Westward and Further Westward

If we base our conclusions on clear historical records, Christian missions to China began with the Nestorian mission in the ninth year of the Zhenguan Era (624–649) under the reign of Emperor Taizong (548–649) of the Tang Dynasty. In 635 AD, Nestorian missionary Alopen arrived in Chang’an (today’s Xi’an), the capital of the Tang dynasty and later established a church there. About fourteen hundred years have passed since then.

Some legends and artifacts suggest Christianity may have come to China during the Three Kingdoms era (220-280). For example, steel crosses have been found in Jiangxi Province and Quanzhou, Fujian Province. Some excavated bricks, paintings, and bronze mirrors from the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220) seem to tell Bible stories and gospel messages. In church history, there is also a legend about the apostle Thomas coming to China. In other words, Christians may have stepped foot in China as early as the first century AD.

But these legends and speculations are not certain. My main point is that the church was not established before the Zhenguan Era. If we begin calculating from the time of the Nestorian mission, Christianity came to China in four waves.

One of our teachers at Western China Covenant College teaches the History of Christianity in China. After going home one day, he asked his wife, “When the Nestorians brought Christianity to China, why did it fail to take root?” His wife answered, “That’s easy: because they attached themselves to influential officials.” He was impressed with her wisdom and asked again, “Then why did Christianity fail to take root during the second wave of Christian missions to China during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)?” His wife answered, “That’s easy: because the missionaries themselves became influential officials.”

These two answers summarize the first three waves of Christian missions to China. In my own words, the aim of the first three missions was “northward and further northward.” The aim of Protestant missions, on the other hand, was “westward and further westward.”

Why did the first three missions focus on going northward? Because the capitals of those dynasties were in the north. The first three missions aimed for the capital, for the emperor, for the scholar-officials. Their strategy was to “capture the ringleader in order to capture the bandits.” Indiscriminate evangelization was not as effective as first converting the emperor. If they could convert the emperor, then they could convert the whole nation. This strategy was derived from the history of Christianity in Europe. Both the conversion of the Roman Empire and the conversion of the Barbarians after the fall of Rome were generally brought about through the conversion of rulers. A ruler would believe in Christ and the whole nation would follow. Missionaries in China, therefore, wanted to imitate the European experience and move northward, northward, and further northward—to the capital, to the center of power, to the most powerful person in China. But for more than one thousand years, God did not allow any of their three attempts to succeed. He did not grant China an experience like that of Europe.

Each of these three missions was actually very close to succeeding. Each time, missionaries successfully gained access to the emperor. It would be very difficult today for a missionary to gain access to President Xi. After the great Sichuan earthquake in 2008, Christian believers and organizations from all over the nation came to help. One Pentecostal sister was especially determined. She prayed daily for the conversion of Premier Wen Jiaobao (b. 1942). One day, she finally came within ten meters of him while he was in Beichuan County. She stretched out her hands to pray for him and to cast out evil spirits from him. But shortly after she began, people surrounding him grabbed her and took her away. After returning to Chengdu, she still would not give up. She rented a room across the street from the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party and prayed around the clock with her hands stretched out toward them.

But the first time Christianity came to China through the Nestorians, emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty welcomed it. He sent Fang Xuanling (579–648), the Wen Jiabao of that day, to greet Alopen outside the city gates of Chang’an. He later appointed Alopen “Archmage of the Kingdom.”

During the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), the mother of Emperor Kublai Khan (1215–1294) even converted, along with many other people in the royal palace. The emperor himself, however, did not believe. Many say he may have believed because when Marco Polo’s uncle met him, the emperor asked him to take a message to the pope asking the pope to send more people to China, including missionaries and experts. He also asked for lamp oil from the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem. Kublai Khan should at least be considered a seeker. But when Marco Polo returned to China, his interests apparently lay elsewhere. He hardly discussed matters of faith with the emperor.

Finally, when the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) was on the verge of collapse, the crown prince, the queen, and the empress dowager of the Southern Ming all converted. Many senior officials, eunuchs, and maidservants in the palace became Christians. The Jesuit missionaries sent a letter back to Europe in hopes that Christian kingdoms would send armies to help them. By attacking the Qing dynasty from both sides, they could defeat the Qing and help to establish a Christian kingdom in China. But the efforts of these missionaries fell short. Kingdoms in European did not want to send armies because China was too far away and there was little profit in it for them. When the pope’s reply finally arrived in China, the Southern Ming regime had already collapsed.

The story was much the same during the era of the Republic of China (1912-1949). Both Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) and Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) were Christians. But God’s will has always manifested itself in the same way, at least for the past fourteen hundred years: any emperors who have believed in Jesus or who might have believed in Jesus have lost control of the country and been forced to rule only a small portion. God has not allowed his gospel to spread throughout China by means of influencing powerful officials. This was true for emperors Kangxi (1654–1722) and Shunzhi (1638–1661) of the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), as well. They had extensive contact with missionaries and the Christian faith but ended up rejecting the gospel.

By the time Robert Morrison (1782–1834) arrived, all of China had completely rejected the gospel. Emperors viewed God as their enemy and entirely forbade Christianity. They killed any believers in God. Then, in 1807, the gospel began taking an entirely different way, which may be described as “westward and further westward.” What was in the west? Peasants, valleys, and minority groups. In the west were the grassroots, the inland. The westward way was the way of the cross.

