One hundred eighty-one years after the founding of the Bahá’í Faith and 133 years after the passing of Bahá’u’lláh, a few Bahá’í communities are ceasing to be almost imperceptible minorities and becoming a numerically significant part of their populations. This talk places the decisions Bahá’í communities are now making in the context of the histories of the routinization of charisma in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Looking particularly at forms of religious education, structures of authority, and habits of worship, the talk argues that awareness of the choices made by other religious communities in their early centuries yields insights for Bahá’ís as they negotiate a period of profound transformation, and that comparative projects are a fruitful arena for scholarship about the Bahá’í Faith.
Holly Hanson is Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and now serves in the Research Department at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. Her publications include To Speak and Be Heard: Seeking Good Government in Uganda, ca, 1500 to 2015 (Ohio University Press, 2021),A Path of Justice: Building Communities with the Power to Shape the World (Grace Publications (2010) also https://bahaiebooks.org/publications/apathofjustice/, Landed Obligation: the Practice of Power in Buganda (Heinemann, 2003), Social and Economic Development: A Bahá’í Approach (George Ronald, 1989), and numerous essays.
Leave a Reply