You learn something new every day

[pne]

The head of state of Samoa, His Highness Malietoa Tanumafili II, is a Bahá'í. He's also the oldest national leader in the world and the third-longest serving head of state (after the King of Thailand and Queen Elizabeth II).

Comments

[pthalo]

yep! I think he's the only royalty that's currently a Bahá'í. I think Maria of Rumania was also Bahá'í, but she might have just been interested/sympathetic to the Faith. I'm not sure.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Good question. The Wikipedia article on him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malietoa_Tanumafili_II_of_Samoa) mentions that he is "only the second royal (after Queen Marie of Romania) to be a member of that religion", but the article on her (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_of_Edinburgh#Religious_beliefs) leaves it a bit ambiguous with phrases such as "the first royalty to declare faith in that religion" or "the first Monarch to have declared her belief in Bahá'u'lláh", which is not quite the same as formally associating herself with the Bahá'í faith.

(I presume there is such a process of formal association, similar to baptism in most streams of Christianity, without which one may be sympathetic to the beliefs but not officially part of the Faith.)

Hm. I wonder whether there are any living Latter-day Saint royals or heads of state.

I think I read somewhere that Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawaiʻi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili%CA%BBuokalani) was a Latter-day Saint, but she's dead. And there are probably US Senators, possibly state governors, but I don't know of any head of state of an independent nation who's LDS.

[pthalo]

there isn't really, well, you sign a piece of paper that says you believe in Bahá'u'lláh and want to be a Bahá'í, but I think way back when a verbal announcement was enough. "declare her belief" is the equivalent of formally associating yourself with the faith. If you are interested but don't want to be a Bahá'í, then you're called a seeker. Someone who is seeking the truth (and they'll either find it with us, or they'll find it elsewhere). But no baptism or anything of the like. In Bahá'í jargon "Declared her belief in Bahá'u'lláh" = "signed her card or made a verbal admission that she wanted to be Bahá'í"

I suspected she might have been because of what was said about her in The Priceless Pearl, a book about Shoghi Effendi, the guardian of the Faith, who knew her, I think.

I can e-mail you the chapter about Martha Root and the Queen of Romania if you're interested.