In 1964, during the height of the North Yemen civil war between an Egyptian-supported Yemeni republic and the tribal armies of the deposed Yemeni Imam, a small group of Southern Baptist medical missionaries petitioned the Yemeni government for permission to open a clinic in Yemen. The Baptist mission in Jibla was unique in that most other Middle East missions were withdrawn during the 1950s due to increased nationalist and religious opposition to their continued presence. In this vein, the appearance of Southern Baptist missionaries in 1964 is all the more surprising and worthy of explanation. Using oral histories conducted with the original missionary members and missionary archival records, this conference paper focuses on the interaction between the missionaries, their U.S. donors, and the nationalist Yemeni government during a time when few Americans ventured into this remote corner of South Arabia. During the 1960s in particular, the U.S. maintained a limited diplomatic presence in Yemen and was willing to support any program that could spread their presence in the country with minimal financial and personnel investment. The U.S. consulate was even willing to lend logistical aid to a religious institution with a clear Evangelical motivation. The Baptist mission accepted this aid selectively and often grappled with its identity during a period of growing anti-American sentiments in the Middle East. What emerged during the first decades of the mission was a triangular identity and allegiance that comprised the interests of the young Yemeni nationalist government, the expectations of Southern Baptist missionaries and their donors, and American political interests in Yemen.

Beginning in 1819, American Protestants undertook a century-long effort to “civilize and Christianize” the Middle East. The movement lasted until the 1930s when it collapsed amidst the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and the religious turmoil of the Modernist-Fundamentalist debates. Hundreds of missionaries were sent to the region during this time to establish schools (to civilize) and churches (to Christianize) the local populations. This paper will assess the political and religious impact of these efforts and the extent to which their influence can still be seen today in the Middle East.

The question of conservative evangelical American Christian support for the state of Israel, undergirded by dispensational premillennial theology and Christian Zionism, has been widely discussed by scholars Stephen Sizer (2004), Victoria Clark (2007), and Stephen Spector (2009). These works link various Southern Baptist Convention leaders, such as former president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Richard Land, and former SBC president Adrian Rogers, to Christian Zionism and endorsement for the state of Israel. Absent from this literature, however, is an assessment of the perspectives of SBC missionaries living in the Middle East vis-à-vis the state of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians. My paper addresses the complicity of Southern Baptist missionary support for Israel by focusing on missionaries living in Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli invasion. This paper draws on ethnographic interviews and archival data, including correspondence and missionary reports, to demonstrate that the SBC missionaries denounced dispensational premillennialism and opposed official convention-wide attempts to issue a resolution in favor of Israel. Instead, these missionaries advocated a position of political neutrality to maintain a missionary presence in Lebanon (and the wider Middle East), all the while advocating on behalf of Palestinians in correspondence and official talks before SBC audiences. I argue that SBC missionaries’ pro-Palestinian leanings, combined with their amillennial theological position, pitted them against pro-Israeli members of the SBC in the United States and dispensational premillennialist Lebanese Baptists in Beirut. Caught betwixt and between two different groups of Baptists who adhered to dispensational premillennialism, but who did not necessarily agree on support for the state of Israel, the SBC missionaries living in Lebanon aimed to find a middle, politically neutral ground in order to act as peacemakers in the battle for Palestine. By closely examining the perspectives of SBC missionaries stationed in Lebanon regarding the state of Israel, this paper sheds new light on the complexity of SBC commitment to Christian Zionism and the rarely acknowledged pro-Palestinian stance adopted by some SBC missionaries during the 1980s.

Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated because Christianity is the religion of colonial Europe and acted as its arm in Asia and Africa. Although colonialism is a form of imperialism and both, in the imperial belief, are meant to bring liberation to human rights to suppressed people, the 20th century historians argue that the role played by missionaries is quite arguable. Some modern historians portray missionaries as arrogant agents for colonial powers, and some look at them as visible agents for change or as saints and humanitarian people who introduce change into the lives of people whom they encountered, if only because their relatively selfless interest in the region compared so favorably with the colonialism of the European powers. As far as Arabia and the Gulf is concerned, they came into contact with American mission activates from the late 19th century.The American presence was clear in the presence of Protestant missionaries. Starting from the early 1890s, Protestant missionaries had begun journeying from New England to the Holy Land and the land of Arabia with the aim of converting Muslims. Although failed almost entirely to win Muslim souls for Christ, and many suffered terribly and lost their lives, they were successful in generating change in the whole region. Their success in leaving a lasting impression in the region in the form of educational institutions and hospitals are remarkable. These activities earned them quite goodwill among local people and many still regard them as agents of change. This reputation for disinterested benevolence was reinforced by the fact that many missionaries had shown some affection for the culture of Arabia as shown in their reports and writings. In addition, almost all of them adopted either Arabic names or Arab culture as a mean to be acceptable form the local. The aim of this paper is to shed a light on the activities of American missionaries in the Arab Gulf in the post –colonial era and discuss the different aspects of mission work in the region. Although humanitarian and educational works were the most successful tool of American mission work in Arabia, other aspects of mission work were also vital for America . Issues such as US Government support for Missionaries and the way they viewed them as necessary tool to intervene in the region at a time when oil concessions where being granted, will also be explored.