Baha'i

Overview

The Bahá’í faith is essentially a spiritual ideology that teaches the value of all religions, espousing the importance of universal equality and unity. Bahá’u’lláh, the founding figure in the Bahá’í faith, officially established his ideology in 1863 in Persia (or modern-day Iran). As something of a hybrid of other faiths, Bahá’í grew out of the tradition of Babism, which itself emerged from an Islamic denomination called Shaykhism. (Today, Babism exists with a few thousand adherents, concentrated largely in Iran, and standing separately from the Islamic ideologies that surround it.) Like Babism, Bahá’í incorporates some of the teachings of Islam but merges them with some Christian principles. The central governing body of the Bahá’í faith, a nine-member council called the Universal House of Justice, operates from Haifa, Israel. Today, the Bahá’í faith has somewhere between five and seven million adherents around the world from over 2,100 ethnic and tribal backgrounds in more than 220 countries. (The Best Schools)

Resources

Universal House of Justice: https://universalhouseofjustice.bahai.org/

What Bahá’ís Believe: https://www.bahai.org/beliefs/

House of Worship Visit

Daily, 1:30 PM services are offered by the Baha'i House of Worship for North America on Facebook Live. Click the link below to watch and then complete the reflection questions.

https://www.facebook.com/BahaiTempleNorthAmerica/

Reflection Questions

You may opt to reflect and respond to each of the questions below, or only those that stir a response in you. Make this reflective process your own and feel free to add any additional thoughts or information learned to your journal.

  1. What did you know about the Baha'i faith before reading about it today? Was there anything that surprised you?

  2. There are no demarcations between Baha'i teachers or practitioners - all are considered equal within the faith. How might this be both liberating and/or limiting from your own worldview perspective?

  3. What do you think about the Baha'i teaching that there is only one true religion, and that we are continuing to build upon teachings of prophets who have come before? Do you recognize some of the common teachings mentioned in Rainn Wilson's video among other major religions? Does this view minimize major differences between traditions?

  4. The Baha'is teach about one's call to walk a spiritual path. Click here to read more about this philosophy. What about this path calls out to you most. What attributes help you walk along your own spiritual path?

If you visited a Baha'i house of worship service, please consider these questions as well...

  • What is something you saw in the service that resonated with you?

  • What questions do you have about the religion/aspects of the service?

  • Did you see your own religious practices reflected at any point in the service?

  • Did you feel connected to your own faith at any point in the service?

  • Is there anything from this experience that you can carry with you as you continue on your own personal faith journey?