Maude Cary
THE MUSLIM WORLD:
MISSION FIELD IN THE DESERT
The first significant Christian mission to the Muslims was conducted in the thirteenth century by Raymond Lull, who was almost alone among Christians in his concern to evangelize Muslims rather than fight them. And in the centuries following, according to Stephen Neill, the “Muslim lands” were “neglected by Christian missions in comparison with more productive fields.” That changed in the late nineteenth century, a period “marked by the beginning of a real encounter between the faith of Jesus Christ and the faith of Mohammed.”1 Henry Martyn’s short tenure among Muslims was followed decades later by fellow Anglicans. Other denominations hesitantly became involved, but it was Samuel Zwemer, a student volunteer initially without denominational support, who more than any other individual coordinated Muslim missionary efforts and sought to draw the attention of other evangelicals to the Muslim population and its need for Christ.
Several models have been used in the difficult challenge of evangelizing Muslims, as outlined by John Mark Terry in a historical study of this topic. Henry Martyn’s ministry, according to Terry, represents the confrontational approach used by Raymond Lull and many of the early Protestant missionaries to Muslims. They arranged public debates and published polemical literature. “This approach is not widely used today,” says Terry. “First, most Muslim countries do not allow it. Those earlier missionaries often worked under the protection of colonial governments. Second, today’s missionaries prefer to emphasize the positive nature of the gospel, rather than expose objectionable elements in Islam. Finally, this method is not usually successful. Occasionally, a Muslim intellectual is convinced, but the debates do not move the masses.”2
The second model Terry cites is the traditional evangelical model, of which Zwemer is a representative—though initially he was more polemical and confrontational. In The Disintegration of Islam (1915) and Mohammed or Christ (1916), he argued that Muslim converts must completely reject Islam—that there must be a “radical displacement” of the religion. With time, however, he developed a softer approach. “Zwemer in later years advocated witnessing to individuals and small groups. He advised his students to engage in friendship evangelism. He believed the human personality was the best bridge for conveying the gospel.”3 The same could certainly be said for Martyn, but Zwemer’s writing is more indicative of this second model.
The three remaining models suggested by Terry are institutional, dialogical, and contextual; as is true with the first two, many missionaries used more than one model. By the early twentieth century, many mission societies believed that the only way to make inroads into the world of Islam was through medical or educational centers, the institutional model. The dialogical model—that of emphasizing respectful interaction between the missionary and the Muslim—has always been used, but it was particularly representative of the ministry of Temple Gairdner, and even more so by Kenneth Cragg. And finally, the contextualization model, whereby missionaries seek to enter the culture of Islam in the least offensive way possible, “calls for changes in missionary lifestyle, worship forms, theological terms, and strategy.”4
While the contextualization model would appear on the surface to be the least offensive, it is considered by many to be a less-than-honest means of making Christianity more acceptable to unwary Muslims. In the final analysis, none of these models offered the solution to penetrating the very difficult field of Islam. Among the reasons for this, according to J. Dudley Woodberry, are sociological factors of close family and community ties, theological issues (that include an outright Islamic rejection of trinitarian claims), political issues (the inseparability of religion and politics in Islam), and finally, the association of Christianity with Western culture.5
Despite the obstacles, the mission outreach grew steadily from the mid-nineteenth century until the late decades of the twentieth century, by which time it had become the last frontier, so to speak, in evangelical missions. With the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, however, the future for Muslim outreach in many areas of the world appeared more grim than ever before.
It is sometimes easy to imagine that the interest in Islam and the philosophical debates that encompass that religion are of recent origin, passed down to our own generation. But Islam was a much-debated topic in nineteenth-century Victorian times—and not only in missionary circles. In England there were two main schools of thought, both claiming Christian foundations. Charles Foster (1787–1871), an Anglican minister, represents the position that was considerably more favorable toward Islam than the other side, which saw little if anything that was positive about the religion. Foster’s book, Mahometanism Unveiled, was considered by many to be an authority on the topic, though many Christians strongly questioned his biblical and theological underpinnings. His interpretation was rooted in the story of Abraham and his two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Foster emphasized that the covenant with Ishmael’s lineage, though often ignored, carried material as well as spiritual blessings. Thus, Islam should be viewed as opening the way for the gospel. He criticized Christians who held Mohammed to the standard of Christ—a standard he did not know. Rather, insisted Foster, he should be viewed alongside Moses and seen as one who also sought to have a positive impact on morality. Foster “believed that Islam was gradually converging toward Christianity … so that eventually Isaac and Ishmael would be reunited.”6
Foster’s “infidel theory” was harshly criticized by most supporters of Christian missions. One critic fumed that if Muslims were “truly entitled to the pedigree and praise bestowed it by Mr. Foster … our societies ought to … [print] cheap Korans [and send] missionary Moulahs to the heathen.”7 These critics rejected this “conciliatory” school of thought in favor of the “confrontational” position—though both offered reputable scholarship on Islam.
