“Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” — Bahá’u’lláh
“The religious ideal is the soul of all plans for the good of mankind. Religion must never be used as a tool by party politicians. God’s politics are mighty, man’s politics are feeble.” — Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted by Lady Blomfield in The Chosen Highway
A key principle of the Bahá’í Faith is non-involvement with partisan politics. This comes directly from the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and Abdu’l-Bahá. Per the guidance of Shoghi Effendi, we are not to register with political parties. The reason for this should be crystal clear after a moment of thought, given deep importance of creating unity rather than a “them and us” mentality among diverse individuals and groups.
Bahá’ís are encouraged to vote and to be active and engaged when it comes to social issues; as Bahá’u’lláh has eloquently put it, we are to be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age we live in. But, we are not to involve ourselves in partisan politics or publicly support one political candidate over another. We are, however, to be supportive of our government. This does not mean that we agree with every policy or attitude, tacitly or overtly. It does mean that we are not to engage in subversive acts or involve ourselves with movements aimed at subverting our elected government.
This is such an important principle of faith that the Universal House of Justice—the global administrative body of the Bahá’í Faith—dismantled the entire elected administrative system of the Iranian Bahá’í community when the Iranian government declared Bahá’í institutions subversive and unlawful.
It is not easy to be engaged in social issues without getting dragged into political discussions but, like anything, it becomes easier with practice. I find myself listening to the barrage of political speech with an ear to winnowing out the partisan … er …. rhetoric and getting at the social issues beneath and within.
This is a lot of work, but it’s worthwhile, I think, and it saves one from the extremes of infusing religion with partisan political … um … stuff and completely disengaging from what’s going on in the world.
There was a discussion online at the beginning of the nomination process about a news story in which a conclave of evangelical Christian leaders were deciding which conservative candidate to back for the upcoming presidential election. One of the gentlemen commented—with a resigned air—that they had to choose from among the available field of candidates since Jesus Christ wasn’t running.
That gave my rational faculties a serious yank. And, after comparing notes with some of my colleagues, I find I’m not alone in my perplexity. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment, seriously. Let’s say Jesus was not only running for president, but was elected. What’s the first thing He’d do?
When He declared His mission in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus did it by quoting a passage from Isaiah. Here, then, is the beginning of Jesus’ “campaign speech”:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. — Luke 4:18-20, King James Version (KJV)
Further statements about peacemaking, meekness, kindness, and loving our fellow humans enough to treat them as we would like to be treated elaborate on this theme. One of His most emphatic statements on His social policy comes as He describes judging the “righteous” and the “cursed”. To the righteous, He says:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. — Matthew 25:35, 36
“When did we do that?” they ask, to which He replies:
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. — Matthew 25: 40
It doesn’t go so well for the other guys.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. — Matthew 25: 41-45
Taken as a body of divine policy, it’s pretty clear that if Jesus were president, He’d favor such ideas as healthcare for all, the sharing of wealth, keeping money from exercising undue influence, tolerance of people who are considered “other” because of their ethnic origins, religion, or social status. He was, after all, the original “bleeding heart.” He’d also be swift to show compassion and slow to punish or make war, advising that those who were without sin should cast the first stone (in other words, nobody), and that those who were smitten should turn the other cheek and learn to love even their enemies.
In short, President Yehoshua-ben-Yosef might well enact policies that would be anathema to many who invoke His name. As at least one political cartoonist has suggested, Jesus would almost certainly find Himself faced with a recall election. The only question is: how long it would take.
A friend I was chatting with said she’d raised this issue with acquaintances who espoused both deep social conservatism and evangelical beliefs. Their contention, she said, was that while it was true Jesus required His followers to do such things, He never said that a government should do them.
An interesting disconnect, that. Almost as if they had forgotten the words of a tall, thin American president who said, after a horrific and divisive civil war that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
So, then, our government is “of” us, “by” us, and “for” us. To put it Pogo style: We have met the government and it is us. Does it not make sense then that it should reflect our hopes and virtues, rather than our fears and hatreds?
There’s also the Constitution of the United States, which states:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
What do these words mean, if not that we, the people, are to forge a just, tranquil and free society in which we protect and promote the “general welfare” of ALL?
Now, it seems to me that the government of a democratic republic is our proxy. If our job as individuals is to take care of the poor, heal the sick, feed the hungry and clothe the naked, then that’s also our proxy’s job.
I’d like to suggest that as we navigate this election season, we seriously consider expecting government to reflect our virtues rather than our vices, and get to work on that “more perfect union”.
9 comments
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Mark H.
October 17, 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well put, Maya.
I think the problem is that we (as in the general American public, regardless of political leaning) are trained or tend toward thinking the world ends at our doorstep. There’s no collective sense of all, of “we,” in the most profound sense.
Hence, the problem is spiritual. When we truly gain a sense of “we,” the problems will take care of themselves, politics will go out the window, I think.
And, btw, what might initially seem like a paradox, but is actually the beauty of it, is that the “we” I speak of does not need to end up being like the Borg (for those of you who can catch a Star Trek reference.) One can feel a true sense of inter-connection, without losing one’s own identity, or will to self-determination.
Alejandro Rodríguez
October 27, 2012 at 3:01 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well put. The problem with modern christians, like catholics (I’m a catholic myself) is that they are more concerned with very minor things that were not even central to Jesus’s message or even the Bible. The USCCB, the body of bishops in the USA is obsessed that catholic hospitals will have to pay for contraception and birth control, think that legalizing same-sex marriage is evil, and oppose abortion to no end. It’s true that they also support immigration rights and oppose policies that affect the poor, but this is only on the catholic side, who still care about all the aformentioned things anyway. Evangelicals purely care only about the social issues I mentioned, plus they support military expansion and tax cuts for the rich. It’s as if they never heard of Jesus. There are many christians who still are good, for example a good majority of catholics ignore the USCCB and will vote for Obama, and protestants are divided into factions, with the most conservative being evangelicals. If they really were hellbent on following the Lord, then they would start supporting healthcare, wealth distribution and oppose military expansion and tax cuts for the rich, and they would probably don’t put that much attention to abortion and contraception and same-sex marriage.
