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"For nearly a century, the
American missionaries have been maintaining contacts with the Armenian
minority. (...) It is by this canal that one learnt in the United States the
troubles from which suffered the Armenians under the Hamidian regime (...) But
the missionaries were not able to or did not want to explain to their
coreligionists that the Turks bore exactly the same troubles. As a result, instead of giving to the
Americans an impartial image of the situation of all the peoples of the
Empire, instead of explaining clearly that it was Hamidian regime who
was the oppressor and the Turks suffered as much as the Armenians, the missionaries drew the attention of America only on the
misfortunes of the Armenians."
Clair Price, "The Rebirth
of Turkey," New York, 1923, pages 79-80
Who were the Missionaries?
Here are some excerpts from Justin McCarthy's excellent Presentation on
British Propaganda:
...On Missionaries: The American Committee for
Armenian and Syrian Relief was founded in November of 1915. There were other
Armenian relief organizations before that.
Propagandists could play upon the great respect
Americans held for the missionaries who had gone to the Ottoman Empire, and
who often appeared in the newspapers as national heroes for a Christian
Nation.
The Relief Organization engaged in an
eight-year policy of vilifying Turks, from 1915 to 1923. It is interesting
that in 1923, once the Turks had won and the Mission obviously would not
survive unless they got along with the Turks, suddenly all changed. Suddenly
Turks were being praised by missionaries. But until then, the Turks were evil.
To build their missionary organization was one of their purposes, but their
main purpose was a good one. Their main purpose was to collect money for what
indeed were starving Armenian and Syrian (Assyrian) Christians, to try to make
sure that these people had food and the orphans had shelter. It was a good
purpose. They used a not-so-good means to get the money, which was to vilify
the Turks in every way, because there is nothing that draws in funds like
portraying a horrible enemy that is oppressing these people and will succeed
unless you help, unless you contribute. Which is what they did.
...
Studying what they preached unfortunately takes a long time. You must read
much truly disgusting literature. What they wrote was not what one would
expect of clergymen. Yet one reason they were so successful is exactly that
people expected that clergymen would not lie.
...
In all of the writings of the missionaries
Turks were never victims; Armenians were always victims. Armenians never
killed; Turks always killed. Turks, and I am not exaggerating in any way,
Turks persecuted orphans; Turks were cannibals; Turks held auctions of
Armenian women; Armenians were a majority all over the east of Anatolia; all
young Armenian males had been killed by Turks; all women, every one, were
raped by Turks; the Turks hated education and always persecuted the educated;
no Christians had ever been part of the Ottoman government. Turks needed
Christians because the Turks were racially incapable of being "doctors,
dentists, tailors, carpenters, every profession or trade requiring the least
skill." And the missionaries wrote that now that the Turks had killed the
Armenians, Westerners who were going to have to come in and take over Turkey,
because the Turks had rid themselves of the only people with brains, the
Armenians, and the Turks could not run the country themselves.
...
The main Protestant missionary propaganda was,
or course, religious. James Levi Barton, the leader of the relief
organization, wrote "[Armenians] are suffering for no fault of their own,
but because their lot was cast in a land where no Christian power was able to
protect and because, forsooth, they would not remove the Lord Jesus Christ
from their altars and put Mohammed in his place."
The fact that the Turks had been running what was called Armenia for eight
hundred years and the Armenians were still there would seem to argue against
that. Of course the propagandists didn't bother with that sort of explanation.
To us today these kinds of things are crude and unbelievable, and I imagine
you would probably be laughing if you didn't think this was a serious topic.
But Americans especially, and many other people in the world, including most
people in Britain, knew little of Turks or of Muslims in general. Such
descriptions of Turks would have seemed perfectly reasonable to them.
The most important factor about the missionaries as far as I am concerned is
that they did not hesitate to lie, most of these lies being lies of omission.
For example, there were two major books written about the rebellion of the
Armenians in the city of Van, one by a missionary named Ussher, another by a
missionary named Knapp. The Knapp book was excerpted in the Bryce Report. To
the missionaries, no Turks or Kurds ever died in Van, except for four
sentences in the three hundred and fifty-page book written by Ussher in which
he stated that Armenians sometimes took revenge against the Muslims. Ussher
mitigated that by stating that these were people who deserved to die.
The fact is that Armenians had slaughtered every Muslim man, woman, and child
they caught in the city of Van. They rounded up the Kurds in surrounding
villages and killed them in the great natural bowl at Zeve. If the
missionaries missed that, they must have been both blind and hiding in the
basement. Yet you read all the missionary literature and the only people who
died were Armenians. This makes one wonder what happened to all those dead
Muslims. They must have committed suicide.
This campaign, the missionary campaign, was a great success. It gained a
hundred and sixteen million dollars, which, if you calculate it in modem
money, was the most successful private charity campaign in American history.
Posters in public buildings, sermons in churches, door-to-door campaigns,
pamphlets, press releases — it was the biggest such campaign ever seen in
America. It has never been superseded in its scope or in the amount of money
that was spent or that was taken in. Leading every one of the missionaries'
pleas to charity was an attack on Turks.
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Arnold
Toynbee
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There was complete cooperation between the
missionaries and the British Propaganda Bureau. They sent materials to Toynbee;
in turn the missionaries distributed Wellington House propaganda material. For
example, three thousand copies of Toynbee's Armenian atrocities were
distributed in America by the missionary relief organizations. The United
States Government forwarded missionary materials on using government
distribution systems. The government gave secret documents to the
missionaries, who extracted sections from them. These eventually made their
way to Toynbee with the statement, "Under no circumstances reveal
source."
The missionary establishment leaders most involved in providing propaganda to
Toynbee were James Barton and William Rockwell. Barton had been a missionary
in Anatolia. He was a Congregational minister and the head of the American
Board of Commissioners For Foreign Missions, the largest of the American
missionary groups. He had become the head of the main relief organization, the
American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. William Rockwell was also a
minister, at Columbia Theological Seminary, I believe a Presbyterian. He was
the Chief Propagandist of the American Committee. They were joined as
Toynbee's prime sources by a gentlemen in Switzerland, Léopold Favre, who had
published the first of the World War I Armenian atrocity books, Quelcques,
Documents sur le sort des Asmeniens en l915. And, of course, there was Boghos Nubar Pasha who had been the
Prime Minister of Egypt and was now the head of what was called The Armenian
National Delegation, of which he had named himself head. He was a well-known
Armenian apologist.
Barton, Rockwell, Favre, Nubar, all these people provided materials to Toynbee,
read the manuscripts, suggested emendations, and read the proofs. At one point
Nubar wrote to Toynbee conceming one document, "Drop the phrases that
make Turks look good." Which Toynbee then did. The original source of
nearly all the documents were the missionaries and the Armenians. And I think
you can probably see that these were the two least reliable sources one can
imagine.
The
Morality of the Missionaries
Most (especially)
Church-influenced Western writers have rarely failed to accuse Islam of
spreading by coercion. The causes of this prejudice lie mainly in the
fact that the spread of Islam has often occurred at the expense of
Christianity. While Islam has for centuries obtained numerous
conversions from Christianity without much effort or organized
missionary activities, Christianity has almost never been able to
achieve conversions from Islam in spite of sophisticated means and
well-organized missionary activities, and it has always been at a
disadvantage in its competition with Islam for fourteen centuries. This
has caused its missionaries and most of the Orientalists to develop a
complex within themselves by depicting Islam and introducing it as a
regressive, vulgar religion of savage peoples. (John Cogley, Religion of
Secular Age; Muhammad Asad, The Road to Mecca)
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The caption under this newspaper image
read: "Trekking to a New Mission Site."
