Bahá’í World/Volume 2/Living Religions and the Bahá’í Movement

The Bahá’í World
Volume 2

LIVING RELIGIONS AND THE BAHÁ’Í MOVEMENT

An address delivered at Steinway Hall, London, England, September 28, 1924, during the Conference of Some Living Religions Within the British Empire, held at the Imperial Institute, London, September 22 to October 3, 1924.

By

DR. WALTER WALSH

“All must adhere to the means which are conducive to love and unity.”

—‘Abdu’l-Bahá

DURING the week which has just ended, more than a dozen of the principal forms of religion—non-Christian and non-Judaic — the forms of religion we were taught to stigmatise as “heathen”—have been expounding their views to one another; and lo! their coming together has been found “conducive to love and unity.” Those who followed the Conference through its various expositions, became conscious of a thought growing more and more into a conviction — the staggering thought and conviction, namely, that, spite of all surface differences, the living Religions are characterized by a fundamental unity. Where one may have expected conflict we find concord; where he anticipated antagonism we have found reconciliation; and where he looked for contraries we have discovered Unities. Throughout these wonderful days, indeed, we have been receiving an object-lesson in the noble science of Comparative Religion. The old presumptions have been shrivelling up before our eyes. Our ears have heard—not the brazen discords of a sectarian jazz band, but the harmonious notes of a spiritual symphony. The note of our age is Reconciliation; and the grand symphony of the Universal has received new expression from the lips of the various exponents of the common faith. It is through the unity of the spirit exemplified in this Conference that the peace of the world will be finally secured.

Of all the notes in the General Evangel, none has sounded sweeter and clearer than that uttered by Bahá’u’lláh and His Successor ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, whose gracious, healing message some of us were privileged to hear from His own lips some years ago. The Bahá’í Movement occupies a foremost place among those new orientations which make for universal harmony and peace. It emphasizes the unity of the spirit of man, the unity of the religions in their essential characteristics and principles, and it prophesies and prepares the way for the final unity of the races.

What constitutes a “living religion?” Mr. Victor Branford, in his illuminating book on the subject, defines a “living religion” as one that has risen from a Nature-religion to a Spirit-religion, and which continues to enrich itself by social adaptations and the growing truths of science. May I add to the description the idea that a “living religion” is one that teaches and inspires men and women to live—to live rationally, unselfishly, and fully. Following the lead of the Conference, it is clear that the trend of every form of religion in the world today is towards three great Unities-the Unity of God, the Unity of Man, and the Unity (or Comm-unity) of [Page 244]Interests. I further assume that the spirit of religion—like the atmosphere around our bodies—seeks to induce the Peace of God in the heart, and the Peace of the World between nations.

First, take the idea of the Unity of God. History makes it clear that divided Deities imply divided Peoples. The age of Tribal Deities was the age of Tribal wars: Imperial Deities have landed us in Imperial wars. The ascent of Man is traced by his successive advances from the cave to the hut, from the hut to the village, from the village to the city, from the city to the nation, from the nation to the empire, from the empire to Humanity. The last step awaits to be taken. The tribal chiefs were merely super-savages who frequently offered their war captives in sacrifice to their gods. The imperial savages of today are content to penalize their beaten foes by impossible exactions, and by reducing them to industrial helotry. The moral ascent of peoples is marked by successive discoveries that national “rights” are not seldom international “wrongs.” In the extent to which communities cease to attribute their own preferences and passions to the gods—in that degree does brotherhood become possible. When go the hostile gods, away go national hostilities.

To us, the history of the Semites is the most familiar example. Semitic history opens upon a whole catalog of tribal gods—Asshur of the Assyrians, Chemosh of the Moabites, Moloch of the Ammonites, Jehovah of the Hebrews. Monotheism was not yet born, and therefore separation was inevitable. A common religion is the most powerful of bonds, within its own limits, and when the limits are recognized to be no narrower than the Human Race, we get a Bond of Brotherhood that cannot be broken. When the Assyrians invaded Judah, Sennacherib warned the Israelites that they need not think to be protected by their tribal Jehovah; for the gods of Samaria and other nations had been unable to protect their devotees from his—the Assyrian power; that is, from the Assyrian gods, who were more powerful than those of the Israelites (2 Kings xviii, 32-35). When the Assyrians carried away the Northern tribes of Samaria and repeopled the land with Babylonians, it is curiously stated that the new colonists did not know how to worship “the god of the land,” who therefore became angry and punished them by an invasion of lions, so that they had to bring some of the Samarian priests back to restore the worship of “the god of the land,” who was obviously an indigenous deity, as anthropologists term it—a deity who is limited and confined to the very soil, and unable to cross the border to succour his worshipers (2 Kings xvii, 26). This idea of the indigenous deity—the deity rooted in and confined to the very soil of a country — is curiously exemplified by the story of Naaman the Syrian, who, after being cured of his leprosy by the Hebrew Elisha, begged to carry back to Syria two mule-loads of Palestinian earth—a few spadefuls of Jehovah's land—on which, in Syria, he might build an altar, and offer sacrifice (2 Kings v, 17) . At that primitive stage of theology, the least conception of Humanity was impossible, or of a United Race, or of the General Good.

