Missionary Journeys

By Gabriel Bach

The approach taken in this research is through the lens of three factors: place, movement, and time. Place, understood as ‘zones’ of contact, trade, and rapports. Movement, as in physical and mental mobility: moving from one place to another, from one continent to another, adjusting to new cultures, languages, and mores. Time, as these missionaries moved from one time zone to another, and learned to live with major delay in their correspondence between China and Europe during WW2, delay impacting decisions in both continents.



Not enough has been written about this war period of the Basel Mission missionaries in China. These Journeys fill a gap about the China episode, the Alsatian ministries, and the Tahiti Hakka theological conflict. Divinity students, students of theology, history, anthropology, social science, and those interested in mission work in the world will gain an invigorating insight into missionary life.-Adds critical dimensions to the Basel Mission narrative of its missionaries in China.



-Focuses on biographies of a French-Alsatian gentleman and a Swiss lady sent to China by the Basel Mission, during WW2, in Guangdong Hakka spoken areas.


-International state of war and local insecurity from 1936 to 1947 impacted evangelization, missionary lives, and social networks.


-Limited conversions and baptisms were due to Chinese traditional beliefs and Chinese historical events, ineffectiveness of the Hakka Church in those days, and denominations competition.




-Missionaries returned to Alsace, France, in 1947, as novel approaches to evangelization were tested, thanks to practices gained in China.




-Call in the 1960s from the Chinese Hakka Jordan Parish in Tahiti to this Frenchman speaking Hakka, trying to reunite Jordan’s religious factions, with unexpected consequences regarding the Alsatian parish left behind

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Mar 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662918650

Book preview

Missionary Journeys: To China, Alsace and Tahiti

Published by Gatekeeper Press

2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

Columbus, OH 43123-2989

www.GatekeeperPress.com

Copyright © 2022 by Gabriel GF Bach

All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

The cover design, interior formatting, typesetting, and editorial work for this book are entirely the product of the author. Gatekeeper Press did not participate in and is not responsible for any aspect of these elements.

ISBN (paperback): t/k

eISBN: t/k

I have been shipwrecked and once adrift in the open sea for a night and a day. Constantly travelling, I have been in danger from rivers and in danger from brigands, in danger from my own people and from pagans; in danger in the towns, in danger in the open country, danger at sea and danger from so-called brothers.

2 Corinthians 11, 25-27.

"Declare His glory among the nations,

His marvelous deeds among all peoples."

Psalm 96:3

Table of Contents

Annexes 1 through 4 provide a trove of relevant information, helping to immerse the reader in the Zeitgeist of my parents’ generation.

Introduction

Once Upon a Time…

Back when… growing up in an Alsatian Reformed Protestant parish presbytery on the Rhine River, facing the Basel harbor, and raised in the shadow of the now historic and iconic Basel Missionshaus, I was surrounded by Chinese art, culture, and names of missionaries my parents met in China and at the historic ‘Basel Mission House’:

• In our living room, I did not cease to admire and make up stories about the artfully decorated Chinese chests, dragons carved on all sides, Chinese scenes of people dressed in classic Chinese dresses, and Chinese characters on the inside.

• Wall mounted satin stitched reproduction of Chinese sages.

• A dramatic eye-catching old wooden statue of a goddess on a low coffee table, I later learned to be the goddess of Misericord Wang Yin, with a fascinating history on how she ended up in our living room.

• Names like Hartman, Maier, Authenrieth, Lutz, Koechlin, Conzelmann, and Guggenbuehl were mentioned briefly here and there during dinner conversations about China. I even have a vivid memory of Martha spending days with us in Huningue, Alsace (France).

Back when, I listened to my father, who was a missionary in China Hakka-Meishien, Kwangtung province, playing the piano and singing chorales in Hakka.

Back when, in his studio, dad showed me glass-plate negatives of Chinese landscape, our family, Chinese homes and people, all very unfamiliar and cryptic to me at the time.

