Baha’is in NH: How a little-known religion found roots in the Granite State

The Dublin Inn—a Georgian-style building that dates the 1790s—is of prime significance to followers of a little-known religious group in New Hampshire. In the early 1900s, the historic building became a brief pit stop for the head of one of the youngest and smallest religions, the Baha’i faith.

The Baha’i faith was founded in Iran in 1863 by social reformist and religious leader Baháʼu’lláh, and currently has more than five million followers all over the world. 

“I might say the name the Baha’i Faith, but it’s just perhaps a new name for the ever-changing faith of God for humanity,” said Susan Felker-Martin, a lifelong Baha’i from the Concord area. “(We believe in the) equality of women and men, the elimination of all prejudices, the idea that science and religion agree, and they’re not separate opposite forces, but that they’re in agreement.”

It started in 1912, when an American Baha’i woman named Agnes Parsons visited Baha’i holy places when she met Abdu’l-Bahá, the leader of the Baha’is from 1892-1921, and the son of the Baháʼu’lláh. Parsons made Abdu’l-Bahá promise that on his trip to the United States he would make a stop in Washington DC and at the Dublin Inn, which was her summer residence. 

“He was offered a ticket on the Titanic, and for its maiden, obviously it’s a one and only voyage, and he turned it down and went on the Cedric,” Felker-Martin said, explaining howAbdu’l-Bahá’s visit to the Granite State was almost serendipitous. 

In New Hampshire there are 200-250 Baha’i people, according to Felker-Martin, who along with other members of the faith, organizes community events in the Concord area, in the Seacoast area and in Elliot, Maine. 

Felker-Martin remembers being almost six-years-old, when one day a box full of new prayer books and books on messengers of God appeared in her house.

“And then my parents started a practice of just saying prayers with us when they tucked us in at night, they always tucked us in, but then they added a little bit of prayer,” she said, explaining how for the first few years of her life she was raised with Episcopal and Congregational values. 

It was Felker-Martin’s mother who was drawn to the religion—accidentally—as she was seeking deeper spiritual answers, she explained. 

“This was the ’70s,” she said. “She had to go to a (work meeting), it was a cosmetic company. That did not resonate with her at all, this makeup and that whole thing.”

Across the hall from where her mother’s meeting was supposed to happen, was a group of people gathered from the Baha’i faith that Felker-Martin’s mother just felt drawn to, and she instantly knew that those were “her people.”

And there has been no turning back since then, Felker-Martin said, adding that just like her parents, she too wanted to continue being on the journey of being Baha’i. 

“One of the central principles was this idea that it’s every person’s duty to investigate truth for themselves,” she said. “I remember learning about that as a central tenet, and my dad saying, ‘Hey, Susan, I chose and I found the Baha’i faith for myself, but this is your journey, and you don’t automatically inherit it from me.’”

Felker-Martin shared that in the subsequent years in her childhood she was always the “different” kid, but thanks to her “very Christian” grandparents she didn’t miss out on Christmas presents that much. 

Felker-Martin grew up with her father after her parents eventually separated. He would make her and her sister believe in all the manifestations of God, so they would mark all major religious holidays, like Christmas and Hanukkah.

“I remember one time being in school, there was a kid … For whatever reason, I had a high prayer book with me. It might’ve been the time of the Fast, which happens in March,” she said. “I didn’t usually have a prayer book with me. He threw it across the science class, and I was just like, ‘Oh, that was terrible that he did that!’”

There are only seven places of worship for Baha’i followers in the world, and the only one in North America is in Illinois. The Baha’i community in New Hampshire meets at community centers or in people’s backyards at least four times a year, and as a smaller group every 19 days for worship service. 

Felker-Martin, though, can never forget the first time she visited the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois when she was 15.

“I don’t know how to put that into words. I was startled. I was amazed,” she said. “I just remember being kind of awestruck by it all, and then looking at the architecture.”