A great Anglican churchman converts to Rome: Michael Nazir-Ali

Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican Bishop of Rochester, has been received into the Catholic Church. He is not the first senior clergyman of the Church of England to “come over” to Rome: this year alone, the Bishops of Burnley and Ebbsfleet have converted, while one of the Queen’s former chaplains did so in 2019. Many others, not only in the UK but in Canada, Australia and the Episcopal Church in the US, have followed suit in the decade since Pope Benedict XVI set up several Ordinariates to enable Anglican clergy to preserve aspects of their liturgy and spirituality, while becoming full members of the Catholic Church.

Why, in that case, is the conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali so significant? It is not merely the fact that he is a familiar presence in the media (including TheArticle, for which he has written here and here), always elucidating and defending our Christian heritage with a robustness that nobody else in the Anglican episcopate could match. He will doubtless continue to write articles and books in the same vein, perhaps with even greater eloquence, from his new spiritual home in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Bearing witness to his faith is Michael’s calling, a calling he has always willingly obeyed, regardless of personal ambition or indeed risk to life.

The immense significance of this conversion derives from the fact that Dr Nazir-Ali has been both a pioneer and a leader in the Church of England. Having served as Bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan until 1986, when the persecution of Christians under General Zia became so severe that, for his safety, Archbishop Robert Runcie took him onto his staff at Lambeth. In 1994 he was the first Asian to be consecrated as Bishop of Rochester and to join what was then an entirely white bench of bishops in the House of Lords. 

As pastor, preacher, theologian and Lord Spiritual, Dr Nazir-Ali proved to be so outstanding that in 2002 his was one of the two names presented to the then Prime Minister as candidates to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Tony Blair chose the other name, Rowan Williams: a professor, a poet and perhaps a prophet, but a disastrous and at times preposterous primate. This was a fateful decision for the Church of England, which thereby missed a unique opportunity to be led by a man with both Christian and Muslim heritage, who knows Islam and Judaism extremely well, at a time when the fraught relationship between the three great monotheistic faiths had been plunged into crisis. 

It can safely be said that Dr Nazir-Ali would never have declared, as Archbishop Williams did in 2008, that adopting sharia law for British Muslims was “unavoidable”. This capitulation to radical Islam was not only greeted with dismay by the general public, but represented a betrayal both of moderate Muslims and of Christians and Jews facing persecution in the Islamic world. So seriously did Dr Nazir-Ali take such persecution that in 2009 he retired from his see of Rochester to found and direct an international charity, Oxtrad (the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue), which helps victims of religious persecution and draws attention to their plight. 

It says much for his remarkable leadership qualities and his scholarship that, despite his advocacy for the persecuted, he was also able to represent the Church of England in dialogue with the pre-eminent Islamic scholars of Al-Azhar University, the Sunni equivalent of the Vatican. He has written several books about Islam from a Christian perspective. Such first-hand experience and knowledge of the Islamic world was almost entirely lacking among Anglican or Catholic clergy in the UK. Nor has the successor of Dr Williams, Archbishop Justin Welby, shown either inclination or aptitude for addressing the multiple challenges to Christianity posed by Islam.

Despite, or perhaps because of, having grown up abroad, in a country which lacks the freedom, democracy and the rule of law that the British take for granted, Michael Nazir-Ali has a deep understanding of the roots of all these secular rights and liberties in our Biblical inheritance. He also knows how fragile our civilisation remains, especially if we allow the atrophy of its Judaeo-Christian values. He has addressed the threats to our way of life in such works as Conviction and Conflict: Islam, Christianity and World Order (2005), Triple Jeopardy for the West (2012) and Faith, Freedom and the Future (2016). Some of the material that contributed to these books first appeared in Standpoint, the magazine of ideas that I founded and edited from 2008 to 2018. I am proud to have published Michael and to count him as a friend.

Now, aged 72, he has opened a new chapter in his remarkable life by joining the long and eminent list of converts to Catholicism. From St John Henry Newman to the late Graham Leonard, former Anglican Bishop of London, many distinguished Anglican clergy have trodden this path. So, too, have laymen and women, from writers such as GK Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh to politicians such as Frank Longford and Tony Blair. Such conversions have often been attended by fierce controversy and have usually involved a real sacrifice by the convert. So it is gratifying that Archbishop Welby has greeted the departure of Dr Nazir-Ali graciously, paying tribute to “his expertise in evangelism, interfaith dialogue, ecumenism and theological education”. All the same, some will wonder whether this great Anglican churchman — indeed, the greatest of his generation — would have converted to Rome if the Church of England had stayed true to its noblest traditions, especially if he had been called to lead it. 

Yet God has his purposes for us all and perhaps Michael Nazir-Ali was always destined to find his ultimate vocation as a Catholic priest. Of his absolute integrity and unworldly devotion to the Christian mission there has never been the slightest doubt. He will be missed by the national Church he has left, but welcomed by the universal Church he has now joined. May God bless Father Michael, as he will soon be known, for all that he has done in the past and everything he shall do in his future ministry.

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