New blog at EricStetson.com

From now on, my blog will be located at my new website, EricStetson.com. That site also contains pages about me and my work.

Stetsonius Redivivus will be left up as an archive, but no more articles will be posted here.

Why I left Nashville

In January, I decided to move back to the Washington D.C. area from Nashville, Tennessee, where I had been attempting to plant a liberal Christian church with a couple of other part-time ministers.  This was a difficult decision to make, for various reasons, and I realize now that it marks a huge turning point in my life.  In my next post I will go into more detail about why that’s the case, but for now I will simply explain the facts of my decision to move.

The church planting project began very well.  We had three ministers including myself, and our ministry team was diverse in terms of race, age, background and style.  Two of the ministers already had been living in Nashville for years and were well connected in the liberal Christian community there, and one of them was leading multiple religious discussion groups in her home.  Our first worship service attracted an attendance of about 30 people.

However, disagreements among the ministers about the style of preaching and worship, as well as personality conflicts, quickly led to the resignation of the minister who had brought in over half the people who came to the first service.  It was a hostile resignation.  Even though she had signed a contract along with me to reserve a meeting room in a hotel for six Sundays — at a cost of over $1,500 which was to be paid by the church itself or by the two of us as individuals if the church wasn’t working out as planned — she refused to honor her part of the agreement and left the church and its two remaining ministers with a huge financial obligation.

This was a major setback and a source of great stress.  Our next service had only about 15 people in attendance.  We tried doing a lot of advertising with fliers and brochures all over town, but it didn’t work, and our third service attracted only 8 or 9 people — despite the fact that we hired an excellent Christian rock band to provide the music.  After that, we scaled back our plans for worship services and decided to hold weekly lunch discussion groups instead, at a local food court.  We did this for several weeks, and never got more than 5 people to attend any of these meetings.

Eventually, I decided that this church planting project was unlikely to succeed.  I became increasingly aware that Nashville was dominated by conservative Christians, and the few liberals in the city already had nice churches they were attending and supporting.  I visited a couple of those and realized that it would be difficult to compete for the small number of people who wanted a liberal religious alternative to the pervasive culture of right-wing evangelical religion — even though I felt that my sermons were very good and that I have what it takes to be a successful pastor.

I decided to move back to Northern Virginia, focus on my paid employment leading the Christian Universalist Association, and look into graduate school programs in Religious Studies.  The Nashville church plant was shut down.  However, just a few weeks ago I was asked to get involved as one of the leaders of a new and very un-churchy church plant in the D.C. metro area – a God-centered, interfaith spiritual meeting group that may slowly evolve into something of a church.  This one will be based on a theological Unitarianism and Universalism, not specifically Christianity.

Am I going in a post-Christian, interfaith direction?  Yes.  Although I love Jesus and his teachings, the fact is, my spiritual journey is taking me beyond the confines of just the Christian tradition — far beyond it, in fact.  Coming to terms with this reality in my mind, my heart, and its implications for my life will be the subject of my next article.

How the heck do nice young single people meet each other these days?

I randomly met my last girlfriend on a Greyhound bus, and we dated long distance for several months before she moved to the Washington D.C. area, where I lived.  Eventually we broke up, but it was a good relationship.  Since I moved to Nashville and am single again, I have begun realizing how incredibly difficult it is to find a romantic partner if you’re not into the bar and club scene and you’re not attending college where you’re surrounded by other young singles every day.

My own situation is perhaps more difficult than most, because I work as a church pastor.  This means if nice young single women attend my church, I pretty much can’t date them, because that could potentially cause problems in the church.  What would happen if we broke up?  I wouldn’t want an ex-girlfriend to leave the church just because of personal issues with me!  Furthermore, some people would say it’s unethical to date members of a church that one leads, just as it would be unethical for a business owner to date a client or something like that.  I’m not sure whether I agree, but I can see the argument.  So my job makes things more complicated as far as finding a girlfriend goes, since I can’t date people I meet in my workplace.

Add to that the fact that I’m a very liberal and unorthodox Christian minister — which means that most self-identified Christian women — i.e. “called out” or “movement” Christians, you know, the type who would vote for Sarah Palin for president and think members of other religions are “lost” or “condemned” by God — wouldn’t even date me, since I don’t conform to their religious or political standards.  (For example, I consider the “no sex before marriage” thing to be absurd; I read the Tao Te Ching as much or more than the Bible; and I can’t stand Fox News and the Republican Party.)  But many non-Christian or non-religious women — the liberal types I’d actually be more compatible with in a lot of ways — wouldn’t date me because in their eyes I’m a Christian religious leader and that might make them uncomfortable.  When you don’t fit into any convenient category, it’s quite a catch 22!

Leaving all that aside, I really don’t know how anyone who’s not into drinking and dancing finds a date these days.  One of the “traditional” ways for such people to find each other is through church.  But I’ve noticed that in all the churches I’ve attended in recent years (liberal, non-fundamentalist ones) there are hardly any young people there.  This makes me wonder if American society has any robust social institutions anymore where nice, decent young people who are neither “partiers” nor “born again, saving it for marriage” types can meet similar members of the opposite sex and find a suitable mate.

It seems to me that the answer is no.  I have yet to discover any such social institution.  In fact, I can’t even figure out where most normal young people are nowadays.  Most people don’t actually like the bar and club scene; they just use it to hook up with an intoxicated and available person when they can’t stand being alone anymore.  And most people of the younger generations today don’t go to church.  So what do they actually do to meet people their own age whom they would be compatible with?

This brings me to the question of online dating.  Since many young people sit behind a computer most of the time and see more video game characters than flesh-and-blood people, perhaps the normal way to find dates now is on the internet?  I don’t know.  I have some qualms about online dating, mainly because I suspect that the subtle aspects of romantic chemistry cannot be gauged by any personality questionnaires, and because I suspect that the type of people who look for a romantic partner online have a “consumer mentality” toward other human beings rather than being willing to give of themselves and accept people’s flaws.  However, it might be that this is how our society is in general, and that the way such people approach online dating is just one of many manifestations of the prevailing culture of shopping and selfishness that pervades modern American culture.

A friend of mine with a lot of similar values and personality traits as my own has tried eHarmony and a couple other dating websites, but had little success.  I went to eHarmony and found out that you have to answer a long list of questions about yourself, and after that you can’t even browse through anyone’s profiles — they “match” you up with only the people they think are right for you.  If you get few or no matches, tough luck!  It didn’t sound very promising to me — especially since I read a couple of blogs where people who have used eHarmony said that most of the matches they give you are people who can’t read messages you attempt to send to them because they didn’t pay to use the site.  But hey, who knows, maybe I’ll try it someday if I get can’t find a girlfriend by meeting someone in the flesh.  Or maybe I’ll try one of the many other online dating sites out there.

Having heard that Craigslist personals have a reputation to be crawling with prostitutes, I went to that site and read some of the listings out of curiosity.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of the “women seeking men” actually sounded like normal, decent people looking for a real relationship.  Some of them even spoke of wanting a “man who believes in God,” and a “man who isn’t interested in casual sex.”  But when I replied to three such women, two tried to sell me a subscription to a website to view pornographic photos of themselves, and one actually turned out to be a prostitute who offered to spend a weekend with me, “or the first man who is interested,” for $300.  Needless to say, I deleted their emails and realized that Craigslist is indeed not the way to find a good girlfriend.

Where to go from here?  Well, to be honest, I’m thinking perhaps another trip on the Greyhound bus is in order….  Or some other totally random way of meeting people.  Because the normal ways to find a girlfriend just don’t seem to be very effective nowadays.

Then again, most other people seem to have a significant other.  I go places alone, such as on hiking trips, to churches, to restaurants, to social functions, and nearly everyone else I see is with a girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife.  Tell me again how these people are finding their partners?  I’m clueless.  I’m beginning to wonder if I even live in this society or if I just happen to be occupying space on the same planet as the rest of humanity, going about my business which barely intersects with the social universe that others are living in.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m more willing to get out and do things alone, whereas the huge numbers of other single people are sitting behind their computers, exchanging messages on dating websites, searching for that elusive “perfect match.”  I guess if my loneliness gets severe enough, maybe I’ll join them!

Moved to a new city, starting a new church, feeling a bit overwhelmed

I haven’t updated this blog in a couple of months, so I guess I’d better write something before it looks like I’ve dropped off the face of the earth!

About a week ago I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where I’m working with two other ministers to start a new church: Agapeosis Fellowship.  Agapeosis is a Spirit-filled, open-minded, all-inclusive church.  We are based on a Christian foundation but are very liberal in our interpretation of Christianity and interfaith oriented, being open to the wisdom to be found in all spiritual and philosophical traditions.