Back when, I accompanied dad a few times to his predications and to a spellbound audience about his China experiences, with chorales in Hakka and diapositive pictures provided by the Basel Mission (BM), as I later learned. Dad narrated about his walks by foot or bicycle from one Hakka village to another, about Japanese warplanes above, thieves and bandits lurking in the woods, Kuo Ming Tang (KMT) and communist soldiers and stragglers sometimes not far away, gamblers, coolies, opium addicts in teahouses, and little pagan temples along the roads and trails.

Back when, while dad was away to complete his state theology studies in Strasbourg, or on mission evangelization in northern Alsace, mother made sure parish services were met. At the same time, she took care of us four children’s schooling, managing the parish women sewing club, visiting elderly ladies and the sick where necessary, all tools of the trade learned in China where she used to actively oversee the day-to-day operation of the mission stations.

Back when, mother prepared, on special occasions, many delicate Chinese dishes, each dish with a special distinct flavor and taste. The family was always looking towards these delicious Chinese family meals she learned to cook in China.

Back when, father decided to do mission work in Tahiti, while mother took care of the parish activities, later on managed a health care facility, and during her retirement in Switzerland, became active in ‘Thirld World’ projects.

Toward a Framework of Research

Any common points between these narratives? My parents were movers, moving within Europe, during WW1 and after, moving to China and evangelizing there for eleven years, before returning after WW2 to Europe, and then and there, still relocating and evangelizing to their last breath in Alsace, Bern-Mittelland and Tahiti.

These short events capture the following concepts: vertical or horizontal movement, contact, trade or relationship, place or space, and time or period. Academic research has included all these concepts under a broad analytical framework with a focus on movement or mobility. Mobility may be understood as the physical movement of people as well as the movement and interchange of ideas and cultures with social repercussions. To name a few researchers in the field of mobility, I cite Carla Ursula Schorpp, Judith Becker and colleagues, Mikael Hård and Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz, Anthony J. Miller, Andrew S. Harvey, Tim Cresswell, and Mary Louise Pratt.

This research has been stimulated by Miller, Hård/Tjoa-Bonatz and Becker: Miller, Anthony J., Pioneers in Exile: The China Inland Mission and Pioneers in Exile. 2015 Dissertation, University of Kentucky. Mikael Hård and Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz, Trading Zones in a Colony: Transcultural Techniques at Missionary Stations in the Dutch East Indies, 1860-1940, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz: Beihefte, 107: Abt. Abendländische Religionsgeschichte, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, pub. 05/24/2020. Becker, Judith, European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation through Interaction in a (Post-) Colonial World. Veroffentlichungen Des Instituts Fur Europaische Geschichte, April 22, 2015. I include of course the one by Christine Christ-von Wedel and Thomas K. Kuhn (eds.) on Basel Mission (2015), and also the works by Lutz and Lutz, Nicole Constable, Thoralf Klein, and a few others, such as Tobias Brander, Basel Mission and Revolutions in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century China: Debating Societal Renewal, Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong-Kong, online publication: 03/15/2018.

This research led to a thematic analysis of my parents’ China and Tahiti correspondence and of their biographies relating to their Alsatian/Swiss journeys. Bibliographical data were also shared in the course of this research.

Plan of Study

This study will explore my missionary parents’ ‘lifelong movements.’ It is based on a selection of available data: first, their condensed biographies, second, their narratives about their ocean voyage from Europe to Hong Kong, third, their Chinese correspondence to Charlotte and Heinrich Gelzer, to the Basel Mission and to a few friends, and fourth, their biographies relating their continued evangelization in Alsace and Switzerland, and my father’s circular letters from Tahiti, summarized by the Basel Mission in a small booklet:

For additional information: Emile Bach. Elf Kurze Monate auf Tahiti. Berichte von Missionar Emile Bach, Evangelische Missionsgesellschaft in Basel, 1963. The BM misdated the Berichte publication. The publication date should have been at least 1965 or 1966, as Emile Bach passed away in November 1964.

Chapter One covers my grandparents’ and parents’ brief biographies, their itinerant life journeys, itinerant also appropriately mentioned by GiJed (Chinese name), my sister, regarding our mother, Monique Bach.

