Global Egalitarianism

NATIVE MESSENGERS OF GOD IN CANADA?:
A TEST CASE FOR BAHA’I UNIVERSALISM (1996)

*** Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in Canada?: A Test Case for Baha’i Universalism.” Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 97–133.

*** Award for Excellence in Baha’i Studies. Association for Baha’i Studies, 1994.

EPILOGUE

Thereupon Tekanawitaˀ [Deganawida, the Peacemaker] stood up in the center of the gathering place, and then he said, “First I will answer what it means to say, ‘Now it is arriving, the Good Message.’ This indeed, is what it means: When it stops, the slaughter of your own people who live here on earth, then everywhere peace will come about, by day and also by night, and it will come about that as one travels around, everyone will be related. …

Now again, secondly, I say, ‘Now it is arriving, the power,’ and this means that the different nations, all the nations, will become just a single one, and the Great Law will come into being, so that now all will be related to each other, and there will come to be just a single family, and in the future, in days to come, this family will continue on.

Now in turn, the other, my third saying, ‘Now it is arriving, the Peace,’ this means that everyone will become related, men and also women, and also the young people and the children, and when all are relatives, every nation, then there will be peace as they roam about by day and also by night. …

Then there will be truthfulness, and they will uphold hope and charity, so that it is peace that will unite all the people, indeed, it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means that there will be unity.” …

When they are functioning, the Good Message and also the Power and the Peace, moreover, these will be the principal things everybody will live by; these will be the great values among the people.”

– Chief John Arthur Gibson, Concerning the League: The Iroquois League as Dictated in Onondaga, newly elicited, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury in Collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry Webster on the Basis of A.A. Goldenweiser’s Manuscript. Memoir 9 (Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 1992): 36–41. 

ABSTRACT

Academic and popular interest has lent prestige to native spirituality and has brought it into prominence. The United Nations proclamation of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous People gave native peoples international recognition. A corresponding interest in native culture has “valorised” (brought respect to) native spirituality.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada took a position of advocacy on behalf of First Nations Canadians in its formal submission to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the fall of 1993. The strong native presence in Canadian Bahá’í community life raises the question of the place of native spirituality within a Bahá’í worldview.

Homefront “pioneers” have extended Bahá’í universalism to a recognition of the richness and authenticity of native cultural values. Such recognition has been supported by local Bahá’í policy, as attested in teaching pamphlets addressed to native peoples, in which the concept of First World messengers of God has been validated. Although theoretically acknowledged, explicit recognition of native messengers of God has yet to be formalised in Bahá’í doctrine.

This study discusses the possibilities of incorporating the principle of “Messengers of God to Indigenous Peoples” within formal Bahá’í doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Bahá’í belief in the North American context. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá establishes the principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible.

The problem of historical attestation remains. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Bahá’í principle of “Progressive Revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a provisional status with Bahá’í prophetology, and still affirm Bahá’u’lláh’s unific role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions.

https://www.academia.edu/36294314/_Native_Messengers_of_God_in_Canada_1996_

LOCKE, ALAIN

Christopher Buck, “Locke, Alain.” Encyclopedia of African American History. Edited by Leslie Alexander & Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Pp. 224–227 (Vol. 1). 

ABSTRACT

History remembers Alain Locke (1885–1954) as the first African American Rhodes Scholar (1907) and, more famously, as the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance (1919– 1934). Locke edited The New Negro (1925), acclaimed as the “first national book” of African Americans. In this way, Locke’s role is analogous to that of Martin Luther King: whereas King championed the civil rights of African Americans through nonviolent civil disobedience, Locke did so through a process known as “civil rights by copyright.” In the Jim Crow era, when blacks had no effective political recourse, Locke used the arts as a strategy to win the respect of the white majority and to call to their attention the need to fully democratize democracy and Americanize America by extending full equality to all minorities.

Recent scholarship has brought Locke back to life, and his philosophy of democracy, in particular, lends him renewed importance. Harvard, Harlem, Haifa—place names that represent Locke’s special involvement in philosophy, art, and religion—are keys to understanding his life and thought. Harvard prepared Locke for distinction as the first black Rhodes Scholar in 1907 and, in 1918, awarded Locke his PhD in philosophy, thus securing his position as chair of the Department of Philosophy at Howard University from 1927 until his retirement in 1953. Harlem was the mecca of the Harlem Renaissance, whereby Locke, as a spokesman for his race, revitalized racial solidarity and fostered the group consciousness among African Americans that proved a necessary precondition of the Civil Rights movement. Haifa is the world center of the Bahá’í Faith, the religion to which Locke converted in 1918, the same year he received his doctorate from Harvard. Until recently, this has been the least understood aspect of Locke’s life.

