ELECTION OF SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF BAHÁ'ÍS OF LEICESTER

This evening I'm taking part in the election of the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Leicester. A local Spiritual Assembly is formed in every locality with nine or more registered Bahá'ís in good standing over the age of 21. All such Bahá'ís are eligible to vote for the local Spiritual Assembly and eligible for election to it, by plurality voting in a secret ballot. The election takes place on the first day of Ridván, the most sacred period in the Bahá'í year (21 April to 2 May inclusive). As the Bahá'í day begins at sunset, the election can be held any time between sunset on 20 April and sunset the next day. The election of the Spiritual Assembly and the celebration of the First Day of Ridván are usually observed separately, so as to distinguish the administrative and social nature of the two events.

The Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Leicester was established in 1957, incorporated in 1963 and has functioned continuously since then.

There are no priests or ministers in the Bahá'í Faith, no clergy of any kind. There are no sacramental duties to perform, so no need of anyone to perform them. There are no positions in the Bahá'í community akin to that of the Imam in the Muslim community or the Granthi in the Sikh. It's an incontrovertible principle of the Bahá'í system that power and authority reside not in individuals, but in the elected institutions. Those people elected as members of these institutions have no rank, power or authority as individuals. Although the media, government and so on may describe individuals such as the chairperson of the local or National Spiritual Assembly "Bahá'í leaders", as a parallel with what is to be found in other religious communities, this is incorrect. The institution is the leader, not any of the individuals who comprise its membership.

One of the clearest description of the duties and functions of the Spiritual Assembly is to be found in this extract from a letter written in 1972 by the Universal House of Justice (the central authority for the worldwide Bahá'í community) to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Bolivia. Although this letter is 40 years old, the guidance is just as relevant today. I've set this below in bullet points for ease of reading here.

Local Spiritual Assemblies are at the present newly born institutions, struggling for the most part to establish themselves both in the Bahá'í community and in the world. They are as yet only embryos of the majestic institutions ordained by Bahá'u'lláh in His Writings.... What we find expounded in the writings of our Faith is the lofty station Local Spiritual Assemblies must attain in their gradual and at times painful development.... Among the more salient objectives to be attained by the Local Spiritual Assembly in its process of development to full maturity are to

• act as a loving shepherd to the Bahá'í flock,
• promote unity and concord among the friends,
• direct the teaching work,
• protect the Cause of God,
• arrange for Feasts, Anniversaries and regular meetings of the community,
• familiarize the Bahá'ís with its plans,
• invite the community to offer its recommendations,
• promote the welfare of youth and children,
• and participate, as circumstances permit, in humanitarian activities.

In its relationship to the individual believer, the Assembly should continuously invite and encourage him [or her]

• to study the Faith,
• to deliver its glorious message,
• to live in accordance with its teachings,
• to contribute freely and regularly to the Fund,
• to participate in community activities,
• and to seek refuge in the Assembly for advice and help, when needed.

In its own meetings it must endeavour to develop skill in the difficult but highly rewarding art of Bahá'í consultation, a process which will require great self-discipline on the part of all members and complete reliance on the power of Bahá'u'lláh. It should hold regular meetings and ensure that all its members are currently informed of the activities of the Assembly, that its Secretary carries out his [or her] duties, and its Treasurer holds and disburses the funds of the Faith to its satisfaction, keeping proper accounts and issuing receipts for all contributions.

At the meeting this evening, we read a few prayers before and after the election, as is customary. We remember our fellow Bahá'ís in Iran, suffering persecution for their beliefs, and our fellows closer to home who are ill or in need of comfort or support. In a little innovation, I read a prayer of Bahá'u'lláh off my iPhone on which I have an app featuring an extensive collection of Bahá'í prayers.

FEAST OF HONOUR

I spend the afternoon with the local Bahá'í friends, celebrating the Feast of Sharaf (Honour).

Due to my irregular work schedule, commitments to the children and so on, I'm unable to attend as many Bahá'í community activities as I should. This is the first time I've been able to come to two consecutive Feasts since goodness knows when!

