A Cathedral, a Conversion, and a photograph that has broken my heart. The surrender of Bristol Cathedral to Islam.

By Gavin Ashenden.

March 13, 2026

Halfway Down the Nave

I have just seen a photograph that stopped me in my tracks and wounded my heart.

It shows Muslims sitting on the floor inside Bristol Cathedral, eating their Ramadan Iftar meal.

For most people this will look like a gesture of hospitality — a moment of interfaith goodwill.

For me it is something else entirely.

At the entrance to this cathedral the call to prayer was sounded. You may not know what the prayer consists of? You should know.

“Allah is the greatest…

I testify there is no god but Allah…

I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah…

Come to prayer.”

Historically and culturally, the adhan functions as:

· A proclamation of Islamic faith

· A claim that a place has become a place of Muslim prayer

· A signal that an area belongs to the “realm of Islam” (dar al-Islam)

That is why historically the adhan was used to mark the establishment of Islam in a city.

Fifty years ago, in that very building, my life changed forever.

And in the photograph they are sitting almost exactly where it happened.

Halfway down the nave.

On the right-hand side.

That is where I gave my life to Christ.

Bristol Cathedral is therefore a precious place for me.

My life changed there at 8:30 on March 3rd, 1975.

It is a long time since I have spoken publicly about my evangelical conversion story, and I do not want to try the patience of my readers. But a small amount of context is necessary to explain why this photograph troubles me so deeply.

When I was eighteen I spent a year in Canada between school and university.

The most dramatic moment of that year came shortly before I returned to England. At a party in September 1973 I carelessly and irresponsibly drank nearly a litre of vodka.

I passed out. My medical friends suggest that the amount of alcohol paralysed my respiratory system. In such cases with such a quantity of alcohol, death follows.

What followed was what I can only describe as a classic near-death experience.

My soul left my body and entered a place of judgement.

The most striking feature of the experience was the presence of light — but not ordinary light. Even at eighteen I somehow knew I was encountering something different: not created light, but something behind light itself. It was ‘uncreated light.’ I had never heard the term. But that is what ‘it’ or ‘Who’ it was. It was as if light had its source there. Words strain to describe it, but the distinction felt unmistakable.

I knew I was to be judged.

The thought occurred to me that I might be sent to hell. And yet another thought immediately followed: that even if that were the outcome, it would still mean that the universe was structured around justice — that good and evil were real, the ‘universe’ knew how to tell the difference between good and evil. It didn’t matter so much as to which side of the divide my life fell, what mattered was that the universe was configured to tell the difference and that mean that Justice lay at the heart of all that had been made. and that good and evil would ultimately be separated.

If I was condemned, that would be terrible for me — but very good for all else - the universe would prove to be a safe moral place.

Very strangely, a phrase from the Book of Revelation came to mind:

“And there was silence in heaven for half an hour.” And although in the Apocalypse it describes the fight between St Michael and the rebellious angels, there was silence at this moment in my being presented there for judgement. Why? I don’t know. There just was. That’s what happened

It was exactly like that.

There was a long silence while my judgement was considered.

The Presence before me was both singular and plural at the same time. I cannot explain how I knew this. But it seemed simply obvious.

Eventually the judgement was delivered.

I was forgiven.

And I was sent back. I wasn’t told why - but

‘There were things I had to do.’

When I ‘regained consciousness’ came to myself, found that I was after all alive, just after dawn that morning, I was astonished by how I felt.

Normally getting drunk, having too much alcohol makes me really quite unwell. The quantity I had consumed should have left me deeply unwell, perhaps terminally so.

Yet five hours later I felt physically, mentally and spiritually clean — better than I had ever felt in my life.

But I did nothing with this experience.

It simply happened to me.

It was so far beyond my understanding that I had no way of integrating it into my life. It remained a memory without interpretation.

I both understood it — and did not understand it at all.

Eighteen months later everything changed.

I was in the middle of my law degree and facing a crisis I did not know how to cope with.

My live-in girlfriend suffered from severe manic depression and was repeatedly talking about ending her life. I felt completely helpless.

I had hit a brick wall.

And then a curious thought came into my mind.

