Conversion, Controversy, & Cultural Production: Syrian Protestants, American Missionaries, and the Arabic Press, ca. 1870-1915Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/ASKIWXBZ/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Deanna FerreeWomackConversion, Controversy, & Cultural Production: Syrian Protestants, American Missionaries, and the Arabic Press, ca. 1870-1915http://syriaca.org/cbss/ASKIWXBZhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/ASKIWXBZhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/ASKIWXBZ2015This doctoral dissertation is a historiographical examination of the missionary encounter in Ottoman Syria (modern Syria and Lebanon) during the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Nahda, or Arab renaissance. It begins in 1870, when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions transferred its Syria Mission to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It ends in 1915 with the escalating effects of World War I in the Ottoman Arab provinces. Building upon Middle East mission historiographies, studies in world Christianity, and postcolonial critiques of missions, this study approaches the story of Syrian Protestantism as an enmeshed history in which Syrian and American lives became inextricably entwined. Moving beyond the traditional narrative, which presents American missionary men as the primary actors, this research points to the complex relationship of Syrians with American, British, and other missionaries in Ottoman Syria. It uses rare Arabic publications from the late Ottoman period and archival sources from the US, UK, and Lebanon to underline the agency of Syrian Protestant women and men who built the Syrian Evangelical Church and contributed to the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda alongside other Syrian Christians and Muslims.
This dissertation demonstrates that Syrian Protestants challenged missionary authority in subtle and overt ways, while at the same time employing the resources of mission schools and the American Mission Press in Beirut to engage in the Arabic production of the Nahda. It argues that Syrian Protestant women played a significant, yet largely unrecognized, role in church and society as journalists, novelists, public speakers, and evangelistic preachers. Chapter 1 compares Syrian Protestant conversion narratives to missionary accounts of evangelical conversion. Chapter 2 investigates the American-Syrian Protestant relationship in light of a major schism within the Beirut Protestant community in the 1890s. Chapters 3 and 4 use Arabic books, periodicals, and pamphlets published at the American Mission Press to demonstrate the depth of Syrian Protestant participation in the cultural and religious discussions of the Nahda. Chapter 5 pieces together the stories of Syrian Biblewomen who worked as evangelists for American missionaries and for the female-led British Syrian Mission.
Womack, Deanna Ferree. “Conversion, Controversy, & Cultural Production: Syrian Protestants, American Missionaries, and the Arabic Press, ca. 1870-1915.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2015.
Deanna Ferree Womack, Conversion, Controversy, & Cultural Production: Syrian Protestants, American Missionaries, and the Arabic Press, ca. 1870-1915 (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2015).Arab ChristiansOttoman empireProtestantsWestern missionXIX CEXIX-XXI CEXX CEconversionpostcolonialismwomen