# Primer for Baha'i Assemblies

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 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: Marzieh Gail, Primer for Baha'i Assemblies, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Primer for Bahá'í Assemblies
> 
> Marzieh Gail
> 
> published in World Order pp. 208-214
> 
> Wilmette, IL: National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States, 1944-10
> 
> An often-quoted individual has often remarked that a book is a letter
> written to unknown friends. The word which I like in that sentence is
> unknown. For some reason your friends—those who meet and speak with
> you—can't read you. You keep rising up before them, obstructing what you
> are trying to say.
> 
> The ideal reader is a person who doesn't know you, and who has chosen to
> spend an hour or so with your words instead of another person's, because
> yours happen to suit him at the time.
> 
> Now about this article, I suppose a number of my friends will read it—my
> friends and their friends. Most of these readers will be Bahá'ís, or close
> to it. If you don't happen to be a Bahá'í, you may not see any reason for
> looking at it.
> 
> But perhaps you have children and want to develop ways of thinking with
> them. Or perhaps you belong to a club, or serve on a committee, or, one
> way or another, have to consult about this and that with other people.
> If so, the techniques of consultation which Bahá'ís are developing may be
> of some use to you. Of course, you will find good material on group
> thinking at your library. But I believe we have a plus factor to
> contribute, because what we are doing is different: we have a "something
> not ourselves" to which we all refer—a common focal center. That is why
> we, who are all kinds of previously unrelated, or even hostile, people—can
> get together, and think and act together.
> 
> The matriarch, the man on the pillar, the Victorian father, the
> dictator—are all water over the dam these days. The new way of living is
> being together and sharing life together, adding our light to other
> people's light, accumulating phases of truth. We are all partners now.
> The job we are doing is building a world. The method we are using involves
> "loving consultation".
> 
> Perhaps it is sentimental, but I hope somewhere there will be an unknown
> friend or so who will feel like reading this.
> 
> Some years ago in Persia I startled fellow committee-members who had
> mistakenly appointed me their chairman, by coming to work with a bell. It
> was a small metal bell. You punched it and it clanged. I explained to my
> fellows—who were mostly dignified, older men—that whenever the bell
> clanged, some one else was to have the floor. I said that in my opinion a
> committee chairman's main function was to regulate conversational traffic,
> and to make absolutely certain that every member had expressed himself
> freely. Persia's history goes back several thousand years, during which
> years, I believe, no one had ever stopped the flow of anyone's conversation
> by punching a bell. I can only hope that the then members of the East-West
> Committee have long since forgiven and forgotten the whole thing.
> 
> I still believe that a chairman's first duty is to extract everyone's
> opinion. If he does this conscientiously, no one person will hold the
> floor too long, especially on the Assembly, where nine are involved. In
> cases where one or two members do all the talking, the chairman's technique
> is still deficient. Members of new, untried Assemblies can discipline one
> another and the chair by insisting that everyone be heard, for unless all
> nine have expressed themselves, the consultation cannot be said to
> represent spiritual guidance.
> 
> The chairman's first job is to bring out what is in the minds of his eight
> fellow-members, and he needs a good sense of timing and pacing to get
> through an evening's work. It seems wise for him to express his own views
> last of all. Certainly he should never take advantage of his position to
> give himself the floor. One of the best chairmen I know always asks
> permission before stating his view. Other functions of the chairman are to
> serve as the Assembly's spokesman and representative to the outside world;
> he presides at Feasts; he addresses visitors to the Assembly; he, in some
> states, must be present at Bahá'í marriage ceremonies, and so on. As
> somebody has said, he is the Assembly's facade.
> 
> The corresponding secretary, however, has the hardest task. In a large
> community his phone rings at all hours. Everyone applies to him for
> everything, blames him for everything. In voting for a secretary one may
> ask oneself such questions as: Has he tact? Can he write a letter? Has he
> an orderly mind? The chairman is Sunday-best, but the secretary is
> all-day-long; and if not always an archangel, the secretary is invariably a
> martyr.
> 
> As for the recording secretary, he is also a vital factor in Assembly
> life, because any legal or other subsequent action that may eventuate will
> center around the minutes he has made. It is a mistake to fall asleep when
> the minutes are being read; they hold your history—you must see to it that
> they include an accurate account of whatever your Assembly is doing.
> We come to the treasurer. Perhaps of all the Assembly members, he must be
> the one who shows the most love to the community. This is not an attempt
> at humor. We are still infantile spiritually speaking, in our attitute
> toward the fund, because we were bred in a materialistic world where money
> seems hard to get and once got must be held on to. The Bahá'í teaching on
> contributions to the fund is that we should open our hands, relax, let go.
