One Common Faith | Page 3

and nations was concerned. Having
penetrated and captured all significant centres of power and
information at the global level, dogmatic materialism ensured that no
competing voices would retain the ability to challenge projects of world
wide economic exploitation. To the cultural damage already inflicted
by two centuries of colonial rule was added an agonizing disjunction
between the inner and outer experience of the masses affected, a
condition invading virtually all aspects of life. Helpless to exercise any
real influence over the shaping of their futures or even to preserve the
moral well-being of their children, these populations were plunged into
a crisis different from but in many ways even more devastating than the
one gathering momentum in Europe and North America. Although
retaining its central role in consciousness, faith appeared impotent to
influence the course of events.
As the twentieth century approached its close, therefore, nothing
seemed less likely than a sudden resurgence of religion as a subject of
consuming global importance. Yet that is precisely what has now
occurred in the form of a groundswell of anxiety and discontent, much
of it still only dimly conscious of the sense of spiritual emptiness that is
producing it. Ancient sectarian conflicts, apparently unresponsive to the
patient arts of diplomacy, have re-emerged with a virulence as great as
anything known before. Scriptural themes, miraculous phenomena and
theological dogmas that, until recently, had been dismissed as relics of
an age of ignorance find themselves solemnly, if indiscriminately,
explored in influential media. In many lands, religious credentials take
on new and compelling significance in the candidature of aspirants to
political office. A world, which had assumed that with the collapse of
the Berlin Wall an age of international peace had dawned, is warned
that it is in the grip of a war of civilizations whose defining character is
irreconcilable religious antipathies. Bookstores, magazine stands, Web
sites and libraries struggle to satisfy an apparently inexhaustible public
appetite for information on religious and spiritual subjects. Perhaps the
most insistent factor in producing the change is reluctant recognition
that there is no credible replacement for religious belief as a force
capable of generating self-discipline and restoring commitment to

moral behaviour.
Beyond the attention that religion, as formally conceived, has begun to
command is a widespread revival of spiritual search. Expressed most
commonly as an urge to discover a personal identity that transcends the
merely physical, the development encourages a multitude of pursuits,
both positive and negative in character. On the one hand, the search for
justice and the promotion of the cause of international peace tend to
have the effect of also arousing new perceptions of the individual's role
in society. Similarly, although focused on the mobilization of support
for changes in social decision-making, movements like
environmentalism and feminism induce a re-examination of people's
sense of themselves and of their purpose in life. A reorientation
occurring in all the major religious communities is the accelerating
migration of believers from traditional branches of the parent faiths to
sects that attach primary importance to the spiritual search and personal
experiences of their members. At the opposite pole, extraterrestrial
sightings, "self-discovery" regimens, wilderness retreats, charismatic
exaltation, various New Age enthusiasms, and the
consciousness-raising efficacy attributed to narcotics and hallucinogens
attract followings far larger and more diverse than anything enjoyed by
spiritualism or theosophy at a similar historical turning point a century
ago. For a Bahá'í, the proliferation even of cults and practices that may
arouse aversion in the minds of many serves primarily as a reminder of
the insight embodied in the ancient tale of Majnún, who sifted the dust
in his search for the beloved Laylí, although aware that she was pure
spirit: "I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her."(1)

"The reawakened interest in religion is clearly far from having
reached..."
The reawakened interest in religion is clearly far from having reached
its peak, in either its explicitly religious or its less definable spiritual
manifestations. On the contrary. The phenomenon is the product of
historical forces that steadily gather momentum. Their common effect
is to erode the certainty, bequeathed to the world by the twentieth

century, that material existence represents ultimate reality.
The most obvious cause of these re-evaluations has been the
bankruptcy of the materialist enterprise itself. For well over a hundred
years, the idea of progress was identified with economic development
and with its capacity to motivate and shape social improvement. Those
differences of opinion that existed did not challenge this world view,
but only conceptions as to how its goals might best be attained. Its most
extreme form, the iron dogma of "scientific materialism", sought to
reinterpret every aspect of history and human behaviour in its own
narrow terms. Whatever humanitarian ideals may have inspired some
of its early proponents, the universal consequence was