Baha'i Faith Archives

By Moojan Momen

Dr. Moojan Momen is an independent scholar who was born in Iran, but was raised and educated in England, attending the University of Cambridge. He has a special interest in the study of the Baha'i Faith and Shi`i Islam, both from the viewpoint of their history and their doctrines. His interests also extend to the role of religion in society. His principal publications in these fields include: Introduction to Shi`i Islam (Yale University Press, 1985); The Babi and Baha'i Faiths 1844‑1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (George Ronald, Oxford, 1982); The Phenomenon of Religion (OneWorld, Oxford, 1999, republished as Understanding Religion, 2008) and The Baha'i Community of Iran (2 volumes, George Ronald, Oxford, 2015, 2021). He has contributed articles to encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia Iranica and the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World as well as papers to academic journals such as International Journal of Middle East Studies, Past and Present, Iran, Iranian Studies, Journal of Genocide Research and Religion. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

In the previous article, “Bahá’í Contributions to the Development of Iran,” the interactions between the Bahá’í community and the modernist reformers in Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were examined over issues such as government, educational reform, and the social role of women. These were issues that had an immediate and evident impact on society. There are a number of Bahá’í teachings, however, that operate at a deeper level and are therefore much more radical, since they were implemented gradually, the changes and their implications were not always discerned by the Iranian population or even, in some cases, by the Bahá’ís themselves. Thus, in the course of the last part of the nineteenth and the whole of the twentieth century, the Bahá’í community in Iran underwent a profound change in its culture and functioning that has resulted in a community that operates in a radically different way from the rest of Iranian society. It presents Iranians with a different model of society.

In the early 1880s, Bahá’u’lláh surveyed the state of the world and wrote that He found it “lamentably defective.” He wrote that He looked for moderation and justice among the leaders of society and discerned instead injustice, strife, chaos, and confusion and that the situation was now irredeemable.¹ In other words, there were no suggestions that He could make to fix matters. The situation of the world would inevitably get worse until, “Such shall be its plight, that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly.”² In a letter written a decade earlier to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh likened the statesmen and political theorists of His time to ignorant physicians who have been summoned to heal the body politic of its illness but only make matters worse.³ Whereas He, “the true Physician,” was “debarred from administering the remedy.”⁴

Given that the world’s system of governance, its economic order, its social structures, and its values were irredeemably defective, and the whole of the world order was in danger of collapse, the only remedy was to roll up the old “World Order” and “spread out a new Order in its stead.”⁵ Thus, Bahá’u’lláh was calling for a complete and radical change. There have been many revolutions in human history that have sought to bring about change at the level of governance, economics, and society: the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the various communist revolutions, and the Constitutional Revolution and Islamic Revolution of Iran. But what Bahá’u’lláh proposed was a far more radical change than what any of these revolutions proposed. He called for a change at the very deepest levels of the vision, assumptions, and values of society and a transformation of the social order.

There is, of course, much that could be said about such far-reaching changes, but this article will be confined to the consideration of one thread. One of Bahá’u’lláh’s most radical proposals was the dismantling of the power relationships that keep a small group of the elite at the top of society. This elite then organizes the thinking and working of society—its law, governance, education, and the media—in such a way as to maintain the hegemony of wealth and power. In about 1868, Bahá’u’lláh declared that that power had been seized from both secular and religious leaders (umará va ‘ulamá): “From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized: kings and ecclesiastics.”⁶ This radical statement was not, however, a precursor to what happened in the other revolutions mentioned above, taking power from one group in order to hand it to another. What Bahá’u’lláh was aiming for was a radical overhaul of the structure of society so as to no longer have a pyramid of power. As became clear over time, the Bahá’í administrative system aims to remove power from the grasp of individuals completely. Authority is to be vested in elected institutions acting as a body. As Shoghi Effendi wrote:

But praise be to God that the Pen of Glory has … dismissed the assertions of individuals as an authoritative criterion, even though they were recognized as the most accomplished and learned among men, and ordained that all matters be referred to authorized centers and specified assemblies.⁷

This was the vision that Bahá’u’lláh presented to the Bahá’í community and to the world. It required a major reorientation of values, assumptions, and practices. Such changes could not be achieved simply through sending instructions; they could not be forced on people; they required a process of counseling and education. The Bahá’í leaders carried this out both through their writings with the inculcation of new values and attitudes and in the specific instructions they sent about the structure and functioning of the community. The process necessarily proceeded slowly and in stages. Because of the continuing hostility and persecution from the general population in Iran, the process also proceeded unobtrusively behind closed doors. It is not surprising, therefore, that the radical nature of what was going on was, for the most part, missed.

One major change that was initiated in the early years of the twentieth century was the transfer of authority from individuals to leadership councils that eventually became elected institutions, which at the local level were called Local Spiritual Assemblies.⁸ Of course, the mere fact of having elected councils is not sufficient to achieve the goal of removing power from individuals and eliminating hierarchy. It requires a radical change in the way that elected institutions operate. There are many elements to this, but it includes a prohibition on the formation of parties and factions, on nominations of candidates for election or office, and on all manner of election campaigning. The guidance coming from the Bahá’í leaders regarding the consultation process that leads to decisions within the Assemblies includes such elements as maintaining a calm, prayerful, and reflective atmosphere, being detached from one’s own opinions and open to considering all suggestions made, and the willingness to accept and work for the final decision even if one voted against it. The absence of factions and parties (and the divisiveness that goes with them) and the elimination of the chairman’s ability to cast the deciding vote or to set the agenda and other similar measures are all designed to reduce the aggrandizement of individuals and limit the ability of both individuals and vested interests to dominate and determine the decisions made in the consultation process. No individual has power or authority simply by virtue of being elected to these institutions. Only the institution acting as a body has authority.

Convention to elect the National Spiritual Assembly of Iran, May 1951

Thus, a novel form of representative democracy was introduced into the Bahá’í community. Since the beginning of this century, an element of participatory democracy has also been added, with most day-to-day decisions being made at the grassroots level through consultation and planning among those who engaged in social action, thus giving them agency. Part of the process is an educational element that encourages participants to think for themselves and gives them the confidence to verbalize their thoughts within a group setting, thus training them to consult effectively in a non-combative manner. It also gives them an ethos of collaborative service and the capacity to undertake simple but fundamental acts of service, such as running children’s classes and junior youth empowerment activities. Meetings are held at a local level, where participants identify the needs of their society and consult about what they can do to address those needs, given the capacities of the group; plans are made which are then carried out in a spirit of collaboration. A few months later, the group meets again to review the results of this effort and what has been learned from it. Moreover, these participants are not just the members of the Bahá’í community. All members of society are welcome to participate in these society-building activities and in the associated consultative and decision-making process. Thus, the Bahá’ís aim to create an ever-widening group of like-minded members of society united in working for the betterment of their community. This pattern of activity is not fixed but is envisioned as continuing to evolve, and there may be major changes to it in the future, depending on the experience gained.

This participation of members of the wider society in the Bahá’í grassroots activities has the potential to influence the general Iranian society. And so, although these changes are occurring within the structures of the Bahá’í community, they can act as a model for Iranians to see that a community can function in ways that are radically different—that replace the competition, conflict, and coercion inherent within the present hierarchical social order with an order that functions through consultation, collaboration, and cooperation and where institutions become instruments for the facilitation of grassroots action rather than for individuals to wield power.

It should be acknowledged, however, that the ongoing hostility towards and persecutions of the Bahá’í community of Iran has limited and continues to limit the range of social actions that it could undertake and has resulted in many who are not Bahá’ís but who appreciate the discourse and lines of action of the Bahá’í community being inhibited from participating in this process. However, the Bahá’ís have continued to be resilient to the pressures that are exerted against them and constructive in their efforts to bring like-minded individuals in Iranian society together to find ways of improving the social environment. Thus, for example, after the Bam earthquake in 2003, Bahá’í educators volunteered to teach young children in that area whose education had been disrupted, and for this they were arrested and imprisoned.⁹ Similarly, some 54 young Bahá’ís were working alongside like-minded fellow Iranians in a literacy project among the poor in Shiraz when they were arrested in 2006, and several of them imprisoned.¹⁰ More recently there have been a number of arrests in places such as Isfahan, Tehran, and Semnan of Bahá’ís after they had been educating Afghan children who are denied education by the state.¹¹

The most important consequence of this change of ethos was to take social agency down to the level of the individual. Thus, this process is bringing together groups of individuals, who are often on the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy, and encouraging them not to wait for government or for charities to help them, but rather to take agency themselves, assess the realities of their communities, identify its needs, and consult about plans to improve their society that are within the capacities of the group, while at the same time expanding these capacities through an educational process.

Apart from the elimination of the power hierarchy, there was a second element in the development of the Bahá’í community of Iran that stood in contrast to the agenda of the modernist reformers. After the Constitution was signed in 1906, the new king, Muḥammad `Alí Sháh, tried to overturn it and the nation became divided. The Constitutionalist reformers, many of whom were familiar with the Bahá’í teachings and had close relations with the community, naturally expected the Bahá’ís to support the Constitutionalist side, given the commonality between the Bahá’í social teachings and the reforms advocated by the Constitutionalists. Although He had previously advised the Bahá’ís against seditious activity in direct opposition to the government, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá appears to have allowed the Bahá’ís to act in conjunction with the reformers in trying to persuade the government of Iran to carry out social reforms. There is evidence of this from various parts of Iran, such as Sari, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran. Then in the period immediately after the signing of the Constitution in 1906, two factors changed. First, the previous national unity in calling for reforms shattered with the emergence of political parties, each with its own agenda and vision for the future of Iran, some supported the shah and others the Constitution. Second, as a consequence of the first, the peaceful nature of the reform movement that had succeeded in obtaining the Constitution disintegrated with the emergence of conflict and violence between the two sides, each trying to subvert and destroy the other. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote of the need for unity and warned of the danger of foreign interference in Iran. He now strictly forbade the Bahá’ís from any engagement with the polarized and often violent politics of the era:

We have no connection with any party: we are neither partisans of the Victorious Government nor do we share the opinions of the Glorious People. We stand aside from all strifes, wish well to all, and offer our prayers and supplications at the Throne of God that He will reconcile these two honourable elements with one another.¹²

‘Abdu’l-Bahá also gave as His reasons for taking this stance the fact that the Bahá’ís weakened the Constitutionalist cause by supporting it, since it gave the reactionary clerics an opportunity to claim that the Constitution was the work of the Bahá’ís and anti-Islamic, and that the Bahá’ís were in danger because each side was accusing them of supporting the other.¹³ There is evidence that news of this new stance by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reached Iran in February–March 1907.¹⁴

Parallel to this was the situation in the 1970s when Mohammad Reza Shah was attempting to force everyone in Iran to join a single political party he had created. Bahá’ís refused, even though for many it meant the loss of their jobs and social position. More recently, the Bahá’ís have not backed groups that seek to overthrow the Islamic government of Iran, although they have, alongside many other groups, appealed peacefully for justice and for the rights of oppressed groups.

The position of the Bahá’í leadership regarding political activity has varied over the years, depending on local factors, usually related to whether certain actions would lead to Bahá’í social objectives, achieve greater degrees of unity and not occasion conflict and violence. There was, for example, a brief period of national unity after the restoration of the Constitution in 1909 when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá appears to have contemplated encouraging certain Bahá’ís to seek election to the national parliament,¹⁵ but this soon ended with the re-emergence of political wrangling and conflict. During the ministry of Shoghi Effendi (from 1921 to 1957), the policy of avoiding political involvement was strengthened such that all such activity, including holding political positions in government, was prohibited and even penalized. However, even with this, certain lines of social action, such as seeking racial justice and integration in the United States, which within the context of that country is highly political, have been pursued by the United States Bahá’í community over many decades where these have not involved confrontation with the state or violence.¹⁶ More recently certain limited moves have been permitted by the Universal House of Justice, such as when the British Bahá’í community joined with another organization in the “Action for Children” campaign and campaigned successfully for national legislation to allow sexual offences against minors committed by British residents outside the United Kingdom to be prosecuted in Britain.¹⁷ Another example was when the worldwide Bahá’í community launched a campaign “Our Story is One,” in parallel to the “Woman, Freedom, Life” movement in Iran.¹⁸

For the Bahá’í community, the present world political order, based as it is on competition and conflict, is part of the problem, and so it cannot be part of the solution. To participate would inevitably pull the Bahá’ís ever deeper into a system that is inherently competitive, conflictual, hierarchical, and corrupt—the very opposite of what the Bahá’ís are aiming for. For this reason, the Bahá’í leadership has, on most occasions, steered the Bahá’í community away from political involvement.

And so, the Bahá’í model for society does not set itself up as a competitor within the present political system. It is working to set up an alternative space outside the conventional political sphere: where a different style of social and political activity can take place, where the present social dynamics of competition is decentered, where the dominant motifs of power and wealth as the central values of society are changed, where the socialization that perpetuates the present dominant culture is disrupted through an educational process that creates a new ethos, and where the culture of monologue (where ordinary people are lectured and told what to think and do) is transformed into a culture in which the capacity of all to engage in dialogue is fostered and becomes the foundation of community life.¹⁹ This alternative space is built on the basis described above of participatory democracy, elected institutions, consultative decision-making, and collaborative grassroots social action.

In addition, in Iran there was tension between the intense nationalism of most of the modernist reformers and Bahá’u’lláh’s aim of orienting His followers towards internationalism—here meaning peace and cooperation among nations as indicated by such statements as “The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens”;²⁰ and beyond that, towards globalism—here meaning an organic vision of humanity as one interconnected global whole, as implied by such statements as “Regard ye the world as a man’s body, which is afflicted with divers ailments, and the recovery of which dependeth upon the harmonizing of all of its component elements.”²¹ And so, while the reformers were advocating for “what is good for Iran”, the Bahá’ís considered that “what is good for humanity as a whole” is actually what is good for Iran in the long run.

This globalism and the position taken by the Bahá’í community for over a century of not participating in partisan and polarizing politics has led to some misunderstandings and distortions of the Bahá’í position. Since most journalists, commentators, and scholars are focused on the political sphere, they have missed what is happening within the Bahá’í community, because it is not operating in that sphere. In addition, the Bahá’í stance frustrated and angered some Iranian reformers and progressive thinkers because it seemed to them that the Bahá’ís were indifferent to the problems of Iran, and therefore they questioned the patriotism of the Bahá’ís.²² Shoghi Effendi refuted this contention by pointing out that the Bahá’í position was not a “repudiation” of “a sane and intelligent patriotism” but rather a realization that it must operate within a “wider loyalty” to the human race.²³

Apart from these tensions with the modernist reformers, Bahá’u’lláh’s vision also challenged aspects of traditional Iranian culture. The Shi’íh culture of nineteenth-century Iran envisioned humanity as divided into believers and unbelievers (the concept of kufr), and this division was accentuated by the belief that the unbelievers were unclean (the concept of nijásat). This meant that all contact with unbelievers was to be avoided, and the traditionalists extended this to adopting the ideas and innovations of the unbelieving Europeans. The Bahá’í leaders expressly abolished both these concepts among their followers.²⁴ Western observers, such as Professor Edward G. Browne and the European missionaries in Iran, noted this change among the Bahá’ís as compared to other Iranians.²⁵ But perhaps the most compelling evidence for this change of ethos in the Bahá’í community was the reports by some members of Iran’s Jewish and Zoroastrian communities of how they were attracted to the Bahá’í Faith by observing that Bahá’ís of Muslim background (some of them formerly Muslim clerics) treated them with kindness and as equals, deliberately rejecting the concept of impurity by eating and drinking from the same vessels as them. The abandoning of such long-held traditions was, however, shocking to the conservative elements in the population.²⁶

There was a third area in which the Bahá’í community and its leadership differed from what was going on in Iranian society and among the Iranian reformers. This arose because some of the reformers, seeing the strong hold that the senior religious leaders had on the people and impressed by the way that these clerics had been able to successfully mobilize the masses against a disadvantageous agreement that the Shah had signed with a European entrepreneur in 1890, sought over the next few years to co-opt the senior religious leaders into the reform movement. At exactly this time, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote a treatise, the Treatise on Politics, warning against involving the clerics in politics. He pointed out that every time religious leaders had entered the political arena, the result had been disastrous, leading to defeat, death, and destruction, and He gave several examples of this from the recent history of Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, the reformers failed to heed this advice, and the result was that many of the reforms envisaged by those who instigated the Constitutional Revolution in the 1900s were annulled at the insistence of the clerics and much of the vision of the reformers failed to materialize. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s advice was again ignored by those who pressed for change in Iran in the 1970s, and the Islamic religious leadership was again allowed into the political process.

Protestors who sought sanctuary at the British Embassy during the Constitutional Revolution, 1906

In the first part of this article, certain lines of social action such as the establishment of modern schools and the advancement of the social role of women were described. It should now be clear that, although what the Bahá’ís were advocating and doing appeared superficially to be similar to the program of the modernist reformers, the Bahá’í activity was cultivating a culture that was radically different from that of traditional Iranian society. The children in the Bahá’í schools, for example, were becoming patriotic Iranians but within a context of also envisioning themselves as world citizens.

It should also be appreciated that Bahá’u’lláh did not present a plan for human development that was to be implemented uniformly across the world. He and His successors as leaders of the Bahá’í community presented certain social principles (such as the equality of women and men) that humanity should aim for and certain means of social functioning (such as consultative decision-making) that would assist in achieving these aims. But the exact details of how all this would evolve has been left to the Bahá’ís to work out in a reciprocal relationship of dynamic interdependence between the individual, the institutions, and the community. And of course, it may be that these details will work out differently in each part of the world according to local culture.

THE WORLD OF RELIGION

One aspect of society in which Bahá’u’lláh made the greatest change was in the field of religion. The religious leadership in Iran in the late nineteenth century, as in many parts of the world, wielded great power and influence, and thereby accumulated great wealth. The people were expected to live their lives and pay certain religious taxes according to a Holy Law (the Sharí`ah) as interpreted by the religious leadership. Even the shah and the local governors had to be wary of offending religious leaders who could stir up the population against them.

The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh were a great challenge to the religious leaders. Bahá’u’lláh, and the Báb before Him, were respectful towards the Qur’án and the Prophet Muḥammad.²⁷ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the successor of Bahá’u’lláh, defended Islam and the Prophet Muḥammad in churches and synagogues during His travels in Europe and North America.²⁸ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s successor, Shoghi Effendi, called on the Bahá’ís of the West to learn about Islam and defend its fundamentals against attacks in the West.²⁹

However, Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb decried the learning that was taught in the Islamic religious colleges in much the same way that Jesus Christ decried the learning of the Pharisees.³⁰ And since the prestige of the Iranian religious leaders was based on their learning, this was effectively undermining their position. The Bahá’í leaders also condemned the hypocrisy, fanaticism, and corruption of some Muslim religious leaders.³¹ But their criticism was not exclusively reserved for the Muslim clerics. They pointed out that each of the founders of the main religions of the world had experienced opposition and persecution from the religious leaders of their time.³² And it was no different this time with the hostility of the Iranian clerics towards the new religion. In view of these criticisms, it is not surprising that Bahá’u’lláh introduced an innovation that would have a profound effect on the ethos of the Bahá’í community: the prohibition of religious professionals.³³

The change that the Bahá’í leaders sought to bring about was, however, much more radical and wide-ranging than just the abolition of religious professionals. Bahá’u’lláh sought to bring about a profound change in the way that religion is imagined and thus in the religious ethos of the Iranian nation. True religion is not, according to the Bahá’í teachings, about believing in the correct doctrine, carrying out correct rituals, or the correct following of a Holy Law. Just the act of calling on a holy figure will not bring salvation, nor will special chants or entering states of ecstasy or trance, nor, in particular relation to the Iranian religious scene, will following the directives of a senior Shi’íh cleric (mujtahid) or Sufi shaykh, or participating in the ritual commemorations of the sufferings of the Imáms. These are the trappings that religious professionals have overlaid onto the true core of religion in order to enhance their role and insert themselves into the relationship between the believer and God. True religion has, according to the Bahá’í leadership, two fundamental purposes: the improvement of the character of the individual through developing moral and spiritual qualities (such as love, justice, trustworthiness, etc.); and the betterment of society (leading to more peaceful, united, and coherent communities). And so, religion functions as it ought to function when such transformed individuals come together and consult in order to create ways of improving society, the overall purpose being “to effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions.”³⁴

In place of the passivity of listening to the sermons of clerics, obeying their rulings and putting off working for improvements in society in anticipation that all would be put right with the promised return of the Hidden Twelfth Imám, who according to Shi’íh Islamic belief would return at the end of time to fill the world with justice, Bahá’u’lláh declared that the time had come, the Promised Imám had appeared (in the person of the Báb), and that the time for passive religiosity was ended. What was needed now was for all people to take an active role in working towards the implementation of the laws and teachings (as laid down in His Writings) that would bring about the promised world filled with justice.³⁵

Thus, for Bahá’ís, religious activity is being of service to others, not just the Bahá’í community but the whole of society. And examples of Iranian Bahá’ís doing this have been given above. Furthermore, the society-building activities of the Bahá’í community are open to all. People do not have to become Bahá’ís in order to participate in these; all like-minded people are welcome to join in both the meetings at which such activities are planned and the carrying out of them.

CONCLUSION

In summary then, the Bahá’í community in Iran over the last 150 years or so has been building up gradually, almost imperceptibly, a radically new type of community life: one in which women can contribute more effectively, one in which the education of children is a central focus, one based on moral values, consultation, and collaboration. Its advocacy and efforts for modern education, the advancement of the social role of women and the broad global vision that it cultivates are only the superficial signs of a deeper revolutionary change in the structure and functioning of the community. Over this period, Bahá’ís have been building up a community that is not run by individuals who hold power but rather which functions through consultative decision-making. It could be called a counterculture in the sense that it runs counter to many of the norms and values that have been holding Iran back over the last century or more. It seeks to break down the hierarchical, patriarchal, and polarized nature of society and create a more cohesive and collaborative functioning of society. And in creating such a community, it is in effect acting as a model, demonstrating to Iranians that it is possible to have a different sort of society based on different values, social structures, and ways of functioning. And all are welcome to join in this society-building project. It is not that Bahá’ís are holding up a final blueprint and saying: “This is the new society.” They are offering a vision of what could be and certain principles and ways of getting there, and they are saying to others: “Let us together explore this path and jointly build a new society.”

