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Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years
Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur’an were sometimes read as part of language instruction.
Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.
Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders’ ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations.
— Heather J. Sharkey, author of A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East
"An eagerness to encourage that interfaith work is a clear subtext of [Muhammad in the Seminary], well-sustained by painstaking archival research that finds signs of curiosity, creativity, and hope in interreligious scholarship in historical moments that one might not expect."
"The book enriches our understanding of nineteenth-century Protestant thought and American Protestant seminaries’ reception and impact on Orientalism, as well as emerging Muslim-Christian relations in the United States."
"Grafton does an excellent job when he analyzes specific individuals in seminaries who had an interest in, taught or wrote about Islam. This book fills in a gap about the ‘Orientalist’ views of Muhammad and Islam by examining this within the context of Protestant theology, a subject virtually ignored in other histories of Islamic studies."
"In the course of his analysis, Grafton makes clear that nineteenth-century American seminary professors and students largely agreed that Muslims needed to be liberated from what they considered to be a deficient religious tradition completely out of sync with the modern world."