VI

With the administrative structure of the Cause taking shape, Shoghi

Effendi turned his attention to the task he had been compelled to delay

for so long, the implementation of the Master's Divine Plan. In Persia,

the development was already well advanced. Directed first by Baha'u'llah

and subsequently by 'Abdu'l-Baha, a corps of especially designated

teachers--_muballi__gh__in_--stimulated the work at the local level

throughout the country, and the existence of a vibrant community life

assisted in the relatively rapid integration of new declarants.

Huququ'llah funds, supplemented by the practice of deputization, which was

already an established feature of Persian Baha'i consciousness, provided

material support for this teaching activity.

In the West, inspiration for the promotion of the Faith had been provided

by the response to the Master's appeals by such outstanding individuals as

Lua Getsinger, May Maxwell and Martha Root. Merely to mention these names

is to highlight a feature of the rise of the Cause in the West to which

the Master drew particular attention:

In America, the women have outdone the men in this regard and have taken

the lead in this field. They strive harder in guiding the peoples of the

world, and their endeavours are greater. They are confirmed by divine

bestowals and blessings.(83)

In the East, social conditions of the time had virtually dictated that the

initiative in the promotion of the Cause would be taken largely by men.

Few such constraints prevailed in North America and Europe, where a galaxy

of unforgettable women became the principal exponents of the Baha'i

message on both sides of the Atlantic. One thinks of Sarah Farmer, whose

Green Acre school provided the infant Baha'i community with a forum for

the introduction of the Faith to influential thinkers; of Sara Lady

Blomfield, whose social position lent added force to the ardour with which

she championed the teachings; of Marion Jack, immortalized by Shoghi

Effendi as a model for Baha'i pioneers; of Laura Dreyfus-Barney, who gave

the Faith the priceless collection of the Master's table talks, _Some

Answered Questions_; of Agnes Parsons, co-founder with Louis Gregory of

the "Race Amity" initiatives inspired by 'Abdu'l-Baha; of Corinne True,

Keith Ransom-Kehler, Helen Goodall, Juliet Thompson, Grace Ober, Ethel

Rosenberg, Clara Dunn, Alma Knobloch and a distinguished company of

others, most of whom pioneered some new field of Baha'i service.

To the list must be added the name of Queen Marie of Romania, whom the

ages will hail as the first crowned head to recognize the Revelation of

God for this day. The courage shown by this lone woman in publicly

declaring her faith, through the letters she fearlessly addressed to the

editors of several newspapers in both Europe and North America, in all

probability introduced the name of the Cause to an audience numbering

millions of readers.

Despite the impressive response that the earliest of these efforts

elicited, the lack of an organized means of capitalizing on the results

initially limited the benefits accruing to Baha'i communities in Western

lands. The rise of the Administrative Order dramatically changed the

latter situation. As Local Spiritual Assemblies came into being, goals

were set, resources were made available to support individual teaching

efforts, and those who declared their faith found themselves participating

in the many activities of an engrossing Baha'i community life. It was now

possible to systematically translate and publish literature, news of

general interest was regularly shared, and the bonds that linked believers

with the World Centre of the Faith grew steadily stronger.

The two chief instruments by which Shoghi Effendi set about cultivating a

heightened devotion to teaching in both East and West were the same as

those on which the Master had relied. A steady stream of letters to

communities and individuals alike opened up for the recipients new

dimensions in the beliefs they had embraced. The most important of these

communications, however, now became those addressed to National and Local

Spiritual Assemblies. Their effect was intensified by the stream of

returning pilgrims who shared insights gained by direct contact with the

Centre of the Cause. Through these connections every individual believer

was encouraged to see himself or herself as an instrument of the power

flowing through the Covenant. The invaluable compilation that eventually

appeared under the title _Messages to America, 1932-1946_ provides a

review of the steps by which Shoghi Effendi drew the North American

believers ever deeper into the implications of the Master's Divine Plan

for "the spiritual conquest of the planet":

