Spiritual Assembly
Encyclopedia
Spiritual Assembly is a term given by `Abdu'l-Bahá
to refer to elected councils that govern the Bahá'í Faith
. Because the Bahá'í Faith has no clergy, they carry out the affairs of the community. In addition to existing at the local level, there are national Spiritual Assemblies (although “national” in some cases refers to a portion of a country or to a group of countries).
, `Abdu'l-Bahá
, and Shoghi Effendi
stated how Spiritual Assemblies should be elected by the Bahá'ís, defined their nature and purposes, and described in considerable detail how they should function. Since these institutions are grounded in the Bahá'í authoritative texts, Bahá'ís regard them as divine in nature, and contrast the wealth of scriptural guidance with the paucity of scriptural texts on which Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious institutions are based.
The Universal House of Justice
has added that among the responsibilities of Local Spiritual Assemblies are to be “channels of divine guidance, planners of the teaching work, developers of human resources, builders of communities, and loving shepherds of the multitudes.” On a practical level, they organize local Bahá'í communities by maintaining a local Bahá'í Fund, owning the local Bahá'í center
(if one exists), organizing Bahá'í events, counseling Bahá'ís about personal difficulties, assisting with Bahá'í marriage
s and funerals, providing educational programs to adults and children, publicizing the Bahá'í Faith locally, fostering projects for the social and economic development of the region, and enrolling new members of the religion. Spiritual Assemblies appoint individuals, task forces, and committees to carry out many of their functions. National Spiritual Assemblies have a similar mandate at the national level: they coordinate publishing and distribution of Bahá'í literature
, direct relations with national organizations and governmental agencies, oversee the work of local spiritual assemblies, and (in some countries) Regional Councils, set local Bahá'í jurisdictional boundaries, provide various educational services and programs, and set the overall tone and direction of the national community.
’s book of laws, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas
:
The passage gives the institution a name, a minimum number (nine, for “the number of Baha” refers to the numerical value of the letters of that word, which is nine), and a general responsibility to take care of the welfare of others even as they would take care of their own. While the resulting institution is local, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas Bahá'u'lláh also spoke about the responsibilities of the supreme or Universal House of Justice
. In response to the passage, Mírzá Asadu'lláh Isfahání, a prominent Bahá'í teacher, organized an unofficial Bahá'í consultative body in Tehran, Iran, about 1878. The first official Bahá'í consultative body was organized under `Abdu'l-Bahá’s direction by Hand of the Cause Hají Ákhúnd
in Tehran in 1897; by 1899 it was an elected body. Because of the difficulties in Iran caused by persecution of the Bahá'í Faith, the Tehran
body served to coordinate both local and national Bahá'í activities. It is not known what name the body was organized under.
The development of a Bahá'í community in the United States
in the 1890s necessitated the creation of local Bahá'í consultative bodies there. In 1899 the Bahá'ís of Chicago
elected a local council based on their awareness of the provisions of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (which was circulated in provisional English translation as a typescript as early as 1900). The New York Bahá'ís elected a “Board of Counsel” in December 1900. In 1901 the Chicago body was reorganized and re-elected and took the name “House of Justice of Bahais of Chicago, Ills.” In response, `Abdu'l-Bahá
revealed three tablets of encouragement and guidance to the body, including prayers to say at the beginning and end of their meetings, prayers that Bahá'ís use around the world today for their Spiritual Assembly meetings.
In 1902 `Abdu'l-Bahá sent a very important tablet to the Chicago governing body where he said “let the designation of that body be ‘Spiritual Assembly’—this for the reason that, were it to use the term ‘House of Justice’, the government might hereafter come to suppose that it was acting as a court of law, or concerning itself in political matters, or that, at some indeterminate future time, it would involve itself in the affairs of government.... This same designation hath been universally adopted throughout Iran.” For this reason, Bahá'í local and national governing bodies are designated “Spiritual Assemblies” to this day.
