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Covenant-breaker is a term used in the Baháʼí Faith to refer to a person who has been Excommunication from the Baháʼí community for breaking the Covenant of Baháʼu'lláh, meaning actively promoting schism in the religion or otherwise opposing the legitimacy of the chain of succession of leadership. Excommunication among Baháʼís is rare and not used for transgressions of community standards, intellectual dissent, or conversion to other religions. Instead, it is the most severe punishment, reserved for suppressing organized dissent that threatens the unity of believers.
Currently, the Universal House of Justice has the sole authority to declare a person a Covenant-breaker, and once identified, all Baháʼís are expected to shun them, even if they are family members. According to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Covenant-breaking is a contagious disease. The Baháʼí writings forbid association with Covenant-breakers and Baháʼís are urged to avoid their literature, thus providing an exception to the Baháʼí principle of independent investigation of truth. Most Baháʼís are unaware of the small Baháʼí divisions that exist.
Dr. Mikhail Sergeev wrote about the Baháʼí practice of excommunication,
The three largest attempts at alternative leadership—whose followers are considered Covenant-breakers—were from Subh-i-Azal, Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí, and Charles Mason Remey. Others were declared Covenant-breakers for actively opposing or disobeying the head of the religion, or maliciously attacking the Baháʼí administration after leaving it.
In a letter to an individual dated 23 March 1975, the Universal House of Justice wrote:
The term Covenant-breaker (Arabic: ناقضين) was first used by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during his ministry to describe partisans of his half-brother Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí, who challenged his leadership, although the concept of expulsion from the community of believers and avoidance of contact with them is rooted in the direct instruction and practices of Baháʼu'lláh. In ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament, he appointed Shoghi Effendi as the first Guardian, defined it as an institution, and also called for the election of the Universal House of Justice. ʻAbdul-Bahá defined in the same manner opposition to these two institutions as Covenant-breaking and advised all Baháʼís to shun anyone opposing the Covenant: "...one of the greatest and most fundamental principles of the Cause of God is to shun and avoid entirely the Covenant-breakers, for they will utterly destroy the Cause of God, exterminate His Law and render of no account all efforts exerted in the past." The Will And Testament of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, p 20
Beyond this, many other relationships to the Baháʼí Faith exist, both positive and negative. Covenant-breaking does not apply to most of them. The following is a partial list of those who could not rightly be termed Covenant-breakers:
Shoghi Effendi did inform Baháʼís that they should avoid contact with followers and descendents of Subh-i-Azal, Baháʼu'lláh's half-brother, on the basis of Azal's attempts to poison him, and his followers' active opposition to Baháʼís, writing that "No intelligent and loyal Baha'i would associate with a descendant of Azal, if he traced the slightest breath of criticism of our Faith, in any aspect, from that person. In fact these people should be strenuously avoided as having an inherited spiritual disease -- the disease of Covenant-breaking!".Shoghi Effendi, From letter dated 9 December 1948 to an individual believer
These marriages caused Ruhangiz, Mehrangiz, and Thurayyá to be declared Covenant-breakers by Shoghi Effendi, though there was some delay and concealment initially in order to avoid public degradation of the family. On 2 November 1941 Shoghi Effendi sent two cables announcing the expulsion of Túbá and her children Ruhi, Suhayl, and Fu'ad for consenting to the marriage of Thurayyá to Faydi. There was also mention that Ruhi's visit to America and Fu'ad's visit to England were without approval. In December 1941 he announced the expulsion of his sister Mehrangiz.
In 1953 he cabled about Ruhi Afnan corresponding with Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, selling property of Baháʼu'lláh, and publicly "misrepresenting the teachings and deliberately causing confusion in minds of authorities and the local population". Messages to the Baháʼí World – 1950–1957, p. 48
Almost all of Baháʼís accepted the determination of the Hands of the Cause that upon the death of Shoghi Effendi, he died "without having appointed his successor". There was an absence of a valid descendant of Baháʼu'lláh who could qualify under the terms of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's will. Later the Universal House of Justice, initially elected in 1963, made a ruling on the subject that it was not possible for another Guardian to be appointed.
In 1960 Remey, a Hand of the Cause himself, retracted his earlier position, and claimed to have been coerced. He claimed to be the successor to Shoghi Effendi. He and the small number of people who followed him were expelled from the mainstream Baháʼí community by the Hands of the Cause. Those close to Remey claimed that he went senile in old age, and by the time of his death he was largely abandoned, with his most prominent followers fighting amongst themselves for leadership.
The largest group of the remaining followers of Remey, members of the "Orthodox Baháʼí Faith", believe that legitimate authority passed from Shoghi Effendi to Mason Remey to Joel Marangella. They, therefore, regard the Universal House of Justice in Haifa, Israel to be illegitimate, and its members and followers to be Covenant-breakers.
In 2009, Jeffery Goldberg and Janice Franco, both from the mainstream Baháʼí community, joined the Orthodox Baháʼí Faith. Both of them were declared as Covenant-breakers and shunned. Goldberg's wife was told to divorce her husband.
The present descendants of expelled members of Baháʼu'lláh's family have not specifically been declared Covenant-breakers, though they mostly do not associate themselves with the Baháʼí religion.
A small group of Baháʼís in Northern New Mexico believe that these descendants are eligible for appointment to the Guardianship and are waiting for such a direct descendant of Baháʼu'lláh to arise as the rightful Guardian.
Enayatullah (Zabih) Yazdani was designated a Covenant-breaker in June 2005, after many years of insisting on his views that Mason Remey was the legitimate successor to Shoghi Effendi and of accepting Donald Harvey as the third guardian. He is now the fifth guardian of a small group of Baháʼís and resides in Australia.
There is also a small group in Montana, originally inspired by Leland Jensen, who claimed a status higher than that of the Guardian. His failed apocalyptic predictions and unsuccessful efforts to reestablish the Guardianship and the administration were apparent by his death in 1996. A dispute among Jensen's followers over the identity of the Guardian resulted in another division in 2001.
Moojan Momen, a Baháʼí author, reviewed 66 exit narratives of former Baháʼís, and identified 1996 (Cole's departure) to 2002 as a period of "articulate and well-educated" apostates that used the newly available Internet to connect with each other and form a community with its own "mythology, creed and salvation stories becoming what could perhaps be called an anti-religion". According to Momen, the narrative among these apostates of a "fiercely aggressive religion where petty dictators rule" is the opposite experience of most members, who see "peace as a central teaching", "consultative decision-making", and "mechanisms to guard against individuals attacking the central institutions of the Bahá'í Faith or creating schisms." On the practice of shunning, Momen writes that it is "rarely used and is only applied after prolonged negotiations fail to resolve the situation. To the best knowledge of the present author it has been used against no more than a handful of individuals in over two decades and to only the first of the apostates described below Francesco more than twenty-five years ago - although it is regularly mentioned in the literature produced by the apostates as though it were a frequent occurrence."
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