China and Christianity

Burdened Past, Hopeful Future

Stephen Uhalley, Xiaoxin Wu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317475002
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian History

This collection offers fresh perspectives on Sino-Western cultural relations, with particular regard to the experience of Christianity in China. The contributors include authorities from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Europe (including Russia and Eastern Europe), and North America.

III

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China and Christianity in Modern and
Contemporary History and Beyond

China and Protestantism: Historical Perspectives, 1807–1949

JESSIE G. LUTZ

Christianity has worn many faces in China.¹ Not only was there Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity with separable terms for the Supreme deity and the religion, but Protestantism itself found differing expressions. There were institutionalized “mainline” denominations and loosely organized evangelical communities, autonomous Chinese churches, and pentecostal or millenarian sects. During the early twentieth century, Christian movements such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and Student Christian Movement were prominent. On the fringes were Chinese Christians whose orthodoxy was questionable, the Taipings, for example. Variety continues today. The number of Chinese who attend “meeting points” in rural China undoubtedly exceeds the membership of the government-sanctioned Three-Self Movement, strongest in urban China. Syncretic and faith sects like the Eastern Lightning group are a source of concern lest they harm church and society.²

Scholars have been slow to recognize the growth of an indigenous Chinese Christianity. Until recently, Chinese generally neglected the history of Christianity in China or viewed Christian missions as the cultural arm of Western Imperialism. Early Western studies by missionaries concentrated on China missions; though these works remain valuable for their data and the expression of Western attitudes, they tell little about the work of the Chinese.³ With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the end of Western missions in China, it appeared that attempts to establish viable Christian communities in China had largely failed. Scholars turned to demonstrating the incompatibility of Confucian and Christian values and concepts.⁴ Or, they traced sources of Chinese hostility to Christianity.⁵ Cultural exchange via education, medicine, social services, and secular publications seemed the principal legacy of a century of Protestant missionary effort.⁶

As China moved toward a more open society in the 1980s and 1990s, however, came the revelation that many more Christians than previously thought had retained their faith. Christian communities were revitalized, while new converts and sects joined the ranks. An indigenous Chinese Christianity existed and its origins must be investigated.⁷ The history of Protestant Christianity in China was more than the story of heroic efforts by Western missionaries and resistance by Chinese, for Chinese Christians themselves had played a crucial role in propagating and interpreting Christianity. The endeavors of Chinese called for study.⁸ Chinese scholars sought to assess the role of missions as a cultural bridge between east and West and to study the history of the Christian colleges and regional Christianity. They began to search for Chinese sources, discovering that much had survived the political turmoil of twentieth-century China.⁹ The history of Protestant Christianity in China is being rewritten from a new perspective, this time with greater attention to the Chinese side of the story.

Pioneering and Preparation, 1807–1860

Even so, the narrative begins with the early catalysts, the pioneer Protestant missionaries. This advance guard was generally enterprising, dedicated, and confident of the unique truth of Christianity, and the superiority of Western civilization. Products of the Great Awakening, they brought a confessional, salvationist Christianity centered on the transformative powers of faith. Individual acknowledgement of sin, repentance, an emotional experience of rebirth, and a determination to lead a new life were essential to conversion. Most missionaries taught a minimalist theology: God as the transcendent Creator and Ruler of the universe, Jesus Christ as the source of salvation for humankind through his sacrifice on the cross, and the Holy Spirit as the source of comfort and guidance. Not the church, but the Bible was the final authority. As the revealed word of God, it should be made accessible to all.

Since Christianity and its propagation were illegal in China and Westerners were permitted to reside only in Canton and Macau until the mid-1840s, the missionaries operated on China’s fringes. There, they lived in a symbiotic relationship with Western merchants. Toleration of Christian evangelism, opening of treaty ports, and extraterritoriality were all won as a consequence of the Opium War of 1839–1842. Christian missions functioned within a political context and, in the minds of most Chinese, were associated with Western imperialism and opium.

The missionaries studied Chinese, translated the Bible, and published religious tracts. In the process they composed grammars and dictionaries to aid their successors and began to work out a Christian terminology. They itinerated in the Hong Kong-Canton region and Southeast Asia, preaching and distributing Christian publications. A few intrepid individuals, like the German missionary Karl Gützlaff (1801–1853) and Walter Medhurst (1796–1857) of London Missionary Society (LMS), made illegal forays into coastal villages. They popularized China missions in the homeland while painting for their supporters images of the Chinese: heathen and superstitious, industrious and family oriented, devious and patriarchal.

