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Christians of many hues have lived in Iran long before 633 CE, when Islam arrived on the heels of the Arab invading army. The Cyrus Cylinder, often considered one of the first declarations of human rights and religious tolerance, is rightly seen as emblematic of the culture of the Persian Empire before the invasion. When the Zoroastrian faith became dominant in that empire, there are sadly many instances when Christians were subjected to brutal suppression and murder. Nevertheless, for centuries, churches and monasteries dotted ancient Iran’s landscapes. Often called “Nestorian” by Westerners, these Iranian Christians not only had a prominent presence in ancient Iran’s capital-- the famous city of Ctesiphon whose architecture, and even pillaged bricks, helped shape Baghdad as the capital of the Islamic caliphate in its “Golden age,” but Nestorian bishops presided over schools that would, even in later centuries, send monks as far as India and China. It has even been reported that the “True Cross” believed to be the one Jesus was crucified on was seized by Sasanian armies in 614 and taken to Ctesiphon, to be later retrieved by Christians. Christianity was, in short, a visible, albeit occasionally brutalized, part of the Persian empire’s intellectual and spiritual fabric. In literature, too, some of the greatest love stories of Iran’s rich poetic tradition include lauded Christian heroes and heroines.
With the Islamic conquest of Iran, the life of the country’s Christians also began to change. The invading Arab armies call to action was Allah-o Abar, or Allah is the Greatest (usually misconstrued as Allah is Great—a gesture of reconciliation, or an effort to hide the global claims of Islam?). That meant that the Jewish and Christian faiths were, within limits, respected as earlier incarnations of a less complete manifestation of the Abrahamic prophetic tradition, one that finds its final, and full iteration in Islam and Mohammad. Even in recent years, Shiite theologians close to the regime in Tehran have claimed that the Bible has been manipulated by Jews and Christians to eliminate any references to the final emergence of Mohammad as the expected new messiah and the last of the prophetic line. Christ and Mary are both particularly venerated in the Qur’an, but the text is categorial that Jesus is not the son of God, with Jesus saying in the text that he is only Abd Allah (Servant or slave of Allah), not his son. (Maryam, 30). In other passages, Allah is categorically named as One who is not begotten and does not beget. Nevertheless, Jews and Christians were afforded a protected status as Ahl-e Ketab—people of the book. If they paid special taxes, if they abided by a covenant first developed after the conquest of Egypt with the Chrisian Copts there, they could keep their faith as Zimmies. Under the covenant, they must live in their own neighborhoods, refrain from proselytizing, respect all Islamic laws, follow certain protocols to identify themselves when leaving the neighborhood, and then they are free to keep their faith. In essence the covenant posited that if Christians accepted second class citizenship, they could remain Christians. Compared to how Europe at the time treated, for example, its Jewish population, this covenant was certainly more tolerant of religious minorities. In today’s world, such a covenant is tantamount to a kind of religious apartheid.
Iran’s path to accepting the new faith was different than most nations conquered in the first decades of Islam’s expansion. This trajectory impacted the lives of Iranian Christians living accordingly. The dominant discourse in Islamic governance treated Christians as subjects rather than citizens—tolerated but socially inferior, occasionally humiliated, and sometimes coerced toward conversion. Those who were not “people of the book” were apostates and could be killed. In Iran today, for examples, while Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians are treated as “people of the book,” members of the Bahai faith are, like all non-believers in some Abrahamic religion, dismissed in official dogma as apostates.
Iranians begrudgingly accepted Islam but refused to accept Arabic as its supposedly divine language. Scholars have argued that it took almost four hundred years before Arabs conquered the entire Iranian empire. In those centuries of turmoil, Iranian Christians and Jews—like Zoroastrians who had been the dominant faith in the empire—were often subjected to the terrors of a local pious Muslim bully. By the fifteenth century, Shiism—one of the main branches of Islam—forcefully became the “state” religion of Iran, but even that did not altogether destroy Christian life in the country. Assyrians and Armenians continued to live in parts of the country. Thousands were forcefully moved from Julfa, near Iran’s border with Armenia, to Isfahan, then the capital of the new Shiite Safavid state. This traumatic migration paradoxically laid the foundation for one of Iran’s most dynamic Christian communities. The Armenians of New Julfa became vital intermediaries in Iran’s silk trade, linking Isfahan to Venice, Amsterdam, and Manila. Within their schools, printing houses, and guilds, Armenians cultivated art, architecture, and theater that enriched Safavid culture itself.
The Pahlavi era brought new forms of tolerance and assimilation for Christians. Reza Shah’s drive for modernization and national unity recognized Christians as more or less full citizens. They were barred from most top political jobs, but their churches, schools, and charitable associations flourished. Christian architects, musicians, and teachers played conspicuous roles in shaping Iran’s urban and cultural modernity.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 once again changed the conditions of the country’s Christians. The new constitution recognized Armenians and Assyrian-Chaldeans as official religious minorities, granting them parliamentary seats and freedom of worship. In practice, however, the atmosphere grew restrictive. Church publications were censored, religious education was monitored, and conversion from Islam to Christianity was treated as apostasy—a capital offense in Islamic jurisprudence. Some theologians in Iran had in the past, and even in recent years, offered a different legal opinion, allowing for conversion; but the law of the land still forbids it. When Christian missionaries began to arrive in Iran in the later part of the nineteenth century, they had very little success in converting any Muslims. But having fallen in love with the land and its people, many of these missionaries did not leave Iran, gave up the mission of converting Muslims, and refocused on establishing schools and hospitals. As one scholar has pointed out, many of the “Arabists” in the State Department—diplomats who favored a more pro-Arab foreign policy for the US—were children of these early missionaries. What the missionaries failed to do in conversion, the Islamists who rule Iran did for them.
As the revolution radicalized and the Iran-Iraq War devastated border regions like Urmia and Salmas, mass emigration followed. Tens of thousands of Armenians and Assyrians left for California, Europe, and Australia. New Julfa’s population dwindled; once-bustling churches fell silent. What the community lost in these migrations, it more than regained in the emergence of Persian-speaking converts in the last four decades—men and women drawn to Christianity through underground house churches, satellite broadcasts, and personal quests for spiritual freedom. The government, wary of evangelism, responded with surveillance and arrests, producing a paradox: Christianity shrinking as an ethnic tradition but reappearing as a clandestine movement among Iranians themselves. It is hard to find reliable numbers, but educated estimates is that there are now between three hundred to five hundred thousand new converts to Christianity. The fact that evangelical social services offer help to converts who flee Iran to places like Turkey, Pakistan and Georgia, and help the new Iranian Christians apply for asylum, has made such conversions less dangerous, and more appealing. In Iran, some of the new converts, and their priests, have been arrested and are in jail. According to one source only in 2024, 96 Christians were sentenced to a total of 263 years in prison. (Faceless Victims, Rights Violations against Christians in Iran, 2024.) Christianity has not been the only beneficiary of the Iranian regime’s dogmatic intransigence, duplicitous piety, and gross self-righteousness. There are reportedly large number of converts to the Zoroastrian and Bahai faith, and an even larger number of people who have opted for a secular view of the world, bereft of any anchor in faith. Now, the landscape of the Iranian Diaspora is dotted with new Iranian Christian places of worship, publishing houses, and social services.
