Foreign Missionary Activity Prior to and During the Armenian Genocide

Introduction

Whereas American protestant mission activity in Asia Minor precedes European mission activity, and while its activity during the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1921 may sound more sensational, all the way till the catastrophic burning of Smyrna in 1922, this article focuses on this activity prior to the Genocide, proposing that much of the relief and recuperating that took place later was a natural continuation of nineteenth century activity. I will try to create a thread between the time when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions became active, all the way to the formation of the British Turkish Missions Aid Society and the German Hilfsbund Mission, thereby showing that even the creation of the Action Chrétienne en Orient (ACO) was a natural continuance of these prior movements and mission activities, mainly but not exclusively among the Armenians.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) is known to be the first major American Protestant missionary organisation to reach Asia Minor and the Near East, having been formed in 1810 in the State of Massachusetts. In the history of the Middle East in the nineteenth century it had immeasurable and pioneering impact in religious, educational, social, medical and cultural development, mainly based on the work of missionaries from Congregational and Presbyterian Reformed churches. The first missionaries arrived among the Armenian circles in Constantinople in 1831 through missionary William Goodell. Great was the impact and very swift as it accompanied a reform movement in the Armenian Church, ¹ leading to the formal foundation of the Armenian Evangelical Church in 1846. ²

The ABCFM missionaries invested much energy and resources in education and evangelism, which resulted in a quick growth of Armenian Evangelical churches, schools, and Sunday schools in Armenian communities throughout the Ottoman territories. In the first ten years, 24 local churches were already functioning. ³ In 1873 this number had grown to 74 churches, and 128 Sunday schools. Through direct missionary support, over the years, 46 secondary schools were established, among which at least 20 for girls. Between 1852 and 1915, we count seven colleges for tertiary education. These colleges were located in towns like Aintab (1874), Kharpert (1852), Marash, and Tarsus. A college for girls was founded in Adana in 1880. Add to these the founding of a number of theological seminaries in the nineteenth century, including those in Marash, Kharpert, and Marsowan. The schools trained dozens of thousands of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and others and the linguistic and cultural impact was tremendous. Around 1850 the American Board employed no less than forty missionaries who worked among the Armenians of Asia Minor, twenty males and twenty females. ⁴ Many of them were connected to the schools that the American Board had started.

The reliance on education in the mission among the Armenians was not uncontroversial within ABCFM circles. Rufus Anderson, who served as secretary of the ABCFM from 1832 to 1866, urged the missionaries to focus on proclaiming the gospel, but he viewed education as a necessary precondition to preaching. Schooling would enable people to receive the message and read the Bible themselves, and it would aid in raising a leadership for the revived Christian communities. ⁵

The input of the American Board may be summarised in eight metaphors, or areas of contribution from its first days till the times of the Genocide. The missionaries acted as witnesses to the conditions of the Armenian and the other minorities. They lived with them, and witnessed the ills and benefits of their days. In time of famine, oppression, persecution, or killing, they shared their witness account in ways that would have not been seen by the external world, including governments, media and especially churches in Europe and America. ⁶ In some remote locations the missionaries were the only outsiders to bear witness. The reports of American and other missionaries has a continuing importance in historiography. Recent studies have shed light on missionary writings that were previously not taken into consideration. ⁷ This is not only important for the detailed documentation of the atrocities committed against Armenians, but also those suffered by other ethnic groups. ⁸

They acted as relief workers, social workers in days of regular need and in times of wider tragedy. The severest test came at the end of the nineteenth century. In the wake of the Hamidian Massacres (1895–1896) ABCFM missionaries opened scores of orphanages and took care of an estimated 10,000 orphans. ⁹ Historians have pointed out that their relief work saved the lives of thousands and came at a very high personal cost to the missionaries. ¹⁰ More will be said about this work later, under the discussion of the British and German missions.

