Religious Conversions in the Mediterranean World

N. Marzouki, O. Roy, N. Marzouki, O. Roy

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137004888
• eBook ISBN: 9781137004895
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

While globalization undermines ideas of the nation-state in the Mediterranean, conversions reveal how religion can unsettle existing political and social relations. Through studies of conversions across the region this book examines the challenges that conversions represent for national, legal and policy ways of dealing with religious minorities.

1

Evangelicals in the Arab World: The Example of Lebanon

Fatiha Kaoues

This chapter analyzes Evangelical missionary activity in the Muslim-Arab world, focusing on the case of Lebanon. All over the world, Pentecostal Churches aim to spread the Gospel, i.e. the ‘Good News’, among people; these organizations may have experienced great success in Africa and South America, but their missionary activity in the Muslim world faces many obstacles. Admittedly, the phenomenon of conversions to Christianity under the influence of the Evangelical Christian missionaries does not constitute a mass phenomenon in the Arab world. However, it receives a great deal of media attention and is treated in a sensationalist manner. Moreover, the stakes involved go beyond its breadth of conversions. Researchers have noticed that the emergence of fundamentalist movements is a product of the standardization and erosion of traditional values, linked to the process of decline of religion and the destruction of cultural areas, and caused by the phenomenon of globalization (Anderson, 2004). In any case, it is no coincidence that the problem of apostasy in the Islamic world raises such unbridled passions. As a matter of fact, an apostate calls into question the definition of the borders of social cohesion when it becomes apparent that common citizenship of a nation is insufficient to delimit its contours.

For humanist universalism to exist, human beings need to overcome their particular loyalties. The minimization of all divisions in favour of the religious identity leads to the exclusion of all other particularities. Thus we can state that some of the main challenges that Muslim countries are confronted with are the definition of citizenship and the nature of the creation of social cohesion. François Burgat said that Islamism was the ‘third stage’ of the ‘rocket of decolonisation’ (Burgat, 1999).

We can also suggest, regarding the conversion of Muslims to Christianity, that the rejection of Islam could constitute the final step in the individualization of people who originally belonged to the Muslim cultural group. In these revolutionary times in the Arab world, these issues acquire great importance. In the Muslim, and particularly the Arab, world, these Evangelical Christians face many obstacles in their quest for evangelisation. However, Lebanon is significantly more welcoming. In this country, religious communities represent the foundation of public order at the expense of the state, and each denomination has its own charitable network. In this regard, Lebanon is distinguished by the freedom it offers to Evangelical Protestants. This chapter considers a few developmental limits and challenges regarding the activities undertaken by these Evangelicals in Lebanon.

Protestantism in the Middle East: A long history

Evangelical Protestantism in Lebanon is closely linked to the rise of Reformed missionary activity in North America and England. The Church of Beirut is the oldest Arabic-speaking Protestant congregation in the Middle East. It was founded in Beirut in 1848 following American Presbyterian missionary activity. In the Middle East, the word ‘Evangelical’ (Injili in Arabic) designates the numerous Christian denominations commonly known in the West as ‘Protestants’ (Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, etc.). Therefore, the words ‘Protestants’ and ‘Evangelicals’ are used interchangeably. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was the first missionary agency to undertake mission work in the Arab world. The first American missions began their evangelizing work in Syria and Lebanon in the mid-nineteenth century (Kidd, 2008). The missionaries had been fuelled by a feeling of triumphalism ever since the Protestant Great Awakening, which had shaped the personality of the American nation and its institutions. The primary aim of the missionary was to evangelise Jews and to accomplish the Great Commission by proclaiming the good news of salvation in order to hasten the Second Coming of Christ, so they decided at first to reside in Palestine, and to launch their work from Jerusalem in the rest of the region. But most of the region’s inhabitants were Muslim Arabs, who remained resilient to the missionary activity. Therefore, Ottoman law at that time banned expatriates both from permanent residence and from owning property in Palestine. Thus, in 1823, American missionaries moved to Beirut, on the ancient Syrian coastline. However, soon after their initial settlement there, they were informed that they could not evangelise Muslims. This is why they directed their work towards Eastern Christians, but once more, they had to deal with stiff resistance led by the Maronite patriarch. At that time, however, the Maronite Church was faced with an uncomfortable dual loyalty to the Ottoman Empire and the papal authority; the Ottoman Empire was itself weakened by the repeated efforts of European powers to dismantle it. This heavy uncertainty increased the sense of existential precariousness of the Maronite Church, which is particularly attached to a rigid orthodoxy touted as a means of survival. One must understand that for the Eastern Christians this ‘missionary moment’ is essential: it has deeply influenced the Maronites’ and Copts’ cultures over centuries, and each group has developed a habitus of spiritual life characterized by a deep withdrawal into their own community. Thus, when the first missionaries’ activity began, these two groups had opposed each other and each had remained ignorant of their counterpart’s specific culture, needs and history. Ussama Makdisi’s book, entitled Artillery of Heaven (Dib, 2006; Makdisi, 2009; Traboulsi, 2012), proved this in an enlightening way: it tells the story of the tragic fate of one of the first Maronite converts, Asad Chidiaq, who was held prisoner and tortured to death by the Maronite authorities in retaliation for his conversion to Protestantism. In a similarly Manichaean manner, Chidiaq became a martyr for the American missionaries, someone who had paid the ultimate price for his freedom of faith and conscience. Conversely, for the Maronites, Chidiaq was living proof of betrayal, a man who had worked from the inside towards the destruction of the ‘Maronite personality’ and who therefore had to be punished in an exemplary manner.

