Across these recent weeks, we have explored how many of the social ideals first announced by Bahá’u’lláh—equality, justice, peace, racial unity—have entered into the world’s bloodstream. We have also named, candidly, the crisis that undermines all this: our refusal, still, to build on their spiritual foundation. We have seen how partial truths fragment and how “false gods”—ideologies, “isms” and slogans—seize and redirect energies once meant for wholeness. Even our most passionate efforts for inclusion, justice, or reform fall short when they’re severed from spirit. Yet, beneath the noise and fatigue, a hunger persists.
What, then, is the next chapter?
The Universal House of Justice calls us—and our world’s religious leaders—to a threshold moment. No longer content with the trappings of progress, we are summoned to spiritual maturity. What has been achieved—important though it is—cannot substitute for the deeper unity this age demands. As they write, with characteristic candor:
“The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.”
—Bahá’u’lláh, cited in the 2002 Letter
This is not unity as uniformity. Nor is it mere tolerance or coexistence—a future where we simply agree not to harm each other. The unity called for is both a promise and a challenge: the “union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith.”
“That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith.”
—Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, CXX
Tolerance, or Oneness?
History warns us that mere tolerance is always insufficient. Tolerance keeps the peace for a time; it also risks becoming a cover for avoidance, for apathy, even for entrenched prejudice. It is spiritual oneness—a shared consciousness, an active and creative embrace of our interconnected destiny—that transforms. This is not about erasing difference or imposing belief. It is about awakening to a truth so deep and luminous that difference itself becomes a source of collective richness, not division.
In my own journey, I’ve witnessed this as subtle, sometimes improbable, miracles: the dissolving of old resentments in the face of shared prayer; adversaries recognizing themselves in each other’s struggles; activists who once fought for a part welcoming, perhaps tentatively at first, the whole.
What Would Spiritual Maturity Look Like?
The Universal House of Justice sketches a striking vision of religious unity—not as institutional merger, nor a homogenization of doctrine, but as a coming of age for the soul of humanity. This unity:
- Respects revelation’s diversity, but insists every faith is rooted in the same unknowable Source.
- Welcomes differing social ordinances and rituals as expressions meant for different epochs, not as proof of irreconcilable division.
- Moves beyond cycles of sectarian rivalry to a partnership—one in which religions, and all sincere seekers, collaborate in healing the world’s most persistent wounds.
- Insists that progress—social, economic, environmental, even scientific—is ultimately unsustainable without spiritual empowerment at its core.
As One Common Faith observes:
“The power through which these goals will be progressively realized is that of unity. Although to Bahá’ís the most obvious of truths, its implications for the current crisis of civilization appear to escape most contemporary discourse… As unity is the remedy for the world’s ills, its one certain source lies in the restoration of religion’s influence in human affairs.”
—One Common Faith
Without this, we remain, in the words of Bahá’u’lláh, “entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices.”
“Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy.”
—Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, CVI
The Invitation—For Leaders, and for Us All
The next move is now ours. The Universal House of Justice does not limit its call to those who wear religious vestments or lead great assemblies. Yes, faith leaders are summoned to courage—“to rise above fixed conceptions inherited from a distant past” and “face honestly and without further evasion the implications of the truth that God is one, and… religion is likewise one.”
But so, too, are each of us invited to begin. To take up the path of spiritual maturity: a relentless seeking for unity in our thoughts, relationships, communities, and work. To witness, in humble ways, what only a life grounded in both principle and spirit can achieve.
“Ye are the stars of the heaven of understanding, the breeze that stirreth at the break of day, the soft-flowing waters upon which must depend the very life of all men…”
—Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, XCVI
If Not Now, When? If Not Us, Who?
We stand at a unique crossroads—not simply as faith traditions, but as neighbors, friends, parents, teachers, citizens. The crises around us—ecological, technological, political, emotional—are symptoms, not causes. Disunity—spiritual disunity—remains untreated at the root.
So, let’s not imagine a savior will appear from elsewhere. The call is to us, and the time is now.
Series Hook:
If not now, when? If not us, who?
Invitation: The Conversation Continues
What would it look like for you, this week, to act for unity? In your community, workplace, place of worship, home? What does “spiritual maturity” mean to you—not as an idea, but as a daily task?
Leaders: Where is your voice needed, not merely for the advancement of social values, but for the restoration of spiritual courage and vision?
All: Where can we, personally and together, begin bringing religious unity—from platitude to living practice?
Share your commitment, reflection, or yearning below, or write an open letter of your own. Our conversation is not theoretical. It is the soil from which the next chapter might just grow.
Next week, we begin digging into One Common Faith itself—uncovering how this blueprint for global spiritual maturity might move from aspiration to action.
Let us be known for the unity we make real.
All quotations appear in their original, authoritative form from Bahá’u’lláh, the Universal House of Justice, and One Common Faith. The journey continues—together.
