How and Why I Became a Baha'i
It has been more than seven years since I became a Baha'i, and nearly three years since I left the faith. I have had plenty of time to reflect on the reasons why I decided to join the Baha'i Faith, how I was drawn in, and what I should have done differently when I was investigating the religion and considering declaring my faith in Baha'u'llah. My story of becoming a Baha'i may be somewhat typical, although everyone has a unique story of their own. My experience highlights the importance of critical thinking in the face of rampant friendliness. How could too much friendliness be a bad thing? Well, it can be when it conceals difficult facts and issues that a person needs to know to make an informed decision. My own experience is that when I first met the Baha'is, they were so friendly and so eager to show me love, that I got lost in all the attention and spirit of camaraderie.
I was a freshman in college who knew hardly anyone at the large state school, the University of Virginia, that I was attending. I was looking to make new friends and join some kind of social group. All around me, I saw too much alcohol, too much promiscuous sex, and too much anonymity. The first Baha'i I met happened to be my next door neighbor in my dorm. Many of the other guys I was living with got drunk, smoked pot, and brought various slutty girls back into their rooms every weekend after their twilight trips to fraternity row. Condoms were handed out for free at a campus barbecue for the freshman class, literally shoved into my hand as though that were the main reason I decided to go to school. One Saturday night a few weeks after fall semester began, even the resident evangelical Christian was passed out on the floor of the bathroom in his own vomit, as I walked in to urinate in the middle of the night. But the Baha'i guy was different: clean-cut, sober, and interested in higher things rather than the wild pursuits of the flesh. After repeated attempts to convince me to attend one of his religious meetings -- I had resisted because "Baha'i" sounded like it could be a cult -- I finally surrendered to my curiosity and decided to spend a Friday evening with this strange religious group rather than at a party or doing something normal. To my surprise, the Baha'i meeting I attended (what is known as a "Fireside") did not contain any bizarre rituals, but was simply a friendly gathering of Baha'is and invited guests in a private home, listening to a speaker, discussing spiritual issues, saying a few prayers, and eating food. They didn't drink alcohol (Baha'is are 100% dry), and they seemed like wholesome folk. I agreed with many of the ideas presented -- love, peace, tolerance and respect for all religions, unity and brotherhood of all mankind, racial reconciliation and gender equality -- basically, stuff most liberal intellectual people in America already believe in anyway. Many of the Baha'i females were Iranian or multiracial stock, dark and exotic looking, and I have always found that type attractive. I was hooked!
The Baha'is made me feel very special. They rekindled my interest in spirituality which had withered after a couple years of adolescent agnosticism. Before that, since I was about 13 years old, I had been deeply interested in "new age" ideas, Eastern religions, Bible prophecy, and utopian philosophies of global unification and transformation of civilization. All of these interests were to be found in some form or another in the Baha'i Faith. My newfound friends (in their Baha'i lingo they even called themselves "the Friends") in the local Baha'i community and the Baha'i college club showered me with praise for my intelligence and progressive worldview, telling me I was already almost a Baha'i and just needed to take the next step. I can only say that I fell for it. Every Friday evening I would go to their meetings and enjoy the Middle Eastern culture, the Persian food, the singing and guitar playing, the close-knit small community atmosphere, the intellectual stimulation, and the utopian spirit their religion embodied. The house where these Fireside meetings were held was the home of an immigrant Iranian couple and their young son, and they treated me with great love. One weekend they even let me sleep over in their house because my roommate wanted to have a sex marathon with his girlfriend and kicked me out of my own room. The Iranian Baha'i man was a doctor and religious scholar. He was a striking figure, guru-like with wire-rimmed glasses, a balding cranium and a goatee, speaking in a Persian accent and frequently sharing profound spiritual insights with me from his massive bookshelves filled with scriptural texts, many of which were ornate volumes written in the Arabic and Farsi languages. His wife was a petite, pretty young woman who made a wicked good cup of tea flavored in the Persian style with cardamom and other oriental spices, the enticing aroma of which would waft through their house and permeate the nostrils. I made Baha'i friends my own age and race, too, including fellow students at the university. I became part of their group even before I became an official member of the Baha'i Faith.
I can honestly tell you that these Baha'is I knew at U.Va. and in Charlottesville, Virginia, were great people -- and I did not want to find out anything bad about their religion that might have prevented me from joining. That, in a nutshell, was the problem. I did read several books of Baha'i scriptures that they provided me with, and I did ask plenty of questions and gave it a lot of thought before officially declaring my faith; but I did not know what to look for in the copious Baha'i sacred writings, much of which I had never yet been exposed to, that would have dissuaded me from becoming a Baha'i, nor would I really have wanted to know at that point anyway. (In retrospect, I wish I had been more cautious and probed with a more skeptical mind, so that I would have learned everything before choosing to sign a membership card.) The Baha'is certainly obliged my subconscious desire to avoid such pitfalls on the path to conversion, never informing me about the serious doctrinal and administrative controversies in their faith that demand careful consideration. I signed my Baha'i declaration card on the Baha'i New Year (Naw-Ruz), March 21, 1998, at a wonderful party where I performed some Baha'i verses of prayer I had memorized in Arabic, singing baritone as part of the U.Va. Baha'i choir. Everyone was happy: they were happy to have made a new convert, and I was happily ignorant of the bombshell discoveries that a few years later would tear my faith apart.
