Salt and Light, Volume 3: More Lives of Faith That Shaped Modern China

By Pickwick Publications

In this centennial year of China's 1911 Revolution, Volume 3 in the Salt and Light series includes the life stories of influential Chinese who played a political or military role in the new Republic that emerged. Recovering this precious legacy of faith in action shows the deep roots of the revival of Christian faith in China today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Jul 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781621892908

Book preview

Salt and Light 3

More Lives of Faith that Shaped

Modern China

Edited by

Carol Lee Hamrin

with Stacey Bieler

2008.Pickwick_logo.pdf

SALT AND LIGHT 3

More Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China

Studies in Chinese Christianity 4

Copyright ©

2011

Carol Lee Hamrin. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may

be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the

publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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isbn

13

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978-1-61097-158-4

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Salt and light 3 : more lives of faith that shaped modern China / edited by Carol Lee Hamrin with Stacey Bieler.

Studies in Chinese Christianity 4

xvi +

262

pp. ;

23

cm. Includes timeline, photographs, map, and index.

isbn

13

:

978-1-61097-158-4

1. China—Church history. 2. China—Religion. 3. Christianity—China.

4. Chinese History. I. Hamrin, Carol Lee. II. Bieler, Stacey. III. Title. IV. Series.

br1288 s15 2011

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Praise for Salt and Light, Vol. 2

The second volume of Salt and Light is a wonderful accomplishment. It takes as its scene the world’s largest country during a century of turmoil and agony, and shows how a few heroic Chinese Christians tried to rescue and redeem their great country. The stories are without exception inspiring. At the same time, they shed much unsuspected light on the history both of China and of Christianity.

—Philip Jenkins, Professor of Humanities, Penn State University, and Senior Fellow, Baylor University, Jesus Wars; The Next Christendom; The Lost History of Christianity

Carol Hamrin and Stacey Bieler have brought together another set of illuminating portraits of historical Chinese Christian leaders. We see here the men and women who sowed the seeds of spiritual, psychological and physical transformation that helped make the Chinese church—and indeed China itself—what it is today. A truly fascinating book.

—Rob Gifford, NPR Shanghai correspondent,

formerly London and Beijing, China Road

 The editors have assembled a strong team of authors, both Chinese and American, to write these compelling portraits. The subjects are lay Chinese Christians who were active between 1850 and 1950, all of whom had some contact with the United States and all of whom were leaders in building up Chinese society. For our day, which marvels at the rapid spread of Christianity in contemporary China, this book is especially important for showing how long-standing and how effective—but also how Chinese—have been the serious Christian contributions to Chinese society. This is a very important book.

—Mark Noll, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame,

Clouds of Witnesses; The Rise of Evangelicalism;

The New Shape of World Christianity

Living up to the high standards of Volume 1, this book offers new, finely written portraits of Chinese Christian patriots of the 20th century. Their stories are both fascinating and inspiring, and they open new windows for viewing the history of modern China. They help us see the moral challenges and cultural transformations that underlay the political and economic struggles of the Chinese revolution.

—Richard Madsen, Chair, Department of Sociology,

University of California, San Diego, Democracy’s Dharma;

China’s Catholics

Praise for Salt and Light, Vol. 1

I highly recommend this collection of succinct, deftly drawn portraits of Chinese Christians whose lives made a difference. The editors and authors are sympathetic to their subjects, but also realistic in their evaluation. Historians of modern China, and many in Chinese Christian communities worldwide, will enjoy and profit from learning about these ten laypersons who contributed much to the Kingdom of God and to the society in which they lived.

—Daniel Bays, Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies at Calvin College, China’s Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections; Christianity in China

Salt and Light . . . presents the human face of China’s emergence in the world, showing how China’s great human assets bear the imprint of deep encounter with the West. It is impossible to overestimate the long-term value of that encounter, and there is no question that such encounter will impact China’s international outlook. This book shows why . . . such people, now as in the past, form a crucial bridge between East and West.

—Lamin Sanneh, Professor of History and Professor of Missions and World Christianity, Yale University, Whose Religion is Christianity?

and The Gospel Beyond the West

Recovering the lost narratives of ten remarkable Chinese Christian lives tells us that Christianity in China is profoundly and thoroughly Chinese. These impressive stories so aptly show that the modern migration of Christian faith . . . sank roots deep into the cultural soil of China. How this occurred, in each case, is an achievement to be celebrated.

