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Hey, I just Venmo'd you for rent. Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card. Say more. More. Exactly. Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get. Like earning up to 5% cash. Back with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brands. So order more pizza. The math demands it. Get the Venmo debit card. Venmo stash bundle Terms and exclusions apply. See terms at venmo me stashterm. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank. Na what if I told you that Moses, Buddha, Jesus and the prophet Muhammad were all right? And that every single one of them was a messenger from the same God delivering the same message? Each one fitted to a time and place that they were sent into? Now imagine that idea didn't come from some university seminar like a modern New Agey self help bestseller guy, but from a random 25 year old merchant in Persia in 1844. A man who announced that he was a gate to something far greater than himself and who would be faced with extreme persecution for it. This is the story of the Baha' I faith. And today we're going to trace that whole journey. We're going to figure out what these people actually believe and why it spread in the way that it did and why its place in the world's religious landscape today is so much more complicated than you would have ever thought. From prophecy, persecution, and a founder whose sacred text was written while in prison, all the way to one of the youngest and most geographically widespread faiths on the entire planet? How does a religion born in the marketplace of 19th century Persia, out of Islam, end up less than a century later with believers in almost every country on earth claiming that all of the world's great religions are just chapters of the same story. Well, today we're going to find out. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Religion Camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to Religion Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single Sunday explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from every religion from around the world from all time. Yes, that is the goal of this show is I'm trying to understand what everyone believes. It's, it's. I think it's the most important thing I do on this planet is I want to understand the God that you worship. Truly, I think it's the best way for human beings to interact with each other. By meeting someone and knowing, like, okay, this is the faith you have, or maybe the faith that you grew up in, it frames so much of the world and our perspective and how we see it. So by understanding everyone else's faith, I can hopefully become a better human being. And furthermore, every time I read something in someone's sacred scripture or in their background or their faith, I apply all the good stuff to my life and just kind of leave the rest. And as a result, I've slowly accumulated all the stuff that has brought me closer to God. And for that, I am grateful. And I don't do this alone. No, I do it with you. And I want to thank you so much for being a part of it. Every time you click comment, like all that stuff, you help keep the lights on in the tent and you help keep the fire burning here at the campsite. And not only do I do it with you, I also do it my good pal, Christos Papadopados, the Greek freak himself. Happy Sunday, Christos. How are you? Happy Sunday, Mark. Christos. No time for that. Because we're talking about the Baha'. I. The Baha' I faith. It's one of the most interesting worldviews. The way that I actually learned about this was from none other than Rainn Wilson. Dwight Schrute from the Office. Wow. Yeah. Amongst other things. Of course, no disrespect to Rain, but he's mostly known for this character from the Office, and I believe he is a practitioner of the Baha' I faith. You can double check the form, but I'm almost certain that's the very first place I heard it. I'm on it. So what is this? What is this worldview that kind of assimilates everything all into one thing? And is it like some new agey BS that came out of, like, some YouTube guru being in, like, 2024, being like, guys, actually, everything is right? No, it comes from 1844 in a place called Shiraz in Persia in modern day Iran. And this is not a calm, settled corner of the world. At the time under The Qajar dynasty, 19th century Persia is thick with religious tensions and maybe more importantly, religious expectation. Now the dominant faith in this part of Iran is Shia Islam. And Shia Islam is waiting in anticipation for the Hidden Imam, a promised figure of divine guidance who would one day return to set the world basically back on the tracks. And that is the soil that this story grows in. Because Baha' I didn't appear out of nowhere as some abstract new Philosophy. It emerged as a direct answer to a real question that everyday people were asking. Was God sending something new? And into that world steps a young merchant named Syed ali Muhammad. In 1844, he makes a declaration that detonates through the Persian religious world. He announces that he is the Bab, a title that simply means the gate. Now, gate to what? What does that mean? Because the Bab wasn't claiming to be the final word. He was claiming to be the doorway. He said that he'd been sent by God to prepare humanity for a new age and for something greater than he himself, and that something far greater than him is going to come next. And he was the one who opens the door so that the truly important figure can sort of walk through it. And that is exactly why the story of the Baha' I faith begins with the. Even though. And this trips a lot of people up, he isn't technically