I think it appropriate to provide a short extract from the Bahá'í writings here, relevant to the name and theme of this Feast and of the month in the Bahá'í calendar that it begins:

“The Almighty hath not created in man the claws and teeth of ferocious animals, nay rather hath the human form been fashioned and set with the most comely attributes and adorned with the most perfect virtues. The honour of this creation and the worthiness of this garment therefore require man to have love and affinity for his own kind, nay rather, to act towards all living creatures with justice and equity.” ('Abdu'l-Bahá)

Following the devotional section which comes at the start of every 19 Day Feast, there’s the opportunity to share news, discuss the present state of the community and make suggestions regarding future opportunities.

There's an interesting report from some of the friends who attended a recent conference in Watford sponsored by the Persian Society for Art and Letters, on the subject of Modernity. Many of the talks, panels and workshops held there were recorded, and we hope that those of us who didn’t go will soon be able to watch or listen to these.

I say a bit about the three  community celebrations of Chanukah I've been able to attend this month and on the activities I was able to join in around Christmas, through supporting Harry singing with the choir at St Thomas the Apostle Parish Church.

We also discuss upcoming opportunities to get involved in an event for International Women's Day to be held at the University of Leicester on Thursday 8 March and to take part in an event (as yet ill-defined) being organised in Leicester by the Occupy movement on the weekend of Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 March. In connection with the latter, while we’d have to be assured of the political neutrality of any such event before committing a more formal Bahá'í involvement, there’s certainly a lot that Bahá'ís can say and do that would be relevant. One of the principles of Bahá'í life is that we must work toward eliminating  extremes of wealth and poverty. Our belief in economic and social justice depend on that central factor in the Bahá'í programme. The Bahá'í Faith is no "pie-in-the-sky" religion that preaches we should accept our lot on earth for the sake of gaining reward in heaven. While it recognises that there's more to life than merely material well-being, it pulls no punches in stating that inequality and injustice are simply wrong, from whatever perspective we might take. This can be seen in the following statement, from a talk given in Paris by 'Abdu'l-Bahá a century ago:

A financier with colossal wealth should not exist whilst near him is a poor man in dire necessity. When we see poverty allowed to reach a condition of starvation it is a sure sign that somewhere we shall find tyranny. Men must bestir themselves in this matter, and no longer delay in altering conditions which bring the misery of grinding poverty to a very large number of the people. The rich must give of their abundance, they must soften their hearts and cultivate a compassionate intelligence, taking thought for those sad ones who are suffering from lack of the very necessities of life. 

There must be special laws made, dealing with these extremes of riches and of want. The members of the Government should consider the laws of God when they are framing plans for the ruling of the people. The general rights of mankind mankind must be guarded and preserved. 

The government of the countries should conform to the Divine Law which gives  equal justice to all. This is the only way in which the deplorable superfluity of great wealth and miserable, demoralizing, degrading poverty can be abolished. Not until this is done will the Law of God be obeyed.

And this, from The Promise of World Peace, a statement by the Universal House of Justice "to the peoples of the world" made in 1984, coinciding with the United Nations International Year of Peace:

However vital a force religion has been in the history of mankind, and however dramatic the current resurgence of militant religious fanaticism, religion and religious institutions have, for many decades, been viewed by increasing numbers of people as irrelevant to the major concerns of the modern world. In its place they have turned either to the hedonistic pursuit of material satisfactions or to the following of man-made ideologies designed to rescue society from the evident evils under which it groans. All too many of these ideologies, alas, instead of embracing the concept of the oneness of mankind and promoting the increase of concord among different peoples, have tended to deify the state, to subordinate the rest of mankind to one nation, race or class, to attempt to suppress all discussion and interchange of ideas, or to callously abandon starving millions to the operations of a market system that all too clearly is aggravating the plight of the majority of mankind, while enabling small sections to live in a condition of affluence scarcely dreamed of by our forebears.

Now, of course Bahá'ís don't have the monopoly on caring about and acting on issues of social justice. Anyone with a working knowledge of the faith communities that flourish in Leicester will be able to come up with practices, principles and quotations aplenty from each of them in support of equity and fairness. Hopefully, that will make it easier to get a wide range of support and help make the contribution of the faith communities distinctive and unified. Both these upcoming opportunities are linked for Bahá'ís via another core principle of their beliefs: the equality of men and women. It’s become clear that women are bearing the brunt of austerity measures arising from the financial crisis. Working for the improved status of women and girls throughout the world can’t be divorced from the wider call for fairness in the management of the economy.

