Inventing the Holy Land: American Protestant Pilgrimage to Palestine, 1865-1941

Rogers succeeds in weaving a narrative that expertly historicizes contemporary instantiations of Christian Zionism, while contributing to the wider discourses on colonial and postcolonial theory

Stephanie Stidham Rogers’s Inventing the Holy Land provides a rich and nuanced account of how American Protestant engagements with the Holy Land shaped both the development of American Protestantism and the history of the Near East. Of particular interest is her analysis of a number of writers, especially women, who have often been left out of earlier discussions. Her consideration of the environmental aspects of Holy Land writing, of Palestine as a ‘fifth gospel’ for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestants, and of the engagement of varieties of Protestantism with Judaism and Islam all make this a substantial contribution to our understanding of what the Holy Land has made of American Protestants, and what American Protestants have made of the Holy Land.