Reddit reviews Making the Crooked Straight

Here's one:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Crooked-Straight-Contribution-Apologetics/dp/0853984433

The original German:

http://www.udoschaefer.com/books/german/desinformation-als-methode.html?L=-0

The general strategy has been to ignore them - responding usually only legitimizes them and further encourages their efforts. In this particular case though, the Evangelical church of Germany financed and distributed an anti-Baha'i book, so it was felt that a response was needed.

Here's a little more background information.

You might find "Baha'i scholarship" to be a very sensitive topic.

1. There isn't much official support for individual initiative translating Baha'i writings from Persian and Arabic. Some Baha'is have been asked not to release their translations of certain texts for instance. So just be warned.
   
   
2. Apologetics. There are some contributions to it, I don't know how useful it is to try to convince people who are hostile to the Baha'i Faith. There is the massive Making the Crooked Straight which I've never heard of anyone actually reading. I'm sure it was a noble enterprise to write this, but not sure what affect it had on the world.
   
   
3. Seems Baha'is don't do enough of this - I hear about all these teachings for the future or the potential for the future of the Baha'i faith, but rarely hear about the teachings being used to address humanity's needs now. There is often this "oh the old world is disintegrating, we have to build a new world!" excuse but I find it kind of sad and defeatist.
   
   
4. History. Someone else mentioned this. There is perhaps very small room for some specific issues for the study of Baha'i history, but from what I understand, any officially-sanctioned Baha'i history must conform with the narratives in the Dawn Breakers and God Passes By. There are massive works in Persian like Fazel Mazandarani's 9 volume History of the Manifestation of Truth. That would be incredible to have in English, but I don't think a translation would be officially sanctioned, I've heard some of it might deviate from Dawn Breakers. Maybe someone could write a modern history of the Baha'i Faith maybe after the passing of the Guardian and it would be very interesting.