The Bahai Faith has no priests, ministers or ordained office of any kind, and no sermon in its worship. Bahaullah abolished professional clergy, and the functions clergy usually carry are divided instead between individual conscience and elected bodies.
Administration rests on Spiritual Assemblies, elected annually at local and national level by secret ballot. There is no nomination and no campaigning; electors vote for whoever they judge fit, which is intended to keep the process clear of the factionalism the faith regards as its chief danger. Every five years the members of the national bodies elect the Universal House of Justice, the international governing council, established in 1963 and seated in Haifa near the shrines of Bahaullah and the Bab. Its authority to legislate on matters not covered in scripture is accepted as binding.
Individual practice is correspondingly plain: obligatory daily prayer, a nineteen-day fast from sunrise to sunset each March, abstinence from alcohol and from non-medical drugs, and contribution to Bahai funds, which are accepted only from Bahais. The calendar has nineteen months of nineteen days, and the community gathers every nineteen days for the Nineteen Day Feast, which combines devotion, consultation on community affairs and hospitality.
Consultation, a structured method of collective decision-making in which an idea once offered belongs to the group rather than to the person who raised it, is treated as a core religious practice rather than a procedural convenience. Marriage requires the consent of all living parents of both partners. Houses of Worship, of which only a small number exist worldwide, are open to people of any religion and host readings from any scripture.