The scandal American slavery frustrated efforts of Protestant missionaries to convert Lebanese Christians to Protestant novelties. One such missionary writes home, paraphrasing a sermon theme in historic Christian churches:

Preachers from America come here to convert you to what they call the true faith of Jesus Christ, and tell you of the great doings in their free and liberal country. We will tell you what Protestantism and freedom leads to. We will tell you this moreover from Protestant newspapers, and then you can tell us whether even the Moslems in Turkey would enact such iniquitous laws.

… I tried to make them understand the difference between Americans of the South and those of the North, but all the reply I got was, “let those of the North then go home and convert those of the South, before they come to preach to the Arabs. Even the Turks never did such things as these.”

How US Slavery Undermined Protestant Missionaries in 1860 Beirut (Orthodox History)