Religious voluntarism, political individualism, and the secular: nineteenth-century evangelical encounters in the Middle East

ABSTRACT

In 1819, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) began a mission in the Middle East. Though initially the missionaries sought to convert Muslims and Jews to the Christian faith, they soon turned to revitalizing their co-religionists. This puzzling situation of Christians proselytizing other Christians occurred because the two groups of Christians, American and Middle Eastern, held very different cultural and political notions of what that identity meant. In the end, the American mission remained minimally effective at conversion but influential in its secular goals of educating, furthering religious freedom, and modernization. Counter-intuitively, the missionaries’ religious proselytizing became implicated in a kind of secularization.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Dr. Joseph Bradley for his support in researching and writing this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Palestine Mission, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), pp.252--3.

2. H. Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Middle East: Western Missions and the Eastern Churches, Islam and Judaism’, in S. Gilley and B. Stanley (eds.), World Christianities, C. 1815–C.1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.464.

3. See among others, In M. Ali Doğan and H.J. Sharkey (eds.), American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011); T.S. Kidd, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp.37–57; U. Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); C.L. Heyrman, American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015); E.H. Tejirian and R.S. Simon, Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp.69--93; S. Khalaf, Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820–60 (London: Routledge, 2012).

4. To be sure, the ABCFM's mission included several mission stations, many missionaries, Board members at home, and American supporters, who all had different perspectives and purposes, but in this article, I take an overall picture of this encounter during its formative period, using the published materials put out in the widely read Missionary Herald. Of course, these were redacted and edited by the home office in Boston and did not necessarily represent the views of the individual missionaries in the field. For a more detailed picture of the different players taken from their private correspondence, see Heyrman, American Apostles.

5. M. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1992), p.169.

6. H.J. Sharkey, ‘American Missionaries and the Middle East: A History Enmeshed’, in Doğan and Sharkey (eds.), American Missionaries, p.12.

7. C.A. Maxfield III, ‘The “Reflex Influence” of Missions: The Domestic Operations of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ (PhD thesis, Union Theological Seminary, 1995), p.14; B. Stanley, ‘Christian Missions and the Enlightenment: A Reevaluation’, in B. Stanley (ed.), Christian Missions and the Enlightenment (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2001), pp.1--3; W.E. Strong, The Story of the American Board (New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969), pp.3--11; M.A. Doğan, ‘From New England into New Lands’, in Doğan and Sharkey (eds.), American Missionaries, pp.3--10; C.J. Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half of the Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp.4--5.

8. E.B. Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p.127; Kling, ‘The New Divinity and the Origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’, Church History, Vol.72, No.4 (2003), p.811; Noll, History of Christianity, pp.185--6; M.A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p.254.

9. Holifield, Theology in America, pp.127, 136--8, 148--9; Kling, ‘The New Divinity’, pp.801–7; Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World, pp.4–9; R.L. Rogers, ‘“A Bright and New Constellation”: Millennial Narratives and the Origins of American Foreign Missions’, in W.R. Shenk (ed.), North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), pp.39--60; W.R. Hutchison, ‘New England's Further Errand: Millennial Belief and the Beginnings of Foreign Missions’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol.94 (1982), pp.49--64.

10. Parsons died of dysentery in Alexandria, and Fisk died from a wounded arm caused by a Bedouin attack during travel. H. Obenzinger, ‘Holy Land Narrative and American Covenant: Levi Parsons, Pliny Fisk and the Palestine Mission’, Religion and Literature, Vol.35, No.2–3 (2003), p.263; Doğan, ‘From New England into New Lands’, p.15.

11. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.18 (1822), p.218; Vol.19 (1823), pp.110, 141, 180; Vol.58 (1862), pp.9--12; Phillips, Protestant America; D.K. Showalter, ‘The 1810 Formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’, in C. Putney and P.T. Burlin (eds.), The Role of the American Board in the World: Bicentennial Reflections on the Organization's Missionary Work, 1810-2010 (Eugene, OR: Wipf& Stock, 2012), p.7.

12. J.L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), p.16; A. Palmer, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1992), pp.1, 7, 115; Strong, Story of the American Board, p.80.

13. D.A. Howard, The History of Turkey, in F.W. Thackeray and J.E. Findling (ed.), The Greenwood Histories of Modern Nations (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001), p.62; U. Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, pp.32–5.

