EMERGENCE OF FAITH’S EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS
I, moreover, call to mind, on this occasion, the successive episodes which, on the morrow of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ascension, in the course of the initial epoch of the Formative Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, signalized the emergence of those administrative institutions, both local and national, which proclaimed the germination of those potent seeds which had lain dormant for more than a decade in these newly opened European territories, and which culminated in the construction of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh and the erection of the first two pillars destined to sustain in that continent the weight of the final unit of that Order.
Nor can I fail to acclaim, as a further milestone in the irresistible evolution of that Faith, the launching, following the creation of the administrative agencies designed to provide the effectual instruments for its propagation, of the Six-Year Plan of the British Bahá’í Community followed successively by the European Teaching Campaign, inaugurated in accordance with the provisions of the Second Seven-Year Plan of the American Bahá’í Community, the Five-Year Plan conceived by the German and Austrian Bahá’í Communities and the Two-Year Plan later initiated by the British Bahá’í Community—Plans which, within less than a decade, succeeded in laying the structural basis of the Administrative Order of the Faith in Wales, in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and in Eire, in multiplying and consolidating Bahá’í institutions throughout the British Isles, in broadening and strengthening the foundations of that same Order in Germany and Austria, in erecting the National Administrative Headquarters of the Faith in the city of Frankfurt, in establishing spiritual assemblies in the capital cities of no less than ten sovereign states in Europe, in reinforcing the administrative foundations of that Faith in those territories, in providing the means for the convocation of five European, and a series of regional, teaching conferences, and above all, in the convocation of the historic convention in Florence culminating in the emergence of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Italy and Switzerland, the third in a series of institutions destined to play their part in the eventual establishment of the supreme legislative body of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
The hour is now ripe for these communities whether new or old, local or national, already functioning on the northern, the western and the southern fringes of that continent, as well as those situated in its very heart, to initiate befittingly and prosecute energetically the European campaign of a global Crusade which will not only contribute, to an unprecedented degree, to the broadening and the consolidation of the foundations of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh on the continent of Europe, but will also diffuse its light over the neighboring islands, and will, God willing, carry its radiance to the eastern territories of that continent, and beyond them as far as the heart of Asia.