Globally there have been conflicts among major world religions as well as between sects of those major world religions as far back as history has been recorded. The heat of those conflicts, however, has escalated in intensity as our ability to create war has become more voracious and refined. Today, conflict is raging in the Middle East among the Jews and Arabs, in India and Pakistan among the Hindus and Muslims, in Ireland among the Catholics and Protestants. And the list goes on and on.

Now we face the possibility of war, conflict and global terrorism at a level never before possible.

The Baha'i Faith emerged in the middle of the 19th Century when its Prophet-Founder, Baha'u'llah spent 40 years of His life in prison and exile at the hands of the fundamentalist Islamic powers of His day. During this time He revealed over 100 volumes of Writings in which he delineated, among many other things, the fundamental reason for the major conflicts in mankind's history as well as those that would proliferate during the remainder of the 19th and into the 20th century.

From the Baha'i perspective, while these myriad conflicts may appear to be based on a variety of separate problems they really are not. Rather, they are each symptoms of one illness. The illness is a spiritual one and has ravaged mankind throughout its history.

Simply stated, mankind?s spiritual reality is that we are one people. Mankind is one. True, like the flowers that blend in the most elegant of gardens, we come in a variety of hues, colors, shapes, sizes and temperaments. But in the final analysis we are one people. And God has an unfolding plan - namely the bringing together of larger and larger groups of people in an ever-expanding vision of unity. In fact, each of the major religions that exist in the world today have been the tools by which God has moved us toward that vision. First from unity of the family, then the tribe, the city-state and then the nation.

Today His plan is no less than the unification of the entire human race. This makes complete sense when one realizes that the purpose of religion is in fact - as evidenced by its very definition - to reunite peoples. That's right, the very word religion comes from the Latin root word "religio" - meaning, "to re-unite". Thus, all of the world's great religions are not separate entities in conflict but rather chapters in one great unfolding plan.

Baha'is refer to this preeminent plan of God as 'Progressive Revelation'. Christ alluded to it when he spoke of the eventual gathering togetherof the "other sheep" that were "not from this fold" and that would recognize the coming of the "one Shepard". It has been our stubborn unwillingness to embrace the possibility of this truth that has been at the core of all of our conflicts. Seen in this light those conflicts are nothing more than symptoms of the spiritual disease of the collective ego or self.

All of the major religious movements that exist in the world today are monotheistic in principle. That is to say that each of them - Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and the Baha'i Faith, are based on the notion of one, single God. The days of polytheism are long gone. It stands to reason that if there is only one God all of His religions must necessarily be one. But man has ever viewed the religious systems other than his own as alien and without validity. Times are changing rapidly, however.

Many people today express, on the one hand, an absolute conviction in the uniqueness of their own Faith's position while on the other confess that they are in a quandary as to where the remainder of the peoples of the world, and that is the vast majority, who also believe that they are following a true Faith from God fit in. This is a dilemma that will become more acute as our outmoded thoughts about the exclusivity of our own Faith-tradition collide more and more with the reality of this new, interdependent and inter-communicating world into which we are being thrust. In this condition we are forced to come face to face with these outworn notions.

Why do the followers of the major world religions see their Faith-traditions as being more valid than the others? The answer is simple. This is what we have been taught to believe. Not only as individuals in our religious study classes but through the indoctrination of countless centuries.

Recognition of the interconnectedness of all of the major world religions is of the utmost urgency at this time. "The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable", Baha'u'llah urges, "unless and until its unity is firmly established."

From www.onecountry.org

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