She's anchored Lincoln’s Baha’i community for 30 plus years

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By BOB REEVES/Lincoln Journal Star

Wherever they are in the world, followers of the Baha’i Faith typically meet in small groups in people’s homes. They share information about  their faith primarily by word of mouth.

For more than 30 years, Ruth Hansen has been an anchor of the Baha’i community in Lincoln.  Most Sunday nights, a “fireside,” informal gathering of Baha’is is held in her home. There being no clergy or office staff, Hansen’s phone number has long been the published contact for Baha’is here.

“That’s because many of the other members were students, who came and went, but  we were always here,” she said in her typically modest way. 

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Ruth Hansen has a portrait of Abdu'l Baha, son of Baha'u'llah, on a table by her living room chair. (Bob Reeves)

Ruth Hansen has a portrait of Abdu'l Baha, son of Baha'u'llah, on a table by her living room chair. (Bob Reeves)

She and her husband, Don, made their home a center for the local Baha’i community until his death in 1989, and she has continued that tradition.

“Like so many others, I became a Baha’i at her house,” said Doug Boyd, who has been a Baha’i since 1982. “I’d venture to say more than 100 people — maybe closer to 200 — became Baha’is at her house, over 30 years.  Her house has been a social center for Baha’is over the years.”

In March, local Baha’is hosted a party to celebrate Hansen’s 90th birthday. She’s still very active, as a member of the local Baha’i Spiritual Assembly and in many other interfaith and peace-related organizations. 

“You keep active by being active,” she said.  “The only thing is, my knees don’t work right.  I take vitamins, I eat healthy and I’ve never drinked or smoked.”

Hansen grew up in North Dakota on a farm near the Canadian border.  “My folks were homesteaders,” she said.  “North Dakota was one of the last places that was homesteaded.”

Her grandparents on both sides were from Norway. 

Like most Scandinavians, her family was Lutheran, but her parents attended a Presbyterian church — so that gave her a more open-minded attitude toward religion, even as a child.  She attended a one-room school part of the time, and in other years rode horseback to school in the small town of Ambrose, N.D.

For high school she lived with an aunt in Ambrose, where she attended a Presbyterian Sunday school, then a youth group in a Lutheran church where the pastor preached against card-playing and dancing — but many parishioners did both anyway. 

Early in life, Hansen said, she began to question some of the churches’ doctrines.  “My Sunday school teacher confused me by talking about both God and Jesus being divine, yet saying there was only one God,” she said.  “That’s when I began to wonder.”

She remembers her father once saying, “I don’t care what the minister says, I don’t think some poor black kid in Africa is going to go to hell because he didn’t have water sprinkled on his head.’”

“I wondered why we all went to different churches on Sundays, and they all were struggling to keep going.  Why couldn’t we all get together?” Hansen said.

She went to college at North Dakota Agricultural College in Fargo, where she majored in math and science. 

“The first time I heard about the Baha’i faith was when I was on a bus in Chicago, and we passed that beautiful Baha’i temple in Willmette.  I asked what it was, and the bus driver said, it’s a religion that believes in the unity of all religions.”

That idea stuck in her mind, causing her to gravitate to the Baha’i faith many years later.

After graduating from college, she taught high school for a while, then World War II began and she got a job as an observer for the U.S. Weather Bureau, putting up weather balloons and recording field data for weather reports.  She became a war-time bride, moving around the country to Army bases where Don was stationed. 

After the war, they lived in Illinois and Wisconsin and eventually came to Lincoln in the late 1960s. They usually attended Presbyterian churches, but Hansen read some articles about the Baha’is and continued to be curious about other religions. 

In Lincoln she found a telephone directory listing for Jeanne Jeffers as a local Baha’i contact.  Hansen called her, and Jeffers invited her to a fireside — an informal meeting where she  could learn more about the religion.

“I told my husband we were invited just to learn about it, and he said, ‘It won’t hurt to find out, so let’s go,’” she said.

They began attending regularly, and after several months of studying the teachings of Baha’i founder Baha’u’llah and other Baha’i writings, both she and Don formally adopted the new faith.

“It seemed like it was answering a lot of questions for me,” she said, adding she was impressed by Baha’i teachings that all religions teach the same moral principles  — such as honesty, integrity, generosity and truthfulness — and all point to the same spiritual reality. Baha’is believe that Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Buddha, Krishna and other prophets are all manifestations of the same God.  Baha’u’llah, who lived from 1817-1892, is the latest manifestation, but more will come in the future, she said.

“We as individuals also reflect the attributes of God, but we’ve got a lot of smudge and mud on us,” Hansen said.  “We’re supposed to work on that to become more pure, and better people.”

Not long after becoming a Baha’i, she was elected to the local Baha’i Spiritual Assembly and has served on it ever since.  The assembly oversees the activities of Baha’is in the Lincoln area, provides for classes for children, study groups for adults, weekly firesides and feast days, and approves marriages and divorces.  The Baha’i faith has no clergy, so it relies entirely on volunteers, Hansen said.

For 20 years, Hansen served as a delegate to the National Assembly of the Baha’is. “That gave me an opportunity to meet Baha’is from all over the United States,” she said.

A big appeal of the Baha’i faith, Hansen said, is its open and inclusive attitude toward people of all religions and cultures.  Over the years, people of many backgrounds have participated in the local group, and in recent years many immigrants and refugees from Iran and Iraq have joined the local Baha’i community.

Hansen also was active in the Lincoln Interfaith Council for many years and currently is part of a group seeking to create a new interfaith group to replace it.   Through Hansen’s efforts, the council sponsored several events that brought people from many religions together to share information about their teachings and practices, as well as showing off the art, music, food and clothing of many cultures. 

Hansen also has been an active member of the United Nations Association of Lincoln, and was a founding member of Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination. 

“She’s involved in just about everything that brings people together,” said Stephanie Dohner, a member of South Street Temple and another local promoter of interfaith activities.

“She’s one of the most active teachers” of the Baha’i faith, said Terry Johnson, who has been a Baha’i for 40 years. He noted that Hansen often wears a button with a quote from Baha’u’llah on it, to spark people to ask questions about the faith.

“Ruth is always friendly, she likes to have a good time, and she’s always willing to help people,”  he said.  “She always has a positive attitude, and people feel comfortable discussing their problems with her.”

Last year Boyd and his wife, Mimi Schneider, were married in a simple Baha’i ceremony at Hansen’s home.  “She’s had a lot of marriages at her house over the years,” he said.

Boyd, a former staff person for the Interfaith Council, credits Hansen with encouraging his own involvement in interfaith activities.

“She’s old enough to be my mom, but I don’t think of her that way,” he added.  “I just think of her as my friend, Ruth.”

Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or breeves@journalstar.com.