World Cup Churches 6. Iran

It's World Cup year - taking place in November/December in Qatar instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as it has always previously done.  Heading round the 32 qualifying countries I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Iran finds itself in World Cup Group B, in our context appearing the odd one out with three historically Christian nations - Wales, England, USA.  Wales is famous for Christian Revivals, England for endless Christian events and personalities and the USA for being a huge population that is mostly 'Christian' but Iran of all the 32 countries in this World Cup has the lowest proportion of Christians in its population (as far as these things can be estimated - and more about Saudi Arabia another blog).

To balance this perception of what is currently an Islamic Republic our Church from Iran is St Mary's Church in Urmia.

Ali Heidari - علی حیدری, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

St Mary's is very old - though the picture makes clear it is also quite new in parts.  I do mean very old.  It was many hundreds of years old when the explorer Marco Polo visited it in the 13th century and it has been suggested it is the second oldest Christian church of them all.  Christianity has been in this area for a very long time, and in this sense Iran far precedes England, Wales or the United States.

That this building exists peaceably in a nation not sympathetic - to say the least - to Christianity is down to its ethnic status as part of the Assyrian minority group.  It is an Assyrian Church of the East and is allowed but only for its own Assyrian minority.  (The Church of the East is related to Orthodox Churches, sort of, but with (arguably) heretical variations).

In fact Iranians are coming to faith in Jesus in great numbers (not least here in North London) but in Iran that is officially illegal - and dangerous.  So this church represents the ancient faith of Christ but sits in a land and among a people that are also in the midst of a movement of the Holy Spirit which, in the 21st Century, Wales and England and the USA have not seen.  It is indeed the odd one out. 

World Cup Blogs 14: Iran

While Egypt clearly takes first place as the most Biblical nation in this World Cup, the runner up is equally certain - Iran.  In English translations it is generally called Persia and it figures in many later parts of the Old Testament.

One Bible Book is set entirely in Iran - the Book of Esther.  And one of the Bible's most famous stories also happened at least within its Empire - Daniel's deliverance in the lions' den.

The Iranian National Team have, as their most common nickname, the Lions.  This is very suitable because historically - and not just via Daniel - Persia was closely associated with the lions that populated its vast and wild countryside.

Today, apart from the odd zoo, there are no Persian lions in Persia.  The only wild population of them is found in a Reserve in India.  It is a sad story replicated over so many species of large animals.

God shut the mouths of the lions one night in the Persian Empire.  But in the end the human beings of Persia and elsewhere have brought the Asiatic lions to the brink of extinction.  The world is a poorer place when the only living expression of a lion is on the banners supporting a football team: the World Cup, we note again, is not the answer to everything.