Vol. 28, No. 3July 2004

On Page98 Arabic Antimissionary Treatises: Muslim

Responses to Christian Evangelism in theModern Middle EastHeather J. Sharkey

104 Arabic Antimissionary Treatises: A SelectAnnotated BibliographyHeather J. Sharkey

107 Said’s Orientalism and the Study of ChristianMissionsHerb Swanson

108 Noteworthy112 Time to Give Up the Idea of Christian Mission

to Muslims? Some Reflections from theMiddle EastColin Chapman

117 Samuel Zwemer and the Challenge of Islam:From Polemic to a Hint of DialogueJohn Hubers

122 My Pilgrimage in MissionMichael C. Griffiths

126 The Legacy of Leslie E. MaxwellW. Harold Fuller

131 Are There More Non-Western Missionaries thanWestern Missionaries?Michael Jaffarian

133 Book Reviews144 Book Notes

Orientalism, Occidentalism,and Christian Mission

Christianity and Islam share much in common. Each ismonotheistic, and each claims universality. Each fos-

ters strong traditions of piety, social action, and justice. Eachclaims—with impressive, albeit selective, proofs—to be the reli-gion of peace par excellence; yet the history of each attests to thesorry ease with which their holy books are invoked to legitimize ordemand violent means to achieve divinely decreed ends. Each hasrecourse to a rich repository of self-flattering memories, provid-ing followers with the means to excuse, reinterpret, or overlookevil perpetrated in the name of its deity.

It is not their similarities, however, but their apparent dis-similarities that concern most observers. Are Christian andIslamic differences merely cosmetic, or are they foundational, themanifestation of intrinsically antithetical cosmologies? Can werealistically look forward to anything more than the bloodyspecter of escalating, religiously inspired violence?

In Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (PenguinPress, 2004), Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit show that West-ern Orientalism—the focus of Herb Swanson’s article—is mir-rored in Eastern Occidentalism. Its more extreme manifestationsees the West as utterly diseased and irredeemably corrupt, adeadly global pestilence. With greed, sensuality, and self-inter-est as its primary vices, the thinking goes, the West should not—indeed cannot—be saved, any more than can cancer or smallpox.If the patient is to be spared, the disease must be eradicated.

In her lead article, Heather Sharkey shows how Christianmissionary activity has been portrayed in Arabic literature as apart of this deadly epidemic. Having for centuries benefiteddirectly from Western intervention in the affairs of Muslimstates, missionary benevolence is viewed as a kind of religiouswedge, a tool to crack the cultural integrity of Muslim societies,making them fatally vulnerable to the Western blight.

In light of all this, is it time to give up the idea of Christianmission to Muslims? Not according to Colin Chapman, whosecareful response is by no means a carte blanche approval of eitherpast or current missionary practices.

While there can be no escaping the cultural and nationalidentities intermingled in the “jar of clay” in which missionaries

carry the treasure of the Gospel, they can work hard at practicingthe skills that distinguish a human being from a corporation:genuine listening, empathetic accompanying, and patient suffer-ing. Only by insistent attention to the primacy of personal rela-tionships can we and they transcend the siren allure of Orientalismand Occidentalism, allowing the Gospel to be seen, then heard.

98 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

In the late twentieth century several Muslim Arab thinkerspublished treatises that labeled Christian missionary ac-

tivities in the Middle East as part of a Western imperial crusadeagainst Islam. Together, the polemical works of this natureconstitute a distinct Arabic genre characterized by itsantimissionary, anti-imperial, postcolonial tone.

Despite variations in the social profiles, ideologies, andnational origins of their authors, these Arabic treatises shareimportant features. They assert close and enduring historicalconnections between a triad of tabshir, isti‘mar, and ishtiraq—thatis, Christian evangelism, Western imperialism, and Orientalistscholarship on Islam and Muslims. They discuss Christian evan-gelical methods for the sake of either resisting or imitating them.Most have an activist strain, urging Arab readers to “wake up”and rally to action by blocking Christian evangelical inroads andWestern cultural influences, pursuing global Islamic mission(da‘wa, literally a “call” or “invitation”), or rigorously supportingthe values of Arab Islamic culture. Some of the more recent worksare deeply xenophobic and insist that Christians and Muslimsremain enemies and rivals, locked in a battle for global masteryand survival.

Why did this Arabic genre flourish so markedly in thesecond half of the twentieth century? And why did the Muslimauthors of these works portray Christian evangelism as such agrave threat to Islam and Muslims, condemning even the socialservices that early twentieth-century missionaries provided todevelop modern schools, ameliorate public health, extend massliteracy, and so on? The vehemence of these authors is all themore striking if one considers, first, that European and Americanmissionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuriesgained few Muslim converts (enjoying far greater success inconversion, by contrast, among indigenous Middle Eastern Chris-tians) and, second, that in the mid–twentieth century newly inde-pendent Middle Eastern governments suppressed most mission-ary activities (for example, by “nationalizing” or appropriatingmany mission-affiliated schools and universities and by barringmissionaries from teaching Christianity to Muslim students).Viewed in this light, the authors’ insistence that there is a con-tinuing foreign Christian threat may seem highly questionable.

Nevertheless, a look at more than twenty Arabic anti-missionary treatises suggests provisional answers to the ques-tions posed above about the genre’s popular appeal and its sourcesof anger or anguish. In short, these works may have struck a chordby acknowledging the humiliation that Western dominance hasentailed in the modern Arab world, where Britain and Franceimposed forms of colonial control in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries and where, in the second half of the twentiethcentury, the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly inter-vened. Their authors accuse missionaries, as bearers of a WesternChristian message, of striking a deep blow at Muslim Arabnotions of communal and religious identity, authority, and pride.

Arabic Antimissionary Treatises: Muslim Responses to ChristianEvangelism in the Modern Middle East

Heather J. Sharkey

Imperialism and Modern Christian Mission

To appreciate the causes for Arab Muslim distress in the face ofmodern Western imperialism, one must bear in mind that theearly Islamic state was once a major imperial power in its ownright. By the time Muhammad died in Arabia in A.D. 632, theearliest Muslims had consolidated their hold over the ArabianPeninsula and were poised to expand by conquest into theterritories of the Byzantine and Sassanian (Persian) Empires. Inthe decades that followed, Arab Muslim armies enjoyed spec-tacular military success—by 711 they controlled a swath ofterritory extending from what is now Gibraltar and Morocco tothe fringes of India and Uzbekistan. Muslim rulers in the grow-ing Islamic empire drew upon guidelines from the Qur’an andfrom the practices of Muhammad and his early successors todevise the following policies toward the Christians and Jewswho lived within their domains: as “People of the Book,” en-dowed with holy scriptures that recognized the one God, Chris-tians and Jews were allowed to practice their religions freely aslong as they acknowledged a subservient status. As dhimmis(protected peoples under social contract), Christians and Jewswere obliged to pay a special poll tax (jizya) and to heed certainrestrictions. For example, they could not disturb public tranquil-ity with church bells, and they could not repair places of worshipwithout Islamic state permission. Moreover, in compliance, first,with Islamic doctrine (which maintained that Muhammad hadbeen the last in a long line of prophets, including Jesus, and thatthe Qur’an’s message superseded Judaism and Christianity)and, second, with the codes set by early Islamic jurists (whointerpreted the Qur’an and the hadith, or traditions aboutMuhammad and his companions, in order to interpret Islamiclaw), the Islamic state allowed conversion into Islam but forbadeconversion out of it. Those who were born Muslim or becameMuslim had to stay Muslim, or else—if they tried to leave the foldand failed to recant—face a final sanction of death.1

For centuries, under a succession of Islamic dynasties thatruled parts of the Middle East, these general principles towardnon-Muslims and conversion prevailed. In the Ottoman Empire(the last of the great Islamic world empires, which for a time ruledthe Arab world from what is now Algeria to Iraq as well as Turkeyand much of southeastern Europe), matters started to change onlyin the nineteenth century, as Western economic, cultural, andpolitical influence grew, and as Western ideas about nationalism,citizenship, and social equality challenged traditional notionsabout the social roles and rights of non-Muslims (as well as ofMuslim women and non-elites). Educated Ottoman elites em-braced many of these Western ideas. In two famous edicts issuedin 1839 and 1856 (later rejected by a pro-Islamic sultan), theOttoman state even proclaimed religious and social equality for allOttoman subjects, Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Among Muslim leaders and intellectuals, the growing paceand intensity of Western intervention became a cause for mount-ing concern as the nineteenth century ended. In 1798 Napoleonhad conquered and briefly held Egypt; in 1830 French forces hadinvaded Algeria and stayed. In the next several decades, Euro-pean colonialism gained more ground as Britain and France (and

Heather J. Sharkey is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studiesat the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She is the author of Livingwith Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-EgyptianSudan (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003).

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July 2004

Italy, in Libya) invaded, occupied, annexed, or imposed protec­torates over Arab territories, or signed treaties with local poten­tates to secure trading monopolies and diplomatic control. In this manner, by the eve of World War I all of North Africa plus Aden and the Gulf states had fallen under European rule. The process continued after World War I, when France and Britain dis­mantled the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with Germany during the war. In the Arabic-speaking, former Ottoman territo­ries of the Fertile Crescent, France and Britain imposed new internal boundaries and claimed control (through League of Nations-approved "mandates") over what is now known as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The British decision in 1918 to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Palestine mandate, a territory inhabited by an overwhelming Arab (Mus­lim and Christian) majority, had dramatic long-term conse­quences for the Middle East and its peoples. To this day, most Arabs look upon the foundation of Israel in 1948 and the disper­sion of the territory's Arabic-speaking majority (those who be­came known as the Palestinians) as one of the greatest injustices perpetrated by the Western imperial powers in the modern era.

Missionaries fit into this story of imperialism because they benefited directly from the expansion of Western influence in the Middle East. American and British Protestant missionaries ar­rived in what is now Lebanon in the early 1820s and moved into Asia Minor, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa in subsequent decades.2 As Westerners in Ottoman domains, they enjoyed access to a set of special legal rights and exemptions, known as the Capitulations, which afforded something akin to diplomatic immunity; they also enjoyed the protection of their countries' consuls, who used political and economic leverage to defend missionary co-nationalists.3 These privileges became especially valuable in the late nineteenth century, when Anglo-American Protestants, buoyed by enthusiasm for the idea of rapid world­wide evangelization, moved away from their early focus on Eastern Christians to emphasize work among Muslims. Thus, under the aegis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western imperialism, missionaries were able to do what had once been unthinkable in Islamic state domains: to attempt openly to convert Muslims to Christianity. Missionaries' ability to evangelize violated the centuries-long status quo by which Muslim rulers had tolerated the presence of Christians as long as they recognized and respected Islamic hegemony. Missionary evangelism also served as a stark reminder of the political and military impotence of the Islamic world in the face of Western imperialism.

The task of Muslim conversion was far from easy, despite the committed efforts of Christian evangelists, largely because mis­sionaries enjoyed freedoms that local Muslims lacked. That is, prospective Muslim converts faced stiff social sanctions from families and communities, including assault and kidnapping; the prospect of disinheritance, divorce, and ostracism; even the possibility of death ("honor killing"). Missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lamented that these threats deterred most Muslims from Christian conversion. Con­trary to missionaries' hopes, therefore, conversion out of Islam never became a mass movement, even in the first quarter of the twentieth century, when the social, political, and economic climate of colonialism was most conducive to Christian evangelism.

By the 1920s, as anticolonial nationalist movements grew stronger in countries like Egypt, and as Muslim Arabs deplored the ways in which the European powers had dismembered the Ottoman Empire, Islamic movements took root. In 1928 an

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Egyptian schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna founded an or-ganization called the Muslim Brotherhood, which was to have atransformative effect on global Islamic activism (for example, byeventually spawning groups like the militant Palestinian Hamas).One of the early concerns of the Muslim Brotherhood was tocounteract Christian missionary activities in Egypt. Banna andhis associates achieved their goal, in part, by replicating Chris-tian evangelism in the form of Islamic da‘wa and by establishingmissionary-style social service networks (schools, clinics, sportsclubs) as a method of public outreach. Banna also called for thestricter assertion of Islamic laws and mores: only by being better

Muslims and by returning to the rigors of early Islam, he argued,could modern Islamic societies recover the strength to stand upto Western imperialism.4 These ideas about reconciling traditionand modernity while applying Islam to government and socialbehavior are at the core of what social scientists today callIslamism and the Islamist movement.

Banna and his peers founded the Muslim Brotherhood at atime when the Egyptian Arabic press was printing sensationalaccounts about Christian missionaries, repeatedly alleging thatmissionaries had kidnapped, brainwashed, or abused Muslimschoolchildren in order to convert them.5 The authors ofpostcolonial antimissionary treatises frequently allude to thesealleged atrocities (which they accept as fact) to make a pointabout missionary wiles and perfidy.

Yet in the view of several of these authors, the worst, mostdangerous, and most chronically debilitating aspect of Christianevangelism for Islamic society was not the loss of a few Muslimsthrough conversion to Christianity, however reprehensible thismay have seemed to them, but rather missionaries’ denigrationor defamation (tashwih) of Islam and their promotion of Westernculture. The authors repeatedly stress the ways in which mis-sionaries and Westerners at large planted doubts in the minds ofMuslims—and particularly in the minds of children—about thecapacity of Islamic society for social progress, development, andrelevance in the modern world. Informing their views is an acuteawareness that the Islamic world had fallen on hard times.Centuries before, the Islamic empire had enjoyed a golden age oftechnological and scientific sophistication, military strength, andcultural dynamism. But in the twentieth century the West wasdominant, and the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesiahad fallen under its thrall.

“Evangelism and Imperialism in the Arab World”

The pathbreaking book in the genre of Arabic antimissionarywritings was al-Tabshir wa’l-isti‘mar fi al-bilad al-‘arabiyya (Evan-gelism and Imperialism in the Arab World), published in Beirutin 1953. Its authors were Mustafa Khalidi, a former professor ofobstetrics at the American University of Beirut and the head ofthe Lebanese national school of nursing, and ‘Umar Farrukh, aspecialist in early Islamic history, classical Arabic poetry, andSufism. Their book on evangelism was so popular that at least sixsubsequent Arabic editions appeared over the next thirty years;it was also translated into Russian (1961), Persian (1968), and

Turkish (1968 and 1991).6 It went on to influence Arabic writerswhose ideologies ranged across the spectrum from secular Arabsocialism to militant Islamism; it shaped the ideas of polemicistsand academics alike.7

Khalidi and Farrukh argued that Christian missionarieswere the most powerful and dangerous agents of Western impe-rialism and that missionary institutions (schools, hospitals, book-stores, etc.) were tools for the Western assertion of political andeconomic hegemony (saytara) over the Middle East. They main-tained that religious motives were secondary or even a cover formissionaries who, as products of the materialistic West, werelikely to worship steel, gold, and oil more than God. Theydescribed missionaries as latter-day Crusaders, “distinguishedby their intense animosity toward Arab Muslims, and by theirapparent animosity toward the people of different Christiansects as well.”8 They applied these arguments to Protestants andCatholics and to American, British, French, and Italian mission-ary groups; they even applied them to the Soviets, whose leaders,they claimed, promoted missionary activities in the Middle Eastdespite their regime’s official atheism. Khalidi and Farrukhconcluded their book by asserting that Western Christian evan-gelism still threatened Eastern peoples with cultural destruction.

Four main factors explain the impact and appeal of Khalidiand Farrukh’s book. First, it had a clear and transportable thesis—the idea that missionaries were culturally pernicious agents ofWestern imperialism who endangered Arabic-Islamic culture.Second, it drew upon a wide array of English- and French-language missionary sources, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century biographies, reports, journals, and conference proceed-ings. This use of sources gave the book academic heft andappealed especially to Arab readers who did not know Europeanlanguages. Third, it took what one might call an ideologicallycentrist or inclusive position that allowed for multiple readings.Even Arab Christians could theoretically relate to its ideas, giventhat the authors dedicated the book equally to Muslim andChristian Arab youths (thereby signaling that their opposition toWestern imperialism and evangelism did not extend to Chris-tianity or to all Christians). Finally, the book made its debut at animportant historical moment in the Middle East, when the regionwas in the throes of decolonization, when the cold war and Arab-Israeli conflict loomed large, and when the political mood wasright for critical reappraisals of colonialism.

Khalidi and Farrukh’s arguments resonated with Arab read-ers because they were familiar. Since the 1920s Muslim national-ists and Islamist activists in Egypt—the cultural and intellectualcapital of the Arab world—had been excoriating Christian mis-sionaries as colonial agents. Khalidi and Farrukh addressedthese long-standing grievances, bolstered their polemic withresearch grounded in the missionaries’ own writings, and castthem into a book that went on to inspire other Muslim Arabwriters to elaborate on antimissionary, anti-imperialist themes.

Recurring Charges Against the Missionaries

Arabic antimissionary treatises share the assumption that Chris-tian evangelism and Western imperialism have been inextricablylinked in the modern era, and that the Christianity promoted byforeign missionaries was a Western cultural product. Accordingto this view, missionaries sought not only to turn Muslims intoChristians but also to import alien values that would acculturateMuslims to Western ways—for example, by dulling religionwith secularism or promoting unfettered interaction betweenmen and women. To accentuate the Westernness of missionary

Their polemic wasbolstered by research in themissionaries’ own writings.

101July 2004

Christianity, and to preserve, remember, or idealize the harmo-nious coexistence that had traditionally characterized relationsbetween Muslims and indigenous Christians, one author sug-gests that the religion of the missionaries should be called salibiyya,“Crusaderism,” rather than masihiyya, Christianity.9 Still otherauthors signal their disdain for foreign missionaries and theirlocal supporters by using the vaguely derogatory term nasararather than masihiyyun for Christians, and munassirin(“Christianizers”) rather than mubashshirin (spreaders of [God’s]news to humankind) for Christian missionaries.

Crusader themes figure strongly in these treatises. A stan-dard refrain is that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christianmissionaries were direct heirs of the Crusaders who rampagedthe eastern Mediterranean zones of the Islamic world from thelate eleventh through the mid-thirteenth centuries. Having failedto defeat the Islamic world militarily, the argument goes, Chris-tians switched tactics and turned toward evangelism, aiminginstead to achieve political goals through the conquest of souls.10

Antimissionary writers argue, too, that as a series of Christianculture wars against Islam, the Crusades continued into the latetwentieth century under various guises. They point to the growthof evangelical radio networks and broadcasting media, beamedto Muslim Middle Eastern audiences from countries like Cyprus.Several censure international schools, whether church-affiliatedor nonsectarian, as centers of missionary-style Westernizationand of what one could perhaps call Islamic deculturation.11 Onesecular leftist (Arab nationalist) writer claims that the CIA in-cluded many missionary operatives who were trained in the artof inciting discord. Meanwhile, the more extreme Islamist au-thors accuse foreign nongovernment organizations, includingcharities like Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Bor-ders), of having missionary connections; one author even con-demns the United Nations as a “Crusader Jewish organization”and the World Health Organization as a front for Christianevangelism.12 A couple of Islamists also express contempt forWestern-initiated human rights initiatives for freedom of reli-gion and conscience, regarding them as part of a long-standingmissionary plot to undo Islam by enshrining rights for Christianproselytism and Muslim out-conversion. One even claims thatmissionaries have encouraged family planning programs tolimit the growth of Muslim populations.

Several antimissionary writers accuse missionaries of hav-ing tried to undermine the Arabic language—a language thatthey identify as the cornerstone of Arab identity and as the God-chosen medium for the Qur’an. Reflecting a view widely sharedamong Arab Muslims of diverse political and religious orienta-tions, these authors object, in particular, to the way in whichsome early twentieth-century missionaries developed printedmaterials for educational purposes by using simplified Arabiccolloquials (that is, local spoken dialects) in lieu of the highliterary language (al-fusha) that educated Arabs have historicallyemployed as the vehicle for formal Arabic reading and writing.13

They describe missionary efforts to cultivate locally variantdialects for publishing purposes as part of a colonial ruse todivide the Arab peoples, in this case by constructing communi-cations barriers among them.14

Antimissionary writers also assert that missionaries fomentedsectarian tensions and kindled Muslim-Christian strife. Thisargument is neither new nor controversial: academic historians,Middle Eastern Christians, and even missiologists and mission-aries have agreed that missionaries in certain contexts (for ex-ample, in Lebanon and Sudan) exacerbated local ethnic or com-munal tensions, while allowing their own national and denomi-

national distinctions to produce rivalries between missions.15

Others have also acknowledged that local Christians sometimesenjoyed professional, economic, or educational privileges throughtheir missionary connections—privileges that may have stokedMuslim resentments in the long run.16 Yet, rather than seeing thedivisive influences of missionaries as the result of inadvertent orunconscious behaviors, the writers of antimissionary treatisesassume ill-intent and accuse missionaries of pursuing a colonialagenda of divide and rule.

Many authors of antimissionary treatises also accuse mis-sionaries of having been complicit in the establishment of Israeland in the uprooting of Palestinians—developments that theseauthors regard as grievous historical wrongdoings. They sug-gest that missionaries gave strong moral support to Zionists asthey worked to establish a Jewish homeland in what had been,before 1918, an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. Arguments

Writers of antimissionarytreatises assume ill-intentand a colonial agenda.

on this score are vague and assume congruity between twentieth-century missionary attitudes and British and American govern-ment policies. (Note, however, that mission archives do notsupport this reading—records show, for example, that AmericanPresbyterian missionaries in Egypt were harsh critics of U.S.government policies toward Israel after 1948, policies that intheir view ignored the plight of the Palestinians.)17 In some casesantimissionary writers also imply a connection between theoriginal Christian Crusader wars and the creation of modernIsrael—two enterprises that, in their view, wrested Jerusalemfrom Muslim rule and created colonial enclaves in the HolyLand.

Finally, antimissionary writers charge missionaries withpromoting Orientalism (ishtiraq)—a set of pernicious stereo-types, often propagated through the medium of Western schol-arship, that portray Muslims and Arabs as backward, irrational,and perverted. Like evangelism, they suggest, Orientalism aimedto achieve a spiritual-cum-political conquest by shaking theconfidence of Arab Muslims and thereby facilitating Westerncontrol.18

Conclusion: Trends of the 1980s and 1990s

In the twenty-five years that followed the publication of Khalidiand Farrukh’s book, Arabic antimissionary treatises intermit-tently appeared. Judging from American research library acqui-sitions, however, the genre experienced an upsurge in the 1980sand 1990s among Islamists who displayed a stridently anti-Christian—and not merely antimissionary—tone. WhereasKhalidi and Farrukh in mid-century had restricted their criticismto foreign missionaries and Western Christianity, members ofthis Islamist cadre now showed a greater readiness to criticizeMiddle Eastern Christians, such as the Egyptian Copts, by sug-gesting that they had become arrogant and had forgotten theirproper place as dhimmis—tolerated, protected, but socially sub-ordinate peoples living at the sufferance of Islamic states. Themost xenophobic writing came from Saudi Arabia and the Gulfstates (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar),where writers issued policy suggestions. Xenophobes urged

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Notes1. One scholar summarizes Islam’s stance towards apostasy (ridda) and

the apostate (murtadd) thus: “in the Qur’an, the apostate is threatenedwith punishment in the next world only, but in Tradition [hadith], theProphet is said to have prescribed the death penalty as punishmentfor apostasy.” The jurists are unanimous that death is the penalty forapostasy but differ over “whether the apostate should be given anopportunity to repent.” E. van Donzel, Islamic Desk Reference (Leiden:Brill, 1994), p. 36. An important new work on these issues in earlyIslamic history is Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion inIslam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003); note that he discusses apostasy in pp.121–59. See also C. Cahen, “Dhimma,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, newed. (Leiden: Brill, 1983), 2:227–31.

2. Valuable surveys of Anglo-American missionary history in theMiddle East and its connections to Western imperialism includeA. L. Tibawi’s two works British Interests in Palestine, 1800–1901: AStudy of Religious and Educational Enterprise (London: Oxford Univ.Press, 1961) and American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901: A Study ofEducational, Literary, and Religious Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1966), and Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East:Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis:Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1971).

3. See Linda T. Darling, “Capitulations,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of theModern Islamic World (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), 1:257–60.

4. The classic history in English of the Muslim Brotherhood is RichardP. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford Univ.Press, 1969; reissued with a foreword by John O. Voll in 1993).

5. An English-language article on these events (which viewsmissionaries in a critical light) is B. L. Carter, “On Spreadingthe Gospel to Egyptians Sitting in Darkness: The Political Problemof Missionaries in Egypt in the 1930s,” Middle Eastern Studies 20(1984): 18–36.

6. One can locate these editions and translations in the RLIN orWorldCat databases, which cover the holdings of American researchlibraries.

7. An example of an Arabic academic study of this kind is a work onnineteenth-century French colonial missions in Algeria by KhadijaBiqtash, al-Haraka al-tabshiriyya al-faransiyya fi al-Jaza’ir, 1830–1871(The French Evangelical Movement in Algeria, 1830–1871) (Algiers:Matba‘at Dahlab, 1992). Some of her words sound like a directquotation from Khalidi and Farrukh; she asserts in her introduction,“There is no doubt that the real and primary motive . . . of evangelismis the termination of non-Christian religions in order to effect thesubjugation [isti‘bad] of their followers. Indeed, the battle betweenevangelists and non-Christian religions is not a battle of religion, butrather a battle in the path of political and economic domination”(p. 5). This book appears to have originated in a university dissertation.

8. Mustafa Khalidi and ‘Umar Farrukh, al-Tabshir wa’l-isti‘mar fi al-bilad

al-’arabiyya (Evangelism and Imperialism in the Arab World), 2d ed.(Beirut: n.p., 1957), p. 36.

9. Muhammad al-Sayyid al-Julaynd, al-Ishtiraq wa’l-tabshir: Qira’atarikhiyya mawjiza (Orientalism and Evangelism: A Concise HistoricalReading) (Cairo: Dar Qiba‘, 1999), p. 8.

10. In fact, by emphasizing the Crusader dimensions of the modernevangelical movement, these Muslim authors are to some extentechoing sentiments voiced by early twentieth-century Anglo-American Protestant missionaries, many of whom called themselvesmodern Crusaders or described their mission as a crusade for socialprogress. Heather J. Sharkey, “A New Crusade or an Old One?” ISIMNewsletter (Leiden: International Institute for the Study of Islam inthe Modern World), no. 12 (June 2003): 48–49, available onlinethrough the publications link at http://www.isim.nl.

