# Baha'u'llah's Ground Plan of World Fellowship

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: George Townshend, Baha'u'llah's Ground Plan of World Fellowship, bahai-library.com.
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> BAHA'U'LLAH'S GROUND PLAN OF
> WORLD FELLOWSHIP*
> George Townshend
> 
> World Congress of Faith, 1936, London
> Thursday, July 16th Morning Session
> 
> The Ground Plan of World Fellowship which is now submitted to your
> consideration was composed out of the writings of Baha'uTlah and
> presented by 'Abdu'1-Bahá in London, and later in Paris, about a quarter
> of a century ago. It proposes in the simplest possible form a practical
> scheme for mastering the urgent problem of world-fellowship; and its
> originating idea, though of outstanding magnitude, is such as to place the
> whole plan throughout, from its beginning, in complete accord with the
> purpose we have before us today - that of promoting the spirit of
> fellowship through the inspiration of religion.
> 
> This Plan, in every feature, plainly implies that nothing less than a
> concerted effort on a world scale, with the spiritual energies of mankind
> informing its practical energies, will now suffice to awaken the spirit of
> fellowship and secure deliverance from danger. No local or regional
> effort; no partial effort of either religion alone or statecraft alone, will
> completely solve our problems. The sense of fellowship, to be adequate
> to this unique emergency, must, on the one hand, be broad-based on the
> whole of our human nature, spiritual, moral and intellectual, and on the
> other hand must not be limited by any terrestrial boundaries whatever.
> 
> Taken from Faiths and Fellowship, Proceedings of the World Congress of Faiths
> Conference, published by J. M. Watkins, 21 Cecil Court, London, W. C. 2, 1936, pp.
> 299-317. Reprinted with permission from the World Congress of Faiths.
> 194         THE SINGAPORE BAHAT STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> Such a thesis may still be ahead of the public opinion of mankind. But it
> is not so far ahead of that opinion as it was when it was first proposed in
> this city in 1911. Today our emergency is rather more serious than then;
> but it is of the same general character. What, then, and up to the present,
> has been lacking in men's experiments is clearness of spiritual vision, the
> guidance of intuition. Only Faith can point or see the way in such an
> hour as this. Men question the love of a God who could let loose on them
> so dire a cataclysm and could choose out this generation for suffering
> wholly unprecedented. Their doubt cuts them off from the source of light
> and help. There is no vision; and the people perish. Only Faith sees
> clearly, in open view, that this darkness is cast by a great light, that this
> passing defeat of the spirit of Fellowship is the prelude of its final
> victory. A loving God would not have set this generation problems
> without bestowing the ability to solve them, would not inflict dire
> penalties on those whom he regarded as guiltless.
> 
> We are daunted by the strange new troubles that close us in on every
> side; we do not look within and observe that a new power of mastering
> these is being developed in conscience and in spirit. Intellectual vision
> never was so keen as in this generation; but spiritual vision, was it ever
> more weak? We talk, we boast, of the New Age, but we miss its greatest
> gift. We say the human race is at last reaching maturity, but we do not
> realise the fullness, the completeness, of this growth. We perceive it is
> intellectual; we do not perceive that it is, in like measure, moral and
> spiritual. Man's conscience has become more sensitive, his spirit more
> responsive to heavenly promptings. As he is today endowed with a new
> degree of intellectual power, so also is he endowed today with a new
> degree of religious power. The evolutionary process, with even hand,
> bears onward the whole being and nature of man; his heart as well as his
> brain. New ideals, new hopes, new dreams of further progress, a more
> general, more insistent desire to build a better world than the one which
> we inherit, these bear witness to man's consciousness of growth. In all its
> faculties the human race is passing from childhood and ignorance
> towards maturity; towards the tasks that befit full manhood. Today
> mankind is like a youth leaving school for the sterner world of business
> and affairs. It is called on to put into practice the lessons of moral
> principle and human fellowship in which it has been instructed for so
> long. For how many centuries have we, all of us, been under tutelage to
> those whom we revere as the Founders of our Faiths? Is it strange that a
> time should come when we should be required to put into concrete deeds
> Báká 'u 'Hák 's Ground Plan of World Fellowship                 195
> 
> the precepts of brotherhood we all acknowledge, and should at last be
> threatened with condign punishment if we disobey?
