This panel examines Bahá’í community life in settings around the world. It examines aspects of Bahá’í spirituality, dream interpretation, conversion, and scholarship. It also looks at how Bahá’ís both fit into and distinguish themselves from wider social norms and how Bahá’ís today think about their relationships with other religious and non-religious friends and neighbors. Bahá’í communities discussed include groups in Ireland, Iran, Germany, the U.S. and England.
This paper examines the lived experiences of first-generation Bahá'ís from European Catholic backgrounds, focusing on their religious transitions through the lens of progressive revelation. Drawing on life story interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Ireland and Italy, I analyze how first-generation Bahá'ís navigate their religious identity within personal, familial, and community contexts. The research reveals how the Bahá'í theological framework of progressive revelation facilitates a unique form of religious transition that enables continuity with Catholic heritage while embracing Bahá'í beliefs. The absence of clergy and of ceremonial rupture with previous affiliations in the Bahá'í Faith allows individuals to maintain familial and cultural connections while developing personal relationships with religious figures, particularly Jesus Christ. This study contributes to understanding how Bahá'í approaches to religious plurality shape convert experiences and challenge traditional anthropological models of religious conversion based on rupture.
This paper examines conceptualizations of ‘virtue’ which emerge in literature drawn from positive psychology and the Bahá’í Faith, exploring the relationship between the two approaches. While positive psychology draws upon a range of religious and philosophical approaches to inform its classification of virtues and strengths (known as the ‘Values-In-Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths’), it has not yet drawn upon or been studied in relation to the Bahá’í Faith.
This paper considers how the approaches may complement and inform one another as distinct bodies of knowledge, contrasting the ways in which their respective empirical and theological frameworks shape the concepts of virtue which emerge. It further highlights the syncretic and ‘integrative’ approach of positive psychology (which integrates specific aspects of religion) with the ‘inclusive’ approach of the Bahá’í Faith (based upon the principle of the oneness of religion). In turn, it considers the unique potential for future dialogue between the approaches.
This paper examines the intersection of religious freedom and academic methodology by comparing the treatment of Bahá’ís in Iran and Germany. While Iran, reflecting an exclusivist Islamic theological framework, denies Bahá’ís religious freedom, Germany allows them to practice their faith freely. A key factor in this disparity is the absence of a developed methodology for religious studies in Iran. Unlike Germany, where religious studies evolved alongside or even merged with Christian theology—exemplified by the Religionsschule des Verstehens—Iranian institutions largely follow an exclusivist theological paradigm. Although some Shi‘a scholars advocate for greater tolerance, their influence remains limited. Additionally, a broader challenge to global religious freedom arises when Muslim institutions in the West demand rights that are not granted to minorities, such as the Bahá’ís, in the Islamic world.
The interpretation of dreams is hardly an exact science. When we mine Islamic and Baha’i texts for instruction, we find that much depends on factors like the favor of God and purity of the heart. These textual traditions agree that while techniques may help to induce dreams of significance and familiar symbols may point in consistent directions, only divine guidance ensures that we distinguish between the truth and illusion. If divine guidance is in place, the truths of the dream realm can be closer to ultimate reality than our wakeful experiences. The state of sleep frees the soul to perceive beyond the bodily senses. On the other hand, our baser desires can cloud our dreams and turn them into a meaningless jumble. When read together, texts from Islam and the Baha’i Faith reveal a complex framework in which dreams lead us closer to or pull us farther from divine truth.