Date: 18 Nov 92 22:21:43
Distribution: world
From: tookey@shemp.cs.wisc.edu (Keith Tookey)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.bahai
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Madison -- Computer Sciences Dept.
Subject: Re: Schisms

[A press release posted earlier had stated:]

>> ... among world religions, only the Baha'i Faith has remained free
>> of sectarian division and schism.

In article <46064@ogicse.ogi.edu> allegra!lieuwen@allegra.att.com (Dan
Lieuwen) writes:

>Please.  You have your schismatics.  I forget the name, Bahais under the
>Covenant or some such name.  One of my best friends is a Bahai, and when
>I saw a poster for them at UW-Madison, I told him you're postering more.
>He asked questions, and then said "oh, them.  They're not real Bahais."

Hi, Dan, nice to hear from you.

     Baha'is do not deny that there are a few people who were thrown
out of the Baha'i Faith.  However, quite aside from the fact that
sheer numbers indicate these are in fact a few individuals expelled
and not a group separated from the main body, and aside from the fact
that these people have made only a couple of converts, while the main
body continues to grow by leaps and bounds, (MAIN POINT)the expulsion
was done by the explicit authority of Baha'u'llah's Writings according
to a method He set up to protect the unity of His Faith.  By the
definition of Baha'i used by the Central Figures, these people cannot
possibly be Baha'is.
     It is not possible to maintain unity in a religion without being
able to expell people who try to usurp authority from the institutions
established by the Founder.  If you wish to call throwing out
troublemakers who try to seize control without authority a schism,
then I will just have to come up with a new way to say that there has
been no split in the body of believers, only a couple of troublemakers
expelled with just cause.

>Any religion can claim that it has no schisms by just declaring its
>heretics not of the fold.  The first major schism in Christianity
>didn't occur until the council of Chalcedon in the middle to late
>400s.  All the little heretical sects of Christianity up to that
>point have died out.

     Sorry Dan, but in the class I took, the little 'heretical sects'
of Christianity were wiped out as opposed to died out, which is a
whole different thing.  Also, as one Christian scholar (was it you?)
pointed out, the same ideas keep reappearing in later groups, so I
would hardly say they were dead history.

     I wish that Christianity had had some way established by Christ
to throw out people to far out, but it didn't.  There were early
fights over questions like requiring the gentiles to be circumcised,
over the nature of Christ, and other questions, some of which were not
decided until the Emperor Constantine put the weight of the Empire
into the equation.  (And there were political shenanigans over that
that leave me unconvinced God or theology had anything to do with it.)
Despite my respect for your orthodox position, schisms started earlier
than Chalcedon.

>So, you have about 250 years to go until you can claim to have met
>Christianity's level of unity.  I would imagine that similar examples
>can be found in other religions.

Islam, for example, split upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

(out of order from the original post)
>Reading statements in newsgroups by people who consider themselves
>Bahais, but make up their religion as they go also belies this claim.

I do not think Baha'is expressing ideas, even wrong ones, means
anything more than that some Baha'is have strange ideas.

This is not a schism by anybody's definition, until someone tries to
impose their idea/interpretation on the rest of us.

>So, please be careful with the truth.  Statements like this can only
>harm your credibility.

>Dan

I agree with Dan, we need to be more precise in our statements.
Posters should be more careful to label their personal ideas as such.
By the way, my post is wholly my opinion, and could contain mistakes.
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