Really? Every summer, I go to a couple of Baha’i Summer Schools, and there are, at the two big ones, hundreds of Baha’is (plus some seekers) there. One of the retreats I go to is focused toward the West Virginia Baha’i community, and that one’s much smaller, maybe 25 or 30 attendees. At the larger schools, a lot (maybe 1/3) of the attendees are of Iranian descent, another 1/3 are mixed race, 1/3 are USA born and bred.
Technical agnostic, practical atheist, cultural Christian with occasional tendencies towards anti-theism, who nevertheless finds the fictional characters of Aslan, Athena, Jesus, & Thor helpful to think about, at divers times and for divers purposes.
Actually, I knew that. Their biggest hit, Hummingbird was written about Baha’u’llah, the Prophet/Founder of the faith. It even includes a couple of lines of Baha’i scripture:
“Lend us your wings
Let us soar
Through the atmosphere of Abha*
Lift us up to the Heaven of Holiness
O, Source of our being!”
*Abha-place of Glory and Light.
I picked atheist, but I still feel a strong connection with Judaism and Jewish culture. Although I don’t actively believe in god, I do often find myself making decisions based on Jewish ethics.
I couldn’t agree more. Those are two of the most diametrically opposed religions I can think of. That would be like putting Buddhism and Scientology in the same category.
IIRC the Baha’i actively refuse to accept Israeli’s into their fold, because of the (unstated) fact that their spiritual and operational center is here, and they just don’t want to piss off any of the large and influential (other) religious denominations here.
Ah – found something