The Cormorant Baker

Good news! You have a wide choice.

You could go to the official Indian Baha’i website and be told:

We are the Bahá’ís of India - members of the largest Bahá’í Community of the world, numbering some 2.2 Million.
The Baha’is of India

Or you could check out a copy of the community’s 2006-2007 annual report and see that that the total number of Baha’i adults, youth and children was 86,612.

There is one very odd thing about the detailed population data on page 55. Many of the rows and columns simply don’t add up. Perhaps that page has errors in it, or perhaps it’s been tampered with. I guess it means that the 86,612 figure is suspect. Decide for yourself.

There is a third source for figures on the Baha’i population of India. The 1991 Indian census  (the most recent for which data at this level of detail is available) puts the Baha’i population at 5,575.

The important thing to remember is that a government census measures  something other than what an NSA membership roll measures. One measures self-declared religious belief. The other measures official membership in an incorporated body. So there are going to be discrepancies between the figures. Perhaps not this big, though.

But I’m being picky. The NSA apparently isn’t hung up on current numbers. As an institution, it will be:

• Maintaining a vision of the potential size of future communities.  (page eight)

While we’re checking out the 2006-2007 annual report, here’s another interesting aspect.

The NSA spent 27% of its outgoings for the 2006-2007 year on legal expenses (Appendix, page “19″, which is un-numbered and very near the end of the document). Seems a lot.

I couldn’t find anything in the annual report to tell me what those expenses were. There was heaps of detail about a bunch of inconsequential things, but somehow information about the legal costs was left out. Maybe the costs were associated with this problem - Bahai trustees accused of embezzling funds.

I remember, about 20 to 30 years ago, being excited by the first reports of (then) Counsellor Arbab’s “institute” processes in Colombia. The concept of gradually bringing whole populations towards Baha’u'llah seemed to offer an extremely useful guiding principle — one that my own, very congregational, community seemed to have lost sight of.

I remember using the “gradually bringing whole populations towards Baha’u'llah” concept a bit over a decade ago, when I wrote to my NSA; suggesting changes in the way local assemblies made books and other resources available. The guts of my suggestion was that, where practical, resources be donated to public libraries, and that Baha’is and non-Baha’is borrow them from there. The NZ NSA was very supportive, and distributed a short paper of mine to all local assemblies. But I’m not aware of any changes being made.

Going back 12-15 years, the institutions were saying the right things. Take the Three Year Plan that started in 1993. Alison was really keen on it:

from Forum magazine - Editorial
by Alison Marshall

Early 1993 saw the launching of the Three Year Plan; a plan designed to develop the worldwide Baha’i Community over the three years between April 1993 and April 1996.

It has three themes:

1. Enhancing the vitality of the faith of individual believers.
2. Developing the human resources of the Faith.
3. Fostering the proper functioning of Baha’i institutions.

I was really excited when I read these themes. They focus on what I feel is often a missing element within the Baha’i community — a ‘people centred’ approach. I suggest that this has meant the community has emphasised quantitative rather than qualitative objectives.

This attitude has shown through in the approach Baha’is have taken to telling others about the Faith. Here the emphasis has been on gaining numbers of Baha’is, rather than on the process by which we all advance towards God.

This is addressed by the International Teaching Centre:

“We hope that during the Three Year Plan fostering individual teaching will not be approached merely in terms of its mechanics — types of teaching events, the number of personal firesides, the number of contacts, or personal goals to teach a certain number of people in a fixed period of time. Important as these considerations may be, it is the spiritual nature of teaching, the spiritual conditions of the teacher, and the spiritual dynamics of assisting another soul [to] reach the City of Certitude that need greater attention.”(1)

What are the “spiritual dynamics of assisting another soul [to] reach the City of Certitude”? Perhaps a part of this process is inviting others to share in our own journey. Baha’is are encouraged to be

“…willing to invite others to join Baha’is in their study of the Revelation [of Baha'u'llah] and in their efforts to apply it in their lives.”(2)

Too often we are reluctant to take up such opportunities because of our tendency to view the spiritual path of others as separate from our own.

When sharing the Faith with others, Counsellor Arbab has stressed that it is not sufficient simply to tell people how things should be and how to do things. Baha’is must also explain the spiritual qualities needed for each progressive step by analysing and sharing their own spiritual experiences.(3)

Footnotes:

1. International Teaching Centre: Letter to all Counsellors dated 17 November 1992 p. 8.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. Some thoughts on expansion and deepening. Notes from a series of talks given by Counsellor Farzam Arbab, October 1989 p. 24.

Source:
Forum: whiti korero o nga Baha’i, vol. 2, no. 3, pages 2-3.

