Authors in Conversation, Ep. 5 — Emily Conroy-Krutz & Matthew Shannon discuss Mission Manifest

7:28PM Jun 5, 2024

Speakers:

Emily Conroy-Krutz

Matthew Shannon

Keywords:

iran

missionaries

mission

history

iranian

americans

mid 20th century

book

tehran

presbyterian

work

folks

talk

chapter

american

evangelical

relations

eventually

early

revolution

Hello, and welcome to Authors in Conversation, a podcast from The US and the World series at Cornell University Press. I'm Emily Conroy-Krutz, one of the editors of the series. And today I am joined by Matthew Shannon, the author of the new book Mission Manifest: American Evangelicals and Iran in the 20th Century. Matthew is Associate Professor of History at Emory and Henry College, and also the author of Losing Hearts and Minds, also from Cornell, and editor of American-Iranian Dialogues. Thank you so much for joining me today, Matthew.

Thank you so much for having me here today. And also for all of the support throughout the book project and all the work that you and the other editors do for the series.

Oh, it's been such a joy to work on this project. In particular, I was wondering if you could maybe get us started by telling us how you got into this topic?

Yeah, it's a really good question. As I was transitioning from working on my first book, losing hearts and minds, which was about Iranian students in the United States, I began to think more about what the other side of that coin was, so to speak, in the transnational encounter between the United States and Iran. So whereas the first book looked at Iranian students in the United States, this book looks at American missionaries and other evangelically minded Americans, any Iran during the same time period during the mid 20th century, primarily from the 1940s to the 1960s. But of course, as with any research project, it begins with a question and an archive. Right. So the question at the very beginning, and the question kind of evolved over time, was, to what extent did the influence of American missionaries, evangelical Christians, which was so vital to the pre World War Two period, to what extent that that influence continued during the Second World War and the Cold War? And if the missionaries slash religion, whereas the historiography indicates so important in the earlier periods, could they possibly have just disappeared in the mid 20th century in this kind of moment of modernization and secularization, right. So of course, I discovered through the research that this wasn't the case, the missionaries were not relics from a bygone age or ghosts that faded into historical obscurity. But they very much remained central to the American Iranian encounter during the mid 20th. Century, the archive, while the book relies on various archives, the most important was the Presbyterian Historical Society. And anyone who works as you do on missionary history, we know you know, kind of how those archives can, at once kind of open up. So much possibility for understanding the human and social emotional side of history, but also how, you know, those documents can be very kind of narrowly focused on a particular group of people who dump a bunch of documents or other types of primary sources into a place, like the PHS. But nonetheless, the PHS was significant to this book. And it helped me understand the human dimension of the American Iranian counter in the mid 20th century. And I refer to the kind of human dimension of this history as the Del Be Del community, the Heart to Heart community. And it's based on a newsletter that was started during the Second World War and continued into the 20 teens. For Americans who have lived in and loved Iran, right. This is kind of how they describe it in the beginning. And as you read, not just that newsletter, but all of the different kinds of papers related to the people that we see in that newsletter, we very much can untangle not just the kind of missionary players in this history, but their non missionary American friends and also their Iranian supporters. So rather than missionaries not mattering to us Iran relations, in the mid 20th century, we actually find that there is a kind of intersection between the missionary work and the larger American and Iranian missions. So the missionary enterprise in Iran actually, you know, kind of has, you know, hits harder both impact and effect during the mid 20th century than was the case in the earlier well studied period, and also in the more recent periods since 1979. Right?

That's fantastic. I love the shout out to the Presbyterian Historical Society. That is one of my all time favorite archives to work in. It is such a rich collection, and you do a really great job with it in this book, and I'm so glad you talked about sort of these multiple types of mission as you were describing that one of the things that I What I find really exciting Yabout this book is the way that you play with sort of that language of different kinds of missions, right? We have missions in a religious sense missions in a diplomatic sense missions in a military sense. So can you tell us a little bit about who these different Americans are in Iran in the mid 20th century? And the way that their goals either overlapped or didn't, right? So you sort of set us up that there are these religious missionaries there? A lot of Presbyterians, but there's also these other Americans who are sort of shaping that story. So what are the other American missions in Iran?

