Tag Archives Baha’i History

‘Stories From the Dawn-Breakers’ by William Sears Is Available Again

Books, Resources Leave a comment

I grew up listening to William Sears read some of the stories from The Dawn-Breakers for children and I am delighted that I can now share that same recording with my own kids. Zoe Meyer originally wrote Stories from the Dawn-Breakers and William Sears’ reading of it is warm, captivating and charming — which makes it a fantastic resource for children and junior youth.

Restored and remastered in honor of the upcoming bicentenary of the Birth of the Bab, the the four disc set is now available for purchase.

If you’d like to read more about The Dawn-Breakers, we shared an article that introduces that priceless historical text here on Baha’i Blog.  Continue reading →

Louis Venters’s Book About the History of the Baha’i Faith in South Carolina

Books, Interviews 1 Comment

Louis Venters is a historian and historic preservationist with a particular interest in the histories of race, religion, and social change in the United States. He has just released a new book titled A History of the Baha’i Faith in South Carolina and it features some incredible photographs.

I first met Louis in West Africa when I was a junior youth — many more years ago than I’d care to admit! My family was pioneering in Benin and he was completing a year of service in Togo and Benin. I learned some valuable lessons from Louis about speaking truthfully, lovingly and at times courageously, about being a Baha’i. I feel really honoured that our paths have crossed again, and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from his experiences once more. Here’s what he shared about his new book:

Baha’i Blog: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I was born and raised in South Carolina, and I became a Baha’i in the late 1980s when I was a junior youth. In fact I first heard about the Faith on Radio Baha’i WLGI, the station that broadcasts from the Louis G. Gregory Baha’i Institute, so in that sense I’m a product of the large-scale growth that made South Carolina such an important part of the American Baha’i community in the 1970s and 1980s. I teach African and African diaspora history, U.S. history, and public history at Francis Marion University, a small public institution in Florence, South Carolina. I also do some public history work, especially through Preservation South Carolina and the state’s African American Heritage Commission. One of the public history projects I’m proudest of is the Green Book of South Carolina, a new mobile travel guide to African American heritage sites across the state. When I’m not being a historian, more often than not it’s my wife and me trying to keep up with our two little boys and serve in our cluster. Otherwise, I’m either at the gym lifting weights or outside running or working in our garden.

Continue reading →

Who Were the Letters of the Living?

History, Tribute 4 Comments

The Letters of the Living is the title given by the Bab to His first 18 followers. The Bab was a merchant from Shiraz, Persia. His name was Siyyid Ali-Muhammad Shirazi, but He is known to the world as the Bab, which means “the Gate” in Arabic, and Baha’is believe that He was the symbolic gate between past ages of prophecy and a new age of fulfilment for humanity. When the Bab was 25, He proclaimed to be both a new Prophet, and the herald to “Him Whom God Shall Make Manifest”, Baha’u’llah. Continue reading →

An Introduction to ‘The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil’s Narrative’

Books, History 1 Comment

Many Baha’is have a copy of The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Baha’i Revelation on their bookshelf. What is this book, and what is its purpose? Why is it important to Baha’is? Who was Nabil? When did he write his narrative, and when was it translated into English? This article provides basic answers to these questions, drawing primarily from Shoghi Effendi’s introduction to the English translation.  Continue reading →

A Seed in Your Heart: A New Book About Louise Mathew Gregory

Books, Interviews 3 Comments

A Seed in Your Heart is a new biography of the life of Louise Mathew Gregory. You may have heard of her before: she married Louis Gregory at Abdu’l-Baha’s suggestion, resulting in the first inter-racial Baha’i marriage of its kind. Janet Fleming Rose is its author and I was very interested to hear more about her book, and to learn a little about Louise Gregory and her stellar accomplishments and services to the Baha’i Faith. Here’s my conversation with Janet. I hope you find it as enlightening as I did!

Baha’i Blog: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I was born in Surrey in the south of England, but have lived in various parts of the world: Scotland, Fiji, Maldives, Spain and more recently Israel where I had the privilege of serving for six years at the Baha’i World Centre as Acquisitions Librarian.

I’ve always had a love of books and the ambition to have a book published. I studied modern languages at the University of Edinburgh and trained as a professional librarian. My hobbies and interests include travelling the world, a love of history, a passion for wild flowers, birding, rambling, learning other languages, an interest in other cultures and singing along to Classic FM radio.

For the last 12 years I’ve lived with my husband, Andrew, in St Albans, an ancient Roman city and burial place of the first English Christian martyr, St Alban.

Continue reading →

A Tribute to William Sears, Hand of the Cause

Tribute 12 Comments

Hand of the Cause of God William Sears (1911-1992). Photo courtesy of the Baha'i International Community.

When setting out to write this article, I felt overwhelmed: William Sears accomplished so much in his 80 years. How to distill decades of service, achievements, and adventures into a short article? Here I’ve only captured the outlines of a man who seized every opportunity to serve—who once said, “I need only to remember one thing: nothing must come between me and my responsibilities to God and to my fellow man. Glory is not his who loves his country, his family, or himself alone. Glory is his who loves his kind. This, I believe, has helped me to look upon each dawn as a new adventure.”