The process of change has, however, been slow because changing the way people see the world, changing the values of society, changing culture is difficult. The Bahá’í community has proceeded in the last quarter century through an educational process that seeks to start with fundamentals and build in such a way as to carry everyone with it. It focuses on developing consultation skills, reading social reality, changing values, and building capacity. And the process is far from over. As it develops, it engages with ever greater numbers in lines of social action of ever greater complexity identified through the consultation process, all evolving towards what Bahá’u’lláh envisaged when He declared the present order to be “lamentably defective” and set out the framework for a “new World Order”:

The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.³⁶

By Moojan Momen

Iran is the birthplace of both the Bahá’í Faith and its predecessor, the Bábí movement. Although the Bahá’í Faith has now spread worldwide, establishing itself in almost every country, the role it has played in the development of its homeland is insufficiently recognized by both the people of Iran and by scholars.

At no time during the history of the Bahá’í community in Iran have there been articles in newspapers, journals, books, or academic publications in Iran that have presented the Bahá’í viewpoint, nor have Bahá’ís been able to publish refutations in Iran in response to numerous attacks and false information. The result is that the general population in Iran is ignorant of even the most basic facts about the Bahá’í Faith, and what it thinks it knows is actually the misinformation that has been fed to it. A number of well-known scholars in Iran have participated in these attacks on the Bahá’í community, even to the extent of fabricating evidence.¹ Houchang Chehabi, a well-known Iranian scholar, has described the resulting situation in Iran:

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that until very recently any discussion of the Baha’is and their religion that did not use abusive, disparaging, or at least sarcastic language was suspected of being an apologia, and that any writer or speaker who talked about Baha’is in respectful or even in a merely matter-of-fact way was suspected of being a Baha’i.²

With little information available to them, scholars outside Iran have often ignored the Bahá’í Faith in their analyses or reproduced the misinformation about the religion that abounds within Iran. Commonly, the Bábí movement is regarded as a failed rebellion, while the Bahá’í community is treated as though it played no significant role in the country’s development. There has been an improvement in this situation in recent decades, but there is still an insufficient appreciation of the extent of the influence of the Bahá’í community.

In this first of a series of two articles, the specific contributions that the Bahá’í community has made to the development of Iran will be described. The second article will attempt to portray just how revolutionary the concepts and changes in social structure within the Bahá’í community have been, the potential implications of these for the wider Iranian society, and the way that the ideas of the religion address many of the problems and issues that face Iran (and indeed other countries).³

In the mid-nineteenth century, following a series of damaging and humiliating military defeats at the hands of European powers, Iran was just becoming aware of the extent to which it had fallen back from being one of the most advanced countries in the world two hundred years earlier. The initial response of the government was to attempt to copy European military training and tactics by bringing European army instructors to Iran.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, the thoughts of progressive Iranians moved beyond just the military. Reports from Iranians who traveled abroad, reforms that were instituted in the Ottoman Empire, and the works written by Iranians living outside Iran began to focus the attention of some Iranians towards bringing social, educational, and governmental reforms to Iran. Thus, a cohort of reformers gradually emerged in Iran (and among Iranians living outside Iran), who wrote works suggesting what changes would benefit Iran and help to bring it up to the level of progress and prosperity that Europe had achieved.

The Iranian modernist reformers were making proposals across various areas of social life, and, in particular, they were looking at law, the governance of society, modern education, and, to a lesser extent, the position of women in society. The Bahá’í leaders were making proposals about the same areas of social life, and so, there was a common area of discourse between these two groups. What this article sets out to demonstrate is that the ideas in the writings of the Bahá’í leaders were put forward earlier and were more progressive than what was being advanced by the modernist reformers, that these reformers were in close contact with the Bahá’í leaders and the community, and therefore, that it is not unreasonable to suggest that the reformers may have been influenced by the Bahá’ís in what they wrote and did, although of course, they would have carefully concealed any such borrowing of ideas from what was regarded in Iran as a heretical and misguided sect.

THE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIETY

A good example of the way that the Bahá’í leaders were earlier and more progressive in their proposals about reform is in the area of the governance of society. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Iranian reformers, such as Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán Mushíru’d-Dawlih and Mírzá Malkam Khán, were advocating that the autocratic Shah should move away from being the sole decision-maker in the governance of Iran and that he should appoint a cabinet and give them responsibility.⁴ At this same time, Bahá’u’lláh went much further, commending democracy and constitutional monarchy in His writings, and His son who was later to succeed Him, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, specifically wrote in an 1875 treatise about the need for Iran to adopt a representative democracy.⁵ This is all the more remarkable given that the majority of European nations were ruled by autocratic regimes at the time, so such ideas were progressive even for Europe, let alone the Middle East.

And the Bahá’í community in Iran gradually, as circumstances allowed, put these teachings into effect. Thus, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá directed the community to have leadership councils, which became called Spiritual Assemblies, and encouraged the Bahá’ís to turn to these councils and abide by the consultative decision-making process that was instituted in them. Eventually these Spiritual Assemblies became elected bodies that guided the community in the area under their jurisdiction. In this way, the ideas about representative democracy from the Bahá’í scriptures became realized in the Bahá’í community.

In addition, Bahá’u’lláh called for world peace at a time when almost no one was talking about this, neither in Iran nor in the West. And He made practical suggestions as to how this may be achieved. In about 1888, He called for a world congress at which all territorial and similar disputes would be settled (by arbitration if necessary) and a treaty signed whereby all the nations would agree to arise collectively against any nation that attacked another nation. This collective guarantee of security would allow all nations to reduce their expenditure on arms and spend the savings on measures that would benefit their citizens. Furthermore, the Bahá’í teachings foresee that a world government and a world security force would be needed to regulate this so that weaker nations would not be disadvantaged.⁶ Thus, the Bahá’í leaders were envisioning world peace, multilateral disarmament, collective security, a global peace treaty, and global institutions many decades before it was within the conceptual world of anyone in Iran or most of the rest of the world.

There was also an important difference between the Iranian modernist reformers and the Bahá’í leaders in the means by which these aims were to be achieved. The Iranian reformers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries looked to political reform as the best way to introduce modernization into Iran and were therefore focused on achieving political power. The Bahá’í leaders, however, specifically advocated against political involvement and confrontation (the reasons for this will be discussed in the next article), and so theirs was a nonviolent, grassroots movement, aiming to transform the social order and the value system upon which it was based, initially within the Bahá’í community but eventually across society as a whole. Since it did not operate at the political level and, apart from a turbulent Bábí period (1848–52), proceeded quietly and slowly, its revolutionary nature remained largely hidden from the populace, from observers and scholars, and perhaps even from many Bahá’ís.

Among the Iranian modernizers, there were some who advocated a wholesale adoption of Western ideas and practices. The Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá rejected this attitude that set the West up as the reference point and standard for progress and modernization. They called for the adoption of those aspects of Western development that would be beneficial to Iran: democracy, modern education, some of the West’s technology, as well as advances in communication such as newspapers and a postal service, as long as the benefits of these were available to all. However, they rejected certain aspects of Western culture. Bahá’u’lláh was critical of the colonialism, militarism, and hypocrisy shown by some of the European powers. Thus, when the British professor Edward G. Browne visited Bahá’u’lláh in 1890, he heard Him criticize the expenditure on the arms race among the European powers. In some of His writings, Bahá’u’lláh expressed His disapproval of Britain’s colonialist campaign in Egypt leading to the bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Alexandria in 1882. He also criticized the hypocrisy of European governments that proclaimed liberal values but allowed pogroms against the Jews.⁷ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá praised the scientific and technological advances He witnessed in Europe, while at the same time decrying the materialism of the West⁸ and warning against the use of science and technology to build ever more destructive weapons: “the malignant fruits of material civilization” as He called them.⁹ He also criticized the Eurocentric arrogance that led to the lives of other people being regarded as without value and unworthy of ethical concern.¹⁰ In His 1875 treatise, He presented His reasons for regarding the West as “morally uncivilized.”¹¹

The next Bahá’í leader, Shoghi Effendi, who succeeded ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1921, took much the same attitude as his predecessors. Shoghi Effendi has been criticized by some Western scholars for being “orientalist.”¹² In fact, Shoghi Effendi’s criticism of the East was mainly directed towards its religious and secular leaders whom he regarded as the main obstacles to progress there. But this is no different from his view of the leadership of most of the rest of the world. While praising certain aspects of the West and appreciative of such advances as the Western educational system, he criticized the hypocrisy, war-mongering, corruption, racism, and colonialism of the leadership of the West that led eventually to the Second World War.¹³ In the opening years of that war, Shoghi Effendi wrote of the three “false gods” of “Nationalism, Racialism and Communism” that were corroding and destroying governments and peoples.¹⁴ In his last general letter to the Bahá’ís of the United States of America in 1957, he wrote of the “all-pervasive materialism” and “the cancerous growth of militant racialism, political corruption, unbridled capitalism, wide-spread lawlessness, and gross immorality” affecting that country.¹⁵

MODERN EDUCATION

One of the major factors that impeded the development and progress of Iran was the fact that the only education available to almost the whole population was in small schools run by a single religious leader, usually in his own home with a religiously-oriented curriculum that did not prepare children for any useful occupation and was of little relevance to the needs of the country—and this only for the small number of families who were able to pay the fees.¹⁶ The military defeats at the beginning of the nineteenth century had led to the inauguration in 1851 of a single educational establishment in Tehran, the Dar al-Funun, but this was primarily focused on the ancillary needs of the army. The modernist reformers did write about the need for modern education and opened some schools,¹⁷ but they generally considered that the most important objective was achieving political power and then such goals as modern education could be achieved, but these were of secondary importance; they could be implemented once political power was gained. There were some schools opened by European missionaries teaching modern subjects, but these catered almost exclusively to children from Christian families. Many of the Muslim clerics were, moreover, opposed to modern schools, considering them an importation of ideas from the infidel West.¹⁸

Bahá’u’lláh gave great importance to education, stating: “Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.”¹⁹ In His 1875 treatise, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá called for universal education and the establishment of modern schools throughout Iran, calling this the “primary” and “most urgent requirement.”²⁰ The Bahá’ís responded, as soon as it was possible to do so, given the intense persecution and pressure to which they were subjected, by establishing modern schools. One difference between the schools that the Bahá’ís were establishing and the schools that the Iranian reformers were establishing was that these latter were only in the major cities of Iran, while Bahá’í schools could also be found in small towns and even villages where there was a sufficient number of Bahá’ís. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged a number of American Bahá’ís who were experienced educators to go to Iran in order to assist with the running and curriculum of Bahá’í schools.²¹

The following passage records what the district governor said to Shaháb Shahmírzádí, a Bahá’í educator, who was trying to set up a school in the village of Ivel in Mazandaran in 1922. It gives an indication of how difficult this task was and how revolutionary the idea of a village school was for the people of Iran:

How do you hope, here in the middle of the jungle, to convince these wild and ill-behaved people, who are a hundred centuries removed from education and civilisation and spend their days from dawn to dusk in the paddy-fields up to their waists in mud and water accompanied by cows, of the benefits of education and knowledge or that Moses or Jesus or Muhammad or Bahā’u’llāh has commanded this or forbidden that? They are not able to understand such matters . . . What an optimist you are! I have been to Īvil. There is no possibility of a school there. Governors have come to the Chahārdānga district and tried to set up a school here in Kiyāsar which is the centre of the district and has almost 500 families, most of them having wealth and land, and they have failed. Two years ago, A‘ẓam al-Vuzarā was the governor here. He really tried hard in this regard and spent fifty tūmāns of his own money for the furniture of the school. They constructed tables and benches. But he was not able to get the children to come to school for even a day. After he left, they used the furniture of the school for firewood . . . What do these people know of education and training?’²²

The Bahá’í schools were also different from the other schools in Iran in the extent to which corporal punishment was used. While the beating of children was a routine daily occurrence in Iran (and largely continues to be so to the present day), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá strongly advised against this, and the practice died out in the Bahá’í schools.²³

The Bahá’í schools were closed on government orders in 1934. The impact of the Bahá’í schools on Iran was probably quite considerable. Because Bahá’í schools were open to everyone, they must have had an impact in reducing the hostility towards modern education that had been instilled in the population by many of the Muslim clerics. People could begin to see the benefits of it for themselves. In many smaller localities, the Bahá’í school was the only modern school available; therefore, many children from Muslim or other backgrounds attended. Even in the larger towns and cities where other schools were available, many families who were not Bahá’í preferred to send their children to the Bahá’í schools because of their good reputation. In this way, many who became prominent ministers, politicians, scholars, and writers in the second half of the twentieth century had attended Bahá’í schools as children.²⁴

THE WORLD OF WOMEN

Women in Iran were confined and constrained by a heavy burden of religious and traditional laws and customs, leading to a lack of education and limited social options. While the reform movement and the Constitutional Revolution resulted in some discussion of women’s issues, this did not lead to much in the way of social change. It did not result, for example, in giving women the right to vote, and only a handful of girls’ schools were set up by private individuals in some large cities. The reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925–41) appeared to bring some improvement for women, but the prohibition of the veil was forced on all women and, as one Iranian historian has commented, initiatives that appeared to favor women were actually a means for Reza Shah’s efforts to subdue the religious leadership and transfer their patriarchal authority to himself.²⁵ By the mid-1930s, all women’s organizations were closed down and replaced by a single state-sponsored institution.²⁶

Women in the Bahá’í community in Iran took much of their inspiration from the Bábí heroine, Táhirih Qurrat al-ʿAyn. She disrupted all the norms that constrained the women of her society. She tore up the script that every woman in her society was given at birth, that of an obedient, submissive and silent daughter, wife, and mother, and wrote her own script. Although she came from a traditional clerical family, she challenged the religious orthodoxy of her family by adopting first the heterodox teachings of the Shaykhí school and later the revolutionary new teachings of the Báb. She upended gender norms by refusing to be submissive to her husband and going off to Karbala to pursue her religious quest, even facing the social opprobrium consequent to being divorced by her husband. She defied religious conventions by joyously celebrating the holy day of the Birth of the Báb during the time of year when Shi’íh Muslims traditionally were in mourning. She disrupted social norms by being appointed to the highest echelon among the followers of the Báb and teaching and leading a large cohort among His male disciples, by preceding the other leading Bábís in realizing the full import of the claims of the Báb, and most famously of all, by appearing unveiled and daring to raise her voice and be heard in a gathering of the leading disciples of the Báb, raising the call announcing the end of the Islamic Dispensation. She did all this knowing that it would lead to the loss of her family, children, social standing, liberty, and even of life itself. In thus claiming agency and making her own choices, Táhirih was not just instituting the women’s movement in Iran; she was the dawn of modernity for both women and men, breaking the shackles of traditional society.

Ilkhani garden, the location in Tehran where Tahirih was killed

The Bahá’í community continued the work of Táhirih by giving agency to women and advancing their position in the community. Bahá’u’lláh encouraged this, writing that He had “lifted distinctions from between His servants and handmaidens, and… hath conferred upon all a station and rank of the same plane,” and had thus “broken the back of vain imaginings (in other words, disrupted the social constructs that maintain the patriarchy).”²⁷

Of course, the pronouncement of equality by the Founder of the religion did not immediately lead to full equality for women in the Bahá’í community. This was a lived, negotiated, and developing outcome, experienced within the cultural expectations and social constraints of a patriarchal society. But, as early as the 1870s, outside observers were noticing the improving position of women in the Bahá’í community. A Polish journalist visiting Baghdad and an Irish doctor born in Iran both wrote of this in the 1870s.²⁸ The words that Professor Browne of Cambridge University heard in 1888 from a street peddler in Isfahan who was a Bahá’í demonstrated that this ethic of promoting women’s emancipation had penetrated all levels of the Bahá’í community: “We believe that women ought to be allowed to mix more freely with men, and should not be compelled to wear the veil.”²⁹ Individual Bahá’í women, such as Táyirih Khánum, contributed to the public discourse on women’s emancipation in the period before and after the Constitutional Revolution, writing articles for newspapers.³⁰

When the Bahá’ís began to establish a community administration at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the first committees to be set up was a Committee for the Advancement of Women,³¹ and the advancement of women has remained a goal of the community up to the present. But perhaps the greatest contribution that the changes in the Bahá’í community made to the advancement of women is the progress that it made and continues to make towards the dismantling of the hierarchical social order that buttresses the patriarchy (see Part 2 of this article).

Committee for the Advancement of Women in 1916

Bahá’u’lláh made it clear that His advocacy for modern education included girls as well as boys.³² Although urged by Western Bahá’í women to promote the unveiling of Eastern Bahá’í women (which was also a feature of the Iranian modernist discourse), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá judged that the more effective and sustainable way to promote the social advancement of women was through education. As the Bahá’í community began to build schools, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made sure that they built girls’ schools alongside the boys’ schools, even saying that the education of girls took precedence over that of boys since they were the first educators of the next generation.³³ One result of this was that Iranian Bahá’í women were, in general, more educated than other women. By 1973, the Bahá’í community was able to announce a 100% literacy rate among women under 40 years of age at a time when nationally only 40% of Iranian women in this age range were literate.³⁴

It is noticeable that almost all of the Western Bahá’ís whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged to settle in Iran to help to develop the Bahá’í community in the fields of education and health were women, who were then able to serve as role models for the Iranian Bahá’í women on how to claim agency and take on social roles.³⁵

There were other areas of life where the Bahá’ís were making innovative and radical changes ahead of what was happening in the rest of Iran, especially in agriculture and rural development, and in health and hygiene. But since the Iranian modernist reformers did not concern themselves much with these areas, there is little to compare these Bahá’í activities with and they will not be discussed here.³⁶

CONTACTS BETWEEN THE REFORMERS AND BAHÁ’ÍS

As well as the evidence presented above that the Bahá’í leaders were ahead of the Iranian modernist reformers in the reforms they were advocating, there is also strong evidence that these reformers were in close contact with the Bahá’í leaders and the Bahá’í community. In the 1860s, two of the leading Iranian reformers were Mírzá Malkam Khán and Sayyid Jamálu’d-Dín Asadábádí (“Afghání”). The first of these was exiled to Baghdad in 1861 and is known to have met Bahá’u’lláh there. Later in 1866, he represented himself as being knowledgeable about the new religion to French scholar Ernest Renan, who encouraged him to write an article on the subject.³⁷ Similarly, Asadábádí is said to have met Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdad, and he also represented himself as knowledgeable about the new religion such that Butrus al-Bustani asked him to contribute an article on the subject for his Arabic encyclopedia.³⁸ He tried to remain in close touch with the Bahá’í leadership, sending them copies of his newspaper al-Urwah al-Wuthqá from Paris in the 1880s.³⁹

The most consequential reformer from the next decade, the 1870s, was Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán Mushíru’d-Dawlih (Sipahsalár), who succeeded in becoming Prime Minister of Iran and began a reform agenda but was thwarted by the reactionary Iranian elite. He had at first been antagonistic to the Bahá’ís and, as Iranian ambassador to the Ottoman Government, was responsible for Bahá’u’lláh’s successive exiles from Baghdad to Istanbul, to Edirne, and to Acre. But after reading some of the letters addressed to Bahá’u’lláh by His followers after Bahá’u’lláh’s courier had been arrested in Aleppo in 1870, he realized that he had been wrong about Bahá’u’lláh. When he returned to Tehran and later became Prime Minister, he openly praised Bahá’u’lláh and protected the Bahá’ís on more than one occasion.⁴⁰ Information about the Bahá’í Faith probably came to him from his close friend Malkam Khán or one of his relatives who was a Bahá’í.⁴¹ Another close friend of Mushíru’d-Dawlih was Mírzá Yúsif Khán Mustasháru’d-Dawlih, who wrote the first reformist treatise to be published, Yik Kalamih. The Bahá’í scholar Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl Gulpáygání records that he was passing through Tabriz where Mustasharu’d-Dawlih lived, and that the latter was present at a meeting where Gulpáygání debated with Reverend Robert Bruce, a British missionary, about the Bahá’í Faith.⁴²

Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán Mushíru’d-Dawlih, c. 1870

By the 1880s, there was an increasing debate about reform in Iran, fueled by newspapers and books printed outside Iran but circulated within the country. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote an important treatise, the Risálih-yi Madaniyyih (The Secret of Divine Civilization), as a contribution to this debate. It was published in Bombay in 1882 and was probably only the second reform treatise (after Yik Kalamih) to be thus printed and circulated. It was published anonymously and with no overt reference to the Bahá’í Faith in it, so that prejudice against the new religion would not prevent it from being circulated and widely read. In this book, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá enters into the discourse that was going on among Iranian reformers about governmental reform and modern education, but, in contrast to these reformers, He emphasizes the need to develop a sound moral basis in society, upon which these other reforms could be established and develop.

One important focus of reform activity in the 1890s was the city of Isfahan. Here a group of modernist reformers gathered, calling themselves the Progress Society (Anjuman-i Taraqqí). It was one of the earliest such societies in Iran and did not just meet to discuss reform but carried out lines of social action, such as establishing a modern school. Almost all of the leading members of this group, which included such figures as Ḥájí Mírzá Naṣrulláh Maliku’l-Mutakallimín, Sayyid Jamál Vá`iz, Majdu’l-Islám Kirmání, Mírzá Asadu’lláh Vazír, and Mírzá Aḥmad Khán Fátiḥu’l-Mulk were at that time either Bahá’ís or closely associated with the Bahá’í community.⁴³

In the next decade, the 1900s, similar to the situation in Isfahan in the 1890s, almost all of the leading members of the reform movement in Sari in Mazandaran were either Bahá’ís or closely associated with the Bahá’í community. They set up the Anjuman-i Ḥaqíqat (The Truth Society) and undertook such activities as establishing a modern school.⁴⁴ Elsewhere in Iran, leading Constitutionalists such as Ḥájí Abu’l-Ḥasan Mírzá Shaykhu’r-Ra’ís were known to have been Bahá’ís,⁴⁵ while Muḥammad Valí Khán Tunukábuní (Naṣru’s-Salṭanih, Sipahsalár-i A‘ẓam) and ‘Alí Qulí Khán Sardár As‘ad Bakhtiyárí, the two military leaders who led the Constitutionalist forces in their capture of Tehran in 1909, thus ending Muḥammad `Alí Sháh’s attempt to overthrow the Constitution, were both in close touch with the Bahá’í community, and both met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Paris.⁴⁶

Also of great interest and demonstrating the extent to which the modernist reformers looked to and may in some measure have modelled themselves on the Bahá’í community is the report by Náẓimu’l-Islám Kirmání, a historian who was closely involved with the reform movement, of the discussion at a meeting in March 1905 of the leading reformers at which he was present and where it was suggested that the reformers should look to the successful methods and tactics of the Bahá’ís for inspiration.⁴⁷

There were also other factors that made it likely that the Bahá’ís may have been influencing Iranian society much more effectively than is often appreciated. In explaining their ideas, drawn as they were from European writings, the modernist reformers were introducing into their texts European terms and thus using words and concepts that were not immediately understandable to most Iranians and appeared as a rupture with Iranian culture. But the Bahá’í texts used words and ideas that were rooted in Iranian culture and therefore easily understood.⁴⁸ Indeed, the concept of the progressive revelation of religious truth, introduced by the Báb and developed by Bahá’u’lláh, created a pathway for a gradual organic modernization, in keeping with the culture of the nation and granting agency to all individuals in society.⁴⁹

Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the number of people engaged in the project of the Iranian reformers was very small, the readership for the writings they produced was very limited, and the ability of this small group to carry out any of their suggested changes was very constrained. Mahdí Malikzádih, who was himself part of the reform movement, suggests that the number in the reform circle in the last decades of the nineteenth century was only a few hundred,⁵⁰ and these reformers were operating within secret societies and only in a handful of large cities. By contrast, the Bahá’í community had a much greater membership (estimated to be 100,000 or more),⁵¹ was distributed across the country, even in small towns and villages, and the Bahá’ís were trying to put these ideas into practice insofar as circumstances allowed.