11. Located in Cairo, Khartoum, Abu Dhabi, and other major MiddleEastern cities, such schools cater to foreign expatriates and to localMuslim and non-Muslim elites.

12. This particular author, whose rhetoric places him on the extremeIslamist fringe, also made what appears to be an allusion to the 1993bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City; he wrote thatthe “Christianizers . . . made a great mistake because Islam is a tallbuilding which no one can destroy.” Mustafa Fawzi ‘Abd al-LatifGhazal, al-Hiyal wa’l-Asalib al-Munharrafa fi al-da‘wa ila al-tabshir(Ruses and Corrupt Methods in the Call to Evangelism) (n.p.:Matabi‘ al-Majmu‘a al-I‘lamiyya, [late 1990s]).

13. Missionaries had two goals in devising Arabic colloquialpublications—to build rudimentary literacy among rural-dwellersand the urban lower classes (i.e., those who had not had the privilegeof extended academic educations), and in some cases to providetranslations of the Bible in the vernacular (in this case, in the Arabiclanguage that people actually spoke, as opposed to the lofty fusha ofscholars).

14. A recent anthropological study discussing attitudes toward theArabic language is Niloofar Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People:Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2003). See also Heather J. Sharkey, “Christian Missionariesand Colloquial Arabic Printing,” forthcoming in the Journal of SemiticStudies (special issue of papers from the Conference on the Historyof Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Cultures of theMiddle East, held in Mainz, Germany, September 2002).

15. Examples abound. See, for example, Ussama Makdisi, The Culture ofSectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-CenturyOttoman Lebanon (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000); HabibBadr, “The Protestant Evangelical Community in the Middle East:Impact on Cultural and Societal Developments,” International Reviewof Mission 89 (2001): 60–69; and Lillian Passmore Sanderson andNeville Sanderson, Education, Religion, and Politics in Southern Sudan,1899–1964 (London: Ithaca Press, 1981). An eloquent discussion of

governments in the region, for example, to close or crack downon Christian churches (which served foreigners and could there-fore function as centers for spying), curtail international schools,impose heavier censorship on Western media imports, and, as faras possible, bar the hiring of non-Muslim workers (notably,South Indian and Filipino Christians), who might try to engagein covert evangelism. Muslims must not wait, warned one writer,until upstart Christians rang church bells in their midst orsubjected Muslims to humiliations like the jizya, the poll-tax oncelevied on Christians and Jews.

The anti-Christian sentiment of these writers was an out-growth of their anti-Westernism. Their rejection of the West,which they presented as dehumanized, soulless, materialistic,and morally corrupt, amounted to what some observers now call“Occidentalism”—a pattern of pernicious stereotyping which isthe inverse of the Orientalism that antimissionary writers havecondemned so harshly.19

In the 1980s and 1990s these anti-Christian Islamist writersprescribed cultural disengagement and isolation from non-Mus-lims and from Western global culture at large. By dwelling onconflict and on omnipresent Christian threats, and by invokinga persistent language of battle and siege, they produced narra-tive jihads that asserted an inevitable war of civilizations be-tween the Islamic world and the West. Constrained by thisworldview, these writers were not candidates for interfaithdialogue. Reeling from the psychic blow of imperialism, suffer-ing from a profound lack of cultural confidence, and unable todiscuss modern Muslim-Christian, East-West encounters in termsof anything other than conflict and power drives, these writersapproached Western Christianity with a deep and abiding mis-trust. In some ways, their hatred was rooted in fear that theymight lose themselves to the West through a subtle culturaltransformation that could prey upon their doubts and perhapseven “convert” them unawares.

103July 2004

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104 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

The works listed in this bibliography illustrate themescommon to Arabic antimissionary treatises. While the

Muslim authors of all these works condemn Christian evange-lism as a tool of Western imperialism, they differ in politicaloutlook. Some are Arab nationalists—socialist-leaning secularistswho extol the unity of Arab peoples and the cultural accomplish-ments of Islamic civilization; others are Islamists, those who callfor the enforcement of Islamic government, law, and custom inthe modern world. These volumes, which can be found in Ameri-can research libraries, represent only a fraction of the Arabictreatises written on this topic.

Ahmad, Ibrahim Khalil. al-Mustashriqun wa’l-mubashshirun fi al-‘alam al-‘arabi wa’l-islami (Orientalists and Missionaries inthe Arab Islamic World). Cairo: Maktabat al-Wa‘i al-‘Arabi,1964. 111 pages.

The writer was an Egyptian Protestant (Presbyterian) pastor whoconverted to Islam in 1959 and later was appointed to thegovernment’s High Council for Religious Affairs. Once a Chris-tian evangelist to Muslims, he now became a Muslim evangelistto Christians. He argues that Anglo-American missionaries wereduplicitous imperial agents and beneficiaries and that they playeda role in inciting communal discord. He published other bookson similar themes, including al-Ishtiraq wa’l-tabshir wa-silatuhumbil-imbiriliyya al-‘alamiyya (Orientalism and Evangelism and TheirConnection to Global Imperialism) (Cairo: Maktabat al-Wa‘i al-‘Arabi, 1973), 199 pages.

al-Askar, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Ibrahim. al-Tansir wa-muhawalatuhu fibilad al-khalij al-‘arabi (Christianization and Its Attempts inthe Gulf Countries). Riyadh: Maktabat al-‘Abikan, 1993. 98pages.

The author, who taught Islamic studies at al-Imam Muhammadibn Sa‘ud Islamic University in Saudi Arabia, emphasizes theChristian threat to Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula and char-acterizes modern evangelism as a latter-day Crusade. He accusesmissionaries of seeking to destroy Islam by planting doubts

Arabic Antimissionary Treatises: A Select Annotated Bibliography

Heather J. Sharkey

Heather J. Sharkey is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studiesat the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She is the author of Livingwith Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-EgyptianSudan (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003).

among Muslims, promoting Zionism in Palestine, abductingchildren to gain converts, inciting sectarian hatred in Muslimcountries, and spying on local communities. He advises Gulfstate governments to dissolve Christian churches, urges imamsto speak out against Christianity in mosque sermons, promotesthe pursuit of worldwide Islamic mission, and discourages Mus-lim families from visiting Western countries, except when strictlynecessary (e.g., when seeking advanced medical care).

al-Bahi, Muhammad. al-Fikr al-islami al-hadith wa-silatuhu bil-isti‘mar al-gharbi (Modern Islamic Thought and Its Connec-tion to Western Imperialism). 8th ed. Cairo: Maktabat Wahba,1975. 552 pages.

Writing at the peak of the Nasser era, this Egyptian author aimedto present an intellectual history of the Muslim world from NorthAfrica to Southeast Asia, showing how the conditions of British,French, and Dutch imperialism and the activities of Orientalistscholars and Christian missionaries galvanized Muslim thinkersin the process of modern Islamic reform. He maintains thatmissionaries sought to transform (if not directly convert) Mus-lims by weakening Muslim values and morale and by assertingthe incompatibility of Islam with modern civilization. He pre-sented similar ideas in a short English-language work publishedas Mohammad El Bahay, The Attitude of Missionaries and OrientalistsTowards Islam (Cairo: United Arab Republic, Government Print-ing Office, 1963), 43 pages.

al-Basati, Ahmad Sa‘d al-Din. al-Tabshir wa-athruhu fi al-bilad al-‘arabiyya al-islamiyya (Evangelism and Its Influence on theArab Islamic Countries). Cairo: Dar Abu al-Majid lil-Tiba‘a,1989. 240 pages.

The author traces Christian evangelism to the military failures ofthe original Crusader wars, and argues that Christian missionar-ies are neo-Crusaders bent on destroying Islam and conqueringthe world. He surveys colonial-era missionary work throughoutthe Middle East, discusses the various missionary conferences ofthe early twentieth century (beginning with Edinburgh 1910),considers the roles of missionary statesmen such as Samuel M.Zwemer (1867–1952), and considers patterns of Christian globalevangelism from West Africa to Indonesia. He praises the effortsof the Egyptian government and other Muslim states to eliminatemissionary activities after decolonization.

the problematic influence of nationalism on foreign missions appearsin Nathan D. Showalter, The End of a Crusade: The Student VolunteerMovement for Foreign Missions and the Great War, ATLA MonographSeries no. 44 (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998).

16. Regarding Egypt, for example, see Saad Eddin Ibrahim et al., TheCopts of Egypt (London: Minority Rights Group, 1996).

17. Presbyterian Historical Society (Philadelphia), UPCNA RG 209-4-20:Helen J. Martin Papers, Martin to Kelsey, Cairo, July 20, 1948; Martinto Reed, Cairo, May 22, 1948; E. E. Elder to President Truman, May21, 1948.

18. Some writers identify particular missionary-scholars who doubledas Orientalists, frequently naming, for example, Samuel M. Zwemer,

W. H. T. Gairdner, and Kenneth Cragg. The ideas of Edward W. Said,whose academic treatise Orientalism (published in English in 1978and issued in Arabic translation in 1981) considered Westernportrayals of the East as functioning in the service of empire, mayhave influenced many antimissionary writers, though they do notnecessarily cite his work in their bibliographies.

19. See Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in theEyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin, 2004). These authors defineOccidentalism as the “dehumanizing picture of the West painted byits enemies” which reduces the West “to a mass of soulless, decadent,money-grubbing, rootless, faithless, unfeeling parasites” (pp. 5, 10).

105July 2004

al-Dahhan, Muhammad Muhammad. Quwa al-sharr al-mutahalifa:al-Ishtiraq, al-tabshir, al-isti‘mar, wa-mawqifuha min al-islamwa’l-muslimin (The Evil Allied Powers: Orientalism, Evange-lism, Imperialism, and Their Position Toward Islam andMuslims). Mansura, Egypt: Dar al-Wafa’, 1986. 220 pages.

In the view of this writer, the “evil powers” include a trio ofOrientalism, Christian evangelism, and Western imperialism, oralternately, of Crusaderism, Communism, and Zionism. Heclaims that these powers want to destroy Islam because theyknow that the Arabic Qur’an stands as a monument to truth. Herecounts a long history of foreign imperial assaults against Islam,from the Crusader wars and Mongol conquests, to the Sovietinvasion of Afghanistan. Regarding the Iran-Iraq war, which wasraging as he wrote, he claims that the West was fanning the war’sflames in order to divide fellow Muslims (Iranians and Iraqis)from each other. He calls for the reassertion of Islamic values, forexample, by banning co-ed schools, and urges worldwide Is-lamic mission, particularly for African “pagans” (wathaniyyin),American “coloreds” (mulawwanin), and “Hindus and outcastesin the depths of India” (al-manbudhiyyin wa’l-hindukiyyin fi a‘maqal-hind).

Ghazal, Mustafa Fawzi ‘Abd al-Latif. al-Hiyal wa’l-Asalib al-Munharifa fi al-da‘wa ila al-tabshir (Ruses and Corrupt Meth-ods in the Call to Evangelism). N.p.: Matabi‘ al-Majmu‘a al-I‘lamiyya, [late 1990s]. 105 pages.

This book presents a litany of Christian schemes to undermineMuslims, with many examples coming from early twentieth-century Egypt and Sudan. It claims that missionaries abductedchildren, exploited the sick, and effected other ruses to getconverts. The author displays sentiments that are both anti-Christian and anti-Semitic; for example, he describes the UnitedNations as a “Jewish Crusading organization” that is dependenton “Jewish money.” In what appears to be a reference to the 1993bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, he alsowarns that “Christianizers [al-munassirin] . . . made a greatmistake because Islam is a tall building which no one can de-stroy.”

al-Hasin, Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz. al-Khatar al-tabshiri al-salibi fial-Kuwayt (The Crusader Evangelical Threat in Kuwait). 8thed. N.p., 1996. 627 pages.

In this lengthy volume, the author describes Christians as infi-dels (kuffar) who have historically hated Islam, and he citesverses from the Qur’an to support the idea that Islam approvesof killing Christians in Muslim domains unless they accept theirsubordinate status as dhimmis. The author also argues that thecontinued existence of Christians in the Islamic world provesIslam’s intrinsic tolerance and refutes accusations of its fanati-cism. The author asserts that the Crusades have been steadilyraging since before the late eleventh century, indeed since thedawn of Islam, and that “they will not end as long as theCrusaders fail to recognize the prophecy of Muhammad.” Hesees the Christian West as a spreader of wickedness and criticizesArab governments for giving missionaries and local Christians(e.g., the Egyptian Copts) free rein as well as for promotingsecular policies. He inventories all Christian institutions andforeign schools in Kuwait (providing photographs and descrip-tions) and urges the Kuwaiti government to crack down on them.He also warns that Christian guest workers, for example, thosefrom Kerala in South India, may be secretly functioning as “footsoldiers” (junud) for Christian evangelism.

al-Julaynd, Muhammad al-Sayyid. al-Ishtiraq wa’l-tabshir: Qira’atarikhiyya mawjiza (Orientalism and Evangelism: A ConciseHistorical Reading). Cairo: Dar Qiba‘, 1999. 132 pages.

The author, a professor of Islamic philosophy at Cairo Univer-sity, wrote this book at the request of the College of Shari’a andIslamic Studies, Qatar University. Though he acknowledges thatamong Christian missionaries there were some good people whorespected Islam and cared about Muslims, he insists neverthelessthat “Orientalism and Christianization [tansir] were among themost dangerous means that imperialism used for its politicalpenetration in the Islamic world, and there is no doubt that theywere two faces of one [evil] deed [‘amla].” The author suggests,therefore, that one should distinguish between Christianity(masihiyya), the religion of Jesus, and Crusaderism (salibiyya), theideology of Christian missionaries and Western imperialists.Like several other works in this genre, the author surveys themissionary conferences of the early twentieth century and refersto the tactics of men like Samuel M. Zwemer (the bête noire ofthese antimissionary writers), whose confrontational evangelis-tic tactics earned him lasting notoriety among Muslims.

Jundi, Anwar. Afaq jadida lil-da‘wa al-islamiyya fi ‘alam al-gharb(New Horizons in Islamic Da’wa in the Western World).Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risala, 1984. 380 pages.

———. al-Islam fi wajh al-taghrib: Mukhattatat al-tabshir wa’l-ishtiraq(Islam in the Face of Westernization: The Schemes ofEvangelism and Orientalism). Cairo: Dar al-I‘tisam, 1986.469 pages.

In these two works, the author argues that missionaries were themost destructive agents of Western imperialism. They planteddoubts about Islam, contributed to spiritual weakness or culturalalienation, and paved the way for Westernization—that is, theyinfluenced Muslims for the worse, even if they did not convertthem outright. In references to Zionism and the creation of Israel,the author suggests that the Crusades revived with the Britishseizure of Palestine in 1918. Western Christian evangelists, heasserts, “began [their work] after the Crusaders left the Islamicworld in 1291, and they are still working today, though they havechanged their skin more than once.” The 1984 volume alsoaffirms the relevance of Islam and Muslim mission for moderntimes and cites examples of distinguished and progressive-minded Westerners who converted to Islam.

Khalidi, Mustafa, and ‘Umar Farrukh. al-Tabshir wa’l-isti‘mar fi al-bilad al-‘arabiyya: ‘Ard li-juhud al-mubashshirin al-latti tarmi ilaikhda‘ al-sharq lil-isti‘mar al-gharbi. (Evangelism and Imperi-alism in the Arab World: A Review of Missionary Efforts thatAimed to Subjugate the East to Western Imperialism). 2d ed.Beirut: n.p., 1957. 240 pages.

Originally published in 1953 and reissued several times thereaf-ter, this book initiated the postcolonial Arabic genre ofantimissionary treatises. It has been translated into Russian,Turkish, and Persian. Its thesis—that Christian missionarieswere the primary tools of Western political, economic, andcultural imperialism—proved extremely influential, appealingto Arab nationalists and Islamists, academics and polemicistsalike. The book draws extensively on English and French mis-sionary sources of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries andincludes Protestants and Catholics in its scope. Its coverage isparticularly strong on Lebanon (not surprising, given that theauthors were based in Beirut).

106 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

Makki, Hasan. Ab‘ad al-tabshir al-masihi fi al-‘asima al-qawmiyya(The Extent of Christian Evangelism in the National Capi-tal). Omdurman, Sudan: Bayt al-Ma‘rifa lil-Intaj al-Thaqafi,1990. 62 pages.

This slim book surveys work related to the Christian church or tomission in greater Khartoum, Sudan, over the course of thetwentieth century and offers some policy suggestions. (Note:Many of its historical details, including dates, are incorrect.) Theauthor traces the work of Christian charities among southernSudanese and Nuba Mountain refugees or migrants. This topic offoreign Christian involvement commands particular interestamong northern Sudanese Muslims, given the country’spostcolonial history of chronic civil war and the widely heldbelief that missionaries created or accentuated north-south di-vides by propagating Christianity in the south among practitio-ners of local religions. The author also considers the role offoreign schools (including both church-affiliated and nonsectar-ian institutions descended from colonial-era mission enterprises)in educating the children of local Khartoum-area Muslim elites.He urges the Sudanese government to crack down on theseschools, which he considers to be centers of Westernization, andto bolster Islamic studies and practices within them.

Mansur, Malik. Wasa’il imbiriliyya fi al-takhrib al-thaqafi (Imperial-ist Methods of Cultural Destruction). Baghdad: Dar al-Thawra, 1977. 124 pages.

As befitting a book published in Iraq during the era of BaathParty rule, this work takes a secular Arab nationalist, not Islam-ist, tone and shows a Marxist historiographical influence. Itargues that missionaries tried to destroy Arab culture after sixcenturies of Ottoman Turkish rule, which had already mired theregion in backwardness. It also argues that missionaries pro-moted a “Zionist imperialist plan” in the Middle East, that theyengaged in the colonial policy of divide and rule, and that theyfought a psychological war to demoralize Arabs. The authordevotes a whole chapter to the relationship between missionar-ies and the CIA—claiming, for example, that missionaries re-ceived special training from the agency in “the skill of agitation”(tafannun al-ithara), citing examples that range from the Congo toVietnam.

Na‘im, Khalid Muhammad. al-Judhur al-tarikhiyya lil-irsaliyyat al-tansir al-ajnabiyya fi Misr, 1856–1986: Dirasa watha’iqiyya (TheHistorical Roots of Foreign Christianizing Missions in Egypt,1856–1986: A Documentary Study). Cairo: Kitab al-Mukhtar,[1988]. 358 pages.

A biographical note indicates that the author was born in anEgyptian Delta village in 1950 and was a lecturer of history atMinya University in Egypt. This book draws upon archivalrecords and Arabic and English sources to recount a history ofAnglo-American missionaries in Egypt. It asserts that Christianmissions in the modern Middle East led “the most recent attemptto besiege Islam on its own ground” and that these new Crusad-ers remain a threat to Muslims globally. He therefore begins hisstudy with a call to action: “Brothers of Islam, wake up!”

Shalabi, ‘Abd al-Wudud. Afiqu ayyuha al-muslimun qabla an tadfa‘ual-jizya (Wake Up, Muslims, Before You Pay the Jizya!).Jidda, Saudi Arabia: Dar al-Majma‘, [1981]. 93 pages.

Although Middle Eastern Muslims and Christians historically

lived as brethren, this writer argues, Christian evangelists—nowadays backed by the Vatican and the World Council ofChurches—have declared Islam to be their enemy and have ledattacks against it. Muslims must counter these efforts with globalIslamic mission and must be aware that Christian evangelisticstrategy, as articulated by the early twentieth-century mission-ary Samuel M. Zwemer, is to Christianize Muslims covertly, byderiding Islam and demoralizing Muslims about their capacityfor modern civilization. He stresses the danger posed by Chris-tian institutions, ranging from the American University in Beirutto a school run by Catholic nuns (most of them Iraqi Christians)in Abu Dhabi. He urges Muslims to action, asking, “Are we goingto sleep until we awaken to the clanging of the church bellsannouncing an assault of the cross?” This book directs its policysuggestions to the government of the United Arab Emirates,advising it, for example, to criminalize violations against thestate religion (i.e., to criminalize Christian evangelism amongMuslims), to impose quotas on Christian guest workers, and torestrict foreign schools to foreign children (i.e., to prohibit Mus-lim students from attending).

Shalabi, Karam. al-Idha‘a al-tansiriyaa al-muwajjiha ila al-musliminal-‘arab (Christian Evangelical Broadcasts Directed TowardArab Muslims). Cairo: Maktabat al-Turath al-Islamiyya,1991. 229 pages.

Published by the Islamic Heritage Society of Cairo, this volumediscusses Christian (Catholic and Protestant) evangelical radiobroadcasts to the Middle East and considers how these pro-grams, which began in the 1920s, have targeted Muslim audi-ences.

Sharaf, ‘Imad. Haqa’iq ‘an al-tabshir (Truths About Evangelism).Cairo: Matba‘at Atlas, 1975. 79 pages.

The author emphasizes the historic tolerance of Islam, whichfavored its expansion, contrasting it with the petty nationalistrivalries, imperialist ambitions, and material motives that havedriven Christian evangelists since the Crusades. He discusses thedubious tactics that Christian missionaries have used around theworld to acquire converts in modern times, citing examples fromSenegal to the Philippines.

‘Uwayyid, ‘Adnan. al-Tabshir bayna al-usuliyya al-masihiyya wa-sultat al-taghrib (Evangelism Between Christian Fundamen-talism and the Power of Westernization). Damascus: Dar al-Mada, 2000. 177 pages.

Writing from an Arab nationalist, not Islamist, perspective, theauthor asserts that “the goal of Christian evangelism . . . in theArab countries under Ottoman rule was not to spread love andthe egalitarian spirit that Christ [al-sayyid al-masih] called for, butrather to realize economic and political interests for Europe in theguise of religion.” More of a historical survey than a polemic, thisbook focuses on the history of the Arabic nahda (the nineteenth-century Arabic intellectual revival that paved the way for Arabnationalism). The author is critical not only of missionaries butalso of the Ottoman (Turkish) imperial authorities, blaming bothgroups in the nineteenth century for trying to divide the Arabpeoples and to push them into backwardness.

107July 2004

In 1978 Edward W. Said (sah-eed) published his masterfuland highly controversial book Orientalism, subtitled “West-

ern Conceptions of the Orient.”1 In the quarter century that hasfollowed, scholars in several fields have conducted an ongoingdebate over the particulars of Said’s thesis that Western scholar-ship about Asia, which he calls Orientalism, has historically“constructed” a false, demeaning, and self-serving representa-tion of the Orient. Said (1935–2003) accuses the orientalists withusing their false, fabricated body of knowledge to aid and abetthe European and American domination of Asia. He writes withpower and passion about his subject in a tone that has captivatedand converted some and driven others to fiery dissent. Importantin its own right, Orientalism is also important because of thequality of the debate it has inspired.2 That debate has in someways modified, in other ways softened, and in still other waysfleshed out Said’s thesis so that his blunt attack on Westernscholarly treatments of the Oriental “Other” has become a morebalanced and useful tool for understanding how Western schol-ars have comprehended the peoples of the Orient. In light of thisdebate and the broad influence Said has exercised in the schol-arly study of Western ways of “constructing the Other,” theadjective frequently applied to Orientalism is “seminal.”

A survey of issues and concerns debated by missiologistsover the last twenty-five years, however, shows Said to be largelyabsent from the missiological literature. Many students of mis-sions may not be aware to any extent of the Orientalism debate,which has taken place in journals and forums they do notnormally read or attend. Others may have been put off by Said’sunremitting attack on the West and reluctant to submit thehistory of missions to an attack of that nature. Still others mayhave written Said off as “just another postmodernist,” a trendysavant of only passing interest. There are, to be sure, missiologicalstudies that have made use of Said,3 but they do not constitute atrend, and there is no indication that Said or his critics andsupporters have played a role in the study of missions compa-rable to their contribution to other fields.

The purpose of this essay is not to present yet another reviewof Said and his critics. It intends, rather, to point out a variety ofways in which the scholarly debate concerning Orientalism cancontribute to the study of historical and contemporary interna-tional missions. It looks upon that debate as a tool for criticalanalysis and for cross-cultural reflection, a tool of potential valueto the field of missiology.

Said’s Critique

While Said did not invent the term “Orientalism” and was hardlythe first to describe and criticize European orientalists,4 the termhas become associated with his name far more than anyoneelse’s. Orientalism, according to Said, is a bundle of interrelatedcharacteristics. In a narrow sense, it is a centuries-old traditionalbody of knowledge created by European and, more recently,American writers who are considered experts on the Orient.They include scholars, novelists, travelers, diplomats, and mis-sionaries, with scholars standing closest to the center of Said’s

Said’s Orientalism and the Study of Christian Missions

Herb Swanson

critical bull’s-eye. According to Said, this unified, internationalbody of knowledge describes Orientals as being uncivilized,unprogressive, immoral, passive, emotional, sensual, and anextensive list of other unsavory characteristics. This body ofknowledge is embodied in what Said calls a “discourse,” borrow-ing the term and some of his understanding of it from the Frenchhistorian-philosopher Michel Foucault. Said focuses on the writ-ten discourses produced by orientalists and submits a significantnumber of them to a sharp, at times brutal, scrutiny. He alsoacknowledges, although with far less precision, that Europeanpolicies and actions toward Orientals are a part of the orientalist“discourse.”

Said emphasizes the traditional nature of Orientalism, whichhas been so powerfully embedded in Western thinking about theOrient from ancient Greece onward that it constitutes an unques-tioned habit of mind. When it comes to Asia, in effect, the Westwears a set of blinders called Orientalism. At points, Said con-tends that there is no real or actual “Orient”; it is merely amythical discourse invented by Europeans on the basis of theirhereditary fear of the Arabs and especially of Islam. At othertimes, however, Said clearly assumes that there is a real Orientand feelingly condemns the ways in which coercive, aggressive,and oppressive orientalists have misrepresented the Orient. Atthe end of the day, Europe and America have used this orientalistbody of knowledge as a tool for establishing and expandingWestern power in Asia; Orientalism is a tool of Western colonial-ism and imperialism.

