Green Acre Baháʼí School
Green Acre Baháʼí School is a conference facility in Eliot, Maine, in the United States, and is one of three leading institutions owned by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháʼís of the United States. The name of the site has had various versions of "Green Acre" since before its founding in 1894 by Sarah Jane Farmer.
It had a prolonged process of progress and challenge while run by Farmer until about 1913 when she was indisposed after converting to the Baháʼí Faith in 1900. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, visited there during his travels in the West in 1912. Farmer died in 1916 and thereafter it had evolved into the quintessential Baháʼí school directly inspiring Louhelen Baháʼí School and Bosch Baháʼí School, the other two of the three schools owned by the national assembly, and today serves as a leading institution of the religion in America. It hosted diverse programs of study, presenters, and been a focus for dealing with racism in the United States through being a significant venue for Race Amity Conventions and less than a century later the Black Men's Gatherings and further events.
Origin
The Piscataqua River by which Green Acre Baháʼí school stands was named from Abenaki Native Americans of the Wabanaki Confederacy describing where a river separates into several parts – "a place where boats and canoes ascending the river together from its mouth were compelled to separate according to their several destinations." The town of Eliot was founded 1810 from Kittery, Maine, which itself was founded in the 1600s. By the mid-1800s the area served as a shipyard, including launching the in 1851. At the time of the founding of the school there were some 1,400 people in Eliot and the town has grown in recent years to near 7,000 today.The Farmers
Sarah Farmer's mother, Hannah Tobey Farmer was raised Methodist. Her father, Moses Gerrish Farmer a Dartmouth graduate in 1844, had success in the new field of electrical engineering and telegraph work and was a heartfelt Christian, though he has also been called a Spiritualist and Transcendentalist. Moses and Hannah married in 1844 and Sarah was born 1847. It is said that the Farmer's home, before they lived in Eliot, was part of the Underground Railroad.It is unclear when the land in Eliot came to be owned by the Farmer family. However, they lived in a variety of places in New England until, after 1880, when the family moved to Eliot and Moses retired. The home they built in Eliot was called Bittersweat, or Bittersweet-in-the-Fields. Hannah established a memorial non-segregated service called "Rosemary Cottage" as a retreat for unwed or poor mothers and working women in Eliot where, for a donation of $7 families would have a two-week vacation, up to 40 at a time in 1888. In 1887, Sarah re-animated the Eliot Library Association and set a number of meetings with speakers while also serving as secretary and helping build a list of patrons of the library of some 700 people. Singer Emma Cecilia Thursby recalled her first visit to what was called "Greenacre" was in 1889. Greenacre is and was situated on a bluff overlooking the river which is a mile wide. In 1890, a group of investors signed a contract to set up a hotel initially called the Eliot Hotel or Inn at the site. In 1891 there were paying customers staying at the Inn.
Farmer had an originating idea about a spiritual theme for the development of the property in June 1892 and then journeyed with her father to the Chicago Columbian Exposition in late 1892 where she met with Swedenborgian Charles C. Bonney, the "visionary" behind the World's Parliament of Religions, and gained encouragement for her vision for a center of learning for spiritual teachers - an idea blessed by family friends Arthur Wesley Down and John Greenleaf Whittier. Her father died that spring, 1893, and she had to leave before the Parliament took place. She took a brief trip to Norway with Sara Chapman Bull in her grief, and she made it back to the Parliament only in October 1893 after it was over.
Farmer made what she recorded in her diary as a "solemn vow" to building the school for spiritual teachers on 4 February 1894. However, by about 1894 the hotel was called a failure and was boarded up when Farmer approached the investors with the plan to use Greenacre as a place to host lectures on religion. Farmer proposed to her investors to use the closed Inn. By 1897, it was capable of housing 75 or more guests and had a number of cottages around the property with a grassy plain that sometimes hosted a tent camp.
Sarah Farmer's inauguration of Greenacre
Following the enthusiasm of the Parliament, Farmer set up the beginnings of using the Greenacre Inn as a summer center of cross-religion gatherings and cultural development. She had success attracting support from Bostonian businessmen, wives of businessmen and politicians, most especially Phoebe Hearst. The work was inaugurated in 1894 with her words "The spirit of criticism will be absolutely laid down – if it comes in it will be gently laid aside; each will contribute his best and listen sympathetically to those who present different ideals. The comparison will be made by the audience, not by the teachers." The early collection of religious interests was wide - Farmer participated with Spiritualist trance-speakers who appeared to channel her father so convincingly the family dog responded, a fact William James took note of.One of the first such promulgators of spiritual insight there was Carl H. A. Bjerregaard where he would frequent through at least 1896. Swami Vivekananda, a prominent Hindu monk serving in interfaith awareness efforts spent nearly two months there in the summer of 1894. His words were printed in the short lived The Greenacre Voice established with the school-and-conference center running at least to 1897. A review appeared in the local Boston Evening Transcript.