If someone had told me, last century, that Arbab would be elected to the House, and that Ruhi institutes would sweep the Baha’i world… …well, I would have thought it a great pipe dream. But I would have expected an array of culturally-appropriate expressions of Ruhi, not some global monolith!

Things seemed to have so much promise. What went wrong?

One theory of mine is that lots of Baha’is thought that unity of the nations would be established by the end of the 20th century, and that a great event would change the fortunes of the Baha’is. Here’s a reporter, who looked into the Baha’i faith in 1992, saying:

“Baha’ulla’h (sic) predicted a destructive end to the 20th century that would bring about a rebirth.”
Cold Calling

I’m being very speculative and terribly simplistic but, perhaps, when the “promised” unity didn’t appear to happen and Baha’is started experiencing burn-out, the leadership lost its nerve and reverted to direct-selling methods to market the religion.

My main point is that Arbab — the guy who invented Ruhi and who is now on the House — started off so promisingly. His radical ideas, such as “gradually bringing whole populations towards Baha’u'llah” seem to be the opposite of what we’ve ended up with — targeting small, isolated and vulnerable populations with the short, sharp shock of direct marketing, then moving on if you don’t instantly get new members.

Baha’i artist and webmaster, Sonja van Kerkhoff, recently created a video called Kitchen Pythagoras, that praised the products of Dutch department store, HEMA. This led to an assignment for the store’s website. The result is very creative, but I’m not convinced she’ll be invited back to do further work. Check out Sonja’s work on the new product catalogue. Nice use of audio in both works, Sonja!

I wonder whether enough time has passed to allow the ideas dreamed up on Talisman9 to percolate through to the community and to become mainstream. My rough guess is that the process takes 20 years or so. Talisman began in late 1994, so I have a feeling it may be premature to study the full force of its effects on the community.

The ideas discussed on Talisman are many and various, and, let’s face it, much of what’s expressed there has the lasting power of a randy mayfly. It’s a big job to summarise the material in order to define the key, lasting ideas. Also, there’s a lot of scope for disagreement over whether such filtering could be done fairly.

I suggest going back 20 years and examining something more manageable, like A Modest Proposal. It should be relatively simple to analyse which of the proposals have since been adopted by the US community. Perhaps someone has already done that? I do know that the proposals look increasingly modest as time passes.

I’m not an academic, and certainly not a historian or sociologist, but I do wonder what conclusions could be drawn from such an exercise. Just because something is later adopted doesn’t mean it was timely when it was first suggested. I fully expect to see a few of the ideas currently talked about on Talisman becoming mainstream in around 2028. I think that’s just the nature of progress. Places like Talisman are where the early adopters congregate. Of course the new ideas will appear there first! But I accept that this concept may not seem as obvious to others as it does to me.

I read Sen’s The knower as servant and immediately thought of Roger White’s Bring Chocolate: Advice from a Poet. And now, Alison has just written her response to Sen’s post: The knower as an artist. She’s exploring the possibilities of writing fiction as a natural progression from her scholarly interests.

I’ve thought some more about the connections between art and scholarship, and about the conditions that led Roger White to write his article. One useful discovery was Robert Weinberg’s obituary to Roger White, taken from Baha’i Studies Review, vol. 7 (1997):

“Roger White believed committed artists would be a vital force in preventing inflexibility in the Bahá’í community. “They will,” he predicted, addressing a group of Bahá’í youth in Haifa in 1990, “be a source of rejuvenation. They will serve as a bulwark against fundamentalism, stagnation and administrative sterility…To the degree the Bahá’í community views its artists as a gift rather than a problem will it witness the spread of the faith ‘like wildfire’ as promised by Shoghi Effendi, through their talents being harnessed to the dissemination of the spirit of the Cause.”(8) To this end, White encouraged hundreds of budding writers and artists around the world, and called upon Bahá’í communities to assist the artists to find their place.”

I’m picking that Baha’i scholars and artists do have a lot in common.

I’m struggling to reconcile the various responses the Universal House of Justice has to the issue of freedom of expression

Here’s part of what it said in 1988 to the US Baha’is:

At the same time, Shoghi Effendi’s advice, as conveyed by his secretary, goes on to stress the point that “all criticisms and discussions of a negative character which may result in undermining the authority of the Assembly as a body should be strictly avoided. For otherwise the order of the Cause itself will be endangered, and confusion and discord will reign in the community.”
Clearly, then, there is more to be considered than the critic’s right to self-expression; the unifying spirit of the Cause of God must also be preserved, the authority of its laws and ordinances safeguarded, authority being an indispensable aspect of freedom. Motive, manner, mode, become relevant; but there is also the matter of love: love for one’s fellows, love for one’s community, love for one’s institutions.