Said, finally, stresses the dualistic nature of Orientalism,which dualism makes hard and fast distinctions between the“civilized West” and the “uncivilized East.” Orientalism re-volves around the distinction between Us and Them. Orientalists,as a consequence, assume that while the West is progressive anddynamic, the East is essentially stagnant and unchanging. Orien-tals, according to traditional orientalist discourse, are also igno-rant, and they do not know themselves nearly as well as theorientalists know them. In one of his numerous summary de-scriptions of Orientalism, Said states that it is “the discipline bywhich the Orient was (and is) approached systematically, as atopic of learning, discovery, and practice.” Or, again, it is “thatcollection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available to any-one who has tried to talk about what lies east of the dividing line”(p. 73).

Orientalism is a book that forces its readers to take sides, andno little part of the earlier debate that swirled around it amountedto either a passionate acceptance or rejection, usually clothed inapparently reasonable, academic dress. More recently, however,several scholars have built on Said to achieve a more usefulunderstanding of the meaning and role of Orientalism. Theyhave demonstrated, for instance, that there have been many“good” orientalists who wrote about Orientals with sympatheticunderstanding in spite of wider European prejudices. Morerecent scholarship has also found that many Asians actuallycontributed in various ways to sustaining Orientalism and thatorientalist discourse has even been used in a variety of creativeways by Asians to counteract the power of Europe. Indiannationalists, for example, used orientalist descriptions of a non-violent and pacific India to encourage a nonviolent approach tonational liberation. Scholars of Asia have also found, less hap-

Herb Swanson is Head, Office of History, Church of Christ in Thailand. Resultsof his research may be found at www.herbswanson.com.

108 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

NoteworthyAnnouncing“Depending on Uncompromising Leadership in a SyncretisticWorld” is the theme for the conference of the Interdenomina-tional Foreign Mission Association, the Evangelical Fellow-ship of Mission Agencies, and the Evangelical MissiologicalSociety, September 23–25, 2004, in St. Louis, Missouri. Fordetails, visit www.ifmamissions.org or call (630) 682-9270.

Sustainable Resources, an advocacy group based in Boul-der, Colorado, will hold its “international forum connectingpeople with hands-on solutions to world poverty” September30 to October 2, 2004, at the University of Colorado, Boulder.Representatives of non-profit agencies, humanitarian organi-zations, and educational institutions are invited. For details,visit www.sustainableresources.org or call (303) 998-1323.

The Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Pacificand Asian History Division, of Australian National Univer-sity, Canberra, will host the first Biennial TransTasman Con-ference on Australians and New Zealanders in ChristianMissions, at Home and Abroad, October 8–10, 2004. Presen-tations will be made on New Zealand and Australian contri-butions to Christian missions, according to http://rspas.anu.edu.au/pah/TransTasman. For details, e-mail IanWelch, ianwelch@coombs.anu.edu.au.

The Eastern Fellowship of the American Society ofMissiology will meet November 5–6, 2004, at Maryknoll, NewYork, to discuss Whose Religion is Christianity? The GospelBeyond the West (2003), by Lamin Sanneh of Yale DivinitySchool. Speakers will include Sanneh, Todd Johnson, and

Patrick Johnstone. For details, e-mail Jonathan Bonk atbonk@omsc.org.

The Third International Conference on Missionary Lin-guistics, with presentations on early-modern descriptions ofnon-Indo-European languages prior to 1850, will be heldMarch 12–15, 2005. Special attention will be given to researchon missionary linguistic work in Asia and the Pacific, accord-ing to organizers Gregory James (lcgjames@ust.hk) of HongKong University of Science and Technology and Otto Zwartjes(zwartjes@kri.uio.no), University of Oslo. The conference willopen at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology andconclude at the Inter-University Institute of Macau. Detailsmay be found at www.hf.uio.no/kri/ospromil.

The Fourth International Lausanne Researchers Con-ference, held under the auspices of the Lausanne Committeefor World Evangelization, is slated for April 10–14, 2005, inLimassol, Cyprus, with “Uncovering Truth: The Impact ofResearch on Mission and Ministry” as its theme. Participantsinterested in presenting papers are invited to contact PeterBrierley, admin@christian-research.org.uk. Conference detailsmay be found at www.Christian-research.org.uk.

With the theme “Come Holy Spirit, Heal and Reconcile,”the World Council of Churches will hold its 2005 Conferenceon World Mission and Evangelism in Athens, May 9–16, thesixth such gathering since integration of the InternationalMissionary Council and the WCC in 1961. This will be the firstecumenical mission conference held in a predominantly Or-thodox context, according to www.mission2005.org.

pily, that Asians at times developed their own versions ofOrientalism, which they applied to other Asians. In the dyingdays of the Ottoman Empire, for example, the ruling Turkish elitearticulated an “Ottoman Orientalism” that looked down on theother peoples of the empire as unprogressive, barbaric, and inneed of modernization by the progressive, civilized Ottomangovernment.5 Many scholars are beginning to see that“Orientalism” as described by Said was actually but one instanceof a larger assemblage of Western ways of dealing with the Other,be they Asians, Africans, the urban poor, Native Americans andaboriginals, Jews, or the many other peoples who stand at themargins of local, national, or global society.

The passionate debate over Said appears to have receded inthe last decade or so. It has been replaced by passing references tohim as the starting point or inspiration for new applications of theconcept of Orientalism. It is this refined Orientalism that is of valueto the historical and contemporary study of foreign missions.

Missionary Discourse and Orientalism

Turning to the possible uses that missiologists can make of Said’sOrientalism, it is important to observe from the outset that mis-sionary writings comprise a stream of discourse that displaysmany of the characteristics of orientalist discourse. The intensivesearch by missiologists and missionaries across the theologicalspectrum for ways to break with older missionary attitudes anddiscover more contextual ways to present the Christian messagein and of itself suggests that traditional missionary discourse wasa form of Orientalism. At various points, Said himself implies a

connection between Christianity, including Christian missions,and Orientalism. He claims, for example, that while Orientalismwas primarily a secular discourse, it originated in Christianreligious discourse and that even in its secularized forms “it alsoretained, as an undislodged current in its discourse, a recon-structed religious impulse, a naturalized supernaturalism” (p.121). He thus considers Orientalism to be a set of structures thatare “naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (orversions of) Christian supernaturalism” (p. 122). Said also linksProtestant missions in the Middle East to European colonialexpansion into the region (p. 100). While Said does not focus onthe religious elements of Orientalism or give them anythingmore than passing, oblique notice, the hints and passing com-ments concerning the religious aspects of Orientalism deservecloser consideration. Hart has written, thus, of “Said’s cryptic,fugitive, but persistent reference to the sacred, religious, theo-logical, and Manichaean.”6

Said apparently sees one of the key links between Orientalismand Christianity to be the dualistic, Us/Them nature of orientalistthinking mentioned above. This dualism stands close to the heartof what he finds both fundamental to and fundamentally objec-tionable in Orientalism. It comprises the constant lens by whichthe orientalists describe and understand the supposedly eternal,unchanging essence of what it means to be an Oriental. Orientals,that is, by their very nature are traditionally described byorientalists as being inescapably backward, degenerate, andcompletely unequal to progressive, moral European civilization(see p. 206). Said refers repeatedly to the dualistic nature ofOrientalism, and in his summary description of four widely held

109July 2004

The Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge, U.K., announcesa CD-ROM containing the collected papers of the North Atlan-tic Missiology Project and the Currents in World ChristianityProject. The two projects, which ran from 1996 to 2001, werebased in the Centre for Advanced Religious and TheologicalStudies in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.Contact: Polly Keen, administrator, Henry Martyn Centre,pk262@cam.ac.uk, or visit www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk.

The School of Oriental and African Studies at the Uni-versity of London announces the creation of a new master’sdegree in Christianities of Africa and Asia. The one-yearcourse of study has been planned especially for clergy, churchworkers, and missionaries. Students may major in either East-ern and Orthodox Christianity or Christianity and SocialChange in Sub-Saharan Africa. For details, visitwww.soas.ac.uk or e-mail Paul Gifford at pg@soas.ac.uk.

PersonaliaDied. David C. Pollock, 64, global advocate for third-culturekids (TCKs), April 11, 2004, in Vienna, Austria. A graduate ofMoody Bible Institute and Houghton College, he and hisfamily went to Kenya in 1975, where they served as boarding-home parents at Rift Valley Academy, and he taught at MoffatCollege of the Bible. Returning from Africa in 1980, he becamethe executive director of Interaction International, which hehad cofounded in the 1960s, and now focused its work onproviding a “flow of care” for TCKs, expatriate families, andthe personnel who work with them. He was also on the faculty

of Houghton College as an adjunct professor and as director ofintercultural programs since 1992. Codirector of three Interna-tional Conferences for Missionary Kids, held in the Philip-pines (1984), Ecuador (1987), and Kenya (1989), Pollock was amember of the Mission Commission of the World EvangelicalAlliance and was codirector of WEA’s Global Member CareTask Force. He was named Houghton College’s Alumnus ofthe Year in 1993 and received an honorary doctorate fromHoughton in 2000. In 1999 he coauthored the book The ThirdCulture Kid: Growing Up Among Worlds.

The Keston Institute, Oxford, England, appointed DavorinPeterlin, a New Testament scholar from Croatia, as director.Keston publishes Religion and State: The Keston Journal, whichstudies church, state, and social issues in the former Commu-nist countries. For details, visit www.keston.org.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolatenamed Mary E. Bendyna, R.S.M., former senior researchassociate, as executive director, the first woman appointed tothat post. Information on CARA, based at Georgetown Uni-versity, Washington, D.C., may be found at http://cara.georgetown.edu.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies hasannounced that president and CEO Paul McKaughan willstep down from his leadership position on December 31, 2005,after fourteen years with EFMA, which represents some 100agencies and 20,000 missionaries worldwide.

key orientalist “dogmas,” he lists dualism first and describes it asbeing “the absolute and systematic difference between the West,which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient,which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior” (p. 300). In his briefaccount of how Europe came to see the Orient “as its greatcomplementary opposite,” Said cites a long list of sources of thedualistic vision, with the first item on his list being the Bible and“the rise of Christianity” (p. 58).

Protestant missionary discourse has historically exhibited adualism that closely parallels the orientalist dualism describedby Said. Missionary writings have consistently divided the worldinto two antagonistic, incompatible realms of Christian and non-Christian. Missionary literature, especially up to 1920, frequentlydescribes the non-Christian world as being immoral, benighted,idolatrous, pagan, barbaric, infidel, and so on down a long list ofother terms that may be summarized best in that old-fashionedword “heathenism.” Although the term “heathen” fell out offashion after World War I, it is a word with a long history, goingback at least to the ninth century according to the Oxford EnglishDictionary, which lists fifteen forms of the term from heathendomto heatheny. The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century litera-ture of missionaries, as students of that literature know, isbrimming with descriptions of the nature of heathenism, fre-quently comparing contemporary heathenism with that describedby Paul in Romans.

Dualistic missionary discourse, thus, shares a number ofimportant characteristics with orientalist discourse. It is a tradi-tional body of knowledge employing a specialized language andembodied in a set of self-aware organizations, institutions, and

practices. Those who share in Christian missionary discoursetake it to be composed of essential, unchanging truths, such as theclaim that heathenism now is exactly what it was in Paul’s timeor that idolatry now is exactly what it was in the time of theHebrew prophets and psalmists. Like Orientalism, missionarydiscourse traditionally has been aggressive, and derogatory in itstreatment of Asians of other faiths, expressing attitudes that havefrequently also included negative views of indigenous cultures.Said states at one point, as we have seen above, that Orientalismdesignates “that collection of dreams, images, and vocabulariesavailable to anyone who has tried to talk about what lies east ofthe dividing line.” Missionary discourse, as both written andpracticed, similarly contains the “dreams, images, and vocabu-laries” used by missionaries and other Christians to describethose who are “east of the dividing line” of the faithful versus theinfidel.

The parallels between missionary and orientalist discoursesare close enough that Said draws on theological terms to describeOrientalism. He, for example, calls the basic tenets of Orientalism“dogmas.” He accuses a key orientalist of having a “metaphysi-cal attitude.” He specifically accuses yet another orientalist ofarticulating the European drive to dominate the Orient in the“Romantic redemptive terms of a Christian mission” (pp. 300–301, 283, 172). Missionary and orientalist discourses, in otherwords, share significant characteristics that locate both of themin the larger family of European discourse. It can only be con-cluded that Said’s Orientalism, as a seminal, widely influentialwork on Orientalism, deserves serious, intensive attention fromthose engaged in the study and practice of missions.

110 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

Issues Relevant to Missiology

Missiologists will find Said unremittingly negative and vocifer-ously critical of Western thought as it is revealed in Orientalism.Some, at least, will hesitate to introduce his approach and viewsinto the realm of mission studies, fearing that to do so will resultin nothing more than another round of “missionary bashing.”Impassioned rejection of Said by those who once wore the title“orientalist” with pride echoed for many years through thejournals and tomes of several disciplines, particularly WestAsian area studies.7 Yet it is recognized today that in his one-sided, judgmental, polemical, almost liturgical attack on theinstitutions of Orientalism, the very nature of his passionateassault continues to stimulate an enormous range of creativeresponses. Scholars of India, China, and Japan have found them-selves looking at their subjects with fresh insights, and evenwhere Said is wrong, his mistakes provoke thought and inspirerevisions.8 Orientalism is far from a perfect piece of work, but ithas a central integrity to it that kindles new avenues of researchand reflection. From a Christian missiological perspective, thereis something prophetic in Said, as secular as he himself may be,that recalls the ancient Hebrew prophets’ passionate pursuit ofjustice and truth.

Realizing that missiologists will also have to work on Said,softening, cutting, and trimming as needed, still we recognizethat he directs our attention to a number of critically importantareas. First, Said emphasizes the relationship of knowledge anddiscourse to power. He rejects Orientalism not simply because itmisrepresents the real Asia but because that misrepresentationhas led to the colonial, imperial oppression of many Asians ingeneral and Arab peoples in particular. The people of Asia havesuffered and continue to suffer at the hands of the orientalists. Interms of missions, insights gained from reading Said’s Orientalismmight well inspire us to ask, How has missionary discourse inboth words and deeds embodied and used power? This questionapplies with particular force to missionary relationships with“native” churches. In Thailand, as just one example, there is thecase of a mainline American mission that dissolved itself in the1950s, only to have its senior members lodge themselves in

Orientalists tend to see theworst in the East and thebest in the West.

positions of power in the Thai national church, which as aconsequence did not become functionally independent for an-other quarter of a century. There is also the example of anevangelical mission, also in Thailand, that refused to allow itschurches to establish their own denominational structures on thepremise that the New Testament does not mandate such struc-tures—while the mission itself remained a distinct supra-churchbody that retained functional power over the churches in its ownhands. How much more powerful were the missions in the agewhen the missionaries still judged “their” converts as beingtainted with heathenism? How did that power influence thecommunication of the Gospel? How did it influence the historicalemergence of Asian churches? Said helps to expose the mission-ary relationship to the convert church as a power relationship,one that does not always benefit the churches.

Second, and related to the point just made, Said makes it

clear that Orientalism functions as blinders that restrict theorientalists’ vision so that they tend to see the worst in the Eastand the best in the West. In missionary literature we sometimesdiscover a similar tendency to describe perceived weaknessesamong Asians as being essential traits of their Asian-ness. Asianachievements, when they are acknowledged at all, are written offas the work of particular individuals. Said views Orientalism asan “archive” that embodies the European experience with theOrient and from which has been created a set of types and typicalresponses. He calls these responses “encapsulations” or “bins,”and he observes that orientalists use these categories to makesense out of the totality of their experiences with Orientals. Inthose cases where orientalists discover something new or un-usual, they will invariably recast the experience in terms of thenegative stereotypes of Orientalism (pp. 58, 102). It seems evi-dent that earlier generations of missionaries brought their owncognitive bins and encapsulations with them from home andrendered the alien world of the mission field into a dualistic,blinkered version of the familiar. It is well worth studying thenature and extent of missionary prejudices. How have thoseprejudices, where they have existed, influenced missionary rela-tionships with the people of other cultures and faiths? How havethey influenced missionary relationships with the churches theyfounded? To what extent have such prejudices been a barrier tothe international missionary movement?

Third, Said accuses orientalists of having what he calls a“textual attitude” that falsely assumes “that the swarming, un-predictable, and problematic mess in which human beings livecan be understood on the basis of what books—texts—say.”Orientalists, he claims, depend on this textual attitude when theyencounter “something relatively unknown and threatening andpreviously distant.” “In such a case,” Said writes, “one hasrecourse not only to what in one’s previous experience thenovelty resembles but also to what one has read about it” (p. 93).True to the general thesis of Orientalism, Said understands thistextual mentality to represent yet another dualistic orientalizingstrategy for defining (negatively) the “essence” of the Orient. Hisargument raises an important question concerning the role of theBible in the work of traditional Protestant missions. Missionaryliterature well into the twentieth century was liberally seasonedwith quotations and passing references to the King James Ver-sion of the Bible, and missionary writers clearly relied on it as amedium for understanding heathenism and justifying to them-selves and others their attitudes and actions toward the heathen.What, then, is the role of the Scriptures in missional relations withpeople of other cultures and faiths? Is it fair to say that mission-aries in the past have frequently misused Scripture, turning itinto an ideological textbook? If fair, what has been the impact? Ifnot fair, how do we understand historical missionary uses of theBible? Said, in any event, has the value of encouraging us to lookat the biblical text as a historical factor in missionary behaviorand thinking.

Fourth, Said describes the relationship between orientalistsand the Orient as being one of “intimate estrangement.” Theorientalists knew the Orient well, even intimately, but still feltsuperior to it and essentially different from it. Said argues thatthis sense of estrangement, in particular, comprised a distin-guishing characteristic of the orientalist tradition that was handedon from generation to generation of orientalists (pp. 248, 260).The letters and reports of nineteenth-century missionaries, atleast in Thailand, reflect a relationship to local cultures that ishauntingly similar to Said’s “intimate estrangement.” The mis-sionaries knew the people, spoke their languages, ate their food,

111July 2004

Said offers missiologiststhe opportunity to reflectcritically on their own field.

Notes1. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978; reprinted with a new afterword,

London: Penguin Books, 1995). Page references in the text are to the1995 edition.

2. For one listing of key works in the debate over Said’s Orientalism, seeValerie Kennedy, Edward Said: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge:Polity Press, 2000), pp. 162–73.

visited their homes and villages, and spent much of their dailylives in close proximity to the “natives.” But they seemed neverquite to forget that those natives were representatives of a lessadvanced and heathen nation. They described families whoworked at single-family mission stations as being “alone” and“isolated,” even though they lived in the midst of thousands oflocal people. Again, Said’s observations raise important ques-tions about the relationships of missionaries to local cultures,local people, and local Christians. Did they live in “intimateisolation”? If so, how did that relationship influence the recep-tion of the Christian faith by local peoples?

Space constraints forbid fuller exploration of other Saidianthemes. It is important to mention, however, examples of at leasttwo ways in which other scholars have built on and correctedSaid’s work. First, Ussama Makdisi has written an intriguingdescription of what he and others term “Ottoman Orientalism.”He uses the term to describe the ways in which the ruling elite ofthe Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, resisted EuropeanOrientalism, while they, on the other hand, created a parallelOrientalism with which they defined themselves as the creative,dynamic, modernizing element of the empire and describedother peoples as backward, violent, and traditionalistic stum-bling blocks to modernization.9 Makdisi provides us with anexample of how Asians took over European racialist, orientalistthinking as their own and used it against Asians. Churches in theso-called Third World provide what appears to be a parallelphenomenon to the Asian use of Orientalism against otherAsians. In many parts of the world, convert churches havehistorically defined people of other faiths as “outsiders” who aredamned to eternal punishment and suffering. In Buddhist na-tions, at least, such Christian attitudes have been a seriousimpediment to the sharing of the Gospel and, to an extent, forcedChristian minorities to live in their own theological ghettossealed off religiously from their larger societies.

Second, along the same line of reasoning, but more posi-tively, we have already noted that Asians now and then madecreative, positive use of Orientalism. Richard Fox has thus notedthat in British India the Sikhs accepted the British stereotype ofthem as militant and militaristic and in turn fostered these traitsand ethos among themselves to resist British occupation. Foxfaults Said for failing to “map” ways that Orientalism itselfbecame a weapon in the Asian arsenal of resistance to Europeancolonialism.10 Can it be argued, by the same token, that AsianChristians have appropriated positive aspects of missionarydiscourse and put them to good use in the communication of thefaith in their own contexts—as well as in the life of the churchmore generally?

Building on Orientalism

Lying between the extremes of enthusiastic converts to a full-blown Saidianism and the absolute rejectionism of those whocannot abide the book or the man, the reaction of the academiccommunity at large to Said’s Orientalism has been a pensive,appreciative “yes, but” response. His work, precisely because ithas prodded the thinking of so many others, has become centralto the scholarly enterprise in several fields of study, to the point

that it is not even mentioned in so many words; his insights arenow simply assumed. For reasons described above, missiologistswill do well to subject Orientalism and the larger literature it hasinspired to their own scrutiny. It can be expected that some willrespond with a “no, never” and others with a “yes, always”reaction. One trusts, however, that the majority of mission schol-ars will take Said’s passionate negativism with the requisitegrain of salt and realize that, “Yes, Said is in many ways correct,but, no, he has not told the whole story, has told parts of itincorrectly, and has failed to reach the proper conclusion in otherplaces.” Said is seminal partly because of the questions he in-spires. Engaging Said, grappling with him, will surely lead tofruitful explorations of difficult but exciting issues in the study ofmissions.

There is one final return that might be expected from closerstudy of Said by missiologists. One of the greatest strengths ofOrientalism has been the way in which it ignores the boundaries

between scholarly disciplines. It combines aspects of history,sociology of knowledge, literary criticism, and other fields, sothat when today one reads Said, one is reading a shared work thathas had a powerful impact on global intellectual thought. Whenone reads the wider literature related to Said, Asian namesabound. At the same time, Said draws on postmodernist thinkingwithout apparently being a “real” postmodernist (he commitsthe crimes of “essentializing,” writing a “universalizingmetanarrative,” and being a closet “realist” who believes there isa real Orient). Working through Said, then, opens one to muchwider cognitive horizons, ones that missiologists will surelywant to explore so as to better understand how the Gospel relatesto the world. Communication of the Gospel, we now understand,always requires sensitive appreciation of context. Said’sOrientalism has become one important source for reflection bothon our own histories and contemporary situations and on ourrelationship as Christian communicators to those with whom wewould communicate.

Missiological readings of Orientalism, in sum, offermissiologists the opportunity to reflect critically on their ownfield of study. Those readings raise new questions and look at oldquestions in new ways. They offer missiologists the opportunityto engage contemporary intellectual thought, which is immedi-ately relevant to their own enterprise. Said and Orientalism, thatis, present a patently Asian challenge to missiologists. Saidaddresses them, albeit indirectly, as potential orientalists them-selves, and he seeks to reorient their perception of their subjects,their field of knowledge, and their research methods. Said’schallenge is a powerful, prophetic one, and if he overstates andeven misstates his case at times, the issues he raises are crucial tothe study of Christian mission and ministry in Asia and in the restof the world.

112 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

After first articulating common challenges raised againstChristian mission to Muslims, in this article I want to

reflect on fundamental issues to be taken into account wheneverChristians think of mission in Islamic contexts. Then instead oftrying to arrive at a possible redefinition of Christian under-standing of mission, I shall put forward some much more modestsuggestions related to priorities in Christian thinking about ourrelations with Muslims at the present time.1

Articulating the Challenges

All the main arguments from history and experience that havebeen used in the last two hundred years to question the conceptof Christian mission sound specially convincing when devel-oped in relation to Islamic contexts. Here are several of the morecommon, which need to be heard and addressed:

The devotion of ordinary God-fearing Muslims puts us to shame. IfChristians recognize the genuineness of this devotion, whyshould they ever want to encourage Muslims to change theirreligion and become Christians? A Western Christian who haslived in Turkey for a number of years expressed this view whenhe wrote, in a comment passed on to me, about his experience ofliving among Muslim students: “It has become harder andharder for me to imagine or even want them to convert. Many ofthem live more ‘godly’ lives than I do, or than most Christians Iknow. We should be talking about coexistence rather than con-version.”

The social and political realities in the world demand that we should betalking about real issues in the world around us rather than trying todiscuss theology. Terrorism, AIDS, poverty, corruption, ThirdWorld debt, inequalities in world trade, the population explo-

Time to Give Up the Idea of Christian Mission to Muslims?Some Reflections from the Middle East

Colin Chapman

sion, global warming, and injustices like the oppression ofChechnyans and Palestinians—surely these are the crucial issuesthat confront the human race, and they have little or nothing todo with our understanding of God.

Christianity has a terrible record in its relations with the Muslim world.Weaknesses in the Christian churches in the Middle East andNorth Africa allowed Muslims to gain control through theirinitial conquests and then gradually win converts over the nextfour centuries. European Christendom eyed the world of Islamacross the Mediterranean with a mixture of suspicion, fear, andenvy, and then it launched the Crusades. The mentality ofcrusading continued for many years, even after the Crusaderswere finally driven out of the Middle East. Christian missionenjoyed a dubious relationship with the imperial powers thatcontrolled Africa and much of Asia, and in these continentsChristian mission in Muslim areas has been remarkably unsuc-cessful. The Muslim world sees the West as still being “Chris-tian” in some sense, and as still engaged in a war against Islam.

When Christians and Muslim have so much in common theologically,it’s pure arrogance for Christians to claim that they have “the truth.”Anyone who has ever tried to explain the Trinity, the incarnation,or the atonement to Muslims knows how difficult it is. Anyway,what’s the point of trying to do so? Christians are far closer toMuslims in their beliefs than to Hindus or Buddhists. We sharebelief in one Creator God and a moral law based on his revealedwill. How can Christians claim that their understanding of Godis “better” or “truer” than that of Muslims, or that their way of lifeis closer to what God requires than that of Muslims?

The conversion of individual Muslims is very difficult and often causesextreme suffering. Since Muslim communities are so close-knitand since the penalty for opting out of the Muslim community isso severe, converts can seldom continue to live in their owncommunities and therefore often end up being extracted fromtheir families and their culture. The Christian community findsit very hard to provide an adequate substitute for all that convertshave to give up. Why engage in an activity that is so obviously

Colin Chapman, until June 2003 Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Near EastSchool of Theology, Beirut, has written Cross and Crescent: Responding tothe Challenge of Islam (InterVarsity Press, 2003), Whose Promised Land?(latest edition, Lion Publishing and Baker, 2002), and Islam and the West:Conflict, Co-existence, or Conversion? (Paternoster Press, 1998).

