Ambiguous Conversions: The Selective Adaptation of Religious Cultures in Colonial North Africa

Abstract

What does it mean to convert? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British and American evangelical Protestant missionaries arrived in the Islamic societies of North Africa with some clear thoughts on this matter. They imagined conversions entailing public professions of faith that would gain confirmation through ceremonies of baptism and the growth of official Church membership. They imagined converts who would establish families and spread Christianity at the grass roots. To their supporters at home, they emphasised that their missions were universal, appealing to Muslims, Christians and Jews; men, women and children; rich and poor; sick and healthy. However, formal, large-scale or family conversions seldom occurred in Islamic North Africa, except, arguably, in parts of Egypt among Coptic Orthodox communities that were already Christian. By the late nineteenth century, circumstances on the ground were compelling Evangelical Protestant missionaries to change their ideas and expectations about what conversion and Christian identity could mean. In the process, missionaries began to acknowledge that conversions could be partial, private and unknowable to others in addition to being incremental in nature.1 In short, conversions could be highly ambiguous.KeywordsSuez CanalReligious ConversionMission SchoolMuslim BrotherhoodIslamic SocietyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.