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World order

SUMMER 1971

PAUL TILLICH AND MY RELIEGIOUS SEARCH

Grace Calí Feldstein

THE GROUP PHENOMENA

Jane McCants

ON BECOMING A BAHÁ’Í: A PERSONAL STORY

Rachel Fort Weller

EDUCATION FOR WORLDMINDEDNESS

Gayle Morrison

THE MUSLIM CLERGY AND THE PEACOCK THRONE

Firuz Kazemzadeh

[Page 0]

World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 5 NUMBER 4 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER 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:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

ROBERT HAYDEN

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

GAYLE MORRISON

Subscriber Service:

MEG LUCKINBILL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 112 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription: Regular mail USA, $4.50; Domestic student rate, $3.50; Foreign, $5.00. Single copy, $1.25.

Copyright © 1971, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

IN THIS ISSUE

1 Disarming for Universal Peace

Editorial

2 Interchange: Letters to and from the Editor

5 Paul Tillich and My Religious Search

by Grace Calí Feldstein

15 On Becoming a Bahá’í: A Personal Story

by Rachel Fort Weller

21 The Little Ways That Encourage Good

Fortune, a poem by William Stafford

22 The Group Phenomena: Experiences in

Evanescent Community, by Jane McCants

32 Education for Worldmindedness

by Gayle Morrison

42 The Muslim Clergy and the Peacock Throne

a book review by Firuz Kazemzadeh

Inside Back Cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue

[Page 1]

Disarming for Universal Peace

THE WORLD is an armed camp. Most of its wealth, energy, and ingenuity are spent on stockpiling, servicing, and updating weapons whose full use would result in nothing less than the extinction of mankind. Although weapons themselves do not start wars, their production strains the economic resources of every nation, while their availability increases the temptation to use them. Therefore arms control and disarmament must form part of any serious plan for the achievement and maintenance of world peace. Addressing the kings of His day, Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed: “Observe the injunctions laid upon you in His Book, and take good heed not to overstep their limits. Be vigilant, that ye may not do injustice to anyone, be it to the extent of a grain of mustard seed. Tread ye the path of justice, for this, verily, is the straight path. Compose your differences, and reduce your armaments, that the burden of your expenditures may be lightened, and your minds and hearts may be tranquillized. Heal the dissensions that divide you, and ye will no longer be in need of any armaments except what the protection of your cities and territories demandeth.”

The entire history of international relations testifies to the inability of sovereign states to prevent war. The only true remedy is to establish a union of nations of the world. Such a union must be embodied in a sacred pact and “All the forces of humanity must be mobilized to insure the stability and permanence of this Most Great Covenant.”

The issue of armaments touches upon the central problem of modern civilization: its capacity to produce almost unlimited material power and its incapacity to feed man’s starving inner self. Half a century ago ‘Abdu’l-Bahá pointed out that material civilization will not of itself bring about the felicity of mankind:

Consider! These battleships that reduce a city to ruins within the space of an hour are the result of material civilization, likewise the Krupp guns, the Mauser rifles, dynamite, submarines, torpedo boats, armed aircraft and bombing aeroplanes—all these weapons of war are the malignant fruits of material civilization. Had material civilization been combined with Divine civilization, these fiery weapons would never have been invented. Nay, rather, human energy would have been wholly devoted to useful inventions and would have been concentrated on praiseworthy discoveries.

A spiritualized civilization will light “candles of unity” that will illumine “the world’s darkened horizon.” To unity in the political realm will be added unity in endeavor, unity in freedom, unity in religion, unity in nations, unity of races, and unity of language. It is the striving for the achievement of these goals that will bring about universal disarmament and peace.

[Page 2]

Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

WORLD ORDER has, from time to time, published articles examining the process by which persons of enormously varied backgrounds were led to seek a spiritual and social fulfillment larger than that which they had inherited from their families or had taken for themselves. The search these people have undertaken has led them to examine the claims of the Bahá’í Faith, and finally to commit themselves to a new Faith—a Faith which not only is dedicated to the elimination of religious prejudice, but which proclaims that the absence of religion would be preferable to religious discord, and which promises the new believer fulfillment of the traditions of his former commitment. Such was S. P. Raman’s “My Quest for the Fulfillment of Hinduism” (Spring 1969) and John Huddleston’s “A Letter to My Friends” (Winter 1969-70).

In this issue, Grace Calí Feldstein provides a brief glimpse of her years as secretary to Paul Tillich at Harvard University. At the same time she shows how a world-famous theologian unwittingly helped her, who is not a theologian, to find “the unifying thread” which Tillich said he sought for tying religions “all together.” Rachel Fort Weller, who wrote as a Quaker in the Fall 1969 issue of WORLD ORDER, describes the process of convincement by which she became a Bahá’í. Less than two years an adherent of her new religion, she demonstrates in her article the luminous spirit of the new race of men who build without destroying, who find fulfillment without repudiation, who experience rebirth with continuity.

For those who seek spiritual and social meaning within the framework of revealed religion, there are many, many more who search outside the boundaries of religion. Disappointed in the failure of the religions of the past to cope with the needs of a growing world community and desperate for a sense of personal and community worth, these people have turned in increasing numbers to groups—T-Groups, growth groups, sensory awareness groups, marathon groups, encounter groups, sensitivity groups, integrity groups. Widely reported in the press is the instant sense of euphoria and belongingness which group participants experience. Not so widely discussed in the lay press are the unpleasant consequences which this expedient (desperate, for many) may have. WORLD ORDER is happy to see this popular movement analyzed in an article by Jane McCants, who brings to the subject her professional competence as a psychologist as well as her wise perceptions as a Bahá’í.

About a group movement of a very different sort, Gayle Morrison, in her essay on education for worldmindedness, asks a very practical question. When one discovers that one is in fact living in a world society, how does one begin to educate oneself and one’s children, in the home and in the schools, to live in that society? To wait for the problem to “solve itself” is tantamount to doing nothing; it leaves ringing in one’s ears ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's admonition, “Were there no educator, all souls would remain savage, and were it not for the teacher, the children would be [Page 3] ignorant creatures.” To face the problem squarely can be immediately frightening. But one can take hope—and direction— from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s observation that “as diseases in the world of bodies are extremely contagious, so, in the same way, qualities of spirit and heart are extremely contagious.” By consciously accepting all mankind as the outer perimeter of one’s many concentric loyalties, one can begin the process of socialization that would make the individual fit to live in a peaceful and integrated world community.

To the Editor

THE POLITICS OF FAITH

A. L. Lincoln’s “The Politics of Faith: A New Political Culture” (Winter 1970-71) is an original, provocative, and articulate exposition of his subject, a superb complement to Daniel C. Jordan’s previous article, “In Search of the Supreme Talisman: A Bahá’í Perspective on Education” (Fall 1970). The Jordan article focuses on the Bahá’í Faith as more than simply a new religion; he sees it as a total cultural matrix within which Bahá’ís are being re-educated and educating their children in the “new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” generated by Bahá’u’lláh. “The Politics of Faith” beautifully delimits the constitutional and political framework of that emerging Bahá’í culture and should dispel any lingering notion that Bahá’ís are uninvolved in or irrelevant to the problems of the body politic. Following on the Jordan article, “The Politics of Faith” makes it clear that the Bahá’í Faith constitutes a total life system —an organic social, political, and cultural whole becoming recognized as not only a dramatic alternative to the secular order of the day but the real revolution with which everyone must sooner or later come to terms as it creates its new realities.

One might wish to read Mr. Lincoln’s speculations on that future political culture or his observations on existing communities where the Bahá’í institutions have been long established and in which the Bahá’í culture may be already taking firm root. Furthermore I would have liked to see Mr. Lincoln elaborate more explicitly on the extent to which the Bahá’í system is relevant “to the issues which need to be discussed in American politics.” Considering the complexities and vastness of his subject, however, Mr. Lincoln has admirably limited his study to the “essential features” of the Bahá’í system and therefore succeeds in his attempt “to set forth a provocative alternative” to the current political issues in the world. Mr. Lincoln has made a valuable contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the dynamics of the Bahá’í Faith, and I look forward to reading more of his work in the pages of WORLD ORDER.

GARY L. MORRISON

Northampton, Massachusetts

The statement on the bottom of the first column of page 28, Winter issue, 1971 [A. L. Lincoln’s “The Politics of Faith”] “. . . and the parental duty to educate the children, are left entirely between the individual and God” seems to be different from my understanding that local houses of justice will make the parents educate their children.

DR. AMRU’LLÁH KHELGHATI

New Orleans, Louisiana

Ed. Note: In the Tablet of Ishráqát, Bahá’u’lláh proclaims: “It is decreed that every father must educate his sons and daughters in learning and in writing and also in that which hath been ordained in the Tablet. He who neglects that which hath been commanded, if he is rich, it is incumbent on the trustees to recover from him the amount required for the education of the children; otherwise the matter shall devolve on the House of Justice. Verily, We have made it an asylum for the poor and needy.” (Bahá’í World Faith, Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956, p. 200.)

[Page 4]

Evening Prayer

Magnificat. Luk. 1.

My soul doth magnifie the Lord : and

my spirit hath rejoyced in God my

Saviour.

For he hath regarded : the lowlinesse

of his handmaiden.

For behold, from henceforth : all generations

shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified

me : and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear

him : throughout all generations.

He hath shewed strength with his arm : he hath scattered

the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath

exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things : and the rich

he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel :

as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his

seed for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the holy

Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be :

world without end. Amen,

Or this psalm.

Cantate Domino. Psal. 98.

O sing unto the Lord a new song : for he hath

done marvellous things.

With his own right hand, and with his holy

arm : hath he gotten himself the victory.

The Lord declared his salvation : his righteousnesse

hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen.

He hath remembered his mercy and truth toward the house

of Israel : and all the ends of the world have seen the salvation

of our God.

Shew your selves joyfull unto the Lord, all ye lands : sing,

rejoyce, and give thanks.

Praise

[Page 5]

Paul Tillich and My Religious Search BY GRACE CALÍ FELDSTEIN

1958

“IT’S Bill Pinkerton, director of the News Office here at Harvard,” I said to Professor Tillich, my palm covering the phone.

He nodded and reached for it from my hand, “Yes, good morning, this is Tillich here.” A pause as he listened. “Yes, of course, I will be glad to do so, but it is better that you explain the details to my secretary—one moment, I will give her to you.”

After a quick exchange, I replaced the phone. “Well, simple enough. They want a two-page description of your biographical data for news releases and publicity material that goes out to places where you have speaking engagements. Of course, not so simple—they would like you to sum up in one paragraph the essence of your theology!”

He threw up his hands in mock horror. “Ach! Indeed, not so simple! Thirty years I take to build my system of thought and they want it digested in a paragraph. You Americans are incredible!”

“It is quite a challenge,” I answered wryly.

“We will do it, though—and now,” he said with a determined thrust of his lower jaw. “They need it quickly and I do not want this hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. Now, you have all the other routine material for the rest of it? Will you work it up into a draft and then we will finish it with this paragraph about my theology that I will dictate to you.”

I murmered assent.

“You have your notebook ready?” He leaned back in his chair, elbows resting on its arms, head back, eyes closed, and his fingertips meeting lightly in a spatulate pressure.

I waited quietly. A soft, steady sound of rain spattered against the window opposite Tillich’s desk. I bent over my steno pad as he started dictating:

“Professor Tillich builds his theology on the method of correlation between questions arising out of the human predicament and the answers given in the classical symbols of Christianity.” He stopped abruptly. “No, wait. Cross out Christianity. Make it the answers given in the classical symbols of religion.”

I made the correction and glanced up at him. “That’s a very significant change, Paulus.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed quietly.

“But I see now more and more that you cannot be confined even to the category of Christianity, let alone to the limiting one of Protestantism. You always seem to be reaching out for the universal.”

“Of course,” he said. “I am always seeking the unifying thread that will tie it all together.”

I leaned forward intently. “Paulus, do you think it will ever be possible to have a world religion that will take in all the different religions?”

“I have given it much thought, Grace,” he answered, when a knock came at the door. Crossing the room quickly, I opened it to find Tillich’s teaching assistant, Bob Kimball, ready to escort him to his eleven o’clock class at Emerson Hall.

“Ah, good, it is you, Bob,” said Tillich. “Grace has just asked me a very interesting question about whether syncretism is possible. Come sit down for a moment before we leave for class.”

So that was the theological term for it, syncretism. I had come across it a few times [Page 6] in my readings recently and had neglected to look it up.

Tillich explained, “I have very great doubts that syncretism would ever be successful, for it would be an artificial attempt to put together arbitrarily some elements of one religion, some from another, and another— and the result would not have an integrity of its own. No, a religion to be valid must arise out of a real life situation with its own special revelation. Every religion must have its own symbols that are living, growing realities that express the greater reality of God. But, as I keep saying, symbols cannot be produced; they must be born and grow naturally.”

“It’s a popular question among your students today,” Kimball said. His voice took on a note of concentrated earnestness. “They ask how can Christianity relate itself in a meaningful way to the other world religions, especially now with the growing dialogue going on between East and West.”

Tillich nodded, “Yes, you are very right, Bob. In fact, my friend Hans Simons at the New School in New York has just asked me to deliver a series of lectures there on six Monday nights on that exact subject. I tried to get out of it; I am certainly no expert on comparative religions; but they insist—they say they want a fresh viewpoint. It won’t be easy. But come, Bob, it is time to go.”

As I helped the professor into his black wool topcoat, I turned to Bob with a smile. “He even has me doing some homework for him—finding out whom he should be reading in modern Islamic thought.”

Tillich shook his head ruefully, “Yes, I have been so busy with my own work. These meetings last year with Hisamatsu and the Zen Buddhists helped in that area, but I have not at all kept up with Islám the way I should.”

“And,” asked Bob, “who is the Islamic thinker he should be reading?”

“Iqbal,” I replied. “Sir Muhammad Iqbal —the philosopher-poet from India who is regarded as the spiritual founder of Pakistan. Remind me to tell you about him the next time I see you.”

“Yes,” said Tillich, “it is really amazing that our thoughts are so parallel. Yet this so often happens—the same ideas come at the same time to different people—unknown to each other.”

“Exactly,” I added. “Look at Teilhard de Chardin and the book of his that someone sent you—L’Avenir de Dieu. And you’ve never even heard of each other.”

Tillich nodded. “Again, there is the universal principle working out—all knowledge is one. But come, Bob, we will be late.” And they left me to the silence of my thoughts as I gathered up my notebook and folders to head back to my desk in Andover Hall.

I had stumbled across the rather strange fact that Iqbal was educated in many of the same German universities as Tillich. With Iqbal’s being born in 1876, nine years before Tillich. they were almost contemporaries, although the Muslim scholar had died in 1938. I had been amazed at the similar qualities of their thought as I leafed through the book Tillich was now delving into: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.

Both thinkers were dynamic, penetrating, and analytical. And no subject was too sacred for a radical reexamination. Each one was trying to reawaken the vital spirit of his faith among his contemporaries by constructing a system of thought and language that would make religion once again relevant. Both Tillich and Iqbal were steeped in philosophy and psychology, and both possessed a keen appreciation of the arts. In order to create a dialogue with the dispossessed intellectuals of their time—who had almost in toto rejected any form of religion—they had to speak the language of Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, Jung, Dostoevski, and van Gogh.

Walking briskly through the inner courtyard [Page 7] formed by Divinity Hall and the Biology Labs on my route to Andover Hall, I felt a surge of sureness about my discovery. Unquestionably, Iqbal was to Islám what Tillich was to Christianity. Who would be the first scholar to stumble across it, I wondered.

1965

PAUL TILLICH had retired from Harvard three years before and was now at the University of Chicago. He proved to be my personal catalyst to creativity, and in 1965 I found myself in New York struggling to actualize my newly discovered interests in writing and singing. Underlying it all flowed a restless spiritual search which was reflected in one of my first published articles:

“. . . it is almost redundant to say that probably a large percentage of them [jazz musicians] have deserted their formal religious background precisely because organized religion has been long on hypocrisy and short on reality. Is this not why so many thoughtful persons over the past two generations have deserted all forms of organized religion? This is just as true within Judaism as in Christianity (Catholic and Protestant), and also in the other world religions of Islám, Hinduism and Buddhism. For years now, there has been a quiet, but devastatingly effective, worldwide revolution against all organized religion.

