IT HAPPENS in every church: technology fails at the crucial moment. A video of a Persian worship song is playing mutely on the big screen. The congregation of around 50 sit in silence as the priest hunches over the laptop before she straightens, apologises for the glitch, and invites them to pray with those sitting near by. It’s as if a spell is broken: all around the church, small groups huddle in quiet conversation, arms placed around shoulders, chairs shuffled to soften the angles of conversation. I wonder how much of the murmur of Persian voices consists of prayer, and how much conversation; then and whether, in this context, there’s all that much difference.
People whose first language is Farsi have been attending churches around the country in increasing numbers in recent years. Most are from Iran, and many of them arrived seeking asylum. Some also sought a church to attend, after facing persecution for their faith: in Iran, conversion from Islam is prohibited, and indigenous Christian communities face severe restrictions. Others have converted to Christianity since arriving, after encountering it for the first time.
In the diocese of Southwark, Christ Church, Gipsy Hill, has found itself at the forefront of catering for Farsi-speakers. A monthly eucharist in Farsi is held, followed by a meal, and the regular Sunday services often include a reading or a verse of a song or hymn in Farsi, with a translation of the order of service, and the sermon, available.
At the Persian eucharist in March, the Associate Vicar, the Revd Emma Lowth, presided in Farsi — a language that she is working hard to master — and distributed holy communion to the plaintive sound of the tar, a Persian stringed instrument. For other parts of the service, including the sermon, she was assisted by Sepi Black, who translated her reflections on Psalm 84 — “How lovely is your dwelling place” — into the same language.
Before the service, I had coffee with a group of men ranging from their late twenties to early fifties. Jafar* told me that he had been looking for somewhere to worship where he could feel at home, and other asylum seekers in the same local hotel had told him about the Farsi-speaking community at Christ Church. A member of an underground house church in Iran, he showed me pictures on his phone of a clandestine visit to an ancient church in the north of the country.
Others spoke about their experience of attending underground churches in Iran. Mansour said that they couldn’t sing during the informal services held in people’s houses, out of fear of detection. Another explained that there were few official churches, and those that were permitted by the authorities were closely watched and could be closed down if suspected of evangelism.
Jose, who has been in the UK for several years and runs a mobile hairdressing business, converted to Christianity in Iran. He delivered groceries to a household of “kind people” who ordered various food items in bulk. One day, he asked them why they needed so much. They trusted him enough to tell him that they ran an underground church. He started to attend, travelled to Turkey to be baptised, and eventually found a home in the UK.
St George’sPersian New Year celebrations at St George’s, Leeds
Hafiz was alone among the group in having been in the UK for a long time. Although he spoke English fluently, he had encouraged each man to tell his story in his own words, or asked one of the others to translate to help him practise. He told me that his wife is an Anglican priest and that it was the language of the liturgy which had attracted him to the Church of England. “It’s a big umbrella that can cover everyone,” he said, but Iranian asylum-seekers attending a church needed help to feel part of the “bigger picture” of the community.
“After a while, people can stop coming,” he said. “They need to feel that people in church are their friends: otherwise, they will drift.” Pastoral engagement with a sensitivity for cultural differences was important, therefore, Hafiz said — and the flourishing of the Persian community at Christ Church, Gipsy Hill, was perhaps attributable to its ability to offer a warm welcome to the first Iranians who came through its doors at the end of 2021.
THIS encounter was described by several people as an act of providence. A couple of Iranians from the migrant hotel near by arrived at a morning service. A member of the congregation, Antoinette, had stepped in at the last minute to fill an unexpected absence, greeting people as they arrived. She heard them speaking in Farsi, her husband’s native language, and called him to come down to the church to talk with the newcomers. From this mustard seed, the Farsi ministry at Christ Church has grown to the point that the church sought, and received, funding to employ Ms Lowth to stay on after the end of her curacy and focus on the Farsi ministry.