During the Jim Crow era, at a time when black people saw little possibility of interracial harmony, this new religious movement offered hope through its “race amity” efforts, which Locke was instrumental in organizing. These three spheres of activity—the academy, the art world, and spiritual society—converge to create a composite picture of Locke as an integrationist whose model was not assimilation, but rather “unity through diversity” (the title of one of his Bahá’í World essays).

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

Christopher Buck, “’Abdu’l-Baha’s 1912 Howard University Speech: A Civil War Myth for Interracial Emancipation.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity. Edited by Negar Mottahedeh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 111–144. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137032010.0009.

EXCERPT:

In his 1912 Howard University speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in essentialist terms, anchored in historical generalizations, as a rhetorical strategy for promoting interracial emancipation. Abolition of slavery was a first step in the progressive emancipation of African Americans within color-bound American society. Slavery’s roots run deep in American history, and are yet to be fully extirpated. They extend, in more subtle forms, down to the present. Racism is a ghost of the slaver’s psyche, and legislation alone cannot eradicate the problem. Something profoundly different is needed to significantly steer social history in a new direction. This is what makes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 sojourn in America of such historical import. . . .

To recapitulate, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his Howard University speech, emphasized the personal sacrifice of Northern whites for Southern blacks in the course of the Civil War, and that African Americans (as the descendants of emancipated slaves) should therefore be grateful to whites in kind. In so saying, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked history (or a certain view of it) in order to make history—by completing the unfinished work of the Emancipation Proclamation. . . .

And so it is that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tasked the whites with a mission equal to the objectives of the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction in achieving what was (and is) still undone, to “endeavor to promote your [i.e. African Americans’] advancement and enhance your honor.” Such interracial unity entails more than fostering interracial camaraderie. Advancement is required. Actual progress must be fostered, for it is this “advancement” that “will be the cause of love (sabab-i maḥabbat).” In other words, doing “good” (by tangible actions) is a precondition for “goodwill” (as an intangible feeling). This, indeed, was the mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, as an interracial endeavor. . . .

The advancement of African Americans was an integral element in the progress of America as a nation, and so there is a strong argument that the development of its own social capital was in the nation’s enlightened self-interest. Here, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s rhetorical strategy was to establish a clear basis, anchored in American history, for overcoming entrenched antagonisms in favor of reciprocal appreciation in the interests of interracial harmony and cooperation. In that sense, the accuracy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s historical generalizations is quite beside the point, as the focus was on fostering racial healing and solving America’s racial crisis. . . .

On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, expressed his appreciation of the Bahá’í efforts to foster ideal race relations: “When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.” (“Cornel West praises work of Baha’is in establishing Racial Unity” (February 1, 2012). Professor West here recognizes the leavening influence of the Bahá’ís in the history of race relations in America. . . .

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 Howard University speech was for then, yet it has a message for us now as well: It could be said that in his Howard speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invited his audience to build on history by making history, in commencing a new era of global solidarity.

https://www.academia.edu/29904876/_Abdu_l-Baha_s_1912_Howard_University_Speech_A_Civil_War_Myth_for_Interracial_Emancipation_2013_

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a 'project', which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end-state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas–such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship–that are long past their expiration date.

Christopher Buck, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2005. Pub date: July 3, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-1890688387. ISBN-10: 189068838X. L

In print. (Order from Kalimat Press: http://www.kalimat.com/Locke.html.)

REVIEWS
•  Derik Smith. World Order 38.3 (2006/2007): 42–48. (Published in 2008.): ”Christopher Buck’s recent book, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy, is a welcome addition to the literature on early twentieth-century American and African American culture. But, perhaps more important, Buck’s study is a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. … Any future study of Locke must necessarily make its way through Christopher Buck’s Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. The scholar forcefully proves his thesis that, in Locke’s thinking, philosophy and religious belief operated as synergistic terms. He has shown that the Bahá’í Faith was integral to Locke’s life and ideology. …  Yet, after reading Buck’s work, it is difficult to imagine Locke the philosopher rapt in prayer. Of course, this is not a shortcoming of the book. Rather it is an indication that, while he may have wanted to portray a more pious figure, Buck maintains the vow he made in his introduction to Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy “to constrain any grandiose claims on Locke as a Bahá’í.”

• M. Anthony Fitchue. Journal of African American History 92.1 (Winter 2007): 131–133: “But the jewels in this book are unmistakable. … Clearly, Buck has given voice to the men and women who not only put the Baha’i faith first in their lives, but also left key documents, personal letters, notes, and memoranda related to the life of philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke for future researchers to ponder and use for years to come.”

• William P. Collins. Insights (Library of Congress Professional Association Newsletter) 38.1–3 (Jan–Oct 2006): 10–12: “Both of these books [Lights of the Spirit and Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy] go a long way toward correcting the historians’ failure to note the important role played by the Bahá’í Faith and prominent African-American Bahá’ís in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.”

“Fifty Baha’i Principles of Unity: A Paradigm of Social Salvation.”
Christopher Buck

Baha’i Studies Review 18 (2012): 3–44. (Published June 23, 2015)
(2017 update, with original Persian & Arabic primary sources added.)