The responsibility resting on the individual to conduct himself in such a way as to ensure the stability of society takes on elemental importance in this context. For vital as it is to the progress of society, criticism is a two-edged sword: it is all too often the harbinger of conflict and contention. The balanced processes of the Administrative Order are meant to prevent this essential activity from degenerating to any form of dissent that breeds opposition and its dreadful schismatic consequences.
Individual Rights and Freedoms

And here’s part of what it recently said in a letter to the Baha’is in Iran:

Undeterred by the voices which insist that you believe but in silence, as if belief and the expression of it can be separated, you are engaged, wisely and unobtrusively, in exchanging views with your friends on themes central to the progress of Iran and its glorification.

At a time when Iranian society is being torn apart by long-standing prejudices of religion, ethnicity, gender, and class, the experience of your community for more than a century and a half can serve as an abundant source of insight to the people of that land.
To the believers in the Cradle of the Faith, 28 July 2008 - Word document
To the believers in the Cradle of the Faith, 28 July 2008 - HTML document

The House spends many paragraphs in its 1988 letter showing how “belief and the expression of it” can and should be separated, particularly when the authority of the Baha’i administration might be undermined. Yet, in its more recent letter, it says the Iranian Baha’is should be undeterred by such talk, particularly when they see their society being torn apart.

A challenge was presented to the friends at a gathering to do something to teach the Faith within the next 48 hours. The area teaching committee for that cluster then passed on the same challenge to all the believers in that cluster. The result? The friends immediately arising to serve (and consulting on how to support each other). In other words, it led to enthusiastic and spontaneous action, and if one effort didn’t work out, the friends would then simply try something else.
Teach within 48 hours

Spontaneous - Performed or occurring without external cause or stimulus; coming naturally or freely, unpremeditated; voluntary, done of one’s own accord; (of literary style etc.) gracefully natural and unconstrained. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)

HAIFA — As the new Baha’i year got under way, Baha’is in the West again found the door to continued membership closed.

Although in its public stance the Universal House of Justice maintains that “individual understanding or interpretation should not be suppressed, but valued for whatever contribution it can make to the discourse of the Bahá’í community”, reports over the past few weeks indicate that the policy of arbitrarily removing Baha’is from membership remains in effect.

Baha’is attempting to regain admittance to membership found that their requests were refused. Baha’is, even those who have been enrolled or accepted as members for years, continue to be removed from membership.

And those who have sought redress through the Baha’i administration have been disappointed, their cases rejected.

“As has been the case for the last ten years, the Baha’i administration continues to use a series of devious ploys to prevent Baha’is from regaining their arbitrarily-removed membership,” said Mr. C. Morant-Baker

The effect of the Baha’i administration’s policies is to arbitrarily close the doors of the membership to certain Baha’is, despite the Baha’i Faith’s supposed commitment to the rule of law, natural justice and due process.

“Our plea to the international community, and especially to leaders and followers of religion everywhere, is that they raise their voices on behalf of Western Baha’i expellees,” said Morant-Baker.

According to reports from Haifa, the principal method this year by which authorities are preventing Baha’is from re-enrolling in the Baha’i Faith is by blocking their applications for re-admittance and declaring their cases “not honored”.

Full story…

Most of the Baha’i-related discussion lists I’m on are quiet, except for a few that have been re-hashing old controversies. Businesses are fairly quiet, too. Global financial uncertainty has been a very effective brake on all kinds of excess. And I’ve been quiet. I haven’t posted to this blog in a month or two.

I’ve decided quiet is good. Maybe it’s the old hippie in me. The world seems to be heading into a recession, and I’m thinking that’s a good thing. People and the environment will get a break, and various unsustainable practices are experiencing a reality-check.

Sure, a lot of people are hurting. I’m just saying that from my perspective I don’t see a down-side.

In 1992, a seasoned NZ reporter, Peter Jessup, checked out the Baha’is and wrote a half-page article for one of the major dailies. He found “a quiet, uncomplicated faith and a creed of equality”.

Door-knocking was obviously not part of the repertoire, and the faith appeared “to have a particular attraction to people from the entertainment field, the liberal, thinking middle class, and students”. Jessup observed that, “the faith has traditionally been kept quietly, in accord with teachings that people should seek it out rather than have it seek them”. He also noted that “Baha’ulla’h (sic) predicted a destructive end to the 20th century that would bring about a rebirth”.

Well, it didn’t pan out as anticipated, and perhaps the Baha’is got tired of waiting for folks to seek out their quiet uncomplicated faith. I’m certainly seeing a change of culture from what Jessup observed in 1992.