Evangelism, Schools and the Press

CHAPTER 2 The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools and the Press By the beginning of the nineteenth century, mission to the Holy Lands had become an obsession for American evangelicals who were driven by a spiritual zeal to occupy Jerusalem. The American missionaries were not alone in their missionary commitment to recover the Holy Lands, nor would they be the last Protestant missionary society to set its heart on establishing the Kingdom of God on earth in Jerusalem. In fact, the Americans would look to their immediate Protestant predecessors for guidance and assistance. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) had already begun its Mediterranean Mission in 1815. William Jowett, the first missionary of the CMS, had traversed West Asia and published his findings in Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815–1820.1 The Basel Mission Society had also sent Christopher Burckhardt to Jerusalem in 1818. The New England Evangelicals, however, added their own particular stamp on Christian mission history. The Americans emitted a con- fident, if not naïve, frontier spirit that had previously tamed the New England wilderness and now turned this spirit outward toward the Ottoman Empire.2 They did not only carry with them a firm conviction in the Gospel of Jesus Christ or in the necessity of some kind of conversion experience or process; but they were also armed with the memory of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop’s calling to be the “city on the hill.” They understood their place in the New World as proof of providential favor. Building on Perry Miller’s influential phrase “errand to the wilderness” that described this New England self-identification, William Hutchison labeled this American spiritual frontier mentality turned outward as an “errand to the world.” The American experience of carving out a Calvinist “city on a hill” in the New World of New England provided fuel for the spiritual fire for the “transporting of a message and witness to unknown, possibly fearsome, and uncivilized places.”3 This activism did not only anticipate the coming millennium when they believed 1 This first volume would be followed by Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land in 1823 and 1824 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1825 and 1826). 2 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 69. 3 William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant thought and foreign missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 5. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi ��.��63/9789004307�00_003 The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 43 that Christ would return and usher in the end times, but provided impetus to undertake the necessary activity to move history forward toward this end goal. There was no place more ideal for a future “city on a hill” than Jerusalem itself. No person affected the American theological and missionary landscape of the eighteenth century more than the New England preacher Jonathan Edwards. His biography of David Brainerd, missionary to the Cherokee Native Americans, captured the hearts and imaginations of born again Christians during the colonial revivals. This biography was standard reading for students at Andover Theological Seminary in Boston, the mecca of Congregationalist pietists. It was from Andover Newton that the ABCFM, the first voluntary American mission association, would look to send out its young men to the far corners of the world to take part in a “great harvest.” Edwards was one of the leading contributors to the American experience of the First Great Awakening, which took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. A Second Great Awakening at the end of the eighteenth century, led by Edward’s colleague, the Congregationalist Samuel Hopkins, directed his hear- ers to repentance and action in preparation for the return of Christ. Christians were to divest themselves of all worldly interest and to give all for Christ, which became known as “distinterested benevolence.” Millennialist interpretations of the Christian scriptures also began to take on popularity during this evangeli- cal movement. Revivalist preachers used passages from Daniel and Revelation to interpret world history and predict the Second Coming of Jesus, who would rule on earth for a millennium. It was Jerusalem, the place of his crucifixion and resurrection, to which Jesus would ultimately return. Thus, according to millennial piety, Jerusalem was seen as “the centre of the world.”4 Therefore, it was to Jerusalem that the Americans would go to preach the Gospel ready to give up their lives to the cause. But unlike other places around the world that were filled with the “hea- then” and their barbaric ways, Jerusalem and the Orient was the home of the Abrahamic faiths. The “stubborn” Jew would be restored to Jerusalem, the “fanatic” Muslim would be overthrown, and the “ignorant” Oriental Christian would come to accept the Gospel, free from the trappings of Tradition and Popery. In 1818, the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM voted to send its two first missionaries to the Middle East with a goal toward establishing a station in Jerusalem, Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons were charged with enlightening the “nominal” Christians of the Near East, who would then evangelize among 4 Salibi and Khoury, eds., The Missionary Herald 18 (1822), 19. See Yehoshua Ben-Arieh and Moshe Davis eds., Jerusalem in the mind of the Western world, 1800–1948 (West Port, Conn.: Praeger, 1997)..

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