Frances Benedict Stewart

Chilean born American sociologist, pacifist, feminist, teacher and Bahá′í missionary

Frances Benedict Stewart, 1950

Frances Benedict Stewart was a Chilean-born American citizen. She was a sociologist, pacifist, feminist, teacher and Bahá′í pioneer. From the late 1920s to 1958, she was the spokesperson for the Baháʼí Faith in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, northern South America and in Central America. She performed missionary work throughout the region for nearly 40 years and established numerous assemblies for the faith.

## Biography

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Frances Benedict Stewart was of Chilean birth[1] and was born to pioneer parents of the Bahá′í Faith.[2] She was a sociologist[3] and as a native Spanish speaker, served as liaison and translator for several feminist and pacifist organizations.[4][5][6] As early as 1928, she was serving as a missionary and teacher in Latin America[7] and in 1936 she was a delegate at the Baháʼí annual convention in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After the convention, she traveled on to teach in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil.[8]

She was teaching abroad again in 1937[9] and by 1938 she was secretary of the Bahá′í Inter-American Committee—tasked with coordinating Bahá′í activities related to the Ten Year Crusade in Latin America[10]—and a spokesperson for the faith in all Latin American centers of the West Indies, all of northern South America and in Central America.[6] In 1939, Stewart was working to establish a Baháʼí Spiritual Assembly in Argentina[11] and from there she went to Montevideo, Uruguay[1] where she was interviewed by Uruguayan feminist Paulina Luisi on Radio Femenina, the first all-woman radio format in the Western Hemisphere.[3]

She was active in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in the late 1930s[12] traveling to Mexico City to attend an educational conference for WILPF and assess the possibility of re-establishing the organization in Mexico with feminists there.[4] She was also a delegate for WILPF at the Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres, held in Guatemala City, Guatemala in 1947.[13]

In 1940, Stewart left the US to spend a year in South America,[14] beginning in Mexico and continuing on to El Salvador,[15] Guatemala,[16] and Honduras,[17] returning to Utica, New York, in October 1941 where she prepared translations of the Tablet of Ahmad and the Prayer Books into Spanish.[5]

Throughout the 1950s, Stewart continued her missionary teaching[18] in Puerto Rico in 1951,[19] on Juan Fernández Islands, Chile in 1955,[20] and various other locations until 1958, when her administrative rights as a member of the Baháʼí Faith community were removed.[21] In 1961, Stewart was living in Argentina and was declared a Covenant-breaker—a form of excommunication in the Baháʼí Faith—by the Hands of the Cause of God, then the temporary leaders of the international Baháʼí community.[22]

## See also

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* List of peace activists

## References

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1. ^ a b Khan 2009, p. 171.
2. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 104\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. December 1936. p. 6. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
3. ^ a b Ehrick 2015, p. 72.
4. ^ a b Threlkeld 2014, p. 189.
5. ^ a b "Inter-America News". No. 147\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. October 1941. p. 7. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
6. ^ a b "Inter-America News". No. 237\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. November 1950. p. 6. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
7. ^ "+526". Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí Library. 1937. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
8. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 109\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. July 1937. pp. 4–5. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
9. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 108\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. June 1937. p. 13. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
10. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 117\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. July 1938. p. 11. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
11. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 122\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. January 1939. p. 8. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
12. ^ "Women's International League for Peace And Freedom Collection". Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
13. ^ Flores Asturias, Ricardo (6 June 2011). "Las Mujeres no Votan Porque Sí: Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres, 1947". Politica y Sentido Comun (in Spanish). Guatemala City, Guatemala: Ricardo Flores Asturias. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
14. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 134\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. March 1940. p. 4. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
15. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 137\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. July 1940. p. 7. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
16. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 141\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. January 1941. p. 5. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
17. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 143\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. May 1941. p. 7. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
18. ^ "Inter-America News". No. 235\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. September 1950. p. 8. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
19. ^ "Latin American News". No. 241\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. March 1951. p. 7. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
20. ^ "Twelfth Pioneer Report". No. 291\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. May 1955. p. 7. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
21. ^ "Deprived of Baháʼí Membership". No. 331\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. September 1958. p. 10. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
22. ^ "Hands Warn of Covenant Breakers in Latin America". No. 365\. Wilmette, Illinois: Baháʼí News. August 1961. p. 16. Retrieved 23 September 2015.

## Sources

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* Ehrick, Christine (23 July 2015). Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and Broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay, 1930–1950. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-07956-4.
* Khan, Janet A. (2009). Heritage of Light: The Spiritual Destiny of America. Wilmette, Illinois: Baha'i Publishing Trust. ISBN 978-1-931847-73-5.
* Threlkeld, Megan (2014). Pan American Women: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4633-9.