Introduction
The Bahá’í community’s commitment to social and economic development is rooted in its sacred scriptures, which state that all human beings “have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.” Fundamental to Bahá’í belief is the conviction that every person, every people, every nation has a part to play in building a peaceful and prosperous global society.
“And the honor and distinction of the individual consist in this, that he among all the world’s multitudes should become a source of social good. Is any larger bounty conceivable than this, that an individual, looking within himself, should find that by the confirming grace of God he has become the cause of peace and well-being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men? No, by the one true God, there is no greater bliss, no more complete delight...
How excellent, how honorable is man if he arises to fulfill his responsibilities; how wretched and contemptible, if he shuts his eyes to the welfare of society and wastes his precious life in pursuing his own selfish interests and personal advantages. Supreme happiness is man’s, and he beholds the signs of God in the world and in the human soul, if he urges on the steed of high endeavor in the arena of civilization and justice.”[1]
In traditional thinking about development, theories of modernization were based on particular definitions of progress and held certain assumptions about the nature of religion and its role in social advancement. In this context, religion was seen as irrelevant at best, or as an obstacle to meaningful progress—a source of taboo and a strong force for social inertia. Development, it was assumed, would necessarily lead to a decline in religion as countries progressively adopted the technologies, institutions, and patterns of life of more industrialized nations. Yet over the decades that ensued, thinking in the field of development was sobered by a more realistic assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the prevailing approach. Years of rigorous effort and an enormous outlay of funds, while leading to tangible progress in areas such as public health and access to education, still saw the persistence and in some cases worsening of numerous social and economic ills, such as the gap between the rich and the poor, the vast number of people living in poverty, migration on an unprecedented scale, and a host of environmental issues. The results of such effort gave rise to a range of fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of the entire development enterprise. Social and economic development, it is now widely recognized, is a complex process, unresponsive to simple formulae that are based on raising income or the propagation of technological packages. Under intense pressure to find solutions, development thought has focused increasingly on people—their cultures, values, and worldviews, which, for the vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants, are shaped by religion. In such an expanded perspective, it has become abundantly clear that materialistic approaches alone will never succeed in releasing the capacity of individuals and communities to transform the world around them; neither will they resolve the many complex challenges facing humanity today, whether related to environmental crises, extremes of wealth and poverty, global public health concerns, food security, or eroding systems of governance.
“Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.”
—Baháʼu'lláh
Interest in the potential contribution that spirituality and religion can make to the discourse on development has thus grown markedly in recent years, in what some scholars refer to as a “turn to religion.” While attempts thus far to engage with religion have generally failed to escape a tendency to view it as an instrument toward predefined development objectives, a more fundamental question beckons: How can insights and principles drawn from religion be brought to bear on the search for ways to harness the scientific, technical, economic, and cultural creativity of the modern world so as to foster prosperity among the diverse inhabitants of the planet and learn about new conceptions of, and pathways for, collective progress?
This website is about the modest efforts of the Bahá’í community working with collaborators from all walks of life, irrespective of background or belief, to contribute to the social and economic well-being of their societies. More broadly defined as social action, such endeavors are motivated by a desire to serve humanity and contribute to constructive social change. Together they form part of an ongoing process of learning from the local to the global level about applying spiritual principles such as the oneness of humankind and justice, along with knowledge accumulated in different fields of human endeavor, to social and material reality. We hope the information presented here provides a vivid illustration of how Bahá’í social and economic development is being carried out in practice.
Bahá’í International Development Organization