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. So first and foremost, I guess I should say it more explicitly, but the PHS, and that Del Be Del community and all that, you know, it's really about, you know, the the Presbyterian kind of influence in Iran. And, and in particular, the PCUSA, for most of that period, is the kind of institution that we're talking about. And its Board of foreign missions was employing Presbyterian missionaries in Iran, from the 1870s, through the 1960s, formally, so there is this evangelical mission, but it's actually much more complicated than that, you know, religion doesn't operate in a vacuum and missionaries don't operate outside of, you know, kind of wider, global conditions. Right. So in the book, you know, I charted out these different kind of arc types of mission, this kind of Calvin archetype, which is the old mission for Christ, so to speak, the Jane Addams archetype or the new mission for culture again, and then this Wilson, Wilsonian archetype that kind of represents, you know, kind of an ideological commitment to not just kind of a religious mission, but something bigger this kind of American global mission. So there, you know, there's there's kind of points of division between these different communities, right? There are times where evangelicals in Iran Don't think too highly about what you know, maybe the US government is doing in a particular moment. There are other times, for instance, during the early 1950s, where the evangelical community is pretty much in total agreement about being against mob and most Adex kind of national movement and being in support of the Shah of Iran, which was ultimately, who was Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was in power from 1941 to 1979, is, you know, ultimately allowing evangelical activity to happen in his reign in a way that isn't always the case in Muslim majority countries, right. So there's the Presbyterian Mission, but there's this kind of broader American mission, there are people who work for nongovernmental organizations like the Near East Foundation, for instance, they're a major player and parts of the book, there are certainly missionaries, as we might talk about later, who cross over into US government work both in the intelligence community and in the Foreign Service in the, especially in the embassy, in Tehran. So, you know, there are at once, you know, kind of hard lines, and kind of a lot of fluidity between the sacred mission and secondary mission, so to speak. Right, so the book really kind of shows how these different Americans with ideals, evangelically minded people who are wanting to kind of, you know, kind of transform Iran, both ideologically and materially, they're all getting together, in part for the same reason, in part for their own, you know, kind of particular reasons in Tehran, right. The book focuses in most of the chapters, specifically on the Iranian capital of Tehran, and how these different missions kind of come together in that particular place. So, you know, you'll see in the book, there are maps and all kinds of things that help us understand that particular place in time. And I should say, certainly, for Schaeffer, folks that the book isn't really a foreign policy book. I mean, I don't really talk about the formulation of policy, right? This isn't, as long as folks don't go in, you know, kind of hoping that is, you know, kind of a major theme that I think that's fine, but it has a foreign relations book and it looks at kind of foreign relations on kind of multiple levels and that involves, like the relation between Iranian and American Christians church mission relations. It involves relations between different Americans living abroad in this colony in Tehran, which eventually grows to be like 50,000 Strong almost by the time of the Iranian Revolution, and it shows how these various actors both state and non state are helping to mediate the encounter between America gins and Iranians and also Christians and Muslims. Right. So by kind of looking at a particular case study, the hope is that we can kind of untangle all those complexities without, you know, kind of getting lost in kind of the many general generalizations that often kind of dominate our thinking about not just us foreign relations, but missionaries.

Absolutely. And I think one of the, one of the real strengths of the book is how rooted in place it is, and how much you help us to understand, right this, this specific place, and you do these beautiful histories of various institutions that are at the heart of these dynamics that is really just incredible, I think readers are gonna get a lot out of that. Especially as you're looking at these dynamics over tremendous periods of real transition, right, you're looking at the world war two years, you're looking at the Cold War. And there's a lot going on, of course, in US history, but also in Iranian history. And one of the major contributions of, of this book is how your ability to look at this. These relationships help us to think differently about the White Revolution. So I was wondering if you know, for those who might not be as familiar with this story, or this history, can you tell us a little bit about what that was? And how your approach and manifest mission helps us to understand it or mission manifest helps us to understand it differently.

Yeah, thank you very much. That's, you know, really important question. In the conclusion, I kind of placed this moment where the present American Presbyterians and the Pavese whether it kind of the Shah himself or people who are in some way able to do their work because of the nature of the pylon of governance. is kind of unique in the history of the American Evangelical encounter with Iran prior to the Pahlavi period. You know, there's kind of different. Great Britain and Russia slash Soviet Union have much more interests in Iran historically. So there isn't this US government protection, but also, you know, prior to the First World War, there's another dynasty in Iran that isn't really able for various reasons to undertake the type of kind of internationally oriented nation building project that the Palestinians do, right. So there's this kind of moment in the mid 20th century where the PAL IVs and the Presbyterians kind of come together. And of course, that moment is severed during the Iranian revolution that one of the final moments in the main narrative of the book is the departure of the last half dozen or so Presbyterians from Iran in the summer of 1980. Right at the height of the revolution. And during the Iran hostage crisis, at that point, the hostage crisis would have been in the middle of it. So the PAL every period, at least by the 1960s, is often understood in terms of the Chavi Ron's major development project, which was called the White Revolution. So much of what's happening in the book is taking place in Iran that is being defined by this project known as the White Revolution, which is rolled out in 1963. includes multiple planks, including land reform, including women's suffrage, eventually, including kind of greater commitments to education and the range of a range of socio economic. If, though not political programs, right. This is a project of authoritarian development, the Shahs White Revolution, and there's a large historiography, multigenerational body of scholarship that deals with this. I won't get into that here, but the sake or the sake of our listeners, but needless to say, the the way in about with regard to mission manifest is that the White Revolution is very much a transnational affair, right? And the United States and these different Americans have a place both directly and indirectly in it. And that's in part because of the Shahs Western education is kind of Western orientation, the Cold War is alliance with the United States, but it also has to do with you know, kind of these other themes in Palau via Iran that if not related to the White Revolution or kind of major, historical, you know, kind of subjects phenomenon of the period right. So the position of religious minorities within the monarchy, the role of international NGOs and the US government in promoting national development, the various kinds of entities including missionary entities that are involved in the international realization of education, the various other forms of cultural exchange that often are funneled through these kind of associations by national, religious, or otherwise, but Right. So kind of all these different themes are kind of why Americans are any Iran and interested in what is happening in Iran to begin with, when the right when the White Revolution is, you know, kind of being kind of conceptualized and eventually, after 1963, when it's a reality. So, you know, just maybe one very brief example, in the chapter on development, each chapter looks at a manifestation of the shared mission, there's a chapter on the mission for development, right. And, you know, we learn about the ways in which Presbyterian missionaries were helping to develop kind of very early versions of Persian language literacy programs, right. Eventually, this is going to become a priority of NGOs. Like, for instance, the missionaries are interfacing with Lombok early on to help get some of these kind of primers off the ground, eventually, it's going to become a major focal point of the US aid mission, governments from the National Archives help us kind of see that and then the creation of a literacy core is going to be one of the early planks of the of the Shahs White Revolution. So here's a case where there isn't necessarily a direct connection, there are a few individuals who've kind of might have their hands and every piece on the Iranian side, but really, it's kind of part of a shared genealogy, right? That kind of these early missionary endeavors are part of this kind of broader mission for development that is being identified as significant by evangelicals by foreign US government aid program, and also by the eventually by the Shahs government, right. So that's one example of how all this comes together under the framework of the White Revolution. But there would be others, of course.

And one of the real strengths of the book, I think, is how you describe that triangular relationship, right? Between these sort of religious organizations, you sort of talk about it in that development part, right as social gospel and social work, and then sort of the on the ground local politics in in Tehran, and it's really just incredibly compelling. And sort of helps us to think through some of those complicated transnational dynamics, centering, or putting religion sort of in that story in a really helpful way. Now, one of the things you mentioned, as you were talking through some of these changes, was women's suffrage. And I am really struck as I read this and think this is across, you know, missionary historiography, looking at the 20th century, you know, gender, politics are a really interesting question. And women of course, are, you know, majority of missionaries. I think with the PC USA at this point. Can you talk a little bit more about how ideas about gender are shaping the kinds of development work that Americans and Iranians are engaging in? In this period?

