When the Bahá'í community in a village is a significant
proportion of the population, it has a wide range of opportunities to be an
example and an encouragement of means of improving the quality of life in the
village. Among the initiatives which it might take are measures to foster child
education, adult literacy and the training of women to better discharge their
responsibilities as mothers and to play an enlarged role in the administrative
and social life of the village; encouragement of the people of the village to
join together in devotions, perhaps in the early morning, irrespective of their
varieties of religious belief; support of efforts to improve the hygiene and
the health of the village, including attention to the provision of pure water,
the preservation of cleanliness in the village environment, and education in
the harmful effects of narcotic and intoxicating substances. No doubt other
possibilities will present themselves to the village Bahá'í community and its
Local Spiritual Assembly.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a message dated 25 July 1988, written on behalf
of the Universal House of Justice to a National Spiritual Assembly; Compilation
‘Agriculture and Rural Life’, prepared by the Research Department of the
Universal House of Justice)