the founder, so he's the prophet who pointed forward, the one who said, hey, get ready. Cause the real stuff, the. The real one, he's coming. Now, there were major consequences for listening to this guy, because he. He obviously did not fit the religious mold of Shia Islam at the time. He was not the Imam that all the Muslims of Iran were waiting for. But the Bab's followers, known as the Babis, they grew fast and so threateningly to the authorities that the response was pretty brutal. Thousands were killed. The Bab himself was arrested, imprisoned, and in 1850, executed by firing squad in the city of Tabriz at just 30 years old. Now, in those 30 years, the movement was nearly extinguished altogether. But the Bab had pointed at someone who was coming after him, who would carry the story forward. And in 1863, that someone appeared. His name was Bahaullah, a title meaning the glory of God. He had been a follower of the Bab, a man from a noble Persian family who grew up with wealth and comfort and ended up imprisoned and exiled for his association with the. The movement. And in 1863, Bahaullah declared that he was the one that the Bab had foretold, the greater messenger, the figure that the gate had opened the door for. And that moment in 1863 is the one widely treated as the formal beginning of the Baha' I Faith as a distinct religion. So the Bab opens this prophetic door, and Bahaullah walks right through it and becomes the founder, whose writings and teachings define everything that the faith would become. Now, the crazy thing about this, and this is something that we should really think about, Bahaullah did much of his most sacred writings from captivity. This was not a man preaching from a position of power and safety and wealth. This was a dude composing the foundational scripture of a world religion while in exile and imprisonment, moved from place to place by authorities who wanted him silenced for his affiliation with this sort of, you know, rogue religious group. The faith was quite literally written behind bars. So now we have our two essential figures. Of course, you have the Bab. That is the gate, the one who prepares the way. And then, of course, Bahaullah is the founder, the promised one, the glory the gate was opening towards. Now, none of this, the persecution or the prophecy or the prison, none of it explains why anyone today in a country thousands of miles from Persia would find this compelling. A dramatic origin story is one thing, a reason to actually believe. Well, that's a little different. So what exactly did Bahaullah teach that made this movement feel so universal and so modern and at the same time, so controversial? Hey, guys, we're gonna take a break really quick because I wanna talk to you about gld. This is an awesome new company that we're working with that I'm actually wearing right now. I actually got this crucifix right here. And honestly, even just getting it, you know, sometimes, like, when you work with some companies, you're like, all right, I really hope the product is good. This one is. I. I wear it all the time. This is actually like the new crucifix. I lost my last one at a bath house, literally, at a sauna, I lost my crucifix, which is maybe God's way of telling me something. But I got a new one from gld and I've been rocking it non stop. My wife likes it, and it's got, like, a nice weight to it. The details actually look better in person. The clasp is, like, super solid. It doesn't feel like something you bought, like, in Times Square from a random dude. It doesn't feel like something you order from, you know, some sketchy website on teu. And they got everything. Chains, pendants, bracelets, watches. Whether you want something subtle or something that's like, yo, I just. I just signed a deal. You know what I mean? If you want, like, the record deal chain, they got that too. Now, if I haven't convinced you yet, let me sweeten the deal a little bit, all right? For a limited time, the listeners of this program, Camp Gagnon, Religion, Camp History, Camp, and the entire camp universe, you're getting a crazy deal. If you use the code camp C A M P. When you check out, you're gonna get 40% off your entire order@gld.com that's 40% off your whole order with the code camp at checkout@gld.com and after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about gld. Tell them you heard about them from, you know, the good folks here at the campsite Mark and Christo sent you. And whenever you do that, it really helps, you know, support the show. And thank you so much to gld and thank you to you for tuning in. Let's get back to the show. Well, here is the idea at the center of all of it, of the writings of Bahaullah, of the Baha' I faith at large, three unities, the unity of God, the unity of religion, and the unity of humanity. Now, the unity of God is pretty straightforward, right? One divine source behind everything. But it's the second one, the unity of religion, where Baha' I makes its boldest move. Bahaullah taught something called progressive revelation. It goes like this, more or less. This is my understanding. God has never sent just one messenger. He's sent many across history. And the major religions all flow from the same single source, each one delivered through a different messenger, each suited to the people and the era of receiving it. So Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Jesus, the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, goes for the whole episode, just, you know, trying to be respectful. All of this in the Baha' I view, these aren't rival founders canceling each other out, all fighting each other. No, I'm right. No, this person's right. They are successive