My own first impression, when I read this first newsletter in the course of my own research was how similar the “simple and elegant” rules are to the way talisman9@yahoogroups.com is even to this day.

The other initial impression is that the young intellectuals that set up the Study Class already had reason to be concerned about accusations that they were not, in one way or another, “good Baha’is” because of the nature of their intellectual discourse.

Thanks for posting that 1974 letter; I’d never seen it before. When I wrote my short article on the Study Class, I had the impression that they started that they had begun in 1976, with this first newsletter. I later heard from one participant that she had been going to them in the early ’70s, and had not found them all that much different from other deepenings held in the LA area at the time. There is some history here we don’t know about.

Love, Karen