The Other Iranian Revolution
In 'godless' eastern Germany, Iranian refugees surprise pastors with their
interest in Christianity.
Matthias Pankau and Uwe Siemon-Netto [ posted 7/17/2012 ]
God must have been
laughing up his sleeve," muses Jobst Schöne. The retired bishop of the
Independent Lutheran Church in Germany is applying a German paraphrase of Psalm
2:4 to the baptism of seven former Muslims from Iran. Early Easter morning, the
seven were baptized in the Berlin parish where Schöne serves as associate
pastor. The baptisms were an emblem of something bigger—a nationwide surge of
such conversions in several denominations and a spate of reports of Muslims
seeing Jesus in their dreams. But Martin Luther's Bible translation, now nearly
500 years old, also played an important role in their story.
The group baptism
happened at an unsettling time for European Christians. During Lent, radical
Muslims handed out large numbers of Qur'ans on street corners and announced
plans to distribute 25 million German-language copies of their holy book in
order to win Germans to their faith. But on the night before Easter, some 150
worshipers filed silently into St. Mary's Church in the Zehlendorf district of
Berlin to witness conversions in the opposite direction.
Until midnight, the
sanctuary was dark. Then Gottfried Martens, senior pastor, chanted from the
altar: "Glory to God in the highest." All at once the lights went on,
the organ roared, and the faithful broke jubilantly into song: "We praise
you, we bless you, we worship you." Like Christians everywhere, they
celebrated the Resurrection of their Lord.
For the six young men and
one woman in the front pew, the moment had additional significance: They were
placing their lives in danger in exchange for salvation. Under Islamic law,
apostasy is a capital crime, a fact brought home to the German public by press
reports about Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, an ex-Muslim, who was sentenced
to death in Tehran. Some of the converts at St. Mary's were themselves
persecuted before fleeing to Germany, now home to the largest Iranian community
in Western Europe, numbering 150,000.
"These refugees are
taking unimaginable risks to live their Christian faith," says Martens,
who ministers to one of Germany's most dynamic parishes, which has grown from
200 to over 900 members in 20 years. He views the conversion of a growing
number of Iranians in Germany as evidence of God's sense of irony.
"Imagine! Of all places, God chooses eastern Germany, one of the world's
most godless regions, as the stage for a spiritual awakening among
Persians," Martens exclaims. According to a recent University of Chicago
study, only 13 percent of all residents of the formerly Communist part of
Germany attest belief in God.
The Vision Thing
The Berlin baptism is a
small piece in a mosaic of faith covering all of Germany, crossing
denominational barriers and extending into Iran itself. Some German clerics speak
of a divinely scripted drama that includes countless reports of Muslims having
visions of Jesus. According to Martens and others interviewed for this article,
most of these appearances follow a pattern reported by converts throughout the
Islamic world: Muslims see a figure of light, sometimes bearing the features of
Christ, sometimes not. But they instantly know who he is. He always makes it
clear that he is Jesus of the Bible, not Isa of the Qur'an, and he
directs them to specific pastors, priests, congregations, or house churches,
where they later hear the gospel.
Thomas Schirrmacher,
chair of the Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, comments
on this pattern: "God sticks to the Reformation doctrine that faith comes
by receiving the Word through Scripture and preaching. In these dreams, Jesus
never engages in hocus-pocus, but sends these people to where the Word is
faithfully proclaimed." This is why Martens says he cannot dismiss such
narratives: "As a confessional Lutheran, I am not given to Schwärmerei,"
he says, using Luther's derogatory term for religious enthusiasm. "But
these reports of visions sound very convincing."
Martens's experience with
Muslim converts goes back to when he began catechism classes for Persian
immigrants five years ago. The classes quickly expanded, and on Easter Sunday
2011, Martens baptized ten converts. Ten more converts are expected next
Easter, and another ten the following year, plus more in between.
As news of the Easter
baptisms at St. Mary's spread, churches across Germany reported similar
experiences: Across Berlin in Neukölln, a district with a nearly 20 percent
Middle Eastern immigrant population, deaconess Rosemarie Götz baptized 16
Persians on Easter Day in her modest house of prayer, Haus Gotteshilfe
("God's Help"). The baptisms doubled her tiny congregation, which
belongs to the Landeskirchliche Gemeinschaft, a
pietistic group within the otherwise liberal Protestant church of the
Berlin-Brandenburg region.
"The new members
brought along 50 others whom we are now instructing in the faith, and 8 to 10
of them will be baptized in August," says Götz, whose involvement with the
Iranians started 19 years ago, when a social worker introduced her to Nadereh
Majdpour. Majdpour had fled Iran after suffering torture for declaring that she
loved Jesus more than Muhammad. "She lost all her hair from being beaten
savagely on her head in jail," recounts the deaconess. Majdpour brought
the other Persians to Götz and now acts as their interpreter.
