ARAM, 25 (2013) 1-18. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.25.0.XXXXXXX

IMPERIAL POLITICS AND MISSIONARY PRACTICES: COMPARATIVE TRANSFORMATIONS IN ANGLO-AMERICAN AND

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX MISSIONS IN SYRIA-PALESTINE

DEANNA FERREE WOMACK(Princeton Theological Seminary)

Abstract

This article compares British, American, and Russian Orthodox missions in the 19th century Ottoman province of Syria. It employs a comparative methodology in order to discern the significance of similarities and differences in missionary strate-gies and to analyze missionaries’ various political, cultural, and theological affinities. Focusing on the British Church Missionary Society work in Palestine, the American Syria Mission, and Russia’s Orthodox Palestine Society, it compares missionary aims and practices. Then, recognizing missionaries’ connections to imperial powers vying for influence in the Near East, the essay moves to the question of theo-politics. High-lighting the transformative agency of native churches and graduates of missionary schools, the final section argues for greater historiographical recognition of the strug-gles, responses, and contributions of the very people whom British, American, and Russian missionaries aimed to influence.

INTRODUCTION

Comparative methodology is a valuable means to move beyond unidirectional representations of history driven by particular political, national, or religious affiliations. While it might be impossible to remove the cultural lenses through which we view the world, it is essential to recognize that world history is not made by one powerful actor or merely by the converging actions of competing powers. Scholars and students alike can move beyond their cultural contexts and gain a more comprehensive view of subjects outside their academic fields by investigating the parallel and diverging ways in which nations, communities, and individuals – both strong and marginal – act, interact, and undergo trans-formation.

For historians of the Ottoman Empire, one fruitful area of comparison is Tsarist Russia, which bordered Ottoman realms for centuries and actively engaged in political and religious affairs in the Near East. The number of military engage-ments between the two empires in the 19th century alone signals the intercon-nected nature of Russian and Ottoman history. Despite this historical reality,

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2 IMPERIAL POLITICS AND MISSIONARY PRACTICES

comparative work on these empires remains scarce.1 Historians of the Near East have much to gain from a concerted engagement with Russian imperial history. Likewise, for Western Christian theology, and for Protestantism in particular, the world of Orthodox Christianity remains a potentially fertile, yet considerably neglected, area of comparative investigation. Of particular importance for the study of Christian mission is the Russian Orthodox Church, whose expansive missionary enterprise reached new heights in the 19th century.

Toward this end, this essay compares Russian Orthodox mission work with British and American Protestant missions in the Ottoman Levant from the 1820s to the turn of the century. Two inter-related questions drive the essay: 1) Comparatively, how did Protestant and Orthodox strategies of mission engage Near Eastern populations in the late Ottoman period? 2) What is the relation-ship between Western political and cultural affinities and Russian, British, and American missionary aims and practices in Ottoman Syria-Palestine?

While mission studies have produced volumes on missions in the Levant, this essay’s comparative approach yields new insight on Russian Orthodox and Anglo-American Protestant mission histories. This topic of discussion is worth-while, first, because no substantive work has compared Russian and Anglo-American missionary practices in the Ottoman Empire. Second, issues of West-ern cultural influence and imperial politics are especially acute in the 19th century when the decline of the Ottoman Empire spurred Western competition for influence in that region. American, British, and Russian missionaries were part of Western imperial history in the Levant, where a number of states vied for influence. Much can be learned about political interests in the region from the relationships between missionaries and Western states and the rivalries between various missionary organizations. Third, while it is beyond the scope of this essay to address all mission work in Syria-Palestine, the choice of Russian, British, and American missions provides a broad spectrum for analysis in terms of church-state relationships and questions of cultural imperialism. At the end of two extremes are “the American missionaries, who had no government back-ing at all, [and] the Russians, who served their government. Located some-where in the middle of this spectrum we find the British, French, and German missionary societies.”2

This essay begins by examining 19th century missionary strategies in the Otto-man province of Syria. The first section demonstrates how American, British, and Russian missionary aims and practices were transformed through encoun-ters with Ottoman subjects and with other Western missionary organizations.

1 One recent exception is Michael Reynolds,!Shattering!Empires:!The!Clash!and!Collapse!of!the!Ottoman!and!Russian!Empires, 1908-1918, (Cambridge, 2011).

2 Ruth Kark, “The Impact of Early Missionary Enterprises on Landscape and Identity Forma-tion in Palestine, 1820-1914”, Islam!and!Christian-Muslim!Relations, 15:2 (April 2004), p. 215.

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D. FERREE WOMACK 3

It focuses on the American Syria Mission, the Church Missionary Society mis-sion in Palestine, and Russia’s Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society. The second section!offers a comparative analysis of the partnerships and rivalries between representatives of church and state, and it identifies significant differences in missionary practices among Russians, Americans, and the British. The final sec-tion of the essay!analyzes the transformations that emerged through two institu-tions of cross-cultural contact, native churches and missionary schools. The essay argues that differences in American, British, and Russian missionary aims and practices stem not only from separate theological traditions and links between missionaries and their national or imperial governments, but also from the rela-tionships between missionaries and the native congregations they supported. In the end, it is not the missionaries, but native Christians and students of mission schools who displayed the greatest power for transformative action.

COMPARATIVE MISSIONARY AIMS AND PRACTICES

Countless Protestant missionary societies have set their sights on the Holy Lands, but the British and Americans predominated in Syria-Palestine in the 19th century. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) established a mission in Jerusalem in 1851, expanding on early 19th century Anglican work there. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent its first two missionaries to Syria-Palestine in 1819. The Russian Empire was the only Orthodox power to establish an ecclesiastical mission in the Levant in the 19th century. Beginning in 1847, its religious work culminated in the Impe-rial Orthodox Palestine Society. This section compares the missionary practices of these three major mission organizations by addressing their historical begin-nings and the evolution of their aims and strategies.

