This luncheon colloquium features The Rev. Dr. Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., retired priest, Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island.

As the birthplace of the Christian faith, the Middle East had always been an area of fascination to church people in the West, and with the expansion of American diplomatic and commercial interests into the Mediterranean in the early nineteen century, leaders of the newly organized Episcopal Church felt empowered to similarly spread their religious values into the region. Beginning in the 1830s, Episcopalians established mission posts in Athens and Constantinople (Istanbul), from which they expected to initiate a mass conversion of Muslims and Jews to Christianity, but when these evangelistic aspirations failed to materialize, they turned their attention to reforming the ancient churches of the East instead. Later assisted by the Church of England’s missionary episcopate in Jerusalem, a small, but influential corps of Episcopalians dedicated themselves to keeping church members in the United States informed about Middle Eastern affairs, particularly the increasingly tenuous status of the region’s Christian population. In this talk, Gardiner Shattuck will outline how the theological and ecclesiastical assumptions held by Episcopal leaders not only guided their missionary activities in the Middle East, but also influenced their denomination’s response to major social and political questions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – issues such as immigration into the United States, genocide, refugee relief, and Zionism.