World Order/Series2/Volume 29/Issue 1/Text

←Volume 29 Index

World Order, Series 2 Volume 29 - Issue 1

Issue 2→

Return to PDF view Proofread once

[Page -1]

Fall 1997

World Order

SHOGHI EFFENDI: AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS

EDITORIAL

SHOGHI EFFENDI AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

SANDRA HUTCHISON

THE GUARDIANSHIP: AN OVERVIEW

GEOFFRY W. MARKS

GOD PASSES BY: A REVIEW

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

SIX BOOKS ABOUT SHOGHI EFFENDI

HOWARD B. GAREY

[Page 0]

World Order

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

ROBERT H. STOCKMAN

JAMES D. STOKES

Consultant in Poetry:

HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091-1811. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Send manuscripts and other editorial correspondence to WORLD ORDER, 4516 Randolph Road, Apt. 99, Charlotte, NC 28211. E-mail WorldOrder@usbnc.org. Manuscripts can be typewritten or computer generated. They should be double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end and not attached electronically to the text. The contributor should send five copies—an original and four legible copies—and should keep a copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription rates: U.S.A., 1 year, $ 10.00; 2 years, $18.00; single copies, $3.00. All other countries, 1 year, $15.00; 2 years, $28.00; single copies, $3.00. Airmail, 1 year, $20.00; 2 years, $38.00. Send address changes to and order subscriptions and back issues from WORLD ORDER Subscriber Service, 5397 Wilbanks Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37343-4047. Telephone, 1-800-999-9019; E—mail: subscriptions@usbnc.org.

WORLD ORDER is protected through trademark registration in the U.S. Patent Office.

Copyright © 1998, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Shoghi Effendi: After a Hundred Years

Editorial

13 Shoghi Effendi and the American Dream

by Sandra Hutchison

25 The Guardianship: An Overview

by Geoffry W. Marks

33 God Passes By

review by Firuz Kazemzadeh

37 Time

poem by Steve Garrigues

39 Six Books about Shoghi Effendi

review by Howard B. Garey

47 Oasis

poem by Joan Imig Taylor

Inside Back Cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue

[Page 1]

[Page 2]

Shoghi Effendi: After a Hundred Years

SHOGHI EFFENDI, who was born a hundred years ago in Ottoman Palestine, became a uniquely significant figure of the twentieth century. But his intrinsic importance to the history of the period is as yet generally unrecognized outside the Bahá’í community. Through prodigious activity as Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, he carried out his designated responsibility as interpreter, both in literary and practical terms, of the vision of world unity advanced by Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í Faith. The principal effect of Shoghi Effendi’s thirty-six-year ministry as the Guardian of the Faith was to create an incomparably diverse but united global community in a remarkably short time. The potential of this community is to become a pattern for future society. Anyone acquainted with its workings will be impressed by the spirit that induces its coherence. As it expands and develops along the lines indicated by Shoghi Effendi, there emerges compelling evidence that the efficacy of his guidance is destined to obtain wide notice and, inevitably, to influence the shaping of a millennium.

No celebration will mark the centennial of Shoghi Effendi’s birth: this absence of a memorial ceremony is out of respect for his clear instruction against the commemoration of any event associated with his life. Yet remembrance of his monumental achievements is irrepressible and begs for expression at every opportunity. This anniversary is a welcome occasion, then, to reflect on the nature of his work and the relevance of his thought to contemporary concerns about the state and direction of human society, especially as the century about which he offered such illuminating and proven analyses draws to a close. The sheer volume and efficiency of his output in any one of his vocations as exegete, author, translator, administrator, commentator on world trends, master planner, organizer of global undertakings, aesthete was astounding. But it was the distinction of his inspired insight that lent a singular quality to his varied occupations and that remains as a unique and potent legacy.

Shoghi Effendi was born in 1897 into a turbulent environment at a time of rising global ferment. Almost half a century earlier his great [Page 3] grandfather, Bahá’u’lláh, had been officially banished from His native Persia as a consequence of charges imputed to His leadership in the founding of a new religion; before that, Bahá’u’lláh’s forerunner, the Báb, had been put to death under dramatic circumstances. Bahá’u’lláh’s exile took him to Iraq and Turkey, in each of which He was confined as a prisoner for a number of years. It was during these years that He announced His mission as the bearer of a new revelation from God. Bahá’u’lláh was further banished to a prison in Acre, Palestine, arriving there with His family in August 1868. He was released from strict confinement after a few years but remained under detention in that area, where He passed away in 1892. His eldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who had shared in His Father’s exile and imprisonment, succeeded Bahá’u’lláh as head of the Faith and the appointed interpreter and exemplar of His teachings.

Shoghi Effendi, the firstborn of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s eldest daughter, Díá’íyyih Khánum, grew up under the sheltering eye of his beloved grandfather. Except for his sojourns abroad as a student and other occasional travels, this scion of a historic family of Persian exiles lived and worked in the land of his birth. His life encompassed the closing years of Ottoman rule, the entire span of the British mandate, and virtually a decade of the independent State of Israel—altogether a period marked by social and political turmoil involving the upheavals of two world wars.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s death in November 1921 marked the beginning of an unusual career for Shoghi Effendi. Nothing had prepared the Bahá’ís then scattered among some thirty-five countries for the conspicuous part that he was destined to play in the making of their community. Consonant with his total dedication to the service of his grandfather, Shoghi Effendi’s great aspiration was to acquire the ability to translate the Bahá’í writings into perfect English. His innocence of any desire beyond such aspiration was shattered by the shock he sustained upon learning from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament of his appointment as interpreter and Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith. He was then only twenty-five and still a student [Page 4] at Oxford. His sudden awareness of this new responsibility overwhelmed him, so much so that he absented himself from the Holy Land for some months to collect his strength for the tasks ahead.

The young Guardian began his ministry in the unsettled aftermath of World War I. He was faced with the daunting challenge of rallying the forces and concentrating the efforts of loosely connected groups and isolated individuals who were for the most part unschooled in the details of the belief and practice of their new religion. If he were to succeed, he had not only to win their adherence to the fundamentals but also to imbue them with a vision that would penetrate and transcend the gloom of the times. The matrix in which the Guardian must function was set by Bahá’u’lláh Himself, Who declared the oneness of humankind to be the central principle of His Revelation. If Bahá’u’lláh was the author of this world-embracing concept, His immediate successor, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was the architect of the System that must realize it, and Shoghi Effendi, the latter’s successor, would be the builder of the structure that would enable that System to function. The Guardian explains the thrust of Bahá’u’lláh’s intentions in these words:

For Bahá’u’lláh, We should readily recognize, has not only imbued mankind with a new and regenerating Spirit. He has not merely enunciated certain universal principles, or propounded a particular philosophy, however potent, sound and universal these may be. In addition to these, He, as well as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá after Him, has, unlike the Dispensations of the past, clearly and specifically laid down a set of Laws, established definite institutions, and provided for the essentials of a Divine Economy. These are destined to be a pattern for future society, a supreme instrument for the establishment of the Most Great Peace, and the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth.

Shoghi Effendi set about his task with efficient energy. There was a divine Plan to be pursued. It required the raising up of new institutions, the execution of worldwide teaching programs, the protection of the Faith from the attacks of its adversaries—all a part of the process of building the new World Order proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh. Thus Shoghi Effendi’s challenge was to do more than explicate the sacred texts: he had to direct and guide his trust through the permutations of individual and social transformation; he had to forge a Bahá’í community. His exegetical works were written to serve these essential purposes.

At the outset Shoghi Effendi focused on building the local and national institutions specified in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Thus in a letter to the Bahá’ís in North America, dated 23 March 1923, he called for the formation through election of local spiritual assemblies, emphasizing their “absolute necessity” in providing the “firm foundation on which the structure of the Master’s Will is to be reared in future.” In this same letter he issued a similar call for the formation of national spiritual assemblies under which the local ones would function. In the West, particularly in North America, where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit in 1912 had stimulated great [Page 5] interest in the Bahá’í teachings and had drawn many to acceptance of the Faith, the words of this letter had a revolutionary effect.

A course was now set for the formation of a different kind of community with its own laws and procedures—a community dependent for its existence on voluntary effort and individual initiative. Through successive elaborations of the processes initiated—calling for elections without campaigning and nominations, for consultation as the basis of decision-making, and for the establishment of a fund supported by voluntary contributions for which receipts must be issued—Shoghi Effendi urged and guided the creation of local and national spiritual assemblies. It was an effort that changed the character of thought and behavior in the management of the spiritual and practical affairs of a clergyless religious community.

With the necessary organization in place, Shoghi Effendi turned the attention of the Bahá’ís toward the systematic propagation of the Faith. In 1937 the Bahá’ís of North America embarked on a seven-year program of expansion and consolidation, their first organized attempt at responding to the series of fourteen letters known collectively as the Tablets of the Divine Plan, addressed to them by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá between March 1916 and March 1917, during the time of World War I. Although a conference was held in New York City as early as 1919 where the fourteen Tablets were displayed and discussed, the implications of these communications from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were not immediately understood. It remained for Shoghi Effendi years later to set in place the organization and to provide the amplification that would guarantee a systematic implementation of their world-encompassing directives. Through his frequent letters and cablegrams, Shoghi Effendi gradually trained the Bahá’ís to recognize and accept the necessity of a sustained response to these directives. It took a series of such communications from the Guardian over a period of two years to bring the North American Bahá’ís to the degree of action for which he had long hoped.

The first Seven Year Plan encompassed the Western Hemisphere, operating for the most part during World War II. Three objectives were specified: opening all unopened provinces of Canada and states of the United States to the Faith by establishing at least one local spiritual assembly in each of them; taking the Faith to other countries in the hemisphere; and completing the exterior ornamentation of the first Bahá’í House of Worship in the West, which at that time was being built in Wilmette, Illinois, north of Chicago. At the end of the Plan in April 1944 all objectives had been achieved. A pattern had now been set for more extensive teaching and consolidation programs. A second Seven Year Plan was launched by the North American Bahá’ís in April 1946, which, together with plans of shorter duration undertaken by national communities elsewhere, ensured the extension of the Faith to other countries in other continents.

The second enterprise preceded the ambitious Ten Year International [Page 6] Teaching Plan initiated by Shoghi Effendi in 1953, at which time there were 12 national spiritual assemblies and 250 local spiritual assemblies in the world. At his death in 1957 at about the midpoint of the Plan, Bahá’í communities had been established in some 200 countries and dependent territories and the number of national and local spiritual assemblies had increased to 26 and 1,000, respectively. At the conclusion of the Ten Year Plan in April 1963, the centennial anniversary of the declaration by Bahá’u’lláh of His prophetic mission in Baghdad, His Faith had become a world religion. The execution of the Plan involved the dispatch to territories all over the globe of large numbers of Bahá’í teachers, known as pioneers. The stories of their exploits chronicle an astonishing record of human adventure and endurance. That Shoghi Effendi was able to inspire such a movement of volunteers, who were untrained in missionary work and whose sole qualification was the high degree of their devotion to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh, is an impressive index of the dynamism of his Guardianship.

SHOGHI EFFENDI’S interpretations of the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were largely oriented to action. To a great extent they were responses to the expressed or demonstrated needs of the community. He seemed completely to avoid gratuitous, random interpretations of the sacred texts; the questions and needs of the community determined his exegetic output.

The interpretive powers of the Guardian were, it is important to reiterate, not self-arrogated but were conferred upon him though an act of appointment deriving from a source authorized by Bahá’u’lláh, Who, Bahá’ís believe, is a Messenger of God come to establish an independent dispensation. It is rare in human history to encounter one who has been assigned such a role by a recognized divine authority. Bahá’u’lláh shed light on the meaning of the office of interpreter when He wrote that the hearts of those who are the “appointed interpreters” of the Word of God are the “repositories of its secrets” and are the “only ones who can comprehend its manifold wisdom.” Thus, in this context, Shoghi Effendi’s treatment of every issue the Bahá’ís might bring to his attention regarding their development as individuals and as members of institutions and of communities was inextricably linked to his designated role as “Expounder” of the Word.

