DISPUTES IN HETERODOX BAHAI FAITH

Besides leadership disputes, there have been a number of episodes of opposition to the Bahá'í administration. In Germany, Hermann Zimmer resurrected the claims of Ruth White in a small book published in 1971 (English translation in 1973), A Fraudulent Testament devalues the Bahá'í Religion into Political Shogism. Zimmer had been planning to form an Association of Free Bahá'ís (or the World Union of Universal Religion and Universal Peace), but this apparently never come into being. Charles Seeburger set up a similar group in Philadelphia in about 1967, but this is apparently defunct. In Switzerland, Francesco Ficicchia wrote a comprehensive pseudo-academic attack, Der Baha'ismus – Weltreligion der Zunkunft? (Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen, Quell Verlag, Stuttgart, 1981). His work was financed and distributed by the Protestant Church in Germany. A book by Bahá'í scholar Udo Schaefer, et. al., originally titled Desinformation als Methode (English title: Making the Crooked Straight (2000)), was written to answer Ficicchia's accusations.Bahá'í Studies Review, Volume 8, (1998) [12] Since the publication of Schaefer's refutation, the German Protestant Church has repudiated both Ficicchia and its own earlier anti-Bahá'í attacks, and indeed has held cordial meetings with Schaefer and other Bahá'ís