Private and organized missionary activities in the Ottoman Empire date back to as early as the sixteenth century. They gained momentum when the Jesuits reorganized, and English and American Protestant churches joined the missionary activities in the empire in the nineteenth century. The main purpose of the missionaries was to revive “pure” Christianity among the “corrupt” Eastern Christian denominations—Greek, Armenian, and Bulgarian Orthodox, Jacobites, Nestorians, Copts, and Maronites—and to disseminate Christianity to non-Christians, especially Jews. Since pro…