Imperial Autocracy

With the year 1807 as our reference point, let us look a little further back in time. Catholicism had already arrived in China long before the 1760s and 1770s through some well-known missionaries, including Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1591–1666), and Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688). About twenty years after Martin Luther sparked the Reformation in 1517, the Counter-Reformation arose within the Catholic church. It did not merely seek to oppose Protestantism but to revive the Catholic church from within. The church acknowledged many of its own problems, including severe corruption, and tried to rekindle a passion for the faith. But the Catholic church at the time did not return to the Bible or to the gospel of salvation by faith alone. Therefore, it was never a true religious reformation but only an ethical and spiritual revival that opposed the Protestant Reformation.

Nevertheless, the Catholic church did see significant renewal. It created a very important organization called the Society of Jesus, which was the pioneer of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Its members experienced spiritual revival, renewing their passion for Christ. At the time, Protestant countries such as Geneva and Germany were all located in north-central Europe. The naval powers surrounding them, from Italy to Portugal and Spain, were all Catholic countries. Motivated by the Age of Discovery and the Reformation, these Catholic countries and the Jesuits consequently became key players in the first wave of world evangelism.

Why did the Protestants fall behind the Catholic church in evangelism? It was simply because the Protestants were still under attack and were not yet standing firm. It would be another one hundred years before England would rise up. With the command of the sea in the hands of the Catholic countries, the Jesuits became the key player in Chinese missions. They arrived two hundred years before Robert Morrison and gained a foothold in China during the Ming dynasty.

But there was a very significant problem, which prevented China from going the way of Europe, where national conversion came about through the conversion of the king. Only after Christianity came to China were we able to rediscover the most basic foundation of Chinese culture and institutions, which is imperial autocracy. It is incorrect to say that imperial autocracy does not allow for religion. There is debate among scholars about whether Confucianism is a religion. Buddhism and Taoism are closer to folk religions. But what is the most important system of belief and worship in China? It is the emperor himself. The emperor is like a pharaoh. He is a religious leader. In an imperial autocracy, Politics itself is a religion and the emperor is the high priest. At the core of Chinese culture is the worship of imperial autocracy. Moreover, in this culture, Confucianism is mainstream. It is the secretary, assistant, and altar boy to imperial autocracy.

This system of worship in China, therefore, traditionally prescribed two things: 1) you must kneel to the emperor, and 2) you must worship Confucius (551–479 BC). It was imperative that scholars payed tribute to Confucius. They did so before every exam. If they refused, they could not take part in the imperial examinations, much less obtain a position in the government. After becoming a government official, a man had to kneel to the emperor and serve him. He surrendered his whole life to the emperor. Therefore, worshipping Confucius and kneeling to the emperor were two sides of the same coin in this imperial autocracy.

When Matteo Ricci came to China, he first sought other religious leaders like himself—people who were competing against the church. He first found Buddhist monks. So he dressed himself in their attire and became a “western monk.” Because, as the saying goes, “Visiting monks give better sermons.” In this way, he thought he could read the Bible to the Chinese. But he soon discovered that monks did not have a high status in culture and society. Confucian scholars, however, did. Consequently, he gave up dressing like a monk and instead dressed like a Confucian scholar and became a “Confucian scholar from the West.” He portrayed himself as an intellectual and a scholar who was as knowledgeable as other scholars were.

Jesuit missionaries, therefore, obtained their cultural identity in China by diluting their spiritual identity. They did not bring the faith of the one true God into stark contrast with this culture of imperial autocracy, which required kneeling to the emperor and worshipping Confucius. They avoided walking the path of the cross and shedding their blood. As Confucian scholars from the West, they continually avoided creating sharp conflict between the gospel and Chinese traditions.

To the Chinese, the Jesuits were first and foremost scholars. Only secondarily were they scholars who believed in God. The Chinese would say, “Our scholars pay tribute to Heaven, and their scholars believe in God. This is the difference. We understand and respect this difference, but it is not important. It is insignificant.” To emperors Kangxi and Shunzhi, what mattered was the knowledge the missionaries brought to China, such as the knowledge of architecture and landscaping, painting and watchmaking, navigation and calendar making, cartography and so on. The Catholic missionaries did not bring the knowledge of the difference between the one true God and idols, between the gospel and religion. They essentially failed to preach to the Chinese the gospel of “Christ alone and him crucified.” Naturally, therefore, no major conflicts arose. They appeared to be quite successful. They gained access to the emperor, entered the royal court, and became high-ranking officials. The worst they experienced was the anxiety and fear that comes along with accompanying the emperor, far from being placed in a colosseum set between Christ and Caesar.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, things in Europe began to change. The Jesuits originally had a monopoly on overseas missions. They were the only ones doing ministry in China. But during the reign of Emperor Chongzhen (1611–1644), as the Ming dynasty was coming to an end, this monopoly was broken. Other mission organizations, such as the Dominican Order, gained access to China and other places and began doing mission work there.

The Dominicans had heard that the Jesuits had done well in China and had influenced the emperor. Yet when the Jesuits arrived, they found that the Jesuits had erred and compromised the faith. The gospel they were proclaiming accommodated religions that worshipped the emperor, Confucius, and ancestors. They coexisted without any conflict.