“The answer to the why of this is rooted in the almost schizophrenic tension that has resulted from religion’s encounter with modern science—and psychiatry. In most people’s lives, religion has become more and more pushed off to a dusty corner as one scientific discovery after another has toppled cherished religious beliefs into the ash can. Almost too late in this century there has emerged the corrective theological scholarship that attempts to reinterpret the symbols of religion so that they have meaning to man today.

“One of the most monumental efforts along these lines has been done by the world famous philosopher-theologian, Paul Tillich.

“Although his theology is rooted in a reinterpretation of the symbols of the Christian religion, the universality of his concepts makes them in many areas just as pertinent to all the other major world religions. And one of Tillich’s most important concepts is his redefinition of the term, religion. Religion is not a set of beliefs, but rather an attitude of the whole being. It is that of being concerned about what is truly ultimate in life. Tillich calls this ‘ultimate concern.’

“In the breakdown of organized religion in modern society, Tillich finds that one is now more apt to find the ultimately concerned person outside the fold of religion. He calls this body of persons the ‘church invisible’ or the ‘latent church.’ Of course, this is not to say that there are no longer any truly religious people within the formal churches. Hardly. . . .

“Tillich’s definition brings us to the crux of the matter.

“Is religion necessary?

“This, incidentally, was the exact title of one of the first articles Professor Tillich wrote in English after immigrating to this country [the United States] from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He was at that time Professor of Philosophical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Many of his classes in philosophy of religion were attended by Columbia students, and so he mailed off his article, “Is Religion Necessary?” to Columbia University Teacher’s College magazine. He received a prompt and very firm rejection. (They were scared to death of it.)

“What did he answer to the question? If religion is one of many facets of society that can be shunted off into a special pigeonhole (as Time magazine sections off its various categories of life into neat compartments) . . . then, no—such religion is not necessary. But [Page 8] if we see religion as the expression of ultimacy that pervades all of life and culture, then it is as necessary as breathing. For without the question of ultimacy, there is no meaning to life. And when meaninglessness sets in, all the destructive and negative qualities of life begin to take over and destroy not only the individual, but society.

"So, in substance, then, there is a desperate need for everyone who feels this concern about the ultimate values in life to seek the best expression for it. The creativity of the artists in society may offer the answers before the clergy or theologians do; hence, every unique and imaginative approach to best actualize the spirit of God should be explored. The more radical the re-examination of pre-conceived ideas, the more creative suggestions the jazz community may come up with to help revitalize the spiritual side of man today.”

But the musicians, writers, and artists were all floundering too. Were there any sure answers? My search went on. Zen Buddhism, Yoga, metaphysics, parapsychology. But the structure was missing. Islám in its pure form might provide it—I searched out the insights in the Qur’án. At least Islám did not seem to fracture a human into warring sides—material and spiritual. It had a certain wholeness —with one glaring defect, however. Its antiquated attitude toward women turned me away.

1970

BUT the river of truth seemed to be flowing inexorably in a certain direction, and it was not surprising that my own personal search led me finally to a religion which has its roots in Islám—the Bahá’í Faith. Within a few short days after first hearing and reading about the Bahá’í Faith in August 1967, I was gripped with the realization that God’s Manifestation for this new era unquestionably was and is Bahá’u’lláh.

Exiled to Palestine from Persia and a political prisoner for almost forty years (his life span was 1817 to 1892), Bahá’u’lláh became God’s chosen channel for the first revealed religion which from its inception has had as its main principle the spiritual unification of the entire human race.

Quite unwittingly, it was Paul Tillich who had prepared the groundwork for my becoming a Bahá’í that August day in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Unwittingly, yes. For it now seems almost certain that he did not encounter the Bahá’í Faith until a short four months before his death in Chicago on October 22, 1965.

This fact came to me quite by chance in May 1969. A visiting Bahá’í friend, Mrs. Ruth Munson—knowing of my association with Tillich—mentioned that, at a small dinner party in Chicago where her son William Munson and his wife were present, Tillich indicated to his Bahá’í hostess, Mrs. Ruth Turk, that he was hearing of the Faith that evening for the first time. I later learned that the dinner party was held sometime in June of the year he died.

During Tillich’s last four months, he found time in his crowded schedule to make a trip north of Chicago to Wilmette, Illinois, where on the shore of Lake Michigan stands one of the world’s most beautiful buildings —The Bahá’í House of Worship. During that same period he also apparently had talks with several Bahá’í believers.

This information I tracked down by an exchange of letters in 1969 with a close colleague of Tillich’s during his final three years—Dean Jerald Brauer of the University of Chicago Divinity School. From his letter to me dated October 22, 1969:

. . . I know that Tillich was quite aware of the Bahá’í religion and that he had visited the Bahá’í Temple on the North Shore of Chicago. How much of Bahá’í he read I am not certain, but I know for a fact that he had a number of discussions with people who were Bahá’í followers. [Page 9] What his personal opinion of Bahá’í was I cannot say; however, I think certain assumptions can be made in that he never referred to it in his writings. I think if he had been impressed with the possibility of Bahá’í it would have appeared either in his book, Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, or in his last lecture on the Future of Religions published under that title in 1966. I edited that particular book, and I also had a discussion with Paulus prior to his delivery of that lecture. At no point did he refer to Bahá’í as he worked on the problem of the future of religions.

Neither Dr. Brauer nor I knew during this exchange of letters exactly when Tillich first heard of the Bahá’í Faith but if, as it soon came out, it was at the June 1965 dinner party, naturally he could not have included any mention of the Bahá’í Faith in his writings prior to that date.

Now, it is pertinent here to take a look at the contents and chronology of The Future of Religions. The book contains the following: an editor’s preface by Dean Brauer; tributes to Tillich by three professorial colleagues —Wilhelm Pauck, Mircea Eliade, and, again, Jerald Brauer; and four essays by Tillich himself. Of these four, only the last—“The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian”— was written after June 1965. According to Dean Brauer’s preface, it was delivered October 12, 1965, and it was from the tape of this public lecture plus Tillich’s notes that Brauer prepared and edited it for inclusion as the final chapter.

Tillich affirms that in order to look at this particular subject seriously, one must reject old and new orthodox attitudes, and he offers five presuppositions on which to reassess the significance of the history of religions for the systematic theologian. All of the five are consistent with Bahá’í thinking, but especially the first and the fourth:

First, one must say that revelatory experiences are universally human. Religions are based on something that is given to a man wherever he lives. He is given a revelation, a particular kind of experience which always implies saving powers. One never can separate revelation and salvation. There are revealing and saving powers in all religions. God has not left himself unwitnessed. . . .

A fourth assumption is that there may be—and I stress this, there may be [Tillich’s italics]—a central event in the history of religions which unites the positive results of those critical developments in the history of religion in and under which revelatory experiences are going on—an event which, therefore, makes possible a concrete theology that has universalistic significance.

It seems to me that for the first time Tillich is admitting the possibility of a universal religion that could have revelatory integrity of its own without falling into that old “mess of pottage” called syncretism. Is it not entirely possible that Tillich’s brief encounter with the Bahá’í Faith triggered some of the insights in this final lecture?

Whether Tillich did or did not actively consider or discuss Bahá’í teachings with his colleagues (a point that needs researching), there is no doubt in my mind that, consciously or unconsciously, his whole structure of thought was heading him in the direction of a serious confrontation with the claims of the Bahá’í Faith. Certainly, one of Tillich’s closest colleagues during his last three years was Professor Mircea Eliade with whom he conducted a joint seminar on the History of Religions and Systematic Theology in the fall and winter quarters of 1964. In a tribute to Tillich written after his death, Eliade states:

[Page 10]

In the course of that superb and moving lecture, Professor Tillich declared that, had he time, he would write a new Systematic Theology oriented toward, and in dialogue with, the whole history of religions. In his Systematic Theology, Tillich had addressed himself to modern Western men, at grips with history and totally involved in the secular world of science and technology. He felt now that a new systematic theology was needed—a theology taking into consideration not only the existential crisis and the religious vacuum of contemporary Western societies, but also the religious traditions of Asia and the primitive world, together with their recent crises and traumatic transformations. . . .

. . . one of the dominant characteristics of his thought was a capacity for renewing itself after an encounter with a radically different, and even inimical, ideology or historical situation.

How well I knew firsthand about this last point. His trip to Japan in the summer of 1960 and his profound discussions with the Shinto and Buddhist priests in Kyoto produced for Tillich his own personal “shaking of the foundations.” I recall his almost anguished comment to me one day soon after his return to Harvard in September, “Grace, I am now going to have to rethink one whole section of my third volume!” And he did— the section on “Life and Its Ambiguities.”

At this juncture, one may quite justifiably ask, how is it possible for one of the world’s most famous religious thinkers to have missed hearing about the Bahá’í Faith almost right up to the end of his life? In fact, how is it possible for so many scholars and students even in the field of comparative religions to have never yet come across the Bahá’í Faith?

This was the question that plagued me in 1967 when I first heard of the Faith and embraced it so unhesitatingly after years of searching. How had Tillich missed it? I was determined to investigate further.

As I dug out my books on Islám and comparative religions, I found very few with any mention at all of either the Bahá’í Faith or its co-founders, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. The Bábí movement, the precursor to the Bahá’í Faith by a few short years, is mentioned by Iqbal in passing in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Here he states:

But the spirit of Ibn-i-Taimiyya’s teaching found a fuller expression in a movement of immense potentialities which arose in the eighteenth century, from the sands of Nejd, described by MacDonald as the ‘cleanest spot in the decadent world of Islam.’ It is really the first throb of life in modern Islam. To the inspiration of this movement are traceable, directly or indirectly, nearly all the great modern movements of Muslim Asia and Africa, e.g. the Sennusi movement, the Pan-Islamic movement, and the Babi movement, which is only a Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism.

Is there perhaps a hint of contradiction in his referring to the Bábí movement in the same breath as a “great modern movement” and also as “only a Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism?”

Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a noted Islamic scholar, has two brief references in his text, Islam in Modern History. On page 140 of the Mentor edition in a footnote, Smith refers to the Bahá’í Faith as a “modern heresy.” Then on page 158 of the same edition, he paraphrases al-Khidr Husayn, an al-Azhar University scholar and editor, “In investigating the Bahá’í heresy, he (al-Khidr) feels that it would get nowhere if [Page 11] religious instruction in schools were compulsory.”

Those are the only references in one of the most widely used texts on modern Islám in the Western universities. Again, a question arises. Obviously, the “Bahá’í heresy” must have been getting somewhere to have been thus referred to. Strange that not even scholarly curiosity was aroused here, especially as the movement, rather than dying out, has reached worldwide proportions as one of the fastest growing religions today.

My search continued. Robert Payne has done a popularized study of Islám called The Holy Sword which has two full pages referring to the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and the Bahá’í movement. Unfortunately, historical records that are available to any thorough researcher are either overlooked, misstated, or completely distorted. Obviously, Mr. Payne relied on secondary sources which although undoubtedly reputable were in this case not entirely reliable.

Why the distortion of facts? My guess would be that when a Western scholar stumbles across any mention of the Bahá’í movement, he would quite naturally go to Islamic sources for further information, especially when most passing references allude to it as a “heretical sect within Islám.” Understandable. Just as a Roman scholar in the time of the emperor Vespasian, studying the Christian movement—and knowing it as a heretical offshoot of Judaism—would tend to go to Jewish scholars for his information.

The bitter persecution by the Islamic hierarchy which led to the torture and slaughter of some twenty thousand followers of the Báb (women and children included) in the mid-1800s was so horrifying that foreign diplomats in Tihrán were moved to complain against the almost unbelievable excesses of the clergy-incited mobs. All this must quite understandably be somewhat of an embarrassment to Islamic scholars today. So much so that it would not be surprising to find them quite willing to sweep the whole nasty mess under an innocent-looking Persian rug. Only very thorough scholars would tend to uncover the truth.

Thus, it is only within the most recent years that the full story of the Bahá’í Faith is attaining worldwide attention. Among some of those who have given serious consideration to the ideas of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh or to the history of the Faith have been British historians Arnold Toynbee and Lord Curzon; Cambridge University orientalist Edward G. Browne (the only Western scholar who met Bahá’u’lláh personally); Oxford professor Benjamin Jowett; French scholars Comte de Gobineau and A. L. M. Nicolas (both of whom wrote at length on the Bábí movement); and more recently the editor of Saturday Review, Norman Cousins; Professor Marcus Bach; and theologian Nels Ferré. For the curious student, the resource material is most definitely there.

Conjecture about Tillich and the Bahá’í Faith would be mere idle or wishful thinking on my part if I did not feel so strongly that his whole thought leads with irresistible logic to the first truly universal faith, the Bahá’í Revelation. His writings abound in ideas that substantiate this theory.

Now it is clear why he changed that all-important phrase from “symbols of Christianity” to “symbols of religion” in the paragraph he dictated to me on his theology at Harvard Divinity School. Tillich was too universal in his thinking to be confined to an idea that revelation was ended with the appearance of Jesus as the Christ.

In fact, the breadth of Tillich’s vision— probably in this instance even prophetic—is no more clearly visible than in the following excerpt from Volume II of his Systematic Theology:

. . . our basic answer leaves the universe open for possible divine manifestations in other areas or periods of being. Such [Page 12] possibilities cannot be denied. But they cannot be proved or disproved. Incarnation is unique for the special group in which it happens, but it is not unique in the sense that other singular incarnations for other unique worlds are excluded. Man cannot claim that the infinite has entered the finite to overcome its existential estrangement in mankind alone. Man cannot claim to occupy the only possible place for Incarnation. Although statements about other worlds and God’s relation to them cannot be verified experientially, they are important because they help to interpret the meaning of terms like “mediator,” “savior,” “Incarnation,” “the Messiah,” and “the new eon.”

Perhaps one can go a step further. The interdependence of everything with everything else in the totality of being includes a participation of nature in history and demands a participation of the universe in salvation. Therefore, if there are nonhuman “worlds” in which existential estrangement is not only real—as it is in the whole universe—but in which there is also a type of awareness of this estrangement, such worlds cannot be without the operation of saving power within them. Otherwise self-destruction would be the inescapable consequence. The manifestation of saving power in one place implies that saving power is operating in all places. The expectation of the Messiah as the bearer of the New Being presupposes that “God loves the universe,” even though in the appearance of the Christ he actualizes this love for historical man alone.

It had been my own personal and growing conviction for years that Christianity had lost its saving power. And the evidences were overwhelming of the surging tide of self-destructiveness at work on both a personal and social level throughout the world. If Tillich was right, that the “saving power is always operating,” could it now not be more vitally at work somewhere outside Christianity?

In Tillich’s own writings this same search is implicit, despite the fact that he remained within the nominal structure of the Christian answer. In the “Christological” section of Volume II of Systematic Theology, he agrees with classical Biblical scholarship which translates the word Christ as meaning the Messiah or “the ‘anointed one’ who has received an unction from God enabling him to establish the reign of God in Israel and in the world.” Thus the name Jesus Christ must be understood as “Jesus who is called the Christ.” And Tillich cautions against the loss of its original meaning by a too common practice of running the names together.

Going more deeply, he asks what is the criterion for the Christ? It is a combination first of all, he states, of both fact and reception of the fact by others. Jesus, no matter what His claim, would not have become the Christ without the recognition of His claim by those who became His disciples and followers. On the other hand, if Jesus had not announced His Christly station, no amount of assertion by others could make Him the Christ.

In essence Tillich defines the criterion for the Christ as being that “Essential God-Manhood has appeared within existence and subjected itself to the conditions of existence without being conquered by them.” And he affirms that this has to take place within a personal life for it to be a reality within time and space as we experience it. Otherwise the search for the Messiah—for a new state of things, for the possibility of achieving “New Being”—would have remained only a hope and an expectation.

Although Tillich insists on the ultimacy of the Christ concept in that there cannot be a more Christly Christ than as embodied in Jesus, it seems clear that this concept need not necessarily have to be contained only and [Page 13] for all time in the person of Jesus as the Christ. He is the Christ, says Tillich, only so long as He is the center of meaning of the historical continuum in which He has been accepted as the Christ. If that center is broken, then “This existential limitation does not qualitatively limit his significance, but it leaves open other ways of divine self-manifestations before and after our historical continuum.”

This, of course, agrees with the Bahá’í beliefs that God has spoken in history in different eras and areas of this planet (and, as Tillich hints, probably elsewhere in our vast universe), yet apparently never in the same historical continuum. Each Manifestation of God has His own time, His own special “new era”: Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Báb, and the latest but not the final Manifestation Bahá’u’lláh. The smaller the world has become through ease of travel and communication, the more it seems as if revelations have overlapped.