By the sublimity and serenity of their faith, by the steadiness and

clarity of their vision, the incorruptibility of their character, the

rigor of their discipline, the sanctity of their morals, and the unique

example of their community life, they can and indeed must in a world

polluted with its incurable corruptions, paralyzed by its haunting fears,

torn by its devastating hatreds, and languishing under the weight of its

appalling miseries demonstrate the validity of their claim to be regarded

as the sole repository of that grace upon whose operation must depend the

complete deliverance, the fundamental reorganization and the supreme

felicity of all mankind.(84)

The Guardian held up before the eyes of the North American Baha'i

community a vision of their spiritual destiny. Its members were, he said,

"the spiritual descendants of the heroes of God's Cause", their rising

institutions were "the visible symbols of its [the Faith's] undoubted

sovereignty", the teachers and pioneers it sent out were "torch-bearers of

an as yet unborn civilization", it was their collective challenge to

assume "a preponderating share" in laying the foundations of the World

Order "which the Bab has heralded, which the mind of Baha'u'llah has

envisioned, and whose features 'Abdu'l-Baha, its Architect, has

delineated...."(85)

The language of the messages is magnificent, enthralling. In acknowledging

the darkness that widespread godlessness, violence and creeping immorality

was engendering, Shoghi Effendi described the role that Baha'is everywhere

must play as instruments of the transforming power of the new Revelation:

Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine

guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the

entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and

agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that

re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose

generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Baha'u'llah Himself,

whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose

animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the

reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete,

the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind.(86)

In 1936 the Guardian judged that the administrative structure of the Cause

was sufficiently broad and consolidated in North America that he could

begin the first stage of the implementation of the Divine Plan itself.

With the world sliding into another global conflagration, and the scope

possible to the efforts of the Persian believers being severely limited,

the focus would necessarily have to be on the expansion and consolidation

of the Baha'i community in the Western hemisphere in preparation for the

much larger undertakings that lay ahead. Calling on the Plan's appointed

"executors", the believers in North America, the Guardian laid out a Seven

Year Plan, scheduled to run from 1937 to 1944. Its objectives were to

establish at least one Local Spiritual Assembly in every state of the

United States and every province of Canada, and to open to the Cause

fourteen republics in Latin America. To these objectives was added the

task, immensely demanding of a community with still very limited numbers

and severely straitened financial resources, of completing the exterior

ornamentation of the "Mother Temple of the West".

Ruhiyyih _Kh_anum has pointed out a striking parallel between two

developments during this period of history. On the one hand, powerful

nations were launching armies of invasion whose goal was to seize the

natural resources of neighbour states--or simply to satisfy an appetite for

conquest. During this same period, Shoghi Effendi was mobilizing the

painfully small band of pioneers available to him, and dispatching them to

the teaching goals of the Plan he had created. Within a few short years,

the vast battalions of aggression would be shattered beyond recovery,

their names and conquests erased from history. The little company of

believers who had gone out with their lives in their hands to fulfil the

mission entrusted to them by the Guardian would have achieved or exceeded

all of their objectives, objectives that soon became the foundations of

flourishing communities.(87)

In appreciating this undertaking, it is helpful for Baha'is to understand

not only the role that planning plays in the life of the Cause, but the

unique nature of this instrumentality in its Baha'i expression. The

systematic identification of objectives to be achieved and decisions as to

how to achieve them does not mean that the Baha'i community has assumed

the responsibility of "designing" a future for itself, as the concept of

planning customarily implies. What Baha'i institutions do, rather, is to

strive to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process

they see steadily unfolding in the world, a process that will ultimately

realize its purpose, regardless of historical circumstances or events. The

challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence

allows, Baha'i efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God,

because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause

by Baha'u'llah bear their fruit. That the provisions of the Kitab-i-Aqdas

and the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha ensure the success of the

efforts of the Baha'is is dramatically demonstrated in the unbroken series

of triumphs that fulfilled the plans created by Shoghi Effendi.