> 
> Much, indeed, has been done of late to remedy old wrongs, to suppress
> tyranny, to uplift the oppressed, to relieve the poor, to teach the ignorant.
> But how much remains undone! We have accomplished enough to
> convict ourselves of being fitted for a better social order, of being ready
> to inaugurate a system of widespread justice and fraternity, and of
> lacking the resolution to put our ideals into effect. There is enough of
> good in our recent record to incriminate us, but not enough to deliver us.
> We stand now before the judgment seat of heaven condemned by the
> evidence of our own acts.
> 
> We had no vision. Men turned from the saints, mystics and seers, and
> listened to secular philosophers. Blind leaders of the blind, into what
> perdition have they led us! Our intellectual eminence by some fatality
> heightened our troubles. Divorced from faith, it aggravated human pride,
> taught men to forget their moral responsibility and to deny their
> servitude before the moral law. The inevitable hour of retribution draws
> near.
> 
> Surely this is a love-tragedy vaster in its scale, more terrible in its
> poignancy than any in the history of our race!
> 
> The urge of evolution pressed us forward; we would not go. The spirit of
> fellowship grew warm in our hearts; we would not feed its flame. The
> gates of world-brotherhood opened wide; we turned away. God poured
> His spiritual bounties on spirit and conscience in greater abundance than
> ever; we in our blindness rejected His gifts and Him.
> 
> But this failure is not final nor for long. It is not the failure of Faith, nor
> yet of Love. It is the open, the confessed failure of human wisdom.
> Through its purgation men who have doubted will learn to turn for
> fellowship and peace to the way they have not trodden; the way of
> religion. But all must tread this way together. Since the whole world as a
> unit is involved, the ideals which are to guide this movement must be
> given a definite shape. If there is to be conceited action towards a single
> goal, some map of the common journey must be made. Vague sentiments
> of goodwill, however genuine, will not suffice. Some explicit agreement
> on principles will be required for any co-ordinated progress.
> 196         THE SINGAPORE BAHAT STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> It was to this task that Baha'uTlah long ago addressed himself, and
> worked out a Ground Plan on which the temple of human fellowship
> might be reared. It consisted of a set of fundamental principles and
> represented the minimum of what the occasion required. No foundation
> less deeply dug than this will hold the structure that is to be built upon it.
> 
> The burden of the whole scheme was laid ultimately upon the shoulders
> of each individual man and woman. Everybody by virtue of his status as
> a human being had his share in the vast world enterprise. The principle
> of individual responsibility was thus to be the basis of all progress.
> 
> But underneath this basic fact of human duty lay something deeper yet.
> The living rock on which this foundation was to be laid was something
> the strength of which humanity hitherto has too little recognised. That
> rock is the Truth. This spirit of fellowship which we seek to encourage is
> not by Bahá'u!lláh conceived as some addition to being, which the genius
> of man should undertake to create. As a flower within the bud, it lies
> waiting the hour of its appearance. It is a reality which our
> fragmentariness denies. And what this Assembly desires to do is not to
> create something new, but to give expression to something which is
> already in existence though unused. Man's advancing power is due to his
> increasing knowledge of truth; and the magnificence of this present age
> bears witness in the last resort not to the personal greatness of this
> generation, but rather to the greatness of a continuously unfolding Truth.
> If this Age is to become the Age of Universal Brotherhood, it must be
> the Age of Knowledge, knowledge of Truth. The Truth will set us free.
> The Truth will make us one.
> 
> As the first item of his programme, therefore, Baha'uTlah claimed that
> every individual should have the right of seeking for himself the truth.
> Love of truth, which at the present time is growing apace among
> mankind, is the sole real corrective of all forms of error and illusion. The
> great enmities which in the past have divided mankind, and which were
> due to misunderstanding and ignorance, have, in recent times, lost their
> vitality, and our estrangements are now due chiefly to the instinct of
> imitation and to prejudice. These prejudices have come down to us from
> the past, racial, religious, national. For them all Baha'uTlah offers one
> radical cure, the search for truth. The battle which mankind yet has to
> fight between prejudice and truth he seems to regard as the Armageddon
> of the human soul.