Two weeks after Easter,
four more Iranians were baptized in the Baptist Friedenskirche (Church
of Peace) in the fashionable Charlottenburg district. Meanwhile, not far from
Götz's chapel, Sadegh Sepehri, an Iranian-born minister of the Presbyterian
Church (USA), was preparing substantial groups of former Muslims for baptism in
the Bethlehemkirche, a German Reformed Church hosting a congregation
of 150 native Iranians. "I have already baptized more than 500 Persians in
my 20 years here in Berlin," Sepehri reported before pointing to an
American pastor who has done four times as well numerically in the southern
city of Nuremberg.
Mark A. Bachman, founder
of Nuremberg's independent Word of God Baptist church, returned to the United
States two years ago. Speaking by telephone from Hyles-Anderson College in
Indiana, where he is training missionaries for work in Islamic countries,
Bachman estimates that he baptized some 2,000 former Muslims during his 23-year
ministry in Nuremberg; most were Persians.
In yet another part of
Germany, Baptist pastor Helmut Venske baptized 13 Iranians on Easter Sunday.
Venske serves a congregation in Mülheim in the industrial Ruhr District in
northwest Germany. "This is happening in many parts of the country,
wherever there are Persian communities," he says.
In a rural Lutheran
church in Bavaria, for example, several dark-skinned strangers surprised the
Communion assistant during Lent when they showed up at the altar. "Who
were they?" he later asked his pastor. "Oh, they are just another
family of Persian converts," the minister answered.
Missing Data
"Something
significant is taking place here," says Max Klingberg, an official with
the International Society of Human Rights (ISHR) in Frankfurt. But when
questioned about a radio report that in Germany alone, at least 500 Persians
become Christians every year, he cautions, "As a trained scientist, I
prefer to be very careful with numbers." However, Schirrmacher suggests,
"The real figure could well be a thousand, perhaps thousands."
Actual numbers are hard
to determine because of the theologically liberal leadership of the regional
Protestant bodies linked to the state. Their leaders tend to steer clear of
mission, says Schirrmacher: "They worry that it might interfere with their
interfaith dialogues." Götz agrees: "I suspect that this is why the
parish pastor around here, a woman, has never visited our congregation."
Therefore, says
Schirrmacher, only "free churches," such as the Baptists and
independent Lutherans, and semi-autonomous congregations like Götz's, joyfully
report conversions. "We know that faithful ministers of the state-related
churches also baptize ex-Muslims, but we are left in the dark about the
numbers." Albrecht Hauser, a former missionary and retired dean of the
Lutheran Church of Württemberg, adds, "We are aware of faithful Catholic
priests doing likewise." But, observes Schirrmacher, "The Catholics
are just as hesitant to release statistics. They don't want to jeopardize
interfaith dialogues."
However, the number of
baptisms of Persians and, to a lesser degree, other Muslims in Germany
outweighs the conversion of Christians to Islam. "According to a report by
the central archive of Germany's Islamic organizations in Soest, approximately
500 Germans became Muslims in 2010," says Schirrmacher. "Yet those
were either German girls marrying Muslim immigrants or nominal ex-Christians
hoping for good business opportunities in other Islamic countries. The
conversion of Persians is of a totally different quality, usually following
long instruction in the Christian faith."
In Gottfried Martens's
congregation, for instance, the catechumens from the Middle East spend four or
more months studying the Bible, the church creeds, Martin Luther's Small Catechism, the significance of the liturgy, and
the hymns. "They are very attracted by the liturgy, which was absent in
their previous faith," Martens explains. Wilfried Kahla, an ex-missionary
from Germany's state-related Lutheran church and a veteran in evangelizing
Muslims, told the Protestant news magazine ideaSpektrum
that he made his candidates study a 62-page brochure on Christian doctrine and
administered a written exam to them. Then, at the baptismal font, he made them
abjure Islam.
Martens, Venske, and Götz
follow similar curricula; like Kahla, they carefully explain to converts the
difference between the Allah of Islam and the God of Christianity. "Islam
is like a rope ladder on which people try to reach God," Kahla likes to
say. "They manage to climb a few rungs, but with each sin, fall off the ladder
and must start all over again. Christians, by contrast, need no ladder because
Jesus comes down to earth for them. Christians have salvation. Muslims
don't."
