A flurry of serious books focusing on local Christians in the Middle East have done much to provide balance to a history that has traditionally been told from the perspective of European and American missionaries. Yet despite some wonderful additions to the list in recent years, Deanna Womack has begun the work of filling yet another gap: not only does Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria describe the history of Syrian Protestants as part of a broader Arab movement but it also addresses their very real religiosity, a subject historians are often afraid to broach. Womack, an Assistant Professor of History of Religions and Multifaith Relations at Emory, effectively positions herself at the crossroads of history and religious studies and draws on the best of both fields to create a fascinating book that cuts across disciplinary boundaries.

The book contributes in at least four distinct ways to the growing understanding of Arab Christians as a dynamic minority community in the Middle East. First, Womack gives real credence to evangelical Christian conversion experiences, accepting their religious belief at face value rather than finding alternative explanations (such as economics) for conversion to Protestantism. Moreover, she takes religious belief as an essential part of these Christians’ identities as participants in the vibrant Arab literary culture of the time period. She also explains how the Protestant community was an important factor in the nahda, or Arab cultural awakening of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Third, women who are often overlooked are central to two of the book's five chapters and are incorporated fluidly throughout the rest of book as well. Finally, the author's knowledge of global Christianity and global missions provides for an important but often underused comparative history, at least in terms of studies of Middle Eastern missions.

Some scholars have suggested that Arab Christians, particularly those who adopted Western Protestant practices and beliefs, were somehow “less Arab” than Latin or Orthodox Christians. Womack confronts this argument head on, insisting that “even the Syria Mission's most acclaimed converts made the evangelical faith their own, apart from missionary designs” (217). The Syrian Protestant community was even rocked by a scandal in 1902 when a “group of Syrian Protestants in Beirut embodied nahdawi ideals of independent agency and free inquiry by circulating a damning assessment of the American mission that depicted the Syrian Evangelical Church ‘crying as from the grave and its echo being heard by the missionaries and the Presbyterian Board of New York’” (213). This controversial pamphlet challenged paternalistic American missionary oversight of the church while maintaining a strong commitment to the faith itself.

Womack insists that “the voices of Syrians, which missionary discourses have buried, sometimes quite deliberately, demand a reconceptualization of mission history in Syria” (329). Accomplishing the task of uncovering these Syrian Protestant voices is a difficult task, especially in the case of the women at the center of the narrative. Womak uses an impressive array of archival sources to present a variety of perspectives. She visited missionary archives of the Church Missionary Society, the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, the Presbyterian Church in North America, the British Missionary Society, and London Bible and Domestic Female Mission, among others. But foreign archives are insufficient evidence for Womack. In addition, she pays close attention to Syrian Protestant “letters, diaries, reports and publications” (329). And in one of the most impressive contributions to the field, Womack consults and interprets the accounts of Syrian mubashirat, or Biblewomen who served an important role for the Syrian mission following the violence of 1860. Technically, missionary leaders only allowed such women to read the Bible to potential converts in the privacy of their homes, yet in practice the Biblewomen also interpreted the Bible; indeed, “the mubashirat often transcended the socially and religiously constructed boundaries of gender upheld by Syrians and Western missionaries alike” (284). While many such women left behind no written account of their activities, Womack used the few personal accounts, as well as serious archival detective work, to uncover the identities and practices of a number of these women.

As good gender history should do, Womack accomplished more than including women in the narrative. Instead, she uses the role of women to upend the standard history of the Syrian Mission and historians’ understanding of global missionary movements. For instance, it was at a 1910 meeting of the American Mission when a missionary woman suggested that female evangelists could use their access to private spaces not only to minister to women but to men and boys as well. Yet Womack discovered that this practice began some fifty years prior. That is, “by reading scripture and preaching, Syrian Biblewomen served as forerunners for American missionary women to broaden the boundaries of their own evangelistic endeavors” (309–310).

Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria contributes to a more well-rounded understanding of history in a variety of ways. Yes, it works as a wonderful contribution to the history of women in Syria's Protestant communities. By relying heavily on the voices of Syrians, it also offers a broad and honest assessment of Syrian missions as a whole, including notions of Western paternalism and masculinity. Finally, Womack's acceptance of conversion stories and Syrian Protestants’ religious experiences is a refreshing perspective not often presented in such a manner in historical writing.