Thus, the end of the Christian era would most logically overlap the Islamic, the Bábí, and the Bahá’í dispensations. And if one studies with clear-headed objectivity the Biblical prophecies that refer to the “time of the end” and point to the year 1844 of the Christian calendar. one will see the age-old prophecy puzzle magically solved.

It was on the crucial date of May 23, 1844, that the Báb declared his mission in Shíráz, Persia. The mission was to prepare the way for the coming of “Him whom God would make manifest”—a Manifestation of God Who would be the promised One of all ages, “the Inaugurator of the long-awaited millennium, . . . the Proclaimer of the coming of age of the entire human race, . . . the Creator of a new World Order, and . . . the Inspirer and Founder of a world civilization.”

Here at this moment in history was the beginning of a new era—the veritable coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. Do not Christians pray in the words taught them from the lips of Jesus Himself: “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

The Founder of the Bahá’í Faith asserts that the Kingdom of God has already been established and that a new era and a new state of being are now at hand for mankind. In the words of Bahá’u’lláh: “. . . diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled . . . .” “The world is but one country and mankind its citizens.”

The most courageous of the contemporary Christian theologians, Paul Tillich, would undoubtedly have come to terms with the reality of this new dispensation had he lived but a short time longer.

The signs are there in his writings for all to read:

The New Creation—this is our ultimate concern; this should be our infinite passion—the infinite passion of every human being. This matters; this alone matters ultimately. In comparison with it everything else, even religion or non-religion, even Christianity or non-Christianity, matters very little—and ultimately nothing.

[Page 14]

[Page 15]

On Becoming a Bahá’í: A Personal Story

“. . . Thy call hath awakened me, and Thy grace hath raised me up and led me unto Thee.”

—Bahá’u’lláh

IN THE DARKNESS before sunrise one morning in the Fall of 1969 I awakened to the ringing of words in my inner ear: “Bahá’u’lláh, the Glory of God!” I lay still and repeated the cry and knew that I should become a Bahá’í.

Earlier I had written an article entitled “Some Thoughts of a Quaker ‘Bahá’í’” which appeared in the Fall 1968 issue of WORLD ORDER. Therein I confessed my love for the Bahá’í Faith and my acceptance of its principles, but expressed my attachment to the Religious Society of Friends and my reluctance to remove my “Quaker bonnet” which I felt to be a symbol of spiritual freedom, in that Quakerism imposes no absolutes upon and demands no specific rules of its adherents. The only authority comes from the “Inner Light,” God, Who speaks directly to the seeker in the silence of his own heart. Quakers are strong individualists and, for that reason among others, the Society of Friends attracts and satisfies many who have repudiated other religious denominations. No Quaker can define a single creed to which all Quakers subscribe or state the position of Friends as a whole on such questions as the Divinity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection. Each seeks his answers from the Light within himself and is free to seek by any method he may choose. At the time I joined the Society of Friends I was very much interested in Hindu philosophy, Yogic systems, reincarnation, and the “occult.” The freedom to gain insights through meditation in the Quaker meeting seemed exactly what I wanted.

What changes, then, took place in me and brought me over seventeen years gradually closer to the Bahá’í Faith until I heard the call which aroused me in the early hours of that autumn morning?

For some time I have been sensitive to the emphasis upon protest among Friends and other concerned people. There is a nobility about the deeply committed individual who is willing to sacrifice for his conviction his respectability, his civil freedom, even his life; and the same is true of a whole people who stand united in protest for the sake of a cause greater than themselves. But as energy is expended day after day, year after year, in attempting, through protest and non-cooperation, to change or destroy wrongs, and when there appears to be little or no response on the part of government and society, the continued emphasis upon a negative approach tends to produce in the protester a weary pessimism, despondency, and—in extreme cases—an angry psychological violence which actually can be more destructive than physical violence. The protagonist of peace and justice then has lost his joy and may be in grave danger of losing his capacity to love.

It must be noted here that I should be misrepresenting the philosophy and spirit of the Society of Friends if I have given any impression that Quakers do not work to balance acts of protest with positive acts of service which are practical, effective, and motivated by disinterested love. The achievements of Friends throughout the world, over more than three hundred years, bear impressive witness to this fact. [Page 16] But even among Friends who certainly are not without love and times of great joy, I have felt now and then in the spoken messages in the meeting for worship a world-sadness weighing heavily upon the hearts of the worshippers.

The first quality I had noticed among Bahá’ís was a positive joyousness. I believe this was the Faith’s first attraction for me. Today I find no other people who are so filled with joy and certainty beyond mere hope, even while they recognize that disaster and intense suffering are unavoidable in the painful course of the disintegration of the old world order. However, I did not at once realize that Bahá’ís are quite as active in doing something about the world’s problems as are the many activist groups who are trying through protest, civil disobedience, or political power to change the “establishment.” The difference is that Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and Shoghi Effendi have laid down clearly the means of acting positively to build a new social structure which can stand strong and firm when the old edifice, which cannot be repaired indefinitely, will fall of its own decay. The endless job of repairing can be exhausting, whereas the work of erecting a beautiful new building is exhilarating and a source of energy—energy which is a breath of the new wind which powerfully blows today’s youth into the Bahá’í Faith where every talent, however small, can be used to place a brick or drive a nail into the structure of the new age. What potential for good is concealed in people of all ages, and how they rejoice when it can be freed to be used!

Unity and harmony of purpose I recognized as sources of Bahá’í power. I had been dismayed as I watched the peace movement falling apart. So many unpeaceful elements seemed to be invading it: so much violence, disagreement, self-seeking, and use of the movement for escape or as an outlet for emotional sickness. The act of the religious pacifist appeared drowned in a sea made angry by hurricanes blowing from all directions. No one seemed able to unite these diverse elements under a single objective or to be able to cause them to agree as to how to attain an objective.

When Bahá’ís come together to decide and act, they come desiring to be united, in the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, by “The prime requisites . . . [of] purity of motive, radiance of spirit, detachment from all else save God, attraction to His Divine Fragrances, humility and lowliness . . . patience and long-suffering in difficulties and servitude to His exalted Threshold.”

The same spirit is implicit in the Friends’ approach to action; and love, unity, and humility should, can, and often do operate among them. But the Quaker emphasis still lies in the direction of individualism. Unanimity must be achieved in Quaker decision-making. Just one dissenter can cause an action to be tabled, for no majority vote may be taken. The individual opinion is no less important in a Bahá’í consultation and consensus is greatly to be desired, but, when unanimity is not the result, the majority decision is acceptable and must be obeyed. Bahá’ís enter into consultation believing, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, that “The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.” No individual, once he has laid his opinion before the group, is to claim it as his own, try to push it through, or feel hurt if it is not accepted. He comes to the meeting believing that the best solution will emerge only after full discussion. The necessity of obedience to the majority decision is difficult [Page 17] for many Friends to accept. However, I have come to believe that, while the Quaker way almost always eventually succeeds within a small group, it is improbable that it could be effective in conducting the affairs of such enormously diversified groups as those which compose cities, states, or nations, let alone a world government such as Bahá’u’lláh envisions.

The Bahá’í injunction to submit to and obey all legitimate governments likewise is difficult for Quakers who hold dear the right to practice civil disobedience against what is judged to be a bad law as an act of obedience to a higher, or divine, law. I have warm sympathy for this point of view. But as I observe the breakdown in our legal and moral structure today, I see the limits of individualism being reached in a movement towards chaos. Many individuals seem to feel justified in breaking any law on the basis of violation of conscience, and few are willing to accept the attendant legal penalties without protest or flagrant disregard of the verdict. For three hundred years the purity of the Quaker who would go to prison, suffer ridicule, persecution, even death rather than harm his fellow man in private life or on the battlefield was an inspiration to those who lacked his courage. Today—although there are exceptions—such a moral hero seems almost lost in the confusion and multitude of mixed motives on the part of those who hold the established order in contempt.

And so I am a convert to the Bahá’í injunction to be obedient even to a very imperfect government, for to have no government is worse, and the flouting of laws weakens the prospect of bringing in a better order. The followers of Bahá’u’lláh who are working to build the structure which promises to be the basis of “the Most Great Peace” cannot be known as lawbreakers. It should be added, however, that no Bahá’í will submit to any demand that he deny his Faith. For this he will give up his life if need be. Nor are Bahá’ís obliged to be silently submissive to government. Bahá’u’lláh told the rulers of the world most plainly what the consequences would be if they persisted in following paths of injustice, and history proves that He spoke truth.

The acceptance of the authority of the Manifestation as the mouthpiece of God would not be easy for some Quakers who are not Christ-centered either in an orthodox or humanist sense. Nor was it easy for me. My parents were agnostics, and in our family we did not pray, talk about God and Jesus, or go often to church. My parents were religious in the very broad sense of having ethical integrity and possessing spiritual qualities of mind and heart, not articulated in religious terms. They taught me no formal creed. I revered Jesus as a wise teacher; but I had no feeling of His station as Christ, and I felt a hostility towards what I saw as Christian arrogance over exclusive possession of “the Truth.” In my “Hindu” period I found it easier to regard Krishna or Ramakrishna as avatars than Jesus. As a pre-Bahá’í student I found it difficult to believe that it is entirely through the Manifestation that we have knowledge of God, for my predisposition to seek insights on my own, inwardly, in the manner of Friends or Indian yogis led me to believe that truth can be revealed directly to the individual without the guidance of any outer agent. I did not understand the meaning of Jesus’ declaration, “No man cometh to the Father but through Me.” It is Bahá’u’lláh Who caused me to discover Jesus as Christ so that my hostility towards man-made Christian doctrines dwindled to unimportance. While we do make independent spiritual discoveries, the very substance of those discoveries [Page 18] came into being with each of the Manifestations, and all knowledge is here to be realized. The glory of God’s continuing Revelation has become for me a single, unbroken process. The whole progression of teachings from the Vedas to the scriptures of Bahá’u’lláh have become clear to me as portions of one great ocean of spiritual reality. Never could I prove that any existing spiritual truth does not stem from the spirit and words of the successive Manifestations. With the religions of the past there is always the problem of stripping away the distortions caused by centuries of remoteness and misinterpretation. But upon reflection I am sure that if I took the time I could attribute every one of my spiritual discoveries to the teachings of all of the Manifestations I have studied.

Acceptance of the Manifestation of God as the Divine Authority for the age into which He is born is the power which, in the beginning, unified each dispensation and caused it to flourish. It is the very core of the powerful unity within the Bahá’í Faith. The lessening, over the centuries, of belief in the authority of the Founders of the religions of the past has resulted in a weakening of their unity and a loss of power to unite the world. The word of God through Bahá’u’lláh is the authority in this age which causes the believers to place first in their lives the goal of the unity of all mankind and has set in motion the spirit which abolishes prejudice between religions, races, man and woman, youth and age. In my little more than a year as an active Bahá’í I have seen this authority at work—and it does work, it is real. Even though there are problems, difficulties, mistakes, for we are faulty human beings, in the end the desire to submit to the Divine Will leads us all to the right and needed measure of truth for this day.

Perhaps one needs to begin to live the Bahá’í life—a fruitful exercise to practice when, drawn to the Faith, one has not yet reached the point of declaration of faith— in order to understand how different obedience to God through Bahá’u’lláh is from obedience to forms of authoritarianism which attempt to suppress individual initiative and creativity. There can be no freedom without some authority. If each individual can follow his own will at all times, it is not long before his will intrudes upon that of his neighbor and his neighbor’s upon his until, finally, no one has unfettered freedom. The Bahá’í order is designed to allow the unique potential of every living being to reach fulfillment, but never at the expense of the emergence and flowering of the greatest potential and good of the whole.

The meaning of this is that the Bahá’í Faith invites mankind to make a leap in its spiritual evolution. In childhood, more or less unconsciously, we are ego-centered; in adolescence we become aware of our egos in relationship to other egos; in adulthood most of us still identify with our egos, but we learn to sublimate our self-centeredness to a considerable extent. Nevertheless, with some exceptions, our actions and reactions stem from our relating most of our experience to our ego-centers. We respond according to the effect upon our emotional sense of I-ness. Even our unselfish or altruistic responses, when we are objective, usually can be attributed to a desire to be well-thought-of or to make things come out right for us personally. These stages of self-centeredness are natural phases of the process of becoming integrated personalities. The ego-identity is not the whole of individual consciousness, nor is transcendence of the ego-identity to be equated with a loss of individual consciousness. There are further stages of wider, deeper consciousness to be reached in the process of spiritual [Page 19] evolution—and who is to say that there is ever to be an end to them in the life yet to come?

All living religion has taught the concept of self-transcendence. In Far Eastern philosophies it has been called “un-attachment,” and Westerners often have mistaken this for lack of interest and loss of feeling. The Buddha clarified it as detachment from the desire to possess transitory things, coupled with acts of compassion for all life. Jesus told us that “he who would save his life must lose it.” Bahá’u’lláh teaches us to pray that we may receive from God that which will enable us to be detached from everything save Him. We are asked to lift our consciousness from the ego-level to a new level from which we may see and act, with our thoughts freed from the need to satisfy the demands of our egos, so that we may be carried forward with tireless joy to work with a wider and deeper caring for man and the world than we were able to know before.

The primary act directing us towards this attainment is the turning of the whole of one’s being to God. In the past it often seemed necessary to withdraw from the outer world in order to give complete attention and devotion to God. Monasticism became widespread. The age of Bahá’u’lláh calls upon us to make the whole of life our monastery—right here, wherever we are, in the midst of what probably is the most clamorous, most earthshaking condition ever to prevail in the whole world at one time. This monastery has no walls and no convenient schedule to remind us at regular intervals to “recollect” the presence of God. Inspired by the new spirit of this tremendous age, precisely because it is so earthquaking, we are challenged to center wholly upon renouncing all to Him Who is the “Possessor of all things visible and invisible.” In so doing we come to know that we have gained all that we need, that we may delight in all things, and that—being unpossessed by them—we have perfect freedom in being possessed by God.

The oneness of living religion is a Bahá’í teaching with which I was in accord long before I became a Bahá’í. In my continuing relationship with the Friends Meeting to which I belonged for more than twenty years I hope I am demonstrating this truth. Though no longer a member, I still make my way on Sunday mornings to the Meeting House and sit in the circle of worshippers “waiting upon the Lord.” There is no disharmony between Friends and Bahá’ís and I have no feeling of having supplanted one with the other. The Bahá’í tenet that religion must be the cause of harmony, never of dissent, and that all sincere worshippers should join together in joy and love has been demonstrated to me by some of my Bahá’í friends. One young Bahá’í during a conversation in which Quakerism was mentioned remarked, “The Friends are so beautiful!” Another in a letter concerning my description of Quaker group meditation in “Some Thoughts of a Quaker ‘Bahá’í’” wrote: “We Bahá’ís have so much to learn from the Friends and I pray that your message to us in World Order will cause more of us to attend the Friends’ silent worship. Thank you.” Here is evident no thought to pick flaws or inadequacies in a different form of faith, but rather a deep appreciation of the Truth embodied in all genuinely God-centered religious disciplines.

These remarks explain some of the reasons why I have become a Bahá’í. In the final analysis, while certain steps leading to a conversion may be traced, the act of believing truly seems to come as a miracle. It cannot be explained in any other way except that it is God Himself Who awakens us, raises us up, and leads us unto Him.

[Page 20]

[Page 21]

The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life

and knowing why.

If you do not have things right in your life

you will be overwhelmed:

you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.

If you have things right in your life

but do not know why,

you are just lucky, and you will not move

in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives

who are acting to make things right for others:

they act only from the self—

and that self will never be right—

no luck, no help, no wisdom.

—William Stafford

[Page 22]

The Group Phenomena: Experiences in Evanescent Community

BY JANE MCCANTS

“I FEEL CLOSER to this group than to my family.” The statement came near the end of a two-day group experience—a relaxed sort of group, which combined T-Group and sensitivity group methods. The speaker was Sid, a likable undergraduate who had volunteered for participation in our group experience “to see what it is like.” The depth of affirmation Sid expressed, after twelve hours with nine people he had never met before, is testimony to the significance the experience had for an intelligent and healthy young man. This is the drawing power of the group movement.

The systematic study of group process began during the Second World War and established itself as a branch of social psychology through the work of Kurt Lewin and his colleagues. Group dynamics research has since demonstrated the surprisingly powerful influence of group membership on individual behavior. It is not principally from this tradition, however, nor from the parallel development of group psychotherapy, that the current group movement has developed. It is a nonprofessional, grass roots movement, a matter of pride to advocates such as Carl Rogers, and of alarm to many others.

