Customer Reviews

The Arabian Mission's Story: In Search of Abraham's Other Son (Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America)

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This is a definitive history of the Reformed Church in America's work in the Arabian Gulf beginning with the foundation established by Samuel Zwemer and James Cantine in 1889. Written by a worker in that field and a resident of the middle east, it offers a wonderful survey of Islam-Christian relations as well as Christian mission work in the area in general as bonuses. The volume has made excellent use of archival sources as well as interviews with many retired missionaries.

Scudder offers excellent insights in this historical survey about the role of mission work as well as insights into the role of the church in the middle east in light of the current political situation.

The volume's particular focus is on the educational, medical, and evangelistic work of the Reformed Church in America. That mission effort concentrated primarily in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman.

Other related volumes such as Grace in the Gulf, by Jeanette Boersma, Sharifa, by Cornelia Dalenberg, and Pioneers in the Arab World, by Dorothy Van Ess are memoirs and autobiographies. Scudder examines the whole of the Reformed church effort with a careful and critical eye.

The volume includes two useful charts: one offers about an 80 page historical timeline of events in western history, the middle east, Arabia, the church, and the mission field from 484 AD to 1994; the other offers a year by year summary of mission appointments and distribution by mission stations in Basrah, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Amarah.

This volume is an excellent introduction for anyone who would like to understand the role of the Christian mission in Islam in general and the work of the Reformed Church in America in particular.

This is an extremely well-documented history of modern Christian activity in the Arabian/Persian Gulf. The extensive bibliography and references make it a great resource on the modernization of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq and Iran.