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Sacred Texts in Tension and Dialogue: Christian Missionary Khuṭbas and Islamic Responses After Edinburgh 1910
Registration only required for online attendance. Just turn up in person.
The lecture examines the hitherto scarcely researched missionary khuṭbas of the Nile Mission Press, which emerged in the early 20th century under the direction of the Presbyterian missionary Arthur T. Upson. These texts mark a strategic turning point in the Christian–Muslim missionary discourse by literally adapting the form of the Islamic Friday sermon (khuṭba) and filling it with biblical–qur’ānic parallel readings. Following the World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh (1910), they adopted a less polemical and more constructive tone, seeking to reach Muslims through narrative accessibility and intertextual argumentation.
The analysis demonstrates how these khuṭbas employ exegetical procedures, reinterpret central theological concepts, and thereby unfold a specific form of analytic–interpretative hermeneutics. At the same time, they provoked systematic counter-sermons by Ottoman scholars such as Seydişehrī and Hasan Sabrī, who, drawing on kalām methodology and rhetorical precision, opposed the Christian readings with Islamic interpretations of the sacred scriptures. In this way, a dialogically structured constellation of texts emerged in which Christian missionary strategies and Islamic apologetics mutually challenged and further developed one another.
The lecture highlights how Christian–Muslim relations in the early 20th century crystallized within a specific textual form, the khuṭba.
Date:
16 October 2025, 14:30
Venue:
Hybrid Zoom seminar at Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies, The Song School, 109A Iffley Rd, OX4 1EH - Upstairs room with no lift
Speaker:
Dr Serkan Ince (University of Tübingen, Germany)
Organisers:
Dr John Chesworth (Research Officer, Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History 1500-1914 project, University of Birmingham),
Martin Whittingham (Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies & Regent’s Park)
Organiser contact email address:
office@cmcsoxford.org.uk
Host:
Martin Whittingham (Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies & Regent’s Park)
Part of:
Autumn Term Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rgErP-NwR8uQgc8XO1AVzw#/registration
Booking email:
office@cmcsoxford.org.uk
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Richard McCallum
