lunamoth said:
Hi Scott, Thank you for your reply. But, what about these quotes by the Guardian Shoghi Effendi and also from Abdu'l Baha?
This does not look like it means that the UHJ will answer to the state, but rather that the state will answer to the UHJ.
Do not Baha'is believe that the Baha'i Administrative Order is the nucleus and model of the government of the Kingdom of God? I might have this wrong, but it was what I learned as a Baha'i.
peace,
lunamoth
Yes and no, Luna.
But states - nations - territories - principalities - federations - confederations, are political entities and there is no need to replace them.
How these political entities interact with one another is what the Lesser and Greater Peace is concerned with.
Government of states by law which recognizes the rights and responsibilities of individuals is not in opposition to the Kingdom of God.
Even Isaiah says the nations will beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks and look to the guidance of God's Kingdom. It does not say they will come to an end, does it?
"During this Formative Age of the Faith, and in the course of present and succeeding epochs, the last and crowning stage in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh -- the election of the Universal House of Justice -- will have been completed, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Mother-Book of His Revelation, will have been codified and its laws promulgated, the Lesser Peace will have been established, the unity of mankind will have been achieved and its maturity attained, the Plan conceived by 'Abdu'l-Bahá will have been executed, the emancipation of the Faith from the fetters of religious orthodoxy will have been effected, and its independent religious status will have been universally recognized, whilst in the course of the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have been unfurled, the World Bahá'í Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and splendor, and the birth and efflorescence of a world civilization, the child of that Peace, will have conferred its inestimable blessings upon all mankind."
(Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 6)
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Main Entry:
com·mon·wealth 
Pronunciation: -"welth
also -"weltth
Function:
noun
1 archaic : [size=-1]COMMONWEAL [/size]2
2 : a nation, state, or other political unit: as
a : one founded on law and united by compact or tacit agreement of the people for the
common good
b : one in which supreme authority is vested in the people
c : [size=-1]REPUBLIC[/size]
3 capitalized a : the English state from the death of Charles I in 1649 to the Restoration in 1660
b : [size=-1]PROTECTORATE [/size]1b
4 : a state of the U.S. -- used officially of Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia
5 capitalized : a federal union of constituent states -- used officially of Australia
6 often capitalized : an association of self-governing autonomous states more or less loosely associated in a
common allegiance (as to the British crown)
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"It must, however long and tortuous the way, lead, through a series of victories and reverses, to the political unification of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, to the emergence of a world government and the establishment of the Lesser Peace, as foretold by Bahá'u'lláh and foreshadowed by the Prophet Isaiah."
(Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 33)
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The Lesser Peace will be established by the nations independently from the Faith. It will come about through exhaustion.
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"The woes and tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable, but mostly inevitable and God-sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity, will find itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to play a preponderating role, as foretold by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, in the hoisting of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in the establishment of a world federal government on this planet."
(Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 126)
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""Be united, O concourse of the sovereigns of the world, for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you, and your peoples find rest. Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice." "The time must come," He, foreshadowing the tentative efforts that are now being made, has written, "when the imperative necessity for the holding of a vast, an all-embracing assemblage of men will be universally realized. The rulers and kings of the earth must needs attend it, and, participating in its deliberations, must consider such ways and means as will lay the foundations of the world's Great Peace among men... Should any king take up arms against another, all should unitedly arise and prevent him." [Words of Baha`u'llah quoted by]
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 192)
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The over-riding requirement for these things to come to pass is that all men give up their prejudices and realize that whatever nation or state, ethnicity or culture, faith or religion, they find themselves part of - they are still united in their humanity before God.
One does not have to become Baha`i by volition to accept that - one can STAY Muslim, Christian, Jew, Parsee, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, or anything and still see the truth of Unity in spirit.
The Greater Peace is to establish amity amongst thenations. How can it do this if it eradicates those nations?
Regards,
Scott
