Builders of the Chinese Church: Book Review
Builders of the Chinese Church: Pioneer Protestant Missionaries and Chinese Church Leaders (Ed. Carol Lee Hamrin and G. Wright Doyle). Studies in Chinese Christianity. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015.
This volume is part of the series Studies in Chinese Christianity, edited by Carol Lee Hamrin and G. Wright Doyle. See other books in the series.
Book Review by Stephanie and Kittie Helmick
Introduction
What can explain the explosion of Christianity in China, despite the apparently insurmountable obstacles of the Cultural Revolution and virtually insignificant number of believers in previous centuries? Builders of the Chinese Church answers this question by examining the lives of nine evangelical leaders: seven Western missionaries and two Chinese pastors.
The introduction begins with a survey of China’s “Great Century” from 1807 to the 1920s. It was a period of rapid technological progress and political upheaval. China faced an existential crisis as their government was unable to repulse foreign encroachment through the opium trade and treaties signed at gunpoint. The introduction provides critical context for the work performed by the featured missionaries, including an overview of the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions. The Chinese people’s increasing frustration with the military and financial superiority of foreign cultures, combined with xenophobic superstitions prevalent at the time, serve to explain many of the obstacles that Western missionaries encountered.
The introduction then describes the religious climate in the West, including familiar names of those who inspired the missionaries to undertake their work. The “main character” section devotes a paragraph to each of the nine featured missionaries. Following these summaries, it outlines several controversies including connections with foreign imperialism, Bible translation, treaty rights for missionaries, ancestor rites, and fundamentalism vs. modernism. The introduction concludes with an evaluation of the missionaries’ various successes and failures in reaching the Chinese people and reforming Chinese culture. As in the individual essays that follow, the introduction achieves its stated goal of presenting a fair and balanced account of Christian missions in China.
Chapter 1: Robert Morrison
Robert Morrison was the first Protestant missionary who contributed to the flourishing of the contemporary Chinese church. He had a great respect for Chinese culture and in his personal, as well as professional life, mediated between China and Western countries. He acted as translator for several treaties between the Chinese and Western powers. He had a great passion for the Chinese language, not only devoting many years to diligent study but also creating study materials for future missionaries. He was a prolific writer with an exacting theology, which did not prevent him from opening his heart to Christians of other churches. He was not only congenial to other Protestants but studied Catholic prayer books and showed concern for the well-being of Catholic missionaries.
Though Morrison was a private person, his letters reveal how much he sacrificed for his missionary work in separation from his children and his wife’s ill health. Even historians who are hostile to missionary work grudgingly respect Morrison’s physical courage and undaunted pursuit of his goals.
Chapter 2: Liang Fa (Liang A-fa)
Liang Fa represents a watershed moment in the evangelization of China: a native Chinese believer who embraced the faith and undertook to evangelize his own people. The author refers to this process as “the indigenization of Chinese Christianity,” a development characterized by culture clash and ostracization, as well as unprecedented opportunities to reach the Chinese people and lay the foundation for a self-sustaining church.
Liang became a Christian by working with London Missionary Society missionary Robert Morrison and his colleague William Milne. After Milne baptized him, Liang reported a liberation from vice and a new desire for virtue. He went on to baptize his wife and son and became ordained as a pastor. Drawing on his previous career as a printer, Liang distributed tens of thousands of tracts including Good News, a four volume work that influenced the leader of the Taiping Rebellion. Although Liang struggled to win converts and many of his own family members resisted or fell away from the faith, his work returned its investment after his death as his conversion proved to be the first fruit of a rich harvest in future generations.
Chapter 3: James Legge
James Legge was a Scottish missionary and one of the few Western Christians who studied the language and culture before arriving. He was well-versed in the Chinese intellectual classics, which prepared him to undertake massive translation projects. His work included a Protestant hymnal and a new calendar for his Chinese congregations that upheld the Sabbath rest. Legge aimed at strengthening the indigenous Protestant presence in China. The largest church he founded was ecumenical rather than adhering to any particular denomination; it included both Western and Chinese congregants.
Legge was frustrated by the failure of his newly founded theological seminary to train native Protestant clergy. Other missionaries criticized him for allowing Confucian principles to influence his theological language and translations. He also had to work in the midst of political upheaval: He tried to remain neutral during the Taiping Rebellion, only to have one of his personal apprentices executed as one of their leaders. Despite these challenges, Legge’s lasting legacy was to provide a foundation for integrating Chinese culture and daily life with the life of a Christian church.
Chapter 4: Griffith John
Griffith John decided to become a missionary when he read a memoir of David Griffiths, a missionary to Madagascar - the man who eventually became his father-in-law. John wanted to follow him to Madagascar, but the London Missionary Society suggested he go to China instead, and he agreed. John, like most missionaries, learned Chinese after he arrived. He initially sympathized with the Taiping Rebellion but over time realized that the leaders were hypocrites who were not caring for their people and did not honestly worship Christ.
