It was 20 March 2021, the day of Nowruz,1 and I expected to be able to follow the Iranian New Year as usual. As the most important holiday of the year for Iranians, Nowruz marks the beginning of spring and symbolises new beginnings. For the second year in a row, I was following Nowruz exclusively on the internet, like many Iranians, both inside and outside Iran. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the online fieldwork, I was able to see how Christians have been making use of this holiday through digital means. As it is a non-religious holiday, I was curious to know what relationship Iranian Christians would have with this holiday. After all, it is an Iranian tradition and not an Islamic one.
I browsed the Instagram pages of some of the groups I follow and all of them – without exception – made greater or lesser mention of Nowruz, wishing their followers well and a happy new year. It was, however, on the Instagram profile of a group called Elam Alive2 that I found something that went beyond an image of Haft Sinn3 with a Happy New Year's wish. I found a 10-minute video that mixed various national and religious symbolism for its faithful.4
The video begins with the preparation of a Haft Sinn table with music in Farsi in the background. The camera zooms in on each of the table's elements: the samanu, the goldfish, the sabzi. It cuts to a stage with musicians playing traditional Iranian instruments and dancers in traditional dress. The video then intersperses images of this performance with those of Haft Sinn. The camera cuts again to a studio, where a pastor appears, giving a sermon in Farsi. With the sermon in the background, the image cuts to the flag of pre-Islamic Republic Iran, with a lion in the centre,5 between the red and green stripes, which is interspersed with images of Jesus Christ and a shepherd with a flock of sheep – a reference to Jesus as the shepherd and the sheep as his followers. While the sermon continues in the background, the shepherd mentions Cyrus and Darius the Great – referring to the period of the Persian Empire6 – at the same time as their images appear on the screen. Again, images of Jesus, the shepherds and the flock of sheep appear. Then, the video cuts back to the studio, with the pastor asking Jesus to bless Iran while a cross is projected behind him.
The video continues, with the sermon in the background and biblical images interspersed with images of historical Iranian monuments linked to the Persian Empire – such as the ruins of Pasargadae7 and the Golestan Palace8 – as well as emblematic Iranian landscapes, such as the Alborz Mountains.9 On the ruins of Pasargadae there is a montage of Christ's crown and a staff falling on them. Finally, the video closes with the Haft Sinn table and, on top of it, we see a Bible instead of a book of poetry or the Qur'an.
Excerpt from fieldnotes
This article10 is focused on the disciplinary discourses of Christian missionaries aiming at the conversion of Iranian Muslims. Such missionaries work with a logic of rupture and continuity with Iranians’ previous national identities, and my article focuses on the rupture aspect based on an anti-Islam discourse. As an anthropologist, my methodology was participant observation, and part of my fieldwork was based on missionaries working with Iranian refugees and immigrants in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2022, as well as on the digital discourses of different missionary groups on their social media.
The context of my work is the conversion of Iranians to Christianity after the 1979 Revolution in Iran and the advent of the Islamic Republic. From that point onward, native discourse points to the growth of Christianity in Iran based on a disillusionment with Islam. Although no data proves the increase in converted individuals, it was possible to map the number of churches for Iranians in the diaspora, showing hundreds of them spread across North America, Europe and Turkey.
The research was carried out through participant observation, both digitally and in person, through the monitoring of social networks of Christian missionary groups, Iranian and non-Iranian, through interviews and through spending time in spaces such as churches and leisure spaces. The face-to-face camp work took place in Turkey, accompanying Latin American missionaries working with Iranian migrants and refugees at a church for Iranians in Istanbul.
I started my research with Iranian converts in 2017 when I came across information about a large number of Iranians applying for asylum in Europe (Fozi 2018). Most of them were claiming religious persecution over their conversion to Christianity. As an Iranian-Brazilian, I was intrigued by this information, considering that the growth of evangelical Christians has significantly increased in Brazil in the past decades, shifting Brazil's religious landscape away from a large majority of Christian Catholics (Almeida 2008). According to missionary groups that work on evangelising among Iranians, Iran's church is the ‘fastest growing church in the World’,11 an affirmation that was never proven in my research.
My research shows, however, that there is a series of factors that lead these Iranians to convert to evangelical Christianity, such as the deepening of a moral-political crisis regarding Islam and the Islamic Republic; the organised investment of missionaries inserted in a transnational network, aiming at the evangelisation of Iranians; and the reception of immigrants and refugees in the churches with a combination of Iranian national symbols and Christian symbols.
