# Baha'i Faith, roots of

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Robert Stockman, Baha'i Faith, roots of, bahai-library.com.
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> World Religions: Belief, Culture, and Controversy                          http://religion.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1586898?sid=1586...
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> roots of the Baha'i Faith
> 
> The roots of the Baha'i Faith can be traced to the Babi Movement of mid-19th-century Persia (today called Iran),
> which was violently persecuted. Among the early converts to the Babi movement was Mirza Husayn-Ali, a
> nobleman born in northern Iran whose father was a palace official. As the Babi leadership was executed, one
> after another, his role in the movement grew in importance.
> 
> In the summer of 1848, he assembled a gathering of the remaining Babi leaders at which he gave each a title; he
> took on the title of Baha'u'llah (the Glory of God)óone subsequently endorsed by Babi Movement leader
> Ali-Muhammad of Shiraz, who in 1844 had taken the title of the Bab (the Gate) and declared himself to be the
> fulfillment of Islamic prophecies. Before his execution, the Bab recognized Baha'u'llah's teenage half-brother
> Yahya as a figurehead leader of the Babi community, though he gave Yahya no explicit authority. Considering that
> Yahya was completely unknown in the Babi community and was still a youth living in Baha'u'llah's household, the
> appointment was probably made to allow Baha'u'llah to run the Babi movement with a minimum of government
> interference.
> 
> In August 1852, a group of Babis attempted to assassinate the king, resulting in a severe government-sponsored
> pogrom against the remaining Babis. Baha'u'llah was arrested and imprisoned for four months.When the Iranian
> government released Baha'u'llah from prison, they banished him from Persia. Hence he departed for Baghdad
> (capital of modern-day Iraq), a city in the Ottoman Empire frequented by many Iranians intent on performing
> pilgrimage to the Shiite shrines nearby.
> 
> The next 10 years were highly productive ones, in which Baha'u'llah penned several of his most important works:
> The Hidden Words, a collection of ethical and mystical aphorisms); The Seven Valleys and Four Valleys, two
> works about the mystic journey of the soul in dialogue with Sufi concepts; and the Book of Certitude, a work
> delineating basic theological concepts and principles of personal spiritual development through commentary on
> passages from the Bible and the Koran. His efforts to revitalize the Babi community of Baghdad and to revive the
> Iranian Babi community were so successful that the Iranian government requested that the Ottomans move him
> farther from Iran. On the eve of his departure for Istanbul, Turkey, in April 1863, Baha'u'llah publicly declared to
> his companions and close associates that he was the prophetic teacher the Bab had prophesied.
> 
> The latter work specified that upon Baha'u'llah's passing, his eldest son, Abbas, was to become his successor;
> other tablets praised Abbas as the exemplar of Baha'u'llah's teachings and the official interpreter of Baha'u'llah's
> revelation. Consequently, when Baha'u'llah died in 189 at age 75, the 48-year-old Abbas was quickly
> acknowledged by all as the rightful head of the Baha'i Faith. He took the title of Abdul-Baha, meaning "servant of
> Baha," to underline his subservience to his father's legacy. An attempt by one of Abdul-Baha's half-brothers to
> form a rival Baha'i movement garnered virtually no support and died out, though it did cause Ottoman officials to
> look at all Baha'is with suspicion and to renew Abdul-Baha's confinement within the city of Acre. The decade of
> confinement ended in 1908, when the Young Turks Revolution toppled the Ottoman sultan and converted Turkey
> into a secular republic.
> 
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> World Religions: Belief, Culture, and Controversy                         http://religion.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1586898?sid=1586...
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> From 1892 to 1908, Abdul-Baha was free to receive visitors and communications, including cablegrams. The
> spread of the Baha'i Faith to the United States and subsequently to Europe, Hawaii, Australia, and Japan resulted
> in a diverse group of pilgrims entering Acreóstill a prison cityóto meet Abdul-Baha and receive his wisdom. When
> Abdul-Baha's confinement ended in 1908, he considered travel. In 1910, he visited Egypt, and in 1911 he
> traveled to Europe to meet and encourage that continent's fledgling Baha'i communities. In 1912, he traveled to
> North America, arriving in early April (just two weeks before the sinking of the Titanic, a ship many Baha'is had
> urged him to take because of its reputation for safety).
