Baha'is mark 150 years

This story appeared in the Saturday, January 4, 2003, Antelope Valley Press.
By NORMAN SHOAF
Valley Press Religion Editor

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PALMDALE -- The Baha'i communities of the Antelope Valley, and Baha'is around the world, just concluded a four-month-long commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Baha'i faith.
This sacred period of spiritual renewal recalled events that began in August 1852, when Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith, was imprisoned for four months in Tehran, in what was then Persia, and received the revelation that he was the "promised one" of all religions.

Today, Baha'i communities in Palmdale, Lancaster and surrounding areas number about 80 out of about 5,000 believers in the larger Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Baha'u'llah taught "that there is one God whose successive revelations of his will to humanity have been the chief civilizing force in history," said Farivar Oshanian, chairman of Palmdale's spiritual association of Baha'is.

"The agents of this process have been the divine messengers whom people have seen chiefly as the founders of separate religious systems but whose common purpose has been to bring the human race to spiritual and moral maturity."

Baha'u'llah taught that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for the world to unify as a single global society. God, Baha'u'llah taught, has set in motion historical forces that are breaking down traditional barriers of race, class, creed and nation and that will, in time, give birth to a universal civilization.

"The principle challenge facing the peoples of the earth," Oshanian said, "is to accept the fact of their oneness and to assist the processes of unification."

Baha'u'llah suffered for his teachings: After his release from Tehran's Black Pit prison, he was exiled to Baghdad. Dismayed by their inability to curb Baha'u'llah's growing influence, Persian religious and civil authorities banished him to Adrianople, then Constantinople and finally to the prison city of Akka in the Holy Land (a suburb of Israel's modern-day Haifa), where he died in 1892. Baha'u'llah suffered some 40 years of imprisonment, exile and torture.

Today, the Baha'i faith is the second most widespread of the world's independent religions, Oshanian said, and is established in 235 countries and territories. Baha'is come from more than 2,100 ethnic, racial and tribal groups and number some 5 million worldwide.

Baha'i membership in the United States reflects racial and cultural diversity.

Baha'is reside in some 7,000 localities, including more than 100 Indian reservations. Some 147,000 Baha'i in the United States make up more than 1,100 local spiritual assemblies, with California, South Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Illinois boasting the largest Baha'i populations.

The Antelope Valley's first Baha'i community was organized in 1958.

The responsibility for organizing the affairs of each community rests with the local spiritual assembly, a body of nine members elected each April 21.

"We are an active advocate for spiritual solutions on issues such as racial prejudice, gender equality and religious intolerance," Oshanian said.

"We work toward a community in which all view themselves as a member of the human family, a family that is loving and united, where the barriers of racial, gender and religious prejudices are removed forever.

"To promote these ideals, we work with organizations such as the Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force, the Antelope Valley International Heritage Committee and the Antelope Valley Interfaith Council."

Neva Lequin and Itibari M. Zulu, public information officers for the local Baha'is, are typical of people in whom the Baha'i faith has found resonance.

Lequin, a second-generation Baha'i, is the offspring of an interracial couple who faced prejudice and hostility after their marriage in the early 1930s.

"A lot of kids were angry at other races after 9-11," said Lequin, who works with schoolchildren. Prejudice "comes from the parents."

Zulu, a Baha'i for about two years, came from a nondenominational religious background.

"A logical understanding of religion includes the elimination of prejudice and, of course, emphasis on a family atmosphere among people," Zulu said.

"The Baha'i faith is not practiced just on Sunday."

In October, Illinois Rep. Mark Steven Kirk addressed Congress about the Baha'i faith in the United States: "On the 150th anniversary of Baha'u'llah's imprisonment and the founding of the Baha'i faith, we salute along with the American Baha'i community the ideals of universal brotherhood, peace, cooperation and understanding espoused by Baha'u'llah. These are Baha'i values; they are American values; and they are universal values."