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BAHÁ’U’LLÁH 1 |
As the new millennium approaches, the crucial need of the human race is to
find a unifying vision of the nature of man and society. For the past century
humanity’s response to this impulse has driven a succession of ideological
upheavals that have convulsed our world and that appear now to have exhausted
themselves. The passion invested in the struggle, despite its disheartening
results, testifies to the depth of the need. For, without a common conviction
about the course and direction of human history, it is inconceivable that foundations
can be laid for a global society to which the mass of humankind can
commit themselves.
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Such a vision unfolds in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, the nineteenth
century prophetic figure whose growing influence is the most remarkable development
of contemporary religious history. Born in Persia, November 12, 1817,
Bahá’u’lláh
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began at age 27 an undertaking that has gradually captured the
imagination and loyalty of several million people from virtually every race,
culture, class, and nation on earth. The phenomenon is one that has no reference
points in the contemporary world, but is associated rather with climactic
changes of direction in the collective past of the human race. For Bahá’u’lláh
claimed to be no less than the Messenger of God to the age of human maturity,
the Bearer of a Divine Revelation that fulfills the promises made in earlier
religions, and that will generate the spiritual nerves and sinews for the
unification of the peoples of the world.
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If they were to do nothing else, the effects which Bahá’u’lláh’s life
and writings have already had should command the earnest attention of anyone
who believes that human nature is fundamentally spiritual and that the coming
organization of our planet must be informed by this aspect of reality. The
documentation lies open to general scrutiny. For the first time in history
humanity has available a detailed and verifiable record of the birth of an independent
religious system and of the life of its Founder. Equally accessible is
the record of the response that the new faith has evoked, through the emergence
of a global community which can already justly claim to represent a microcosm
of the human race.
2
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During the earlier decades of this century, this development was relatively
obscure. Bahá’u’lláh’s writings forbid the aggressive proselytism
through which many religious messages have been widely promulgated. Further,
the priority which the Bahá’í community gave to the establishment of groups
at the local level throughout the entire planet militated against the early
emergence of large concentrations of adherents in any one country or the mobilization
of resources required for large-scale programs of public information.
Arnold Toynbee, intrigued by phenomena that might represent the emergence of
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a new universal religion, noted in the 1950s that the Bahá’í Faith was then
about as familiar to the average educated Westerner as Christianity had been
to the corresponding class in the Roman empire during the second century A.D.
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In more recent years, as the Bahá’í community’s numbers have rapidly
increased in many countries, the situation has changed dramatically. There
is now virtually no area in the world where the pattern of life taught by
Bahá’u’lláh is not taking root. The respect which the community’s social and
economic development projects are beginning to win in governmental, academic,
and United Nations circles further reinforces the argument for a detached and
serious examination of the impulse behind a process of social transformation
that is, in critical respects, unique in our world.
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No uncertainty surrounds the nature of the generating impulse.
Bahá’u’lláh’s writings cover an enormous range of subjects from social issues
such as racial integration, the equality of the sexes, and disarmament, to
those questions that affect the innermost life of the human soul. The original
texts, many of them in His own hand, the others dictated and affirmed by their
author, have been meticulously preserved. For several decades, a systematic
program of translation and publication has made selections from Bahá’u’lláh’s
writings accessible to people everywhere, in over eight hundred languages.
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1. | Bahá’u’lláh (“Glory of God”) was born Ḥusayn-‘Alí. The authoritative work on the missions of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh is Shoghi Effendi’s God Passes By (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1987). For a biographical study see Hasan Balyuzi’s Bahá’u’lláh: The King of Glory (Oxford: George Ronald, 1980). Bahá’u’lláh’s writings are extensively reviewed in Adib Taherzadeh’s The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh (Oxford: George Ronald, 1975), four volumes. [ Back To Reference] |
2. | Britannica Yearbook, 1988, indicates that, although the Bahá’í community numbers only about five million members, the Faith has already become the most widely diffused religion on earth, after Christianity. There are today 155 Bahá’í National Assemblies in independent countries and major territories of the globe, and more than 17,000 elected Assemblies functioning at the local level. It is estimated that 2,112 nationalities and tribes are represented. [ Back To Reference] |
3. | Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. VIII (London: Oxford, 1954), p. 117. [ Back To Reference] |