Sir William Muir (1819–1905), principal at Edinburgh and author of Life of Mahomet (1861), was representative of the confrontational school. One observer notes:
In his 1845 review of Foster’s book, Muir not only rejected the view that Islam contained any spiritual value but also the idea that it prepared the way for the reception of Christian faith. Instead, it presented an “impenetrable barrier … which effectively excludes every glimmering of the true light.” Muhammad, too, should be judged not against Moses, but against Christ and so judged stands condemned: his cruelty, craft, artifice, and licentiousness outweigh his urbanity, loyalty, moderation, and magnanimity…. Muir wrote, “The Islam of today is substantially the Islam we have seen throughout history. Swathed in the bands of the Koran, the Moslem faith, unlike the Christian, is powerless to adapt to varying time and place, to keep pace with the march of humanity, direct and purify the social life and elevate mankind…. Among missionaries, Muir’s work was thought definitive.8
During the Victorian era, Muir represented the school of thought that viewed Christianity in opposition to the very threatening faith of Islam. The battle was being waged both between Christians of opposing views and between two powerful religions. Muir identified with Henry Martyn, whom he called “champion of England’s honour” in first entering the “sacred contest.”9
Henry Martyn is sometimes described as the pioneer Protestant missionary to Muslims—though as a chaplain with the East India Company assigned to India, he was not technically a missionary. Yet it was his intention, when he arrived in India in 1806, not only to serve as a spiritual counselor to employees of the company but also to minister to Indian nationals—though he assumed those native people would be Hindus. But his focus quickly turned to Muslims and their lack of Scripture translations. He recognized his own lack of understanding and confessed that he was reading “everything I can pick up about the Mohammedans.” Indeed, he had gone to India “without having first read a single word of the Koran.”10 In many ways his company ties served him well. Missionaries were forced out of the country and harassed in other ways, but he was permitted far greater freedom.
Martyn was born in Cornwall, England, in 1781. His father was a merchant who provided well for his gifted child. After Martyn completed his formal training, he went on to Cambridge, where he graduated with top honors in mathematics. Though he had turned away from God during his youth, the death of his father and the influence of friends and family, as well as the writings of David Brainerd, led to a spiritual transformation and a vision for missions.
Like Brainerd, Martyn spent many hours each day in prayer and devotion to God: “I thought of David Brainerd and ardently desired his devotedness to God. I feel my heart knit to this dear man. I long to be like him. Let me forget the world and be swallowed up in a desire to glorify God.” In his effort to glorify God, Martyn began practicing self-denial, which included eating his breakfast and reading while “standing at a distance from the fire though the thermometer was at freezing point.”11
Celibacy was another aspect of his self-denial. He was thankful he was “delivered from all desires for the comforts of married life,” preferring a “single life in which are much greater opportunities for heavenly mindedness.” But that was before he fell helplessly in love with Lydia Grenfell, his cousin’s sister-in-law, who was six years older than he. It was this “idolatrous affection” that more than anything else distracted him from his single-minded goal of following in the footsteps of Brainerd: “I felt too plainly that I loved her passionately. The direct opposition of this to my devotedness to God in the missionary way excited no small tumult in my mind.” Lydia had captured his heart. He could not stop thinking about her, waking in the night with his “mind full of her.”12
Martyn would not have been the first (nor the last) to have been deterred from foreign missions by romance, but though Lydia consumed his thoughts, he refused to be turned aside from his spiritual commitment. He was convinced that he could more effectively serve God unencumbered by marriage, and it was highly doubtful whether Lydia would have accompanied him to a foreign land anyway. He spent most of a year making plans to sail to India, all the while pining over Lydia but claiming to be “cheerfully resigned to do the will of God and to forego the earthly joy” of marriage.13
In 1803 Martyn was ordained as a curate, and two years later as an Anglican priest, and then was appointed a chaplain to the East India Company. He was well aware of the scorn this commercial company had for missionaries. The minutes of a directors’ meeting are anything but subtle: “The sending of missionaries into our eastern possessions is the maddest, most extravagant and most unwarrantable project … ever proposed by an enthusiastic lunatic.”14
In the summer of 1805 he bade farewell to Lydia and sailed for India. On his arrival he met William Carey and the other Serampore missionaries, who immediately recognized his brilliance and encouraged him to do Bible translation work. As a chaplain, his main responsibilities were to the employees and families of the East India Company; but his heart was in missions, and he was eager to begin translation work. For four years he served at military posts, preaching to both Europeans and Indians, establishing schools, and at the same time working on translations of the New Testament into Urdu and later into Persian and Arabic. His closest assistant was Nathaniel Sabat, a Muslim convert.
Martyn had a profound confidence in Scripture that was expressed with passion—as few missionaries and Bible translators before or since have had. “Henry Martyn’s implicit faith was that once readers had the Christian page before their eyes, the reading mind would understand,” writes Kenneth Cragg. “For him, the translator’s work—given the right diligence in seeking out the ‘conveyance’ of the Word—would turn the key of comprehension…. He was sure that … the text would be its own perfect advocate.” His devotion to this task is perhaps best summed up in his prayer before the open Greek New Testament: “Tell me where … I may find India.” He was so assured of the power of the translated text that, with its publication, he believed “rival Scriptures” would be set aside—that “the Qur’an would pale into insignificance.”15
His vision, however, was not realized. Even while he worked with his translation helpers, he encountered hostility. Their being paid out of his private funds did not lessen their disdain for the work. Of one of them, he wrote: “He said with dreadful bitterness and contempt that after the present generation … a set of fools would perhaps be born such as the Gospel required … who would believe that God is a man and man is God…. He sometimes cuts me to the very soul.” He conceded at times that doctrinal debates were often of little use—that the gospel must be transmitted through proclamation and through demonstration of Christ’s love: “I wish a spirit of enquiry may be excited,” he wrote, “but I lay not much stress upon clear arguments. The work of God is seldom wrought this way.”16
Henry Martyn, Bible translator in India and Persia.
