Shoghi Effendi in the context of "Baháʼí literature"

The Baháʼí Faith is a religion established by Baháʼu'lláh in the 19th century that teaches the essential worth of all religions and the unity of all people. It initially developed in Iran and parts of the Middle East, where it has faced ongoing persecution since its inception. The religion has 7–8 million adherents known as Baháʼís who are spread throughout most of the world's countries and territories.

The Baháʼí Faith has three central figures: the Báb (1819–1850), executed for heresy, who taught that a prophet similar to Jesus and Muhammad would soon appear; Baháʼu'lláh (1817–1892), who claimed to be said prophet in 1863 and who had to endure both exile and imprisonment; and his son, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921), who made teaching trips to Europe and the United States after his release from confinement in 1908. After ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death in 1921, the leadership of the religion fell to his grandson Shoghi Effendi (1897–1957). Baháʼís annually elect local, regional, and national Spiritual Assemblies that govern the religion's affairs, and every five years an election is held for the Universal House of Justice, the nine-member governing institution of the worldwide Baháʼí community that is located in Haifa, Israel, near the Shrine of the Báb.

A monolithic column or single-piece column is a large column of which the shaft is made from a single piece of stone instead of in vertical sections. Smaller columns are very often made from single pieces of stone, but are less often described as monolithic, as the term is normally reserved for less common, larger columns made in this way. Choosing to use monolithic columns produces considerable extra difficulties in quarrying and transport, and may be seen as a statement of grandeur and importance in a building.

As an example of this level of choice, Shoghi Effendi cabled Bahá'ís of the world in 1948 about the Shrine of the Báb on December 10, 1948:

The Shrine of the Báb is a structure on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the remains of the Báb, founder of the Bábí Faith and forerunner of Baháʼu'lláh in the Baháʼí Faith, are buried; it is considered to be the second holiest place on Earth for Baháʼís, after the Shrine of Baháʼu'lláh in Acre. Its precise location on Mount Carmel was designated by Baháʼu'lláh himself to his eldest son, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, in 1891. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá planned the structure, which was designed and completed several years later by his grandson, Shoghi Effendi.

Crowning the design, as anticipated by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, is a dome, which is set on an 18-windowed drum. That, in turn, is mounted on an octagon, a feature suggested by Shoghi Effendi. An arcade surrounds the stone edifice. A restoration project of the exterior and interior of the shrine started in 2008 and was completed in April 2011.

A Haziratu'l-Quds (Arabic, sacred fold), or Baháʼí centre, is one of the national, regional or local Baháʼí administrative centres.

Shoghi Effendi, the head of the Baháʼí Faith in the first half of the 20th century, wrote that the Haziratu'l-Quds should include the secretariat, treasury, archives, library, publishing office, assembly hall, council chamber and the pilgrims' hostel. He also stated that its functions would be complementary to those of the Baháʼí House of Worship, and that it would be desirable if both these buildings would be on the same site.

The Baháʼí conception of God is of an "unknowable essence" who is the source of all existence and known through the perception of human virtues. The Baháʼí Faith follows the tradition of monotheism and dispensationalism, believing that God has no physical form, but periodically provides divine messengers in human form that are the sources of spiritual education. In another sense, Baháʼí teachings on God are also panentheistic, seeing signs of God in all things, but the reality of God being exalted and above the physical world.

Shoghi Effendi, head of the religion from 1921 to 1957, described God as "a personal God, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty".

The leadership of the Baháʼí Faith has created goal-oriented Baháʼí teaching plans, spanning 1–10 years each, to spread the Baháʼí Faith. The plans began in the 1930s and 1940s as teaching goals for certain countries and in 1953 became coordinated globally, often with a focus on sending travelling teachers to new countries. Shoghi Effendi initiated the plans before his death in 1957, and the Universal House of Justice has initiated the plans since 1964. From 1964 to 2000, there were six international Baháʼí teaching plans of varying lengths.

Since 2000, the plans have had a focus on Baháʼís becoming trained to facilitate "core activities" of devotional gatherings, classes for children and adolescents, and a systematic study known as "study circles", based on a series of workbooks by the Ruhi Institute. Starting with a one-year plan from 2021 to 2022, the Universal House of Justice has announced a 25-year-long series of plans ending in 2046. Currently, the international Baháʼí community is in the midst of a nine-year plan intended to last from 2022 to 2031.