This is what fanatical missionaries did all
over the world... forced their values
upon "savages" with different beliefs.
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The missionary writer Sir Thomas W. Arnold
(THE PREACHING OF ISLAM, A HISTORY OF THE PROPAGATION OF THE MUSLIM
FAITH, London, 1896) wrote that during the reign of Amir Tuqluq Khan,
160,000 Mongols embraced Islam voluntarily in one day. There could be no
underhanded or deceptive coercion methods employed for this mass
conversion as employed by missionaries over the centuries. Arnold wrote
further: "...of any organized attempt to force the acceptance of
Islam on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic persecution
intended to stamp out the Christian religion, we hear nothing. Had the
caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action, they might have swept
away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of
Spain... the very survival of these Churches to the present day is a
strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of Mohammedan
governments towards them"
These are the roots of
the morality of the missionaries. One day, TAT hopes to feature the
shocking missionary prayers during the Ottoman period where these
fanatical people regarded the Muslims in such bigoted ways, they swore
to God on a daily basis to regard the Muslim in anything but a
"Love Thy Neighbor" manner. Honestly believing the worst of
the "savage" Muslims or outright lying and deception came
easily to these people of the book.
The missionary Dr.
Nichols, in charge of the Near East Relief work for the territory
embraced within Syria and Cilicia after the end of World War I, was one
such deluded individual. J. H. S. Dessez, the American Commanding
Officer of the U. S. S. Smith Thompson, reported to Admiral Mark
Bristol on May 3, 1920 that American missionaries were playing an
important role in the slaughter perpetuated by Armenians; missionaries
stirred up the local Christians against their Muslim neighbors through
the spreading of anti-Muslim hatred and by providing hiding places for
the arms and ammunition which was being used against the settled Turkish
population:
"Dr. Nichols I
consider a very dangerous man who can do a great deal of harm if given a
free hand. He is a religious fanatic apparently, and anxious to have
something sensational take place between Turks and Americans, in order
to influence public opinion in the United States. He impressed me as
rather glorying in the fight between the Armenians and Turks at Aintab....[I]t
developed that the first shots fired at the American Orphanage were by
armed Armenians from the orphanage with the full knowledge and
encouragement of some Americans.... Turkish police and army searches
found anti-Muslim propaganda along with arms and ammunition hidden in
American missionary centers in various parts of Anatolia."
...Turkish police and
army searches found anti-Muslim propaganda along with arms and
ammunition hidden in American missionary centers in various parts of
Anatolia."
[Examples of police reports substantiating the
claim may be found in 25 May 1921, regarding missionary activities at
Mamuretülaziz--CA (Ankara), BBK/30/10 kutu 206/dosya 406/doc. 3),
report of 30 June 1921 on Talas--CA (Ankara), BBK/30/10 kutu 206/dosya
406/doc. 4. Source:Prof. Stanford Shaw's "The Armenian Legion and
Its Destruction of the Armenian Community in Cilicia" chapter from
the book, "The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period.]
Another
American military man's views on the missionaries were published
in The New York Herald on August 18, 1895:
"Rear-Admiral Kirkland, commanding the European station, whenever
he speaks upon the subject, is empathic in his condemnation of the
missionaries in Turkey. He says that he has found that one of the
most prominent Sunday-school teachers in Syria spent three years in the
Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa., and that, taken altogether, they are
a bad lot. The cause of all the trouble, Admiral Kirkland asserts,
is that, relying upon the protection of the American government, the
missionaries defy local laws, and do not merit the dispatch of a
warship at every appeal made by the missionaries, most of which
appeals are not true."
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EXTENSIVENESS OF
THE MISSIONS
Protestant missionaries and their schools played an important role in this
process of [Armenian] radicalization. Both the government and the Armenian
church tried to discourage the influx of these foreigners and their Western
ideas, but the number of missionaries, most of them American and German, kept
growing. By 1895, according to one count, there were 176 American
missionaries, assisted by 878 native assistants, at work in Anatolia. They had
established 125 churches with 12,787 members and 423 schools with 20,496
students. [4] Even though the missionaries denied that they instilled Armenian
nationalistic, let alone revolutionary, sentiments, the Ottoman government saw
it differently. As Charles Eliot, a well-informed British dipomat with
extensive experience in Turkey, put it:
The good position of the Armenians in Turkey had largely depended on the
fact that they were thoroughly Oriental and devoid of that tincture of
European culture common among Greeks and Slavs. But now this character was
being destroyed: European education and European books were being introduced
among them... The Turks thought that there was clearly an intention to break
up what remained of the Ottoman Empire and found an Armenian kingdom...
"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war," in English is a
harmless hymn, suggestive of nothing worse than a mildly rituatlistic
procession; but I confess that the same words literally rendered into Turkish
do sound like an appeal to Christians to rise up against their Mohammedan
masters, and I cannot be surprised that the Ottoman authorities found the hymn
seditious and forbade it to be sung. [5]
[4] Jeremy Salt, Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians,
1878-1896, p. 31.
[5] Charles Eliot, Turkey in Europe, pp. 400-402. See also the
observations of Selim Deringil in The Well-Protected Domain; Ideology and
Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909, pp. 128-29.
Prof. Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, A Disputed
Genocide, 2005, p. 4.
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| Equal Time: An Armenian Overview |
Missionaries were the first foreign
eyewitnesses of the Armenian Genocide. With their successful evangelizing among Armenians
of the Ottoman Empire, Protestant missionaries, mostly associated with the American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), had created an extensive network of school,
orphanages, hospitals, and colleges across Anatolia and Armenia. On account of US
neutrality during the first three years of World War I, the missionaries were allowed to
stay in the Ottoman Empire. Their institutions, however, were devastated by the
destruction of the Armenian population. The missionaries made heroic attempts to provide
for the care and feeding of the destitute, especially orphans, only to face hardships of
their own at the hands of Turkish officials. Attempts to provide refuge proved futile and
only provoked the ire of the government, which came to look upon them with increasing
suspicion. Next to the US consuls, the American missionaries collectively became the
second most important group of witnesses to the Armenian Genocide. Virtually every mission
sent reports, which together with the official consular communiques, came to constitute
the body of English-language eyewitness and documentary evidence about the Ottoman policy
of extermination filed with the American Embassy in Constantinople and forwarded to the US
Department of State in Washington. Many of these reports were compiled by Arnold Toynbee,
then a young historian, and were published in Lord (James) Bryce's The Treatment of the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire presented to the British Parliament in 1916 as proof of
"the gigantic crime that devastated the Near East in 1915." While the Department
of State classified the cables from the Embassy in Constantinople as confidential, the
ABCFM was able to release the contents of the reports it received and alerted the US media
and the American public. Formal US reaction to the deportations and massacres did not go
beyond verbal protests to the Ottoman government. Strong public sympathy generated by the
atrocity reports, however, helped in subsequent relief efforts. Swiss, Danish, and German
missionaries also witnessed the Armenian Genocide. Johannes Lepsius of the Deutsche-Orient
Mission, whose wartime report was suppressed by Germany upon the protest of the Turkish
government, with the authorization of the postwar German government published Deutschland
und Armenien 1914-1918: Samlung diplomatischer Aktenstucke (1919), the second important
volume of documentary evidence released during the time of the Genocide.
