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“Love ye all religions and all races with a love that is true and sincere and show that love through deeds...” ~ ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
Baha’i schools across the United States offer three- to five-day programs for adults, youth and children on such themes as [ Read More ]
Study circles are regular gatherings of people interested in studying the Baha’i Writings and applying [ Read More ]
The Baha’i community places great emphasis on the moral and spiritual education of children and youth [ Read More ]
Young members of the Baha’i community are encouraged to grow in moral responsibility, often by contributing [ Read More ]
The U.S. Baha’i community has developed curricular materials for the spiritual education of children [ Read More ]
We hope you will enjoy the mix of speakers and the variety of topics discussed every Sunday here on our website [ Read More ]
Speaker Biography: John S. Hatcher received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Georgia. He is Professor Emeritus in English literature at the University of South Florida in Tampa where he taught for forty years. He has published twenty-five books and more than a hundred poems and articles. His works have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese German, and Norwegian. His comparative study of theodicy The Purpose of Physical Reality: The Kingdom of Names, published originally in 1987, is now in its fourth printing and was reviewed in the prestigious Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle Vol III, a dictionary of the world philosophical works published by the Presses Universitairs de France, where he was listed as one of three of the most important scholars in Bahá’í Studies for the 20th century. He has been editor of the Journal of Bahá’í Studies for the past seven years, and he formed a translation team with Amrollah and Ehsanollah Hemmat which has endured for almost twenty years and which is responsible for the publication of five books of poetry, three of which contain all the known works of Ṭáhirih, noted teacher and poet from the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Faith.
In this second presentation John S. Hatcher, PhD discusses the topic "The Pandemic and the Path to the Lesser Peace in depth." In an earlier talk, He spoke of the unique conditions the pandemic had produced, some of which, He remarked, were not necessarily negative in their ability to awaken us to the inextricable relationship we share as citizens of a single global community. In this talk, He speaks more completely about how these conditions demonstrate the sort of unexpected and unforeseen circumstances that will contribute to bringing about a secular unity that is called "The Lesser Peace" in the Baha'i writings. In the first paragraphs of The Promised Day is Come, Shoghi Effendi quotes passages from Bahá’u’lláh about how the Lesser Peace will not come about until humanity has experienced world engulfing tribulation, though the Writings never explain exactly what that calamity will be. The present pandemic demonstrates how such an unexpected transformative event could occur and how quickly the circumstances of the nations and people of the world could suddenly become chaotic and uncontrollable. A quick review of the stages in the path towards the Lesser Peace as described by the Guardian can help us understand what process we must go through to achieve a global polity and the stages that will lead from that secular governance to the establishment of the Golden Age of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh.
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