The
enduring legacy of the twentieth century is that it compelled
the peoples of the world to begin seeing themselves as the members
of a single human race, and the earth as that race's common homeland.
Despite the continuing conflict and violence that darken the horizon,
prejudices that once seemed inherent in the nature of the human
species are everywhere giving way. Down with them come barriers
that long divided the family of man into a Babel of incoherent
identities of cultural, ethnic or national origin. That so fundamental
a change could occur in so brief a period- virtually overnight
in the perspective of historical time- suggests the magnitude
of the possibilities for the future.
Tragically,
organized religion, whose very reason for being entails service
to the cause of brotherhood and peace, behaves all too frequently
as one of the most formidable obstacles in the path; to cite
a particular painful fact, it has long lent its credibility
to fanaticism. We feel a responsibility, as the governing council
of one of the world religions, to urge earnest consideration
of the challenge this poses for religious leadership. Both the
issue and the circumstances to which it gives rise require that
we speak frankly. We trust that common service to the Divine
will ensure that what we say will be received in the same spirit
of goodwill as it is put forward.
The
issue comes sharply into focus when one considers what has been
achieved elsewhere. In the past, apart from isolated exceptions,
women were regarded as an inferior breed, their nature hedged
about by superstitions, denied the opportunity to express the
potentialities of the human spirit and relegated to the role
of serving the needs of men. Clearly, there are many societies
where such conditions persist and are even fanatically defended.
At the level of global discourse, however, the concept of the
equality of the sexes has, for all practical purposes, now assumed
the force of universally accepted principle. It enjoys similar
authority in most of the academic community and information
media. So basic has been the revisioning that exponents of male
supremacy must look for support on the margins of responsible
opinion.
The
beleaguered battalions of nationalism face a similar fate. With
each passing crisis in world affairs, it becomes easier for
the citizen to distinguish between a love of country that enriches
one's life, and submission to inflammatory rhetoric designed
to provoke hatred and fear of others. Even where it is expedient
to participate in the familiar nationalistic rites, public response
is as often marked by feelings of awkwardness as it is by the
strong convictions and ready enthusiasm of earlier times. The
effect has been reinforced by the restructuring steadily taking
place in the international order. Whatever the shortcomings
of the United Nations system in its present form, and however
handicapped its ability to take collective military action against
aggression, no one can mistake the fact that the fetish of absolute
national sovereignty is on its way to extinction.
Racial
and ethnic prejudices have been subjected to equally summary
treatment by historical processes that have little patience
left for such pretensions. Here, rejection of the past has been
especially decisive. Racism is now tainted by its association
with the horrors of the twentieth century to the degree that
it has taken on something of the character of a spiritual disease.
While surviving as a social attitude in many parts of the world-
and as a blight on the lives of a significant segment of humankind-
racial prejudice has become so universally condemned in principle
that no body of people can any longer safely allow themselves
to be identified with it.
It
is not that a dark past has been erased and a new world of light
has suddenly been born. Vast numbers of people continue to endure
the effects of ingrained prejudices of ethnicity, gender, nation,
caste and class. All the evidence indicates that such injustices
will long persist as the institutions and standards that humanity
is devising only slowly become empowered to construct a new
order of relationships and to bring relief to the oppressed.
The point, rather, is that a threshold has been crossed from
which there is no credible possibility of return. Fundamental
principles have been identified, articulated, accorded broad
publicity and are becoming progressively incarnated in institutions
capable of imposing them on public behaviour. There is no doubt
that, however protracted and painful the struggle, the outcome
will be to revolutionize relationships among all peoples, at
the grassroots level.
As the twentieth century opened, the prejudice
that seemed more likely than any other to succumb to the forces
of change was that of religion. In the West, scientific advances
had already dealt rudely with some of the central pillars of
sectarian exclusivity. In the context of the transformation
taking place in the human race's conception of itself, the most
promising new religious development seemed to be the interfaith
movement. In 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition surprised
even its ambitious organizers by giving birth to the famed "Parliament
of Religions", a vision of spiritual and moral consensus
that captured the popular imagination on all continents and
managed to eclipse even the scientific, technological and commercial
wonders that the Exposition celebrated.
Briefly, it appeared that ancient walls had
fallen. For influential thinkers in the field of religion, the
gathering stood unique, "unprecedented in the history of
the world". The Parliament had, its distinguished principal
organizer said, "emancipated the world from bigotry".
An imaginative leadership, it was confidently predicted, would
seize the opportunity and awaken in the earth's long-divided
religious communities a spirit of brotherhood that could provide
the needed moral underpinnings for the new world of prosperity
and progress. Thus encouraged, interfaith movements of every
kind took root and flourished. A vast literature, available
in many languages, introduced an ever wider public, believers
and nonbelievers alike, to the teachings of all the major faiths,
an interest picked up in due course by radio, television, film
and eventually the Internet. Institutions of higher learning
launched degree programmes in the study of comparative religion.
By the time the century ended, interfaith worship services,
unthinkable only a few decades earlier, were becoming commonplace.
Alas, it is clear that these initiatives lack
both intellectual coherence and spiritual commitment. In contrast
to the processes of unification that are transforming the rest
of humanity's social relationships, the suggestion that all
of the world's great religions are equally valid in nature and
origin is stubbornly resisted by entrenched patterns of sectarian
thought. The progress of racial integration is a development
that is not merely an expression of sentimentality or strategy
but arises from the recognition that the earth's peoples constitute
a single species whose many variations do not themselves confer
any advantage or impose any handicap on individual members of
the race. The emancipation of women, likewise, has entailed
the willingness of both society's institutions and popular opinion
to acknowledge that there are no acceptable grounds- biological,
social or moral- to justify denying women full equality with
men, and girls equal educational opportunities with boys. Nor
does appreciation of the contributions that some nations are
making to the shaping of an evolving global civilization support
the inherited illusion that other nations have little or nothing
to bring to the effort.
So fundamental a reorientation religious leadership
appears, for the most part, unable to undertake. Other segments
of society embrace the implications of the oneness of humankind,
not only as the inevitable next step in the advancement of civilization,
but as the fulfilment of lesser identities of every kind that
our race brings to this critical moment in our collective history.
Yet, the greater part of organized religion stands paralyzed
at the threshold of the future, gripped in those very dogmas
and claims of privileged access to truth that have been responsible
for creating some of the most bitter conflicts dividing the
earth's inhabitants.
The consequences, in terms of human well-being,
have been ruinous. It is surely unnecessary to cite in detail
the horrors being visited upon hapless populations today by
outbursts of fanaticism that shame the name of religion. Nor
is the phenomenon a recent one. To take only one of many examples,
Europe's sixteenth century wars of religion cost that continent
the lives of some thirty percent of its entire population. One
must wonder what has been the longer term harvest of the seeds
planted in popular consciousness by the blind forces of sectarian
dogmatism that inspired such conflicts.
To this accounting must be added a betrayal
of the life of the mind which, more than any other factor, has
robbed religion of the capacity it inherently possesses to play
a decisive role in the shaping of world affairs. Locked into
preoccupation with agendas that disperse and vitiate human energies,
religious institutions have too often been the chief agents
in discouraging exploration of reality and the exercise of those
intellectual faculties that distinguish humankind. Denunciations
of materialism or terrorism are of no real assistance in coping
with the contemporary moral crisis if they do not begin by addressing
candidly the failure of responsibility that has left believing
masses exposed and vulnerable to these influences.
Such reflections, however painful, are less
an indictment of organized religion than a reminder of the unique
power it represents. Religion, as we are all aware, reaches
to the roots of motivation. When it has been faithful to the
spirit and example of the transcendent Figures who gave the
world its great belief systems, it has awakened in whole populations
capacities to love, to forgive, to create, to dare greatly,
to overcome prejudice, to sacrifice for the common good and
to discipline the impulses of animal instinct. Unquestionably,
the seminal force in the civilizing of human nature has been
the influence of the succession of these Manifestations of the
Divine that extends back to the dawn of recorded history.
This
same force, that operated with such effect in ages past, remains
an inextinguishable feature of human consciousness. Against
all odds, and with little in the way of meaningful encouragement,
it continues to sustain the struggle for survival of uncounted
millions, and to raise up in all lands heroes and saints whose
lives are the most persuasive vindication of the principles
contained in the scriptures of their respective faiths. As the
course of civilization demonstrates, religion is also capable
of profoundly influencing the structure of social relationships.
