The Baha’i Faith in America as  Panopticon,

1963-1997

 

 

 

Juan R. I. Cole

( Professor of History at the University of Michigan )

Originally published in The Journal for the Scientific study of religion , Volume 37, No. 2 (June 1998): 234-248. Digitally republished here with additional notations, May, 1999.

Despite the large literature on American religious bodies, some groups remain curiously off-limits to careful investigation. In many instances, these largely unstudied contemporary faiths carefully cultivate public images that hide important facets of their outlook and internal workings. Thus, the collapse of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s

 

Oregon commune surprised many observers. Some of these groups have developed control mechanisms that discourage adherents and often even apostates from writing about these workings. Scientology, for instance, employs techniques of harassment against critics. Others employ shunning which can be an extremely powerful deterrent, endangering a lifetime of friendships and even family relationships. The problem with strict internal controls for missionary religions, however, is that they are most often incompatible in Western societies with significant growth. One solution to this difficulty is to attempt to control what are thought of as key pressure points—vocal intellectuals, media, prominent institutions—and to give greater leeway to ordinary believers. This solution has the further advantage of making charges of repression less plausible to the rank and file, who have not personally experienced such constraints.Here I wish to examine social control mechanisms in the American Baha’i community. These include mandatory prepublication censorship of everything Baha’is publish about their religion, administrative expulsion, blackballing, shunning and threats of shunning. What are the ideological bases of these control mechanisms? How is power attained and managed in a lay community without a clergy? I wish to stress here that this article is not concerned with the essence or scriptures or theology of the religion, but with the actualities of its day-to-day technologies of control. Many of my remarks cannot be generalized to other national communities, and concern mainly the

U.S. 

More …

 

Is the Baha’i Faith a cult?

Is the Baha’i Faith a cult? Baha’i leaders as well as rank-and-file Baha’is vigorously deny the charge. My own view, from reading the stories of many ex-Baha’is and talking Groups in the website is that the Haifa-based Baha’i Faith organization falls into a gray area on the borderline of cult status.It has many telltale characteristics of the controlling religious organizations known popularly as “cults,” but it is not as bad as the worst of them. In fact, some Baha’is can exist comfortably in the Baha’i Faith for a long time before they realize their religion is anything other than the slick Baha’i rhetoric says it is. Perhaps this is because Baha’i leadership does not use extreme pressure to force Baha’is to be much more involved than they want to be.

But spend enough time and become involved enough in the Baha’i Faith, and most believers will eventually realize they were deceived when they joined and have been deceived ever since by an authoritarian hierarchy that hides behind pleasant-sounding rhetoric of peace, love and unity, and uses subtle tactics of manipulation to keep people in, active and obedient.

The underlying problem is that Baha’is are required to believe the Baha’i administrative order is infallibly guided by God in all its decisions. This means that questioning or ignoring even the smallest statement of a Baha’i institution is tantamount to disobeying God Himself, and can bring accusations of “weakness in the Covenant” which is a harsh spritual judgment and veiled threat of discipline.Any Baha’i who openly criticizes any plan or policy of the administrative order (especially a “Plan” published by the UHJ) is regarded as a dangerous influence on “the Friends” and will be pressured by leadership to conform and remain silent, even if his or her ideas make sense. Slander and backbiting will often follow if the critic persists, followed by official discipline and sometimes culminating in expulsion or excommunication.

The vast majority of Baha’is avoid these problems simply by keeping their mouth shut when they disagree, becoming less active in the faith, or allowing themselves to be indoctrinated into believing things they do not really agree with in order to preserve the coherence of their religious belief system.

Now it is the time to here the stories of so many former bahais and ex-bahai :

Steven Scholl says :

I received a letter from a Baha’i Continental Counsellor indicating that I was under threat of being declared a Covenant-breaker, the impact on me personally was less than on my family. My wife is a Baha’i as are many of her family members, . . . The very real threat of being declared a Covenant breaker meant my wife had to face the decision of joining me as a heretic or divorcing me so that she could maintain her relationships with her family and other lifelong friends. Since [my wife] had no intention of divorcing me, the choices then extended out to her family. Her sister would not refuse to socialize with us so she would automatically be declared a covenant breaker along with her husband and children. Many of my close Baha’i friends would also be faced with the decision of maintaining friendships or joining me as a heretic. The whole thing is absurd and quite medieval. But it does raise the issue which you point out so well; how anyone would want to belong to a group which is willing to act this way and be so cruel is beyond me. That is why I voluntarily left the religion. Not in order to escape punishment but because the Baha’i community had become such an unhealthy place spiritually. I was terribly saddened that my spiritual home of 25 years had turned into a prison and nightmare.—————————————————–

Reference :

http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/Scholl3.htm

OR

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.bahai/browse_thread/thread/1edb46d4c95708d3/5933f0e3d9406b42?lnk=st&q=%22Bahai+Qustions+%22&rnum=2&hl=en#5933f0e3d9406b42

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