> 
> His nine-month journey extended as far south as Washington, D.C., as far north as Montreal, Canada, and as far
> west as Los Angeles, California. He gave hundreds of speeches to thousands of people gathered in churches,
> synagogues, and theosophical lodges. He spoke to the annual Lake Mohonk Peace Conference and the fourth
> annual national conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The
> result was hundreds of newspaper articles, almost all favorable. He left North America in December 1912,
> spending the winter and spring visiting Baha'is from London to Budapest before returning to Palestine months
> before the beginning of World War I. A contemplated trip to India was rendered impossible by the war and his
> age. He passed away in November 1921 at age 77.
> 
> Like his father, Abdul-Baha wrote a will, in which he named his eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, to be
> his successor and vali amrullah (Guardian of the Cause of Allah). As a result, aside from a few small efforts to
> split the Baha'i community (none of which garnered more than a few hundred followers or lasted more than a
> generation), the Baha'is united by accepting Shoghi Effendi as their new head. Abdul-Baha's will also specified
> the system whereby Baha'is would elect nine-member local spiritual assemblies (governing councils of local
> Baha'i communities) and delegates who would elect nine-member national spiritual assemblies. The will also
> specified that the members of all national spiritual assemblies would serve as the delegates to elect the Universal
> House of Justice, the supreme worldwide Baha'i governing body. Abdul-Baha's will asserted that while the
> Guardian had the power to interpret authoritative Baha'i texts, the Universal House of Justice had the authority to
> legislate on matters about which the texts were silent.
> 
> However, Shoghi Effendi's sudden deathówithout a willóin November 1957, plunged the Baha'i Faith into crisis,
> because it deprived the community of its international leadership and raised the specter of schism. But Shoghi
> Effendi had begun a 10-year plan for expansion of the Baha'i Faith in 1953 that provided the Baha'is with clear
> goals until April 1963. He had also appointed a series of individuals as Hands of the Cause of Allah (a position
> created by Baha'u'llah). In October 1957, he raised their total number to 27 and termed them "the Chief Stewards
> of Baha'u'llah's embryonic World Commonwealth, who have been invested by the unerring Pen of the Center of
> His Covenant with the dual function of guarding over the security, and of insuring the propagation, of His Father's
> Faith."
> 
> Abdul-Baha's will had also given the Hands clear authority. Consequently, the Baha'is of the world turned to the
> Hands, who coordinated the Baha'i Faith until the completion of Shoghi Effendi's 10-year teaching plan. One
> effort by a Hand of the Cause, Charles Mason Remey, to claim leadership of the Baha'i community garnered
> support from several hundred persons, but subsequently the Remeyite movement split into at least four factions.
> 
> In April 1963, the Hands oversaw the election of the Universal House of Justice (they voluntarily disqualified
> themselves as members). Subsequently the Universal House of Justice has been elected every five years by the
> 
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> 
> members of all the national spiritual assemblies, who either send their ballots by mail, or gather in Haifa, Israel, to
> cast their ballots in person. The Universal House of Justice has overseen continued expansion of the Baha'i
> community and coordinated translation of more Baha'i texts into English and other languages (including the Kitabi-Aqdas); it was also responsible for a great increase in the public visibility of the Baha'i Faith worldwide.
> 
> The global dissemination of the Baha'i Faith had begun in 1888, when two Lebanese Christians became Baha'is
> in Egypt and in 1892 immigrated to the United States. One of them, Ibrahim George Kheiralla, was responsible
> for converting the first Americans in 1894. Starting with a small group in Chicago, by 1900, the United States had
> four Baha'i communities of 50 or more believers, plus scattered Baha'is in 23 states. By 1899, the Faith was also
> introduced from Chicago to Ontario, Canada; Paris, France; and London, England. In turn, a European convert
> took the Baha'i Faith to Hawaii in 1901, and two Hawaiian Baha'is took the religion to Japan in 1914. In 1910, a
> pair of American Baha'is circled the globe westward, visiting major Baha'i communities in every country where the
> religion could be found. By 1921, other American Baha'is had settled in Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand,
> and Korea.
> 
> Abdul-Baha was so impressed by the American Baha'i community that he sent them a series of 14 tablets from
> 1914 to 1916 entitled The Tablets of the Divine Plan, in which he enjoined them to spread the Baha'i religion to
> every nation and island on the globe. He enumerated hundreds of places where there should be Baha'i
> communities, all of which subsequently became missionary goals. In the 1920s, Shoghi Effendi gave the
> American Baha'is the chief responsibility for establishing Baha'i elected institutions, and he patterned such bodies
> in Europe, Asia, and Australasia on the American model.
