In the West, Baha'ism had established itself as a moderately-successful middle-class cult, but it remained too peripheral to attract serious attention within the academic world.

In the West, Baha'ism had established itself as a moderately-successful middle-class cult, but it remained too peripheral to attract serious attention within the academic world. It had become far too Westernized in its modern phase to hold much appeal for orientalists; its pretensions to the status of a 'new world religion' carried little weight with scholars in religious studies working within the major traditions; and sociologists of religion had not yet developed a serious interest in non-Christian sects or what are now termed 'new religious movements'. The religion's adherents wrote plenty of books and pamphlets, of course, but these contributed next to nothing to a real understanding of the subject, being directed almost exclusively to apologetic, devotional, didactic, or organizational ends.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982