teachers in the same school, each picking up on the lessons where the last one left off. Now, that's a pretty radical reframe for all the major religions. To a Baha', I, the question which religion is the truest is almost a categorical error. You're looking at one unfolding revelation that humanity has been receiving in different installments. And Bahaullah is simply the most recent installment, the one for the new age, the modern age. And that single idea lets the faith do something that no other religion can really attempt to do. Affirm the founders of all the others as genuine while still claiming a new revelation of its own. And here's where it gets interesting for anyone hearing this for the first time. The social teachings that flow out of this are pretty wild because they sound less like 19th century Persia and more like something pulled out of, you know, like a headline you would read online today. So basically, like, the teachings that come from this would be like, elimination of all prejudice, the equality of men and women, universal education, the pursuit of world peace, the idea that we are all one human family. And all of it is being taught by a Persian nobleman writing from a prison cell. Now, the Baha' I faith went from a single declaration in one Persian city in the 1840s to a religion with followers in basically every country on Earth, and one of the youngest faiths to ever reach that kind of global scale. And a faith this young, this vast and built on a claim this sweeping, it raised a lot of questions. If Baha' I says that all the great religions are true, what kind of life does a religion like that actually ask of you? Like, what is your lifestyle? Do you take communion? Do you pray five times a day? Facing Mecca? Do you meditate? Do you eat pork? Can you not eat pork? What do you do? Well, so far, we've talked about Baha' I as a set of claims. These big, sweeping ideas about God and all the prophets and the unity of basically everything but an idea and a lifestyle is very different. Okay, so you believe in one God, so you're pushed towards one human family. And since, you know, we're all children of the same source, and this is a pretty universal unifying idea, you also have to believe in progressive revelation. And you're pushed towards respecting every other faith, since they'd all just be earlier chapters in your own history. And of course, you have to believe that human beings carry an inherent nobility, which is a core Baha' I teaching. And suddenly things like education and justice and service and refusal to hold prejudice, these things are no longer optional. You have to mandate this for all human beings. And these results become the logical consequence of what you already believe. So what does that actually look like on the ground? Well, just to be clear, Baha' I is firmly monotheistic. One God, transcendent, ultimately beyond human understanding. You're not expected to comprehend the divine. You're just expected to respond to the divine by developing specific spiritual qualities. So again, truthfulness and love and humility and service and justice. And the point of a human life isn't to get things or to collect things. It is to become something. Now, right off the bat, there's one principle here that I personally find really interesting because it really goes against how a lot of, like, religious history has worked. It operates with an independent investigation of truth. You're expected to seek out truth for yourself, not just inherit your belief from your parents or the church you go to or your culture or people that you know. This is a religion whose doctrine tells you not to accept things merely because you inherited them. And that's a pretty bold thing to build into the foundation. And again from there, the social principles just fan out. Now, there is one thing that is particularly distinctive for the Baha' I followers and of the faith. The harmony between science and religion. The insistence that faith and reason, they're not enemies, but they're meant to work together. That you should use, you know, your reason in order to build up your faith, and you should use your faith to build up your reason. And that these two things, because they were both created by God, they work in perfect harmony. They're not at odds with each other. Science and religion are compatible. Now, what does the lived practice really look like? Well, the Baha' I sources are explicit that these two things are not separate. So prayer and meditation, devotional gatherings, an annual fast and holy days throughout the year, all of it alongside a strong emphasis on family, on moral education of kids, and on actively serving the society that you live in. And maybe the most radical part of the whole ethic, the teaching that work itself, done in a spirit of service to others, counts as a form of worship. Think about that. Your job, whatever it is, isn't a distraction from your spiritual life if it's done with the right intention. And it is your spiritual life. There's no wall between the sacred and the ordinary. So if you're sweeping a floor, if you're working at a soup kitchen, if you're an accountant, this can be an act of devotion. And that single idea explains why Baha' I identity comes across not as a creed that you recite, but as an ethic that you live every single day. It says, here's how I move through my life. This is how. I apply this to every moment that I'm awake. And there's another layer that makes it unusual. Baha' I community life is built around careful relationships between three things. The individual, the community, and its institutions. This isn't a religion meant for private belief that's tucked away in your