—Rouben Paul Adalian
Talat Pasha
allowed the American missionaries to do relief work among the Armenians, in spite of
the fact that Turkey and the United States were on the opposing camps during the
war. How many examples are there in history of a combatant country permitting the
citizens of another country fighting in the other camp to stay, feed, cloth and
educate the people it is accused of exterminating?
Professor
Türkkaya Ataöv, The 'Armenian Question'
Conflict, Trauma & Objectivity. (Holdwater Note: Talat
Pasha is recognized by Armenians as the mastermind behind the Armenian
"Genocide.")
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From THE ARMENIAN FILE: MYTH OF INNOCENCE
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Their (the Armenians') country is controlled by
a rich and powerful potentate of another race, who with his court and army would be
neither cruel nor revengeful except for their religion. They are Mohammedans and
they have been taught for centuries that a Christian slain was the surest passport
to the favor of God and the enjoyment of eternal happiness. Under the insane spell
of this awful fanaticism, they have come down like wolves on the gentle Christian
people under their sway, and within the last year have slaughtered men, women, and
children without mercy, noi4for any wrong that they have done, but only because they
are Christians.
This passage is taken from the preface of Bliss's book. Bliss spent many years in
Turkey, where he was a missionary.
If such a remark could be made in blind partiality in 1896 about Islam, which was
established more than 1,270 years ago, and which more than 200 million people had
chosen as their faith (a fact recorded by Bliss on pages 57-8 of his book), and
about the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire whose religious tolerance is recognized by the
entire world, then one can imagine, without reading the book, what could be said
about events which had taken place a year earlier, in an area in which the world and
especially Americans were almost uninterested.
It is true that the religious factor has always played an important role in
relations between Turks and the Christian nations. One has always treated Turks
differently, not because they were Turks, but because they were Muslims, and the
Christian community has treated them as outcasts. This treatment was not restricted
to Turks, but to other communities in Europe as well. Hungarians and Bulgarians were
subjected to the same treatment until they accepted Christianity.
------------------
While Russia claimed to be the
protector of the Orthodox, and France of Catholics, the interest of the American
public turned towards Turkey. This was due to the conversion of Armenians to
Protestantism by American missionaries. This change of interest carried with it a
negative attitude. Powell wrote:
The extent of American
missionary effort in the old Ottoman Empire is quite generally known, but its effect
on American public opinion is not, perhaps, so widely recognized. Very early in
their work the American missionaries discovered that Moslems do not change their
faith, so, debarred from proselytism among the Turks, they devoted their energies to
religious, educational, and medical work among the Christian minorities,
particularly the Armenians. For half a century or more, these missionaries provided
our chief sources of information on conditions in the Near and Middle East, and by
them public opinion in the United States on these subjects was largely molded.
Having been rebuffed by the Moslem Turks and welcomed with open arms by the
Christian Armenians, it is scarcely surprising that they espoused the cause of the
latter and that the reports which they sent home and the addresses which they
delivered, when in America on leave of absence, were filled with pleas for the
oppressed Christians and with denunciations of their Turkish oppressors. The
congregations which supported the missionaries accepted this point of view without
question, and there was thus gradually developed, under the aegis of our churches, a
powerful anti-Turkish opinion. (21)
On the missionaries, Clair
Price recorded:
That the Armenians were
grossly maladministered by the modern Sultans in Constantinople, there can be no
manner of doubt. And so were their Turkish neighbours. It was in this very
maladministration that the problem of the modern Ottoman Empire lay, and that
problem was a Turkish problem as well as an Armenian problem. . . .
American missionaries
established contact with the Armenian minorities nearly a century ago. . . . It was
inevitable that the very real and undoubted wrongs which the Armenians were
suffering under Hamidian administration should become known in the United States.
This was in itself an entirely healthy process, but its tragedy lay in the fact that
because the missionaries either could not or would not make it plain in the United
States that the Hamidian regime in Constantinople was the oppressor and that Turks
and Armenians alike were its victims, the result of American missionary endeavour
was to focus American concern on the Armenians' sufferings alone.(22)
Just as Russia, France and the
United States were interested in Turkey for religious reasons, Britain acted no
differently, as Valyi explained:
After the Congress of Paris
(1856) Russia invented a system which simply meant the suicide, limb by limb, of
Turkey. The plan of fostering antagonism between Christianity and Islam, and of
preventing by subterranean methods, the application of the principles of
conciliation, professedly supported before public opinion in Europe, was an adroit
policy al1 the more certain of success as the theocratic elements in Turkey were for
a long time opposed to progress. If the Tanzimat, the first great attempt at reform
in Turkey, ultimately failed, this was largely due to muddled foreign interference.
To accustom the Christians of the Near East to constant interference from abroad and
to a system of incessant meddling, amounting to a regular tutelage over Islam, was
to give them carte blanche against the Turks. Beaconsfield thought the Musulmans as
worthy of participating in the work of modern civilization as they had participated
in the powerful civilizations that had preceded our own. He wished this country to
preside in brotherly collaboration over the economical education of the Moslim
peoples, and over the vast movements which have been agitating the minds of
Musulmans for the last hundred years. Unfortunately England, which was soon to be
absorbed in domestic troubles in which Gladstone was to play a high-handed part, did
not understand Lord Beaconsfield. Hatred of Islam was, as everybody knows, one of
the strongest actuating motives of Gladstone, deeply impregnated as he was by
Christian theology. Under his ill-omened influence, the Eastern policy of Great
Britain changed completely and she became, in fact, the unconscious ally of Tsarism
against Islam.
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| The Activities of Missionaries |
The first Protestant missionaries to come to Turkey were members of the
British and Foreign Bible Society, which, soon after its foundation in 1804, started to
send distributors of Bibles inland from Izmir (Smyrna).(24)
American missionaries started to arrive from 1819. In 1832 the station of Istanbul
(Constantinople) was founded. At first, the activities of the missionaries were directed
towards Muslims and the Oriental Churches. Work among the Jews was carried out chiefly by
Scottish Presbyterians and members of the Church of England, but did not prove very
successful.
After having realized that there was little opportunity of successful work among Muslims,
the missionaries turned their attention towards the Oriental Churches, which included the
Armenian, the Greek, the Bulgarian, the Jacobite, the Nestorian, the Chaldean, and the
Maronite Churches.
Bliss explained the situation that the first missionaries encountered:
The first missionaries entered upon their work with no thought whatever of proselytising.
