Arkansas

Arkansas
Deepening Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1971.
Location of Arkansas
History: Firsts
-	Local Bahá'í	c. 1913, Edward Ruppers
-	Local Assembly	1943, Little Rock

Arkansas is a state of the United States of America.

There were Bahá’ís living in Arkansas as early as 1913 and in the 1910s ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged the American Bahá’ís to firmly establish a community in the state. Efforts to establish the Faith in Arkansas began in earnest in the late 1930s and found success in the early 1940s due to the teaching work of Howard Colby Ives with the first Local Spiritual Assembly of Arkansas forming in Little Rock in 1943. Bahá’í activity in the state was largely centred around Little Rock until an Assembly was established in Rogers in 1959 and a period of accelerated growth took place in the early 1970s when mass teaching methods were adopted.

The community remains active to the present day currently focusing its efforts on facilitating the spiritual development of communities through the institute process. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimated that there were 1,266 Bahá’ís in the state as of 2010, and the communities statistics recorded 1,350 Bahá’ís and five Local Spiritual Assemblies in 2015.

History

The earliest recorded Bahá’í to live in Arkansas was Edward Ruppers who was noted as living in Genoa, Miller County, in 1913 however he moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1917. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá mentioned Arkansas in one of the Tablets of the Divine Plan revealed on March 27, 1916, instructing the Bahá’í community to establish the Faith in the State:

In the Southern States of the United States, the friends are few, that is, in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Consequently you must either go yourselves or send a number of blessed souls to those states, so that they may guide the people to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Tablet was delivered to Joseph Hannen and in October 1916 his address was published in Star of the West to allow him to coordinate teaching efforts in the Southern States. In 1920 Mrs. H. G. Marshall conducted a teaching tour of several cities in Arkansas, and in 1928 the national membership records of the Faith noted a J. A. Patterson living in Pine Bluff and a Mrs. C. E. Hines living in Blockton.

As of May 1937 there were no Bahá’ís residing in the state, and likewise no Bahá’í literature had been donated to any Arkansas libraries. Efforts to establish the Faith in Arkansas were renewed in 1939 with Rezsi Sunshine moving to Hot Springs, Marvin Newport spending ten days teaching in Little Rock, and Lydia J. Martin organizing for Louis Gregory to deliver a talk to five hundred college students in Pine Bluff.

In 1941 it was noted that Arkansas still did not have a Local Spiritual Assembly, however throughout January and February that year Howard Colby Ives assisted with teaching campaigns which resulted in Hot Springs having five Bahá’ís and Little Rock having three with more close friends of the Faith. Robbie Wilson was the first Bahá’í of Arkansas being introduced to the religion by Ives and declaring around 1941, and in approximately 1942 Homer Holmes pioneered to the state. In 1942 a Regional Teaching Committee for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas was established, and a circuit for systematize travel teachers touring Arkansas was established with Ruth Cornell, Dorothy Logelin, Pearl Berk, and Esther Klein visiting the state and Rezsi Sunshine remaining in the state for the summer to help consolidate the teaching work.

As of March 1943 there were six Bahá’ís in Little Rock and four in Hot Springs, and three Bahá’ís pioneered to Little Rock allowing the city to form a Local Spiritual Assembly at Ridvan 1943 as the first in the state. The second Local Spiritual Assembly of Arkansas was formed in 1948 in Eureka Springs.

As of 1950 Arkansas was under the jurisdiction of a joint Regional Teaching Committee for Arkansas and Oklahoma with the Committee undertaking efforts to contact isolated Bahá’ís across the two states that year, and in 1953 the teaching committees of the United States were reconstituted with Arkansas coming under the jurisdiction of the Area Teaching Committee for the South Central States alongside Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. When the Ten Year Crusade was launched goal cities for the establishment of Local Spiritual Assemblies in Arkansas were North Little Rock and Fort Smith with Fort Smith having no Bahá’í residents as of 1953, but a pioneer had settled by 1954.

In July 1955 the South Central States Area Teaching Committee held a major teaching conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, and in 1956 David Ruhe was able to deliver an eight class course on the Faith at the University of Arkansas due to the efforts of Tim Rost. In 1957 the Bahá’ís of Little Rock launched an advertising campaign which resulted in the National Bahá’í Center receiving requests for Bahá’í literature from interested parties in Arkansas.

