On Saturday, Jan. 12, the Hatch home was the gathering place for a Bahá'í potluck dinner, where attending members of the Bloomington Bahá'í community were encouraged to bring not only food, but an international student, or someone of another culture. \nThe word Bahá'í means "follower of Bahá'u'lláh." Bahá'u'lláh was the prophet-founder of the Bahá'í faith. His name in Arabic means "The Glory of God."\nUnity of all mankind is one of the main messages people of the Bahá'í faith wish to send out to the world. And in their own small way, Bloomington residents Richard and Sara Hatch are helping to serve this mission. \n"It's not often that we get to interact with people of a different background," Sara Hatch said.\nAmong Bahá'í communities in the U.S. Sara said it is common to have this kind of an international-oriented meeting. Even earlier on when the Hatches moved around from country to country (Philippines, Korea, Japan) on military assignment, they made these cultural potluck dinners a part of their lives.\nColor-splashed walls surrounded the chatty Bahá'í group as they helped themselves to a few more Chinese dumplings or another helping of the creamy vegetarian lasagna. The vibrancy of the house came not only from the people in it but from the many paintings done by Sara, whose home is also her gallery. The frames of her paintings may as well not be there.The figures fling their arms across the canvas, springing outward from the frames full of joy and color. When Sara became Bahá'í in the late '70s, her work started to show the influence of her new faith and incorporated one of the essential principles of Bahá'í -- equality of women and men. \n"It's about the emancipation of women -- no boundaries," Sara said. \nBut on this Saturday night, learning about other cultures was not the main focus of the dinner. Allen Manifold, a fellow Bahá'í from Lafayette, was the guest speaker. \nHis talk centered on comparisons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Bahallah, the Persian prophet who established the Bahá'í faith in 1844. Bahallah was born in 1817 in Persia but was exiled for his teachings. He died in 1892 in Israel where his body was buried.
\nBefore his talk, Manifold explained that Bahá'ís believe in a concept called "progressive revelation."\n"God sends a messenger fitted for the people's capacity," Manifold said. "It's not that this messenger doesn't know as much as Bahallah does, its just that people weren't ready for him; he was powerful. [Each messenger] teaches them enough to get them to the next step and then another messenger comes along." \nThis process, Bahá'ís believe, will continue to go on eternally. \n"In the past, its been about every 1000 years," Manifold continued. "Sometimes as little as 600, sometimes a couple thousand years; but if you look back at history, you see that almost every 1000 years, you see a new religion growing up, and in different cultures."\nThe Book of Certitude, one of the 100 volumes written by Bahallah, shows how all the holy books of the past talked about this process of progressive revelation as well but in a language that the people of the time did not understand then. Kitabi-Aqdas (the most Holy Book) holds most of the laws that Bahallah revealed.\nAfter everyone had eaten, the group gathered in the living room for Manifold's short talk. At the end, Manifold asked for any comments and a small white haired woman named Ruth Murphy lifted her hand slightly and took a breath. She told a story of an eight-year-old boy who attended a Bahá'í school. When he came home, his grandmother asked him what he learned in school and then, with some concern, who he played with. Her grandson mentioned a boy named Johnny several times, and the grandmother proceeded to ask if Johnny is black. The boy looked puzzled.\n"I don't know, but when I see him, I'll ask him," replied the young boy. \nA miniscule pause followed the end of the story. Then, knowing laughter. A few others tossed their thoughts out to the group. Finally, Manifold pulled out his guitar as his wife began to sing the words to a civil rights movement song.\n"If you miss me from the back of the bus and you can't find me nowhere, come on up to the front of the bus, I'll be ridin' up there…" \nQuickly, the room filled with clear voices as everyone caught onto the tune and understood that these words resonated with the principle of abolishment of all kinds of prejudices that is integral to the Bahá'í faith. Richard Hatch rocked a yellow-haired boy in his arms as he stood behind a row of chairs to join the singing. The little boy watched around him, listened and briefly tried to imitate the sounds. \nOne woman's story\nFor one woman who attended the dinner, it took some time to get used to the self-responsibility of the Bahá'í religion. Karen St. Rain, a Bloomington resident and a recent convert to Bahá'í, is an IU graduate student and mother of five, who admitted that even after she officially declared her belief in Bahallah, she was still dubious.\n"I would flaunt the rules to see if someone would give me a hard time, and just find out if it really was on your own, just between me and God, or will somebody be watching over my shoulder."\nSt. Rain was raised German Lutheran, but had left that church with a negative view of religion. \n"I just thought that people were using religion to make each other feel bad," she said with a shrug. \nIn the next room, voices melted together again to the accompaniment of the guitar as a new song began. \nUpon discovering Bahá'í, St. Rain said she was very much impressed by its non-judgmental attitude. She leaned on the kitchen counter in her red sweater and pointed out the difference.\n"I could see they were really making sacrifices because they really did believe," she said. " It wasn't like anybody was getting a lot out of it because if you wanted to go to a religious organization for social reasons, you'd pick another church -- the church that had the better youth group, the church that had whatever you were interested in, but this was such a diverse group of people…different economic groups, different races, and these people all came together because they all really believe that Bahallah is the return of Christ."\nRichard Hatch said about six million people of the world have accepted the Bahá'í faith, and it is considered to be the second most widespread religion, its followers scattered across the globe. The Guinness Book of World Records notes that Bahá'í is the largest religion without any rituals. This faith is not only free from rituals, but also free from clergy. Instead, Bahá'ís elect spiritual assemblies on a national and local level, and a center in Israel called the Universal House of Justice, serves as the world headquarters of the Bahá'í religion.
Students embrace the faith\nIU's own student Bahá'í group is rather small, consisting of about six or seven members. But the group is led by a passionate believer in the Bahá'í faith, Gregory Maytan, an IU graduate student in the music school. Maytan said he had the blessing of being raised Bahá'í, because both of his parents are Bahá'í. Yet he also admitted that he felt cheated in not discovering the beauty of Bahá'í all by himself.\n"Sometimes I really wish I wouldn't have been raised Bahá'í. I envy those who have found it on their own. But everyday one still finds new meanings," he said. \nAccording to Bahá'í law, Maytan really did accept the Bahá'í faith on his own through what Bahá'ís call "independent investigation after truth." At the age of 15, a child has reached maturity and has the option not to follow blindly in the footsteps of his or her Bahá'í parents. But for Maytan, the depth and beauty of the Bahá'í faith had been clear from the age of 13. \n"There's such a diversity of understanding, and that's what makes [Bahá'í] so beautiful." \nWith his eyes staring straight ahead through his glasses, Maytan quoted scripture after scripture from the writings of the Bahallah to describe the Bahá'í faith. Unity, or oneness of humanity, is the ultimate goal of Bahá'í he said, and the turmoil we as a world are currently facing, is "the birth pangs of a world civilization." \nMaytan doesn't think that most people know much about the Bahá'í religion, and often times Bahá'í is misrepresented as taking the best of all world religions and combining them into one. \n"Bahá'í has renewed the essential rule of love that is the same in every religion, and added to that social teachings right for today's age," he said.\nFor Maytan, the Bahá'í religion is like an umbrella that embraces everyone. He also considers Bahá'í very unique because there are no sects among its followers. \n"If [Bahá'í] proclaims itself to unify all mankind, how can it be split up itself"
