American Missions in the Near East

Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

NO other American activity in the Near East has been of such extent and consequence as Christian missions. No other has been so long and so earnestly supported by so numerous and so influential a constituency at home. No other has made such persistent claims upon Christian Americans for financial assistance and upon the Government of the United States for diplomatic support. Not a region of the Near East has been neglected. First and foremost in the field were the Congregationalists (represented by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions);^[i] during the past sixty years, however, their work has been supplemented in Syria and Persia by the Presbyterians, in the Balkans by the Methodists, and in Egypt by the United Presbyterians; there are also less extensive American missions conducted by the Reformed Church among the Arabs, by Lutherans among the Kurds, and by the Society of Friends in Palestine. The American Bible Society, which has been active in the Near East for a century, has distributed between four and five million volumes of the Scriptures in the several vernaculars. Along with these Protestant missionary organizations and largely under their aegis have gone American schools, American colleges, American hospitals, and American social service organizations -- the whole making an impressive array, involving the expenditure of millions of dollars and the devoted service of thousands of lives. Until recently, American Catholics have shown little interest in the Near East, although Roman Catholic missions under French and Italian auspices have been conspicuous in Syria and elsewhere throughout the former Ottoman Empire...