4. DISEÑO DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN
4.5 Fase III Cambio en los estados financieros
The anti-Christian movement of the 1920s served to push the Chinese Christian community to reflect on positioning Christianity in a local context. Triggered by the imminent eleventh World Student Christian Federation 世界基督教學生同盟 (WSCF) meeting at Qinghua University in April 1922, a group of students in Shanghai formed an Anti-Christian Student Federation 非基督教學生同盟 in February.436 The Chinese YMCA undertook responsibility for the preparation of the Conference and published a special volume in its magazine Qingnian jinbu 青年進步 in February, which was also
435 Lian Xi, “’Cultural Christians’ and the Search for Civil Society in Contemporary China,” The Chinese Historical
Review (May 2013): 82–3.
436 For the anti-Christian movement in China, see: Tatsuro and Sumiko Yamanoto, “The Anti-Christian Movement
in China, 1922–1927,” Far Eastern Quarterly (1 February 1953): 133–47; Lewis Hodous, “The Anti-Christian Movement in China,” The Journal of Religion (October 1930): 487–94. Luo Weihong 罗伟虹, “Ping ‘feijidujiao” yundong” 评“非基督教”运动 (Commenting on the Anti-Christianity Movement), Shanghai shehui kexueyuan xueshu jikan上海社会科学院学术季刊 Vol. (1991): 169–74. Ye Renchang 叶仁昌, Wusi yihou de fandui jidujiao yundong 五四以后的反对基督教运动 (The Anti-Christianity Movement in post-May Fourth Period) (Taipei: Jiuda, 1992); Yang Tianhong 杨天宏, Jidujiao yu minguo zhishifenzi: 1922–1927 zhongguo fei jidujiao yundong yanjiu 基督教与民国知识分子：1922 年-1927 年中国非基督教运动研究 (Christianity and Republican Intellectuals: Research on the Anti-Christianity Movement from 1922 to 1927) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2005).
135 circulated by other Christian periodicals. In response to the event, the Anti-Christian Student Federation drafted its regulations in March and published them together with its declaration in Xianqu
先駆 (The Pioneer), the institutional magazine of the Communist Youth League of China, in a special issue entitled “Anti-Christian Student Federation” in the same month. The declaration’s specific goal was to oppose the WSCF as Christianity and the churches “assisted the bourgeoisie in plundering the proletariat and supported the former to suppress the latter.”437 This anti-Christian sentiment was soon echoed in Beijing, where on 11 March the Anti-Religion Federation 非宗教大同盟 was formed at Beijing University.438 Although the federation in Beijing targeted religion in general and upheld science, its criticisms of Christianity infused the anti-Christian campaign with another force. Shortly after the anti-Christian movement in Shanghai and Beijing, other areas such as Guangdong, Nanjing, and Hunan responded actively in their denunciation of Christianity.439
The agitation against Christianity experienced another wave in the early 1920s, manifested in the movement for gaining education rights from mission societies. The publication of Zhongguo jidujiao jiaoyu shiye 中國基督教教育事業 (Christian Education in China) in 1922, a survey conducted by mission boards and societies, encouraged the spread of nationalist sentiment among local intellectuals especially those working in educational institutions.440 In March that year, Cai Yuanpei 蔡
元培 (1868–1940), the president of Beijing University and a man of liberal thinking, advocated the separation of religion and education in an article entitled “Jiaoyu duli yi” 教育独立議 (On the Independence of Education).441 Two years later, the movement for gaining education rights from mission societies escalated after the British headmaster at the Anglican Trinity College in Guangzhou
437 “Fei jidujiao xueshengtongmeng xuanyan” 非基督教學生同盟宣言 (Declaration of the Anti-Christian Student
Federation), Xianqu先駆 Vol. 4 (15 March 1922): 1.
438 Yang, Jidujiao yu minguo zhishifenzi, 108–9. 439 Ibid., 118–37.
440 For the Chinese version, see Zhongguo jidujiao jiaoyu shiye中國基督教教育事業 (Shanghai: Commercial
Press, 1922). For the English version, see Christian Education in China: The Report of the China Educational Commission of 1921–1922 (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1922).
441 Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, “Jiaoyu duli yi” 教育独立議 (On the Independence of Education), Xin jiaoyu新教育 Vol.
