A Path of Justice: Building Communities with the Power to Shape the World

A Path of Justice explores the question, “How do we translate our longing for justice into concrete actions that will contribute to the creation of a just society?” The author Holly Hanson, a Historian at Mount Holyoke College, draws on insights from the Bahá’í Revelation and a critical rereading of modern history to show how the sense of impotence that paralyzes individual and collective action towards creating justice is the result of oppressive thought structures that are based on false assumptions about human and social reality. These assumptions have over the centuries solidified into structures that have severely limited what we can imagine possible. They have given us the unjust world we have today. Hanson shows how through following the will of God, communities the world over can begin to channelize the vast unexplored human potential locked up within them to create a world based on justice. She explains how the everyday actions of ordinary people in neighborhoods, villages, and towns may contribute to bringing into existence the era of peace and justice which all the world’s religions have foretold. In the course of her analysis, Hanson also presents a fundamentally new understanding of the concepts of power, justice and economic activity. The latter section of the book includes an extensive, original compilation of quotes from the Bahá’í Writings related to justice, including themes such as ‘Justice as a Human Capacity’, ‘Justice as the Foundation of Civilization’, and ‘The Instruments of Justice’.