Bahá'í Books & Authors

Religion and faith communities have been a part of America’s struggle with racism throughout its history. While religion has been used to perpetuate oppression and enslavement, it has also inspired and sustained those laboring for justice. Eternal spiritual teachings and practices found across religious traditions—loving one another; recognizing our interdependence; promoting justice; and cultivating moral courage, humility, and compassion—offer vital resources for overcoming racism. Insights from these teachings and practices can be shared by all striving for the same aims whether or not they are religious adherents.
Illumined by Oneness grows out of a multi-year, multifaith dialogue on how religion and faith communities can contribute to overcoming racism. It invites readers into this conversation, offering readings, questions, and dialogue materials. Individuals and groups can use the resources and reflections provided to support study, conversation, and ultimately action on this vital and challenging issue.
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Many Bahá’ís will be familiar with the name John David Bosch; however, until now his life has not been explored in a comprehensive biography. John and his wife Louise are perhaps best known for their efforts and selfless generosity in helping to establish a Bahá’í school in northern California. The school, which opened in 1927 on the Bosches’ property in Geyserville, would grow as a center of learning and eventually relocate to its current location in the mountains above Santa Cruz and be named in their honor.

Author Angelina Diliberto Allen has drawn on extensive research to weave together the strands of the Bosches’ lives and give us a vivid picture of these inspiring souls. Within the pages of this book, the reader will find a treasure trove of highlights, from John’s discovery and embrace of the Faith under the tutelage of Helen Goodall to his deep and lasting friendships with such luminaries as Thornton Chase and Hands of the Cause Amelia Collins and Roy Wilhelm, to name just a few. Most notable of all, however, is the presence on these pages of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Encounters and correspondence with the Master are documented here extensively, and, in perhaps the book’s most stunning section, the reader is given an intimate glimpse of the days surrounding the Master’s passing. The Bosches were among a small group of pilgrims present at the time, and their experience of the event and the special tasks they performed are shared in detail.

John and Louise Bosch lived multifaceted lives of discovery, devotion, and service, and their story will leave the reader with much to reflect upon.
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Thornton Chase believed that "Religion is Life, and Life is Love, and Love is God." This is the story of one of the most significant figures in American Bahá'í history—from the time he joined the Bahá'í Faith in 1894 until his death in 1912. The author traces Chase's years of spiritual search and yearning, his departure from mainstream Protestant belief, and his discovery of the life and teachings of Bahá'u'lláh. Despite fierce tests and difficulties, Chase became a leading American Bahá'í writer, speaker and organizer. This is one man's spiritual odyssey, a shining example of how to live, love and worship one's Creator. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roshan Danesh has devoted his career to the study of law and religion with a particular focus on the Bahá’í Faith and its central legal text, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. In this collection of essays—previously published in a variety of academic journals, including the prestigious Journal of Law and Religion—Danesh invites the reader into an exploration of largely unchartered waters. As he states in the introduction to this collection, “understanding Bahá’í law challenges us to question, and ultimately abandon, our taken-for-granted ways of thinking, talking about, and using law.”

Organized around four distinct areas— Bahá'u'lláh's conception of law, the constitutional dimensions of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh's theory of social change, and scholarship and discourses concerning Bahá'í law—the essays collected here are expansive and illuminating, and they provide an invaluable contribution to discourse on the subject, with a foreword by Kiser Barnes.
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Rarely does a book cover a historically and culturally important topic that has never been written about before. Yet Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá'ís in North America, 1898-2000 accomplishes precisely this through an absorbing collection of glimpses into the lives of some extraordinary individuals who devoted themselves to a common cause and made outstanding contributions toward building a unified society.

Edited by Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, a professor of English at Miami University in Ohio, and Richard Thomas, a professor of history at Michigan State University, the book brings to light the stories of a diverse group of people including attorney Louis Gregory, poet Robert Hayden, jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, Broadway actress Dorothy Champ, and Canadian singer Eddie Elliot, to name a few.

Lights of the Spirit is divided into two sections. Part one offers a helpful introduction to the Bahá'í Faith and six highly readable essays that comprehensively describe the black experience in the North American Baha'i community. Chapters by Etter-Lewis, Thomas, and others address African-Americans and the development of the Faith in the U.S. and Canada, contributions of African-American women, and the role African-Americans in the global expansion of the Baha'i Faith.

Part two contains documents from nine historically prominent African-American Bahá'ís, providing insights into how these remarkable individuals perceived themselves and the larger communities in which they lived. Here, readers will find creative and social commentaries, letters, and family histories. Many of the documents are previously unpublished. Written from a first-person point of view, they preserve a largely unknown history that expands our notions of African-American religious traditions.

The unique content of the book will appeal to readers interested in Black history, race relations, and the history of religion in North America.
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