A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence Since 1552 1611461499, 9781611461497

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A Voluntary Exile

STUDIES IN MISSIONARIES AND CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA General Editor: Xi Lian, Duke University/Durham, North Carolina Publishing interdisciplinary, innovative scholarship, this series extends our understanding of the Christian missionary movement in China from the time of the Jesuits in the Ming dynasty to the Protestants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and explores its impact on both the Chinese people and the countries that sent missionaries to China. Advisory Board Ryan Dunch, University of Alberta, Canada Lydia Gerber, Washington State University, Washington Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Pace University, New York Lida Nedilsky, North Park College, Illinois

Titles in this Series Anthony E. Clark, ed., A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence since 1552 John Craig William Keating, A Protestant Church in Communist China: Moore Memorial Church Shanghai, 1949–1989 Connie Shemo, The Chinese Medical Ministries of Kang Cheng and Shi Meiyu, 1872–1937: On a Cross-Cultural Frontier of Gender, Race, and Nation Anthony E. Clark, China’s Saints: Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing (1644–1911) Judith Liu, Foreign Exchange: Counterculture Behind the Walls of St. Hilda’s School for Girls, 1929–1937 Jessie G. Lutz, ed., Pioneer Chinese Christian Women: Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility Kathleen L. Lodwick, The Widow’s Quest: The Byers Extraterritorial Case in Hainan, China, 1924–1925 M. Cristina Zaccarini, The Sino-American Friendship as Tradition and Challenge: Dr. Ailie Gale in China, 1908–1950 Jun Xing, Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social Gospel and the YMCA in China, 1919–1937

A Voluntary Exile Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence since 1552 Edited by Anthony E. Clark

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY PRESS Bethlehem

Published by Lehigh University Press Copublished with Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A voluntary exile : Chinese Christianity and cultural confluence since 1552 / edited by Anthony E. Clark. pages cm. — (Studies in missionaries and Christianity in China) Includes index. ISBN 978-1-61146-148-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61146-149-7 (electronic) 1. Missions—China—History. 2. China—Church history. 3. Christianity and culture—China. I. Clark, Anthony E., editor of compilation. BV3415.2.V65 2014 266.00951—dc23 2013033479 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Illustrations Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction: A Voluntary Exile: Crisis, Conflict, and Accommodation After Matteo Ricci Anthony E. Clark 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

A Glorious Failure: The Mission of Francis Xavier and Its Consequences on the China Enterprise Eric P. Cunningham Jesuit Formation and Its Influence on the Methods of Matteo Ricci Michael Maher, SJ The Lefebvre Incident of 1754: The Qing State, Chinese Catholics, and a European Missionary Robert Entenmann Restoring the Ancient Faith: The Taiping Rebels and Their Mandate Thomas H. Reilly Mandarins and Martyrs of Taiyuan, Shanxi, in LateImperial China Anthony E. Clark Christianity for a Confucian Youth: Richard Wilhelm and His Lixian Shuyuan School for Boys in Qingdao, 1901–1912 Lydia Gerber Catholic and Chinese Folk Religion during the Republican Era in the Region of Taiyuan, Shanxi Liu Anrong Church-State Accommodation in China’s “Harmonious Society” Joseph Tse-Hei Lee

Works Cited Index

vii xi xiii 1

21

39

59

77

93

117

145

173

199 215 v

vi

About the Contributors

Contents

221

Illustrations

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 5.1

Saint Francis Xavier, SJ, presenting Christianity to the non-Christian East. Credit: Frontispiece of Dominique Bouhours, SJ, La Vie de Saint François de la Compagnie de Jesus Apostre des Indes et Japon (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1682). Copy held in the rare books collection of The Beijing Center, Beijing, China.

22

1610 Painting of Matteo Ricci, SJ, executed by the Chinese convert, Yu Wenhui (Latinized as Emmanuel Pereira), who is the only painter of Ricci who actually knew him. Credit: Anthony E. Clark, photograph taken in the sacristy of the Gesu Jesuit Church, Rome.

40

Adam Schall, SJ, and Matteo Ricci, SJ, hold a map of China as Francis Xavier, SJ, and Ignatius Loyola, SJ, are featured above in heaven. Credit: Athanasius Kircher, SJ, China Monumentis (1667).

54

Stylized image of Hong Xiuquan (or Tiande) as the “chief of the insurrection” against the Qing. Credit: Frontispiece of J-M Callery and Melchior Yvan, Insurrection in China: With Notices of the Christianity, Creed, and Proclamations on the Insurgents (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853).

78

Western depiction of Taiping believers “teaching the Lord’s Prayer.” Credit: Augustus F. Lindley (Lin-Le), Ti-Ping TienKwoh: The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution (London: Day & Son, 1866), 318.

79

Governor Yuxian, the “butcher of Shanxi,” who ordered the executions of Taiyuan’s Catholic and Protestant missionaries on 9 July vii

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Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3

Fig. 7.4

Fig. 8.1

Illustrations

1900. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

100

Mr. George Farthing and family, members of the Baptist mission at Taiyuan who were martyred on 9 July 1900. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

101

Friars and native Catholics related to the Franciscan Mission of Shanxi who were martyred at Taiyuan on 9 July 1900; Bishop Gregorio Grassi, OFM, is seated front and center. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

104

Governor Yuxian’s yamen courtyard, where the executions occurred on 9 July 1900; photo taken c. 1901. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

106

Formal portrait of Richard Wilhelm. Credit: History of Christianity in China Archive (Spokane, Washington).

118

The Lixian Shuyuan School at Qingdao, opened in 1901. Credit: History of Christianity in China Archive (Spokane, Washington).

133

Census of Temple Types in the Thirty-Five Villages Near Taiyuan

150

Census of Temple Types in the Thirty-Five Villages Near Taiyuan (continued)

151

Poor Catholics from Shanxi’s capital city, Taiyuan (c. 1940). Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

158

Shanxi Catholics of Geliaogou Village kneel during adoration following mass at the village church (1947). Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

161

Wu Yaozong meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong (June 1960). Credit: History of

Illustrations

Fig. 8.2

ix

Christianity in China Archive (Spokane, Washington).

180

Large outdoor Christian memorial service in Beijing’s suburbs (2008). Credit: Anthony E. Clark, photographer.

194

Abbreviations

ACGOFM

Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome)

AFMM

Archive of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (Rome)

AL

Annual Letter, Society of Jesus (Rome)

AME

Archives Missions Etrangères de Paris (Paris)

ANPM

Archives of the National Palace Museum (Taipei)

APUG

Archives of the Pontificia Università Gregoriana (Rome)

ARSI

Archivium Romanum Societatis Iesu (Rome)

ASV

Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Vatican City)

BAS

Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Munich)

DOAM

Deutsche Ostasienmission (Berlin)

JAL

Journal d’André Ly

MST

Mission du Se-tchoan

TDA

Taiyuan Diocese Archive 太原教區檔案館 (Taiyuan)

TPTG

Taiping Tianguo 太平天國

UOSC

University of Oregon Special Collections (Eugene)

VM

Vertraulichen Mitteilungen (Munich)

ZMR

Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft

xi

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ms. Marie Melrose, herself from a Hainan, China, missionary family, for her generous support in this venture; to her this volume is affectionately dedicated. In addition to Marie’s support, we have benefited from the kind assistance of several institutions, grants, archival repositories, and persons. We also offer our gratitude for the substantial financial support we have received from the following fellowships and grants: Fulbright Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Northeast Asia Council, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Weyerhaeuser Research Grant, William’s Fund Research Grant, Vincentian Studies Institute, National Security Education Program David L. Boren Fellowship, and the Institute of International Education. Among the institutional and archival collections we have consulted, we especially thank the Taiyuan Diocesan Archive; Center for Christian Studies at Shantou University in China; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; Archivio Segreto Vaticano; Tien Educational Center and Jesuit Archives in Taipei, Taiwan, and Vanves, France; Ricci Institutes in San Francisco and Taipei; Ricci Hall in Hong Kong; Maryknoll Archive; Biblioteca Antonianum in Rome; Order of Friars Minor Curia Archive; Tianjin Xikai Archive and Library; Xujiahui Library in Shanghai; Shanghai Municipal Library and Archives; Foreign Missions of Paris Archive in Paris; Center for Chinese Studies and the National Central Library in Taipei; Jesuit Archive in Rome (ARSI); Anton Library at The Beijing Center in Beijing; Fu Jen University in Taipei; Institut für Sinologie und Ostasienkunde at Münster University; Bibliothèques des Instituts D’Extrême-Orient; Collège de France in Paris; University of Oregon Special Collections; Yale University Divinity School Library Special Collections; and the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong. The individual persons to thank are too numerous to include here, but we acknowledge the patience and assistance of many archivists, interviewees, librarians, confreres, colleagues, friends, and family members. We especially acknowledge Amanda C. R. Clark, whose long hours of indexing, editorial, and formatting work have greatly improved our book.

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Introduction A Voluntary Exile: Crisis, Conflict, and Accommodation After Matteo Ricci Anthony E. Clark

MISUNDERSTANDING: INNOCENT ERRORS In a letter to his brother Orazio, Matteo Ricci, SJ (1552–1610), described the life of a missionary in China: “We the religious, are in these countries like in a voluntary exile, not only far away from dear ones, father, mother, brothers, and relatives, but also from Christians and our nation, and sometimes in places, where in ten or twenty years one does not see a single European, and others, such as those who are in China, never eat bread nor drink wine.” 1 This is not the first letter by Ricci (or by any other Christian missionary in Asia, for that matter) to suggest that being in such a foreign context is like living in “a voluntary exile.” First encounters between East and West were uncomfortable, and they often precipitated cultural misunderstanding, misgiving, and conflict due to mistaken impressions. Exile implies something negative about the situation one finds him or herself in, and it suggests the presence of difference between we and they. As Edward Said (1935–2003) made clear, human history has been punctuated by the seemingly natural propensity to create and underscore cultural distinctions—I and Other—that tend often toward self-empowerment. Orientalism, Said suggests, “depends for its strategy on the flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.” 2 Ricci was in “exile” because he was essentially alone in a cultural Other unlike anything he could have imagined, and whether he and his successors were able to avoid the impulse toward “superiority” in their “relationships with the Orient” is one of the concerns of this volume. But here we must also admit that Chinese Christians have themselves become to some extent “voluntary exiles,” or “Others,” within their own cultural context. Their position in China’s cultural milieu as adherents of a minority religion, one that continues to be considered “foreign” (and worse, “heterodox”), has required native believers to both justify their 1

2

Introduction

spiritual practices and stave off political and cultural pressures to abandon their exile and “reintegrate” into “normal” Chinese society. This collection is about Christian missionaries who went to Asia to proselytize and the native Chinese Christians who attempted to make sense of Christian beliefs in light of China’s long cultural history. As Nicolas Standaert notes, the incursion of foreign missionaries into China “led to a confrontation with all indigenous ideological and religious systems: Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and popular religion,” and these antagonisms between Christian Europeans and native Chinese led to “local tensions and conflicts, and occasionally to regional or even national anti-Christian movements.” 3 Even Matteo Ricci, the great “cultural bridge builder,” could not avoid inevitable polemics and calumnies. After a long description of missionary successes in a letter to Girolamo Costa, SJ (fl. 1590s), Jesuit rector of the College of Siena, Ricci admitted cultural tensions: “Only the followers of idolatry, the most pagan sect among the three existing in China, resented very much because they have found in the catechism [Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven)] a clear refutation of many of their mistakes, such as the transmigration of souls, other falsehoods and such things; but they have just stated malicious things about us and have insulted us.” 4 While Westerners like Ricci sometimes complained about the denigrations of non-Christian Chinese, China’s rulers were equally exasperated by the misrepresentations of Western missionaries. After Kangxi (r. 1661–1722) had become aware of the Catholic Church’s injunctions against ancestor veneration, and after having communicated with Bishop Charles Maigrot, MEP (1652–1730), who was sent to China to condemn Confucian ancestral rites as superstitious, the emperor had cause for complaint. He wrote on 17 December 1720, “Maigrot must confess his transgression against China, and the Western religion [Christianity] can no longer be spread throughout China.” 5 Mistrust was equally felt, and criticism was equally dispensed. Sometimes these misgivings were precipitated by what Jacques Gernet has called “errors and confusions” based on innocent inaccuracies that resulted from cultural and religious misinterpretation. 6 One example is the Chinese imagining of Christian missionaries who removed the eyes of dying Chinese converts, which they alchemically transformed into silver. I discuss this briefly in my own chapter, though Paul Cohen has well described the procedure as it was alleged: “When a Chinese convert was on the verge of death, the Catholic priest came and, covering the convert’s head with a piece of cloth, pretended to pronounce absolution. In reality, however, he secretly made off with the eyes of the dying man. These were then mixed with lead and mercury to create silver.” 7 The Roman Catholic sacramental rite upon which this rumor was advanced is clearly the Extremae Unctionis, or “Last Anointing.” In the rite, the priest enters the room of the ill or dying person and “hears his confes-

Introduction

3

sion and absolves him,” and later he “dips his thumb in the holy oil, and anoints the sick in the form of the cross on all members indicated.” 8 The first to be anointed in the rite for the dying is ad oculos, the eyes (or literally, “on the eyelids”). This action of the anointing is performed so that “the Lord forgive thee whatever sin thou hast committed by the sense of sight.” 9 After the eyes have been anointed, the priest follows by placing oil on the nose, mouth, hands, and normally the feet of the dying; a dispensation from anointing the feet was granted China, however, due to the reality that touching a woman’s bound feet would have stirred scandal. It is not difficult to see how embellished rumors could have developed from bystanders who did not understand the sacramental meaning of the ritual. We can see how vitriolic this rumor eventually became in the antiChristian illustrations featured in the late nineteenth-century Bixiejishi (A Record of Facts to Ward Off Heterodoxy). 10 One of its illustrations depicts a Chinese person reclining on a bed while two Western priests are featured gouging out the eyes, and the title caption reads, “Image of the pig grunt [homophone for Catholic] religionists cutting out eyes.” 11 Other images in the text include priests removing the fetus from a woman’s womb and sitting with young married women on their laps. 12 As the Roman lyric poet Horace once said, “Nothing is as swift as a rumor,” and once such inventions were disseminated through China, open conflict was inescapable. CONFLICT: OPEN VIOLENCE Rumors of curious and horrible missionary practices in China, no matter how fallacious, produced anger and agitation among China’s common population. Real and imagined cultural difference made the Christian goal of conversion increasingly difficult as political and religious tensions reached a fevered pitch during the nineteenth century. Other than the notorious destruction of churches and mass martyrdoms of native converts in Japan and Korea, perhaps the most well-known era of ChristianAsian violence is the Boxer Uprising in China, from 1898 to 1900. 13 Few incidents during the Boxer attacks on Christian places and persons represent more clearly the convergence of cultural misinterpretation and religious conflict as the siege against Beijing’s North Cathedral (Beitang) from 14 June to 16 August 1900. One of the women who witnessed the ordeal, Sister Hélène de Jaurias (1824–1900), a Daughter of Charity sister, left behind a considerable number of recollections regarding her experiences at the cathedral. In one of her letters she wrote of the missionary belief that all of China was under the control of the devil: “We often hear Satan speaking by the mouths of possessed people. A holy missionary, who has been here for twenty-two years, told me that he heard him declaring

4

Introduction

through a woman who was possessed that China was his chosen Empire, and that there was not a single spot of this country where he was not worshipped!” 14 While she and her fellow missionaries perceived China as the devil’s “chosen Empire,” native Chinese had constructed their own mythology of a demonized West. Boxer attacks against the cathedral from June to August were thwarted time and again, despite Boxer use of popular magic to penetrate the foreign edifice. Among the rumored reasons for their failure was that Pierre-Marie-Alphonse Favier, CM (1837–1905), the cathedral’s French bishop, himself had special demonic powers. As Paul Cohen writes of popular Chinese mythologies regarding Favier, “[T]he white-bearded leader of the Catholic defenders of the Northern Cathedral, Bishop Favier, was transformed into a ‘devil prince’ (guiwang [perhaps more accurately rendered as ‘demon king’]), two hundred years of age, who, in addition to being highly skilled as a strategist, practiced sorcery, [and] was an expert in divination.” 15 Chiang Ying-ho adds that at least one Chinese pro-Boxer grand councilor “believed that Pierre-Marie-Alphonse Favier, a bishop in Peking, was invulnerable because he painted woman menses on his forehead.” 16 While the Christians in the cathedral and the Boxers who besieged it fought with guns, cannons, swords, and spears, each side, European and Chinese, imagined a spiritual battle raging above between spirits; each side envisioned the other side’s gods as malevolent demons. The imagined spiritual battle was, unfortunately, manifest in human conflict that resulted in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths in China’s capital. In his journal entry of 3 July 1900, Bishop Favier, the “demon king,” wrote, “Mortality is on the increase; we are burying as many as fifteen children a day.” 17 By 12 August Favier reported a “violent explosion” from a Boxer mine that was “seven yards deep and forty in diameter”; the National Palace Museum in Beijing preserves an image of the massive crater beside the cathedral. Favier notes that “five Italian marines and their officer disappeared; more than eighty Christians, including fifty-one children in the cradle, have been buried forever under this ruin.” 18 Sister de Jaurias, who also kept a record from inside the cathedral, recounts other losses: “A gunner was killed beside his canon; a woman cut in two by a shell; bombs and torches fell on every side.” 19 It is important to note that even with the siege, North Cathedral fared best of all the churches attacked in Beijing. The East Church (Dongtang), West Church (Xitang), and South Church (Nantang) were all burned to the ground, and their pastors and many Chinese converts were massacred during the Boxer and Qing military attacks on Christian institutions. Following the Sinomissionary clashes of the Boxer Uprising, and despite Western retaliations and another unequal treaty (the Boxer Indemnity) between China and foreign powers, Christian missionary interests in China experienced

Introduction

5

unprecedented growth as mission churches, orphanages, schools, and hospitals were rebuilt and expanded. After so much violence, both during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and the Boxer Uprising, Catholic and Protestant Christians returned to old questions that revolved around how to adapt Christian theology to the Chinese worldview and Christian practice to Chinese culture, a culture considered proven to be inimical to Christian belief. The correlation between conversion and culture once again occupied missionary discourse. Missionaries reconsidered Ricci’s apparent ability to mitigate cultural difference; Jesuits looked again at Ricci’s writing, which had approached Asia first as friend, and second as potential convert. In his Jiaoyoulun (Essay on Friendship), Ricci wrote, “Friends and enemies are like music and cacophony, and these two are distinguished by the presence or absence of harmony. Accordingly harmony can be taken to be the root of friendship. On the basis of harmony small things become great, and on the basis of disharmony great things become small.” 20 New attempts were made, both Chinese and Western, to reestablish ties of friendship in the wake of turbulence. Despite a century that was particularly rife with conflict, history held examples of attempted Christian accommodation in China, sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful, and these efforts toward cultural and religious confluence figure largely in the studies included in this volume. ACCOMMODATION: ATTEMPTED UNDERSTANDINGS When Christian missionaries first entered Asia, they were confronted with an enigmatic question: If God had, as they read in the Acts of the Apostles, “in past generations allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways, yet did not leave himself without witness,” then how was it that Asia seemed to be without God’s promised witness? 21 Regarding this question, the Catholic theologian, Jean Danielou, SJ (1905–1974), in his Dieu et Nous, remarks, “The Bible bears witness to a revelation of God addressed to men of all religions.” 22 Even in his assertion that God makes some allowance for those who have not benefited from the “help of a positive revelation,” Danielou nonetheless states that cultures such as that of China remain “vague and confused” without this revelation; Christian missionaries shared this “only we know the entire truth” view when they approached Asia. 23 Having read and considered China’s canonical Confucian works, Matteo Ricci had discovered that China’s intellectual legacy was by no means less sophisticated than the West’s, and he also understood that Western theology had a precedent for finding “God’s witness” among pagan nations. Justin Martyr (103–65 BC) had pondered this question in relation to pre-Christian Greece, and having considered the problem he posited that there is a divine particle in every

6

Introduction

person’s reason that guides her or him, even if she or he is raised without knowledge of Christ. Justin expressed this as the seed of the Word, or “spermatikos logos” (in Latin, ratio seminalis). 24 For Ricci, this meant that he had to locate in China’s past a vestige of this “seed,” which would be found in its indigenous intellectual history; China’s seed of the Word, he determined, was to be found in the Confucian canon. The seed of religious dialogue, East-West, was at last uncovered in the seed of the Word latent within the philosophical treatises, poetry, and esoteric works such as the Yijing (Classic of Changes) that were connected with literati, or rulin (forest of scholars), who hailed from the intellectual lineage of Confucius (c. 551–479 BC). One of the a priori assumptions of European missionaries as they first encountered the East was that, since China already contained a spermatikos logos, their theological conventions must respond to and be grafted onto Asia’s latent “Word.” One adage common among Christian theologians, Catholic and Protestant, was that Theologia Deum docet, a Deo docetur, ad Deum ducit, or “Theology teaches God, is taught by God, and leads to God.” The question for these missionary pioneers in Asia, then, was how their theology must be configured to access such an apparently antithetical cultural milieu to their own, and they had to discover how God had already taught them the truths of Christianity, and how to use the theology they knew to lead the East to the Christian faith. One of the outcomes of these internal deliberations among Christian missionaries resulted in the Jesuit school of Figurists. The Figurist attempt to accommodate China’s past to the Christian biblical understanding of world history resulted in some peculiar assumptions. One of the works read by Jesuit missioners before departing for Asia was Paul Beurrier’s (1608–1696) Speculum christianae religion in triplici lege naturali, mosaica et evangelica, published in 1663. Beurrier wrote that it is “certain that the Chinese had known the same truths about the creation of the world, the birth of the first man, his fall, the Deluge, the Trinity, the Redeemer, the angels and the devils, purgatory, the punishment of the wicked and the recompense of the righteous ones, as the old patriarchs had known.” 25 In other words, the message given to the Jesuits embarking on their missionary venture to China was that they were in part called to teach the Chinese the actual history of their own culture, one that China had somehow forgotten. Thus, Jesuit accommodation did not accommodate Christianity to China, but rather accommodated China to Christianity. Figurists such as Joseph-Henri Prémare, SJ (1666–1736), and Joachim Bouvet, SJ (1656–1730), remapped the contours of China’s past to include several theories that, once discovered by the Chinese, drew harsh criticisms for Jesuit historical creativity. First, these early missionaries argued that God had selected certain individuals through whom to disseminate his divine law, who were called “Supreme Lawgivers,” or sometimes

Introduction

7

“Common Masters.” These lawgivers were, as Arnold Rowbatham calls them, the “progenitors of all human knowledge” and the world’s “great Teachers and Moral Leaders.” 26 In Hebrew this was Enoch, the greatgrandfather of Noah, even though the Figurists also identified the Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes; the Syrian philosopher, Zoroaster; and others as “Common Masters.” In terms of China, Prémare and Bouvet identified the ancient Chinese so-called inventor of script, Fu Xi, as the same person as Enoch; in fact, the Figurists claimed that since Fu Xi was really Enoch, Fu Xi never truly lived in China. Second, the Jesuit Figurists argued that after the Deluge, Noah’s third son, Shem, became the ancient father of the Asian people—that is, all Asians could trace their genetic lineage back to the biblical figure Shem, who originally bestowed on them the monotheistic religion of the Christians. This led the missionaries to believe that the earliest Chinese texts actually reflected their own Western religious worldview, and they thus felt compelled to correct late-imperial Asian “misinterpretations” of their own historical past. Later Protestant missionaries in China inherited these Jesuit attempts to conform China’s past to the biblical narrative. In Henry Clay Mabie’s (1847–1918) Baptist account of Protestant missionary activities in Asia, he includes a photograph of the sage king, Yu’s, tomb in China, which is identified as the “Tomb of Yü, the great-great grandson of Noah.” 27 And third, this Figurist accommodation intimated that the Chinese language itself was infused symbolically with the monotheism and the divine law of the creator discussed in the Judeo-Christian canon. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France holds a rare seventeen-page essay written by an anonymous Jesuit sometime between 1660 and 1670, which was intended to be published along with Philippe Couplet’s, SJ (1623–1693), classic, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687). The essay was never published, but one passage highlights the missionary “attempted understanding” of China we discuss in this volume: “On the subject of Fu Xi, many believe that it was him who created the six classes of characters, but it remains uncertain whether he brought these forms to use. It is also quite probable that Chinese characters reminiscent of hieroglyphs were used in those times. It is certain that the origin of the book called the Yijing, or ‘Classic of Changes,’ deals with the beginning and end of all things.” 28 Otherwise stated, Fu Xi’s putative Yijing was believed to be a kind of cosmological key to understanding the ancient law prescribed in the Judeo-Christian religion. 29 While Matteo Ricci predates the high point of Figurist accommodationism, we can see in his interactions with Chinese intellectuals a modicum of suspicion regarding these novel Jesuit approaches to China’s native religious and philosophical traditions. Ricci’s missionary reception in China was mixed; there were those who fawned over his intellectual acumen and those who wondered what he expected to accomplish in Asia with his “inferior” religious and philo-

8

Introduction

sophical tradition. The late Ming (1368–1644) intellectual Feng Yingjing (1555–1606) famously praised Ricci in his preface to the Tianzhu shiyi, asserting that “Sir Li [Ricci] has traveled for eighty thousand miles and investigated the nine heavens and nine rivers most accurately,” and he continued to affirm that after reading Ricci’s arguments, “we ought to accept his reasoning on divinity.” 30 It should be noted, nonetheless, that despite Feng’s apparent esteem for Ricci’s reasoning, he never became a Christian. The Ming philosopher Li Zhi (1527–1602) had another view of Matteo Ricci, one that contained both positive and pejorative sentiments about the Christian missionary from Macerata. In correspondence to a friend, Li wrote of an encounter with Father Ricci: Xitai [Matteo Ricci] is a man from the regions of the great West who has traveled over 100,000 li to reach China. . . . Now, he is perfectly capable of speaking our language, writing our characters and conforming to our conventions of good behavior. He is an altogether remarkable man. . . . His manner is as simple as can be. . . . Among all the people I have ever seen, there is not his equal. . . . But I do not really know what he has come to do here. I have met him three times and I still do not know what he is here for. I think it would be much too stupid for him to want to substitute his own teaching for that of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius. So that is surely not the reason. 31

After his litany of accolades, Li Zhi asked what most Chinese intellectuals of his time wished to know: Why did Ricci come to China? Surely, they thought, it was not to replace China’s indigenous Confucian tradition with the doctrine of Christianity. China remained mostly unconvinced by the acrobatic missionary intellectual attempts to make the East conform to the Christian template of world history, informed as it was by narrow biblical historiography. While difficulties persisted as Christian missionaries sought to evangelize Asia, the Jesuit method of “cultural accommodation” attempted to reach an understanding of the society within which they found themselves, and did in fact help to mitigate many of the inevitable tensions that arose when two such disparate cultures first met. In his introduction to the Fonti Riccianne, the definitive collection of Ricci’s works, the Jesuit sinologist, Pasquale d’Elia, SJ (1890–1963), describes Ricci’s accommodationist view of mission work: “It was certainly not his intention to ‘Europeanize’ the peoples of the Far East. What he wanted, and very strongly, was instead that in all things compatible with dogma and evangelical morality the missionaries should become Indian in India, Chinese in China, and Japanese in Japan.” 32 The missionary ideal to be “Chinese in China” was largely inspired by the enterprise of the famed Francis Xavier, SJ (1506–1552), who is said to have, after discovering that Japan was so

Introduction

9

unlike his native Navarre, adopted St. Paul’s advice to “Be all things to all people.” 33 OVERARCHING THEMES AND CHAPTER OUTLINES The principal aim of this collection of new research on Christianity in China is to confront the historical realities of conflict and confluence in light of the so-called Ricci method, upon which later missionaries mainly built their successes and failures. We wish to consider the anxieties, and even perhaps oddities, of first impressions and later interactions, and we readily admit that the view of the missionary, who sees a heathen, and even cannibalistic Other, has its analog in the view of the Asian, who also sees a heathen, and even cannibalistic Other. William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), famous for his “spoonerisms,” is noted to have remarked after meeting a widow, “Her late husband, you know, a very sad death— eaten by missionaries.” 34 In this apparent transposition of “cannibals” and missionaries we are allowed to imagine the irony of missionaries who are actually “the heathens.” But this is precisely what many Chinese believed Christian missionaries to be; Catholic Eucharistic theology rendered this rumor easy to transmit. We are interested here, too, in considering what early formation Christian missionaries received before traveling to Asia, and how this formation may have informed their views of, and interactions with, native Chinese. The contributors are interested in presenting new research regarding cultural tensions, and even martyrdoms, that punctuate Christianity’s contact with China. And in some way, the chapters here respond not only to Ricci’s positive opinion of the Christian mission but also to Jacques Gernet’s later pejorative opinion of it. One cannot easily overlook Gernet’s remark in his introduction to China and the Christian Impact that “Christianity was a religion that changed customs, called into question accepted ideas and, above all, threatened to undermine existing situations.” 35 This volume intentionally approaches these questions from contrasting disciplinary traditions, historical regions, and eras, and it wishes to remedy the unfortunate reality that, even with the recent growth in Sinomissionary studies, few scholars conduct research on the rich missionary history of China compared to other scholarly areas, and fewer still devote their interests to the question of religious conflict and accommodation. Each chapter responds, moreover, to the question of conflict and confluence as Christianity was first introduced to Asia and was later adapted to its new cultural context in China, even as it thrives today. We have additionally tried to confront the question of denominational difference, as this, too, influenced Christian efforts in the Chinese landscape. Since only Catholic missions occupied the China field until the early nineteenth century, the bulk of this volume necessarily considers Catholic history. In at

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least three chapters Protestant Christianity is considered, and one sees that despite the theological, liturgical, and cultural differences between Catholics and Protestants, both groups, for the most part, inherited and carried on Matteo Ricci’s “method” of accommodation to alleviate the initial religious and cultural antagonisms they encountered when entering East Asia. Culture and conflict were catholic problems for Christians in Asia, regardless of whether they were Catholic. As the Jesuit missiological approach comprised the starting point of our research for this volume, it made sense that the first chapter be dedicated to Francis Xavier and his role as the forerunner of the Christian mission to China. In chapter 1, Eric Cunningham reflects upon the socalled failure of the Jesuit missionary to Asia, Francis Xavier, to convert the Japanese on a large scale and to successfully arrive in China, which was in fact his grand scheme. Among the historical assumptions that Cunningham challenges is the general affirmation that the Jesuit mission to Asia was characteristically “top down” and solely “accommodationist.” Rather, Cunningham notes, Xavier, the accepted father of Asian missions, “never attained the level of intimacy with Japan’s ruling elites that Ricci or Verbiest enjoyed in China. He was not appointed to any court positions, he did not achieve fluency in written or spoken Japanese, he did not dress like an ‘Oriental’ sage, and he would not have dreamed of participating in any local religious rites. He was not trying to engage in any syncretistic projects, nor engineer any grand fusions between East and West. No pope or provincial ever censured him for becoming ‘too native’ and Rome never became embroiled in any grudge matches with the emperor or shogun over who actually ‘owned’ him.” This description of Xavier could hardly be used to portray much of the early Jesuit mission in China; Cunningham’s chapter seeks to recast Xavier into a more specifically Xaverian light, one that was “successful” for reasons other than those ascribed to his later confreres. Cunningham points to factors not normally mentioned when considering missionary “success”: “Unfortunately, what church historians have to admit is that . . . any influence Christianity enjoys in the East today exists because of more recent imperialist adventures.” In this light, Xavier was not a member of the political and imperialist enterprise that ushered later missionaries into Asia, but rather was centered exclusively on his role as a messenger of his religious convictions. Comparing Xavier’s impact upon Japan’s native culture to, say, Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s (1796–1858) 1853 landing at Uraga Harbor, we see that Japan’s apparent Westernization far outreaches its Christianization. If Xavier was indeed the missionary who set the tone for the mission to China, then how can scholars today reconcile this fact to the reality that Japan is less than 1 percent Christian? Cunningham thus recommends reading Xavier’s success not by enumeration—how many Christians are there in Japan?—but rather by Xavier’s unapologetic faithfulness to the religious message he

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struggled to convey, and he states that this model encouraged subsequent Jesuits to enter China after Xavier’s example. After Xavier, scholars of the history of Christianity in China most often turn toward the famous “Father of the China Mission,” Matteo Ricci, and his “method.” Chapter 2 thus considers Ricci and his formation as a Jesuit and how it informed his approach toward the “conversion of China.” Whereas the predominance of scholarly work on Ricci and his legacy has focused on his life after leaving his native Europe, Michael Maher’s study considers what he refers to as the “Jesuit suitcase”—the intellectual, theological, and cultural suppositions that would have comprised his “suitcase” as he departed for his famous mission. One of Ricci’s most notable characteristics was his ability to establish friendships (guanxi) with China’s native literati. In his Della entrata della Comgagnia di Gesù e christianità nella Cina, or “Entrance of Christianity in China,” Ricci discusses more than eighty-five Chinese persons by name, most of them notable officials with whom he became friends. There can be little doubt that his ability to integrate with and successfully graft his Christian beliefs onto Chinese society marks him as one of the greatest accommodationists in mission history, but Maher asks, “Did Ricci’s Jesuit formation actually provide him with intellectual, spiritual, and psychological dispositions that enabled him to achieve greater success in China or was his own personal character the sole basis for his extraordinary ability?” Was it something in his Jesuit formation or merely charisma and intellectual savvy that facilitated his accomplishments? In Maher’s unique approach to considering Matteo Ricci’s accommodation, he principally focuses on three aspects of Ricci’s Jesuit formation (the “optimistic view of human nature,” “the classics,” and “obedience”), and he begins his study with Ricci’s requisite practice of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s (1491–1556) Exercitia Spiritualia, or Spiritual Exercises. From the Exercises, Maher suggests, Ricci was infused with an optimistic view of human nature, for did not Ignatius exhort the exertant to presuppose “that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it”? Thus, in his first encounters with others, Ricci was inclined to adopt what the Chinese would have considered a Mencian view—that is, that humans are intrinsically good. Second, Maher contends that the Jesuit emphasis on the mastery of Western classics informed Ricci’s later command of China’s classics. Taking as a basis for engagement Tertullian’s famous question— “what does Athens have to say to Jerusalem (how can pagan thinkers contribute to the knowledge of salvation)?”—Ricci concluded that Christianity was latent within China’s canonical texts, which were valuable in that they could be used to help explain Christian teachings. The third component of Ricci’s Jesuit formation that Maher identifies as particularly influential in his strategies to convert China was Ricci’s idea of obedience, one of the notable marks of Jesuit character. As Maher

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Introduction

notes, the Jesuit who is under the vow of obedience is thus predisposed to hear “the voice of God . . . being spoken by someone else.” Since the root meaning of the word “obedience” is the Latin obidere (“to listen”), Ricci’s “intellectual suitcase” would have included affection for attending to the statements of others, such as his Chinese acquaintances and friends. In this sense, Ricci’s obedience was able to manifest itself into openness to new ideas and friendships, and perhaps this expression of obedience is what inspired his work on friendship, which, as Jonathan Spence suggests, accorded him “more prestige and admiration among the Chinese than anything else he wrote.” 36 The third chapter, by Robert Entenmann, confronts the problem of conflict between native Chinese and missionaries in eighteenth-century Sichuan, focusing on the arrest, court interrogations, and near execution of the French priest, Urbain Lefebvre (1725–1792), a member of the Missions Étrangères de Paris. Entenmann’s research discloses how Christianity was tolerated in Sichuan despite legal prohibitions of the sect, which was considered heterodox; Lefebvre, along with native Chinese priests, was arrested, not due to anti-Christian edicts, but rather because of tensions between non-Christians and Chinese Catholics caused by an unpaid debt. Once arrested, the European and Chinese priests were accused of collaborations with the despised White Lotus society, and this allegation precipitated more harsh treatment. One of the manifest values of this chapter is its description of a conflict that at the outset had less to do with cultural difference and anti-Christianity than local misunderstanding, though once Lefebvre was seized the interrogations indeed centered on religion. Whereas in other arrests of European missionaries around that time the foreign Christians did not fare well, Lefebvre’s case highlights incidents of greater leniency. Levebre’s interrogators admitted that his religion was “tolerably good”; however, it was his “preaching a doctrine contrary to our customs and proscribed by the emperor” that provoked the ire of local officials. Entenmann’s study provides unique insights into the late-imperial juridical process of dealing with Western missionaries enmeshed in local conflicts, and allows us scholarly access to how Jesuit service to the emperor in Beijing relieved Sino-Western antagonisms in the provinces. In fact, Lefebvre was able, like Matteo Ricci, to ingratiate himself with his captors by offering them “exotic gifts”: brandy, a portrait of Louis XIV (1638–1715), and candelabras. As this chapter reveals, for “most of the following half-century, this pattern of tacit toleration continued.” This toleration was, nonetheless, halted in 1784, when a nationwide persecution of Christians was initiated. We learn from Entenmann’s chapter that the Chinese priests who were arrested along with Lefebvre were more harshly treated; indeed, beyond his physical punishments, Father Andreas Ly’s personal belongings connected to his religious faith were seized and burned. Entenmann’s study demonstrates clearly how Chris-

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tianity in China encountered alternating periods of acceptance and antagonism. Thomas Reilly’s discussion of the Taiping religion in chapter 4 offers an alternative way of understanding the complex history of the Taiping Rebellion and suggests that Christianity could, in the context of late Qing China, be both successfully grafted onto traditional Chinese culture and simultaneously distorted into something hardly recognizable by Western Christians. Reilly’s research seeks to provide a balanced view of Taiping “Christianity.” In Augustus F. Lindley’s (1840–1873) 1866 exhaustive apologetic for the Taiping cause, we read about the movement in the most sympathetic terms: “Let us trust that, phoenix-like, the Ti-pings may rise from the ashes of their former glory and yet succeed in their great religio-political movement, that they may again print and widely circulate the Holy Bible, which, throughout all their territory, British bayonets and Manchoo torches have for a time destroyed, and that England will not have to answer for the sin of crushing the first Christian movement in modern Asia.” 37 Lindley was, as Vincent Shih refers to him, a “Taiping partisan” who believed that the movement was the first genuine Chinese “cause for the Gospel,” which was, Lindley argues, “crushed” by English bayonets. 38 Lindley’s optimism regarding the orthodoxy of Taiping Christianity was later challenged. In Jonathan Spence’s God’s Chinese Son, for example, a more critical image of Taiping belief is outlined: God the Father is a yellow-bearded old man with numerous sons, including the Hakka founder of the Taipings; Jesus has wives and children; and the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, lives in heaven and is nicknamed “sister” by the heavenly hosts. 39 Reilly’s chapter approaches the historical legacy of the Taiping Rebellion somewhere between these two positions, one being that it was indeed a Christian movement, and the other that it was so Sinicized as to render it into what appeared to be a new religion. Reilly suggests that since Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864) “had adapted his new Christian faith to the Chinese context, it was no longer a Western religion, a foreign creed.” In fact, this chapter offers a more nuanced vision of how Taiping Christianity was indigenized by associating the Shang dynasty (c. 1556–1045 BC) deity Shangdi with the God of the JudeoChristian Bible. Relying on strong textual evidence, Reilly argues that Taiping Christianity was envisaged as a “revival and a restoration of the ancient Chinese classical faith in Shangdi,” which was “the substance of the Taiping appeal.” China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (r. 221–210 BC), had usurped God’s title and position by arrogating to himself the title Huangdi, which blasphemously placed him on the same level as God (di). Thus, rather than rebelling against the corrupt ruling house—the normal justification for rebellion in China—the Taipings rebelled because of Manchu blasphemy. Reilly suggests, perhaps in contradiction to some scholarly conclusions about the nature of the rebellion, that “the religious

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Introduction

movement was not transformed into a mostly political rebellion; rather the Taiping Rebellion was from start to finish a religious movement.” In the fifth chapter I consider China’s Taiyuan Incident, 9 July 1900, from two angles: the cultural and religious factors that contributed to the conflicts between the Christian missionaries and the local magistrate, and the denominational differences between the Catholic and Protestant missions in Taiyuan. I also examine how historical record, as it is transmitted, is necessarily nuanced, and perhaps altered, to reflect the divergent theological views of these two groups. Catholic accounts of the Taiyuan massacre reflect Catholic devotional literature of the nineteenth century, and Protestant accounts reveal that their martyrs were, as I note, “afforded opportunities to, in essence, preach to the governor, his troops, and the crowd before finally being executed.” Despite their emphatic narrative differences, both Catholic and Protestant accounts of the incident nonetheless set Western “civilization” against Asian “backwardness.” Official Chinese accounts in gazetteers (difangzhi) unsurprisingly render an alternative historical narrative to the ones produced by Western missionaries. My aim in this chapter is to focus on conflict, not only between Asia and Western missionaries but also between missionary denominations. What results is a consideration of contact, conflict, and perceptions, East/West, that are still found today. In chapter 6, Lydia Gerber explores several questions regarding the historical mission of Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930), who after his mission to Qingdao became one of the most prodigious and influential sinologists in the history of Western scholarship regarding China’s distant past. Indeed, one of the larger questions she confronts, though somewhat implicitly, is how far Christian theology and practice can be stretched and still be considered “Christian.” Of Wilhelm’s life and work in China, Gerber takes note of his assertion “that the human connection to the divine was still evolving and would encompass more than just Christian traditions.” Among the strategies of accommodation adopted by Wilhelm was his refusal to baptize native Chinese, for, as he believed, baptism was viewed in China as the renunciation of national identity rather than the changing of “one’s religious affiliation from Confucianism to Christianity.” Conforming to the theological view of his father-in-law, Christoph Blumhardt (1842–1919), baptism was achieved “with fire and the Holy Spirit,” and not through the ritualized performance of the immersion or sprinkling of water. Wilhelm’s missionary approach was eventually termed das indirekte Missionsverfahren (the indirect missionary method) and Gerber’s research notes that his “method” attracted vigorous criticisms for being so indirect that it had in reality strayed entirely from orthodox Christianity. To mitigate these complaints, Wilhelm sought to present a Confucian-Christian admixture that was even more integrated than the Jesuit Figurist attempts of the seventeenth century. As Gerber suggests, Wilhelm held that

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the “Bible will not only not alienate students from their Confucian heritage but also become a means to ‘fulfilling’ the essential goal of a Confucian education.” Wilhelm’s mission school in Qingdao represents one of the very few Western institutions that prepared Chinese students for the imperial exams while also teaching the rudiments of the biblical narrative. In Wilhelm’s view, as this chapter demonstrates, teaching one to be a Confucian junzi could “no longer be considered the lesser attainment, compared to conversion to Christianity.” Wherein the predominant methodological approaches in this volume fit into the Western humanities tradition, we thought it appropriate to include an contribution from a Mainland Chinese scholar who provides a social science analysis of conflict and accommodation in the missionary enterprise in China. Thus chapter 7 provides a study of Christian and folk religious exchange in Shanxi Province by Taiyuan scholar Liu Anrong. Liu’s research analyzes the ways in which Catholic beliefs either influenced local folk religion around Taiyuan or were influenced by the syncretic religious convictions of local practices. One of the salient characteristics of Liu’s methodology, representative of Chinese scholarship on religious topics, is her use of local interviews to consider issues of Christian belief and practice as they were understood and experienced on China’s northern landscape during the Republican Era (1911–1949). Indeed, one of Liu’s chief findings is that, as she states, “Catholics without a good grasp of Catholic doctrine, along with those followers of popular religion who likewise cannot explain their folk beliefs, assert that their respective religious traditions differ only in custom.” Her study reveals persuasively that Catholics believed the God (Tianzhu) of their Bible and the main deity worshiped in Shanxi folk religion, Old Man Heaven (Laotianye), were one and the same deity. The final study in this volume, chapter 8, by Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, confronts accommodation and conflict in China’s Maoist and post-Maoist contexts, providing scholars with a unique glimpse at how China’s Christian population has surprisingly flourished under state restriction, or perhaps even repression, rather than diminishing. Lee’s study focuses on “the growth of Christianity and its integration into the fabric of Chinese society during the Reform Era (1978–present),” and how Chinese Christians have adjusted their modes of religious expression, perhaps even transforming more traditional forms of theology into new and syncretic Chinese manifestations. This chapter seeks also to amend how scholars have defined Chinese Christian groups, suggesting that the terms “underground church” (dixia jiaohui) and “aboveground church” (dishang jiaohui) are both hackneyed and misleading. He prefers that Catholic and Protestant Christians in China be more accurately referred to as “registered” and “unregistered” communities, and he states that the lines between these two groups are elusive and shifting. In reality, all of China’s

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Christians, Lee suggests, collectively identify themselves as “victims of the socialist transformation during the Maoist era.” 40 Lee’s chapter also considers how Christianity has, largely in the setting of rural and uneducated China, been transformed in some places into what may be construed as syncretic, if not entirely novel, religious traditions. While “prosperity gospel” theology, popular in China’s commercial sector today, is not unknown outside of China, other sectarian groups are unique to China’s rural landscape. One of the more controversial examples of such a sectarian group is the so-called Established King sect (Beili Wang), whose founder, Wu Yangming, declared himself to be the Messiah and claimed that the eschatological end of the world was close. While the Established King sect and others have emerged in China, they nonetheless remain criticized by mainstream Christian groups. Among the scholarly contributions of Lee’s chapter is its careful look at how missiological Christianity has dealt flexibly with state suppression and adapted itself to China’s current confrontation with modernity, materialism, and ideological disparity. CONTINUED CONVERSATION I began this introduction with a quote from Matteo Ricci to his brother in Europe, wherein the missionary, famous for his “integration” into Chinese society, refers to his life in China as “a voluntary exile, not only far away from dear ones, father, mother, brothers, and relatives, but also from Christians and our nation.” Matteo Ricci recognized the uneasiness of living in a context of such cultural and religious difference, and expressed a longing for the friends, family, and the religious expressions of his own nation. Discomfort precipitated by difference is natural, but perhaps what makes Ricci unique, and possibly why there are presently so many books about him, is that he was able to largely avert the conflicts caused by difference and convert Chinese not only into Christians but also into friends. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE–CE 65) famously quipped, “When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.” 41 Ricci proved Seneca wrong. While this volume confines itself to a thematic cohesion, accommodation and conflict, we have purposely included divergent disciplinary approaches, historical eras, and regions. We have likewise deliberately dedicated only one single chapter to Matteo Ricci, despite the fact that we are all in some way responding to his, or even Xavier’s, foundational “method” of accommodation. This has allowed us to speak more to what transpired after Xavier and Ricci “opened” the mission field in China. Recent publications on Ricci are prodigious: R. Po-Chia Hsia’s A Jesuit in the Forbidden City, Michela Fontana’s Matteo Ricci, and Christopher Shelke

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and Mariella Demichel’s Matteo Ricci in China are only three examples of a landslide of scholarly works dedicated to Matteo Ricci in the past few years. In addition to works such as Liam Brockey’s Journey to the East, Eugenio Menegon’s Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, and Lian Xi’s important monograph, Redeemed by Fire, we are pleased to submit our scholarly voices to the growing number of published studies concerning the history of Christianity in China. 42 In the area of Chinese Christian history there is on the mainland a reawakening of interest and scholarship as it pertains to Sino-missionary exchange. Recent publications include Zhang Xianqing’s Guanfu zongjiao yu tianzhujiao (Local Authorities, Religion, and Roman Catholicism), Liu Anrong’s Shanxi tianzhujiao shi yanjiu (Research on the History of Roman Catholicism in Shanxi), and Yu Xueyun and Liu Lin’s recent edited volume, Tianjin laojiaotang (Old Churches of Tianjin), a well-researched and beautifully illustrated study of Tianjin’s major churches and cathedrals that were constructed in a Western style. 43 Chinese academic institutions, such as People’s University and Henan University, have hosted highprofile scholarly symposia on the study of Christianity in China and have invited local and international scholars to discuss topics that only a few years ago were politically “sensitive.” In the end, our research seeks to contribute to, and participate in, what has become a popular and sizeable academic conversation. In light of the growing imperative to better understand religious conflict and confluence, we have, as Ricci wrote in the introduction to his Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), “[written] down these dialogues . . . and collected them into a book.” 44 NOTES 1. Matteo Ricci, SJ, Matteo Ricci Lettere (1580–1609), ed. Francesco D’Arelli (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2001), 401. Quoted in R. Po-Chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 261. 2. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 7. 3. In Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity, Volume One: 635–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 632. 4. Letter from Matteo Ricci, SJ, to Gerolamo Costa, SJ. APUG, 292-miscellanea. Translated in Christopher Shelke, SJ, and Mariella Demichele, eds., Matteo Ricci in China: Inculturation Through Friendship and Faith (Rome: Gregorian Press, 2010), 87. 5. Kangxi, “Summons to the Westerner,” 17 December 1720, ANPM. 6. For several essays that consider the question of representation and misrepresentation, see Anthony E. Clark, ed., Beating Devils and Burning Their Books: Views of China, Japan, and the West (Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 2010). 7. Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Antiforeignism 1860–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 31. 8. The Roman Ritual, Volume One: The Sacraments and Processions, trans. Rev. Philip T. Weller (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1950), 336–39. 9. Roman Ritual, 340–41.

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10. The Bixiejishi 辟邪紀實 (A Record of Facts to Ward Off Heterodoxy) was authored under the nom de plume Tianxia diyi shangxin ren, 天下第一傷心人, or “the world’s most heartbroken man” (Hunan 1861). 11. See Cohen, China and Christianity, middle signature of illustrations. 12. For a color plate of many images from the Bixiejishi, see Marina Warner, The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz’u-Hsi 1835–1908, Empress Dowager of China (London: Cardinal, 1972), 213. 13. Several works consider the history of Christian persecution in Japan; see, for example, George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), and for a more general outline, see Joseph Jennes, CICM, A History of the Catholic Church in Japan: From its Beginnings to the Early Meiji Era (Tokyo: Oriens Institute for Religious Research, 1973). 14. Quoted in Henry Mazeau, The Heroine of Pe-Tang: Hélène de Jaurias, Sister of Charity (1824–1900) (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1928), 51. 15. Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 16. Chiang Ying-ho, “Literary Reactions to the Keng-tzu Incident (1900),” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982, 100. 17. Alphonse Favier, CM, The Heart of Pekin: Bishop A. Favier’s Diary of the Siege, May–August, 1900 (Boston: Marlier, 1901), 37. 18. Favier, The Heart of Pekin, 52. 19. Quoted in Mazeau, The Heroine of Pe-Tang, 221. 20. Matteo Ricci 利瑪竇, Jiaoyoulun 交友論 (Essay on Friendship), BAV, Borgia Cinese 234, 10˚, 6 verso. Also see Matteo Ricci, On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, trans. Timothy Billings (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 92–93. 21. See Acts, 14: 16–17. Also translated in Shelke and Demichele, Matteo Ricci in China, 201. 22. Jean Danielou, God and Us, trans. Walter Roberts (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1957), 10. 23. Danielou, God and Us, 14. 24. See L. W. Bardard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 33. 25. Paul Beurrier, Speculum christianae Religion in triplici lege naturali, Mosaica et evangelica (Paris, 1666), quoted in Knud Lundbæk, Joseph de Prémare (1666–1736), S.J.: Chinese Philology and Figurism (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1991), 14. 26. Arnold H. Rowbatham, “The Jesuit Figurists and Eighteenth-Century Religious Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 17, no. 4 (October 1956), 476. 27. Henry C. Mabie, In Brightest Asia (Boston: W. G. Corthell, 1891), 57. 28. Unprinted manuscript to be attached to Philippe Couplet’s Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Latin 6277. Most of the manuscript is concerned with the rudiments of Chinese script, though statements such as this one disclose the anonymous author’s Figurist proclivities. 29. Joachim Bouvet’s correspondence with the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is particularly revealing vis-à-vis the Yijing’s role as symbolically encoded with divine and universal laws. For a more detailed consideration of this theory, see Knud Lundbæk’s study of Joseph de Prémare and David E. Mungello’s Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1985). 30. Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚, ed., Li Madou zhongwen zhuyiji 利瑪竇中文著譯集 (Collected Chinese Translated Works of Matteo Ricci) (Shanghai 上海: Fudan daxuechubanshe 復旦大學出版社, 2001), 97–98. Translated in Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City, 223. 31. Quoted in Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 18–19.

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32. Pasquale d’Elia, ed., Fonti Ricciane: Storia dell’introduzione del cristianesimo in Cina, 3 vols. (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1942–1949), Introduction, xciii. Accessed at ARSI. Also quoted in Michela Fontana, Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 27. 33. See 1 Corinthians 9:19–23. 34. In William Hayter, Spooner: A Biography (London: W. H. Allen, 1977), 140. 35. Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, 1. 36. Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Penguin, 1985), 150. 37. Augustus F. Lindley [Linle], Ti-ping Tien-kwoh: The History of the Ti-ping Revolution, vol. 2 (London: Day & Son, 1866), 822. 38. See Vincent Y. C. Shih, The Taiping Ideology: Its Sources, Interpretations, and Influences (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 406. Also see Lindley, Ti-ping Tien-kwoh, 822. 39. See Jonathan Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Qiuquan (New York: Norton, 1996), passim. 40. For an important work related to Christianity during the Maoist era in China, see Paul P. Mariani, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 41. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard M. Gummere (London: William Heinemann, 1917), 7. 42. See Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), and Lian Xi, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 43. See Zhang Xianqing 張先清, Guanfu zongjiao yu tianzhujiao 官府，宗教與天主教 (Local Authorities, Religion, and Roman Catholicism) (Beijing 北京: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 2009), Liu Anrong 劉安榮, Shanxi tianzhujiao shi yanjiu 山西天主教史研究 (Research on the History of Roman Catholicism in Shanxi) (Taiyuan 太原: Beiyue wenyi chubanshe 北岳文藝出版社, 2011), and Yu Xueyun 于學蘊 and Liu Lin 劉琳, Tianjin laojiaotang 天津老教堂 (Old Churches of Tianjin) (Tianjin 天津: Tianjin renmin chubanshe 天津人民出版社, 2005). 44. Matteo Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, translated and introduced by Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, SJ, in a Chinese-English edition edited by Edward J. Malatesta, SJ (St. Louis: Institute for Jesuit Sources, 1985), 60–61.

ONE A Glorious Failure The Mission of Francis Xavier and Its Consequences on the China Enterprise Eric P. Cunningham

THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETING XAVIER’S MISSION TO JAPAN Any conversation on the modern Christian missions in East Asia, especially China, should begin with a discussion of the first Catholic missionary in the field, the Jesuit Father, Francis Xavier, whom Catholics honor even today as the “glorious Apostle to the Far East” (see figure 1.1). In introducing the gospel to Asia in 1549, Xavier opened the door for later missionaries from the Society of Jesus, men such as Alessandro Valignano, SJ (1539–1606), who also served in Japan, and Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall von Bell, SJ (1591–1666), and Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623–1688), all of whom served in China. The influence of these priests in their respective mission fields was so great that the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are still commonly known as the “Christian centuries” of Japan and China. Indeed Society refectories were abuzz with stories of Xavier’s exploits in Japan, and his story was a precursor to their encounters with the Middle Kingdom. Historians generally attribute the success of these missions to a particular approach to conversion that was developed by the Society of Jesus for its overseas apostolates. The approach used a number of evangelical innovations, the most important of which Joanna Waley Cohen calls “top-down” preaching. This was the practice of “focusing attention on the educated, upper-class Chinese rather than on the ordinary people” in 21

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Figure 1.1. Saint Francis Xavier, SJ, presenting Christianity to the non-Christian East. Credit: Frontispiece of Dominique Bouhours, SJ, La Vie de Saint François de la Compagnie de Jesus Apostre des Indes et Japon (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1682). Copy held in the rare books collection of The Beijing Center, Beijing, China.

the hopes that their conversion would lead to the subsequent conversion of their political and social subordinates. 1 The Jesuits prepared themselves for meaningful encounters with the intellectual elites by studying the Chinese language and classics, and then demonstrating their own superior knowledge of Western science and world affairs. The preaching component consisted of portraying Christianity as a kind of natural culmination of native Confucian philosophy, a method that was predicated on the idea that the Logos had always been present among the Chinese people, and that Confucius’s thought was merely China’s good (if imperfect) way of groping for the eternal truth of Heaven. Once the Jesuits could show that Christ was the real but long-hidden goal of Confucian ethical aspirations, court mandarins and local officials might also be persuaded that they needed the doctrine of salvation in order to attain real virtue and more perfectly honor their ancestors. Closely related to the top-down strategy was the policy of cultural “adaptationism” or “accommodation,” which meant “adapting to Chinese ways to the greatest extent possible without compromising the in-

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tegrity of Catholicism.” 2 The Jesuit ability to “find Christ in all things,” to communicate in native languages, to participate in Confucian rites, and to adopt native dress was generally as impressive to the mandarins as it was irksome to other missionary orders, whose tallies of new converts never came close to rivaling those of the Jesuits. The policy of accommodation also earned for the Jesuits the enduring respect of historians, who still credit the Society with the opening of modern cross-cultural dialogue. For better or worse, though, when we look to Xavier’s Japanese mission for origins of these famous “top-down” and “accommodation” strategies, we encounter difficulties locating evidential support of this assumption. Xavier never attained the level of intimacy with Japan’s ruling elites that Ricci or Verbiest enjoyed in China. He was not appointed to any court positions, he did not achieve fluency in written or spoken Japanese, he did not dress like an “Oriental” sage, and he would not have dreamed of participating in any local religious rites. He was not trying to engage in any syncretistic projects, nor engineer any grand fusions between East and West. No pope or provincial ever censured him for becoming “too native” and Rome never became embroiled in any grudge matches with the emperor or shogun over who actually “owned” him. Xavier was, in the end, merely a faithful and fervent missionary, whose primary task, according to his own understanding, was to bring the Japanese people “to a knowledge of their Creator, Redeemer, and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 3 Xavier thus poses something of a problem for secular and Christian historians alike. For modern secular historians, who credit the Jesuit missions with being the antecedent to more acceptable kinds of internationalization—modern trade, technological exchange, and diplomacy—it is better for the “the Jesuit project” to be interpreted as an episode of cultural dialogue, rather than evangelical mission. It is better, too, that the Society’s primary directive to save souls remain obscured beneath more materially significant achievements, such as introducing East Asia to modern astronomy, cartography, architecture, and so forth. By focusing on the cultural rather than spiritual aspects of the Jesuit missions, scholars can accomplish two critical modern historical objectives: first, they can place the starting point of contemporary global affairs in the general milieu of early modern European civilization (specifically, the Scientific Revolution); second, they can portray the influence of Christianity on the historical process as a kind of time-specific “precursor” to modernity rather than a living impulse that may still seek to redeem the modern world, as the Jesuits suggested. In other words, the Jesuit “moment” in East Asian history can be written as something of a fractal analogue for Christianity in the larger historical process—a philosophical impulse that had its day but ultimately (and necessarily) gave way to the progressive rationalism that animates the historical process.

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What this seems to suggest is that modern historians can, perhaps, value Jesuit accommodation precisely because it failed to convert East Asia, yet in its failure provided various means for secular modernity to make its own inroads. Accordingly, as a model for internationalization, the zealous, rustic, and disturbingly premodern Xavier often gets overlooked in favor of his more urbane, cosmopolitan, and appropriately modern successors in China. The modernist’s narrative can confirm that even though Western Christianity was eclipsed in the East, Western modernization continued apace, and men like Matteo Ricci can be cast in the role of forerunner to the culturally adept modern diplomat, the savvy trade negotiator, or the earnest and impressionable Fulbright scholar. For ecclesial historians, whose narratives might flow better if the Asian missionary project exhibited any real coherence in motivation and execution throughout its history, Xavier’s work in Japan can only be seen as a false start—an enterprise that required informed revision before it could achieve success. It would be better if the growing missions in East Asia today could be directly linked to the first modern mission, and it would be better if the history of Christian evangelization in Asia could be seen as a trajectory without rupture—something ever-expanding, everdeepening, and at the very least ever-present. It would be better if church historians could say that the religious dialogue initiated by Xavier was still alive and well, and waiting for its completion in the fullness of progressive time. Unfortunately, what church historians have to admit is that the early modern Jesuit missions appear to have failed, and that any influence Christianity enjoys in East Asia today exists because of more recent imperialist adventures. Christianity as it is practiced in Japan and China today was not imported by gaunt, wild-eyed Spanish preachers, but rather by genteel, bourgeois Christians, following in the wake of military conquest and propped up by unequal treaties. The mission of Francis Xavier forces church historians to contend with the reality that the comforting narrative of modern progress that leads inevitably to everyone’s satisfaction in the end is largely unavailable to them. Church historians cannot adopt the discourse of the modernist without reducing missionary work to the status of a subsidiary enterprise in a great agenda of modern cross-cultural exchange. Moreover, they cannot view international Christian missions in the same way they view (or at least until very recently viewed) global finance—which is to say, as stable, well-maintained structures that are always safe from the danger of collapse. They certainly cannot be satisfied with concluding that the Christian missions merely set the stage for material modernization, and that the ultimate historical purpose of the Jesuits in East Asia was to make sure, for example, that China could modernize and attain superpower status in the twenty-first century. Church historians abdicate their calling if they can only interpret Francis Xavier as merely a step in the global triumph of modern historical consciousness.

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How, then, do we interpret the Japanese mission of Francis Xavier? What sense are we to make of such a profoundly important moment in modern church history, when it only seems to serve as an embarrassment to both the modern historian for its manifestly religious quality and the Christian historian for its ultimate failure? In the spirit of this edited collection, in which we remember and celebrate the Christian missions in China, which Xavier helped to “wedge open,” I would like to propose a new way of looking at the mission of Francis Xavier, one that neither credits it for being merely the beginning of modern East-West dialogue nor condemns it for being insufficiently modern or too short-lived. I would like to suggest that Xavier’s mission can stand on its own, uncoupled from any modernist interpretations, as a model of authentic evangelism—a model that was both faithful in its day and perfectly viable for the needs of postmodern missionary activity. Xavier’s work in Japan offered valid strategies for the subsequent China Jesuits whose object was to live and preach the gospel in an adverse environment. I would argue that for Francis Xavier and his confreres the proper end of any mission had less to do with good recruiting than with the gesture of standing for one’s truth for the sake of righteousness. In this sense the vital importance of Xavier’s mission can be discovered in those features that most clearly defined it: his radical fidelity to his religious vocation and his persistent failure to achieve his practical ends. THE MAKING OF A MISSIONARY SAINT The life of St. Francis Xavier is a subject that eludes easy historical judgments. On one hand, Xavier appears to be something of a religious action hero; a bona fide medieval knight and man of adventure who traveled the world, tangled with pirates, befriended samurai lords, endured bitter hardships, and never shirked his sacred duty for the sake of comfort. On the other hand, he is the quintessential plaster saint, a gentle, self-effacing man whose passionate and often tearful image is reproduced in countless holy cards, statues, and stained-glass windows. While Xavier has been the subject of many biographies (most hagiographical, others ponderously matter-of-fact), his own detailed letters provide the best insights into his life and work. Of these letters there are many, overflowing with declarations of fervent devotion to God, accounts of bitter combat with the devil, and unapologetic testimonials of love for the various peoples he encountered over his career—particularly the Japanese, whom he praised as “the best [people] that have as yet been discovered.” 4 Xavier was born in 1506 at the ancestral castle of his mother’s family in Navarre, close to the birthplace of his companion and mentor, St. Ignatius of Loyola. He met Ignatius when they were both students at the University of Paris, sharing quarters with Peter Favre, SJ (1506–1546),

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another future Jesuit saint. While biographers note that the lighthearted Xavier initially found the older and intensely pious Ignatius a less than congenial companion, he could not help struggling with Loyola’s persistent question: “What shall it profit a man, Don Francisco, if he gain the whole world and yet lose his soul?” 5 Over time, Ignatius drew “Francisco” into the habit of prayer and self-examination until at last Xavier became transformed. He became a devoted member of the “Iniguistas,” a small band of students who followed Ignatius, met to pray and talk, and eventually became the core members of the Society of Jesus. Under Loyola’s leadership the Society quickly acquired a reputation for religious zeal, self-denial, ethical integrity, and intellectual sharpness. The Jesuits, as the world came to know them, served as the spiritual “shock troops” of the Roman papacy in its struggles against Protestantism during the Catholic Reformation. As father general of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius originally planned to send members of the Society on pilgrim missions to the Holy Land, but they became so well known in Europe as teachers and preachers of orthodox Catholicism that when King John III of Portugal (1502–1557) needed a good priest to minister to his colonial subjects in the Indian Ocean, he turned to Ignatius for help. 6 Ignatius ordered Xavier to proceed to Lisbon and place himself at the disposal of the king, who sent him on to the Indies in 1542. After thirteen grueling months in transit, Xavier arrived in Goa on the west coast of India. It was here that he first demonstrated his unique talents as an evangelist. Using a combination of charm and playful good humor, he preached the gospel in an appealing way and gained the true friendship of local people, to say nothing of the clinging adulation of small children. As his letters tell us, his practice was to walk through the streets with a hand-bell calling people to catechism and singing out prayers and lessons that he had memorized in the local languages. 7 His children’s catechisms were so popular that he often found himself without time to eat, sleep, or pray. 8 While it was clear that mission work suited him, he eventually became disenchanted with his role as a front man for the Portuguese crown. Dissatisfaction with the heavyhanded administration of Governor Afonso de Sousa (1500–1571) seemed to create in Xavier’s mind a yearning to break free of colonial India. The scope of this chapter does not permit a detailed exploration of Xavier’s Indian mission, an energetic three years filled with heroic efforts and several certified miracles, but at least two things stand out from his experience in India that would come to serve as informing principles of his later work in Japan. The first of these was the conviction that the only way to achieve proper conversion was to preach, to the greatest extent possible, in the native language of the hearers. The second, already noted, was his growing disenchantment with the Portuguese royal authorities. The Portuguese officials in India treated the native Christians like members of an inferior caste, which offended Xavier on both humanitarian

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and practical levels. How, he wondered, would anybody come to the church or accept the authority of “Christian” civilization if the soldiers and officials of the colonial governments treated them so shamefully? The only way an authentic indigenous church could flourish, Xavier thought, was to have it grow in a politically independent environment. While he would not find an independent Asian country until he went to Japan, he still felt the impetus to remove himself from the great center of Portuguese power in Goa. When, in 1545, Xavier was presented with the opportunity to leave India and sail east for the Moluccas in present-day Indonesia, he seized it. For the next two years, Xavier traveled between the colonial post of Malacca on the Malayan Peninsula, and the Moluccas, ministering to the natives and Portuguese settlers on all of the main islands. It was during one of his many transits between Malacca and Indonesia that he first learned of the existence of Japan. 9 THE JESUIT VISITOR IN ASIA—JAPAN The events that brought Xavier to Japan unfold like the plot of a wellcrafted adventure novel. They begin with a samurai named Yajiro, who was on the run after having murdered a man in his home domain of Satsuma in southern Kyushu. In Satsuma’s port city of Kagoshima, he met a Portuguese captain named Alvaro Vas, to whom he confessed his deed and poured out the bitterness of his life as repentant exile. Vas found a position for Yajiro aboard another Portuguese trading ship, but apparently Yajiro went to the wrong ship, serendipitously presenting himself to Captain Jorge Alvares (d. 1521), who was a friend of Xavier’s. 10 Alvares urged Yajiro to sail with him to Malacca, where he could meet the esteemed Jesuit and perhaps find peace in a proper sacramental penance. Upon arrival in Malacca, Yajiro learned that Xavier had just set sail for the Moluccas. Disappointed, Yajiro sailed back to Japan, and on the way his ship ran into a storm that forced it to take shelter on the Chinese coast. While waiting for the storm to subside, Yajiro met yet another Portuguese captain, who had information that Xavier had returned to Malacca. This captain took Yajiro back to Malacca, where the two future mission companions finally met. Xavier told Yajiro about the love and forgiveness of Christ, and Yajiro told Xavier about his country; from this beginning a great and mutually beneficial friendship was formed. Xavier decided to bring Yajiro back to Goa, where he began catechesis and was ultimately baptized as Paul of the Holy Name. 11 Xavier, for his part, became convinced that he was being called to Japan. “If all the Japanese are as eager to know as is [Yajiro],” he wrote to his companions in Rome, “it seems to me that this race is the most curious of all the peoples that have been discovered.” 12 In addition to being impressed with the conversion potential of the Japanese, he considered it providential that Japan lay

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outside the reaches of the Portuguese empire. Asia, it seemed, was the ideal soil in which to plant the seeds of a truly independent new church. His goals for Japan were simple: to find the “king” in order to secure official sanction for preaching the gospel, and to meet the professors of Japan’s reputed “great universities.” In 1549, Xavier, Yajiro, and two Jesuit companions, Cosme de Torres, SJ (1510–1570), and Brother Juan Fernandez, SJ (d. 1567), set sail for Japan. They arrived in Kagoshima, on the auspicious day of 15 August, celebrated as the Feast of the Assumption. Xavier’s long letter to Goa from Kagoshima dated 5 November reveals his initial excitement and admiration for Japan, but within a few months it became clear that finding the “king” and the “universities” was not going to be easy. Essentially, there was no easily identifiable king of Japan, and the “university professors” were actually Buddhist monks who would prove to be averse to the idea of spreading Christianity. The political environment that Xavier entered was neither stable nor unified under the authority of any central ruler. Japanese emperors had not wielded any genuine authority for more than five hundred years; the real power, such as it was, belonged to the shogun—a military governor ostensibly administering the realm on behalf of the emperor. Unfortunately, in 1549, even the shogun possessed little in the way of legitimate authority, as the Japanese archipelago had been in a state of civil war for nearly a century. The Sengoku Jidai, or “period of warring states,” lasted from the outbreak of the Onin War in 1467 to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. The war had started over a succession dispute in the ruling Ashikaga family—both factions in the dispute called upon allied warrior clans to help them press their respective claims. After ten years of urban warfare, the capital was destroyed and the shogunate greatly discredited. The clan chiefs, also known as daimyō, abandoned the ruined capital and retreated to their rural domains, where they and their descendants spent the next century competing for hegemony through assassination, warfare, and every conceivable form of treachery. Because the Sengoku domains enjoyed general parity with one another in terms of force strength, means of production, tactics, and military technologies, anything that would give the daimyō leverage over his rivals was greatly valued. The appearance of Portuguese ships carrying firearms in southern Japanese waters in the 1540s added a whole new dimension to the conduct of these wars. Shimazu Takahisa (1514–1571), the lord of Satsuma, had actually been the first Japanese daimyō to get his hands on European guns, and he quickly assessed the advantages that a healthy relationship with the “southern barbarians” could bring to his domain. When his long-lost subject Yajiro reappeared in Kagoshima in the company of foreign priests, Takahisa made sure to provide them all with a courteous welcome, and he let them propagate whatever teachings they wanted. Xavier had no idea that this rural lord was actually a more

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potent ruler than the emperor himself, a situation quite unlike the one his European confreres after him encountered in China. Turning to the question of the Buddhist “professors,” Japan’s religious life was no less fragmented than its political life. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the golden age of Buddhism, which generally coincided with the Kamakura period (1185–1333), was a distant memory, and great schools of Buddhism such as the Shingon Sect, the Pure Land Sect, the True Pure Land Sect, and the Zen Sect were riddled with corruption, self-indulgence, and habitual abuses of power. Monks were widely criticized for their lapses in observing the five moral precepts of Buddhism; 13 cohabitation with nuns, eating meat, and drunkenness were among the most frequent charges, while pederasty, sodomy, abortion, and infanticide were also regular practices in the monastic communities. The monks, sensing trouble in the strict piety and moral condemnations of this new religion, were almost immediately hostile to the presence of Xavier and his “barbarian” companions. A noteworthy exception to the general hostility of the monks was the attitude of the Zen abbot Ninjitsu of Kagoshima, a person who became an “an amazingly good friend” to the Jesuits. 14 Ninjitsu’s conversations with Xavier touched on a range of metaphysical issues, and the monk seems to have been thrown into a period of long reflection over the question of the soul’s immortality. Ninjitsu never converted to Christianity, but he was a “pious, amiable, and charitable man,” and a friend to Xavier during a difficult period. 15 THE MISSION GROWS On hearing news that a Portuguese ship had dropped anchor in Hirado (roughly 250 kilometers northwest of Kagoshima), Xavier journeyed there, hoping to get news from members of the Society in India. Disappointed that no letters had been shipped, he went back to Kagoshima, finding that during his absence local opinion had turned decidedly against his small flock. Takahisa was apparently incensed that a Portuguese ship had sailed to a rival domain, and felt that he had been duped by Xavier. In response, he had placed a ban on Christian baptism, much to the satisfaction of the local Buddhist temples. The Jesuits decided to return to Hirado without delay, with the ultimate aim of moving on to Kyoto to seek an audience with the emperor. Xavier left Yajiro in charge of the Christian community in Kagoshima and set sail on a ship borrowed from Takahisa. On his return to Hirado, Xavier was introduced to the local daimyō, Lord Matsuura Takanobu (1529–1599), who was surprised at the respect this shabby priest seemed to command from the barbarian sea captains. Enthusiastic about the prospect of opening his island domain to Portuguese trade, Takanobu allowed the Christians to

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preach, and they baptized roughly one hundred converts in less than two months’ time. In October 1550, Xavier and Brother Fernandez departed Hirado for the city of Yamaguchi, the large capital of Suo domain. The local monks were excited to meet a priest who had reputedly come from the land of the Buddha’s birth, but they had no particular interest in his strange teaching. It was in Yamaguchi that Xavier’s evangelism acquired a certain new intensity. In addition to preaching to the point that his face would become “red and fiery,” 16 he would also station himself conspicuously in public places, sit on a mat, and read transliterated prayers and sermons, an activity that aroused both curiosity and often the hostility of the local Japanese. His interpreter, Brother Fernandez, who was occasionally uncomfortable in his role as the mouthpiece of Xavier’s rousing sermons, may have wondered if Father Francisco was not seeking an early martyrdom. 17 Several days before Christmas, Xavier and his companions left Yamaguchi, and began the trek to Kyoto, observing that both the weather and the hospitality grew colder as they moved north. Although he had become strong, even combative when dealing with monks, Xavier endured the ridicule of townspeople and peasants with unflappable, even “heroic” grace. 18 In the port city of Sakai, the Jesuits joined a samurai entourage on its way up the road to the capital. Running alongside the nobleman’s palanquin, they passed through the outskirts of Kyoto and finally set their eyes on the fabled “Miyako.” Unfortunately, owing to seventy years of civil war and economic depression, the imperial city was littered with vacant lots and ruined buildings, giving a shabbier first impression than many of the provincial cities they had already seen. The emperor, Go-Nara (1497–1557), was personally destitute and had been forced several times during his reign to appeal to the great aristocratic houses for relief. The palace was so overgrown and dilapidated that it seemed no better than “a common farmhouse.” 19 The Jesuits enjoyed the hospitality of a merchant named Konishi, whose house would serve as a base of operations for Xavier’s intended visits to the local “universities,” as well as to the emperor himself, should his petition be accepted. As it turned out, neither of these plans came to fruition. In order to gain entrance to the monasteries and the imperial palace, the presentation of gifts was considered correct protocol, and Xavier failed to provide the proper tribute. Moreover, he and his companions were barefoot, ragged, and filthy from the journey, and they bore no more cachet as visiting dignitaries than any other vagabonds who might have wandered into town. His requests for audiences were denied, and his street preaching went essentially ignored by an urban population more concerned with eking out a living than with hearing about how to save their souls. After eleven days in the capital, a disappointed Xavier and his companions headed back to Yamaguchi.

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The second pass through Yamaguchi was more successful than the first, largely because Xavier was able to capitalize on the lessons learned from Kyoto. In petitioning for an audience with Lord Ōuchi Yoshitaka (1507–1551), he presented himself as an envoy of the governor of India and came dressed in his finest silks, loaded with exotic gifts for the daimyō. When, after receiving bottles of Portuguese wine, clocks, spectacles, a musket, and other European curiosities, Yoshitaka tried to present gifts of his own, Xavier politely refused them, asking only for permission to preach in the city. For the next nine months, Xavier enjoyed the unequivocal favor of Yoshitaka, and his mission flourished. This period in Yamaguchi might have been a trial run for the accommodation strategy that became the bedrock of the Jesuit mission in China, except for an embarrassing event that prompted a scandalized Xavier to radically “deaccommodate” the local community over their understanding of the name of God. 20 For many months, the Jesuits had been referring to the Almighty as Dainichi, making do with Yajiro’s best effort to render the idea of “God” into Japanese. Prior to his conversion, Yajiro had been a member of the Shingon sect and was well versed in that community’s veneration of Dainichi Nyorai, which is the Japanese representation of the Vairocana Buddha, 21 as well as a syncretistic aspect of the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu. Yajiro had succeeded in convincing Xavier that all Japanese worshiped Dainichi as a personal god and savior—a supreme deity who rewarded the good and punished the wicked, and who was, like the Holy Trinity, one of three divine persons. 22 Until he came to Yamaguchi, where he was corrected by converts who were apparently better grounded in Buddhist theology than Yajiro, Xavier had been exhorting people to pray fervently to Dainichi. For many Japanese, it seemed odd that a foreign priest would be urging devotion to a Buddhist deity. Adding to the confusion was the fact that Dainichi could in some profane connotations refer to the phallus, which only increased opportunities for ridicule by detractors. 23 When Xavier was made aware of the undesirable flexibility of the name Dainichi, he immediately ordered that all references to God be made with the Latin term Deus, or, as it is transliterated in Japanese, “Deusu.” Except for this unfortunate misunderstanding, the mission in Yamaguchi was as good as might be hoped for. Xavier succeeded in converting close to five hundred souls, despite the heckling of monks who quipped that the god of the southern barbarians, “Deusu,” was a great lie, or Dai-uso. 24 The most interesting and fortuitous conversion in Yamaguchi was perhaps that of a half-blind minstrel who would take the name Brother Lorenzo and become one of the most articulate and forceful preachers in the history of the Jesuit missions. Impressed by the fact that the Jesuits had traveled so far and had endured so much hardship for the sake of their God, compared to the corrupt self-indulgence of the local Buddhist

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clergy, he decided to dedicate his life and his music to spreading the Christian dharma. In August 1551, Xavier heard that a Portuguese ship had landed in Bungo domain, south of Yamaguchi across the inland sea. The lord of Bungo was Yoshitaka’s nephew, a dynamic young samurai named Ōtomo Yoshishige (1530–1587). Seven years before, as a fifteen-year-old boy, Yoshishige had talked his father out of murdering several Portuguese merchants who had landed in his domain. Now daimyō in his own right, Yoshishige summoned Xavier to his palace to discuss the possibility of entering into a treaty with the king of Portugal. An unwillingness to offend the local clergy kept him from accepting Christianity immediately, although he would be baptized in 1578. Yoshishige opened independent diplomatic relationships with the Europeans, sending envoys to India as well as Rome. The mission in Bungo was a brief moment in which the future of Christianity in Japan finally seemed bright; yet distressing news arrived from the community in Yamaguchi. According to letters written by Fernandez and Torres, and smuggled out by a Japanese convert, Yamaguchi had been overrun by rebels and Lord Yoshitaka had committed suicide. The loss of the friendly daimyō was both a personal tragedy to Xavier and a depressing blow to the mission. Then, to the surprise of everyone, the rebel leaders offered Yoshitaka’s throne to the younger brother of Yoshishige (of Bungo) and announced their intention to continue their predecessor’s policy of protecting the Christian community in Yamaguchi. Believing that his flock was in stable (though certainly not in robust) condition, and concerned about the fact that he had not received a single letter from Goa the entire time he was in Japan, 25 Xavier decided to return to India when the Portuguese ship sailed from Bungo in November 1551. While en route to India, Xavier began to entertain the idea of pressing into China, imagining that if he could only succeed in bringing China to the faith of Christ, Japan would ultimately follow. While this thought betrays an understandable naïveté concerning the specific relationship between Ming China and Sengoku Japan, it was not, in the general sense, an unreasonable hope, based on what he had observed of power relationships in East Asian social hierarchies. As has been noted, the expectation that a newly converted official might bring an entire network of subordinates with him was the informing assumption of the top-down conversion strategy. Nevertheless, the hope that China possessed enough cultural influence over Japan to persuade its people to adopt a new religion was one thousand years too late. After several months in Goa, where Xavier was obliged to perform some administrative housecleaning in the Indian apostolate, he set sail again, back to the Pacific, this time in the direction of the Chinese mainland. At the time, the Ming Empire was closed to foreign trade, and its mandarins considered the seafaring Portuguese little better than pirates,

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making the task of entering China a remote possibility. Nevertheless, Xavier persisted, and by November 1552 he was living on the beach of Sancian (Shangchuan) Island, waiting for permission to enter Canton. With the shores of the mainland in sight, Xavier passed the time praying in a makeshift chapel, and composing letters to his companions. On 21 November he fell ill with a fever, and he slowly deteriorated, becoming delirious and incoherent by degrees until he finally died on 3 December, at the age of forty-six. After ten years in the mission fields of Asia, and a little over two in Japan, he could claim to have been the baptismal father of 1,400–1,500 Japanese Christians. While Xavier’s mission was undoubtedly heroic, and undeniably history making, it can hardly be considered successful according to the standards set by earlier great missionaries of the Catholic Church. If we consider Saints Paul, Patrick, and Boniface, to name only three, men whose achievements led to the conversion of entire societies, Xavier’s efforts hardly match up. Moreover, if we compare Xavier’s impact on Japan to that of Commodore Perry, who entered the country three centuries later, we would face an uphill battle arguing that Christianity left as deep an impression upon Japanese consciousness as secular modernization did. To return, then, to the question posed at the beginning of this chapter, how do we best interpret the early modern mission of St. Francis Xavier in light of its consequences on the later Jesuit enterprise in China? ASSESSING XAVIER’S WORK IN JAPAN In 1951, in commemoration of Xavier’s own four-hundred-year jubilee, historian C. R. Boxer published a definitive academic history of the Catholic missions in Japan. Its title, The Christian Century in Japan: 1549–1650, is generous in its implication, as Japan’s first brush with Christianity was neither a century in duration nor properly “Japan’s” in any total sense. The question of why the premodern Japan mission ultimately failed takes us far beyond the scope of Xavier’s own brief sojourn—so we need to distinguish between the failure of grafting Christianity in the larger sense and the failure of Xavier’s work in the more immediate sense. The causes for each occasionally overlap, but unless we make the distinction and examine each on its own terms, we run two risks: the first is that of falsely blaming Xavier for what may have been, owing to unique historical circumstances, a doomed project from the start; the other is that of dismissing Christianity as simply unworkable in the early modern Japanese, or Asian, context. This was the argument made by the Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868) as it consolidated power in the seventeenth century, and it has been adopted by some modern historians as well, reinforcing the general materialist assumption that Christianity is unworkable in any modern context. In other words, the failure of the Jesuits in Japan was a

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consequence of the fact that East is East and West is West (even though we deplore such categories) and that Christianity died a quick death in Japan because it was so conspicuously alien. Its death in the West would simply take a few more centuries as Europeans woke up from their long premodern slumber and became “enlightened.” In considering this problem in the immediate sense of Xavier’s own work, we can identify three potentially contributing factors: the failure of the missionary, the resistance to reception, and the inadequacy of historical conditions, which is to say, the presence of historical influences that sabotaged an enterprise that may have worked in another time and place (this third factor is the nexus to the larger problem that I will turn to in due course). Looking at Xavier’s contribution, we might argue that as the first missionary in a completely foreign land, without having had any conquistadores or chartered merchants providing an entrée, he accomplished far more than might be expected. Despite never having mastered Japanese and his lack of experienced companions, he managed to leave a functioning community behind, and he did convert a good many people, including one daimyō (however belatedly), several monks, and a number of lower-ranking samurai nobles. In terms of numbers of baptized converts, a comparison of various sources leaves us with between 100 and 150 souls in Kagoshima, 100 in Hirado, 500 in Yamaguchi, and between 600 and 700 in Bungo. Again, for three foreign missionaries, in a limited time, in a completely alien culture with only a handful of native helpers, these are not unimpressive figures. When we look at these figures, we might actually conclude that Xavier’s personal contribution was not categorically deficient, even if he did not enjoy the same success as later missionaries in Japan and China. When we turn to the matter of reception, we face a more complicated problem. Is it the case that Japan’s religious life was too firmly fixed to admit a new belief system? Considering how easily Confucianism and Buddhism had already been absorbed into Japan’s preexisting Shinto culture, this would not appear to be the case. What about naturalized Buddhism itself? To say that Buddhism was too devoutly practiced in Japan to allow Christianity to flourish would probably be giving Japanese Buddhism of the late Sengoku period too much credit. As has been discussed, Buddhist religious practice was in a state of general decline; despite impressive levels of faith among the people, the higher echelons of administration were plagued by corruption and were more concerned with power than with piety. The Shingon, Pure Land, True Pure Land, and Zen communities were wealthy, well armed, and intimately involved in the fractured politics of the era. Indeed, their political influence at the domain and urban level was so great that they were considered a threat to the stability of the realm. Accordingly, the hegemon Oda Nobunaga (1534–1580) would specifically target the large monastic communities, destroying the Tendai sect at Mt. Hiei and the Ikkō True Pure Land sect

