Century of Light Part 4

Fully aware of the condition into which society had fallen, the consequences of his betrayal at the hands of family members on whose a.s.sistance he should have been able to rely, and the relative weakness of the resources available to him in the Baha'i community itself, Shoghi Effendi arose to forge the means needed to realize the mission bequeathed to him.

To one degree or another, most Baha'is no doubt appreciated that the a.s.semblies they were being called on to form had a significance far beyond the mere management of practical affairs with which they were charged.

'Abdu'l-Baha, who had guided this development, had spoken of them as:

...shining lamps and heavenly gardens, from which the fragrances of holiness are diffused over all regions, and the lights of knowledge are shed abroad over all created things. From them the spirit of life streameth in every direction. They, indeed, are the potent sources of the progress of man, at all times and under all conditions.(66)

It fell to Shoghi Effendi, however, to a.s.sist the community to understand the place and role of these national and local consultative bodies in the framework of the Administrative Order created by Baha'u'llah and elaborated in the provisions of the Master's Will and Testament. An obstacle faced by a significant number of believers in this respect was the unexamined a.s.sumption of many that the Cause was essentially a "spiritual" a.s.sociation in which organization, while not necessarily ant.i.thetical, did not const.i.tute an inherent feature of the Divine purpose. Emphasizing that the Kitab-i-Aqdas and the Will and Testament "are not only complementary, but ... mutually confirm one another, and are inseparable parts of one complete unit",(67) the Guardian invited the believers to reflect deeply on a central truth of the Cause they had embraced:

Few will fail to recognize that the Spirit breathed by Baha'u'llah upon the world, and which is manifesting itself with varying degrees of intensity through the efforts consciously displayed by His avowed supporters and indirectly through certain humanitarian organizations, can never permeate and exercise an abiding influence upon mankind unless and until it incarnates itself in a visible Order, which would bear His name, wholly identify itself with His principles, and function in conformity with His laws.(68)

He went on to urge the Faith's followers to realize the essential difference between the Cause of Baha'u'llah, whose Revealed Texts contain detailed provisions for such an authoritative Order, and those preparatory Revelations whose Scriptures had been largely silent on the administration of affairs and on the interpretation of their Founders' intent. In the words of Baha'u'llah: "The Prophetic Cycle hath, verily, ended. The Eternal Truth is now come. He hath lifted up the Ensign of Power...."(69) Unlike the Dispensations of the past, the Revelation of G.o.d to this age has given birth, Shoghi Effendi said, to "a living organism", whose laws and inst.i.tutions const.i.tute "the essentials of a Divine Economy", "a pattern for future society", and "the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth".(70)

The friends should strive to appreciate, therefore, the Guardian urged, that the Spiritual a.s.semblies they were painstakingly establishing throughout the world were the forerunners of the local and national "Houses of Justice" envisioned by Baha'u'llah. As such, they were integral parts of an Administrative Order that will, in time, "a.s.sert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind".(71)

For a few in the young communities of the West, such a departure from traditional conceptions of the nature and role of religion proved too great a test, and Baha'i communities suffered the distress of seeing valued co-workers drift away in search of spiritual pursuits more congenial to their inclinations. For the vast majority of believers, however, great messages from the Guardian's pen, such as "The Goal of a New World Order" and "The Dispensation of Baha'u'llah", threw brilliant light on precisely the issue that most concerned them, the relationship between spiritual truth and social development, inspiring in them a determination to play their part in laying the foundations of humanity's future.

The Guardian provided, as well, the organizing image for this mighty work.

The "Heroic Age" of Baha'u'llah's Dispensation, he declared, had ended with the pa.s.sing of 'Abdu'l-Baha. The Baha'i community now embarked on the "Iron Age", the "Formative Age", in which the Administrative Order would be erected throughout the planet, its inst.i.tutions established and the "society building" powers inherent in it fully revealed. Far ahead lay what Shoghi Effendi called the "Golden Age" of the Dispensation, leading eventually to the emergence of the Baha'i World Commonwealth that will const.i.tute the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of G.o.d and the creation of a world civilization.(72) The impulse that had been initially communicated to human consciousness through the revelation of the Creative Word itself, whose revolutionary social implications had been proclaimed by the Master, was now being translated by their appointed interpreter into the vocabulary of political and economic transformation in which the public discourse of the century was everywhere taking place. Lending the process irresistible force, illuminating ever new dimensions of Baha'i experience, and serving as the mainspring of the unification of humankind it proclaimed was the Covenant that Baha'u'llah had established between Himself and those who turn to Him.

