Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East

The United States in the World

by Ussama Makdisi

The complex relationship between America and the Arab world goes back further than most people realize. In Artillery of Heaven, Ussama Makdisi presents a foundational American encounter with the Arab world that occurred in the nineteenth century, shortly after the arrival of the first American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East. He tells the dramatic tale of the conversion and death of As'ad Shidyaq, the earliest Arab convert to American Protestantism. The struggle over this man's body and soul--and over how his story might be told--changed the actors and cultures on both sides.

In the unfamiliar, multireligious landscape of the Middle East, American missionaries at first conflated Arabs with Native Americans and American culture with an uncompromising evangelical Christianity. In turn, their Christian and Muslim opponents in the Ottoman Empire condemned the missionaries as malevolent intruders. Yet during the ensuing confrontation within and across cultures an unanticipated spirit of toleration was born that cannot be credited to either Americans or Arabs alone. Makdisi provides a genuinely transnational narrative for this new, liberal awakening in the Middle East, and the challenges that beset it.

By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, this book counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world.

Genres: History, Middle East, Nonfiction, Religion, Politics, American History, Islam

280 pages, Hardcover

First published December 20, 2007

Reviews

[Mostafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

يستمر أستاذ مقدسي، في استعراض مفارقات عصر التنظيمات في الدولة العثمانية، وفي بلاد الشام بالتحديد، تلك المرة انطلاقًا من قصة أسعد الشديّاق، المتحول من المارونية للبروتستانية، والذي مات معُذبًا ومتهمًا بالجنون ومُستغنى عنه من أهله. لكن القصة الرئيسية هي قصة التبشير الأمريكي في بلاد الشام، الذي انتهى إلى ما يُعرف حاليًّا بالجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت. يضع مقدسي تلك الحملات التبشيرية في سياقها الزمني، أي، تزامنها مع حملات التبشير في الغرب الأمريكي بين السكان الأصليين، ويحاول أن يقف على تحديد الإختلاف والإشكالية، لماذا لم تكن تلك الحملات الأمريكية في بلاد الشام نوعًا من الإمبرياليّة الثقافية، كنظيرتها في الغرب الأمريكي، ولم لم تنجح في النهاية ذاك النجاح المرجو. في ذاك الكتاب أيضًا، نتعرف على ثنائية مسيحية مرتبطة بالمسيحية الغربية في مواجهة المسيحي الشرقي، أو المسيحي المتحول من الهنود والمشرقيين للبروتستانية، وكيف أن تلك الحملات كانت، كما يدعي مقدسًّا، كانت اللبنات الأولى التي وضعت فيما سيُعرف بعد بقرن التفوق الأمريكي، الذي سيُعرف فيما بعد بعبء الرجل الأبيض من خلال القصيدة الشهيرة للشاعر العظيم العنصري معادي السامية والنساء، الاستعماري الشوفيني، روديارد كيبلنغ، وهو العبء الذي سيُحرك الولايات المتحدة نحو الشرق دائمًا

[أميرة · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice but a bit longer than it should be, and I had to look up more words than I care for. Apotheosis and ecumenical? Alright Ussama, we all know you went to Princeton.

[Michael DeBusk · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1819, Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk, missionaries with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), set out from the city of Smyrna (modern Izmir) to explore the Anatolian interior and parts of the Levant. Along the way, they reported back their encounters with Muslims, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians, and Jews for publication in the ABCFM journal, The Missionary Herald. Those reports helped mobilize an ABCFM mission to the Ottoman Empire that for over a century sent hundreds of missionaries to the Middle East and established hundreds of churches and schools. Ussama Makdisi’s "Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East" concentrates on a single episode in that long story: the conversion, life, and death of a Protestant convert from a Maronite Catholic background named As‘ad Shidyaq.

The intersection of two cultural worlds, American Protestants and Eastern Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, during the first part of the nineteenth century has typically been narrated through one of two lenses. The first of these is the perspective of the missionaries, commonly recounted in missionary histories and biographies that tend to magnify the historical record left by the missionaries more than the voices of their cultural hosts. The second perspective, articulated by missionary opponents in the host culture, secular Western historians, and occasionally even contemporary missiologists, is that ABCFM missionaries to the Ottoman Empire came as agents of cultural imperialism.

Makdisi’s work seeks to go beyond the perspectives of "Arab backwardness" on the one hand, and missionaries as "cultural imperialists" on the other, recognizing that both of these reductions fail to offer a complete picture of the ABCFM’s mission to the Middle East—even when one attempts to synthesize them. According to Makdisi, the truer narrative instead emerges out of the intersection of two very different ways of looking at the world, Maronite Catholic and American Protestant, that met in the nineteenth century. Thus, Makdisi adds to the primary source material offered by missionaries, usually overwhelming in their abundance, a careful consideration of Ottoman government and Maronite Christian sources as well. This approach makes Makdisi’s contribution to the understanding of the ABCFM mission unique and ground-breaking. Moreover, rather than attempting a full-scale survey of the ABCFM mission to the Ottoman Empire, Makdisi opts for a micro-history approach focused on the conversion, life, and death of a single individual. This approach works quite well. By personalizing the narrative through his chosen anecdote, the author offers the reader a window on how the dynamics between missionaries, government officials, religious leaders, and local populations might have played out in similar corners of the empire.

[Evan Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book. Deserved the Hourani Prize. Only problem with it is the extremely dense prose, which I assume he picked up from his Uncle Edward Said. Confirmed very much the conclusions that I came to in my thesis, and is the sort of thing that I would want to do had I the language ability and grant money that he had. Read this book if you want to learn about the United States in the nineteenth century, the Middle East in general, and American missionaries in general.

[Brynn S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the most important contribution of this book to historiography is the ending sentence "We are, in the end, all implicated in one another's histories." On the surface, Artillery of Heaven is an excellent account of the first interaction between American missionaries and an Eastern Christian society within the Ottoman Empire. But even more thought provoking is the way in which the narrative is written-from the perspective of both sides, revealing the flaws of each, but not overstating them. This narrative also serves as an important reminder that the gospel works through imperfect avenues and transforms those searching for Truth even in the midst of great adversity.

[Mano Chil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. Somehow it was kind of boring and loved the last parts of the book much more.

[Wouter van der Hoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soms langdradig over onbelangrijke details, maar over het algemeen zeer vermakelijk en interessant!

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells the story of a group of American missionaries who went to the Middle East (then the Ottoman Empire) during the 19th century. The book details their experiences, particularly their first convert, a Maronite Christian who was later martyred for his new found faith. The book seeks to understand how the missionaries perceived themselves and their mission, and how they were perceived by the native population. It is a good effort, but the book relies too much on academic jargon that makes it hard to read. I also thought that some of its claims were doubtful, particularly when it tried to divine the opinions of peole who were long dead.

[Tess · Rating 2 out of 5]

Artillery of Heaven finally tells the story of missionaries in the Middle East with the "other" perspective added to the mix. The story is interesting and the research is impressive, but the writing is mediocre and repetitive.

[Ltambar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book because it shows the perspectives of the colonized as well as the colonizer. I great foundational work for anyone that is interested in American missionaries in the Middle East.

[Jason S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book that complicates traditional notions of cultural imperialism and the "Clash of Civilizations" with the Middle East.