A World Centre and the Question of Residence

The Baha'i World Centre presents a situation with few parallels among world religions. Its administrative and spiritual centre stands in a country where the community itself does not seek members and where ordinary Baha'is do not settle. Baha'is come to Haifa and Acre as pilgrims for a fixed period, and the resident population at the World Centre consists of volunteers serving terms in its institutions.

The community does not teach its faith to Israeli citizens, a position it has maintained since the state was founded and which is generally described in Baha'i accounts as a policy of not proselytising in the country that hosts the World Centre. Moojan Momen and Peter Smith both treat the arrangement as an unusual settlement rather than an incidental one, since it separates the seat of a religion from any national community of that religion. The gardens and terraces at Haifa are open to the public and are among the most visited sites in the city, while the shrines themselves are places of prayer. The atlas describes the arrangement as the community and the scholarship on it report, and does not take a position on the wider political questions attached to the location, which are outside its subject and are contested by parties whose claims it is not the atlas's place to adjudicate.