News Update: Eleventh International Baha’i Convention: A global community reflects

This was posted earlier today on the Baha’i World News Service site: for the full story see link.

4 May 2013

HAIFA, Israel — More than 1,000 representatives of the Baha’i world community gathered here, 29 April-2 May, for a unique global event that was infused with joy, reverence and purpose.

The eleventh International Baha’i Convention marked the 50th anniversary of the inaugural Convention in 1963 at which the Universal House of Justice – the international governing council of the Baha’i Faith – was first elected.

A global election

The Convention saw the election of the nine members of the Universal House of Justice for the coming five year term. In a unique electoral process, all forms of campaigning, electioneering and nominations are strictly avoided. Rather, after prayerful reflection, the assembled delegates silently and privately wrote down the names of nine individuals who they felt would be best able to serve on the institution.

For more than three hours, the representatives then filed across the stage to deposit their votes in a simple wooden box. The following day, the result was announced, and the new membership of the Universal House of Justice received a warm and reverent welcome from the gathering. See link.

A learning community

Central to the proceedings were consultative sessions during which delegates from more than 150 countries – women and men representative of every background and walk of life – had the opportunity to share their thoughts, experiences and insights as part of a global learning process.

The main focus of deliberations was outlined in a letter from the Universal House of Justice, presented to the Convention. The message described the work before the Baha’i community as it strives to contribute to the spiritual and material advancement of civilization.

Many of the insights shared from diverse localities around the world – particularly concerning the efforts of young people to take responsibility for the spiritual education of those younger than themselves – had a universal resonance for delegates.

“I begin to identify with what people are talking about and I see the same challenges that we face and how people are managing to overcome it,” said Nancy Oloro Robarts, a delegate from Uganda. “And I start to appreciate that the Baha’i world is one.”

Ximena Osorio from Colombia noted a visible change in the picture that is emerging of today’s worldwide Baha’i community.

“Sometimes you don’t realize it because you are in your own country, considering your own challenges,” she said. “But when you come here you can see that things are moving forward, we are changing and building a culture that is different.”

“And all these different activities and elements that we are trying to apply at the very local level have an impact at the global level.”

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News Update: Universal House of Justice elected

The following has been posted on the Baha’i World News Service (see link). 

30 April 2013

HAIFA, Israel — The results of the election of the nine members of the Universal House of Justice have been announced.

More than 1,500 ballots were cast yesterday for membership of the council that serves as the head of the Baha’i Faith. Those elected for the next five-year term are Paul Lample, Firaydoun Javaheri, Payman Mohajer, Gustavo Correa, Shahriar Razavi, Stephen Birkland, Stephen Hall, Chuungu Malitonga, and Ayman Rouhani.

The election marked the 50th anniversary of the first election of the Universal House of Justice in 1963. The supreme governing council of the Baha’i Faith is entrusted by Baha’u'llah in His own writings with exerting a positive influence on the welfare of humankind, promoting education, peace and global prosperity, and safeguarding human honor and the position of religion. It is responsible for applying the Baha’i teachings to the requirements of an ever-evolving society and legislating on matters not explicitly covered in the Faith’s sacred texts.

The delegates that voted in the election are themselves members of national Baha’i governing bodies from around the world. They were chosen in earlier elections in their own countries.

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Humanity is our Business (2/5): The Vision of Civilisation-Building

This is the second of the two posts I thought it worth re-publishing. It follows on in a way from the need highlighted by the the poem I recently posted as well as suiting the climate of fellow-feeling created by the Olympics and Paralympics.

If One Common Faith helps the Bahá’í community understand the current context of the vision we are seeking to implement (see previous post), Century of Light helps us see how our understanding of this vision developed by slow degrees.

Obstacles to Understanding

Secularisation partly explains the difficulty humanity as a whole has in grasping a transcendent vision of global transformation: the failure of religion makes a contribution too.

. . . the secularization of society’s upper levels seemed to go hand in hand with a pervasive religious obscurantism among the general population.

