It is increasingly said today that the Anglican Communion is a global Christian church whose identity can no longer be restricted to a broadly Western, or more narrowly English, patrimony.  Despite this claim, there is little if any attempt to gather together in a central location the narratives of Anglicans living in diverse locales, past or present.  This series aims to change that by reviewing global, provincial, and regional histories, biographies of major global figures, and locally-situated theological and devotional writings.  As a series dedicated to Anglicanism’s global character, it should be noted from the outset that the narratives of Western Anglicans are prized neither more nor less than the narratives of non-Western or Southern Anglicans.  Many of the writings reviewed here will be recent, although some will be much older (indeed, out of print).  It is trusted that Anglicanism will emerge, over the course of these reviews, neither as a Communion animated by incompatible theological and devotional trends, nor as a Communion that is the mere product of the now-defunct British Empire, but as a coherent tradition, locally rooted and expressed, and united by the deep bonds of Common Prayer, shared witness, and liturgically articulated memory.

[Click here to read Part Two of this series, which looks at the anti-apartheid activist, monk, and bishop, Trevor Huddleston, CR.]

The Unfolding Design of My World: A Pilgrim in Exile
H. B. Dehqani-Tafti
Canterbury Press (2000)
x + 278pp.
b/w photographs
isbn: 1853113794

Most people do not quickly identify Anglicanism with Iran.  Anglicanism is identified with – and sometimes against – England; it is also sometimes identified with Africa and, more broadly, the so-called “Global South”.  Yet, until the Iranian Revolution, Anglicanism maintained a peaceful presence in Iran for nearly 150 years.  H. B. Dehqani-Tafti’s The Unfolding Design of My World: A Pilgrim in Exile is the late bishop of Iran’s autobiographical reflection upon his life and ministry both before and after the Iranian Revolution.  The narrative, which begins slowly, becomes a gripping read in the second half of the book as Dehqani-Tafti records the growth in Iran of anti-colonial sentiment and a failed assassination attempt upon his own life; it turns a deeply emotional corner when he recounts the assassination of his son, Bahram, and the experience of ministering in exile to the Anglicans in his care.  Along the way, Dehqani-Tafti offers numerous theological reflections, particularly on evangelism, missions, and the relationship of tradition and culture.  Upon completion, The Unfolding Design of My World is a book that commands continued and sustained reflection upon both the theological issues raised in the text and the genuinely inspiring witness of Dehqani-Tafti and his family.

The contours of Dehqani-Tafti’s episcopal career – indeed, his entire life – are very much those of someone who lived ‘betwixt and between’.  Because he was a Muslim convert to Christianity – and, more specifically, a convert from Shi’ism to Anglicanism – The Unfolding Design of My World can be read as an extended, autobiographical consideration of what the relationship between Christ and culture might be.  As Dehqani-Tafti writes in the opening pages, “Life is a short span in which to learn to be bi-cultural.  Diversities of customs and values, traditions of thought and patterns of behaviour merge and conflict inside me, leaving me at times in restful ease, and at other times in turmoil” (4).  Yet, rather than living between two worlds, he emerges as someone who lived in two worlds as well.  This is exemplified in the ways that Persian and English – and, therefore, Shiite Muslim and Anglican – poets punctuate the narrative; Hafiz of Shiraz (14th c. Persia) and Thomas Traherne (17th c. England) are especially prominent.  I do not think it is a mistake to read this as having something of an apologetic intent, although I do think it is a misreading to reduce such literary citations to being exclusively apologetic.  Rather, it reflects something of Dehqani-Tafti’s own life, and the fact that he negotiated cultural differences through literature, particularly that of great poets.

