Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East

In 1981, a satellite television station called Star of Hope began broadcasting from Israeli-occupied South Lebanon.Backed by American missionaries, Israeli politicians, and Lebanese Catholic leaders, the channel aired Western entertainment and Christian content using a repurposed ABC Monday Night Football truck situated on the Israel-Lebanon border.Later renamed Middle East Television (METV), its programming included American soap operas, sports, and evangelical content alongside innovative Arabic Christian televangelism. It was a station of enormous consequence. METV spurred the growth of competing Christian broadcasters and reshaped the Middle East's media and religious landscape over the next four decades.Yet it was, of course, controversial--its foreign, imperialist, and proselytizing approach to media was a source of curiosity and consternation in the region and, occasionally, around the world. Through extensive fieldwork and archival research, Febe Armanios explores how Western e