Behind the Facade: Cult-like Tendencies in the Baha'i Faith
One of the reasons I decided to become a member of the Baha'i Faith organization was that I wanted to participate in Feast, the Baha'i worship service and community business meeting that takes place every nineteen days. At first, this was interesting, but soon the novelty wore off. I slowly began to realize that being a Baha'i is a very different thing for a member than for a "seeker," and that official membership in the Baha'i Faith calls for an enormous dedication of time and energy to administrative matters. This would not be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that Baha'i administration is treated with an almost idolatrous reverence. Community issues are discussed according to a ritualistic process of "consultation," often preceded by reciting scriptures about the glory of the Baha'i administrative order and the appropriate methods of institutional decision-making. Month after month at Feast, we listened to droning tape-recorded messages from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States, telling us about the latest plans of their institution, the "Four Year Plan" of the Universal House of Justice and all its implications for our lives, the constant need for more financial donations (Baha'i institutions are always running huge deficits and begging for money), and fervent exhortations for members to "teach" the faith to more people and bring about "Entry By Troops" (a prophecy of mass conversion of the public to the Baha'i Faith). When I was elected to be an officer of the college Baha'i club, I ended up spending several extra hours per week on long, drawn-out club leadership meetings where few real decisions were made, but many passages of Baha'i scripture were often recited about consultation procedures, institutional order, infallibility of the Baha'i administration, and the sacrosanct Covenant of obedience to the Baha'i system. All this obsession with administrative ritual and a fawning attitude toward Baha'i leaders and institutions smacked of Communism, and it frustrated me that the supposedly open-minded and free-thinking religion I had joined was so dominated by a focus on obedience and procedure rather than real spirituality. Sometimes it seemed almost as if the Baha'i administrative order was viewed as the equivalent of God Himself!
Though my faith in Baha'u'llah's prophethood and his basic principles of religious and racial unity remained strong, over time I began to realize that the overarching message of the Baha'i Faith was not what I had originally thought. Instead of open minds, the Baha'i Faith closed people's minds once they belonged to it. Instead of tolerance and respect for differences of opinion, the Baha'i Faith demanded absolute agreement with its scriptures and leadership on everything. One could not be considered a good Baha'i if one ever said, "I don't agree with [fill in the blank] that was written in such and such text or was stated by the UHJ." To say such a thing would bring accusations of "weakness in the Covenant," which is a veiled threat of losing the love and friendship of the community if one's views do not soon change to conform to the approved position. Since the Baha'i holy writings and institutions took positions on virtually every issue imaginable, one essentially had to turn over ownership of one's own mind to the Baha'i Faith. I was a religious studies and philosophy major, and when I decided I wanted to research the Baha'i connection to Christianity and write a book introducing the Baha'i Faith to Christians, I was informed that anything published by a Baha'i must go through a rigorous process of administrative "review" (i.e. censorship) by a special committee of Baha'i leaders, to make sure every word written conformed to the official viewpoints on all issues. As a university student who was considering pursuing a doctorate and professorship in religious studies, I was shocked to learn that even academic articles written by Baha'is must go through this censorship process. I found out there were Baha'i scholars who actually had to resign their membership in the Baha'i organization just so that they could publish their work, because they had somewhat different interpretations and understandings of the religion of Baha'u'llah, and the things they wanted to write had been censored. So much for scholarly integrity; doctrinal purity trumps all other considerations among the Baha'is.
Nevertheless, I did go ahead and attempt to write an introduction to the Baha'i Faith for Christians. In the process of studying the Baha'i Faith in a rigorous academic way in order to write a comprehensive book that would present the religion accurately, I discovered some problems in the history and development of the religion I had never before encountered. (More about this also in the next section of this page.) I knew that attempting to discuss these problems rationally with Baha'i authorities would lead only to indoctrination attempts or discipline, for I explored some of the official Baha'i arguments and found them very weak, and I knew they were indefensible. My manuscript was already 90% finished and I had put in hundreds of hours of work on it. But I was realizing that I no longer wanted to promote the Baha'i Faith to Christians or anyone else -- I was disturbed and disgusted by the way Baha'is with different views about their faith were silenced, slandered, and even excommunicated. I was beginning to fear this could happen to me, I was angry, and I was starting to lose my faith. I did not even bother to share my feelings openly with other Baha'is, because I knew enough about Baha'i culture to know that this would be pointless. Through my own personal experiences and by reading the websites of several Baha'i reformers, I had discovered that the Haifa-based Baha'i Faith organization is in some ways a cult-like group, denying its members basic rights such as freedom of speech, the press, and association. Contrary to the Baha'i public image of tolerance and open-mindedness, behind the scenes the Baha'i leaders are running their religion in a spirit of institutional authoritarianism. Here are a few good resources to get you started as you investigate the truth beyond Baha'i propaganda:
- The Baha'i Faith & Religious Freedom of Conscience. Baha'i reformer Frederick Glaysher has put together an extensive collection of sources documenting the hijacking of Baha'ism by extremists who are intolerant of alternative viewpoints and free expression by Baha'is.
- Juan Cole is a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan who is a Baha'i reformer and has been involved with the Unitarian-Universalist church. He was forced to resign from the Baha'i Faith under threat of shunning due to differences of opinion about certain issues in the religion and its organization. Baha'is are sometimes discouraged by their leaders from reading anything he has written -- even his popular book on the origin of the Baha'i faith, Modernity and the Millennium -- simply because it is by the prominent heretic Juan Cole. (I myself was warned against reading it.) He maintains a page of Documents on Baha'i History and Thought which includes a number of reform-oriented texts. Definitely read his two most controversial articles:
- Karen Bacquet is an unenrolled Baha'i. She believes in Baha'u'llah but not the organization claiming to represent him. Among her many articles, here are some of the most interesting ones:
- Alison Marshall is an excommunicated Baha'i. On her website she shares her religious views and describes how she was forcibly expelled from the Baha'i Faith.
- Baha'i Leaders Vexed by On-Line Critics. An article by ex-Baha'i religious author K. Paul Johnson that appeared in Gnosis magazine in 1997. A summary of the controversy over the Talisman discussion group, a liberal Baha'i email list started by several reform-minded Baha'i scholars. Baha'i administrative officials repressed free speech on the list by interrogating and threatening its members, which culminated in discipline and excommunication or resignation of several prominent Baha'i intellectuals including Juan Cole and Indiana University professor Linda Walbridge. Johnson was an active participant in the original Talisman list, which was shut down only to be reborn later in a new form that is less controversial and grudgingly tolerated by the Baha'i institutions.