Have you ever been in a desperate situation before?

Yes, I had.

And what had happened then?

‘God’ had happened to me. ‘God’ rescued me. Why had I forgotten Him? How could I have ignored Him?

I realised, almost with embarrassment, that I had forgotten Him entirely.

I needed to find Him again.

This time the stakes were life and death.

I went to the local Anglican parish church.

The service itself left me rather underwhelmed. But the vicar — a perceptive and kind man — noticed me and struck up a conversation.

When I told him my story, he mentioned that a university mission was taking place that very week.

“If you are serious,” he said, “you should go and listen to a man called David Watson speaking about God.”

The title of the mission was:

My God Is Real.

I told my girlfriend we had to go.

It felt like the only possibility of hope in what had become a very dark situation.

Walking to the Cathedral that evening felt almost like an episode from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Every few hundred yards we ran into friends.

The first group were heading to a twenty-first birthday party.

“It’s Ginny’s 21st. You must come, -youcan’t not come - she’ll be upset.” they insisted.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the Cathedral to hear a man talk about God.”

They looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Having failed to persuade me they left laughing, singing, boisterous and jolly.

Several hundred yards later another group appeared — musicians I knew. We all played in the university symphony orchestra together.

The Chilingirian Quartet were performing late Beethoven for free. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Come with us,” they urged. No one interprets late Beethoven like these people do. It’s free. It’s not going to happen again.

“I’m going to the Cathedral to hear a man talk about God.”

The same conversation repeated itself twice more over the next 500 yards as I walked down Park Street.

By the fourth time I realised something strange was happening.

I had never before encountered such a series of interruptions pulling me away from one destination.

Even in my youthful naïveté I began to suspect there might be some kind of struggle going on — something connected with my soul.

Eventually we reached Bristol Cathedral.

I sat halfway down the nave on the right-hand side.

And there I listened as David Watson spoke about Jesus Christ.

He described Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As he spoke, something extraordinary happened.

The experience I had had eighteen months earlier suddenly began to make sense.

I had encountered light.

Jesus said, “I am the light.”

I had lost my way.

Jesus said, “I am the way.”

I was searching for truth.

Jesus said, “I am the truth.”

And I had been forgiven — completely and inexplicably forgiven.

Jesus said he had came to bring the forgiveness of sins.

Only Christ claimed authority to forgive sins.

As I tried to construct a kind of photo-fit of the God I had encountered, it began to take on the face of Jesus.

Being a law student, I wondered if criteria we were used to in the law would help.

On the balance of probability, Jesus was who He said He was. ‘Beyond reasonable doubt?” I was beginning to think so.

And so, halfway down the nave of Bristol Cathedral, I surrendered my life to Him.

Which is why the photograph I saw today is so troubling.

In that photograph a group of Muslims sit on the floor of the Cathedral eating their Ramadan meal.

Almost exactly where I had knelt.

I had been persuaded that Jesus is the Son of God who died for the sins of the world.

The faith represented by those gathered in the photograph teaches that this belief is false — even blasphemous. They teach that either Jesus did not say those things and was misreported or that it was a case of self-deception on his part, or a lie.

There may not have been a burning bush, but I had met God here in the form of His Son, and he had, beginning with that night, turned my life round. He had freed me from my disorders, replaced confusion with the presence of his Holy Spirit; he had seen me through every crisis and cross roads for the fifty years since. He had never let me down, not even in the worst moments of unsupportable pain, despair and anxiety, and there have been many of those.

The Cathedral that once hosted a mission proclaiming Christ as Lord is now hosting a religious gathering that explicitly denies Jesus is Lord. They deny he is the Way truth and the life. They deny he is the Son of God, incarnate to take our human condition on himself to free us and carry us to heaven. They have taken over a building that was created to be a tabernacle for the miraculous host in the miraculous mass and claimed it for a warlord who demands surrender or death? It was once captured by Protestants who banned the mass and replaced it with a meal of remembrance - an act which denied the concept of the stones shaped around the tabernacle set on the altar; and now it had been captured again for a meal that was so much worse in concept and practice, a meal celebrating Mohammed.