The Wingèd Man’s Faith Journey, Part II

Becoming Bahá’í

My only venture into the world of internet chat rooms came one night over winter vacation from college.  Before I knew Beth, I would always go to my parents’ house by myself, and I would often suffer from insomnia while there, usually for the first night, and sometimes on later nights as well.  I eventually figured out that 2010: The Year We Make Contact (starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, and Bob Balaban) puts me to sleep in about 20 minutes and cures my insomnia.

At this point, however, I did not know the solution lay as close as an old VHS tape in the living room, so I was left to my own devices.  I logged on, and found a group of religious chat rooms.  All manner of faiths were represented: from Mormons, who attempted to convince me that the Jews had always known about Jesus and were expecting Him, but through wickedness eventually forgot about him, to Hindus.

I had heard of the Bahá’í faith before stepping into their chat room, but had never given them much thought.  It was a fairly orderly place, with friendly, courteous participants.  They directed me to several websites and answered many questions.

I was quite intrigued.  When I told them I went to college in Chicago, they suggested I stop by the House of Worship found in Wilmette.  The House of Worship is not a place of worship in the way a church is.  The House of Worship is not owned or controlled by any local Bahá’í community, and it is the home of no-one congregation.  According to the Bahá’í administration, each community should eventually have its own House of Worship with many appendant institutions like a hospital, a school, an old folks home, and other charitable and service agencies.  For now, there are eight or nine in the world, and they serve as centers of pilgrimage as well as hubs for Bahá’í organization.  If you’re ever at the House of Worship in Wilmette, the small white building across Sheridan Road to the southeast is the seat of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

Bahá’í’s teach that their founder, Bahá’u’lláh, was the Second Coming of Christ, and the fact that very few people took notice of this exiled Persian holy man fulfilled the Gospel prophecy that Christ would come like a thief in the night, like a flash of lighting across the sky, that is there and gone before anyone can notice.  I remember where I was —right in front of the Crown Center at Loyola’s campus— when I thought to myself that being a Bahá’í was a fulfillment of my Christianity.  If Christ’s promises were true and Bahá’u’lláh’s claims were true, then my responsibility as a Christian was to recognize Christ’s second coming.  This realization filled me with warmth and comfort.

I would visit the House of Worship, I read some books, and continued to think about the Bahá’í Faith.  About a year later, at the prompting of a roommate who saw how seriously I was taking it all, suggested I become a Bahá’í.  I decided to do so, and on January 20, 1998, I became a Bahá’í, by declaring my faith at the House of Worship.

It is not an impressive event, and there is not a bit of ceremony.   I went to the office at the House of Worship, and told them of my desire to declare my faith.  A nice woman met with me and spent several minutes convincing me that to be a Bahá’í involves a conversion of heart and not the signing of a document.  She made it very clear that I did not have to sign my declaration card to be a Bahá’í, that I already was one, and that signing the card really meant that I was accepting certain responsibilities as a Bahá’í to the world community of Bahá’ís.  I convinced her that I wanted to sign the card, and I did.

Someone from the Chicago Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA), the Bahá’í equivalent of a parish, met with me and made sure I knew what I was doing.  Soon thereafter, I began attending the local Feasts, which were held every 19 days, on or near the first of the Bahá’í month.  I prayed the Long Obligatory Prayer, which fulfilled my Bahá’í obligation for daily prayer, and even chanted the sacred name of God, Allah’u’Abha, 95 times on a set of homemade prayer beads, before the Universal House of Justice (UHJ), the supereme, global  Bahá’í council, made it obligatory.  (Incidentally, I used the cord and beads from this set of prayer beads to make myself an Anglican Rosary.)  I kept the Fast and voted in local Bahá’í elections.  I would not go to class or work on Bahá’í Holy Days.

But something did not feel right within me.  Bahá’ís are forbidden to drink, and I drank.  At this point in my life, I did not drink as much as I would later, but I would drink on the weekeneds to excess.  This was not the fault of the faith, as much as it was an indication that I was not mature enough to become a Bahá’í.

Additionally, Bahá’í claims of the equality of the sexes did not hold true in their practice; for example, women are forbidden from service on the Universal House of Jusice.  Gay Bahá’í’s, and I knew a few in the Chicago LSA, were advised to seek counseling to “cure” them of the disease.  Bahá’í claims of the unity and purity of the faith seemed undermined by the UHJ’s labeling dissenters as “covenant breakers” and ordering all Bahá’ís to shun them.

Whoever Bahá’u’lláh was, his followers certainly hadn’t lived up to his teachings.  Gradually, as I saw that many of the things that disenchanted me about the Catholic Church were also present in the Bahá’í faith, I fell away from it.  I gradually stopped going to Feast, stopped praying, and began drinking more heavily.

I began to enter a period of pluralistic agnosticism which coincided with a time of profound unhappiness.  I drank too much, I often felt lonely, and it didn’t help that some of my best friends also drank too much.