of countless
individual clerics, He points out the consequences of the way in which
self-appointed religious elites, throughout history, have interposed
themselves between humanity and all voices of progress, not excluding the
Messengers of God Themselves. "What 'oppression' is more grievous," He
asks, "than that a soul seeking the truth, and wishing to attain unto the
knowledge of God, should know not where to go for it...?"(77) In an age of
scientific advancement and widespread popular education, the cumulative
effects of the resulting disillusionment were to make religious faith
appear irrelevant. Impotent themselves to deal with the spiritual crisis,
most of those clerics of various Faiths who became aware of Baha'u'llah's
message either ignored the moral influence it was demonstrating or
actively opposed it.(78)

Recognition of this feature of history does not diminish the harm done by
those who have sought to take advantage of the spiritual vacuum thus left.
The yearning for belief is inextinguishable, an inherent part of what
makes one human. When it is blocked or betrayed, the rational soul is
driven to seek some new compass point, however inadequate or unworthy,
around which it can organize experience and dare again to assume the risks
that are an inescapable aspect of life. It was in this perspective that
Shoghi Effendi warned the members of the Faith, in unusually strong
language, that they must try to understand the spiritual calamity
engulfing a large part of humankind during the decades between the two
world wars:

God Himself has indeed been dethroned from the hearts of men, and an
idolatrous world passionately and clamorously hails and worships the false
gods which its own idle fancies have fatuously created, and its misguided
hands so impiously exalted.... Their high priests are the politicians and
the worldly-wise, the so-called sages of the age; their sacrifice, the
flesh and blood of the slaughtered multitudes; their incantations, outworn
shibboleths and insidious and irreverent formulas; their incense, the
smoke of anguish that ascends from the lacerated hearts of the bereaved,
the maimed, and the homeless.(79)

Like opportunistic infections, aggressive ideologies took advantage of the
situation created by the decline of religious vitality. Although
indistinguishable from one another in the corruption of faith they
represented, the three belief systems that played a dominant role in human
affairs