Editing Covenant-breaker (section)

==Resultant groups==
{{main|Attempted schisms in the Baháʼí Faith}}
{{unreferenced section|date=February 2017}}
Most of the groups regarded by the larger group of Baháʼís as Covenant-breakers originated in the claims of Charles Mason Remey to the [[Guardian (Baháʼí Faith)|Guardianship]] in 1960. The ''[[Will and Testament of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá]]'' states that Guardians should be [[lineal primogeniture|lineal descendant]]s of [[Baháʼu'lláh]], that each Guardian must select his successor during his lifetime, and that the nine [[Hands of the Cause of God]] permanently stationed in the [[Holy Land]] must approve the appointment by majority vote. Baháʼís interpret lineal descendency to mean physical familial relation to Baháʼu'lláh, of which Mason Remey was not.

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.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2009-05-30 |title=Baha'i court case; Robert Stockman, Janice Franco, Jeffrey Goldberg |pages=9 |work=The Honolulu Advertiser |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17555083/bahai-court-case-robert-stockman/|access-date=2020-11-27}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Naghdy, Fazel. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/898418021 |title=A tutorial on the Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh : exploring the fundamental verities of the Bahá'í faith |date=2012 |publisher=F. Naghdy |isbn=978-1-4681-4531-1 |location=[San Bernardino, CA] |oclc=898418021}}</ref>

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.

===American opposition===
[[Juan Cole]], an American professor of Middle Eastern history who had been a Baháʼí for 25 years, left the religion in 1996 after being approached by a [[Institution of the Counsellors|Continental Counselor]] about his involvement in a secret email list that was organizing opposition to certain Baháʼí institutions and policies.{{sfn|Momen|2007}} Cole was never labeled a Covenant-breaker, because he claimed to be a [[Unitarian-Universalism|Unitarian-Universalist]] upon leaving. He went on to publish three papers in journals in 1998,{{sfn|Cole|1998}} 2000,{{sfn|Cole|2000}} and 2002.{{sfn|Cole|2002}} These heavily criticized the [[Baháʼí administration]] in the United States and suggested cult-like tendencies, particularly regarding the requirement of [[Baháʼí review|pre-publication review]] and the practice of shunning Covenant-breakers.{{sfn|Momen|2007}} For example, Cole wrote in 1998, "Baha’is, like members of [[The Watchtower]] and other cults, shun those who are excommunicated."{{sfn|Cole|1998}} In 2000, he wrote: "Baha'i authorities... keep believers in line by appealing to the welfare and unity of the community, and if these appeals fail then implicit or explicit threats of disfellowshipping and even shunning are invoked. ... Shunning is the central control mechanism in the Baha'i system"{{sfn|Cole|2000}} In 2002, he wrote: "Opportunistic sectarian-minded officials may have seen this... as a time when they could act arbitrarily and harshly against intellectuals and liberals, using summary expulsion and threats of shunning".{{sfn|Cole|2002}}

[[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".{{sfn|Momen|2007}} 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."{{sfn|Momen|2007}} 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 Ficicchia] 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."{{sfn|Momen|2007}}