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in Nagashima during his campaigns to unify Japan in the 1570s. In true Sengoku daimyō fashion, Nobunaga strategically exploited his Christian contacts not only as a means of attaining firearms but also simply to antagonize his Buddhist rivals. Understandably, then, these sects were vigorous in their opposition to Christianity, but not necessarily for religious reasons. It could be argued that there is no better ground for the flourishing of a new religion than the decline of an old one. Joseph Kitagawa observes that the people of Sengoku Japan, “living as they did at a time when the political order and social fabric were disintegrating . . . were in need of a sense of social identity and solidarity; many were also looking for the certainty of a salvation experience.” 26 A Christianity well taught and faithfully administered might have satisfied these needs at a time when the Buddhist temples were failing to do so, but there was certainly no mass conversion from Buddhism to Christianity. In the final analysis, it would be difficult to argue that Buddhism was the primary obstacle to the growth of Christianity in Japan, because the Christian expulsion and prohibition edicts of 1597, 1614, and 1616 were initiated by political and not religious authorities. Between Nobunaga’s strategic tolerance of Christianity in the 1570s and the Tokugawa regime’s bloody persecutions in the early seventeenth century, Christianity came to be seen as even more troublesome, meddlesome, and undesirable than Buddhism. It may be that the same forces that led to the persecution of Buddhism also ultimately led to the banning of Christianity, and this brings us to the final consideration—that historical conditions were unfavorable, if not outright hostile, to the flourishing of Christianity or any system of spiritual beliefs in early modern Japan. The sixteenth century gave birth to a new belief system, and by this I am not referring to Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, or any of the Reformed Christian sects. The new “religion” that came into being was modernity, and it has arguably been the most successful missionary religion yet, having replaced the traditional belief systems of almost every society it has encountered. No mainstream religion or local practice has been able to withstand its relentless march to dominance over human consciousness. The question of whether modernity is a universally valid religion or simply a particular cult of the European civilization is still a much-disputed historical question. Japan historians have been debating the issue since the arrival of Perry in 1853, and no verdict has been reached. Those who argue that modernity is a universal absolute interpret Japan’s Sengoku period as a time of incipient modern development. It was a time in which market forces and a rising bourgeoisie contributed to the formation of a modern society. It was a time in which an exhausted feudal order ultimately fell under the sway of a dominant central authority. It was a time in which class identities were defined and legally inscribed for all members of Japanese society. Finally, it was a time in

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which a political philosophy—specifically Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) NeoConfucianism—became enshrined as a state orthodoxy, and helped a series of unifiers, culminating with the Tokugawa dynasty, create and legitimize a fully secular definition of state and society. As a ruling ideology Neo-Confucianism resulted in the capitulation of religious consciousness to political consciousness at roughly the same time that the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) ended and solidified the power of the state over the church in Europe as well. Thus the argument that Japan was becoming a modern state concurrently with, yet completely independent of, European influence is an interesting one, and it suggests that some deep modernizing current in the stream of world history was simply too strong to allow any religion, new or old, to thrive in the new historical order. Again, when we note that the same forces that snuffed out Christianity in early modern Japan also brought the Buddhist monasteries to their knees, we have to wonder if the age itself was inauspicious for the sowing of religious belief. To return again to China, all of these historical currents in Japan and Europe cast an important light on the Jesuit mission to China in Xavier’s footsteps. In the final analysis, then, we might say that Francis Xavier appeared at the perfect time and place in history to show his later confreres who went to China what good modern missionaries should do, which was to be faithful to the gospel, and to be ready to fail in spreading it. As we have observed, and which distinguished the Japan mission somewhat from the mission in China, this had little to do with accommodating the dominant culture or seeking the good opinion of its elites. Although successive generations of Jesuits in China, beginning with Matteo Ricci, would unfailingly honor Father Francis as their progenitor in the field, it is clear that they indeed modified, if not largely rejected, many strategies of the Japan project. The later methods of accommodation and adaptation, which yielded far greater results in the building of an Asian church, appear to us more as the fruits of hard lessons learned than a continuation of effective policy. Nevertheless, Xavier was the first modern European to perform any kind of authorized diplomatic or religious function in East Asia, and without giving due consideration to the means by which he “exported” his faith and his civilization, no discussion of modern East Asian missions (or, for that matter, modern East Asian foreign relations) is possible. If we had to distill Xavier’s conversion strategy into a formula considered by missionaries to China, we might identify three main precepts. The first of these was simply to preach the gospel without attempting to dilute it or apologize for it. The second was to treat hearers of the message as men and women of discernment, and not as children who could be bought off with hollow slogans or easy interpretations of complex things. The third was to show due respect for the laws of the land in which one gives witness, while staying as remotely detached from the

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goals of its political apparatus as possible. This is not a strategy that necessarily brought overwhelming success in China, but as Mother Teresa was known to remark, the Christian is not called to be successful, only to be faithful. If the example of Francis Xavier (or, as he is known in the Catholic Church, Saint Francis Xavier) shows us anything, it is that despite apparent failure, fidelity prevails in the end. As the following chapters in this volume demonstrate, Jacques Gernet’s broad dismissal of the ability to graft Christianity onto the Asian landscape was not entirely correct. The “failure” of Xavier to Christianize Japan in fact planted the seeds for the more successful grafting of Christianity on Japan’s much larger continental neighbor—China. NOTES 1. Joanna Waley Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (New York: Norton, 1999), 64. 2. Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing, 73. 3. Francis Xavier to his companions living in Goa, from Kagoshima, 5 November 1549, in The Letters and Instructions of St. Francis Xavier, hereafter cited as Letters, trans. Joseph Costelloe, SJ (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sciences, 1992), 308. 4. Letters, 297. 5. Theodore Maynard, The Odyssey of Francis Xavier (New York: Longmans Green, 1936), 27. 6. Andrew C. Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542–1742 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 14. 7. Francis Xavier to his companions living in Rome, from Cochin 15 January 1544, in Letters, 65. 8. Francis Xavier to Ignatius of Loyola, from Tuticorin, 28 October 1542, in Letters, 61. 9. Copious materials related to the life and mission of Francis Xavier are presently held at the ARSI in Rome. 10. Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Beliefs and Practices (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 6. 11. Neil S. Fujita, Japan’s Encounter with Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 14. Yajiro was apparently an unusually bright and enthusiastic catechumen, who was reputed to have learned the entire Gospel of Matthew by heart. The favorable impression Xavier formed of Japan was no doubt influenced by Yajiro’s high degree of zeal and intellectual curiosity. 12. Francis Xavier to his companions residing in Rome, from Cochin, 20 January 1548, in Letters, 177. 13. The Dhammapada identifies the Five Precepts of the Dharma as (1) to refrain from taking life, (2) to refrain from taking that which is not freely given, (3) to refrain from sexual misconduct, (4) to refrain from unwise speech, and (5) to refrain from intoxication. 14. Xavier, 5 November 1549, Letters, 301. 15. Georg Schurhammer, SJ, Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, vol. 4, Japan and China, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe, SJ (Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1992), 74. 16. Schurhammer, Francis Xavier, 154. 17. Schurhammer, Francis Xavier, 156. 18. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 35. 19. Schurhammer, Francis Xavier, 199. 20. Fujita, Japan’s Encounter with Christianity, 15.

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21. The dharmakāya Buddha, or Buddha of Cosmic Light. 22. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 33. 23. Jennes, A History of the Catholic Church in Japan, 17. 24. Francis Xavier to his companions in Europe, from Cochin, 29 January 1552, in Letters, 338. 25. Jennes, A History of the Catholic Church in Japan, 16. 26. Joseph Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 139.

TWO Jesuit Formation and Its Influence on the Methods of Matteo Ricci Michael Maher, SJ

Historians have filled the annals of Christian missions with names of men and women who spread the gospel of Christ in various times and places. 1 Among these names, Matteo Ricci often stands as an icon of success, a man who dealt with the difficult question of how to incorporate indigenous culture in order to express the central truths of Christianity while at the same time attempting to preserve and transmit those truths to a very different culture (see figure 2.1). 2 Although historians are not unanimous in their verdict that Ricci successfully portrayed an accurate version of Christianity to the Chinese, or that the Chinese universally received this portrayal with interest and appreciation, most recognize that he proceeded in a manner that distinguished him from many contemporary Europeans. 3 In his effort of evangelization, Ricci followed the footsteps of St. Patrick (387–460), St. Boniface (672–754), and St. Augustine (354–430), missionaries who attempted to express Christianity in its unchanging truth but still adapted this truth to words, symbols, and gestures, which made sense to those people and places where the gospel was proclaimed. Few historians would question Matteo Ricci’s incredible ability to memorize and his skill in learning Chinese, language skills that enabled him to become a well-known author of Chinese-language literature. 4 This chapter wishes to identify particular features of Ricci’s training as a Jesuit so as to explore the possibility that his Jesuit formation may have influenced him and subsequently his missionary efforts. Did Ricci’s Jesuit formation actually provide him with intellectual, spiritual, and psychological dispositions that enabled him to achieve greater success in China 39

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Figure 2.1. 1610 Painting of Matteo Ricci, SJ, executed by the Chinese convert, Yu Wenhui (Latinized as Emmanuel Pereira), who is the only painter of Ricci who actually knew him. Credit: Anthony E. Clark, photograph taken in the sacristy of the Gesu Jesuit Church, Rome.

or was his own personal character the sole basis for his extraordinary ability? This question bears wider significance, since Jesuits other than Ricci have been accredited with great success in their respective missionary fields. Jesuits such as Roberto de Nobili, SJ (1577–1656), in India and the Jesuit founders and implementers of the Paraguayan reductions have

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been credited with greater creativity and a stronger penchant for accommodation than some of their missionary colleagues. 5 The Jesuit formation available to Ricci would have been available, in its basic format, to other Jesuits as well and therefore an examination of some of the elements of Ricci’s training may provide for a better understanding not only of Ricci but also of other Jesuit missionaries. Contemporary Chinese accounts would seem to support the understanding of Ricci as an extraordinary individual and not necessarily influenced in a great degree by Jesuit formation. Chen Longzheng (1568–1645) described Ricci as “a very clever man who, after his arrival in China, learned to speak and read Chinese. Even his writings were above ordinary. After his death, his followers were able to carry on his teaching, but none of them could compare with him intellectually.” 6 Likewise, the great Ming philosopher Li Zhi argued for Ricci’s extraordinary talents but makes no attribution of these skills in relation to his membership in the Jesuit order: “Among all the people I have come across, I have never met one equal to him [Ricci]. Some of them are too insolent, others too cringing; either they are too ostentatious or too retiring. Indeed, he is a gifted man: inwardly he is very intelligent, outwardly he is simplicity itself.” 7 At least one twentieth-century historian, Wolfgang Franke, seems to agree with the verdict of Chen Longzheng and Li Zhi: Looking back with our present understanding of Chinese civilization of the Ming period, we find it almost incredible that a foreigner—however well educated and intelligent he might be—without any previous knowledge of the language and civilization was able within less than twenty years to take up residence in the capital, be accepted by a very different, highly sophisticated, sinocentric, antiforeign and exclusive society, make friends with a number of the most eminent scholar-officials of the time, and even convert some of them to his own Christian faith, and to receive a regular allowance from the emperor during his lifetime and a burial place after his death. Only Ricci’s particular intellectual and personal qualities made such an achievement possible. 8

Although contemporary literati in China identified Ricci as an extraordinary man, as do many modern historians, he first and foremost thought of himself as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, ultimately under the direction of the bishop of Rome and a member of the Society of Jesus, acting under both the Church’s and the Society’s jurisdiction and manner of life. 9 Although there can be no question as to Ricci’s “particular intellectual and personal qualities,” can it be safely assumed that “only” these qualities made his many achievements possible? I would argue that any understanding of Ricci’s character that absents itself from examining aspects of his membership in the Jesuit order and that order’s formation would diminish any proper understanding of the man and his work. This chapter does not attempt to disentangle the traits particular to Ricci’s

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character and those specifically influenced by his Jesuit training; rather, this study simply wishes to identify some aspects of Jesuit formation that may have influenced Ricci, and subsequently the trajectory of the Jesuit missions in China. Among all the possible influences that Matteo Ricci received from his Jesuit formation and took to China in what we may refer to as his intellectual suitcase, I would like to identify three: a presumption of the goodness of human nature, a respect and recognition of the importance of the classics, and an understanding of the vow of obedience. Before investigating each of these three areas, which were part of Ricci’s Jesuit formation, a brief biography of our protagonist is in order. MATTEO RICCI: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Matteo Ricci was born in Macerata, Italy, on 6 October 1552, and at age nine his father enrolled him in his hometown’s Jesuit school, where he studied until he was sixteen. 10 After completing his studies there, his family sent him to Rome in preparation for a career in law, no doubt sensing his potential for great things. The young Matteo had greater things in mind than a career of law, however, and entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rome on 15 August 1571, where at that time Allesandro Valignano was serving as acting novice master—Valignano would play no small part in the development of Ricci’s mission strategy. From his first days of his novitiate training, Ricci studied the founding document of the Jesuit order, the Formula of the Institute, which identifies the fundamental purpose of the Jesuit order as bringing men and women into a relationship with Jesus Christ by means of membership in the Roman Catholic Church. 11 In addition to examining the Formula of the Institute and its subsequent elaboration, The Constitutions, Ricci would have taken the Spiritual Exercises, a method of spiritual progress created by Ignatius of Loyola as a means of growing in the love of God and dedication to God, so that all choices would be made in light of that love. 12 After his novitiate training, Ricci continued his Jesuit formation with academic studies at the Roman College, beginning in the fall of 1572 and ending in the spring of 1577. The formative influence of the Roman College deserves a large chapter in any biography of Ricci, since this education provided both content and method for an already talented young mind. 13 The Roman College combined the best of revived classical pedagogy identified by the Renaissance humanists, a method that embraced a firm foundation in classical thought and scholastic theology. Ignatius created this method of studies and gave it fuller elaboration in part IV of the Jesuit Constitutions. In part IV, Ignatius created an integrated approach to studies in which content, proper organization of the order of the content, and its organic unity and focus, combined with excellent

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pedagogical practices, created “method of studies,” or, in Latin, the Ratio Studiorum. 14 The goal of the Ratio was to establish a systematic and reasoned reflection of the created world and human experience that would in turn establish a set of philosophical principles that then served as a solid platform for natural theology (what can be known about God by reason alone), and then, subsequently, revealed theology (what is known about God by revealed faith). 15 Ignatius insisted on the proper order of these disciplines as much as he identified the subject matter to be taken. 16 After its founding in 1551, Ignatius gave special attention to the curriculum, pedagogy, and student life at the Roman College, the school that he saw as the template for all others. At the Roman College the courses of study began with the classics and culminated with the unifying theological worldview of St. Thomas Aquinas, OP (1225–1274). 17 And it was at this college that Ricci received an education from some of the greatest teachers of the period, such as St. Robert Bellarmine, SJ (1542–1621), and Christopher Clavius, SJ (1538–1612), who were implementing a system of learning that by this time was gaining fame throughout Europe. 18 In addition to teaching and discussing the latest questions in theology and science, the Roman College also served as a clearing house for all the missionary reports coming from the new world, Africa, India, and Asia. Letter writing provided the central governance of the Jesuits with both information concerning a specific Jesuit work and geographical and social settings of that work. The Constitutions provided detailed instructions concerning the content of these letters and the frequency with which they were to be sent. 19 In addition to describing the heroics of the missionaries, these letters also provided ethnographic reports, astronomical data, and detailed information concerning flora and fauna from the exotic Indies, both east and west, which piqued the interest of benefactors in the works of the Jesuits. In today’s world of instantaneous communication, we hold as commonplace the availability of immediate news. But for a young man reading eyewitness descriptions from such locations as China, Paraguay, and India, news that was only five years old, this “immediate” and accurate information would have perhaps had the same startling effect as a report coming to us today describing civilizations from other solar systems. 20 Ricci’s superiors acquiesced to his desire to work in the foreign missions and on 18 May 1577 he set out for Portugal, the embarkation point for the East Indies. On 13 September 1578, he arrived in Goa, India, where, after continuing his studies, he was ordained on 25 July 1580. During these early years his letters home describe a strong level of frustration based on his inability to understand Indian culture and his anger at the behavior and organization of the Portuguese authorities. A renewed vigor charged Ricci when his former novice master, Allesandro Valignano, summoned him to be among those Jesuits who were to

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attempt entry into China. Valignano had by then been transferred from his work in Italy to be the visitor of the Asian mission. In the summer of 1573, Valignano received the office of visitor and with it came the authority from the superior general of the Jesuits to make radical changes on the mission when and where they were needed. Recent studies have identified the important work of Valignano and, to some extent, may have taken some of the spotlight off Ricci and refocused it on the important role played by Ricci’s former novice master as one of the guiding forces on the China mission. 21 The identification of Valignano’s role in Asia calls to mind the stages in the progression of evangelization from the arrival of Francis Xavier in Japan in 1549 to Ricci’s arrival and work in Beijing in 1601. The first stage marks the insights of Francis Xavier concerning the need for greater cultural awareness and accommodation to various cultural expressions; the second, the codification of these insights by Alessandro Valignano; and the third, further development and implementation of these insights by Matteo Ricci. 22 Whereas Xavier quickly realized a greater cultural sensitivity would provide a better means to successful evangelization, it was Alessandro Valignano who made the practices of greater cultural awareness more normative, as evidenced in his Il Cerimoniale per I missionari del Giappone, written in 1581. 23 This text, as did others, led Valignano to match action to idea and his insistence on requesting that intellectually capable Jesuits be sent to the missions who could learn languages and customs required, so as to successfully enter into a foreign culture. Under this new rigorous rubric for admitting men to the missions, Valignano requested a young Jesuit he had known while novice master, and who was currently residing in Goa: Matteo Ricci. Ricci left Goa and arrived in Macao in 1582. In this Portuguese trading enclave on an island in southern China, he joined with other Jesuits whom Valignano had assigned to implement his methodologies, an implementation that demanded a thorough knowledge of Chinese language and customs. 24 Thanks to Valignano’s insistence that future missionaries learn the Chinese language and culture as the surest means of successful evangelization, Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggeri gained permission to establish a residence on the mainland of China in 1583. Their attentiveness to etiquette, knowledge of the language, and receptivity to the values of Chinese culture quickly made them both indispensible at all meetings between the Chinese and the Portuguese. The story of Ricci’s entry onto the mainland and the eventual establishment of a house in Beijing in 1601 was recorded by Ricci and retold by others. 25 Although historians may disagree as to the success and accuracy of his transmission of Christianity into China, there can be little doubt that he left a lasting impression on the Chinese, as evidenced by the memorials left after his death, not to mention the construction of his tomb at imperial expense.

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AN OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE We turn our attention now to an analysis of what in Ricci’s Jesuit formation could have enabled or facilitated his success; in brief, what did he carry in his intellectual suitcase that enabled him to implement in a successful fashion the ideas sown by Xavier and codified by Valignano? We may begin with the fundamental principle of presumption of the goodness of human nature as articulated in the Spiritual Exercises and later echoed in the position taken by the Jesuits in some of the theological debates of the second half of the sixteenth century. During his novitiate, beginning in 1571, Ricci experienced the Spiritual Exercises, which Ignatius identified as having the purpose of inculcating a desire to “overcome oneself and to order one’s life without reaching a decision through some disordered affection.” 26 For Ignatius, the correct ordering of one’s life had as its focus union with God in this life so as to enjoy perpetual union with God in the next. Ignatius clarified this idea in the First Principle and Foundation of the Exercises: “Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of this to save their souls. The other things on the face of the earth are created for the human beings to help them in working toward the end for which they are created. From this it follows that I should use these things to the extent that they help me toward my end and rid myself of them to the extent they hinder me.” 27 Ignatius identified the purpose of the Exercises as a means by which the created world is judged in so far as this creation will help persons move towards the ultimate purpose for which they were created: union with God. For Ignatius, the created world and that apex of creation, human nature, was potentially good, since creation, by its very created nature, existed as a partial reflection of the Creator and therefore had the potential of assisting a person to move toward God. Ignatius insisted on this presumption of the goodness of human nature, as noted in his introductory comments to the Spiritual Exercises when he described the correct attitude that should exist between the person giving the Exercises and the recipient: “That both the giver and the receiver of the Spiritual Exercises may be of greater help and benefit to each other, it should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it.” 28 We may recall that Ignatius wrote the Exercises during the first half of the sixteenth century, a period when presumption of good intention did not exist as the norm within theological discussion. Evidence of more commonly held suspicion occurred in 1527, when Ignatius enjoyed the hospitality of an ecclesiastical prison as a result of the Dominican inquisitors’ concern over the nature of the spiritual advice he was giving while a student in Salamanca. 29 Yet, in spite of these suspicious times, Ignatius held to the position that God works in the hearts of all men and women

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and that one should presume a good interpretation upon the first encounter. In this same passage from the Exercises, the word “neighbor” is worth noting. The official Latin translation of the Exercises uses the word proximo for neighbor, the same word used by Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan. 30 In response to the question of “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus recounts in the parable (Luke 10:25–37) how the most “neighborly” was the Samaritan, a man outside the chosen people of Israel. Thus the use of “neighbor” stated in the Exercises—with its full significance as possibly someone outside of one’s own culture—was echoed in the founding document of the Jesuits, The Formula of the Institute, which described the scope of Jesuit concern as someone who lived in any part of the world, including those who lived in the Indies or the Moors. 31 This same identification of “neighbor” as anyone who would be the object of Jesuit ministry anywhere in the world was reiterated by Ignatius in a letter to those studying in Coimbra, Portugal, reminding them that their good preparation would make them better instruments in God’s work. 32 Any discussion of the goodness of human nature during the sixteenth century touched upon a theological nerve that sent theologians into the ring ready to fight. Several issues were at play, and their complexity can only be briefly indicated: How did one reconcile free will (if in fact it existed) with the providence of God? If God is omniscient (knows all) and omnipotent (is responsible for all), how can a human act be responsible for contributing or causing salvation? If human nature is essentially good, why did it require redemption? If humanity is totally depraved and grace is totally operative, is there a place for human will? Catholics and Protestants debated these points, and Catholic theologians debated these same points between themselves. All sides quoted St. Augustine, the great patristic theologian whose responses to so many varied theological issues made him a favorite source for proof texting in defense of any and all theological positions. So heated did the argument become concerning the relationship between nature (free will) and grace (God’s action) that these debates, known as the De Auxiliis controversies, caused Pope Paul V (1552–1621) in 1611 to intervene officially among the interlocutors and pronounce that grace was necessary, free will was necessary, and everyone involved should keep their mouths shut and their quills dry until further notice. 33 Although the full force of this debate did not hit the Roman College until after Ricci’s departure in May 1577, the writings of John Calvin (1509–1564) provided ample material for discussion, particularly the full expression of the reformer’s ideas expressed in the revised version of the Institutes of Christian Religion published the year of his death. Ricci would have also been influenced by Robert Bellarmine, whose appearance at the Roman College in 1576 came about as a direct request of Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585) to instruct missionaries traveling to England and Ger-

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many to deal with the issues not fully addressed by the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent (13 January 1547), the session that attempted to define the more subtle clarifications on how free will is still operative yet still influenced by grace. The official Jesuit position always argued for a more optimistic view of human nature, and Ricci’s education would have supported this position. Interestingly, a similar debate concerning the intrinsic nature of the human person was being discussed by Ming philosophers during the time of Ricci’s presence in China. 34 Leaving the theological subtleties of the correct relationship of human nature and divine providence aside, we can presume that Ricci packed in his suitcase the presumption that in dealings with his neighbor—whoever or wherever that neighbor may be—the conversation should be done with the presupposition of good intention based on a more optimistic view of human nature. THE CLASSICS Students at the Roman College studied more than the debates concerning nature and grace. From the humanities to philosophy and finishing with theology, a student studied subject matter that directly examined the Latin and Greek classics, or else subject matter, such as physics, based on these classics. From his earliest schooling with the Jesuits in Macerata, the nine-year-old Matteo learned his history, literature, and Latin by reading Caesar, Ovid, Horace, and the master of classical writers, Cicero. 35 During the first phase of a Jesuit education, a young scholar learned the skills necessary to analyze the human condition. This first phase was known as the trivium, and it taught first grammar, then logic, and finally rhetoric. Good style came from a concentrated effort of copying the style of Cicero so that a young man could, as Cicero demanded, be an able citizen for the betterment of humanity. 36 Students studied literature, history, and composition, which, until the early twentieth century, fell under the rubric of rhetoric, all learned by means of the classics, from Caesar’s writings on the Gallic wars to Ovid’s Metamorphoses (expunging, of course, any indelicate matters). 37 The trivium completed, a student turned to the quadrivium. Supported by the reasoning skills gained in the trivium, a young Jesuit such as Matteo Ricci turned to the disciplines of the physical world with studies in mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. Here, too, the classics reigned, with the physics of Aristotle (384–322 BC) either studied or hotly debated. Already in the thirteenth century the physics of Aristotle had to be modified in light of a developing body of scientific research, but a dissolution of the Aristotelian worldview and its supporting physics never completely occurred until Isaac Newton (1643–1727) posited his theories on universal gravity with the publication of his Principia in 1687.

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After studying the courses required in the trivium and the quadrivium, philosophy followed and this series of courses discussed questions that evolved from a reasoned reflection upon the material world. Here again Aristotle played an important role, but it was an Aristotle viewed through the lens of Thomas Aquinas. Although Thomas quoted many philosophers, the philosopher was always Aristotle. Continuing in this progression of using Aristotelian logic in support of the truths of the faith, philosophy followed with a metaphysical analysis of the created world. Philosophy applied a reasoned analysis to both the world of human experience and the physical world, and from this analysis students arrived at certain truths that supplied the intellectual basis for natural theology (what can be known about God by reason alone) and subsequently revealed theology (what can be known about God by faith). This system, a reasoned reflection on the material world and the world of human experience, which then produced philosophical principles, which in turn served as the foundations for theology, was known as scholasticism. The basis of this system was Aristotelian logic, and it was from this logic that Aquinas built a system preferred by Ignatius, who indicated such in his recommendations for the curriculum of schools. 38 What did Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, and Cicero all have in common? They were pagans. Nice people, no doubt, but still pagans. No greater evidence of the virtuous nature, yet still pagan status, of the classical authors was Virgil’s (70–19 BC) inability to enter paradise in Dante Alighieri’s (1265–1321) Divine Comedy. Keeping the “pagan” status of these august thinkers in mind, we recall that a student at a Jesuit college such as Ricci could not escape his indebtedness to the pagan classics. He wrote like a pagan, his manner of speech was like a pagan, and his systematic theology was built on pagan logic. True, the classics were doused with the waters of baptism, but Jesuits still built their entire edifice of education on the firm foundation of classical thought. If the great patristic writer Tertullian’s (160–220) question—“what does Athens have to say to Jerusalem (how can pagan thinkers contribute to the knowledge of salvation)?”—were asked of Augustine, Aquinas, and Ignatius, they would have likely responded that the truths of the faith were not known to these authors, but the way these truths could be understood and described were aided by a knowledge of the pagan classics. That the classics in fact prefigured the truths of the Christian faith existed as an idea dear to the Renaissance philosopher, whose world was filled with allegory, trope, symbolism, and metaphor. 39 No doubt Matteo Ricci would have seen Michelangelo’s (1475–1564) Sistine Chapel, where the sibyls of antiquity foretold the truths of the faith along with the Hebrew prophets. For the Renaissance mind, true humanism examined a multitude of sources, which argued for a better understanding of God’s revelation in Christ, and those sources certainly included the Greek and Roman classics. 40 The

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idea of a secular humanism would have been pure nonsense to both Ignatius and Ricci. During his years of schooling with the Jesuits, Ricci gained a respect for how non-Christian authors could be used to understand God’s action in the world. If Aristotle could provide a foundation for expressing the truths of Catholicism in the West, could not Confucius (551–479 BC) serve the same purpose by providing a foundation for expressing the truths of Catholicism in China? Compelled by the Spiritual Exercises to presume the goodness of God’s creation, and particularly the goodness of human nature, it should come as no surprise that Ricci turned to the Confucian classics as a means for helping the Chinese understand the truths of the Christian faith. We therefore may identify the second addition to Ricci’s intellectual suitcase as a profound respect for non-Christian classics and how the classical writings of a civilization could function as a means for bringing humanity to its ultimate end—union with God. THE VOW OF OBEDIENCE With all the clocks, prisms, and books Ricci brought with him to China, it may be wondered if he had any room left in his intellectual suitcase. I would argue that he did, and that the third important idea Ricci packed in addition to his other two vows was his vow of obedience. Those familiar with religious life know that obedience is one of the three vows, the others being poverty and chastity. For Ignatius, a Jesuit’s practice of the vow provided the distinguishing mark of a Jesuit as compared to members of other religious orders. In a letter to the Jesuits in Portugal, written on 26 March 1553, Ignatius wrote: We may allow ourselves to be surpassed by other religious orders in fasts, watchings and other austerities, which each one, following its institute, holily observes. But in the purity and perfection of obedience together with the true resignation of our wills and the abnegation of our judgment, I am very desirous, my dear brothers, that they who serve God . . . may be recognized as men who regard not the person whom they obey, but in him Christ our Lord. 41

Space does not allow for a detailed description for this frequently misunderstood vow. For some, the reference to blind obedience indicates an abnegation of the will even in decisions, which would be morally offensive. This was, and is, not the case, and such an exercise of the vow would turn a religious virtue into a moral vice. Obedience may be best understood by recalling that the word comes from the Latin verb obedire (to hear). An obedient person is someone who hears. For example, in Paul’s letter to the Romans, Jesus is described as obedient, for he responds to the call, or vocation, of his Father’s will (5:18). This obedience, this ability to hear, has its roots in the ancient prayer of the Jewish people,

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the Shema Yisrael: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one.” Vocation likewise is based on hearing. Vocation comes from the Latin Vocare (to call), which presumes that someone can “hear.” We identify our vocation synonymously as our calling, or what we have “heard.” According to a proper understanding of the vow, obedience exists as an imitation of Christ, who was obedient—that is, someone who had listened to the will of his Father and had responded. Thus religious obedience finds its fullest meaning in hearing and then subsequently following the will of God. In religious life, this will of God is mediated through one’s superiors. Thus the subject has the obligation to obey—that is, to hear and to act—and the superior has the obligation to make sure he is following God’s will and not some self-centered scheme. The Jesuit Constitutions made this point clear: Genuine obedience considers, not the person to whom it is offered, but Him for whose sake it is offered; and if it is exercised for the sake of our Creator and Lord alone, then it is the very Lord of everything who is obeyed. In no manner, therefore, ought one to consider whether he who gives the order is the cook of the house or its superior, or one person rather than another. For, to consider the matter with sound understanding, obedience is not shown either to these persons or for their sake, but to God alone and only for the sake of God our Creator and Lord. 42

We may identify obedience as a response to the heard will of God mediated through important persons such as cooks, and sometimes even through superiors. Christian obedience, as Ignatius stated, does not find its fullness in obeying an individual; it finds its fullness in following the heard will of God in imitation of Christ. 43 Although the vow of obedience finds its truest meaning in hearing the will of God through a religious superior and acting on this call—the ultimate vocation of every Christian—we may identify obedience as hearing the voice of the other, if it indeed speaks God’s word, and in turn respond to this call by means of fulfilling some action. Let us for a moment recall John Milton’s (1608–1674) monumental work, Paradise Lost, in which Lucifer is described as someone who heard his own voice and responded to that selfcentered call, believing it better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. Likewise, Adam and Eve heard the voice of the serpent and responded to that call instead of listening to God’s Word. All parties involved in the fall were disobedient—that is, they heard God’s word but did not act in accordance with it. For a man or woman under the vow of obedience, the voice of God is always spoken through another—usually mediated through a superior, though, as Ignatius noted, this may not always be the case, since cooks can also be God’s instruments. The voice of God is also mediated through conscience and natural law, since both reflect the wisdom and continual

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action of the Creator. Obedience, therefore, may be understood as the ability to hear or discern the voice of God spoken by another and to act in light of what is heard. Religious obedience finds its normal practice within religious life, but the vow itself, if truly understood, makes a person susceptible to hearing the will of God spoken by the other and not necessarily by listening to what the self has to say. The vow should make its practitioner a good listener to the voice of God as spoken by someone else. It was for this reason that discernment became the backbone of Jesuit spirituality, because it was through discernment that an individual learned to make choices between which of the many voices heard was the voice of God, and which one was not. In Ricci’s case, superiors were few and very far away. Decisions had to be made largely on his own concerning the best ways in which the Catholic faith could be presented to the Chinese. It is no surprise that Ricci used the classics of Chinese culture, just as the classics of the West were used as the foundation of his education at the Roman College. These three predispositions that Matteo Ricci took with him to China, and how these predispositions developed during his formation, help explain his own fundamental worldview, and they served as a model for his successful cultural encounters. Safely presuming Matteo Ricci’s familiarity with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which required of its participants the fundamental directive of seeking good intention, we can find in these Exercises the fundamental presumption that a person could and should “find God in all things” because the goodness of God is reflected in all things. Thus, the apex of creation, the human person, although damaged by sin, still reflected the image of God and therefore had the potential to express the goodness of God. Jesuits did not understand humanity as a population limited to Europe; rather, the object of a Jesuit missionary was the entire world. Ignatius himself viewed the object of Jesuit work to include all parts of the world, and especially the neighbor, who, as Jesus taught, is someone beyond our own community. Thus, in Ricci’s interactions with the Chinese, the spiritual stance learned in the Exercises would have been to respect human culture and try to find in that culture a reflection of God. Or, as Ignatius so often advised, to find God in all things. Matteo Ricci, as did all students under the academic direction of the Jesuits, quickly became aware of the dignity of humanity’s potential by means of a well-organized study of the classics. By studying the classics, students gained respect for human wisdom and experience, even though this knowledge was described by non-Christian philosophers. Jesuits considered the classics to be something analogous to a religious text— certainly not secular, as the term became known in the nineteenth century, since pre-Christian classical texts and their human authorship reflected the divine authorship of their author’s immortal souls. Even though these souls had yet to be affected by the waters of baptism, as was

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the case with Aristotle, pagan philosophers reflected the dignity of God because they were humans with souls created by God. This presumption of finding God reflected in all aspects of human wisdom was true Renaissance humanism, and this ability to presume God working through a non-Christian body of literature provided a perfect intellectual grounding for Ricci’s ability to incorporate various aspects of Confucian culture. Space does not allow for a detailed analysis of Ricci’s dependence on the Greco-Roman classics, as seen in his Jiaoyoulun (Treatise on Friendship), based on Cicero’s De amicitia, and certainly the role of Aristotelian logic as found in his Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven); all these examples demonstrate his respect for the Western classical tradition. Third and finally, Ricci’s vow of obedience created the disposition to hear the voice of God spoken by the “other.” Ricci came to China willing to presume the goodness in human nature and implement a respect for the practice of using classical texts to explain the truths of Christianity, and he was predisposed by his vow of obedience to admit the possibility that if God can be heard by listening to his superiors, there may be a strong chance that he could hear that same voice being spoken by someone from China. It would be incorrect to leave any reader of this essay with the impression that Matteo Ricci was a forerunner of the modern sensibility, which sees diversity for diversity’s sake as a beautiful thing. His disagreement with some of the tenets of Buddhism cannot be disregarded, as was the case with other aspects of Chinese life. 44 In his debates concerning the metaphysical ideas held by the Buddhists, in which he argued against their proposition that no difference existed between creator and creature and against their idea of the transmigration of souls, Ricci seems to have taken a page from Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises: “Further, if one cannot interpret it [an opinion] favorably, one should ask how the other means it. If that meaning is wrong, one should correct the person with love; and if this is not enough, one should search out every appropriate means through which, by understanding the statement in a good way, it may be saved.” 45 This radical idea of searching out every means so as to understand a statement “in a good way” places us on the threshold of a story that has been discussed at some length by other scholars, as seen in George Minamiki’s, SJ, The Chinese Rites Controversy. 46 In this controversy, a complex discussion ensued among various groups in China and in Europe concerning what Chinese terms could be used to express theological concepts and whether indigenous actions could be used in the performance of the liturgical practices of Catholic faith. This controversy had some tragic chapters in the telling, but the end of the story revealed that Ignatius’s advice and the practices of Matteo Ricci ultimately provided guidelines for successful cultural interaction. 47 The Chinese Rites controversy exists as one chapter of a larger story, which records the immense difficulties and struggles involved in the

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process of cultural interaction. Cautions, precautions, and hesitant steps frequently mark endeavors involving cultural dialogue, since agents who serve as cultural intermediaries are required to understand the fundamental values and their traditional expressions of two different cultures, and then must articulate and explain cultural equivalents. Expressing religious values that are both formative and foundational in new ways provides no little challenge, and substantial studies in communication theory have demonstrated how the medium used to express a message effects how something is understood. 48 The Jesuits realized the importance of how actions, particularly ritual actions, establish ideas and practices, and it was for this reason that they involved themselves in the training of priests and their continuing education to ensure compliance in ritual meaning. 49 That the cultures of China and the “West,” cultures with over three thousand years of written history and tradition, had trouble coming to “terms” should really surprise no one—at least no one who has lived in another culture and struggled with the attempts expressing cultural and linguistic equivalency. The revived interest in Ricci’s attempts at cultural encounter and transmission of fundamental ideas, especially during the many commemorations of his death some four hundred years ago on 11 May 1610, indicate a strong interest in the man and his methods. Ricci’s desire to advance the message of Roman Catholicism challenged him to use those resources that he carried with him in his intellectual suitcase, and which would best promote the purpose he sought. Although his own character and intellect certainly provided advantages for better cultural interaction, that suitcase undoubtedly contained values and insights learned and sharpened during his Jesuit formation. Further identification of these “Jesuit traits” and how they were impressed upon the other members of the order will provide a better understanding for common characteristics among the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, and perhaps a guide for successful cultural encounters to come (see figure 2.2).

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Figure 2.2. Adam Schall, SJ, and Matteo Ricci, SJ, hold a map of China as Francis Xavier, SJ, and Ignatius Loyola, SJ, are featured above in heaven. Credit: Athanasius Kircher, SJ, China Monumentis (1667).