Above all, they made a few vital converts, the majority from among their employees. The Westerners, after all, were dependent on Chinese as language teachers, translators, colporteurs for interior China, and even preachers on their itinerations. Some of the first Chinese converts might be considered converts of convenience or “rice Christians,” acting in accord with traditional Chinese patron–client relationships. The attrition rate was high. A small corps, however, internalized their Christian faith and became deeply committed to converting their fellow countrymen. During the next few decades most of the initial conversions were accomplished by Chinese, not Western missionaries. For example, Theodor Hamberg (1819–1854) of the Basel Mission reported in 1853: “I had the honor of baptizing forty-one persons. Most of them are from Lilong and belong to the Kong lineage. … Such a baptism in the interior of China is a rarity. … Rather than praise myself, I shall gladly credit Kong Jin (Jiang Jiaoren, 1818–1853) with these forty-one as the fruit of his labor.”¹⁰ Che Jinguang (Ch’êa Kam-kwong, c 1800–1861) converted some 150 inhabitants in Buluo and presented them to LMS ministers for baptism in 1860–61.¹¹ Westerners offered further instruction and, as ordained ministers, performed baptism, indicator of church membership.

The Chinese not only had the advantage of language facility and acquaintance with Chinese mores, but they could travel freely in the interior. Most importantly, they had family and lineage as avenues of approach. Whereas Westerners concentrated on conversion of individual souls, the Chinese operated through their kinsmen, fellow villagers, and guild members. Even amidst lineage feuds, community closure, and widespread banditry, they had access to these groups. For example, Zhang Fuxing (Tschong Hin, 1811–1890), founder of the Basel mission to the Hakka of Meizhou, had little success in the Lilang region opposite Hong Kong, but soon after returning to his homeland in Wuhua district in 1852, he reported over a 100 converts.¹² A Christian isolate in Chinese society faced inescapable pressures for conformity from family and village. Converts needed the support of Christian communities and so they began their evangelistic work with spouse, parents, children, and siblings, then branched out to in-laws and other relatives. By providing church centers and cemeteries, offering moral support and fiscal aid at funerals and weddings, creating funds for the poor and for schools, and holding joint festivities at Christmas and Easter, the Christian congregation became in some ways a surrogate lineage. The Protestant missionary’s concept of the centrality of the individual gave way before the primacy of family and social harmony. Listings of the second and third generations of converts with their common surnames and village locales confirm the vital role of the Chinese associates and their methodology.¹³

Adaptation had begun, as Chinese conveyed their interpretations of Christianity and devised their own evangelistic style. Though they did employ the Western technique of public preaching, they relied heavily on conversations with small groups in informal settings. Frequently they visited tea houses or engaged in discussion on a one-to-one basis. An approach employed by Liang Fa (1789–1855), first ordained Chinese Protestant minister, was praying together or reading the Bible with an inquirer. Worship services could be held in the home and be quite informal; hymn singing, repetition of the Creed and the Lord’s prayer, and Bible reading with explication of the text might be accompanied by drinking tea, smoking tobacco, and feeding babies. As congregations acquired their own chapels, however, the trend was toward more formal ritual and emphasis on religious decorum, including segregated entrances and seating for the sexes.

In their evangelism, the Chinese often appealed to the desire for the protection and intervention of a more powerful God, one who could offer supernatural help in times of illness and hardship. The Basel associate Xu Fuguang (Tshi Fuk-kong), in conversation with a bandit-soldier, argued for example: “You heathens are ruled by the devil, but we Christians rule the devil.” The outlaw, to free himself from the devil’s influence, decided to join the ranks of the believers.¹⁴ Strict monotheism vis à vis Buddhist, Daoist, and folk deities was often combined with continued admiration of Confucian ethics.

Many Chinese converts found the concept of a loving and forgiving Jesus attractive in the light of personal troubles and social disorder. Perhaps, as the missionaries contended, they resisted the idea of original sin and continued to subscribe to the Confucian-Mencian concept of the essential goodness of human nature. But they readily acknowledged personal failings and they craved reassurance and hope. How could they explain the current harsh conditions except by their guilt? Even if they were not greatly interested in complex theology or specific denominational teachings and practices, they derived comfort and relief from the doctrines of grace and forgiveness.

