Christopher Buck

Buck, Christopher. Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role. Santa Barbara, CA/Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO/Praeger, 2009 (now Bloomsbury Publishing). Hardbound edition. ISBN: 978-0-313-35959-0. e-ISBN: 978-0-313-35960-6. 325 pp. (Release date: April 30, 2009.)

Description

At the heart of American studies is the idea of America itself. Here, Buck looks at the religious significance of America by examining those religions that have attached some kind of spiritual meaning to America. The author explores how American Protestantism—and nine minority faiths—have projected America into the mainstream of world history by defining—and by redefining—America’s world role. Surveying the religious myths and visions of America of ten religions, Buck shows how minority faiths have redefined America’s sense of national purpose. This book invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.

Religious myths of America are thought-orienting narratives that serve as vehicles of spiritual and social truths about the United States itself. Religious visions of America are action-oriented agendas that articulate the goals to which America should aspire and the role it should play in the community of nations. Buck examines the distinctive perspectives held by ten religious traditions that inform and expand on the notion of America, and its place in the world. He covers Native American, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Christian Identity, Black Muslim, Islamic, Buddhist, and Baha’i beliefs and invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.

Libraries Worldwide: Total (print & eBook editions): 1,050 Libraries (in 3 editions). [WorldCat, June 17, 2023.] “Held by Big Ten Academic Alliance.” See http://www.amazon.com/Religious-Myths-Visions-America-Redefined/dp/0313359598. (Open Access: “Access free” on Internet Archive.)

Reviews
• Journal of American History 98.1 (June 2011): 279–280. Review by Richard Kyle (Tabor College):
“Religious Myths and Visions of America has many strengths. The author has defended his thesis with solid research. He has also made an original contribution to American studies.”

• Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15.3 (February 2012): 139–141. Review by Irén E. Annus (University of Szeged, Hungary): “This volume may be of interest to readers involved not only in Religious Studies, but also in Political Science, History, Intellectual History, American Studies, and Cultural Studies. … In the course of the detailed and well-documented analysis of individual religions, Buck reveals a highly elaborate and in-depth picture of the various beliefs, which is indeed impressive. … He argues that the original myth and vision of America as a nation was captured by the Protestant notion of manifest destiny. This has been challenged by the other faiths … that have transformed the idea of manifest destiny into America’s common destiny. … The book is overall a fresh and stimulating cultural reading of some of America’s religions and the complex ways in which their followers make sense of and act in the world.” [Electronic Database (full text available): ATLA Religion Database; JSTOR.]

• Multicultural Review 18.4 (Winter 2009): 66. Review by Vladimir F. Wertsman (New York Public Library):
“This interesting, thoroughly researched scholarly study examines how ten minor religions interpreted America’s reality (“nation and notion”) and generated numerous religious myths and visions of America. … [t]his volume is certainly a welcome addition to the topic of racial, cultural, and ethnic studies. … Recommended for comparative ethnic and religion collections.”

Released by publisher online:
eBook Preview PDF (front matter, Chapter 1, and References),
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429023088

Baha’i Faith: The Basics
By: Christopher Buck
Edition: 1st Edition
First Published: 2021
eBook Published: 27 November 2020
Pub. location: London
Imprint: Routledge
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429023088
Pages: 262 pages
eBook: ISBN9780429023088
Subjects: Humanities

Bahá’í Faith: The Basics provides a thorough and accessible introduction to a fascinating, independent world religion. Examining its historical development, current “community-building” efforts and the social contributions of the Bahá’í Faith in the world today, this introduction covers:

• Beliefs: Bahá’í spiritual teachings.
• Principles: Bahá’í social teachings.
• History: Bahá’u’lláh and his covenant.
• Scripture: Bahá’í sacred texts and inspired guidance.
• Institutions: The Bahá’í Administrative Order.
• Building community: What Bahá’ís do.
• Social action: Bahá’í social and economic development projects.
• Public discourse: The Bahá’í International Community.
• Vision: Foundations for a future golden age.

With features including a glossary of terms, and references to the Bahá’í writings throughout, this is the ideal text for students and interested readers wanting to familiarize themselves with the Bahá’í Faith.

Reviews
"This excellent, beautifully organized introduction provides an accurate and unusually rich entré into a relatively new and still somehow frequently misunderstood religion. The author, Christopher Buck, is a leading scholar of the Baha'i religion. His book is richly enhanced with quotations from official translations of the Baha'i sacred writings, insights into the formation of distinctive Baha'i institutions and rare glimpses of key moments in Baha'i intellectual history from an introduction to the influential African-American Baha'i philosopher, Alain Locke (d. 1954) known as 'the father of the Harlem Renaissance', to a discussion of the more recent development of the Ruhi Institute process. This introduction goes beyond existing textbooks in both scope and detail. It will be warmly welcomed by researchers and students of the Baha'i Faith."

Todd Lawson, University of Toronto, Canada

Christopher Buck is an independent scholar and former professor at Michigan State University, USA; Quincy University, USA; Millikin University, USA; and Carleton University, Canada.

PowerPoint on new book, Bahá’í Faith: The Basics (Routledge, 2021), for invited Zoom presentation, Sunday, June 27, 2021, on “Baha’i Explorations” program hosted by the Baha’is of Clearwater, FL, https://clearwaterbahais.org/blog/bahai-explorations.html. (Zoom video to be posted online soon.)

SLIDE #37:

Dynamic Bahá’í Principles
— Expressed as Actions —

    1.  Search for truth.
    2.  See humankind as one.
    3.  See religion as one.
    4.  Religions should unify.
    5.  Religion respects science.
    6.  Women and men are equal.
    7.  Abolish every prejudice.
    8.  Promote world peace.
    9.  Provide education for all.
    10. Economic problems require spiritual solutions.
    11. The Universal House of Justice is unique.
    12. The special Bahá’í “Covenant” protects Bahá’í unity.
    13. Adopt a universal auxiliary language.
    14. Work is worship.
    15. The Bahá’í Faith offers other “new principles.”

Source: Buck, Bahá’í Faith: The Basics (2021), Chap. 3.

PowerPoint for live Zoom book launch of *Bahá’í Faith: The Basics* (Routledge, 2020), hosted by the Desert Rose Bahá’í Institute, on February 26, 2021 at 8:00 PM EST. See: https://drbi.org/event/book-launch-dr-christopher-buck-bahai-faith-the-basics-turning-faith-into-action/.

Endorsement by Todd Lawson, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought, University of Toronto, Canada:

“This excellent, beautifully organized introduction provides an accurate and unusually rich entré into a relatively new and still somehow frequently misunderstood religion. The author, Christopher Buck, is a leading scholar of the Bahá’í religion. His book is richly enhanced with quotations from official translations of the Bahá’í sacred writings, insights into the formation of distinctive Bahá’í institutions and rare glimpses of key moments in Bahá’í intellectual history from an introduction to the influential African American Bahá’í philosopher, Alain Locke (d. 1954) known as ‘the father of the Harlem Renaissance’, to a discussion of the more recent development of the Ruhi Institute process. This introduction goes beyond existing textbooks in both scope and detail. It will be warmly welcomed by researchers and students of the Bahá’í Faith.”

Book review by Jack McLean, Independent Scholar, Ottawa, Canada:

“One outstanding feature of this book  … is its contemporary relevance. Even well-informed readers could not possibly be fully aware of the overview presented by Buck of all the multifarious activities taking place in the Bahá’í world community. … Buck’s treatment of the material is throughout well-researched, and rich in the detail that an alert reader expects. In sum, despite its unpretentious title, this book is more than the Basics of the Bahá’í Faith. … it presents a complete contemporary picture of the remarkably diverse economic, social, and spiritual activities …by the Bahá’í community in all countries of the world.”

See full review here: http://jack-mclean.com/reviews/review-of-bahai-faith-basics/

1st Edition
Baha’i Faith: The Basics
By Christopher Buck
Copyright Year 2021
Available for pre-order. Item will ship after November 25, 2020
ISBN 9781138346161
November 24, 2020 Forthcoming by Routledge
250 Pages

Request Inspection Copy
https://www.routledge.com/Bahai-Faith-The-Basics/Buck/p/book/9781138346161

Book Description
Baha’i Faith: The Basics provides a thorough and accessible introduction to a fascinating independent, world religion. Examining its historical development, current "community-building" efforts and the social contributions of the Baha’i Faith in the world today, this introduction covers:

• Beliefs: Baha’i spiritual teachings
• Principles: Baha’i social teachings
• History: Baha’u’llah and his covenant
• Scripture: Baha’i sacred texts and inspired guidance
• Institutions: the Baha’i administrative order
• Building community: what Baha’is do
• Social action: Baha’i social and economic development projects
• Public discourse: the Baha’i International Community
• Vision: foundations for a future Golden Age

With features including a glossary of terms, and references to the Baha’i writings throughout, this is the ideal text for students and interested readers wanting to familiarise themselves with the Baha’i Faith.　

Table of Contents
1. Introduction: What is the Bahá’í Faith?

2. Beliefs: Bahá’í Spiritual Teachings

3. Principles: Bahá’í Social Teachings

4. History: Bahá’u’lláh and His Covenant

5. Scripture and Authoritative Writings: Bahá’í Sacred Texts and Inspired Guidance

6. Institutions: The Bahá’í Administrative Order

7. Building Community: What Bahá’ís Do

8. Social Action: Social and Economic Development

9. Public Discourse: The Bahá’í International Community

10. Vision: Foundations for a Future Golden Age

Author(s)
Biography
Christopher Buck is an independent scholar and former professor at Michigan State University, Quincy University, Millikin University and Carleton University.　

Reviews
"This excellent, beautifully organized introduction provides an accurate and unusually rich entré into a relatively new and still somehow frequently misunderstood religion. The author, Christopher Buck, is a leading scholar of the Baha'i religion. His book is richly enhanced with quotations from official translations of the Baha'i sacred writings, insights into the formation of distinctive Baha'i institutions and rare glimpses of key moments in Baha'i intellectual history from an introduction to the influential African American Baha'i philosopher, Alain Locke (d. 1954) known as "the father of the Harlem Renaissance", to a discussion of the more recent development of the Ruhi Institute process. This introduction goes beyond existing textbooks in both scope and detail. It will be warmly welcomed by researchers and students of the Baha'i Faith."

— Todd Lawson, University of Toronto, Canada

WINDS OF CHANGE
The Challenge of Modernity in the Middle East and North Africa

Edited by Cyrus Rohani and Behrooz Sabet,

ADVANCE INFORMATION
978-0-86356-388-1
Release date: November 7, 2019
(Advance publication: July 2019)
Politics/Sociology/Middle East/Islam
PB Royal 352 pp £25

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface by Cyrus Rohani, Behrooz Sabet

Foreword by Christopher Buck (pp. iii–viii)

1. Toward a discursive framework of change, Behrooz Sabet and
Cyrus Rohani

2. Culture for openness and coexistence: How can we create it?
Abdul Hamid Al-Ansari

3. Guiding principles of leadership for the 21st Century: An essay on leadership, Cyrus Rohani

4. Confronting Violence through Policies of Dialogue: Towards
establishing a ‘citizenship that incorporates religious diversity’ in
post-ISIS Era, Saad Salloum

5. Nonviolence and the challenges in the Middle East, Ramin
Jahanbegloo

6. Religion of peace: Islamic principles of good governance,
Christopher Buck (pp. 87–111)

7. Traditionalist and reformist discourses pertaining to Islamic
revival, Armin Eschraghi

8. Defining Islamic social principles: a preamble, Christopher Buck (pp. 125–133)

9. Human rights in the Middle East, Nazila Ghanea

10. Reason in Islam: Taking back their own, Ian Kluge

11. “Be just”: Quranic ethics as benchmarks for Islamic law,
Christopher Buck (pp. 168–181)

12. Education in the Middle East, Behrooz Sabet

13. Globalization and the Middle East: Reflections on a conceptual
reorientation, Shahrzad Sabet

14. Environment and sustainability in the Middle East, Arthur Lyon
Dahl

15. Connecting electronically to the public

About the Contributors
Behrooz Sabet holds a doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo. For more than twenty years, Dr Sabet has been intellectually engaged in research and writing on the intersection of religion, science and culture in the Middle East. He has been a university professor, academic dean and consultant on aspects of education and culture in the Middle East, and has translated and written extensively on religious, ethical, educational, philosophical and social themes. Dr Sabet is a renowned scholar of religion, contemporary political thought and movements in Iran, and the conceptual and historical origins of modernity and its impact on Islam and Middle Eastern societies

Cyrus Rohani is an advisor on social and economic development, and a management and education consultant. He studied at the American University of Beirut and later received an MBA from Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, USA. He worked with Shell-Qatar and then with Qatar Petroleum (oil and gas).

https://saqibooks.com/?post_type=product&p=10902

ARABIC EDITION
(Slightly different organization and content.)

Winds of Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Crisis, Catharsis, and Renewal, ed. Behrooz Sabet and Gamal H. M. Hassan. Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan (رياح التغيير: في الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا). Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 2018. Pp. 17–24. (Release date: November 1, 2018.) ISBN: 9786140320994.

Contributions by the present writer:

Christopher Buck, “Introduction.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 17–24.

Idem, “Chapter 5: Religion of Peace: Islamic Principles of Good Governance.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 133–166.

Idem, “Chapter 6: Defining Islamic Social Principles: A Preamble.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 167–180.

Idem, “Chapter 7: ‘Be Just’: Quranic Ethics as Benchmarks for Islamic Law.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 181–198.

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY:
Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

PREVIEW
This downloadable PDF features Google Books’s “Preview” of pp. 1–41 (as well as front matter and back matter).

Edited by Loni Bramson. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2019. (Release date: December 3, 2018.) Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4985-7002-2. Paper ISBN: 978-1-4985-7004-6 (delayed). Elec. ISBN: 978-1-4985-7003-9.

1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America. [Pp. 1–41.]
• by Christopher Buck

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith. [Pp. 91–116.]
• by Christopher Buck [Pp. 91–116.]

ORDER INFORMATION:
Lexington Books

Book Details
Pages: 296 • Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-7002-2 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00):
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498570022

978-1-4985-7004-6 • Paperback • September 2021 • $39.99 • (£31.00):
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498570046

978-1-4985-7003-9 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00)
https://rowman.com/ISBN/97814985-70039

___________________

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY:
Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

Released December 3, 2018

Edited by Loni Bramson;
Introduction by Loni Bramson;

Contributions by:
• Christopher Buck
• Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis
• Louis Venters
• Mike McMullen
• June Manning Thomas
• Loni Bramson

This book examines the intersection of African American history with that of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Bahá’ís in America have actively worked to establish interracial harmony within its own ranks and to contribute to social justice in the wider community, becoming in the process one of the country’s most diverse religious bodies. Spanning from the start of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first, the essays in this volume examine aspects of the phenomenon of this religion confronting America’s original sin of racism and the significant roles African Americans came to play in the development of the Bahá’í Faith’s culture, identity, administrative structures, and aspirations.

Book Details
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. [Pp. ix–xxv.]
• by Loni Bramson

1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America. [Pp. 1–41.]
• by Christopher Buck

2. “The Most Vital and Challenging Issue”: The Bahá’í Faith’s Efforts to Improve Race Relations, 1922 to 1936. [Pp. 43–89.]
• by Loni Bramson

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith. [Pp. 91–116.]
• by Christopher Buck [Pp. 91–116.]

4. The Most Challenging Issue Revisited: African American Bahá’í Women and the Advancement of Race and Gender Equality, 1899–1943. [Pp. 117–141.]
• by Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis

5. Hand in Hand: Race, Identity, and Community Development among South Carolina’s Bahá’ís, 1973–1979. [Pp. 143–177.]
• by Louis Venters

6. Race Unity Efforts among American Bahá’ís: Institutionalized Tools and Empirical Evidence. [Pp. 179–224.]
• by Mike McMullen

7. Race, Place, and Clusters: Current Vision and Possible Strategies. [Pp. 225–253.]
• by June Manning Thomas

Conclusion. [Pp. 255–258.]
• by Multiple Authors of the Chapters in This Book

About the Contributors

Lexington Books
Pages: 296 • Trim: 6 1/4 x 9
978-1-4985-7002-2 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00)
978-1-4985-7003-9 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00)
Subjects: Religion / Baha'i, Religion / General, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

About the Contributors

CHRISTOPHER BUCK, PhD (University of Toronto), JD (Cooley Law School), is an independent scholar, Pittsburgh attorney, and online faculty member at the Wilmette Institute. He previously taught at Michigan State University, Central Michigan University, Quincy University, Millikin University, and Carleton University. Dr. Buck publishes broadly in Bahá’í studies, American studies, African American studies, Native American studies, Islamic studies, religious studies, Syriac Studies, and legal studies (constitutional law). His books include: Baha’i Faith: A Quick Reference; God and Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America; Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy; Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá’í Faith; Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i Íqán; Religious Celebrations (co-author); and Generation Y Speaks Out: A Policy Guide (coeditor).

LONI BRAMSON’s doctorate is in Contemporary History and History of Religion from the Université Catholique de Louvain. She has taught at universities in Africa, Europe, and the United States. Currently she is an associate professor at the American Public University System. She teaches courses in modern United States and European history, history of religion, women’s history, African American history, and American Indian history. Her publications include chapters in books, articles, and encyclopedia entries on the Bahá’í Faith, and a human rights monograph. She is an editor for the Journal of International Women’s Studies.

GWENDOLYN ETTER-LEWIS is Professor of English, black world studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Etter-Lewis teaches a variety of interdisciplinary courses. Most recently she taught a course on black British writers at the Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center in Luxembourg, which included a five-day study tour in London. In 2007, she founded a college readiness program (Project REACH, now known as Dream Keepers) for underrepresented high school students in the greater Cincinnati area. The program was awarded an internal grant ($150,000) in 2015 and has become a university practicum offered each semester. Dr. Etter-Lewis’ interest in women of color and education has taken her to various countries for research: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Lesotho, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya. She is the author of several books and articles including:

• Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’is in North America. Coedited with Richard Thomas. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 2006.

• Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women’s Personal Narratives. Coedited with Michele Foster. New York: Routledge, 1996.

• My Soul Is My Own: Oral Narratives of African American Women in the Professions. New York: Routledge, 1993.

LOUIS VENTERS, PhD, teaches African and African diaspora history, southern history, and public history at Francis Marion University and is a consultant in the fields of historic preservation and cultural resource management. He is the author or coauthor of several site studies, public history reports, and exhibits, and is a member of the board of directors of Preservation South Carolina and of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission. He is currently working on a sequel to his book, No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina’s Bahá’í Community. He blogs on issues related to race, religion, history, and culture at www.louisventers.com.

MIKE MCMULLEN is a professor of Sociology and Cross Cultural Studies at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. He received his doctorate from Emory University. His first book The Bahá'í: The Religious Construction of a Global Identity. His areas of interest include Bahá’í studies, the sociology of religion, the Middle East, organizational development and change, and conflict resolution and mediation. Recently, he lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at the American University in Cairo. He continues to research the American Bahá'í community, and recently published a book entitled The Bahá’ís of America: The Growth and Change of a Religious Movement. He is currently working on a book on the history of conflict resolution in the United States.

JUNE MANNING THOMAS is Mary Frances Berry Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan and specializes in issues related to social equity in city planning and development. Some of her books include Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (1997, 2013); Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi (1999); and the coedited Mapping Detroit: Evolving Land Use Patterns and Connections (2015). She currently serves on the Regional Baha’i Council of the Midwestern States. Her full biography can be accessed at http://taubmancollege.umi ch.edu/urbanplanning/faculty/directory/june-manning-thomas.

BAHA'I CALENDAR
Sample Article posted by "Facts on File"

Excerpt from 2016 "Facts on File" ebook for high school students:

Baha'i Faith: A Quick Reference
Christopher Buck
Copyright 2016 Facts On File. All rights reserved.

BAHA'I CALENDAR

The Baha’i calendar, like all calendrical systems, charts physical time; yet the Baha’i calendar also inspires spiritual progress by associating time with reminders of human nobility. The new year begins on the vernal equinox (which is astronomically determined and falls on March 19, 20, or 21 on the Gregorian calendar); it consists of 19 months, each month of which is comprised of 19 days. The calendar, called the "Wondrous (Badi) Calendar," invests time with spiritual significance by naming weekdays, days of the month, months, years, and cycles of years after godly perfections that can be translated into goodly virtues. In this way the Baha’i calendar transforms time into opportune moments for reflection on matters of the spirit.

For example, Sunday, March 21, 2010, on the Gregorian calendar may be expressed as follows on the Baha’i calendar: the weekday of Beauty (Jamal, i.e., Sunday), the (first) day Splendor (Baha’) in the (first) month of Splendor (Bahá’) in the year (15th) of Affection (Vidad), in the cycle (19 years) of Unity (Vahid) of the first Grand Cycle (361 years) of All Things (Arabic, Kullu Shay’; Persian, Kull-i Shay’).

In the Baha’i calendar, the names represent far more than simple designations of units of time. They connect to the timeless progress of the soul. The calendar was originally created by the Bab, Baha’u’llah's predecessor and herald, who compared the souls of human beings to mirrors. These mirrors, once burnished and polished by spiritual efforts, are potentially reflections of all divine names and attributes of God that are capable of expression in human existence. To the extent that a person is a bearer of one of the names (i.e., qualities or powers) of God, that individual is empowered to express that quality in human action. (Buck and Melton have called this process "theophoric metamorphosis.") Through the progressive spiritualization of all persons—and, indeed, of all things—the Bab wished to transform all of reality into “mirrors” reflecting the perfections represented by these divine names.

In this unique calendric system, each and every unit of time gives pause for spiritual reflection. This is part of the Bab's comprehensive system of precepts and practices, all calculated to keep the believer in a constant spiritual frame of mind. Each of these dynamic names of God highlights a distinctive quality of sterling character and human nobility; they may not only be invoked, but they may be evoked. At every moment, a person, noting the present time, takes time to reflect on a godly perfection that can be translated into a goodly virtue expressed in thought and deed. By doing so, the mirror of the human heart, or soul, may reflect a ray of the spiritual sun.

The Baha’i Nineteen-Day Feast—when the local Baha’i community meets for worship, consultation, and fellowship—takes place at the beginning of each of the 19 Baha’i months. The Feast begins with devotions, is followed by consultation on community affairs, and ends with food and fellowship. The devotional portion has a spiritualizing effect; passages from the Baha’i Writings and prayers are read. Consultation takes place in a forum similar to a town hall meeting, but conducted with civility and respect. The purpose of consultation is to reach consensus. Consensus is not always possible, but a recommendation may be conveyed to the Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA) by way of a majority vote; even individual suggestions may be passed on to the LSA for consideration. Ideally, the LSA's decisions on prior Feast recommendations should be reported back to the community at a later Feast, both as a courtesy and as evidence of the importance the LSA places upon the consultative process. Finally, the community shares food with the goal of refreshing and further uniting the local community.

Further Information

Christopher Buck and J. Gordon Melton, "Baha’i Calendar and Rhythms of Worship," in Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations, ed. J. Gordon Melton (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2011), Vol. I, pp. 79–86.

Christopher Buck, "Nineteen-Day Feast (Baha’i)," in Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations, ed. J. Gordon Melton (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2011), Vol. 2, pp. 641–645.

Gerald Keil, Time and the Bahá’í Era: A Study of the Badí‘ Calendar (Oxford: George Ronald, 2008).

Edward M. Reingold, and Nachum Dershowitz, "The Bahá’í Calendar," in Calendrical Calculations: The Millennium Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 223–231.

Nader Saiedi, Gate of the Heart: Understanding the Writings of the Báb (Ottawa, Ont.: Association for Baha’i Studies and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008).

Entry Author: Buck, Christopher.

________________________________
Excerpt from:

Baha'i Faith: A Quick Reference
Christopher Buck
Copyright 2016 Facts On File. All rights reserved.

Summary

One of the world's youngest and fastest-growing religions, the Baha'i Faith's adherents believe there is one infinite God who sent divine messengers—including the founders of all the major world religions—to teach people about God and to help move humanity toward greater truths. Baha'i Faith: A Quick Reference covers all the basic information about the religion in an accessible A–Z format. This useful guide comes complete with full-color photographs, a timeline, and further readings for each entry to aid research.

About the Author(s)

Christopher Buck, Ph.D., is the author of God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America. An independent scholar, attorney, and former university professor, Dr. Buck has published numerous articles, essays, and books in religious studies, Baha'i studies, Islamic studies, African-American studies, and Native American studies.

Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Introduction
Entries
‘Abdu’l-Baha
Bab, The
Baha'i Administrative Order
Baha’i calendar
Baha'i community life
Baha'i eschatology
Baha'i ethics
Baha’i houses of worship
Baha'i laws
Baha'i prayer
Baha'i principles of unity
Baha'i Writings
Baha'u'llah
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Introduction
Entries
‘Abdu’l-Baha
Bab, The
Baha'i Administrative Order
Baha’i calendar
Baha'i community life
Baha'i eschatology
Baha'i ethics
Baha’i houses of worship
Baha'i laws
Baha'i prayer
Baha'i principles of unity
Baha'i Writings
Baha'u'llah
Book of Certitude
Declaration of the Bab, Festival of the
God in Baha'i Faith
Hidden Words, The
Naw-Ruz
persecution of Baha’is in contemporary Iran
Ridvan, Festival of
Shoghi Effendi
Shrine of Baha'u'llah
Shrine of the Bab
Twin Birthdays, Festival of the
Universal House of Justice
Support Materials
Timeline
About the Author

Christopher Buck, God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America. (Introduction by J. Gordon Melton, Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Institute for Studies in Religion, Baylor University.) Kingston, NY: Educator’s International Press, 2015. (Hardbound release date: March 27, 2015; Paperback release date: November 10, 2015.) ISBNs: Hard-bound: 9781891928154 | Paperback: 9781891928451.

Note: The publisher, Educators International Press, went out of business in 2019. All rights reverted back to the author, Christopher Buck. Since there is little prospect that this title will ever be republished, I am now releasing this book, in full, to the interested public.

Contents
    Acknowledgments
    Introduction
    Chapter 1: America: Nation and Notion
    Chapter 2: Native American Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 3: Protestant Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 4: The Christian Right’s Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 5: Catholic Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 6: Jewish Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 7: Mormon Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 8: Christian Identity Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 9: Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 10: Contemporary Muslim Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 11: Buddhist Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 12: Baha’i Myths and Visions of America
    Chapter 13: Conclusion: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role
    References
    About the Author”

Based on a Michigan State University course, “Religious Myths of America” (IAH-211C) for “Integrated Arts and Humanities” (IAH). This course was designed and taught by Christopher Buck, Ph.D., during the 2003–2004 academic year.
Course syllabus: 
http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/syllabi/b/buck/Buck-20040309.pdf

Reviews
• “Interview with Christopher Buck, author of God & Apple Pie.” By Troy Mikanovich, Assistant Editor, and Christopher Buck. Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. (Published online: September 14, 2018.)

• Reading Religion (“A Publication of the American Academy of Religion). Review of God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America by Emily Goshey (PhD candidate, religious studies, Princeton University): “This overview of religions in America and their relationship with America as both “nation and notion” covers tremendous ground. … God and Apple Pie is a veritable encyclopedia of both primary and secondary sources, but with the benefit of a more digestible presentation and a coherent narrative framework. Although the numerous, lengthy block quotes require some extra work from the reader, the overall effect is to empower the reader to see for themselves exactly how people within a given tradition mythologize and theologize America. That is to say, Buck shows as well as tells. … God and Apple Pie offers a valuable contribution to readers looking to understand why religion matters in America and how different American religious groups have seen their relationship with their country. Any reader, no matter how well versed in religious traditions, would learn a great deal by perusing its pages.” (Published online: August 14, 2017.)

• Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 20.4 (May 2017): pp. 130–131. Review by Donald A. Westbrook (UCLA): “Thus, the volume has clear import for both theological studies and religious studies, and is unique in that it attempts to summarize, systematize, and synthesize the visionary and mythical examples it deftly surveys. … On the whole, this revised and expanded volume is impressive for the breadth and depth it accomplishes and will be of value to researchers, teachers, and especially general readers.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2017.20.4.130

• Religion: (Published online: October 26, 2016.) Review by Daniel Liechty PhD, DMin, ACSW (Professor of Social Work, Illinois State University): “Fascinating … The chapter on Mormonism … is itself alone worth the price of the book. Other chapters, on Black Muslim and contemporary Islamic views, as well as Buddhist and Bahá’í visions of America … are, to my knowledge, the very best sources available for summarization of this material. … The reading itself is quite accessible. It could easily function not only as an undergraduate textbook, but also as the main reading for any adult education class or discussion group.” DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2016.1244636.

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR OF GOD & APPLE PIE (9-17-2018)
"Reading Religion" published by the American Academy of Religion
_______________________________________________
Because of the diversity of religious beliefs that are present in the United States, the prospect of a singular religious vision for America and its role on the world stage is difficult to pin down. In God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America, Christopher Buck eschews any simple generalizations and instead chooses to survey eleven distinct religious traditions and the way that they frame the US in their canon and practices. Rather than landing on comfortable, generalized platitudes, Buck’s work offers a glimpse into the different and often conflicting ways that the subject, shadow, and promise of America factors into these different religious traditions. On July 8, 2018, I met with Dr. Buck on Skype to learn more about his work. – Troy Mikanovich, Assistant Editor

TM: Why don’t you start by telling me a little bit about God & Apple Pie? What are you arguing in the book and how did you get there?

CB: God & Apple Pie is based on a course that I designed and taught at Michigan State University in 2003–2004. At the time there wasn’t an argument or a thesis. After I moved to Pennsylvania and I was studying for the bar exam, a senior editor from Praeger sent me an email out of the blue saying, “We saw your syllabus; how would you like to put together a book proposal?” So I had to develop an argument. The two operative hypotheses I have, which are both quite general and I think fairly common-sense are first, “religions remythologize America,” and further, that “religions re-envision America.”

The book is a survey of eleven different religions, selected from among religions that have religious views of America either officially or popularly. In its original publication, the book was titled Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role. One of the themes in the book is America’s world role, however that’s defined—or “redefined”—by one of these religious traditions.

TM: In the United States, now as much as ever, some people are interested in having a debate between those who have a particularistic vision of American religion and those who have a pluralistic or inclusive vision of American religion. Was the process of revisiting the first publication of your work in 2009 informed at all by the current religious—or partisan—landscape?

CB: I would say that instead of this debate having informed the writing of God & Apple Pie, the current debate makes it more relevant.

TM: In what ways?

CB: I want to studiously avoid partisan politics, which I see as quite divisive. But on principle, there’s this idea of America’s world role—think of the slogan, “America First”—or, alternatively, “World First”—or some combination of these two catchphrases. President Woodrow Wilson, who was the only US president to have a PhD—a PhD in political science—is often credited by historians for being the first US president to openly define or propose America’s world role. Not that presidents didn’t have an idea of America’s place in world affairs before, but President Woodrow Wilson was arguably the first to articulate this vision of America’s world role so clearly and definitively. But that’s in the secular world. In the religious world, we have this idea of American exceptionalism going all the way back to the origins of America, and the “city upon a hill” idea that Ronald Reagan quoted in three speeches.

TM: He even added “shining”; it was now the “shining city upon a hill.”

CB: Yes—so, is that still the vision of America? And if so, what about America as an exemplar nation, whether religiously or socially? What can America contribute to the world? God & Apple Pie traces the evolution of an increasingly international awareness in the context of America’s world role.

Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations. By J. Gordon Melton, Editor, with James A. Beverley, Christopher Buck, and Constance A. Jones. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-59884-205-0. eISBN: 978-1-59884-206-7 Pub. date: September 13, 2011. [See below for entries.]

From the "Introduction" (p. xxi):

A review of the Baha’i Faith is particularly edifying. It is the newest of the major world religions and underwent some significant repression during its founding years. Through the twentieth century, it went through a lengthy process of establishing a new Baha’i calendar and designating holy days, including commemorations of the birth and death of the faith’s early founder/leaders. In a century, the Baha’is accomplished what it sometimes took other religions multiple centuries to complete. Meanwhile, a few of the twentieth-century new religions have moved to create an annual cycle of celebration within their first generation of existence.

Articles on Baha’i Holy Days in: Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations:

1. “‘Abdu’l-Baha, Ascension of (November 28).” (Vol. 1, pp. 1–4.)  
2. “Ayyam-i-Ha (Baha’i Intercalary Days) (February 25–March 1).” (Vol. 1, pp. 60–63.)  
3. “Bab, Festival of the Birth of the (October 20).” (Christopher Buck and J. Gordon Melton.)  (Vol. 1, pp. 65–67.) 
4. “Bab, Festival of the Declaration of the (May 23).” (Vol. 1, pp. 67–73.)  
5. “Bab, Martyrdom of the (July 9).”  (Vol. 1, pp. 73–76.)  
6. “Baha’i Calendar and Rhythms of Worship.” (Christopher Buck and J. Gordon Melton.)  (Vol. 1, pp. 79–86.) 
7. “Baha’i Fast (March 2–20).”  (Vol. 1, pp. 94–96.)  
8. “Baha’u’llah, Ascension of (May 29).” (Vol. 1, pp. 96–99.)  
9. “Baha’u’llah, Festival of the Birth of (November 12).” (Christopher Buck and J. Gordon Melton.)  (Vol. 1, pp. 99–102.) 
10. “Covenant, Day of the (November 26).” (Vol. 1, pp. 225–228.)  
11. “Naw-Rúz, Festival of (March 21).” (Vol. 2, pp. 225–228.)  
12. “Nineteen-Day Feast (Baha’i).”  (Vol. 2, pp. 641–645.)
13. “Race Unity Day.”  (Vol. 2, pp. 727–731.)   
14. “Ridvan, Festival of (April 20–May 2).”  (Vol. 2, pp. 744–747.)  
15. “World Religion Day (January).”  (Vol. 2, pp. 936–939.)  

Christopher Buck, Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role. Santa Barbara, CA/Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO/Praeger, 2009. Hardback edition. ISBN: 978-0-313-35959-0. eISBN: 978-0-313-35960-6. (Release date: April 30, 2009.)

Libraries Worldwide: Total (print & ebook editions): 1,209. [WorldCat, September 14, 2018.] See http://www.amazon.com/Religious-Myths-Visions-America-Redefined/dp/0313359598.

Reviews

• Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15.3 (February 2012): 139–141. Review by Irén E. Annus (University of Szeged, Hungary): “This volume may be of interest to readers involved not only in Religious Studies, but also in Political Science, History, Intellectual History, American Studies, and Cultural Studies. . . . In the course of the detailed and well-documented analysis of individual religions, Buck reveals a highly elaborate and in-depth picture of the various beliefs, which is indeed impressive. . . He argues that the original myth and vision of America as a nation was captured by the Protestant notion of manifest destiny. This has been challenged by the other faiths . . . that have transformed the idea of manifest destiny into America’s common destiny. . . The book is overall a fresh and stimulating cultural reading of some of America’s religions and the complex ways in which their followers make sense of and act in the world.” [Electronic Database (full text available): ATLA Religion Database; JSTOR.]

•  Journal of American History 98.1 (June 2011): 279–280. Review by Richard Kyle (Tabor College):

“Religious Myths and Visions of America has many strengths. The author has defended his thesis with solid research. He has also made an original contribution to American studies.”

• Multicultural Review 18.4 (Winter 2009): 66. Review by Vladimir F. Wertsman (New York Public Library):

“This interesting, thoroughly researched scholarly study examines how ten minor religions interpreted America’s reality (“nation and notion”) and generated numerous religious myths and visions of America. … [t]his volume is certainly a welcome addition to the topic of racial, cultural, and ethnic studies. … Recommended for comparative ethnic and religion collections.”