Maya Bohnhoff
October 31, 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Interestingly, I’m having this discussion with a group of Catholics on Facebook. Their contention is that I have erred in my “take” on Jesus, and that unless one is “righteous” (quoting the Apostle Paul) one cannot inherit the kingdom.
My question to them is — what is righteous? If one is unrighteous for breaking the least of God’s commandments, then what is his state if he breaks the greatest?
Jesus says, in another context, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God…” We know that God is love and that Christ’s greatest commandment to us is to love. It stands to reason, then, that we need to get that commandment down first because He also says that all the others “depend upon” it.
Bahram
October 30, 2012 at 10:43 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Interesting post.
We will be in a lot better shape as a country if we could follow this simple advice. Abdu’l-Bahá (Bahá’u’lláh’s son) has said that it is better to be united and wrong, than divided and right:
“Though one of the parties may be in the right and they disagree that will be the cause of a thousand wrongs, but if they agree and both parties are in the wrong, as it is in unity the truth will be revealed and the wrong made right.“
Maya Bohnhoff
October 31, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Great thought! I think I’m going to pass this along today,
Stephen Kent Gray
November 20, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
According to Wikipedia, the Constitution, is limited in scope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause
James Madison advocated for the ratification of the Constitution in The Federalist and at the Virginia ratifying convention upon a narrow construction of the clause, asserting that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax.[16][17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
Generally, people take a means end view, but I’m firmly deontology cal in my thinking. Free markets, charity, mutual aid societies, benefit societies, etc. rather than government should beefit people.
Maya Bohnhoff
November 23, 2012 at 3:30 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I agree that the General Welfare clause is a statement of purpose. And the purpose of any government worthy of the name would, in my opinion, begin with determining what would fulfill that purpose. In other words, a government should (to use Baha’u'llah’s words) “be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age” and “center its deliberations on its exigencies and requirements”. From that consultation I would expect the government to determine what will benefit the people and act on it.
Personally, I think we err when we make blanket statements such as “government shouldn’t benefit people”—in fact, I ‘d say that flies in the face of the General Welfare clause. If government doesn’t benefit the people it serves, what good is it? If it does not create the conditions under which the people can pursue life, liberty and happiness, what it its purpose? If we say it should not work to see that its people have an environment in which individuals and communities can flourish in the most basic and needful aspects of human life, what sense does it make to say it should provide military protection, police forces, roads schools, or anything else?
Surely, if free markets (which are aimed at acquiring wealth) and mutual aid societies are capable of stemming the tide of homelessness, ending hunger, and caring for the sick, (are they capable of that?) they are also capable of protecting our communities and borders (through militias) and governing individual communities. Why would we need any sort of Federal Government at all? Why can’t every community educate its children, feed its poor, and care for its young, sick, or elderly?
The answer, from my perspective, is that even with the current level of government organization and involvement in such areas, people are still starving and dying of preventable diseases. There are things we can do collectively, through representative leadership (or servitude, depending on the system) that turn the will of the people into reality.
Then too, our evolution has been from smaller units of cohesion to larger ones. When Muhammad organized the nascent Muslim community, He made the alms system a priority so that every member of the society had basic needs met. To me, putting that back in the area of individual whim or conscience amounts to devolution. Further, given that the resources of all communities are not equal, such practice would lead to ghettoization. There would be areas that did a fine job of taking care of the poor, sick and needy and areas that failed miserably to do it.
That, to me, is simply unacceptable.
According to the mavens of free-marketry (such as Milton Friedman), the free market’s one purpose in life is to make money for its masters and the role of the people (and a government of, for and by same) to worry about the moral issues that arise. This sets up an adversarial relationship between the free market and the people who are its workers and consumers and ensures that they will appeal to government to protect them from the excesses of that market because they have not the individual or collective power to do it on their own.
Rick Schaut
November 24, 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
A too narrow reading of the General Welfare clause can lead to some rather perverse conclusions. It’s OK, for example, for the government to buy bullets and bombs and train people to kill other people with those bullets and bombs, but it’s not OK for the government to buy bread and butter or to train people to develop skills that might be useful in the private sector.
And that’s before we even begin to discuss what happened when Central and South American governments tried implementing a variety of free market reforms back in the 1970′s. As journalist Edwuardo Galeano said, “People were in prison so that prices could be free.”
One of my favorite quotes from Shoghi Effendi is:
There’s a difference between ideology and principle. We need to eschew the former while ever seeking to understand the latter.
Maya Bohnhoff
November 25, 2012 at 3:51 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Amen. Often—too often—systems we set up to serve human beings end up serving themselves. Interestingly, that’s a central theme of a science fiction novel I’m working on at the moment.
I’ve often heard people say that all our government should do is guard our property from physical harm and keep the wheels of industry greased. They describe—in very vague terms, usually—a free market society protected from physical harm by a standing military. Everything else is envisioned as being in the province of either the free market (even such things as health care) or this protective function (police). Rather than ameliorate poverty before it becomes systemic, we imprison criminals who are one of its consequences and play “hot potato” with those whose health fails as a result of not being able to afford preventive healthcare.
To me, these are symptoms of a system that has begun to function for its own perpetuation rather than for the sake of the people it was intended to serve.