On this occasion, time forbids me to trace the expansion of theology in the Semitic and other Oriental forms of religion, with their glimmerings of the larger truth and wider internationalism; such as are found, for example in the Hebrew drama of Jonah. To the Greek Stoics belongs the credit of first and definitely affirming the notion of the Brotherhood of Man, from which in turn sprang the idea of Natural Rights; but it was not till the break-up of the Roman empire followed by the conflicts between Emperor and Pope and the appalling wars that accompanied the passing of Feudalism—it was not till then, I say, that the idea of International Law formulated itself in the human mind, was expressed by Grotius the Dutch Jurist, and is now embodied in the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

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[Page 246]Theological prejudice involved in the idea of tribal or national Deities bore inevitable sour fruit in the shape of National Prejudice, which, with the possible exception of Sectarian Bigotry, is perhaps the most invincible foe of human progress. Hard to uproot are these hostile traditions! True ideas take long to realize, but the principle of progress is in the idea, and we cannot doubt that the wide acceptance of the Unity of God will be accompanied by a corresponding abatement of racial instincts, suspicions, and fears. The idea that nations are independent entities will yield to that of Human Solidarity. The realization of Human Solidarity will place the fact of Interdependence beyond dispute. Mutuality will take the place of hostility. Cooperation will replace competition. Instead of the false notion that a nation is endangered by the prosperity of its rivals, and that competition to the extent of war is necessary for self-preservation, we shall get the true notion of a Community of Interests, when every commercial tariff will be erased, every trade barrier thrown down; when every Custom House will be turned into an International Club and every Barracks into an International Theatre. With the old gods will pass away the old traditions and the old statesmen, and the human race will have entered definitely on the era of Universal Peace.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,

Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;—

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

(Lowell.)

If I am asked to furnish warrant for these shining expectations, I refer you to the Conference of Living Religions, which clearly intimates that religion is now striving to unite on the things that are fundamental and common to human nature. I have long seen, and frequently pointed out, that the Religions of the Orient were becoming subject to the same liberalizing influences as were those of the West. Criticism, Science, and Sociology are at work upon the Rig-Veda as well as upon the New Testament, and upon the Qur’án as well as upon the Bible. The spirit of the East and the West is evolving a common perception and a common purpose — the perception of the Unity of God, and the purpose of the Unity of Man; the mystical concept of the Kingdom of Heaven striving to realize itself in a Commonwealth of Nations—the grand dream of all the ages, bequeathed to this age to realize in one great, pacific, World-State.

Is it a dream?

Nay, but the lack of it the dream,

And failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream,

And all the world a dream.

(Walt Whitman .)

It is plain that the idea of the Unity of Man follows on that of the Unity of God. This is the rock on which to build the civilization of the future—the Common Nature underlying all differences; while the militaristic civilization based on division and mistrust—“our unsurpassed civilization,” as an affected writer puts it—sinks deeper and deeper into the blood-soaked sands of time.

Let no one, however, suppose that our task is done! Let no one exclaim with the Lotos-eaters, “Here will we rest.” Progressive religion has yet stern work to do. It has to despatch the Ecclesiastical Gods to the same limbo as the vanishing Gods of the Tribe. The Externalities of Religion have to be cut away like dead branches, that the inner life, the life of the soul, the Communal Life of the race, may expand and bear its myriad fruits for the healing and enrichment of the peoples. The idea of Divine Favoritism must be banished from every form of [Page 247]religion—the ideals of special privilege, chosen peoples, exclusive revelations, nationalistic incarnations, salvation limited by sacramental and liturgical conditions,—all these egoistic ideals must be eliminated. A Deity with ecclesiastical prejudices can deliver mankind no more than a Deity with tribal prejudices. The Ecclesiastical Deities have given us divided America and sundered India and distracted Europe. During the war, the Ecclesiastical Deities gave us the spectacle of Protestant Britain, Roman Catholic Belgium, Greek Russia, and Free-thinking France united against Protestant Germany, Roman Catholic Austria, and Muḥammadan Turkey. They fortified the hills around Nazareth with big guns, and surrounded Bethlehem with barbed-wire entanglements. The old Tribal Deities were resurrected “for the duration of the war,” and clothed in the garb of modern ecclesiasticism.

The Ecclesiastical Deities pursue their victims to the bitter end, to the death, as men say. For example, according to newspaper records, five hundred men were drowned, and Mother Nature asked no questions, but buried them in one common ocean-grave. Three of the dead, however, were washed ashore, of whom one proved to be a Roman Catholic, the second a Greek Christian, and the third an Anglican, so they buried them in three separate graveyards! In a letter to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the late Arminius Vambéry that great Orientalist and traveler, confessed that he had at different times professed himself a Jew, a Christian, a Muḥammadan, and a Zoroastrian, in order to discover the truth of things for himself, and had found that “all these religions have become the instruments of tyranny and oppression in the hands of rulers and governors, and they are the causes of the destruction of the world of humanity.” For these reasons, Vambéry enlisted himself on the side of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and accepted with joy the prospect of a fundamental basis for a universal religion of God being laid through His efforts. [See page 162.]

