Launching the Ten Year Crusade in 1953

In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes that the World Crusade "crowned his ministry and his life's work." It was a source of deep happiness to the Guardian, she says, and its victories a comfort to his often sad and overburdened heart.

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The plan took shape in stages. In November 1951 Shoghi Effendi announced four Intercontinental Teaching Conferences for the coming Holy Year, which would mark the centenary of the birth of Bahá'u'lláh's Mission in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán. Only a week earlier he had still been referring to a "third Seven Year Plan," and the Bahá'ís took the Conferences to be jubilee gatherings.

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Rúḥíyyih Khánum remembers him one summer, worn out after a long winter's work in Haifa, taking a cure at a watering place after promising her that he would rest. Instead he spent the hours of daylight leaning over his own map of the goals, filling in its details with great care, and neither her protests nor his doctor's had any effect.

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The detailed plan was made public in 1952 at the opening of the Holy Year. It was to run for a decade, from Riḍván 1953 to Riḍván 1963, the centenary of Bahá'u'lláh's Declaration. There were 131 "virgin" territories to be opened to the Faith, and 118 already opened that still needed consolidation. The number of National Spiritual Assemblies was to be more than quadrupled, to over fifty. Bahá'í literature was to be translated into 91 new languages, and three new continental Houses of Worship were among its goals. Shoghi Effendi defined its purpose in his own words:

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> Let there be no mistake. The avowed, the primary aim of this > Spiritual Crusade is none other than the conquest of the citadels > of men's hearts. The theatre of its operations is the entire > planet.

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The four Conferences of 1953 opened the Crusade: at Kampala in February, at Chicago during Riḍván, at Stockholm in July and at New Delhi in the autumn. More than 3,400 believers attended, from more than eighty countries. In Chicago, where the Mother Temple of the West had been dedicated on 2 May, well over a hundred believers arose and offered themselves as pioneers.

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In the first year of the Plan one hundred new territories were opened. Those who first reached a virgin territory in that year received from Shoghi Effendi the title "Knight of Bahá'u'lláh." He wrote that the most vital objective of the Plan had been "virtually attained" before its first year had ended. When he became Guardian the Faith had reached 35 countries and territories; when he passed away in November 1957, six years before the Crusade was to close, the number was 254.

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*A retelling based on **The Priceless Pearl** (Rúḥíyyih Khánum, 1969). For the fuller account, see the original.*

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