Mirrored from www.bahai-library.org
originally posted by Mark Foster at bahaistudies.net/century_of_light.html;
Reformatted by Gary Fuhrman; updates added by Julia Buckney (2002;
further updates added by Brett Zamir (2003) based on a letter from the House;
see also an Outline
of the Century of Light, by Arjen Bolhuis (offsite)
and a Review of Century of Light,
by John Taylor
revised edition
Editor's note: Page numbers given in this online edition correspond with the editions printed by the Bahá'í Publishing Trust. Note that some pages in those printed editions are blank, and the notes which appear on pp. 147-157 in those editions have here been moved to the end of each part for the convenience of the reader. These endnotes are numbered consecutively from the beginning to the end of the whole document, as in the printed editions.
The conclusion of the twentieth century provides Bahá'ís with a unique vantage
point. During the past hundred years our world underwent changes far more
profound than any in its preceding history, changes that are, for the most
part, little understood by the present generation. These same hundred years saw
the Bahá'í Cause emerge from obscurity, demonstrating on a global scale the
unifying power with which its Divine origin has endowed it. As the century drew
to its close, the convergence of these two historical developments became
increasingly apparent.
Century of Light, prepared under our supervision, reviews these two
processes and the relationship between them, in the context of the Bahá'í
Teachings. We commend it to the thoughtful study of the friends, in the
confidence that the perspectives it opens up will prove both spiritually
enriching and of practical help in sharing with others the challenging
implications of the Revelation brought by Bahá'u'lláh.
THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE
Naw-Rúz, 158 B.E.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, the most turbulent in the history of the human race, has
reached its end. Dismayed by the deepening moral and social chaos that marked
its course, the generality of the world's peoples are eager to leave behind
them the memories of the suffering that these decades brought with them. No
matter how frail the foundations of confidence in the future may seem, no
matter how great the dangers looming on the horizon, humanity appears desperate
to believe that, through some fortuitous conjunction of circumstances, it will
nevertheless be possible to bend the conditions of human life into conformity
with prevailing human desires.
In the light of the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh such hopes are not merely
illusory, but miss entirely the nature and meaning of the great turning point
through which our world has passed in these crucial hundred years. Only as
humanity comes to understand the implications of what occurred during this
period of history will it be able to meet the challenges that lie ahead. The
value of the contribution we as Bahá'ís can make to the process demands that we
ourselves grasp the significance of the historic transformation wrought by the
twentieth century.
What makes this insight possible for us is the light shed by the rising Sun of
Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation and the influence it has come to exercise in human
affairs. It is this opportunity that the following pages address.
[page 1]
LET US ACKNOWLEDGE AT THE OUTSET the magnitude of the ruin that the human race
has brought upon itself during the period of history under review. The loss of
life alone has been beyond counting. The disintegration of basic institutions
of social order, the violation — indeed, the abandonment — of standards of
decency, the betrayal of the life of the mind through surrender to ideologies
as squalid as they have been empty, the invention and deployment of monstrous
weapons of mass annihilation, the bankrupting of entire nations and the
reduction of masses of human beings to hopeless poverty, the reckless
destruction of the environment of the planet — such are only the more obvious
in a catalogue of horrors unknown to even the darkest of ages past. Merely to
mention them is to call to mind the Divine warnings expressed in Bahá'u'lláh's
words of a century ago: "O heedless ones! Though the wonders of My mercy
have encompassed all created things, both visible and invisible, and though the
revelations of My grace and bounty have permeated every atom of the universe,
yet the rod with which I can chastise the wicked is grievous, and the fierceness
of Mine anger against them terrible."[1]
Lest any observer of the Cause be tempted to misunderstand such warnings as
only metaphorical, Shoghi Effendi, drawing some of the historical implications,
wrote in 1941:
[page 2]
A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course, catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome. Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.[2]
From the point of view of wealth and influence, "the world" of 1900
was Europe and, by grudging concession, the United States. Throughout the
planet, Western imperialism was pursuing among the populations of other lands
what it regarded as its "civilizing mission". In the words of one
historian, the century's opening decade appeared to be essentially a
continuation of the "long nineteenth century",[3] an era
whose boundless self-satisfaction was perhaps best epitomized by the celebration
in 1897 of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, a parade that rolled for hours
through the streets of London, with an imperial panoply and display of military
power far surpassing anything attempted in past civilizations.
