A New World Order/The Five Year Youth Program
National Spiritual Assembly Announces Five Year Program for American Youth[edit]
To the Bahá’í Youth of the United States
Beloved Friends:
With the optimistic and gladsome voices of the National Bahá’í Youth Conference still resounding in our hearts, we announce on the joyous occasion of the Centenary of the arrival of the Lord of Hosts in the Holy Land the goals of the Five Year Youth Program. No occasion could be more propitious for such a tremendous undertaking on the part of the youthful members of our national community. We have only to recall Bahá’u’lláh’s own reference to His debarkment on the shores of ‘Akká. Said He: "Upon our arrival, We were welcomed with banners of light, whereupon the Voice of the Spirit cried out saying: 'Soon will all that dwell on earth be enlisted under these banners." In the spirit of high expectations generated by this utterance, we call upon the American Bahá’í Youth:
- To deploy 500 from their ranks to fill homefront and foreign goals;
- To settle 350 of these in teams throughout the southern states of America;
- To send at least five pioneers to Africa and 20 to Latin America;
- To double the number of Bahá’í College Clubs from 61 to 122, with at least one in every state;
- To establish 20 high school clubs;
- To inaugurate a traveling-teacher program, to include circuit teaching by teams and musical groups;
- To increase their contributions to the National Bahá’í Fund by sustained regular giving, and to assume responsibility for producing $100,000 of the 1968-69 national budget;
- To establish special service projects directed toward minority teaching;
- To engage in a systematic deepening program based on the instructions for deepening enunciated in the Riḍván 1967 message of the Universal House of Justice; and
- To improve, through daily prayer, constant study of the life-giving Word, and self-examination, their personal conduct.
These goals are at once a challenge and a blessing. In a society torn by dissension and distracted by one transient passion after another, the role of Bahá’í youth assumes gigantic proportions; for it is they who must assist in establishing the only true balance by which the accomplishments of the future are to be measured and guaranteed. That balance heralded by the Primal Point, proclaimed by the Everlasting Father, explained by the beloved Master, and amplified by the Sign of God on Earth is none other than the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. One of the major concerns of Bahá’í youth must be the avoidance of any cleavage in the Bahá’í community. Every youth must believe wholeheartedly and demonstrate that a "generation gap" has no place in the new World Order. Difference in age, far from engendering negative considerations, is to be valued as one expression of unity in diversity.
The Five Year Youth Program, to be directed by the National Teaching Committee through its Department of Youth and College Activities, is a subsidiary of the Nine Year Plan. In adjusting to its challenges and requirements, the youth should never lose sight of the three fields of service defined by the Universal House of Justice in its letter to the Youth of Every Land:
First, the foundation of all their other accomplishments, is their study of the teachings, the spiritualization of their lives and the forming of their characters in accordance with the standards of Bahá’u’lláh. . . The second field of service, which is linked intimately with the first, is teaching the Faith, particularly to their fellow-youth, among whom are some of the most open and seeking minds in the world. The third field of service is the preparation by the youth for their later years.
We challenge the American Youth, fully mindful that youth have played a major part in the birth and growth of our priceless Faith; and, as the Universal House of Justice reminds us: "Let it, therefore, never be imagined that youth must await their years of maturity before they can render invaluable services to the Cause of God." Moreover, let it not be forgotten that those Americans who arise to do their part are designated as "spiritual descendants of the Dawn-breakers."
As you embark on this significant undertaking, we send you our warmest love and assurance of our special prayers on your behalf.
August 31, 1968
Sincerely,
- NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY
[Page 48]
THE FIVE YEAR YOUTH PROGRAM:[edit]
Why do you suppose the National Spiritual Assembly has given the youth in the United States this program at this point in time?
How many goals are the youth given?
Which message of The Universal House of Justice does the National Spiritual Assembly quote from? Why?
What does the National Spiritual Assembly say about the generation gap? Is this a goal?
What are the implications of this program for the American Bahá’í Community? for the American nation?