heart. It is deliberately structured to build a unified social order. So just think about the big kind of picture here. One God flows into one human family. Progressive revelation flows into respects for all of the other faiths. Human nobility that all people are inherently born with. Well, that flows into education and service and the rejection of prejudice. Every piece pulls in the same direction. And because of the outflowing of this structure, Baha' I manages to feel really modern. I mean, it's very like pro equality, pro science and faith and harmony, a global moral vision, without ever presenting Itself as a breakaway from the religions. It doesn't say, hey, throw out all that other stuff, here's a new thing. It says, hey, all the religions are on the right track. This is the updated version of all of them. The same divine project made current for the present stage of humanity. And for a lot of people, that is the exact thing that makes it click. It resolves a choice that they thought they were stuck with, right? Do I take a spiritual path? And if I do, which one do I take? Or should I accept a more sophisticated, modern, scientific path? Well, the Baha' I says that all of these things are true, and that's honestly what's so ambitious about it. It's a faith trying to turn the idea of unity into an actual way of life, an actual organized religion in its own right that encompasses everything. You know. Now, if this religion of ordinary people living ordinary lives, well, what does a community like that look like? And if you met up a high person, would you recognize them? Well, probably not. A modern Baha' I follower doesn't look distinct the way that followers of other religions might look. There's no required dress, no visual marker. Baha' I come from every walk of life, every corner of the world. They have regular jobs and raise families and take part in ordinary society. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. 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And on top of that, there are devotional gatherings, so a 19 day fast each March and recurring community events called the 19 Day Feast. That name, that 19 part points to something kind of woven through the whole faith. A huge significance to given to the numbers 9 and 19. Their calendar is actually built out of 19 months of 19 days. The symbol of the faith is a nine pointed star. And the houses of worship for the Baha' I are famously Built with nine sides and nine entrances opening from every direction, it is literally the architectural representation of humanity arriving from all paths towards one center. And that's the meaning of the consistency of the nine for them. But there's also a more distinctive feature of the entire faith. You know, with Catholicism and Islam and Judaism, there are leaders, there's clergy, but in the Baha', I, there's none. There's no priests, no rabbis, no imams, no religious class of any kind standing between the believers and God itself. Bahaullah rejected the necessity of priesthood for this age entirely. So instead, authority flows through elected institutions and a collective decision making process called community consultation. Today, the Baha' I faith has a genuinely global footprint. By their own account, Baha' is live in well over 100,000 localities across, you know, the majority of the world's countries and territories. And its structure is held together in an unusual way. The way that the structure is kind of held up works like this. At the top sits a governing body called the Universal House of Justice. It was established in 1963 and seated in Haifa. Now keep that in mind, because it's going to matter in a second. But the way that those institutions get elected is different than maybe anything I've ever heard. In Baha' I elections, there's no campaigning, there's no nominations, no candidates putting themselves forward or, you know, debates or parties or platforms, nothing like that. Campaigning is actually considered disqualifying. Members just gather together and vote. That's it. A secret ballot for whoever they believe is best suited. Someone can just get elected into office even if they don't want to be there if people voted for them in enough of a turnout. And the faith asks for a real discipline too. So Baha' I are forbidden from drinking alcohol or using recreational drugs, with a heavy emphasis on moral conduct and family and service. That's not like a low commitment identity. I mean, you have to be completely sober now at this point, it's probably like a little abstract. You're like, all right, I understand more or less what they believe. I see kind of how the structure works. I see where it came from and why it was created. But like, who is it? Did you confirm if Rainn Wilson is Baha'? I? Actor and comedian Rainn Wilson is an active and outspoken member of the Baha' I faith. There you go. So he's pretty open about it. And from my memory of just watching him on his podcast, which is great, by the way, I really enjoy his show. I watched him with Alex o'. Connor. It was awesome. He. He speaks pretty candidly about this worldview. And he's honestly a great example of the point of Baha', I, that it isn't some sealed off relic of 19th century Persia. Right. Like it's here right now with a guy that you've probably seen on TV that is just living the lifestyle. But underneath all the approachable, accepting, modern highlights, there's something way more ambitious going on, something that sets Baha' I apart from basically every religion that came before it. Because this faith makes a claim that no other major religion in history has ever been able to pull off. And they call it the covenant. Now here's what that means. You know, how Christianity was, you know, let me say Catholic. And then of course there's a schism and you get orthodox, and then, you know, from the Catholic Church you have a reformation that creates thousands of Protestant branches. And then of course with Islam, it breaks into Sunni and Shia within decades of the Prophet's death. And then, you know, in a way kind of keeps on dividing. Buddhism, Judaism, there's all sorts of different sects that kind of operate in subtly different ways. And it's almost like an iron law of religious history. The founder will die, or perhaps the originator of the ideas. And disagreement then creeps in basically to the people that inherit the faith. And then all of a sudden, who's in charge? Who's going to take over? And what is the message that our founder, our prophet really meant? And then sooner or later the whole thing will just fracture into rival camps with subtly different beliefs, but then spend potentially centuries at war battling each other. Well, the Baha' is claim their religion doesn't do that. That in over a century and a half, through the most fragile schism prone stretch of any faith's life, right after the originator goes away, that's where all the secession problems happen. Baha' I stayed essentially one thing. No major denominations, no grand schism, no rival Baha' I churches. Well, how does that happen? Well, the reason it happens in so many other faiths is based on what I just said. You know, the founder or the prophet of a religion dies and then the fighting starts immediately, often because there's disagreement about who inherits that authority. But Bahaullah in writing, named his successor, his son Abdul Baha, as the authorized interpreter of his teachings. And Abdul Baha named what came after him in a documented chain that runs all the way down to those modern institutions, including the Universal House of Justice in Haifa. Remember I told you to remember that this is why the line of authority was never left to guesswork. Now to be fair, it wasn't perfectly seamless. There have been small breakaway attempts over the years, individuals who contested the secession, but they never actually went anywhere. So whether or not you buy the theological explanation, it's a historical fact that Baha' I never fractured into the massive, enduring rival branches that almost every other older religion has had to deal with, or at least not yet. So for a faith this globally spread, that kind of unity is pretty impressive. But the covenant is just one piece of what makes Baha', I, I guess, so spreadable, because the faith isn't a religion that preaches be nice to each other and leave it there. It has this astonishingly explicit blueprint for how the entire planet should be organized. It lays out a future global commonwealth, a form of world religion government, in a way, with a system of collective security in order to prevent war. It calls for the nations of the world to choose a single universal auxiliary language, taught in every school alongside the mother language of that country. And this is done so that humanity can actually communicate across every border. This is a religion that has a built in foreign policy, a vision of world order detailed so thoroughly that it reads less like scripture and more like a constitution for a human race. And yet it's not claiming an endless parade of new prophets to get us there. Baha' is believe that there won't be another manifestation of God or another messenger for at least a thousand years after Bahaullah. So progressive revelation isn't a constant stream. It's widely spaced chapters, and we're near the start of a very long one. Even their view of the afterlife kind of leans the same way. They believe the soul continues after death. But heaven and hell aren't physical places that you're basically shipped off to for eternity. They are just symbolic states, either nearness to God or distance from God. And then of course, there's the money, the way they fund their organization. There's actually a practice called hukukula. This is the right of God. It's a contribution of 19%. Remember that 19. 19% on whatever wealth a believer has beyond their essential needs. But here's the reframe that is interesting here. It's not a tax or a collection plate. It's understood as an act of spiritual purification, a way of cleansing your wealth and attaching yourself to something higher than just collecting money. And there's a hard boundary around it. Only Baha' is are permitted to contribute to Baha' I funds at all outsiders. Money is politely refused. The community quite literally pays for itself. So you pull it all together. And a very particular portrait emerges. It's not the vague feel good spirituality that you might see from, like a New age guru. This is a systematic way of living and a devotion to human unity. You'd think a religion like this that's committed to bringing people together would be respected. You know, they're pretty chill. You think people would leave them alone, but in some places on Earth, they've been sought out and hunted and destroyed. I mean, why? Why would a religion preaching peace and unity provoke so much ire and hatred? Well, as you can imagine, the answer takes us into a very dark chapter of this whole history. At the core, the conflict with the Baha' I, and, you know, every other religion, comes down to authority, revelation, and finality. Who gets to say when God has spoken and whether God is allowed to speak again. Because remember what Baha' I actually claim. It doesn't say that all religions are nice and we should get along. It says something way braver, that the founders of the major world religions are all genuine messengers