As most of my fieldwork was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, the relations of the transnational network of Iranian Christian groups on the internet were central in my research. The internet also allowed me to broaden my perspective, enabling me to analyse not only a local church in the diaspora but also the relations of the transnational network that supports missionary evangelisation of Iranians, both digitally and face-to-face.
Even before the pandemic, I initiated online research, mapping my interlocutors. This work was carried out with Iranian missionary groups and via local Iranian Christian churches’ websites and social media. In this way, I could acknowledge the existence of a transnational network formed by Iranian Christian churches in the diaspora, along with Iranian and non-Iranian Christian missionaries, who support local churches with materials and training for the conversion of Iranians in Iran and in the diaspora.
During my digital fieldwork, I found many organisations. The most important were Elam Ministries, Sat-7 Pars, Iran Alive Ministries, Farsinet, Frontier Alliance International and local churches that congregate Iranians in the diaspora. I analysed mostly discourses in public material made available by these groups regarding the conversion of Muslim Iranians to evangelical Christianity, and their references to Iranian national identity.
Drawing on the potential discontent with Iran's state vision of Islam, evangelical Christian discourse aims to foster a rupture with Islam and to show Christianity as the path to be followed. Therefore, Islam in general is necessarily portrayed as extremist, authoritarian and oppressive, while Christianity is presented as a free, democratic and welcoming alternative.
On the other hand, in the conversion discourse, there is a continuity with Iranians’ national identity in the use of national symbols, like the sun and lion flag, the use of Farsi in the church and its rituals, the presence of Iranian food and the formation of a community based on Iranian national identity built around the church, through festivities like Nowruz. All these elements are used along with Christian symbols, prayers, the reading of the Bible, worship and the reorganising of national identity in an Iranian Christian nationalism.
Religious communities often play an important role for immigrants in a new country. According to Horstmann and Jung (2015), religious places are important for immigrants to reorganise their lives in a new country, retake control over their lives and make them more comfortable and bearable. The practice of festivities and rituals similar to the ones performed before migration brings a sense of continuity and belonging regarding the pre-migration period, making it easier for them to settle in the country of destination. In this sense, these national festivities are largely used to attract the Iranian community surrounding the churches in the diaspora.
The evangelisation of the Muslim world is part of a larger project of religious expansion of the evangelical world, called the ‘transcultural gospel’ (Montenegro 2011), focused on specific ethnic communities. In the case of the Iranian diaspora, these ethnic churches are formed by a discourse of rupture with Islam and continuity with elements of Iranian national identity. The anti-Islam discourse of the Christian transnational network mobilises and capitalises on a perceived moral-political dissatisfaction with the Islamic Republic, through various methods, such as missionary training on local culture and Islam, discourses on the situation of women in Iran and accusations of terrorism, and the extensive use of the internet and social networks to reach their audience in Iran and the diaspora. To achieve this, non-Iranian missionaries’ work involves training on culture and idioms among communities and groups they work with; the training involves missionaries from different parts of the globe, including North America, South America and Asian countries such as South Korea. The Christian transnational network uses several methodologies to make the gospel reach more Iranians. Missionary groups also encourage field trips for their missionaries to Muslim countries and the construction of churches led by Iranian converts.
Even though these missionary groups identify as interdenominational, most of the missionaries are Pentecostals and many of them are Christian Zionists. Besides connecting Iranian Christian converts from Iran and the diaspora, the network is formed by Christian missionaries from other countries that help churches in the diaspora or house churches in Iran. According to Alberto, a South American missionary in Iran, it is easy to find not only South Americans but also South Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese missionaries. Another important point in the research was that these groups working in Iran also work in Afghanistan, due to the similarities between Dari and Farsi. In the diaspora, Iranian churches usually also welcome Afghan immigrants and refugees.
Besides missionaries’ incursions into Muslim countries, there is an interest in training new Iranian religious leaders to run their churches. According to the missionaries’ methodology, the goal is to train Iranian Christian converts to become more independent from non-Iranian missionary work. In this view, native missionaries are very important and more effective in creating new converts.
Thus, there is a ramification of religious authority, spreading from countries with a Christian majority, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, moving towards countries in the network with an Islamic majority, such as Turkey and Iran. Support involving materials from religious authorities through digital media and satellite TV is very important to more peripheral groups, such as those located in Turkey or Iran.