- A Modest Proposal: Recommendations Toward the Revitalization of the American Baha'i Community. This article was to have been published in Dialogue magazine, a liberal Baha'i periodical, but it never appeared in print. The editors submitted it for "review" (in-house official Baha'i prepublication censorship) to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States, and actually met with two members of that body. At the Baha'i National Convention in April 1988, the authors and editors were condemned for even thinking about publishing such a document. The editors, heartbroken, ceased publication of Dialogue.
- Baha'i Angst and Brave New World are humorous sources of Baha'i satire and more.
If you are a Baha'i questioning your religious beliefs, a "seeker" or somebody interested in the Baha'i Faith, it might be a good idea to talk with various people about the religion and their experiences in it. Since there aren't very many Baha'is around in most towns, and those who do openly talk to you about their faith are often the most hard-core followers, it is helpful to go to an online discussion group to get a more balanced perspective from many believers, ex-Baha'is, and others. Also, Baha'is are typically shy about answering questions that might make their religion look bad or cause them to be reported and disciplined by the Baha'i administrative order. Many ordinary Baha'is are not even aware of some of the more difficult issues you might want to ask about. On the internet, you can meet Baha'is willing and able to discuss even the hard questions and provide you with alternative perspectives, either under the cloak of anonymity or publicly with the courage of their convictions. Some online Baha'i message boards are heavily moderated and censored by Baha'is appointed by the administrative order to prevent challenges to their views. Find a forum where real dialogue and different points of view about the Baha'i Faith are permitted, such as the forums listed below.
Uncensored Baha'i discussion groups:
- Ex-Baha'i Discussion & Support. For ex-Baha'is, Baha'is doubting their faith, liberal, inactive, or unenrolled Baha'is, adherents of alternative Baha'i sects, and curious non-Baha'is and seekers who wish to learn more about the Baha'i Faith from a critical perspective (Yahoo Groups). Eric Stetson is group owner and Dan Jensen and Ian McCarthy are moderators. Strongly recommended.
- Unenrolled Baha'i. Support group for believers who are disillusioned with organized Baha'ism (Yahoo Groups). Moderated by Karen Bacquet.
- talisman9. Baha'i religious studies and intellectual issues, especially for liberal Baha'is (Yahoo Groups).
- talk.religion.bahai. General discussion for anyone and anything Baha'i-related (Google Groups). Both Baha'i believers and anti-Baha'i critics typically post here. No rules.
- Baha'i Debate. Baha'i vs. anti-Bahai (Beliefnet.com). Posters are expected to remain courteous and respectful.
- Baha'i Dialogue. Dialogue between Baha'i liberals and conservatives, fundamentalists and unenrolled believers, and members of different Baha'i sects (Beliefnet.com).
- Unenrolled Baha'is. Reform-oriented and liberal Baha'i gathering place (Beliefnet.com).
Some Guardianist Baha'is believe that Donald Harvey was the person Remey really wanted to succeed him in the Guardianship. Both Marangella and Harvey received an appointment, but Marangella's came first, and he attempted to take over the Remeyite movement claiming that Remey was going senile in his old age and had abdicated his position. Remey later changed his mind and appointed Harvey, but by then Marangella had already consolidated his support and Harvey was unable to gain a significant following. Harvey appointed Jacques Soghomonian of France to be his successor, and Soghomonian is now trying to attract support with the help of Brent Reed, an American who has been excommunicated by both the mainstream Baha'i Faith and the Orthodox Baha'i Faith. Reed runs a discussion group to promote Soghomonian's claim, called Journey to the Heart of the Baha'i Faith. There are files posted there which explain Soghomonian's view that he is the fourth Guardian. Also check out this article by Reed against the claims of Marangella: The Fallacy of Joel Bray Marangella's Activation-Abdication Postulate. Reed has got some interesting study materials, but Soghomonian needs to set up a real website and organization if he is actually serious about wanting to lead the Baha'is. In fact, it is unclear whether Jacques Soghomonian has ever taken any significant steps to advance his claim to the Guardianship and promote the Baha'i religion. He might just be a Guardian on paper, and his small Baha'i sect may remain stagnant or die out unless his successor proves to be a more dynamic and active figure.
The only currently existing Baha'i sect that is not based on disputes about the Guardianship or any new claim of spiritual authority is the Reform Bahai Faith, founded in 2004 by prominent Baha'i dissident Frederick Glaysher, who for years had fought to change the Haifa-based Baha'i Faith organization by vocal protest. When he decided this approach had failed, he created another Baha'i splinter group instead. This independent Baha'i denomination seeks to promote a more liberal, less authoritarian interpretation of the Baha'i faith. It rejects the absolute, infallible authority of any human institution, including the Universal House of Justice, and teaches that the Guardian (Shoghi Effendi) was not infallible either. Here are two important texts to read by Glaysher in support of his new Baha'i reform movement:
Time will tell whether any of the smaller Baha'i denominations will succeed in mounting a significant challenge to the mainstream Haifa-based Baha'i Faith. If current trends of decline continue, it is possible that Baha'ism as a whole will eventually be reduced to one small cult that is meaningless in the world, but that remains to be seen.
How and Why I Left the Baha'i Faith and Converted to Christianity
During my last year in college, I was secretly exploring the issues described in the preceding two sections of this article: the authoritarian, cult-like tendencies of the Baha'i Faith, and the historical leadership crisis and sectarian split over the issue of the Guardianship. After thoroughly studying these issues and reading arguments from various points of view, I realized I could no longer continue as a follower of the Baha'i community as it was organized and understood. However, at this point I still believed in Baha'u'llah and many of the basic principles of his religion. After much thought, reflection, prayer and meditation, I came to the conclusion that the Baha'i religion needed to be radically reformed. As a person of conviction who values honesty and moral courage, I decided I had no choice but to speak out about how the religion had been corrupted, and attempt to start a reform movement to restore the Baha'i Faith to what I believed was its original message and purpose.
