Bahá'í Faith in Australia

The Bahá'í Faith has a long history in Australia. The first known mention of events related to the history of the religion was several reports in Australian newspapers in 1846. After sporadic mentions a turning point was a mention of Australia by `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion, in 1916 following which United Kingdom/American emigrants John and Clara Dunn came to Australia in 1920. They found people willing to convert to the Bahá'í Faith in several cities while further immigrant Bahá'ís also arrived. The first Local Spiritual Assembly was elected in Melbourne followed by the first election of the National Spiritual Assembly in 1934. Iranian Bahá'ís had first tried to emigrate to Australia in 1948 but were rejected as "Asiatic" by Australia's White Australia policy. Though the situation was eased in the 1960s and 70s, on the eve of Iranian revolution, in 1978, there were approximately 50-60 Persian Bahá'í families in Australia. Persians, including Bahá'ís, arrived in number following the revolution. See persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran. Since the 1980s the Bahá'ís of Australia have become involved and spoken out on a number of civic issues - from interfaith initiative such as Soul Food to conferences on indigenous issues and national policies of equal rights and pay for work. The community was counted by census in 2001 to be about 11000 individuals and includes some well known people (see below - National exposure.) The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated some 17,700 Bahá'ís in 2005, and over 19,300 in 2010.

The first known mention of events related to the history of the religion was several reports in Australian newspapers in 1846:

These were reprints of an 1845 article in the London Times which relied on Muslim reactions to the new religion. The next known news story covering events in Bahá'í history was in The Argus, 4 November 1850 in Melbourne which briefly mentions it. In 1853 there was an event with caused great suffering among the Babís (whom Bahá'ís regard as spiritual precursors of their religion.) The Babís were blamed for an attempted assassination of the Shah of Persia. Recent scholarship has identified a fringe element distinct from all the major aspects of the religion, its community and leadership at the time, as actually being responsible. Nevertheless, coverage in newspapers at the time often echoed the Persian government's view blaming the Babís and Babís in large numbers were in fact executed as a result.

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