Martyn’s translation work progressed, but the scorching temperatures of Central India took a toll on his already frail health. In 1810, with his Urdu New Testament ready for the printer, he left on a sea voyage to Persia, hoping to restore his health and at the same time revise his Persian and Arabic translations. Here he wrote tracts that set the stage for debates with Muslim scholars. And, with improved health, he continued translation work alongside some of the most recognized scholars in Persia. But soon his condition again deteriorated along with his optimism. “What surprises me,” he wrote, “is the change of views I have here from what I had in England. There my heart expanded with hope and joy at the prospect of the speedy conversion of the heathen. But here the sight of the apparent impossibility requires a strong faith to support the spirits.”17
Martyn’s Bible translation work was widely known and even praised by some unlikely sources. When the British ambassador presented a copy of the New Testament to the Shah, he praised the work as one “in a style most befitting sacred books” and “a source of pleasure.”18
By 1812 he determined that an overland trip to England was his only hope of regaining his health, and it would also be an opportunity for him to renew his relationship with Lydia. Although she had rejected his invitations to come to India and marry him, he longed to see her again and to tell her in person what he had been saying in letters for the past six years. But the opportunity never came. He died in Asia Minor in the fall of 1812, at thirty-one years of age. When he had first arrived in India, he had written in his diary, “Now, let me burn out for God.”That he did.
The name most associated with Protestant missions to Muslims is that of Samuel Zwemer. Sometimes referred to as the “Apostle to Islam,” Zwemer more than anyone else put the Muslim world on the map. He was born near Holland, Michigan, in 1867, the thirteenth of fifteen children. His father was a Reformed Church pastor, and it seemed natural for Samuel as he was growing up that he should enter Christian service. Four of his five surviving brothers entered the ministry, and his sister, Nellie Zwemer, spent forty years as a missionary to China. During his senior year at Hope College, while listening to the persuasive preaching of Robert Wilder (who was on tour recruiting student volunteers), he and five of his seven classmates volunteered for foreign missionary service.
After seminary studies and medical training, Zwemer and a fellow seminarian, James Cantine, offered themselves to the Reformed Board to serve in the Arab world. They were turned down, however, because of the prevalent belief that such a mission would be “impractical.” Undaunted, the enthusiastic pair formed their own mission, the American Arabian Mission, and began raising support, Zwemer traveling some four thousand miles visiting churches in the West, while Cantine traveled in the East. Their method of deputation was unique. Rather than appealing for funds for themselves, Zwemer requested support for Cantine, and Cantine for Zwemer. The biggest obstacle was the “lethargy of the pastors,” wrote Zwemer.19
By 1889 Cantine’s tour was over and he sailed for Arabia, with Zwemer following in 1890. Their determination and dedication did not go unnoticed by their church leaders. In 1894 the mission was invited to become incorporated into the Reformed Church in America. The slow progress and opposition Zwemer faced during the early years of his ministry in the Persian Gulf region did not discourage him but only verified what he had anticipated. Initially, he and Cantine lived with an Anglican missionary couple, but when the Anglican couple was relocated, they were on their own, except for a young Syrian convert who had come to work with them. His untimely death less than six months after he arrived was a painful setback to the work.
In 1895, after five lonely years as a single missionary, Zwemer began courting Amy Wiles, a missionary nurse from England sponsored by the Church Missionary Society of the Anglican Church. Their plans for marriage, however, were impeded by the Church Missionary Society’s “very strict rules about their young lady missionaries having gentlemen friends.”According to Zwemer’s biographer, the mission “did not surrender their prize without something of a struggle. As is the custom with most Societies, a portion of transportation cost must be refunded if a new person does not remain a certain time on the field. It was necessary to meet this rule, so … Samuel Zwemer purchased his wife in true oriental fashion.”20
After sailing to the United States for furlough in 1897, the Zwemers returned to the Persian Gulf to work among the Muslims on the island of Bahrein. They distributed literature and conducted evangelism in public thoroughfares and in private homes, but rarely did they witness a positive response. Living conditions further complicated efforts for a successful ministry. In an age before air conditioning, the heat was almost unbearable—“107 in the coolest part of the veranda.” Personal tragedy also interrupted the work. In July of 1904, the Zwemers’ two little daughters, ages four and seven, died within eight days of each other. Despite the pain and hardship, Zwemer was content in his ministry, and he could look back on this period some fifty years later and say, “The sheer joy of it all comes back. Gladly would I do it all over again.”21
By 1905 Zwemer had established four stations, and though they were few in number, the converts showed unusual courage in professing their faith. In that year the Zwemers returned to the United States, and, though they did not know it at the time, it would mark the end of their pioneer missionary work. Back in the United States, Zwemer traveled and spoke in behalf of missions to the Muslims and aggressively raised funds. Then in 1906 he served as chairman of the first general missionary conference on Islam that was convened in Cairo.
While in the United States, he accepted a call to become the traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement, a position that suited him well. At the same time, he served as field secretary for the Reformed Board of Foreign Missions, so that his time was taken up in traveling and speaking. Unlike his work with the Muslims, this work elicited an enthusiastic response, and many students responded to his appeals for missionaries. Nevertheless, he was eager to go back to his position in Arabia. In 1910, following the Edinburgh Missionary Conference and a return trip to America, he sailed for Bahrein to continue his work.
Zwemer’s wife and two youngest children accompanied him back to the Gulf region, but not to remain long. Living arrangements for the two older children back home had not been satisfactory, nor had the education of the two younger children on the field. Thus, Amy returned to the United States to oversee the family matters, a situation that placed the family, as Zwemer described, on “three horns of a dilemma”—a problem with no real solution. “If the wife went home with the children, some would remark that the missionary did not love his wife to let her go like that. If the children were left in the homeland, they were thought to be neglected by their parents. If husband and wife both spent more than usual furlough time at home, they would be accused of neglecting the work on the field.”22
Back on the field, Zwemer found it difficult to reestablish himself in the work. His leadership abilities were in great demand, and conference planning and speaking engagements frequently called him away from his post. Then in 1912 he received a call from the United Presbyterian Mission in Egypt, requesting that he relocate in Cairo and coordinate the missionary work to the entire Islamic world. The Nile Mission Press, known for its literature distribution to Muslims, also joined in the call, and so did the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and the American University of Cairo. The decision was clear: Zwemer accepted the call.
