Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) — As Christmas season went into full swing this year, Glen Fullmer’s 7-year-old son came home from school with an assignment: Make a poster illustrating his family holiday traditions.

The boy wasn’t sure how to proceed because he and his family are Baha’is, not Christians, and they have no holidays during the Christmas season.

Thus, Fullmer encountered the “December Dilemma” — the term used for the quandaries and anxieties non-Christians and interfaith couples face during Christmas season.

Fullmer, a Baha’i faith spokesman who lives in Evanston, Illinois, said he saw the poster assignment as a “teachable moment” for his 4-, 7- and 10-year-old sons who associated holiday traditions with Christmas.

He reminded his boys that Baha’is have a gift-giving and charity period in February called Ayyam-i-Ha, a stretch of time not unlike the Christmas season.

And he helped his son design the poster about that holiday, which precedes a fasting period and then the Baha’i New Year in March.

“His classmates asked him questions about the holiday, and one of his friends came up to him and wants to celebrate that holiday,” Fullmer said, pleased that his son’s peers helped him reaffirm his identity.

Navigating the Christmas season can be a challenge for the millions of people who don’t celebrate the holiday. Many acknowledge and sometime embrace the season’s customs, such as gift-giving and sending out greeting cards, while at the same time they are conscious of maintaining their own religious identities.

The emotional impact of Midnight Mass

I was brought up an Anglican. As a young teen, I used to love going with my parents to Midnight Mass in one of our nearby country parish churches or to the parish church in Cirencester, where there’d be candles, processions, a choir singing carols that soared into the dimly lit vault above us, and the mystery of sung Eucharist.

The emotional impact of the ritual and the music has stayed with me, even though I’ve been a Baha’i for more than 40 years.

Raising children and the “feel” of counter-cultural calendars

My wife and I brought our three children up as Baha’is and – of course – celebrated Ayyam-i-Ha and the Baha’i holy days with them. Baha’i community life has its own calendar, its own rhythm and pattern. We wanted that to become as much part of their identity as Christmas and Hannukah and Eid and Divali are for Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus.

But the challenge is this: the Baha’i community is relatively small and is embedded in a culture that has turned Christmas into a consumer-fest that tries to indoctrinate all of us into the spend, spend, spend that drives the consumerist machine. How does a small community establish a deep-rooted “feel” of the pattern of its own sacred year in its children, without at the same time making them feel like outcasts from the mainstream?

And be sure that calendars are as much a matter of the “feel” of their rhythm as they are of calculation.

My Iranian Baha’i friends, whose families have been Baha’is for generations, have that “feel” embedded in their hearts and souls as they celebrate the Ayyam-i-Ha and commemorate the solemn anniversaries of the Martyrdom of the Bab and the Ascension of Baha’u'llah.

This year Jacob, our rising-four-year-old-grandson who lives with us took part for the first time in his nursery’s nativity play (as a cow!) He, too, inevitably begins to be immersed in the excitement of the season and the expectation of presents.

Now, Jacob loves going to the Nineteen Day Feast and other Baha’i gatherings; he loves to recite one or other of the Baha’i prayers he’s learned by heart. Our challenge is to educate him – as Glen Fullmer is doing with his sons – to understand, to embrace the spiritual and social significance of the rhythm and pattern of Baha’i community life.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Christmas, Christianity, religion, calendars, festivals, holy days

Questions raised over C of E report on church schools and community cohesion

By staff writers

27 Nov 2009

A report commissioned by the Church of England claims that faith schools are better at building relationships with their local communities than non-religious schools.

But critics say that the report does not demonstrate this, and instead gives church schools credit for the extra work they have to do as a result of their religiously restrictive admissions policies.

The study by Professor David Jesson at York University, analysed ratings given to 700 primary schools and 400 secondary schools by Ofsted inspectors for promoting community cohesion.

The researchers gave schools a score of one if they were rated “outstanding”, through to four if they were given an “inadequate” judgment. The findings showed both faith primary schools and non-religious primaries scored an average of 2.2 overall. But at secondary level, the faith schools scored an average of 1.86, compared to 2.31 for non-religious secondaries.

Of the 74 secondary faith schools surveyed, almost a third (32 per cent) were rated “outstanding” at community relations, while around one in seven (14 per cent) of the 271 non-religious secondaries were given the same grade.

The report assesses the meeting of the legal duty that all maintained schools in England now have to promote community cohesion. This duty was introduced by the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and came into effect on 1 September 2007. Schools’ compliance with the duty is inspected by Ofsted.