I’m excited to be serving in a field where I believe I can make a significant difference.  There is a lot of interest in progressive spirituality — even in a city like Nashville which is in a conservative Southern state.  In fact, I’m finding out that Nashville is something of a progressive oasis in the midst of Red America.  In the city, there are plenty of open-minded people — in fact, my first day here I went to a multi-cultural festival at a downtown park which was attended by thousands of people — but go 15 or 20 minutes outside the city and it’s rural, traditional, and very different from the liberal environs of the Washington D.C. area that I’ve grown accustomed to.

Anyway, this summer and fall have been a major time of transition in my life.  I have had to do a lot of deep soul searching about who I am, where I’m going, and what I realistically hope to accomplish during my time on this earth.  One of the results of this has been my move and my decision to embark upon a church planting project.  Agapeosis Fellowship is meant to become a truly radical and cutting-edge spiritual community, a model for what “church” could become in the 21st century, stripped of all the doctrinal baggage and the assumptions, attitudes, lingo, and organizational hierarchy of the past.

Unfortunately, as I was going through a period of intense questioning about my life (and plenty of anxiety and depression to go with it), and following that as I’ve been devoting my time to getting Agapeosis up and running and the process of moving to a new city, I have let some other things fall by the wayside.  One of them is this blog.  Also my Facebook account and my Twitter account.  And I’ve had much less time to give to my nonprofit organizations, the Christian Universalist Association and the Council of Wisdom – so little, in fact, that I feel embarassed about how far behind I am in what I should be doing to run these organizations up to my standards.  I hope to rededicate myself to these endeavors as much as possible in the months ahead, after the initial overwhelming phase of moving and starting my church begins to subside.

Sometimes we have to reevaluate our priorities in life.  We can’t do it all.  I often get frustrated because I feel like I have too many interesting ideas and projects I’d like to start or continue doing, but not enough time and energy to pursue them all.  It may come to a point in the near future where I have to drop one or two things completely, so that I can devote myself more fully to the things I believe in my heart are the most important priorities at this point in my life and career path.  I will be praying and meditating a lot about this as 2009 winds down to a close, so that I can go into the new year feeling less overwhelmed by all the things I’m doing or want to do in my life, and more engaged in and dedicated to the things I really believe in the most.

Cellphones: the new cigarettes

Just yesterday I got my first cellphone.  Yes, you heard that right — yesterday.  Why have I resisted this new technology for so long?  One reason is that I don’t like to be on an “electronic leash,” because having a cellphone means that people think you are, or should be, accessible at all times.  But the more important reason is my health.  Cellphones, and other communications technology based on microwave radiation such as wireless modems, are downright poisonous to the human brain and body.

That’s BS, many people would say.  But that’s because their own nervous systems and immune systems are not sensitive enough to the radiation emitted by these devices to immediately notice the detrimental effect.  As for me, I am one of those people (a few percent of the population) who are basically allergic to cellphones and wireless modems.  When I use a cellphone for more than a few minutes, I begin to feel pressure in my ear, dizziness, foggy thinking, burning in my sinuses, and a noxious feeling of fatigue and anxiety.  I get a similar reaction from wireless modems, but much less intense (probably since the computer is not pressed up against my head).

It’s not a psychological phenomenon.  These devices emit powerful radiation close to the human body or head.  It is a scientific fact that cellphones use a microwave to amplify the signal — the same kind of wave used to cook food.  Obviously it’s a much lower dose, but it can’t be good for you.  Studies show clear changes to your body’s cells from using a cellphone.  Some studies even indicate a link between cellphone use and brain cancer.

Many people can notice an unpleasant sensation in their ear when they talk on a cellphone for a long time.  A friend of mine, for example, has always told me she prefers not to use her cell for long periods of time because she can feel it “burning her ear.”  Nevertheless, she uses her cellphone a lot, because it’s expected of her by most of her friends and family.

Whether or not you are sensitive enough to notice the radiation affecting your body while using a cellphone, this radiation IS having an effect on your body — an abnormal and undesirable effect.  Over the years, this could certainly cause health problems, especially involving the nervous system and immune system (the two systems of the body known to be affected by cellphone radiation).