—Robert Frykenberg, Professor Emeritus of History & South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Christianity in India

Volume 1 in Chinese, adapted from the Foreword

This book discusses ten people who should be remembered by today’s Chinese. The history behind them also should be remembered . . . because the cause to which they were dedicated should be carried on. The spirit behind their dedication should also nourish the spirit of today’s Chinese. Why? In the past, we remembered historical figures; today we pay attention to . . . political figures or business leaders or stars" in the performing arts or sports. However, most of our daily life concerns—family relations, school education, health care, professional training, the media, international relations—do not benefit from learning about those types, but those who do real social service and hard work. We haven’t given those [in this book] sufficient attention, or recognized their noble characters. We haven’t paid attention to their spiritual life, displayed in their hard work. We forget their great contribution to thousands and thousands of students, farmers, readers, patients, new mothers and babies.

Behind the stories is a history of mutual help and close friendship between the Chinese and American peoples that also has been forgotten, or that we never even knew. . . . Many intellectuals have never noted the role played by Christians related to the cultural relations between the two peoples. As for the common public, they know nothing about this. This book talks about outstanding people who have a background of study in America. Their dedication and their achievement is due to their spiritual power, which is a very sincere Christian faith. Though these people worked in different fields, they shared a common goal, which was to improve the well being of the common Chinese people.

More praiseworthy, they all did their best to improve the inner well being and quality of the Chinese people. They understood deeply that high moral standards and a vital spiritual life are essential to the real progress of China and necessary for the happiness of the Chinese people. Look at today’s situation in our country and the circumstances of the people. This noble cause still needs our continued efforts. This book talks about history but with real meaning for today; it talks about people in the past but can help people today. So I hope all, especially the young, will not only read this book, but think deeply and take action for good.

—Dr. Guanghu He, Professor of Religious and Christian Studies, Renmin [People’s] University, Beijing

Sources of Illustrations

MAP Originally published in Stacey Bieler, Patriots or Traitors?

A History of American-Educated Chinese Students (Armonk,

NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

Revised and used by permission.

1-1 Courtesy of Huang Peixi, Fuzhou, Fujian, China.

1-2 Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

1-3 Courtesy of Huang Peixi, Fuzhou, Fujian, China.

2-1 Qingnian Jinbu [Association Progress], April 1917.

2-2 Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota.

2-3 Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota.

3-1 Who’s Who in China. (Shanghai: The China Weekly Review,

1925); Reprinted by Hong Kong: Chinese Materials Center,

1982.

3-2 Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

4-1 George T. B. Davis, China’s Christian Army: A Story of Marshal

Feng and His Soldier (New York: Christian Alliance, 1925).

4-2 Who’s Who in China. (Shanghai: The China Weekly Review,

1931); Reprinted by Hong Kong: Chinese Materials Center,

1982.

5-1 Courtesy of Queen Mary, University of London Archives.

5-2 Courtesy of Queen Mary, University of London Archives.

5-3 Courtesy of Stacey Bieler.

6-1 John C. H. Wu, Beyond East and West (London, Sheed and Ward,

1952).

6-2 John C. H. Wu, Beyond East and West. [cropped].

6-3 Wu Jingxiong, Huai Lan Ji (Taipei: Kuang Chi Chubanshe:

1963). Special Collection and Archives, Kuang Chi Cultural

Group, states that no copyright holders are found.

7-1 Women’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society publica-

tion, 1944, Missionary Research Library, Union Theological

Seminary, New York City, New York.

7-2 Liu-Wang Liming, Kuaile jiating [The Happy Family] (Shanghai:

Shangwu yinshuguan [Commercial Press], 1931).

8-1 Lin Yu Tang House, Taipei, Taiwan. Http://www.linyutang.org.tw.

8-2 Lin Yu Tang House, Taipei, Taiwan.

8-3 Lin Yu Tang House, Taipei, Taiwan.

9-1 Groton Historical Society, Groton, Massachusetts.

9-2 Fuliang Chang Collection, Berea College Archives, Berea,

Kentucky.

9-3 Fuliang Chang Collection, Berea College Archives, Berea,

Kentucky.

