The Bahá'í Faith is the youngest of the world's independent religions. Its founder, Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892), is regarded by Bahá'ís as the most recent in the line of Messengers of God that stretches back beyond recorded time and that includes Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad.

The central theme of Bahá'u'lláh's message is that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification in one global society. God, Bahá'u'lláh said, has set in motion historical forces that are breaking down traditional barriers of race, class, creed, and nation and that will, in time, give birth to a universal civilization. The principal challenge facing the peoples of the earth is to accept the fact of their oneness and to assist the processes of unification.

The Promise of World Peace: To the Peoples of the World addresses humanity’s coming of age, the spiritual roots of peace, the path to world order, the construction of a peaceful global civilization, and the basis of human happiness.

One of the purposes of the Bahá'í Faith is to help make this possible. A worldwide community of some five million Bahá'ís, representative of most of the nations, races and cultures on earth, is working to give Bahá'u'lláh's teachings practical effect. Their experience will be a source of encouragement to all who share their vision of humanity as one global family and the earth as one homeland.

Bahá'u'lláh taught that there is one God whose successive revelations of His will to humanity have been the chief civilizing force in history. The agents of this process have been the Divine Messengers whom people have seen chiefly as the founders of separate religious systems but whose common purpose has been to bring the human race to spiritual and moral maturity.

Humanity is now coming of age. It is this that makes possible the unification of the human family and the building of a peaceful, global society. Among the principles which the Baha'i Faith promotes as vital to the achievement of this goal are

• the abandonment of all forms of prejudice
• assurance to women of full equality of opportunity with men
• recognition of the unity and relativity of religious truth
• the elimination of extremes of poverty and wealth
• the realization of universal education
• the responsibility of each person to independently search for truth
• the establishment of a global commonwealth of nations
• recognition that true religion is in harmony with reason and the pursuit of scientific knowledge

Further Reading

The Destiny of America and the Promise of World Peace
At this time of world turmoil, the United States Bahá’í community offers a perspective on the destiny of America as the promoter of world peace.

The Vision of Race Unity
The Vision of Race Unity addresses racism as the most challenging issue facing the United States. In no other country is the promise of organic unity more immediately demonstrable than in the United States because it is a microcosm of the diverse populations of the earth. Yet this promise remains largely unrealized because of the endemic racism across the nation. The economic, social and spiritual development of this nation depends on the individuals comprising it to have a change of heart.

Two Wings of a Bird: The Equality of Women and Men
Two Wings of a Bird addresses the equality of women and men and proposes that once women obtain full and equal participation in all spheres of life the ultimate establishment of a united world will occur.

Who Is Writing the Future? Reflections of the Twentieth Century
This statement of the Bahá'í International Community's Office of Public Information, released in February 1999, examines the events of the twentieth century in the light of Bahá'u'lláh's teachings and relates these developments to the challenges facing humanity at century's end.

The Prosperity of Humankind
This statement of the Bahá'í International Community's Office of Public Information, released in January 1995 in preparation for the United Nations World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, examines prevailing attitudes and practices in social and economic development. It redefines the roles of all those involved and questions underlying assumptions about the nature of true global prosperity.

Unity of the Human Race
In 1936, on the eve of the second World War, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi, wrote a letter to the Bahá'ís of the Western world in which he outlined the Bahá'í perspective on the establishment of a future global commonwealth. This visionary document, which reiterates and develops Bahá'u'lláh's teachings about the next stage in the development of human civilization, still reads as though it were composed yesterday.