Social Change

Transformative Leadership: Developing the Hidden Dimension teaches readers about the inner qualities, attitudes, and values that equip a leader to catalyze transformation. This companion Study Guide helps put those principles into practice. Chapter by chapter, key concepts are translated into practical tools for mastery. Using thought provoking questions, individual and group activities, as well as processes for ongoing learning, the capabilities to affect personal and institutional transformation are simplified into actions we can all take to remake our lives, our communities, and our organizations.

Often leadership is considered to be the exclusive calling of a few. In contrast, transformative leadership indicates how we can all show leadership at home, at school and in the organizations to which we belong, without the need of authority or a formal position as the head of a group. Transformative leadership puts emphasis on the interaction between personal and social transformation and focuses on the nobility in each human being, promoting an attitude of service, and a commitment to moral values freely chosen by each person. Faced with the tremendous challenges that characterize this stage of human history, transformative leadership gives youth an idea of what they can do to build a better world –- starting wherever they are.

Most books on leadership focus on skills - those visible aspects of leaders that garner applause, accolades and awards. This book is concerned with what is usually overlooked - the invisible aspects - ones that may never get noticed but without which a leader can never be truly great. This book is concerned with that inner dimension that not only enhances important skills, but determines if the leader will choose to forgo self-interest for the common good. It is those inner qualities, attitudes, and values that equip a leader to accept personal sacrifice in order to catalyze transformation. These are the leaders we need today.

The emergence of a cohesive interracial fellowship in Jim Crow-era South Carolina was unlikely and dangerous. However, members of the Bahá’í Faith rejected segregation, broke away from religious orthodoxy, and defied the odds, eventually becoming the state’s largest religious minority. No Jim Crow Church traces the history of South Carolina’s Bahá’í community from its early origins through the civil rights era.

Technology, tourism, politics, and law have connected human beings around the world more closely than ever before, but this closeness has, paradoxically, given rise to fear, distrust, and misunderstanding between nation-states and religions. In light of the tensions and conflicts that arise from these complex relationships, many search for ways to find peace and understanding through a “global public sphere.”

Contributors to this volume address various aspects of this challenge within the context of Bahá’í thought and practice, whose goal is to lay the foundations for a new world civilization that harmonizes the spiritual and material aspects of human existence. Bahá’í teachings view religion as a source of enduring insight that can enable humanity to repair and transcend patterns of disunity, to foster justice within the structures of society, and to advance the cause of peace. Accordingly, religion can and ought to play a role in the broader project of creating a pattern of public discourse capable of supporting humanity’s transition to the next stage in its collective development.

The Fashioner takes the reader on a journey through the various ways in which the arts can touch people’s lives. Drawing on inspirational quotations from the Bahá’í Writings, as well as interviews with a number of artists, this book explores the transformative power of the arts.

The Bahá’i Response to the Crisis of Our Time

The book draws on Guidance provided by the universal House of Justice on the most effective actions we can take at this moment, calling upon us to participate in a world-wide program of moral and spiritual education for different age groups.

Moral Empowerment: In Quest of a Pedagogy

Drawing on the experience of FUNDAEC—a Bahá’í-inspired organization whose work in the field of education and the empowerment of populations has been ground-breaking and influential—Farid-Arbab examines concepts such as power, understanding, integration, and capability in the light of relevant philosophical literature, and makes an invaluable contribution to discourse in the fields of education and community development