14. Howard, History of Turkey, pp.62--3, H.-L. Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change in Turkey (Nineteenth to First Half of Twentieth Century)’, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations Vol.13, No.4 (2002), p.393; P.E. Shaw, American Contacts with the Eastern Churches, 1820–1870 (Chicago: American Society of Church History, 1937), pp.90--91.

15. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.15 (1819), p.45.

16. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.306.

17. While the missionaries did not have a significant mission to orthodox Muslims, they did work among the Druze, a heterodox Muslim group.

18. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.19 (1823), p.376.

19. H. Badr, ‘Mission To “Nominal Christians”: The Policy and Practice of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Its Missionaries Concerning Eastern Churches Which Led to the Organization of a Protestant Church in Beruit (1819--1848)’ (PhD thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1992), p.49; Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change’, pp.392–3; Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.466; Strong, Story of the American Board, p.90; ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.44 (1848), p.3.

20. The term ‘nominal Christians’ is one way the missionaries used to designate non-Evangelical Christians in the Middle East (e.g. Catholics, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox). Badr argues that the term is not necessarily denunciatory because it was also used to apply to any Christian without a conversion experience, regardless of denomination or ethnicity. Badr, ‘Mission To “Nominal Christians”’, p.9--10.

21. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.19 (1823), p.376.

22. T.S. Kidd, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp.37–57.

23. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.15 (1819), p.265; Badr, ‘Mission To “Nominal Christians”’, pp.9--10, 78--9.

24. Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Introduction, in H. Murre-van den Berg (ed.), New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p.17; Obenzinger, ‘Holy Land Narrative’, pp.241–67; L.I. Vogel, To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), pp.99--106.

25. U. Makdisi, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity’, The American Historical Review, Vol.102, No.3 (1997), p.687.

26. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.302.

27. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.18 (1822), p.109.

28. The most famous of the nineteenth century accounts of the Holy Land was William Thomson's The Land and the Book, but this was just one of many published in periodicals and books.

29. Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.471.

30. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.254.

31. Ibid., p.109.

32. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.319.

33. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.15 (1819), p.265.

34. Murre-van den Berg, Introduction, p.17.

35. Makdisi, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible’, p.683.

36. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.19 (1823), p.143.

37. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.341.

38. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.341.

39. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.33 (1837), pp.113--26.

40. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.29 (1833), p.386.

41. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.270.

42. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.18 (1822), p.41; Vol.19 (1823), p.140.

43. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.342

44. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.100.

45. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.41 (1845), p.15.

46. Heyrman, American Apostles, p.126.

47. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), pp.99, 105.

48. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.18 (1822), p.255.

49. Ibid., p.37.

50. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.19 (1823), p.375.

51. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1823), p.97.

52. Heyrman, American Apostles, p.132.

53. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.18 (1822), p.33.

54. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.215; Vol.21 (1825), p.108.

55. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.214.

56. A.E. McGrath (ed.), The Christian Theology Reader, 2nd ed. (Malden: Blackwell, 2001), p.95.

57. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.20 (1824), p.171.

58. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.21 (1825), p.92; R.L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East: 1820–1960 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1970), p.24.

59. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.41 (1845), p.6; D.P. Corr, ‘“The Field Is the World”: Proclaiming, Translating, and Serving by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810–40’ (PhD thesis, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1993), p.216; Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, p.33; Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East, pp.20--22; Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.460; Strong, Story of the American Board, p.103.

60. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.277; A. Mansoori, ‘American Missionaries in Iran, 1834--1934’ (PhD thesis, Ball State University, 1986), p.200; Murre-Van Den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.459.

61. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), pp.77, 80; Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, p.30; Murre-Van Den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.468.

62. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, p.19 (1823), pp.112--3; Vol.44 (1848), p.5; Vol.46 (1850), p.8; Vol.59 (1863), pp.4--5. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, p.31; Makdisi, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible’, p.694; Phillips, Protestant America, p.139; B.J. Merguerian, ‘“Missions in Eden”: Shaping an Educational and social Program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855--1895)’, in Murre-van den Berg (ed.), New Faith in Ancient Lands, pp.241--6.

63. ABCFM, Annual Report (1842), pp.54--7.

64. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.17 (1821), p.110; Vol.36 (1840), p.7; Vol.41 (1845), p.15.

65. H. Badr, ‘American Protestant Missionary Beginnings in Beruit and Istanbul: Policy, Politics, Practice and Response’, in Murre-van den Berg (ed.), New Faith in Ancient Lands, p.225.