By August 1944, Shoghi Effendi was able to celebrate the completion of the

first Seven Year Plan. The Guardian marked the moment with a gift to the

Baha'is of the world that represents one of the greatest achievements of

his life. The publication, in 1944, of _God Passes By_, his comprehensive

and reflective history of the first hundred years of the Cause, threw open

for believers a window on the spiritual process by which Baha'u'llah's

purpose for humankind is being realized.

History is a powerful instrument. At its best, it provides a perspective

on the past and casts a light on the future. It populates human

consciousness with heroes, saints and martyrs whose example awakens in

everyone touched by it capacities they had not imagined they possessed. It

helps make sense of the world--and of human experience. It inspires,

consoles and enlightens. It enriches life. In the great body of literature

and legend that it has left to humanity, history's hand can be seen at

work shaping much of the course of civilization--in the legends that have

inspired the ideals of every people since the dawn of recorded time, as

well as in the epics of the _Ramayana_, in the exploits celebrated in the

_Odyssey_ and the _Aeneid_, in the Nordic sagas, in the _Shahnameh_, and

in much of the Bible and the Qur'an.

_God Passes By_ elevates this great work of the mind to a level ardently

striven after but never attained in any of ages past. Those who open

themselves to its vision discover in it an avenue of approach to

understanding the Purpose of God, an avenue that converges with the vast

expanse spread out in the Guardian's matchless translations of the

Revealed Texts. Its appearance on the centenary of the birth of the

Cause--just as the Baha'i world was celebrating the success of the first

collective effort it had ever been able to undertake--summoned up for

believers everywhere the full majesty and meaning of a hundred years of

ceaseless sacrifice.

* * * * *

At a relatively early point in the second world war, the Guardian set that

conflict in a perspective for Baha'is that was very different from the one

generally prevailing. The war should be regarded, he said, "as the direct

continuation" of the conflagration ignited in 1914. It would come to be

seen as the "essential pre-requisite to world unification". The entry into

the war by the United States, whose president had initiated the project of

a system of international order, but which had itself rejected this

visionary initiative, would lead that nation, Shoghi Effendi predicted, to

"assume through adversity its preponderating share of responsibility to

lay down, once for all, broad, worldwide, unassailable foundations of that

discredited yet immortal System."(88)

These statements proved prophetic. With the end of hostilities, it

gradually became apparent that a fundamental shift in consciousness was

under way throughout the world and that inherited assumptions,

institutions and priorities that had been progressively undermined by

forces at work during the first half of the century were now crumbling. If

the change could not yet be described as an emerging conviction about the

oneness of humankind, no objective observer could mistake the fact that

barriers blocking such a realization, which had survived all the assaults

against them earlier in the century, were at last giving way. One's mind

turns to the prophetic words of the Qur'an: "And you see the mountains and

think them solid, but they shall pass away as the passing away of the

clouds." (27:88) The effect was to inspire in progressive minds a sense of

confidence that it would be possible to construct a new kind of society

that would not only preserve the long-term peace of the world, but enrich

the lives of all of its inhabitants.

Primarily, this new birth of hope had resulted, as Shoghi Effendi had

foreseen, from the "fiery ordeal" that had at last succeeded in

"implanting that sense of responsibility" which leaders earlier in the

century had sought to avoid.(89) To this new awareness had been added the

effects of the fear induced by the invention and use of atomic weapons, a

reaction calling to mind for Baha'is the Master's prescient statements in

North America that ultimately peace would come because the nations would

be driven to accept it. The _Montreal Daily Star_ had quoted Him as

saying: "It [peace] will be universal in the twentieth century. All

nations will be forced into it."(90) The years immediately following 1945

witnessed advances in framing a new social order that went far beyond the

brightest hopes of earlier decades.

Most important of all was the willingness of national governments to

create a new system of international order, and to endow it with the

peacekeeping authority so tragically denied to the defunct League. Meeting

in San Francisco in April 1945--in the state where 'Abdu'l-Baha had

prophetically declared, "May the first flag of international peace be

upraised in this state"--delegates of fifty nations adopted the Charter of

the United Nations Organization, the name proposed for it by President

Franklin D. Roosevelt.(91) Ratification by the required number of member

nations followed that October, and the first General Assembly of the new

organization convened on 10 January 1946, in London. In October 1949, the

cornerstone of the United Nations' permanent seat was laid in New York

City, hailed by 'Abdu'l-Baha thirty-seven years earlier as the "City of

the Covenant". During His visit there He had predicted: "There is no doubt

that ... the banner of international agreement will be unfurled here to

spread onward and outward among all the nations of the world."(92)

Significantly, it was also on the initiative of a political leader of one

of the Western hemisphere nations which had been addressed by Baha'u'llah,

that His summons to collective security--first reflected in the nominal

sanctions voted by the League of Nations against Fascist aggression in

Ethiopia--was at long last given practical effect. In November 1956, Lester

Bowles Pearson, then External Affairs Minister and later Prime Minister of

Canada, secured the creation by the United Nations of its first

international peacekeeping force, an achievement which won its author the

Nobel Prize for Peace.(93) The full nature of the authority contained in

such a mandate would steadily emerge as a major feature of international

relations during the second half of the century. Beginning with the

policing of agreements worked out between hostile states, the principle of

collective action in defence of peace gradually took on the form of

military interventions such as that of the Gulf War, in which compliance

with Security Council resolutions was imposed by force on aggressor

factions and states.

Along with the establishment of the new United Nations' system and steps

to enforce its sanctions, a second major breakthrough occurred. Even

before hostilities had ended, public audiences throughout the world were

stunned by film coverage of the liberation of Nazi death camps, which

exposed for all to see the horrific consequences of racism. What can

adequately be described only as a profound sense of shame at the depths of

evil that humanity had shown itself capable of committing shook the

conscience of humankind. Through the window of opportunity thus briefly

opened, a group of dedicated and far-sighted men and women, under the

inspired leadership of figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, secured the United

Nations' adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The moral

commitment it represented was institutionalized in the subsequent

establishment of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. In due

course, the Baha'i community itself would have good cause to appreciate,

at firsthand, the system's importance as a shield protecting minorities

from the abuses of the past.

Highlighting the significance of both advances was the decision of the

nations that had triumphed in the recent conflict to put on trial leading

figures of the Nazi regime. For the first time in history, the leaders of

a sovereign nation--men who sought to argue the constitutionality of the

political positions they had occupied--were brought before a public court,

their crimes unsparingly reviewed and documented, were duly convicted, and

those who did not escape through suicide were then either hanged or

sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. No serious protest had been

raised against this procedure which, theoretically, constituted a

fundamental departure from existing norms of international law. Although

the integrity of the proceedings was gravely marred by the participation

of judges appointed by a Soviet dictatorship whose own crimes matched or

exceeded those of the defendants' regime, the act set an historic

precedent. It demonstrated, for the first time, that the fetish of

"national sovereignty" has recognizable and enforceable limits.

Beginning in these same years, the fulfilment of a long-delayed ideal

unfolded in the dissolution of the great empires that had not merely

survived 1918, but had managed even to extend their reach through

acquiring "mandates", "protectorates" and colonies seized from the

defeated powers. Now, these antiquated systems of political oppression

were submerged by a rising tide of movements of national liberation far

beyond their weakened abilities to resist. With astonishing swiftness, all

of them either willingly abandoned their claims or were forced by colonial

rebellions to bow to the same fate that had overtaken their Ottoman and

Hapsburg predecessors earlier in the century.

Suddenly, the peoples of the world found themselves with a place to stand

in dignity, a forum in which to express the concerns that most deeply

affected them, and the faint beginnings of a role in deciding their own

future and that of humanity in general. A corner had been turned that left

behind six or more millennia of history. Beyond all the continuing

educational disadvantages, the economic inequities, and the obstructions

created by political and diplomatic manoeuvring--beyond all these practical

but historically transient limitations--a new authority was at work in

human affairs to which all might reasonably hope somehow to appeal.