(Century of Light: Sec I, page 6)

We also all lack precedents to aid our understanding:

Our century, with all its upheavals and its grandiloquent claims to create a new order, has no comparable example of the systematic application of the powers of a single Mind to the building of a distinctive and successful community that saw its ultimate sphere of work as the globe itself.

(Century of Light: page 10)

British Museum: London

People might, for example, claim that Marx had developed what seemed to be a global vision but it is not in fact comparable. It was a muddled reductionist vision. It was reductionist in the way that it relegated ideas to the back seat and promoted material conditions to the driving seat of history. It was muddled because, at the same time, it used exhortation to enlist the persuadable to throw their weight behind the idea of a supposedly impersonal dialectic of change. Also all the attempts to implement the vision have so far been catastrophically destructive, involving Chekhov‘s pet hates of ‘violence and lies‘ in abundance. Not only that but Marx had the benefit of one of the best libraries in the world – the British Museum’s reading room – and still failed to achieve the breadth, depth, complexity, compassion and ultimate practical efficacy of  the vision expounded by Bahá’u'lláh in prison and from exile.

An Unfolding Understanding

Guardian’s Resting Place: London

Even within the Bahá’í community understanding of the vision evolved over a period of  time. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his role as expounder of the words of Bahá’u'lláh, emphasised the role of the recognition of the oneness of the human race (Century of Light: page 23). Later, Shoghi Effendi, who was appointed in his turn as interpreter of the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh and died in London in 1957, drew out the implications:

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind – the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u'lláh revolve – is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. . . . . . It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not experienced…. It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world – a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units.

(World Order of Bahá’u'lláh: pages 42-43. Quoted in Century of Light: page 50)

To one degree or another, most Bahá’ís no doubt appreciated that the Assemblies they were being called on to form had a significance far beyond the mere management of practical affairs with which they were charged (op. cit: Page 54). Century of Light again quoted Shoghi Effendi:

. . . . they were integral parts of an Administrative Order that will, in time, “assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind”.

(Century of Light: Page 55)

A word of explanation is perhaps needed here. The Bahá’í Faith has an administrative system that involves electing local and national assemblies on an annual basis. This is done without electioneering: the Bahá’í voter in a secret ballot votes for anyone within the community, local or national as appropriate, who seems to him or her to have the necessary qualities of character and experience to execute the role of Assembly member conscientiously and well. Processes such as consultation (see the earlier post on this subject) are vital decision making tools of these institutions. The pattern can be studied and borrowed from by all, whether Bahá’í or not, and in this way the future shape of the world can be influenced by this pattern.

‘The Bahá’í community,’ it goes on to explain, ‘now embarked [on a stage of development] in which the Administrative Order would be erected throughout the planet, its institutions established and the “society building” powers inherent in it fully revealed’ (Century of Light: Pages 55-56). 

It continues with the words of the Guardian  (Page 68):

Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Bahá’u'lláh Himself, whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete, the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind.

Moving Towards Empowerment

Century of Light speaks of the role of planning not as though ‘the Bahá’í community has assumed the responsibility of “designing” a future for itself’, but as striving ‘to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world.’ This is a purpose, of course, which can influence all peoples of good will, whether Bahá’í or not. Their duty is to align their efforts with the spirit of the age in their way just as Bahá’ís do in this particular fashion. By these combined efforts the world will change. However:

The challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence allows, Bahá’í efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God, because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause by Bahá’u'lláh bear their fruit.

(Century of Light: Page 69)

The Greater Plan of God, the spirit of the age seen as the organising principle of unity in diversity, requires the efforts of the whole of humanity. As a Bahá’í community we have to make sure that we provide a kind of catalyst by means of what we do within our administrative system and in collaboration with all people’s good will, the Lesser Plan of God.

Century of Light continues:

. . . . . The organic unity of the body of believers – and the Administrative Order that makes it possible – are evidences of what Shoghi Effendi termed “the society-building power which their Faith possesses.”

(Century of Light: Page 97)

By 1996, it had become possible, as the Faith grew, to see all of the distinct strands of this complex enterprise as integral parts of one coherent whole (Century of Light: page 108). There were still challenges though.

For the most part, however, these [new Bahá'í] friends were essentially recipients of teaching programmes conducted by teachers and pioneers from outside. One of the great strengths of the masses of humankind from among whom the newly enrolled believers came lies in an openness of heart that has the potentiality to generate lasting social transformation. The greatest handicap of these same populations has so far been a passivity learned through generations of exposure to outside influences which, no matter how great their material advantages, have pursued agendas that were often related only tangentially – if at all – to the realities of the needs and daily lives of indigenous peoples.

(Century of Light: pages 108-109)

This highlighted a need, the meeting of which led to the creation of the Training Institute process (page 109) that empowered people to take initiatives and persist in action even under difficult circumstances:

. . . beginning in the 1970s in Colombia, where a systematic and sustained programme of education in the Writings was devised and soon adopted in neighbouring countries. Influenced by the Colombian community’s parallel efforts in the field of social and economic development, the breakthrough was all the more impressive in the fact that it was achieved against a background of violence and lawlessness that was deranging the life of the surrounding society.

The Colombian achievement has proved a source of great inspiration and example to Bahá’í communities elsewhere in the world.

The process of transformation the Cause has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses for all those of us who would serve it is to free ourselves from attachment to inherited assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity’s coming of age (page 136).

Seat of the Universal House of Justice: Haifa

Century of Light towards the end (pages 139-140) concludes:

. . . . With the successful establishment in 1963 of the Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’ís of the world set out on the first stage of a mission of long duration: the spiritual empowerment of the whole body of humankind as the protagonists of their own advancement.

We must not underestimate the significance of this achievement:

The process leading to the election of the Universal House of Justice . . . .  very likely constituted history’s first global democratic election. Each of the successive elections since then has been carried out by an ever broader and more diverse body of the community’s chosen delegates, a development that has now reached the point that it incontestably represents the will of a cross-section of the entire human race. There is nothing in existence – nothing indeed envisioned by any group of people – that in any way resembles this achievement.

(Century of Light: page 92)

See links below to the subsequent five posts which examine in more detail some of the specific components of this process of empowerment.

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Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (b)

Humanity is our Business (4/5): Devotional Meetings

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (a) The Plight of Children

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (b) What can we do for our children?

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Humanity Is Our Business (1/5): The Vision

The poem I recently published as well as the spirit of global understanding generated by the Olympic and Paralympic Games led me to feel that it would be worthwhile re-publishing the first two posts in this sequence. At the foot are links to the five more specifically focused posts of the sequence.

Who Do You Think You Are?

We are half way through a new series of the popular BBC show, Who Do You Think You Are, which sees celebrities exploring the secrets of their family trees, reacting to their unpredictable discoveries with a combination of tears and elation. It’s fascinating viewing and its popularity tells us a lot about where we look when we are seeking clues to our identity.

Our search could take another direction altogether. Instead of looking to the past we could look towards the future. Instead of seeing ourselves shaped by ancestral experiences and our genetic heritage, and behaving accordingly, we could define our identities in terms of the purpose we see our lives having. What are we here for? What do we want to achieve?

And these ambitions need not be constrained by relatively short-term purely personal purposes. In this sequence of posts I want to explore the possibility that we could create a meaningful identity for ourselves around the notion that we are here to contribute to the shaping of the future of our society.

The Bahá’í Perspective

This is not just for Bahá’ís. While it is true that we see a role for the Bahá’í Community in the betterment of the world, it is also true that the vast majority of the world’s population has to become involved. This entails a combination of consciousness-raising and empowerment. How, exactly, are we going to achieve that?

Realization of the uniqueness of what Bahá’u'lláh has brought into being opens the imagination to the contribution that the Cause can make to the unification of humankind and the building of a global society. The immediate responsibility of establishing world government rests on the shoulders of the nation-states. What the Bahá’í community is called on to do, at this stage in humanity’s social and political evolution, is to contribute by every means in its power to the creation of conditions that will encourage and facilitate this enormously demanding undertaking.

(Century of Light: page 94)

In 1985 our international governing body issued a statement to the leaders and the peoples of the world concerning world peace, which they see as something for all of us to work for. They wrote:

Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth.

