New Local Spiritual Assembly - Welwyn, UK

Ok, so here we are, the newly formed Spiritual Assembly of the Bah?’?s of Welwyn. Thursday evening (after sunset) was a joyous time for this particular group of Bah?’?s (including the author of this blog). We were able to declare our Local Assembly formed in the presence of a representative of the Bah?’? Council for England, Nadia Jiwnani.

Here’s Nadia (below left) with Roya Taidi, now the Vice Chair of our Local Assembly.

Bah?’?s talk a lot about administration - a word that’s almost guaranteed to get most of us yawning and finding an excuse to leave the building. But it’s actually a fundamental part of our faith. The Bah?’? institutions (which include the Local Spiritual Assembly, the National Spiritual Assembly and the Universal House of Justice) are, we believe, divinely ordained bodies through which administration becomes a sacred task and responsibility. The Bah?’? community has no priests or ministers. In fact, Bah?’u'll?h abolished the institution of priesthood, deeming it unnecessary in a literate world in which every person can read and study the Word of God for her or himself. There is no need for any individual to interpose themselves between the believer and God, to interpret the scriptures for the believer, or to perform rituals and sacraments.

Instead, where there are nine or more Bah?’?s in a given locality, they form a Local Spiritual Assembly. If there are more than nine Bah?’?s in the locality, they elect nine people from the community to serve on the Local Assembly. The election itself is a spiritual process. All adult Bah?’?s in the locality are eligible both to vote and be voted form. Nobody is nominated; nobody canvasses. The electors should vote for those they consider to have the right spiritual, moral and intellectual qualities and capacities to serve on the Assembly.

The National Spiritual Assemblies and the Universal House of Justice are similarly elected, but by indirect delegate elections. There is much more to the Bah?’? administrative structure than this, but I won’t go into it here. You can read about this elsewhere.

The heart of the collective life of the Bah?’? community is ‘Bah?’? consultation‘. I say ‘heart’ deliberately because it is an extraordinary, spiritual, uplifting and incredibly creative process - when it works properly. Consultation as Bah?’?s do it is a subtle flow that balances the complete freedom of the individual to express his or her views, to contribute facts and information and to speak frankly with the creative collective wisdom that emerges in the Assembly as the consultation proceeds. Once a decision has been made, preferably by consensus - but, failing consensus, by majority vote - all involved are bound by the decision, even if they voted in the opposite direction.

This is entirely contrary to what counts as ‘democratic’ in the West, since it seems to submerge individual conscience in the Assembly’s decision. What if the Assembly’s decision is wrong? What if it goes against my deeply held beliefs?

Actually, Bah?’?s believe that the individual conscience is sacred. Each and every individual has the right and responsibility to study, to look at things with a searching eye and to arrive at their own conclusions. This is the Bah?’? principle of the individual search after truth. However, each of us surely understands, in all humility, that our own picture of the world is limited, that we have only a few pieces of the overall jigsaw puzzle of the cosmos. So, to insist on my own view is to insist on something partial (and probably wrong). Many years experience in Bah?’? consultative bodies have taught me that what comes out of properly conducted consultation is always better and more complete than my own limited ideas and understanding.

I’m trying to find a way of expressing what I experience in consultation. Is it a love-filled dance of the spirit, expressed in words, ideas, gestures, laughter, tears? That’s how good consultation seems to me. The partners in the dance, filled with love for God, for Bah?’u'll?h, for each other, complement and add to each other’s moves and steps, together creating beautiful pattern. And there comes a moment when the beautiful pattern is somehow complete - and we know we’ve arrived at a decision. Actually, that’s the role of the Chair of the Assembly - a good chairperson senses when the pattern is complete and invites the Assembly to acknowledge the consensus.

But when one or other of the partners tries to dominate, to force the dance in a particular direction, the other partners trip and stumble, and the whole ensemble may fall over in pain and with recrimination.

I’ve experienced the beauty and I’ve experienced the pain.

I love the creation of beauty in consultation. It’s the most wonderful arena for spiritual growth; it challenges the ego and tests one’s spiritual capacities to the full. On the other hand, I would do almost anything to avoid the pain. And yet, the greatest growth can perhaps come only with pain. I and others of my dearest Bah?’? friends have sat together in the fire, weeping with pain, staying there only in the faith that our Assembly would grow and come to another place - and, God be praised, it did. In our darkest moments we could live only by faith and trust in the guidance of the senior institutions, which were holding us in the fire and what might have seemed like punishment, but which we knew to be an act of the greatest love. Now we bless and thank those senior institutions for their faith in us, knowing that we had the capacity to suffer the pain and to learn and grow.

All the Bah?’?s recognize the authority of the Assembly as a body. But the Assembly is a leadership of service. The Assembly enables, empowers and co-ordinates individual initiative and the collective life of the community. In fact, the real task of the Assembly is to be part of a worldwide process that is transforming (slowly but surely) the whole of society and building a new civilization based on unity and justice:

‘So powerful is the light of unity,’ Bah?’u'll?h declared, ‘that it can illuminate the whole earth.’ ‘We, verily,’ He further stated, ‘have come to unite and weld together all that dwell on earth.’ Bah?’u'll?h made the oneness of humankind the central principle and goal of His Faith, an emphasis that implies the organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of nations and signalizes the ‘coming of age of the entire human race.’

Dig around on The Bah?’?s web portal to find out more.

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