The movement leaps ahead of research; there is more practice than understanding of the diverse effects of growth groups, sensory awareness groups, marathon groups, encounter groups, sensitivity groups, and integrity groups. Commercially produced tapes (to direct leaderless groups) have become a profitable business, and conservative church congregations are being urged to participate in weekend encounter sessions. Yet group conditions are capable of altering an individual’s behavior as drastically as sympathomimetic drugs which are unavailable without a physician’s prescription. Some participants have had psychotic breaks during or after group encounters. These consequences prompted the American Journal of Psychiatry to devote its December 1969 issue to a discussion of the dangers of participation in such activities, and Martin Lakin has recommended to the American Psychological Association a set of ethical guidelines designed to establish specific professional standards for psychologists who function as group leaders. Both psychiatrists and psychologists are concerned about the potential danger to the emotional health of group participants. Thus, warnings from both groups focus on the professional qualifications of the leader and on criteria for excluding from groups persons vulnerable to serious psychological harm. Since the movement is largely independent of these professions, however, pleas for responsibility and certification of leaders are not likely to have much impact. It is therefore crucial that potential participants be informed of the serious risks these groups involve, of the superficial quality of experience some popular group methods provide, and of the more lasting and reliable alternatives which are available.

The Groups

TECHNIQUES vary. The T-Group model is a twelve-hour group experience in which the participants wrestle with the problems of developing group structure and observe their own reactions to the stages the group passes through in evolving an internal structure. Didactic comment from the leader is offered to assist participants in understanding and [Page 23] generalizing their experience. Sensitivity groups focus on personal interactions among participants. Authenticity of expression is encouraged, and members give each other “feedback” about the feelings of attraction or repulsion they elicit. Attention is given to nonverbal behavior in order to uncover covert feelings. Intensity seems the goal of encounter, marathon, and sensory awareness groups. Various leader manipulations are employed to involve participants deeply in personal interaction or sensate experience.

Participants in all of these groups report an emancipation of feelings, a new awareness of self, a renewed sense of personal worth, and other varieties of “deeply meaningful personal experience.” Follow-up studies are few and anecdotal; “a more honest relationship with my husband,” “less inhibited with people,” “better able to express my feelings” are the sort of comments made a few months after the group experience.

What happens in groups?

MANY PEOPLE in the movement are unconcerned with the question of what happens in the groups. For them it is experiencing the moment that matters; analysis is considered the sterile occupation of those as yet uninitiated into the world of feeling. Some serious psychologists have succumbed to this anti-intellectual mood, espousing a phenomenological epistemology as justification for abandoning the rigors of scientific discipline. For those who are interested in evaluation, the task is difficult. Different leaders using different techniques report successful results; they explain their work according to different theoretical models.

In a motion picture of an encounter group led by Carl Rogers, Journey Into Self, one watches a group of people progress from superficial stiffness and conventional social chatter, through awkward confessions of loneliness and entrapment in uncaring lives, to sobbing affirmations of loving concern for each other as persons. One is struck by the degree to which each participant is led (ever so subtly by Dr. Rogers) to become the caring self Rogers has persistently asserted is the core of every man. Other group leaders find their charges affirming different hypotheses: the capacity to express hostility (Bach), to assume responsibility (Glasser), or to master the task of autonomous identity (Mann). The assumption that the power of group experience lies in the content of feelings expressed is questionable.

Consideration of the research of Stanley Schachter and Robert B. Zajonc casts some light on this question. Zajonc has shown that arousal—physiological excitement mediated by sympathetic nervous system activity —is characteristic of participants in group situations. Schachter has demonstrated that the meaning given to a research subject’s state of physiological arousal can be manipulated by social suggestion. Research subjects given adrenalin, a compound which mediates sympathetic arousal, interpreted their feelings as happiness or anger according to a suggestion made to them by a companion who cooperated with the experimenter. In the different groups, then, physiological arousal generated by being a member of a social group (sometimes enhanced by novel sensual manipulation) may be labeled (identified as a specific emotion) according to the leader’s expectations, however unintentionally. In turn his expectations are confirmed as group participants act out the emotions he expected them to have. Perhaps it is from the sharing of intense experience that the phenomenon so precious [Page 24] in the memories of participants comes. Successful groups have differed in focus, method, interpretations, and leadership style. They have had one thing in common; however diverse the events and interpretations, the experiences were shared. This, I believe, is what Sid felt—not the relief of hostilities ventilated, responsibilities assumed, or profound affection for others (in twelve hours?), but a sense of unity with his fellows born of shared experience. Evidence that it is in fact sharing, rather than the specific content of experience, which is the critical factor in group phenomena is reported by Charles B. Truax and Robert Liberman. Working from totally different theoretical positions, both investigators found that the degree of cohesion expressed in the group as a whole has more impact on beneficial outcome for individual members than does their own personal interaction within the group.

Sharing, belonging, cohesion, all refer to the quality of unity in the group. The circumstance which makes the current group movement such a popular one derives from the strength of our individual need to experience this unity and from the failing ability of our society to meet that need.

The need for inclusion

SOCIETY is necessary to human survival. The impulse to belong to a social group has the motivational strength of survival instinct. In his analysis of individual motivation for group experience, William Schutz found that the need for inclusion—for belonging to the group—is analogous to the will to live. When hope of inclusion fails, Schutz finds, severe withdrawal symptoms occur—a form of psychological suicide. Irvin D. Yalom reports the same observation; his term for acts which elicit rejection by the group is “social suicide.” The source of such despair is understandable. The existential agony of aloneness, insufficiency, and meaninglessness is the experience of man in isolation, alienated from or in opposition to his social world. There is no resource in rationality to still the agony or fill the void; the sense of void is experiential, and its resolution requires experience, not analysis. Belonging to a community is an experience which penetrates the loneliness, compensates the insufficiency, and invalidates the sense of personal meaninglessness. Man creates himself, is reconciled with his fellows, and forms links to both the past and the future of humankind through his participation in a social group.

Since each man becomes himself within a social context, he depends upon its integrity in order to realize his own. He becomes himself in relationship to others, and his relationships are patterned by his culture. This interdependence is not peculiar to an other-directed generation; it is inherent in the human condition. The society to which an individual belongs provides the conditions according to which his need for inclusion may be fulfilled. Depending on the values of the society, its relationship patterns may cultivate nobility of character or require the stunting of creativity, passion, and integrity. Thus a man’s sense of personal identity derives from his relationship to his social world.

Emile Durkheim saw that human distinction emerges from man’s participation in society; he wrote:

We speak a language we have not made; we use tools we have not invented; we invoke rights we have not instituted . . . . It is to society that we owe those various goods of civilization . . . they are what give [Page 25] man his personal physiognomy among all beings, for man is a man only because he is civilized.

Persuaded that religion is the source of social cohesion, and that its ebbing vitality is the cause of our progressively weakening social structure, Durkheim sought for the influence such a cultural crisis must have on the lives of individuals. In his classic investigation of suicide, he found, in the large majority of cases, that some rupture had occurred between the suicide victim and his social group. More recently, Herbert H. Krauss and Beatrice J. Krauss have demonstrated that it is possible to predict the incidence of suicide among different societies by measuring the disruption in significant social bonds within those societies.

Social crisis?

THE NEED for belonging can be best fulfilled within a cohesive social unit. Membership in the social community is available to individuals through performance according to norms accepted by the group as a whole. Norms are behavioral expressions of cultural values. Deeply held values produce powerful norms, and social conflict is avoided or resolved by reference to these norms. The concept of cohesion describes such a system. Values are the heart of the social organism; their strength is its life force. The capacity to satisfy the personal need for inclusion disappears in a society which is losing its cohesive vitality. Survival is problematic; a disintegrating society imperils rather than protects its citizens. Attempts to resolve critical social problems result in increased fragmentation— and polarization—of the social group. As commitment to values erodes, cohesion weakens; and each confrontation creates pressures which an enfeebled society can no longer harmonize or channel into constructive solutions. The demise of a social system follows a pattern of progressive decomposition. As the bonds of unity—shared values— give way, smaller subgroups form; the system experiences fragmentation. Coercive power may be introduced to impose control when norms no longer maintain order; antagonistic subgroups face each other in competition for power. The diminishing integrity of our society, its cohesion eroded in, the wash of racial tensions, recurrent involvement in war, and commercial exploitation which befouls the land has, therefore, an inevitable impact on the quality of personal life.

The process of fragmentation is particularly evident in the destructive interaction among subgroups in our society. These subgroups are formed according to principles psychologists have observed among individuals deprived of an acceptable adult model during their developing years. The analogy holds because a healthy society offers roles for individuals to adopt in a manner similar to the model parents provide for their children’s developing personalities. The failure of the social culture to fulfill individual needs for inclusion—social roles derived from shared values—leaves a void where positive social identity should exist. When a child is offered an identification figure which is unacceptable, he may try to forge an identity in terms of what he opposes—Erik H. Erikson’s concept of negative identity. In our society we find anti-war, anti-pollution, anti-establishment groups formed in opposition to one or another of our social disasters. This resolution, however, is a precarious one. Knowing what one is against is not the same as knowing who one is, and feelings of personal emptiness may be held at bay by ever more emphatic gestures of opposition. Such gestures become autonomous, unrelated to appropriate [Page 26] efforts to effect constructive change. Wanton violence and exhibitions of rage are typical pathological outcomes.

Negative identity is not the only result of the lack of constructive social identity. Offered an unacceptable pattern for identification, some children display a reaction of withdrawal, a quiet refusal to enact the rejected role accompanied by a vague, noninvolvement in all aspects of life. Faced with unpleasant reality, one may attack it or retreat from it. Either choice leads away from reality and from constructive solutions, towards destructive pathology. The response to hostile attack or massive rejection is to become defensive, rigid, unyielding, and liable to stereotyped thinking; so the subgroups in our society are formed. Their interaction produces the vicious cycle of fragmentation so often lamented, and abetted, by our political leaders.

There is no longer a viable social ethic around which these opposed groups can unite, no longer a meaningful goal with sufficient compelling power to enable each group to accept some limitations on its immediate aims in order to safeguard the unity of the larger group. Mistrust and antagonism among subgroups are growing stronger; commitment to the whole society and its values is dwindling. In a disintegrating social unit, subgrouping increases. People seek to establish a cohesive unit around progressively narrower group norms. The Weathermen and the Minutemen represent extremes of this process, their raison d’etre, controlling norms, being opposition to the norms of the larger group. The analogy to cancer is precise. The cultural milieu is hostile to the need for belonging, and an essential personal experience must be sought elsewhere.

From the arid land of alienation flock eager migrants to the vivid intensity of encounter, sensitivity, or sensory awareness groups. Group association is an awesomely powerful experience. Durkheim, Krauss, and Schutz have shown that belonging to a community affects the will to live. The power of group interaction has been discovered and is being exploited in the current popular movement, its attraction enhanced by the demise of community experience in the society at large.

Evanescent community

THE LONELY CROWD is searching for a sense of belonging through “group experience.” Individual psychotherapy has been persuasively described by William Schofield as the purchase of friendship; the group phenomena currently blooming in abundant diversity might be thought of as trade compacts for the experience of community.

Authentic expression, caring for others, responsibility, disinhibition of hostility, and self-affirmation are individual responses which may be elicited from normal adults who come together for a short time, perhaps a weekend. Individuals, then, have the ready capacity to express these qualities if they are simply removed from the constraints of an inhibiting social order and given a little encouragement. The magic is in the development of a different sort of group relationship, not in the transformation of individual personalities. Richard Mann, Samuel Tenenbaum, and Carl Rogers have shown that an essential prerequisite to meaningful group experience is the development of a special set of norms, norms different from the competitive, defensive, isolating norms of our society. And, as Mann sagely observes, here also is the limitation of the group experience. Depending on these exceptional values, that profoundly meaningful growth-producing [Page 27] experience draws its life from precisely those elements of the contrived group which distinguish it from our real social world. Evanescence is inherent. After “I feel closer to this group than to my family,” Sid made only one other remark: “I wish this could last.” The drawing power of group encounters is grounded in the specialness of that context of personal interaction. A vital human need is met, but also betrayed. Man needs a sense of community, an attachment to life, more durable than can be provided by a weekend’s encounter with strangers.

Nor are all groups successful in achieving primarily constructive outcomes. Irresponsibility, destructive anger, and phony caring are reported as frequently as their positive counterparts. The individual calamities which have alarmed the mental health professions result. The more dangerous potentials of group process are sometimes revealed in these special groups just as they are in larger society. The phenomenon of scapegoating is reported with frightening regularity; there is a strong tendency for the small group to perform in microcosm that lethal process which is called genocide when performed by nations. At best the groups offer a palliative, a fleeting experience of unity with one’s fellows, a precious reminder that one’s self has a vital potential rarely realized “outside.” William Schutz calls it “Joy.” It has created a band of addicts, “groupies” who arrange their lives around a succession of group experiences which remind them of what they cannot experience for long outside the contrived setting. At worst the groups are con games where the lonely are herded through manipulations of feeling and sensation, discouraged from asking what happened, and required to pay a substantial fee. Emotional patent potions—un-helpful, deceptive, degrading, and dangerous if employed where an efficacious remedy is required.

The less responsible groups, and, if journal reports are accurate, Esalen Institute in California is included, use sensory and emotional arousal techniques as an end in themselves. The sympathetic arousal apparatus responds to both physical and cognitive stimuli. Dust in the eyes or a tragic tale both produce tears; sharp pain and yogi meditation both change respiratory activity. Blushing is an obvious physiological response that occurs in response to stimuli to which culture or personal experience has given meaning and definition.

In the more freewheeling groups, a participant may be blindfolded and instructed to fall into the arms of another member; his hesitation is interpreted in terms of his ability to trust other people emotionally. As Schachter has shown, the cognitive interpretation of physiological arousal in an ambiguous situation is easily susceptible to suggestion from others. Such groups use a pragmatically selected set of sensory and emotionally arousing gimmicks and offer interpretations about the personal meaning of the psychophysiological reaction these exercises produce. When the apprehension a blindfolded person feels about falling from a standing position is interpreted in terms of his ability to trust other people, everything about the situation—its ambiguity, the authority of the leader, the internal and external pressure for inclusion (acceptance) in the group—makes it difficult to resist that interpretation. It seems likely that people seriously searching for intimacy in personal relationships would be easily taken in. The leaders’ interpretations of manipulated psychophysiological arousal suggest that group events are meaningful interpersonal experiences, and the participants’ own arousal state offers confirmation. But falling when blindfolded is a physical, not an interpersonal, experience; the emotional-cognitive experience is counterfeit. This is a serious deception since teaching the discrimination between authentic and pseudo-intimacy ought to be the very work of such groups. Instead, discrimination is blurred, the skills required for interpersonal relationships are not taught, and fantasy is reinforced. “Love at first sight” is adolescent fantasy; so [Page 28] is love at first encounter.

When professionals lend themselves to such deception, the breach of trust with the naive client/consumer, who comes for help and who does not have the sophistication to protect himself, is particularly odious. The procedures of groups which specialize in touching exercises and other physical interactions may seem merely ridiculous. If one takes seriously the need for interpersonal relation (as the Krauss data indicate we must), and remembers that need is heightened by the isolation and alienation characteristic of our society, these procedures are worse than ridiculous. Such shoddy substitutes for human sharing and communication are difficult to forgive. The group members are poignantly misled; psychologically blind, they reach out to touch one another and lose the capacity to do so authentically as they listen to the seductive voices of irresponsible professionals. The longing to touch another’s soul, to sense one’s being in relation to another, has been crassly translated into the need to rub bodies.

A question

EMILE DURKHEIM, the first to investigate empirically the vital link between a man’s will to live and his participation in a community, considered our social crisis to be caused by the weakening of religion. Edward A. Tiryakian writes:

In presenting Durkheim’s perspective on religion, our main interest has been to show the crucial role he attributed to religion in the development of human thought. In the primitive religion of totemism, Durkheim believed he had found the seeds of all later developments of the human intellect. What he wanted to demonstrate was that the original source of logical thought lies in the collectivity, and that primitive religion was the first seat of the collective consciousness. He held that science and philosophy, the crowning achievements of reason, also have their genesis in religion. It is in primitive religious beliefs that man first conceived of things being related to one another internally; it is in religion that man first grasped the unity of nature, the totality of things. The realm of the sacred embraces both the physical and the social world; religious forces provide the nexus between things which to the senses appear discrete and unconnected. Once man began to think that what appears dissimilar to his senses may have an internal unity, science and philosophy became possible. Religion —the product of collective, social forces—enabled man to have a new representation of reality, one which transfigured his own limited sensorial perception.