At the end of 2021, Alberto invited me to go to Turkey with him and a group of South American missionaries he was leading to introduce them to the region. He would meet me after taking them on a field trip to Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. In Istanbul, I could see the work of other South American missionaries with Iranian immigrants and refugees.
Besides getting to know their work, I seized the opportunity to see other Iranian Christian churches based in Turkey. To map these churches, I used one of the first websites dedicated to Iranian Christians that I found in my digital research, Farsinet.12 In a happy coincidence, my travel coincided with the Nowruz celebrations, which enabled me to observe the importance of national celebrations to these Iranian Christian churches in the diaspora. The church in which I chose to do most of my fieldwork was in a middle-class area in Istanbul, with a large group of Iranian immigrants and refugees. The church served as a national reference point for Iranians living nearby, where they could find a community and a solidarity network in the diaspora.
Reasons for Conversion
It is important to understand why these Christian missions, which date back in Iran to the nineteenth century (Rzepka 2017), are now achieving a higher level of success in the conversion of Iranian Muslims. To understand this phenomenon, we must consider not only the methods commonly used by the Christian missionary network to convert various ethnicities and Muslim groups; but also the context of discontent with the Islamic religious nationalism of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has created fertile soil for the increase in the interest in conversion to other religions.
Robbins (2004) indicates the growth of charismatic Pentecostalism throughout the world, noting that two-thirds of its supporters (estimated in at least 250 million) live in the Global South. Therefore, it is the most dynamic section of Christianity, currently showing the biggest growth with the possibility to surpass Catholicism in the twenty-first century. According to Robbins, this phenomenon is due to the propagation logic of the Pentecostal doctrine, which works with a simple structure and methodology and, simultaneously, dialogues with and preserves the local culture where it arrives.
In addition to this global phenomenon, the use of technological media such as satellite TV and the internet plays an important role in the spread of evangelical Christianity in Iran and the Iranian diaspora. It is important to understand the exchanges between subjects in this transnational network, which, although maintaining flows and displacements, are organised mainly through communication via the internet. When thinking about relationships between missionaries and converts, it is crucial to consider how these tools are used in this interaction (Meyer 2020), since the internet not only provides the possibility of disseminating content and connecting people to it, but also different ways of living contemporary religious experience (Meyer and Moors 2006).
In the specific case studied here, it is important to analyse the uses made of the internet through websites, social networks, messaging apps and other apps in the relations and disciplinary discourses between missionaries and Iranian converts to Christianity, as well as the uses of these tools for the conversion of Iranians and for church support to Iranians in Iran and the diaspora from mission groups.
Beyond the internet, we must also examine the context in which these messages, much more accessible now, find fertile soil to thrive. Robert Hefner (1993) points out the importance of major social transformations due to what he calls mass conversions in Africa. He criticises intellectualist views of conversion, such as those discussed by Horton (1971) and Weber (1965), in which identification with a particular religion occurs through a rational choice, from an identification with the proposed doctrine and explanation of the world. Hefner thus questions instrumental choice as the main reason for the conversion of individuals, understanding that it relates to transformations in converted subjects’ social identities.
For Hefner, political and moral issues influence conversion processes, and a crisis in a moral and political context leads to questioning of subjects’ self-identification. The new religion thus presents social responses more than individual ones. The idea of social belonging to a new identity is more important and predominant than identification with the new doctrine. According to Hefner, conversion takes place as a choice among a range of moral-political possibilities that present themselves in a scenario of moral-political crisis. For him, conversion processes only become possible with the breaking of the moral and political order of the original community, leading to new forms of belonging. The possibility of envisioning new opportunities in a moral crisis is what makes possible the conversion of subjects immersed in a society that no longer presents satisfactory social responses.
In the case of conversion projects to Christianity focused on Iranians, this ‘demonisation’ of the past is evident in the strong anti-Islam discourse that appears in materials produced by the groups under study, and in the narratives of conversion presented on their social networks. Robbins (2004) analyses how the missionary discourse bets on discontinuity and rupture in the conversion process. Most of these discourses operate through a strong orientalist narrative (Said 2007) that identifies Islam with backwardness, barbarism, violence and authoritarianism, in opposition to civilisation and the values of love, peace and democracy related to Christianity. The new Christian identity is built, thus, in opposition and relation (Barth 2000) to prior religious identity. Thus, missionaries carry within themselves a civilising mission narrative – which is different from saying that they bring a civilising and modernising mission.