Let us face the hard truth. As we have to get rid of prejudice, pride, patriotism and nationalism in the world of politics, so we have to abolish partisanship, particularism and exclusive claims of truth, messiahship, etc., from religion. Christians have usually stigmatized Muḥammadanism as an intolerant form of religion; but the late Canon Cheyne—Christian scholar and dignitary of the Church—expressly accused Christianity of being “intolerant of other religions,” while, in the same book,* he upholds the Bahá’í Movement (along with the Brahmo Somaj) as making for the Spiritual Unification of all peoples; for which reason he had attached himself to the Movement.

In this way, as it seems, will Community of Interest be reached through the Unity of Man, as that is reached through the Unity of God. While the political leaders of the world—quite sincerely no doubt, for they are all terribly frightened—are striving to substitute for the old war-provoking “Balance of Power” a pacific League or “Concert of Nations,” it is for the religious leaders of mankind to create a Symphony or Sisterhood of Religions. That is the thing which presses. It calls for an early and far more representative Conference of Religions to consider the one vital question of the Peace of the World. I can think of no one better qualified to convene such a World-Conference of Religious Representatives than is the Head of the Bahá’í Movement, Shoghi Effendi.

I hope I shall not die before seeing the completion of that great Mashriqu’l-Adhkár—the Dawning-Place of the Mention of God, on the shore of Lake Michigan—designed to be a vast and hospitable gathering-place for all the religions of the world; a resplendent symbol of the Unity

*The Reconciliation of Races and Religions.

[Page 248]of Man in the Oneness of God; and I might hope also to witness the completion of that similar Centre of Universal Religion, The Hall of All Religions as a great Peace Memorial—now being projected in India, even in the sacred city of Benares itself.

It is a wonderful thing that, in the very life-time of some here present, the great movement set in motion in Persia by the Báb, sanctified by His own blood and the blood of twenty thousand followers—extended and fortified by Bahá’u’lláh through forty years of captivity—and proclaimed to the Western world by the golden tongue of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—the Chrysostom of the Movement—should be universally acclaimed as expressing the chief Hope of the World. All forms of religion are essentially the same, it teaches—all prophets and teachers of truth are true—all men are brothers—women are equals with men—equal education—equal opportunity—this pure Universalism, this exemplification of clear thinking and noble living, and, I may add, holy dying, is not indeed confined to the Bahá’í Movement; it is proclaimed and followed by some I have already mentioned, and by others, including the Free Religious Movement—but it has been so expressly set forth by the sanctified sagacity of Bahá’u’lláh, proclaimed by the silver eloquence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and watered by the blood of twice ten thousand martyrs—that the Bahá’í may by all generous minds be regarded as first among many brethren.

Here is a highly devotional form of religion, offering full encouragement to the spiritual and aspirational side of human nature, but at the same time giving dis-couragement to its superstitious tendencies; a religion disclaiming supernatural sanctions, non-miraculous, ethical, pacifist, humanist, universalist, yet withal profoundly spiritual;—to such a religion the blundering blood-stained world may hopefully look for guidance and inspiration. I was particularly struck by the paragraph in the Bahá’í paper, (read to the Conference by Mr. Mountfort Mills), in which the writer referred to the Economic situation. Amid much reading of Economics, I do not remember to have seen the trouble so clearly diagnosed as in the first sentence I am about to quote or the remedy more clearly set forth than in the last:

“Now by the fear that is based on the idea of poverty either actual or prospective, the human soul is ever turned downward into nature, where the predominant law is the struggle for existence; and becoming dominated by this law, and captive to it, the soul’s struggles only the more heavily burden its own chains. For the struggle for existence sets off the powers of one soul against the powers of another, and this mutual division of powers means mutual defeat. Thus in this day the sciences and inventions which shadow forth a universal order, and dumbly signify the existence of a reality whose law is co-operation, have become, through perversion, the greatest menace to the existence of mankind.”

“The disease which afflicts the body of humanity is lack of love and absence of altruism. In the hearts of men no real love is found, and the condition is such that unless their susceptibilities are awakened by some power so that unity, love and accord develop within them, there can be no healing, no relief among mankind.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá)

This pure Universalism, this great Humanist religion, is fast outrunning both church and synagogue, both mosque and temple, and will speedily cover the earth with the glow of a brighter day. A European Club in China one day gathers Russians, Frenchmen, Germans, Austrians, Britons, Americans; they shake hands all round and sing Burns’ immortal “Auld Lang Syne!” The soldiers at the front could with difficulty be kept from fraternizing—they stopped the fighting and sang Christmas carols in Flanders. Verily there is neither Jew nor Greek, Russian, French, German, Indian, African[Page 249], nor Turk, but all are one in Humanity and Humanity’s God. On the altar of this glorious Universalism let us sacrifice our patriotic pride, our racial antagonisms, our religious antipathies, our theological prepossessions, our church limitations! To this Blessed Gospel of Reconciliation let us dedicate our lives!