THE RELIGION OF RULERSHIP

Leaving propaganda aside, we are confident in stating that Baha'is are taught to lavish unearned respect and ungodly devotion upon members of their administration. These administrators, desperate to maintain their stranglehold over the minds of their followers, stand ready to violate every rule of God and man to defend their positions. If a believer so much as asks a question about anything in the religion, and administration finds out, he is in short order shunned. No religion we know of is so quick to condemn its people or to defile their names throughout the religious community as the Baha'i Faith.

Steven Hassan recently published a book saying the Baha'i Faith isn't a cult. Well, we may be wrong, but...isn't Mr.Hassan a Baha'i? Years ago a Baha'i psychiatrist was for awhile a prominent "deprogrammer" of youths caught up in cults, but not his own, we are sure. To be fair to Mr.Hassan, we know that one sign of a cult is that its followers worship a living man. Baha'is worship Baha'u'llah, who passed away in the 1800s, don't they? In theory yes, in practice no. The element of worship begins with fear of the worshipped one, and Baha'is have more reason to fear their administrators than they do God Himself.

Consider: the Baha'i Fund insists that all contributions are confidential. Name anything that is kept confidential today! The Baha'i Fund uses every tactic to encourage believers to give and give and give, and give more than is reasonable, and promise great returns for sincere giving. Of course, if nothing shows up after you give, you can conclude that you have not been sincere. So you can question it and face excommunication, or give more. The Baha'i Fund folks have volumes of wondrous tales, of Baha'is who give more than they think they can, and then get job promotions or unexpected inheritances or the like. You gave and didn't get one? Then something is wrong....with you! The Baha'i community treasurer can easily cover her artistry by denying any coercion, which exists only in Baha'i treasurer communications that are For Baha'is Only. A believer hoping for a few more pennies from heaven will stow that Treasurer's letter in the trash, to obey the Treasurer and to stave off the guilt of admitting his gullibility to his spouse.

Another feature of cult is the distancing of the believer from his roots and thus his self-confidence and selfhood. How does the Baha'i Faith do this? By failing to inform seekers of what lies past the "Fireside" get-togethers, instant friendships, and administrative estimates of just how short a leash the seeker will accept. After the signing of the "declaration" card, seasoned community members strive to contain the new declarant in a mist of euphoria, encouraging him to denounce (in forgiving terms, of course) his parents, his education, his country, anything that cannot be identified directly with the Baha'i Faith. The community proffers an artificial world, complete with parents (administrators), family (non-administrators), music, art, education, even celebrities!

Baha'i publishers are turning out more and more literature on what the Faith means, and they are getting as lost in the clouds of intellectual Rube Goldberg inventions, as the ordinary Baha'is are lost in trying to reconcile themselves to being members of something that shouldn't have been a cult, but is. They don't know how to get out, because they are surrounded with experts that will keep them in through fear or expel them for lack of it.

We do not for a moment believe that Baha'u'llah intended for His religion to become a cult. We do not believe for a moment that there is anything inherent to His Revelation that allows for the existence of a cult that would go by His Name. We do believe that in the historically few short years since His passing, the nature of man and nothing but that nature has seen in the Baha'i Faith an ideal ground for growing a cult. We are willing to believe that many Baha'i administrators did not see it that way with the onset of their careers in the Faith, but the patterns and behaviors and separations and malignant growths appeared chiefly as a result of man's own rebellious nature and evil heart.

A preponderance of intellect over emotion, of administration over spirit, has created a monster from the pieces of Baha'u'llah's teachings. We do not think it was supposed to be that way, but we know that the Writings state it will not stay that way. There may be an Auxiliary Board Member somewhere who dreams of the apocalypse, sees it propelling him to his destined throne, finally the ruler he knew himself to be. This is the final tragedy of a cult: the wasting of a man.