L E T T E R T O T H E E D I T O R

RON FEINBERG, EDITOR
AJC, Faith & Values

I applaud your efforts to be inclusive of all faiths in Faith & Values. As a Baha'i, I believe that all religions ultimately teach the same truth. However, I was disappointed after reading "God Online" in the August 5th edition. My feelings stemmed from not seeing any reference to the large number of resources available on the web about the Baha' i Faith.

The Baha'i Faith is the second most widespread religion in its geographic reach, behind Christianity. With over 5 million believers worldwide, the Baha'i Faith has a membership of approximately 133,000 in the United States and close to 2,000 in metropolitan Atlanta. Followers of Baha'u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha'i Faith, come from diverse backgrounds and include representatives of over 2,100 tribes and minorities.

One of the central teachings of the Baha'i Faith is the notion of "independent investigation of the truth." What better way to conduct an independent search but on-line, using your favorite browser? Although results vary when typing in the word "Baha'i," popular search engines typically generate a multitude of results. To name a few: Yahoo.com returned 236 sites in 44 categories, Go.com returned 4,793 pages, Lycos.com returned 30,999 pages, and AltaVista returned an astounding 66,519 hits. Beliefnet.com, mentioned as one of the most popular sites in the article, has a page dedicated to the Baha'i Faith located at www.belief.net/index/index_10041.html.

I realize that you cannot mention all of the available sites on the various individual religious groups in a feature story. But, in the future, I would hope that you consider including the world-embracing religion known as the Baha'i Faith.

I recommend three main sites to gain a greater awareness and better understanding of the Baha'i Faith:

     1. For Metro Atlanta:           www.atlantabahai.org
     2. For the United States:           www.us.bahai.org
     3. For the Globe:                      www.bahai.org

Very best regards,

Al Viller
Duluth, Georgia