Layli Maparyan & Louis Venters: The Bahá’í Faith in South Carolina (1/2)

On December 12th, Layli Maparyan and Louis Venters joined us for a conversation on The Bahá’í Faith in South Carolina and America’s Unfinished Business of Reconstruction.

From the first mention of the Báb in a Columbia newspaper in 1865 to the “Carolinian Pentecost” of the 1970s and beyond, the Bahá’í community has deep roots in South Carolina—the birthplace of Reconstruction and home of the most significant response to the Bahá’í Faith so far by people of African descent in North America. Based on Venters' book, ‘No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina’s Bahá’í Community’, we contemplate what lessons the Bahá’í experience in South Carolina might hold today, when many Americans wonder if it is even possible to construct a just multiracial society.

This is part one of this session—