Start ||| The Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness ||| EU News Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield

 European Witness

TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

Table of Contents 

OUR MISSIONARY INSTITUTIONS IN TURKEY

    SOME of our missionary schools and colleges in the Ottoman Empire are open for business, and reports of the Mission Board describe them as flourishing. They are either continuing or resuming operations after having suffered their share of pillage and massacre. The Board of Missions is making an earnest and vigorous campaign for raising more American money to be sent into Turkey for their upkeep.

    As a church member, as an ex-official who has been of service to those institutions on many occasions, I am obliged to state that I have serious doubts as to the wisdom of contributing further money to our religious establishments in the Ottoman Empire under present conditions. Before doing so the fact should be widely advertised in Turkey that their real object and that of the men and women working in them, is, by hook or crook, to convert the Turks to Christianity, which is considered to be a religion superior to Mohammedanism. American church people should be informed frankly that the prohibition of the teaching of Christianity or the holding of Christian religious exercises has been accepted by the Mission Board; and that no effort to convert Turks is countenanced by the Ottoman Government. But this is really no new thing, as 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.

    Soon after the entrance of the Khemalists into Smyrna a committee of Moslems visited one of our schools and expressed the most friendly sentiments to the teachers:

    "We hope you will keep right on with your good work and we promise you every support, only you understand that there is to be no more religious teaching."

    When I mentioned this to Mr. Jacobs, of the Y. M. C. A., he replied: "Where L— is and C—" mentioning two missionaries, "Christ will be taught somehow." But, if that is so, the Turks ought to know it. Any other course is not quite honest nor up to the standard of the old time Christians who testified in heathen lands and suffered martyrdom. Moreover, 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. Even though this is not true, it would not be difficult to create this impression.

Next Page

Previous chapter : THE MAKING OF MUSTAPHA KHEMAL

Next chapter : AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS UNDER TURKISH RULE

Back to Table of Contents * Read Excerpts only 

The Blight of Asia in Print