They speak of the change of consciousness that is needed if this is to come about:

Acceptance of the oneness of mankind is the first fundamental prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as one country, the home of humankind. Universal acceptance of this spiritual principle is essential to any successful attempt to establish world peace. It should therefore be universally proclaimed, taught in schools, and constantly asserted in every nation as preparation for the organic change in the structure of society which it implies.

(Promise of World Peace: Section III)

Clearly this will take time and dedicated effort. Something else is also necessary:

Some form of a world super-state must needs be evolved, in whose favour all the nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make war, certain rights to impose taxation and all rights to maintain armaments, except for purposes of maintaining internal order within their respective dominions. Such a state will have to include within its orbit an International Executive adequate to enforce supreme and unchallengeable authority on every recalcitrant member of the commonwealth; a World Parliament whose members shall be elected by the people in their respective countries and whose election shall be confirmed by their respective governments; and a Supreme Tribunal whose judgement will have a binding effect even in such cases where the parties concerned did not voluntarily agree to submit their case to its consideration.

(ibid.)

They urge us all to lend our weight to this mighty and essential project:

Let men and women, youth and children everywhere recognize the eternal merit of this imperative action for all peoples and lift up their voices in willing assent. Indeed, let it be this generation that inaugurates this glorious stage in the evolution of social life on the planet.

(ibid.)

Even that though will not be enough. Our daily lives need to be imbued with this vision of civilisation-building.

Responsibility for the Welfare of the Entire Human Family

The Universal House of Justice has already unpacked very clearly what this must mean to us (see my earlier post on Working for a Divine Arkitect). When the buildings on Mount Carmel were complete, the following words were read at the opening ceremony:

. . . the time has come when each human being on earth must learn to accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human family. Commitment to this revolutionising principle will increasingly empower individuals and Bahá’í institutions alike in awakening others to . . . the latent spiritual and moral capacities that can change this world into another world.

(Universal House of Justice: 24 May 2001 in Turning Point page 164)

For ‘individuals’ I think it’s fair to read ‘everyone’ whether Bahá’í or not.

The Bahá’ís have a particular role to play:

The rest of humanity has every right to expect that a body of people genuinely committed to the vision of unity embodied in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh will be an increasingly vigorous contributor to programmes of social betterment that depend for their success precisely on the force of unity. Responding to the expectation will require the Bahá’í community to grow at an ever-accelerating pace, greatly multiplying the human and material resources invested in its work and diversifying still further the range of talents that equip it to be a useful partner with like-minded organizations.

(One Common Faith: page 50)

It goes on to unpack the implications of this:

If Bahá’ís are to fulfil Bahá’u’lláh’s mandate, however, it is obviously vital that they come to appreciate that the parallel efforts of promoting the betterment of society and of teaching the Bahá’í Faith are not activities competing for attention. Rather, are they reciprocal features of one coherent global programme.

(One Common Faith: pages 51-52)

So, it is important to recognise that these aims are not incompatible but reciprocally reinforcing. The next post will attempt to clarify how the vision of the Bahá’í community has developed over the years in terms of how to give these insights practical expression in the alienated complexities of the modern world. Subsequent posts (see list below) looked at three aspects of the work Bahá’ís do that are responses to the call of this vision of civilisation-building.

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A Life for our Time (3/3): Handling the Challenges

Henry Hyndman, SDF Founder

William Morris was acutely aware of one way in which his greatest strength disabled him as the would-be leader of an activist movement (page 496):

Morris saw how day-to-day political commotion was damaging his intellectual concentration: ‘my habits,’ he explained, ‘are quiet and studious and if I am too much worried with “politics” ie intrigue, I shall be no use to the Cause as a writer.’ He saw his real value as his capacity to stand back and take the broader view.

There was another side to this coin though (page 497):

. . . neither May [his elder daughter] nor later commentators with a vested interest in promulgating the ‘dear old Morris’ legend make proper allowance for his streak of ruthlessness. He did not seek the quarrel [with Hyndman, the President of the Federation, and his followers]. But once the quarrels were upon him Morris could pursue them with a strength of purpose and a weight of anger . .

