In the coming weeks we will list upcoming events and contact information.  Make sure you check back in a couple weeks for updated information.

Reflections on the Life of the Spirit

This course has touched the hearts of many from the most remote villages to the most populated cities! It is designed to enhance spiritual identity, offer skills in study of Sacred Texts, enrich prayer life and offer insights on the meaning of life and death. Participants learn that true life is the life of the spirit. Skills learned include those needed to hold devotional meetings in your home and neighborhood.

Arising to Serve

This course shares principles and teachings that frame Bahá’í community life. These principles include the Oneness of Humanity, the Equality of Women and Men, Universal Education and Justice. Through the example of sharing concepts with new Bahá’ís, this course helps the participant to understand the joy of sharing the Bahá’í teachings, and trains participants with practical skills to do so with interested individuals. The course also offers training in how to introduce spiritual principles into our daily conversations with others.

Teaching Children’s Classes – Grade 1

“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.”

This course is of benefit to all, as we all have interactions with the children in our lives. These children are the most precious treasure a community can possess. The course offers skills in spiritual parenting, understanding the nature of children and in conducting classes for children with love, understanding and the discipline necessary to create a proper learning environment. Participants are trained to offer children’s classes in their home and neighborhood and gain some experience with Lesson Plans appropriate for five to seven-year-olds.

Twin Manifestations

This course addresses the lives of the Twin Manifestations – the Herald of the Bahá’í Faith, the Báb, and the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, Bahá’u'lláh. Through it participants gain spiritual insights into the potency of the short and dramatic Ministry of the Báb, the magnitude and significance of the spiritual forces released by Bahá’u'lláh in this Day and the promise this new Revelation holds for humanity.

Teaching the Cause

This course is an exploration of the subject of teaching – an act of particular spiritual significance that involves both “being” (giving attention to one’s inner condition) and “doing”. It addresses developing effectiveness in teaching through a posture of learning – action, reflection on experience and turning regularly to the Writings for insights and guidance. Participants become familiar with personal and collective teaching approaches and design a personal teaching plan.

Owen Hein taught history at ETHS for 37 years before retiring in 2004

It took 10 years for Owen Hein to join the Baha’i Faith. Ten years to study it from every angle and conclude that, more than any other religion, it spoke to his passion – eliminating racial inequality.

“Baha’u'llah said, ‘Close your eyes to racial differences and welcome all with the light of oneness,’” Mr. Hein told those who gathered recently at Transitions Bookplace in Chicago to hear his account of becoming a Baha’i in 1992.

Mr. Hein’s personal campaign to end racial injustice began when he was 15 and his United Church of Christ youth group went to Chicago to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“His speech about breaking down barriers changed my life,” Mr. Hein says.

Growing up west of Chicago in an all-white suburb, he picked up the vibe that racism didn’t exist. After listening to the Rev. King, Mr. Hein realized it did and made the commitment to work for racial equality.

His efforts garnered him several awards at Evanston Township High School, in Evanston, Ill. where he taught history for 37 years before retiring in 2004. He recently was named one of the 2007 Vision Keepers at the recent Interfaith Action of Evanston’s annual awards dinner. Presenters said award recipients “grace every life they touch and encourage all of us to reaffirm our own visions.”

When Mr. Hein entered the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1959 he brought with him more than bedding and books. He brought his dedication to righting the wrongs that stretched back to slave times in the United States.

First, he joined the United Church of Christ student group, and then the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).

“If African-Americans walked into most stores in Urbana-Champaign in the early ‘60s, they were treated as invisible,” Mr. Hein says. “Store owners who would serve blacks were asked to put a sticker in their window. But they wouldn’t because they thought it was too controversial.”

When SNCC leaders asked whites to leave the organization so blacks could succeed on their own, Mr. Hein wasn’t offended. He merely took his efforts elsewhere. He didn’t know it at the time, he says, but his perseverance was in line with the Baha’i writings:

“Let the white make a supreme effort in their resolve to contribute their share to the solution of this problem, to abandon once for all their usually inherent and at times subconscious sense of superiority, to correct their tendency towards revealing a patronizing attitude towards the members of the other race. . . to persuade them through their intimate, spontaneous and informal association with them of the genuineness of their friendship and the sincerity of their intentions. . .”

After receiving his master’s degree in history, Mr. Hein accepted a teaching position at Evanston Township High School, which, he says, “looked like the perfect place to be at the time because of its desegregated school system.”

“Evanston was very segregated then,” says Mr. Hein, who is a resident of the town just north of Chicago. “Blacks had a separate hospital and YMCA.” At the school he pioneered global humanities studies, spent a lot of time “talking to black kids,” taught the history of Africa and slavery, and was the faculty advisor to the black prom – yet another form of segregation.

