Source: The Houston Chronicle

On December 23, 2000, The Houston Chronicle reported the meeting of the Seventh World Zoroastrian Congress in Houston. On the agenda was the issue of "keeping the faith alive" among the shrinking numbers of Zoroastrians worldwide. Facing "challenges from cultural assimilation and intermarriage with people of other faiths," membership has shrunk to 250,000, 500 of whom live in the Houston area. "More than 2,000 people from more than 15 countries, including Iran, India, France, Germany and Bangladesh, will attend the congress, which will be the first held in North America," reports the Chronicle. The Persian prophet Zoroaster is credited with developing this monotheistic religion 2500 years ago. He "taught that there were good and evil, and a heaven and a hell, radically new concepts for that day...Zoroaster left no detailed moral code in his teachings, so the individual must resort to intelligent reflection." The practices and rituals of the religion, such as keeping a light burning at home and speaking in the dead language of Avestan, "are being challenged by modernity and local culture." The important thing, however, says one Houston Zoroastrian from India, is that "the tenets of the faith are fixed and universal."