At a small Persian church in Chicago’s western suburbs, the pastor bowed his head and offered a special prayer for regime change and freedom of worship in his native Iran, as the five-week U.S.-Israeli war there rages on.

“We pray to God to tear down the darkness power from Iran and bring his kingdom and give people peace,” the Rev. James Shahabi said in Persian during a Palm Sunday service at Kheimeh Molaghat church in Addison, Ill. “And let his name be glorified in Iran freely.”

“Amen,” the predominantly Iranian American congregation responded in unison.

As the church prepares Sunday to celebrate Christ’s resurrection on Easter, its members call for renewal and liberation of their homeland as the fate of its governance hangs in the balance.

Although Roman Catholic leaders — most prominently Pope Leo XIV — have resolutely criticized the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, the congregants at Kheimeh Molaghat staunchly champion it, longing for the fall of the theocratic leadership of the Islamic Republic, where Christians and other religious minorities are heavily persecuted.

They say they yearn for a day when Iranians of all religions will be allowed to worship freely in their homeland.

And they applaud President Trump’s vow to “Make Iran Great Again.” Early in the war, Trump called for the overthrow of the Iranian government and its military’s unconditional surrender, though he has issued vague and contradictory statements since.

On Wednesday, during Trump’s first national address since the U.S.-Israeli attacks started the war Feb. 28, he said that U.S. forces would “finish the job” soon, following weeks of often conflicting messages on the military operation.

“If Iran gets great, I think the world will get great,” said Narjes Delacai, 66, who left the northern Iranian city of Mashhad decades ago.

Aria Bahraman, 44, who says he fled religious oppression in Iran about 15 years ago, believes a change of government in Tehran would weaken the many Iranian-backed militant groups scattered across the Middle East, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, making the world safer and more peaceful.

“If you destroy the head of the snake, the whole snake is gone,” he said.

Catholic leaders decry the war

Their words of support for the war are in stark contrast to those of many Christian leaders who have opposed the military operation in Iran and how the Trump administration has conducted it.

Chicago-born Pope Leo has repeatedly called for a ceasefire, and on Tuesday he urged Trump to look for an “off-ramp” to end the war.

During his inaugural Palm Sunday address, the pontiff denounced those who use God to justify war and urged prayers for peace, particularly for those suffering in the Middle East.

“Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Cardinal Blase Cupich last month decried a video the White House posted online that spliced images of action scenes in movies with real videos of U.S. bombing in Iran.

“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment, as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through while we’re waiting in line at the grocery store,” the archbishop of Chicago said in a statement. “But, in the end, we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military.”

The National Council of Churches has also opposed what it calls the “unauthorized military aggression in Iran,” lamenting “the loss of life from these aggressive acts and gratuitous violence by the U.S. and Israel against the Iranian people, which has only served to further destabilize the region, cripple infrastructure and harm the most vulnerable.”

The war has proved broadly unpopular among Americans, with roughly 61% disapproving of Trump’s management of the conflict and 59% believing the U.S. decision to use military force was wrong, according to a Pew Research Center poll released March 25.

As for the pastor at Kheimeh Molaghat, Shahabi said he’s confident the Trump administration will persevere in toppling the Iranian government and restoring governance to the people, as the president promised in the war’s first hours.

The clergyman warned, however, that failure to do so would jeopardize the future of Iran and the stability of the entire Middle East, unleashing an even more volatile and repressive Tehran government in the war’s wake.

“Trump has to finish it. He has no other option … because if he doesn’t finish, the Islamic Republic will destroy the whole safety of the Middle East,” Shahabi said. “They are going to get worse and worse. The U.S. has to finish it and make sure that there is a very stable, new government.”

‘Save us from this brutal regime’

During the Palm Sunday service, the in-person audience at the nondenominational church was much smaller than on a typical Sunday, with only about half a dozen members dotting the rows of blue chairs in front of the stage.

The pastor said many congregants were absent because they had traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend a March 29 rally of Iranian diaspora in support of the war.

Among them was church member Mahdi Rahbar, who said he had joined a crowd of thousands at the demonstration on the National Mall, a day after nationwide “No Kings” rallies protested the war and other Trump policies.

In front of the U.S. Capitol, the 30-year-old from suburban Chicago waved an American flag and the tricolor lion-and-sun flag — the flag of Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that has become a symbol of opposition to the government in Tehran.

“It’s important for everyone in the world to know this ongoing war is for rescuing the Iranian people from this regime,” said Rahbar, who left Iran five years ago. “Save us from this brutal regime.”

Back then, there was no freedom of speech, human rights abuses were rampant and the rights of women in particular were severely restricted, he recalled.

His family and friends in Iran say the oppression has only escalated in the years since — just three months ago, the government brutally crushed nationwide protests, killing thousands of citizens and arresting thousands more. Rahbar lives in constant fear for the safety of his loved ones back home.

“I think most people don’t understand what it means to live under a dictatorship and such a government,” he said. “I never thought I would want my country to be bombed. But it’s not actually my country. … It’s certain places that are occupied by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the regime that actually kills Iranians.”

Rahbar was raised in a Muslim family, but said he was agnostic when he left Iran.

Shortly after arriving in the United States, he met American Christians at the university he attended and asked to join them at a Bible study.

This kind of inquiry is prohibited in Iran, where it is illegal for a Muslim to convert to Christianity.

Religious persecution

Amnesty International has repeatedly condemned religious persecution in Iran, noting in its 2024 report that minority faiths — including Bahais, Christians, Jews and Sunni Muslims — have suffered discrimination in various aspects of life, including education access, employment and government positions.

Open worship can also be dangerous.

“Authorities subjected members of religious minorities to arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution and torture and other ill-treatment for professing, or practicing their faith,” the report said.

Conversion to a minority religion is particularly perilous in Iran, the global human rights advocacy organization found.

“People born to parents classified as Muslim by the authorities risked arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment and the death penalty for ‘apostasy’ if they adopted other religions or atheism,” the report said. “Authorities raided house churches and arbitrarily detained Christian converts.”

Iran is ranked the 10th-most dangerous nation for Christians, according to Open Doors International, a Christian advocacy nonprofit.

Armenian and Assyrian Christian communities in Iran are treated as “second-class citizens,” according to Open Doors.

“They are also banned from using the Persian language in religious activities and for religious materials, and are not allowed to engage with Persian-speaking people in church services,” the nonprofit reported.

Converts, though, face the greatest risk, according to Open Doors.

After the service at Kheimeh Molaghat, over coffee and sweets in the church fellowship hall, Bahraman recounted how armed Iranian forces raided the home of his parents about 15 years ago because their family had converted to Christianity. His mother and father were detained for about a month, he said.

His mom served as the pastor for their church, which met in secret in their home along with 17 or 18 fellow converts for daily services.

At the time, Bahraman had 5,000 Persian Bibles, which are illegal in Iran, stored in his own apartment. Church members would pass them out surreptitiously for evangelism to prospective Iranian converts.

When he learned of the raid on his parents, Bahraman rushed to throw out all of the Bibles in public dumpsters.

“Believe me, it is not easy to get rid of 5,000 books,” he recalled. “I remember going around and just watching my shadow, because you never know who is behind you.”

Discarding all of those sacred texts “was heartbreaking,” he recalled.

“It was painful to throw it away,” he said. “But what other choice have you got?”

Shortly after that incident, he abruptly fled Iran.

“What I love most about America is if I wake up in the morning and I want to go to a church, I can go to a church,” Bahraman said. “There is nobody stopping me.

“If I want to read a book, I can read a book,” he added. “No one is stopping me.”

The services at Kheimeh Molaghat are recorded and posted online, often viewed by thousands of remote worshipers. The church’s YouTube page has more than 26,000 subscribers.

The pastor says the online audience typically comprises Persian speakers from roughly a dozen countries including Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.

Shahabi was born into a deeply religious Muslim family and served as a Quran teacher in Iran.

But at 17, his father, a professor, was sent to prison for writing that religion and government should be separate, Shahabi said.

“They arrested him and took everything we had. Our home. Our clothes,” the pastor said, adding that he was left to care for his minor siblings. “I couldn’t survive.”

A friend in Turkey offered to help him and his family, so Shahabi went there as a refugee.

In Turkey, he met a young Iranian Christian pastor who gave him a Bible as a gift.

“There was a moment I just realized, ‘I need to listen.’ And I started reading the Bible and I listened to him more and more,” he recalled. “When he was praying for my needs, they would get answered. That was unusual for me.”

That pastor invited him and his brother to come to church the following Sunday. They accepted but were surprised to find the service took place in the pastor’s apartment. And they were the only worshipers.

“You guys are the first people I shared the Gospel with in this city,” the young pastor replied, Shahabi said.

Within six months, some 70 people were attending worship services in that home church. “Those were the years my life was very changed by coming to Christ,” Shahabi said.

He and his wife, Joy, also a Christian convert from Iran, came to the United States in 2013.

Shortly after their arrival, they attended a service at a large church in Naperville, marking the first time they had worshiped openly as Christians.

Joy Shahabi watched the crowd in awe.

“They were standing, worshiping God. Some of them were clapping,” she said. “Some of them put their heads down and were praying. Others had their hands raised to heaven.”

She recalled weeping uncontrollably.

“I had never had that experience, to freely be standing and I can worship God, shouting his name,” she said. “That was perfect. And no one was going to come and say, ‘Why are you worshiping God?’”

James and Joy Shahabi founded an online ministry in 2013 and then established an in-person church in 2016, first at another site in St. Charles and then in 2018 at the current location in Addison.

The pastor said that over the last decade or so, the church has sent thousands of illicit Bibles in Persian to Iran with a WhatsApp number written inside, so the retriever overseas can call or text for more information.

Praying at Easter

The church members plan to gather for a service at Kheimeh Molaghat on Easter Sunday, where they intend to once again pray together for the future of Iran and their loved ones back home.

They believe that democracy will come to their homeland one day.

“We have a long path to a democratic system,” Rahbar said. “We fought for 47 years.”

With democracy comes freedom of worship, he added.

“I don’t want to make everybody Christian. But I want them to have the chance to hear what Christianity [is] like. Because it made me free,” he said. “That’s how it should be. A democratic country has to go that way. To let people choose what to believe in.”

Leventis Lourgos writes for the Chicago Tribune.