“The kids thought I was cool,” he says with a smile.

Nevertheless, he says, he lacked a spiritual home. In college he drifted away from the United Church of Christ because “congregants were saying the church was the primary salvation of the individual soul, and I was looking for something that would also save the world.”

Taking his own lead in teaching global studies, Mr. Hein began investigating a variety of world religions. He tried each one on, but couldn’t find a perfect fit. Then he discovered the Baha’i Faith. To his delight, he learned that it views the world’s major religions as part of a single, progressive process through which God reveals His will to humanity.

Mr. Hein says he became a Baha’i mostly because of the Faith’s core beliefs in unity and eliminating prejudice.

“Baha’u'llah said when you fall in love with God, prejudice disappears,” he says. “The Baha’i Faith gives us a passageway to the oneness of humanity.”

Mr. Hein has been using that passageway as a volunteer at Carepoint, a Chicago-area family services center that educates people on how to prevent HIV and avoid substance abuse.

When helping those less fortunate, Mr. Hein says he keeps the following words of Baha’u'llah in mind:

“Blessed is the man who hath detached himself from all else but Me, hath soared in the atmosphere of My love, hath gained admittance into My Kingdom, gazed upon My realms of glory, quaffed the living waters of My bounty, hath drunk his fill from the heavenly river of My loving providence, acquainted himself with My Cause, apprehended that which I concealed within the treasury of My Words, and hath shone forth from the horizon of divine knowledge engaged in My praise and glorification. Verily, he is of Me. Upon him rest My mercy, My loving-kindness, My bounty and My glory.”

Visit bahaitemple.org for more information.

View more Baha’i videos on the U.S. Baha’i YouTube Channel.

Children belonging to the Bud Billiken Club were taught that they should be honest and trustworthy, obey their parents and respect one another. A cartoon character, Bud Billiken, taught them how. Through a pen-pal program with children in Africa, South America, Europe and the Middle East the Billiken club helped chip away at the wall of segregation that had separated these children.

To honor those achievements, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States presents an annual award in his name to honor individuals or organizations who “represent positive role models for youth of all races and who contribute outstanding lasting service to the community.”

View a video about the life of David Kellum:

Abdu’l-Baha spent several weeks in the Chicago area and laid the cornerstone for the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette.   He also gave one public address in Evanston, on May 4, 1912 before the Theosophical Society at Northwestern’s historic University Hall.

These were some of Abdu’l-Baha’s words on that occasion and the prayer with which he concluded his talk.  The Baha’i Reference Library has a full transcript.

In the spiritual world the divine bestowals are infinite, for in that realm there is neither separation nor disintegration, which characterize the world of material existence. Spiritual existence is absolute immortality, completeness and unchangeable being. Therefore, we must thank God that He has created for us both material blessings and spiritual bestowals. He has given us material gifts and spiritual graces, outer sight to view the lights of the sun and inner vision by which we may perceive the glory of God. He has designed the outer ear to enjoy the melodies of sound and the inner hearing wherewith we may hear the voice of our Creator. We must strive with energies of heart, soul and mind to develop and manifest the perfections and virtues latent within the realities of the phenomenal world, for the human reality may be compared to a seed. If we sow the seed, a mighty tree appears from it. The virtues of the seed are revealed in the tree; it puts forth branches, leaves, blossoms, and produces fruits. All these virtues were hidden and potential in the seed. Through the blessing and bounty of cultivation these virtues became apparent. Similarly, the merciful God, our Creator, has deposited within human realities certain latent and potential virtues. Through education and culture these virtues deposited by the loving God will become apparent in the human reality, even as the unfoldment of the tree from within the germinating seed. I will pray for you.

O Thou kind Lord! These are Thy servants who have gathered in this meeting, have turned unto Thy Kingdom and are in need of Thy bestowal and blessing. O thou God! Manifest and make evident the signs of Thy oneness which have been deposited in all the realities of life. Reveal and unfold the virtues which Thou hast made latent and concealed in these human realities.

O God! We are as plants, and Thy bounty is as the rain; refresh and cause these plants to grow through Thy bestowal. We are Thy servants; free us from the fetters of material existence. We are ignorant; make us wise. We are dead; make us alive. We are material; endow us with spirit. We are deprived; make us the intimates of Thy mysteries. We are needy; enrich and bless us from Thy boundless treasury. O God! Resuscitate us; give us sight; give us hearing; familiarize us with the mysteries of life, so that the secrets of Thy kingdom may become revealed to us in this world of existence and we may confess Thy oneness. Every bestowal emanates from Thee; every benediction is Thine.

Thou art mighty. Thou art powerful. Thou art the Giver, and Thou art the Ever-Bounteous.