Representatives of once subject peoples, whose exotically clad warriors

had brought up the rear of the Diamond Jubilee procession in London only

five decades earlier, now began to appear as delegates to the Security

Council and occupants of senior posts in the United Nations and

non-governmental organizations of every kind. The magnitude of the change

is perhaps best symbolized by the fact that the Secretary-General of the

United Nations is today a Ghanaian, his two immediate predecessors having

been, respectively, from Egypt and Peru.(94)

Nor was this change merely one of formal and administrative character. As

time passed, growing numbers of outstanding figures in every walk of life

would escape the familiar limits of racial, cultural or religious

identity. In every continent of the globe, names like Anne Frank, Martin

Luther King Jr., Paolo Freire, Ravi Shankar, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Kiri

Te Kanawa, Andrei Sakharov, Mother Teresa and Zhang Yimou became sources

of inspiration and encouragement to great numbers of their fellow

citizens.(95) In every department of life, heroism, professional

excellence or moral distinction would increasingly be able to speak for

themselves and be embraced by the generality of humankind. The world-wide

outpouring of affection and rejoicing that was to greet the release from

prison of Nelson Mandela and his subsequent election as president of his

country would reflect a sense among peoples of every race and nation that

these historic events represented victories of the human family itself.

It became apparent, too, that pre-war conceptions regarding the use and

distribution of wealth would have to be overhauled. Apart from principles

of social justice, which doubtless motivated a significant number of those

committed to this task, the economic dislocations produced by the events

of the previous three decades had made it clear that existing arrangements

were outdated and ineffective. Experiments to address such problems at the

national level had been undertaken in several countries in response to the

Depression during the 1930s. Now an interlocking system of institutions

oriented to recognition that national economies constitute elements of a

global whole was successively devised and put in place. The International

Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades, the World

Bank, and various subsidiary agencies began belatedly to grapple with the

implications of an integrating world, and with issues related to the

distribution of wealth inherent in this development. Thinkers in

developing countries were not slow to point out that such initiatives

served primarily the needs of the Western world. Nevertheless, their

emergence marked a fundamental change of direction that would increasingly

open participation to a wide range of states and institutions.

A humanitarian initiative of a kind never previously conceived opened

still another dimension of the global integration occurring. Beginning

with the "Marshall Plan" devised by the government of the United States to

rehabilitate war-torn European nations, those nations that were able to do

so turned to serious consideration of programmes that might foster the

social and economic development of rising nations. Widespread publicity

awakened a sense of solidarity with the rest of the world on the part of

peoples in lands that enjoyed reasonable levels of education, health care

and the application of technology. In time, this ambitious initiative came

under attack for the mixed motives attributed to it. Nor can anyone deny

that the long-term results of development projects have been

heartbreakingly disappointing in their failure to close the yawning gap

between the rich and the poor. Neither circumstance can obscure, however,

a sense of common humanity in its objectives that spoke perhaps most

eloquently in the response it evoked from an army of idealistic youth of

many lands.

Paradoxically, in the Far East particularly, even war had a certain

liberating effect on consciousness. As early as 1904, the Russo-Japanese

conflict had been seen in parts of the Orient as encouraging evidence that

non-Western peoples could resist the apparently invincible might of the

West. The effect had been heightened by the events of the first world war,

and greatly advanced by the success of Japanese arms in withstanding for

so long the massive Western effort devoted to defeating them during the

period 1941-1945. The second half of the century saw this new

technological expertise give birth to modern economies in half a dozen

nations of the region, whose innovative products and industrial energy,

particularly in the areas of transportation and information technology,

were able to hold their own with the best that the rest of the world had

to offer.

* * * * *

By 1946, the end of hostilities had opened the way for the launching by

Shoghi Effendi of a second Seven Year Plan, which benefited from the new

receptivity to the message of the Faith produced by the shift of

consciousness that was by then already apparent. Once again, the North

American Baha'i community was summoned to assume a demanding

responsibility, one that essentially built upon and developed the

achievements of the earlier Plan. The great difference, however, was that

several other Baha'i communities were now in a position to participate.

