Developments in Bahá'í Administration

[Applause] Good evening everyone. Um, and really thank you so much Karen for such a beautiful reflection of this loving relationship between our two sister nations. So as was mentioned this year is the 100th anniversary of our joint national spiritual assembly of the bahigh of the United States and Canada. So it's been one century and tonight's panel is going to be reflecting on those 100 years, reflecting on our institutional development, reflecting on the evolving capacity of the Bahigh community to contribute to the spiritual and social transformation across North America. As many of you know, there are significant efforts underway across the continent, learning how to create models of unity in neighborhoods and communities and havens of hope for people of every race, creed, and background. The Bahigh community has sought to embody a distinctive system of governance that integrates principles such as consultation, equality, unity and it's a system that has been designed to guide the advancement of civilization. So our panelists tonight will explore how this system of Bahigh administration operates today in a mode of systematic learning and we'll also consider how some of these insights from the Bahigh administrative process both in the US and Canada can advance contributions in our academic and professional discourses. But first, we're going to begin with a film. And this is a 20-minute film that's going to trace this journey um over the course of a hundred years. is it's going to start with the roots of the Bahai administrative order in North America from Bahala's call to America to the laying of the temple cornerstone by Abdul Baha and then follow the remarkable evolution of our joint national spiritual assembly into the two distinct bodies that that it now is today of the United States and Canada. So we'll watch the film first and then I'll introduce to you our panelists for tonight. So let's begin with the film in a prison city on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In this modest room, Bahala, the founder of the Bahigh faith, provided a vision for a fully prosperous world. It is a vision in which we learn to leave behind conflict, division, and oppression. Bahala provided the spiritual teachings, principles, institutions, laws, and practices that would help us move forward towards a lasting peace. [Music] In his summons, he called upon the North American continent and the US in particular to play a special role. Bahigh's understand that religion is progressive that the cause of God as Bahigh's think about it is one thing. We've called it Judaism. We've called it Zoroastrianism. We've called it Buddhism. We've called it Christianity. We've called it Islam. And now we call it the Bahigh faith. But we understand that all of these religions are from the same God. And we understand that they are progressive. That is as human beings evolved, as our societies became more complex, as the problems we faced became more challenging, there was a need for a fresh infusion of spiritual energy and instructions from God about how to organize society at a higher level of complexity and competence. The idea that the Bahigh faith had an organization went back to Bahala. He himself ordained a an administrative order that would have governing councils and a supreme governing body who he said he would always guide. This is the first time that we know in religious history that a messenger of God has ordained institutions, not individuals but institutions to continue their religion after their passing. And so the Bahigh faith brings us teachings that are specifically designed to help us understand the forces that are reorganizing the world. what those forces are, how they work, and the work that they're going to do. And to give us specific instructions about how to unify the nations, how to deal with ecological imbalance, how to deal with uh racial prejudice and gender discrimination, how to deal with um the whole issue of a spiritual solution to economic disparities. All those issues are the issues of modernity. Bahala's vision required a renewal of the institutions of governance. His teachings laid out a new pattern of administration which the Bahigh community has been building around the world. Under the direction of Abdul Baha, the eldest son of Bahala, the appointed head of the faith, the Bahigh in America established the first western assemblies, the local governing bodies that would lay the groundwork for future institutions. A decade later in 1909, a small group of Bahigh's gathered in Chicago to consult on the building of the first Bahigh House of Worship in the Western world. So this very special meeting that really was the seed of what would later become the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahigh of the United States and Canada was held on the first day of spring, the beginning of the Bahigh new year on March 21st, 1909. With much of the holy writing still untransated, naturally the early bahigh drew on the organizational processes and standards they were already familiar with. >> Some of them had some misunderstandings themselves about basic Bahigh teachings. One was that women could not serve on Bahigh assemblies. That was totally wrong and in contradiction to the Bahigh principle of the equality of men and women and the vast majority of believers were women. One of those women was Karinru who visited Abdul Bahigh in 1907. She was surprised when he asked her to oversee the building of the temple. Later three men from the Bahai temple unity committee visited Abdul Baha and asked him about the temple. His reply was, "I've given all the instructions to Mrs. TR. You must ask her." So they had to abolish the men's committee and the women's committee and have one committee with both sexes. Karin would see Abdul Baha 5 years later in 1912 when he arrived in the United States and spent 239 days spreading his father's teachings. And in Chicago, he laid the cornerstone for the new house of worship. As Abdul Baha broke ground at the temple site, he called for several women to come forward and then one by one, individuals from a multitude of races and nationalities. >> Then in 1921, Abdul Baha fairly suddenly passed away. Abdul Baha's passing was devastating for the worldwide Bahai community and for his grandson Shogi Aphendi who was now designated the head of the Bahigh world. Now in early 1922, the Bahai world finds its new leader is this young man who is a graduate student in age 24. Shogi Aphendi called for the establishment of local assemblies wherever nine or more Bahigh's reside and directed that Bahigh community activities be placed under their authority. 