Stephanie Stidham Rogers's Inventing the Holy Land provides a rich and nuanced account of how American Protestant engagements with the Holy Land shaped both the development of American Protestantism and the history of the Near East. Of particular interest is her analysis of a number of writers, especially women, who have often been left out of earlier discussions. Her consideration of the environmental aspects of Holy Land writing, of Palestine as a 'fifth gospel' for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestants, and of the engagement of varieties of Protestantism with Judaism and Islam all make this a substantial contribution to our understanding of what the Holy Land has made of American Protestants, and what American Protestants have made of the Holy Land.

Brian Yothers, University of Texas at El Paso

Rogers offers a narrative that centers on the ways in which American Protestants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries crafted, through an elaborate textual community, an image of the “Holy Land” that accurately reflected their historical and theological preconceptions

Rogers succeeds in weaving a narrative that expertly historicizes contemporary instantiations of Christian Zionism, while contributing to the wider discourses on colonial and postcolonial theory

Religious Studies Review