> Bahá 'u 'lláh 's Ground Plan of World Fellowship             197
> 
> Through this search for truth mankind at last would become really and
> clearly conscious of the essential unity of the human race. For this unity
> is, and has ever been, a fact. "Ye are the branches of one tree, and the
> leaves of one branch. Deal ye with one another with the utmost love and
> harmony, with friendliness and fellowship", wrote Baha'uTlah. From the
> full knowledge of this unity, and from nothing less, there would be born
> in this age a spirit of world fellowship adequate to the present
> emergency. On this consciousness of unity, therefore, 'AbduT-Bahá laid
> the greatest stress. He gave to it a central place in his programme, other
> features supporting or amplifying it or giving it application in the
> practical affairs of mankind.
> 
> One of the facts which has obscured from men's view their essential
> unity is the difference between the world religions, which has been made
> the cause of estrangement, or prejudice and even of ill-will and strife.
> But, insisted 'AbduT-Bahá, there is nothing in these differences which
> should produce so sad a result. Indeed, there is an important aspect in
> which all religions are at heart one, and he included the existence of this
> unity as a principle in his scheme. He meant, so it seems, that a religion
> does not consist solely of a doctrine, and an institution, but is also, in a
> real and vital sense a spiritual atmosphere. It is, as he once described it,
> "an attitude of soul towards God, reflected in life." This is the essence of
> true religion; and to this extent, the whole world over, members of all the
> religions have an outlook, an experience, an obligation which they share
> in common with one another in spite of their special and distinctive
> loyalties, and which group them all together apart from the sceptic.
> 
> The more intensely spiritual men are, the more vividly conscious are
> they of the reality and sweetness of this communion, and one of their
> privileges is the experience of a deep sympathy, a common lowliness, a
> common aspiration which they share with those of a different tradition
> from their own.
> 
> Not only in their atmosphere and their influence but even in their
> profounder teachings the world-religions may show forth this unity. Do
> not all our faiths affirm and magnify the love of God for His creatures?
> What truth could be more ancient, more precious than this? What would
> bind those who espouse it with a closer tie of fellowship?
> 198         THE SINGAPORE BAHAT STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> This age of widening consciousness and deepening love of truth has
> begun to bring us, on a scale quite unprecedented, some accurate
> knowledge of the sacred treasures and the sacred history of the human
> race. Scholars, divines, men of letters, poets have all contributed to this
> enlightenment. They show us each of the great religions as being like a
> majestic temple reared in some chosen spot by the hand of a master
> architect, and surrounded now by a multitude of lesser buildings of
> various later dates. Each temple blends with its own environment but is
> in marked contrast with all the other temples. No two are alike, and the
> annexes connected with each are still more unlike. But if the enquiring
> traveller pursues his investigations and makes his way within the sacred
> structures, he discovers, in their several interiors and even in the shrines
> themselves an unmistakable kinship in beauty.
> 
> Experts in comparative religion have spoken with emphasis of the points
> of agreement to be found between the world religions. Professor Cheyne
> quotes Max Muller as "advising the Brahmists to call themselves
> Christians," and himself argues that the reconciliation of religions must
> precede that of races "which at present is so lamentably incomplete."
> The evidence of men of learning is supported by that of another cloud of
> witnesses, whose testimony none can gainsay, and who speak with the
> voice not of intellectual criticism but of spiritual knowledge. The highest
> exponents of a religion, those who understand most thoroughly its
> meaning and interpret its spirit with the most compelling authority, are
> those men and women of mystical genius whose impassioned devotion
> and obedience to their divine Master is the outstanding feature of their
> lives. If each of these religions were strictly exclusive, the negation of all
> the others, bringing to men its own irreconcilable message, those who
> followed these religions to the extreme, the mystics and the saints, would
> assuredly move farther and farther apart, and would come to rest at the
> last point of divergence. The greater the saint the wider the gulf between
> him and the saints of alien allegiances. At the same time the less aspiring
> and spiritually gifted multitudes, immersed in the daily human concerns
> which all men share alike, would be found to be the least estranged from
> one another by their differing creeds.
> 
> But in fact this is not so. Strangely, very strangely, religious history
> shows us something quite different, exactly the opposite. The contrast
> between each world-religion and all its sister-religions is, as a rule, felt
> most acutely and insisted on most vigorously by the less mystically
> Bahá fU 'lláh 's Ground Plan of World Fellowship             199
> 
> minded of its votaries. While the mystics of all the religions, instead of
> moving farther and ever farther apart, seem rather to travel by
> converging paths and to draw nearer and nearer together.