Ms Lowth estimates that 250 Iranians have since come through the doors of Christ Church. The vagaries of the asylum process mean that many who attend don’t know from one month to the next whether they might soon be denied asylum, kept waiting, or granted permission to remain. Though the latter is obviously the hoped-for outcome, it starts a new clock ticking: from that point they have less than two months to leave the hotel, and it’s often impossible to find accommodation near by.
When I met Samira, she had several large, empty suitcases with her. She had recently been granted leave to remain in the UK, and so was moving out into her own accommodation, but the only room that she could afford was more than an hour away. A fellow congregation member had lent her the suitcases. She was moving the next morning.
Before leaving Iran, Samira had been in trouble with the regime for posting photographs of herself with her head uncovered. “They wanted to put me in jail,” she said. “As a woman, you don’t have any freedom.” She started to attend an underground church around the time of the 2022 protests that followed the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for alleged violations of the law on head coverings. Samira was drawn to the church after witnessing how a Christian friend was able to remain so calm amid the turmoil.
IN 2024, church attendance by asylum-seekers fell under the media spotlight, after a former Church of England priest claimed that there was a “conveyor belt” of refugees cynically converting to Christianity to expedite their applications (News, 12 March 2024). “People would like you to believe that people are only going to church to get a baptism certificate,” Ms Lowth said. In fact, the reality was “significantly more complicated”.
Many — like Samira, Jose, Jafar, and Mansour — attended church before leaving Iran, facing significant personal risk. For those people, as well as for those encountering Christianity for the first time in the UK, it was important to “slow down” the approach to discipleship, Ms Lowth said, and to let people’s faith develop at their own pace, though, in general, the Iranians that she had encountered had a “voracious appetite” for faith. At Christ Church, a weekly Farsi Bible study is attended by 30 people on average, and the church regularly runs the Alpha course in the Persian language.
Francis MartinThe haft-sīn at St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury
Responding to the difficult question whether some asylum-seekers seek conversion in the hope that it benefits their case, Dr Nick Bundock, now the Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway, spoke about the Farsi ministry at St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury, in south Manchester: “I think a lot of people are coming for asylum, for residency, in the same way that we got lots of people coming to our church because they want a place for their children at the Church of England school. But that’s only looking at it from one angle. The other angle is that we see a genuine flourishing of faith, a real presence of God within this community,” he said.
The church has repurposed the stamp-card system used for logging the attendance of families seeking a place at the church school, to provide the immigration authorities with factual information about the regularity and extent of an asylum-seeker’s involvement. To comment authoritatively on the genuineness of anyone’s faith was impossible, Dr Bundock said, and he left the decision of weighing evidence to the Home Office.
Jenny Courtney, a licensed lay minister who helps to coordinate the Persian ministry at St James and Emmanuel, is enthusiastic about the opportunities for evangelism which arise, regardless of what might initially have inspired Farsi-speakers to come through the door. The connection that some made with the church — coming back to visit long after they had been relocated — was testament to their sincerity, she suggested.
In Didsbury, there is a service in Farsi every Sunday afternoon. On the day that I attended, the church was full, and children were playing in a side room. I was given a headset, which provided a simultaneous English translation, the same technology that the church uses at its earlier, English-language service for interpreting the other way.
It was a far cry from how it had started, one of the regulars, Fara, told me. The congregation dated back to her early days in the UK, two decades ago, after she had left Iran in the aftermath of anti-regime protests. At that point, just a small group met together (and sometimes had to sleep) in a different church. Over time, that inchoate congregation found a home at St James and Emmanuel.
After the service, I joined the congregation of more than 100 for a Nowruz party, for the Persian New Year. The church hall was bustling, and people took photographs beside a long table laden with fruit, cakes, and flowers. At the end of the table was a haft-sīn — Persian for “seven S’s”. It consists of seven food products, all beginning with that letter in the Persian alphabet, including vinegar, apples, garlic, and sumac.
A hāft-sin traditionally also includes a holy book, usually the Qur’an: here, a Bible took pride of place. I photographed Mahsa and Mahti standing beside it. They travelled to the UK with their baby, a journey made by foot, lorry, and boat. They had converted in Iran, after becoming disillusioned with Islam.
