My thoughts on the CES Letter.
My friend Bill recommended I read CES Letter. I found it pretty hard to put down, and read the whole thing over the last couple days. I thought it was worth reflecting on the ideas in it from the point of view of a Baha’i.
I haven’t mentioned it on my blog yet for various reasons, but I declared myself a Baha’i in October 2023. So I now belong to a Faith about the size of Mormonism (although much smaller in the US). I have been met with quite a bit of understanding and maybe a little puzzlement. But this seems like a good context to talk about it, because any faith should be able to withstand the kinds of questions Jeremy Runnells asks of his former faith. Why not start with the controversial stuff? At least you won’t think I’m being fatuous.
Before going too far down this road, I want to make it clear I’m not going to bag on LDS believers. Baha’u’llah says “Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.” Reading the CES Letter, I felt a lot of sympathy for Jeremy and others like him: good and decent people trying to adhere to God’s wishes, whom I have no doubt are worthy of and will receive an ample share of God’s blessings. And furthermore, I’m just a random Baha’i and a guy who has read some books; I don’t speak from authority about anything, let alone the Baha’i Faith.
The CES Letter is concerned with a number of topics: the verity of the foundational texts, the legitimacy of Joseph Smith Jr and the line of authority starting with him, the legitimacy of his witnesses, certain difficult or troubling teachings, and the Church’s attitudes towards historicity, fact, belief, emotion and the general reconciliation of reason with, let’s say, shortcomings in those categories.
There are analogs in some of these areas to the questions that are asked of the Baha’i Faith. In Mormonism, the question about the texts has to do with their historicity and legitimacy. In the Baha’i Faith, we have a large number of writings that are untranslated. Both religions have gone through succession crises and wound up with basically one real movement and a few tiny groups of sectarians. Neither is especially progressive about LGBTQ issues, and both have a kind of membership status that can be imperiled by transgressing certain behavioral standards including this. Both have a concept of infallibility, a word that makes my skin crawl a bit and probably yours too.
Probably the most basic difference is that the Baha’i Faith requires you to figure things out on your own. While you may be born into a Baha’i family and may get a Baha’i education, in the end, it’s completely your personal decision. When you declare, at least in the US, you fill out an online form; if you withdraw, you click a button on the same site. You’re not going to get harassed about it. You can attend Baha’i gatherings as a Baha’i or just a friend; declaring and undeclaring does not imperil this. Nothing is really at stake if you reject the Faith. The benefits of being a declared Baha’i are simply that you can donate money, participate in the electoral process and take part in the internal discussion part of the 19-day meeting (“feast”). Nobody believes that you are going to hell or otherwise going to suffer some kind of penalty in the afterlife. Similarly, the Baha’i behavior standards are for Baha’is. If you have not declared, they obviously do not apply to you, and nobody will think less of you for drinking or whatever. Anyone can use the Baha’i prayers, read the Baha’i books, believe in any part of it or none of it; it is for everyone equally.
Based on the CES Letter, it sounds like for Mormonism, the important thing is that you feel it is true, and this is called a testimony. Based on this, you’re supposed to accept everything. The outcome for Jeremy was extremely difficult. It’s not a good look for the LDS church, in my opinion.
Now, infallibility gives me and most Americans hives because we find it impossible to imagine that someone could never have made a mistake about anything. The combination of infallibility with two known-invalid translations and a third whose source is not available kind of beggars belief. For Baha’is, the combination of infallibility with a large corpus of untranslated text at first sounds like a minefield. I have only read a small portion of what is available, because despite it being a fraction of what exists, it’s still enormous. In doing this reading, what I came to realize is that generally when something is said and I have trouble with it, when I ponder it, I come to see how it fits with everything else. Though there is a vast amount of writing, the majority of it closes in on the same themes repeatedly: the unity of mankind, the unity of religion, the unity of the world. It is tremendously optimistic. Having read as much as I have, my fears about what remains untranslated have reduced a lot. Baha’u’llah didn’t sit around holding forth on every possible topic. He talked about the same things repeatedly with many different people, using different kinds of language.
