The Action Chrétienne en Orient: From Missionary Society to Fellowship of Churches

In October 1995, a gathering of European and Middle Eastern Protestants took place in the Syrian town of Kessab. In attendance were representatives of Protestant churches in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. While most visitors come to Kessab to enjoy its mountainous scenery, clean air and hospitable hotels and restaurants, they came to sign and celebrate a solemn agreement, in which they committed themselves to the ACO Fellowship. It was a sign of the dawning of a new phase in the relationships between Protestants in the Middle East and Europe.

Prior to this the Action Chrétienne en Orient (ACO) had been a European mission agency with constituencies in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Its “mission field” lay in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Egypt, and, for a short while, Algeria. The newly adopted constitution, however, described the body as “an evangelical fellowship,” in which three mission agencies from Europe and three churches from the Middle East participated. The chief objective of this fellowship was described as:

developing the partnership and interaction among members being on an equal footing, in a spirit of responsible sharing and through common service in their respective regions. This is to be done specially through programmes that have a missionary or witnessing character. ¹

A comparison with the original objectives of the ACO, which were articulated when it was first founded in 1922, reveals both similarities and differences. ² What was similar was a dovetailing of physical healing and spiritual outreach. In 1922, the founders of the ACO were determined to bring relief amidst the suffering caused by the Armenian Genocide. They were equally driven by a desire to render service to the churches of the Middle East and transmit the Christian faith, especially among Muslims. ³ The 1995 documents retain that passion for both service and evangelical witness. The differences between the 1922 and 1995 approaches lie in the answers to the questions: Who will engage in service and witness? Where will they do that? And how? In 1995, it was clear that the ACO was no longer a service from the Occident to the Orient, but that this mission of service and witness was to be carried out by the churches of Europe and the Middle East together, in a spirit of “partnership,” not just in the Middle East but also in Europe.

This article traces the gradual transformation of the ACO from European missionary society operating in the Middle East to a supranational fellowship of churches, which culminated in the Kessab meeting. It argues that, even though the ACO had many traits of a traditional European missionary society, from the outset it was uniquely positioned to become a platform for encounter and exchange. The ACO’s interpretation and expression of partnership is analysed in light of ecumenical theories on mission that were developed in the second half of the twentieth century. It is to these theories that we first turn.

Partnership in the Ecumenical-Missionary Discourse

The concept of partnership was part of British colonial discourse in the mid-twentieth century. British colonial authorities used this term to indicate that colonies were given a measure of autonomy, while the British crown retained a measure of control. ⁴ Partnership was interpreted as trusteeship, as missiologist Jonathan Barnes observes, which was a way of exercising power over people who had been promised autonomy. ⁵ Barnes points out that this trusteeship or tutelage was in the hands of nations that viewed themselves as “advanced.” ⁶

Although Protestant missionaries were citizens of these “advanced” nations and therefore not immune to such paternalistic ways of thinking, they nevertheless referred to something quite different when they used the term partnership. ⁷ To them, it had first of all a theological and ecclesiological meaning.

The process of ecumenical theological reflection on partnership was well summarized by Max Warren, who served as general secretary of the Anglican Church Missionary Society from 1942 to 1963. In Warren’s view the concept was in harmony with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which he understood as a fellowship of equal partners. ⁸ Warren associated the Christian idea of partnership with the biblical word koinonia, which in his view denoted divine-human cooperation and interhuman fellowship. ⁹ He argued that equality and mutuality were essential preconditions to Christian partnership: there had to be a level playing field and every partner should be free to enter and leave a partnership at any given moment. ¹⁰ Warren’s interpretation was an inversion of the general colonial use of the term, which applied partnership to the process that led to equality and mutuality, a process that was imposed on the colonized nations by the “advanced” nations.