Professor Jenson and the Church of England are claiming their survey as “clear evidence” that faith schools are awarded “substantially higher” grades for community cohesion than other schools.

However, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of the Accord Coalition, which campaigns for inclusive education and community schooling, warned that the Ofted criteria for cohesion are not robust enough.

Church of England schools are only satisfying a benchmark that fails to consider admissions policies or the religious curriculum of faith schools, he pointed out this morning.

“Building community cohesion is vitally important and we congratulate all those schools that have been working hard to meet the duty’, Dr Romain declared.

“But the most pressing issue is whether the criteria used by Ofsted are sufficient.”

While school linking projects and classroom discussions of diversity are commendable, inspectors should also consider the impact of discriminatory admissions and the limited teaching of RE on cohesion, Romain added.

“Meetings with other groups have little merit if the children move in closeted circles most of the time and do not receive a broad education in class,” he said.

Duty to promote community cohesion

All “maintained” (government-funded) schools in England have a legal duty to promote community cohesion.

Professor David Jesson’s Church of England commissioned report claims that faith schools (notably, one supposes, Church of England schools) do a better job of this than state schools.

However, the Accord Coalition and the British Humanist Association counter that faith schools whose admissions policies discriminate in favour of their own faith members actually have more to do to promote community cohesion than do state community schools, where children from diverse religions or non-religious belief groups are educated together.

Religious segregation & social isolation

Independent research shows that religious segregation in schools tends to reinforce the social isolation of different sections of the population and the living of “parallel lives” referred to by Ted Cantle referred in his 2001 report following inter-communal disturbances in cities in the north of England.

What about open faith schools?

What this doesn’t address, though, is the question of faith-based schools that are open to children of any faith or none. How good would such schools (if they exist) be at promoting community cohesion?

Actually, can we set the term “community cohesion” aside for a moment? It’s too bureaucratic for my taste. Instead I’m thinking in terms of human oneness and solidarity. I’m thinking about how people embrace and live by the knowledge that all human beings are part of a single family and that each of us is responsible for the welfare of all.

Nurturing the lived experience of solidarity

It isn’t enough for this to be theoretical knowledge or a good thing “in principle”. It has to be real lived experience.

Yes, we need the foundation of the principle of oneness (sometimes referred to as “unity in diversity”), but there is no substitute for the day-to-day experience of living with people of different faiths and cultures.

And that suggests that schools that include children from different backgrounds are likely to be better at promoting human solidarity – oh, all right, community cohesion, if you insist.

But only if they have a culture that strongly nurtures integration – aka fellowship – between children of different faiths and cultures.

Technorati Tags: community cohesion, faith schools, parallel lives, human solidarity

From The Times

November 26, 2009

Violence: let’s separate the men from the boys

Posters, T-shirts and education campaigns won’t do. Only robust child protection will break the cycle for boys – and girls

Camila Batmanghelidjh

It is wonderful to hear that the Government is launching an “ambitious strategy aiming to bring an end to violence against women and girls”. The agencies that championed this should be congratulated. It is the result of the most effective campaign spearheaded by the End Violence Against Women Coalition, as well as years of work done by refuges working with vulnerable women and children.

We are told that the strategy will make available £13 million to support victims of sexual and domestic violence; there will be a national communications strategy to educate children and the general public to understand that violence against women is abhorrent. In addition, there will be helplines supporting those who are being stalked and those who have experienced sexual violence. Domestic violence protection orders or “go orders” will be put in place to allow victims to stay in their homes and make perpetrators leave so that long-term plans for protection can be made. The NHS will also be asked to examine its role in responding to female victims of violence.

As I was reading through the announcement, I had a sense of joy but also of regret. I am happy for women but sad for boys and men. They too experience so much violence, but no one seems to be rising up to protect them. There is a risk that the analysis of violence stays embedded in simplistic narratives.

The perpetrator is often thought to be the male and the victim the female. Undoubtedly, women suffer across the world at the hands of men who perceive themselves to be superior, and whose perverse sense of “biological elitism” gives them permission to harm, control and minimise women.

However, the violence afflicting Britain is much more complicated. It is important to understand that, broadly speaking, there are two types of people involved in violence; the more disturbed I call the initiators of violence; the less disturbed are the imitators, who rise in defence when they have been attacked themselves.

Violence is a human issue

Ending violence against women is profoundly important. But, then, so is ending violence against children, against men, boys, girls – against people altogether.

