From May 22-25, 171 Baha'i delegates in the United States will gather at the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette, Ill., to elect the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. At the same time, Baha’i delegates in 181 other nations will gather to elect their National Spiritual Assemblies.

This year marks the 100th annual Baha'i national convention in the United States.

Delegates at the first convention, held in Chicago in 1909, established an organization called Baha’i Temple Unity, the first national institution in the Baha’i world.

“The desire of those early believers to build the temple in Chicago is what prompted them to hold the first national convention here” says Robert Stockman, a Baha'i historian and author of The Baha'i Faith in America.

Charged mainly with construction of the Temple, the Baha'i Temple Unity gradually took on other tasks, such as publishing Baha’i literature, coordinating the teaching of the Faith and assisting isolated Baha’is. In the 1920s, it evolved into the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States.

The Baha’i Faith has no clergy; instead, the approximately five million Baha’is worldwide are governed by elected councils at the international, national and local levels. They are, respectively, the Universal House of Justice, the national spiritual assemblies and the local spiritual assemblies.

The U.S. National Spiritual Assembly oversees the affairs of the 160,000 Baha’is who live in the 48 contiguous states. The National Spiritual Assembly members recently participated as delegates in the election of the nine members of the Universal House of Justice at the faith’s world headquarters in Haifa, Israel. The international election is held every five years.

National and Local Spiritual Assemblies are charged, according to Baha’i writings, with the responsibility of being "channels of divine guidance, planners of the teaching work, developers of human resources, builders of communities, and loving shepherds of the multitudes."