In Cairo he encountered a much more open society, where educated young adults were eager to listen to this impressive missionary intellectual from the West. He spent hours each week on university campuses and, according to Sherwood Eddy, even “gained access to the leaders of the proud and influential Muslim University El Azhar.” On some occasions he conducted meetings with as many as two thousand Muslims present, but actual conversions were rare, and opposition remained intense. Once he was forced to leave Cairo on the grounds that he had illegally distributed tracts among university students, but the incident contributed to the conversion of one of those students. An infuriated professor tore to bits one of his tracts in front of his class, and a student, curious as to why a small leaflet should create such an outrage, later picked up the fragments and pieced them together. Subsequently, he was converted to Christianity.
During his first year in Cairo, Zwemer was joined by William Borden, a young student volunteer from Yale who had signed the “Princeton Pledge” as a result of his preaching. Borden’s humility and eagerness to pass out tracts as he rode through the teeming Cairo streets on his bicycle belied the fact that he had been born into wealth and was an heir to the vast Borden fortune. Before venturing to the mission field he had given hundreds of thousands of dollars to various Christian organizations, while at the same time denying himself a car—“an unjustifiable luxury.” His single-minded goal was to serve out his life as a missionary. That he did, though his term was short. After four months in Cairo he died following an attack of spinal meningitis.
Although his converts were few, Zwemer’s greatest contribution to missions was that of stirring Christians to the need for evangelism among Muslims.
For seventeen years Zwemer made Cairo his headquarters, and from there he traveled all over the world, participating in conferences, raising funds, and establishing work among Muslims in India, China, Southeast Asia, and South Africa. His evangelistic methods were a combination of traditional confrontational interaction and the more contemporary concept of presenting the love of Christ that was characteristic of the student volunteers. Although his converts were few—probably less than a dozen during his nearly forty years of service—his greatest contribution to missions was that of stirring Christians to the need for evangelism among Muslims.
In 1918 he was asked to join the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary, but he believed the urgency of his work in Cairo was too great. In 1929 his work was well established, and when a call again came from Princeton, he was able to leave with good conscience and to begin a new career as Professor of History of Religion and Christian Missions, where he continued until 1937. He spent his “retirement” years teaching at the Biblical Seminary of New York and Nyack Missionary Training Institute.
During his teaching career he continued speaking and writing. For forty years he edited the Moslem World, and he wrote hundreds of tracts and dozens of books. To the very end he was filled with “nervous energy.” A traveling companion once glumly recounted his overnight stay with him: “He could not stay in bed for more than half an hour at a time … for then, on would go the light, Zwemer would get out of bed, get some paper and a pencil, write a few sentences and then again to bed. When my eye-lids would get heavy again, up would come Zwemer, on again the light, and another few notes…. Then off to bed again.”23
Throughout his life, Zwemer faced tragedy and hardship. He mourned the deaths of his little daughters, of close associates, and of two wives (his first in 1937, and his second in 1950). Yet he remained remarkably content and optimistic, and in many ways his personality was uniquely suited to his years of toil in the barren ground of the Islamic world. “A lifelong student of Islam,” writes Alan Neely, “he never ceased to contend for the finality of Christ.”24
William Henry Temple Gairdner, a contemporary of Samuel Zwemer and probably the most noted British missionary to the Muslim world in the early twentieth century, was born and raised in Scotland. His father was a professor of medicine at Glasgow University; his mother, “Lady Gairdner,” an “elegant” and “distinguished” woman. The religious environment in his home was not what could be described as evangelical, but after he enrolled at Oxford University, his life began to change. There he encountered the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, a group considered fanatical by most students. He had hoped he could participate as a “silent” witness, but there was no such option. Writing to his family he confessed his struggles:
I know that in Oxford one is thought a mild type of imbecile if one displays any personal enthusiasm for the cause that is one day to conquer the world…. I do feel that at the risk of being thought a prig or a fanatic one must hang out one’s colours…. It is hard, I find it awfully so here; but it will be always hard whatever our sphere of life, and yet it will be always our business…. I am asked, “Are you better than those here, that you speak to them?” Nay, but Christ is better—I do not speak of myself but of Him.25
Gairdner did not fit the evangelical mold in many respects and was accused by some of the evangelical students of not being fully one with them. He was open-minded on matters of biblical criticism, and he “took a strong line” on the destination of the lost and refused to believe in any “physical flames of everlasting fire.” His passion for overseas missions was further inspired by two Americans, John R. Mott and Robert Speer, who were touring England as representatives of the Student Volunteer Movement. Of one of the meetings, he wrote in his diary: “Holy Communion … deep impression of new era…. Evening, Speer simply God-inspired. ‘Evangelization of the World in this Generation.’ Never heard anything like it.”26
His decision to serve as a missionary in Cairo—not just as a missionary, but worse than that as a missionary to Muslims—was troubling to both friends and family as a waste of a brilliant mind. Speaking for others, one friend lamented that they “deplored his devoting his life to a mission to educated Mohammedans—spending years of labour, we hear, in making one proselyte.” In Cairo, Gairdner was met by friends who were already involved in ministry, and he learned the language well enough to become involved in teaching in less than a year. And despite his friends’ dire predictions, he made more than one “proselyte” during that very early time of ministry. But, as he would discover later on many occasions, the joy of winning converts could quickly turn to heartbreak: “It was a story only too familiar to those who know the Near East…. Two members of the Church gave way…. Both made public recantations of Christianity for Islam, as usual accompanied with slanders concerning the leaders of the Church they left. It darkened all the sky for Gairdner. He could not rest for thinking of the failure of these souls, of the failure of the Church to hold them.”27
