by Charlotte Eagar, Spectator
Apostasy – specifically, conversion to Christianity from Islam – is punishable by death in Iran. Suspected Christians are routinely imprisoned and tortured. Despite this, evangelical Christianity is sweeping through Iran. A 2020 survey of 50,000 Iranians conducted by a Dutch NGO, the Group for Analysing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran, suggests that there could be more than 1.2 million Christian converts. In a country with a population of 90 million, that’s a sizeable portion – and it’s growing fast.
‘It’s probably more like two million today,’ says Father Jonathan Samadi, founder of the Persian Anglican Community of London. ‘The numbers increase every year.’ Father Jonathan converted as a young man, having found a Farsi copy of the New Testament in a Tehran library. He fled Iran for Britain in 2009 after he was arrested and questioned by the security services. Now in his forties, he was ordained into the Church of England in 2016.
At Father Jonathan’s church, St Mary and St Peter in Staines, Surrey, the congregation is swelling with Iranian Christians who have recently found refuge in the UK. Two huge karaoke screens flank the altar, broadcasting hymn lyrics in English and Farsi.
After communion, Iranians gather beneath the gargoyles for their post-service coffee morning, keen to let me know what led them to Christ – and, by extension, Staines. ‘My mum became a Christian in Iran,’ says twentysomething Mehdi (not his real name). ‘Then I got interested. There is no force in this religion. Not like Islam. That’s the big difference between Islam and Christianity.’
‘There are lots of Christians like us in Iran,’ insists a group of Iranian ladies, clustering round the pew.
Read also: Could this be the end of the mullahs’ rule in Iran? by Adrian Blomfield, Telegraph
Iranians are rising up against their brutal Islamist rulers by Tim Black, spiked