Mirrored from www.bahai-library.org
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THE IMMEDIATE EFFECT of the winning of the Ten Year Crusade and the establishment
of the Universal House of Justice was to give a powerful impetus to the advance
of the Cause. This time the progress — which affected virtually every aspect of
Bahá'í life — took the form of long-range developments that are best
appreciated when the entire period since 1963 is viewed as a whole. During
these crucial thirty-seven years the work proceeded rapidly forward along two
parallel tracks: the expansion and consolidation of the Bahá'í community itself
and, along with it, a dramatic rise in the influence the Faith came to exercise
in the life of society. While the range of Bahá'ía ctivities greatly
diversified, most such efforts tended to contribute directly to one or other of
the two main developments.
A decision taken by the House of Justice at an early point in the periodproved
crucial to all aspects of both teaching and administrative development.
Realization that there was no successor to Shoghi Effendibrought with it
recognition that neither would the appointment of new Handsof the Cause be any
longer possible. How essential the functions of thisinstitution are to the
progress of the Faith had been demonstrated withunforgettable force during the
anxious six years between 1957 and 1963.Accordingly, in pursuance of the
mandate authorizing it to bring
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into existence newBahá'í institutions,[119] as
the needs of the Causerequire, the House of Justice created, in June 1968, the
Continental Boardsof Counsellors. Empowered to extend into the future the
functions of theHands of the Cause for the protection and propagation of the
Faith, the newinstitution assumed responsibility for guiding the work of the
alreadyexisting Auxiliary Boards and joined National Assemblies in
shoulderingresponsibilities for the advancement of the Faith. The great
victoriescelebrated at the end of the Nine Year Plan in 1973, splendid in
themselves,reflected the extraordinary ease with which the new administrative
agencyhad taken up its duties and the eagerness with which it had been welcomed
bybelievers and Assemblies alike. The moment was marked by another
majordevelopment of the Administrative Order, the creation of the
InternationalTeaching Centre, the Body that would carry into the future certain
of theresponsibilities performed by the group of "Hands of the Cause
Residing inthe Holy Land", and from this point on coordinate the work of
the Boards ofCounsellors around the world.
Envisioning the course that the growth of the Cause would follow, ShoghiEffendi
had written of "the launching of worldwide enterprises destined tobe
embarked upon, in future epochs of that same [Formative] Age, by theUniversal
House of Justice, that will symbolize the unity and coordinate andunify the
activities of ... National Assemblies."[120]
These global undertakings beganin 1964 with the Nine Year Plan, to be followed
by a Five Year Plan (1974),a Seven Year Plan (1979), a Six Year Plan (1986), a
Three Year Plan (1993),a Four Year Plan (1996), and a Twelve Month Plan that
ended the century. Theshifts in emphasis that distinguished these successive
endeavours from oneanother provide a useful index to the growth that the Cause
was experiencingin these decades and the new opportunities and challenges that
this growthproduced. Far more important than the differences amongst them,
however, isthe fact that the activities called for in each Plan were extensions
ofinitiatives which had been set in motion by Shoghi Effendi, who in turn
hadseized up and elaborated strands woven by the Faith's Founders — thetraining
of Spiritual Assemblies; the translation, production anddistribution of
literature; the encouragement of universal participation bythe friends;
attention to the spiritual enrichment of
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Bahá'í life;efforts toward the involvement of the Bahá'í community in thelife
of society; the strengthening of Bahá'í family life; andthe education of
children and youth. While these various processes willcontinue indefinitely to
unfold new possibilities, the fact that eachoriginated in the creative impulse
of the Revelation itself lends toeverything the Bahá'í community does a
unifying force that isboth the secret and the guarantee of its ultimate
success.