As the century began, there were few, whatever their degree of social or moral
sensitivity, who perceived the catastrophes lying ahead, and few, if any, who
could have conceived their magnitude. The military leadership of most European
nations assumed that war of some kind would break out, but viewed the prospect
with equanimity because of the twin fixed convictions that it would be short
and would be won by their side.
[page
3]
To an extent that seemed little short of miraculous, the international peace
movement was enlisting the support of statesmen, industrialists, scholars, the
media, and influential personalities as unlikely as the tsar of Russia. If the
inordinate increase in armaments seemed ominous, the network of painstakingly
crafted and often overlapping alliances seemed to give assurance that a general
conflagration would be avoided and regional disputes settled, as they had been
through most of the previous century. This illusion was reinforced by the fact
that Europe's crowned heads — most of them members of one extended family, and
many of them exercising seemingly decisive political power — addressed one
another familiarly by nicknames, carried on an intimate correspondence, married
one another's sisters and daughters, and vacationed together throughout long
stretches of each year at one another's castles, regattas and shooting lodges.
Even the painful disparities in the distribution of wealth were being
energetically — if not very systematically — addressed in Western societies
through legislation designed to restrain the worst of the corporate freebooting
of preceding decades and to meet the most urgent demands of growing urban
populations.
The vast majority of the human family, living in lands outside the Western
world, shared in few of the blessings and little of the optimism of their
European and American brethren. China, despite its ancient civilization and its
sense of itself as the "Middle Kingdom", had become the hapless
victim of plundering by Western nations and by its modernizing neighbour Japan.
The multitudes in India — whose economy and political life had fallen so
totally under the domination of a single imperial power as to exclude the usual
jockeying for advantage — escaped some of the worst of the abuses afflicting
other lands, but watched impotently as their desperately needed resources were
drained away. The coming agony of Latin America was all too clearly prefigured
in the suffering of Mexico, large sections of which had been annexed by its
great northern neighbour, and whose natural resources were already attracting
the attention of avaricious foreign corporations. Particularly embarrassing
from a Western point of view — because of its proximity to such brilliant
European capitals as Berlin and Vienna — was the medieval oppression in which
the hundred million nominally liberated serfs in
[page
4]
Russia led lives of sullen, hopeless misery. Most tragic of all was the plight
of the inhabitants of the African continent, divided against one another by
artificial boundaries created through cynical bargains among European powers.
It has been estimated that during the first decade of the twentieth century
over a million people in the Congo perished — starved, beaten, worked literally
to death for the profit of their distant masters, a preview of the fate that
was to engulf well over one hundred million of their fellow human beings across
Europe and Asia before the century reached its end.[4]
These masses of humankind, despoiled and scorned — but representing most of the
earth's inhabitants — were seen not as protagonists but essentially as objects
of the new century's much vaunted civilizing process. Despite benefits
conferred on a minority among them, the colonial peoples existed chiefly to be
acted upon — to be used, trained, exploited, Christianized, civilized,
mobilized — as the shifting agendas of Western powers dictated. These agendas
may have been harsh or mild in execution, enlightened or selfish, evangelical
or exploitative, but were shaped by materialistic forces that determined both
their means and most of their ends. To a large extent, religious and political
pieties of various kinds masked both ends and means from the publics in Western
lands, who were thus able to derive moral satisfaction from the blessings their
nations were assumed to be conferring on less worthy peoples, while themselves
enjoying the material fruits of this benevolence.
