After the passing of
`Abdu'l-Bahá in 1921, the leadership of the Bahá'í community
entered a new phase, evolving from that of a single individual
to an administrative order founded on the "twin pillars" of
the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice.
This administrative order was originally envisaged by
Bahá'u'lláh in his Book of Laws and was given further shape by
`Abdu'l-Bahá, particularly in His Will and Testament. In that
document He appointed His eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi, as
Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith and also referred to the future
election of the Universal House of Justice, a legislative body
of which the Guardian would be the "sacred head and the
distinguished member for life."1
The Universal House of Justice was not established in
`Abdu'l-Bahá's lifetime; it fell to the Guardian to lay the
base for its foundation throughout the thirty-six years of his
tenure as head of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh.

Shoghi Effendi, the
Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith
|
Throughout those years, Shoghi
Effendi educated the Bahá'í community about the administrative
order of the Faith and prepared it for the eventual
establishment of that order's other central institution by
writing consistently about the interconnection of the
Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice, both of which
he described as "divine in origin, essential in their
functions and complementary in their aim and purpose."2
He continued on to state that their common purpose is "to
insure the continuity of that divinely-appointed authority
which flows from the Source of our Faith, to safeguard the
unity of its followers and to maintain the integrity and
flexibility of its teachings."3
The institution of the Guardianship is Bahá'u'lláh's means for
providing for the continuation of the unerring interpretation
of His word. The function of the Universal House of Justice,
on the other hand, is to legislate upon matters "not expressly
revealed in the Sacred Texts."4
As Shoghi Effendi said, "Acting in conjunction with each other
these two inseparable institutions administer [the Bahá'í
Faith's] affairs, coordinate its activities, promote its
interests, execute its laws and defend its subsidiary
institutions."5
The interconnection of the Guardianship and the Universal
House of Justice is further evidenced by the Guardian's
ceaseless labor to foster the expansion of the Bahá'í
community around the world in order to establish and develop
the national legislative bodies of the administrative order;
the goal of this work was the election of the Universal House
of Justice and the full development in all aspects of the
order ordained by Bahá'u'lláh.
While the Guardianship was outlined as a hereditary
institution and `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament provided for
the possibility of a line of succession to His appointee as
Guardian, Shoghi Effendi died without any heirs and without
being able to appoint a successor, as no other members of his
family met the stipulations that had been outlined by
`Abdu'l-Bahá. The vitality of the Guardianship continues,
however, through the voluminous writings, the extensive
guidance, and other legacies left to the Bahá'í community from
Shoghi Effendi's ministry between 1921 and 1957. To appreciate
fully the scope of these legacies, it is helpful for us to
take a more detailed look at the many facets of the Guardian's
work to develop the Bahá'í community.
The Work of Shoghi Effendi
In His Will and Testament
`Abdu'l-Bahá wrote in these touching words of the one who
would succeed Him after His death:
O ye the faithful loved ones of
`Abdu'l-Bahá! It is incumbent upon you to take the greatest
care of Shoghi Effendi....
For he is, after `Abdu'l-Bahá, the guardian of the Cause
of God.... He that obeyeth him not, hath not obeyed God; he
that turneth away from him, hath turned away from God and he
that denieth him, hath denied the True One. Beware lest
anyone falsely interpret these words.... 6
Thus, `Abdu'l-Bahá's choice of a successor to the
leadership of the Bahá'í community after His passing was
explicitly stated. The Guardianship protected the unity of the
Faith of Bahá'u'lláh by continuing the line of authority,
which had passed from Bahá'u'lláh to `Abdu'l-Bahá, and now
rested on the shoulders of Shoghi Effendi, who was also called
by `Abdu'l-Bahá in His Will and Testament 'the Sign of
God'.7
When he was appointed Guardian, Shoghi Effendi was in his
early twenties, studying at Balliol College, Oxford. The grief
he felt upon the death of his dearly-loved Grandfather, added
to the weight of the responsibility he had been given in
`Abdu'l-Bahá's will, was initially crushing, since he had had
no intimation that he was to be appointed to any such
position.
