Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946Shoghi, Effendi
Religion
Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946
Shoghi, Effendi
Bahai Faith -- North America; Shoghi, Effendi, 1897-1957 -- Correspondence
The double task already undertaken to enlarge the basis of the
administrative structure of the Faith throughout the states and provinces
of the North American continent and throughout Latin America, and to
proclaim its truths and principles to the masses, should be relentlessly
pursued, whilst the range of the operation of the Plan is being steadily
enlarged. The administrative centers—foci at which the ever expanding
activities of a rising Order must converge—whose total number had not
exceeded forty at the time of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to America, which at
the inception of the first Seven Year Plan had risen to three hundred, and
had swelled to over a thousand ere the expiry of the first Bahá’í century,
should through resolute effort and careful planning, be continually and
speedily multiplied. Particular care should be constantly exercised to
enable the groups scattered throughout the length and breadth of the
states and provinces of the United States and Canada to attain Assembly
status, and assume gradually the responsibilities and functions assigned
to them in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and the Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. A
corresponding increase in the number of such centers throughout both
Central and South America should likewise be aimed at. Bolder measures
designed to proclaim the verities of the Faith, its tenets, its claims and
the purpose of its institutions, through the press and radio, through
displays, exhibits and conferences, and through a wider dissemination of
its literature in English, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as a more
convincing presentation of its aims and teachings to the leaders of public
opinion, should, moreover, be seriously and systematically undertaken not
only in the mother country but also throughout the Latin Republics where
the structural basis of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic Order has already been
established.
Collateral with this process of consolidation in North, Central and South
America, a special effort should be exerted to bring to a final conclusion
the construction of the most holy Temple which will ever be erected by the
followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, and whose inception, forty-three
years ago, synchronized with the erection in the city of I_sh_qábád of the
first Ma_sh_riqu’l-A_dh_kár of the Bahá’í world. The completion of the
interior ornamentation of the Temple, following upon its exterior
decoration, and fitting it for the purposes for which it was ordained, and
coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of its inception, will, in
itself, pave the way for the gradual erection of those Dependencies which
are designed to supplement the functions which the Central Edifice is
destined to perform, and whose future development must needs be provided
for during successive stages in the unfoldment of the Divine Plan itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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