Page 85 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

69

Then in the aftermath of the Great Depression the

missionaries begin to feel themselves cut off from the West

by a growing apathy and finally hostility at home towards mis­

sionary activity abroad. The economic depression which forced

curtailment of missionary activities, principally in the

educational field, was accompanied by what Dennings termed
i
"a spiritual depression," western society gradually deserted

many of its older values and beliefs in progress. In their

place there grew an isolationist attitude towards any over­

seas involvement and a cynical materialism' at home. With the

discovery of oil in the Middle East in the early 30’s the mis­

sionaries were forced to come to terms with this new western

materialism, for it pursued them out to the Gulf in the form

of "oil men" and the salesmen and "carpet baggers" who followed

them. These new emissaries of the West brought with them

an affluence that both bettered the material standards of

'life and eroded the traditional Islamic value system, The

missionaries who had once viewed themselves as proponents

of modern western science and medicine against Islamic super­

stition and ignorance now found themselves trying to defend
the Middle East against the crass materialism that the oil

technology brought in its train. Men like Paul Harrison,

Louis P. Dame and Earold Storm traveled throughout Arabia

attempting vainly to spread Christianity and curb the effects

"The Cross of Christ is pitted not
of \\restern materialism,

so much against the waning Crescent," wrote Storm in 1938,

"as against materialism, unbelief, pride and lust • • • which

I