They acted as unceremonious diplomats. They mediated with the Ottoman local or regional authorities to ease pressure or get permits, or interceded or lobbied on behalf of people in difficulty. Mission historian Heather Sharkey calls the American missionaries ‘political animals’ who were active lobbyists. ¹¹

They acted as fundraisers for the schools, seminaries and churches they sponsored or supported. The local congregation, say in the USA, and often in Europe, was the main area of interest and source of funds. Sharkey observes some differences between American and other missions in strategies of fundraising. The American churchgoers generally had more ‘cash surpluses’ and American missions had fewer qualms about fundraising. ‘The United States, in other words, had a culture in which pious widows were as likely to donate to missions as merchants and magnates; it was a place where families like the Rockefellers bankrolled mission projects even as women and children raised pennies from bake sales.’ ¹²

They acted as opinion leaders or cultural influencers. They influenced peoples’ taste, perspectives on life, and others. Again, the schools were instrumental, for that is where cultural values were taught and acquired. In some cases, the missionaries even loosened the bonds between the schools and the mission in order not to alienate their local clients and move to a cultural rather than a religious proselytism. ¹³ Under Anderson's leadership, however, the ABCFM attempted to limit the transmission of American culture in the mission schools. Anderson feared that those who came into contact with the missionaries would become too much like them and thereby become alienated from their own cultures. ¹⁴ For much of the nineteenth century, the mission schools were instructed to teach only in the vernacular and learning English was discouraged. Nevertheless, Barbara Merguerian concludes in a study on the Kharpert mission, ‘[t]he effect of the missionary programs in Kharpert had been to enlarge the horizon of the Armenians, to raise their intellectual level, to foster a philosophy of individualism, and to encourage aspirations for a more democratic society in which they could shape their own lives and determine their own destiny.’ ¹⁵

They acted as examples in institutional thinking and operation. To have worked with the new Evangelicals, to build a culture that focused on new mission and new vision, to help write manuals, curricula, and to reach out to the individual irrespective of background was major.

They of course were prime actors in spiritual and biblical reform, revival and education. This last image is the more traditional one as the mission to evangelise was probably at the core of the callings of the missionaries, but a thorough study will easily find the other roles equally tremendous, and it would be simplistic to see such a huge movement through a narrow religious lens only. ¹⁶

The Bible Lands Missions Aid Society

Now, we move to Britain and the Turkish Missions Aid Society, later known as the BibleLands Society and today as Embrace the Middle East, originally founded in 1854, the same year that Britain allied itself with Turkey and declared war on Russia (the Crimean War). The story had started with an 1853 visit of Cuthbert Young, an English clergyman and evangelist and his Christian vision. In Constantinople, he had met ABCFM missionary Cyrus Hamlin, who was involved in education, and learnt about the missionary work taking place, including the great publication and translation work of Christian materials. He was fascinated by the work of the American missionaries, and he shared this with his British colleagues saying, ‘[d]ue to American efforts, the Bible is becoming the great statute book in the East…’ ¹⁷ In May 1854, a group of 63 men, mostly from the circles of the Evangelical Alliance, including Evangelical Alliance president Sir Culling Eardley, gathered to found the new society. Its first president was Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper), a dedicated supporter of Christian missions and social reform.

Since Britain was engaged in war and it had its interests that could jeopardise missions work, the Turkish Missions Aid Society started its mission with an original decision: rather than sending workers of its own, its funds raised in Britain would support existing missions, especially the American. The new Society went even further by focussing on ‘the native agency’ that is empowering local Christians. Interesting to note is that female education was among the first to receive funding, and the Mission also provided funds to pay salaries for the teachers and pastors of the Protestant schools and churches. Scholarships were provided for promising Armenian youths to get higher education, at medical schools in Scotland and also Harvard University.

The 1860 civil war in Lebanon, Druze-Maronite, which resulted in 20,000 mostly Christian internal refugees, was one of the first defining moments of the work of the Turkish Missions Aid Society. It prompted the Society to organise a fundraising campaign called the Syrian Protestant Relief. One of the ways in which the support was disseminated locally was through the work of Elizabeth Bowen Thompson, who arrived to Beirut just before the war broke out and who engaged in an evangelistic, relief, and educational mission among victims of the violence. Thompson founded the nondenominational British Syrian Mission which created a network of schools. ¹⁸ The civil war also made the committee of the Society reflect on its mandate. Was it called to only to support evangelism, Protestant schools, and Christian literature, or should it also offer general humanitarian support in response to catastrophes like the civil war? The committee's decision was that both were appropriate objectives for the Society. ¹⁹ Thus, at this early stage, it became a holistic mission agency, much like the Hilfsbund and, later, the ACO.