The selected data were translated from French or German into English by me. Regarding the time period, the scope of this research covers my parents’ lifetimes, from 1910 to their death. Included in this time span are my grandparents’ concise biographies. Why so? As social-learning studies have presented, parents’ socioeconomic background shapes children’s outlook on life. Parenting styles influence children’s thoughts, feelings, or actions and issues related to their future. And these are reflected in the way children later relate and recount their life experiences. My grandparents left their marks on my parents’ worlds.

Chapter Two targets my parents’ narratives about their life-changing ocean-journey events in the 1930s from Genoa to Hong Kong: each new port of call visit exposed my parents to different people, old and young, different places, languages, religions, social classes, ethnic groups, and nationalities. During the three weeks aboard an ocean liner, time had to be adjusted daily while crossing the many time zones to reach Hong Kong. This ‘slow world’ exposure facilitated their introduction to their future life in the Hakka region of northeastern Kwangtung, China. On the return sea-journey, years after WW2, my parents missed those ports of call visits as they had to take care of three children born in China, the oldest speaking only Hakka.

Chapters Three to Seven focus on my parents’ weekly narratives life encounters in the mission stations of the Basel Mission in the Hakka region. Letters were mailed as regularly as possible to their parents, the Gelzer, before, during, and after WW2, a span of seven to eleven years; these letters were returned to my parents on their return to Alsace, France. It took sometimes two to six months for a letter to arrive at destination, especially when it was sent from China over Siberia and the USSR to Switzerland, as the sea-route was closed to the regular mail traffic during war time. Sometimes a letter never arrived at destination, or one arrived faster than the one just sent as my mother and grandmother set up a numbering system to keep track of the mail. Of course, letters over Siberia were opened and censured, or may have just been simply destroyed. Of significance are the mailing dates:

for example, in a letter sent from China on 03/08/1944, the narrator mentions receiving two letters from Basel dated 08/20/1943 and 06/20/1943, to recall, the war was raging in China and close by in Kwangtung, as well as in Europe, a miracle that they were even received. It also indicates, that by the time they reached destination, news originally was no longer news at destination: how does one cope with family deaths, births, and marriages at distance and with time delay, or one letter sent on 11/08/1944 and delivered in Basel on 09/1945?

Chapters Eight through Twelve report on evangelization in Alsace-France, Switzerland, and Tahiti in French Polynesia, data based on my parents’ biographies mentioned above and my father’s circular letters from Tahiti to the Basel Mission in Basel, Switzerland, until his passing in Papeete in November 1964.

Queries About Narratives

Narratives basically relate interactions between the missionaries and people they live and work with in different Chinese settings and environments. The interpretation of Emile’s and Monique’s narratives were at times challenging. These challenges were listed below and some of them were mentioned by a few authors in this study.

-Target audience: First, on a private level, letters were sent to the families Gelzer in Basel, Switzerland and Bach in Strasbourg, France, occasionally to friends in Basel. Because of personal/family matters in each of these letters, they cannot be made available to larger audiences. Second, on a professional/public one, the audience was the Basel Mission Committee, and the Inspector of the China program, Heinrich Gelzer, who happened to be Monique’s father, Emile’s father-in-law to whom quarterly and yearly reports were sent. The content, choice of words, ‘tone,’ detailed descriptions and images they conveyed were fine-tuned to the target audience. Third, the target audience was the audience at large, through the Heidenbote and the many churches and organizations, as well as families and individuals providing financial support to the Basel Mission evangelization abroad.

In the early twentieth century, the Basel Mission Committee managed the Mission seminary and worldwide mission fields. The Committee was run in a patriarchal way, its members being more or less coopted. The governance by the Committee can be described as being more autocratic than democratic, where decisions always flowed from the top to the bottom, with barely any recourse from the bottom up. The aftermath of WW2 changed most of its institutions and structures. Ref. Basel Mission.

-Narrative purpose of these mostly narrative letters: to inform, entertain, persuade, and share feelings when one may feel stressed or isolated at the death of a newborn, happy or joyful at the birth of a child.