3. See, for example, Jonathan Ingleby, “The Involvement of ChristianMissions in Education: Colonial Ploy or Commitment to the Poor;Historical Resources in the Contemporary Debate,” Journal of theHenry Martyn Institute 18, no. 2 (1999): 48–61.

4. See Donald P. Little, “Three Arab Critiques of Orientalism,” TheMuslim World 69, no. 2 (1979): 110–31.

5. See Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American HistoricalReview 107, no. 3 (2002): 768–96.

6. William D. Hart, Edward Said and the Religious Effects of Culture(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), p. ix.

7. For early rejections of Said, see, for example, Malcolm H. Kerr,review of Orientalism, by Edward W. Said, International Journal ofMiddle East Studies 12, no. 4 (1980): 544–46; and Bernard Lewis, “TheQuestion of Orientalism,” New York Review of Books (June 24, 1982):49–56. One of Said’s best known critics is James Clifford. See,

especially, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), 225–76.For a summary of criticisms of Said and Orientalism, see Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso,1997), 34–73.

8. See, for example, Arif Dirlik, “Chinese History and the Question ofOrientalism,” History and Theory 35, no. 4 (1996): 96–118; MilicaBakic-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of FormerYugoslavia,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (1995): 917–31; and Gyan Prakash,“Orientalism Now,” History and Theory 34, no. 3 (1995): 199–212.

9. Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” pp. 768–96. See also Bakic-Hayden,“Nesting Orientalisms,” pp. 917–31.

10. Richard G. Fox, “East of Said,” in Edward Said: A Critical Reader, ed.Michael Sprinker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 146, 152.

´

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provocative in the eyes of Muslims and leads to so much heart-ache for those who do respond?

Understanding the Deeper Issues

These various arguments raise important challenges and indeedshould give us pause. Deeper issues, though, underlie the idea ofChristian mission to Muslims. Reflection on these more funda-mental points, several of which are outlined below, can providethe context for properly evaluating these and other seeminglyintractable challenges.

Christianity and Islam are both missionary religions. In an addressentitled “The Challenges Facing Christian-Muslim Dialogue”given at Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 1996, George Carey,former archbishop of Canterbury, urged Christians and Muslimsto be honest enough to admit that the missionary element is partof the nature of both faiths: “The fact is that both Islam andChristianity are missionary faiths. We make absolute claims andwe are anxious to promote our faiths. This is integral to both ourreligions and there is nothing to apologise for. Muslims arecommanded in the Holy Qur’an to ‘act as witnesses for mankind’just as Christians are commanded in Holy Scripture to ‘go into allthe world and preach the Gospel.’”2

According to Islamic tradition the Prophet Muhammad sentmessengers some years before his death to the emperors ofAbyssinia, Egypt, Byzantium, and Persia (three of whom wereChristians). In Islamic thinking the Prophet was obliged to givethese nations the opportunity to accept Islam before the Muslimcommunity undertook any kind of conquest. We are dealingwith a faith that came into existence 600 years after Christ andthat, from the beginning, has had a clear understanding of itsmission to correct the errors of Christian belief. Part of its mes-sage to Christians is therefore very blunt: “Islam is the true faith.Your understanding of God is wrong because you have compro-mised the oneness of God by inventing the Trinity. You areseriously misguided in putting Jesus on the same level as Godand in believing that God could have allowed him to be crucified.Muhammad is the last of the Prophets.”

If both faiths have from the beginning behaved as mission-ary faiths, and if Islam has a clear mission in relation to theChristian church, would it not be a strange irony if Christiansnow were to give up any commitment to mission, just when someMuslims are redoubling their efforts to win the West for Islam?

National Christians and foreign missionaries often have quite differentagendas. Living within the Christian community in the MiddleEast for some years and working with foreign missionaries ofdifferent kinds has made me acutely aware that these two groupsgenerally have very different perspectives and agendas. For thevast majority of Christians in this region, the major questionsabout Islam have to do with survival and coexistence: CanChristianity survive in this region? Is genuine coexistence pos-sible? Does the Christian church have a future? Will there be anyChristians left in a hundred years’ time?

Many of the foreign workers, however, come (often unin-vited) with “mission” and “evangelism” as the main items ontheir agenda. When they first arrive, they have little sense ofhistory and are blissfully unaware of the legacy of centuries inwhich Jews and Christians lived as dhimmis (protected commu-nities) under Islamic rule—a status that made anything likemission almost unthinkable. Their impatience both with theancient churches and with the Protestant churches often leads

them either to establish new denominations or to bypass theexisting churches altogether, working entirely independently ofthe churches.

If these two groups stand aloof from each other and evenattack each other, the witness of the church is weakened, andboth parties lose something of real value. But if they can try tounderstand each other’s perspectives and even begin to trusteach other, both can be enriched, even if they accept a kind of“division of labor” and continue to work quite separately. Fortu-nately there are many examples in the Middle East of fruitfulinteraction between national Christians and foreigners—espe-cially in cases where the foreigners don’t invite themselves intothe country but come at the invitation of the national church.When this happens, the foreigners become much more sensitiveto the total context and work within and alongside the churches,and nationals become much more articulate about the mission ofthe church and find greater confidence in sharing their faith.

Evangelism needs to be understood in the broader context of missionand Christian discipleship. In mission conferences I have attendedover the years, I have sometimes felt a little uneasy about anexclusive focus on evangelism that is based simply on the GreatCommission of Matthew 28:16–20: “Go . . . and make disciples ofall nations.” Most of the discussion tends to be about the procla-

Many foreign workerscome (often uninvited)with little sense of history.

mation of the Gospel, about leading people to faith in Christ andplanting new churches. What I have sometimes missed in thesegatherings is an awareness of what it is actually like for nationalChristians to be living alongside Muslims in a huge variety ofdifferent contexts all over the world.

My experience of teaching in different places in the MiddleEast over a number of years has made me aware of very negativeviews about Muslims and Islam that are the product of 1,400years of difficult relationships in this part of the world. Arme-nians, Iranians, and Sudanese, for example, do not have warmfeelings about Islam and do not find it easy to love Muslims! Insuch situations it is often premature to be exhorting Christiansfrom these groups to evangelize their Muslim neighbors. Weprobably need to spend much more time reflecting on the mean-ing of the second part of the Great Commandment: “Love yourneighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39) and asking what it means tolive by the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12). Urging evangelism makeslittle sense if the Gospel has not yet challenged one’s ownprejudices and fears.

We need to listen to the Muslim critique of Christian mission. In July1976 a significant consultation was held at Chambésy in Switzer-land on the subject “Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah[invitation].” The main reports and main papers by people likeBishop Arne Rudvin, Lamin Sanneh, Kenneth Cragg, and Isma’ilal-Faruqi remain a valuable statement of how each faith per-ceives both its own mission and each other’s mission.3 One of thebasic criticisms of Christian mission in the last three centuries isthat it has so often been closely associated with Western imperi-alism. Since the missionaries have generally arrived with thesoldiers, the traders, and the colonial administrators, people

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could hardly resist accepting the Gospel and Western culturealong with the education, the medicine, and social services thatwere being offered. Another fundamental criticism is that somuch mission activity in medicine, education, and social or reliefwork has exploited people in positions of weakness. The practi-cal and material help that has been offered has produced “riceChristians,” with people being pressured to accept the faith thatcomes with the practical benefits.

Both these criticisms acquired new poignancy in this part ofthe world with the murder of three Southern Baptist medicalworkers from the United States at a mission hospital in Yemen.And on November 21, 2002, an American nurse was shot dead ina clinic attached to a Protestant church in Sidon, south of Beirut.It looks as if some Islamists are angry about Christian missionar-ies working among Muslims and may have deliberately targetedAmericans as a way of expressing their anger over the policies ofthe present American government. The fact that the victims havebeen dedicated to healing the sick, that several of them werewomen, and that the vast majority of American missionaries in

this part of the world are extremely critical of their government’spolicies in the Middle East (especially over the Israeli-Palestinianconflict and now the war in Iraq) is probably dismissed by theIslamists as being irrelevant.

A different kind of response to the Islamic critique is respect-fully to ask Muslims if they are prepared to own up to their ownimperialisms in the past (e.g., in their first three centuries acrossthe Middle East and North Africa and in the Safavid, Mogul, andOttoman Empires). Are they willing to examine more criticallythe processes by which populations in the Middle East (whichwere largely Christian) became majority Muslim communitiesover a period of around four hundred years? If Syrian, Palestin-ian, or Egyptian Christians of the seventh to tenth centuries couldspeak, would they not use tones that are very similar to those ofMuslims who have been at the receiving end of Western imperi-alism and Christian mission? Are Muslims willing to be as criticalof their own Islamic mission as they (and Christians) have beenof Christian mission?

We need to hear the message of converts and inquirers. If we need tolisten to what Muslims have been saying about Christian mis-sion, we need also to be listening to the message of Christiansfrom Muslim backgrounds. Their testimonies generally speakabout a personal encounter with Christ that has changed theirthinking and transformed their lives. Sometimes (but certainlynot always) they have met Christians who have shown sacrificiallove in action. Very often the reading of some part of the Bible(and especially the Gospels) has been highly significant. And inmany cases they believe that they have experienced the power ofChrist through a vision, a dream, or some kind of healing. Inalmost every case there has been a price to pay in terms ofrejection and sometimes even death. But they are willing toaccept all this because of the joy they have found in Christ. Someof their stories read like the parable of the treasure hidden in a

A fundamental criticism isthat much mission activityhas exploited people inpositions of weakness.

field: “someone found and hid [it]; then in his joy he goes andsells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44). Otherssound like the parable of “a merchant in search of fine pearls; onfinding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he hadand bought it” (Matt. 13:45).

A number of missions focus their efforts on proclamation toMuslims through literature, radio, or satellite television. WhenMuslim listeners and viewers respond, some are angry, threaten-ing, or argumentative, while others are deeply curious about theChristian faith and life. An example of this last type is a Tunisianman who responded by letter to a Christian radio program asfollows: “I came across your broadcast that enlightens the Arabicmind and increases his spiritual education. One day I was verydepressed and all alone, so I turned on the radio, which is myonly companion. While I was listening to different world stationsI found your station. It is really a great treasure. I was fascinatedby it, and since that day I became an addict to it. It is like myvitamin C that activates my mind. It is incredible. I would likeyou to send me some scientific, health, and spiritual books. AlsoI would like you to send me some cassettes and videos and theteaching of the Gospel, because I want to deepen my knowl-edge.” If this is how converts speak about their pilgrimage infaith and how inquirers express their initial openness, bothgroups would be among the first to encourage Christians topersevere in their efforts to communicate their message.

It will be pointed out that conversion works both ways, thatChristians also need to be willing to hear why some Christianshave turned to Islam. The point is well taken. But Christians needalso to hear this other message: Are you going to deny Muslimsthe opportunity of hearing the Gospel? No one is compellinganyone to believe and change their religion. But don’t you haveany desire or responsibility to make the Christian messageaccessible through every available means to all who might want tohear and see it?

Genuine dialogue does not rule out evangelism. One of the mostcommon arguments put forward by those who argue for dia-logue over against evangelism is that it is impossible to engage ingenuine dialogue if you enter the discussion in order to convincethe other person of what you believe. If this comment simplymeans that dialogue involves genuine openness, listening, and awillingness to change one’s mind where necessary, most if not allwould accept this conclusion without question. Often, however,the idea is pressed further to suggest that only those who arecompletely open-minded can engage in dialogue, and that thosewho are convinced about what they believe can never engage inreal dialogue. My own experience with Muslims (both in Europeand the Middle East) suggests precisely the opposite. Many ofthe Muslims I know say that they are tired of talking to Christianswho do not know what they believe and would far rather talk toconvinced Christians who will argue passionately for their con-victions.

Some days after the murder of the American missionary inSidon, I received a phone call from a Shiite Muslim sheikh whomI had come to know recently, who expressed his condolencesover the murder and said, “This was not an Islamic action but aterrorist action.” Then later, at a seminar in July 2002 for gradu-ates from the Near East School of Theology, this same sheikh wasasked what he thought about tabshir (evangelism), a word thathas quite a strong, negative connotation in Arabic. His reply wasvery significant: “I have no problems at all with Christianssharing their faith with me and trying to convince me about whatthey believe. I too want to convince them about my Islamic

115July 2004

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116 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

beliefs. But what happens when they find that I don’t want tochange my faith? Is that the end of the relationship when theyfind that I’m not willing to convert? Or will they go on talking tome and remain friends? If there’s a genuine personal relationshipbetween us, I have no problems at all with evangelism.”

Alongside a “mission to Muslims” we can think of a “mission to Islam.”This vision has been part of Kenneth Cragg’s thinking for manyyears. He would say that preoccupation with making individualconverts can lead to discouragement and despair when there islittle or no tangible fruit in one’s ministry. He suggests, therefore,that while not giving up the hope that individuals will becomedisciples of Christ, Christians can and should hold onto the hopethat perhaps Islam itself can change. Sufism, for example, has

been deeply influenced by Christian ideas and practices at vari-ous stages in its development, and many Sufi ideas have comeinto mainstream Islam. This example shows that Islam has neverbeen either static or monolithic, has changed in the past, and isstill changing in the present.

Although Muslims that we relate to at the present time maynot seem open to consider the Christian message, perhaps be-cause of what they now see and hear, their children and grand-children may be more open to ask questions and open theirminds. Could we not believe that Muslim ideas about God andour relationship with him might change over the years and comea little closer to those revealed in the Gospels? Are such thoughtssimply a rationalization of failure, or could they represent agenuine, long-term hope for Christians?

Defining Immediate Christian Priorities

I trust that consideration of these various “deeper issues” mightlead to a more rigorous evaluation of our present methods andmotives in mission work among Muslims. Christians, for ex-ample, might be more hesitant to sum up everything concerningChristian-Muslim relations under the slogans of “Muslim evan-gelism” or “dialogue.” Such reappraisals are valuable and neces-sary. At this point, however, I wish to turn to several immediate,more limited priorities that could make a difference “on theground.”

Relationships with people. While in certain situations Christiansand Muslims are living together and mixing freely, I suspect thatin many more situations they do their best to avoid meeting faceto face with each other. For reasons that are very understandable,they may tolerate each other, but they do not really want to gettoo close to each other. Where this is the case Christians andMuslims in positions of leadership and authority need to do allin their power to enable people of all kinds (and not just scholars)in both communities to meet each other.

Engagement with immediate issues in the context. What wouldhappen if, instead of constantly thinking in terms of “us” and

Could we not believe thatMuslim ideas about Godmight come closer to thoserevealed in the Gospels?

“them,” Muslims and Christians in a given place were to worktogether in facing the pressing issues in their society? The chal-lenge would then be to work for the well-being of the wholecommunity and for genuine nation-building, not simply for theinterests of one’s own family and faith community. We cannot goon forever putting the blame for our problems on other parties;we need to shoulder our responsibility now for things that wereally can do—where possible, together.

In the Lebanese context, for example, this engagement wouldmean addressing the depressing economic situation of the coun-try, the corruption that exists at many levels of society, theinequalities between rich and poor, the destruction of the envi-ronment, and the legacies of a long civil war. Then of course thePalestinian problem hangs over everything like a menacingcloud, and we wonder if there can be real progress on any frontas long as the conflict continues, affecting everything that hap-pens in the region. When we understand the reasons for America’ssupport of Israel and discover the extent of the support that itspresent government receives from the so-called Christian Rightin the United States, we begin to recognize the enormous respon-sibility of Christians (and especially Protestant evangelical Chris-tians) in one of the major grievances of the Muslim world againstthe West.4

Serious dialogue. Official dialogue conferences with communiquésissued in front of television cameras no doubt have their place.But what is probably more important here is the kind of conver-sation that takes place between Christians and Muslims living inthe same building, studying together at school or university,serving together in the army, or working in the same office.Although these situations are ideal for what is called the dialogueof life, conversation with my students suggests that the kind ofdialogue that takes place in these settings often does not go verydeep because neither side is very interested in a real meeting ofhearts and minds.

Witness to Jesus. Part of my answer to the challenge about thedevotion of committed Muslims is that at the end of the day themost significant thing that Christians have to offer—if not theonly thing—is their testimony to Jesus. We feel like Peter andJohn, who, when forbidden to speak or teach in the name of Jesus,replied: “We cannot keep from speaking about what we haveseen and heard” (Acts 4:20). We are not offering a superiorculture, a richer civilization, or a more powerful ethic. All wehave to offer is the conviction—based on our experience and ourunderstanding of revelation—that “in Christ God was reconcil-ing the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). It is Jesus of Nazareth whogives us the clearest picture of what God is like and communi-cates the love and mercy of God to our troubled conscience.

This basic urge to bear witness to Christ is summed upbeautifully by Kenneth Cragg in a memorable passage from hisCall of the Minaret, first published in 1956 and revised andreprinted many times since then, most recently in 2000:

This is the inward tragedy, from the Christian angle, of the rise ofIslam, the genesis and dissemination of a new belief which claimedto displace what it had never effectively known. The state of beinga stranger to the Christian’s Christ has been intensified by furtherfailures of love and loyalty on the part of institutional Christianityin the long and often bitter external relations of the two faithsthrough the centuries.

It is for these reasons that the call of the minaret must alwaysseem to the Christian a call to retrieval. He yearns to undo thealienation and to make amends for the past by as full a restitution

117July 2004

as he can achieve of the Christ to Whom Islam is a stranger. Theobjective is not, as the Crusaders believed, the repossession ofwhat Christendom has lost, but the restoration to Muslims of theChrist Whom they have missed.5

Acceptance of suffering. When Christians think about suffering inthe context of Christian-Muslim relations, they are usually think-ing about the suffering involved in situations where Christianslive as minorities in predominantly Islamic societies, the suffer-ing involved in any Muslim opting to become a disciple of Christ,or the suffering experienced by the messengers. Western in-volvement in the Muslim world over the last two hundred yearshas led to distinct improvements in the status of Christians inIslamic societies, and no country practices the dhimma systemany longer. A number of moderate Muslims speak of banishingthe concept to the cupboard of history,6 although it will takemany years for this thinking to percolate down to Muslims on thestreet. If Christian minorities want to stay rooted where they areand not emigrate to the West, they therefore need to developpositive attitudes that will enable them to cope with the difficul-ties of their minority status. Somehow they have to work outwhether “turning the other cheek” inevitably means passivesubmission or whether it can suggest attitudes and responses

that show both firmness and respect and spring not from weak-ness but from inner strength.7

The problem of suffering associated with conversion out ofIslam has stimulated a widespread debate about contextualizationor inculturation, which has led in recent years to creative think-ing about different possible options for Muslims who want tofollow Christ and remain in their situation.8 In the end, however,Christians will never be able to escape the simple fact that somesuffering is inevitable for followers of a crucified Savior. Afterfatal attacks by Islamists on Christian workers in Pakistan,Lebanon, and Yemen, Christians are inevitably bracing them-selves for similar attacks in the future. But they do so now witha keen awareness of the ambiguities of the situation: in one sensesome will certainly be martyrs; but from another point of viewthey will simply be victims of their own governments’ policies.

If the Middle Eastern context has brought some of these issuesabout Christian mission to Muslims to the surface, I trust it hasalso suggested what it may mean for all Christians to reflect onthe meaning of Christian mission in different contexts at thepresent time. Despite the many objections to such mission, we goforward, not forgetting the one who said, “As the Father has sentme, so I send you” (John 20:21). No, it is not time to give up!

Notes1. An earlier version of this article appeared in Ung Teologi, no.1 (2003):

47–57. Used by permission.2. George Carey, “The Challenges Facing Christian-Muslim Dialogue”

(address given at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, October 4, 1996).3. Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah, Proceedings of the Chambesy

Dialogue Consultation (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1982).4. See further Colin Chapman, Whose Promised Land? (Oxford: Lion

Publishing, 2002), chap. 6.3, “Christian Zionism and Dispensa-tionalism.”

5. Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, 2d ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: OrbisBooks, 1985), pp. 219–20.

6. See, for example, Mohamed Talbi, “Islamo-Christian EncounterToday: Some Principles,” in “Christian-Muslim Encounter in theMiddle East,” special issue, MECC Perspectives, no. 4/5 (July/August1985), pp. 7–11; Tarek Mitri, ed., Religion, Law, and Society: A Christian-Muslim Discussion (Geneva: WCC, 1995); and Fahmy Howaridy,Muwatinun la Dhimmiyun (Fellow-citizens, not Dhimmis) (Cairo: Daral-Shorouq, 1980).

7. See, for example, “Suffering and Power in Christian-MuslimRelations,” Transformation 17, no. 1 (January–March 2000).

8. Phil Parshall, New Paths in Muslim Evangelism: Evangelical Approachesto Contextualization (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980).

John Hubers, living in Orange City, Iowa, serves with the Reformed Church inAmerica as Supervisor of Mission Programs in the Middle East and South Asia,and as Stewardship Coordinator for the Synod of the Heartland. Formerly hewas a pastor in Oman and Bahrain (1986–96).

Samuel Zwemer (1867–1952) provides the student of mis-sion with a fascinating study of a person caught between

two worlds. Beginning his Middle East ministry in the spirit ofthe triumphalist Protestant missionary movement of the nine-teenth century, he ended his career in the more chastened spiritof missions after World War I, anticipating a more dialogicapproach to Islam. This change should not be overstated. Zwemernever abandoned his belief that Islam was fatally flawed. Butthere was a development in his thought and approach that needsto be acknowledged, if for no other reason than to countertendencies within the post-9/11 evangelical community to re-vive the triumphalist spirit of an earlier age. Here was a man who

Samuel Zwemer and the Challenge of Islam:From Polemic to a Hint of Dialogue

John Hubers

committed his life to an evangelical witness to Muslims in theheartland of their faith. He never compromised this witness, buthe did modify it. This modification is the concern of this article.

Early Years and Training

Samuel Zwemer was born into a family of Dutch immigrantswho had belonged to an evangelical subculture in the Nether-lands that echoed the values of a similar subculture in America.1The emphasis was on a personal faith undergirded by a disci-plined devotional life. “The major decisions of [Zwemer’s] homewere all made after seasons of prayer, and there was a constantfeeling of fellowship with Christ and divine guidance in thefamily. . . . Three times a day, at each meal, there was Biblereading and prayer. In such a home it is little wonder that theyouth felt himself committed to Christ from the time of hisearliest reflection on the subject. Nor was it out of the ordinary

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that he should join the church and hear the call to the Gospelministry and later enter foreign service.”2

Zwemer attended Hope College in Holland, Michigan. In1886, during his senior year, he joined the Student VolunteerMovement, a student-led movement that in its heyday attractedthe best and brightest of America’s university graduates intomissionary service. He was one of the first to join, became a leaderin its early stages,3 and remained actively involved throughouthis career.4

This movement emerged from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalism in America, which fit well the spiritual em-phasis in Zwemer’s home. At its heart was the goal to call people

of all cultures and language groups to a personal faith in Christthat would at the same time allow them to participate fully in theblessings of a “Christian” civilization best represented by Euro-pean and American societies. These two things—conversion andcivilization—were intimately connected.5 This is not to say thatnineteenth-century missionaries were agents of colonial govern-ments, but they were unapologetic about the benefits Christian-ity as a system brought to both individuals and societies thatcame under its benevolent sway.

Zwemer’s education in Islam began during his seminaryyears at New Brunswick Seminary in New Brunswick, NewJersey. He was one of three students who met regularly toprepare for mission service in the countries of the ArabianPeninsula, which they considered to be the most challengingmission field in the world. In this task they were mentored byJohn G. Lansing, their Old Testament professor, who had re-cently returned to the United States from a mission stint in Egypt.

What was theoretical in seminary became practical whenZwemer, along with fellow seminarian James Cantine, moved tothe Arab world upon his graduation from seminary in 1889. Afterstudying Arabic for a year in Beirut, the pair settled on Basra,Iraq, and Manama, Bahrain, as the initial sites for what they cameto call mission stations. Bahrain became Zwemer’s operationalbase.

Zwemer served in the Middle East until 1929, when heaccepted an appointment at Princeton Theological Seminary asprofessor of missions and of the history of religion. After retiringfrom Princeton in 1937, he continued to teach and write, con-stantly encouraging mission work among Muslims.

Harsh Critic of Islam

Once in the Middle East Zwemer soon discovered the essentialsocial, political, and religious cohesiveness of Islam, the “mighti-est of non-Christian faiths.” In his eyes this cohesiveness was acurse, for he perceived Islam to be a spiritual and sociologicalstraitjacket, keeping its adherents from reaping the benefitsEuropeans had enjoyed under the tutelage of the Christian faith.In 1907 he approvingly quoted William Clifford Palgrave assaying, “When the Koran and Mecca shall have disappearedfrom Arabia, then, and only then, can we expect to see the Arab

Zwemer considered Islamto be a form of spiritualslavery from which itsvictims needed release.

assume that place in the ranks of civilization from whichMohammed and his book have, more than any other cause, longheld him back.”6 Zwemer considered Islam to be a form ofspiritual slavery from which its victims needed release. To en-gage in mission work in the Arab world was therefore to commitoneself to a war of spiritual liberation.

View of God. Zwemer’s critique of Islam began with what heperceived to be its warped doctrine of God. In his early writingsZwemer stresses the foundational nature of Islamic theism,which he felt was its strength, “its tremendous and fanaticalgrasp on the one great truth—Monotheism.”7 Yet this strengthwas also its greatest weakness, as the theism Islam promoted fellfar short of what Christians understood about God throughbiblical revelation.

In his book Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (1900), Zwemer chal-lenged the assumption of a number of his contemporaries thatAllah was the same deity as the God worshiped by Christiansand Jews. “Nearly all writers take it for granted that the God ofthe Koran is the same being and has like attributes as Jehovah orthe Godhead of the New Testament. Nothing could be furtherfrom the truth.”8 Zwemer develops this point in The MoslemDoctrine of God (1905). For Zwemer, Muhammad’s “Allah” wasborrowed from three sources—natural theology, paganism, anda secondhand knowledge of the Bible—and was nothing like theGod of the Bible. Zwemer noted, for instance, that the Qur’ancould only describe Allah in negations. “Whatsoever your mindcan conceive, that Allah is not, you may well believe.” Hecontrasts this portrayal with the positive attributes of God foundin the Bible (God is light, God is love, etc.).9

The deity portrayed through this negativist theology was animpersonal, “infinite, eternal, vast Monad” who could be knownonly through his (negative) attributes. Out of the list of ninety-nine attributes that Muslims used to describe Allah, the “terribleattributes” were both more frequent and more frequently used.Zwemer does admit that some attributes were positive, but theywere superseded by those that described Allah as a deity who“abases, leads astray, avenges, withholds His mercies, and worksharm.” Muhammad “saw God’s power in nature, but never hada glimpse of His holiness and justice.”10

Muhammad’s Allah, being unbound by any moral restraints,was arbitrary in the extreme. If Allah wished to abrogate morallaw (which he did time and again for Muhammad), he wasperfectly free to do so.11 This god, unchecked by the quality ofagape love so central to the Christian understanding of deity,was inaccessible to humankind.

Rejection of the Bible. The inadequacy of Islam’s doctrine of Godwas rooted, in Zwemer’s view, in Muhammad’s failure to basehis theology on biblical revelation.12 Natural theology wasMuhammad’s operational framework. The result was a god whobore only a passing resemblance to the far superior God ofJudaism and Christianity. Whatever positive things might havebeen said about Muhammad’s grasp of monotheism as thecentral organizing truth of human existence was negated by thisfailure to base his teaching on the full and complete revelation ofthe Hebrew and Greek scriptures.

Muhammad. Muslims believe Muhammad to be the channel ofGod’s final and most complete revelation to the world, an actorgiven a divine script to read. Zwemer believed that Muhammadhimself was the source of this so-called revelation. He was theorganizing genius who not only defined Islamic theology (based

119July 2004

largely on ideas borrowed from various contemporary sources)13

but put the stamp of his own character on it. “The religion whichMohammed founded bears everywhere the imprint of his lifeand character. Mohammed was not only the prophet, but theprophecy of Islam.”14

In his early writings Zwemer shows a grudging admirationfor Muhammad’s genius, admitting that the prophet had a sharpmind, charismatic personality, and natural leadership abilities.For Zwemer, these positive qualities are negated by what heperceives to be Muhammad’s immoral character. The proof ofMuhammad’s dissoluteness is seen in the ethical system hecreated, which contrasted poorly with other moral codes of hisday. What was worse was Muhammad’s behavior, as he wasunable to live up even to his own low standards. One only had tolook at his marital irregularities for proof of this failing. TheQur’an put the limit for polygamous unions at four wives for oneman. Muhammad had fourteen wives, at least one of whom wasa child bride.15

Qur’an and Hadith. Zwemer dismisses the Qur’an as a jumble ofdistorted history, fables, and superstition, which he saw as amirror of Muhammad’s debased morality. In Zwemer’s eyes theQur’an “perpetuates slavery, polygamy, religious intolerance,the seclusion and degradation of women and petrifies sociallife.”16 Even more serious was the solidification of Muhammad’simmoral behavior in the collection of traditions known as theHadith, which held him up as the shining example of Islamicliving.

Muhammad’s teaching in the Qur’an and his example in theHadith led millions of people who came under the influence ofhis teaching into an immoral lifestyle that required the liberationof the Gospel.17 Many of the names Muhammad’s followers usedto describe him were similar to those attributed to Jesus in theNew Testament. Words spoken by Jesus found their way intoMuhammad’s mouth in the Hadith. Muslims were thus unable torecognize the uniqueness of Christ because Muhammad hadusurped his elevated status. “The sin and guilt of the Moham-medan world is that they give Christ’s glory to another, and thatfor all practical purposes, Mohammed himself is the MoslemChrist.”18

Islamic moral code. The fruit of Muhammad’s Islam was a weakmoral code, the denunciation of which was a preoccupation ofZwemer’s writing throughout his career. Islam, Zwemer con-tended, was “the most degraded religion, morally, in the world.”19

This was strong language, but justified in Zwemer’s eyes by whathe observed in the lifestyle and behavior of Muslims in his travelsthrough the Arab Muslim world.

Zwemer was particularly critical of what he perceived to beIslam’s casual attitude toward sin. Islam maintained a hierarchyof sins that tended to narrow ethical concern to those designatedas kabira, “great sins,” on which Muslims had no agreement. Suchthings as lying, deception, and lust (which Zwemer felt to beintegral elements of Muhammad’s character) were regarded byMuslims as easily forgivable sins, not all that critical to Allah.20 Inaddition, Islamic ethics failed to recognize any clear differencebetween moral and ceremonial law.21 Eating pork held the samemoral weight as stealing, sometimes even more. This attitude ledZwemer to conclude that Islam was “phariseeism translated intoArabic.”22

An important work in this respect was Zwemer’s Childhoodin the Moslem World (1915), which focused on the corruptinginfluence of Islam on the lives of innocent children. “Moslem

children come into the world handicapped. The curse of Islam,through its polygamy, concubinage, and freedom of divorce,already rests upon them . . . it is hardly conceivable that a childcan grow up pure minded in such an atmosphere.”23

Zwemer was concerned also about the role of women inIslamic society. What victimized children victimized women aswell, whom Zwemer considered to have been better off in pre-Islamic Arabia than now: “It was Islam that forever withdrewfrom Oriental society the bright, refining, elevating influence ofwomen. . . . The harem system did not prevail in the days ofidolatry. Women had rights and were respected.”24

Hints of Change

World War I was a philosophical watershed for Protestant mis-sion, a time of deep soul-searching for many in the missionarycommunity. At issue was the fact that “Christian” nations weredrawing colonial subjects into a conflict of the colonialists’ ownmaking, which forced a revision of previously held convictionsabout the superiority of Western “Christian” civilization. ForJohn Mott, the long-serving chairman of the Student VolunteerMovement, this change of attitude came as early as 1914. At theSVM convention in Kansas City, Mott observed, “The situationis more urgent than ever because of the rapid spread of thecorrupt influences of so-called Western civilization. The blush ofshame has come to my cheeks as I have seen how these influencesfrom North America and the British Isles and Germany, not tomention other countries, are eating like gangrene into the lesshighly organized peoples of the world.”25

Zwemer was not as quick as Mott to pick up the anticolonialistspirit. His address to the same convention in 1914 found himwaving the imperialist flag, claiming that it was essential forWestern countries to remain in the ascendancy in the Muslimworld.26 This view arose in part from Zwemer’s fear that Muslimnations, freed from a colonial infrastructure, would close theirdoors to further gospel witness.

In his book The Disintegration of Islam (1916), we begin todiscern a subtle alteration in Zwemer’s thought, evidence thatMott’s critique was beginning to hit home. After affirming thatProvidence had placed Great Britain in a position of political,moral, and spiritual leadership in the Muslim world, Zwemergoes on to express feelings of betrayal, suggesting that Britain

had not done all it should have or could have to aid the advance-ment of the gospel witness: “Surely Christian missions andChristendom have a right to demand that nominally Christiangovernments, although they may not help forward the spread ofthe Gospel, should at the very least not be permitted to oppose orthwart the efforts of missionaries.”27

A crack had opened up in Zwemer’s optimistic appraisal ofthe colonial venture. In the years immediately following theturmoil of the war, what began as a doubt became a growingconviction—that he had been wrong to put his hopes here. Thecourse of his ministry was about to take a turn in a new direction.

In his early writingsZwemer shows a grudgingadmiration forMuhammad’s genius.

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Lyle Vander Werff notes that the later stage of Zwemer’scareer was marked by a more “anthropological-Christocentricapproach” to Islam, a stage that began in 1916: “It is almost as ifZwemer is a liberated man. No longer is it his duty to make battleagainst Islam as a system. He can now concentrate on themessage which is Christocentric and eschatological, a message ofGood News for the Muslim as a man.”28

Al-Ghazali. One sign of Zwemer’s move in this new direction isthe positive references he makes to the life and thought of thegreat Muslim mystic and theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111). Wesee it already in The Disintegration of Islam, where he brieflyreferences al-Ghazali and his work. It soon becomes even moreevident, in a work Zwemer devotes entirely to the life and workof al-Ghazali, entitled A Moslem Seeker After God (1920). In both ofthese books al-Ghazali is seen to represent the best Islam has tooffer. Zwemer praises him as someone whose teaching movestoward a Christian perception of truth. Zwemer even goes so faras to compare al-Ghazali favorably with the apostle Paul: “Ingiving his thoughts on the spiritual character of prayer, [al-Ghazali] attains almost to the height of St. Paul.”29

It is important to note here that Zwemer praises al-Ghazalifor his contributions as a Muslim. Zwemer recognizes that thereis value to the writing of a Muslim thinker who never left thefaith. “Of all those who have found a deeper spiritual meaning inthe teachings of the Koran and even in the multitudinous andpuerile detail of the Moslem ritual, none can equal Al-Ghazali.”30

Zwemer was clearly beginning to break free from his blanketcondemnation of Islam, seeing shades of gray where he once onlysaw black and white.

Abdul-Wahab. Another example of Zwemer’s more open attitudeappears in comments about Abdul-Wahab bin Mussherif, theperson behind the Wahabi movement, which later solidified intosomething approaching an official theology for the Kingdom ofSaudi Arabia. Zwemer shows his approval for Abdul-Wahab’sreforms, noting that he was “an incarnate whirlwind of Puritan-ism against the prevailing apostasy of the Muslim world.” Wherehe had compared al-Ghazali to the apostle Paul, what Zwemersees in Wahab are parallels with Martin Luther. His reform, notes

Zwemer, was iconoclastic, fruitful beyond his territory, andrepresented a return to a purer, more primitive form of the faith.He acknowledges Wahab’s positive accomplishments in a sur-prising way, given his earlier unequivocal critiques of Islam andall it represents: “Islam in its primitive state is nearer the truththan Islam with all its added superstitions and additions of laterdate. The Koran can more easily be made our ally in the battle forthe Gospel than the interpretations of the four Imams.”31

It must not be assumed from such a passage that Zwemer’searlier objections to Islam had ended. The denunciations of hisearlier works continued in modified form throughout his career.But it is important to note that the blanket condemnation of Islamwas giving way to a more subtle critique, one that was willing to

recognize that there were gradations of light within the darkness,at times approaching the dazzling light of Christ. In the oftenoverlooked little book Call to Prayer (1923), Zwemer signals theend of one era and the beginning of the next: “Two methods standout in clear contrast: the polemic and the irenic; the method ofargument, debate, contrasts and comparison on the one hand,and on the other hand the method of loving approach along linesof least resistance.”32

Seeing Points of Contact

Much in this irenic little book reflects this new approach. For thefirst time Zwemer addresses his Muslim neighbors as “breth-ren,” which is something few missionaries today would becomfortable doing. Even more telling is his reluctance to saywhat he had said numerous times before—that Islam has had awholly negative effect on the lives of those who come under itssway. For the first time Zwemer openly and freely admits topositive contributions made by this “greatest of all non-Christianfaiths,” making its valuation much more complex than he hadoriginally assumed. In this context he approvingly mentionscurrent Islamic reform movements, what he calls New Islam,saying that those who were caught up in these movements couldbe considered allies with Christians in their desire to bring socialand ethical reform to their societies. This signals an end toZwemer’s earlier assertion that the only hope for the Muslimworld is the radical displacement of Islam. He now openlyadmits that Muslims working within the confines of their Islamicworldview can be the source of positive societal changes.33

This book signals Zwemer’s attempt to break with histriumphalist past. No longer will he support the colonial venture.It was a mistake, he says, to ever have relied on that avenue toforward Christ’s aims. “We must not put our trust in politics.They are uncertain at best, and whatever may prove the finaladjustment of the present tangled situation neither our hopes norour dread lie in that direction.”34

Muhammad. In his last comprehensive treatment of Islam, TheCross Above the Crescent (1941), the missionary-now-turned-professor shows that his earlier critique of Muhammad remainedconsistent. He is still convinced that Muhammad’s character wasflawed, even though the criticism is more muted than in previousworks. The near-deification of Muhammad in Muslim pietyremains a source of irritation. Muhammad had stolen the glorydue Christ in the minds and hearts of most Muslims. However,Zwemer balances this with a positive appraisal of Muhammad’sgenius. Zwemer the reluctant admirer of Muhammad in theearly 1900s has become a genuine admirer in 1941. Muhammadwas “one of the greatest creative spirits in the history of humanculture. The impress of his mind and life has been colossal.” Evenmore astonishing is Zwemer’s assertion that Muhammad wassincere in his prophetic calling and, despite a growing arrogance,did in fact exhibit signs of personal and spiritual integrity.35

Noticeably absent in this book is the deprecating polemic ofearlier works.

Islamic theism. We see a change in Zwemer’s attitude toward theIslamic doctrine of God. The mature Zwemer, while still feelingthat Muhammad’s portrayal of God was inadequate, no longerbelieves it was inadequate enough to justify the harsh languageof his early years. In an article he wrote for the journal TheologyToday in 1946, we see an emphasis less on what Muhammad gotwrong than on what Muhammad got right. In a complete rever-

It is important to note thatZwemer praises al-Ghazalifor his contributions as aMuslim thinker and writer.

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Notes1. Adrian Zwemer, Genealogy and History of the Zwemer-Boon Family

(Harrisburg, Pa.: Nungesser Printing, 1932), p. 25.2. J. Christy Wilson, Apostle to Islam (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1952), p. 21.3. Ibid., p. 28.4. Lyle L. Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims (Pasadena, Calif.:

William Carey Library, 1977), p. 225.5. Ibid., pp. 31, 210–14. See also Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Great

Century, vol. 4 of A History of the Expansion of Christianity (New York:Harper & Brothers, 1941), chaps. 1–4.

6. Samuel Zwemer, Islam: A Challenge to Faith (New York: StudentVolunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1907), pp. 1, 130.

7. Samuel Zwemer, The Moslem Doctrine of God (New York: AmericanTract Society, 1905), p. 7.

8. Samuel Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (New York: Fleming H.Revell, 1900), p. 171.

9. Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God, pp. 19, 24–25, 28, 30.10. Ibid., pp. 30, 48, 49.11. Ibid., p. 55.12. Ibid., p. 109.13. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam, p. 170.14. Zwemer, Islam: A Challenge to Faith, p. 51.15. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam, pp. 180–81, 183.16. Ibid., pp. 187–90.17. Zwemer, Islam: A Challenge to Faith, p. 119.18. Samuel Zwemer, The Moslem Christ (London: Oliphant, Anderson &

Ferrier, 1912), pp. 140–70, quotation on p. 157.19. Samuel Zwemer, Childhood in the Moslem World (New York: Fleming

H. Revell, 1915), p. 159.

20. Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God, pp. 51–53.21. Zwemer, Islam: A Challenge to Faith, pp. 121–22.22. Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God, p. 52.23. Zwemer, Childhood in the Moslem World, p. 170.24. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam, p. 161.25. Fenell P. Turner, ed., Students and the World-Wide Expansion of

Christianity, Kansas City Convention (New York: Student VolunteerMovement for Foreign Missions, 1914), p. 86.

26. Ibid., pp. 70–78.27. Samuel Zwemer, The Disintegration of Islam (New York: Fleming H.

Revell, 1916), pp. 118–19.28. Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims, p. 243.29. Zwemer, Disintegration of Islam, pp. 64–71, quotation on p. 71.30. Samuel Zwemer, A Moslem Seeker After God (New York: Fleming H.

Revell, 1920), pp. 21–22.31. Zwemer, Disintegration of Islam, pp. 77, 88, 91.32. Samuel Zwemer, Call to Prayer (London: Marshall Brothers, 1923),

p. 30.33. Ibid., pp. 49, 22.34. Ibid., pp. 25–28, quotation on p. 27.35. Samuel Zwemer, The Cross Above the Crescent (Grand Rapids:

Zondervan, 1941), pp. 68, 69, 28 (quotation), 66–67.36. Samuel Zwemer, “The Allah of Islam and the God of Jesus Christ,”

Theology Today 3 (April 1946): 66–72, quotation on p. 66 (my italics).37. Ibid., p. 67.38. Zwemer, Cross Above the Crescent, p. 48.

sal of his earlier conviction, Zwemer is now convinced that Allahis merely a different name for the same God worshiped by Jewsand Christians. Zwemer celebrates Muhammad’s role in callingthe Arabs “back to the worship of one living God.”36 Zwemer alsonow finds that the ninety-nine attributes of Allah, with only oneor two exceptions, are equivalent to the attributes of Jehovah inthe Hebrew scriptures.

Such conclusions all give weight to Zwemer’s argument thatMuslims and Christians worship the same God. The most con-vincing proof, however, was something he had observed duringhis long years as a missionary in Arabia: no Muslim convert everclaimed to have changed gods. “No Jew since Paul’s day, anymore than Paul himself, was conscious of a change of ‘gods’when he accepted Christ as Savior and Lord. The same is true ofevery Muslim convert today.”37 Zwemer had moved into newterritory here. His abandonment of a polemical approach toevangelistic outreach had allowed him to see points of contact,where before he had seen only reasons for conflict. He was moreof a listener now, anticipating the dialogic approach of those whowould pick up where he left off.

A Caution

The case for Zwemer’s transformation of thought should not beoverstated. It was a modification more than a transformation.Many of his original critiques, though less harsh, remained

consistent throughout his life. In 1941 he was still echoing earlierthemes: “In spite of all its elements of worth and strength andvitality, Islam has failed conspicuously and proved itself hope-lessly inadequate to meet the social, the intellectual, the moraland spiritual needs of humanity. Its inward weakness, its denialsand falsehoods have corrupted the best that is in it, and provedthe truth of the Latin proverb: ‘The corruption of the best is theworst.’ The failure of Islam is the justification and plea formissions to Mohammedans.”38

Zwemer remained consistent in his evangelical calling topeople whom he perceived to be held in the grip of a faith heconsidered fatally flawed. But years of living among and inter-acting with Muslims he learned to call friends and neighborsforced him to modify his harshest views. (A particularly touch-ing tribute to Muslim friends appears in A Call to Prayer, wherehe notes with heartfelt appreciation the support his BahrainiMuslim neighbors gave him and his wife during their time ofgrief after the death of their two daughters.)

Nurtured on nineteenth-century triumphalist polemic, themature Zwemer evolved into a more thoughtful critic, exhibitinga greater respect for people he had always loved and an increasedadmiration for the faith that shaped their lives. In these days,when the “clash of civilizations” is being touted as the mostaccurate description of Muslim-Christian relations, we would dowell to follow Zwemer’s lead, moving further down that sameroad. Zwemer himself, I believe, would approve.

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Iwas born in Cardiff, Wales, in April 1928. A simplecalculation shows that like others of my generation I have

lived through a third of the history of Anglo-Saxophone mission,giving an interesting perspective upon it.

At age ten I won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital, a boysboarding school, founded as a Reformation response to the needof London’s street children. Then two weeks after World War IIstarted, I began attending the school’s Christian Union, a groupindigenous to and organized by senior schoolboys. After fouryears of Sunday meetings, I came to Christ through AlfredSchultes, a German pastor of the Confessing Church. We boyslistened to this “enemy” because he had suffered, having beenimprisoned by Hitler with Martin Niemöller and later internedby us. In broken English he expounded 1 John, “Gott is light, Gottis luff, Gott is laif!” I realized that while God’s holiness reveals mysinfulness, Christ’s love in dying for me brings me forgiveness ofsin and new life. I have felt indebted to German Christians eversince.

In primary school I had competed for top place, but now ina school restricted to bright kids from lower-income families, Iwas down at the bottom. Things began to change around the timeof my conversion. Reading Paul de Kruif’s book Microbe Huntersinspired me to aim for a medical career. The 1944 Education Actopened the door to Oxford and Cambridge, previously onlyopen to boys from wealthy homes and a few poorer boys ofoutstanding genius. (“Boys,” since Cambridge did not finallyadmit women until 1948.). “Even people like you, Griffiths, cango to Oxbridge now,” a master told me. The headmaster urgedme to go to Cambridge, rather than a London medical school.

Providentially, I gained an entrance award to Peterhouse,Cambridge, but was then conscripted into the Royal ArmyMedical Corps. I worked on wards as a nurse and then in chargeof a pathology lab in a small hospital. I loved medical work butwas disturbed that our patients remained ungrateful and selfish.Was I to devote my life to producing healthy sinners? Afterdemobilization, I talked with evangelist Dick Rees about Churchof England ministry. Evangelical advice at that time was stronglyagainst studying academic theology, then at the high-tide markof biblical skepticism, so I started reading natural sciences atCambridge in October 1949. Though I have often since regrettedmy lack of any formal theological degree, I recognize that we arethe product of our own times and circumstances.

English Student Work

Peterhouse was the oldest college (1284) at Cambridge, andalmost the smallest. That year our college group belonging to theCambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) beganwith seven members, but we finished with thirty-seven Chris-tians out of two hundred Peterhouse undergraduates. The larger

My Pilgrimage in Mission

Michael C. Griffiths

CICCU was seeing students converted every week; of the fivehundred members, half were converted after joining the univer-sity. After two terms I was invited onto the Executive Committee,and in my second year became president of this indigenousstudent movement, run by and for students. At age twenty-three,this experience provided remarkable on-the-job training. Thefollowing two years I served as missionary secretary, and thenchairman, of the national InterVarsity Fellowship (IVF) StudentExecutive, covering twenty-two universities in the United King-dom (now fifty years later there are five times as many). As wellas seeing many conversions through student evangelism, twoother things accelerated my pilgrimage.

In my first term the CICCU was organized into forty missionprayer groups of ten members each. For five years I prayed forEast Africa every Saturday of term. Several members of our smallgroup later went as missionaries to Africa, while Africans like myfriend John M’Paie, graduate of the Alliance High School inNairobi, later translator of the Maasai Bible, became East AfricaBible Society secretary. I was soon committed to becoming amissionary, probably in Africa. Our daily prayer meetings (since1848) met in the Henry Martyn Hall, with Martyn’s portraitlooking down on us. In 1950 Mildred Cable spoke to us at amissionary breakfast about closing doors to China. We enjoyedother speakers from the China Inland Mission, too; I rememberDr. Jim Broomhall, Lesley Lyall, and David Bentley-Taylor—allsix-foot, phlegmatic, “front-row forwards.” But China closed in1950, and as the insecure product of a broken home, I wasmanifestly not qualified. After graduation (1952), and feelingeven more insecure because my parents divorced that summer,I stayed on in Cambridge at Ridley Hall to train for Anglicanministry. The four faculty and sixteen of the students wereliberal, and forty of us students were conservative evangelicals.The faculty attempted to open our admittedly narrow mind-setto “new truth,” while we wrote comic songs lampooning theirefforts. We questioned suspiciously everything our lecturerstold us (not the best way to study theology!). Our essays ben-efited from advice from Andrew Walls, then at nearby TyndaleHouse, before he left for West Africa. Many of us were givingweekly Bible expositions in college CICCU groups; I spent threedays each week preparing and delivering that material. Fellow-ship among us was rich and deep, and while, typically, there wasno missiological constituent in the theological curriculum, sev-eral of us went on to spend much of our later lives overseas.

The second impulse came from three overseas visits, pos-sible now that the war was no longer imprisoning us in our smallislands. My first trip was to the Norwegian university and highschool movement, led by Ole Hallesby and Carl Fredrik Wisløff.I was astonished to find Bible-believing, passionate, hymn-singing Lutherans believing in baptismal regeneration and lack-ing assurance of salvation. My second trip involved speaking atReformed societies in Netherlands universities. In their networkof kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, and the FreeUniversity, all teachers had signed the Augsburg Confession andthe Articles of the Synod of Dort—but there was no prayermeeting in any Dutch university. It was doctrinally as sound asa bell, but spiritually as dead as a dodo. Yet these courageouspeople had fought for the Reformation, against Catholic Spain,and later against German occupiers. I began to realize that each

Michael C. Griffiths, following student work in the U.K. and Japan, served asgeneral director of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (1969–80) in Singapore,the principal of London Bible College (1980–89), and professor of missionstudies at Regent College, Vancouver (1989–92). He has written more than adozen books, the latest on mission being Lambs Dancing with Wolves(Monarch Publications, 2001), dealing with the importance of bonding withnational Christians in the host culture.

123July 2004

country has its own church history related to its own uniqueculture, and that we must not try to force others into theProcrustean bed of our own cultural ecclesiology. My third visitwas in 1953 to an early conference of the International Fellowshipof Evangelical Students (IFES), drawn almost entirely from NorthAmerica and Europe rather than the Third World. Paul Whitewas from Australia, David Adeney from Asia, while culturaldiversity came from Hans Burki (Switzerland), Uli Wever (Ger-many), and Frank Horton (France). I realize now that because ofmy own experience of rapid conversion growth among Britishstudents, I was almost “triumphalist,” expecting confidently thatwherever the Gospel is faithfully preached, it must inevitablyspread to the ends of the earth. The ebb tide of spiritual declinein Europe (not least in the U.K., Norway, and Holland) hasaccompanied a rising tide in Africa and Asia. This developmentsubstantiates Andrew Walls’s thesis that church growth is notsteadily progressive but proceeds in fits and starts.

The Anglican Church was not for me. When I told my bishopthat I thought infant baptism was neither dominical nor apos-tolic, but that I would be prepared to baptize children of believ-ing parents who accepted covenant theology, he told me thecurate must baptize every child in the parish before it was sixweeks old. I had no choice but to resign. (Roland Allen hadresigned over the same issue!) Doors to medicine and to Anglicanministry closed—so what did God want me to do now?

I was given a unanimous call from the IVF Student Execu-tive, which I accepted, to become one of three male travelingsecretaries, one of my colleagues being Methodist Donald En-glish. This experience proved superb missionary training, withlearning by doing, training student executive committees andBible study group leaders, counseling individuals, modelingfriendships with non-Christians, and engaging in personal evan-gelism. We occasionally preached at church evangelistic ser-vices, but what I enjoyed most were informal late-night evange-listic cocoa parties! After five years as a student activist, threeyears as a student worker was a natural development. Leader-ship was still indigenous, by students for students. We travelingsecretaries might spend four days in a university, but then wewould move on to another (by train!), so that students neverbecame dependent upon staff workers.