Already in 1938, the Baha'is of India, Pakistan and Burma had set out on a

plan of their own. As international hostilities gradually came to an end,

the National Spiritual Assemblies of Persia, of the British Isles, of

Australia and New Zealand, of Germany and Austria, of Egypt and the Sudan,

and of Iraq--freed from the limitations imposed on them by the war--embarked

on projects of various durations to expand the base of the Administrative

Order, settle pioneers in goals both at home and abroad, and multiply the

available Baha'i literature.

By 1953 all of these undertakings had been fully completed. Three new

National Spiritual Assemblies had been established and had also undertaken

supplementary teaching plans, an array of new Local Spiritual Assemblies

had been formed in Europe, initiatives by five different national

communities acting under the coordination of the National Spiritual

Assembly of the British Isles had led to the settling of pioneers in East

and West Africa, and the great project set in motion by the Master's

laying of the corner stone of the Mother Temple of the West was at last

finished.(96)

Before the believers could celebrate these achievements, a new challenge

of staggering proportions was unveiled by Shoghi Effendi. Impelled by

historic forces that only he was in a position to appreciate, the Guardian

announced the launching at the forthcoming Rid.van of a decade-long,

world-embracing Plan, which he designated a "Spiritual Crusade". Engaging

the energies of all the twelve National Spiritual Assemblies then in

existence--the twelfth being that of the Italo-Swiss community--it called

for the establishment of the Faith in one hundred and thirty-one

additional countries and territories, together with the formation of

forty-four new National Spiritual Assemblies, the incorporation of

thirty-three of these, a vast increase in Baha'i literature, the erection

of Houses of Worship in Iran and Germany (the former being replaced by

Temples in both Africa and Australia when the Tehran project was blocked),

and the expansion of the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies around the

world to a total of five thousand, of which three hundred and fifty must

be incorporated. Nothing in their collective experience had prepared the

Baha'is of the world for so colossal an undertaking. The magnitude of the

challenge was set out by Shoghi Effendi in a cablegram of 8 October 1952:

Feel hour propitious to proclaim to the entire Baha'i world the projected

launching ... the fate-laden, soul-stirring, decade-long, world-embracing

Spiritual Crusade involving ... the concerted participation of all

National Spiritual Assemblies of the Baha'i world aiming at the immediate

extension of Baha'u'llah's spiritual dominion ... in all remaining

Sovereign States, Principal Dependencies comprising Principalities,

Sultanates, Emirates, Shaykhdoms, Protectorates, Trust Territories, and

Crown Colonies scattered over the surface of the entire planet. The entire

body of the avowed supporters of Baha'u'llah's all-conquering Faith are

now summoned to achieve in a single decade feats eclipsing in totality the

achievements which in the course of the eleven preceding decades

illuminated the annals of Baha'i pioneering.(97)

Victory in so ambitious an enterprise would mean that the embrace of the

Faith would span the globe, that the institutional foundations of its

Administrative Order would expand at least five-fold, and that its

community life would be enriched through the participation of believers

from a vast number of as yet untapped cultures, nations and tribes.

In effect, the Plan called for the Cause to make a giant leap forward over

what might otherwise have been several stages in its evolution. What

Shoghi Effendi saw clearly--and what only the powers of foresight inherent

in the Guardianship made it possible to see--was that an historical

conjunction of circumstances presented the Baha'i community with an

opportunity that would not come again and on which the success of future

stages in the prosecution of the Divine Plan would entirely depend. What

he did not hesitate to call the "summons of the Lord of Hosts" was

embodied in a message that seized the imagination of Baha'is in every part

of the world:

No matter how long the period that separates them from ultimate victory;

however arduous the task; however formidable the exertions demanded of

them; however dark the days which mankind, perplexed and sorely-tried,

must, in its hour of travail, traverse; however severe the tests with

which they who are to redeem its fortunes will be confronted.... I adjure

them, by the precious blood that flowed in such great profusion, by the

lives of the unnumbered saints and heroes who were immolated, by the

supreme, the glorious sacrifice of the Prophet-Herald of our Faith, by the

tribulations which its Founder, Himself, willingly underwent, so that His

Cause might live, His Order might redeem a shattered world and its glory

might suffuse the entire planet--I adjure them, as this solemn hour draws

nigh, to resolve never to flinch, never to hesitate, never to relax, until

each and every objective in the Plans to be proclaimed, at a later date,

has been fully consummated.(98)