This holistic approach was expressed in the Society's subsequent endeavours. One example was the support that it provided to the Baghdassarian couple who took care of homeless orphans whom they found roaming in the villages, as a consequence of famine that had hit in the 1870s. Gregory Baghdassarian, who had studied at the Bebek Seminary and then at the Basle Missionary College, and his Irish-born wife Emma opened their orphanage in Bursa in 1875, facing initial resistance from Armenian Apostolic and Muslim religious authorities. After the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878, the Baghdassarians also received some displaced children from the Black Sea area. ²⁰ The Turkish Missions Aid Society was their main source of funding.

In 1877 the Christian minorities, especially Armenians, paid a heavy price for the war between Russia and Turkey and the Society realised that it should show more solidarity. Letters from American missionaries, sent to Britain, described the misery in Armenian communities, as heavier taxes were levied on them, laws were passed forbidding them to carry weapons, and they found themselves left to the mercy of well-armed Kurdish and Turkish neighbours. Such reports moved the conscience of the Turkish Missions Aid Society further.

A major factor in British action was a magazine initially called the British Missions Intelligencer, which was first published in 1883 and later called the Star in the East The society's institutional history, The Light Bearers by Jean Hatton, relies partially on these magazines, the minutes of meetings and other archival material. The magazine reports were quite detailed and basically presented the existential challenges the Armenian communities faced in the nineteenth century. While the ABCFM missionaries witnessed to American Protestant audiences, the Turkish Missions Aid Society did the same among British Protestants. ‘Trouble in Erzroum,’ for example, was an article published in 1888. It was written by Presbyterian (ABCFM) missionary William Nesbitt Chambers, who had been stationed in Erzurum since 1879, with his family. His brother and his family lived and worked alongside him in the same town near Mount Ararat. ²¹ In the article, Chambers suggested that a sustained campaign that was being directed by the Turkish authorities against the Armenians went beyond what had previously committed. The papers suggested that the events heralded the onset of further and disastrous tragedy. ²² The Chambers clan continued to live and work in Ottoman Turkey until 1915, and witnessed the sad unfolding of Nesbitt's prediction. Their writings provide details on the various phases of violence against Armenian communities.

The Star reported a deteriorating situation in the early 1890s. Due to heavy taxation imposed on the Armenians previously wealthy families were turning into beggars. Passports were no longer being issued for the Armenians. A few years later, the news about the Armenians was getting far worse. A missionary from Marash reported in 1895 saying ‘many fell in our sight like partridges.’ Another missionary in Aintab said ‘we have suffered a baptism of fire and now we sit in grief among ruins.’ ²³ The news shook the members of the Society, which since 1893 was called Bible Lands Missions Aid Society, and they intensified their fundraising efforts. Members were contacting the offices to see whether these reports were true and what could be done. They were puzzled as to why the Ottomans found the Armenians to be a threat. At the same time, Armenian calls for justice and liberty resonated well with the missionaries.

Between 1894–1896 some 300,000 Armenians were massacred. Erzurum, Bitlis, Kharpert (which was often rendered as Harpoot in the missionary reports), Aintab, Marash, Caesarea, and Marsovan were some of the locations. The missionaries were in shock and an 1896 report entitled ‘Armenian Massacre Relief,’ which was published as a supplement of the Star, gave details. The same missionary from Aintab wrote: ‘What we heard was the indescribable roar of the mob, pierced by the sharp report of pistols and guns, with now and then shrieks of agony and fear and shouts of defiance and command, and over all, and most horrible of all, the loud shrill Zullghat, the wedding cry, raised by Turkish women crowded on their roofs and cheering on their men to the attack.’ ²⁴ In these massacres, called the Hamidian massacres, the Star assured the victims that they could count on the support of the Society. They actually sent out 4000 appeal letters to churches; individuals, churches, and Sunday schools made regular collections. ²⁵ The events strengthened the humanitarian resolve of the Bible Lands Missions Aid Society. William Essery, the secretary of the Society, catalogued the atrocities committed in the Kharpert region, detailing numbers of people wounded, killed in fields and highways, burned, died of hunger, committed suicides, loss of properties, forced marriages with Turkish men, sanctuaries damaged or destroyed, and even miscarriages. Such figures spoke and moved the British readers of the Star. American historian Keith Watenpaugh has noted the transition in reporting on humanitarian crises that took place around the turn of the twentieth. Observers began to write in ways to instigate specific types of humanitarian action. ‘The emergence of modern humanitarianism is, in part, a product of the rise of that narrative form,’ he writes. ²⁶ It appears that Essery's reports on the situation of the Armenians aligns with this watershed moment indicated by Watenpaugh.

