##### First International Baha'i Council / Guardian Charles Mason Remey # **Comment on *A New Baha’i Era (The Chicago Manifesto)*** #### Excerpt from *The Daily Observations of the Bahá’í Faith Made to the Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land* #### **April 1960, unpublished, privately circulated.** *** **December 29, 1958** In the year following the first Bahji Conclave \[November 1957]\[1], the Hands \[as a body] issued a letter\[2] exhorting the believers to cease speculating about the Guardianship and to busy themselves with the teaching of the Faith but without stating what the Baha’is should teach now since this majority of the Hands had given up all idea of ever having a second Guardian to be followed by others. … during this first year after the initial conclave again found a fuller and more explicit explanation of their real intention \[to abolish the Guardianship] … in that Manifesto that was gotten up in Chicago by the American Hands of the Faith\[3] in cahoots with the National Spiritual Assembly of the U.S.A.. When a copy of this Manifesto found its way to Haifa very casually in a letter from Germany and the Custodians read it they were amazed at the lack of wisdom in the sending forth of this statement. The fear of a fuss being stirred over the matter caused the Custodians to cable to Chicago to stop the circulation of that document that was then being set up in print to go through the Baha’i world. This was stopped then at the eleventh hour, but not in time to delay the trouble altogether, for at least to those who read the Manifesto (which from its style had evidently been composed by Horace Holley) there was no doubt that the majority of the Hands were determined on the abolishment of the Guardianship of the Faith. The Hands in Haifa wrote to Horace approving highly the main substance of this statement of the abolishment but they just didn’t want it sprung upon the Baha’i world in this way and at that time for fear that the people were not as yet psychologized to the point of accepting \[it] without protest. Thus were matters when we all came together in the second Conclave at Bahji when it was decided (carried by majority) no allusion or mention of the Guardianship \[should] be made in their report to the people of the Faith, but that the infallibility of the \[headless] House of Justice \[which they proposed to establish in 1963] be centered upon in their presentation as the hope of the Cause. Now up until the date of this writing (December 29, 1958) there have been received here at Haifa in all but five or six letters from abroad questioning this action of the Hands, this pussy-foot manner in which they are leading the Baha’is away and afar from the intent of the very explicit injunction of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s _Will and Testament_ regarding the Institution of the Guardianship. *** **Endnotes** **1.** \[Editors note: The text in brackets has been inserted in our source copy by an unknown transcriber. The unpublished *Daily Observations* is a heavily shared and photocopied book, difficult to read in many places, as well as never having been edited.] **2.** \[Editors note: The Proclamation of the first Conclave of the Hands of the Cause – 1957, dated November 25, 1957 from a session held Novmber 18 – 25.] **2.** \[Editors note: The document was authored by two American Hands, Corrine True, and Horace Holley, and one European Hand, Hermann Grossmann, and was published by the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States.] *** `Posted: 9 September 2025`