In the light of unity, I see infallibility as primarily serving the role of bringing about unity by proscribing intense, schism-causing debate. In this perspective, Baha’u’llah gave leadership to Abdu’l-Baha’ and declared his infallibility so that there would not be schism from different people trying to usurp the religion. (Many tried anyway.) The same story repeats with Shoghi Effendi. In neither case were they empowered to add new things to the religion, only to explain. Each of these were small succession crises in comparison to Shoghi Effendi’s death and the formation of the UHJ. But even there, enough groundwork had been laid that the vast majority of people came along to the Baha’i Faith we have today, and only a small splinter group was created (mostly living in Roswell, NM, of all places). There are only a few examples people have found where Abdu’l-Baha’ appears to say something contrary to science; the most prominent one is probably this one:
Question: What will be the food of the united people? Answer: As humanity progresses, meat will be used less and less, for the teeth of man are not carnivorous. For example, the lion is endowed with carnivorous teeth, which are intended for meat, and if meat be not found, the lion starves. The lion cannot graze; its teeth are of different shape. The digestive system of the lion is such that it cannot receive nourishment save through meat. The eagle has a crooked beak, the lower part shorter than the upper. It cannot pick up grain; it cannot graze; therefore, it is compelled to partake of meat. The domestic animals have herbivorous teeth formed to cut grass, which is their fodder. The human teeth, the molars, are formed to grind grain. The front teeth, the incisors, are for fruits, etc. It is, therefore, quite apparent according to the implements for eating that man’s food is intended to be grain and not meat. When mankind is more fully developed, the eating of meat will gradually cease.
On the one hand, we have an evolutionary explanation for why we have incisors: tearing meat, probably. But the question isn’t about where we have come from, it’s about where we are going, and virtually everyone can agree that eating more meat is probably worse for us. Evolution tells us where you came from, it doesn’t necessarily tell you where you’re going; giant pandas have incisors too, but only eat bamboo.
In the Baha’i Faith, science and religion are complimentary because one tells you where you have been and the other where you are going; one tells you how things are and the other tells you why. As Baha’u’llah says: “Knowledge is as wings to man’s life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone.” While there is an emotional, experiential dimension to the Baha’i Faith, it is not to override reason. This does not appear to be the case in the LDS church.
On the question of LGBTQ issues, we have about the same in the Baha’i Faith as in the other major Abrahamic religions: a definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman and that sexual relations are to be limited to this union. Baha’u’llah made a very oblique mention of pedophilia in the book of laws; Shoghi Effendi expanded this to homosexual relations. I can’t reconcile myself to Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation, but he certainly did not have the power to add something new to the writings or abrogate something completely in order to arrive at another solution. In the interest of unity, I can only acquiesce to it. There are LGBTQ Baha’is, as well as Muslims, Catholics and Jews; I think Baha’u’llah certainly did not want us to construct our identities on the basis of our preferences, and this is simply one of those tests for us, especially Americans who are accustomed to equating the satisfaction of our desires with the good. The matter is, in my opinion, somewhat overstated, because the Faith does not really permit us to categorize people into “good” and “bad” categories (or “in-group”/“out-group” or any other dichotomy) on any basis. If you are discriminated against by a Baha’i, they have failed to fulfill their obligations to Baha’u’llah to create unity.
Unlike Mormonism, we simply don’t have questions about the accuracy or authenticity of our religious texts. Also unlike Mormonism, we get to have the benefit of most other religion’s texts. The validity of our translations are sometimes questioned. The Arabic of The Báb and Baha’u’llah were not exactly normative; Modern Standard Arabic wasn’t yet really formalized and their styles are idiosyncratic and have a lot of Persian influence. The Báb’s writings were only intended to last a short period of time and are written in a very dense style for people highly acquainted with the Qur’an; translating the bulk of them into English has not been a high priority. Those interested in knowing more about His writings should probably read Gate of the Heart. I don’t know the precise reason why much of Baha’u’llah’s writings haven’t yet been translated. I suspect that the reasons are simply because A) there is so much to translate, B) Shoghi Effendi translated what he considered important for us, and there is a general trust in his decisions, C) not much trust in our ability to do an equally good job, D) the funds are better spent in other ways, and E) a lot of Baha’u’llah’s writings are direct correspondence with believers and others, so may be repetitive in toto or not particularly general. These are just my speculations.