An Educated
People Group
Why is it that, of the 4
million Muslims living in Germany, Iranians are the most likely to turn to
Christianity? The ministers interviewed attribute this fact in part to their
high level of education. They say that most of the Iranian refugees are
businesspeople, physicians, scientists, engineers, lawyers, economists, teachers,
and other professionals or students. In coming to Germany, they followed a
centuries-old pattern of cultured Persians in a country where German-Persian
professional organizations have existed since the 19th century.
"Iran is suffering
from a big brain drain as a result of its fanatical religious policies,"
observes Schirrmacher. Hans-Jürgen Kutzner, who ministers to 1,000 Persians on
behalf of the state-related United Evangelical-Lutheran Churches in Germany,
agrees: "As far as the university-educated elite in Iran is concerned,
Islam has lost all moral integrity, especially among the young."
Citing a report by the
nationwide Deutschlandradio network, Martens wrote to his parish that perhaps
half of all young, educated Persian urbanites sympathize with Christianity
these days, while Klingberg of the ISHR cautions that such estimates might be
exaggerated.
Still, Bachman ascribes
the rise of underground Christianity in Iran partly to the fact that every day
17 million of its 79 million people listen to programs via Christian satellite
radio and television from abroad. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S.
Lutheran pastor involved in clandestine missionary work in the theocratic
nation speaks with awe of the intensity of exchanges between the expanding
Christian communities in exile and in Persia itself.
Why Do They Do
It?
Clergy interviewed for
this story reject the suspicion held by some German government officials that
many refugees from Iran convert solely for refugee status. They point out that
many converts had to exchange material comfort for poverty. "You don't do
this simply for material reasons," says Götz. "Neither would you
study so hard for your baptism and attend services so faithfully."
Martens admits he gets
angry when testifying before immigration tribunals on behalf of Persian
congregants. "Can you imagine?" he growls. "Here we have judges
whose knowledge of Christianity is at best on the superficial level of cultural
Protestantism, and they presume to judge the sincerity of someone else's
Christian faith." Like his German colleagues, Bachman says, "I have
always made it clear to ex-Muslims asking me to instruct them in the Christian
faith that baptism would not automatically save them from being returned to
Iran by German authorities."
Perhaps the most
convincing argument supporting Bishop Schöne's image of a laughing God at work
is found in the genesis of the Persian awakening at St. Mary's. It began in
Saxony, the birthplace of the Reformation, where Christians have become an
endangered species. Twelve years ago, Trinity Parish in Leipzig, a tiny
congregation of the Independent Lutheran Church, began teaching German as a
second language to asylum seekers awaiting government approval of their refugee
status.
Trinity used Luther's
Bible translation as a textbook. Linguists credit that translation with having
created the modern German language. Intrigued by what they read, several exiles
asked to be baptized. They brought along friends who also wished to learn the
basics of the Christian faith. "Today, one third of our 150 members are
Persians," says Markus Fischer, Trinity's pastor.
'In this
congregation, I heard for the first time that God is a loving Father who
desires a personal relationship with every human being.'—'Hamid'
Those members include
28-year-old "Amin" (not his real name) and his young family. Amin
says he is a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. He was a successful
corporate executive in Tehran until an Armenian friend introduced him to the
Christian faith. Amin and his pregnant wife then fled to Europe. Their story is
much like that of "Hamid," former owner of a Tehran shopping center.
He was arrested and tortured after a raid by Iran's religious police on the
house church he attended.
"In this
congregation, I heard for the first time that God is a loving Father who
desires a personal relationship with every human being. This was news to me,
because Islam had taught me the image of God as a distant, punishing
deity," says Hamid. He was one of the ex-Muslims baptized this Easter in
Berlin, where he had moved after the German authorities granted him refugee
status.
Other Persian converts
from Leipzig also moved to Berlin. Others still moved on to Hamburg, Dresden,
and Düsseldorf, where they joined the local congregations of the Independent
Lutheran Church, according to Hugo Gevers, the denomination's special
representative to migrants. Wherever they went, they started evangelizing
fellow refugees, which helps to account for the surge in conversions.
Meanwhile, in Leipzig, Trinity's
success among immigrants has caught the attention of German-born seekers. The
congregation is outgrowing its minute makeshift building in a cemetery and
negotiating a permanent lease of a large but little-used sanctuary of the
state-related Lutheran Church, a shrinking denomination.
Schirrmacher finds
stories like this engrossing. He says, "Isn't it odd that the Ayatollah
Khomeini has turned out to be one of modern Christianity's greatest
missionaries?"
Matthias Pankau is a Lutheran pastor and an editor of Idea, a
Protestant wire service and magazine in Germany. Uwe Siemon-Netto, a
journalist, directs the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in
Capistrano Beach, California.
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