, which benefited from the new
receptivity to the message of the Faith produced by the shift of
consciousness that was by then already apparent. Once again, the North
American Baha'i community was summoned to assume a demanding
responsibility, one that essentially built upon and developed the
achievements of the earlier Plan. The great difference, however, was that
several other Baha'i communities were now in a position to participate.
Already in 1938, the Baha'is of India, Pakistan and Burma had set out on a
plan of their own. As international hostilities gradually came to an end,
the National Spiritual Assemblies of Persia, of the British Isles, of
Australia and New Zealand, of Germany and Austria, of Egypt and the Sudan,
and of Iraq--freed from the limitations imposed on them by the war--embarked
on projects of various durations to expand the base of the Administrative
Order, settle pioneers in goals both at home and abroad, and multiply the
available Baha'i literature.

By 1953 all of these undertakings had been fully completed. Three new
National Spiritual Assemblies had been established and had also undertaken
supplementary teaching plans, an array of new Local Spiritual Assemblies
had been formed in Europe, initiatives by five different national
communities acting under the coordination of the National Spiritual
Assembly of the British Isles had led to the settling of pioneers in East
and West Africa, and the great project set in motion by the Master's
laying of the corner stone of the Mother Temple of the West was at last
finished.(96)

Before the believers could celebrate these achievements, a new challenge
of staggering proportions was unveiled by Shoghi Effendi. Impelled by
historic forces that only he was in a position to appreciate, the Guardian
announced the launching at the forthcoming Rid.van of a decade-long,
world-embracing Plan, which he designated a "Spiritual Crusade". Engaging
the energies of all the twelve National Spiritual Assemblies then in
existence--the twelfth being that of the Italo-Swiss community--it called
for the establishment of the Faith in one hundred and thirty-one
additional countries and territories, together with the formation of
forty-four new National Spiritual Assemblies, the incorporation of
thirty-three of these, a vast increase in Baha'i literature, the erection
of Houses of Worship in Iran and Germany (the former being replaced by
Temples in both Africa and Australia when