Joel Marangella

Joel Marangella
Born	September 22, 1918 Lynn, Massachusetts, USA
Died	September 1, 2013 San Diego, California, USA
NSA member	France 1958 - 1960
ABM	Europe 1954 - 1960

Joel Bray Marangella (September 22, 1918 - September 1, 2013) was an American Bahá’í who served on the first Auxiliary Board for Europe. After the passing of Shoghi Effendi he supported Charles Mason Remey in his attempt to claim to be the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith and usurp leadership of community and was expelled from the Bahá’í community as a Covenant-breaker. He later claimed the Guardianship as Remey's followers began to splinter into different factions and called his group the Orthodox Bahá’í Faith.

Biography

Marangella was born in 1918. His father was Philip Marangella, an Italian born American who was introduced to the Bahá’í Faith in 1921, and he was an active Baháʼí youth speaking at the annual conference for Racial Amity at Green Acre in 1933, a youth symposium held at the Wilmette Temple in 1937, and a Baháʼí youth teaching clinic in New England in December 1940. In 1940 he joined the military, and he served in the European Theatre during WWII where he earned two bronze stars and achieved the rank of Colonel while on active duty. After the war Marangella returned to the United States and he married Irene Aducat in New Jersey in September 1945. He continued serving the Faith visiting Huntington Park, California, in January 1946 to speak on the importance of youth to the world community to assist efforts to re-establish a Huntington Local Spiritual Assembly.

At some point Marangella and Irene moved to France, and in 1954 he was appointed to the newly established Auxiliary Board for Europe attending a Conference with his fellow Board members with the Hands of the Cause in Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, in October that year. As of 1956 he was chairman of the French Summer School Committee and spoke at that years Summer School. In April 1957 he spoke about the Ten Year Crusade at the Convention at which the National Spiritual Assembly of the Benelux Countries was formed in Brussels, Belgium, alongside the Hand of the Cause Hermann Grossmann and fellow Board member Louis Hénuzet, and in September he chaired and spoke at the French Summer School held to prepare the community to form a National Spiritual Assembly the following year.

In December 1957, shortly after the passing of Shoghi Effendi, Marangella facilitated sessions studying The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh at the Italo-Swiss Summer School in Switzerland. At Ridvan 1958 he was elected to the first National Spiritual Assembly of France as chairman, and in July he chaired an afternoon session on pioneering at the Frankfurt Intercontinental Conference held to mark the midpoint of the Ten Year Crusade. In April 1959 he was re-elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of France as chairman of the body, in November he represented the Bahá’í International Community at a round table discussion convened by the World Association for World Federalists in Paris, and in December he facilitated a daily class on the Promised Day is Come message by Shoghi Effendi at the Italo-Swiss Summer School held in Switzerland.

In April 1960 Charles Mason Remey issued a message to all National Spiritual Assemblies in which he claimed to be the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, despite having previously signed statements acknowledging that Shoghi Effendi had not appointed an heir which was an explicit requirement of the office set by ‘Abdu’l-Baha. Marangella and Bernard Fillon, a fellow French National Assembly member, assisted Remey and had French translations of Remey's message produced in advance which they distributed at the same time he declared his claim. He was described as one of Remey's five henchmen in his attempt to exert authority over the community and expelled from the Faith as a Covenant-breaker by the Hands of the Cause in a message sent to the Bahá’í community on August 3, 1960.

In December 1961 Marangella received a sealed letter from Remey in which he was appointed as his successor as Guardian. On September 21, 1964, Remey appointed a group he called the Second International Bahá'í Council with Marangella as its President, however on October 18, 1966, Remey dissolved the body demanding that Marangella turn over all records to him and in 1967 he appointed Donald Harvey as his successor as Guardian. On November 12, 1969, Marangella stated that Remey's erratic behavior meant that his appointment of Harvey was not legitimate and claimed leadership over Remey's followers.

At some point Marangella moved from France to Switzerland and regularly made visits to the United States allowing him to complete a Master's of Business Administration at Florida International University in 1976. In 1983 he moved from Switzerland to Perth, Australia, which remained his residence until he moved to California in 2005. In the 1990's he attempted to revive his claim to be Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith by submitting advertisements to newspapers in various countries referring to his group as the Orthodox Bahá’í Faith, and in 2006 he established a group he called the Third International Bahá’í Council appointing Perth resident Nosrat’u’llah Bahremand as Vice-President of the body and in May 2007 he appointed Bahremand as his successor. A 2007 court case showed his community had just forty members in the United States.

In 2013 he passed away and was buried in Greenwood Memorial Park in San Diego.