BISHOP IN IRAN

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31330, 29 March 1967, Page 12

BISHOP IN IRAN

Christchurch Visit

The Bishop in Iran (the Rt. Rev. Hassan Dehqani-Tafti) will be the guest speaker at a missionary school in Timaru ,and will address public and clerical meetings in Christchurch during a visit to Canterbury in April and May. The Bishop will arrive from Melbourne on April 12, and will travel immediately to Bullock Creek for a private visit to relatives. He will return to Christchurch on May 2 to address a public meeting and members of the clergy will be invited to meet him the next morning at St. Mary’s, Merivale. The son of a Moslem bootmaker and Christian mother, who died when he was five. Bishop Tafti had to fight family and village opposition to become a Christian. Through the persuasion of a missionary, his father allowed him a Christian education at the Stuart Memorial College in Isfahan, and he was baptised at 18. In 1940 he informed the diocesan council of his wish to enter the ministry, and was awarded a scholarship to Teheran University on the condition that he proceed to ordination. His training was interrupted by war-time service, but he was ordained in 1949 after becoming deeply involved in youth work in Iran, and theological studies at Cambridge University. During his period of military service, the Bishop translated some psalms he had learnt as a child into verse, and these are now being sung in Irani churches.

He was consecrated Bishop in 1961 after serving 11 years as rector of St. Luke’s, Isfahan, and today works in a country of 20,000,000 where only 1 per cent are Christian. Most of these Christians are Assyrian, Armenian or Greek Orthodox. The number of Protestants of all denominations is 7600.

The majority of the Church Missionary Society missionaries working under Bishop Tafti are in Christian hospitals and schools. Although only two or three teachers in each school are allowed to be Christian, the work of Christian education and other projects undertaken by the missionaries, are greatly respected. The missionaries also work for the blind, and in village medical and evangelistic work.