BahÁ'Í Communities in the Caribbean

With the achievement of unity and justice as its pivotal tenets and fundamental aim, the Bahá'í faith has attracted increasing attention throughout the Caribbean since the 1940s. In his voluminous writings the faith's founder, Bahá'u'lláh, addresses large cosmological questions such as the nature of God and faith, the basis of moral authority in human affairs, and the relationship between the world's religions. Equally emphasized in his writings are the principles and structures needed to transform human society: the elimination of racial and other forms of prejudice, equality of women and men, economic justice, and the need to establish an auxiliary world language, among many others. First started in Iran in the mid-nineteenth century, the Bahá'í faith as of 2002 was established in 191 countries and forty-six dependent territories or overseas departments, its scriptures translated into over eight hundred languages worldwide.

People in the Caribbean first learned of the faith from visitors from North America in the late 1930s. Among these enthusiastic promoters of the faith were several prominent black believers such as Louis Gregory, Ellsworth Blackwell, and others—including Dr. Malcolm King, a Jamaican who became a Bahá'í in Milwaukee in 1931—of Caribbean background. By the early 1940s the study groups these teachers formed in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic had blossomed into flourishing Bahá'í communities. With the exception of Puerto Rico, these communities expanded sufficiently to elect their respective national governing bodies in 1961 and participated in 1963 in electing the first Universal House of Justice, the international governing council of the faith, democratically elected every five years. Other Caribbean territories were opened to the faith in the early 1950s and gradually consolidated, increasing the number of National Spiritual Assemblies in the region to nineteen by 2003.

The Bahá'í faith in the Caribbean, as elsewhere in the world, has attracted adherents from all ethnic and class segments and from a variety of religious backgrounds. To peoples in this region the consciousness cultivated in the Bahá'í faith of the wholeness of the human race, and the imperative need for world citizenship based on unity in diversity, has no doubt had special resonance. The Caribbean, after all, has been globalized for five centuries, has struggled with diversity, and has produced artists and leaders of thought on the world stage to an extent disproportionate to its geographic and demographic size. One indication of the appeal of the faith's progressive international emphasis is that several of the earliest Bahá'ís in Jamaica came from a background in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the transnational black movement founded by Marcus Garvey that reached its high point in the 1920s.

Bahá'ís from the Caribbean have served with distinction in promoting global citizenship and advancing the work of the faith worldwide. One early Jamaican Bahá'í, Julius Edwards, who served as a secretary to Garvey in the early 1930s, left his homeland in the early 1950s to take the Bahá'í teachings to Ghana and Liberia. Late in life he returned to the Caribbean and helped with the development of the Grenada Bahá'í community. A Bahá'í of Jamaican background was elected to and has served on the nine-member Universal House of Justice since 1982. The faith has been included in the school curriculum of various Caribbean countries, won widespread commendation from civic and government leaders, and is now widely recognized for its contributions to social development.

See also Garvey, Marcus; Universal Negro Improvement Association

Bibliography

The Bahá'í World: An International Record. Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre. Published biennially.

Hatcher, William S., and J. Douglas Martin. The Bahá'í Faith: The Emerging Global Religion. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985.

Momen, Wendi, ed. A Basic Bahá'í Dictionary. Oxford: George Ronald, 1996.

Smith, Peter. A Concise Encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: Oneworld, 2000.

charles v. carnegie (2005)