Of course, some say that this critique was driven by competition between the Dominicans and the Jesuits and that the Dominicans were trying to undermine their work. But the Dominican missionaries were right in pointing out that the Jesuits had compromised the faith in China. The Jesuits claimed that after conversion, believers could still kneel to the emperor, worship Confucius, and sacrifice to their ancestors. What kind of Christianity was that? They had never clearly and articulately proclaimed the first and second commandments to the Chinese. Therefore, the Dominicans brought charges against the Jesuits to the Vatican.

One example of Jesuit teachings can be found in the writings of the famous French philosopher and thinker Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), whose theological leanings favored Calvinism. In his Provincial Letters, he says that the Jesuits taught their followers in Asia and in China that they should conceal their worship of Jesus Christ within their worship of Confucius. Chinese Christians were taught to hide a cross under their clothing while offering sacrifices to Confucius and their ancestors. This would allow them to redirect their worship to Jesus Christ in their hearts. This was called “allowing Confucius to pass through your intestines while Christ remains in your heart.”

During the reign of Emperor Chongzhen, the Vatican recognized the wrongdoings of the Jesuits. Later, during the latter part of Kangxi’s reign, the Pope issued a decree forbidding the translation of the word “God” into “Heaven” in order to avoid conflating the Christian worship of the one true God with the Chinese concept of “revering Heaven.” In 1706, they sent an envoy to China with a message for emperor Kangxi: “To believe in Jesus means confession of him as the one true God. You are the emperor and we respect you. But belief in God will not allow believers to kneel to you. Nor can they worship their ancestors, as their ancestors are not God; they can respect their ancestors but they cannot worship them. Nor can they worship Confucius, because he is not God either; we respect him but cannot worship him.” Emperor Kangxi was furious about the message. You might have heard that emperor Kangxi wrote a “Song of the Cross”. Did he believe in the Lord? Certainly not! He was fooled by the Jesuits, or maybe the Jesuits were fooled by him. Therefore, when this message from the Vatican came, emperor Kangxi replied, “Go away!” He then ordered a ban on Christianity and all Catholic missionaries were driven away.

But China was a huge country, much bigger than Japan. A couple of years ago, you may have seen the movie Silence. Japan was so small that Christians there had nowhere to hide. Persecution was harsh and many were killed. The same thing happened when China banned Christianity. You would be asked to throw a cross or a portrait of Jesus on the ground and then spit and stomp on it. If you did this, nothing would happen to you. But if you held on to your faith, you would be given the death penalty. They just wouldn’t be as ruthless as Japan in the way they carried out the death penalty since China was such a large country. Each region had its own way of doing things. Since China lacked a feudal system, there was greater disparity in the way provincial governments executed the polices of the central government.

During the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty, the central government moved millions of people into Sichuan from surrounding provinces over a period of about one hundred years. During this time, many persecuted Catholics fled to Sichuan. Persecution drove them further and further westward because western regions were more out of the emperor’s reach. As a result, Sichuan soon became a center of Catholicism. The number of Catholics in Sichuan ranked third or fourth in the whole country, and most of them went there to avoid persecution.

Between 1706 and 1720, Emperor Kangxi and the pope engaged in a few rounds of tug-of-war. The emperor finally issued a decree banning Christianity, but the law was not strictly enforced. In 1723, after Emperor Yongzheng (1678–1735) came to power, the ban was strictly enforced. Similar to what happened in the Cultural Revolution, Catholic churches were converted into temples to Guan Yu. This lasted for more than one hundred years—until 1860. In history, it is called the “Hundred-year Ban on Christianity.” During these one hundred years, China entirely banned Christianity and isolated itself.

Robert Morrison Establishes the House Church

Notice, therefore, that when Robert Morrison finally arrived in China in 1807, he was breaking the law. He was considered to be a foreign hostile force meddling in China’s internal affairs. Morrison risked his life by coming to China. Since he came in order to plant house churches, entering China was illegal, landing here was illegal, evangelizing was illegal, even studying Chinese was illegal because Chinese was an intangible cultural heritage of our country that could not be shared with foreigners. Therefore, he had to pay ten times the normal fee for a Chinese tutor in order to find someone willing to risk his life to teach him. This man was not a Christian. He did it purely for the money. There are some people who people who are willing to risk more for money than Christians are willing to risk for the Lord. Of course, Morrison himself was a daredevil, which was why he needed to find another man like himself. Every time this man came to teach Morrison Chinese, he would come with a suitcase packed with toiletries and a change of clothes in case he needed to flee. He even carried poison. He was willing to commit suicide in the event that he was captured and could not withstand the torture—all for the sake of money.

So, for about the first fifty years of Protestant missions in China—from 1807 to 1842, when the Treaty of Nanking was signed, and then from 1842 to 1860, when the Treaty of Peking was signed—for about a half a century, Christianity was banned and evangelism was illegal. The Treaty of Nanking opened five ports for foreign trade. Foreigners could live in these five coastal cities and do business, build churches, and spread the gospel. But missionaries were not satisfied with these terms. So they took boats upstream along the Pearl River to try to get further inland. Some biographies say that as they traveled along the Pearl River, they would be discovered by gunboats, which would chase them and shoot at them. This lasted until the end of the Second Opium War with the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858 and the Treaty of Peking in 1860. In 1860, the inland was completely opened up and the ban on Christianity officially ended.

