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Spiritual Assembly is a term given by `Abdu'l-Bahá to refer to elected councils that govern the Bahá'í Faith . Because the Bahá'í Faith has no clergy, they carried out some of the responsibilities of clergy, as well as some responsibilities that an elected Board of Deacons or Parish Council of a Christian church might perform. In addition to existing at the local level, there are national Spiritual Assemblies (although “national” in some cases refers to a portion of a country or to a group of countries). HISTORY Local Spiritual Assemblies The origin of the institution of the local Spiritual Assembly lies in Bahá'u'lláh ’s book of laws, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas : :The Lord hath ordained that in every city a House of Justice be established wherein shall gather counsellors to the number of Baha, and should it exceed this number it doth not matter. They should consider themselves as entering the Court of the presence of God, the Exalted, the Most High, and as beholding Him Who is the Unseen. It behoveth them to be the trusted ones of the Merciful among men and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God for all that dwell on earth. It is incumbent upon them to take counsel together and to have regard for the interests of the servants of God, for His sake, even as they regard their own interests, and to choose that which is meet and seemly.Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitab-i-Aqdas (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1992), p. 29. The passage gives the institution a name, a minimum number (nine, for “the number of Baha ” refers to the numerical value of the letters of that word, which is nine), and a general responsibility to take care of the welfare of others even as they would take care of their own. While the resulting institution is local, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas Bahá'u'lláh also spoke about the responsibilities of the supreme or Universal House Of Justice .Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 183. In response to the passage, Mírzá Asadu'lláh Isfahání, a prominent Bahá'í teacher, organized an unofficial Bahá'í consultative body in Tehran, Iran, about 1878.Ruhu'llah Mihrabkhani, “Maháfil-i-shur dar 'ahd-i Jamál-i-Aqdas-i-Abhá,” (“Assemblies of Consultation at the time of Baha'u'llah”), ''Payam-i-Bahá'í,'' nos. 28 and 29, pp 9-11 and pp 8-9 respectively. The first official Bahá'í consultative body was organized under `Abdu'l-Bahá’s direction by Hand Of The Cause Ḥájí Ákhúnd in Tehran in 1897; by 1899 it was an elected body. Because of the difficulties in Iran caused by persecution of the Bahá'í Faith, the Tehran body served to coordinate both local and national Bahá'í activities.Moojan Momen, “Haji Akhund,” http://www.northill.demon.co.uk/relstud/akhund.htm. It is not known what name the body was organized under. The development of a Bahá'í community in the revealed three tablets of encouragement and guidance to the body, including prayers to say at the beginning and end of their meetings, prayers that Bahá'ís use around the world today for their Spiritual Assembly meetings. In 1902 `Abdu'l-Bahá sent a very important tablet to the Chicago governing body where he said “let the designation of that body be ‘Spiritual Assembly’—this for the reason that, were it to use the term ‘House of Justice’, the government might hereafter come to suppose that it was acting as a court of law, or concerning itself in political matters, or that, at some indeterminate future time, it would involve itself in the affairs of government.... This same designation hath been universally adopted throughout Iran.”Stockman, ''The Bahá'í Faith in America,'' vol. 2, 72 (the new translated quoted in this article is found in footnote 139, pp. 448-49). For this reason, Bahá'í local and national governing bodies are designated “Spiritual Assemblies” to this day. The first decade of the twentieth century saw the proliferation of local Bahá'í governing bodies. Often unaware of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s guidance, they had a variety of titles in English and Persian , such as “Council Board, “Board of Consultation,” “House of Spirituality,” and "Executive Committee." Unaware `Abdu'l-Bahá had told the Chicago Bahá'ís to elect their body every five years, they were usually elected annually or even semi-annually. The number of members varied from five to nineteen (except in New York City, where `Abdu'l-Bahá, in 1911, said they should elect twenty-seven members in order to be inclusive of that city’s diverse and often squabbling Bahá'í groups). They were male only until `Abdu'l-Bahá said, in 1911, that women should be elected to the local governing bodies existing in the United States; their exclusion from local bodies continued in Iran until the 1950s, because of Iranian cultural conventions. Stockman, ''The Bahá'í Faith in America,'' vol. 2, 338. In the period 1900 to 1911, consultative bodies are known to have existed in Kenosha, Wisconsin ; Boston, Massachusetts ; Washington, D.C. ; Spokane, Washington; northern Hudson County, New Jersey; the greater San Francisco area, California; Bombay, India; Cairo, Egypt; Acre, Palestine; Baku, Azerbaijan ; Tbilisi, Georgia ; Ashkhabat, Turkistan ; Samarqand, Uzbekistan; and Mashhad , Abadih, Qazvin , and Tabriz , Iran . Consultative bodies also existed for the Jewish and Zoroastrian Bahá'ís in Tehran and for the women of a few Bahá'í communities.Robert H. Stockman, ''The Bahá'í Faith and American Protestantism,'' Th.