The first two decades of the process were one of the most enriching periodsthat
the Bahá'í community has experienced. Within a remarkablyshort period of time,
the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies multipliedand the ethnic and cultural
diversity of the membership became an ever moredistinctive feature of Bahá'í
life. Although the breakdown ofsociety was creating problems for Bahá'í
administrativeinstitutions, a related effect was to generate a greatly
increased interestin the message of the Cause. At the outset, the community was
introduced tothe challenge of "teaching the masses". By 1967, it was
being called on "tolaunch, on a global scale and to every stratum of human
society, an enduringand intensive proclamation of the healing message that the
Promised One hascome...."[121]
As believers from urban centres set out on sustained campaigns to reach themass
of the world's peoples living in villages and rural areas, theyencountered a
receptivity to Bahá'u'lláh's message far beyondanything they had imagined
possible. While the response usually took formsvery different from the ones
with which the teachers had been familiar, thenew declarants were eagerly
welcomed. Tens of thousands of newBahá'ís poured into the Cause throughout
Africa, Asia andLatin America, often representing the greater part of whole
rural villages.The 1960s and 1970s were heady days for a Bahá'í communitymost
of whose growth outside of Iran had been slow and measured. To thefriends in
the Pacific went the great distinction of attracting into theCause the first
Head of State, His Highness Malietoa Tanumafili II of Samoa,a distinction for
which only future events will provide an adequateframe.
At the heart of the development, as has been the case in the life of theCause
from the outset, was the commitment made by the individual believer.Already,
during the ministry of Shoghi Effendi, far-sighted
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persons had taken theinitiative to reach indigenous populations in such
countries as Uganda,Bolivia and Indonesia. During the Nine Year Plan, ever
larger numbers ofsuch teachers were drawn into the work, particularly in India,
severalcountries in Africa, and most regions of Latin America, as well as
inislands of the Pacific, Alaska and among the native peoples of Canada andthe
rural black population of the southern United States. Pioneering broughtvital
support to the work, encouraging the emergence of groups of teachersamong the
indigenous believers themselves.
Even so, it soon became apparent that individual initiative alone,
howeverinspired and energetic, could not respond adequately to the
opportunitiesopening up. The result was to launch Bahá'í communities on awide
range of collective teaching and proclamation projects recalling theheroic days
of the dawn-breakers. Teams of ardent teachers found that it wasnow possible to
introduce the message of the Faith not merely to asuccession of inquirers, but
to entire groups and even whole communities.The tens of thousands became
hundreds of thousands. The Faith's growth meantthat members of Spiritual
Assemblies, whose experience had been limited toconfirming the understanding of
the Faith of individual applicants raised incultures of doubt or religious
fanaticism, had to adjust to expressions ofbelief on the part of whole groups
of people to whom religious awareness andresponse were normal features of daily
life.
No segment of the community made a more energetic or significantcontribution to
this dramatic process of growth than didBahá'í youth. In their exploits during
these crucial decades— as, indeed, throughout the entire history of the past
one hundred andfifty years — one is reminded again and again that the great
majorityof the band of heroes who launched the Cause on its course in the
middleyears of the nineteenth century were all of them young people. TheBáb
Himself declared His mission when He was twenty-five years old,and Anís, who
attained the imperishable glory of dying with his Lord,was only a youth. Quddús
responded to the Revelation at the age oftwenty-two. Zaynab, whose age was
never recorded, was a very young woman.Shaykh 'Alí, so greatly cherished by
both Quddús andMullá Husayn, was martyred at the age of twenty,
whileMuhammad-i-Báqir-Naqsh laid down his life when he was only
fourteen.Tahirih was in her twenties when she embraced the Báb's Cause.
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Following in the path that these extraordinary figures had opened, thousandsof
young Bahá'ís arose in subsequent years to proclaim themessage of the Faith
throughout all five continents and the scatteredislands of the globe. As an
international youth culture began to emerge insociety during the late nineteen
sixties and seventies, believers withtalent in music, drama and the arts
demonstrated something of what ShoghiEffendi had meant when he pointed out:
"That day will the Cause spread likewildfire when its spirit and teachings
are presented on the stage or in artand literature...."[122] The
spirit of zeal andenthusiasm characteristic of youth has also provided an
ongoing challenge tothe general body of the community to explore ever more
audaciously therevolutionary social implications of Bahá'u'lláh'steachings.
The burst of enrolments brought with it, however, equally great problems. Atthe
immediate level, the resources of Bahá'í communitiesengaged in the work were
soon overwhelmed by the task of providing thesustained deepening the masses of
new believers needed and the consolidationof the resulting communities and
Spiritual Assemblies. Beyond that, culturalchallenges like those encountered by
the early Persian believers who hadfirst sought to introduce the Faith in
Western lands now replicatedthemselves throughout the world. Theological and
administrative principlesthat might be of consuming interest to pioneers and
teachers were seldomthose that were central to the concern of new declarants
from very differentsocial and cultural backgrounds. Often, differences of view
about even suchelementary matters as the use of time or simple social
conventions createdgaps of understanding that made communication extremely
difficult.
