Deanna Ferree Womack - Böcker

From the end of the American Civil War to the start of World War II, the Protestant missionary movement unintentionally tilled the soil in which American Islamophobia would eventually take root. What ideas did missionaries in Islamic contexts pass on to later generations? How were these ideas connected to centuries-old Protestant discourses about Muslims and gender beginning in the Reformation? And what bearing does this history have on the birth of Islamophobia and on Christian-Muslim dialogue efforts in the US today? In answering these questions, Re-inventing Islam traces the gender constructs that have informed historical Protestant perceptions of Islam, especially in the far-reaching textual, visual, and material influences of the American and British movement for missions to Muslims. This book first considers Protestant discourse about Muslim women and men from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Then it turns to the colossal archive of literature, images, and cultural objects that missionaries--and particularly missionary women--collected from Islamic contexts and used to inform and motivate their constituents.Anglo-Protestants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries perpetually re-invented stereotypes about Muslims and used these negative images to achieve particular Protestant theological and political purposes, including missionary aims. They did so when disseminating gender critiques widely to Protestant men, women, and children. Why did they re-invent Islam? Deanna Ferree Womack argues that they did so to reinforce Protestant theological claims, to justify their evangelistic endeavors, to express both humanitarian concern and Eurocentric views of the world, and to support British and American cultural, economic, and military expansion. Simultaneously, however, this same missionary movement educated its constituents about diverse Islamic cultures, in part by providing humanizing images of Islam. Missionaries also formed personal relationships with Muslims that would open pathways toward formal efforts of Christian-Muslim dialogue after the mid-twentieth century. Americans have inherited all of these legacies. In revisiting this history readers will find new possibilities for building a more open and just future.

Named one of the Top 10 Books of the Year in 2020 by the Academy of Parish Clergy For a long time, American Christians have been hearing a story about Islam. It's a story about conflict and hostility, about foreigners and strangers. At the heart of this story is a fundamental incompatibility between the two religions going all the way back to their original encounters. According to that story, the only valid Christian response to Islam is resistance.But it's time to tell a different—and truer—story. Christians and Muslims have not always fought or lived in fear of each other. Christian communities in majority-Muslim countries have coexisted with their Muslim neighbors for centuries. More importantly, Muslims have been part of the American story from its beginning. And like their Christian neighbors, Muslims want to make the community in which they live a better place for all citizens. In Neighbors, Deanna Ferree Womack lays the groundwork for members of the two religions to understand, converse, and cooperate with each another. With models for cultivating empathy and interfaith awareness, Christians can move from neighborly intention to real dialogue and common action with Muslims in the United States.Ideal for individual or group study, the book includes discussion guide for group study with links to video clips, a timeline of the first Muslim communities, and a glossary of Arabic terms related to Islam.

The Ottoman Syrians – residents of modern Syria and Lebanon – formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. This book offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda, from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, it challenges historiography that focuses on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syrian Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today.

The Ottoman Syrians – residents of modern Syria and Lebanon – formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. This book offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda, from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, it challenges historiography that focuses on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syrian Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today.