[Presented at Princeton University (February 21, 2014).]

ABSTRACT
The Baha’i Faith, a young world religion, offers principles of unity—from family relations to international relations—as a paradigm for social salvation. These principles may be studied within the analytic prism of an ‘illness/cure’ approach to religious soteriologies—a conceptual model in the phenomenology of religions popularized by Stephen Prothero. World religions are systems of salvation, liberation or harmony. Their respective offers of salvation, liberation or harmony respond directly to the human predicament, as defined by each religion. If humanity is plagued by sin, then Christianity’s redemptive offer of salvation from sin makes perfect sense. Early Buddhism’s offer of liberation—from the fundamental problem of suffering—also fits perfectly in this model. In the Baha’i religion, the plight facing the world is profound estrangement at all levels of society. Therefore the social salvation that the Baha’i religion offers are precepts and practices that augment unity and harmony, as Baha’u’llah proclaims: ‘The distinguishing feature that marketh the pre-eminent character of this Supreme Revelation consisteth in that We have … blotted out from the pages of God’s holy Book whatsoever hath been the cause of strife, of malice and mischief amongst the children of men, and have … laid down the essential prerequisites of concord, of understanding, of complete and enduring unity’. After reviewing Raymond Piper’s typology, fifty (50) Baha’i principles of unity are enumerated and briefly described: types of unity propounded by Baha’u’llah in the Tablet of Unity (Lawḥ-i Ittiḥād); types of unity forecast by ‘Abdu’l-Baha in the ‘The Seven Candles of Unity’; and types of unity articulated by Shoghi Effendi—a splendid array of understudied elements of the Baha’i social gospel. Since the present study is a first extended survey—of the notion of unity vis-à-vis the Baha’i Faith, based squarely on authenticated primary sources—results are preliminary, not definitive.

* This updated version (1 November 2017) is dedicated to the loving memory of the present writer’s eldest son, Jason Buck (b. August 20, 1978), who—suddenly, but peacefully—passed away on 26 October 2017, at the young age of 39. See https://www.facebook.com/jason.buck.180.

Buck, Christopher. “The Baha’i ‘Race Amity’ Movement and the Black Intelligentsia in Jim Crow America: Alain Locke and Robert S. Abbott.” Baha’i Studies Review 17 (2011): 3–46. [Published September 2012.]

EPIGRAPH:

I attended every session, day and night ... Many times throughout the meetings did with much effort restrain my tears. My heart leaped and throbbed and many times almost burst within my breast. I am a colored man ... My race as a whole, I believe, is quite ready to welcome the glad day when all will be brothers. ... The trouble is nearly unilateral. God give us the day.

— M. F. Harris, audience member at the ‘Convention for Amity Between the Colored and White Races Based on Heavenly Teachings’ (19–21 May 1921)

ABSTRACT:

This study demonstrates how the Baha’i ‘Race Amity’ efforts effectively reached the black intelligentsia during the Jim Crow era, attracting the interest and involvement of two influential giants of the period — Alain Leroy Locke, PhD (1885–1954) and Robert S. Abbott, LLB (1870–1940). Locke affiliated with the Baha’i Faith in 1918, and Abbott formally joined the Baha’i religion in 1934.

Another towering figure in the black intelligentsia, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) – whose first wife, Nina Du Bois (d. 1950), was a member of the New York Baha’i community — had sustained, for a period of time, considerable interest in the Baha’i movement, as documented in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Religious History, guest edited by Todd Lawson. These illustrious figures — W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain L. Locke and Robert S. Abbott — are ranked as the 4th, 36th and 41st most influential African Americans in American history. It is not so much the intrinsic message of the Baha’i religion that attracted the interest of the black intelligentsia, but rather the Baha’i emphasis on ‘race amity’ — representing what, by Jim Crow standards, may be regarded as a socially audacious, even radical — application of the Baha’i ethic of world unity, from family relations to international relations, to the prevailing American social crisis.

EXCERPT:

On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, Professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, paid tribute to the historic Baha’i efforts to foster ideal race relations in America:

“When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.”

[“Towards Oneness - Cornel West” (1 February 2012). Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbEDC8wAWiI [updated link, accessed May 17, 2018.]

If and when, as suggested by Cornel West, a revisionist history of the Jim Crow era is written, the contribution of the Baha’i ‘race amity’ initiatives — envisioned and mandated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself — should take its rightful place in the annals of American history.

Christopher Buck, “Robert Hayden’s ‘[American Journal]’: A Multidimensional Analysis.” Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37. 

