What Bahá'is Believe

Bahá'u'lláh, Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, teaches that there is one God whose existence is beyond our understanding. He is the Creator of everything, and although we may call Him by different names – God or Yahweh, Allah, Brahma, or the Great Spirit – we are speaking about the same loving Presence that has supported and guided humanity throughout history.

“The fundamental principle enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh, the followers of His Faith firmly believe, is that Religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is a continuous and progressive process, that all the great religions of the world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony, that their aims and purposes are one and the same, that their teachings are but facets of one truth, that their functions are complementary, that they differ only in the non-essential aspects of their doctrines and that their missions represent successive stages in the spiritual evolution of human society.”

- From the Bahá’í Writings

The pivotal principle of the Bahá’í Faith is to unite all races and peoples in one universal Cause, the betterment of the world. Believing in the oneness of humanity demands a rooting out of prejudice and inequality, it elevates the need for all relationships and systems to be grounded in cooperation and mutual assistance. Bahá'u'lláh teaches that every person is an unique soul that must have a place in the advancement of society.

“Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship...”
Bahá'u'lláh

The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the sexes, is one of the most important, though less acknowledged prerequisites of peace.  The denial of such equality perpetuates an injustice against one half of the world’s population and promotes in men harmful attitudes and habits that are carried from the family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations.  There are no grounds, moral, practical, or biological, upon which such denial can be justified.  Only as women are welcomed into full partnership in all fields of human endeavour will the moral and psychological climate be created in which international peace can emerge.

–  Universal House of Justice, To the Peoples of the World, A Baha’i Statement on Peace

The principles of the Teachings of Baha’u’llah should be carefully studied, one by one, until they are realized and understood by mind and heart — so will you become strong followers of the light, truly spiritual, heavenly soldiers of God, acquiring and spreading the true civilization…. – Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 22.

The first Baha’i principle is the independent investigation of reality. Not found in any sacred Book of the past, it abolishes the need for clergy and sets us free from imitation and blind adherence to unexamined, dogmatic beliefs. Baha’is believe that no soul should follow ancestral or traditional beliefs without first questioning and examining their own inner landscape. Instead, the first Baha’i principle gives each individual the right and the duty to investigate and decide what they believe on their own:

…every individual member of humankind is exhorted and commanded to set aside superstitious beliefs, traditions and blind imitation of ancestral forms in religion and investigate reality for himself. Inasmuch as the fundamental reality is one, all religions and nations of the world will become one through investigation of reality. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 433.

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Religion and Science are inter-twined with each other and cannot be separated. These are the two wings with which humanity must fly. One wing is not enough. Every religion which does not concern itself with science is mere tradition…. Therefore science, education and civilization are most important necessities for the full religious life. – Abdu’l-Baha in London, p. 28-29.

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Universal compulsory education for everyone — one of the essential Baha’i principlesrevealed by Baha’u’llah — calls on all societies and cultures to:

Address yourselves to the promotion of the well-being and tranquillity of the children of men. Bend your minds and wills to the education of the peoples and kindreds of the earth, that haply the dissensions that divide it may, through the power of the Most Great Name, be blotted out from its face, and all mankind become the upholders of one Order, and the inhabitants of one City. – Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 333-334.

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The welfare of any segment of humanity is inextricably bound up with the welfare of the whole. Humanity’s collective life suffers when any one group thinks of its own well-being in isolation from that of its neighbours’ or pursues economic gain without regard for how the natural environment, which provides sustenance for all, is affected. A stubborn obstruction, then, stands in the way of meaningful social progress: time and again, avarice and self-interest prevail at the expense of the common good. Unconscionable quantities of wealth are being amassed, and the instability this creates is made worse by how income and opportunity are spread so unevenly both between nations and within nations. But it need not be so. – The Universal House of Justice, 1 March 2017.

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