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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
25 stories on this theme.
Shoghi Effendi's account, in *God Passes By*, of Thornton Chase — the Chicago insurance executive who in June 1894 became the first American and the first Westerner formally to embrace the Bahá'í Faith, and who would later be honoured by 'Abdu'l-Bahá as *the first Bahá'í of the United States.*
Shoghi Effendi's narration, in *God Passes By*, of the Master's laying of the cornerstone of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár at Wilmette in May 1912 — a moment the Guardian describes as the inauguration of the construction of the first House of Worship of the Bahá'í Dispensation in the Western world.
A busy businessman in Chicago read a few words in a newspaper, went to listen — and became the first person in all of America to follow the Bahá'í Faith.
For nearly half a century Corinne True gave herself to a single labour of service — the raising of the first Bahá'í House of Worship of the West on the shore of Lake Michigan at Wilmette. Across two world wars and a great depression she gathered the dimes and dollars of working believers, held the project together through every discouragement, and lived to see the temple she had served dedicated to public worship. 'Abdu'l-Bahá called her the Mother of the Temple.
On a green hillside above a river in Maine, Sarah Farmer founded a summer gathering where people of every religion and philosophy could meet, listen to one another, and seek the truth in peace. When she made her pilgrimage to 'Akká and recognised in the Bahá'í teachings the very unity she had been reaching for, she gave Green Acre into the keeping of the Cause — and it became one of the first enduring Bahá'í centres of learning in the West.
Scattered across an enormous continent, the early American believers could not build a House of Worship one city at a time. So in 1909 the delegates of their far-flung communities met in Chicago and brought into being Bahá'í Temple Unity — the first national institution of the Western Faith, the instrument through which a whole people could act as one to raise the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of the West.
In the winter of 1898, fifteen Western believers — gathered and largely financed by Phoebe Hearst, and travelling in small parties to avoid notice — made their way to the prison-city of 'Akká to attain the presence of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Shoghi Effendi marks their visit as the opening of a new epoch in the rise of the Faith in the West.
The first American to embrace the Faith did not rest in the distinction. For the next eighteen years Thornton Chase quietly built the institutions of a young community — chairing the Chicago House of Spirituality, founding its publishing work, and writing the patient circular letters that knit the scattered believers of a continent together. 'Abdu'l-Bahá named him Thábit, the Steadfast.
Long before he had ever heard of the Bahá'í Faith, the French-Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois believed his life's work was to build a universal temple of Truth for all humanity. When he found the Cause, he found his commission — and poured the rest of his life into the luminous nine-sided House of Worship at Wilmette, a building whose ornament gathers the symbols of all the world's religions into one.
At 'Abdu'l-Bahá's own request, a Washington hostess with no experience in such matters set out to gather Black and white Americans together to proclaim their oneness. In May 1921 over a thousand souls of both races filled a hall for the first Convention for Amity between the Races — and there the Master's message, carried fresh from Haifa, declared that no more important gathering had been held since the beginning of time.
In 1925 the *Star of the West* carried the announcement of the formation of the first National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States and Canada — the inaugural national institution of the American Faith, elected in convention at the Wilmette Temple grounds.
In the August 1915 issue of the Star of the West, the editors surveyed the program of the Green Acre Bahá'í summer school at Eliot, Maine — the gathering that, since Sarah Farmer's gift of the property, had become the principal summer institution of the American Bahá'í community.
In 1926 the Star of the West printed the obituary of Howard MacNutt, the early New York believer who had compiled and edited The Promulgation of Universal Peace from the stenographic records of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's American talks of 1912.
In 1916 the Star of the West reported on the publication of Ali-Kuli Khan's translation of the Kitáb-i-Íqán — the first complete rendering into English of Bahá'u'lláh's principal doctrinal work, made available to the American friends after fifteen years of patient labour.
In 1918 the Star of the West printed Louis Gregory's report on his Southern teaching tour — a journey through the segregated cities of Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and Nashville at a time when Black and white believers in the South were quietly meeting together in defiance of the laws of those states.
In a 1915 issue of the Star of the West, Mary Hanford Ford published an early survey of the Bahá'í communities then in existence across the United States, naming city by city the small assemblies and scattered isolated believers — a snapshot of the American Faith just as the war was beginning to reshape the world it was being preached into.
In the spring of 1916 the *Star of the West* carried the first published Tablets of the Divine Plan, sent by 'Abdu'l-Bahá from the war-strained Holy Land to the American believers — eight letters that would prove to be the charter of the Bahá'í teaching enterprise of the twentieth century.
In October 1912 the Star of the West printed the news of the death of Thornton Chase — the first American to embrace the Bahá'í Faith, who had passed in Los Angeles only weeks after meeting 'Abdu'l-Bahá on the Master's American journey. The Master called him *the first American believer.*
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to Mrs. Jessie Cole of Chicago, addressing her recent recognition of the Cause and exhorting her to undertake the active teaching work in her city that her conviction made her ready for.
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the New York believers, preserved in the 1909 *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas* — addressing the city of New York as the eventual centre through which the Cause will reach the New World and exhorting the friends to prepare for that destiny.
An early collective Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the Washington, D.C. community of believers — exhorting them to unity among themselves as the foundation of their effective teaching work in the capital city.
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to Lua Getsinger — the *mother teacher of the West,* one of the first Western pilgrims to 'Akká in 1898 — sent to her after her return to America with a charge to undertake the lifelong teaching work that her pilgrimage had opened.
*World Order* magazine carried, in a profile of the late twentieth century, an appreciation of Firuz Kazemzadeh — the Persian-American historian, professor of Russian history at Yale, and member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, whose lifetime of scholarship and institutional service shaped the American Bahá'í community across half a century.
*World Order* magazine carried, in a historical profile, the story of Keith Ransom-Kehler — the American Bahá'í pioneer who died in Iṣfáhán in 1933 of smallpox contracted during her teaching tour of Persia, and who was named by Shoghi Effendi the first American Bahá'í martyr.
*World Order* magazine carried, in a 1980s issue, an appreciation of Marzieh Gail — the American Bahá'í translator whose six-decade career rendered into English a substantial portion of the Persian and Arabic Bahá'í Writings, including major works of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi.