# Baha'i Faith

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Douglas Martin, Baha'i Faith, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Baha'i Faith
> 
> Douglas Martin
> published in The 1998 Canadian Encyclopedia
> 
> McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1997-09-06
> 
> Bahá'í faith, a world religion with followers in 235
> countries and territories, and with 173 National Spiritual
> Assemblies. There are now an estimated 28,600 Bahá'ís in
> Canada. Although its forerunner, the Babi movement, had its
> roots in Shi'ah (ISLAM) Iran, the Bahá'í faith is
> independent rather than a sect of another religion, and
> derives its inspiration from its own sacred scriptures.
> These consist primarily of the writings of the founder,
> Bahá'u'lláh (1817-92), who Bahá'ís believe is the Messenger
> of God to our age, the most recent in a line stretching back
> beyond recorded time and including Abraham, Moses, Buddha,
> Christ and Muhammad.
> 
> The central teaching of Bahá'u'lláh is that mankind is one
> human race, and that the age for the unification of this
> race in a global society has arrived. Among the principles
> of justice on which it is based are equality of the sexes,
> the right of all people to education and economic
> opportunity, the abolition of all forms of prejudice and the
> need for the establishment of a democratic world government
> with its own peacekeeping force.
> 
> Bahá'ís believe that all great religions of the past have
> been stages in the progressive revelation of what
> Bahá'u'lláh called "the changeless Faith of God." God
> himself is unknowable. From age to age he reveals himself
> through his messengers, whose lives and teachings reflect
> the Divine qualities. These successive revelations provide
> the chief impulse in the civilizing of human nature and the
> evolution of human society. Other messengers will follow
> Bahá'u'lláh so long as the universe exists, but the
> challenge of the next thousand years will be to realize
> Bahá'u'lláh's vision of world unity.
> 
> For the individual, the purpose of life is to know and
> worship God. This lifelong process occurs as the individual
> learns to serve humanity by responding to the message of God
> and, in the process, develops his or her own spiritual,
> moral and intellectual capacities. Prayer, meditation on the
> creative Word and the discipline of one's physical nature
> are necessary aids to this effort. The soul is immortal and
> continues to evolve after death.
> 
> The Bahá'í faith began in 1844 in Persia [Iran], with the
> announcement of the new age by Bahá'u'lláh's forerunner,
> known as the Bab ("The Door"). The Bab (1819-50) and some
> 20,000 early Persian followers, regarded by the Muslim
> clergy as heretics, were persecuted and killed. Bahá'u'lláh
> was imprisoned and eventually exiled to the Turkish penal
> fortress of Akko, on the bay of Haifa in present-day Israel.
> The shrines where the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh lie buried are
> today the focal points of an imposing complex of gardens and
> institutions. By 1987 over 2000 ethnic groups were
> represented in the 120,000 Bahá'í centres established
> worldwide. Persecution of Iran's 300,000 Bahá'ís for refusal
> to recant their faith intensified under the regime of the
> Ayatollah Khomeini and the current Islamic Republic.
> 
> Bahá'ís have no clergy. The affairs of the community are
> governed by democratically elected councils locally,
> nationally and internationally. At the lower 2 levels the
> councils, known as Spiritual Assemblies, are elected each
> year. The supreme governing body, the Universal House of
> Justice, whose seat is at the faith's world headquarters on
> Mount Carmel, Haifa, is elected every 5 years. Because of
> its beliefs, the Bahá'í Faith has placed great importance on
> co-operation with all efforts toward world unity. The body
> which represents it in international affairs, the Bahá'í
> International Community, holds consultative status as one of
> the nongovernmental organizations at the UNITED NATIONS, and
> it takes an active part in many of the UN's humanitarian and
> educational activities.
> 
> Bahá'í Faith in Canada
> 
> Canada has played an unusually important role in Bahá'í
> history. After a visit to Montréal and several American
> cities in 1912, the founder's son, Abdu'l-Bahá, gave US and
> Canadian believers joint responsibility for expansion of the
> Bahá'í Faith around the world. Canadian Bahá'ís responded
> enthusiastically, and today their community shoulders the
> second-largest burden of responsibilities for international
> activities. One of the community's members, Mary Sutherland
> Maxwell of Montéal, married in 1937 the great- grandson of
> the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, who
> served in the central role of its Guardian until his death
> in 1957.
> 
> The Canadian community has had a particularly close
> connection with the design of the Faith's many imposing
> shrines and houses of worship around the world. Two Montréal
> Bahá'í architects, Jean- Baptiste Louis Bourgeois and
> William Sutherland Maxwell, designed, respectively, the
> Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land and the
> first house of Worship in the western hemisphere at Chicago,
> Illinois. More recently the Vancouver Bahá'í architect
> Fariborz Sabha created the extraordinary "Lotus Temple " in
> New Delhi, India, which has won acclaim in the international
> architectural press. Still another Vancouver Bahá'í, H.
> Amanat, is responsible for the design of the complex of
> monumental marble edifices constituting the faith's
> international administrative centre in Haifa, Israel, now
> approaching completion on the slopes of Mount Carmel.
> 
> Canadian Bahá'ís work in countless community- development
> projects undertaken by their faith around the world, and
> their National Assembly collaborates with the CANADIAN
> INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY and the INTERNATIONAL
> DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE on a range of such activities.
> The Canadian community pioneered the concept of an
> international organization for Bahá'í studies to bring
> together scholars and students in an application of Bahá'í
> principles to various social concerns. The Association for
> Bahá'í Studies, founded 1977, has its headquarters in Ottawa
> and affiliates in 25 other countries.
> 
> The faith has attracted members from all Canadian provinces
> and territories and from every ethnic group and social
> class. Some 35 of the faith's 374 elected Local Spiritual
> Assemblies are on native reserves and others, with Inuit
> members, are in remote Arctic centres. The Canadian National
> Spiritual Assembly was the first Bahá'í institution in the
> world to be incorporated formally by a special Act of a
> sovereign parliament (1949), an example since followed in
> many other countries. The Bahá'í National Centre is located
> in Thornhill, Ontario, and the former Maxwell home in
> Montréal is maintained as a Bahá'í place of Pilgrimage.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views10065 views since posted 2005-03-20; last edit 2012;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../martin_bahai_faith_canadian;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Citation: ris/2735
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> — *Baha'i Faith (Used by permission of the curator)*