Interpretation of holy scripture has, of course, been fundamental to the existence of religious communities throughout the ages. In the past each community has met the need for such interpretation according to its own insights. As in most instances no one was recognized as having been authorized by the religion’s Founder to be the interpreter of His words, individuals who assumed the role were not able to overcome the protests of those who disagreed with their offerings. The consequent conflicts arising from a variety of interpretations have led to irremediable schism and a history of chaos among people claiming to belong to the [Page 7] same faith. This has been disastrously contrary to the intention of every revealed religion to create a unified community. It is, therefore, of crucial importance that the Founder of a religion principally concerned with achieving the unity of the human race should have made specific arrangements to secure it against the divisiveness of conflicting, unauthorized interpretations of its sacred laws and ordinances. In the light of past experience, the explicit, authoritative appointment of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and then Shoghi Effendi, as interpreters stands as a distinguishing feature of the Bahá’í Faith.

It is also important to recognize that Shoghi Effendi’s function as interpreter was inseparable from his designation as Guardian. The absorption of the two into an indivisible whole ensured both explication of the theory and actualization of the practice of the new Faith. His interpretive work must be seen within the context of his broad responsibilities as the successor of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “For he is, after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” His Will and Testament states, “the guardian of the Cause of God . . . and the beloved of the Lord must obey him and turn unto him.”

The Guardian was as a telescope with a clear lens through which others might see Bahá’u’lláh’s purpose in bold relief. In a sense he made himself transparent so that the recipients of his explanations and guidance could fix their sight on Bahá’u’lláh as the source of their motivations and on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as their exemplar. In a critical sentence Shoghi Effendi clarified his attitude in this respect: “The fact that the Guardian has been specifically endowed with such power as he may need to reveal the purport and disclose the implications of the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá does not necessarily confer on him a station co-equal with those Whose words he is called upon to interpret.” He was vigilant in avoiding an imposition of his personality that might in any way dim the preeminence of the Central Figures of the Faith. Although he met and talked with the many individuals who came as pilgrims to the World Center of the Faith, he did not visit Bahá’í communities and did not circulate photographs of himself. His instruction to the Bahá’ís not to commemorate events associated with his life is an impressive example of the self-effacement that characterized his relationship to these Figures.

The writings of Shoghi Effendi, for the most part, comprise an estimated thirty-six thousand letters and messages addressed to institutions, national and local communities, the world community, and individuals. A large portion of these communications is the result of the vast correspondence he conducted with individuals, a correspondence that produced an immense treasury of guidance on a remarkably wide range of subjects. Some of the Guardian’s letters and messages were voluminous enough to be published separately as books; others have been drawn together in published anthologies. He wrote a stupendous history of the first hundred years of the Bahá’í Faith. In addition, he provided translations of major works by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

The literature of interpretation has taught Bahá’ís how to believe, how [Page 8] to act, and how to grow spiritually. These in a broad, practical sense mean among other things: how to manifest justice in their deeds and relationships; how to acquire the virtues of a chaste and holy life; how to eliminate racial and other forms of prejudice; how to translate the inherent equality of women and men into social practice; how to preserve the salutary essentials of politics; how to be loyal citizens without indulging in partisanship; how to cultivate a sense of civic responsibility; how to appreciate diversity in the human family; how to be servants to their fellow humans of whatever background; how to uplift victims of oppression; how to develop a world-embracing vision, to appreciate the basic oneness of the revealed religions, to acquire the virtues of world citizenship.

If Shoghi Effendi made indelible impressions on minds and hearts, he also left ineradicable marks on the ground, superb evidences of his aesthetic acuity. His close personal attention to the physical development of the Bahá’í World Center, which is situated in the twin cities of Acre and Haifa, actuated his creative energies. The buildings designed and erected at his initiative, his direct involvement in their interior decoration, the extensive gardens he himself designed to provide a proper ambiance for the holiest sites of the Faith, have all ensured a legacy of beauty for generations to come. There was in these actions a means of educating the community as well; for through them Shoghi Effendi demonstrated how the sacred should be revered.

SHOGHI EFFENDI’S labors revolved around explicating and actualizing the pivotal Bahá’í principle, the oneness of humankind. The global community he raised up is meant to embody that all-embracing code. But this core principle established by Bahá’u’lláh is not simply the motto of a religious congregation. This principle puts the world on notice that human evolution has reached the stage of its consummation, and it sets the goal toward which all effort on the planet must now be oriented. Early in his Guardianship, Shoghi Effendi dismissed the notion that this principle could be regarded as a “mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism” or that it should merely be identified with “a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood.” Though its message applies to the individual, he elaborated, it is primarily concerned with “the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family.” The result it seeks, therefore, is “a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units.”

The urgency of the revolutionary goal of oneness is all the more pressing for at least two reasons: the chaotic state of the world demands it; more particularly, the new potentialities of the human race make it necessary and inevitable. Taken together, the unprecedented advances in [Page 9] science and technology during this century are only one obvious example of the burgeoning of these inherent human powers. It is a burgeoning that Bahá’u’lláh associates with the coming of age of humanity in the new day that He came to usher in. “Every creature,” He averred, has been “endowed with all the potentialities it can carry.” The many new discoveries of intellectual and natural resources appear to affirm it; and it seems demonstrable, for example, in as basic a material as sand when one considers its use in the manufacture of the computer microchip.

In the context of the goal of world unity, the twentieth century must be viewed as a critical part of a period of transition from the present chaos to a wholly new state of society, a period in which the ground is being laid for a coming Golden Age for the entire planet. The tumultuous dynamics of this transition are being played out through a twofold process, “each tending, in its own way and with an accelerated momentum,” Shoghi Effendi writes, “to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the face of our planet. The first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive.” The integrating process itself comprises two parts which though essentially related are outwardly separate, both leading to the same bright prospect: world peace. One is to lead to a preliminary stage, the other is to consummate the peace in which a new civilization will emerge and flourish.

Bahá’í literature refers to the two parts of this integrating process as the Lesser Peace and the Most Great Peace. The former is to be achieved through the reaction of political leaders to the painful consequences of a twentieth-century world shrunken into a neighborhood by the advances of science but morally and socially deranged by its spiritual disorientation. The actions of world leaders that brought about the League of Nations and subsequently the United Nations offer hints as to the nature of the course to be taken. The latter is to be attained through the eventual spiritualization of the planet, a much more protracted and profound undertaking involving the inner transformation of the individual inhabitants of the earth through their voluntary acceptance of the principles enunciated by the latest divine Messenger. The progress of the Bahá’ís in swelling their numbers to millions in all parts of the world committed to the way of Bahá’u’lláh is indicative of the possibilities for this ultimate goal.

For Bahá’ís, the transition, with all its horrors and frustrations, is the natural consequence on a global scale of the way in which a person evolves to adulthood from adolescence—a period in the life of an individual when the struggle and rebelliousness of youth must, with the onset of maturity, eventually yield to a resolution of conflicting tendencies or else suffer the recurrent crises of a disoriented personality. The processes involved in the experience of the individual are also reflected in those of a society at the threshold of its coming of age. Humanity as a whole is as yet reluctant to yield to the new situation; hence it remains ill-prepared to extricate itself from the strife and confusion in [Page 10] which it is enmeshed. Shoghi Effendi devoted much attention to explaining the paradoxes of the “simultaneous processes of rise and of fall, of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos, with their continuous and reciprocal reactions on each other,” which characterize the current state of affairs in the world.

Historians and social scientists pondering the twentieth century might well pause to examine Shoghi Effendi’s commentaries on the ills and portents of this “Age of Extremes,” as Eric Hobsbawm has called the period. Thinkers interested in sorting out the challenges posed by the bewildered state of so-called “post-Communist” or “post-Capitalist” society could encounter much in his writings to stimulate their outlook. They would be treated to unusual perspectives in his explanations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s portentous description of the twentieth century as the “century of the revelation of reality and, therefore, the greatest of all centuries,” as the “century of lights,” as the “sun of previous centuries, the effulgences of which shall last forever.” They would discover, too, in Shoghi Effendi’s majestic and evocative prose a source of intellectual and spiritual refreshment. For, indeed, he was a master writer who succeeded in distilling the virtues of language, making it reflect the spirit and wholesomeness of truth.

SHOGHI EFFENDI created a literature that appealed to the mind and the heart. His power of persuasion was formidable; his employment of logic compelling; his timing dramatic; his combined use of praise, censure, and exhortation inspiring action on the part of the recipients of his messages. The voluminous outflow from his pen initiated, encouraged and sustained the establishment and consolidation of Bahá’í administrative institutions, the prosecution of teaching programs, and the nurturance of community life. At the same time the community benefited from the inspired vistas his writings presented, which enabled them to see beyond the topsy-turvy state of society to the peace-fashioning goal of their Faith. They were invited into a realm of thought by which they could achieve a soul-satisfying transcendence while attending to the practical circumstances of life in a time of cataclysmic disturbances.

Galvanized by the energy of his messages and the vision they projected, Bahá’ís embarked successfully on the vast enterprise of erecting the banner of Bahá’u’lláh’s Faith in countries throughout the world, engaging ordinary people from the widest range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds in efforts by which a renewal of civilization might be effected. An emergent community has sprung up. Here is a global laboratory in which an unprecedented transformation in individual and collective behavior is progressing toward the realization of the world-shaping principle of the oneness of humanity. In it can be discerned, thanks to the indispensable guidance of Shoghi Effendi, the glimmerings of a new world order.

That such a figure should have lived in the twentieth century adds a dimension to the annals of the period that cannot for long be ignored. [Page 11] Shoghi Effendi’s Guardianship was not merely a significant transitional episode in the development of a religious community. If the claims of Bahá’u’lláh are to be understood aright, that Guardianship bodes well to be increasingly regarded as a wellspring of authentic guidance from which the forces of civilization will draw renewed virtue for at least a full millennium.

[Page 12]

[Page 13]

Shoghi Effendi and the American Dream

BY SANDRA HUTCHISON

Copyright © 1998 by Sandra Hutchison.

The continent of America is, in the eyes of the one true God, the land wherein the splendors of His light shall he revealed, where the mysteries of His Faith shall he unveiled, where the righteous will abide and the free will assemble.

—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ

Shoghi Effendi and the Destiny of America

IN December 1938, as the Great Depression rounded out almost a full decade of economic devastation that seemed to lay to rest forever the American dream of material abundance for all, Shoghi Effendi, from war-darkened Europe, penned an epistle to his American coworkers about the glorious destiny of their nation. Published in 1939 under the title The Advent of Divine Justice, it was addressed to the relatively small, yet highly diverse band of Americans who had enlisted in the ranks of the Bahá’í community and now turned to him, as the head of the Bahá’í Faith and its appointed Guardian, for direction on how to derive meaning from the social and economic chaos wrought by the 1930s.

The title of Shoghi Effendi’s letter was drawn from the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, and reflected Shoghi Effendi’s intention to place the hardships faced by the American Bahá’ís of the day in the context of the broader pattern of Bahá’u’lláh’s transcendent and universal principles, in particular, of His vision of social renewal for the age. “Know thou of a truth,” He had proclaimed as early as the mid-nineteenth century, “these great oppressions that have befallen the world are preparing it for the advent of the Most Great justice.”

