Builders of the Chinese Church

Pioneer Protestant Missionaries and Chinese Church Leaders

Doyle

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878818
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

From 1807, when the first Protestant missionary arrived in China, to the 1920s, when a new phase of growth began, thousands of missionaries and Chinese Christians labored, often under very adverse conditions, to lay the groundwork for a solid, healthy, and self-sustaining Chinese church. Following an Introduction that sets the scene and surveys the entire period, Builders of the Chinese Church contains the stories of nine leading pioneers--seven missionaries and two Chinese. Here we meet Robert Morrison, the heroic translator; Liang Fa, the first Chinese evangelist; missionary-scholar James Legge; J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission; converted opium addict Pastor Hsi ("Overcomer of Demons"); Griffith John and Jonathan Goforth, both indefatigable preachers; and the idealistic advocates of education and reform, W. A. P. Martin and Timothy Richard. Readers will be inspired by their courage, devotion, and sheer perseverance in arduous work, and will gain an understanding of the roots of the two "branches" of today's Chinese Protestantism.

1

Robert Morrison

Missionary Mediator, Surprising Saint

Christopher D. Hancock

Robert Morrison’s arduous life and catalytic work as a Bible translator and educator set him apart from the many other great missionary figures in China. A poor Geordie lad with a fine mind and strong will, Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to operate in mainland China. Born on January 5, 1782, he grew up in an austere Scots Presbyterian home in the aftermath of the eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival. Morrison was converted as a teenager; an event he described later as “a change of life, and I trust, a change of heart too.”78 Thereafter, like many of his peers, he sought to honor God and began to hunger for adventure in the pursuit of a missionary vocation. After a simple diet of Christian education and basic language learning (Latin and Greek) in his native Newcastle-upon-Tyne and at the new evangelical colleges in Hoxton, London, and Gosport, Hampshire (under the inspirational figure David Bogue), Morrison landed in Macao on September 4, 1807.79 Thereafter, except for a prolonged sabbatical back in the UK,80 Morrison divided his time between various residences in Macao and (for six months of the year) his bridge-head labors at the international “factories” of the Free Trade port of Canton eighty miles further up the Pearl River. Circumventing East India Company and imperial censure of missionary activities, Morrison fulfilled the dual role of “official interpreter” for the East India Company (EIC) and the London Missionary Society’s (LMS) first Chinese Bible translator.

Tough, single-minded, and controversial in life and death, Morrison was a pioneer in Chinese translation work. As he learned the Chinese language, he systematized it for those who followed and then applied his skills to the translation of the Bible (New Testament, 1814; the whole Bible in 23 vols., 1823), preparation of a multi-volume Chinese-English Dictionary (1815–23), and publication of a range of other texts for use in China or for the purpose of interpreting China to the West.81. This work earned him a Doctor of Divinity degree from Aberdeen University (1817), a prestigious Fellowship of the Royal Society (1825), an audience with King George IV, and international acclaim for his bravery, scholarship, endurance, and unique achievement. Unlike so many early missionaries, Morrison survived twenty-seven long years of service at his missionary “post;” like many of his colleagues, he was predeceased by his first wife (Mary, d.1821) and first son (John, d.1810). Morrison’s life is full of ambiguity, pain, disappointment, and failure; it is also alive with a compelling zeal to advance the Christian cause in China that brooked no opposition, reconciled conflicting agendas, and overcame extraordinary odds. As the LMS’s “Register of Missionaries” records, “Few missionaries have encountered the difficulties with which he had to contend, or have needed the self-denial by which he overcame all obstacles. He saw little direct result in the conversion of the Chinese, but he prepared the path for others.”82 In this chapter, we study Morrison as a mediator and a saint. These are profiles that are often neglected in contemporary studies of Morrison, although we glimpse something of them in the great missionary historian Latourette’s classic summary of the man: “He possessed unusual breadth of vision, integrity, singleness of purpose, devotion, scholarship and sound judgement.”83

Morrison the Mediator

Morrison’s mediatorial role developed as his long residence in China unfolded. Linking the evolution of this vocation to the events of his life, we will look at Morrison’s political, social, ecclesiastical, cultural and vocational identities. In these different spheres, Morrison reveals an attractive—and progressive—proclivity to reconcile divergent perspectives and to seek to accommodate sharp differences of opinion. Though traditionally (and plausibly) read as an awkward firebrand, insensitively single-minded in pursuit of his high calling as scholar, missionary, and servant of the Chinese people, Morrison is also an adept politician and skilful intermediary, who adapted rigorous spiritual principles to the demands of necessity and opted for a “both-and” strategy when many of his evangelical peers embraced an “either-or” simplicity. Dubbed by some to this day a choleric compromiser and hard-edged dogmatist, there is another story to be told about a man who is still respected by secular sinologists and feared by China’s elites. Why? Because, as we will see, he embraced a nuanced attitude towards East-West cultural relations that impresses skeptics of missions and threatens the exceptionalism that claims that outsiders can never understand Chinese culture—a claim that Morrison’s life and work self-evidently disprove. John K. Fairbank’s incisive remark is still true and fits Morrison, “In China’s nineteenth-century relations with the West, Protestant missionaries are still the least studied but most significant actors in the scene.”84

We begin with Morrison’s political profile. “Political” refers to his official role as interpreter for the EIC and to his informal style as a man inhabiting an alien culture and a colleague belonging to various social groups. Morrison’s decision, on his wedding day in 1809 (February 20), to accept a position and salary from the EIC as “Chinese translator to the English Factory at Canton,”85 has provoked comment, especially from missionary agencies and critical Chinese sources. Eliza Morrison, his second wife and biographer, explains and justifies the decision, “Upon this incident the great usefulness of Morrison’s life turned; and by this it is hoped the immortal interests of millions were decided.”86 Morrison reasoned in his diary, with St Paul’s tent-making in mind, “If secular employment were lawful in him I know not why a missionary may not attend to secular affairs for his own support.”87 Despite the tacit (pragmatic) support of the LMS, Morrison’s new role stirred the charge from fellow Christians of receiving funds tainted by trade, mammon, and prejudice,88 while to hostile Chinese he was now self-evidently a stooge of British imperialism and enemy of the people he sought disingenuously (and misguidedly) to “proselytize.” But Morrison’s public-private roles as mercantile agent and pioneer missionary troubled others more than Morrison himself. He consistently defended his tough decision and new position on the hard-headed grounds of finance and law; with inadequate funding from the LMS and an illegal status as a missionary operating in EIC territories and mainland China, how else could he remain in Canton once his missionary cover was blown?89 In Morrison’s decision we glimpse a capacity for astute political behavior that many of his later colleagues lacked.

Morrison’s role as official interpreter involved him during the trading season in long hours of detailed translation (oral and written) of complex trade and diplomatic negotiations. While to Eliza, exercising his new responsibilities providentially provided “so many lessons in...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Robert Morrison
• Chapter 2: Liang Fa (Liang A-fa)
• Chapter 3: James Legge
• Chapter 4: Griffith John
• Chapter 5: J. Hudson Taylor
• Chapter 6: William A. P. Martin
• Chapter 7: “Pastor Hsi”—Xi Shengmo
• Chapter 8: Timothy Richard
• Chapter 9: Jonathan Goforth
• Bibliography