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Scholarship and knowledge in service to the common good

no name given · Bahá'í World News Service (BWNS) · 2026-09-03 · Haifa · Source

Knowledge · main message Community · carrying

The Association for Bahá'í Studies made a significant contribution to humanity's quest for knowledge through the systematic integration of Bahá'í scholarship into academic discourse and its correlation with contemporary thought.

How might insights that emerge from the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh contribute to humanity's search for knowledge?

The text describes the development of the Association for Bahá'í Studies (ABS) in North America and its role in integrating Bahá'í scholarship into academic discourse. David Smith recalls the founding idea of seeking answers to societal and technological problems through higher education. The ABS expanded its mandate to all of North America in 1981 and established the Centre for Bahá'í Studies in Ottawa in 1982. In the 1980s, the association organized symposia and founded the Journal of Bahá'í Studies in 1988 in order to contribute rigorous scholarly work. Roshan Danesh emphasizes that the ABS created environments in which Bahá'í thought could be correlated with contemporary thought. Pierre-Yves Mocquais highlights the experimental nature of the association, which developed new approaches through consultation with Bahá'í institutions. The text underscores that the purpose of the ABS was to contribute insights from the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh to humanity's search for knowledge.

Worldview

what this means

What, according to this text, is the root of the evil?: Ignorance, illusion, a false view of reality (inferred)
Where does the evil reside?: in the economy, politics, or social structures
What helps against it?: insight, learning, enlightenment, right understanding; solidarity, mutual help, belonging
What is human being according to this text?: willed by God, with a task and a responsibility
Where is history heading?: it is getting better, development towards the good
What does the text base its claim on?: on the founder or prophet of the tradition; on tradition, the fathers, an established practice
To whom does the text's call for devotion apply?: to every human being, regardless of faith
Where is the text's criticism directed?: the text does not criticise

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What the text calls for

bahá'í-Gelehrsamkeiten mit zeitgenössischem Denken korrelieren (social)
Schnittpunkte zwischen bahá'í-Denken und breiteren Wissensgebieten etablieren (social)

Measured

Basic stance: 1 from -2 to 2
Insistence: 1 of 3
Reach: 4 of 5
Concreteness: 2 of 3
Boundary: 0 of 3
Time: past 2, present 1, future 1

Analysed with qwen/qwen3.8-27b, version v3. The same standards apply to every tradition, see Values.

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David Smith, who was among those involved in the Association’s early development later served as a member of the Board of Counsellors in North America, recalled being drawn to the possibility that people looking for answers to the problems of society and technology could encounter insights from the Bahá’í teachings in settings of higher learning. The Association, he said, became “this instrument of learning.” As the Association grew, so did the avenues through which this purpose could be pursued. Its mandate expanded across North America in 1981, and the Centre for Bahá’í Studies opened in Ottawa the following year. During the 1980s, a number of symposia and dialogues became opportunities for Bahá’í perspectives to be considered alongside other bodies of scholarship and contemporary currents of social thought. The Journal of Bahá’í Studies , established in 1988, provided another increasingly rigorous way for scholarship to contribute both to the intellectual life of the Bahá’í community and to wider academic conversations. Conferences, publications, campus initiatives, and scholarly dialogues would all assume different forms over the following decades. Yet the purpose animating them continued to deepen: How could insights arising from Bahá’u’lláh ’s Revelation contribute to humanity’s search for knowledge? Roshan Danesh, a former member of the executive committee, described another important dimension of the Association’s early contribution. At a time when scholarship on the Bahá’í Faith outside Persian- and Arabic-language contexts was still limited, the Association helped create settings in which such work could develop and enter broader intellectual conversations. From the outset, he said, the Association’s concern extended beyond the study of the Bahá’í Faith itself to correlating the Bahá’í teachings with contemporary thought. This orientation found expression in publications, conferences and exchanges with thinkers from a range of disciplines. Dr. Danesh noted that these early initiatives helped establish “points of intersection” between Bahá’í thought and wider fields of knowledge. The more participatory approaches visible today, he said, build on this earlier work of exploring how such connections could be made. Pierre-Yves Mocquais, another former member of the ABS executive committee and now professor emeritus at the University of Calgary, described a feature that stands out across those decades: “The one thing that to me is remarkable about the Association for Bahá’í Studies is the fact that it has all along experimented.” New approaches unfolded through consultation with Bahá’í institutions as the Association sought to understand how its work could respond to changing needs.