Shoghi Effendi - Accomplishments

Accomplishments

During his leadership the Bahá'í religion developed into a global faith. From the time of appointment until his death, the Bahá'í Faith grew from 100,000 to 400,000 members, and the countries in which Bahá'ís had representation went from 35 to 250. As Guardian and head of the religion, while Shoghi Effendi was initially traumatized, he had a clear vision of how he believed the religion should progress, and he communicated his vision to the Bahá'ís of the world through his numerous letters and his meetings with pilgrims who would come to Palestine. During the 1920s, he first started to systematize and extend the Bahá'í administration throughout the world where there existed Bahá'í communities; because the Bahá'í community was relatively small and undeveloped when he assumed the leadership of the religion, he strengthened and developed it over many years to the point where it was capable of supporting the administrative structure envisioned by `Abdu'l-Bahá. Under Shoghi Effendi's direction, National Spiritual Assemblies were formed, and many thousands of Local Spiritual Assemblies sprang up as the Bahá'í Faith spread around the globe. Then, during the 1930s he worked on a series of major translation projects, translating the works of Bahá'u'lláh into English. Starting in 1937, he set into motion a series of systematic plans to establish Bahá'í communities in every country of the world. The culmination of these plans was the Ten Year Crusade that covered the years from 1953 to 1963. Starting in the late 1940s, after the independence of Israel, he also started to develop the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa, including the construction of the superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb and the building of the International Archives as well as beautifying the gardens at Bahji, where the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh is located; these plans continued through the 1950s. In the 1950s he also continued building the Bahá'í administration, establishing in 1951 the International Bahá'í Council to act as a precursor to the Universal House of Justice, as well as appointing 32 living Hands of the Cause — Bahá'ís who achieved a distinguished rank in service to the religion and whose main function was to propagate and protect the religion. He also acted as the official representative of the religion to legal authorities in Israel.

In a more "secular" cause, prior to World War II he supported the work of restoration-forester Richard St. Barbe Baker to reforest Palestine, introducing St. Barbe Baker to religious leaders from the major faiths of the region, from whom backing was secured for such an effort.