Baha'is and MLK Day

Just found an article in the U.S. Baha'i News about Baha'i involvement in the commemoration of MLK Day and other efforts at promoting racial unity in America. I've included the entire article below: Enjoy!


Baha'is have long history of honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Hundreds of Baha'i communities throughout the United States observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day by helping to organize public events to commemorate the great, slain civil rights leader.

Jerry Cott, a Baha'i and Maryland pharmacologist, has been on the coordinating committee of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Park Tribute since 1992, one year after it came into being. Now in its 15th year, the tribute was held Saturday, Jan. 14, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland.

“The tribute started in church basements and has grown to about 400 attendees in the last several years,” says Cott, whose racially mixed committee has included the current and past mayors and other public officials of College Park as well as neighborhood organizations.

This year’s program included the Metropolitan Washington Baha'i Chorale, which has sung since the tribute began, the Maryland State Boychoir, the Daughters of Embry A.M.E. Church and a Muslim prayer for unity.

For more than a century, American Baha'is have worked for social justice and racial harmony in keeping with the faith’s belief in the oneness of humanity. Their wide-ranging activities include youth assemblies, prayer meetings and race unity workshops.

In 1957, the National Spiritual Assembly, which governs U.S. Baha'i activities, inaugurated Race Unity Day to promote racial harmony and understanding, and annual commemorations on the second Sunday in June are growing in popularity throughout the country.

In 1991, the NSA issued a landmark statement on “The Vision of Race Unity: America’s Most Challenging Issue.” Baha’is have distributed the statement widely and presented it to local government officials, civic organizations and interfaith groups to encourage dialogue and activities to foster an end to racism.

"In no other country is the promise of organic unity more immediately demonstrable than in the United States, because it is a microcosm of the diverse populations of the earth,” the statement reads. ”Yet this promise remains largely unrealized even here because of the endemic racism that, like a cancer, is corroding the vitals of the nation."

In 1992, two Baha’is served as Federal Commissioners of the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission. As members of the Commission, Robert Henderson, current secretary-general of the National Spiritual Assembly, and Maryland Baha'i Carole Miller helped coordinate the efforts of Americans of diverse backgrounds and organizations to encourage appropriate ceremonies on the holiday.

Miller’s affiliation with Martin Luther King Day activities began when she met Coretta Scott King in 1988 at the Fort Lauderdale airport baggage claim.

“We were on the same plane and her luggage had gotten lost,” Miller says. “We had a long conversation about the challenges of race in America, Dr. King’s dream and the Baha’i Faith. One of her best friends in high school was a Baha’i (Dr. Robert Hatch), and she had a lot of respect for him and the teachings of the Baha’i Faith on race unity.

“I offered my services to assist with her work at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Change (now The King Center) in Atlanta,” Miller says. “This was the beginning of my wonderful friendship with Coretta Scott King and her family.”

Baha’is believe that the achievement of racial unity and harmony in America will have a profound influence on the world and assist in the establishment of world peace. To that end, Baha'is say the Prayer for America, which says, in part, “Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world.”

Message to Religious Leaders

In April of 2002, The Universal House of the Justice, the International Governing Body of the the Baha'i Faith issued a statement to the religious leaders of the world. The opening paragraphs are below. Given the direction of world events in the past 3 years, it is well worth reading again:


TO THE WORLD’S RELIGIOUS LEADERS

The enduring legacy of the twentieth century is that it compelled the peoples of the world to begin seeing themselves as the members of a single human race, and the earth as that race’s common homeland. Despite the continuing conflict and violence that darken the horizon, prejudices that once seemed inherent in the nature of the human species are everywhere giving way. Down with them come barriers that long divided the family of man into a Babel of incoherent identities of cultural, ethnic or national origin. That so fundamental a change could occur in so brief a period—virtually overnight in the perspective of historical time—suggests the magnitude of the possibilities for the future.

Tragically, organized religion, whose very reason for being entails service to the cause of brotherhood and peace, behaves all too frequently as one of the most formidable obstacles in the path; to cite a particular painful fact, it has long lent its credibility to fanaticism. We feel a responsibility, as the governing council of one of the world religions, to urge earnest consideration of the challenge this poses for religious leadership. Both the issue and the circumstances to which it gives rise require that we speak frankly. We trust that common service to the Divine will ensure that what we say will be received in the same spirit of goodwill as it is put forward.

You can read the entire statement here.

Eliminating Extremes of Wealth and Poverty

Just discovered an article in the Hingham Journal about a talk given by Dr. Robin Chandler, a member of the Boston Baha'i community as part of the many commemorations of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, the opening paragraph is below:

It was a busy weekend for Robin Chandler, but she still found time to visit Hingham to pay tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. at a breakfast held every year in his honor at Glastonbury Abbey.

