Agnes Baldwin Alexander

by Earl Rdman and Duane Troxel

Agnes Alexander was the only Hand of the Cause of God to be mentioned in the Tablets of the Divine Plan. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote of her: ‘I declare by the Lord of Hosts that had this respected daughter founded an empire, that empire would not have been so great’, and described her as ‘the daughter of the Kingdom, the beloved maid-servant of the Blessed Perfection’.

Her life spanned the closing epoch of the Apostolic Age of the Faith and the earliest epoch of the Formative Age, saw the erection of National Spiritual Assemblies in lands where she was once the lone Bahá’í, and also witnessed the birth of the long-promised era of the Universal House of Justice.

Two things guided her. The first was the direction given both to her personally and to the Bahá’ís collectively by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi. The second was her constant belief that things happen ‘if God wills’ them to happen. She was an optimist, rarely acknowledging the negative side of things. She radiated love and kindliness everywhere she went and never spoke badly of others; consequently she was able to do many things others could not.