In the spring of 2001 I graduated from U.Va. and went home to live at my parents' house, where I spent a summer doing odd jobs while looking for work and ruminating about what specific course of action I should take concerning my religion. For the most part I stayed away from the local Baha'i community, which was easier to do because it was a different community than the one I had been actively involved in at college, so they didn't really know me anyway. By the end of the summer, I felt it was time for me to do something publicly to state my case for Baha'i reform, but I was unsure how to proceed. It was then that I was confirmed in my convictions by a vision that drove me to write a book in the style of Baha'u'llah. In the vision I was not sure whether I was asleep or awake, and it seemed to be some altered state of consciousness brought on by prayer. I now believe that I had entered into what is called a hypnogogic trance, a state that is on the borderline between dreaming and wakefulness, in which people commonly can hear voices and see visions and not know whether they are real or imaginary. These altered states can occur as a result of psychological stress or intense prayer or meditation, and in my case there were both of these factors. As the experience unfolded, I prayed to Baha'u'llah, asking him what he wanted me to do, and then I encountered a being I thought was an angel, who gave me a large golden trumpet and told me to blow on it. He said that by blowing this trumpet I would "shake the whole world." I resisted, telling the angel that the trumpet was "too heavy for me to bear," but he told me to go ahead and take it and blow it. When I did so, I could feel my whole body shaking and vibrating, and I felt as though my spirit was leaving my physical body. After that it continued as a dream about flying through heaven, the details of which I no longer remember. Anyway, after I woke up from this visionary experience, I was convinced that God wanted me arise as a prophet to warn the Baha'is to correct the problems in their faith so that it could succeed in transforming the world.
Looking back, I am skeptical that this experience was anything truly supernatural. It is likely that my own intense thinking, prayer, meditation, and reading of Baha'i scriptures -- day after day in an attempt to solve the problems of the faith and prepare myself for a mission of Baha'i reform -- had caused my mind to fabricate a vivid dream or vision in which I was chosen as a prophet. Trumpet imagery is common in the Baha'i scriptures as a metaphor for prophethood and revelations from God, and my reluctance to accept the trumpet in the vision represented my real-life fears about speaking out boldly against the doctrines and policies of the established Baha'i Faith. The vibrating sensation I felt was probably the disconnection of the mind or consciousness (what paranormal researchers call the "astral body") from the physical body at the onset of REM sleep. This happens normally every night, but we don't usually remember it because we are unconscious. But if a person is not totally asleep, the person will consciously feel vibrations in their body followed by a feeling of floating that can be interpreted as an out-of-body experience. There is actually a scientifically recognized sleep disorder in which people experience this phenomenon on a regular basis.
At the time, I believed what happened to me was a real spiritual experience of great significance. My belief was intensified when I found a book by an excommunicated Baha'i named John Carre who disagreed with both the Haifan and Guardianist traditions and argued that a new Baha'i prophet should arise in America in the year 2001 to restore the faith. Based on this prophecy and my own vision, I considered myself to be called by God and Baha'u'llah as a messenger to prophesy to the Baha'is that they must reform their religion or perish. I proceeded to write a text called The Book of Restoration that ended up being as long as Baha'u'llah's Kitab-i-Iqan, and was written in a poetic, prophetic style. In my book, I put forward nineteen points of reform as well as plenty of commentary on important Baha'i issues and themes. It was not hard for me to write this book; I churned out the majority of it in only a few days of continuous writing, and I did very little editing thereafter. I published it on the internet in early 2002, and attempted to start an organization called the Alliance for the Reform of the Baha'i Faith. (My entire book used to be available on this website but I chose to remove it, because I think God would want me, as a Christian now, to completely put aside the mistakes of my past.) For a few months after I made the Book of Restoration public, I watched as reform-oriented Baha'is discussed it on internet message boards, and several people contacted me to express their support for what I was doing. I corresponded with a few of them who told me they believed my mission was truly from God.
Before long, I came to the realization that I did not really want to become the founder of another small Baha'i sect, and I knew that's all my efforts would accomplish if I continued on the path I was going. I was also becoming less impressed with the claim of Baha'u'llah and was starting to disagree with more and more of the Baha'i teachings, especially the idea that any man could ever write perfectly infallible scripture. I realized that it was not very difficult for an intelligent, talented, deeply religious person to produce good scriptural-style text -- and that I could do it easily -- but that this proves nothing about whether any of it is actually coming from God. I knew that Baha'u'llah had done little else to back up his claim of prophetic authority other than produce lots of inspirational writings. So I gradually found myself feeling less inspired by what Baha'u'llah did, and I started realizing that Christians believe Jesus Christ did much more, things that neither Baha'u'llah nor Muhammad nor myself could do -- things that were truly miraculous. The more I resisted this thought, the more I felt the Spirit of Christ reaching out to me and calling me to become a Christian. In the summer of 2002 I accepted Jesus Christ in my heart and began to consider myself a Christian. Around this time, I was asked to meet with Baha'i officials from the Auxiliary Board for Protection of the Faith, who were concerned about my Baha'i reform website and wanted to try to persuade me to recant. I surprised them by informing them in our meeting that while they had been investigating my case, I had proceeded to reject the religion of Baha'u'llah completely and accepted the claim of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
Other than simply feeling the call of the Holy Spirit in my heart, there are two main reasons why I decided to renounce my belief in Baha'u'llah and the Baha'i religion in favor of Jesus Christ and Christianity, which I will discuss in more detail later in this article. Here is a brief summary:
- Jesus was able to perform supernatural miracles including healing people of terrible diseases, reviving a dead man, and himself rising from the dead in the resurrection and appearing to his disciples in a literal, visible way. These things were recorded by reliable eyewitnesses in the Gospels and were always understood by the Christian church to be real, not merely metaphorical as Baha'is believe. Baha'u'llah never was able to do the amazing things Jesus did, yet he claimed to be the return of Christ. This doesn't make any sense, because Jesus said he would return with even greater power than before. Jesus warned about false christs coming in the future, and it seems that Baha'u'llah was one of them.