COMPARATIVE MISSIONARY AIMS In 1815 the CMS appointed Rev. William Jowett to begin a Mediterranean

mission based in Malta and sent him on an information-gathering tour of Palestine. The mission society’s geographical and religious aims reflected its founders’ inclination that it was “one of the most sacred duties of Reformed Christendom to send the pure Gospel to the regions from whence it had first come.” The specific CMS objective was to rouse the Oriental Churches to “self-reformation” so these native Christians would then spread the gospel among Muslims.3 The initial Anglican evangelistic work in Palestine, however,

3 Church Missionary Society. The!Church!Missionary!Society!Atlas,!Containing!an!Account!of!the!Various!Countries!in!which!the!Society!Labors!and!of!its!Missionary!Operations,!8th Edi-tion, (London, 1896), p. 67.

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targeted neither Muslims nor Christians but the Jewish community. For this purpose the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (LJS) launched a mission in Palestine in 1823. Together, the LJS in Jerusalem and CMS missionaries in Malta advocated for an Anglican bishop, an English church, and a British consul in Jerusalem. In 1841, without seeking the approval of the Ottoman government, leaders of the Church of England and King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia established the bishopric of Jerusalem to oversee a united British-German Protestant community. Its first bishop, Michael Soloman Alexander (1842-1845), limited his work to the Jewish community. His succes-sor, Samuel Gobat (1846-1879), showed only a token interest in evangelization of Jews, having identified the Arab Orthodox community as the most promis-ing locus for mission work because of the closed nature of the Muslim, Jewish, and native Catholic communities.4 Bishop Gobat invited the CMS to establish its Palestine mission, which operated independently from the bishopric. At its Jerusalem conference in 1851 the CMS concluded that work among Muslims was “not only virtually impossible, but likely to endanger the status of the mission in the Ottoman Empire.”5 With Bishop George F. P. Blyth (1887-1914) the bishopric ended its alliance with German missions and also initiated an era of improved relations with Greek Orthodox leadership. From that time forth the bishopric focused on serving its English congregation and evangelizing Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians. CMS missions, however, continued working primarily among Orthodox Christians and nominally among Muslims. By the close of the century the Archbishop of Canterbury recognized the futility of Western efforts to evangelize Muslims, stating, “They must be approached by Oriental missionaries.”6

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), an interdenominational body with a Congregational majority, commissioned Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk in 1819 for “benevolent action for the recovery of the world for God and to happiness.”7 These ABCFM missionaries maintained close contact with British ecclesial, commercial, and political figures in the Ottoman Empire. Their immediate task, like that of the CMS Palestine Mis-sion, was to “nominal” Christians who the missionaries believed would spread Christianity to pagans, Jews, and Muslims. Although Jerusalem was the origi-nal geographic focus, because of the prohibition against foreigners residing in Jerusalem and the Greek revolt against Ottoman authority in 1821, Parsons and

4 A. L. Tibawi, British!Interests!in!Palestine,!1800-1901:!A!Study!of!Religious!and!Educational!Enterprise,!(London, 1961), pp. 9, 27, 48-50, 93. The bishopric united the Church of England and the United Evangelical Church of Prussia.

5 Tibawi, British!Interests,!p. 107. 6 Tibawi, British!Interests,!pp.!169, 221, 259. 7 A. L. Tibawi, American! Interests! in!Syria,!1800-1901:!A!Study!of!Educational,!Literary,!

and!Religious!Work,!(Oxford, 1966), p. 14.

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D. FERREE WOMACK 5

Fisk found Beirut to be a convenient and safer location for a permanent Amer-ican mission station. In 1834, the ABCFM finally established a mission in Jeru-salem, but within ten years the mission relinquished its stations and schools in that area, finding that the Anglicans had more successfully expanded their zone of influence in Palestine.8

Because of an intense and organized opposition from the Maronite Church, by the 1830s American missionaries in Syria had focused their attention on the Druze and Eastern Orthodox communities.9 In contrast to the Anglican mis-sionaries, the interdenominational ABCFM did not initially advocate the estab-lishment of a separate denominational church, although it recognized the creation of a Protestant community in the Levant as a possible consequence of its evan-gelistic endeavors. In 1842 the mission board decreed, “Resolved, that the object of evangelical missions to the Oriental Churches, is and ought to be the revival of spiritual religion by the republication of the doctrines of grace, and not the propagation of particular forms of church organization or worship.”10 In 1870, at the decision of the eight members of the Syrian mission, the ABCFM trans-ferred its entire Syria Mission to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presby-terian Church in the United States. Despite the shift of native Protestant churches to Presbyterian polity and the differences between the generation of missionaries led by Henry Jessup and the earlier missionaries working under Eli Smith, the aims and strategies of the mission remained similar.11 By this point, however, the missionaries had abandoned all efforts of church reform in favor of establish-ing distinct Protestant congregations.

Like Anglo-American missions, Russian ecclesial and educational work in the province of Syria developed in the early decades of the 1800s. Russians had, in fact, sustained contact with communities in Syria-Palestine for centuries through pilgrimages to Jerusalem and their association with the Greek Ortho-dox Church, which controlled the Orthodox hierarchy in the Ottoman Empire.12 By the late eighteenth century, the Russian Tsar had recognized the political advantages of involvement in religious issues in the Near East.13 Thus, with imperial oversight, the Russian mission in Palestine had a more clearly defined political aim than its Protestant competitors. In the 1830s the Russian church initiated efforts to protect its pilgrims in Jerusalem by establishing a hostel and

8 Tibawi, American! Interests, pp. 14, 15, 18, 25, 73-74, 105.! Robert Speer, Presbyterian!Foreign!Missions:!An!Account!of!the!Foreign!Missions!of!the!Presbyterian!Church!in!the!U.S.A. (Philadelphia, 1901), pp. 195-196.!

