Collegiate Times

Suzanne Ament, a Radford University professor and convert to the Baha'i faith, sings at the YMCA in Blacksburg at one of the Baha'i communities weekly cultural events.

"While it's liberal in some ways, it defies definition on a left-right scale ...  People who were illiterate are accepting Baha'u'allah. It encourages people to make something of themselves," Ament said.

Moreover, the tradition does have very stark boundaries on some issues.

"There is a certain fundamentalism in a positive sense. It's an embracing of all the world religions, but it also encourages and requires people to be faithful to the religious tradition, to practice the virtues," Bob Rogers said.

Further still, the Baha'i beliefs fall on points across the left-right political spectrum.

"Baha'is are actually forbidden from participating in partisan politics. I think we know that there is truth in lots of things that people say. We don't write people off because they listen to Rush Limbaugh," Bob Rogers said.

This doesn't mean the Baha'i are passive observers, however. Both Sarah Rogers and her husband Mehrtash Olsen underwent a customary service experience abroad (Sarah in Zambia, Mehrtash at the Baha'i holy

site in Haifa) while Mostaghimi's son both volunteered in a Guatemalan orphanage and eventually went on to Teach for America in the Mississippi Delta.

"Universal peace and the unity of mankind is the great umbrella ... and whatever you can do to bring about the unity of mankind is what happens at the local level with the service activities," Mostaghimi said. "We think globally because we think of ourselves as world citizens. The world is but one country and mankind its citizens. That is really the thing that we live by on a daily basis and so it's a lot easier on a daily basis as a result of that that Baha'i communities are ethnically and educationally diverse, for example."

The struggle, then, for the Baha'i of Blacksburg is to maintain the humility that attracted many of them to the faith in the first place while sharing their message, Bob Rogers said.

"If everyone lived by their teachings, there would be no need for Baha'i. Over time, religions splinter. In the Christian faith, you see it with 38,000 denominations. At what point do you say, 'This one is correct?' It becomes a question of 'What is the truth anymore?' and some of that is part of the idea that now and then religion needs to be refreshed. It's not rejecting the older religions, but encompassing and honoring them."

Continue Reading:  « Previous123