Tablet to the Friends in Washington

Among the collective Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to American communities preserved in the 1909 publication of *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas* is a substantial Tablet addressed to the believers in Washington, D.C. The Tablet bears no exact date but appears, by internal evidence, to have been revealed in the years immediately preceding the Master's American journey of 1912.

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The Washington community in those years was in the early phase of its formation. A small group of believers — drawn from the city's professional and government employee populations — had begun meeting regularly under the informal leadership of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Parsons. The community was distinguished by the racial integration that would, in the coming years, become one of its principal witnesses: the African American believer Louis Gregory was among its early members, and the gatherings were among the first in the city to bring together African American and white participants on equal footing.

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The Tablet to the Washington friends opens with the characteristic salutation of the Master's collective addresses to American communities. It expresses joy at their *gathering in the Cause* and addresses them as *the friends in the seat of the great government.* The Master's recognition of the political significance of the city is unobtrusive but present.

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The principal substance of the Tablet is the call to unity.

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> O ye believers of God in the city of Washington! Be ye as > one soul in many bodies, and the Spirit shall flow forth > from you. Be a single hand of mercy turned toward all > men. Stand together in the Cause as the fingers of one > hand, distinct yet united, separate yet inseparable.

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The Tablet ties the effectiveness of the Washington friends' teaching work directly to their inner unity. The city, the Master observes, is the seat of the American government. The eyes of many will be on the small Bahá'í community gathered there. If the community is divided among itself, no public address it gives will carry weight. If the community is united, even small public acts will attract the notice that the city's prominence makes possible.

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Specific guidance follows. The Master asks the friends to attend their gatherings regularly. He asks them to set aside personal differences in the small interest of the collective work. He asks them to give particular attention to the *amity between the races* — language that, in the American Washington of the early twentieth century, was unmistakable in its reference. He asks them to be hospitable to the visiting friends from other communities.

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The Tablet closes with a benediction. The Washington believers, the Master assures them, are *under the eye of divine favour.* If they live up to the call to unity, they will become, in time, *a centre of teaching for the whole American republic.*

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The Washington community, in the decades that followed, would substantially live up to the call. Its racial integration would deepen. Its public engagement with the African American community would grow. Its formal institutional life — the Local Spiritual Assembly, established in the 1920s — would become one of the more distinguished local bodies of the early American Faith.

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