March 15, 2019
The Church of England has for the first time held a Sunday service in Farsi, led by the church’s only Iranian-born bishop.
The Church of England is the state church of England, founded when King Henry VIII took England out of the Catholic faith in 1534. It is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion that includes the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada.
In England, the church says it has a growing number of Iranian adherents and a few years ago named its first Iranian-born bishop, Guli Francis-Dehqani.
When she was 13-years-old in 1980, her brother was murdered for being a Christian. She fled with her family—her father was an Anglican priest—and moved to England.
Now, as the ordained Bishop of Loughborough, the Right Reverend Guli Francis-Dehqani is leading the Church of England’s growing community of Iranians who have found a home in the church. Her main tasking in the church is to work with ethnic, racial and cultural minorities within the church.
On Sunday, March 3, in Wakefield Cathedral in Yorkshire, the Holy Communion scripture was delivered in Persian for the first time. With the cathedral packed full of 450 Persian Christians from parishes all over the UK, the Rev. Francis-Dehqani led the inaugural service.
“This translated service is hugely significant in terms of the life of the Church of England,” the Rev. Francis-Dehqani told the Telegraph. “We are finding that many Iranians are coming to be baptized and be part of the Church. That’s a really joyful thing for us to celebrate.”
She said, “I came this country during the very early stages of the revolution back in Iran. We found ourselves in England thinking we would be here for a few weeks or months. But, as it turned out, I was unable to return.
“It is a very emotional day for me. It’s the first time I have ever led a service in Persian so that, in itself, surrounded by so many Iranians, makes it very much feel like it is the start of something new.”
The church does not have official figures on how many Iranians have converted. However, over the past three years, 75 churches across the country have requested help from senior bishops due to the increasing numbers of Persians regularly turning up for Sunday services.