Connecticut

Connecticut
Bookmobile which toured the State to celebrate Connecticut Bahá’í Week, 1966.
Location of Connecticut
Clusters		5
History: Firsts
-	Local Assembly	1925, New Haven

Connecticut is a state of the United States of America. Its Bahá’í community is under the jurisdiction of the Regional Bahá’í Council of the Northeastern States which operates under the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States, and community activities are organized under five clusters.

The Bahá’í Faith has been present in Connecticut form as early as the 1910s. Some Bahá’í travel teachers visited the state in the 1920s leading to the establishment of a Local Spiritual Assembly in New Haven in 1925 however a lack of visiting Bahá’ís limited the growth of Bahá’í communities across the state in the 1930s.

Small communities were established in several cities across Connecticut in the 1940s and in 1947 the community focused on assisting larger groups in establishing Local Spiritual Assemblies although these communities struggled to maintain their Assemblies into the 1950s. Under the Ten Year Crusade establishing the Faith in major cities of Connecticut that did not yet have communities was made a focus and the Stamford Bahá’í community became well established during the Crusade.

In the 1960s the Bahá’í Faith began to become more widely known in Connecticut due to publicity efforts of the Bahá’ís, notably with Bahá’í Booths being manned at agricultural fairs at the close of the decade, and in the 1970s major regional Bahá’í conferences and mass teaching campaigns began to be held in the state. As of 1980 there were seven Local Spiritual Assemblies across Connecticut with the Bahá’í population being sparse and spread out over the state.

The Bahá’í community of Connecticut remains active to the present day pursuing community development and participating in the discourses of society.

History

The Bahá’í Faith was first established in Connecticut in the 1910's with individuals from Mansfield and New Haven contributing to the Bahá’í Fund in 1911. Star of the West reported that small communities had unexpectedly formed in New Haven and Hartford in 1916, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá noted that there was a Bahá’í presence in the state in one of the Tablets of the Divine Plan revealed on March 26, 1916, but also advised the community needed to more firmly establish the Faith:

The Northeastern States on the shores of the Atlantic—Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York—in some of these states believers are found, but in some of the cities of these states up to this date people are not yet illumined with the lights of the Kingdom and are not aware of the heavenly teachings; therefore, whenever it is possible for each one of you, hasten ye to those cities and shine forth like unto the stars with the light of the Most Great Guidance.

The New Haven Bahá’í community sent a delegate to the 1917 National Convention for the Bahá’ís of North America. Teaching efforts in New Haven received support from travel teachers in the early 1920's with Dorothy Beecher visiting in 1920, and Fádil Mazandarání visiting in 1923, and the Local Spiritual Assembly of New Haven was established in 1925 which was the first in Connecticut.

In 1927 Albert Vail was invited to speak on the Faith at a Theological Seminary in Hartford, and in 1931 an organized Bahá’í Group was established. Other Bahá’í activity in the state in 1931 included Howard Colby Ives, Mabel Ives, and Ides O. Johnson teaching in West Hartford and establishing a small group of Bahá’ís, and another small group of Bahá’ís became active in Norwich under the guidance of the New Haven Local Spiritual Assembly.

Teaching efforts suffered throughout the 1930's due to a lack of travel teachers visiting Connecticut however in 1938 Mountfort Mills began visiting Hartford to facilitate a Bahá’í study class and in 1939 an Inter-Community Teaching Conference for Connecticut was held in New Haven. In 1939 the New Haven Bahá’ís set themselves the goal of having nine Local Spiritual Assemblies in the State by 1944, with Connecticut having only one Assembly in New Haven and four organized Groups in Rockville, Stafford Springs, West Haven, and Norwich as of the end of the year. In this period the New England Teaching Committee encouraged Bahá’ís to teach in their own cities rather than traveling long distances to teach in cities they were unable to pioneer to in this period crediting the change in direction with the establishment of new Bahá’í Groups.

In 1940 the Local Spiritual Assembly of West Haven was established, however as of 1943 New Haven and West Haven remained Connecticut's only two Assemblies, although there were an additional six Bahá’í Groups not large enough to establish Assemblies by 1944. A Local Spiritual Assembly was established in Hamden in 1945 bringing the total number of Assemblies in Connecticut to three, however the West Haven Assembly lapsed in 1946.

In 1947 an intensive teaching campaign dubbed the National Bahá’í Program was launched which tasked the American Bahá’í community with focusing teaching efforts on areas with a large number of Bahá’í Groups aiming to establish Local Spiritual Assemblies. Connecticut was a focus area with Greenwich being identified as a town to focus on, and in 1948 the Local Spiritual Assemblies of Greenwich and Hartford were established. The Connecticut community experienced some setbacks in the early 1950's with the Local Spiritual Assembly of Hartford lapsing in 1952, and the Local Spiritual Assembly of Hamden lapsing at some point prior to 1953.

When the Ten Year Crusade was launched in 1953 Bridgeport and New Britain in Connecticut were named as goal cities for the American Bahá’ís to establish communities in, having no Bahá’ís as of the the start of the Crusade. Another goal was re-establishing the Local Spiritual Assembly of Hamden. Some successes early in the Crusade were three Bahá’ís had pioneering to Bridgeport and initiating teaching efforts by January 1954, and the Local Assembly of Greenwich being incorporated in April 1954.

In 1956 a Local Spiritual Assembly was established in Stamford, and shortly after forming the Assembly organized a series of deepenings under the name Connecticut Sundays for Study and Sociability for the whole Bahá’í community of the State with William and Marguerite Sears speaking at the first session. The meetings proved successful and as such the site of the sessions moved with the event being held in West Haven, Washington, Greenwich, Trumbull, and Norwich throughout the year. In 1959 the Bahá’í community of Hartford organized an intensive teaching campaign with the support of the Assemblies of Stamford, New Haven, and Greenwich, with Firuz Kazemzadeh visiting to deliver a presentation on the Faith.

In 1964 and 1966 the Connecticut Bahá’ís organized for Mayor Richard Lee of New Haven to sign proclamations of the United Nations Human Rights Day encouraging New Haven to celebrate the event. The Local Spiritual Assembly of Meriden was established in 1966 and the Stamford Local Assembly was incorporated. Also in 1966 the Bahá’ís of Connecticut came together to undertake a statewide effort to proclaim the Faith holding a series of public meetings in cities across the state and dubbing April 22 to April 29 Connecticut Bahá’í Week. A camper van was converted into a traveling library and visited several cities across the state during the week to share Bahá’í literature.

In 1967 a celebration of Ayyám-i-Há for all Bahá’ís in Connecticut was held in Wallingford which was attended by over two hundred people, and a Local Spiritual Assembly was established in Westbrook the same year. In 1968 Marian Brettner opened a Bahá’í Library in Cheshire, and the Bahá’ís of Meriden sponsored a Race Unity Day celebration at which a memorial for the recently assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy was held. In 1969 Bahá’ís from across Connecticut collaborated to organize a Bahá’í booth at the North Haven Fair, an annual agricultural fair for South Central Connecticut, allowing them to widely proclaim the Faith to thousands of people, and the strategy continued in 1970 with Bahá’í booths being organized for agricultural fairs in North Haven and Guilford resulting in widespread interest in the Faith.

In 1971 Ridgefield was opened to the Faith when Bahá’ís visited to hold a Unity Festival in the city which was advertised in local papers. Also in 1971 mass teaching was undertaken across Connecticut under the guidance of Adrienne Ellis Reeves in Manchester, Vernon, and Mansfield, with the campaigns resulting in Local Spiritual Assemblies being established in Vernon and Mansfield. In 1972 another mass teaching project was launched in Bridgeport which resulted in a Local Spiritual Assembly being established, and that year a Local Spiritual Assembly seminar for Assembly members of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachussetts held to deepen Bahá’ís on the importance of Local Spiritual Assemblies was held in Hartford. It was the first in a series of seminars held across the United States organized by the National Spiritual Assembly and was facilitated by Glenford Mitchell. The same year a Regional Bahá’í Youth Conference was held in Storrs and attended by over four hundred youth who heard Adrienne Ellis Reeves speak. Some growth was experienced from 1973 to 1975 with Local Spiritual Assemblies becoming active in Hartford and New Britain in this period.

In 1974 the District Teaching Committee of Connecticut established a network of travel teaching circuits to coordinate Bahá’í travel teachers visiting the state. In June 1975 a Regional Bahá’í youth conference was held in New Haven, and in December 1975 Rúḥíyyih Khánum visited Connecticut and gave a speech to over five hundred Bahá’ís in New Haven. In 1976 ten traveling teaching teams formed which began undertaking teaching trips across Connecticut aiming to assist in opening cities to the Faith and establish four Local Spiritual Assemblies across the state. In 1977 another Connecticut Bahá’í Week was held to stimulate teaching activity in the state, and the Local Spiritual Assembly of Norwich was established that year with the Local Spiritual Assembly of West Hartford being established at some point between 1977 and 1980.

As of 1980 there were seven active Local Spiritual Assemblies in Connecticut. In 1981 a four-week teaching campaign was held in Connecticut which resulted in fifty-five declarations across eight localities in the state, although in 1983 the National Teaching Committee of the United States noted that there was a sparse Bahá’í population in the state and that it would benefit from pioneers. In 1984 the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States established its Office of External Affairs with offices in New Haven and it remained based in Connecticut until moving to Washington, D.C. in 1987. In 1985 a Connecticut Proclamation Conference was held in West Hartford which was chaired by Robert Stockman, and at which Bahá’ís from across the state consulted on ways to proclaim the Faith, and in 1987 New Haven hosted Connecticuts first Bahá’í Race Unity Conference.

As of 1988 an ongoing teaching project to expand the Bahá’í community of Connecticut was ongoing, with the states Teaching Committee having set a goal of establishing six new Local Spiritual Assemblies. In 1989 the Bahá’í inspired New Era Foundation, founded by the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States, received the donation of land and property in Stamford. As of 1991 a Local Spiritual Assembly had been established in Torrington, the birth place of Horace Holley, and in 1993 the Horace A. Holley Teaching Project was launched in the city.

In 2008 a major Bahá’í Regional Conference was held in Stamford which was attended by almost two thousand Bahá’ís. The community-building efforts of the Bahá’í community in the present and in the future was discussed with Stephen Hall and Rachel Ndegwa representing the International Teaching Center at the event.

See also

• All articles about Connecticut