Salt and Light 3

Studies in Chinese Christianity

G. Wright Doyle and Carol Lee Hamrin,

Series Editors

A project of the Global China Center

www.globalchinacenter.org

List of Names

Variations and Characters for Chapter Subjects

01a.hamrin.v3.List%20of%20Names.pdf

Note on Romanization

Chinese names are given with surname first. Along with other Chinese words, names and place names are romanized according to the pinyin system used by the People’s Republic of China, including its standard exceptions, such as Tsinghua and Peking universities and Kuomin-tang for the Nationalist Party. Other exceptions include the names of scholars who live in the West and have adopted Western-format names, as well as some names widely known to English readers, such as Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Yangtze River. We have maintained variations that occur in references.

Key to Pronunciation

ā as in fate

a as in fat

ē as in eve

e as in met

ī as in pine

i as in it

ō as in note

o as in not

oo as in book

ū as in use

u as in up

ü as in German pronunciation

ch as in church

hy as in hue or hew

hw as in whale

Previous volumes in English of Salt and Light will be referred to in this volume as Salt and Light v. 1 and Salt and Light v. 2. See Carol Lee Hamrin, ed., with Stacey Bieler, Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China and Salt and Light: More Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009 and 2010). Volume 1 was translated and published in Chinese through ZDL Books as Guang yu yan: tan suo jindai zhongguo gaige de shiwei lishi ming ren [Exploring Ten Famous Reformers in Modern Chinese History] (Beijing: Zhongguo Dang’an Chubanshe [China Archives Publishers], 2009).

Map of China

01c.hamrin.v3.map.jpg

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We have many to thank for their valuable support to accomplish this book series. We are grateful for the excellent research and cheerful cooperation of our chapter authors, and for the outstanding work of General Editor K. C. Hanson and the staff of Wipf and Stock for expeditious copyediting, design, distribution, and marketing. We thank Global China Center Director G. Wright Doyle, staff, and associates for encouragement and administrative support, and especially John Barwick for his creative ideas and sage advice. Tom Bieler has given generously of his time and technical skills.

March 2011

Introduction

Chinese Christian Reformers in Early Modern China

by Carol Lee Hamrin, with Stacey Bieler

Salt and Light volume three presents nine more life stories of outstanding Chinese citizens, all of them Christians, who promoted moral and social reform from 1850 to 1950. The lives of these social and political leaders, seven men and two women, join two dozen introduced earlier—in volume one (2009), pioneers in the modern professions, and in volume two (2010), builders of China’s early modern civic institutions.

The map and pronunciation guide at the front of this volume, and the time line at the back, will help readers become more familiar with these people and their place in space and time.

The Salt and Light Series

Our aim as editors of this series has been to share evidence, long lost or buried, of the positive impact of Christian values and culture in modern Chinese society, and to counter the conventional thinking in China and America that Christianity was marginal at best, and harmful at worst. While some contributions of the nineteenth–twentieth century mission era, partly through biographies of individual missionaries, are again being acknowledged in recent decades, there has been too little attention given to Chinese Christians, both church leaders and especially its members, or laity. Their stories testify that many Chinese citizens welcomed rather than opposed Christianity, both for personal transformation and for social reform.

The title of our series comes from the command of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount that his followers should do good deeds as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. China’s faith community, like salt through the ages, served as a moral preservative in a nation under stress from severe socio-economic dislocation and corrupt power politics. And like light, it gave others hope during difficult times.

The Chinese institutional church, including both the mission and indigenous branches, was a significant part of China’s early modern civil society in several ways. Individual congregations, through their preaching and teaching and mutual self-help activities, provided a set of ethics and leadership experience that brought benefit to the larger society. Denominational bureaucracies, church-related associations like the advisory National Christian Council (NCC), and independent Christian civic institutions, modeled private social services, philanthropy and volunteering.

The Salt and Light series includes many civic leaders of such faith-based institutions. While only a few were ordained church leaders, many were children of pastors. Chinese Christians helped to build and preserve cultural institutions that still have influence today: the Commercial Press; the internationally renowned Beijing Film Academy; Peking Union Medical College, now part of Tsinghua University; the revived Young Men’s and Women’s Christian Associations (YMCA and YWCA), and key universities—Nankai, Yanjing (now Peking), Jinlling (now Nanjing Normal) and Wuhan.