Initially, such problems proved stimulating as both Bahá'íinstitutions and
individual believers struggled to find new ways of lookingat situations — new
ways, indeed, of understanding important passagesin the Bahá'í Writings
themselves. Determined efforts weremade to respond to the guidance of the World
Centre that expansion andconsolidation are twin processes that must go hand in
hand. Where hoped forresults did not readily materialize, however, a measure of
discouragementfrequently set in. The initial rapid rise in enrolment rates
slowed markedlyin many countries, tempting some Bahá'í institutions
andcommunities to turn back to more familiar activities and more
accessiblepublics.
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The principal effect of the setbacks, however, was that they brought home
tocommunities that the high expectations of the early years were in
somerespects quite unrealistic. Although the easy successes of the
initialteaching activities were encouraging, they did not, by themselves, build
aBahá'í community life that could meet the needs of its newmembers and be
self-generating. Rather, pioneers and new believers alikefaced questions for
which Bahá'í experience in Western lands— or even Iran — offered few answers.
How were Local SpiritualAssemblies to be established — and once established,
how were they tofunction — in areas where large numbers of new believers had
joined theCause overnight, simply on the strength of their spiritual
apprehension ofits truth? How, in societies dominated by men since the dawn of
time, werewomen to be accorded an equal voice? How was the education of large
numbersof children to be systematically addressed in cultural situations
wherepoverty and illiteracy prevailed? What priorities should guideBahá'í moral
teaching, and how could these objectives best berelated to prevailing
indigenous conventions? How could a vibrant communitylife be cultivated that
would stimulate the spiritual growth of its members?What priorities, too,
should be set with respect to the production ofBahá'í literature, particularly
given the sudden explosionthat had taken place in the number of languages
represented in thecommunity? How could the integrity of the Bahá'í
institutionof the Nineteen Day Feast be maintained, while opening this vital
activityto the enriching influence of diverse cultures? And, in all areas
ofconcern, how were the necessary resources to be recruited, funded,
andcoordinated?
The pressure of these urgent and interlocking challenges launched theBahá'í
world on a learning process that has proved to be asimportant as the expansion
itself. It is safe to say that during these yearsthere was virtually no type of
teaching activity, no combination ofexpansion, consolidation and proclamation,
no administrative option, noeffort at cultural adaptation that was not being
energetically tried in somepart of the Bahá'í world. The net result of the
experience wasan intensive education of a great part of the Bahá'í communityin
the implications of the mass teaching work, an education that could
haveoccurred in no other way. By its very nature, the process was largely
localand regional
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in focus,qualitative rather than quantitative in its gains, and incremental
ratherthan large-scale in the progress achieved. Had it not been for
thepainstaking, always difficult and often frustrating consolidation
workpursued during these years, however, the subsequent strategy
ofsystematizing the promotion of entry by troops would have had very littlewith
which to work.
The fact that the Bahá'í message was now penetrating the livesnot merely of
small groups of individuals but of whole communities also hadthe effect of
reviving a vital feature of an earlier stage in theadvancement of the Cause.
For the first time in decades, the Faith founditself once more in a situation
where teaching and consolidation wereinseparably bound up with social and
economic development. In the earlyyears of the century, under the guidance of
the Master and the Guardian, theIranian believers — denied the opportunity to
participate equally inwhatever limited benefits the society of the day offered
— had arisento painstakingly construct a comprehensive community life of a kind
beyondeither the need or the reach of the relatively isolated Bahá'ígroups
across North America and Western Europe. In Iran, spiritual and
moraladvancement, teaching activities, the creation of schools and clinics,
thebuilding of administrative institutions, and the encouragement ofinitiatives
aimed at economic self-sufficiency and prosperity — all hadbeen from an early
stage inseparable features of one organically unifiedprocess of development.
Now — in Africa, in Latin America, and parts ofAsia — the same challenges and
opportunities had re-emerged.