3 years later it was time to elect the first national spiritual assembly of the United States and Canada. In 1925, a group of Americans and Canadians came together at a retreat center in Maine with a very noble and unique purpose to establish after years of struggle a governing body that they knew would transform the world. It it is absolutely marvelous to look at the photographs, the group photographs of the 1925 convention. It's predominantly women, but it is racially, socially, ethnically diverse. It's incredible because this was the opposite of what was happening in the United States as a whole. It was a time of intense racial conflict in the United States. We had just come out of the Red Summers where there was literally racial warfare in 37 cities throughout the United States. Now in that environment, the American Bahigh community was just beginning to develop and it had very specific instructions from the head of the faith that we were to build a racially integrated spiritual community. You can imagine what a challenge that was in the context of what was happening at the time. >> When the votes were counted, the new nine-member assembly included two women, Florence Morton and Amelia Collins. Two years later, Lewis Gregory would join the assembly and over the succeeding decades, it would continue to represent the diversity of the American continent itself. One of the fundamental beliefs of the Bahigh faith is that there is a direct relationship between the equality of black and white Americans and the development of world peace. And if you think about it from a poetic standpoint, it is beautiful symmetry in a spiritual context. And what could be more spiritually and metaphorically and practically perfect than that being the seed of the unity of all humanity. >> Shogi Fendi would later refer to the American Bahigh community as the cradle of the administrative order. How we would learn as a species to govern ourselves for the whole world. [Music] When you then have the structure of the Bahigh faith which does not have clergy, we have elected institutions that are elected by one person, one vote and everybody's eligible. There's no campaigning, there's no nomination, and there's no self-promotion or any other thing. So, this is a brand new vision for the leadership of a spiritual community. And so, you have local spiritual assemblies that are elected by the same process at the local level. And then nationally delegates are elected by the various uh areas and they come together to elect the national spiritual assembly that oversees the bahigh affairs on a national scale. But this is a far different uh arrangement than is traditionally uh practiced by religions uh because there's still no individual authority. >> For 100 years, the National Assembly and hundreds of local assemblies have been engaged in a countrywide endeavor to bring spiritual principles to every neighborhood. From coast to coast, communities are transforming, youth are rising, and children are being spiritually educated. >> I'm passion and I'm 8 and a half and turning at 9 October 31st. The prayers you get to sing and uh you get to do the prayers that you like. >> Yeah. It makes me feel like I'm alive. You see where we started 100 years ago, the object was just to understand the principles and begin to fashion an administrative organization that would reflect the spirit of the Bahigh faith itself. In fact, the spirit of all religions and where we are now is that is sufficiently well established and understood that we can begin to join with others as we went into the 80s and 90s. The National Spiritual Assembly began to share the Bahigh writings with America at large. So for example, the National Spiritual Assembly released a series of statements on cornerstone issues that were challenging American society. The first was the statement on race and it was called America's most challenging issue. It described the Bahigh writings understanding that this is the time for the unity of the races and the development of one spiritual and human and social family. And so it was a spiritual imperative and a social, political, and economic imperative that the systems that govern human society begin to cultivate an understanding that we are all fundamentally related. For me, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States in Canada is a cause for not only great celebration because we've come a long way in a century, but also for reflection. The spirit of those early North American believers was incredible. They were on fire with a flame of of devotion for a faith that was still very new to them. And they saw the possibility of their efforts, as small as they seemed, to transform the world. Each one of us is individually responsible to search for truth. Not the way you see it or somebody else sees it, but what is this truth that lies at the root of the purpose of creation by God himself? And how do I conduct myself? Well, then if you think about those principles as they guide my individual life, you recognize that there needs to be principles that guide the community, the state, the nation, and the world. And those principles have to be inspired and organized in accordance with the same spiritual understandings and spiritual principles. But they have they have to have practical structures and practical organizations that will allow us to transfer the benefits of cooperation and the transfer the benefits of a very high level of problem solving and and search for answers to the complex challenges we face and turn it turn the community into a prosperous and cooperative social order. Bahawala has envisioned a new and unique system of administration that goes beyond humanity's previous understanding of governance. The assemblies of North America alongside a steadily growing number of national assemblies around the world have provided an initial effort to put his vision into practice. There's now evidence that humanity can move beyond deeply dysfunctional and divisive forms of governance, that democratic elections can be held without any form of competition, and that all individuals have the freedom to be heard and participate. It is a system that produces institutions that are able to operate in an ongoing mode of learning adjusting to changing social conditions yet never wavering from the foundational values Bahala has prescribed. [Music] Bahala wrote, "Hearken ye, O rulers of America and the presidents of the republics therein, unto that which the dove is warbling on the branch of eternity. And later he said, "We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations. That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers. That the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened. That diversity of religion should cease and differences of race be enulled. So it shall be. These fruitless strifees, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the most great peace shall come. [Applause] So, thank you so much for that wonderful film. There was a a team of collaborators who pulled this together for us really at the last minute, but it came together really nicely. So, thank you So, while we're getting set up here for our panel, I'd like to actually introduce to you our panelists tonight. Um, so they're going to be helping us reflect more deeply on on this century of Bahigh administration and its development across North America. So, first we have with us Kathy Jwitt Hogensson. She is a historian, a lawyer, an author who has written about the establishment