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NOTES 1. An excellent and brief analysis of the historiography of the Christian missions may be found in Luke Closey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2–19. 2. The Ricci historiography is extensive. For the first edition of Ricci’s letters and journals, see Nicolo Trigatio (Nicolas Trigault, SJ), ed., De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas (Rome, 1615). Although Ricci’s writings received substantial editing by Trigault, this edition exists as a significant document since it served as the source of the image of China and the Chinese received by Europeans in the early seventeenth and subsequent centuries. A more accurate edition of Ricci’s journals may be found in d’Elia, Fonte Ricciane. 3. The strongest criticism of Jesuit methods comes from Jacques Gernet, in his China and the Christian Impact, in which he argued that the Jesuit endeavors were “an enterprise of seduction” (5). Willard Peterson responded in part to Gernet’s thesis by analyzing the context and the reasons for the conversion of three prominent Chinese literati to Catholicism: Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, and Xu Guangqi. See “Why Did They Become Christians?” in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, eds. Charles E. Ronan, SJ, and Bonnie B. C. Oh (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988), 129–52. 4. An excellent summary of Ricci’s written works may be found in Joseph Sebes, “The Summary Review of Matteo Ricci’s T’ien-chu Shih-Yi in the Ssu-K’u Ch’uan-shu Tsung-Mu t’i-Yao,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 53 (1984): 371–93. 5. See Roberto de Nobili, Preaching Wisdom to the Wise: Three Treatises by Roberto De Nobili Missionary and Scholar in 17th Century India, translated and introduced by Anthony Amaladass and Francis X. Clooney (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2000). The use of indigenous styles or the adaptation of Western styles to art on the Jesuit mission has been discussed by Gauvin A. Bailey in Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 6. Quoted in Albert Chan, SJ, “Late Ming Society and the Jesuit Missionaries,” in East Meets West, 169. For further information on Ch’en Lung-chen, see his entry in the Dictionary of Ming Biography, eds. L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), vol. 1, 174–75. 7. Chan, “Late Ming Society,” 160. 8. “Matteo Ricci,” Dictionary of Ming Biography, vol. II. 9. Matteo Ricci provided a lengthy discussion in defense of his vow of chastity, a vow that would have been very confusing, if not considered erroneous, among the Chinese, who saw filial duty and familial relationship as the foundation of Chinese society. Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, 411. Ricci, in his History of the Introduction of Christianity in China (d’Elia, Fonte Ricciane), identified his work in China as “converting souls to the Catholic faith” (convertire anime alla fede catolica), page 5. 10. For a description of the daily order and content of the classes of a typical Jesuit school during the late sixteenth century, see George Ganss, St. Ignatius’ Idea of a Jesuit University: A Study in the History of Catholic Education, Including Part Four of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1954), 81–111. 11. The Formula of the Institute is considered the founding document of the Society of Jesus. Its final version received papal approbation on 21 July 1550 and was contained in the bull Exposcit debitum. This brief document identifies the purpose of the Society of Jesus and the characteristic means used to achieve these ends. See George Ganss, trans. and ed., The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), 66–72, hereafter cited as Ganss, Constitutions. For a detailed study of the Formula of the Institute, see Antonio Aldama, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus: The Formula of the Institute: Notes for a Commentary (Rome: Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, 1990). 12. Ignatius required the novices who were seeking entry into the Society of Jesus to make the Spiritual Exercises; see Ganss, Constitutions, 96, 99 (paragraph 65, paragraph 98). In addition to taking the Exercises, Jesuits were to advance this form of spiritual

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progress among others and speak of it in a way that would foster interest in taking them; Ganss, Constitutions, 203 (paragraph 409). A record of novitiate life in Rome for 1588 describes how the Jesuit novices took the Spiritual Exercises for one month, the prescribed time identified by Ignatius of Loyola for this retreat. The document is found in ARSI, Rom. 178 b, folio 3v: Consuetudini Del Noviziato Di S. Andrea. 13. For a brief history of the Roman College, consult Philip Caraman, University of the Nations: The Story of the Gregorian University of Rome from 1551 to Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). A more detailed study is Ricardo Villoslada, Storia de Collegio Romano dal suo inizio (1551) alla suppression della compagnia di Gesù (1773) (Rome: Apud aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1954). 14. On the important role Part IV played in the formation and expression of the Jesuit educational system, see Ganss, St. Ignatius’ Idea, particularly chapters 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10. 15. The Ratio Studiorum at the time of Ricci’s years of study at the Roman College was a collection of rules and recommendations based on experience from various Jesuit institutions, particularly the methods employed by the Roman College. These various recommendations may be found in the Monumenta Paedagogica vols. II and III (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1974). (These are also numbered volumes 107 and 108 of the entire Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu.) A near-contemporary instruction written by superior general Edward Mercurian in 1575 for the Roman College demonstrates the importance of proper order: Item, intendano et tengano per certo che nessuno sarà promosso alle scuole di filosofia, se non sarà prima fondato in lettere di humanità, di maniera che possa dar buon conto di se. Et questo punto è di grande portanza per molti rispetti. “Instructio ad Iuvanda studia humaniorum litterarum Collegii Romani.” Cited in Monumenta Paedagogica (1573–1580), vol. IV (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1981), 5. 16. Ganss, Constitutions, 191 (paragraph 366). 17. A list of authors studied at the Roman College and their specific titles may be found in ARSI. Rom 78b f. 14v Catalogus Lectionum Collegii Romani. For examples of authors and their works used in other Jesuit schools in the sixteenth century, see Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu, Vol. III: (1557–1572) (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1974), 527–98. Ignatius’s preference for Thomas may be found in Ganss, Constitutions, 219 (paragraph 464). 18. For the important place the physical sciences held in the Roman college, see William Wallace, Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 19. Ganss, Constitutions, 292–93, paragraphs 674–76. Ignatius considered letter writing as one of the most valuable means of keeping information flowing between the superior general and the Jesuits throughout the world. Frequently Ignatius had to remind Jesuits, sometimes quite sternly, as to the obligation of correct letter writing and their frequency. See the following letters all in Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola, selected and translated by William J. Young, SJ (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1959): to Fr. Peter Faber, 10 December 1542 (62–64), to Fr. Nicholas Bobadilla, 1543 (72–77), to Fr. John Alvarez, 18 July 1549 (190–94), to Fr. Robert Clayssone, 13 March 1555 (376–77). 20. A sample of such letters can be found in M. Howard Rienstra, Jesuit Letters from China, 1583–84 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). 21. See Alessandro Valignano, SJ: Uomo del Rinascimento: Ponte tra Oriente e Occidente, edited by Adolfo Tamburello, M. Antoni, J. Üçerler, SJ, and Marisa Di Russo (Rome: Bibliotheca Instituti Historici SJ, 2008). Also see Antoni J. Üçerler, Christianity and Cultures: Japan & China in Comparison, 1543–1644 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2009). 22. The letters of Francis Xavier provide an excellent means for understanding the mind and methods of the first Jesuit missionary to the East. For a collection of these letters, see The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier, translated and introduced by M. Joseph Costelloe, SJ. Valignano’s responses to the various conditions on the mis-

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sion may be found in Josef Schutte, SJ, Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan, trans. John Coyne (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980–1985). 23. Alessandro Valignano, Il Cerimoniale per Missionari del Giappone, ed. Josef Schutte (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letterature, 1946). A recent collection of essays on Valignano provides helpful and insightful information into the life of this important figure in the China missions. See Alessandro Valignano, edited by Tamburello, Üçerler, and Di Russo. 24. One of the Jesuits at Macao studying Chinese was Michele Ruggieri. Ruggieri’s description of Chinese and his efforts at learning it were described in a letter he sent to the Jesuit headquarters in February of 1583. See Rienstra, Letters, 15. 25. The basic narrative of Ricci’s work in China in light of the wider context of the China mission is examined by Liam Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). Also helpful is Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. 26. This passage from Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises is taken from George Ganss, Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 129 (paragraph 1). 27. Ganss, Spiritual Exercises, 130 (paragraph 23). 28. Ganss, Spiritual Exercises, 128 (paragraph 22). 29. Ignatius retold the story of his imprisonment in his Autobiography. See Ganss, Ignatius of Loyola, 95. 30. See Sancta Ignatii De Loyola, Exercitia Spiritualia. Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, vol. 1 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1969), 165. 31. Ganss, Constitutions, 30. 32. Young, Letters, 27 May 1547 (120–30). 33. See “Congregatio De Auxilliis,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 168–71. 34. Ricci alluded to this debate in his True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven when he stated, “We know that the natures of every kind of thing are good therefore, as traces of the Lord of Heaven; but to say that they are the Lord of Heaven is wrong.” Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, 221 (see also 347–53). This debate among Neoand traditional Confucians is discussed in Ian Morran, “Late Ming Criticism of Wang Yang-ming: The Case of Wang Fu-Chih,” in Philosophy East and West 23, no. 1–2 (January–April 1973): 91–102. 35. See Aleksander Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2008), particularly chapter 2: “Christian Virtue and Excellence in Ciceronian Eloquence.” 36. “Knowledge of the language [Latin] involves correctness of expression and ample vocabulary, and these are to be developed in daily readings in the works of Cicero, especially those that contain reflections on the standards of right living.” Although this quote comes from the 1599 Ratio Studiorum, it nevertheless reflects the attitude the Jesuits had towards Cicero. Cited in Maryks, Saint Cicero, 88. 37. Ganss, Constitutions, 189 (paragraph 359), 219 (paragraph 464). 38. Ganss, Constitutions, 219 (paragraph 464). 39. Recent scholarship on Renaissance humanism has been carefully distilled and presented by Ronald Witt, “The Humanist Movement,” in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600, vol. 2, eds. Tomas Brady, Heiko Oberman, and James Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 93–125. 40. Ignatius thought it perfectly acceptable and encouraged the use of the classics, referring to them as using the “spoils of Egypt,” an allegory that signified the use of the past in advancing a present need. See Ganss, Constitutions, 189 (paragraph 359). 41. Young, Letters, 288. 42. Ganss, Constitutions, 101 (paragraph 84). 43. In March 1553 Ignatius wrote a letter to the Jesuits in Portugal that provided the fullest articulation of his understanding of obedience and its practice. In this letter

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Ignatius states that although other religious orders may excel in fasts and other austerities, the Jesuits would be conspicuous in their vow of obedience. See Young, Letters, 287–95. 44. Spence, Memory Palace, particularly chapter 7, “The Third Picture: The Men of Sodom,” 201–31. See also page 56. 45. Ganss, Spiritual Exercises, 139 (paragraph 22). For Ricci’s refutation of Buddhism, see True Meaning, chapter 5. 46. See George Minamiki, SJ, The Chinese Rites Controversy: From Its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985). For a view of the Rites debates that is more amenable to the Dominican position, see J. S. Cummins, A Question of Rites: Friar Domingo Navarrete and the Jesuits in China (Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1993). 47. The bibliography of the Chinese Rites controversy is substantial. For an accurate and brief establishment of the theological questions and the chronological sequence of events, see Francis Rouleau, “Chinese Rites Controversy,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3, 611–17. An excellent introduction to the subject, which traces the story from the first Jesuits in China to the resolution of some of the fundamental issues in twentieth-century Japan, may be found in Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy. 48. See Marshal McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). 49. On the importance Jesuits placed on ritual and its proper performance, see Michael Maher, SJ, “Jesuits and Ritual in Early Modern Europe,” in Medieval and Early Modern Ritual, ed. Joelle Rollo-Koster (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 193–218.

THREE The Lefebvre Incident of 1754 The Qing State, Chinese Catholics, and a European Missionary Robert Entenmann

According to the mission historian Kenneth Latourette, the era from 1707 to 1839 was the “period of retarded growth” in the history of Christianity in China. 1 In fact, the number of Chinese Christians, all Roman Catholics at the time, declined from about 200,000 in 1700 to perhaps 135,000 in 1765. They did not return to early eighteenth-century levels until after 1800. 2 This “retarded growth” is all the more striking because China’s population doubled during this period; demographic growth alone would normally have significantly increased the number of Chinese Catholics. The Chinese Rites controversy and the resulting conflict between the Catholic Church and the Qing state disrupted Catholic missions and culminated in the prohibition of Christianity in 1724. 3 In the century that followed, Chinese Catholics, led primarily by Chinese clergy, lay catechists, and congregational leaders, persevered despite intermittent persecution. At the same time, European missionaries attempted to maintain contact with, presence in, and supervision over Chinese Catholic communities. Yet the arrival of a European missionary could bring turmoil to Chinese Catholics, lay and clergy alike, as an incident in 1754 in Sichuan demonstrates. This incident also reveals the ambiguities of Qing policy toward Christianity and foreign missionaries. Christianity’s history in Sichuan began with an abortive Jesuit effort in the 1640s and another in the 1660s. In 1702, two Lazarists and two priests 59

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of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris inaugurated missions in Chengdu and Chungking. Despite intermittent hostility from officials and common people alike, and the prohibition in 1724, the number of Catholics in the province gradually increased over the next few decades. 4 However, that growth was interrupted in 1746, when persecution forced the French vicar apostolic, Joachim Enjobert de Martiliat, MEP (1706–1755), three other European missionaries, and two Chinese priests to flee Sichuan. 5 THE SICHUAN MISSION WITHOUT EUROPEANS Only one priest remained in the province, serving three or four thousand Catholics living in more than forty towns and villages scattered across a province the size of France. 6 Born into a Chinese Catholic family, Andreas Ly (Li Ande, c. 1692–1774) studied as a child with Jean Basset, MEP (1662–1707), and Jean-François Martin de la Baluère, MEP (1668–1715), the first two members of the Missions Étrangères in Sichuan. 7 Still in his teens, he accompanied them when they went to Macao in 1707 in the wake of the Chinese Rites controversy. Ly later studied at the Collège de Saint Joseph—a seminary for training indigenous clergy in Asia—in Ayutthaya, Siam. After his ordination, he returned to China—it was 1725, a year after Christianity was proscribed. Ly worked for several years among Catholic communities in Fujian and Hubei. He returned to Sichuan in 1734. 8 In 1749, Stephanus Siu, CM (Xu Dewang, b. 1694), a Lazarist who had served in Sichuan before moving to Huguang in 1739, returned to the province at Ly’s request. 9 The following year Ly and Siu were joined by Lucas Ly (Li Shiyin, 1719–1798), a native of Fujian. 10 Like Andreas Ly, Lucas Ly had studied at the Collège de Saint Joseph in Siam. Although both reported to superiors in the Société des Missions Étrangères, they were not formally members of the society, which limited membership to French priests. 11 They did, however, receive from the society an annual stipend, four fifths the amount allotted to French missionaries. 12 For nearly a decade after 1746 the three Chinese priests staffed the mission in Sichuan, which was, in the absence of the vicar apostolic, under the de facto leadership of Andreas Ly, the senior priest in the province. 13 Chinese priests were ordinarily subordinate to European clergy, but in this case they enjoyed a high degree of independence. 14 As Jean Charbonnier, MEP, notes, Ly effectively fulfilled the role of vicar apostolic, though he lacked a bishop’s authority to ordain new priests. 15 Ly reported to his superiors by sending his journal, written in Latin, by courier to Macao, and thence to Paris. 16 Martiliat, the vicar apostolic, was, by the year 1752, living in Rome. The church in Sichuan was theoretically under the supervision of a provi-

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car in Macao, but the distances and difficulty of communication with Macao, and even more so with the vicar apostolic in Rome, left the Chinese clergy in Sichuan in effect autonomous. They visited far-flung Christian communities across Sichuan, some of which had not seen a priest for many years. 17 They engaged in such pastoral work as hearing confessions, celebrating mass, officiating at weddings, and performing last rites. Andreas Ly wrote prayers and a catechism, as well as a pastoral letter regarding canon law on marriage. He taught several pupils and hoped some would eventually become priests. He also supervised the temporal business of the church, collecting rent on a house owned by the mission in Chengdu and farmland outside of the city. He lived in Martiliat’s former residence in Chengdu, passing himself off as a merchant. The three Chinese priests were members of the society and culture in which they worked, despite their rejection of Chinese practices they considered incompatible with Christianity. Unlike European missionaries, they were not visibly alien, and they generally carried out their labors undiscovered. Even though Christianity was prohibited, local officials usually followed a policy of tacit toleration of Chinese Catholics, generally ignoring them and dealing with them only when circumstances forced them to do so. LEFEBVRE ARRIVES IN SICHUAN A serious outbreak of persecution did occur, however, in 1754. It resulted in the arrest of two of the three Chinese priests in Sichuan, Andreas Ly and Stephanus Siu. This incident led in turn to the discovery and arrest of a French missionary, Urbain Lefebvre, MEP, who had just arrived in the province. 18 Lefebvre was captured a mere half-dozen years after the execution of seven missionaries in eastern China. 19 His capture exposed the close relationship between Chinese Catholics and Europeans. It could have had fatal consequences for him, and it jeopardized the survival of the church in Sichuan. Remarkably, however, Ly, Siu, and Lefebvre escaped severe punishment. Moreover, the authorities soon returned to a laissez-faire attitude toward Sichuan’s Catholics, despite their declared aim of “tearing out the perverse Christian religion by the roots.” Born on 21 January 1725 in the parish of St. Pierre-du-Boile, near Tours, Lefebvre was the son of a master carpenter. He was ordained in 1748 and admitted to the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères de Paris in 1749. On 1 December of that year, he departed Port-Louis in Brittany for a yearlong voyage to East Asia. Although destined for Sichuan, he spent a short time in Cambodia at the urging of Armand (or Arnaud-François) Lefebvre, MEP (1709–1760), the vicar apostolic of Cochin China. 20 His long-awaited assignment to Sichuan was repeatedly delayed. In July 1752, Andreas Ly wrote to Martiliat, reporting that Lefebvre had not set

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forth for the province “for various reasons which I have recounted in my journal.” 21 In a letter to his former colleague Jean-Hyacinthe de Verthamon, MEP (b. 1700), who had fled Sichuan with Martiliat in 1746, Ly notes that Jean-Baptiste Maigrot, MEP, the provicar based in Macao, had delayed dispatching Lefebvre to Sichuan due to the fact that China’s internal controls on travel were being more strictly enforced. 22 Ly evidently had trouble finding someone to bring Lefebvre to Sichuan, “for if we ourselves, natives of this province, are now exposed to dangers which none of the Christians can escape, especially in this time of calamities, how much more will it be the case with Europeans!” 23 A year later, Ly lamented that circumstances forced Lefebvre, through no fault of his own, to remain idle in Macao. 24 Finally, on 6 January 1754, Lefebvre left Macao for Sichuan, guided by the courier Jacobus Ouang (Wang Shangzhong) and another Christian from the province. The journey was difficult. They traveled, mostly by riverboat, through Guangdong, Hunan, and Hubei for eighty days. 25 Along the way, both a merchant from Shaanxi and an innkeeper in Hunan suspected him of being a European, but he was not detained. In Kuizhou, the first river port in Sichuan, the boat was stopped at a checkpoint. Lefebvre’s vestments were poorly packed, and the bag with his chalice and missal was hanging from a nail in the cabin. Lefebvre sat, smoking a pipe, while the boat was searched. A guard found the chalice and recognized it as European, but accepted a bribe of seven taels. 26 Lefebvre arrived in Chungking on 23 March. There he and Ouang found the gates to the city heavily guarded because of banditry (un partie de voleurs révoltés). They climbed through rubble in a break in the wall and walked to the house of the prominent Christian Luo family. Lefebvre, soaked in sweat, suffered from a cold and a bad headache. The head of the Luo family, an apothecary, treated him with “a river of tea.” 27 The journey had cost over 147 taels, equivalent of about 200 piastres. 28 Despite having been occasionally recognized as European, Lefebvre was never reported to the authorities. 29 A few days later, Andreas Ly, then visiting Shengchongping—an important Christian community near Chungking—learned with delight of Lefebvre’s arrival in the province. 30 Ly sent his adopted son, Petrus Pe, to Chungking to retrieve Lefebvre, and on 27 March the two priests met at Shengchongping. Lefebvre and Ly remained there a month. Lefebvre applied himself to the study of Chinese in the hope that, within a year, he would be able to hear confessions and preach. 31 He was evidently not yet prepared to undertake pastoral work, which was to his advantage after his arrest. On 1 May, they rented a boat for eight taels and began their journey to Chengdu, arriving there at nightfall on 26 May. No one along the way recognized Lefebvre as European. 32 In Chengdu, he stayed in Andreas Ly’s house. Lefebvre’s sojourn in Sichuan, was, however, brief.

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ARRESTS On 28 June, a few weeks after Lefebvre and Ly arrived in Chengdu, soldiers raided Andreas Ly’s house. There they discovered Lefebvre, along with Andreas Ly, Stephanus Siu, Lefebvre’s guide Jacobus Ouang, and others. The authorities had not known of Lefebvre, and their discovery of a European missionary was accidental. Lucas Ly, the remaining priest, learned of the raid and fled to Shaanxi undetected. 33 The incident was triggered by an unpaid debt in northeastern Sichuan’s Guangyuan district, where there had been a Catholic presence for several decades. 34 Some years earlier, Zuo Yuezhang, the district magistrate, had investigated the Catholics, apparently dealing with them leniently. 35 But in 1754, Li Guishu, a non-Christian, demanded that his Catholic cousin, Gabriel Wang, repay a loan. 36 As elsewhere, economic disputes aggravated tensions between Christians and their non-Christian neighbors. 37 When Wang failed to pay, Li denounced him as a Christian to the local authorities. The officials, preoccupied with relief measures during a drought, ignored the accusation. They did not consider Christians worth much attention. At that point, Li made the much more serious charge that Christians were plotting a revolt. Fearing a Catholic connection to the often-volatile White Lotus sectarians, the authorities took action. 38 Fu Mei, the prefect of Baoning, and Zhang Gengmo, the district magistrate, alerted Huang Tinggui (1691–1759), the governor-general of Sichuan. Huang ordered an investigation. 39 Seventy Christians were arrested, but no evidence was found that they intended to rebel. Li Guishu admitted that he had made up the story to avenge himself against his cousin and claimed that he had not intended to cause such trouble. He was sentenced to a beating of twenty strokes. 40 The Christians who had been arrested were punished more severely. A potentially fatal sentence of eighty strokes was recommended for some, and one hundred for others. But the governor-general reduced the sentence to forty strokes and two months in the cangue for some, and twenty-five strokes and one month in the cangue for the others. Learning of Andreas Ly through their interrogations, the prefect and the magistrate reported to the governor-general that Ly was the leader of Sichuan’s Catholics. A Christian employed on the staff of the governor-general, Marcus Ouang, wrote to Ly to warn him, but the letter was intercepted. Marcus Ouang was interrogated under torture. 41 On the morning of 28 June, soldiers were sent to Ly’s residence in Chengdu to arrest him, and there they discovered Lefebvre and Stephanus Siu as well. At first the soldiers did not realize that Lefebvre was European. They began to suspect it only when they found European objects. One of the low-ranking officers looked at Lefebvre closely and noticed that he was wearing a false queue. “Who are you?” he asked. “You are a European;

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where are you from?” Lefebvre claimed that he was a native of Chengdu prefecture. “If you are from Chengdu prefecture, why is your speech different from ours?” “Because I was away from Chengdu for many years.” “Yeah, right! You are from a Western country, otherwise you wouldn’t have all these Western things.” The officer reported to the prefect that Lefebvre was European. 42 The soldiers seized ten taels that Lefebvre and Ly possessed, as well as books and a reliquary containing an alleged piece of the True Cross. They also arrested two other Christians, Basilius Tching and Petrus Pe, Ly’s adopted son. After leaving the house, the soldiers encountered and arrested two other Christians. INTERROGATIONS Three accounts exist of the interrogations of Ly, Siu, Lefebvre, and Jacobus Ouang. Andreas Ly related his experiences in his journal and Lefebvre described his in a report to the Société des Missions Étrangères. 43 Huang Tinggui, the governor-general, and Yue Zhonghuang (d. 1766), provincial commander-in-chief of Sichuan, reported the case to the emperor in a confidential memorial that has been preserved in archives in both Beijing and Taipei. 44 Other documents written by Chinese authorities survive only in Ly’s Latin translation, copied in his diary. Andreas Ly was interrogated four times: twice by Chen Lüzhang, district magistrate of Chengdu, and Wang Xun, district magistrate of Huayang; then by Zhou Wan, provincial judge; and, finally, by Huang and Yue. 45 In his first interrogation, Ly was interrogated about his birth, his native place, and, curiously, about his relationship with the early eighteenth-century missionaries with whom he had studied half a century earlier. Basset had died in 1707, not long after leaving Sichuan, and Martin de la Baluère had died in 1715. Ly was asked about his livelihood, since there was no evidence that he engaged in trade. He answered that he was supported by his son, Petrus. 46 Ly admitted he was a Christian and said, probably truthfully, that his family had been Christian since the Ming dynasty. He denied, untruthfully, that he had passed on his teachings to any students. The authorities apparently knew that Ly had been educated by French missionaries as a child. Moreover, he had been found sheltering a European in his house. Although they did not know that Ly, or any other Chinese, was a priest, they were clearly concerned with Andreas Ly’s European connections. 47 “Are you not ashamed,” Zhou Wan, the provincial judge asked him, “to practice the perverse religion of the Europeans, which destroys the obedience of children to their parents?” Ly responded

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by quoting the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. This did not persuade Zhou, who appears to have drawn his knowledge of Christianity from anti-Christian polemical works, such as Budeyi by Yang Guangxian (1597–1669): 48 “Do not believe that you can deceive us with your words. I cite extracts from the horrible books of your religion. I have read that your religion teaches that children should regard their parents as bricks regard their molds. But does a brick, once it is cast, depend any longer on its mold? Where then, in your religion, is the sacred and necessary obedience of children toward their parents?” Ly responded that the comparison was taken out of context from a book by Johann Adam Schall von Bell, SJ (1591–1666). The pioneer Jesuit missionary wrote that “filial piety and obedience of children to parents is part of natural law, for God made use of parents to give birth to children, as a mason uses a mold to make bricks.” 49 When Ly was brought before the governor-general, he was so tightly chained by the neck that his face became purple. The guards noticed and loosened the chain. Asked about fellow Christians, Ly refused to name any. He reported that he had received the Christian religion from his parents. “You are more than seventy years old and wise, yet you lack honors or titles of nobility,” the governor-general told him. (Ly was actually in his early sixties.) “From that you can conclude that all your religion promises is vain and unreasonable.” Ly answered that were he to renounce God, “I would suffer from torments much worse than those you want to inflict on me. I ask you insistently to punish me all the more.” Huang regarded Ly with contempt, muttering “old Christian!” three times. The interrogation ended at nightfall. The prisoners, having escaped beatings, were conducted to jail. Some guards treated them with kindness and politeness, according to Lefebvre, offering the hungry prisoners each a half-pound of flour cooked with water. The prisoners were still bound with chains. “Relieved of our rosaries that morning, the links of the chains served as beads of the necklace,” Lefebvre reports. Stephanus Siu was questioned about his relationship with Andreas Ly and Lefebvre. He claimed that he and Andreas Ly had studied the doctrines of Confucius with his father. His presence at Ly’s house at the time of the raid, he claimed, was accidental. He had heard that there was a European there and was curious to see him. On the fourth day after their arrest, the prisoners were conducted through crowded streets to the office of the subprefect. 50 Their chains were replaced with heavier ones. “Although your religion appears to be tolerably good,” the subprefect observed, “none of you is without guilt: this barbarian, because he is in China without the emperor’s permission and because he preaches a doctrine contrary to our customs and proscribed by the emperor; and you, who welcomed this barbarian without denouncing him, and because you follow the customs and religion of

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foreign nations. You can be certain that before long you shall make your acquaintance with a bamboo cudgel. Await new orders.” On the fifth day, Ly and Jacobus Ouang were each sentenced to a beating of one hundred strokes, and the other Chinese defendants were sentenced to eighty. “I had entered China, that was the greatest crime,” wrote Lefebvre. “Jacobus Ouang had guided me; Father Ly had received me: two crimes a little less severe. Six others, including Stephanus Siu and Paulus Tchang [Zhang], who is nearly ninety, and two seminarians and two [lay] Christians, guilty of professing our holy religion, were jailed, three in the cells of Huayang and three in the cells of Chengdu.” 51 At midnight Ly and Lefebvre were conducted to their cell. They had no beds or blankets but were ordered to sit on a low table. A guard intertwined their chains and fastened them to the column with a padlock. The next morning they were conducted to the tribunal of the prefect, Xu Guodong. He, and probably Chen Lüzhang, the district magistrate of Chengdu, conducted the interrogation. 52 Ly and Lefebvre were interrogated several times, both together and separately. “All was as the day before,” wrote Lefebvre. “On one side, leather whips; on the other, sticks of various sizes. In two rows, at least twenty soldiers served as our guards.” The officials threatened the prisoners with the jiagun, an instrument of torture. The questions generally repeated those of the day before. The officials asked Lefebvre to give the name of his country and hometown. He was also ordered to say something in French. The officials insisted, for some reason, that he was Portuguese and was sent and paid by the Portuguese government. Lefebvre answered that he was born in Tours in France. The interrogators had trouble pronouncing these words: “We were all speaking in our own languages, all at once, and nobody could understand anything.” Lefebvre was once again interrogated by Zhou Wan, the provincial judge, Huang Tinggui, the governor-general, and Yue Zhonghuang, provincial commander-in-chief. They asked him his name, his origins, the reason he had come to Sichuan, and whether he had used his teachings to deceive the people. Huang asked Lefebvre about the significance of the crucifix. Lefebvre replied that it symbolized the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Passion, an explanation that was likely unintelligible to Huang. The subprefect summoned Lefebvre. He showed Lefebvre his European alarm clock, “which seemed to have been in a deep sleep for many years.” Lefebvre found that it was missing a piece and repaired it. The magistrate was delighted, convinced that Lefebvre knew how to make clocks, but Lefebvre denied this. “Then why did you come here? To preach the Christian religion!” the official shouted. He ordered Lefebvre confined to a narrow room, separated from the other prisoners. Lefebvre became distraught and refused to eat or drink, he claims, for ten days. Wan, fearing that Lefebvre would die under his care, had him returned to the prison.

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Finally, a judgment was issued against Lefebvre, which he translates in his report to the Missions Étrangères: On the 9th day of the 5th month of the 19th year of the Qianlong reign [28 June 1754], in this city of Chengdufu, capital of Sichuan province, at our order, Li Ande [Andreas Ly], preacher of the Christian religion, was arrested. At the same time, in his house a European was discovered, named Fei Buren; after the arrest of the latter, we learned that he had recently come to preach the Christian religion. After spending three years, four months, and eight days in Macao, he came to Sichuan under the pretext that a European ambassador had been well received by the emperor, and that he believed that he could practice the Christian religion here as freely as in the time of the Kangxi emperor. After having learned all this, we ordered that he be expelled. 53

REPORT TO THE EMPEROR In their memorial to the emperor, Huang and Yue reported, “Although this barbarian (gaiyi) could speak a little Mandarin, he was not very clear. But through forceful questioning, we could get a general sense.” 54 Lefebvre gave his name as Fei Buren, reported that he was twenty-nine years old, and claimed to be an official (suoguan zhi ren) in Tours (Dulu) in Europe (Daxiyang). In the eleventh month of the fourteenth year of Qianlong (i.e., 10 December 1749–7 January 1750), because he wanted to go to Guangdong to do business, he took passage from the Indian Ocean (Xiaoxiyang). In the second month of the fifteenth year (8 March–6 April 1750) he arrived in Macao “for the sake of commerce,” but eventually gave up his business there because of a failure in that venture. In the winter of the eighteenth year (1753) he saw a tribute mission entering China. He heard that the Westerner Mu Tianchi (Johannes Müllener) had gone to Sichuan to proselytize. 55 Lefebvre claimed not to know whether Müllener was still alive, although in fact he would certainly have known that Müllener had died a dozen years earlier. Lefebvre encountered the Sichuanese Wang Shangzhong (Jacobus Ouang), a Catholic, in Macao, and asked Wang to conduct him to Sichuan. 56 Along the way they were questioned but not stopped. Lefebvre claimed that Wang led him directly to Andreas Ly’s house in Chengdu, not mentioning his sojourn with the Catholics in Chungking and Shengchongping. In Chengdu, Lefebvre reported, he learned that Müllener had died in the seventh year of Qianlong (1742). He further learned that all heterodox religions (xiaojiao) were prohibited and persecution was very severe. Not daring to preach his religion, he wanted to return immediately to Macao. But, because of illness, he had been unable to depart before being captured. Huang and Yue also interrogated Jacobus Ouang and Andreas Ly repeatedly. They asked Ouang why he had guided Lefebvre to Sichuan.

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Ouang answered that he had long been a Christian and, in Macao, had learned—by accident—that he and Lefebvre were of the same religion. When Lefebvre asked for Ouang’s assistance, he could not decline. He guided Lefebvre to Sichuan, renting boats in Chenzhou, in Hunan, and in Jingzhou in Hubei. When they arrived in Chengdu, Lefebvre stayed at the house that Ouang shared with Andreas Ly. But, according to Ouang, Lefebvre “did not start to preach to deceive people.” Jacobus Ouang was asked five times to name some Christians; he refused and was beaten each time. Lefebvre, Huang and Yue concluded, had not opened a church or preached his doctrine. This may in fact have been true, since Lefebvre had so recently arrived in the province and his command of Chinese was still inadequate for his duties. Catholicism, Huang and Yue noted, was classified as a type of heterodoxy (yiduan). It pertained to the distant barbarians from far away (waifang yuan yi) and was not suitable to China (bu bian rong liu neidi). They said that Jacobus Ouang, who had accompanied Lefebvre to Sichuan, and Andreas Ly, who had sheltered him there, should be investigated and given appropriate punishment. They recommended that Lefebvre be sent under guard to Guangdong, expelled to Macao, and sent back to Europe. Thus he would not be tempted to return to the interior to preach heterodoxy and lead the people astray. The emperor’s response, a vermillion rescript on the memorial, was brief: “noted” (zhidao le), indicating that he accepted the recommendation that Lefebvre be deported. PROCLAMATIONS The memorial by Huang Tinggui and Yue Zhonghuang is the only government document for which the Chinese-language original has been preserved relating to this incident. With few exceptions, documents kept at the provincial level have not survived. 57 Andreas Ly, however, includes in his journal his Latin translations of two proclamations publicly posted in Chengdu. The first proclamation, “published within the walls of the city of Chengdu,” curiously, does not mention Lefebvre. 58 It recounts the investigation in Guangyuan and reports that Catholics there had behaved circumspectly, not having engaged in deception or enchantment or built a church. “Nor are they trying to stir up any trouble against the state” (nec quidquam mali in statum Reipublicæ moliri). The accusation of rebellion made by Li Guishu had been erroneous. Nonetheless, the Christians had persisted in adhering to a prohibited sect and had tried to conceal books and images, and they were punished appropriately. Vessels, utensils, books, and images found in Andreas Ly’s house were seized and burned. The proclamation admonished officials to investigate and enforce the

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laws against Christianity and to warn the people so that “the perverse Christian religion may be torn out by the roots.” Another proclamation, concerning Urban Lefebvre, was issued a few weeks later. 59 It, too, seems to minimize the offenses committed by Lefebvre and Ly, saying that Ly and other Chinese Catholics follow a religion passed down from their parents. They fast and pray, they have not led many astray, and they are generally law-abiding. Although Jacobus Ouang guided Lefebvre into the province, Lefebvre had not yet built a church, preached the religion, or led people down the wrong path. In both proclamations, the authorities clearly distinguish between Catholicism, which was illegal but quiescent, and the potentially subversive White Lotus religion. PUNISHMENT AND EXPULSION In contrast to European missionaries arrested and executed in eastern China in 1747 and 1748, Lefebvre was, of course, treated lightly. The governor-general also reduced the sentence of Andreas Ly and Jacobus Ouang to forty strokes and one month in the cangue. Lefebvre reports that Ly’s age and illness, together with the dignity with which he conducted himself during the ordeal, worked in his favor. 60 Most of the other defendants received a sentence of forty strokes rather than the original sentence of eighty; some received lighter sentences of five or ten strokes. Stephanus Siu received only five. All survived the beatings; on 19 October they were released. In an attempt to win over of the prefect of Chengdu, Ly gave him a number of his European possessions, including a basin and jug for washing hands, a Spanish cross, two candelabras, a portrait of Louis XIV, a portrait of the late Ming Christian grand secretary Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), and two bottles of brandy. 61 Lefebvre, too, won good treatment from some officials and soldiers by giving them European objects as presents. “If you would like to come back next year,” he was told, “bring with you more of these objects that we love, and you will have nothing to fear from the officials.” 62 Accompanied by a low-ranking official and two guards, Lefebvre departed Chengdu on 12 October and arrived in Macao on 6 January 1755. He tried unsuccessfully to reenter China. He thereupon traveled to Siam, by way of Pondicherry, to serve for a time as procurer of the seminary there. He received a letter from the archbishop of Tours, his home diocese, urging him to return home to care for his mother, but the Seven Years’ War made that journey impossible for several years. After spending some time in Ayutthaya, Pondicherry, Merguy, and Réunion, he returned to Europe in 1763. He left the Société des Missions Étrangères and abandoned the mission vocation after his return to Europe. He served in

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Paris, where he became known as un prêtre régulier, mais d’un spirit superficiel. 63 Lefebvre escaped martyrdom in China, but ironically became a victim of the French Revolution. He was arrested on 30 August 1792 and questioned the next day. Asked whether he had signed the oath of allegiance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, as required of all priests, he replied that he had not because he had been retired from the ministry for nine years. The authorities told him that, as a good citizen and a good priest, he should have nonetheless sworn the oath. The record of his interrogation concludes that he was suspected of being a bad citizen and was ordered imprisoned in the former convent of Carmes in Paris. Three days later he was killed in the September Massacres. 64 He was beatified in 1926. AFTERMATH AND SIGNIFICANCE At the beginning of 1755, Ly celebrated his release with a banquet to thank his benefactors. His guests included both Christians and nonChristians, including three secretaries of the district magistrate of Chengdu who had mediated in his favor. 65 He was acutely aware of the mortal danger he had survived; his former colleague, the Spanish Dominican bishop Pedro Sanz, OP (1680–1747), had been executed in Fuzhou. Six other missionaries had been executed in the following two years. Lefebvre’s departure left the Sichuan mission once again in the hands of Chinese clergy. It was not long before European presence was restored, however. Upon arriving in Sichuan in 1756, a young French priest, François Pottier, asserted his authority over his older and more experienced Chinese colleagues. 66 Direct European involvement in Sichuan’s Catholic mission continued uninterrupted until the 1950s. 67 The relative leniency with which Lefebvre and the Chinese Catholics were treated in this incident suggests that local and provincial officials were allowed great latitude in dealing with Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries. The executions of Sanz and others, in 1747 and 1748, had been carried out at the insistence of Zhou Xuejian (1693–1748), governor of Fujian, even though the Grand Council had originally recommended that the Europeans be expelled to Macao. 68 Half a dozen years later, in Sichuan, the provincial officials were much more moderate in their response, perhaps partly because gifts were presented to the presiding judge, and the emperor agreed with this leniency. They did not, however, tolerate illegal heterodoxies they regarded as politically seditious; just a few months before the arrest of Lefebvre and the Chinese Christians in 1754, the emperor commended Governor-General Huang Tinggui for his handling of the heretic Chen Zixue, who was put to death. 69 The provincial officials’ moderation toward Chinese Catholics certainly

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reflected their belief that Catholics did not pose a political challenge to authorities. During this time, in fact, Jesuit priests continued to serve the emperor in Beijing. Indeed, Huang and Yue may have previously encountered missionaries at court; Yue’s cousin Yue Zhongqi had friends among the Jesuits, including the celebrated court painter Giuseppe Castiglione, SJ (Lang Shining, 1688–1766). 70 For most of the following half-century, this pattern of tacit toleration continued. 71 It was interrupted by a nationwide persecution in 1784 that resulted in the arrest of four missionaries, two of whom died in prison and two of whom were deported. The authorities still remembered Lefebvre’s arrest thirty years earlier. During interrogation, they asked Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse, MEP (1750–1815), one of the arrested, if he knew Lefebvre. “Yes, I saw him one time in Europe,” Dufresse said, “but I never spoke with him.” 72 Twenty years later, as a severe repression of Christians was beginning across the country, the governor-general of Sichuan reported to the emperor that “it is true that there are many Christians in Sichuan. That’s not surprising; the religion has been preached here for a long time,” reminding the emperor of the arrest of Lefebvre a half-century earlier. 73 NOTES 1. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmillan, 1932), chapter IX, 156–84. 2. Standaert, SJ, Handbook of Christianity in China, 380. 3. The Chinese Rites controversy concerned, among other things, whether Chinese Catholics could participate in rituals honoring their ancestors and Confucius. The Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722) supported the Jesuit position that such rituals were civil, not religious, and therefore permissible for Chinese Catholics. Rome ruled against these rites in the apostolic constitutions Ex illa die (1715) and Ex quo singulari (1715). See David E. Mungello, ed., The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning (Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, no. 33; Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994). 4. See Robert Entenmann, “Chinese Catholic Communities in Early Ch’ing Szechwan,” in Edward J. Malatesta and Yves Raguin, eds., Échanges culturels et religieux entre la Chine et l’Occident (Variétés Sinologiques, nouvelle série, no. 83; Paris: Institut Ricci—Centre d’Études Chinoises, 1995), 147–61, and Robert Entenmann, “Catholics and Society in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” in Daniel H. Bays, ed., Christianity in China, from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 8–23. 5. The other Europeans were Jean-Hyacinthe de Verthamon, MEP, and two Italians, Alberto Maria Scifone, OFM, and Domenico Lamagna, a secular priest of the Propaganda Fide. The Chinese priests who fled were Joannes-Baptista Kou (Gu Yaowen 谷耀文), also of the Propaganda Fide, and Paulus Sou (Su Hongxiao 鴻孝), CM. 6. A list of the Catholic communities in Sichuan in 1746 can be found in AME 444.173. 7. For Basset and Martin de la Baluère, see their entries in Adrien Launay, Mémorial de la Société des Missions-Étrangères, 2 vols. (Paris: Séminaire des MissionsÉtrangères, 1912–1916). 8. For Andreas (or André) Ly, see Armand Olichon, Aux origins du clergé chinois: Le Prêtre André Ly, missionnaire au Setchouan (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1933); Jean-Marie Sedes,

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Une Grande âme sacerdotale: Le prêtre chinois André Ly (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1943); Anton Borer, “Das Tagebuch André Ly’s als Quelle der Missionspastoral,” Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 1 (1945), 194–203; Henry Serruys, CICM, “Andrew Li, Chinese Priest, 1692 (1693?)–1774,” Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 32, no. 2 (1976), 39–55, 130–44; Fang Hao 方豪, Zhongguo Tianzhujiaoshi renwu zhuan 中國天主教 人物傳 (Biographies of Chinese Catholicism) (Hong Kong: Gongjiao Zhenli 公教真理, 1967–1973; rpt. Beijing 北京: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1988), 122–33; Jean Charbonnier, MEP, Histoire des Chrétiens de Chine (Paris: Desclée, 1992), 189–203, translated as Christians in China: A.D. 600 to 2000 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 271–90; Taki Chiharu 瀧千春, “Kanryū kinkyōka no Shisen ni okeru Tenshukyō fukyō katsudō— Chūgokujin shisai no Ratengo nikki kara” 乾隆禁教下の四川における天主教布教活 動—中国人司祭ラテン語日記から (Catholic Mission Activities in Sichuan during the Qianlong Period of Prohibition—From the Latin Diary of a Chinese Priest), MA thesis, Osaka University, 1996; and Anne Weber, “Missionnaires et Chrétientés en Chine: L’Exemple de la Mission du Sichuan (Années 1730–1760): Autour du Journal du Prêtre Chinois André Li et de la Correspondance Missionnaire,” doctoral thesis, Université de Paris Diderot, 15 October 2010. I am grateful to Taki Chiharu for sending me a copy of her thesis, and to François Barriquand, MEP, for sending me a copy of Anne Weber’s thesis. 9. The provinces of Hubei and Hunan constituted Huguang. For Stephanus Siu, see F. M. J. Gourdon, Catalogus cleri indigenæ in provinica Se-tchouan 1702–1858 (Tchong-kin [Chungking]: Typis Missionis Catholicæ, 1919), 2–3; J. van den Brandt, Les Lazaristes en Chine, 1697–1935: Notes biographiques (Peiping: Imprimerie de Lazaristes, 1936), 3. Stephanus Siu, a native of Leshan, Sichuan, studied with the Missions Étrangères but joined the Lazarists (Congrégation de la Mission) after his ordination in 1726 by Johannes Müllener, CM, as vicar apostolic of Sichuan. The Lazarists and the Société des Missions Étrangères both claimed jurisdiction over the mission in Sichuan; the Missions Étrangères was given exclusive jurisdiction in 1753. 10. For Lucas Ly (1719–1798), see Gourdon, Catalogus, 12; also Robert Entenmann, “Lucas Ly, a Chinese Catholic Priest in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” paper presented at the conference on History with Chinese Characteristics: “From Ming to Globalization: A Conference in Honor of Ted Farmer,” University of Minnesota, 19 February 2011. Lucas Ly, like Andreas Ly, kept a diary in Latin, which survives only in part, from 13 October 1749 to 21 November 1751 and 16 July 1752 to 21 August 1753 (AME 436:367–74 and 444:617–30, 633–76). Adrien Launay, in different places in the same book, writes that Lucas Ly was ordained in Siam in 1747 (Histoire des Missions de Chine: Mission du Se-tchoan, 2 vols., Paris: P. Téqui, 1920; hereafter MST, II:69), in Macao in 1747 (MST, I:286), or in 1748 (MST, II: Appendice, 96). Gordon indicates that he was ordained in 1748 (Gourdon, Catalogus Cleri Indigenæ, 12). But in a letter written in November 1747, Martiliat indicates that Ly, newly arrived from Siam, was still a deacon. Martiliat to MEP, Macao, 28 November 1747 (AME 435:301–6), as cited by Weber, “Missionnaires et Chrétientés en Chine,” 224. It is thus almost certain that he was ordained in Macao in 1748. 11. Anne Weber incorrectly identifies Lucas Ly as an Augustinian (Weber, “Missionnaires et Chrétientés en Chine,” 210), a misreading of the title Ly gives in his journal (“Diarium Lucae Ly Augustini . . .”). In fact, his full Latin name, with which he often signed his correspondence, was Lucas Augustinus Ly. Father Joseph Ruellen, MEP, in an unpublished translation of the journal, accurately translates the title as “Journal de Mr Luc-Augustin Ly.” If Ly had been an Augustinian, the title of his journal would have been “Diarium Lucae Ly Augustiniani.” I am grateful to James May for helping clarify this. 12. Adrien Launay, ed., Journal d’André Ly, prêtre chinois, missionnaire et notaire apostolique, 1747–1763: Texte Latin (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, éditeurs, 1906; hereafter JAL), 31 July 1751, 181; Léonide Guiot, La Mission du Su-tchuen au XVIIIe Siècle: Vie et Apostolat de Mgr. Pottier (Paris: Téqui, 1892), 44.