Work in Japan

I met Valerie, my wife-to-be, one of two women a year readingtheology at Oxford, at a conference on the English Puritans. Weboth had a clear call to overseas mission: she had worked atNazareth among illiterate Arab women, I had been praying forAfrica. Some compromise was essential, which was settled infavor of Asia, as statistics showed that Africa had more Chris-tians and more missionaries than Asia. There were few overseasstudents in Britain after the war, but three Japanese I met were sointriguing that I started reading everything I could about Japan.Ariga Hisashi, who was returning from studies at the FreeUniversity in Amsterdam, came along with me on universityvisits. He was uncomplimentary about missionaries, whom hesaw as poor in language and ignorant of culture, so he astonishedme by asking me to pray about joining the Overseas MissionaryFellowship (OMF, the successor to Hudson Taylor’s China In-land Mission) and coming to Japan to work with KirisutoshaGakusei Kai (KGK, Christian Student Association), their nationalstudent movement, of which he was about to become generalsecretary. Our prayers for guidance were being answered, notwith a Macedonian vision, but through real-live Japanese. As

soon as Valerie completed her postgraduate teaching diploma,we were married. A year later we boarded a ship for OMFinternational headquarters in Singapore; it took us nineteendays. The night before we sailed, on October 4, 1957, I completedthe manuscript of my first book, requested and published byInterVarsity Press (IVP) as Consistent Christianity (1960). Valeriewas keener on Indonesia than Japan, but we accepted the director’sdesignation to work in Japan, initially in language study andchurch planting in the north, and then, only after that apprentice-ship, joining KGK.

In spite of all we heard in training, and despite our havingtaken a language-learning course with the Summer Institute ofLinguistics, nothing had prepared us for the shock of findingourselves so utterly useless in our ability to evangelize or teach

the Bible; we realized what a long slog learning Japanese wouldbe. We could offer only ¥100 an hour (then worth only 2 shillings,or 40 cents) for informants rather than trained teachers. So,simply by listening, we worked at learning a difficult northernzuzu ben dialect. In Hakodate, where we had no baptized con-verts, I was befriended by an unemployed tuberculosis patientwho had learned English by listening to radio. He was depressedand impoverished but, after we had left, was baptized followinga life-threatening hemorrhage; he subsequently became an elderin the emerging church and still is a friend today. We moved toHirosaki, where I tried to pastor a dozen believers, with inad-equate language. Each Sunday I preached on the main street,where presenting a thousand tracts always meant a stiff backfrom all the bowing.

Student unrest in Tokyo caused Christian students to rejectthe KGK board, publishing house, and staff, so Ariga resigned. Iwas called to fill the gap: two Japanese colleagues said theywould cover the rest of the country if I would cover the 110universities in Tokyo. It was a daunting task, but four yearsspending all day with students rapidly enlarged and improvedmy vocabulary!

Tokyo seemed full of specialist parachurch organizationsworking with radio, literature, and university and high schoolstudents. Such organizations were parasitically dependent uponlocal churches to finance and follow up broadcasting, distributetracts, buy books, provide staff, and so on. The justification forsuch organizations was how well they served the churches. Yearslater I discussed this with Lorne Sanny of Navigators, for whilethe Navigators emphasized prayer, Scripture memory, witness,and fellowship, at that time they were teaching nothing about thechurch. Sanny’s visit with me arose out of his reading mybestselling book Cinderella with Amnesia (IVP [U.K.], 1975; U.S.title: God’s Forgetful Pilgrims). I suggested that the bride of Christhad lost her memory, squatting in the institutional ashes, formany churchgoers merely attended churches instead of bondingand belonging to them, forgetting what church is for.

Working in Tokyo, I noticed the Gilbert-and-Sullivan rela-tionship between ecumenical and evangelical missionaries, whoeven took their holidays in different resorts! Each group talked to

Doors to medicine and toAnglican ministry closed—so what did God wantme to do now?

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their own constituency as though the other did not exist. Only theannual Hayama conference brought us together for thoughtfulstudy and discussion. I also joined a monthly reading group thatcovered a wide spectrum, where I discovered that evangelicalshad more in common with Jesuits and Franciscans than withliberal Protestants. Even among evangelicals there is a spectrum,with North Americans at one end, Germans and Swiss at theother, with the Brits somewhere in between (e.g., on attitudestoward the World Council of Churches, creative evolution, socialimplications, and the education of missionary children). NorthAmerican missionaries predominated in Japan, so Brits enjoyedscarcity value as mediating novelties!

Japan was in transition: still poor, with few Japanese owningcars. There was a huge postwar drift into the cities, which maderural church-planting unproductive. In addition to population

drift, local ties to shrines and temples could make planting a ruralchurch the work of a thirty-year missionary lifetime. In growingurban areas there were few traditional temples and new congre-gations might arise in five years. It was better use of a missionary’senergies to plant six urban churches than one rural one. At OMF’srequest, I served eighteen months as OMF deputy superinten-dent in North Japan. The ministry involved being a kind oftraveling secretary to missionaries instead of students.

OMF General Director

Stacey Woods had invited me to consider succeeding him inIFES, but at that time I was invited by OMF to succeed OswaldSanders as general director. I accepted the OMF offer, whichmeant that in 1969 we had to move back to OMF’s internationalheadquarters in Singapore and travel the world from there. I wasforty-one. The job entailed delegating administration to others,while fulfilling a similar “traveling secretary” role among ninehundred missionaries of varied nationalities working in twelvecountries across East Asia. After a hundred years as an all-Caucasian mission, we had at last decided to admit Chinese,Japanese, Korean, and other nationalities. Hudson Taylor hadalways placed his headquarters in China rather than in the West,but transition to true multiracialism was slow at first. Escapingthe arrogance and cultural imperialism of mononational mis-sions was one thing, but growing beyond a dominant Anglo-American subculture was another.

On a first visit to the United States following Urbana 1967, Ifelt like a puppet popped up on platforms to do my thing andended up exhausted. I was stimulated meeting Kenneth Pike ofthe Summer Institute of Linguistics, Hudson Taylor Armerding,president of Wheaton College, Donald McGavran at Fuller’sInstitute of Church Growth, and Ralph Winter, at that time stillat Fuller. My appointment to OMF leadership almost coincidedwith the arrival of the charismatic movement, which initiallyproved as divisive among missionaries overseas as it was inchurches at home. We are all vulnerable to suggestions that ourexperience might be deficient, so we had to find ways of tolerat-

On a first visit to theUnited States, I felt likea puppet popped up onplatforms to do my thing.

ing different spiritualities by neither encouraging propagationnor forbidding what Scripture allows. Mutual respect for thespiritual autonomy of others was basic. I had to speak about it atconferences, and I developed the ideas in books like Three MenFilled with the Spirit (OMF, 1969) and Gifts Without InvertedCommas (MARC Europe, 1986).

My initial proposal to send missionaries into Cambodia wasrefused by colleagues, who felt we were too thinly spread else-where. It was finally accepted in 1974, only a year before PhnomPenh fell. We called for single people to volunteer (wanting noresponsibility for deaths that might produce widows or or-phans), as rockets were already falling in the city. In the end, thehandful we sent had only ten months, but some remainedworking with refugees across the Mekong, and with Cambodi-ans for the rest of their lives. Our missionaries in Vietnam, Laos,and Cambodia were forced out, and the fall of those countries toradical leftist regimes, plus the “domino theory” which assumedthat Thailand must swiftly follow, made missionaries feel inse-cure. Two leprosy nurses in Muslim South Thailand were kid-napped for ransom. A letter showed up on my desk from themaddressed to “Dear Mike,” demanding half a million dollars andthe withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank. This experience wasshattering, as was news of their deaths a year later. It would beso easy for terrorists to grab more of our vulnerable missionariesand cash them in, so paying ransom was impossible, even ifmoney had been available and if we had had influence with theIsraelis.

While living in Singapore, Valerie worked with wives ofJapanese businessmen, and this ministry ultimately grew into acongregation of expatriate Japanese, enabling us to remain fluentin Japanese language and culture. The growth of our family alsospanned between Singapore and Japan. We were privileged to begiven four children—the first and last born in Singapore and themiddle two in Japan. Like other missionary children, getting anEnglish language education involved sacrificial separation, pain-ful for all of us. They certainly enriched our lives, and we hopeliving with us in East Asia enriched theirs.

London Bible College

In 1977 I had been privileged to preach in King’s College Chapelat the centenary of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate ChristianUnion. After the service I was asked whether I would considerreturning to become general secretary of the Universities andColleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF), the national body unitingthe various University Christian Unions. I set in motion cumber-some procedures for finding a successor at OMF, which we did:a Mandarin-speaking great-grandson of Hudson Taylor. In 1979I enjoyed leading two eight-day university missions in Durham(what a missionary privilege to preach Christ between the bonesof Bede and the tomb of Cuthbert!) and Oxford Universities, gladto be back in evangelism. Sadly, however, we had to decline theUCCF invitation, because there was no clear role for Valerie.

At this point, much to my astonishment, for two years atRidley Hall did not earn me even a first theological degree,London Bible College (LBC; now the London School of Theol-ogy) invited me to become their third principal. They were thefirst independent U.K. theological college to gain governmentvalidation of a bachelor degree (1972), and later also the first foran M.A. (1983). I accepted. This totally unexpected sidewaysjump into theological education allowed me to enjoy three life-long enthusiasms: students, Bible teaching, and mission. Leav-ing OMF after twenty-three years was painful, and we both

125July 2004

Note1. David Bosch, “The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew

28:16–20,” in Exploring Church Growth, ed. W. R. Shenk (GrandRapids: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 218–48.

missed Japanese and Chinese friends left behind in East Asia.Because of my travels in East Asia and in countries from whichOMF missionaries came, I was familiar with the backgrounds ofmany international students. Having engaged in mission for aquarter of a century, I now was able to share that experience withothers. One plus was that Valerie was invited to continue someOld Testament teaching.

We graduated a hundred students a year, with overseasstudents returning home and some British graduates leaving formission abroad. We derive huge vicarious pleasure from readingreports and praying for our students’ subsequent ministries.British Bible colleges are different from those in North America:our students were mainly older (the average age was twenty-nine) and already committed to Christian ministry. On a widercanvas, the European Evangelical Accreditation Association wasconcerned with standards of training throughout western Eu-rope, where I could work alongside French- and German-speak-ing colleagues. At quadrennial youth mission conferences of TheEuropean Mission Association (TEMA), held first in Lausanne (aEuropean Urbana), I gave the Bible expositions four times out ofthe first five; I formed links with mission enthusiasts throughoutEurope and enjoyed opportunities of conference ministry withthem. I became increasingly aware of the Lord of mission at workin every country.

Though initially I had been promised adequate administra-tive backup at the college, it never materialized, and a newchairman tried to push me into a more administrative role aschief executive officer for which I was not trained or gifted, andwhich I never wanted. I was not that kind of leader. Thus I foundmyself leaving after nine years, at sixty-one years of age.

Regent College, Vancouver

In one week, however, I received three invitations from NorthAmerica. I accepted one—to Regent College, Vancouver, wherein 1990 I became their first full-time professor of mission studies.The average age of the students at Regent was thirty-three, andthe college was a total learning experience where students andfaculty learned from each other. In London my opportunities toteach mission had been minimal. Now it was all systems go. Itwas a wonderfully creative time; I wrote twelve new coursesover the three years, including Church Growth Around thePacific Rim and Contextualization, until reaching retiring age. Inseminars titled Mission Thinkers and Mission Activists, studentsmade presentations about the ministries of significant heroesand heroines chosen by them. The whole class read the appropri-ate IBMR “Legacy” articles, while I read more widely in order tobe on top of the subject. It was a good way of teaching andlearning. Sadly, however, Harvie Conn’s dream of a “missiologicalagenda for theology, not a theological agenda for missions” wasnever fulfilled.

I found myself becoming enthusiastic for what I startedcalling historical missiology (in parallel to historical theology).Donald McGavran makes sense when you understand his Indianbackground, as do Stephen Neill and Lesslie Newbigin sharingthe same cultural heritage. Similarly Hudson Taylor, John Nevius,and Roland Allen developed their strategies in China. DavidBosch, whom I first met in South Africa when he was training

I found myself becomingenthusiastic for what I callhistorical missiology.

Zulu and Xhosa pastors, developed there his system ofmacroparadigms.

After my retirement in 1993, with more time to read histori-cal biography, I became exposed to a whole network ofmicroparadigms, with groups of people influencing each other—like Thornton, Gairdner, and Zwemer in Egypt, and others in theIslamic world like Bishops Valpy-French and Stewart. Thereseem to be genealogical clusters of men and women whose

example and enthusiasm sparked off each other. More recently,the opportunity to teach Iranian Christians has fired my interestin the Persian church: imagine this body, which around A.D. 500included a theological college in Nisibis on the Tigris with athousand students. Persecution drove this church out to Chinaand South India. Such accounts make it clear that mission historydoes not start with William Carey or the Moravians but withforgotten saints and martyrs of generations before and after theadvent of Islam.

During visits to Israel, first with a group from our localchurch, next with LBC students, and then as a guest of theFellowship of Christian Students in Israel, I realized how few“traditional missionaries” are sent there by mission “agencies”(a horrible word, representing the disastrous shift from aclosely bonded fellowship of fund-sharing teams to groups ofindependently-funded individuals for whom “agencies” aremerely temporary flags of convenience). Instead, I discovered anetwork of committed, largely self-supporting, like-minded in-dividuals. I suddenly realized that a much older, more efficient,and more knowledgeable mission society led by its three experi-enced, divine Directors has placed men and women where theywant them, in accordance with their all-knowing wise provi-dence. This missio Dei is an observable and glorious fact in whichwe can rejoice and revel, until “in every place” his name is greatamong the nations where Jesus shall reign. David Bosch’s article“The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew 28:16–20”was the most seminal for my own thinking, addressing both theauthority of the Lord for evangelizing Jews, Muslims, and Hin-dus, and his continuing presence with us in mission, dealing withour inability and weakness.1

As my pilgrimage draws toward its natural anticipated end, Irealize the extent of my ignorance and brighten at the possibilitythat in glory we will be able to meet saints who are themselvesprimary sources, living mission “Torah,” not available to us onearth because they have been forgotten, their records lost, or theirthoughts never committed to writing. That great cloud of wit-nesses before whom we each have run our own individualpilgrim race will, when we in turn join their number, surelyprovide many opportunities for questionings and reminiscences,and above all for having the time to marvel more fully at thewisdom of the missio Dei.

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Though he himself never served as a missionary, Leslie E.Maxwell (1895–1984), cofounder of Prairie Bible Insti-

tute (PBI) in Three Hills, Alberta, left a legacy that has had a majorimpact on the world Christian mission. James Hudson Taylor IIItold this author that Maxwell’s ministry was felt not only inCanada but also around the world, including inland China. Bibleconference speaker Stephen F. Olford, himself the son of mission-aries, says that Maxwell’s mentoring produced a distinctive typeof missionary.

In the pool halls of his youth, Maxwell’s companions wouldhave scoffed at the idea that this feckless youth would everbecome a preacher and a world missions leader. Born to a farmerin Salina, Kansas, the eldest of nine children, Maxwell as a youngman was terrified of public speaking and spent more timeplaying pool than sitting in church. Religion was not part of hisfamily life, though a godly grandfather would read from theBible during the visits of his grandchildren. Years later, Maxwellcharacterized his youth as playing ball, playing pool, and play-ing the fool.1

He and his family experienced a tragic episode when ayounger brother, Ernest, was crushed to death under the wheelof a grain wagon. But what drove Leslie, in his late teens, torepentance and faith was the hellfire preaching of a Methodistevangelist and a Presbyterian minister’s invitation to “come toChrist.” Maxwell made his personal transaction with the Saviorand turned full circle. He stayed up most of that night reading theBible, and the next day he left his poolroom companions.

The young convert began to realize the tenacity of a prayingaunt, Christina. Her prayers had preceded his conversion andnow stayed with him through his early Christian growth. Whenhe left for France to serve with the U.S. Army during World WarI, she gave him a Bible motto: “The blood of Jesus Christ saves usfrom sin.” Shortly after his discharge from the army, his fatherdied, leaving him responsible for the support of his widowedmother and five siblings. Aunt Christina helped by securing aclerical job for Leslie at a bank in nearby Kansas City.

The job in the city also enabled him to study at the newlyopened Midland Bible Institute in Kansas City. The principal ofthe school was William C. Stevens, former head of Nyack Col-lege, founded by A. B. Simpson of the Christian and MissionaryAlliance.2 In Maxwell’s last year at the school, a plea came toStevens from a farmer, Fergus Kirk, in the remote village of ThreeHills, Alberta. Kirk’s sister had taken one of Nyack’s Biblecorrespondence courses developed by Stevens, and Kirk hadused the material to teach a Bible class. Feeling the time had cometo employ a Bible teacher, he inquired whether Stevens knew ofa student who could come to Three Hills for a couple of years toteach the class.

And so it was that in 1922 Maxwell found himself in thegrain-elevator town of Three Hills in southern Alberta. After atwo-year stint, the young Kansan stayed on. Although neitherMaxwell nor Kirk intended to start a full-blown Bible school, theclass of eight students in fact became the nucleus of Alberta’s first

The Legacy of Leslie E. Maxwell

W. Harold Fuller

continuing Bible institute. Within twenty-five years it had be-come one of North America’s largest.

In spite of Maxwell’s early fear of public speaking, hispersonal gifts of wit and drama, coupled with spiritual insight,transformed classes into unforgettable encounters with the Scrip-tures. “He was the most significant teacher I ever had,” saysElisabeth Elliott, noted author and conference speaker. “A rivet-ing speaker, a man of deep compassion, side-splitting humor,and an unswerving determination to follow his God!”3

Soon in demand as a conference speaker, Maxwell traversedthe continent and later the globe. He was a guest speaker at thefirst student mission conference sponsored by InterVarsity Chris-tian Fellowship, held in Toronto in 1946.4 As word of this spartanschool and its effervescent leader spread, students came from allparts of North America and, increasingly, from other continents.The largest enrollment followed World War II, when servicemenand servicewomen came with the vision of taking the Gospel toareas of the world where they had seen great physical andspiritual need. The school with the motto “Training disciplinedsoldiers for Christ” had its own appeal to these war veterans. Asthe campus grew, Maclean’s, Canada’s weekly newsmagazine,called it “Miracle on the Prairies” in a main feature.5

Missions, the Church’s First Business

“Christians must become convicted and convinced that missionsis the first business of the church,” Maxwell frequently declared.He saw missions in the entire Bible, beginning with the Abrahamiccovenant and Israel’s role as a witness to the nations. Thisemphasis is followed in the Gospels by the risen Lord’s GreatCommission, which is then enacted by the apostles through theirwitness, with the ultimate fruit—“a great multitude, which noman could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, andtongues”—unveiled in the Book of Revelation.

Stephens, under whom Maxwell studied at Midland, stronglybelieved that the return of Christ depended upon global evange-lization. PBI emphasized the imminent return of Christ, butabove all else the school saw world evangelization as a matter ofobedience and fulfillment of God’s purpose for the church. Allpeoples must have the opportunity to accept Jesus as Lord beforehe returns to judge the earth.

Always in financial straits in the early years, the school andits supporters may have seemed an unlikely base for giving tomissions, but they practiced what they preached. At the first PBImissionary conference, in 1923, guests—mostly struggling farm-ers—pledged $2,000 for missions. Within four years, friends ofthe school channeled some $10,000 (many times that in today’scurrency) to foreign missions.6 Moreover, by 1930 three of thefaculty’s five members left to help found and staff a Bible schooland mission in the Caribbean.7

As PBI graduates shared the Gospel in other lands, thechurches they helped establish also gave priority to missions.Within two years of first hearing the Gospel, converts from awarring tribe in Nigeria took up an offering to send an evangelistinto neighboring Dahomey (now Benin). Within six years oforganizing, the Evangelical Churches of West Africa, an indig-enous Nigerian denomination, launched its own mission society,the Evangelical Missionary Society, with a PBI graduate as a

W. Harold Fuller, a graduate of Prairie Bible Institute, entered missionaryjournalism with SIM in 1951, becoming editor of West Africa’s largest circu-lation monthly. The most recent of his eleven books is Maxwell’s Passion andPower (2002).

127July 2004

cofounder. In 2002 the Alumni Association stated that alumni—numbering 17,000 with the majority serving in missions orchurches—were working in 114 nations.8

However, this missions-minded leader did not limit himselfto raising funds and training recruits. From his own missionarytravels he developed a progressive missiology. Discussing theurgency of missions in the face of anti-Christian forces gainingstrength, Maxwell wrote: “What then is the chief need of thiseleventh hour in missionary history? It seems to me that the realproblem is the mode of procedure to establish in each country aself-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating group ofindigenous churches. The only adequate answer to this acuteproblem is to train the greatest possible number of nationals inthe shortest possible time.”9

Lifestyle: Sacrificial and Resourceful

Responding to the missionary calling required sacrifice. In hisfirst year at Three Hills, Maxwell realized that the local farmerscould not support him financially. Adopting a simple lifestyle, heboarded with farmers during his first three years in Three Hills.After he and Pearl Plummer married in 1925, the newlywedslived in the student dormitory. When they did find a house, itwas so rustic Pearl had to wear snow-boots in the house duringthe winter, and she would perch her infants on the kitchen tableto keep them warm. Members of the staff and the faculty receivedcampus housing, basic farm produce, and volunteer medicalcare; they divided equally any gifts that were designated for staff.

Sacrificial living was embraced by the school’s early sup-porters and staff alike. To help finance early construction, FergusKirk at various times sold his car, some of his farmland, andlumber he had bought to build a respectable house. As a boy Kirkhad seen his parents—and their children—forgo Christmas pre-sents and butter for two years so the family could fulfill a pledgeto help support a Presbyterian missionary in Taiwan.10 In the1930s Maxwell pitched hay during the summer to help providefor his family. He and his family joined in the annual missionarypledge offering in faith that God would somehow help them findthe money. As the school grew, the buildings themselves were

stark reminders of a simple lifestyle—basic tarpaper and clap-board “boxes” with no frills. Going into debt, however, was outof the question. If there was no money for a keg of nails, thevolunteer builders-cum-farmers halted operations until moneycame in.

This lifestyle was in accord with the struggles of prairiefarmers. Occasionally there were good years, but wheneverdrought blew away the fertile topsoil, the settlers had to move onto find virgin land. When the American stock market collapsedin 1929, farmers on the Canadian prairies felt the repercussions.The price of wheat, Alberta’s staple export, collapsed. Hungerand unemployment hit many communities. But because the littleschool in Three Hills owed nothing, it carried on. Farmerstrucked in loads of potatoes and sides of beef. Students handleddaily maintenance assignments. Decades later, when some semi-

naries and Bible schools faced huge debts because of changingdemographics and economics, PBI was able to continue its min-istry unabated, though it did have to tighten its belt.

PBI graduates took this simple lifestyle and no-debt policywith them when they went overseas as missionaries, and the newchurches they helped to found followed their example. In Ethio-pia indigenous missionaries tramped over the hills into hostileterritory with only a bag of flour over their shoulders. EthiopianChristians built churches and Bible schools as they were able,without foreign funds. In West Africa, when Dompago Chris-tians told PBI graduate Roland Pickering that they needed a Bibleschool, he replied, “Fine—you build it, and I’ll be glad to teach init.” The school had only a thatched roof and mud walls, but itbelonged to the Dompago Christians, and there was no debt.

The frugality of the Three Hills school necessitated resource-fulness to operate the campus, which by midcentury sprawledover 120 acres. One example was the heating system. Roger Kirk(Fergus’s brother), a tinsmith, cobbled together cast-off boilersand pipes to construct a central heating system, fueled by coalfrom a nearby mine. The pipes ran through tunnels under thecampus walkways (keeping them de-iced) and into the build-ings. Students knew that the warmth of their dorm rooms duringa howling blizzard depended on the ingenuity of people likeEmil Bruck, an American volunteer master machinist who some-times had to design and make his own replacement parts for theheating system.

A Soldierly Discipline

“Prairie Bible Institute stands for an unusual ruggedness, disci-pline, and spiritual emphasis in training,” states Olford.11 Thesoldier metaphor came readily to war veteran Maxwell and wasenhanced during the post–World War II influx of students whohad served in the armed forces. Maxwell himself kept up a dailyregime of exercise, but he had in mind much more than physicaldiscipline. He referred to Paul’s call to soldiership (2 Tim. 2:3–4),and he found models in the lives of early Christian martyrs andof mystics such as Francis of Assisi and Jeanne-Marie Guyon.

It was Amy Wilson Carmichael, a contemporary of Maxwell,who influenced him most of all. An Irish Anglican missionarywho served in Japan and India, Carmichael founded a refuge forchildren, especially young girls destined for “marriage” to Hindugods in temple service. In her prime, Amma (Tamil for “mother”),as everyone called her, suffered a crippling fall and spent her lastdecades directing the work of Dohnavur Fellowship from a bedof pain. But from her affliction flowed volumes of poetry andprose that called Christians to a life of self-denial and discipline.12

Maxwell often quoted Carmichael, challenging PBI studentswith memorable lines such as the following, penned by the Irishmissionary in 1912:

From subtle love of softening things,From easy choices, weakenings,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .From all that dims thy Calvary,O Lamb of God, deliver me.

At PBI, Carmichael’s spirituality fit in with the rustic campus, thestrict social regulations, and the challenge to “endure hardship asa soldier of Christ.” Olford notes, “I have met graduates from thisschool all over the world. They are usually known for twodistinctive Christian qualities—spirituality and stickability.”13

PBI graduates took thissimple lifestyle andno-debt policy overseas.