The couple had attended both English and Farsi services that day. British people were so kind and friendly, Mahsa said, and had made them welcome, but it was also nice to be able to worship in their own language, especially as her English remained hesitant. Near by, amid dozens of simultaneous conversations, a game had got under way that seemed to be a cross between karaoke and a pub quiz. “Iranians are crazy, bonkers,” Fara told me apologetically, before being drawn into the game herself.
My next appointment was a service at a church in the neighbouring suburb, and Fara offered to drive me. A takeaway container was thrust upon me as we left Didsbury, and the smell of rice and chicken filled the car as we wound through south Manchester to Heaton Moor United Church, where a church dedicated in honour of the Persian sage St Aphrahat meets.
St George’sAli Bashiri and Ann Weir at St George’s, Leeds
The service was quieter, and the congregation was generally older than at Didsbury, though a clutch of children came forward for a blessing at the altar rail and were given a chocolate from a box that matched the purple vestments. The service was traditional and sacramental in its churchmanship, a style one might associate with the Anglo-Catholic wing of the C of E.
The priest who founded St Aphrahat the Persian Sage, Canon Omid Moludy, was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, and trained in that tradition, but his early ministry in Iran was in an Evangelical church founded by Korean missionaries. After his third arrest, and time in prison, he was advised to leave the country, and formed the community that became St Aphrahat’s, 21 years ago. It wasn’t initially part of the Church of England. “We felt that we were a small, isolated island in the middle of nowhere. To be part of the Anglican community gives us a sense of belonging,” he said.
Another inspiration for working within the Church of England is to maintain a spiritual, if not currently a practical, link with the Anglican diocese in Iran. “My dream is to build the diocese of Iran in the diaspora,” Dr Moludy said, so that “when God opens the doors, we have the right structure to take in.” He has also recently taken a leadership role in the newly formed World Iranian Christian Alliance, which brings together more than 200 Iranian Christian leaders from around the world in an official fellowship.
A woman whom I met at St Aphrahat’s had been a member of the Anglican Church in Iran. The Church was being strangled because it could not accept new members, she said: if it did, undercover agents might report that it was making converts, regardless of whether the new members had come from other churches. “I’m shaking, thinking about what they’re doing,” she said, and declined to give her name out of concern for the safety of relatives still in the country.
A third benefit of working within the Church of England is its systems of training and accountability. Dr Moludy was upfront about the pressures, and emphasised the need for careful discipleship. A particular challenge, he said, was explaining the concept of the Trinity, which has no analogue in Islamic theology, and, if explained poorly, could be confused with polytheism.
The website for St Aphrahat’s lists three associate ministers alongside Dr Moludy and the Revd Farid Yasini, who were preaching and presiding on the Sunday when I visited. The others all serve at different churches, but maintain a link with their Persian “mother church”. The timing of the service at St Aphrahat’s means that it is possible to attend (or conduct) a Sunday-morning eucharist elsewhere and still make it in time.
For the Revd Mehrdad Qasemi, a two-service Sunday was not what he thought he would be doing when he moved to the UK: “I had two dreams when I was in Iran: to become a professional footballer for Manchester United, or to become an actor in Hollywood.” He could not have foreseen attending those services in a clerical collar, as he converted to Christianity after moving from Iran, and was ordained two years ago. He is droll about the challenges that he faces, particularly with the language: “If I wasn’t sure it was God, I wouldn’t stay,” he said.
The Revd Zahra Shafiei is another of the associate ministers at St Aphrahat’s. Her vocation was forged at the church. She now serves as a curate at a majority English-speaking church but retains links to St Aphrahat’s. Ms Shafiei was first drawn to church by a desire to make friends, and found one in Jesus. After becoming an ordained local Mmnister at St Aphrahat’s, she felt a calling to care for and help to nourish Farsi-speakers who are scattered across English churches.
The transience of the community is a difficulty, she concedes: at short notice, asylum-seekers find themselves either being moved by the Home Office, or having to find new accommodation because their leave to remain has been approved. Ms Shafiei tries to stay in contact with people, inviting them to Zoom fellowship with fellow Iranians, but also encouraging them to join their local church, providing them with a letter of introduction.