136 prohibited the formation of a student union and expelled some dissident students on 22 April. Other students later escalated the incident into an anti-imperialist movement, which ignited an on-going campaign for gaining education rights from Western missionaries during the following years.442 The nationalist campaign that was confined initially to education was later channelled into forces that resuscitated anti-Christian sentiment. As a result, a political joint force was formed. In August 1924, the Anti-Christian Federation (Fei jidujiao datongmeng 非基督教大同盟) was established, including three Communist Party members and one Kuomintang (KMT) member amongst its five committees.443 In the spirit of science and patriotism, the Federation aimed to oppose Christianity and all of its causes.444 Minguo ribao民國日報 (The Republican Daily), the official newspaper of KMT, functioned as a crucial medium for the campaign, which launched a special issue on the anti-Christian movement on 19 August 1924. In its ninth issue that year, one of the committee members called Li Chunfan 李春 蕃 proposed an anti-Christian week from 22 to 27 December. Li appealed for a collective effort of anti- Christianity comrades to launch protests, public lectures, and publications.445
Together with the following May Thirtieth Movement in 1925 that fuelled anti-Christian movement with anti-imperialist sentiment, the Christian community suffered from constant disturbance and devastation during the KMT’s Northern Expedition.446 The anti-Christian movement ebbed in 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek moved the KMT from an alliance with the Communist Party of China to becoming anti-Communist. The nationalist government persecuted Communist members and banned students’ gatherings and protests. Yang Tianhong 杨天宏 notes that Chiang’s antagonistic position towards the Communist Party discouraged the anti-Christian movement in which Communist
442 Yang, Jidujiao yu minguo zhishifenzi, 207–8.
443 Ye, Wusi yihou de fandui jidujiao yundong, 85; “Fei jidujiao datongmeng xuanyan” 非基督教大同盟宣言 (The
Manifesto of the Anti-Christianity Federation), Juewu覺悟 (Supplement of Minguo ribao, the Special Issue on anti-Christianity) (19 August 1924): 7.
444 “Fei jidujiao datongmeng xuanyan,” 6.
445 Li Chunfan 李春蕃, “Fei jidujiao zhou” 非基督教周 (The Week of Anti-Christianity), Juewu (9 December 1924):
2.
137 members functioned as key players. Furthermore, the perceived need to solidify the KMT government following the victory of the Northern Expedition meant that public movements, which the ruling regime regarded as a threat to its authority, were banned.447 Although the anti-Christianity movement waned in the late 1920s, it advanced discussions about indigenisation in the Chinese Christian community and made a long lasting impact on the shape of Christianity in the history of modern China.
Towards an Indigenous Church
The growing nationalism of the 1920s intensified the desire of Western missionaries to present the Protestant church as a Sinicized venture, which facilitated the formation of many Chinese-led interdenominational organisations.448 While legally protected by the Unequal Treaties, the foreign missionary community was nevertheless surrounded by hostile sentiment from parts of the local society. In particular, this anti-foreignism became an alarming threat in March 1927, following the looting of foreign houses and the killing of the Vice-President of the University of Nanking, the American missionary Dr J. E. Williams. The Chinese Recorder wrote that only 3,000 of the original 8,000 Protestant missionaries were still in China by the middle of 1927. The Christian Century even interpreted the situation caused by anti-foreign sentiment as “a missionary debacle.”449
The growing tide of nationalism accompanied by the hostility of Chinese society against foreign missionaries stirred up a series of discussions in missionary publications. George A. Hood points out that articles in the International Review of Missions from 1925 to 1928 mainly dealt with the Chinese Church, the future of Christianity in China, the use of the term “indigenous,” the significance of the present situation in China for missionary administrators, and Treaties and Missions in China.450 Foreign missionaries also paid close attention to the thinking of local Christians concerning mission work. For
447 Ibid., 366–73.
448 Lian Xi, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 2010): 109.
449 “Missionary Debacle in China”, The Christian Century (29 April 1927): 519–21.
