In the summer and fall of 2004, I gradually came to the conviction that the Baha’i Faith was no longer worthy of my allegiance. Realizing that I had to remove myself from that community outright as a matter of honor, I wrote the following letter:
To the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States,
After years of investigation and soul-searching, I have finally come to the sad understanding that I can no longer bring myself to believe in Baha’u’llah or any of the institutions established in His name, including the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice. I am totally convinced that the Baha’i Faith is doomed to fail in its mission to bring peace, unity, and a Golden Age to humanity and I therefore resign from my past membership in the Faith. Goodbye.
Regretfully,
Dale Husband
I composed that letter on my computer and mailed it in January of 2005. A few weeks later, the NSA replied that they had accepted my resignation and expressed hope that I would one day decide to return. That looked like denial to me, so I dismissed it and threw away the letter. Then I cut completely all personal ties to the Baha’is in the Fort Worth area.
Soon after this, I began my relationship with Cheri, the woman that would later become my wife. According to Baha’i law, I would have needed the consent of both her mother (her father was already deceased), and my BIRTH (not adoptive) parents to be married to her. Ironic, considering that many Baha’is have non-Baha’i parents who may even be racist, and thus object to their children marrying members of a different race. The stupidity of that idea should be obvious. Parental consent should only be an issue if the married partners are still minors. Once they are ADULTS, they should be treated like adults, period.
My future wife was a member of First Baptist Church of Dallas, a stronghold of fundamentalism. I decided that if she wanted to marry me, she would have to leave that church, because I would never join it and she still wanted us to worship together on Sundays. Instead, I asked her to join with me in First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church, which I had belonged to before. She agreed! We were married the following year. Eventually, what started as a compromise between us grew into a case of full blown allegiance to the UU church for both of us. Cheri came to love the freedom of thought in that church, despite still being a strong Christian, while I came to love the powerful community the church provided, despite my agnosticism.
For the first few months of our marriage, Cheri and I shared a home with my parents, until we had enough money to move out on our own. When we did, I left behind at the house most of the Baha’i books and other literature I had collected from my eight or nine years as a Baha’i. Later, my mother, who was always hostile to the Baha’i Faith because of her Baptist convictions, took those items and discarded them all without my consent. At the time, I didn’t care. I would later realize how useful those books could have been as weapons against my former religion, but I also was able to find enough online resources for my purposes.
I stayed silent about my defection from the Baha’i Faith until October 19, 2007, when I posted my first blog entry attacking it.
Without the support of the UUs at First Jefferson Church, I might have never had the courage to do battle against the corrupt, idiotic Haifan Baha’i Administrative Order as I have done. They and other UUs are destined to do the work of peace, unity, and freedom that Baha’is cannot and will never do! My life and Cheri’s together are proof that it can work!
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I resigned myself on 07/07/07. I’m glad to know that you have found a better life after moving on, as have I. Actually, when I was Baha’i I was dating a nominal Christian, and I had suggested the UU church as a possible place that we could go for worship together if we got married. That relationship ended long ago and now I am Orthodox, but this post kind of brought up some old memories.
Does it really matter? In the end (undefined in conventional thinking) all knees will bow before the King of all Kings, Jesus Christ. The Bible provides ALL the answers, in my truly humble (!) opinion.
Your opinion is based on no facts whatsoever and therefore is not worth considering.
I’m lazy. I’ve never officially withdrawn or resigned, but stopped being a Baha’i either one or two years after declaration. I declared back in 2008 when I was a naive open eyed idealist about the principles without knowing about all the contradictions and stuff. Finding out about what the Bahai Faith was actually about rather than all the stuff they like to advertise was a big shock. Also, the lack of actual places of worship was another big shock. There is no way I’m going to use a strangers personal home as a house of worship. Also, tons of conservative, orthodox, even fundamentalist traditional morality in Bahai law.
It’s 2014 now. It’s six years since I declared and four or five since I became an ex Bahai. I can’t remember if it was one year or two years, but it was probably closer to one year.
Do it yourself clergy aka the horrible administrative order, no politics allowed aka also another side effect of the administrative order as a model for the world at large, no alcohol drugs gambling gossip sex outside of heterosexual monogamy aka loads and loads of rules, etc are all drawbacks of being a Bahai.
I’ve never been into having to jump through hurdles to withdraw. The letters or contact of why you are withdrawing are also another reason why not to do so. It’s like Scientology in trying to manage apostasy in this way.
How very interesting,I too declared the same time but now find myself so spiritually down in the mouth, I take great objection to the anti-homosexual stance having got dear friends that are homosexual, also I actually enjoy the occasional glass of wine in the evening with my husband, the Bahai Calendar continues to baffle me and I can’t get to grips with this fasting business, oh dear….I’m not actually a bad person but find the faith quite difficult, I intend withdrawing from the faith as I’m certainly not spiritually fulfilled, the people are nice but it’s not for me anymore.
It doesn’t matter if you didn’t formally withdraw because in practice you would have lost your administrative rights anyway, and since that is the only thing that a formal declaration provides–administrative rights–it really makes no difference anyway. Still, when I left the Administration I formally withdrew but this had more to do with the sanctity of the rites of initiation in the Christain Church than it did with the Administration of the Baha’i faith.
“in practice you would have lost your administrative rights anyway,”
There were several completely inactive Baha’is in the North Richland Hills, Texas locality who I never saw in the years I was a Baha’i, but there was no talk of them not having administrative rights. I read where it clearly said in the Baha’i Writings you have to explicitly deny belief in Baha’u’llah to be removed from National Baha’i membership rolls. If that has changed recently I’d like to see the reference.
I should update this by noting that I separated from Cheri in December of 2011 and filed for divorce from her on May 7, 2012, finally getting the divorce granted on August 15, 2012. Marrying that mentally immature woman was perhaps the biggest mistake of my life, and joining the Baha’i Faith was the second biggest. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak.
tht ws qck. gss t ws mr lk “prf” tht yr prblms l lss n pltcs nd rlgn nd mre n… mntal hlth sss?
(Dale Husband: How old are you? Try making a comment like an adult and I will then treat you like one. Consider this your only warning!)
Thanks for the post. I am currently a skeptic who is looking at both UU and Baha’i as a new place to find a community that thinks like I do. Knowing you “seem” similar to my mindset from a brief review of your site, I might be more inclined to try the UU route. Thanks!
I have been studying AJ Miller’s teachings for 17 months now. My life has changed in ways that I had hoped the Baha’i Faith would help me do, but in 35 years has not. AJ’s concepts are not a religion or a cult. It is free information and it is offered without any coercion on your free will about what to do with it. He teaches that God is a loving Parent who never uses threats or fear or guilt or shame in relating to Her/His children. I am closer to God than I have ever been, and less confused than I have ever been. I encourage you to look him up and see if it resonates with you. I, too, am considering resigning my membership.
Again, it doesn’t really matter. If you don’t recognize Baha’u’llah as a manifestation of God then you aren’t really a Baha’i whether or not you happen to be part of the Baha’i Administrative Order. It really doesn’t matter what one calls oneself, it only matters what one’s relationship is to God in reality. However, from a Baha’i perspective if your relationship to God has not been directed by the revelation of Baha’u’llah than we are really talking more about one’s own vain imaginings as opposed to reality.
In any case, good luck to you and God Bless.
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Maybe there is a wisdom in asking for parental consent after all, reading how this marriage of two adults ended up. God’s wisdom cannot always be seen by human eyes.
You know nothing about why my marriage failed and it had nothing to do with lack of parental consent.
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‘At the gate of the garden some stand and look within, but do not care to enter. Others step inside, behold its beauty, but do not penetrate far. Still others encircle this garden inhaling the fragrance of the flowers, having enjoyed its full beauty, pass out again by the same gate. But there are always some who enter and, becoming intoxicated with the splendor of what they behold, remain for life to tend the garden’.”
Right…..and:
Some discover a hornets’ nest in the garden and fearing being STUNG TO DEATH, run out of the garden in horror.
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