And if, for some legitimate reason, it’s not possible for the Bahá'í community to be formally involved in one or both of these events, there's nothing to stop individual Bahá'ís from taking part and bringing a Bahá'í sensibility to the table. Notes of our discussion are taken and will be passed on to the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Leicester for further consideration and a decision about the degree of involvement.

In the Bahá'í calendar, the day begins at sunset; the month of Sharaf (Honour), the start of which is celebrated with this Feast, begins at sunset on 30 December. When I was a young Bahá'í in Glasgow in the late 1970s and early 80s, we used to incorporate appropriate aspects of a traditional Scots celebration of Hogmanay into this Feast. I’ll leave it to you, faithful reader, to imagine which aspects they might have been. One of the things that makes the 19 Day Feast such a vibrant element of Bahá'í community life is its adaptability. The three-fold framework (devotional period, consultative period, social period) should always occur (in that order) and there’s guidance aplenty for how each of those sections should go and how they should relate to each other. But there’s also room for the Feast to breathe and expand, according to its national or cultural setting and the make-up of the community celebrating it. The Bahá'í community has always been awash with travellers’ tales of how the 19 Day Feast is celebrated variously in a rural Indian setting, among indigenous tribes people in North Africa or in an Inuit village above the Arctic Circle. But right from the start of my involvement in the Bahá'í community, I was with people who asked why that same variety shouldn’t be appreciated and encouraged here at home. It was things like holding the 19 Day Feast on Hogmanay, reading the poetry and singing the songs of Robert Burns at it and sharing black bun and ginger wine (that’s non-alcoholic of course) with friends of diverse origins and backgrounds that helped affirm my identity as a Bahá'í – indeed, as a Scottish Bahá'í. If truth be told, it was only by seeing those aspects of Scottishness through a Bahá'í lens that I learned how to love my own country and culture.

If you'd like to know more about the Bahá'í calendar and its pattern of Feasts and Holy Days, check out the excellent article on Wikipedia.

PHILOSOPHY PANEL AT ST PAUL'S CATHOLIC SCHOOL

To St Paul's Catholic School, Spencefield Lane, Evington, this morning, where the Council of Faiths has been asked to facilitate a "Philosophy Panel" for Year 9 pupils. I took a call a fortnight or so ago from Seamus O'Looskan, who is Chaplain there. He asked us initially to provide two people who could represent Islam and Hinduism respectively on a panel to be quizzed by pupils from this year group on some of the big questions of life. A few days later, he sent me another message asking if we could provide a few more participants to help make a balance between people who would speak from a faith background and others who would not. I failed to get a Muslim speaker to come along; nor was I able to obtain the services of a Buddhist (well, I did make the approaches at rather short notice). In the event, an interesting and varied line up of speakers attend:

• Leon Charikar (Chair of Neve Shalom, Leicester’s Progressive Jewish Congregation)
• Ramesh Majithia (Hindu community)
• Kishor Gohel (who took over from Ramesh as the Hindu representative for the second session)
• Fr Peter Hunter O.P. (Holy Cross Priory)
• Harry Perry ( Leicester Secular Society)
• Clare Carr (Global Education LeicesterShire, also a member of the Secular Society)
• Jan MacDonald (Secretary of the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Leicester and member of Leicester Council of Faiths)

I should say that the school invited Peter and Harry on their own; the others I drummed up. We're taken into a fairly large hall just after 0900. The pupils are spaced around the hall in six groups, about a dozen of them per group. There's a seat for each of the representatives, facing the group. Each speaker spends ten minutes or so answering the group's questions, then a bell is rung and they move on to the next group. This whole process is done twice, with the first session ending about 1000, then restarting with a new hall full of pupils a few minutes later. This means that all the pupils get to spend more time listening to each speaker than if we were to follow the conventional "Question Time" format of running a panel. Better for the pupils, but more tiring for the speakers, who are "on" virtually all the time, rather than taking it in turns to contribute, then sit back and listen to their colleagues. This activity is being offered to the pupils as something additional to the curriculum, which gives them greater freedom to ask what they want, rather than just stick to topics on which they'll be examined.

I'm in attendance just in case any of the speakers want to bow out at any time, so I can step in and take their place, but that doesn't happen. I take the opportunity then to speak to several teachers, raising the possibility of other opportunities when they could join in appropriate activities arranged by the Council of Faiths - such as during the "Leicester Speaks" week-long event later this month or during National Inter Faith Week next month. Both sessions with the panel conclude with the recitiation of the school prayer, is taken from Micah, 6:

This is what the Lord asks of you: to act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with your God.