9 Tibawi, American! Interests, p. 59; Ussama Makdisi, The!Artillery! of!Heaven:!American!Missionaries!and!the!Failed!Conversion!of!the!Middle!East,!(Ithaca, NY, 2008), p. 160.

10 Tibawi, American!Interests, p. 103.11 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 191-192. 12 Andrej Kreutz, Russia!in!the!Middle!East:!Friend!or!Foe?!(Westport, CT, 2007), p. 12. 13 Theofanis George Stavrou, Russian!Interests!in!Palestine,!1882-1914:!A!Study!of!Religious!

and!Educational!Enterprise,!(Thessaloniki, 1963), pp. 12.

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using Russia’s Beirut consul to acquire other buildings in the city. In 1847 Tsar Alexander II approved the first Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, which was not given an official imperial or ecclesial status. Its first director, Archimandrite Porfiri Uspenski, settled in Jerusalem in the guise of a pilgrim. He was to serve as a mediator between the Greek Patriarchate and Russia’s Holy Synod and to provide supervision for Russian funds to the patriarchate.14 Additionally, the mission aimed to provide accommodation and spiritual sup-port to Russian pilgrims and to gradually reform the Greek clergy, whom the Russians blamed for Protestant and Catholic missionary advances among Arab Orthodox populations.15 This final goal is significant considering similar Anglo-American hopes for reviving Orthodox churches. The Russian Orthodox Church did not contest the need for church reforms, but it sought to accomplish such changes by deferring to the leadership of the Greek hierarchy, at least in theory.

After its dissolution during the Crimean War, the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission was resurrected in 1858 under the control of a bishop. Simultaneously, the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, brother of Tsar Alexander II, initiated the Palestine Committee (later Palestine Commission). The Committee pro-moted Russian Orthodox spirituality in response to Catholic “propaganda” and encouraged pilgrims to visit and immigrate to Palestine with assistance from a Russian navigation company. The Orthodox Palestine Society created in 1882 by Russian bureaucrat Vasili Nikolaevich Khitrovo aimed to promote Ortho-doxy in the Holy Land in light of the Russian mission and Palestine Commit-tee failures. In 1889 it subsumed the duties of these two bodies. After visiting Palestine on a religious pilgrimage and paying particular attention to the work of European missions there, Khitrovo had envisioned an organization that “was a synthesis of the purposes and programs of various Catholic and Protestant societies active in Palestine at the time.” It aimed not only to improve the conditions for pilgrims but also to defend Orthodoxy against its Protestant, Catholic, and even Greek Orthodox rivals.16 Despite Orthodox missionaries’ attempts to convert Muslims within the Russian Empire, the Orthodox Palestine Society articulated no aim for mission to Muslims. The same was true with regard to Jews. While Protestant missionaries encouraged Jews to seek medical treatment in their hospitals in the aim of evangelizing them, the Russian gov-ernment barred the Jewish community from receiving treatment at Russian

14 Stavrou, Russian! Interests. pp. 31-33, 37. Derek Hopwood characterizes Uspenski as a man of “rash actions and intolerable judgment.” Uspenski’s polemics against and confronta-tions with the Greek hierarchy demonstrate his lack of diplomatic sensitivity. Derek Hopwood, Russian!Presence! in!Syria!and!Palestine,!1843-1914:!Church!and!Politics! in! the!Near!East, (London, 1969), pp. 35, 37-38.

15 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!pp.!41-42.16 Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!pp. 41, 63, 70.

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Orthodox medical facilities in Jerusalem where both Russian Christians and Arabs were welcome.17 The three main objectives of the Orthodox Palestine Society were “sound scientific knowledge about Palestine and the Holy Places, aid to the Russian pilgrims to these places, [and] moral and financial support to the native Orthodox Christians of Palestine.”18 Until the last decade of the 19th century, the Society focused primarily on Palestine. However, due to strug-gles with the Greek Orthodox hierarchy in Jerusalem and the increased recep-tivity of the Antioch patriarch, the Society turned its efforts toward Syria in 1895. It quickly took the lead in Orthodox schools there, while still maintaining its mission in Palestine. Recognizing in 1899 that “power lies in Syria and not in Palestine,” the Society continued to devote the majority of its resources to schools in Syria until its work was terminated indefinitely with the start of World War I.19

COMPARATIVE MISSIONARY PRACTICES

In attempting to reach their mission societies’ articulated goals, Anglo-American and Russian missionaries employed many similar strategies. The most important was education, which British and American missionaries con-sidered from the beginning as an effective means of teaching the gospel. Initially the Russians focused on building and repairing Orthodox churches administered by the Greeks, but they soon turned to education in response to the growing number of Orthodox Christians attending Protestant and Catholic schools. When the Greek hierarchy’s fear of Russian encroachment led it to block the Ortho-dox Palestine Society from overseeing church work, the Society turned exclu-sively to education “in the natural hope that if adults could not be influenced through their churches the children would be educated in the Orthodox faith.”20 In aiming to increase Russia’s influence over the Jerusalem patriarchy, however, Russian missionaries never attempted to create a separate Russian Orthodox Church for Arabs. Khitrovo wrote, “If our society were called the Russian Pal-estine Society then we would simply convert Orthodox Arabs into Russians as the Protestants convert them into Englishmen and the Catholics into French-men, but we are called Orthodox and so we have to make them good Orthodox Arabs.”21 At a limited level, the CMS, American mission, and Orthodox Pal-estine Society all created institutions of secondary education to train native teachers and clergy. These included the Syrian Protestant College (renamed the American University of Beirut), various American predecessors to Beirut’s

17 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 117; Kreutz, Russia!in!the!Middle!East,!p. 46. 18 Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!pp. 75-76.19 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 150.20 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 115. 21 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 115.

