The Right Rev Hassan Dehqani-Tafti was for 29 years the Anglican bishop in Iran.

His life and ministry were affected forever by the Iranian Revolution, as a consequence of which he lived from late 1979 as an exile from his homeland. For ten years, out of deep conviction and with the strong encouragement of the church in Iran, he remained its bishop. His devotion to his people and his strong views on the nature of ministry caused him to agonise over separation from his flock. Nevertheless, the advice of friends in and out of the diocese prevailed, and he was spared for a wider ministry that touched many lives.

Hassan Dehqani-Tafti was born in 1920, the second son of Muhammad and Sekineh. Theirs was a modest home, his father chiefly involved in the making of traditional cloth shoes. His mother had trained as a nurse with missionaries in Yazd. There she became a Christian. Back home in Taft, she ran the village dispensary, but died when her second son was barely 5 years old.

It had been his mother’s wish that the young Hassan should have a Christian education, and so he went to school in Yazd. From there he moved to Isfahan and to the Stuart Memorial College where the principal was his William J. Thompson, later bishop in Iran — and father-in-law.

In the early days in Isfahan he was strongly influenced by a talented head of school, a convert from Sunni Islam, a linguist and writer of poetry. He helped Dehqani-Tafti to see “how a strong and intelligent Christianity could truly belong in and with an authentic Persian culture”.

While at the Stuart Memorial College Dehqani-Tafti became a Christian. Baptised when he was

18, he took the Christian name Barnabas. Moving to Tehran, he took his degree at the university in July 1943. He offered himself to the

diocese for ministry, but he was advised to get some experience of the world first. Military service was obligatory and, as an army officer, he became secretary-interpreter to an American lieutenant-colonel. Once more offering himself to the diocese, he became a youth worker and secretary of the Christian literature committee.

There followed two years’ training for the ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, immediately before which he attended the Second World Christian Youth conference in Oslo. There he was gripped by a concern for Christian unity which remained a fundamental element for the rest of his ministry, exercised in both the Middle East and, more widely, through the World Council of Churches.

Returning from Cambridge, Dehqani-Tafti was made deacon in 1949 and ordained priest the next year. Based for ten years at St Luke’s Church, Isfahan, he undertook work from time to time in several other places before moving to St Paul’s Church, Tehran. His stay there was short since, on Bishop Thompson’s resignation in 1960, he was elected bishop and was consecrated in St George’s, Jerusalem, in April 1961. Returning to Isfahan, he was installed in St Luke’s Church which remained his base for nearly 20 years.

As the first Persian Anglican bishop, he was proud of the Iranian identity of a church which gladly embraced all, but which also affirmed its Persian roots.

In June 1952 he had married Margaret Thompson, one of the daughters of his bishop. Theirs was to be a close partnership, enriching for many others as well as themselves.