This Montreal church has baptized more than 140 Iranians since 2020

As participants logged into St Jax Church’s weekly Bible study on Feb. 3, the Zoom call filled with the warm echoes of “salam baradar” and “salam khahar”—peace, brother, and peace, sister. The study, held in Farsi, is one of the services the Montreal church has recently added to address the growing influx of Iranian congregants.

St Jax has baptized over 140 Iranians since 2020, when it opened as a new Anglican church plant.

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“The growth of our Iranian community actually started with a person who was a very dynamic community leader and came here saying, ‘I’m definitely not a Muslim. I’m definitely not a Christian, either. However, I know a lot of Iranians who are trying to explore Christianity, and I’ve looked into where the best churches for them are. It may as well be here,’” recalls senior pastor Rev. Graham Singh.

While Iran is predominantly a Muslim nation, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian and Baha’i communities have rich histories in Iran and continue to gather as minorities, often at risk of persecution under the Islamic theocracy that has ruled since the 1979 Revolution. Although apostasy is punishable by death under the Islamic regime, Christian conversion among Iranians born Muslim is a growing movement both within the country and across the diaspora living in the West. Now, as Iran reels from levels of governmental violence that haven’t been seen since the revolution, Montreal’s Iranians are finding comfort at St Jax.

Christian conversion from Islam as a supernatural sensory experience

Reading John 8:7, instructor Pourya Zanganeh asked the attendees if anyone had ever witnessed a stoning. No one raised their hands but him. He added, “I have, when I was three or four years old. It’s one of the sights I will never be able to erase from my brain.”

“[The Islamic clerics] scared us all our lives with threats of burning,” said one attendee with a sigh as the class prepared to discuss “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.”

Another congregant at St Jax, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal for critiquing Islam, shared that her faith in Islam began to waver when she began reading the Bible simply as an intellectual exercise. After a time, she returned to the Qur’an to translate it from Arabic to Farsi, and became “terrified of Islam…. I would read Surah Al-Nasr or Surah Al-Ahzab [chapters of the Qur’an]… and see war, bloodshed, killing. I saw that reflected in the regime’s actions, but the [New Testament] spoke to me only of peace and forgiving even your enemies,” she said.

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Zanganeh, who before converting was a devout disciple of revolutionary Islamist thinker Ali Shariati, immigrated to Canada after facing hostility from Iranian authorities. He was friends with an Assyrian couple in Iran, whose generosity captivated Zanganeh and made him curious about Christianity. But it wasn’t until he moved to Canada and had free access to the Bible in Farsi (the New Testament is mostly available in Armenian or Assyrian scripts in Iran) that he experienced what he describes as his main testimonies.

“I was living away from my family in Canada and … under a lot of pressure. So one day at the metro, I decided to end it all. As I saw the train’s light, I stepped on the yellow line, ready to jump, and I even noticed the driver get scared. But someone literally pulled me back,” Zangandeh said. “I came home, wailing and reading the Bible until I got to John 14:1, ‘Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.’ I fell asleep on that verse, but woke up to the notification sounds of my wife and son’s immigration files being approved.”

It was then that Zanganeh decided to be baptized at St Jax, and to continue the rest of his and his family’s immigration case as religious asylum seekers. He said he also had a vision that led him to volunteer to lead Bible study.

Linda Darwish is an associate professor of religious studies at St. Francis Xavier University and a member of St. James United in Antigonish, N.S. She specializes in Muslim-Christian relations and Iranian Shi’ism. In a study published in 2017, she analyzed the narratives of 17 Iranian Muslim converts to Christianity in Canada and found that religious conversion is often the result of a supernatural sensory experience beyond a cognitive or intellectual shift, similar to Zanganeh’s testimony.

“Conversion is a momentous change that represents something so contrary to the way they’ve been brought up that it kind of calls for something from outside of themselves and not just their own thinking and reasoning,” Darwish explained. “When you’re in that space of in-between things, maybe facing major decisions, you’re open to new input. It could be a personal crisis. Often it was loneliness from being in Canada, domestic issues or a health problem, and when that miraculous experience is linked to something like a specific prayer, then the event could take on meaning in a way that is defining for a person’s identity.”

Iranian converts find unconditional love at St Jax

Starting Dec. 28, 2025, a series of anti-regime demonstrations have erupted across Iran. Protests escalated on Jan. 8 and 9, resulting in a brutal crackdown from the regime. According to estimates from U.S.-based organization Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 7,000 people have been confirmed killed, with an estimated 11,700 deaths still under investigation. The state also imposed a nationwide internet and telephone blackout, unprecedented in scale and length, that restricted both domestic and international communications as it carried out its violent suppression. Over the past few weeks, the Islamic regime and the United States have been engaging in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions against the country. The previous attempt to reach a deal failed last June, when Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran and U.S. strikes targeted Iranian nuclear facilities.

As the threat of war looms over the region and the Islamic regime carries out executions of arrested protestors, Iranians in Canada are stuck in a grim news cycle. Those who are in need of community in Montreal have found a safe and welcoming home at St Jax. As nearly half of the congregation is now Iranian, the church offers live translation for its Sunday services and has customized its introduction to Christianity course, Alpha, for Farsi speakers.

“The number of people in our Iranian community who are leaders and changemakers is very significant,” said Singh.

Psychological, intellectual and material factors may all drive conversion — religious trauma from the regime, asylum claims for refugee status or a desire to assimilate and integrate within Western societies. But an almost-universal experience among the Iranian converts at St Jax who shared testimonies with Broadview was the unconditional love they found in Jesus Christ and at the Anglican church.

“From my experience, Iranians in general have a deep hunger and sensitivity to spirituality,” said Darwish. “I’ve known many Iranians who have said, ‘Since the revolution, since this form of Islam has been over us, it has turned us against Islam. But that doesn’t mean we’ve turned against God. We still want to find God through another way.’”

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Ghazal Azizi is a writer and fact-checker in Montreal.