There is one issue that has drawn much criticism. Missionaries at the time served as interpreters for the treaty negotiations. Why? They were the only foreigners who knew Chinese. Learning Chinese at that time meant risking one’s life. In order for the two countries to negotiate and sign treaties, the only people who could interpret were missionaries. William Alexander Parsons Martin (1827–1916) and Samuel Wells Williams (1812–1884) were the interpreters for the 1858 negotiations surrounding the Treaty of Tianjin. They proposed the “religious toleration clause” that demanded stopping the persecution of Chinese Christians. In the 1860 negotiations for the Treaty of Peking, one French missionary was so passionate for the Lord that he added one sentence in the Chinese version that was not in the French version. It stated that foreigners could travel inland and “establish churches and erect buildings at one’s convenience.” This diplomatic accident was not discovered until many years later. Since China lost the war, it had to concede to this addition. Consequently, from 1860 on, missionaries were able to establish churches inland. In 1865, Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) founded the China Inland Mission in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. It was then that the gospel began moving further and further westward and further and further downward.

Before 1860, Christianity was illegal in China and was opposed at the state level by the Qing dynasty. But in 1860, the ban on Christianity was lifted and state opposition ceased. Local officials were afraid of causing trouble seeing that the missionaries were under the protection of the “unequal treaties.” In the Chinese worldview, the “Celestial Empire” had always been at the center of the universe and all other nations were considered “barbarians.” It had never recognized equality between nations or known anything about international treaties. When it lost the war, it was forced to sign peace treaties as a nation equal with others. Therefore, in reality, the Treaty of Nanking was the first “equal treaty” China had ever signed. The terms of the treaty were not equal since China lost the war, but the nation that won the war willingly attributed equal status to the defeated nation in this international treaty. This was a first in the history of the Celestial Kingdom. It was also the beginning of the collapse of this idea of the “Celestial Kingdom.” Since the beginning of Chinese history, Chinese people could be arrested or killed at will. But now, according to this treaty, foreigners could no longer be arrested or killed at will. These different human rights standards were “unequal.” The Treaty of Nanking even demanded release not only of English people who had previously been arrested but also of Chinese who had previously been arrested. Granting protection to foreigners was acceptable to the Chinese, but granting protection to Chinese people was viewed as intervening in the internal affairs of the state. It was considered unfair and a kind of bullying. Later, the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) made what would become a well-known saying: “Better to give treasure to foreigners than to servants.” This was actually first said by Ronglu (1836–1903), one of her favorite officials, but the revolutionary Chen Tianhua (1875–1905) attributed it to Cixi.

Therefore, we can call the major conflicts with Christianity in China between 1860 and 1900 local conflicts against Christianity. The national conflict faded while local and cultural conflicts broke out. This period can also be called the “era of church incidents”, as it was characterized by endless church incidents. Government officials and the imperial court were no longer the aggressors in the conflict. They actually appeared to protect the missionaries. The gentry class became the major opponents of Christianity. Unlike the situation in the Ming dynasty when many high-ranking officials rose up against Christianity, after 1860, Qing officials allied themselves with the imperial court. Even though they may have secretly supported opponents of Christianity, they did not openly oppose Christians.

Traditionally in China, the gentry class ruled autonomously over rural areas. Because the organizational strength of the national government was insufficient, order was maintained at the local level through the patriarchal system and Confucian societal principles. This system was summarized by the saying “imperial power does not extend to the counties.” The center of every village was its ancestral temple. Each village and each family had its own temple. They were the centers of culture, community, jurisdiction, and religion. The leaders of a village were the patriarch of the biggest extended family and the gentry class. The gentry class were educated men, some of whom had even passed the imperial examinations and served as government officials. They were from well-off families that owned farmland. Their families were often called “families of farming and studying.” Some were businessmen and others were officials. Together they made up the gentry class and were basically the leaders of local society.

But after 1860, the church entered these rural areas, causing conflict within the social structure of these Chinese villages. For example, suppose there was originally an ancestral temple in a certain village. Now there was a church right next to it, which indicated the establishment of a new cultural and religious authority. The church had its own leaders, which were the missionaries. As a result of moving further and further westward and further and further downward, they became a kind of “foreign gentry class.” Consequently, in areas where the gospel significantly spread, there arose two different sets of social structures with different ethical and religious authorities and leaders.

To help us understand the conflict at the time, we can make a quick comparison with another change after 1949. When the Communist Party took power, it wiped out the gentry class in the rural areas and replaced them with hooligans and corrupt officials. In other words, within one hundred years, the leaders of the rural society in China changed three times. The first leaders were the gentry class, who were then replaced by pastors and ministers, who were then replaced by the Party branch secretary. Of course, in certain areas, the Party branch secretaries were former gentry class members who leaned towards the Party. When this was the case, locals would rejoice. This also helps us to understand why the Jesus Family founded by Jing Dianying (1890–1957) in Shandong Province was so brutally exterminated after 1950 during the TSPM. The church had formed a new kind of social order in rural area that combined church leaders and the traditional gentry class. Without exterminating them, the Party branch secretary could not take their place.

