Trend of bahai community in exclusivism and sectarianism
Trend of bahai community in exclusivismand sectarianism
Religious Studies Review, Vol. 43, no. 3 (March, 2002):195-217
Fundamentalism in the Contemporary U.S. Baha'i Community*
Juan R. I. Cole
University of Michigan
ABSTRACT
This article considers the ways in which the Baha’i faith in the United States has become more fundamentalist in the past four decades. It looks at trends toward an increasing emphasis on doctrinal and behavioral conformity, resulting in greater exclusivism and sectarianism in what on the surface appears to be a liberal and universalistic tradition. Building on the Marty and Appleby Fundamentalism Project, it shows a trend in the community toward a strong reaction against the marginalization of religion, selectivity about the tradition and about modernity, moral dualism, absolutism and inerrancy, millennialism, an elect membership, sharp boundaries, authoritarian organization, and strict behavioral requirements. It also demonstrates that Baha’i fundamentalists see the civil state and academic scholarship on religion as their “negative counterparts.” It considers the impact on the community of the big wave of conversions of the 1970s and the influx of immigrant Iranian Baha’is fleeing the Khomeinist regime. It further notes that fundamentalist Baha’is have became in some key sectors of the Baha’i administration and employ their authority to exclude Baha’i liberals. In some recent instances, Baha’i liberals have simply been dropped from the membership rolls with no formal procedure.
Most researchers involved in the Fundamentalism Project concluded that fundamentalist movements as they defined them can be found in each of the contemporary Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Marty and Appleby 1991-1995). A fourth, small, Abrahamic tradition that the project did not treat is the Baha'i faith. Originating in Iran and claiming to fulfill apocalyptic expectations in Islam, the Baha'i faith has some ritual and doctrinal similarities to Islam. Its central tenets, however, are generally quite liberal. Baha’is believe that all the major religions are one. They employ a figurative approach to the interpretation of past scriptures. They believe in the need for a strong United Nations, in improving the status of women, in the unity of science and religion, and in fighting racial, ethnic and nationalist prejudices. On the surface, these principles make them sound close ideologically to the Unitarian-Universalists. But given that they also have a global hierarchy headed up by an “infallible” institution, the “Universal House of Justice,” (UHJ) it is more accurate to compare the liberals among them to liberal Roman Catholics. Social scientists have published on left-of-center Baha’i communities like that of Denmark, finding a “liberal and international” outlook compatible with globalization (Warburg 1999).
I will argue here, however, that there is also a significant fundamentalist tendency in the contemporary Baha'i faith in the U.S. and at the Baha’i World Center in Haifa, Israel of which social scientists have taken less account. Scholars who have examined fundamentalisms have identified nine major motifs in such movements, including a reaction against the marginalization of religion, selectivity about the tradition and about modernity, moral dualism, absolutism and inerrancy, millennialism, an elect membership, sharp boundaries, authoritarian organization, and strict behavioral requirements (Almond, Sivan and Appleby, 1995). Arjomand has also argued that fundamentalists see their utopia as having “negative counterparts,” in the form of the scientific worldview and the centralized, secular state (Arjomand in Martin and Appleby 1995, 5:182-185). All of these motifs are present in Baha'i fundamentalism, which falls into two broad types, world-denying and world-affirming. World-denying Baha’i fundamentalists can sometimes approach an Amish-like rejection of higher education and some forms of technology. World-affirming Baha’i fundamentalists are less extreme, and some are well-educated in the sciences or engineering, but they oppose key aspects of academic scholarship as applied to the Baha'i faith, as well as many democratic values.
Baha'i fundamentalists, who do not have a separate organization but are increasingly prominent in the Baha'i administration, have interpreted the liberal-sounding principles mentioned above in such a way as to be compatible in their eyes with an emphasis on strict obedience to religious authority, a literalist approach to the interpretation of scripture, and patriarchal values. They would reject the label of fundamentalism, claiming simply to be true Baha’is, and would deny that sub-groups such as liberals and fundamentalists exist in the Baha'i faith. Scholars within the movement, such as Moojan Momen, have nevertheless admitted the tension that exists between Baha’i liberals and fundamentalists (Momen 1992). Ex-Baha’i Denis MacEoin has also pointed to fundamentalist themes in Baha’i historiography (MacEoin 1986). Fundamentalists form a plurality among U.S. National Spiritual Assembly members, who meet in Wilmette, Ill., and among delegates to the annual National Convention. The Universal House of Justice, the nine-man collective Baha'i “papacy” in Haifa, Israel, has been increasingly dominated in the 1990s by fundamentalists, as indicated by the sentiments expressed in their public talks and in the encyclicals issued by that body. That is, I am reporting a major shift in the Baha'i faith similar to the take-over of the Southern Baptist convention by fundamentalists in the 1980s and 1990s (Ammerman 1990). Many sources are available for the study of Baha'i fundamentalism, including writings and audio tapes from prominent leaders, letters and directives from Baha'i institutions, and email and usenet discussion groups. For rank and file views I depend heavily on Soc.Religion.Bahai (SRB), a mainstream Baha’i usenet group. I have also used the more liberal list, talisman@indiana.edu (which has had a number of subsequent incarnations and is now talisman9@yahoogroups.com) and oral histories gathered from Baha’is and ex-Baha’is. The results of this study may therefore be skewed toward Baha’is who are internet users, and toward official pronouncements. These sources, despite their limitations, demonstrate the contours of a Baha'i fundamentalism. I will suggest some reasons for which this tendency, which has long been significant in the religion, has become increasingly hegemonic in the past two decades. I will also argue that in the Baha’i faith, fundamentalism as a set of motifs results in a more “sectarian” as opposed to church-like community, and that fundamentalist leaders are attempting to take the community in an exclusivist direction typical of the sect in its strict sociological sense. Although the treatment here is academic, I should alert readers that the author has been a Baha’i since 1972, and is involved on the liberal side in the lively culture wars now taking place in the community.....
