George Townsend

by David Hoffman

The 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.