Jesus optional: First World War and the shifting institutional identity of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut

Abstract

Before the First World War, foreign institutions in the Ottoman lands were protected from interference by the Ottoman government via treaties known as the Capitulations. During the war, Ottoman officials employed their newfound wartime powers by cancelling the Capitulations as part of an effort to reassert their sovereignty. This article examines the ramifications of these changed wartime political dynamics through the case of one particularly prominent American educational institution, the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. It argues that the Ottoman government changed the institutional identity of the Syrian Protestant College by forcibly ending the controversial requirement that all students (Christian, Muslim or Jewish) study the Bible and attend Christian services. This paved the way for the secularization of the university and inadvertently helped ensure its enduring relevance in the region.