of the administrative order through a number of biographies of hands of the cause and of the early believers of of North America. We also have with us tonight Kenneth E. Bowers, secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahigh of the United States, who has served in various capacities at the national level for over three decades. Ken is the author of an introductory book on the Bahigh faith titled God Speaks Again. And finally, we have Dr. Michael Carlberg. Michael is a professor of communication studies at Western Washington University and is the author of books Beyond the Culture of Contest and Constructing Social Reality. So, with that, I'm going to invite our three panelists to join us here on stage. [Applause] Hello. Oh yes. Okay. So, welcome to our panelists. Um Kathy, we're going to start with you tonight. So, the Bahigh community as it has developed and spread around the globe, it's promoted fundamental spiritual principles. The oneness of humanity, the equality of women and men, the elimination of racial prejudice to name a few. And to the best of their ability, Bahigh have given practical expression to these spiritual principles and they've labored to um liberate communities from the barriers that have historically divided humanity. But we're looking back a century. We're looking back to 1925. And here in North America, this was a time when racial segregation was the law of the land. It was a time when women still lacked full voting rights and many of today's foundational freedoms were still aspirational and yet within that context the Bahigh community gave birth to an administrative system that enshrined unity and equality. So Kathy can you take us back to that moment? Take us back to the beginnings of the formation of that national spiritual assembly. What were the early stages of the development of the Bahigh Administrative Order and how has the fruit of the National Spiritual Assembly today been brought to bear over a hundred years of effort? >> Thank you Safhira. As a student of history, I've often found it very interesting how very quiet out of the way incidents can transform the world. As Bahigh's one of the best examples, perhaps the best examples of all examples is a quiet conversation over tea that took place in a residential modest residential neighborhood of Shiraz in 1844. That little conversation one night over tea set the spark to totally transform God, God's plan for the world and to bring it about. Nobody knew about it. It was a secret. So another slightly larger gathering in 1909, the Bahigh new year in Chicago, third floor of a very large home in Chicago where they normally played billiards. A group of Bahigh's from across the North American continent gathered with the goal of building a building You know, a tangible goal like a building is a very useful tool to get yourself organized. You have to learn lots of skills to build a big building. And this was a very modest group. Most of the people in it had uh no renown at all. And yet the seed swed there in that billiard room would later become the National Spiritual Assembly. And to show you the spiritual power of what happened on that day, half a world away in Hifa, Israel, the sacred remains of the Bob were being laid to rest at the same time. forever connecting the house of worship of North America, the emblem really of the administrative order for us because it was the seed and the shrine of the Bob. So this meeting in a billiard room was the seed for establishing a brand new pattern for how all of mankind ultimately will conduct its business. We can't at this point even a hundred years later begin to fully appreciate the magnitude of what happened. The guardian often did refer to the Bahigh temple unity and its executive committee which filled a vacuum and basically began to manage the affairs of North America because nobody else uh was was there to do it. as the precursor of the true administrative order that would follow in a few years. The uh executive committee was annually elected by representatives from across the United States. The first Bahigh governing body of a national or international level that was elected in that way. We did have the central committee of Tehran but it was not an elected body. Bahala talked about assemblies in his most important book, the Katabi Agdas. But it was left to Abdul Baha to put some flesh on those beautiful words and explain a little bit more. And he did so through his will and testament which was not promugated until a few months after his passing. Shogi Fendi first had to translate it and then there was a whole process of disseminating the will in testament worldwide but particularly in the west and in 1922 he called believers from a number of countries to come and consult with him in the holy land and then he sent them home to start establishing elected assemblies both local and national. Now, as you would expect, the US and Canada elected a national spiritual assembly in 1922. So, why are we celebrating it in n in 2025? And the short answer is we don't know. Shogi offendi said 1925 even though he recognized it in 1922. that he and God passes by changed the dates not only for us. The Germans and the Brits also got the same treatment and they were a year or two later than when they actually held the first election. But 1925 was especially significant because between 1922 and 1925 we did a census of the American community because one of the first questions was who was of a high lots of people were coming to meetings who was eligible to vote. So you had to have membership list. Remember it was the Bob himself who called upon the believers to have membership list and we kind of had it but it was pretty not very uh carefully done let us put it that way. So we needed to sort of come up with a who is an Airbai community and friends this also I hate to to say it but because of Abdulah's passing this period of transition made that a more complicated issue than it would have been at another time in history because of the transition that was going on. So we don't know why but we have to go with Shogi Fendi statement 1925 is it. So that is our celebration. Now in 1922 when he had the friends gathered with him to discuss what to do next after the passing of the master he wrote a very important letter. It's in Bahigh administration. It's his first major letter of substance to the believers, but particularly to the North American believers. It's March V. And in this letter, he explained and provided translations of the sacred texts which we had never seen before. understanding what is this Bahigh administrative order and our elected bodies and calling upon us to immediately begin to establish them. He talked about the sacredness of their nature that these are not just committees to figure out how many cookies to buy and how to manage funds. These are divinely ordained, divinely directed institutions. And I know it doesn't feel like that in your local assembly many times, right? But that's what we are, what these assemblies are. And we must never forget that. He also mentioned the wide scope of their activity. Friends, unlike most governments today, we do not have an executive, legislative, and judicial. We only have an assembly. It may delegate some of those powers but it directs all of those. There is no competition within various activities of um an assembly and he said also that grave responsibility rest on them. We often forget that your local spiritual assembly is not just responsible for the Bahigh community that have elect them and come to feast and so forth. Your local assembly is responsible for the spiritual and material well-being of all of the people of that jurisdiction. As he the guardian said it is a grave responsibility that rest on them. Bahala and the Agdas said it behooveth them to be the trusted ones of the merciful amongst men and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God for all that dwell on earth. And of course, the Guardian in that same letter emphasized a way of making decisions that was not common in mankind's history. Certainly, there have been councils, councils of elders. There have been attempts at bringing other people's voices in what we refer to as democracy, and we'll bring that up in a second. But this idea that everyone has a voice, universal participation, an electoral process that is totally free. This certainly is something that the people of the world long for. Now, they're often given a slate of people and say, "Pick between the horrors." You know, this is not how we function. And we function, these bodies have to function in a prayerful manner. They stand before God in the council chamber. They are accountable to God for their decisions. Their work must be based on spiritual principles and oneness. Oneness. So when this group of very different people first came together in the 1920s, it was extremely diverse. We not only had uh Lewis Gregory, who most of you are very familiar with, a black man from the south whose parents had been born into slavery. He was a lawyer. We had two women, one of whom would serve uh in the early days as treasurer. This is awesome also very unheard of that a woman would be given the financial financial responsibility. But we had our Canadian Fred Shofflocker, a German immigrant who was Jewish. And we forget anti-semitism is not new. There were many places in the United States and Canada where fresh off locker was not welcome. And yet he served with distinction on the National Spiritual Assembly as a very vital member. We had other challenges. This was before air travel. One member from California went to a east coast meeting. It took her four days on the fastest trains she could get on. We had to have people standing by for uh delegates who couldn't attend the convention if they needed to vote again. They had to be at the telegraph office. These are the kinds of challenges that they had to deal with. They had very few resources, maybe about 500 active people scattered across North America. More on the roles, but but that and they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't have guidelines for local spiritual assemblies. Shogi Fendi didn't have all that yet either. We had the will and testament and some basic spiritual teachings and consultation. So Shogiendi used the North Americans as his lab rats, his experimenters both at the national and local levels. It was an area of the world where there was religious freedom where our assemblies could function without worrying about what the government was going to do and we were off everybody's radar. So this is how the Guardian through trial and error came up with the administrative order we have today. answering the questions of the North Americans and dealing with the challenges as they arose. And friends, there were lots of challenges both internal and external. I have for those of you who remember the 1960s, it doesn't have anything on the 1920s. The 1920s, the jazz age, you know, it was uh a period of great immorality. It was a period where there was tremendous social turmoil, particularly racial, but also women had just gotten the vote, but weren't really truly accepted in society. There were great governmental transitions going on as a result of changes that happened during the Wilson administration during World War I. The United States became a much stronger central government. And in 1929, five years after uh four years after the election of the official first national assembly, the stock market crashed and the great depression was on us. It was also a period where in the greater world as well as in North America, Marxism and fascism were on the rise. So this was a very difficult period. The National Assembly as it started its teaching work especially in the south had to face legal discrimination against the black believers, black community in general. And the question of could white and black believers in the same community come together in a meeting, a racially mixed meeting and not break the law was a huge issue. The National Assembly of the traveled to Tennessee to see firsthand what was going on during that period. In the meantime is trying to build this house of worship, this amazing huge structure. This is not just a little chapel with no money in the depression. And then the house, the shogi offendi as his as he started to develop the tablets of the divine plan charged this national assembly with opening the entire western hemisphere in seven years. Seven years to do it. and the National Assembly and the New York City Assembly, which is why it's in that film, developed the charters for all local and national assemblies, the Declaration of Trust for all national assemblies and the bylaws for a local spiritual assembly written by the New York City assembly. What it showed was that this pattern given to us by God was organic. It was flexible. It was able to constantly add new levels of complexity and it was moving beyond personality. These were institutions. How many of you here can name all nine members of the universal house of justice? You see it as an institution, not as the individuals who serve on it. The founding of the Bahigh administrative order is the most significant turning point in the establishment of mankind's government. We look to historic moments where democracy started it rearing its head primarily in Europe. We think about Athens, the Magna Carter in uh England and then the experimental box of the English colonies with the first 30 years of the Virginia uh legislative body and then the Mayflower Compact and then of course the political geniuses who set up our current system and the period of the revolution and with the writing of the US Constitution. But friends, this makes them all pale because this is from God. This is for the whole world. And it doesn't matter what kind of system of government a culture has had in the past. This pattern is going to work for everyone and we are proving that across the world with more than with 157 national spiritual assemblies. So with that, [Applause] >> thank you so much for that, Kathy. It's it's a really wonderful reminder how sometimes these seemingly in insignificant moments actually are the seed of a new