A spiritual light burned in Sears practically from his birth on March 28, 1911. Starting in 1912, at 18 months old, he had dreams about a Holy Man—dreams which, he later discovered, began when that Holy Man, Abdu’l-Baha, visited Minnesota, where Sears grew up. Raised in the Catholic Church, Sears was full of questions about religion, and was supported in his investigations by his grandfather. His father, however, was bewildered as the boy voraciously studied the Bible and proclaimed, “Someday I’m going to go all over the world and tell people about God.” Continue reading →

When the West Comes to the East: Laura Barney’s Lessons from Persia

History 3 Comments

Laura Dreyfus-Barney (30 November, 1879 - 18 August, 1974). This portrait of Laura was done by her mother, Alice, and is courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

May 16, 1909, New York City: a group has gathered to hear Laura Clifford Barney speak. Her name is familiar to the audience from Some Answered Questions, which was published last year. This book brought Abdu’l-Baha’s commentary on subjects ranging from the New Testament to criminal justice to the newborn Baha’i community in the United States. Barney, the book’s compiler and translator, has spent most of the past decade far from this, her homeland, living in Paris and Akka. But now she has returned to visit—and to share what she has learned from her sojourns with Baha’is in the Middle East. One audience member has a pen poised above a stack of lined paper, ready to transcribe Barney’s words. Thanks to this anonymous scribe, we have a record of Barney’s comments that day, divided into two talks: the first, on her journey to Persia, and the second, on her observations of Abdu’l-Baha.

Barney had a long, productive life, which you can learn about in this Baha’i Blog article on her relationship with Hippolyte Dreyfus, whom she married in 1911. I’ll focus on her efforts as a young woman to build a bridge between continents.  Continue reading →

The Journey West Podcast: Exploring Abdu’l-Baha’s Travels to the West

History, Resources Leave a comment

The Journey West podcast is an audio initiative which explores and celebrates the centenary of Abdu’l-Baha’s travels to Egypt, Europe and North America in 1911-1913. Each episode features a reading of one of Abdu’l-Baha’s talks, as well as dramatized stories and historical accounts. You can also hear discussions of the talk that was featured, and some personal thoughts on how the ideas discussed in the talk are applicable today.  Continue reading →

Seeking a State of Heaven: A Book About the German Templers by Carolyn Sparey Fox

Books, Interviews 2 Comments

Carolyn Sparey Fox’s newest book is titled Seeking a State of Heaven and it tells the story of the German Templers who settled at the foot of Mount Carmel beneath the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa, Israel.

Their avenue of homes has become an iconic landmark of Haifa and for Baha’is they have become symbolic of those who are searching and yearning to hear about Baha’u’llah’s teachings of unity, equality and oneness. To be honest, that’s the extent of my knowledge of the German Templers so my curiosity was definitely piqued when I learned that a book about them has been written.

It was great to catch up with Carolyn Sparey Fox, who I had interviewed before, about her latest book. Here’s what she shared with me:

 Baha’i Blog: What was the inspiration for putting this book together?

Since writing my first book, The Half of it was Never Told, many Baha’is have spoken to me about the German Templers, wrongly believing that they settled at the foot of Mount Carmel because they believed that the return of Christ was about to take place there. I knew that this wasn’t entirely correct, but I didn’t really have the answer, so I started doing some research — it turns out that the Templers initially called themselves “Friends of Jerusalem” and Jerusalem was actually the focus, the goal of the German Templers’ spiritual journey, not Haifa. Initially my plan was to come up with a few sentences, but as I read more and more my sentences became paragraphs, my paragraphs became chapters, and before I knew it I was launched into writing a book, which describes all about how the Templers ended up in Haifa, instead of Jerusalem.

I was also fascinated by the connection between the German Templers in Haifa and the Baha’is living in Akka, and latterly Haifa. Abdu’l-Baha knew several of the Templers personally of course, and Baha’u’llah actually wrote a Tablet to David Hardegg, one of the two men who were behind the creation of the Templers.

Continue reading →

Remembering Enoch Olinga

Tribute 9 Comments

Hand of the Cause of God Enoch Olinga (24 June 1926 - 16 September 1979). Photo courtesy of the Baha'i International Community.

There are three memories that have stayed most profoundly in my heart from my visit to Uganda. The first is the richness of the deep-red soil – much of which I carried home with me on my clothes and shoes! The second is the humble, yet awe-inspiring House of Worship that sits with quiet majesty on Kikuya Hill. When you stand within the Temple, and look up, you are greeted with a luminous turquoise-sky ceiling, at the heart of which sits the Greatest Name. The third, and perhaps most poignant, memory, however, was my opportunity to visit the resting place of Enoch Olinga – Knight of Baha’u’llah, Father of Victories, and Hand of the Cause of God.

The following are the opening words of the cablegram sent to the Baha’i World from the Universal House of Justice on the untimely death of Enoch Olinga:

WITH GRIEF-STRICKEN HEARTS ANNOUNCE TRAGIC NEWS BRUTAL MURDER DEARLY LOVED GREATLY ADMIRED HAND CAUSE GOD ENOCH OLINGA…

When tragedy imprints itself on any story, it often becomes very difficult to remember anything else. But, although tragedy did indeed mark the lives of Olinga and his family, his was also a tale of joy, triumph and ultimate victory. In the same cablegram, the House of Justice honours and immortalises, as an imperishable memory,

HIS RADIANT SPIRIT, HIS UNWAVERING FAITH, HIS ALL-EMBRACING LOVE, HIS LEONINE AUDACITY IN THE TEACHING FIELD, HIS TITLES KNIGHT BAHA’U’LLAH FATHER VICTORIES CONFERRED BELOVED GUARDIAN, ALL COMBINE DISTINGUISH HIM AS PRE-EMINENT MEMBER HIS RACE IN ANNALS FAITH AFRICAN CONTINENT.

Indeed, one friend described Olinga as “sunshine bursting through the clouds.” Despite the tests that Olinga himself faced throughout his life, he was known to often greet others with the words, “Are you happy?” Ruhiyyih Khanum recounted one of his most endearing qualities was his “great joyous, consuming and contagious laugh.”  Continue reading →