A country’s story, still being written

NEW YORK — History is often told as something already settled: a sequence of events inherited by those who come after. A gathering held recently at the New York offices of the Bahá’í International Community (BIC) invited another way of looking at history: not as a fixed inheritance, but as part of an unfolding process in which each generation is called to take part.

Coinciding with the anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter, the forum explored the role of the United States in the community of nations and what its future contribution might require.

The gathering concluded a series of public forums convened by the U.S. Bahá’í Office of Public Affairs following the release of “A Common Endeavor: Realizing the Promise of America,” a message addressed by the Bahá’ís of the United States to “all who hold the promise of America in their hearts.” The publication was released for the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Previous forums, near Chicago and in Washington, D.C., explored the role of religion in society, the building of social trust, and the stirrings of spiritual renewal in public life. This conversation was hosted a short distance from the United Nations Headquarters, in offices where the BIC has engaged with the UN for decades.

Nwandi Lawson, a journalist and member of the Bahá’í community, moderated a conversation in which panelists considered the country’s role among nations across three movements: the present, the past, and the future.

The present

Christopher Lu, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for management and reform, observed that the noise of daily events can make the present moment difficult to see with any clarity. Set against the eight decades since the Charter was signed, he suggested a longer arc becomes visible, and within it the part the country has played.

Any account of the part the U.S. has played since the Charter, Mr. Lu suggested, resists simplification. Americans, in his view, are a good and generous people, and a flawed one, and the two are not in contradiction. The effort to form what the Constitution calls “a more perfect union,” he said, is continuous rather than concluded, and the principles on which it rests offer no guarantees of their own. Freedom and equality “are not self-executing,” he said. “These are for each generation to take on their own and move them forward.”

The idea that inherited principles must be taken up again by those who receive them ran through the afternoon that followed.

The past

The present had come from somewhere, Ms. Lawson observed. Those in the room stood on the shoulders of others.

Anna Fierst, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, spoke of her great-grandmother, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was seldom spoken of at home during her own childhood. What she absorbed was less a legacy than a habit of mind: to weigh a question on its own merits, in a global sense rather than a partisan one.

What people remembered of Mrs. Roosevelt, Ms. Fierst said, was the way she listened. That quality, she suggested, has grown scarce. When one is speaking with someone who does not share one’s outlook, she said, it remains necessary to pause to understand them.

Those habits were carried into the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where Mrs. Roosevelt chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the task was to hold together the aspirations of many peoples. She approached the work feeling unprepared, Ms. Fierst said. She had not attended university. She was conscious of sitting among scholars. What she brought was an ear for others, and among those she listened to were the women from other parts of the world serving on the Commission alongside her whose contributions the panel described as substantial.

Karenna Gore, founder and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary, suggested that it was not incidental that women had played an important part in shaping the vision behind the Universal Declaration. Having been told that their experience was of little importance, she said, women perceived differently what belonged in such a document and spoke with a particular moral authority about it.

Ms. Fierst described the Universal Declaration as a springboard: an instrument framed for the world, whose purpose was to change things close at hand. She reached for her great-grandmother’s own answer to the question of where universal human rights begin—in small places, close to home.

Asked what is worth holding on to from that inheritance, Ms. Gore pointed to the conviction that every person is born equal in worth and dignity, and to how far the world still stands from it, not only in the distance between wealth and poverty, but in access to the elements of life itself.

Mrs. Roosevelt had misgivings of her own about that distance. She watched the country fill with possessions after the war, Ms. Fierst said, and regarded the fascination with material consumption as a distraction from what a society ought to be considering about its own direction. She lived simply and said so plainly at a time when few wished to hear it. Among the maladies that A Common Endeavor names as standing between the country and its high destiny is excessive materialism.

The future

Ms. Lawson asked what values ought to guide the next stage of a shared global life, a question raised in A Common Endeavor. The message holds that the peoples of the earth belong to one human family, and that material attainments, unless coherent with spiritual and moral principles, may prove as much a source of harm as of good.

Among the questions it leaves open is how a collective devotional spirit might help those of differing beliefs experience all humanity, and all life, as an interdependent whole to which all hold moral obligations, and how such a spirit might reshape the care of the land and its resources.

The conversation that followed took up these questions, each panelist arriving at them by a different path.

Ms. Gore began with the opening words of the United Nations Charter, “We the peoples of the United Nations,” in which she heard echoes of language the U.S. had helped produce. To have contributed to it, she said, is not an entitlement but a responsibility, and an honor.

The work begun then, as she saw it, remains unfinished. The Charter had been drawn chiefly to prevent another world war, and it did not speak directly to the care of the natural world, though “a right to a healthy environment,” Ms. Gore noted, has since been recognized by the UN. The human population has more than tripled since. Patterns of consumption that arose among relatively few peoples have been extended to many. Any reconsideration of the principles needed for the coming century, she suggested, must take fuller account of humanity’s relationship with land and nature.

Ms. Gore noted the attention that A Common Endeavor gives to spiritual renewal and said she recognized in the natural world a life force she referred to as “a spirit.” To recognize it, she suggested, is part of the renewal now needed.

To bring the ideas of the message into sharper focus, Ms. Fierst asked to read aloud a passage she had marked: “that we can arise in service, expand our circle of concern, seek the harmonization of our interests with the interests of others, and work for mutual benefit,” and “…can learn with others how to put higher truths to practical use in specific contexts.” It spoke, she said, to the worth of a life of service for the good of others, in whatever sphere one happens to be.

Reflecting on the series of forums marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Kenneth Bowers, Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, said the gatherings revealed a readiness to engage with the moral and spiritual questions facing the country.

“Where a conversation begins with what people hope for themselves, their families, and their communities,” said Mr. Bowers, “it emerges before long that they want much the same things from life.”

Once that much is agreed, it becomes easier to face difficulties together. “It begins,” he said, “from points of unity.”

PJ Andrews, Director of the Office of Public Affairs, highlighted the message’s title—A Common Endeavor. The United States, the message observes, is in many ways a microcosm of the world, and the work of fostering unity in diversity is a search for ways of living that might nurture peace at home and across the globe. This, the message says, is “the promise of America.” Hosting the gathering in New York offered a glimpse of that promise. “The world is in New York City,” Mr. Andrews said.