With chronic unemployment at home and a European war looming on the not-too-distant horizon, calamities were certainly close at hand, and the future did not seem to augur well for peace and prosperity. But the very fabric of the times, Shoghi Effendi explained in his letter, was woven from a bewildering yet ultimately reassuring pattern of social decay and concomitant spiritual regeneration; as surely as the process of “disintegration” was evident in the society at large, so was the process of social renewal or “integration” taking place within the Bahá’í community. Social and spiritual renewal were, he assured his readers, the very spirit of the age:

Such simultaneous processes of rise and of fall, of integration and of disintegration, [Page 14] of order and chaos, with their continuous and reciprocal reactions on each other, are but aspects of a greater Plan, one and indivisible, whose Source is God, Whose author is Bahá’u’lláh, the theater of whose operations is the entire planet, and whose ultimate objectives are the unity of the human race and the peace of all mankind. (72-73)

Born in turn-of-the-century Palestine into a Persian family exiled there two generations earlier, Shoghi Effendi grew up worlds and centuries apart from John Winthrop, whose shipboard sermon to the Puritan settlers arriving in America articulated one of the leitmotifs in that body of myths termed the American dream: “the city set upon the hill.” Yet, despite a gap of centuries and a difference in cultures, in many respects Shoghi Effendi’s vision of the American destiny echoes that shipboard dream with its assertions of American “newness,” American destiny, and American “exceptionalism.”

The idea that America offered settlers from Europe a wide, open, new space where they could exercise their personal freedom and recreate themselves and their society was a belief shared by many arriving from the Old World of Europe. In the Puritans, who fled from religious persecution, such a belief inspired the hope of building a new Eden, which would set a moral example for the Old World society they had left behind; in many others, it generated the hope of a different kind of freedom in the form of social mobility achieved through a new-found economic prosperity.

The belief in the opportunities presented by the newness of the land was integrally linked with another belief, which also became central to the American identity— namely, that America was destined by Providence for some higher purpose, a “manifest destiny” to “redeem the Old World by high example.” In 1845 this idea took on a slightly different meaning as the term “manifest destiny” was coined by a democratic editor in response to European protest at America’s expansionism on the American continent, to describe America’s God-given right to “overspread the continent” in order to provide land for its “multiplying millions.” Moreover, in fulfilling its “manifest destiny,” America would not fail, for, as Winthrop’s sermon further underlined, America was not like other nations: it was exceptional. The American nation had both a sacred destiny and the capacity to carry it out.

But broader and more far-reaching than the Puritan dream of a New-World garden for a recreated race that would set a high moral example for the Old World or even [Page 15] than the recasting of that dream in a later century as expressed in the concept of a “manifest destiny,” Shoghi Effendi’s vision of the American destiny was of a nation that could, through rectifying its own moral life, bring about universal salvation. In the final pages of his 1938 letter, Shoghi Effendi triumphantly cited the words of his grandfather, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the appointed head of the Faith and interpreter of the Bahá’í writings before him:

The American nation is equipped and empowered to accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the envy of the world, and he blest in hath the East and the West for the triumph of its people. . . . The American continent gives signs and evidences of very great advancement. Its future is even more promising, for its influence and illumination are far-reaching. It will lead all nations spiritually. (86)

Like ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi proclaimed for the American nation a “glorious destiny ordained for it by the Almighty” (91). The American Bahá’í community would be in the forefront of the Bahá’í Faith worldwide, and the American nation preeminent in world affairs. But America could fulfill its high destiny only by eschewing contemporary values and integrating into American life the world-unifying teachings articulated by Bahá’u’lláh. With the American Bahá’ís at the nation’s heart “consummating its divinely appointed mission” to erect the new World Order of Bahá’u’lláh both at home and abroad, America’s leadership in world affairs, especially in the arena of peacemaking, Shoghi Effendi assured his readers, would become firmly established (91).

“Recurrent crises” such as war, Shoghi Effendi warned, would not cease to afflict the world as long as the “chill of irreligion” continued to creep “relentlessly over the soul of mankind” (2, 5). Such calamities were integral to the times and reflected the ailing spirit of the modern age. However, far from boding ill, such agitations augured a new age of hope that would be initiated when the high moral standard implicit in the Bahá’í teachings began to manifest itself in the inner lives of the believers, resulting in a network of strongly functioning Bahá’í communities. Then, and only then, would the American dream of a new Eden in a new world be made manifest. Moreover, through the missionary efforts of the American Bahá’ís, that new Eden would be spread throughout the globe and a new earth established under a new heaven.

The Advent of Divine Justice

IT IS difficult to ascertain exactly how much knowledge of American culture Shoghi Effendi had absorbed when he wrote The Advent of Divine Justice. Undoubtedly, he had learned something about American history through his studies at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut and had gleaned something about American culture from contact with the faculty there, which was largely American. He would have grasped still more about the workings of the American mind from his long association with the American Bahá’ís. In his childhood and youth he had frequently met the Americans who came to Haifa and Acre on pilgrimage to the Bahá’í holy places, and he had followed avidly every detail of the trip ‘Abdu’l-Bahá took to America in 1912.

Later, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s secretary, Shoghi Effendi helped maintain ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s voluminous correspondence with the American believers, and, as head of the Faith after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing in 1921, he initiated a fresh correspondence with the body of American believers as a whole, which he kept up until his death in 1957. Shoghi Effendi’s letters offered guidance, gave exhortations and expositions, and issued warnings on themes wide ranging and diverse, from the principles [Page 16] and practice of Bahá’í administration to the fundamental tenets of the Bahá’í Faith and the role of the American Bahá’ís in bringing about the promised age of peace prophesied in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

The Advent of Divine Justice occupies a unique place in Shoghi Effendi’s correspondence with the American Bahá’ís during the turbulent years leading up to World War II. Not only does it contain a detailed description of the mission of the American Bahá’í community in establishing the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh and of the probable role of the American nation in future world affairs, the letter offers a critique of the moral life of modern-day America and unveils, for the first time in Shoghi Effendi’s works, what could be described as a systematic Bahá’í code of ethics, universal in its possible application but designed to renovate individual and community life in America and to lend a fresh impulse to the dream embedded in the nation’s beginnings.

As Shoghi Effendi explains in The Advent of Divine Justice, the destiny of the American Bahá’í community and of the nation as a whole were intertwined. The fulfillment of each depended upon the successful prosecution of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mandate to carry the Bahá’í teachings to all corners of the earth, a charge He gave to the American Bahá’ís in His Tablets of the Divine Plan. The pursuit of this mission, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained there, would bring them untold spiritual distinction:

The moment this Divine Message is carried forward by the American believers from the shores of America and is propagated throughout the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australasia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion.

As “the prime mover and pattern of future communities” that the Bahá’í Faith was “destined to raise up throughout the length and breadth of the Western Hemisphere” (6-7), Shoghi Effendi asserted, the American Bahá’í community was certain to have an impact not only on the moral life of America but on that of the entire planet. America was “the cradle, as well as the stronghold of that future New World Order,” which, as Shoghi Effendi explained, was “at once the promise and the glory of the Dispensation associated with the name of Bahá’u’lláh” (6).

In The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi Effendi weaves ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s vision of the American destiny into a rich tapestry of history and current events, linking it with the times and correlating it with the American experience. Framed by his own unique rhetoric and characteristic social analysis, the letter offered American readers of the day a paradigm for social reconstruction that made sense of the maelstrom of forces that was assaulting their fledgling community and their nation. As a student, and, increasingly, as his ministry progressed as a master of the classical English prose style handed down by writers such as MacCaulay, Gibbons, and Carlyle, Shoghi Effendi undoubtedly understood the need for imagery that appealed to the collective cultural imagination of his American readers and brought his social analysis home to them. Drawing upon the myths and metaphors that defined the making of their nation, Shoghi Effendi, in The Advent of Divine Justice, not only evoked but remade for his American readers that body of myths so integral to their culture: the American dream.

Extending the American Frontier

OF the regional myths that, according to one critic, make up the American dream, the [Page 17] myth of the Far West, is, without doubt, the most compelling and enduring in modern-day America. As the same critic, Robert Dreamer, explains, “it is, in a very direct and basic way, Americans’ stance toward the frontier, toward the West, and toward their own westering experience that has defined their character, their culture, and their myths of place.” Perhaps the myth of the Far West endures because it is, as Deamer points out, “the least geographically definable of American myths of place.” As Thoreau puts it, “frontiers are not east or west, north or south,” but “wherever a man fronts a fact.” “[T]he American dream of the West,” Deamer writes, “does not inhere in a literal frontier: it inheres in a spiritual crossing of the frontier, in a fronting of primordial reality, in an achieved change in consciousness.”

Precisely because of its highly metaphorical nature, the Far West has long served as the scene for the enactment of that drama of consciousness that is the yearning to escape from civilization and to find new horizons for being. The westering experience, as Shoghi Effendi defines it in The Advent of Divine Justice, carries forward this symbolic meaning into a broader context: that of religious history. Quoting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi explained in a 1933 letter to his American coworkers the “strange phenomenon” of the westward migration of religious truth: “From the beginning of time until the present day . . . the light of Divine Revelation hath risen in the East and shed its radiance upon the West. The illumination thus shed hath, however, acquired in the West an extraordinary brilliancy.”

Here, the “West” represents not only a social but also a spiritual frontier, a place where it is possible to cast off Old-World religious systems, or “tradition,” and to embrace fresh metaphors conducive to new ideals of selfhood and society. As The Advent of Divine Justice makes clear, in the vision of Shoghi Effendi, the American nation is at the very heart of a new “West.” Perhaps it is because the migration of the new Faith to America’s shores symbolizes the kind of “spiritual crossing,” to which Deamer alludes, that Shoghi Effendi imbues ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s journey there in 1912 with such significance in his history of the first hundred years of the Faith, God Passes By.

What, then, was the “fact” the new Faith “front[ed]” when it crossed the ocean With ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to America? For Shoghi Effendi, as for many writers and thinkers, America’s great strength as a nation lay in its youthfulness, a virtue that was bound up with other qualities such as “high intelligence,” “unbounded initiative,” and “enterprise” (20). The very newness, the freshness of the nation made it receptive to the new way of life prescribed by the Bahá’í Faith.

In The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi [Page 18] Effendi unfolds a breathtaking vision of the spiritual transformation of the nation that would take place as a Bahá’í code of ethics took root in the robust, young culture of America. For Shoghi Effendi, as for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, America was clearly the ideal “frontier” upon which the new religious teachings could flourish, a frontier that would, in turn, serve as the point of embarkation for carrying the Bahá’í teachings to other countries of the globe.

In the spiritual geography mapped out in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablets of the Divine Plan, the American frontier is extended far beyond the physical boundaries of the nation. In that seminal teaching charter, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá entrusts to the American Bahá’ís the responsibility of taking the Bahá’í teachings to every land. Two decades after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá authored these tablets, Shoghi Effendi began the difficult task of developing systematic plans to translate ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words into action. The American Bahá’í community, Shoghi Effendi reminded his American readers in his 1938 letter, already had an impressive record of accomplishments by spiritual “pioneers” (9), Bahá’ís whose “qualities of audacity, of consecration, of tenacity, of self-renunciation, and unstinted devotion” had “prompted them to abandon their homes, and forsake their all, and scatter over the surface of the globe” (9). They had established the Bahá’í Faith in such “highly important and widely scattered centers and territories” as Germany, the Far East, the Balkan States, Scandinavia, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and the Baltic States (9).

But the time for individual acts of consecration was over, Shoghi Effendi explained to his American readers, and the time for a more concerted national effort had come. Shoghi Effendi’s Seven Year Plan for teaching the Bahá’í Faith, unveiled to the American Bahá’ís the year before he wrote The Advent of Divine Justice, had as its goal the introduction of the Faith into an “unbroken chain” of Republics, stretching from Mexico to the farthest reaches of South America, thus linking newly established Bahá’í communities to their “mother Assemblies in the North American continent” (71), with Panama in the special position of uniting East and West (70).

