The history of Anglican worship in Qatar began
with visits to the oil field by Anglican chaplains of the Iraq Petroleum
Company (the parent of QPC) from Iraq in the 1930s and 40s. the Company
appointed the Reverend K. T. Jenkins as the first resident chaplain in
Qatar in April, 1951. He was succeeded by the Reverend J. M. Howells
(1-9-1958 to 31-1-1962). There were in addition visits by other
chaplains from Kirkuk. In 1959 and subsequent years Archbishop Campbell
MacInnis, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem in whose diocese Qatar
lay visited Doha and Umm Said. His successors have kept this visiting a
regular feature even since.
In 1962 the Reverend Alun Morris was appointed
Archdeacon of Eastern Arabia and the Gulf and began to establish the
joint Anglican parish of Qatar and the Trucial States, and in 1963 the
Reverend Richard Matthews was appointed chaplain of the joint parish.
Mr. Matthews at first visited both parts of the parish regularly from
Bahrain, the moved to Abu Dhabi and visited Qatar every month and
sometimes more often.
In 1967 the Reverend David Elliot was appointed
as Anglican chaplain to the joint parish, living in Abu Dhabi and
visiting Qatar regularly until he left in 1969. For a short interim
chaplains from Bahrain visited Qatar. In 1970 the Venerable Ralph
Lindley was installed as Archdeacon in Abu Dhabi and in turn continued
monthly visits to Qatar until he left in May, 1978. He was followed by
the Venerable Clive Handford as Archdeacon in the Gulf and chaplain to
the joint parish of Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
Meanwhile the Province of Jerusalem and the East
had been divided in 1976 into four dioceses and the parish of Abu Dhabi
and Qatar came under the diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf. During all
this period regular visits had been paid by the Archbishop in Jerusalem
and these were continued by the Anglican Bishop of the new diocese, who
from 1976 was resident in Cyprus.
In the earliest days services were held only in
Umm Said and Dukhan. Later these were extended to Doha as the Christian
population arrived from 1949 and began to grow. Lay readers licensed by
the Anglican Bishops would hold services on days when chaplains could
not be present.
It will be seen from this that the Anglican
worship under the direction of the Archbishop in Jerusalem and later the
Bishop in Cyprus has been continuous in Qatar since the late 1930s.
Edward Henderson
The Church in Qatar - Some Reminiscences
In the early eighties, the Qatar economy was
booming. British companies dominated commerce and the eight to nine
thousand British expatriates made up the largest Western community. Not
all had easy lives; many found daily life difficult, with little contact
with Qatari people, and it was not surprising that rumours flourished.
One of the more persistent stories was that “the church” – meaning the
Church of England – was banned. This was blamed variously on the
Ayatollah Khomeini, recently in power across the Gulf, on extremist
Islam or on the neighboring Saudis.
From my own perspective as British Ambassador,
nothing could have been further from the truth. Every Sunday Christians
from a number of countries gathered in one of the British schools and
once a month the vicar came down from Abu Dhabi to hold communion,
conducting christenings and encourage his flock. Ah, said the rumour
mill, he has to enter in disguise. Not true: his dog-collar was evident,
though I doubt whether it signified a great deal to airport officials,
and his passport gave his occupation as – equally mystifying – Clerk in
Holy Orders.
One December a period of mourning was declared
throughout the Arab world and families were urged not to hold public
weddings and festivals but send money instead to help earthquake victims
in Yemen and the families of bereaved in Lebanon, devastated by Israeli
invasion. Hotels cancelled all festivities and the Westerners concluded
– quite wrongly – that Christmas had been targeted, a gesture to
appease Iran. The Economist carried a full-page article reporting the
upsurge of extremism in the Gulf, putting two and two together and
making nine.
The then Amir, Sheikh Khalifa, like his son
today, attached great importance to his Islamic responsibilities towards
the people of the book and he gave me a warm welcome when I called to
discuss arrangements for the Christian celebration of our great
festival. He could not resist a dig at Western priorities and said he
was delighted I was calling to discuss worship, for once, and not the
usual Western obsessions with liquor and women driving. Certainly we
could – indeed should – hold Christian services, but he gave me a
difficult time over little old men in red cloaks and white beards,
reindeers and noisy parties. In which of our passages of scriptures did
they appear? But there was only encouragement for the commemoration of
Christ’s birth and the subsequent midnight service was so well attended
that it filled the courtyard of the school, a glorious moonlit night and
a triumphant chorus of the familiar anthems.
The thought occurred to me then, as it has so
often since, that prejudice and division arise from misunderstanding,
and where else are misconceptions so prevalent as between us and the
world of Islam?
At the end of our stay in Doha, though we were
indifferent church-goers, my wife and I were given a warm farewell from
the church and a salver inscribed with a message from the friends we had
made. Certainly there was no building, but that meant there were no
problems of maintenance, re-building appeal, heating (or, rather,
cooling) costs to worry about. It was a church in the purest sense and
after thirty years traveling the world, in the course of which we
worshipped in many buildings, large and small, grand and primitive, we
look back on the church in Qatar with special affection.
S. Day
British Ambassador in Qatar, 1981 – 84
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