The Bahai Faith was originated in the second half of the 19th century, which was a time of great efervescence and shock from the confrontation between the wider awareness of scientific findings and of religious beliefs worldwide.
Roughly the same time period gave us an impressive array of other ambitious, innovative, daring doctrines that might well have been unworkable before that development, if for no other reason because there simply wasn't enough awareness of other world doctrines. Many of those, including the Bahai Faith, had some form or another of attempts at being all-encompassing or, perhaps more often, all-explaining. It was the time of the Golden Dawn, of Allan Kardec, of H.P. Blavatsky.
From where I stand, most or perhaps all of those movements were largely motivated by the desire to appease a deep disconfort that came with the realization that then-current views and models were simply not very good at explaining the actual variety of stances and beliefs worldwide. Perhaps unavoidably, an urge arose to supplement those views so that they could resume their role of providing safe, reliable explanations of how the world was and how we should deal with it.
One of the manifestations of that urge was, indeed, a sense of urgency - a craving for quick answers to restore the confort of understanding how things were. Some of that craving channeled itself into renewed reverence and greater expectations towards science and the people who were perceived to speak with its authority.
Things are, of course, very different now. There are many reasons why, but I think that it is fairly enlightening to focus on the cultural shock and grim realization that came worldwide during roughly the time of World War I. The time period of Abdul Baha's role in the Bahai Faith was roughly 1892-1921, if I am not mistaken, and coincided well with that period.
World War I was noteworthy, among other reasons, for how deeeply deluded the participating nations were about their own abilities and the reach of their destructive power. I find it illustrative that it was the first conflict to seriously indicate to the British how outdated their proud Cavalry was in the time of widespread, long-range military firearms. It was a series of bitter, bloody frustrations to all people involved, as semester after semester followed with ever grimmer degregation of everyone's dignity and hope. It was the conflict that taught people very sharply that war was not something to look forward to.
I happen to believe that a big part of it was that World War I was made possible by a cultural environment that sort of assumed that everyone was destined to greater reach, greater prosperity, greater renown, and changed that environment something fierce, as so many promises made or implied by so many leaders turned to literal dust and smoke. Overall optimism, however naive, was certainly among the victims of that conflict. And it was a conflict that involved a lot indeed of evidence that science can be used for destructive ends, and that political leaders should not always be trusted. That has been a recurring situation since.
