The Bahai Faith: One Revelation, Many Messengers

What is the Bahai Faith, and what do Bahais believe?

Imagine you are scrolling the news late at night, and story after story is about people hurting each other in the name of God. You and your best friend grew up in different religions, and you have never believed either of you was going to hell. Then you see a photo of a white, nine-sided temple shaped like a lotus, and you wonder: is there a faith that says we belong together?

The short answer: The Bahai Faith is an independent world religion founded in nineteenth-century Persia by Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri, known as Bahaullah. It teaches one God, one human family, and one religion revealed in stages by a series of divine Messengers.

Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad are in that series, and so, Bahais hold, is Bahaullah, each bringing what his age could receive. God is held to be unknowable in essence, so we know God through these Messengers, called Manifestations of God.

From that comes the rest: prejudice of race, nation, class and creed has no standing; women and men are equal; science and religion must agree; and you must search for truth yourself rather than inherit it.

There is no clergy and there are no sacraments. Elected councils of nine run the faith, and its scripture is the founder's own written word. The name, often written Baha'i, comes from the Arabic baha, glory or splendor.

If you wonder how this differs from a vague everything-is-one philosophy, two features stand out.

First, the documents. Bahaullah wrote his own scripture, by hand or through secretaries who read it back to him for correction, so the uncertainty around older founders barely arises.

Second, the Covenant. In a sealed document, the Kitab-i-Ahd, Bahaullah named his eldest son Abdul-Baha as successor and sole authorized interpreter, and Abdul-Baha appointed his grandson Shoghi Effendi. That written chain is the usual explanation for why the faith has had far less lasting schism than most religions at a similar age. Small breakaway groups descend mainly from Mirza Muhammad Ali, who contested the succession after 1892, and from Charles Mason Remey in 1960. No independent census of them exists, and none has shown a following near the main body's size.

Outsiders often call the faith syncretic, or an interfaith movement. Bahais reject both: theirs is a distinct revelation with its own laws, calendar, holy days and institutions, much as Christians decline to be called a Jewish sect. Scholars of religion classify it as an independent religion too.

Who was Bahaullah, and how did the faith begin with the Bab?

If you love a story of courage under pressure, this one will hold you. It starts with a young merchant in Shiraz.

On the evening of May 22, 1844, Siyyid Ali-Muhammad told a visiting seminary student, Mulla Husayn, that he was the Qaim, the promised figure of Shia expectation, and took the title the Bab, the Gate. He also claimed to be a Manifestation of God with a new book of laws, the Bayan, which set aside parts of Islamic law. That made him an apostate to the Shia clergy and a threat to the Qajar state. His movement spread across Persia and was met with force. He was tried, imprisoned in the mountains of Azerbaijan, and shot by firing squad in the barracks square at Tabriz on July 9, 1850, aged thirty. Thousands of his followers were killed.

Bahaullah was born Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri in Tehran on November 12, 1817, son of a Persian court minister. He accepted the Bab in 1844 without meeting him and became a leading Babi.

In August 1852 a few Babis, counted by historians as two, three or four men, tried to kill Nasir al-Din Shah in revenge for the Bab. Bahaullah was arrested and chained in the Siyah-Chal, the Black Pit, an underground Tehran dungeon, where he later wrote that he first became aware of his mission. In 1863 he declared himself the one the Bab had promised, taking the title Bahaullah, the Glory of God.

Picture forty years of being moved further from home. Released in 1853 and banished to Baghdad, Bahaullah spent a decade in Ottoman Iraq, two years of it, 1854 to 1856, alone in the mountains of Kurdistan. There he wrote the Book of Certitude and the Hidden Words and gathered the scattered Babis.

Ordered to Constantinople in 1863, he spent twelve days in a garden outside Baghdad, later called the Garden of Ridvan, and told a small circle he was the promised one. Then came Adrianople, and in 1868 Akka, the Ottoman penal colony on the coast of today's Israel, where he arrived a prisoner with family and companions. Confinement eased, and he was allowed to live outside the walls at the mansion of Bahji, where he died on May 29, 1892.

His half-brother Mirza Yahya, whom the Bab had made nominal head of the Babis, rejected his claim. Their split at Adrianople is why a small Babi remnant, the Azalis, survived separately in Iran.

What is progressive revelation, and which messengers does it name?