Those of us who stay on for tea and a chat are taken on a tour of the school by Seamus and Krysia Foster. We're introduced to some of the staff and pupils as we go round. It's all very impressive and we're made to feel very welcome. Props to Mr Gillespie, Head of Design, for having the cover artwork for Weasels Ripped My Flesh by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on his classroom wall. "Rzzzzz!"

Here's what Clare had to say about her involvement:

I  have to admit that I was surprised, as a person with no religious belief, to have the opportunity to enter into a genuine dialogue with the young people at St Paul's School.  Their questions were well prepared and they showed great respect for a person with a different viewpoint by listening carefully and building on my responses with new and relevant questions.  The morning provided a fantastic learning opportunity for all the people involved and it was heartening to see everyone make the most of that opportunity.  I shall look forward to meeting with the RE staff to evaluate this new philosophy module, drawing on my experience as a Philosophy for Children/Communities (P4C) practitioner.

The morning finished with a tour of St Paul's School.  The building is in need of refurbishment and updating and, thankfully, the planned remodelling under the Building Schools for the Future initiative will be going ahead next summer.  Walking around the school, it was clear that this is a very happy School Community where young people make the most of the very good education on offer.  Personally I do not support the idea of faith schools, but I recognise a good school when I see one.  I don't believe that St Paul's is a good school because it is a faith school.  It is simply a good school, and I wish more schools around the country were as good.

Harry offered the following comments about the experience:

My impressions of the event at St Paul’s were also positive. The Year 9 pupils (13 year-olds) were much better behaved than the 16 year-olds that, thirty years ago, made me realise that teaching wasn’t my vocation! Having said that I also have to say that the presence of crucifixes everywhere did unsettle me a bit!

I was surprised at the make-up of the school, having expected to find a largely white populace of Irish and Polish descent, but in fact finding in addition to these around 40% (roughly speaking) of non-white origin from the Far East, Asia, Middle East and Africa. In a quick briefing beforehand Seamus reported a relatively large number of kids of Filipino extraction.

I was unaware that Clare was going to be there but I had been told there’d be a "Humanist" so I concentrated on the basic atheist position and the pupils’ questions also focused on this area, eg: existence of gods, origin of the Universe and Earth, evolution by natural selection, what happens after death and why I don’t believe in miracles, visions, prayers, etc. Although advised to prepare beforehand for questions on "moral’" issues I wasn’t faced with any and if invited to a similar event in future I think I’ll have to try to bring in the implications of non-belief on those fronts. The sessions were fast-paced and there was no time for detailed argument but that was an inevitable consequence of the format. Perhaps in future the school might consider an alternative format where individual speakers have more time to explain their views in more detail and respond to questions with more depth.

But full marks for the RE staff at St Paul’s – they had no obligation to put on this session and they made it clear their objective was to encourage independent thought, not simply engage in indoctrination.

Here's Jan's reflection on having taken part in the panel:

It was an enjoyable morning meeting with the teachers and students. I think that it was beneficial for us who were there to answer questions because it gave us the opportunity of coming in contact with the students and understanding the kind of information that they want to know. It certainly showed the changes that are taking place and that we are moving into a tolerant society where there are people who are ready to listen to other people’s views. I was very impressed with the school.

Peter's thoughts about the Philosophy Panel were as follows:

I very much enjoyed the morning at St Paul's. Obviously, we couldn't talk at any great length with any one group, but the format had the great advantage of meaning that the students heard from a wide range of voices in a manageable time-frame. The questions were well-prepared and intelligent, and some were very testing! The students were polite, friendly and really engaged, which made the whole experience very much worthwhile. Well done to St Paul's for organising this, and hopefully other schools will follow suit.

Leon offered the following:

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the young people at St Paul’s School to discuss issues of faith and religion. They asked some probing and intelligent questions on issues such as personal experience of God, life after death and why God would allow suffering. I was impressed with the care they had put into their questions and their willingness to listen and engage in dialogue with people from a variety of faith perspectives. I’d welcome the opportunity to contribute to similar discussions with young people and congratulate the school on this initiative.