Utopia

I am most grateful to President Taft for having extended his influence toward the establishment of universal peace. What he has accomplished in making treaties with various nations is very good, but when we have the interparliamentary body composed of delegates from all the nations of the world and devoted to the maintenance of agreement and goodwill, the utopian dream of sages and poets, the parliament of man, will be realized.

This illustration proves that those who live in the divine law are self-sacrificing in this path; for they have proven it by their deeds. They are neither visionaries nor utopians. With the greatest might and strength they have arisen to serve their fellow-men. Through their marvellous power they are establishing amity between the various nations and religions; they are working incessantly day and night.

This is the hope of this exiled one! From the throne of the Almighty I beg for you assistance and confirmation, so that you may become strengthened to accomplish such a work, the feasibility of which has been considered impossible and utopian since the dawn of creation. May this work be accomplished through you, in this radiant century, with the utmost brilliancy and grandeur.

Be not dismayed if your endeavors are dismissed as utopian by the voices that would oppose any suggestion of fundamental change. Trust in the capacity of this generation to disentangle itself from the embroilments of a divided society. To discharge your responsibilities, you will have to show forth courage, the courage of those who cling to standards of rectitude, whose lives are characterized by purity of thought and action, and whose purpose is directed by love and indomitable faith. As you dedicate yourselves to healing the wounds with which your peoples have been afflicted, you will become invincible champions of justice.

In one of his letters to the Persian Bahá’ís, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Faith, has said that love and compassion were the counsels of older dispensations. In this day the people of Bahá are exhorted to sacrifice their all for each other. These words of Shoghi Effendi are not to be taken as mere utopian visions of an unattainable goal. On the contrary, the history of the Cause amply demonstrates that some of its followers have attained to this exalted station. The unity of the Bahá’í community is the glory and the promise of the future. It guarantees the unity of the human race on a spiritual as well as a social level. It is a model which, as it grows in strength and develops further towards maturity, can and will inspire generations yet unborn to come under its world-embracing tabernacle of unity which the hand of God has raised in this day.

It would be a mistake to think that these goals are merely utopian conceptions, or idle speculation. The Bahá’í community has documented development experiences in several countries which give substance to these otherwise theoretical assertions.

Only if humanity's collective childhood has indeed come to an end and the age of its adulthood is dawning does such a prospect represent more than another utopian mirage. To imagine that an effort of the magnitude envisioned here can be summoned up by despondent and mutually antagonistic peoples and nations runs counter to the whole of received wisdom. Only if, as Bahá’u’lláh asserts to be the case, the course of social evolution has arrived at one of those decisive turning points through which all of the phenomena of existence are impelled suddenly forward into new stages of their development, can such a possibility be conceived. A profound conviction that just so great a transformation in human consciousness is underway has inspired the views set forth in this statement. To all who recognize in it familiar promptings from within their own hearts, Bahá’u’lláh's words bring assurance that God has, in this matchless day, endowed humanity with spiritual resources fully equal to the challenge.

The unification of the earth's inhabitants is neither a remote utopian vision nor, ultimately, a matter of choice. It constitutes the next, inescapable stage in the process of social evolution, a stage toward which all the experience of past and present is impelling us. Until this issue is acknowledged and addressed, none of the ills afflicting our planet will find solutions, because all the essential challenges of the age we have entered are global and universal, not particular or regional.