Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion

Interfaith Dialogue

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion
Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East

Author(s): Eleanor H. Tejirian & Reeva Spector Simon

Reviewed by: Ian G. Williams, Markfield Institute of Higher Education, Birmingham, UK

 

Review

Tejirian’s and Simon’s work is not the first examination of Christian mission history in what Europe originally called the Near East. Neill (1964) discussed it in a broader history of missions; Friedrich, Kaminsky, and Loffler (2010) edited a volume on missions specifically in the 19th and 20th centuries; Pikkert’s (2006) doctoral dissertation explored Protestant missions; and Sharkey (2013) discusses missionary activities in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. The aim of the present authors “is to provide a benchmark narrative that tells the story of Christian missions to the Middle East from the beginning of Christianity to the present”. (All other places) (p. x-xi). The schema is ambitious for a text of a mere two hundred pages and thus creates an inherent and problematic weakness. Chapters 1 and 2, out of necessity, address the early generations of Christianity and its leadership, primarily with Paul and Peter amongst them. Significantly and erroneously the authors note that after Paul “there appears to be no formal missionary mechanism within the Christian Church”. (p. 5) Thus, the first chapter deals mostly with the formation of the Roman/Byzantine traditions beginning with Constantine, which it is alleged were more concerned with imposing orthodoxy on the various local Eastern churches, which is hyperbolic.


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