The above evidence demonstrates that in decade after decade from the 1860s onward, the ideas put forward in the Bahá’í texts were presented earlier, more developed, and more easily understood than what appeared in the discourse and texts of the modernist reformers, and the Bahá’ís were implementing these changes in their communities scattered across the whole of Iran. Given this and the evidence presented above that many of the leading modernist reformers were in close touch with the Bahá’í leaders and the community, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Bahá’í ideas had some influence on the thinking of the reformers. The extent to which this may have occurred requires further research, as it would be hidden by these reformers to forestall opposition and persecution.

ATTACKS AND SETBACKS

Inevitably, the radical changes that the Bahá’í community was trying to make were either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented to the people of Iran. And so, for example, the Bahá’í endeavor to advance the social role of women led to allegations of sexual immorality. The efforts of the Bahá’í community to introduce modern education led to claims that the Bahá’ís were trying to introduce foreign ideas into Iran. The ethos of modernity and progress cultivated within the Bahá’í community gave rise to accusations that the Bahá’ís were trying to undermine Iran’s culture and even, in later years, to conspiracy theories, which continue to the present day, that the Bahá’ís are agents of foreign powers. The global vision inculcated in the Bahá’í scriptures led to accusations that the Bahá’ís did not care about the welfare and progress of Iran. All of this led to persecution of the Bahá’í community by the religious leaders of Iran, who then recruited the intellectuals and politicians in their campaign against the Bahá’ís.

Takeover of the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds (Bahá’í Center) in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution

Although the Bahá’í community was striving to advance all of these areas of social progress, the constant persecution and the consequent social constraints that the community suffered did limit their efforts and cause setbacks. The hostile environment created by the opposition of the religious leadership in the country, and often the government, led to a situation in which the only public discourse about the community was hostile attacks. Even many of the secular nationalist reformers, whom one might have thought would have welcomed the Bahá’í social agenda, were contributing to these attacks by the time of Reza Shah’s reign.⁵²

The most public face of the Bahá’í community was its schools, and these were vehemently opposed by the Islamic religious leaders, many of whom were opposed both to all modern education and to any Bahá’í initiatives. In several instances, these schools were wrecked or closed down by the authorities, until finally the national government closed all of them permanently in 1934.⁵³ Another area where the efforts of the Bahá’í community were held back was in the social advancement of women. Thus, although women were able to vote for the Bahá’í leadership councils from 1923, it took until 1954 before conditions were right for them to be elected to these councils.⁵⁴ In all, there was a constant barrage of black propaganda against the community.

CONCLUSION

At no time since its founding in the latter part of the nineteenth century has the Bahá’í community been free to pursue its agenda for social reform or to enter into Iranian public discourse. The people of Iran have received only falsified facts and fanciful conspiracy theories about the Bahá’ís.⁵⁵ As a result, Iranians have remained widely ignorant of the achievements of the Bahá’í community and the extent to which it has assisted the development of Iran.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Iran was in urgent need of reform and modernization. Two possible routes presented themselves: that of the modernist reformers and that of the Bahá’í community. In this article, we have traced the earliest suggestions made by the Iranian modernist reformers and pointed out that, in most instances, the Bahá’í leaders were making suggestions that were earlier and more progressive than those of the modernist reformers. It should not surprise us, however, that evidence for a direct influence of the Bahá’í teachings on the reformers is difficult to find, since it would have resulted in rejection and even danger for the reformers to admit to being influenced by a persecuted and reviled religious community. Given the evidence presented here that these modernist reformers were in many cases in close contact with the Bahá’í community and in some cases with the Bahá’í leadership, it would seem likely that at least some of the discourse of the modernist reformers was influenced by the Bahá’í teachings.

By Maximillian Afnan

Maximillian Afnan is a political theorist and Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research examines the normative principles that underpin the operation of international institutions and the structure of the global order.

A central tenet of the Bahá’í perspective on history is that humanity has reached the point at which a lasting global peace is “not only possible but inevitable.”¹ Yet if peace is indeed inevitable, the path towards it has been neither straightforward nor uninterrupted. The twentieth century witnessed the establishment of unprecedented institutions of international cooperation, accompanied, at certain moments, by shifts in political culture and public consciousness that seemed to signify a new era in international relations. However, from a vantage point a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, it is clear that the project of building a united and effective global order is far from complete, and indeed in some respects appears to be in reverse. As the Universal House of Justice observes:

For many decades following the second great war of the twentieth century, humanity moved, with fits and starts, toward the promise of a united world. The failure to complete the project of the unification of nations, however, left gaps in relations in which supranational problems could fester and threaten the security and well-being of peoples and states, leading to a recrudescence of prejudice, of divers expressions of factionalism, and of virulent nationalism that are the very negation of Bahá’u’lláh’s message of peace and oneness.²

Within this political and historical context, this article explores two questions. First, why did previous attempts to reach for lasting peace not succeed? Second, what conceptual and moral shifts stand between humanity and this long-cherished goal? If the obstacles to peace were merely technical or institutional, they might have been overcome long ago. The persistence of conflict and division suggests that a deeper transformation is required. What might be among the fundamental adjustments necessary for the establishment of a durable peace?

Reaching for Peace

In a message dated 18 January 2019, the Universal House of Justice comments on the progress towards world peace that has been made over the past century, and analyzes some of the causes of the regressive steps of recent years. In the letter, the House of Justice identifies three moments in which mankind seemed to be “reaching for real, lasting peace, albeit always falling short”: the two periods immediately following the First and Second World Wars, and the post-Cold War period.³ The first moment saw the establishment of the League of Nations after the First World War. This represented the earliest attempt at a global collective security mechanism in history, and was accompanied in the 1920s by treaties and statements from intergovernmental meetings that explicitly rejected war as an instrument of foreign policy—a novel development in international relations at the time.⁴ Tragically, of course, the League of Nations was hampered from birth by the non-participation of the United States, and by the harsh settlement imposed on the defeated powers from the First World War, sowing the seeds of resentment that would ignite a second global conflict two decades later.

The second attempt at peace initially appeared more promising. The United Nations and the series of accompanying economic institutions established in the wake of the Second World War were broader-based in their membership, and were accompanied by advances at the level of thought and political culture, with the creation and ratification of foundational agreements related to human rights and international law. What is interesting to note about this period is not only the list of institutions that were established, or the treaties signed, but the tenor of public discourse. During this period, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a wide range of scientists, political figures, jurists, journalists, and authors advocated for a world state powerful enough to prevent nuclear destruction. Albert Einstein, for example, conducted an extended publicity tour advocating for global government, while his colleagues on the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists lobbied for integrated global control of nuclear weapons.⁵ Multiple resolutions introduced in the US Congress supported the creation of a world federation or transformation of the United Nations along world state lines, and major hearings on world government proposals were held by foreign affairs committees in both the US House and Senate in 1949 and 1950. Elsewhere, public support for a union of Atlantic democracies was expressed in 1949 by the foreign ministers of Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, as well as by the Canadian Senate.⁶ In India, Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru made a world federal government central to the 1942 Quit India Resolution, framing it as a remedy for Western imperialism.⁷ Several organizations were founded in this period to draft a “world constitution.”⁸ World federalism drew support not only from academic, scientific, economic, and political elites, but also from relatively broad cross-sections of the population (at least in surveyed countries). In June 1946, for example, a Gallup poll asked Americans: “Do you think the United Nations Organization should be strengthened to make it a world government with power to control the armed forces of all nations, including the United States?” The results showed 54% in favor and 24% opposed, with the remainder undecided.⁹

If nothing else, these examples illustrate that the terrain of public discourse is not fixed and that what appear to be immovable boundaries in public opinion, or hard constraints of political possibility, can, and indeed do, change dramatically over time. In the case of the mid-century postwar moment, however, this upsurge in discourse around world government receded as attempts to strengthen global government, notably in response to the threat of nuclear war, failed in an atmosphere of growing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, political, scholarly, and public attention drifted away from the idea and remained largely dormant until the end of the Cold War.

Full-page promotion in *The New York Times* (1918-12-25) by The League to Enforce Peace, promoting formation of a League of Nations.

The Third Moment

The third moment of reaching for peace stands much closer to our present historical juncture. During the 1990s there was a significant expansion in the range and strength of systems designed to foster international cooperation, exemplified by a series of conferences on thematic issues organized under the auspices of the UN, various developments in the area of international law including the adoption of the Rome statute leading to the creation of the International Criminal Court, and the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. These political developments were matched by an upsurge in scholarly attention to the question of global governance (and the emergence of this term in common academic parlance).¹⁰

Alongside the political optimism of the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, a prominent feature of intellectual discourse at the time was the assumption that an expanded global order would consist largely in the progressive extension of the achievements of the modern West around the world. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis was totemic of this assumption. Fukuyama argued that following the collapse of Soviet communism liberal democratic capitalism had emerged as the final form of human government, with no viable ideological competitors remaining.¹¹ Proposals for reforming political order in this period were thus often proposals for globalizing aspects of the economic and political model of the West.¹²

Yet against the optimism of many who assumed that liberal democracy would inexorably suffuse political systems worldwide, the first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a series of cross-cutting trends that have undermined this narrative, and which seem to have eroded faith in the very idea of international governance. In some parts of the world, a “globalization backlash” has been expressed in phenomena such as member states withdrawing from international organizations and agreements, increasing trade protectionism, and more general protests against international institutions.¹³ These currents of dissatisfaction draw on a wide and sometimes contradictory range of sources—from populist nationalisms, to movements with anti-capitalist orientations, to postcolonial critiques centered on historical marginalization. Underlying many of these phenomena is a general concern that the structures and ideologies underpinning globalization serve only a small minority of the world’s population. Alongside these political developments, this period has also seen growing scholarly interest in marginalized traditions of thought, often with the goal of unmasking the “false universalism” of dominant liberal thought.¹⁴ Efforts to imagine an effective and legitimate global order have thus come to be constrained within the terms of an unpalatable dichotomy—between a “globalism” that embraces liberalism and free-market capitalism as its foundation and an “anti-globalism” that is suspicious of the very idea of a global order. Such suspicion reflects not only disillusionment with the prevailing model of globalization, but broader anxieties about cultural homogenization and the global concentration of power.

While social and intellectual trends have raised questions about the direction of globalization, the inherently cross-national challenges for which global institutions are designed have hardly disappeared. If anything, their intensity has grown. In the juxtaposition of these trends lies a key paradox. On the one hand, the forces propelling global integration are strengthening, and with them the necessity of global cooperation. On the other, consensus around the basis for a legitimate global order is eroding.

A Fundamental Prerequisite

Where, then, do we go from here? The vision of global integration built on liberal democratic capitalism has been criticized for its tendency to universalize particular political, cultural, and economic arrangements that themselves have not proven able to establish social harmony or justice, while a reactive skepticism of the entire project of building a unified world order offers no constructive path forward in the face of inherently transnational challenges. Neither pole offers a satisfactory response to the challenges humanity faces. The task, therefore, is twofold: to separate the notion of a unified global order from the simple extension of the methods and procedures of liberal democracy or market capitalism, and to move beyond solely critiquing a defective order by describing, with progressive clarity, what might take the place of the present “incomplete project” of the unification of nations.

Where might such an alternative foundation be identified? Each of the three historical moments examined above saw genuine advances in the machinery of international cooperation, yet none succeeded in establishing enduring peace. The post-Cold War period, in particular, demonstrated that even substantial institutional development proves insufficient when underlying questions about the nature and purpose of global society remain unresolved. The resulting dichotomy between globalism and anti-globalism reflects, at a deeper level, an absence of shared conviction about the foundations of human society capable of commanding broad allegiance. What appears to be missing are not only better mechanisms of coordination, but rather a conception of global society itself, one that can ground institutional arrangements in globally shared principles.

In examining Bahá’í contributions to public discourse on the question of peace, one idea stands out as a central conviction regarding both what is defective in the existing global order and what is required for the elusive goal of global peace and stability to be realized: the principle of the oneness of humanity. The principle not only informs visions of a future world civilization whose contours can scarcely be imagined, but also stands at the heart of contributions to contemporary discourse about what is to be done here and now.

In a statement marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, for example, the Bahá’í International Community draws attention to the “profound convictions for our collective behaviour” that flow from the truth that “the human family is one.”¹⁵ The statement observes that the challenge of embedding the principle of oneness in the design and operation of the global order is not merely one of creating or reforming institutions, important as this is. Rather, there exists a pressing need for what the statement terms a “settled consensus” around “a set of common values and principles” capable of underpinning collective decision-making on issues affecting humanity as a whole.¹⁶ The Promise of World Peace, a 1985 message of the Universal House of Justice to the peoples of the world, similarly expresses this conviction, identifying the primary question confronting humanity as “how the present world, with its entrenched pattern of conflict, can change to a world in which harmony and cooperation will prevail.” Its answer: “World order can be founded only on an unshakable consciousness of the oneness of mankind….” Accepting the oneness of humanity, the message continues, represents “the first fundamental prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as one country, the home of humankind.”¹⁷

Yet what is meant by “oneness” in these contexts? And how does the principle of oneness take us beyond the familiar principles and institutions of the current discourse on global governance? Shoghi Effendi states:

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind—the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve—is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations.¹⁸

In exploring the meaning of oneness, it is important to begin from the recognition that it would be premature to claim to comprehend anything but a fraction of its full import for the life of humanity. Clarity on what the principle of oneness entails for the next stage of social evolution will only emerge through sustained processes of learning and exploration. The full significance of the principle—including its implications for human consciousness and the very foundations of social existence—extends well beyond what any single line of inquiry can capture. The principle carries implications for many dimensions of social life, including questions of identity, the relations between diverse peoples and groups, the organization of economic life, and collective governance.¹⁹ Indeed, the promise of a global order grounded in oneness may extend beyond the achievement of more stable and just governance arrangements. As relationships among peoples are progressively reordered to reflect the reality of oneness, new horizons of possibility may emerge that cannot be anticipated at present. With all this in mind, and conscious of the constraints of inevitably limited vision, there is one particular idea this essay seeks to examine because of its relevance to current questions of political life and global order: what the concept of oneness tells us about the nature of society itself.

Conceptions of Society

Underlying most political and philosophical thought are conceptual models or metaphors which, though not literal descriptions of reality, generate distinctive conceptions of the body politic. One thinks of the market as a jungle in classical economics, the Confucian image of the extended family as a model for political relationships, or Plato’s image of the city-state as a ship requiring a wise captain. Such heuristic devices organize ideas and shape intuitions regarding the moral principles that ought to govern collective life, which in turn mold social norms and structures.

Of these various images, we can examine one in some depth as an example of how a guiding metaphor can shape the architecture of an entire tradition of political thought. The image of a social contract conceptualizes society as a collection of individuals who, despite divergent interests and beliefs, form a binding agreement to regulate social and political questions arising among them. This contract sets certain ground rules for ongoing coexistence and serves as a reference point in arbitrating disputes about what individuals owe to one another. From this deceptively simple starting point flow distinctive assumptions about persons, about what justice requires, and about the proper role of political institutions, assumptions that have also informed influential approaches to theorizing social and global order.

John Rawls’s influential theory of justice provides an instructive example of how this contractualist vision generates a framework of political principles. Rawls is a particularly helpful figure because he explicitly notes that conceptions of justice are “the outgrowth of different notions of society.”²⁰ Rawls begins with a fundamental organizing conception of society as a system of cooperation between autonomous and equal individuals. He then creates the device of an “original position,” a hypothetical scenario in which parties deliberate about the terms of the social contract—the basic terms of social cooperation between them—while deprived of knowledge about morally arbitrary characteristics about themselves, such as their race, class, gender, or natural talents.

The original position serves as the mechanism for working out what free and equal individuals would agree to under conditions that model fairness. Parties in the original position are characterized by “mutual disinterest”—they are concerned with advancing their own conception of the good, but are not motivated by benevolence toward or envy of others. This assumption is not incidental: it ensures that the principles chosen are ones that individuals can accept as fair regardless of their particular conceptions of human flourishing or moral doctrines, and it models the separateness of persons that Rawls takes to be a basic fact about human beings.²¹ From this architecture flows Rawls’s principles of justice. The first principle guarantees equal basic liberties for all citizens—freedoms such as political participation, expression, and conscience that rational agents would not risk losing regardless of their position in society. The second principle addresses social and economic inequalities, requiring that positions of advantage be open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and that any remaining inequalities work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society.²² Each element follows from what mutually disinterested parties, ignorant of their own circumstances, would rationally choose: they would secure fundamental freedoms, ensure fair access to opportunities, and, since they might find themselves among the worst off, insist that inequalities improve the prospects of those worst-off in society.

Rawls’s theory represents one example of sophisticated and nuanced contractualist thinking, which in many ways is sensitive to the balance of unity and diversity in society. The purpose here is not to criticize it, but rather to demonstrate that any such framework relies on a particular image of human nature and social order. The characterization of agents in this framework as mutually disinterested, the specification of interests prior to and independent of social relationships, and the modeling of fair agreement as that which emerges from a process of individual rational choice all form, and reinforce the notion that an individual’s core interests are understood to be independently constituted, and that social cooperation is merely an arrangement among such agents to secure fair terms despite potentially divergent interests. Importantly, the effects of contractualist thinking, of which Rawls’s view is one illustrative example, have not been confined to the academy. In direct and indirect ways, this conceptual model, which emerged during the Enlightenment and remains influential in contemporary political thought, has become embedded in the political, economic, and social lives of whole societies. Consider Rawls’s principles of justice. His first principle, guaranteeing equal basic liberties, finds expression in the broader liberal commitment that individual freedom can only be constrained in order to prevent harm to others.²³ The assumption of mutual disinterest, which ensures that principles are acceptable regardless of one’s particular conception of the good, underwrites the notion that the state should remain neutral between different visions of the good life rather than promoting any substantive account of human flourishing. And the architecture of the original position, modeling society as separate individuals who must find terms of cooperation despite divergent interests, reflects the prevalent belief that governance structures and social institutions exist primarily to arbitrate between potentially divergent claims rather than to cultivate shared purposes. These and similar principles have over time become codified in constitutional documents, embedded in popular consciousness, and expressed in legal precedent.

The point is not that such principles lack merit. It is rather that they emerge from a particular conception of society and the person. When this contractualist framework is extended to theorize global order, the parties sometimes shift from individuals to states, such that global society is conceptualized as a system populated by free (i.e. autonomous) and equal (i.e. sovereign) nation-states.²⁴ But core elements of the underlying conception remain: separate agents with divergent interests seeking mutually acceptable terms of cooperation. Beyond explicitly nationalist or statist extensions of the contractualist conception of society, if building a just and effective global order consisted, as many assumed in the post-Cold War period, in extending the Western social and political model worldwide, it would involve globalizing something like the contractual conception of society, embedding its assumptions about persons and social cooperation in political cultures and institutions around the world.

The purpose of the analysis above has simply been to make visible assumptions that often operate invisibly—to show that the contractual framework represents one possible starting point among others, not a neutral or inevitable foundation for political thought. This recognition opens space to ask what a conception of society informed by the principle of oneness might look like, and how it might differ from the models that currently predominate.

Oneness and Global Society

With this in mind, let us return to the idea of oneness. A conception of society, including global society, as a cooperative system characterized by an essential oneness would emphasize the extent and nature of interdependence between its constituent elements, in both an empirical and a normative sense. The empirical aspect observes that the well-being of individuals and societies is connected across borders, whether through economic systems, ecological processes, technological networks, or political structures.²⁵ Yet the conception is not merely descriptive. The normative component asserts that these empirical interdependencies possess constitutive rather than merely instrumental significance for human flourishing. This normative dimension transcends enlightened self-interest, which would calculate the long-term advantages of cooperation while maintaining that agents affect one another’s well-being only instrumentally, and approaches that widen the scope of moral obligation while leaving the underlying conception of agents and their interests unchanged. Constitutive interdependence makes a stronger claim and implies a transformed understanding of what constitutes interest and well-being themselves: one’s capacity to flourish is inherently limited when others suffer. This is not simply because their suffering might eventually affect one’s interests from the outside, but because flourishing itself is partly constituted by the character of one’s relationships and the health of shared structures. To put the point positively, participation in relationships of genuine reciprocity and shared endeavor may unlock, or even itself constitute, a dimension of flourishing that no degree of isolated prosperity can provide.

Each conception of society carries with it an implicit or explicit view of the person—what agents are like, what motivates them, and what constitutes their flourishing. A contractualist conception would generally assume agents whose interests can be specified independently. A conception informed by oneness, by contrast, is likely to assume that agents’ capacity for flourishing is inherently relational. Human flourishing, on this view, inherently involves the quality of relationships and systemic conditions, not merely the accumulation of goods, the satisfaction of preferences, or even access to resources and the protection of basic rights, important as these are. From this perspective, the quality of social structures partially determines individual possibilities, and societal dysfunction constrains human flourishing even for those who appear temporarily insulated.