pattern of civilization. So thank you. This was a lovely overview of that period of time. We're going to move now to some more contemporary reflections. So I'm going to turn now to Ken. Ken has served as the secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahigh of the United States for almost 19 years. Prior to that, he was the assistant secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly for 5 years and before that secretary of the National Teaching Committee for nine years. So it's over three decades of service at the national level. So Ken, can you tell us what stands out to you looking back over that period of time? What were some of the most significant developments of the Bahigh community and the Bahigh administrative order? >> Okay. >> Looking back, >> thank you very much. Good evening everyone. It's wonderful to see sort of all of you with with the spotlights in in front of us. It's very difficult to encapsulate three decades or so uh very easily in the few minutes that we have. But if I were to choose one phrase, I would say that the chief development in the administrative order and indeed I think in the entire culture of the Bahigh community, not just in the United States, but I would say arguably around the world, has been in our capacity for learning. And I think it has undergone a profound change over the course of the past generation and has brought us to a point now where the real potentials of the faith to transform the life of society are becoming more and more obvious. Now when we when we say learning let me just preface what I'm about to say uh by reminding us of something that Karen shared with us Karen Mai shared with us at the top of the evening which was when we think of learning we can't think simply in terms of an intellectual exercise. Now the intellect is involved yes of course but there's not a dichotomy between the intellect and the heart the mind and the heart. These two things go together. So when we say learning, what we're referring to is a a deeply profound, yes, exercise of the mind and of the rational soul, but also an exercise of the spirit. And the two come together and give us something that is quite different, I think, than anything else that is going on in the world. And I think that's part of the magic that Kathy was talking about. Now, of course, based on Kathy's wonderful comments just now and this beautiful video that we saw, it's very clear that the the Bahigh community always has been in a mode of learning. So, it's not to say that just in the past generation we began to learn things, but no, you know, we there there have been brilliant people who have learned amazing things over the course of time, but those things really were just the foundational elements, if you will, of this magnificent system that we're building. And largely that learning um happened with uh certainly today we have the universal house of justice thank god to guide our learning process. In those days we had uh we had Bahala himself in his own time and then we had the master and we had choi. But in the last generation or so, the House of Justice itself took very uh important steps to um push the process of learning further down into the ranks of the community and to instill in us all a greater consciousness of that process of learning in and of itself. So to give some examples of that in 1986 at the beginning of the six-year plan the Universal House of Justice uh made the announcement that in this case in that plan it would offer to the Bahigh world general aims which we would all pursue uh general goals that we would all pursue but that for the first time in history national spiritual assemblies would be responsible based on those general goals to set their own national goals in consultation with the counselors. So significant was that step that the house of justice characterize that alone as marking a new stage, a new epic in the formative age of the faith. So that launched us on our fourth epic of the formative age. Just that fact. Now why was that important? Because until then all of the goals of the various plans had been set by the head of the faith whoever that was at that time. So the house of justice for a number of years and before that obviously shendi had set those goals right down to how many local assemblies would be formed, how many nations would be opened, uh languages would be translated and so on and so forth. But it was the head of the faith. And now we were being called upon on national spiritual assemblies with the counselors to read our own reality in the light of those goals as we would now put it. And in the light of that reality, the the in light of what we saw as our potential and uh what we could achieve in those goals, set our own goals and try to achieve them. And then of course engage in our own level of reflection about how we were doing, how we were progressing. Now that decision was augmented uh very famously just a decade later with the um establishment of instruments by the universal house of justice to push the process of planning and goal setting even further down. One was uh the creation of regional bahigh councils in various countries of the world. The other of course the establishment worldwide of the institute process and that latter one really most of all was the one that that created for us uh together with the the institute itself but the guidance that the house of justice launched it with the idea of a a framework for action that would evolve as we continue to learn. Now in the past generation since then a lot has happened and I'm only going to touch on a few ways that I've seen uh at least in the United States but perhaps also in Canada things have changed in the culture of the Bahigh community as the result of the institute and that learning process. So one of them is simply the the idea that there is a coherent framework of action. Now this was not something that actually existed 30 years ago. Now maybe it existed there was guidance. it was in the writings but it's not to say it wasn't there in the guidance but we just didn't understand it so the result of that was and in the '90s I served on the national teaching committee so part of that role was to go around the United States and have meetings with the friends and we would talk about the growth of the faith and the teaching work uh that this notion of how do we uh advance the process of entry by troops and in those conversations um it was very clear that there was no sense of how we were really going to go about that. So, inevitably, you know, to give just an anecdotal sense of it, you know, we would be in a meeting with the friends and one friend would stand up and say, well, the key to entry by troops is firesides and here's my quote from Shogi Fendi to prove it. And then the next person inevitably would get up and say, no, the key is mass teaching and here's my quote from Shogi Fendi to prove it. And then the next person, no, it's living the life and here's my quote from Shogi Fendi to. So everyone's quoting the same guardian and coming to very different conclusions because it was kind of a