Matthew Hughey, Functionalism, Fanaticism, and Faith: Re-making Race in Star of the West and World Unity (1927-1935)

Before World Order magazine was established as an official organ American Bahá’í community in 1935, there were two public-facing American Bahá’í periodicals, Star of the West (founded in 1909) and World Unity (established in 1927).  Both possessed different editors, orientations, goals, and experienced varied oversight from Bahá’í individuals, central figures, and administrative institutions.  From 1927 to 1935, both Star of the West and World Unity had much to say about racial matters, from attempting to define the “race” concept and racial prejudice to how best to understand and interpret the causes and consequences of racial segregation, hostility, inequality, and more.  Across these eight years, both journals were influenced by, and were responding to, the popular, scientific, and political milieu—such as the advent of functionalist academic and popular culture theories, the rise and fall of eugenic fanaticism, and debates over the proper intersection of faith with facts—all against the changing backdrop of the roaring twenties, great depression, and build up to World War II.  Toward that end, I map the undulating landscape of racialized discourse in Star of the West and World Unity with attention to a simultaneous accommodationist and counter-public tension that reflected Bahá’í endeavors to legitimate their faith within the Abrahamic tradition while also distinguishing itself as a new spiritual movement possessive of unique teachings to promote the oneness of humanity.

Matthew Windust Hughey is an American sociologist known for his work on race and racism. He received his B.A. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1999, an M. Ed in Cultural Studies from Ohio University in 2002, a Masters in Religion Studies from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Virginia in 2009. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where he is also an adjunct faculty member in the Africana Studies Institute; American Studies Program; Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, & Policy; Sustainable Global Cities Initiative, and graduate certificate program in Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, & Politics. His work has included studying whiteness, race and media, race and politics, racism and racial assumptions within genetic and genomic science, and racism and racial identity in white and black American fraternities and sororities.