As America’s “Bicentennial poem,” poet-laureate Robert Hayden’s “American Journal” reveals much about the poet’s treatment of American identity, and of his tropical use of “America” as well. The artifice of “American Journal” is quite interesting: “American Journal” purports to be the field notes of a Martian observer who, by his shape-shifting powers, disguises himself in an array of human personas, and who then reports his findings to his superiors, “the Counselors.” "American Journal” introduces the unlikely figure of an alien observer from outer space, whose field-notes are reported in the poem itself. The alien‘s journal about America (hence the title, “American Journal”) is recorded in truncated form—largely by the poetic device known as brachylogy (condensed expression; laconic speech), as in “oceans deserts mountains grain fields canyons / forests variousness of landscapes weathers / sun light moon light as at home much here is / beautiful dream like vistas reminding me of / home.”

A close reading of “American Journal” assumes that these American social identities act as superegos that overarch and refract on individual identities, to which individual identities may be subaltern. In the opening lines of the poem, the poet describes “the americans this baffling / multi people.” Yet, at the end of the poem, the poet is at a loss to adequately account for “their variousness their ingenuity / their elan vital and that some thing essence / quiddity i cannot penetrate or name.” Nevertheless, internal evidence suggests that Hayden treats American identity in nine dimensions: (1) Landscape Identity; (2) Alien (Individual) Identity; (3) Racial Identity; (4) Political Identity; (5) Class Identity; (6) Material Identity; (7) Religious Identity; (8) American (National) Identity; (9) Human Identity.

Citation: Christopher Buck, "Robert Hayden's 'American Journal": A Multidimensional Analysis." Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37.

19th century’s famous poet Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.” However that is not a popular idea and equality for everybody generally seen as a pillar stone of a just society by common view. It is widely accepted that all human beings are equal and people should be treated as equals in any case. If there is a situation that creates an inequality in any way, people oppose it and try to change it relentlessly. It is straightforward and convenient to think that equality for all would create a just society however it is not the case. This paper is going to challenge the status-quo by being in defense of inequality, supporting some anti-egalitarian insights and bringing out the new concept of “equivalency in society”. In order to do this, the paper is claiming that equality for all is impossible because all people are not equal also equality doesn’t mean justice thus trying to make people equal creates injustice rather than justice and the solution to this problem is equivalency for all in society.

Buck, Christopher. “The Eschatology of Globalization: Baha’u’llah’s Multiple-Messiahship Revisited.” Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Baha’i Faiths. Edited by Moshe Sharon. Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, 104. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004. Pp. 143–178.

ABSTRACT

Globalization refers to “both the compression of the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” and as “both concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole” (Robertson 1992: 8). It is further defined as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1990: 64). Ethical responses to globalization are essentially world order issues (Lerche 1998), in a search for values of egalitarianism, equity, and sustainability a worldview that some have called “globalism” (Ritchie 1996). As a response to globalization, globalism may be viewed as a reflex or extension of Kantian cosmopolitanism as the “moral universalism of international relations” (Robinson 1996: 4).

Bahā’īs often assert that, since Bahā’u’llāh anticipated modernity, then he must have been a prime mover of it. Historically, it can be observed that Bahā’u’llāh was a sudden sparkle of the nineteenth-century a flash of visionary brilliance. And it may be safe to say that Bahā’u’llāh and modernity are dynamically coincidental and, apart from directions of influence, that Bahā’u’llāh was engaged in dialectic with modernity.

Regarding Bahā’u’llāh’s world reforms and their historical significance, ‘Abdu’l-Bahā observed: “These precepts were proclaimed by Bahā’u’llāh many years ago. He was the first to create them in the hearts as moral laws. Writing to the sovereigns of the world, he summoned them to universal brotherhood, proclaiming that the hour for unity had struck unity between countries, unity between religions” (DP 85). This sympathetic appraisal of the historical significance of Bahā’u’llāh’s international peace mission reinforces our hypothesis: viz., that Bahā’u’llāh’s signal contribution to globalization was to ethicize and sacralize it. Bahā’u’llāh’s “multiple-messiahship” furnished the divine authority necessary if ever his world reforms were to be taken seriously. This is Bahā’u’llāh’s eschatology of globalization.

Scholar Meets Prophet:
Edward Granville Browne and Baha’u’llah (Acre, 1890)

Christopher Buck
Independent Scholar, Pittsburgh

Youli Ioannesyan
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg

Baha’i Studies Review, Vol. 20 (2014, published 2018): 21–38.

(The original publication (print or PDF) may be ordered online from Intellect.)

ABSTRACT
Rediscovery of contemporaneous handwritten notes by Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne,1 of his historic meetings with Baha’u’llah, prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith in Akka (St Jean d’Acre), Palestine, during his stay there – which lasted from his arrival on Sunday, 13 April 1890, to Browne’s departure on Sunday, 20 April 1890 – significantly adds to our knowledge of those spiritual and momentous events. Given the fact that Baha’u’llah was to become widely regarded as the founder of a new world religion, Browne’s published account of his 16 April 1890 audience with Baha’u’llah takes on added significance as a rare first-hand description by a distinguished contemporary from the West. Although well-known to those acquainted with Baha’i history, relatively little is known regarding the sequence of events. This article will draw from Cambridge manuscripts to add some new details, and will draw a fuller picture of what transpired by use of Browne’s correspondence with Russian academics, along with known Baha’i sources judiciously compared with Azali sources. Together, a composite account of that historic encounter between scholar and prophet, Browne and Baha’u’llah, will be offered.

