Transcript

Welcome to CR amplified, the Cairo Review’s Podcast, where we talk to experts and policy makers about relevant issues on the world stage. I’m Jacob Blau. 

Today, I will be continuing my discussion with Dr Matthew K Shannon in this two part series on the history of us Christian missionaries in Iran during the Pahlavi Dynasty. Dr Shannon will be speaking on his recently published book Mission Manifest: American Evangelicals in Iran in the 20th Century. He’s currently an associate professor of history at Emory and Henry University and an expert on the history of U.S. Iranian relations. Dr. Shannon will be joining the Department of History at the American University of Cairo as a full time faculty member in the fall of 2025. Last episode, Dr Shannon and I spoke about the origin of the Christian mission in Iran and how it existed in the context of US foreign policy as a means to exert imperialism, despite the rising tides of nationalism that were starting to sweep Iran. Today, we will be speaking about the relationship between U.S. Christian missionaries and Iranian evangelicals through the lens of culture. We’ll be looking at various development programs that included social work, education and healthcare, and how after 1965 these programs became nationalized by local Iranians. Furthermore, we’ll be talking about cultural integration, personal relationships, and space, and how these aspects changed for U.S. missionaries in the years leading up to the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Jacob Blau:  Also, you speak about in the book that within this development, and especially after 1965 which you state as the year that the Iranian Evangelical Church gained independence from this home base, there are some positive byproducts that come out of that come out of the Christian mission. [Specifically], you talk a lot about literacy, schooling and social work; and while this did coincide with Muhammad Reza Shah’s development program, it also had some important influence with the Iranians who led this development. You talked about, excuse my pronunciation, Sattareh Farmanfarmaian, and maybe you want to talk a little bit about this [figure].

Matthew K. Shannon: It’s such an important question. I’m really glad that you’ve asked that, because one of the lines that I try to walk in the book is to stress the coercive superstructure that is surrounding all of this history, whatever we want to call it Imperial or something else. But, I’m also trying to understand what the various kind of impacts are on the ground, both institutionally and on a personal level, in ways that sometimes surprise us, or give us a different type of perspective on the longer term impact of not just mission work, but some of these cultural and developmental programs that other Americans are involved in. So, the title of the book is, Mission Manifest [and] ultimately, I demonstrate that there are various manifestations of this  Presbyterian American, Iranian shared mission in downtown Tehran and it’s not just the churches.

MKS: So, another manifestation of that shared mission comes in the form of development programs, broadly defined. There are two case studies. One case study is on literacy work: mission literacy work, US aid literacy work, and then ultimately the Shah of Iran’s literacy corps— you see this genealogy literacy programming through the three shared missions. And, as you mentioned, I also look at the question of social work, and what the relationship between this one clinic, maternal clinic in South Tehran was to the broader maternal welfare state, and [to] the social work programming that Sattareh Farmanfarmaian was developing on her own at the same time. So as an example, this particular clinic becomes part of Farmanfarmaian’s broader network of the School of Social Work. Here’s an example where, when the institutions start to get their independence coming out of the “commonwealth stage” it’s not just the church, it’s all of these institutions that we have to think about. And, in the case of some of the social work programming with the clinic work, we see there’s some direct ties to Sattareh Farmanfarmaian’s Social Work Project. That’s presumably a good thing where people are able to get services they need and that some of these often underfunded, understaffed, [and] constantly changing mission projects were able to get a degree of stability under the broader government emergent welfare state of the Pahalvi [period].

MKS: There would be other examples, schools [which] there’s a chapter on. The Community School of Tehran really [became] an international Iranian institution—a school that began for mish (short for missionary) kids is now serving elite Iranians at large in the 1970s. The Iran Bethel School for Women is transformed into Damavand College which becomes one of the first “modern liberal arts schools” for Iranian women. There are the various cultural associations that I discuss— we could go into some of the other examples, but yes, I was fascinated by the ways in which institutions that were established by Presbyterian missionaries, and in some cases, [by] some of these US government cultural programs too. What began from [what] you will think of in terms of cultural imperialism, but [actually] on the ground in Tehran the mission and place are converging— they are adapting to new circumstances, and they’re often taken into a new life by the very people that those institutions were created for. These missionary institutions become Iranian institutions, or international institutions, doing much bigger things and moving away from some of the evangelical impulses in adopting a more secular model. So, whether it’s in literacy work, social work, schooling, or any of the other examples we see, especially after 1965 when the Presbyterian Mission shutters, those institutions are set loose and they have 15 years to reinvent themselves before there is another change during the revolution of 79’. 