Yet America’s destiny was only beginning to unfold. As “the ambassadors of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh” (74), the North American Bahá’ís had the mandate to take the Bahá’í teachings to all parts of the globe, and as “the chief creator and champion of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh” (11), the American Bahá’í community was bound not to cease until it had fostered in the local peoples the capacity to establish “institutions, both local and national, modeled on . . . [its] own” (13).

Other plans would follow, for, as Shoghi Effendi reminded his American readers, the completion of the Seven Year Plan would result in the establishment of only one center of activity in each of the republics of the Western Hemisphere whereas the fulfillment of ‘Abdul—Baha’s Tablets of the Divine Plan implied the “scattering of a far greater and more representative number of the members of the North American Bahá’í community over the entire surface of the New World” (12). “With their inter-American tasks and responsibilities virtually discharged,” he elaborated, “their intercontinental mission enters upon its most glorious and decisive phase” (13). A crusade of even greater magnitude lay before America, one that would entail its spreading the Faith to all five continents.

As was the case with all the global strategies he developed to meet the goals of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s teaching charter, Shoghi Effendi couched his directives to the American Bahá’ís in a rhetoric both powerful and appealing. In his 1938 letter, Shoghi Effendi cast familiar motifs in new molds shaped by the Bahá’í teachings. Just as the concept of “pioneering” must have had special resonance for his American readers, calling to mind as it would [Page 19] have the spirit and adventures of those early Americans who had transformed the country in a few short centuries from a wilderness to a leader among nations, so would another American motif closely related to it have had special significance for his American readers: the frontier.

The frontier archetype, so variously represented in American literature, has always been central to the American culture and identity. Integrally linked to America’s “Western and Adamic myths of separation, freedom, and self-creation” in the wilderness as well as to the “Adamic myth of freedom and rebirth in a pristine natural world beyond the frontier,” the archetype represents a form of self-redefinition, a kind of transformation and redemption, as a result of the change of consciousness that attends the radical break from familiar, well-inhabited spaces.

In Huckleberry Finn, for example, Mark Twain strongly hints that Huck will find redemption, at last, by “setting out for the territories ahead of the rest.” Similarly, for the early American Bahá’ís, merely following the Bahá’í teachings, let alone carrying out ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mandate to spread them worldwide, performed the same radicalizing function that the challenge of physical geography had served for those who opened up the wild western spaces of the American nation: it carved out and created a psychic frontier that not only permitted but demanded their release from American social and cultural norms.

Embracing the Bahá’í teachings placed the American adherents of the religion on the “frontiers” of American culture, clearing for them a wide, open space for personal transformation and offering them a broader sense of identification with the world beyond their own national boundaries. In short, the new Faith gave them the imperative to expand both their physical and psychic frontiers and an opportunity to leave culture, country, and familiar values behind, preparing them to receive the new code of ethics outlined by Shoghi Effendi in The Advent of Divine Justice.

Redefining the Ethical Imperative

AS American literature and history amply demonstrate, the frontier archetype is associated with such extreme forms of individualism as those that reach their nadir in those mythic communities of violence described as the “Wild West,” communities in which the self-reliance necessary for survival on the frontier generates a law that asserts itself only through the barrel of a gun. In the modern context, however, such an ethic is clearly antithetical to real community-building, and the bankruptcy of the frontier archetype for contemporary American culture manifests itself, in its most extreme forms, in the phenomena of the urban cowboy and the terrorist.

The individualist ethos reflected in the myths of the Wild West has been revealed to be as ill-suited to the modern American city as its counterpart of achieving redemption in what remains of a vanishing wilderness is to its proponents in the contemporary counterculture. Just as the rampant spread of industrialism and the rapid encroachment of civilization into America’s wild, open spaces has relegated the Thoreauvian dream of self-sufficiency on the land to the romantic past, so has the growing complexity and interconnectedness of a society that is, at once, modern, urban, and global, revealed the moral flaw at the heart of the frontier archetype: its inability to generate an ethic capable of fostering and sustaining community life in a pluralistic society.

[Page 20] Shoghi Effendi’s 1938 letter outlines a system of ethics that addresses this flaw. In The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi Effendi invites his readers to meditate upon “the imponderable, the spiritual, factors, which are bound up with their own individual and inner lives, and with which are associated their human relationships” (21). Since the fewness of their numbers rendered them incapable for the time being of “producing any marked effect on the great mass of their countrymen,” Shoghi Effendi explained, the American Bahá’ís were to “focus their attention, for the present, on their own selves, their own individual needs, their own personal deficiencies and weaknesses. . . .” (20-21).

In the ethical universe delineated by Shoghi Effendi, the “wilderness” is redefined as that place where the individual conscience, prone to temptation and error, is in danger of being led astray by its own self-serving impulses and egocentric concerns. In The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi Effendi directs his readers’ attention to the moral frontier that lies within the human heart. America’s frontier culture could be purged from the excesses to which it is prone, his letter suggests, only if the battle that once raged without— pioneers against the environment, the North against the South, whites against indigenous peoples—was now fought within the individual soul.

The twin obligations of the American Bahá’ís were, on the one hand, “to weed out, by every means in their power, those faults, habits, and tendencies . . . inherited from their own nation” and, on the other, “to cultivate, patiently and prayerfully, those characteristics . . . so indispensable to their effective participation in the great redemptive work of their Faith” (20). Eschewing such “patent evils” as “materialism,” “racial prejudice,” “political corruption, lawlessness and laxity in moral standards,” they were to cultivate “those essential virtues of self-renunciation, of moral rectitude, of chastity, of indiscriminating fellowship, of holy discipline, and of spiritual insight” (19), virtues that would, in time, fit the American Bahá’ís for “the preponderating share” they would have in creating “that World Order and that World Civilization of which their country, no less than the entire human race, stands in desperate need” (19-20).

The success of America’s teaching mission, Shoghi Effendi emphasized, would depend upon the degree to which the American Bahá’ís conquered the frontier within. He outlined “three spiritual prerequisites for success” upon which not only the teaching plans but all other projects would depend: “a high sense of moral rectitude in their social and administrative activities, absolute chastity in their individual lives, and complete freedom from prejudice in their dealings with peoples of a different race, class, creed, or color” (22). Armed with such “weapons” as “rectitude of conduct,” “holiness and chastity,” and an “interracial fellowship completely purged from the curse of racial prejudice,” the “invincible army of Bahá’u’lláh,” in one of the “potential storm-centers” of battle, was to launch a “double crusade, first to regenerate the inward life of their own community, and next to assail the long-standing evils that had entrenched themselves in the life of their nation” (41, 42, 41).

Shoghi Effendi’s reinterpretation of the frontier archetype in his 1938 letter is timely and significant. His vision of the pioneer is not of the self-made man or woman taking nature or the law in his or her hands but of the individual contributing through sacrificial service to an orderly expansion of communities of the faithful to extend a world-embracing, peacemaking Faith to new lands not only “west” of a well-defined border—meaning, familiar culture—but throughout the globe. As Shoghi Effendi enumerates them in his 1938 letter, the prerequisites for success in pioneering to new frontiers do not depend [Page 21] on individual daring and bravado but upon the refinement of the individual character.

The ethical code outlined in The Advent of Divine Justice does not merely seek to make peace with diverse ethnicities, condemning racial atrocities such as chattel slavery and the Indian wars that have marred American history; it consciously celebrates pluralism. In Shoghi Effendi’s vision, the moral refinement of the individual ultimately demands a redefinition of individualism itself so that the act of setting out for the frontier is no longer seen as a step toward union with, and, hence, spiritual salvation, in a pristine wilderness but rather as the first step toward extending a universal code of ethics salutary for a worldwide community.

America and the Most Great Peace

OF all the American motifs that Shoghi Effendi adapted in his 1938 letter, that of the nation’s mission and destiny is perhaps most critical to his remaking of the American dream. Expanding upon both the Puritan idea of America as a “city set upon the hill” that would redeem the Old World by the example of its high moral standard and upon the idea of a “manifest destiny” that entitled America to “overspread the continent,” Shoghi Effendi describes an America that would extend its influence throughout the globe by setting and enforcing a high standard of justice and by keeping world peace. In the final pages of The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi Effendi takes up a theme he explores in a 1933 letter to the American Bahá’ís entitled “America and the Most Great Peace.”

As its “cradle and champion,” the American Bahá’í community had played and would continue to play a critical role in establishing the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. The “creative energies” already released by the “first stirrings” of that order in America, he explained, had “endowed that nation with the worthiness, and invested it with the powers and capacities, and equipped it” to, in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s prophetic words, “lead all nations spiritually” (86). Shoghi Effendi elaborated:

The potencies which this God-given mission has infused into its people are, on the one hand, beginning to be manifested through the conscious efforts and the nationwide accomplishments, in both teaching and administrative spheres of Bahá’í activity, of the organized community of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh in the North American continent. These same potencies, apart from, yet collateral with these efforts and accomplishments, are, on the other hand, insensibly shaping, under the impact of the world political and economic forces, the destiny of the nation, and are influencing the lives and actions of both its government and its people. (86)

It was, as Shoghi Effendi emphasized in his 1938 letter, a crucial “epoch in the world’s history” and a critical “stage in the Formative Period of their Faith,” a time both of “glorious opportunities” and “tremendous responsibilities.” Indeed, “these times, so fraught with peril, so full of corruption” were nonetheless “so pregnant with the promise of a future so bright that no previous age in the annals of mankind,” he asserted, could “rival its glory” (43). While the American Bahá’í community was rectifying its own inner life in preparation for its assault on the decadence of the nation, other developments were taking place in the political sphere and steering the American nation in the direction of its special destiny.

What role would America play in the shifting balance of world affairs? The world was “contracting into a neighborhood,” Shoghi Effendi observed, and one wracked by social [Page 22] upheavals. In an ever-contracting world increasingly afflicted by wars and political upheavals, America “must assume the obligations imposed by this newly created neighborhood,” he concluded. “Paradoxical as it may seem,” he continued, “her only hope of extricating herself from the perils gathering around her is to become entangled in that very web of international association which the Hand of an inscrutable Providence is weaving” (87-88).

In short, America was destined to play an important role in the future world order as a peacebroker for the nations. Moreover, in terms of a specific foreign policy, Shoghi Effendi predicted that America would establish a “closer association” with the “Republics [of America]” and opt for “increased participation, in varying degrees, . . . in the affairs of the whole world” (90). The nation had come of age when its federal unity had been achieved and its institutions firmly established; now its “further evolution,” as “a member of the family of nations” would continue until America would,

through the active and decisive part it will have played in the organization and the peaceful settlement of the affairs of mankind, have attained the plenitude of its powers and functions as an outstanding member, and component part, of a federated world. (90)

However, it would take a “world-shaking ordeal,” Shoghi Effendi warned, before the American nation would emerge “consciously determined to seize its opportunity, to bring the full weight of its influence to bear upon the gigantic problems that such an ordeal must leave in its wake,” and exorcise, finally and decisively, the specter of war from the earth (90). Having weathered such an ordeal, America would then be ready to rise to the heights of its destiny. Shoghi Effendi concluded:

Then and only then, will the American nation, molded and purified in the crucible of a common war, inured to its rigors, and disciplined by its lessons, be in a position to raise its voice in the councils of the nations, itself lay the cornerstone of a universal and enduring peace, proclaim the solidarity, the unity, and maturity of mankind, and assist in the establishment of the promised reign of righteousness on earth. Then, and only then, will the American nation, while the community of the American believers within its heart is consummating its divinely appointed mission, be able to fulfill the unspeakably glorious destiny ordained for it by the Almighty, and immortally enshrined in the writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Then, and only then, will the American nation accomplish “that which will adorn the pages of history,” “become the envy of the world and be blest in both the East and the West.” (90-91)

Remaking the American Dream

THE challenge facing Shoghi Effendi as the head of a religion only beginning to establish itself globally during some of the most turbulent decades of this century was to put into practice its world-unifying, integrative vision in a world that was, as so many of his letters to his American coworkers pointed out, on the verge of a vast and colossal disintegration. In The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi Effendi not only makes sense of that disintegration but offers a vision of social transformation that must have dazzled the eyes and piqued the imaginations of the members of the small band of converts to the new religion at whose head he stood.