The historicity claims of the LDS church are pretty integral to the entire enterprise. If Joseph Smith didn’t really find hidden tablets, if the tablets aren’t true, then the rest of his revelation is probably false, which is what provides the impetus for their being an LDS church at all. Would the Book of Mormon be worth reading if it were an out-and-out forgery? The context surrounding it makes it difficult for non-Mormons to take seriously, and the Book of Abraham and Kinderhook Plates are obviously forged. Is there still value in reading and studying these books? I’m not in a position to say. Much of the Hebrew Bible is either unverifiable or false from a historical perspective; the majority of Jews don’t see a problem with this and find that the ideas are still useful and worth studying. Most of Jesus’s words are in the form of parables, which means we know that their “truth value” in the sense of logic is false, but their “truth value” in the sense of spiritual teachings is quite large. On the other hand, it is the truth value of the LDS’s teachings that gave the LDS church racist teachings, promoted polygamy and conversion therapy, several of which were abrogated only recently.
The Baha’i Faith has some historicity problems of another sort. The obvious one is that if all religions are one, why are they so different from one another? The Baha’i perspective is that there are core teachings that are the same for all religions, which have been promoted by the Manifestations of God in all eras and all regions; the details differ because the locality and era might demand different emphasis, or perhaps just due to the passage of time and meddling by religious authorities (a favorite target of Baha’u’llah’s). This seems pretty workable for the Abrahamic faiths that preceded it but raises problems about Eastern religions that do not have obvious solutions. Consider this question about Confucius and Buddha:
Buddha also established a new religion and Confucius renewed the ancient conduct and morals, but the original precepts have been entirely changed and their followers no longer adhere to the original pattern of belief and worship. The founder of Buddhism was a precious Being Who established the oneness of God, but later His original precepts were gradually forgotten and displaced by primitive customs and rituals, until in the end it led to the worship of statues and images.
It’s quite difficult to look at the Buddhism we have today and see how Buddha could possibly have been talking about the oneness of God when there are no Buddhisms today that talk about God. Moojan Momen wrote a lengthy article about the interface between the Baha’i Faith and Buddhism centered around the 8-fold path. But it’s unlikely that a Buddhist would be interested in hearing from us that they were originally monotheists. But Buddhism is so old and the original writings long gone, so what we have here from Abdu’l-Baha’ is basically untestable. His interpretation of Buddhism as worshipping images would be offensive to Western Buddhists. But I’m not in a position to judge whether it is true elsewhere; my sense is that Buddhism in the West is rather different from Buddhism in the East, where people actually visit Buddhist shrines and have them in their homes. But back to the point.
Faced with a particular instance of an infallible person saying something at least untestable but perhaps false, I could respond by just giving up on it. I could respond to the unacceptance of gay marriage by giving up on the Faith. I didn’t though.
- There is not some slightly-tweaked form of the Faith out there that would resolve all these problems; there’s one Baha’i Faith.
- If there were, how would siding with some splinter group help working towards unity?
- There is not a place in the Faith where it says it is my job to judge people on the basis of their religion or sexuality or anything else. On the contrary, I am to accept everyone, show kindness to everyone, show violence to no one, speak ill of no one, etc.
- What we are trying to build is bigger; quibbling about this or that element creates more disunity rather than more unity.
- I can accept and show love to anyone, even if I can’t change doctrine.
Whether Abdu’l-Baha’ is right about the historical Buddha, we will probably never know, but I don’t think it undermines my religion. We have what we have today. Building bridges between Buddhism and the Baha’i Faith, that is something that matters today, moreover between Buddhists and Baha’is. Whatever their beliefs are based on, I still think we can learn something from them today. And it’s the same with the LDS church. We can learn things about God, humanity, how to be a better person and so forth from Mormons, from Buddhists, from LGBTQ people, from atheists. And we should, and we have to.
So this my interpretation of infallibility: that it is more about unity than about being right about everything. Much like in a marriage, sometimes you have to set aside the question of who is right in order to be happy and have peace. Hopefully not all the time. The marriage is more important. It can be, anyway, ideally. But also like a marriage, it’s hard to rebuild trust after a lot of lying. After having gone through the CES Letter, it feels like there is a little too much fabrication.
Overall, the CES letter is a great read. I recommend it to you whether you are an LDS member or not. I only disagree with one idea: “Each religion has believers who believe that their spiritual experiences are more authentic and powerful than those of the adherents of other religions. They cannot all be right together, if at all.”