Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha’i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East

Volume 9 in the Studies of the Babi and Baha’i Faith Series

This is a pioneering and controversial work that seeks to place the beginnings of the Bahá’í Faith in their historical context. An excellent piece of academic writing, it is the first book published by a university press on the life of Bahá’u’lláh since the time of E. G. Browne at the beginning of the twentieth century. Cole examines Bahá’u’lláh’s response to the pressing issues of his time–which are still the issues of our time: religious liberty, the separation of church and state, the need for peace and collective security, the rights of women, the dangers of unbridled nationalism, and so forth. He demonstrates how the early teachings of Bahá’u’lláh both engage with and critic modernity.

This is an indispensable book for any scholarly study of Bahá’í history.