Reflecting on the situation, Gairdner wrote: “I now begin for the first time to see that the character of Judas Iscariot is possible and human.” This was his first such experience, though certainly not his last. It had a deep and personal impact on him, as he confessed to the young woman to whom he was engaged to be married:
I seem to have left the uncloudiness, the boyhood of life behind me forever, and have entered into what I feel to be a sadder life…. For I look ahead, darling, and I see the same thing in front—this apparently hopeless effort to cope with Islam, the weariness of the climate and the sense of duties left untouched, and above all, these terrible disappointments. That’s the life I’ve chosen; that’s the life—God help me—I’ve asked you to come and share.28
Gairdner and Margaret Mitchell were married in Nazareth in the fall of 1902. She had been assigned to conduct mission work in India, but after their engagement was reassigned to a location where she could easily study Arabic. After their marriage, they made their home in Cairo—a home that would include their four children and become a center for mission activity. Both Temple and Margaret were musicians; he specialized on the keyboard, and she on the violin. They hosted concerts for Christians and Muslims alike. Although Gairdner was a classical musician, he “hoped for the day when the Church would discover and use the beauty of her own Eastern airs.” Among missionaries, he was ahead of his time. “The reward that he saw in his lifetime,” writes Constance Padwick, “was to have some member of his congregation (once a Moslem) ring him up begging that a best beloved Eastern tune of his collection might be sung in Church next Sunday, or to hear the utterly pure beauty of a few girls’ voices as they sang on Good Friday one of his haunting Eastern airs.”29
Gairdner’s mission activities as a teacher and evangelist and writer were diverse—activities that came together in his role as a Christian apologist to Islam. Through the course of his ministry, his “approach to Muslims shifted from polemics to apologetics,” writes James Tebbe, “which meant, if not a more positive view of things Islamic, at least an approach that was less confrontational.” In his survey of Christian literature written for Muslims, Gairdner had found it to be very argumentative—an insight that prompted him “to move away from an attack on Islam to a focus on explaining to Muslims problems they faced with various Christian beliefs.” But he continued to believe that Christian missions would always have a “decisive ‘quarrel’ with Islam, which irenic sensitivity must refine but could in no way loyally evade.” For him, there was one motive for evangelism: “All ‘debate’ or ‘dialogue’ was with intent to save, not crudely to score, nor idly to compare, nor cosily to converse.”30
“We need the song note in our message to Moslems,” he insisted, “not the dry cracked note of disputation, but the song note of joyous witness [and] tender invitation.” The song note was evident in his evangelism and apologetics through his artistic endeavors. He was more than a musician. He wrote and directed dramas, most of which were performed in schools and hospitals. His greatest production was “Joseph and his Brothers, an Old Testament Passion Play,” which was performed five times in a Cairo church and viewed by some seventeen hundred people. “But suddenly at the height of this creative joy,” writes Padwick, “came a short, sharp arrest.” Word came from his mission board, concerned that “the idea of plays in church should prove too shocking to supporters of the Society and money gifts should be lost.”31
One of the most difficult problems Gairdner faced during his nearly three decades of ministry was lack of help. He was convinced that the progress being made in Cairo would spur excitement and would result in the assignment of more workers to the area. With the death of his longtime partner Douglas Thornton, he lost not only a dear friend but also half of his publishing and ministry team. There were many inquirers, but no time to follow up. He was trained to be a missionary, but much of his time was consumed with routine office work. The Church Missionary Society had given him a year to study Islam with some of the best scholars in the world, but when he returned to Cairo he was so inundated with work that he had no time to publish his insights or pursue his studies any further. “With all my heart,” he lamented, “I could have gone in for the research work, and I feel that I might have done some decent work in it.” But, writes Padwick, “the dream was dead.”32
Throughout his tenure as a missionary in Cairo, Gairdner sought to bring unity in the church and diffuse the opposition among Muslims. He was distressed by the lack of goodwill among Christians—“sect upon sect, each more intolerant than its neighbour, each practically excommunicating the others in the name of the One Lord—and that in the face of an Islam which loathes all alike.” Unlike most missionaries to Egypt, he had good relations with Coptic Christians, but he found precious few among them who had a heart for evangelism. He longed for the day “when there shall emerge a reformed Orthodox Coptic Church, showing at last those two lost ‘notes’ of a Church—evangelical militancy and Catholicity.”33
The most difficult conflict for Gairdner, however, was that which arose within his small group of converts. In 1914 “an extraordinary outburst of Moslem opposition” erupted, “quite unlike any we have before experienced.” The outburst was well organized and financed, and it was difficult to counteract. “At that very hour of danger, I became aware of some serious weakness in our own ranks,” he later wrote. “For a fortnight I suffered more than I can tell you—days sick with anxiety and evil news and rumours and restless, dreaming nights.” This was the Easter season, and he referred to the time as “Black Holy Week.” He gathered the group together and went to the desert where there was a cave. There he admonished them with the words of Paul that they should “deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of Jesus Christ”:
We invoked the divine power. There was a rallying, and only one or two fell away. We breathed again and are now praying for and believing for the manifestation of divine power…. We’re not the first to cope with this. The men who really had a hard time were the people in the first centuries when there was no Church history. We have only to look up the Early Fathers to see that our troubles have been survived before. Blessed be God for History!34
Gairdner died in 1928 at age fifty-five after suffering for several months from a lung disease. Surviving were his wife and four children and the ministry in Cairo that continued on without its extraordinary leader. He left behind a legacy of printed materials that were used and improved upon in the decades that followed. But more than that, he left behind a zeal for Muslim outreach that fueled mission enthusiasm in his own Anglican Church and beyond.
