Mass Teaching
A letter written to a Bahá'í on behalf of Shoghi Effendi has a section that gives a clear perspective of the Bahá'í attitude toward mass conversion.
- It is not sufficient to number the souls that embrace the Cause to know the progress that it is making. The more important consequences of your activities are the spirit that is diffused into the life of the community, and the extent to which the teachings we proclaim become part of the consciousness and belief of the people that hear them. For it is only when the spirit has thoroughly permeated the world that the people will begin to enter the Faith in large numbers. At the beginning of the spring only the few, exceptionally favoured seeds will sprout, but when the season gets in its full sway, and the atmosphere gets permeated with the warmth of true springtime, then masses of flowers will begin to appear, and a whole hillside suddenly blooms. We are still in the state when only isolated souls are awakened, but soon we shall have the full swing of the season and the quickening of whole groups and nations into the spiritual life breathed by Bahá'u'lláh."
- (Letter 18 February 1932, on behalf of Shoghi Effendi)
Read more about this topic: Entry By Troops
Famous quotes containing the words mass and/or teaching:
“Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“... teaching to me was anathema, chiefly because it would condemn me to a world of petticoats.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)