There were many Baha’i where I used to live in Oregon. I do not like or understand the appeal of this religion. Syncretism is wrong and untenable. I have seen many people, well-meaning and good and peaceful and all that, come to this religion, being attracted by it’s “mystic” pretensions and the fact that, as a universalist and dispensationalist-leaning belief system, they felt a great deal of “harmony” existing in it faith. Most were formerly Christians of some kind and liked the fact that Jesus has some place in this religion. God have mercy on them. I see no harmony at all in such a messy, confused, and contradictory jumble of nonsense that makes up Baha’i theology and historiography.
The popularity of Baha’i religion outside of its historical homeland seems to be (like Sufi Islam, Buddhism, and various schools of Hinduism that you can find in the West) a result of modern, particularly Western preoccupation with niceness, political correctness, fairness, “all you need is love” thinking, or whatever else it is that you could call this impulse to deny exclusive truth claims found in Christianity, because after all, I have a neighbor/friend/coworker/acquaintance who is X, and they’re so nice/interesting/loving/friendly/knowledgeable/whatever. Be careful not to fall into this kind of trap. The claims of these other, more syncretic religions or forms of religion are, at heart, no less exclusive, as they only accept Christ within their pre-existing religious system, not as He and His apostles actually taught us to accept Him (and of course come with a lot more baggage than just that). So we must be careful never to fall prey to this kind of “niceness”, which is a gateway to apostasy and damnation.