Morris pursued the split to breaking point. Writing to his wife he said (page 500):

The question only is now whether we shall go out of the SDF or Hyndman: we are only fighting for possession of the name and the adherence of the honest people who don’t know the ins and outs of the quarrel.

His ambivalence is revealed later in the same letter (ibid.):

All this is foul work: yet it is a pleasure to be able to say what one thinks at last.

I can’t help wondering whether there isn’t more than a touch of Gwendolen here:

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.

(The Importance of Being Earnest: Act II)

In the end, though he won the vote against Hyndman, Morris left the SDF to form the Socialist League (page 502-503):

The SDF membership could only suffer damage when Morris formed a rival body, the Socialist League. Morris acted as he did because he felt an urgent need to redefine Socialist policy: Hyndman was pursuing policies of notoriety and intrigue that were giving Socialism, already, a bad name. Morris was reluctant to embark on a long programme of obstruction, tabling motion after motion, amendment after amendment.

According to Shaw there was a streak of the dictatorial in Morris. What is very clear is that the Federation offered him no hope that he could see of consulting his way towards a principled unity of thought.

Mark Tobey: 'Void Devouring the Gadget World'

In the late 1960s this was still the problem I had with the Socialist/Communist cause. Violence had been added to the lies by that stage, making a mockery of the humanitarian rhetoric. I needed something that offered a more attractive and convincing route towards radical social change. The Bahá’í Faith turned out to be that something.

It is worth mentioning that in the aftermath of my conversion experience some close friends took me to one side and warned me that if I continued to attempt to bludgeon into submission everyone I met with my absolute conviction I’d soon have no friends left. I knew that I was prohibited from using a sword to change someone’s mind so I’m afraid I fell into the trap of sliding the ‘s’ to the back and used words as my weapon instead. I learned from humbling first hand experience that the human tendencies towards schism, personal advantage and the dogmatic imposition of deeply felt views upon the unconvinced have to guarded against with unremitting vigilance.

The core beliefs of the Faith are clearly antithetical to any use of force or compulsion in belief and this is explicit in the Writings of its Founder.

Consort with all men, O people of Bahá, in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. If ye be aware of a certain truth, if ye possess a jewel, of which others are deprived, share it with them in a language of utmost kindliness and good-will. If it be accepted, if it fulfil its purpose, your object is attained. If any one should refuse it, leave him unto himself, and beseech God to guide him. Beware lest ye deal unkindly with him. A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men. It is the bread of the spirit, it clotheth the words with meaning, it is the fountain of the light of wisdom and understanding . . .

(Gleanings: CXXXII)

Also vigorous measures are taken to prevent splits and disunity while preserving freedom of thought and individual investigation of the truth.

In these days when the forces of inharmony and disunity are rampant throughout the world, the Bahá’ís must cling to their Faith and to each other, and, in spite of every difficulty and suffering, protect the unity of the Cause.

(Shoghi Effendi: Dawn of a New Day)

None the less, untrammelled enthusiasm can easily erupt into milder variants of these disruptive and divisive ills, and the supreme governing body of the Bahá’í community spells out in many places very clearly the standards of conduct we must adhere to. For example:

Apart from the spiritual requisites of a sanctified Bahá’í life, there are habits of thought that affect the unfoldment of the global Plan, and their development has to be encouraged at the level of culture. . . . . [The friends] are called upon to become increasingly involved in the life of society, benefitting from its educational programmes, excelling in its trades and professions, learning to employ well its tools, and applying themselves to the advancement of its arts and sciences. At the same time, they are never to lose sight of the aim of the Faith to effect a transformation of society, remoulding its institutions and processes, on a scale never before witnessed. To this end, they must remain acutely aware of the inadequacies of current modes of thinking and doing – this, without feeling the least degree of superiority, without assuming an air of secrecy or aloofness, and without adopting an unnecessarily critical stance towards society.

