On The Complexity and Novelty of Baha'u'llah's Message: Neither Pluralism nor Exclusivism

In 2001 a remarkable piece of scholarship was published, Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Baha'u'llah, by Nader Saiedi. The last paragraph ( p. 14) of the introduction provides a comprehensive description of the implications of the message of Baha'u'llah for his followers. -gw

...[E]ven while Baha'u'llah asserts His message to be the fulfillment of all the scriptural prophecies for the expected universal revelation of God, the attitude Baha'u'llah prescribes for His own followers to take toward all people and all religious communities is one not only of respect and equality but of love, fellowship, and unity. Declaring the sacredness of all human beings in the context of universal egalitarian principles, Baha'u'llah eliminates any differential social status between believers and nonbelievers. Neither the categories of exclusivism and fundamentalism nor those of pluralism and postmodernism are adequate to capture the complexity and novelty of Baha'u'llah's message, a message which is simultaneously an announcement of the unity of all religions, a rejection of relativism, and an exposition of the spiritual foundation of universal human rights.