An Expansive Prospect looks at four places in the world, capturing the efforts of individuals, communities, and institutions as they strive together to release the society-building power of the Bahá’í teachings in ever-greater measures. See the story about North Carolina at 38:40.

A Rich Tapestry is a video storytelling series that explores how people across the United States are putting love into action to build racially and culturally inclusive communities, showing real-world examples of cooperation, community building, and social-justice work.

Together, these two articles trace the historical and contemporary efforts of the Bahá’í community in the United States to build enduring patterns of racial unity grounded in the spiritual principle of the oneness of humanity. They illustrate how Bahá’ís have moved from early acts of interracial fellowship to today’s grassroots community-building processes that foster new social relationships, challenge prejudice, and contribute to long-term racial healing. 

The Bahá’í community is seeking to build a replicable system for building capacity for service within communities that empowers them to determine and pursue their aspirations.

Lample, Paul. “Exploring a Framework for the Elimination of Racial Prejudice,” The Journal of Bahá’í Studies, 35.1–2, 2025.

A framework for eliminating racial prejudice in America is grounded in spiritual principles and community-building processes that address personal, social, and structural dimensions of racism. Through long-term collective learning, the cultivation of unity, and the development of capacities, relationships can be transformed and social norms reshaped.

Smith, Derik and Michael Karlberg, “Responding to Injustice with Constructive Agency,” in Robert Stockman (ed.), The World of the Bahá’í Faith. London: Routledge, 2022.

Social change can be achieved not through confrontation or protest, but through deliberate, non-adversarial building of new social structures and norms rooted in justice and solidarity.