Religious Syncretism

In addition to imperial autocracy, religious syncretism also flourished in traditional Chinese society. The so-called “Three Teachings” were made of a combination of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. In the everyday lives of the people, it was impossible to distinguish which elements were from Taoism, which were from Buddhism, and which were from Confucianism. They were completely mixed together. People would worship Guan Yu on Monday, Confucius on Tuesday, and Mazu on Wednesday. If they heard that worshipping Zhu Bajie was beneficial, then they would start worshipping him, too. This hodgepodge consisted of a mixture of men and deities. They were all mixed within this religious syncretism. All of folk culture and the whole of society were mixed together. Scholars call this a “disseminated religion” in contrast with Christianity, which is an “institutional religion”.

Similarly, festivals such as the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), Qingming (April 5th), the Dragon Boat Festival, and the Ghost Festival were all products of religious syncretism with many forms of celebration in folk culture and local societies. The famous writer Lu Xun (1881–1936) wrote a story, Village Opera, about this sort of celebration. In northern China, there were also temple fairs and processions to welcome the gods where people would play the drums and gongs to drive away the ghosts, worship ancestors, hold parades, and act in operas. The gentry class would arrange all these activities and allocate the financial burdens to every family. Yet when the Christians came, they claimed that they would not participate in such activities and would not pay for them. Because they believed in Jesus, they would not participate in idol worship.

For traditional Chinese society, it was okay for the Christians to believe in Jesus and the officials would not bother to intervene. Yet for the temple fairs and processions, everyone, regardless of their faith, had to bear the financial burden. The Christian faith, which precluded one from contributing to the activities, seriously impacted the grand scheme of religious syncretism. Within the traditional concept, the Three Teachings were one. With the addition of Christianity, the four teachings should have been one. This was religious freedom according to the Chinese understanding, a religious freedom under the absolute monarch and with religious syncretism. Therefore, a hundred years ago, emperor Kangxi felt wronged, he believed that although he had been good enough to the Christians, the church, besides its belief in Jesus, went too far in its unwillingness to worship the emperor, Confucius, and even their own ancestors. In other words, Christianity was an application unfit for the operating system of Chinese culture. Christianity worships the absolute one true God. There is no other god except for Jesus. Therefore, Christianity in China led to conflict against the entire operating system rather than a conflicts at the application level.

Once the emperor came to this realization, he started to ban Christianity in China. By that time, the gentry class also came to the painful realization that once you had a Christian in the village, the whole village would soon be in disorder. Local gentry members were worried about the loss of control in their local communities. The agitation of the gentry class in addition to a group of hooligans led to the rise of the Boxer Movement. Local conflicts against Christianity culminated in 1900.

The Convergence of State and Local Conflicts against Christianity

The year of 1900 represents the convergence of national and cultural level conflicts against Christianity. In the midst of these conflicts was the Taiping Rebellion. Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864) baptized himself after reading some literature by Liang Fa (1789–1855), the very first Chinese pastor. Therefore, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom carried the banner of Christianity. Their belief was indeed a heresy, in effect another product of religious syncretism. Yet, as the Manchurian royalties of the Qing dynasty could not suppress their religious expressions, officials of Han origin rose up and trained militia of their own. The focus of this movement against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was not to save the Qing dynasty but to save Chinese culture and defend its traditions. As a defender of the Confucian tradition, they motivated all of the country’s nongovernmental power who remained loyal to the Confucian tradition to put down the Taiping rebellion.

After that suppression, great changes took place within the Qing dynasty. Before the rebellion, officials of Han origin had not held high-ranking positions in the regime, but after the rebellion these officials turned into the backbones of the regime. They advocated the Westernization Movement, since learning from foreigners was no longer considered high treason. However, this movement took another sharp turn during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895.

The Sino-Japanese War was different from the Opium War. During the Opium War decades before, the Qing dynasty fought with swords and spears against the western forces who were armed with superior weapons, and thus they had no chance of winning the war. But the years of the Westernization Movement produced civil advances, exampled by the Merchants Steam Navigation Company and the Shanghai Mechanical Textile Bureau, as well as military advances represented by the Northern Seas Fleet. All of the fleet’s ships were imported from Germany and Britain. In terms of quality and total tonnage, the Qing Dynasty fleet ranked the third in the world, and the Japanese fleet was no match for the Northern Seas Fleet in total tonnage and other indexes. The First Sino-Japanese War was like a competition between two students who graduated from the school of western powers. At that time, the Western powers though that Japan would lose. After years of the Westernization Movement, it seemed that the Chinese fleet might be able to fight even against the British Fleet, just like we now often dream about the Chinese soccer team competing in the final stage of the FIFA World Cup.

But the Qing dynasty was actually defeated by Japan. Its military forces were hopelessly routed, leaving both the government and the public disillusioned. Those navy officers, for example Deng Shichang (1849–1894), were all very westernized and many were educated in Europe, and they were among the most stylish group of people in China. Deng Shichang usually drank coffee, and the officers always played billiards in the clubs of the Northern Seas Fleet. They made up the elite who were supported by the whole nation and who lived their lives in the most westernized way. Yet they were completely annihilated, which disillusioned the whole empire.

