Bahá'í The Way (Or, Oh Bahá'í Guyz)

Research Report #1 Griffin Weston
Sunday Meeting at Bahai Faith Center, Makawao.

Still reeling from the Hope Chapel thunder, I allowed several Sundays to pass lazily by until my mother showed me a calendar of remaining weeks left, thus putting the fear of Religion (150) back in my heart. After warily eying the long list of churches downtown, I randomly selected the Bahá'í Faith. They held regular Sunday services in Makawao at 8:00 am. Google Maps confirmed my suspicion that it was probably held in some guys home. My outlook at 7:30 on a rainy Sunday morning was somewhat pessimistic.
I decided to arrive slightly early, which resulted in me being the only one there for a good 10 minutes. The Bahá'í Center was a long, white building squeezed into the neighborhood surrounding Makawao Elementary. I was greeted at the door by a surprised woman holding a vacuum cleaner. I explained my situation, she explained hers, and she continued to clean up while I took off my shoes and sat quietly. The interior was also low and long, with roughly 15 cushioned chairs arranged in an oval. Old books sat in old bookshelves. A black and white photograph of an old (evidently Persian) man was on one wall, while various symbols from major world religions were on the others. A functional kitchen took up the far wall. My introspection was broken by a newcomer. It was his first time as well; a middle aged man with a knapsack from Chicago looking for a place to go Sunday mornings. We exchanged words until the arrival of our first real Bahá'í, a friendly fellow with an orchid farm shirt and muddy boots. He immediately bustled around, making coffee, turning on the lights, and learning our names. He happily launched into a brief overview of the Bahá'í Faith: Relatively new (founded in 19th century Persia) and practiced by 5 or so million followers, the Bahá'í Faith essentially agrees with all the major world religions, claiming they are all connected by the single unifying God. Spiritual and social unity, peace, and a continual forward momentum for humanity. It sounded pretty good. Every few minutes a new person would enter, adding a few words and introducing themselves to us with handshakes and smiles. People would get up for coffee, someone brought a small cake to the center table. This was not a sermon (although I was assured that some readings by Bahá'u'lláh [the founder of the Faith] would eventually occur), it was a discussion, a forum. On several occasions I was surprised to find myself the recipient of several people’s attention. They asked me questions after they answered my own.
The turning point came when the final arrivals made their entrance. An old man wearing what can only be described as “spectacles”, a loud Hawaiian shirt and knee high socks walked over to me and offered me a hug, stating “Bet you didn’t know you had a grandpa from outer space, did you!” . Apparently, I did now. If this man had a title along the lines of “pastor” or “teacher”, I didn’t hear it that day. He had written a book on the sacred writings of Bahá'u'lláh, which lay on the table among prayers. Now that Jenobe had arrived, the conversation circled back to the two initiates: myself, and the earnest traveler. Grandpa Jenobe explained the finer points of the Bahá'í Faith with grand gesticulations and energy. Unity, Unity, and more Unity could not be stressed enough. A set of principles he drew up included the drive for the elimination of all prejudice (racial, sexual, economic, intellectual, everything!), the need for a universal language (in complete concurrence with maintaining cultural ties), and the importance of reconciling science and religion. Included in the discussion were the posters along the walls containing excerpts from the main religious texts of several religions stating the exact same things.

I was continually (and pleasantly) surprised by the sheer amount of logical sense contained in the conversation. The metaphors were fitting, the explanations made sense. Working under the belief that there is a single God who has been revered and named by a multitude of different religions, followers of Bahá'í then (are logically compelled to) accept all religions equally. Various religious figures such as Muhammad and Jesus and Buddha are all seen as messengers of God, suited specifically to their era. The correlation offered was that of a school. Students are progressed from 1st to 12th grade. 1st graders are taught by the 1st grade teacher, who teaches them all that the children are able to learn at that level, and so on up the ladder. No teacher is more or less important than the other, because each one builds on the foundation set by the previous.
Emphasis was put on how easy it is to gather every Sunday and say these things and then put them aside the rest of the week. After some time, in a lull among the multiple conversations going on, I focused again on Jenobe. I do not remember exactly how he arrived at the specific allegory, but he was going over the statement in the New Testament stating “Love your enemies”. The word “terrorists” caught my ear and I sighed inwardly at the use of such a cliché. Boy, was I wrong.
After asking him to start at the beginning, Jenobe told the group his story. My details may not be exact, but roughly: In the 70’s he was attending a Bahá'í Faith conference in Indonesia and contracted malaria. He arranged a plane flight to the next leg of his journey where he was going to sweat it out in his hotel room. Before his plane had taken off, it was hijacked by fundamentalist terrorists and held hostage for multiple days on the tarmac. The conditions he described were horrifying, but the point he drew was that, coming from an exposition on his faith, he viewed it as a test. A test that, as he told us, he failed. He tried to love these enemies and boy, I can’t blame him, found he could not. He remembered what Martin Luther King had said, “Discover the element of good in your enemy.”, and tried to focus on a single thing worth loving about these people, and he failed.
We were left to draw our own personal meaning out of this event, but Jenobe did close with the statement that “Well, since I think I failed that one….God’s probably going to do it again some time until we get it right. So don’t fly with me.”

I left after an hour and a half of conversation. They never got around to reading out of any book, and I later found out that the unsmiling Persian on the wall was not Bahá'u'lláh as I had first assumed. In fact, they’d like to avoid using his physical likeness in order to dissuade preconceived notions.
As a whole, I was pleasantly surprised. Continually. I can see why the Bahá'í Faith is the second fastest growing religion. The level of detail, of understanding and logic involved, the stress for education and compassion and unity made a whole heck of a lot of sense to me. As a religion, I have yet to see a negative aspect of it. As a way of life, as an ethical and philosophical and social system, I can get behind it and cheer wildly. Yes to worldwide education, yes to a universal auxiliary language, yes to every single person being “anxiously concerned with the needs of society”. The people at the Bahá'í Faith center are earnest, interesting and energetic. If they weren’t so godawful early in the morning I would be sore tempted to return.
I sure hope it doesn’t get twisted and misinterpreted by fundamentalists like every single other religion ever out there. But then again, honestly, what would a Bahá'í fundamentalist do? Force you to learn a second language at gunpoint? Brusquely encourage your independent investigation of the truth? Oh NO!

Hey team, I'll come back to this and put some links and youtube embeds later. I'm a little behind on work. And by work I mean Warcraft. And by Warcraft I mean sleep.