Marriage - Second
As regards your question whether it would be advisable and useful for you to marry again: he feels unable to give you any definite answer on that point, as this is essentially a private affair about which you, and the friends around you or your Local Assembly, are in a much better position to judge. Of course, under normal circumstances, every person should consider it his moral duty to marry. And this is what Bahá’u’lláh has encouraged the believers to do. But marriage is by no means an obligation. In the last resort it is for the individual to decide whether he wishes to lead a family life or live in a state of celibacy.
- Shoghi Effendi, cited in Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963-1986, p. 234
Divorced people can remarry either other divorced people, or people who have never been divorced.
- Shoghi Effendi, Messages to Canada, p. 187
There is nothing against a person remarrying, the implication of unity in marriage being meant as a spiritual bond which will be everlasting, and not a sexual thing . . . It is suggested that Bahá’í marriage does not automatically 'lead to a profound friendship of spirit, which will endure in the next world'. Further, it would appear that the possibility of such an enduring 'friendship' is not limited to the relationship between husband and wife. Rather, it is dependent on the nurturance and development of 'a deep spiritual bond', which transcends the 'merely physical bonds of human relationship' and is conditional on the establishment of 'unity' in the particular relationship.
- Universal House of Justice, New Religious Movements, Tolkien, Marriage, 07/06/94
Quote of the Day
Fidal 12 Mashiyyat 182 B.E.
. . . it is clear that there is a profound difference between the Bahá’í attitude to the circumcision of males and the excision of females.
From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to the Office of Public Information – Haifa, 2 January 1992