Father Dunn, Pioneer to Australia

A retelling based on Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By and his cable on Hyde Dunn's passing in Messages to America, with details from Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand and the notes to Arohanui: Letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand. It is told in our own words; words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.

John Henry Hyde Dunn was born in London in 1855. He worked in business in Britain and Europe and then moved to the United States. In 1905, in a tinsmith's shop in Seattle, he overheard the shopkeeper talking with a man just back from 'Akká and from the presence of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. The visitor quoted the words: "Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country, but let him glory in this, that he loves his kind." Dunn joined the conversation and accepted the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh that day. In 1912 he was at a meeting with 'Abdu'l-Bahá in San Francisco.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the Divine Plan, which called the believers to carry the Faith to other lands, Australia among them, were unveiled at the first American Bahá'í Convention after the war. Shoghi Effendi writes in God Passes By that in response "the great-hearted and heroic Hyde Dunn, at the advanced age of sixty-two, promptly forsook his home in California, and, seconded and accompanied by his wife, settled as a pioneer in Australia." He and his wife, Clara, arrived there in April 1920.

Hyde found work as a travelling salesman and spoke of Bahá'u'lláh in the towns his work took him to. Shoghi Effendi records that he carried the message to "no less than seven hundred towns throughout that Commonwealth." With Clara he brought it to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Perth in the west and Queensland in the north, and in 1922 and 1923 they spent time in New Zealand. The believers came to call them "Father" and "Mother" Dunn. In 1934 Hyde was elected to the first National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Australia and New Zealand.

Hyde Dunn died in Sydney on 17 February 1941. Shoghi Effendi cabled the American Bahá'ís: "The magnificent career of this veteran warrior of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh reflects the purest luster of the world historic mission conferred upon American community by 'Abdu'l-Bahá." A letter written on the Guardian's behalf to the Australian believers praised the Dunns' "quiet and unassuming sacrifices for the Cause" and said of Hyde: "He is indeed the spiritual conqueror of that continent!"

Clara Dunn continued to serve for many years, and Shoghi Effendi later appointed her a Hand of the Cause of God. Hyde was given the same rank after his passing. Clara died in 1960, at the age of ninety-one.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi and the notes to Arohanui: Letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand.

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/