May 14. On this date in 1982, Amoz Gibson died. He served on the Universal House of Justice from its founding in 1963 until his death. Before that served on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, an Auxiliary Board member for propogation, and a pioneer to the Navajo Indian Reservation.

 

May 14. On this date in 1982, Amoz Gibson died. He served on the Universal House of Justice from its founding in 1963 until his death. Before that served on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, an Auxiliary Board member for propogation, and a pioneer to the Navajo Indian Reservation.

Amoz Gibson was born in Washington, D.C., and received a bachelors degree in education from Miner Teachers College (now the University of the District of Columbia) in 1940 and a master of arts in geography from Mexico City College (now University of the Americas) in 1951. He was inducted into the US Army in 1944 and served in Europe and the Pacific. He returned to Washington in 1946 and continued his work in the educational field as a teacher. In the mid-1950s he pioneered to the Navajo Indian Reservation, where he taught for four years. In 1959 he was appointed to the Auxiliary Board for protection, and in 1960 he was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. In 1963 he was elected to the first Universal House of Justice.

His career is typical for individuals in the Bahá’í hierarchy, whether in an elected office or in an appointed offce from which the higher elected officials invariably come from.

At all levels, including the LSAs, Bahá’í leaders are generally as authoritarian, if not more, than clergy from other religious faiths, which as Dale Husband points out, is one of the Four Ways to Create a Religion of Hypocrites:

1. State that religion no longer needs clergy……and replace them with leaders that are as authoritarian as the clergy ever was.
2. Claim that men and women should be equal……but then deny women membership in the all-powerful leadership council of the religion.
3. Condemn as heretics those who believe in your religion but dare to challenge the claims of your religion’s current leadership, while at the same time claiming to welcome as friends the followers of other religions.
4. Claim there is harmony between science and religion, but also claim that anything your leaders say is absolutely true, even if on topics science is expected to address. Any one of these makes a religion not worth following, but what do you do if you find a religion that has all four such contradictions