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.
It seems hardly probable that the Mission Board would
come out and officially inform the contributing church members of the United
States:
“We have no intention or desire, either immediate or
ultimate, of converting Mussulmans in Turkey. We are running secular schools
there with the hope of raising their general moral standing and making
Mohammedans of them.”
If the board can raise money for such a purpose, that
would be a frank honest proposition for both Turk and Christian.
It is logical for the devout Christian to give money for
the conversion of the Moslem. The faith of the Nazarene is one of the proselytizing
religions, as Professor Max Muller said in his famous lecture in Westminster
Abbey in 1873. It can not be possible, however, that there is any mental
impulse in this country which would lead Americans to contribute large sums
for the support of purely secular schools in foreign countries. Even from a
humanitarian standpoint, there are more crying needs for their charity.
The one thing that the missionary working in Turkey really fears is that some Turk may be converted. Should this
occur a storm of fanaticism and violence would break upon his head that might
close his school and end his career. It is not possible to convert
Mohamrnedans in Turkey, nor even let them get wind that one is trying to do
such a thing. In my thirty years of service in the Near East I have known of
but one Moslem really converted. I remember distinctly the uneasiness, which
his impending public confession caused among his teachers, imperiling, as it
did, all their future activities. He was persuaded by the missionaries that
the time was not ripe for him to proclaim his change of faith, but the
Mohammedans became aware of it and promptly murdered him. According to the
best information available it cost between forty-five and eighty million
dollars to convert that unfortunate young man and he did not last long. The
Moslem who renounces his religion suffers ostracism, forfeiture of his goods
and practically commits suicide.
During
the War and before the Turks severed diplomatic relations with the United
States, the Germans were anxious to seize the beautiful and expensive buildings
of the International College of Smyrna and turn them into barracks. I had
much to do in preventing this. On one occasion, while talking with Rahmi Bey,
the Turkish governor (vail) of Smyrna
at that time, he said to me: “The only
reason that I can protect that college is that I have never seen any disposition
on the part of its president and faculty to convert Moslems. Should any such
attempt be made I could no longer shield it.” This was the argument, which
the vali used with the authorities at Constantinople. It was this clean
record which saved the college.
The missionaries in Turkey now find themselves in the
position of hostages. They have seen many of their buildings destroyed, their
native teachers, Armenians and Greeks butchered, their pupils scattered. They
have received no help from the American Government. They are in the hands of
the Turks. Many of them have spent their lives in the work and not a few of
them own comfortable modern homes, which they have paid for in part or
entirely.
That very shrewd and capable Scot, Doctor Alexander
MacLachlan, has built up the International College at Smyrna by a lifetime of
earnest and persistent effort. Its beautiful and expensive buildings, erected
with money raised in America, his own substantial home, the delightful
residences of the faculty, situated in charming gardens, are all resting on a
powder mine. An outburst of fanaticism might sweep this idyllic picture from
the face of the earth at a moment’s notice; might make it one with the desolate
ruins of Smyrna but a few minutes’ distant. It would need but a tiny spark to
set off the powder mine—some adverse criticism of the Turk, the conversion of a
Mohammedan. The danger for this, as well as for similar institutions, is
augmented by the fact that the ignorant, fanatical population of the Ottoman
Empire is greatly in the majority, and there is abundant evidence that the
Spirit of the Prophet is abroad, impatient of reform.
One missionary, at least, has been in the
United States loudly proclaiming Mustapha Khemal the George Washington of
Turkey, and comparing the soldiers who burned and sacked Smyrna and violated
its women with the veterans of Valley Forge. This has doubtless got back to Asia Minor and has produced a salutary
effect. One word more: Our missionaries have been operating in Turkey for
nearly a century. They did admirable work among the native Christians, but what
evidence have the Turks shown in their conduct of any results obtained from
the vast sums sent into their country for their enlightenment and moral
uplifting? It is impossible to argue with a religious devotee of any creed. The
question is put to the normal men and women of America.
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