The coordination of Persian ministry in the Church of England is, for the most part, piecemeal, and Dr Moludy is keen to see a centralised national strategy that goes beyond networking: “I think we need our Archbishop of Canterbury to be supportive. We need the General Synod to pass a resolution, and also to have a budget for it.”
IN JUNE, a one-day conference will be held in Nottingham. The Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Francis-Dehqani, will preside at the closing eucharist, and the Archbishop of York is due to preach. The conference will bring together the Iranians already working in the Church of England — about 18 in total, including ordinands — as well as English clerics such as Ms Lowth who are deeply engaged with the Persian community.
Dr Francis-Dehqani’s father, Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, was the first Persian Anglican Bishop in Iran, succeeding an English missionary, William Thompson, who happened to be his father-in-law. When the Islamic Revolution came, her family came under attack: her brother, Bahram, was killed, and her father narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Still a child, Dr Francis-Dehqani came to the UK as a refugee.
Francis MartinPardeh khānī paintings at Christ Church, Gipsy Hill
“When asylum-seekers or refugees arrive, they need two things. This has been my own personal experience. They need to feel a sense of genuine welcome. They also need to have the opportunity to begin to contribute,” Dr Francis-Dehqani told me. “We need to be both host and guest in providing welcome and creating opportunities.”
Ann Weir, at St George’s, Leeds, embodies this ethos. A retired teacher, now 80 years old, she is the lay leader for the church’s Persian ministry, and has made a habit of inviting members of the congregation to dinner at her house. The symbolism of this is important: both Hafiz and Dr Moludy told me that, in Persian culture, inviting someone to your home was a significant gesture showing trust.
Ms Weir runs a weekly discipleship session on Zoom with 27-year-old Ali Bashiri, who moved from Iran and is now a ministry intern at the church. The affection in which she is held is obvious when each person, on joining the call, greets her as “Mum” or “Mother”. The call also shows the necessity of good translation: when Mr Bashiri’s connection fails, Ms Weir struggles to make herself understood.
“I always remember my father saying that the work of translation is much more than just about finding the words to express as closely as we can the original,” Dr Francis-Dehqani told me. The process of translation must also “make sense within the cultural framework that people have”. She was involved in the process of producing the authorised Persian translation of a Common Worship order for the eucharist, which remains the only service that has an official translation, although others have been produced in local contexts.
A common question in non-English ministries is whether to prioritise integrating the non-English congregation into regular services (using translations and other tools) or to offer separate services entirely in the native language. Dr Francis-Dehqani, along with many others, commends efforts to do both. To those who say that the Church of England should be moving towards more multicultural expressions, with fewer separate congregations, she says: “I applaud that principle, but there is also something very powerful about worshipping in your own language, and think there is a place for that as well.”
Six weeks after attending the Farsi service at Christ Church, Gipsy Hill, I returned for the Sunday-morning communion service in English. Almost one fifth of the congregation were Persian, many of whom I recognised from my previous visit.
One of them had received permission to remain in the UK just that week. The next step was to find new accommodation and a job. In Iran, he had been an architect, designing apartment blocks, but it will be impossible for him to find work of this sort until his English has improved. Church was helpful in this respect, he said, giving him a chance to practise talking with native speakers and follow the sermon with reference to a Farsi translation, which is available via a link on the big screen.
At the front of the church, beside the altar, was another symbol of the Persian culture that has become part of Christ Church’s lifeblood: a triptych of paintings by a local Iranian artist depicting Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances to his disciples The style is based on the tradition of a pardeh khānī, in which a cloth painted with scenes valorising the Persian kings is unfurled in a performance that mixes art with theatre and poetry.
On my previous visit, I had been shown two canvases by the same artist, used at previous festivals, and she had produced three more for Easter this year. At the Farsi service on Easter Day, they were used to dramatise the story of Christ’s resurrection, Ms Black explained, before she went off to find me the English translation of the service: naturally, every effort had been made to make sure that I and all others were welcome.
*Some names have been changed.
