Baha'ism and Its Ambitious Claims
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Orvis Fairlee Jordan, Baha'ism and Its Ambitious Claims, bahai-library.com.
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Bahá'ísm and Its Ambitious Claims

Orvis Fairlee Jordan

published in The Christian Century38:2, pp. 15-18

1921-10-06

MECCA for Mohammedans, Jerusalem for Jews
and Christians, but Chicago has now become the
center for a religion that would supersede Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity and all other religions if its ambitions are realized. On the banks of the
drainage canal to the north of Chicago, in the village of
Wilmette and overlooking Lake Michigan, the teamsters
are already at work making a great excavation. Here,
it is announced, the foundations will soon be laid for a
great temple toward which the faithful will turn their
eyes every day from many sections of the earth. It is
the temple of the Bahaists.

While this new religion now has nearly eighty years
of history, it has encountered many persecutions and the
new building will be the first significant structure erected
in its history in the western world. Its only other great
temple is in Turkestan. That a faith originating in Persia
among the Mohammedans should seek the protection of
tolerant America for its world temple is not without significance.

Plans for the new structure are believed to have
been revealed to the architect by divine inspiration. Louis
Bourgeois, the architect, is one of the faithful, of course,
and he has been able to produce a sketch of his idea of a
building intended to illustrate the fundamental tenets of
the faith. A great central dome of unusual proportions is
surrounded by nine minarets, nine being one of the sacred
numbers in the new religion which attaches great importance to numbers. The insignia of the great religions of
earth will be found on the dome woven into new patterns.
One will be able to decipher the Greek cross, the Roman
cross, the crescent and the Jewish triangles among the
various devices. The building is to be open to the people
of all faiths and religions, nine great doors leading into
sanctuaries of nine great world faiths. The central sanctuary under the dome is reserved for those who hold to
the present limited ideas of God and divine truth. H. B.
Mayoingle, president of the Architectural League of
America, has pronounced the drawings for the building as
the first new idea in architecture since the thirteenth century. It will cost a million and a half dollars.

The great building will be lighted by electricity at night.
It will be a beacon to the sailors on the lake and also to
the motorists up and down Sheridan Road, one of the
leading highways into Chicago. It is planned to organize
choirs of children in great musical services, and in each
chapel it will be permitted to the followers of the various
world religions to read their own sacred scriptures and
to worship in their own particular ways. It is reported
that the big building is to be offered to the Christian
churches for services on occasion.

AMBITIOUS BUILDING PROJECT

About the temple, it is said, there will be erected a number of other buildings. Abdul Baha, the spiritual head
of the new religion, who resides in Acca, writes thus with
regard to the plan for the various buildings: "When
these institutions — college, hospital, hospice and establishments for the incurables, university for the study of the
higher sciences and advanced educational courses, and various philanthropic buildings — are built, the doors will be
open to all the nations and to all religions. There will be
drawn absolutely no line of demarkation. The charities
will be dispensed irrespective of race and color. The gates
will be flung wide to mankind; prejudice toward none,
love for all. The central building will be devoted to the
purpose of prayer and worship. Thus for the first time
religion will be harmonized with science, and science will
be the handmaid of religion, both showering their material and spiritual gifts on all humanity."

A student of religion naturally wants to find and become acquainted with the group which has conceived such
ambitious projects. In Chicago the Bahaists meet on the
eighteenth floor of the Masonic Temple where they compete for popular favor with the various other new religions
which hope to supersede Christianity. Here one will find
New Thought, Theosophy and many of the other cults
which have made Chicago like Athens the city where winds
of new doctrine take the spiritually unaware off of their
feet.

"THE SPLENDOR OF GOD"

At the Sunday afternoon meetings of the new religion a
hundred people was considered a crowd until the publicity
of the new building increased the crowd of curiosity
seekers that attended the meetings. Dependable statistics
with regard to new religions in America are notoriously
hard to secure, but the best information seems to be that
there are in America about two thousand adherents of
the Bahaist faith, and that about two hundred of these
live in Chicago. The groups in New York and Washington are said to contain some people of large means, and it
has been by their generosity that the movement has been
able to maintain an aggressive publicity bureau and to
purchase the land upon which the new temple is to be
erected. Contributions are said to be coming in from
Persia for the new temple. In Chicago a paper is published called the Star of the West. It comes out every
nineteen days, the first day of each Bahaist month. This
peculiar chronology corresponds with the Bahaist ambition to reform the calendar and to make a new year with
nineteen months of nineteen days, since nineteen is the
most holy number of all those which possess religious significance. In New York is published a monthly magazine
which comes out every thirty days in approved western
style, and which is called Reality. It is already to be
found upon the news stands in radical book stores. One
may read this new magazine from cover to cover, and find
nothing in it oriental. The faith is here expounded in
terms of occidental idealism, indicating the wonderful
adaptability of the new faith to western environment.

