Modern Religious Cults and MovementsAtkins, Gaius Glenn
Religion
Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Atkins, Gaius Glenn
Christian Science; New Thought; Religion; Spiritual healing
A program inclusive enough for any generous age. These principles are
substantiated by quotations from the writings of Abdul-Baha and the
teachings of Baha'u'llah. Many things combine to lend force to its
appeal--the courage of its martyrs, its spaciousness and yet at the same
time the attractiveness of its appeal and its suggestion of spiritual
brotherhood. Since the movement has borne a kind of messianic
expectation it adjusts itself easily to inherited Christian hopes. There
are real correspondences between its expected millennium and the
Christian millennium.
How far its leaders, in their passion for peace and their doctrine of
non-resistance and their exaltation of the life of the spirit, are in
debt to the suggestions of Christianity itself, or how far it is a new
expression of a temper with which the Orient has always been more in
sympathy than the West, it would be difficult to say, but in some ways
Bahaism does express--or perhaps reproduces--the essential spirit of the
Gospels more faithfully than a good deal of Western Christianity as now
organized. Those members of Christian communions which are attracted to
Bahaism find in it a real hospitality to the inherited faith they take
over. It is possible, therefore, to belong to the cult and at the same
time to continue one's established religious life without any very great
violence and indeed with a possible intensification of that life.
It is difficult, therefore, to distinguish between Bahaism as it is held
by devout groups in America, so far as ethics and ideals go, from much
that is distinctive in the Christian spirit, though the influence of
Bahaism as a whole would be to efface distinctions and especially to
take the force out of the Christian creeds.
Chicago, or rather Wilmette, is now the center of the movement in
America and an ambitious temple is in the way of being constructed
there, the suggestion for whose architecture is taken from a temple in
Eskabad, Russia. This is to be a temple of universal religion,
symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "The
temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular
garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of God's unity; nine
pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the
pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at
the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of God's oneness,
all will become one.... At night it will be brilliantly lighted and the
light will shine forth through the tracery of the dome, a beacon of
peace and unity rising high above Lake Michigan."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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