In 1959 a Local Spiritual Assembly was established in Rogers, Arkansas, and in 1960 the Rogers Assembly organized an annual event called the Prayer Powwow which gathered Native Americans and Bahá’ís. In 1963 the Governor of Arkansas issued a proclamation of World Peace Day, an event organized by the American Bahá’í community, and in 1964 the Fourth Annual Rogers Prayer Powwow, attended by over two hundred people, received a message from the Universal House of Justice which stated the following:

Such a gathering will assuredly bring forth the blessings of the Great Spirit—the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

By 1968 a small Bahá’í community had been established in Fayetteville with a Naw-Ruz celebration being held in the city that year, and in 1969 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Fayetteville was established, and a Bahá’í Club had been formed at the University of Arkansas in the city by 1970.

In January 1971 the Arkansas State Goals Committee held a Mass Teaching Conference in Little Rock which resulted in a large amount of Bahá’ís engaging in mass teaching in the Dunbar area of the city of Little Rock securing one hundred and thirty-three declarations. Mass teaching efforts continued from Dunbar expanding to Searcy, Rogers, Pine Bluff, and Hot Springs and within a week over three hundred people had declared through the campaign. As a result in November the Continental Board of Counsellors for North America held a Deepening Conference in Little Rock at with Hand of the Cause Zikrullah Khadem, Counselor Edna True, and several others conducted sessions on various deepening themes. The Conference received widespread media coverage on television and in newspapers. Around the same time a copy of the Bahá’í Peace Program was sent to the Governor of Arkansas who sent a reply expressing his appreciation and noting he had previously been introduced to the Faith in Chicago and visited the Temple in Wilmette.

In 1972 efforts to publicize the Faith in Arkansas through newspaper advertising were launched which were highly successful, successfully proclaiming the Faith even in cities with no Bahá’í residents, prompting the establishment of an Arkansas Bahá’í Information Service, and in June a State Arkansas Bahá’í Youth Conference was held in Little Rock. In 1973 a proclamation month was pursued in Little Rock during which Arkansas Bahá’ís met weekly at the cities Bahá’í center then divided into small groups to home visit recent declarants in order to deepen them in the religion, teach their family members, and inform them of upcoming meetings.

In 1976 a Southern teaching program was launched with the endorsement of the Universal House of Justice under which the Arkansas Bahá’í community was set the goal of having nine Local Spiritual Assemblies, with the state having three Assemblies by 1978 and four by 1979. In 1980 future President and then Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton met with a Bahá’í delegation as part of activities commemorating the United Nations International Year of the Child, and by 1981 Arkansas had eleven Local Spiritual Assemblies, although there were no declarations in the state from 1982 to 1983. In 1988 a teaching campaign called the Howard Colby Ives Project was launched in Arkansas.

In 1994 a Bahá’í event called the Martin Luther King Jr. I Have a Dream Youth Assembly was held in Little Rock, and in 1995 a group of Bahá’í youth from Indiana visited Fort Smith to teach the Faith re-opening the city to the religion. As of 1997 there were three hundred and seventy-three Bahá’ís with known addresses in Arkansas with eight people having declared from 1996 to that year. In 1998 a deepening seminars on stewardship and development of local communities were held in Arkansas, and in 1999 a Conference on teaching the Faith to Christians was held in Little Rock. In December 1999 Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee met with a representative of the Little Rock Bahá’í community.

In 2000 a summer teaching project was conducted in Arkansas which included participation from a number of Bahá’í youth from the Marshall Islands and was coordinated by Duane Troxel. Troxel noted the campaign focused on the process more than the outcome with the team viewing increased unity and trust as just as valuable as declarations. The same year Fort Smith and Pine Bluff were noted as cities which the community should attempt to establish Local Spiritual Assemblies in by the recently formed Southern States Regional Bahá’í Council.

As of 2015 there were five Local Spiritual Assemblies in Arkansas and 1,350 Bahá’ís according to the United States Bahá’í communities records. The community remains active focusing on service to the community through providing opportunities for practical learning on spiritual community building.

See also

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