微密圈

鈥淗ousing is an issue of justice, which Jesus cares about intimately.鈥� With these words Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, announced at an industry conference last month that he was appointing a bishop for housing. The news was greeted with surprise and curiosity, welcomed by some, dismissed as an irrelevance by others. What was the leader of the Anglican Communion doing addressing a housing conference? And what can the third estate achieve where the first and second have so singularly failed?

For those watching more closely, the appointment of Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani has not come out of the blue but is a response to a report due to be published this weekend (21 February). Coming Home is the fruit of the heavyweight Commission on Housing, Church and Community established by Welby two years ago to examine the housing crisis in all its complexity from theological and practical perspectives. A bishop for housing sitting in the House of Lords is one of its recommendations.

The Church of England has political influence and a moral authority as well as, many would say, a moral duty to speak out 鈥� and of course it has done so in various ways over centuries. With a community in every parish, the Church is uniquely connected to the people at the sharp end of the housing crisis. It also owns a huge amount of land.

微密圈 spoke to Bishop Guli about what she hopes to achieve and heard her remarkable story, which drives a passion for justice for the dispossessed. 微密圈 also asked housing specialists what they make of her appointment.

Francis-Dehqani, who does not take up her post until mid-April, begins by confessing to limited knowledge. She uses the word 鈥渂eauty鈥� as someone not yet conversant with its loaded meaning in the style wars but she also talks with enthusiasm about seeing Elemental鈥檚 cost-effective Chilean half-houses for the poor on TV. She was patron of a homelessness charity in Leicester and she knows that building flourishing communities, not just units, is the goal.

She also talks about the need to redefine 鈥渁ffordable鈥�. She has already had enthusiastic emails from many quarters including from an architect working in housing at a 鈥渉uge London practice鈥� offering her help.

Francis-Dehqani鈥檚 personal experiences of housing mostly involve clergy homes, beginning with the Bishop鈥檚 House in the historic Iranian city of Isfahan where she was born in 1966. Gulnar Eleanor Dehqani-Tafti spent the first 13 years of her life in this elegant house with its colonnade and pointed windows, part of a compound enclosing a hospital, school, church and centre for blind people.

It was the seat of the Anglican Church in Iran and her father was the bishop, his province covering much of the Middle East. Hassan Dehqani-Tafti was a Muslim convert who married Margaret Thompson, the Persian-born granddaughter of missionaries and daughter of Hassan鈥檚 predecessor as bishop. The couple had four children. Guli, the youngest, remembers a hospitable home and a happy if, in her words, unusual childhood before the Iranian Revolution changed everything.

鈥淚 grew up between and betwixt these two worlds of Islam and Christianity, eastern and western cultures, English and Persian, which for the most part coexisted peacefully,鈥� she recalls. 鈥淚t was my normal.鈥�

With the dawn of the late 1970s came rumblings of the Islamic revolution that would overthrow the increasingly unpopular Shah. The bishop wrote to Ayatollah Khomeini pledging support for a just and free Iranian society, but it quickly became apparent that freedom and justice were not on the revolutionaries鈥� agenda.

The Church was targeted with murders, the closure of institutions and the confiscation of property. The bishop, as a criminal 鈥渁postate鈥�, was the object of particular wrath. He was briefly arrested and the family home was raided twice, the second time in an assassination attempt.

On the night of 26 October 1979, gunmen shot at the bishop and his wife as they lay in bed. Four bullets missed and the fifth hit Margaret鈥檚 hand as she flung herself over her husband in an extraordinary act of heroism. The pillowcase with its four bullet holes has become a family heirloom.

After her father left the country a week later to attend a conference, the situation became even graver, with the start of the US hostage crisis. The bishop was advised not to return until things blew over 鈥� but the fanatics were undeterred. They seized his house and evicted his wife and children, who left with the few possessions they could fit into a suitcase.

The thread for me is justice rather than experience. For obvious reasons it is an important theme in my life 

Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani

The injustice still stings all these years later, Francis-Dehqani has said. But worse was to come. Seven months later the bishop鈥檚 only son, Bahram, was murdered in an ambush as he d