Now, the need for orphanages was greatest, especially because Turkey announced that orphans could not leave its territories, and the obvious plan was Turkification. So the only way for the missionaries was to take care of them in their towns. This was a turning point, and with the Americans leading the work, orphanages were opening in Van, Urfa, Malatya, Marash, and other locations. Nesbitt Chambers, for one, expanded the school in Erzurum to include an orphanage. ²⁷ German and Swiss Protestants were quickly establishing their foundations too. Among them was the Swiss Jakob Künzler, who worked with the Deutsche Orient-Mission, in Urfa between 1899 and 1921. He witnessed the atrocities of the Genocide there and persevered in relief, rescue and medical work. When he was expelled from Urfa he travelled with his family, workers and thousands of orphans to Lebanon, where he founded a new orphanage and continued his relief work among Armenians. ²⁸ At this period, the missionaries reported that there was a growing degree of cooperation between Armenian Evangelical and Apostolic Christians; the latter also cooperated with the missionaries. The Star reported that there were at least 15,000 children in the orphanages. ²⁹

The Armenian Massacre Relief Fund was reactivated in 1909 in response to the Adana Massacre. Again, relief work among the survivors was the main concern. Some resources were also given to small loans that enabled survivors to re-establish their businesses. ³⁰ Samuel Gentle-Cackett, the successor of Essery as secretary, led the fundraising and relief effort of the Society during the Armenian Genocide. In the Star he urgently appealed to the readers on behalf of the thousands who had survived and experienced untold suffering. ‘Thousands have been saved so far and new thousands are appearing, coming out of their hiding places, wearily tailing back from the desert regions to which they were deported, women and children in appalling numbers.’ ³¹ The experience transformed him and made him a strong advocate of justice and relief for the Armenians.

The Genocide put an end to many of the American missions that had been supported by the Bible Lands Missions Aid Society for decades. Some of the missionaries had to stand by and watch while their Armenian neighbours, friends, and orphans and students under their care were taken away or killed. The communities were wiped out and their properties taken. With them, the mission stations of Asia Minor were closed.

The German Hilfsbund Mission

Among the humanitarian entities established following these massacres of 1894–1896 and the orphanisation (my English) of the thousands, was a Swiss-German foundation, which was originally called the Deutscher Hilfsbund für Christliches Liebeswerk im Orient, and later renamed the Christlicher Hilfsbund im Orient. It was established in 1896 by two pastors, Ernst Lohmann and Johannes Lepsius, in Frankfurt/Main.

At this time Lohmann ³² was a young pastor who served in Frankfurt. He was affiliated with a pietistic revival movement, the Gemeinschaftsbewegung. He was inspired by the missionary zeal of the Christian student volunteer movements and had helped organise a conference with John Mott. He had been a city missionary in Halle, and in Frankfurt he also worked among the urban disadvantaged. ³³ He had read about the atrocities inflicted on the Armenians and felt that the German churches should take action. He began to publish about the massacres and the suffering: ‘Only God and our suffering brothers and sisters in this distant land know the whole story,’ he wrote. ‘It is incomprehensible and intolerable that the global Christian community continues to watch this drama indifferently and impotently.’ ³⁴ For Lohmann this was the beginning of a lifelong devotion to foreign missions and relief through the work of the Hilfsbund.

