Bahá'í Faith in the United States

The Bahá'í Faith is a diverse and widespread religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in the 19th century in Iran. Bahá'í sources usually estimate the worldwide Bahá'í population to be above 5 million. Most encyclopedias and similar sources estimate between 5 and 6 million Bahá'ís in the world in the early 21st century. The religion is almost entirely contained in a single, organized, hierarchical community, but the Bahá'í population is spread out into almost every country and ethnicity in the world, being recognized as the second-most geographically widespread religion after Christianity. See Bahá'í statistics.

The first mention of events related to the history of the religion in the United States appears to be the 1845-6 echo of the Nov 1845 London Times story relating events of the Báb upon return from pilgrimage, which Bahá'ís hold as a direct precursor akin to the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus. In America this was printed in April 1846 in the Boon Lick Times based on an article in the NY Mirror. A mention in 1850 followed. The first academic paper on the religion was a letter written to the American Oriental Society which was holding its meeting in Boston and the library of materials was held at the Boston Athenæum. The letter was originally published as part of the minutes of the Society in The Literary World of June 14, 1851, as an untitled entry whose first quote is "notice of a singular character, who has for some years past played a prominent part on the stage of Persian life" dated February 10, 1851 by Dr. Rev. Austin H. Wright. It was subsequently also published in a Vermont newspaper June 26, 1851. In 1867 Bahá'ís near Baghdad petitioned the United States for relief from persecution. In 1893 Rev. Henry Harris Jessup addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago with the first mention the Bahá'í Faith itself in the United States - and published in the Chicago Inter Ocean and manuscript. In 1894 Thornton Chase became the first American Bahá'í. Others soon followed.

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