Focusing on Quaker missionary activity in Ramallah from 1869 to 1939, this paper examines the dynamic interactions between American Christian missionaries and residents of Ramallah and surrounding villages during the Ottoman and British mandate periods. Using memoirs, oral histories, and archival sources including private letters and diaries, this paper argues that the Quakers’ relative successes in establishing educational and medical services, as well as a permanent Meeting House (church), resulted from their failure to convert a significant number of Palestinian families. Despite pressure from their funders in the United States, Quakers in Ramallah quickly realized that conversions would be limited. Instead, they devoted their attention to spreading American social and domestic practices and values through formal education. Quakers provide a useful case study for considering missionary encounters in the Ottoman and colonial periods because of their egalitarian style of worship, focus on social justice, aversion to overt proselytizing, as well as some superficial similarities to Islam (such as prohibiting alcohol), all of which set them apart from other missionaries. Their focus on tolerance and the ‘inner light,’ rather than outward official conversion, made them less threatening to entrenched Orthodox Christian and Muslim authorities. Quakers focused more on spreading Anglo-Saxon norms than religion, which enabled them to fit in with the established practices of religious co-existence found in Ramallah during the Ottoman era. While Quakers encountered pockets of resistance, many Greek Orthodox and some Muslims in Ramallah competed for the opportunity to educate their children in Quaker schools. By the turn of the twentieth century, Quakers were running more than a dozen day schools and spots in their boarding schools were highly coveted. The evolution of these institutions is a story of resistance, cooperation, and eventual cooptation that illuminates some of the complex dynamics between missionaries and their intended converts.