In brief, the dual aspects of religious forces—their physical and moral aspects—made religion the matrix from which the main seeds of civilization developed. The forces which move physical and spiritual bodies were first represented under a religious form. The most diverse techniques and practices, be they those which deal with the mental life (e.g., law, morality, or the fine arts) or those which serve the material life (industrial technologies), are all directly or indirectly derived from religion.

Durkheim assigns such a significant place to religion in the formation of civilization because he regarded religion as the highest expression of the collective forces generated in the interactions of members of the social group. Religious beliefs and rituals are the symbolic expression of the moral power of society itself. That is why Durkheim holds that religious beliefs are grounded in reality. At bottom, the fate of religion and the fate of society are inextricably intertwined. The faith of the believer is essential to the continuing existence of both.

The practical concern of Durkheim with society, religion, and morality is the moral crisis of modern society. Religion is the womb of moral life. But the transformations [Page 29] in the structure of modern society have rendered the traditional moral system unstable and untenable; the traditional established religion has lost its supremacy in society as a moral authority. What is at stake is nothing less than the cohesion of society, for it is by the normative regulation of the behavior of individuals that social solidarity is maintained. If traditional religious beliefs are rejected, what will provide the source of sanctions for the moral behavior of individuals? The ultimate preoccupation of Durkheim can be stated as follows: if religion is indispensable to society, which religion is appropriate for the present age?

An answer

A RELIGION with the potency to become the seedbed of social cohesion in the modern age, the foundation of world civilization for the community of mankind, will be a revealed religion. The sense of community which springs from common worship, spiritual brotherhood, a sacred historical tradition (a shared past), and a book of law has been a divine, not a human, accomplishment. The history of Judaism and of Islám dramatically illustrates the transforming influence of revealed religion on quite unpromising sections of humanity. The introduction of revelation into those culturally stagnant populations produced, in both cases, spectacular civilizations.

Not yet one hundred and fifty years old, the worldwide Bahá’í community claims to herald the beginning of another God-directed transformation of human society—a transformation effected through a revelation addressed for the first time in history to the whole of mankind. In this Faith the inclusion of every single human soul is considered a fact of creation: “Ye are all fruits of one tree and leaves of one branch,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith. Unity is the central core of the Bahá’í message—the oneness of God, of religion, of mankind. The Bahá’í social teachings are operational expressions of the theme of unity: world government, equality of races, equality of men and women, education for all, equitable distribution of economic resources, and the responsibility of each individual to contribute productively to the welfare of his society. Bahá’u’lláh taught that religion is the germinating influence behind the progressive evolution of civilizations, and that the Bahá’í Faith will be the foundation of a world civilization marking mankind’s achievement of spiritual maturity.

The Bahá’í teachings harmonize the goal of individual spiritual development with the goals of society:

Whatever duty Thou hast prescribed unto Thy servants of extolling to the utmost Thy majesty and glory is but a token of Thy grace unto them, that they may be enabled to ascend unto the station conferred upon their own inmost being, the station of the knowledge of their own selves.

All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.

Within the precepts of revealed religion, man finds the key to his own noblest potential and the pattern for social institutions which will nurture and sustain this highest self. The relationship between a Bahá’í and his community is like that between an individual cell, the smallest unit, and the larger system of a human body. The laws of this Faith applicable to the individual may be thought of as the essential life processes of an individual cell.

Prayer, service to humanity, independent investigation of truth, and the cultivation of personal integrity are essential to the spiritual [Page 30] health of the individual soul. Organized community life is likewise governed by laws revealed by Bahá’u’lláh. Bahá’í community life includes a participatory worship service and the election of local, national, and international bodies charged with the administrative responsibilities of the community. Dedicated to rendering war obsolete through international organization, to succoring the disadvantaged and effecting social justice, the Bahá’í community exercises social power far beyond that accessible to the individuals who compose it. In the vitality of the individual soul begins the life processes of the body of mankind; these souls are in turn sustained, nourished, and protected by the healthy functioning of the larger organism.

The community is indeed an organism; its gift of life is evidence of its divine origin. The spirit which unites its members is religious conviction. Nothing less, Bahá’u’lláh taught, can restore the lost vitality of a disintegrating civilization. Man can demythologize his religion; he can translate it into contemporary idiom; he can reform and refurbish it. But he cannot recreate its vitality. Ecumenical reform did not create the original unifying power of early Christianity; neither can it restore that power. Nor will political reform, or revolution, bring vitality to a society whose life force—its spiritual foundation—is gone. Man cannot bestow creative energy on defunct values by an act of will, and the redistribution of political power is no substitute for compelling social values. Life, collective as well as individual, is a divine gift. We can choose how we will participate, how we will utilize this gift. The Bahá’í community, organized according to the explicit guidelines of Bahá’í scripture, offers conditions for inclusion, a sense of identity, which draws from its members their highest spiritual, intellectual, and social potential. The community is universal, including all races, nations, religious backgrounds. Its purpose is lofty: world civilization, peace, justice.

The unity of the Bahá’í community is born in the affirmation by its members that Bahá’u’lláh is a Messenger of God. Each Bahá’í has determined for himself that Bahá’u’lláh is the Mouthpiece of the creator of his own soul and of the universe. His Teachings inspire, therefore, a devotion and obedience inseparable from the believer’s affirmation of his own being; his commitment to those Teachings becomes the transcendent motive in his life. Bahá’í scripture contains a comprehensive pattern for community life: local, national, and international administrative institutions are provided; Houses of Worship with auxiliary charitable agencies are prescribed; an original process for group decision making is stipulated; social responsibilities for the orphan, the aged, the impoverished, are explicitly designated; the practice of interracial fellowship is enjoined; policies designed to eliminate warfare are specified; a law of marriage is given.

Thus the community is organized in an institutional structure and pattern of participation designed to channel individual commitment into socially effective action. The relationships established in that community cultivate the spiritual potential of each member, at once offering fulfillment to his unique identity and making available to him the enormous resources of the larger community.

An example of the remarkable balance between individual integrity and service to the group which the Bahá’í community achieves is the process prescribed for reaching group decisions, the procedure of Bahá’í consultation. Members of the consultative body are enjoined to take counsel together to provide for the welfare of the community. The goal of their deliberations is to minister to the needs of the whole, and never to sacrifice those for individual considerations. The process of consulting on such decisions requires that each participant search his own conscience, and, influenced neither by timidity, [Page 31] ambition, nor the desire to win favor with others, set forth his view. The manner of his discourse must be candid and open, yet he is to refrain from defensive or intimidating attitudes which could interfere with the freedom of others to consider and express frankly their own views. Unflinching, but disciplined, individual integrity is the means by which decisions dedicated to the service of the community are achieved. Participants in this process find it demands the development and integration of their best intellectual and emotional resources, a development hardly attainable without the opportunity for interaction with others similarly engaged. In consultation, unfoldment of the self and stimulating encounter with others are simultaneous. The exhilaration of such an experience is not an end in itself, however; it is one by-product of the hard work of formulating equitable and fruitful policies to guide community life. Satisfaction for the participant is twofold: he experiences in the process the refinement of his own capacities, and the policies he helps to formulate benefit the community which sustains him.

The extraordinary harmony of individual and community growth which consultation demonstrates is expanded and elaborated in the institutions and laws which constitute the Bahá’í society. And the embryonic Bahá’í community is demonstrating again how revealed religion gives rise to a new pattern of social organization. The heart of each Bahá’í community is the Feast, an institution which celebrates in microcosm the birth of community which follows the advent of a new religion. While the manner of this celebration varies in every locality and culture, permitting the rich diversity of the human family to express itself, three aspects of this celebration have been prescribed by Bahá’u’lláh: a worship service, community consultation, and a period of fellowship. During the worship service, prayers and selections from the sacred text are read; each Bahá’í reaffirms his own spiritual commitment. In consultation, the community applies these spiritual values to its immediate problems; the revelation bears fruit in the realm of social action. The final period of fellowship, during which Bahá’ís share refreshments and converse together, enacts the joyful intercourse natural among members of a community whose religious conviction has been realized in just and charitable social action. As the community orders its affairs according to spiritual principles in consultation, these ideals are translated into living social reality. The act of worship passes from reverent aspiration to responsible collective action. Joyful fellowship results, a spontaneous response to the experience of responsible integrity in a community of vigorously individual souls.

Harvey Cox suggests that the quality of celebration, of festival, characteristic of early Christian community life, be somehow restored to our lives. That quality, likely the same “Joy” of which William Schutz writes, cannot simply be willed into being. Nor can episodes of communal experience in small groups provide an adequate basis for this joy. The Bahá’í solution is more convincing. Bahá’ís are dedicated to transforming the society in which they live, to establishing within it norms derived from spiritual commitment which will restore for humanity the lost experience of community. Forbidden the indulgence of protest or withdrawal, the Bahá’í cannot simply denounce social evils or retreat to a commune of fellow believers. He is obligated to live his beliefs, to perform in society those constructive alternatives to racism, militarism, moral decadence, and apathy in which he believes. He is united with his fellows in this challenging spiritual adventure, confident of victory, and assured that his participation will help to build a community which is not evanescent, but enduring, not limited to a small group, but world embracing.

[Page 32]

Education for Worldmindedness

BY GAYLE MORRISON

THE IDEA that the individual owes his ultimate social allegiance to mankind is not new. Neither is the belief that the establishment of world order is the next imperative step in man’s cultural development. Thoughtful men from Thomas Paine to Arnold Toynbee have nurtured conceptions of world consciousness. Occasionally even national leaders—perhaps most notable among them, Woodrow Wilson—have put forward, albeit irresolutely, a world view.

The events of this century would seem to have reinforced their positions. Our traditional loyalties and ways of thinking have been strained by the proliferation of nuclear power, which has made full-scale war barely imaginable if not unthinkable. Local wars and revolutions appear magnified in an atmosphere of confrontation between the major powers. International competition has catapulted us into space, where suddenly the earth seems both more precious and more vulnerable; and ecological perils are seen to be no respecters of frontiers.

[Page 33] Nevertheless world consciousness has remained elusive. Even while our perspective is being altered subconsciously, as Marshall McLuhan has observed, by the “medium, or process, of our time—electric technology,” we have tended to cling consciously to nationalism, racialism, and a catalog of other ideologies which divide the world. The United Nations, a noble experiment, has become little more than a forum for the old nationalisms of the East and the West and the new nationalisms of the Third World. International agreements, both within and outside the U.N., are fragile and not universally binding. The strongest bonds between peoples are still based on conflict; thus we have NATO and SEATO and the Warsaw Pact, the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

A CENTURY ago Bahá’u’lláh stated the central challenge of our time: “It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” Undoubtedly, world consciousness is elusive because, as Bahá’u’lláh indicates, it requires a juggling of loyalties, a resolution of long held (though perhaps superficial) conflicts between one’s community, ethnic group, or nation, and the world. Moreover we need to make a positive identification with “mankind” and “the world” as meaningful, concrete entities instead of abstract concepts. There have been on the intellectual level many proponents of world unity, but, as psychologists Donald L. Sampson and Howard P. Smith have pointed out, worldmindedness goes beyond an intellectual understanding of and interest in international affairs—an understanding and interest probably based on a solidly national set of priorities and views. An orientation toward “national security” must be replaced by a value or a frame of reference, a positive affiliation with mankind based on an emotional set, a way of looking at the problems of mankind with humanity itself as the reference group. Therefore there is an important distinction between international-mindedness, in even the best liberal tradition, and worldmindedness. An individual may travel around the world, well-intentioned and eager to learn, yet finding himself acutely conscious that he is a Russian or a Japanese—or, on other levels, an Easterner or a Westerner, a capitalist or a socialist, a Christian or a Buddhist—and subject to clashes and frustrations which challenge his intellectual commitment to internationalism. Only the development of worldmindedness can allay these clashes and frustrations, which result from the real differences among mankind.

Bahá’ís view the growth of world consciousness as both a swift, essential commitment and a gradual unfolding process. Every day thousands of people around the world, in accepting Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings of world unity, peace, and justice, take a great stride in their new-found Faith toward becoming world citizens. This is equally true for the Meo tribesman in Laos and the World Federalist in San [Page 34] Francisco. Moreover an embryonic world order already exists in the institutions of their Faith on the local, national, and international levels. Nevertheless the spiritual impetus toward world unity is a partial solution even for Bahá’ís, as long as the institutions of the new order are not yet fully developed. The commitment to unity cannot entirely obliterate our socialization in the present divided societies among mankind. Eventually the mind set which is so difficult to attain now will be a matter of course. As Woodrow Wilson put it, “I look forward to the time when men will be as ashamed of being disloyal to humanity as they are now of being disloyal to their country.”

In the meantime we have in education a potentially effective means of helping to develop new attitudes toward mankind. Shoghi Effendi has observed, “That so fundamental a revolution [the federation of mankind], involving such far-reaching changes in the structure of society, can be achieved through the ordinary processes of diplomacy and education seems highly improbable.” Education alone will not bring about world unity, but it is an important component in the formation of the new order.

One of the most eloquent of a number of writers who have given attention to the subject of world education is Harold Taylor. He writes:

In the most optimistic reading of contemporary history, we could now say that we have reached a stage at which it has become necessary for the educated man to extend the dimension of his loyalty to the entire human race. The conception of education itself must now be one which locates man intellectually in a universe described by scientists, artists, and writers, and in a cultural setting as big as the globe. To enjoy any longer the luxury of defining one’s nation, one’s society, or oneself in terms of pride of ancestry, social superiority, or power of destruction is not only supremely dangerous to the survival of the race, but intellectually and socially obsolete.

Yet, despite the convincing arguments of men such as Taylor and Theodore Brameld, another educational philosopher, education for worldmindedness has not become a major issue in American education. Instead, other issues have engaged our interest: theories of early childhood development, based on the studies of Montessori, Erikson, Piaget, and others; compensatory education; the demands for relevance and for integrated (interdisciplinary) approaches to learning. Yet worldmindedness as an educational goal is related in an important way to each of these concerns and helps to put them in a new perspective.

The major studies of early childhood have shown that, in addition to intellectual abilities, basic attitudes and emotional sets are conditioned by the home and the first [Page 35] school experiences. As we consider reshaping the school and the opportunities it offers the child, however, we tend to become caught in a compartmentalized view of our problems. Thus our responses are also compartmentalized, and larger relationships are lost. Black children in America, for example, have long been denied formal instruction in the history of their people. White children have, in turn, been allowed to retain prejudgments about the worth of blacks in our society. Nevertheless, as valuable as black studies may be, they constitute in their current emphasis a localized treatment, a bandage and some salve on an especially critical wound—our failure to come to terms with the oneness of mankind. They are a temporary expedient. A fate comparable to that of blacks in our educational system has been suffered by Indians and Mexican-Americans, but the scope of the problem is larger still. In general the majority of mankind is either excluded from our schools or, probably worse, presented in exotic rather than humane terms. The superiority of Europeans and their descendents around the world will have to be rooted from our curriculum before the history of blacks, or of any nonwhites, can assume its proper place in the minds of our children, and before all traces of condescension can be removed from “remedial” programs such as Headstart.

Obviously, the development of an overarching concept of worldmindedness faces tremendous obstacles. Our conception of the world is vague and abstract. Except as a view of the globe, a replica, or perhaps a photograph from space, the world is unlikely to be experienced directly as an entity in itself. Robert D. Hess and Judith V. Torney have observed that the political socialization of young children provides the basis for adult attitudes and behaviors; and, although conceptualization is still vague, this early socialization begins with a positive response to symbols as the “crucial points of focus for attachment.” It follows, therefore, that the development of a world affiliation, as Gordon W. Allport notes, is hampered by a lack of symbols of unity, which are “greatly needed in order to provide mental anchorage points around which the idea of world-loyalty may develop.” Unlike the nation, mankind has no flag, no governing body, no army, no holidays, no universally recognized heroes, no school system, and no curriculum; it does, however, have a history, a tangible physical reality, and the beginnings of both a superculture and a supernational order. It is conceivable that world symbols could be devised, as logical and attractive as any which now help to instill in children and to bolster in their elders loyalty to the various nations.

