Séminaire PredicMO avec Febe ARMANIOS
Salvation through the Screen: The Birth of Arab Christian Televangelism in the Middle East
Jeudi 13 mars 2025, 15h-17h, médiathèque de la MMSH, salle Seurat, Aix-en-Provence et en ligne.
Lien Zoom / ID de réunion : 967 4492 9907 / Code secret : 484459
La séance s'articulera autour de deux temps : une présentation de Febe Armanios, (Professeure d’histoire au Middlebury College) autour de ses travaux sur le télévangélisme chrétien au Proche-Orient (résumé et bio en anglais ci-dessous) ; une lecture croisée de trois articles portant sur le « tournant matériel » dans l’étude des religions animée par Annalaura Turiano (IREMAM).
Salvation through the Screen: The Birth of Arab Christian Televangelism in the Middle East fondée sur son ouvrage (Febe Armanios, Middlebury College).
This presentation is based on Febe Armanios’s forthcoming book, Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2025). It examines the pioneers of Arab Christian televangelism in the Middle East: Elias Malki (1931-2015) and Nizar Shaheen. During the 1980s, both men preached and broadcast shows on Middle East Television (METV), the region’s first Christian channel established in Israeli-occupied South Lebanon by American evangelical George Otis (1918-2007) and later managed by media mogul Pat Robertson (1930-2023). As a Lebanese-American Pentecostal preacher, Malki introduced American-style televangelism through “The Good News,” a show that offered dramatic faith healing through television screens. Meanwhile, Shaheen, of Palestinian Arab Israeli Christian background, created “Light for All Nations,” which focused on biblical studies and Christian history. Despite their different backgrounds, the two shared similar paths: encounters with Western missionaries led to their “born-again” conversion, and time in North America enhanced their media skills and ties to Western evangelical networks. Though scholarly accounts of religious television in the region often overlook these pioneers, the two men established enduring models that shaped subsequent Christian and Islamic televangelism across the Middle East.
Febe ARMANIOS is Professor of History at Middlebury College. She specializes in the history of Christian communities in the Middle East, especially of Egypt’s Copts, in the study of comparative religious practices, as well as food history and media studies. Armanios is the author of Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford UP, 2011) and co-author with Boğaç Ergene of Halal Food: A History (Oxford UP, 2018). She’s now completing a book-length project on the history of Christian television (terrestrial and satellite) in the Middle East (ca. 1981-present) and has also begun research for another book project, which looks at the history of Christian food practices in Ottoman and post-Ottoman regions, including in Egypt, Cyprus, Lebanon, Greece, and Turkey.
En savoir plus sur l'ANR PredicMO - Grammaires de la prédication : lexique, cartographie, mise en scène (Moyen-Orient, XIXe-XXIe siècles)