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13. Paulus Su (Su Hongxiao 蘇鴻孝, 1692–1773?), a Lazarist priest who had fled in 1746, returned to the province in 1754 or 1755, in order to take care of family business (selling some property on behalf of his adopted son and daughter-in-law), not to work in the mission. Chinese Catholic priests, including Andreas Ly, often disguised their celibacy by passing as widowers and adopting sons. 14. Charles Boxer aptly compares the partnership of European and Chinese clergy to that of horse and rider, “with the white man as rider.” C. R. Boxer, “European Missionaries and Chinese Clergy, 1654–1810,” in The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia Before Dominion, eds. Blair B. King and M. N. Pearson (Honolulu: University Press of Hawai’i, 1979), 97. 15. Jean Charbonnier, MEP, “The Catechetical Approach of Andrew Li (1692–1775): A Chinese Priest in Sichuan Province,” in Staf Vloeberghs, Patrick Taveirne, Ku Weiying, and Rachel Lu Yan, eds., History of Catechesis in China (Leuven Chinese Studies 18) (Leuven, Belgium: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, 2008), 129–50. Ly regretted that he was unable to administer the sacrament of confirmation, a function reserved to bishops. JAL, 17 March 1757, 407. 16. JAL. The original text is held by AME, volume 500. The Bibliothèque Nationale has put JAL online (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5039570, accessed 2 March 2011). AME also holds voluminous correspondence by Andreas Ly. 17. JAL, 1 January 1753, 229. See the summary of Andreas Ly’s travels in these years in Launay, Histoire des Missions de Chine, I:296–97. 18. See the entry on Lefebvre in Launay, Mémorial de la Société des MissionsÉtrangères, II:380; see also Gérard Moussay and Brigitte Appavou, Répertoire des Membres de la Société des Missions Étrangères 1659–2004 (Paris: Archives des Missions Étrangères, 2004), 75. See also Louis-Auguste Bosseboeuf, La Touraine dans les missions: Urbain Lefebvre, missionnaire dans les Indes et la Chine (1725–1792) (Tours: Imprimerie Paul Bousrez, 1888) and an anonymous article, probably by Adrien Launay, “Le Bienheureux Urbain Lefrebvre,” Annales de la Société des Missions Étrangères et de l’Oeuvre des Partants, no. 206 (July–August 1932), 166–69. 19. In 1747 and 1748, five Dominicans, including Bishop Pedro Sanz, were executed in Fujian; in 1748, two Jesuits were executed in Suzhou. See Anthony E. Clark’s China’s Saints: Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing (1644–1911) (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2011), especially chapter 3 (“The Dominican Martyrs of Fujian”). 20. For A. Lefebvre, see Moussay and Appavou, Répertoire, 72, where his first name is given as Armand, and www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/blefaf.html (accessed 22 March 2011), where it is given as Arnaud-François and his last name is spelled with a grave accent (Lefèbvre). He and Urbain Lefebvre were not related. 21. Andreas Ly to Martiliat, 20 July 1752, AME 436.438. (Ly’s journal, however, does not refer to Lefebvre until 14 September 1753, over a year later: JAL, 250.) I am grateful to Father Barriquand for providing me a copy of this letter and the letters cited in the next three notes. 22. Andreas Ly to Verthamon, 20 July 1752, AME 436.445. 23. Andreas Ly to Jean-Baptiste Maigrot, 3 September 1752, AME 445.82. 24. Andreas Ly to Martiliat, 10 September 1753, AME 436.513; Andreas Ly to the Directors of the Seminary [of the Société des Missions Étrangères] of Paris, 25 September 1753, AME 296.364. 25. Lefebvre left a detailed and vivid account of this journey (AME 445.409 et seq.), published as “De Macao à Tchen-tou en 1754: Lettre de M. Urbain Lefebvre, missionnaire apostolique,” in Annales des Missions Étrangères et de l’Oeuvre des Partants, no. 97 (1914), 86–98. 26. “De Macao à Tchen-tou,” 94–95. 27. “De Macao à Tchen-tou,” 96. The Luo family of Chungking was a prominent Catholic family until well into the nineteenth century, producing five priests. Gourdon, Catalogus cleri, 38, 47, 55–57, 59. I use the Anglicized spelling of Chungking instead of the pinyin spelling of Chongqing (重慶) to distinguish the prefecture from the district of Chongqing (慶), now named Chongzhou (崇州), about forty kilometers

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west of Chengdu. Although the two places are distinct and written with different initial characters, the names are pronounced identically. 28. JAL, “Indiculus expensarum pro itinere et cymbis atque victu quibus R. D. Lefebvre anno 1754 e Macao ad usque urbem Tching-tou provinciæ Sse-tchuen feliciter pervenit,” 339–40. 29. Andreas Ly, some years later, suggested that missionaries be chosen with a physiognomy similar to the Chinese—and not someone tall, like Lefebvre. Andreas Ly to Pierre-Antoine Lacerre, 30 July 1755, AME 445.468. 30. JAL, 26 March and 27 March 1754, 276. 31. JAL, 17 April 1754, 276. 32. JAL, 1 May and 26 May 1754, 277; Lefebvre, “De Macao à Tchen-tou en 1754.” 33. For Lucas Ly’s experiences, see Lucas Ly to MEP, AME 445.275. 34. Joseph Dehergne, “La Chine du Sud-Ouest: Le Szechwan, Le Kweichow, Le Yunnan: Étude de Géographie Missionnaire,” ARSI, no. 42 (1973), 268–69. 35. “Edictum Præsidis Generalis vulgo Tsong-tou [zongdu 總督] nuncupatus provinciæ Sse-tchuen contra Christianam religionem, die 19â Augusti anni 1754, intra mœnia urbis Tching-tou [Chengdu] publicatum,” published QL 19/21/7 (7 September 1754), JAL, 284. Zuo was magistrate of Guangyuan from the eleventh year of Yongzheng to the third year of Qianlong (1733–1738). Yang Fangcan 楊芳燦 et al., comp, Sichuan tongzhi 四川通志, 204 juan (1816), 104.32b, 104.37. 36. Ly’s transcription of Chinese names follows eighteenth-century French orthography and reflects Sichuanese local pronunciation. Thus the pinyin romanizations I provide may not necessarily be accurate. Ly spells Li Guishu as Ly Koue-cheou and Wang as Ouang. We know from the memorial of Huang Tinggui and Yue Zhongqi that Jacobus Ouang’s Chinese name was Wang Shangzhong 王尚忠. 37. For example, a land dispute caused a local persecution in Jiangjin district in 1755. See Entenmann, “Catholics and Society in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” 17–21. 38. François Pottier, in a letter written five years later, reports the suspicions of a Catholic connection to the White Lotus. Pottier to the directors of the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères, 8 October 1759, AME 436.692. 39. I have identified Fu Mei and Zhang Gengmao from Yang Fangcan 楊芳燦, Sichuan tongzhi 四川通志 (Gazetteer of Sichuan) (Taipei 台北: Huawen shuju 華文書局, 1967), 104.32b, 104.37b. Huang Tinggui, a member of the Chinese Bordered Red Banner, served as governor-general of Sichuan from 1753 to 1755 and, in 1754, was concurrently president of the Board of Civil Office. See his biography in Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644–1912), 2 vols. (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1943–1944), I:349–50. 40. JAL, 26 May 1754, 278. 41. JAL, 27 June 1754, 281. 42. Lefebvre and Ly to MEP, AME 436:587. 43. Ly, “Relatio persequutionis quam experta est Christianitas Sse-tchuen, hoc anno 1754 et Imperii Kien-long 19, quam dum intra Prætoris Tching-tou-hien tribunal detinemur ordini utcumque suscipimus, ac Diaro D. Andreæ Ly adjunctam pio Lectori exhibemus,” JAL, 281–96; see also Lefebvre to Martiliat, 14 September 1754, AME 436:549–54. According to the mission historian Adrien Launay (1853–1927), archivist of the Missions Étrangères, Lefebvre left a long account in Latin of this incident, but it is not located in the AME where Launay says it is (AME 445: 229 et seq.). Although his Mission du Se-tchoan is invaluable, it is not always reliable in its citations. Launay is clearly referring to an account written by Lefebvre and Ly located elsewhere in the archives (AME 436:555–92). Although the narrative is in Ly’s handwriting, it refers to Lefebvre in the first-person singular. Lefebvre’s correspondence was almost always in French, and Ly’s in Latin, so it is difficult to determine who was the primary author. Launay provides a helpful summary in MST I:311–20. 44. Memorial of Huang Tinggui and Yue Zhonghuang QL 19.5.21 (10 July 1754), ANPM, document 006752, printed in Gong zhong dang Qianlong chao zou zhe 宮中檔乾 隆朝奏摺, 75 vols. (Taipei 台北: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan 國立故宮博物院, Minguo

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71–75 [1982–1986]), 8:560–61; also in Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan 中國第一歷史檔 案館編, Qing zhongqianqi Xiyang Tianzhujiao zai Hua huodong dang’an shiliao 清中前期西 洋天主教在華活動檔案史料 (Archival Materials Related to Western Catholic Activities in China), 4 vols. (Beijing 北京: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 2003) I:219–20. This document is a palace memorial or secret memorial, sent directly to the emperor outside of usual bureaucratic channels. The version published in Beijing is a copy, written in cursive script 草書, of the original memorial, held at the Palace Museum Archive in Taiwan and published in Gong zhong dang Qianlong chao zou zhe. The original memorial, written in standard script 楷書, is much more legible than the copy. Yue Zhonghuang was a descendant of the renowned Song dynasty general Yue Fei 岳飛 (1103–1142) and succeeded his cousin Yue Zhongqi 岳鍾琪 (1686–1754) as provincial commanderin-chief. Hummel, Eminent Chinese, II:959. 45. The city of Chengdu was divided into two districts, Chengdu and Huayang. I have identified the district magistrates of Chengdu and Huang from Sichuan tongzhi 104.5ab. 46. JAL, 291. 47. The Qing government was apparently not aware of the existence of Chinese clergy until the arrest of Chinese priests nearly forty years later. See Bernward H. Willeke, Imperial Government and Catholic Missions in China During the Years 1784–1785 (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1948), passim, esp. 89–90. Charles Boxer, however, finds this hard to believe. He suggests that the authorities would have been informed by some of the “fair number of voluntary apostates embittered against the missionaries throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Boxer, “European Missionaries and Chinese Clergy,” 113. If Boxer is right, it is curious that there seems to be no evidence of this in the Chinese documentary record. 48. For Yang Guangxian (1597–1669), see Hummel, Eminent Chinese, II:889–92. 49. This part of the interrogation is described in Lefebvre’s account but not mentioned in Ly’s account. I have not been able to identify the source of the quotation from Schall, although I suspect it may be Yang Guangxian’s 楊光先 Budeyi 不得已 (I Cannot Do Otherwise). For Schall, see Alfons Väth, Johann Adam Schall von Bell S.J.: Missionar in China, Kaiserlicher Astronom und Ratgeber am Hofe von Peking 1592–1666 (Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XXV, Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1991). 50. The subprefect (tongzhi 同知) would have been either Bao Chenglong 鮑成龍, who served until the nineteenth year of the Qianlong reign, or Liu Junchen 劉君臣, who began serving that year. Sichuan tongzhi, 104.3. 51. Lefebvre exaggerates Paulus Tchang’s age. In 1747 Ly reported that he was 75 (JAL, 6 December 1747, 32), and in 1754—seven years later—he was “almost 80” (JAL, 327). 52. I have identified Xu Guodong from Sichuan tong zhi, 104.1b. 53. Lefebvre and Ly to MEP, AME 436:579. 54. Memorial of Huang Tinggui and Yue Zhonghuang, QL 19.5.21 (10 July 1754). 55. Johannes Müllener (1673–1742), a Lazarist who helped establish the mission in Sichuan at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was vicar apostolic of Sichuan from 1715 until his death in 1742. For Müllener, see Claudia von Collani, “Per Pedes Apostolorum: Bishop Johannes Müllener, CM (Mu Tianchi) in Sichuan,” in Lu Yan and Philip Vanhaelemeersch, eds., Silent Force: Native Converts in the Catholic China Mission (Leuven Chinese Studies 20) (Leuven, Belgium: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, 2009), 95–130. 56. Jacobus Ouang was actually a native of Shaanxi, though he may have lived in Sichuan for a long time. Launay, Mission du Se-tchoan, I:313, n. 1, no source given. Launay gives Ouang’s birthplace as Hien-lin, near Xian, which is probably Xianning 咸寧. 57. A significant exception is the archive of Ba Xian, the district located in the prefectural city of Chungking, much of which survived and is held at the Sichuan Provincial Archives (Sichuan sheng dang’anguan 四川省檔案館) in Chengdu. Some of these documents have been published in Qingdai Qian Jia Dao Ba Xian dang’an xuanbian

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清代乾嘉道巴縣檔案選編, comp. Department of History, Sichuan University 四川大學 歷史系 and the Sichuan Provincial Archives 四川省檔案館, 2 vols. (Chengdu 成都: Sichuan University Press and Sichuan Zhonghua shuju 四川大學出版社, 四川中華書 局, 1989–1996). But the earliest documents concerning Christianity come from the early nineteenth century and are limited to the Chungking region. 58. “Edictum Præsidis Generalis vulgo Tsong-tou [zongdu 總督] nuncupatus provinciæ Sse-tchuen contra Christianam religionem, die 19â Augusti anni 1754, intra mœnia urbis Tching-tou [Chengdu] publicatum,” published QL 19/21/7 (7 September 1754), JAL, 283–86. Ly indicates in the heading that it was dated 19 August 1754, but the text itself gives the date of September 7. 59. “Aliud edictum Præsidis Generalis, quo decernitur ut D. Urbanus Lefebvre missionarius gallus, et cæteri una cum ipso capti et hucusque in vinculis detenti puniantur dimittanturve,” dated QL 19/8/8 (22 September 1754), JAL, 287–89. 60. Lefebvre, as cited by Olichon, Aux origins du clergé chinois, 344, no source given. 61. JAL, 296. 62. Andreas Ly to Pierre-Antoine Lacerre, 30 July 1755, AME 445.462. 63. Launay, Mémorial, II: 380. 64. Lefebvre’s death is described in more detail in “Le Bienheureux Urbain Lefebvre,” 169, than in the biography by Bossebœuf. 65. JAL, 2 January 1755, 330–31. 66. This is discussed in Robert Entenmann, “Chinese Clergy and Their European Colleagues in Sichuan, 1702–1800,” in Rachel Lu Yan and Philip Vanhaelemeersch, eds., Silence Force: Native Converts in the Catholic China Mission, 85–89. 67. The last European missionary in Sichuan was René Boisguérin (1901–1998), whom I met in Paris in 1989. He arrived in Sichuan in 1928, and in 1946 he became vicar apostolic of Suifu. He was imprisoned by Chinese Communist authorities in 1951 and expelled from China in 1952. Moussay and Appavou, Répertoire, 472–73. 68. Ad Dudink, “Opponents,” in Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China, 522. 69. Da Qing lichao shilu 大清歷朝實錄 (Veritable records of successive reigns of the Great Qing; Xinjing 新景: Da Manzhou Diguo Guowuyuan 大滿洲帝國國務院, 1937; rpt. Beijing 北京: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1986–1987), Qianlong 462.11 (QL 19. run 閏 4.11), 463.12 (QL 19. run 閏 4.24). The Qing veritable records, a comprehensive collection of court records, do not mention the Lefebvre incident, suggesting that the court did not consider it important. 70. JAL, 12 May 1751, 173. 71. See Robert Entenmann, “Chinese Catholics and Their Relations with the State During the Campaign Against the White Lotus,” in Contextualization of Christianity in China: An Evaluation in Modern Perspective, ed. Peter Chen-Main Wang (Collectanea Serica, Monumenta Serica Institute; Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2007). The persecutions of the early nineteenth century, reflecting a harsher policy toward Chinese Christians and European missionaries, are examined in Robert Entenmann, “1810–1820 nian Sichuan de pojiaozhe, xundaozhe, he beijiaozhe” 1810–1820 年四川的迫教者，殉道者 和背教者 (Persecutors, Martyrs, and Apostates in Sichuan, 1810–1820), trans. Gu Weimin 顧衛民 in Yan Huayang 鄢華陽 (Robert Entenmann) et al., Zhongguo Tianzhujiao lishi yiwenji 中國天主教歷史譯文集 (Collected translated essays on the history of Catholicism in China; Guilin 桂林: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe 廣西師範大學大學出 版社, 2010), 39–52. (This article has not yet been published in English.) 72. Dufresse to MEP, July 1786, Nouvelles Lettres Édifiantes Des Missions De La Chine Et Des Indes Orientales, 8 vols. (Paris: Le Clere, 1818) II:295. 73. Pierre Trechant to Denis Chaumont, 11 November 1805, Nouvelles Lettres Édifiantes, IV:174. Trenchant does not identify the “general de notre province,” presumably the governor-general. The governor-general at the time was Lebao 勒保 (1740–1819), a member of the Bordered Red Banner. See his biography in Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, I:444–46.

FOUR Restoring the Ancient Faith The Taiping Rebels and Their Mandate Thomas H. Reilly

Many of the contributions to this volume focus on the Catholic missionary enterprise in East Asia, but in this chapter we are shifting our focus to address the impact of Protestant missionary efforts. There is one theme, however, that unites all these chapters, and that is the debt owed, even by Protestants, to Matteo Ricci. For as much as the rebel movement we will be discussing here was first inspired by a Protestant tract, it was Ricci’s strategy of identifying Christianity with China’s ancient faith that sustained the rebels’ religious zeal. The Taiping movement was first of all a religious movement. The man who would become leader of the rebellion, 1 Hong Xiuquan, was converted to his new faith after reading a Protestant religious tract (see figure 4.1). The contents of this religious text explained, and confirmed, a vision of Heaven that he had experienced a few years earlier. After his conversion, Hong, along with some of his cousins, began preaching this new faith in their home village. They were more successful at gaining followers in the neighboring province of Guangxi, located in southwestern China, and it is in this province that they began to refer to their burgeoning movement as the “God Worshipers Society.” By 1851, after clashing with government troops, the God Worshipers proclaimed their intention to found a new political order: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The Taiping Rebellion, occupying many of China’s richest provinces, fought over a period of thirteen years, from 1851 to 1864, with casualties estimated at over 20 million lives, then, was no ordinary peasant upris77

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Figure 4.1. Stylized image of Hong Xiuquan (or Tiande) as the “chief of the insurrection” against the Qing. Credit: Frontispiece of J-M Callery and Melchior Yvan, Insurrection in China: With Notices of the Christianity, Creed, and Proclamations on the Insurgents (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853).

ing. What most distinguished the rebellion was the religion of the rebels. The Taiping religion, with its mixture of Christianity, Confucianism, and popular sectarianism, has long fascinated scholars of Chinese history. Yet while there has been this general fascination with the outlines of Taiping religion, ironically, there has been no specific study of its most signature doctrine—the doctrine of God. In particular, the process by which the Taiping deity came to be named Shangdi has been largely unexamined,

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and even less attention has been paid to the impact of the fateful missionary decision to identify the Christian God with the High God of China’s classical past, and to its significance for the Taiping understanding of the imperial order. Previous scholarship on the Taiping Rebellion has failed to emphasize that by the time that the Taiping rebel leader, Hong Xiuquan, had adapted his new Christian faith to the Chinese context, it was no longer a Western religion, a foreign creed. The faith very quickly had developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion, one whose conception of the title and position of the sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the imperial order. Hong Xiuquan presented this dynamic new religion, Taiping Christianity, as a revival and a restoration of the ancient Chinese classical faith in Shangdi (see figure 4.2). This was the substance of the Taiping appeal. In accordance with their faith in Shangdi, the Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title, Huangdi. 2 In a similar fashion, the Taiping condemned the sacral nature of the imperial office. The imperial title and office were blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi’s title and position, and the rebels called for a restoration of the classical system of kingship alongside the restoration of the classical worship of Shangdi. 3 Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of renewal; the Taiping, by contrast, declared

Figure 4.2. Western depiction of Taiping believers “teaching the Lord’s Prayer.” Credit: Augustus F. Lindley (Lin-Le), Ti-Ping Tien-Kwoh: The History of the TiPing Revolution (London: Day & Son, 1866), 318.

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the long-standing imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In the Taiping movement and its religion, we witness a new development in Chinese history: a radical change in popular thought regarding the authority of the emperor and the legitimacy of the imperial order. The Taiping was the first movement in Chinese history to advocate not just the removal of the then-ruling emperor or the end of one particular dynasty but also the abolition of the entire imperial system and the institution of a whole new religious and political order. The Taiping appeal, then, was not based on the traditional appeal of a sectarian rebellion. On the contrary, the Taiping leaders would not have seen themselves as sectarians or rebels. They related their faith more to the native Chinese classical and Confucian tradition than to popular forms of sectarianism. 4 Their purpose was to lead a revolution, but in the older sense of the word—signifying a return to an earlier time. Hong Xiuquan and his Taiping followers believed that with the advent of the Qin dynasty and the empire (221 BC), Chinese culture had taken the wrong road, as it was the ruler of this Qin dynasty who first took the title of Huangdi. A more fitting term than “rebellion” or “revolution,” then, would be “restoration,” for the leaders of the Taiping movement wanted to restore what was believed to be the religious and political order of the classical past, the order that existed prior to the foundation of the empire. Restoration of the classical political order was important to the Taiping mission, but it was the restoration of the classical religious order that was the driving force of the movement. Religion was at the heart of the Taiping movement, and Taiping culture was the body of the movement, the physical expression of these religious beliefs. Political rebellion, in sum, was only one of several facets of this cultural transformation. Indeed, the Taiping would have regarded their movement as a failure if all they achieved were political goals, for Hong Xiuquan’s greater ambition was to remake all of Chinese culture according to his vision of a restored worship of Shangdi. Thus, although there was a political objective in the Taiping movement, the religious vision antedated the call to political rebellion. It was the worship of a new god that demanded the establishment of a new king, and not vice versa. The religious movement was not transformed into a mostly political rebellion; rather, the Taiping Rebellion was from start to finish a religious movement. 5 THE MISSIONARY SEARCH FOR THE NAME OF GOD The history of the faith that inspired the Taiping Rebellion must begin with the work of Matteo Ricci and the early Jesuit missionaries to China. Theirs was a contribution rightly called seminal, for it was the Jesuits who initiated the approach that proved so influential with Hong Xiuquan

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and the Taiping movement: they identified Christianity with the classical religion of China, and it was Matteo Ricci himself who first used the name of Shangdi to translate the name of the Christian God. Jesuit efforts to portray Christianity in terms of the classical religion initially were persuasive to a number of the Confucian literati. Ricci spoke of his efforts in two ways: of returning to an “original Confucianism,” and of “completing Confucianism.” Believing that Confucianism needed a transcendental faith to serve as a base for its ethical teachings, Ricci argued that Christianity served as a more suitable basis for Confucianism than Buddhism did, since Christianity was closer in character to the transcendent religion of Heaven that was originally featured in the Five Classics. (This collection of five books from the Zhou dynasty was edited and compiled by the Confucian school and served as Confucianism’s transcendental basis.) Incongruous as it may seem, Ricci presented Christianity as a way for the Chinese to return to their ancient faith. In his apologetic work, Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), Ricci quotes profusely from the Five Classics in his effort to show the similarity between China’s classical high god, Shangdi, and the Christian God. Ricci translated the name of the Christian God in various ways: Lord of Heaven, Shangdi (translated “High God” in this chapter; regularly translated by others as “Sovereign on High”), and Supremely Honored One. He most often refers to God as the Lord of Heaven, but also uses Shangdi fairly frequently. In the chapter titled “An Explanation of Mistaken Views Concerning the Lord of Heaven Among Men,” Ricci refers to the Five Classics numerous times in order to buttress his claim about the compatibility of Shangdi and the Christian God. For example, Ricci quotes from the Book of Songs: “The Arm of King Wu was full of strength; Irresistible was his ardor. Greatly illustrious were Cheng and Kang, kinged by Shangdi.” This is followed by quotations from other passages in the Book of Songs (also called Odes) in which Shangdi appoints a king to serve as a model to the Nine Regions. It is noted in still another song how “King Wen, watchfully and reverently . . . served Shangdi.” 6 Ricci does not limit his references to just one of the classics, but also quotes from the Book of Changes, the Record of Rites, and the Book of History. In the document known as “The Announcement of Tang,” taken from the Book of History, Ricci refers to the part of the text where it reads, “The great Shangdi has conferred even on the inferior people a moral sense.” Ricci concludes this section of classical references with this statement: “[Therefore], having leafed through a great number of ancient books, it is quite clear to me that Shangdi and Tianzhu [Lord of Heaven] are different only in name.” 7 Actually, oftentimes they were not even different in name, since Ricci and his converts regularly referred to God as Shangdi, even though Tianzhu was more widely preferred. The term Shangdi was one of the two terms initially favored by Ricci, but its use was later forbidden by Pope Clement XI in the 1704 papal bull,

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Ex Illa Die. 8 The papal decree enforced a statement issued by the Inquisition that forbade the use of Shangdi and Tian (Heaven) in referring to God, while approving the more innocuous and historically neutral term Tianzhu (Heavenly Lord) as an appropriate substitute. With that decision, the Catholic effort to identify with China’s classical religion suffered a setback, and it also contributed to the eventual imperial prohibition of Christianity. These events would result in a new life for Catholicism as a Chinese heresy, and in a new identity as a Chinese popular religion. 9 The first Protestant missionaries did not arrive in China until 250 years after the first Catholic missionaries had blazed the trail. The earliest Protestant efforts were directed at the translating of scripture, and these first Protestant translators, Robert Morrison and Joshua Marshman, learned from the experiences of their Catholic forerunners and initially refrained from employing the term Shangdi in their own translation of the name of God. Such restraint is evident in the writings of Liang Afa, China’s first Protestant evangelist. Most of the credit for the Protestant missionary contribution to the religion of the Taiping is given to Liang, and to his tract, Good Words to Encourage the World (Quanshi liangyan). This early Protestant tract did introduce the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to the Christian faith. 10 Liang’s tract, however, receives more emphasis than it is due, for while his book did germinate the religious seeds sown in Hong Xiuquan’s vision, it was the Taiping leader’s reading of the Bible a few years later (specifically the translation prepared by the Reverend Charles Gützlaff), and Hong’s introduction to the name of Shangdi therein, that shaped the form and direction which the maturing movement took. Indeed, on all the lists of Taiping royally sanctioned books, there is not one that includes the title of Liang Afa’s text. But, from the very first, these lists very prominently featured the Taiping Old and New Testaments. 11 In the profusion of passages that Liang Afa quoted directly from Morrison’s Bible, 12 Liang used mostly the terms Shentian (God, or gods, of Heaven) or simply Shen, and less frequently Shentian Shangdi (Shangdi, the God of Heaven) and Tian Shangdi (Shangdi of Heaven, or the Highest God of Heaven) to translate “God.” In his text, Liang had recourse to invoking the name Shangdi used alone in only a single passage. 13 While Morrison favored the use of Shen, Gützlaff, in the translation of the Bible adopted by the Taiping, preferred the term Shangdi for rendering the name of God, and less frequently Huang Shangdi (Supreme High God) and Shangzhu (Supreme or High Lord). So Genesis 1:1 in the Gützlaff version reads, “Yuanshi, Shangdi” (In the beginning, Shangdi), and Genesis 1:3 reads, “Shangdi yue guang” (Shangdi said [let there be] light), whereas Genesis 2:4 and 4:1, 4 refer to Shangzhu, Huang Shangdi (The High Lord, the Supreme Shangdi) and Huang Shangdi (the Supreme Shangdi), respectively. All of these terms were associated with the imperial title. 14

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Soon there were more than just these two translations, and so, with a flotsam of translations floating on a tempest-prone Chinese religious sea, Western missionaries gathered in Hong Kong in 1843, immediately following the Opium War, and began to set down a plan for a unified translation of the Bible. When the delegates finally assembled in 1847 to prepare a draft of the translation, it was immediately apparent that the committee handling the task had become polarized over what came to be known as the “term question.” 15 The debate over the proper rendering of the term for God took place in an open forum: in the pages of the Chinese Repository, a treaty port newspaper, which from 1843 to 1851 was inundated with wave after wave of articles arguing for one term or the other. 16 The debate began in the religious sphere, and it was a virtual continuation of the Catholic clash some two centuries earlier. It was acrimonious at times, especially as the debate intensified between the chief protagonists, Reverend William Boone, a missionary bishop of the American Episcopal Church, who endorsed the use of the term Shen, and Dr. Walter Medhurst, London Missionary Society veteran, who advocated using the term Shangdi. (It was Medhurst who cooperated with Reverend Gützlaff in the translation of the Taiping Bible.) While sometimes acrimonious, the debate was always impressive, an imposing monument to the breadth of learning that these men commanded, with the argument shifting from Roman history to Hebrew grammar and then back to the Chinese classics, often in the space of a single journal article. The contours of the debate were determined by how much weight the participants gave to one of two concerns. The Shen advocates emphasized the need to follow the apostolic precedent in searching for the proper term for signifying the deity. What Boone and his allies liked about the term Shen is that it seemed to better fit with the first-century apostolic example of translating the name of God into the Greek language. What did the Apostles do in their translation of the Hebrew idea of God? They did not use the name Zeus, the high God of the Greeks, for referring to the God of the Hebrews; rather, they used the Greek term that designated the common generic sense of god, theos. 17 Conversely, what Boone objected to in using the term Shangdi was that missionaries would unwittingly be promoting the worship of a pagan god. Medhurst responded to this argument with a position taken from the context of Chinese culture. Medhurst contended that the Chinese word for God had to convey to the Chinese the sense of unrivaled majesty the Christian God possesses. This sense, he felt, was not captured by the term Shen. Medhurst reasoned that in Chinese classical texts the term Shen denoted the generic name for a god and did not evoke the respect and awe due to the highest God. In his words, “Its simple and original meaning is that of spiritual and invisible beings in general, but always of an inferior order.” 18 Moreover, he pointed out that the term Shen was often

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paired with the word gui (ghost, and usually a malevolent ghost at that), which demonstrated that both terms refer to lower-level spiritual beings, and not at all to higher-level beings. The London Missionary Society veteran then returned to the Chinese cultural context and proposed using the name Shangdi for translating the term of God, both because it had a classical pedigree and because the term Shangdi referred to one who properly occupied the highest position of all the gods in the Chinese world. In fact, Medhurst argued that there was a sense in which the Chinese were not polytheists at all, since while they recognized the existence of a plurality of spiritual beings, they nonetheless only accorded Shangdi the highest honor. Medhurst referred to the practice of the emperor in his own worship, in which the ancient rites instructed the ruler to put on more “felicitous robes” when sacrificing to Shangdi, and to remove these same robes when worshiping the Shen (gods) of hills and rivers. 19 And it was only the emperor who could worship Heaven, at least at the Altar of Heaven in Beijing, using the ancient rituals. The Taiping will later address the matter of the emperor’s exclusive prerogative. 20 Medhurst was not always as imaginative in his presentations as he shows himself to be here. His comments, however, do reveal what he took to be the critical issue. While the Greek word theos could refer both to the highest deity and to the plurality of deities, the Chinese word Shen only referred to the latter. Therefore, the apostolic example could not be followed in this situation since the Greek case was not truly parallel to the Chinese. This debate was not just limited to the religious sphere; it also involved other, more complex, issues, and these issues began to surface as the debate intensified. In 1848, coincident with the rising politicization of the Taiping, of which the missionary community was at this point unaware, there were scattered references in the Chinese Repository that addressed the political dimensions of using the term Shangdi. Indeed, such associations were the basis for Boone’s more heated objections to using Shangdi; he charged that the term was subversive of civil government. Medhurst responded to this charge in a particularly astute article in which he pointed out the difficulty in the Chinese context of separating the religious from the political. He begins his defense as follows: “Another objection to Te [Di], is, that it has been used from the highest antiquity, and still is, the title given to the ruler of China.” 21 Medhurst then launched into a survey and an analysis of the divine pretensions of the Chinese emperor. He reminded his readers that, except for the ancient emperors, China’s rulers had only been called wang (usually translated as kings, but it can also be translated as princes) until the time of the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, who “arrogated to himself” the title Huangdi. This title is traditionally translated into English as emperor, but is just as naturally translated as “Glorious or Illustrious God.”

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While an emperor was alive, Medhurst explained, titles such as Huangshang (Illustrious Superior) and Shengzhu (Sagely or Holy Lord), along with Huangdi, were regularly employed to refer to the sovereign; it was the practice to confer the title of Di used alone only on deceased emperors. Medhurst compared the Chinese practice to the ancient Roman practice, in which Roman emperors were called theoi (gods) and sacrifices were regularly offered to them. After their deaths these same Roman emperors were often honored with an apotheosis (a ceremony through which the emperor was raised to divine status). These divine associations were likewise similarly cultivated in the Chinese situation. In the end there was a stalemate: neither Boone nor Medhurst gave way. The debate ended in the Repository; the Shanghai “Delegates” translation committee ceased without having broken through this impasse, an impasse that continues down to the present day, with Chinese Protestant Bibles printed in both Shen and Shangdi versions. THE TAIPING EFFORT TO RESTORE THE WORSHIP OF SHANGDI Nevertheless, it was Medhurst’s understanding of God that won over Hong Xiuquan. Though he was not in the audience of the delegates, the Taiping rebel leader was a beneficiary of Gützlaff and Medhurst’s decision to translate the term for God with the name Shangdi. The repercussions of this translation soon became evident in the integrated Chinese worlds of religion, politics, and culture. At the most fundamental level, Hong’s view of the exclusive worship of Shangdi meant that no other god could be worshiped. So his movement, which began in iconoclasm, continued in such activity until the very end. Hong’s early missionary treks included the defacing and destruction of temples. On one of his forays into the Guangxi countryside, Hong attacked an idol in a temple in Xiangzhou, beating the idol, which he referred to as a demon, and ordered his followers to “dig out the eyes of the demon, cut off his beard, trample its hat, tear its embroidered dragon robe to shreds, turn its body upside down, and break off its arms.” 22 And it was in a temple, the Temple of the Nine Dragons, that Hong Xiuquan first proclaimed publicly that he was the Heavenly King, some three years prior to the rising of the Taiping in Guangxi Province. This was an iconoclasm motivated by how Hong read the Ten Commandments, as he states very clearly in the Taiping Zhaoshu (The Taiping Imperial Declaration): By referring to the Old Testament (Jiuyizhao shengshu) we learn that in early ages the Great God (Huang Shangdi) descended on Mount Sinai and in his own hand he wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone, which he gave to Moses, saying, “I am the Supreme Lord (Shangzhu), the Great God; you men of the world must on no account set up

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Thomas H. Reilly images resembling anything in heaven above or on earth below, and bow down and worship them.” Now you people of the world who set up images and bow down and worship them are in absolute defiance of the Great God’s expressed will. . . . How extremely foolish you are to let your minds be so deceived by the demon! 23

The prominence of the commandments in the religion of the Taiping was so distinctive that Western observers commented that the Taiping faith was known among the common people as the “Ten Commandments religion.” 24 The Taiping followers’ reverence for and submission to the Decalogue was seen in both their fervent iconoclasm and their reluctance to forge too close a tie with the secret societies, policies that, if moderated, could have won even more people to their cause. Such support, nevertheless, came at too high a price for the Taiping. It was the third commandment that implicated the imperial system in the sin of blasphemy. Gützlaff translated the commandment thus: Wu ducheng ru Shangzhu Huang Shangdi zhiming fu Huang Shangdi wubuzui wangcheng qimingzhe (“Do not blaspheme the name of your High Lord the Supreme Shangdi; the Supreme Shangdi will certainly condemn as guilty he who recklessly calls upon his name”), 25 whereas the Taiping Heavenly Commandments followed this translation and then added buhao wangti Huang Shangdi zhiming (“It is not good to recklessly speak out the name of the Glorious Shangdi”). The poem that accompanied the Heavenly Commandments was particularly revealing: “Our exalted Father is infinitely honorable; those who violate the proper boundary and profane his name seldom come to a good end.” 26 The Repository had expressed its misgivings about this translation of the third commandment, fearing these very political repercussions. It was this religious belief in the exclusive worship of Shangdi that fostered a conviction about the illegitimacy of the Chinese imperial system. According to Taiping teaching, by adopting the term Huangdi, the first emperor had committed blasphemy, and successive emperors followed him in this sin. This view echoed early Catholic missionary sentiments and Reverend Medhurst’s comments on the imperial system as a blasphemous usurping of Shangdi’s prerogative, and this teaching became the Taiping ideological motivation not just for overthrowing the Manchus but also for overturning the entire imperial system as it was established by the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. The imperial figure represented just one more idol to smash. In this sense, the iconoclastic crusade which began in the temples of Guangxi was intended to reach all the way to Beijing’s imperial palace. The Taiping faith in Shangdi was vitally connected to the culture of the classical period, for that was the culture that featured a political system that honored Shangdi. This is the very system that inspired Hong and his fellow leaders to adopt for themselves the title of kings. Hong fashioned

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his own title after the original Heavenly King of the Zhou dynasty. Hong’s purpose, however, was not conservative or reactionary—he was not a slavish proponent of a return to early Confucianism. Instead, his intention was to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on the foundations of classical China, and thereby continue its traditions into the present. The kingdom Hong envisioned establishing was intended to return to the point that the emperors had led China astray, only this time China was to take the right path. This vision of the sweep of Chinese culture and history was very much in agreement with the interpretation proposed by early Catholic missionaries and the Protestant Walter Medhurst, both of whom had argued that the Chinese had worshiped the true (i.e., Christian) God in the classical period and had then fallen away from that worship. The Taiping believed that Hong Xiuquan alone would be able to persuade his countrymen to accept this view of the Chinese past. While Hong Xiuquan certainly attempted to wield the authority of an emperor and boasted of his own connections to divinity—he did claim to be the younger brother of Jesus—he always made it clear that only the Father could be called Di (emperor/God), and that he was only to be called a king—a heavenly king, yes, but only a king. As he instructed his heavenly soldiers, “Henceforth, all soldiers and officers may address me as Sovereign [or ‘lord,’ the term is zhu], and that is all; it is not appropriate to call me Supreme, lest you should offend the Heavenly Father.” 27 Hong did tend to imitate the emperor in some of his practices, but in the title he took for himself, Heavenly King, and in the system of collegial kingship his followers established, he demonstrated that he sought to create something new in his Taiping movement. This is a notable and distinctive characteristic of the Taiping movement: the title of their ruler was Heavenly King, not emperor. Other leaders in the movement would also be granted the title of king (there were over one hundred kings), but only Hong bore the dignity of Heavenly King. Yet this very distinctive marker of the Taiping movement barely elicits any comment from those who have studied the movement. Indeed, scholars have all but overlooked its ideological significance. However, by taking this title, Hong very clearly demonstrates the intention of the Taiping believers: to restore the classical religious and the classical political order. Hong’s objective, then, was not just to rebel against this one emperor but also to topple the entire imperial institution. As he put it in the Sanzijing (The Three Character Classic), the rulers of the classical period all honored Shangdi and revered heaven. It was only in the Qin dynasty that the ruler arrogated to himself the name of Huangdi, and so “All were deluded by the devil, those two thousand years.” 28 This view of imperial history permeates all the major Taiping documents. As the Taiping zhaoshu emphasizes, it was from the time of the Qin and Han dynasties that China began straying from the path of righteousness, and each succeed-

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ing emperor only added to the weight of that sin. When the Song emperors ascended the throne, they committed one of the most egregious sins yet: they changed the name of Shangdi. When Hui of Song appeared, he changed the appellation of the Great God to the Great Jade Emperor, God of the Golden Palace of the Luminous Heaven. Now to say that he dwelt in the golden palace of the luminous heaven was not so much amiss, but to call him the Great Jade Emperor was indeed the worst kind of blasphemy against the Great God. Since the Great God is the universal Father of all creatures under heaven, how can humans change his venerable name? 29 So the Taiping attacked more than the ruling Qing dynasty (1644–1911)—Hong Xiuquan and his followers held all the emperors from the Qin dynasty down to the Qing responsible for blasphemy, for the spread of idolatry, and for the general corruption of culture. This was the rationale, the ideological justification, for the Taiping Rebellion. This charge has not been taken seriously by those who have studied the Taiping. While many traditions of ruling authority have claimed for themselves divine origins and boasted of divine pretensions, the Chinese imperial system may have been doing these all one better. What was the meaning of the emperor’s claim to the title of Huangdi? Was the meaning of his claim to be, not just represent, the Son of Heaven? 30 There does seem to be an identification with deity here that gives substance to the Taiping charge of blasphemy. As I mentioned earlier, Gützlaff used the term Shangdi throughout his translation, and not infrequently referred to God as Huang Shangdi. Hong Xiuquan condemned the imperial identification with Shangdi in these words: The Great God is the only emperor [di]. The monarchs of this world may be called kings [wang] and that is all; but how can they be permitted to encroach a hair’s breadth upon this? Even Jesus the Saviour, God’s Crown Prince [Huang Shangdi Taizi], is only called our Lord. In heaven above and earth below, among men, who is greater than Jesus? Even Jesus was not called emperor; who then dares assume the designation of emperor? One who does so only demonstrates his blasphemous presumptions, bringing down upon himself the eternal punishment of hell. 31

