religion—the ideals of special privilege, chosen peoples, exclusive revelations, nationalistic incarnations, salvation limited by sacramental and liturgical conditions,—all these egoistic ideals must be eliminated. A Deity with ecclesiastical prejudices can deliver mankind no more than a Deity with tribal prejudices. The Ecclesiastical Deities have given us divided America and sundered India and distracted Europe. During the war, the Ecclesiastical Deities gave us the spectacle of Protestant Britain, Roman Catholic Belgium, Greek Russia, and Free-thinking France united against Protestant Germany, Roman Catholic Austria, and Muḥammadan Turkey. They fortified the hills around Nazareth with big guns, and surrounded Bethlehem with barbed-wire entanglements. The old Tribal Deities were resurrected “for the duration of the war,” and clothed in the garb of modern ecclesiasticism.
The Ecclesiastical Deities pursue their victims to the bitter end, to the death, as men say. For example, according to newspaper records, five hundred men were drowned, and Mother Nature asked no questions, but buried them in one common ocean-grave. Three of the dead, however, were washed ashore, of whom one proved to be a Roman Catholic, the second a Greek Christian, and the third an Anglican, so they buried them in three separate graveyards! In a letter to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the late Arminius Vambéry that great Orientalist and traveler, confessed that he had at different times professed himself a Jew, a Christian, a Muḥammadan, and a Zoroastrian, in order to discover the truth of things for himself, and had found that “all these religions have become the instruments of tyranny and oppression in the hands of rulers and governors, and they are the causes of the destruction of the world of humanity.” For these reasons, Vambéry enlisted himself on the side of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and accepted with joy the prospect of a fundamental basis for a universal religion of God being laid through His efforts. [See page 162.]
Let us face the hard truth. As we have to get rid of prejudice, pride, patriotism and nationalism in the world of politics, so we have to abolish partisanship, particularism and exclusive claims of truth, messiahship, etc., from religion. Christians have usually stigmatized Muḥammadanism as an intolerant form of religion; but the late Canon Cheyne—Christian scholar and dignitary of the Church—expressly accused Christianity of being “intolerant of other religions,” while, in the same book,* he upholds the Bahá’í Movement (along with the Brahmo Somaj) as making for the Spiritual Unification of all peoples; for which reason he had attached himself to the Movement.
In this way, as it seems, will Community of Interest be reached through the Unity of Man, as that is reached through the Unity of God. While the political leaders of the world—quite sincerely no doubt, for they are all terribly frightened—are striving to substitute for the old war-provoking “Balance of Power” a pacific League or “Concert of Nations,” it is for the religious leaders of mankind to create a Symphony or Sisterhood of Religions. That is the thing which presses. It calls for an early and far more representative Conference of Religions to consider the one vital question of the Peace of the World. I can think of no one better qualified to convene such a World-Conference of Religious Representatives than is the Head of the Bahá’í Movement, Shoghi Effendi.
I hope I shall not die before seeing the completion of that great Mashriqu’l-Adhkár—the Dawning-Place of the Mention of God, on the shore of Lake Michigan—designed to be a vast and hospitable gathering-place for all the religions of the world; a resplendent symbol of the Unity
*The Reconciliation of Races and Religions.