of the same God, and that Bahaullah was a newer one for the present age. Here's the cleanest way to understand it. Baha' I doesn't merely, you know, coexist beside the older religions. It explains them and contextualizes them all one tapestry. It folds each of them into a single Baha' I map of history with itself as the most recent chapter. And being explained by someone else's religion is something that a lot of faiths don't like. And so we can walk through. Why? Because the reaction isn't the same everywhere. Now, I think it would be unfair to say that every religion hates Baha'. I. They don't. The pushback is uneven and really depends on where the pressure points are in each different tradition. So Islam is where the collision is the most severe. And it's worth understanding why mainstream Islam holds that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the seal of the prophets, meaning that the Prophet Muhammad is the final Prophet after whom no new Prophet and no new revelation will come. That is a foundational doctrine not only in Shia Islam, but in Sunni Islam as well. Now, by understanding Baha' I so far, you can see how that doesn't really fit. Because by recognizing the Bab and Bahaullah as messengers who came after the Prophet Muhammad, Baha' I runs directly into that wall of finality. So to much of the Islamic clergy, this is apostasy. This is literally abandoning Islam itself. Like, you're not saying, like, oh, the Prophet is good too. You're claiming that Islam is A false religion. And that is what makes it so charged. Baha' I was born inside the Islamic world out of Shia Persia. So from that vantage point, it didn't look like a foreign religion across the border. It was a betrayal from within. So as a result, there's going to be some conflict. Now, Christianity has, you know, in comparison, a more gentle but a very real friction, because Christians actually find a lot to admire in the Baha'. I. Right. This emphasis on unity and peace and service, all those ethics really resonate. But again, there's a sticking point. Traditional Christianity centers salvation and revelation uniquely in Jesus Christ. The idea that another prophet, founder could come after Christ and carry the story forward kind of, you know, away from mainstream Christianity. Well, you know, that is a very real tension. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily turn violent, but it's still deeply theological. And then, of course, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the friction shifts again, but it's more subtle now. It's usually not about the final prophet language. Like, you know, with Judaism, the question is whether Baha' I is genuinely honoring Jewish revelation or just sort of absorbing it. You know, relocating the particular story of Jewish people into a much broader universal narrative that doesn't really focus so much on the chosen people, but focuses on all people, and it's not really a Jewish story anymore. Now with Hinduism and Buddhism, Baha' I explicitly includes figures like Krishna and Buddha among the divine messengers that it recognizes. So, you know, that inclusion, you can imagine, would be well accepted. Well, to Baha', is, it's an act of profound respect, but to some within other traditions, it feels like flattening, like you're taking faiths that understand themselves in radically different terms, and then you're pushing it all into one sort of amorphous shape of, you know, religious forced diversity. So here's the paradox at the heart of it. Baha' I is one of the most inclusive religions on the planet. Introducing Taco Bell's new Jalapeno citrus Salsa. With bright citrus, real red jalapenos, guajillo chiles. Usually you add sauce to the food, but when the sauce is this good, the food is just there to get the sauce to your mouth. That rolled quesadilla. Not a rolled quesadilla anymore. Now it's a sauce shovel. Taco Bell's jalapeno citrus salsa. Get it with any item on the Cantina chicken menu while it's here. The participating US Taco Bell locations, for a limited time only, while supplies last contact store for availability. I mean, technically speaking, if you're outside of all these religions, you're probably like, yeah, I mean, look how open minded these guys are. But that very inclusiveness is exactly what makes it controversial. The thing it offers as an embrace, you know, like, hey, you guys are all telling the same truth. It feels like a quiet takeover. And now it might feel like to them, hey, I'm going to tell you what your truth actually means, because you don't even understand it. Now, the Baha' I obviously wouldn't claim this, but I think to many people that exist outside of the faith and in their own traditions, that's sometimes what it feels like. Baha' I sees itself as a bridge between all the world's faiths. But many believers in those faiths look at that bridge and they see an outsider trying to redraw the map of their religion without their permission. And so for most people, that disagreement is right there. It's theological and it is intense and it's a matter of debate. But in one place, the very place where Baha' I was born, that disagreement was never abstract. It was a threat that needed to be eliminated. And that takes us right to the dark part of the story. Persecution for the Baha' I isn't new. It's woven into the religious story from, you know, the very beginning, right? Like the Bob, he's executed by a firing squad in 1850. His death wasn't the end of the violence, though. It was actually kind of the beginning. Now, the modern chapter that defines this new era of Baha' I is 1979, the Iranian Revolution, the year that the country became an Islamic Republic. After 