Century of Light

ter's Divine Plan. In Persia, the development was already well advanced. Directed first by Bahá'u'lláh and subsequently by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a corps of especially designated teachers-mub

which was already an established feature of Persian Bahá'í cons

als by such outstanding individuals as Lua Getsinger, May Maxwell and Martha Root. Merely to mention these nam

d in this field. They strive harder in guiding the peoples of the world, and the

ol provided the infant Bahá'í community with a forum for the introduction of the Faith to influential thinkers; of Sara Lady Blomfield, whose social position lent added force to the ardour with which she championed the teachings; of Marion Jack, immortalized by Shoghi Effendi as a model for Bahá'í pioneers; of Laura Dreyfus-Barney, who gave the Faith the priceless collection

or this day. The courage shown by this lone woman in publicly declaring her faith, through the letters she fearlessly addressed to the editors of se

amatically changed the latter situation. As Local Spiritual Assemblies came into being, goals were set, resources were made available to support individual teaching efforts, and those who declared their faith found themselves participating in the many activi

f these communications, however, now became those addressed to National and Local Spiritual Assemblies. Their effect was intensified by the stream of returning pilgrims who shared insights gained by direct contact with the Centre of the Cause. Through these connections every individual believer was encouraged to see himself or herself as an in

eir community life, they can and indeed must in a world polluted with its incurable corruptions, paralyzed by its haunting fears, torn by its devastating hatreds, and languishing under the weight of its appalling miseries d

itutions were "the visible symbols of its [the Faith's] undoubted sovereignty", the teachers and pioneers it sent out were "torch-bearers of an as yet unborn civilization", it was their collective challenge to assum

read godlessness, violence and creeping immorality was engendering, Shoghi Effendi described the ro

the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Bahá'u'lláh Himself, whose dominion is the entire planet, whose wat

necessarily have to be on the expansion and consolidation of the Bahá'í community in the Western hemisphere in preparation for the much larger undertakings that lay ahead. Calling on the Plan's appointed "executors", the believers in North America, the Guardian laid out a Seven Year Plan, scheduled to run from 1937 to 1944. Its objectives were to establish at least one Loca

ng this same period, Shoghi Effendi was mobilizing the painfully small band of pioneers available to him, and dispatching them to the teaching goals of the Plan he had created. Within a few short years, the vast battalions of aggression would be shattered beyond recovery, their names and conq

itself, as the concept of planning customarily implies. What Bahá'í institutions do, rather, is to strive to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world, a process that will ultimately realize its purpose, regardless of historical circumstances or events. The challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence allows, Bahá'í

the world that represents one of the greatest achievements of his life. The publication, in 1944, of God Passes By, his comprehensive and reflective history of

sessed. It helps make sense of the world-and of human experience. It inspires, consoles and enlightens. It enriches life. In the great body of literature and legend that it has left to humanity, history's hand can be seen at work shaping much of the course of civilization

ing the Purpose of God, an avenue that converges with the vast expanse spread out in the Guardian's matchless translations of the Revealed Texts. Its appearance on the centenary of the birth of the Cause-just as the

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n ignited in 1914. It would come to be seen as the "essential pre-requisite to world unification". The entry into the war by the United States, whose president had initiated the project of a system of international order, but which had itself rejected this

the change could not yet be described as an emerging conviction about the oneness of humankind, no objective observer could mistake the fact that barriers blocking such a realization, which had survived all the assaults against them earlier in the century, were at last giving way. One's mind turns to the prophetic words of the Qur'án: "And you s

d the effects of the fear induced by the invention and use of atomic weapons, a reaction calling to mind for Bahá'ís the Master's prescient statements in North America that ultimately peace would come because the nations would be driven to accept it. The Montreal Daily S

sed in this state"-delegates of fifty nations adopted the Charter of the United Nations Organization, the name proposed for it by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.91 Ratification by the required number of member nations followed that October, and the first General Assembly of the new organization convened on 10 January 1946, in London. In October 1949, t

Bowles Pearson, then External Affairs Minister and later Prime Minister of Canada, secured the creation by the United Nations of its first international peacekeeping force, an achievement which won its author the Nobel Prize for Peace.93 The full nature of the authority contained in such a mandate would steadily emerge as a major feature of international relatio

be described only as a profound sense of shame at the depths of evil that humanity had shown itself capable of committing shook the conscience of humankind. Through the window of opportunity thus briefly opened, a group of dedicated and far-sighted men and women, under the inspired leadership of figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, secured the United Nations' adoption

ublic court, their crimes unsparingly reviewed and documented, were duly convicted, and those who did not escape through suicide were then either hanged or sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. No serious protest had been raised against this procedure which, theoretically, constituted a fundamental departure from existing norms of international la

