World Community - Religion

Religion

Many religions have taken on the challenge of establishing a world community through the propagation of their doctrine, faith and practice.

In the Bahá'í Faith, `Abdu'l-Bahá, successor and son of Bahá'u'lláh, produced a series of documents called the Tablets of the Divine Plan. Now in a book form, after their publication in 1917 and their 'unveiling' in New York in 1919, these tablets contained an outline and a plan for the expansion of the Bahá'í community into Asia, Asia minor, Europe and the Americas, indeed, throughout the planet.

The formal implementation of this plan, known as 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan, began in 1937 in the first of a series of sub-plans, the Seven Year Plan of 1937 to 1944. Shoghi Effendi, the leader of the Baha'i community until 1957 and then the Universal House of Justice from 1963, were instrumental in the organization and design of future sub-plans. All of this and much more was part of the creation and establishment of a world community, now the second most widespread on the earth according to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

In Buddhism "the conventional Sangha of monks has been entrusted by the Buddha with the task of leading all people in creating the ideal world community of noble disciples or truly civilized people."

A Benedictine monk, Friar John Main, inspired the World Community for Christian meditation through the practice of meditation centered around the Maranatha mantra, meaning "Come Lord."

The Lutheran Church in America had issued a social statement - World Community: Ethical Imperatives in an Age of Interdependence Adopted by the Fifth Biennial Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 25-July 2, 1970. Since then The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has formed and retained the statement as a 'historical document'.