To deal with his grief and to prepare himself to assume the
burden of authority placed upon his shoulders, he left the
Holy Land and entered a several-month period of seclusion.
During this time, he left the affairs of the Faith under the
leadership of his great aunt, Bahíyyih Khánum -- Bahá'u'lláh's
daughter and `Abdu'l-Bahá's sister. Shoghi Effendi and his
great aunt were very close; she, of all the members of his
family, understood his crushing grief at the loss of his
beloved Grandfather, and she was a wise and loyal support to
him during the early years of the Guardianship until her
passing in 1932. The depth of his regard for her is evident in
the tender tribute he penned immediately following her death,
a small portion of which is excerpted here:
Dearly-beloved Greatest Holy Leaf! ...The memory
of the ineffable beauty of thy smile shall ever continue to
cheer and hearten me in the thorny path I am destined to
pursue. The remembrance of the touch of thine hand shall
spur me on to follow steadfastly in thy way. The sweet magic
of thy voice shall remind me, when the hour of adversity is
at its darkest, to hold fast to the rope thou didst seize so
firmly all the days of thy life.8
The "thorny path" to which the Guardian alludes in this
passage perhaps refers to one of the crucial and difficult
tasks he was called upon to perform: the protection of the
young Faith from enemies from both outside and within its
ranks. He also served as the sole authoritative interpreter
and expounder of its teachings; he erected the administrative
order of the Faith; he prosecuted global plans for the
worldwide expansion of the Bahá'í Faith, as outlined in the
writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá; he translated volumes of the Faith's
sacred writings from their original Persian and Arabic into
English, which subsequently served as the standard for further
translations into other languages; he wrote a history of the
first century of the Faith; and he developed and beautified
the properties at the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa and Acre.
Those are the major tangible legacies of the Guardianship, but
perhaps as important as any of these was the way Shoghi
Effendi inspired ordinary people to arise and do extraordinary
things. In much the same way that a general marshals his
troops to battle, he wrote numerous letters to the Bahá'í
communities, large and small, all over the world and called
them to greater service to their Faith and to humanity. For
example, in a letter to the American Bahá'ís in 1948, he
referred to them as "the champion builders of Bahá'u'lláh's
rising World Order" and urged them to "scale nobler heights of
heroism as humanity plunges into greater depths of despair,
degradation, dissension and distress."9
He safeguarded the unity of the Faith by acting, as
`Abdu'l-Bahá before him had acted, as the authoritative
interpreter and expounder of the Bahá'í sacred writings. All
questions regarding interpretation were to be directed to him.
Although he did not have the authority to alter in any way
what Bahá'u'lláh or `Abdu'l-Bahá had revealed, he performed
the crucial tasks of clarifying points which may not have been
clearly understood and of elaborating upon previously revealed
teachings. To this end, he wrote thousands of letters to
individual believers and to Bahá'í communities around the
world. Through such guidance, the Bahá'ís remained unified in
their clear understanding of the Faith's sacred writings.
Shoghi Effendi translated the Bahá'í writings from the
language in which they were revealed -- either Persian or
Arabic -- into a majestic style of English. In 1921,
relatively few of Bahá'u'lláh's extensive writings were
available in English. The Guardian translated Bahá'u'lláh's
central works and compiled them so the Bahá'ís would have
access to authoritative translations, and he published, under
the title of The Dawn-Breakers, his annotated and
edited translation of the main historical account of the early
years of the Bahá'í Faith by Nabíl-i-A`zam so the
English-speaking Bahá'ís would be able to gain inspiration
from the examples of their spiritual forebears and to read
eyewitness accounts of those who met the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh.
Shoghi Effendi also penned his own historical account of the
first century of the Bahá'í Faith called God Passes
By.
