June 19. On this date in 1955, a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi stated "By dispersal the Guardian means the friends should get away entirely from the large centres of population and, leaving a nucleus of about 15 Bahá'ís to maintain the Local Assembly, go settle, live and teach in new towns, cities and even villages."

 

June 19. On this date in 1955, a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi stated "By dispersal the Guardian means the friends should get away entirely from the large centres of population and, leaving a nucleus of about 15 Bahá'ís to maintain the Local Assembly, go settle, live and teach in new towns, cities and even villages."

1952. The Purpose of Dispersal

"By dispersal the Guardian means the friends should get away entirely from the large centres of population and, leaving a nucleus of about 15 Bahá'ís to maintain the Local Assembly, go settle, live and teach in new towns, cities and even villages. Naturally, it is no service to the Cause to disperse if it breaks up an existing Assembly. The purpose of dispersal is to create more Assemblies over a wider area. Until a given assembly can spare some of its local Community to go out and settle, they should by all means at least do extension teaching.

"In the instance you cited about the friend who with independent means was willing to go out and sell her home and move to a new area, he feels she would have done better to go. You had more than 9 members in your Community; you could have found another place to meet. This is just the type of pioneering the Guardian is urging. Those who can go should go. Others will arise locally to take their places."

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, June 19, 1955)

Juan Cole includes the following paragraph in his article titled "Race, Immorality and Money in the American Baha'i Community: Impeaching the Los Angeles Spiritual Assembly" which was published in the journal Religion...

The exclusion of a fair number of Iranian Baha'is, moreover, was the fault of the international and national Baha'i authorities, who adopted policies signaling that the Iranian refugees were not supposed to be in Los Angeles. Around 1981, Ruhiyyih Khanum (née Mary Maxwell) Rabbani, a Hand of the Cause or lay bishop, spoke to the community harshly, upbraiding them for settling in a such a decadent urban center, implying they should never have left Iran, and that if they had insisted on doing so should at least have had the decency to settle as missionaries in some remote village of the global South. Many traditionalist Baha'is believe that cities are in imminent danger of evaporation. When someone from the audience asked where they should have settled instead, she replied in Persian that it was self-evident: Khar kih nistid (you are not asses). Many Iranian Baha'is came away from the meeting angry. One Iranian-American observer pointed out that most Iranian Baha'is who settled in Los Angeles did so to be close to family members, or for economic opportunities. Nevertheless, he noted, repeated admonitions from Baha'i leaders and institutions about the dire consequences of living in Los Angeles has led to considerable confusion, thus making assimilation seem even less desirable to them, and added that their choice of domicile has become a religious question which led to a strong sense of guilt associated with their settling in Los Angeles.

"Race, Immorality and Money in the American Baha'i Community: Impeaching the Los Angeles Spiritual Assembly" "analyses the dissolution of the Baha'i local assembly of Los Angeles in 1986–88 by the National Assembly. Official explanations for this move focused on lapses in morality and administrative discipline, but local interviewees, as well as some official pronouncements, suggest that the conflict had two roots: the globalisation of the community and resultant ethnic conflict among whites, African–Americans and newly immigrant Iranians; and national/local conflicts over power and money. Low-information elections, the unaccountability of elected officials, censorship and difficulties in acknowledging social conflict were the causes of these episodes in the Baha'i religion."