The first to respond to the call of the New Day in the western world; for
many years, in concert with the small band of Canadian believers residing
in its immediate neighborhood, the sole champion of the newly proclaimed
Covenant of Baha'u'llah; foremost in its decisive contribution to the
creation of the pattern, the erection of the fabric, the enlargement of
the limits, and the consolidation of the institutions of the embryonic
World Order, the child of that same Covenant and the harbinger of a still
unborn world civilization; singled out by the pen of the Center of that
same Covenant for a unique and imperishable bounty as the principal
custodian and chief executor of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan; doubly honored
in the course of His extensive visit to the shores of its homeland through
the distinction conferred by Him on the community's two leading centers,
the one as the site where He laid the cornerstone of the holiest House of
Worship in the Baha'i world, and the other the scene of the proclamation
of His Father's Covenant; the triumphant prosecutor of two successive
historic Plans, boldly initiated by its elected national representatives
for the propagation of the Faith it has espoused in the land of its birth,
in the Dominion of Canada, in Central and South America and in the
continent of Europe and for the erection of its own House of Worship, the
Mother Temple of the West; outstanding in its role as the defender of the
Faith, as the supporter of its down-trodden, long-persecuted sister
communities in both the Asiatic and African continents, and as the
formulator of the national Baha'i constitution, embodying the by-laws
regulating the internal affairs of the members of the Baha'i communities;
incomparable throughout the Baha'i world as the dynamic agent responsible
for the opening of the vast majority of the over two hundred sovereign
states and chief dependencies of the globe to the Faith of Baha'u'llah;
surpassing even its over a hundred-year old sister community in the cradle
of that Faith in the number and variety of isolated centers, groups and
local assemblies it has succeeded in establishing over the face of the
Union stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboards and from
Alaska to Mexico; noteworthy in the rapid accumulation and wise
expenditure of material resources, often involving a self-abnegation
reminiscent of the self-sacrifice of the dawn-breakers of the Apostolic
Age of the Faith, for the sole purpose of systematically propagating the
Faith it has pledged itself to serve, of enhancing its prestige, of
multiplying and perfecting its administrative agencies, of enriching its
literature, of erecting its edifices, of launching its manifold
enterprises, of succoring the needy among the members of its sister
communities, of warding off the dangers confronting it from time to time
through the malice of its enemies--the American Baha'i Community, boasting
of such a record of exalted service, can well afford to contemplate the
immediate future, with its severe challenge, its complex problems, its
hazards, tests and trials, with equanimity and confidence.
For there can be no doubt that the entire community, limited as is its
numerical strength and circumscribed as are its meager resources, in
comparison with the vastness of the field stretching before it, the
prodigious efforts demanded of it, and the complexity of the problems it
must resolve, stands at a most critical juncture in its history.