Episcopal Press and News
Iranian Anglican Bishop Assaulted
Episcopal News Service. November 8, 1979 [79337]
ISFAHAN, Iran -- The Anglican Church in Iran has endured eight months of harassment and physical assaults including a recent assassination attempt on its bishop and the murder of a priest.
An attack was made on Bishop Hassan Barnaba Dehqani-Tafti, head of the Anglican Church in Iran and Bishop President of the Central Synod of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, in late October. This was one of a series of often violent incidents the Church has experienced with the Moslem community since the February revolution.
On October 26 three gunmen attacked him, though he was not injured, but his English wife Margaret was shot in the hand. She was taken to a local hospital but has since been released.
Christianity is recognized by the new regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as an accepted minority religion, but Bishop Dehqani believes a small group of Moslem fanatics is attempting to bring about the Church's destruction.
It has been reported in the press that the compound housing the Anglican Church of St. Luke in Isfahan has become a refuge for the bishop, his family, and staff. It was once the center of a nationwide network of Christian welfare projects. Armed guards now patrol the area outside the compound's walls and plainclothesmen are on duty inside.
The trouble began a week after the revolution, when the Rev. Arastoo Syah, vicar of the Anglican Church in Shiraz, was found brutally murdered. Then two Church-owned hospitals were taken over by revolutionaries and turned into Moslem institutions, followed by the expropriation of an Anglican school for blind boys and men in Isfahan.
The revolutionaries are now apparently demanding that the bishop turn over Church funds, estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million.
Bishop Dehqani said, "We have been largely self-supporting as a result of this fund, and if it is taken away from us, I do not see how we can survive."
Bishop Dehqani is determined not to give in to what he describes as a "whirlwind sweeping in from the desert," although it is becoming increasingly obvious that his defiance puts his life in jeopardy.