Camilla Batmanghelidjh offers some very helpful and thought-provoking observations about how violence grows and is perpetuated within families. Girls as well as boys can be violent.

In the service of truth, I would like to point out that violence is not just an issue for boys. Girls can also be extremely violent — they often harm younger children as well as each other. Shockingly large numbers of boys and girls are constantly harmed by drug dealers, child abusers and through gang violence.

Campaigners have done a great job representing the women victims of domestic violence, but we need a broader commitment to reduce violence, one that is not simply a cosmetic campaign based on posters, concerts and life-not-knife T-shirts.

We need more of this kind of clear-headed thinking about one of the most damaging and often hidden aspects of family life and the bringing up of children.

The Baha’i perspective is that we are all born with latent virtues and that we all have the potential to rise to great heights of nobility. But we can also fall to great depths of depravity. It takes courage and commitment by adults to work with children and young people – particularly those aged 11-15 – to break the cycles that perpetuate violent behaviour, to transform individual, family and neighbourhood culture away from contest and violence to mutuality and support.

Technorati Tags: gender, women, men, boys, girls, violence, family, virtues, nobility

Human dignity is indivisible

By David Kilgour, Citizen SpecialNovember 6, 2009Be the first to post a comment

One dismaying estimate of the number of people who died violently because of their religion between 1900 and 2000 includes 70 million Muslims; 35 million Christians; 11 million Hindus; nine million Jews; four million Buddhists; two million Sikhs and one million Baha’is.

What can be done to reduce the persecution of religions globally?

A first step is universal recognition that human dignity is ultimately indivisible in today’s shrunken world and all groups must thus stand together. As Pastor Martin Niemöller poignantly said of the Nazis, “Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Religious intolerance by governments breeds violence. Journalist Geoffrey Johnston notes, “Those countries that do not actively protect religious minorities or prosecute the perpetrators of religiously motivated violence are ultimately undermining their own security. A climate of impunity tends to embolden militants, who eventually turn against the state, using violence to advance their agenda. Pakistan and Nigeria are prime examples of governments that have allowed extremist groups to attack religious minority communities before they themselves became the targets of terror strikes.”

Religious intolerance by governments is deadly

David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament, shows how religious intolerance perpetrated by governments has led to the death of millions between 1900 and 2000 because of their religious adherence.

I’m not sure where he derives the figures from. The figure given for Baha’i deaths sounds high to me, and it would be useful to know the source for these numbers.

Kilgour calls for the development of an “anti-eliminationist discourse” (drawn from “Worse than War:Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity” by Daniel Goldhagen) and says that faith communities should stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the face of religious persecution.

Choose your partners carefully?

It sounds good, but, given the history of disunity between religions and the sectarian nature of some communities, it could be difficult to decide with whom we might wish to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.

It’s probably not a good idea to stand shoulder-to-should with groups claiming religious sanction for eliminationist discourses of their own.

No, the sustainable solution to religious intolerance, persecution and mass murder is at once more radical, more challenging and simpler than trying to assert a countervailing tolerance.

One Divine Source

The solution lies in a change of conceptual framework.

We need to stop seeing religions as separate entities like nation states, each defending its own spiritual and conceptual “territory” from invaders.

Instead, we have no alternative but to recognize that all the great faiths emerge from one source – or, as I prefer to put it, one Divine Source.

Embracing human oneness

This is an essential part of embracing human oneness. And embracing human oneness is foundational to genuine peace and the beginnings of solutions to humanity’s great problems.

If I can forsake tribalism, if I can understand that my fellow humans are part of my family – rather than “others” to be kept at a distance, to be “othered” (to use a rather inelegant term) – and that I am responsible for their welfare, eliminationist discourse will have no part in my life.

I said it was challenging.

Do read the rest of David Kilgour’s article from the Ottawa Citizen.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, religion, intolerance, persecution, eliminationism, mass murder, human rights

It is rare that religion and science find agreement, but that is what happened when Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks spoke at a meeting on saving the earth from climate change.

“The great Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson published a book in 2007 called “Creation”, subtitled An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” Sacks told leaders of all the major faiths meeting at Lambeth Palace in London on Thursday.

(Photo: A partially dried reservoir in Yingtan, Jiangxi province, China, 29 Oct 2009/stringer)

“I thought that was a very good book. E.O. Wilson is known not to be religious, but what this book was was a call to religious people and scientists to call off the war between religion and science and work together for the sake of the future of life on earth.