Many political theorists are troubled by the social and economic inequalities within a single country but they tend to accept only sufficiency principles of distributive justice at the global level. Dissatisfied with this view, some theorists argue that luck egalitarianism—the view that no one should be worse off than others through no fault or choice of one’s own—can offer the most compelling objection to global distributive inequalities. For instance, it is unfair if some have worse opportunities because of their national or civic identity since being born into a poor country is just part of a person’s “unchosen” circumstances. A potential problem with this view is that it pays little attention (if any) to the nature of the relationship that people stand to one another and as such it fails to capture some of our most fundamental concerns with distributive inequalities.
This paper aims to develop and defend a conception of equality which expresses an ideal of how human relations should be conducted and argue that it applies at the global level. More specifically, it identifies three aspects of equality as a relational ideal: (1) the preservation of self-respect, (2) non-domination, and (3) fair terms of cooperation in collective endeavors, which implies (a) the terms of interactions must be free from exploitation (and there should be appropriate institutional arrangements to prevent people from being exploited by more powerful agents), and (b) each participant in the cooperative scheme is to have fair access to the benefits resulted from their cooperation.. It argues that equality is a relevant ideal in the global context because living in a global community of equals has instrumental as well as non-instrumental values: it is consistent with our status as equal moral agents and it supports our self-respect, protects freedom from domination, and promotes fair terms of transnational cooperation. By grounding global egalitarianism on the “relational” ideal of equality, my paper will therefore steer a middle course between the strong globalist view that the demands of equality apply everywhere with the same strength and the strong statist view that we should only object to inequalities among individuals living in the same society. The final section of the paper responds to a number of possible objections to this version of relational egalitarianism.

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

From the Inside Flap;

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Christopher Buck

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

This book is about an unusual religious topic: the United States of America ("America").
"America" is, at once, nation and notion, country and creed, republic and rhetoric. This book is about Providence and principle--the relationship of the supernatural world to the world's superpower. "America" is not in the Bible, nor in the Qur'an. Yet "America" today pulsates with religious significance. "America" is a word that has taken on mythic proportions.

Eleven religions have been selected for their distinctive perspectives on America: (1) Native American religion (Iroquois); (2) Protestant Christianity (the Puritans); (3) the Christian Right; (4) Roman Catholicism; (5) Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist); (6) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); (7) Christian Identity (White nationalists); (8) Nation of Islam (Black nationalists); (9) Islam (especially Radical Islamists and Progressive Muslims); (10) Buddhism (Tibetan and Soka Gakkai); and (11) the Baha'i Faith.

Over the course of American history, religious myths and visions of America tend to reflect an ever-changing American civil society, whether as a function of its social evolution or as a catalyst of it. The result is: Religions re-mythologize America. And: Religions re-envision America.

God & Apple Pie invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.

This research investigates a commonly held view in certain peri-urban areas around Chimoio, Mozambique, that German Pentecostal pastors and missionaries, as well as German communists, have been operating as witches from the 1990s until the present time. Drawing on ethnographic material (1999–2016), the chapter explores the popular perception that these ‘Germans’ (alemãos) were promulgating an egalitarian value of sameness and an ethos of purity: gradually, however, they came to be regarded as witches, engaged in nocturnal bloodsucking and undertaking savage hunts for children who were subsequently kidnapped or devoured. Drawing on colonial era cases and comparing the material with other African as well as Melanesian cases, the chapter also relates these ideas about the violence of German witches to long-standing experiences of enslavement, domination and violence, which involve dynamics of memorialization common across both Africa and Melanesia.

The doctrine of permanent sovereignty over natural resources is a hugely consequential one in the contemporary world, appearing to grant nation-states both jurisdiction-type rights and rights of ownership over the resources to be found in their territories. But the normative justification for that principle is far from clear. This article elucidates the best arguments that might be made for permanent sovereignty, including claims from national improvement of or attachment to resources, as well as functionalist claims linking resource rights to key state functions. But it also shows that these defences are insufficient to justify permanent sovereignty, and that in many cases they actually count against it as a practice. They turn out to be compatible, furthermore, with the dispersal of resource rights away from the nation-state which global justice appears to demand.

Author accepted version can be seen at: https://www.gdblunt.com/publications

This article is premised on the idea that global poverty is the foreseeable and avoidable by-product of the international system. This position is held by many cosmopolitans, but rarely do they deal with the consequences of this claim. This paper will examine the idea of a right to resistance in the face of global poverty. It will argue that a right to resistance is a necessary component of the political conception of human rights. It will also be argued that it is latent in some major documents and declarations to the point that it can be considered an emerging practice.