A NUMBER of important questions may also be raised with regard to man’s psychological capacity for worldmindedness. One may ask whether mankind can indeed be an obiect of loyalty, an in-group without an out-group. Furthermore one may ask whether international cooperation and peace (correlates of worldmindedness) are utopian, since aggression is asserted to be an inherent tendency in human beings and must be expressed directly. Finally one may ask whether the thorny [Page 36] problem of prejudice, which some regard as a fact of human nature to which we must become resigned, can be resolved.

If we were suddenly to discover the existence of Martians or Venusians, the problem of mankind as a focus for loyalty would be immediately resolved. Man’s tendency to dichotomize, to think in terms of “we and they,” is well established by sociologists. Yet, even given the strength of loyalty to the in-group, it is possible to see that conflict is not essential to that loyalty. Allport states that “the psychological emphasis must be placed primarily on the desire for security, not on hostility itself,” and that “hostility toward out-groups helps strengthen our sense of belonging, but it is not required.” If an in-group does not depend on the existence of hostility toward an out-group, then it is conceivable that mankind could exist as an in-group with no corresponding out-group. In discussing the development of concentric loyalties Allport concludes that “concentric loyalties need not clash . . . . The loyalties that clash are almost invariably those of identical scope.” Therefore it may be argued convincingly that worldmindedness need not preclude loyalty to one’s nation any more than patriotism precludes community spirit in a city or town.

Unfortunately, since loyalty is frequently associated with hostility, it often seems that war and violence are inevitable. Furthermore many people feel that aggression is part of man’s normal behavior and that its direct expression is necessary. “We have always had wars and always will have them,” the argument runs. It is claimed that ultimately man fights against his fellows because it is in his nature to do so.

This line of reasoning seems partially valid. Studies of children indicate that aggression in childhood “seems to be universal.” The way in which adults respond to aggression, and thereby teach children to deal with feelings of anger, can, however, determine the extent to which violence, or repressed aggression in the form of neuroses, exist in adult society. All children are at times aggressive, but happy children do not harbor the anger which leads to frequent aggressive behavior. Therefore natural aggression may be lessened by favoring the development of happy children and by finding effective ways of stopping aggression and handling constructively the feelings that go along with it.

A theory has developed, especially among middle-class, well-educated parents, that aggression in childhood should be drained off by direct expression, which is healthier than either suppression or repression. Selma Fraiberg, a child psychoanalyst, has observed that “the right of a child to feel anger toward parents and siblings” has gained almost universal acceptance in our culture only in the past fifty years:

It is strange that in the whole gamut of emotions, hostility has been singled out in recent years as the prerogative of the young . . . . But the “right” to have a feeling is not the same as a license to inflict it on others, and in the matter of license we appear to have erred gravely in the education of today’s child.

[Page 37] In a similar vein child psychologist Boyd McCandless gives two reasons for questioning the effectiveness of direct expression in reducing aggression. First, even gossip or frankness, the disguised, verbal forms of violence, “are more likely to produce complications in human relationships than to oil the wheels of social interaction,” and such complications in relationships lead to personal unhappiness which breeds further aggressiveness. Second, “learning theory predicts that the expression of aggression and its consequent momentary tension-relief strengthens rather than weakens the tendency to behave aggressively”; evidence from several studies supports this prediction.

The “right to feel anger,” then, can become an impossible burden for both the individual and his society. Yet there are alternatives to direct expression. Anger can be recognized and accepted as normal, even though hostile behavior is discouraged. According to McCandless the most effective ways of stopping aggression in children are diversionary and reasoning-understanding techniques. Children can be taught instead to channel their anger constructively, when it must be expressed, “into such socially acceptable forms as ambition, competition, and initiative.” The energies of man need not of necessity be expended in violence. Moreover Fraiberg argues that even repression of anger is not an unacceptable means of dealing with it, particularly when it is expressed as pleasure in destruction:

Repression? But isn’t that bad? Isn’t it possible that this repressed sadism will create a neurosis? It is possible—but not necessary. We have already mentioned that repression, in itself, does not create a neurosis. And this brings us to a further point. It is necessary in a civilized society, that sadism, pleasure in inflicting pain, undergo repression. An attitude of disgust and revulsion toward Ihe destruction of human beings or human works is necessary for the preservation of human values.

The problem of prejudice is even more complicated than that of inherent aggressiveness. McCandless suggests that prejudice may be either “normal” or “pathological.” Normal prejudice is the adoption of derogatory attitudes within one’s culture by a basically well-adjusted individual. Pathological prejudice is the displacement of “frustrations, self-contempt, and self-destructive dispositions onto convenient scapegoats.” Allport gives essentially the same definitions in somewhat different terms: there are prejudgments, which man makes invariably about almost everything in order to maintain equilibrium in new situations, and there are actual prejudices. “Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge. A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it.”

According to these definitions prejudgments or normal prejudices are fairly easily [Page 38] reversed, given positive attitudes expressed by family, peers, teachers, or society at large. A middle-aged American’s judgments of men based on length of hair may be readily modified or invalidated, since the acceptability of changing styles is culturally conditioned. Derogatory attitudes can also be reversed by information, as has occurred with the development of knowledge about leprosy. Given widespread recognition that the illness is not highly contagious, and also given use of a less connotative term, “Hansen’s disease,” attitudes have changed in many societies with the result that those who contract the disease are no longer “lepers” in the figurative sense.

Prejudice, however, is highly resistant. Society not only determines generally held attitudes, but it also helps condition child-rearing practices which seem to be associated with the development of authoritarian or prejudiced personalities. Although the psychoanalytic theory of authoritarianism has been the subject of valid criticism, there is no reason to conclude that prejudice is irreversible in human nature. It may be unlikely that an authoritarian adult in a “normally prejudiced” society will change without undergoing psychoanalysis, or even that psychoanalysis will be totally successful, but there is no evidence to suggest that prejudice is inborn. In her fascinating study of the development of race awareness in young children, Mary Ellen Goodman notes that four-year-olds in a biracial nursery school ranged in awareness from vague confusion to a nearly adult use of racial terms and conceptions, that many held feelings of superiority and inferiority in regard to race, but that in general the children were not ready to carry out their predispositions in the act of prejudiced behavior. While her findings engender hope, since it apparently takes several years for children to translate learned values into habitual behavior, they also point to the crucial need to deal with the roots of prejudice in the first years of life, beginning at least at age two and a half or so when the first traces of racial awareness appear.

With prejudice constituting such an effective barrier to worldmindedness, Dr. Goodman’s study suggests why it is so difficult to recondition adults. Possibly the most one may hope for is that “normal” prejudices (or prejudgments) will yield to information, perhaps as a result of the added impetus of a pressing, indeed frightening, need to resolve social problems. The potential for change is, of course, much greater among children and youth than adults. A number of individuals concerned with developing world consciousness have focused on high school and higher education. Increasing attention is being given to the elementary curriculum. Relatively little consideration, however, has been given to the development of worldmindedness and the prerequisites for worldmindedness in the critical period of early childhood.

PERHAPS ONE REASON for the lack of emphasis on such programs at the preschool level is the generally held belief that small children are not yet ready to think in world terms. Piaget, for example, found in a study of Swiss children that only at age eight to ten could the child grasp concentric loyalties, recognizing, albeit with some [Page 39] confusion, his identity as a Genevan and a Swiss. At ten or eleven the matter became much clearer. As is true with much of Piaget’s work, however, this test has been the subject of technical criticism. Tests of Scottish children between ages six and eleven have found that many of them develop clear ideas of concentric loyalty much earlier than their tenth or eleventh years.

Hess and Torney write that “the acquisition of political attitudes proceeds rapidly, especially through the fifth grade.” The earliest political responses are confused but involve intense loyalty and attachment to symbols. There is a strong tendency toward a feeling of national superiority in the early grades, an identification which remains basic in adults and conditions attitudes toward those who are disloyal to their country.

These studies indicate that important political socialization occurs in the early years of schooling. National allegiances develop rapidly, but significant development of attitudes toward internationalism can occur as well. Hess and Torney asked children between the second and the eighth grades, “Who does most to keep peace in the world: the United States or the United Nations?” By the fourth grade more children answered that it is the U.N.; by the eighth grade the children nearly mirrored their teachers in their view of the U.N. as a peacekeeper.

This rapid growth in awareness is based on the acquisition of basic values during early childhood. Dr. Goodman’s studies have shown how effectively parental and societal attitudes shape the values, including the self-concept, of small children. By the age of four both black and white children in her study had gained not only some awareness of race but a general preference for whiteness. White children acquired a general attitude of superiority; they were not touched or threatened by their awareness of race. She found that black children, however, never assumed “a posture of superiority toward whites.” They did not yet understand how it is that race impinges upon them, but they seemed to sense at threat, a personal threat that white children did not feel. Goodman’s findings are supported by those of H. W. Stevenson and E. E. Stewart, who found that blacks did not prefer a doll of their own color until the age of seven, whereas white children showed a clear preference for white dolls from the age of three. Also black children tended to identify a black child as the “villain” in a story in increasing percentages from the age of three to seven. These studies suggest that early racial awareness for a discriminated-against minority also involves out-group preference and in-group rejection, psychological sets which, among other unhealthy results, militate against the development of worldmindedness among American children.

The early years are, therefore, crucial in shaping the child’s attitudes toward himself and others like and unlike himself. An initial step in developing worldmindedness, therefore, might be the establishment of a psychological basis for unity. Since [Page 40] the prejudiced personality seems to be the product of specific kinds of child-rearing practices, it is theoretically possible to educate parents and prospective parents with regard to child-rearing techniques which tend to produce “tolerant” personalities —techniques generally believed to rest on permissiveness rather than authoritarianism, love-orientation, equalitarianism, tolerance of ambiguities and individualism, withdrawal of privileges rather than of love, and a constructive approach in dealing with aggression. Unfortunately, parental attitudes toward child rearing are almost as inaccessible as their attitudes and behaviors with regard to race and other prejudices. Parents who are open to new child-rearing techniques are likely to be correspondingly open to concern regarding prejudice. Perhaps the most hopeful avenue of approach is through community psychiatry, a developing method of dealing with psychological problems among large groups of people. Intervention on this level is, however, fraught with difficulties; and change is likely to come slowly, although much more effectively than through psychoanalytic and group therapy techniques aimed at prejudiced adolescents or adults.

Another method of breaking down barriers between people is the establishment of early contacts to diminish feelings of strangeness. By itself this method cannot be expected to produce startling results. Goodman’s study of children in a biracial preschool revealed the existence of nascent prejudice. Allport gives a moderately hopeful picture: “Contacts that bring knowledge and acquaintance are likely to engender sounder beliefs concerning minority groups, and for this reason contribute to the reduction of prejudice.” He suggests that sustained acquaintance produces far more significant results than casual contacts, which may in fact reinforce stereotypes. This theory is borne out by P. H. Mussen’s study of white boys who spent four weeks in an interracial camp, which showed that group attitudes did not alter significantly although many individual children changed in their attitudes. Contact is valuable, therefore, but is unlikely to affect a personality which is already pathologically prejudiced or a “normally prejudiced” person in a pathologically prejudiced environment.

AS HAS BEEN SUGGESTED earlier, worldmindnedness is an emotional set; therefore an important approach to its development is through the emotions. Little has been done to develop symbols, the rallying-points for early loyalties. Hess and Torney found that the beginnings of political loyalty lie in attachment to symbols—in America, the flag, and the Statue of Liberty—and that, even as conceptualization [Page 41] becomes more complex and abstract, the symbols are retained. Perhaps the most effective world symbol has come from space exploration; even though it has been motivated in large part by nationalism, space flight has given the world the image of a beautiful blue sphere upon which the only “borders” are continents meeting seas. The U.N. flag and the Secretariat building are potential symbols, but really no more than that, given current attitudes toward world government.

One of the most interesting and promising approaches to the development of worldminedness is through aesthetics. In a valuable little book, The Sociology of Early Childhood Education (New York: American Book, 1968), Edith W. King and August Kerber provide excellent suggestions for the use of music, art, literature, and films in preschool and kindergarten. Dr. King, as head of the Worldmindedness Institute at the University of Denver, has continued to make important contributions in this area. She has directed production of a series of four filmstrips called “Discovering the World” which focus on “The Universal Language of Children,” “Cultural Dignity,” and “Masks.” Her latest book is entitled, The World: Context for Teaching in the Elementary School (Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown, 1971). This aesthetic approach is especially useful since it touches the emotions and affects the early development of values which will condition political attitudes and loyalties in later childhood and throughout the life of the individual.

Finally, although the informational approach is not likely to produce striking changes by itself, curriculum innovations in elementary school cannot be dismissed. Leonard S. Kenworthy’s Social Studies for the Seventies (Waltham, Mass: Blaisdell, 1969) provides a number of thought-provoking suggestions in this regard. Another approach to teacher training has been taken by Sister Mary Kenneth Flanigan, Principal of St. Raphael School in Bay Village, Ohio, who is working on “mini-institutes” for training in-service elementary teachers in the concepts of worldmindedness. On the high school level Glenn Hawkes of the University of Massachusetts has been working on a curriculum design which reflects his interests in world order and in what he and David Trask call “prophetic history.”

These final proposals for curriculum innovations are interesting and valuable especially because it seems as if we have very little time in which to establish an acute awareness of humanity’s interdependence and the need for world-embracing answers to twentieth-century problems. Undoubtedly efforts to inculcate worldmindedness among older children, adolescents, and adults can have significant results. We have no excuse to wring our hands and give up without trying every means at hand. Nevertheless the greatest hope for establishing a world citizenry rests in the raising up of a generation in whom worldmindedness has been fostered since early childhood. For a Bahá’í anything less would fall short of the goal envisioned by Shoghi Effendi, the creation of “an organic change in the structure of present-day society” and “the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world.”

[Page 42]

The Muslim Clergy and the Peacock Throne

A REVIEW OF HAMID ALGAR’S Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period (BERKELEY: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 1969), 260 PAGES

BY FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

NINETEENTH-CENTURY Persia was dominated by two great forces, the monarchy and the clergy. While the former was supposedly absolute and all-powerful, it was in fact held in check by the latter. Though the Muslim clergy in theory was not a priesthood, lacking sacerdotal character and performing no sacraments, it was sociologically and psychologically a priestly caste, wielding enormous influence built upon the popular conviction of monopoly of the means of salvation. The monarchy and the clergy shared power. At times they coexisted in an almost symbiotic relationship that led European observers to see Persia as a “Church-State.” Frequently they clashed and struggled over their respective shares of influence, prestige, and wealth. Between them, the two institutions to a great extent shaped the political, cultural, and spiritual life of the nation.

Professor Hamid Algar in his recent book, Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906, examines the intricate relationship between the monarchy and the clergy. He begins with an exposition of certain Shí’ih doctrines, particularly that of the Imámate as the only source of legitimate authority, a doctrine which implied that in the absence of an Imám (the twelfth having disappeared in the year 260 A.H.) no government was perfect or worthy of implicit obedience by its subjects. Next he turns to the Shí’ih ulamá, the clergy, who were considered to be intermediaries between the Hidden Imám and the faithful. The most learned of the ulamá were accorded the rank of mujtahid. Mujtahids were believed to possess the right and the capacity to guide the faithful, each of whom had to become an imitator (muqallid) and accept the judgment of a mujtahid. Collectively and individually the ulamá not only directed the spiritual life of the nation but performed numerous practical functions such as collecting and distributing alms, administering religious endowments, running religious courts, acting as trustees for minors, and witnessing contracts. They were also in charge of education, since they entirely controlled the schools both as administrators and as teachers.

The power and the influence of the ulamá rested on the veneration and awe they inspired in the population, on the large economic resources at their command, and on private armies of tulláb (seminarians) and lútís (bandits, ruffians) ready to execute the commands of their priestly leaders. The ulamá were never loath to use their wealth, power, and influence to political ends. Since they intervened in every sphere of life, including the political sphere, they were bound to come into conflict with the state (pp. 19-20).

Professor Algar does not analyze the nature or the theory of Persian monarchy in the Shí’ih period of Persian history (since A.D. 1500). This leaves the reader with the impression that there was no such theory and that the fairly esoteric doctrine of the illegitimacy of all secular authority in the absence [Page 43] of the Imám determined the attitude of the masses toward the throne. Such was not the case. Through all the dynastic changes, through all the catastrophes and reversals of fortune, the theories of divine monarchy survived. Views and attitudes evincing something akin to veneration of the monarchy can be found in Persian poetry, in learned treatises, and abundantly in fairy tales. Thus the state did not stand spiritually naked before the ulamá. It had its own moral justification. While it is true that the Qájár rulers of Persia were usurpers to start with, it is also true that they did gradually acquire legitimacy in the eyes of the masses of the people.