The response was immediate. Within a few months messages from the World

Centre began sharing the news of a succession of victories in country

after country. Those pioneers who succeeded in establishing the Faith's

first foothold in a country or territory were designated "Knights of

Baha'u'llah", and their names inscribed on a Roll of Honour destined, in

time, to be deposited, as called for by the Guardian, under the threshold

of the entrance to the Shrine of Baha'u'llah. Nothing testified quite so

dramatically to the foresight embodied in Shoghi Effendi's successive

Plans than the fact that, within each of the new nation-states born after

the second world war, Baha'i communities and Spiritual Assemblies were

already a part of the fabric of national life.

A brilliant succession of achievements followed these initial ones. By

October 1957, by which time the Faith had been established in over two

hundred and fifty countries and territories, Shoghi Effendi was able to

announce the purchase of property for ten new temple sites, and the

commencement of work on the Houses of Worship in Kampala, Sydney and

Frankfurt; the acquisition of properties for forty-six of the required

national Haziratu'l-Quds; a vast increase in the production of Baha'i

literature; additional Assembly incorporations that had raised the total

number to one hundred and ninety-five; growing recognition of Baha'i

marriage and Baha'i Holy Days; and the advancing work on the International

Baha'i Archives, the first building to be constructed on the broad arc

that the Guardian had traced on the slope of Mount Carmel. No one who

reviews the events of those days can fail to be deeply moved by the

parental care with which Shoghi Effendi ensured the achievement of these

magnificent results, as reflected in his painstaking listing by name, in

the last general message he wrote on the Crusade, in April 1957, of each

one of sixty-three regional teaching conferences and institutes held that

year around the Baha'i world.

Such a review would be incomplete without an understanding of parallel

developments of the Administrative Order at the international level that

the Guardian undertook during these years. These steps proved crucial not

merely to winning the Crusade but to consolidating and protecting the

future of the Cause. Alongside the decision-making authority devolved on

the elective institutions of the Faith, a parallel function of the

Administrative Order is to exert a spiritual, moral and intellectual

influence on both these institutions and the lives of the individual

members of the community. Conceived by Baha'u'llah Himself, this

responsibility "to diffuse the Divine Fragrances, to edify the souls of

men, to promote learning, to improve the character of all men..." is

vested by the Master's Will and Testament particularly in the Hands of the

Cause of God.(99)

During the ministries of both Baha'u'llah and 'Abdu'l-Baha those believers

given this high station had played crucial roles in advancing the teaching

work in the Orient. As the conception of the Ten Year Crusade took shape

in his mind, Shoghi Effendi moved to mobilize the spiritual support this

institution could bring to achieving the tasks of the Plan. In a cablegram

of 24 December 1951, he announced the appointment of the first contingent

of twelve Hands of the Cause of God, allocated equally to the work in the

Holy Land, in Asia, the Americas and Europe. These distinguished servants

of the Cause were called upon to focus directly on the challenge of

mobilizing the energies of the friends and providing the elected bodies

with encouragement and counsel. Shortly thereafter the number of Hands of

the Cause was raised from twelve to nineteen.

The resources available for the discharge of this responsibility were

greatly increased by the Guardian's decision in October 1952, calling on

the Hands of the Cause to create five auxiliary boards, one for each

continent: those in the Americas, Europe and Africa consisting of nine

members each, while those in Asia and Australasia having seven and two

respectively. Subsequently, separate auxiliary boards were created to

assist with the protection of the Faith, the other of the two chief

functions of the Hands of the Cause.

