On Should Baha’i Houses of Worship Be Built? Kind comments
Jun 24th, 2008 by admin
Baha’i Temple India
“The queues ran all the way to the Visitors Centre at the entrance of the temple grounds.” Uploaded on December 30, 2007 by paulancheta on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic
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April 11th, 2008, an article ran on the Baha’i House of Worship in New Delhi in an Indian travel blog. The post has drawn 55 comments, beginning immediately after it appeared and continuing up until the present day. One commenter questioned whether Baha’i houses of worship should be built in the first place, given the needs of the poor.
See how Duane, Patrick, and Susan respond to the question. Note the prevailing sentiments of the other commenters, most of whom who are not Baha’i. Read what the writer Ram Dhall himself has to say in response. -gw
Thanks for your thought provoking comment.
On the outset I would like to mention that I am not a Baha’i. The post I wrote was from the perspective of a visitor and I described what I saw and understood.
Needless to say that we all have a great concern for the poor and downtrodden and I believe that we all are contributing for their upliftment as per our respective capabilities.
As Patrick Jones has very aptly said in his comment that besides social work (which of course is of great importance), we need to take care of the creativeness and developmental aspect too, without which progress is almost impossible.
I also agree with Nandan that the temples, churches or mosques are good instruments for imparting education and awareness. In a country like India, where faith plays an all important role, the contribution of the religious places, where people meet and congeregate is of immense value.
The questions you have raised were probably also relevant and existent during the Renaissance period, a golden era of history, when a lots of progress in the fields of literature, art, medicine, etc took place. If the rulers and the churches of those times did not support / patronise the artists, philosphers and researchers, we would have been devoid of many Gothic and Romensque structures, we see today. In my humble opinion, the ancient temples, churches, mosques and even some of the most beautiful historical structures were all a part of the vision and creativeness of some of the God gifted people.
Now coming back to the Lotus Temple, I believe, before its construction, not many people in India were even aware of the existence of the Baha’i faith. I am told that on average around 10,000 persons visit this edifice every day and since its opening to the public, more than 60 million people have visited this place. Assuming that even 20% of the visitors made use of the prayer hall for prayers and meditation, the very objective of construction of this magnificent opus is probably achieved and it will carry on for ages to come.
I think Duane Herrmann’s comment about the usage of resources for medical and educational purposes is self explicit.
However, I still respect your opinion and as read somewhere in the writings of Abdu’l Baha that through the clash of opinions, comes the spark of truth.
I am exremely grateful to you for your kind comment.
Thank you and God Bless you
