Does the Bahá’í Encyclopedia Project have a policy of using gender-neutral language?
It is the Encyclopedia Project’s policy to use inclusive, gender-neutral language in its articles. The reader will note, however, that quotations from the translated writings of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and from Shoghi Effendi use gendered language, including masculine pronouns and terms referring to God, generic terms such as man and mankind, and references to man or men in such terms as “O Son of Spirit!” The Bahá’í position is that one’s understanding of the intent of such terms must be informed by awareness of the concept of equality that is integral to the Bahá’í Faith. “The problem of gender-specific nouns is . . . susceptible of two lines of solution,” the Universal House of Justice has stated. “One is to change the usage of nouns, the other is to permit the consciousness of sexual equality to modify the meaning of nouns as now used” (27 November 1989, from a memorandum from the Universal House of Justice to a Bahá’í Office of Public Information). Although usage wi
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