> 
> If one is to accept the account of their experience given by
> contemporaries or by themselves, these mystics seem all the world over
> to have gone upon the same spiritual adventure, to be drawn onward by
> the same experience of an outpoured heavenly love; and they testify one
> and all that to reach this knowledge of the love of God is to understand at
> last the mystery and the hidden blessedness of life, and to possess an
> everlasting treasure for which the sacrifice of all earthly things is but a
> little price.
> 
> This fellowship among all mystics is common knowledge, of which
> evidence is within the reach of all. In a well-known English work, Miss
> Underhill writes of the mystics that, "We meet these persons in the east
> and the west, in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Their one
> passion appears to be the prosecution of a certain spiritual and intangible
> quest... This, for them, has constituted the whole meaning of life... and it
> is an indirect testimony to its objective actuality that whatever the place
> or period in which they have arisen, their aims, doctrines and methods
> have been substantially the same. Their experience, therefore, forms a
> body of evidence, curiously self-consistent and often mutually
> explanatory..." (Introduction to Mysticism, Chapter I)
> 
> Every public library in this country will contain books supplying
> illustrations of this statement. The mystical outlook and perspective both
> on the things of heaven and the things of earth is in its essence eternally
> the same. But perhaps no instance of the fundamental unity that underlies
> all mystical experience is more striking than that parallelism between
> Plotinus and St. Augustine to which in his Evolution of Theology
> Professor Edward Caird draws attention. "Some of the finest expressions
> of this (the mystical) attitude of soul," he writes, "may be found in the
> Confessions of St. Augustine. But when St. Augustine expresses his
> deepest religious feelings we find that he repeats the thoughts and almost
> the very words of Plotinus." Professor Caird then shows how closely
> akin to the thought of Plotinus is "that great passage in which Augustine
> gives an account of his last conversation with his mother Monica about
> the life of the redeemed in heaven." And he concludes, "how deeply neo-
> Platonism must have sunk into the spirit of St. Augustine, when, in
> 200         THE SINGAPORE BAH A' I STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> describing the highest moment of his religious experience, he adopts
> almost verbally the language in which Plotinus tries to depict the mystic
> ecstasy of the individual soul as it enters into communion with the soul
> of the world."
> 
> By what diverse paths have mystics, who had nothing in common save
> wholehearted servitude before the one loving God, by what diverse paths
> have they all alike attained the blessed Presence? And what man in his
> pride of opinion will shut out from Paradise those whom God's own hand
> has admitted? Thus do scholars and saints join to testify that the great
> religions have their aspect of unity as well as their aspect of variety, and
> that without qualifying their special allegiance, worshippers in all
> religions may find something in the fundamental nature of religion itself
> which promotes a sweet, precious and abiding sense of true
> companionship.
> 
> The promotion of a boundless spirit of concord and goodwill,
> Baha'uTlah maintained to be agreeable to the genius of every world-
> religion. Whatever misunderstanding may have arisen in bygone
> centuries, no religion as originally taught was meant to encourage
> animosity. Quite the contrary. Religion is meant to heal discord. So
> important, in an age of disintegration, did this feature of religion seem
> that 'AbduT-Bahá proposed to include in his Plan the precept that, "the
> purpose of religion is to promote harmony and affection."
> 
> One will not doubt this loving purpose may be discovered, or
> rediscovered, in every one of our world-faiths, and assuredly in
> Christianity. If we look away from Christendom to Christ and to the pure
> teaching of Christ, we find it evident throughout the Gospels. Christ said
> that one's whole duty was to love God and one's neighbour, and He
> described neighbour as meaning anyone you could help regardless of
> creed or kin. He made fellowship in love the evidence of Christian
> membership, "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye
> have love one to another."
> 
> In this Age we congratulate ourselves that for centuries past religious
> enmity has been continually growing more weak. Yet our ideal remains
> negative. To manifest no ill will towards those who differ in opinion from
> us is not enough. Christ enjoined a more positive attitude of soul, one of
> active goodwill despite all differences. When God thus commands a
> Bahá yu 'lláh 's Ground Plan of World Fellowship             201
> 
> spirit of affection towards all, He gives the power to obey His command.
> Religion, in other words, is creative. Through its force the will of an
> earnest man is enabled to achieve an inward change that otherwise would
> be beyond his strength. If this were not so, what useful place would
> religion fill in this kosmos of ours?