450 George Hood, Neither Bang nor Whimper: The End of a Missionary Era in China (Singapore: The Presbyterian
138 example, The China Christian Advocate published a translated article entitled “The Place of the Western Missionary” from a Chinese Christian magazine Zhenli yu shengming眞理與生命 (Truth and Life) in 1927.451 This article listed three possible positions for foreign missionaries in their work in China. One was the position of superintendent, where missionaries were shepherds and Chinese Christians were their sheep. The second was the cooperative position where foreign missionaries shared joint authority over management and administration with Chinese converts within the church. The third was the position of assistant, where Chinese had power of administration and management in the church. Some mission societies such as the Methodist Episcopal Church expressed their willingness for more indigenous control, embodied in their proposals at the 1927 Shanghai Conference.452 Although by 1877 most Protestant missionaries had accepted the concept of an indigenous church in China at the first missionary conference in Shanghai,453 a nation-wide mobilisation for indigenisation did not take place until the 1920s when the anti-Christian movement provided a critical context for Chinese Christians to reflect on their national identity. The term “Zhongguo bense jiaohui” 中國本色 教會 (Chinese indigenous church) was a popular catchphrase in the 1920s that reflected a primary movement among Chinese churches. The term “indigenous” at the time refered to “a Christianity that has possession of the Christian spirit and expresses itself in Chinese fashion.”454 As Jonathan T’ien-en Chao notes, the term “Chinese indigenous church” expressed:
the idea that the Church in China must be of the Chinese people, for the Chinese people, and by the Chinese people—a church marked by Chinese characteristics—as opposed to the various concepts of churches imported and controlled by foreign missionaries and characterized by their respective ethnic characters.455
451The China Christian Advocate (April 1927): 16. 452The China Christian Advocate (1 June 1927): 5. 453 Ibid., 5.
454 T. C. Chao, R. O. Hall, and Roderick Scott, The Christian Movement in China in a Period of National Transition
(Mysore City: Wesley Press and Publishing House, 1938), 62.
455 Jonathan T’ien-en Chao, The Chinese Indigenous Church Movement 1919-1927: A Protestant Response to the
139
Towards a Chinese Christian Family
The anti-Christian context gave rise to the sinicization of the discourse on family reform in the Chinese Christian community. Wang Zhixin 王治心 (1881–1968), an active Christian writer at the time, was a pioneer in advocating family reform from a local viewpoint.456 Wang stressed the purpose of family reform was neither to religionise into Christianity (jidujiao hua 基督教化) nor to Westernise (xiyang hua 西洋化) but to transform the family into a Christlike one (jidu hua基督化).457 Instead of negating traditional ethics, Wang attempted to seek similarities between the principles of Christianity and the traditional family in his article on how to Christianise the family, written in 1926. He asserted that the fusion of these two was possible on grounds that they were both eastern ideologies (dongfang sixiang
東方思想), which geographically originated and culturally developed in an “eastern” context. The development of Indian Buddhism in China, in his view, manifested the possibility of an eastern religion redeveloped in China, the doctrines of which surpassed the place of origin. The encounter of Christianity with Chinese thought, he believed would be able to likewise surpass the achievements of the encounter of Christianity with the West. In this way, Wang emphasised local agency in the development of Christianity. Conflicts between the Christian family and the traditional family occurred over issues such as the nuclear Christian family versus the extended Chinese family, divorce versus chastity, and utilitarianism versus frugality. Wang attributed these conflicts to a misinterpretation of the nature of the Christian family, which mistakenly believed that the Western model of the family was based on Christian institutions. Wang therefore appealed for the separation of Occidentalism from Christianity so that Christianity could be better adapted to a Chinese context. As far as Christianising Chinese homes was concerned, one method Wang suggested was to replace the existing concept of celestial reverence with the “Heavenly Father,” emphasising the importance of filial piety
456 Wang Zhixin 王治心, “Ruhe shi jiating jiduhua” 如何使家庭基督化 (How to Christianise Home), Shenxue zhi
神學誌 Vol. 12 No. 1 (1926): 107–14.
140 found in the Bible, and transforming the practice of ancestor worship into the worship of God by the family.
Wang’s discussion of the family was influenced by his concerns about the indigenisation of Christianity in China. Although he highlighted Chineseness as an essential element of Christianity in China, he refuted the idea that this was associated with either nationalism or exclusivism.458 Specifically Wang wrote that:
The role of an indigenised church (bense jiaohui 本 色 教 會) is to transform the westernised church into a Chinese church that successfully suits the spirit of the Chinese race (Zhonghua minzuxing 中 華 民 族 性).459 This transformation will not undermine Christian truth but will reconcile Chinese traditional culture with Christian truth so that the religious life of Chinese Christians accords with Chinese conditions.460
The following section shows how Nü duo responded to the indigenisation movement in the Chinese church.