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1990, p. 168. Because efforts to organize local Bahá'í consultative bodies remained informal, few additional ones had formed by 1921 (notable exceptions being Cleveland, Ohio , and London, England ), and some of the ones in the United States had lapsed. Upon assuming the Guardianship of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi read `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will And Testament and made establishment of local spiritual assemblies an early priority. His second general letter to the Bahá'ís of the world, dated March 5 , 1922 , referred to the “vital necessity of having a local Spiritual Assembly in every locality where the number of adult declared believers exceeds nine.”Shoghi Effendi, ''Bahá'í Administration'' (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1968), 20. The letter also quoted extensively from Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá about the purposes and duties of Spiritual Assemblies. The result was a rapid proliferation of local Spiritual Assemblies; a 1928 list had the following: Australia, 6; Brazil, 1; Burma, 3; Canada, 2; China, 1; Egypt, 1; England, 4; France, 1; India, 4; Japan, 1; Korea, 1; Lebanon, 1; New Zealand, 1; Palestine, 1; Iran, 5; Russia, 1; South Africa, 1; Switzerland, 1; Syria, 1; Turkey, 1; and the United States, 47, for a total of 85 local Spiritual Assemblies worldwide.''The Bahá'í World: A Biennial International Record, Volume II, 1926-1928'' (New York City: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1928), 182-85. Data for Germany arrived too late to be included in the list; that year, Germany had Bahá'ís in 37 localities. The number has grown ever since; in 2001 there were 11,740 local Spiritual Assemblies worldwide. National Spiritual Assemblies National Spiritual Assemblies are first mentioned in `Abdu'l-Bahá's and Canada elected a nine-member “Executive Committee” for the Bahai Temple Unity, a continental consultative body formed to build the Bahá'í House Of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois , a suburb of Chicago. Subsequently the Bahai Temple Unity, which held annual conventions, appointed committees to publish Bahá'í Literature , coordinate the spread of the Bahá'í Faith across North America, and review Bahá'í publications for their accuracy. By the time of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s passing in November 1921, the Bahai Temple Unity functioned as a “national” Bahá'í coordinating body. In the same , Hawaii , and Puerto Rico have their own “national” bodies because they are geographically separated from the lower forty-eight states; Sicily has its own because Shoghi Effendi said major islands in the Caribbean should elect independent National Spiritual Assemblies. Like local Spiritual Assemblies, all National Spiritual Assemblies have nine members and are elected annually, usually during the Ridván Festival (April 21-May 2). All Bahá'í elections occur in an atmosphere of prayer where nominations, campaigning, and all discussion of persons is forbidden. The members of the National Spiritual Assemblies collectively serve as the electoral college for electing the Universal House Of Justice , the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith, which was first formed in 1963. See Also: Statistics on National Spiritual Assemblies NATURE AND PURPOSE Bahá'u'lláh , `Abdu'l-Bahá , and Shoghi Effendi stated how Spiritual Assemblies should be elected by the Bahá'ís, defined their nature and purposes, and described in considerable detail how they should function. Since these institutions are grounded in the Bahá'í authoritative texts, Bahá'ís regard them as divine in nature, and contrast the wealth of scriptural guidance with the paucity of scriptural texts on which Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious institutions are based.Shoghi Effendi, ''The World Order of Baha'u'llah'' (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1974), 144. The , direct relations with national organizations and governmental agencies, oversee the work of local spiritual assemblies, and (in some countries) Regional Councils, set local Bahá'í jurisdictional boundaries, provide various educational services and programs, and set the overall tone and direction of the national community. NOTES SEE ALSO REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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