66. Shaw, American Contacts, p.96; P. Harris, ‘Denominationalism and Democracy: Ecclesiastical Issues Underlying Rufus Anderson's Three Self Program’, in Shenk, North American Foreign Missions, p.69; Goddard, History of Christian–Muslim Relations, p.124.

67. Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World, p.143.

68. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, p.44 (1848), p.6; Vol.46 (1850), p.6; Vol.17 (1821), p.203; Vol.20 (1824), pp.169–70.

69. Makdisi, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible’, p.690; J. Salt, ‘Trouble Wherever They Went: American Missionaries in Anatolia and Ottoman Syria in the Nineteenth Century’, Muslim World, p.92, No.3--4 (2002), no page numbers; Shaw, American Contacts, pp.72–3; Strong, The Story of the American Board, p.88. For more on the story of A. Shidyaq, see Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven.

70. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.41 (1845), p.3.

71. Shaw, American Contacts, p.87. However, compare these examples with Persia, where there was less persecution. Mansoori, ‘American Missionaries in Iran’, pp.37--44; Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World, p.159.

72. Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World, pp.160--61; Shaw, American Contacts, pp.88--92; Strong, Story of the American Board, Vol.93, pp.105–6.

73. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.41 (1845), p.4.

74. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.44 (1848), p.4.

75. R.L. Daniel, ‘American Influences in the Near East before 1861’, American Quarterly, Vol.16, No.1 (1964), p.75; Howard, The History of Turkey, pp.62--3; Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change’, p.684; Palmer, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, pp.126--7; H. Goddard, A History of Christian–Muslim Relations (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2000), p.128; Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, pp.184--7; Salt, ‘Trouble Wherever They Went’.

76. S. Deringil, Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Sharkey, ‘American Missionaries’, p.18.

77. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.44 (1848), p.4.

78. The ABCFM missionaries were among the first to send back reports of the Armenian massacre which began in 1915. Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change’, p.404; Salt, ‘Trouble Wherever They Went’.

79. Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change’, p.394; Salt, ‘Trouble Wherever They Went’; Harris, ‘Denominationalism and Democracy’, p.85.

80. ABCFM, Missionary Herald, Vol.58 (1862), pp.9--12; Vol.59 (1863), pp.3--5; Makdisi, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible’, p.697; Salt, ‘Trouble Wherever They Went’; Kidd, American Christians and Islam, pp.50--7.

81. Makdisi, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible’, pp.697, 707. As Murre-van den Berg notes, secularization occurred across the missions organized by various countries. Introduction, pp.8--9.

82. E. Fleischmann, ‘Evangelization or Education: American Protestant Missionaries, the American Board, and the Girls and Women of Syria (1830--1910)’, in Murre-van den Berg (ed.), New Faith in Ancient Lands, pp.263--80. This impulse to secularize education did not proceed without conflict among the missionaries and the oversight of the Board in Boston. See C. Yetkiner, ‘At the Center of the Debate: Bebek Seminary and the Educational Policy of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1840--1860)’, in Doğan and Sharkey (eds.), American Missionaries and the Middle East, pp.63--83; C. Goffman, ‘From Religious to American Proselytism: Mary Mills Patrick and the “Sanctification of the Intellect”’, in Doğan and Sharkey (eds.), American Missionaries and the Middle East, pp.84--121; Tejirian and Simon, Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion, p.84.

83. Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change’, p.404.

84. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, p.60.

85. Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.470.

86. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, p.36.

87. Salt, ‘Trouble Wherever They Went’.

88. Kieser, ‘Mission as Factor of Change’, p.391; Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Middle East’, p.470.

89. For example, see B. Reeves-Ellington, ‘PetkoSlaveykov, the Protestant Press, and the Gendered Language of Moral Reform in Bulgarian Nationalism’, in Doğan and Sharkey (eds.), American Missionaries and the Middle East, pp.211--36; and Merguerian, ‘Missions in Eden’, pp.241--61.

90. Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, p.5.

91. See for instance, C. Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 2007); J. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); M. Riesebrodt, Religion in the Modern World: Between Secularization and Resurgence, Max Weber Program 2014/01 (Florence: European University Institute, 2014), pp.1–8.

92. See R. Finke and R. Stark, The Churching of America: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005).

93. Note this is how Augustine understood the secular (saeculum) as referring to the temporal, material world and not something opposed to faith. Augustine, City of God, H. Bettenson (trans.) (London, Penguin Classics, 2003); R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).