International meetings of missionaries and church leaders translated this lofty theology of partnership into policy. The Jerusalem conference of the International Missionary Council (IMC) held in 1928 called the western mission agencies to move “from paternalism to partnership.” ¹¹ The IMC meeting in Whitby, Ontario (1947) recommended changes in the role of missionaries (they were no longer to work as administrators, but to take a supportive role and be accountable to local leadership), mission properties (they were to be transferred to local churches), and the disbursement of financial support (not the mission agencies but the local churches were to be responsible, while respecting the intentions of the donors). The reality on the ground did not always correspond to these policies. In many cases, mission agencies did not devolve authority until they were forced to do so during the ferment of the decolonization. Nevertheless, ecumenical-missionary gatherings prepared the ground for a change in the relations.

In the last three decades of the twentieth century the concept of partnership was further enriched with the idea of reciprocity. Churches in the former colonies began to realize that they had gifts to give and talents to share. Protestant churches in the west began to realize that they could be recipients as well as donors, beneficiaries as well as benefactors. The World Council of Churches published recommendations and best practices for sharing of people and resources between the churches. ¹² The ideal of a free flow of people, ideas and resources in all directions took hold. An uncomfortable question arose. Were the western missionary societies the best instruments to facilitate such sharing? Many in the ecumenical movement doubted it. They viewed these agencies as structures of a bygone age that repristinated colonial power imbalance and economic domination. These structures needed to be broken up by moving from bilateral to multilateral forms of cooperation.

The Formation of Multilateral, Ecumenical Bodies for Mission

The Paris Society of Evangelical Missions was the first organization to heed the call for change. It looked for a closer embedding in the French Protestant churches and, with the churches from Oceania, Asia and Africa that had come into existence due to its missionary labours, it formed the Evangelical Community for Apostolic Action (CEVAA). ¹³ CEVAA was a round table, an international community of churches in which all member churches had voting rights. One of its objectives was to facilitate the flow of missionaries and resources among its members, thereby supporting the missionary and diaconal work of the local churches. CEVAA pioneered short visits of international teams to the local churches, which were meant to inspire and raise awareness. ¹⁴ The example of the CEVAA was followed by three British missionary societies, among which was the London Missionary Society, when they created the Council for World Mission (CWM) in 1977. This too was a democratic council, with more than twenty member churches from different parts of the world. Like CEVAA, the CWM aimed to stimulate and resource mission on the local level. ¹⁵

The experience of the CEVAA and CWM was evaluated at the San Antonio mission conference of the WCC in 1989. On the credit side, the conference noted that they facilitated church-to-church relations rather than mission-to-church relations. ¹⁶ However, critics argued that the new structures were prone to bureaucracy, which could stifle action rather than promote it. Bernard Thorogood, who had guided the London Missionary Society through the transition, asked some incisive questions: “Would the family relationship survive if there were no financial grants? And can these two councils call forth from the member churches the sacrificial offering of life and privilege that will always be the way of the cross?” ¹⁷ Thorogood had come to believe that it was preferable to form communities of fewer churches, fifteen to twenty at most He also argued that these fellowships should be reshuffled every ten years. ¹⁸ The issue of justice was raised by Maitland Evans, a church leader from Jamaica who served as moderator of the CWM at that time. Were the encounters in the councils really “horizontal” and could they guarantee justice? Or were the colonial burdens simply carried over from the missionary societies into the new structures, where they were less visible and, therefore, possibly more harmful? ¹⁹

With the theory and the practical experience of the wider Protestant mission community in mind, we are now in a position to consider the trajectory of the ACO from missionary society to fellowship of churches.

