The Universal House of Justice Is First Elected in Haifa

Twelve years after the Mother Temple of Africa opened in Uganda in 1951, already recorded here, and sixteen years before the Iranian Revolution triggered systematic persecution of Baha'is in 1979, also recorded here, the Baha'i Faith completed the succession plan Baha'u'llah's own writings had set out for the contingency Shoghi Effendi's sudden death had created. Shoghi Effendi, the faith's Guardian since 1921, already recorded here, died in London in November 1957 without naming a successor, and the Hands of the Cause of God he had appointed carried the administration forward and arranged the election Baha'u'llah's covenant had specified. On 21 April 1963, during the centenary year of Baha'u'llah's declaration of his mission, delegates from all fifty six National Spiritual Assemblies then established worldwide gathered at the Master's House in Haifa and elected the Universal House of Justice, the nine member body Baha'u'llah's writings designated as the faith's supreme legislative and administrative institution, seating Charles Wolcott, Amoz Gibson, Hushmand Fatheazam, Hugh Chance, Borrah Kavelin, Ian Semple, Lutfu'llah Hakim, David Hofman and 'Ali Nakhjavani as its founding members. The election closed the six year interregnum since Shoghi Effendi's death, transferring the faith's supreme authority from a single hereditary guardian to an elected body with no successor guardian ever named, an arrangement a minority of Baha'is rejected as a breach of the covenant. Peter Smith's academic history of the Baha'i Faith treats the 1963 election as the moment the covenant's succession plan was tested against a contingency Baha'u'llah's writings had anticipated and found able to carry the institution forward.