This book series focuses on the Christian social elite of early modern China, broadly defined and ranging across the spectrum of Protestant denominations and including prominent Roman Catholics. By far the majority of chapters are about those who made a public profession of Christian faith, were baptized, and did not repudiate their faith. Thus, we are looking at the public contributions of people who considered themselves followers of Jesus Christ. Some were outspoken believers and others, especially those in government positions, were more private in their convictions—the latter being the norm at that time given the reticence to share private matters as well as the strong anti-Christian sentiments of the era. A number were believers, but not church-goers. We clearly note the few exceptions who departed from the Christian faith at some point, but we include them to demonstrate that Christian values and culture still had a strong influence in and through such lives.

Though most members of this elite were based in Shanghai and Beijing, they had national and even international influence. Many knew each other personally or learned from each other’s work and writings, while some cooperated in various social or religious projects. These professionals worked in an expanding range of occupations—at first in religion, education, medicine, social work and diplomacy, but eventually also in the fields of media, sports and the arts, literature, the military, law and politics.

We have chosen stories that demonstrate the unprecedented and growing influence of women in Chinese public life in the twentieth century. Several chapters show the importance of male/female partnerships, whether as spouses, close relatives or professional colleagues. Conceptions of family life were not peripheral to cultural change in China, given the centrality of extended family (clan) interests in the traditional Confucian hierarchical society. Christian reformers such as those in this volume—Liu Tingfang and his wife, and Wang Liming and her husband—promoted an integral balance among individuals, family and society in modern Christian life. Individual family members possessed a fundamental equality and value as persons, and one purpose of the family was preparing its members to be useful in service to society. This was especially evident in the many lives of service in the Xu (Huie) family of New York City.

This series brings together in one place, with a common format, stories that have been scattered among biographies or autobiographies now out of print, recent journal articles in Chinese or English with photos or family interviews, and unpublished dissertations. Some of these lives were shaped by a pious family upbringing and even more of them by a religious education in China or the U.S. We have chosen to highlight those Chinese educated in America partly because there is a wealth of information in school archives in the U.S. not easily available, prior to the digital age. Many secondary resources for hundreds of other such stories are available for further reading and research.¹

Rethinking China’s Social and Cultural History

This book series is part of a larger trend among historians of China—

a shift of focus from the political, military and economic history of socialism in China to a broader consideration of twentieth century Chinese culture and society.

Even within this trend, however, the role of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is often ignored in the story of modernizing China. Salt and Light volumes are part of a Studies in Chinese Christianity series—guided by the Global China Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and published by Wipf and Stock—intended to call attention to the rich resources for filling that gap. Our efforts complement recent publications by other Chinese and Western scholars in correcting the anti-Christian bias that discredits the mission era as cultural imperialism.² In fact, the more scholarly types in Salt and Light, like their peers, wrestled with how to relate the cultures of East and West, and found them in many ways both compatible and complementary.

This trend is not a simple return, however, to earlier studies focused on missionary history or on Chinese church leaders. Salt and Light explores how the lives of lay Christians from different arenas contributed to social and cultural change. Today, with the rebirth and transformation of Chinese society and rapid growth of religion, people want to know more about the role of Chinese Christians in society, both past and present.³ The stories in our series also highlight the importance of the history of social and cultural relations between China and the West, as well as the role of the Chinese in global affairs and world Christianity. Most of these reformers studied in the United States or lived and worked with American colleagues in China. Some first arrived in America as laborers and worked their way through college and graduate school. Others learned skills for running voluntary associations through their involvement in the U.S.-based Chinese Students’ Christian Association or the Chinese Students’ Alliance. Living on the boundaries of East and West, traditional and modern China, these reformers creatively applied their Western knowledge and experience to solve problems facing their nation.

Personal and professional ties bridging the Pacific gave them access to valuable resources for China’s development. Unofficial social and cultural relations served as a buffer against political problems that arose periodically between the two countries. Several people in the series served in people’s diplomacy efforts; others were part of official missions to obtain critical wartime assistance from the United States in the 1940s.

Revising the History of the Early Republic

Historians of China are rethinking the over-emphasis on political developments marked by the 1911 and 1949 revolutionary demarcations, and exploring the underlying commonalities and continuities that characterize cultural and social change over time. Certainly, China entered the twentieth century in crisis, with the Imperial government near collapse, a discredited Confucian civilization and a society and economy destabilized by internal and external forces. But already in the last Imperial years, modernizers had begun to explore systemic reforms, working together with coastal business leaders to regain control of key resources from Western Powers and generate international respect for China. These efforts accelerated after the Republic of China was established in 1911, when men and women with a modern education and a strong sense of patriotism, many of them Christians, became a central element in shaping China’s early modern society.