The ACO as a Missionary Society

The ACO was a relative latecomer in the spectrum of Protestant missionary societies in the Middle East. To give some examples, American Presbyterians and Congregationalists had been active in Turkey, Syria, the Lebanon and Iran since the 1820s. Basel missionaries had begun their work in the Caucasus around the same time; the Church Missionary Society had a presence in Malta since 1815 and in Palestine since 1851. ²⁰ In Palestine, the CMS missionaries joined the Anglican Society for Work among the Jews, which had settled in Jerusalem in 1820. ²¹ Since 1854 the British BibleLands Mission had been active in the Ottoman Empire (at first under the name Turkish Mission Aid Society). ²² British and American Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters) had come to northwest Syria in 1856. ²³

In structure, the ACO closely resembled these nineteenth-century missionary societies. It was a voluntary society, which depended entirely on the efforts of a group of Protestant individuals. Just like other organizations of its kind, the ACO’s endeavors included relief, social and medical work, the establishment of schools, and evangelism. Like other agencies, the ACO took a mission-station approach, which was especially evident in Aleppo. When the first building was completed in 1933, the work there took on a more permanent and established form. ²⁴ And, following customary mission practice, the ACO employed local workers to help carry out its mission.

In other respects, however, the ACO was very different from other Protestant missionary societies. It was not a unilateral evangelistic initiative of visionary Europeans, but first and foremost a compassionate response to deep suffering. The ACO was a daughter of the Frankfurt (Main)-based Deutscher Hilfsbund für christliches Liebeswerk, which had been established in 1896 in response to the Armenian massacres under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The leadership and the workers of the Hilfsbund felt equally called to respond when more suffering befell the Armenians, Syriacs and Assyrians during World War I. Hilfsbund-workers moved with the survivors to Syria. However, as a German agency, the Hilfsbund was no longer permitted to work in Syria after World War I. A solution presented itself: the foundation of a new agency in the Alsace, which had just become French territory. This task fell to the Alsatian pastor Paul Berron, who had worked with the Hilfsbund. He had witnessed the suffering of the Armenians first hand during his travels in the Middle East. Berron convened the Alsatian supporters of the Hilfsbund and founded the ACO on December 6, 1922. He became its director and continued to serve in this capacity for four decades. Two non-German missionaries were transferred from the Hilfsbund to the ACO: Hedwig Büll and Alice Humbert-Drosz. ²⁵ The first newsletter contained a report of an unnamed Armenian evangelist from the north of Syria, which illustrated the needs that the ACO intended to meet.

Three hundred families have arrived here. They have near to nothing left after their long journey. Aleppo and the Syrian countryside are flooded by these poor people, which is a deeply moving sight. You can imagine that we are overwhelmed by the work. In a village we have organized a school to prevent the children from roaming the streets. But our means are insufficient, and many children are ill, malnourished and almost without clothes.

From the outset, the ACO was intentional about cooperation with the local churches. While the American Protestant missions of the nineteenth century had intended to “revive” the, in their view, nominal and spiritually arid Oriental churches, the ACO formulated its goal more modestly as “service to the Christian cause in the Orient.” ²⁷ Both the Hilfsbund and the ACO also intended to missionize among Muslims, but this mission was described in rather general, unspecific terms. In 1923, Paul Berron wrote to the supporters of the ACO: “We envisage our engagement not only as purely material assistance, but as a broadly missionary work that aims to serve the cause of the gospel and the kingdom of God in the Orient.” ²⁸ Conversion and church planting were implied, but were not the primary aims; service with and to the existing churches was. In most cases the ACO chose to support initiatives that were emerging from the local Christian community. In the refugee camps around the Aleppo, it supported the churches and schools of the Armenian Evangelicals, medical work, income-generating projects, and sustainable housing. In the 1930s, the ACO helped start a Protestant school and two small churches in the Jazeera region in the northeast of Syria, where many Syriac and Assyrian displaced people lived. ²⁹