A short list of presentations was published in the newspaper even as far away as Chicago also featured academic scholars as well as priests presenting on religions: Professor Ernest Fenollosa, Boston Museum of Fine Arts – "The Relation of Religion to Art"; Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, "Sociology"; Rev. Dr. William Alger, "Universal Religion"; Edwin Meade, "Immanuel Kant"; Professor Thomas C. Wild, "Union for Practical Progress"; Frank B Sanborn, "The Humane treatment of Mental and Spiritual Aberrations"; Margaret B. Peeke from Sandusky, Ohio, "The Soul in its search after God"; and Abby Morton Diaz, "The Work of humanity for humanity" were among the "well known" presenters but the distinction of the summer school was of lecturers who were younger and less well known than those of the earlier Concord School of Philosophy maintained by the Transcendentalists previously which closed about 1887 and less about philosophy than of comparative study initially. The sessions were positively reviewed. Sanborn would soon be among the leaders operating at Greenacre. Professor Lewis G. Janes was there giving talks on "Darwin and Spencer", "Social Tendencies under Evolution" and "Life as a Fine Art" and would also soon take a leading role in developments as well. There was also something of a windstorm that year. The "school" had a winter session in Cambridge with several repeat appearances hosted by Sara Chapman Bull. Indeed, these winter sessions continued some years and came to be called the Cambridge Conferences directed by Janes.
1895 to 1899
An 1895 address book of Farmer's revealed she had contact information on a number of leaders of thought and religion in America. That summer among those that met at the conference center were evolutionists, and Farmer invited Lewis Janes to assist with the program development. Janes was a student of Herbert Spencer. An engine inventor also presented. The conference grew to the point the Inn itself was too small and a tent camp arose as well as buildings to provide shelter from rain or sun were added.In 1896, Sanborn organized an "Emerson Day" and it continued for more than a decade. That year a formal reunion of the Concord School of Philosophy was also held. In addition to the talks on art, actual musical concerts, painters, sculptors, poets began to make appearances at Greenacre. Strong calls for peace against war from the conference got printed in the Boston Evening Transcript.
The Monsalvat School for the Comparative Study of Religion, a progressive or liberal development seen against conservative religious experience, was established formally in 1896 as an institution hosted at Greenacre and the first director was Lewis Janes. Monsalvat was named after the sacred mountain in Wagner's Parsifal where the Holy Grail was kept, though it is most often spelled Montsalvat. However, Farmer and Janes differed often – Janes wanted academic credentials among his speakers and a businesslike plan for the economic solvency of the work by charging everyone rather than trusting on contributions. They had serious difficulty even agreeing on what they were talking about – "This difference of understanding could never have occurred between two men accustomed to business methods," Janes wrote in 1899. Farmer framed the school as a place for encounter between religious leaders for "a fuller realization" of unity among religions, and relied on generosity and enthusiasm to overcome the challenges of economy. Nevertheless, the school and Greenacre continue to operate and was noted in newspapers.
The August 1897 season opened with the new lecture hall the "Eirenion", and Sarah Farmer and Greenacre made the New York Times. A book was circulated in Japan about it too. Prominent Buddhist monk Anagarika Dharmapala stayed at Greenacre where he worked on practices himself and offered classes and talks on specific meditational disciplines as well as quotes on the teachings of the Buddha. He was enthusiastic about the kind of interfaith coming together process of Greenacre. Unitarian Alfred W. Martin closed the 1897 season with a talk "Universal Religion and the World's Religions", the theme of which became his life's work. Electrical engineers met at the conference center at least in 1897 as the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the electric tolley car.
The 1898 session on the Monsalvat school listed a variety of people including Janes himself on "Relation of Science to Religious Thought", Swami Abhedananda on "Vedanta philosophy and Religions of India", "Hebrew Prophets" by Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt, "Literature, Ethics and Philosophy of the Talmud" by Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, "Islam and the Koran" by Emil Nabokoff, "Philosophy and Religions of the Jains" by Vichand Raghavji Gandhi and others.
A diary of Charles W. Chesnutt noted he was a replacement speaker for Walter Hines Page for a talk in 1899 on the condition of African-Americans in the South, and commented on witnessing a diversity of clothing representing cultures of the world. Farmer's farewell address for the 1899 season was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript and contained warm thoughts of the development of the work and its ongoing goals. A beatific booklet Greenacre on the Piscataqua of some 22 pages with a section written in August 1899 and another in September 1900 was published. Baháʼís have identified a quote from the religion in the 1899 program and speculate Farmer had heard of the religion. However, in Farmer's life and the structure of Greenacre there was crisis. According to scholar Eric Leigh Schmidt Sanborn was working for a "creation of a new shrine" for transcendentalism akin to reforming the Concord school centered on Emerson and used his coverage work of Greenacre in newspaper stories to frame that development while at the same time Janes drifted explicitly from Farmer's approach by charging people for the classes and insisting on academic credentials and approaches to understand the diversity of religions. Janes' disconnect from Farmer had reached the point of shutting down the Monsalvat school. There were also tensions between Sanborn and Janes and among other groups. There had been speculation on Farmer being bought out, creditors were nervous, and her business partners had thought to force Farmer to sell out.