They recognized the essential Christian character of the churches and their object was to
set before them not a new creed, or a different form of church government, but simply a
higher conception of what constituted Christian life. They found almost absolute ignorance
of the Bible; complete domination by an ignorant and superstitious hierarchy; and a
general feeling that their church life was so thoroughly identified with national life
that to leave the church was to leave the nation, and that every heretic was also a
traitor. (p. 303)
An Armenian or a Greek who incurred the hostility of a Bishop and was placed under the ban
had no rights that any one was bound to respect. He could neither be baptized nor be
buried; he could neither marry nor purchase; no baker would furnish him with bread and no
butcher with meat; no one would employ him and no court recognized his defence so as to
give him the most ordinary protection. [p. 304)
It is apparent that in this situation, the missionaries won the Armenians over to the
Protestant Church. As for the Greeks, Bliss wrote: `There were missionaries who sought to
reach the Greeks, but their efforts met with very little success. Their national and
ecclesiastical pride was too strong, and their nearer relation to Western life made the
new teaching appear less attractive than to those to whom it was in great degree a
revelation. [p. 309]'
Naturally a question comes to mind. Since the situation of the Greeks was the same as that
of the Armenians, and the reason why the Greeks were not interested in the new teaching
was their close links with the Western world, then the Western world must have objected to
the spreading of Protestantism. Indeed, Bliss writes (p. 312) that such an objection came
not only from the Armenian and Greek Patriarchates, but from the Papal representative, as
well as from the French and the Russian ambassadors.
These objections are more clearly expressed by Cyrus Hamlin: `This democratic spirit of
freedom was extravagantly attributed to the influence of the missionaries, who had nothing
directly to do with it. But, above all, Russia pressed the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin to
stop the progress of this heresy, and clear the empire of it. The decisive influence came
from St. Petersburg through Etchmiadzin.(25)
The decisive influence mentioned by Hamlin, who himself was a Protestant missionary who
founded the Robert College in Istanbul, refers to the excommunication of those who had
established contact with the Protestant Church.
In spite of this, the Ottoman administration officially gave permission to the Protestant
Church, through the intervention of England, and thus a Protestant Armenian community was
born.
In 1896, missionaries from seven separate churches from the United States and four
churches from England were present in the Ottoman Empire. There were as many as 176
Americans and 869 local helpers who worked with them (Bliss p. 313). The main Anatolian
cities where a mission was established were: Bursa, Izmir, Merzifon, Kayseri, Sivas,
Trabzon, Erzurum, Harput, Bitlis, Van, Mardin, Antep, Maras, Adana, Hacin Ankara, Yozgat,
Arapkir, Malatya, Palu, Diyarbekir, Urfa, Birecik, Elbistan, and Tarsus.
Bliss wrote as follows about the activities of the missionaries:
The question is frequently asked, What are the relations between the missionaries and the
Turkish government? Repeatedly the statement is made by that government that the influence
of the missionaries is antagonistic, disturbing, and that they are the enemies of the
present rule. This is in no sense true. American missionaries have invariably ranked
themselves on the side of the law. They have taken the position that the Turkish
Government is the government of the land and its law must be obeyed. If those laws are
oppressive they will do their best to secure a change, but so long as the law is law it
must be obeyed. In all the various attempts to stir up revolutionary feeling among the
people, they have opposed such movements with all their influence. It is undoubtedly the
fact that the general result of their instruction by stirring intellectual development,
has been to make men restive under oppression. Undoubtedly their preaching has created an
intense desire for true religious liberty. Undoubtedly they have brought light into the
empire, and light is always a disturbing element where there is corruption; it creates
fermentation, and such fermentation as is not pleasant to oppressors. (p. 321)
It is not easy to say whether this statement praises the missionaries or condemns them. It
is clear from Bliss's statement that the Ottoman government was not pleased with the
activities of the missionaries, and saw them as enemies of the regime. If a government
accuses a foreigner in this manner, it may be expected to expel him from the country.
Because the missionaries remained in the country, it is apparent that the government was
not able to expel them. Bliss says that the missionaries will do whatever they can to
change repressive laws, but will also respect the law. Is it the people who decide whether
the law is repressive, or the missionaries? Bliss states that people, as their
intellectual level rises, become dissatisfied with repression. One is then led to assume
that missionaries gave rise to dissatisfaction which did not previously exist, and were
the ones who decided that the laws were repressive. Moreover, what is understood by `true
religious liberty' is not clear. The Ottoman Government not being interested in the
religion of non-Muslims, and having allowed the establishment of the Protestant Church,
who will then be blamed for the lack of religious freedom? Bliss asserts that missionaries
oppose revolutionary movements, yet he accepts that as a result of the missionaries'
activities a revolutionary climate was born, and that the missionaries took it upon
themselves to extinguish it. If they had reported this climate to the government forces,
then they could indeed have prevented the rebellions.
For all these reasons it is difficult to understand whether the statements made by Bliss
are apologetic or accusatory. Other writers have expressed their ideas more clearly. We
quote from Clair Price, Elie Kedourie and Sydney Whitman:
Moslems are usually hospitable to all foreigners and they frequently respect missionaries
personally. They use mission hospitals and occasionally they avail themselves of the
advantage of foreign schools. But for missionaries as Christians, engaged in spreading a
gospel of peace while their contemporaries at home invent poison gas, Moslems have neither
understanding nor respect. In their Christian capacities, missionaries are tolerated as
long as they do not offend.
The older missionaries know these things. They know that in their effort to , spread
Christianity, their greatest enemies have been the Christians, and most of their work in
the Ottoman Empire has been an effort to convert Eastern Christians to a Western
interpretation of Christianity. But this their supporters in the United ! States have to
this day never realized. Americans at home have assumed that the word Christian is an
all-sufficing label, that the communicants of the Orthodox and Gregorian Churches in the
East are Christians as Western Protestants understand the term, that Eastern Moslems are
heathen in the Western meaning of the word; and on this assumption they have built up out
of the mutual tragedies of racial and religious disentenglement in the Ottoman Empire,
their Christian martyr-legend and the sorry butcher-legend which they have attached to the
Turks.
The missionaries' supporters at home are firm believers in prohibition, but the
missionaries themselves know that the liquor traffic in the Ottoman Empire has been in the
hands of native and Western Christians, protected under the Capitulations by Christian
Governments. Yet so habitual has the Christian attitude of superiority become, that
American churchmen have actually gone to Constantinople within these last four years and
have come away unhumbled.(26)
The religion of Armenians was their distinctive badge in an Ottoman society regulated and
governed according to denominational distinctions. This religion was not only a matter for
the individual conscience, for personal and private devotions; it was a rule of life
regulating all social activities and all relations with the suzerain power, itself
suzerain by virtue of professing the dominant religion. And the internal government of the
community was similarly the prerogative of the religious hierarchy, which drew its civil
power from the fact of its ecclesiastical authority.
Into these long standing and well understood arrangements the West, round about 1830,
suddenly intruded. It came in the shape of American Protestant missionaries. They arrived
with arguments and contracts and funds. Their purpose, they said, was to infuse vitality
and spirit into the unprogressive and dormant eastern Christian communities. The
established hierarchy resisted these encroachments. It exiled and imprisoned Armenian
converts to Protestantism. It approached the Ottoman government with a request to forbid
the activities of these missionaries.
What actually were the doctrines that the missionaries, arousing so much opposition and
anger from so many different quarters, were teaching? Dwight defines them for us: `The
standard doctrine of the Reformation - salvation by grace alone, without the deeds of the
law-was usually the great central truth, first apprehended by their awakened and inquiring
minds, and made the ground of satisfactory repose.'
