As the youngest of the world's independent religions, the Bahá'í Faith is distinctive in many ways. Alone among the major faiths, for example, its sacred scriptures quite clearly uphold the equality of women and men. And its administrative structure is distinctly modern: eschewing clergy, the Faith relies instead on democratically elected bodies of laymen to make all of its decisions.
Another aspect of its relative youth is the degree to which the 150-year history of the Faith has been recorded. Founded in 1844, well after the development of movable type and just as electronic communications were beginning to shrink the globe and change forever humanity's consciousness of itself, the Faith has seen its progress documented voluminously by innumerable observers and scholars both within and outside of the movement. The result is a unique record of the birth and early years of a religion and its rapidly growing community.
One measure of this record can be found in the series known as The Bahá'í World, which is the Faith's official international record of its own activities and accomplishments. First published as the Bahá'í Year Book in 1926, the series has since carefully chronicled the rise of the Faith from a small and obscure group whose largest centers were confined primarily to the Middle East and North America to a global religion of some five million followers with significant communities in virtually every country in the world.
The original Bahá'í World series, which covered the period up to April 1993, documented Bahá'í history not only through first-hand reports from Bahá'í conferences and scholarly articles on issues of theological concern, but also by publishing wholesale various documents, issued by governments and others, that itemized the Faith's impact on all levels of society as it expanded, country by country, around the world. It also included "In Memoriam" articles on community members and even excerpts of Bahá'í literature translated into lesser known languages.
While such voluminous detail has captivated Bahá'í audiences for year, and will certainly be of interest to future scholars of the Bahá'í Faith, the editors of The Bahá'í World have recently seen fit to alter the format so as to provide interested members of the public with a ready reference on Bahá'í activity.
The growth of the Bahá'í community, its emergence from obscurity, and its evolving needs have made the time propitious for such change, and the occasion of the second Bahá'í Holy Year was chosen as the time to inaugurate the new annual series.
The 1992-93 volume of The Bahá'í World has been issued in an entirely new format and design, slimmer than the heavy tomes produced in the past -- volumes that also cover up to seven years of activities. It is also more compact, along the lines of university-format texts, with larger type and wider margins.
The result is a design that is appealing to the eye, pleasant to read, and highly legible. Photographs, some in color, and statistical charts add to the volume's attractiveness and usefulness.
Perhaps more importantly, the new edition's editorial tone and style is far more accessible and useful for the public, especially to those scholars, journalists and educated readers who may be relatively unfamiliar with the Faith but wish to have more information, treated in some depth, about Bahá'í activities.
The articles provide information and detail that will certainly be of interest to even the most knowledgeable of Bahá'ís, but they are quite obviously written and edited with an eye toward the general reader.
For example, an article on "The Spiritual Foundations for an Ecologically Sustainable Society" by Robert White not only plunges deeply into the complex theological answers offered by Bahá'í teachings in response to and in connection with the so-called "Deep Ecology" movement, but it does so in a way that explains in clear terms those new and distinctive theological concepts that the Bahá'í teachings bring to the discussion.
Likewise, an article on "The Case of the Bahá'í Minority in Iran," which chronicles the persecution of the Bahá'ís in that country since the establishment of an Islamic Republic there in 1979 reveals not simply the details of the 15-year persecution there but examines it in the context of how Bahá'ís around the world have sought to protect their co-religionists using the human rights machinery of the United Nations and other international institutions. Accordingly, the article stands not only as an informative piece on the persecutions themselves, but also as a definitive case study for anyone interested in human rights and the protection of minorities.
Other articles focus on Bahá'í social and economic development, the release of Bahá'u'lláh's Book of Laws in English translation, Bahá'í involvement in the '92 Earth Summit. As well, in honor of the 1992 Bahá'í Holy Year, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the death of Bahá'u'lláh, the Faith's Founder, the editors have reprinted a comprehensive statement about His life.
Also included is a "Chronology" section that offers short summaries of events that have occurred throughout the Bahá'í world, several pages of brief obituaries, and a selected bibliography providing capsule reviews of some 12 noteworthy books and brief notations on some 35 other selected publications.
In keeping with the mission to provide general information about the progress and activities of the Faith, the new volume also contains straightforward accounts of the Faith's history and basic teachings. It also supplies four pages of statistical information at the end, offering to the scholar a critical source of demographic information about the worldwide scope of Bahá'í activity.
Published in both hardcover and paperback, and distributed by World Centre Publications, this first volume will be the template for future annual volumes in the series. The new series is being published in both hardcover and paperback formats, thus offering to a wider public the costs savings offered by the latter format.
The new plan for The Bahá'í World -- as based on
this first volume in the new series -- promises to be an important
step in helping to provide in-depth but accessible information
about the worldwide movement known as the Bahá'í
Faith.