One hundred years ago, Christian culture re-entered China as part of the broader impact of Progressivism. This intellectual and social movement, which began in late eighteenth century Britain and spread to post-Civil War America, was suffused with optimism that steady social progress could be made world-wide through the exercise of human creativity and new technology.⁴ Religious revivals helped stimulate social reforms and spurred a new boldness in promoting international missions.⁵

Western missionaries and returning Chinese students from overseas brought these ideas and ideals to China, making the case that Christianity could help the country become strong and prosperous.⁶ Many urban Chinese came to share this modernizing agenda for the first time, and spread the vision of creating a strong, modern nation-state through renewal of the Chinese people through education, citizenship training, and social reform.

Voluntary associations responded to the hardships of the working class in the new industrial economy as well as periodic floods and droughts that devastated areas of the countryside. A relatively weak government response allowed for the development of a stronger civil society to fill in some of the gaps in education, local governance and social services. Hundreds of associations of all kinds, including religious, professional, and charitable types, sprang up in the larger cities.

The tensions between the need for a strong national government and the need for a strong society became exacerbated by global economic depression and international conflict. Attempts to enforce the loyalty of all social institutions to a monopoly party-state began under the Nationalists and continued under the Communists, crossing the 1949 political watershed.

Christianity and Modernity

Before the mid-twentieth century, the Christian endeavor helped to shape a modern Chinese outlook and culture. The new social and cultural history thus far, however, has given only a slight nod to the influence of religion as a (small, primarily negative) part of the story of cultural exchange between East and West. This perspective in part is based on the tiny number of missionaries in China and the small percentage of Chinese Christians in the population. Yet this narrow view misses a major avenue of investigation into why and how Christians exerted a positive influence far out of proportion to their numbers.

There is in fact a deep or thick linkage between Christianity and modernity as played out in China and elsewhere. The close fit between the faith and vocational work of the civic leaders in Salt and Light reflects a broader affinity between Protestantism and modernity that has received more attention in recent decades, especially by Chinese scholars, including Harvard’s Tu Weiming. Whereas eminent historian Wang Gungwu still posits an insignificant impact of Christianity on China, and contrasts it with the profound impact of modern science, younger scholars see the two as intertwined. They have discovered the roots of modernization in Christian values, and conclude that the historical progression of modernity as an authoritative global ideology has provided an unprecedented opening for Christianity and its absorption into traditional Chinese culture.⁷

The core of Protestantism is its view of the individual believer as the channel for exercising God’s will in the world, transforming social reality to reflect transcendent truths. The priority given to human reason over tradition leads to a high regard for science, education for all, and the freedom of inquiry necessary to promote scientific pursuits. To disseminate their faith, Protestants translate the Bible into the local vernacular, which is a catalyst for expanding literacy and using print media on a large scale.

Decentralized congregational management of church affairs among Protestants is an important incubator for democratic ideals and practices. The mandate to promote the common good leads to voluntary social philanthropy. Ethical principles such as diligence, thrift, and an affirmation of secular vocations pursued by lay Christians assists in the development of modern capitalism. Concepts of natural law and the social contract provide a functional relationship between religious faith and social (and commercial) trust. Catholicism also helps to promote modernity, even if the correlation was not as strong historically as with Protestantism.

Together, they affirm the Christian belief in the equality of races and classes, and the underlying unity of all humanity as created by God. This has been a vital factor in the social elevation of women and the poor, and the human rights movement and international humanitarianism, which in turn have inspired the construction of global networks and identities. Today’s global world-view thus grew out of nineteenth-century missions and mid-twentieth-century internationalism.⁸

Reform and Revolution

Chinese intellectuals for the past century have been faced with a difficult choice between reform or revolution as the proper means to the historic end of allowing China to catch up with the long wave of global modernization. Recent decades have witnessed critical thinking about the high cost of revolution.⁹

Among church leaders, this problem has posed the additional ethical question of whether and when revolutionary violence might be justified. While most missionaries quickly distanced the church from the pseudo-Christianity of the nineteenth-century rural Taiping Rebellion against the Qing (pron. ching) Dynasty, the urban anti-Qing uprisings incited after 1900 by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a Western-educated Christian, were a different matter. The Xu Qin family (Salt and Light v. 2) provided him a home base for raising support and working out his Three People’s Principles during visits to New York City. Huang Naishang, in this

volume, for example, saw Sun as