Christopher Buck, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2005. Pub date: July 3, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-1890688387. ISBN-10: 189068838X. L

In print. (Order from Kalimat Press: http://www.kalimat.com/Locke.html.)

REVIEWS
•  Derik Smith. World Order 38.3 (2006/2007): 42–48. (Published in 2008.): ”Christopher Buck’s recent book, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy, is a welcome addition to the literature on early twentieth-century American and African American culture. But, perhaps more important, Buck’s study is a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. … Any future study of Locke must necessarily make its way through Christopher Buck’s Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. The scholar forcefully proves his thesis that, in Locke’s thinking, philosophy and religious belief operated as synergistic terms. He has shown that the Bahá’í Faith was integral to Locke’s life and ideology. …  Yet, after reading Buck’s work, it is difficult to imagine Locke the philosopher rapt in prayer. Of course, this is not a shortcoming of the book. Rather it is an indication that, while he may have wanted to portray a more pious figure, Buck maintains the vow he made in his introduction to Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy “to constrain any grandiose claims on Locke as a Bahá’í.”

• M. Anthony Fitchue. Journal of African American History 92.1 (Winter 2007): 131–133: “But the jewels in this book are unmistakable. … Clearly, Buck has given voice to the men and women who not only put the Baha’i faith first in their lives, but also left key documents, personal letters, notes, and memoranda related to the life of philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke for future researchers to ponder and use for years to come.”

• William P. Collins. Insights (Library of Congress Professional Association Newsletter) 38.1–3 (Jan–Oct 2006): 10–12: “Both of these books [Lights of the Spirit and Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy] go a long way toward correcting the historians’ failure to note the important role played by the Bahá’í Faith and prominent African-American Bahá’ís in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.”

Christopher Buck, Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. ISBN-10: 0791440613. ISBN-13: 978-0791440612. (Release date: May 13, 1999.)

NOTE
This is the first formal (academic) comparison of the Baha’i Faith and Christianity, notwithstanding a wealth of apologetic literature on this topic.

OPENING PARAGRAPH
Religions enshrine symbols, the stained-glass windows of faith. Sacred symbols present an explorable treasury of religious thought—an information-rich, condensed language of spirituality. Symbols are the prisms of ideals and of other religious concerns. Symbols are susceptible of analysis and are proper objects of study. As symbols encode ideas, they require interpretation to be both understood and meaningfully compared. “We can see that an essential ingredient of the modern study of religion,” writes Ninian Smart, “is symbolic analysis, which tries to throw light on the various themes which can be discovered cross-culturally through the exploration of various worldviews” (1985, 33). Symbolic analysis involves not only the exploration of religious worldviews intrinsically, but comparatively as well. – Paradise & Paradigm, p. 1.

CONCLUSION
Symbols ensoul ideas. In the Abrahamic faiths generally, the most important symbol complex is eschatological imagery, the positive focus of which is Paradise. Visions of the empyreal realm have, historically, had an extraordinary power to inspire. Paradise is iconoplastic. The beatific panorama, the symbolic landscape, the ideals and imagery that inform Paradise in the religious imagination are grounded in root metaphors and are animated by key scenarios reflecting a theology of activity, in a dynamic interplay of belief and behavior, myth and ritual, within the religious grasp of totality.

Paradise allegorizes ideals. These ideals are projected onto heaven. There, in the wish-images of the communal dream, ideals are reified and beatified. In a Bergeresque process of paradisical world building, Heaven functions as the impressionistic blueprint of the ideal faith-community. Paradise imagery is then dislocated from the speculative and refocused on Earth. When once the heart is transformed and society reformed, Paradise is realized. In the intersection of eschatology and ethics, in the interplay of ideas and imagery, and as a function of an organizing principle, an overarching paradigm, Paradise becomes utopia. – Paradise & Paradigm, p. 329.

REVIEWS
•  Kathleen McVey. International Journal of Middle East Studies 35.3 (Aug. 2003): 494–496. 
Will C. van den Hoonaard. Studies in Religion. Sciences Religieuses 31.3–4 (2002): 501–502.
• Brannon Wheeler. Religious Studies Review 28.3 (July 2002): 293:
“Buck’s theoretically innovative analysis of ‘paradigmatic differences’ in East Syrian (or Nestorian) Christianity and the early Baha’i faith is a fascinating and intellectually challenging book. … In all, a forceful and clearly argued book which should be read by scholars interested in questions of religious symbolism and the comparative method.”
• Andrew Rippin. University of Toronto Quarterly 71.1 (Winter 2001/2002): 170–172. 
• William Collins. Baha’i Studies Review 10 (2001/2002): 157–160. 
• Edward G. Farrugia, S.J. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 66.2 (2000): 480–483.
• John Renard. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 34.2 (2000): 212–213.
• Daniel Grolin. H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (July 2000). 
Harold Coward. (Unpublished) (2000). 

POST-PUBLICATION SCHOLARSHIP
Paola Orsatti, “Syro-Persian Formulas In Poetic Form In Baptism Liturgy,” Persian Origins – Early Judaeo-Persian and the Emergence of New Persian. Collected Papers of the Symposium, Göttingen 1999. Edited by Ludwig Paul (Iranica Vol. 6, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2003), pp. 147–176.

LIBRARIES WORLDWIDE
Total (print & ebook editions): 1,886. [WorldCat, July 11, 2019.] Also available as a Nook Book.

Updated version posted on June 1, 2024.

Posted with permission of author and publisher, Kalimát Press. Thesis topic originally recommended by Todd Lawson. Scanned by Duane Troxel. Proofread by Jonah Winters and Lynn Jaluvka, with additional proofing by Bobbi Lyons. Formatted for the web by Jonah Winters. Corrections by Shahrokh Monjazeb. Critically read, from cover-to-cover, with recommendations, including several emendations, by Sohrab Kourosh. Please support this online re-printing by ordering a copy of the book.

See also the following published, academic reviews of Symbol & Secret:

•  Moojan Momen, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series) 7.2 (July 1997): 290–91. “Christopher Buck’s book represents the first book-length attempt in the English language to analyse one of the major works of Bahā’u’llāh. … One main theme that Buck explores in this book is the question of whether the text of the Īqān contains hints by Bahā’u’llāh of his future claim. Some have expressed doubt as to whether any such hints exist but Buck demonstrates, conclusively I think, that there are many covert and even overt indications of what he calls ‘Bahā’u’llāh’s messianic secret’. … Buck has created a good starting point for what one would anticipate will be a new genre: critical analyses of the writings of Bahā’u’llāh.”

•  Frank Lewis, Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 76–91 [16-page extended review]. “Buck’s analysis of Bahaullah’s [sic: Baha’u’llah’s] appeal to Koran 33:44 promising attainment to the divine Presence on the Day of Resurrection (itself allegorically interpreted by Bahaullah as the advent day of a new prophet), as a counter-argument to the nearby verse (33:40) about the ‘Seal of the Prophets’ is simply brilliant.” … “Symbol and Secret is a ground-breaking study, setting a standard for and describing the agenda of the exegesis of Bahai texts for some time to come.”

•  John Hatcher, Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Bulletin 30.1 (July 1996): 70–71. “Buck offers insightful analysis of Bahā’u’llāh’s exegetical technique.”

•  Jonah Winters, Iranian Studies 32.1 (Winter 1999): 141–145. “Buck has undertaken a project that is to be commended on many fronts. This study is daring in that it is the first extended analysis of the Islamic context and content of Baha’ullah’s thought and writings. The rigor with which Buck has treated his topics is a model for anyone engaging in textual scholarship: his research is broad, his attention to detail thorough, and his coverage of the topics exhaustive. Finally, many of his conclusions, the light he throws on the Íqán and its content, and in places even his methods are frankly brilliant.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00210869908701948.

•  Jonah Winters, Journal of Bahá’í Studies 9.3 (September 1999): 69–75. “Christopher Buck’s Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i Íqán (Studies in the Bábí and Bahá’í Religions, volume 7) can be seen as a work of genius: it is ground-breaking—daring, innovative, and even brilliant. … As Symbol and Secret is the first work written in English to examine Bahá’í scripture and hermeneutics in any analytical depth, Buck’s work can without exaggeration be declared seminal.

[…] First, this study is daring in that it is the first extended analysis of the Islamic context and content of Bahá’u’lláh’s thought and writings. Buck’s tangential self-defense on pages 260–261 indicates that he, too, is well aware of the daringness of the topic and of his academic approach to it. Second, the rigour with which Buck has treated his topics is a model for anyone engaging in textual scholarship: his research is broad, his attention to detail thorough, and his coverage of the topics exhaustive. Finally, many of his conclusions, the light he throws on the Íqán and its content, and in places even his methods are frankly brilliant.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-9.3(1999).

Generation Y Speaks Out: A Policy Guide. Edited by Christopher Buck, David Stowe & Shanetta Martin. Lansing: Michigan Nonprofit Association & Michigan’s Children, 2002.

From the "Introduction":

Michigan State University’s Service Learning Writing Project has become a combination of both service and learning throughout the 2000–2001 academic year, in association with two non-profit advocacy organizations: Michigan Nonprofit Association and Michigan’s Children. Students in Dr. David Stowe’s and Dr. Christopher Buck’s sections of “Writing: Public Life in America” (ATL 135) were given the opportunity to write issue briefs, covering concerns of their generation, Generation Y.

Generation Y Speaks Out: A Policy Guide is the result of hard work and dedication, and is researched and written entirely by MSU students. The following compilation of issue briefs began as an unknown. The final outcome was a mystery to all partners, yet a vision was in mind.

What exactly is an issue brief? What components does it contain? What is the final format? All of these are questions that were asked over and over to make this project’s vision a reality. An issue brief is exactly what its name describes - a brief summary of a current issue relevant to society.

In this particular case, it is an issue that is of concern to Generation Y. Generation Y is the 18–24 age group into which participating students of this project fall. While the views of this generation have been criticized as either being radical, or not having any views at all, the results may be surprising. These results are the end product of numerous focus groups, surveys, and research of the opinions of students and friends of students at Michigan State University.

“Last Prophet and Last Day: Shaykhī, Bābī and Bahā’ī Exegesis of the ‘Seal of the Prophets’ (Q. 33:40).” By Christopher Buck and Youli A. Ioannesyan. In: The Bahā’ī Faith: Doctrinal and Historical Explorations. (Pp. 97–118.) Edited by Moojan Momen and Zackery Mirza Heern. (Basel, Beijing, Wuhan, Barcelona, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Cluj, Manchester: MDPI Books, March 2024). (238 pages.) ISBN 978-3-7258-0143-5 (Hardback). ISBN 978-3-7258-0144-2 (PDF). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-7258-0144-2. (“Special Issue Reprint.”)

Abstract:The appearance of post-Islamic religions, the Bābī and Bahā’ī Faiths, is a theoretical impossibility from an orthodox Muslim perspective, since the Qur’ān designates the Prophet Muḥammad as the “Seal of the Prophets” (Q. 33:40), widely understood as meaning the “Last of the Prophets.” To overcome this problem, the respective prophet-founders, the Bāb (1819–1850) and Bahā’u’llāh (1817–1892), each presented novel approaches, which this article will explore. In short, the Bāb revealed a “new” Qur’ān, i.e. the Qayyūm al-Asmā’ (1844), and Bahā’u’llāh wrote the Kitāb-i Īqān (Book of Certitude) in January 1861. While acknowledging Muḥammad as the last prophet in the “Prophetic Cycle,” the Bāb and Bahā’u’llāh inaugurated the advent of the “Cycle of Fulfillment.” This new era was foretold in the Qur’ān by way of a symbolic code, understood metaphorically and spiritually. A key concept is that of the “divine presence” (liqā’ Allāh), i.e. the encounter/“meeting” with God, whereby Q. 33:44, Q. 83:6, Q. 7:35 (and their respective parallels) effectively transcend Q. 33:40. Recognizing that the Bāb and Bahā’u’llāh each represents the “divine presence” thereby constitutes a “realized eschatology.”*

*This paper represents the first time that a wide-ranging survey and analysis of the Shaykhī, Bābī, and Bahā’ī viewpoints on the subject of the “Seal of the Prophets” has been made and is the result of a collaboration between two scholars working in the United States and Russia.

“The ‘Baha’i Question’ in Iran: Influence of International Law on ‘Islamic Law’,” by Christopher Buck.

In: Menschenrechte in der Islamischen Republik Iran (Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran), ed. Anja Pistor-Hatam (Würzburg, Germany: Ergon-Verlag, 2021). Pp. 161–188. (Published on May 5, 2021.)

Description (German, with English translation):

Beschreibung

Die Islamische Republik Iran ist an den gewohnheitsrechtlichen Inhalt der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte gebunden. In der Verfassung Irans gelten Gleichheitsrechte jedoch nur für Musliminnen und Muslime. Auch wird der Schutz durch das Gesetz in der Verfassung den Bürgerinnen und Bürgern der Islamischen Republik ausschließlich im Rahmen der zwölferschiitischen Auslegung des islamischen Rechts gewährt. Demzufolge gibt es unterschiedliche Rechte für unterschiedliche Menschen, je nach Geschlechts- und Religionszugehörigkeit. Wie man in Iran auf dieser Grundlage die universellen Menschenrechten diskutiert und wie man mit diesen umgeht, ist Gegenstand der Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes.

Description

The Islamic Republic of Iran is bound by the customary content of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Iran's constitution, however, equality rights apply only to Muslims. Also, protection under the law in the constitution is granted to citizens of the Islamic Republic only within the framework of the Twelver Shiite interpretation of Islamic law. Accordingly, there are different rights for different people depending on their gender and religious affiliation. How universal human rights are discussed and dealt with in Iran on this basis is the subject of the contributions to this anthology. Content:

Anja Pistor-Hatam: Einleitung/Introduction /

Kerstin von der Decken: Völkerrechtliche Bindungen des Iran an die Menschenrechte: UN-Menschenrechts-verträge, universelles Völkergewohnheitsrecht und OIC-Menschenrechtsdokumente /

Arash Sarkohi: Islamischer Menschenrechtsdiskurs in Iran - Chance oder Widerspruch /

Constance Arminjon Hachem: Human Rights in Twelver Shiite Islam: Iranian Clerics' Debate on Two Legal Traditions /

Ladan Rahbari: Violence Against Women in Contemporary Iran: Between State, Society and Domestic Sphere /

Arash Guitoo: Sexuelle Minderheiten in der Islamischen Republik Iran /

Christopher Buck: The "Baha'i Question" in Iran: Influence of International Law on "Islamic Law" /

Anja Pistor-Hatam: "Human Dignity/karâmat": On the Question of a Possible Consensus in the Human Rights Debate through the Example of the Islamic Republic of Iran /

Anja Pistor-Hatam: Freedom of Religion in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the "Right to Have Rights" /

Mohsen Kadivar: Plädoyer für die Abschaffung der Bestrafung von Apostasie im Islam

About the Editor:

Anja Prof. Dr. Pistor-Hatam
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Seminar für Orientalistik 

Dr Anja Pistor-Hatam is professor of Islamic Studies at Kiel University. After studying Islamic Studies and History at Freiburg University, where she earned her doctorate in 1992, she habilitated at Heidelberg University in 1999. Prof. Pistor-Hatam has held various positions at Kiel University (Dean of the Department of Philosophy, Speaker of the university's senate and Vice-President for Student Affairs, Internationalization, and Diversity). She is a member of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg and of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Scientific Advisory Board for the Institute of Iranian Studies.

https://www.nomos-shop.de/ergon/titel/menschenrechte-in-der-islamischen-republik-iran-id-87893/

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY:
Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

PREVIEW
This downloadable PDF features Google Books’s “Preview” of pp. 1–41 (as well as front matter and back matter).

Edited by Loni Bramson. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2019. (Release date: December 3, 2018.) Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4985-7002-2. Paper ISBN: 978-1-4985-7004-6 (delayed). Elec. ISBN: 978-1-4985-7003-9.

1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America. [Pp. 1–41.]
• by Christopher Buck

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith. [Pp. 91–116.]
• by Christopher Buck [Pp. 91–116.]

ORDER INFORMATION:
Lexington Books

Book Details
Pages: 296 • Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-7002-2 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00):
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498570022

978-1-4985-7004-6 • Paperback • September 2021 • $39.99 • (£31.00):
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498570046

978-1-4985-7003-9 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00)
https://rowman.com/ISBN/97814985-70039

___________________

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY:
Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

Released December 3, 2018

Edited by Loni Bramson;
Introduction by Loni Bramson;

Contributions by:
• Christopher Buck
• Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis
• Louis Venters
• Mike McMullen
• June Manning Thomas
• Loni Bramson

This book examines the intersection of African American history with that of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Bahá’ís in America have actively worked to establish interracial harmony within its own ranks and to contribute to social justice in the wider community, becoming in the process one of the country’s most diverse religious bodies. Spanning from the start of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first, the essays in this volume examine aspects of the phenomenon of this religion confronting America’s original sin of racism and the significant roles African Americans came to play in the development of the Bahá’í Faith’s culture, identity, administrative structures, and aspirations.

Book Details
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. [Pp. ix–xxv.]
• by Loni Bramson

1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America. [Pp. 1–41.]
• by Christopher Buck

2. “The Most Vital and Challenging Issue”: The Bahá’í Faith’s Efforts to Improve Race Relations, 1922 to 1936. [Pp. 43–89.]
• by Loni Bramson

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith. [Pp. 91–116.]
• by Christopher Buck [Pp. 91–116.]