(Universal House of Justice: 28 December 2010, paragraph 36)

Combining highly motivating conviction with this degree of humility and tolerance of others is a difficult trick not often consistently mastered in a lifetime. It’s hard to see, though, how we could build a more humane and genuinely united society without learning it.

Someone as warm, generous and creative as Morris found it was beyond him, even though he grumbled about it. One hundred and fifteen years after his death the same task he grappled with from his perspective confronts us still in our situation. We each have to learn the best way we can how to combine compassion with conviction in a world-transforming fusion.

I haven’t found a way better adapted to the conditions we are currently facing than the one described in the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, not because His core Message was essentially different from or superior to that of the other great Faith Traditions but because the way the spiritual insights they all hold in common are translated into patterns of practical action is not bettered anywhere else that I can find.

So, this is my choice, the path along which I am navigating my way through the complex jungle of modern materialism. We each are free to choose our own way through. What we are not free to do without dire consequences, it seems to me, is to ignore the need to choose. For all his errors and his frailties, no one could accuse Morris of ducking that challenge, and if I had his energy and courage I’d be a better human being, I believe.

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Coleridge, the French Revolution & the Middle East

Almost Connecting with Coleridge

I recently found myself within 20 miles of where Coleridge had composed some of his greatest poetry including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. Rather impetuously, and on the wings of my urge to see the spot, I whisked my wife off without checking the state of play on the National Trust website.  To say the least I was slightly disappointed to find, on our arrival in Nether Stowey, that the cottage opposite the Ancient Mariner pub was locked, barred and bolted and, when we stared hopefully through the grimy windows for some sign of welcoming life, we realised the interior was crammed to the rafters with scaffolding. It clearly would not be open to visitors for quite some time yet. I leave you to imagine my wife’s feelings on the matter.

The whole episode is rather symptomatic of my lifelong relationship with Coleridge, always feeling I would like to get to know him and his work much better but somehow always finding other distractions and commitments coming in between my wish and any effective action.

On the run in to this disappointing encounter, I had re-read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and resonated powerfully to its gripping narrative of careless cruelty, extreme suffering and eventual redemption. It has been noted that the poem, written by the time Coleridge was twenty-six, in its account of the Mariner’s agonies of soul brought on by his own thoughtless action, seems uncannily prescient given the course that Coleridge’s life was going to take.

The ending, out of context, reads rather sentimentally. Coming at the end of a reading of this great poem it has a simple force that is quite compelling:

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Coleridge at age 42

A Seditious Dog?

What makes Coleridge even more interesting to us now, right at this moment of modern history, when the Middle East is swirling with the unsettling energy of frustrated hopes striving for long awaited fulfilment under oppressive regimes, is that the poet as a young man was an advocate of freedom when Europe was in political turmoil for very similar reasons. In the introduction to James Reeves‘ Selected Poems (Page xiv: Heinemann, 1979) we find an amusing but chilling illustration of the state of play at that time. Coleridge was promoting The Watchman, a literary and political weekly which was regarded by many as a rebellious publication.

A friend in Nottingham gave a prospectus of The Watchman to an aristocrat, who glanced at the motto: ‘That all may know the truth, and that the truth may make us free,’ and remarked, ‘A seditious beginning!’ On being told that this motto was quoted from another author, the aristocrat said, ‘What odds whether he wrote it himself or quoted it from another seditious dog?’ He was then told to look up the Gospel of St John, Chapter VIII, verse 32, and he would find that the seditious dog was Jesus Christ.

A key element in the development of Coleridge’s thinking was the ideal of Pantisocracy, with its dream of a truly egalitarian society. Reeves feels his engagement with this ideal demonstrated both ‘his fundamental sincerity’ and ‘his failure to achieve the practical expression of any of [his] plans’ (page xi). None the less his keen intelligence and fine emotional resonance to the culture and politics of his time, as well as his initial affinity with its progressive movements, make him a fascinating witness to the feel of the moment. As Reeves’ describes it (page x) at the time of the fall of the Bastille in 1789:

It seemed as if the inveterate despotism of the old order in Europe had been triumphantly challenged, and as if nothing could prevent the destruction of tyranny and the establishment of liberty for all those groaning under oppression.