1979, persecuting Baha' is wasn't just tolerated, it was kind of official. Iran's constitution recognizes certain religious minorities, but the Baha' I were deliberately left off the list, making them the country's largest unrecognized religious minority. That's roughly 300,000 people with no legal protection to their faith at all. And the machinery of the state turned on them. And I want to be clear here, because these aren't like vague accusations. It's documented by independent human rights organizations. According to the Iranian Human Rights Documentation center, since the founding of the Islamic Republic, 202 Baha' IS have been executed, killed, or forcibly disappeared. And at one point in 1986, nearly 750 were held in Iranian prisons at once. Now, one detail that really exposes all this, those prisoners weren't charged under any actual penal code. They were held on these sort of like vague offenses, like, kind of like trumped up charges, because the real offense was Just being Baha'. I. Now, one of the starkest examples happens in December of 1981. The entire elected National Leadership Council was arrested. And about two weeks later they were executed. But the crazy thing, when the leadership was wiped out, the community elected a new one. And then much of that group was killed too. The state wasn't just punishing individuals, it was trying to just end the religion altogether. In 2024, the Human Rights Watch released a major report. Its title was taken from how one victim described their experience. It's called the Boot on My Neck. And the conclusion is unfortunately, pretty sobering. Iran's decades long systematic repression of Baha' is amounts to a crime against humanity. Now what does that look like today? Baha' Is are barred from university, they're denied higher education outright for their faith. They're pushed out of jobs. At least 15,000 of them have lost their livelihoods, their property can be confiscated. They're denied like basic burial rights for their dead. I mean, the list goes on, but the important part is that through all of this, the executions, the imprisonments, confiscations, all of that, the Baha' I response has been nonviolent. No armed uprising, no campaign of revelation. The Baha' Is of Iran have met persecution with patience, with appeals to law and to conscience, and with a stubborn insistence on just continuing to exist. When they were borrowed from university, they built their own underground university. And when authorities raided it, they rebuilt it again. And that brings us back to this terrible irony, that we're kind of like circling around a faith whose single deepest principle is the oneness of humanity. A faith without a religious hierarchy, an explicit doctrine of peace and nonviolence, a vision of one unified human family. It has been met with relentless persecution. Now what I think sticks out the most in this story of the Baha' I is that every major religion has some version of division, right? Like we are us and they are them. We look this way and they look that way. We're saved and those people are lost. That line is what religions have used for, unfortunately, prejudice and wars and discrimination for hundreds, thousands of years. And then someone tried to erase it, to say there is no outside. Every prophet is your prophet too. Every stranger that looks different than you, they're actually a part of your family. It might be the most generous idea that any formal religion has ever tried to have. And of course, the world just answered it with more violence. We tell ourselves that hatred comes from division, from difference, but Baha', I, it breaks that story. Here's a faith offering the opposite of division, and it was still met with some of the most brutal cruelty of the modern age. Many worldviews require these bridges be burned in order for them to survive. So maybe what we're really afraid of isn't the stranger who looks different from us. Maybe it's the person who looks at us in the eye and says, hey, we're actually all the same. I'm you and you are me, and we're all humans in this together. There are people sitting in a cell right now for believing that exact thing. And I don't know, maybe they're naive. Maybe they see something that the majority of people are too afraid to look at because it'll dismantle the way that they were brought up or the world they live in. And people would often rather live with structure and familiarity than try to break it. And that might be just a part of this bigger story. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief synopsis of the life, the origins of, and the theology, if you will, of the Baha' I faith. I mean, it's interesting. It reminds me in many ways of Sikhism, of Sikhi. How so? Like, if you think of, like, Guru Nanak Dev ji, he comes together and says, hey, there is no Muslim. There is no Hindu. There's only one. It is a worldview or a philosophy that is predicated on oneness, on this belief that we are one human family, that there is one God, and that we are basically in service of other people. And that undergirding all of this is oneness, that you and I are the same, that you and I, the person watching this or listening to this right now, that you and I are the same. We are all connected to the same consciousness. And, you know, the ego that we have, that is our, you know, observer effect, us just sort of experiencing and kind of reflecting on consciousness as it's happening. But really, there is no you and I. We're all connected. That is more or less the undergirding principles of Sikhism, as I understand it. And Baha' I is kind of doing something similar. But it feels like Sikhism came out of a time, specifically in Punjab, around, like, the 1500s, I believe that basically is contesting with a Hindu and Muslim kind of schism, Whereas Baha' I is kind of doing that with every worldview, saying, Krishna, Prophet, Muhammad, Jesus Christ, they're all a part of the same story. And it kind of ties a lot of stuff together in that way. It feels like Sikhism, like, on steroids, perhaps, but I don't know. I mean, that's just I'm not Sikh. I'm also not Baha', I, so I can't speak with authority on that. But that's just kind of my initial feeling. My thought, though, with a lot of this stuff, one I get a little scared of, like, universal kind of like governance, you know, Like, I love the idea of everyone speaking the same language so we can, like, cross borders and talk to each other. That's awesome. Love that. I do get a little concerned with, like, I guess, the technicalities of how this stuff works. Like the moral gray areas, right, like euthanasia, not like kids in China. I'm talking, like, the ability to, like, take your own life when you're old or, like, have a terminal illness. Is that moral or not? And I'm curious how, like, the Baha' I faith answers that question or things of like, terminating a pregnancy, a very difficult, challenging topic. And different faiths have kind of, like, their worldview for answering that kind of a question. But how does Baha' I answer a question like that? Perhaps these answers exist and I just haven't dug into them. But these are the things that kind of initially maybe trip me up, but the underlying principles I love. I'm like, for me, even if I don't believe that every religion is inherently true or capital T true, or if all religions aren't all a part of the same one singular story of spiritual development, that I can operate as if that it is that you, as a Greek Orthodox and my friends that are Muslim and my friends that are Jewish, my friends that are Hindu, I can respect their faith and admire them for their faith and appreciate their relationship with the divine without necessarily having to believe the theological, like, touch points, you know, and that, I think operating as if that is the case probably leads to a more peaceful worldview than the opposite. But again, I don't. I don't know. I'm. This is just kind of like my initial understanding. What do you have? Under the Baha' I faith, euthanasia and assisted unaliving are not permitted because human life is considered sacred and birth control is generally permitted within marriage, and couples may decide responsibly how many children to have. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I guess, yeah, if you're going with that principle, like, human life is sacred. That's interesting. Yeah. I forget the term that we were just talking about the. That, like, foundational core, like, human beings are valuable and. Because human beings are valuable and they have an inherent worth, you need to have education, universal healthcare, all that stuff. Love it. Big fan. That's awesome. They're also big on equality with men and women, which is probably why they wanted. Someone wanted them take them out. That might have something to do with it, I'm sure. I mean, again, like, if you come from a worldview that you're like, no, these things are not equal, then yeah, of course that's going to be an affront to it. Also world peace and the idea that science and religion should work together. I'm a big fan of all this. I love all this stuff. I'm. I'm not in contest with that. And you're letting me keep Jesus Christ. I love Jesus. Let's go convert. All right, all right, Come on. We're getting crazy here, but I am curious. I would love to talk with a Baha', I, perhaps Rainn Wilson himself. That'd be great. I think it'd be awesome. He was on. Someone was on his pod that we just had in here. I just don't know if we dropped the pod yet, so. Well, you can say it. Douglas Rushkoff. Oh, really? Yep. Oh, no way. That's awesome. Good for him. Oh, that's great. Well, anyway, what do you guys think? Are you Baha'? I? Which also, let me just say for the record, I didn't grow up Baha'. I, so if I missed anything about this, I apologize. Really trying to do this in good faith, which is another good name for the show. If I were to rename it, I call it In Good Faith. It's pretty clever. Baha' I camp. All right, all right, come on. I mean, dude, you're like, you're fully converted. I mean, we talk about it for one episode and you're like, dude, get me on there. I really like the office. Okay, that's a good reason. Now, if there's anything I missed, please drop a comment, let me know. I apologize in advance if I did miss anything. If there's anything you learned, I would love to know what that is, please. YouTube, Spotify. I read all the comments. I love reading your guys feedback and I'm gonna get in the comments and respond more. I'm sorry, I've just been really busy. But anyway, God bless you all. Thank you so much for tuning in on another Sunday to learn more about the religions and philosophies of the world. If you're interested in history, great news, we have History Camp. If you're interested in crazy deep dives on mysteries and the unexplained, the occult, conspiracy theories galore, well, that is where Camp Gagnon will take you. And if you just like to rock with the religious vibe. Well, hey, great news. We drop these every single Sunday, so make sure you subscribe. Subscribe so you don't miss a future episode. God bless. Have an amazing day and I'll see you next time. Peace. This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google Account, Google Health App, Internet, and Google Health Premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini Apps Check responses for accuracy.