4. The Most Challenging Issue Revisited: African American Bahá’í Women and the Advancement of Race and Gender Equality, 1899–1943. [Pp. 117–141.]
• by Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis

5. Hand in Hand: Race, Identity, and Community Development among South Carolina’s Bahá’ís, 1973–1979. [Pp. 143–177.]
• by Louis Venters

6. Race Unity Efforts among American Bahá’ís: Institutionalized Tools and Empirical Evidence. [Pp. 179–224.]
• by Mike McMullen

7. Race, Place, and Clusters: Current Vision and Possible Strategies. [Pp. 225–253.]
• by June Manning Thomas

Conclusion. [Pp. 255–258.]
• by Multiple Authors of the Chapters in This Book

About the Contributors

Lexington Books
Pages: 296 • Trim: 6 1/4 x 9
978-1-4985-7002-2 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00)
978-1-4985-7003-9 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00)
Subjects: Religion / Baha'i, Religion / General, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

About the Contributors

CHRISTOPHER BUCK, PhD (University of Toronto), JD (Cooley Law School), is an independent scholar, Pittsburgh attorney, and online faculty member at the Wilmette Institute. He previously taught at Michigan State University, Central Michigan University, Quincy University, Millikin University, and Carleton University. Dr. Buck publishes broadly in Bahá’í studies, American studies, African American studies, Native American studies, Islamic studies, religious studies, Syriac Studies, and legal studies (constitutional law). His books include: Baha’i Faith: A Quick Reference; God and Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America; Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy; Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá’í Faith; Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i Íqán; Religious Celebrations (co-author); and Generation Y Speaks Out: A Policy Guide (coeditor).

LONI BRAMSON’s doctorate is in Contemporary History and History of Religion from the Université Catholique de Louvain. She has taught at universities in Africa, Europe, and the United States. Currently she is an associate professor at the American Public University System. She teaches courses in modern United States and European history, history of religion, women’s history, African American history, and American Indian history. Her publications include chapters in books, articles, and encyclopedia entries on the Bahá’í Faith, and a human rights monograph. She is an editor for the Journal of International Women’s Studies.

GWENDOLYN ETTER-LEWIS is Professor of English, black world studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Etter-Lewis teaches a variety of interdisciplinary courses. Most recently she taught a course on black British writers at the Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center in Luxembourg, which included a five-day study tour in London. In 2007, she founded a college readiness program (Project REACH, now known as Dream Keepers) for underrepresented high school students in the greater Cincinnati area. The program was awarded an internal grant ($150,000) in 2015 and has become a university practicum offered each semester. Dr. Etter-Lewis’ interest in women of color and education has taken her to various countries for research: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Lesotho, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya. She is the author of several books and articles including:

• Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’is in North America. Coedited with Richard Thomas. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 2006.

• Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women’s Personal Narratives. Coedited with Michele Foster. New York: Routledge, 1996.

• My Soul Is My Own: Oral Narratives of African American Women in the Professions. New York: Routledge, 1993.

LOUIS VENTERS, PhD, teaches African and African diaspora history, southern history, and public history at Francis Marion University and is a consultant in the fields of historic preservation and cultural resource management. He is the author or coauthor of several site studies, public history reports, and exhibits, and is a member of the board of directors of Preservation South Carolina and of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission. He is currently working on a sequel to his book, No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina’s Bahá’í Community. He blogs on issues related to race, religion, history, and culture at www.louisventers.com.

MIKE MCMULLEN is a professor of Sociology and Cross Cultural Studies at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. He received his doctorate from Emory University. His first book The Bahá'í: The Religious Construction of a Global Identity. His areas of interest include Bahá’í studies, the sociology of religion, the Middle East, organizational development and change, and conflict resolution and mediation. Recently, he lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at the American University in Cairo. He continues to research the American Bahá'í community, and recently published a book entitled The Bahá’ís of America: The Growth and Change of a Religious Movement. He is currently working on a book on the history of conflict resolution in the United States.

JUNE MANNING THOMAS is Mary Frances Berry Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan and specializes in issues related to social equity in city planning and development. Some of her books include Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (1997, 2013); Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi (1999); and the coedited Mapping Detroit: Evolving Land Use Patterns and Connections (2015). She currently serves on the Regional Baha’i Council of the Midwestern States. Her full biography can be accessed at http://taubmancollege.umi ch.edu/urbanplanning/faculty/directory/june-manning-thomas.

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY:
Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

PREVIEW
This downloadable PDF features Google Books’s “Preview” of pp. 1–41 (as well as front matter and back matter).

Edited by Loni Bramson. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2019. (Release date: December 3, 2018.) Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4985-7002-2. Paper ISBN: 978-1-4985-7004-6 (delayed). Elec. ISBN: 978-1-4985-7003-9.

1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America. [Pp. 1–41.]
• by Christopher Buck

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith. [Pp. 91–116.]
• by Christopher Buck [Pp. 91–116.]

ORDER INFORMATION:
Lexington Books

Book Details
Pages: 296 • Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-7002-2 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00):
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498570022

978-1-4985-7004-6 • Paperback • September 2021 • $39.99 • (£31.00):
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498570046

978-1-4985-7003-9 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00)
https://rowman.com/ISBN/97814985-70039

___________________

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY:
Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

Released December 3, 2018

Edited by Loni Bramson;
Introduction by Loni Bramson;

Contributions by:
• Christopher Buck
• Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis
• Louis Venters
• Mike McMullen
• June Manning Thomas
• Loni Bramson

This book examines the intersection of African American history with that of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Bahá’ís in America have actively worked to establish interracial harmony within its own ranks and to contribute to social justice in the wider community, becoming in the process one of the country’s most diverse religious bodies. Spanning from the start of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first, the essays in this volume examine aspects of the phenomenon of this religion confronting America’s original sin of racism and the significant roles African Americans came to play in the development of the Bahá’í Faith’s culture, identity, administrative structures, and aspirations.

Book Details
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. [Pp. ix–xxv.]
• by Loni Bramson

1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America. [Pp. 1–41.]
• by Christopher Buck

2. “The Most Vital and Challenging Issue”: The Bahá’í Faith’s Efforts to Improve Race Relations, 1922 to 1936. [Pp. 43–89.]
• by Loni Bramson

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith. [Pp. 91–116.]
• by Christopher Buck [Pp. 91–116.]

4. The Most Challenging Issue Revisited: African American Bahá’í Women and the Advancement of Race and Gender Equality, 1899–1943. [Pp. 117–141.]
• by Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis

5. Hand in Hand: Race, Identity, and Community Development among South Carolina’s Bahá’ís, 1973–1979. [Pp. 143–177.]
• by Louis Venters

6. Race Unity Efforts among American Bahá’ís: Institutionalized Tools and Empirical Evidence. [Pp. 179–224.]
• by Mike McMullen

7. Race, Place, and Clusters: Current Vision and Possible Strategies. [Pp. 225–253.]
• by June Manning Thomas

Conclusion. [Pp. 255–258.]
• by Multiple Authors of the Chapters in This Book

About the Contributors

Lexington Books
Pages: 296 • Trim: 6 1/4 x 9
978-1-4985-7002-2 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00)
978-1-4985-7003-9 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00)
Subjects: Religion / Baha'i, Religion / General, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

About the Contributors

CHRISTOPHER BUCK, PhD (University of Toronto), JD (Cooley Law School), is an independent scholar, Pittsburgh attorney, and online faculty member at the Wilmette Institute. He previously taught at Michigan State University, Central Michigan University, Quincy University, Millikin University, and Carleton University. Dr. Buck publishes broadly in Bahá’í studies, American studies, African American studies, Native American studies, Islamic studies, religious studies, Syriac Studies, and legal studies (constitutional law). His books include: Baha’i Faith: A Quick Reference; God and Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America; Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy; Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá’í Faith; Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i Íqán; Religious Celebrations (co-author); and Generation Y Speaks Out: A Policy Guide (coeditor).

LONI BRAMSON’s doctorate is in Contemporary History and History of Religion from the Université Catholique de Louvain. She has taught at universities in Africa, Europe, and the United States. Currently she is an associate professor at the American Public University System. She teaches courses in modern United States and European history, history of religion, women’s history, African American history, and American Indian history. Her publications include chapters in books, articles, and encyclopedia entries on the Bahá’í Faith, and a human rights monograph. She is an editor for the Journal of International Women’s Studies.

GWENDOLYN ETTER-LEWIS is Professor of English, black world studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Etter-Lewis teaches a variety of interdisciplinary courses. Most recently she taught a course on black British writers at the Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center in Luxembourg, which included a five-day study tour in London. In 2007, she founded a college readiness program (Project REACH, now known as Dream Keepers) for underrepresented high school students in the greater Cincinnati area. The program was awarded an internal grant ($150,000) in 2015 and has become a university practicum offered each semester. Dr. Etter-Lewis’ interest in women of color and education has taken her to various countries for research: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Lesotho, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya. She is the author of several books and articles including:

• Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’is in North America. Coedited with Richard Thomas. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 2006.

• Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women’s Personal Narratives. Coedited with Michele Foster. New York: Routledge, 1996.

• My Soul Is My Own: Oral Narratives of African American Women in the Professions. New York: Routledge, 1993.

LOUIS VENTERS, PhD, teaches African and African diaspora history, southern history, and public history at Francis Marion University and is a consultant in the fields of historic preservation and cultural resource management. He is the author or coauthor of several site studies, public history reports, and exhibits, and is a member of the board of directors of Preservation South Carolina and of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission. He is currently working on a sequel to his book, No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina’s Bahá’í Community. He blogs on issues related to race, religion, history, and culture at www.louisventers.com.

MIKE MCMULLEN is a professor of Sociology and Cross Cultural Studies at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. He received his doctorate from Emory University. His first book The Bahá'í: The Religious Construction of a Global Identity. His areas of interest include Bahá’í studies, the sociology of religion, the Middle East, organizational development and change, and conflict resolution and mediation. Recently, he lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at the American University in Cairo. He continues to research the American Bahá'í community, and recently published a book entitled The Bahá’ís of America: The Growth and Change of a Religious Movement. He is currently working on a book on the history of conflict resolution in the United States.

JUNE MANNING THOMAS is Mary Frances Berry Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan and specializes in issues related to social equity in city planning and development. Some of her books include Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (1997, 2013); Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi (1999); and the coedited Mapping Detroit: Evolving Land Use Patterns and Connections (2015). She currently serves on the Regional Baha’i Council of the Midwestern States. Her full biography can be accessed at http://taubmancollege.umi ch.edu/urbanplanning/faculty/directory/june-manning-thomas.

PREVIEW: 2018 book cover attached to original 2015 journal article:

Christopher Buck, “Political Philosophy: Alain Locke’s Philosophy of Democracy.” Studies in Bahá’i Philosophy: Selected Articles. Edited by Mikhail Sergeev (Swampscott, MA: M-Graphics Publishing, 2018). (Released August 1, 2018.) ISBN-10: 1940220904. ISBN-13: 978-1940220901.

Book available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Studies-Bahai-Philosophy-Selected-Articles/dp/1940220904

Previously published as: Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke’s Philosophy of Democracy.” Studies in Baha’i Philosophy 4 (2015): 24–45.

ABSTRACT
Alain Locke has been acknowledged as “the most influential African American intellectual born between W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr.” This paper presents Alain Locke’s philosophy of democracy, in nine dimensions. Baha’i values synergized Locke’s philosophy of democracy or, at the very least, now serve as a useful heuristic for understanding and appreciating certain aspects of Locke’s philosophy of democracy. Locke’s grand (though not systematic) theory of democracy sequenced local, moral, political, economic, and cultural stages of democracy as they arced through history, with racial, social, spiritual, and world democracy completing the trajectory. Adjunct notions of natural, practical, progressive, creative, intellectual, equalitarian democracy crystallized the paradigm.

Buck, Christopher. “David Bottoms.” American Writers, Supplement XXVIII. Ed. Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons/The Gale Group, 2018. Pp. 21–36. ISBN-13: 978-0684325170. (Published/Released September 2017.)

EXCERPT
A particularly poignant poem is “Stumptown Attends the Picture Show,” which, as the poet indicates right after the title, is “on the first attempt at desegregation in Canton, Georgia” (AH, p. 14):
______________
Word has come and Martha the ticket girl
stands behind the candy counter
eating popcorn and smoking Salems.
Beside her the projectionist,
having canned the Vivien Leigh
and come downstairs to watch the real show,
leans folding chairs against the theater doors,
guards his glass counter
like saloon keepers in his Westerns
guard the mirrors hung above their bars.

Outside, good old boys line the sidewalk,
string chain between parking meters
in front of the Canton Theater,
dig in like Rebs in a Kennesaw trench.
From the street, policeman and sheriff’s deputies
address their threats to proper names,
try to maintain any stability.
Someone has already radioed the State Boys.

Through the glass door Martha watches
the moon slide over the Jones Mercantile.
In front of Landers’ Drugstore
a streetlight flickers like a magic lantern,
but Martha cannot follow the plot,
neither can the projectionist.

Only one thing is certain:
elements from different worlds are converging,
spinning toward confrontation,
and the State Boys are winding down some country road,
moving in a cloud of dust towards the theater marquee.
______________
This poem never attracted the attention and critical claim that it rightly deserves. It is a masterpiece of understatement, an almost casual look at profound social change in progress, to which the ticket girl and projectionist are oblivious (“but Martha cannot follow the plot, / neither can the projectionist”).

In an almost documentary fashion, “Stumptown Attends the Picture Show” is a showpiece exemplifying the prevailing social “reptile brain” among many white Americans in the Deep South, so steeped as it was in racial prejudice. It is almost a perfect poem as a snapshot of that time and place, where Canton, Georgia, represents America at large.

The actual event took place on Monday, August 11, 1964, as four young African American men attempted to integrate the Canton Theater on Main Street. “Stumptown” is the nickname for an African American section of Canton, where David Bottoms grew up. We are never shown the attempted desegregation of the local movie theater (presumably by unnamed African Americans from Stumptown), but only the prelude (which could well have been the result of a wild rumor).

The siege mentality is strikingly depicted, and the poem’s ending—“Only one thing is certain: / elements from different worlds are converging, / spinning toward confrontation”— is as close as Bottoms ever comes to outright social commentary. …

Available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) database:

Citation:
Buck, Christopher. “Ninian Smart (1927–2001).” British Writers, Supplement XXIV. Ed. Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons/The Gale Group, 2018. Pp. 269–283. ISBN-13: 978-0684325156. (Release date: September 8, 2017.)

ABSTRACT

ACADEMICS IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES have a long- standing joke. Question: “What is the difference between Ninian Smart and God?” Answer: “God is everywhere. Ninian Smart is everywhere but here!” (Ninian Smart on World Religions, p. xxi). That one-liner about Smart’s ubiquity attests not only to the reach of his publications but also to his international influence in the emergence of the scholarly field of religious studies—first and foremost in Britain and, more widely, in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Almost single-handedly, Ninian Smart “founded the academic study of religion in Britain” and “gave intellectual structure and shape to the field in the rest of the English-speaking world, especially the U.S.A.,” according to Jacob Neusner (“Remembering Ninian Smart,” pp. 355–356). Yet Smart was far more than an academic. In writing books about philosophy and world religions, he was steeped in deep thought, immersed in higher thinking. Human and social values were his subject matter. He compared cultures, religions, philosophies, and political ideologies such as Marxism and Maoism. His own thinking about Buddhist enlightenment, Confucian order, Taoist freedom, Hindu liberation, Christian salvation, and so forth produced a wonderful, if not exotic, synthesis. He could see the full picture, understand human dilemmas, and propose global orientations in solutions that were simple, yet profound. A gentleman and a scholar in every sense, Smart was a down-to-earth man but a noble soul, with a grand vision of the world and the direction he believed that it needed to take. …

Despite his Scottish flourishes—eating his porridge with salt and pepper, and occasionally donning his kilt and tartan—Ninian Smart was humanitarian and universal. He presented a vision and version of Christianity that could seriously engage with the fact of religious pluralism and operate in an entirely secular mode as well. Smart was fond of joking: “Comparative religion will make you comparatively religious” (quoted in Strenski, “Ninian Smart and the Overcoming of Philosophy,” p. 369). He recognized wisdom and insight in various religious and cultural settings, and he broke free entirely of parochial presumptions. In that regard, he was both theologian and academic. Ninian Smart, almost single-handedly, was instrumental in institutionalizing the academic study of religion. The entire discipline is indebted to his leadership and legacy.

Now available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) database.

CHAPTER 2
Discovering
Christopher Buck

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, Second Edition
Edited by Andrew Rippin and Jawid Mojaddedi
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017
Published Online: 18 March 2017
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118964873

Why the Qurʾān?

The Qurʾān, the holy book of Islam, may well be the most powerful book in human history, with the arguable exception of the Bible. Both in world history and contemporary affairs, it is doubtful that any other book now commands, or has in the past exerted, so profound an influence. Objectively, one of every five people on earth today is Muslim, each of whom subjectively believes that the Qurʾān actually supersedes the Bible, and that it is the Qurʾān – not the Bible – that is unsurpassed.

Since Muslims see Islam as the last of the world’s religions, they view the Qurʾān as the latest and greatest book. Even if one does not share this view, the sheer magnitude of its influence commands respect, and one cannot be cross‐culturally and globally literate today without some understanding of this monumental text. The purpose of this chapter is to inspire and assist readers in discovering the Qurʾān for themselves, with the helpful synergy of insider and outsider – religious and secular – perspectives. This chapter has an added purpose as well, which is to present both historical and contemporaneous argument rationale for inclusion of the Qurʾān in academic curricula.

Academic Study of the Qurʾān

The study of the Qurʾān in an academic setting has raised a number of legal and pedagogical issues in recent decades, some of which have thrust the scripture into the public eye in a way that has not been previously experienced. Of course, religion in general is a controversial topic within education, and demands inevitably arise to know why the Qurʾān should (or even can) be taught in a publicly funded university. The situation in the United States, for example, is one that has provoked legal discussions and challenges. Doesn’t the study of the Qurʾān in the university violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment? What about the separation of church and state?

These very concerns were raised in US federal courts. A national academic and legal controversy erupted in summer 2002 when the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill required incoming freshmen, as part of its Summer Reading Program, to read and discuss Michael Sells’ Approaching the Qurʾān: The Early Revelations (Sells 1999). This text – a fresh translation and elucidation of the early Meccan sūras of the Qurʾān – was recommended by UNC Islamicist Carl Ernst in order to promote an understanding of Islam, especially in light of the events surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Buck 2012; Burdei 2002).

