Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Review: Kathryn Kraft's 'Searching for Heaven in the Real World'

Searching for Heaven in the Real World: A Sociological Discussion of Conversion in the Arab WorldSearching for Heaven in the Real World: A Sociological Discussion of Conversion in the Arab World by Kathryn Ann Kraft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kathryn Kraft’s book is a study of groups of converts from Islam to Christianity in Egypt and Lebanon. Working in the field of sociology of religion, she attempts to analyse and understand the consequences of the decision to leave Islam and embrace a Christian faith. (Why the indefinite article? This is never explained but I’m certain this is not the way that converts speak of their faith.)

Her intent is clearly explained on page 16: After telling us, at some length, about her methodology and research experience, she will utilize two Islamic doctrines, tawhiid and umma, to “explore the lives, cultures and values of converts from an Arab, Muslim background.” She does this by treating a number of idealized topics (hence the word “heaven” in the title): the perfect researcher, perfect unity (tawhiid), perfect community (Umma), perfect dream, perfect believer and a perfect identity. A recurring theme is that these converts (and it is good that she uses the correct word here—convert) have a vision and hope for something in converting to Christianity that they do not ultimately achieve. In making the dangerous and difficult move of converting they are hoping for heaven on earth, but in fact meet with disappointment on multiple levels. They are disappointed by churches that don’t welcome them, by missionaries who are overbearing or pastors who are disconnected, they are alienated from their (Muslim) families and nations, they are disappointed by the intolerance of Islamic law, and so on (anomie is the technical term which Kraft uses to summarize this state).

That Kraft is frank about the difficulties faced by Christians from a Muslim background is refreshing. Much of the material that exists about these converts tends to lionize them and portray them as having faith to move mountains and standing up under persecution like Polycarp or Perpetua. This does indeed happen sometimes, but Kraft’s exploration of the other side of the coin is welcome, even if at times the “anomie” of these “deviant persons” tends to overpower the equally genuine truth that these converts often have a powerful and refreshing sense of hope and love which they had not experienced in Islam.

Kraft is able to explore some new territory in relation to these converts. How do converts manage the question of self-identity in a country like Egypt where they cannot legally change their religion from Muslim to Christian? How do they relate to their families? What are the effects of leaving a structured diin like Islam, with set fasts, pray times, a manner of chanting the Qur’an, for evangelicalish Christianity (mostly), which tends to eschew such structure and (blandly, perhaps) encourages people to simple pray to God whatever is “on their heart”? Also welcome is Kraft’s willingness to acknowledge the complexity of the convert identity, and her treatment in Chapter 7 of various strategies used by converts to figure out how to live as Christians from a Muslim background is nuanced and does not oversimplify the topic. In engaging with the question of identity she is following in the footsteps of Seppo Syrjanen who composed the first sociological case study of converts from Islam to Christianity.

There are problems with the book, however. At times it was not clear to me whose voice was speaking: the convert’s, or hers? Some sections had a wealth of quotations from her sources which were helpful and welcome, but at other times one could go for pages reading the author’s analysis on some facet of conversion life without reading a single quotation from the sources themselves. This does not mean that her conclusions are false, my own research among converts (Arabs and Iranians, mostly) actually tends to back up most of her points. But there are sections where allowing the voices of the researched subjects to be present before going on to analyse them would improve the reading experience.

As to the methodology and her own reflection on herself as a researcher (the end of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2), I am ambivalent. Students doing scholarship among MBB’s in the Muslim world, and especially the Arab world, will find this lengthy section helpful and indeed may well want to use it as a template for their own methodology section. Comaprisons to nuns leaving the convent may warm the heart of anthropologists, but add nothing to the book. Readers who simply want to know about the converts from Islam may well want to skip her chapter on “the perfect researcher”.

Perhaps the most difficult decision to make in relation to field research is related to how to analyse the data. After weeks, months or years of interviews, e-mails, conversations, visiting churches and hearing sermons and songs—one must figure out how to go about identifying what stays in and what stays out, what is worth exploring more and what is not, what gets a whole chapter in the thesis, and what gets a paragraph or an appendix or is simply saved for future articles. It is at this point that

Kraft makes her most puzzling move by choosing two Islamic concepts: tawhiid and Umma. Kraft has claimed that she wants to let the converts speak on their own terms, using their own ideas, and not impose ad extra her own presuppositions. So why would she choose these two concepts? The question is never answered in her book.

The author overestimates, I think, the significance of tawhiid, which refers to the monadic monotheism of God’s essence in Islamic theology. Kraft believes that this tawhiid is refracted onto the life of the Muslim by creating a unified and integral way of life. For instance, tawhiid would resist the idea that secular order and religious order should be separated from each other. And so, she appears to believe, in leaving Islam converts are hungering for this same sort of integrated life and identity they had experienced (maybe?) in Islam, but become disappointed when this dream of heaven on earth is not fulfilled in Christianity.

The implication is that there is something special about Islam, because of tawhiid, that makes the Muslim (and ex-Muslim) hunger for a well-integrated life and identity that is not present in other societies. This is a problematic claim. Is it not more likely that modernity tends towards compartmentalized, fragmented identities, and that the normal way to be human, including for non-modern Christians, is to desire and perhaps attain such an integrated life? This position has been argued extensively by Peter Berger in his book, Facing Up To Modernity: Excursions In Society, Politics, And Religion. According to him, Modernity has created five key problems. One, abstraction: this is related to the mass state and media, and the rise of the Machine, and the destruction of what have been historically integrated communities (71, 72). Two, futurity—as children of Modernity are always focusing on the future and not the present or the past. Three, individuation: entailing the separation of the individual from the collective, which has led to greater anomie. Four, liberation: people have liberty to choose who or what they will be, but that liberty may convert itself into being forced to choose, and thus become oppressive, this experiencing of being forced to choose is called the heretical imperative. Five, there is secularization: “Modernization has brought with it a massive threat to the plausibility of religious belief and experience” (78).

One could ask similar questions about the concept of the Umma. Are we to believe that the desire to belong to a close-knit and united community is particular to Islam? Is it not in fact particular to many forms of Christianity throughout history (if not evangelicalism today)? In other words, it is not Islam that is different here, it is modernity that is bizarre and novel in its willingness to fracture and compartmentalize facets of the human life, and while not all Christianity is the fruit of modernity, evangelicalism certainly is.

Kraft’s choice of two concepts from Islam, a religion which her converts claim to have left, to explain how Christians live is the most problematic and puzzling aspect of this book. In spite of this over-reliance on the explanatory power of tawhiid and Umma, her analisys actually succeeds quite well. I just wish she would have used different words to treat the topic. After all, the chapter on tawhiid is very much about relationships, and the chapter on Umma about community. Simply acknowledging that relationships and community are integral aspects of what it means to be human—whether one is Christian or Muslim—and that the convert’s life cannot be examined without treating the two topics would have sufficed.

The book’s conclusion (the final chapter) is its strongest note, with Kraft briefly explaining the next frontier of exploration in relation to Christians from a Muslim background: the second generation. How converts raise their children in societies like Egypt where the extended family is Muslim and the child is, according to the dictates of the shari’a, by necessity Muslim and must be taught Islam in school—these topics are completely unresearched to my knowledge.

Kraft has provided us with a valuable book, one of the only ones in existence about converts from Islam to Christianity. Her sober treatment of the difficulties they face and the complexity of their strategies in negotiating identity and relationships outweighs any deficiencies on might identify, and mean that, without a doubt, this book will be indispensable reading for any scholar researching similar converts.

Reviewed by Duane Alexander Miller, NETS Book Reviews, October 2013

View all my reviews

You may also download the PDF of the review here.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Baptist Beginnings in Lebanon: 1893-1956, by Julia Graham

Our seminary is happy to make this rare text available in PDF format.

Baptist Beginnings in Lebanon: 1893-1956 is a series of texts written by and compiled by Julia Graham, and is dated 1986. The text, it appears, was type-written and lists no place of publication or publisher.

Because of the large size of the scanned material, the book (202 pages long) is available in four PDF files:

Part 1 (Cover through page 51)
Part 2 (pp 52-103)
Part 3 (pp 104-150)
Part 4 (pp 151-202)

If anyone knows additional information about the author or the text please leave that in the comment section. If for any reason those links are not working the files are also available on Scribd:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

This is a good place to remind readers that we previously made available a scanned version of a rare 1925 text from the Palestine National Christian Council which provides insights on Anglicans/Episcopalians here after World War 1. For more information on that text click here.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

MWOP 2:3, "Caesarea and the Mission of God"

NETS is please to share with your third Occasional Paper for 2013: Caesarea and the Mission of God.

Download the file by clicking here.

Here is the Abstract:
The article explores the theological significance of a location, what is today the impressive archeological site of Caesarea Maritima. In the Book of Acts, Caesarea, as the primary setting for the story of Peter and Cornelius, becomes a critical pivot in Luke’s unfolding story both of the movement of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome and of the transformation of the latter-days community of Messiah from a Jewish-only movement into a multi-ethnic family, a Jew-Gentile New Creation. The article emphasizes the literary patterns and devices Luke uses to present and reinforce the message of the universal Kingdom, especially in the Cornelius story. As the apostles proclaim the crucified-and-risen Jewish Messiah across boundaries of election, religion, ethnicity, and history, the Kingdom of God comes and the healing of a primordially fractured world begins.

According to ancient prophecy, though contrary to the expectations of many, the cosmic promises to Abraham, the enacting of a new covenant, and the emergence of a New Creation are actively realized when not only Jews, but also Gentiles, are incorporated as one chosen people of God in Christ. In the New Testament, this culturally, even spiritually, jarring transformation is central to the story of salvation, even to the eternal design of God. Peter’s experience in Caesarea is a microcosm of that reality; Caesarea becomes the site of a key breakthrough, if only in kernel form, in the expansion of the Good News and the eschatological reign of Jesus into the nations, to the ends of the earth. 
And Keywords:
Caesarea / Cornelius / early church / Gentile inclusion / Luke-Acts / narrative design / Peter / Salvation-History / typology


Thursday, October 3, 2013

Book Review of "A Muslim who became a Christian: The Story of John Avetaranian"

Alex Miller has recently published a book review of the following book:

A Muslim who became a Christian: The Story of John Avetaranian (born Muhammad Shukri Effendi)second edition, by John Avetaranian, translated by John Bechard (Sandy, UK: AuthorsOnline 2003)

Here is a section of the review:
Born Muhammad Shukri Efendi, as the complete title indicates, this writer and subject of the book lived from 1861 through 1919. Born into the prestigious Ottoman effendi class, Shukri was a descendent of the Prophet himself. He spent much of his early years traveling around with his odd and peripatetic father—a mystic who could not settle down. 
The review of this book has recently been published in the International Journal of Frontier Missiology, Vol 30:1, Spring 2013. The review can be downloaded from their website.