Two Easters ago, the retiring Anglican archbishop responsible for the ailing diocese of Iran – Cyprus-based Englishman Michael Lewis – received a visit from a handful of his Iranian congregants.

“If the Archbishop can’t come to Iran, Iran will come to the Archbishop!” read a Twitter post on the account of the Jerusalem and Middle East Church Association (JMECA), under which the Iranian diocese falls these days, bereft of a bishop of its own.

“Over recent years it has been difficult to obtain visas in order to facilitate episcopal visits to the Diocese of Iran, which made the opportunity for five people, both clergy and lay, from Anglican churches in Iran to visit with the Diocese of Cyprus, even sweeter,” explained an article on the JMECA website.

“Archbishop Michael had invited them to join him and others for two days so that the Province could, in a setting of trust, express concern, care, and encouragement for the remaining congregations of the Diocese of Iran and be better informed about the realities of daily life… The Iranians were keen that their life and its joys and sorrows should be more widely appreciated.”

The article went on to note that the only three remaining active Anglican churches in Iran – St Luke’s in Isfahan, St Paul’s in Tehran, and St Simon the Zealot’s in Shiraz – “remain closed for formal worship”, having not been permitted to reopen since the pandemic.

“Ways forward with government authorities were discussed,” JMECA stated, “as well as episcopal oversight of the diocese”.

But two years on, the three churches remain closed – perhaps the only example anywhere in the world of places of worship closed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic remaining off limits.

Archbishop Michael retired a month after the Cyprus visit and was replaced by a Palestinian, Hosam Naoum, but Iran’s Anglicans remain both churchless and, in effect, bishop-less, as no visit to Iran by an Anglican leader has been possible since the former Vicar-General of Iran, Rev Albert Walters, was forced to leave his role, and the country, in 2019, after his residence and work permits were not extended.

Former glories

In effect, the Anglican Church in Iran has therefore found itself bishop-less for six years and church-less for five.

And yet the beleaguered diocese has not always been so. Indeed, the translator who attended the Cyprus gathering, Church of England bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani, was a living testament to both the current and former situation of the Church in Iran, having as a young girl been forced to flee the country along with her father, Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, the first native-born Anglican bishop of Iran.

When Bishop Dehqani-Tafti, a convert from an Islamic background, was installed as bishop in 1960, the future of the small but growing Church in Iran seemed bright, exemplified by the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to his church in Isfahan a year later.

But everything changed with the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

The pastor of the Anglican church in Shiraz, Arastoo Sayyah, was killed just eight days after the arrival of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini heralded the beginning of a new Islamic Republic. And by the end of that year, Bishop Hassan and his family had fled the country after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, and much of the church’s property had been confiscated or repurposed.

When the bishop’s only son, Bahram, returned to Iran the following year, he too was murdered.

Bishop Hassan continued to lead the Anglican Church in Iran, in exile, for a further decade, before being succeeded by his friend and fellow convert, Iraj Mottahedeh – the second and, to date, last Persian Anglican bishop of Iran.

Bleak future

Bishop Mottahedeh was replaced by a Pakistani, Bishop Azad Marshall, but since his retirement in 2016, the Church has been represented only from afar, and with ever decreasing possibilities of engagement.

Moreover, since 1979, the Anglican churches of Iran have not been permitted to welcome new members to their churches, so only those who could prove they were already Christians before the revolution have been able to stay in congregations that were once hundreds strong and are now down to a combined membership of less than 100 across the three remaining churches.

The dwindling membership of the Anglican Church of Iran still bears the hallmarks of its former glories, with many of the remaining members coming from the blind centres that were set up by missionaries in the 20th century.

But with no longer any bishop in the country, nor even visits of foreign-based bishops permitted, no churches open, and no possibility of new members, the future of the Anglican Church in Iran seems bleak.

Unless something changes, the membership will surely further dwindle and, eventually, die out, leaving only empty buildings, which, like many others before them, will then be at risk of eventual confiscation and repurposing by the state.