Buck, Christopher. “Deganawida, the Peacemaker.” American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Supplement XXVI. Edited by Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Scribner’s Reference/The Gale Group, 2016. Pp. 81–100.

EXCERPT (including an important statement by Chief Jacob (“Jake”) Thomas):

Equally at issue, however, is the question of how this canonization of the Peacemaker comports with the views of Native Americans and Native Canadians. What justification for this cultural appropriation, this impingement on all things indigenous, this infringement, as it were, of sacred indigenous tradition, which is so culturally sensitive? By what right can the non-Native present writer presume to profane (i.e., to publicly render secular) a sacred oral tradition?

The Iroquoian ethnologist Michael K. Foster, curator emeritus of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, recounts how Chief Jacob (“Jake”) Thomas (d. 1998), a prominent proponent and interpreter of Haudenosaunee culture, justified this profanation/translation to the non-Native world when, in September 1992 on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, he took the unprecedented step of reciting the Great Law in English (drawing much indigenous indignation thereby), in a nine-day event on the grounds of his home, which attracted national media coverage. Among the some two thousand people present, a large number of these listeners were white, not Iroquois. During the summer of 1994 Chief Thomas repeated the event. Responding to criticism, he offered this justification, according to Foster:

I think the white man needs to understand. It isn’t that he’s going to take the law and use it himself. They already did! The 13 colonies already took the Great Law for their so-called Constitution. So what should we be afraid of? If they want to learn it, they have a right to. That should have been done 500 years ago, to study and respect the Confederacy. Maybe we wouldn’t have the problems we have today if they would have studied our people, and [would now] understand and honor and respect [us].
(Foster, “Jacob Ezra Thomas,” p. 227)

It is in the spirit of this advice that the following epitome of the life and teachings (i.e. oral “writings”) of the Peacemaker are here presented. In so doing, this is not intended as exploitation of Native American spiritual traditions. It is not a “theft of spirit.” Rather, it is recognition of the universality and contemporary relevance of the Peacemaker’s enunciation of “the Good Message, also the Power and the Peace.”

THE "BAHA'I FAITH": A "WORLD RELIGION"?
— OR A "NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT"?

A Case of Changing Classifications

The Publication:
Christopher Buck, “Baha’i: History, Beliefs, Practices” and “Baha’i: Theological Exchanges, Current Issues.” Handbook of Religion: A Christian Engagement with Traditions, Teachings, and Practices. Edited by Terry C. Muck, Harold A. Netland, and Gerald R. McDermott. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014. Pp. 714–719; 720–724.

The Controversy:
As originally planned, the Baha'i Faith was supposed to be featured as the last of the "world religions" in “Part 2: World Religions,” as chapters 26 through 29.

I was asked by the lead editor, Terry C. Muck, to contribute these four chapters, which I did. The working relationship between editor and author was collegial and productive.

Shortly before this multi-author volume went to press, however, there was in-house opposition (i.e. in the "Baker Academic" publishing house, a Christian press) to including the Baha'i Faith as a "world religion."

The excuse given was that the Baha'i Faith did not fit the following definition of a "world religion":

"Today we commonly call the religions that emerged from the Axial Age world religions. World religions have three distinguishing characteristics. They are old, large, and cross-cultural.” (p. 44)

So the chapters on the Baha’i Faith (which the editors insisted on referring to as simply "Baha'i") were reduced from four essays to two, and were shortened in length as well.

Instead of appearing in the “World Religions” section as first intended, the two published essays were placed as the final two essays in “Part 4: New Religious Movements.”

The two chapters uploaded here were created to correspond as faithfully as possible to the published version, by reproducing text, format, and pagination. This is seen as preferable to posting scans of the two essays themselves, as the author does not have an eBook version of this multi-author volume.

Research Interests: Religion, New Religious Movements, Comparative Religion, History, Sociology, and 14 more

https://www.academia.edu/36192935/_Baha_i_History_Beliefs_Practices_and_Baha_i_Theological_Exchanges_Current_Issues_2014

Christopher Buck, “’Abdu’l-Baha’s 1912 Howard University Speech: A Civil War Myth for Interracial Emancipation.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity. Edited by Negar Mottahedeh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 111–144. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137032010.0009.

EXCERPT:

In his 1912 Howard University speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in essentialist terms, anchored in historical generalizations, as a rhetorical strategy for promoting interracial emancipation. Abolition of slavery was a first step in the progressive emancipation of African Americans within color-bound American society. Slavery’s roots run deep in American history, and are yet to be fully extirpated. They extend, in more subtle forms, down to the present. Racism is a ghost of the slaver’s psyche, and legislation alone cannot eradicate the problem. Something profoundly different is needed to significantly steer social history in a new direction. This is what makes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 sojourn in America of such historical import. . . .

To recapitulate, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his Howard University speech, emphasized the personal sacrifice of Northern whites for Southern blacks in the course of the Civil War, and that African Americans (as the descendants of emancipated slaves) should therefore be grateful to whites in kind. In so saying, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked history (or a certain view of it) in order to make history—by completing the unfinished work of the Emancipation Proclamation. . . .

And so it is that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tasked the whites with a mission equal to the objectives of the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction in achieving what was (and is) still undone, to “endeavor to promote your [i.e. African Americans’] advancement and enhance your honor.” Such interracial unity entails more than fostering interracial camaraderie. Advancement is required. Actual progress must be fostered, for it is this “advancement” that “will be the cause of love (sabab-i maḥabbat).” In other words, doing “good” (by tangible actions) is a precondition for “goodwill” (as an intangible feeling). This, indeed, was the mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, as an interracial endeavor. . . .

The advancement of African Americans was an integral element in the progress of America as a nation, and so there is a strong argument that the development of its own social capital was in the nation’s enlightened self-interest. Here, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s rhetorical strategy was to establish a clear basis, anchored in American history, for overcoming entrenched antagonisms in favor of reciprocal appreciation in the interests of interracial harmony and cooperation. In that sense, the accuracy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s historical generalizations is quite beside the point, as the focus was on fostering racial healing and solving America’s racial crisis. . . .

On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, expressed his appreciation of the Bahá’í efforts to foster ideal race relations: “When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.” (“Cornel West praises work of Baha’is in establishing Racial Unity” (February 1, 2012). Professor West here recognizes the leavening influence of the Bahá’ís in the history of race relations in America. . . .

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 Howard University speech was for then, yet it has a message for us now as well: It could be said that in his Howard speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invited his audience to build on history by making history, in commencing a new era of global solidarity.

https://www.academia.edu/29904876/_Abdu_l-Baha_s_1912_Howard_University_Speech_A_Civil_War_Myth_for_Interracial_Emancipation_2013_

Christopher Buck, “Chapter 13: Baha’i Faith.” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice. Edited by Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess. Malden, MA / Oxford, UK; Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Pp. 210–223. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444355390.ch13.

ABSTRACT

The Bahá’í religion had established ethical and social principles for the ennobling of individuals and the ordering of societies well before “social justice” emerged as a dominant value in modern democracies. Indeed, the Bahá’í Faith claims to be a religion “endowed with a system of law, precept, and institutions capable of bringing into existence a global commonwealth ordered by principles of social justice” (Bahá’í World Centre, 1993: 107). In the Bahá’í hierarchy of moral values, social justice ranks as a central and guiding principle. The distinctively pragmatic Bahá’í approach is to promote social justice through coordinated initiatives of “social action.”

Bahá’ís generally prefer to speak of “social action” rather than “social justice” because they view the former as proactive and the latter as reactive. Social action, as they speak of it, anticipates social issues and addresses them prospectively; social justice aims at remediating injustices that have already occurred. Seen in this light, engaging in social action could be expected to reduce the need to redress social injustices. If “social justice” is conceived broadly (i.e., not simply as remedial or corrective), then “social action” is the name that Bahá’ís use to articulate a proactive model for achieving social justice. This proactive orientation to social justice involves acting on the basis of a vision and core values to reorder society by means of a multifaceted, systematic, and progressive plan of social engagement: multifaceted in that it involves undertaking different kinds of initiatives and projects simultaneously around the world; systematic in that it involves coordinating complementary initiatives and programs; and progressive in that it extends successful local and regional initiatives to communities around the globe.

The centrality of justice in Bahá’í thought is evident in the declarations of the religion’s early leaders. Its founder, Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892), elevated justice by linking it in several ways to God and by citing its practical utility: “The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice . . . turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee.” “By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor.” “Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes” (Bahá’u’lláh, 1978: 37). ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844–1921), Bahá’u’lláh’s son and appointed successor, who led the religion from 1892–1921, also accorded justice a special status: “Justice . . . is a universal quality”; and “justice must be sacred, and the rights of all the people must be considered” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 1969: 159).

But social justice is not an end in itself. In the Bahá’í hierarchy of values, social justice directs thought and action to a higher principle and to a grand vision of a future world commonwealth. “The purpose of justice,” Bahá’u’lláh declared, “is the appearance of unity among men” (Bahá’u’lláh, 1978: 67). In other words, social justice is a means to a higher end, unity, which Bahá’ís view as an organizing principle for their entire system of community norms and practices, which will, in turn, transform society on a global scale. They describe this unity not as rigid uniformity or slavish conformity but as “unity in diversity” – a social culture in which diversity can flourish.

Buck, Christopher. “The Constitutionality of Teaching Islam: The University of North Carolina Qur’an Controversy.” Essay VIII. Observing the Observer: The State of Islamic Studies in American Universities. Edited by Mumtaz Ahmad, Zahid H. Bukhari and Sulayman S. Nyang. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2012. Pp. 137–177.

Review: The editors describe Christopher Buck’s essay as the first comprehensive treatment of the 2002 University of North Carolina controversy, characterized by Michael Sells as “suing the Koran on behalf of the Bible” (pp. xxiii and 138). This narrative-cum-analytic essay by an attorney and independent scholar documents an important post-9/11 controversy at a major university and demonstrates that even the academic study of Islam is not safe from what some observers have called the “Islamophobia industry.” (Usaama al-Azami, Review of Observing the Observer: The State of Islamic Studies in American Universities (2012). The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 (2013): 94–97 [96].)

Christopher Buck, “Kahlil Gibran.” American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Supplement XX. Edited by Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Scribner’s Reference/The Gale Group, 2010. Pp. 113–129.

KAHLIL GIBRAN
(1883–1931)
Christopher Buck

The Arab American author and artist Kahlil Gibran was a best-selling writer whose work has yet to receive critical acclaim equal to his popular appeal. There is no question that Gibran’s work in Arabic was central to the development of twentieth-century Arabic literature—in that Arab Romanticism begins with Gibran, the pivotal figure in the Mahjar movement of émigré Arab writers centered in New York. There is also no question that Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet (1923)—a small volume of aphorisms (wise sayings) offering pithy wisdom of an almost prophetic quality—belongs to world literature, for it is known and loved the world over. As an American man of letters, however, Gibran has received scant attention by American literary critics. Since The Prophet has yet to be widely recognized as an American classic, and the author yet to be fully accepted as an American writer, Gibran’s inclusion in the American Writers series requires some justification.

Eminent scholars including Irfan Shahid (professor emeritus at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.) and Suheil Bushrui (professor emeritus and current director of the Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland at College Park) have made the case for Gibran’s recognition as an American writer worthy of note. According to Bushrui, America is entitled to claim Gibran as one of its sons (even if not a native son) as fully and as authentically as his native Lebanon can lay such claim: “In his work, he became not only Gibran of Lebanon, but Gibran of America, indeed Gibran the voice of global consciousness” (1996, p. 10). After all, the young Gibran spent only the first twelve years of his life in Bsharri (a village near the famous “Cedars of God”), where he was born in 1883, before emigrating with his family to the United States. Apart from a two-year study in Paris and two brief return visits to Lebanon, Gibran spent his entire adult life—the last two-thirds of his life, in fact—entirely on American soil, dying in New York at the age of forty-eight. In The Prophet, the city of Orphalese is often said to represent America (or New York).

Shahid underscores the fact The Prophet was America’s best-selling book of the twentieth century, not counting the Bible, and that Gibran outsold all other American poets, from Walt Whitman to Robert Frost. According to Gibran’s New York publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, The Prophet has sold more than ten million copies. The book’s success was due entirely to its own appeal, as Knopf never promoted it. Strangely, Gibran is arguably America’s best-loved prose-poet, whose market appeal continues despite critical indifference. It’s true that Gibran had what might be called a double psyche, and inhabited two thought-worlds at once. As an Arab American, Gibran wrote in two languages: English and Arabic. Arabic was his mother tongue, and English his second language. As an accomplished man of letters of considerable influence in the Middle East, Gibran inspired a literary renaissance in the Arab world, such that all modern Arabic poetry bears the marks of Gibran’s. Yet Gibran’s work has had little influence in American letters, despite its enormous popular appeal. Notwithstanding, Shahid thinks that Gibran has not been fairly treated as an American writer. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, categorically, The Prophet exists in splendid isolation, severed from its Arabic cultural roots. And so The Prophet will have to be evaluated, or reevaluated, on its own literary merits and for its singular contribution to the American literary heritage.

Christopher Buck, “Religious Minority Rights.” The Islamic World. Edited by Andrew Rippin. London/New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. 638–655. [Final chapter.] DOI: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203019139.ch49.

This chapter also suggests that Islamic identity and praxis must now withstand the scrutiny of the international community — a relatively new situation that certainly did not exist when Islam was the world’s superpower during the so-called Dark Ages of Europe. Inevitably, Islamic law will be measured against international law, and will increasingly be constrained by it. More importantly, in the twenty-first century, the legal “right” of minority religions to an identity may be as important as the “truth” of their respective identities. The cosmopolitanism of human rights requires the right to an identity of a minority where that identity stands in tension with the identity of the majority.

Three of the most controversial religious minorities within the Islamic world with be examined in their respective socio-historical contexts: the Alevis in Turkey, the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, the Bahá’ís of Iran. These three faith-communities provide ideal subjects for a comparative study of the identities of religious minorities within the modern Muslim world. In an increasingly globalized world, Islamic identity is ultimately a legal as well as a religious issue. Characterizing the Ahmadiyya and the “Bahá’í Faith” as “Islamic minorities” is problematic in itself, as the Ahmadis profess themselves as Muslims while the Bahá’ís do not. Indeed, the distinctive identity of the Bahá’í Faith as an independent world religion is universally upheld by the Bahá’í scriptures, authorities, and adherents themselves, while the adamantine Islamic identity of the Ahmadiyya is universally upheld by the Ahmadiyya writings, authorities, and adherents with equal vigor. Where the self-identity of each of these two religious minorities is at issue within a given Islamic state offers a case-study in terms of Islamic claims to authenticity.

So, what is Islamic identity? More to the point is this question: Can an Islamic state tolerate a religious minority that has an alternative Islamic identity (as in the case of the Alevis), a rival Islamic identity (as in the case of the Ahmadiyya), or a post-Islamic identity (as in the case of the Bahá’ís)? The resolution of these vexed questions depends on which lens is used as a frame and focus. Here, the choice of the framework of analysis is critical, for it will largely determine the outcome. This study employs a three-faceted inquiry. The identities of religious minorities within Islamic states implicates: (1) emic (insider/subjective), (2) etic (outsider/objective), and (3) international perspectives. Together, these three perspectives operate as a prism that works its own ideological optics, refracting claims to Islamic identity and breaking those claims into their constituent colors - the spectral measure of which is the treatment of religious minorities in an Islamic state.

Thus, this chapter explores Islamic and non-Islamic identities from multiple perspectives — internal, external, and international. Internal identity emanates from the perspective of the faith-community itself. Its own identity is refracted externally from the perspective of dominant Islamic authorities. International opinion regarding the identity of both religious minorities and the majority of a given Islamic state is best viewed from the perspective of international human rights standards. In trying to make sense of all three vantage points, the connections between how Islamic authorities characterize certain religious minorities and how they treat them with respect to fundamental human rights will be explored. It is critical, then, to be clear throughout which perspective is being presented.

BEYOND THE “SEAL OF THE PROPHETS”:
BAHA’U’LLAH’S BOOK OF CERTITUDE (KITAB-I-IQAN)

Buck, Christopher. “Beyond the ‘Seal of the Prophets’: Bahā’u’llāh’s Book of Certitude (Ketāb-e Iqān).” Religious Texts in Iranian Languages. Edited by Clause Pedersen & Fereydun Vahman. København (Copenhagen): The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters / Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab – Historiske-filosofiske Meddelelser 98, København, 2007. Pp. 369–378.   

INTRODUCTION

Because of its international audience, Baha’u’llah’s Book of Certitude (Ketab-e Iqan) may now be regarded as the world’s most influential Koran commentary in Persian outside the Muslim world. The basis for this claim is simple: the Iqan is coextensive with the Baha’i faith. As its preeminent doctrinal text, the Iqan helped crystallize Baha’i identity and lent considerable impetus to its missionary expansion. The core claims advanced by the Iqan have, in principle, been adapted to other religious environments. It is post-Islamic by dint of its claims: the Iqan vindicates the prophetic credentials of Sayyid ‘Ali-Muhammad Shirazi, known as “the Bab” (d. 1850), who broke decisively from Islam in 1844, by declaring himself to be the inaugurator of a new religious cycle. “Revealed” in January 1861, the Iqan sets the stage for Baha’u’llah’s impending claim to revelation in April 1863 in Baghdad.

The Iqan advances an Islamic argument to legitimate its post-Islamic claims. The Iqan's most original and dramatic act of Koranic interpretation may well be its argument for how God could (and would) send another prophet after Muhammad, notwithstanding the latter’s station as the “Seal of the Prophets” (Q. 33:40). Baha’u’llah’s exegetical strategy is a tour de force—using an essentially Islamic argument to prove something ostensibly alien to orthodox Islam, both Sunni and Shi‘a. More significant than its theological argument, however, is the Iqan's historical impact. Even though, from the Islamic point of view, the Iqan argued the impossible, Baha’u’llah’s discourse on realized eschatology became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The argument for a post-Islamic rev- elation was not academic. It was historical.

