Karen Webb
Centerville, Utah
Baha'i since 1971


Karen WebbI became a Baha'i in my heart in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971, while on a study trip after graduating from high school. I hadn’t yet heard of the Baha'i Faith, which I would formally join later that year, but that is the moment my heart reached out to the Universe, and I felt there had to be a religion that encompassed feelings of this sort.

At a little side altar at the height of the Vietnam War, I made the most fervent prayer of my life. It had no words other than "please," but was a plea that there be something in the world that would make all the hurting and killing stop and that I be allowed to be a part of it.

About a week after I got to college, I attended my first fireside, where I learned that Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Baha'i Faith, had as His mission the spiritual rebirth and unity of humanity, which would lead to the establishment of permanent world peace and the Kingdom of God on Earth.

I had already spent time exploring Catholicism and the Lutheran Faith -- the religions in which I had been raised – and world religion, which helped me realize all world religions have similar basic teachings.

Learning about the Baha'i Faith led me to experience a deep grasp of a Divine Plan that reaches back eons, that points to this Day as the Promised Day and to Baha'u'llah as the Promised One of All Ages. (In the Catholic litany, it says, "Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ shall return," and Baha’is know He has!).

Baha’u’llah spoke to my heart as well as to my intellect. My brain just said “Yes!” to His teachings: that all the religions of God proclaim the same faith, that this is the Day in which the world will indeed find peace with itself, that we need teachings like the equality of men and women and the harmony between science and religion to accomplish this staggering task.

My spirit soared at passages like, “The flower thus far hidden from the sight of man is unveiled to your eyes” and “O Holy Mariner! Bid thine ark of eternity appear before the Celestial Concourse… Launch it upon the ancient sea, in His Name, the Most Wondrous… “

Becoming a Baha'i has made me more outward-looking and mindful of the needs of my fellow man. It has made me capable of loving the individual instead of just the nebulous concept of the race of man.

But mostly the Baha'i Faith has given me hope. Humanity is suffering to the extent that our children are growing up believing they may not survive to adulthood. Baha’is know there is suffering, but they also know that that suffering is a part of the death throes of a society glutted on its own materialism.

Baha’is know that beyond the suffering is the seed of a new world in which no child is starved or abused, no woman fails to meet her potential because she is deprived of an education and no man seeks to make war on his brother. That my husband, Paul, and I can pass this hope on to Zayne, our 10-year-old son, is the Baha’i Faith’s most precious gift.