The failure of the Westernization Movement led to the Hundred Days’ Reform, which failed as well. Then the Qing court turned from the control of the Han ministers back to the hands of those most stubborn nobles from the Eight Banners. When these nobles came to power, they wanted in the heat of the moment to wage war against eight western countries. Therefore, Empress Dowager Cixi sent two people to observe the Boxers in Tianjin and see whether they were invulnerable to the blows of cannon and rifle shots. These two people returned, and out of fear of disappointing the Empress Dowager, said the boxers all had radiant faces and were masters of martial arts. There was no definite record of whether Cixi believed them or not. She simply emphasized that the boxers could be used to evict the foreigners. Consequently, the national level opposition against foreigners and Christianity converged with the hooligans who fought during the decades of local conflicts against Christianity, which led to the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

We have heard many stories of martyrs from that era. Many missionaries were killed, and they were called Laomaozi, meaning foreigners. Many Chinese Christians were killed, and they were called Ermaozi, meaning vassals of foreigners. Those seekers and friends of Christians who came to the church only once during Christmas could have been called Sanmaozi or Simaozi, meaning subordinates of the vassals of foreigners. There were few Chinese Christians, and after the massacre most elites in the indigenous church were lost, including the Chinese pastors. It had been hard to find educated, believing church workers, and most of them died in the massacre.

Consequently, the year of 1900 became the turning point and watershed moment in Chinese church history.

Christianity in the 19th and 20th Century

Taking the year 1900 as the boundary, we can divide the Christian missions to China into 19th century Christianity and 20th century Christianity.

Apart from the historical context of the Chinese church and the social changes in China, there is one other critical change in theological principles that can be marked by the year 1900. We now need to briefly review the western churches at the intersection of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The 19th century could be called an “Age of Christian Denominations”, because it was a century filled with an explosion of new denominations. Before that century, the protestant church had never had so many denominations. The Protestant Reformation started with three main denominations, Lutheranism, mainly located in northern Europe and Scandinavia, the Reformed tradition, which became a global faith with the rise of Britain and United States, and Anabaptism.

The Reformed tradition in Britain deviated into a few more denominations. For example, the Church of England was a “state church”, and its Thirty-nine Articles of Religion were basically Calvinist. During the First Great Awakening, dissension between John Wesley and George Whitefield arose. Under the influence of Dutch Arminianism, Wesley disagreed with the doctrine of predestination and parted ways with Whitefield. But both of them still belonged to the Church of England. Wesley had not planned to leave the Church of England, but his organization kept growing in size and influence until it finally left the Church of England to become the independent Methodist Church.

During the Puritan Era, the Congregationalists, the denomination that held the most radical view of the church, came on scene. They believed that any local church congregation with as few as twenty members should be independent from any other church. Every church belongs directly to Jesus Christ, and every church is its own central church with no other church having spiritual authority over it. With the appearance of the Congregationalists, the two thousand years of church history were moving into the darkest age. From the perspective of ecclesiology, the churches were atomizing. Congregationalism meant the birth of modern churches, which confirmed the legality of the church’s unlimited division. Any local church can independently believe what they believe, independently understand the Bible according to their own understanding, and deny any visible authority by anyone else.

Such a determinedly independent Congregationalism was the major force that ignited the denomination explosion of the 19th century. Because of their absolute support for independent Congregationalism, the Congregational churches were persecuted in England most severely. Both the Church of England and the Presbyterian church were against Congregationalism, because its view of the church was considered outrageous at the time due to its overemphasis on individual rights and freedoms and its huge influence on the atomistic division of the church.

Another important denomination is the Presbyterian Church, which was founded by John Knox in Scotland. Because the Church of England was the state church, the Presbyterian system had never been fully established.

The Congregationalists first fled to Holland, and then in 1620 they were the first group of people to arrive in America on the Mayflower. In Holland, the Congregationalists met the Anabaptists from Germany who had been persecuted in central and northern Europe. This meeting led to their merger and mutual influence that created one new denomination, the Baptists, the most influential denomination in modern churches.

The Anabaptists were against infant baptism and believed baptism must follow adult conversion. They did not accept baptism by pouring or sprinkling, but rather held full immersion to be necessary. The Congregationalists held that a church should only be an absolutely independent congregation, and that there should be no authority between any two churches. This way they could avoid religious persecution. When these two concepts combined, they gave birth to the Baptists.

Even then, the number of major Protestant denominations could still be counted with one’s fingers.

As the 19th century came, the number of denominations exploded. The disappearance of religious persecution led to an unlimited division of the church, including an explosion of cults. The four big heresies in American church history: the Seventh-day Adventists, the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science, all appeared in the early 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, another significant change took place: the rise of liberal theology. It originated with Friedrich Schleiermacher in Germany and then exerted influence on churches in Britain and the United States.

By the end of the 19th century, almost all denominations were dominated by liberals. How did that come about? First, the unlimited division of the church was integral to the continued liberalization of theology. Second, both the unlimited division of the church and the liberalization of theology were consequences of the church’s inability to respond to the Enlightenment. Rationalism and the popularization of science entered mainstream culture at the end of the 19th century. The slogans of the New Cultural Movement in 1919 were Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science. These became a trend and an idol for all the world. Mr. Democracy and Mrs. Science stood respectively for democratic values at the level of society and rationalism at the level of science. They were the gods for the new world.