Hassan Dehqani-Tafti was born in the village of Taft to a Christian mother and a Muslim (Shiite) father.  His mother died when he was a child, but arranged to have him receive a Christian education, which began at the Anglican mission in Yazd.  In his teenage years, Dehqani-Tafti converted to Christianity, but was legally forbidden to be baptized until he was eighteen years of age.  He does not give us the details of why this law existed or how Christian missionaries abided by it, but tells us that at the age of eighteen he was baptized and signified his conversion by taking on a Christian name.  Dehqani-Tafti’s lifelong negotiation of Persian and Christian identity is reflected in what then followed.  Before his baptism, he contacted the Registry Office in Yazd to learn about changing his name and was informed that although he could not change his first name, he could “abandon the family name” (36).  In his own words, “This I had no desire to do, for I loved my family dearly.  So I proposed a second, Christian name – Barnabas, with its rich meaning of ‘Son of comfort’” (36).  Hassan thus became Hassan Barnabas.  His conversion was a matter of tremendous controversy within his family, and came at personal cost; he writes that some of his friends terminated their relationship with him, and that some of his family considered him to be “unclean” and would not eat with him (37).  Although he was only exiled from Iran after the Revolution, it is clear that the tension which defined his life – how to be Persian and Christian – was with him since his teenage years.

After the end of the Second World War, Dehqani-Tafti received his ministerial training at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and writes with much affection and wonder of the impression that England first made upon him: “nothing prepared me for the sight of Magdalen College.  I was filled with awe … The British, I felt, were not embarrassed by antiquity: they reveled in it as a thing of honor” (99).  While at Cambridge, he was befriended by the late, great Stephen Neill, who gave him spiritual counsel during a period of intense personal turmoil, and later gave his pectoral cross and episcopal ring to Dehqani-Tafti when the latter was consecrated as the Bishop of Iran, a position which he held for 29 years, even as he lived in Iran for only 19 of them.  During his episcopal ministry, he translated into Persian works by Anglican luminaries such as William Temple and Kenneth Cragg; he oversaw the creation of the Anglican province of Cyprus and the Gulf, and became its first Primate.  Some of his hymns, originally written in Persian, are translated in the present volume, as is his moving work, ‘A Father’s Prayer on the Martyrdom of his Son’, which was composed on the day of son’s burial, 11 May 1989.  It is clear that Dehqani-Tafti left a considerable literary and theological legacy; I hope that it will someday be translated from its original Persian into the many languages of the Anglican Communion.

Amidst the inspiring difficulties that Dehqani-Tafti had in his life’s mission to “interpret Christ’s way” to his fellow Iranians (79), he became involved in international ecumenical conversations in which he saw the development of a strong, anti-colonial sentiment.  Given some of the tensions in the Anglican Communion at present, I believe that his reflection upon a 1973 World Council of Churches gathering is worth quoting: “It was soon apparent that there was a kind of consensus emerging against ‘mission’ and ‘the West’ on the part of local and national churches, vociferously claiming to detach themselves from all the alleged paternalism, the superiority complex they read into their western relationships” (179; emphasis mine).  He argues that although “white missionaries had made mistakes”, it was entirely unfair to wholly blame them for the sins of their respective empires, and then writes that he was “second to none … in my first affirmation of identity and culture, language and poetry in the Persian heritage.  But I felt I had to be equally emphatic about the obligation to the decisive unity we had in Christ to resist all ‘go-it-alone’ rejectionism on the part of ‘younger churches’” (ibid.).  At the very least, such comments draw our attention to the ways in which global political situations can and do affect and infect our own theological discourse.  I cannot help but think that these words, which were first penned in 1999, are in part a critique of one facet of the current Anglican situation, albeit at an earlier stage.

The Unfolding Design of My World stands at the intersection of several distinct avenues of world history: Anglican missions, the Iranian Revolution, twentieth-century martyrs, Islamic-Christian relations, the growth of Anglicanism in non-Anglo-American contexts.  Yet, even as Dehqani-Tafti brings much of Persia to the Anglican table, his sharp and original theological considerations are recognizably Anglican.  Word and Sacrament, poetic devotion, a deep and humble respect for the wisdom of the past, and an equally deep passion for cultural relevance are all present.  It can and should be said of our late bishop – without any offense to Muslims, I hope – “peace be upon him.”

[Coming Soon: in part four of this series, we will look at the Welsh poet and Anglican priest R. S. Thomas, focusing upon his two volumes of collected poems.]
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