According to Ussama Makdisi, Asad Chidiaq’s plight is a typical example of the long history of misunderstanding and mutual exclusion between Arabs, Christians, Muslims and Americans which continues to this day. While the first attempt to establish Protestantism in the Arab world can be seen to have failed, this was mainly because of the missionaries’ arrogance and their commitment to the inherent superiority of their culture. Thus, although the first Evangelicals arrived in Beirut at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was not until 1850 that the Ottoman Empire recognized Protestantism as an official religion.

A diversified world

A distinction must be made between the mainstream Evangelical Churches – that is to say the traditional Churches, which belong to the historical trend – and other Evangelical denominations. However, this terminology is misleading because all Protestant churches in the Middle East are referred to as Evangelical. In the Lebanese capital, the mainstream Churches are chiefly located in Hamra and Ras Beirut and close to the American University of Beirut, which in its early days was called the Syrian Protestant College. As a matter of fact, it should be noted that over the past decade, the mainstream Churches have been supplanted by the global spread of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity, which has multiplied ‘church planting’ in Beirut, especially in the popular areas of Sinn el Fil, Nabaa, Burj Hammoud, etc.

In the 2000s, the National Protestant Church has considerably strengthened its links to the world, both in the directions of the Lebanese diaspora established abroad and to other Evangelical Churches, particularly in the Anglophone world. The aim of such networking is to generate more income and more extensive resources. The Near East School of Theology (NEST) was founded in Beirut in 1932. Today, this seminary is one of the best Protestant theological training colleges in the Middle East and North Africa. Located in the middle-class neighbourhood of Hamra, north of the capital, not far from the American University of Beirut, NEST teaches students from all over the Middle East and North Africa. It should be noted that, in accordance with the principles of the Reformation, the language of the cult of the Evangelical community in Lebanon has been, since its inception, the vernacular Arabic. Greek Orthodox or Maronite Arab Christians did not use Arabic as an official liturgical language when Protestantism started. Each of these Churches worshiped using their own ancient language which was not understood by the public, and it is only in the late nineteenth century, in response to Protestantism and to resist its progress, that the Arabic language was substituted for Greek, Syriac, Coptic or Latin. Lebanon has two important Protestant seminaries: the Near East School of Theology NEST (in Arabic: Kuleyat Lahout fi el Sharq el Adna) and the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, ABTS (in Arabic: Kuleyat Lahout el Arabiyya Ma’madaniya). These are the country’s main theological faculties. Their uniqueness in the Middle East lies in the fact that they train pastors and lay Protestants not only in Lebanon but throughout the Muslim world, especially in Arab countries.

While NEST is involved in high-level intellectual activities, publishing academic journals and organising regular academic conferences, and while it prohibits proselytising, ABTS lays claim to the same academic excellence but is more open to evangelizing. The difference lies in their respective historical traditions: NEST belongs to the historical or mainstream tradition, in line with the first nineteenth-century Protestant movement, while ABTS was born in line with Baptist missionary activity that appeared much later, in the twentieth century.

