Najib George Awad's monograph Umayyad Christianity is an extensive analysis of Melkite Christians living during the Umayyad period (661–750). Umayyad Christianity is not a historical narrative of the life of John of Damascus. Rather, it utilizes episodes from Umayyad history as contextual points to highlight aspects of John's life and works. Just as important, this book assumes the reader is already well acquainted with the biography of John of Damascus and his writings. The work is structured around the arguments of recent scholars regarding John's life and works (especially those from Daniel Sahas, Sidney Griffith, and Andrew Louth), making it referential and historiographical rather than historical. Awad's monograph is divided up into six chapters that examine John of Damascus in terms of his identity and intellectual impact in history. Awad terms this approach from “context to text.” Using empiricist language, Awad argues that contextual history of John's life setting (Sitz im Leben) reveals his full humanity and not just his mental world (vii). For Awad, a contextual reading indicates that John should not be characterized as a Greek or Byzantine author working in a silo separated from his Damascene environment; rather, he was a Melkite in an Arabic-speaking Islamic world and this knowledge helps historians to comprehend his life and writings.

The first chapter introduces John of Damascus. For Awad, “John of Damascus ought to be construed as the first theological Syrian voice from the land of Islam, a man who attempted to do theology while standing consciously and steadily with both feet in the circle of the Christians’ existence in and volitional affiliation to the Islamic milieu” (7–8). The second chapter focuses on Awad's contextual methodology as a starting point for analyzing John's actions and writings. Awad argues that contextual analysis is more effective than historical theology as a tool of inquiry because the history of ideas is also shaped by one's life setting. Thus, Awad moves from context (Umayyad Damascus) to text (Greek treatise), rather than text to context, in his analysis. The third chapter concentrates on the identity of John of Damascus and why he was denounced as “Saracen-minded” in a 754 synod. Awad emphasizes the Syrian origins of John's family (traced back to his grandfather) and the ways in which “Saracen-minded” was applied to other figures. He concludes that this term was used for those who Arabized or were considered Arab in thought and manners but not necessarily religiously. Thus, John was “Saracen-minded” in his political influence, his ethical and social teachings, and his biblical interpretation (71). The fourth chapter examines John's identity in the context of his family, iconography, and his patronym. Awad examines eighth-century Damascus, the portrayal of John as a turban wearer in iconography (turbans were used as a distinguishing factor for one's ethnicity, class, and religious status and it marked him as a Syrian Christian in Umayyad Arab society), John's Arabic name (Yannah), and his status as an Umayyad client. The fifth chapter examines the context for John's Greek works on Islam, including Heresy of the Ishmaelites and his defense of icons in On Divine Images. Awad claims that John used Greek rather than Arabic because it would have been understood by Christians, including Syriac and Arab peoples. Awad believes that chapter 101 of John's work On Heresies reveals that he was not acquainted with the Qur'anic text, that the Heresy of the Ishmaelites was in fact a posthumous addition to the work which he composed separately, and that it has little historical value because it was only based on second-hand hearsay. John's folk knowledge of the Qur'an and Islam were used as an act of violent self-protection against encroaching Islamic ideals. Awad argues that John's treatise On Divine Images was composed due to the iconophobia (fear) of the Umayyad Syrian context and not the iconoclasm (destruction) of the eighth-century Greek milieu. John advocated for Syrian Christians to maintain their veneration of icons as an indigenous practice that was part of the religious and social context of their land. If Christians rejected icon veneration, Awad argues, then Muslims could have used that sentiment to justify their destruction, and that is why John penned his work. The sixth chapter analyzes identity formation for Arabic-speaking Christians living under Umayyad rule, and how the client-ruler relationship informs our knowledge of John's time and its implications for the Middle East in contemporary times. For Awad, the Umayyads were pragmatists who integrated the religious and political policies of the Arab and Syriac Middle East into their rule via an inclusive client system. But in the mid-eighth century, Umayyad caliphs with Islamicizing tendencies transitioned to an exclusive governing structure that ended closer collaboration.

The book is 472 pages in total, and the same well-supported arguments with a contextual reading could have been made by the author in a briefer framework. For instance, chapter 5 is more than two hundred pages. Awad occasionally moralizes the Umayyad context, mentioning at several points that calling the Arab Muslims “Ishmaelites” was a “derogatory, even racist” view. But a close reading of Genesis 16:7–13 and 21:13–18 finds a positive view of Ishmael and his mother Hagar as people who are blessed by God, watched over by angels, and given the promise of a great nation. While certain later thinkers may have reread the biblical story to portray Arabs in a negative light, this interpretation runs against the context of the biblical narrative. It is not at all clear from the context that John used the term “Ishmaelites” in a derogatory, racist sense, but more likely, he was using it in biblical terms which acknowledged that the Arabs would at some point have a great nation because of God's promise in Genesis. In addition, at several points the reader is aware of how the author's contemporary concern for Christian-Muslim relations affects his reconstruction of the Umayyad past as a place of collaboration, and this is made clear in the conclusion: Award's arguments align well with pan-Arab sentiments among Christians and Muslims, although Awad denies the viability of pan-Arab nationalism to adequately unify both religious groups, as the nationalism of today is too tinged with Islamism to be of service for pan-Arab initiatives. Awad's book nicely points out how contemporary Middle Eastern Christians are trapped in models of unity that are shaped by ethnocentricity. These models do not promote engagement, and the Umayyad situation is a helpful comparison point for perhaps a better model for Arab Christianity in the Middle East.