The Home and Space of Independent Investigation

One of the most interesting and intriguing facts about the Baha’i faith, is that they have no church affiliation and do not practice in a specific place like a church and no clergy. Though there are seven houses of worship, at least one on each continent, and these are the closest to a church, there are not a multitude of places such as churches to worship. I was given an interesting description of the faith when someone said, “it can be a lonely faith.” This is because there is no church to attend, you have to build a sort of community around you. This was something I struggled with to understand when I was younger, why didn't we attend church? And until I investigated further, I was still confused. When we would have Baha’i Sunday school classes or Baha’i functions we would still meet on Sunday, but we would meet at someone’s house who would be a host, and we would all gather together and say prayers. This made everything seem much more casual and laid back, as opposed to church when I was much younger when we had to get dressed up and sit in a pew and we would listen to a minister give a service. When my family decided to join the Baha’i faith I was in about 5th grade and until that point I had gone to church with my grandparents and attended very formal services. I was surprised to see that on the web I could find hardly any information about why there is no particular branch of Churches for the faith. Then I stumbled upon an interesting site www.bahai.com and under the principals of the bahai faith it talked about the independent investigation of truth and I found an interesting quote that read:

"God has given man the eye of investigation by which he may see and recognize truth. He has endowed man with ears that he may hear the message of reality and conferred upon him the gift of reason by which he may discover things for himself. This is his endowment and equipment for the investigation of reality. Man is not intended to see through the eyes of another, hear through another's ears nor comprehend with another's brain. Each human creature has individual endowment, power and responsibility in the creative plan of God."
-Abdu’l-Baha

Basically the quote was talking about how each person must discover truth for themselves what their belief is and we all have the power and responsibility to investigate truth and so this is how the faith becomes more independent and I have better understood this now. I really appreciate this about the faith and the independent investigation is I think vital to a faith. I think it was interesting too how we talk about participant observation where you put yourself in the place of a culture and you understand why that culture works in the way that it does while putting aside your own belief system for the time. I think the idea of independent investigation within the Baha'i faith really correlates to the action of participant observation where anyone can observe and learn while being able to make decisions for themselves as to what they believe.

*The quote posted here was from www.bahai.com:
1997 Baha’i faith. The Principals of the Baha'i faith. Electronic Document, http://www.bahai.com/Bahaullah/principles.htm, accessed March 18, 2008.