Page 82 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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own health, service. In terms of the early pioneer creed
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of being missionaries of the Christian west to the Islamic
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east such an absorption would have been anathema, as it'.implied
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Islamicizing the mission effort. Sven to John Van Ess, the
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evangelical goal was still supreme, and working within state

organisations would seem to be secularizing the mission effort
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to an unacceptable degree. But Paul Harrison had pointed to
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a new outlook in which Christian service to people in need

was its own justification and Christian witness was made
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through the example of the daily behavior of the missionary.
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Within this ideological framework missionary work within the

! Omani limitations was still possible and the group that met
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in Muscat voted in its favor. But in actuality, the document
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they drafted formalizing their new organizational relation­

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ships really spelled the end to the Arabian Mission as an
! The arrangement it described, where each
: independent entity,
mission group would formulate its own policy and each mis­
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sionary would be free to act as his own agent independently
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of the others and accountable only to the General Program
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Council (successor body to the Board of World Missions) in

Mew T0rk through the local managing board or committee over­
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seeing his program, was more than a ’reorganization.’ It
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! was a virtual dissolution of the Arabian Mission.
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