Lepsius ³⁵ had worked as an assistant pastor in Jerusalem and had married Margaret Zeller, who was the daughter of Johannes Zeller, a German missionary in the service of the British Church Missionary Society in Palestine. While in Palestine, Lepsius had served on the board of an orphanage and had thereby learned about the sad aftermath of the civil war of 1860. After his return to Germany, he had taken up a parish but had remained actively engaged in fundraising for Protestant mission in the Middle East In 1896 he founded the Deutsche Orient-Mission, which would soon engage in running clinics, pharmacies, workshops, vocational training and orphanages for survivors of the Hamidian Massacres. Initially, evangelism was Lepsius's main concern, but the massacres made it clear to him that he was called to raise awareness of the plight of the Armenians and advocate for them. ³⁶ Lepsius's writings gave detailed accounts of Armenian suffering, analysed the causes, and created an ‘international humanitarian legal framework.’ ³⁷

After Lepsius journeyed to Asia Minor in 1896, he and Lohmann founded the Hilfsbund. Lepsius's Deutsche Orient-Mission remained his primary concern. Lohmann continued to direct the Hilfsbund. The two organisations agreed on a division of the work they envisaged and thus complemented each other. The work of the Hilfsbund was comparable to that of the other missions: education, medical work, and evangelism. Caring for orphans was the most pressing duty and the Hilfsbund ran its share of institutions. During his travels Lepsius had coordinated with other, mostly American, missionaries who were serving the Armenian communities, so that the work of the Hilfsbund (and the Deutsche Orient-Mission) would be effective and not duplicate existing initiatives. ³⁸

From 1896 until the end of World War I, or the era of Genocide, the Hilfsbund established or supported around twenty orphanages, multiple schools, established workshops for tailoring, pottery, weaving, and other skills. ³⁹ A large number of orphans had lost both parents, and these orphanages were all they had. The Hilfsbund missions covered a wide area of disaster, including first Kharpert and Marash, ⁴⁰ and then Van, Mush, Aintab, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Hadjin, Malatya, Palu, Sivas, and Urfa, to name the main ones. Tremendous humanitarian and Christian work was done in these newly established centres, many of which started within one year, and soon some of these institutions already had campuses or numerous buildings each. Of course, at many Hilfsbund stations, the work was done through cooperation with the American missionaries who had already previous experience. It was a mix of relief, education, skill development and Christian education, all seen as one unity.

The work of one of the Hilfsbund-missionaries, the Swiss Beatrice Rohner, in Marash and Aleppo stands out as particularly heroic and significant. Her story is told by the Swiss historian Hans-Lukas Kieser; I briefly draw attention to some relevant points in his article here. ⁴¹ Rohner grew up in Basle and lost her father at a young age. After her teacher training and a stint as a teacher in Paris, she became a missionary with the Hilfsbund. In 1899 she arrived in Constantinople and, for a short while, served at the Bebek orphanage. In 1900 she moved to Marash where she served as housemother-teacher at the Hilfsbund orphanage. In Marash she mentored the young Hedwig Büll, who shared her pietistic background and her deep sense of calling. Many of Büll's later initiatives in the service of the ACO echoed the work of Rohner in her Marash and Aleppo years. Rohner's mother Maria Magdalena Rohner and sister Anni Rohner followed her example and became missionaries too. They joined her in Marash in 1908 and 1913.

In April 1915 the systematic arrests and deportations began and the people of Marash were not spared this fate. In August 1915 they were sent marching to the desert. Rohner witnessed this and wrote reports which she dispatched to her contacts in Europe. One of her reports was included in the collection of documents on the Genocide by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee. The staff of the orphanages in Marash and the nearby village of Harounieh, among them Hedwig Büll, fled with the children to Cyprus.

