Announcement of Series of Five Intercontinental Conferences and Appointment of Eight Additional Hands of the Cause
On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the opening of the memorable Holy Year associated with the Centenary celebrations of the birth of the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán—an anniversary falling only a few months before the decade-long global Spiritual Crusade, on which the entire company of His followers have embarked, will have reached its midway point—I feel moved to announce the convocation of a series of Intercontinental Conferences, five in number, to be held successively in Kampala, Uganda, in the heart of the African continent; in the city of Sydney, the oldest Bahá’í center established in the Antipodes; in Chicago, where the name of Bahá’u’lláh was publicly mentioned for the first time in the western world; in the city of Frankfurt, in the heart of the European continent; and in Djakarta, the capital city of the Republic of Indonesia.
These historic gatherings, which will recall in some of their aspects the four epoch-making Conferences which commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the inception of the Bahá’í Revelation, are to be held respectively in the months of January, March, May, July and September, under the auspices of the Regional Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Central and East Africa, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Australia, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States of America, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Germany and Austria, and the Regional Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of South-East Asia.
They are to be convened by the chairmen of the aforementioned Regional and National Spiritual Assemblies for the five-fold purpose of offering humble thanksgiving to the Divine Author of our Faith, Who has graciously enabled His followers, during a period of deepening anxiety and amidst the confusion and uncertainties of a critical phase in the fortunes of mankind, to prosecute uninterruptedly the Ten-Year Plan formulated for the execution of the Grand Design conceived by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; of reviewing and celebrating the series of signal victories won so rapidly in the course of each of the campaigns of this world-encircling Crusade; of deliberating on ways and means that will insure its triumphant consummation; and of lending simultaneously a powerful impetus, the world over, to the vital process of individual conversion—the preeminent purpose underlying the Plan in all its ramifications—and to the construction and completion of the three Mother Temples to be built in the European, the African, and Australian continents.
PHENOMENAL ADVANCE ACHIEVED IN WORLD CRUSADE
The phenomenal advances made since the inception of this globe-girdling Crusade, in the brief space of less than five years, eclipses—if we pause to ponder the scope and significance of recent developments—in both the number and quality of the feats achieved by its prosecutors, any previous collective enterprise undertaken by the followers of the Faith, at any time and in any part of the world, since the close of the initial and most turbulent epoch of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.
The raising of the number of Bahá’í centers—foci and pivots of Bahá’í teaching and administrative activity—all over the globe, from twenty-five hundred to forty-five hundred; of the number of countries, both sovereign States and Dependencies, included within the pale of the Faith from one hundred and twenty-eight to two hundred and fifty-four; and of the number of Bahá’í national and regional Spiritual Assemblies—forerunners of the Universal House of Justice—from twelve to twenty-six; the substantial multiplication of Bahá’í local Spiritual Assemblies—constituting the foundation of a rising Administrative Order—throughout five continents, whose number has now passed the thousand mark; the planting of the banner of the Faith in over seventy islands, situated in the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean and the North Sea; the establishment of its northernmost outpost beyond the Arctic Circle, in far-off Thule, Greenland; the erection and completion, in the Holy Land itself, at the cost of over a quarter of a million dollars, of the Bahá’í International Archives, heralding the emergence, in its plenitude, of the seat of the embryonic World Order of Bahá’u’lláh on the slopes of Mt. Carmel and facing the Qiblih of the Bahá’í world; the enlargement of the scope of Bahá’í international endowments in the twin cities of Akká and Haifa, constituting the World Center of the Faith, until their present value can now be estimated at over five and a half million dollars; a corresponding extension of Bahá’í national endowments in the Great Republic of the West—the stronghold of the Bahá’í Administrative Order—the value of which is fast approaching five million dollars, and of Bahá’í holdings in the Cradle of the Faith, conservatively estimated to be well over forty million túmans; the acquisition of no less than forty-eight National Hazíratu’l-Quds—the central administrative headquarters of Bahá’í communities established in the sovereign States and chief Dependencies of the globe—involving an expenditure of over half a million dollars; the founding of Bahá’í national endowments in no less than fifty capitals and chief cities of all five continents, the cost of which may be estimated to be at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; the initiation of the construction of the Mother Temples of both Africa and Australia, as well as the purchase of eleven Temple sites for over two hundred thousand dollars; the incorporation of over ninety national and local Spiritual Assemblies, raising the total number of incorporated Assemblies the world over to over two hundred; the translation of Bahá’í literature into one hundred and forty-eight languages, of which no less than seventy-two are over and above those called for by the provisions of the Ten-Year Plan, bringing the total number of languages to two hundred and thirty-seven; as well as a series of additional accomplishments, too numerous to recount, supplementing the objectives of that Plan, in connection with the opening of virgin territories, the acquisition of Temple sites, the inauguration of Bahá’í schools, the founding of Bahá’í local endowments, the establishment of local Hazíratu’l-Quds, the formulation of subsidiary Plans, the initiation of a Bahá’í Publishing Trust, the purchase of Bahá’í Holy Sites, and of plots for Bahá’í burial-grounds and for Bahá’í summer schools—all these can be regarded by any fair-minded observer in no other light except as the manifestations of a momentous progress as diversified in character as it is far-reaching in its import.