EXCERPT:
The “Seal of the Prophets”

[...] By shifting the focus of prophetological attention away from the “Seal” verse itself to refocus on the several Koranic “Divine Presence” verses, Baha’u’llah could make an Islamic case for post-Koranic revelation. From a certain point of view, his entire line of argumentation in the Iqan is calculated to establish the priority of Q. 33:44 over Q. 33:40. Baha’u’llah accepts the importance of the Koranic verse designating Muhammad as “the Seal of the Prophets” (Q. 33:40), yet draws attention to an exegetical oversight but four verses later:

“How strange! [...] Even as the Lord of being hath in His unerring Book [the Koran], after speaking of the ‘Seal’ in His exalted utterance: ‘Muhammad is the Apostle of God and the Seal of the Prophets’ (Q. 33:40), hath revealed unto all people the promise of ‘attainment unto the divine Presence’ (cf. Q. 33:44). To this attainment to the presence of the immortal King testify the verses of the Book, some of which We have already mentioned. The one true God is My witness! Nothing more exalted or more explicit than ‘attainment unto the divine Presence’ hath been revealed in the Koran.” [...]

“And yet, through the mystery of the former verse, they have turned away from the grace promised by the latter, despite the fact that “attainment unto the divine Presence” in the ‘Day of Resurrection’ is explicitly stated in the Book. It hath been demonstrated and definitely established, through clear evidences, that by ‘Resurrection’ is meant the rise of the Manifestation of God to proclaim His Cause, and by ‘attainment unto the divine Presence’ is meant attainment unto the presence of His Beauty in the person of His Manifestation. For verily, ‘No vision taketh in Him, but He taketh in all vision’ (Q. 6:103).” (Iqan 169–70/Persian text, 112)

This argument is predicated on an anti-anthropomorphist interpretation of Q. 6:103. It would be safe to say that, for Muslims universally, the Koran’s designation of Muhammad as the “Seal of the Prophets” (Q. 33:40) is possibly the most important prophetological verse of the Koran (certainly it ranks as one of the most crucial verses doctrinally). Yet Baha’u’llah here points to a verse just four verses later, and makes that verse (and its parallels) the centerpiece of his exegesis and the crux of his entire argument: “Their greeting on the day when they shall meet Him shall be “Peace!” And He hath got ready for them a noble recompense” (Q. 33:44).

While this brief description of the Iqan scarcely does justice to its broader range of Koranic interpretations, the reader should now have a clear idea as to the book’s purpose, theophanic claims, and historical impact. As a heterodox work of tafsir, the Iqan advances an Islamic argument to exegetically create the possibility of post-Koranic prophets. For this and other reasons, the Iqan preserves its place as the preeminent doctrinal text of the Baha’i Faith. To claim that the Iqan may now be regarded as the world’s most influential Koran commentary outside the Muslim world is simply to acknowledge the historical fact that the Baha’i religion has spun out of its Islamic orbit and radiated globally, while maintaining its Islamic roots.

Buck, Christopher. "Discovering" [the Qur’an]. The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an. Edited by Andrew Rippin. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Pp. 18–35. [Lead chapter.] DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470751428.ch2.

Selected as "sample chapter" for preview/download in 2006 (first edition). Revised edition of The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an is forthcoming (2017). Opening:

Why the Qurʾān?

The Qurʾān, the holy book of Islam, may well be the most powerful book in human history, with the arguable exception of the Bible. Both in world history and contemporary affairs, it is doubtful that any other book now commands, or has in the past exerted, so profound an influence. Objectively, one of every five people on earth today is Muslim, each of whom subjectively believes that the Qurʾān actually supersedes the Bible, and that it is the Qurʾān – not the Bible – that is unsurpassed. Since Muslims see Islam as the last of the world’s religions, they view the Qurʾān as the latest and greatest book. Even if one does not share this view, the sheer magnitude of its influence commands respect, and one cannot be cross‐culturally and globally literate today without some understanding of this monu­mental text. The purpose of this chapter is to inspire and assist readers in discovering the Qurʾān for themselves, with the helpful synergy of insider and outsider – religious and secular – perspectives. This chapter has an added purpose as well, which is to present both historical and contemporaneous argument rationale for inclusion of the Qurʾān in academic curricula.

Academic Study of the Qurʾān

The study of the Qurʾān in an academic setting has raised a number of legal and peda­gogical issues in recent decades, some of which have thrust the scripture into the public eye in a way that has not been previously experienced. Of course, religion in general is a controversial topic within education, and demands inevitably arise to know why the Qurʾān should (or even can) be taught in a publicly funded university. The situation in the United States, for example, is one that has provoked legal discussions and chal­lenges. Doesn’t the study of the Qurʾān in the university violate the Establishment Clause of the First amendment? What about the separation of church and state?

These very concerns were raised in US federal courts. a national academic and legal controversy erupted in summer 2002 when the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel hill required incoming freshmen, as part of its Summer reading program, to read and discuss Michael Sells’ Approaching the Qurʾān: The Early Revelations (Sells 1999). This text – a fresh translation and elucidation of the early Meccan surās of the Qurʾān – was recommended by UNC Islamicist Carl Ernst in order to promote an under­ standing of Islam, especially in light of the events surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Buck 2012; Burdei 2002).

Alleging that UNC violated the Establishment Clause and abridged students’ rights to religious free exercise by forcing incoming freshmen and transfer students to study Islam against their will, a conservative‐Christian activist group, the Family Policy Network (FPN), filed suit in US District Court, Middle District of North Carolina (MDNC), on July 22, seeking a preliminary injunction to keep UNC from conducting its summer program. The case was captioned (named) Yacovelli v. Moeser (after James Yacovelli, an FPN spokesman, and James Moeser, UNC Chancellor). When the FPN lost, it immedi­ately appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but lost again. This case was widely reported (see Euben 2002), both nationally and internationally, but was not judicially “reported” (that is, the district and appellate decisions were not published).

A later challenge was filed in 2004 but was lost on appeal. Without going into the technicalities of the Lemon test, which the Court applied along with the endorsement and coercion tests, the challenge failed. In his decision, Chief Judge N. Carlton Tilley, Jr. ruled: […]

Buck, Christopher. “The Eschatology of Globalization: Baha’u’llah’s Multiple-Messiahship Revisited.” Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Baha’i Faiths. Edited by Moshe Sharon. Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, 104. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004. Pp. 143–178.

ABSTRACT

Globalization refers to “both the compression of the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” and as “both concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole” (Robertson 1992: 8). It is further defined as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1990: 64). Ethical responses to globalization are essentially world order issues (Lerche 1998), in a search for values of egalitarianism, equity, and sustainability a worldview that some have called “globalism” (Ritchie 1996). As a response to globalization, globalism may be viewed as a reflex or extension of Kantian cosmopolitanism as the “moral universalism of international relations” (Robinson 1996: 4).

Bahā’īs often assert that, since Bahā’u’llāh anticipated modernity, then he must have been a prime mover of it. Historically, it can be observed that Bahā’u’llāh was a sudden sparkle of the nineteenth-century a flash of visionary brilliance. And it may be safe to say that Bahā’u’llāh and modernity are dynamically coincidental and, apart from directions of influence, that Bahā’u’llāh was engaged in dialectic with modernity.

Regarding Bahā’u’llāh’s world reforms and their historical significance, ‘Abdu’l-Bahā observed: “These precepts were proclaimed by Bahā’u’llāh many years ago. He was the first to create them in the hearts as moral laws. Writing to the sovereigns of the world, he summoned them to universal brotherhood, proclaiming that the hour for unity had struck unity between countries, unity between religions” (DP 85). This sympathetic appraisal of the historical significance of Bahā’u’llāh’s international peace mission reinforces our hypothesis: viz., that Bahā’u’llāh’s signal contribution to globalization was to ethicize and sacralize it. Bahā’u’llāh’s “multiple-messiahship” furnished the divine authority necessary if ever his world reforms were to be taken seriously. This is Bahā’u’llāh’s eschatology of globalization.

Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke.” American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Supplement XIV. Edited by Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Scribner’s Reference/The Gale Group, 2004. Pp. 195–219. (Available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) database.)  

ABSTRACT
ALAIN LEROY LOCKE—philosopher, race leader, art critic, adult educator, essayist, and anthologist—was the leading African American intellectual of his day after W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963). A social genius, Locke was the mastermind behind the Harlem Renaissance, that explosion in the 1920s and 1930s of “New Negro” literature, drama, music, and art that bolstered black pride and earned reciprocal white respect on a national scale never before achieved. The December 1925 publication of Locke’s anthology, The New Negro, was a stellar event in American cultural history. A volume that spoke volumes, The New Negro: An Interpretation was art as manifesto—a secular liberation theology. For this and other reasons Columbus Salley, in The Black 100 (1999), ranks Locke as the thirty-sixth most influential African American in history. Alain Leroy Locke is the Martin Luther King Jr. of American culture.

Locke was a “prophet of democracy,” whose grand (though not systematic) theory of democracy sequenced local, moral, political, economic, and cultural stages of democracy as they arced through history, with racial, social, spiritual, and world democracy completing the trajectory. Adjunct notions of natural, practical, progressive, creative, intellectual, equalitarian democracy crystallized the paradigm. Seeing America as “a unique social experiment,” Locke’s larger goal was to “Americanize Americans,” with the simple yet profound message that equality benefits everyone and that democracy itself is at stake. The essence of Locke’s philosophy of democracy is captured in the title “Cultural Pluralism: A New Americanism,” a public lecture he gave at Howard University on November 8, 1950. In raising democracy to a new level of consciousness, Locke internationalized the race issue, making the crucial connection between American race relations and international relations. Racial justice, he predicted, would serve as a social catalyst of world peace. Thus there are two major streams of thought in Locke’s work—the African American historical, cultural, and intellectual tradition, and a cosmopolitan, global outlook intensified by the Bahá’í principles he embraced. Locke is both a “race man” (cultural racialist) and a philosopher (cultural pluralist). How Locke should be read depends on which of these two roles predominates.

History has both immortalized and obscured Locke. Given his cynicism toward it in later life, it is ironic, although not surprising, that Locke should forever be associated with the Harlem Renaissance, much to the exclusion of his broader role as a cultural pluralist. With new information that has come to light regarding his Bahá’í identity, it is now possible to understand how Locke could function simultaneously as a cultural racialist and cultural pluralist. Together the two combine to produce “unity through diversity”—the Bahá’í principle that Locke held sacred. Locke’ s philosophy of democracy, which previous literature never holistically described, is the key to integrating the various facets of his thought. As a philosopher Locke had no appreciable impact in his own lifetime. In the end, however, he may enjoy a delayed influence. That will depend largely on whether the new information that recent scholarship has provided can bring Locke back to influential life as a prophet of democracy.

Buck, Christopher. “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism.” Search for Values: Ethics in Baha’i Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004. Pp. 94–158.

African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important Western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for one 1979 article in a Bahá’í periodical, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor the Faith’s influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, contributes to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. It examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.”

Buck, Christopher. “Baha’i Universalism and Native Prophets.” Reason and Revelation: New Directions in Baha’i Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2002. Pp. 172–201. 

ABSTRACT

Academic and popular attention has revived interest in native spirituality. This essay explores the possibility of accepting prophets from indigenous cultures into Baha’i doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Baha'i belief in North America. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Baha establishes this principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Baha’i principle of “progressive revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a theoretical status within Baha’i prophetology and affirm Baha’u’llah’s unifying role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions

ABSTRACT
"Christopher Buck." In Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2024. Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors (accessed February 19, 2024). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000188543/CA?u=gale&sid=bookmark-CA&xid=f62323db.

WORKS
WRITINGS:
Symbol & Secret: Qur'an Commentary in Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i ĺqán, Kalimát Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1995, 2nd edition, 2004.

Paradise & Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with David W. Stowe and Shanetta L. Martin) Generation Y Speaks Out: A Policy Guide, Michigan Nonprofit Association (Lansing, MI), 2002.

Alain Locke: Faith & Philosophy, Kalimát Press (Los Angeles, CA), 2005.

Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America's World Role, Praeger Publishers (Westport, CT), 2009.

(J. Gordon Melton, Editor, with James A. Beverley, and Constance A. Jones) Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations, ABC-CLIO (Santa Barbara, CA), 2011.

God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America, Educator's International Press (Kingston, NY), rev. ed. of Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America's World Role, 2015.

Bahá'í Faith: A Quick Reference, Facts On File (New York, NY), 2016.

Bahá'í Faith: The Basics, Routledge (London & New York), 2021.

Contributor of numerous articles to academic journals and encyclopedias. Author of book chapters in edited multi-author works. Author of online articles on the Bahá'í Faith.

SIDELIGHTS
Christopher Buck is an attorney, independent scholar, educator, and author of nonfiction. He is most noted for his work in comparative religion, especially as it pertains to the Bahá'í Faith, a monotheistic religion founded in nineteenth-century Persia by Bahá'u'lláh, and emphasizing the spiritual kinship and unity of all humanity. According to Bahá'í beliefs, all major world religions have been a part of an evolving understanding of divinity and human purpose, as revealed through a series of messengers (including Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, among others). Buck's first two books, Symbol & Secret: Qur'an Commentary in Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i ĺqán and Paradise & Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith, have been applauded both for their fresh and rigorous methodology and for bringing attention to a major world religion generally neglected in academic research.

M. Anthony Fitchue. Review of "Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy" by Christopher Buck. Journal of African American History 92.1 (Winter 2007): 131–133:

Excerpt:
“But the jewels in this book are unmistakable. … Clearly, Buck has given voice to the men and women who not only put the Bahá’í faith first in their lives, but also left key documents, personal letters, notes, and memoranda related to the life of philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke for future researchers to ponder and use for years to come.”

(Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064165.)

Susan Maneck, Review of Baha’i Faith: The Basics (2021) by Christopher Buck, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 46, Iss. 2 (20 April 2022), pp. 379–381. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.12860.

Excerpts:

The most important contribution of this work to the literature on the Baha’i Faith consists of its focus on current Baha’i community life and its description of core activities which include devotional meetings, children’s classes, junior youth groups, and adult study circles, even describing the current curriculum being used for those activities. Attention is given as well to social and economic development projects and Baha’i participation in public discourse, all elements not covered in previous introductory material. In other words, this text focuses much more broadly on what Baha’is do, rather than simply what they believe. … This text serves as a good up-to-date presentation of current Baha’i beliefs and practices.

Roland Faber, Review of *Baha’i Faith: The Basics* (2021), by Christopher Buck. London/New York: Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis), 2020 (©2021). Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. (Published online December 6, 2021.) https://readingreligion.org/books/baha%E2%80%99i-faith

Author profile: “Christopher Buck.” Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields. Vol. 285. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2010. Pp. 56–58. (Biography. Length: 1313 words. Updated: Jan. 9, 2017.) Databases: Gale eBooks (June, 2015); Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors (2017); Gale In Context: Biography. (Gale Document Number: GALE|H1000188543.)  (Updated Aug. 3, 2021, courtesy of Jennifer Stock.)

Jack McLean, “Baha’i Faith: The Basics by Christopher Buck: Review (2020).” Published online (January 15, 2021). Excerpts:

One outstanding feature of this book for either Bahá’ís or non-Bahá’ís is its contemporary relevance. Even well-informed readers could not possibly be fully aware of the overview presented by Buck of all the multifarious activities taking place in the Bahá’í world community. … Buck’s treatment of the material is throughout well-researched, and rich in the detail that an alert reader expects. In sum, despite its unpretentious title, this book is more than the Basics of the Bahá’í Faith. It not only covers well the religion’s early history, three central holy figures, spiritual and social teachings and organization, but also it presents a complete contemporary picture of the remarkably diverse economic, social, and spiritual activities that are being planned and executed by the Bahá’í community in all countries of the world.

God & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America
Christopher Buck
Troy, NY:  Educator's International Press , November  2015.  424 pages.
$26.95. Paperback.  ISBN  9781891928451. 

REVIEW
http://readingreligion.org/books/god-apple-pie

As debates over America’s true nature and its ideal role in international affairs saturate current public discourse, Christopher Buck’s latest scholarly contribution is both timely and important. God and Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America offers readers an accessible account of the ways that America’s diverse religious communities have continually revised their understanding of America and their hopes for its future.

This work, released in 2015, is an expanded version of Buck’s Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role (Praeger Press, 2009). The change in title helps to clarify what this book does and does not try to do. As Buck explains in the first chapter, the goal of this book is not to document how or to what extent minority faiths’ visions of America have exerted a quantifiable influence on the American public sphere. Rather, Buck aims primarily to show that “religions remythologize and re-envision America.” In this regard, he offers compelling evidence. Furthermore, this edition contains a new introduction by J. Gordon Melton as well an entirely new chapter on the Christian Right as well as updates to each of the other chapters.

After the introduction and a chapter outlining the goals of the text, chapters 2 through 12 each treat a distinct religious tradition or group of traditions in America—Native American religions, Protestantism, the Christian Right, Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Christian Identity, Black Islam, Contemporary Islam, Buddhism, and the Baha’i Faith. In each of these chapters, Buck presents the myths of America that have emerged from these religious groups and what those groups predict and prescribe for America’s future. The chapter on Mormonism is especially compelling, due in part to this religious tradition’s uniquely intimate relationship with the United States. Likewise, the chapter on the Baha’i Faith represents a valuable addition to the tiny but growing corpus of studies of this modern world religion.

Chapter 13 concludes the text and offers an argument about what America’s future should be, and how religions can contribute to that ideal. Buck judges that most of America’s religions increasingly affirm the ideals of internationalism, pluralism, and cosmopolitanism, and that those religions “can and should translate their shared ideals into an American civil religion—and a corresponding ethic—that can help form a basis for the world civil religion that Robert Bellah envisions,” (371).