> "We must be like the fountain or spring that is continually emptying itself
> of all that it has and is continually being refilled from an invisible
> source." Infants need love. The best treasurer I know expresses gratitude
> even for the smallest contributions. During consultation periods he does
> not evaluate a man's opinion on the basis of the man's gifts to the fund.
> He does not harangue the friends at the Nineteen Day Feast. He does,
> however, take them into his confidence, explain his problems, and show how
> their contributions are carrying the Faith forward, and how, without the
> fund, activity must cease. Once in a while he tells, not mentioning names,
> the story of some outstanding sacrifice that has come to his attention.
> Each Assembly member is the voice of such community members as elected
> him. I do not mean that the voters can exert pressure on him and get him
> to speak for them — nothing so clumsy as that. I mean that,
> automatically, different voters elect different types of people. One can
> state it better by saying that this and that quality in a given Bahá'í
> community finds expression in the ballot.
> 
> We should pause here and examine the voter. He wields terrific power.
> The fate of his community for the year is placed in his hands. One thing
> seems apparent in Bahá'í community life—we do not really know an
> individual until we have served on a committee with him; for this reason it
> is a good idea to place every member of the community on committees.
> Everyone is charming over a tea-cup, or when viewed from the lecture
> platform; but it is only after a period of what is often real suffering on
> committees that his aptitudes become known. And like Assembly members,
> committee members can discipline one another by insisting that Bahá'í
> procedures be followed—in this way training one another for possible
> future Assembly work.
> 
> Maturity in voting is a goal that may take a long time to reach. We
> should not vote for a person unless we have a pretty fair idea of how he
> will behave on the Assembly. We should not vote for him because he has had
> terrible sorrows and needs to be cheered up, or because his great-aunt was
> an early believer, or because we can spell his name. In voting we are
> creating a body which is to serve us for an entire year. The year's fate
> hangs on the names we write down.
> 
> The new voter will often find himself relying on material considerations
> when he sits down to fill out his ballot. But the oldtimer comes to
> realize that he can vote for a cripple in a charity hospital providing
> after reflection and prayer, he feels that this individual has the
> qualities defined by the Guardian: "unquestioned loyalty...selfless
> devotion...a well-trained mind...recognized ability and mature experience."
> In American life we occasionally see elected bodies blamed for every thing
> that goes wrong; these bodies are apparently set up as targets for
> malcontents; we are told that if only they were out and some other group
> were in we would have utopia immediately. In Bahá'í administrative life,
> however, there is no "we" and "they"; one could say that the Assembly is
> the community in action; one could also say that the Assembly mirrors the
> community.
> 
> Sometimes you will hear this comment: Our Assembly doesn't meet very
> often, because there isn't much work to do. The answer to that is: Meet
> more often and there will be work. Where do people expect the work to come
> from? The Tehran Assembly, if memory serves, meets every night. A good
> community pushes its Assembly, never giving it a moment's rest; a good
> Assembly harries its community, always urging it forward. The combined
> process is something like a wheel going round.
> 
> Incidentally, if you are in doubt as to the duties of a Bahá'í Assembly,
> read page 33 of Bahá'í Administration.
> 
> True Bahá'í consultation is something to remember. In those moments when
> we, groping toward the techniques of the future, experience collective
> harmony—when we become, briefly, a composite reflection of spiritual
> light—the world is a lovely place to be in. Perhaps, to the amateur,
> pleasure results when a committee reaches harmony because of the members'
> similarity to one another; to the connoisseur, however, the real joy of
> harmony is only reached when dissimilarities are at work together—when
> opposites are reconciled—when tension is balanced, poised, distributed.
> The more truly Bahá'í a community is, the more varied it will be, and the
> more varied its Assembly membership. Youth is there with the faults of
> youth, age with the faults of age. The fluttery blonde is there, along
> with the judge and the garbage man; the intellectual is there, gravely
> studying the opinion of the business man who left school when he was
> twelve. Each is compensating for another's deficiency, each seeing an
> aspect of the problem that another cannot see, each representing some
> quality in the community and therefore duty-bound to express his view.
> A human being is never just right. He is either too young or too old or
> too middle-aged; tired out from a day's work or fretful with leisure; bowed
> with care or unsympathetic from lack of sorrow; too poor for breadth of
> vision or too rich to understand the value of a postage stamp; so bold that
> he will violate sacred conventions, or so timid that he will apologize for
> holding a thought; in love, not in love, or at the "dangerous age"
> —a vague period covering apparently some fifty years of life. All these
> elements in human nature are teamed on the Assembly, and one makes up for
> another.