In his 1938 letter, he paints a portrait of an America in which the social crises of economic depression and the coming war figure as part of a providential pattern of opportunities uniquely presented to the American Bahá’í community to purify itself and, in turn, to regenerate the nation in whose embrace it was evolving. But of equal [Page 23] importance to the power of his message in The Advent of Divine Justice is the art giving life to that portrait. One cannot read Shoghi Effendi’s masterful ethical treatise without being struck by his clear grasp of some of the central myths upon which American culture is built. In The Advent of Divine Justice, Shoghi Effendi reinterprets the westering experience, the frontier archetype, and the American mission and destiny, making them applicable to the times and to the goals of the Bahá’í Faith.

At the heart of Shoghi Effendi’s epistle is an ethical treatise of remarkable scope and vision in which the essential ingredients for remaking the American dream are outlined. The frontier Shoghi Effendi enjoins his American coworkers to open up has not only a geographical but a spiritual dimension, and success as a pioneer on this new frontier depends, first, upon the rectification of the individual character and, next, upon the welding together of a diverse community of like-minded persons to exert the same refining influence on their communities, their nation, and ultimately the world at large.

Shoghi Effendi’s subtle yet radical revision of the myths that make up the America dream is, at once, practical and visionary. Set within the context of the far-reaching vision of Bahá’u’lláh, the new American dream that emerges in The Advent of Divine justice is more universal than any of which John Winthrop could have conceived when he delivered his sermon to the Puritan settlers about to arrive on American shores several centuries earlier. Shoghi Effendi’s new American dream is also critical of the debasing of the Puritan ideal of “the city set upon the hill” implicit in the belief that the play of a hearty and unrestrained individualism on America’s wide, open spaces will confer economic prosperity on all who venture there. The ethics of Shoghi Effendi’s new American frontier, rather, exploit the spiritual and cultural geography of America by recognizing in it an opportunity for the strengthening of rather than escaping from community life and the responsibilities it entails. Containing perhaps one of the most radical critiques of the American dream in contemporary theology, The Advent of Divine Justice also offers readers a remarkably visionary recasting of the national dream in terms still resonant with meaning today.

[Page 24]

[Page 25]

The Guardianship: An Overview

BY GEOFFRY W. MARKS

Copyright © 1998 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. This article, which was written for the Bahá’í Encyclopedia project of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, is published with the permission of the author and the publisher.

THE Guardianship is the institution created by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will and Testament to carry forward the function of the authoritative interpretation of the Bahá’í writings and to serve as the authoritative center to Which Bahá’ís would turn for guidance.

Origins

THE institution of the Guardianship was formally established by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is His Will and Testament, in which He appointed His eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi, as the one to whom all Bahá’ís must turn after His death, “as he is the sign of God, the chosen branch, the Guardian of the Cause of God.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá also directed Shoghi Effendi to appoint a successor and stipulated the conditions under which such an appointment was to be made.

The establishment of a line of chosen male descendants was anticipated by Bahá’u’lláh by implication in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas—for example, in a passage in which He states that, after His passing, authority for disposing of “Endowments dedicated to charity. . . . shall pass to the Aghṣán” (His male descendants).

In His Will and Testament ‘Abdu’l-Bahá also invested Shoghi Effendi with the authority to interpret the Bahá’í writings and designated him as the “sacred head” and “distinguished member for life” of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme legislative body of the Bahá’í Faith. Underscoring the authority [Page 26] that the Guardian and the Universal House of Justice would share over the affairs of the Bahá’í community, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asserted that they were both under “the care and protection” of Bahá’u’lláh and under “the shelter and unerring guidance” of the Báb. He pronounced their infallibility—“Whatsoever they decide is of God”—and invoked “the wrath, the fierce indignation, the vengeance of God” upon anyone who opposed them.

Functions

JUST AS Bahá’u’lláh had conferred on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá exclusive authority to interpret His writings, so ‘Abdu’l-Bahá conferred that same authority on Shoghi Effendi. Therefore, Bahá’ís regard Shoghi Effendi’s interpretations as divinely inspired statements of what the Bahá’í scriptures mean, as binding as the text of the scriptures themselves.

In his capacity as interpreter of the Bahá’í writings, Shoghi Effendi wrote one full-length book—God Passes By—and thousands of letters, some of them book length, to Bahá’í institutions and individuals. Many of his letters responded to questions about the meanings of particular passages in the Bahá’í writings. Shoghi Effendi’s translations of the Bahá’í writings, which demonstrate a masterful command of English, are an extension of his function as authoritative interpreter. For this reason his English translations, rather than the original writings in Arabic and Persian, are the texts from which translations of those works into other languages are made. His translations are also an indispensable guide and standard for the continued translation of the Bahá’í writings into English that is carried out under the direction of the Universal House of Justice.

Allied with the function of authoritative interpretation are those prerogatives associated with the headship of the Faith, such as the protection and nurturing of the Bahá’í community; the promulgation of a program for the expansion and consolidation of the Bahá’í Faith in accordance with the provisions of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablets of the Divine Plan, the charter for the promulgation of the Bahá’í Faith throughout the world; the development of the Bahá’í World Center in Acre and Haifa, Israel, where the spiritual and administrative focal points of the Faith are located; and the cultivation of relationships with international organizations such as the United Nations. Other vital functions of the Guardianship stipulated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will and Testament are the appointment and direction of the Hands of the Cause of God and the administration of the Ḥuqúqu’lláh, an offering of a fixed portion of the value of one’s assets after expenses.

[Page 27] Infallibility

IN RESPONSE to questions Bahá’ís put to him about the extent of his infallibility, Shoghi Effendi explained that it was confined to matters related to the Bahá’í Faith and did not extend to such fields as science or economics. He also pointed out that he was not, like a Prophet of God, “‘omniscient at will’” and stated that his infallibility covered the interpretation of the Word of God and its application, as well as the protection of the Bahá’í Faith. Shoghi Effendi did not consider his advice to individuals on personal matters to be binding.

Position in the Bahá’í Administrative Order

‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ’S Will and Testament designated the institutions of the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice as the supreme institutions of Bahá’u’lláh’s administrative system and as the twin successors of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Although their spheres of authority differed in that the Guardianship was invested with exclusive authority to interpret the Bahá’í writings and the Universal House of Justice was given exclusive authority to legislate on matters not covered in the Bahá’í scriptures, Shoghi Effendi explained that the two institutions shared the common purpose of ensuring “the continuity of that divinely-appointed authority which flows from the Source of our Faith, to safeguard the unity of its followers and to maintain the integrity and flexibility of its teachings.” Shoghi Effendi further affirmed that the two institutions, “Acting in conjunction with each other,” would administer the affairs of the Faith, “coordinate its activities, promote its interests, execute its laws and defend its subsidiary institutions.” Each would operate “within a clearly defined sphere of jurisdiction,” and each would be “equipped with its own attendant institutions—instruments designed for the effective discharge of its particular responsibilities and duties.” Each would exercise, “within the limitations imposed upon it, its powers, its authority, its rights and prerogatives. These are neither contradictory, nor detract in the slightest degree from the position which each of these institutions occupies. Far from being incompatible or mutually destructive,” they would “supplement each other’s authority and functions” and would be “permanently and fundamentally united in their aims.”

Although the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice occupy cognate positions as the twin successors of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and [Page 28] as the supreme institutions of Bahá’u’lláh’s administrative order, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá conferred upon the Guardian a rank above that of the members of the Universal House of Justice, admonishing “all the Aghṣán, the Afnán, the Hands of the Cause of God to show their obedience, submissiveness and subordination unto the Guardian of the Cause of God, to turn unto him and be lowly before him.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s elevation of the Guardian was further reinforced by His designation of the Guardian as the permanent head of the Universal House of Justice. He also emphasized Shoghi Effendi’s primacy by referring to him as “the most wondrous, unique and priceless pearl that doth gleam from out the Twin surging seas” and “the blest and sacred bough that hath branched out from the Twin Holy Trees.” Although he occupied a rank of such preeminence, Shoghi Effendi emphasized that it would be blasphemous to equate the rank of Guardian with that occupied by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of the Covenant—how much more so with the station of Bahá’u’lláh, the Manifestation of God. Stressing the exalted position of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in relation to his own position as Guardian, Shoghi Effendi wrote that, “however great the gulf that separates” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá from Bahá’u’lláh, “it can never measure with the distance that stands between Him Who is the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant and the Guardians who are its chosen ministers. There is a far, far greater distance separating the Guardian from the Center of the Covenant than there is between the Center of the Covenant and its Author.” Hence Shoghi Effendi asserted that no Guardian could ever claim to be the “perfect exemplar of the Bahá’í teachings.” Although each Guardian would be “overshadowed by the unfailing, the unerring protection of Bahá’u’lláh and of the Báb” and would “share with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the right and obligation to interpret the Bahá’í teachings,” each would remain “essentially human” and could not, therefore, “arrogate to himself, under any pretense whatsoever, the rights, the privileges and prerogatives which Bahá’u’lláh has chosen to confer upon His Son.” Therefore, “to pray to the Guardian of the Faith, to address him as lord and master, to designate him as his holiness, to seek his benediction, to celebrate his birthday, or to commemorate any event associated with his life would be tantamount to a departure from those established truths that are enshrined within our beloved Faith.”

[Page 29] The Bahá’í Faith in the Absence of a Living Guardian

THE death of Shoghi Effendi in London in 1957 brought about a crisis of leadership in the Bahá’í Faith. Following Shoghi Effendi’s funeral, the Hands of the Cause of God convened in Haifa and determined, after having made an extensive search, that Shoghi Effendi had left no will. Since he had no children, and since none of the remaining male descendants of Bahá’u’lláh had remained faithful to the Covenant, no one could legitimately claim to be Shoghi Effendi’s successor. After lengthy consultations, the Hands of the Cause determined that since they had been designated by Shoghi Effendi as the “Chief Stewards of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic World Commonwealth,” they would assume temporary responsibility for administering the affairs of the Faith. On the basis of Shoghi Effendi’s pronouncements about their role as his chief stewards and with the expressed support of all of the existing National Spiritual Assemblies, the Hands of the Cause secured the legal authority required to take possession of the Bahá’í properties and funds in the Holy Land. However, they concluded that the period of their stewardship should last only until April 1963, when the detailed plans given by Shoghi Effendi in the Ten Year World Crusade, the Bahá’í community’s first global teaching plan, would end. Declaring themselves ineligible for election, they called for the election of the Universal House of Justice to be held in April 1963.

At the time of the election of the Universal House of Justice, the question of whether there would be a second Guardian remained unresolved. Although the possibility of a break in the line of eligible male descendants had been envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are silent on the succession of authority. Consequently, the matter could only be ruled upon authoritatively once the Universal House of Justice, the body authorized to legislate on matters not covered in the holy texts, was established. In October 1963 the Universal House of Justice announced that “there is no way to appoint or to legislate to make it possible to appoint a second Guardian to succeed Shoghi Effendi.”