"protectorates" and colonies seized from the defeated powers. Now, these antiquated systems of political oppression were submerged by a rising tide of movements of national liberation far beyond their weakened abilities to resi

ic inequities, and the obstructions created by political and diplomatic man?uvring-beyond all these practical but historically transient limitations-a new authority was at work in human affairs to which all might reasonably hope somehow to appeal. Representatives of once subject peoples, whose exotically clad warriors had brought up the rear of the Diamond Jubilee procession in London only fi

abriel García Marques, Kiri Te Kanawa, Andrei Sakharov, Mother Teresa and Zhang Yimou became sources of inspiration and encouragement to great numbers of their fellow citizens.95 In every department of life, heroism, professional excellence or moral distinction would increasingly be able to speak for themselves and be embraced by t

oblems at the national level had been undertaken in several countries in response to the Depression during the 1930s. Now an interlocking system of institutions oriented to recognition that national economies constitute elements of a global whole was successively devised and put in place. The International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades, the World Bank, and various subsidiary agencies began belatedl

ocial and economic development of rising nations. Widespread publicity awakened a sense of solidarity with the rest of the world on the part of peoples in lands that enjoyed reasonable levels of education, health care and the application of technology. In time, this ambitious initiative came under attack for the mixed motives attributed to it. Nor can anyone de

est. The effect had been heightened by the events of the first world war, and greatly advanced by the success of Japanese arms in withstanding for so long the massive Western effort devoted to defeating them during the period 1941-1945. The second half of the century saw this new technolo

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essentially built upon and developed the achievements of the earlier Plan. The great difference, however, was that several other Bahá'í communities were now in a position to participate. Already in 1938, the Bahá'ís of India, Pakistan and Burma had set out on a plan of their own. As international hostilities gradually came to an end, the National Spiritual Assemb

ocal Spiritual Assemblies had been formed in Europe, initiatives by five different national communities acting under the coordination of the National Spiritual Assembly of the British Isles ha

existence-the twelfth being that of the Italo-Swiss community-it called for the establishment of the Faith in one hundred and thirty-one additional countries and territories, together with the formation of forty-four new National Spiritual Assemblies, the incorporation of thirty-three of these, a vast increase in Bahá'í literature, the erection of Houses of Worship in Iran and Germany (the former being replaced by Temples in

he immediate extension of Bahá'u'lláh's spiritual dominion ... in all remaining Sovereign States, Principal Dependencies comprising Principalities, Sultanates, Emirates, Shaykhdoms, Protectorates, Trust Territories, and Crown Colonies scattered over the surface of the entire

utional foundations of its Administrative Order would expand at least five-fold, and that its community life would b

in the Guardianship made it possible to see-was that an historical conjunction of circumstances presented the Bahá'í community with an opportunity that would not come again and on which the success of future stages in

es will be confronted.... I adjure them, by the precious blood that flowed in such great profusion, by the lives of the unnumbered saints and heroes who were immolated, by the supreme, the glorious sacrifice of the Prophet-Herald of our Faith, by the tribulations which its Founder, Himself, willingly underwent, so that His

were designated "Knights of Bahá'u'lláh", and their names inscribed on a Roll of Honour destined, in time, to be deposited, as called for by the Guardian, under the threshold of the entrance to the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh. Nothing testified quite so drama

required national ?a?íratu'l-Quds; a vast increase in the production of Bahá'í literature; additional Assembly incorporations that had raised the total number to one hundred and ninety-five; growing recognition of Bahá'í marriage and Bahá'í Holy Days; and the advancing work on the International Bahá'í Archives, the first building to be constructed on the broad arc that the Guardian had traced on the slope of M

future of the Cause. Alongside the decision-making authority devolved on the elective institutions of the Faith, a parallel function of the Administrative Order is to exert a spiritual, moral and intellectual influence on both these institutions and the lives of the individual members

upport this institution could bring to achieving the tasks of the Plan. In a cablegram of 24 December 1951, he announced the appointment of the first contingent of twelve Hands of the Cause of God, allocated equally to the work in the Holy Land, in Asia, the Americas and Europe. Thes

five auxiliary boards, one for each continent: those in the Americas, Europe and Africa consisting of nine members each, while those in Asia and Australasia having seven and tw

Only a day later, however, a second cablegram warned ominously of the urgent need of the Faith's senior institutions to act in concert to protect it from new dangers that the Guardian perceived to be gathering on the horizon. This was followed in October by a message announcing that the number of Han

a visit to London. The Centre of the Cause who, for thirty-six years, had day by day guided its evolution, whose vision encompassed both the flow of events and the actions the Bahá'í community must take, and who

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l 1963, the ballots of delegates from fifty-six National Spiritual Assemblies, including the forty-four new bodies called for and successfully formed during the Ten Year Crusade, brought

s which have not outwardly been revealed in the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. Go

oting by mail-should take place in the home of the Master, whose Will and Testament had described

stice. That which this body, whether unanimously or by a majority doth carry, that is verily the Truth and the Purpose of God Himself. W

as he had explained would be the case, the second step in the process had been taken when this institution evolved into a nine-member Council, elected by the members of the National Spiritual

ovenant-breakers to undermine the unity of the Faith, this small company of grief-stricken men and women succeeded in ensuring that the Crusade's ambitious objectives were attained in the time required and that the necessary foundation was in place for the erection of the Administrative Order's crowning unit. In asking that their own members be left free from election to the Universal House of Justice, so as to perform the services assigned them by the Guardian, the Hands also endowed th