Understanding oneness in this way—as a principle informing our conception of global society—carries significant implications. If the capacity to flourish cannot be isolated from the health of shared structures and relationships, neither can peace; and this reframes conventional thinking about what peace requires, in terms of both scope and sequence. Regarding scope, it helps to explain the claim in The Promise of World Peace that achieving peace requires removing obstacles often seen as unrelated to peace: “…the abolition of war is not simply a matter of signing treaties and protocols; it is a complex task requiring a new level of commitment to resolving issues not customarily associated with the pursuit of peace.”²⁶ If oneness informs our foundational conception of society, then obstacles to peace such as racism, wealth inequality, tribal nationalism, and religious sectarianism are not discrete problems to be addressed separately. They are incompatible with oneness and therefore with a society capable of genuine peace; conceptualizing social order through the lens of oneness illuminates why these diverse phenomena share a common root. Regarding sequence, oneness reveals the limitations of the assumption that unity is “a distant, almost unattainable ideal to be addressed only after a host of political conflicts have been somehow resolved”: oneness is not the fruit of solving other problems; it is the prerequisite for solving them.²⁷

A conception of society informed by oneness, like its contractual counterpart, would not be a mere abstraction, but would carry significant practical consequences. As the discussion of Rawls illustrated, conceptions of society inform the normative principles selected to regulate collective life, which in turn shape laws, policies, and institutions. Such a conception of global society would carry with it similarly distinctive implications, both empirical and normative.

The empirical dimension directs attention to the ways in which the major challenges defining contemporary global politics demonstrate this inherent interdependence. Climate change is one clear example: no amount of national wealth can insulate a society from atmospheric changes driven by global emissions. Similarly, pandemic preparedness, financial stability, and digital technologies create vulnerabilities that transcend national boundaries and cannot be addressed through isolated action. These are not marginal issues but increasingly define the parameters within which all other political and economic activity occurs. The principle of oneness also enables us to distinguish between narrow material accumulation and comprehensive flourishing. An individual or society might increase certain metrics—household wealth, GDP, territorial control—while experiencing degradation in the broader conditions that enable genuine well-being. Rising wealth inequality in many countries coinciding with deepening polarization and weakening social trust suggests that even apparent beneficiaries of economic inequality bear costs in other dimensions of life.²⁸

The normative dimension carries distinctive implications for what ought to be done about these interdependencies. Enlightened self-interest might recognize that assisting developing nations creates future markets or that environmental cooperation prevents future costs. But the idea of constitutive interdependence suggested by oneness makes a stronger and qualitatively different claim: one’s capacity to flourish cannot be separated from the flourishing of others within a system of social cooperation, because the quality of shared structures and relationships is not merely an external condition affecting well-being but partly constitutive of it. Appealing to oneness to justify and appraise laws or policies may imply, among other things, that the legitimacy of domestic policies be judged by reference to their global impacts and that self-interested bargaining in global politics represents not merely a moral failure but a fundamental misunderstanding of a nation’s own interests.²⁹ A central bank’s mandate, for instance, would be framed not purely in domestic terms but in terms of contributing to the stability and health of the international economic system, recognizing this as a condition of its own society’s prosperity.³⁰ Agricultural support policies would be designed to strengthen food systems both domestically and internationally—asking not only whether subsidies benefit domestic producers, but whether they contribute to food security worldwide and to the livelihoods of farming communities in other countries.³¹ Tax regimes would be oriented toward building the shared fiscal capacity to fund public goods in every country, rather than structured in ways that encourage nations to competitively undercut one another. In each case, a oneness-informed conception of international society does not merely add global well-being as an afterthought; it reframes the very question of what constitutes effective policymaking, directing attention not only to how outcomes are distributed but to the character of the relationships through which collective life is conducted.

A selection of some of the published versions of *The Promise of World Peace*. Clockwise from top: English, Tuvaluan, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Sinhalese, Norwegian, Tswana, German, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Korean, Samoan, Turkish, New Zealand Maori, Arabic, Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish, Faroese.

Oneness beyond Collectivism

The foregoing has sought to articulate, in necessarily preliminary terms, what a conception of global society informed by oneness might involve and some of its implications. Yet for all its apparent relevance to the challenges of global order, such a conception of global society has not yet permeated political discourse, let alone become embedded in social structures. This is not to say the ideal of oneness is completely absent—one can identify latent expressions of the underlying sentiment in foundational international documents such as the UN Charter. Similarly, in the more diffuse realm of public consciousness, it is common to hear in discourse, from informal everyday conversation to formal statements in global forums, recognition that in matters of public health “no one is safe until everyone is safe,” or that on climate change “the world will succeed or fail as one.” All this notwithstanding, there are many aspects of the existing global political order that do not yet reflect, or align with, the implications of human oneness. Why might this be? Why has a conception of the essential nature of social order informed by oneness not been more widely adopted?

Clearly, one significant part of the answer is a gap between moral principle and action, and a lack of willingness to “put aside short-term self-interest” on the part of individuals, governing institutions, and indeed whole societies.³² But it would appear that insufficient commitment to recognized ideals is not all that is at work here. Sustained action in pursuit of moral principles is difficult without clarity about the kind of world those principles are meant to create. There are conceptual obstacles, at least in some prevalent traditions of thought, to embracing the reality of oneness as an essential characteristic of global society. These conceptual obstacles may, by furnishing rationales for behavior inconsistent with the principle of oneness, in turn weaken the connection between the force of moral principle and political practice. When, for instance, the separateness and divergent interests of nations is treated as a basic fact of international life, policies that prioritize narrow national advantage over global well-being appear not as moral failures but as rational responses to how the world is structured.

The conceptual concern regarding oneness, while not always articulated explicitly, can be presented as follows: conceptions of society that emphasize unity, including those which draw on organic metaphors (such as the use of the human body analogy in the Bahá’í writings), have historically been deployed in service of worldviews emphasizing hierarchy, homogeneity, or the priority of the collective over the individual. Karl Popper expresses the general intuition in contrasting the collectivist ‘closed’ society, which resembles a living organism and subordinates the individual to the group, with the ‘open’ society, defined by its commitment to individual rights and personal responsibility.³³

Clearly, this is not what the principle of oneness from a Bahá’í perspective asserts. When the Bahá’í writings make reference to the human body as a model for social relationships, this is not an understanding of the body as simply an agglomeration of interchangeable cells, whose individual character is unimportant, but rather a complex web of interdependent systems, which requires the complementary operation of differentiated components.³⁴ Extending the metaphor to social organization, diversity in political cultures and institutional arrangements enables experimentation with different governance approaches, creating opportunities for learning about distinctive knowledge and practices suited to varied contexts. Further, collectivism, in problematic forms, treats society as a unified agent possessing a single system of desire, a collective entity whose judgments and purposes override or subsume individual perspectives. A oneness-inspired conception of society need not make any such claim. It would make quite a different point: that pursuing self- or national interest in ways that systematically undermine global structures or the flourishing of other segments of society represents a misunderstanding of the conditions for one’s own flourishing.

Unreflective identification of ideals of interdependence or social unity with crude collectivism, then, may help to explain why a conceptualization of global society that emphasizes its essential oneness has not been the object of greater attention. Attempts to examine the potential of conceptual models other than those dominant within the liberal tradition have perhaps been hampered by the persistence of false dichotomies. The tendency to present social organization as a binary choice between collectivism and individualism, or between liberalism and authoritarianism, may be one conceptual obstacle that needs to be overcome.

Crisis and Possibility

The foregoing analysis of twentieth-century attempts to establish peace suggests that moments of crisis often precipitate a reexamination of inadequate frameworks. Conceptions of society exert a profound influence on the intuitions, norms, and structures that shape collective life. Yet fundamental shifts in how society is understood are rarely the product of conceptual argument alone. Liberal models of social organization, for example, emerged through an interplay between philosophical reflection and the social and political action of particular groups and movements. As they form, such conceptions become embedded not only in formal structures but in popular consciousness, social norms, and everyday relationships. It follows that the process of developing a new underlying basis for global order will necessarily involve the efforts of communities and peoples in diverse settings to explore what oneness means for patterns of social organization—efforts that will, over time, generate insights and demonstrate possibilities capable of informing broader discourse and institutional change. In this sense, every segment of the world’s population has agency in the process of redefining the conceptual foundations of global society.

While the immediate prospects for peace are uncertain, the historical record also demonstrates how dramatic shifts in the landscape of political possibility can and do occur. It is not possible to predict how the integrative and disintegrative forces shaping humanity’s trajectory towards peace will unfold in the near future. Yet if enduring peace requires not only institutional arrangements but a conception of global society capable of grounding them, the work of clarifying what oneness implies for our collective life may be indispensable to the peace humanity seeks.

The author is grateful to Vafa Ghazavi, Shahrzad Sabet, and Stephen Agahi-Murphy for their input.

By Tara Raam

Tara Raam is a neuroscientist and lecturer in the Department of Neuroscience at UC Berkeley. Her research examines how social groups coordinate their behavior to respond to environmental challenges. Her broader research interests include themes related to harmony of science and religion, the mind, human nature, and the relationship between biology and social reality.

Human nature is a central concept in the Bahá’í writings. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains: “In man there are two natures: his spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. In one he approaches God, in the other he lives for the world alone. Signs of both of these natures are to be found in men.”¹ This dual nature means that human beings possess both the capacity for nobility—justice, wisdom, and compassion—and the capacity for base behavior—prejudice, aggression, and selfishness. It suggests that human beings are not fixed in either virtue or vice, but capable of growth and transformation depending on which nature predominates and develops.

Yet as the Universal House of Justice observes, a contrary view has taken root in contemporary thought:

So much have aggression and conflict come to characterize our social, economic and religious systems, that many have succumbed to the view that such behavior is intrinsic to human nature and therefore ineradicable.

With the entrenchment of this view, a paralyzing contradiction has developed in human affairs. On the one hand, people of all nations proclaim not only their readiness but their longing for peace and harmony, for an end to the harrowing apprehensions tormenting their daily lives. On the other, uncritical assent is given to the proposition that human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive and thus incapable of erecting a social system at once progressive and peaceful.²

This deterministic view is increasingly reinforced by interpretations of brain function from the field of neuroscience. When brain imaging studies reveal neural patterns underlying humanity’s lower nature, such findings can seem to imply finality; aspects of humanity’s lower nature appear hardwired into our biology, permanent and unchangeable.

Developing a coherent understanding of human nature requires drawing on both scientific knowledge and spiritual insight. How does the Bahá’í understanding of human nature relate to contemporary neuroscientific findings about the brain and behavior? This essay explores how such findings can be understood within a historical framework that takes into account both humanity’s current reality and our spiritual destiny.

THE AUTHORITY OF NEUROSCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC EYE

To understand how neuroscientific findings have come to shape our conception of human nature, we must first examine the remarkable authority these findings hold in public discourse. Over the past two decades, one particular neuroscientific finding has become part of common knowledge; the prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and impulse control, is not fully developed until the early twenties.³ This explanation for teenage behavior has proven remarkably sticky, repeated in parent-teacher conferences, cited in policy debates, and invoked whenever adults seek to account for risky behavior among youth. The appeal is understandable: it seems to offer a clear, biological answer to the perennial question of why adolescents drive recklessly, experiment with addictive substances, or make choices that baffle the adults around them. The scientific evidence, to many, seems conclusive.

This pattern repeats itself across domains. Scientists have found that romantic love activates the same reward pathways as drugs, alcohol, and gambling,⁴ leading some thinkers to suggest that love is experienced as an addiction. We learn that racial bias correlates with heightened activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for our fear responses.⁵ We discover that individuals convicted of violent crimes show abnormalities in their brain scans.⁶ Many of these findings are covered by popular, mainstream news sources, and each arrives with the weight of scientific authority, seemingly offering a definitive answer to complex questions about human behavior.

To be sure, neuroscience has also identified neural patterns associated with humanity’s higher nature, such as empathy, compassion, altruism, and moral reasoning.⁷ Yet it is the deterministic interpretation of findings related to our lower nature that poses the greatest challenge to visions of human transformation. When aspects of our lower nature appear in brain scans, they can seem permanent and insurmountable, reinforcing the ‘paralyzing contradiction’ the Universal House of Justice describes.

But why do brain-based explanations carry such persuasive power? Research in psychology has identified what scholars call the “seductive allure of neuroscience explanations”—a documented tendency for people to find arguments more convincing when they include neuroscientific information, even when that information adds little explanatory value.⁸ For example, in controlled studies researchers present participants with identical explanations of psychological phenomena. One version states simply: “teenagers engage in risky behavior because they are still learning to make good decisions.” Another adds a brain reference: “Brain scans show that teenagers engage in risky behavior because the prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making, is not fully developed until age 25.” Consistently, participants rate the second explanation as more satisfying and credible, despite the neuroscientific detail offering little explanation that deepens our understanding. Strikingly, this tendency to overweigh statements about human behavior holds even when the statement is simply paired next to an image of the brain, without mentioning any neuroscience in the statement itself.

This cognitive bias operates with remarkable consistency. References to the brain or “neuro-” terminology functions as a seal of approval, lending scientific legitimacy to claims that might otherwise seem speculative. The effect persists across educational backgrounds, cultures studied, and types of behavioral explanations.⁹ We appear collectively susceptible to the appeal of neuroscience to explain who we are.

The implications of this phenomenon are vast and extend beyond psychology experiments. When neuroscientific findings enter public discourse through media coverage, they have the potential to shape how societies understand human nature. Neural correlates of in-group preference, the tendency to affiliate with people who share similar identities as your own, become perceived as evidence that tribalism and prejudice are hardwired. Adolescent brain research becomes justification for viewing youth as neurologically incapable of mature judgment and behavior. Research on neural responses during social interactions becomes evidence that humans are fundamentally competitive and self-interested rather than cooperative.

These interpretations carry profound consequences. When we accept that prejudice is hardwired in the brain, we may unconsciously lower our expectations of humanity’s capacity to embrace our oneness and eliminate all prejudices. When teenage recklessness becomes a matter of an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, we may excuse behaviors that actually reflect the way youth are trained and educated, rather than biology. When love is reduced to an addiction, we diminish the divine origin of love that knits together the hearts of human beings and creates bridges across the divisions that have historically separated us. The unspoken assumption often becomes that if something appears in a brain scan, it must represent a fundamental, unchangeable aspect of human nature. This is true even in communities deeply committed to spiritual principles. Each deterministic reading quietly obscures our sense of what patterns of human behavior are possible, and ultimately, whether humanity has the capacity for social and spiritual transformation.

HOW CULTURE SHAPES THE BRAIN

Yet this authority rests on an assumption that current neuroscience research captures something universal about human brains and human nature. What if that assumption itself deserves scrutiny? What if the findings we accept as generalized biological truths are far more limited, and far more culturally specific, than we realize?

For decades, the vast majority of brain research has relied on a remarkably narrow segment of humanity as its research subjects: undergraduate students at research universities in wealthy Western countries. This demographic has been aptly described by researchers using the acronym WEIRD—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Recent estimates suggest that greater than 90% of participants in human psychology and neuroscience studies come from Western countries, despite these nations representing only about 12% of the global population.¹⁰ For adolescent brain development, the imbalance is even more stark; by some estimates, 99% of research has been conducted in Western contexts,¹¹ leaving the vast majority of the world’s youth entirely unstudied.

This sampling bias is not merely a methodological constraint—it fundamentally challenges the universality of neuroscientific claims. When researchers identify brain patterns associated with prejudice, aggression, or decision-making, they are largely observing brains shaped by WEIRD cultures, educational systems, and social structures. What has been understood as universal human neurobiology may actually reflect the specific neural adaptations of a small, privileged segment of humanity living in particular cultural conditions. The brain patterns that neuroscience has discovered and the public has embraced as truths about human nature might be far more culturally contingent than we have assumed.

The emerging field of cross-cultural neuroscience has made significant strides in correcting this WEIRD bias, and begun to reveal how profoundly culture shapes brain function. Studies comparing individuals from different cultural backgrounds show that even basic cognitive processes differ measurably across cultures. Research comparing East Asian and Western populations, for example, has found stark differences in how people visually process scenes. Participants from East Asian cultures tend to show greater attention to contextual information and relationships between objects, while Western participants focus more on focal objects in isolation.¹² These are not differences in what people report seeing, but differences in neural activity patterns themselves—evidence that cultural values and practices shape the very mechanisms of perception.

Cultural differences extend to fundamental aspects of self-concept and social cognition. Brain imaging studies have found that when people from individualistic Western cultures think about themselves, different neural patterns emerge than when people from more collectivist cultures engage in self-reflection.¹³ Even our most basic sense of identity appears neurologically influenced by the cultural frameworks we inhabit. Similarly, emotional processing shows cultural variation; the brain regions activated when viewing emotional expressions vary substantially between cultural groups.¹⁴

These findings demonstrate the brain’s remarkable plasticity—its capacity to organize and reorganize itself in response to the environments and practices we engage with. Perhaps nowhere is this plasticity more dramatically evident than in research on contemplative practices like meditation. Studies of long-term meditators have documented measurable changes in brain regions associated with attention, emotional regulation, and compassion.¹⁵ These are not fleeting effects but enduring transformations that reflect long-term commitment to sustained meditation practice. The brain is not a fixed biological organ that determines our behavior, but a dynamic system continuously shaped by experience, and by culture.

If particular cultural practices can induce such profound neural changes, what might this suggest about collective cultural evolution and brain function? The emerging cross-cultural evidence demonstrates that observed neural patterns are intimately connected to the values, practices, and social structures of the cultures that shaped them. The brain activity associated with prejudice in WEIRD populations may, for instance, reflect neural adaptations to societies with particular histories of racial injustices and segregation. The patterns of adolescent brain development observed in Western studies may be responses to specific educational systems and cultural expectations of youth, rather than universal trajectories of brain development that characterize all adolescents.

This understanding reframes what neuroscientific findings can tell us. Rather than revealing timeless truths about fixed human nature, they may be showing us how brains adapt to particular social milieus. They are, in a sense, mirrors reflecting back the cultures that produced them. If culture varies across geography, shaping brains differently in different places, might culture also vary across time? Might the neural patterns observable today represent not hard-wired features of human biology, but temporary adaptations to humanity’s current stage of development, a stage that is itself in transition?

HUMANITY IN AN AGE OF TRANSITION

The Bahá’í writings offer a framework for understanding human history as fundamentally developmental, viewing humanity as passing through distinct stages of collective maturation. This perspective suggests that the behaviors, thought patterns, and perhaps even brain activity characteristic of our current era may be temporary expressions of a civilization still in the process of maturing. While this framework is rooted in Bahá’í teachings, it offers a perspective that may prove useful to anyone seeking to reconcile scientific findings about human nature with aspirations for human transformation.

Writing nearly a century ago, Shoghi Effendi described humanity’s historical trajectory in explicitly developmental terms: “The long ages of infancy and childhood, through which the human race had to pass, have receded into the background. Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood. Then will the human race reach that stature of ripeness which will enable it to acquire all the powers and capacities upon which its ultimate development must depend.”¹⁶

Just as individuals pass through distinct developmental stages, each characterized by particular capacities, needs, and patterns of behavior, the Bahá’í writings describe humanity as undergoing a parallel collective process. The turbulence of our current era, from this perspective, reflects not the permanent condition of human nature but the particular challenges of a transitional moment. In this view, the prejudices, conflicts, and destructive patterns of behavior that seem so intractable today are to be understood as vestiges of an earlier stage of development, persisting even as new capacities begin to emerge. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá frames this transition in terms of evolving requirements: “Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities. New bounties, perfect bestowals, are awaiting and already descending upon him. The gifts and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient during the adolescence of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the requirements of its maturity.”¹⁷

This view of history is an inherently teleological one—it suggests that human civilization has direction and purpose, moving toward the realization of humanity’s highest potential. The chaos and suffering of the present are not random. They reflect our difficulty in letting go of patterns of life that once served humanity, but now hamper it. New forms of organization, new ways of relating, new capacities for cooperation and unity are struggling to be born even as older patterns resist dissolution. This framework helps make sense of a world that seems simultaneously to be falling apart and coming together, disintegrating and integrating, in a process that is as painful as it is hopeful, precisely because it is transformative.

If humanity is indeed undergoing such a transition, what does this imply for culture? The Universal House of Justice describes a process of cultural evolution already underway:

Propelled by forces generated both within and outside the Bahá’í community, the peoples of the earth can be seen to be moving from divergent directions, closer and closer to one another, towards what will be a world civilization so stupendous in character that it would be futile for us to attempt to imagine it today. As this centripetal movement of populations accelerates across the globe, some elements in every culture, not in accord with the teachings of the Faith, will gradually fall away, while others will be reinforced. By the same token, new elements of culture will evolve over time as people hailing from every human group, inspired by the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, give expression to patterns of thought and action engendered by His teachings.¹⁸

This passage reveals a crucial insight; culture is relative not only across geography, but also across time. Human cultures are not static repositories of tradition but dynamic systems undergoing transformation. Elements of culture that reflect disunity, prejudice, dominance, and division—patterns built into the social structures and systems of earlier stages—are gradually being recognized as obsolete. New patterns reflecting emerging understandings of human oneness and interdependence are taking shape. If the brain is indeed shaped by culture, and if culture is evolving as humanity matures, then the patterns of brain activity neuroscience currently observes may themselves prove to be subject to transformation over time.

Within this framework, neuroscientific findings take on new meaning. When research identifies brain activity associated with prejudice, it may be documenting not an immutable feature of human nature, but the neural signature of cultures built on division and othering, cultures that are products of humanity’s childhood. When studies show that romantic love activates the same neural pathways as addiction, they may be revealing how brains in our current cultural moment process connection through frameworks shaped by consumerism and instant gratification. When adolescent brain development follows certain trajectories in Western research contexts, those patterns may reflect the specific educational systems, cultural expectations, parenting approaches, and social structures of societies that are themselves in transition to maturity, rather than universal laws of brain development.

The Universal House of Justice frames humanity’s current moment as one of approaching maturity: “Humanity, it is the firm conviction of every follower of Bahá’u’lláh, is approaching today the crowning stage in a millennia-long process which has brought it from its collective infancy to the threshold of maturity—a stage that will witness the unification of the human race.”¹⁹ In this view, neuroscientific findings can be understood as snapshots in time rather than final—as descriptions of how brains function in humanity’s collective adolescence, not as declarations of immutable human nature. Perhaps the brains of youth in future generations will mature more rapidly when nurtured through spiritual and moral education that cultivates latent capacities from an early age. Perhaps romantic love will no longer activate the same neural pathways as addiction, but will engage entirely different regions that reflect the profound significance of human connection. And perhaps, in a global society that fully embraces the oneness of mankind, our brains will no longer be conditioned to react to in-group and out-group distinctions in fear-based ways, but will instead reflect ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s counsel: “Cleanse ye your eyes, so that ye behold no man as different from yourselves. See ye no strangers; rather see all men as friends.”²⁰

The plasticity of the brain, its demonstrated responsiveness to cultural practices and social conditions, suggests that as humanity’s collective culture evolves toward greater expressions of oneness, justice, cooperation, and interdependence, brain function may well evolve in response. The implications of these principles for human behavior are profound. As we develop “capacities that can scarcely be glimpsed at present,”²¹ the patterns of brain activity associated with those capacities may bear little resemblance to those observed by science today.

