On Immigration: It's Effect on the American Baha'i Community

Marriage Prayer in Chinese:

"He is the Bestower, the Bounteous! Praise be to God, the Ancient, the Ever-Abiding..."

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Immigration is an issue of national debate in the United States presently. How has immigration effected the ethnic composition of the Baha'i Community?

Immigration has profoundly shaped the American Baha'i community's ethnic composition. During the war in Vietnam the Baha'i Faith in Southeast Asia particularly attracted ethnic Chinese and Hmong hill people; they have been especially numerous among the groups fleeing Vietnam. Baha'i teaching efforts in refugee camps attracted thousands of Cambodians and Laotians to the Baha'i Faith as well, and many of them came to the United States. As a result the American Baha'i community has several thousand Baha'is of Southeast Asian background; no one knows exactly how many there are. In some cities--such as Portland, Oregon, and Lowell, Massachusetts--Southeast Asian Baha'is are a majority or substantial minority of the Baha'i community. The Islamic Revolution in Iran also forced tens of thousands of Baha'is to flee that country and about ten thousand have settled in the United States, especially in greater Los Angeles. ...
Photo: Louis Gregory
The Baha'i principle of the oneness of humanity has been another consistent source of appeal. The American Baha'is early recognized that the oneness of humanity meant that they had to teach their religion to all types of people, and that they could not form racially or ethnically segregated Baha'i communities. The Washington, D.C. Baha'is took the lead in teaching African Americans the Baha'i Faith in 1903; by 1909 about a dozen blacks had become Baha'is (in a community with about seventy Baha'is altogether) and in spite of resistance by some white Baha'is, who maintained the time for integration had not come, the African Americans were integrated into the white community. In 1911 the Washington Baha'is elected Louis G. Gregory, the leading black Baha'i, to the local Baha'i governing body; in 1912 Gregory was elected to the national Baha'i coordinating body as well by delegates representing all the Baha'i communities in North America. In 1912 Gregory married a white Baha'i. The union was the first racially integrated marriage in the American Baha'i community; `Abdu'l-Baha, who was visiting the United States at the time and who had actively encouraged their courtship, praised interracial marriage as a demonstration of the love that is possible between the races. `Abdu'l-Baha also spoke extensively about the dangers facing the United States if it did not overcome its racial divide; he set the tone for future Baha'i concern about the issue.

While integration of races and ethnic groups in the American Baha'i community has never been perfect or without controversy, it has consistently been a priority of the American Baha'is, and explains why persons of varied ethnic backgrounds have been able to coexist in local Baha'i communities. Intermarriage among these groups is a sign of their acceptance of each other. The American experience has helped set the tone for Baha'i communities worldwide.

Excerpted from "The American Baha'i Community in the Nineties," by Robert H. Stockman, Baha'i Research Office, Wilmette, Ill. Published in Dr. Timothy Miller, ed., America's Alternative Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995)