Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Baha'i


This week I spent some time reading Baha'u'llah. I also took a peak at a Baha'i website, and viewed a few videos on the religion.




I learned that Baha'i believe that most major religions share some core values. Baha'i focus on the shared parts of the religions and unite them as one super religion. They believe that many of the create prophets shared by different religions are all just prophets of Baha'i and that Baha'u'llah is the newest of them. I am happy to see such a diverse multicultural religion exist. Because they draw from so many religions it is easy for people people to convert and focus on the core morals.

I discovered that talking about someone behind their back is forbidden in Baha'i. While it is somewhat childish and impoliet in American cultural I am still surprised that it such a strong rule. They call it backbiting. There are no real punishments for breaking the rule, but all Baha'i do thier best to avoid it and try to help others avoid doing it as well. They often find a positive thing to say to help counteract the negative things said about the person.

The Baha'i are organized into commitees and are controlled at different levels. Each place of worship is run by a commitee, each region, each continent, and finally one that is comprised of nine people they admister the religion as a whole. This is a very different structure than say Cathalocism with its single leader and large buracracy of cardinals and bishops and other clergy.

Baha'i has is very own calender! It consists of 19 months named after the attributes of god. Each month has 19 days, and there are four or five extra days to keep it in place with the solar year. The year dating is based on the founding of Baha'i in 1844. One month out of the year from march 2 to 22, the Baha'i fast from sunrise to sunset.


There is obviously much about Baha'i that I still do not know. I plan on continueing my learning adventure into the world of Baha'i.

1 comment:

  1. And of course you are quite welcome to learn more about the religion. As to your comment They believe that many of the create prophets shared by different religions are all just prophets of Baha'i and refer to a mega-religion. Well yes sort of to a mega-religion "the eternal religion of God" we call it. But it's not to be mistaken for the Baha'i Faith. The Baha'i Faith will end it's days sometime, perhaps even in 800-ish years. But all the prophets are just prophets of Baha'i? That is a description I think no Baha'i would recognize. All prophets come from God - not that's a description I think all Baha'is would accept easily as a human description for something that transcends us. There is a sense of prophecy as well - and that arrow does just point to the endless future. Baha'is do claim some prophecies have been fulfilled. But there are more about the distant future. This is not the end.

    ReplyDelete