The introduction of these ideas, then, could not fail to affect the internal affairs of
the Armenian community, as well as its relations with the Ottoman Power. To start with, a
schism, encouraged by the missionaries, took place between the Orthodox majority and the
converts to Protestantism, and a new Protestant Armenian community was formed. Then,
within the Orthodox community itself, parties of `Enlightened' and `Reactionaries' were
formed. After a while, the `Enlightened', as is proper, won and reorganised the government
of the Armenian community. Extensive powers were taken away from the ecclesiastical
hierarchy and vested in a new elective Communal Council of Deputies.(27)
This is a large Moslem country. It is ruled by a sovereign whom International Law
recognizes as the Sultan of Turkey. This country belonged to the Turks even before the
discovery of America. Today it is honeycombed with Christian, and mostly Protestant
missionary schools, the avowed object of which is to educate a small Christian minority -
be it admitted the most thrifty, shrewd, pushing, and intriguing of all Eastern races - in
the Christian religion and at the same time in modern European ideas, and to bid them look
to the Western world outside Turkey as their natural protector. This was bound to make
these Asiatics discontented with their Asiatic status. . . .
I willingly believe that they never really intended to provoke disturbances or encourage
rebellion against the Turkish authorities. Still there cannot be any doubt that their
teaching - not their doctines, perhaps - had the result, probably never intended, and one
it has taken a couple of generations to attain-of fostering the Armenian revolutionary
movement throughout Asiatic Turkey. (28)
Henry Tozer, who was himself a Church member, wrote about his conversation with M.
Wheeler, the President of the American College in Harput:
Thus the missionaries, though they abstain on principle from taking any part in politics,
exercise indirectly something of the inftience of a European consul. Mr. Wheeler told me
that he was frequently in communication with Sir Henry Layard (the British ambassador to
Istanbul), who requested him to supply him with information about what was passing. In
consequence of this, some time ago, a pasha, who openly manifested his ill-will towards
them, received a sharp reprimand from Constantinople.(29)
These quotations show that the activities of missionaries, even if they did not buttress
the Armenian rebellions, played an active part in laying the foundation of the rebellions.
The activities of the missionaries were covered extensively before and after the
rebellions in reports coming from the provinces. We will return to this subject in Chapter
4.
|
Propaganda
|
Generally, in almost every country, there is a
tendency to believe that a newspaper article or a piece of news is naturally
accurate.
We have stated above that the religious factor and political considerations have
helped to establish an anti-Turkish climate. When conscious propaganda is added to
this, then not only do we have biased news, but inaccurate news as well.
The following statements (by Powell and Whitman) confirming this assertion are worth
reading:
Atrocity stories have been vastly overdone; some of the more recent massacres have
been wholly nonexistent. One of the local (Constantinople) members of the press end
of a relief organization told some friends openly that he could only send
anti-Turkish despatches to America because that is what gets the money!(31)
Shortly after the news had spread to Europe of the attack on the Ottoman Bank and
the subsequent massacre of Armenians, a number of artists of illustrated newspapers
arrived in Constantinople, commissioned to supply the demand for atrocities of the
Million-headed Tyrant. Among these was the late Mr. Melton Prior, the renowned war
correspondent. He was a man of a strenuous and determined temperament, one not
accustomed to be the sport of circumstances, but to rise superior to them. Whether
he was called upon to take part in a forced march or to face a mad Mullah, he
invariably held his own and came off victorious.
But in this particular case, as he confided to me, he was in an awkward predicament.
The public at home had heard of nameless atrocities, and was anxious to receive
pictorial representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply them with what
they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried and no women or children had
suffered hurt, and no Armenian Church had been desecrated. As an old admirer of the
Turks and as an honest man, he declined to invent what he had not witnessed. But
others were not equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an Italian illustrated
newspaper containing harrowing pictures of women and children being massacred in a
church.(32)
Among the men who were credited with a large share in the cruel measures of
repression said to have been carried out by different Turkish high officials against
the Armenians, the name of Marshal Chakir Pasha, Imperial Commissioner for the
introduction of reform in Anatolia, stood foremost. The story that the Marshal, who
was at Erzeroum in the month of October 1895, at the time of the Armenian rising,
had, like a human bloodhound, stood, watch in hand, when asked for orders, and
decided that the work of knocking the Armenians on the head was to continue for
another hour and a half - some versions say two hours-went almost round the world. .
. With the object of our journey in view we called successively upon Mr. Graves, the
British Consul; Mohammed Sherif Raouf Pasha, the Governor-General (Vali); M.
Roqueferrier, the French Consul; and M. V. Maximov, the Russian Consul-General. To
each of these gentlemen we put the question whether he believed in the truth of the
tale about Chakir Pasha, and the watch-in-hand episode. M. Roqueferrier ridiculed
the story. `These are stories that have been invented ad lib', he said, and added a
few words of high personal appreciation of Chakir Pasha.
The Russian Consul-General, M. Maximov, said: `It is not my business to deny the
truth of such tales. All I can tell you is, that Chakir Pasha is a worthy man - a
very good natured man. I have known him for years, he is a friend of mine.' Mr.
Graves, the British consul, said: `I was not here at the time, nor have I spoken to
Chakir Pasha about the matter, but the Vali assured me that it wasn't true, and that
is quite sufficient for me, as I should believe implicitly any personal statement of
Raouf Pasha.'
`Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian
revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian population to
rebellion?' I asked Mr. Graves.
`Certainly not,' he replied. `I do not believe that a single Armenian would have
been killed.(33)
These reports, however, have never been echoed in the Western press. The following
report by Clair Price is another example:
By the end of October, the late Miss Annie T. Allen and Miss Florence Billings, the
Near East Relief's representative in Ankara (Angora), compiled a report on the state
of the Turkish villages which the Greeks had burned during their retreat and
forwarded it to the Near East Relief's headquarters in Constantinople. But the Near
East Relief has never published that report, just as Mr. Lloyd George never
published the Bristol report on Greek misdeeds at Izmir (Smyrna).(34)
Indeed, Lloyd George had not allowed publication of the Bristol report, as Toynbee
noted:
Their unwillingness to publish the report is not incomprehensible and besides, Mr.
Venizalos threw all his personal influence into the scale. He objected to the
publication of evidence which had been taken by the Commission without the presence
of a Greek assessor, and in which the names of the witnesses were withheld. There
was, of course, a good reason for this, which reflected on the local Greek
authorities and not on the Western Commissioners. The individuals giving damaging
evidence against the Greeks were living under a Greek military occupation and could
not safely be exposed to reprisals. There were the same legal flaws in the Bryce
Report on Alleged German Atrocities in Belgium and on The Treatment of Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire. But the Allied governments did not hesitate to publish these
documents on that account.(35)
The Bryce Report mentioned by Toynbee is the Blue Book of the British, of which
Toynbee was the editor. We shall return to this topic.
At times completely opposite situations could also arise.
In 1918 the British had been forced to set Baku free. Newspapers, while reporting
this, had also mentioned the treachery of the Armenians. The British propaganda
services were then alarmed, and they wanted to erase any effect such news would
have. The following lines are taken from a memorandum prepared to that effect:
To lessen the credit of Armenians is to weaken the anti-Turkish action. It was
difficult to eradicate the conviction that the Turk is a noble being always in
trouble. This situation will revive this conviction and will harm the prestige not
only of Armenians, but of Zionists and Arabs as well.
The treatment of Armenians by the Turks is the biggest asset of his Majesty's
Government, to solve the Turkish problem in a radical manner, and to have it
accepted by the public.(36)
The author of these sentences, A. J. Toynbee, was working for the British propaganda
agency when he wrote this memorandum on 26 September 1919.
To understand the importance of propaganda, it is useful to take a look at Lucy
Masterman's account of the agency founded for this purpose.
The earliest news that I personally had of a propaganda department was a
conversation after a Sunday luncheon at Walton Golf Club during August 1914, when
Mr. T. P. O'Connor pressed on Mr. Lloyd George the necessity for countering the
propaganda already begun by the Germans in the United States in the form of leafiets
given away in the streets, and thrust into the hands of passengers arriving by
steamer. Mr Lloyd George used the phrase: `Will you look into it, Charlie, and see
what can be done.' Masterman agreed. (37)
Mr. Masterman, a member of Parliament, was a former member of the cabinet.
It is known that, after this date, Mr Masterman founded a bureau of propaganda, and
directed it. The existence of the bureau was kept secret. Mr Masterman having
resigned from his office in the National Health Commission, `Wellington House',
where the Commission operated, was converted into the headquarters of the bureau,
and the name of the bureau was entered in the registers as `Wellington House'.
The object of Wellington House is stated in the following quotation: the
dissemination of facts on "the Allied Cause, the British effort, the work of
the Navy, the Army, the Mercantile marine and the munition factories, the economic
and military resources of the Empire, the causes and aims of the war the crimes and
atrocities of Germany and her allies, the cause of Belgium the submarine
outrages". It is noticeable that "crimes and atrocities" come ?a long
way down the list. The means used were "Books, pamphlets, periodicals,
diagrams, maps, posters, postcards, .drawings, photographs and
exhibitions".(38)
It is reported that the bureau issued 17,000,000 copies of various publications in
England alone, including fifteen daily illustrated magazines.
The British, instead of distributing these publications in the streets, as the
Germans were doing, chose to find individuals and organizations which could
influence public opinion, and distribute the publications through them. Moreover, by
getting in touch with circles and publishing houses in neutral countries, they were
able to issue their publications while remaining in the background.
The main goal of the bureau was to ensure, by making public the atrocious and
inhuman actions of Germany and her allies, that neutral countries, and especially
the United States, would enter the conflict on their side.
I remember at the end of the war I met Mr. Henry White, formerly American Ambassador
in England and in Germany at the outbreak of the war. On hearing who I was he
countered the observation of Lord Bryce, who was of the party, stating that nothing
had been done in propaganda, by saying: "I beg your pardon, it was the best
thing done in the war. If it was your husband (turning to me) that did it, please
give him my compliments. The Germans bothered and harassed us. You nursed us along
till you got us just where you wanted us, and we never knew9we were being brought
there. We thought we were coming there of ourselves. (39)
I now refer to the third report concerning the activities of the Masterman bureau.4o
At the end of the 118-page report is a list of the books and pamphlets which were
published. At the end of the first half of 1916,182 had been published. Among the
authors were Max Aitken, William Archer, Balfour, James Bryce, E. T. Cook, Conan
Doyle, Alexander Gray, Archibald Hurd, Rudyard Kipling, A. Lowenstein, C. F. G.
Masterman, A. J. Toynbee and H. G. Wells. One of the books written by Toynbee was
entitled Armenian Atrocities, The murder of a nation.
Although we shall deal later with the topic of propaganda against the Ottoman Empire
throughout the war, we find it useful to include here a few passages from the
report:
Within this development policy framework, we have ensured the possibility of
publishing most of our publications in neutral or allied countries. Wellington House
publications (in addition to those published in London), are at present being
published and distributed in Paris, Madrid, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Holland,
Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. Many countries, especially small countries having a
common border with Germany, are very sensitive to organized propaganda carried out
by foreign states, and in some of them, especially in Sweden and Switzerland our
publications have been censored, and have had difficulties in the customs. For this
reason, the sale and the free distribution of our publications, their publication by
the local publishing houses, without any apparent relationship to the British
government's propaganda has been very useful. [p. 4]
One has witnessed the development of illustrated newspapers in this period. At the
present time, 6 such newspapers are being published and distributed by Wellington
House. [p. 5J. [One of these illustrated newspapers was Al-Hakikat (The Truth)
published twice a month in Arabic, Turkish Persian and Urdu.]
A former Turkish Consul distributes Al-Hakikat to local Moslems in Argentina. [p.7]
Wellington House was an organization formed by eight different propaganda divisions:
America, France, Spain and Portugal, Scandinavia, Italy and Switzerland, Greece and
Rumania, Eastern, and Islamic countries. In addition there were the divisions of
painting, photography and film, and the intelligence and distribution divisions.
Although it had such a wide area of activity, only 74 people worked for the
organization, including the president and the secretary. The organization worked in
cooperation with the publishing houses.
Naturally there is no information as to how the propaganda material was gathered.
Lucy Masterman, who wrote her husband's biography, undoubtedly did not include
anything that might be used against her husband. We even come across the following
statement: `What he objected to was the demand that his department should lose all
integrity or sense as a condition of the work they were doing' (p. 275). This
statement, however, does not tell us whether the bureau of propaganda conveyed only
news that was accurate. Lucy Masterman states that her husband had nothing to do
with the unfounded news that appeared from time to time in certain newspapers.
Nevertheless, to show how propaganda was gathered, we may consider the preparations
of the blue book on the Armenians published in 1916.
Apparently the first text of the blue book was the pamphlet entitled Armenian
Atrocities, The murder of a nation by Toynbee, published, as mentioned above, by the
Masterman bureau. We do not have this first text as a Wellington House publication.
However, the book was reprinted in 1975 by an Armenian publishing house in the
United States.4l It is impossible for us to know whether Toynbee, the author of The
Western Question in Greece and Turkey, would have permitted this new edition of his
book, if he had been alive in 1975.
The references given in this book are the Armenian newspapers Horizon published in
Tiflis, the Ararat in London, the Gotchnag in New York, and the Armenian Atrocities
Committee in the United States, which reported the information it had been given by
the missionaries. What will be written in a book which relies on these sources is
obvious. It may be mentioned that while the Armenians of Istanbul and Izmir were not
deported, a map in the book indicates that they were. In the third report of the
Masterman bureau it was stated that Toynbee's book aroused much interest.
The British documents describe the following situation (the numbers in brackets are
those of the documents).
The British Consul in Batum, Stevens, writes in a telegram (F.O. 371/2488/140259) to
his Ministry on 10 September 1915 that he had his information from the Armenian
newspapers in Tiflis, that Ottomans had destroyed Sasun and killed many people, that
1?15,000 refugees per day were coming to the region of Erivan, and that so far
160,000 refugees had come.
Lord Cromer writes in a memo dated 2 October 1915 that it is useful to publicize
what the Turks have done, and thus prevent educated Muslims in India from
associating the Islamic cause with the Turks. It is stated in subsequent memos that
no other information was available, except that from newspapers.
These news items were made public in American newspapers on 4 October.
On 6 October, a question on this matter was directed to the Government in the House
of Commons. (Records of Parliament, 6 October 1915, pp. 994-1004.) Spokesman for the
government Lord Cromer states that they have heard of the massacre of 80,000, and
repeats his opinion as stated in the memo.
