A Feminist Awakening? Evangelical Women and the Arab Renaissance

Syrian Protestant women did not join in the published theological debates of the Christian presses in Beirut, but chapter 3 reveals that in the 1880s they began publishing sermons and articles on female education and child-rearing (tarbiya) for the mission periodical al-Nashra al-Usbu’iyya (The Weekly Bulletin). Along with the books and novels that women published at the American Mission Press, these largely neglected articles put Syrian Protestant women at the forefront of the Arab women’s awakening that gained momentum in the early twentieth century and united Christian, Muslim, and Jewish women activists. These proto-feminist authors occupied the traditionally masculine sphere of Arabic production and carved out a space for women’s intellectual and spiritual leadership in the Protestant community. Among these women were the acclaimed journalists Farida ’Atiya, Hanna Kurani, and Julia Tu’ma al-Dimashqiyya.