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Commitment, simple lifestyle, and discipline were the out-ward expressions of Maxwell’s core message expressed in hisbook Born Crucified.14 This work stressed that every follower ofChrist is spiritually reborn only as he or she accepts Christ’ssubstitutionary death on the cross. By identifying with Christ,every believer is “born crucified.” That identification extends toChrist’s resurrection. In dying to sin, disciples are made “aliveunto God.” That meant taking up one’s cross daily and followingJesus into new life. Whenever believers live for themselves, theydeny Christ in those areas of their life. They have not yet picked

up their cross and denied themselves. Maxwell saw that condi-tion as an utter contradiction of the believer’s position of being“born crucified.”15

Missionary statesman Ian M. Hay, general director emeritusof the Sudan Interior Mission (now SIM, or Serving in Mission),sees Maxwell’s born-crucified message as the major reason forthe missionary effectiveness of PBI graduates.16 With specialreference to those facing the strains of serving in cross-culturalcontexts, Olford observes, “Without the moment-by-momentapplication of the Cross to the self-life, relationships are strainedand resentments are stirred to explosive proportions. This inturn, can lead to alarming defections from the mission field.”17

James Hudson Taylor III comments, “The mark of the people[Maxwell] mentored was their commitment to Christ, love forthe Word, heart for the world, and servant spirit.”18

Finding Theological Balance

Some misunderstood Maxwell’s strong emphasis on the cruci-fied life, hearing only the “dying-to-self” refrain and not listen-ing long enough to hear the balancing principle of “rising-to-life.” Hyper-Calvinist camps accused PBI graduates of beingunsure of their eternal security, and some Holiness camps ac-cused them of being too Calvinistic.

Maxwell’s theology reflected a rich background of Presbyte-rian ancestry, Methodist evangelism and emphasis on the workof the Spirit, and Baptist doctrine.19 He had no doubt about God’ssovereignty, but he also understood the role of human will. Earlyin his ministry he had read The Twofoldness of Divine Truth,20 abook that bridged the opposing poles of hyper-Calvinism andHoliness. The author avowed that the Scriptures sometimes statedifferent positions in order to display the full truth and preventa one-sided interpretation. In his ministry Maxwell melded thebest from both theological camps, presenting a balanced, nonsec-tarian stand in the midst of strong sectarian factionalism on theCanadian prairies.21 His approach to the tension between lawand grace, he confessed, did not follow the beaten track.22

This openness to seeing value in differing views on second-ary issues equipped PBI graduates for global missions in a specialway. Those serving in denominations retained their churchdistinctives but without dogmatism on peripheral issues. Gradu-ates serving with interdenominational missions usually fit into

the mix of church backgrounds with understanding, not divi-siveness. While strongly opposing liberal theological teaching,Maxwell’s emphasis on balance served to promote the unity ofthe Spirit across man-made borders.

“The hardest thing in the world is to keep balanced!” wasMaxwell’s most frequently repeated aphorism. Students jok-ingly called it “Maxwell 1:1.” He believed that any truth pressedto extremes becomes error.23 Maxwell sought balance not only intheology but also in practice. PBI experienced its share of studentrevivals. Maxwell welcomed these experiences, as students madethings right with other students, teachers, parents, and homechurches. But he was quick to notice when emotional displaytook over from sincerity, or when the students needed sleepmore than confessional lineups, in which case he would an-nounce gently over the microphone, “I think the Lord would bepleased if you all got to bed and had a good sleep in preparationfor the morrow.”

Maxwell’s views on divine healing reflected his personalpilgrimage in finding balance. Before coming to Three Hills, hehad embraced the doctrine that Christ’s atonement ensuredphysical healing, and therefore he felt that use of medical helpamounted to failure to trust God. Later in Three Hills, his wife,Pearl, was on the verge of death when a neighbor wisely calledin a doctor. Maxwell came to understand that his faith in theLord’s direction and protection did not preclude seeking medicalhelp.

Women in Ministry

Early in the school’s history, Maxwell asked his vice-principal,Dorothy Ruth Miller (a graduate of New York University andColumbia University and a gifted speaker and theologian), topreach on Sunday mornings. Given the fact that Three Hills wasa frontier kind of town with a typical macho character, this wasa bold move. “Wherever the gospel goes, it betters the lot ofwomen,” stated Maxwell. His openness to the role of women inministry and his belief that a woman had liberty to use herspiritual gifts in any role to which the Holy Spirit called herplaced him ahead of his time.

He came to this position as a result of independent study.Poring over his Hebrew and Greek lexicons, perusing churchhistory, and reading many sources pro and con, he came to theconclusion that barring women from leadership roles in ministrydid not line up with the overall teaching of Scripture. Late in lifehe expressed his views in Women in Ministry.24 “His desire wasthat women might be set free from what he felt were unscripturalrestrictions placed on them by many churches and Christianleaders,” wrote dean of women Ruth C. Dearing in her introduc-tion to Women in Ministry. Maxwell faulted rabbinic teaching, amale-centric worldview, and medieval tradition as the causes ofcontinued bias against women in ministry.25

Methodology: Study and Apply

“Scripture is its own best commentary!” Maxwell often para-phrased renowned expositor R. A. Torrey, who wrote: “There isno other commentary on the Bible so helpful as the Bible itself.”26

Rather than passively absorbing lectures, students at PBI wereexpected to examine and apply the Scriptures for themselves,using an inductive, search-question approach adapted from thesystem used by the Bible school in Kansas where both Leslie andPearl had studied.27 Lesson materials listed questions that helpedstudents prepare for class discussion. The questions were de-

Openness to seeing valuein differing views onsecondary issuesequipped PBI graduatesfor global missions.

129July 2004

signed to send students searching through passages and cross-references in order to develop their own exegesis, which theywere expected to defend in class by appeal to Scripture.

The system attracted a wide range of students. One was aquiet-spoken engineering graduate, Ralph Winter, who spent asemester at PBI before taking postgraduate studies in anthropol-ogy and linguistics at Cornell University. “I’d heard of theschool’s inductive system,” he explained to the author, “andwanted to see firsthand how it worked.” Winter went on to serveas a missionary in Central America. He eventually helped initiateTheological Education by Extension and programmed instruc-tion, both becoming valuable systems in Bible teaching programsworldwide.28 He employed a similar question-and-answermethod in his widely used missions course, Perspectives on theWorld Christian Movement.

The inductive method put into students’ hands a valuabletool they would use long after graduation, a tool that lent itself toadaptation in other languages and, according to Goertz, pre-pared missionaries for isolated ministry.29 Thus, in new Chris-tian communities overseas no less than in the missionaries’sending countries, the Bible was central in study and teaching. Itwas especially revolutionary in cultures that traditionally taughtby rote learning. Inductive learning helped develop indigenousleadership.

“Many Prairie graduates have been involved in Bible schoolteaching, using the inductive method they learned in ThreeHills,” states George M. Foxall, a member of the InternationalCouncil of Evangelical Theological Education. “And that made agreat impact on church growth. Once Bible schools (most of themvernacular) were established, graduates aided the rapid growthof churches.”30

Gus Kayser, a 1945 PBI graduate who in 1949 went toEthiopia with his wife, Lois, is one example. In the Kambattavillage of Durami they used an inductive Bible study method,translating study questions into Amharic, the country’s linguafranca. This material was recycled and contextualized for morethan twenty other Kambatta district schools. According to Pauland Lila Balisky, “Dozens of Kayser’s students became strongleaders in the national church.”31

The inductive material was further adapted and updated byother missionaries and became a key factor in the survival ofthese churches during Ethiopia’s Marxist regime (1974–89). Dur-ing this period of intense persecution, the churches went under-ground but were able to continue teaching in secret. Instead ofdwindling, evangelical churches actually increased numerically.

Complementing the inductive method used in study wasMaxwell’s declarative preaching style. He taught and preachedfor results in the lives of students. He declared the scripturalmessage, seeking to follow the example of the apostle Paul (1 Cor.2:1). Graduates went into church pulpits and missionary servicewith the same passion to apply the Scriptures to the lives of theirhearers. It was part of Maxwell’s legacy, taken around the world.

Prairie Populism: Sociopolitical Influence

Perhaps Maxwell’s most surprising legacy was one he wouldnever have intended—the impact of his message on the politicallandscape of the prairie provinces. Goertz, in his study of thesocial and religious interaction in Alberta between 1925 and1938, finds that Maxwell led the religious consensus on theCanadian prairies at the time.32 Although a politician-preachernamed William Aberhart has often been seen as the main figurein what became “the Bible belt” of southern Alberta, Goertz

documents the fact that Maxwell was the principal arbiter of theBible belt and the primary organizer and theologian of thereligious revival of the 1930s. As Goertz points out, this was anera of fragmenting sects and emphasis on the social aspects of theGospel.33 Maxwell stayed clear of both minefields. AlthoughMaxwell and Kirk had Presbyterian backgrounds, they kept theThree Hills school nonsectarian, exemplifying a kind of evangeli-cal ecumenicity based on spiritual unity. Also, concerned thoughhe was about the hardships of the Great Depression, Maxwellprotected the institution from political entanglements.

As some denominational leaders emphasized political solu-tions in place of spiritual regeneration, Maxwell’s unwaveringbiblical teaching resonated with a large segment of the popula-tion. Through his school, radio broadcasts, and frequent visita-tion all across the prairies, he widened his “parish” and influ-enced the formation of a prairie populism still evident today.34

Maxwell’s Family: Living Out the Legacy

Leslie and Pearl had five girls and two boys—“our five loavesand two fish,” Maxwell often called them. Leslie’s legacy playedout in the family, as all seven children took up some form ofChristian service, serving in missions or churches in Africa,Japan, Philippines, South America, and North America. But thechildren’s personal pilgrimage did not always follow the par-ents’ expectations. Living in the “goldfish bowl” of campus life,the children faced pressures felt by children of public figures. Thefirst five heeded the strict but loving discipline of their parents,but the latter two, Paul and Miriam, chafed under the family’sregimen and also the expectations of faculty and other students.They seemed determined to show they could live their own lives.

In Paul and Miriam’s childhood years, the campus hadgrown substantially, and the demands on father Leslie’s timehad greatly increased. While the older children were young, he

had faithfully set aside Saturday mornings to be with them. Hefailed to follow this pattern with the two youngest, though, forwhich he later blamed himself. As Paul and Miriam persisted inrebelliousness, their parents did much soul-searching. “Oh God,what can we do!” Pearl exclaimed in despair. “Trust me withjoy,” the reply seemed to come from God.35 And she did find joyas Paul, after returning to his spiritual heritage, followed in hisfather’s footsteps, ultimately becoming president of the school.

Because of constant campus pressures, Miriam, an excep-tionally gifted child, resented being labeled a Maxwell. “Wealways knew our parents loved us,” she said, “but when Imarried and changed my last name, it was such a relief!”36

However, as she and her husband served in churches and per-sonal witness, she too came to value her heritage.

Assessing Maxwell’s Influence

Today on its Three Hills campus, now grown to 130 acres, PBIprovides elementary and secondary education, plus schools ofBible, fine arts, and aviation, as well as the Maxwell InterculturalCentre, which offers an M.A. in Intercultural Studies. PBI’s

Maxwell taught andpreached for results in thelives of students.

130 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

distance education program links several hundred off-campusstudents and students in cooperating schools.

“When historians attempt to assess and understand thespecial character of Canadian prairie Christianity in the mid-twentieth century, they will have to account for the influence ofL. E. Maxwell,” writes Maxine Hancock, author, broadcaster,and Regent College (Vancouver, B.C.) professor.37 “God hasused Prairie not only around the world but also in home mis-sions, establishing churches,” states PBI chancellor emeritus TedS. Rendall, citing the role of PBI graduates serving within theNorthern Canada Evangelical Mission, the Canadian Sunday

School Mission, and Village Missions, among others.38 Canadianchurch historian John Stackhouse, Jr., in a 1993 publication,declared Maxwell and his Bible institute one of the major influ-ences on Canadian evangelicals over the past century.39

Brian C. Stiller, president of Tyndale College and Seminary,Toronto, has well summarized Maxwell’s legacy: “Our country’shistory is marked by risk-taking visionaries who see in theirwaking hours what most dare not dream in the night. L. E.Maxwell was one of those people. He changed the course of ournation’s church history, and heaven will forever rejoice in hissojourn of faith.”40

Notes 1. W. Harold Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion and Power (Memphis, Tenn.:

Master Design Ministries; Huttonville, Ont.: Maxwell Foundation,2002), p. 10.

2. A Presbyterian from Canada, Simpson opened the MissionaryTraining Institute in Nyack, New York, patterning it after a similarschool in London, England, led by evangelist-missionary HowardGuinness. Stephens, also a Presbyterian, shared Simpson’s interestin missionary training and intensive Bible study.

3. Elisabeth Elliott to author, September 10, 2001. 4. After the initial conference in Toronto, InterVarsity Christian

Fellowship has held its mission conferences on the Urbana campusof the University of Illinois, generally every three years. Current“Urbanas” attract up to 20,000 students.

5. James H. Gray, “Miracle on the Prairies,” Maclean’s, December 15,1947, pp. 16, 54–56.

6. Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, p. 19. 7. West Indies Mission was cofounded by Cuban Presbyterian minister

B. G. Lavastida and Prairie faculty member Elmer V. Thompson. 8. As a result of incomplete record keeping in the early years of the

school, statistics about graduates are necessarily approximate. AsMaxwell explained to researcher Aaron Goertz, “In the early years,we were so sure that Christ would return right then, we didn’t thinkit worth keeping records” (of graduates and their places of ministry).“We possessed only three file cabinets. When the third got full, wethrew out the contents of the first and started over again.” SeeDonald Aaron Goertz, “The Development of a Bible Belt: The Socio-Religious Interaction in Alberta Between 1925 and 1938” (M.A.thesis, Univ. of Alberta, 1976), p. 97; further details in interview withthe author.

9. L. E. Maxwell, cited in Yusufu Turaki, Theory and Practice of ChristianMissions in Africa: A Century of SIM/ECWA History and Legacy inNigeria, 1893–1993 (Nairobi: International Bible Society, 1999), 1:487.

10. Bernice Callaway, Legacy (Three Hills, Alta.: MacCall Clan, 1987), p.37.

11. Phillip W. Keller, Expendable (Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press, 1966),p. 223.

12. Maxwell’s bookshelves contained many of Carmichael’s thirty books(which included 560 poems), published by Dohnavur Fellowship,London.

13. Stephen F. Olford, “Foreword,” in Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, p. x.14. L. E. Maxwell, Born Crucified (Chicago: Moody Press, 1945; reprinted,

1973).15. In spite of this emphasis, Maxwell had no illusions that either the PBI

staff or its graduates possessed some kind of superspiritual immunityto failure. With typical frankness, he would often observe, “‘PBI’ canalso stand for ‘Pretty Bad Inside!’”

16. Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, p. 68.17. Olford, “Foreword,” in Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, p. x.18. James Hudson Taylor III to author, September 1, 2001.19. A Baptist church in Edmonton offered Maxwell the pastorate shortly

after he started teaching in Three Hills. See Roy Davidson, God’s Planon the Prairies (Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press, 1986), p. 15.

20. R. Govett, The Twofoldness of Divine Truth (Harrisburg, Pa.: ChristianPublications [ca. 1900]).

21. Goertz, “Development of a Bible Belt.” Dogmatic views on thetiming of the return of Christ underwent a similar process, asstudents learned the pros and cons of premillennial, postmillennial,and amillennial positions. “When we served in China, manymissionaries thought the Rapture would take place before theTribulation,” C. T. Paulson, missions professor at Prairie, stated in aclass attended by the author at the end of the 1940s. “But as Maoistatrocities increased and we were expelled from China, some weren’tso sure!”

22. L. E. Maxwell, Crowded to Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951).23. Maxwell attributed this idea to James M. Gray (1851–1935), Episcopal

minister, scholar, and author, who served as president of MoodyBible Institute in Chicago from 1904 to 1934.

24. L. E. Maxwell, with Ruth Dearing, Women in Ministry (Wheaton, Ill.:Victor Books, 1987); published posthumously.

25. Maxwell, Women in Ministry, pp. 45, 105, passim. In support of hisviews on women in Christian leadership roles, Maxwell appealed torespected evangelical exegetes of earlier decades, such as A. J.Gordon and A. T. Pierson, as well as the example of J. Hudson Taylorof the China Inland Mission, a pioneer in recognizing women asmissionaries in their own right. See Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor,Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work ofGod, 13th impression (London: China Inland Mission, 1949), pp. 128,294, 398.

26. R. A. Torrey, The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge: 500,000 ScriptureReferences and Passages (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, n.d.), Introduction.

27. This search-question approach, a form of inductive Bible study, wasapparently employed by William. C. Stevens at Nyack, even beforehe founded Midland Bible Institute. It may have been influenced bythe system of inductive Bible study used extensively at BiblicalSeminary in New York, founded by John R. Mott’s brother-in-lawWilliam White.

28. See Grace Holland, “Which Way for a Changing Africa?” (researchpaper at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Ill., 1980),and Stewart Snook, “Developing Leaders Through TEE”(unpublished monograph, Billy Graham Center, Wheaton, Ill., 1990).

29. Goertz, “Development of a Bible Belt,” p. 127.30. George M. Foxall to author, March 19, 2002.31. Paul Balisky to author, March 30, 2002.32. Goertz, “Development of a Bible Belt,” pp. 2, 3, 152, 162.33. Ibid., p. 116.34. Ibid., pp. 113, 114.35. Callaway, Legacy, p. 128.36. Miriam Maxwell Carlson to the author, personal communication;

see Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, p. 278.37. Maxine Hancock to author, October 1, 2001.38. Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, pp. 68–69.39. John Stackhouse, Jr., Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century

(Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 88.40. Brian C. Stiller, quoted in Fuller, Maxwell’s Passion, p. i. Stiller was

raised in the prairie province of Saskatchewan and was president ofthe Evangelical Fellowship of Canada for twelve years.

131July 2004

Works About Leslie E. MaxwellCallaway, Bernice. Legacy: The Moving Saga of Our Prairie Pioneers.

Canada: MacCall Clan, 1987.Fuller, W. Harold. Maxwell’s Passion and Power. Memphis, Tenn.: Master

Design Ministries; Huttonville, Ont.: Maxwell Foundation, 2002.Goertz, Donald Aaron. “The Development of a Bible Belt: The Socio-

religious Interaction in Alberta Between 1925 and 1938.” M.A. thesis,Univ. of Alberta, 1976.

Keller, W. Phillip. Expendable! With God on the Prairies: The Ministry ofPrairie Bible Institute. Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press, 1966.

Spaulding, Stephen Maxwell. “Lion on the Prairies: An InterpretiveAnalysis of the Life and Leadership of Leslie Earl Maxwell, 1895–1984.” D.Miss. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1991.

Stackhouse, John, Jr. Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century.Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1993.

Selected BibliographyWorks by Leslie E. Maxwell1945 Born Crucified. Chicago: Moody Press.1951 Crowded to Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.1955 Abandoned to Christ. Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press.1957 The Holy Spirit and Missions. Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press.1971 Pentecostal Baptism. Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press.1971 Prairie Pillars. Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Bible Institute.1977 World Missions: Total War. Three Hills, Alta.: Prairie Press.1982 The Holy Spirit in Believers and in Missions. Three Hills, Alta.:

Prairie Press.1987 (with Ruth Dearing) Women in Ministry. Wheaton, Ill.: Victor

Books.

Are There More Non-Western Missionaries than WesternMissionaries?

Michael Jaffarian

Michael Jaffarian and his wife, Dawna, have been missionaries withCBInternational since 1983. They served in India and then for six years inSingapore. Jaffarian was an associate research editor for the second edition of theWorld Christian Encyclopedia and now serves as Coordinator of Research forCBInternational.

For some years now, the idea that there are more Four-Fifths-World missionaries than Western missionaries

has been showing up in various missions presentations andpublications. Unfortunately, it is just not true.1

This idea stems from Larry Pate’s 1989 book From EveryPeople, which makes a very important contribution to our under-standing of the Four-Fifths-World missions movement. He pro-jected, “If both the Western missionary force and the Two-ThirdsWorld missionary force continue to grow at their current rates. . . [by 2000] the majority of Protestant missionaries will be fromthe non-Western world.” More specifically, “The number ofTwo-Thirds World missionaries holds the very real promise ofsurpassing the number of Western missionaries by the year2000.” Though Pate warned that “a projection is not a predic-tion,” still the idea has been launched that this projection hasbecome reality.2 It is one of the great items of missiometricalmisinformation of our time.3

Note two important things about this assertion. First, forFour-Fifths-World missionaries, Pate counted both domesticand foreign missionaries, but for the Western world he countedonly foreign missionaries. (Foreign missionaries leave their coun-try of citizenship to serve God in another country; domesticmissionaries serve cross-culturally within their own land, suchas those from South India who serve among tribal peoples incentral India, or Anglo-Americans who serve among Asians,Hispanics, or international students in America.) To arrive at afair conclusion, Pate should have compared the same kind ofmissionaries—either foreign only or both foreign and domes-tic—for both regions of the world. He did not, however, and thusthe size of the Four-Fifths-World missionary force is dispropor-tionately large (or that of the Western world too small); thecomparison is not valid.

Second, Pate projected that the Four-Fifths-World mission-ary force would maintain a constant growth rate, with no slow-ing of the pace. Over time, however, new social or religiousmovements rarely show a consistent pattern of growth. There isalmost always a significant slowing of the growth rate of suchmovements, and the growth rate of the Four-Fifths-World mis-sions movement since 1989 has been no exception.

Pate’s projection was thus built on the foundation of thesetwo errors. Since 1989 both David Barrett in the World ChristianEncyclopedia and the team of Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandrykin Operation World have done the actual counting, and both showthat Pate’s projection failed to come true.

The second edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia (2001)shows the number of all Christian missionaries, from all ecclesi-astical traditions. By the authors’ count, as shown in table 1, in theyear 2000 there were more than four times as many Westernmissionaries as missionaries from the Four-Fifths World.

Table 1. Christian Foreign Missionaries in A.D. 2000

Global Foreign Missionaries perregion missionaries million Christians

Four-Fifths World 83,454Africa 17,406 51.9Asia 24,504 79.7Latin America 41,544 87.3

Western World 336,070Europe 192,346 358.3Northern America 135,222 637.3Oceania 8,502 397.8

Total 419,524 222.2

Source: David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson,World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches andReligions in the Modern World, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,2001), 1:843.

The 2001 edition of Operation World shows a similar pattern.Johnstone and Mandryk were more limited in their scope, count-ing only Protestant, Independent, and Anglican (PIA) missionar-ies. In table 2 the column “Total national missionaries” includesboth foreign and domestic missionaries, for both the Four-FifthsWorld and the Western world. There the Four-Fifths World totalis close to the Western world total, but still smaller. For foreignmissionaries, though, there were more than three times as manyWestern missionaries (PIA) as missionaries from the Four-FifthsWorld.

Table 2. Protestant, Independent, and AnglicanMissionaries in A.D. 2000

Global Total national Missionaries Churches perregion missionaries serving abroad missionary sent

Four-Fifths World 91,837 20,570Africa 12,442 3,126 48.4Asia 69,203 13,607 11.3Latin America 10,192 3,837 30.3

Western World 103,437 70,323Europe 22,897 16,077 6.2Northern America 71,088 50,720 7.2Pacific 9,452 3,526 6.1

Total 195,274 90,893 11.8

Source: Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World:When We Pray God Works, 6th ed. (Carlisle, Eng.: PaternosterLifestyle, 2001), p. 747.

But what about growth trends? For this point, see table 3,which compares statistics from the fifth edition of OperationWorld with statistics from the sixth edition. Preparing this tablerequired some adjusting. First, the two editions divided theworld’s global regions differently, so that in some cases I had togo to the country level of statistics to get the 1990 figures tocorrelate with those for 2000. Second, the 1993 edition presentsfigures for “Protestant” missionaries, versus for “PIA” mission-aries in the 2001 edition. After reviewing pages 23–24 in the olderedition, however, I could see that the same group of missionarieswas being counted in both cases, with improved terminology inthe 2001 edition. Third, especially for the figures in the 1993edition, totals are at times larger than the sum of the columns

above them because of missionaries or Christian workers insensitive situations, who are not identified by country. For ourpurposes here, I simply added the numbers of each region toreach the subtotals shown. This slight inaccuracy, however, isnot enough to invalidate the larger trends that table 3 reveals.

Table 3. Protestant/PIA Foreign Missionaries inA.D. 1990 and 2000

Global Missionaries Missionaries Growth rateregion in 1990 in 2000 (%)

Four-Fifths World 6,634 20,570 210Africa 1,669 3,126 87Asia 3,476 13,607 291Latin America 1,489 3,837 158

Western World 62,927 70,323 12Europe 15,701 16,077 2Northern America 43,554 50,720 16Pacific 3,672 3,526 -4

Total 69,561 90,893 31

Source: Patrick Johnstone, Operation World: The Day-by-Day Guideto Praying for the World, 5th ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993),p. 643; Johnstone and Mandryk, Operation World, 6th ed., p. 747.

The figures in table 3 make clear a different side of thequestion. Though the Four-Fifths-World missions movement isstill much smaller than the Western missions movement, it isgrowing at a much faster rate. It also is adding a larger numberof missionaries each year. In the ten-year period shown in thetable, the number of missionaries in the Four-Fifths World grewby 13,936, versus only by 7,396 in the Western World. Thisdifference is significant. It doesn’t necessarily mean, however,that the Four-Fifths-World missions movement will pass theWestern missions movement in size any time soon. We cannotassume that either will continue to grow at the same rate as theydid in the decade of the 1990s.

In any case, we should recognize the growth in the numberof foreign missionaries from the Four-Fifths World, rejoice overit before the Lord our God, and support it—even though wecannot say there are more non-Western missionaries than West-ern missionaries. At least not yet.

Notes1. This article is adapted from Jaffarian’s Missions Research Ezine, a free

occasional publication on missions research and information. Tosubscribe, simply write michaeldawna@earthlink.net and ask to beput on “the ezine list.” “Four-Fifths World” is used to better describewhat has been called the Two-Thirds World or, more simply, thenon-Western world.

2. Larry D. Pate, From Every People: A Handbook of Two-Thirds World

Missions, with Directory/Histories/Analysis (Monrovia, Calif.: MARC,1989), pp. 51, 54, 47.

3. David Barrett introduced the term “missiometrics” in his article“‘Count the Worshippers!’ The New Science of Missiometrics,”International Bulletin of Missionary Research 19, no. 4 (October 1995):154–60.

