Mission Crossroads is a three-time-a-year magazine focused on worldwide work of the PC(USA). It offers news and feature stories about mission personnel, international partners and grassroots Presbyterians involved in God's mission in the world.
Issue link: https://missioncrossroads.epubxp.com/i/491857
6 Spring 2015 Photo courtesy of Jan DeVries Presbyterians' commitment to education continues to fourish in the Middle East By Victor E. Makari Students at Ramses School for Girls in Cairo, 2013 Cornerstone of mission In just two decades, missionaries serving in Egypt launched 187 elementary and secondary schools in villages where there were no educational institutions. Presbyterian mission work in the region began in Syria in 1823 and in Iran in 1834. Tomas McCague and James Bennett, the frst Presbyterian missionaries to arrive in Egypt, described the work they began in 1854 as having been "the means of saving many souls, gathering many companies of believers, establishing many schools, difusing secular as well as religious knowledge far and wide, giving the nation a start on the road to enlightenment and freedom." Tat commitment inspired Egyptian congregations and wealthy national Christians to fund additional schools. Missionaries founded the frst schools for girls in the Ottoman Empire that are now educating women through graduate and postgraduate levels. Tey built academies that provided training in the humanities, arts, and sciences, raising the bar in higher education in the region. In addition to the American University of Beirut, other colleges founded and initially headed by American Protestant missionaries included the American University in Cairo (founded 1919), the Lebanese American University (founded 1924) and Haigazian University in Beirut (founded 1955). Missionaries established two highly infuential theological seminaries: the Evangelical Teological Seminary in Cairo, started by Presbyterians in 1863, and the Near East School of Teology in Beirut, founded by Presbyterians and Congregationalists in 1932. Over the years, both have produced church leaders for most Protestant and some Orthodox denominations in the Middle East as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas. It was also missionaries that assisted Middle Eastern partner churches and organizations in launching literacy campaigns in remote villages. Some of these eforts have evolved into broad- spectrum Christian social service and sustainable development organizations. A prime example is the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (better known now by its acronym CEOSS), which has become a leader in training other national and regional development agencies while serving no less than two million Egyptians at any one moment. Graduates of Presbyterian-founded schools Since the mid-19th century, educational institutions established by pioneering Presbyterians and their Congregational and Reformed cousins have spread Christian values and equipped national leaders in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and other Gulf states. Recent national movements for liberation, democratizations and civic engagement in the Arab world ofer some of the most dramatic bits of evidence that the Presbyterian Church's commitment to education is continuing to bear fruit around the world. Daniel Bliss, a missionary of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches, served as president of the American University of Beirut when it was founded as Te Syrian Protestant College in 1866. At a ceremony marking the laying of the cornerstone of the frst building on campus, Bliss pledged that the school would welcome students "without regard to color, nationality, race or religion." After studying at the college, he declared, a student might "go out believing in one God, in many gods, or in no God. But it will be impossible for anyone to continue with us long without knowing what we believe to be the truth and our reasons for that belief."