-Gain and burden in Journaling: It helps to answer What’s the best thing that happened to me today? It puts hope, aspirations, and wishes to the narrative, comforts one’s mind, helps to get a better understanding of daily life events. But letters can also become an instrument of blame, guilt, and insecurity in the face of hardship.

-Narrative context: These letters were written in China some 80 years ago, in the late 30s and 40s, during and after WW2. While in China, my parents learned about atrocities in Europe and Germany. My father, as a ‘French-Alsatian,’ had to work and deal with other Basel Mission missionaries, most of them being German, some pleased with Nazi Germany conquests in Europe, and also work with the Hakka Church administration cooperating with the Basel Mission. Constant threat of Japanese airplane bombs, KMT soldiers, local communist stragglers, and local thieves, did not facilitate evangelization. Their lives and that of their children were often at risk.

-Narrative structure: Usually, letters begin with personal notes and questions to the family in Switzerland or Alsace, then on to daily or weekly events in China. They end with news about colleagues and families in Kwangtung, their health, births, and other concerns, providing a snapshot ‘worldview’ of the writer’s interests. Concluding notes appeal to the diaspora, desiring their prayer and financial support to the missionary tasks in China.

-Narrative content of the China letters: Emile’s letters are more centered on itinerant evangelization matters: different landscapes, people he met on the way, bible woman assistance, native preacher’s performance, Hakka’s leadership, and Basel Mission’s responsibilities. Sometimes it seems, as Emile experiences an event, he is already beginning to think about how to frame it and how to tell this to a specific audience. Monique’s narratives begin with questions to her family or personal worries, then she includes many different topics, sometimes jumping from one news to another or a concern, an incredible mine of daily information:

In her April 19, 1943 letter to her mother, received end of August 1943 in Basel, Monique is thankful for her mother ‘support, describes in length her daughter GiJed’s activities in the day, then shares her new habit of carrying her daughter on her back like the Chinese women do, moves on to explain why they will not go to Moilim at Easter for her baptism, explains why they currently lodge a caregiver from Moiyen, and yes the goat delivered a kid, Monique milks her twice daily, its milk being worth more than gold: The Chinese are surprised that I leave my daughter for hours on the veranda whereas they carry their babies all day long on their back.… raising a child is so different here. I make clothes for GiJed. Sister Rosli.Burren goes for a week to Leupin to assist the station there. From other brothers and sisters, our mission colleagues are doing fine. Emile is always in good health and has settled very well in the Chinese way of life. To close, the bible woman/catechist has been replaced by the daughter of the Hakka Church’s president, who trained at the Bethel school for bible-women in Canton.

-Mobility narrative exists in practically all the China letters. Monique justifies the need of a bike to facilitate her husband’s multiple tasks:

Emile bought the bike from Mr. Maier. It is like new and very sturdily built, so that he can carry me around in the countryside. It cost 1800.- Chinese dollars. Emile needs it only for his service or when he has to attend a meeting in Pyangtong or Ngfa. So, we can go by steamboat to Schuizhai and from there bicycling home to Onliu. This is a great relief. We naturally have to bicycle nights, as days are too hot (05/07/1942 MB).

-Narratives modifying/reinforcing perceptions of China, its people and European missionary work. Missionaries like the Bach knew the Chinese fairly well in their ascribed region. They were daily in close contact with the Hakka population, spoke their language. They were involved, through preaching the Gospel, education, medical services, and charity mission, in the socio-cultural and economic transition of its people to a present-day China. By devoting themselves to introduce Christianity and indirectly Western civilization to China, they, at the same time, made China known to the West and the world. Remaining longer than reporters or diplomats, they provided information about Chinese in their homeland and to the world through letters to family, reports to home missions and evangelization lectures. They, in turn, were naturally also influenced by Chinese culture, mores, customs, and ways of life, and ended up adopting some of them.

