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You make my point for me. The "consensus of the faithful," in both Christianity and Islam, is in effect the imposition of hegemonic views on the faithful. It sounds like a guarantee of the agency of the ordinary believer, but works the other way since only the dominant school among the religious...

No, Shoghi Effendi did not mention a Bahai theocracy. That's a misunderstanding that arose from publishing a few words out of their context. David Hofman used the term "theocracy" in his commentary on the Will and Testament of Abdu'l-Baha, (he believed in a future Bahai theocracy), and what he...

I am not thinking of an intermediate situation. I am looking back to what Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi thought and taught, and I have quoted them. The claim that Bahais have a secret long-term agenda that is different to what is in the writings is just propaganda. If it's not...

For the kings and rulers, to educate and advise them. And to reprove them too.

The non-establishment principle in the USA has worked there -- at the Federal level only, at first. The extent to which non-establishment achieves the separation of church and state has varied, and there are countries, such as England, which have an established church but still achieve the...

The local fire brigade, police, courts etc must be controlled by a civil government, obviously. The Bahai assemblies / houses of justice are not a government, and as Shoghi Effendi said, the Bahais will never allow this machinery of Bahai community administration to supersede the civil...

I know of nothing in the Bahai writings that supports the idea that the Houses would be responsible for anything but the affairs of the Bahai community. "Justice" in the sense of crime & punishment, and national security, are the sphere of government. The Bahai religious institutions may not...

Well "most of" the Gospel is precisely the problem. The secretaries' letters say that when we find something quoted by Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, we know it must be "absolutely authentic." That is a means of finding at least a few "authentic" pieces, but it does not mean that the rest is not...

This is a great video and discussion, copied to Youtube from a presentation for the Corinne True Centre by JoAnn Borovicka : “What Can We Assume When Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith Cite Ancient Traditions?" Link: This presentation effectively debunks the idea that because Baha'u'llah, or...

It appears that the Universal House of justice may be recognizing the separation of church and state as part of Baha’u’llah’s world order. I’m reading the signs on this from two sections in a video by Glenford Mitchell on the Youtube channel Bahai Perspective. See Glenford Mitchell’s talk at the...

This video starts with the question, whether Abdu'l-Baha's letter on the "seven candles of unity" describes successive stages (the answer is no). It points to a relationship between the "seven candles" and a section of Abdu'l-Baha's book, "The Secret of Divine Civilization," and to four more...

I made a short video about a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi which has been misunderstood, because an editor quoted part of it out of context, in "Directives from the Guardian," and because readers and authors quoted the cut version. It's the letter that says, "... the Bahai...

This video shows that Shoghi Effendi read H.G. Well's utopian work "The Shape of Things to Come" (1933, filmed 1936), and quotes from it in his 1936 letter "The Unfoldment of World Civilization," which is one of the "World Order" letters. Could it be that the futurist letter "The Unfoldment of...

Shoghi Effendi tended to see twin things everywhere: twin cities, twin pillars, twin Manifestations, two simultaneous process, and so on. Abdu'l-Baha wrote a book that is all about the two great forces in society, government and religion. This video explores twoness, in the religion of the three...

I've started a youtube channel for Bahai studies presentations. The first is about the harmony of science and religion, but not as you know it. It gets a new twist because of a newly-published Persian text of a talk Abdu'l-Baha gave in New York in 1912, on the subject of "the new teachings of...

Violetta Zein has an announcement, and a good contribution in research, writing and site design: Dear friends, One hundred years ago this month, Shoghi Effendi was beginning the third full year of his ministry as Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith. The life of Shoghi Effendi is so rich, so...

Peggy Caton has posted a research paper and audio compilation on dhikr, the repetitive chanting of the names of God, and the word at the root of mashriq'ul-adhkar. It is on Jonah Winter's Most Great Bahai Site: https://bahai-library.com/caton_sacred_refrains

OK - but in message #3 you seemed to say that it was not in the Abrahamic religions themselves, but only in modern misinterpretations of their texts. I think neither view can be sustained: the religions are too varied. Even in Evangelical Christianity, you have postmillennial and pre-millennial...

and (in a comment): "The idea of humanity's spiritual progress marches on, is modern, founded on misinterpreted religious texts. There's nothing in the Abrahamics, as far as I know, that hints of this spiritual 'progress'." Which is your predominant idea: that the Abrahamic religions do or do...