The one who dared assume this designation was the then present ruler, the Emperor Xianfeng, together with all his ancestors. All throughout Taiping-occupied China declarations featuring these charges were posted. Zhang Dejian, Zeng Guofan’s compiler of intelligence reports, includes many of these very declarations. The leading one, which Zhang presumably lists as most representative, reads as follows: The Heavenly King [hereby] proclaims saying: All you fellow Qing Chinese, make your position clear—order all your soldiers and officials to obey the mandate and adhere to the Commandments. In all the great

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universe, the Glorious God [Huangdi; usually the title used to refer to the emperor, but here it is used to refer exclusively to Shangdi] is alone one. He is the Heavenly Father, the High Lord, the Glorious High God [Huang Shangdi]. Apart from the Heavenly Father, the High Lord, the Glorious High God, if there is a man who calls himself the Glorious God, with respect to the law of Heaven this transgression involves snow in the midst of the clouds. 32

Those who have studied the Taiping may not take this charge seriously, but it is clear that Qing loyalists did. After the rebellion was suppressed, a good deal of the Qing restoration effort was directed at shoring up and reconstructing ideological orthodoxy. So it was in Nanjing, the former Taiping Heavenly Capital, that the Qing general Zeng Guofan spent much of his energy and funds erasing the memory of Taiping heterodoxy and constructing a more orthodox and Confucian version of the events of the rebellion, building ceremonial arches and erecting shrines to those who sacrificed for the Qing loyalist cause, and ensuring that the first buildings to be restored were those that would support this effort: the Confucian temple (in 1865), the Nanjing Shrine of Loyalty and Righteousness (1868), and the examination halls (1864). 33 The priority and urgency that the Qing loyalists gave to constructing these buildings reflects how seriously these loyalists regarded the damage that the Taiping had wreaked on the imperial order. The damage was consequential, just as the Taiping attack on the imperial office was serious. The emperor was guilty of the charge of blasphemy: in assuming the title of Huangdi, the ruler of China had profaned the name of God. Hong Xiuquan, by taking up the sword, had acted to honor God’s name and to restore the ancient worship of Shangdi. Assuming the titles of sovereign and king, but refusing that of emperor, Hong showed that he would preserve the sanctity of the Heavenly Father’s name. NOTES 1. In its December 2009 issue, the journal Late Imperial China devoted the entire contents to the Taiping Rebellion. One article in particular, “Loyalty, Anxiety and Opportunism: Local Elite Activism during the Taiping Rebellion in Eastern Zhejiang, 1851–1864” (39–83), authored by Xiaowei Zheng, shows how some elites actually supported the rebels. This is not how the elite role is usually cast. Consequently, the author argues that we should stop using the more prejudicial term “rebellion” for the movement, which is how the Qing dynasty attempted to delegitimize the Taiping. Rather, especially in view of what she has found, it is better characterized as a “civil war.” Stephen Platt, in the introduction to this same issue, expands on this idea. As he remarks, “The English term ‘rebellion’ was originally the choice of sympathy with the imperial side, while foreigners who sympathized with the Taiping at the time described them as ‘revolutionaries’ or ‘insurgents’ and those with no clear preference called the conflict a ‘civil war.’” See Late Imperial China 20, no. 2 (December 2009), 7. Platt also takes this position in his book, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2012), incorporating

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that position into the title and throughout the narrative. Though I have sympathy for the Taiping movement, I will follow convention by describing the movement as a rebellion, but I will do so with these qualifications in mind. 2. Huangdi is the term that the ruler of the Qin dynasty chose as his title after he had conquered all the kingdoms of the classical era and unified China under his control. Westerners translate this title as “emperor.” The di is the same character in both Shangdi and Huangdi, and, if used alone, it can be translated as either god or emperor. 3. Platt, in his Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, 161, refers to the efforts of the Taiping Shield King, Hong Rengan, in seeking to place the Taiping movement in the context of Chinese history. This effort, however, came in the later years of the rebellion. In Hong Xiuquan’s description of the movement’s purpose as restoring the classical kingship and classical religion, he was also attempting to place the movement in the larger context of Chinese history, and yet he was doing so during the earliest years of the movement. 4. Deciding on the terms for describing various religious traditions and their adherents is always a tricky matter in Chinese religious contexts. For example, “popular Buddhist sectarians” would be a fairly accurate term for such groups. But there are those who would object to the use of such terminology. By describing these teachings and traditions as popular religion, I am implying not that the elite did not subscribe to these teachings and traditions, but rather that they would normally not have participated in the religious organizations that grew out of these beliefs. And then there is the label “Buddhist.” Daniel Overmyer, in his study Precious Volumes: An Introduction to Sectarian Scriptures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, argues that these popular sects were a tradition apart from established Buddhism and Daoism— a fourth teaching, as it were. These groups do often draw ideas from a number of different sources, including Confucianism, but the ideas and concepts seem most heavily indebted to the Buddhist tradition. 5. In even their most secular documents, such as the anti-Manchu Proclamation by Imperial Sanction (Banxing zhaoshu) or the communalistic Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty (Tianchao tianmou zhidu), the Taiping cite religious motives as justification for their actions. I am not denying the intention of the Taiping to stage a political rebellion. Yet they did so because this political goal served the larger religious goals of the movement. 6. Matteo Ricci, Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), translated with an introduction by Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuochen, edited by Edward J. Malatesta (Taipei: Ricci Institute, 1985), 122–23. I have used Lancashire and Hu Kuochen’s translations of Ricci’s text, but have changed a few items to reflect the pinyin transcription of terms, especially for Shangdi. Usually the translators translate the Chinese term Shangdi 上帝 as “Sovereign on High,” rather than just transliterating the term. 7. Ricci, Tianzhu shiyi, 124–25. 8. Arnold Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at the Court of China (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1942), 165–66. 9. Two recent books that discuss this part of the career of Chinese Catholicism are Lars Peter Laamann’s Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China (London/New York: Routledge, 2006) and Eugenio Menegon’s Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, which focuses on Catholicism as a local and popular religion. 10. “Tract” suggests brevity; the work extends to just over five hundred pages. 11. Many of the Taiping publications include a list of other Taiping works that garnered the Taiping imprimatur, usually on the first page. So, for example, affixed to the cover of the Taiping Imperial Declaration, there is a list of fifteen books that received the permission of the Taiping Heavenly King. That list features the Taiping Old and New Testaments, but not Good Words. A publication printed later in the rebellion, The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Calendar, Eleventh Year, features a list of twenty-nine texts,

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and again the Taiping Old and New Testaments have a place, but Good Words does not. See Taiping Tianguo yinshu, 388, 718. 12. Liang’s opus is largely just that: a compilation of passages from the Morrison Bible. 13. Liang Fa 梁發, Quanshi liangyan 勸世良言 (Good Words to Encourage the World) (Canton: Religious Tract Society, 1832; rpt. Taipei 台北: Taiwan xuesheng shuju 台灣學 生書局, 1965). The text contains the following examples: Shentian Shangdi, 44; Tian Shangdi, 38; Shen, 237. Shangdi, used alone, is on page 435. I have used the pagination of the reprint edition. 14. Jiuyizhao shengshu, Xinyizhao shengshu (The Old Testament, the New Testament), 1853. Qinting Jiuyizhao, Qinting qianyizhao (The Royally Authorized Old and New Testaments), 1860(?). British Museum microfilm. Both of these versions of the Bible were published by the Taiping. The 1853 version is an exact copy of Gützlaff’s version; the latter is Hong’s adapted version, complete with his annotations. 15. A history of the committee is featured in the Chinese Repository (Canton), volume 19, 544–49. See also Douglas G. Spelman, “Christianity in Chinese: The Protestant Term Question,” (Harvard) Papers on China 22A (1969): 27. Spelman examines the debate in general; I examine the debate more for its implications for the ideology of the Taiping. 16. In the most intense year of the debate, 1848, more than 350 pages of the Repository’s total 650 pages were devoted to the controversy; at the climax of the debate in 1850, there were no fewer than nineteen different articles on the controversy in that one year. See Chinese Repository (1848, 1850). 17. The Apostles themselves were following a precedent of their own, for it was the pre-Christian era Jewish translators of the Hebrew scriptures, in the version known as the Septuagint, who had first employed the term theos in their Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. This translation was completed during the third to first centuries BC. See the article on this translation in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1093–1103. In the Septuagint’s version of Genesis, the words for God are mostly kurios ò theos (the Lord God) and simply ò theos (God). Zeus, as Boone noted, is not used. 18. Chinese Repository, January 1847, 35. Part of the debate focused on finding a term that, like the Greek term theos, could signify both a generic sense of god and the majestic sense of the high God. Medhurst stumbled at one point and tried to argue that only the term Di satisfies both requirements. He only really won the debate—at least in my view—when he argued that the Chinese language did not have one single term that supplied both meanings. 19. Chinese Repository, July 1848, 329. 20. A good introduction to the sacrifices offered by the emperor and to the rituals he followed in his work as priest of the Confucian and canonical cult is available in Thomas A. Wilson, “Sacrifice and the Imperial Cult of Confucius,” in History of Religions 41, no. 3 (2002), 251–87. See also Rodney Taylor, The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990). 21. Chinese Repository, May 1848, 221. 22. Franz Michael, The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents, vol. 2 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 74. I have used Michael’s translations for Taiping documents whenever these are available, indicating any differences I have with his translations in a note. He includes most of the documents, with the exception of the Taiping Bibles. I have also included a reference to the Chinese version of these documents, which is available in the series edited by Xiang Da et al., Taiping Tianguo, volumes 1 and 2, in the series, Zhongguo jindai ziliao congkan (Shanghai: Shenzhou Guoguang she, 1952), volume 2, 649. Hereafter, I shall cite this source as TPTG. 23. Michael, 2:41; TPTG, 1:95. I should point out here how Taiping documents regularly refer to the Bible as an authority, but only refer to Liang’s treatise in a couple of instances, neither of which refers to Liang’s work as any kind of authority.

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24. E. Gardiner Fishbourne, Impressions of China, and the Present Revolution: Its Progress and Prospects (London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1855), 180. 25. Jiuyizhao shengshu, Qinding jiuyizhao shengshu; Exodus 20:1–7. 26. Michael, The Taiping Rebellion, 2:119–20; TPTG, 1:78. 27. Michael, The Taiping Rebellion, 2:107–8; TPTG, 1: 67. 28. Michael, The Taiping Rebellion, 2:157; TPTG, 1:226. 29. Michael, The Taiping Rebellion, 2:44. 30. The silence on this topic is perplexing. Rodney Taylor, in his The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism, does not even broach the subject. There are studies on the imperial cults—that is, those cults in which the emperor participated. We know what animals were sacrificed on what sacred day—we even know what color they were supposed to be: the three Great Offerings included a red bull, a black ram, and a white pig. But I have yet to find a study that examines the religious aspects of the imperial person and office. If anyone could succeed at such a project, it would be Michael Loewe. Loewe goes into detail discussing the imperial cults in his entry, “The Religious and Intellectual Background,” in the Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, The Ch’in and Han Empires (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), but he, too, says little about the cult of the emperor itself. Surprisingly, he leaves such a discussion to another contributor, who refers to Qin Shi Huangdi assuming the title of Huangdi in a short page or two. Nor does Loewe address the issue (but more understandably, since he is dealing with the Han dynasty) in his comments on religion in his Crisis and Conflict in Han China, 104 BC to AD 9 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974). Nevertheless, he addresses other aspects of the Qin imperial legacy, so why not this one? All I can say is that this is a profound and perplexing gap in our knowledge of imperial Chinese culture. 31. Michael, 2:46; TPTG, 1:97. Michael’s translation has God’s son, for which I have substituted God’s Crown Prince. 32. TPTG, Vol. 3; “Zeiqing huizuan,” 191. The phrase “snow in the clouds” refers to executing a man with a sword—decapitation. 33. In an apparent attempt to discourage heterodoxy and encourage orthodoxy, Zeng took property that prior to the rebellion had belonged to a Daoist temple and put it to a more orthodox use: he built the prefectural school and a Confucian temple on the land. See William Charles Wooldridge, “Building and State Building in Nanjing after the Taiping Rebellion,” in Late Imperial China 20, no. 2 (December 2009), 101–13. Similar efforts were expended in Yangzhou, as described by Tobie Meyer-Fong in her chapter, “Gathering in a Ruined City: Metaphor, Practice and Recovery in Post-Taiping Yangzhou,” in Lifestyle and Entertainment in Yangzhou, edited by Lucie B. Olivova and Vibeke Børdahl (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2009), 37–61. Meyer-Fong, however, looks not just at building projects but also at other restorative efforts, such as gatherings of elites and the reassembling of libraries.

FIVE Mandarins and Martyrs of Taiyuan, Shanxi, in Late-Imperial China Anthony E. Clark

On 9 July 1900, a group of Italian Franciscans and English Baptist missionaries were marched through the streets of Shanxi’s capital city, men and women stripped to the waist, and beheaded near the gate of the governor’s yamen. Their heads were then displayed in small wooden cages at the official’s mansion, as was commonly done with the decapitated heads of criminals in late-imperial China. Historical accounts of this massacre conform to common Protestant and Catholic hagiographical tropes: the Protestants render stirring testimonies (one might describe them as protracted homilies) before dying, and the Catholic martyrs are depicted as piously intoning Latin hymns as they die. 1 Catholic descriptions of the Shanxi martyrs emulate popular devotional literature of the late nineteenth century. The seven sisters who were executed are said to have chanted the Te Deum as they were beheaded, their voices diminishing one by one as they died, similar to the deaths of the Carmelites in Gertrude von le Fort’s (1876–1971) novella, Die Letzte am Schafott, and Francis Poulenc’s (1899–1963) opera, Dialogues des Carmélites. 2 The antiforeign and anti-Christian violence during China’s Boxer Uprising occurred nearly three centuries after Matteo Ricci had established his mission in Beijing’s Xuanwu District. 3 Ricci had demonstrated an optimism that Christianity could be embedded into Chinese society if it was sensitive to China’s extant cultural mores; indeed, cultural accommodation, rather than cultural erasure, was the Jesuit missioner’s modus operandi in Asia. As George Dunne, SJ (1905–1989), notes, Ricci and his mentor, Alessandro Valignano, sensed that “[i]nstead of attempting to graft itself as a 93

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foreign substance upon the resistant and unfriendly body of Chinese culture, Christianity was to revert to its original character of leaven. Entering quietly into the body of Chinese culture it must endeavor to transform it from within.” 4 Ricci was not without anxieties, however, that Chinese misunderstanding of Christianity could precipitate intense cultural and religious antagonisms. These anxieties sadly became apparent in events such as the Taiyuan Massacre discussed in this chapter. In a letter to his superior in 1596, Matteo Ricci wrote, “We only venture to move forward very slowly . . . it is true that up till now we have not explained the mysteries of our holy faith, but we are nonetheless making progress by laying the principle foundations.” 5 Two aspects of this letter have attracted scholarly attention: Ricci exhibits certain anxieties about disclosing Christian doctrine too hastily in his new cultural context, and he notes progress, albeit protracted, in proselytizing China. The Taiyuan incident of 1900 is one of the best historical venues to consider these two points. First, Ricci, who was perhaps one of the most Sinified of all Westerners, knew early on that the religious components of the Christian mission could attract negative consequences in their new cultural context, as in Shanxi; second, the accommodationist approach of Protestant and Catholic missionaries in Taiyuan was, for the most part, only able to generate cultural and religious understanding among those Chinese who were “converted” to Christianity via slow and calculated indoctrination. The historical events of the Boxer Uprising in 1900 suggest that on the macro level Chinese society largely misunderstood (and misrepresented) the activities and beliefs of the Western missionaries; accommodationism only reduced cultural tensions in Taiyuan on the micro level among those Chinese who had been consciously inculcated with, and accustomed to, the cultural and doctrinal particularities of Western Christianity. 6 I should note at the outset that the so-called Ricci method of deliberate and calculated Christianization was not actually formulated by Matteo Ricci. It is more accurate to ascribe the accommodationist approach of these early missionaries to Ricci’s famous confrere, Michele Ruggieri, SJ (1543–1607), who advocated adjusting Christianity to Chinese language and cultural mores rather than making Europeans of the native Chinese. History attests to the general successes of the missionary methods of Ruggieri and Ricci, and their influence on China’s late-imperial history spans beyond religious catechesis. 7 The scientific, philosophical, and theological expertise of these early missionaries was prodigious, and they left a remarkable legacy of Western expertise on the landscape of Chinese history. The cartographic, philosophical, theological, and scientific works produced by Ricci and his successors have been the predominate occupation of Western scholars such as Benjamin Elman and Florence Hsia. 8 These scholarly works, while quite important to our understanding of Western mission history

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in China, have, however, highlighted the scientific and intellectual aspects of the Christian mission in China while largely ignoring the religious dimension of their efforts. My goal here is to consider the religious, rather than scientific, aspects of China’s mission history by focusing on a single historical event to demonstrate how the Ricci method, employed by Catholics and Protestants alike, helped produce a thriving Christian community, one that was nonetheless largely martyred during the turbulence of the Boxer Uprising in 1900. This account illustrates that Ricci’s anxieties regarding the potential for hostile and violent religious misunderstanding were legitimate, and that the slow unveiling of Christian doctrine materialized into a well-catechized native Christian community that could not escape the persistent cultural and religious misunderstandings that plagued the Christian mission in China. In hagiographical texts, the Boxer Uprising massacres of missionaries and converts are regularly connected to Tertullian’s (c. 160–225) famous assertion: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” 9 That is, the incipient churches of ancient Rome and early modern China are represented analogously. Tertullian’s equation is often mentioned by Chinese Christians in Shanxi today as the principal explanation for the remarkable popularity of Christianity there. Another aspect of the Taiyuan incident I wish to underscore here is that cultural and religious tensions were not confined only to antagonisms between Christians and native non-Christians, but were also manifest between Catholics and Protestants. Denominational disparities are most evidently seen in how the Taiyuan incident was represented in later hagiographies. (MIS)REPRESENTATIONS AND THE ADVENT OF CONFLICT By the late nineteenth century Protestant and Catholic missionaries shared the mission field, and both communities had acquired firsthand knowledge of the conflicts caused by cultural and religious differences. As has been well documented in previous scholarship, these animosities were by no means unilateral; both European/American and Chinese nonChristian communities imagined and produced pejorative representations of the others’ cultural and religious views. 10 These uncomplimentary depictions were quite broad, influencing cultural impressions of sexuality, ceremonies, medical practice, religious iconography, and nomenclature. Missionaries wrote often in derogatory terms about the religious culture of native Chinese, and these impressions traveled to European and American audiences. One missionary, W. E. Hipwell, recorded his response to visiting a Chinese temple during a festival in 1907: “I entered the temple for a few moments, but was compelled to withdraw quickly, on account of the horror by which I was overwhelmed as I watched those before the idol who with intense fervour besought the blessings which

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they desired. . . . The place was reeking with sickening smoke, and horrible because of the almost manifest presence of the devil, glorying over these multitudes thus enslaved by him.” 11 Hipwell’s account represents China’s indigenous religious culture in resolutely disapproving words— the Chinese people render offerings of “sickening smoke” to Satan, who has, we are told, “enslaved” them. This and similar missionary accounts were translated later into a popular genre of literary works that portray the Chinese in analogous terms. Sax Rohmer’s (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, 1883–1959) widely read novels on the “insidious” Dr. Fu Manchu appear to directly emulate Hipwell’s temple description. Rohmer wrote, “From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft . . . smoke faintly penciled through the air—from the burning perfume on the table—grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of grey horror.” 12 In another passage about the same character, the reader is told to “[i]magine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.” 13 Rohmer’s vivid description of the “Satanic doctor” resonates with other Protestant descriptions of such Chinese worshipers, “with their hideous, grotesque expressions, staring fixedly in front of them.” 14 Catholic missionaries likewise industriously occupied themselves with similar depictions of the Chinese. Father George M. Stenz, SVD (1869–1928), a Catholic missioner of the Society of the Divine Word, has recorded a song intoned to departing missionaries to China: Friends, farewell, and may God speed you, And to holy combat lead you . . . Yet, the enemy has swayed them And for centuries has made them Spurn their Maker, the all-good. Shall he longer yet enslave them? Hasten, brethren, forth to save them. 15

This song was not an anomaly in missionary hymnals; in a later SVD hymn book is included the song, “Hark! The Sound of the Fight Has Gone Forth,” which invokes the missionary “soldiers” to “hasten to conquer the world with the sign of the Victim” and “march to the battle with speed.” 16 Such hymns are representative of the Ecclesia Militans ethos that prevailed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which presents a rather uncomplimentary view of China’s religious heritage and its people; the first song dispatches missionaries to “holy combat” in “darkness most repelling,” where the devil has “swayed them,” causing them to “spurn their maker.” Catholic missioners departing from their native European soil were exhorted to “save” Chinese from enslavement. Father Stenz found even more about China to revile, writing that the “Chinaman

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murmurs everything between his teeth and with such laziness that it is well-nigh impossible to distinguish anything but a hopscotch of sounds and tones,” and furthermore that Chinese “possesses an unsurpassable dexterity in the use of vile and corrupt language.” 17 Stenz’s disdain for Chinese culture and language was not uncommon among Catholic missioners living in China, who established schools to instruct the native Chinese in the “more civilized” European languages. 18 Christian missionaries habitually described China’s indigenous religions as “Satanic” and “repulsive,” while also complaining in personal letters of the “uncivilized” nature of Chinese language and culture. Jacques Gernet has stated, “The missionaries were deeply imbued with all that the oppositions between the eternal soul and the perishable body imply for the human moral and philosophical order and they were convinced of the existence of transcendental truths.” 19 And he adds that they “found themselves in the presence of a different kind of humanity,” one that sadly led to more conflict than mutual understanding on both sides. 20 For its part, China viewed the West in similar terms. Foreign missionaries were “barbarian,” more animal than human. In fact, since China’s tonal language allowed for certain anti-Christian punning, Catholic missionaries were depicted as worshipers of a “grunting pig.” The Chinese term for “Catholic” is Tianzhujiao 天主教, or the “Lord of Heaven Religion.” And the last two graphs, zhujiao, sound homophonically analogous to two other characters: zhujiao, 豬叫, which mean “pig grunt.” 21 Catholics, especially those in northern China, were accordingly said to worship a grunting pig. In addition, Christian missionaries were rumored to have practiced cruel and lascivious acts on the Chinese. The popular nineteenth-century book Bixiejishi outlined several imaginative mythologies: Christians worship a pig named “Yesu” (Jesus), gouge out the eyes of Christian converts, remove living fetuses, and commonly rape young and married Chinese women. One passage describes a Sunday service as a time when “[t]he pastor takes his seat at the front and extols the virtue of Yesu. . . . The whole group mumbles through the liturgies, after which they copulate together in order to consummate their joy.” 22 In yet another portion of the text, we read that Western missionaries “are able to impart a magical power to water; to send abroad charms on the wings of the wind; and to take captive the spirits of living persons for the purpose of holding licentious intercourse with them.” 23 Catholic missioners were accused of, essentially, raping the Chinese both physically, during liturgical rites, and spiritually, through magical rites. With such images of Christian missionaries disseminated throughout lateimperial China, it is little wonder that violent conflicts occurred. By 1900 popular anti-Christian songs were heard throughout northern China, and Shanxi, which had formerly been comparatively affable toward foreign guests, became one of the most anti-foreign provinces. These ditties contained most of the prevalent anti-missionary mytholo-

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gies: accusations of injustice, rape, kidnapping, and the removal of human organs to produce silver. One such song was the widely intoned Mie gui ge (Exterminating the Demons Song), which calls for an alarming elimination of Christian missionaries. 24 Quickly tie him up and force some shit down his throat. 25 After pouring the shit, search his house all around: Any demon-book should go in the fire. Then draw a cross on the ground with a devil hanging down, and tell him to piss on this thing if he wants to be unbound. Should he dare to disobey, throw him into the waterway. And see how he’ll scream in dismay! Fathers and brothers who teach this song will reap blessings and virtue aplenty. Boys and girls who learn this song will be free from menace their whole life long. Though the demons may come in a horde, we’re sure to put them all to the sword. 26

Besides this song, which exhorts Chinese to put all missionaries “to the sword,” there were other works that encouraged Chinese action against Christians. The famous scholar Chen Tianhua (1875–1905) rendered a rather caustic assessment of Westerners in his Jing shi zhong (Alarm Bells) and called his fellow Chinese to wrathfully rise against the foreign threat: “Alas, our day of death has come! . . . Kill them, kill them all! . . . Let scholars put aside their pens, peasants their ploughs, merchants their business and craftsmen their tools; sharpen the steel, load the guns and drink the wine of blood; advance in your multitudes with warlike cry, to kill the foreign devils. . . . [Advance to] kill them all, kill, kill, kill!” 27 Chen’s appeal for the forceful removal of Westerners was heard by large numbers of antiforeign Chinese in 1900; on 14 June 1900, Boxers surrounded Beijing’s North Cathedral shouting, “Sha, sha . . . shao, shao,” or “Kill, kill . . . burn, burn!” 28 Ricci’s fears that Chinese misconceptions of Christian belief and praxis could precipitate antagonisms had by the late nineteenth century become a reality, and it was in this context of misinterpretation and misrepresentation that several Protestant and Catholic missionaries found themselves in Taiyuan during the fiercest months of the Boxer Uprising, June through August of 1900. THE PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES OF TAIYUAN Not long after Matteo Ricci and his Jesuit confreres had established the Christian mission in Beijing, other Catholic and Protestant groups began pouring into China. Nicolas Trigault’s, SJ (1577–1628), brother, Michel Trigault, SJ (1602–1667), was the first Catholic missionary to enter

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Shanxi’s capital city, Taiyuan, in 1633, and by the late nineteenth century the poor province of Shanxi boasted a sizable number of mission churches, orphanages, hospitals, and schools. 29 Taiyuan contained the largest number of foreigners. The Catholic mission was located near the city’s imposing North Gate, and the Protestant mission had constructed the large Schofield Memorial Hospital, part of the large Baptist compound in the southeast section of the capital city. Until the summer of 1900, when the Boxer violence against foreigners was at its height, the two groups seldom interacted, but they were lodged together in June while they awaited their collective execution under the order of Governor Yuxian (d. 1901), who was referred to in missionary periodicals as the “butcher of Shanxi” (see figure 5.1). The account of the Taiyuan incident (Taiyuan jiaoan) is significant because it was, as far as I have been able to discern, the first instance in the history of Christianity in China in which Protestants and Catholics were imprisoned and martyred together. Unfortunately, there are few historical documents recounting this event, and what sources do exist describe the actual executions at Yuxian’s yamen quite differently. 30 Protestant, Catholic, and Chinese sources render a dissimilar sequence of events, though the skeletal details of the massacre conform to a similar narrative. 31 In order to gather what information I have acquired, it was necessary to consult the respective Protestant missionary records and Catholic sources compiled for causes for sainthood, and I also traveled to Taiyuan to interview the descendants of many of the Chinese converts who were martyred there. The Taiyuan Christian martyrs function as a representative example of other similar conflicts throughout China’s northern plains; misunderstanding and misrepresentation fueled native Chinese hostilities against the foreign missions and the community of Chinese Christians, which was willing, under the preparation and sustained support of the foreign missionary presence, to tolerate the animosities of their fellow Chinese for the sake of their adopted religious tradition. The Protestant mission in Taiyuan was established under the auspices of English Baptists and the China Inland Mission, founded by James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) in 1865. Among the mission’s charitable works in Taiyuan was the Schofield Hospital, which was overseen by sixteen English Baptists in the southeast section of the city. Accommodations for the missionaries attached to the hospital were tight; Nat Brandt notes that “only four families and a single female missionary could be accommodated inside its walls.” 32 Several of the Baptists who operated this mission, and who died during the violence of 1900, were old China hands: Rev. and Mrs. James Simpson (thirteen years in China); Rev. and Mrs. George Stokes (nine years in China); Rev. and Mrs. Silvester Whitehouse; and Edith Coombs, who ran the Baptist girls’ school. Dr. Arnold Lovitt managed the hospital along with his wife, who was a trained nurse. 33 Other Protestant families, such as the Farthings and Benyons,

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Figure 5.1. Governor Yuxian, the “butcher of Shanxi,” who ordered the executions of Taiyuan’s Catholic and Protestant missionaries on 9 July 1900. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

were also executed on 9 July (see figure 5.2). By the early summer of 1900, this intimate group of English Christians was aware of the growing number of displaced young Chinese, out of work due to recent natural disas-

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ters in northern China; famine and crop failures had left several thousand peasant families without fields to harvest, hungry, and with more free time to give attention to anti-Christian materials, such as Chen Tianhua’s Jing shi zhong, the Bixiejishi, and the popular ditty Mie gui ge. 34 Anti-foreign pamphlets commonly accused Christians of provoking the natural disasters that had beset China. And in addition to this, the court had declared war on the Christian churches and foreign legations in Beijing. Taiyuan’s governor, Yuxian, was notoriously anti-foreign, and the popular uprising against Christian missions helped facilitate his efforts to eliminate Shanxi’s foreign and Christian presence. Yuxian was also known for his generally malicious methods of confronting missionaries and for his alliance with the Boxers. Archibald Glover (1859–1954), who with his family barely escaped the Boxer violence in Shanxi, wrote that shortly after his appointment in Taiyuan on 18 April, Yuxian began recruiting young persons into Boxer units in and around the capital. 35 Paul Cohen has stated that Yu’s “policy of decapitation and dispersion was well adapted to the structure of the groups that were its main target”—namely, foreign missionaries and Chinese converts. 36 The various historical narratives of Yuxian’s massacre of Christian missionaries at Taiyuan confirm all accounts of his ensanguined persecution of foreign-

Figure 5.2. Mr. George Farthing and family, members of the Baptist mission at Taiyuan who were martyred on 9 July 1900. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

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ers and Christians, which were largely driven by misrepresentations disseminated by anti-Christian literati and peasants during the late nineteenth century. Relying on scholarly and hagiographical sources we can cautiously weave together a broad narrative of the incident, one in which cultural and political misunderstanding and mistrust precipitated a horrible crisis. Sino-Western conflicts in Beijing between the court and foreigners in early 1900 were magnified when increasing numbers of anti-foreign Boxers occupied Beijing in early June, and after a Manchu bannerman killed the German official Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler (1853–1900) on 20 June, open hostilities quickly erupted. The foreign legations demanded reparation, and Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) used this as a pretext to officially declare war against foreign missions and the legations on 21 June. Local Chinese officials, such as Governor Yuxian, were enlisted in the conflict after the court issued its formal declaration of war. Yuxian had gained official sanction to do what he had all along hoped for; he was now at war with the Christians in Shanxi. A decree was posted at Taiyuan’s telegraph office in June that alarmed the Christian community: “This area has foreign missionaries who have ravaged our region, angering both gods and men. All of you who have converted to their religion, correct your errors and reform yourselves. . . . Those who remain unenlightened will have endless regrets.” 37 In a fearful letter dated just two weeks before her execution on 9 July, Mary Duval wrote, “These are not nice times we are living in. . . . Rumour says [the governor] is going to ask permission to kill the foreigners. . . . There are horrid rumours, but God is keeping us trusting; and looking up to Him, away from all else, gives peace.” 38 The imperial decree published in late July had clearly stirred anxieties among the missionaries and converts living at the Baptist mission in Shanxi, and indeed, not too long after Duval’s letter was written, a crowd attacked Schofield Hospital and razed much of the mission compound. Dr. Lovitt and his family attempted to escape the flames through a street exit, but they were noticed by Boxers and assailed by bricks. Edith Coombs fell on her way out of the mission while attempting to save a small schoolgirl, and Eben Edwards recounts that Coombs was “thrust once, twice, thrice into the flames as she endeavored to escape.” 39 The remaining Protestant missionaries, along with several Chinese converts, were taken into custody by Yuxian for “their protection” and held under guard in a railway office located at “Pig Head Alley.” Members of the English Baptist mission and the Italian Franciscan mission were now lodged together. 40 Once convened, the two groups of missionaries prepared themselves for what they knew was about to befall them; for his part, Yuxian was uneasy about rumors that Catholic converts were well armed, and he called for reinforcement militia from nearby Datong and Pingyang before finally ordering the executions. 41 The eccentric Eng-

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lish painter and anthropologist who traveled into China, Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865–1924), notes that Yuxian only ordered their decapitations after he had “the gates of the city closed and carefully watched.” 42 And after his reinforcements arrived, the governor stationed both official troops and Boxers around the execution ground near the yamen gate, and summoned the prisoners. Luella Minor’s account of Christian martyrs during the Boxer Uprising describes an eyewitness who was “startled to see them coming up the street in a long line, each with a rope tied tightly around his forehead and passing back to the next one. Men, women, and children, they formed a strange procession. And they must have been marching to their death, for that is the way they lead condemned criminals out to execution.” 43 The missionaries and converts were not only tied together but also “stripped to the waist, as was the custom with” criminals about to be beheaded. 44 In the papers of Dr. Charles F. Johnson (1879–1944), a Presbyterian medical missionary who lived in China during the Boxer Uprising, we find an extended witness account of the Shanxi violence under Yuxian’s orders. Johnson includes a description of the “Shansi Massacre” in an outgoing letter dated 13 September 1900. He writes, “The following account was given by Rev. H. D. Porter, M.D. [Henry D. Porter], who received it from an English speaking Chinese teacher who had been employed as teacher in the boys’ school in Fenchowfu, and who escaped from the massacre bringing the news to Tientsin.” Despite the fact that the account is thus third hand, it is remarkably accurate. The witness provides important details: “On the 9th he [Yuxian] ordered them all to come to his yamen ostensibly that he might escort them safely to the coast. On entering the first gate of the yamen they were surrounded by a guard of soldiers. About 21 Boxers, then, with drawn swords, were allowed, or told, to enter the circle, and the foreigners were deliberately cut to pieces by these fiends. They were all beheaded and their heads, placed in baskets, were hung over the four city gates.” 45 THE CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES OF TAIYUAN Leading up to the 9 July incident, the Catholic mission operated by the Franciscan friars and sisters had grown to an imposing size (see figure 5.3). Taiyuan and surrounding villages had large Catholic churches, hospitals, convents, rectories, and priories that were built in a predominantly Western style; they were edifices of foreign power that appeared to the poor Chinese communities near them to be wealthy and imperialist. In their history of Taiyuan, Zhang De and Jia Lili recount somewhat mordantly that “every time a church was built the [foreign missionaries] seized a large plot of fertile farmland.” 46 Public Catholic celebrations conducted on certain feasts, such as Corpus Christi, displayed long pro-

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cessions that wound through Chinese streets, often passing Chinese native temples. 47 A non-Christian Shanxi literatus named Liu Dapeng (1857–1942) wrote in 1902 of the Franciscan compound at Dongergou, located very near Taiyuan: “The villagers all follow the foreign religion. The village lies at the foot of the hills, with the church standing on the slope of the hill, surrounded by a wall. There are many buildings within the wall. The site is impressive and the buildings are all in the foreign style.” 48 This prominent presence of Catholic missionaries in Shanxi during a time of cultural antagonism exacerbated China’s impressions of foreign imperialism; large Western structures with seemingly wealthy foreigners attached were an easy target for hostility, especially during a time of famine. Severe starvation in the late nineteenth century caused by the famine in Shanxi juxtaposed with the apparently wealthy mission compounds provoked increasingly irritated anti-foreign stories. By spring 1900, antiChristian placards began to appear in the proximity of Taiyuan with ditties that were by then common, which attributed Shanxi’s natural disasters to the presence of the missionaries and summoned the local population to rise against them: The gods help those who fight with the Society of Righteous Harmony, because the devils have disturbed the Central Plain.

Figure 5.3. Friars and native Catholics related to the Franciscan Mission of Shanxi who were martyred at Taiyuan on 9 July 1900; Bishop Gregorio Grassi, OFM, is seated front and center. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

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The skies won’t rain and the earth is scorched, all because the devils have blocked the heavens. Fairies leave their caves and gods descend the hills, sparing no efforts to kill the devils. 49

Three dominant Boxer leaders had by the early summer formed Boxer groups around Taiyuan to rid the plains of these inauspicious devils, and to perform this expulsion they practiced martial arts and chanted incantations to fortify themselves with magical powers. At Nanchengjiao the chieftain Hu Xingyuan (nicknamed “Master of the Three Teachings”) established a following of around six hundred Boxers along with other leaders. 50 At Beige, a Boxer chieftain nicknamed “Old Master Guan” led approximately five hundred followers. At Xiaodian a group of Boxers under Guo Qizi (nicknamed “Old Star of Longevity”) and a chieftain nicknamed “Zhou Cang” trained at the Baolian Temple. 51 As has been noted, “Together with the political decisions of the court in Beijing, reflected in Yuxian’s shifting and ambiguous policies, they created the conditions for the violence.” 52 By mid-July, Zhou Cang led his band of disciples to the village of Yangjiabao, where they attacked and destroyed the Catholic church. Yuxian was a principal player in antiforeign attacks; in fact, the Shanxi tongzhi (Comprehensive History of Shanxi) recounts that Yuxian “with much solemnity and ritual presented a horse” to Jiang Jinhua, a notorious Boxer leader from Yuci. 53 Zhang and Jia assert that Yuxian treated the Boxers with such dignity that “after that day the number of Boxers in Taiyuan grew swiftly.” 54 Official action against the Catholic mission at Shanxi began on 2 July, a week before Yuxian ordered the executions of all foreigners within his jurisdiction, which included the Franciscan and Baptist missionaries. 55 Around four o’clock in the afternoon the Catholic bishops, priests, and faithful were praying together in the mission chapel when Governor Yuxian’s entourage beset the mission and arrested them all. They were, as Qin Geping relates, “taken to a railroad office at a place called ‘Pig-Head Alley’ on the alleged reason of their protection, though he really intended to make massacring them more convenient.” 56 The Catholics were allowed to celebrate mass together before their executions; Théodoric Balat, OFM (1858–1900), gave communion to fifteen persons the night before they all died in the magistrate’s courtyard. 57 Sources note that the Catholic and Protestant Christians were derided and beaten on their way to the governor’s yamen. According to the testimony of one witness, as the Catholics were being tied with ropes to be taken to Governor Yuxian, Bishop Francis Fogolla, OFM (1839–1900), asked if he could continue unbound. 58 He was tied with the rope, despite his request, and a soldier sliced Fogolla’s leg with his sword; his elderly Franciscan confrere, Bishop Gregory Grassi, OFM (1833–1900), endured similar abuses as he was marched to the execution ground. 59 Grassi suf-

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fered “a deep wound on the forehead and a sword cut on the shoulders” while he walked, and the other Catholics were punished with swords and clubs. 60 Once the foreign missionaries and Chinese converts had arrived at the yamen gate, Yuxian ordered them to kneel according to Chinese custom, and what occurred after this is narrated differently in Protestant and Catholic accounts (see figure 5.4). VARIED ACCOUNTS Catholic versions record that after a brief dialogue between Yuxian and Bishop Fogolla, in which the bishop refuted the magistrate’s accusations of “harming the Chinese,” Yuxian struck Fogolla twice on the chest and ordered his troops to begin the executions. 61 In this account the Catholics are the first to be attacked and martyred. The description of the executions by Georges Goyau (1869–1939) is a vivid précis of the collective records: In a harsh voice Yu-Hsien ordered the yard to be cleared and the prisoners were dragged out to the tribunal, the people hurling insults at them as they passed down the streets. Yu-Hsien did not even pretend to hold a trial. He himself gave the order to kill and dealt the death

Figure 5.4. Governor Yuxian’s yamen courtyard, where the executions occurred on 9 July 1900; photo taken c. 1901. Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

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blow to the two bishops with his own hand. On their knees the nuns . . . sang the Te Deum as they knelt with heads bowed to the executioner. “They were very tranquil,” some pagan spectators said afterwards. “They lifted up their veils for the death blow,” and added, “It is a shame! These European nuns were so good.” 62

Louis Nazaire Cardinal Bégin’s (1840–1925) account is even more detailed than Goyau’s. Bégin, a Catholic prelate, writes that as Yuxian’s men struck Bishop Grassi, a Chinese Christian who was employed as Father Balat’s assistant, escaped unnoticed and was thus able to provide one of the more extensive testimonies. “Kill them, kill them!” roared the crowd. Yu-Hsien striking with his own sword cried: “Kill them!” At this sight the soldiers began the slaughter, dealing blows right and left, cruelly injuring their victims before giving the final stroke. Father Elie, aged sixty one years, received more than one hundred sword cuts and at each lifted his eyes to heaven saying: “I go to heaven.” During the scene the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary were spectators, for their executioners hoped the sight of the martyred priests would make their own death more horrible. They knelt in prayer with eyes lifted to heaven, praying for the martyrs, for the conversion of their persecutors and for the perseverance of the Christians. . . . The nuns embraced each other, intoned the Te Deum, and presented their heads to the executioners—a stroke of the sword and all was over! 63

The Chinese Jesuit, Li Di, SJ (also called Li Wenyu, 1840–1911), who collected the testimonies of actual witnesses of Boxer violence in 1900, describes the scene in similarly poignant terms: “In a moment the blood gathered into flowing channels and countless corpses lay prone throughout the courtyard.” 64 The Franciscan bishops, priests, sisters, seminarians, and tertiaries had died, along with several Chinese converts, and letters from the highest levels of the church were sent by way of condolences and congratulations. 65 The particulars of the incident are rendered in decidedly Catholic terms; courage while dying in odium fidei and displays of intense piety are underscored throughout the histories, and the narratives are carefully crafted to conform to a requisite checklist of details for canonization. 66 One cannot help but notice also that in both the Catholic and the Protestant narratives of the executions, little is said about the other group with whom they were martyred. Protestant sources render a contrasting account. In these records two themes are enunciated: first, the Protestants remain enduringly faithful when pressured to apostatize; and second, they are afforded opportunities to, in essence, preach to the governor, his troops, and the crowd before finally being executed by the Boxers. In Luella Minor’s hagiographical retelling of the event, she writes that Yuxian offered the Chinese converts a last opportunity to disavow their “foreign religion,” but one replied, “Don’t ask us any more, but quickly do what you mean to

