Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00509)

Thanks for that insight Paul, I do appreciate it. we once caught a Mormon
mission president down Alabama way do had done similar things. The
missionaries would invited young teens to the local ward meetinghouse for
a "tour". Then when they got them to the baptismal font they'd ask" want
to see how Mormon's baptize-just step right down into the water and we'll
demonstrate" These kids didn't have a clue as to what had just happened!
Several years later, they were all interviewed and those who expressed no
remembrence of ever joining the Mormons were dropped from the roles.
Isn't organized religion just so wonderful? thanks again

Larry

On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 15:18:15 -0000 "kpauljohnson"
<kpauljohnson@yahoo.com> writes:
> Dear Larry,
> 
> Here are two links with somewhat different POVs:
> 
> http://bahai-library.org/essays/membership.stats.html
> http://members.fortunecity.com/bahaicensorship/FalseStats.htm
> 
> In 1968 there were 17,765 American Baha'is; I joined at 15 in 1969 
> (after a few months stint with the Mormons) and when I left in 1974 
> membership had grown to 63,470-- more than tripling in 5-6 years. 
> Baha'i had successfully marketed itself to the youth culture and to 
> African Americans, and this is where all the growth was. But the 
> original pre-1969 Baha'i community was ill-prepared for this influx 
> of [mainly] liberals in a heretofore conservative community, and 
> there was a crackdown on the "teaching" efforts that were bringing 
> in 
> all these new members. The great majority of teenage and black 
> converts left within a few years.
> 
> Although numbers have supposedly more than doubled since 1974, there 
> 
> is ample room to doubt this. An organization like the ARE or the 
> Adyar TS has annual membership dues and thus only those motivated 
> enough to pay up are listed as members. But Baha'i keeps people on 
> the rolls forever, until they know for sure that the person is dead 
> or has resigned. (They make it a big deal to resign, so most people 
> 
> just disappear, leaving no forwarding address.) If ARE worked this 
> way it could claim way over 100,000, and the American Section of the 
> 
> Adyar TS probably could come close. The actual growth that occurred 
> 
> after the late 70s was due to a huge influx of Iranian emigres. But 
> 
> the number of active Baha'is is probably smaller than it was when I 
> left, according to the analyses of Juan Cole, leading academic 
> expert 
> on the Baha'i Faith.
> 
> As for why the collapse: the Faith overreached itself with an 
> aggressive teaching campaign that pulled a lot of new members in 
> without telling them all the difficult details of Baha'i faith and 
> practice. A strict, repressive leadership drove out most of the new 
> 
> converts fairly quickly and has never been able to replace those 
> driven out. This was kinda a case of Moonies pretending to be 
> Unitarians and grabbing lots of sympathetic publicity and converts-- 
> 
> but ultimately losing all the new members when they found out what 
> kind of religion they had really joined.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> PJ
> 
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> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to 
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 

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