Another unique feature of the ACO was its trans-European character, which made it less prone to what the British Catholic church historian Adrian Hastings has called “missionary nationalism.” ³⁰ This transnational character was embodied by a number of the early leaders. Paul Berron, who changed nationality after World War I, was a living testimony of intra-European cooperation. ³¹ The two first ACO missionaries, who had both worked for the Hilfsbund, represented different nations and traditions. Hedwig Büll was an Estonian who was fluent in five languages. Alice Humbert-Drosz was a Swiss national. The headquarters in France were supported by committees in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Cato de Witte, the long-serving secretary of the Dutch branch of the ACO, had worked in Dutch diplomatic service in Berlin. Upon her conversion she felt a missionary vocation and left her career in diplomacy to serve the Hilfsbund. When the Dutch committee, which was called Morgenlandzending, was established in 1926, she was the obvious candidate for the secretariate. ³² In 1936, the newly founded Swiss ACO committee began its work. The Swiss committee did crucial work during World War II, when the Alsace was devastated by Nazi annexation, evacuations, and the forcible drafting of thousands of men into the German Wehrmacht. At this time, communication and coordination from Strasbourg was impossible. Providentially, the Swiss Roger Burnier had been appointed general secretary of the ACO a few months before the war broke out. After familiarizing himself with the work, he had returned to Lausanne and coordinated the work from neutral Switzerland for the duration of the war. ³³ Another Swiss national, Karl Meyer, who worked for the Bund Schweizerischer Armenienfreunde, took the role of ACO field secretary in Syria. Financially, the ACO survived World War II with the help of the Orphaned Missions Fund, the largely US-donated solidarity fund of the International Missionary Council for missionaries cut off from their home base, ³⁴ and a gold-reserve in Aleppo, which was made available by a French Professor. ³⁵

So, although the ACO followed the pattern of the nineteenth-century Protestant missionary societies, it was distinctive in that it was primarily a trans-European response to deep need. From the beginning, the ACO worked in close cooperating with local churches.

The Age of “Integration”

A major shift in the relations between the ACO and the churches took place in the turbulent 1950s. The establishment of the State of Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Suez crisis (1956), and more generally the Cold War caused the newly independent Syrian Republic to gravitate towards the Soviet Union. Anti-western sentiments and suspicion of missionaries were on the rise. ³⁶ This had repercussions for all western missions, including the ACO. In 1952 the work permit of the Dutch nurse Maria Zier was revoked for unclear reasons, after she had been in the country for only a few months. In the same year, Swiss missionary Hélène Hartmann’s residence permit was not renewed on allegations of proselytism. Another Swiss missionary, Alice Ulmer, was expelled in 1960, after four years of working in Aleppo, because of alleged defamation of Islam during a presentation in Switzerland. Hartmann and Ulmer were relocated to Lebanon. Anne-Marie Beck was the only ACO missionary who was allowed to stay because she was married to a Syrian, Elias Tartar, and had the Syrian nationality. ³⁷

The ACO was deeply concerned about the continuity of its work in Syria. The transfer of the work to the national churches became increasingly urgent. This transfer was not only a pragmatic, strategic move that secured continuity; it was also a missiological principle, endorsed by the International Missionary Council at its conferences in Whitby in 1947 and in Willingen, Germany, in 1952. One of the recommendations of the latter conference was that “properties now registered in the name of foreign mission boards should be transferred to national churches or holding bodies, or to an international holding body.” ³⁸

The only option in Syria was to register the properties in the name of the local churches. In the mid-1950s, the ACO reached an initial agreement on the Aleppo mission compound with the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East. At first the plan was to hand over the work in Jazeera to the Armenian Union as well, but in 1962 an agreement was signed with the (Arab Presbyterian) National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon. In Jazeera the ACO had not registered any property in its name. Instead it had supported the local Christian communities of Hassakeh, Derik (Al-Malikiyah) and Khanik (Al-Khalidiyah) in building its sanctuaries and parsonages, and, as was noted earlier, the school of Hassakeh. It agreed to hand over “the material, moral and spiritual responsibility” for this work. ³⁹ In 1964 another agreement with the Armenian Union followed, which concluded the transfer of the work in Aleppo, now called the Church of Christ ⁴⁰