The ulamá preserved and perpetuated their enormous power by being vigilant and struggling against all possible rivals. Professor Algar shows that they excommunicated and persecuted the Akhbárí sect, fought more than doctrinal battles with the influential Ṣúfís whom they drove underground, and destroyed whatever influence the Ismáílís still exercised in certain areas of the country. They were alarmed by the teachings of Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Ahsá’í and of his disciple and successor Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí. In spite of his great reputation for piety, the support of a number of prominent officials, and the benevolent attitude of Fath-‘Alí Sháh himself, Shaykh Aḥmad was anathematized by the Usúlí (orthodox) mujtahids (p. 68).

The influence of the ulamá on the affairs of state was on the whole baneful. Although Professor Algar does not draw this conclusion, all the evidence presented by him shows that on questions of governmental policy the mujtahids were ignorant, unrealistic, selfish, and nearsighted. In the first three decades of the nineteenth century they opposed the military reforms attempted by the heir to the throne ‘Abbás Mírzá and his capable minister Mírzá Abu’l-Qásim, the Qá’im-Maqám (p. 76ff.). Though Professor Algar makes no such comparisons, certain similarities with the role of a portion of the Russian clergy in the seventeenth century are evident. The ferocious resistance of many Russian churchmen to Western ideas and techniques is reminiscent of the reaction of the Shí’ih clergy to the appearance in Írán of French army instructors and newfangled uniforms.

Professor Algar’s treatment of the role played by the clergy in the development of Russo-Persian relations demonstrates again the shortsightedness and ignorance of the ulamá. The defeat suffered by Persia in the first war with Russia should have been lesson enough. Yet the ulamá, in spite of all their vaunted learning, failed to understand the nature of Western power. In this they were far behind such secular leaders as ‘Abbás Mírzá and Qá’im-Maqám. The clergy preached holy war, pushing an unprepared nation into a second trial of strength (1826-28) against an army that had defeated Napoleon. The result was a major disaster. Persia’s second defeat cost her several Caucasian Khanates and saddled her with the Treaty of [Page 44] Turkamancháy under which Russia acquired a strong and privileged position in Persian affairs. The clergy threw the blame for the defeat on the state, shattering the nation’s confidence in itself. The spiritual leaders of the people had nothing to offer in this crisis except retreat into a past that could never be revived (Chapter V).

The ulamá almost succeeded in provoking a third war with Russia when they inspired and led Ṭihrán mobs in an attack upon the Russian legation and the massacre of its staff, including the Minister Plenipotentiary, the brilliant Russian writer A. S. Griboedov. Of course, Griboedov was an agent of Russian imperialism who enforced, harshly and arrogantly, the provisions of the peace treaty for the return to the Caucasus of Georgians and Armenians captured by the Persians in earlier wars. Many of the captives did not wish to leave Persia. Most had embraced Islám, some had achieved high rank in Persian society, some had married Persians and were naturally reluctant to leave their spouses and children. The grievances of the people against Griboedov and the Russians were real. However, the manner in which the clergy acted revealed its blindness to international relations and its moral obtuseness. Staging a riot, attacking a foreign legation, massacring foreign diplomats—these acts came naturally to those who in the name of religion were often willing to resort to bloodshed and murder. It should be noted in passing that Professor Algar made use of no Russian sources in his discussion of the two Russo-Persian wars and the Griboedov episode. This is regrettable because Russian sources are rich and important. Without them the study must remain to some extent one-sided. Moreover, checking Russian sources would have helped to avoid minor errors such as the persistent misspelling of General Yermolov’s name.

WESTERN SCHOLARS who spend their lives studying a subject that must by its very nature remain exotic to them, sometimes develop for it a romantic attachment that tends to distort their judgment. They seem to over-react against that other variety of Western scholars, the ones who never see any good among the heathen and forever preserve their imagined superiority to those whose society, history, or culture they investigate. Professor Algar belongs to the first category. He likes the Persians and, most of all, he likes the ulamá. This sympathy for the clergy does not prevent him from disclosing some of their malefactions. It does, however, lead him to present them in a light far too favorable on the evidence of his own research and documentation. A case in point is his treatment of Ḥájí Siyyid Muḥammad Báqir-i-Shaftí, a prominent mujtahid of Iṣfahán.

Ḥájí Siyyid Muḥammad Báqir was closely associated with street gangs and criminal elements of Iṣfahán. He was largely responsible for the anarchy that gripped the city at the death of Fatḥ-‘Alí Sháh. He was the chief instigator of a revolt against the royal governor who was expelled from the city. “Encouraged by this success,” Professor Algar writes, “Ḥájjí Sayyid Muhammad Báqir and his allies among the lúṭís extended their activities. At night the lúṭís would emerge from bast [sanctuary] and engage in murder, robbery, and rape with impunity. ‘The next day [says Násikhu’t Taváríkh, a Qájár court chronicle], they would wash their swords, which were red with the blood of Muslims, in the water-tanks of the mosques’” (p. 112). Ḥájí Siyyid Muḥammad Báqir was finally subdued by the energetic and capable new governor of Iṣfahán, Manúchihr Khán Mu‘tamidu’d-Dawlih. The criminal mujtahid died shortly thereafter and, Professor Algar writes, “Iṣfahán was deprived of its spiritual and temporal ruler” (p. 113). The last sentence is not intended by Professor Algar to be sarcastic.

The misgovernment of the ulamá was obvious everywhere. In Karbilá, a Shí’ih holy city in Ottoman territory, the secular authorities left local affairs in the hands of [Page 45] the resident mujtahids. As a result Karbilá, in Professor Algar’s words, turned into “a place of refuge for thieves and brigands both from Iran and Arab Iraq” (p. 114). The ulamá grew so bold that they even omitted the mention of the Sulṭan in Friday prayers at the mosques, an omission that was a clear challenge to his sovereignty. In January 1843 the Turkish governor, Najíb Páshá, had to fight his way into Karbilá against armed resistance directed by the ulamá. An infuriated Sunní soldiery killed thousands of people and sacked the city. Professor Algar mentions that the house of Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí, the Shaykhí leader, was not touched, and finds this remarkable and inexplicable. The explanation is simple. Najíb Páshá had no desire to stage a massacre at Karbilá. He was perfectly aware of the political activities and criminal connections of many Usúlí mujtahids. He was also aware of the piety, the sincerity, and the sanctity of Siyyid Káẓim and appealed to him to induce the inhabitants of Karbilá to surrender peacefully. He promised a general amnesty if the city surrendered and warned of a great calamity in case of armed resistance. Siyyid Káẓim met with the leaders of the insurrection and persuaded them to open the gates to Najíb Páshá. However, the ulamá frustrated this plan, assuring the rebels of victory “on the strength of a dream in which one of their members had seen ‘Abbás, who had charged him to incite his followers to wage holy war against the besiegers and had given him the promise of ultimate success.” Siyyid Káẓim reported his failure to Najíb Páshá who replied that he would “force the gates of the citadel, and would regard the home of the Siyyid as the only place of refuge for a defeated enemy.” Thus it happened that Siyyid Káẓim’s house was spared as were the lives of a large number of people who took bast there and in the adjoining buildings.

The author’s clerical sympathies make him identify the interests of the priests with those of Islám and of Írán. The ulamá appear as the only guardians of Íránian nationality and their opponents are always cast in negative roles. This is nowhere more obvious than in his treatment of the Bábí-Bahá’í movement. The Bábís are first mentioned in a sentence that virtually dismisses their struggles as “events of passing and marginal importance” (p. 103). Thirty-three pages later it is stated that the effects of the Bábí movement “on the subsequent course of Iranian history” were such that “it deserves detailed examination” (p. 136). Professor Algar devotes to the Bábi-Bahá’í movement an entire chapter, yet he does net examine it in detail. He simply states that “Bábism, at all stages of its doctrinal development, was of necessity opposed to Islam, for its claim to validity presupposed the supersession of Islam” (p. 137). That, of course, was the position of the ulamá, whom Professor Algar calls “the institutional expression of the power of Islam, the expositors and guardians of its doctrine and the enforcers of its law” (pp. 137-38).

“Bábism,” far from being opposed to Islám, was to the Báb and the Bábís its fulfillment. The Báb looked upon Islám as Jesus looked upon Judaism. If the Christians saw in Jesus the Messiah of the Jews, the Bábís saw in the Báb the Qá’im (“him who shall arise”) who would fulfill Islám and bring it to its final fruition. The Bábí-Bahá’í attitude toward Islám (the acceptance of Muḥammad as Prophet, respect for the Prophet and the Imáms) is evident in every pronouncement ever made by the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. Whatever the ulamá may have said, the Bábís had no intention of destroying Islám but believed that they were fulfilling its promise. As for the claim that the ulamá were the guardians of Islám, the proposition should at least be qualified by inserting the words “self-styled,” for who is to say that a Siyyid Muḥammad Báqir-i-Shaftí or an Áqá [Page 46] Najafí were more Muslim than all the Sunnís, Ismáílís, Akhbárís, Súfís, and other Muslims whom they anathematized or even sent to their deaths?

IN NARRATING the story of the Báb and the Bábís, Professor Algar relies on a number of classic sources. However, with the exception of Alessandro Bausani’s Persia Religiosa he ignores the literature that has appeared since the days of Edward G. Browne. (One may also express surprise that the author of A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Báb is not identified.) Thus he ignores Nabíl’s The Dawn-Breakers, as well as the available volumes of the twentieth-century historian Fáḍil-i-Mázindarání, who himself was of the ulamá before accepting the Bahá’í Faith. He is seemingly unaware of Shoghi Effendi’s God Passes By. Moreover, he ignores the rich historical material in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, whose Epistle to the Son of the Wolf has been available for years not only in Persian but in French and English as well. Finally, there is no evidence of acquaintance with the writings of the Báb or with the scholarly work of the French orientalist A. L. M. Nicolas whose Seyyed Ali Mohammad dit le Bab is of the first importance to any investigation of the history of the Bábí Faith, and no mention of the significant contributions made by Mirza Kazem Bek, Rosen, and Tumanskii.

The narrative of events from the day of the Báb's declaration of mission is presented in a somewhat slanted way. (Incidentally, the year of the Báb’s declaration was 1844, not 1843, as it appears on page 138.) Professor Algar is right in saying that the cause of the immediately hostile reaction of the ulamá toward the Báb “was doubtless provided by the realization that his doctrine constituted bid’at, i.e., reprehensible innovation” (p. 138). The Bábís went so far as to add to the traditional formula of the adhán: (call to prayer) the words “I bear witness that ‘Alí Muḥammad is the remnant of God.” In a footnote Professor Algar refers to “this deformed idhán,” clearly indicating his agreement with the position of the ulamá (p. 138, note 2). To deform, after all, means “1. To spoil the form of; disfigure. 2. To deprive of comeliness, grace or perfection.”

Thus the Bábís “deformed” the adhán and paid for it dearly. “Some,” Professor Algar writes, “were whipped, others, such as Muḥammad ‘Alí Bárfurúshí, were paraded around the bazaar with blackened faces and burnt beards” (p. 138). Since the author chose to mention this episode, it is given below in a fuller version:

He [Ḥusayn Khán, the governor of Shíráz] then commanded that the beards of both Quddús [Mullá ‘Alí-yi-Bárfurúshí] and Mullá Ṣádiq should be burned, their noses be pierced, that through this incision a cord should be passed, and with this halter they should be led through the streets of the city. “It will be an object lesson to the people of Shíráz,” Ḥusayn Khán declared, “who will know what the penalty of heresy will be.” . . . Those who had been instructed to inflict this savage punishment performed their task with alacrity and vigour. None intervened in behalf of these sufferers, none was inclined to plead their cause.

Such, then, was the beginning of the persecution of the Bábís by the combined forces of the state and the clergy.

Professor Algar detects a difference of approach toward the Báb on the part of the clergy and the state. The clergy demanded condign punishment and strict isolation of the dangerous heretic. The state was willing to temporize. Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, the grotesque Prime Minister and spiritual preceptor of Muḥammad Sháh “can scarcely have been scandalized by the Báb’s claims; more probably he hoped for some amusement from the spectacle of the Báb’s clash with the ulamá, and even for an amount of support in his [Page 47] own constant struggle with the clerical class” (p. 140). On his orders the Báb was put under house arrest, “but evidently his confinement was not strict, for it was in Shiraz that Mullá Ḥusayn Bushravayh [sic], on his way from Arab Iraq to Kirman, accepted the Báb’s claims” (p. 140). In this instance Professor Algar’s reasoning is betrayed by chronology. Mullá Ḥusayn Bushrú’í (not Bushravayh) arrived in Shíráz in late May 1844 and was the first person to hear and to accept the Báb’s claim. This occurred more than a year before the arrest and confinement of the Báb and the first persecution of the Bábís in Shíráz.

The favorable attitude toward the Báb of Iṣfahán’s governor, Manúchihr Khán Mu‘tamidu’d-Dawlih, is implicitly advanced as further evidence that the state, unlike the clergy, was ambivalent with respect to the new “heresy.” The ulamá, Professor Algar writes, did not wish even to meet the Báb, saying that the case had been decided and all that remained was to inflict upon the heretic the punishment provided by the law. Again, the story is incomplete. Manúchihr Khán was acting not in behalf of the state but in his own. He had in fact become a Bábí and served the Báb with the same zeal as the other disciples. This turn of events alarmed Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí who saw a threat to his own position since Manúchihr Khán had the fullest confidence of the Sháh and might have induced the latter to pay serious attention to the Báb’s claims. It was fear that prompted the Prime Minister to prevent the Sháh from meeting the Báb.

As for the ulamá, they were not ranged solidly against the new Faith. Indeed, while a majority violently opposed it, hundreds joined its ranks. Of the Báb’s first eighteen disciples, called Letters of the Living, twelve or more were mullás and at least three others were children of mullás. Perhaps half of the Bábís who perished in the siege and the subsequent massacre at Fort Shaykh Ṭabarsí were divines. The ulamá led the Bábís at Zanján, Nayríz, and elsewhere. Therefore, it is impossible to claim that the Shí’ih clergy was more anti-Bábí than state officials.

The execution of the Báb, Professor Algar writes, “ended the first stage in the development of the religious movement resulting in the syncretist doctrines of Bahá’ism” (p. 147). Again as with the “deformed” adhán, the term “syncretist” is used in an obviously pejorative sense. However, it is a term utterly inapplicable to the Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. First misapplied to the Bahá’í Faith by Western observers who believed that they saw in it an attempt at a fusion of all religions, the term has been repeated by many writers who have not borhered to inquire into the nature of the case.

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH accepts as true and divinely inspired the great religions of the past such as Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islám. If this be syncretism, Islám is also syncretistic, for it accepts the validity of Christianity and Judaism and speaks of thousands of unnamed prophets who preceded Muḥammad. A truly syncretistic religion would try to combine various features of other religions; it would be eclectic and without a strong doctrinal structure of its own. The most superficial familiarity with the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and their interpretations by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi, as well as the slightest acquaintance with the organizational principles of Bahá’í communities throughout the world, would show the independent character of the Bahá’í Faith, its striking originality, and the organic nature of its Teachings. Lack of fanaticism, acceptance of the validity of the religions of the past, generosity of spirit, and dedication to brotherhood are not evidences of syncretism. Some thirty-five years ago the Enciclopedia Italiana described the Bahá’í Faith as a form of religious indifferentism. The editors apparently could not conceive of strong belief without hostility to others.

“It was the ulama,” Professor Algar continues, “who were first threatened by it [the [Page 48] Bábí movement] and often suffered from its violence (p. 147). Over the next two pages he repeatedly stresses the violence of the Bábís and states explicitly on page 149 that it was “the violence of the early Bábís [that] was paid back to their successors by the ulamá and the state.” One can only wonder at this. By Professor Algar’s own account force was first unleashed by the Muslim clergy, which was generally violent and thought nothing of ordering murderous attacks on anyone who incurred their displeasure, or whose property excited their cupidity, be he a Ṣúfí, a Zoroastrian, a Jew, a Bábí, or whatever. That the Bábís, victimized beyond endurance, committed individual acts of terrorism is a well-known fact. Here and there prominent enemies of the Faith were attacked. In 1852, two years after the martyrdom of the Báb, an attempt was even made on the life of the Sháh. However, only at Mázindarán, at Nayríz, and at Zanján did the Bábís collectively turn on their persecutors:

On these three occasions a number of Bábís, driven to desperation, withdrew in concert from their houses to a chosen retreat and, erecting defensive works about them, defied in arms further pursuit. To any impartial witness it was evident that the mullás’ allegations of a political motive were untrue. The Bábís showed themselves always ready—on an assurance that they would be no longer molested for their religious beliefs—to return peacefully to their civil occupations. . . . They would fight for their lives with determined skill and strength; but they would not attack. Even in the midst of a fierce conflict they would not drive home an advantage nor strike an unnecessary blow.