> 
> If now the creative power of religion to effect this purpose were called
> upon and put to vigorous use, how many vital problems which have
> proved insoluble on the intellectual plane, such as the reunion of
> Christendom or the combating of secularism, might prove much more
> tractable when carried to the spiritual plane!
> 
> Another effort at harmonisation was called for when Baha'uTlah
> included in this scheme an active partnership between religion and
> science.
> 
> Tolerance between the two is too little. In their nature they are
> complementary, as two wings with which the soul soars towards
> knowledge of the truth. Science divorced from religion gives a wholly
> distorted view of reality. Religion divorced from science may become a
> mere superstition. Man is to use both as his servants and thus to bring the
> material aspect of life and the spiritual aspect at last into evident and
> complete accord.
> 
> To these principles Baha'u'llah added, as necessary for practical results,
> certain provisions of a more material nature. 'Abdu'1-Bahá mentioned
> laws to prevent extremes of indigence and opulence, universal education,
> a common language, a central World-Tribunal.
> 
> To the use by all nations of a secondary or world language in addition to
> their mother tongue, great importance was attached. Without this device
> fellowship would never be assured. The religious history of mankind
> from the days of Babel to the present bears out this emphasis. When we
> remember, for example, the influence of the general use of the Greek
> language throughout the Roman Empire at the beginning or our Era;
> when we consider how in Islam the adoption of Arabic as a common
> language united peoples hitherto estranged, facilitated the interchange of
> thought and aided the rapid extension of a single culture over vast
> regions; or when again we observe how the cause of ecclestiastic unity
> was promoted by the use, and weakened by the disuse, of the Latin
> 202         THE SINGAPORE BAHA' I STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> language as a medium among the peoples of western Europe centuries
> ago; we are driven to conclude that in this age of radio and aviation a
> world-language would unify the peoples of mankind to a degree
> unprecedented in the past and difficult for us to calculate in anticipation.
> 
> The federal tribunal or Board of Arbitration which in a few words
> 'Abdu'1-Bahá proposed, differed in three notable points from the League
> which afterwards was set up. The provision of an adequate police force
> was an essential prerequisite: the draft of any proposed constitution was
> to be referred not only to the governments but also to the peoples of the
> world; and, when finally ratified and adopted, it was to enjoy the full
> support of religion, of church as well as of state, and its strict
> maintenance against any violation by any nation was to be held by all
> mankind as a sacred obligation.
> 
> In these and all other reforms man's greatest stay would be the Holy
> Spirit, without whose aid no peace or fellowship or unification would
> ever be secured.
> 
> This scheme of world fellowship, first promulgated some forty years
> before, was presented twenty-five years ago in London by 'Abdu'1-Bahá.
> "This," he said, "is a short summary of the teachings of Baha'u'llah. To
> establish this, Baha'u'llah underwent great difficulties and hardships. He
> was in constant confinement and he suffered great persecution. But...
> from the darkness of his prison he sent out a great light into the world."
> ('Abdu'1-Bahá in London, p. 18)
> 
> 'AbduT-Bahá claimed that these principles were consistent with the
> spirit of all the world-religions, and were measured with exact and
> unique fitness to mankind's heightened capacity and its tremendous
> responsibility at this time. He felt no doubt of this being at no very
> distant date adopted: fellowship along these lines was the birthright of
> our New Age. But though they have percolated far through the world and
> have cheered the hearts of many, yet the larger collaboration between
> races and religions here so definitely outlined has in fact been postponed
> in favour of narrower views and more materialistic reforms. Our
> civilisation is in desperate plight and has sunk into a moral and spiritual
> abyss.
> Bahá 'u 'lláh 9s Ground Plan of World Fellowship           203
> 
> Men realise the urgent need of a reformation greater in range and
> intensity than mankind has ever yet achieved; but know not how to meet
> that need.
> 
> In such an emergency does not this bold original scheme of fellowship
> merit serious consideration and even the test of experiment? Does it
> deserve to be merely ignored by the rulers and teachers of the world?
> 
> In advocating peace to a western audience 'Abdu'1-Bahá once said: "You
> have had war for thousands of years; why not try peace for a change? If
> you do not like it you can always go back to war." One might hazard a
> similar suggestion about this fellowship plan. We have tried every other
> device, why not now try this?
> 
> For all its brevity, this summary may suffice to suggest the character of
> the Ground Plan of World Fellowship constructed by Bahá'u'lláh and
> presented here in London by 'Abdu'1-Bahá, and may indicate how close
> it is in spirit and in purpose to the ideal which is now before this
> Assembly.
