Men in the House

Men in the House, Revisited

By John Taylor; 19 September, 2005

In the course of this summer ending now my thoughts have revolved
around the question of why, why are only men allowed on the Universal
House of Justice? Why, why, are only men obliged to go on pilgrimage
in the Baha'i Faith? What is the wisdom of this apparent skew towards
the male element?

A climax of sorts to my ruminations came in August when I read an
article in Time Magazine about a Christian minister in the States who
has taken upon himself a personal "mission to the men." He pointed out
that over sixty percent of the membership rolls of Protestant
churches, and something like eighty or ninety percent of their active
membership, are female. In those conservative sects where women clergy
were suddenly allowed, the number of female leaders shot up from zero
to, again, ninety percent or more in only a few years. He said that
male church members who do turn up complain about the artsy-fartsy
services, full of singing, dancing and lovey-dovey sentiment.
Damnation and brimstone are a thing of the past. To my surprise, he
negatively compared his female dominated Christianity to Islam, the
world's fastest growing religion, which gives a bigger place -- to say
the least --to men.

I cannot say that I found this man of God's approach to attracting
males to religion all that interesting. Taken to an extreme, he would
be hiring wrestling announcers as preachers and staging mini-football
games behind the pulpit to keep the interest of male congregants from
flagging. But nonetheless, he has a point about men in religion
generally, one that is driven home to me every time I attend Feast
here in Haldimand. While we have one or two others who turn up
sporadically (depending, I suppose, upon the NHL hockey schedule),
usually in a roomful of women the only males are myself, Ron, and my
six-year old son, Tomaso. This imbalance is not obvious in communities
with a Persian element, since they resemble Muslims in that men tend
to be more active than women. This problem is characteristically
Western.

So to me, in setting up ground rules for male involvement in religion
Baha'u'llah was not trying to maintain the last bastions of a rotten,
patriarchic, male dominated old order. Rather He was looking to the
new Order, pointing a divine finger at the face of men Eastern and
Western, saying: do your duty to God. You have a responsibility in
this age of broader freedoms not to enjoy wine, women and sports but
to work, not to blow your energy indulging yourselves but to take a
positive role in society, and particularly in family life. Yours must
be a partnership role but also a leadership role in the family. That
is why you are the nominal head, so that you will keep that family
name going through the generations, at whatever cost to you
personally. Men are selfish and altruism is harder for you. You must
fight your inclination in family life not because you are forced to do
so or as a way to work personal power or will (quite the reverse) but
because restrained, consultative initiatives are best for all. Male
involvement is the best impetus for spiritual progress and, yes, the
virility of family as an institution, and hence politics and democracy
generally.

And what exemplar do you have, men? Well, there is the Master for one.
One novel thing for me came of reading Myron Phelp's book, the first
ever written in English about `Abdu'l-Baha, called The Master in Akka.
It has a mini-history of the Faith not in `Abdu'l-Baha's words but in
His sister's words, from Bahiyyih Khanum's female perspective. Men
especially should read her eyewitness account in its entirety (I would
like to make a video of it, with my daughter Silvie as narrator) but
here is what she says about `Abdu'l-Baha as paterfamilias in capsule
format:

For one thing, His initiatives in giving prodigious amounts of money
to the poor and indigent at times when the family was by no means
prosperous did not go unnoticed in family circles, especially by
mother, daughters and sisters. I had imagined this might be so, but it
was the first time I had heard it mentioned. What does this mean? Our
Exemplar was unstinting, even at the price of family prosperity, on
behalf of the poor. His leadership was unrelenting, tough, but not --
God forbid! -- in the sense of male oppression. Quite the reverse,
this was the hard path of relieving the world of poverty and
oppression. Men, if you want to do your duty, turn all your money and
energy to ending poverty and indigence locally and in the world. Turn
off the Stupid Bowl and the Sadley Cup for a while, and act, plan, for
an end to oppression and tyranny. When they are stamped out, then you
can think about a pick up game, but not before. I will return to this
presently, it has big consequences; it is the theme behind the themes
of most of my essays recently and in the near future.

Bahiyyih Khanum also tells the story of the Master as father. Like
most parents in an age before antibiotics, He and the Holy Mother
Munirih Khanum underwent the unimaginable trauma of losing five of
nine children, most at a young age. Only four offspring survived, all
girls. Long story short, tremendous pressure by the believers was
brought to bear upon Father and Son to bear a male heir. The Covenant,
the Prophetic succession, the future of the Faith itself seemed to
hang upon primogeniture, the eldest boy taking over leadership. And
only girls were making it through childhood.

Surprisingly for many (for me, at least), Baha'u'llah did not stand in
the way of a second spouse for His Son; that would have meant more
chances for a male heir, and the Kitab-i-Aqdas did allow a second
wife. But according to Bahiyyih Khanum, Baha'u'llah stood back. He
intentionally did not forbid `Abdu'l-Baha from marrying again, saying
in effect, "If He wishes to do so, He may. Nothing stands in His way."
The Master, having the decision left to Himself alone, interpreted the
clause in the Aqdas allowing two wives max as effectively enjoining
monogamy since it said that the second marriage was conditional upon
peace and harmony.

Why all this sidestepping? Why was polygamy not just directly
forbidden in the Book? Clearly, there is a lesson, one especially
aimed at men, at men as fathers and heads of families. Our exemplar
had His chance, a decision was laid on His shoulders alone, and He
made it. He could have taken a second spouse legally and answered
expediency with a chance at a male heir. He freely elected not to and
was no doubt upbraided by some of those concerned.

So, now that the legal system in the West has swung around to give men
a similar choice, we all know for most men most of the time this is
not a real choice at all. Pick the ball and chain behind curtain
number one, or free sex without a hint of moral strings behind curtain
number two. Given that freedom, who can be surprised when pews empty
out and bleachers and porn sites are packed to the brim? Not
surprising that indicators of men shirking all unpleasant duties are
everywhere, top to bottom. One example on top is especially hard to
ignore, how a certain leader started his administration paying lip
service to a "culture of responsibility" (several decades after Shoghi
Effendi called this the "age of responsibility"), yet ignored cheap
and simple preventive measures that would have averted the flooding of
New Orleans. A city poor and largely Black, an unpleasant burden
ignored by the slacker father of the world's wealthiest nation, the
reverse of the virility and manliness shown by the Exemplar.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com