- The moral philosophy of Jesus is fundamentally different than the principles taught by Muhammad. For example, Jesus said we should love and forgive our enemies and remain peaceful despite persecution, whereas Muhammad instructed his followers to forcibly convert, subjugate, or kill the unbelievers by the power of the sword. The Baha'i Faith teaches that both Jesus and Muhammad were infallibly inspired by God in all their teachings, but their teachings are contradictory on the most basic issues. Therefore, the Baha'i Faith is wrong, and cannot be the truth revealed by God.
I officially resigned from the Baha'i Faith organization and declared my faith in Christ on November 5, 2002, in a letter to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States and the local Baha'i community where I was enrolled. Here you can see a short testimonial article with photos of my baptism.
The Baha'i Faith and Cults, Ex-Cult and Anti-Cult Resources
Is the Baha'i Faith a cult? Baha'i leaders as well as rank-and-file Baha'is vigorously deny the charge. My own view, from extensive personal experience as a Baha'i and from reading the stories of many ex-Baha'is and talking with quite a few of them, is that the Haifa-based Baha'i Faith organization falls into a gray area on the borderline of cult status. It has many telltale characteristics of the controlling religious organizations known popularly as "cults," but it is not as bad as the worst of them. In fact, some Baha'is can exist comfortably in the Baha'i Faith for a long time before they realize their religion is anything other than the slick Baha'i rhetoric says it is. Perhaps this is because Baha'i leadership does not use extreme pressure to force Baha'is to be much more involved than they want to be. But spend enough time and become involved enough in the Baha'i Faith, and most believers will eventually realize they were deceived when they joined and have been deceived ever since by an authoritarian hierarchy that hides behind pleasant-sounding rhetoric of peace, love and unity, and uses subtle tactics of manipulation to keep people in, active and obedient.
The underlying problem is that Baha'is are required to believe the Baha'i administrative order is infallibly guided by God in all its decisions. This means that questioning or ignoring even the smallest statement of a Baha'i institution is tantamount to disobeying God Himself, and can bring accusations of "weakness in the Covenant" which is a harsh spiritual judgment and veiled threat of discipline. Any Baha'i who openly criticizes any plan or policy of the administrative order (especially a "Plan" published by the UHJ) is regarded as a dangerous influence on "the Friends" and will be pressured by leadership to conform and remain silent, even if his or her ideas make sense. Slander and backbiting will often follow if the critic persists, followed by official discipline and sometimes culminating in expulsion or excommunication. The vast majority of Baha'is avoid these problems simply by keeping their mouth shut when they disagree, becoming less active in the faith, or allowing themselves to be indoctrinated into believing things they do not really agree with in order to preserve the coherence of their religious belief system.
During the few years I was a Baha'i, I noticed trends toward more systematic indoctrination programs ("Ruhi courses" and "study circles"), which have now become virtually compulsory, and more focus on recruitment and development ("deepening") of vulnerable youth. I also noticed a growing emphasis on missions to the easy-to-convert poor and uneducated, as well as more pressure to make non-Baha'i friends specifically for proselytizing, and to befriend "inactive Baha'is" to apply pressure on them to become more active in the Baha'i community. The Baha'i college club I belonged to at the University of Virginia actually maintained a database of inactive Baha'i students and periodically assigned members to try to become friends with them to draw them back into the faith. Furthermore, a lot of us chose our living arrangements, such as which dorm to live in, based specifically on hopes of targeting likely candidates for conversion to the Baha'i Faith. I went on two Baha'i mission trips to the Indian country of rural Oklahoma with other Baha'i college students, where we stayed with a retired Army officer who was spending all her time spreading the Baha'i Faith and coaching hard-core Baha'i youth to become successful missionaries. We went around with this woman distributing free food to impoverished Indians and trying to convince as many of them as possible to sign Baha'i declaration cards. The amazing thing is that the Baha'i Faith calls itself a "non-proselytizing religion" -- they define proselytizing in an extremely narrow way, so that they can promote themselves as a liberal-minded faith that does not engage in organized conversion campaigns, when in fact they do (they call it "teaching projects" instead). This is part of a trend of Baha'is talking in their own lingo that is foreign to people outside the group. For those inside, there are ever-increasing and intense requests for your money and your time by the organization, which uses propaganda videos and cassettes, hyped meetings and conventions, wildly inflated statistics, and repeated false promises of mass conversion ("entry by troops") to keep the brows sweaty and the checkbooks open.
My instincts tell me that as the Baha'i Faith fails to keep its converts, fails to grow and in fact declines in membership, its leaders are gradually transforming it into more of a cult in order to preserve what they have. The Baha'i Faith today exerts more and more social control over its membership, to prevent them from forming meaningful relationships outside the group except for purposes of evangelizing and converting people. For example, did you know that Baha'is are prohibited by their leaders from belonging to certain mainstream organizations in our society, including all political parties, all fraternities, sororities, and exclusive clubs, and even human rights advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet? Any group that holds any viewpoint or position contrary to Baha'i doctrine and policy is banned for the Baha'is. The Baha'i administrative order wants total loyalty and allegiance to the Baha'i Faith alone. This is a telltale sign of a cult. Here are a few useful resources to explore as you consider whether the Baha'i Faith is a cult or heading in that direction:
- How Cults Work. All about cult characteristics, methods, tactics and techniques, and how to spot them. Published by Cultwatch, a Christian counter-cult group based in New Zealand.
- AFF's Cult Information Service. The American Family Foundation provides a broad spectrum of cult-related information and assistance, including practical services for ex-members and families, and research for the academic, mental health, and legal professions. Includes an online journal, Cultic Studies Review.