Disruptive discourses are used as conversion strategies that aim to break with Shiite Islam. On the other hand, they operate from continuity, in what is called the cross-cultural gospel, which aims to introduce Christianity without changing the local ‘cultural’ configuration, understanding religion as detached from this configuration. In this process, elements are formed for the construction of a Christian religious nationalism in a context presenting a strong nationalist component.
Anti-Islam Discourse and the Deepening of a Moral-Political Crisis
In the discourse of both missionaries and converts, one can commonly find the standard and almost automatic response that the reason for the conversion of ‘so many’ Iranians to Christianity is disappointment with and rejection of the Islamic Republic and, consequently, of Islam. This answer is given in different ways: ‘Islam is bad’; ‘The one [the Islam of the Islamic Republic of Iran] is the “true” Islam’; ‘People are seeing what Islam is like through this oppressive regime’; ‘unlike Islam, Christianity is a religion of love’; or ‘in Christianity, I was able to find a living God’, among other affirmations of this kind by converts.
Thus, in addition to analysing whether there is a moral-political crisis (Hefner 1993) and how it presents itself beyond discourse, I will address the disciplinary discourse used by missionary groups, Iranian and non-Iranian, in approaching the public with which they work. Understanding that it is part of the methodology of certain Christian groups, especially Pentecostals and charismatics, to invest in discontinuity and rupture to create converts (Robbins 2004) through the rejection of a past seen negatively, I will bring forth an analysis of how the anti-Islam discourse presents itself as one of the main forms of this rupture and discontinuity.
It is important to demonstrate the importance of using technological tools and media devices for the propagation of these religious disciplinary discourses by the Iranian Christian transnational network. For Hirschkind (2006a, 2006b), who analysed disciplining through sermons on cassette tapes in the Islamic revival movement in Egypt, these tools bring the possibility of improving disciplinary techniques, training and knowledge of religion, in addition to rituals, discipline in mosques and flexibility of practice hours. Here, we see how digital media is fundamental for maintaining a relationship between remote religious authority and new churches, with new converts and disciples, and the propagation of conversion discourses such as criticism of Islam.
Birgit Meyer (2020) reflects on the use of media like television and the internet by Protestant Christianity as new forms of mediation between practitioners and the sacred. Meyer and Moors (2006) indicate the importance of analysing transformations that media carry out on religious relations and practices. The emergence of the internet enabled the formation of a network that allows dialogue between converts and religious authorities in a more accessible way. Furthermore, it is important to understand how religious relations and practices are transformed by the use of new media and the possibilities it presents.
One of the digital groups I followed that brings out this discourse in a very forceful way is Iran Alive Ministries (IAM). Their website13 is divided into the topics ‘Who We Are’; ‘The Problem’; ‘The Solution’; and ‘Implementation’. Under the topic ‘The Problem’, the main title is: ‘82 million people in Iran are hostages of Islam’, and, right below, there is a photo of hundreds of women walking in black veils, indicating that they are the hostages.
The idea that Muslim women are oppressed is an orientalist discourse that is quite common and widely used by Iranian Christians. The idea that Muslims and, in particular, Muslim women need to be saved (Abu-Lughod 2002) is recurrent in the thinking of Europe and the United States, the location of part of the public to whom these organisations’ website are addressed, especially in search of donations. There is indeed a tendency in parts of Iranian society to reject Islam, something that has been indicated by research that demonstrates a secularisation of parts of society (Khosrokhavar and Roy 1999; Maleki and Tamimi Arab 2020) as a response to disagreement with the government and its association with Shiite religiosity. The difficulty in doing research in Iran on these issues leads to a data blackout on the subject.
The IAM calls this moral-political crisis a ‘spiritual crisis’. However, in the statements made by these organisations, such as the IAM, it is suggested that the entire Iranian population is dissatisfied and rejects Islam, or is even ‘deceived’ or held ‘hostage’ by religious leaders, removing the possibility of agency of these subjects in their religious choices and their devotion to Islam.
We believe that Islam is experiencing its greatest defeat in history in Iran today. There's still a lot of work to be done. There are currently no visible churches among Christians of Muslim origin. The government uses psychological warfare to oppress the people through fear and isolation. They are trying to contain the growth of Christianity, but they are not succeeding. Iran is full of despair and dismay. Drug use is at an all-time high. Iran ranks 1st in the world for per capita drug use. Suicide rates are skyrocketing, especially among women. Iran is the only country in the world where the suicide rate among women is higher than among men. The Koran gives men permission to abuse and oppress women. This is a culture of corruption at all levels: political, religious, domestic, etc. Persians living in Iran say they are living in a prison – that Iran is like living in a coffin!