The first decade of the twentieth century saw the proliferation of local Bahá'í governing bodies. Often unaware of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s guidance, they had a variety of titles in English
and Persian
, such as “Council Board, “Board of Consultation,” “House of Spirituality,” and "Executive Committee." Unaware `Abdu'l-Bahá had told the Chicago Bahá'ís to elect their body every five years, they were usually elected annually or even semi-annually. The number of members varied from five to nineteen (except in New York City, where `Abdu'l-Bahá, in 1911, said they should elect twenty-seven members in order to be inclusive of and to foster unity between that city’s diverse Bahá'í groups). They were male only until `Abdu'l-Bahá said, in 1911, that women should be elected to the local governing bodies existing in the United States; their exclusion from local bodies continued in Iran until the 1950s, because of Iranian cultural conventions. In the period 1900 to 1911, consultative bodies are known to have existed in Kenosha, Wisconsin
, Boston, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C.
, Spokane, Washington
, northern Hudson County, New Jersey
, the greater San Francisco area, California, in the United States; and in Bombay, British Raj
India; Cairo
, Khedivate of Egypt
; Acre
, Ottoman Syria
; Baku
, Tbilisi
, Ashgabat and Samarqand in the Russian Empire
; and Mashhad
, Abadih, Qazvin
, and Tabriz
, Persia
. Consultative bodies also existed for the Jewish
and Zoroastrian
Bahá'ís in Tehran and for the women of a few Bahá'í communities.
Because efforts to organize local Bahá'í consultative bodies remained informal, few additional ones had formed by 1921 (notable exceptions being Cleveland, Ohio
, and London
), and some of the ones in the United States had lapsed. Upon assuming the Guardianship of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi
read `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament
and made establishment of local spiritual assemblies an early priority. His second general letter to the Bahá'ís of the world, dated March 5, 1922, referred to the “vital necessity of having a local Spiritual Assembly in every locality where the number of adult declared believers exceeds nine.” The letter also quoted extensively from Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá about the purposes and duties of Spiritual Assemblies. The result was a rapid proliferation of local Spiritual Assemblies; a 1928 list had the following: Australia, 6; Brazil, 1; Burma, 3; Canada, 2; China, 1; Egypt, 1; England, 4; France, 1; India, 4; Japan, 1; Korea, 1; Lebanon, 1; New Zealand, 1; Palestine, 1; Iran, 5; Russia, 1; South Africa, 1; Switzerland, 1; Syria, 1; Turkey, 1; and the United States, 47, for a total of 85 local Spiritual Assemblies worldwide. The number has grown ever since; in 2001 there were 11,740 local Spiritual Assemblies worldwide.
, but the fact that they would be established circulated for years before the contents of the Will became publicly available in early 1922. In 1909, Hippolyte Dreyfus wrote extensively about the role of the national House of Justice (as it would have been known then) in his The Universal Religion: Bahaism, Its Rise and Social Import. In that year, also, the Bahá'ís of the United States
and Canada
elected a nine-member “Executive Committee” for the Bahai Temple Unity, a continental consultative body formed to build the Bahá'í House of Worship
in Wilmette, Illinois
, a suburb of Chicago. Subsequently the Bahai Temple Unity, which held annual conventions, appointed committees to publish Bahá'í literature
, coordinate the spread of the Bahá'í Faith across North America, and review Bahá'í publications for their accuracy. By the time of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s passing in November 1921, the Bahai Temple Unity functioned as a “national” Bahá'í coordinating body.
In the same March 5, 1922 letter to the Bahá'ís of the world that called for the election of local Spiritual Assemblies, Shoghi Effendi called on them to “indirectly” elect National Spiritual Assemblies. He also enumerated committees that a National Spiritual Assembly should have in order to carry out its responsibilities. “Indirect” election
referred to the process, mentioned in the Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá, of the Bahá'ís electing one or more delegates from each locality, who would represent them at a national convention and would vote for the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly. The 1928 issue of The Bahá'í World listed nine National Spiritual Assemblies: Persia (Iran
); the United States and Canada; Germany
; Great Britain and Ireland
; India
and Burma; Egypt
; Turkistan
; Caucasus
; and Iraq
. Of these, the Iranian body was still the “Central Spiritual Assembly” in Tehran, elected by the Bahá'ís of that community; it wasn’t until 1934 that a national Bahá'í membership list could be drawn up that allowed the election of delegates and convening of a fully representative national convention. It is possible that the Turkistan and Caucasus bodies were preliminary as well. By 1953 the number of National Spiritual Assemblies worldwide had increased to 12; in 1963, 56; by 1968, 81, by 1986, 168; by 2001, 182. An important part of the process was the establishment of “regional” National Spiritual Assemblies; thus in 1951 all of South America
elected a single National Spiritual Assembly, but by 1963 nearly every nation on that continent had its own. National Spiritual Assemblies are still being formed as areas of the world achieve religious freedom. Some National Spiritual Assemblies have been formed in areas smaller than a nation: Alaska
, Hawaii
, and Puerto Rico
have their own “national” bodies because they are geographically separated from the lower forty-eight states; Sicily
has its own because Shoghi Effendi
said major islands also like in the Caribbean should elect independent National Spiritual Assemblies. Like local Spiritual Assemblies, all National Spiritual Assemblies have nine members and are elected annually, usually during the Ridván Festival
(April 21-May 2). All Bahá'í elections occur in an atmosphere of prayer where nominations, campaigning, and all discussion of persons is forbidden.