JB: It’s so interesting to me that you talk about this idea of cultural imperialism, because I feel like it’s such an understudied topic in history [when] studying the post-colonial era during the Cold War. So I want to talk and run with this a little bit, and specifically talk about the American experience in Iran. So moving back in time a little bit, I know we’re jumping all over the place a little bit but it’s okay, in 1941 we talked about the Allies invading Iran and  this seemed to be much to the benefit of the Presbyterian Mission, because these allies, sort of unexpectedly discovered these missionary establishments. And one soldier, I want to pull a quote from your book, talked about a missionary’s home saying “his home has been an oasis for soldiers who have visited there, a bit of Tennessee, transplanted to the heart of Persia.” I want to talk about this downward trajectory or spiral of American integration in Iran in a cultural sense, in saying that Americans sort of get less and less integrated, and become more isolated in Iranian culture. In the beginning, what were some of the reasons why expats felt so at home in Iran, and how did Christian missionaries cultivate this experience? And then how did this go sort of towards a downward spiral? 

MKS: It’s a wonderful question. The book isn’t a policy book, it’s a foreign relations book, but we’re looking at the relations on multiple levels. One of the levels that I think is most interesting is what you just touched on— the human experience of an expatriate life in Pahlavi Iran. The quote that you found is fascinating, again, you have American GIs who aren’t really super prepared to encounter other societies; [on the other hand, most] missionaries have at least a degree of preparation and language skills. So that quote is [interesting], because you kind that quest for familiarity right from the American GIs—they’re dropped down 6000 miles away from home, and they don’t know what they’re going to find. When they find little pieces of Americana, they seem to be taken by it. You’ll see other examples of that in the book that— you’d see examples of that in history and contemporary life in Iran and other places, it’s not a unique phenomenon. But the soldiers, and some of these letters, are often amplifying their feelings to testify to the value of these missions as we move into the post war years. I would argue that there are different types of Americans in this story as well. Some are more interested in integrating with society,  being part of Tehran, living in the city, and others aren’t. The missionaries, interestingly, are attempting to integrate themselves into society. When you look at those maps, you’ll see that most of those mission institutions are located in downtown Tehran. They’re right there, near the Majles building [and] other major sites and government buildings in downtown Tehran. They can walk down the street and interact with their friends who are heads of the National Bank. 

The missionaries, again, have their blind spot, but they are living and working and eating and breathing in downtown Tehran through most of this period. But, that’s not true for  all of the different subgroups of the American colony in Tehran. So for instance when we think about military contractors, especially those who start to come in large numbers post, 64’, 65’, or even most of the GIS, they’re [living] on bases outside of the city. A lot of these other Americans who maybe don’t have that “heart to heart attachment” to Iran that some of the missionaries profess to have [since] they don’t live in the city. 

As the 60s and 70s progressed, Tehran evolved considerably, and it began to move north—there are new suburbs that are being created in North Tehran, the government is opening up public land to develop new Neighborhoods and Schools, and of course all of this is totally developed out in Tehran. But, there’s a compound in North Tehran that eventually [has] a lot of these secular institutions. [For example], the cnglish language church for expats, or the big school for expats—the Tehran American School, not the Community School had an international community. They moved up to this compound [which had] commissary facilities and different things like that. 

So in that last chapter, I talk about this idea of the northern tier of Tehran and the segregation of the American colony at the very time, that’s growing in size, to demonstrate how the disconnect post 65’ can be understood in relation to the physical space of Tehran. We move from that period where the missionaries and their friends are moving about downtown, relatively integrated, with their blind spots and all, to a totally segregated community where you read about some of these military folks in the 70s who just aren’t happy there. People are just trying to replicate this so-called Tennessee in the heart of Persia without knowing that to live a good life in Iran, they need to abandon that way of thinking and  adapt more to local circumstances. So, the recklessness of post 65’ US foreign policy toward Iran and the massive defense expenditures and sales that we can see in the 70s, we can see the same mentality as that northern tier colony becomes manifest in Tehran. Whereas the missionaries actually seem to like the Americans who came in the Second World War, they don’t see the missionaries who are sticking around in the 60s and 70s, however small a number they are, they don’t see the the developments of the 60s and 70s in a favorable light. They see it as making it very difficult to be an American in Tehran, and they see a lot of the newcomers who are getting in traffic accidents and getting in brawls on the streets as being a signifier that the ugly American has arrived in Tehran. And no matter what any other group may try to do, that ugly American image is the one that had the big impact on the Iranian population in the 70s, as we move toward the revolution.

