Frederick J. Bliss spent a great deal of his life living in Syria and Palestine, as his father worked for the Syrian Protestant College. Thus, his knowledge of the religious practices of the people of that area is not merely academic but also based in his own experience. The present volume is the edited and published version of the lectures Bliss presented at Lake Forest College in 1908, sponsored by the Bross Foundation. In these lectures, Bliss describes the religious practices of the two main religions in Syria and Palestine: Christianity and Islam. With regard to Christianity, Bliss discusses the many sects of Christians that inhabit the middle East, and he describes the practices that are unique to each group. Bliss’s depiction of Islam, filtered as it is through his Western, Christian worldview, leaves much to be desired, but his descriptions still provide interesting insights into the practice of Islam in Syria and Palestine at the turn of the twentieth-century.

• Series Foreword (page 5)
• TO DANIEL BLISS (page 7)
• THE BROSS FOUNDATION (page 9)
• PREFACE (page 13)
• CONTENTS (page 15)
• THE RELIGIONS OF MODERN SYRIA AND PALESTINE (page 17)
• CHAPTER I THE HISTORIC SETTING INTRODUCTORY NOTE (page 19)
• CHAPTER II THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES (page 51)
• THE ORTHODOX CHURCH (page 55)
• THE UNIATES (page 97)
• CHAPTER III THE RITUAL OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES (page 139)
• CHAPTER IV THE FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM (page 189)
• CHAPTER V THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS OF ISLAM (page 243)
• CHAPTER VI OTHER FEATURES OF ISLAM (page 294)
• CHAPTER VII THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST (page 331)
• APPENDIX (page 355)
• INDEX (page 363)