The rest of the article can be found by following the link: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/676705

Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke’s Philosophy of Democracy.” Studies in Baha’i Philosophy 4 (2015): 24–45. 

Alain Locke has been acknowledged as “the most influential African American intellectual born between W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr.” This paper presents Alain Locke’s philosophy of democracy, in nine dimensions. Baha’i values synergized Locke’s philosophy of democracy or, at the very least, now serve as a useful heuristic for understanding and appreciating certain aspects of Locke’s philosophy of democracy. Locke’s grand (though not systematic) theory of democracy sequenced local, moral, political, economic, and cultural stages of democracy as they arced through history, with racial, social, spiritual, and world democracy completing the trajectory. Adjunct notions of natural, practical, progressive, creative, intellectual, equalitarian democracy crystallized the paradigm.

Republished as a book chapter: Christopher Buck, “Political Philosophy: Alain Locke’s Philosophy of Democracy.” Studies in Bahá’i Philosophy: Selected Articles. Edited by Mikhail Sergeev (Swampscott, MA: M-Graphics Publishing, 2018). (Released August 1, 2018.) ISBN-10: 1940220904. ISBN-13: 978-1940220901.

Christopher Buck, Review of Steven K. Green,
"Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding."
(Oxford University Press, 2015). 
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
83.4 (December 2015): 1183–1186.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv068.

ABSTRACT
"Inventing a Christian America" deconstructs—and reconstructs—the myth of America as a Christian nation. Steven K. Green (Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Religion, Law, and Democracy at Willamette University) argues both sides of the issue with skill, precision, clarity, and even sensitivity—characteristic of a constitutional law professor who is also a trained historian. A distinctive feature of this monograph is its attention to law. The result is a history of “Christian America” with an added legal dimension within American history and thought.

This article considers how migrant deaths -particularly in the borderlands of Europe and the United States -relate to the speed at which migrants travel. It argues that the most dangerous boundaries for migrants, and the most difficult ones to traverse, are those which embody the sharpest divides in energy consumption, divides reflected in the vulnerability of migrants who typically move at relatively slow speeds and have insufficient access to safe modes of travel. Thus, migrant deaths and the boundaries that produce them embody the injustices associated with grossly unequal levels of access to, control over, and consumption of environmental resources.

Many of the foremost defenders of distributive egalitarianism hold that its scope should be limited to co-citizens. But this bracketing of distributive equality exclusively to citizens turns out to be very difficult to defend. Pressure is placed on it, for instance, when we recognise its vulnerability to ‘extension arguments’ which attempt to cast the net of egalitarian concern more widely. The paper rehearses those arguments and also examines some – ultimately unsuccessful – responses which ‘citizenship egalitarians’ might make. If it does turn out that citizenship egalitarianism cannot be defended, then two options are open to its adherents: to substantially modify that position in order to embrace at least some global egalitarian components, or to argue for a reorganisation of citizenship regimes in such a way that citizenship might properly track the subjects of egalitarian justice. Both are radical options. At the end of the paper, finally, I briefly consider one way in which an attenuated form of citizenship-egalitarianism might still be defended.

"Whereas the drive to elaborate principles and practices of global distributive justice is continuing apace in the academy, Rawls’s last book The Law of Peoples rejected the very idea of global distributive justice, and recommended instead a ‘duty of assistance’ towards societies burdened by unfavourable conditions – a concession that was described by many critics as wholly inadequate to the task of addressing global economic injustice. Recently, though, some more friendly critics (including Samuel Freeman, David Reidy and Mathias Risse) have argued for a reappraisal. Perhaps the duty is a demanding one, which enjoys clear advantages over some accounts of global distributive justice. And relatedly, perhaps The Law of Peoples possesses greater resources for theorising issues of global economic justice than has sometimes been recognised.

This paper evaluates this attempt at rehabilitation. The character of the duty of assistance is set out, and the reasons why it is held to be superior to principles of global distributive justice are briefly canvassed. The supposed advantages enjoyed by the duty are examined, and it is shown that these are far less impressive than has been suggested by both Rawls and some recent defenders of his position. The paper also considers the ways in which the account developed in The Law of Peoples is able to contribute to the theorisation of global economic injustice. Although the account does provide more resources than has sometimes been recognised, it is argued that as the duty-based account is pushed further on this issue, it becomes still less plausible to claim that it possesses appreciable advantages over various positions on global distributive justice. More pointedly, its supposed advantages turn out to be in tension with each other. As such, if the provision of an adequate position on global economic justice is the goal, the reappraisal of The Law of Peoples may ultimately demand a transcendence of at least some of its key elements. "

The Philosophical Quarterly (2017); The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice. EDITED BY George Hull. (London: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. vii + 354. Price £70.00.)

http://pq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/10/10/pq.pqw063.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=6pdzSKo8XubTuAq

You can access the article by following the link above.