one-dimensional thing. We had never really put it together. Then the House of Justice itself issued a a compilation and statement called promoting entry by truths which made very clear that growth is a multifaceted endeavor that we would have to pursue in in all of its facets but also very importantly it would be something that we would have to learn to do over the course of time. So it introduced this idea and also introduced the idea that a diversity of activity required a diversity of services. So and the house famously said in that letter that not no one person can do everything nor should all people do the same thing in order to advance that process. So based on that we began to think and learn over the course of the year. So one was just to have that framework of thought that unified us. One of the important results of that framework was that it allowed us to have a far more sustained commitment to what we were doing. There was a time when and some of you may have been Bahigh's long enough to remember that you know we would have you know a big plan for a teaching campaign in our community and you know there would be a parade and balloons and you know all this sort of thing and and project Badash was on its way and or Tabarci or whatever we wanted to do and 6 months later hey whatever happened to that you know teaching plan does anybody does that sound familiar to those who are veteran yes because because what would happen is we would set certain goals and if it and we would we would hasten to judge them as either complete successes or abject failures but not take the time to say well what did we learn from this and how might we refine our activities this was just not really a part of the cultural conversation that we were having so with the idea that we had a framework we had to say well all right well maybe my study circle this time wasn't as effective or my junior youth group you know it kind of petered out after a while or what have you. So what did I learn from this and how can I do better next time? How can we help each other do better next time? That was really the the thing that it did. And so it freed us from this sort of freneticism that had been going on for a long time. And that commitment over the course of many years led to another very important capacity I think on the part of the institutions of the faith which was the um ability to build systems that facilitate that learning especially at the grassroots. That is systems that would um facilitate the flow of information and guidance and the not only the generation but also the dissemination of insights uh from what was going on. And of course uh this again not just in the United States or Canada but the the House of Justice advanced this process of learning around the world. Now we have a situation when we talk about universal participation there is now also universal contribution to our worldwide learning something that they learn in Tuvalu or a village in India that is an insight in the process of growth will benefit potentially people living in Chicago Illinois or in Ontario. you know it just this is the way the system now has been built because of that commitment because we've stayed with it for so long. Just a couple of more thoughts. One is the whole idea of that that we're in an attitude of learning that that is the humility and the uh the patience and the the willingness from those things to entertain you know that I may not have all of the answers but together with those who are working with me we will be able to find those answers and it has given us an ability also to reach out to others who are also learning that is people who are not necessarily formally enrolled in the Bahigh faith and this too is a huge cultural change that has taken place in the last generation. Now of course I think we all knew at some level that all of the peoples of the world would contribute to the building of a new civilization. I personally wouldn't say there was any time in my life as a Bahigh, having grown up as a Bahai, that I didn't think that. But this gave us a more um concrete and systematic and and real way to uh realize that aspiration that that all people would contribute to something and I would say that it changed the thinking particularly of the older generation of Bahigh in a very important way. The way I've encapsulated that before has been that when I grew up as a Bahigh youth when we would go out and teach back in the days that they called the mass teaching days we would say become a Bahigh and help us change the world. Now we say help us change the world. And if you're willing to do that, great. And yes, eventually yes, you're welcome to become a bahigh if you're so inclined. You can go on your spiritual journey. But the key is that we're together. We're figuring these things out. And we realize that every group of people in the world has some contribution to make to the advancement of our society, building that spiritual world that Bahala has envisioned. And then now as we enter the second century of the formative age uh which brings me to my my final idea is that having sustained this process for this amount of time the house of justice now has told us so it's not me saying it it's the house of justice that we can now begin to see particularly in the most advanced clusters that we have and that exist in the world the the way in which the society building powers that are inherent in the revelation of Bahala will have their effect. They will be released in ever greater measures throughout the course of this plan and the series of plans that will take us into the middle of the century uh and beyond. This is an extremely important thing to see because we know that part of our spiritual mission you know we are the co-addresses of the advent of divine justice. This this letter of the Guardian was sent not just to the American Bahigh but to the Canadians as well. It was to the Bahigh of North America. And in it, the Guardian spoke of the um rampant materialism, the moral laxity, the corruption, and of course the ingrained racial prejudice that impede our society and prevent it from fulfilling the great destiny to usher in the most great peace. And that the Bahigh have a certain contribution to make in assisting our fellow citizens to purge ourselves of these to which we are not immune by the way but of these these terrible tendencies that are endemic in our society. But it's through we can now see the f this same framework of action that the resolution of those issues can be made. And this is very very clear. And so now we can perhaps get a glimpse of what the guardian said about the will of the master uh early in his ministry. Uh this is quoted in the House of Justice's um letter of uh November 28, 2023. Reflections on the first century of the formative age as we as we know it. Something >> parents, please pick up your >> Oh, parents. Okay. Parents, please. I It's not about what I'm going to say. It's It's something else. It's It's It's something else. The Guardian wrote, "We return to our theme." The Guardian wrote, "The contents of the will of the