> 
> If it be true that reforms as great and as numerous as these are demanded
> by the Genius of our Age, one will perceive why the alternatives tried by
> mundane wisdom during this generation have resulted in consistent
> disappointment. What has been lacking in all is religious insight, an
> appreciation of the fact that evolution has brought to men an advance in
> their moral and spiritual powers and a proportionate heightening of their
> opportunities and responsibilities.
> 
> "That one is a man indeed who to-day dedicateth himself to the service
> of the entire human race... It is not for him to pride himself who loveth
> his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The
> earth is but one country and mankind its citizens." (Gleanings from
> Baha'uTlah, p.250)
> 
> Baha'uTlah clearly affirms that without a keener spirituality, a loftier
> and firmer faith in the Universal Father mankind will not discover the
> way out of its troubles. Only through the initiative of religion will
> humanity be rescued from dissention and united in hearts' fellowship.
> And if religiously minded men and women are to leaven with the spirit
> of fellowship this love-lorn and lonely world until the whole be
> 204        THE SINGAPORE BAH A' I STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> leavened, that which they will need beyond all else is that they have in
> their hearts no place where doubt or fear may enter but be possessed with
> the invincible assurance that under God the whole movement of
> evolution is with us in this endeavour, that no difficulty, no delay, no
> defeat which may take shape as we advance can ever stem the onward
> march of Heaven's purpose, that within man's soul to-day are ample
> powers to win all that we desire, and that the banner under which
> mankind will stand at last united is that spiritual faith in the love of
> Almighty God, which is the universal heritage of us all.
> 
> Comments by the Chairman, Viscount Sir Herbert Samuel:
> 
> If one were compelled to choose which of the many religious
> communities of the world was closest to the aim and purpose of this
> Congress, I think one would be obliged to say that it was the
> comparatively little known Baha'i community.
> 
> Other faiths and creeds have to consider at a Congress like this, in what
> way they can contribute to the idea of world fellowship. But the Baha'i
> faith exists almost for the sole purpose of contributing to the fellowship
> and the unity of mankind.
> 
> Other communities may consider how far a particular element of their
> respective faith may be regarded as similar to those of other
> communities, but the Baha'i faith exists for the purpose of combining in
> one synthesis all those elements in the various faiths which are held in
> common. And that is why I suggest that this Baha'i community is really
> more fully in agreement with the main idea which has led to the
> summoning of the Congress than any particular one of the great religious
> communities of the world.
> Bahá 'u 'lláh 's Ground Plan of World Fellowship           205
> 
> Its origin was in Persia where a mystic prophet, who took the name of
> the Bab, the "Gate," began a mission among the Persians in the earlier
> part of the nineteenth century. He collected a considerable number of
> adherents. His activities were regarded with apprehension by the
> Government of Persia of that day. Finally, he and his leading disciples
> were seized by the forces of the Persian Government and were shot in
> the year 1850. In spite of the persecution, the movement spread in Persia
> and in many of the countries of Islam. He was followed as the head of
> the community by the one who has been its principal prophet and
> exponent, Baha'u'llah. He was most active and despite persecution and
> imprisonment made it his life's mission to spread the creed which he
> claimed to have received by direct divine revelation. He died in 1892 and
> was succeeded as the head of the community by his son, 'Abdu'1-Bahá,
> who was born in 1844. He was living in Haifa, in a simple house, when I
> went there as High Commissioner in 1920, and I had the privilege of one
> or two most interesting conversations with him on the principles and
> methods or the Baha'i faith. He died in 1921 and his obsequies were
> attended by a great concourse of people. I had the honour of representing
> His Majesty the King on that occasion.
> 
> Since that time, the Baha'i faith has secured the support of a very large
> number of communities throughout the world. At the present time it is
> estimated that there are about eight hundred Baha'i communities in
> various countries. In the United States near Chicago, a great temple, now
> approaching completion, has been erected by American adherents to the
> faith, with assistance from elsewhere. Shoghi Effendi, the grandson of
> 'Abdu'1-Bahá, is now the head of the community. He came to England
> and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, but now lives at Haifa, and
> is the centre of a community which has spread throughout the world.
>
> — *Baha'u'llah's Ground Plan of World Fellowship (Used by permission of the curator)*