CHRISTIANITY IS ALIVE IN IRAN!
We are seeing the Muslim nation of Iran turn away from Islam and embrace Christianity. Jesus appeared to set captives free. We see Him at work as Iranian Muslims are breaking free of the dark and imprisoning spirit of Islam by the light of the Gospel. As we continue to send the Good News to Iran, and we believe that Iran will be the first Muslim nation to turn to Christ! (Iran Alive Ministries 2021)
Through these materials, we can observe a perspective on Islam that presents a generalisation about it. Thus, Islam, and particularly the Islamic practice in vogue in Iran under the Islamic Republic, are identified with what are seen as immoral acts, and Islam is also associated with a lack of individual freedom, terrorism and crimes such as trafficking of women.
Thus, the missionary discourse shows a vision of a homogenised Islam, in which nuances, contradictions and conflicts between its practices and discourses are not recognised, even though there is a deep knowledge of Islam on the part of the missionaries, Iranian and non-Iranian. Iranian missionaries have experienced Islam, as they are mostly of Muslim origin, and non-Iranian missionaries undergo in-depth studies on Islam. Thus, a disciplinary discourse is constructed that leads missionaries and new converts to have an extremely limited view of Islam, in which no path within this religiosity is possible, only the rejection of it – especially for those who want a path of devotion. For these people, the only possible solution is Christianity, an answer always presented together with reiterated anti-Islam discourses.
There are also posts on social networks by Latin American missionaries demonstrating the success of the conversions they manage to carry out in Muslim countries. A Latin American missionary presents a young Christian Iranian man who today is his disciple, helping with the establishment of several churches in the diaspora, on his Instagram – with posts aimed at the public of the missionary's country – and shows how, currently, this Iranian is a devout Christian, even though he was previously a fanatical Muslim. To demonstrate the difference, there is a ‘before’ and ‘after’ post, in which the first photo shows the alleged boy in an āshūrā ritual covered in blood, contrasted with a video of the boy (who does not appear to be the same person) praying in Farsi with another Iranian convert.
Other researched groups, however, employ a much more discreet discourse about their vision of Islam. In the same way that some missionaries believe that they must find new converts through the example of their work and not through massive evangelisation, the vision they have of Islam is also less stereotypical. However, it is still possible to find, at certain times, phrases that allude to a negative view of the Muslim religion.
Talking to a South American missionary couple during the days I spent with them in Turkey, the subject of the Muslim religion rarely came up. As they had undergone training on religion and local customs, their observations were, in general, respectful and came from people who understood the context in which they operated. However, sometimes, certain comments escaped. When mentioning to a colleague how a trip to Iran had been, Julieta said that it was a visibly sad country, where people were unhappy due to the Islamic oppression they lived under, without any contextualisation or extra data, just the allusion to religion.
In general, groups that have a more subtle approach towards potential Muslim converts also deal with the issue of Islam and the Muslim past more leniently. These are generally the groups that have a stronger preoccupation with the study of the local culture, cultural relativism being a very important tonic for the approximation with potential converts in new territory.
Anti-Islam Speech and Women
The image of Muslim women as oppressed and devoid of agency is an orientalist discourse that is quite common among Christian missionaries, being part of the way they construct the narrative of the converts’ Muslim past. The idea that Muslim men and women need to be saved (Abu-Lughod 2002) is recurrent and part of an imagination about the work of converting Iranian men and women. In this context, it is also important to understand the agency of these former Muslim women in converting to a new religion, Christianity, demonstrating an exchange for a new religious discipline, as pointed out by Mahmood (2005), working with women in the Islamic Revivalist movement in Egypt. We must also take into account how the Christian network tends to focus their work and be more fruitful among more religious sectors, as shown by the work of Montenegro (2011) with Arab converts at the Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay border.
