American apostles
Subtitle: when evangelicals entered the world of Islam
By: Christine Leigh Heyrman
Edition: First edition.
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9780809023981
Subjects: Missionaries; Missions; Protestant churches; History; American Missions; Biography
Description: In "American Apostles," the Bancroft Prize-winning historian Christine Leigh Heyrman brilliantly chronicles the first fateful collision between American missionaries and the diverse religious cultures of the Levant. Pliny Fisk, Levi Parsons, and Jonas King became the founding members of the Palestine mission and ventured to Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, and Syria, where they sought to expose the falsity of Muhammad's creed and to restore these bastions of Islam to true Christianity. Not only among the first Americans to travel throughout the Middle East, the Palestine missionaries also played a crucial role in shaping their compatriots' understanding of the Muslim world. "American Apostles" brings to life evangelicals' first encounters with the Middle East and uncovers their complicated legacy. The Palestine mission held the promise of acquainting Americans with a fuller and more accurate understanding of Islam, but ultimately it bolstered a more militant Christianity, one that became the unofficial creed of the United States over the course of the nineteenth century. The political and religious consequences of that outcome endure to this day.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Part one: American Orients; title: The age of wonders; title: "By the beard of Mahomet!"; title: "A perfect romance"; title: Part two: Jihad; title: British connections; title: "Our great weapon"; title: Part three: Hegira; title: Turning Turk; title: An American Muslim; title: Part four: The hidden man; title: Epiphanies; title: At the gates of Damascus.