Making the invisible visible

The present review examines five books, one by a non-Baha'i, three by a Baha'i academic, and one by a Baha'i non-academic. The non-Baha'i volume, which is very short, is by a Danish sociologist of religion, Margit Warburg. It forms a solid explanatory text informed by a lengthy experience of the Baha'is both in Denmark and abroad. This review discusses, inter alia, three volumes by a Baha'i sociologist, Peter Smith. While the three titles are very different books, taken together they form an intelligent presentation of the religion from the perspective of a thoughtful insider. Finally, the article looks at a completely different sort of book, an intelligent portrayal of Baha'ism from its spiritual and moral perspectives by Moojan Momen. This last brings readers closest to typical fare for believers and new converts. Keywords: Baha'iBaha'ismBaha'i faithBabismreligious minoritynew religious movementworld religionBaha' AllahBaha'u'llahBab'Abd al-Baha''Abdu'l-BahaShoghi EffendiIransociology of religion Notes 1'The House of Justice accepts that many scholarly methods have been developed which are soundly based and of enduring validity. It nevertheless questions some presumptions of certain current academic methods because it sees these producing a distorted picture of reality. The training of some scholars in fields such as religion and history seems to have restricted their vision and blinded them to the culturally determined basis of elements of the approach they have learned. It causes them to exclude from consideration factors which, from a Bahá'í point of view, are of fundamental importance. Truth in such fields cannot be found if the evidence of Revelation is systematically excluded and if discourse is limited by a basically deterministic view of the world.' Letter from the Universal House of Justice to Dr Susan Maneck, 8 February 1998, available at: http://bahai-library.com/uhj_academic_methodologies. 'Scholarly training and professional experience will have sensitized you to the implications for the study of religion of certain assumptions about human nature and the processes of civilization that a purely materialistic interpretation of reality has imposed on scholarly activity of every kind, at least in the Western world. A related paradigm for the study of religion has gradually consolidated itself in the prevailing academic culture during the course of the present century. It insists that all spiritual and moral phenomena must be understood through the application of a scholarly apparatus devised to explore existence in a way that ignores the issues of God's continuous relationship with His creation and His intervention in human life and history. Yet, from a Bahá'í point of view, it is precisely this intervention that is the central theme of the Teachings of the Founders of the revealed religions ostensibly being studied.' Letter from the Universal House of Justice to Dr Susan Maneck, 20 July 1997. Available at: http://bahai-library.com/uhj_scholars_administrative_order 2See his recentlypublished study Handbuch Baha'i: Geschichte - Theologie - Gesellschaftsbezug, Stuttgart, 2009. See the review by Armin Eschraghi in this journal (40/2010: 356–358). 3 Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith, Oxford, 1994. 4'Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World Order of Baha'u'llah would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that hereditary principle which, as 'Abdu'l-Baha has written, has been invariably upheld by the Law of God. "In all the Divine Dispensations," He states, in a Tablet addressed to a follower of the Faith in Persia, "the eldest son hath been given extraordinary distinctions. Even the station of prophethood hath been his birthright." Without such an institution the integrity of the Faith would be imperiled, and the stability of the entire fabric would be gravely endangered. Its prestige would suffer, the means required to enable it to take a long, an uninterrupted view over a series of generations would be completely lacking, and the necessary guidance to define the sphere of the legislative action of its elected representatives would be totally withdrawn' (Effendi Citation1938: 148)

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