As builder of the administrative order, Shoghi Effendi took
the writings of Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá concerning the
establishment of Bahá'í institutions that would administer the
affairs of the community, and he developed a plan to bring
them into being. Taking as his guide Bahá'u'lláh's and
`Abdu'l-Bahá's statements about the administrative order of
the Faith, Shoghi Effendi developed the fledgling communities
around the world to the point where they could support the
institutions envisioned by Bahá'u'lláh. When he was first
appointed Guardian, there were no national administrative
bodies in the Bahá'í Faith; at the time of his passing, there
were 26; at the time of the completion of the Ten Year Plan he
had initiated for the global expansion and consolidation of
the Faith between 1953 and 1963, there were 56.
Shoghi Effendi carried on an extensive correspondence with
Bahá'í communities all over the world concerning the
development of the Bahá'í administrative order. As early as
March 1923, for example, he wrote a letter to the Bahá'ís in
America, Great Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy,
Japan, and Australasia, in which he outlined the conditions
necessary for establishment of Local and National Spiritual
Assemblies, guidelines for Assembly elections, and the
parameters of Assembly functioning. He also offered the
Bahá'ís the long view of such elections: "With these
Assemblies, local as well as national, harmoniously,
vigorously, and efficiently functioning throughout the Bahá'í
world, the only means for the establishment of the Supreme
House of Justice will have been secured."10
The development of the administrative order was obviously
not brought about in isolation. Coordinated with this was a
series of plans designed to effect the systematic expansion of
the Bahá'í community around the globe. Volunteers known as
"pioneers" dispersed to remote areas to teach their Faith and
found Bahá'í communities. In the Ten Year Plan which ran from
1953 to 1963, hundreds of pioneers settled in countries and
territories throughout the world, establishing 44 new National
and Regional Assemblies to add to the existing twelve, and the
Bahá'í population swelled.
As well as coordinating the dispersal of Bahá'í pioneers to
all parts of the globe, Shoghi Effendi greatly advanced the
development of the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa. He arranged
for the construction of a superstructure over the tomb
`Abdu'l-Bahá had erected where the remains of the Báb had been
laid to rest; he beautified and expanded the gardens
surrounding the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh outside Acre; he
constructed the International Bahá'í Archives building on the
slopes of Mount Carmel, where the tablets and relics of the
Báb and Bahá'u'lláh were to be appropriately housed and
displayed for Bahá'í pilgrims; he had the remains of Navváb,
the wife of Bahá'u'lláh who had accompanied Him through all
His exiles, and His son Mírzá Mihdí, who had died in the
prison in Acre, transferred to their final resting places in
the shadow of the Shrine of the Báb and near the grave of the
Greatest Holy Leaf. All of this work was undertaken to create
an atmosphere appropriate to the spiritual and administrative
center of a world religion. As head of this religion, the
Guardian also conducted activities related to the external
affairs of the Faith and its World Centre.
Addressing even one of the various facets of the work
undertaken by the Guardian was a herculean task; that the
Guardian accomplished the vast number of objectives he set in
so many different areas over a thirty-six year period is
astounding, in retrospect. For this reason, and particularly
for his accomplishment in bringing into tangible existence the
new social order given by God to the world through the
Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, he has been extolled by one writer
as "the one human being in all history, past, present or
future, to exercise the greatest influence on the ultimate
shape and modus operandi of the social order of the
world."11
His widow, Amatu'l-Bahá Rúhíyyih
Khánum, expressed it this way:
The Guardian had fused in the alembic of his
creative mind all the elements of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh
into one great indivisible whole; he had created an
organized community of His followers which was the
receptacle of His teachings, His laws and His Administrative
Order; the teachings of the twin Manifestations of God and
the Perfect Exemplar had been woven into a shining cloak
that would clothe and protect man for a thousand years, a
cloak on which the fingers of Shoghi Effendi had picked out
the patterns, knitted the seams, fashioned the brilliant
protective clasps of his interpretations of the Sacred
Texts, never to be sundered, never to be torn away until
that day when a new Law-giver comes to the world and once
again wraps His creature man in yet another divine
garment.12