000			03201nam a2200241Ia 4500
003			OSt
005			20230730184511.0
008			180225s1983 CNT 000 0 und d
020			_a0-85398-126-4 cased
040			_cNew Zealand National Baha'i Reference Library
100			_aDavid Hofman _9582
245	1	0	_aGeorge Townshend _bHand of the Cause of God (Sometime Canon of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Archdeacon of Clonfert)
250			_aRevised edition
260			_aOxford _bGeorge Ronald _c2002
300			_axviii, 418 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
500			_aThe biography of the sometime Canon of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin and Archdeacon of Clonfert who renounced his orders to proclaim the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh. This biography of a great Irishman is the story of a man with a vision. It reveals the response of a sincere Christian, who reached high rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, to the modern and rapidly advancing Bahá'í Faith. George Townshend renounced his Orders in the Church ‘in order to be loyal to Christ as I know Him’ and to proclaim publicly that the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh is the long-awaited ‘return’ promised in the Gospel. At the age of seventy he willingly accepted all the hardships this entailed. The story itself is adventurous and of wide-ranging interest. George Townshend's years in Utah, where he was ordained in Salt Lake City; his academic career in Sewanee, Tennessee where he became Associate Professor of English at the University of the South; his long years near Ballinasloe, County Galway, where he was incumbent of Ahascragh and Archdeacon of Clonfert; to the last decade in a small bungalow outside Dublin -- this forms the outward pattern of a great life. But it is the inner spiritual striving, the modesty, the courage, the relentless persistence in pursuit of his vision which compel our admiration. His literary accomplishment, insufficiently realized as yet, is dealt with in some detail. A leader writer for The Irish Times between 1900 and 1904, he achieved recognition with The Altar on the Hearth (1927) and more widely with The Genius of Ireland (1930). His love for Ireland and his conviction of her great destiny in the reshaping of the world, were powerful motivating forces, which lent vigour and beauty to much of his writing, both prose and poetry. His later and larger works, related to the Bahá'í Faith, have gradually become more widely known and have been translated into a number of languages, and his services to the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, especially in the literary field, are here recounted for the first time.
520	3		_aA literary biography of this important Bahá'í figure - a former official of the Church of Ireland who renounced his ecclesiastical office to devote himself to furthering the Bahá'í Cause. Illustrated, good index. Hofman is Townshend's literary executor.
526			_a"List of George Townshend's known works": pages [394]-397
600		0	_aGeorge Townshend _9600
650		0	_aBiography _vBaha'i Faith _9170
650		0	_aHands of the Cause of God _gAyádí Amru’lláh _vBaha'i Faith _9823
942			_2ddc _cCHAPTER
999			_c30880 _d30880