If communities were like people, turning a hundred would be one of those kindly occasions for a gentle birthday party where the kids might be cautioned not to get the honored senior overstimulated. There’d be just one candle in the middle of an oversized cake, big enough to accommodate all the great-grandchildren, and grandpa would get just a taste of it—too much sugar, you know.

But for the Los Angeles Baha’i community, which observes its 100th Baha’i anniversary on Friday, January 8, 2010, celebrating its collective birthday is more like passing the city limits sign on the way into town—population such and such and the revitalized city center is on the right.

Dating L.A.’s Baha’i anniversary from 1910 comes from a special meeting held in nearby Tropico, Ca., better known today as the city of Glendale but then a neighboring unincorporated community northeast of downtown L.A. Tropico had come into being as a new housing development and its name was inspired by California’s allure of endless sunny days and tropical winters. Los Angeles, by contrast, was experiencing rapid growth partly as a result of the new “movie” business and the decision by New York-based film studios to relocate to the west coast, likewise attracted by the favorable climate and the promise of extended outdoor location shooting unhindered by inclement weather.

Around 30 Baha’is who lived in the area had gathered together to elect the first Baha’i  consultative governing body for Los Angeles.  Thornton Chase, the first American Baha’i, had only recently arrived three months earlier from the Chicago area and was enthusiastic to form a Baha’i consultative body, a form of religious governance replacing the need for a formal ministry or clerical class. The first meeting was held on January 2, 1910, and the election six days later on January 8. The first elected members were:   Charles Haney, Nellie Phillips, Henrietta Clark Wagner, Rosa Winterburn and Thornton Chase.

A lot has changed since that time, both for the city, its Baha’i community and the greater metropolitan area. L.A. grew from a sleepy little town into the nation’s second largest city where one in every ten Californians now reside and one out of every four people in the state lives in Los Angeles County! Similarly, the L.A. Baha’i community grew from a little over 30 people to well over 2,700, a factor of 90 or, to put it another way, a 9,000 per cent increase!

But it’s not just size that makes the L.A. Baha’i community notable, it’s also service. In the early 70's, the first Baha’i Youth Workshop was formed. Using the performing arts, usually in the form of innovative, narrative dance routines, Baha’i youth promoted spiritual virtues such as the equality of women and men, the elimination of racism and also warned of the perils of drug and alcohol abuse.  Within the course of a generation, similar youth groups would form across America and in other countries all over the world.

Following the Watts riots in the 1960's, Baha’is in Los Angeles worked hard to promote race unity incorporating festivals, seminars, community meetings and conferences. A generation later, the community would respond even more vigorously in 1992 in the wake of the civil unrest  connected to the verdict in the Rodney King police-brutality trial. Mental health professionals volunteered time tending to residents of south-central L.A. and an after-school program to assist the young people in the neighborhood was quickly formed.

Still active to this day, albeit under a different name, LEAP (Leadership, Education and Arts Program) provides tutorial assistance with school work, arts and crafts instruction and virtues training five days a week. Currently, like all other Baha’i communities around the world, neighborhood service takes the form of children’s classes, junior-youth spiritual enrichment groups, devotional gatherings and Baha’i study classes.

The first gatherings of Baha’is in Los Angeles were held in the homes of individual believers. As their numbers grew, they began to rent space for their religious meetings and during the 1930's and 40's space was rented in the Haliburton Building on 8th Street in downtown Los Angeles. In 1946, a large residential property at 311 So. New Hampshire Avenue was purchased but by the late 60's, increasing numbers required a move to a large commercial property on Pico Blvd. in West L.A.

By the early 80's, expanding membership forced still another move to the L.A. Baha’i Center’s present location at 5755 Rodeo Road in the Baldwin Hills area. In 1999, the Baha’is of Los Angeles purchased a community center in Encino, partly providing meeting space to a growing Persian segment of the local Baha’i community who emigrated to the United States fleeing religious discrimination in their home country of Iran.

The collision of different cultures in ethnically diverse Los Angeles has not been without its challenges, again, both for the city at large and its Baha’i community. But with generous applications of love and with the ever-present goal of unity, the central theme of the Baha’i sacred writings, the Los Angeles Baha’i community has clearly demonstrated that the Baha’i Faith is, first, not just a Persian religion, second, not just a religion for white America and, third, not just an English-speaking religion as more and more converts in the city are from Latin American countries.

Thornton Chase died in Los Angeles in 1912, prompting a visit to the city by `Abdu’l-Baha, the son of the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith who was then on a tour of the West from the Holy Land.  Mr. Chase is buried in nearby Inglewood, Ca., and every year Baha’is gather at his grave site to say prayers and honor his memory.

It’s been a hundred years since the early Baha’i believers first formed into a community in Los Angeles and the world is very different now.  But unlike an individual, who might celebrate an advanced birthday with an eye towards the end of his or her existence, the Baha’i community in Los Angeles plans to celebrate its 100th anniversary with an outward orientation that anticipates the future — acknowledging its past achievements but embracing a vision for the changes yet to come.

Story submitted by Randolph Dobbs