The political theorist Michael Walzer has usually been taken as an opponent of global distributive justice, on the basis that it is incompatible with collective autonomy, would endanger cultural diversity, or simply on the basis that principles of global distributive justice cannot be coherently envisaged, given cross-cultural disagreement about the nature and value of the social goods which might be distributed. However in his recent work, Walzer demonstrates a surprising degree of sympathy for the claims of global distributive justice, even of the egalitarian variety. But the precise contours of his current position on global equality are not yet clearly developed. The paper therefore attempts to reconstruct what that position might be, paying particular attention to the conclusions we could draw firstly for our understanding of the opposition between global equality and national self-determination (which is more complex than has sometimes been thought), and secondly for the relationship between global equality and shared understandings.

Christopher Buck,
Review of Jacoby Adeshai Carter and Leonard Harris (eds.),
Philosophic Values and World Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010).
Baha’i Studies Review 18 (2012): 172–178.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/bsr.18.1.153_5.
(Published June 23, 2015)

ABSTRACT
Philosophic Values and World Citizenship (‘World Citizenship’), as the title indicates, aims at connecting the values philosophy of Alain Locke (1885–1954) and peers with the global ethic of world citizenship. To what extent does this volume deliver on its promise?

World Citizenship is effectively the proceedings volume of a 2008 conference of the Alain Locke Society held at George Washington University. This multi-author work succeeds in catapulting Locke into the limelight as a cosmopolitan, by showcasing Locke as an advocate of world citizenship, as no other previous publication on Locke has done.

Indeed, prior to this, Locke, for the most part, had been frozen in time as the 1925 editor of The New Negro: An Interpretation, thus privileging Locke as a ‘race man’. World Citizenship features Locke as a man of the human race.

Laura Valentini's Justice in a Globalized World presents, with admirable clarity, a new, hybrid conception of global justice that builds on insights from both cosmopolitans and statists, especially their relational variants. Relational cosmopolitans generally argue that substantial economic cooperation and interdependence (i.e., the relevant economic relations) trigger robust obligations of distributive justice. They then argue that, as a matter of fact, these relations obtain globally in virtue of intensifying global trade, capital flows, and labor migration. Thus, relational cosmopolitans conclude that obligations of distributive justice directly apply to the global economic order. Relational statists, by contrast, argue that obligations of distributive justice are trigged by coercive, political relations. Furthermore, these coercive relations only obtain-and can only be justified-within a state. As a consequence, the global order is a 'secondary site' of justice that ought to be concerned with assisting and protecting legitimate states but does not directly trigger obligations of distributive justice.

Diffusion : Iddri -6, rue du Général Clergerie -75116 Paris -France Téléphone : 01 53 70 22 35 [email protected] -www.iddri.org Conception : Alain Chevallier Les propos contenus dans ce document n'engagent que son auteur et en aucune manière l'institution à laquelle il appartient.

This paper investigates the significance, from the point of view of egalitarian justice, of patterns of attachment to natural resources. Section I establishes what is at stake in arguments about attachment as a source of special claims over resources. Section II shows why, by contrast to the view associated with Charles Beitz, for instance, attachment over natural resources should be taken seriously by egalitarians. But even if egalitarians should take attachment seriously, it is not clear just how and whether they could accommodate important attachments whilst also holding firm to their egalitarian commitments. Section III, however, provides an account of just how egalitarians can accommodate good attachment-based claims within their accounts of justice, and also spells out the implications of that accommodation for theories of global justice. Section IV considers but rejects an alternative account of how we should accommodate attachments, and concludes by arguing that egalitarianism contains far greater resources for taking important attachments seriously than we might otherwise suppose.

Author's Accepted version can be seen at: https://www.gdblunt.com/publications

This article defends illegal immigration from the Global South to the Global North, while being agnostic about the right of the state to control borders. This argument is based on two premises: a) cosmopolitan accounts of global distributive justice and b) the human right to resistance. Given that global poverty is an avoidable and intransigent violation of human rights, resistance is justifiable. Illegal immigration is a form of “infra political” resistance that is comparable to fugitive slaves. Like these slaves, people living in extreme poverty experience a durable form of domination in which escape is possible, even though it is highly risky. If one thinks that the fugitive slave did nothing wrong, then one cannot condemn the illegal immigrant.

* Persian translation of:

"50 Baha’i Principles of Unity:
From Individual to International Relations"
by Christopher Buck

Published online (June 10, 2014):
http://bahaiteachings.org/50-bahai-principles-of-unity-from-individual-to-international-relations

* Persian translation by .