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Near East School of Theology, the English College established by the CMS in Jerusalem, and the Russian mission’s Nazareth Seminary. Because the Russian Orthodox Church did not have a base of women missionaries like the Protestants or nuns like the Catholics, in 1890 it also established an institution in Beit Jala to train female teachers.22

Orthodox Palestine Society schools taught Russian language courses but also focused a significant portion of the curriculum on Arabic until increased student interest in French and English forced a curriculum change in 1914.23 The Society’s schools also offered more secular subjects than Protestant insti-tutions, including Arabic literature. By similarly using Arabic as a language of instruction and employing native Protestant women, the CMS schools “presented an image of being ‘less foreign’ and more indigenous.”24 Under the direction of ABCFM Secretary Rufus Anderson (1832-1866), the primary text-book in American schools was the Arabic Bible, and even at the seminary level, instruction was in Arabic in order to encourage native sympathies and prepare graduates for “more efficient and useful action” as preachers and teachers among their own people.25

A second emphasis of Anglo-American missions was the Arabic printing press. Both American and British presses produced books to engage literate adults and, with the assistance of native teachers, used Arabic texts to pro-mote literacy and Christian knowledge among students at missionary schools. Anderson’s policy limited the American press to religious publications, and by 1869 it had produced the Arabic Bible, reprints of religious literature, five non-religious textbooks for use in mission schools, and a number of books funded by native authors.26 The new Protestant translation of the Bible com-pleted in 1865 was the result of the mission’s emphasis on Bible translation in its early years. In a rare show of inter-mission cooperation, in 1896 the super-visor of Russian schools requested Arabic Bibles from the American Press to be used in all Russian schools in Syria-Palestine.27 Under the direction of Porfiri Uspenski, the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission also established an Arabic press in 1853 to provide textbooks for its schools in Palestine.28

In the field of medical missions, the LJS began the first Anglican clinic in Jerusalem, which later expanded to a hospital for Jews. The CMS turned to this “well-tried missionary method” in 1883, initiating medical missions in As-Salt

22 George Sabra, Truth!and!Service:!A!History!of!the!Near!East!School!of!Theology,!(Beirut,!2010); Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!p. 162.

23 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 156.24 Ela Greenberg, Preparing! the!Mothers! of! Tomorrow:!Education! and! Islam! in!Mandate!

Palestine,!(Austin, TX, 2010), p. 21.25 Tibawi, American!Interests,!p. 125. 26 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 183-85. 27 Speer, Presbyterian!Foreign!Missions, p. 187.28 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 44.

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and Jaffa. In 1891 it added a hospital to the mission’s dispensary in Gaza and opened another hospital in Nablus. In addition, the CMS began sending mis-sionary women to Arab villages to administer simple medical treatments in people’s homes.29 The Americans commissioned a small number of medical missionaries beginning in 1832 with Asa Dodge, who regarded his medical practice as a “means of furthering the spiritual objectives of the mission” even though his primary duty was the medical care of fellow missionaries.30 In 1893 Dr. Mary Pierson Eddy, daughter of missionaries, became the first woman to receive permission from the authorities to practice medicine in the Ottoman Empire.31 The Orthodox Palestine Society operated a hospital and clinic in Jeru-salem and other clinics in pilgrimage centers of Palestine where doctors and nurses were considered medical missionaries who exerted a positive Orthodox influence upon Russian pilgrims and Arab Christians.32 Besides its medical services, the Society maintained hostels and dining facilities for pilgrims and offered them transportation, guidance, and subsidized travel. With this increased support, the number of Russian pilgrims reached more than 6,000 annually by 1900. This focus on pilgrims, as well as the Society’s scholarly, scientific, and popular publications distributed in Russia, distinguished it from Anglo-American missions.33

Just as American and British missionary societies funded their work through individual donations, the Orthodox Palestine Society also maintained branches throughout the empire and raised money through membership dues, private donations, and an annual Palm Sunday offering taken on behalf of the society by Russian Orthodox Churches. All three mission organizations used rivalries with Eastern churches and other foreign missions to gain sympathy and support at home. When raising funds for the Orthodox Palestine Society, for example, priests “would speak of the present condition of Orthodoxy in that cradle of Christianity, and how the Society endeavored to revive and strengthen it in the face of Western propaganda and Greek corruption.”34 In reports to their boards calling for more funds and personnel, American and British missionaries pointed out their need to match the progress of Protestant and Catholic competitors and highlighted the amount of money invested in Russian work among Orthodox populations, which had resulted in the closure of some Protestant schools.35

29 Tibawi, British!Interests, pp.!226-227.30 Tibawi, American! Interests, p. 62. Tibawi quotes from the ABCFM Annual report of

1832.31 Speer, Presbyterian!Foreign!Missions,!p. 207. 32 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 117; Kreutz, Russia!in!the!Middle!East,!p. 46. 33 Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!p. 150. 34 Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!p. 130. 35 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 160, 226; Tibawi, British!Interests, pp. 172-173; Stavrou,

Russian!Interests,!p. 113.