Readers may find that an imbalance arises in the book’s treatment of these diverse traditions. This is due, in part, to the difference in the extent to which their authoritative texts or leadership figures have spoken about America. In this regard, Mormonism is exceedingly rich, Judaism is somewhere in the middle, and contemporary Islam is tough to analyze. Buck concludes that Islam does not yet offer any notable contribution to collective visions of America’s world role given that: 1) Radical Islamism only sees a negative role for America; and 2) Progressive Islam has not reached a consensus on the subject. These two points are valid, but perhaps a reconsideration of consensus as a condition for generalization about a group’s vision of America could create space for better appreciation of the positive visions of America that Muslims across the country share, and how those visions inspire public engagement.

Race is a crucial theme in this book, which faithfully traces the role of racial and racialized discourse throughout American religious history. The chapters on Christian Identity and Black Islam offer the most extended exploration of race and religion, but the overt racial implications of other religious visions of America—among Protestants and Mormons in particular—receive attention as well. In the concluding chapter Buck explains “The … history of the religious idea of America, therefore, can be analyzed, in part, as an evolution—protracted and painful—in the idea of the place of race and ethnicity in American life, as religiously valued. The evolution of American thought, with respect to the idea of America itself, is roughly a progression from religious—and often racial—particularism to universal inclusivism.” (349)

This overview of religions in America and their relationship with America as both “nation and notion” covers tremendous ground. To complete this massive undertaking as a single author demonstrates a remarkable breadth of knowledge, which lends weight to Buck’s analysis. God and Apple Pie is a veritable encyclopedia of both primary and secondary sources, but with the benefit of a more digestible presentation and a coherent narrative framework. Although the numerous, lengthy block quotes require some extra work from the reader, the overall effect is to empower the reader to see for themselves exactly how people within a given tradition mythologize and theologize America. That is to say, Buck shows as well as tells. This rich background information makes it easy for an educated reader unfamiliar with some or all of these religious traditions to jump into the text.

As one would expect with a work that covers this much ground, some nuance is lost. Buck chooses to make his points clear by favoring generalizing language and simplifications, thereby saving the reader from getting bogged down by disclaimers and qualifications. However, this also opens him up to criticism for reifying categories and labels that, although practical for his purposes, are inherently problematic. For instance, Buck offers a taxonomy of Islamic responses to modernity in which he states that Sunni Muslim clerics can best be understood as traditionalists whose goal is “to preserve the status quo.” If another edition appears in the future, the allocation of space to discuss the complexity that such generalizations mask would make the text stronger.

God and Apple Pie offers a valuable contribution to readers looking to understand why religion matters in America and how different American religious groups have seen their relationship with their country. Any reader, no matter how well versed in religious traditions, would learn a great deal by perusing its pages.

About the Reviewer(s):
Emily Goshey is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at Princeton University.

Date of Review:
August 14, 2017

Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 20.4 (May 2017): pp. 130–131. Review by Donald A. Westbrook (UCLA):

“Thus, the volume [God & Apple Pie] has clear import for both theological studies and religious studies, and is unique in that it attempts to summarize, systematize, and synthesize the visionary and mythical examples it deftly surveys. … On the whole, this revised and expanded volume is impressive for the breadth and depth it accomplishes and will be of value to researchers, teachers, and especially general readers.”

Daniel Liechty (Illinois State University), Review of God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America, by Christopher Buck, Kingston, NY, Educator’s International Press, 2015, xiv + 421 pp., US$26.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978 1981928 154. Religion. Ahead of Print. doi: 10.1080/0048721X.2016.1244636

REVIEW
I grew up in a town that held annual weeklong revival meetings each autumn, co-sponsored by all of the churches (or at least the Protestant ones) in the town. Together they provided a budget sufficient to bring in some internationally known star revival preachers. The ones who could really pack in the crowds were those whose revival message was linked to dispensationalist eschatology. As they scoured the books of Daniel and Revelations for clues to what would happen next, a grade-school listener like myself could hardly be blamed for concluding that the Rapture, Second Coming, and the Times of Tribulation leading up to Judgment Day were literally right around the corner – hopefully even before school let out for the year! That was more than 50 years ago now and while one would think it very difficult to maintain such fervor for so long, I recently ran across the television show of preacher Jack Van Impe, impressive in those days as much for his gorgeous looks as for his End Times message. Well, bless his heart, he is still preaching the self-same message as he was 50 years ago, only updated by the addition of current events that have taken place over the last half century, each one presented as another important piece of the puzzle.

I was reminded of this as I read Christopher Buck’s fascinating book. Watching Van Impe as an adult underlined something I noticed even as a child. No matter how you twist and turn the many biblical passages to read the entrails of dispensationalist prediction, there is simply no direct mention of America at all in the scriptures. Yet strained though it would be, these preachers were unquestionably sure that America was pivotal and playing a special role in God’s plan for humanity and for the world. Furthermore, though again it was laid more between the lines than stated explicitly, heavy American loyalty and patriotism was both an expected plank in the belief system as well as the element that ensured that when the End Times feathers really did hit the fan, you would be sure to be found on God’s side of the apocalyptic struggle. Interestingly, all of this message about American primacy in God’s plan was also seamlessly mixed with raging denunciations of Hollywood movies, Rock and Roll music, liberal politicians and educators, consumerism, the welfare state, and much else that in retrospect appears to have been quite integral to the heart of American culture. The logical contradictions just did not surface.

God and Apple Pie is a well-written and researched compendium of this theme of the special role America plays in God’s plan for humanity as it appears across the spectrum of American religions, denominational statements, and sectarian apocalyptic visions. For this reader, one of the great values of the book is that it really underlines the fact that wrestling with the religious ‘meaning of America’ has by no means been confined to the End Times tail of conservative Protestantism or far-right political theologies. Chapter by chapter, Buck examines not only a number of Christian theologies, but also Native American perspectives and Jewish and Catholic thinkers who understandably saw in American religious pluralism a place of refuge for their people. The chapter on Mormonism, which moved in a very few years from readiness to declare Utah an independent nation to becoming perhaps the most solidly ‘pro-American’ faith of the bunch, is itself alone worth the price of the book. Other chapters, on Black Muslim and contemporary Islamic views, as well as Buddhist and Baha’i visions of America, fill out this book and are, to my knowledge, the very best sources available for summarization of this material.

Another strength of this book is its demonstration that religious myths and visions of America do not simply remain in the pulpit and the pews. They have had continuing strong and discernable impact on American political theory and on domestic and foreign policy. Their influence, for example, can be found especially in the framework and even the specific language of those politicians and commentators espousing ‘American exceptionalism’, who might be quite surprised to have the religious connections pointed out to them.

Buck suggests that what his book more than anything verifies is the assertion that religions in America periodically re-envision and re-mythologize the idea of America. This is an important notion, because America is a place, a land, an entity that sits within defined geographical borders. But as much or even more than that, ‘America’ is an ideal, a concept, something almost akin to a religion itself. Social theorists speak about the need for any nation to have unifying ideals that hold it together as a nation.

For many nations, the unifying element has been the shared history, language, and race of the people. Only in the current generation, for example, are many European countries coming to grips with the sense that, for example, a French, or German, or Swedish identity can be held by those who are new immigrants, who do not yet speak the respective language well, and whose skin color is quite different from that of the ‘typical’ citizen. But America has been coming to grips with this sense for 250 years already. While no one (and certainly not Buck) would assert that we have been unequivocally successful in this and do not face serious issues related to it as well, there is no question that America has done better in integrating the wide masses of people into a unified nation than have many others. And while we often point to religions as the last bastions of social prejudice, Buck’s book well makes the point that in this re-envisioning and re-mythologizing function of religion – their ongoing ability to adapt, adopt, and refashion the major symbols of the nation – we also strongly have American religions to thank for the measure of success we have enjoyed.

In the final chapters, Buck shifts gears a bit to pose more reflective questions about whether, from a sort of post-critical perspective, it still makes sense to speak in somewhat mythologized terms about America’s role in the world. He does not try to answer this definitively, but taking his cue from Robert Bellah’s formulation of the role of ‘civil religion’ in uniting diverse people together on the home front, Buck raises the interesting issue of whether, in a time of globalization and world consciousness, it might be time to think, along with Bellah, in terms of the need for a ‘world civil religion’.

If this were to be the case, what special contributions could be made from the perspective of the American experience? Buck points toward the integrity of the original Protestant/Puritan vision, fostering values of liberty, individualism, populism, egalitarianism, and of democracy in general, but with special attention to the many ways in which these values have been honed, interpreted, and enhanced as they were strained through the minority religions, particularly that of minority religions associated with the struggle for civil rights and empowerment of all citizens in the social mix. I am reminded here of the Kantian social ideal of ‘maximum individuality (liberty) within maximum community’. This is obviously a dynamic concept, never achieved once-and-for-all, but an ideal toward which to work in each generation.

Buck’s implied vision draws largely from the wider lake of attachment to universalism and democratic ideals. If it were unequivocally true that all people and nations were aching for the opportunity to come together in peace and international harmony, then it would be undoubtedly true that the American experience as presented in this book, of initially sound but functionally elitist Enlightenment ideals being continually adapted and refashioned in the symbolism of minority religions to produce a civil religion of dynamically wider inclusion into the beloved community, would largely fulfill the role of (1) being a model for the world, (2) exerting a benign political influence in international politics, (3) in the promotion of global peace and unity. These three concepts, exemplarism, vindicationism, and cosmopolitanism, form the basis for what Buck (citing in his favor a number of scholars and theorists) sees as the path toward a world civil religion. What is less clear in this book is how this vision plays out in a world in which at least some factions of undeniable importance see this vision itself as exactly what they reject and resist. True, Buck has shown how minority religions in America, such as Black Muslims and Christian Identity, contoured an initially hostile ideology in more positive directions. I am not sure, however, if that model can be repeated on the global scene.

Finally, I want to emphasize that while this book is heavily documented (cumulatively some 40 pages of end notes and 30 pages of bibliography), the reading itself is quite accessible. It could easily function not only as an undergraduate textbook, but also as the main reading for any adult education class or discussion group.

rén E. Annus (University of Szeged, Hungary), Review of Religious Myths and Visions of America: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role (Santa Barbara, CA/Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO/Praeger, 2009), Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15.3 (February 2012): 139–141:

“This volume may be of interest to readers involved not only in Religious Studies, but also in Political Science, History, Intellectual History, American Studies, and Cultural Studies. . . . In the course of the detailed and well-documented analysis of individual religions, Buck reveals a highly elaborate and in-depth picture of the various beliefs, which is indeed impressive. . . He argues that the original myth and vision of America as a nation was captured by the Protestant notion of manifest destiny. This has been challenged by the other faiths . . . that have transformed the idea of manifest destiny into America’s common destiny. . .

The book is overall a fresh and stimulating cultural reading of some of America’s religions and the complex ways in which their followers make sense of and act in the world.” 

[Electronic Database (full text available): ATLA Religion Database; JSTOR.]

Richard Kyle (Tabor College), Review of Religious Myths and Visions of America (2009), Journal of American History 98.1 (June 2011): 279–280:

“Religious Myths and Visions of America has many strengths. The author has defended his thesis with solid research. He has also made an original contribution to American studies.”

Vladimir F. Wertsman (New York Public Library), Review of Religious Myths and Visions of America (ABC-CLIO, 2009), Multicultural Review 18.4 (Winter 2009): 66:

“This interesting, thoroughly researched scholarly study examines how ten minor religions interpreted America’s reality (“nation and notion”) and generated numerous religious myths and visions of America. …

[T]his volume is certainly a welcome addition to the topic of racial, cultural, and ethnic studies. … Recommended for comparative ethnic and religion collections.”

Review of Christopher Buck, Religious Myths and Visions of America (ABC-CLIO, 2009), Reference & Research Book News (August 2009): 11:

“Buck, an attorney and independent scholar who has taught at several universities, describes how minority religions have shaped America. He considers the myths and views of America in Protestantism and nine minority faiths—Native American religion (Iroquois), Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Christian Identity (white nationalism), Black Muslim, Islam, Buddhism, and the Bahá’í Faith—particularly for what they have to say about America. He addresses specific myths, such as those about the “promised land,” Manifest Destiny, race, and America’s world role.”

Derik Smith, Review of Christopher Buck, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2005), World Order 38.3 (2006/2007): 42–48. (Published in 2008.):

HIGHLIGHTS:
”Christopher Buck’s recent book, Alain Lock: Faith and Philosophy, is a welcome addition to the literature on early twentieth-century American and African American culture. But, perhaps more important, Buck’s study is a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. …

Any future study of Locke must necessarily make its way through Christopher Buck’s Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. The scholar forcefully proves his thesis that, in Locke’s thinking, philosophy and religious belief operated as synergistic terms. He has shown that the Bahá’í Faith was integral to Locke’s life and ideology. … 

Yet, after reading Buck’s work, it is difficult to imagine Locke the philosopher rapt in prayer. Of course, this is not a shortcoming of the book. Rather it is an indication that, while he may have wanted to portray a more pious figure, Buck maintains the vow he made in his introduction to Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy “to constrain any grandiose claims on Locke as a Bahá’í.”

William P. Collins,
Review of "Alain Locke: Faith & Philosophy" (2005) by Christopher Buck.
Insights 38.1–3 (Jan–Oct 2006): 10–12:
(Library of Congress Professional Association Newsletter)

“Both of these books [Lights of the Spirit and Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy] go a long way toward correcting the historians’ failure to note the important role played by the Bahá’í Faith and prominent African-American Bahá’ís in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.”

Kathleen McVey, Review of Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith, by Christopher Buck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), International Journal of Middle East Studies 35.3 (Aug. 2003): 494–496. 

Will C. van den Hoonaard, Review of  Christopher Buck, Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 31.3–4 (2002): 501–502:

Brannon Wheeler, Review of Christopher Buck, Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), Religious Studies Review 28.3 (July 2002): 293:

“Buck’s theoretically innovative analysis of “paradigmatic differences” in East Syrian (or Nestorian) Christianity and the early Baha’i faith is a fascinating and intellectually challenging book. … In all, a forceful and clearly argued book which should be read by scholars interested in questions of religious symbolism and the comparative method.”

Andrew Rippin, Review of Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith, by Christopher Buck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), University of Toronto Quarterly 71.1 (Winter 2001/2002): 170–172. 

Daniel Grolin, Review of Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith, by Christopher Buck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (July 2000).

Review of Christopher Buck, Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. (Release date: May 13, 1999.)

By Edward G. Farrugia, S.J. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 66.2 (2000): 480–483.

ABSTRACT

The work, originally a doctoral dissertation successfully defended at the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, in 1996 (p. xiii), is meant to be an experiment in comparison (p. 313).

Given his background, the author sought to compare Christianity with the Baha’i religion established in Baghdad by Mirza Ḥusayn-‘Ali Baha’ Allah, (1817–1892), a name officially spelt Baha’u’llah, meaning “Glory of God” (p. 2). In order to compare like with like, Buck concentrated on East Syrian Christianity, since this form of Christianity and the Baha’i Faith are two culturally related Abrahamic traditions in the Iranian context (p. 1).

In Late Antiquity, the world had two superpowers, Rome and Persia, with the Sasanian Empire, which held sway from 224 to 651 practically always at war with the Roman Empire, save for short periods (p. 4). From an ecclesial viewpoint, while in present-day Iran Armenian Christians outnumber Assyrian Christians two to one, originally — until the devastations caused by the Mongols — it was Syrian Christianity which prevailed in Sasanian Iran, then much larger than now (p. 313). A way of stating the question of the book is to ask how “Persian” was Persian Christianity (p. 313).

As is generally known, “paradise” is a Persian loan word (p. 1), and so is the word for sacraments, “raze”. The author restricts himself to the formative period of East Syrian writings, before a Church of Persia was officially constituted — and that means primarily Aphrahat the Persian Sage and Ephrem the Syrian (p. 9), from both of whom derives the grammar of images prevalent in Syriac spirituality in its formative period (p. 39).

Buck explains the title of his book as follows: “Paradise may function as a master-symbol of a core religious paradigm, a controlling, conceptual model that governs ideal beliefs and behaviors” (p. 10). In its methodological intent, the work is more structural than historical (p. 11). The methodological justification that follows is particularly worth reading, for it gives us the author’s bearings, especially where he stands in comparison with other authors. Corresponding to the place occupied by symbols for East Syrian Christianity, one is pleased to see that symbol is the central category, as the sub-title would lead one to believe anyhow.

Religions are described as a system of symbols, a symbol being, in turn, defined as an object or an act or an event which, metaphorically and narratively, enshrines a conception (p. 12). As Paul Ricoeur aptly puts it: “Le symbole donne a penser ... ” (p. 13). But besides providing food for thought, symbols possess a kind of collective “dream logic”, which penetrates beyond the limits of discursive thinking (p. 14). …

In a nutshell, the symbolic approach may be said to reveal “creeds beyond words” (p. 315). To the author’s mind, in both early Christian and modern Baha’i texts one may observe a logic of higher agreement aiming at a synthetic unity of opposites. Soteriology is for the author the single most important heuristic key for comparing both religions (p. 315). But, while the Baha’i faith does not have a sacramental worldview, the paradigm of purity in Syriac Christianity presupposes a state of sanctification achieved through sacramental divinization (p. 317f).

In the past, comparative religion fell into disrepute because of its poaching on alien territory and drawing conclusions unwarranted by the facts. On his own avowed methodological stance of not forcing identities but of explaining similarities by way of difference, Buck seems to have avoided the strictures against the old methods of comparison (see p. 320). Since the reviewer’s competence does not include the Baha’i religion, this review has purposely restricted itself to the presentation of East Syrian Christianity, which, besides providing much useful information, takes pains to avoid caricature.

E. G. Farrugia, S.J.

Moojan Momen, Review of:

Christopher Buck, Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i Iqan. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1995.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series) 7.2 (July 1997): 290–291.