master are far too much for the present generation to comprehend. It needs at least a century of actual working before the treasures of wisdom hidden in it can be revealed. Now, of course, the Guardian did not say it would take exactly a century, but he said at least a century. But now that we're in, you know, that first century, we've completed that century and we're beginning the second one. I think it's possible to look at some of these places and say, "Yes, we're beginning to see perhaps what the potential that is enshrined in that will and testament is all about and how the world will change." If you go, a lot of this footage was about um the triangle cluster. Most of it was from the triangle cluster which is in uh the state of North Carolina in the United States. And in that cluster, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of people who are interacting with the word of God for today and learning individually and collectively to engage in ever more complex acts of service, reading their own community realities, taking action based on those realities, consulting, reflecting. They have a sense of empowerment, a sense of agency. They come literally from just about any conceivable background. It's a highly diverse cluster. And in a spirit of love, they are building relationships, real relationships, of friendship, of trust, of unity, of prayer, of of reliance on each other, but of course also reliance on God. And what is happening there is amazing. And the vast majority of those involved are not formal members of the Bahigh faith. But many of them who have not perhaps formally registered would consider themselves spiritually deeply connected to Bahala if not Bahigh's in their heart. And the time the day will come you know when groups of them will enter eventually then troops of them will enter as is promised. [Applause] Thank you so much Ken. Those are some really wonderful reflections on our evolving capacity for learning and refining our efforts now in in light of a framework and where the Bahigh community is now poised to release this the society building powers of the faith. So we're going to turn to our final speaker to you Michael. Um, in some of your academic work, you've explored how governance systems reflect assumptions about power, about human nature and progress. And from that academic lens, can you tell us some of the distinctive features of the Bahigh system of governance and what makes it fundamentally different from what we see in political and institutional structures around the world? and maybe if you can add how you've learned to describe some of these features in your contributions to professional and academic discourses. >> Thanks. So there are so many features, some of which have been touched on already tonight that are distinctive about our system of governance. But I want to say I learned about a new feature, a distinctive feature tonight from Katherine's comments that has really confirmed my faith because I didn't know until tonight that this institution we're reflecting on today was conceived in a pool hall. And and those of you who know me out there know I love a good game of pools. So I feel like I've reached the city of certitude now, but I haven't worked out how to talk about that distinctive feature with my academic peers yet. So let me focus on a couple of others I've thought more deeply about. You know, I think really one of the fundamental structural features is as has been mentioned already, we have an electoral system that is free of any form of competition. You know, sometimes we describe the system as nonpartisan and so forth, but it's much more fundamental than that. when I think many of you probably had this experience describing the nature of an election in which everyone has complete freedom of choice and there's no competition. It's actually hard for most people to comprehend because elections are synonymous with competition in the western liberal imagination. So this is something that's actually beyond the sort of horizons of the imaginations of certainly most of my academic peers. Um and why is this significant? Well, I think we can say a few things about you know a system that is without the principle of competition. Electoral competition it's about structuring elections as contests of power. And this is one of the fundamental sources of political corruption in liberal democracies because this is what invites the corrupting influence of ego and money and other uh things we could get into. But it's also in fact what builds pressures to create or join parties because parties are machines for effectively aggregating the powers to win electoral contests. So this is a very fundamental structural feature that I think uh we really have to learn to convey clearly so that people you know and explore the implications of this in in academic and and other contexts. Um another feature of course that distinguishes the system of governance from western liberal democracies is making decisions without oppositional debate. The principles of consultation we're all quite familiar with. I'm sure many people have written about this including in the context of sort of Bahigh governance. But what does this give us? It gives us a decision-making process that unifies people in the search for truth. It unifies people in their processes of trying to discern the best course of collect collective action and then learn their way forward. Opposition debate along with the electoral contest of power divides people and undermines the ability of governing institutions to operate in learning modes over time. Now those are probably fairly familiar features. Another one I think is very familiar to most of us in this room but is quite difficult to articulate in an academic context is this. Well, high governance involves the systematic application of spiritual principles or spiritual truths in decision-making. How does one explain that in a largely secular academic environment? So, I think this is something that we're still working out sort of language and concepts that that are digestible that you know by which we can do this. I know I've spent a fair bit of time in my second book trying to sort of work out some of this and you know we can draw here on traditions that help us do this. So for instance in the western philosophical tradition we can draw on the concept of normative truths which is in many ways a a synonym for what we would call spiritual principles that we we operate on the premise that there are truth normative truths truths about hum how humans ought to live that are in fact objective features of reality in the same way that gravity is these are truths that are woven into the fabric of existence. We're trying to learn to apply them systematically then to the governance of human affairs to promote human flourishing. This is something we can and you know work out how to begin to offer in academic contexts. Um, another I think principle that we uh are beginning to to try to explore and think about how do you offer especially in sort of secular academic context is that uh our system we have a structure