The Bahá'í Club of Columbia University in the City of New York

An Introduction to the Baha'i Club

The Baha'i Club is a student group whose membership is not confined to members of the Baha'i Faith.  It organizes regular, diverse activities open to all.  Its main purposes are to bring people together in a spirit of friendship, to promote independent and unprejudiced thinking, to foster unity among different racial, ethnic and religious groups on campus, and to collaborate with organizations having similar aims. 

In the Baha'i Club, we discuss and act on issues of world peace, spirituality and religion, and the progress of humanity in all fields.  We give the Columbia community a forum for tolerant, informed discussion of the things that really matter, one of the widest variety of speaker meetings to be found in the university, interfaith activity, and connections with many other campus organizations.

Our e-mail address is:  bahai@columbia.edu.  Please send questions, suggestions, and requests for information or to be added to our e-mail list.  We are happy to hear from you!

An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith

The Baha'i Faith is an independent world religion.  Its founder, Baha'u'llah (1817-1892), is believed by Baha'is to be the most recent in the line of Messengers of God that goes back beyond recorded time and includes Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad. 

The central theme of Baha'u'llah's message is that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification in one global society.  God, Baha'u'llah said, has set in motion historical forces that are breaking down traditional barriers of race, class, creed, and nation and that will, in time, give birth to a universal civilization.  The principal challenge facing the peoples of the earth is to realize their interdependence and to contribute toward the development of a just, peaceful, and prosperous society.

One of the purposes of the Baha'i Faith is to help make this possible.  A worldwide community of some six million Baha'is, representative of most of the nations, races and cultures on earth, is working to give Baha'u'llah's teachings practical effect, including:

  • the responsibility of each person to independently search for truth
  • recognition that true religion is in harmony with reason and the pursuit of scientific knowledge
  • the abandonment of all forms of prejudice
  • the equality of women and men
  • recognition of the unity and relativity of religious truth
  • the elimination of extremes of poverty and wealth
  • the realization of universal education
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