Encouraged by an American friend, ABCFM missionary Fred Shepard, Rohner travelled to Aleppo, where camps for Armenian refugees had been set up. She met twice with Jemal Pasha, arguably the least evil one in the Ottoman triumvirate, and she obtained his official permission to take charge of a large orphanage within Aleppo. She also poured her energies into organising relief work for the camps, which were located outside the city. Hovhannes Eskijian, the pastor of the Armenian Evangelical Emmanuel Church of Aleppo, had set up a collaborative relief effort for the camps outside the city. Rohner joined this work and continued it after Eskijian's death in 1916. ⁴² She managed an underground network of couriers who smuggled letters and cash into the camps. Some of the funds for her work were provided by the ABCFM. This network even extended to the refugees in Deir ez-Zor. Rohner's messengers told her about the massacres that took place there among the deported. Due to the violence in Deir ez-Zor and the Aleppo camps her relief work came to a halt, and in the first months of 1917 the Ottoman authorities also deported the orphans under her care, to Lebanon. Rohner was heartbroken and travelled back to Switzerland in an unstable condition. Only when Hedwig Büll, who was now in the service of the ACO, visited her in Switzerland in 1926 and told her that all ‘her orphans’ had survived, her depression came to an end. Kieser concludes that Rohner's work was ‘the most important rescue effort during the second phase of the Armenian genocide’ and that her pietistic faith was ‘the vital motor’ of her efforts. ⁴³

Other missionaries in the service of the Hilfsbund did similar work. One of them was the German teacher Johannes Ehmann. He arrived in Ottoman Turkey in 1897 with two other Hilfsbund missionaries. He was stationed in Ezre/Mesereh, near Kharpert, where he set up care and schooling for orphans. ⁴⁴ With his wife Helen he led the station, which also included workshops, clinics, and a pharmacy. This work was done in close cooperation with the local American missionaries and with Danish missionary Maria Jacobsen. When the deportations began, Ehmann successfully appealed to the regional Ottoman authorities to spare children under his care. ⁴⁵ In other stations the missionaries were no less dedicated, but sometimes had to watch as the children under their care were taken away and they were able to save only a few. Such was the case in Mush.

Thus, even though the Hilfsbund was a relative newcomer and, unlike the ABCFM and the Bible Lands Missions Aid Society, did not have decades of experience, it nevertheless had a significant contribution to relief work, eyewitness reporting, and development among the devastated Armenian communities in Ottoman Turkey.

Significant in this part of mission history is that the German government firmly stood by the Ottoman government and its propaganda. News of the massacres even produced a convoluted dynamic of denial and justification in German foreign policy and in some German media outlets. ⁴⁶ As several scholars have observed, German ambassador Joseph Maria von Radowitz assured the Sultan in 1888: ‘[W]ith us there is not the least interest in the Armenian circumstances [and] that we view this question as one concerning the domestic relationship between the Sultan and his subjects and do not share the urge to cause the Sultan any problems.’ Another official commented in 1896 that it could not be ‘the purpose of German politics to look after the Christians of all the world and to organize a European Crusade against the Crescent.’ ⁴⁷ Lepsius was one of the critics of German support for the Ottoman Empire and the justification of this realpolitik in the state-sponsored press. ⁴⁸ When the deportations and killings began in 1915, Lepsius, who was late in realising that another tragedy was in the making, and other missionaries continued their painstaking work of collecting material, writing reports, giving talks and remonstrating with the authorities. In light of this it is clear that German and Swiss missionary and humanitarian involvement went against the political tide, and courageously so.

Conclusion

This survey with some examples shows us how missionary involvement was providential for the survivors of the previous sufferings and massacres to go through an even more unimaginable Genocide during World War I, and the already critical role the missionary institutions and presence on the ground played, to reach out to the stricken people. The Armenian communities and individuals faced the Genocide much better educated, skilled, and resilient than they would have been without the type of nineteenth-century spiritual, cultural and organisational enlightenment they witnessed, at least partly thanks to the missionaries.

The missionaries, on their part, found themselves in a unique situation, where the evangelical churches and other institutions grew and flourished, but where they were called to be the protectors and witnesses of the suffering of the very communities they served. This forged a strong bond between the missionaries and the communities and it also explains why the missionaries accompanied the Armenians into other lands, like Syria, to help them re-establish themselves and maintain the Christian hope. Their crucial reporting on the situation of the Armenians and other minorities helped set in motion humanitarian aid and relief without which the suffering had been even deeper.

The ACO, then, is a natural continuation of the story that this article presented. The nineteenth-century missions from North America and Europe shared common spiritual sources, missionary methods, and humanitarian objectives, which the ACO continued in the post-Genocide context. Missionaries from the different agencies and countries maintained good communications and working relations, with many missionaries migrating between foundations and institutions, and continuing or developing the work, or picking up the pieces after the Genocide.