The members of the National Spiritual Assemblies collectively serve as the electoral college for electing the Universal House of Justice
, the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith, which was first formed in 1963.
`Abdu'l-Bahá
‘Abdu’l-Bahá , born ‘Abbás Effendí, was the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. In 1892, `Abdu'l-Bahá was appointed in his father's will to be his successor and head of the Bahá'í Faith. `Abdu'l-Bahá was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family of the realm...
to refer to elected councils that govern the Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....
. Because the Bahá'í Faith has no clergy, they carry out the affairs of the community. In addition to existing at the local level, there are national Spiritual Assemblies (although “national” in some cases refers to a portion of a country or to a group of countries).
Nature and purpose
Bahá'u'lláhBahá'u'lláh
Bahá'u'lláh , born ' , was the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. He claimed to be the prophetic fulfilment of Bábism, a 19th-century outgrowth of Shí‘ism, but in a broader sense claimed to be a messenger from God referring to the fulfilment of the eschatological expectations of Islam, Christianity, and...
, `Abdu'l-Bahá
`Abdu'l-Bahá
‘Abdu’l-Bahá , born ‘Abbás Effendí, was the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. In 1892, `Abdu'l-Bahá was appointed in his father's will to be his successor and head of the Bahá'í Faith. `Abdu'l-Bahá was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family of the realm...
, and Shoghi Effendi
Shoghi Effendi
Shoghí Effendí Rabbání , better known as Shoghi Effendi, was the Guardian and appointed head of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957...
stated how Spiritual Assemblies should be elected by the Bahá'ís, defined their nature and purposes, and described in considerable detail how they should function. Since these institutions are grounded in the Bahá'í authoritative texts, Bahá'ís regard them as divine in nature, and contrast the wealth of scriptural guidance with the paucity of scriptural texts on which Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious institutions are based.
The Universal House of Justice
Universal House of Justice
The Universal House of Justice is the supreme governing institution of the Bahá'í Faith. It is a legislative institution with the authority to supplement and apply the laws of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, and exercises a judicial function as the highest appellate institution in the...
has added that among the responsibilities of Local Spiritual Assemblies are to be “channels of divine guidance, planners of the teaching work, developers of human resources, builders of communities, and loving shepherds of the multitudes.” On a practical level, they organize local Bahá'í communities by maintaining a local Bahá'í Fund, owning the local Bahá'í center
Haziratu'l-Quds
The term Haziratu'l-Quds or Bahá'í centre refers to national, regional and local Bahá'í administrative centres....
(if one exists), organizing Bahá'í events, counseling Bahá'ís about personal difficulties, assisting with Bahá'í marriage
Bahá'í marriage
Bahá'í marriage is union of a man and a woman. Its purpose is mainly spiritual and is to foster harmony, fellowship and unity between the two partners...
s and funerals, providing educational programs to adults and children, publicizing the Bahá'í Faith locally, fostering projects for the social and economic development of the region, and enrolling new members of the religion. Spiritual Assemblies appoint individuals, task forces, and committees to carry out many of their functions. National Spiritual Assemblies have a similar mandate at the national level: they coordinate publishing and distribution of Bahá'í literature
Bahá'í literature
Bahá'í literature, like much religious text, covers a variety of topics and forms, including scripture and inspiration, interpretation, history and biography, introduction and study materials, and apologia...
, direct relations with national organizations and governmental agencies, oversee the work of local spiritual assemblies, and (in some countries) Regional Councils, set local Bahá'í jurisdictional boundaries, provide various educational services and programs, and set the overall tone and direction of the national community.