Although not initially designated "Spiritual a.s.semblies", the councils that local Baha'i communities in Persia had been encouraged by 'Abdu'l-Baha to create had a.s.sumed responsibility for the administration of their affairs. In the light of what was to follow, no one with a sense of history can fail to be struck by the fact that the Faith's first Spiritual a.s.sembly, that of Tehran, was founded in 1897, the year of Shoghi Effendi's own birth. Under the Master's guidance, intermittent meetings held by the four Hands of the Cause in Persia had gradually evolved into this inst.i.tution that served simultaneously as Persia's "Central Spiritual a.s.sembly" and as the governing body of the local community in the capital. By the time of 'Abdu'l-Baha's pa.s.sing, there were more than thirty Local Spiritual a.s.semblies established in Persia. In 1922 Shoghi Effendi called for the formal establishment of Persia's National Spiritual a.s.sembly, an achievement delayed until 1934 by the demands related to the taking of a reliable census of the community as a basis for the election of delegates.

Outside Persia, the believers in 'I_sh_qabad, in Russian Turkestan, elected their first Local Spiritual a.s.sembly, a body that a.s.sumed an important role in the project for the construction of the first Baha'i Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar in 'I_sh_qabad. In North America a variety of consultative arrangements-"Boards of Council", "Council Boards", "Boards of Consultation" and "Working Committees"-performed a.n.a.logous functions, evolving gradually into elected bodies that const.i.tuted the forerunners of Spiritual a.s.semblies. By the time of the Master's pa.s.sing, there were perhaps forty such councils functioning in North America. These developments prepared the way for the eventual emergence of the first National Spiritual a.s.sembly of the Baha'is of the United States and Canada, which evolved from the "Temple Unity Board", a body created in 1909 to coordinate construction of the future House of Worship. It was formed in 1923, although the administrative requirements set by the Guardian for this step were met only in 1925. Before this latter date arrived, National a.s.semblies had been established in the British Isles, in Germany and Austria, in India and Burma, and in Egypt and the Sudan.(73)

As the formation of National and Local Spiritual a.s.semblies was taking place, the Guardian began to lay emphasis on the importance of their securing recognition as "corporate persons" under civil law. By securing such formal incorporation, in whatever fashion proved practicable, Baha'i administrative inst.i.tutions would be enabled to hold property, enter into contracts, and gradually a.s.sume a range of legal rights vital to the interests of the Cause. The importance Shoghi Effendi attached to this new stage of administrative evolution becomes clear in the photocopies of such civil instruments that began to become a major feature of the photographic coverage of the expansion of the Faith in successive volumes of _The Baha'i World_. Indeed, once the Mansion at Bahji had been repossessed and fully restored to its original condition, and appropriately furnished, Shoghi Effendi put together a collection of this much valued doc.u.mentation for display there as an encouragement and education for the growing stream of pilgrims to the World Centre.

The processes of civil incorporation began with the adoption in 1927 of a Declaration of Trust and By-Laws for the National Spiritual a.s.sembly of the United States and Canada, which gained civil recognition as a voluntary trust two years later. On 17 February 1932 the first local Baha'i a.s.sembly, that of Chicago, adopted papers of incorporation which, together with those adopted by that of New York City on 31 March of that year, were to become a pattern for such instruments throughout the world.

