Abstract

This essay examines the ways that Arab Christian immigrants in the late-nineteenth-century United States understood religious, cultural and national belonging. Focusing on migrants from Ottoman Syria (present day Lebanon and Syria) who referred to themselves as Syrians, it uses publications from the Arab renaissance in Beirut and early Arab American newspapers in New York to consider how these Christians grappled with their identities as subjects of the Ottoman Sultan, as Christians from various denominations, as citizens in an Islamic society and as newcomers to America. Defying Protestant missionaries’ simplistic depictions of Middle Eastern Christianity, such Syrian Christian authors expressed a sense of belonging in an interreligious environment and sought to inform American readers about the riches of Arab-Islamic heritage.

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