JB: I mean moving towards the revolution, it seems to me that the American mission that trumps the Presbyterian Mission later in the 70s, leads to this negative view that Iranians have towards Americans. You explain in the book how there’s thousands of military personnel and contractors in Iran leading up to the revolution. Then you talked about [how], in this one part of the book,  people are graffiting on Presbyterian compounds and properties “Americans leave.” So even though maybe the Presbyterians themselves saw themselves differently than the military personnel and the contractors, [they] didn’t really seem any different to Iranians. And then there was the anti- American perspective that was held in the 70s and then later by the Ayatollah.

MKS:  I think that’s a really fair point, and we’d have to think more about how this holds up over time, whether or not these types of distinctions are perceptible [with] time, or if it’s something that as time passes, we can kind of start to see these nuances. But you’re absolutely right to point out that during the revolution, there aren’t distinctions really being made at least by revolutionaries and people who are taking the revolution to the streets, between this or that type of American institution. So, for instance, I  talk about how the community school of Tehran starts to experience some of this early on with some of the graffiti, but some of these schools have to shut down during the revolution. I’ll give an example to put this into context. So ultimately, to  swing back around to the big picture of the cultural relations between the US and Iran, there are a little more than 50,000 Iranian students in the US. When the revolution happens, it’s the largest group of international students in the US at the time way more than there are today. There are about 50,000 Americans in Iran when the revolution happens. So let’s just generally say 100,000 people, who are moving about and and are a part of this transnational experience, whose mobility, and in some cases livelihoods, will be completely transformed by the hostility that emerges between the US and Iran during and after the revolution. So in the United States during the hostage crisis, the INS begins mandatory screenings of Iranian students, eventually visas stop getting issued, [and] the population shrinks dramatically. This is its own history that’s been written. But in Iran, the American colony will go from nearly 50,000 when the summer of 1978 ends, to about 1000 when the hostage crisis begins, Many of those 1000 are dual-nationals  or maybe people who married an Iranian in the 70s and they have children and they moved to Iran; there are some business people getting their houses in order, or other miscellaneous folks. [This is ] a whole colony— foreign colony that is nationalized [and then] ceases to exist, and it happens in about a year. The properties themselves are part of that history.

 So in the book, I write about this. We all know about the taking of the U.S. Embassy on November 4, 1979. But there’s the earlier taking of the embassy attempt in February 1979. So there’s the failed attempt in February 79 “successful attempt” in November. Between that time, in February, and we know there are different reasons why the February takeover didn’t last the way the November one did, there’s one issue of question of foreign property, and will that property still be respected, or will it be nationalized? So in early 79’ we don’t know the answer to the question [but] in late 79’ we see the answer. In between, there are takeovers of religious Presbyterian properties. The big one that happens is the Community School of Tehran right before the start of the academic year—in the 79’ 80’ academic year, the revolutionaries take over the compound, there are some negotiations, and eventually the Presbyterians leave. The hospital compound in downtown East Tehran becomes a different institution and entity after that nationalization moment in 1979. The school moves to far north Tehran to finish out the academic year, and then it’s no longer allowed to operate, and those last half dozen Presbyterians that I write about do not have their work permits renewed in the summer of 1980.

But [in talking about] this idea of making distinctions between the diplomatic colony and the mission community we see that in the seizure of properties and the liquidation of these foreign communities and their holdings that there aren’t distinctions made, and that the Community School compound and the embassy compound, despite their differences, essentially meet the same fate; even if over time, maybe certain groups are thought about differently or more favorably than others, either on the American or Iranian side, in that moment of the revolution it seems to be a distinction without a difference. At the same time missionaries weren’t taken hostage, they were living and working freely. There’s a deeper history here to get into, but what some of the Americans who actually can stay safely in Iran through the summer of 1980 are able to kind of do, it’s quite impressive—they’re able to do things and live in a way that wasn’t the case for their diplomatic counterparts. So, even though the institutions, the properties,  and the compounds meet a similar fate, the individuals have a different experience, 

JB: And then, of course, we see how anti-American rhetoric and political Islam in Iran sort of coincide with each other, and then the revolution ensues. So talking a little bit about this, and then wrapping up, how does the history of American evangelicalism in the Middle East inform us about current Middle Eastern Affairs? What are some myths regarding this American evangelicalism in the Middle East and its relationship to political Islam? Lastly, what are some examples today that we still see evangelicals involved in current Middle Eastern Affairs?

