On Apr 19, 1:16=A0am, "Susan Maneck" <sman...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> But hey, if a bunch
> of kids want to come to my neighborhood and do this, more power to
> them!
>
There may be a difference here between the rural and urban point of
view here. There are roughly 180 households in my village and while I
don't claim to know everybody a good majority would at least know of
my wife and I and a good number would at least be vaguely aware that
we are Baha'is. If a flock of outsiders hit the village with D2D work
it would have implications for us. The only other religion that ever
come to our doors are the JWs and there is a potential for confusion.
I am of the opinion that such campaigns should be dependent on local
Baha'i sup****t. Hopefully the present plan should ensure that such
teaching forays do not occur unless the people concerned have
carefully planned and resourced both the actual teaching and detailed
follow-up procedures.
> The people being visited
> > are declared Baha'is - in Australia =A0they would have received
probably~=A4O
> > a fairly formal welcome and introductory material from the LSA or
> > similar body, be getting a magazine monthly, and really wouldn't need
> > visits to explain that we have a fund etc.
>
> If people have come into the Faith via direct teaching efforts, door
> to door, for instance, they would *not* have this background. And just
> because people can read doesn't mean they will.
If they really haven't taken any notice of the material and contact
they received as part of the process of declaring it is hard to
imagine them inviting someone to home visit them. The point is that
Ruhi book 2 totally ducks the issues of in what cir***stances and and
how one seeks such invitations. As Baha'is we are presumably guided
by
"no man should enter the house of his friend save at his friend's
pleasure, nor lay hands upon his treasures nor prefer his own will to
his friend's, and in no wise seek an advantage over him." but applying
it is not neccessarily easy.
All book 2 does is give a script for the easy part - i.e what do say
when the home visit happens and in my opinion even the advice (or
script) it gives there is inappropriate to the Western world.
>
> I've never heard of home visits being unannounced unless we are
> talking about areas where people might not have phones, etc.
Exactly, you couldn't do it in Australia and in general you couldn't
visit mere acquaintances (as new declarants from mass teaching are
likely to be at best) even with announcement unless invited. But Ruhi
2 simply ignores this side of the matter. It may be that it was
written for societies where it is much more acceptable to just pop in
unannounced (China for example was like that) or it may be that they
deliberately avoided the issue as they recognised it would be
different in different cultures. If you happen to have one of those
tutors who insist on keeping the study circle to the narrow context of
the book (as seems to be recommended in the introductions) the
participants are left with no skills I can see for conducting home
visits.
In Australia, recently, there has been experiments with offering the
home visits as part of initial contact . That may be a solution.
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