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. You know, in the chapter or in the book there, you know, the question of Women and Gender really, kind of moves throughout all the different Oh, yeah. chapters in the development chapter, there's a kind of an example without getting into too much detail of, again, kind of this emphasis on place. There are female missionaries who are kind of doing pioneering work that is Evangelical, for sure. But it's also kind of moving in the direction of what would be professional social work. And they're doing this work in South Tiburon. Even prior to the Second World War, this is, you know, the more impoverished part of the city at the time. And, you know, kind of as the mission is kind of reinvigorated after the Second World War. This project that had been organized by various women of the Iran mission, the main one is Louis Chase, but there were many others involved really is able to become, like, recognized as significant and institutionalized. So supported with funds and new buildings, and things like things like this eventually becomes called. It's called the clinic of hope. It's operated by the Presbyterian Mission for years, and then it's eventually absorbed into the Iranian government's welfare state at sea, but administered by one of the most significant graduates of the pre World War Two Presbyterian education says So many Iran solitary farming farming on who is the godmother of Iranian social work, so to speak. So that's one example how not just kind of women who were missionaries, but also kind of understandings of like social value, quote, unquote, kind of dignity of labor, and self, and all these things that are coming from all kinds of places, from the missionaries, and kind of other Americans involved, ultimately, you know, kind of graft themselves onto that emergent welfare state. And wait Pallab Iran.

Fascinating stuff. And I will say it is, I always really appreciate it when I'm reading missionary histories that include women and gender as a matter of course, as part of the story, which doesn't happen as often as we might like, and you do a really, really lovely delegates. So if folks are looking for that, um, this is a really good book on the thinking about how women are really a central part of these, you know, big conversations about politics and culture and development and things like this. And it's related to that. One of the other ideas that you talk about in this book, and, you know, here, I think, is a really important concept for those listeners who might be familiar with some other work in missionary history in the 20th century, is a derivative of a boomerang effect. And you talk really, really well about this idea of a Persian boomerang. And I was wondering if you might sort of talk about, you know, what that is, and how it connects to sort of broader conversations in literature about how these sort of missionary experiences abroad, come to shape, sort of domestic conversations about race, about culture and foreign policy priorities, things like this? And how sort of the, what does the Iranian case sort of contribute to that story?

Yeah, I really appreciate that question. While like I said, most of the chapters really drill down pretty deep into this kind of lived experience in Tehran, the various manifestations of mission there in the mid 20th century. Of course, none of this is ever disconnected from, you know, quote, unquote, home right from the United States. And this becomes evident in various chapters, for instance, early on when we're thinking about, you know, kind of ecumenical reorganizations among mainline churches and kind of new mission policies that come about from those reorganizations in the 1950s, and 1960s. Those are often the most significant kind of factors that then kind of shape the realities that quote, unquote, foreign missions have to react to right. So throughout the book, there's a lot of bleed between kind of the domestic and the foreign. But in chapter six, I think there's a chapter that deals with that explicitly. It's called the Persian boomerang. Of course, I'm borrowing from Hollinger and say, the Protestant boomerang and many other people Amy says there and other kinds of writers who think about, you know, kind of the boomerangs from kind of the colonial back to the Metropolitan spaces, right? So it's not it's, it's a conversation that happens across some fields in history and many fields outside of history. And, but the person boomerang looks at you know, kind of these three different manifestations of that mission back in the United States, as opposed to in Iran. So there are three examples. They're all kind of speaking back to these art types of mission, you know, new, newer, newest of the different things, but there's one case study about missionaries who, you know, kind of weave the missionary network. They're no longer you know, kind of professional evangelicals, they do other things with their life and some of those people, you know, work for the national security state during the Second World War, and Cold War. I maybe mentioned this briefly earlier, but the intelligence community and the State Department are places where this happens and Kyler Young, who becomes one of the preeminent percussionists academics at Princeton. And Edwin Wright, who remains a career national security professional are are the two folks I look at who both worked in Iran at one point together in the same school in a small town on the Caspian Sea, at that point smoked a rash to the town. And what these two individuals kind of do during their time in the intelligence community primarily during the Second World War. There are other folks who like are no longer employed. Leaders, foreign missionaries, but don't detach. The Presbyterian Church or Presbyterian institutions or church supported institutions, broadly speaking from their professional lives, right. So in this section, this is, you know, kind of that new mission kind of folks who are, you know, religiously oriented, but are also educational professionals. So there are three individuals who worked at the outdoors College of Tehran, which, you know, closes kind of in the beginning bookend of this book mission manifested in 1940. And it's nationalized, it's converted, eventually becomes a very prestigious, Iranian ISIL. But when that closes, and even before that, a lot of the folks who work there and there's a lot of historiography on Alborz college, I kind of wanted to understand the legacy story of that college, at least three of them come back to the United States and become presidents at Presbyterian colleges. So Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and center College in Kentucky, and Western College, which was a women's college in Miami, Ohio. And then there's a third section and the Persian boomerang chapter that looks at the folks who never abandoned the old mission, so to speak, you know, kind of hardcore evangelicals disagreed with the closure of foreign missions, who, you know, generally thought that investing in educational and cultural associations diverted attention and funds from church work. And those folks, they actually come back to the United States in the 1960s, in the case of John Elder and William Miller, Miller in the book, you know, become players and kind of be emergent nearly evangelical culture in the United States, they be they begin working with different organizations and kind of writing for some different audiences than would have been the case earlier in their career when they were kind of PCUSA stalwarts or whatever. And they really, their contribution in scare quotes is that they prior to the Iranian Revolution, kind of introduce Americans to this evangelical understanding of Christian Muslim relations. So they're engaged in the business of writing apologetics. And you know, kind of hoping to train the next generation of missionaries. And they're inspired by, you know, some of these late 19th, early 20th century missionaries that would give a speech at their college and inspire them to go abroad, right. So the Persian Boomerang is as complicated as the manifestations of mission abroad, we see kind of that American national mission, with the kind of national security intelligence piece, we see that new mission with education schools, and then we see that old mission with the folks who continue to do the same work, but just in a different place, a different country.

And as you were talking about the that, one of the things that really stands out, of course, is the importance of these educational institutions, right, both in the US, and of course, in Iran. And this is, actually I am a huge fan of your first book, losing hearts and minds. And I really, really enjoyed reading that. And I was so excited to see you continue to think about these transnational educational projects in this book, which is, you know, part of, but not the whole story here. So you talk us a little bit more, you sort of touched on this already. But tell us a bit more about what role education plays in this broader story of American relations with Iran in the mid 20th century. And maybe tell a little bit more about the W. Dell idea that is just absolutely fascinating.

Yeah, thank you so much for the words about Losing Hearts and Minds. You know, as we all know, who work on dissertations, and then publish those books. It's always nice. It never gets old here. And people say nice things about that book, or the first book, so to speak. Yeah. But, you know, Mission manifest, you know, doesn't look specifically at, like education, but it certainly looks more broadly at cultural relations. So there's that broad connection, right. But there is a chapter, I think the fourth chapter that deals explicitly with the educational manifestation of Michigan, right. So a lot of people who maybe are interested in international education and more so than some of the other subjects, you know, that's certainly something that they might To focus on but there are two case studies, I look at two Presbyterian institutions that existed in the mid 20th century in Tehran. One was a school for Iranian women called Iran Bethel. And it was a school that also had an attached clinic. And a lot of the students, and especially graduates of the school, from previous generations would kind of do work volunteered their time at that clinic today, we might think of it as like service learning, at least that component of the around Bethel experience, that that school, you know, traces its history back into the late 19th century. You know, it has kind of various, you know, versions of it's the school, as you know, kind of goes through various kind of moments in its history. It regroups after the Second World War, under the leadership of somebody named Jane Doolittle, who had worked at the school for decades, prior to the post world war two years, she actually lived and worked in Iran from the 1920s through the 1970s. I mean, she spent the majority of her life in Iran, and then came back to the US and with that the last decade of her life in the US, but really never lost touch with that kind of Iranian experience. So she's, you know, what they called the headmistress right at around Bethel for many years. And as is in charge of the Presbyterian missions project for women's education, this school after the Presbyterian Mission, so the Presbyterian Mission that all these missionaries are working for formally closes in 1965, there's kind of a shell there and kind of the institutional transfers to other forms of ownership kind of all have their own histories, which are explained in the book. But after that formal closure in 1965. The Iran Bethel School, eventually is transformed into Donavon College, which was like the first kind of quote unquote, modern kind of Western liberal arts college for Iranian so that Iran Bethel project, you know, morphs into Donavon. College, so folks who are interested, for whatever reason, in those institutions or, you know, more broadly in the history of women's education in the Middle East, that section hopefully can speak to that, and we learn a lot about a lot of the folks you mentioned suffrage, how this schools history is kind of tied into that suffrage moment, right. There's one other case study this very quickly, it's called the county school. It's a co H co educational English language school, it exists in Tehran from 1935, to 1980. And this is the place where not just like the children of missionaries might have gone but as time passes, you know, English speaking elites in the city, whether the children of diplomats or you know, even, you know, kind of Iranians who, for whatever reason want to have that type of education, it becomes really kind of that elite, k 12, English language, college prep school. And so we learn about the Iran Bethel, women's educational experience. But we also learn about the very interesting history of this community school in Iran as well.

They were just fascinating examples and really powerful to think about how how these kinds of institutions alongside the other places that you're talking about in Tehran are sort of shaping those Iranian ideas and American ideas about what this relationship between these two countries should be at a pivotal moment in world history as we sort of work through through the Cold War story that you tell. We are sort of coming towards the end of our time. And I was wondering if you might sort of take us from the sort of this late cold war a moment to think about our own time, and if mission manifest can sort of speak to our current moment, how sort of understanding this history might help us to think about US relations with Iran now?

Yeah, that's a really good question. And contemporary us Iran relations are always evolving, right. So for folks who are listening to this, who knows when you know, we're, we're talking early in the week after the helicopter crash that resulted in the death of the Rouhani, President, Foreign Minister and others, but, of course, a month ago, there would have been a different kind of media landscape. And in a month, who knows there might be as well so just kind of preface, this, these comments with that comment. So the first part of me kind of wants to say, not at all. It's not that simple, of course, right. But a big goal of the book was to, you know, as best as we all can as mortals, humans living in the world, you know, and shaped by all the things happening around us, right? To at least try to escape some of the teleology is that dominate? You know, our understandings of us Iran relations. So I really appreciated the the one blurb on the book, about, you know, how this how mission manifest speaks to a history, I think they say, long before the rise of more familiar religious or political myths, right, that really made me happy to see people kind of kind of picking up on that. Just kind of one more kind of on that point, you know, folks who read the book will, you know, kind of get a lot of discussion of periodization. As you know, historians love to talk about periodization. Right, but there are various reasons why every chapter in this book, except for the very last chapter, ends in the mid to late 1960s, right, maybe a few kind of trickle into the early 70s, this kind of thing, but so the the kind of the endpoint is not 1979. Right? It's, it's actually kind of the materialization of the Shahs White Revolution and the Shahs establishment of at least a relative degree of autonomy, kind of from his American patrons and kind of the Iranian assumption, or a broader international assumption of control over institutions that would have been like American or Presbyterian or foreign. Prior to the 1960s. Right, the 1960s is not just the decade of the Shahs White Revolution. But it's you know, in 1967, the US declares Iran a developed country, quote, unquote, withdrawals, US aid mission, the Shah holds his coronation in 1967. Right, more than two decades after he assumed power. So there are a lot of these kind of, you know, signposts, right in the late 1960s, in addition to the closure of the Presbyterian Mission that we need to see what comes in the 1970s is, at least in the context of history, I was trying to write and being somewhat different, right. But of course, you know, it's not that simple, you know, so I can speak to some ways that the book, at least is relevant to some of the conversations that are happening more broadly right now. So the final chapter of the book does deal with the ultimate disappearance, right of this not just Presbyterian Mission, which is pretty small by the late 1970s. But the broader American colony and you're right, so if that colony was approaching 50,000, say at the end of the summer of 1978. In November 1979, when the hostage crisis started, there, were only about 1000 American nationals there who were who were there voluntarily, right. And a lot of them were business people kind of cleaning up tying up loose ends, or, you know, this kind of thing. People who married and married Iranians, so Americans who married Iranians and go back to Iran, and are there then maybe they have binational children, but there aren't many people there. I mean, it's a tremendous it's almost like an evaporation of the whole, you know, kind of lifestyle whole kind of that whole colony doesn't exist, at least with Americans living in it, right? These institutions have afterlife after 1979. But that happens very quick. Right? And so that final chapter, tries to explain that the best that I can there could be an entire book or a whole body of literature, of course, about that kind of question, but I demonstrate how these Americans really hitched their star to the Shah of Iran. Ian's national mission is memory to this idea of kind of restoring kind of a Ron's kind of greatness in the region as a modern developed socio economically advanced, globally connected but not politically free. Country. This was something that, you know, the Americans I write about, appreciate it. They benefited from from this personally, professionally and in all the other ways. So there's this moment right in the 1960s. And that White Revolution moment where, you know, a lot of the missionary folks and other Americans kind of see all their kind of ambitions and ideals as being realized and actualized, right that Iran had, in fact, gave this American community of Evangelicals a loving embrace, and this embrace was going to be permanent and long lasting. Right? The Job had been completed right that other another historian writes about this, that peaceful conquest, right that Wilsonian idea that that had happened. This was the belief of the people that I'm writing about. Of course, not everybody in the 1960s and 70s, thought that but really, a lot of Americans did think that but they were getting reassurances from people who are associated with the monarchical vision of Iran. What happens in the final chapter is we see that there were competing Iranian missions, right? There's this idea of Dawa, or Islamic mission that was at once at odds with the monarchical vision of modern Iran. And also, what these Americans, not only what they were doing in Iran, but at a point the fact that they were even there to begin with, right. So we see in that final chapter that while there was this kind of Iranian national secular monarchical, vision that was attractive to Americans, there was this other really kind of potentially larger group at the time in the 60s and 70s, of course, of Iranians who didn't see it, though, right. So as we think about all the complex things happening in the world, it's interesting to think about whether Americans are thinking about us Iran relations, and kind of in connection to monarchical mission, which is, of course, a huge part of the overseas conversation, whether they're thinking about it in terms of this now state sanctioned notion of what the Islamic Republic of Iran is supposed to be, or if there are, you know, a bunch of kind of points in between and shades of grey and middle ground that can help Americans maybe have a better read on what the appropriate role of the United States of the world, in the world and in places like Iran actually is, right. Because this hyper interventionism that took, you know, kind of before my write about in the book ultimately is very, you know, offensive to people who expelled the Americans in the revolution in 1979. Right. Now, so, you know, that would just be, you know, one possible point of relevance between the book and some of the uglier aspects of contemporary Yes, Ron relations, but, you know, I conclude the book, maybe the same way I can complete our talk today, which is this idea of the Del Be Del residuals, right, that this kind of idea of a heart to heart community, based on a Persian proverb about, like connection being made or road existing between each heart, from heart to heart, this idea that you can make this connection with somebody that is more than a material experience and impactful kind of, you know, the soul or spirit, depending on the missionary view, or at least maybe the kind of worldview or, you know, kind of mindset, from, you know, kind of some of the less missionary minded American, but this idea that they're, you know, the folks who had this type of affection or love for Iran, very problematic, very complicated, you know, certainly, you know, with strings attached, right, and, you know, kind of all the other kind of aspects of the power situation that informs the human relationships of the cold were between a superpower in any country that isn't a superpower, right?

You know, but with all those qualifiers, right, there are these Del Be Del residuals, the folks who, you know, kind of had the experience that I write about any Iran to them, I get the impression that it was genuine. And, you know, even if things were misunderstood at the time, a lot of them, as I write about, at the end of the book, have time to kind of unpack some of that both in relation to their own personal family experiences, but also by kind of thinking about Iran and in a broader global context as, as, as time goes on, right, but a lot of the folks who, you know, even if they weren't, you know, kind of immediate actors in the history I write about, as an example, I've spoken to and done interviews. They're not in this book, but was with former students of the Community School, and that experience very clearly had a lasting impact on them. At least with the folks that I've talked to Over the course of their entire lives, and when you talk to folks who, you know, kind of American expatriates who grew up in Iran, who went to school in Iran, or Americans who served in the Peace Corps in Iran, or, you know, really interesting things nowadays, where like families are rediscovering their histories, and some person who didn't really understand what the great great grandparents were doing 6000 miles around the world, discover some manuscript or get contacted by a scholar, and you see kind of what that means to write those folks. Right. So, I mean, it's complicated, right? Every human kind of story is complicated when you're doing a relationship between humans and other humans, let alone these broader collectivities. Right. But there is this idea of the Del Be Del residuals, that there is, you know, kind of some, at least side of America, so to speak, that has an appreciation for Iran, despite the way politics change, every decade and, you know, kind of think that the United States and Iran the conflict between the countries is an inherently necessary, right, that it's constructed by, you know, kind of other outside factors, right. So there's at once kind of thinking about as far as contemporary legacy. Who are the Americans dealing with? Is it the monarchy? Is it kind of the Islamic narrative? Or is it something else in between, but also that it isn't just about conflict? That's the point of the book, you know, that there is this human history? That, you know, has legacies that continue? As we're speaking today? Right.

That's powerful stuff. And I, I love how, you know, like, all good historians write the answer, in part, it's, it's really, really complicated. But you have to sort of see these, these human connections. To make a really complicated story much more approachable and understandable, is a real strength of the book. Before I let you go, can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on these days?

That's a very good question. I have to, you know, large projects that will probably have, you know, smaller manifestations, so to speak, as I'm working on them over the next few years, but I'm going to tackle the post 79 us Iran history, from a kind of narrative and synthesis perspective, something that maybe can be useful for the types of students that I teach, and maybe, you know, early stage researchers who need to think in a more complicated way about their story ographers, and this kind of thing. So that will be fun, for a lot of reasons, and I'm looking forward to, you know, really, really diving into that over the next couple of years. But also unrelated to Iran. I've always been interested in Supreme Court Justice William Douglas. And, you know, there's some material about him and losing hearts and minds, it turns out, he had a lot of extra judicial, you know, off the bench interests, you know, the environment and a range of other things, but, you know, very much interested in and engaged with foreign affairs questions, right. So, I've, you know, I've been working kind of steadily on some, this project of justice Douglas, the internationalist, and, you know, just working on some smaller pieces, article ideas here and there. But as I do more work and research, his collection has like 1700 pages and the library of 1700 boxes in the Library of Congress. Most of that is like legal stuff, you know, wouldn't be about like the foreign policy side and everything. But anyway, that's, that's a project that now that mission manifest is, has arrived in the world and as, at least behind me, as far as workload, I've begun to think a bit more seriously about the next research monograph and Douglas, the internationalist, is where I'm at right now. We'll see where I am in a few more years, though. That

sounds great. I can't wait to hear more about it in the coming years. So thank you so much, Matthew. This has been an author's and conversation discussing today mission manifest American evangelicals and Iran in the 20th century. And you can find that on the Cornell press website. Thanks so much.