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Protestant Missionaries to the Middle East: Ambassadors of Christ Or Culture?

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Protestant Missionaries to the Middle East: Ambassadors of Christ Or Culture? Protestant Missionaries to the Middle East: Ambassadors of Christ or Culture? by Pieter Pikkert Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology in the subject of Missiology at the University of South Africa Promoter Dr. William Saayman Submitted May 2006 1 I declare that Protestant Missionaries to the Middle East: Ambassadors of Christ or Culture? is my own work and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been indicated or acknowledged by means of complete references. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Brian Johnson, American Board historian and keeper of its library in Istanbul, Turkey, not just for giving me unlimited access to the many treasures contained therein, but also for pointing out potentially useful books and articles I might have overlooked. I also thank Norine Love, librarian of the Fellowship of Faith for Muslims library in Toronto, Canada, for allowing me take books to the Middle East and letting me keep them for months at a time. Dr. Philip Wood, former director of WEC Canada, the mission agency I am affiliated with, encouraged me to pursue this doctorate in the first place; his successor, Henry Bell, has been unstinting in his support since Philip’s return to the Congo. I also thank my promoters, Dr. Marge Karecki and Dr. William Saayman for being faithful communicators and gentle guides and encouragers from afar. Anna, my best friend, faithful wife and “partner in the gospel” for over 20 years never wavered in her faith in the value of this project for the missionary community in the Middle East. Key Terms American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Arab World, “Clash of Civilizations”, Contextualization, Islam, Levant, Middle East, Mission, Ottoman Empire, Turkey. Bible quotations taken from the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. Qur’an quotations and references taken from Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (n.d.). 2 Summary The thesis looks at Protestant missions to the Ottoman Empire and the countries which emerged from it through Bosch’s “Enlightenment missionary” (2003) and Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” (1996) paradigms. It argues that Muslim resistance to Christianity is rooted in innate Muslim intransigence and in specific historical events in which missionaries played important roles. The work utilizes a simple formula: it contrasts the socio-political and cultural framework missionaries imbibed at home with that of their host environment, outlines the goals and strategies they formulated and implemented, looks at the results, and notes the missiological implications. The formula is applied to four successive periods. We begin with the pre-World War I missionaries of the late Ottoman Empire. We look at their faith in reason, their conviction in the cultural superiority of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, their attitude towards Islam, their idea of reaching the Muslim majority by reviving the Orthodox churches, and the evolution of their theology and missiology. World War I changed the landscape. The Empire’s demise led to a struggle for Turkish and Arab national self-determination leading to the establishment of the Turkish Republic and various Arab entities, notably French and British mandates. Protestant missions almost disappeared in Turkey, while a small number of “veterans” kept the enterprise alive in the Arab world. While the Arabs struggled to liberate themselves from the Mandatory Powers, these veterans analyzed past failures, recognized the importance of reaching Muslims directly and began experimenting with more contextualized approaches. The post-World War II era saw the retreat of colonialism, the creation of Israel, a succession of wars with that country, and the formation of a Palestinian identity. Oil enabled the Arabian Peninsula to emerge as a major economic and political force. The missionary enterprise, on the other hand, virtually collapsed. Unlike their veteran predecessors, the pre-Boomer generation, with a few notable exceptions, was bereft of fresh ideas. During the 1970s the evangelical Baby Boomers launched a new enterprise. They tended not to perceive themselves as heirs of a heritage going back to the 1800s—though the people they “targeted” did. Their successors, the GenXers, products of post-modernism and inheritors of Boomer structures, face a region experiencing both increased political frustration and the re- emergence of Islam as a socio-political power. In closing we look at Church-centered New Testament spirituality as a foundational paradigm for further missions to the region. 