People in this age would think that it was okay to claim faith in Jesus, but it would sound stupid to claim faith in every word of the Bible as God’s unchanging revelation and in the virgin birth. It didn’t matter if I thought it was stupid, other people though it was stupid. Scholars of science and philosophy put tremendous cultural pressure on the church with their profound knowledge and intelligence. Therefore, when liberal theology arose, it tried to find a new way to explain Christianity in which faith would not clash with science. The mainstream way was to view faith as individual rather than public, as spiritual rather than social, or as ethical rather than rational. Such thinking was in essence religious syncretic thinking that dominated almost all of the churches in Europe and the United States.

In 1895, conservatives from the American Presbyterian church rose up along with members of other denominations. Beginning in 1910, they published a series of essays called The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth. Later these people were called the Christian Fundamentalists. They proposed five points of the fundamental Christian faith and affirmed that only those who believed in these five points were Christians in the biblical and traditional sense. The first was belief in the authority of the Bible as God’s revelation and God’s word. Second was belief in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the authenticity of virgin birth. Third was belief in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross as our atonement. Fourth was belief in the resurrection of Jesus on the third day and the authenticity of the resurrection. Fifth was belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Judgment Day, and the new heaven and new earth.

You might be asking yourself how one could be a Christian without believing in these five points. The reason you would ask this is a result of God’s special protection of the Chinese church over the past one hundred years. Today, seventy percent of those who claim to be Christians all over the world do not believe in these five points, or they might say that they have their own way of understanding them.

Therefore, in the 20th century, great changes took place within Christianity. While there were still increasingly great numbers of denominations with diverging theological differences, the most critical difference was no longer between denominations, but between traditional Christianity and modern Christianity.

In the 19th century, affiliation with a denomination, for example Presbyterian or Baptist, could roughly display the nature of one’s faith. Like a brand, denomination affiliation distinguished faith. However, in the 20th century, this sort of recognition would not work. A Presbyterian church might ordain female pastors and consent to homosexuality.

Christian fundamentalists gained their foothold around 1900. Consequently, Christianity in the 20th century displayed a cross-denominational distinction between the fundamentalists and the liberals. The fundamentalists were also called conservatives, and later most of them turned into evangelicals, while the liberals were also called the Modernists. Such distinction permeated all denominations. One could no longer say that the Presbyterian church was conservative, and the Baptist church was liberal. In any denomination today, there is always a smaller portion of conservatives and a larger portion of liberals.

For example, in a Chinese house church, if you claim to be Presbyterian, it means you are conservative, to the degree of irritating some others. However, in the United States, if you claim to be Presbyterian, many might take you to be a liberal. Presbyterian denominations in the United States have about three million members, and two and a half million of them belong to liberal Presbyterian denominations, the biggest of which is Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) with over two million members. There are seven or eight conservative Presbyterian denominations, the biggest of which is Presbyterian Church America (PCA) with three hundred thousand members, just a tenth of the PCUSA. Other conservative Presbyterian denominations are even smaller in size, and the smallest has only a thousand members.

What is the relationship between the changes in the global church and the Chinese church in the 20th century? To answer this, we will have to look at two other issues. First, what was the gospel that the 19th century missionaries shared with China? Second, what was the gospel that the 20th century missionaries shared with China?

The Turnaround Around the Year 1900

As a matter of fact, one tremendous change took place around 1900. First, all of the missionaries who were martyred in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion had arrived in the 19th century. Most of them had lived in China for decades. The gospel that they shared in China was a traditional, Puritan gospel. Most of them were from either Britain or the United States. Regardless of their denominational affiliation, they held to the fundamental Christian faith and the teachings of the traditional gospel.

Robert Morrison came from the tradition of the Scottish Presbyterian church. After coming to China, he learned Chinese, translated the Bible, compiled a dictionary, and put together a Christian Doctrines Catechism. This catechism was not only a translation of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, but Morrison added issues related to traditional Chinese culture. For example, he asked, could one have concubines? But this Christian Doctrines Catechism was written according to the theology and structure of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Meanwhile, until the beginning of the 20th century, major publishing organizations and books published in China by Christian publishing ministries were sponsored by Presbyterian churches. For example, the American Presbyterian Mission Press printed over one hundred million pages of discipleship materials every year. The Commercial Press was also out of a Presbyterian publishing organization.

Therefore, the gospel that the Chinese church received in the 19th century was of a pure faith from the Reformation, which emphasized the grace of God, sin and the repentance of man, and salvation by faith alone. To a large extent, Chinese Christianity in the 19th century held a Calvinist gospel, as Calvinist puritans made up a big part of the missionaries to China in the 19th century.

Second, these missionaries had lived in China for decades. Many had never returned to their motherland. Some had returned and then after returning, had gone back to China. Therefore, they were not familiar with, nor overly influenced by, the theological changes in their motherland. Nor did they have access to the volumes of books published by the liberals in their motherland, which was another special blessing from God.

Once, a foreign pastor asked me, “Why are almost all the Chinese house church members until now conservatives who believe in biblical inerrancy?” I said, “Praise the Lord, because we do not read enough books. We read very few books from the modern age. Most of the books we read were written by saints who have long passed away. You have read too many books by the living. Therefore, our faith might be a little firmer.”

