New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Boston: Brill, 2006)
It is a common conceit that our problems are unique in human history. One of the reasons for studying history, of course, is to deflate that conceit by finding the overarching stories that have been part of human history for millennia. New Faith in Ancient Lands accomplishes this by giving historical insight into West/East religious encounters in the past two hundred years that evoke parallels with what we see in the news today.
Consider the story of Pope Gregory XIII who in 1582 sent two papal legates to the Coptic patriarch John XIV. In the middle of negotiations with the Coptic Church synod, John XIV mysteriously died. The legates were immediately arrested as spies and were not released until a ransom of 5,000 gold pieces was paid. As Anthony O'Mahony summarizes the end result of this attempt at reunion, "The results of the attempt at reunion remained ambiguous and contested through mutual lack of understanding between the two parties." (p.94)
Or consider the fate of Miss Matilda Creasy, one of the first female English missionaries to Jerusalem. Creasy became the treasurer for the Sarah Society, and partnered proselytization with the charitable work of the society. Most of the Sarah Society's money went to feed and clothe the poor women of the Jewish Quarter. On September 9, 1858, Matilda Creasy's beaten body was found outside the city of Jerusalem. Efforts to investigate the murder led to conflict between the Ta'amri Bedouin and the Ottoman government, resulting in the death of four of the Ottomon soldiers. No one was ever convicted for Miss Matilda Creasy's murder, but unflattering portraits of the Holy Land as a murderous land lived long after her.
Nor are all the stories negative: Consider the works of the Kaiserswerth Deaconess Institution. Founded in 1836 in Kaiserswerth Germany and funded by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, the Kaiserswerth deaconesses worked to establish the Orientarbeit, an educational and nursing program in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. Part of the Deaconness Institution mission was to raise up sisters from the local population. This partnership with local peoples contributed to the longevity of the Orientarbeit, and the last Kaiserswerth deaconess retired in 1974.
As Murre-van den Berg writes in her introduction, "There can be little doubt that the nineteenth century, like the early stages of the Crusader period, constituted a time in which influences and developments from many different parts of society contributed to an ever-increasing Christian interest in the Middle East." (p.17) The stories collected in this volume capture well the ambiguity, the struggles, and the seemingly few successes of Western missionary efforts in the Middle East. They are apt tales for our time.
Table of Contents:
Introduction / Heleen Murre-van den Berg
Spirituality and scholarship: the Holy Land in Jesuit eyes (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) / Bernard Heyberger and Chantal Verdeil
William McClure Thomson’s The Land and the Book (1859): pilgrimage and mission in Palestine / Heleen Murre-van den Berg
Fransciscains en terre sainte: de l’espace au territoire, entre opposition et adaptation / Giuseppe Buffon
Coptic Catholic church, the Apostolic Vicar Maximus Giuaid (1821-1831), the Propaganda Fide and the Franciscans in early nineteenth-century Egypt / Anthony O’Mahony
Danger and the missionary enterprise: the murder of Miss Matilda Creasy / Nancy L. Stockdale
Public space and private spheres: the foundation of St Luke’s Hospital of Nablus by the CMS (1891-1901) / Philippe Bormaud
Metamorphosis of a pietistic missionary and educational institution into a social services enterprise: the case of the Syrian Orphanage (1860-1945) / Roland Löffler
Deutschen Kurdenmissionen in Mahabad in ihrem Kontakt zu den orientalischen Christen / Martin Tamcke
German "Home Mission" abroad: the Orientarbeit of the Deaconess Institution Kaiserswerth in the Ottoman Empire / Uwe Kaminsky
American Protestant missionary beginnings in Beirut and Istanbul: policy, politics, practice and response / Habid Badr
"Missions in Eden": shaping an educational and social program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855-1895) / Barbara J. Merguerian
Evangelization or education: American Protestant missionaries, the American Board, and the Girls and Women of Syria (1830-1910) / Ellen Fleischmann
Muslim response to missionary activities in Eqypt: with a special reference to the Al-Azhar High Corps of ʻUlamâ (1925-1935) / Umar Ryad.
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