Joel Marangella
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Joel Bray Marangella is the present Guardian, or administrative and spiritual leader of the Orthodox Bahá'ís.
When Charles Mason Remey asserted his claim to the Guardianship of the Bahá'í Faith in 1960, Marangella, then serving as chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of France, accepted his claim. Given that the majority of Bahá'ís did not accept Remey's claim, he and his supporters were expelled by the Hands of the Cause, who had assumed temporary stewardship of the worldwide Bahá'í community. Marangella was declared a "Covenant-Breaker" and expelled from the community. As five of nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of France also accepted Mr. Remey's claim, the body itself was dissolved.
In 1961 Remey wrote a letter to Marangella, saying that he would know when he should open it. Mr. Marangella later opened the letter, in which Mr. Remey purportedly appointed him as Mr. Remey's successor, and therefore the third Guardian of the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith. In 1964, Remey, who had previously set up the Second International Bahá'í Council, seen by Orthodox Bahá'ís as the embryonic Universal House of Justice, appointed Joel Bray Marangella to be its President. Given Mr. Remey's views on his own presidency of the first International Bahá'í Council, Mr. Marangella (and others) took this as confirmation of his appointment as Mr. Remey's successor. Orthodox Bahá'ís believe that Mr. Marangella's appointment came into force upon the council's "activation" in 1965.
Marangella has served as Guardian of the Orthodox Bahá'ís from 1965 to the present. Most followers reside in the U.S.[1], India[2], and Africa. Exact membership figures are not released. The Mother Bahá'í Council of the United States, the governing body of the Orthodox Bahá'ís in the U.S., is headquartered in Espanola, New Mexico.
Marangella's leadership after the death of Mr. Remey was contested, and some Orthodox Bahá'ís followed other claimants, some of these forming Bahá'í divisions that persist to the present.
He now resides in Australia, where he occasionally writes messages to his followers. A recent letter from March 2006 is devoted to his annoyance with the "Bahá’ís, who should now realize that they were tragically duped..." He mentions frustrations with Bahá’ís who separated from the Bahá’í organization based in Haifa, but who, after investigating him, also rejected the Orthodox religion.
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Regrettably, much information on the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith and Mr. Marangella is sourced from the web, and there is a derth of scholarly work on the topics. The following links represent most of the sources available, notwithstanding USENET news archives.