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Missionary reports of the time show Russian missions had an advantage over Protestants in terms of numbers because of their connection with Orthodox communities, especially in Syria.36

CHURCH, STATE, AND THE QUESTION OF THEO-POLITICS

While some scholars consider missionaries as one facet of the overarching imperial structure in colonial societies, Western political, commercial, and religious enterprises held very different aims and often struggled against one another.37 In the early 19th century Levant, Great Britain exerted influence over a small number of Protestants, whereas Russia held the official status as protector of the Greek Orthodox community.38 Britain’s growth as an imperial power during the course of the 1800s, however, gave Anglican missionaries a sense of prestige and security. The political coloring of American missionary work was paler than that of the British because the United States initially maintained no colonial or imperial power from which American missions could gain political clout. At least before the late 19th century, American missions were marked by religious zeal and did not have the ability or moti-vation to pursue American political interests.39 Both American and Anglican missionaries, however, turned to British consuls, ambassadors, and politicians for protection and to influence Ottoman legal decisions, since they viewed Ottoman law as their main hindrance in conversion of Muslims. American diplomats were not as free to exert such pressure until the late 19th century when the United States grew as a world power. This stronger political status lessened the American missionaries’ reliance on British diplomatic protection and heightened their sense of competition with British missions.40 Among the results of British overtures to the Sultan, at least two should be noted: the granting to Britain of protector status over Ottoman Jews and later over foreign

36 In 1896, CMS schools in Palestine served 2,307 students and 32 seminarians. Tibawi, British!Interests, p. 229. In 1899 the American mission served 1,000 students in urban areas and sup-ported a loose chain of village schools whose numbers constantly fluctuated. Tibawi, American Interests, pp. 305-306. In 1899 the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society reported 1,074 students in Palestine, 3,668 students in southern Syria, and 2,948 students in northern Syria. Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!p. 164.

37 Kark, “The Impact of Early Missionary Enterprises”, p. 231. 38 Tibawi, British! Interests, p. 30. In 1774 the Sultan recognized Russia as the protector of

Greek Orthodox communities, which gradually came to include Orthodox Arabs and not just Russians, Greeks, and other foreigners.

39 Tibawi, American!Interests,!pp. 4, 10; Makdisi, American!Missionaries,!p. 9.40 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 114, 296, 310. In 1898 the mission urged a display of the

United States’ naval might for protection of missionaries and to pressure Ottoman government to compensate the mission for property destroyed in Constantinople during the “Armenian disturbances.”

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Jews from Russia and elsewhere, and the recognition of Protestants in 1850 as an official millet.41 While the aims of missionaries and diplomats often coincided to a degree, political figures did not always support missionary goals. Some avoided contact with missions altogether while others chastised missionaries for endangering national interests.42

Because of Russia’s position as protector of Ottoman Orthodox communities and its ability to work within the existing Orthodox Church structure, the lead-ers of the Orthodox Palestine Society and its predecessor organizations were less concerned than the Anglo-American missionaries about changing Otto-man laws. Although the Orthodox Palestine Society was a private organization and not officially controlled by the Russian government or the Holy Synod, the Society’s religious aims were strongly bound to the Russian Empire’s political goals.43 Besides receiving the Tsar’s patronage, the Society included in its mem-bership a number of individuals from the imperial family, the most signifi-cant being the brother of Alexander III, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, who served as president of the Society until his assassination in 1905. The Russian administration’s use of the Orthodox Palestine Society as a political tool became clearer in 1889 when, by imperial decree, the Society came indirectly under the control of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and gained the title “Imperial.”44 As the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society increased Russian religious and educational influence in Syria-Palestine, the Tsarist administra-tion gained further justification to intervene in Ottoman political affairs. Thus, despite the religious and scholarly interests of the Society, it could not escape the demands of imperial politics. Theofanis George Stavrou claims, “Instead, the Society deeply involved itself in the political imbroglio of the Near East, of which it was partly a product.”45 As in the case of Anglo-American missions, this does not mean that church, state, and mission interests were always aligned. In fact, correspondences between ecclesiastical, imperial, and Pan-Slavist figures associated with the Society reveal perpetual conflicts of interest.

British, American, and Russian mission workers all used political leverage as a means to achieve religious aims, and their views of native populations were strongly conditioned by cultural predispositions. For the Orthodox Palestine Society, however, religious and political motivations were often inseparable, reflecting a symbiotic relationship between the Tsarist government and the Holy Synod that did not exist between church and state in the American or

41 Tibawi, British! Interests, pp. 33, 127. Makdisi, American!Missionaries,!p. 184. Makdisi challenges British claims of full responsibility for the 1850 decree.

42 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 95, 220; Tibawi, British!Interests, pp. 68,!213. 43 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!p. 104. 44 Stavrou, Russian!Influence,!pp. 126, 179. 45 Stavrou, Russian!Influence,!p. 3.

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imperial British contexts.46 This theo-political distinction is particularly appar-ent in missionary aims regarding Muslim populations in the Levant. American, British, and Russian missionary writings at the turn of the 19th century reveal a striking convergence in their respective representations of Islam as “fanati-cally intolerant,”47 as sterile, lifeless, and stationary,48 and as “strongly opposed to the preaching of Christianity by the fanaticism of its character.”49 This shared attitude of cultural and religious superiority led British and American mission-aries to hope for future opportunities to evangelize Muslims, even while work-ing primarily among Christian populations. Russian Orthodox missions only focused on Muslims inside the Russian Empire, however, recognizing Islam as the main rival to Orthodox Christianity among the empire’s ethnic minorities.50 In the Levant, where Russians viewed Catholic and Protestant missionaries as their primary competitors, the Orthodox Palestine Society aimed at reviving the faith of lapsing Orthodox communities and never attempted to convert Mus-lims. This reflects both the Russian Orthodox Church’s claim to be the defender of Orthodox Christianity and the Tsar’s desire for a political foothold in the Near East. There is no Russian parallel to British and American religious zeal for the evangelization of the whole Arab world. In contrast to Anglo-American mission work and Russian Orthodox missions elsewhere, the Orthodox Palestine Society’s approach underlines the overtly political nature of Russian mission work in Syria-Palestine.

