Dr. David Grafton

Throughout the 19th 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, within the field of Biblical Studies, as well as in the new field of comparative religions. This lecture, drawn from the speaker’s new book Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century (NYU Press, 2024), explores the way Protestants utilized the Qur’an within Old Testament Studies, and how they viewed Islam as an important part of the evolution of religions culminating in an American Christianity.