To point out the failings of a great civilization is not to deny its
accomplishments. As the twentieth century opened, the peoples of the West could
take justifiable pride in the technological, scientific and philosophical
developments for which their societies had been responsible. Decades of
experimentation had placed in their hands material means that were still beyond
the appreciation of the rest of humanity. Throughout both Europe and America
vast industries had risen, dedicated to metallurgy, to the manufacturing of
chemical products of every kind, to textiles, to construction and to the
production of instruments that enhanced every aspect of life. A continuous
process of discovery, design and improvement was making accessible power of
unimaginable magnitude — with, alas, ecological consequences equally unimagined
at
[page
5]
the time — especially through the use of cheap fuel and electricity. The
"era of the railroad" was far advanced and steamships coursed the
sea-ways of the world. With the proliferation of telegraph and telephone
communication, Western society anticipated the moment when it would be freed of
the limiting effects that geographical distances had imposed on humankind since
the dawn of history.
Changes taking place at the deeper level of scientific thought were even more
far-reaching in their implications. The nineteenth century had still been held
in the grip of the Newtonian view of the world as a vast clockwork system, but
by the end of the century the intellectual strides necessary to challenge that
view had already been taken. New ideas were emerging that would lead to the
formulation of quantum mechanics; and before long the revolutionizing effect of
the theory of relativity would call into question beliefs about the phenomenal
world that had been accepted as common sense for centuries. Such break-throughs
were encouraged — and their influence greatly amplified — by the fact that
science had already changed from an activity of isolated thinkers to the
systematically pursued concern of a large and influential international
community enjoying the amenities of universities, laboratories and symposia for
the exchange of experimental discoveries.
Nor was the strength of Western societies limited to scientific and
technological advances. As the twentieth century opened, Western civilization
was reaping the fruits of a philosophical culture that was rapidly liberating
the energies of its populations, and whose influence would soon produce a
revolutionary impact throughout the entire world. It was a culture which
nurtured constitutional government, prized the rule of law and respect for the
rights of all of society's members, and held up to the eyes of all it reached a
vision of a coming age of social justice. If the boasts of liberty and equality
that inflated patriotic rhetoric in Western lands were a far cry from
conditions actually prevailing, Westerners could justly celebrate the advances
toward those ideals that had been accomplished in the nineteenth century.
From a spiritual perspective the age was gripped by a strange, paradoxical
duality. In almost every direction the intellectual horizon was darkened by
clouds of superstition produced by unthinking imitation of
[page
6]
earlier ages. For most of the world's peoples, the consequences ranged from
profound ignorance about both human potentialities and the physical universe,
to naïve attachment to theologies that bore little or no relation to
experience. Where winds of change did dispel the mists, among the educated
classes in Western lands, inherited orthodoxies were all too often replaced by
the blight of an aggressive secularism that called into doubt both the
spiritual nature of humankind and the authority of moral values themselves.
Everywhere, the secularization of society's upper levels seemed to go hand in
hand with a pervasive religious obscurantism among the general population. At
the deepest level — because religion's influence reaches far into the human
psyche and claims for itself a unique kind of authority-religious prejudices in
all lands had kept alive in successive generations smouldering fires of bitter
animosity that would fuel the horrors of the coming decades.[5]
NOTES
[1] Shoghi
Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing
Trust, 1990), p. 81.
[2] Shoghi
Effendi, The Promised Day is Come (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust,
1996), p. 1.
[3] Eric
Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991
(London: Abacus, 1995), p. 584.
[4]
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, operated the colony as a private preserve for
some three decades (1877-1908). The atrocities carried out under his misrule
aroused international protest, and in 1908 he was compelled to surrender the
territory to the administration of the Belgian government.
[5] The
processes that brought about these changes are reviewed in some detail by A. N.
Wilson, et al., God's Funeral (London: John Murray, 1999). In 1872, a
book published by Winwood Reade under the title The Martyrdom of Man
(London: Pemberton Publishing, 1968), which became something of a secular
"Bible" in the early decades of the twentieth century, expressed the
confidence that "finally, men will master the forces of Nature. They will
become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then
be perfect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar
worship as a god." Cited by Anne Glyn-Jones, Holding up a Mirror: How
Civilizations Decline (London: Century, 1996), pp. 371-372.