Remember your question about whether these faiths could belong together? Progressive revelation is the Bahai answer.

It teaches that God has guided humanity through a series of Messengers, each founding a religion suited to the people who received it, and the series never ends. Think of school: the same teacher gives simple lessons in first grade and harder ones in high school. The truth stays; the student grows.

The Manifestations named in the writings are Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab and Bahaullah. The list is openly incomplete; Bahaullah wrote of Messengers whose names are lost and records perished. Each is said to reflect a God who cannot be approached directly, as a polished mirror carries the sun's image without containing the sun.

Their teachings are of two kinds. Spiritual teachings, like worshipping God, speaking truthfully and treating others as you would be treated, never change. Social teachings on marriage, diet, punishment, ritual and social order are temporary and replaced as conditions change. Religions decay, in this view, when the social shell hardens and the spiritual core is neglected. Have you ever felt that about a tradition you grew up in?

This does not make all religions equally true. Each revelation was true for its age, and a law replaced later was not false. Bahais also accept that scriptures were altered in transmission and later doctrines may not reflect a Manifestation's teaching, so honoring a religion's origin is not endorsing everything done in its name.

If you come from another faith, know where this rubs. Refusing finality to any revelation clashes with the Islamic teaching that Muhammad is the seal of the prophets and with Christian claims about the uniqueness of the incarnation. And placing Krishna and Buddha beside Moses and Jesus is something Hindu and Buddhist teachers never asked for and have largely declined; The 14th Dalai Lama: Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices covers Buddhism on its own terms.

Bahai texts draw a further line. In table talks Laura Clifford Barney recorded at Akka between 1904 and 1906, published in 1908 as Some Answered Questions, Abdul-Baha separated independent Manifestations who bring a book and a law, among them Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and Bahaullah, from prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah who work within a dispensation already given. That is why Bahais honor the Hebrew prophets without adding them to the nine, and why Manifestation means founding a religion, not receiving a vision.

What are the Bahai writings, and which books count as scripture?

If you would rather read for yourself, a huge library is waiting. Bahai scripture is the revealed writing of the Bab and Bahaullah plus the writings and authenticated talks of Abdul-Baha. Bahai sources estimate more than fifteen thousand tablets and letters from Bahaullah alone; the archives at Haifa hold fewer individual texts, and under five hundred exist in authorized English translation.

The Kitab-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book, is the book of law, written in Arabic at Akka around 1873 and fully translated into authorized English only in 1992.

The Kitab-i-Iqan, the Book of Certitude, was written at Baghdad in January 1861 for a maternal uncle of the Bab, traditionally in two days and two nights. It is the main statement of progressive revelation and how to read prophecy. Start here if your questions are about how faiths fit together.

The Hidden Words, from 1858, gathers short ethical passages, seventy-one in Arabic and eighty-two in Persian, in the voice of God speaking to the soul. This is the one to keep by your bed.

The Seven Valleys describes the stages of a mystical search, written for a Sufi judge.

Bahaullah's tablets to the rulers of his day, among them Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, Pope Pius IX and the Shah of Persia, announce his claim and urge disarmament and collective security.

Authorized English texts come from the Bahai Publishing Trusts and are free in the online Bahai Reference Library run by the Bahai World Center, which includes the Aqdas, the Iqan, the Hidden Words, Gleanings and the works of Abdul-Baha and Shoghi Effendi. Local communities usually lend or give a copy to anyone who asks.

Bahais separate revelation, interpretation and legislation. Only the Bab, Bahaullah and Abdul-Baha produced scripture. Shoghi Effendi, Guardian from 1921 until 1957, gave binding interpretation that is not revelation, the English translations most Bahais read, and a history of the first century, God Passes By (1944). His style is deliberately old-fashioned, modeled on the King James Bible, and he fixed the transliteration that gives Bahai names their accents and underlined letters. The Universal House of Justice makes binding law where the texts are silent, and can repeal its own rulings but never a revealed law.

One practice draws steady criticism: Bahai manuscripts about the faith go through pre-publication review. The historians Juan Cole and Denis MacEoin, both former Bahais, argue this cannot coexist with independent scholarship; Cole resigned in 1996 and has opposed it since. Bahai institutions call review temporary and have narrowed it.

What does the Bahai Faith teach about the oneness of humanity, equality and social justice?