Toynbee's book was published after this. We see that Toynbee, from February 1916 on,
stating that he is acting on behalf of Lord Bryce, asks for information against
Turkey from various countries and individuals, as well as from Armenian Committees (F.O.
96/205). These items of information were sent to Toynbee without details of their
sources. All these writings are present in the above-mentioned dossier; among them
was the following letter sent by Toynbee on 11 May 1916 to Lord Bryce:
Mr. Gowers from our office discussed with Montgomery from the Foreign Office how to
publish the Armenian documents. They [the Foreign Office) claim that if you were to
send these documents with an introductory note to Sir Edward Grey [Foreign
Secretary) and state that they have been prepared under your supervision, that they
are trustworthy, then your letter would be published by the Foreign Office as an
official document, and the documents would constitute an appendix to your letter.
The problem of publication would thus be solved. While giving the book an official
character, it would free the Foreign Secretary from the obligation to take upon
himself the proving of the accuracy of every matter mentioned in these documents.
Thus, the blue book was prepared by the Masterman bureau — by putting together
documents without having checked their accuracy, documents exclusively collected
from Armenian sources or from people sympathetic to Armenians from second or third
hand — and was published with official status.
We would like to quote now from two authors who have studied how propaganda material
was gathered.
The first is Arthur Ponsonby and the title of his book is Falsehood in WarTime.4z
Ponsonby was a member of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons from 1910 to
1918. He then transferred to the Labour Party and was opposed to war. He published
his book in 1928. We quote hereunder some particularly interesting passages
concerning the propaganda-gathering process.
A circular was issued by the War Office inviting reports on war incidents from
officers with regard to the enemy and stating that strict accuracy was not essential
so long as there was inherent probability [p. 20]
Atrocity lies were the most popular of all, especially in this country and America;
no war can be without them. Slander of the enemy is esteemed a patriotic duty. [p.
22J
Even in inconsequential events the testimony of individuals is never absolutely
convincing. But when prejudices, emotions, passions and nationalism are present, an
individual's statement becomes worthless. It is impossible to describe all the types
of atrocity stories. They were repeated for days in brochures, posters, letters and
speeches. Renowned persons, who otherwise would be hesitant to condemn even their
mortal enemies for lack of evidence, did not hesitate to accuse an entire nation of
having committed every imaginable savagery and inhuman action. [p.129]
For those who are unaccustomed, a photograph creates an inherent element of trust.
For them there can be nothing more authentic than a snapshot. No one thinks of
questioning the veracity of a photograph. For this reason even if they are
subsequently shown to be fakes, the damage has already been done. During the war the
faking of photographs became an industry. Every state engaged in this activity, but
the French were the real experts. [p.135]
During the massacres of 1905 many photographs were taken. One of these, a group of
people surrounding a row of corpses, appeared on June 14,1915 in `le Miroir' with
the headline: `The Murders of the German Gangs in Poland.' Many other similar
examples appeared in other newspapers. [p.136]
The photograph of a German soldier leaning over his dead comrade was published on
April 17, 1915 in `War Illustrated' (published by the Masterman Bureau), as definite
proof that the Huns were violating war regulations, `a German savage robbing a dead
Russian'. (p.137]
The second author is Cate Haste and the title of her book is: Keep the Home Fires
Burning.(43) A speech of US President Coolidge to the Association of Newspaper
Editors is cited on the first page of the book: `Propaganda seeks to present part of
the facts, to distort their relations, and to force conclusions which could not be
drawn from a complete and candid survey of all the facts.'
We quote some passages from the book:
The essence of propaganda is simplification. Through the methods adopted by the
media and the organizations engaged in propaganda, a fabric of images about war was
gradually built up, by endless repetition over a long period, to provide
indisputable justification for the fighting. Propagandists create images with simple
human content which are believable because they chime with what people have already
been taught to believe. As Goebbels put it in a later war the task is `to provide
the naively credulous with the arguments for what they think and wish, but which
they are unable to formulate and verify themselves. [p. 3]
In wartime, this means firstly building up an image of `the enemy' which accords
with preconceived ideas of the behaviour which can be expected of `enemies'. It
entails constantly denigrating the enemy in such a way as to inspire hatred of him,
and excluding information which is sympathetic to his cause. [p. 3)
Atrocity stories have appeared in all wars, before and since. The intention is to
create an image which acts as a repository for all the hatred and fear inspired by
war. [p. 3)
The war is justified in the name of simple and universal ideals which everyone has
learnt and with which nobody can be expected to disagree. Ideals like Freedom,
Justice, Democracy and Christianity, which are the embodiment of prevailing national
virtues. (pp. 3-4]
The characteristic atrocity story came from `a correspondent' some distance behind
the scene of operations. It was invariably a supposedly verbatim account by an
unidentified Belgiƒn or French refugee. . . . Even these accounts were usually
second-hand. [p. 84]
On page 87 an example of how a piece of news is transformed is given: `
When the fall of Antwerp got known the church bells were rung.' - K"lnische
Zeitung.
`According to the K"lnische Zeitung, the clergy of Antwerp were compelled to
ring the church bells when the fortress was taken.' - Le Matin (Paris).
`According to what The Times has learned from Cologne via Paris, the unfortunate
Belgian priests who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken have
been sentenced to hard labour.' - Corriere della Sera (Milan).
`According to information in the Corriere della Sera, from Cologne via London, it is
confirmed that the barbaric conquerors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian
priests for their heroic refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living
clappers to the bells with their heads down.' - Le Matin (Paris).
The sixth chapter of this book reports the hostility shown by the people towards
persons of German origin living in England, and their being gathered and sent to
specific camps. We shall not dwell on this subject, for it has little to do with
propaganda per se. We shall only cite the following sentence from p.121: `Louis,
Prince of Battenberg, son of Prince Alexander who has a high-ranking position in the
Austrian army, has been forced to resign from his post as First Lord of the
Admiralty.'
Propaganda during war was effective to this extent. But in the case of the Ottoman
Empire, the propaganda had started long before the war, and continued, was even
itensified, after the truce.
We shall conclude this subject by quoting C. F. Dixon-Johnson:
We have no hesitation in repeating that these stories of wholesale massacre have
been circulated with the distinct object of influencing, detrimentally to Turkey,
the future policy of the British Government when the time of settlement shall
arrive. No apology, therefore, is needed for honestly endeavouring to show how a
nation with whom we were closely allied for many years and which possesses the same
faith as millions of our fellow-subjects, has been condemned for perpetrating
horrible excesses against humanity on `evidence' which, when not absolutely false,
is grossly and shamefully exaggerated. (44)
|
| THE NINTH COMMANDMENT |
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Ex. 20, 16.
To accuse a man by bearing false witness against him, either in the court of law
officially. or in public in order to destroy his dignity, is a sin not only before
God, but even before man, according to the ordinary standards of life. This act is
not merely a lie; it is spiteful joy at the expense of an innocent person. To bear
false witness, against one's neighbor is a vice which includes lying and defamation,
as well as mockery, calumny and profanity.