Following a hearty and tasty meal prepared by the brothers of the Abbey, Chandler, who is director of the Women’s Studies Program at Northeastern University, centered her talk around the issue of poverty.
This is in line with King’s vision that people of all religious, backgrounds, and nationalities could live together in a climate of peace, economic justice, and tolerance. He was committed to eliminating war, poverty, and racism.

You can read the entire article here.

The Marriage Gap: Updated

Just read a really amazing (if a bit long) piece in City Journal called "Marriage and Caste" about how the marriage gap between middle class and low income women contributes to entrenched intergenerational poverty. Below is a selection from this piece:

"Two-America Jeremiahs usually nod at the single-parent family as a piece of the inequality story, but quickly change the subject to describe—accurately, as far as it goes—an economy that has implacably squeezed out manufacturing jobs, reduced wages for the low-skilled, and made a wallet-busting college education crucial to a middle-class future. But one can’t disentangle the economic from the family piece. Given that families socialize children for success—or not—and given how marriage orders lives, they are the same problem. Separate and unequal families produce separate and unequal economic fates."

You can read the entire article here.

Reading this prompted me to reflect on the Baha'i perspective that the family is the basic building block of the social order and that it's spiritual, moral and material well-being is critical to the development of a unified, just, peaceful and "ever advancing civilization."
The Baha'i Writings state:
Compare the nations of the world to the members of a family. A family is a nation in miniature. Simply enlarge the circle of the household and you have the nation. Enlarge the circle of nations and you have all humanity. The conditions surrounding the family surround the nation. The happenings in the family are the happenings in the life of the nation. (Abdu'l-Baha, Foundations of World Unity, p. 100)

There's a wonderful statement from the Baha'i International Community that I finally rediscovered today. The opening paragraphs are below:

The Family in a World Community

Pamphlet first distributed at the World NGO Forum Launching the United Nations International Year of the Family (IYF)

Malta, Malta
November 1993

Like the world as a whole, the family is in transition. In every culture, families are disintegrating, fragmenting under pressure of economic and political upheavals and weakening in the face of moral and spiritual confusion.

The conditions surrounding the family surround the nation. The happenings in the family are the happenings in the life of the nation.¹

Bahá'ís see these disturbances as signs of humanity's struggle toward a new age in its collective development, an age of maturity. The family, as the most basic unit of society, must in this process be remolded and revitalized according to the same principles that are reshaping civilization as a whole.

You can read the entire statement here.

A Woman in the White House?

In the Boston Globe today, Laura Bush predicted that there will be a female president.
She made these remarks during a CNN interview where she was discussing being part of a delegation to visit Liberia which just elected its first female president, in fact the first in the entire African continent. I've included the new Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's profile below:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born October 29, 1938) will be the next the President of Liberia. Her victory was formally announced by the Liberian elections commission on 23rd November 2005 following the 2005 election. She is the first elected female President of an African country. Her Vice President will be Joseph Boakai.

Educated at Harvard, Johnson Sirleaf became involved in government when she became Assistant Minister of Finance in President William Tolbert's administration in 1970. While running for Senate in 1985, she spoke out against the military regime, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Released after a short period, she left in exile and returned in 1997 in the capacity of an economist, working for the World Bank, and Citibank in Africa.

Initially supporting Charles Taylor's rebellion against Sergeant Samuel Doe, she later went on to oppose him, and ran against him in the 1997 presidential elections. She managed only 10% of the votes, as opposed to Taylor's 75%. Taylor charged her with treason. She campaigned for the removal of President Taylor from office, playing an active and supportive role in the transitional government, as the country prepared itself for the 2005 elections. With Taylor's departure, she returned to take over the leadership of the Unity Party.

In the first round of 2005 voting, she came second with 175,520 votes, putting her through to the runoff vote on November 8 against former footballer George Weah. On November 11th, the National Elections Commission of Liberia declared Johnson-Sirleaf to be President-elect of Liberia. On November 23rd they confirmed their decision saying that Johnson Sirleaf had won with a margin of almost 20% of the vote. Weah is currently awaiting the results of the inquiry by the National Elections Commission concerning his allegations of fraud. However, independent international, regional, and domestic observers have all declared the vote to be free, fair and transparent. Ms. Johnson Sirleaf is the mother of four sons and has six grandchildren.

Germany also met its own gender equality milestone when Angela Merket became its first female Chancellor.

Profile: Angela Merkel

Mrs Merkel could forge closer ties with Washington

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Angela Merkel has become Germany's first woman chancellor, despite only scraping a victory in the 18 September election.
You can read the entire profile here.

While it remains to be seen what the election of these two women on two separate continents will mean for their own nations, the significance of their elections cannot be missed by Baha'is who view the establishment of the equality of women and men as a fundamental prerequisite for world peace. In the 1985 statement, The Promise of World Peace, the Universal House of Justice which is the international governing body of the Baha'i Faith made the following statement:

The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the sexes, is one of the most important, though less acknowledged prerequisites of peace. The denial of such equality perpetrates an injustice against one half of the world's population and promotes in men harmful attitudes and habits that are carried from the family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations. There are no grounds, moral, practical, or biological, upon which such denial can be justified. Only as women are welcomed into full partnership in all fields of human endeavour will the moral and psychological climate be created in which international peace can emerge.

As other nations take steps toward welcoming women into the highest levels of leadership, it will be interesting to see how long it takes the United States to do the same and how this might contribute to the "moral and psychological climate" in which the peace so many of us desire must emerge. Mrs. Bush, I hope your prediction is correct.

Baha'is Face Pressure in Egypt

Baha'i Blog has information about the most recent troubles facing the long suffering Baha'is in Eqypt and advocacy on their behalf in both the United States and the UK.

January 12, 2006

Back on November 16, Kit Bigelow, the director of external affairs for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, addressed the Congressional Human Rights Caucus of the
House of Representatives in the US. She was there to talk about the situation of the Baha’is in Egpyt.

The most urgent issue that faces the Bahá’ís in Egypt is the Government’s decision to require all of its citizens to obtain mandatory identification cards. At present, Bahá’ís are not legally permitted to obtain these cards.

…

The cards must be presented for any type of government service, such as medical care in a public hospital or processing for a property title or deed. They are required to obtain employment, education or banking services. They are needed to pass through police checkpoints, and individuals without cards are deprived of their freedom of movement.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Related to this and to previous posts about the Baha'i who recently died after 10 years in prison for refusing to recant his faith in Iran, is an October statement by the Baha'i International Community regarding freedom of belief. Below is the first paragraph of this important statement:

Over fifty years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights boldly proclaimed the inherent dignity and the equal rights of all members of the human family. Guided by the vision of equality for all, the Declaration enshrined the fundamental right of every human being to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Despite the international community's unanimous¹ adoption of this Declaration and its codification in subsequent instruments of international law,² the world bears witness to persistent intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief, the proliferation of violence in the name of religion, the manipulation of religion in the interest of political ideology, and increasing tensions between religion and State policies.³ The rising tide of religious extremism has fuelled these developments, threatening security, human development, and efforts towards peace. Widespread violations of this right -- most often targeting women and minorities -- have continued. Given the interdependence of human rights, such violations have compromised, among others, the right to education, employment, peaceful assembly, citizenship, political participation, health, and at times, life itself. Indeed, the promise of freedom of religion or belief for all remains one of the most contested and pressing human rights of our time.

You can read the entire statement here.

Global Governance and Terrorism

The challenges that terrorism throws at governments can only be countered by global governance deeply grounded in unity, a keynote speaker told the European Baha'i Conference on Law.

You can read the complete article about this conference here.

Life After Life

Here's an interesting editorial by a Baha'i in Portsmouth about the afterlife, another subject worthy of numerous posts and much discussion. Enjoy the article!

More on Baha'i Martyr

The Chicago Tribune is one of many U.S. papers with stories about the Baha'i prisoner who recently died in Iran. He had been in prison for 10 years for refusing to recant his faith. You can read the Tribune story here. I will be collecting stories of this kind as I discover them.

The Earth is One Country

Columnist James Carrol has an editorial in the Boston Globe today that addresses the limitations of national sovereignty in religious terms. You can read it here. The globalization of human consciousness and our recognition that "The earth is one country and mankind its citizens" is viewed in the Baha'i Writings as a distinguishing characteristic of a human race that is entering the stage of maturity. Below is one of many selections from the Baha'i Writings about this important issue:

Unification of the whole of mankind is the hall-mark of the stage which human society is now approaching. Unity of family, of tribe, of city-state, and nation have been successively attempted and fully established. World unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is striving. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life.

(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 202)

Serving Humanity

I was just reading a story about a Baha'i Social and Economic Development Project focused on computer literacy in the Gambia and got inspired to include several stories from the Baha'i World News Service about how Baha'is are striving to serve humanity. Enjoy!

Computer Classes in Gambia

Film Festival Focused on Women in Australia

Promoting Religious Unity in Tanzania

Emphasizing the Oneness of Humanity and the importance of Freedom at the United Nations

Promoting World Peace through the Academy

"This is worship: To serve mankind and to minister to the needs of the people. Service is prayer."
'Abdu'l-Baha