A RELIGION OF RECONCILIATION
BY REV. GRIFFITH J. SPARHAM
Highgate Hill Unitarian Christian Church, London, England
IN his book “A League of Religions,” the Rev. J. Tyssul Davis, formerly minister of the Theistic Church in London, and at present minister of a Unitarian Church in Bristol, England, sets out to demonstrate that each great religious movement in the world has contributed something of peculiar importance to the spiritual life of man. Thus, he says, the great contribution of Zoroastrianism has been the thought of Purity; of Brahmanism that of Justice; of Muḥammadanism that of Submission; of Christianity that of Service; and so on. In each instance he lays his finger on the one thing par excellence for which the particular religious culture seemed to him to stand, and tries to catch its special contribution in an epigrammatic phrase. Coming, in this way, to Bahá’ísm, he names it “the Religion of Reconciliation.” In his chapter on Bahá’ísm he says: “The Bahá’í religion has made its way because it meets the need of the day. It fits the larger outlook of our time, better than the rigid older faiths. A characteristic is its unexpected liberality and tolerance. It accepts all the great religions as true and their scriptures as inspired.”
This, then, as he sees Bahá’ísm, is its essential feature: liberality, toleration, the spirit of reconciliation; and that, not in the sense, as Mr. H. G. Wells has it in his “Soul of a Bishop,” of making a “collection” of approved portions of the world’s varied and differing creeds, but in the sense, as he also puts it in the same book, of achieving a great “simplification.”
"Bahá’ísts,” says Dr. Davis, “bid the followers of these (that is, the world’s) faiths disentangle from the windings of racial, particularist, local prejudices, the vital, immortal thread of the pure gospel of eternal worth, and to apply this essential element to life.”
That is Dr. Davis’s interpretation of the genius of Bahá’ísm, and that it is a true one, no one who has studied Bahá’ísm, even superficially, can question, least of all the outsider. Indeed one may go further and assert that no one who has studied Bahá’ísm, whether superficially or otherwise, would wish to question it; particularly if he approaches the subject from a liberal and unprejudiced point of view. In the last act of his “Wandering Jew,” Mr. Temple Thurston puts into the mouth of Matteos, the Wandering Jew, himself, the splendid line, “All men are Christians—all are Jews.” He might equally well have written, “All men are Christians—all are Bahá’ís.” For, if the sense of the Unity of Truth is a predominant characteristic of liberally-minded people, whatever may be their religious tradition, it is predominantly a characteristic of Bahá’ísm; since here is a religious system based, fundamentally, on the one, simple, profound, comprehensive doctrine of the unity of God, which carries with it, as its necessary corollary and consequence, the parallel doctrine of the unity of Man.
This, at all events, is the conviction of the present writer; and it is why, as a Unitarian, building his own faith on the same basic principles of divine and human unity, he has long felt sympathy with and good will toward a religious culture which stands on a foundation identical with that of the faith he holds. And a religion that affirms the unity of things must of necessity be a religion of reconciliation; the truth of which in the case of Bahá’ísm is clear.
For the Christian world especially Bahá’ísm
should prove in a peculiar measure a
tutor toward the reconciling spirit, inasmuch
as nothing is more potent for the undermining
of that exclusiveness that has been a
feature of orthodox Christianity than a study
of Christian origins, and nothing can make
the nature of those origins clearer than the
discovery of a parallel series of events in
modern times; and that parallel series, as Dr.
Estlin Carpenter points out in his
“Relation[Page 546]
of Jesus to His Age
and Ours,” is found in
the story of Bahá’ísm, a fact that a glance
at the story of the beginnings of the two
religious movements will show.
Historically, Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism. As a distinct thing it began, as Professor Seely reminds us in his “Ecce Homo,” with the preaching of the Kingdom of God by John, known as the Baptist, among whose followers was Jesus. John was put in prison, and subsequently beheaded, and Jesus, who became known as the Christ, came forward to carry on the work, in a fuller sense. By reason of His greater spiritual endowments Jesus became the dominating figure of the movement, which came to be called after him, or rather his title. Then Jesus was crucified, and in course of time an
Manúchihr-Khán, the Mu‘tamidu’d-Dawlih who extended his protection to the Báb in Iṣfáhán, Persia. (Refer to Dawn Breakers, ch. X.)
expositor of the, by this time, new religion arose in the person of Saul, who was later called Paul.
