The National Spiritual Assembly

A C ompi lation Prepa red by t he Resea rch Depa r t ment of t he Un iver sa l Hou se of Ju st ic e October 2023

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

Bahá’í Publishing 1233 Central St, Evanston, Illinois 60201 Copyright © 2023 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States All rights reserved. Published 2023 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ 26 25 24 23 4 3 2 1 ISBN 978-1-61851-243-7

Cover and book design by Patrick Falso

CONTENTS A Pivotal Instrument of the Administrative Order............1 The Administrative Order: Nucleus and Pattern of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh................................. 1 Role of the National Spiritual Assembly......................... 8 An Ethos of Loving Service........................................... 12 Interdependence of the Elected and the Appointed...... 20 Facilitating an Evolving Framework for Action...............31 Evolution of the Administrative Order and its Institutions..............................................................31 A Learning Mode.......................................................... 36 Building Institutional Capacity and Developing Human Resources................................................... 47 Regional Bahá’í Councils.................................... 47 The Training Institute......................................... 54 Local Spiritual Assemblies................................... 58 The Institution of the Fund.................................61 Releasing the Society-Building Power of the Cause.........67 Propagation of Divine Teachings.................................. 67 Contributing to Social Transformation......................... 70 Social Action....................................................... 70 Involvement in the Discourses of Society............ 78 v

CONTENTS

Spiritual Health and Vitality of the Bahá’í Community................................................. 83 The Three Protagonists...................................................93

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A PIVOTAL INSTRUMENT OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER The Administrative Order: Nucleus and Pattern of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.

(Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, par. 181) [1] It should be remembered by every follower of the Cause that the system of Bahá’í administration is not an innovation imposed arbitrarily upon the Bahá’ís of the world since the Master’s passing, but derives its authority from the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is specifically prescribed in unnumbered Tablets, and rests in some of its essential features upon the explicit provisions of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. It thus unifies and correlates the principles separately laid down by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and is indissolubly bound with the essential

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verities of the Faith. To dissociate the administrative principles of the Cause from the purely spiritual and humanitarian teachings would be tantamount to a mutilation of the body of the Cause, a separation that can only result in the disintegration of its component parts, and the extinction of the Faith itself.

(Shoghi Effendi, from a letter dated 27 February 1929, in The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: Selected Letters (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1991), p. 5) [2] The Administrative Order which lies embedded in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, and which the American believers have championed and are now establishing, should, under no circumstances, be identified with the principles underlying present-day democracies. Nor is it identical with any purely aristocratic or autocratic form of government. The objectionable features inherent in each of these political systems are entirely avoided. It blends, as no system of human polity has as yet achieved, those salutary truths and beneficial elements which constitute the valuable contributions which each of these forms of government have made to society in the past.

Consultation, frank and unfettered, is the bedrock of this unique Order. Authority is concentrated in the hands of the elected members of the National Assembly. Power and initiative are primarily vested in the entire body of the believers acting through their local representatives. To generate those forces which must give birth to the body of their national administrators, and to confer, freely and fully and at fixed intervals, with both the incoming and outgoing National Assemblies, are the twofold functions, the supreme responsibility and sole prerogative of the delegates assembled in Convention. Nothing short

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of close and constant interaction between these various organs of Bahá’í administration can enable it to fulfil its high destiny.

(From a postscript by Shoghi Effendi appended to a letter dated 18 November 1933 written on his behalf to a National Spiritual Assembly) [3] Dearly-beloved friends! The onrushing forces so miraculously released through the agency of two independent and swiftly successive Manifestations are now under our very eyes and through the care of the chosen stewards of a farflung Faith being gradually mustered and disciplined. They are slowly crystallizing into institutions that will come to be regarded as the hall-mark and glory of the age we are called upon to establish and by our deeds immortalize. For upon our present-day efforts, and above all upon the extent to which we strive to remodel our lives after the pattern of sublime heroism associated with those gone before us, must depend the efficacy of the instruments we now fashion—instruments that must erect the structure of that blissful Commonwealth which must signalize the Golden Age of our Faith.

(Shoghi Effendi, from a letter dated 8 February 1934, in The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 98) [4] Let no one, while this System is still in its infancy, misconceive its character, belittle its significance or misrepresent its purpose. The bedrock on which this Administrative Order is founded is God’s immutable Purpose for mankind in this day.

The Source from which it derives its inspiration is no one less than Bahá’u’lláh Himself. Its shield and defender are the embattled hosts of the Abhá Kingdom. . . . The pillars that sustain its

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authority and buttress its structure are the twin institutions of the Guardianship and of the Universal House of Justice. The central, the underlying aim which animates it is the establishment of the New World Order as adumbrated by Bahá’u’lláh.

The methods it employs, the standard it inculcates, incline it to neither East nor West, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither rich nor poor, neither white nor colored. Its watchword is the unification of the human race; its standard the “Most Great Peace”; its consummation the advent of that golden millennium—the Day when the kingdoms of this world shall have become the Kingdom of God Himself, the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh.

(Shoghi Effendi, from a letter dated 8 February 1934, in The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 156–157) [5] In emphasizing its distinctiveness, Shoghi Effendi has pointed out that “this Administrative Order is fundamentally different from anything that any Prophet has previously established, inasmuch as Bahá’u’lláh has Himself revealed its principles, established its institutions, appointed the person to interpret His Word and conferred the necessary authority on the body designed to supplement and apply His legislative ordinances.” In another statement, he maintains that “It would be utterly misleading to attempt a comparison between this unique, this divinelyconceived Order and any of the diverse systems which the minds of men, at various periods of their history, have contrived for the government of human institutions.” “Such an attempt,” he felt, “would in itself betray a lack of complete appreciation of the excellence of the handiwork of its great Author.”

(The Universal House of Justice, from a message dated 29 December 1988 to the Bahá’ís of the United States of America) [6] 4

End of this sample.

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