Bahá’í Beliefs

The Bahá’í Faith is an independent world religion with adherents in virtually every country. The worldwide Bahá’í community, numbering more than six million, includes almost all nationalities and social classes. More than 2,100 ethnic groups and tribes are represented. In 2006, Bahá’ís around the world elected 182 National and Regional Spiritual Assemblies.

Bahá’u’lláh is the Revealer of the Bahá’í Faith.

Bahá’u’lláh taught that there is one God Who progressively reveals His will to humanity. Each of the great religions brought by the Messengers of God—such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad, Zoroaster and others, including some that predate recorded history—represents a successive stage in the spiritual development of civilization. Bahá’u’lláh, the most recent Messenger to humanity, revealed teachings that address the moral and spiritual challenges of the modern world.

The central principles of His religion are:

  • the oneness of God

  • the oneness of religion

  • the oneness of humanity

"The Bahá’í Faith upholds the unity of God, recognizes the unity of His Prophets, and inculcates the principle of the oneness and wholeness of the entire human race. It proclaims the necessity and the inevitability of the unification of mankind, asserts that it is gradually approaching, and claims that nothing short of the transmuting spirit of God, working through His chosen Mouthpiece in this day, can ultimately succeed in bringing it about. It, moreover, enjoins upon its followers the primary duty of an unfettered search after truth, condemns all manner of prejudice and superstition, declares the purpose of religion to be the promotion of amity and concord, proclaims its essential harmony with science, and recognizes it as the foremost agency for the pacification and the orderly progress of human society. It unequivocally maintains the principle of equal rights, opportunities and privileges for men and women, insists on compulsory education, eliminates extremes of poverty and wealth, abolishes the institution of priesthood, prohibits slavery, asceticism, mendicancy and monasticism, prescribes monogamy, discourages divorce, emphasizes the necessity of strict obedience to one's government, exalts any work performed in the spirit of service to the level of worship, urges either the creation or the adoption of an auxiliary international language, and delineates the outlines of those institutions that must establish and perpetuate the general peace of mankind."

(Shoghi Effendi, Summary Statement - 1947, Special UN Committee on Palestine)

Further Information

Official site of the Bahá'ís of the United States:

www.bahai.us

Official international site for the Bahá'í Faith:

www.bahai.org
© 2007 SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHÁ’ÍS OF EUGENE, OREGON