The 2018 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: The Protestant Reformation through Arab Eyes, 1517–1698

Abstract

This essay examines what Arabs knew about Luther, Calvin, and the Protestant-Catholic conflict in the early modern period. While there have been studies of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century impact of Protestant missions on the Arab East, there has been no study of the Protestant movement and its confrontation with Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the period between 1517 and 1698. Although Protestantism failed in gaining converts, the rivalry between Protestant England and Catholic France in co-opting converts to their military and ideological camps resulted in religio-social fissures that would have a lasting impact on Christians and Christianity in the Middle East.