> 
> In 1937, the North American Baha'is having finally established firm local and national spiritual assemblies, Shoghi
> Effendi gave them a Seven Year Plan (1937ñ1944) calling for them to establish at least one local spiritual
> assembly in every state in the United States and one in every province of Canada, to establish the Baha'i Faith in
> every country in Latin America, and to complete the exterior of the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois.
> In spite of World War II, enormous progress was made, and by 1944, many Latin American nations were home to
> local spiritual assemblies as well as small groups of Baha'is.
> 
> In 1946, Shoghi Effendi launched a second Seven Year Plan (1946ñ1953) that called for creation of a separate
> national spiritual assembly for Canada (the Canadian Baha'is having shared a national assembly with the United
> States all that time), a single national spiritual assembly for all of South America, another for all of Central
> America, and reestablishment of the Baha'i Faith in war-ravaged Western Europe.
> 
> By 1953, there were 12 national spiritual assemblies worldwide: one in Italy and Switzerland, one in Germany
> and Austria, one in Egypt and Sudan, one in Australia and New Zealand, one in India and Burma, the four
> aforementioned in the Americas, the United Kingdom, Iran, and Iraq. Shoghi Effendi gave plans to all 12 for the
> period 1953ñ1963. Among the goals were to more than double the number of countries, islands, and significant
> territories in which the Baha'i Faith was established and to raise the number of national spiritual assemblies to 57.
> Except for a national spiritual assembly in one Islamic country, all the goals were achieved by 1963. The United
> States achieved perhaps a third of the goals, while expanding the number of American Baha'is from 7,000 to
> 10,000.
> 
> The decade spanning 1963ñ1973 saw the fruits of the effort to spread the Baha'i Faith widely but very thinly
> around the world. Latin American Baha'is settling in Bolivia reached out to the rural population, and tens of
> 
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> World Religions: Belief, Culture, and Controversy                         http://religion.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1586898?sid=1586...
> 
> thousands became Baha'is; the Bolivian Baha'i community is still the largest in Latin America, with a university
> and a radio station to serve its members and the citizenry. In the United States, door-to-door teaching brought
> 10,000 to 15,000 rural African Americans into the Baha'i Faith in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia in
> the years 1969ñ1972. At the same time, an unusual receptivity swept the college population, stimulated by
> support for the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. By 1974, the United States had 60,000
> Baha'is. Subsequent conversion has been supplemented by immigration (some 12,000 Iranian Baha'is and
> perhaps 10,000 Southeast Asian Baha'is have settled in the United States since 1975), with the result that in
> 2001, the United States had 142,000 Baha'is and nearly 1,200 local spiritual assemblies. Today, the National
> Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States owns retreat and conference centers in five states;
> publishes a children's magazine, a monthly newspaper, and a quarterly scholarly periodical; operates a radio
> station in South Carolina; runs a senior citizens' home and two institutions for economic development and public
> health; and employs some 200 staff members.
> 
> Expansion of the American Baha'i community in the last 25 years has also allowed resources to be channeled in
> several new directions. The Baha'i community has been able to sustain much greater commitment to the abolition
> of racism, the establishment of world peace, and the development of society. One result has been greater media
> attention. The larger community also produced an expanded book market that stimulated writers and scholars, so
> that Baha'i literature greatly expanded in scope and depth. Cultural expressions of the Baha'i Faith, such as
> operas and "Baha'i gospel" music, have also developed, and have become much more sophisticated. Now more
> than a century old, the American Baha'i community is an indigenous American religion, with fifth- and sixthgeneration members.
> 
> Robert Stockman
> 
> Further Reading
> 
> Badiee, Julie. An Earthly Paradise: Baha'i Houses of Worship around the World. Oxford: George Ronald, 1992;
> Bahá'u'lláh. Selected Writings of Baha'u'llah. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing, 2005; Cedarquist, Druzelle. The
> Story of Baha'u'llah, Promised One of All Religions. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing, 2005; Esslemont, J. E.
> Baha'u'llah and the New Era. Wilmette, Illinois: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1980; Hatcher, William S., and J. Douglas
> Martin. The Baha'i Faith: The Emerging Global Religion. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984; Smith, Peter.
> The Babi and Baha'i Religions: From Messianic Shi'ism to a World Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University
> Press, 1987.
> 
> Select Citation Style:     MLA
> 
> MLA
> Stockman, Robert. "roots of the Baha'i Faith." World Religions: Belief, Culture, and Controversy. ABC-CLIO,
> 2011. Web. 2 Nov. 2011.
> 
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> 4 of 4                                                                                                                02/11/11 12:36 PM
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> — *Baha'i Faith, roots of (Used by permission of the curator)*