John’s base of operations was in the city of Hankou. His careful attention to church discipline prevented the proliferation of the “rice Christians” who plagued other churches: Chinese who were only interested in Christianity for its material benefits. John was particularly skilled at adapting his preaching style to fit more cohesively with Chinese expectations and culture. His sermons often transformed into question and answer sessions, as he was familiar with the people of his flock and could address them individually. Serving during one of the most violently anti-Christian periods in China, he and other colleagues suffered the loss of property and sometimes physical harm during their efforts to preach the Gospel in the Chinese interior.
Chapter 5: J. Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor’s father specifically prayed that he would become a missionary to China, a prayer that was fulfilled early in Taylor’s life. He embraced the Gospel at the age of fifteen after he had initially drifted from the family’s faith. Taylor became one of the best-known missionaries to China, beloved both by fellow missionaries and the Chinese people he served.
Taylor had a deep respect for Chinese culture. He scandalized fellow missionaries early in his career by adopting native dress. He used his familiarity with Chinese culture to evangelize communities further inland than any missionary had before him. Taylor pioneered the practice of deploying single female missionaries to China in order to better reach Chinese women whose culture restricted them from interacting with male missionaries. He founded the China Inland Mission (CIM), a nondenominational organization with native headquarters, to provide medical relief and evangelization to areas of China untouched by established mission societies. Since his childhood, Taylor had been convinced that missionaries should pair medical work with evangelism, so he made a policy of training new missionaries in medical relief. CIM became the largest foreign mission society active in China.
Chapter 6: William A. P. Martin
William Alexander Parsons Martin was born to a Presbyterian pastor in Indiana. He decided to become a missionary to China while in school. His work in seminary revealed his interest in using modern science to advance the cause of Christianity. Martin was particularly gifted at learning the Chinese language. After mastering it quickly upon arriving in China, he developed a phonetic script that allowed native Chinese to learn to read their own language much more quickly and easily. Most of his mission work focused on showing the Chinese people the historic benefits of Christianity, as well as emphasizing its commonality with Confucianism and Buddhism. He attempted to reconcile the traditional practice of reverencing ancestors with Christian principles, often over the objections of fellow missionaries.
After the Taiping rebellion, Martin changed the focus of his efforts to bringing modern Western education to China. He eventually became the president of Wuch’ang University. He also helped organize the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge as a way to introduce modern Western ideas to Chinese intelligentsia in hopes of contradicting long-held superstitions that Martin considered harmful to Chinese society. Unfortunately, in an effort to reach a wider audience, he excluded religious topics from the publications. He spent much of his missionary career frustrated with the results of his work.
Chapter 7: “Pastor Hsi” - Xi Shengmo
Pastor Hsi is the second native Chinese Christian featured in the book. His story highlights his personal struggles with opium addiction and the later burdens of shepherding a young community of Christians. Hsi was independent minded early in his ministry but came to appreciate the counsel and support of Western missionaries when dealing with issues of heresy and church discipline. He navigated the trials of church schisms and open rebellion while also growing in his own faith and spiritual development.
Hsi was a member of the educated class of China and initially scorned Christianity as a foreign religion connected with the opium trade, but he became curious about it during a famine when Christian relief workers launched a campaign to reach more Chinese intellectuals. Upon committing to Christianity, he found the means to overcome his opium addiction and later testified that only the Gospel possessed the saving power to liberate people from substance abuse. Much of Hsi’s ministry was devoted to the care and conversion of native opium addicts.
Chapter 8: Timothy Richard
Timothy Richard was a highly educated Protestant missionary. He had perhaps more influence than any other missionary over the educated classes in China--he was even acquainted with the emperor himself. Most of Richard’s missionary work took place within the context of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese, later renamed the Christian Literature Society, where he was in charge of managing published content for a decade. He wrote several influential essays and recruited other missionaries to contribute. Richard’s most successful campaign came about through the aid he gave to the anti-footbinding movement. He also assisted the Chinese government in famine relief and founding new modern universities.
Richard’s work displays a focus on the well-being of China as a nation rather than on individual souls. He was held in high regard by Chinese leaders and trusted more than most foreigners, but few of the people he influenced came to embrace Christianity by way of Western modernization.
Chapter 9: Jonathan Goforth
Jonathan Goforth is the most recent missionary covered in the book. After many years of serving in northern China, he was one of the first missionaries to breach the mission field in Manchuria. His work is a good indication of the inroads made by the missionaries and Chinese Christians who preceded him, since he focused almost entirely on reviving true Christian contrition in already existing churches. He was counter-cultural, in the sense that he resisted the tendency of many of his contemporaries to embrace liberal theology and favor education and economic reform over evangelism as the answer to China’s problems.
Goforth received his calling to enter the mission field at a very young age, and he continued preaching well into his seventies. He had a fractious relationship with the presbytery who sponsored him, but he was beloved by the Chinese and many Western Christian supporters. Later demographic surveys have borne out the fruits of his revivals as sincere and long-lasting conversions.
Conclusion
By ordering the accounts in roughly chronological order, Builders of the Chinese Church creates a multi-layered perspective on China’s “Great Century” of mission work and sociopolitical developments. The essays vary in tone and focus, but all present thoughtful and often personal insights into their subjects’ characters and work. For casual readers as well as scholars, Builders of the Chinese Church offers the best of both a survey and detailed studies.