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George Horton's

TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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EXCERPTS FROM TURKEY - THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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Page 17

From OUR MISSIONARY INSTITUTIONS IN TURKEY

    CHRISTIAN proselytizing in Turkey has never been possible; the understanding that religious teaching is to be confined by the missionaries to the members of their own families and to teachers already of the Christian faith, is recent. [...]

    The Mohammedan’s contempt of the Christians is very easy to arouse and it would be a sad thing should it enter the mind of the Turks that some of the missionaries were willing to forego the teaching of their faith to save their buildings and their jobs. [...]

    The one thing that the missionary working in Turkey really fears is that some Turk may be converted. Should this occur a storm of fanaticism and violence would break upon his head that might close his school and end his career. It is not possible to convert Mohammedans in Turkey, nor even let them get wind that one is trying to do such a thing. In my thirty years of service in the Near East I have known of but one Moslem really converted. I remember distinctly the uneasiness, which his impending public confession caused among his teachers, imperiling, as it did, all their future activities. He was persuaded by the missionaries that the time was not ripe for him to proclaim his change of faith, but the Mohammedans became aware of it and promptly murdered him. According to the best information available it cost between forty-five and eighty million dollars to convert that unfortunate young man and he did not last long. The Moslem who renounces his religion suffers ostracism, forfeiture of his goods and practically commits suicide.

 

From AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS UNDER TURKISH RULE

    THE TEACHERS of Anatolia College are "scattered." This is doubtless a correct expression to apply to people, many of whom have suffered martyrdom and are in Heaven, along with many of the teachers of other colleges. Let us breathe the pious wish that they are not too widely "scattered" up there, as they will certainly long to get together and talk over their experiences. Continuing, the doctor says:

    "Just at the present time in the absence of regulations, the schools are hampered in their religious teaching. The Turks have given orders that there shall be no religious instruction and for the present there is nothing in the form of direct instruction during school hours and none of the students can be required to take Biblical studies or be present where religious instruction is given. Under present circumstances, it seems wise to those who are conducting schools in the Near East to comply with these regulations until a more substantial understanding can be reached and the educational system of the country be put on a sound basis"

    If by a "sound basis" the doctor means—and he can not mean anything else—the permission of the Turkish Government to convert Turks in Turkey to Christianity, he will wait a long time. The "sound basis," to arrive at which the Turks have been shedding rivers of Christian blood, has already been achieved. And in the meantime, some of the Christian missionaries have accepted to cease preaching Christ. It is about time for the cock to crow. Doctor Barton continues:

    "It is well known by Turks as well as by foreigners, that Turkey needs what these institutions can give, in order to enable her to organize her present administrations on a basis that would give her a worthy place in the sisterhood of nations."

    When Jesus appeared to the Eleven, as they sat at meat after the Crucifixion, He enjoined them: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But he that believeth not shall be damned."

    He said nothing about educating foreigners so that they could put their administrations on a sound basis. This is a laudable object but should be done and paid for by the foreigners themselves. [...]

    I am not in sympathy with the policy of certain missionaries with regard to Turkey, and I believe that the utter failure of Christianity to direct the policy of governments, as shown in this sad narrative, renders any campaign in Moslem countries a well-nigh hopeless task. I am convinced, also, that an examination of our private lives and conduct, will convince any one that the conversion of Americans is a more crying need than that of Mohammedans.

    What America needs, and what Europe needs, is a great spiritual awakening. Christ is all right. He is unutterably wonderful and lovely. Let us all unite under His banner, and then think about advancing into foreign lands. [...]

    This chapter can have no more appropriate ending than the following quotation from the pen of the Reverend Ralph Harlow, formerly Missionary to Turkey, and now Professor of Biblical Literature and Comparative Religion at Smith College, Massachusetts: [...]

    "For five hundred years, the Christians of Asia Minor have been the objects of persecution, while Christian civilization has stood by and looked on. In more recent years the barbarity of that persecution has shocked the conscience of humanity. In the eighties came the Bulgarian horrors; in the nineties came the Armenian atrocities; in 1909 Adana ran red with the blood of slaughtered thousands and echoed to the wail of countless women."

    "In each case the Turk was restored to power; in each case lengthy promises of good conduct to his Christian subjects were extracted."

    "From 1915 to 1918 came that series of atrocities such as the world of our day had hardly the emotions and conscience to comprehend, even amid the horror of the other cruelties of those other years. Those of us who were in the land at that time, who saw these things with our own eyes, have never told half of the truth of those dark hours. The Allied nations swore by all that was sacred, by the crosses of their fallen dead, that these things should not again be possible. One million five hundred thousand is a conservative estimate of the lives struck down in lust and torture. America sent in workers and dollars to the relief of the starving and tattered fragments of the people who survived the blast."

    "The man most responsible for all this horror was Talaat Bey. What is the attitude of the government of Mustapha Khemal to Talaat and his methods? When Talaat died the government at Angora held a service in his honor. The Yeni gun, the official organ of the Nationalist party, came out with great mourning bands of black. In the editorial were these sentences: ‘Talaat wrote the most glorious pages in Turkish history. Let the eyes that do not weep become blind. Let the heart that does not ache cease to beat.’ Khemal has followed in the footsteps of Talaat. Massacres, deportations, cruelty, outrage and terror, have marked the reign of the Nationalist government. The Smyrna tragedy has taken place in hundreds of villages on a smaller scale. The innocence of childhood, the sacredness of womanhood, the tears of mothers, the cries of the helpless, make no appeal at all to the armies or the courts of this government."

 

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