like our electoral system but it only functions in the context of a culture that grows around it. So we assume that actually governance the our structure in our culture has to co-evolve to support this. You couldn't impose a high electoral model on a on a population that hadn't developed the culture that enables it to work. And we've spent the last hundred years co-evolving these things. So we understand what it means if someone for instance expressed you know the desire to be elected expressed the confidence that they were the best you know able to serve the community. We actually have a culture that understands this is actually a signal of uh of lacking the qualities that we would want to but that's a cultural thing we've we've come to understand. Another aspect of our system uh that's you know very related to this is and it's really it's part of this culture but this is a system that relies on the systematic cultivation of spiritual qualities and attitudes and virtues. The system doesn't work without that. It's not just a structure. It's a structure that has to be populated by souls who are striving to embody certain qualities. And so in this regard, of course, you know, for hundred years, we've been trying to learn how to cultivate these. What we have now is actually a a network of training institutes that spans the globe that's enabling us to with increasing, you know, sort of systematic ways foster these qualities in growing ever expanding numbers of people beginning with the youngest generations. And this training institute couples that process of cultivating spiritual qual the requisite qualities and attitudes that our system of governance needs. It couples that with also uh cultivating concrete skills and abilities, how to consult, how to elect, you know, and many other things that we could talk about. So you know a dear friend of mine in the audience here is fond of saying uh that you know the theory and practice of western liberal democracy has a training institute-esized hole in it. This is actually a distinctive feature of our system of governance and I think we haven't fully worked out even in our own minds how the training institute is in fact becoming an inseparable feature of of uh the evolution of our system of governance. These are co-evolving you know aspects of what we're learning to do. So this this my thoughts are very brief. These are just you know a few thoughts but to sort of invite those of you out here who are in who are moving in discourses academic professional discourses for whom some of like the Bahigh system of governance might have insights to offer to really push oursel advance oursel to think how do we work out the language the concepts that are relevant to the very specific discourses we're involved in so that we can offer the experiences of this community. Not in a triumphalist way. We certainly haven't, you know, figured it all out. But with a kind of unapologetic confidence that we have a set of principles that have already offered a kind of provisional evidence, that they work and that they offer a path towards a new level of maturity in governance and how do we how do we begin to offer these principles? Now, I know there are also people in this audience. I've done some tried to do some of this work. There are other people in this audience doing this work. So you Michael Sabet who's out there somewhere in the blinding light which by the way you thought there were spotlights. I thought there were like blinding halos above everybody's heads amazing audience here but you know Michael Svet's doing a political science doctoral dissertation on Bahigh governance trying to work out some of these things. He recently co-authored a wonderful peer-reviewed article with Todd Smith also in the audience here on transcending partnership that was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Rashan Desh who many of you know a very distinguished Canadian legal scholar has written an excellent article on how the Bahigh faith is fundamentally reframing the sort of liberal democratic notion of church and state. very significant uh feature of understanding Bahigh governance. Arasha Bizade a distinguished political philosopher at McGill University in Quebec has written some outstanding articles on Bahigh elections and a recent Rutled volume titled the world of the Bahigh faith edited by Robert Stockman who I suspect is somewhere out in the audience contains a number of excellent chapters on Bahigh governance. Other examples could be cited but my point is simply this. Our distinctive system of governance is emerging as a legitimate object of academic inquiry and it offers provisional evidence that can be a source of hope for humanity's future. And this was only going to increase in time as the size of our community grows. So people become more interested in what we have to say and as our contributions to the betterment of humanity grow and gain more attention. And on this note, let me just sort of leave you with these words from the House of Justice, which I think we heard an echo of earlier, right? As the contributions being made by the faith to the progress of society in different parts of the world gains greater visibility, the Bahigh community will increasingly be called upon to explicate the principles it advocates and to demonstrate their applicability to the issues facing humanity. The more the intellectual life of a community blossoms and thrives, the greater its capacity to answer this call. It will be up to the followers of Bahala to provide in the world of ideas the intellectual rigor and clarity of thought to match their commitment to spiritual and material progress in the world of deeds. So how do we bring insights from our experience with governance into these context is one of the questions in front of us. Uh I've been asked to sort of close the the panel tonight and I want to close by actually looking ahead to the panel tomorrow night just for a moment because we've been looking at these distinctive features of Bahigh governance as among those aspects of the society building powers we've been called to release in ever greater measure. Tomorrow night, we're going to have a panel that will invite us to think deeply about social action and contributing to discourse and the relationship between them as other, you know, aspects of these society building powers. Um, we have some very special guests here tonight who have been working for many years with Fundiac in Colombia. Many of you are aware of them. They're going to share insights from a book they've recently authored on this experience which is by the way in our bookstore. I would encourage you if you want to sort of glance at this even before the talk. It's a it's a it's a gem of a book. So we uh look forward to sort of continuing the conversation tomorrow night along this theme. And again it's been a pleasure to be part of this panel. Thank you. So have a good night everyone. >> Thank you so much to our esteemed panelists and thank you all for joining us tonight. We wish you a wonderful conference. Have a wonderful evening. [Music]