The repercussions of 9/11 and the declaration of a “War on Terror” awakened a predictable but commendable interest in the history of interfaith relations between Christianity and Islam. Readers familiar with this growing literature will recognize similarities between David D. Grafton's book and Thomas Kidd's American Christians and Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), also published in 2009 after Piety, Politics, and Power had gone to press. Both works take a long view, emphasizing the deep roots of religious prejudice against Islam. Stereotypes founded in ignorance, in which the main ingredient is often apocalyptic speculation, clash most pointedly for both Grafton and Kidd with the efforts of missionaries to develop workable, human relationships with actual Muslims.

Grafton has his own agenda, however, one that is deeply rooted in the history and politics of Lutheranism. Although he is ultimately most interested in American Lutherans, their history as an immigrant church requires that he begin his story in Europe to gain the long-term perspective he seeks. Indeed, Grafton begins with Luther himself, who wrote quite extensively about Islam during a period when Ottoman expansion still posed a very real threat to Christendom. Grafton describes the political context in unnecessary detail (a problem generally with the early chapters), but Luther's writings do afford a usable past because of the parallel sense of threat that Islam poses for Christians today. Although Luther had no hesitation in casting the “Terrible Turk” as Gog to Rome's Magog in his end-times scenario, Grafton emphasizes that his intent was less to demonize Muslims than to call for repentance from Christians.

After that initial chapter, Grafton focuses on the history of Lutheran missions in the Middle East with two chapters on early European missionaries and two on American. He particularly admires the early Lutheran Pietists because of their disinterest in denominational forms, which allowed them to move easily into the service of the Church Missionary Society. A kind of declension ensues when the waning power of the Ottoman Empire opened the Middle East to increasing European imperial inroads, and missions became entwined with the national interests of the great powers.

The problem with the early chapters, however, is that there just are not many “Lutherans encountering Islam in the Middle East,” as the subtitle promises. Grafton acknowledges, “The Lutheran presence in the Middle East … has always been small and scattered” (238). Relatively few Lutheran missionaries ventured to the Middle East, and those who did, in common with missionaries from other denominations, found evangelization of Muslims impracticable and focused instead on Jews or Orthodox Christians like the Nestorians. An exception who proves the rule was Karl Gottlieb Pfander. Grafton describes his book, The Balance of Truth, as “the most prominent piece of Protestant missionary literature utilized by Christian missions in the Middle East throughout the twentieth century” (99). Yet Pfander's insistence on publicly criticizing Islam led to repeated threats on his life that forced him to relocate to four different fields before finally retiring.

Although humanitarian efforts were most successful in establishing stable and successful relationships with people in the Middle East, direct evangelism continued to draw support and took on new life when radio made it possible to do so from a safe vantage. Radio evangelism undertaken by the Missouri Synod's Middle East Lutheran Ministry (MELM) provided the opening for more sustained efforts after World War II, and those efforts began to take on a life of their own. Grafton's account of these changes constitutes his most important contribution. Through cooperation with the Near East Council of Churches and the work of the Palestinian Moris Jahshan, the “MELM found itself … helping to articulate an Arab or Middle Eastern Christian identity, fully rooted in the Christian faith and fully Arab in culture” (186). With a growing spirit of cooperation toward other faiths, a new generation of missionaries in the 1960s, led by Edward Azzam and Walter Boss, promoted a move away from evangelism toward “dialogue” with Islam as the focus for Lutheran missionary efforts.

This new direction proved difficult for the Missouri Synod Lutherans to swallow, and the initiative passed to the more liberal wings of American Lutheranism. A plan developed by Bruce Schein and Fred Neudoerffer led to a partnership with the Reformed Church in America and brought in Harold Vogelaar, who, along with Mark Thomsen, has been the key figure in Lutheran engagement with Islam since the 1970s. Under Vogelaar's direction, the center of operations was transferred from Beirut to Cairo, where the most important contribution may well have been an internship program that has produced some of the denomination's leading Islamicists, including Grafton himself.

In an extended concluding chapter, Grafton emerges as an engaged advocate for continuing to develop a “conversation with Islam.” The long history of instability and disappointment for Lutheran missions in the Middle East becomes an argument for an approach centered on cultivating understanding rather than planting churches. Such an understanding “must reflect the reality of power and politics, and not only piety” (253). In other words, Lutherans cannot effectively witness for the Christian faith in the Middle East unless they also come to terms with the legacy of American foreign policy. In making this compelling case, Grafton's book both implies and embodies a key point about modern missions, that their most important work is often directed more at changing hearts and minds at home than in the field.

Piety, Politics, and Power is clearly intended to inform and persuade American Lutherans, and those readers may find his general history of their denomination engaging. Specialists in the study of missions, however, will also find much of value in Grafton's history of and commentary on recent efforts to open lines of communication with Muslims in the Middle East.