Skip to main content

“Modernization in the Name of God”: Christian Missionaries, Global Modernity, and the Formation of Modern Subjectivities in the Middle East

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Middle East Christianity

Part of the book series: The Modern Muslim World ((MMUS))

Abstract

This chapter deals with the historical entanglement of the Middle East and the West in shaping different paths of modernity. It explores the ways in which the encounter with Christian missionaries was a significant source of inspiration for the activities and self-understanding of the Islamic reform movement in Egypt and beyond. This chapter enhances our understanding of Christianity in the Middle East, having been the religion of both indigenous communities and external colonial forces. In doing so, it makes a theoretical contribution to the topic of Christianity in the Middle East by drawing from the concepts of multiple and entangled modernities and inquiring into the role of Christian missionaries in shaping trajectories of modernity in the Middle East. It looks at the ways in which Christian Missionaries were unconscious agents in the modern transformation of Middle Eastern societies and forms of religious subjectivities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Abduh, Muhammad. 1965. Risalat al-tawhid. Cairo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din. 1880–1881. The Truth about the Neicheri Sect and an Explanation of the Neicheris. In An Islamic Response to Imperialism, ed. Nikki R. Keddie, 130–174. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Al-Azmeh, Aziz. 1996. Islams and Modernities. 2nd ed. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnason, Johann. 2003. Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arslan, Amir S. 2004. Our Decline. Its Causes and Remedies. Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron, Beth. 2014. The Orphan Scandal. Christian Missionaries and the Rise of The Muslim Brotherhood. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beidelman, T.O. 1974. Social Theory and the Study of Christian Missions in Africa. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (IAI) 44 (3): 235–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beyer, Peter. 2006. Religions in Global Society. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breitenbach, Esther. 2009. Empire and Scottish Society: The Impact of Foreign Missions at Home, c. 1790 to c. 1914. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bröckling, Ulrich, Susan Grasmann, and Thomas Lemke, eds. 2011. Governmentality. Current Issues and Future Challenges. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Casanova, José. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dogan, Mehmet A. 2011. From New England into New Lands, The Beginning of a Long Story. In American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters, ed. Mehmet A. Dogan and Heather J. Sharkey, 3–32. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunch, Ryan. 2002. Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity. History and Theory 41 (3): 301–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2000. Multiple Modernities. Daedalus 129 (1): 1–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. The Civilizational Dimension of Modernity: Modernity as a Distinct Civilization. International Sociology 16 (3): 320–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elsharky, Marwa. 2011. The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late Ottoman Beirut. In American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters, ed. Mehmet A. Dogan and Heather J. Sharkey, 167–210. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel [Gordon, Colin (ed.)]. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Brighton: The Harvester Press Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1984. What Is Enlightenment? In The Foucault Reader, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1990. The Use of Pleasures. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gasper, Michael. 2013. Public Deliberations of the Self in Fin-de-Siècle Egypt (1880–1910). In The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood, ed. Dyala Hamzah. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gökalp, Ziya, and Niyazi Berkes, eds. 1959. Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gökalp. London: George Allan & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamzah, Dyala. 2013. Muhammad Rashîd Rida and His Journal al-Manar (1898–1935). In The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood, ed. Dyala Hamzah. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvard. 2004. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions archives, 1810–1961. Guide, Houghton Library: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou01467. Accessed 20 July 2019.

  • Hourani, Albert. 1983. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jung, Dietrich. 2011. Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam. Sheffield: Equinox.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Sociology, Protestant Theology, and the Concept of Modern Religion: William Robertson Smith and the ‘Scientification’ of Religion. Journal of Religion in Europe 8 (2015): 335–364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. Muslim History and Social Theory: A Global Sociology of Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lelyveld, David. 1996. Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, John W. 1995. Muhammad Abduh on Science. The Muslim World 85 (3/4): 215–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, Niklas. 1981. Geschichte als Prozess und die Theorie sozio-kultureller Evolution. In Soziologische Aufklärung, Band, ed. Niklas Luhmann, vol. 3, 178–197. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1987. Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Makdisi, Ussama. 2008. Artillery of Heaven. American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metcalf, Barabara D., and Thomas H. Metcalf. 2011. A Concise History of Modern India. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, John W., John Boli, George Thomas, and Francisco Ramirez. 1997. World Society and the Nation State. American Journal of Sociology 103 (1): 144–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Randeria, Shalini. 2002. Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-Colonial India. In Unraveling Ties – From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, ed. Yehuda Elkana, Ivan Krastev, Elísio Macamo, and Shalini Randeria, 284–311. Frankfurt/New York: Campus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryad, Umar. 2002. Rashid Rida and a Danish Missionary: Alfred Nielsen (d.1963) and Three Fatwas from Al-Manar. Islamochristiana 28 (2002): 87–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and His Associates (1898–1935). Leiden: Brill.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sedra, Paul. 2011. From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharkey, Heather J. 2011. American Missionaries and the Middle East. A History Enmeshed. In American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters, ed. Mehmet A. Dogan and Heather J. Sharkey, ix–xliii. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tauber, Eliezer. 1989. Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I. The Muslim World 79 (2): 102–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van der Veer, Peter. 1996. Introduction. In Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, ed. Peter Van der Veer, 1–21. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Widmer, G. 1937. Übertragungen aus der neuarabischen Literatur III. Emir Shakib Arslan. Die Welt des Islams 19 (1937): 1–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yetkiner, Cemal. 2011. At the Center of the Debate: Bebek Seminary and the Educational Policy of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1840–1860). In American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters, ed. Mehmet A. Dogan and Heather J. Sharkey, 63–84. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Jung, D. (2020). “Modernization in the Name of God”: Christian Missionaries, Global Modernity, and the Formation of Modern Subjectivities in the Middle East. In: Stetter, S., Moussa Nabo, M. (eds) Middle East Christianity. The Modern Muslim World. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37011-4_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics