Protestant missions in China
In the early 19th century, Western colonial expansion occurred at the same time as an evangelical revival – the Second Great Awakening – throughout the English-speaking world, leading to more overseas missionary activity.
It is difficult to determine an exact number, but historian Kathleen Lodwick estimates that some 50,000 foreigners served in mission work in China between 1809 and 1949, including both Protestants and Catholics.
In such conditions, his proselytizing was limited to his employees, whom he compelled to attend Sunday services and daily meetings including prayer, Scriptural readings, and the singing of hymns.
Upon his first attempt to print tracts for his village kinsmen, Liang Fa was arrested, beaten on the soles of his feet with bamboo, and released only to pay a massive fine which Morrison on principle refused to help him with; instead, he used the savings he had laid aside for new houses for his wife and father.
In 1826, the Daoguang Emperor revised the law against superstitions to provide for sentencing Europeans to death for spreading Christianity among Han Chinese and Manchus ("Tartars").
... All civil and military officers who may fail to detect Europeans clandestinely residing in the country within their jurisdiction, and propagating their religion, thereby deceiving the multitude, shall be delivered over to the Supreme Board and be subjected to a court of inquiry.The first American missionary to China, Elijah Coleman Bridgman arrived in Guangzhou in 1830.
The defeat of China by Great Britain in the First Opium War resulted in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 which opened to trade, residence by foreigners, and missionary activity five Chinese port cities: Guangzhou ("Canton"), Xiamen ("Amoy"), Fuzhou ("Foochow"), Ningbo ("Ningpo"), and Shanghai.
Experiencing a severe mental disturbance after a series of failed imperial examinations, the scholar Hong Xiuquan had a dream which he interpreted in light of the 500-page Liang Fa tract given to him years before.
(Liang and other Protestants targeted Guangdong's prefectural and provincial examinations as massive gatherings of literate, potentially influential young men.)
Although he used the Protestant Bible and tracts as his movement's holy books and attached great importance to his version of the Ten Commandments, he preached his own form of Christianity, including the belief that he was Jesus's younger brother.
Prominent British missionaries included James Legge, Walter Henry Medhurst, Fred Charles Roberts, and William Edward Soothill.
Prominent among the China missionaries were idealistic and well-educated young men and women who were members of the Oberlin Band, the Cambridge Seven, and the Student Volunteer Movement.
[24] In the name of Islam, the Uyghur leader Abdullah Bughra violently physically assaulted the Yarkand-based Swedish missionaries and would have executed them except they were only banished due to the British Aqsaqal's intercession in their favor.
It may be added that the British and Foreign Bible Society is at present printing the four Gospels in the dialect of Chinese Turkestan, and that in all probability they will be ready before the new mission is settled at Kashgar.
[30] The first unmarried female missionary in China was Mary Ann Aldersey, an eccentric British woman, who opened a school for girls in Ningpo in 1844.
An 1888 Baptist conference affirmed that "women's work in the foreign field must be careful to recognize the headship of men" and "the head of woman is the man.
One hundred and eighty-nine Protestant missionaries, including 53 children, (and many Roman Catholic priests and nuns) were killed by Boxers and Chinese soldiers in northern China.
The Qing government attempted reform and missionaries found the Chinese more receptive to both their evangelical and their "civilizing" message, but the West lost the certainty of its conviction that it had the right to impose its culture and religion on China.
They created the Anti-Opium League in China among their colleagues in every mission station, for which the American missionary Hampden Coit DuBose served as the first president.
The survey included doctors in private practices, particularly in Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as Chinese who had been trained in medical schools in Western countries.
In 1888 Broomhall formed and became secretary of the "Christian Union for the Severance of the British Empire with the Opium Traffic" and editor of its periodical, National Righteousness.
In the 1860s, American Presbyterian Helen Nevius and others combated foot binding by matchmaking, finding Christian husbands for young women with unbound feet.
In 1872 in Beijing, American Methodist Mary Porter, who became the wife of Boxer Rebellion hero Frank Gamewell, banned girls with bound feet in her school and in 1874 an anti-footbinding organization was founded in Xiamen.
Since the late 19th century, the YMCA in particular played a very prominent role in spreading scientific approaches to physical education and amateur sports as a form of Protestant citizenship training ("muscular Christianity") in China and other Asian countries.
The 1922 study The Christian Occupation of China presented view of the liberal wing of the missionary establishment that control should be turned over to Chinese, but the unfortunate title made matters worse.
[57] Another skeptical note was sounded by the massive study commissioned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. entitled "Rethinking Missions" which cast doubt on a wide range of missionary activities.
Helped by strong leaders such as John Sung, Wang Ming-Dao, and Andrew Gih, the Chinese Protestant Christian churches became an indigenous movement.
Around 1900 there were on average about 300 China missionaries on furlough back home, and they presented their case to church groups perhaps 30,000 times a year, reaching several million churchgoers.
China was the setting for many of her best-selling novels and stories, which explored the hardships, and the depth of humanity of the people she loved, and considered fully equal.
"[62] No one had more influence on American political thinking about foreign policy than Henry R. Luce (1898–1967)[citation needed], founder and publisher of TIME, LIFE and FORTUNE magazines from the 1920s to his death.