If you have ever been made to feel smaller because of your skin, gender or birthplace, this teaching may speak to you most. Humanity is one species with one origin, and prejudice by race, nation, class, sex or creed is a disease to cure, not a preference to tolerate.

Abdul-Baha set out commitments Bahais still recite: independent search for truth; equality of women and men; universal compulsory education; harmony of science and religion; dropping every prejudice; ending extremes of wealth and poverty; a universal auxiliary language alongside mother tongues; and an international tribunal to settle disputes between states.

Some were ordinary in 1912 and some were not. Equality of the sexes came with an instruction: a family able to educate only one child must educate the daughter, since she will teach the next generation.

On wealth, Bahai teaching accepts private property and differences in wealth but treats extremes as a flaw to be fixed by law and voluntary giving, a position between socialism and laissez-faire that satisfies neither. Named measures include profit-sharing with workers, graduated taxation, a village storehouse for those who cannot work, and Huququ'llah, a confidential payment on wealth above a threshold.

Bahais take no part in party politics anywhere, as a discipline, not indifference to public life.

You deserve an honest picture: the record is uneven.

During his 1912 visit Abdul-Baha told American Bahais, whose meetings were segregated in practice, that Black and white unity was the test of whether they believed their own teachings, a test they were failing. He insisted on integrated meetings, spoke at Howard University and at churches in Washington and Chicago, and encouraged that year's marriage of the Black lawyer Louis Gregory and the white Englishwoman Louisa Mathew, scandalous in America then. His favorite image was a garden whose beauty depends on flowers of different colors sharing one bed. Shoghi Effendi wrote in The Advent of Divine Justice (1938) that racial prejudice was the most vital and challenging issue facing American Bahais, and named Gregory a Hand of the Cause after his death in 1951, the first African American to hold that rank.

The Bahai International Community has held consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council since May 1970, and with UNICEF since 1976, working mainly on women's advancement, education and human rights.

Two positions draw criticism. Only men serve on the Universal House of Justice. And Bahai law limits sex to marriage between a man and a woman, so same-sex marriages are not performed, though institutions instruct that no one be shunned over it.

What do Bahais do day to day, and how do prayer, fasting and the nineteen day feast work?

If a Bahai friend has stepped away to pray at lunch, or skipped breakfast in March, here is why. Practice rests on daily private prayer, a yearly fast and a gathering every nineteen days, with no clergy anywhere.

Daily prayer. Each Bahai over fifteen chooses one of three obligatory prayers by Bahaullah and says it alone: a short one between noon and sunset, a medium one three times a day, or a long one once in twenty-four hours. They wash first and face Bahji near Akka, where Bahaullah is buried. Many repeat Allah-u-Abha ninety-five times a day and read scripture morning and evening.

The Fast. The last month of the Bahai year, usually March 2 to 20, ending at Naw-Ruz, with dates shifting a day in some years because Naw-Ruz follows the equinox. Nineteen days without food or drink from sunrise to sunset, binding from fifteen to seventy, with exemptions for illness, pregnancy, nursing, menstruation, hard labor and travel.

The Nineteen Day Feast. On the first day of each Bahai month, always in three parts: devotional readings, consultation on community affairs with the Local Spiritual Assembly, then food and company. Like a family meeting that starts with prayer and ends with dinner.

The only congregational prayer is for the dead, recited by one person while others stand. Gatherings are readings and chanting with no sermon, officiant or ritual. In a House of Worship only the revealed word is read or sung, unaccompanied, so those buildings have choirs, not organs.

The Bahai year runs on the Badi calendar, adopted from the Bab: nineteen months of nineteen days, each named for a quality of God, starting at Naw-Ruz on the spring equinox around March 21. The four leftover days, five in a leap year, are Ayyam-i-Ha, placed before the last month.

Nine holy days suspend work: Naw-Ruz; the first, ninth and twelfth days of Ridvan; the Declaration of the Bab; the Ascension of Bahaullah; the Martyrdom of the Bab; and the twin birthdays of the Bab and Bahaullah, which follow a lunar reckoning and so move on the Western calendar. To compare a modern festival year built from scratch, see Wicca for Beginners: Beliefs, Deities and the Wheel of the Year.