It is an offense with the armour of manyfold weapons of destruction. The writer of
the Epistle of James 1, 3-5, describes in a vivid manner the use of human abilities
against one's neighbor and society. Such behavior is the opposite of the truth by
which the Church of Christ is sustained and nourished by Almighty God.. The
commandment not only admonishes us to avoid bearing false witness or even
neutrality, but also encourages us to promote the fruits of the Truth as it is
described by our Savior in the Sermon on the Mount.
|
"AMERICAN
THEOCRACY"
|
Kevin Phillips - Viking; excerpted by Sukru S. Aya
Page 100: Christianity in the United States, especially Protestantism,
has always include had an evangelical — which is to say, missionary — and
frequently a radical or combative streak. Some message has a1wa s had to be
preached, punched, or proselytized. Once in a while that excitability has been
economic — most notably in the case of the Social Gospel of the 1890s, which
searched through Scripture to document the Jesus who emphasized caring fir the
poor and hungry. In the twentieth century, though, religious zeal in the
United States usually focused on something quite different: individual pursuit
of salvation through spiritual rebirth, often in circumstances of sect-driven
millenarian countdowns to the so-called end times and an awaited return of
Christ. These beliefs have often been accompanied by great revivals;
emotionalism; eccentricities of quaking, shaking and speaking in tongues:
characterization of the Bible as in errant; and wild-eyed invocation of
dubious prophecies in the Book of Revelation. No other contemporary Western
nation shares this religious intensity and its concomitant proclamation that
Americans are God’s chosen people and nation. George W. Bush has averred
this belief on many occasions.
In its recent practice, the radical side of U.S. religion has embraced
cultural antimodernism, war hawkishness, Armageddon prophecy, and in the case
of conservative fundamentalists, a demand for governments by literal biblical
interpretation. In the 1800s, religious historians generally minimized the
sectarian thrust of religious excess, but recent years have brought more
candor.
Page 251: We have seen that between 1870 and 1914 the British developed
a “national psychosis” of war expectation, and the United States displayed
a lesser version in 1917 -1918. Several hooks have been written about the U.S.
churches’ militance, for the rhetoric among U.S. clergy was as overblown as
any in Europe’
Page 252: Thus, just as scholars of the British war mentality in the
years prior in 1914 do well to study the patriotic bombast of the music halls,
the stanzas of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and the endless books
predicting German invasions, fathoming the Bush electorate requires its own
study materials.
Page 255: … However, before we look at premillennialism’s impact on
U.S. policy in the Middle East, it is useful to recall the calamitous pre—World
War I legacy of British evangelicalism, moral imperialism, and religious
hawkishness. In some ways, although certainly not all, the United States
picked up the evangelical baton Britain dropped nearly a century ago — and
ironically, few Americans were more aware of Britain’s 1917 invasion of the
Turkish-controlled holy land than George W. Bush.
… An itinerant preacher, Chambers spent his last days bringing the gospel to
Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt in late 1917 for the
invasion of Palestine and the intended Christmastime capture of Jerusalem.
… By 1914 many British churches were all but draped in flags. According to
historian Arthur Marwick, …
Page 257: "'war that will end war,’ caught the public fancy
because it appeared to fulfill St. John’s prophecy of the war between the
legions of God and Satan, conveniently defined as England and Germany,
respectively.”
… The romance of the Crusades was alive and breathing strongly. As French
and British imperialism moved into the lands of Islam during the nineteenth
century, both nations turned out books with titles like The Cross and the
Crescent and art like Delacroix’s painting The Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople.
… German East Africa had been captured, Egypt became a formal British
protectorate in 1919, and Persia became an informal one, leaving the holy Iand—Palestine,
Jordan, and Mesopotamia—as the missing link in complete British dominance
from Cape Town to Burma.’ Pushed by Lloyd George, Britain had by the end of
1918 sent 1,084,000
Page 258: British and Commonwealth troops into Ottoman territory to
control the carving up, and the so-called settlement of 1922 fulfilled British
ambition.
Nevertheless, by 1922-1923 British policy makers knew that the foundations of
these ambitions had collapsed. Mary troops had been with drawn in 1919, and
then Britain’s economy fell into a deep downturn in 1920 and 1921 ...
… As early as 1919 Britain urged the United States to take up a peacekeeping
role in Constantinople and Armenia, but Congress declined.
Slippage at home was visible in the inability of British churches to command
their former respect and Sunday attendance. The Church of England lost public
confidence through its thoughtless wartime flag-waving, and the largely
evangelical nonconformists lost ground because their war support—many had
been caught up in the drumbeat of moral imperialism by 1914—mocked their
earlier peacetime priorities and pre- occupation with social progress.
Page 259: and irrevocably” and “become and more ablaze for the
glory of God.” For Chambers, said The Times, “the enemy was ‘evil,’
religious duty was clear, and Christian soldier marched onwards in a straight
line.”
Events in the Middle East had been part of Britain’s post-World War I
debacle. Nearly a century later error was about to be blindly repeated by a
president of the United States who shared Lloyd George’s biblical frame of
reference, thought the enemy was “evil,” and failed to profit from the
larger lesson taught by history.
Since the collapse of the Union, America has taken up the war whoops of
militant Protestantism, the evangelical Christian missionary hopes and
demands, the heady talk about bringing liberty and freedom to new shores, the
tingle of the old Christian-Muslim blood feud, the biblical preoccupation with
Israel and the scenarios of the end times and Armageddon—the whole
entrapping drama that played in British political theater a century ago.
American evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal churches, in turn become
the new flag bearers of crusades against Islam’s “evil ones.”
...
Yet much of their activity purports to be missionary. Instead of British
church people and Bible societies accompanying Queen Victoria’s soldiers to
India, we have U.S. missionaries following the flag to the Middle East. Prior
to World War Il he mainline U.S. churches led missionary work, but today, says
historian Paul Harvey, “American foreign mission efforts are dominated by
conservative evangelical groups (the Southern Baptist Convention and the
Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination, are the two largest
senders of career missionaries) and Mormons (by far the largest sender of
non-career missionaries).”
Page 260: By 2003, after a decadelong drumbeat by religious
organizations Urging the United States to defend foreign Christian populations—another
page taken from British nineteenth century experience —the principal
evangelical churches were not just war supporters but active mission planners.
A year after the military took Baghdad, a survey by the Los Angeles Times
found thirty evangelical missions in the city Kyle Fisk, executive
administrator of the National Association of Evangelicals, told the newspaper
that “Iraq will become the center for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ
to Iran, Libya and throughout the Middle East.”...
... ” Later, even during World War I, the Ottoman Empire was cast in the
antichrist role, and by the 1970s fundamentalists were transferring that evil
to the Arab world.
Page 298: The only thing new in the world is the history we don’t
know, — Harry S Truman
The lesson of history is that we don’t learn the lessons of history. –
Thomas G. Donlan, Barron’s, 2005
Page 383: ... But when the Armageddon of 1914-1918 brought forty
million deaths instead of Christ’s return, the embarrassment was not limited
to flag bedecked Anglican churches or nonconformist chapels that had joined in
the parade. Religion in general seemed to have failed, and British church
attendance shrank — and then shrank again. it is not hard to imagine
something similar happening in the United States by 2030 or 2040 as two or
three decades of cynicism claim religious as well as economic and political
victims.
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More:
Ottoman Official Attitudes Towards American Missionaries
Godly go-ahead for hate from 16th century Pope
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