New Book by Febe Armanios Named a Finalist by Christianity Today
A new book by Febe Armanios, Philip Battell and Sarah Frances Cowles Stewart Professor of History, was named a finalist in the 2025 Christianity Today Book Awards for shaping evangelical life, thought, and culture. Her book Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2025), was selected as one of four finalists in the “Missions and the Global Church” category by a panel of theologians, pastors, novelists, and other influential thinkers.
Satellite Ministries explores how Western evangelicals and indigenous Christians harnessed terrestrial and satellite technologies to promote Christian television in the Middle East starting in the early 1980s and over the next four decades. Armanios’s research shows how modern expressions of faith, technology, and political power intersected and conflicted across the Global South and beyond.
The idea to explore the origins of Christian “satellite ministries” came to Armanios while she was watching two American televangelists on television in her Cairo apartment deliver energetic sermons and perform dramatic healings—their voices dubbed into formal Arabic. “The moment felt surreal,” Armanios recalled, prompting her to reflect on how television can introduce new and unfamiliar religious practices in unexpected places.
“When I wrote the book, my goal was to trace how, over more than forty years, television altered and amplified the public expression of Christianity for many people across the region,” said Armanios. “I examined how foreign-sponsored evangelical initiatives inspired indigenous Christians to create their own media platforms.”
Because documentary sources on the topic are scarce, Armanios said she relied heavily on oral history interviews. “This approach allowed key figures who influenced these channels to share their personal stories and provide critical details—something that written records alone might fail to capture fully.”
Armanios is a scholar of Middle Eastern history whose work focuses on religious minorities and also the connections between food practices and religious cultures. She has written extensively on Christian communities in the Middle East and on comparative religious practices. Her previous books include Halal Food: A History (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2011).