The beginning of Baptism in Lebanon

The development of Evangelical Churches is much more recent. In 1948, Reverend Graham Finlay and his wife Julia were the first Baptist missionaries to establish themselves in Lebanon, followed by a few others. Graham came from Oban, Scotland. This Scottish Presbyterian received his formation at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas. As a member of the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, his missionary vocation appeared to him after he was shot down over North Africa and captured by the Germans. Having survived this adventure, Graham had returned from the war convinced that he had been saved by the miraculous intervention of God, and that he should now serve Christ. Graham gave an important impetus to Baptism in Lebanon by developing a network of new churches, taking the form of concentric circles from Beirut to the entire region. The second stage was to ‘nationalize’ Baptism in Lebanon. As such, the Lebanese Baptist Convention was officially founded on October 27, 1955, by representatives of four churches (Beirut, Tripoli, Kefr Mishky and Mieh Mieh) gathered around the missionary Graham Finlay. The Lebanese Baptist Convention intended to connect to the mainstream Protestant universe at regional and international levels: to do so, it became a member of the Supreme Council of Evangelical Churches in Syria and Lebanon, and joined the Baptist World Alliance in 1956. In 1959, the Union of Baptist women was created in Lebanon. In accordance with Protestant tradition, the first Baptist missionaries established a school in 1955 in Beirut with six classes. They also founded a publishing house to deal with the growing need for books, bibles and guides in Arabic to carry out their various ministries and programs. The main Baptist publishing house is currently known as Dar Manhal Al Hayat. In 1960, a crucial step was taken with the foundation of the theological seminary known as the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. ABTS is located in Mansourieh, Lebanon, and aims to promote and spread Protestantism in the Arab world, so the administration is composed of an advisory committee with representatives of the major countries in the region, including Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. The Baptist movement in Lebanon is now composed of 22 Baptist churches comprising at least 3,000 registered people and many others unofficial members.

Pentecostals: A dynamic movement

The adventure of the Assemblies of God in Lebanon began in 1969 when two missionary pastors, Bob Hoskins and Bill Elinski, founded a mission station in Beirut. In 1987, all American missionaries in Lebanon with many other foreigners had to leave the country for political reasons. Bob Hoskins and his wife Hazel left Lebanon for Salvador (in Brazil). Bill Elinski placed an advertisement in a newspaper to find people who could take over the mission station.

Among these people was Camille Nawar, who finally became the leader of the Lebanese Assemblies of God in 1993, and who founded his church in Hazmieh. Rev. Camille Nawar is the head of the Evangelical Assemblies of God that bring together all Pentecostal churches. He is also the pastor of the Church named Jesus the Savior (Yassour el Khallas). The Church defines itself as non-denominational, but its worship is Pentecostal and it is affiliated to the International Assemblies of God, whose main church is located in Springfield, Missouri, USA. The Assemblies of God were born in Chicago in 1914. In the American organisation, Lebanon and Egypt are integrated into the Eurasia region (particularly in MENA, Middle East and North Africa, classified as ‘sensitive area’); the Assemblies of God have 285 missionaries and 77 associated partners throughout the world. Within the American Church, there are different kinds of missionaries. In the Middle East, several positions were proposed in 2012, including assistantships for a missionary team in Cairo in charge of various courses (English, sports, music, etc.). Another position was advertised for a missionary female in Amman, Jordan, in Hakema Cafe, which offers various fitness and beauty facilities for women. All these positions will begin in January 2013.