COMPARATIVE TRANSFORMATIONS OF CULTURAL CONTACT

This essay has endeavored to present 19th century mission history in the Levant as not primarily an American, British, or Protestant story, but as a larger enterprise involving numerous actors, including the Russian Orthodox Church and native Christians.51 The role of the latter, however, has not been

46 British and American missionaries certainly used political means whenever possible to advance their religious aims. They applauded Stratford Canning, British ambassador in Constan-tinople, for his role in adding a clause to the 1857 Hatti-humayûn regarding freedom of the human conscience in religious matters. Church!Missionary!Society!Atlas, p. 68. Robert Speer notes the British government’s protests after the execution of a Muslim convert in Adrianople. Speer, Pres-byterian!Foreign!Missions,!p. 191.

47 Speer, Presbyterian!Foreign!Missions,!p. 190.48 Church!Missionary!Society!Atlas, p. 66.49 Eugene Smirnoff, A!Short!Account!of!the!Historical!Development!and!Present!Position!of!

Russian!Orthodox!Missions, (London, 1903), p. 10.50 Michael Khodarkovsky, “The Conversion of Non-Christians in Early Modern Russia”, in

Robert P. Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky, (ed.), Of!Religion!and!Empire:!Missions,!Conver-sion,!and!Tolerance!in!Tsarist!Russia,!(Ithaca, NY, 2001), p. 117.

51 While beyond the scope of this essay, it is important to recognize other Protestant mission organizations in the Levant as well as Catholic involvements in the region, especially those of French Jesuits.

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satisfactorily examined, and neglecting the experiences of Arab, Armenian, and other native Christians would leave the impression that religious and cultural transformations in Syria-Palestine were simply the result of Western Christian actions. Cautioning against one-sided representations of history, Ussama Makdisi affirms, “Ottoman Arab lands ‘discovered’ by the missionaries were not simply the setting for a preordained or predetermined narrative but an active stage on which strands of American and Arab history, with all their passions and preju-dices, were played out.”52 The well-documented and often understandably hos-tile reactions of Ottoman officials, Muslims, and Middle Eastern church leaders to missionary intrigues are one side of the story. Ecclesial and imperial histori-ans who outline missionaries’ positive achievements present an alternative ver-sion of this story. In reality, neither view of history acknowledges the responses, struggles, and contributions of the very people whom Western missionaries aimed to reach. Therefore, this section focuses on the transformative aspect of native-missionary encounters and argues that in spite of culturally-determined missionary practices, social development occurred in Middle Eastern societies through sustained efforts by members of native congregations and students edu-cated in mission schools.

The establishment of Arab Protestant churches transformed the religious land-scape of 19th century Syria-Palestine, at least to a small degree. These minority Protestant communities emerged although neither the American mission nor the CMS quickly fulfilled their aim of establishing independently governed indig-enous congregations. In July 1847 a group of Protestant converts submitted a petition to the American missionaries for the recognition of the Evangelical Church of Beirut, explaining:

We have forsaken our churches, prepared to undergo disgrace and persecution and loss, a part of which has actually fallen upon some of us, and the whole upon others… Yet we confess that heretofore we have not given ourselves so entirely, as was our duty, to the work of spreading the knowledge of salvation among our countrymen… If we remain in our present unorganized state, we shall be weak in ourselves and appear so to those around us… Wherefore, since the formation of an evangelical church in Syria is an object which we hope to see accomplished… we have deemed it important that the matter should be commenced as soon as possible…53

The mission eventually complied with this request and established an Arabic- speaking church in March 1848 without a native pastor, arguing that the church was not prepared for complete independence. When Butrus al-Bustani, an early convert who partnered with Eli Smith in Bible translation, applied in 1854 for ordination as pastor of this first native church, the mission did not approve his

52 Makdisi, American!Missionaries,!p. 8.53 Tibawi, American!Interests,!p. 121.

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ordination even though Smith had hoped Bustani would enter the ministry.54 Having regularly preached sermons at the mission’s churches in Beirut and Kafr Shima, Bustani wrote to Smith asking to be relieved of this responsibility, saying, “If you have the time and inclination, we should be much obliged if you would inform us, in clear language and with details, of the reasons for your negative reply to the [native] church, and of the defects which you have found in us.”55 At this time, the Beirut church and three other congregations founded by the mission remained without ordained native pastors. There was no change when Bustani and John Wortabet, an ordained Armenian evangelist, confronted Rufus Anderson with their grievances during his visit to Beirut in 1855. The mission’s charge that Bustani and Wortabet held unacceptable theological views reflects the Americans’ staunch commitment to a Western brand of Protestant-ism. For this reason, mission leaders reacted strongly in 1858 to Wortabet’s assertion that the Holy Spirit might still sanctify those who have knowledge of Jesus Christ even if such individuals “continue out of the pale of Protestantism and of the Protestant church.”56 Upon reading Wortabet’s words in a mission report, Anderson advised that the mission “be rid of him and his great salary.”57 The second native pastor, Saliba Jarwan, received ordination in 1864, but despite further church petitions it was not until 1890 that Yusuf Badr replaced missionary Henry Jessup as head of the native church in Beirut.58

