page_title: Michael Nazir-Ali
section_title: Ordained ministry and public career
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Nazir-Ali / Ordained ministry and public career
caption_attribution_description: English: Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali. II. International Conference on Christian Persecution
context_page_description: Michael James Nazir-Ali is an Anglican bishop who was the 106th Bishop of Rochester in the Church of England from 1994 to 2009. He is now director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue, and has been Visiting Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, in the United States, since 2010. He is a dual citizen of Pakistan and Britain.
context_section_description: Nazir-Ali was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1976 and worked in Karachi and Lahore. He became the first Bishop of Raiwind in West Punjab (1984–86), at the time he was the youngest bishop in the Anglican Communion. When his life was endangered in Pakistan in 1986, Robert Runcie, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, arranged for his refuge in England. Nazir-Ali said, "the reason behind some of the difficulties I was facing was removed when General Zia was killed - unfortunately for him, and I am now not doing the work that I was doing at the time with the very poor". He became an assistant to the Archbishop at Lambeth and assisted with the planning of the 1988 Lambeth Conference; he was General Secretary of the Church Mission Society 1989–1994 and concurrently an Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Southwark. He was appointed Bishop of Rochester, England in 1994, and in 1999 entered the House of Lords as one of the "Lords Spiritual" because of his seniority in episcopal office, the first religious leader from Asia to serve there. He was one of the final candidates for Archbishop of Canterbury, though Rowan Williams was appointed by the British prime minister, Tony Blair.
  Between 1997 and 2003, Nazir-Ali was chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's ethics and law committee. He was a leader of the Network for Inter-faith Concerns of the Anglican Communion. and led the dialogue with Al-Azhar. He is also a founding member of the Dialogue of Scholars founded after the 9/11 attacks. For many years, he served as a member of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and, more latterly, of the International Anglican–Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM).
caption: Michael Nazir-Ali in Central Europe
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