Baha'i Faith
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Douglas Martin, Baha'i Faith, bahai-library.com.
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Baha'i Faith

Douglas Martin
published in The 1998 Canadian Encyclopedia

McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1997-09-06

Bahá'í faith, a world religion with followers in 235
countries and territories, and with 173 National Spiritual
Assemblies. There are now an estimated 28,600 Bahá'ís in
Canada. Although its forerunner, the Babi movement, had its
roots in Shi'ah (ISLAM) Iran, the Bahá'í faith is
independent rather than a sect of another religion, and
derives its inspiration from its own sacred scriptures.
These consist primarily of the writings of the founder,
Bahá'u'lláh (1817-92), who Bahá'ís believe is the Messenger
of God to our age, the most recent in a line stretching back
beyond recorded time and including Abraham, Moses, Buddha,
Christ and Muhammad.

The central teaching of Bahá'u'lláh is that mankind is one
human race, and that the age for the unification of this
race in a global society has arrived. Among the principles
of justice on which it is based are equality of the sexes,
the right of all people to education and economic
opportunity, the abolition of all forms of prejudice and the
need for the establishment of a democratic world government
with its own peacekeeping force.

Bahá'ís believe that all great religions of the past have
been stages in the progressive revelation of what
Bahá'u'lláh called "the changeless Faith of God." God
himself is unknowable. From age to age he reveals himself
through his messengers, whose lives and teachings reflect
the Divine qualities. These successive revelations provide
the chief impulse in the civilizing of human nature and the
evolution of human society. Other messengers will follow
Bahá'u'lláh so long as the universe exists, but the
challenge of the next thousand years will be to realize
Bahá'u'lláh's vision of world unity.

For the individual, the purpose of life is to know and
worship God. This lifelong process occurs as the individual
learns to serve humanity by responding to the message of God
and, in the process, develops his or her own spiritual,
moral and intellectual capacities. Prayer, meditation on the
creative Word and the discipline of one's physical nature
are necessary aids to this effort. The soul is immortal and
continues to evolve after death.

The Bahá'í faith began in 1844 in Persia [Iran], with the
announcement of the new age by Bahá'u'lláh's forerunner,
known as the Bab ("The Door"). The Bab (1819-50) and some
20,000 early Persian followers, regarded by the Muslim
clergy as heretics, were persecuted and killed. Bahá'u'lláh
was imprisoned and eventually exiled to the Turkish penal
fortress of Akko, on the bay of Haifa in present-day Israel.
The shrines where the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh lie buried are
today the focal points of an imposing complex of gardens and
institutions. By 1987 over 2000 ethnic groups were
represented in the 120,000 Bahá'í centres established
worldwide. Persecution of Iran's 300,000 Bahá'ís for refusal
to recant their faith intensified under the regime of the
Ayatollah Khomeini and the current Islamic Republic.

Bahá'ís have no clergy. The affairs of the community are
governed by democratically elected councils locally,
nationally and internationally. At the lower 2 levels the
councils, known as Spiritual Assemblies, are elected each
year. The supreme governing body, the Universal House of
Justice, whose seat is at the faith's world headquarters on
Mount Carmel, Haifa, is elected every 5 years. Because of
its beliefs, the Bahá'í Faith has placed great importance on
co-operation with all efforts toward world unity. The body
which represents it in international affairs, the Bahá'í
International Community, holds consultative status as one of
the nongovernmental organizations at the UNITED NATIONS, and
it takes an active part in many of the UN's humanitarian and
educational activities.

Bahá'í Faith in Canada

Canada has played an unusually important role in Bahá'í
history. After a visit to Montréal and several American
cities in 1912, the founder's son, Abdu'l-Bahá, gave US and
Canadian believers joint responsibility for expansion of the
Bahá'í Faith around the world. Canadian Bahá'ís responded
enthusiastically, and today their community shoulders the
second-largest burden of responsibilities for international
activities. One of the community's members, Mary Sutherland
Maxwell of Montéal, married in 1937 the great- grandson of
the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, who
served in the central role of its Guardian until his death
in 1957.

The Canadian community has had a particularly close
connection with the design of the Faith's many imposing
shrines and houses of worship around the world. Two Montréal
Bahá'í architects, Jean- Baptiste Louis Bourgeois and
William Sutherland Maxwell, designed, respectively, the
Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land and the
first house of Worship in the western hemisphere at Chicago,
Illinois. More recently the Vancouver Bahá'í architect
Fariborz Sabha created the extraordinary "Lotus Temple " in
New Delhi, India, which has won acclaim in the international
architectural press. Still another Vancouver Bahá'í, H.
Amanat, is responsible for the design of the complex of
monumental marble edifices constituting the faith's
international administrative centre in Haifa, Israel, now
approaching completion on the slopes of Mount Carmel.

Canadian Bahá'ís work in countless community- development
projects undertaken by their faith around the world, and
their National Assembly collaborates with the CANADIAN
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY and the INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE on a range of such activities.
The Canadian community pioneered the concept of an
international organization for Bahá'í studies to bring
together scholars and students in an application of Bahá'í
principles to various social concerns. The Association for
Bahá'í Studies, founded 1977, has its headquarters in Ottawa
and affiliates in 25 other countries.

The faith has attracted members from all Canadian provinces
and territories and from every ethnic group and social
class. Some 35 of the faith's 374 elected Local Spiritual
Assemblies are on native reserves and others, with Inuit
members, are in remote Arctic centres. The Canadian National
Spiritual Assembly was the first Bahá'í institution in the
world to be incorporated formally by a special Act of a
sovereign parliament (1949), an example since followed in
many other countries. The Bahá'í National Centre is located
in Thornhill, Ontario, and the former Maxwell home in
Montréal is maintained as a Bahá'í place of Pilgrimage.

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-- Baha'i Faith (Used by permission of the curator)