The Zwemer family quickly settled back into life in Bahrain, though Sam still spent a good deal of time traveling to speak at conferences. One of the conferences he traveled to in 1911 was the Lucknow Conference on Missions to Moslems, held at Lucknow in Northern India. This was the follow-up to the Cairo Conference held five years before, and once again Sam served as conference chairman. In Cairo, sixty-two delegates had been present at the conference, representing twenty-nine different mission societies. At the Lucknow Conference, 166 delegates were present, representing six different countries and fifty-eight different missionary societies. Sam was amazed by the growth of the conference. Once again, under his chairmanship the conference was a great success.
As Sam traveled from conference to conference to speak, he realized that his heart was no longer in the day-to-day work in Bahrain. He still loved the people of Bahrain and the mission work he had played such a big part in developing. But now he wanted to work in an interdenominational way, both informing the Christian church of the great need for Muslim evangelization and inspiring hundreds of Christians to join the worldwide missionary effort to Muslims. To this end Sam had started a magazine called The Moslem World. The first issue had been published in January 1911 to coincide with the Lucknow Conference. The Moslem World was a quarterly magazine designed to inform, inspire, and unite the Christian world to reach out to Muslims.
Sam wanted to reach out in an even broader way to the Christian church. The question was how to do so. The answer came in 1912 from several mission boards in Cairo, including the United Presbyterian Mission to Egypt, the Church Missionary Society, and the Nile Mission Press. Because of his successful leadership of the conferences in Cairo and Lucknow and his intellectual ability as demonstrated by the many books he had written on the Muslim world, Sam was now a recognized Christian leader in the field of understanding Islam. Since Cairo was considered the intellectual center of the Muslim world, at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia, these mission boards suggested that Sam move to Cairo and use it as a base for further study on Islam. The leaders of the mission societies felt that with Sam’s presence in Cairo, the city would become a kind of intellectual center for Christians and missionary societies focused on missionary work among Muslims.
Sam was certainly fascinated by the proposal. He began to think of all the possibilities of living and working in such a hub of cultural activity as Cairo. Sam’s only hesitation in moving ahead with such a plan was that it meant leaving behind the Arabian Mission he had helped found. As he pondered what to do, Sam wrote to the mission board of the Reformed Church in the United States. He was overjoyed when he received a response from them. The Reformed Church was willing to allow Sam to live in Cairo and work with many different denominations and Christian organizations as long as he made regular visits home to the United States to represent the Arabian Mission there. It was the just kind of response Sam had been praying for.
By October 1912, the Zwemer family had relocated from Bahrain to Cairo. On the day after Christmas that year, Sam wrote a newsletter to his family and supporters telling them how things were going.
My three months’ residence here in this great metropolis has already confirmed my judgment that it is the one strategic place in the Muslim world from which we can influence every Muslim land, persistently and irresistibly through the printed page…. Egypt has practically become a British protectorate. Both Mr. Upson and [I] have had personal interviews with Lord Kitchener [British consul-general in Egypt] and he is in full sympathy with the work…. Some of our special literature for Muslims has been translated during the year and printed in India, South Africa, Persia, and China.
Sam went on to explain in the newsletter that negotiations were under way to buy a new, bigger building for the Nile Mission Press and that he was busy writing a series of tracts for Muslim people. One tract was titled Do You Pray? It became so popular that people started addressing Sam as Mr. Do You Pray.
That Christmas the Zwemers also hosted William Borden, the heir to the Borden Dairy fortune, whom Sam had steered toward missions. William was in Cairo preparing to enter China and work among Muslims. While still in Cairo, he became sick and was hospitalized. Sam and Amy visited him regularly at the hospital and prayed for him. William was diagnosed with cerebral meningitis. His condition grew worse until he died on April 9, 1913. A small group of missionaries stood at the gravesite to honor William’s life. Sam conducted the funeral service and read a passage from Pilgrim’s Progress about the death of Valiant Truth. News of the death of “Borden of Yale” reverberated around the Christian world. Construction of the Borden Memorial Hospital in memory of William Borden soon began in Lanchow, China.
In Cairo Sam produced his magazine The Moslem World, paying for most of its production out of his own pocket. He studied Islam and wrote books about it from a Christian perspective. He also worked closely with the Nile Mission Press to produce Christian literature for Muslims. Sam described printed pages as “leaves for the healing of the nations.” He put his belief in the power of the printed page this way: “[The printed page] has a unique value as a means of carrying the gospel to Mohammedans…[it] finds an entrance into many doors closed to the living witness and can proclaim the gospel persistently, fearlessly and effectively.”
Although the Zwemers were headquartered in Cairo, Sam spent much of his time traveling the world to speak at and attend conferences. On his travels, he researched Muslim groups and met with missionaries to find out what their needs were. He took Christian literature for Muslims (published by the Nile Mission Press) with him wherever he went.