It was not easy for the ACO to let go of their work in Aleppo and Jazeera. In the first draft of the agreement with the Synod, Paul Berron proposed a partial and staggered transfer. He suggested that the ACO field secretary would become a member of the Synod; the ACO missionaries, council members of the local Presbyterian Church; and that the ACO would have a say in the appointment of personnel in the Jazeera mission. Berron’s first draft of the agreement conveys a sense of loss and grief: “We, representatives of the ACO ask the Synod to understand that it is not easy for us to withdraw ourselves from a work and field for which we have brought great sacrifices and prayed very much.” ⁴¹ Understandably, the Presbyterians could not agree to ACO’s proposal. By mouth of the secretary of the Synod, Ibrahim Daghir, they responded that the proposal of joint administration contradicted the principle of ecclesiastical autonomy and self-governance. In addition to that, the political climate dictated that the church be perceived as “truly national.” Instead of a model of gradual and partial devolution, the Synod preferred full transfer of the work, and, of course, a continuing cooperation with the ACO. ⁴² The ACO accepted this and realized that claims of historical ownership, suspicion of the churches, and controlling attitudes had to be relinquished. As Roger Burnier wrote, it was a matter of obedience to the call of the Lord, even if this meant that the mission would lose some of its freedom of movement. Only “total confidence” between the mission and the churches could guarantee the continuity of the work. ⁴³

The integration gave the Armenian Evangelical Churches and the Presbyterian Church full authority over the mission work and responsibility for the ACO missionaries, who were now called fraternal workers (ouvriers fraternels) and were to be received by the churches as proper members. ⁴⁴

Not only in the Middle East but also in Europe the mission work became increasingly integrated in the Protestant churches. In 1963, the Swiss ACO committee became part of the Département Missionaire of the French-speaking Protestant churches. In 1971, the French ACO became a member of the Mission Council of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the Alsace and Moselle Regions. In the Netherlands, the Morgenlandzending entered into a close cooperation with the GZB in 1985, a mission agency that was a branch of the Netherlands Reformed Church. In 1994, it was fully integrated and became a department of the GZB. It was now more accurate to speak of the ACO as a church-based mission agency than a voluntary missionary society.

The Formation of the Fellowship

The new form of cooperation between the ACO and the churches remained unchanged for three decades. The ACO continued to support the work in Aleppo and Jazeera and became involved in a number of ministries of the churches in Lebanon. New fraternal workers were sent to aid the churches in youth, medical and evangelistic work, such as the long-serving Wijnanda (Nans) Groeneveld. The Presbyterian Hamlin Hospital and Nursing Home, high in the Lebanon mountain range, employed a number of ACO-sponsored nurses. The Near East School of Theology in Beirut made use of the services of ACO-sponsored theologians. The work expanded beyond the Levant, to Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Iran.

The contact between the Protestant churches of Iran, which had grown out of the work of American Protestant missions, and the ACO was especially promising. The political situation in Syria continued to be unconducive to mission work. Could Iran be a new field of labour? Nerses Khachadourian, who had moved from Syria to Teheran to serve as a pastor of the Armenian Evangelical community, and Paul Berron’s successor Robert Brecheisen were instrumental in establishing the relationship. Khachadourian had worked with the ACO since 1932, at first in Aleppo, later in Jazeera, and since 1951 as field secretary. Unfortunately, the service of the first fraternal worker, Jean-Claude Basset from Switzerland, who was sent in 1976 to serve the Persian-speaking community, was cut short by the Islamic Revolution. Nevertheless, the relations between the ACO and the Synod of Evangelical Churches of Iran endured into the twenty-first century. ⁴⁵

At the end of the 1980s the model of church-based, integrated mission came under criticism. While it secured equality and a certain degree of mutuality, it did not provide enough space for reciprocity. It was felt to be unidirectional. In the common meetings, the partners from the Middle East had no voting power. It was especially the Swiss committee that pointed out that it is was not right that the ACO acted like “a financial father” to the churches of the Middle East. ⁴⁶ The Swiss pastors who sat on the ACO committee had gained ecumenical experience in the circles of the WCC and the CEVAA community. They realized that the ACO too could move to a deeper expression of Christian koinonia and used CEVAA as a blueprint to propose a new structure for the ACO. ⁴⁷

After five years of intensive negotiations, the ACO Fellowship was officially launched in Kessab in 1995. The Constitution was a distinctive attempt to overcome the donor-recipient relationship. It first formulated some essential tenets of the Christian faith that served as guiding principles for the Fellowship. It also included a carefully worded definition of Christian mission, which had been agreed upon by the European partners during a meeting at Crêt Bérard, Switzerland, in 1989. ⁴⁸ Out of these convictions flowed one single aim of the Fellowship: to “give a common witness to Jesus Christ” As means of this common witness it identified: “partnership,” “responsible sharing” and “common service.” ⁴⁹ Specific attention was paid to the role of personnel: “The Fellowship encourages the exchange of personnel. This exchange happens in all directions, from partner to partner.” In subsequent decades, this noble intention did not materialize, as fraternal workers continued to move from Europe to the Middle East but not vice versa. The resources and socio-political circumstances of the Middle Eastern partners did not permit this.

When it came to short-term visits the Fellowship lived up to the expectations that were formulated in 1995. The Constitution articulated this as follows: “The fellowship encourages mutual visits that may become opportunities for real meetings on spiritual, community, and personal levels. These shall be organized on all levels, in a creative way, so as to include lay people, youth and women.” A youth exchange meeting had already been pioneered in the 1980s. The Kessab meeting put in motion a cycle of similar exchange visits and retreats that profited all partner churches.

Reciprocity among the member churches of the ACO was a priority for the Fellowship. All were involved in giving and receiving. Perhaps the most powerful expression of this was the common basket and a common budget, which followed the CEVAA model. All member churches were expected to submit proposals for projects, including the European partners. This gave the Middle Eastern partners the opportunity to be involved in the mission of the churches in Europe.

Conclusion

The fellowship model in Protestant mission grew out of the new ecumenical missiology that developed in the mid-twentieth century. At the heart of this model was the concept of partnership, which was understood as equality, mutuality and reciprocity. As a trans-European organization that accompanied the survivors of the horrors of the Genocide, the ACO was well-positioned to absorb this missiology. It gradually appropriated the fellowship model, as it navigated the changing relations between European missions and Middle Eastern churches. In comparison with other consortia such as the CEVAA and the CWM, the ACO had only few members. Its small scale had a number of advantages: it kept bureaucratic processes limited to a minimum and guaranteed high involvement of the members. The ACO became an instrument for a long-term, faithful commitment of Oriental and Occidental churches in a common witness and service.

For all its best efforts the ACO was not able to achieve full symmetry in the relations between the Middle East and Europe. The European partners continued to be the mission agencies of the churches rather than the churches themselves. This made it difficult for the Middle Eastern partners to become truly involved in the grassroots work of their partner churches. The asymmetry was also evident in the flow of fraternal workers, which continued to be unidirectional rather than a flow “from everywhere to everywhere.” These factors were, however, not matters of principle, but were dictated by the continuing struggle and decline of the churches in the Middle East and the relative prosperity and peace of the churches in Europe, especially during the second half of the twentieth century. The churches of the Middle East were simply not in a position to contribute more than they did.

Amidst the various political, military and economic crises in the Middle East in the early twenty-first century, twentieth-century models of international cooperation seemed to have lost some of their effectiveness. The European Union, the United Nations and the Arab League were unable to foster strong diplomatic processes to prevent conflicts from escalating. In contrast, the ecumenical and missionary ties between Europe and the Middle East remained strong, as the continuing concern of both the WCC and the Vatican demonstrated. In this context, the fellowship model in Protestant mission proved a helpful tool for international encounter and cooperation, especially on a small scale, as was demonstrated by the ACO. It remains to be seen how this model will develop in an age of increasing economic pressure and political fragmentation.