Imagine if you lived in a place where you could see smog in the air every day.  Perhaps, after breathing the air outside for more than a few minutes at a time, you would notice a subtle effect in your lungs.  Asthma and allergy sufferers would notice a much stronger effect and complain about it.  Wouldn’t you be concerned for your health if you lived in such a place?

This is essentially the world we live in today, except that the “smog” is electromagnetic waves from cellphones and wireless networks surrounding us and penetrating into our bodies at all times, at varying intensities depending on where we are and what we’re doing.  In the quest for ever more convenient and constant communication, we have created a vast biological experiment with ourselves as the guinea pigs!

Do we really need to be connected wirelessly at all times, available for conversations and able to surf the net 24 hours a day, everywhere we go?  I don’t think so.  But we do it anyway, not because it’s inherently necessary, but because our present-day culture demands it.  Much in the same way people 100 years ago were expected to show up at church, we today are expected to carry and answer cellphones.  Anyone who refuses to use a cellphone is viewed as a weirdo, even an anti-social pariah.

I plan to use my cellphone as little as possible.  Certainly with the way it affects me when I talk on it for longer than a few minutes, I have a strong incentive to limit my use.  I have to treat it as an allergen in my environment, but unfortunately, for social reasons, an allergen I must sometimes expose myself to.

The human brain, nervous system, and immune system are incredibly complex and sensitive systems.  Every living body has an electromagnetic field.  The brain and nerves run on electrical impulses.  Do we really think we can create a civilization that systematically exposes all people to electromagnetic poison as an everyday part of life, and remain unchanged by this?

The “wireless culture” WILL have a major effect on humanity — and not all positive.  We may look back in a few decades and realize that cellphones are like the 21st century version of cigarettes: something everybody thought was cool and socially necessary, nearly everybody used… and most people got sick and many people died because of.

The Challenges of Being a Visionary

I am a visionary — a person who sees bold new possibilities and aspires to change the world rather than accepting it as it is.  I don’t apologize for who I am, nor do I recommend it!  The world needs a certain small percentage of its people to be visionaries in order for progress to occur, but it’s largely a thankless role to play in life. We hear the stories of highly successful visionary leaders of various fields such as Albert Einstein in science, Mahatma Gandhi in religion and politics, and Bill Gates in business and technology.  But most visionaries never achieve their dreams; or even if they do, their lives are full of frustration and their contributions are not generally understood or valued while they are in the process of making their visions a reality.

I have been reflecting upon these things recently as I am attempting to implement a vision called the Council of Wisdom, a nonprofit organization I founded a couple months ago.  The Council of Wisdom is intended to become a global nongovernmental parliament of broad-minded, forward-thinking people from a wide variety of religious, national, ethnic, geographic, and career backgrounds, using the internet to facilitate dialogue and democratic decisionmaking to promote charitable causes, social activism, and the best of human culture.

Using this project as an example, I would like to share a few observations about what it’s actually like to be a visionary — the day-to-day struggles that people such as myself face while trying to achieve their unusual dreams.  If you yourself are a visionary person, I suspect the points I make in this article will resonate with you.  If you know a visionary person, perhaps this article will help you to understand better what is likely going on in his or her mind, soul, and life.

There are many unique challenges of being a visionary.  One of them — perhaps the greatest of all — is to maintain faith in one’s vision, even when few or no other people see it yet.  Just because one gets a vision for something that should happen does not mean that anyone else will necessarily see the value, benefit, or importance of it.  It doesn’t matter how beautiful the vision, or how beneficial it would be, or how urgently the world (or one’s country, community, religion, political party, etc.) needs it to become a reality.  If it’s something new and different, then the vast majority of people will instinctively resist or ignore it, because that’s the natural reaction of the average human mind.

Most people tend to be skeptical of new ideas, and they don’t usually like change.  Visionaries naturally lean in the opposite direction, embracing novelty and always seeking a better way to think, do, and live.  This profound difference causes several problems for visionaries:

1. They overestimate the number of people who will be interested in their new ideas and their level of interest and support.

2. When few people initially react to their new ideas with agreement and enthusiasm or at least willingness to give it a try, visionaries may begin to doubt whether their vision is really a good one and worth pursuing, or whether it’s feasible to make it happen even if it is good.

3. This doubt about one’s visionary ideas may easily become self-doubt, doubt about one’s worth as a person and one’s place in the world.