Others were distressed not simply by their own inadequacies, but also by the widespread social and political breakdown surrounding them. Before turning to Christianity, Liang Fa, Huang Yungan (Wong Nyun-on), and Li Zhenggao (Li Tschin-kau, 1823–1885) had sought guidance from Buddhist monks and even tried Buddhist regimens such as meditation, repetition of mantras, or good works. All to no avail. The concept of the transformative power of the Holy Spirit seemed promising. Perhaps adherence to the Ten Commandments through the help of the Holy Spirit was the means to redemption of both the individual and Chinese society.¹⁵

Contributing to variant interpretations and strategies were divisions among Western missionaries. The majority of those answerable to home mission societies adopted the confessional approach, that is, conversion was followed by a period of catechismal training and probation before baptism was granted; such a methodology depended on hierarchical control. Other missionaries, especially independent ones like Karl Gützlaff, August Hanspach, Issachar Roberts (1802–1867), and William Burns (1815–1868), gave priority to spreading the Gospel message, confident in the persuasive powers of the Holy Writ and the regenerative powers of the Holy Ghost.¹⁶ They offered baptism after confessional conversion and brief instruction in basic teachings; further training would follow. Chinese evangelists were allowed to baptize converts and found Christian communities. Despairing of the conversion of China’s 350 million by the small band of Protestant missionaries and convinced that Chinese Christians communicated more effectively with their countrymen, Gützlaff in 1844 founded the Chinese Union (Hanhui) to recruit and train Chinese evangelists for all China. Union membership expanded rapidly and dramatically as did the reported number of converts. As was soon revealed, the majority were charlatans interested only in employment and the Chinese Union disintegrated upon Gützlaff s death in 1851. A small number, however, remained true to their call; they were instrumental in founding viable Hakka Christian communities in Meizhou and southeast Guangdong and small Cantonese congregations in the Pearl delta region.¹⁷ The nondenominational, evangelistic orientation of Gützlaff, Burns, Hanspach, and others would be adopted by many Chinese as well as by J. Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM).¹⁸ Emphasis on itineration and heavy reliance on local Chinese workers also characterized the work of the American Presbyterian John L. Nevius (1829–1873), whose methodology shaped the Korean Protestant church.¹⁹

Foundation Building and Expansion, 1860–1900

By 1860, guns had opened China to the Western presence while missionary publicity had popularized China missions among home congregations. An era of foundation building and expansion ensued. Volunteers, mission societies, and funds all increased. The number of Protestant missionaries in China grew from approximately 189 in 1860 to approximately 3,445 in 1905²⁰; single women, working primarily in education and social services, comprised a significant component. Chinese Protestants totaled about a quarter of a million. There were perhaps 300 ordained Chinese ministers, but many, many more Chinese evangelists and Bible women, who remained largely invisible in mission records and generally absent from nationwide mission conferences.

Both missionaries and Chinese preachers experienced a decline in autonomy. Additional missionaries and residence in the interior meant closer supervision of Chinese workers. Zhang Fuxing, who had presided over the Wuhua Christian community for fourteen years before the first Basel missionary was stationed there in 1866, lost both his leadership position and his lodging in the church center. Establishment of administrative structures in China and mission enclaves in the treaty ports, plus more rapid communication with home boards reduced the operating space of pioneering, experimental missionaries.

The few thousand Protestant missionaries touched interior China only lightly, however. In 1905 about 630 central stations with mission residences, chapel, school, and perhaps a medical dispensary were located in treaty ports or cities and under the guidance of a Western minister.²¹ Some 4,500 substations, usually manned by Chinese, were the actual arena for much of the evangelistic work. Jiang Falin (b. 1845) and Chen Minxiu (Tschin Min-syu, b. 1844), both Basel ordained ministers and sons of Christians, founded numerous new congregations in northeast Guangdong, and in 1885 Jiang even became head of a ce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• I. Introduction
• II. China and Christianity in the Traditional Past
• III. China and Christianity in Modern and Contemporary History and Beyond
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• List of Participants
• Index