-Unsolved narratives: Sometimes, an issue is brought up, such as family disputes, the unwanted birth of a baby girl, illness linked to baptism, superstitions, or issues with the mission direction in China and in Basel. One would like to learn the outcome, yet the narrative moves on to a new topic and one is left without an answer.

-Mobility issues: letters rarely arrived in a timely fashion, due to the route taken, maritime by sea or land over Siberia and war zones. Let us not forget that some of the letters were opened and censured. Mobility here takes on two moves: displacement in geographical and international space as well as turning back or moving forward the clock: impressive, especially in times of war!

This postcard was sent on 09/01/1943 and received on 03/23/1945. At least it was not lost! A miracle this card survived the end of the war and arrived at destination.

-Narrative limitations: a gap exists between the content of what is said and the terms of the interaction: a dialogue of spatial, discursive, physical looks is missing, and so may change the content or the intention of the narrative. Absent are voices, absent are gestures, absent are eye contacts, which at times would have been helpful for a better understanding of the message. One may have to try to read sometimes between the lines or guess what is not said or omitted.

-Translation moves: Language is at the base of culture. Three languages are involved in this journey: German, French, and of course Chinese. I will only very briefly dwell on the Chinese, yet I am not an expert. In order for Christianism to be ‘accepted’ and ‘received’ by the Chinese, it has to become an integral part of the cultural heritage, patrimony. The relative failure of Christian missions -and Emile will mention this as well- has been attributed, among other reasons, to a substantive incompatibility: the three fundamental ‘religions’ or ‘teachings’, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, are considered to be an integral part, in their didactic and philosophical elements, of the Chinese tradition. This approach makes Christianism not an absolute but a relative truth, yet still a notable way, to approach social and peaceful harmony.

Translation of concepts, like God, Heaven, Holy Spirit, were far from perfect and may have included discordant elements to their meanings. I do not even mention the fact that Catholics and Protestants translated these concepts differently, an additional potential confusion for the Chinese willing to convert.

-Telling a story: a shot at archival ethnography:

-the ‘China and Tahiti chapters’: I let the narrators tell their stories, quotes are in full use.

-the ‘Alsace narrative’ is a first-hand family experience highlighted in the bios.

A narrative sometimes serves different purposes, and so, seems to be used repetitively. Repetition helps to emphasize a point within different contexts. Without sacrificing the ‘plot’ of the narratives, I sometimes condensed or summarized a passage to leave out unnecessary details or irrelevant information relative to the theme being discussed at that point in time.

-Pictures: I thank the BM archivist for the use of a few available photos in the public domain. The BM photos and maps include a (bm) to their captions. The majority copyrighted are from Emile, my father, and from Jean and GiJed, my sister, on visit to the Kwangtung ‘Hakka country’ in 2000.

-Narrative identities: these 'Journeys' were stories about who my parents were, where they grew up and moved to, and how their lives forged ahead and matured in time and space: stories progressed from Europe to China before WW2, to Alsace after WW2, and concluded in Switzerland for Monique and in Tahiti for Emile. My parents’ identities were based on written narratives but also on oral history, on photographic story lines, and events Emile brought up in social media. From assessing my parents’ China’s narrative identities in my Mission Assessment, to recognizing my parents’ lifelong narrative identities in Monique and Emile, who were you?, these were my fascinating endeavors.

For additional information on narrative identity: McAdams, Dan, Narrative Identity, Current Directions in Psychological Science, (2013, 22 (3): 233–238). Michel, Johann: Narrativité, Narration, Narratologie: du Concept Ricœurien d’Identité Narrative aux Sciences Sociales, Revue Européenne des Sciences Sociales, XLI-125, 2003, pp. 125-142. McAdams, Dan P. , Personal Narratives and the Life Story, in John, O. P., Robins, R. W., & Pervin, L. A. (Eds.): Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (3rd ed.), 2008, The Guilford Press; pp. 242-262.

-Conventions: names of people remain the way they were written in the narratives. The dialect spoken in the Hakka populated areas is the Meishien dialect. Names of agglomerations are left as they are in the letters: example: Meishien remains Meishien, Wufa remains Wufa,