> 
> You never know whom you will find as your fellow Assembly-member; but even
> if you have only been a Bahá'í for a week, your opinion is entitled to as
> much consideration as anyone else's, if each member is to formulate his
> view in accord with the Teachings.
> 
> A friend of mine was faced with a problem recently and I asked why she did
> not take it to the Assembly. "I have spoken to all the members
> individually," she answered. Another believer, member of an Assembly, was
> consulted on some issue. "The Assembly would say thus and so about it," he
> replied. I mention these two cases because they represent fairly general
> attitudes. The first individual had not grasped the fact that the nine
> persons, consulted separately, were only community members and therefore
> could not arrive at an Assembly decision. The second had taken it upon
> himself to think for eight other minds besides his own.
> 
> Keith Ransom-Kehler used to explain Bahá'í consultation in a homely but
> unforgettable way. She said it was like making a soup. One person put in
> the salt, one the meat, one the vegetables, and so forth. In the end you
> had not salt, not meat, not vegetables, but something new, the result of
> all that had been put together.
> 
> In successful Bahá'í consultation, every member is happy with the result,
> or at least satisfied with the way the consultation has proceeded.
> Business as the world conducts it apparently means to go to work on a
> majority, win them over to your side, and carry your vote: you then gloat
> politely over the defeated side, and go home and tell your wife how you
> laid down the law. This is not Baha' consultation. The Bahá'í Assembly
> member has no side to take, except insofar as all nine members are on the
> same side: they all want the greatest good of the Cause. The Bahá'í
> Assembly member does not attend the meeting to railroad a thing through.
> He attends to find out what his opinion will be after he has heard eight
> other opinions. Since he sees a question from his angle only, he knows
> that he must add eight other versions of a problem to his own, in order to
> reach a decision in accord with Bahá'í administrative principles. The best
> decision is that which has assimilated all nine opinions, and in this light
> a Bahá'í Assembly is structurally very like the Temple at Wilmette.
> Assembly members should see to it that no one leaves the meeting with the
> feeling that he has been unjustly treated, stifled, belittle or ignored. A
> member may, however, feel that he is always in a minority, and that the
> Assembly is making mistakes. This does not matter. The Teachings require
> majority decisions, and affirm that even if a mistake is made, this can be
> rectified providing unity is safeguarded at all times. A particularly
> gifted member may often find himself in a minority because he is ahead of
> his fellows. In this case, he should continue patient and loving, for as
> events prove him right his fellow-members will gradually come to understand
> and value the particular aspect of truth which he represents.
> Resigning in protest is the new Assembly member's invariable first
> impulse. This move chokes off whatever elements in the community elected
> him, and also has a harmful effect on his character. After his
> resignation, he does not quite know what to do with himself; he does not
> approve of what is going on, but he has thrown away his best means of
> correcting it; and his action has lessened the weight his opinions once had
> in the community, so that the measures he advocates find few supporters.
> The Bahá'í way is rather to face the guns, to seek out tribulation, not to
> hide from it. One can, of course, remain a devoted believer and still
> arrange one's life so as to avoid all administrative responsibilities, but
> as a rule the cost in character and effectiveness is much too high.
> Assembly consultation cannot be carried on without extreme courtesy, which
> may be one reason why courtesy is so much stressed by Bahá'u'lláh.
> Interruption, raising of the voice, unpleasant facial expressions—such as
> we see on many a secular committee—certainly are not proper to a gathering
> which is looking for truth in the laboratory sense. If the chairman gives
> each of you the floor—as he must, and through many sessions, if need be
> till a satisfactory decision is reached—you do not need to interrupt. If
> your fellows listen to you carefully as they are duty-bound to do if they
> are to formulate their own decision in accord with Bahá'í principles—you
> do not need to raise your voice.
> 
> There is a secret, it seems to me, that makes Bahá'í consultation a very
> easy thing. It is to be found in the Visitation Tablet that we chant in
> the Shrine of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. The particular words I am thinking of are:
> "Make me as dust in the pathway of Thy loved ones...." nine persons who are
> all striving for this goal will experience few adminsitrative difficulties.
> What it all means, really, is that Assembly members must love one another.
> If they do not, they will poison their community, which will then become
> too weak either to attract new members or retain old ones.
> 
> A Bahá'í went to 'Akka in the early days and saw the beauty of
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá. He said, "I wish I could take Thy face with me, back to the
> friends in America." The Master said that My love is My face. Take it to
> them. Tell them to see Me in their love for one another.
> 
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> Views11149 views since posted 1999; last edit 2025-02-15 10:48 UTC;
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> previous at archive.org.../gail_primery_bahai_assemblies;
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> — *Primer for Baha'i Assemblies (Used by permission of the curator)*