Constance Padwick began working with Temple Gairdner in Cairo in 1916, and after his death, having previously written a biography of Henry Martyn, she wrote a biography of him. Padwick was a missiologist—a mission strategist—and she was convinced that biography was the most effective means of presenting not only inspiring and sacrificial lives but also mission methods and theories that would challenge others to become involved in Muslim missions. She had a broad understanding and involvement with Islam from her experience in Egypt and later in Palestine, Sudan, and Turkey.
Born and raised in Sussex, England, in 1886, Padwick was active in the Student Volunteer Movement as a youth. But in her mid-twenties she visited Palestine, and out of that experience came her lifelong concern for the Muslim world. Her desire to serve abroad was initially denied due to health problems. For five years she worked in the home office of the Church Missionary Society, and finally, after she had proven herself on a short-term assignment, the CMS agreed to sponsor her as a missionary—a career that extended over most of four decades.
Padwick’s primary ministry involved writing. In addition to editing Orient and Occident (thus relieving Temple Gairdner of that enormous task), she wrote a wide variety of materials for Muslims. But she was far more than a writer: she was also an effective organizer. She “inspired and became the energetic mainspring of the Central Literature Committee for Muslims,” which sought to coordinate the scattered mission efforts to provide literature for Muslims.35 The director of the CMS in Africa praised the “remarkable ventures in the field of literature which owe so much to the genius of Temple Gairdner and Constance Padwick.” Like Gairdner, she was critical of much of the existing literature—literature that was often “filled with the spirit of disputation rather than of worship and love, and apt to hammer rather than to woo and win.”36
In addition to writing biographies and literature for Muslims, Padwick wrote for Christians in the West. She lamented that the church had too long ignored the Islamic world. The all-pervasive theme that runs through her writing is that it is an obligation of the church to reach out to Muslims. There were many, however, who believed that the Islamic world was essentially a lost cause. She did not sidestep the issue: “Can it be right, when in mass movement areas souls are pressing into the Kingdom, for when we cannot find shepherds,” she asked, “can it be right in these circumstances to send men and women to an Islam that consistently rejects their message?” Her response was unequivocal and without apology:
The church through long centuries showed not only the negative of neglect but the positive of hostility and retaliation. Therefore are we bounden (as members of that Church of Christ whose communion and solidarity is not limited to those contemporary with us on earth) to go, not in superiority but in penitent love to the Muslim, to make what loving reparation is allowed us to the heart of our forgiving Lord and to the unforgiving Muslim world. And this duty lies upon us, inescapable, whatever are the opportunities of joyful service elsewhere.37
Padwick’s vision was to develop a mission strategy that would effectively resonate with Muslims. Others before her had held high that same vision, but primarily with an apologetical approach. She emphasized a relational approach, though other missionaries had emphasized that as well. One proponent of this principle was Agnes De Selincourt, who gave an impassioned address at the second mission conference on Islam in 1911 in Lucknow. De Selincourt particularly challenged women missionaries to reach out to upper-class Muslim women:
We need to give a larger place in our missionary plans to what has been well termed the Ministry of Friendship. It means infinite expenditure of time and sympathy and love to place ourselves alongside of these women, to enter into their lives, to share their aspirations in so far as these are rightful; it means willingness also to lay ourselves open to not a few snubs and repulses. In many ways it is harder than contact with the poorer classes, who often quickly and gratefully respond, and do not so speedily pull us up by their hot resentment the instant we show the cloven hoof of our fancied superiority and behave as if we had come to India to “work among them,” rather to love them and seek their friendship.38
As she studied Islam and mission outreach to Muslims, Padwick became convinced that one of the most effective means of building bridges between Christianity and Islam was through a common spirituality. Her work that best offers insights into this realm is Muslim Devotions. It is a compilation of Islamic devotional writings, the understanding of which she believed was essential in the task of communicating the gospel with Muslims.
Much of Padwick’s mission strategy was conveyed through her biographical works. In addition to her full-length biographies of Henry Martyn and Temple Gairdner, she wrote a lengthy biography of Lyman MacCallum, entitled Call to Istanbul. Here she emphasized what she believed to be the very foundation of effective ministry. In the introduction, she wrote: “The significance of Lyman MacCallum’s life, and the reason why it should be recorded, lies in his behaviour…. He differed radically from most of the missionaries … in that he did not feel, and indeed was essentially not, a foreigner among the Turks.” She quoted a testimonial to him from a Muslim Turk—a testimony that she hoped would stand as a model for all missionaries: “I came to know one Christian who did away with the chasm which separated us from all Christians. He filled it in completely and made the path absolutely level. I have tested him for years. I came to believe that if there could be one such real Christian, there must be many more. I love him and in his person loved all Christians.”39
The title of one of Padwick’s many articles was “Lilias Trotter of Algiers.” Lilias Trotter (1853–1928) was a contemporary of Padwick’s—one she admired greatly. Like Padwick, Trotter had been a mission society reject due to her ill health, but she refused to be hindered in her calling to reach Muslims with the gospel, despite the temptation to pursue her lifelong love of art. Raised in an affluent home in London, she traveled to Venice where she studied under the noted artist John Ruskin. But she was convinced that her talent was one she must sacrifice for her call to missions—though she would continue to paint throughout her years in North Africa. Padwick opens her biographical sketch of Trotter with the words: “There is a peculiar loveliness about the artist-saints.” But was it worth the sacrifice? Padwick asks, and then answers that question:
Her gift to Algeria was twofold: the creation, with her much-loved comrades, of an evangelistic band of some thirty members scattered in fifteen stations and outstations, and the creation of an evangelistic literature, chiefly in leaflet form but none the less noteworthy for its story-parables with their human freshness and the note of oriental beauty in colour and line.
