IT WAS “Ghazedakha” that stopped me. I pasted the lyrics into Google Translate, which read “dancing dandelions gave the excellent news of freedom, laughing lilies gave a joyful message, Maryams were perfumed by this news, roses opened to the enjoyment of this word. Freedom in Christ means life for ever, the cross of Christ frees us from sin.”
I used to be searching for songs that I could learn with Iranian asylum-seekers in a hotel near by, run by the Home Office. This week, I had an issue for my Iranian friends: What is that this song about dandelions? Is it a song in regards to the resurrection? Are the Maryams the Marys walking to the empty tomb of Christ? No, I used to be told. Maryams are also flowers.
I asked: How can you’ve a worship song about flowers? They spoke to me as if to a baby. Dandelions (you recognize the way you blow the seeds) are messengers of fine news. The lilies stand for eloquence, the Maryams for purity, and a Maryam is placed next to women when they offer birth (following a fable that Mary the mother of Jesus clenched one in her hand during labour). The rose is an emblem of perfection.
Thus I used to be introduced to a metaphorical language stretching back centuries, of which I used to be ignorant, but which my friends found natural as a language for worship. And the song was unlike any I had ever sung in an English church.
The weekly music sessions within the hotel have been a revelation. The participants have all been baptised and confirmed prior to now 12 months, and attend the parish church near by, where services are prepared in each English and Farsi.
Music was at all times going to be problematic, because music carries different meanings in response to the a part of the world you come from. If Iranians were to assimilate with an English congregation, that they had to regulate not only to a distinct language, but to a distinct sensibility. Songs in major keys here don’t mean similar to they do within the Middle East. The carol “Silent Night” was not well received — such a miserable slow song, in a significant key; minor keys are higher for rejoicing!
So, in our weekly gatherings, the Iranians would translate hymns and songs of the Persian Church from the Farsi into easy English; and, in return, I taught English hymns in English and Farsi, testing how the words sounded and adjusted when translated between the 2 languages.
THERE are two extremes that multiculturalism tries to avoid. The first is assimilation, when the identity of those joining is erased, and their culture is discarded. The opposite is segregation, when the newcomers are ghettoised: treated as exotic and separate. When each joiners and hosts have a lot to learn from one another, different cultures have to pay deep attention to 1 one other.
Rewind back to the Persian Christmas celebration at the tip of last 12 months: a Persian Christmas carol, “Dar Akhori Post” — “In a humble manger”. It is a bossa nova, written by a member of an Armenian family who fled Iran when their father (a pastor) was murdered. As music begins, people begin to fill the aisle where they’ve room to bop. Imagine: a carol service with dancing! A Middle Eastern carol with a Brazilian groove.
But, in case you come from a culture that has not had a Reformation or an Enlightenment, attitudes to worship, emotion, and embodiment are entirely different. The challenge of incorporating these latest arrivals into the English Church is to permit their different sensibilities to flourish without being erased or ignored by the host culture.
There is nothing “normal” about Anglican worship. It is just not superior to other traditions. We like it because we’re used to it, but listening to how the sacred is expressed within the words and music reveals quite how repressed worship is within the UK. Our bodies and our senses are rarely engaged.
In our liturgies, our minds, however, are subject to a deluge of abstraction. One of the strengths of liturgical patterns is to permit familiarity to construct spaces where our spirits can grow. But, compared with spiritualities from other parts of the world, the worship of English churches looks unhealthily detached from the remaining of life.
A related but equally significant issue is how these latest Christians ought to be tutored of their faith. They live in two worlds. In the countries from which they arrive, they discover a up to date experience of Christian martyrs: a powerful impulse to persist in faith when faith has proved costly to the purpose of death. In comparison, within the UK, modern martyrs have been secularised to communal Remembrance rituals. Courses in Christian discipleship reflect the preoccupations of Twentieth-century British churchmanship.
If our churches turn out to be more multicultural, we’ll discover the influences of theologians and thought-leaders from other parts of the world. It is a fallacy to assume that our own theological and mental history is the default to which latest Christians will defer. This is just not to discount the high value that migrants coming to this country often place on the culture that they’ve come to affix; but we must always not neglect the cultures that they bring about with them.
THEN there are the parts played by lay people: sidespeople, communion assistants, vergers, and churchwardens — all linked to the upkeep of the local church as an establishment, in a specific place, involving bricks and mortar. Many of those Christians have left all the things and lost all the things. How will we prepare them for these positions, and the way will we expect them to exercise these offices?
All of that is to indicate that our Church goes through a period of rapid and significant change — changes as significant as those of the Oxford Movement, the inroads of Evangelicalism, or the Charismatic movement; but different, because those were ideological shifts that took place inside a single culture, whereas the changes that we live through reflect the growing contribution of Christians joining the UK Church from all around the world. And they aren’t coming in as second-class residents, but as those that have already played a big part within the countries from which they arrive.
After a conference in Leicester in March, an Anglican Network of Intercultural Church (ANIC) has been launched, with several regional groupings. It is meant to offer support and sharing of resources for churches working through what it means to turn out to be intercultural. Does a congregational gathering treat all cultures equally in its services? Or does the church constructing host a succession of monocultural events, spread across a Sunday, wherein the worshippers rarely, if ever, mingle?
ANIC can be a protected forum for the growing variety of ministers of global-majority heritage to reflect on how their very own background informs their ministry, and the way they may exercise that calling.
It has never been more urgent for us to take heed to the brand new Christians in our midst and the rhythms of worship which speak to them. They are greater than just fresh fodder for the pews: they’re a present.
John Griffiths is a Reader within the diocese of St Albans.
Find a map of Persian-friendly churches here, a part of a folder of Farsi musical and liturgical resources overseen by the Revd Mohammad Eghtedarian.
More details about ANIC here.
