Though the established Circle of Light Baha’i School at Johns Hopkins University just resumed its centralized, September-through-May rounds of Sunday devotion and instruction, the 150-year-old unity faith it promotes is stressing greater local outreach in anticipation of the day when all religions will be one.
“The ‘promised day’ is a day for unity,” said Geri Lynn Peak, a Chinquapin Park Baha’i who regularly hosts youth study groups at her home. “It’s a day for us to break down our allegiance to nations and [races] — all of the illusions that we’ve constructed — and realize that there is one humanity, one world, and that we are brothers and sisters.”
Akin to the post-tribulation millennium of world peace expected by Christians, the presently unfolding “promised day” for Baha’is offers incentive to ramp up local worship, community service and educational activities — tenets, drawn from the world’s great religions, that provide the theological basis for the faith’s unifying vision.
The writings of two central figures — Baha’u’llah, the faith’s founder and purported successor to a line of prophets that includes Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, and the Bab, Baha’u’llah’s forerunner — form the basis of this pacifist, Persia-rooted faith of 5 million in 126 countries.
Faith-based study circles, devotional meetings, informational fireside chats, virtues-based children’s classes and responsibility-themed instruction for 11- to 14-year-olds — increasingly originated in the homes of 400 or so Baha’is in the Baltimore area — provide the vehicles of its vigorous vision quest.
“The Baha’i faith is for all mankind,” said Sandra Fishman, a Bel Air-Edison Baha’i and mother of six who holds weekly devotions at her home. “So if you have a centralized meeting place, say for children, we’re not providing opportunities for neighborhood children to come to classes.”
This month, especially, Peak said, will be a time of increased local outreach, as Baha’is will celebrate the birthday of the Bab on Oct. 20.
“Groups of Baha’i communities, which we call clusters, are all doing [similar] activities, focusing on neighborhood-level spiritual transformation to bring unity to neighborhoods,” Peak said. “The point of the Baha’i faith is unity, and you can’t have unity if people don’t know about it.”
