Christian Witness Between Continuity and New Beginnings

Christian Witness Between Continuity and New Beginnings
Author: Martin Tamcke
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2006
Genre: Middle East
ISBN: 9783825898540

Missions to, from and within the Middle East have shaped the region in multitudinous ways since the 19th century. This collection of essays from a range of international scholars explores this immensely significant subject using a range of disciplines, including theology, history, and geography. This interdisciplinary approach helps to provide a thorough overview of the often complex and multi-layered topic of missions and the Middle East in contemporary research, and will be of interest to all who seek to improve their understanding of the role of religion in the Middle East.

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion
Author: Eleanor Tejirian
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231138652

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion surveys two thousand years of the Christian missionary enterprise in the Middle East within the context of the region's political evolution. Its broad, rich narrative follows Christian missions as they interacted with imperial powers and as the momentum of religious change shifted from Christianity to Islam and back, adding new dimensions to the history of the region and the nature of the relationship between the Middle East and the West. Historians and political scientists increasingly recognize the importance of integrating religion into political analysis, and this volume, using long-neglected sources, uniquely advances this effort. It surveys Christian missions from the earliest days of Christianity to the present, paying particular attention to the role of Christian missions, both Protestant and Catholic, in shaping the political and economic imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon delineate the ongoing tensions between conversion and the focus on witness and "good works" within the missionary movement, which contributed to the development and spread of nongovernmental organizations. Through its conscientious, systematic study, this volume offers an unparalleled encounter with the social, political, and economic consequences of such trends.

The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870

The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870
Author: Thomas O'Flynn
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1141
Release: 2017-08-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004313540

Winner of The 2018 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award In The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870, Thomas O'Flynn vividly paints the life and times of missionary enterprises in early nineteenth-century Russia and Persia at a moment of immense change when Tsarist Russia embarked on an expansionist campaign reaching to the Caucasus. Simultaneously he charts the relationship between the new Persian dynasty of the Qājārs and missionary activity on the part of European and American missionaries. This book reconstructs that world from a predominantly religious perspective. It recounts the sustaining ideals as well as the everyday struggles of the western missionaries, Protestant (Scottish, Basel and American Congregationalist) and Catholic (Jesuit and Vincentian). It looks at the reactions of diverse tribal peoples, the Tatars of the North Caucasus, the Kabardians and Circassians. Persia was the ultimate goal of these missionaries, which they eventually reached in the 1820s. Altogether this study throws light on the troubled course of history in West Asia and provides the background to politico-religious conflicts in Chechnya and Persia that persist to the present day.

Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine

Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine
Author: Laura Robson
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292726538

Drawing on a rich base of British archival materials, Arabic periodicals, and secondary sources, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine brings to light the ways in which the British colonial state in Palestine exacerbated sectarianism. By transforming Muslim, Christian, and Jewish religious identities into legal categories, Laura Robson argues, the British ultimately marginalized Christian communities in Palestine. Robson explores the turning points that developed as a result of such policies, many of which led to permanent changes in the region's political landscapes. Cases include the British refusal to support Arab Christian leadership within Greek-controlled Orthodox churches, attempts to avert involvement from French or Vatican-related groups by sidelining Latin and Eastern Rite Catholics, and interfering with Arab Christians' efforts to cooperate with Muslims in objecting to Zionist expansion. Challenging the widespread but mistaken notion that violent sectarianism was endemic to Palestine, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine shows that it was intentionally stoked in the wake of British rule beginning in 1917, with catastrophic effects well into the twenty-first century.

Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria

Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria
Author: Deanna Ferree Womack
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2019-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474436730

The Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. This book offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda, from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, it challenges historiography that focuses on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syrian Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today.

New Faith in Ancient Lands

New Faith in Ancient Lands
Author: Heleen Murre-van den Berg
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2007-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047411404

Over the centuries, the Middle East has held an important place in the religious consciousness of many Christians in West and East. In the nineteenth century, these interests culminated in extensive missionary work of Protestant and Roman Catholic organisations, among Eastern Christians, Muslims and Jews. The present volume, in articles written by an international group of scholars, discusses themes like the historical background of Christian geopiety among Roman Catholics and Protestants, and the internal tensions and conflicting aims of missions and missionaries, such as between nationalist and internationalist interests, between various rival organisations and between conversionalist and civilizational aims of missions in the Ottoman Empire. In a synthetic overview and a comprehensive bibliography an up-to-date introduction into this field is provided.

The Pentecostal Mission in Palestine

The Pentecostal Mission in Palestine
Author: Eric Nelson Newberg
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2012-06-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1610975537

The Pentecostal mission in Palestine is a virtually unknown episode in the history of Pentecostalism. Its story begins in 1906 at the Azusa Street Revival, from which missionaries were sent to Palestine. In its first thirty years, the Pentecostal mission in Palestine gained a foothold in Jerusalem and expanded its reach into Jordan, Syria, and Iran. It was severely tested and lost traction during the tumultuous period of the Arab Revolts, World War II, and the Partition Crisis. With the catastrophic war of 1948, the Pentecostal missionaries fled as their Arab clients were swept away in the Palestinian Diaspora. After 1948, a valiant attempt was made to revive the mission, but only with relative success. Although the Pentecostal missionaries failed in their objective of converting Jews and Muslims, they were eyewitnesses of the formative events of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Newberg argues that the Pentecostal missionaries functioned as brokers of Pentecostal Zionism. He offers a postcolonial assessment of the Pentecostal missionaries, crediting them for advocating philosemitism, yet bringing them up short for disregarding the civil rights of Palestinian Arabs, espousing Islamophobia, and contributing to the forces working against peace in the Holy Land.

A Liminal Church

A Liminal Church
Author: Maria Chiara Rioli
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004423710

Through largely unpublished archives in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, and the Pius XII papers, in A Liminal Church Maria Chiara Rioli offers an appraisal of Jerusalem’s Roman Catholic diocese in the Palestine War and its aftermath.

Arab Evangelicals in Israel

Arab Evangelicals in Israel
Author: Azar Ajaj
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2016-07-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498279511

The essays contained in this book provide an introduction to the history, challenges, and hopes of contemporary evangelical Arab Christians in Israel (and to a lesser degree in the West Bank). After opening with a general overview of Arab Christianity in the Holy Land, the following chapters treat different aspects of the evangelical Arab experience: the founding of the Convention of Evangelical Churches in Israel (CECI) as well as a theological seminary for the training of church workers (Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary [NETS]), the self-understanding of Arab Baptists in terms of their identity and relation to other groups in Israel, an Arab perspective on the relationship between Arab evangelicals and Messianic Jews, as well as the struggles, hopes, and fears of another "evangelical" community that is usually hidden from view, namely, that of Muslim converts to Christianity in Israel, the West Bank, and the Middle East in general. The final chapter offers a detailed bibliography on "Arabophone Christianity" in Israel and Palestine.