Bahá'í Faith in Equatorial Guinea

The Bahá'í Faith in Equatorial Guinea begins after `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916. The first pioneer to Spanish Guinea was Elise Lynelle (then Elise Schreiber) who arrived in Bata, Spanish Guinea (as it was called then), on 17 May 1954, and was recognized as a Knight of Baha'u'llah. In 1968 the first Local Spiritual Assembly of Equatorial Guinea was elected in Santa Isabel, (later renamed Malabo). The community has elected a National Spiritual Assembly since 1984. The community celebrated its golden jubilee in 2004. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimated some 3,500 Bahá'ís in 2005.

`Abdu'l-Bahá wrote a series of letters, or tablets, to the followers of the religion in the United States in 1916–1917; these letters were compiled together in the book Tablets of the Divine Plan. The eighth and twelfth of the tablets mentionedAfrica and were written on 19 April 1916 and 15 February 1917, respectively. Publication however was delayed in the United States until 1919—after the end of the First World War and the Spanish flu. The tablets were translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on 4 April 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919. `Abdu'l-Bahá mentions Bahá'ís traveling "...especially from America to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, and travel through Japan and China. Likewise, from Germany teachers and believers may travel to the continents of America, Africa, Japan and China; in brief, they may travel through all the continents and islands of the globe" and " ...the anthem of the oneness of the world of humanity may confer a new life upon all the children of men, and the tabernacle of universal peace be pitched on the apex of America; thus Europe and Africa may become vivified with the breaths of the Holy Spirit, this world may become another world, the body politic may attain to a new exhilaration...."

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