Pastors under CMS jurisdiction in Palestine did not fare much better. In 1884 the CMS instituted the Native Church Council directed by a European mission-ary with the initial aim to give native pastors independence. In the end, however, these pastors remained subordinate assistants to CMS missionaries. In defend-ing this situation the CMS argued that the missionaries “must first see the native congregations contribute materially towards a fund before granting more inde-pendence.” A. L. Tibawi suspects “national” sentiments caused missionaries to treat native Anglicans as inferior even when some Arab pastors were higher in ecclesiastical rank.59 While the British were more willing to ordain native clergy, this problem parallels the American mission’s hesitancy to grant pastors authority over church operations. As in the experience of Bustani and Wortabet, the Chairman and other missionaries on the Native Church Council questioned the theological views of some native pastors and endeavored to dismiss them from duty. In the cases of Rev. Nasr ‘Odeh and Rev. Seraphim Boutaji, Bishop

54 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 121, 130-132. 55 Tibawi, American!Interests,!p. 132.56 Tibawi, American!Interests, pp. 141-142. John Wortabet was the son of the mission’s first

Armenian converts. He was ordained as an evangelist in 1853 but not given a church. 57 Tibawi, American!Interests,!p. 142.58 Tibawi, American!Interests,!pp. 164, 281. 59 Tibawi, British!Interests, p. 242. Tibawi quotes a letter sent in 1889 to the Anglican bishop

of Jerusalem.

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Blyth of Jerusalem prevented such disciplinary actions. Caught in the bishopric- CMS rivalry for jurisdiction over Anglican clergy, ‘Odeh was accused of “ritu-alist” views too closely aligned with Catholic and Orthodox practices.60 When summoned by the Council to a court of inquiry, ‘Odeh pointed out that nearly half of the Native!Church Council was made up of missionaries. He wrote to his native colleagues, “I must, on principle… look upon [the court of inquiry] as irregular and unlawful, and refuse to appear before it, or acknowledge its power in this case, which is in the province of our Bishop.”61 Boutaji, in turn, expressed his native congregation’s feeling of alienation from CMS missionar-ies. He complained that a missionary is not dedicated if his work consists only in “saying two sermons and two discourses each fortnight in the church” and writing some letters to CMS headquarters while “spending the rest of the time on his own pleasure.”62 Such examples indicate that church membership statis-tics in Protestant mission reports do not tell the full story of native clergy and churches struggling for independence from Western notions of church operations and leadership. The case of Russian Orthodox interaction with Arab Orthodox clergy is strikingly different.

While the Orthodox Palestine Society in 1912 admitted its failure to stop the flow of Orthodox converts to Protestantism by reviving Orthodox Arab faith, its impact on native church affairs was not insignificant. Whether primarily to weaken the Greek hierarchy or truly in the interest of Arab advancement, the early Russian mission supported the Arab clergy’s right to participate in all levels of church leadership. It rallied Arab clergy in 1872 to protest against the deposition of Cyril, the Jerusalem Patriarch closely allied with the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission who held a more favorable view of Arab church lead-ership. While Russians and Arabs were unable to prevent the Greek Orthodox Synod’s action, in Derek Hopwood’s estimation, “What Russia had!done was to encourage the creation of a conscious national Arab Orthodox opinion and to awaken a strong desire for greater participation in the affairs of the patriarchate.”63 Later, Russian diplomatic pressure in Constantinople played a prominent role in the election of the first modern Arab patriarch of Antioch. The Sultan’s confirmation of Dumani Meletios in March 1899 has been attrib-uted both to the Russian ambassador’s efforts to persuade the Sultan and to Damascus governor Nazim Pasha’s inclination toward the Arab party. After an ensuing competition between the Greek and Arab parties, Meletios was finally

60 Tibawi, British!Interests, pp. 246-247, 249. ‘Odeh resigned from the CMS in order to be reassigned by Bishop Blyth to a post in Egypt. Boutaji was forced to transfer to a CMS station east of the Jordan River.

61 Tibawi, British!Interests, p. 245.62 Tibawi, British!Interests, pp. 248-249.63 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!pp. 183, 211.

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enthroned in November 1899.64 In contrast, the first Arab Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem was not installed until 1958. By supporting Meletios’ election, Stav-rou claims:

[The Orthodox Palestine Society] made a lasting contribution to the awakening of Arab nationalism, which basically was a revolt against foreign rule, whether political, cultural, or ecclesiastical. The awakening of Arab nationalism proved highly detrimental to the position of the Greek hierarchy in the Jerusalem and Anti-och Patriarchates. One might further argue that the Russians dealt the last blow to the receding Greek cultural influence in the Orthodox East.65

In the field of education, both Russian and Anglo-American mission schools encouraged the national sympathies of their Arab pupils and enabled students’ social advancement and cultural contributions to their own societies. From the mid-19th century, graduates of foreign schools, initially Christian but also Muslim, became bearers of a “literary-cultural awakening” in the Arab world.66 Mission schools spread literacy in both Arabic and foreign languages, which contributed to a higher level of literary output and the establishment of numer-ous newspapers and journals.67 In addition, missionary competition fueled the already emerging religious and educational revival in Syria-Palestine, which included important Ottoman educational reforms. Anglo-American and Russian advancement of female education also influenced the establishment of private Muslim schools for girls.68

In the interest of producing teachers for its primary schools who were fluent in Arabic and Russian, the Orthodox Palestine Society’s teacher training school in Nazareth sent its best students to study in Russia. Mikael Noaima, a Lebanese writer, was one of these students who expressed the pride that he and his class-mates felt for their Russian school because “behind this school, there was a great country which was feared by other nations.”69 Besides educating notable Arab literary figures like Mikael Noaima, Salim Qobain, and Khalil Ibrahim Baidas, the Orthodox Palestine Society gave Orthodox Palestinian and Syrian youth the opportunity to study theology in Russian seminaries in preparation for future service as bishops and high church leaders.70 Similarly, students who took advantage of educational opportunities in Protestant schools emerged as

64 Hopwood, Russian!Presence,!pp. 168-171.65 Stavrou, Russian!Interests,!pp. 210-211. 66 Kark, “The Impact of Early Missionary Enterprises”, p. 229. 67 Albert Hourani, A!History!of!the!Arab!Peoples, (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 303-304.68 Tibawi, British Interests, p. 231; Mahmoud Haddad, “Syrian Muslims’ Attitudes Toward

Foreign Missionaries in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”,!in Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon, (ed.), Altruism!and!Imperialism:!Western!Cultural!and!Religious!Missions!in!the!Middle!East,!(New York, 2002), p. 255.

69 Hanna Khildani, Modern!Christianity! in! the!Holy!Land,!(trans. George Musleh), (Bloom-ington, IN, 2010), p. 150.

70 Khildani, Modern!Christianity,!p. 153.

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influential figures in their societies. Khalil Sakakini is one Palestinian writer and intellectual from an Orthodox family who graduated from the Church Mis-sionary Society’s college in Jerusalem. He paved the way for Arab cultural nationalism in Palestine by founding a private school in 1908 “that became the vanguard for Arab national and secular education.”71 The educational opportu-nities offered to Sakakini by missionary institutions made it possible for him to establish an educational alternative independent from both foreign and Otto-man administered schools. In the American case, the Syria Mission’s role in establishing Syrian Protestant College, now the American University in Beirut, must be hailed as the mission’s greatest educational achievement.72 A signifi-cant number of its graduates became leaders of Arab nationalist movements in the 20th century.73 Although the mission did not officially educate him, Butrus al-Bustani’s contributions to Lebanese society deserve further attention. Bustani valued the American mission for widening his horizons, but he also chartered his own course by breaking with the “mutually exclusive narratives of purity” put forth by American Protestant and Maronite orthodoxies.74 Hailed as an ecumenical humanist and representative of Arab cultural renaissance, Bustani founded the National School in Beirut in 1863, and its student population quickly outnumbered that of both American mission schools in the city. With a cur-riculum that included five foreign languages, introduced a new form of expos-itory Arabic prose, and offered individualized religious education for students of different faiths, the National School drew a population of Muslims, Druzes, and Christians of all sects, which the American mission was never able to achieve.75

CONCLUSION

At a time when their home nations’ political ascendancy in the Middle East was not assured, 19th century British and American missionaries perceived many challenges to the spread of Protestant faith in Syria-Palestine. They largely failed at attempts to evangelize Jews and Muslims, and unlike the Russians, these Protestant missionaries became instant rivals with Eastern churches. While viewing native Orthodox and Catholic churches as theologically rigid,

71 Ronald L. Nettler, Medieval!and!Modern!Perspectives!on!Muslim-Jewish!Relations,!(Lux-embourg, 1995), p. 165.

72 Tibawi, American!Interests, p. 306.73 Munir Antonios Bashshur, The!Role!of!Two!Western!Universities! in! the!National!Life!of!

Lebanon!and! the!Middle!East:!A Comparative!Study!of! the!American!University!of!Beirut!and!the!University!of!Saint-Joseph, PhD Dissertation, (University of Chicago, 1964) p. 48.

74 Madkisi, American!Missionaries,!pp. 13, 192.75 Madkisi, American!Missionaries,!pp. 208-209; Hourani, A!History!of! the!Arab!Peoples,!

p. 305.

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Anglo-Americans were equally opposed theological compromise and thus they were unsuccessful in reviving the churches from within. Russians, who never aimed to evangelize Muslims in Syria-Palestine, drew upon their own theo-logical traditions to build relationships with the Arab Orthodox church. This theological affinity, coupled with Russia’s status as an imperial power, caused many Arab Christians and some Greek clergy to view Russia as their natural ally. Russia’s primary rivalries, therefore, were not native Christians or Mus-lims but Protestant and Catholic missionaries and, at times, the Greek Orthodox hierarchy. Such rivalries reveal how political affiliations affected missionary practices in the region.

Until the United States gained greater political and military power near the turn of the 19th century, American and British missionaries maintained a loose partnership. Believing that officially legislated religious freedom would open the mission field, missionaries in the CMS and American Syria Mission lobbied British consuls and ambassadors to influence Ottoman state policy. In contrast, the Russian Empire’s status as protector of Ottoman Orthodox communities allowed Russian missions to more easily pursue religious reform through Orthodox churches and schools in Palestine and later in Syria. Especially after Russia’s losses in the Crimean War, the Tsar supported the Orthodox Palestine Society’s work in order to maintain a foothold in the Near East. Church and state interests were not always aligned, but missionaries and diplomats saw each other as means for achieving their particular religious and political ends.

The most significant transformations in the late 19th and early 20th century Levant occurred in the area of cultural resistance, reform, and revival. The Otto-man subjects of Syria-Palestine were not passive recipients of Western missions. Rather, they actively shaped the future of their own societies. While further scholarly work is needed to give voice to numerous native contributions, this essay highlights the struggle of native Protestants in securing independent churches and the work of Arab clergy to gain control of their own church hier-archies. Regarding education, the essay recognizes Ottoman and local Muslim reforms as well as students who graduated from missionary schools and became key intellectual figures in the Arab world. Both religious and educational efforts contributed to Arab nationalism and cultural renaissance in the 20th century. These examples, as well as the intersecting aims and practices of American, British, and Russian missions, unequivocally demonstrate the multi-dimensional history of Ottoman Syria-Palestine.

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