These things were the outward and visible achievement of her life, and the inevitable question arises, were they worth while? Had they, when all was said and done, made the slightest dint on the Moslem life of North Africa? … Her journals drive home the … impression of soul after soul led Christward just in time to die. Again and again did Lilias Trotter hear from dying lips in a Moslem household some phrase like “Jesus has all my heart.”40
Most of the missionaries to Muslims were not artists and writers and scholars as Martyn, Zwemer, Gairdner, Padwick, and Trotter were. They were, except for Zwemer, Anglicans who held scholarship in high regard. But there were also many missionaries in the Muslim world who served as simple evangelists or were involved in humanitarian endeavors and gave little thought to the religious tenets of Islam. Lillian Trasher, whose connections were with the Assemblies of God, is an example. She broke a marriage engagement to serve as a missionary in Egypt, and during her half-century of tireless labor, beginning in 1910, she established an orphanage and through the decades reached out to more than eight thousand homeless children. Her work was highly regarded among the people, as was evident at the time of her death: “As the gilded horse-drawn hearse carried Lillian Trasher’s earthly remains through Assiout to the cemetery, people everywhere wept. In every window, every balcony the procession passed, people stood remembering this great woman who had loved so deeply and given so much.”41
Equally intrepid was Maude Cary—though at her death she would be honored by no such procession.
By the early twentieth century women were equaling or outnumbering men in most mission societies, and in some countries the mission work would have virtually collapsed had it not been for the single women. Such was the case for a time in Morocco with the Gospel Missionary Union. One of five Protestant missions in that country, the GMU had struggled since 1894 to reach the Muslims with the gospel. Despite these efforts, there was little visible progress against the seemingly impenetrable wall of Islam, and discouragement as well as disease took its toll on the missionary force. For some, the logical solution would have been to close the mission stations and concentrate on other fields; but the single women, among them Maude Cary, remained and served with unusual distinction during a difficult time. Her story is relevant as it intersects with missions to Muslims, and perhaps even more so as it relates to her personal life.
Maude Cary, missionary to Morocco.
Cary was born on a Kansas farm in 1878 and was introduced to missions by the traveling evangelists and missionaries who frequently conducted meetings in the Cary home. Her mother, an independent woman, was a talented musician who had trained at the Boston Conservatory of Music, and an outstanding Bible teacher as well. Maude inherited this independent spirit, and at age of eighteen she enrolled at the GMU Bible Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, to be trained for a ministry in overseas missions.
In 1901 she sailed to Morocco with four other GMU missionaries to begin her fifty years of service there. The first months were devoted to language school, and from the beginning there was evidence of personality friction between her and the other students. A bright and competitive student, she was not about to be outscored by the others, including F. C. Enyart, the only male in the small class. Although Enyart was as competitive as she was, he felt that since he was a male, it was his prerogative to maintain the highest grades in class (and, in fact, he outscored her by a fraction of a percentage point). But it was she who was accused of pride and aggressiveness. Women needed to be independent and courageous enough to forsake all for a missions career, but they were expected to accept their secondary status alongside men. Cary, however, recognizing the error of her ways, “prayed daily,” according to her biographer, “for cleansing from the sin of pride.”42
Cary’s first summer in Morocco was filled with new experiences. It was the mission policy to spend the summer months doing itinerant evangelistic work in the villages, and it was an exciting time as the missionary caravan started out into the rural areas. The excitement soon faded, however, as the harsh realities of the primitive camp life became apparent. And the difficulty in presenting the gospel proved even more frustrating. Every family kept a “pack of fierce dogs whose bite was worse than their bark,” but “even when they were held back from attacking the foreign visitors, they would bark noisily in the background,” drowning out what the missionaries were trying to say. Despite the obstacles, there were encouraging times, especially for the women missionaries, who, once outside the village, were able to talk with the women at a river or spring where they carried water or washed their clothes. Many listened with interest, “but if a man appeared in the distance, the women melted away, apparently fearful of being caught listening to the heretics.”43
More threatening than the dogs and the men who occasionally caught their wives conversing with the missionaries was the general political situation in Morocco that soon turned against the missionaries, forcing them to relocate near the coast. Work continued, but not without heartache for Cary. At the field mission conference following her second year in Morocco, one of the meetings was opened to group discussion on the topic of grievances and complaints the missionaries had toward each other. According to her biographer, she soon found herself to be the brunt of much of the criticism: “From all that was said, her first two years on the field had been a total failure. The mission would have been better off without her. She was selfish and forgetful. She had written at least one unspiritual letter. She didn’t always pray with the Muslims to whom she witnessed. Gaiety, friendliness, laughter—these had all been misconstrued. Added to her tendency to idle talk and her pride of dress, they became a mountain over which her coworkers had stumbled.”44
Within weeks after that devastating meeting, the president of the GMU, who was visiting Morocco at the time, advised her to prepare to return home. Her health problems, along with her personality quirks, combined to make her a greater liability than an asset to the mission. She was crushed. How could she ever face her family and friends back home?
Ironically, the ordeal she endured relating to her pride (both during her language school days and again at the annual field meeting) was not an unusual or isolated occurrence for women in missions. Many other single women encountered similar circumstances. The very qualities that made them supremely capable for missionary service were viewed with suspicion by their weaker sisters and were threatening to their male colleagues. Isobel Kuhn, in her book By Searching, tells of a similar experience when she was applying for mission candidacy to the China Inland Mission. On the basis of a personal reference, she was charged with being “proud, disobedient, and likely to be a troublemaker.” Though she was “conditionally” accepted, her departure for China was delayed, allowing the council time to keep an eye on her. She was promised that if she “conquered her problems,” she would be “fully accepted.” Dr. Helen Roseveare, similarly, was nearly denied candidacy because of the council’s judgment that she was “proud, always knowing better than others, unable to be told things or warned or criticized, difficult to live with, and so on.”45
The very qualities that made women capable for missionary service were viewed with suspicion by their weaker sisters and were threatening to their male colleagues.
