George Townshend (Bahá'Ã)
George Townshend ( born June 14, 1876 in Dublin, Ireland, † March 25, 1957 ) was a Baha'i and one of the twelve Hands of the Cause of God, who were appointed on 24 December 1951 by Shoghi Effendi. He was the first ordained Christian priest who broke his vows to become Baha'i.
Life
Townshend studied classical literature and English at Hertford College, Oxford, graduating in 1899. Upon his return to Ireland he worked for the Irish Times and the Irish Bar, and received a law degree.
He then emigrated to Provo from, worked as a missionary among the Mormons and Indians, and was ordained in 1906 in Salt Lake City as an Anglican priest. In 1909 he taught at the Salt Lake High School. He then moved to Sewanee, Tennessee, and in 1912, assistant professor of English at the University of the South.
Although he had taken U.S. citizenship, he returned in July 1916 returned to Ireland and took in Booterstown ( County Dublin) the place of a curate at. Townshend met the Bahai faith, as a friend from Sewanee sent him some brochures with words of Abdu'l-Baha. By 1918 he began to write with Abdu'l-Baha. 1918 Townshend married Anna Sarah Maxwell.
He spent many years near Ballinasloe in County Galway. There he was in charge from January 1919 as pastor for Ahascragh and from 1933 as Deacon 's Ark for Clonfert. His son Brian was in 1920 and his daughter Una was born in 1921.
1926 offered Townshend Shoghi Effendi to revise the English translations of Baha'u'llah's works. The offer took Shoghi Effendi thanks. The collaboration took place for 18 years and began with the Hidden Words. Townshend believed he could with books gradually influence the leaders of the church and bring the whole church to the faith of Baha'u'llah.
His first book was the popular and well sold prayer and meditation book "The altar on the Hearth " of 1926, which emphasizes the progressive revelation of God and a new spiritual civilization. Although it does not directly mention the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, it is steeped loud Shoghi Effendi from Bahai spirit. Some content appeared again in 1952 in his book "The Mission of Baha'u'llah ". His next work, " The Promise of All Ages " appeared in 1934 under a pseudonym and treated open the progressive revelation of God, the mission of Baha'u'llah and the testimony of Christ, pointing to the day of God.
The 1939 published book "The Heart of the Gospel " tells the story as a spiritual development and examines the doctrines of the gospel that were overlooked by the theology. Nevertheless, he sent of the last two works, hundreds of copies of the clergy in Ireland and he received some favorable reviews in the newspapers, no one accepted in the church his message.
At the World Congress of Faiths in London in 1936 Townshend Shoghi Effendi presented Declaration " Baha'u'llah's design for a world society." This results in Townshend identified publicly with the Bahai faith. Nevertheless, he had to wait for family and economic reasons, another eleven years before his formal exit could be carried out from the church. Townshend was elected canon of St. Patrick's Cathedral and moved to Dublin. There he spoke in June 1940 in a sermon on Baha'u'llah.
Townshend wrote the introduction to Shoghi Effendi book " God Passes ," which was published in 1944 to mark the centenary of the Declaration of the Bab and reported on the events in the first century of the Baha'i faith. Also, checked and he edited the manuscript of " God Passes ."
In 1947, Townshend continued to rest and left formally the Anglican Church. At the same time he was a member of the Baha'i community and has written for all Christians in the brochure " The Old Churches and the New World Faith ," at the 8122 people in the British Isles, 5000 in Australia, 2000 and in the United States, 4000 in Canada was sent to an unknown number in Egypt and Germany. However, the resonance of this action was low. The Old Churches and the New World Faith has also been published in The Baha'i World (Vol. XIII) and in German language. The first local Spiritual Assembly of Dublin was also the first of Ireland and was founded in 1948 by Townshend and other Baha'i.
He spent his last decade in a small bungalow in Dundrum in Dublin. Shoghi Effendi appointed Townshend in 1951 for the Hand of the Cause of God. As a Hand of the Cause he proved Shoghi Effendi numerous services especially in the field of writing. Shoghi Effendi regarded him as the best writer to have the Baha'i. In 1953, Townshend as a representative of Shoghi Effendi, with his wife at the International Baha'i teaching conference in Stockholm in part. He held there a talk about the sufferings of Baha'u'llah and their meaning, which were published in The Baha'i World (Vol. XVI). Townshend ended shortly before he died in 1957 from Parkinson his work, whose German translation bears the title "Christ and Bahá'u'lláh ". Because of his illness, he was assisted in writing of his two children. Shoghi Effendi described the book as the crowning work of Townshend.
Works
- George Townshend, George Ronald (ed.): Christ and Bahá'u'lláh. Oxford, UK, 1966, ISBN 0-85398-005-5.
- George Townshend, Christ and Bahá'u'lláh ( 3rd edition ). Baha'i -Verlag, Hofheim- Long Grove 1981, ISBN 3-87037-032-7. 4th revised edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-87037-500-3.