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Covenant-breaker is a term used in the Baháʼí Faith to refer to a person who has been excommunicated from the Baháʼí community for breaking the Covenant of Baháʼu'lláh, meaning actively promoting schism in the religion or otherwise opposing the legitimacy of the chain of succession of leadership.[1][2][3] Excommunication among Baháʼís is rare and not used for transgressions of community standards, intellectual dissent, or conversion to other religions.[2][4] Instead, it is the most severe punishment, reserved for suppressing organized dissent that threatens the unity of believers.[5]
Currently, the Universal House of Justice has the sole authority to declare a person a Covenant-breaker,[2][6] and once identified, all Baháʼís are expected to shun them, even if they are family members.[5] According to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Covenant-breaking is a contagious disease.[7] The Baháʼí writings forbid association with Covenant-breakers and Baháʼís are urged to avoid their literature, thus providing an exception to the Baháʼí principle of independent investigation of truth. Most Baháʼís are unaware of the small Baháʼí divisions that exist.[8]
Dr. Mikhail Sergeev[a] wrote about the Baháʼí practice of excommunication,
In dealing with organized dissent, and covenant-breaking as the most radical form of opposition, Baháʼís stand, as they do on many other controversial issues, somewhere between modernity and traditional religions. They are not as tolerant as the adherents of the Enlightenment ideology that institutionalizes opposition. Nor do they crush it as harshly as the fervent religious leaders of the past.[5]
The three largest attempts at alternative leadership—whose followers are considered Covenant-breakers—were from Subh-i-Azal, Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí, and Charles Mason Remey.[10][2] Others were declared Covenant-breakers for actively opposing or disobeying the head of the religion, or maliciously attacking the Baháʼí administration after leaving it.[10][11]
- ^ Hartz 2009, p. 138.
- ^ a b c d Smith 2000.
- ^ Winters 2010.
- ^ Momen 2007.
- ^ a b c Sergeev 2015, pp. 94–95.
- ^ McMullen 2015, p. 21.
- ^ Hejazi Martinez, Hutan (2010). Baha'ism: History, transfiguration, doxa (Thesis thesis). hdl:1911/61990.
- ^ Johnson 2020, p. xxxi-xxxv.
- ^ "Mikhail Yu. Sergeev, PhD". Wilmetteinstitute.org/. Retrieved 25 December 2020.
- ^ a b Momen 1995.
- ^ Adamson 2009.
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