The absence of a Guardian has been a grievous loss to the Bahá’í Faith. Nevertheless, the Universal House of Justice has stated that, by virtue of the authority invested in it by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, it is in a position to [Page 30] do everything necessary to establish the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. Although the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice are complementary in their aims and purposes, the functioning of one is not dependent on the existence of the other. Indeed, Shoghi Effendi served as Guardian for thirty-six years in the absence of the Universal House of Justice. As stipulated in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament, the Universal House of Justice has the authority to legislate on matters not covered in the Bahá’í writings. This carries with it the authority to determine when and how to apply the laws of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and whether supplementary legislation is needed. The Universal House of Justice has also been invested with the more general functions of protecting and administering the Faith, solving obscure questions, and deciding on matters that have caused differences. As the supreme institution of the Bahá’í Faith, the Universal House of Justice is now, in the absence of a Guardian, responsible for carrying out those functions that it shares with the Guardianship, such as the protection and propagation of the Faith, and for other functions that lie within the province of the Guardianship, such as directing the work of the Hands of the Cause, ensuring the continuation of their work into the future, and administering Ḥuqúqu’lláh. Functions that lie exclusively within the sphere of the Guardianship, such as interpretation of the Bahá’í writings and appointment of the Hands of the Cause of God, have become inoperative and cannot be assumed by the Universal House of Justice.

The Enduring Influence of the Guardianship

ALTHOUGH there is no longer a living Guardian, the institution of the Guardianship continues to exercise a profound influence on the Bahá’í world. Before legislating on any matter, the Universal House of Justice studies carefully and exhaustively the pertinent writings of Shoghi Effendi. Given the vast range of topics covered by Shoghi Effendi during the thirty-six years of his ministry, few subjects are not covered to some degree by his interpretations. National and local assemblies are similarly guided by Shoghi Effendi’s interpretations, as are individuals in their study of the Bahá’í writings. The pattern Shoghi Effendi established for the systematic prosecution of teaching plans in pursuance [Page 31] of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan continues under the guidance of the Universal House of Justice, and the plans he laid for the development of the administrative institutions of the Bahá’í World Center, for the construction on Mount Carmel of the buildings that will house them, and for the beautification and further development of the properties in Haifa and at Bahjí continue to be carefully executed.

[Page 32]

[Page 33]

God Passes By

A REVIEW OF SHOGHI EFFENDI’S God Passes By, INTRO. GEORGE TOWNSHEND, NEW ED. (WILMETTE, ILL.: BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING TRUST, 1974) XXIII + 436 PAGES WITH INTRODUCTION, FOREWORD, INDEX

BY FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

Copyright © 1998 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. This review, which was written for the Bahá’í Encyclopedia project of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, is published with the permission of the author and the publisher.

God Passes By is a history of the first century of the Bábí-Bahá’í Faith and the only full-sized book by Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 to 1957. The work, written in English and later translated into many languages, was published in 1944 on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Bahá’í Faith. Shoghi Effendi stated that his purpose was to survey “the outstanding events of the century, . . . the events which the revolution of a hundred years . . . has unrolled before our eyes.” He specifically disclaimed the intention “to write a detailed history of the last hundred years of the Bahá’í Faith, [or] . . . to trace the origins of so tremendous a Movement, or to portray the conditions under which it was born, or to examine the character of the religion from which it has sprung, or to arrive at an estimate of the effects which its impact upon the fortunes of mankind has produced.”

God Passes By follows a scheme of periodization established by Shoghi Effendi for the first century of the Bahá’í era, a century that “may be said to comprise the Heroic, the Primitive, the Apostolic Age of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, and also the initial stages of the Formative, the Transitional, the Iron Age which is to witness the crystallization and shaping of the creative energies released by His Revelation.”

Shoghi Effendi divides the first Bahá’í century into four stages or periods. The first and briefest covers the mission of the Báb from His declaration in 1844 to His martyrdom in 1853. The second period stretches from 1853, when Bahá’u’lláh received His first revelation in the dungeon in Tehran, to His death in 1892 at Bahjí near Acre, then in the Ottoman province of Syria. The third period begins in 1892 with the announcement of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant— [Page 34] the appointment of His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as Head of the Faith and interpreter of His teachings—and ends with the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1921. The fourth period, lasting from 1921 to 1944, “motivated by the forces radiating from the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” a fundamental document elucidating the main principles of the Bahá’í administrative order, was one of expansion of the Faith, the establishment of its administrative institutions, and the recognition of its independent status in a number of countries. With characteristic humility Shoghi Effendi does not even mention the central role he played in the development of the Faith in the years following the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

The work is divided into four segments, each corresponding to a period. The first, “The Ministry of the Báb,” is in turn divided into five chapters, four covering the life and mission of the Báb, and one telling of the harsh suppression of the new religion and the role that Bahá’u’lláh played during the Báb’s ministry. The second and much larger segment, subdivided into eight chapters, deals with the ministry of Bahá’u’lláh. The third, again in eight chapters, covers the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The fourth and last period, in four chapters, brings the history of the Faith to the year 1944. The book concludes with a brief “Retrospect and Prospect” in which the author summarizes in a few closely packed pages the content of the book and expresses full confidence in the continuing progress and triumph of the Faith.

Although God Passes By eschews the scholarly apparatus of citation and analysis of sources or a discussion of their relative merits, the book is based on a deep knowledge of both primary documents and secondary sources. It is rich in quotations from the writings of the Central Figures of the Faith and shows familiarity with most of the historical literature on the subject available at the time in Persian, Arabic, English, and French. Rúḥíyyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi’s wife, writes that in preparation for this work Shoghi Effendi had read “every book written about the Faith by Bahá’ís, whether in manuscript form or published, and everything written by non-Bahá’ís that contained significant references to it. . . . this must have covered the equivalent of at least two hundred books.”

Among the sources, Nabíl’s Narrative, published in English under the title The Dawn-Breakers, must be singled out for two reasons. Nabíl was either an eyewitness to events he recorded or had heard about them from participants. Moreover, Shoghi Effendi valued the chronicle; translated and annotated the part that deals with the mission of the Báb; and in the pages of God Passes By referred to or quoted it more frequently than he did any other history.

God Passes By is a work of extraordinary density. It is replete with facts that are reported with great accuracy and with sketches of individuals most of [Page 35] whom are masterfully characterized and brought to life. The book paints a vast canvas that depicts the birth and early development of a world-embracing religion, gives vivid portraits of its Central Figures, conveys the enthusiasm of the early disciples, recounts the ferocious opposition of religious and political leaders of the Qájár and Ottoman empires, and tells of its spread over most of the world. The history is intended to encourage and inspire Bahá’ís as well as to narrate events of the past.

The latter part of the book emphasizes the growth of the Faith and the development of its institutions in the West, particularly in North America, where the first conversions to the Faith occurred in 1894. It was in North America that the institutional forms of the Bahá’í administration were first established and offered as a model to the rest of the Bahá’í world. In the chapters on the last decades of the first Bahá’í century Shoghi Effendi combines a broad survey with a wealth of detail that he considered important for the establishment and recognition of Bahá’í communities throughout the world.

God Passes By does not, however, ignore the more painful, the darker side of Bahá’í history. The failings, vacillations, errors, betrayals, and acts of cowardice of individual Bábís and Bahá’ís are not hidden from sight but exposed with unsparing frankness. The roles of Mírzá Yaḥyá Azal and Mírzá Muḥammad ‘Alí, at times minimized by Bahá’í historians and frequently misunderstood by non-Bahá’í ones, are fully discussed in two chapters specifically devoted to them. Neither does Shoghi Effendi ignore the ambitions and the failings of some individual Bahá’ís whose acts caused setbacks and reverses from which the Bahá’í Faith has suffered from time to time.

Yet God Passes By is more than a narrative of events. In its essence it is the story of the manifestation of the divine in history. The very title of the book enunciates its main theme: the appearance in the world of two prophetic figures, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, Whom Bahá’ís believe to be Manifestations of God. Coming from the pen of Shoghi Effendi, the authorized interpreter of Bahá’u’lláh’s and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s writings, the book has, particularly for the Bahá’ís, a meaning that stretches far beyond the historical. It gives the authoritative Bahá’í interpretation of the spiritual significance of the events of the first century of the Faith and enters the realm of metahistory. It also offers Shoghi Effendi’s interpretations of numerous passages from Bahá’í scriptures.

The pages of God Passes By include concise definitions of the stations of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as well as elucidations of the meaning of the Bahá’í administrative order that echo Shoghi Effendi’s authoritative statement on these matters made in February 1934 and published under the title The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh. The style of God Passes By is at once elaborate [Page 36] and direct, majestic and dramatic, formal and vivid. It was formed under the influence of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible and of the writings of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians such as Thomas Carlyle and especially Edward Gibbon, whose stately prose Shoghi Effendi “greatly admired.” This elevated style with its slightly archaic overtones corresponds perfectly to the grandeur of the theme, the scope of the narrative, and the character of the dramatis personae.

At Shoghi Effendi’s invitation, George Townshend, an eminent scholar and author, wrote an introduction that has appeared in every edition of God Passes By. Shoghi Effendi also produced for Iranian Bahá’ís an abbreviated Persian version of God Passes By, called Lawh-i-Qarn.

[Page 37]

Time

For some,

time is like a cold razor

which slips by swiftly,

smoothly and

unnoticed—

the pain comes

later.

To others,

it is a spring-brushed

blossom

with secrets unfolding,

a spider strand

glistening prism—like

in the wind.

And there are those

to whom time is

the dreary pull of tides

upon a foundering hulk,

gray waters sliding

inexorably away.

And yet, time may

be

but a stage

on which we rehearse

our moments before

eternity.

—Steve Garrigues

Copyright © 1998 by Steve Garrigues

[Page 38]

[Page 39]

Six Books about Shoghi Effendi

A REVIEW OF ALI M. YAZDI’S Blessings Beyond Measure: Recollections of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi (WILMETTE, ILL.: BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING TRUST, 1988) XV + 100 PAGES WITH NOTES; MARCUS BACH’S Sboghi Effendi: An Appreciation, INTRO. HORACE HOLLEY (NEW YORK: HAWTHORN, 1958, 1956) x + 35 PAGES; UGO GIACHERY, Sboghi Effendi: Recollections (OXFORD: GEORGE RONALD, 1973) x + 238 PAGES WITH PREFACE, APPENDICES, GLOSSARY, REFERENCES, AND INDEX; RÚḤÍYYIH RABBANI’S THE PRICELESS PEARL (LONDON: BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING TRUST, 1969) VIII + 482 PAGES WITH INDEX; RÚḤÍYYIH RABBANI’S The Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith (LONDON: BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING TRUST, 1988) XIV + 251 PAGES WITH INDEX; The Vision of Shoghi Effendi: Proceedings of the Association for Bahá’í Studies Ninth Annual Conference November 2-4, 1984, Ottawa, Canada (OTTAWA: ASSOCIATION FOR BAHÁ’Í STUDIES, 1993) IX + 234 PAGES WITH PREFACE, ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

Copyright © 1998 by Howard B. Garey.

BY HOWARD B. GAREY

IT HAS been instructive for this reviewer to read six books about Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 through 1957, in the chronological order of publication because, contrary to what one might expect, there has been so little change in the way in which Shoghi Effendi has been valued, appreciated, loved, admired, and revered in the thirty-seven years from the first to the last of these works. Striking also is the extent to which there seems always to have been broad awareness of the scope of the Guardian’s incredibly multifaceted career: statesman, landscaper, architect, philosopher, theologian, historian, translator, organizer of a worldwide, constantly expanding religious community—evidence (troubling to the skeptic) of the divine mandate of this man to accomplish what for mere mortals would be an impossible task. Indeed, the life and work of Shoghi Effendi are inseparable from each other since he dedicated his entire energies to protecting and nurturing the global Bahá’í community.