In Cary’s case, she was already on the field, and sending her home would have been devastating; in the end she was allowed to stay. There would, however, be more humiliating experiences ahead of her. In addition to her language study in Arabic, she was studying the language of the Berbers, an ancient tribe that inhabited the area long before the Arabs moved across North Africa. She had worked with this tribe before her relocation near the coast. But as she struggled with the language, she searched her motives, wondering if she would be so interested in going back to those people if it were not for a single male missionary, George Reed, who was working among them. She and Reed had corresponded with each other, and she secretly hoped her study of the Berber language would further stimulate his interest in her. It apparently did, and soon after the 1907 field conference, they became engaged. But whether because of her ill health or a combination of reasons, Reed soon had second thoughts. He encouraged her to return to the United States, and when she refused, he returned to work with the Berbers without her, though not officially breaking off their engagement.
Still single on her thirtieth birthday, she, according to her biographer, “chose a new motto for her life. It was ‘Seek Meekness,’ chosen, in part at least, because George Reed said he wanted a humble wife.”46 But humility or not, the marriage never took place, though she was to be strung along for six more years before she would know for sure. In 1914 George decided to leave Morocco and open a new work in the Sudan (a decision that may have been precipitated by his seeming inability to call off the engagement), and his departure signaled the end of their relationship. Only then did she reluctantly accept her fate—spending the rest of her life, as she put it, as an “old maid missionary.”47
After twenty-three years Cary returned home for her first furlough, still wearing the same style dress and hat she had worn when she left the United States in 1901. America was reveling in Roaring Twenties, and she seemed entirely out of place. Yet it was a time to care for her aged parents, both of whom died during her furlough, and it was also a time for reflection. What had she accomplished in those twenty-three years? Had churches been founded? Were mission schools filled with eager students? Were converts evangelizing their own people? No. In terms of outward success, very little had been accomplished against the power of Islam. And of the handful of “converts,” the most promising one had turned away from the faith in the face of persecution. Was it truly worth the sacrifice? She was convinced that it was; and besides, at forty-seven, she was now alone, and the only home she really knew was Morocco.
Back in Morocco, the very slow progress of the previous decades seemed to be starting to reverse itself, and Cary began to see signs of success. More women were openly defying their cultural mores and coming out for Bible teaching. Likewise, there were two young male converts whose courageous stand inspired the whole Moroccan missionary community. But despite her optimism, the GMU missionary force continued to dwindle, and new recruits were few in number. By 1938 she found herself alone with one other single missionary to man the GMU stations in that most discouraging field of service. Two more single women arrived just before the outbreak of World War II, but then the doors were closed. It was a troubling time. The four single women might have isolated themselves in an out-of-the-way station and waited out the war. Instead, they split up in order to keep the three stations in operation—Cary and the other more experienced missionary each to a station by themselves, and the two new missionaries working together. Finally, in 1945, the war was over, and surprisingly, according to Cary’s biographer, “The work had suffered very little, thanks to the faithful, sacrificial labors of our single women who chose to remain on the job.”48
Following the war, new GMU missionary recruits began entering Morocco, eleven by 1948, and most impressive of all, “Three of them were men!” Cary, now the mission’s elder statesman, conducted language school and helped new recruits become situated, but her pioneering days were not over. Still plagued by a shortage of workers, the GMU assigned her, at the age of seventy-one, accompanied only by a young woman still in language study, to “open the city of El Hajeb to resident missionary work.” Elsewhere the work also went forward, and in 1951 a Bible institute was organized to train young Moroccan men. Three students were enrolled, two of whom were from her new station at El Hajeb.
Although the Bible institute had long been a dream of Cary’s, she was not present at its dedication in January of 1952. Some months before she had been flown back to the United States for medical treatment. No one expected her to return, but late that year, at the age of seventy-four, she was back and once again involved in the work. For three years she continued her ministry, but due to recurring health problems the mission began arranging for her retirement. Her departure in 1955 coincided with the end of the French occupation of Morocco and an exciting new era of relaxed restrictions against the missionaries. For twelve years the missionaries worked openly and freely among the Muslims, and many responded. Some thirty thousand of them enrolled in correspondence courses, and Bible studies flourished.
But the good times were not to last. In 1967 the Moroccan government closed the door to all foreign missionaries. Seventy-five years of service ended for the GMU. Radio broadcasts continued to beam the gospel to those who would listen, but for all practical purposes the tiny Moroccan church was on its own. In that same year, back in the United States, an obituary appeared in the local newspaper, and “a small handful of people, seven of whom were ministers, attended the funeral. There were only two sprays of flowers and hardly any tears.”49 Maude Cary had gone to be with her Lord.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bentley-Taylor, David. My Love Must Wait: The Story of Henry Martyn. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975.
Padwick, Constance E. Call to Istanbul. London: Longmans, Green, 1958.
_______. Henry Martyn: Confessor of the Faith. New York: Doran, 1922.
_______. Temple Gairdner of Cairo. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930.
Stenbock, Evelyn. “Miss Terri”: The Story of Maude Cary, Pioneer GMU Missionary in Morocco. Lincoln, NE: Good News Broadcasting, 1970.
Wilson, J. Christy. The Apostle to Islam: A Biography of Samuel M. Zwemer. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1952.
______. Flaming Prophet: The Story of Samuel Zwemer. New York: Friendship, 1970.