By 1949, the National Spiritual a.s.sembly of the Baha'is of Canada-formed when the two North American Baha'i communities had separated the previous year-was able to secure formal recognition of its status under civil law through a special Act of Parliament, a victory which Shoghi Effendi hailed as "an act wholly unprecedented in the annals of the Faith in any country, in either East or West".(74)

These pressing administrative demands did not distract Shoghi Effendi from other tasks that were vital to shaping the spiritual life of a global community. The most important of these was the arduous work that he alone could perform in providing the growing body of the believers who were not of Persian background with direct and reliable access to the Writings of the Faith's Founders. The Hidden Words, The Kitab-i-iqan, the priceless treasury brought together with so much love and insight under the t.i.tle _Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah_, _Prayers and Meditations of Baha'u'llah _and Epistle to the Son of the Wolf provided the spiritual nourishment the work of the Cause urgently required, as did Shoghi Effendi's translation and editing of Nabil's "Narrative" under the t.i.tle _The Dawn-Breakers_.

Baha'i pilgrims found spiritual enrichment of yet another kind in the Holy Places and historic sites that the Guardian acquired-often at the cost of protracted and wrenching negotiations-and lovingly restored. Shoghi Effendi was equally responsive to unexpected opportunities that offered themselves to his historical perspective. In 1925, a Sunni Muslim religious court in Egypt denied civil recognition to marriages contracted between Muslim women and Baha'i men, insisting that "The Baha'i Faith is a new religion, entirely independent" and that "no Baha'i, therefore, can be regarded a Muslim" (and therefore qualified to enter into marriage with someone who was).(75) Seizing on the larger implications of this apparent defeat, the Guardian made wide use of the court's definitive judgement to reinforce the claim of the Cause in international circles to be an independent Faith, separate and distinct from its Islamic roots.

As the Baha'i community was constructing administrative foundations which would permit it to play an effective role in human affairs, the accelerating process of disintegration that Shoghi Effendi had discerned was undermining the fabric of social order. Its origins, however determinedly ignored by many social and political theorists, are beginning, after the lapse of several decades, to gain recognition at international conferences devoted to peace and development. In our own time, it is no longer unusual to encounter in such circles candid references to the essential role that "spiritual" and "moral" forces must play in achieving solutions to urgent problems. For a Baha'i reader, such belated recognition awakens echoes of warning addressed over a century earlier by Baha'u'llah to the rulers of human affairs: "The vitality of men's belief in G.o.d is dying out in every land.... The corrosion of unG.o.dliness is eating into the vitals of human society...."(76)

The responsibility for this greatest of tragedies, the Guardian emphasized, rests primarily on the shoulders of the world's religious leaders. Baha'u'llah's severest condemnation is reserved for those who, presuming to speak in G.o.d's name, have imposed on credulous ma.s.ses a welter of dogmas and prejudices that have const.i.tuted the greatest single obstacle against which the advancement of civilization has been forced to struggle. While acknowledging the humanitarian services of countless individual clerics, He points out the consequences of the way in which self-appointed religious elites, throughout history, have interposed themselves between humanity and all voices of progress, not excluding the Messengers of G.o.d Themselves. "What 'oppression' is more grievous," He asks, "than that a soul seeking the truth, and wishing to attain unto the knowledge of G.o.d, should know not where to go for it...?"(77) In an age of scientific advancement and widespread popular education, the c.u.mulative effects of the resulting disillusionment were to make religious faith appear irrelevant. Impotent themselves to deal with the spiritual crisis, most of those clerics of various Faiths who became aware of Baha'u'llah's message either ignored the moral influence it was demonstrating or actively opposed it.(78)

Recognition of this feature of history does not diminish the harm done by those who have sought to take advantage of the spiritual vacuum thus left.

The yearning for belief is inextinguishable, an inherent part of what makes one human. When it is blocked or betrayed, the rational soul is driven to seek some new compa.s.s point, however inadequate or unworthy, around which it can organize experience and dare again to a.s.sume the risks that are an inescapable aspect of life. It was in this perspective that Shoghi Effendi warned the members of the Faith, in unusually strong language, that they must try to understand the spiritual calamity engulfing a large part of humankind during the decades between the two world wars:

G.o.d Himself has indeed been dethroned from the hearts of men, and an idolatrous world pa.s.sionately and clamorously hails and worships the false G.o.ds which its own idle fancies have fatuously created, and its misguided hands so impiously exalted.... Their high priests are the politicians and the worldly-wise, the so-called sages of the age; their sacrifice, the flesh and blood of the slaughtered mult.i.tudes; their incantations, outworn shibboleths and insidious and irreverent formulas; their incense, the smoke of anguish that ascends from the lacerated hearts of the bereaved, the maimed, and the homeless.(79)

Like opportunistic infections, aggressive ideologies took advantage of the situation created by the decline of religious vitality. Although indistinguishable from one another in the corruption of faith they represented, the three belief systems that played a dominant role in human affairs during the twentieth century differed sharply in their secondary and more conspicuous characteristics to which the Guardian drew attention.