A message of 3 June 1957 celebrated the action of the Israeli government

in executing the final decision of the court of appeals of that country,

by which the surviving band of Covenant-breakers were at last evicted from

the Haram-i-Aqdas surrounding the focal Centre of the Baha'i world at

Bahji.(100) Only a day later, however, a second cablegram warned ominously

of the urgent need of the Faith's senior institutions to act in concert to

protect it from new dangers that the Guardian perceived to be gathering on

the horizon. This was followed in October by a message announcing that the

number of Hands of the Cause of God had been raised from nineteen to

twenty-seven, designating these senior officers "Chief Stewards of

Baha'u'llah's embryonic World Commonwealth", and charging them with

responsibility to consult with National Spiritual Assemblies on urgently

needed measures to protect the Faith.

Less than a month thereafter, the Baha'i world was devastated by the news

of Shoghi Effendi's death on 4 November 1957 from complications following

an attack of Asiatic influenza contracted during the course of a visit to

London. The Centre of the Cause who, for thirty-six years, had day by day

guided its evolution, whose vision encompassed both the flow of events and

the actions the Baha'i community must take, and whose messages of

encouragement had been the spiritual lifeline of countless Baha'is around

the planet, was suddenly gone, leaving the great Crusade half finished and

the future of the Administrative Order in crisis.

* * * * *

The grief and overwhelming sense of desolation produced by the loss of the

Guardian lends all the greater significance to the triumph of the Plan he

had conceived and inspired. On 21 April 1963, the ballots of delegates

from fifty-six National Spiritual Assemblies, including the forty-four new

bodies called for and successfully formed during the Ten Year Crusade,

brought into existence the Universal House of Justice, the governing body

of the Cause conceived by Baha'u'llah and assured by Him unequivocally of

Divine guidance in the exercise of its functions:

It is incumbent upon the Trustees of the House of Justice to take counsel

together regarding those things which have not outwardly been revealed in

the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. God will verily

inspire them with whatsoever He willeth, and He, verily, is the Provider,

the Omniscient.(101)

It seemed especially fitting that the election--carried out by the

assembled delegates and those voting by mail--should take place in the home

of the Master, whose Will and Testament had described nearly sixty years

earlier the intent and scope of the authority bestowed by Baha'u'llah's

words:

Unto the Most Holy Book every one must turn and all that is not expressly

recorded therein must be referred to the Universal House of Justice. That

which this body, whether unanimously or by a majority doth carry, that is

verily the Truth and the Purpose of God Himself. Whoso doth deviate

therefrom is verily of them that love discord, hath shown forth malice and

turned away from the Lord of the Covenant.(102)

An important preliminary step for the election had been taken by Shoghi

Effendi in 1951, in his appointment of the membership of the International

Council to assist him with his work. In 1961, as he had explained would be

the case, the second step in the process had been taken when this

institution evolved into a nine-member Council, elected by the members of

the National Spiritual Assemblies. Consequently, when the Ten Year Crusade

came to its victorious end in 1963, the Baha'i world had gained important

experience in the challenging act it was then called on to perform.

Historians will unhesitatingly accord credit for mobilizing the effort

that had made this moment possible to the Hands of the Cause, who provided

the coordination of which the loss of the Guardian's leadership had

deprived the Baha'i world. Tirelessly coursing the earth in promotion of

Shoghi Effendi's Plan, coming together in annual conclaves to provide

encouragement and information, inspiring the endeavours of their newly

created deputies, and fending off the efforts of a new band of

Covenant-breakers to undermine the unity of the Faith, this small company

of grief-stricken men and women succeeded in ensuring that the Crusade's

ambitious objectives were attained in the time required and that the

necessary foundation was in place for the erection of the Administrative

Order's crowning unit. In asking that their own members be left free from

election to the Universal House of Justice, so as to perform the services

assigned them by the Guardian, the Hands also endowed the Baha'i world, as

a second great legacy, with a spiritual distinction that is without

precedent in human history. Never before had persons into whose hands the

supreme power in a great religion had fallen and who enjoyed a level of

regard unmatched by any others in their community, requested not to be

considered for participation in the exercise of supreme authority, placing

themselves entirely at the service of the Body chosen by the community of

their fellow believers for this role.(103)