I have experienced all of these things after starting the Council of Wisdom — a project I believed would attract a great deal of interest and support from many progressive intellectuals I know.  When it did not attract such interest from more than a handful of my personal contacts, I went through a lot of doubt about whether the project is something that can really gain the support and participation of large numbers of people and thus be able to make a difference in the world.  I also doubted whether I can really fit into this world and feel satisfied with my role in it if what I consider to be the best idea I’ve ever had is something that doesn’t catch on.

To overcome such challenges, I’ve come to realize that visionaries must continually renew their “inner eye” — their capacity to see what others don’t yet see.  Otherwise, their enthusiasm for pursuing their visions will tend to fade away and turn to cynicism, like nourishing milk left to sit in a hot room that becomes sour and poisonous.  By renewing the inner eye, I mean the practice of envisioning things that are unseen in the material world.  This may include such things as prayer (conversation with God); meditation (conversation with one’s own soul); imagining in detail how things should be if the world were functioning according to higher ideals and principles; and reflecting on one’s own responsibility to provide leadership, encouraging people to choose higher visions over stagnation.

Neglecting to practice such things on a regular basis will cause a visionary to lose faith in his or her visions when others are not yet embracing them.  The world would therefore be deprived of the visionary leadership it needs.  Visionaries must do whatever it takes in their own spiritual and intellectual life to provide themselves with adequate faith and motivation to go forward with actions to promote their ideas.  This is very difficult and requires a great deal of time and energy that others would spend having fun!

The reason it’s so important to maintain faith and passion for one’s vision is not just so that one will continue seeking supporters for it, but also so that one can provide motivation to those who already do agree with the vision.  Without other people participating in the process of trying to make a vision a reality, it will remain merely a vision.  No one can do it alone.

Encouraging participation by supporters of a vision is key.  And it’s something I’ve struggled with a great deal in the process of starting the Council of Wisdom.  Repeated attempts to spur people to action, to get people more involved, can leave a visionary leader drained and wanting to quit if these efforts do not bear fruit.  I mean, there are only so many times that you can ask people to do things before it just becomes rude and an exercise in futility.

What I’ve found is that the only thing that works is to remain strong in the vision oneself, and the more enthusiastic you are, the more people will want to be involved because the enthusiasm is contagious.  But it is a big challenge to be the supplier of this kind of passionate energy all the time!  I find this to be the hardest part of being a visionary, actually.  Perhaps that’s because of my particular personality type, which tends to be more rational and calculating, and prone to depression at times, rather than ebullient and upbeat all the time.

Now I want to turn to the second main point of this article: that visionaries have to do tremendous amounts of work without receiving financial compensation for it, or any guarantee that they ever will.  This is a big challenge and one that is a source of much frustration and misunderstanding.

Part of the problem is that most people have no idea how much time and energy it takes to make a serious attempt to implement a visionary idea, to turn it from a dream into a reality — even just to give the idea a realistic chance of success.  For example, I first got the idea for the Council of Wisdom in August 2008.  Over the next several months, my written plan for the organization went through 11 drafts before culminating in the final version of the Bylaws (15 pages) and Policy (35 pages).  I had extensive discussions for many hours with several people along the way, to make sure I got things right.  I would estimate that the process of just setting up the plan for the organization — the thinking, the discussing, the writing, the editing — took over 500 hours of work.

Then came the website.  I could not find someone willing and able to develop the Council of Wisdom’s website for me, and I didn’t have the kind of money to be able to pay a professional to do it (since it’s a complex website based on a customized modification of forum software), so I had to do it myself.  This required me to learn a great deal about how the php programming language works, how the phpBB software works and how to configure it and extensively modify it for my needs, and then to actually write a lot of code to set up the pages and features on the Council of Wisdom site.  I estimate that doing these things to create the website took over 200 hours of work.

I also had to find high-quality people willing to serve on the board of directors of the new organization.  I contacted over 30 people I knew to try to find good board members.  Plus there were various administrative things that had to be done, such as writing and filing Articles of Incorporation, opening a post office box and phone line, etc.  After setting up the website, I began promoting it online by sending personalized messages to hundreds of people on social networking sites and forums where the members would likely have an interest in ideas like my own.