In denouncing "the dark, the false, and crooked doctrines" that would bring devastation on "any man or people who believes in them", Shoghi Effendi warned particularly against "the triple G.o.ds of Nationalism, Racialism and Communism".(80)

Of Fascism's founding regime, created by the so-called "March on Rome" in 1922, little need be said. Long before it and its leader had been swept into oblivion during the concluding months of the second world war, Fascism had become an object of ridicule among the majority of even those who had originally supported it. Its significance lies, rather, in the host of imitators it sp.a.w.ned and which were to proliferate throughout the world like some malignant series of mutations, in the decades since then.

Fuelled by a manic nationalism, this aberration of the human spirit deified the state, discovered everywhere imaginary threats to the national survival of whatever unhappy people it had fastened upon, and preached to all who would listen the notion that war has an "enn.o.bling" influence on the human soul. The comic opera parade of uniforms, jackboots, banners and trumpets usually a.s.sociated with it should not conceal from a contemporary observer the virulent legacy it has left in our own age, enshrining in political vocabulary such anguished terms as _desaparecidos_ ("the disappeared").

While sharing Fascism's idolatry of the state, its sister ideology n.a.z.iism made itself the voice of a far more ancient and insidious perversion. At its dark heart was an obsession with what its proponents called "race purity". The single-minded determination with which it pursued its murderous ends was in no way weakened by the demonstrably false postulates upon which it was based. The n.a.z.i system was unique in the sheer b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of the act most commonly a.s.sociated with its name, the programme of genocide systematically carried out against populations considered either valueless or harmful to humanity's future, a programme that included a deliberate attempt literally to exterminate the entire Jewish people. Ultimately, it was n.a.z.iism's determination that a "master race" of its own conception must rule over the entire planet which was princ.i.p.ally responsible for fulfilling 'Abdu'l-Baha's prophetic warning of twenty years earlier that another war, far more terrible than the first, would ravage the world. Like Fascism, n.a.z.iism has left a detritus in our own time. In its case, this takes the form of a language and symbols through which fringe elements in present-day society, demoralized by the economic and social decay around them and made desperate by the absence of solutions, vent their impotent rage on minorities whom they blame for their disappointments.

The false G.o.d that the Master was moved to identify explicitly, and the one denounced by name by Shoghi Effendi, had demonstrated its character at its outset by brutally destroying, during the latter part of World War I, the first democratic government ever established in Russia. For long years, the Soviet system created by Vladimir Lenin succeeded in representing itself to many as a benefactor of humankind and the champion of social justice. In the light of historical events, such pretensions were grotesque. The doc.u.mentation now available provides irrefutable evidence of crimes so enormous and follies so abysmal as to have no parallel in the six thousand years of recorded history. To a degree never before imagined, let alone attempted, the Leninist conspiracy against human nature also sought systematically to extinguish faith in G.o.d.

Whatever view of the situation political theorists may currently hold, no one can be surprised that such deliberate violence to the roots of human motivation led inexorably to the economic and political ruin of those societies luckless enough to fall under Soviet sway. Its longer-term spiritual effect, tragically, was to pervert to the service of its own amoral agenda the legitimate yearnings for freedom and justice of subject peoples throughout the world.

