Review of Life Histories of Bahá’í Women in Canada: Constructing Religious Identity in the Twentieth Century by Lynn Echevarria

Abstract

Life Histories of Baha'i Women in Canada: Constructing Religious Identity in the Twentieth Century, by Lynn Echevarria. Peter Lang, 2011. ix + 229 pages, including appendices and index.With great pleasure I accepted the invitation from the Journal of Bahai Studies to review Lynn Echevarria's book on the life histories of early Canadian Baha'i women. As sociologist who is Baha'i and who has always had deep interest in gender and the equality of women and men, I felt particularly privileged to read and review this book.Echevarria's stated purpose is to offer sociological presentation of the women of the Canadian Baha'i community through the years 1938-1960 (2). To this end, she interviewed twenty people who were Bahais during these years as well as some Baha'is from later era. Using life-history method, she approached her topic from both feminist and symbolic-interactionist perspectives. The feminist perspective brings in questions that feminist theologians might ask about women's place in religious community, while the symbolic-interactionist perspective explores social processes, such as acquiring an identity as Bahai. This book succeeds in telling fascinating story about women's experiences in the early days of the Bahai community of Canada while at the same time incorporating the discourses of sociology and the academic study of religion.The early chapters of Life Histories of Bahai Women in Canada provide welcome description of the setting and social context. In chapter 1, Echevarria tells the stories of early Bahai heroines in the context of the Baha'i Faith's birth, Tahirih and Bahiyyih Khanum, and in North America, May Maxwell and Dorothy Baker. These narratives serve the purpose of demonstrating the social context in which the Baha'i teachings regarding the equality of women and men grew, as well as the importance of women in the Faith from its earliest days. Of note is the observation that these women were mentors and examples of being Bahai-not just for women but also for men.Chapter 2 looks at the social conditions in Canada from the 1940s through the 1960s, time when the role of women in churches was marginal and supported by belief in the inferiority of women. The chapter successfully provides enough context to allow the reader to grasp the extent of the difference between understandings of gender and racial identity in the Baha'i Writings and community when compared to the society of the mid-twentieth century at large.During this period, the Baha'i community evolved from group of scattered individuals to coherent community that welcomed marginalized people, in contrast to the political climate and attitudes of racism (49) that were rampant at the time. This chapter is particularly useful in avoiding what C. Wright Mills famously referred to as historical which leads to our thinking that the present is a sort of autonomous creation ( 151). It allows us to understand the period in which Echevarria's participants grew up and later confronted as they assumed their roles within the Baha'i community of the 1940s to 1960s.Historical provincialism, which is widespread, may lead to one's evaluating the behavior and ideas of people from an earlier era by contemporary standards. Particularly in the areas of gender and racial terminology, we are prone to judge people as if they were writing and speaking today. Hence, someone might look at early translations of the Bahai Writings, for example, and criticize the use of the word man to stand for humanity without understanding that this usage was standard before the women's movement of the 1960s and later.In chapter 3, the author provides an excellent example of how studies about the Bahai Faith can work within the existing academic framework to explain the social processes in the Baha'i community. The chapter explores how theology affects the role of women in religious communities. …