Local Spiritual Assemblies
The origin of the institution of the local Spiritual Assembly lies in Bahá'u'lláhBahá'u'lláh
Bahá'u'lláh , born ' , was the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. He claimed to be the prophetic fulfilment of Bábism, a 19th-century outgrowth of Shí‘ism, but in a broader sense claimed to be a messenger from God referring to the fulfilment of the eschatological expectations of Islam, Christianity, and...
’s book of laws, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas
Kitáb-i-Aqdas
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas is a central book of the Bahá'í Faith written by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the religion. The work was written in Arabic under the Arabic title , but it is commonly referred to by its Persian title, Kitáb-i-Aqdas , which was given to the work by Bahá'u'lláh himself...
:
- The Lord hath ordained that in every city a House of Justice be established wherein shall gather counsellors to the number of Baha, and should it exceed this number it doth not matter. They should consider themselves as entering the Court of the presence of God, the Exalted, the Most High, and as beholding Him Who is the Unseen. It behoveth them to be the trusted ones of the Merciful among men and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God for all that dwell on earth. It is incumbent upon them to take counsel together and to have regard for the interests of the servants of God, for His sake, even as they regard their own interests, and to choose that which is meet and seemly.
The passage gives the institution a name, a minimum number (nine, for “the number of Baha” refers to the numerical value of the letters of that word, which is nine), and a general responsibility to take care of the welfare of others even as they would take care of their own. While the resulting institution is local, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas Bahá'u'lláh also spoke about the responsibilities of the supreme or Universal House of Justice
Universal House of Justice
The Universal House of Justice is the supreme governing institution of the Bahá'í Faith. It is a legislative institution with the authority to supplement and apply the laws of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, and exercises a judicial function as the highest appellate institution in the...
. In response to the passage, Mírzá Asadu'lláh Isfahání, a prominent Bahá'í teacher, organized an unofficial Bahá'í consultative body in Tehran, Iran, about 1878. The first official Bahá'í consultative body was organized under `Abdu'l-Bahá’s direction by Hand of the Cause Hají Ákhúnd
Hají Ákhúnd
Ḥají Mullá `Alí-Akbar Shahmírzádí , known as Ḥají Ákhúnd was an eminent follower of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, a global religion of Persian origin. He was appointed a Hand of the Cause, and identified as one of the nineteen Apostles of Bahá'u'lláh.- Background :Hají Ákhúnd was...
in Tehran in 1897; by 1899 it was an elected body. Because of the difficulties in Iran caused by persecution of the Bahá'í Faith, the Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
body served to coordinate both local and national Bahá'í activities. It is not known what name the body was organized under.
The development of a Bahá'í community in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in the 1890s necessitated the creation of local Bahá'í consultative bodies there. In 1899 the Bahá'ís of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
elected a local council based on their awareness of the provisions of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (which was circulated in provisional English translation as a typescript as early as 1900). The New York Bahá'ís elected a “Board of Counsel” in December 1900. In 1901 the Chicago body was reorganized and re-elected and took the name “House of Justice of Bahais of Chicago, Ills.” In response, `Abdu'l-Bahá
`Abdu'l-Bahá
‘Abdu’l-Bahá , born ‘Abbás Effendí, was the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. In 1892, `Abdu'l-Bahá was appointed in his father's will to be his successor and head of the Bahá'í Faith. `Abdu'l-Bahá was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family of the realm...
revealed three tablets of encouragement and guidance to the body, including prayers to say at the beginning and end of their meetings, prayers that Bahá'ís use around the world today for their Spiritual Assembly meetings.
In 1902 `Abdu'l-Bahá sent a very important tablet to the Chicago governing body where he said “let the designation of that body be ‘Spiritual Assembly’—this for the reason that, were it to use the term ‘House of Justice’, the government might hereafter come to suppose that it was acting as a court of law, or concerning itself in political matters, or that, at some indeterminate future time, it would involve itself in the affairs of government.... This same designation hath been universally adopted throughout Iran.” For this reason, Bahá'í local and national governing bodies are designated “Spiritual Assemblies” to this day.
