![]() One way that this can be achieved symbolically is through acknowledging that, in principle, the indigenous peoples of the Americas have their own claim to wisdom traditions, and that these traditions derive from “Messengers of God to First Nations.” This principle is anchored, Buck and Addison argue, in the Tablet to Amír Khán Áhan. Buck addresses the critical need to fully transform intercultural interactions between Native American/Native Canadian and mainstream Bahá’í communities, and that this process can renewed through a formal recognition, on the part of the Bahá’ís, of the value and authenticity of Native American spirituality. Their work takes the form of an experimental alternative to traditional models of academic discourse-one called “conversive relationality,” broadly defined as follows: “A conversive model of communication and scholarship … firmly rooted within the sacred, emphasizing relationality, intersubjectivity, and collaboration … reinform and transform academic … writing and scholarship.” The exchange between Dr. Christopher Buck, in an emic/etic (insider/outsider) collaboration that offers a complement of Native/non-Native perspectives. The following paper is cast in the form of a conversation between two Bahá’í scholars, Dr. *** In Memoriam: DONALD FRANCIS ADDISON (co-author, Choctaw Elder, died February 18, 2018) Christopher Buck and Don Addison (Choctaw Elder), “Messengers of God in North America Revisited: An Exegesis of ’Abdu’l-Baha’s Tablet to Amir Khan.” Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 1 (2007): 180–270. In the intersection of eschatology and ethics, in the interplay of ideas and imagery, and as a function of an organizing principle, an overarching paradigm, Paradise becomes utopia. When once the heart is transformed and society reformed, Paradise is realized. Paradise imagery is then dislocated from the speculative and refocused on earth. In a Berger-esque process of paradisical world-building, Heaven functions as the impressionistic blueprint of the ideal faith-community. There, in the wish-images of the communal dream, ideals are reified and beatified. The beatific panorama, the symbolic landscape, the ideals and imagery that inform Paradise in the religious imagination are grounded in root metaphors and are animated by key scenarios reflecting a theology of activity, in a dynamic interplay of belief and behavior, myth and ritual, within the religious grasp of totality. Visions of the empyreal realm have, historically, had an extraordinary power to inspire. In the Abrahamic faiths generally, the most important symbol-complex is eschatological imagery, the positive focus of which is Paradise. Closing paragraphs: Symbols ensoul ideas. Symbolic analysis involves not only the exploration of religious worldviews intrinsically, but comparatively as well. “We can see that an essential ingredient of the modern study of religion,” writes Ninian Smart, “is symbolic analysis, which tries to throw light on the various themes which can be discovered cross-culturally through the exploration of various worldviews” (1985, 33). As symbols encode ideas, they require interpretation to be both understood and meaningfully compared. Symbols are susceptible of analysis and are proper objects of study. Symbols are the prisms of ideals and of other religious concerns. Sacred symbols present an explorable treasury of religious thought-an information-rich, condensed language of spirituality. ![]() Opening paragraph: Religions enshrine symbols, the stained-glass windows of faith. ![]() If Bahá'ís are to present Bahá'u'lláh's remarkably modern teachings to the world, they will need to detach themselves from some inherited ideas and from their emotional associations.Ĭhristopher Buck, Paradise & Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). Beyond this, it points to three challenges facing the Bahá'í community: the need to provide explicit scriptural foundations to support ideas presented as Bahá'í teachings the need to clarify certain attitudes toward politics and the need for moral self-examination. This essay examines one passage from the writings of Shoghi Effendi that might plausibly be interpreted in a theocratic sense, and one phrase interpolated into The Promulgation of Universal Peace, and then argues against the theocratic theory by criticizing one form of argument that has been used to support it. In contrast, this essay presents scriptural support that suggests that the institutional differentiation of the religious and political orders is a central Bahá'í doctrine. ![]() A survey of Bahá'í secondary literature in major European languages indicates that most commentators have supported the idea that Bahá'ís do not accept the separation of church and state.
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