Indeed, it would be difficult to think of any fundamental advance
in civilization that did not derive its moral thrust from this
perennial source. Is it conceivable, then, that passage to the
culminating stage in the millennia-long process of the organization
of the planet can be accomplished in a spiritual vacuum? If
the perverse ideologies let loose on our world during the century
just past contributed nothing else, they demonstrated conclusively
that the need cannot be met by alternatives that lie within
the power of human invention.
The implications for today are summed up by Bahá'u'lláh
in words written over a century ago and widely disseminated
in the intervening decades:
There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world,
of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from
one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God. The difference
between the ordinances under which they abide should be attributed
to the varying requirements and exigencies of the age in which
they were revealed. All of them, except a few which are the
outcome of human perversity, were ordained of God, and are a
reflection of His Will and Purpose. Arise and, armed with the
power of faith, shatter to pieces the gods of your vain imaginings,
the sowers of dissension amongst you. Cleave unto that which
draweth you together and uniteth you.
Such an appeal does not call for abandonment
of faith in the fundamental verities of any of the world's great
belief systems. Far otherwise. Faith has its own imperative
and is its own justification. What others believe- or do not
believe- cannot be the authority in any individual conscience
worthy of the name. What the above words do unequivocally urge
is renunciation of all those claims to exclusivity or finality
that, in winding their roots around the life of the spirit,
have been the greatest single factor in suffocating impulses
to unity and in promoting hatred and violence.
It is to this historic challenge that
we believe leaders of religion must respond if religious leadership
is to have meaning in the global society emerging from the transformative
experiences of the twentieth century. It is evident that growing
numbers of people are coming to realize that the truth underlying
all religions is in its essence one. This recognition arises
not through a resolution of theological disputes, but as an
intuitive awareness born from the ever widening experience of
others and from a dawning acceptance of the oneness of the human
family itself. Out of the welter of religious doctrines, rituals
and legal codes inherited from vanished worlds, there is emerging
a sense that spiritual life, like the oneness manifest in diverse
nationalities, races and cultures, constitutes one unbounded
reality equally accessible to everyone. In order for this diffuse
and still tentative perception to consolidate itself and contribute
effectively to the building of a peaceful world, it must have
the wholehearted confirmation of those to whom, even at this
late hour, masses of the earth's population look for guidance.
There are certainly wide differences
among the world's major religious traditions with respect to
social ordinances and forms of worship. Given the thousands
of years during which successive revelations of the Divine have
addressed the changing needs of a constantly evolving civilization,
it could hardly be otherwise. Indeed, an inherent feature of
the scriptures of most of the major faiths would appear to be
the expression, in some form or other, of the principle of religion's
evolutionary nature. What cannot be morally justified is the
manipulation of cultural legacies that were intended to enrich
spiritual experience, as a means to arouse prejudice and alienation.
The primary task of the soul will always be to investigate reality,
to live in accordance with the truths of which it becomes persuaded
and to accord full respect to the efforts of others to do the
same.
It may be objected that, if all the great
religions are to be recognized as equally Divine in origin,
the effect will be to encourage, or at least to facilitate,
the conversion of numbers of people from one religion to another.
Whether or not this is true, it is surely of peripheral importance
when set against the opportunity that history has at last opened
to those who are conscious of a world that transcends this terrestrial
one- and against the responsibility that this awareness imposes.
Each of the great faiths can adduce impressive and credible
testimony to its efficacy in nurturing moral character. Similarly,
no one could convincingly argue that doctrines attached to one
particular belief system have been either more or less prolific
in generating bigotry and superstition than those attached to
any other. In an integrating world, it is natural that patterns
of response and association will undergo a continuous process
of shifting, and the role of institutions, of whatever kind,
is surely to consider how these developments can be managed
in a way that promotes unity. The guarantee that the outcome
will ultimately be sound- spiritually, morally and socially-
lies in the abiding faith of the unconsulted masses of the earth's
inhabitants that the universe is ruled not by human caprice,
but by a loving and unfailing Providence.