The first decade of the twentieth century saw the proliferation of local Bahá'í governing bodies. Often unaware of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s guidance, they had a variety of titles in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, such as “Council Board, “Board of Consultation,” “House of Spirituality,” and "Executive Committee." Unaware `Abdu'l-Bahá had told the Chicago Bahá'ís to elect their body every five years, they were usually elected annually or even semi-annually. The number of members varied from five to nineteen (except in New York City, where `Abdu'l-Bahá, in 1911, said they should elect twenty-seven members in order to be inclusive of and to foster unity between that city’s diverse Bahá'í groups). They were male only until `Abdu'l-Bahá said, in 1911, that women should be elected to the local governing bodies existing in the United States; their exclusion from local bodies continued in Iran until the 1950s, because of Iranian cultural conventions. In the period 1900 to 1911, consultative bodies are known to have existed in Kenosha, Wisconsin
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Kenosha is a city and the county seat of Kenosha County in the State of Wisconsin in United States. With a population of 99,218 as of May 2011, Kenosha is the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Kenosha is also the fourth-largest city on the western shore of Lake Michigan, following Chicago,...
, Boston, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Spokane, Washington
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
, northern Hudson County, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, the greater San Francisco area, California, in the United States; and in Bombay, British Raj
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
India; Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Khedivate of Egypt
Khedivate of Egypt
The Khedivate of Egypt was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire.- Rise of Muhammad Ali :The Egypt Eyalet was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. The eyalet was ruled locally by the Mamluk military caste and their various beys , who started to fight amongst themselves for control of...
; Acre
Acre, Israel
Acre , is a city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. Acre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the country....
, Ottoman Syria
Ottoman Syria
Ottoman Syria is a European reference to the area that during European Renaissance from the late 15th to early 18th century was called the Levant within the early period of the Ottoman Empire, the Orient until the early 19th century, and Greater Syria until 1918...
; Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
, Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, Ashgabat and Samarqand in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
; and Mashhad
Mashhad
Mashhad , is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia Muslim world. It is also the only major Iranian city with an Arabic name. It is located east of Tehran, at the center of the Razavi Khorasan Province close to the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Its...
, Abadih, Qazvin
Qazvin
Qazvin is the largest city and capital of the Province of Qazvin in Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 349,821, in 96,420 families....
, and Tabriz
Tabriz
Tabriz is the fourth largest city and one of the historical capitals of Iran and the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Situated at an altitude of 1,350 meters at the junction of the Quri River and Aji River, it was the second largest city in Iran until the late 1960s, one of its former...
, Persia
Qajar dynasty
The Qajar dynasty was an Iranian royal family of Turkic descent who ruled Persia from 1785 to 1925....
. Consultative bodies also existed for the Jewish
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
and Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...
Bahá'ís in Tehran and for the women of a few Bahá'í communities.
Because efforts to organize local Bahá'í consultative bodies remained informal, few additional ones had formed by 1921 (notable exceptions being Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
), and some of the ones in the United States had lapsed. Upon assuming the Guardianship of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi
Shoghi Effendi
Shoghí Effendí Rabbání , better known as Shoghi Effendi, was the Guardian and appointed head of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957...
read `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament
Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá
A seminal document, written in three stages by `Abdu'l-Bahá. Several sections were written under imminent threat of harm. The first section was probably written in 1906....
and made establishment of local spiritual assemblies an early priority. His second general letter to the Bahá'ís of the world, dated March 5, 1922, referred to the “vital necessity of having a local Spiritual Assembly in every locality where the number of adult declared believers exceeds nine.” The letter also quoted extensively from Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá about the purposes and duties of Spiritual Assemblies. The result was a rapid proliferation of local Spiritual Assemblies; a 1928 list had the following: Australia, 6; Brazil, 1; Burma, 3; Canada, 2; China, 1; Egypt, 1; England, 4; France, 1; India, 4; Japan, 1; Korea, 1; Lebanon, 1; New Zealand, 1; Palestine, 1; Iran, 5; Russia, 1; South Africa, 1; Switzerland, 1; Syria, 1; Turkey, 1; and the United States, 47, for a total of 85 local Spiritual Assemblies worldwide. The number has grown ever since; in 2001 there were 11,740 local Spiritual Assemblies worldwide.
National Spiritual Assemblies
National Spiritual Assemblies are first mentioned in `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and TestamentWill and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá
A seminal document, written in three stages by `Abdu'l-Bahá. Several sections were written under imminent threat of harm. The first section was probably written in 1906....