See also:
“Fifty Baha'i Principles of Unity: A Paradigm of Social Salvation”
(2017 update, with original Persian and Arabic texts).

https://www.academia.edu/35016378/_Fifty_Bahai_Principles_of_Unity_A_Paradigm_of_Social_Salvation_2017_update_

Proponents of practice-dependent egalitarianism argue that egalitarian duties and entitlements only apply among participants in morally relevant practices. In this paper I argue that these views are implausible because they allow for objectionable treatment of nonparticipants. I show that it is impossible, on the basis of practice-internal considerations alone, to determine the extent to which the pursuit of practices can permissibly limit the opportunities of nonparticipants. There are opportunities beyond the current holdings of practices to which no one has a privileged claim (such as unowned natural resources), and the distribution of which is a matter of justice. A just distribution of such unowned distributive goods, though, requires a practice-independent distributive baseline. I further show that such a baseline can only be egalitarian, because all alternative baselines face serious objections. From this I conclude that any plausible theory of distributive justice must accept some form of equal practice-independent distributive entitlements.

In the philosophies of Marx Weber (Prucia, 19th century) influenced by John Locke (England, 18th century), sublimity of French amour-ism found similitude in the vision of aristocrat-ism swaying merchantilism, Dominion-ship blends within territorial boundaries to sooth inequality. Forming the characteristics of a Monarchy, Revolution found Legitimization in Traditionalization, shifts trends to adjust performance of fragile organizations to bewilder with charisma. In Gender Equality, Parsimoniously Frugal Parental-ism is viewed conspicuously a from of inequality, therefore traditionalization speaks of Individualism, certainly of Collectivism. In the Magnanimous interest of the elite, it invites comfortability in the surrounding of super-symmetry of ecliptic design. Synchronous with the harmonious production of entrepreneurs, the Princely/Kingsley network of coordinated fragile establishment ventures capital to continuously proliferate.

Globalisation has come under severe pressure at the exact moment when some of those we used to regard as the winners of the global market have started to lose from it. Or, in other words, globalisation is going through the most serious drawback since the post-war era just when divergent growth between countries has inverted its trend, thus becoming convergent. In this article I argue that convergent globalisation poses a serious theoretical challenge to the idea of global justice. More precisely, the recent equalisation in the international distribution of wealth, together with the technological
developments in automation and communication, render classic models of global justice obsolete. For the struggle for a more just globalisation is now realigned on the national level and sees deployed on the one side those who control enough capital to cut down on labour costs, and on the other one those others who are redundant in production.

This paper examines arguments for restricting duties of specifically egalitarian distributive justice to the level of individual states. One argument suggests that citizens of a given state owe one another such duties on account of their subjection to, and authorship of, a system of coercive laws and institutions. An alternative argument suggests that citizens of a given state owe such duties by virtue of their reciprocal contribution to the provision of certain collective goods. It is shown here that neither argument is successful in limiting egalitarian duties to the intra-state, as opposed to supra-state level. Normatively speaking, neither of the two arguments under review provides a persuasive account of when and why egalitarian duties are owed. Empirically speaking, each of the two arguments is in any case susceptible to what is termed the continuum objection: both accounts, that is, lead to the conclusion that at least some egalitarian duties are owed beyond the bounds of individual states. The paper concludes by offering some reflections on the nature of egalitarian duties at the global level, and attempts to carve out conceptual space for a pluralist, but nevertheless global, form of egalitarianism.

In this essay, I argue that even when they appear to help, restrictions on migration are usually only an impediment, not an aid, to cosmopolitan justice. Even though some egalitarian cosmopolitans are well intentioned in their support of migration restrictions, I argue that migration restrictions are (i) not truly cosmopolitan and (ii) will not have the kinds of consequences they expect. My argument in defense of this claim begins, in section 1, by outlining a defense of migration restrictions based on egalitarian cosmopolitan grounds. Then in sections two and three, I reply to the harms this position associates with open borders and provide some reasons as to why restrictions on migration are incompatible with cosmopolitan justice.

To whom is egalitarian justice owed? Our fellow citizens, or all of humankind? If the latter, what form might a global brand of egalitarianism take? This paper examines some recent debates about the justification, and content, of global egalitarian justice. It provides an account of some keenly argued controversies about the scope of egalitarian justice, between those who would restrict it to the level of the state and those who would extend it more widely. It also notes the cross-cutting distinction between relationists (whose views on scope are derived from a belief about which relations, practices or institutions give rise to the demands of equality) and non-relationists (who place no such importance on empirical facts about the relations between individuals). Beyond this, it sets out some of the different principles that might flow from a commitment to global egalitarianism. One of the key goals is to highlight the increasing diversity within debates on global justice, so that even those with a shared commitment to global equality may espouse different views about the justifications for equality, as well as the nature of, and proper sites for, egalitarian principles.

“Alain Locke: Race Amity and the Baha’i Faith” (invited presentation). Alain Locke Centenary Program. Association of American Rhodes Scholars. Howard University. Washington, DC. (September 24, 2007.) (PDF of plenary session slide presentation.)