Many of the early books about Shoghi Effendi were biographies (four of which are reviewed below) by people who knew and worked with him either in service to their shared Faith or who, in the case of Marcus Bach, sought him out because of an interest in the world’s religions. But much of the growing body of recent work about the Guardian (also selectively reviewed below) focuses scholarly study on his writings and on the nature and implications of the Guardianship as an institution. It is a rich area for study.

Shoghi Effendi’s enormous responsibilities as Guardian entailed tireless writing: translations of the Bahá’í writings, especially those of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith; letters in English, Persian, and Arabic to the ever-increasing number of localities that, largely due to his efforts, were springing [Page 40] up all over the world; letters in answer to questions and reports from individuals and local and national spiritual assemblies; treatises on matters of importance to the world community of Bahá’ís. Some of this massive correspondence has been published as a number of books, a list of which appears in an “Annotated Bibliography of Works by and about Shoghi Effendi” in The Vision of Shoghi Effendi, a collection of essays reviewed below.

Given the historical uniqueness of Shoghi Effendi’s role as interpreter of the Bahá’í writings and his prodigious output as the practical administrator of a growing spiritual community, it is not surprising that, in the years following his death in 1957, the study of his life and works continues to occupy the minds and spirits of many Bahá’ís.

The four biographies reviewed below (by Ali M. Yazdi, Marcus Bach, Ugo Giachery, and Rúḥíyyih Khánum Rabbani) were written by people who knew, admired, and loved Shoghi Effendi. Collectively, they provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of his life and work from the perspective of each author’s unforgettable experience with the Guardian.

In Blessings Beyond Measure: Recollections of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi (1988), Ali M. Yazdi recounts his nearly life-long friendship with Shoghi Effendi. The first part of the book tells of Ali’s early life with his parents in Ramleh, a suburb of Alexandria, Egypt, where he first came to know ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. It was in Ramleh that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made His headquarters for His trips to Europe and America between 1910 and 1913. The months that He spent in Ramleh were, for Ali, “like paradise.” Shoghi Effendi, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandson, and Ali became acquainted at the French Brothers’ School in Ramleh. On the way home after a day at the French Brothers’ School, the eleven-year-old Ali, steeped in Bahá’í tradition, went often to the house where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was staying. Ali was in awe of this Person Who, as he understood, was “a divine man, . . . not a Manifestation [of God], [but One Who] still had a divine station.”

There are glimpses of Shoghi Effendi in the first part of the book dealing with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, but it is the second part that tells of the loving friendship of these two Bahá’ís, only two years apart in age. (Shoghi Effendi was born in 1897, Ali in 1899.) After their first meeting in 1910, “shortly after the Master came” to Ramleh, Yazdi tells of Shoghi Effendi’s disappointment in 1912 on being prevented, on the groundless finding of trachoma, from boarding the Cedric with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for a trip to the United States and Canada.

Three years later Ali and Shoghi Effendi were once more fellow students, this time at the Syrian Protestant College, later called the American University of Beirut. The picture Ali shows us of the future Guardian is not what this reader, who knew of him as heavily burdened, occupied with many tasks material and spiritual, had expected. For example, Ali writes:

At the college Shoghi Effendi was always jolly, optimistic, and hopeful. He had a wonderful personality. All of a sudden he would burst forth with loud laughter. Or sometimes a smile would break on his face. He had a very small mouth; beautiful, expressive eyes; and very regular, handsome features. He was bouncy. He just bounced.

Shoghi Effendi and Ali lived in the same dormitory, in rooms facing each other across the hall:

We would converse on many subjects. Actually, our relationship was one of two young men, two personal friends, as we were beginning our life on our own, and we had much to share. We often talked to each other about the future. His vision was always of the Faith spreading all over the world and of everybody serving the Cause; these were his only ambitions. We shared a common goal of personal service [Page 41] to the Faith. He himself did not know he was going to be the Guardian.

When Ali visited Haifa during the summer of 1917, he and Shoghi Effendi were part of a group of youths, most of them Persian students who during the war were unable to reach their homeland. Together these young men—and they may well have included Shoghi Effendi—explored this historic region, especially Acre, which has so much meaning for Bahá’ís.

Shoghi Effendi and Ali graduated from the Syrian Protestant College in 1918. Shoghi Effendi returned to Haifa, Ali to Damascus, where his family was then living. After the war they went on to their separate destinies, Shoghi Effendi to Oxford, Ali to the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. They corresponded frequently, Shoghi Effendi’s letters to Ali providing a clear look into the aspirations and preoccupations of this student in an alien land, who wanted to learn practically everything to be of service to the Faith and to the Master. He did not conceive of the inevitable death of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and had not the slightest idea of his own coming role as Guardian of the Cause of God. Toward the end of one long letter to Ali, Shoghi Effendi tells of his self-doubts before the vast task he had undertaken:

My field of study is so vast, I have to acquire, master, and digest so many facts, courses, and books—all essential, all indispensable to my future career in the Cause. The very extent of this immense field is enough to discourage, excite, and overwhelm such a young and inexperienced beginner as myself. Think of the vast field of Economics; of social conditions and problems; of the various religions of the past, their histories and their principles and their force; the acquisition of a sound and literary ability in English to be served for translation purposes; the mastery of public speaking so essential to me, all these and a dozen more—all to be sought, acquired and digested!

Prayer, faith, perseverance and effort will alone do it. Praying for your success from all my heart!

Shoghi Rabbani

As formidable as the self-imposed task was, it is obvious now that he accomplished it.

The many letters, diary entries, and photographs provide a personal, close-up view of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi that owners of the book will treasure. It has been admirably edited with a foreword by Ali’s widow, Marion Carpenter Yazdi, and excellent notes, documenting and often supplementing information in Yazdi’s text, by the editors of the Bahá’í Publishing Trust.

Marcus Bach’s Shoghi Effendi: An Appreciation (1956) is the only work in this group to have been written before the Guardian’s passing, as well as the only one by a non-Bahá’í. Bach was Director of the Fellowship for Spiritual Understanding in California, in 1993, and may still be. He has long written and lectured about comparative religion, always seeking the principles underlying them all. Shortly before Shoghi Effendi’s death in 1957, Bach visited him from “Jerusalem, Jordan” (as the old city was called when held by Jordan from 1948 until 1967), having to pass through the Mandelbaum gate to get to “New Jerusalem” and the rest of Israel. Bach managed to secure a special dispensation from the Jordanian authorities, who routinely forbade the return to Jordan from Israel but who allowed Bach to come back after a set period of time there.

The faith of the Bahá’ís whom Bach met in Haifa, before his unforgettable meeting with Shoghi Effendi, impressed him, especially his first sight of Rúḥíyyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi’s wife, and his conversation [Page 42] with her. He was to have met the Guardian for dinner, but the Guardian regretfully postponed the meeting until later that evening. Bach had dinner with more Bahá’ís, who told him of their beliefs. Learning of the great importance of prayer in the life of Bahá’ís, he came to realize that in view of this “earnest practice of the presence of God . . . basic in the faith” the fundamental tenets of the Faith were not a mere sociologist’s utopian dream, as most Americans might perceive it, but had a firm spiritual basis. Reflecting on his dinner companions, he asked himself, “What would happen to me if I were suddenly to say, ‘This is it! My search is over! Here in the Bahá’í mecca [sic], I have found the Pearl of Great Price!’”

The interview with Shoghi Effendi held surprises for Bach, in spite of all he had heard about the Faith from the Bahá’ís to whom he had been talking. This earnest Christian was amazed by the strength of Shoghi Effendi’s belief in Jesus. It was not just a theoretical recognition of Jesus as a Manifestation of God, Bach says, but a real “devotion to the Galilean. He was fully as faithful to Jesus as he was to Bahá’u’lláh.”

Bach’s description of the Guardian is precious for its visual clarity; it shows him in his physical aspect and in the way it reveals much of the inner man:

I saw coming through the adjoining room a small, dark-complexioned man, dressed in Western attire but wearing a fez. His clean-shaven face and slender figure registered indomitable strength. He walked with head up as though an entourage of the faithful might be following him. He strode in, bowed to me with an almost imperceptible nod, and held out his hand. As we exchanged greetings there was a smile on his lips, though this did not entirely destroy my impression of a certain aloofness in his bearing. He welcomed me with a sensitivity that seemed to feel, rather than hear my words.

The expression of his dark eyes, too, gave a hint of inner judgment based not on what was said but, rather, on what was sensed. He was self-possessed, self-sufficient, purposeful. I had been told that he was a man of fifty-seven, but, judging from his unlined, youthful face, he might have been forty. And though I stood head and shoulders above him, I felt diminutive. I envied him the sense of security and holy mission in life that filled his whole soul with confidence, beyond doubt and beyond question.

There was no limit to Bach’s admiration for Shoghi Effendi or to his approval of the tenets of the Faith. Yet he never answered the question he had put to himself earlier. His search was not over; he does not claim to have “‘found the Pearl of Great Price.’” It seems his commitment to the search was stronger than that to the discovery of its object.

The picture of Shoghi Effendi recorded by Yazdi and Bach is further rounded out by Ugo Giachery in his Shoghi Effendi: Recollections (1973). In the very first chapter, “An Appreciation,” he offers this description of the Guardian:

He was of a gentle nature, his manners were cordial, remarkably loving and aristocratic, and his memory was extraordinary. He could remember names, dates, places and circumstances with a clarity that commanded respect and admiration. He knew the history of the Bábí and Bahá’í Revelations from their inception, while at the same time his full, comprehensive and detailed knowledge of the world and its nations, peoples, governments, religions, history and culture was outstanding.

With regard to his appearance, my first impression was one of wonder. His gentle, graceful figure was enhanced by the power and authority which emanated from him; his broad forehead, his fine hazel eyes filled with light, the harmonious oval shape of [Page 43] his clear face, with his dark hair and small moustache, the consuming fire of his gaze, the small well-shaped hands, the striking purity and innocence and integrity which emanated from his whole being, all made a perfect vehicle for the tremendous forces of the spirit which were channelled through him.

His apparently delicate body was charged with such vitality that he could work month after month, year after year, without any appreciable interruption. If one came near to him, one could feel this great vitality, almost like an electric charge, radiating from him upon men and things, and when his particularly well-modulated and resonant voice eagerly and passionately expressed the depth of his thoughts, the fascination was complete and captivating.

Dr. Giachery’s book is not a biography, but, as its subtitle states, a highly personal set of recollections. After World War II, Giachery, an Italian chemist, was charged by Shoghi Effendi with the task of securing the stone for the Shrine of the Báb, the final resting place for the Prophet-Forerunner of the Bahá’í Faith, from the famous marble quarries of Carrara, Italy, engaging the services of Italian stonemasons, amid the shipping diffculties, social and economic dislocations, and shortness of funds characteristic of the period. From then on the story is told of the completion of the Shrine in all its fascinating detail. But the real story is that of these two men, Shoghi Effendi and Ugo Giachery, working together and of the latter’s growing affection, admiration, and reverence for the Guardian. Facts are not valued for themselves but for what they contribute to the building of a personal epic by relating the collaboration of the Guardian and his loving assistant, stone by stone, tile by tile, so that, as the dome of the Shrine of the Báb comes to its realization, as the great doors of the Archives are hung, as the ornamental fences, sculptures, and urns are placed in the gardens and about the holy shrines, one senses at the same time the growth of love and solidarity between Shoghi Effendi and Dr. Giachery, who, together, subordinate themselves to a Cause that gives meaning to human existence.

The Priceless Pearl (1969) was published by Shoghi Effendi’s widow, Rúḥíyyih Khánum Rabbani, twelve years after his passing. The Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith (1988) is a slight abridgement of the earlier book, somewhat easier to read, lacking notes or other documentation and shorter by several chapters, though provided with a useful index and many previously unpublished photographs. Otherwise, The Priceless Pearl and The Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith are essentially the same book. The biography of Shoghi Effendi includes his childhood and youth, under the loving training of his grandfather, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and his education in Haifa (at a Jesuit elementary school, le Collège des Frères); in Beirut at the Syrian Protestant College; and finally at Balliol College, Oxford.

