Michael Nazir-Ali

Michael Nazir-Ali is the former Church of England Bishop of Rochester. According to The Times, he is on the "conservative evangelical wing of the Church".

Early Life

According to the BBC, Nazir-Ali was born in Karachi in 1949 into a largely Shi'a family.

Nazir-Ali's secondary education was in Pakistan. He read Economics, Sociology and Islamic History at the University of Karachi, and Theology at Fitzwilliam College and Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

In Pakistan, Nazir-Ali taught at Karachi Theological College, worked as a parish priest in a poor urban area, became Provost of Lahore Cathedral and was consecrated the first Bishop of Raiwind. He has said that he faced threats when he was a Bishop in Pakistan. In 1986, the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie arranged for him to travel to Britain. Subsequently, according to Nazir-Ali, " the reason behind some of the difficulties I was facing was removed when General Zia was killed - unfortunately for him".

In 1986, he joined the staff of the Archbishop of Canterbury to prepare for the 1988 Lambeth Conference, for which he edited the Report and Pastoral Letters.

Nazir-Ali was General Secretary of CMS from 1989 to 1994.

Bishop of Rochester

Nazir-Ali served as Bishop of Rochester from 1994 to 2009. At his appointment he was the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England.

He entered the House of Lords in 1999.

In January 2008, Nazir-Ali wrote a Telegraph article charging that multiculturalism in Britain had facilitated the growth of Islamic extremism:

One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up and also to turn already separate communities into "no-go" areas where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability.

Following these comments, Nazir-Ali was given police protection after his staff received death threats. The article also provoked some tension with the Church hierarchy, according to the Times:

One senior cleric told The Times yesterday: “The Bishop of Rochester is in effect threatening to undo everything we have done.”

The cleric said that some congregations in cities such as Leicester, where interfaith work was a priority, were increasingly wary of donating money towards this work. Church leaders in towns with a large Muslim population were anxious that relations with their neighbours were being undermined.

Nazir-Ali later issued a clarification, stating:

“It has been asked what I meant by ‘no-go’ areas. I would wish to make it clear that I was not referring, as some have implied, to the situation which arose in some neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland some years ago which the authorities felt constrained from entering.”

In June 2008, Nazir-Ali was one 300 Conservative Anglican bishops who attended the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem.

In the same month, he wrote an article in the inaugural issue of Standpoint, which warned that Britain's Christian heritage was being "replaced by the newfangled and insecurely founded doctrine of multiculturalism."

Nazir-Ali boycotted the Lambeth conference in 2008 because of a rift over homosexuality.

Damian Thompson suggested at the time that Nazir-Ali was building up a "creeping power base inside the Church of England", which was not due to anti-gay sentiment but was "almost entirely the result of his brave stance against the creation of islands of Sharia law in Britain."

The Guardian's Stephen Bates gave a strongly critical account of Nazir-Ali's role in the Church at this juncture:

Factionalism is rife with ambitious men such as Rochester's Michael Nazir-Ali, overlooked when Williams was appointed and again when John Sentamu was made Archbishop of York, scarcely giving Williams his support. Nazir-Ali may be a darling of the rightwing press for saying rude things about the Islam of his forebears, but he is not collegiate, or broadly liked even by fellow evangelicals among his colleagues - some of whom regard him as arrogant and patronising.

Resignation

Nazir-Ali announced in March 2009 that he was stepping down as Bishop to focus on work with persecuted Christians, notably those in Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Iraq. His resignation meant giving up a £37,000 salary, rent-free home and seat in the House of Lords.

According to the Telegraph the decision was unexpected:

The bishop is aged only 59 and potentially could have stayed in post for another decade.

He was a leading contender to succeed George Carey as Archbishop of Canterbury, but has become increasingly outspoken at the direction of the Church since Dr Rowan Williams’s appointment.

Following this decision, Nazir-Ali was strongly criticised by the liberal Dean of Southwark Colin Slee:

"The Bishop of Rochester has just announced his resignation, whatever he may say, it is clearly a move towards a sectarian alternative church intentionally designed to create turbulence in the Anglican Communion," the Mr Slee said.

In July 2009, Nazir-Ali told the Sunday Telegraph that homosexuals should 'repent and be changed'.

The comment came the day before the launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a coalition of evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parishes, backed by Nazir-Ali, which critics claimed was an attempt to create a "church within the church".

Views

On nuclear weapons

In a March 2007 Telegraph article, Nazir-Ali criticised the General Synod of the Church of England for opposing the renewal of Trident:

As the Government's White Paper on renewing Trident makes clear, the threshold for a nuclear response must be very high and the circumstances "extreme". It contains the promise that any response would be "proportionate" and it should be clear that any plan-ned use of Trident or its replacement would be based on a counter-combatant strategy that targets military and related sites keeping non-combatant casualties to an absolute minimum.

On Homosexuality

In July 2009, Nazir-Ali told the Sunday Telegraph:

"The Bible’s teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature.

"We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed."

Affiliations

• Oxford Centre for Mission Studies - Former director
• Christian Aid - Former board member
• Human Fertilisation and Embyrology Authority - Member and chair of Ethics and Law Committee 1997-20003
• Network for Inter Faith Concerns - Former President
• Crown Appointments Review Group - Theological Consultant 1998-2001
• Board of Mission - Chairman of the Mission Theology Advisory Group 1992-2001
• Standpoint - Contributor
• Centre for Social Cohesion - Advisory Board Member
• Keep Marriage Special Vice-President, created in January 2012.

External Resources

• Standpoint Articles by Michael Nazir-Ali