Minor Cults: The Meaning of the Cults for the Church : Part 2

Modern Religious Cults and Movements
by Gaius Glenn Atkins

(Page 13 of 19)

The Bab and His Successors

As far as our own present interest is concerned, the movement dates from 1844 when a young Persian merchant announced himself as the Bab. If we are to find a parallel in Christianity he was a kind of John the Baptist, preparing the way for a greater who should come after him, but the parallel ends quickly, for since the Mohammedan Messiah did not appear, his herald was invested with no little of the authority and sanctity which belonged to the hidden one himself. The career of the first Bab was short - 1844 to 1850. He was only twenty-four years old at the time of his manifestation, thirty when he suffered martyrdom and a prisoner during the greater part of his brief career.

The practical outcome of his propaganda was a deal of bloody fighting between antagonistic Mohammedan factions. The movement received early that baptism of blood which gives persistent intensity to any persecuted movement. His followers came to regard him as a divine being. After his execution his body was recovered, concealed for seventeen years and finally placed in a shrine specially built for that purpose at St. Jean d'Acre. This shrine has become the holy place of Bahaism.

During one period of his imprisonment he had opportunity to continue his writings, correspond with his followers and receive them. He was therefore able to give the world his message and we find in his teachings the germ of the gospel of Bahaism. Before his death he named his successor - a young man who had been greatly drawn to him and who seemed by his youth, zeal and devotion to be set apart to continue his work. To this young man the Bab sent his rings and other personal possessions, authorized him to add to his writings and in general to inherit his influence and continue his work. This young man was recognized with practical unanimity by the Babis as their spiritual head. Owing to his youth and the secluded life which he adopted, the practical conduct of the affairs of the Babi community devolved chiefly on his elder half-brother Baha'u'llah. What follows is a confused story of schism, rival claimants and persecution but the sect grew through persecution and the control of it came in 1868 into the hands of Baha'u'llah.

During the greater part of his life Baha'u'llah was either an exile or a prisoner. From 1868 until his death in 1892 he was confined with seventy of his followers in the penal colony of Acca on the Mediterranean coast. Meanwhile the faith which centered about him changed character; he was no longer a gate or herald, he was himself a "manifestation of God" with authority to change all earlier teaching. He really universalized the movement. Beneath his touch religion becomes practical, ethical, less mystic, more universal. He was possessed by a passion for universal peace and brotherhood. He addressed letters to the crowned heads of Europe asking them to cooperate in peace movements. It has been suggested that the Czar of Russia was influenced thereby and that we may therefore trace back to Baha'u'llah the peace movement which preceded the war.

Pilgrims came and went and through their enthusiasms the movement spread. After his death there was the renewal of disputes as to the proper succession and consequent schisms. The power came finally into the hands of Abdul-Baha who was kept under supervision by the Turkish government until 1908. He was freed by the declaration of the New Constitution and carried on thereafter with real power a worldwide propaganda. He had an unusual and winning personality, spoke fluently in Persian, Arabic and Turkish and more nearly than any man of his time filled the ideal role of an Eastern prophet. He died in November, 1921, and was buried on Mt. Carmel - with its memories of Elijah and millenniums of history - his praises literally being sung by a most catholic group of Mohammedans, Jews and Eastern Christians.

The Temple of Unity

Bahaism as it is held in America today is distilled out of the writings and teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha. Naturally enough, in the popularization of it its contradictions have been reconciled and its subtleties disregarded. What is left fits into a variety of forms and is in line with a great range of idealism. The twelve basic principles of Bahaism as announced in its popular literature are:

The Oneness of Mankind. Independent investigations of truth. The Foundation of all religions is one. Religion must be the cause of unity. Religion must be in accord with science and reason. Equality between men and women. Prejudice of all kinds must be forgotten. Universal Peace. Universal Education. Solution of the economic problem. An international auxiliary language. An international tribunal.

A program inclusive enough for any generous age. These principles are substantiated by quotations from the writings of Abdul-Baha and the teachings of Baha'u'llah. Many things combine to lend force to its appeal - the courage of its martyrs, its spaciousness and yet at the same time the attractiveness of its appeal and its suggestion of spiritual brotherhood. Since the movement has borne a kind of messianic expectation it adjusts itself easily to inherited Christian hopes. There are real correspondences between its expected millennium and the Christian millennium.

How far its leaders, in their passion for peace and their doctrine of non-resistance and their exaltation of the life of the spirit, are in debt to the suggestions of Christianity itself, or how far it is a new expression of a temper with which the Orient has always been more in sympathy than the West, it would be difficult to say, but in some ways Bahaism does express - or perhaps reproduces - the essential spirit of the Gospels more faithfully than a good deal of Western Christianity as now organized. Those members of Christian communions which are attracted to Bahaism find in it a real hospitality to the inherited faith they take over. It is possible, therefore, to belong to the cult and at the same time to continue one's established religious life without any very great violence and indeed with a possible intensification of that life.

It is difficult, therefore, to distinguish between Bahaism as it is held by devout groups in America, so far as ethics and ideals go, from much that is distinctive in the Christian spirit, though the influence of Bahaism as a whole would be to efface distinctions and especially to take the force out of the Christian creeds.

Copyright 1923 by Fleming H. Revell Company