The group in Chicago was once very much larger, but
when Baha-o'-Ullah, the Splendor of God, died at the
age of 75, there came a terrible dissension over the question of the succession. In the process there were charges
and counter charges of immorality, lying and other grave
sins, during which the Chicago literary expounder of the
Faith, Ibrahim Khieralla, was separated from his wife and
(laughter and lost his authority. His books are still to be
found in the public library, and have value as an exposition of the teachings of Baha-o'-Ullah.

The present head of the new faith, Abdul Baha, visited
Chicago in 1912 and during the period of his visit to
America spoke in various cities. He laid the foundation
>tone of the new temple at Wilmette with a golden trowel.
At that time the enterprise was shrouded in the deepest
mystery. Instead of meeting with opposition, he was welcomed into many Christian pulpits and spoke at the Peace
Conference at Mohonk. The Unitarians were particularly
interested in Abdul Baha because he sounded as his fundamental note that of unity. It is interesting to note in the
July 21 issue of the Christian Register, the most authoritative interpreter of the Unitarian faith in America, an
article on the new religion which is all praise. One can
understand this only when one learns that there seem to
be two statements of the doctrine of the Bahaists, one for
the general public and one for the esoteric group which
is initiated into the mysteries of the faith. Certain non-evangelicals who have rejected the incarnation of God in
Christ, have found great sympathy with a religion which
holds to an incarnation of God in Baha-o'-Ullah in the
nineteenth century!

However, many orthodox pulpits were also opened to
the Persian visitor. Dr. Cadman of Brooklyn defended
his hospitality to the visitor as exhibiting the freedom of
the Christian church in hearing all religious views. Dr.
Percy Stickney Grant of New York permitted the visitor
to speak in his Episcopal Church of the Ascension. St.
Marks-on-the-Bowerie opened a room for the Sunday
afternoon meetings of the Bahaist group. In England
there grew up a considerable sympathy with the new
religion. Dr. T. K. Cheyne, editor of the Encyclopedia
Biblica, has sometimes been counted as a convert, though
that is probably an over-statement of the facts. [see bahai-library.com/toy_thomas_kelly_cheyne] In no
country more than in England has the new movement
secured attention from the educated and elite.

CONNECTION WITH ISLAM

In order to understand the history of the Bahaists one
must know something of Islam and its history. The religion of the Prophet, contrary to the usual western impression, has quite as many sects as does occidental Christianity. Particularly, the Mohammedans of Persia have
no fellowship with the Turkish Caliphate. The story of
these divisions is too long for the compass of the present
article, but they may be found in any standard reference
work, such as the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.
The general distinction is that Turkish Mohammedanism
has tended to be formal and materialistic, while the Persian Mohammedanism has had in it room for a great deal
of mysticism. This is of course a matter of national temperament. The Persians of the Shiah sect have always
held to the doctrine of Twelve Imams, the descendants of
Ali and Fatima, daughters of Mohammed. In the tenth
century the twelfth Imam disappeared into a well, and it
was expected he would appear as a Mahdi, a kind of
Mohammedan Messiah. In 1844, Mirza Ali Mahomet
took the title of the Bab, or the Gate, through whom communication might be set up with the Twelfth Iman. The
career of the Bab was a brief and tragic one. Some of his
disciples were charged with an attempt to assassinate the
Shah. It is asserted that the Bab was innocent of any
knowledge of this plan, if it existed. The story was made
the excuse for a general persecution in which the Bab
and many of his followers were killed in 1850. The new
religion had its martyr, and this was quite as valuable as
was the martyrdom of Joseph Smith to the later history
of the Mormons. Before the Bab died he advanced in his
claims to be the Mahdi, later to be Nukta, or the point of
Divine Unity. His revelation was called the abrogation
of Islam and the Koran. He may well be described as a
Mohammedan Gnostic.