From a Baha'i point of view, humanity's worship of idols of its own invention is of importance not because of the historical events a.s.sociated with these forces, however horrifying, but because of the lesson it taught. Looking back on the twilight world in which such diabolical forces loomed over humanity's future, one must ask what was the weakness in human nature that rendered it vulnerable to such influences. To have seen in someone like Benito Mussolini the figure of a "Man of Destiny", to have felt obliged to understand the racial theories of Adolf Hitler as anything other than the self-evident products of a diseased mind, to have seriously entertained the reinterpretation of human experience through dogmas that had given birth to the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin-so wilful an abandonment of reason on the part of a considerable segment of the intellectual leadership of society demands an accounting to posterity. If undertaken dispa.s.sionately, such an evaluation must, sooner or later, focus attention on a truth that runs like a central strand through the Scriptures of all of humanity's religions. In the words of Baha'u'llah:

Upon the reality of man ... He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self.... These energies ... lie, however, latent within him, even as the flame is hidden within the candle and the rays of light are potentially present in the lamp.... Neither the candle nor the lamp can be lighted through their own unaided efforts, nor can it ever be possible for the mirror to free itself from its dross.(81)

The consequence of humanity's infatuation with the ideologies its own mind had conceived was to produce a terrifying acceleration of the process of disintegration that was dissolving the fabric of social life and cultivating the basest impulses of human nature. The brutalization that the first world war had engendered now became an omnipresent feature of social life throughout much of the planet. "Thus have We gathered together the workers of iniquity", Baha'u'llah warned over a century earlier. "We see them rushing on towards their idol.... They hasten forward to h.e.l.l Fire, and mistake it for light."(82)

VI

With the administrative structure of the Cause taking shape, Shoghi Effendi turned his attention to the task he had been compelled to delay for so long, the implementation of the Master's Divine Plan. In Persia, the development was already well advanced. Directed first by Baha'u'llah and subsequently by 'Abdu'l-Baha, a corps of especially designated teachers-_muballi__gh__in_-stimulated the work at the local level throughout the country, and the existence of a vibrant community life a.s.sisted in the relatively rapid integration of new declarants.

?uququ'llah funds, supplemented by the practice of deputization, which was already an established feature of Persian Baha'i consciousness, provided material support for this teaching activity.

In the West, inspiration for the promotion of the Faith had been provided by the response to the Master's appeals by such outstanding individuals as Lua Getsinger, May Maxwell and Martha Root. Merely to mention these names is to highlight a feature of the rise of the Cause in the West to which the Master drew particular attention:

In America, the women have outdone the men in this regard and have taken the lead in this field. They strive harder in guiding the peoples of the world, and their endeavours are greater. They are confirmed by divine bestowals and blessings.(83)

In the East, social conditions of the time had virtually dictated that the initiative in the promotion of the Cause would be taken largely by men.

Few such constraints prevailed in North America and Europe, where a galaxy of unforgettable women became the princ.i.p.al exponents of the Baha'i message on both sides of the Atlantic. One thinks of Sarah Farmer, whose Green Acre school provided the infant Baha'i community with a forum for the introduction of the Faith to influential thinkers; of Sara Lady Blomfield, whose social position lent added force to the ardour with which she championed the teachings; of Marion Jack, immortalized by Shoghi Effendi as a model for Baha'i pioneers; of Laura Dreyfus-Barney, who gave the Faith the priceless collection of the Master's table talks, _Some Answered Questions_; of Agnes Parsons, co-founder with Louis Gregory of the "Race Amity" initiatives inspired by 'Abdu'l-Baha; of Corinne True, Keith Ransom-Kehler, Helen Goodall, Juliet Thompson, Grace Ober, Ethel Rosenberg, Clara Dunn, Alma k.n.o.bloch and a distinguished company of others, most of whom pioneered some new field of Baha'i service.

To the list must be added the name of Queen Marie of Romania, whom the ages will hail as the first crowned head to recognize the Revelation of G.o.d for this day. The courage shown by this lone woman in publicly declaring her faith, through the letters she fearlessly addressed to the editors of several newspapers in both Europe and North America, in all probability introduced the name of the Cause to an audience numbering millions of readers.

