In 1994 the Universal House of Justice defined two objectives for external affairs work. The one I propose to focus on today is, to quote, ‘To influence processes towards world peace’.¹

The External Affairs Strategy document issued by the Universal House of Justice sets the context for what the House of Justice has elsewhere referred to as ‘this increasingly important field of service’:²

The House of Justice then turns its attention to the Lesser Peace, that long-anticipated revolution in the affairs of the world:

So, says, the House of Justice, there is clearly a need for a Bahá’í strategy. But what kind of strategy might this be? Our human and financial resources are relatively small and we are committed to non-involvement in partisan politics. What can we possibly do?

The answer given by the House of Justice is ingenious. We are to ‘lend spiritual impetus to the momentum which that grand attainment [the realization of the Lesser Peace] will generate’:

The Bahá’í community of the United Kingdom has been engaged in public relations work for very many years, but it is only recently that the National Spiritual Assembly (the community’s elected governing body) has been able to commit considerable financial resources to the establishment of an Office of External Affairs, and to the employment of two full-time staff under the direction of the Secretary of the National Assembly, using the title ‘Secretary General of the Bahá’í Community of the UK’. Here, then we see, as in a small number of other national Bahá’í communities, the beginnings of professionalization of the external affairs work, the establishment, so to speak, of a civil service, a ‘Foreign Ministry’ (alongside the ‘Home Office’ of the National Assembly’s Secretariat), to pursue strategically and sustainably the building of contacts with all the sectors with which the Bahá’í community needs to work. And it is the building of close working contacts that will open the doors of official and citizen consciousness to the potency of the concepts to be found in the Bahá’í Writings.

There is much in the paragraph I quoted earlier from the External Affairs Strategy to be unpacked. In a few words the Universal House of Justice has set out a direction for the work of the Bahá’í community that has huge implications for the deployment of resources.

Before I examine in more detail some of the themes on which the external affairs work is focused, I would like to take a few moments to think about the nature of moral leadership. A ‘leader’ in most people’s eyes is one who is in charge or has control and power over others, power to enforce his (and it is usually a ‘he’) will upon lesser mortals. I believe it was Mao Tse Tung who said something to the effect that power grows from the muzzle of a gun. That, in a shellcase, is the ultimate source of this kind of leadership: leadership by the exploitation of people’s fear of dying or being hurt. Now, in most countries that claim to be civilized, the instruments of fear are usually kept quite well hidden. The legitimacy of the leadership is based on more or less democratic elections - although these are taken more seriously in some places than in others - and on the extent to which the leader is giving the led more or less what they want. And therein lies one of the paradoxes of this kind of leadership: the leader cannot generally take his people further than they are willing to be led. Of course, the instruments of fear and power re-emerge as soon as the leadership feels it or the order that supports it to be under threat, as we have seen in a number of countries in recent years. Ultimately, however, leadership by fear seems to contain the seeds of its own destruction.

So what kind of leadership is ‘moral leadership’? It requires us to stand the world on its head:

I commented earlier that Bahá’í resources are limited. The Universal House of Justice, recognizing this, focuses the external affairs work of the Bahá’í community on just four themes: human rights, the status of women, global prosperity, and moral development. I say ‘just’; actually when one begins to consider what each of these comprises, almost the entire panoply of human development appears to be packed within them. Each of these themes – all inextricably linked with each other – is packed with opportunities for social and economic development.

Let me take but one example. Traditionally human rights and human development have been separate areas of work, as shown by the separation of the UN agencies which deal with them. However, the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development states that development a human right. This declaration was strengthened by the Declaration of the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights, which refers to the right to development as an inalienable human right. Recently the UN Development Programme published a document⁹ linking human development and human rights.

Clearly, then, these four themes are the loci of both external affairs work and social and economic development. How, then, do these two areas of Bahá’í activity reinforce each other?

I can identify three ways in which external affairs and social and economic development work should be able to reinforce each other in a virtuous circle or, better, a virtuous spiral.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, social and economic development activities in themselves influence processes towards world peace. By putting Bahá’í principles into action at the grassroots, whether within the Bahá’í community or in the wider community (perhaps in partnership with a UN agency or an NGO), Bahá’ís model the kinds of strategies, actions and outcomes that take a group of people in the direction advocated by the Bahá’í Writings. And, not only are those people who are engaged in processes of development through a Bahá’í-inspired or Bahá’í-led project learning to move in the right direction, but also the development workers and change agents who guide the projects learn in practice what the Bahá’í principles and concepts mean in the context of the project; they should, therefore, be better able both to apply those principles elsewhere and to help educate others in Bahá’í-inspired development processes. Furthermore, an important outcome of such projects is an increase in the capacity of the Bahá’í community to organize itself and to promote the underlying principles.

Secondly, having examples of what the Bahá’í principles that we are conveying through our external affairs work mean in practice boosts the credibility of the Bahá’í community as a source of reliable and useful information. Sometimes, external affairs representatives feel as if they are ‘dancing on hot air’. Governments, development agencies, NGOs, and individual activists are generally focused on remedying in a practical way what they perceive as particular evils or lacks in some group or groups of people in one or more parts of the world. They can be impatient of things that lack a practical outcome. Only the Bahá’í community, as far as I can tell, is promoting a long-term, ‘multi-dimensional, integrated, dynamic and progressive’¹¹ vision, based unequivocally on the root spiritual principle of the unity of the human race, throughout the planet, working with its own grassroots community, with partner NGOs, with government, with the UN. In this context, it is not the social and economic development work that is the prime focus, but the concepts and principles that underlie the work and that we are conveying to people. However, to the practically minded, something that is all concept and no practice is not very credible. So, in a purely pragmatic sense, being able to point to the work that Bahá’ís engaged in social & economic development word around the world - all in pursuance of the grand vision of Bahá’u’lláh - contributes hugely to the credibility of the Bahá’í community in its external affairs work. People want to know what the Bahá’í community is doing, not just what it is thinking.

Thirdly, the networks of people in which social & economic development Bahá’ís and external affairs Bahá’ís (if I may short-hand them in this way and who may not necessarily be different people) will increasingly overlap and reinforce each other. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of networking (and I’m sure I need not say that here) as a means of facilitating and advancing the work of both external affairs and social and economic development. The Universal House of Justice’s External Affairs Strategy document puts forward ‘association with like-minded people and organizations’ as one of the means of accomplishing our purpose in external affairs; it also points out that we must ‘engage like-minded non-Bahá’ís in our activities, inviting them to work with us and offering to work with them as appropriate.’¹² Such people may well quickly see the point of the ideas and concepts that the external affairs workers are putting forward; their appreciation of them will be greatly reinforced by consideration of the practical examples of social & economic development work undertaken by Bahá’ís world-wide.

My purpose is not to claim that social & economic development work is or should be an adjunct to external affairs work. On the contrary, I believe that each, guided by the Universal House of Justice and standing within its own sphere, can enormously boost the effectiveness of the other. When one comes to think of it, the entire Bahá’í project of ‘laying the foundations of a global society that can reflect of the oneness of human nature’¹³ is at root a giant, all-embracing human development project. The growth of the Bahá’í community in numbers, in density within given populations, in capacity to carry out ever greater tasks and projects, will inevitably make this an ever more influential force in world society.