, but the fact that they would be established circulated for years before the contents of the Will became publicly available in early 1922. In 1909, Hippolyte Dreyfus wrote extensively about the role of the national House of Justice (as it would have been known then) in his The Universal Religion: Bahaism, Its Rise and Social Import. In that year, also, the Bahá'ís of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
elected a nine-member “Executive Committee” for the Bahai Temple Unity, a continental consultative body formed to build the Bahá'í House of Worship
Bahá'í House of Worship
A Bahá'í House of Worship, sometimes referred to by its Arabic name of Mashriqu'l-Adhkár ,is the designation of a place of worship, or temple, of the Bahá'í Faith...
in Wilmette, Illinois
Wilmette, Illinois
Wilmette is a village in New Trier Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is located north of Chicago's downtown district and has a population of 27,651. Wilmette is considered a bedroom community in the North Shore district...
, a suburb of Chicago. Subsequently the Bahai Temple Unity, which held annual conventions, appointed committees to publish Bahá'í literature
Bahá'í literature
Bahá'í literature, like much religious text, covers a variety of topics and forms, including scripture and inspiration, interpretation, history and biography, introduction and study materials, and apologia...
, coordinate the spread of the Bahá'í Faith across North America, and review Bahá'í publications for their accuracy. By the time of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s passing in November 1921, the Bahai Temple Unity functioned as a “national” Bahá'í coordinating body.
In the same March 5, 1922 letter to the Bahá'ís of the world that called for the election of local Spiritual Assemblies, Shoghi Effendi called on them to “indirectly” elect National Spiritual Assemblies. He also enumerated committees that a National Spiritual Assembly should have in order to carry out its responsibilities. “Indirect” election
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...
referred to the process, mentioned in the Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá, of the Bahá'ís electing one or more delegates from each locality, who would represent them at a national convention and would vote for the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly. The 1928 issue of The Bahá'í World listed nine National Spiritual Assemblies: Persia (Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
); the United States and Canada; Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
; Great Britain and Ireland
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
; India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Burma; Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
; Turkistan
Türkistan
*Türkistan is the local name for Turkestan, a region of Central Asia.*Türkistan, Kazakhstan is a historic city and place of pilgrimage in southern Kazakhstan...
; Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
; and Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. Of these, the Iranian body was still the “Central Spiritual Assembly” in Tehran, elected by the Bahá'ís of that community; it wasn’t until 1934 that a national Bahá'í membership list could be drawn up that allowed the election of delegates and convening of a fully representative national convention. It is possible that the Turkistan and Caucasus bodies were preliminary as well. By 1953 the number of National Spiritual Assemblies worldwide had increased to 12; in 1963, 56; by 1968, 81, by 1986, 168; by 2001, 182. An important part of the process was the establishment of “regional” National Spiritual Assemblies; thus in 1951 all of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
elected a single National Spiritual Assembly, but by 1963 nearly every nation on that continent had its own. National Spiritual Assemblies are still being formed as areas of the world achieve religious freedom. Some National Spiritual Assemblies have been formed in areas smaller than a nation: Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, and Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
have their own “national” bodies because they are geographically separated from the lower forty-eight states; Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
has its own because Shoghi Effendi
Shoghi Effendi
Shoghí Effendí Rabbání , better known as Shoghi Effendi, was the Guardian and appointed head of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957...
said major islands also like in the Caribbean should elect independent National Spiritual Assemblies. Like local Spiritual Assemblies, all National Spiritual Assemblies have nine members and are elected annually, usually during the Ridván Festival
Ridván
Riḍván is a twelve-day festival in the Bahá'í Faith, commemorating the commencement of Bahá'u'lláh's prophethood. It begins at sunset on April 20 and continues until sunset, May 2...
(April 21-May 2). All Bahá'í elections occur in an atmosphere of prayer where nominations, campaigning, and all discussion of persons is forbidden.
The members of the National Spiritual Assemblies collectively serve as the electoral college for electing the Universal House of Justice
Universal House of Justice
The Universal House of Justice is the supreme governing institution of the Bahá'í Faith. It is a legislative institution with the authority to supplement and apply the laws of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, and exercises a judicial function as the highest appellate institution in the...
, the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith, which was first formed in 1963.
External links
- Formation of National Spiritual Assemblies, a chronological overview.