Other Bahá'í offshoots (umbrella)
Umbrella for small Bahá'í offshoots beyond Orthodox Bahá'í Faith and Azali entries.
CLCI radar
BITE breakdown
0 — umbrella for other small Bahá'í offshoots beyond named entries.
Profile facts
In context
Beyond the individually named entries (the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith of the Mason Remey line and the Azali Bábís), a handful of small Bahá'í-derived offshoots formed around rival claims to Covenant authority, most sharply after Shoghi Effendi died in 1957 without an appointed successor Guardian. Bodies such as the Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant (Leland Jensen) and the Free Bahá'ís typically number only dozens to low hundreds of adherents and are defined chiefly by mutual excommunication — the mainstream community declares them 'Covenant-breakers' and shuns contact, and the offshoots reciprocate. Membership is voluntary and material exit costs are low relative to residential high-control groups; the moderate score reflects covenantal shunning and doctrinal exclusivity rather than coercive containment. The mainstream Bahá'í Faith, with roughly five to eight million adherents worldwide, is by far the largest body and is scored separately.
Recovery resources
- ICSA (International Cultic Studies Association) — General referral and cult-aware therapist directory.
- Freedom of Mind Resource Center — Steven Hassan's organisation; BITE-model resources and family-side exit guidance.
- Reclamation Collective — Religious-trauma-aware therapist network; relevant for post-exit identity-rebuilding.
- Religious Trauma Institute — Religious-trauma clinical research and clinician directory (Marlene Winell tradition).
- INFORM (Information Network on Religious Movements) — LSE-founded UK research-based information service covering new religious movements.
See the full curated list at /resources.
Evidence by BITE axis
- Small leader-defined successor claims with exclusive authority
- Severance / shunning between offshoot and mainstream community ('Covenant-breaker' framing)
Timeline
- VariousMultiple offshoots
Sources
- Moojan Momen, academic studies of Bahá'í schisms and 'Covenant-breaker' dynamics search ↗
- Denis MacEoin, 'The Bábí and Bahá'í Religions' and related scholarship on schismatic offshoots search ↗
- Encyclopædia Iranica entries on Bahá'í offshoot and Azali groups search ↗
We cite sources by name and outlet rather than fabricating links. Where a source includes its own URL, the open ↗ link opens it directly; otherwise search ↗ runs a Google Scholar query for the cited title — useful for verifying academic sources. For news outlets, search the outlet's own archive.
Change history
Substantive edits logged per the score-updates policy.
- 2026-05-29Phase 1 Batch J: per-group recovery resources applied via programmatic palette (closest-fit by category + subCategory + score). Palette: Universal fallback.
- 2026-05-20Source-density flags derived from existing free-text sources[]: academic sources. Heuristic auto-flag; subsequent editorial pass will populate structuredSources[] with reliability tiers.
- 2026-05-20Score band scheme migrated from 4 bands to 5 (Minimal 0–5 / Low 6–12 / Moderate 13–20 / High 21–30 / Extreme 31–40). No CLCI value changed; the new Minimal band was carved out of the bottom of the previous Low band.
Key terms in this profile
Relevant hubs
Curated entry points on CLCI Hub for situations connected to this group.
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