Despite the impressive response that the earliest of these efforts elicited, the lack of an organized means of capitalizing on the results initially limited the benefits accruing to Baha'i communities in Western lands. The rise of the Administrative Order dramatically changed the latter situation. As Local Spiritual a.s.semblies came into being, goals were set, resources were made available to support individual teaching efforts, and those who declared their faith found themselves partic.i.p.ating in the many activities of an engrossing Baha'i community life. It was now possible to systematically translate and publish literature, news of general interest was regularly shared, and the bonds that linked believers with the World Centre of the Faith grew steadily stronger.

The two chief instruments by which Shoghi Effendi set about cultivating a heightened devotion to teaching in both East and West were the same as those on which the Master had relied. A steady stream of letters to communities and individuals alike opened up for the recipients new dimensions in the beliefs they had embraced. The most important of these communications, however, now became those addressed to National and Local Spiritual a.s.semblies. Their effect was intensified by the stream of returning pilgrims who shared insights gained by direct contact with the Centre of the Cause. Through these connections every individual believer was encouraged to see himself or herself as an instrument of the power flowing through the Covenant. The invaluable compilation that eventually appeared under the t.i.tle _Messages to America, 1932-1946_ provides a review of the steps by which Shoghi Effendi drew the North American believers ever deeper into the implications of the Master's Divine Plan for "the spiritual conquest of the planet":

By the sublimity and serenity of their faith, by the steadiness and clarity of their vision, the incorruptibility of their character, the rigor of their discipline, the sanct.i.ty of their morals, and the unique example of their community life, they can and indeed must in a world polluted with its incurable corruptions, paralyzed by its haunting fears, torn by its devastating hatreds, and languishing under the weight of its appalling miseries demonstrate the validity of their claim to be regarded as the sole repository of that grace upon whose operation must depend the complete deliverance, the fundamental reorganization and the supreme felicity of all mankind.(84)

The Guardian held up before the eyes of the North American Baha'i community a vision of their spiritual destiny. Its members were, he said, "the spiritual descendants of the heroes of G.o.d's Cause", their rising inst.i.tutions were "the visible symbols of its [the Faith's] undoubted sovereignty", the teachers and pioneers it sent out were "torch-bearers of an as yet unborn civilization", it was their collective challenge to a.s.sume "a preponderating share" in laying the foundations of the World Order "which the Bab has heralded, which the mind of Baha'u'llah has envisioned, and whose features 'Abdu'l-Baha, its Architect, has delineated...."(85)

The language of the messages is magnificent, enthralling. In acknowledging the darkness that widespread G.o.dlessness, violence and creeping immorality was engendering, Shoghi Effendi described the role that Baha'is everywhere must play as instruments of the transforming power of the new Revelation:

Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Baha'u'llah Himself, whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete, the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind.(86)

In 1936 the Guardian judged that the administrative structure of the Cause was sufficiently broad and consolidated in North America that he could begin the first stage of the implementation of the Divine Plan itself.

With the world sliding into another global conflagration, and the scope possible to the efforts of the Persian believers being severely limited, the focus would necessarily have to be on the expansion and consolidation of the Baha'i community in the Western hemisphere in preparation for the much larger undertakings that lay ahead. Calling on the Plan's appointed "executors", the believers in North America, the Guardian laid out a Seven Year Plan, scheduled to run from 1937 to 1944. Its objectives were to establish at least one Local Spiritual a.s.sembly in every state of the United States and every province of Canada, and to open to the Cause fourteen republics in Latin America. To these objectives was added the task, immensely demanding of a community with still very limited numbers and severely straitened financial resources, of completing the exterior ornamentation of the "Mother Temple of the West".

Ru?iyyih _Kh_anum has pointed out a striking parallel between two developments during this period of history. On the one hand, powerful nations were launching armies of invasion whose goal was to seize the natural resources of neighbour states-or simply to satisfy an appet.i.te for conquest. During this same period, Shoghi Effendi was mobilizing the painfully small band of pioneers available to him, and dispatching them to the teaching goals of the Plan he had created. Within a few short years, the vast battalions of aggression would be shattered beyond recovery, their names and conquests erased from history. The little company of believers who had gone out with their lives in their hands to fulfil the mission entrusted to them by the Guardian would have achieved or exceeded all of their objectives, objectives that soon became the foundations of flourishing communities.(87)