- ex-cult Resource Center. Articles about cults in general, information on specific cults, ex-cult bookstore, and links to anti-cult organizations and resources.
- ex-cult-support. Ex-Baha'is and disenchanted Baha'is may wish to read some testimonies and thoughts by people who have left other new religious movements, and share and compare your experiences with them. Check out this Yahoo Group, a private mailing list "for anyone who has been in a cult, a high-demand or spiritually abusive group."
The longer I am away from the Baha'i Faith, the more I realize how it warped my priorities and took away a lot of opportunities I could have pursued during my college years. For four years, I spent a great deal of my life socializing with a small group of religious fanatics, studying religious texts that are irrelevant to 99.9% of the world's population, trying to convert my friends and family (and probably irritating them in the process), and working on fruitless plans and projects to help the Baha'is gain their goal of world domination. Instead, I should have been meeting lots of new and interesting people, dating a wide variety of girls, enjoying my hobbies such as tennis and hiking, and focusing more of my time and energy on my education and involvement in community service. It was my mistake; I do not blame the Baha'is, although I wish they had been more up-front and honest about the true facts of their religion before I joined. The moral of the story is, do not let Baha'i become your life! You will regret it later, in the form of so many missed opportunities remembered.
Comparative Religion, Baha'i Fallacies and Contradictions
One fact that Baha'is like to gloss over is that there are major differences between the various religions of the world, including outright contradictions and incompatibilities. Baha'is argue that God has revealed one unchanging spiritual message to different peoples and cultures at different times, but the social laws change from age to age according to the needs of the time, which causes religions to appear different. But open-minded and scholarly research into comparative religion does not support such a theory. The religions of the world are truly different, and each one would be insulted by any suggestion that what makes them unique is only some temporary "social laws" rather than a distinct assertion of eternal metaphysical truth and moral and philosophical guidance. The Baha'i theory falls apart when one is willing to investigate religions on their own terms, outside of the Baha'i theoretical framework that attempts to force all religions into a Baha'i box. If, as the evidence suggests, the major religions really have always taught different things which make them incompatible belief systems, then the Baha'i Faith cannot be the absolute truth revealed by God, because the oneness of all religions is a central Baha'i teaching.
I especially urge everyone to study the life of Muhammad and the early history of his religion -- you may be shocked by what you discover. They don't tell you many of the gory details in politically correct Islam 101 courses. Muhammad's rabid sex life and disrespect for women, his thirst for conquest and the spoils of war, and some of the backward moral teachings in the Qur'an (Koran) all serve to undermine the foundations of Baha'ism and its theology of "Manifestations of God" and "progressive revelation" -- and when viewed alongside the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, serve as a powerful argument for the ultimate truth of Christianity. One need only look at traditional fundamentalist Islam being practiced in many parts of the world today, much as it was practiced in the time of Muhammad and the early Caliphs and Imams. Floggings, stonings, amputations, polygamy and harsh treatment of women, and bloodthirsty jihad (holy war) are all examples of teachings found in the Qur'an and Hadith, the original Muslim scriptures. Baha'ism emerged out of the Islamic religious tradition -- in many ways as a reaction to its excesses, arguing that Islam was inspired by God but had become corrupted by men. But the reality is, it was corrupt from the beginning, and today's Islamist fanatics are only trying to reinstate the religion of Muhammad who they view as the ideal man who brought the ideal law for society. Can Baha'is really maintain, as their theology requires, that Muhammad's teachings are superior or a more "progressive revelation" than the earlier, more loving and merciful teachings of Jesus Christ? Look at the tremendous pain and suffering inflicted by the sincere followers of Muhammad, and then judge the religion by its fruits. And then reflect upon the words of Jesus, that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." (Mark 3:25). Reform-oriented Muslims want to ignore the harsher verses in the Qur'an and claim that any offending Hadith must have been forged. Baha'is do the same. But this attitude goes against the obvious truth, that many things Muhammad taught and did are morally objectionable. If you are a Baha'i, you are obliged to accept Muhammad because Baha'u'llah accepted him. But if you cannot accept Muhammad, then you cannot accept Baha'u'llah, no matter how good his faith may seem to you.
Another issue that needs to be considered is the contradictions within the Baha'i Faith itself. Baha'is have a very large scriptural corpus which includes many teachings that conflict with one another upon careful analysis, especially regarding the transition from Babism to Baha'ism and from early Baha'ism to the modern Baha'i Faith. Furthermore, the Baha'i holy writings contain numerous examples of outright error, which undermines the Baha'i belief that the founders of their faith were infallibly guided by God and that everything they wrote is divine revelation.
Here are some websites and articles worth reading on these issues:
- Forum for Baha'i Investigations. A website by an ex-Baha'i containing objective information about the Baha'i religion, its history and teachings, including several articles discussing the contradictions and problems in Baha'i doctrine.
- The Baha'i Millenarian Movement. Created by several people with "extensive experience within the Baha'i community," this site is "dedicated to alternative perspectives on the Baha'i religion" but "doesn't promote any particular religious persuasion." Contains a list of articles exposing some embarrassing flaws in Baha'ism and how Baha'is have attempted to conceal or rationalize these problems.
- From Babism to Baha'ism: Problems of Militancy, Quietism, and Conflation in the Construction of a Religion. An academic article by religious studies professor and ex-Bahai Denis MacEoin, examining how the pacifist Baha'i faith grew out a violent revolutionary Shi'ite sect and co-opted its martyred leader, the Bab, as the forerunner of Baha'u'llah, covering up the real nature of his teachings and movement in order to make Baha'ism more appealing to the Christian West.
- An Examination of Suppression and Distortion in 20th-Century Baha'i Literature. Vance Salisbury, an ex-Baha'i who declared his faith in Christ while enduring a life-threatening infection with flesh-eating bacteria, discusses various ways Baha'i authors and official censors have twisted the truth about their religion in the literature they make available to their membership and the public.
