«تنها راه مؤثر برای ترویج ایمان»

Reading a Wikipedia article about the Bahá’í Faith in the USA, I come upon this: “Overall religious membership fell precipitously from 70% to 47% among all Americans from 2000 to 2020. The growth of the American Baháʼí community began to stall around the same time, seeing a 50% drop in enrollments from 1997 to 2007, and a 30% increase in withdrawals in 2006…” Of course, one takes Wikipedia with a certain degree of skepticism; still it seems that the spectacularly dynamic of teaching and growth in our numbers is a thing of the past. I remember well attended firesides in the 1970s. My Colombian wife (I’ve been pioneering there) talks of when her parent’s house was full of seekers. We ask ourselves if the change might have something to do with the emphasis on Ruhi that’s since taken hold on the Bahá’í world. The shift from direct teaching of friends, neighbors, classmates and acquaintances to “putting them through the Ruhi sequence” is supposed to have been more “systematic” and effective – but has it really resulted in numerical growth? And could it be that the over enthusiastic insistence on Ruhi on the part of some individuals and institutions (often implying neglect of other teaching methods) may have dampened enthusiasm for teaching altogether? Back in 1989 I asked a member of the UHJ if I could be lukewarm about Ruhi and yet be a devoted Bahá’í. The answer, to my intense relief, was, “yes”. I’ve since read letters by the UHJ assuring the friends that we’re perfectly free to like or dislike the Ruhi program. I encourage any who express interest in studying Ruhi. I accompany Ruhi tutors and even offer to tutor if asked. This is how I support the institutions in their promotion of the Institute process. Meanwhile I participate in community activities and pursue my own personal teaching goals. I’m curious to know how my friends in the US have managed with respect to the Ruhi process and its replacement of some other longstanding activies.

Though I abstain from criticizing the Ruhi process, I take issue with what I see as a neglect of proclamation, firesides, and other forms of direct teaching. I struggle sometimes with my impatience at hearing some of the friends insist that “people aren’t ready” and that the only effective way to promote the Faith is to coax people into joining a study circle in the hope that, somewhere along he process, they’ll decide they themselves Bahá’ís. I don’t see a lot of growth taking place this way and those who enter the faith in such a passive manner rarely become very active. I happen to find the university professors and students with whom I associate in Colombia quite open to learning about the Faith, but it’s embarrasing not to be able to invite them to events that would permit them to experience the Bahá’í community, given our emphasis on numbers of small study circles and individual devotionals. I’ve made it a personal project to promote high quality holy day celebrations as something to fulfill this need.

Back in the 70’s the Bahá’í principles seemed to many people just a collection of nice ideas that most people presumably agreed with and offered nothing out of the ordinary. Nowadays the Faith offers a refuge of sanity and light to masses of people who must be in desperate search for an alternative to the almost unbearably corrupt, spiteful, conflictive global society we all inhabit. I don’t think people have ever been more ready for the Faith. Way back in the 1950s a magazine article said something like, “If these Bahá’ís ever get moving, they may take the world by storm”. Isn’t it long past time we get moving? Again, I’d love to hear about what the friends in the United States and other countries are doing to get us back to the rapid expansión we once had and should, with all the more reason, see now.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2209644753/?multi_permalinks=10164705463829754