Rúḥíyyih Khánum Rabbani’s two books about Shoghi Effendi are necessarily histories of the modern age of the Bahá’í Faith as guided by him with attention to the smallest details of the building of the World Center in Haifa and detailed guidance to national and local spiritual assemblies and individuals, as part of a vast plan that encompasses the entire world and a clear vision of a distant, preordained future. No one is better placed to recount the incredible panorama of this man’s achievements than is the author of these books. But she presents us with more than his achievements: here we live vicariously through his periods of tragedy; his sadness during his struggles with Covenant-breakers, the internal enemies of the Faith; his joy in the contemplation of nature and [Page 44] art; his constancy in the pursuit of practical and diplomatic ends, of positive and fruitful relationships with the authorities of the British Mandate and of the State of Israel, and with centers of power on the world stage.

The Vision of Shoghi Effendi (1993), a selection of papers offered at the ninth annual conference of the Association for Bahá’í Studies, held in Ottawa, Canada, 2-4 November 1984, offers a splendid example of the kind of recent works that study Shoghi Effendi’s accomplishments. It includes a preface by William P. Collins, followed by nineteen essays by seventeen authors, the aforementioned “Annotated Bibliography of Works by and about Shoghi Effendi,” a “Bibliography” of more general works by Bahá’í and non-Bahá’í authors, plus “Biographical Notes” on the authors of the nineteen essays. A sampling of the contents will illustrate the range and interest of the volume.

Collins’ foreword provides a helpful general introduction to the essays, though non-Bahá’í readers (and even many Bahá’í readers) will be put off by the plethora of laudatory adjectives. Praise is more effective, more believable, when conveyed by demonstrations of an objective nature. Collins makes valid points about Shoghi Effendi as well as about the essays that comprise this volume; it is too bad that his gushing detracts from his message.

An essay by Ann Boyles, “The Epistolary Style of Shoghi Effendi,” succeeds in confirming or creating within the reader a profound appreciation of Shoghi Effendi’s literary style. Dr. Boyles identifies the Guardian’s literary models (Gibbon, Carlyle, Pauline and Other New Testament epistles), providing parallel passages from these authors and Shoghi Effendi. She then illustrates the differences and makes a very good case for the superiority of Shoghi Effendi, and of his primary models, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, not only stylistically but in content, insight, and foresight.

It is interesting to compare the Boyles essay With that of A. M. Varqá, “Le Style persan du Gardien” (The Guardian’s Style in His Persian Writings). (Gardien is misspelled in the Contents as Guardien but is correctly spelled in the title on p. 209.) Varqá compares Shoghi Effendi’s English and Persian styles, but his main thrust is, of course, the Persian style. The differences have to do with the contrast between the stylistic expectations of Occidental and Oriental reading publics, the latter being devoted to what the former would regard as “flowery” language. Varqá translates passages from Shoghi Effendi’s letters to Oriental (Persian and Arabic) readers into a French that gives a believable feeling for the esthetic effect of those letters, which were written, much like Bahá’u’lláh’s writings, in a Persian much seasoned with Arabic. The style of Shoghi Effendi’s messages to the West is perceptibly different.

Reading Varqá’s essay would help Western readers overcome the discomfort that many of them feel in the “flowery language” of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as translated by Shoghi Effendi. There is great beauty in Shoghi Effendi’s letters, which combine loftiness of sentiment and genuine affection for the reader on the part of the author.

One more detail may help the reader who wants to get closer to an understanding of Shoghi Effendi, both as Guardian and as an individual human being: he had no formal training in either Persian or Arabic. His only contact with these languages was as a native speaker of colloquial Persian at home and of Palestinian Arabic outside. His study of English was formal and intensive. His formal training in Arabic was limited to what was taught in the Jesuit elementary school he attended as a child. Varqá points out that Classical Arabic is a language of great expressiveness and subtlety, for the mastery of which Shoghi Effendi’s formal instruction under normal circumstances would have been quite inadequate. But he had the advantage of the [Page 45] close study of the texts in these languages by Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a study that gave him a mastery of Persian and Arabic language and innovation in style.

The other essay in French is that of Shapour Rassekh, “La Vision de l’évolution générale du monde dans l’oeuvre de Shoghi Effendi” (Shoghi Effendi’s Vision of the General Evolution of the World). In Dr. Rassekh’s broad examination of the works of Shoghi Effendi, he discerns eight principal ideas that can be briefly, if inadequately, summarized as follows: (1) The current crisis of Western civilization involves the whole world. (2) It is related to the decline of religion as a force in society. Religion is more, says Shoghi Effendi, than a set of myths, dogmas, and rites having as their object the sacred. When functioning properly, religion is a creative and regenerative force. (3) This force at once attracts and repels; it integrates and tears down. A new religion appeared in Iran in 1844 and has since become a worldwide force, while, at the same time, one may observe the agonies of the world and the birth pangs of a new order. (4) History is directed toward an ultimate goal, the apogee of the human race—namely, the Kingdom of God on earth as promised by all the prophets of the past. But humankind must do its share; it is not absolved of the responsibility of achieving the Kingdom. (5) Current crises are a sort of retribution for humanity’s turning away from the message of God for this epoch. (6) In the past there have been two views of history: the oriental religions have favored a cyclic theory, according to which the triumphs and defeats of humanity recur endlessly; the Judeo-Christian tradition (continued by the philosophers of the Enlightenment) has promoted a linear theory of history, beginning with creation, and arriving at the time of the end; the Bahá’í approach combines the two into a spiral in which many of the phases are repeatedly run through but with differences through time such that the spiral seen as a whole appears as a line, the goal of which is the Kingdom. (7) In addition to the sociohistoric view of history, fired by the energy of religion, there is also a biospiritual evolution in which the progress of humankind goes through phases like those of the growing individual: infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age. Spengler notwithstanding, all human beings, regardless of cultural differences, share the aspiration toward the promised day and the time of the end. (8) The concept of progressive revelation is not the creation of the Bahá’í Faith—it was proclaimed by Muḥammad. But the unique Bahá’í elaboration of this principle has to do with the relativity of truth, according to which human understanding of ultimate truth evolves, changes, develops, refines itself continually from one dispensation to the next.

The summary of the “eight ideas” has necessarily left out much subtle and illuminating discussion. Dr. Rassekh’s article ranks among the best of this collection and should be read by any Bahá’í or interested person who can read French.

William S. Hatcher’s “An Analysis of The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh” has philosophic weight and import similar to that of Rassekh’s article. Hatcher describes “The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh” as being “the only one” among all of Shoghi Effendi’s works to be “almost totally devoted to a consideration of fundamental theological and philosophical issues.” Among the points Dr. Hatcher derives from this letter are the following: Past religions have left technical questions of theology to be dealt with by later scholars, religious leaders, schismatics, “heretics” (as the losers are called by those who win in an essentially political battle), theologians, and philosophers. The Bahá’í Faith is unique in that its theological questions have been elucidated by its Founders and principal Figures, thus avoiding quarrels on such matters.

Typically, according to Dr. Hatcher, a Founder, a charismatic figure, arises Who [Page 46] attracts a body of believers whose ambient society is deeply suspicious and hostile, even envious of the loyalty of his followers. A cleavage in society between believers and nonbelievers results. There ensues a period of strong emotions and actions not amenable to deep reflection on abstractions. Bahá’u’lláh has left not only doctrines but a clear succession of authorized interpreters. These figures (‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi) have dealt not only with theological and philosophic questions but also with matters of organization, called, in Bahá’í terms, the “Administrative Order.” Quarrels over doctrinal, legislative, judicial, financial, and executive authority have in past dispensations been a rich source of dissension, in view of the vagueness of arrangements made by the religious founders. Such questions, when they arise in the Bahá’í community, are resolved by mechanisms that are an integral part of this dispensation.

The stations of Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and Shoghi Effendi have been clearly delineated in the works of the Guardian, who developed an ever-evolving, worldwide Administrative Order, in accordance with the guidelines laid down by his predecessors. Many of the other articles in The Vision of Shoghi Effendi explore Shoghi Effendi’s exegetical, theological, and administrative contributions in some detail. This brief sampling suggests the range and richness of the volume and of recent trends in researching Shoghi Effendi and the Guardianship.

In recent years, as the six works reviewed here demonstrate, one can trace a significant increase in the amount of scholarship focused on the study of the Guardian and the Guardianship. But as substantial as that research is, surely it represents the barest beginnings of what one might expect will become a vast and continuing research into the life, station, and contribution of Shoghi Effendi and of the Institution of the Guardianship that he served uniquely and so well. The Bahá’í Faith is rich in authenticated original textual material—primary and secondary —for the study of a revealed religion. As vast as is the material by and about Shoghi Effendi, it represents but a fraction of such material when one considers what exists related to the Central Figures. When the world community of Bahá’ís has developed the human and material resources for sustained, systematic scholarship, the study of Shoghi Effendi and the Guardianship will become an integral part of a research enterprise the scope and effect of which on the world one can barely imagine at present. But the works reviewed here afford a glimpse into the rich future of scholarship on the life and works of Shoghi Effendi.

[Page 47]

Oasis

It is an Oasis

a retreat—

a safe place to be

in the middle

of the wilderness

which is the world.

Here one can return

to repair oneself

to become awake

to the beauty

invisible to the eye

but real

to the heart.

It can be anywhere

in the midst of life

in the hollow of your hand

in the commotion

surrounding a feeder

in the garden

it comes from within.

An inner glowing

in the flowing

of the soul

when touched

by the sun

and wind

of the spirit.

—Joan Imig Taylor

Copyright © 1998 by Joan Imig Taylor

[Page 48]

[Page 49]

Authors & Artists

HOWARD B. GAREY is a professor of French and Romance philology emeritus at Yale University.

STEVE GARRIGUES is a professor of English and linguistics in the Department of English Language and Literature at Kyongbuk National University, Taegu, Korea, and an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, Asian Division (Korea). His interests include travel, tea, hiking, and photography; his photographs appear regularly in World Order.

SANDRA HUTCHISON completed a doctorate in English literature at the University of Toronto and postdoctoral studies at the University of British Columbia on the literary left-wing movement of the 1930s. She has traveled the world working as a university lecturer and a journalist. She received an Arts’ Council award for her book of stories, Chinese Brushstrokes (Turnstone Press, 1996). She has written numerous academic articles and reviews in her field and worked with her husband on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in America: Agnes Parsons’ Diary (Kalimát Press 1996). She began her studies of the writings of Shoghi Effendi during her tenure in the Research Department at the Bahá’í World Center. She is currently living in Hong Kong with her husband and daughter and working on another book of stories.

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH is professor of history emeritus at Yale University and Editor of World Order.

GEOFFRY W. MARKS is general manager of the Uswe Trust, a literacy and adult basic education and training organization in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lives With his wife Amy and daughter Bahia. Before moving to Cape Town in 1989, Dr. Marks spent a year and a half at the Molepolole College of Education in Botswana as a curriculum development specialist on a USAID project. From 1982 to 1986 he was the codirector of the Louhelen Bahá’í School in Michigan.

JOAN IMIG TAYLOR is a writer. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including World Order.

ART CREDITS: Cover design by John Solarz, cover photograph, Susan Reed; p. 1, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 11, photograph, Darius Himes; p. 12, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 24, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 31, photograph, Michael Winger-Bearskin; p. 32, photograph, Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 36, photograph, Darius Himes; p. 38, photograph, Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 48, photograph, Steve Garrigues.

[Page 50]