“And I felt that was a very generous and appropriate call by a non-religious scientist.”

He said “that science and religion despite their apparent friction actually converge on a profoundly scientific and at the same time religious idea that there is a kinship of life and hence a covenant of life”.

Not only did such a high-profile religious figure agree with the scientific world, but faith leaders found harmony among themselves at the same meeting.

Sitting next to Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the Anglican Church, was the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, who only days earlier had delivered the Pope’s offer to disaffected Anglicans the chance to convert to Rome.

Also attending were faith and community organisation leaders including Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha’i, Jain and Zoroastrian.

(Photo: Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, 23 July 2006/Paul Hackett)

Organised by Williams, the leaders issued a joint statement in which they “recognised unequivocally that there is a moral imperative” to tackle the causes of global warming.

They agreed to work together to raise awareness about the effects of “catastrophic climate change”, saying it was the poor and vulnerable who most suffered from the ensuing droughts, floods, water shortages and rising sea levels.

Quoting from the book of Genesis, Sacks said man was placed on earth to serve it and protect it. “Man was a guardian, not the owner using and abusing the good things on earth,” he said.

“We are taken from the earth and therefore owe it a sense of kinship and responsibility. We believe our very existence as human beings come wrapped up in environmental imperatives and ecological responsibility.”

Drawing on the story of Noah’s Ark where all animals, including the lion and the lamb, had to survive side by side, he said we would all drown if we failed to work together.

Of course, if everybody kept the Sabbath, when nobody drove cars, flew by plane, or switched on any electrical appliances, the environmental problem would be solved, he said.

But more realistically, a new set of rituals would have to be devised that recognise the importance of the environment.

“What religion allows us to do is take the big ideas and translate them into daily rituals,” he said.

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What difference does this make?

The role of faith communities in mitigating the effects of climate change is very much flavour of the moment. I have already attended part of one conference on the subject. Next week I shall be at the big event being mountd by the Alliance of Religion and Conservation and the UN Development Programme at Windsor.

There are questions: will any of this make any difference? And if so, to what, to whom and by when?

Grassroots transformation

Whatever is actually happening to the world’s climate and whom or whatever is responsible for the changes that are clearly going on, the essential truth in all of this is that we all bear spiritual and practical responsibility for the planet and its peoples. At the moment, “we all” tends to mean “nobody” or “what’s in my best interest”, but the Baha’i teachings propose a long-term, sustainable transformation in villages, towns, streets, neighbourhoods that motivates individuals, families, communities to embrace human oneness and to accept their moral responsibility to care for each other and for the planet.

Idealistic? I don’t think so. It’s a long haul and challenging. And it starts with what Baha’i literature refers to as “stirrings at the grassroots” – changes of consciousness by people in villages, streets, etc about what’s needed and what’s possible.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, climate change, religion, faith, ethics, transformation

Oct22

U.S. House of Representatives Passes 11th Resolution Condemning the Persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran

04:43 pm on Oct 22nd 2009 OEA

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 407-2, a resolution condemning the government of Iran for “state-sponsored persecution of its Bahá’í minority and its continued violation of the International Covenants on Human Rights.” H.Res.175 is the eleventh congressional resolution since 1982 to address the religious oppression of the Bahá’ís in Iran.

“Given current human rights violations against the Iranian citizens, we welcome Congress speaking out again against the persecution of Iran’s largest religious minority,” said Ms. Kit Bigelow, director of external affairs for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the U.S.

The resolution also called on President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to condemn the ongoing persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran, and to demand the release of religious prisoners, including seven Bahá’í leaders who have been detained for more than a year without a trial—Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm.

“Today, the House of Representatives sends a signal to the Iranian regime, and it contains an important message,” Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said yesterday in a statement on the House floor. “The U.S. Congress will expose this regime that murders innocent women and children in the streets and denies citizens’ basic human rights. To the dictators in Iran we say, release your political prisoners, especially release your Bahá’í prisoners, and end your ignorant and uncultured persecution of the peaceful Bahá’ís.”

A concurrent Senate resolution, S.Res.71, is still pending.

• Read coverage from BBC (in Farsi)

The Iranian government is on notice from governments around the world that their appalling human rights record and their persecution of minorities, including the Baha’is is not in the least acceptable.

Hats off to the House of Representatives for adding its voice to the many others calling for the release of the seven Baha’i leaders, who have been held without cause in the notorious Evin prison for well over a year.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, United States, House of Representatives, human rights, religious freedom, minorities