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Ideologies from the New Age movement have penetrated many different forms of worship. The New Age is a broad movement identified by different approaches to traditional Western spiritual culture. According to Gordon J. Melton it “draws from both Eastern and Western Spiritual and metaphysical traditions and infuses them with influences from self-help and motivational psychology, holistic health, parapsychology, consciousness research and quantum physics.”i Baha’i faith shares a connection to these New Age theologies.
Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abdulbaha.jpg...
Baha’i doctrine was originally established through Sufism, an inner mystical dimension of Islam. The Baha’i faith is founded on Baha’u’llah’s teachings which he established around the year 1850.
Today it is almost as far reaching geographically as Christianity, a fact that reveals the desire of Baha’ism to be the single religion of the world.ii
Traces of Baha’i Faith ideas are apparentiii in New Age teachings. The Baha’i Faith’s core beliefs, as well as New Age core beliefs, center on the unity of God, the unity of religion, and the unity of humankind. The Baha’i faith also shares with the New Age teachings that promote oneness in world religions, the political order, and a coming new age or era of enlightenment.iv The Baha’is believe that God is not made up of three parts, therefore differentiating it in this respect from New Age which teaches that there may be multiple forms of God. However it should be noted that although many New Age teachings point to belief in multiple deities, they do often center around one Supreme Being. They believe that there is only one religion that is gradually revealed to followers by God, and that faith and science can exist in harmony because if anything cannot be rationally explained then it cannot be adapted. This system would render many of the stories of the Bible untrue or allegorical. They think human unity will never occur unless a one world language is accepted and practiced universally.
New Age teachings in general are not completely similar to all of the ideas and teachings found in the Baha’i faith, but it is evident that the core essentials of the dogmas do agree.
i. Melton, J. Gordon – Director Institute for the Study of American Religion. “New Age Transformed” http://web.archive.org/web/20060614001357/religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/newage.html – accessed 19/06/13
ii. http://www.bahai.us/welcome/frequently-asked-questions/
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