Principles of the Baha’i Faith

“The independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or tradition; the oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic unity of all religions; the condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class or national; the harmony which must exist between religion and science; the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of human kind is able to soar; the introduction of compulsory education; the adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations; the exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship; the glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations; and the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal of all mankind . . .”

Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 281

“At the heart of the Master's ('Abdu'l-Bahá's) message was the announcement that the long-promised Day for the unification of humanity and the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God had come. That Kingdom, as unveiled in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's letters and talks, owed nothing whatever to the other-worldly assumptions familiar from the teachings of traditional religion. Rather, the Master proclaimed the coming of age of humankind and the emergence of a global civilization in which the development of the whole range of human potentialities will be the fruit of the interaction between universal spiritual values, on the one hand, and, on the other, material advances that were even then still undreamed of.”

Commissioned by The Universal House of Justice, Century of Light, p. 21