Covenant-breaker

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Note: the term "head of the Faith" is used throughout the article, it is helpful to note that, since 1963, this refers to the elected nine-member Universal House of Justice.

A Covenant-breaker or the act of Covenant-breaking is a term used by Bahá'ís to refer to a particular form of heresy. Being declared a Covenant-breaker by the head of the Faith is somewhat equivalent to Cherem in Judaism, Excommunication in Christianity and Takfir in Islamic law, i.e. Bahá'ís avoid association with them, even if the Covenant-breaker is a family member. The authority to declare a Bahá'í a Covenant-breaker resides solely with the head of the Bahá'í Faith, which since 1963 has been the (elected) Universal House of Justice, situated in Haifa, Israel.

Contents

[edit] Definition

Covenant-breaking does not refer to attacks from those who are not Bahá'ís or who have left the Bahá'í Faith out of disagreement with its tenets. Rather is in reference to internal campaigns of opposition whereby the Covenant-breaker is seen to be as one who is challenging the internal succession of the Faith and thereby causing internal division, or by claiming or supporting an alternate succession of authority or administrative structure.

In a letter to an individual dated 23 March 1975, the Universal House of Justice wrote:

“ When a person declares his acceptance of Bahá'u'lláh as a Manifestation of God he becomes a party to the Covenant and accepts the totality of His Revelation. If he then turns round and attacks Bahá'u'lláh or the Central Institution of the Faith he violates the Covenant. If this happens every effort is made to help that person to see the illogicality and error of his actions, but if he persists he must, in accordance with the instructions of Bahá'u'lláh Himself, be shunned as a Covenant-breaker. ”

The term 'Covenant-breaker' or, in Arabic 'naqidin', was first used by `Abdu'l-Bahá to describe the partisans of his brother Mírzá Muhammad `Alí, who challenged his leadership. In `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament, He appointed Shoghi Effendi as the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, called for the eventual election of the Universal House of Justice, and defined in the same manner opposition to these two institutions as Covenant-Breaking. `Abdu'l-Bahá advised all Bahá'ís to shun anyone opposing the Covenant: "...one of the greatest and most fundamental principles of the Cause of God is to shun and avoid entirely the Covenant-breakers, for they will utterly destroy the Cause of God, exterminate His Law and render of no account all efforts exerted in the past."[1]

[edit] Categorization

[edit] Included categories of people

While most Covenant-breakers are involved in schismatic groups, that is not always the case. For example, a Bahá'í who refuses to shun Covenant-breakers is at risk of being named one. One article[2] originally written for the Bahá'í Encyclopedia, characterized Covenant-breakers that have emerged in the course of Bahá'í history as belonging to one of four categories:

  1. Leadership challenge: These are persons who dispute the authority and legitimacy of the head of the religion and advanced claims either for themselves or for another. The main examples of these are Mírzá Muhammad `Alí and Charles Mason Remey.
  2. Dissidence: Those who disagree with the policies and actions of the head of the religion without, however, advancing an alternative claim for leadership. This group consisted mostly of opponents of the Bahá'í administration such as Ruth White and Mirza Ahmad Sohrab.
  3. Disobedience: Those who disobey certain direct instructions from the head of the religion. Mostly the instruction in question is to cease to associate with a Covenant-breaker. Examples of this type include most of the descendants of `Abdu'l-Bahá during Shoghi Effendi's time.
  4. Apostates who maliciously attack the Bahá'í Faith. Examples include Ávárih and Níkú.

[edit] Excluded categories of people

Shoghi Effendi wrote to the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada in 1957:

“ People who have withdrawn from the Cause because they no longer feel that they can support its Teachings and Institutions sincerely, are not Covenant-breakers -- they are non-Bahá'ís and should just be treated as such. Only those who ally themselves actively with known enemies of the Faith who are Covenant-breakers, and who attack the Faith in the same spirit as these people, can be considered, themselves, to be Covenant-breakers.[3] ”

Beyond this, many other relationships to the Bahá'í Faith exist, both positive and negative. Covenant-breaking does not apply to most of them. The following is a partial list of those who could not rightly be termed Covenant-breakers:

  • Members of other religions or no religion without any particular relationship to the Bahá'í Faith.
  • Followers of Subh-i-Azal, Baha'u'llah's half-brother, who are known in modern times as Bayanis are often mistakenly referred to by this label. The appelation seems, however, misapplied. Since Covenant-breaking presumes that one has submitted oneself to a covenant and then broke it, and Bayanis never swore allegiance to Baha'u'llah, they cannot therefore be said to have broken his covenant.
  • Bahá'ís who simply leave the religion. (see above)
  • Bahá'ís who, in the estimation of the head of the religion have insufficiently understood the nature of the covenant from the start. These are sometimes "disenrolled" and are considered to have never actually been Bahá'ís, given their fundamental diversion from this core Bahá'í doctrine.
  • External enemies of the Bahá'í Faith.