3 Introduction In the course of more than 25 years of missionary work among Arabs, Turks and Kurds in the Middle East I have been struck repeatedly by the fact that many colleagues seem quite unaware of the context, the “big picture”, of which they are an integral part. Most missionaries to the region know something—sometimes a lot—about the particular country in which they work, and they usually know the background to the particular mission and/or ministry of which they are a part. Few, however, perceive themselves as heirs of a heritage going back to the 1820s. There are several reasons for this disconnect: 1. A failure to teach mission history in many evangelical seminaries and Bible schools, the recruiting ground for most missionaries to the Middle East. 2. The lowering of academic standards by many Evangelical mission agencies, which provide the bulk of missionary candidates to the region today. Not long ago the potential recruit would have had to have a Bible School diploma or Theology degree to be considered an eligible candidate. Not any more (see Pikkert 2005:2). One of the many worrying long-term consequences of this “dumbing down” is that fewer and fewer missionaries have a sense of historical development, whether in theology, history, church history, or missions. 3. The fact that missions is not necessarily perceived as a long-term commitment. Frequent career change is a norm in missions as much as in any other vocation. While the number of career missionaries has decreased dramatically over the years, the number of “short termers” going overseas has grown in leaps and bounds (Raymo 1996:25, 148). This had led to an erosion of the sense of cultural depth and understanding missionaries were at one time in a position to accrue. 4. The fact that an increasing number of contemporary missionaries to the Middle East come from non-European or North American backgrounds. It is understandably difficult for the growing body of, say, Korean, Filipino, and South American missionaries to relate to a past in which their forefathers had no input and for which they, consequently, do not feel responsible. Although missionaries to the Middle East may not perceive themselves as heirs of a troubled legacy, the people to whom they seek to minister do see them in that light. Their depth of awareness of the history of Christian-Muslim relations—or rather, their perceptions of that history as drawn from their religious and nationalist texts, the popular press, and oral traditions—goes back 4 to the Middle Ages, the Crusades, and the knowledge “that only a few centuries ago their people were superior to the West in all fields of cultural endeavor of which the West is so proud” (Patai 1983:297). In fact this different understanding of history between missionaries and nationals constitutes one of the “civilizational clashes” between missionary and Muslim. A proper understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Islam is very important. Accounting for more than half the world’s population between them, both are missionary religions with mutually exclusive claims to finality, universality, and truth; both believe themselves to be true to a degree the other is not. This inherent conflict of interests is compounded by a long history which has often been fraught with conflict and antagonism (Zebiri 2000:5, 175). This thesis seeks to answer the question of whether the basis for the Muslims’ rejection of the Christian message is essentially theological, or whether it is based on a history of socio-political and cultural misunderstandings. It does so by outlining the evolving framework within which Protestant missionaries have operated, by probing their methodology and by juxtaposing these with actual results. I trust that this exercise will enable us to learn from the travails of our predecessors, leading to humbler, wiser, and more fruitful intercourse with the people of the Levant. Pieter Pikkert Istanbul, 2006 5 Contents/Outline Acknowledgements 2 Key Terms 2 Summary 3 Introduction 4 Contents/Outline 6 Abbreviations 11 Footnoting 13 Turkish name changes 13 Arabic orthography 13 1. The Research Problem, Paradigm and Literature Review 14 1.1. The research problem 14 1.2. The purpose 15 1.3. Paradigms: Bosch’s enlightenment missionary & Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” applied to missions to the Middle East 16 1.3.1. Criticisms of the Huntington paradigm vis-à-vis the Muslim world 19 1.3.2. Suitability of the paradigms to describe Christian-Muslim relations 21 1.4. Parameters of study 27 1.5. Methodology 28 1.6. Literature review 28 1.6.1. Works interacting with Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” paradigm as it pertains to the Muslim world 29 1.6.2. Works which deal with the socio-political and cultural framework which limited the missionaries options 32 1.6.2.1.Works which deal with the socio-political and cultural framework missionaries inherited from their home culture 32 1.6.2.2.Works which deal with issues with which missionaries had to grapple in the Middle East 33 1.6.3. Works on the missionaries’ goals and strategies 36 1.6.3.1.General Missions strategy and The Great Experiment 37 1.6.3.2. Debate/apologetics 39 1.6.3.3. Spirituality as understood by Muslims 39 1.6.3.4.
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