Professor Algar equates the defensive violence of the victim with the aggressive violence of the oppressor. Moreover, he attempts to implicate the Bahá’ís in and blame them for the violence forced upon the Bábís. How else can one read the following jumbled and confusing paragraph:

The development of Bábism into Bahá’ism confirmed the existing hostility to the ulama. Thus Mírzá Jání Káshání, author of the Nuqṭat ul-Káf, looked forward to the beheading of 70,000 mullás by the Hidden Imám on his emergence, and thought them less valuable than the carcass of a dog. The attempt on the life on [sic] Náṣir ud-Dín Sháh was preceded by a similar plot against the imám jum’a of Tehran, which however was not put into operation. (p. 150).

In what way did the “development of Bábism into Bahá’ism” confirm “the existing hostility” (whose hostility?) to the ulamá? What does the statement of Ḥájí Mírzá Jání prove? Why is the attempt on the life of the Sháh mentioned in connection with “the development of Bábism into Bahá’ism”? Why is it further stated that the Bahá’ís “dissociated themselves from the attack on the Shah” in the summer of 1852 when Bahá’ís did not come into existence until 1863? All this confusion simply means that Professor Algar has adopted the clerical point of view. That point of view, however, does not square with the facts. Hence the confusion, the innuendo, the belittling, and the inability to cope with the subject.

Professor Algar imputes to the Bahá’ís the desire “to achieve with Náṣir ud-Dín Sháh what the Báb had failed to accomplish with Muḥammed Sháh: to present themselves as allies of the state against the ulamá.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá supposedly “wrote in this vein to Náṣir ud-Dín Sháh” (p. 151). Both Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá addressed epistles to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, but not to propose alliances. Bahá’u’lláh’s messages, in one instance delivered at the cost of the young messenger’s life, were admonitions and instructions which the Sháh was certain to disregard. They paralleled closely Bahá’u’lláh’s epistles to the [Page 49] sulṭans of Turkey, to Napoleon III, and to other rulers of the day. Their purpose was to proclaim the new religion. Professor Algar does not seem to know this literature. He never refers to the well-known texts of Bahá’í Writings published from authenticated manuscripts. Instead he refers his reader to secondary sources, some of which are of dubious value.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s letter to the Sháh is said to have been taken from ‘Abdu’r-Razzáq al-Ḥasaní’s book on the Bábís and the Bahá’ís published at Sidon, Lebanon, in 1956-57. Who is this obscure authority? A Shí’ih divine? Sidon is a major center for the publication of Shí’ih polemical literature. The book is an attack on the Bábís and the Bahá’ís. Citing such a source, it would seem, should have compelled a scholar to look elsewhere as well, to make sure that the text was authentic, that it had not been garbled or even invented outright. Would one base one’s opinions of Islám on the writings of medieval Christian churchmen?

Another dubious reference is to “Browne, ed., Traveller’s Narrative, II, 149” for the statement that the Bahá’ís not only blamed the ulamá for the suppression of “Bábism . . . but they were held responsible for preventing Náṣir ud-Dín Sháh from introducing a policy of toleration” (p. 151, note 95). A careful reading of A Traveller’s Narrative fails to show any such thing, but page 149 contains instead an invocation to God “to sanctify the hearts of certain of the doctors from rancour and hatred that they may regard things with eyes which closure overcometh not . . .” On the next page one finds a prayer to God that the Sháh be made just, “that he may not shut his eyes to the wrong which he seeth, but may regard his subjects with the eye of favour and preserve them from violence.” The spirit of these passages is infinitely remote from the kind of political machination insinuated by Professor Algar and is unsupported even by his own citations. Such methods throw serious doubt on the reliability of his other citations as well, and consequently on his entire work.

THE SUBJECT of authorities and sources should not be closed without mention of the sad fact that over the last fifty years Western scholars have been satisfied with quoting a few early investigators of the Bábí-Bahá’í movement and letting it go at that. With one or two rare exceptions they have regurgitated Edward G. Browne until he has become sanctified and incontrovertible. He has achieved for Orientalists a status similar to that Atistotle enjoyed with his medieval commentators. Browne undoubtedly contributed much to the gathering and publication of Bábí-Bahá’í materials in the West. Yet his own knowledge was defective and his personal involvement with Persia frequently clouded his vision. It is time to reexamine Browne in the light of a mass of new evidence. A first step in that direction has been recently taken by Mr. H. M. Balyuzi in his book Edward Granville Browne and the Bahá’í Faith, which contains a most important chapter on the Táríkh-i-Jadíd and the Nuqṭatu’l-Káf.

The remaining seven chapters of Religion and State in Iran are of uneven quality. The history of the late nineteenth century has been more thoroughly explored by scholars than the early Qájár period and Professor Algar’s contribution is minor. Moreover, some of his ideas are highly debatable. He tries to prove, for instance, that Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh’s religion was unorthodox in spite of his ostentatious piety and in spite of his rather lavish handouts to the ulamá. This raises [Page 50] anew the whole question of orthodoxy. In the absence of a supreme body or a supreme pontiff authorized to define orthodoxy, who determined the heterodoxy of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh or of Muẓaffari’d-Dín Sháh, his successor? Even the consensus of mujtahids cannot be invoked here, for there was none. The Sháh had his own Usúlí mujtahids who gave him firm backing against others. But what is orthodoxy? The unorthodoxy of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh apparently was evinced by his refusal to accept the direction of a “marja’-i taqlíd,” (p. 160) to follow blindly a “source of imitation,” to entrust one’s mind and conscience to some mujtahid.

Students of modern Persian history are familiar with the squalid conditions under the last four Qájár sháhs. The court was corrupt past belief. Corruption was a way of life for government officials. The clergy, self-styled guardians of Islám, shamelessly exploited religion and vied with secular officials in amassing wealth and exploiting the people. Ḥájí Mullá ‘Alí-yi-Kaní, chief mujtahid of Ṭihrán, hoarded grain and sold it at exorbitant prices during famine. In Iṣfahán a group of mujtahids, among them Mír Muḥammad Ḥusayn and Shaykh Muḥammad Báqir—both notorious for killing Bahá’ís (who on principle offered no resistance)— dominated the city to their own advantage and unmercifully fleeced the public. Their great rival was the governor, Mas’úd Mírzá Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, eldest son of the sháh, who was as greedy and unscrupulous as they. “Ẓill us-Sulṭán,” Professor Algar writes, “had had the satisfaction of seducing Shaykh Muḥammad Báqir’s wife and seeing him powerless to react, but the Shaykh’s son, Muḥammad Taqí, known as Áqá Najafí, amply avenged his father and built up for himself a power hardly inferior to that of the governor” (p. 180). Áqá Najafí also hoarded grain and grew immensely rich in times of famine. Mírzá Javád Áqá of Tabríz disrupted the city’s government, exacted enormous amounts of money from his flock, and became the owner of two hundred villages.

The government made only feeble attempts at reform and modernization. Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán-i-Sipahsálár’s dealing with Julius Reuter, a British subject who was granted a unique concession for the economic exploitation of the country, were motivated more by desire for personal gain than for the betterment of his country. In this instance clerical obscurantism and hatred of all innovation happened to inspire an opposition to policies which were in fact detrimental to the nation’s well-being. However, Professor Algar dismisses too lightly the involvement of the Russians in the Reuter episode. The sháh’s determination to go through with the concession was shaken by the cold reception he was accorded in St. Petersburg. Prince Gorchakov, Russia’s Chancellor, expressed his government’s displeasure in no uncertain terms. The Russian legation in Ṭihrán was deeply involved in the “protest” movement whose leadership the clergy assumed with the knowledge that they would be backed by Russia. It is highly significant that when the Reuter concession was canceled and the government entered into negotiations with a Russian-backed entrepreneur, Baron Falkenhagen, the clergy remained silent. For some reason Professor Algar does not mention Falkenhagen at all, nor is he aware of Russia’s policies in regard to economic concessions, especially railway concessions in Persia.

The infamous lottery concession granted by the Sháh to Mírzá Malkam Khán, Persian Minister in London (not an ambassador as Professor Algar styles him on p. 182), was another tragicomedy that demonstrated the extent of corruption in government. The concession was ultimately revoked and, according [Page 51] to Professor Algar, “in this revocation the ulama played their part. The Sháh in his letter annulling the concession, refers to the incompatibility of a lottery with the sharí’at, and presumably a farvá had been issued to that effect” (p. 182). There is no evidence for this interpretation. However, there is a mass of documents which shows that if anyone was worried about the incompatibility of the concession with law, it was the British government. The British applied pressure on the Sháh, and on this occasion received sincere cooperation from the Russians. It was this combined Anglo-Russian pressure that forced the Sháh to cancel the concession. When the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mírzá ‘Abbás Khán Qavámu’d-Dawlih, on December 10, 1889, officially informed Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, the British Minister in Ṭihrán, that the concession had been cancelled, he put the blame on Malkam Khán. The latter had supposedly “put in other games (than the lottery) which are contrary to the noble laws of the Mussulman faith . . . therefore by obligation the above mentioned concession was annulled and cancelled.” What else could the Persian government have said? This was a face saving formula, and it was acceptable to the British and the Russians. The ulamá played no part here.

They did play a leading role in the cancellation of the Tobacco Régie, a monopolistic concession granted by the Sháh to a British company. Since the Sháh and Amínu’s-Sulṭán, the Prime Minister, were both generously paid by the concessionaire, they were personally interested in the Régie’s success. The producers as well as the merchants of tobacco were threatened by the concession. The clergy became the rallying point and a vast antiforeign, antigovernment movement was set afoot.

Professor Algar uses largely familiar sources: Mustawfí, Feuvrier, Kasraví, Taymúrí. He refers to Nikki R. Keddie’s Religion and Rebellion in Iran, but makes little use of her work. His account of the events of 1891-92 is sketchy and unoriginal. As in the case of the Reuter and Malkam Khán’s concessions he underestimates the significance of Russian involvement. By 1890 the pervasiveness of foreign influence had become clear to all Persians who had any connection with public life. In many minds the “two legations,” British and Russian, outranked the Imperial palace as the source of power. It was possible to go against the wishes of one legation, especially with the support of the other, but not against the wishes of both. The Russian Minister in Ṭihrán, Evgenii Karlovich Bützow, made no secret of his government’s attitude. He not only lodged formal protests against the monopoly, claiming that it violated Article 1 of the commercial treaty appended to the Treaty of Turkamancháy, but permitted the Russian consul in Tabríz to assure Armenian tobacco merchants who were Russian subjects that they could disregard the Régie.

The defeat of the Sháh and the cancellation of the Régie enormously increased the power of the clergy at the expense of the state. The lesson was not lost on the British. They had witnessed twice how unpopular measures of the government were frustrated by the mullás with the backing of Russia. Sir Arthur Hardinge, British Minister in Ṭihrán, began to cultivate the ulamá, hoping to use them against the growing Russian menace.

Professor Algar notes Russia’s ascendency and immediately links to it “a recrudescence of antagonism to the Bahá’ís,” who were said to have been “widely held to be agents of Russian policy in Iran” (p. 230). The authority for such a view (p. 230, note 39) is Yaḥyá Dawla-tábádí, a representative of Shí’ih clericalism. It is a wonder Professor Algar does not cite the so-called memoirs of Prince Dálqúrkí (presumably Dolgorukov) published some thirty years ago apparently in Mashhad. He could have used this little [Page 52] forgery to allege that it was Dálqúrkí, who in his capacity as Russian Minister in Persia in 1844, persuaded ‘Alí Muḥammad of Shíráz to make a claim to prophethood and become the Báb. The identification of Bahá’ís with Russian, British, and even American interests is not new, though one is surprised to see it in a work with scholarly pretensions.

Of course in early twentieth century Írán, where foreign influence was paramount, everybody sooner or later had to take a position vis-à-vis Britain and Russia. The Qájár monarchy had tried to use one against the other, but virtually gave up the balancing act in the 1890s. Muẓaffari’d-Dín Sháh’s need for money and Russian willingness to supply it threw him into Russia’s arms. Muḥammad-‘Alí Mírzá, heir to the throne and Governor of Ádhirbáyján, had become so closely associated with the Russians that he could be, and was, considered their agent not only by his ill-wishers but by the Russians themselves as well. In such circumstances any Persian nationalist movement must assume an anti-Russian character.

In 1901-02 anti-Sháh, anti-Russian agitation took shape. A leaflet that circulated in Ṭihrán accused Amínu’s-Sulṭán of efforts “to make Persia a portion of Russia.” It charged that he had spent government funds on wine, prostitutes, and boys, “bestowed large sums on Dervishes besotted with opium, bribed the clergy with government money and the blood of the country to win them over to his side . . .” The British gave the anti-Russian forces a helping hand. Siyyid ‘Abdu’lláh Bihbihání was willing to organize the clergy in opposition to Russian loans, but some of the clergy were corrupt; “He required money to bring them over, and he wished to feel assured that their actions on this matter would be appreciated by England, in whose interests, as much as in those of Persia, he was acting in this matter.” Subsequently Siyyid ‘Abdu’lláh received from the secret funds of the British legation certain sums for distribution among the clergy. Of all this Professor Algar says not a word, though he discusses the contacts between the British and the ulamá at Karbilá and Najaf.

The Constitutional movement in whose early stages the clergy played a leading role does not receive its proper share of attention in Professor Algar’s book. He seems in a hurry to get through the subject and follows closely well-known accounts such as Kasraví and Názimu’l Islám-i-Kirmání; and he borrows his interpretation from the usual clerical sources. The book comes to an inconclusive conclusion and leaves the reader with a sense of regret for what the author could have accomplished had he . . . . But then it would have been another book.

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Authors & Artists

GRACE CALÍ FELDSTEIN, a free-lance writer and housewife, is interested in world religions, philosophy, theology, history, and music —especially modern jazz. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, she was, for a time, a feature writer for an English newspaper and an entertainment critic for a Spanish paper. For five months she served as administrative assistant to Duke Ellington, and for seven years (1955-1962) was editorial assistant and personal secretary to Paul Tillich at Harvard University. Mrs. Feldstein is now working on a book covering her years with Tillich.

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH, Professor of History at Yale University, is the author of Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864-1914: A Study in Imperialism, as well as of a number of articles dealing with the history of Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

JANE MCCANTS, a graduate of the University of Michigan where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, has pursued graduate studies at the Sorbonne, Radcliffe College, and Atlanta University. She is now completing her doctoral studies at the University of Georgia with a dissertation on group behavior. Her research has included the investigation of the nature and nurture of scientific creativity in children and adults, and the development of a behavioral outcome measure for the evaluation of change in participants in small group therapies.

GAYLE MORRISON, an Associate Editor of World Order, did graduate work in Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University and received her M.A. in Social Education from the University of Massachusetts. Her interest in Southeast Asia led her to compile an annotated bibliography, A Guide to Books on Southeast Asian History (1961-1966), and later to center her work in education on intercultural understanding. At present she is a full-time mother and a part-time freelance editor.

WILLIAM STAFFORD is Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress. His latest book is 'Allegiances, and he has also published West of Your City, Traveling through the Dark, and The Rescued Year. Mr. Stafford’s poems have appeared in several issues of World Order.

RACHEL FORT WELLER, a homemaker most of her adult life, has published a number of articles in the Friends Journal and in this issue makes a second appearance in World Order. She received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Chicago in 1927 and 1928. She is currently editing the notebooks of the American painter, Abraham Rattner, for submission to the University of Illinois Press.

ART CREDITS: P. 4, photograph of a page from a Book of Rituals of the Anglican Church printed at London in 1639; p. 14, photograph of a nighttime view of the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 20, photograph by Jay Conrader; p. 32, photograph by Scott Bivans; back cover, photograph by Jay Conrader.

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL is Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Managing Editor of World Order.

JAY CONRADER, a freelance writer and photographer, is a regular contributor to World Order.

SCOTT BIVANS, a student in his senior year at the Kansas City Art Institute, specializes in graphic design.