Abstract
Highlighting the agency of Syrians (residents of Greater Syria) in their history and identifying the gender dynamics at hand in the encounter between Syrian Protestants and US missionaries, Deanna Ferree Womack, Assistant Professor of History of Religions and Interfaith Relations at Candler School of Theology, rewrites the history of the Arabic Renaissance. Offering a corrective to mission histories that interpret the flourishing of Arabic literature as a result of US missionary intervention, Womack meticulously and skillfully analyzes the writings of native Protestant women and men between the 1860s and 1915.
Divided into five chapters, the book begins with a chapter that analyzes the conversion narratives of the local Christians and their appropriation of evangelicalism. In converting to Christianity, the local men and women developed a love for letters. In chapter 2, Womack discusses the Syrian Protestant print culture, for which the American Mission Press was the hub, and how modernity and tradition converged in it. She locates the intra-Christian theological disputations within the larger context of debates between Nahda (renaissance) intellectuals, each eager to “publish” their faiths. The Nahda movement was not a male enterprise. Syrian women participated in it through their writings on education and child-rearing, the author argues in chapter 3. Women in this “feminist awakening” treaded skillfully between modernity and tradition. Analyzing the case of the Beirut Church controversy, Womack discusses in chapter 4 the power dynamics between male ministers and their missionary counterparts and the assertion of the Nahdawi masculinity. In chapter 5, Womack examines the history of Syrian Biblewomen who, through their liminality, negotiated and secured the freedoms their male counterparts could not. By comparing the practices and theologies of Syrian Biblewomen with those of their sisters in other regions of the world, Womack contributes to the emerging discourse on the profession of Biblewoman.
Womack fulfills her promise of a counter-narrative not only by naming and numbering the Syrian Protestant “publishers” but also by analyzing their texts. Keeping her word, she challenges the male-centered narratives of the Arab Renaissance by highlighting the participation of Syrian women in Nahda, especially the role of gender in their activism. A careful look at the larger international relationships and the power dynamics during the period would have shed further light on the analysis. With its focus on modernity, mission, and gender, this volume is a valuable addition to the fields of World Christianity and interfaith relations. Its respect toward and commitment to the Syrian Protestants and their neighbors marks this book aside from other interpretations of the Arabic Renaissance or appropriations of Christianity in other regions of the world.