All in all, I worked the equivalent of about a half-year of full time work to launch the Council of Wisdom — for no pay.  So far, this has resulted in an organization with only about 45 members and virtually no funding, but a serious chance of eventually becoming something great and world-changing.

My point is, many people think that visionaries are the kind of lazy people who sit around all day talking about philosophy while they take hits on a bong.  Although some people are indeed like that, those kind of people don’t usually achieve anything.  Visionaries who actually make a difference, who do something that has an impact in the real world, work extremely hard and receive little or no personal reward for a very long time before they are recognized and find the financial support they need even just to pay their bills without having to work a second job.  Thus, they often work harder than major corporate CEOs (60-70 hour workweeks and high stress levels), but may be financially impoverished and have little time and energy left over for an active social life.

So, there’s a window into the life of a visionary, before he gains public recognition and the support of major foundations and wealthy benefactors to implement his ideas.  This is the kind of life I live.

Why do I do it?  Because that’s who I am; that’s what I am called to be.  Or so I think.  If I want to be true to myself, I have no choice but to be a visionary — and accept the challenges that come with that life, the frustrations, the sacrifices — in the hope that eventually, it will all prove to be worth it.

It’s hard to stay motivated to live this kind of life, knowing that it may take a long time before I see significant results and my work is fairly rewarded.  As I said at the beginning of this article, I wouldn’t recommend the visionary life.  Only people who feel compelled to be that way should be.  The question I often ask myself is: “Can I pull it off?”  It’s a question of whether I have the inner strength, the divine blessings, and whether my ideas are good enough in the first place.

For whatever reason, I have always felt compelled to be a visionary.  At times it has made me feel proud, even arrogant; at other times I have hated it and viewed it as a curse.  Right now, I guess I’m just trying to accept it for what it is: the way I am — and the way a small percentage of humans need to be in any generation, so that bold dreams of a better tomorrow always have a place in the human consciousness and enough advocates unwilling to relegate them to the realm of “only dreams.”

If I can look back someday and say, “I did my best to try to improve the world and inspire people to participate in doing so,” then I will have achieved my goal.  And with a little luck or blessings from above, hopefully some of my dreams for the world will become a reality.

Interesting things I’ve read or learned about recently

I’ve been too busy to blog recently, but I’ve still been reading lots of interesting articles and discovering some cool websites.  Here are a few links worth sharing:

Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link.  The Bush administration tortured people to try to get evidence for a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, because they wanted to justify the Iraq War.  Turned out there was no connection.

The Banality of Bush White House Evil by Frank Rich.  Torture was used routinely as a government policy, for reasons that weren’t very important, rather than to try to protect America against imminent terrorist threats.

Swine Flu and Factory Farms.  There is evidence suggesting that swine flu may have emerged as a result of appalling conditions in “factory farms,” which raise huge numbers of animals in close quarters.

Urban chicken movement taking roost in KC area.  I’ve heard about this happening in other cities, too.  It appears to be a growing trend for people to raise chickens for food in the middle of urban areas where they live.

Three excellent charitable organizations I learned about recently: Global Giving, Charity Navigator, and The Footprints Network.  These organizations are in a sense “meta” charities — they compile information about many different causes and groups, and/or provide an interactive, user-driven aspect, rather than just promoting one specific cause.

A young woman I recently met online is starting what looks to be a high-quality, innovative alternative school for young children in the San Francisco Bay area, based on holistic and progressive values.  Thought I’d give it a plug.

Sometime in the next day or two I will post an article containing some philosophical musings about what it’s like to be a visionary person — the unglamorous, difficult, often unrecognized side of that kind of life which I’ve been living!

News from space

Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planet — In a nearby solar system.  They also find that a neighboring planet discovered earlier is in the prime habitable zone for potential life.

‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers — The Sun is the dimmest and least active it’s been in nearly a century.

Cosmic close-up: Sensational images of Saturn show the ringed planet in incredible detail — Definitely worth a look!

Ridvan 2009: Baha’is missing the point of their own religion

Today is the first day of Ridvan, a major holiday season for adherents of the Baha’i Faith.  As a former Baha’i who still agrees with many of the basic principles of that religion, I keep up with what’s going on in the Baha’i world.  This year’s Ridvan message from the highest leaders of the Baha’i Faith confirms my view that Baha’i has become an inward-looking religion that refuses to engage the world at large except for the purpose of trying to convert people.

Why am I bothering to comment on this?  Baha’i, with only a few million adherents, isn’t exactly an important religion in worldly terms and most people haven’t even heard of it.  But I think it’s a profound illustration of how beneficial, potentially transformative spiritual messages can be twisted and obscured by leaders and members of a religion for their own misguided ends — a problem that is all too common in every significant religion.

The Baha’i Faith was founded by Baha’u'llah (1817-1892), a Persian aristocrat in exile who in 1863 declared himself to be a new messenger of God.  Baha’u'llah was raised a Shi’ite Muslim, and in his young adulthood followed the radical millennarian movement of another contemporaneous Persian claimant to prophethood known as the Bab.  The Baha’i religion is above all an attempt to build a more universal spiritual paradigm out of the foundation of Islam.  Much in the way Christianity emerged as a Jewish reform movement and a project to spread the core principles of Judaism into the Greco-Roman world, Baha’i was born from an Islamic matrix as a project to modernize, universalize and spread the central ideas and practices of Islam to the whole world.

Baha’u'llah’s main teaching was that humanity is moving into an age when barriers of race, language, nation, and religion should come tumbling down, replaced by global unity and the transcendent consciousness that all religions come from the same God.  So what do the Baha’is do?  As one might guess from the rich history of religious followers doing the opposite of what the founder of their faith taught, Baha’is today focus all their energies on trying to build their own new sect and convert as many people as possible to it!

The latest confirmation of this attitude comes from the 2009 Ridvan message issued by the Universal House of Justice, the international leadership body of the Baha’i Faith:

To the Baha’is of the World

Dearly loved Friends,

A mere three years ago we set before the Baha’i world the challenge of exploiting the framework for action that had emerged with such clarity at the conclusion of the last global Plan. The response, as we had hoped, was immediate. With great vigour the friends everywhere began to pursue the goal of establishing intensive programmes of growth in no less than 1,500 clusters worldwide, and the number of such programmes soon started to climb. But no one could have imagined then how profoundly the Lord of Hosts, in His inscrutable wisdom, intended to transform His community in so short a span of time. What a purposeful and confident community it was that celebrated its accomplishments at the midway point of the current Plan in forty-one regional conferences across the globe! What an extraordinary contrast did its coherence and energy provide to the bewilderment and confusion of a world caught in a spiral of crisis! …

The Baha’i leaders open their message to the Baha’is during a major holiday season of their faith by talking about how wonderful it is that Baha’is are following the UHJ’s “global Plan” for “intensive programmes of growth” — i.e. that they are focusing, in a systematic way, on trying to convert as many people as possible.  And then they go on to mention how Baha’is held a lot of big conferences where they gathered among themselves.  This is supposed to be an “extraordinary contrast” to the world that is currently suffering from a severe economic crisis and so many other problems.

Baha’is think that they will get more members because they are trying hard to get more members — especially because they feel confident in their religion while the world outside the Baha’i bubble is “caught in a spiral of crisis.”  The irony is that if Baha’is shifted their focus away from proselytizing and organizing events for their own members, toward doing tangible things to help solve problems in the real world — economic development, human rights, peace movements, environmental protection, etc. — they would find that more people would naturally be attracted to their religion, because people would see that they care about helping the world, not the size of their membership rolls.

And therein lies the problem for Baha’is.  They, or at least their leaders, seem to believe that the only way to truly help the world is to convert people to Baha’i.  So that’s where they invest their time, energy, and money, leaving little or nothing for promoting the world-changing values and causes that really make a difference.

Sound familiar?  Yup, it’s the same tired old attitude of fundamentalists of all religions.  All of them essentially say some variation of the following:  “Our religion is the only way of true salvation, so the whole world needs to join us.  Doing other things is unnecessary or even counterproductive, because this world is destined to go through an apocalypse anyway, which will show people the glorious and absolute truth of our faith.”  Actually trying to solve the problems of the world so that we won’t have an apocalypse — while accepting people’s religious preference as it is and working constructively on real issues with people of all faiths — is not on their agenda.  Or if it is, it’s far down the list of priorities.

Baha’is, with their progressive belief that all religions are inspired by One God, should at least in theory be particularly able to avoid the trap of fundamentalism.  In reality, sadly, they are not.  I know a few liberal Baha’is who believe that the future of human spirituality lies not in one religious sect converting everyone else and taking over the world, but rather in “meta-spirituality” and interfaith respect and reconciliation.  But the Baha’is who follow the party-line of their religious organization, which seems to be most of them, are blinded to this reality and instead chase the quixotic, ever elusive dream of one world, one religious identity/practice for everyone.  Just as the fundamentalist Christians and Muslims do.