With the death of the Bab there was a great quarrel
over succession. The Bab had appointed Subh-i-Azal as
his successor, but among the variant claimants to the
honors was one named Mirza Husian Ali, the son of a concubine mother, who assumed the title of Baha-o'-Ullah,
"the Glory of God." Both these men were placed under
police supervision on account of quarrels, the former being
located on Cyprus and the latter at Acca, Syria. The
division resulted in the formation of two rival religions,
the Babis and the Azalis. Baha-o'-Ullah attracted most
of the Babis to himself and they became Bahists. Following the death of Baha-o'-Ullah, the succession was
again disputed, but it fell to the eldest son of the departed
'leader, and Abdul Baha, once known as Abbas Effendi, is
now the leader of the cult throughout the world, not by
election, but by divine revelation.

TWELVE BASIC PRINCIPLES

The magazine, "Reality," publishes twelve basic bahai
principles. These are as follows: "The oneness of mankind, independent investigation of truth, the 'foundation of
all religions in one, religion must be the cause of unity,
religion must be in accord with science and reason, equality between men and women, prejudice of all kinds must
be forgotten, universal peace, universal education, solution
of the economic problem, an international auxiliary language, an international tribunal." These basic principles,
the reader says at once, are the great underlying convictions of spiritually-minded people in the western world.
If Bahaism were this and only this, most of us would be
compelled to confess that we were Bahaists.

However, the history of the movement has been strangely
out of accord with these principles. No religious movement in modern times has had more sectarian quarrels
than has Bahaism, in spite of its principle that "religion
must be the cause of unity." The principle of the equality
of men and women accords splendidly with modern conviction in the occidental world, but it is strangely out
of accord with the actual practice of Baha-o'-Ullah who
had two wives and a concubine. He kept these secluded
in a harem in accordance with oriental custom. Nor is
there anything in Bahaist ethical teaching that implies
opposition to bigamy, for this would at once alienate the
two hundred thousand Bahaists of Persia who are numerically the main body of the new religion. The solution
of the economic problem is not to be accomplished by a
scientific program elaborated in the light of experience,
but by the process of bringing the warring parties to the
House of Justice at Wilmette where their cause will be
heard. World peace is to be accomplished in the same
way by the establishment of the Bahaist court to hear the
disputes. In the matter of the international auxiliary
language, Esperanto has been cultivated in recent years.
The Chicago Sunday school used to operate in Esperanto.
The teaching of the cult with regard to the intermarriage
of the races has led to a great falling away in the southern
states. There is no longer a Bahaist society in Atlanta,
following the marriage in Washington of a Negro and
and English white woman with the blessing of Abdul Baha.

The missionary approach to America by the new religion assumes that one may be at the same time a Bahaist
and a Christian. The two religions are not incompatible,
it is said. It is just this method of approach which makes
the new faith unique among all the cults of America. It
sounds so broad, and enables the new believer to proceed
a long way before he burns the bridges behind him. Of
course sooner or later he learns that the new scriptures of
Baha-o'-Ullah supersede the old ones, and that a new
Christ has taken the place of the Christ of Galilee.

One asks, what has been added to the good old religion
of the New Testament? Do we not have there the doctrine of the unity of the human race? Do not women and
little children get their charter of liberty there? Is not
the love of the truth one of the fundamental Christian
attitudes? World peace, education, economic betterment
and many another good cause have gone to the scriptures
of the Christian church and found their support there.

A PAPER RELIGION

An examination of the claims of the new religion must
take into account that we are comparing a religious system as yet untried by the great mass of the human race
with another religion which has lived through nineteen
centuries and ministered in varying degree to most of the
peoples of earth. Just as paper socialism always looks
more attractive than the orthodox political economy as
studied in the experience of the struggling mass of workers, so a paper religion has a big advantage over religions
against which the mistakes of the centuries may be recounted. To be fair we must consider both Bahaism and
Christianity in the light of their claims and also in the
light of their achievements.

As a means of satisfying the theological curiosity which
is ever in the mind of man, the Bahaist system has much
less to offer than Christianity. The God of Bahaism is
remote and unintelligible, and can be approached only
through successive incarnations. The Christian prays
'Our Father which art in heaven," while the Bahaist when
he prays addresses "Baha-o'-Ullah." The gnosticism of
Bahaism is far inferior to the ethical theism of Christianity. Gnosticism, whether we find it in early Christianity, Persian Mohammedanism, Christian Science or
even in the new religion of H. G. Wells has low ethical
value. Bahaism has but little to say of sin or salvation.
Nineteen hundred years of history has proven that Christianity has performed a wonderful service in the world
by its reinforcement of ethics with religious sanctions.