Finally, the issue of women in Iran appears forcefully in the missionary discourse as a factor in the denial of Islam and the presentation of Christianity as an option for ‘freedom’. In the documentary Sheep among Wolves II there is, for example, an emphasis on the role of women in church-building in Iran. Whether or not it is true, such discourse is quite common, reinforcing the idea that Iranian women who are leading churches and are the main converts will lead their families to conversion as well. According to Bradley (2014),14
In this equation of disillusionment with Islam and attraction to Christianity, women play a prominent role. Even a casual observer of new Iranian Christians can tell that they probably have more women than men in house church meetings. Secret footage of a date showed that there were about 15 women and only one man. An older church leader claims without hesitation that 70 percent of people coming to Christianity are women. This is not a surprise. Women have many reasons to reject their home religion. At every line, the law of the Islamic Republic devalues them. In court their word is worth half a man's word; in marriage, men can marry up to four wives and have as many temporary wives as they can afford; in divorce, the husband takes custody of the children. In some families, masculinity is proved through the strict control of women. I know a husband who, before becoming a Christian, would not let his wife drink a glass of water without his permission. Control was often exercised by violence. (Bradley 2014: 95)
Thus, the discourse is heavily centred on the idea that a certain view of Islam configures the entire Muslim religion, and that Christianity is the only solution for the liberation of Iranians, more specifically women. Iran Alive Ministries also makes extensive use of the narrative of Iranian Muslim women as oppressed. They use a lot of images of women dressed in the chador, a wide black veil that covers a person from the hair down to the feet, often worn in Iran by the most religious women, and a mosque in the background, working with images and stereotypes that impact the Western audience. Another way that groups employing less stereotypical anti-Islam discourse deal with the issue of women is to place women at the centre of various programmes, delivering services and broadcasts directly to this audience.
Sat-7 Pars, for example, fits this profile. As a group that is dedicated to general teaching and not just Bible reading and teaching, Sat-7 Pars passes to its spectators visions and values of its Christian interpretation through its programmes. Their videos deal with everyday themes through which they teach women, children and young people about moral conduct. In addition to programmes intended exclusively for a female audience, there are other programmes aimed at a more general audience that are presented by women. These women are always dressed in trousers and long-sleeved blouses, with light make-up and loose hair, without a veil, differentiating themselves from Muslim women in terms of clothing.
One of the exclusive programmes for the female audience is called Insiders. The opening shows a woman travelling, taking a plane and a train and walking through the streets of the United Kingdom until she arrives at a restaurant where she finds friends who are waiting to talk to her. The themes addressed by the presenters are highly varied and concern the daily life of an adult woman and her family relationships, from her relationship with her husband and the husband's family, her relationship with children, and female health and well-being to cultural issues and more general information about Iranian society.
While the programme New Identity is also aimed at a female audience, its biblical message is more direct. According to the website's description, ‘The series seeks to communicate the profoundly transformative messages of the Bible to viewers, to show God's original plan for women, and to help them know the identity they can achieve in Christ.’15 The programme deals with a wide range of issues that Persian-speaking women face: anger, anxiety, depression, abuse and trauma.
In the opening of this programme, a woman with short blonde hair, large earrings and a low-cut, short-sleeved dress sings a song of praise in Farsi, while images of services with women are interspersed with images of a cross on a wall next to a candle, and a representation of Jesus carrying the cross. Like Insiders, New Identity also deals with women's everyday issues, but with a greater emphasis on their biblical and Christian orientation. Taking the programmes aimed at women as an example, it is possible to observe how Sat-7 Pars works with different audiences. However, both programmes deal with matters dear to women and mothers according to the Christian perspective and values of the channel.
These programmes contain debates that encourage these women to take the values presented on the channel into their daily practices. Thus, freedom regarding clothing in Christian groups reinforces the idea of Christianity as a religion of freedom, while Islam is a religion of authoritarianism concerning women's clothing. This idea of an independent modern working woman with no strict dress code is quite common in Iranian churches.
In the church where I did fieldwork in Istanbul, the first time I went, on Nowruz, I was surprised that the women were all made-up, some wearing miniskirts, and many wearing a chain with a crucifix pendant. When visiting Pentecostal churches in Brazil, I observed restrained behaviour and morality among their congregations. It is important to understand how this discourse and practice can change depending on the context.
Robbins (2004) states that the discourse of morality is one of the key factors present in the globalised reproduction of this model. What I could observe here is that this moral discourse is flexible and can change according to the context. In the face of a very restricted Islamic morality, the proposition of further restricted moral conduct would not have the oppositional and alternative effect that Pentecostalism seeks to have in this context. Thus, I observed flexibility regarding this factor. Freedom concerning clothing in Christian groups reinforces the idea of Christianity as a religion of freedom, and Islam as authoritarian.