I think what this proves is that organized religion operating in a capitalist-style competitive environment of soul-winning is inherently going to focus on the bottom line — growing its rolls — even if it’s a religion that is based on the idea that all religions are worthy paths to the divine (and therefore that nobody needs to convert to escape hell).  The relative lack of growth of the Baha’i Faith compared to some of its competitors in the spiritual marketplace also proves that when a religion offers little else but an incessant membership drive as the basis of its community life, it won’t actually grow as much as it would like.  People don’t usually join groups unless they can see that the group is serving some noble or useful purpose other than to perpetuate and expand its own existence.

As I wrote in an article on Bahai-Faith.com recently:

Baha’u'llah said that “The Great Being, wishing to reveal the prerequisites of the peace and tranquility of the world and the advancement of its peoples, hath written: The time must come when the imperative necessity for the holding of a vast, an all-embracing assemblage of men will be universally recognized.” Perhaps the main reason the Baha’i Faith has not lived up to its potential is that, in its desire to make more Baha’is, it has neglected the bigger and broader teachings such as this — teachings which could be spread and implemented regardless of how many people are adherents of any particular religion. …

To be a true Baha’i, in my opinion, is to devote oneself to serving the cause of the oneness of human spirituality and the oneness of civilization. Simply promoting the Baha’i religion is not getting the job done. For various reasons, most people are not converting to the Baha’i Faith — and perhaps never will. That shouldn’t stop Baha’is from living and sharing the deeper meaning of their faith.

Since the Baha’i Faith is not going to take over the world, people know that how many people in the world call themselves “Baha’i” is pretty much meaningless.  What matters is what values, principles and causes people are working for, giving their time and energy and money to make a constructive difference in the world.  If Baha’is would take at least 50% of the time, energy, and money they’re currently devoting to the “global Plan” for “intensive programmes of growth” promoted by their beloved, supposedly infallible UHJ, and transfer those human and financial resources into doing actual work to promote ideals Baha’is have always believed in — things such as overcoming racism and gender discrimination, reducing the gap between rich and poor, and striving for peace between nations and religions — they might find that more people would want to get involved in their religious community!

This is a lesson that all religions should learn, not just the Baha’is.  The bottom line is that humanity needs to grow up.  The time for fruitless sectarianism is over.  The time for transcending religious differences to build a better world is at hand.  When a religion focuses primarily on proselytizing and conversion, it misses the point and excludes itself from being a meaningful part of the interfaith discussion today.  Spiritual maturity is when we are willing to devote ourselves to helping other human beings and helping the world, even if everyone else in the world belongs to a different religion than our own.

Abdu’l-Baha, the son and successor of the Baha’i prophet said:

Religion should unite all hearts and cause wars and disputes to vanish from the face of the earth; it should give birth to spirituality, and bring light and life to every soul. If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division, it would be better to be without it. … Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion.

Wise words we would all do well to heed.

Obama open to Bush administration torture prosecution, will ask A.G. to review

It appears that the strong public pressure on President Obama to allow prosecution of those who authorized/ordered torture under the Bush administration is working!

Today, President Obama opened the door to prosecuting Bush administration officials responsible for devising illegal torture polices.

While reiterating his belief that CIA officers who carried out so-called “enhanced interrogations” should not be prosecuted, the President said he wanted the Attorney General to make a determination on how to procede with “those who formulated those legal decisions.”

Obama said that any potential investigation must be bipartisan and independent.

Source: Daily Kos, with video from Obama himself.

I’m very glad the president appears to be seeing the light on this issue — even if it was mainly because of an outcry from the public over the previous plan of doing nothing.  I hope he and his administration will follow through on the new plan.

I can see the point of refraining from prosecuting people who were ordered to commit torture, since they were required to do so or else would have lost their jobs (even though it does not excuse them morally).  But it’s definitely necessary to prosecute the people who ordered torture or persuaded those who ordered or authorized it by using erroneous and reprehensible legal arguments.  The people who had the power are the ones who must face the consequences of misusing it!  Good to see that Obama seems to get it now.