An Office Created to Continue a Function

The Continental Counsellors exist because a previous office could not be refilled. When the appointment of Hands of the Cause became permanently impossible in 1957, the work those individuals had done, teaching, protecting the Faith and advising its elected bodies, still had to be done. In 1968 the Universal House of Justice created this office to carry it forward.

The design differs from what it replaced in two ways. A Counsellor is appointed for a renewable term rather than for life, so the office is refillable by construction and cannot be closed by an accident of succession. And a Counsellor serves a defined region of several countries rather than the world, which distributes globally what had been an unbounded personal charge.

The advisory character was retained exactly. Counsellors advise National and Local Spiritual Assemblies and hold no administrative authority over them; they cannot direct an Assembly, overrule a decision or govern a community. What they can do is appoint and direct the members of the Auxiliary Boards operating within their region, so the appointed arm has its own internal structure while remaining outside the chain of governance. The number of Counsellors and the boundaries of their regions have been adjusted repeatedly as Baha'i communities have grown.