men shall be brothers.’ ”
To-day this religious movement has a million and more adherents, including people from all parts of the globe and representing a remarkable variety of race, color, class, and creed. It has been given literary expression in a veritable library of Asiatic, European, and American works to which additions arc annually made as the movement grows and grapples with the great problems that grow out of its cardinal teachings. It has a long roll of martyrs to the cause for which it stands, twenty thousand in Persia alone, proving it to be a movement worth dying for as well as worth living by.
From its inception it has been identified with Baha ’Ullah, who paid the price of prolonged exile, imprisonment, bodily suffering, and mental anguish for the faith he cherished—a man of imposing personality as revealed in his writings, characterized by intense moral earnestness and profound spirituality, gifted with [ p. 83 ] the selfsame power so conspicuous in the character of Jesus, the power to appreciate people ideally, that is, to see them at the level of their best and to make even the lowest types think well of themselves because of potentialities within them to which he pointed but of which they were wholly unaware; a prophet whose greatest contribution was not any specific doctrine he proclaimed, but an informing spiritual power breathed into the world through the example of his life and thereby quickening souls into new spiritual activity. Surely a movement of which all this can be said deserves, nay, compels our respectful recognition and sincere appreciation.
It had its rise in Mohammedan Persia nearly a century ago when that fair country was torn by religious schism and sectarian strife. In the words of Abdul Baha, son of Baha ’Ullah: “At a time when in the Orient there existed the utmost state of strife and sedition, when warfare raged between the religions and between the various sects, darkness encompassed the horizon of the Orient and each [ p. 84 ] religion asserted its claim over the other, at such time and under such circumstances His Holiness, Balia ’Ullah, shone from the horizon of the East.”
Just as to-day increasing Christian sectarianism has given rise to a movement among the Episcopalians for a “World Conference on Faith and Order” among the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists in Canada for a “United Church,” so eighty-one years ago in the Orient under kindred conditions a corresponding movement arose in the interest of world unity in religion. In other words, the Bahai Movement originated as a reaction from those religious schisms and feuds to which Abdul Baha referred. Their prevalence in Persia in the ’forties of the last century points to the cause whence the most characteristic demand of the Bahai movement arose, the demand for unity. Taking precedence over all else in its gospel is the message of unity in religion—a unity such as has been described in the preceding chapter, a unity not to be compassed by even the Christian name, great and [ p. 85 ] deep as is the reverence of Bahais for that name. For they rightly hold, as did their illustrious founder, that it is not enough to have fellowship in Christ, or in Moses, or in Buddha, it must be all-embracing in its scope and strictly universal in its allegiance. And, indeed, if human brotherhood is ever to be anything more than the grim caricature that we see to-day in the rivalries, jealousies, antipathies, and deadly competitions among the religions and among their sects, then I hold that it is of the utmost importance that there should be in the world at least one such movement as the Bahai, dedicated to promoting the realization of that sublime ideal.
Supplementing the gospel of unity in religion is that of other unities; racial, linguistic, economic, ethical; set forth in that thesaurus of religious literature which constitutes the sacred scriptures of the Bahai movement and of which a noble edition was recently published under the competent editorship of the Secretary of the National Council, Mr. Horace Holley. Nay, more, these great unities have been summarized [ p. 86 ] and expounded with consummate skill and in the exquisite poetical prose of Abdul Baha in his “Divine Philosophy.” There, under the inspiring headline of “independent investigation of truth,” we find: “The unity of humanity, the unity of the foundations of all religions, the harmony of science and religion, equality of the sexes, the abolition of prejudice, universal peace, solution of the economic problem, a universal language, an impartial international court for maintaining world peace,” ideals with which all liberal people are in hearty accord. Only as to the mode in which these ideals are to be realized will differences of opinion obtain. And though both Baha ’Ullah and Abdul Baha have made what must be regarded as permanent contributions in pointing the way to a realization of their ideals, it is certain that some of their affirmations will have to be modified, if not superseded, by reason of changed conditions which they could not have foreseen; witness for example what has been written regarding Esperanto as the coming universal language and of “focusing attention [ p. 87 ] on resemblances to the neglect of differences” as the way to attaining unity in religion.