TOWARD AN INTEGRATED UNDERSTANDING

These possibilities raise important questions about how we should interpret scientific findings in light of humanity’s historical trajectory. The progressive nature of science is fundamental to how we should understand any scientific finding. All research, whether from neuroscience or from particle physics, represents a snapshot in time—our best current understanding given the available methods, technologies, and conceptual frameworks. What we know today according to any body of knowledge will inevitably be refined, expanded, or revised as new evidence emerges and new questions are asked. This is not a weakness of science—on the contrary, it is its greatest strength: its capacity for self-correction and continuous, iterative progress. Neuroscience is no exception. Current findings in the field reflect the populations studied, the cultural contexts of researchers and subjects, the methodologies and tools available to us, and the interpretive lenses through which data are viewed. Recognizing this provisional character of scientific knowledge invites us to hold even the most compelling findings with an appropriate level of epistemic humility.

This progressive view of science is consistent with the historical framework through which modern neuroscience can be viewed that we explored earlier. Current neuroscientific findings can be understood as describing how brains function during humanity’s collective adolescence, reflective of the cultures, values, assumptions, and social structures that characterize the civilization within which we are currently embedded. This is not to dismiss the validity of current neuroscientific research, or to imply that current findings are incorrect—they are correct within the context they are generated. Instead, this view simply contextualizes them within a larger historical arc. It is important to note that this framework is interpretive rather than predictive. It does not claim to know precisely how brains will change in the future. We cannot observe today what neural patterns will characterize a mature civilization. Rather, it offers a lens for understanding current findings as reflections of a particular historical moment, inviting us to hold them with appropriate humility about their permanence. Understanding ourselves as a species in transition, capable of transformation and moving toward maturity, changes how we interpret scientific findings about the brain. It offers a framework that takes into account both our biological reality and spiritual possibility, suggesting that how our biology functions today need not constrain possibilities for humanity’s future.

This integrated perspective highlights the complementary roles that science and religion play in understanding human nature. Science makes descriptive statements that document and describe what currently is. Neuroscience tells us how brains currently function, what patterns of neural activity correlate with particular behaviors, and how cognitive and emotional processes unfold in the populations studied. These descriptive insights are invaluable, revealing the mechanisms through which culture, experience, and biology interact to shape human thought and behavior. But descriptive knowledge, however detailed, cannot on its own tell us what humans ought to become or what latent capacities might yet be developed. Science describes our present behavior, but it cannot tell us how we ought to behave.

Religion, by contrast, makes normative statements by articulating a vision of human potential and calling forth our latent and unrealized capacities. The spiritual teachings of the world’s great faiths have historically impelled processes of moral and social transformation, challenging people to transcend limited conceptions of self and to develop virtues and capacities that enable more mature patterns of relationship and social organization. As ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reminds us, humanity must develop “new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities” suited to its emerging maturity. This normative dimension, the vision of what humanity can (and must) become, drives the cultural evolution that may, in turn, shape future patterns of brain function. This integrated understanding offers more than simply intellectual coherence. It reshapes our sense of possibility and our approach to the work of building a more unified world.

Heruy Aregawi Gebremariam, ፀበል (Tsebel), Acrylic on canvas 40.6 cm x 50.8 cm, heruyart.com. ፀበል (Tsebel) means “holy water” in Ge’ez, an ancient Ethiopian language.

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF POSSIBILITY

The understanding that human nature is malleable rather than fixed has profound implications for how we understand ourselves and our collective future. When neuroscientific findings are interpreted deterministically as unequivocal “proof” of hardwired traits, they can diminish our sense of what transformation is possible. Yet when situated within a teleological understanding of human history, these same findings reveal something different: not permanent features of our biology, but reflections of humanity’s current stage of maturation.

This framework invites us to approach neuroscientific findings with both humility and hope. Humility, in recognizing the limitations of research conducted primarily within Western populations and the provisional nature of all scientific knowledge. Hope, in understanding that the brain activity associated with prejudice, violence, rebellion, or other aspects of humanity’s lower nature need not represent unchangeable biological destiny. This is not to suggest that humanity’s lower nature will entirely disappear—as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains, the dual nature of human beings is intrinsic to our existence in the contingent world. Rather, as spiritual and cultural evolution take place, humanity’s higher nature may increasingly predominate, and become reflected in neural patterns that manifest this shift. Current patterns of brain activity identified and described by neuroscience are real, but they reflect cultures built on division, conflict, and instant gratification, cultures that are themselves undergoing transformation. As humanity develops greater capacities for unity, justice, selflessness, and cooperation, it is quite possible that brain function will adapt in ways we cannot yet fully imagine.

What does it mean to live consciously in such an age of transition? The worldwide Bahá’í community, alongside many like-minded collaborators, is engaged in a systematic process of learning about spiritual and social transformation through educational programs that cultivate moral capacities in young people, efforts to improve the material and social conditions of a community, and contributions to the prevalent discourses of society. All of this work proceeds from the basic conviction that humanity’s latent capacities can be cultivated through conscious, collective effort towards processes of spiritual and material education. Yet there is much to learn, and Bahá’ís are laboring alongside others in wider society, drawing on insights from every relevant field of knowledge, including the natural and social sciences. These fields are tasked with the difficult undertaking of describing reality even as we actively work to transform it, creating a dynamic relationship between understanding what currently is, while fostering the realization of humanity’s highest aspirations. The challenge, then, is learning how to integrate insights from diverse domains in ways that neither dismiss the scientific findings of our time, nor accept deterministic interpretations that constrain our vision of human possibility. The civilization we aim to build cannot be fully imagined by any human mind today, and yet we can work consciously toward it, sustained by the understanding that who we are today need not limit who we can become tomorrow.

By The Bahá'í World

The transformative processes that were advancing in the Bahá’í world also found expression in the further development of the Bahá’í administrative order. The responsiveness of Bahá’í administration to the rapid developments in the Faith reflect one of its vital characteristics: “Even as a living organism, it has coded within it the capacity to accommodate higher and higher degrees of complexity, in terms of structures and processes, relationships and activities, as it evolves under the guidance of the Universal House of Justice.”¹

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In describing the profound implications of the principle of the oneness of humanity, Shoghi Effendi wrote: “It does not constitute merely the enunciation of an ideal, but stands inseparably associated with an institution adequate to embody its truth, demonstrate its validity, and perpetuate its influence.”² For much of the twentieth century, Bahá’ís endeavored to bring into being the foundational elements of this institution—a new administrative system—with the conviction that it represents the nucleus and pattern of an emerging global order. The fundamental principles of the Bahá’í administrative order were revealed by Bahá’u’lláh and have been progressively elaborated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice.

The elected structures of the administrative order initially consisted only of Local Spiritual Assemblies, and, soon after, National Spiritual Assemblies. By 1963, the Bahá’í Faith had become sufficiently large and widespread, with 56 National Spiritual Assemblies, to hold the first election of the Universal House of Justice. By the twelfth election in 2018, there were 173 National Assemblies, reflecting the dramatic growth and geographic spread of the Faith in the preceding century.

In addition to elected councils, the appointed institutions of the Faith were mandated with stimulating and supporting the efforts of the community, facilitating its healthy development, and ensuring the flow of insights and experience from the international level to the grassroots. Bahá’u’lláh appointed four distinguished believers as Hands of the Cause of God. The appointment of individuals as Hands of the Cause continued through the lifetime of Shoghi Effendi and came to a close with his passing. Today, the appointed arm of the Bahá’í administrative order comprises the International Teaching Centre, the Continental Boards of Counsellors, and Auxiliary Board members and their assistants.

THE SERIES OF GLOBAL PLANS

The Bahá’í administrative system as a whole evolved to enable institutions to support and cultivate learning and to allow for new insights and experience at the grassroots to appropriately be shared for the benefit of other communities. As the institute process gained in strength in various parts of the world, it began to give rise to “a culture which promotes a way of thinking, studying, and acting, in which all consider themselves as treading a common path of service—supporting one another and advancing together, respectful of the knowledge that each one possesses at any given moment,” wrote the House of Justice. Speaking of this emerging culture, the House of Justice continued, “And therein lie the dynamics of an irrepressible movement.”³ Where such dynamics were present, Bahá’í institutions had the opportunity to learn how to more effectively nurture human potential. Terms such as “facilitate,” “accompany,” “support,” “encourage,” “empower,” and “channel” came to define the work of the administration of the Faith at the grassroots.

The “dynamics of an irrepressible movement” became more pronounced in small settings, such as villages, neighborhoods, and small pockets within them. A concentration of activities in a relatively small geographic area could have a pronounced impact on the attitudes, orientation, and daily activities of a village or neighborhood. This, combined with the participation of inhabitants in the institute process, fueled a process of individual and collective transformation, manifesting in various ways—for example, greater unity, trust, and consideration in a community; a decrease in crime rates and drug abuse; a far greater weight being given to the education of girls as well as their participation in collective decision-making; and the amelioration of tensions between previously opposing groups.

What occurred in all such settings was the shifting of decision-making processes closer to the ground, where activities were occurring among groups of families and small nuclei of friends. A remarkable pattern of spiritual empowerment and social change began to emerge. Such developments, most notably the progressive decentralization of decision-making to enable the participation of people in greater numbers in the spiritual development of their communities, point to the ability of the administrative order to adapt to changing circumstances and to evolve in response to the exigencies of growth. To further stimulate and coordinate grassroots activity, the Universal House of Justice formalized a new institution in 1997 at the regional level: Regional Bahá’í Councils. By 2021, the number of Regional Councils had grown to 228 in no fewer than 60 national communities. Regional Councils followed the advancement of clusters within their jurisdiction, and supported their further development.

In growing, vibrant local communities, the institution of the Local Spiritual Assembly was able to mature further and evolve. In towns and villages where the number of those participating constituted a substantial percentage of a population, Local Assemblies assumed a more prominent role, not only within the Bahá’í community, but also in the wider society. They began to deliberate on the well-being of the entire local population and came to be seen as a source of moral insight.

The influence of the transformation occurring worldwide at all levels of the community and the development of its administrative affairs had implications for the Faith’s international institutions. At the Bahá’í World Centre, the historic formation in 2005 of the International Board of Trustees of Ḥuqúqu’lláh, with branches spread throughout the globe, marked the further development of an institution that was created by Bahá’u’lláh to foster the prosperity of humankind. Several other entities were created to support various major aspects of the work of the Faith, including the Office of Temples and Sites in 2011, the Office of Public Discourse in 2012, and the Office for the Development of Administrative Systems in 2014. Additionally, after several decades of experience following efforts in social and economic development, the House of Justice established in 2018 a new world-embracing institution: the Bahá’í International Development Organization.

Internationally, the number of Continental Counsellors and Auxiliary Board members increased from 81 in 1995 to 90 in 2020 and from 990 in 1995 to 1,134 in 2016, respectively.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PATH TRAVERSED

The Bahá’í administrative order is shaped by a consciousness of the inherent oneness of humankind. This nascent system provides humanity with a new model of governance characterized primarily by reciprocity and cooperation, unity and concord, and trustworthiness and forbearance. It recasts the nature of the relationships among individuals, institutions, and the community.

The experience of recent years offers the first glimmerings of a new dynamic among these three protagonists—for example, of the kind of individual who exercises self-expression responsibly through thoughtful participation in consultation devoted to the common good; of institutions which, appreciating the need for coordinated action channeled toward fruitful ends, aim not to control, but to nurture and guide; and of communities that work to sustain an environment of unity and mutual support, where the powers of the individual under the guidance of institutions are harmonized into a powerful collective movement. A new warmth and a new life have come to characterize the relationships among the individual, the institutions, and the community, and a profound, transformative power existing in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh is expressed in fuller measure.

From the grassroots to the international level, then, relationships among these three protagonists in the life of the Bahá’í community are being recast, in stark contrast to those that predominate in many societies, where, too often, the citizen clamors for freedom, the body politic claims precedence, and institutions demand submission, locking all three actors in an ultimately futile struggle for power.

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Almost a century and a half ago—against a backdrop of feuding monarchs, far-reaching empires, and gathering storms of political and social change—Bahá’u’lláh declared that humanity was approaching its collective maturity, which would usher in an era of lasting peace. However, the patterns of governance and ingrained relationships among the peoples and nations of His time were not capable of achieving such a vision. “The winds of despair,” He wrote, “are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective.”⁴

The Bahá’í administrative order—an expression of the “wondrous System” designed by Bahá’u’lláh—though relatively nascent, is demonstrating its capacity to channel the energies of millions of individuals into the weaving of a new social fabric.

By The Bahá'í World

Every society wishes for the well-being of its younger generations and is challenged to provide the knowledge, wisdom, and support necessary for youth to navigate the world they inherit, and to live meaningful lives of accomplishment.

Despite the extraordinary advancements made over the last decades, youth everywhere face an unprecedented constellation of social forces. The convergence of these forces has resulted in a bewildering landscape: the accelerating threat of climate change and its catastrophic consequences; the enervating effects of extreme materialism; the rise in youth radicalization; mass migrations of young people fleeing insecurity and war or seeking economic opportunity, often under harrowing and heartbreaking conditions; the depletion of the youth population in certain societies; the high rates of unemployment and poverty; the normalization and legalization of drug use and the rise in substance abuse and addiction; the proliferation and easy accessibility of pornography online and the impact on sexual violence and the degradation of the human being, especially women and girls; a mental health crisis affecting the young in many countries; the sophisticated networks of underground slavery that exploit vulnerable populations for economic gain; the numbness engendered by violence in the media; and the nascent and poorly understood effects of social media, virtual worlds, and artificial intelligence—these are but a sample of the phenomena that those growing up today must, in one form or another, navigate.

Under no illusion about the state of the world, the Bahá’í community has sought to create environments that can nurture and support youth from every background, through the various stages of their lives, and can aid them to contribute to the betterment of society. Its experience has confirmed that in youth lie the seeds of profound social transformation. In vast numbers of young people, the Bahá’í community has encountered a limitless well of optimism and hope and of aspirations for a just and unified world. By 2021, a dynamic, growing movement of youth was emerging to take its place at the forefront of social change—youth who “have no ambition except to revive the world, to ennoble its life, and regenerate its peoples.”¹

The following is a brief review of some current programs aimed at the spiritual and intellectual empowerment of young people—Bahá’ís and those who are increasingly drawn to the vision in the Bahá’í teachings of a more just and unified world. While such efforts are modest and nascent, they offer a glimmer of real hope for the future and are explored here in that spirit.

COURSES OF THE TRAINING INSTITUTE

With the establishment of the institute process, and its refinement over many years of experience, the Bahá’í community has developed a powerful means by which to imbue young people with a strong sense of purpose to take ownership of their own spiritual and intellectual growth and to direct their energies towards constructive social transformation. In its approach, the institute process helps young people apply the knowledge they glean through study of sacred writings to their local circumstances, enabling them to take practical steps in applying spiritual principles to the betterment of their communities. Often, youth go through the sequence of courses offered by the training institute together, at times in intensive settings that enable them to progress rapidly and apply what they are learning in acts of service.

Growing numbers of youth have been at the forefront of coordinating community-building efforts in virtually every type of setting. Especially powerful has been the youth’s part in nurturing those younger than themselves. With the training provided through the institute process and a system of support and accompaniment, youth have become, in large numbers, the teachers of children’s classes and the animators, or facilitators, of junior youth groups. The Bahá’í community has begun to witness the potential of youth to create a movement of positive change, albeit still at an early stage, characterized by love and service, and to bring along with them the next generation. Where such an advance at the level of culture has been experienced, the ripple effects on the wider community have been palpable, impacting families and the community in various important ways, including the reduction of destructive behaviors, the empowerment of whole families to contribute to the progress of their community, and the increased value placed in a whole community on knowledge and education.

THE JUNIOR YOUTH SPIRITUAL EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM

In the early stages of the 25-year-long series of plans, as a result of witnessing the idealism and energy of so many young people, the Bahá’í community began to give focused attention to the moral and spiritual development of adolescents through the establishment of a program for the spiritual empowerment of 12-to-15-year-olds, referred to as “junior youth.” Targeted by propaganda of all kinds, junior youth can be especially vulnerable to negative influences and destructive peer pressures. Society may view this population as problematic or self-absorbed. However, the experience of the Bahá’í community has demonstrated in junior youth a host of positive characteristics that, through education and an empowering environment, can be cultivated, including altruism, an acute sense of justice, an eagerness to care for the planet, and a desire to understand life’s purpose and contribute to creating a better world.

The junior youth spiritual empowerment program emerged out of a learning process of Bahá’í and Bahá’í-inspired agencies aimed at providing youth with the opportunity to explore themes and concepts and to engage in activities that enable them to have greater agency in shaping their destiny and contributing meaningfully to social change. The content of the courses explores themes from a Bahá’í perspective, but not in a mode of religious instruction. As the program spread worldwide, it demonstrated an ability to help its participants analyze the constructive and destructive forces operating in society and recognize the influence these forces exert on their thoughts and actions. The program aims to enhance certain important capacities such as spiritual perception, powers of expression, and moral sensibilities. The emerging strong sense of purpose, intertwined with acts of service, unites the fulfillment of individual potential with the advancement of society.

At the time of this writing, the program is being carried out in more than 170 countries. The training course “Releasing the Powers of Junior Youth,” which raises up animators of junior youth groups, has been completed by over 154,000 individuals around the world, and over 255,000 junior youth are participating in the program. It is estimated that the number of junior youth who have completed at least one text is some one million.

The considerable demand for the program experienced worldwide has prompted the establishment of a network of sites for the dissemination of learning in all continents, some 60 of which are currently in operation to provide training to coordinators of the program and help systematize and diffuse knowledge accruing in diverse contexts.

The response from society has been noteworthy. “Only the capacity of the Bahá’í community,” the Universal House of Justice wrote in 2010, “limits the extent of its response to the demand for the program by schools and civic groups.”²

PREPARATION FOR SOCIAL ACTION

Preparation for Social Action (PSA) is one of the educational programs developed in the context of social and economic development efforts inspired by the Bahá’í teachings. The program seeks to raise up individuals of progressively higher proficiency within a region, capable of applying scientific knowledge together with spiritual principles to advance particular processes of community life related, for example, to health, food production and security, education, and the environment.

The program builds the capabilities of participants to become promoters of community well-being. Groups of youth around the world study the PSA curriculum in informal settings over a period of two to three years. As participants advance through the program, they are able to undertake a wide range of initiatives to address the needs of their villages and towns—initiatives that arise out of participants’ growing understanding of their social reality.

PSA emerged out of a long-term learning process that began in the late 1970s, when Fundación para la Aplicación y Enseñanza de la Ciencia (FUNDAEC) undertook an action-research initiative in partnership with the population of the Norte del Cauca region in Colombia. The aim was to generate knowledge that would assist the region’s rural population, especially its youth, to withstand accelerating forces of social disintegration and the overwhelming drivers of rural-to-urban migration. The aims of the learning process were not only to help young people to find viable ways to stay in their villages and towns, but also to raise their capacity to contribute to the progress and prosperity of their communities.

From the outset, the foundational principles of FUNDAEC’s efforts—the principles of the oneness of humanity and of justice—were explicit. It was the conviction of FUNDAEC that participation of rural populations could only meaningfully be achieved if the people themselves were able to choose and walk their own path of development. Such an approach was, at that time, in contrast to many of the prevalent approaches in the development field—approaches that generally involved local populations participating in plans designed by organizations from the outside.

FUNDAEC’s educational materials were gradually developed in the context of growing experience on the ground. Given the high academic level of the curriculum, it was eventually accredited as a formal secondary program known as Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (SAT). One of the remarkable achievements of SAT was that the educational outcomes of those in rural areas were on par with those from urban centers. In fact, SAT participants scored some of the highest marks in their region on state exams. Perhaps more significantly, though, the program enabled its participants to dedicate their new knowledge and skills, and their time and effort, to the development of their own communities. “SAT students learn for life; others learn for exams” became a sentiment associated with the program.

In the early 2000s, in response to a growing interest in the SAT materials by a number of organizations around the world, FUNDAEC revised a portion of the SAT curriculum to create the PSA program. The 25 units that make up the program help participants cultivate capabilities in three categories: moral capabilities, capabilities related to forms of knowledge (the sciences, mathematics, history, and language), and capabilities connected with service to the community. Participants begin learning about and engaging in different processes of community life such as those related to health, food, education, and the environment.

Since its emergence in 2006, PSA has been implemented in some 20 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, reaching more than 17,000 participants. A number of other countries are taking initial steps to introduce the program.

YOUTH CONFERENCES

With a growing movement of youth on every continent, the Universal House of Justice announced in 2013 plans for 95 youth conferences around the world, with an additional 19 conferences added shortly after to accommodate the large number of young people wishing to participate.

Open to all people between the ages of 15 and 30, the series of conferences catalyzed a global youth movement arising from the impact of the programs of training institutes and other educational initiatives aimed at their spiritual and intellectual development. Over a four-month period, more than 80,000 participants attended. An additional cohort of some 100,000 participated in follow-up gatherings.

The conference program enabled participants to explore such themes as the characteristics inherent to the period of youth, the historical contributions of young people to the transformation of society, the responsibilities of the present generation of youth, the society-building power of the Bahá’í teachings, and the importance of faith and tenacity to a life of service.

The conferences led “to an inclusive and ever-expanding conversation” and a “pattern of action of far-reaching consequence regarding how to live a coherent life and be an agent of spiritual and social transformation.”³

THE INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN GLOBAL PROSPERITY

Another important development in the period under review has been the efforts made by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity (ISGP), an educational and research organization established in 1999. ISGP provides a forum for the exploration of concepts and the analysis of processes that give shape to humanity’s search for global peace and prosperity.

Alongside its research initiatives, ISGP offers annual seminars for university students. The seminars seek to “raise the consciousness of youth about the importance of engaging in action and discourse directed towards social change” and to help them “understand and analyze the culture in which they are immersed as well as the content of the university courses they are studying.” Ultimately, ISGP has created a program that aids university students to “assume ownership of their education” and “assist them in their efforts to acquire the kind of knowledge that will enable them to live fruitful, productive and meaningful lives.”⁴

Encouraged to see in education a more expansive purpose than what is commonly promoted, the students are challenged to think beyond superficial or simplistic conceptions of social change, of science, of religion, and of the purpose of education itself. In addition, students explore how the spiritual and material dimensions of life reinforce each other, especially at such an important juncture of their lives as they choose their professions and determine a path for their future. Throughout the four years of study, youth also review different aspects of the efforts undertaken by the Bahá’í community, explore some of the fundamental concepts and principles that sustain its work, and reflect on ways to raise their own capacity to contribute at higher and higher levels of sophistication and effectiveness to the betterment of humanity.