Even in 1795 Coleridge still felt that liberty could be achieved elsewhere without violence and wrote in A Moral and Political Lecture (Pages 246-247: Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose, Norton Critical Edition):

We have reason to believe that a revolution in other parts of Europe is not far distant. Oppression is grievous – the oppressed feel and complain. Let us profit by the example of others; devastation has marked the course of most revolutions, and the timid assertors of Freedom equally with its clamourous enemies have so closely associated the ideas, that they are unable to contemplate the one disunited from the other. The evil is great, but it may be averted – it has been a general, but it is not therefore a necessary consequence.

Fall of the Bastille

As time went on his position shifted. In their preface to the section on his lectures of that time, the editors of this edition explain (page 259):

The lectures provide a telling point of contrast to Coleridge’s later defence of private property, his denunciation of Unitarianism, and his adoption of Trinitarian religion.

In his book, Earthly Powers, the conservatively minded historian, Michael Burleigh, has only one reference to Coleridge in his index (page 114):

Across Europe where there had been hope there was disillusionment, as the biographies of innumerable Romantic artists, musicians, poets, thinkers and writers witness. The British poets Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth were among those who progressed from naive enthusiasm for the French Revolution to more conservative opinions, putting away, as Coleridge had it, his ‘squeaking baby trumpet of sedition’ after French forces invaded his beloved Switzerland.

This transition from euphoria to disenchantment, with a consequent shift from an idealistic passion for wholesale change to a cautious desire to hold on to the albeit tainted benefits of an imperfect status quo, is an all too familiar pattern.

It is worth mentioning, as an aside, that Coleridge also had his own rather different reasons, at one point in his life, for taking the same keen interest we are now taking in the Middle East. He was in Malta during England’s War with France. A role, well suited to his abilities and experience, sprang out of a friendship that developed between Coleridge and Sir Alexander Ball, civilian governor of Malta. Richard Holmes, in the second volume of his biography of Coleridge, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, describes this link with the Middle East (page 18):

By mid-June [1804, Ball] had enlisted Coleridge in [a] top-level and highly confidential discussion, commissioning him to draft a series of ‘position papers’ . . .

This was work well adapted to Coleridge’s experience as a leader writer for . . . . the Courier.  Over the next few weeks he produced four long papers, the first of which . . .  was dispatched to Nelson on 7 July 1804. Others followed on ‘Algeria,’ ‘Malta,’ and ‘Egypt,’ which were forwarded to . . . . Downing Street.

Echoes of the Same Unrest

Given the pattern of disillusion in the face of disappointing realities seen in Coleridge and others at the time of the French Revolution, it should not be surprising, but it is certainly none the less intriguing, to find that the Universal House of Justice has written some words of caution about the current situation in the Middle East (April: 2011):

. . . cumulative instances of political upheaval and economic turmoil on various continents have shaken governments and peoples. Societies have been brought to the brink of revolution, and in notable cases over the edge. Leaders are finding that neither arms nor riches guarantee security. Where the aspirations of the people have gone unfulfilled, a store of indignation has accrued. We recall how pointedly Bahá’u'lláh admonished the rulers of the earth: “Your people are your treasures. Beware lest your rule violate the commandments of God, and ye deliver your wards to the hands of the robber.” A word of caution: No matter how captivating the spectacle of the people’s fervour for change, it must be remembered that there are interests which manipulate the course of events.

From a Bahá’í point of view the core principles we are striving to learn how to translate into effective action are an essential part of the ultimate resolution of these problems. In the words of the House (ibid):

. . . so long as the remedy prescribed by the Divine Physician is not administered, the tribulations of this age will persist and deepen. An attentive observer of the times will readily recognize the accelerated disintegration, fitful but relentless, of a world order lamentably defective.

The Bahá’í community clearly must not fail to pursue its attempts to implement the true spirit of Bahá’u'lláh’s message and work on tirelessly in the hope and belief that sufficient people across the world as a whole will inevitably respond, before it is too late, to what we believe is the spirit of the age and move in the same direction whether predominantly within their own traditions or by pooling their energies with ours.

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