Every locality is asked to run devotional meetings, children's classes, junior youth groups and study circles. Study circles use the Ruhi curriculum, written at a Bahai institute in Colombia and promoted worldwide by the Universal House of Justice from 1996, so a Bahai in Ohio and one in Zambia often read the same booklet the same week.

How is the Bahai Faith governed with no clergy, and what is the Universal House of Justice?

If you are worn out by religious leaders who seem to want power, this system was built to make that hard. It runs on elected councils of nine at three levels, with no clergy, nominations or campaigning.

Local Spiritual Assembly: elected yearly on April 21 by a locality's adult Bahais.

National Spiritual Assembly: elected yearly by delegates at a national convention. There are now close to two hundred, against twelve in 1954, which shows the faith's spread after mid-century.

Universal House of Justice: nine members, first elected in 1963 and every five years since by all members of every national assembly together. It legislates where the revealed texts are silent and can amend its own rulings, which bind Bahais. It cannot alter anything Bahaullah revealed, and does not interpret scripture, a role that belonged to Abdul-Baha and Shoghi Effendi and ended with them.

Every election works alike: you write nine names on a secret ballot from all eligible adults, and the nine most named win. Asking for votes, building a slate or announcing ambition rules you out in practice. Imagine an election where wanting the job is the surest way not to get it. Bodies decide together, and no member has authority outside the meeting, which is why there is no priesthood to reform.

The move to this system brought the faith's sharpest crisis. Abdul-Baha's Will and Testament provided for a line of Guardians and the Universal House of Justice, but Shoghi Effendi died suddenly in London in 1957, childless and without naming a successor. For six years the Hands of the Cause, whom he had appointed, ran the faith; they concluded no further Guardian could be named and called the first House of Justice election for Ridvan 1963. A minority disagreed, most visibly Charles Mason Remey, who claimed the guardianship in 1960 and was expelled; his followers continue as small groups.

Alongside the elected bodies is an appointed arm with no decision-making power: Continental Boards of Counselors and their Auxiliary Board members, who encourage, advise and protect. Bahai writings call it the learned arm and state it holds no authority over anyone, keeping influence and power in separate hands.

Why have Bahais been persecuted in Iran, and what is happening now?

If you have felt drawn to these ideas, this part is hard to read. Go gently.

Bahais have been persecuted in Iran since the 1840s, more harshly after the 1979 revolution, because the Islamic Republic's constitution recognizes Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians as protected minorities and does not name Bahais at all. So roughly three hundred thousand Iranian Bahais, the largest non-Muslim minority, have no legal standing as a community.

More than two hundred Bahais were executed in the years after 1979. All nine members of the national assembly were abducted in August 1980 and never seen again, and eight members of the replacement assembly were executed in December 1981. In June 1983 ten Bahai women were hanged in Shiraz for refusing to recant, among them Mona Mahmudnizhad, seventeen.

Bahai institutions were banned in 1983 and have not operated in Iran since. Cemeteries have been bulldozed, including the main one in Tehran, businesses sealed and property confiscated. Much of the pressure is paperwork: marriages unregistered, inheritance denied, pensions withdrawn, licenses refused. It is like being slowly erased from your own country's records.

Clerics call it apostasy, since the faith arose among Shia Muslims and claims a revelation after Muhammad. Official rhetoric adds that Bahais serve foreign powers, usually Israel, because the World Center is in Haifa, where the Ottomans exiled Bahaullah in 1868, eighty years before Israel existed.

Is this local cruelty or national policy? A confidential 1991 memorandum on the Bahai question, prepared within the Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council and signed by Seyyed Mohammad Golpaygani, wrote it down: Bahais could live, but their progress was to be blocked, they were to be expelled from universities once identified, and kept from influence. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, then UN Special Representative on human rights in Iran, obtained and published it in 1993. It is the clearest evidence that this is national policy.

It did not begin with the revolution. In 1955 the preacher Mohammad Taqi Falsafi attacked Bahais in Ramadan broadcasts on Radio Tehran with government approval; troops then occupied the national Bahai center in Tehran and demolished its dome, the army chief of staff taking part.

In 2008 seven Bahais who informally coordinated community affairs, the Yaran, were sentenced to twenty years and served ten. Two of them, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, were arrested and sentenced again in 2022, the same season security forces demolished Bahai homes at Roshankouh in Mazandaran province.

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