Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
The Review

Go East, Evangelicals

By Edward J. Blum October 5, 2015
A 19th-century  illustration includes  Christian pilgrims  in the Holy Land.
A 19th-century illustration includes Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land.Drawing by David Roberts

At least half of the old quip that the “moral majority” is neither moral nor a majority is true.

Evangelical Protestants have never constituted a majority in the United States. They have never dominated any aspect of the American scene: not society, not culture, not politics, not religion. They have never been the sole influence behind any American change or tradition. Sure, President Ronald Reagan catered to evangelicals rhetorically. Sure, before him, the pollster George Gallup declared 1976 the “year of the evangelical.” And sure, President George W. Bush was an evangelical in the White House. But perennially, evangelicals have been one subgroup among many, each vying for authority and influence.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

At least half of the old quip that the “moral majority” is neither moral nor a majority is true.

Evangelical Protestants have never constituted a majority in the United States. They have never dominated any aspect of the American scene: not society, not culture, not politics, not religion. They have never been the sole influence behind any American change or tradition. Sure, President Ronald Reagan catered to evangelicals rhetorically. Sure, before him, the pollster George Gallup declared 1976 the “year of the evangelical.” And sure, President George W. Bush was an evangelical in the White House. But perennially, evangelicals have been one subgroup among many, each vying for authority and influence.

American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam

By Christine Leigh Heyrman (Hill and Wang)

Evangelicals have received and continue to receive far more attention than their numbers warrant because of their intense commitment and activity. They have also been eager to make public and political their piety — to shine, biblically, as lights in the darkness. Evangelical leaders tend to love the spotlight. When the megachurch pastor Rick Warren has a good idea, like how to lead a “purpose-driven life,” he publishes it and promotes it. When CNN calls, Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, responds.

Increasingly since the 1980s, historians have been drawn to the power and influence of evangelicals and evangelicalism. Depending on which book or article one reads, evangelicals seem to factor on every side of historical problems — often on opposite ones. They are responsible for ending slavery and perpetuating the peculiar institution, for freeing women and subjugating them, for liberalizing the United States and keeping it mired in conservative traditions. Evangelicalism became a cottage industry for historians and reporters with George W. Bush’s presidency and then the 9/11 attacks. Hardly a month goes by during which a major publishing house fails to issue some insightful work on evangelicalism.

Christine Leigh Heyrman is one of the reasons the study of evangelicalism has become so important to historians. When the University of Delaware historian published Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (and won a 1998 Bancroft Prize), George W. Bush had yet to be elected president. The World Trade Center still stood, and the evangelical rhetoric of “good versus evil” seemed dormant during the sex-scandal-ridden presidency of Bill Clinton. What Heyrman accomplished in Southern Cross was to demonstrate that there was nothing inevitable about the American South’s becoming a bastion of evangelicalism. Through meticulous research, eloquent prose, and subtle argumentation, she described how Baptist and Methodist evangelicals emerged and expanded during the late 18th and early 19th centuries to become the most important religious culture in the region. She helped put evangelicalism on the map as a vital player in United States history.

Now, after the attacks of 9/11, the waging of wars throughout the Middle East, and the unlikely presidency of a man with a Muslim-sounding name, Heyrman’s new book, American Apostles, is a striking narrative of how a handful of New England evangelicals in the early 1800s transformed the ways in which Americans thought about Islam in the Middle East. Not only that, but this hardy crew of missionaries, as well as their editors and supporters at home, changed the fundamental nature of evangelical Protestantism within the United States.

Three apostles stand at the center of Heyrman’s tale: Levi Parsons, Pliny Fisk, and Jonas King. Young New Englanders, they were sent to the Middle East by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, one of the many new organizations of the new American republic. During their few years in the Ottoman Empire, they beheld scenic vistas and awe-inspiring wildlife. They attempted to learn new languages and navigate diverse cultures. They worked to understand other faiths while reconfiguring their own in the process. While Fisk grew to appreciate some Muslims and aspects of Islam, King moved in a more militant manner. He used his encounters to call evangelicals back home to a bolder, stronger form of faith, one that Heyrman sees as a continuing thread in evangelicalism to this day.

American Apostles is about much more than Fisk, Parsons, King, and their adventures. Heyrman deftly shows how before them, American writings and attitudes toward Islam were complicated and becoming more so. Just as Amanda Porterfield detailed in her excellent Conceived in Doubt, evangelical Protestants of the early republic were anything but a majority voice in American conceptions of faith, politics, and the world. For every five or six denunciations of Muhammad as a violent fanatic, Heyrman locates a sympathetic assessment or two of him. For every 10 or 12 assaults upon Islam as injurious to women, there was an article about how American men treated their own women.

The evangelical crusaders and especially their publications in the United States tipped the balance, and not just about Islam. By claiming personal experience and insight, the missionaries (and how their articles were edited and distributed) asserted authority when describing Islam, Muslims, and Middle Eastern cultures and politics. Moreover, and especially from the writings of Jonas King, evangelicalism defined itself as crusading and masculine, the defender of women who needed defending — and they all needed defending.

Some of Heyrman’s arguments seem exaggerated. Most obviously, is it possible that these few men and their publications could have swayed such wide swaths of American opinion? As Timothy Marr showed in his extraordinary book, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism, the depth and breadth of American considerations of Islam and the Middle East were vast. Long before these three apostles had been to the Middle East and long after them, American preachers, theologians, novelists, explorers, and many others had been dreaming dreams and recounting visions of the Middle East.

Second, and perhaps more subtly, did this adventure really leave “little impress on the Middle East”? They may have failed to convert anyone to their Protestantism, but to assume that Fisk, Parsons, King, and the others who traveled had no influence there is to slight the power of small interactions. In American Evangelicals in Egypt, the historian Heather J. Sharkey explored how a similar set of Protestant missionaries engaged Christians and Muslims in the Middle East and, although these American interlopers failed, for the most part, to convince anyone of evangelicalism’s truths, they subtly elicited important legal and cultural shifts in local religious traditions. Sharkey examined texts in Arabic and located several arenas where the missionary “outsiders” pushed local Muslims to alter certain legal codes and approaches to foreigners.

ADVERTISEMENT

Perhaps Heyrman is not to blame, however, for endeavoring to find more in microcosms than simply the micro. Perhaps we should hold accountable the tradition of promotional historical writing that has us wondering if the Irish actually “saved civilization” or if one British map could “change the world.”

If we match this disciplinary penchant for inflation with that of evangelical rhetoric of certainty and bravado, we have a perfect storm of hyperbole.

Evangelicals then and now tend to speak and write with such confidence that it is easy to mistake their hopes for historical realities. They believe so earnestly that their belief almost seems real. After reading American Apostles, I am certain of at least one thing: This is a beautiful book and a delight to read. Americans of the early 19th century found the travels and insights of the missionaries inspiring. They asked new questions of themselves and the world. This reader in the 21st century feels similarly with Heyrman as his guide.

A version of this article appeared in the October 9, 2015, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
The Death of Shared Governance
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

Illustration of an ocean tide shaped like Donald Trump about to wash away sandcastles shaped like a college campus.
The Review | Essay
Why Universities Are So Powerless in Their Fight Against Trump
By Jason Owen-Smith
Photo-based illustration of a closeup of a pencil meshed with a circuit bosrd
The Review | Essay
How Are Students Really Using AI?
By Derek O'Connell
John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin