Posted on 05/17/2007 6:15:39 PM PDT by Cyrus the Great
ALMOST 30 churches and church buildings in Iran, confiscated by the government after the 1979 revolution, could be returned as part of an understanding with the Iranian government, the future Bishop in Iran said last week after meeting Iranian officials in Tehran earlier this month.
The Rt Revd Azad Marshall is Episcopal Vicar General in Iran, and is due to be installed as diocesan Bishop in Tehran on 5 August. He will continue to be Bishop in the Arabian Gulf.
“At the revolution, the Church lost 29 schools, institutions, and churches, confiscated by the authorities. But the government has assured us it is looking at this with a view to returning these properties,” the Bishop said.
“We have submitted a complete list to them and they are sympathetic. None has been returned yet, but I hope that by the end of this year, some will be,” he said.
The Bishop was speaking before he addressed the spring meeting of the Friends of the Diocese of Iran in London. He said his installation in St Paul’s, Tehran, would be the first time an Anglican bishop had been installed since the revolution.
“My hope for the Iranian Church is to have the confidence to show the Republic of Iran that our Church is not run by any foreign body; that it is an indigenous body. The fact that I am a Pakistani bishop, our province is Jerusalem and the Middle East, and in that province all the bishops in Palestine are Palestinian, and in Egypt they are all Egyptian — these strengthen our claim that our Church is indigenous.”
The Bishop had been given permission to appoint the Revd Nusratulla Sharifian to work in Isfahan, and a Pakistani priest, the Revd Christopher Edgar, to work in Tehran. In Shiraz, without a priest, many had not received communion for months.
The Bishop said: “They are like people in any other community, their fears are like everybody else’s — they hate war and insecurity and isolation and they would like to see Iran prosper and Iranian Christians prosper and be accepted and be part of the international community. We believe the Church can be a bridge. In the government, there is a lot of emphasis on interfaith dialogue with the world Church, but local Churches are a microcosm of that. Since the Revolution, they have relaxed and eased some of the restrictions.”
PR stunt.
Either that or this is Iran’s version of a state-sponsored church ala China.
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