EXCERPTS
“Christopher Buck’s book represents the first book-length attempt in the English language to analyse one of the major works of Bahā’u’llāh. …

One main theme that Buck explores in this book is the question of whether the text of the Īqān contains hints by Bahā’u’llāh of his future claim. Some have expressed doubt as to whether any such hints exist but Buck demonstrates, conclusively I think, that there are many covert and even overt indications of what he calls ‘Bahā’u’llāh’s messianic secret’. …

Buck has created a good starting point for what one would anticipate will be a new genre: critical analyses of the writings of Bahā’u’llāh.”

Franklin Lewis, Review of Symbol & Secret (1995), Baha'i Studies Review 6 (1996): 76–91 [16 pp.]:

“Simply brilliant. Symbol and Secret is a ground-breaking study, setting a standard for and describing the agenda of the exegesis of Bahai texts for some time to come.” 

Review of “Symbol & Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i-Iqan” (1995) by Christopher Buck.

John Hatcher,
Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Bulletin 30.1 (July 1996): 70–71.

“Buck offers insightful analysis of Baha'u'llah's exegetical technique in explicating Qur'anic prophecy and various hadlth. In discussing how Baha'u'llah explicates some extremely abstruse Qur'anic verses (ostensibly as authoritative support for Baha'u'llah's own "argument"), Buck demonstrates "Baha'u'llah's skills as a master of symbolic interpretation" (p. 232). Of special interest is Baha'u'llah's refutation of the accepted interpretation of "Seal of the Prophets" as designating an end to the historical process of divine revelation.

Christopher Buck, “The First Recorded Bahá’í Fireside.” Baha’i Studies Review 21 (cover date, 2015; publication date, 2019): 57–85. (Invited article. Published on or before November 20, 2019.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/bsr.21.1.57_1/https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/bsr/2015/00000021/00000001/art00004.

Christopher Buck and Youli A. Ioannesyan, “Scholar Meets Prophet: Edward Granville Browne and Bahá’u’lláh (Acre, 1890).” Baha’i Studies Review 20 (cover date, 2014; publication date, 2018): 21–38. (Edited by Steve Cooney.) (Published online: January 11, 2018.)

ABSTRACT
Rediscovery of contemporaneous handwritten notes by Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne, of his historic meetings with Baha’u’llah, prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith in Akka (St Jean d’Acre), Palestine, during his stay there—which lasted from his arrival on Sunday, 13 April 1890, to Browne’s departure on Sunday, 20 April 1890—significantly adds to our knowledge of those spiritual and momentous events. Given the fact that Baha’u’llah was to become widely regarded as the founder of a new world religion, Browne’s published account of his 16 April 1890 audience with Baha’u’llah takes on added significance as a rare first-hand description by a distinguished contemporary from the West. Although well-known to those acquainted with Baha’i history, relatively little is known regarding the sequence of events. This article will draw from Cambridge manuscripts to add some new details, and will draw a fuller picture of what transpired by use of Browne’s correspondence with Russian academics, along with known Baha’i sources judiciously compared with Azali sources. Together, a composite account of that historic encounter between scholar and prophet, Browne and Baha’u’llah, will be offered.

Subjects: Interpersonal relations; Christianity; Historical linguistics; Browne, Edward Granville, 1862–1926; Bahá'u'lláh, 1817–1892

Cited References: (34)

“The 1893 Russian Publication of Bahá’u’lláh’s Last Will and Testament: An Academic Attestation of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Successorship.” By Christopher Buck and Youli A. Ioannesyan. Baha’i Studies Review 19 (cover date, 2013; publication date, 2017): 3–44. (Edited by Steve Cooney.) (Published May 2017.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/bsr.19.1.3_1/https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/bsr/2013/00000019/00000001/art00001.

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Title:
The 1893 Russian Publication of Baha'u'llah's Last Will and Testament: An Academic Attestation of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Successorship.

Authors:
Buck, Christopher1
Ioannesyan, Youli A.2
Source:
Baha'i Studies Review; Jun2013, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p3-44, 42p
Document Type:
Article
Subjects:
Browne, Edward Granville, 1862-1926
Covenants (Christianity)
Acquisition of Russian publications
Ethnology -- Tanzania
Author Supplied Keywords:
Abdu'l-Baha
Alexsandr Tumanski
Baha'i Faith
Baha'u'llah
Baron Rosen
covenant
Edward Granville Browne
Kitab-i-'Ahd
successor

Abstract:
This study concerns the publication of a document that may well be unique in the history of religions: the written designation of a successor by the charismatic founder of a world religion. Mīrzā Ḥusayn-‘Alī (1817–1892), known as Bahā’-Allāh (more commonly, Baha’u’llah, ‘Splendor of God’), prophet-founder of the Bahā’ī Faith. In the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī (‘Book of My Covenant’), Baha’u’llah designated his eldest son, ‘Abbās Effendī, known as ‘Abdu’l-Bahā (1844–1921), as successor. Baha’u’llah died on 29 May 1892 (at 3:00 a.m.) in Bahjī (near ‘Akkā), Palestine (now modern-day Israel), and the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī was read aloud nine days later. In 1893, Russian orientalist, Aleksandr Grigor’evich Tumanski (1861–1920) published this document, in the original Persian, with Russian translation, together with a eulogy composed by the celebrated Bahā’ī poet, Mīrzā ‘Alī-Ashraf-i Lāhājānī, known by his sobriquet, ‘Andalīb (‘Nightingale’; d. 1920). Since ‘Andalīb was an eyewitness to the events he describes, his eulogy may be treated as a historical source. Tumanski’s scholarly publication of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī is discussed in the context of Russian scholarly and diplomatic interests. The present study is presented as follows: (1) Introduction; (2) Aleksandr Grigor’evich Tumanski; (3) Contents of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī and Brief Commentary; (4) ‘Andalīb’s Eyewitness Account of the Reading of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī, 1892; (5) The St. Petersburg Edition of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī; (6) The Original Manuscript of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī and the Textus Receptus; (7) Textual Variants Between the St. Petersburg Edition of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī and the Textus Receptus; (8) The Cambridge Manuscript of the Kitāb-i ‘Ahdī in the E. G. Browne Collection; and (9) Conclusion: Contemporary-Historical Attestation of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Successorship by Tumanski and other Russian Notables [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author Affiliations:
1Independent Scholar, Pittsburgh
2Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg)
ISSN:
13548697
DOI:
10.1386/bsr.19.1.3_1
Accession Number:
122940446

Christopher Buck, “Fifty Bahá’í Principles of Unity: A Paradigm of Social Salvation.” Baha’i Studies Review 18 (cover date, 2012; publication date, 2015): 3–44. (Published June 23, 2015.) (Edited by Steve Cooney.) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/bsr.18.1.3_1/https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/bsr/2012/00000018/00000001/art00001.

(Presented at Princeton University, February 21, 2014.) Video of presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_ElzcX6Wo. Thanks to Emily Goshey, PhD (for setting up this event with Princeton), and to Tahi Hicks and Sahand Keshavarz Rahbar (for posting the video of the presentation).

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Fifty Baha'i Principles of Unity: A Paradigm of Social Salvation.
Academic Journal

By: Buck, Christopher. Baha'i Studies Review , 2012, Vol. 18 Issue 1, p3-44, 42p Abstract: The Baha'i Faith, a young world religion, offers principles of unity - from family relations to international relations - as a paradigm for social salvation. These principles may be studied within the analytic prism of an 'illness/cure' approach to religious soteriologies - a conceptual model in the phenomenology of religions popularized by Stephen Prothero. World religions are systems of salvation, liberation or harmony. Their respective offers of salvation, liberation or harmony respond directly to the human predicament, as defined by each religion. If humanity is plagued by sin, then Christianity's redemptive offer of salvation from sin makes perfect sense. Early Buddhism's offer of liberation - from the fundamental problem of suffering - also fits perfectly in this model. In the Baha'i religion, the plight facing the world is profound estrangement at all levels of society. Therefore the social salvation that the Baha'i religion offers are precepts and practices that augment unity and harmony, as Baha'u'llah proclaims: 'The distinguishing feature that marketh the pre-eminent character of this Supreme Revelation consisteth in that We have ... blotted out from the pages of God's holy Book whatsoever hath been the cause of strife, of malice and mischief amongst the children of men, and have ... laid down the essential prerequisites of concord, of understanding, of complete and enduring unity'. After reviewing Raymond Piper's typology, fifty (50) Baha'i principles of unity are enumerated and briefly described: types of unity propounded by Baha'u'llah in the Tablet of Unity (Law?-i Itti??d); types of unity forecast by 'Abdu'l-Baha in the 'The Seven Candles of Unity'; and types of unity articulated by Shoghi Effendi - a splendid array of understudied elements of the Baha'i social gospel. Since the present study is a first extended survey - of the notion of unity vis-à-vis the Baha'i Faith, based squarely on authenticated primary sources - results are preliminary, not definitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].

DOI: 10.1386/bsr.18.1.3_1; (AN 108561335)

Subjects: Bahai Faith; Religion; Salvation; Buddhism; Religious life; Foreign affairs; International Affairs; Interpersonal relations research; International relations -- Research

Cited References: (169)

“The Bahá’í ‘Race Amity’ Movement and the Black Intelligentsia in Jim Crow America: Alain Locke and Robert S. Abbott.” Baha’i Studies Review 17 (cover date, 2011; publication date, 2012): 3–46. (Edited by Steve Cooney.) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/bsr.17.3_1/https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/bsr/2012/00000017/00000001/art00001. [Published September 2012.]

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The Baha'i 'Race Amity' Movement and the Black Intelligentsia in Jim Crow America: Alain Locke and Robert S. Abbott.
Academic Journal

By: Buck, Christopher. Baha'i Studies Review , 2011, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p3-46, 44p

Abstract:
This study demonstrates how the Baha'i 'Race Amity' efforts effectively reached the black intelligentsia during the Jim Crow era, attracting the interest and involvement of two influential giants of the period - Alain Leroy Locke, PhD (1885-1954) and Robert S. Abbott, LLB (1870-1940). Locke affiliated with the Baha'i Faith in 1918, and Abbott formally joined the Baha'i religion in 1934. Another towering figure in the black intelligentsia, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) - whose first wife, Nina Du Bois (d. 1950), was a member of the New York Baha'i community - had sustained, for a period of time, consider¬able interest in the Baha'i movement, as documented in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Religious History, guest edited by Todd Lawson. These illustrious figures - W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain L. Locke and Robert S. Abbott - are ranked as the 4th, 36th and 41st most influential African Americans in American history. It is not so much the intrinsic message of the Baha'i religion that attracted the interest of the black intelligentsia, but rather the Baha'i emphasis on 'race amity' - representing what, by Jim Crow standards, may be regarded as a socially audacious - even radical - application of the Baha'i ethic of world unity, from family relations to international relations, to the prevailing American social crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; DOI: 10.1386/bsr.17.3_1; (AN 88061176)

Subjects: Bahai Faith; Religious movements; Black intellectuals; Segregation of African Americans; Race relations in the United States; Abbott, Robert S. (Robert Sengstacke), 1868-1940; Locke, Alain LeRoy, 1886-1954; Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963

Cited References: (168)

“Baha’u’llah’s Bisharat (Glad-Tidings): A Proclamation to Scholars and Statesmen.” By Christopher Buck and Youli A. Ioannesyan. Bahá’í Studies Review 16 (2010): 3–28. (Edited by Moojan Momen.) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/bsr.16.3/1.

EBSCO Host data:
Baha'u'llah's Bishārāt (Glad-Tidings): A Proclamation to Scholars and Statesmen.
Academic Journal

By: Buck, Christopher; Ioannesyan, Youli A.. Baha'i Studies Review , 2010, Vol. 16 Issue 1, p3-28, 26p

Abstract:
This article is a historical and textual study of the one of the major writings of Baha'u'llah: the Lawḥ-i Bishārāt ('Tablet of Glad-Tidings'), revealed circa 1891, and advances new theories as to its provenance and purpose. The 'Tablet of Glad-Tidings' is a selective compendium of Baha'u'llah's laws and principles, sequentially presented in a series of 15 'Glad-Tidings'. As the Arabic term, Bisharat, suggests, these 'Glad-Tidings' were a public announcement of some of the essential teachings of the new Baha'i religion. The 'Glad-Tidings' is the most extensive of several 'tablets' by Baha'u'llah that present key teachings in a numbered structure. The Glad-Tidings may, in part, be regarded as serially articulated 'world reforms' intermixed with religious reforms emanating from Baha'u'llah in his professed role as 'World Reformer'. The 'Glad-Tidings' also functioned analogously (albeit anachronistically) to a press release, serving not only as a public proclamation but to rectify the inaccuracies and gross misrepresentations that had previously circulated in print. Intended for widespread translation and publication, the Glad-Tidings was sent to scholars - notably Russian orientalist, Baron Viktor Rosen (1849-1908) and Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne (1862-1926) - and possibly pre-revolutionary Russian statesmen as well. As a 'Proclamatory Aqdas', the Tablet of Glad-Tidings was part of a much broader proclamation by Baha'u'llah, who proclaimed his mission to the political and religious leaders of the world. This study will argue that Baha'u'llah may have revealed the Tablet of Glad-Tidings for E. G. Browne - or rather through him, since Baha'u'llah evidently intended that Browne should translate and publish the Bisharat in order to make the nature of the Baha'i teachings more widely known. This would then correct the distortions that had previously been published regarding Baha'u'llah's purpose and the nature of the religion that he founded, thereby promoting a public awareness that a new world religion was on the horizon of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DOI: 10.1386/bsr.16.3/1; (AN 55556852)

Subjects: Terms & phrases; Vocabulary; Religion; Modernity; Bahá'u'lláh, 1817-1892

Cited References: (42)
Times Cited in this Database: (2)

Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke: Bahá’í Philosopher.” Baha’i Studies Review 10 (2001/2002): 7–49. [Article invited by editor, Dr. Seena Fazel, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, Honorary Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, The Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford.]

Abstract

African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for Ernest Mason’s 1979 World Order article, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor its influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, will contribute to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. This study examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.” [1]

[1] Alain Locke, “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle,” in The Bahá’í World: A Biennial International Record, Volume IV, April 1930–April 1932, comp. National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (New York: Committee, 1933; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1980) 372–74. Reprint in Leonard Harris (ed.), The Philosophy of Alain Locke (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989) 133–38 [above quote from 137]. Harris’ reference (133 n.) should be emended to read, Volume IV, 1930–1932 (not “V, 1932–1934”).

Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as Zoroastrian Saviour.” Baha’i Studies Review 8 (1998): 14–33.

Abstract

This paper explores theoretical tensions between modern scholarship and modern messiahship. Messiahs, typically, advance truth claims and adduce proof texts. Prophecies foretell; messiahs fulfill. But what if the proof texts are other than what they purport to be? What if a prophecy turns out not to be genuine? How might this affect the truth claim? An ideal case-study is that of Bahā’u’llāh, whose claim to multiple messiahship is unusual in the history of religions, paralleled only by the second-century world-prophet, Mānī (d. 276). Bahā’u’llāh’s truth-claims were anchored in several apocalyptic traditions, interpreted as convergent. Bahā’u’llāh’s claim to be Shāh Bahrām Varjāvand, the Zoroastrian messiah, is a case in point. A theoretical problem arises once it is shown that Zoroastrian apocalypses that foretell the advent of Shāh Bahrām are primarily medieval texts, lamenting the Byzantine, Arab and Turkish invasions of Iran. These texts are hardly prophecies, but are cast in the form of prophecies, through use of a literary device known as “vaticinium ex eventu” (prophecy after the event). These prophecies are a type of inverse history, where recent history (the calamity of conquest) is recounted, followed by a scenario expressed in the future perfect tense (prophecies), which more or less narrates what should have been, in the name of what shall be. It will be shown that Bahā’u’llāh’s appeal to the Shāh Bahrām tradition circumvents this problem by radically reinterpreting the Zoroastrian prophecies themselves, thereby reinventing the figure of Shāh Bahrām.

Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in Canada?: A Test Case for Bahá’í Universalism.” Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 97–133. (Invited by Christine Zerbinis, editor.) [Award for Excellence in Bahá’í Studies. Association for Bahá’í Studies, 1994.]

Abstract
Academic and popular interest has lent prestige to native spirituality and has brought it into prominence. The United Nations proclamation of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous People gave native peoples international recognition. A corresponding interest in native culture has “valorised” (brought respect to) native spirituality. The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada took a position of advocacy on behalf of First Nations Canadians in its formal submission to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the fall of 1993. The strong native presence in Canadian Bahá’í community life raises the question of the place of native spirituality within a Bahá’í worldview. Homefront “pioneers” have extended Bahá’í universalism to a recognition of the richness and authenticity of native cultural values. Such recognition has been supported by local Bahá’í policy, as attested in teaching pamphlets addressed to native peoples, in which the concept of First World messengers of God has been validated. Although theoretically acknowledged, explicit recognition of native messengers of God has yet to be formalised in Bahá’í doctrine. This study discusses the possibilities of incorporating the principle of “Messengers of God to Indigenous Peoples” within formal Bahá’í doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Bahá’í belief in the North American context. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá establishes the principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible. The problem of historical attestation remains. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Bahá’í principle of “Progressive Revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a provisional status with Bahá’í prophetology, and still affirm Bahá’u’lláh’s unific role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions.

Christopher Buck, Review of Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam: Qur’an, Exegesis, Messianism, and the Literary Origins of the Babi Religion, by Todd Lawson (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). Baha’i Studies Review 18 (cover date, 2012; publication date, 2015): 153–161. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/bsr.18.1.153_5/https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/bsr/2012/00000018/00000001/art00008. (Published June 23, 2015.) Available via EBSCO Host.

Christopher Buck, Review of Moojan Momen, The Phenomenon of Religion. Baha’i Studies Review 9 (1999): 93–99. [Introduces Buck’s “DREAMS Paradigm.” “DREAMS” is a mnemonic acronym for the Doctrinal, Ritual, Ethical, Artistic, Mystical, and Social dimensions of religion. Developed as a classroom tool (for university students) in formally comparing world religions.]