Nor is the Christ of Bahaism the commanding figure
that Christianity possesses. One need not fail in appreciation of the many excellences to be found in Baha-o'-Ullah
to say confidently that the world will never place on the
same plane the Christ of Galilee and that Persian religionist who quarreled with his brothers over the succession
and finally won the victory over them.

Leaving to one side the theological satisfaction of the
two religions which some today may affect to despise, but
which will never be outgrown considerations in the study
of any religion, one asks concerning the social ideals of
the two religions. To begin with, Bahaism is a theocratic
autocracy. Its leaders have one by one been self-appointed.
This compares unfavorably with the evangelical section
of Christianity, and even with Catholic Christianity where
the pope himself must be elected by a college of cardinals.
The religion that would successfully preach democracy to
this modern age must be itself a democracy, and the discontent that people have nowadays with the alleged lack
of democracy in the church would be multiplied a thousand times were Christianity to be superseded by Bahaism.

VISION OF PEACE

In Bahaism there has been a commendable interest in
world peace and in the overcoming of all sorts of prejudice whether it rested upon racial, national or credal bases.
Christianity has been an international religion ever since
it burst the bonds of Judaism in the first century. Though
in actual practice it has sanctioned wars and persecutions,
these are coming increasingly to be felt as inconsistencies.
Bahaism also in its actual history has shown a similar inconsistency between profession and practice.

In the matter of worship, Christianity seems to hold
elements of great superiority. A new religion cannot
create forms of worship de novo. These are the growth
of the centuries, the creation of inspired genius. Unless
Bahaism takes over the forms of worship of Christianity,
she must confess herself for many centuries inferior. The
present mood of the Bahaist is to minimize worship, just
as H. G. Wells does. An approved statement of principles in the magazine Reality says: "Bahaism has no clergy,
no religious ceremonial, no public prayers; its only dogma
is belief in God and his Manifestations."

Ethically the new religion can hardly claim to be in the
same class with Christianity. One reads with astonishment that "Monogamy is universally recommended . . ."
Here follows an ellipsis in the article in Reality. Monogamy may be recommended, but it is a fact that some of
the leading lights of the new religion have been polygamists, just as many Mohammedans are. While professing
to give woman an equal status in human society, the new
religion if adopted in the western world would soon lower
immeasurably the dignity of women. One notes with
approval that the new religion teaches that everyone must
have an occupation. The education of children is enjoined and regulated. One misses, however, the fine spirit
of sympathy and consideration for the rights of others
which is to be found in the sermon on the mount. In all
Bahaism there is no such adequate ethical principle as
the golden rule, and no such masterly summarization of
the meaning of all law, human and divine, as is to be
found in Jesus' principle of love.

WHAT CHRISTIANS MAY LEARN

Christianity has learned something from every new
religion with which she has come into contact. She may
well learn from Bahaism a certain attitude of reverence
for all religion, such as the Bahaist documents profess.
Instead of talking of false religions, we should with Paul
find God at work in even' religion to bring men to himself. Our missionaries have in most lands ceased to talk
about the "heathen." They resent the old fashioned
diatribes against Confucius and Buddha. Furthermore,
Christianity may well emphasize more strongly her doctrine of the unity of the human race, which is also one of
the cardinal tenets of Bahaism. If the new religion has
originated nothing, here, it has at least served usefully in
insisting that no lines shall separate the race into hostile
camps.

The Bahaist dream of the religious unity of the whole
world as a basis for social unity is sound. The only question is, What religion is best prepared to serve in this
way? So far the response of the world to Christianity
is more encouraging than the response to Bahaism. A
world full of altars will hardly take for its religion a
system without an altar. A world full of sorrow and sin
will scarcely find its salvation in a religious system in
Which ethics is subordinated to mystical speculation.

In the good providence of God, it may be that Bahaism
is intended as a gate by which the Mohammendan world
may come to contemplate Christianity without prejudice.
The missionary approach of Christianity to the Mohammedan world has all too often failed because trinitarian
speculation was obtruded as fundamental to Christianity.
The Mohammendan is a monotheist and he thinks the
Christian is not. The worship of Mary and the saints
by Catholics gave Mohammedanism its original opportunity. Bahaism gives a basis for believing in a revelation
of God through human life, just as Christianity has always
taught. When the Mohammedan world is convinced that
it has no real addition to religious knowledge through
Baha-o'-Ullah, and in him are to be found many serious
relapses, we may hope that the followers of the Prophet
will add to the truth of the Koran, the larger truth of the
gospel of Christ.

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-- Baha'ism and Its Ambitious Claims (Used by permission of the curator)