In 1914, when the Great War broke out in Europe, little effect was felt in Egypt. The British kept a tight military rein on the country. Even when the Allies fought to wrestle control of Arabia away from the Turks, things remained stable in Egypt. Sam continued studying and writing. With the buildup of British and Allied troops in the country, Sam was in demand to preach to the troops, which he gladly did.
Even as the war raged in Europe, Sam made several visits there to speak. The war made travel more difficult, especially when he had to travel to the United States to attend a conference. Because of repeated German U-boat attacks on transatlantic passenger ships, Sam sailed to the United States by going in the opposite direction across the Pacific Ocean and landing on the West Coast in San Francisco. It was not the preferred route to get to the United States from Egypt, but he did arrive safely.
Whenever he was in the United States, Sam visited and spent time with Bessie and Raymund. Both children were doing well and receiving an excellent education. Sam was always sad to leave his oldest two children behind and travel on. When she could, Amy traveled with Sam to conferences and speaking engagements. Sam enjoyed her company as well as her wit and wisdom.
In 1924, Sam and Amy traveled overland from Cairo to Baghdad to speak at a large Christian conference. Traversing the blistering Arabian Desert was grueling, but it was something Sam and Amy seemed to relish. When they reached Baghdad, Jim was waiting to welcome them. Sam was excited to see his old friend, and the two men were able to spend time together praying, talking, and reminiscing about how the mission they had cofounded had grown and blossomed in Arabia.
From Baghdad Sam and Amy traveled to Basrah, the city where they had first met twenty-nine years before. Then it was off to Bahrain. This was the first time Sam had set foot on the island since he had left twelve years earlier, and he was impressed by what he saw. The mission had continued to grow, new buildings had been erected, the schools had grown, and there was now an Arabic printing press and a library along with a mission bookstore. Sam noticed one other curiosity on the Bahraini skyline—windmills. The first windmill on the island had been erected when Sam was overseeing the building of the hospital. It was designed to pump fresh water for use in the hospital. Back then, most of the residents of Bahrain had thought such a device crazy, but over the years, attitudes had changed. Now windmills had become the accepted way to pump fresh water from the ground.
During April and May of 1925, Sam visited England for twenty-three days. During that time he gave thirty-six addresses to over thirty-seven thousand people, earning himself the nickname the “Flying Dutchman.”
After the trip to England, Sam and Amy traveled to the United States. The Zwemer family all met together in Alexandria, Virginia, to celebrate the marriage of Bessie Zwemer to the Reverend Claude Pickens, a young Episcopal minister, on August 27, 1925. Sam and Amy were proud of their daughter, particularly her choice of a husband. Claude was a devout and energetic Christian with a desire to become a missionary.
Following Bessie and Claude’s wedding, Sam and Amy headed back to Europe to speak in churches and at conferences in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Italy before taking a steamer back to Egypt. In 1927 Sam went to the Balkans to learn more about the Muslims who lived there and investigate opportunities to proclaim the gospel.
By the beginning of 1929, Sam and Amy had spent seventeen years traveling the world, encouraging, learning, writing, speaking, and praying about missionary work among Muslims. Sam had a growing sense that things were about to change.
Chapter 17
Night Shall End in Day
In the fall of 1929, Sam sat down to write a letter to his friends in the Arabian Mission.
When the call came to leave Bahrain for the larger opportunities and wider tasks of the Nile Mission Press and the training of workers in Egypt, the pull at our heart strings was strong and we left Arabia with many regrets at parting from the circle of the mission. But as we look back over the seventeen years spent from Cairo as a base in travel and thought for the evangelization of the Muslim World, in the preparation of literature and its circulation, in helping forward in some small way the plans of other pioneer missions in Africa and Southeastern Europe—we are convinced that the call was of God. Once again—not suddenly, but by a series of Providences and calls to service—we have moved our hearthstone to a new center where we humbly trust that God will use us for the same task, although in another way.
In his letter Sam was referring to the position he had accepted to become the chair of the History of Religion and Christian Missions at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. He and Amy had prayed long and hard about the decision to leave the Middle East and return to the United States as their base of operation. In the end, Sam accepted the position because he wanted to be able to inspire some of the brightest young minds in America to take up the challenge of missionary work, especially among Muslims.
In typical Zwemer style, Sam and Amy threw themselves into their new roles at Princeton. The Princeton Theological Seminary at the university was part of the Presbyterian Church. It provided room and board to twelve missionary families from all over the world who were home on furlough. Sam took a special interest in these missionaries, and Amy often invited them over to their house for a home-cooked meal and encouraging conversation. Always full of ideas, Sam soon developed a weekly Round Table Conference on missions. The weekly conference was attended by the missionaries in residence and by students who were interested in missionary work.
Sam continued to write books and publish The Moslem World quarterly magazine. From the time he had started writing, Sam had managed to publish one book a year. Several of the books, those about the plight of Muslim women and children, were written in collaboration with Amy. Now that he had an office and a well-stocked library, Sam wrote even more. One of his most popular books during this period was The Origin of Religion, which he wrote as a textbook for a course he was teaching. The book soon became widely used in universities around the world.