132 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

ANNOUNCING: “Researching World Christianity: English-Language Doctoral Dissertations on Mission Since1900.” In collaboration with the Yale University Divinity School Library, the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY

RESEARCH is creating a cumulative database of English-language doctoral dissertations on mission dating from1900. The more than 2,370 primarily North American titles featured in the July 1983, 1993, and 2003 issues of theIBMR will be augmented by English-language dissertations from around the world, including D.Min. and D.Miss.theses. Professors of mission, librarians, and university department heads are encouraged to assist in making thisdatabase as complete as possible. The database will be made available online and on CD-ROM. The plannedpublication date is October 2005. For details, e-mail dissertations@OMSC.org.

Book ReviewsHinduism and Modernity.

By David Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp.250. £50 / $62.95; paperback £15.99 / $26.95.

Hinduism and Modernity by David Smithseeks to explore how the seeminglydisparate forces of Hinduism andmodernity have interacted with oneanother. Smith demonstrates hispedagogical abilities through an insightfularray of metaphors borrowed frompopular Hinduism that he uses to illustratevarious themes within Hinduism andmodernity. This approach serves himparticularly well in part 1 of the bookwhen he is defining Hinduism andmodernity and tracing the broad, historicalthemes in each movement. For example,his comparison of the great, rollingJagannath from the great temple at Puriwith the great, rolling juggernaut ofmodernity and its commitment to never-ending progress is nothing less thanbrilliant.

In part 2 the author explores thehistory of India’s discovery of modernismand the European discovery of Hinduism.In this part a knowledgeable reader willbe surprised by the glaring omissions inSmith’s historical survey. Major Indian

Christian figures (such as BrahmabandhavUpadhyay), as well as a whole array ofWestern missionaries who played such avital role in stimulating the BengaliRenaissance, are all curiously neglected.The role of the printing press and the emer-gence of vernacular, prose writings byHindu reformers in mediating modernismand Hinduism are likewise omitted.

In part 3 the author chooses threethemes for comparison: gender issues inmodernity and Hinduism, idolatry in Eastand West, and the notion of the self in themodern West and the Hindu East. Hisinsights into how modern Indian womenhave interacted with traditionaloppressive cultural structures set againstthe backdrop of Hinduism, which glorifiesand worships the female, is very insightfuland helpful. Increasing incoherence seemsto creep into the remaining two themes,however, resulting in very littlesubstantive interaction with thecomparable themes in modernity. Indeed,like modernism itself or, like the great,rolling Jagannath at the end of the festival

when it rolls back into the temple of itsorigin, Smith’s book slowly rolls to a stop,leaving the reader wondering how muchprogress has actually been made.Reminiscent of the famous race aroundthe universe between Ganesh and Skandafor the mango prize, wherein Skandaactually makes the journey and theelephant-headed Ganesh merely plodsaround his parents and declares them theuniverse, the reader may wonder whetherwe, like Skanda of old, really made thejourney and received the prize or, likeGanesh, have simply walked around thetwo themes of Hinduism and modernityand declared the contest over.

—Timothy C. Tennent

Timothy C. Tennent, Associate Professor of WorldMissions, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary,South Hamilton, Massachusetts, is the author ofChristianity at the Religious Roundtable:Evangelicalism in Conversation withHinduism, Buddhism, and Islam (Baker, 2002).

God and Globalization. Vol. 3:Christ and the Dominions ofCivilization.

Edited by Max L. Stackhouse, with Diane B.Obenchain. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity PressInternational, 2002. Pp. 360. $40.

In today’s world the resurgence of religionis conspicuous amid the interplay of forcesin the current rush to globalization. Severalauthors in this third volume of God andGlobalization address the relevance of Godin the midst of current global changes.Scott Thomas, for example, devotes hischapter to this subject, referring inparticular to writers in different epochswho have drawn attention to the influenceof religion. This chapter highlights andillustrates the merit of this excellent work.

Proponents and major players ofglobalization are primarily preoccupiedwith economic issues, which dictate to alarge extent the direction of globalization.The writers of this volume are clear inpointing out, however, that, amid all theforces at work in globalization, “religioncan and does shape those principalitiesand powers, authorities and regencies as

much [as the economic]” ( p. 16). Thisbook is a forceful reminder that religion isstill one of the underlying factors thatmust be reckoned with. Althoughglobalization itself may be a recentphenomenon, the contributors to thisvolume make it clear that religion remainsalive and very much active in effectingchange in the modern world.

The various authors writeknowledgeably in their respective fieldsand address insightfully the newinternational context. For both newcomersand veteran readers, the chapters ablyclarify the various “dominions” ofcivilization.

Globalization, however, although arecent concept, has in a sense been takingplace since time immemorial, at least inthe movement of the various religionsbeyond their respective borders. The

criticism could be made that some of theauthors are perhaps overly preoccupiedwith the glory of the past. In this respect,they fall short and have not addressed therelevance of God in the most present andsatisfactory way.

—Thu En Yu

Thu En Yu is Principal of Sabah TheologicalSeminary, in Malaysia, an interdenominationalinstitution with multinational mission partners.

Blood Ground: Colonialism,Missions, and the Contest forChristianity in the Cape Colonyand Britain, 1799–1853.

By Elizabeth Elbourne. Montreal andKingston: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 2002.Pp. xi, 499. Can$75 / US$75 / £57.

Recently several new approaches to thehistory of Britain and its empire havebegun to bear fruit. In coming tounderstand the limitations of both

133July 2004

Creating Christian Indians: NativeClergy in the Presbyterian Church.

By Bonnie Sue Lewis. Norman: Univ. ofOklahoma Press, 2003. Pp. xix, 281. $34.95.

Events of history—well documented ornot—allow for varying interpretations.This is certainly true of the events describedin Creating Christian Indians, by BonnieSue Lewis. The creative way that NezPerce and Dakota pastors addressedthemselves to ecclesial structure in thisstory of Presbyterian Native missionprovides an intriguing glimpse into thechallenges of the time. But even as Iappreciate the success, in contrast to somany others, and even as I marvel at theresilience of these Native “men of God,”questions come to mind. Did an indigenousexpression of Christianity truly arise inthese mission contexts? Did the Nativeleaders exercise authentic governance overthe affairs of their ministry and theirchurches? Was the mission reallysuccessful? Lewis’s work comes to theconclusion that it was. The evidence,however, suggests an alternate reading ofevents.

If numbers of ordained clergy alonewere a substantive measure of anindigenized church and a successfulmission, this truly is a result to be excitedabout. A significant number of men wereordained to the ministry. Their acceptancein the wider church as peers among equals,however, was, by the author’s own

context. The final questions addressedconcern democracy and empowerment ofwomen in the church, issues still in theirearly development.

Hasan concentrates on the process ofmodernization in the Coptic Church. Thespiritual motives and inspiration behindsuch a dramatic renewal are therefore notexplored; instead, a systematic approachto transformation is suggested. Thequestion of spiritual substance behind thisCoptic reformation has yet to be studied.

Hasan’s candid and well-researchedwork is an important contribution tounderstanding the church in today’sEgypt, which continues under the threatof discrimination. In its scholarship andempathy, this book could represent ahelpful step toward changing the title’swords “Christians versus Muslims” to“Christians and Muslims” in modernEgypt.

—Paul-Gordon Chandler

Paul-Gordon Chandler, Rector of St. John’s AnglicanChurch in Maadi/Cairo, Egypt, is the author ofGod’s Global Mosaic (InterVarsity Press, 2000).

description, a struggle of epic proportion.Going around and not throughPresbyterian policy, Native pastorsfrequently found ways to get things done,which only demonstrates Nativeingenuity. But was it indigenous, or simplyexpedient. Was it “successful,” or merelytolerated? This is not altogether clear. At apoint in the narrative when Indian-initiated revival is co-opted by non-Nativemissionaries (paternalism abundantlyevident!), we are left, once again, toquestion the author’s claim.

In the end, Lewis leaves us to wonderat the present state of the Native church.How has historic mission left it to farewithin the wider Presbyterian Churchtoday? Overall, her presentation is helpful,the conclusion challengeable.

—Terry LeBlanc

Terry LeBlanc, a Mi’kmaq/Acadian who lives westof Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, presently serves asNational Ministries Director for My PeopleInternational, a ministry to Native North Americans.He has served in mission for over twenty-five years.

135July 2004

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International MissionBibliography: 1960–2000.

Edited by Norman E. Thomas. Lanham, Md.:Scarecrow Press, 2003. Pp. xvii, 873. $130.

Norman Thomas has impressivecredentials as a missions bibliographer.From 1965 to 1999 he served as book revieweditor of Missiology, and he chaired theDocumentation, Archives, andBibliography Working Group of theInternational Association for MissionStudies from 1988 to 1992. In that capacityhe undertook the compilation of aninternational, annotated bibliography ofcontemporary books on missiology, aproject on which he and an editorial boardof thirty-six worked for eighteen years.

As published, this bibliography hasseveral serious flaws. The editor refers tothe bibliography as a “database” (pp. xvii,873), and doubtless the printed book wasproduced from an electronic database. Theeditor also refers to the development ofsubject headings (p. xvi), but there is nosubject access in the printed versionbeyond the twenty general categories intowhich it is organized and theirsubdivisions.

Artisans of Peace: GrassrootsPeacemaking Among ChristianCommunities

Edited by Mary Ann Cejka and Thomas Bamat.Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003. Pp. 288.Paperback $25.

This creative volume appeals to both heartand mind. Its well-structured format ofnarrative, background, and analysisprovides activists with a theoretical baseto evaluate and better focus their work, aswell as giving researchers a cross sectionof contemporary case studies to furthertest and challenge theory. All readers will

One might contrast this publicationwith the database developed by the Centrefor the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University ofEdinburgh, “Cumulative Bibliographyof the International Review of Mission”(http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/divinity/cmb/). This database includes books andjournal articles published on mission, orof general interest to missiologists,including coverage from 1912 to thepresent. Like the International MissionBibliography, it is a classified bibliography.Unlike the International MissionBibliography, it has keyword and subjectindexes, and it is updated on a regularbasis.

The potential for this work is great, asit brings together what the editors considerto be the most important works onmissiology for a forty-year period, withannotations. It is unfortunate, however,that the publishers issued it as a stand-alone monograph; they might have linked

it to a searchable Web site or, at the least,included a searchable CD-ROM with thepublication. Given the nature of the work,one can only hope the publishers will seefit to do so at some point.

—Paul F. Stuehrenberg

Paul F. Stuehrenberg is Librarian, Yale UniversityDivinity School, New Haven, Connecticut.

136 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

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“On the Journey Home”: TheHistory of Mission of theEvangelical United BrethrenChurch, 1946–1968.

By J. Steven O’Malley. New York: UnitedMethodist Church, General Board of GlobalMinistries, 2003. Pp. xiv, 285. $21.95;paperback $14.95.

When the Evangelical United BrethrenChurch merged with the much largerMethodist Church in 1968, over a century

the Marshall Islands, Namibia, theNetherlands Antilles, Nigeria, thePhilippines, South Africa, Zambia, andZimbabwe). The short article onPentecostals is very brief and mostlyextracted from Barrett, Kurian, andJohnson’s World Christian Encyclopedia.Entries on some of the individualPentecostal denominations are better,though many significant representativesseem to be missing.

Sometimes the proportionate use ofspace is odd, as with long articles on theConvulsionaries (an eighteenth-centuryJansenist sect) and the Cooneyites, alsoknown as the Black Stockings and the

Nameless House Church (a twentieth-century fundamentalist movement), butno separate treatment of Anglicanchurches in Nigeria, Uganda, or Kenya.One page is given over to the RomanCatholic Church. The absence ofbibliographies detracts from the volume’susefulness, but it is still a welcome resourcefor what it does contain.

—Mark A. Noll

Mark A. Noll, McManis Professor of ChristianThought at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, isthe author most recently of America’s God: FromJonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (OxfordUniv. Press, 2002).

Old Testament Research for Africa:A Critical Analysis and AnnotatedBibliography of African OldTestament Dissertations, 1967–2000.

By Knut Holter. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.Pp. viii, 144. SFr 76 / €49 / £35 / $48.95.

Knut Holter teaches at the School ofMission and Theology in Stavanger,Norway. This listing of doctoraldissertations in Old Testament by Africanscholars between 1967 and 2000 rendersinvaluable service for researching AfricanChristianity. A better title, however, mightbe “Old Testament Research in AfricanScholarship.”

Allowing for “dissertations whichmay have escaped our attention” (p. 17),the total of eighty-seven is impressive.That seventeen were completed in Africaninstitutions is not insignificant, for fewstudents have the means for postgraduateresearch in the field.

Curiously, the most revealing findingis the African researchers’ acceptancewithout challenge of Western historical-critical approaches to the Old Testament.Holter puzzles over this realization (pp.97, 102, 109, 114). None shows serious useof the African context as resource forinterpretation or indicates that the Africanworld, with its awareness of atranscendence that is “larger” than whatthe Western Enlightenment outlook allowsfor, can illuminate the Old Testament,probably because most of the dissertationswere produced at Western institutions.

A further finding relates totranslations. Though several classictranslations were produced on Africansoil—the Greek Septuagint, the Old Latin,the Coptic, and the Ethiopic—this heritageis not reflected “beyond a mereprogrammatic rhetoric” (p. 110).

Here too, Holter can be criticized.Into the future, he can foresee African

interaction only with “the material andmethodology of the global guild of OldTestament scholarship” (p. 114), namely,the Western guild! How such a future willinvigorate African Old Testamentscholarship is hard to see. Holter has noexpectation that African scholarship willinteract with African receptions of the OldTestament occurring predominantlythrough Scriptures in indigenouslanguages. African scholars will do wellto be alert to this reality on the ground, lestthey alienate themselves from the “livingworld” of the Old Testament incontemporary African experience.

—Kwame Bediako

Kwame Bediako, a Ghanaian, is Executive Director,Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre for MissionResearch and Applied Theology, Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana.

138 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

of significant EUB mission history was indanger of being lost. In this comprehensiveoverview Steven O’Malley, professor ofWesleyan Holiness history at AsburyTheological Seminary, helpfully preservesthis history. The book is the fourth in aprojected series of six volumes thatdocument and update the mission historyof United Methodism’s various antecedentgroups.

The EUB Church existed as such foronly twenty-two years, the period that isthe main focus of this volume. ButO’Malley summarizes also the missionwork of the groups that formed the EUB in1946—the Evangelical Association and theUnited Brethren, groups with GermanPietist and (in the case of the UB)Mennonite roots tracing back to the late1700s.

O’Malley stresses the “indigenousand cooperative approach” (p. 30) thatmarked EUB missions as part of itsinheritance from Pietism, “traditional EUBoptimism” (p. 46) tracing back to Pietisthopes for “a more glorious state of thechurch than ever has been” (p. 2). EUBmissions did in fact leave a remarkableheritage of indigenous and ecumenicalendeavors (particularly in China, Japan,the Dominican Republic, and thePhilippines), despite some failures. At thetime of merger in 1968, EUB mission workwas generally more ecumenical than wereMethodist missions; the EUB had helpedform a number of united churches—in theprocess losing its own identity. O’Malleyshows how EUB mission was motivatedby a theological vision of the kingdom ofGod, yet he is candid in acknowledgingthat the church did not always live up toits vision.

O’Malley also covers the significantEUB work in Germany and its extensivehome mission work in the United States,such as the Red Bird Mission in Kentucky.

—Howard A. Snyder

Howard A. Snyder is Professor of the History andTheology of Mission, E. Stanley Jones School ofWorld Mission and Evangelism, Asbury TheologicalSeminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. He and his familyserved as Free Methodist missionaries in São Paulo,Brazil, from 1968 to 1975.

Protestantism and Politics inKorea.

By Chung-shin Park. Seattle: Univ. ofWashington Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 316. $50.

In Protestantism and Politics in Korea,Chung-shin Park, professor of Christianstudies at Soongsil University in Seoul,explores the sociopolitical issues

surrounding the inception, initial growth,and development of ProtestantChristianity from the late nineteenth tothe late twentieth century. Park makes thepoint that before 1919, Protestantism wasa radical force because its social criticismappealed to the dispossessed elite andoppressed classes. Church leadership after1919 was conservative, which he attributesto the institutionalization of the church,when the leadership sought to preserveProtestantism’s newly achieved status ofrespectability. During the 1950s, Park

claims, Protestantism under SyngmanRhee achieved sociopolitical dominancebecause the most influential members ofthe political leadership were Protestant, asituation that changed after 1961 underPark Chung Hee and his successors, whenthe bonds of religious affiliation weredissolved.

Although there is much food forthought here, the book is not free fromcriticism. Park unwittingly takes KoreanPresbyterianism to mean KoreanProtestantism and thereby ignores the

139July 2004

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M I S S I O N S , N AT I O N A L I S M , A N D T H E E N D O F E M P I R EBrian Stanley, editorRespected authorities on the history of missions explore newterritory in these chapters, examining from diverse angles thelinkages between Christianity, nationalism, and the dissolutionof the colonial empires in Asia and Africa.

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importance of the denominational factor.In his discussion of the 1970s and 1980s,Park stresses the role of the churchleadership over the laity, yet in myexperience the laity were more politicallyand socially engaged than the formalProtestant leadership. In revising his 1987dissertation, Park should have been takenthe story down to the present. In the 1990stwo leading former dissidents assumedthe presidency. Was the Protestantrelationship to the political culture thesame as under Syngman Rhee? If not, whynot?

Despite these criticisms, Park’s bookmakes an important contribution to thestudy of the sociopolitical history ofKorean Protestantism and will appeal toscholars of East Asian political history aswell as to missiologists.

—James Huntley Grayson

James Huntley Grayson, Professor of Modern KoreanStudies in the School of East Asian Studies,University of Sheffield, England, was a UnitedMethodist educational missionary in Korea from1971 to 1987.

The Meaning of Life in the WorldReligions.

Edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin.Oxford: Oneworld, 2000. Pp. xvi, 330.Paperback £14.99 / $23.95.

Love, Sex, and Gender in theWorld Religions.

Edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin.Oxford: Oneworld, 2000. Pp. xvi, 320.Paperback £14.99 / $23.95.

Ethics in the World Religions.

Edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin.Oxford: Oneworld, 2001. Pp. xvii, 381.Paperback £14.99 / $23.95.

These books are the first three volumes inthe Library of Global Ethics and Religion.They each consist of papers presented atconferences held at Chapman Universityin Orange, California, in 1997, 1998, and2000. Huntington, Francis, and GrisetLectureship funds were used to sponsorall three conferences; the last was alsosponsored by Loyola Marymount Collegeof Liberal Arts and its Program in Asianand Pacific Studies.

The spirit of these conferences arisesfrom an evident desire to find ethicaluniversals among the world’s religions,while at the same time showing criticalrespect for differences of expression ofthose same universals in the discrete

140 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 3

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Correction (April 2004):U.K. Christian Handbook: ReligiousTrends, No. 4, 2003/2004.Edited by Peter Brierley. London:Christian Research, 2003. Pp. 176. £20.See www.christian-research.org.uk.

religious traditions. They offer a“pluralistic and global perspective onquestions of religion and ethics” (Meaningof Life, p. xv). The first volume is dedicatedto John Hick and Huston Smith, the secondto Julius Lipner and Arvind Sharma, andthe third to Keith Ward and Chris Chapple.The editors are professors in the religiousstudies department of ChapmanUniversity.

The volumes follow a consistentpattern. After two or three introductoryarticles setting the context of the issue(meaning, gender, and ethics) and itsrelationship to religion, scholars ofWestern religion give a Jewish, Christian,and Muslim view of a subject, followed byscholars of Asian religion giving a Hindu,Buddhist, Jain, and Chinese view. Articlesare then presented that give a cross-religious view and global views. Thecontent of the articles is excellent.

It is hard to imagine a better collectionof scholars to address this fundamentalissue of ethical cooperation amongreligions in order to address the problemsof the world as they relate to meaning,gender, and ethics. Contributors are almostall from university religious studiesdepartments, and almost always write

from the perspective of religious studiesscholarship. The intriguing thing aboutthese collections, however, is that eventhough great pains have been taken tofocus on the greatest scholars of religionthe (largely) Western world has to offer, avery clear “theological” motif emerges,one the authors argue with zeal, passion,and what Michael Polanyi called universalintent.

Put it another way: although the“missionary” (in the traditional sense ofadvocating a religious position of atradition to nonadherents in the hopes oftheir becoming adherents) point of viewhas been scrupulously left out of this workof scholarship, a “new mission” emerges.This new mission not only argues its“tradition” with skill and power, but italso questions all other missions asillegitimate; that is, traditionalmissionaries are not wrong just in terms ofthe content of what they say, but in theirvery attempt to advocate the rightness ofa single religious tradition.

Readers of the International Bulletin ofMissionary Research will resonate with themissionary intent of these volumes andwill probably agree with much of the globalethical agenda presented. They will find

curious, however, the ignoring ofBuddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslimmission attempts to address the sameissues from their very differentperspectives, and the implicit rejection ofthose attempts as somehow illegitimate.Perhaps a better, more fruitful approachwould be to acknowledge the universalityof “mission” in all the religions, and thenuse the considerable scholarly skillsevident in these volumes to help theindividual religions differentiate goodmission from bad mission, both of whichare present in abundance in the history ofworld religion. And perhaps even includethe religious in those scholarly endeavors?

—Terry C. Muck

Terry C. Muck is Professor of Missions and WorldReligions at the E. Stanley Jones School of WorldMission and Evangelism at Asbury TheologicalSeminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

141July 2004

Editor: Magnus Lundberg, University of Uppsala.

One of the oldest and best-established missiological journals in the world, published quarterly since 1913. We are a

respected international journal with Scandinavian roots – and since 1995, nearly every article is now published in English.

Distinguished past editors have included Bengt Sundkler, Carl F. Hallencreutz, and Christopher Steed.

Thematic issues of 2004 include:

� New Trends in Ecumenism and Middle Eastern Issues�

� The Dynamics of Mission and Dialogue�

Contributors this year will include Jacques Dupuis, Aruna Gnanandason, Werner Jeanrond, John D’Arcy May,

An Invitation to Subscribe

Volume 92. 2004 (4 issues, circa 600 pages) ISSN: 0346-217 XInstitutions: SEK 400 (US$ 40) Individuals: SEK 300 (US$ 30)Most back issues are available at reduced rates.

Please send subscription address and payment to the following address:Swedish Institute of Mission Research, P.O. Box 1526, SE-751 45 Uppsala, SWEDEN.Tel and fax: +46 (0)18 – 13 0060. E-mail: gustaf.bjorck@teol.uu.se

Please pay via S.W.I.F.T. to our account/IBAN number: SE74 9500 0099 6026 0398 7542

SWEDISH MISSIOLOGICAL THEMES

SVENSK MISSIONSTIDSKRIFT

Missional Character of the Church

Latin American and African Mission Theologies

Viggo Mortensen, Werner Ustorf.

Book NotesAllison, Lon, and Mark Anderson.Going Public with the Gospel: Reviving Evangelistic Proclamation.Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003. Pp. 180. Paperback $13.

Bailey, Gauvin Alexander.Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773.Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 310. Paperback $35 / £22.50.

Bauckham, Richard.Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World.Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster Press; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003. Pp. ix, 112. Paperback£5.99 / $13.99.

Bharati, Dayanand.Living Water and Indian Bowl: An Analysis of Christian Failings inCommunicating Christ to Hindus, with Suggestions Toward Improvements.Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2004. Pp. x, 196. Paperback $12.99.

Coleman, David.Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old-WorldFrontier City, 1492–1600.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 252. $39.95.

Forker, Wilbert, ed.Born in Slavery: The Story of Methodism in Anguilla and Its Influence in theCaribbean.Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2003. Pp. x, 80. Paperback £10.95 / $19.

Gregory, Trev.Mission Now: Developing a Mission Lifestyle.Carlisle, U.K.: Authentic Media, 2003. Pp. xvii, 222. Paperback £7.99.

Kraft, Marguerite G., ed.Frontline Women: Negotiating Crosscultural Issues in Ministry.Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2003. Pp. xv, 226. Paperback $16.99.

Laing, Mark T. B., ed.Leadership and Mission: Papers from the Ninth CMS Consultation.Delhi and Pune: Center for Mission Studies (CMS) and Indian Society for PromotingChristian Knowledge (ISPCK), 2004. Pp. xiii, 285. Paperback Rs 225 / $18.

Moreau, A. Scott, Gary R. Corwin, and Gary B. McGee.Introducing World Missions: A Biblical, Historical, and Practical Survey(includes Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions on CD-ROM).Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004. Pp. 349. $29.99.

Myers, Bryant L.Exploring World Mission: Context and Challenge (with CD-ROM).Monrovia, Calif.: World Vision International, 2003. Pp. 87. Paperback $34.95.

Olajuba, Oyeronke.Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere.New York: State Univ. of New York Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 172. Paperback $16.95.

Rundle, Steve, and Tom Steffen.Great Commission Companies: The Emerging Role of Business in Missions.Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003. Pp. 204. Paperback $16.

Schestokat, Karin U.German Women in Cameroon: Travelogues from Colonial Times.New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Pp. 204. $63.95.

Stinton, Diane B.Jesus of Africa: Voices of Contemporary African Christology.Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004. Pp. xiv, 303. Paperback $25.

In ComingIssuesThe Congregational LeadershipCrisis Facing the Japanese ChurchThomas J. Hastings and Mark R.Mullins

The Church in North Korea:Retrospect and ProspectHyun-Sik Kim

Catholic Missionaries and CivilPower in Africa, 1878–1914Aylward Shorter, M.Afr.

Beyond Bosch: The Early Churchand the Christendom ShiftAlan Kreider

The Religious Worldview of theIndigenous Population of theNorthern Ob’ as Understood byChristian MissionariesAnatolii M. Ablazhei

John Howard Yoder as MissionTheologianJoon-Sik Park

Pre-Revolution Russian Mission toCentral Asia: A ContextualizedLegacyDavid M. Johnstone

In our Series on the Legacy ofOutstanding Missionary Figures ofthe Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies, articles aboutNorman AndersonThomas BarclayGeorge BowenHélène de ChappotinFrançois E. DaubantonJohn DuncanNehemiah GorehPa Yohanna GowonByang KatoHannah KilhamRudolf LechlerGeorge Leslie MackayLesslie NewbiginJames Howell PykePandita RamabaiElizabeth RussellBakht SinghJames StephenPhilip B. SullivanJohn V. TaylorJames M. ThoburnM. M. ThomasHarold W. TurnerJohannes VerkuylWilliam Vories