Like David Pryce-Jones, I knew nothing about Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, late of the Anglican Diocese of Iran, until after his death on April 29, 2008. Reading his story in the Daily Telegraph’s characteristically lively obituary, I can’t help thinking that this man, whose life was barely noticed by the world, was truly a confessor for the Faith in the midst of persecution. In the words of the obituarist,
Many considered that Bishop Hassan, as he was generally known, was one of the 20th century’s saints. A man of gentle and compassionate spirit, he seemed incapable of thinking evil of anyone, and he devoted virtually the whole of his adult life to the service of the tiny Christian community in Iran – making and nurturing converts in an atmosphere that was always unsympathetic, and often hostile, to non-Islamic faiths, and labouring to support missionary schools and hospitals.
Born into a Moslem family, he was received into the Church at age 18, worked actively in Christian youth circles, and became a protegé of the Anglican bishop, an Englishman whose daughter he married in 1952. Not long before that, he had matriculated at Cambridge and been ordained to the priesthood. In 1961 he was elected as his father-in-law’s successor, thus probably becoming the first Persian bishop of a Chalcedonian church since roughly the time of the Council of Chalcedon itself.
Although the government of Shah Reza Pahlavi was not strongly attached to Islam and did not actively persecute Christians, Bishop Hassan was no friend to its arbitrary ways. He offered his support to the Islamic revolution in 1979, thinking, like many other naive souls, that the sequel would be greater liberty for all Iranians. Instead,
the consequences of the [Ayatollah Khomeini’s] seizure of power were worse than anything experienced before, and soon Bishop Hassan and his Church found themselves maligned and harassed.
Pastors were arrested, Church hospitals and blind missions were confiscated, the bishop’s house was looted, and later [he himself] was arrested and temporarily detained. Then, one night in late 1979, two gunmen scaled the wall of the bishop's house in Isfahan, entered the bedroom he shared with his wife and opened fire. Miraculously, the first four shots narrowly missed – Margaret Dehqani-Tafti still has the pillowcase with its four bullet-holes – and the fifth passed through her hand as she flung her body across her husband to protect him.
In the following year, the bishop’s secretary and his only son, Bahram Dehqani-Tafti, who had been studying abroad but had returned to Iran to fulfill his military service obligation, were attacked within a few days of each other. The secretary survived; the son did not. Bishop Hassan composed this prayer for the funeral service:
O God,
We remember not only Bahram but also his murderers;
Not because they killed him in the prime of his youth
And made our hearts bleed and our tears flow,
Not because with this savage act they have brought further disgrace on the name of our country among the civilized nations of the world;
But because through their crime we now follow Thy footsteps more closely in the way of sacrifice.
The terrible fire of this calamity burns up all selfishness and possessiveness in us;
Its flame reveals the depth of depravity and meanness and suspicion, the dimension of hatred and the measure of sinfulness in human nature;
It makes obvious as never before our need to trust in God’s love as shown in the cross of Jesus and His resurrection;
Love which makes us free from hate toward our persecutors;
Love which brings patience, forbearance, courage, loyalty, humility, generosity, greatness of heart;
Love which more than ever deepens our trust in God’s final victory and His eternal design for the Church and the world;
Love which teaches us to prepare ourselves to face our own day of death.
O God,Bahram’s blood has multiplied the fruit of the Spirit in the soul of our souls;
So when his murderers stand before Thee on the day of judgement
Remember the fruit of the Spirit by which they have enriched our lives,
And forgive.
Mindful of Our Lord’s injunction, “If they persecute you in one city, flee to the next” (Matthew 10:23), Bishop Hassan with his wife and daughters then went into exile in England. His book The Hard Awakening, published in 1981, describes the travails of Iranian Christians under the world’s first Islamofascist regime. He remained titular bishop until his retirement in 1990 and did what he could to ease the plight of his flock.
The story of Iran’s Anglican community since then has been as unhappy as one would expect. Persecution continued. When Bishop Hassan’s successor retired in 2004, there reportedly were no active Anglican clergymen left in the country. The situation has improved very slightly since then. After a three-year gap, the mullarchs allowed a new bishop to be consecrated in August 2007 and three clergymen to serve parishes, but they have been kept on a short leash. Last month, obviously under duress, they joined in a condemnation of the famous “Danish cartoons” and of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ film Fitna.
It is instructive to contrast Bishop Hassan’s response to the murder of his son, which inspired him to plead for divine forgiveness of the oppressors, with the riots and mayhem with which so many Moslem extremists greet mere “insults”. If Christianity were a different kind of religion, the grieving father would have swathed one of his daughters in semtex and sent her to blow herself up in a school or a restaurant or a mosque. Instead, this man of God echoed the words of Our Savior in the Cross, “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Further reading: Bishop Hassan’s autobiography, Design of My World: Pilgrimage to Christianity, was published in 2000.
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