| Summary: | "Christian Homeland examines the history of the Episcopal Church's involvement in missionary work in the Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it describes how the denomination's evangelistic activities and theological ideas influenced the response of church members to a variety of political and social issues affecting them as Americans during that same period. Beginning in the 1830s, Episcopalians established mission posts in Athens and Istanbul, from which they sought to convert the Muslims and Jews of the Ottoman Empire to Christianity, but failing to achieve any appreciable evangelistic success with non-Christians, they turned their attention to reforming the Eastern Christian churches instead. Receiving key assistance in these efforts from the Anglican missionary bishopric in Jerusalem, a small, but influential corps of Episcopalians dedicated themselves to keeping church members informed about the Middle East, particularly the status of the region's Christian population, through the middle of the twentieth century. In addition to its study of Episcopal missionaries, this book explores other topics related to their evangelization concerns; these include immigration into the United States, the Armenian genocide, humanitarian relief for refugees and victims of persecution, anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, Zionism and the formation of the State of Israel, and the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict"--
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