Together with the crumbling of barriers
separating peoples, our age is witnessing the dissolution of
the once insuperable wall that the past assumed would forever
separate the life of Heaven from the life of Earth. The scriptures
of all religions have always taught the believer to see in service
to others not only a moral duty, but an avenue for the soul's
own approach to God. Today, the progressive restructuring of
society gives this familiar teaching new dimensions of meaning.
As the age-old promise of a world animated by principles of
justice slowly takes on the character of a realistic goal, meeting
the needs of the soul and those of society will increasingly
be seen as reciprocal aspects of a mature spiritual life.
If religious leadership is to rise to
the challenge that this latter perception represents, such response
must begin by acknowledging that religion and science are the
two indispensable knowledge systems through which the potentialities
of consciousness develop. Far from being in conflict with one
another, these fundamental modes of the mind's exploration of
reality are mutually dependent and have been most productive
in those rare but happy periods of history when their complementary
nature has been recognized and they have been able to work together.
The insights and skills generated by scientific advance will
have always to look to the guidance of spiritual and moral commitment
to ensure their appropriate application; religious convictions,
no matter how cherished they may be, must submit, willingly
and gratefully, to impartial testing by scientific methods.
We come finally to an issue that we approach
with some diffidence as it touches most directly on conscience.
Among the many temptations the world offers, the test that has,
not surprisingly, preoccupied religious leaders is that of exercising
power in matters of belief. No one who has dedicated long years
to earnest meditation and study of the scriptures of one or
another of the great religions requires any further reminder
of the oft-repeated axiom regarding the potentiality of power
to corrupt and to do so increasingly as such power grows. The
unheralded inner victories won in this respect by unnumbered
clerics all down the ages have no doubt been one of the chief
sources of organized religion's creative strength and must rank
as one of its highest distinctions. To the same degree, surrender
to the lure of worldly power and advantage, on the part of other
religious leaders, has cultivated a fertile breeding ground
for cynicism, corruption and despair among all who observe it.
The implications for the ability of religious leadership to
fulfil its social responsibility at this point in history need
no elaboration.
Because it is concerned with the ennobling of character and
the harmonizing of relationships, religion has served throughout
history as the ultimate authority in giving meaning to life.
In every age, it has cultivated the good, reproved the wrong
and held up, to the gaze of all those willing to see, a vision
of potentialities as yet unrealized. From its counsels the rational
soul has derived encouragement in overcoming limits imposed
by the world and in fulfilling itself. As the name implies,
religion has simultaneously been the chief force binding diverse
peoples together in ever larger and more complex societies through
which the individual capacities thus released can find expression.
The great advantage of the present age is the perspective that
makes it possible for the entire human race to see this civilizing
process as a single phenomenon, the ever-recurring encounters
of our world with the world of God.
Inspired by this perspective, the Bahá'í
community has been a vigorous promoter of interfaith activities
from the time of their inception. Apart from cherished associations
that these activities create, Bahá'ís see in the
struggle of diverse religions to draw closer together a response
to the Divine Will for a human race that is entering on its
collective maturity. The members of our community will continue
to assist in every way we can. We owe it to our partners in
this common effort, however, to state clearly our conviction
that interfaith discourse, if it is to contribute meaningfully
to healing the ills that afflict a desperate humanity, must
now address honestly and without further evasion the implications
of the over-arching truth that called the movement into being:
that God is one and that, beyond all diversity of cultural expression
and human interpretation, religion is likewise one.
With every day that passes, danger grows
that the rising fires of religious prejudice will ignite a worldwide
conflagration the consequences of which are unthinkable. Such
a danger civil government, unaided, cannot overcome. Nor should
we delude ourselves that appeals for mutual tolerance can alone
hope to extinguish animosities that claim to possess Divine
sanction. The crisis calls on religious leadership for a break
with the past as decisive as those that opened the way for society
to address equally corrosive prejudices of race, gender and
nation. Whatever justification exists for exercising influence
in matters of conscience lies in serving the well-being of humankind.
At this greatest turning point in the history of civilization,
the demands of such service could not be more clear. "The
well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable",
Bahá'u'lláh urges, "unless and until its
unity is firmly established."
THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE
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