But most of these missionaries were martyred in 1900. The next ten years saw an overall renewal of missionaries to China. By 1930, the number of missionaries to China reached its peak at six thousand. At the same time, this also marked an overall renewal of theological standing. The big change was that among the six thousand missionaries, five thousand of them no longer participated in ministries directly related to the gospel, for example evangelism, preaching, church planting, and pastoring. What would they do then? Medicine, education, charity, and cultural causes. These new missionaries had been immersed in liberal theology. They cared less about the gospel focus of the atonement of Christ, and more about the influence of faith on society. Basically they were followers of the Modernism Christianity of Walter Rauschenbusch, who was a strong proponent of the “social gospel”. That is, to consider the mission of God to consist of social and cultural work and to fervently seek social and cultural achievements.

They arrived in China with two differences. If you were the missionary of that time, what would you feel in China? The first would be, “Oh, people here do not know Jesus; they worship idols”. When Robert Morrison arrived in China, he prayed to God in his diary, “How wretched this nation is! They do not have a sabbath. They do not know that in seven days there is one day given by God for rest”. This was the first difference.

The second difference was equally strong, perhaps stronger. Here in China, it was too underdeveloped, too unclean, too uncivilized, too ignorant, or too autocratic. There were so many deep gaps between China and their motherland. Therefore, many missionaries taught that in the Gospels, Jesus first shared the gospel, then second he had mercy on people and healed the lepers and the crippled. Jesus both did mercy ministry and shared the gospel at the same time.

Therefore, when they arrived in China and saw the sufferings of this nation, including autocracy, darkness and poverty, they “had mercy” on the Chinese people, and found they could use a relatively small amount of money to buy a big pile of materials. Consequently the missionaries wanted to do mercy ministry through education and medical work. Therefore, in the early stages of evangelism, education, medicine, and preaching were called the “trinity” of ministry.

Was it wrong for them to do this? Not at all at the beginning. When the church shared the gospel with China, it was filled with compassion for China. The gospel is about the focus of Christ’s atonement, but it also produces care for and participation in society. Yet, at the intersection of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the rise of liberal theology, the church lost its balance in mission, evangelism lost its focus, and missionaries increasingly bound the two goals together. There was nothing wrong with social participation and cultural change, but it was wrong to remove the gospel focus from mission, which was equivalent to removing the core belief of Christianity. If Christ’s atonement and the total depravity of man were no longer the premise and focus of social activity, any secular cultural and ideological trends could easily carry away the church’s ideology. And that is why the liberals (or Modernist Christians) in the first half of the 20th century basically turned into the political left, which turned out to be important for the TSPM after 1949.

However, in the Gospels, healing for the sick was never the inevitable result of the gospel, nor is it the general pursuits of this life, but rather the shadow of the power of God’s kingdom coming into this world. Yet for more and more missionaries, their first goal was for the Chinese to believe in Jesus and for China to become a nation for Jesus. Their second goal was for China to become a civilized, democratic, and free country. In other words, they shared two gospels, one about Jesus Christ, and the other about western civilization, which is key to understanding the anti-religion movement after the May Fourth Movement of 1919.

Thus they translated many western works into Chinese and participated in all kinds of social work. These activities tremendously impacted modern Chinese society. The missionary published A Review of the Times had great influence on the Hundred Days’ Reform. Liang Qichao (1873–1929) was once secretary for the missionary Timothy Richard (1845–1919). Through the missionaries’ introduction, they all learned about the goodness of the western world while they learned little about Jesus. It was even through a missionary’s article that Marxism was introduced into China for the first time.

Therefore, in the 20th century, some of the remaining missionaries who had come to China in the 19th century kept writing to the sending churches and mission boards, saying, “stop sending those who have been influenced by modern theology to China! Let us keep China as a base for the conservative Christian faith free from western influence”.

However, their cry would not work because all western churches were influenced by liberalism, and more and more missionaries came to China under liberal influence. However, looking back one hundred years later, God did listen to their prayers and cries and did protect the Chinese church after all so that today we are still a base for the conservative Christian faith generally free from the influence of western liberal theology. God has His own way of showing grace and His means of punishment. Who can comprehend the great things God has done and who has been His counselor? Paul prayed to go to Rome, but who would have imagined the way in which God took him to Rome, through bondage and prison?

In China, Christianity in the 20th century was distinctly different from Christianity in the 19th century. In the next session we will discuss how in the first half of the 20th century two forms of Christianity developed in the Chinese church, one being Christian fundamentalism, and the other liberal. These two came into being before 1949. This is the key context through which we will come to understand the Chinese church after 1949 and this would become the two divergent ways of the house churches and the TSPM over the next sixty years. The distinction between the house churches and the Three-Self Church did not come about as a result of political pressure from the Communist party’s taking of power in China. There had been clear signs that it was coming, not only within the Chinese church, but also in the global churches as well.

Let us pray:

Lord, we thank you and we praise you. You take charge in Chinese church history, and you take charge in Chinese secular history, for all things work together for good according to your purpose. Lord, it is like the things that happen in our personal lives. At the time, we could not feel your love or see your wondrous guidance. Yet when we look back at history, we always see your blessing and your patience. Even when you strike and discipline your children because of their disobedience, you have always prepared them for the next revival and for your great plan of salvation. Lord, we thank you for that, and pray that you will lead us through this course with prayer, reading, and meditation. We give thanks and praise to you, Lord. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen!