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[Page 1]

World Order

A Bahá’í Magazine

Fall 1966

A Pattern for Future Society

by ARTHUR J. DAHL

The City of Man Revisited

by W. WARREN WAGAR

[Page 2]

World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE ● VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1 ● PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER is a publication of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. It is intended to stimulate, inspire and serve thinking people in their search to find relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and philosophy.

Editorial Board:

DR. FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

DR. HOWARD GAREY

MR. MONROE E. MICHELS

MRS. MURIEL MICHELS

Yearly subscriptions: $3.50 per year in U.S., its territories and possessions; foreign subscriptions $4.00 per year. Address any correspondence or checks for subscriptions to World Order, c/o Mrs. Muriel Michels, 1 Cove Ridge Lane, Old Greenwich, Conn. 06870. Single copies available $1.00 each.

Copyright © 1966, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

Application to mail at second-class rates pending at Old Greenwich, Conn.

CONTENTS

The City of Man Revisited

by W. WARREN WAGAR ............. 3

A Pattern for Future Society

by ARTHUR L. DAHL ................ 8

Excerpts from Dispatches Written

During 1848-1852 by

PRINCE DOLGORUKOV,

Russian Minister to Persia ............. 17

My Religious Faith

by BERNARD LEACH ................ 25

Social Disadvantage—The Real Enemy

in the War on Poverty

by DANIEL JORDAN ................ 29

Open Letter ......................... 35

Writings of BAHÁ’U’LLÁH ............ 36

The views expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, nor of the Editorial Board.

[Page 3]

THE CITY OF MAN REVISITED

By W. Warren Wagar

W. Warren Wagar is Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. After attending Franklin and Marshall College and Indiana University, he obtained his Ph.D. at Yale in 1959. In 1957-58, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of London. He has also taught at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Five years ago I wrote, and three years ago I published, a book entitled The City of Man: Prophecies of a World Civilization in Twentieth-Century Thought. Despite generous reviews in a number of newspapers and periodicals, and despite the eminence of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, the book did not capture the public imagination and died a relatively early death. It entered the lists of remaindering firms just twelve months after its appearance in 1963. There was never any question of a second printing.

Many exponents of a unified world order in the past fifteen years have experienced a similar resistance on the part of the thinking population to books and projects in this field. The world federalist movement, so dynamic in Western Europe and the United States in the early postwar years, has kept alive only with the greatest difficulty since Korea. The peace campaigners of recent seasons have expressed only peripheral interest in the idea of a unified world order. Or, rather, their conception of world order involves little more than the establishment of world peacekeeping machinery, with all other national business presumably continuing as usual. Once a potent force for the propagation of universalist values, the various schools of socialist thought have lost much of their élan in the postwar era. In Daniel Bell’s phrase, we seem to have reached “the end of ideology in the West.” The United Nations has failed to fulfill the bright hopes of 1945 and 1946; nor has mankind embraced a world religion, a philosophical synthesis, or a common value-system. The “world culture” of the middle twentieth century is at best a culture of means, of instruments and institutions, and not of ends. There is yet no human race, in a psycho-spiritual sense. When one bears in mind the universal acknowledgment that humanity stands poised on the brink of total annihilation, the failure of most people to direct their attention to the problem of world order appears all but incredible. The prevailing apathy has, under the circumstances, a psychotic quality. Most of us continue in our appointed rounds as if nothing were about to happen. It is a case of mass schizophrenia. On the one hand, awareness of infinite peril; on the other hand, infinitely self-deluding indifference.

I remain convinced that the twentieth-century world crisis has no solution save in the rapid growth to maturity of a planetary civilization. Although we may choose, for the moment, to close our eyes to the clear needs of the epoch in which we live, the necessity for a world political and cultural order is just as obvious as ever. The inevitability of such an order, if mankind is to survive, relieves me of any anxiety about the staying power of the ideas put forth in The City of Man. If we are to have a future, the future is there. The only problem is time. Have the civilization-building processes, which produced in their historical integrity the Han and Gupta Empires, Rome, and Baghdad, the time to complete their task of creating a world civilization before it is too late? In my view, our only hope lies in the chance we can manage to accelerate artificially those natural world-historical [Page 4]processes. We can best begin the work at hand by promoting universal awareness of the compelling need for Cosmopolis: the first step is necessarily evangelism.

The City of Man proceeds, then, from the assumption that the historical solution to the breakdown of local order is the growth of a wider economic, political, cultural and spiritual order co-terminous with the geographical limits of the people involved. This has happened before several times, on a continental scale. Our task now is to encourage in every possible way the development of a global order, literally universal for the first time in history because, for the first time in history, geographical limits as such do not exist. The difficulty, once again, lies not in the thing itself, but in the time available to achieve it. To be sure, the world civilization will differ in many salient respects from past “world” civilizations: in the degree of individual freedom granted and preserved, in the elimination of gross economic disparity between classes and regions, in the new vitality of science and technics. It will have to be more stable and yet more progressive than past civilizations. It will not be able to allow itself the luxury of bouts of decline or anarchy, given the nature of modern total weaponry. But the basic problems, in their broad outlines, have been solved before and—we must assume—can be solved again. If we assume wrongly, it is still better to fall fighting for the unity of man than for the glory of this or that national fragment.

Fortunately this thesis is not the monopoly of the author of The City of Man. In fact most of the book is devoted to a comparative analysis of the ideas of a world civilization as the next stage of human history which you can find scattered through the prophetic writing of a whole generation of modern thinkers. Most of these thinkers are not known primarily for their prophecies of world order, and not all of them may realize they are part of a trend of thought leading in this direction.

They include such thinkers as the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers; the late Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; in Britain, the historian Arnold Toynbee, the bio-physicist Lancelot Law Whyte, and the evolutionist Sir Julian Huxley; President Radhakrishnan of India; and in the United States, the philosophers F.S.C. Northrop, William Ernest Hocking, and Oliver L. Reiser, the historians Lewis Mumford and Erich Kahler, the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, and the psychologist Erich Fromm. This is obviously a mixed bag. It includes representatives of the great world religions and agnostic humanists. It includes economic liberals and devout socialists. Most of them have come to their respective visions of world order in relatively late life. Each of them brings to his vision a somewhat different perspective and emphasis. None of them would agree with everything I have written in The City of Man, and I am unable to accept the total outlook of any one of them. But all of us present roughly the same view of the crisis in civilization, and we all point to an integrated planetary civilization as the ultimate goal of human progress and the ultimate solution of the problems of twentieth-century man.

In my book I note that some prophets emphasize the importance of bringing into harmonious interaction the various religious and philosophical traditions still living in our various separate cultures. There are proposals for a world religion, for closer cooperation among the religions, for world philosophical synthesis, for the development of a planetary perspective in the existing religions and philosophies.

Other prophets stress the need for the integration of knowledge and the knowledge-gathering disciplines, as a prerequisite for world social, political, economic, [Page 5] and spiritual unity. Still others focus on the need for individual psychological integration. And there are those who emphasize projects for world political and economic synthesis. But they all agree that action will have to be taken along a number of different fronts simultaneously.

Most of them also agree that a truly living, organic world civilization cannot be simply a mechanical agglomeration of the compatible fragments of the old civilizations. It cannot be a monolith, a juggernaut, or an anthill. It cannot afford to mass-produce standardized human units all believing the same things and living by the same codes. There must be maximal diversity in unity: a diversity provided in part by continuing regional cultural differences and in still a greater part by continuing individual differences. Even if all regional differences eventually blur and fade, we will always have with us the individual man, and he must be free to draw on the whole human experience in shaping his life. Many people will no doubt voluntarily choose to conform to one or another new planetary “average,” like the standard French or British or American type of today. But for the exceptional man, a much wider range of choice will be available than in the relatively confining national traditions of our own time. If freely formed, the world culture will be more complex and rich than any existing national culture. The nightmare vision of the science-fiction counter-Utopias, from Brave New World on down to the latest serialized horror in the pulp magazines, with their single homogenized world mass-culture is far from inevitable.

And of course no matter how much the world grows together, there will always remain differences of climate, scenery, flora, and types of industry and agriculture. In an integrated world economy, each region will specialize more intensively than it does now, since regions will no longer feel the need to be self-supporting, and each area will do just that sort of work for which its natural and human resources best suit it. Labor will move freely all over the world. The outlook is for a much more mobile society, with more opportunity for travel and residence “abroad”—if the world survives at all—than is possible under current conditions. On the whole, I suspect it will be an altogether more interesting world: more available, more diversified, at least from the point of view of the individual man.

No prophet can predict the exact structure of the coming world civilization, and for this reason alone no one can predict how much the world civilization in being will owe to the efforts of the various individuals and movements who work now and will be working in the foreseeable future to build the city of man. In addition to the independent prophets, many already flourishing organizations of all kinds are vigorously engaged in the struggle for world integration. In my book I call special attention to international Marxism, the Roman Catholic Church, the Bahá’í Faith, the East-West philosophers’ conferences in Honolulu, the world federalist movement, and the United Nations as examples of forces, large and small, active in this struggle. Since the book was written, I have become associated with the work of the Council for the Study of Mankind, whose headquarters are now in California, and I have been in touch with a number of other groups around the world, such as the World Union movement in India, whose aims closely parallel those of the prophets studied in The City of Man. Some of these organizations hope to become the world order. Others seek merely to help direct and inspire its coming. The ultimate objective is not perhaps radically different.

Deeply as I respect, for example, many of the tenets of the Bahá’í Faith, I [Page 6] freely concede that I cannot myself see the future in terms of the triumph of a single creed or ideology, however catholic or tolerant or broadly based that faith may be. But I am not vain enough to imagine that I have any special powers of foresight. It may be the purpose of the cosmic order, in which we have our being, to bring unity to man through the guiding instrumentality of a single universal religion. Even Toynbee has admitted this possibility.

I think, however, that I am right in insisting on two preconditions for a lasting and life-fulfilling world order. With these I close.

First, I cannot believe that the way to world integration lies through insistence on a determinate gospel, into which the whole human race must be forced by mass-hypnosis or the whips of compulsion. The way to world unity does, I believe, lie through insistence on the brotherhood and the sovereign value of man as a free and spiritual being. By “spiritual” I do not mean to suggest a necessarily supernaturalistic conception of man. I am personally convinced of the ultimate unity of man, nature, and being-itself, which renders the idea of a “supernature” superfluous in any event. But man is not merely a thing. He is a being without definite limits. He is everywhere marked off from the rest of creation by his potentialities for inward spiritual experience, by his boundlessness, and by his dignity as a self-determining being. He is also indefinitely finite and fallible, and therefore open to suffering. If we induce him to abandon his conscience or if we force him to submit to our own, we create a leviathan society, and we perish. The only universally binding allegiance in the new world order will be to man himself. Each formula for salvation must give unconditional priority to the claims of self-determining and suffering mankind. It must pass the test of speaking, authentically and unreservedly, for mankind.

My second precondition follows from the first. The relative failure of all movements for world order in the last twenty years, their failure to grow at a pace commensurate with the increasing need for them, is their inability to communicate with the intellectual avant-garde of the postwar generation. A movement is lost if it cannot win the ears and hearts of those younger people on whom the future psycho-spiritual leadership of the human race depends. I do not wish to imply that some human beings are “better” than others. But some human beings see, feel, and think more deeply than others, because of exceptional natural gifts or opportunities in their environment, or both. Most of the leaders of the new generation fail to exhibit much real interest in our goal of a world civilization. It is a concept at once too vast and too impersonal for their taste. To some, it may suggest the existing regional and national orders combined into an engine of world-tyranny more monstrous than anything so far experienced by mankind. They have become spiritually alienated from the traditional cultures, and when we speak of preserving those cultures through a pooling of resources, they turn away from us.

The only way to remove their suspicions and enlist their support and, indeed, their leadership, is to join with them in their war on all that is dead and dying in the old orders. We must take their grievances more seriously than we have so far done, and more seriously than I did in The City of Man. The moral and intellectual revolution of our times is not a passing phenomenon. It strikes deeply at the old orders and not at the institution of the armed nation-state alone, or at the church militant, or at the rule of race-terror, or any other single obstacle to the full realization of the freedom and dignity of man. I have become convinced that the struggle of the avant-garde for personal freedom against the depersonalizing [Page 7] mass-orders of traditional life and the world integrator’s struggle for the brotherhood of man in a planetary society must be united into a single campaign. In no other way can we hope to reach the leading minds of the new generation. In no other way can we hope to insure that the world order we form will safeguard human freedom and dignity, and therefore be worthy of the effort demanded to achieve it.

But these preconditions, the overarching idea of mankind and the overarching idea of freedom, do not exclude from the movement for a world civilization any of the prophets studied in The City of Man or any of the organizations now engaged in the building of Cosmopolis. Some individual Marxists, Roman Catholics, and Bahá’ís, let us say, may be excluded. Certainly many of the dogmas of the organized religions and ideologies stand badly in need of reinterpretation and humanization. As the spirit of reverence for freedom and human solidarity grows in these movements, they can transcend whatever speaks against the human cause in their traditions. They can begin to see more and more clearly the essential unity of their missions and the urgency for more intimate cooperation at every level. It may well be, as I have said before, that in due course humanity will discover in one single faith a special purpose that goes beyond that of all the others. But on this possibility I think it would be disastrous for any of us to dwell, whether we labor inside an existing tradition, or outside all traditions. The question is not what we can do for the proletariat, for Rome, for Canterbury, for the West, or for Bahá’í, but what we can do for mankind.

[Page 8]

A PATTERN FOR FUTURE SOCIETY

By Arthur L. Dahl

Arthur L. Dahl, MBA, Stanford University, is a partner in a prominent San Francisco investment firm. He is a patron of the arts, trustee of several educational institutions, and at the same time, Treasurer of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Mr. Dahl is the author of widely read literature on the Bahá’í Faith.

“Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first stage it is ridiculed, in the second stage it is opposed, in the third stage it is regarded as self-evident.”

—Schopenhauer

The Bahá’í World Faith is a new, independent religion whose goal is the spiritual unification of all mankind. Today it lies somewhere between stages one and two of Schopenhauer’s progression, but its followers confidently believe that its teachings hold the key to the solution of most of the major problems of our age.

We are living in a time of crisis, one of those crucial eras when decisions made, actions taken and trends set in motion during a few short years determine for centuries the course of history. It is an age of climactic struggle and change. Our modern life is dominated by a series of simultaneous and largely interrelated conflicts between ideologies, nationalisms, races, religions, classes, and organized vested interest and pressure groups which tend to put their own well-being ahead of the larger whole. Each of these conflicts has an effect upon and is a contributing cause to the others. Each is a force that creates a sense of separation, suspicion, fear and enmity, which in turn makes it easier for new divisive forces to take hold. Established religion, science, education, philosophy, government, all have been powerless to prevent this situation.

Thoughtful people, approaching these issues from different points of view, are coming more and more to the inescapable conclusion that the ultimate solutions must be world-wide in scope and be universally applied. Broadly speaking, the issues fall into three areas, politico-economic, societal and individual.

Politically and economically the crucial needs are the prevention of nuclear war, control of the population explosion, and the organization of our material effort to get the most mileage from our dwindling resources. The latter requirement is well summarized by Harrison Brown in The Challenge of Man’s Future. After analyzing the physical needs of society in the decades ahead, basing them upon projections of population trends and the material requirements of progressively higher standards of living in all parts of the world, and taking into consideration all the potential sources of energy and raw materials now known to science, Dr. Brown concludes that the future supply of these bulwarks of our technological civilization is going to be very tight indeed, and that mankind must organize itself internationally in such a manner that what it does have will be utilized with maximum efficiency and the greatest return. In his concluding chapter he says: “It is amply clear that, if man wills it, a world community can be created in which human beings can live comfortably and in peace with each other. . . And it is equally clear that the time for decision is the present. With the consumption of each additional barrel of oil and ton of coal, with the addition of each new mouth to be fed, with the loss of each additional inch of topsoil, the situation becomes more inflexible

Schopenhauer: quoted in Investment Companies, Arthur Weisenburger & Co., New York, 1954 edition, p. 61

Brown: The Challenge of Man’s Future. Viking Press, 1954. pp. 265-266

[Page 9] and difficult to resolve. Man is rapidly creating a situation from which he will have increasing difficulty extricating himself. . . He can no longer rely upon the unforseeable fortunate circumstances; future mistakes will have consequences far more dangerous than past ones have been . . . He must encourage the emergence of new ideas in all areas. He must learn not to fear change, for of one thing he can be certain . . . no matter what happens in the world of the next few decades, change will be the major characteristic. But it is within the range of his ability to choose what the changes will be, and how the resources at his disposal will be used—or abused—in the common victory—or ignominious surrender—or mankind.”

In terms of structure our problem stems from the fragmentation and division that exists throughout our modern society. Arnold Toynbee described the condition underlying most of our conflicts in these terms in a Saturday Review article: “Living together as a single family is the only future that Mankind can have, now that our Western technology has simultaneously ‘annihilated distance’ and invented the atomic bomb. The alternative, now, is mass-suicide. Yet the feat of learning how to live together as a single family is going to be very difficult, even if urgently necessary. Till our day man’s improvement of his physical means of communication lagged far behind his advance in civilization on the spiritual plane. So, for the last 5,000-6,000 years our cultures and our religions have been developing more or less in isolation from one another, and therefore have been growing apart. Thus, we have come to live side by side in a world divided up into cultural compartments. It has been a world in which, as Pascal puts it, ‘a meridian decides what is the truth’. . . These accidentally, and therefore arbitrarily, differentiated outlooks and attitudes have had time to become ingrained habits. Human beings have had 6,000 years’ leisure for learning to become strangers to one another, and now we have given ourselves hardly any time at all for learning the more difficult art of dwelling together in unity, like brothers. We are, indeed, well aware how dangerous our present situation is. We have suddenly become one another’s next-door neighbors physically, while our hearts and minds remain still far apart.”

At the individual level, today’s attitudes and values are all mixed up and subject to chaotic cross-currents. Modern technology has gone far toward solving the problem of poverty in much of the world, and yet, contrary to expectations, affluence has not brought increased happiness. This age is dominated by waves of protest and rebellion, particularly on the part of young people, against everything that has been held dear in the past: love, honor, sentiment, patriotism, religion, order. As Romain Gary put it in his novel The Ski Bum: “Your generation is suffering from what for lack of a better word I shall call overdebunk. There was a lot of debunking that had to be done, of course. Bigotry, militarism, nationalism, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, phoniness, all sorts of dangerous, ready-made, artificially preserved false values. But your generation and the generation before yours went too far with this debunking job. You went overboard. Overdebunk, that’s what you did. It’s moral overkill. It’s like those insecticides Rachael Carson speaks of in her book, that poison everything, and kill all the nice useful bugs as well as the bad ones, and in the end poison human beings as well. . . Yours is a silent spring. . . Nothing sings for you anymore. . . You have reduced the world to a spiritual shambles. God is ha-ha-ha. The soul is ho-ho-ho. Booze is reality, love is sex. Family—what’s that, are you kidding? . . . But the point is: you don’t seem to enjoy it. Something is still missing, eh? You got rid of God, and, isn’t it funny, something’s still missing.”

Toynbee: New Vistas for the Historian. Saturday Review, January 7, 1956. pp. 64-65.

Gary: The Ski Bum. Bantam Books, 1965. pp. 123-124

[Page 10] And so the great individual need is for a set of values and a purpose for life that is relevant to and meaningful in the modern world. Without this, people work off their frustrations or escape from a sickening reality with alcohol, dope and hallucinogens, crime and violence, vandalism, sex and suicide. Life in general seems more tense, more neurotic and less rewarding. We have painted ourselves into the corner described by Prof. J. Glenn Gray of Colorado College in Harpers: “Lacking an embracing cause and a fervent ideology, the student’s search for a durable purpose is likely to become aggressive, extremist, at times despairing. It can easily turn into preoccupation with subjective feelings and plain egotism. As Andre Gide has put it: ‘Each human being who has only himself for aim suffers from a horrible void.’ Paradoxical as it sounds, the real problem of our college youth is to discover some authority, both private and public, that will make possible authentic individuality.”

These issues and problems relate, in the last analysis, to human motivation. All of the vast and complex decisions which will determine how well we control the terrifying rate of change which characterizes this age will be dictated by the states of mind of people, individually and collectively. It is here that we must look for the ultimate solution. The question is, what source of influence on human motivation is sufficiently powerful and effective to bring about the truly colossal changes in attitude necessary to put the world on the right track again.

In the past, religion has been perhaps the greatest molder of attitude in human history. The founders of the major faiths, though lacking in wealth, education and worldly position, have caught the imagination of hundreds of millions of people over centuries of time, causing them to act in keeping with the tenets of their faith and inspiring them to harmonious, loving, unselfish relations with their fellow believers. The fact that numerous horrors have been perpetrated in the name of religion only shows by contrast the loss when the original pure spirit of each faith declined.

Today religion is very much on the defensive. The reasons are not hard to find: the stubborn insistence of many denominations on illogical propositions which have lost the confidence of scientific man; the retention of practices and attitudes long outmoded which seriously retard the development and application of modern methods of technology and social and humanitarian organization; the archaic terminology and concepts so often used; the failure of the church to play a meaningful role in the daily life of the people, a failure which is now being rectified to some extent; the ease with which proponents of freedom of conduct can demonstrate that moral prohibitions of many of the denominations were added by fallible church leaders long after the founding of the faith; the resistance of much of religion to change in a very fast moving world. As Alfred North Whitehead commented in Science and the Modern World: “Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.”

Most seriously, religion’s cause is damaged by its divisiveness. The eternal struggle between the various denominations within one major faith, often over minor doctrinal matters, is topped only by the hopeless cleavage that separates the major faiths. No wonder that people who are looking for a unifying force turn away from an institution which seems to be one of the world’s great battlegrounds.

And yet there is more and more agreement that the root cause of our conflicts is the lack of a spiritual dynamic strong enough to animate people toward a cooperative, cohesive attitude, something that religion has done very well in the past.

Gray: Salvation on the Campus. Harpers, May, 1965. p. 54

Whitehead: Science and the Modern World. Mentor Edition, New American Library (paperback), p. 188

[Page 11] If we expect eventually to develop a successful world government and an international approach to economic and social relationships, we must bridge the tremendous spiritual gaps generated by the very different points of view of the several world religions as they are taught today. The answer would seem to be a universal faith, which will instill love and cooperativeness in men’s hearts, and bring all the world’s peoples together in unity and understanding, rather than develop in them a sense of competitiveness, mistrust and hatred.

Most Christians will probably have one of two reactions to this proposal: either 1) the idea sounds good but is completely utopian and impractical and can never be carried out; or 2) it is obviously the only answer and must be achieved by revitalizing Christianity in some manner, by reconciling its internal divisions and bringing the world under Christ’s banner. Yet neither of these positions is an effective one. The first is an admission of defeat. If we cannot avoid religious regionalism we shall be unable to generate a spiritual dynamic strong enough to move the whole world and to counteract the fiercely entrenched prejudices and hatreds manifest in today’s conflicts; we must be resigned to having them with us indefinitely. Yet we have seen that experts believe these discords must be resolved reasonably soon lest modern society reach an untenable position and be placed in grave jeopardy.

It is perfectly natural that dedicated Christians should feel sincerely confident that most of the world could be converted to Christianity and thus bring the period of religious strife and separation to a close. Belief in the uniqueness of Christ’s divinity and spiritual authority, and the ability of the Bible to answer all human needs forevermore, carefully fostered by ecclesiastical leadership down through the centuries, lends strength to such a conviction, even in the face of the serious schisms which exist within Christianity itself. Yet little thought is given to the possibility that a Muslim, for example, considering the same issues, might feel just as strongly and sincerely, and with just as much historical and scriptural justification, that the world could eventually find its spiritual leader and guidance in the person and teachings of Muhammad.

For a Christian to be converted to Islam, he must accept Muhammad as a greater Prophet of God than Christ, something most devoted Christians would consider inconceivable. Yet this would be a less severe adjustment than the Muslim’s, were he to embrace Christianity. The Qur’án gives recognition to the station of Christ as a Prophet of God, just as the Bible does to Moses and other Prophets of the Old Testament, while the Christian Churches do not accord Muhammad any spiritual authority whatsoever; if he became a Christian, the Muslim would be faced with the necessity of totally repudiating the Prophet he loves and reveres. And these are the two most recent of the established religions. An even greater gap separates them from older Faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism, whose origins are more obscure, whose current teachings and practices are less firmly grounded and more susceptible to the distortions of centuries of adjustment to historical pressures. Yet each of these great religions of the past dominates the lives and actions of important segments of humanity, with Christianity, the largest numerically, accounting for less than a third of the world’s population.

No, it is too much to hope that religious unity on a world level can be achieved through global conversion to any of the existing Faiths. Faced with such a dilemma, and with a loss of confidence in the traditional churches, more and more people are writing off religion as a bad job and turning elsewhere for answers. This is a sad and unnecessary and illogical move. Just because the religions [Page 12] of the past, with all the distortions they have suffered down the centuries, aren’t meeting the needs of a radically different world doesn’t mean that religion itself, which has accomplished incomparable feats in past ages, has suddenly lost its potency. What is needed is an exciting new approach to religion which will overcome the stumbling blocks found in the older Faiths, will meet the special needs of our very special period in history, which will be both rational and logical on the one hand and deeply inspiring on the other. A new religious approach, in short, which will fulfill the admonition of a London editor quoted by Dr. Glenn Hoover as saying: “No proposal for the evils of our time should be considered unless it takes our breath away.”

Bahá’ís believe that these conditions are met by the breathtaking teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of the Bahá’í World Faith. These teachings have three cornerstones: Progressive Revelation; reestablishment of God’s Covenant; and the Oneness of Mankind.

Progressive Revelation is, in effect, a new explanation of the origin of religion and the nature of its influence on the development of civilizations. Bahá’ís believe that this principle will make the establishment of a universal Faith a practical possibility in the years ahead.

Starting with the premise common to all revealed religions, that there is a Creator (God), whose full essence is unknowable to His creatures, but who loves man, the highest manifestation of His creation on this planet, and desires to guide his development, the Bahá’í Faith teaches that God accomplishes this by periodically sending an educator, who brings God’s Word and infinite wisdom to a mankind floundering without it. These teachers, who are called Manifestations or Messengers of God, are physically like other men, but have been selected by God for this divine purpose, and therefore have been given His special guidance. They are not regarded as being God incarnate, but they do reflect all the divine attributes of God, as a mirror reflects the sun without the sun being in it, and when they speak in spiritual terms they are considered to be speaking the Word of God. They are the channels through whom God’s love, spirit and wisdom flow, and are the one source of man’s knowledge of God.

The essence of Progressive Revelation, the process by which God communicates with, guides and inspires mankind, is its continuously developing nature. As Lecomte de Nouys suggested in Human Destiny, man has been physically evolving for many millions of years and has now reached a relatively advanced and mature stage. Concurrently, there has been a spiritual evolution which started much later, and which has reached merely the stage of adolescence. Mankind is like a student in school, who is continuously growing in his needs and in the complexities of his relationships, and also in his capacity to absorb knowledge and put it to practical use. Each grade becomes more advanced as the student matures, and builds on the cumulative knowledge from previous grades. So God, in His infinite wisdom, has sent mankind a succession of teachers, each bringing a message particularly suited to His era, each inspiring and eventually guiding civilization to new heights of unity, social organization and creative endeavor.

These are the teachers who founded the great religions of the world. The first ones came before recorded history, but of those known today the Bahá’ís recognize, among others, Krishna, Buddha, and Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad. Each is regarded by Bahá’ís as a divine Manifestation of God, and none is considered greater than another. The religions they founded, in their original form (which may bear little resemblance to the form in which they exist today),

London Editor: Quoted by Prof. Glenn Hoover of Mills College in an address before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco a few years ago and reprinted in The Commonwealth, the journal of the Club. The name of the editor was not given.

[Page 13] are equally genuine and authentic, being parts of a single continuously evolving religion.

Bahá’ís believe that these Manifestations of God perform three primary functions: 1) They restate and reemphasize the eternal spiritual verities—teachings such as the golden rule and man’s responsibility to God, which are to be found in all the great scriptures; 2) They bring laws and ordinances which apply God’s wisdom to the problems facing society at a given time and place. These are not necessarily meant to be permanent, for society keeps changing, and the needs of one century may be very different from the needs of another. The failure to recognize this is responsible for many of our modern religious anachronisms, and is the source of most of the contradictions in religious institutions; 3) They bring an intangible but nonetheless powerful spiritual dynamic which gradually, over a period of several hundred years, permeates society, reaching the hearts and minds of millions of people, awakening them to sense the truth and divine origin of the Prophet’s words, quickening their finer instincts, arousing their impulses toward love for and unity with their fellow men, and causing them to practice these teachings in their daily lives, thus making possible a high degree of social progress. These founders of great religions have been humble men, usually without worldly wealth, power or prestige, yet they have had a far greater influence on the development of civilizations than any other class of persons. They have possessed a special quality denied to others; Bahá’ís believe it is this spiritual dynamic which enables them to serve as God’s channels, helping mankind to make the right choices, to recognize the truth and to put it to use.

Bahá’ís consider that these Manifestations of God have been mainly responsible for the upward thrust of each cycle of civilization. The Prophets have come when they were most needed, when mankind had rejected religious and spiritual values as vital influences, when society was characterized by war, crime, immorality and materialism. Their teachings, example, and spiritual dynamic, channeled through a new Church, gave their followers renewed moral and ethical standards, furnished momentum to the forward progress of a new civilization. But in time these constructive influences were weakened through the cumulative emphasis by fallible Church leaders on ritual and dogma; difference of interpretation created schisms; and gradually negative forces became predominant again in society. When the need for a new spiritual impetus was great enough, it was again provided; but not from a revitalization of one of the religions of the past; rather, it came from a new Manifestation, sent to renew God’s impulses on earth and to carry on the work of his predecessors, just as the baton is passed to each new runner in a relay race.

This point of view, Bahá’ís believe, makes possible a reconciliation of all the major religious Faiths. The Christian, for example, need not give up his belief in Christ as a divinely inspired Prophet of God, nor accept anyone else as a greater Prophet. He will merely widen his horizon to include the founders of the other great Faiths as equal channels of God’s Word. Admittedly, it will be difficult for many Christians, convinced of the uniqueness of Christ’s divinity, to adjust their thinking, and admit that others have shared this authority and authenticity; it will be no less difficult for Muslims to bring themselves to believe that Muhammad was not the greatest nor the last of the Prophets, and for Jews to accept Christ and Muhammad as Messiahs. But having made this adjustment themselves, Bahá’ís who come from all Faiths, find even greater inspiration and strength from the unifying concept of the Oneness of God and all His Prophets. And the possibility [Page 14] of such an adjustment on the part of many millions of people becomes more realistic when one understands that religious convictions today, deep and sincere though they may be, stem nevertheless largely from accidents of birth. Very few people have objectively examined the teachings and practices of all of the world’s Faiths, and based their personal choices upon such a rational comparison. It may well be that convictions arising mainly from environment may be more easily altered in the face of reason and the pressures of a rapidly changing social order,

But some catalyst is necessary to bring this about. And here the Bahá’í teachings touch specifically on the problems of our day. We believe that this era is comparable to others in the past when Prophets came to renew and revitalize the influence of God among men. Certainly it is an age when religion is not a dominant influence. We have endured two world wars and are threatened with a third; we are burdened with the cancer of widespread racial prejudice; we have conflicts, disunity and crime, immorality, neuroses, and tensions; we find many people desperately seeking an answer to their spiritual needs; some are seriously questioning the existence of God, or whether He still lives. From the lessons of the past we should expect the spiritual renewal we need to come, not through a revitalization of one of the older Faiths, but from a new Manifestation of God. And exactly this, Bahá’ís believe, has occurred. Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, a Persian who was born in 1817 and who died in 1892, claimed to be and is accepted by Bahá’ís as God’s Manifestation for this day. We are confident that in time His teachings and the spiritual dynamic He brought to the world, whose effects are already being felt, will lead mankind away from division toward unity, away from materialism toward spirituality, away from conflict toward cooperation.

Bahá’u’lláh has opened up new theological horizons, clarifying metaphysical questions which have been but dimly understood and are the subject of controversy. He has explained the meaning of many of the more obscure and difficult passages of the Bible, the Qur’án and other great scriptural writings. He has laid down a moral code with the highest standards, yet freshly created in our own age and with contemporary needs in mind, and has provided the principles whereby an individual can live a happy, purposeful, and satisfying life and meet without flinching the problems imposed by our modern society. But most of all He has renewed the Covenant of God, that through His Messengers God will undertake to help man and guide him out of his difficulties, and that on his part man must honor the teachings of God as given by His Manifestations, and follow and practice them in his daily life. Once more Bahá’u’lláh has emphasized the responsibility of man towards God and his fellow man, urgently needed in this age when so many people judge a religion by the return in material success, well-being, or “peace of mind”, at the cost of a minimum of effort and sacrifice on their part. The two-way nature of our relationship to God must be firmly reestablished in our consciousness if an enlightened society is to be created.

In addition, Bahá’u’lláh goes further than any of the Manifestations of the past in offering laws and principles to govern our political, social and economic relationships. He has, in effect, given the world a pattern for its future society. Underlying this is the principle which is the third of His major contributions: the Oneness of Mankind. We have reached the close of the Age of Prophecy, the age of regional religion, and are entering the Age of Fulfillment, the era of World Faith. For the first time in history the world is physically and technologically ready to be united. God, through Bahá’u’lláh, is telling us that we must also become united spiritually, politically, and economically, if we are to survive to realize the tremendous [Page 15] potential for constructive development which science has made possible.

“That one indeed is a man,” says Bahá’u’lláh, “who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race . . . Let your vision be world-embracing rather than confined to your own self . . .Ye are all the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one branch, the flowers of one garden . . . The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men . . . The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”

To supplement this idea, Bahá’u’lláh has given a series of principles which, in total, represent a blueprint for the kind of society which must evolve to meet the realities of the present age. He advocates a federated world government with sovereignty over universal issues, an international police force to enforce its decrees, a world court to adjudicate its legal questions, and an international language to simplify communication between all the peoples of the world. He specifies an international approach to economic problems, with a gradual removal of barriers to world trade and of extreme inequalities of income. He decrees the abolition of war in all its forms. He urges the elimination of conflict between religions, and through the principle of Progessive Revelation makes this a practical possibility. He condemns all forms of prejudice and superstition, particularly racial prejudice. A true Bahá’í is not even aware of race, but appraises each person for his individual qualities alone.

Bahá’u’lláh teaches that there is no basic conflict between science and religion, that both deal with levels of reality necessary to man, and that man should make full use of both. There is no irreconcilable conflict between economic classes. There must be universal education, and equality of men and women. Finally, Bahá’u’lláh advocates the independent investigation of truth on the part of each individual, free of any form of coercion, based on serious and unfettered study.

All of these principles are interrelated. None can be achieved without the others, and all are dependent upon the change of heart which mankind will first achieve through the acceptance of the religious teachings and spiritual revelation God has sent through Bahá’u’lláh. Intellectually, one might approve of these social ideas and yet feel they were hopelessly utopian. We believe that when combined with the potentials for spiritual unity and reinvigoration contained in the Bahá’í World Faith, they are well within the reach of accomplishment.

Today there are Bahá’í communities in more than 260 countries and territories of the world, with members drawn from almost every racial, religious and economic background. These Bahá’ís feel closely bound by ties of spiritual fellowship, and together truly represent a universal Faith. To the best of their ability they are putting all of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings into daily practice, and are thus helping to bring a world order into being. For this to spread to a good fraction of the world’s population will be only a difference in degree.

The Bahá’í Faith is active, not ascetic. Work performed in the spirit of service is considered to be a form of the worship of God, and the most enlightened man is he who takes his place in society, contributing to the productive process and demonstrating by example the wisdom of Bahá’u’lláh’s principles.

A Bahá’í administrative system is being developed which differs in many important respects from the Churches of the past. Ritual is minimized, form simplified. There is no professional clergy. Functions it ordinarily performs are carried out by Bahá’í institutions at the local, national and international level, elected periodically from the membership by a truly democratic process. This brings each

Bahá’u’lláh: Faith for Freedom, p. 14

[Page 16] Bahá’í into active participation in the affairs of his Faith, which expects a great deal of him. No one is a casual bystander. The process is not always easy, for many of the Bahá’í principles contradict prejudices and attitudes carried over from earlier life, or prevalent in one’s environment. People do not change overnight. But an energetic effort to apply these principles is being made and considerable progress achieved in such difficult fields as race relations and the instilling of spiritual attitudes in group consultation.

As a result, participation as an active Bahá’í is a dynamic and exciting experience. Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings give the individual a creative purpose in life, and strong, helpful guidance in meeting the many problems and pressures imposed by today’s civilization. Bahá’ís understand and apply the admonition: “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you become is your gift to God.” They find that the Faith offers them strength, support, and spiritual direction, yet allows them much leeway in working out their own destinies.

At the same time, the Faith draws much of its own strength and momentum from its individual members, so that they have a strong sense of active participation, of belonging, of contributing to a cause that is of crucial importance to the future of mankind. For the Bahá’í Faith is a very young Faith, its members relatively few, its task tremendous, and thus the value of the efforts made by individual Bahá’ís today is incalculable. They often feel in a comparable position to the early Christians, a small, little known minority group, keeping alive a spiritual spark sent by God which, at the proper time, will burst into flame, spread throughout the world, destroy prejudices and attitudes which stand in the way of unity, and lay the groundwork for a great world society, based upon principles of justice, mercy, love and cooperation. Bahá’ís consider that their own administrative system is a laboratory or pilot plant model of this future world order, differing only in degree; that it is proving that these principles really do work; and that some time in the future, under conditions which none of us can foresee, the world will become aware of this successfully functioning organism in its midst and will be ready to follow.

And so Bahá’ís are hopeful. They do not know what difficulties lie ahead, while men persist in following so many negative paths. They may not live to see the brighter day, but they are confident that in time the healing, unifying teachings of Bahá’u’lláh will reach and animate human hearts, and that the world will then face a noble future, foreshadowed in these words of the late Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, Shoghi Effendi:

“The Oneness of Mankind . . . represents the consummation of human evolution . . . an evolution that has had its earliest beginnings in the birth of family life, its subsequent development in the achievement of tribal solidarity, leading in turn to the constitution of the city-state, and expanding later into the institution of independent and sovereign nations.

“The principle of the Oneness of Mankind, as proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, carries with it no more and no less than a solemn assertion that attainment to this final stage in this stupendous evolution is not only necessary but inevitable, that its realization is fast approaching, and that nothing short of a power that is born of God can succeed in establishing it.”

Shoghi Effendi: Selected Writings, p. 39

[Page 17]

EXCERPTS FROM DISPATCHES WRITTEN DURING 1848-1852

by Prince Dolgorukov, Russian Minister to Persia

The early days of the Bábí dispensation, the religion which heralded the birth of the Bahá’í Faith, attracted the attention of a number of Western writers. The first European to deal with the origins of the new religion at any length was Joseph-Arthur Comte de Gobineau whose Les religions et philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale became a classic. He was followed by a number of French, English, and Russian scholars, of whom E. G. Browne was the most distinguished. However, no nineteenth century scholar had access to the diplomatic documents preserved in the British, Russian, and other state archives. More than fifty years had to pass after the martyrdom of the Báb and of some twenty thousand of his followers before historians could examine the dispatches sent to their respective governments by the British and Russian ministers in Tehran.

Historically these documents are disappointing. Bábí and Bahá’í historians, several of them eyewitnesses to the events they described, gave infinitely more accurate and comprehensive accounts. Most foreign diplomats proved to have been defective observers, poor analysts, and indifferent reporters. Yet their testimony is valuable. They are, in spite of their biases, an independent and, to some extent, an uncommitted source.

Some of the dispatches of Prince Dimitrii Ivanovich Dolgorukov, Russian minister in Tehran from 1845 to 1854, were published almost two decades ago in an appendix to M. S. Ivanov’s book, The Babi Uprisings in Iran. Since none of these documents has ever appeared in English, WORLD ORDER has decided to publish a number of them in translation.

Prince Dolgorukov was not a trained Orientalist, nor was he a scholar of any kind. It is improbable that he knew either Persian or Arabic and his knowledge of Islam must have been slight. He was not too well informed on the situation in Persia and did not learn of the existence of the Bábí religion until 1848. Even then his first references to it were virtually meaningless. It is probable that in 1848-1849 Prince Dolgorukov had only one source of information: the Persian government, which, of course, was not interested in enlightening a foreign diplomat on such a difficult internal issue as the rise of a new religion and its own attempts at suppressing the movement. Later Dolgorukov’s knowledge increased as he came into contact with a number of Bábís in Tehran, including one employed as an Oriental secretary by the Russian Legation itself.

Being accredited to Naser ed-Din Shah and in almost daily contact with his prime minister, the notorious Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Nezam, Dolgorukov saw the rise of the new religion through the eyes of its persecutors. As the representative of one autocrat at the court of another, he sympathized with the attempts of the Shah to control the population and prevent the spread of ideas which might [Page 18] threaten the established order. The brutality of the massacres unleashed by the government against all followers of the Báb, including women and children, revolted Dolgorukov and brought about a change in his attitude. He began to distrust the information supplied by the government and to admire the courage and dignity of Bábí martyrs.

The dispatches which appear below offer only a partial and distorted view of the birth of a new world religion. They ought to be read in the context provided by such works as Nabíl’s Dawnbreakers and Shoghi Effendi’s God Passes By. Yet they are important for the reconstruction of one of the most stirring and significant periods in the religious history of mankind.

Document No. 1

DOSSIER No. 177, TIHRAN, 1848; pp. 49-50.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 6; February 4, 1848.]

For some time now Tihran has been subject to the influence of sinister predictions. A Siyyid, known in this country under the name of “the Báb,” who was exiled from Isfahan due to a rebellion which he caused there and who last year, on my demand, was removed from the vicinity of our frontiers, to which he was exiled by the Persian Government, has recently circulated a small compilation in which he foretells an impending invasion by the Turkomans as a result of which the Shah would have to leave his capital.

Those predictions would hardly produce a quieting result in a people of such a volatile character as the Persian people . . ..

Document No. 2

DOSSIER No. 177, TIHRAN, 1848; p. 360.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 94; December 24, 1848.]

Several times already I have informed the Imperial Ministry of the Muslim sectary who is called the Báb. This fanatic who, due to the disorders which he tried to produce in different provinces of Persia, was removed on my demand from Russian borders, is now under strict surveillance in a village not far from Urumiyyih. He styles himself the nayib [representative] of the twelfth Imam. His harmful doctrines have found many adherents; and three days ago news was received that the latter have attacked some inhabitants of Mazindaran between Sari and Barfurush and have killed about 100 men, among whom is the sarkardih [chief] of that province, named Mustafa Khan.

After several conferences which took place between the Amir [Prime Minister] and the most influential nobles of Mazindaran, who are now in Tihran, it was decided to use military force against the furious sectaries and Prince Mahdi Qasim Mirza was ordered to double his vigilance toward the leader of these new disrupters of public order.

Document No. 3

DOSSIER No. 177, TIHRAN, 1849; pp. 80-81.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 15; February 23, 1849.]

The news from Khurasan communicates nothing decisive, but during the last two days there is talk of new successes of Salar [a princely contender for the [Page 19] throne of Persia] in his struggle against the Shah’s troops. However, no matter how serious this question may be, it has not preoccupied society to the same extent ever since the sectaries of the Báb have apparently had the tendency to grow in all parts of the Kingdom. The Amir confessed to me that their number can be already put at 100,000; that they have already appeared in southern provinces; that they are found in large numbers in Tihran itself; and that, finally, their presence in Adhirbayjan is beginning to worry him very much. In truth, there are rumors that in Zanjan they have appeared 800 strong, and that by their presence, they threaten to disrupt the public order.

Document No. 4

DOSSIER No. 177, TIHRAN, 1849; pp. 136-137.

[From the dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 25; March 15, 1849.]

The alarming situation in connection with the disturbances, which are at this very moment taking place in the Astarabad province, has necessitated a military guard for the so-called anbars [store houses], but until today my demands to the Persian cabinet for a corresponding guard as a defense from plunder have been in vain.

During several months the Amir postponed the consideration of my demands. All my notes in this connection were left unanswered. An official communication which I have just received from Muhammad Ali Khan . . . informs me, at last, that my demand has been considered and that 30 men have already been appointed for the protection of our storehouses.

News from this region is awaited with anxiety because at this time it is far from certain that the Shah’s troops, which have been sent against the Bábís, have had any success in the struggle against these dangerous sectaries.

I have the honor to enclose a very interesting report which has just been delivered to me from our consul in Astarabad. He gives an exposition of the history of their appearance in Mazindaran and confirms the information, which I have myself already given to the Imperial Ministry, about the failures of the attempts of the authorities of that province to compel them to obedience by force of arms. It is maintained that Malik Qasim Mirza has received a secret order to execute the leader of these fanatics [the Báb], who is incarcerated in a fortress near Urumiyyih. But the Governor of Adhirbayjan refused to do this, fearing to provoke a rebellion of the people. There is no doubt whatsoever that such a measure would have made them even more audacious and dangerous.

Appendix to Document No. 5

DOSSIER No. 177, TIHRAN, 1849; pp. 142-145, No. 25.

[Copy of the report of the consul in Astarabad to the Russian Imperial Minister Plenipotentiary, Dolgorukov, at the Persian Court, February 26, 1849, No. 28.]

Last autumn there arrived in Mazindaran from Khurasan a crowd of the followers of the newly formed sect, known under the name of Bábí, the founder of which, Siyyid Ali Muhammad, who calls himself the vice-regent of the twelfth Imam, is now in Adhirbayjan.

Having made their way into Mazindaran, they occupied several villages in the environs of Barfurush and began to lure into their sect the inhabitants of Mazindaran. Their numbers from the very start began rapidly to increase. Their chief, Mulla Ḥusayn of Bushruih, in whom fearlessness and enterprise are joined to cunning and efficiency, managed the affairs of the sectaries so successfully that [Page 20] in a short time their numbers increased to 1500 men. Possessing considerable amounts of money, and being favored by local inhabitants, the Bábís fortified themselves in their abode, dug around their retreat a deep trench and stored food as well as everything else necessary for a siege of several months.

The governors of Mazindaran realized the danger which the presence of this crowd engendered for the peace of this province and twice tried to penetrate their retreat and destroy the crowd. The first campaign was undertaken by Muhammad Quli Khan, the son of Abbas Khan, who ruled the province in his father’s absence; the second, by the now Governor of Mazindaran, Mahdi Quli Mirza. Both campaigns ended ingloriously for the Mazindaranis who were repulsed with great losses.

Encouraged by the arrival of Abbas Quli Khan of Larijan, Mahdi Quli Mirza again collected the Mazindaran militia, but in even greater numbers, and undertook a new siege of the refuge of the sectaries. This time all measures were taken to prevent the Bábís from making a surprise attack upon the besiegers; guards were posted, all possible order was established in the camp; briefly, everything was so arranged that this time the question, whether the Governor of Mazindaran could manage the Bábís with his own forces, had to be finally solved.

Having stood for two or three weeks within sight of the Bábís, with whom, it seems, they were afraid to fight, the Mazindaranis finally decided to storm, but the assault was unsuccessful . . . .

Having no hope that the local militia could cope with the sectaries and fearing that they might become stronger and create disturbances in Mazindaran, I deemed it necessary to report to your Excellency about all the above-mentioned events, which could, in my opinion, soon become very important.

To this, I have the honor to add that the Persian Government cannot pacify these sectaries except by sending here some capable and brave person with a detachment of regular troops and several pieces of artillery. In the army of Mahdi Quli Mirza there are several cannons, but it seems that no one knows how to use them.

Document No. 6

DOSSIER No. 178, TIHRAN, 1849; pp. 53-54.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode No. 32, April 21, 1849.]

In a political report I may not paint a less gloomy picture. According to the information received from Mazindaran, Sulayman Khan Afshar, who was commissioned to subdue the Bábís by peaceful means, has failed in his attempts.

Attacked by Sardar Abbas Quli Khan Larijani and Sulayman Khan, who wanted to take the fortifications by force, those fanatics, in spite of numerical inferiority to the attackers, repulsed them; and the Sardar himself received a bullet wound in his shoulder.

Document No. 7

DOSSIER No. 178, TIHRAN, 1849; p. 93.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 36, Mariam-Abad; May 5, 1849.]

According to the latest news received by the Government of the Shah, the expedition against the Bábís in Mazindaran has put an end to his worries.

When, according to the Prime Minister, those fanatics risked leaving the little fortress where they had fortified themselves, the troops of Abbas Quli Khan [Page 21] Larijani and Sulayman Khan Afshar engaged them in combat, as a result of which 1300 men were left on the battlefield. Others maintain, and their stories sound less suspicious to me, that the Bábís were invited to leave their fortifications in order to come to a friendly agreement; and when they were coming out, they were attacked and pitilessly slaughtered by the troops of Sulayman Khan.

Perhaps you, Your Excellency, will think that the successes thus achieved are more worthy of pity than defeats, because the indignation which these successes arouse in questions where religious fanaticism is supreme, excites the spirit of a new and even more dangerous resistance.

Document No. 8

DOSSIER No. 133, TIHRAN, 1850; pp. 100-105.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 11, February 12, 1850.]

Minds are in an extraordinarily excited state due to the execution [of several Bábís] which has just taken place in the great square of Tihran. I have already once expressed my opinion that the method by which last year the troops of the Shah under the command of Prince Mahdi Quli Mirza exterminated the Bábís will not lessen their fanaticism.

From that time on the Government has learned that Tihran is full of these dangerous sectaries who do not recognize civil statutes and preach the partitioning of the property of those who do not join their doctrine. Becoming fearful for the social peace, the ministers of Persia decided to arrest some of these sectaries and, according to the common version, having received during an interrogation their confession of their faith, executed them. These persons, numbering seven, and arrested at random, since the Bábís are counted already by thousands within the very capital, would by no means deny their faith and met death with an exultation which could only be explained as fanaticism brought to its extreme limit. The Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mirza Muhammad Ali, on the contrary affirms that those people have confessed nothing and that their silence was interpreted as a sufficient proof of their guilt.

One can only regret the blindness of the Shah’s authorities who imagine that such measures could extinguish religious fanaticism, as well as the injustice which guides their actions when examples of cruelty, with which they are trying to frighten the people, are committed without distinction against the first passer-by who falls into their hands. . . .

Document No. 9

DOSSIER No. 133, TIHRAN, 1850; p. 137

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nesselrode, No. 16, March 2, 1850.]

Rumors of hostile intentions of the Bábís are circulating here; and if those intentions have not yet turned into a manifest rebellion as in Mazindaran it is none the less true that the harmful doctrines of these dangerous sectaries find a response among the masses and do not cease to worry the Government. In Zanjan, which is situated halfway between Tihran and Tabriz, their number reaches 2000 people and the ideas spread by them among the people incite common discontent.

Document No. 10

DOSSIER No. 133, TIHRAN, 1850; pp. 470-471.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, No. 59, Mariam-Abad, July 31, 1850.]

[Page 22] The Government has exhausted all possible means to compel the Bábís to submit voluntarily. Muhammad Ali, who heads the two or three hundred of those fanatics in Zanjan, has fortified himself in one of the quarters of the said town and terrifies the inhabitants. The Amir was finally forced to take energetic measures, and the former beglerbegi of Tabriz, Muhammad Khan, has just been sent against them with an army of 2000 men and four cannons.

Document No. 11

DOSSIER No. 134, TIHRAN, 1850; p. 562.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, No. 72, Mariam-Abad, September 14, 1850.]

The disorders of Zanjan are not yet coming to an end. The Bábís, who are engaged there in a life and death struggle against the troops of the Shah, are still resisting the attacks of Muhammad Khan, and one can only wonder at the fierceness with which they meet the danger of their situation. Their leader Mulla Muhammad Ali, has appealed to the Turkish Minister, Sami Effendi, and also to Colonel Sheil for their mediation. However, my English colleague is of the opinion that it would be very difficult to force the Persian Government to consent to foreign intervention in favor of the above mentioned sectaries.

Document No. 12

DOSSIER No. 133, TIHRAN, p. 582

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, No. 78, Tihran, October 6, 1850.]

I think that it would have been better if they [the Persian government] had given more serious attention to the affairs of Zanjan. The Bábís have been fighting against 6000 of the Shah’s best troops for almost five months now, and Muhammad Khan, who is already master of three quarters of the city, cannot take the quarter where they have fortified themselves and are defending themselves with a heroism and a fury worthy of a better application. It is maintained that the former Beglerbegi [military commander] of Tabriz is not distinguished by personal courage, and that the demoralization of the troops he commands has reached extreme proportions. Here they give no thought to the force of religious convictions which, under the present circumstances of Persia, are necessary for the solution of problems which are rarely settled on the battle fields.

Document No. 13

DOSSIER No. 134, TIHRAN, 1850; p. 99.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, No. 84, Tihran, November 9, 1850.]

New military units have just been dispatched against the Bábís of Zanjan. This time the Governor of that city, a brother of the Shah’s mother, Amir Aslan Khan, is accused of provoking the resistance, which the Bábís offer the Shah’s army, by his incautious behavior.

Document No. 14

DOSSIER No. 134, TIHRAN, 1851; p. 156.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, No. 93, Tihran, December 26, 1850.]

The Zanjan disturbances have ended. After a siege which lasted for almost six months the Shah’s troops have destroyed the center of the rebellion. The Bábís who defended themselves to the last, and whose numbers were finally reduced to [Page 23] twenty men, who sought refuge in a cellar, were torn to pieces. In addition to monetary expenditures, this struggle has cost Persia 1500 in killed and disabled.

Document No. 15

DOSSIER No. 158, TIHRAN, 1852; pp. 501-503.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, Mariam-Abad, August 11, 1850.]

I have already said once that religious questions are not solved on the battle field.

As was to be expected, the Government, in reply to the attempt on the life of the Shah, began to arrest people accused of belonging to the sect of the Báb. Neither the massacre of Mazindaran, nor the slaughter in Zanjan would lessen the ardor of these sectaries, for recently an unwelcome discovery was made that many of them are hiding in Tihran, and that among the members of that sect there are people of all classes, not excepting even persons closest to the throne.

The Government think that they have an accurate list of the participants in the attempt of August third. They learned that four of them were hiding in the village of Zargandih for the past month. The Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote me a letter, asking permission to search that village. I immediately ordered the Ghulam-Bashi [Chief Servant] of the Legation to join the agents of the Persian Government to observe their search, and they found one of the persons on their list. This arrest led them to two more men who were seized by the ghulams [servants] of the Shah in a place called Ivin (Evin), located at the distance of one farsakh [about 3.5 miles] from Zargandih. The fourth person happens to be a relative of the Mirza of the Legation. He is accused of Bábism, and being a Persian subject whose name is not entered in the list of my employees must appear before the authorities.

The two accused persons arrested in Evin were transferred to Zargandih the same night and placed in the house of one of my servants. The ghulams of the Shah did not want to lead them to Niavaran at once, saying that they might be attacked on the way, but I insisted that they be transferred immediately, and gave them a guard of ten soldiers and an officer of low rank from the detachment which guards the Russian camp.

For a long time there has been imprisoned in Tihran under the surveillance of Mahmud Khan, Chief of Police, a Bábí woman. In spite of this she apparently found means daily to gather around herself many members of her sect. She was strangled in a garden in the presence of the Ajudan-Bashi. Four others were cut into halves. Burning candles were inserted into their flesh, and while they were thus led around the streets of the city, the poor creatures cursed the Shah and expressed joy at dying with such pomp, because such a death assured them the crown of martyrdom.

Who could dispute the right of the Government of the Shah, or rather of the Shah himself, to administer justice? However, making no distinction between real accomplices in the attempts and the thousands of persons professing Bábism, he excites even more the fanaticism of these sectaries and thus exposes himself to a very serious danger.

Document No. 16

DOSSIER No. 159, TIHRAN, 1852; pp. 508-509.

[From a dispatch of the Minister in Tihran, Dolgorukov, to Seniavin, No. 56, Mariam-Abad, August 12, 1852.]

[Page 24] Three days ago the Persian Government sent a messenger to St. Petersburg to announce the happy outcome of the attempt on the life of the Shah.

The repulsive spectacles which we have been witnessing since that fatal event have forced me to visit Mirza Agha Khan and personally let him understand, in the interests of the Persian Monarch, the necessity of putting an end to this, or at least, making a distinction between the real accomplices to the crime and persons who merely profess the doctrines of the Báb. I did not at all hide from him the danger to which the Shah is exposing himself by failing to limit to some extent the public executions, and that he must not kill just because he is free to put to death whomsoever he pleases.

The Sadr-Aazam [Prime Minister] entirely shares my opinion, but at the same time he confessed to me that he is having difficulties fighting against the irritation of the Shah and the provocations of those who imbue the Shah with the desire for vengeance, namely, his mother and his Farrash-Bashi [Chief Executioner]. The number of the above mentioned persons has already reached nine; and it is planned to distribute among the chief personages of the court, the army and the clergy, several Bábís, whom they would kill with their own hands.

Here they talk about all of this with a joyful air, trying to make people think that all this slaughter is a most common and natural thing.

NOTES

[Page 25]

MY RELIGIOUS FAITH

by Bernard Leach

Bernard Howell Leach, C.B.E., is a world-famous potter. He founded the Leach Pottery, St. Ives, Cornwall. Mr. Leach has exhibited widely abroad, and lectured in the United States under the sponsorship of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Winner American Ceramic Society Binns Medal 1950; Honorary D.Litt. Exeter University 1961; author: A Potter’s Book; A Potter’s Portfolio; Japan Diary; A Potter in Japan.

(At the close of 1953)

TO MY FRIENDS:

Some of you know that I am a Bahá’í, to others the name is strange. In any case I feel under an inward obligation to tell you as simply as I can what the World Faith of Bahá’u’lláh means to me.

I don’t know if I have justified my existence as an artist. I think I had a small genuine gift and a strange calling in a great cause—the meeting of East and West. But I have come during the last year to see that the meeting in art and in craft is only a fragment of a far greater vision—Bahá’u’lláh’s, of the unity and maturity of mankind—and that my secondary cause is dependent upon the primary, therefore I must go to the centre. By which I mean accepting Bahá’u’lláh as the latest in the series of Prophets who have established the religions of man.

At the front and head of all saints, poets, artists, and philosophers, stand great figures, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Gautama, Christ, Mohammed, and, I believe, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, shedding light and love upon mankind—the milestones of human evolution. No power of kings and conquerors, nor even of genius, can compare with the sway which Their authority has exercised throughout recorded history, until day has turned to night and men have twisted Their Teachings to suit their own small purposes. In Europe the decay began with the Renaissance, infected the Reformation and led on to industrialism, materialism and individualism. Here we are after two world-wars more and more uncertain whether we can escape an atomic catastrophe and unable with all our hard-won democratic freedom to put forward an answer to the present dilemma.

We have neither the light nor the love and we are all of us so enclosed in our little shells of self that we cannot recognize the Light when it shines. Our Christian light came from the East, where the continents join; Bahá’u’lláh’s light shone in Persia and Palestine a century ago. He recognized and united the Teachings of all the Founders of religions providing thereby a true basis for World Peace and Unity. The fact is we have lost the common denominator, God, called by whatever name. We are nowhere near a frame of mind, of sufficient humility, to listen even to a Christ or a Buddha, and for that, if for no other reason, we shall have to pass through a third disaster of the kind to which we have devoted our main energies. Bahá’u’lláh states, as His Predecessors did, that it is through the Prophets that man apprehends something of the inscrutable nature of God. This century will, He says, see universal peace and the beginning of the maturity of mankind as a whole. He has left a great body of writing and a complete Plan of World Order based upon man’s relationship with God, man’s relationship with Himself, and man’s relationship with man. His followers are now scattered all over the world quietly disseminating His way of life. Bahá’í literature has been translated into some 60 languages (About 300 by 1966).

[Page 26] I first heard the name Bahá’í from Agnes Alexander in Tokyo in the early days of the First War. We asked what had brought her to Japan and I was struck by the quietness of her smile when she answered, “You will not understand, but I came because a little old Persian Gentleman asked me to come.” That little old Persian Gentleman was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the Founder of the Faith. I did not understand, at the time, but years later when I met Mark Tobey, the American artist, at Dartington Hall (Devonshire) I learned about the Faith from him. Much of the Teachings appealed to me from the first, the marriage of East and West, the inter-relationship of the great religions, the significance of true art and true crafts as worship, the equality of men and women, the absence of prejudice, superstition, priests, great wealth and great poverty.

But as an individualist seeking my own interpretation of the meaning of life and art, attracted by painters and poets and mystics, I resisted Mark as long as he remained in England. I felt pushed by propaganda and antipathetic to revelation and religious authority. But left to myself I found that I could not forget the utter selflessness Of the Founders of this Faith and the fire which it kindled in the hearts of Their followers causing many thousands to accept torture and martyrdom with radiant acquiescence in the corrupt background of modern Persia. It was a repetition in a Mohammedan environment of the history of the early Christian martyrs, and in a parallel cause.

The Forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, Ali Mohammed (The Báb, or Gate, as He is called), was shot after only a few years of teaching; Bahá’u’lláh and His son, Abdu’l-Bahá, were imprisoned for 40 years. Yet from out of the prison walls in the ancient fortress of Acca in Palestine, this Universal Call has spread at the time of the greatest need. But the claim of Bahá’u’lláh is tremendous, not only identity with His Predecessors, but also as the Second Coming of Christ. For some years this was too much for my habit of thought and skepticism. However, I did eventually accept the Faith, openly, but there remained a hidden wavering on this issue which undermined my activity and this has only broken down during this last year. I cannot hope to explain this change entirely in terms of logical thinking but neither can I explain the experience of art, and it was out of my experience as an artist and as a craftsman—not just as a half-believing Bahá’í—it came about during this year of travel with my old friends, the leaders of the Japanese Craft Movement, Yanagi and Hamada.

It began at the International Conference of Craftsmen at Dartington Hall in 1952. There I realized more clearly than in my own workshop at St. Ives that it is a mere handful of artist-craftsmen who are producing new and living work to supply the whole world’s need. A mere drop in the bucket, and not pure at that, because this new kind of individual craftsman is almost as isolated as the painters and poets are, and as a consequence just as abnormal: Trees twisted out of shape by the prevalent winds of life.

At St. Ives during the last 15 years or so we have been attempting to form a cooperative team of craftsmen with a commonly felt sense of what is right to make in answer to the needs of people like ourselves—work which flows from the whole man, from the heart as well as the head and hands. That group is working now on its own, without me or my son David. It remains to be seen how much fresh life they can infuse into a tradition which I started on a personal basis. During these years of experiment, David and I discovered the importance of the life behind work,—tradition—the values held in common—which gave unity and normality of [Page 27] beauty to pots made by groups of unknown potters in old England, Persia, Japan, China, Korea, or anywhere else. We admired and emulated such work but were ourselves far removed from it.

Our pots by comparison look made, theirs born. At our Conference we found that craftsmen from all over the world were experiencing the same change and the same difficulties. When we reached America we encountered thousands of self-conscious individual craftsmen without root and without the desire or capacity to cooperate. We recognized this as reaction from extreme mechanization. My distaste with over-stressed individualism grew stronger. I admire most the art in which there is a power greater than that of the individual, less of the desire to shine, for It shines, not the me. From Yanagi and Hamada, I learned much—the words of Yanagi and the actions of Hamada. There was also a long and memorable meeting with Dr. Daisetsu Suzuki in New York. I asked him about Zen and Shin Buddhism—the lonely road of self-discovery and the broad road of humility— “Jiriki Do” and “Tariki Do”. He replied that there was no conflict between them —the essence of Buddhism lay behind apparent opposites in a land of nakedness or “thusness”, that the path of the individual was hard—that either path could be an imprisonment—but that the more one gave of oneself to the “Other Power” the more it saved. I came a step nearer.

In Japan I have found the old truth and beauty of crafts dying with the life which gave them birth. The culture of Japan was defeated by the civilization of the west before the war began. Arnold Toynbee—the historian of our time— explains it clearly. Japan has gone headlong into industrialism and lost the ballast of her inheritance. This process is reflected in the modern Japanese Craft movement which is nevertheless the most unified and widespread in the world today. There are just two or three creative men in it who have managed to bridge the gulf between East and West. They are the pioneers—the men of Zen; where they can go others will follow, but it is still the same drop in the bucket as in the West. It is a leaven of individualism which does not begin to answer the great communal need. A Hamada cannot be in 50 traditional potteries at the same time showing the bewildered country craftsman what to do and what not to do. It takes a man’s whole life and energy to do his own work as an artist, or as a craftsman, faithfully and perhaps help a chosen few with latent capacity, to find their own feet.

He can, and should, I believe, if he is unselfish and has a capacity for leadership, gather a team and work in a group, for that is the nature of most hand-crafts. It is a step in the right direction; but there is little or no ground for belief that it will give us the impersonal truth or beauty in ordinary things which was normal before the Industrial Revolution. Any man’s work for everyman. It seems to me that only in that way can the empty bucket be filled. But anyman does not live and work in that way unless he is in deep unity with his fellows, unless he shares faith with them. Toynbee also says, “Unity is the only alternative to self-destruction in an Atomic Age.” If, as I believe, this is true, we must seek a road towards human unity. Primarily this is the province of religion rather than of art. To attain unity, a religion of man containing within itself the essence of the existing faiths is the basic requirement. A religion produces a culture: A culture produces characteristic traditions and arts. But religions are not produced synthetically. They have been given out by the Great Prophets, whom Bahá’ís call Manifestations, who claimed a Divine Source of inspiration. I believe that Bahá’u’lláh was a Manifestation and [Page 28] that His work was to provide the spiritual foundation upon which the society of mankind could be established.

In becoming a convinced Bahá’í, the only discarding of slowly gathered convictions has been the replacement of self at the center of the circle by—“The Other Power”,—God—and the result has been strange, for the jig-saw pieces begin to fall into place—seemingly by themselves.

BERNARD LEACH

[Page 29]

SOCIAL DISADVANTAGE— THE REAL ENEMY IN THE WAR ON POVERTY

by Daniel Jordan

Daniel Jordan is Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, as well as Director of the Institute for Research in Human Behavior at Indiana State University. He is active in aiding disadvantaged students as a director of one of the Upward Bound Programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity.

In August of 1964, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act and two months later appropriated $800 million to help initiate an all-out war on poverty. During 1965, $1.5 billion were appropriated for poverty programs, and another $1.7 billion is expected for the current year.

These sums appear almost outrageously high until the enormity of the resources required to win the war is grasped. Thirty-five million people—9.3 million families with 12-15 million children, approximately one-fifth of the population —live in conditions of poverty or near poverty. In 1962, 5.4 million families had annual incomes below $2,000; some five million unrelated persons who lived alone or were without family ties had incomes below $1,500 and at least three million had incomes below $1,000.

Even if low income were to be regarded as the basic problem—the enemy in the war—the 1965 appropriation of $1.5 billion when divided among thirty-five million persons amounts to about $43 per capita each year. That is less than 83¢ per week per person. This tiny sum is not even enough to make any difference in the amount and quality of food each recipient could buy. If the $43 in cash were to be given to every poor person, the whole appropriation would simply evaporate without leaving a trace. Even if $1,000 could be given to each person directly it would probably have only a little immediate effect but no permanent consequence.

Seen in this light, the $1.5 billion appropriation is hardly significant. The only possible way that it may have significance is for it to be used in mobilizing special resources against the real enemy in the war—an enemy that has been difficult to identify because it has been and still is so well camouflaged.

Contradictory values in our own cultural heritage make it difficult to see through the camouflage and discern objectively the crucial factors that perpetuate poverty and which up to now have inhibited any effective action against it. On the one hand, millions of poverty stricken families living in unsanitary urban slums and rural shacks cannot comfortably be ignored by a society which claims a Judaic-Christian conscience as part of its heritage. Yet, on the other hand, to [Page 30] do anything about it that will have significant results will cost several billions annually more than is currently being spent on the poverty program. That fact in itself is enough to cause considerable ambivalence, but the issue is confused even further by the traditional notion that there is something spiritually elevating about poverty and that we should therefore not be overly concerned about eradicating it. Many religious orders make vows of poverty a requirement of membership and Sunday school teachers teach that the poor are blessed. Though it may be difficult for some to understand, many have indeed found some blessing and spiritual upliftment in the kind of poverty that consists only of the lack of material things, so long as minimum shelter and food are available. Among such blessings are release from the burdens of maintaining and looking after material belongings, freedom from the many legal and economic worries that are associated with owning property and being pressured into accumulating more, and having time available to feast upon the fruits of man’s religious, esthetic, and philosophical heritage. Those possessing intellectual and spiritual riches are the only ones who can, in fact, feel the blessings of poverty as narrowly defined above, and they are the only ones who have ever advocated poverty as a means of spiritual growth. When such persons have taken vows of poverty, they pledged to give up only material things. More than likely, the decision to take such a vow in the first place is predicated upon a certain intellectual and spiritual outlook that reflects a kind of non-material wealth which is not included in the vow as something to be given up.

Poverty more broadly defined as a cultural condition, however, is entirely different from a mere absence of material wealth. For those born into it, no riches of mind can be accumulated, little awareness of identity can grow, and there is almost no hope for the expression of individual potential. Instead, disease, sickness, insecurity, hunger, cold, and injustice prevail and there is little opportunity and no incentive to develop mind or spirit. An environment with these traits will also spawn a high rate of crime, delinquency, and mental illness. As a cultural condition, then, poverty bestows no blessings, and whatever spiritual elevation might be achieved by those whose lives are immersed in the culture of poverty will be largely in spite of it rather than because of it.

The camouflage is made up of many other beliefs which further impede action against poverty. There is, for instance, a general acceptance of the idea that the poor are inveterately lazy, without initiative, and, in the case of the non-white poor, innately inferior. From this premise it easily follows that what the poor have is what they deserve. When beliefs of these kinds are coupled with the old conviction that as the nation grows economically, poverty will automatically disappear by itself in spite of the characteristics of the poor, a bulwark against remedial action is reinforced. In light of this background it is not too difficult to understand why there has been no dramatically significant and nation-wide efforts made to reduce poverty before 1960.

During the ten or fifteen years prior to 1960, however, there was an increasing loss of faith in the general economic growth of the nation as the basic solution to the problem of poverty. Widespread unemployment among the poor, an alarmingly high average annual high school dropout rate, and the condition of poverty among 35,000,000 citizens in spite of economic growth have been disillusioning. Even the many good efforts to provide decent housing, place people on relief, create jobs, and distribute food have had, by themselves, few enduring effects. The disillusionment was good. It forced government agencies to collaborate with institutions [Page 31] of higher learning and private research organizations in a search for the critical factors of poverty and how they affect the personalities of the poor.

As a result of these joint efforts, much data has been collected and analyzed. Obviously there are many different ways of interpreting the data. Each interpretation defines the problem differently and leads to the formulation of a different kind of attack. But no matter what or how vigorous any of the attacks are, if the real enemy is not identified, the war will be inevitably misdirected and ultimately lost.

One way of looking at the data has been particulary promising as a means of pinpointing the real enemy. Virtually all of the basic factors which have been discovered to underlie the conditions of poverty can be traced to various kinds of disadvantages inherent in most of the social relationships which the poor are able to establish. Social disadvantage thus emerges as the real enemy in the war on poverty. The significant victory of the war will come when it is permanently removed.

Conviction that this in fact is the enemy has come largely from finally recognizing and accepting one glaring reality about poverty—that it perpetuates itself by a vicious circle that is sustained through social relationships. Seen in cultural terms, this is perfectly understandable. As used here, culture refers to ways of thinking, feeling, and acting which are transmitted from one generation to another through learning. People born into poverty learn to think, feel, and act in ways that adapt them to living in poverty, but they do not learn, and under ordinary circumstances cannot learn, how to think, feel and act in ways which insure survival in a non-poverty social and physical environment such as that characteristic of the middle class.

The process of cultural transmission from one generation to another is mediated by human beings through the social relationships they have. Since the rate and volume of cultural transmission is greater during the early years of life, the social relationships of these years are the most crucial. If his primary relationships are with middle-class people, a child will have a middle-class culture transmitted to him, and he will adapt to this kind of environment with facility. Similarly, the relationships that a child born into poverty will have are going to be with other poor people who will transmit to him ways of thinking and behaving that will, to be sure, adapt him to a poverty environment, but which will also vastly increase the probability of his failing in school. This, in turn, will very likely doom him to a life of poverty which he will then transmit to his own children, thereby completing the vicious circle. To win the war on poverty means, therefore, to break into the circularity of poverty.

Social disadvantage—the real enemy—lies, then, in the fact that one who is born into poverty cannot have social relationships with those who can transmit to him what will enable him to leave a poverty environment and still survive. When compared with others who can have such relationships, he is clearly disadvantaged socially. From this disadvantage springs nearly every other kind of disadvantage that might be mentioned.

The full force of this disadvantage is hard to grasp without an understanding of the nature of learning and the socialization process. A few concrete examples will help to demonstrate its magnitude.

Since attaining success in school is generally speaking the quickest way to break out of poverty, much of the deleterious power of social disadvantage can be understood in terms of the ways in which it precludes the possibility of a person’s [Page 32] developing the skills and abilities on which success in school depends. The socially disadvantaged young person is almost always educationally disadvantaged. He became that way because he lacked, when he was growing up, the many important experiences that the non-disadvantaged person has to prepare him for achievement in school.

Paramount among these experiences that are lacking among the poor are those which in middle class society are mediated through relationships with family members. Ordinarily, the disadvantaged young person experiences little or no family conversation which would stimulate him to ask questions, provide him with answers, extend his vocabulary, encourage him to explain and defend his point of view, and most basic of all, give him practice in listening to whole sentences which express meanings that acquaint him with the powers and pleasures of abstraction—the basis of intellectual activity. He will also have no example set by others who are significant to him of persons who read and thereby convey to him the value of reading and writing. No one will read to him and he will have no chance to learn to speak standard English. There will be few play materials available to him to stimulate his imagination and develop hand and eye coordination. Without these experiences and many others like them, young people have no opportunity to develop aspirations to participate and succeed in learning activities that will equip them for survival outside the subculture of poverty; their judgments about time, number, and other basic concepts are apt to be poor; they are likely to have underdeveloped powers of auditory and visual discrimination; chances are that they will have little self-understanding, confusion about their worth, low self-esteem, and no sense of a personal future.

As lengthy as it might appear, this is nonetheless only a partial list of ways of thinking and acting that are not transmitted to the children of the poor because they do not have social relationships with people who can transmit them. It is long enough, however, to demonstrate concretely the magnitude of the disadvantage. Its ramifications are even more staggering when viewed in the light of extensive data recently examined by Dr. Bloom, Professor of Education at the University of Chicago. This data suggests that around 50% of a person’s intelligence measured at the age of 17 is already determined by the age of 4, and another 30% of the development of intelligence takes place between the ages of 4 and 8. For all practical purposes, social disadvantage guarantees deprivation of basic experiences which are crucial to the development of intelligence. Moreover, the debilitating effects of this kind of deprivation are in many cases relatively permanent and in all cases extremely difficult to reverse.

From an acceptance of social disadvantage as the real enemy, it logically follows that the strategy for waging the war on poverty should be developed around two basic campaigns: one to remove social disadvantage so that oncoming generations will not perpetuate the culture of poverty, and the other to reverse the efiects of deprivation among the millions who are already its victims.

One may well ask at this point whether or not the generals waging this war— the three branches of the federal government and all of the public and private agencies collaborating with them—have agreed that social disadvantage is, in fact, the enemy. The answer to that question, as yet not fully answered, could turn out to be the best part of the story.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision concerning school desegregation paved the way for legislation which may be considered the monarch of all the laws passed to help in the struggle against poverty—the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Without its [Page 33] provisions which strike at the basis of legalized institutionalization of social disadvantage, no war on poverty could conceivably be carried out. It struck powerfully at the heart of the enemy. Following in the wake of that victory came the Economic Opportunity Act which created the Office of Economic Opportunity. This office has vigorously assumed responsibility for inaugurating a number of programs to break into the vicious circle of poverty and reverse the effects of deprivation. Under its auspices Community Action Agencies have come into being throughout the nation. They carry out, often in collaboration with other public and private agencies, such programs as Headstart (for pre-school children of the poor), Upward Bound (for disadvantaged high school students to prepare them for college), legal services programs of various kinds, and Foster Grandparent programs. In the Job Corps, youth are trained so they can become employable. VISTA (Volunteers to Service in America) is the nation’s domestic Peace Corps. The Department of Labor sponsors the Neighborhood Youth Corps which provides work and recreation for young people who would otherwise quite likely become a social liability. Rural loans for farmers in need are available from the Department of Agriculture, and small business loans are available from the Small Business Administration to help maintain small businesses which are useful to the economy and will provide jobs for those needing employment. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare administers a full spectrum of educational programs to reduce poverty. The Higher Education Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, both passed in 1965, provide millions of dollars for a direct attack on poverty through education on all levels. The Manpower and Development and Training Act authorizes the Department of Labor to implement research and training programs designed not only to remove poverty but also to utilize human resources valuable to our economy.

What has happened so far is very encouraging. There is, however, another kind of social disadvantage which is less obvious, but an enemy nonetheless. This is the disadvantage of the non-poor when they try to administer programs for the poor—a kind of social disadvantage in reverse. Information about the feelings and behavior of the poor is obviously essential to the success of any program that is supposed to eradicate poverty. Yet, many who are working in the programs have had no meaningful relationships with people who are poor and therefore have never had experience with the ways of thinking, feeling and acting characteristic of the poor. Social disadvantage clearly works both ways and can make the planning and execution of poverty programs extremely trying and difficult.

Very few affluent people can see this latter kind of social disadvantage as a disadvantage because they are usually completely unaware of its effects. Yet, in some ways it is even more insidious than the former kind because it is institutionalized and therefore easily ignored and extremely resistant to change. In its role of educator of the poor, the public school is one obvious example of institutionalized disadvantage in reverse. The faculty and administrative personnel of almost all public schools are disadvantaged when it comes to understanding and educating the poor, and it has caused them to fail in that job. This failure, responsibility for which in all fairness must be shared by other institutions, is tangibly evident in the one million annual dropouts, the 7-9 million functionally illiterate adults, and another 10-12 million under-educated Americans. It is a failure costing the taxpaying citizen billions of dollars annually to support welfare programs, penal institutions, courts, mental hospitals and police forces on municipal, state and national levels. Around $20 billion are spent each year on job creation, relief, food [Page 34] distribution, and special housing programs, all of which are over and above the special programs that have been recently initiated as a part of the war on poverty. It is a bad enough disadvantage for the affluent to have to bear this financial burden, but the disadvantage is further increased because these funds are used in a way that does not eradicate poverty but in fact helps to perpetuate it. In essence, the money goes to help keep the poor alive and since it is not used to remove social disadvantage, it has the effect of enabling the poverty culture to be transmitted from one generation to another.

Unfortunately not too much has been done about removing social disadvantage in reverse. Although a great deal of research has yielded very useful information about poverty and its effect on human beings, it is frequently unknown or not applied by poverty program administrators, particularly on the local level. In any case, knowing things about other people from reports on research is one thing; feeling comfortable and being effective in cooperating with them is another. Having the former doesn’t necessarily guarantee the latter. One clause in the Economic Opportunity Act reflects an understanding of this problem. It provides for a close working relationship between the poor and the non-poor in carrying out poverty programs. This provision, found in Title II of the Act, requires that the Community Action Programs be “developed, conducted and administered with maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups” being served. On theoretical grounds alone, it could have been predicted that this “maximum feasible participation” clause would cause a great deal of controversy. In effect, it calls on people of two different cultures, who don’t know each others’ ways of feeling and acting, to cooperate in a massive revolution of major aspects of our society.

Implementing the provision has, in fact, been extremely difficult in many cases, and has almost always proved controversial. Yet, understood in terms of the harm that lack of close communication and joint efforts without a democratic spirit can do, this provision is of profound importance in the long-range success of the whole anti-poverty effort. Without it, the war against poverty could easily turn into a war against the poor.

In spite of the controversies over the stipulation of maximum participation and the loud cries of the critics against other aspects of the poverty program, the prospects are good; some would say even thrilling. Besides bringing hope and restoring dignity to the lives of millions, the government will have its investment in each participant of poverty background returned many times over as each one successfully enters or rejoins the labor force. Not only will he not be using public funds by being on welfare or not adding to the crime rate, but he will be paying annual income tax at a rate which will undoubtedly amount to a good deal more than the cost of the services he received while participating in one or more of the programs. It is also certain that public education will never be the same in this country because of the new approaches in education being developed to assist in the war on poverty. These new developments and related research findings will be of benefit to everyone. But more than all that, in recognizing social disadvantage for what it is, the nation acknowledged the spiritual nature of man and assumed a moral obligation long ignored. The effect this can ultimately have on all men everywhere stirs the imagination. It could well be the harbinger of a 20th century renaissance.

[Page 35]

WORLD ORDER

A Bahá’í Magazine

EDITORIAL BOARD

Dr. Firuz Kazemzadeh

Dr. Howard Garey

Mr. Monroe E. Michels

Mrs. Muriel B. Michels

AN OPEN LETTER

After a lapse of eighteen years World Order again provides a forum for those who are convinced that only through unity can mankind escape destruction and move resolutely toward a world civilization. Our editorial policy may be deduced from the very title of our magazine and from the contents of its first number, but an explicit statement of this policy will be useful.

We are providing an opportunity for the discussion of a vast number of problems which must be solved if the goal of a unified and peaceful humanity is ever to be achieved; whence our interest in the poverty question, with which Professor Daniel Jordan deals in these pages; in the social implications of racial and cultural differences, and in the physical and anthropological facts which underlie such differences; in linguistics, as a clue both to the nature of human thought and to cultural differentiation—in short, in the whole range of social and ethical problems.

The past, from which we seek instruction and inspiration, will be dealt with, and we will publish from time to time historical materials such as the dispatches of a nineteenth century diplomat which appear in this number. The esthetic side of life will not be neglected. No statement on this score can be more eloquently persuasive than the essay of Bernard Leach, which we are privileged to reproduce here.

Believing that religion is the source of man’s highest aspirations and ultimately the only force capable of leading humanity to peace and unity, we will deal with every aspect of the Bahá’í Faith, as well as with other religions of the world. Arthur L. Dahl, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, contributes to our first number a lucid introduction to the Bahá’í Faith.

Thus our magazine represents a dialogue among those, whether Bahá’í or not, whose efforts to understand and do something about the human condition have brought them to a point at which the exchange of ideas and insights will be of common benefit.

THE EDITORS

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BE generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression. Let Integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body of mankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, e shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility.

—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH