In this introduction he was the first Bahá'í to mention the 1844 Edict of Toleration. the pre-eminent Bahá'í writer.' Townshend wrote the introduction to the book "God Passes By" which recounted the events of the first century of the Bahá'í Faith. With this designation he rendered many services to the religion, mainly in the area of writing, as Shoghi Effendi thought of him as 'the best writer we have. Townshend was one of the founding members of the Dublin Local Spiritual Assembly and in 1951 was designated by Shoghi Effendi, then head of the religion, as a Hand of the Cause of God. He then moved to a small bungalow outside of Dublin where he spent his last decade. In 1947, at the age of 70, Townshend renounced his orders to the Anglican Church and wrote a pamphlet to all Christians under the title “The Old Churches and the New World Faith” that was sent out to 10,000 people in the British Isles on the occasion of this resignation. He later became a Bahá'í and it was his activities in the Faith, including his writing of two books, “The Heart of the Gospel” and “The Promise of All Ages”, that created ever increasing tensions between Townshend and the other clergy and eventually caused Shoghi Effendi to call for his resignation as the Canon St. In 1918, Townshend started correspondence with Abdu'l-Bahá.
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