Guide to the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations Secretaries' Files: Syria Mission

American Protestant work in Syria dates from 1819, when Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons, representatives of the American Board of Foreign Missions, arrived in Smyrna with the objective of initiating missionary work in the Jerusalem area. Following the reunion of the Old School/New School Presbyterian Churches in the US in 1870, the American Board's Syria Mission was transferred to the Board of Foreign Missions.

The work of the Presbyterian Church in Syria was conducted through four main stations, three of which were taken over from the American Board. These included Beirut, occupied in 1823; Tripoli, opened in 1848; and Sidon, occupied in 1851. The last station, Aleppo, was opened by the Board of Foreign Missions in 1920. In addition to these four stations and their sixty-three outstations, these were several substations. Suk-el-Garb, started by the American Board in 1848, was part of the Beirut station, as was Zahleh. Hama and Deir-ez-Zore were both substations of the Aleppo station. The work of the Syria Mission transcended three distinct states: Lebanon, which encompassed the stations of Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon and the substation of Zahleh; Latakia, where the Mission performed limited work in certain villages; and Syria, where work was conducted in the cities of Hama, Aleppo and Deir-ez-Zore.

The conflict between Christian and Moslem - a dominant and recurring theme throughout Syria's history - presented the Mission with a diversity of problems unknown in other mission fields. The division of the population along religious lines resulted in internecine warfare throughout Syria/Lebanon. This had an unsettling effect on the mission's educational, medical and evangelistic work. Despite this turmoil, the Mission was able to effect progress, especially ln the area of educational and medical assistance. Schools and medical work were a part of the Christian enterprise in Syria throughout the Mission's history. Such institutions as the American School for Girls, the Syrian Protestant College (later known as the American University of Beirut), the Tripoli Girls' School, and the Gerald Institute manifested the Church's educational ministry in Syria. Medical work was carried on in three centers: the Hamlin Memorial Sanitarium for tubercular patients; the Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Tripoli; and the Deir-ez-Zore Hospital in the remote northern desert.

The first evangelical church in Syria was organized in Beirut in 1848, and by 1921, the existing three presbyteries united to form a synod. Though a Syrian Evangelical Church was organized, its communicants remained small in number and the Church continued to function with the Mission until 1959. In that year, the American Presbyterian Mission in Syria-Lebanon was dissolved and its work and program integrated into the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.