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This volume brings together, for the first time, the communications addressed to the followers of Bahá'u'lláh in the Australasian area by Shoghi Effendi during the period of his ministry, from 1921 to 1957, as Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith. Since the majority of the Bahá'ís of Australasia were resident in Australia during that period, most of the letters collected here were addressed to the believers in that continent. It constitutes a valuable depository of the authoritative guidance from the Head of the Faith during that time.
It is much more than a historical record of letters written to early followers of this Faith, many of whom are no longer alive. It provides a fascinating opportunity to examine the twentieth-century development in the remote Antipodes of a religion having its origins in the heart of Asia. The forces and processes which led to the establishment of a staunch Bahá'í community in so distant a region have not, at the present time, been clearly traced. It is known that the first mention of the new religion in Australia was in a Melbourne newspaper in March 1846, less than two years after the Declaration of the Báb, to be followed by a report in an Auckland, New Zealand, newspaper in February 1853. The first Bahá'í in the Antipodes is accepted as being in New Zealand in 1912, while Australia was opened to the Faith by its illustrious Bahá'í pioneers in 1920.
One might inquire how a new belief originating in an Asian setting, promulgated by a small handful of adherents of limited means and modest social standing, could have been spread far and wide across so vast a region of the planet as that of Australia and the Pacific Islands, at a time when the general population displayed no predisposition to embrace a faith other than orthodox Christianity and no discernible inclination to assess the relative merits of the great religions of the world. It is in the pages of this volume that one might profitably search for an answer to this question. Sustained and invigorated by the loving guidance of Shoghi Effendi, the early Bahá'ís proceeded slowly, and at times painfully, to propagate their Faith, undeterred by the meagre response to their efforts or by their own consciousness of their perceived inadequacy. Setbacks were overcome, obstacles surmounted, and discouragement conquered, as these valiant believers struggled ever onward, confident that one day the Institutions of the Bahá'í Administrative order would be raised up in all parts of the region and would develop as centres of spiritual illumination and unity. To read the letters published here is to attain a profound sense of admiration for the heroism and dogged persistence of those first believers and to acquire an abiding gratitude for their devoted labours.
This book conveys a painfully realistic portrait of the development of the Australasian Bahá'í community. No attempt is made to mask the fact that the infant community endured periods of deep misunderstanding and fundamental misconception, of disunity and inertia, of frustration and impatience in the process of its growth. But the mysterious power of the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh welded believers from widely-separated areas, from differing socio-economic backgrounds, and from diverse cultural perspectives, into the unified, energetic and confident community which now exists and which is clearly entering a phase of unprecedented growth and consolidation.
The significance of the events referred to in this book might best be assessed against the background of the evolution of Australian national consciousness during the years in which the letters were written, since so much of the correspondence was directed principally to Australia. In a newly-federated nation, searching for its identity, acutely conscious of its isolation from its European cultural roots and of its proximity to Asia, the Bahá'ís established centres of world-mindedness, of universality and of international cooperation, symbolized by such actions as the monetary contributions made by the fledgling community to global Bahá'í endeavours of earthquake relief in Asia and of construction of the Mother-Temple of the American continent.
The members of the Australian and New Zealand Bahá'í communities are shown, on the evidence of the letters addressed to them by Shoghi Effendi, to have represented, in many ways, the best of the character and temperament of those nations. Over the years, he called attention to "the loyalty, the vigour and the devotion" with which they conducted their affairs, expressed his "admiration for their zeal and noble determination", hailed "the solidarity and self-sacrifice, the courage and confidence they display in their incessant and manifold activities", and lauded "the vitality and adventurous spirit the members of these communities have so strikingly manifested". In a society which was male-oriented to an extreme, Bahá'í women played a courageous and disproportionate role as pioneers, teachers and administrators of the Faith. Disregarding the prevailing tendencies to assign little value to the indigenous peoples, the Bahá'ís attached importance to attracting to their Cause as brothers and sisters the aboriginal Australians and the Maori New Zealanders, thus contributing to the upliftment of the peoples and to their enlistment in the world-wide endeavour of spiritual regeneration of humanity.
This book is of far more than archival value. It provides insight into the complex dynamics of the growth of a Bahá'í community in a Western society, and into the gradual emergence of that community from unmitigated obscurity into a position of admiration and respect from the most progressive elements of that society. It might also profitably be studied for the clarifications it offers about various aspects of the Bahá'í teachings, and the prescription it sets out for the process of acquiring a more profound comprehension of these teachings. As world events unfold, a deeper understanding will be gained of the significance of the "spiritual axis, extending from the Antipodes to the northern islands of the Pacific Ocean" to which the Guardian referred.
The prodigious accomplishments of Shoghi Effendi in the 36 years of his ministry as Guardian of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh are a continuing source of wonder and astonishment. A perusal of his letters to Australasia reveals his infinite patience, his compelling logic, the clarity of his thought, his sensitivity to believers who only dimly grasped the importance of the work to which he was calling them, his compassion for them in their setbacks, and the fathomless love and tenderness with which he nurtured and trained them from spiritual infancy to adulthood. As stated by the Universal House of Justice in its tribute to Shoghi Effendi on the occasion of the first World Congress in 1963:
He it was, and he alone, who unfolded the potentialities of the widely scattered, numerically small, and largely unorganized Bahá'í community which had been called into being during the Heroic Age of the Faith. He it was who unfolded the grand design of God's Holy Cause; set in motion the great plans of teaching already outlined by 'Abdu'l-Bahá; established the institutions and greatly extended the endowments at the World Centre, and raised the Temples of America, Africa, Australasia, and Europe; developed the Administrative Order of the Cause throughout the world; and set the ark of the Cause true on its course.
The passage of years will magnify rather than diminish the gratitude that succeeding generations of Australasian Bahá'ís will feel for his monumental labours.
Peter J. Khan
Haifa, Israel
September 1992.
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