Protests over the Death of Mahsa Jina Amini and the Christian Community
On 16 September 2022, guards from the so-called ‘Morality Police’ beat a young woman of Kurdish origin, Mahsa Jina Amini, for alleged misuse of her headscarf; she fell into a coma and died shortly afterwards. Following Amini's death, a series of protests broke out across Iran. The absence of the veil appeared in the protests as a symbol of contestation of the authoritarian power of the Islamic Republic and the imposition of its vision of Islam.
However, the same is not true in Christian Iranian women's reading of what happened. With the deepening of the moral-political crisis in the Islamic Republic, there was in the discourses and narratives of the country's Christian churches an immediate identification of authoritarianism and repression with Islam as a whole. In this sense, specifically for Christian Iranian women, opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran is opposition to Islam as a whole. Following the church in Istanbul where I did fieldwork on Instagram, I could see the church's many demonstrations of support for the protests. In the first few weeks, the Instagram profiles of all the churches in the diaspora that I followed, in different countries, created stories and posts with testimonials showing support.
On the website of Sat-7, a group that brings together several Christian satellite TV channels in the Middle East, and on Sat-7 Pars, an article called ‘Iran Protests: How Should Iranian Christians Respond?’ appeared (Sat-7 2022). This article encourages participation in the protests and calls readers to be aware of the situation of injustice that Christians and women face in Iran. In the church in Istanbul where I did fieldwork, for weeks a map of Iran was projected on a screen behind services, with the protests’ slogan Zan zendegi āzādī, which means ‘Woman, Life and Freedom’.
In addition to church services, several church members made individual statements on their Instagram profiles. A convert who had attended the church in Turkey, and now sought refuge in Germany, posted videos in support and showing her participation in protests in her new country of residence. She gave an interview to a local channel about the protests and posted it on Instagram, justifying herself by saying that she believed that the interview she gave was in line with the thinking of all Iranian Christians.
Mariam, one of the founders of the Istanbul church, who lives in South America, posted a video of herself on 24 September in support of protests. This video centred on her, all in black and white, with a Farsi lament song in the background, cutting her hair, with the hashtags #Mahsaamini #Freeiran #Iran. The act of recording videos of cutting one's hair became a form of support for the demonstrations in Iran and was carried out by women of different nationalities around the world, with text that showed the support of the Christian church to the protests.
Thus, the question of women within the Iranian Christian transnational network has been shown to be a constant counterpoint to the rules and moral conduct of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Women as symbols of Islamic oppression and the redeeming Christian message were and continue to be widely used as a discourse to deepen the political and moral crisis related to the Iranian state and Islam as a whole.
Conclusion
In this article, I have dealt with the importance of a transnational support network for the conversion of Iranians to evangelical Christianity, which works through face-to-face and digital means. I tried to demonstrate the importance of this network in increasing the conversion of Iranians and the propagation of conversion discourses, which act through rupture and continuity with elements of the Iranian national identity. In regard to the relationship of Iranian and non-Iranian missionaries to their target audience, the construction of the conversion process takes place based on missionaries’ disciplinary discourses that foment rupture with Islam and continuity with aspects of national identity, providing the formation of a new Iranian Christian nationalism.
Accordingly, I understand the conversion process of my interlocutors as a matter of identity, alongside the deepening of a moral-political crisis regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran and thus Islam itself. Considering that this is a process that has taken place in Iran and the diaspora through identification with Christian Iranian communities that welcome my interlocutors, they also go through personal transformations and life crises, accompanied by a reorganisation of being Iranian through a new religious identity.
This context is formed by an Iranian and non-Iranian transnational Christian missionary network, based outside the country, especially in European countries with a Christian majority and in the United States. This network operates in a specialised manner for the conversion of Muslims, specifically Iranians, using means such as the internet, satellite television and the translation of Bibles into Farsi to expand the reach of missionary work to spread the gospel to Iranians in Iran and in the diaspora.
Thus, missionary groups act according to a logic of rupture with a pre-Christian past. In the case of Iranians, the discourse of rupture is centred above all on the reinforcement and deepening of a moral-political crisis in the Islamic Republic of Iran and in Islam. Through frequent broadcasts that point to Islam as a religion of violence, extremism and oppression, Christianity is touted as a solution for disaffected, mostly religious Iranians.
An important part of the anti-Islam discourse concerns the issue of women. Identification of Islam as a religion of women's oppression is constant in the discourse, with Iran as the main example. Thus, the presentation of Christianity as a solution to this issue, whereby women can dress freely, have their hair on display and express their opinions, appears intensively in the broadcasts of these groups. The September 2022 protests in Iran gained strength through this discourse, in which a critique was not made of how the Islamic Republic uses Islam, but of Islam as a whole.
I have tried to demonstrate the importance of a transnational network of missionaries who actively work towards the conversion of Muslim Iranians to evangelical Christianity. Focusing on conflict in the Muslim world and the need for conversion in this region, these missionaries work in an organised way to achieve the conversion of Iranians, through disciplinary discourses that dialogue with a possible dissatisfaction of these subjects with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Notes
‘Nowruz is the celebration of the New Year in Iran, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Although it is celebrated in various places, it is presented by the interlocutors as the “Iranian New Year”, and marks one of the main symbols of Iranian identity. Celebrated at the equinox on the day of the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, from March 20th to March 21st, the tradition dates back to the pre-Zoroastrian period’ (Raietparvar 2014: 77).
This page can be found at https://www.instagram.com/elam.alive/ (accessed 20 Oct 2021).
A few days before Nowruz the following symbolic items (called Haft Sinn – or the Seven S's), each beginning with the Persian letter sinn, are placed on a tablecloth, or sofreh: Sabzi (sprouts), samanu (a sweet made from sprouted wheat), seeb (apple), senjed (dried lotus fruit), sir (garlic), somâq (sumac) and serekh (vinegar). Other items too, such as coins, a basket of eggs, a goldfish, a bottle of rosewater, a significant book (usually the Qur'an or a book of poems from Fez, or both) and sometimes a mirror are placed on the sofreh. I have been told different meanings for the various symbols, but most believe that each item of the Haft Sinn symbolises the seven angelic heralds of life: rebirth, health, happiness, patience, joy, light and beauty. Families have their own preferences for the Haft Sinn table; many compare it to Christmas trees (Spellman 2006: 47).
Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMos-X_p2L1/ (accessed 12 May 2022).
With the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the old flag of the Persian Empire, made up of three stripes, red, white and green with a lion in the centre, was replaced by the current flag, with the three stripes and, in place of the lion, the design of a tulip with the words Allah (God) superimposed by the phrase lā ʾilāha ʾilla l-Lāh (There is no god but God) and Allahu Akbar (God is great). The symbol has been associated with the Persian monarchy since the Achaemenid period (Shapur Shahbazi 2012). The flag with the lion in the middle is still used today by groups opposed to the Islamic Republic.
The relationship with the Persian Empire is one of the national symbols most mobilised by Iranians, especially those of Persian origin. The ancient Persian Empire was located in present-day Iranian territory and there is a mythical continuity between that period and Iranians today. In general, I refer to the period of the Achaemenid dynasty (550–330 bc) under the reigns of Cyrus the Great and Darius (Raietparvar 2014).
The ruins of Pasargadae are an archaeological site, the former capital of the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great. They are located near the city of Shiraz and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Golestan Palace is part of a series of buildings that belonged to the ancient Qajar dynasty, the official residence of the Shahs of that dynasty. It was built during the Safavid dynasty, around the year 1500. It is located in the city of Tehran and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A mountain range in the north of Iran, close to the Caspian Sea.
This article is based on my PhD research on the transnational network of missionaries converting Iranians to Christianity.
The claim that Iran has the ‘fastest-growing church in the world’ is reproduced by several groups studied in this article, such as Iran Alive Ministries and Frontier Alliance International, and by Mark Bradley's (2014) book, organised by Elam Ministries, which provides an overview of Christianity in Iran today. Data would have been extracted from the portal Operation World (https://operationworld.org/, accessed 4 March 2024), which gathers information about Christianity around the world.
See Farsinet, www.farsinet.com (accessed 19 March 2024).
See Iran Alive Ministries, www.iranalive.org (accessed 5 March 2024).
Mark Bradley's (2014) book Too Many to Jail: The Story of Iran's New Christians was suggested to me by an interlocutor from Elam Ministries, an Iranian Christian living in the diaspora. She said that this book would help me understand Christianity in Iran. Bradley is the author of two more books on Christianity in Iran and the book has a preface by Sam Yeghnazar, founder and director of Elam Ministries, as well as reviews by leaders from Sat-7 Pars and Hovsepian Ministries, among others. Since it was suggested by a native interlocutor, and considering the book's content, I consider it a native source.
See Sat7Pars. New Identity. https://www.sat7pars.com/en/new-identity (accessed 30 December 2022).
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