In a similar way, historically, Bahá’ísm
took its departure from the Shi’ah sect of
Islám, and in some degree from the Súfí form
of it. It began, as a distinct thing, with
Mírzá ‘Ali Muḥammad, known as the
Báb,[Page 547]
among whose followers
was Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí. Mírzá ‘Alí Muḥammad
was martyred, and Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí, who
became known as Bahá’u’lláh, came forward
to carry on the
work in a fuller sense. By reason of His
greater spiritual endowments Mírzá ‘Alí
Muḥammad became the dominating figure of the
movement, which came to be called after him,
or rather his title. Then Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí
passed, and an expositor of the, by this time,
new religion, arose in the person of ‘Abbás
Effendi, who was later called ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
That is the parallel. It is almost exact. And the worth of this from the Christian point of view is that it gives those who are unprejudiced a sense of relative values. It shows the development of things in their natural light and their true proportions. And above all it demonstrates that the central thing in Christianity, as in Bahá’ísm, is a universal conception of the Kingdom of God which, in turn, at once leads men out to the point at which Christianity and Bahá’ísm stand not merely on common ground, but actually become one faith. Not merely in this subtle sense, however, is Bahá’ísm a religion of reconciliation. It is so in the very warp and woof of its being. The early doctrines of the Báb may appear to the western mind to savor, as is proper and natural, somewhat of the soil from which they sprang. There was a tendency toward the pantheistic teaching of the Súfís. A reverence was attached to certain numbers. From time to time, also, in Bahá’ísm itself an inclination toward the miraculous and the prophetic has appeared. And that these elements have commended themselves to some of the most spiritually minded men in the Bahá’í world is worthy of note. It shows that they stand for truths, and therefore should not be readily dismissed. But whether we accept these things or not, they are not of the main stuff of the body spiritual of Bahá’ísm. We may accept them, or otherwise, without touching fundamental issues. The essentials of Bahá’ísm, and its increasingly emergent feature, are its insistence on certain great spiritual ideals and principles and its development of these, which are in every case of the inclusive, or universal sort.
To begin with, there is the insistence on the Unity of Mankind. Mankind, says Bahá’ísm, is one, and the supreme loyalty, under God, is not to a creed, or a nation, but to the human race. Then, there is the insistence on the Unity of Truth. Truth, says Bahá’ísm, is one, and every man should seek it independently both on the material and on the spiritual plane. Again there is the insistence on the Unity of Religion. Religion, says Bahá’ísm, is one, since God is one, and revelation is the growing apprehension of Him by mankind, and every great Teacher has been, and is, in greater or less degree, a prophet of His one inclusive word. Yet, again, Science and Religion are one, in so far as each is true, since all truth is but knowledge of the one reality of God.
Further, we have the doctrine that man and woman are in their ultimate nature one, variants, simply, of one spiritual stock. Education, therefore, should be equally for both. Prejudice of all kinds should be forgotten; and in the sense of their common origin nations should learn to live in mutual accord and peace.
These are factors which illustrate the essence of Bahá’ísm, and manfest its essentials, and there is nothing in the essential elements of Bahá’ísm, but what reveals it as a reconciling power. “To be a Bahá’í,” said Abdu’l-Bahá. on one occasion, “means simply to love all the world; to love humanity and try to serve it; to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood.” Or as He said on another occasion, it is for men to recognize that they are as "one soul in many bodies,” “for the more we love each other the nearer shall we be to God.”
There are many other aspects of Bahá’ísm that might be alluded to; its emphasis on the life that is prayer; the thought that is communion; the religion that is the immersion of the soul in God; to say nothing of its extraordinarily detailed and comprehensive teaching on and practical work for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of mankind, and for international interdependence, cooperation and good will. But what are these, except variants of one theme—which is the theme of true religion wherever it is discovered? They spring from the basic conception of one humanity in one God, which faith, whenever men hold it, under whatever name, reconciles the world.
Richard St. Barbe Baker
Founder of the "Men of the Trees” and internationally known silviculturist. Mr. Baker has spent eight years in the heart of Africa reclaiming the mahogany forests in Nigeria and teaching the natives of Kenya the value of trees. During all these years he so endeared himself to the natives that he was made a "blood brother” of the tribes, one of the only two white men to experience this honor.
