Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East.
Johnston, David L.
Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed
Conversion of the Middle East
By Ussama Samir Makdisi. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2008.
Pp. xi, 262. $35.
Ussama Makdisi, a leading scholar of nineteenth-century Ottoman
history, offers in this book a breathtaking genealogy of the various
discourses swirling around the death of a young Maronite convert to the
Protestant faith, As'ad Shidyaq, around 1830 in what is today
Lebanon. Treated as "insane" people were apt to be treated at
that time, As'ad, despite multiple escapes, was kept in a Maronite
monastery, "bled," beaten repeatedly on the soles of his feet,
and fastened to a wall with a chain around his neck, with little food or
clothing. According to the Maronite patriarch who in vain had tried to
force him to recant, he died of a fever.
On a first level, Makdisi unveils the tragedy as the clash of two
irreconcilable narratives. Members of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) began work in Beirut and
surrounding areas in 1820, buoyed by a millennialist view of biblical
prophecy according to which the end was near and, despite satanic
opposition, all false contenders like Catholicism and Islam were doomed
to crumble before the advent of Christ's kingdom--hence the phrase
"artillery of heaven." The Maronite Church, in contrast, after
some battles with heretical elements, aggressively enforced its role as
the Catholic bulwark of doctrinal and moral purity.
On another level, however, Makdisi follows Michel Foucault in
unmasking the dimensions of power in discourse--in a tribute, certainly;
to his uncle Edward Said. The ABCFM was clearly the heir of previous
attempts to evangelize Native Americans, though by now, the missionary
conscience was uneasy with the gradual decimation and dispossession of
the Indian tribes. Yet millions of heathen now beckoned in and around
the Holy Land, and so, riding on the coattails of surging American
imperial might, missionaries aimed to refashion the world in a
Protestant mold.
Other layers are skillfully peeled back in Makdisi's "new
history": the class dimension behind the Ottoman millet system and
its gradual unraveling as a result of Western pressure and Ottoman
reforms after 1850; the evolution of missionary goals and philosophy as
schools and hospitals begin to compensate for the missionaries'
dismal failure to see conversions; and finally, the unintended
consequence of that educational mission in the person of Protestant
convert, teacher, and encyclopedist Butrus al-Bustani, who, half a
century after As'ad's death, penned a biography of As'ad
that radically subverts both the racial and national superiority of the
American missionaries and the self righteous conservatism of the
Maronites with his discourse of "dialogue within and across
cultures" (p. 212). Tellingly, the last chapter is entitled
"The Vindication of As'ad Shidyaq."
David L. Johns ton spent sixteen years as a pastor and teacher in
Algeria, Egypt, and the West Bank. He is currently an adjunct professor
in Islamic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and St.
Joseph's University, both in Philadelphia.