In 2006, 30 participants attended the very first ISGP seminar for undergraduate students, which was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The seminars have since been extended to more than 50 units, serving over 100 countries in Africa, the Arab region, Australasia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and South and Southeast Asia. To date some 8,000 youth have participated in at least the first year of the program and around 1,700 have completed all four years. In 2008, ISGP also began to offer a seminar for graduates and young professionals, which has now extended to five regions: Australasia, Europe, North America, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia—and over 1,500 individuals have attended.

YOUTH IN THE VANGUARD

When viewed together, the educational programs highlighted here—the training institute, the junior youth spiritual empowerment program, Preparation for Social Action, and the seminars offered by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity—all seek to foster the spiritual and intellectual capacities of young people. These include, for instance, the capacities to independently investigate reality, to consult with others in seeking a more well-rounded and precise understanding of the world around them, to think clearly and in a nuanced manner, to develop their powers of expression, and to work together in efforts aimed at the progress of their communities. These capacities, and many others developed through participation in the programs described, underpin a host of other initiatives to support the academic success of young people and to fix their footsteps firmly on a path of productive work and of service to humanity.

In the years ahead it is anticipated that, against a backdrop of turbulence and social unrest in societies throughout the world, these educational programs will assist youth to navigate the critical years of their lives and to channel their aspirations for a better world into meaningful action. The Universal House of Justice, ever confident in the potentialities of youth to build the world anew, looks to them “to expand the horizons of what the Bahá’í community can accomplish.⁵

By The Bahá'í World

By the closing decade of the twentieth century, the Bahá’í Faith was the second-most widespread religion in the world, with adherents in virtually every country and territory on the planet.

As the community developed and spread geographically, Bahá’ís, in nearly every land, promoted fundamental spiritual principles: the oneness of the human race, the equality of women and men, the eradication of all forms of prejudice, the harmony of science and religion, freedom from imitation and superstition, and the need for universal education, to name a few. To the best of their ability and available resources, they gave practical expression to these principles in vastly different societies and labored to build communities liberated from the barriers that have historically divided humanity.

As their numbers and resources increased, Bahá’ís were further able to direct their energies toward the betterment of the world. They initiated hundreds of social and economic development projects in areas ranging from health to education to the advancement of women. They championed the cause of peace on the international stage through the United Nations Offices of the Bahá’í International Community. And around the world, they were vigorous promoters of interfaith dialogue.

In 1992, some 27,000 people attended the second Bahá’í World Congress in New York City, enabling the community, by then more than five million people, to appreciate the extent to which the Faith had grown and flourished in just over a century.

What had been accomplished to that point was, in many respects, remarkable. Under the stewardship of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and, subsequently, Shoghi Effendi, a relatively small and courageous band of Bahá’ís had established communities around the planet and laid the basis of a unique network of institutions. By the second half of the century, periods of large-scale growth in certain parts of the world revealed the degree to which many people and populations found a reflection of their highest aspirations in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh.

As the new millennium approached, there was every indication that growing numbers would see in the Bahá’í Faith hope for the future of humanity and would dedicate themselves to laying the foundations of the world civilization envisioned in the Bahá’í writings. Yet, rapid growth had raised substantial questions for which there were no clear answers at the time: How could the Bahá’í world—in response to the great receptivity it was encountering virtually everywhere—learn to establish communities that would continuously grow in size and embrace people of all walks of life? At the same time, how could such communities learn to create the conditions in which more and more people would be empowered to apply Bahá’í principles and teachings to their individual development as well as for the progress of their communities?

A TURNING POINT

The year 1996 would prove to be pivotal. With the launching of a series of global plans, the Universal House of Justice set the Bahá’í community on a 25-year journey of learning in action that would enable it to address the questions before it and lead to hard-earned development and maturation.

Over that time, there were six global plans in sequence: a Four Year Plan in 1996, a One Year Plan in 2000, and four subsequent Five Year Plans, ending in 2021. Each plan built upon the achievements of the previous plan and opened new horizons in the next.

No one, at the outset, could have anticipated just how profound the global community’s transformation would be or the many insights that its experience would yield. By the close of the period, a community had emerged whose boundaries were more porous, whose understanding of the implications of oneness and justice were deeper, and whose conception of the power of religion to transform individuals and communities was more profound. Its capacity to take action and to learn in systematic ways corresponded with a rise in humility born of the recognition that it aspires to achieve something that humanity does not yet know how to build.

THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY

The series of plans began by calling on the Bahá’í world to focus on its own growth and development and on strengthening its ability to share and apply the Bahá’í teachings for the betterment of the world. This focus proved highly generative. As the community advanced and gained new insights and capacities, it was able to apply them to other areas of activity oriented toward social transformation.

The period began with the establishment of a new institution of learning—the training institute. Over time, Bahá’ís developed and progressively refined the institute’s unique system of education that has enabled millions of people to study the sacred writings in small groups and to take practical actions that help advance both the community and the wider society. The institute enabled the community to vastly multiply core activities that had proven fundamental to serving the spiritual needs of a population. In places where such activities were open and accessible to all, these, together with other activities, began to be woven into an increasingly rich pattern of community life. The Bahá’í community came to see and describe its efforts more explicitly and clearly in terms of community building.

Whereas prior to 1996, many of the largest local Bahá’í communities comprised several hundred individuals with varying degrees of participation in community life, by the close of the period, the largest communities were learning to integrate and work with tens of thousands of people connected in varying degrees to community-building processes.

Growth, it should be plainly stated, has never been an end in and of itself. Bahá’ís see in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh a path towards a global civilization unlike anything humanity has been able to achieve at earlier stages in its collective life. Their own institutions and communities are early contributions in humanity’s efforts to establish the foundations of that civilization. And the spread of the Bahá’í Faith has, in accordance with Bahá’u’lláh’s explicit admonitions, always been through peaceful means and free of any form of coercion, proselytization, or manipulation. One’s sacred duty, Bahá’u’lláh taught, is to see with one’s own eyes and to pursue truth and reality proactively.

The aim of expansion, then, has been to create a pathway for people who believe in the oneness of humankind to work together for a world which reflects that fundamental principle. How could Bahá’í communities more effectively open and widen that pathway?

In 2010, just past the midway point of the series of plans, the Universal House of Justice described the relationship between the growth of the community and its ability to contribute to social transformation:

What should be apparent is that, if the Administrative Order is to serve as a pattern for future society, then the community within which it is developing must not only acquire capacity to address increasingly complex material and spiritual requirements but also become larger and larger in size. How could it be otherwise. A small community, whose members are united by their shared beliefs, characterized by their high ideals, proficient in managing their affairs and tending to their needs, and perhaps engaged in several humanitarian projects—a community such as this, prospering but at a comfortable distance from the reality experienced by the masses of humanity, can never hope to serve as a pattern for restructuring the whole of society. That the worldwide Bahá’í community has managed to avert the dangers of complacency is a source of abiding joy to us. Indeed, the community has well in hand its expansion and consolidation. Yet, to administer the affairs of teeming numbers in villages and cities around the globe—to raise aloft the standard of Bahá’u’lláh’s World Order for all to see—is still a distant goal.¹

The progress made by the Bahá’í world after 1996 enabled it to better appreciate how, as its resources increased, it could contribute to the civilization-building process envisioned in the Bahá’í writings. It came to understand this contribution as having two dimensions: the growth and development of the community itself, and its involvement in society at large.

INVOLVEMENT IN SOCIETY AT LARGE

By the second half of the series of plans, the Universal House of Justice encouraged the Bahá’í community to draw on the many insights and capacities it had gained in community building and to apply these to its efforts to contribute to social transformation more broadly.

Already for many decades, the Bahá’í community had undertaken numerous initiatives in the arena of social and economic development. With an enhanced capacity at the grassroots and with clarity about the conceptual framework governing Bahá’í endeavors, efforts in social action multiplied around the world.

Initiatives of fixed duration—for example, to preserve and revive the physical environment, promote community health, or enhance literacy and education—became a natural outgrowth of community-building processes in neighborhoods and villages. Such initiatives became a regular feature of Bahá’í educational programs for youth and junior youth. In many dynamic, outward-looking Bahá’í communities, the active participation of hundreds and thousands of people in efforts to enhance the spiritual and intellectual life of the community was complemented by efforts to address social and material progress. Animating these efforts was a conviction that every population should have ownership of its own development—that development is not something one group does for another.

This conviction shaped the approaches of a growing number of Bahá’í-inspired organizations that initiated programs which were complementary to, integrated with, and mutually supportive of community-building processes at the grassroots. Programs focusing on the moral and spiritual empowerment of junior youth, on the promotion of community schools through teacher training, and on the training of young people as promoters of community well-being flourished. More broadly, the Bahá’í world experienced an efflorescence of activity in areas such as agriculture, education, arts and media, health, the local economy, and the advancement of women.

In parallel with such developments was the growing involvement of Bahá’ís in the broad conversations focused on social well-being and progress. From the workplace or school to the local community, and to the international stage, Bahá’ís sought to make a contribution in the many social spaces where thinking evolves and gives meaning and direction to action in society. Their efforts secured in many societies the trust and friendship of those who, like Bahá’ís, were striving to advance the cause of peace, justice, and social well-being.

Notably, at the international level, the Bahá’í International Community expanded its presence—opening new regional offices in Addis Ababa, Brussels, and Jakarta—and refined and intensified the involvement of its United Nations offices in New York and Geneva in prevalent discourses. Further, scores of National Spiritual Assemblies’ Offices of External Affairs emerged, many of them engaged vigorously in public discourse, making remarkable strides and helping to consolidate the Bahá’í community as a recognized contributor to social progress in their countries. All such efforts were directed at those discourses that have a significant bearing on the well-being of humanity, such as peace, religious coexistence, social cohesion, racial justice, the role of religion in society, and migration.

By seeking to foster unity and consultation; by establishing distinctive consultative spaces for respectful dialogue aimed at consensus and collective understanding; by infusing the often chaotic landscape of discourse with hope; by selflessly contributing human, material, and intellectual resources for the advancement of vital causes; by learning with others in the context of addressing the vital issues of the day—by each of these and other features of Bahá’í participation in discourse, the Bahá’í world witnessed in many societies the power of spiritual principles to effect change. In some societies, meaningful contributions to public discourse helped change the fortunes of the Bahá’í community, lifting it out of obscurity and opening the way for it to offer a greater share to the progress of society.

REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS MADE

Today, the Bahá’í community numbers about eight million. In the progress made over the past quarter century can be found evidence of humanity’s capacity to transcend division and polarization and to give expression to unity, cooperation, and the inherent nobility and goodness of people.

Certain qualities and characteristics have become the ideals toward which this growing community strives and has made progress: a posture of learning; dedication to the long-term process of action and reflection about how to translate the ideals of the Faith into reality; a sustainable and systematic approach to social change; a consciousness of oneness that transcends any sense of “us” and “them”; a long-term effort to create a new pattern of essential social relationships among the individual, the community, and the institutions; a desire to learn with and from people of goodwill everywhere; a spirit of intergenerational cooperation, with young people in many ways at the forefront; a dedication to the spiritual and intellectual development of all children; a commitment to overcoming prejudice; a pursuit of justice in unifying ways; and a perspective that seeks to harmonize faith with reason and religious conviction with scientific truth.

To work toward the realization of such ideals, of course, does not mean that the community has achieved them. Its efforts are, and no doubt will continue to be, a work in progress. The community, explains the Universal House of Justice,

makes no claims to perfection. To uphold high ideals and to have become their embodiment are not one and the same. Myriad are the challenges that lie ahead, and much remains to be learned.… However idealistic the Bahá’í endeavour may appear to some, its deep-seated concern for the good of humankind cannot be ignored. And given that no current arrangement in the world seems capable of lifting humanity from the quagmire of conflict and contention and securing its felicity, why would any … object to the efforts of one group of people to deepen its understanding of the nature of those essential relationships inherent to the common future towards which the human race is being inexorably drawn?²

At this writing, millions inspired by the teachings of the Faith, in a wide range of settings, are participating in grassroots activities that strengthen the spiritual and social fabric of community life. Many are not formally enrolled as Bahá’ís but are increasingly identifying themselves with the Faith’s ideals and exploring its prescription for the world.

A community is emerging that does not divide the world but rather encourages growing numbers of people, of various faiths and of none, to build together the elements of a more just and peaceful society—working, for instance, through its educational system to raise a generation of children whose hearts are free from prejudice and whose spiritual qualities are cultivated together with their rational and scientific faculties.

At the administrative level, the national communities with an elected governing council (National Spiritual Assembly) currently number 174. There are 228 Regional Councils in 61 countries. Nearly 330 training institutes administer a novel system of distance education that enables people to study sacred writings in small groups and to discover practical and meaningful ways to apply spiritual principles to their individual lives and in service to their locality and society.

Of the millions who have participated in at least one of the training institute courses, the majority are women—a startling fact in light of the widespread disparities that continue to define women’s experience throughout most of the world. Women also comprise the majority of those serving in the appointed arm of Bahá’í administration, which includes members of the International Teaching Centre, the Continental Boards of Counsellors, and Auxiliary Board members and their assistants.

Among National Spiritual Assemblies, women make up 42 percent of the membership and 53 percent of their principal executive officers—another significant indicator of movement toward greater equality and a statistic that stands out dramatically when compared with society at large. Nonetheless, the community is keenly aware that the goal of a world in which women and men are regarded as equals in every sphere of society and contribute together to the advancement of civilization is still, as yet, a distant one. There is much that remains to be learned and achieved.

In the area of social and economic development, progress has also been stark. The number of social action initiatives has multiplied from around 2,000 to more than 70,000, most of which are activities of limited duration. Sustained endeavors in social and economic development have increased from around 300 to more than 1,500. The number of Bahá’í-inspired organizations has correspondingly risen to support such efforts, from around 30 to more than 160.

THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

The election of the Universal House of Justice in 1963 was arguably humanity’s first global democratic election. Since that time, the House of Justice has guided the Bahá’í community and ensured its dynamic unity. The flow of its encouragement and guidance was a major feature of the period under review. Through letters, the House of Justice supported the global community, harmonized thought and action, cultivated a stronger orientation toward learning, called on Bahá’ís to adopt a posture of humility, and encouraged them to be courageous in forging new pathways of service and action.

The House of Justice emphasized that development is not something one group does for another. Humanity, it asserted, is on a path toward building a global civilization that is unlike anything known to it today. Every soul, indeed every population, must therefore have the opportunity to contribute to, and benefit from, the lessons learned throughout the planet.

The Bahá’í administrative system evolved to enable the Bahá’í institutions to support and cultivate learning and to allow for new insights and experience at the grassroots to be shared appropriately for the benefit of other communities. A dynamic flow of communication traveled from small pockets and unassuming settings to the regional, national, and international levels, and those insights and approaches that were universally helpful were distilled and shared in a manner that vastly extended the worldwide community’s capacity to learn.

The election of the Universal House of Justice in April 2018 opened a window onto the vast diversity of the Bahá’í community and the distance the global community has traversed. Members of the National Spiritual Assemblies, representing the divers peoples of the world, gathered at the Bahá’í World Centre. The delegates sat side by side as one family. Some arrived after weeks of travel—beginning in remote villages, traveling by foot, by bus, by car, by boat, by plane—to represent their respective national communities. Some came from the major cosmopolitan centers of the planet.

Delegates at the Twelfth International Bahá’í Convention, Haifa, April 2018— a remarkable demonstration of the oneness of humankind

Some represented historically ostracized or oppressed populations. Some were from among the indigenous people of their land. Some were refugees. This most diverse of groupings of the human family was united as one people with shared convictions and aspirations.

————

“The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh over a century and a half ago. “Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.” “So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.” With such evocative images and concepts, He set in motion a process which is releasing humanity’s spiritual potential in ever greater measure. In the series of plans from 1996 to 2021, a community of millions—a cross section of the peoples of the world—took a great leap forward in its efforts to make that vision a reality. Today, the global community stands at the start of yet another series of plans that will carry it 25 years into the future, the scope of another generation.

By Shahrzad Sabet

Shahrzad Sabet is Co-Director of the Center on Modernity in Transition (COMIT) and a Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. A political scientist, her research spans a variety of disciplines including philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and economics. Her current book project proposes a reimagined universalism that reconciles the oneness and the diversity of humankind. She has held positions at Princeton University, the University of Maryland, and Harvard University, where she received her PhD.

Humanity is gripped by a crisis of identity, as various peoples and groups struggle to define themselves, their place in the world, and how they should act. Without a vision of shared identity and common purpose, they fall into competing ideologies and power struggles. Seemingly countless permutations of “us” and “them” define group identities ever more narrowly and in contrast to one another. Over time, this splintering into divergent interest groups has weakened the cohesion of society itself.—The Universal House of Justice¹

The “crisis of identity” described by the Universal House of Justice is one of the defining features of the present moment. Questions of identity and belonging have surged to prominence in recent years, finding expression in virtually every aspect of collective life. As the forces of our decidedly global age challenge the boundaries, both literal and figurative, that define group identities, the secure sense of belonging these identities have traditionally supplied is increasingly frustrated or lost, resulting in confusion, insecurity, conflict, and ever more forceful assertions of difference. Paradoxically, even as the need for a deeply felt sense of human oneness has grown more obvious, categories of “us” and “them” have multiplied and become more salient around the globe.

Confronted with humanity’s crisis of identity, some thinkers have proposed the reimagination of national identity. A newly enlightened and capaciously inclusive form of nationalism, they suggest, can provide a shared context of belonging within which various narrower identities and attachments can be reconciled.² But solutions rooted in national identity, or in other familiar concepts such as liberal democracy, are struggling to resolve the crisis.

From the perspective of the Bahá’í teachings, the solution to our crisis of identity lies in the genuine and deeply felt recognition of human oneness. Specifically, the Bahá’í writings suggest that only a collective identity³ rooted in the oneness of humankind can resolve our present crisis and fundamentally relieve the various long-standing tensions that surround it. The previously cited passage from the Universal House of Justice goes on to elaborate this point:

Rival conceptions about the primacy of a particular people are peddled to the exclusion of the truth that humanity is on a common journey in which all are protagonists. Consider how radically different such a fragmented conception of human identity is from the one that follows from a recognition of the oneness of humanity. In this perspective, the diversity that characterizes the human family, far from contradicting its oneness, endows it with richness. Unity, in its Bahá’í expression, contains the essential concept of diversity, distinguishing it from uniformity. It is through love for all people, and by subordinating lesser loyalties to the best interests of humankind, that the unity of the world can be realized and the infinite expressions of human diversity find their highest fulfilment.⁴

The notions of identity and human oneness reflected in this passage, and indeed throughout the Bahá’í writings, present a radical departure from the way these concepts are frequently understood in contemporary thought and discourse. Many prominent conceptions of our shared humanity, and in particular, those that emerge from the predominant intellectual frameworks of the West, are widely deemed homogenizing. They are also critiqued for being too far removed from the texture of everyday life to hold any relevance for the communities and relationships to which people immediately belong. The Bahá’í teachings offer a different vision. Far from threatening or contradicting the essential diversity of humankind, the Bahá’í writings suggest that a universal human identity is uniquely equipped to ensure the fundamental security and flourishing of our particular (i.e., narrower) identities, communities, and affiliations. This article considers why and how the Bahá’í expression of human oneness resolves both the collective crisis of identity we currently face and the long-assumed tension between the oneness and the diversity of humankind.

HUMANITY’S CRISIS OF IDENTITY: TWO UNDERLYING TENSIONS

It would be helpful to begin by more closely examining the crisis itself. Two long standing tensions, or apparent contradictions, underlie humanity’s crisis of identity and complicate its resolution.

The first tension pertains directly to the nature of traditional group identities⁵ themselves. As the philosopher Martha Nussbaum explains in reference to the two-faced Roman god of duality, collective identities are “Janus-faced”: they are characterized by two contrasting aspects in chronic tension.⁶ On the one hand, our traditional “bounded” identities—that is, identities that include some and exclude others—are deeply susceptible to instability, conflict, and destructiveness. Whether in the dividing lines of contemporary society or in the most catastrophic injustices of human history, collective identities can reveal an exceedingly ugly face. Observing the tensions that surround group identities, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah declares them “horsemen of the apocalypses from apartheid to genocide.”⁷

On the other hand, the diversity embodied in our bounded social identities is vital. At the aggregate level, various forms of diversity are essential to the strength, stability, and flourishing of social systems.⁸ Shared identities, furthermore, bind us together in social and moral enterprises, providing a basis for community, collective action, and mutual support. At a more personal and subjective level, our particular experiences and perspectives constitute important parts of our self-concept as human beings: they legitimately yearn for recognition, inclusion, and expression.

This dual nature of collective identity is also suggested in the Bahá’í writings. Shoghi Effendi, for instance, distinguishes unbridled nationalism from a “sane and legitimate patriotism,”⁹ and the Universal House of Justice describes “a love of one’s country that cannot be manipulated” and that “enriches one’s life.”¹⁰ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá makes this duality more explicit. “[D]ifferences, He writes, “are of two kinds. One is the cause of annihilation and is like the antipathy existing among warring nations and conflicting tribes who seek each other’s destruction … The other kind, which is a token of diversity, is the essence of perfection …”¹¹

These two sides of our traditional bounded identities leave them in a state of chronic tension and instability which has, to date, stubbornly evaded resolution. Social identities are perpetually vulnerable to destructiveness and conflict. And yet, we cannot live without them.

The tension that characterizes bounded identities is amplified by their relationship to forces and movements that are unbounded. Economic globalization in its various forms, the heightened ease of transborder communication, the growing universality of our moral intuitions, the expanding consciousness of human oneness and interdependence more broadly, not to mention the countless interdependencies that propagated a deadly virus across the globe, are all widely thought to threaten the security of our traditional identities and affiliations.¹² Put differently: the legitimate yearning for rootedness and belonging is challenged by the porousness, fluidity, and expanded consciousness of an increasingly global age. The insecurity induced by these “universalizing” forces thus results in a more acutely felt yearning for the sense of rootedness traditional identities provide, as well as in the related impulse to bolster the security of these identities by sharpening the boundaries that define them. In other words, as our shared consciousness of the physical, social, moral, and economic space we inhabit as human beings is stretched to include the entire planet, humanity’s collective ambivalence toward its bounded identities both intensifies and becomes increasingly expressed in a second, broader tension between the universal and the particular—between the pull of bounded identities and attachments, on the one hand, and that of universalist forces and aspirations, on the other. This stubborn tension has led the political philosopher Seyla Benhabib to conclude, “Our fate, as late-modern individuals, is to live caught in the permanent tug of war between the vision of the universal and the attachments to the particular.”¹³

At the heart of humanity’s crisis of identity, therefore, lies a key question: Can humanity’s fundamental oneness be reconciled with its essential diversity? And can such a reconciliation be achieved at the deepest levels of human identity and meaning? The answer proclaimed in the Bahá’í writings, as we have seen, is unequivocally affirmative: it is through the deeply felt recognition of human oneness that the diversity of humankind thrives and finds its highest fulfillment. Why might an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind be uniquely equipped to protect and promote its diversity?

UNIQUE FEATURES OF AN IDENTITY ROOTED IN THE ONENESS OF HUMANKIND

To begin answering this question, I suggest that a collective identity genuinely rooted in the oneness of humankind is qualitatively different than every other social identity because of at least two distinguishing features. These unique features, in turn, enable a universal human identity to stabilize and empower¹⁴ our particular identities in ways that other overarching affiliations—nationality, for example—cannot.

The first feature that distinguishes an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind is rather obviously that it is non-exclusionary. Insofar as human beings and their communities are concerned, an identity genuinely rooted in our common humanity has no bounds of exclusion or parameters of otherness; it literally has no “other.”¹⁵ This stands in contrast to all traditional social identities which, by definition, have outsiders, and are thus inescapably bounded and exclusionary.

I hasten to note that a non-exclusionary human identity need not cast humanity in opposition to non-human life on the planet, nor must it entail a sharp separation of human beings from their physical environment, precluding, for instance, the notion that we share a type of oneness with our ecosystem(s).¹⁶ Indeed, a genuinely non-exclusionary human identity should lead to a deeper appreciation of our broader interdependence, rather than to a destructive anthropocentricism, which is often an expression of the very same attitudes and predispositions that animate the exclusion, oppression, and destruction of human life on the planet.¹⁷

The second distinguishing feature of a genuinely universal human identity pertains to the nature of the commonality on which it is based. Consider that, as scientific studies widely confirm, virtually all other group identities are ultimately socially constructed.¹⁸ This is not to say, of course, that these identities are not real, whether in their objective, material consequences, or in humanity’s subjective experience and valuation of them. It is to observe, rather, that the commonalities in which they are grounded are contingent (i.e., dependent) on a range of social constructs and impermanent socio-historical phenomena, for example, on fluid beliefs about social and biological reality, on the frequently contested details of history, on socially constructed parameters of membership, and tragically, on shared experiences of oppression and injustice.¹⁹ In this sense, then, the contingency of other collective identities is inescapable.

Strikingly, more than a hundred years ago, when the socially constructed nature of humanity’s dividing lines was far from obvious, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made these observations explicit. As he explained, “These boundaries and distinctions are human and artificial, not natural and original.”²⁰ And elsewhere: “Religions, races, and nations are all divisions of man’s making only …”²¹ Indeed, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá elaborated on the inherent contingency and impermanence of the various identities and affiliations that traditionally bind human beings together:

In the contingent world there are many collective centers which are conducive to association and unity between the children of men. For example, patriotism is a collective center; nationalism is a collective center; identity of interests is a collective center; political alliance is a collective center; the union of ideals is a collective center, and the prosperity of the world of humanity is dependent upon the organization and promotion of the collective centers. Nevertheless, all the above institutions are, in reality, the matter and not the substance, accidental and not eternal—temporary and not everlasting. With the appearance of great revolutions and upheavals, all these collective centers are swept away.²²

Drawing on the Bahá’í writings, this article posits that, in contrast to the necessarily contingent basis of all other identities, the basis of a universal human identity need not be socially constructed or contingent. Such an identity, rather, can be rooted in the non-contingent and ultimately investigable reality of human oneness.

This second unique and distinguishing feature of an identity authentically rooted in the oneness of humankind I will call its non-contingency. Specifically, by positing that the basis of a genuinely universal human identity is non-contingent, I take for granted first, that there is something distinctive and non-contingent that only and all human beings have in common;²³ and, second, that the expressions of this human commonality or “core”—expressions in the form, for example, of common yearnings, vulnerabilities, and experiences—are such that human beings, whatever their particular context, can come to recognize that a distinctive and non-contingent human commonality exists.²⁴^,²⁵

Not every possible basis of unbounded human affiliation will meet the criteria of genuine (or authentic) non-contingency. The article returns to this point in various ways below, especially when it considers what constitutes a genuinely non-contingent basis for collective identity from the Bahá’í perspective.

The sections that immediately follow, however, aim to show that when taken together, the two distinguishing features of a universal social identity posited above—that is, its non-exclusionary and potentially non-contingent basis—carry deep and far-reaching implications.

A SOURCE OF FUNDAMENTAL SECURITY

What implications follow from the non-exclusionary and non-contingent basis of a collective identity authentically rooted in the oneness of humankind? Consider first that these two features of a universal human identity can yield parameters of inclusion that are immovably all-inclusive—in other words, that are thoroughly stable and safe. In contrast, bounded and contingently grounded identities have parameters of membership that are inherently unstable. Because the boundaries of such identities are exclusionary (by definition, there are outsiders), and because they are contingent and fluid (they are socially constructed and therefore subject to reconstruction), their parameters of belonging are intrinsically susceptible to contestation, redefinition, exclusion, and othering. This threat of exclusion, of course, can come from without (i.e., othering of and by non-members). But significantly, it also comes from within. When parameters of inclusion are intrinsically bounded and contingent, the question of “who belongs?” can never be fully closed: today’s insiders can be cast as outsiders tomorrow. The instability of intergroup relations is thus augmented by the potential precariousness of in-group membership. The current discourse and political rhetoric surrounding many national identities helps illustrate this point. As the narrative of a national identity is recontested and retold, so too are its parameters of otherness redrawn: “Who counts as ‘real’ national and who doesn’t?” has become a strikingly unstable question in recent years, even in long-consolidated nations and democracies.

Thus, when parameters of inclusion are bounded and the basis of belonging contingent, the possibility of external threat is never fully eliminated and one’s claim to internal membership is never fully stable. Only a collective identity that is both genuinely non-exclusionary and non-contingently grounded—that is, an identity rooted in the genuine recognition of human oneness—can deliver a context of fundamental security: one belongs because one is human, full stop.²⁶

The distinctive characteristics of a universal human identity, therefore, reveal the possibility of a collective identity that is not only itself uniquely invulnerable to instability and destructiveness, but that is also uniquely equipped to relieve the insecurity and potential destructiveness of all other shared identities and affiliations. In other words, only a collective identity rooted in the oneness of humankind has the potential to deliver a stabilizing context of fundamental security to our particular—and otherwise unstable—group identities.

Empirical research in psychology suggests and substantiates this proposition in notable ways. Two threads of this research are briefly highlighted here. The first shows that a feeling of security (and conversely, the feeling or perception of threat) plays a critical role in constituting the context and nature of intergroup relations. Specifically, a substantial body of research finds that “felt security” relieves intergroup hostility, yielding a posture of empathy, care, and openness to out-groups,²⁷ while “felt threat” increases intergroup hostility and conflict.²⁸ Thus, a sense of security is conducive to more caring and empathic relations with those who hold different bounded identities.

A second thread of evidence powerfully complements the first by suggesting that identifying with the humanity of others is associated with markedly higher levels of felt security. For example, in her analysis of in-depth interviews with Nazi supporters, bystanders, and rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, the political psychologist Kristen Monroe found that those who conceived of themselves first and foremost as part of all humankind²⁹ experienced distinctively higher levels of felt security.³⁰ Studies employing different methods offer consistent results. Brain imaging in neuropsychology, for example, reveals that the amygdala—a part of the brain that plays a central role in the experience of fear and aggression—becomes highly active when the average subject is shown faces from different races. But when subjects are first primed to think of people as individual human beings rather than as members of groups, the amygdala does not react.³¹

These two threads of empirical research thus suggest that identifying with the oneness of humankind is associated with a greater sense of security, and that a sense of security relieves intergroup hostility and yields a posture of empathy, care, altruism, and openness toward out-groups.

Taken together, these empirical findings begin to substantiate the implications drawn logically from the inclusiveness and non-contingency of a universal source of belonging. An identity based on the essential oneness of humankind detaches bounded identities from the threat of rejection, humiliation, and domination that has forever shadowed them, and from notions of superiority and inferiority that have stubbornly fueled these threats. In other words, by transforming the overarching frame in which difference is situated and perceived—by resituating our particular identities within parameters of inclusion that are thoroughly safe, immovable, and all-inclusive—a universal identity has the potential to fundamentally relieve the seemingly inherent instabilities of our particular attachments, and to resolve the chronic tension or duality that we observed at the outset. An all-encompassing identity can thus deliver the context of genuine and enduring security that has long eluded our bounded social identities.³²

BEYOND SECURITY: LIBERATING THE PARTICULAR

The preceding section developed the case that an identity authentically rooted in the oneness of humankind provides a context of fundamental security, stabilizing the tensions that have long shadowed our bounded identities. The implications of a genuinely universal collective identity, however, go beyond just relieving particular identities of their destructive and destabilizing potential. What a context of deep, all-pervasive security delivers is not merely a stable equilibrium of peaceful coexistence, but rather, optimal conditions for the vibrancy and flourishing of particular identities, and of human diversity more broadly.

The idea here might be put this way: when the cost and encumbrance of insecurity and its associated protective measures are removed, on the one hand, and when an open and empathic posture toward difference becomes pervasive, on the other, then uninhibited, constructive, and creative expressions of the particular from all sides become much more probable and robust. In a context of fundamental security, goals of survival and collective self-protection can give way to more generative and constructive goals. In other words, through the felt security and certainty of belonging that an identity rooted in human oneness provides, other identities find not only protection—from their own instability and from the threat of other groups—but also liberation or release from the constraining weight that a context of latent threat has imposed on the expression of their potential. Thus, the deeply internalized consciousness of the oneness of humanity frees our bounded identities both from the threats of instability, hostility, and oppression that have stubbornly shadowed them, and from the countless safeguards and constraints that have been devised to keep these instabilities in check. Far from stifling the diversity of humankind, a reimagined universal human identity can furnish a powerful lubricant for the free expression of diversity on newly constituted terms.

Notably, the relationship between freedom and the recognition of human oneness is emphasized and elaborated in various ways throughout the Bahá’í writings. In one passage, for example, Bahá’u’lláh writes, “If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty.…”³³ In another tablet, Bahá’u’lláh explains more explicitly that “true liberty” will be achieved when identification with and love for the whole of humankind is realized in people’s consciousness.³⁴ It is noteworthy that, in that passage, Bahá’u’lláh also characterizes the achievement of such an identity as “the ornament of utmost tranquility,” further associating universal human identity with a sense of fundamental security and freedom.

What comes into focus, then, is a radical and somewhat counterintuitive vision of human oneness that directly addresses the tension between the universal and the particular. The Baha’i writings suggest that it is by liberating the particular through the universal—by releasing, in other words, the particular from the insecurities, instabilities, and oppressive relationships that have constrained it—that a fundamental and enduring resolution emerges.³⁵ Paradoxically, it is by leaning fully into a genuine and emotionally rich universalism that the particular thrives, flourishes, and fulfills its potential. Thus, and as the opening passage from the Universal House of Justice indicates, it is through the deeply felt recognition of our fundamental oneness that the infinite expressions of human diversity thrive and find their highest fulfillment.³⁶

CRITIQUES OF UNIVERSALISM AND THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE BAHÁ’Í VIEW

The notions of identity and human oneness reflected in preceding sections present a significant departure from the way these concepts are frequently understood in contemporary thought and discourse, particularly in the contemporary discourses of the West. One of the most powerful and pervasive critiques of universalism—and of a collective identity rooted in the oneness of humankind, in particular—is that it poses a threat to diversity. Skeptics worry that, along a variety of dimensions (e.g., identity, language, culture, geography, institutions, etc.), the ideal of human oneness carries an inherent risk of uniformity. This homogeneity, they further worry, tends to project dominant cultures and identities, and is often propagated through (neo-)imperialistic processes.³⁷ The Bahá’í writings, as we have seen, envision a radically different possibility. The concept of oneness that emerges from these writings is not uniformity, but rather, a notion of unity that “contains the essential concept of diversity.” This conception of oneness is also strikingly embodied in the practice of the Bahá’í community. Across the globe, the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humankind is actively expressed in worldwide community-building efforts that are explicitly “outward looking”³⁸: they are, by definition, open to the full diversity of human beings, including those with other or no religious beliefs.

Another prominent critique of universalism reflects the notion that ideas rooted in our common humanity are overly abstract and disconnected from the concrete texture of everyday experience. While universalist visions might be relevant to questions of directly global or transnational concern (e.g., global governance, “global” poverty, etc.), their relevance to the relationships, neighborhoods, and communities to which people immediately belong is unclear or remote. This is especially true, the argument goes, where collective identity is concerned. In contrast to the intimacy and warmth offered by our traditional group identities, a universal human identity entails a rational commitment to the cold and distant abstraction of human oneness. From this perspective, an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind is too far removed from the texture of everyday life and experience to deliver the color, warmth, meaning, and locality that our other identities provide. A variation on this critique is the now-popularized charge of elitism: if a global, universal, or “cosmopolitan” identity works for anyone, we are told (and can vividly imagine), it works for a small, out-of-touch tribe of frequent-flying elites.³⁹

The Bahá’í vision of oneness and identity also diverges markedly from this view. As the preceding sections have tried to show an identity genuinely rooted in the oneness of humankind transforms the overarching context in which all identities are expressed, reorienting identities and relationships at all levels of society. From the Bahá’í perspective, then, the domain of universalism does not lie exclusively beyond borders, nor is it some distant transnational space inaccessible to the masses. Its domain, rather, is everywhere: it is concrete, immediate, and ubiquitous, encompassing all the textured communities and identities human beings value, whether they hold international passports or not. In this view, the oneness of humankind finds expression as much in the particular, and as much within the bounds of local and national communities, as it does beyond them. Again, this conception of oneness is not only reflected in the writings of the Faith, but also, strikingly, in the practice and experience of the worldwide Bahá’í community across countless cultural settings. In the Bahá’í experience, a universal identity is both directly nourished by and expressed in a range of grassroots community-building efforts that are decidedly local in nature.⁴⁰

A directly related and overlapping feature of the Bahá’í conception of human oneness—and of an identity rooted in the oneness of humanity, in particular—is the radical, thoroughgoing, and unprecedented nature of the transformation it entails. Unlike some notable conceptions of universalism, the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humankind does not simply call for the “universalization” of existing identities, norms, and institutions.⁴¹ It does not, for instance, entail the extension of existing national systems of governance and democracy to the entire globe; nor does it simply call for the expansion of existing schemes of domestic redistribution, or the replication of national collective identities in the global plane. Rather, the Bahá’í conception of the oneness of humanity represents a qualitatively distinct and transformative shift that permeates every level of society, fundamentally reorienting all identities and relationships, and transforming all structures of society. As the Universal House of Justice writes, “the principle of the oneness of humankind, as proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, asks not merely for cooperation among people and nations. It calls for a complete reconceptualization of the relationships that sustain society.”⁴² Similarly, this principle “has widespread implications which affect and remold all dimensions of human activity.”⁴³

In other words, far from merely reflecting a linear and incremental expansion of scope from the national to global sphere, the deeply felt recognition of humanity’s oneness represents a fundamentally different and qualitatively unprecedented step in the evolution of humankind. In reference to the revolutionary changes that led to the unification of nations, for example, Shoghi Effendi writes, “Great and far-reaching as have been those changes in the past, they cannot appear, when viewed in their proper perspective, except as subsidiary adjustments preluding that transformation of unparalleled majesty … which humanity is in this age bound to undergo.”⁴⁴ Elsewhere, he explains that the principle of the oneness of humankind implies “a change such that the world has not yet experienced,” “a new gospel, fundamentally different from … what the world has already conceived.”⁴⁵

THE RISK OF FALSE UNIVERSALISMS

Of course, any proponent of the oneness of humankind must heed a critical warning: humanity shares a long and continuing history of oppressive ideas about the “human.”⁴⁶ Indeed, theorists of various kinds legitimately worry that casting our humanity in essentialist terms (i.e., taking for granted that our humanness is constituted by certain universal features, as the premise of non-contingency suggests) risks elevating a particular conception of the human over others, potentially marginalizing non-dominant experiences and opening the door to false, oppressive, and exclusionary ideas.

Adequately addressing these important concerns lies beyond the limited frame of this article. Here, I acknowledge the significance of these concerns and briefly highlight two points that might be developed in relation to them. First, recognizing that a non-contingent basis for a universal human identity exists—a recognition, it should be noted, that countless human beings readily and intuitively evince—does not require an immediate commitment to any particular, fixed, or rigid conception of our shared humanity. Of course, on a biological level, the truth that human beings constitute a single species is a basic fact that few people today deny, and which can serve as a starting point for the recognition of our shared humanity. But to arrive at a fuller and deeper common understanding of human oneness—one that can sustain a richly-conceived collective identity—a process of genuinely open, inclusive, and dynamic inquiry is required. By explicitly positing that the content or definition of a universal human identity must (minimally) include the recognition of its basis as non-exclusionary and non-contingent, we guard against false accounts of the human that violate these parameters—accounts, in other words, that exclude some human beings, or that render their humanity contingent and therefore questionable.⁴⁷ This particular formulation of a collective human identity thus creates a safe and stable set of parameters within which genuine dialogue and inquiry into the content and expression of the human can take place.⁴⁸

A related point is suggested in the Bahá’í writings. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá proclaims, “[T]ruth or reality must be investigated; for reality is one, and by investigating it, all will find love and unity.”⁴⁹ In another talk, He explains:

The first teaching [of Bahá’u’lláh] is that man should investigate reality, for reality is contrary to dogmatic interpretations and imitations of ancestral forms of belief to which all nations and peoples adhere so tenaciously … Reality is one; and when found, it will unify all mankind … Reality is the oneness or solidarity of mankind … The second teaching of Bahá’u’lláh is the principle of the oneness of the world of humanity.⁵⁰

Clearly, these passages assert the truth of the principle of the oneness of humankind. But by closely pairing that principle with the precept that human beings should actively investigate reality, the truth of human oneness is also rendered a testable hypothesis. Indeed, both the reality of human oneness, and ideas about the various forms and expressions it might take, are investigable propositions. The posture of free and independent investigation enjoined by the Bahá’í writings—that is, the principle that truth must be investigated free from the force of prevailing traditions, habits, and prejudices—both demands a critical interrogation of the (often oppressive) claims, structures, and relationships that bear the false imprint of universalism, and directly negates any assumption that universalism requires the imposition of a particular viewpoint or way of thought. In the Bahá’í view, a genuine recognition of the oneness of humankind can not only survive the free, open, and critical investigation of reality, but in fact, requires it. With the potential pitfalls of essentialism firmly in mind, but recognizing the transformative power that a genuine universalism could hold, the reality of human oneness might be regarded as a hypothesis that deserves the open, rigorous, and investigative posture that the Bahá’í teachings invite.⁵¹

A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF HUMAN ONENESS AND THE ONGOING LEARNING OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY

Drawing insights from the Bahá’í writings, and engaging prominent strands of contemporary thought and discourse, this article has developed the case that the solution to our collective crisis of identity lies in the genuine and deeply felt recognition of the oneness of humankind. But as the preceding section suggests, important questions remain: What might constitute the content—that is, the non-contingent basis—of a universal human collective identity? Can such an identity take shape and find expression across the vast spectrum of human diversity? And if so, how?

In this connection, the experience of the Bahá’í community and its grassroots community-building efforts present a potentially fruitful case for study. Bahá’í communities, the Universal House of Justice explains, define themselves “above all … by their commitment to the oneness of humanity.”⁵² Significantly, for the Bahá’í community, this recognition of human oneness is a fundamental and defining feature of identity. It is a meaningful and deeply internalized commitment, entailing thick, emotionally rich bonds of genuine solidarity and love.⁵³ Bahá’ís consciously strive to manifest a love that extends “without restriction to every human being”⁵⁴ and to achieve “a sense of identity as members of a single human race, an identity that shapes the purpose of their lives …”⁵⁵

As alluded to earlier, the radical vision of human oneness that motivates this identity also shapes the practice and experience of the Bahá’í community in important and potentially illuminating ways. First, the Bahá’í expression of unity contains the essential concept of diversity. Second and relatedly, the Bahá’í concept of oneness finds powerful expression in the local and the particular: it assumes a deep confluence between a universal human identity, on the one hand, and a deeply felt sense of local community and belonging, on the other. As such, the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humankind is actively and systematically expressed in local community-building processes open to the full spectrum of human diversity⁵⁶ and extending to every corner of the planet. Around the globe, Bahá’ís—and all who wish to join them—are consciously learning how an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind can be cultivated and expressed across a range of breathtakingly diverse communities, identities, and experiences. In light of the two core concerns raised by critics of universalism—namely, that the ideal of human oneness stifles diversity and is detached from the texture and locality of everyday life—the evolving experience of the Bahá’í community presents fertile ground for learning. Additionally, the experience of the Bahá’í community addresses the further critique that universalist projects, in particular those pertaining to social identity, are utopian and unrealizable. The breadth, depth, and wide-reaching resonance of Bahá’í endeavors should at least prompt a reconsideration of this frequently assumed limit of collective human possibility.