While social and economic development activities had long been under
way,particularly in Latin America and Asia, these had been isolated
projectscarried out by groups of believers under the guidance of individual
NationalAssemblies, and unrelated to any plan. In October 1983, however,Bahá'í
communities throughout the world were called on tobegin incorporating such
efforts into their regular programmes of work. AnOffice of Social and Economic
Development was created at the World Centre tocoordinate learning and help seek
financial support.
The decade that followed saw wide experimentation in a field of work forwhich
most Bahá'í institutions had little preparation. Whilestriving to benefit from
the models being tried by the many development
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agencies operating around theworld, Bahá'í communities faced the challenge of
relating whatthey found in various areas of concern — education, health,
literacy,agriculture and communications technology — to their understanding
ofBahá'í principles. The temptation was great, given themagnitude of the
resources being invested by governments and founda-tions,and the confidence
with which this effort was pursued, merely to borrowmethods current at the
moment or to adapt Bahá'í efforts topre-vailing theories. As the work evolved,
however, Bahá'íinstitutions began turning their attention to the goal of
devisingdevelopment paradigms that could assimilate what they were observing in
thelarger society to the Faith's unique conception of humanpotentialities.
Nowhere was the strategy of the successive Plans so impressively vindicatedas
was the case in India. The community there has today become a giant ofthe
Cause, numbering well over a million souls. Its work stretches acrossthe
expanse of a vast sub-continent, home to an immense diversity ofcultures,
languages, ethnic groups and religious traditions. In manyrespects, the
experience of this greatly blessed body of believersencapsulates the Bahá'í
world's struggles, experiments,setbacks and victories throughout these critical
three decades. The dramaticrise in enrolments had brought with it all of the problems
being encounteredelsewhere in the world, but on a massive scale. The long road
leading theIndian Bahá'í community to its present-day eminence was besetwith
the most painful difficulties, some of which threatened at times tooverwhelm
the administrative resources available. The victories won,however, provide a
foretaste of the confirmations that will in time blessthe efforts of Bahá'í
communities struggling with the samechallenges on other continents. By 1985,
the growth of the Faith in Indiahad reached the point where the needs and
opportunities of so many diverseregions called for more sharply focused
attention than the NationalSpiritual Assembly alone could provide. Thus was
born the new institution ofthe Regional Bahá'í Council, setting in motion the
process ofadministrative decentralization that has since proven so effective in
manyother lands.
In 1986, the expansion and consolidation taking place in India werebefittingly
crowned with the inauguration of the beautiful "Lotus
Temple".Although the project had raised optimistic expectations as to
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the impact itscompletion would have on public recognition of the Faith, the
reality hasinfinitely surpassed the brightest of such hopes. Today, India's
House ofWorship has become the foremost visitors' attraction on the
subcontinent,welcoming an average of over ten thousand visitors every day, and
featuringprominently in publications, films and television productions. The
interestaroused in a Faith that could inspire and embody itself in so magnificent
acreation has given new meaning to the description by 'Abdu'l-Bahá ofBahá'í
Temples as "silent teachers" of the Faith.
The progress of the Indian Bahá'í community, both in itsinternal development
and its relationship with the larger society, wasillustrated by a pioneering
initiative undertaken in November 2000 in thefield of social and economic
development. Taking advantage of the reputationit had deservedly won among
progressive circles in the country, the NationalSpiritual Assembly hosted, in
collaboration with the Bahá'íInternational Community's newly created Institute
for Studies in GlobalProsperity,[123]
asymposium on the subject of "Science, Religion and Development". The
projectengaged the participation of over one hundred of the most
influentialdevelopment organizations in the country and inspired national
mediacoverage. Marking out a distinctive Bahá'í contribution to thepromotion of
social advancement, the event set the stage for symposia of thesame kind in
Africa, Latin America and other regions, where creativeBahá'í communities can
help shape what may well become one ofthe Faith's major success stories.
During these same years, the Asian continent also saw the sudden emergenceof
the Malaysian Bahá'í community as an engine of theexpansion work, winning its
own goals with stunning speed and dispatchingpioneers and travelling teachers
to neighbouring lands. A development thatmade this dramatic advance possible
was the bonds of spiritual partnershipthat had been woven between believers of
Chinese and Indian backgrounds.Visitors to Malaysia spoke, with something
approaching awe, of the way inwhich the Malaysian community, although working
under many constraints anddisabilities, seemed to be the very embodiment of the
military metaphorswith which Shoghi Effendi's writings seek to capture the
spirit ofBahá'í teaching efforts.
Neither the world-wide growth of the Bahá'í community nor the
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process of learning it wasexperiencing, however, tell the whole story of these
tumultuous and creativedecades. When the history of the period is eventually
written, one of itsmost brilliant chapters will recount the spiritual victories
won byBahá'í communities, in Africa particularly, who survived war,terror,
political oppression and extreme privations, and who emerged fromthese tests
with their faith intact, determined to resume the interruptedwork of building a
viable Bahá'í collective life. Thecommunity in Ethiopia, homeland of one of the
world's oldest and richestcultural traditions, succeeded in maintaining both
the morale of its membersand the coherence of its administrative structures
under relentless pressurefrom a brutal dictatorship. Of the friends in other
countries on thecontinent, it may be truly said that their path of faithfulness
to the Causeled through a hell of suffering seldom equalled in modern history.
Theannals of the Faith possess few more moving testimonies to the sheer powerof
the spirit than the stories of courage and purity of heart emerging fromthe inferno
that engulfed the friends in what was then Zaire, stories thatwill inspire
generations to come and represent priceless contributions tothe creation of a
global Bahá'í culture. Such countries asUganda and Rwanda added unforgettable
achievements of their own to thisrecord of heroic struggle.
Inspiring, too, was the demonstration of the capacity for renewal that
isinherent in the Cause and which emerged in Cambodian refugee camps along
theThailand border. Through the heroic efforts of a handful of teachers,
LocalSpiritual Assemblies were established among people who had survived
acampaign of genocide almost beyond the capacity of the human heart
tocontemplate, who had lost countless loved ones as well as everything
theypossessed in the way of material security, but in whom still burned
thelonging of the human soul for spiritual truth. An extraordinary
achievementof a related kind was that of the Liberian Bahá'í community.Driven
from their homes into exile in neighbouring lands, many of theseintrepid believers
transported with them their whole community life, settingup Local Spiritual
Assemblies, carrying on teaching work, continuing theeducation of their
children, using their time to learn new skills, andfinding in music, dance and
drama powers of the spirit that helped keep hopealive until they could return
to their country.
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As the process of education in methods of mass teaching was taking place,the
Faith's membership was being transformed. In 1992, theBahá'í world celebrated
its second Holy Year, this one markingthe centenary of the ascension of
Bahá'u'lláh and thepromulgation of His Covenant. More eloquently than words
could have done,the ethnic, cultural and national diversity of the 27,000
believers whogathered at the Javits Convention Center in New York City —
togetherwith the thousands present at nine auxiliary conferences in
Bucharest,Buenos Aires, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Panama City, Singapore,
Sydney andWestern Samoa — provided compelling evidence of the success ofBahá'í
teaching work around the world. An affecting momentoccurred when the network of
satellite broadcasts linked the gathering inMoscow with the one taking place in
New York City, and Bahá'íseverywhere thrilled to greetings in Russian — the
common language ofsome 280 million people from at least fifteen countries —
thatproclaimed a new phase in humanity's response toBahá'u'lláh.
In the Moscow and Bucharest conferences could be glimpsed the rebirth ofBahá'í
communities that had been nearly extinguished under theoppression of the Soviet
regime and its collaborators. One of the last threesurviving Hands of the
Cause, 'Alí-Akbar Furutan, who had livedin Russia, had the great joy of
returning to Moscow, at the age ofeighty-six, for the inaugural election of the
National Assembly of thatcountry.Local Spiritual Assemblies sprang up in all of
the newly openedlands, and six new National Spiritual Assemblies were elected.
In a briefspace of time, pioneering and teaching activities in countries along
thesouthern rim of the former Soviet empire — where the Faith had beensimilarly
proscribed — soon brought into existence still more LocalAssemblies and eight
additional National Spiritual Assemblies.Bahá'í lit-
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erature was translated into a range of new languages,energetic steps were taken
to secure civil recognition ofBahá'í institutions, and representatives from
Eastern Europeand the countries of the now vanished Soviet bloc began
participating withtheir fellow believers in the external affairs work of the
Faith at theinternational level.
Gradually, too, the message of the Faith began to find a welcome in manyparts
of China and among Chinese populations abroad. Bahá'íliterature was translated
into Mandarin, university audiences in manyChinese cities extended invitations
to Bahá'í scholars, aCentre for Bahá'í Studies was established at the
prestigiousInstitute of World Religions in Beijing,[124]
which operates within theAcademy of Social Sciences, and many Chinese
dignitaries have been generousin their appreciation of the principles they
discover in the Writings. Inlight of the high praise of the Master for Chinese
civilization and its rolein humanity's future, one begins to anticipate the
creative contributionthat believers from this background will make to the
intellectual and morallife of the Cause in the years ahead.[125]
The significance of these three decades of struggle, learning and
sacrificebecame apparent when the moment arrived to devise a global Plan that
wouldcapitalize on the insights gained and the resources that had been
developed.The Bahá'í community that set out on the Four Year Plan in1996 was a
very different one from the eager, but new and stillinexperienced body of
believers who, in 1964, had ventured out on the firstof such undertakings that
were no longer sustained by the guiding hand ofShoghi Effendi. By 1996, it had
become possible to see all of the distinctstrands of the enterprise as integral
parts of one coherent whole.
With this education had also come a much needed perspective on what had
beenaccomplished. The expansion of the Cause over the preceding three
decadeshad represented the response of several million human beings who had
beenaffected by their encounter with the message of Bahá'u'lláh tothe point
that they were moved to identify themselves in varying degreeswith the Cause of
God. They were aware that a new Messenger of the Divinehad appeared, had caught
something of the spirit of faith, and had beenstrongly affected by the Bahá'í
teaching of the oneness ofhumankind. A small minority among them were able to
go beyond this point.For the most part, however, these friends were essentially
recipients ofteaching programmes conducted by teachers and pioneers from
outside. One ofthe great strengths of the masses of humankind from among whom
the newlyenrolled believers came lies in an openness of heart that has
thepotentiality to generate lasting social transformation. The greatesthandicap
of these same populations has so far been a passivity learnedthrough
generations of exposure to outside in-
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fluences which, no matter how great their materialadvantages, have pursued
agendas that were often related only tangentially— if at all — to the realities
of the needs and daily lives ofindigenous peoples.
The Four Year Plan, which was a major advance on those that immediatelypreceded
it, was designed to take advantage of the opportunities andinsights thus
offered. The goal of advancing the process of entry by troopsbecame the
single-minded aim of the enterprise. The lessons that had beenlearned during
earlier Plans now placed the emphasis on developing thecapacities of believers
— wherever they might be — so that allcould arise as confident protagonists of
the Faith's mission. The instrumentto accomplish this objective had been
undergoing steady refinement duringthe earlier Plans and had demonstrated its
efficacy.
As with most of the other methods and activities by which the Faith
wasadvancing, this instrument had likewise been conceived decades earlier bythe
Master, who calls in the Tablets of the Divine Plan for
deepenedbelievers to "gather together the youths of the love of God in
schools ofinstruction and teach them all the divine proofs and irrefragable
arguments,explain and elucidate the history of the Cause, and interpret also
theprophecies and proofs which are recorded and are extant in the divine
booksand epistles regarding the manifestation of the Promised One...."[126] Pioneering work
andorganized training of this nature had already been done in Iran, during
theearly years of the century, by the much-loved Sadru's-Sudúr.[127] As
the years passed,winter and summer schools had multiplied, and successive Plans
alsoencouraged experimentation in the development of Bahá'íinstitutes.
By far the most significant advance in this latter respect occurred over
aperiod of more than two decades, beginning in the 1970s in Colombia, where
asystematic and sustained programme of education in the Writings was devisedand
soon adopted in neighbouring countries. Influenced by the Colombiancommunity's
parallel efforts in the field of social and economicdevelopment, the
breakthrough was all the more impressive in the fact thatit was achieved
against a background of violence and lawlessness that wasderanging the life of
the surrounding society.
The Colombian achievement proved a source of great inspiration and exampleto
Bahá'í communities elsewhere in the world. By the
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time the Four Year Plan ended,over one hundred thousand believers were involved
world-wide in theprogrammes of the more than three hundred permanent training
institutes. Inaccomplishing this goal, a majority of regional institutes had
carried theprocess a stage further by creating networks of "study
circles" whichutilize the talents of believers to replicate the work of
the institute at alocal level. It is already apparent that the success of the
institute workhas significantly reinforced the long-term process by which a
universalsystem of Bahá'í education will take shape.[128]
Although the struggles of these decades were relatively modest — atleast when
set against the standard of the Heroic Age — they providethe present generation
of Bahá'ís with a window on what ShoghiEffendi describes as the cyclical nature
of the Faith's history: "a seriesof internal and external crises, of
varying severity, devastating in theirimmediate effects, but each mysteriously
releasing a corresponding measureof divine power, lending thereby a fresh
impulse to its unfoldment."[129]
These words put intoperspective the succession of efforts, experiments,
heartbreaks andvictories that characterized the beginning of large-scale
teaching, andprepared the Bahá'í community for the much greater
challengesahead.
Throughout history, the mass of humanity have been, at best, spectators atthe
advance of civilization. Their role has been to serve the designs ofwhatever
elite had temporarily assumed control of the process. Even thesuccessive
Revelations of the Divine, whose objective was the liberation ofthe human
spirit, were, in time, taken captive by "the insistent self ",were
frozen into man-made dogma, ritual, clerical privilege and sectarianquarrels,
and reached their end with their ultimate purposefrustrated.
Bahá'u'lláh has come to free humanity from this long bondage,and the closing
decades of the twentieth century were devoted by thecommunity of His followers
to creative experimentation with the means bywhich His objective can be
realized. The prosecution of the Divine Planentails no less than the
involvement of the entire body of humankind in thework of its own spiritual,
social and intellectual development. The trialsencountered by the Bahá'í
community in the decades since 1963are
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those necessary ones thatrefine endeavour and purify motivation so as to render
those who would takepart worthy of so great a trust. Such tests are the surest
evidences of thatprocess of maturation which 'Abdu'l-Bahá so
confidentlydescribed:
Some movements appear, manifest a brief period of activity, thendiscontinue. Others show forth a greater measure of growth and strength, butbefore attaining mature development, weaken, disintegrate and are lost inoblivion.... There is still another kind of movement or cause which from avery small, inconspicuous beginning goes forward with sure and steadyprogress, gradually broadening and widening until it has assumed universaldimensions. The Bahá'í Movement is of this nature.[130]
NOTES
[119] The
Establishment of the Universal Houseof Justice, compiled by the Research
Department of the Universal Houseof Justice (Oakham: Bahá'í Publishing Trust,
1984), p.17.
[120]
Universal House of Justice, Messagesfrom the Universal House of Justice,
1963-1986: The Third Epoch of theFormative Age, op. cit., p. 52.
[121] ibid.,
p. 104.
[122] Bahá'í
News, no. 73,May 1933 (Wilmette: National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahá'ísof the United States), p. 7.
[123]
The Institute was created by the UniversalHouse of Justice in 1998 as an agency
of the Bahá'íInternational Community, reporting to the House of Justice through
theOffice of Public Information. Its mandate describes it as an
agency"dedicated to researching both the spiritual and material
underpinnings ofhuman knowledge and the processes of social advancement."
[124]
The Centre's purpose is described asundertaking "research in a systematic
manner on the Bahá'íFaith, including its religious culture, humanitarian spirit
and religiousethics."
[125]
Cited in Star of the West, vol. 13,no. 7 (October 1922), pp. 184-186.
[126]
'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of theDivine Plan, op. cit., p. 54.
[127]
Beginning in approximately 1904, a learnedIranian believer known as
Sadru's-Sudúr established the firstteacher-training class for Bahá'í youth in
Tehran with'Abdu'l-Bahá's encouragement. The classes met daily, and
thegraduates, who had been trained in the beliefs of other religions as well
asvarious aspects of the Bahá'í Faith, contributed greatly tothe expansion and
consolidation of the Cause in their native land.
[128]
The model in question is the "RuhiInstitute", whose materials and
methods have been adopted by manyBahá'í communities throughout the world. Its
guidingphilosophy is an integration of service activities with focused study of
theBahá'í Writings themselves. Organized as a series of levels ofstudy, which
form a central "trunk" of basic understanding of the
spiritualessentials taught by Bahá'u'lláh, the system allows for thealmost
infinite development by various user communities of branching subsetsthat serve
particular needs.
[129]
Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, op.cit., p. xiii.
[130]
'Abdu'l-Bahá, The Promulgation ofUniversal Peace, op. cit., pp. 43-44.