- World Religions: Comparative Analysis. "The goal of this site is to investigate whether or not there is sufficient evidence to prove that world religions are complementary and equally true."
- Answering Islam. A high-quality, comprehensive website dedicated to intelligent investigation of Muhammad's religion and exposing the problems with it. Christian-Muslim dialogue from a Christian perspective.
- Islam: Sex and Violence, by ex-Muslim Anwar Shaykh. Online book detailing the mistreatment of women and the practice of military jihad against "infidels" in fundamental, Quran-based Islam.
- Prophet of Doom: Islam's Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad's Own Words, by Craig Winn. Online book about Muhammad's life and career as a violent religious warrior. Also contains pages of shocking quotes from the Quran and Hadith.
- Why I Left Islam. Ali Sina discusses some of the disturbing teachings of the Quran and Hadith which led him to question and then renounce his faith in Muhammad's religion.
Christian Apologetics and Critical Views of Baha'ism
If you are a Baha'i who is having doubts about your faith, or you simply want to understand why most Christians will not convert to the Baha'i Faith no matter how hard you try to "teach" them, I hope you will read some material that offers a critical view of the Baha'i religion from a Christian perspective. For any Baha'i who might consider becoming a Christian, or any Christian who is being courted by Baha'is to join their religion, I encourage you to look into some Christian apologetic arguments against the Baha'i Faith. Here are a few interesting Christian views for your consideration:
AUDIO: I, Eric Stetson, discuss the Baha'i Faith and Christianity with Barney Leith, Baha'i spokesperson in the U.K., and Sunil Shivdasani, a Christian. "Unbelievable?" with Justin Brierley, Premier Christian Radio, February 9, 2008. Download MP3 (38 minutes) or listen to the entire show (77 minutes).
- Jesus Christ vs. Baha'u'llah: Competing Claims, Incompatible Religions. An apologetic article I wrote to explain that Christianity and Baha'ism are mutually exclusive because both of these religions teach that their particular founder, either Jesus or Baha'u'llah, is the highest spiritual authority for all time.
- An Overview of the Baha'i Faith. For Christians who want to learn the basics about Baha'ism, and a Christian apologetic critique of Baha'i theological doctrines.
- The Fireside Letters. "A Christian Apologetic critique of the Baha'i faith, based upon many years of dialogue, and much prayerful study in the quest for Truth." In-depth apologetics written by a Christian to lead Baha'is toward a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ, Christianity, other world religions, and the problems in Baha'i theology and contradictions in Baha'i holy texts.
- Let Us Reason Ministries: On the Baha'i Faith. A collection of articles describing, criticizing, and comparing Baha'i teachings with Christianity.
- Baha'i-Christian Dialogue: Some Key Issues Considered. An essay evaluating some important claims of the Baha'i religion from a Christian perspective.
- Some Observations on the Baha'i World Faith. A solid Christian rebuttal to Baha'i interpretation of Bible prophecy.
- Who Really Are the Baha'is? A Christian counter-cult ministry highlights several disturbing features, problems and controversies in the Baha'i Faith.
One important reason why I am a Christian and not a Baha'i is because I understand the uniqueness of Jesus. Baha'is say that Jesus was nothing more than one in a series of messengers of God. But the Bible says otherwise, and I am inclined to trust the events reported in the Bible by eyewitnesses who personally knew Jesus. I believe very strongly that Jesus Christ had supernatural divine powers and that the ultimate demonstration of this was his resurrection from the dead, as the Bible reports. Jesus did this to prove that, unlike the founders of other religions, he is the Lord incarnated in human flesh -- or in Baha'i terms, the only perfect Manifestation of God. All other historical spiritual leaders, such as Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Muhammad, Baha'u'llah, and countless others, were fallible human beings who may have been inspired by God in some of their ideas, but not perfectly in a way that demands obedience. But Jesus was more than just a man. Unlike all other men in human history, he had the ability to defeat death by transforming himself from a dead corpse into a body of spirit that was tangible and visible to hundreds of people, the testimony of which is shared for all to consider in the New Testament.
I believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ is confirmed scientifically by the Shroud of Turin, an ancient cloth containing real human bloodstains and the image of a crucified man burned into the topmost layer of linen fibers in a way that no artist has ever been able to duplicate. If you are skeptical about this relic, please read The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical and Archeological Evidence by Mark Antonacci. Published in 2000, this brilliant book analyzes and disproves all theories that the Shroud of Turin could be a forgery or a natural phenomenon. Through hard science, Antonacci demonstrates that the Shroud of Turin is a real burial shroud from first-century Jerusalem which once contained a crucified body, whose image could only have been imprinted on the cloth by sudden atomic dematerialization of the corpse, an event that defies the laws of physics as we know them and is consistent with belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. I challenge all Baha'is to read this book and still be able to argue with any credibility whatsoever that the resurrection was a "metaphorical," "spiritual" event without any literal, physical reality.
Baha'i Faith or Universalism?
Many people come to the Baha'i Faith because they are attracted to progressive, tolerant, universalist views of religion, and this is how the Baha'is present their faith in public. On the surface, the Baha'i Faith seems like an organized form of universalism because of its emphasis on the oneness of all religions, the oneness of mankind, race unity and peace among nations. It was primarily because of the appeal of a broad-minded, universalist philosophy that I decided to become a Baha'i. I wanted to believe that all people can go to heaven regardless of which specific religious faith they profess, and that all the world can be united as one global civilization despite our differences. As I got more deeply involved in the Baha'i community, my illusions about the Baha'i Faith as an open-minded and tolerant organization were shattered. What I found instead was an authoritarian, narrow-minded group hiding behind the rhetoric of universalism. And sadly, for a few years I myself was a Baha'i fundamentalist, an ideological fanatic trying to convert everyone to my Baha'i religious opinions in order to save the world.
When I resigned from the Baha'i Faith and became a Christian, I went through a phase of wanting to be ultra-Christian, as a reaction to my former errors as a Baha'i. I thought the only way was to be a hard-line Christian fundamentalist, as if that was what being a true Christian means. By professing a more extreme form of Christianity, I reasoned, I could more effectively repent for my sinful involvement in the Baha'i Faith. I worried that God was angry at me because I had been a Baha'i -- and even more so because I had falsely claimed spiritual authority when I was in the process of leaving the Baha'i Faith -- and I was afraid that unless I believed in a very strict and exclusivistic interpretation of Christianity that I might go to hell along with the Baha'is and their false prophets such as Baha'u'llah. In retrospect, I now believe that although I was mistaken to profess the Baha'i religion and become so wrapped up in it, God forgave me of all my sins when I decided to accept Jesus Christ and embark on the spiritual path he wants me to follow, and I need not worry about damnation. I also realize that my mistakes as a Baha'i were an important learning experience in my spiritual journey and my process of developing a more mature view of life, the world, and God. What I learned is that fundamentalism is dangerous and misguided -- whether it be Baha'i, Muslim, or even Christian. The spirit of fundamentalism is what causes so much of the pain and strife in this world, and what prevents people from growing in their relationship with the Divine. Furthermore, I no longer believe that Baha'is or other non-Christians necessarily go to hell when they die, if they had the spirit of Christ in their heart. In my opinion, it is possible for a person to have the Holy Spirit without professing the Christian religion. If one lives in the way Jesus taught and seeks the help of the Supreme Being in the best way one knows how, that is more important than any ideological doctrines or organizational commitment.
Though I remain firmly a follower of Jesus Christ, in a sense I have come full circle, recognizing once again the value of a universalist attitude which initially had attracted me to the Baha'i Faith. But now I believe this spirit of love for all mankind is best represented not by the Baha'i Faith, but by Jesus Christ and those who truly strive to live according to his teachings. Jesus was indeed the one and only Lord uniquely manifested in human flesh, but he did not come to earth to start a religion; he came to teach people about God's universal love, forgiveness, and desire to draw all people to Himself. Jesus came to free humanity from the shackles of religion -- the law codes, the rituals, the organizations demanding absolute obedience. Jesus wanted us to develop our own conscience, our own personal relationship with God, and our own capacity to follow God by doing good deeds for the benefit of others, with the grace of the Holy Spirt as our helper. He wants us to follow him, not just by saying "I believe in Jesus," but by actually following in the way of Jesus. Believe it or not, some non-Christians may be more Christian by Jesus's standards than some fundamentalist Christians who do not have compassion for humanity and who think all they need to do is hold the right dogmas to be saved, and that everyone else is going to be tortured forever in the fires of hell.
My study of the Bible and reflection on the philosophy of Jesus has led me to become a Christian Universalist. I believe that the love of God never permanently abandons any soul, and hell is only a temporary, purging fire (a just punishment of some sort that fits the deeds and needs of each individual) rather than an eternal vindictive torture. I believe this view is actually supported by the original Greek New Testament, and that the concept of eternal damnation is an unfortunate deviation from the good news of the essential Christian Gospel. As Jesus said, "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32). I believe Jesus will succeed in his goal of universal reconciliation of all souls with their Creator at the end of time. As the Apostle Paul prophesied, "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:10-11), so that "God may be all in all." (1 Cor. 15:28). If you are interested in Christian Universalism and want to learn more, I encourage you to visit my website, Christian-Universalism.com, which contains a large index of articles and resources explaining the universalist interpretation of Christianity. Please understand, just because I am a universalist Christian does not mean I reject basic Biblical claims about Jesus such as his miracles, resurrection, and literal future return. In fact, there is nothing the Bible says about Jesus, his life and teachings, that I do not accept. I simply interpret statements Jesus and other Biblical authors made about hell and salvation within their appropriate ancient Jewish cultural context, and I prefer to use more accurate translations of the Bible such as Young's Literal Translation and the Concordant Version. I honestly believe that if everyone interpreted Christianity in the way Jesus originally intended, there would be no need for people to seek a universalist understanding of God and spirituality outside the Christian faith. Sadly, because Christianity is so often promoted as a religion that condemns billions of people to hell for eternity, people seeking a religion of universal love and brotherhood tend to look elsewhere for spiritual guidance. I consider that a tragedy.
If you are looking for a world-embracing, loving, tolerant religious faith that will really bring you closer to God and your fellow man, I hope you will investigate Christian Universalism and put aside the Baha'i Faith with all its mindless authoritarianism, legalism, errors and deceptions. Please spend some time at the website of the Christian Universalist Association, an interdenominational network of churches, ministries, and individuals which I founded along with 12 other ministers and spiritual leaders in 2007. Read my book, Christian Universalism: God's Good News For All People. If you are going through a process of searching for truth and you want to meet and associate with people in a community who are open-minded and seeking God in various ways, you may also want to check out the Unitarian Universalist Association. Beyond that, I hope you will consider accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior -- the perfect Son of God who is redeeming the entire world, the greatest World Teacher who challenges us to follow his example and rise into the station of mature sons and daughters of God. Find a church that has the characteristics you like about the Baha'is, but is committed to the truth of Jesus as the true Manifestation of God in the flesh rather than fallible men such as Baha'u'llah. Or, if you prefer, don't go to church at all, but pray to God in Jesus' name on your own time, and get involved with organizations that do the work of Jesus, such as charities, human rights organizations, and other causes that spread love and compassion and the highest values of the spirit.
Blessings to you in your spiritual journey, and may God be with you always!
Love, Light, and Peace in Christ,
Eric Stetson
Bahai-Faith.com founded November 2002. Last updated May 6, 2008.
Copyright © 2002-2008 Eric Stetson, all rights reserved.
Links to Bahai-Faith.com
Should you accept Baha'u'llah and the Baha'i Faith or Jesus Christ and Christianity? Can you accept both?
