Christian WINDLER.  Missionaries in Persia: Cultural Diversity and Competing Norms in Global Catholicism.  London, New York, Oxford: I.B. Taurus, 2024. Pp. 408. $84.00. Hb. ISBN 978-0-7556-4936.  Reviewed by Daniel SMITH-CHRISTOPHER, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA. 90045.

The study of missions and mission history, formally known as “Missiology”, has undergone somewhat of a renaissance in the last decades.  There are many obvious reasons for this – heightened interest in cross-cultural analysis, critical interest in the mistakes of missionary strategies, and interest in “new” or unusual Christian expressions in different cultural contexts.  For anthropologists, there is also a serious interest in ‘mining’ missionary descriptions for information about early cultures that these missionaries sometimes did, or even did not, intend to preserve for history.  Some missionaries were well aware of the potential significance of their documentation work and were notably careful in doing so (one thinks of Fr. Berard Haile’s [1874–1961] important work documenting aspects of Navajo culture, for example).  Others, of course, were more interested in illustrating the need for more funds to aid in overcoming mistaken ideas and “heresies”.  Finally, there is interest among a few Biblical scholars in the fact that one may find in some  missionary descriptions of “the mistakes” of indigenous cultures and their “primitive” understanding of Biblical texts may in fact represent examples of rather significant “cultural exegesis” – which is to say: creative responses to Scripture informed by their cultural traditions.  Because of this, new analysis of missionary movements and contexts are often of great interest to a variety of disciplines beyond traditional “missiology”. 

This study in missiology by Christian Windler is a dense and detailed analysis of a particular period of Catholic missionary activity in the lands that now compose parts of Iraq but mainly Iran.  The book analyzes not only the activity of the missionaries themselves in the Safavid Dynasty (1501 to 1736), but also the detailed politics of missionary activities from the perspective of Rome, and especially the founding of the office of the “Congregatio de Propaganda Fide” and its’ relationships with the missionary activities of various orders – and there were many who were involved in the drama of this period.

The first chapter, therefore, is an analysis of missionary politics in Rome related to many different missionary activities, and not only in the Persian territories.  It is not entirely clear why this level of detailed analysis of the religious politics and arguments between missionary efforts, orders, and Papal interests was crucial to a study aimed at a specific region – namely Safavid Persia – but it is a fascinating analysis that would be of interest to anyone interested in the Church’s missionary efforts in this time period more generally, and can be profitably read for anyone interested in missionary activities throughout the world in the time during and after the 17th Century. 

Ch. 2 includes some background on Safavid Persia and the immediate context for the missions.  Ch. 3, particularly interesting, includes a discussion of relations between the Missionaries and Islamic scholars, at times quite convivial even in disagreement.  Ch. 4 deals with the Catholic missionaries and their relations with the Eastern churches – most of whom were not on communion with Rome, and often go back to very old Christians divisions indeed (e.g. Nestorian tradition churches, for example).  Ch. 5 discusses the missionaries and their contacts with families with widespread business interests, especially those (e.g. some Armenian families and their businesses) whose networks proved very useful indeed for the missionaries themselves.  Ch. 6 raises the interesting question of the missionaries “in the field” and their conflicts with their home superiors – documenting some of the disagreements that the missionaries had with policies that were made by those with little understanding of the ‘facts on the ground’ that the missionaries themselves lived with.  Here is one of the most interesting issues in Mission studies, especially Catholic mission studies, as the missionaries themselves often found themselves “pushing the envelope” when it came to the acceptability of local adaptations of Christian faith and practice on cultural contexts (in China, leading to the so-called “Rites Controversies”).  Ch. 7, finally, develops these issues raised especially in Ch. 6 even further, bringing in the experiences of missions in India and China as comparative cases.  

Thoroughly documented, and argued in detail, this work will be interesting for anyone interested in mission history and the Middle East.  This is a solidly academic study, however, and not a casual read.  The author is to be commended for a significant contribution to the field of mission studies.