The Bahá'í Faith in South Carolina

Until this past year Bahá'í was little more than an exotic name to me. A favorite spiritual tune, one which is performed almost every week at my Unity church is Daniel Namod’s One Power, which includes these words as the chorus:

                Call it God, call it Spirit
                Call it Jesus, call it Lord
                Call it Buddha, Ba’ha’ulla
                Angel’s Wings or Heaven’s Door
                But whatever name you give it
                It’s all One Power, can’t you see
                It’s the power of the love in you and me

Ba’ha’ulla is of course the name of the founder of Bahá'í. Last year as a part of our series on world religions we had Ms. Marylyn Harrison speak to us about this religion. I was excited to learn how profoundly its tenets aligned with my interfaith values. Just these past couple of months I’ve begun to know a little more about this faith through Victoria Smalls, a member of Baha'is of Beaufort County, and who spoke a beautiful prayer from her scripture last month at the Grace AME Chapel during the memorial for the Mother Emmanuel Nine.

I had found an article a while back which I revisited today entitled How the Baha'i Faith became South Carolina's second-largest religion which had been published in June of 2014 in The Post & Courier. Intrigued? I certainly was. When I investigated the source of a chart in the article I found the map which opens this posting. It was a surprising and delightful graphic. If you wish to read the article, the articles title above is a link. Here is a quote from the article:

“Baha'i basics
Founded in Iran in 1844, the Baha'i Faith teaches two core principles: the oneness of mankind and the oneness of world religions.

Baha'is believe in God's ongoing revelations to humanity through the central divine figures of the world's major religions. That includes Zoraster, Krishna, Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Christ, Mohammed and Baha'i founder Baha'u'llah.

These divine messengers each brought new teachings that advanced people's understanding of God based on the cultures and times they live in. While the social teachings differed, the essential spiritual messages did not (believe in God, be honest, loving, truthful, giving and so forth).”

The oneness of mankind and the oneness of religion is also the message that Swami Vivekananda shared in his keynote speak to the first Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893.