MKS: That’s a great question. And again, I want your listeners to know that this is a subject I’m approaching as a historian. I don’t have any connection to these types of movements or any insider information beyond the research. Make sure that everybody understands that. So there are a couple different ways to think about, again you ask a really good question, this moment that I study—it’s really just one wave in the broader history of the American Foreign Mission movement. So in conclusion, I talk about the Presbyterian Mission, this kind of mainline Protestant mission moment, that crests from the late 19th century to the the mid 20th century [which] is sandwiched between two other different periods of the foreign fission movement.

 So there were missionaries in Iran, prior to the Presbyterians. You know, some of these, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), some of the Congregationalists and others. These would have been folks who not only would have been in Iran, but they would have been working with Native Americans Cherokee in the United States and things like this. And post 1960s Of course, there’s still a lot of evangelical activity going on in the world, and even if it’s not being led by these mainline churches, it’s often being led by more conservative churches and independent mission societies. So again, this idea that there are moments where missionaries, or religion more broadly, I should say matter, and moments where it doesn’t, that’s a myth. It always matters.  So, for instance, just because the Presbyterians close[d] up shop in 1965 that doesn’t mean that religion doesn’t remain a mediating factor or force in U.S. Iran relations moving forward. And again, I’m just speaking from the American side. 

So why does it matter today? And for instance, how do the dispelling of those myths help us understand why this history is still relevant today? We know that American evangelicals are a central block in the american conservative movement. [Furthermore], when we think about U.S. policy toward Israel, or whatever it may be, we have to understand not just the geopolitical factors, but also some of the religious drivers of American foreign policy more broadly.  So religion is central to U.S. foreign policy [and] foreign relations [and] I hope I demonstrate [how that] worked in the context of Pahlavi Iran. But we have studies about American evangelicals in Israel, American evangelicals in Lebanon in the more contemporary period, whatever the case may be. So I think that’s really significant. There could be a couple other examples. So the idea that there are these narratives about, to swing back to where we began,  dialogue. I’m arguing, hopefully persuasively, that there has been a series of dialogs between Americans and Iranians that are often shaped by the broader international system, but then take their own dynamics on the ground, whether it’s leftist students protesting at Berkeley in the 60s or whether it’s missionaries working with their Iranian partners doing social work. But those dialogues are contested often very quickly. They’re not often ever resolved. So this idea that there’s an either or option, there’s international hostility on the one hand, or a kumbaya moment on the other; I hope I show that it’s really not either [of] these two. [In reality], these factors are constantly in a dialectic relationship

with each other.  

And there might be other other points that we could consider. But I think, at least those two points, I hope, are myths that are dispelled, that in turn, can help us understand the relevance of this book to contemporary considerations—the ever present influence of religion and U.S. International Affairs broadly defined, how to think about these middle grounds between clash and dialogue, and to think about contested and often unresolved dialogues between individuals [and] societies. I hope that that’s something that folks appreciate. 

JB: Thank you so much professor. And maybe just lastly, in a couple sentences, if you could give advice to young historians out there who are studying American imperialism in a post-colonial context, what would you say?

MKS: One of the most important is to ask questions, really engaging in often difficult questions that you’re passionate about but that could also compel you to rethink the complexities of the international system. To have a question, and we know that [through] archival research and working through historiographies that there are various ways that you could come to these questions. But, I think if you have that question, assuming that it could be answered in some way with the sources that we are trained to use, you’ll find that your research will always be enjoyable and that you will find ways to become a part of that conversation. [This] exercise of asking questions really is a way to get yourself into that conversation in a way historians will understand or interdisciplinary studying international relations.

JB: Thank you professor, thank you so much for being here.

MKS: Thank you so much.
JB: That concludes today’s episode of this two-part on the history of U.S. Christian missionaries in Iran. I want to thank Zeina Hafez for producing this podcast, along with Abigail Flynn and the American University in Cairo’s Journalism and Mass Communication department for helping throughout the process. And of course I want to thank Dr. Matthew K. Shannon for taking the time to speak with me. Tune in next time on CR Amplified.