This panel pulls together sociologists and historians in order to collectively examine the trajectory of American Bahá'í discourse, activities, debate, and varied responses to the question of racial unity and its related topics of inequality, racism, identity, segregation, and reparations. In drawing from social scientific, historical, and Bahá'í scriptural sources, these three papers examine the past, present, and future. The first paper examines past (1908-1934) American Bahá'í periodical discourse on race, with special attention to Blackness. The second paper analyzes modern (1991-2021) Bahá'í discourse on race unity and findings from a survey of American Bahá’í communities over an overlapping twenty-year period. The third paper looks into the future to explore the current state of race-based reparations and religion to advance a Baha'i conceptualization of what a future reparative (and indeed transformative) model of justice would resemble.
This paper examines the early American Bahá'í periodical discourse on race, with particular attention to Black, African American or “Negro” peoples. To empirically ground this research, I examine the original three American Bahá'í periodicals: Bahai Bulletin (1908-1909), Star of the West (1910-1934), and World Unity Magazine (1927-1934). These periodicals’ discussion of race—as well as content by and about African Americans—was complex and contradictory. With temporal overlap with Jim Crow, the Great Migration, New Negro Movement, and Harlem Renaissance, as well as the fact that many early African American Bahá'í converts retained relationships with the “Black Church”, this manuscript promises to engage an understudied aspect of African American religious practice, discourse, and multiple religious belongings.
This paper will highlight direction from the Universal House of Justice and National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States to the American Bahá’í community over the past 30 years that refocuses Bahá’í efforts on racial unity. This attention to race unity is in tandem with efforts to encourage expansion efforts, create social change and engage in infusing Bahá’í principles into social debates on the problems facing humanity. This paper will also present findings from the national FACT research project which has surveyed American Bahá’í communities over a twenty-year period. Survey results show that spiritually-engaged Bahá’í communities have not only increased their community-building efforts (through the multiplication of Bahá’í “core activities”), but also expanded efforts to transform society by promoting activities that foster racial unity.
With demands for reparations circulating throughout the American (and indeed global) political sphere, religious organizations of various inclinations have been forced to (re)render the history of modernity in theological terms. For many this has involved an extension of existing principles of redemption, love, and justice to the current discourse surrounding reparations. For others this has meant a deep dive into their faith tradition for historical and scriptural touchstones to make reparations legible. As some religious bodies have been proactively leading the way in reparations conversations, others find themselves reluctantly called to account for their own institutional histories. Within this complex landscape, developing a shared ecumenical theology of reparations capable of informing the secular conversations already taking place appears as an urgent need. This paper will explore the current state of reparations and religion before advancing a Baha'i conceptualization of reparative (and indeed transformative) justice.