Baháʼí Faith in the United States

[5] After returning from his journey, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá continued corresponding with American Baháʼís, eventually addressing to them a series of letters, or tablets, charging the believers with the task of spreading the religion worldwide.

[6] Following ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death in 1921, his grandson Shoghi Effendi became the Guardian of the Faith, and continued to encourage and direct the efforts of the American and worldwide Baháʼí community.

In 1937, Shoghi Effendi asked believers to begin the systematic implementation of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's vision of teaching the Faith worldwide, calling for American pioneers to assist in establishing Baháʼí communities in the republics of Latin America.

Later students of Kheiralla's included Howard MacNutt, who would later compile The Promulgation of Universal Peace, a prominent collection of the addresses of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during his journeys in America.

[25] In 1898, Kheiralla undertook a Baháʼí pilgrimage to Palestine to meet ʻAbdu'l-Bahá with other American pilgrims, including Phoebe Hearst, Lua Getsinger and joined by May Bolles.

[31] Meanwhile, to the east, Sarah Farmer had founded Green Acre following the enthusiasm of the same Parliament as a summer center of cross-religion gatherings and cultural development.

According to scholar Eric Leigh Schmidt various people involved were trying to take Green Acre in various directions and threatened the shutdown of the programs[32]: pp.199–200 [33][34] Creditors were nervous,[35] and her business partners had thought to force Farmer to sell out.

[40] Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl, among the most scholarly trained Baháʼís of the time, accompanied Anton Haddad returning to America and arrived for the 1901 season.

[50] As an example of the persecution Baha'is faced (then and now) in Iran, even an American diplomat was murdered in 1924 by a mob on suspicion of being a Baháʼí intervening in a local matter.

First he demonstrated an advanced race-consciousness by glorifying diversity and black individuals on multiple occasions when racial segregation in the United States was the usual practice.

[59] For example, following the 1917 national convention, Mason Remey chaired an investigative committee into a study group in Chicago that was mixing the teachings of Baháʼu'lláh with an occult leader, while communications with 'Abdu'l-Baha were cut off.

[65] While the first Baháʼí House of Worship of the Americas began taking form in Chicago, national institutional development of the religion shifted to Green Acre for some decades.

Individuals in a number of social situations joined the religion - Alain LeRoy Locke, James Ferdinand Morton Jr., Robert Sengstacke Abbott, Helen Elsie Austin, and Nancy Douglas Bowditch.

[70] Though just a member of the community, the young Helen Clevenger was murdered in July 1936[71] and made international headlines in newspapers, and her story was republished in true crime magazines and retold in radio dramas into 1937, sometimes referencing her status as a Bahá'í, though academic review finds "…the irony of the case lay in Clevenger membership in the Bahai’i(sic) Faith [who…] were strikingly at odds with most other mainstream religions in their resolute affirmation of human equality.

That this occurred in the context of President Woodrow Wilson resegregating the capital city and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan outside of the former Confederate south is astonishing".

[9] During that period the Baháʼí National Spiritual Assembly of the United States and Canada appointed the Inter-America Committee to take charge of the preparations for international pioneers.

In the fall, amidst the rebuilding of the economy in the Great Depression and the build up to World War II a special collection and printing of the scriptural guidance to America was given to President Franklin Roosevelt, "that these utterances may, in this hour of grave crisis, bring to him comfort, encouragement and strength.

In 1937 there was essentially no presence of the religion from Central America south,[7] and eleven states and provinces in the US and Canada had no Baháʼís at all; thirty‑four lacked spiritual assemblies.

[78] In 1941, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States and Canada(NSA) filed a suit in the Supreme court of New York County against Mirza Ahmad Sohrab to stop him from using the name "Bahá'í".

[75] Though there had occasionally been earlier contact with Native American populations, (see for example the story of Nipo T. Strongheart,) this kind of effort was also a point of action during the plan.

[99] Unlike the spread of Christianity within Indian country in the United States, the Baháʼí Faith has never been associated with a fortification of colonial occupation, Euro-American assimilation, or forced conversions of Native Americans.

[102] Prior to the election of the Universal House of Justice, in 1960 one of the Hands, Mason Remey, announced that he was the Guardian and expected the allegiance of the world's Baháʼís.

Firesides were held widely in rural areas around Greenville which featured singing, and the group supported petitioning for the public swimming pool being integrated.

According to the Baháʼí teachings, development should increase people's self-reliance, communal solidarity, giving access to knowledge, and, where possible, removing sources of injustice.

[75] The American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000, estimated that there were 84,000 self-identifying adult (21 and over) Baháʼís in the United States.

[149] The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated there were some 525,000 Baháʼís in the United States in 2005[150] however internal counts in Feb 2011 show 175,000[151] excluding Alaska and Hawaiʻi.

Austin H. Wright[166][18] as an untitled entry whose first quote is "notice of a singular character, who has for some years past played a prominent part on the stage of Persian life" dated February 10, 1851.

The Baháʼí Faith in South Carolina begins in the transition from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement but defines another approach to the problem, and proceeded according to its teachings.

[174] Soon after his resignation, Cole created an email list and website called H-Bahai, which became a repository of both primary source material and critical analysis on the religion.

William Sears was a sports commentator and television personality, and Louis Gregory was an African-American lawyer, and both become prominent inside the religion as Hands of the Cause.