OUR MISSIONARY INSTITUTIONS IN TURKEY
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.
[Illustration: MISS MINNIE MILLS
Teacher in American Girls’ College at Smyrna, who saw Turkish soldiers
engaged in firing Armenian houses.]
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 Mohammedans 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 (_vali_) 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.