The Pentecostal movement has experienced rapid development. The Hazmieh church had 80 members in 1996. Today, it has moved to Louaizeh and has a congregation of 250 people. Camille Nawar is currently the President of the Union of Evangelical Pentecostal Churches in Lebanon, under the leadership of the Supreme Council of Churches in Lebanon and Syria led by Salim Sahyouni. Pentecostal churches are under its jurisdiction, and two others are under construction. Camille Nawar received his formation at the Derek Prince Ministry (DPM), a charismatic missionary organisation named after its founder, Derek Prince, who died in 2003, whose aim was to complete the formation of the newly converted. According to Nawar, official members of Pentecostal churches totalled 2,000 people, gathering former Maronites, Catholics, Muslims and Druze. There are also 4,000 registered Baptists, 5,000 Presbyterians and 3,000 members of Churches of God (Knisset Allah, in plural, Kaneyes Allah). To these should be added the unaffiliated members, whose number is estimated at around 40,000–70,000. According to the pastor, 20 per cent of them are from Muslim and Druze backgrounds. The senior pastors of these Pentecostal churches are Chadi El Aouad, Michel Matar, Magdy Basta, Fouad Kahwajé, Walid Khoury, Kevork Salbajian, Gaby El Awad (Chadi’s brother), and George Saad. Two other pastors are being formalised. In Lebanon, the missionaries hail from many countries, including Sweden, France and Korea, but most are from the US. When a pastor wishes to start a church, he must ultimately obtain the approval of the Supreme Council and the validation of its president, Salim Sahyouni. A police investigation is conducted to ensure that the building is intended to house a church.

Legacies and heritage of Protestant missions in Lebanon

Considering the impact of Protestant missions in Lebanon, Habib Badr, head of the National Evangelical Church of Beirut, observes an Evangelical heritage and several cultural legacies. He makes an intentional distinction between an Evangelical, ecclesiastical, and religious heritage, with generally positive consequences on the one hand, and a Protestant civilisational, cultural, ideological and political legacy with a mixture of bad and good elements, on the other. According to him, a consensus exists among scholars to appreciate the precious educational, scientific and general cultural influences of Protestantism in the Middle East. Schools, colleges, printing presses and publishing houses and other such institutions bear witness to this phenomenon. To illustrate the significant impact which the American University of Beirut (AUB) has had on the Middle East and North Africa and the rest of Asia, one should note that AUB had the highest number of university graduates among the official representatives of the young nations of Asia and the Middle East who participated in the founding act of the United Nations in 1945.

However, Reverend Badr has noted several aspects of Protestant presence in the Middle East which have had a negative impact. The first of these is the issue of cultural, social and political alienation which the Protestants experience or are perceived to have provoked among their religious communities. Badr makes the point that a ‘legacy of alienation’ appears when some Protestants, at the present time, disconnected themselves from their Arab roots, by their thoughts and words, for the benefit of Western cultural forms of expression. This alienation from many of their Eastern fellow Christians and non-Christians alike is evident, according to Badr, in their lack of effort to build contextualising theology, worship and liturgy, music and other forms of an Arab-specific expression of Protestantism. As a result, according to the reverend, one cannot properly speak of a Middle Eastern Reformed Lutheran, Episcopal or Baptist theological and church tradition.

The second legacy Badr notices is that of emigration. Protestants facilitate the resettlement of Middle East Christians in America in a variety of ways. However, in doing so, they create a continuing current of migration which helps to concomitantly reduce the Christian presence in Middle East.

Another legacy which can be noted is proselytism, a subject that is very sensitive vis-à-vis ecumenical relations. As a matter of fact, born-again Protestants aim to evangelise not only Muslims but to help reviving the ‘nominal Christians’. In 2007, a big clash occurred when Maronites attacked a newly built, independent Baptist church in a Lebanese village called Ajaltoun. For Badr, the fact that there are Protestants who evangelise Eastern Christians is very disturbing, to the point that their ‘mere existence as an “Eastern Protestant” church community is sometimes felt to be an embarrassment, if not altogether a burden’. Another legacy that Badr regrets is the issue of Zionism. This ideology, both pol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Evangelicals in the Arab World: The Example of Lebanon
• 2 Purifying the Soul and Healing the Nation: Conversions to Evangelical Protestantism in Algeria
• 3 Religious Mobilities in the City: African Migrants and New Christendom in Cairo
• 4 Pentecostal Judaism and Ethiopian Israelis
• 5 Ambiguous Conversions: The Selective Adaptation of Religious Cultures in Colonial North Africa
• 6 Converts at Work: Confessing a Conversion
• 7 Being a Black Convert to Judaism in France
• 8 Converting to ‘Mormonisms’ in France: A Conversion Both Religious and Cultural?
• 9 Participating without Converting: The Case of Muslims Attending St Anthony’s Church in Istanbul
• Conclusion: What Matters with Conversions?
• Index