Reception of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Britain

Brendan McNamara, Ph.D. (2017), University College Cork is a lecturer in the study of religions at that university. He has published journal articles, a book chapter and edited Connections; Early Links Between the Bahá’í Faith and Ireland (Tusker Keyes, 2007).

• ContentsAcknowledgments1 Introduction1 “East Comes West”2 ʿAbdu’l-Bahá and the Baháʾí Faith3 Documenting Missionary Travels4 Protestant Discourse5 Recovering the Obscure6 Sources and Materials7 Orientalism8 Forgetting the Past9 A New World10 The View from Where2 Religious and Intellectual Milieu1 Comparative Religion2 Foundations3 Joseph Estlin Carpenter4 Political and Cultural Resonance5 The Cult of Omar6 Narratives Subjoined7 Conclusion3 Establishing Parameters for East-West Encounters: Chicago and Oxford1 Filter and Grid2 Third International Congress for the History of Religions3 Oxford4 Cheyne’s Cosmology5 Conclusion4 The Curious: the Celtic Dimension to Pre-First World War Religious Discourse1 Dean’s Yard2 Tudor Pole’s Quest3 The Celtic Revival4 Discovering ʿAbdu’l-Bahá5 Conclusion5 New Protestant Theodocies: R.J. Campbell, “the Disturber of Our Comfortable Peace”1 The New Theology2 One of the Great Let Downs of the World3 Uncharted Dimensions of Early 20th Century Protestant Discourse4 Implications for the Religious Field5 Conclusion6 ʿAbdu’l-Bahá in Britain1 What Was Understood2 In London3 At Westminster4 Indirect Admonishment5 Missionary Reaction6 Conclusion7 The Elision of Memory: Forgetting Aspects of Early Twentieth Century Discourse1 Now Time and Afterlife2 A Dialectic of Rejection and Fascination3 Religion and War4 Religious Reformers at War5 ConclusionAppendix 1: Significant Baháʾí DatesAppendix 2: Arabic Notation in The Christian CommonwealthAppendix 3: Tudor Pole, Campbell and the Glastonbury CupBibliographyIndex