Just now the paramount need of the Bahai Movement is an authoritative translation of the principal works of the founder with explanatory comments, to the end that the reader be left in no doubt as to the precise meaning of what Baha ’Ullah wrote, especially in. regard to crucial points of belief and of practice on which differences of interpretation still persist. It was surely unfortunate to have a monograph on “Bahaism” appear while the precise meaning of the Master’s thought, as given by the author, is still in dispute.
It is the crowning glory of the Bahai Movement that while deprecating sectarianism in its preaching, it has faithfully practiced what it preached by refraining from becoming itself a sect. Far from endeavoring to convert all outside its fellowship to such doctrines as are generally held by the members—whether of “theism,” or of “revelation,” or of “intuition” as a criterion of truth—it has assiduously [ p. 88 ] sought to help men and women of all persuasions to realize the highest ideals of religion. Nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of this movement or further from its purpose than the attempt to displace all existing religions by itself. It frowns upon the notion that any one of the existing great religions will ever triumph over all the rest. And, far from bidding any one sever his connection with the religion he has inherited or adopted, the Bahai Movement bids him cling to it, so long as reason and conscience sanction his allegiance. Thus in the best sense of the word it is a missionary movement. Its representatives do not attempt to impose any beliefs upon others, whether by argument or by bribery; rather do they seek to put beliefs that have illumined their own lives within the reach of those who feel they need illumination. No, not a sect, not a part of humanity cut off from all the rest, living for itself and aiming to convert all the rest into material for its own growth; no, not that, but a leaven, causing spiritual fermentation in all religions, quickening them [ p. 89 ] with the spirit of catholicity and fraternalism —such I take it is the essence of the Bahai Movement.
Clearly, then, we are dealing with a fellowship, an influence, a leaven, a movement that fights shy of sectarian enthusiasms, that abhors the formation of a close corporation with exclusive privileges, for that has been a greater obstruction to brotherhood than either kingly ambition or commercial greed. This movement has no priesthood, no college, no ecclesiastical hierarchy, but, on the contrary, is conspicuous for its distrust of organization, constitutions, by-laws, and other familiar fetters of the western world. But I see foreboding signs, I hear disquieting rumors of a tendency among some within this movement to have it crystallized within a sectarian mold, to have it stand explicitly for a certain set of theological ideas, and then make this the test of fellowship. No more serious or fateful calamity could befall this movement than to have it relegated to the limbo of sectarianism. Let it hold fast to its distrust of organization, let it permit only [ p. 90 ] that minimum of organization which is essential to the fulfillment of its leavening work, and not only will there lie before it an ever increasing field of usefulness but, forfeiting none of its beneficent power, it will go on from strength to strength in the fulfillment of its invaluable and indispensable mission.
Close to Chicago and fronting on Lake Michigan, a Bahai temple is in process of completion. Designed by a Belgian architect— himself a Bahai—the building is symbolic of the characteristic features of the faith and, as such, marks a bold and original departure from all the traditional schools of architecture. This temple is dedicated to the free and untrammeled investigation of truth, to the harmony of science and religion, to the unity of work and worship, to the promulgation of universal brotherhood and international peace. Around the central building, open to the devotees of every religion and of every sect, other buildings will be erected, educational and philanthropic, and these, too, as Abdul Baha said, “are to be open to the people of all nations, no line of demarcation [ p. 91 ] will be drawn and charities will be dispensed irrespective of color, creed, or race, with love for all.” Who shall say but that just as the little company of the Mayflower, landing on Plymouth Rock, proved to be the small beginning of a mighty nation, the ideal germ of a democracy which, if true to its principles, shall yet overspread the habitable globe, so the little company of Bahais exiled from their Persian home may yet prove to be the small beginning of a world-wide movement, the ideal germ of democracy in religion, the Universal Church of Mankind.