Another essential characteristic of the Bahá’í principle of human oneness relates more directly to the basis of a universal human identity and the question of its non-contingency. From the Bahá’í perspective, what renders a universal collective identity truly stabilizing and non-contingent—in other words, what makes it uniquely invulnerable to the tensions, instabilities, and contradictions that characterize other sources of identity—is a spiritual understanding of the human oneness on which it is based. According to the Bahá’í writings, the fundamentally spiritual reality of human beings—the human soul—is not characterized by the contingent traits that define other, bounded social identities. As the Universal House of Justice explains, “An individual’s true self is to be found in the powers of the soul, which has the capacity to know God and to reflect His attributes. The soul has no gender, no ethnicity, no race. God sees no differences among human beings except in relation to the conscious effort of each individual to purify his or her soul and to express its full powers … This truth is directly related to another—that humanity is one family.”⁵⁷

Recall the core argument that, in contrast to all other forms of love and association, the non-exclusionary and non-contingent basis of an identity rooted in human oneness yields a collective identity that is uniquely stable and stabilizing. In more than one passage, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá affirms this idea directly, and explicitly ties the non-contingency of universal love and identity to a spiritual source. For example:

… fraternity, love and kindness based upon family, nativity, race or an attitude of altruism are neither sufficient nor permanent since all of them are limited, restricted and liable to change and disruption. For in the family there is discord and alienation; among sons of the same fatherland strife and internecine warfare are witnessed; between those of a given race, hostility and hatred are frequent; and even among the altruists varying aspects of opinion and lack of unselfish devotion give little promise of permanent and indestructible unity among mankind … the foundation of real brotherhood, the cause of loving co-operation and reciprocity and the source of real kindness and unselfish devotion is none other than the breaths of the Holy Spirit. Without this influence and animus it is impossible. We may be able to realize some degrees of fraternity through other motives but these are limited associations and subject to change. When human brotherhood is founded upon the Holy Spirit, it is eternal, changeless, unlimited.⁵⁸

Elsewhere, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá characterizes love for the whole of humanity as the one expression of love that is uniquely “perfect” (i.e., free from limits and instabilities) and again, ties this characteristic to the spiritual and the divine. He explains:

Love is limitless, boundless, infinite! Material things are limited, circumscribed, finite. You cannot adequately express infinite love by limited means.

The perfect love needs an unselfish instrument, absolutely freed from fetters of every kind. The love of family is limited; the tie of blood relationship is not the strongest bond. Frequently members of the same family disagree, and even hate each other.

Patriotic love is finite; the love of one’s country causing hatred of all others, is not perfect love!

Compatriots also are not free from quarrels amongst themselves.

The love of race is limited; there is some union here, but that is insufficient. Love must be free from boundaries!

To love our own race may mean hatred of all others, and even people of the same race often dislike each other.

Political love also is much bound up with hatred of one party for another; this love is very limited and uncertain.

The love of community of interest in service is likewise fluctuating; frequently competitions arise, which lead to jealousy, and at length hatred replaces love…

All these ties of love are imperfect. It is clear that limited material ties are insufficient to adequately express the universal love. The great unselfish love for humanity is bounded by none of these imperfect, semi-selfish bonds; this is the one perfect love, possible to all mankind, and can only be achieved by the power of the Divine Spirit. No worldly power can accomplish the universal love.⁵⁹

Spiritual forces and commitments are not only conducive to selfless association and universal love; for many human beings, they are also prime sources of meaning, purpose, and purposeful action. Casting a spiritual light on identity thus reveals a potent connection between the crisis of identity with which this article is concerned, and another pressing crisis confronting humanity, namely, our collective crisis of agency and meaning. Indeed, even as we collectively struggle to find a secure sense of identity and belonging, the yearning for a sense of meaningful agency—that is, the yearning to meaningfully shape our lives, to give purposeful expression to our potential, and to contribute constructively to the communities we inhabit—is also widely frustrated. The experience of the Bahá’í community and the conception of identity on which it is based suggest that the solution to these two crises ultimately converge. A spiritual conception of identity not only attaches an absolute sense of belonging to the condition of being human; it also provides a powerful source of purpose and agency, and a basis for meaningful, transformative action. In the Bahá’í experience, these two expressions of identity—being and doing—are deeply intertwined and often indistinguishable.

The aim of this brief section has not been to demonstrate or adequately develop these ideas. Rather, it has been to highlight how the efforts of the Bahá’í community across vastly different cultural settings might provide illuminating insights into the power and possibility of a universal collective identity and, in particular, into the potential of an explicitly spiritual conception of human oneness.

By Benjamin Schewel

Benjamin Schewel is Co-Director of the Center on Modernity in Transition (COMIT). He is author of the book, Seven Ways of Looking at Religion, published by Yale University Press in 2017, and is currently finishing a second book, Encountering the Axial Age, which will also be published by Yale University Press. He also co-edited, Religion and Public Discourse in an Age of Transition: Reflections on Baha’i Practice and Thought, which was published by Wilfrid University Press in 2018.

The Bahá’í writings describe the modern period as an age of transition toward a future world civilization that manifests the oneness and essential diversity of humankind. The “world’s equilibrium,” Bahá’u’lláh writes, has been “upset” by the “vibrating influence” of “this most great, this new World Order.” The Universal House of Justice further elaborates upon Bahá’u’lláh’s remarks by likening these disruptive transformations to the period of adolescence: “Humanity, it is the firm conviction of every follower of Bahá’u’lláh, is approaching today the crowning stage in a millennia-long process which has brought it from its collective infancy to the threshold of maturity—a stage that will witness the unification of the human race. Not unlike the individual who passes through the unsettled yet promising period of adolescence, during which latent powers and capacities come to light, humankind as a whole is in the midst of an unprecedented transition. Behind so much of the turbulence and commotion of contemporary life are the fits and starts of a humanity struggling to come of age. Widely accepted practices and conventions, cherished attitudes and habits, are one by one being rendered obsolete, as the imperatives of maturity begin to assert themselves.”¹ This essay explores the idea of modernity as an age of transition as presented in the Bahá’í writings.²

THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN AGE OF TRANSITION

The modern age of transition begins as a movement out of the medieval order of civilization, some prominent expressions of which include the Song Dynasty of imperial China (960-1279 CE), the Hindu-Islamicate society of Mughal India (1526-1857 CE), the Mali Empire of West Africa (1235-1670 CE), and orthodox-Christian Byzantium (286-1453 CE). Each of these medieval societies relied upon a material substrate of village-based agrarian activity. These agrarian villages were, in turn, ruled by a cadre of urban elites whose authority was thought to hierarchically descend from the divinely sanctioned powers of a single emperor or king. Both social layers were, in turn, embedded in a common religious-metaphysical system, among which those associated with Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Neo-Confucianism were concurrently preeminent. And although by around 1250 CE, certain Old World elites had established a meaningful web of Afro-Eurasian interconnections, each medieval society still largely continued to consider itself civilizationally autonomous.³

Precisely how and when the medieval order began to decline is a matter of scholarly debate. What is clear, however, is that the upheavals of the “long nineteenth century”—from roughly 1770 to 1920—inaugurated the modern age of transition by firmly uprooting the foundations of medieval civilization. The advent of industrial manufacturing undermined the agrarian, village-based substrate of medieval life by unleashing the explosive powers of fossil fuels, mechanical technology, and megapolitan urbanization. Populist revolutions in the United States (1765-1791), France (1789-1799), and Haiti (1791-1804) stimulated novel vectors of political change that would, by the middle of the twentieth century, help topple most of the world’s great monarchical empires. The spreading influence of secular and materialistic ideologies disrupted the taken-for-granted authority of long-established ecclesiastical institutions and religious creeds. And a succession of pathbreaking transportation and communication technologies, including the steamboat (1803), the locomotive (1804), electric telegraphy (1844), the petrol automobile (1886), broadcast radio (1896), and the airplane (1903), overwhelmed medieval notions of civilizational autonomy by dramatically interlinking the far-flung regions of the earth. One by one, then, each of the established pillars of medieval civilization were decisively displaced during the long nineteenth century.⁴

AN ERA OF IDEOLOGICAL FRUSTRATION

The upheavals of the long nineteenth century aroused a gusty season of intellectual commotion and ferment. How, every attentive mind began to wonder, should a just, peaceful, and prosperous society be structured if not by the age-old medieval pillars of village-based agrarianism, monarchical empire, and ecclesiastical religion? Given the outsized influence that, at the time, European and North American peoples enjoyed, many intellectuals attempted to answer this question by presenting certain impressive features of modernizing Western societies—their pursuit of rational self-determination; their relentless strivings for scientific and technological progress; their expanding commitments to democratic politics and the self-correcting dynamism of free markets; their burgeoning schemes of political-economic equalization; or even their nationalistic enthusiasms—as the crucial foundations of a new, modern order of civilization that all peoples must eventually embrace.

The Western-centric inquiries of nineteenth-century thinkers yielded a constellation of influential ideologies—including liberalism; capitalism; socialism; nationalism; anarchism; secular humanism; scientific materialism; organicism; techno-utopianism; and enlightened despotism—that illuminated certain real features of the modern age of transition. Yet these ideologies also each employed so many problematically one-sided and parochially self-centered assumptions that subsequent efforts to enact their claims ended up lurching back and forth between moments of encouraging progress and of demoralizing frustration. One thinks, for example, of how the efforts of revolutionary France to politically enact the ideals of liberty, equality, and solidarity were swiftly followed by the authoritarian repressions of the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic regime. Or one could also mention how endeavors to demonstrate the universal validity of modern science, advanced by such thinkers as Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and August Comte (1798-1857), helped to stimulate a encouraged new constellation of obscuring materialistic orthodoxies.

Noting these difficulties, long-nineteenth-century thinkers strove to remedy the many defects that plagued their cherished modern ideologies in at least three broad ways. First, there were those who, like J.W.F. Goethe (1749-1832), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Karl Marx (1818-1883), and Walt Whitman (1819-1892), claimed that humanity could only continue proceeding down the path of modern progress by more consistently or radically embracing the ideals of the Enlightenment, particularly those of freedom, equality, and rationality. Second, many others advanced the countervailing claim that redressing the ideological failings of Western modernity required revitalizing one or another of humanity’s great pre-modern traditions; consider, for example, of the efforts of Friderich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Søren Kierkegaard (1817-1855), and the architects of the Meiji Restoration, respectively, to re-engage the ethos of Homeric polytheism, of early Christianity, and of Japanese Shintoism. And third, one encounters an expanding cohort of voices who, in the manner of a Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) or Max Stirner (1806-1856), suggested that a more ideal society could emerge only after the West’s moral-ideological pretensions had been firmly subverted and exposed. The intellectual landscape of the long nineteenth century was, therefore, cross-pressured by efforts to show how the crucial defects of Western modernity could be resolved by more comprehensively embracing Enlightenment ideals, or by revitalizing some premodern ethico-spiritual tradition, or by critically vitiating the dark side of modern Western civilization.

Much has obviously taken place since the close of the long nineteenth century, including such world-shaking events as the Great Depression; the Second World War; the nuclear proliferations of the Cold War; decolonization and the third wave of nation-state formation; the “Big Push” of international development; the formation of the United Nations; the establishment of the international human rights regime; the rising global clout of East and South Asian societies; the digital revolution; and the accelerating trajectory of anthropocentric climate change. And yet, dominant intellectual discourses—especially in the West—continue to swirl within the same limited horizon of ideological possibilities that crystallized between 1770 and 1920. Indeed, despite the impressive advancements in knowledge that have taken place during the century, many among our most prominent thinkers continue to assume that, if contemporary humanity is ever to address its mounting civilizational woes, it must do so either by re-committing itself to the ideals of the Enlightenment, renewing its engagement with some older and ostensibly superior tradition, or disruptively deconstructing the oppressive and disingenuous foundations of modern Western civilization.

THE ANALOGY OF COLLECTIVE ADOLESCENCE

The age of transition thesis discloses a new horizon of interpretive possibilities. It recasts the tumultuous vectors of modern thought and social change as the initial expressions of a still-unfolding process of global-civilizational transformation that can be likened to the collective adolescence of humankind. “The long ages of infancy and childhood through which the human race had to pass, have receded into the background,” proclaims Shoghi Effendi, who served as the administrative head of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 to 1957, in a letter written several years before the outbreak of the Second World War. “Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood. Then will the human race reach that stature of ripeness which will enable it to acquire all the powers and capacities upon which its ultimate development must depend.” Or again, as the Universal House of Justice explains, “the human race, as a distinct, organic unit, has passed through evolutionary stages analogous to the stages of infancy and childhood in the lives of its individual members, and is now in the culminating period of its turbulent adolescence approaching its long-awaited coming of age.”⁵

This image warrants careful consideration. For individuals, the period of adolescence is marked by the rapid development of adult-like capabilities. Yet a mature framework within which to orient these new powers is initially lacking. The young person must struggle to clarify the concepts, values, and identities upon which they will rely as they approach the threshold of adulthood. This is an immensely challenging task, and it is made even more difficult by the young person’s competing attachments to the well-known norms of childhood, burgeoning enamorments with their own mental and physical capabilities, and deepening uncertainties about the merits of different models of adult living. Indeed, it is precisely from the resultant sense of disorientation that arise the patterns of “turbulence,” “impetuosity,” and “vehemence” that are so consistently associated with the period of human adolescence.

When applied to the modern age of transition, the analogy of adolescence recasts the proliferating welter of modern ideologies, not as the expression of some unsurpassable state of social, political, and intellectual maturity, but rather as the chaotic yet promising outgrowth of humanity’s burgeoning abilities to envision a new era of a globally-integrated civilization. The analogy additionally encourages a long-term vision of social change that can enable successive generations to continue laboring to erect an organically transfigured world society. In this regard, one might consider the difference between the young person who, because they see themselves living only for today, dissipates their energies in the pursuit of fleeting pleasures and enthusiasms, and another, who, by remaining more acutely aware of the looming imperatives of adulthood, conscientiously devotes themselves to undertakings that prepare them for what lies ahead.

The effort to analogically reconfigure one’s narrative of history, moreover, helps clarify the crucial role that other analogies already play in shaping thought about modern history. Indeed, the very notion of enlightenment constitutes one such influential analogy, suggesting the ideals of banished illusion and of rationally clarified perception that have profoundly influenced the trajectory of modern Western culture and history. And one can also readily identify several other images—based, for example, on the model of atomic interaction, or on the naturally selective pressures of jungle life, or even on the operations of industrial factories and mechanical clocks—that continue to orient prevalent ideas about specific features of modern social existence. Consequently, instead of aspiring to supplant the ostensibly objective and neutral narratives of modernity that contemporary intellectuals employ with an unduly imagistic one, the age of transition thesis actually endeavors to transform the existing analogical contents of modern historical imagination.

TOWARD A NEW HORIZON OF RESEARCH AND INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY

If the age of transition thesis is to ever become widely influential, much more will be required than simply enumerating its various conceptual and interpretive merits. The idea must additionally be incorporated into a new and robustly advancing pattern of research and intellectual activity. To shed further light on how an expanding constellation of individuals, communities, and institutions might practically address this far-reaching challenge and opportunity, the author draws on his experience with a nascent research organization, the Center on Modernity in Transition. Before exploring this particular body of experience, however, it may be useful to offer some additional insight into the intellectual transformation that is being considered by briefly exploring the history of the modern research university.

The institution of the modern research university arose in Germany during the early nineteenth century, and is widely recognized as beginning with the founding of the University of Berlin in 1809. Unlike its medieval predecessors, such as the universities of Paris or Oxford, which functioned as scholastic guilds that pursued the ideal of orthodox intellectual integration, the modern research university was meant to advance intellectual endeavors that grew out of the novel idea of modernity as a dawning age of rational and scientific enlightenment. One major strategy that these universities employed was to situate the proliferating research activities that Enlightenment thinkers pursued within a handful of specialized disciplines and fields. As explained by the well-known Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the modern research university was to lead humanity further into the dawning Age of Enlightenment by managing “the entire content of learning … like a factory, so to speak—by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee, and all of these together would form a kind of learned community called a university.”⁶ The disciplinary order of knowledge that now orients our world thus arose within the efforts of modern research universities to systematically embed the idea of modernity as a dawning age of enlightenment in a new pattern of research and intellectual activity. By extension, it would seem reasonable to expect the mature development of the idea of modernity as an age of transition to entail at least an equally weighty and institutionally complex transformation in the intellectual life of humankind.

The writings of philosopher Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) further illuminate the actual process by which such an intellectual transformation might proceed. Specifically, Lakatos claims that every serious research endeavor relies upon a “hard core” of conceptual presuppositions that are never directly tested, but rather used to support an evolving “protective belt” of rigorously evaluated theories, propositions, and methodologies. For Lakatos, the main distinction between a scientific program of research and a non-scientific one lies not in the extent to which they respectively employ empirically unverified assumptions—both of them inescapably do—but rather in the degree to which their conceptual presuppositions sustain a progressively advancing system of secondary theories, propositions, and methodologies. Consequently, instead of endeavoring to conclusively demonstrate the veracity of the age of transition thesis before proceeding any further down the path of inquiry that the idea suggests, Lakatos’s arguments suggest that one must simply get started trying to use the idea to ground a new and robustly advancing program of research and intellectual activity.⁷

In this regard, it may be useful to mention the nascent efforts of one research organization, the Center on Modernity in Transition (COMIT), with which the author has, since its establishment in early 2020, been energetically engaged. As the organization explains in a recent report, “the Center on Modernity in Transition aspires to contribute to the intellectual life of the emerging world civilization envisioned by Bahá’u’lláh. We begin from the premise that if one interrogates deeply enough the sources of humanity’s pressing challenges, one arrives ultimately at a network of concepts and assumptions that undergird the current order, and that shape the ways in which social reality is read, understood, and constructed. The broad aim of COMIT is thus to rigorously examine the intellectual foundations of modern society and to contribute, however gradually, to their transformation. COMIT pursues this goal by working to establish a new and dynamic research program animated by the idea of modernity as an age of transition toward a new world civilization—one characterized by unprecedented levels of unity, justice, peace, and material and spiritual prosperity.”

In support of its long-term, research-program-building agenda, the Center pursues two interrelated areas of activity. COMIT aspires to advance novel and distinctive lines of research that are rooted in the idea of modernity as an age of transition, as well as in the various fundamental concepts that underpin the idea. At the same time, however, the organization strives to contribute to a growing number of academic discourses and fields that, in one way or another, help to illuminate various facets of the modern age of transition. Neither endeavor can, the Center maintains, be effectively pursued in isolation from the other. For without consistently engaging the best knowledge and methodologies that humanity has produced, COMIT’s attempts to build a new research program would struggle to significantly improve upon the patterns of intellectual activity that operate within the world’s leading research universities. Inversely, however, if the Centre focuses only on advancing the kinds of research that existing academic institutions pursue, it would soon find itself unable to meaningfully contribute to the establishment of a new and highly distinctive program of research and intellectual activity. COMIT thus aspires to advance both endeavors in a complementary and coherent manner.

A series of initial developments suggests the fecundity of COMIT’s approach. Relevant examples include the establishment of fruitful collaborations with academic bodies at Duke University, New York University, and Columbia University; the successful execution of a number of online speaker series—for example, The Liberal Imaginary and Beyond and Identity and Belonging in a Global Age—featuring a line-up of highly distinguished thinkers and practitioners, including Charles Taylor, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Barbara Fields, Cornel West, Seyla Benhabib, and Craig Calhoun; the development of a maturing web presence, particularly the organization’s webpage, comitresearch.org, and its YouTube channel, where video recordings of its events have been widely viewed; the raising of an initial tranche of funds to support the organization’s expanding research activities and the hiring of personnel; the establishment of several dynamic, distinctive, and externally well-received research projects; and the cultivation of an expanding network of committed thought partners and research collaborators. Although the organization remains acutely aware of the many challenges it must face as its efforts continue to gain in complexity and scope, it continues to derive sustenance and hope from the demonstrated abilities of the age of transition thesis to invite the enthusiastic participation of scholars situated within a wide variety of disciplinary, intellectual, and ethico-spiritual traditions.

What this article suggests is that, today, there is a unique opportunity for motivated researchers to begin rigorously embedding the distinctive vision of modernity as an age of transition, such as it is presented in the Bahá’í writings, into new and far-reaching patterns of research and intellectual activity. The example of the Center on Modernity in Transition provides some insight into the kinds of evolving research activities that might help to tangibly advance the envisioned intellectual transformation. At present, however, the simple fact remains that we can have little real knowledge of the precise content or shape of this future intellectual efflorescence. It is precisely for this reason that the Bahá’í writings consistently encourage us to regard the welter of tumultuous forces that characterize the modern age of transition through the lens of the organic metaphor. “It is,” as ‘Abdu’l-Baha writes, “even as the seed: The tree exists within it but is hidden and concealed; when the seed grows and develops, the tree appears in its fullness.”⁸ The immediately pressing task before us is for an expanding constellation of individuals, communities, and institutions to begin boldly and systematically pursuing the myriad opportunities for serious intellectual transformation and growth that can be discerned within the immediate contexts of their lives and social milieus.

THE WORLD OF RELIGION

CONCLUSION

The Bahá’ís and Reform and Renewal in Iran (Part 1)

Part 1: Bahá’í Contributions to the Development of Iran

THE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIETY

MODERN EDUCATION

THE WORLD OF WOMEN

CONTACTS BETWEEN THE REFORMERS AND BAHÁ’ÍS

ATTACKS AND SETBACKS

CONCLUSION

The Bahá’ís and Reform and Renewal in Iran (Part 2)

Part 2: Building a New Society in Iran

Reaching for Peace

The Third Moment

A Fundamental Prerequisite

Conceptions of Society

Oneness and Global Society

Oneness beyond Collectivism

Crisis and Possibility

THE AUTHORITY OF NEUROSCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC EYE

HOW CULTURE SHAPES THE BRAIN

HUMANITY IN AN AGE OF TRANSITION

TOWARD AN INTEGRATED UNDERSTANDING

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF POSSIBILITY

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

THE SERIES OF GLOBAL PLANS

REFLECTIONS ON THE PATH TRAVERSED

COURSES OF THE TRAINING INSTITUTE

THE JUNIOR YOUTH SPIRITUAL EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM

PREPARATION FOR SOCIAL ACTION

YOUTH CONFERENCES

THE INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN GLOBAL PROSPERITY

YOUTH IN THE VANGUARD

A TURNING POINT

THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY

INVOLVEMENT IN SOCIETY AT LARGE

REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS MADE

THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

HUMANITY’S CRISIS OF IDENTITY: TWO UNDERLYING TENSIONS

UNIQUE FEATURES OF AN IDENTITY ROOTED IN THE ONENESS OF HUMANKIND

A SOURCE OF FUNDAMENTAL SECURITY

BEYOND SECURITY: LIBERATING THE PARTICULAR

CRITIQUES OF UNIVERSALISM AND THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE BAHÁ’Í VIEW

THE RISK OF FALSE UNIVERSALISMS

A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF HUMAN ONENESS AND THE ONGOING LEARNING OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY

THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN AGE OF TRANSITION

AN ERA OF IDEOLOGICAL FRUSTRATION

THE ANALOGY OF COLLECTIVE ADOLESCENCE

TOWARD A NEW HORIZON OF RESEARCH AND INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY