Conflict, conquest, and conversion : two thousand years of Christian missions in the Middle East / Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Spread of Christianity: the first thousand years -- Latin west in the Middle East: pilgrimage, crusade, and mission -- Disintegration, revival, Reformation, and counter-Reformation: 1450-1800 -- Great awakening of the Protestants and the Anglicans -- Missionaries and European diplomatic competition -- Imperialist moment: from the Congress of Berlin to World War I -- Achievements and consequences: intended and unintended -- World War I: nationalism, independence, and the fate of the missionary enterprise -- Setting the agenda: from conversion to witness and back.

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion surveys two thousand years of the Christian missionary enterprise in the Middle East within the context of the region's political evolution. Its broad, rich narrative follows Christian missions as they interacted with imperial powers and as the momentum of religious change shifted from Christianity to Islam and back, adding new dimensions to the history of the region and the nature of the relationship between the Middle East and the West. Historians and political scientists increasingly recognize the importance of integrating religion into political analysis, and this volume, using long-neglected sources, uniquely advances this effort. It surveys Christian missions from the earliest days of Christianity to the present, paying particular attention to the role of Christian missions, both Protestant and Catholic, in shaping the political and economic imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon delineate the ongoing tensions between conversion and the focus on witness and "good works" within the missionary movement, which contributed to the development and spread of nongovernmental organizations. Through its conscientious, systematic study, this volume offers an unparalleled encounter with the social, political, and economic consequences of such trends. -- Book jacket.