Social Action and Participation

Midway through the series of Plans, the community’s involvement in the life of society ^{1 2 3 4 5} began to become the focus of more direct attention. The believers were encouraged to think of this in terms of two interconnected areas of endeavour—social action and participation in the prevalent discourses of society. ⁶ These, of course, were not alternatives to the work of expansion and consolidation, ⁷ much less distractions from it: they were inherent within it. The greater the human resources ⁸ a community could call on, the greater became its capacity to bring the wisdom contained in Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation to bear upon the challenges of the day—to translate His teachings into reality. ⁹ And the troubled affairs of humankind over this period seemed to underline how desperate was its need for the remedy prescribed by the Divine Physician. ¹⁰ Implied in all this was a conception of religion very different from those holding sway in the world at large: a conception which recognized religion as the potent force propelling an ever-advancing civilization. ¹¹ It was understood that such a civilization would also not appear spontaneously, of its own accord—it was the mission of Bahá’u’lláh’s followers to labour for its emergence. Such a mission demanded applying the same process of systematic learning ¹² to the work of social action and engagement in public discourse. ¹³