[edit] Current groups

Main article: Bahá'í divisions

Most of the currently active groups regarded by the larger group of Bahá'ís as Covenant-breakers originated in the claims of Charles Mason Remey to the Guardianship in 1960. The Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá states that Guardians should be lineal descendants of Bahá'u'lláh, that each Guardian must select his successor during his lifetime, and that the nine Hands of the Cause of God permanently stationed in the holy land must assent to the appointment by majority vote. Bahá'ís interpret lineal descendency to mean physical familial relation to Bahá'u'lláh, of which Mason Remey was not.

The majority of Bahá'ís accepted the determination of the Hands of the Cause upon the death of Shoghi Effendi, that he died "without having appointed his successor", owing to an absence of a valid descendant of Bahá'u'lláh who could qualify under the terms of the `Abdu'l-Bahá's will. Later the Universal House of Justice, first elected in 1963 at the first Bahá'í World Congress, made a ruling on the subject that it was not possible for another Guardian to be appointed.

In 1960 Remey, a Hand of the Cause himself, retracted his earlier position, and claimed to have been coerced. He claimed to be the successor to Shoghi Effendi. He and the small number of Bahá'ís who followed him were expelled from the majority group by the Hands of the Cause. Those close to Remey claimed that he went senile in old age, and by the time of his death he was largely abandoned, with his most prominent followers fighting amongst themselves for leadership.

The largest of the remaining followers of Remey, members of the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith, believe that legitimate authority passed from Shoghi Effendi to Mason Remey to Joel Marangella. They, therefore, regard the Universal House of Justice in Haifa, Israel to be illegitimate, and its members and followers to be Covenant-breakers.

Some groups outside the majority consider the right to declare someone a Covenant-breaker to have been ended with the passing of Shoghi Effendi, and therefore members of these groups often choose to associate with non-members. These are often shunned, however, by those who believe that such authority persists in the House of Justice.

The present descendants of expelled members of Bahá'u'lláh's family have not specifically been declared Covenant-breakers, though they mostly do not associate themselves with the Bahá'í religion. A small group of Bahá'ís in Northern New Mexico believe that these descendants are eligible for appointment to the Guardianship and are waiting for such a direct descendant of Bahá'u'lláh to arise as the rightful Guardian.

There is also a small group in Montana, originally formed around the personality of Leland Jensen, who claimed a status higher than that of the Guardian. His failed apocalyptic predictions and unsuccessful efforts to reestablish the Guardianship and the administration were apparent by his death in 1996. A dispute among Jensen's followers over the identity of the Guardian resulted in another division in 2001.

There also existed a small number of "Free Bahá'ís" in Europe who accepted Ruth White and Hermann Zimmer's claim that the Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá' was a forgery. These claims too were rejected by the largest group of Bahá'ís in Haifa who consider these groups as Covenant-breakers.

Since the time of Bahá'u'lláh until the present, the many attempts by individual Bahá'ís to create schism or division have ended in failure during the lifetime of the individual. This is seen by Bahá'ís as a confirmation of `Abdu'l-Bahá's warning

“ Should any, within or without the company of the Hands of the Cause of God disobey and seek division, the wrath of God and His vengeance will be upon him.[4] ”

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The Will And Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p 20
  2. ^ The Covenant, and Covenant-breaker, by Moojan Momen
  3. ^ Shoghi Effendi, Messages to Canada, p. 64
  4. ^ `Abdu'l-Bahá, The Will and Testament, p. 12

[edit] References

  • Balyuzi, Hasan (2000). Bahá'u'lláh, King of Glory, Paperback, Oxford, UK: George Ronald. ISBN 0-85398-328-3. 
  • Taherzadeh, Adib (1972). The Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh. Oxford, UK: George Ronald. ISBN 0-85398-344-5. 

[edit] External links

  • The Covenant and Covenant-breaker - Article by Moojan Momen on the history, purpose, and power of the Covenant. Includes history of Covenant breakers, the three categories, and references for further study.
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