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do.” 67 In Robert Forsyth’s description of the incident, another Chinese Protestant, a fifteen-year-old boy named Chang Ang, was also given a chance to apostatize. Chang is said to have replied, “I will not. You can do as you please with me, but I will not deny the Lord.” 68 Protestant sources include sermons delivered by several missionaries before their executions that are astonishingly coherent for having been articulated while encompassed by Qing troops and a large gathering of menacing Boxers with “big sabers.” This is also curious in light of the fact that Chinese jurisprudence does not normally allow for criminals to present soliloquies prior to their beheadings, especially ones laden with “heterodox” religious ideas. In some accounts, these pre-execution orations are reported to have “shamed” Governor Yuxian; indeed, Yuxian’s mother is said to have become a Christian because of the testimonies of the Christians her son beheaded in his yamen courtyard. 69 Jonathan Goforth recalls that a thirteen-year-old member of the Baptist mission castigated the governor just before the bloodshed began. She first reminded him of the long list of charitable works the missioners had done in Shanxi, exclaiming, “Many [Chinese] with hopeless diseases have been healed.” 70 The young girl then called into question Yuxian’s Confucian character, suggesting with literati eloquence that he himself does not fully apprehend the concept of xiaoshun, or “filial piety.” She declared: Governor, you talk a lot about filial piety. It is your claim, is it not, that among the hundred virtues filial piety takes the highest place. But you have hundreds of young men in this province who are opium sots and gamblers. Can they exercise filial piety? Can they love their parents and obey their will? Our missionaries have come from foreign lands and have preached Jesus to them . . . [who] has given them power to live rightly and to love and obey their parents. 71

Following her exhortation Yuxian is said to have felt humiliated at her rebuke, and a soldier seized her hair and beheaded her. In this version, the Protestants are killed first. 72 One of the members of the Baptist mission, Thomas Pigott, was among those who died preaching. C. A. Pigott notes that “Mr. Pigott, preaching to the last moment, was beheaded with one blow.” 73 Over the next twenty-four hours, Yuxian’s troops and Boxers seized and executed several hundred Christians in and near Taiyuan. CONCLUSION Reflecting on the historian’s craft, John Lewis Gaddis suggests that the “chief priority” of the historian is to explain the past, and I have attempted here to attribute at least some of the blame for what occurred in northern China during the Boxer Uprising to religious intolerance and cultural hubris, both Western and Chinese. 74 These contributing antece-

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dents were partially fueled by reciprocal mythologization, pejoratively expressed through narrative and imagistic representation. I have also tried to consider how denominational differences functioned to produce contrasting narratives of the same event; religious sensibilities have inspired disparate histories. While both Catholic and Protestant hagiographies largely conform to their respective cultural sympathies—Catholics pray piously and intone Latin as Protestants deliver stirring oral testimonies—narrative similarities do sometimes appear. In Giovanni Ricci’s, OFM (1875–1941), record of the Boxer conflicts in Shanxi, he notes that a Catholic virgin named Paola Wang Lanlan (Van Lan Lan), like the Protestants, preached several times as Boxers approached her village, Sanxian, and when the attackers finally broke into the church she raised a crucifix above her head. 75 And I might also add that the conflicts between Christian missionaries and local Chinese were echoed by other antagonisms between the Catholics and Protestants living in Taiyuan. In Louis Bégin’s account of the Taiyuan incident, he recounts that as the missionaries were escorted to Yuxian’s yamen on 9 July, Bishop Grassi exhorted the Protestants to “turn to the true Faith.” 76 Sino-missionary conflict was mirrored in noticeable ways by Catholic-Protestant conflict that was hardly less intense. As Paul Cohen aptly remarks, “the history the historian creates is in fact fundamentally different from the history people make.” 77 In Georges Goyau’s hagiographical account of the seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary who were martyred in 1900 under Yuxian’s orders, he underscores the optimism of the sisters as they conducted their duties at their Taiyuan mission. Goyau quotes Marie Amandina, FMM (1872–1900), from one of her letters, stating, “I am very happy all the time in China.” 78 But as I read through the original letters from the sisters as they encountered the conflicts of the Boxer Uprising, I located another letter by her conseour, Maria della Pace, FMM (1875–1900), written less than a week earlier; della Pace notes Amandina’s serious illness. In fact, Amandina’s sickness had caused such concern that della Pace invoked the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and St. Anthony, and “placed a holy medal around her neck” to help cure her. 79 And in another passage, the Mother Superior complains of another sister’s “uselessness” in the mission. Goyau’s hagiography deliberately expurgates several of the stark details of more diurnal challenges of the martyrs; the reality was much more complicated. The actual letters of the sisters who died at Taiyuan also provide a more nuanced picture of Catholic accommodation in Shanxi vis-à-vis China’s indigenous population as tensions escalated in 1900. The Taiyuan incident and other accounts of Sino-missionary conflict during the Boxer Uprising evoke, I believe, a rather compelling question regarding the so-called Ricci method of Christian accommodation. Clearly the foreign and native Christians were convinced enough of the legitimacy of their faith to offer themselves in martyrdom. The majority of

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native Chinese, however, appear to have agreed with Yuxian’s urgent desire to excise Christianity from China, along with the foreigners who brought it. Conversion occurred on the micro level, but understanding and sympathies for alternative religious views had not occurred on the macro level. In a probably apocryphal account, the Jesuit missionary, Alessandro Valignano, stared defiantly at Mainland China from Macao and said, “Rock, rock, oh when wilt thou open, rock?” wondering at the impenetrability of the Middle Kingdom. Alessandro’s apprehensions regarding the possible success of grafting one religion onto a very different culture were also sensed by Matteo Ricci. Indeed, Christian missionaries were unprepared for a culture that had not entertained, nor seemed interested in, the question of from where the cosmos originated. Nor were the Chinese prepared for foreigners who taught that an executed “criminal” was the incarnate creator of that cosmos. Despite the myriad cultural differences that aggravated the relationship between Taiyuan’s foreign missionary community and its local population, genuine conversion occurred. Not all of the victims of Yuxian’s hostilities were foreigners; in fact, most of the Christian martyrs who died in Shanxi were Chinese. Celebrating the heroic testimonies of China’s indigenous Christians, the Vincentian, Jean-Marie Planchet, CM, exclaims, “These Chinese, who were said to be fainthearted and fickle in their faith, went into battle like old soldiers, and cut a very fine figure there. These neophytes, who formerly were called by the disdainful name of ‘rice Christians,’ declared their faith like the Christians in the time of Rome or Lyons.” 80 The “battle” of these Chinese “soldiers” in Taiyuan was, as they were eager to convey, spiritual; their croix de guerre was the testimony of their martyrdom. After the beheadings in Yuxian’s yamen a proclamation was disseminated throughout the city exhorting any remaining Christians to apostatize. Boxers and official troops continued to execute Chinese who refused to obey the decree for several days. 81 The violence that swept through Taiyuan in 1900 occurred nearly three centuries after Matteo Ricci’s death in Beijing, and one wonders if he could have foreseen the capricious future of the seedling mission he had planted during the final years of the Ming. In a letter to his confrere, Girolamo Costa, SJ, Ricci said of the Christian conversion of China, “Know that I and all those who are here dream of nothing else day and night.” 82 But Ricci understood that the conversion of China would not come freely, for even with his accommodationist method in practice, the cultural and religious sensibilities of China and the West remain vastly dissimilar. The famine and unrest in Shanxi that plagued the Central Plain in 1900 exacerbated the misunderstandings between Taiyuan’s local population and the Christian missionary activities that punctuated the city’s cultural routines. The dreams of religious conversion and national protection collided in one of northern China’s most tragic incidents of East-

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West conflict, but for the growing Christian community in Taiyuan the 1900 incident was merely a single unfortunate episode in the evolutionary process of cultural and religious integration. The Taiyuan cathedral today boasts one of China’s largest Christian congregations, and its main altar features depictions of the 1900 martyrs. According to these faithful, Tertullian was correct. NOTES 1. Early examples of Protestant sources on the 1900 Taiyuan incident that render accounts in largely hagiographical terms include E. H. Edwards, Fire and Sword in Shansi: The Story of the Martyrdom of Foreigners and Chinese Christians (London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, 1907); Marshall Broomhall, ed., Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission, With a Record of the Sufferings of Some Who Escaped (London: Morgan & Scott, 1901); and Luella Minor, China’s Book of Martyrs: A Record of Heroic Martyrdoms and Marvelous Deliverances of Chinese Christians During the Summer of 1900 (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1903). Roman Catholic hagiographies of the Taiyuan violence include Theobold Aumasson, OFM, La Croix Sur la Pagode: Le Bx Theodoric Balat et ses Compagnans Martyrs (Brive, France: Editions Echo des Grottes, 1947); Léon de Kerval, Deux Martyrs Français de L’Ordre des Frères Mineurs: Le R. P. Théodoric Balaat et le Fr. André Bauer, Massacrés en Chine le 9 Juillet 1900 (Montréal: Revue du Tiers-ordre et de la Terre sainte, 1906); Louis Nazaire Bégin, Life of Mother Marie-Hermine of Jesus: Massacred in Shan-si (China) July 9th, 1900 (Quebec: Archeveque De Quebec, 1910); John Ricci, OFM, Franciscan Martyrs of the Boxer Rising: The Authentic Account of the Sufferings and Death of the Victims of the Boxer Rising, China, 1900 (Dublin: Franciscan Missionary Union, 1932); Very Rev. Msgr. George Telford, Missionaries and Martyrs, trans. Georges Goyau (Anand: Anand Press, 1944); and M. T. de Blarer, La Bienheureuse Marie Hermine de Jésus et ses Compagnes (Vanves: Imprimerie Franciscaine Missionnaire, 1946). 2. Poulenc’s opera, Dialogues des Carmélites, was itself inspired by Gertrude von le Fort’s famous 1931 play, Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold). 3. For a study of Sino-missionary conflicts during the Boxer Uprising, especially the violence of the Taiyuan incident, see Clark, China’s Saints, 120–43. 4. George H. Dunne, SJ, Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last Decades of the Ming Dynasty (London: Burns & Oats, 1962), 17. 5. Quoted by Joseph Shih, SJ, in his introduction to Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault, Histoire de l’expédition chrétienne au royaume de la Chine, 1582–1610 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1978), 38. Also see Charbonnier, Christians in China, 153. 6. Nestorian Christianity (Eastern Christianity), which is culturally and liturgically very unlike Western Christianity, was perhaps more successful in China, as it flourished during the Yuan. Important research into whether Nestorianism was more successful in China, and why, is needed. 7. For a discussion of how the native Chinese influenced Ricci’s missionary enterprise, see Nicolas Standaert, SJ, “Matteo Ricci: Shaped by the Chinese,” www. thinkingfaith.org (online journal of the British Jesuits), 21 May 2010. 8. See, for example, Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), and Florence C. Hsia, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits & Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 9. Tertullian, The Apology (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, reprinted 2004), 50. 10. For treatments of East-West cross-cultural representation and misrepresentation, see Cohen, China and Christianity, and relevant chapters in Clark, Beating Devils and Burning Their Books.

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11. W. E. Hipwell, “Union in Face of the Foe; or, Co-operation in Evangelistic Effort in China,” Church Missionary Gleaner (December 1907), 185. I am indebted to Eric Reinders for alerting me to Hipwell’s pejorative description of an indigenous Chinese temple. 12. Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (Dover: New York, 1998), 81–82. 13. Sax Rohmer, The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (New York: A. L. Burt, 1916), 4. 14. “The Idol’s Protection,” Homes (January 1910), 4. 15. George M. Stenz, S.V.D., Life of Father Richard Henle, S.V.D.: Missionary in China (Techny, IL: Mission Press, 1921), 45. 16. Cantate Domino Canicum Novum Quia Mirabilia Fecit (Techny, IL: Mission Press S.V.D., 1941), 311. 17. Stenz, Life of Father Richard Henle, 61. 18. For what is perhaps the most exhaustive consideration of the colonialist impulse to civilize, or domiciliate, subaltern peoples by imposing upon them the language of the colonizer, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983). 19. Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, 247. Gernet’s work was originally published in French under the title Chine et christianisme, published in Paris by Editions Gallimard in 1982. 20. Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, 247. 21. For more on Chinese homophonic punning as a mode of anti-foreignism, see Clark, “Rape, Baptism, and the ‘Pig’ Religion,” in Beating Devils and Burning Their Books, especially 46–54. 22. Quoted in Cohen, China and Christianity, 49. Also see the anonymously translated and published English version of the Bixie jishi, Death Blow to Corrupt Doctrines: A Plain Testament of Facts (Shanghai, 1970), 10. 23. Quoted in Death Blow to Corrupt Doctrines, 15–16. 24. The song appears in Fan yangjiao shuwen jietie xuan 反洋教書文揭帖選 (Selections of Anti-Foreign Religion Books and Placards), ed. Wang Minglun 王明論 (Jinan 濟南: Qi lu shushe 齊魯書社, 1984), and is translated in Renditions 53 and 54 (Spring and Autumn 2000), 251–52. 25. Feces have been believed in China to be an effective agent in exorcisms. 26. I have followed Eva Hung’s translation in Renditions, 251–52, with minor changes. For a longer excerpt and discussion of this song, see Clark, “Rape, Baptism, and the ‘Pig’ Religion,” in Beating Devils and Burning Their Books, 46–48. 27. Chen Taihua, Alarm Bells, trans. Ian Chapman, quoted in Renditions 53 and 54 (Spring and Autumn 2000), 246. 28. In Bishop Pierre-Marie-Alphonse Favier-Duperron’s, CM, private journal written during the 1900 Boxer siege on the cathedral, The Heart of Pekin, 24. 29. See Qin Geping 秦格平, Taiyuan jiaoqu jianshi 太原教區簡史 (A Concise History of the Diocese of Taiyuan) (Taiyuan 太原: Catholic Diocese of Taiyuan 太原教區, 2008), 7. Also see Joannes (Giovanni) Ricci, OFM, Vicariatus Taiyuanfu seu Brevis Historia Antiquæ Franciscanæ Missionis Shansi et Shensi a sua Origine ad Dies Nostros (1700–1928) (Beijing: Congregation of the Mission, 1929). 30. Sources on the Boxer movement that include mention of the Taiyuan incident are Qiao Zhiqiang 喬志強, “Shanxi diqu de yihetuan yundong” 山西地區的義和團運動 (Shanxi Area Boxer Incidents), in Yihetuan yundong liushi zhounian jinian lunwenji 義和 團運動六十週年紀念論文集 (Commemorative Articles on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Boxer Incident) (Beijing 北京: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1961): 167–83; Liao Yizhong 廖一中, Li Dezheng 李德征, and Zhang Zuru 張族如, Yihetuan yundong shi 義 和團運動史 (A History of the Boxer Incident) (Beijing 北京: Renmin chubanshe 人民出 版社, 1981); and Giovanni Ricci, Barbarie e trionfi: Ossia le vittime illustri del Sansi in Cina nella persecuzione del 1900, 2nd edition (Firenze: Associazioni Nazionale per Soccorrere i missionary Cattolici Italiani, 1910). Also see relevant materials at TDA. 31. For an account of the Protestants attached to the Baptist mission in Taiyuan, see Arthur H. Smith, China in Convulsion, vol. 2 (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901), 613–15. Smith’s record includes Yong Zheng’s “The Martyrdom at T’aiyuanfu on the

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9th of July, 1900. By an Eyewitness,” North China Herald (3 April 1901), 637. Smith’s quotation, as Roger R. Thompson notes, contains some slight alterations, but the content is essentially the same. See Roger R. Thompson, “Reporting the Taiyuan Massacre: Culture and Politics in the China War of 1900,” in The Boxers, China, and the World, 84. 32. Nat Brandt, Massacre in Shansi (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 224. 33. For a general biography of the Protestant missionaries attached to the Schofield Memorial Hospital, chapel, and girls’ school in Taiyuan, see Paul Hattaway, China’s Book of Martyrs, vol. 1 (Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions, 2007), 227–39. Also, for an additional account, see Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries on the China Inland Mission, especially 107–16. 34. For a study of famine in nineteenth-century China, especially in Shanxi, see Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in NineteenthCentury China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 35. See Archibald E. Glover, A Thousand Miles of Miracle in China: A Personal Record of God’s Delivering Power from the Hands of the Imperial Boxers of Shansi (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), 16. 36. Cohen, China and Christianity, 28. For another, perhaps more sympathetic, account of Yuxian’s actions in July 1900 at Taiyuan, see Thompson, “Reporting the Taiyuan Massacre,” 65–92. 37. Zhonghua xundao shengren zhuan 中華殉道聖人傳 (Biographies of China’s Martyrs), Diocese of Taipei Secretariat, eds. 臺北教區宣聖委員 (Taipei 台北: Taipei Catholic Bishops Committee 台北教區主教團, 2005), 260. 38. In Edwards, Fire and Sword in Shansi, 224. 39. Edwards, Fire and Sword in Shansi, 216. Wen Cui, Edwards’s personal friend, offers another account of Coombs’s death: “They then threw Miss Coombs on the fire in the gateway, and then when twice she rose out of the flames, they heaped a door and tables and boards on top of her . . . . [The next day] they found only a few charred bones which they buried amid the ruins of the mission compound.” In Minor, China’s Book of Martyrs, 425–26. 40. Zhonghua xundao shengren zhuan, 230. 41. Zhonghua xundao shengren zhuan, 230. 42. Arnold Henry Savage Landor, China and the Allies, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 266. 43. Minor, China’s Book of Martyrs, 428. 44. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 231. 45. Dr. Charles F. Johnson Papers, UOSC, Ax 268, Box I, Folio, 66–69. This folio also contains copious notes regarding other Boxer incidents in Shanxi and carefully outlines the specific names and denominations of those who died. 46. Zhang Deyi 張德一and Jia Lili 賈莉莉, Taiyuan shihua 太原史話 (A Historical Account of Taiyuan) (Taiyuan 太原: Shanxi renmin chubanshe 太原人民出版社, 2000), 159. 47. A rare image exists of a Corpus Christi procession in Taiyuan, led by the Franciscan martyr bishop, Gregory Grassi, OFM. See Ricci, Vicariatus Taiyuanfu seu Brevis Historia, plate xxx. 48. Liu Dapeng, 劉大鵬 “Tuixiangzhai riji” 退想齋日記 (Diary from the Study for Retreat and Contemplation), in Jindaishi ziliao yihetuan shiliao 近代史資料義和團史料 (Materials for Modern History: Materials on the Boxers) (Beijing 北京: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe 中國社會科學出版社, 1982), 819. Translated in Henrietta Harrison, “Village Politics and National Politics: The Boxer Movement in Central Shanxi,” in The Boxers, China, and the World, eds. Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3. The abandoned Franciscan complex of buildings described in Liu’s diary still rest on the slope of the hill at Dongergou. For a biographical account of Liu Dapeng, see Henrietta Harrison, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village, 1857–1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University

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Press, 2005). See especially 84–86 for Liu’s experiences with anti-foreignism and antiChristianism during the Boxer Uprising. 49. Quoted in Zhang Deyi and Jia Lili, Taiyuan shihua, 160. For a more exhaustive account of Boxer activities, which includes copious examples of anti-foreign and antiChristian ditties and rumors, see Qiao Zhiqiang 喬志強, ed., Yihetuan zai shanxi diqu shiliao 義和團在山西地區史料 (Regional Historical Sources on the Society of Righteous Harmony at Shanxi) (Taiyuan 太原: Shanxi renmin chubanshe 太原人民出版社, 1980). 50. Qiao, Yihetuan zai shanxi diqu shiliao, 7. 51. See Zhang Deyi and Jia Lili, Taiyuan shihua, 161. Zhou Cang features as an important martial hero in Luo Guanzhong’s 羅貫中 famous Sanguo yanyi 三國演義 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), who swore allegiance to Guanyu after a former involvement with the Yellow Turbans. Most famously, Zhou Cang is heralded as Guanyu’s weapon bearer and companion during his numerous military exploits. 52. Henrietta Harrison, “Christianity in Central Shanxi,” in The Boxers, China, and the World, eds. Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 6–7. 53. In Zhang Deyi and Jia Lili, Taiyuan shihua, 161–62. 54. Zhang Deyi and Jia Lili, Taiyuan shihua, 162. 55. Yuxian had begun organizing his action against the Shanxi Christian communities even before 2 July. On 28 June, for example, he sent a communication to Bishop Grassi forbidding Christians from gathering for religious meetings. Yuxian also ordered his men to collect the children from the Catholic orphanage, and Georges Goyau recounts that “the nuns looked on helplessly while soldiers carried off the sobbing orphans.” Goyau, Missionaries and Martyrs, 35. 56. Qin Geping, Taiyuan jiaoqu jianshi, 318. 57. Cardinal Louis Bégin writes, “Every day Mass was said in the prison and the Ordo of Father Théodoric, afterward found, indicated that on the night of July 8th the eve of the massacre, he gave communion to fifteen persons.” Bégin, Life of Mother Marie-Hermine of Jesus, 61. The “Ordo” mentioned here is Father Theodoric Balat’s booklet, in which he recorded marginalia during his captivity in Yuxian’s yamen. 58. Zhonghua xundao shengren zhuan, 232. 59. Zhonghua xundao shengren zhuan, 232. 60. Bégin, Life of Mother Marie-Hermine of Jesus, 61–62. 61. Zhonghua xundao shengren zhuan, 232. 62. Goyau, Missionaries and Martyrs, 37. 63. Bégin, Life of Mother Marie-Hermine of Jesus, 62–63. For yet another description of the executions at Yuxian’s yamen courtyard, see Joannes Ricci, Vicariatus Taiyuanfu seu Brevis Historia, 114–15. 64. Li Di 李杕, Zengbu quanfei huo jiaoji 增補拳匪禍教記 (Supplemental Accounts of the Boxer Catastrophe) (Shanghai 上海: Shanghai tuwan yinshuguan 上海土灣印書館, 1909), 340. 65. Pope Leo XIII’s private secretary, Mgr. Rinaldo Angeli, wrote the following to Mother Mary of the Passion on behalf of the Holy Father: “His Holiness blesses with all his heart the Institute which has given these spotless victims. I rejoice with you in this new pledge of heavenly graces given to your society.” In Goyau, Missionaries and Martyrs, 38. 66. For the official processus accounts, which are indeed copious, see ASV, Congr. Riti, Processus, 4623, 4628, and 4629. 67. Minor, China’s Book of Martyrs, 110. 68. Robert Forsyth, ed., The China Martyrs of 1900: A Complete Roll of the Christian Heroes Martyred in China in 1900, with Narratives of Survivors (London: Religious Tract Society, 1904), 364. 69. It is highly unlikely that Yuxian’s mother could have been in a position to convert to Christianity. Indeed, her son disseminated an edict that stated, “Foreign missionaries employ evil arts to enchant the people and poison China’s soil. . . . All believers should make a fresh start [reform themselves]. . . . And if they do not re-

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form . . . they will be sternly dealt with, and shall stand trial for punishment” 洋人傳教 邪術迷人毒害中土。 。 。凡爾教民亟宣自新。。。倘乃不改。。。嚴拿懲辦立正典型. In Zhang and Jia, Taiyuan shihua, 163. It is doubtful that Yuxian’s mother would have disobeyed such an edict, and evidence suggests that she and Yuxian were transferred surreptitiously to another province after the end of the Boxer Uprising. 70. Jonathan Goforth, By My Spirit (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1964), 63. 71. Goforth, By My Spirit, 63. 72. Goforth, By My Spirit, 64. 73. C. A. Pigott, Steadfast Unto Death, or Martyred for China: Memorials of Thomas, Wellesley, and Jessie Pigott (London: Religious Tract Society, 1903), 239. 74. See John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 75. See Ricci, Franciscan Martyrs of the Boxer Rising, 108–10. Also see Giovanni Ricci, OFM, Pagine di Eroismo Cristiano, i Terzari Cinesi Martiri nello Shan-si Settentrionale (Persecuzione dei Boxers—1900) (Lonigo: Tipografia Moderna, 1925), 177–80. 76. Bégin, Life of Mother Marie-Hermine of Jesus, 62. 77. Cohen, China and Christianity, 3. 78. In Goyau, Missionaries and Martyrs, 15. The letter is dated 21 May 1900. 79. Letter from Sister Maria della Pace, FMM, dated 15 May 1899. AFMM. I express my gratitude to Sister Alma Broggi, FMM, for providing me with digital scans of all the original letters of the seven Franciscan sisters who died at the Taiyuan incident in 1900. 80. Jean-Marie Planchet, CM, Documents sur les martyrs de Pékin pendant la persecution des Boxeurs (Beijing: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1922), 2. Quoted in R. G. Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume Two: 1800 to the Present (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 341. 81. See Ricci, Franciscan Martyrs of the Boxer Rising, 50–57. 82. Quoted in Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City, 199.

SIX Christianity for a Confucian Youth Richard Wilhelm and His Lixian Shuyuan School for Boys in Qingdao, 1901–1912 Lydia Gerber

Central to Richard Wilhelm’s (1873–1930) life and work, including his missionary work in China, was his conviction that the human connection to the divine was still evolving and would encompass more than just Christian traditions (see figure 6.1). During his years as a missionary he had not only studied and translated many of China’s most revered philosophical texts but also participated in Confucian and Daoist rites, experiences that expanded his spiritual horizons. Likewise, Richard Wilhelm’s vision of a very different kind of missionary work was ever evolving, first in dialogue with his mentor Christoph Blumhardt (1842–1919), and later in dialogue with others. Rather than offering baptism into a Western-style church as the goal of his mission, Richard Wilhelm described his missionary work as an attempt to renew or revive Chinese culture through the light of the gospel. Wilhelm and his mentor and father-in-law, Blumhardt, saw themselves surrounded by obstacles in this plan; foremost was perhaps the arrogance of the colonial rulers under whom Wilhelm lived and worked in the German lease Kiautschou (Jiaozhou Bay), including the barbarism enacted upon Chinese civilians in the name of revenge for the Boxer Uprising. There was the missionary enterprise, as it was understood in its more “orthodox” context, which in its purposes and personnel ran contrary to Wilhelm’s plans. There was the onslaught of anti-religious Western modernity. There were also the expectations of the Weimar Mis117

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Figure 6.1. Formal portrait of Richard Wilhelm. Credit: History of Christianity in China Archive (Spokane, Washington).

sion, or AepMV (Allgemeiner evangelisch-protestantischer Missionsverein), the sending agency that financed Wilhelm and his mission work. However, Blumhardt and Wilhelm shared a strong conviction that God was on the side of Blumhardtian eschatology and would use Wilhelm’s work in China to liberate not only the Chinese but also, through them, the Western world from the tyranny and godlessness of established Christian churches. This would eventually allow all of mankind to realize their freedom as God’s beloved children. When Richard Wilhelm founded the still famous Lixian Shuyuan School for Boys in Qingdao in 1901, he designed an institution that differed greatly from a regular mission school. Hoping that a solid Confucian and scientific education would allow his graduates to gain acceptance in the Chinese civil service, he refrained from introducing any Christian content into the curriculum. Only morning assembly with Bible quotes and strictly voluntary Sunday services would offer students any form of Christian instruction. Chinese Christian teachers contributed equally voluntary evening prayers, but only traditional Chinese holidays were observed at school.

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Almost a decade later, in 1910, Richard Wilhelm considered complementing the Confucian focus of the school with Christian texts, much to the relief of both his sending agency and his famous father-in-law. Rather than handing Bibles to his students, Wilhelm planned to write his own primer of selected biblical stories. In a preface to his primer, Wilhelm wrestled with a key question in his missionary work: Why should his students, whom he prepared to succeed in a still largely Confucian society, bother to read and understand biblical stories? I offer here an overview of Wilhelm’s missionary work and present his unique and questionable reasoning for offering Bible stories to “junzi in training.” This research is largely based on material from German archives and the archive of the Weimar Mission in Speyer and Richard Wilhelm’s papers in the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich, as well as on works published under the auspices of the Weimar mission. Today, few people realize that Richard Wilhelm began his path toward eminence as an interpreter of Chinese philosophy and culture in Germany and beyond in the role of a Christian missionary. He served under the auspices of the Weimar Mission in the German colonial lease Kiautschou between 1899 and 1920, but those who are familiar with this period in Wilhelm’s life recognize that he was highly unusual in his missionary approach. At a time when missionary work generally meant inviting converts to join and adjust to Western church institutions and practices transplanted onto foreign soil, Wilhelm decided not to baptize any Chinese. For years he refrained from teaching Christianity in his school as part of the curriculum, and his respect for Chinese Confucian traditions went so far that he participated in Confucian rituals. After the Chinese Revolution of 1911 he actively lobbied his missionary society for funds to financially support the Confucian refugee population stranded in Qingdao. His involvement with those who advocated for the return of the Qing Empire went so far that the German colonial authorities warned him to refrain from any such further activity. This unusual stance of skepticism toward importing Western Protestant culture into China had originated with his father-in-law and mentor Christoph Blumhardt, one of the intellectual inspirations of the Christian socialist movement. Blumhardt, and before him his father Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880), were representatives of a unique Christian vision, connected to Wuerttemberg Pietism but free of its world-negating aspects. Trusting in a personal connection to God and a mission to reclaim Christianity from the clutches of established churches, they had created a spiritual retreat in Bad Boll in the 1850s for all who came to seek renewal. Among their clientele were people from all walks of life and different religious groups, including Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists, and Jews. Even more radical than his father, Christoph Blumhardt eschewed formal church services and replaced them with a more informal, personal style of interacting with his clientele. In 1899 he shocked even

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the sympathetic within the established Protestant churches by joining the Social Democrats and representing them briefly in the Wuerttemberg parliament in Stuttgart. He was subsequently asked to give up all rights connected to his ordination as a Wuerttemberg pastor in the Lutheranbased Landeskirche. These events only strengthened his conviction that the established churches were the deathbed of a true, living Christianity. To him, Richard Wilhelm, newly connected to the Blumhardts through his marriage to Blumhardt’s daughter Salome, presented a distinct hope for change. He saw Wilhelm’s missionary work as the start of a movement to bring first China and then the entire world into an authentic relationship not with church doctrines and rules, but with their heavenly father. The fact that there was only one Richard Wilhelm and thousands of missionaries representing numerous established churches did not matter. God, after all, had to be on Blumhardt’s side. The twenty-six-year-old Richard Wilhelm arrived in Qingdao in May 1899, officially in the dual role of missionary for the Allgemeiner evangelisch-protestantischer Missionsverein (AepMV / Weimar Mission) and pastor for the Protestant civilian population in the new German leased territory Jiaozhou (Kiautschou). Yet his personal ties to his future father-in-law and the unusual Christian community in Bad Boll played a critical role in shaping how Wilhelm understood and lived out his ministry in China. Wilhelm navigated the complexities within the newly established colonial settlement and the tensions between traditional missionary work and Christoph Blumhardt’s visions of “true discipleship” in order to create a unique mission with a lasting impact. RICHARD WILHELM AS BLUMHARDT’S MESSENGER Before Richard Wilhelm left for China in the spring of 1899, his future father-in-law asked or ordained him to become his messenger to China— specifically, the messenger of Blumhardt’s spirit, transmitted to him by the gospel. 1 An image of what this special relationship between Christoph Blumhardt and his messenger, Richard Wilhelm, entailed emerges from the letters he wrote to Wilhelm while the latter was in Qingdao. 2 Wilhelm’s own letters written in response are no longer extant. For over a decade, Christoph Blumhardt guided Richard Wilhelm’s steps, as far as this was possible from such distance. Even more, he influenced both the hiring decisions for the Weimar Mission and, most importantly, the unusual mission methods used in Qingdao, such as Wilhelm’s decision to refrain from personally baptizing any Chinese. The Blumhardt family and their followers, and now particularly Richard Wilhelm, were, in Blumhardt’s eyes, God’s chosen disciples, and their work— bringing all mankind into the kingdom of heaven—would and could be accomplished if the disciples only understood and followed God’s will,

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as trusting children. One of Blumhardt’s principles was to wait for signs of God’s plan rather than forge ahead in frantic human activity. Therefore, it is not surprising that Blumhardt did not approach the mission work in Qingdao with a predetermined blueprint. Instead, he and Wilhelm discussed developments as they unfolded. The methods he suggested were initially radically different from most traditional forms of missionary work. During the first years of Wilhelm’s stay in Qingdao, Blumhardt went so far as to discourage a focus on preaching of the gospel, believing that Richard and Salome Wilhelm’s loving presence as Christ’s disciples would have to be the first step to help Chinese persons intuit their own value and role as God’s children. 3 In later years, he saw the need for a spiritual center beyond the mission schools and encouraged a very careful approach to religious instruction and the spoken message of the gospel. Richard Wilhelm’s own plans for the mission work in Qingdao, many of which could not be realized, can be understood as an attempt to recreate the spirit of Bad Boll within a very different cultural context. That Wilhelm had hoped eventually to succeed Blumhardt as the Hausvater in Bad Boll, at least until his father-in-law informed him of a different choice, also suggests that we may view the first twelve years of Wilhelm’s mission work in Qingdao in terms of something like an apprenticeship in the Blumhardt family mission. Some of Wilhelm’s goals after 1911, such as his focus on preserving the Confucian legacy and supporting a stronger link between China and Germany, were no longer closely aligned with Blumhardt’s religious goals. By that time Wilhelm had begun to rely on other mentors as well. Still, Richard Wilhelm continued to regard his father-in-law as well as the older Blumhardt (whom he had never met) as spiritual teachers and Christian prophets, even at a time when he had apparently moved far away from more accepted Christian beliefs. 4 WILHELM’S EXPERIENCES IN QINGDAO Richard Wilhelm arrived in Qingdao in May 1899, fourteen months after the German-Chinese treaty over the lease of Kiautschou had been signed. The German administration under the control of the Reichsmarineamt (National Marine Headquarters) had begun with the difficult work of constructing a settlement for the marines and civilians. This would provide Germany with an ice-free harbor and access to the coal mines of central Shandong through a meandering railroad connecting Qingdao with Shandong’s capital Jinan. Ultimately, it was intended to become a venue through which German influence could reach the Chinese interior. The first China missionary of the AepMV, Ernst Faber (1839–1899), was already residing in Qingdao, but, like a large number of both German and Chinese at that time, he soon fell ill and died in September 1899.

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His untimely death meant that Richard Wilhelm, after being in China for only four months, became the head of the Weimar mission enterprise. Faber left a considerable personal fortune as well as a valuable research library to the mission in Qingdao. As in the case of Wilhelm’s father’s early death, Faber’s demise left the young pastor and missionary to find his own way in unfamiliar territory without a mentor and guide by his side. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine in retrospect how Wilhelm might have done his work in accordance with both Faber’s and Blumhardt’s divergent views. 5 Wilhelm’s first year in Qingdao was mostly devoted to administrative tasks related to his work as pastor for the German civilians. He opened a school for German boys and began to assemble a German Protestant congregation. This he found extremely trying, due to a significant lack of interest in this project among his German compatriots. He also performed countless funeral services for German civilians and marines. To Wilhelm, who had been raised in a fairly protected environment, these first months in Qingdao were a sobering experience on many levels. In addition, he himself fell seriously ill in the fall of 1899 and asked the mission board for relief. By the time Salome Blumhardt arrived in China in May 1900 to take her part in the Qingdao mission as Richard Wilhelm’s wife, he had recovered and was able to welcome her into the newly built mission home. Wilhelm Schüler (1865–1935) had arrived a few weeks earlier on 17 April to take over the role of pastor for the German Protestant civilians, and so freed Wilhelm to focus on missionary work among the Chinese in the territory. 6 These were extremely difficult times for any missionary enterprise, as the Boxer Uprising, which culminated in the siege of the Legation district in Beijing by the Boxers in the summer of 1900, demonstrated the vulnerability of foreign missionaries and especially their Christian converts. It led to swift and violent responses by Japan and Western powers, united under the banner of “civilization” standing against Chinese “barbarism.” The German leased territory was vulnerable to Boxer attacks, and troops were sent into the demilitarized zone surrounding the territory in an effort to protect it and its inhabitants. There were casualties among the German marines stationed in Qingdao involved in fighting at the Dagu forts near the city of Tianjin. Wilhelm’s colleague, Wilhelm Schüler, had to perform the memorial service for the fallen marines, and he was deeply disturbed by the violently anti-Chinese sentiment he witnessed among Germans in Qingdao. 7 If it had not been for Wilhelm’s courageous actions in Gaomi in November 1900, the missionary work in Qingdao might not have survived these challenges. In November 1900, the German military launched a campaign from Qingdao into the neutral zone surrounding the German leased territory in order to suppress violent local resistance against the building of a railway into the interior. Some villages in the zone were also accused of

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harboring Boxers, and probably over one thousand Chinese lost their lives in the ensuing battles. 8 With the help of his Chinese teacher, Li Benjing, Richard Wilhelm went to the Gaomi district and successfully persuaded both sides to end this one-sided confrontation. Following the process of the negotiations, Wilhelm was also able to secure financial support and medical care from the German administration for the distressed peasants in the area. Christoph Blumhardt accurately described Wilhelm’s actions in Gaomi as a door opening into China beyond the German leased territory. 9 The local Chinese government officials who were without access to Chinese troops in the demilitarized zone had been entirely powerless to stop the German onslaught. Gratitude for Wilhelm’s support spread throughout the province and made him an immediate celebrity. It extended to Shandong’s governor Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), who personally sent a bottle of French champagne to Wilhelm and his wife. Salome, who was then pregnant with her first child, courageously accompanied Wilhelm on an extended stay in Gaomi in a move to help protect the Chinese women there. 10 Years later, in 1906, the Qing authorities granted Wilhelm fourth-class official honors for his rescue work in Gaomi and his contributions as an educator in Gaomi and Qingdao. 11 Wilhelm’s unusual ability to, as a missionary, forge successful relationships with Chinese authorities during a particularly tense situation made him highly popular with his missionary society. As a result, he was more emboldened in asking to have Blumhardt’s missionary methods shape much of the work in Qingdao. Blumhardt subsequently influenced the selection of suitable coworkers and, more importantly, pressured Wilhelm to refrain from traditional missionary goals of baptism and congregation building. The nature of Wilhelm’s mission work could not easily be demonstrated through numbers and statistics, and many of the more traditional supporters of the Weimar Mission found it difficult to discern his successes as a Christian missionary. Yet Wilhelm had the almost unconditional support of the Berlin home board until a visitation in 1910/1911 led to significant doubts about the religious content of his work. In 1904, Wilhelm officially announced, as part of his annual report published in the Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft (ZMR), that the AepMV in Qingdao would neither engage in baptizing Chinese converts nor form congregations. Under the headline Das rechte Missionsverfahren in China (The correct method of missionary work in China), Wilhelm first described the reasons why he believed congregation building was not an acceptable option for the AepMV. He began with an indictment of “the quality of Chinese Christians that have been converted by missionaries,” and claimed that there were among them plenty of “dubious elements.” He stated that the main difference between Chinese Christians and non-Christians appeared to be the “Christian phraseology” employed by the former. Wilhelm further claimed there

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was roughly an equal number of excellent persons among both Christians and non-Christians; the latter, he asserted, had also been influenced by Christianity and chose to live a life of “genuine piety and veneration for God.” However, many of these would never even consider being baptized and joining the somewhat mixed society of a Chinese congregation. This was followed by a list of reasons why the AepMV in Qingdao should not engage in congregation building with a comparatively brief and vague image of the alternative approach he planned to use: Furthermore, since we have, in our school [the Lixian Shuyuan] a larger circle of young people around us, who are learning from us and will also remain in touch with us after they leave school, it seems to be practical and reasonable that we do for now refrain from tightening these bonds, and that we continue to do our work based exclusively on our faith that it will not be in vain, but that God will use our witness according to His desire to win souls for His kingdom. 12

The official declaration against baptizing Chinese persons, as it was printed in the Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft in 1904, further isolated the AepMV from the other German Protestant missionary societies working in China. It involved more than a criticism of decades of missionary work; in its focus on “true discipleship,” it also showed an expectation of human perfection that was distinctly at odds with the Lutheran tradition that guided most German Protestant missionaries. Earlier in the same volume of the ZMR, Wilhelm introduced another theme that supported the argument that the “indirect method” of missionary work was more productive at that time: he quoted the recommendations of an unnamed Chinese government official presented during a missionary conference held in Qingzhou organized by Timothy Richard (1845–1919). According to Wilhelm, the official suggested that 1. Christian missionaries should be well educated and able to understand China’s own religious and philosophical literature. 2. Chinese Christians need to lead exemplary lives. Those who accepted Christianity for ulterior motives, be it economic advantages or the missionary’s support in judicial affairs, are Christianity’s worst enemies. 3. Missionaries have a very promising field in education. . . . If you win [China’s] youth, you have her future. 13

These recommendations obviously endorse all aspects of Richard Wilhelm’s indirect missionary method and point to a critical advantage that Wilhelm only hinted at in his own text: the indirect method allowed the AepMV to maintain close contacts with Chinese Confucian elites. As Wilhelm mentioned in his annual report of 1904, Chinese government officials were still expected to perform Confucian rites and thus were pre-

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vented from converting to Christianity. 14 As a nonbaptizing mission, the AepMV remained what could be called a safe destination for the Confucian elite, and it also avoided potential conflicts with the established Confucian power structures in the Qing civil service. Such conflicts frequently were the result of missionaries providing financial and legal support to converts of low social standing. 15 Wilhelm’s already demonstrated understanding of Chinese thought and his ability to forge connections with the Chinese upper class gave him a position of respect somewhat similar to that of the early Jesuit missionaries. There was even the option of following the Jesuit lead in transforming China “from the top down”: Wilhelm accordingly occasionally considered plans to relocate his mission work in Beijing to gain better access to central institutions of Chinese political power. Yet, in contrast to Wilhelm’s work, the Jesuits’ ultimate goal was still the conversion of China to Roman Catholicism, involving the formation of spiritual communities of baptized Chinese communicants and making these communities a part of the universal Catholic Church. The official proclamation that the AepMV would refrain from baptism and congregation building in Qingdao had been the result of a lengthy debate between Wilhelm and August Kind (d. 1915), who served as the president of the Weimar Mission from 1901 until his death. Yet the origins of what was eventually called das indirekte Missionsverfahren (the indirect missionary method) date back to Christoph Blumhardt’s instructions for Richard Wilhelm before he even left Germany. Johannes Weissinger recalled Blumhardt’s explanation of his mandate for Wilhelm to a small circle of friends: Once Blumhardt mentioned among friends that he had given Wilhelm the mandate for his work in China: “Don’t even consider baptizing a Chinese!” I asked him, why Wilhelm should not baptize the Chinese, and I received this answer: “In China baptism is not seen as changing one’s religious affiliation from Confucianism to Christianity, but as a betrayal of one’s national identity and an affiliation with the Europeans; and Wilhelm should neither risk nor reinforce this terrible misunderstanding.” Blumhardt finished with the statement: “Wilhelm shall baptize them with fire and the Holy Spirit, then he will have no need to perform any baptisms.” 16

After Wilhelm had been in Qingdao for less than two years, and quite possibly as a result of his complete separation from the Landeskirche and his affiliation with the Social Democrats, Blumhardt extended his stance against baptism beyond the specifics of the Chinese situation. He wrote to Wilhelm in January 1901: A main concern, which has become even stronger over the last weeks, is that you [both Richard and Salome Wilhelm are meant] should fully maintain God’s character, Who is like the sun that sends its rays every-

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Lydia Gerber where, even into the dirt. All churches and sects create obstacles and separations, by using mass baptism to form congregations according to their own choosing. I consider this kind of baptism to be wrong for this last epoch in the development of God’s kingdom. Because it is human will, not God’s will. . . . When Jesus says: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” 17 he can only have understood spiritual baptism, which happens when the apostles make all peoples they encounter disciples of Jesus through the right kind of interaction with them. I therefore want to say: your interaction with the Chinese, which you had in the spirit of Jesus, as you learned it from me, has led to a spiritual baptism, first just [the fact] that their hearts trust you, so that you can teach them, [but] later there will be a further baptism. Why then a church baptism, a human baptism! I am asking you, therefore, look at all Chinese that come to you as your, or rather Christ’s sheep and do not differentiate through baptism by water, which requires you to decide, whom you are going to baptize. Let them all be committed to your care, so that God may increase and deepen His influence for a long period of time, so that millions may recognize their Father in heaven, as the Spirit may grant them, and the idols will fall without any effort. . . . Believe me, as soon as you will begin to baptize, you will receive the unfit, and God will withdraw His sheep. 18

The significance of Wilhelm’s particular missionary approach was expressed by Blumhardt in a letter, written less than a year later: Each prophet or prophetically working person will also work politically. Your work seems to lead you into the world of the Chinese, and if God grants you their hearts, that they may trust you then they will enter the kingdom of God, even without being called Christians. It is more difficult to lead people out of the swamp of Christian churches than out of the barbarism of paganism. The Christian peoples are only painted barbarians, who live a life of self-deceit. So do not hesitate, if this should happen, to be called a heathen among the heathens, as long as your spirit is following God’s will. 19

The startling difference between Blumhardt’s hope that Richard and Salome Wilhelm embody the ideal of God’s kingdom for all God’s children and the official declaration with its criticism of the quality of Chinese congregations illustrates the enormous tension inherent in Wilhelm’s affiliation with both Blumhardt and the Weimar Mission. Even though Wilhelm was its author, the declaration is not a direct expression of hiss own unmitigated perspective, but a compromise document he designed after his lengthy debates with August Kind; therefore, the published record does not provide good evidence of Wilhelm’s own thoughts. His letters to August Kind are filled with a variety of reasons against baptizing, but Wilhelm’s only truly personal remark on this subject is the brief and puzzling statement: “‘Taufen’ ist mir zuwider” (I find “baptizing” repulsive). 20

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On the surface, Wilhelm’s decisions not to baptize and not to provide formal religious education in his schools, or even regular spiritual support in the mission hospital, can easily be interpreted as those of a person to whom the faith he had agreed to propagate had lost meaning. In Wilhelm’s case, this view could be supported by the fact that he was almost continuously engaged in trying to find other employment. 21 Furthermore, his assurances that he would continue with the actual missionary work wherever he might find himself could easily be disregarded as empty phraseology, since the terms “evangelism” and “the Christian faith” are rarely even mentioned in his letters to the mission board. A few letters Richard Wilhelm wrote to his friends do, however, present a different image. In a letter to Wilhelm Schüler, Wilhelm describes his own faith. At that time Schüler was waiting for the home board’s permission to switch from the role of a pastor to the German civilians to that of a full-time missionary to the Chinese in Qingdao. Weeks earlier, he had visited Christoph Blumhardt in Bad Boll and received his blessing and permission to join in the true Bad Boll mission work in Qingdao. As a consequence, Wilhelm was writing not just to a fellow pastor and colleague, but to someone who had been initiated into the spiritual community in Bad Boll. Discussing in this context in his letter to Schüler the impact of a book by Wilhelm Bölsche (1861–1939) 22 that described new research in the natural sciences, including the theory of evolution, Wilhelm wrote: We have it certainly much easier in this regard [continued faith in a personal connection to God], since for us, our connection with God is not a doctrine, or a point, that can be toppled by other doctrines or points, but fact, that is to say of the utmost certainty, compared to which all other certainties and probabilities are much less certain (and we must not forget, that in research we are looking at currently accepted findings, that will be revised over and over again). . . . [Wilhelm accepts Bölsche’s description of evolution as likely, but maintains that it does not impact his faith.] By the way, this view seems to be much more in harmony with the position of the Bible than the antique world view of a creation that is completed for all times. After all, the entire life of the Bible particularly [in] the New Testament is focused on progress; “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be,” this clearly expresses the position of development. 23

“Development” was a key factor in Blumhardt’s eschatological theology, and if we believe Wilhelm’s own words about his connection with God as “an unmitigated fact,” these principles hold true for Wilhelm as well. At one point during his most radical phase as a Social Democrat in the Stuttgart Parliament, Blumhardt described divine revelation and prophetic visions as forces that run roughshod over all institutions and dogmas, and apparently envisioned just such a prophetic role for Wilhelm and his work. In fact, Wilhelm’s frequent adjustments and new plans can

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easily be seen as somewhat frantic attempts to follow what he understood to be God’s plan in the midst of confounding circumstances involving a changing China, and complicated German colonial structures. Seen in this light, Wilhelm’s perspective was not just nondogmatic but also anti-dogmatic. If true Christian discipleship was to be lived in response to present day divine guidance, the biblical foundation of Christianity and established Lutheran church practices could not be more than mere stepping-stones over which one must pass. From this perspective, Jesus serves as a role model and a liberator from structures of the past, and as one who would guide people to truly embrace their God-given freedom. But this process would continue beyond the liberating vision of the gospel itself. 24 Another letter Wilhelm wrote provides some insight into the complex question of how to be a Blumhardtian missionary and transmit this eschatological vision to others. In 1907, Wilhelm asked his friend Friedrich Boie, who returned to Germany after serving a few years as the German pastor in Shanghai, to visit Bad Boll. 25 Boie had told Wilhelm that, rather than seeking new employment in Germany, he would like to join the Qingdao missionary work. At that time Wilhelm had declined Boie’s request, even though a few years later, in 1911, he had fought hard to get Boie appointed by the AepMV. Boie had, in the interim years, been introduced to Blumhardt and Bad Boll. Wilhelm’s letter in 1907, while denying Boie’s request to work with him right away, began the process of connecting Boie, whom Wilhelm would later call his “best friend,” to Bad Boll and the family mission. This document also suggests some of the challenges that Blumhardt’s person and teaching might present to the asyet uninitiated: As a farewell present I ask you that you should go to Bad Boll, and you have to promise me that, without getting angry, you will stay until you have come to understand Blumhardt’s importance. . . . Then you will also understand why I have, to your discomfort, said so little about him. It is something about his person that cannot be expressed, because it is by laws of necessity separate from our concepts and theories, like all intuited truth. And finally, all talk about life is in vain; it is either present, or it is not, and our words always reach only to the point where the real problem begins. What has been precious to me in Bad Boll is the original, divine life, the immediate life, free of any dogmatic or theoretical mediation. For this very reason I was at first startled, because this could not be classified according to the established systems. And this can, at first, cause one to feel uncomfortable. [I myself was uncomfortable] until I was finally able to see the connection my experiences in Bad Boll had with the prophetic and evangelical tradition. It is the same spirit here and there. But because of this there is not a trace of a slavish or outward similarity. [The Spirit’s] expressions frequently appear in such variety that they are almost opposite, until one realizes the unity in their origin. It is furthermore wonderful that

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once one has been touched by this originality one does not need to be biased or partisan, instead one gains power and courage to follow one’s very own path. There are, of course, “Blumhardtians,” particularly among the ladies gathered there [in Bad Boll]. And that has deterred some people. But you will soon see how little truth there is in that [phenomenon]. Nobody has been more resistant to gathering disciples than Blumhardt. He even prevented it that a group formed within the church that wanted to follow his flag. But you will see all this for yourself. 26

This describes what, to Wilhelm, was the powerful and life-transforming impact of Blumhardt’s personality. Nevertheless, the fact that Wilhelm only introduced these experiences after a friendship of some duration points to the enormous difficulty of a missionary endeavor based so much on Blumhardt’s person and message, rather than on either the Christian scriptural interpretations or the doctrinal traditions of a specific denomination. Even someone like Boie, who had the rare privilege of close contact with the Wilhelm family for an extended period of time, could only gradually be introduced to this neatly hidden core of the Qingdao mission work in China. In Christoph Blumhardt’s letters sent to Qingdao during the early years of Wilhelm’s stay there, not only were baptism and congregation building discouraged, but even preaching and spreading the gospel message to the Chinese had to be approached with great care. One way to understand this approach would be that Wilhelm was supposed to engage in a “wordless teaching” through his personal life, and Blumhardt’s instructions do suggest a form of discipleship demonstrated through action rather than words. 27 Moreover, Blumhardt actively and repeatedly discouraged Wilhelm from sharing experiences of the sacred with his sending agency. 28 Similarly to his concerns about the possible withdrawal of divine support should Wilhelm engage in traditional baptism, Blumhardt also feared that bragging about sacred encounters would endanger Wilhelm’s connection to the divine. Back in Europe, these Blumhardtian missionary principles created frequent problems with the mission society. Understandably, members of the Weimar Mission found it difficult to see Wilhelm’s work in terms of missionary work, as neither sacred events nor statistical details were freely shared with the mission board. However, the alternative approach Wilhelm used in obedience to Blumhardt’s instructions did not appear to show immediate and strong results. Wilhelm arrived in China at a time when most Chinese had already formed too strong an image of Western missionaries to easily perceive Blumhardt’s very different message, regardless of Wilhelm’s methodological approach. So for his Chinese audience, Wilhelm might still be too closely identified with the title of “missionary” to be trusted. To both Wilhelm and Blumhardt, it thus became obvious that Wilhelm’s position as a Christian missionary presented, if

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anything, a disadvantage. Seen in this light, it appears perfectly reasonable that Wilhelm and Blumhardt actively sought to find him a different position and title, even though their efforts were for more than a decade unsuccessful. THE AEPMV Of all contemporary German Protestant missionary societies, only the Allgemeiner evangelisch-protestantischer Missionsverein (AepMV) would have allowed non-board members such as Richard Wilhelm and Christoph Blumhardt significant influence in questions of personnel and mission methodology. Several factors contributed to this unique situation. First of all, the AepMV was a very young organization; at the time that Wilhelm sailed for Qingdao, it was barely fifteen years old. Swiss and German pastors and professors of theology representing a variety of Protestant groups tied to liberal Protestantism had hoped to create an alternative to the established missionary societies, one which they themselves would be comfortable supporting. They planned to place their missionaries in three Asian countries that they believed had already manifested significant cultural attainments: India, China, and Japan. In contrast to the regular seminary-trained missionaries of low social standing, they would send out university-trained and cultured theologians who would engage the elite in these three countries in a dialogue on religious and spiritual matters. Rather than dismissing all non-Christian traditions, such as Confucianism, as they perceived to be the habit among other missionary societies, they would acknowledge the “elements of truth” (Wahrheitselemente) they discovered in Asian beliefs and use them as stepping-stones for missionary work. In the literature introducing the newly founded AepMV, the emphasis was clearly on a new missionary methodology rather than on the outcome resulting from this alternative process in terms of, for example, expected conversions or the formation of congregations. 29 Compared to other missionary societies, the denominational focus was vague. The Weimar Mission limited itself to the statement that it was grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ (steht auf dem Boden des Evangeliums Jesu Christi). The members of the AepMV in the early 1900s included several well-known theologians, such as Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) and Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), whose work challenged established knowledge of the Bible and Christianity. 30 As an organization, the AepMV showed some similarities to the Swiss Federation. AepMV branches (Zweigvereine) with voting rights were founded in cities throughout German-speaking areas of Switzerland, France, and Germany. Until 1909, all work was done on a volunteer basis supported by one paid secretary, including the editing of the highly regarded periodical, Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft.

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During the years that Richard Wilhelm worked for the AepMV its headquarters and presidents were in Berlin, along with a small executive board, the Geschäftsausschuss (GA), representing the local members of the mission board. Only in 1909 did the AepMV change its structure from being strictly a volunteer organization by hiring a Berlin pastor, Johannes Witte (1877–1945), as a mission inspector. Witte’s visitation of the Qingdao China mission work and his attempts to make missionary publications more successful tools for fund-raising by focusing on “heathen misery” significantly challenged Wilhelm and his missionary approach. Since 1885 the AepMV had sent missionaries to Japan, where comparatively traditional mission stations had been established in Tokyo (1885) and Kyoto (1890). It had also chosen to support the renowned Confucian scholar and conservative missionary Ernst Faber, who had left the Rhenish Mission a few years earlier and resided in Shanghai. In the year 1892 it extended the literary mission in Shanghai through support of Faber’s student Paul Kranz (1866–1920), who left the AepMV in 1903 over differences of doctrine. The missionary work begun in 1898 in the newly leased territory of Kiautschou had for the first time in its short history seriously threatened the peace among AepMV members. Several of the German branch organizations, most notably those in Hamburg and Berlin, were ardent supporters of working in the German leased territory. They hoped that it would provide publicity for the AepMV and help attract new members from colonial circles and especially from those engaged in the China trade who had generally shown little support for missionary work. 31 The Swiss branch organizations were, however, largely opposed to supporting this German colonial agenda, and coupled with the democratic structure of the AepMV, these conflicting viewpoints led to previously unfamiliar competition over the allocation of resources. New questions arose over the respective nationality and positions of members of the mission board, and especially those of the critical decision-makers in the Geschäftsausschuss. 32 Swiss members repeatedly expressed their disagreement with the new colonial focus and demanded better support for the mission in Japan. However, the Berlin GA went so far as to consider closing the stations in Japan and using all its funds for the work in China. 33 As a result of this fundamental schism over the value of the Kiautschou work, the Berlin GA (and particularly its president, August Kind) needed to present Wilhelm’s missionary work in the best possible light to ensure that it would endure. Consequently, the GA in Berlin deliberately obscured the quality and nature of Richard Wilhelm’s missionary work, including its uncomfortably close connection to Christoph Blumhardt, the well-known critic of the church as an institution. 34 Growing hostility between the AepMV and other German missionary societies actually helped the GA and Wilhelm: the occasional and usually accurate descriptions of Wilhelm’s missionary work composed by the

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rival Berlin Mission in Qingdao and published in German-language newspapers in Asia were considered slanderous, and so not taken seriously by AepMV members. 35 Only when its newly appointed inspector, Johannes Witte, visited the AepMV mission stations in Japan and China from November 1910 to February 1911 did the home board in Germany receive its first independent and rather critical assessment of Wilhelm’s work. Yet Wilhelm had at that time already begun to consider making adjustments in his work to bring it into somewhat closer alignment with traditional Christian mission work. The Lixian Shuyuan school was an example of the extreme reticence Wilhelm displayed in making Christianity an explicit part of his mission in China, or of his annual reports for the home board. It also became the laboratory for his attempts to shift toward a new direction, one that would assuage concerns over the “religious element” in his work. WILHELM’S BOYS SCHOOL, LIXIAN SHUYUAN Wilhelm’s most famous and enduring institution began as an informal German-language class for Chinese students in his living room in Qingdao in October 1900. 36 The school, Lixian Shuyuan (which was named “Lixian” after Wilhelm’s first name in Chinese), officially opened, in June 1901, with thirty students in a house located in the Dabaodao district (see figure 6.2). It was soon moved to the mission compound, since its prior home in the red-light area had threatened student morals. Here it attracted a growing number of students, requiring frequent additions to the original compound. In 1904 several boys from local gentry families attended the school. 37 Wilhelm was much more impressed with the new students that came to Qingdao as refugees and members of the former Qing elite in early 1912. 38 At the Lixian Shuyuan Richard Wilhelm created a system that rewarded teachers for their long-term commitment to the school, which allowed him to retain well-trained and experienced Chinese faculty in both the modern sciences and traditional Chinese subjects. 39 Richard and Salome Wilhelm, Wilhelm Schüler, Benjamin Blumhardt, Wilhelm Seuffert, and Hermann Bohner were among the German faculty at the school. The popularity of the school continued after the 1911 revolution, and in 1912 Wilhelm had over one hundred applications to the school, which made it relatively easy to dismiss students who had been instigators of a school strike in May 1912. 40 The academic success and popularity of the school led the German colonial government to suggest in 1907 to include it and its founderdirector, Wilhelm, as part of a comprehensive state school system for boys. Due to his favorable relationship with Wilhelm Schrameier, a key member of the colonial administration and also a member of the AepMV,

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Figure 6.2. The Lixian Shuyuan School at Qingdao, opened in 1901. Credit: History of Christianity in China Archive (Spokane, Washington).

Wilhelm had already been commissioned in 1905 to create a network of elementary schools throughout the German leased territory. It was therefore not unreasonable to expand Wilhelm’s role to include middle and high school institutions. The fact that his school did not mention religious instruction in its curriculum enhanced the chances of a government takeover. Wilhelm himself actively lobbied for this change and spent much of his furlough in 1907 and 1908 discussing plans with representatives from the Reichsmarineamt in Berlin. Yet the German Parliament in Berlin ultimately decided against the proposed comprehensive school plan, choosing instead to support a German-Chinese university to be built in Qingdao. It took more than two years until it was finally decided in 1909 that the school would remain under the control of the Weimar Mission, Richard Wilhelm remaining its director. 41 As a Christian mission school, the Lixian Shuyuan was quite unusual. While teachers in the natural sciences were graduates from Presbyterian mission schools and generally Christians, explicit Christian content was not part of the curriculum for more than a decade. Morning prayers, which were voluntary, first focused on texts from the Bible, but later alternated between Confucian and Christian texts. 42 Attendance of Sunday services by students was also voluntary. Having been urged by the home board to describe the missionary work he engaged in, Wilhelm also mentions regular evening Bible classes offered by Christian teachers at the school. 43 Those who desired baptism were asked to join the local

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Presbyterian church, a congregation that Wilhelm described as fairly independent of foreign and missionary influence. 44 With its emphasis on a sound traditional Confucian education coupled with the sciences and the study of German, Wilhelm had created a curriculum that would prepare his students for careers in the Chinese interior, including the Qing dynasty civil service. In fact, according to the booklet published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Lixian Shuyuan, Wilhelm formally adopted the statutes issued by the Qing government for modern schools with an eight-year curriculum. 45 Wilhelm had repeatedly petitioned the Shandong provincial government in Jinan to have the school registered and to allow Lixian graduates to participate in the provincial examination system. Zhou Fu (1837–1921), governor after Yuan Shikai and a personal friend of Richard Wilhelm, had informally agreed to include Lixian students, and one of Wilhelm’s first students, Tan Yufeng, passed the provincial examinations in Jinan in 1904 and received the degree of “senior licentiate.” 46 However, the school was never officially registered, in spite of its “religious neutrality.” 47 When the German government in Berlin had finally voted against taking over the school, Christoph Blumhardt encouraged Wilhelm to embrace the benefits of the school’s relative independence from either Chinese or German state expectations. Downplaying Christian instruction at the school could therefore no longer be justified as a means of connecting the school to state systems. At this point, Blumhardt and Wilhelm began to discuss a more formal religious instruction for Lixian students. Blumhardt may even have been taken aback when he realized how completely Wilhelm had embraced his call for wordless teaching and cultural sensitivity by keeping Christian content so completely out of the school curriculum until this time. Offering Blumhardtian-based Christian instruction for Chinese students posed significant challenges, as can be seen in the letters Blumhardt wrote to Wilhelm about this subject. Such instruction in Bad Boll could, after all, assume that all involved were thoroughly familiar with both the Old and the New Testament and equally aware of church history. The spectrum of Christian denominations and their various positions on social issues could be understood and discussed against this background, and, more importantly, the experience of Blumhardt’s teaching, personal counseling, and encouragement required little in the way of added scripture. In Qingdao, however, the background knowledge of Wilhelm’s students was much less predictable. Some of his students and teachers had been raised within the Presbyterian tradition or had converted as adults; others had mostly been exposed to the ranting of itinerant evangelists. The majority of Chinese Christians had been raised in an atmosphere that was distinctly critical of the Chinese Confucian tradition. While German

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missionaries operating in Qingdao considered Confucianism to have merit as a basis for Christian teaching, many American and British missionaries saw it in a much more negative light. Moreover, few missionaries were likely to embrace science in the way Wilhelm would want to see it practiced at the Lixian Shuyuan, which included an open mind toward, for instance, the new theory of evolution. At the same time Chinese translations of the Bible had a bad reputation among Chinese scholars, both for the mixed content offered and for the supposed lack of elegance of the translation. Moreover, the instruction Wilhelm planned to offer would need to satisfy both Blumhardt’s thought and the expectations of the new missions inspector Witte, whose visit was anticipated, along with the ideals of the Weimar Mission expressed by its membership of theologians. Even more importantly, whatever Wilhelm would offer in the future would under no circumstances challenge the Confucian focus of the school as it then existed. Otherwise, Wilhelm would have found it difficult to keep the trust of his students. The solution Wilhelm and Blumhardt discussed was a book authored by Wilhelm about the Bible, which was intended to encourage students to see biblical stories as of human origin, rather than divinely inspired accounts of the human experience with God. In a letter of 22 September 1909, Blumhardt suggested a “history of the development of the kingdom of God” as the major framework for such instruction. This would include the creation story, “which, while not to be understood as scientifically accurate, still is an expression of the heartfelt trust that God is for us all in everything.” The history of the people of Israel would be discussed with a focus on God’s fight against idolatry. The New Testament would provide a more intimate view of the Father in Heaven: “Everything the Gospel says can be connected to the life of Jesus, which is centered in the future of God’s Kingdom, but also connected to our work in this life. This is how I imagine the lessons.” 48 A text Wilhelm published in German in April 1910 in his periodical for friends and supporters, Vertrauliche Mitteilungen (VM), under the title “Einleitung zu der ‘Geschichte des Namens Gottes’” (Introduction to a “History of the Name of God”), is the only published evidence we have of Wilhelm’s attempts to use such a book to introduce the Bible to his Chinese students. While the book itself was apparently never written, the introduction provides an intriguing example of Wilhelm’s attempt to deal with a most fundamental issue of his missionary practice: Why should his students bother to study the Bible or Christian teachings? After all, Wilhelm’s pedagogy was firmly focused on offering a Confucian education, and he was adamant in his avoidance of converting anyone out of the context of what he considered to be a Confucian society. Eternal damnation for nonbelievers was equally remote from Wilhelm’s worldview. What Wilhelm claimed he wanted for his students and China in general was often expressed in rather abstract terminology, such as

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“enlivening Chinese society with the life force of the Gospel,” or to give his students a sense of the “true life.” The method for obtaining this goal he described as a kind of role modeling by him and his family—again, “wordless teaching.” Wilhelm’s introduction to his planned book is only five pages long in the German translation he published in April 1910; yet it nonetheless provides the reader with a host of statements and observation that clarify Wilhelm’s position within the spectrum of Sino-Western opinions. More importantly, it provides an interesting argument for why an understanding of Christian revelation can be of key importance to Wilhelm’s students, whom he treats in this text as “junzi in training.” Beginning with the Confucian programmatic ideal of zhengming—rectifying the names (Lunyu [Analects of Confucius] 13, 3)—Wilhelm argues that God’s name has to be rectified first, for without considering one’s relationship to God, it is likely that “the big would be considered small, and the small taken for big.” 49 Giving credit to all peoples of culture for attempting to put order into human relationships, Wilhelm continues to discuss the rise and fall of civilizations and the fact that some developments such as certain styles of dwellings can be observed to have risen simultaneously in different cultures, while in other cases, some cultures, such as the Germanic tribes, benefited from the cultural advances made by others. Here he explicitly points out that China shared some cultural traits with others and that Egyptian and Babylonian cultures appear to have flourished along with China’s, challenging the perception of China’s absolute uniqueness. However, describing Germanic culture as a beneficiary of others may have provided a nice antidote to the German sense of superiority frequently displayed in Qingdao. Wilhelm also challenges views commonly held by Western missionaries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They claimed divine and immediate agency in all of world history, starting with creation. More importantly, they saw God’s hand defining the framework of their own missionary endeavor and maintained that China’s backwardness compared to the West’s technological strengths was part of intentional divine pedagogy. To them, China was an example of how far a civilization without God could progress. Wilhelm instead argues that neither the origin of life itself nor the impetus leading to the rise of civilizations is well understood. This cultural attainment is, Wilhelm claims, desired by God to bring forth mankind’s original spirit, but its essentially human origin leads to rise and fall over time in all cases. 50 Challenging Chinese convictions of the continuity in China’s Confucian-based culture, Wilhelm points out that significant transformations are evident there as well and that, for example, feudalism was not reinstated after the fall of the Qin dynasty, even though Confucius’s ideals were based on such society. Confucianism, Wilhelm argues, would also

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not easily be transferred to other cultures and societies, evidence to him that this culture, in its more specific social dimensions, is of human origin and therefore impermanent. Dismissing all cultural attainments as human and therefore incapable of leading to his goal to “rectify God’s name,” Wilhelm now moves to the Bible as a source of divine revelation and therefore information that extends beyond the realm of the temporary. Only God’s revelation in Christ, Wilhelm claims, would allow man to rectify God’s name. “The value of the Bible,” Wilhelm argues, “was not in its ability to teach scientific concepts, or in its stylistic beauty, but in introducing us to people, to whom God had revealed himself and who could as a result partake in eternal life.” 51 Yet Wilhelm does not present access to divine will as exclusively the domain of the Bible. In an earlier paragraph Wilhelm described the role of prophets as the embodiment of awareness beyond the realm of human understanding. He alludes to Mencius (VII B, 25, 7), using traditional Chinese views of sheng along with biblical images to forge a connection between China’s cultural heroes and those who received divine revelation according to the Christian Bible. To Wilhelm, there is no separation between a supposedly “heathen” Chinese experience and a Western “Christian” experience. There is human experience, much of it temporary, culture specific, and subject to rise and decline, and there is the realm of the divine that sheds light into this human experience and its eternal meaning and shape. That realm’s very essence is its elusiveness to any particular “ownership” or cultural flavor. Perhaps Wilhelm’s most radical claim in his reasoning for Bible study in his school is based on a very loose translation of the Lunyu statement: 子曰：不知命， 無以為君子也 (Lunyu XX, 3, 1). Simon Leys translates this statement as “Confucius said: ‘He who does not understand fate is incapable of behaving as a gentleman.’” 52 Richard Wilhelm offers his German audience this translation instead: “To understand human nature it is essential to understand God.” 53 Seen in this light, and combined with his claim that only “God’s revelation in Christ” would allow for a full “rectifying of God’s name,” not using the record of the Bible as a pathway toward understanding divine will and agency would make the ultimate Confucian educational goal of becoming a junzi quite impossible to achieve. Taken together, Wilhelm promises in this text that studying the Bible will not only not alienate students from their Confucian heritage but also become a means to “fulfilling” the essential goal of a Confucian education. This view is somewhat similar to the accommodationist strategy employed by Jesuit Figurists. He also promises that the East-West divisions so prominent in the experience of the German-governed lease, necessarily part of attending a foreign-run school, will lose their importance. At the level of the eternal and divine, Wilhelm claims that differences of

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race and heritage and relative technological advantages will disappear. In that realm, a quest for junzi-hood will no longer be considered the lesser attainment, compared to conversion to Christianity. Yet Wilhelm’s plans to write the proposed book were not realized, and the school continued without formal Bible or biblical studies as part of the curriculum for another two years. Other projects must have appeared more urgent or less daunting to Wilhelm. It is also possible that Wilhelm’s affinity for embodying his relationship to the divine (rather than talking or writing about it) took precedence after all. Probably prompted by the Qingdao visit of mission board representative and Wilhelm critic Johannes Witte, Wilhelm wrote in February 1911 in his publication Vertrauliche Mitteilungen that he disagreed with the practice of requiring Chinese students to study Christianity. Rather than helping Chinese students fully realize their potential as Confucian junzi, he argued that this would only create resentment within the student body. 54 As a letter from Wilhelm to the home board demonstrates, his book project still awaited completion in January 1913. 55 The Weimar home board had not been aware of the lack of formal religious instruction until Inspector Witte informed them after his return from Asia in the spring of 1911. The mission board, and even Christoph Blumhardt (who may also not have known to what extent Wilhelm avoided Christian instruction in his school), disagreed with Wilhelm’s position. 56 Wilhelm subsequently changed his policy of “religious neutrality” in 1912, claiming that the former elite who had fled the 1911 revolution specifically suggested that the Lixian Shuyuan students should learn about Christianity. 57 Wilhelm not only introduced Bible studies, though only on a voluntary basis, but also planned to open a theological seminary attached to the school. 58 In the summer of 1913, he also began to publish a Chinese-language magazine for his students and alumni, with the title Der Freund (The Friend), in an attempt to foster a spiritual connection. In addition, Wilhelm used this little publication to respond to questions his students had, and he introduced his readers to Christoph Blumhardt’s religious thought. 59 As the director of the Lixian Shuyuan, Wilhelm did not like to provide statistical information about the students, such as their religious affiliation or possible conversions. A survey he published first in the Kiautschou Post, a German-language paper published in Qingdao, focuses only on the careers of former students. 60 Once he did mention that three of his students had decided to undergo Christian baptism. 61 At another time, the recent baptism of two students is mentioned. 62 Yet a survey about the education system in German colonies in June 1911 ironically credits Wilhelm’s school with the highest percentage of male Christian students (40 percent) among all mission schools in Qingdao. 63 Moreover, the testimony of some of his old students indicates that the school’s very particular missionary approach in China led several students and teachers to get

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baptized and join the Presbyterian church. 64 The Festschrift celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Lixian Shuyuan, which was published exclusively in Chinese in Qingdao, may have for other reasons minimized the Christian focus of the school. In this publication, Wilhelm’s work of “transmission” is described as introducing Kant to China and Master Kong (Confucius) to the West. 65 Moreover, it uses the old motto of the Yangwu Yundong (the Chinese modernization movement of the 1860s to 1880s), “Yi zhongxue wei ti, yi xixue wei yong”—Chinese learning for the essential, Western learning for the practical—as the motto of the school. 66 If accurate, this description would have denied any impact Wilhelm might have had on his students’ engagement with that beyond the level of direct human experience. Wilhelm’s grand book project was probably never completed and there is no record of a response even to the published introduction. Yet this work prompted Wilhelm to at least intellectually reconcile his very unusual school with the missionary goals and convictions of Blumhardt, his own positions as an advocate of modern science and a critic of the general missionary movement, and, to a more limited degree, some of the positions of the liberal Protestant Weimar Mission. His introduction highlights the universality of God’s engagement with the world, as Blumhardt stressed it. It brings out Wilhelm’s deep respect for Confucian spirituality and limited interest in many of its cultural concepts. It refuses to insist on biblical positions concerning the origin of the world as accurate and encourages scientific engagement, including, as key Weimar Mission supporters did, scientific engagement with the Bible. More fundamentally, this text shows the human connecting with the divine as an ongoing project, one that demonstrates an interweaving of different traditions, East-West, rather than asking others to join fully developed Westernstyle church life as the ultimate expression of “truth” and “Christianity.” NOTES 1. In German: “Mein Geist, den mir das Evangelium gegeben hat.” Christoph Blumhardt refers to this in a letter to Richard Wilhelm dated 25 May 1899. The letter is published in Christoph Blumhardt, Christus in der Welt: Briefe an Richard Wilhelm (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1958), 31–33. 2. Arthur Rich published Christoph Blumhardt’s letters to Richard Wilhelm under the title Christus in der Welt. Only a few paragraphs and letters from Christoph Blumhardt to Richard Wilhelm are not included in this volume, which is supplemented with useful annotations. A typed copy of the originals is available in Richard Wilhelm’s Nachlass found in BAS in Munich, Box 74. 3. He first addressed this in a letter to Wilhelm dated 31 July 1899, encouraging Wilhelm to refrain from actions, but rather, to let his and Blumhardt’s existence bring about God’s actions to transform the world. See Blumhardt, Christus in der Welt, 34f. In another letter, Blumhardt elaborates further: “In your person Jesus needs to be present and perceived, before you can tell the Chinese about the history and experience of Jesus.” Letter, 16 September 1899; Blumhardt, Christus in der Welt, 36f. Later, he en-

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couraged Richard and Salome to be “an embodiment of God’s love and faithfulness” among the Chinese. Letter to Richard Wilhelm, dated 22 December 1901. Blumhardt, Christus in der Welt, 75–77. 4. Both Salome Wilhelm (1956), 320f., and Nigg (1988), 122f., include longer quotes from two articles Wilhelm wrote in the 1920s: “Modernes Prophetentum,” published in the magazine Die Tat (published by Jena, E. Diederichs) in 1925, and “Der Priester in Europa,” published in Europäische Revue in 1927/1928. In both of these articles Wilhelm describes the Blumhardts, particularly his father-in-law, as “biblical prophets in modern dress.” 5. For a brief biographical sketch of Faber and his missionary work, see Lydia Gerber, Von Voskamps “heidnischem Treiben” und Wilhelms “höherem China”: Die Berichterstattung deutscher protestantischer Missionare aus dem deutschen Pachtgebiet Kiautschou 1898–1914 (Hamburg: Hamburger Sinologische Gesellschaft, 2002; Hamburger Sinologische Schriften, 7), 167–74. For some of Faber’s sinological contributions, see Lauren Pfister, “Ernest Faber’s ‘Sinological Orientalism,’” in Sino-German Relations since 1800: Multidisciplinary Explorations, eds. Ricardo S. Mak and Danny S. L. Paau (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000), 93–107. In a letter to Wilhelm, Blumhardt commented on the news of Faber’s death: “I do not consider this to be bad for you or the cause. What this man of outstanding merit could do has, in my view, been accomplished, so his life has been concluded with satisfaction.” Letter to RW, dated 30 September 1899; Christus in der Welt, 40f. 6. The theologian Wilhelm Schüler came to Qingdao as AepMV missionary with the position of pastor to the German Protestant civilians. In 1904 he used his furlough to resign as pastor to the Germans and returned with Christoph Blumhardt’s and the mission board’s blessing to Qingdao as Richard Wilhelm’s colleague and missionary to the Chinese. He worked as a teacher and missionary in Gaomi and Qingdao and helped out at the mission hospital. In February 1911 Schüler became pastor to the German Protestants in Shanghai. He returned to Germany in 1913 and became professor at the department for Asian studies (Orientalisches Seminar) at the university in Berlin. 7. Wilhelm Schüler, letter to (AepMV president) Arndt, dat. Qingdao, 17 October 1900. DOAM, acta 227, 118–22. 8. Laiqing Yang, “Die Ereignisse von Gaomi und der Widerstand der Bevölkerung gegen den deutschen Eisenbahnbau,” in Ulrich van der Heyden, Mechthild Leutner, and Joachim Zeller, Kolonialkrieg in China (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2007), 49–58. 9. See morning service, 8 January 1901: “At first I found this war to be abhorrent, but now I see that it had to take place, so that through my son-in-law the Gospel, not church doctrine, and my spirit could come [to the Chinese interior].” Christoph Blumhardt, Gesamelte Werke: Schriften, Verkündigung, Briefe, vol. 2 (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 255. 10. Letter, Richard Wilhelm to home board, dated 26 Nov. 1900, DOAM, acta 236, 159f. 11. See an excerpt from Shandong governor Yang’s report to the throne (6 May 1906), which was published in German translation in the Qingdao German paper Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, 17 May 1906, and is also on record in DOAM, acta 236, 205. 12. Richard Wilhelm, “Das rechte Missionsverfahren in China,” ZMR 1904, 48f. 13. Richard Wilhelm, “Das chinesische Volksleben und die evangelische Mission,” ZMR 1904, 311–13, reprint of an article Wilhelm had published in Qingdao’s local German-language newspaper Deutsch-Asiatische Warte. 14. ZMR 1904, 47. 15. See Jiaowu jiaoandang 教務教案檔 (Missionary Incidents Archive; Taipei 台北: Zhongyang yanjiusuo jindai yanjiusuo 中央研究所近代研究所, 1981), the multi-volume collection of archival materials related to nineteenth- and twentieth-century incidents caused by conflicts involving Christian missionaries for ample evidence to support this point.

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16. “Erinnerungen von Johannes Weissinger,” in Christoph Blumhardt, Ansprachen, Predigten, Reden, Briefe: 1865–1917, vol. 3 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978), 209. 17. The Great Commission, Matthew 28, 19; translation: New Revised Standard Version. 18. Letter, Christoph Blumhardt to Richard Wilhelm, 21 January 1901, in Christus in der Welt, 60–62. Marks in the original transcript. 19. Letter, Christoph Blumhardt to Richard Wilhelm, 29 October 2001, in Blumhardt, Christus in der Welt, 67–69. 20. Letter, Richard Wilhelm to August Kind, 11 June 1904, Nachlass Wilhelm, box 75. For a more detailed account of the letters regarding Wilhelm’s missionary methods, see Gerber, 97–102. 21. Wilhelm first pursued employment outside of the Weimar Mission in 1902, when he attempted to become the president of the newly established university in Jinan. See Gerber, 181, for different accounts of Wilhelm’s actions. In 1907 he actively supported the ultimately abandoned plans to transfer the Lixian school, with himself as director, into the colonial school system and away from the Weimar Mission. Beginning in 1911, Wilhelm actively pursued his transfer to the new Chinese German University in Qingdao. Having finally received an offer of employment by the colonial government, Wilhelm wrote his letter of resignation on 1 July 1914. DOAM, acta 258, 423–28. The outbreak of World War I prevented Wilhelm’s transfer from taking effect. 22. Wilhelm Bölsche was a German author who did much to spread Darwin’s and Häckel’s findings in Germany. The book Wilhelm and Schüler discussed was probably either Die Entwicklungslehre (Darwinismus) (1900) or Vom Bazillus zum Affenmenschen. Naturwissenschaftliche Plaudereien (1900), both by Bölsche. But, given Bölsche’s significant productivity, there are other possibilities. 23. Wilhelm, letter to Wilhelm Schüler (in Germany), dated Qingdao, 29 August 1904. Nachlass Wilhelm, Box 244. 24. Richard Wilhelm’s Jesus—Züge aus seinem Leben (Qingdao, 1919) describes the miracles Jesus performed according to the gospel in terms of a liberation of the afflicted, and even Jesus’ death on the cross as that of a person who was “free and pure.” Wilhelm, Jesus—Züge aus seinem Leben, 113. 25. When the AepMV had reluctantly agreed to hire Boie in early 1912, Boie himself decided to stay in Germany, but Wilhelm’s letters to Boie, available in Wilhelm’s Nachlass, contain some of the most honest descriptions of Wilhelm’s experiences in Qingdao. 26. Richard Wilhelm and Friedrich Boie, dated Qingdao, 19 January 1907. Nachlass Wilhelm, box 246. 27. See letters, Christoph Blumhardt to Richard Wilhelm, 31 July 1899. In Christus in der Welt, 34f. 28. Letter, Christoph Blumhardt to Richard Wilhelm, 16 September 1899. In Christus in der Welt, 36f. 29. Wolfgang Eger, “Zur Geschichte der Ostasien-Mission: ein Überblick,” in Spuren . . . Hundert Jahre Ostasien-Mission, ed. Ferdinand Hahn (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Missionswerk in Südwestdeutschland, 1984), 56–61. 30. A history of the AepMV has not yet been written. Spuren . . . Hundert Jahre Ostasien-Mission (1984), the Festschrift, edited by Ferdinand Hahn, provides articles on both the theological foundation and the mission work in China (Winfried Glüer) and Japan, as well as an account of the separation of the Swiss and German branches and their fate after World War II. For a more detailed account of the impact of the Qingdao mission on the AepMV, see Gerber, 82–97. 31. Compared to the broad support for usually church-initiated missionary work among Americans and the British, German missionary societies faced quite a different situation. They had been established independently from the state churches, often displaying a religious perspective at odds with the Landeskirchen. While many pastors supported mission work, most of the committed supporters were the so-called Stillen

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im Lande, often people with little formal education and low social standing. These people generally had little interest in the grand political visions associated with colonialism (the Berlin Mission, which also took up work in Qingdao, could raise very little in its attempted extra collection for Kiautschou). The educated middle class, however, found it generally easy to make fun of the mission supporters, while dreaming about a new global political role for the recently reunited Germany. Johannes Christian Hoekendijk, Kirche und Volk in der deutschen Missionswissenschaft (München, 1967), still provides the most in-depth account of this issue. 32. The Swiss and German branches of the AepMV finally separated after World War II, after decades of a difficult collaboration due to the impact of World War I, inflation, the limits the Nazis placed on financial transactions with foreign countries, and significant ideological differences. For details of this process, see Kurt Suter, Die Zeit der Trennung und des beginnenden Wiederaufbaus während und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, in Spuren. Hundert Jahre Ostasien-Mission, ed. Ferdinand Hahn (Stuttgart: Quell. Verlag, 1984), 106–12. 33. For a Swiss response to such considerations, see letter GA Schweizer Landesverein to the GA of the home board in Berlin, dated 17 February 1909; DOAM, acta 11, 92–98. 34. For details, see Gerber, 84–97. 35. See Gerber, 237–41, for a more detailed account of the rivalry between the two missionary societies and the use of the media by the Berlin missionaries. 36. Among his first students was Tan Yufeng 譚玉峰, a Christian and refugee from the Boxer wars around Tianjin, who became one of the best students of the Lixian Shuyuan and, having received an engineering degree, returned in 1922 to join the faculty as a teacher. In 1934 he became its vice principal. See Tan Jü Feng, “Zum 50 jährigen Jubiläum der Ostasien-Mission,” in 50 Jahre evangelischer Arbeit im Fernen Osten (Berlin, 1934), 35–36. 37. Wilhelm later described them as comparatively ill behaved and lazy, and they only stayed for a short time. See Richard Wilhelm, “Aus unserer Arbeit: China,” in Der Jahresbericht des AepMV, April—Dez. 1905 (Berlin, 1905), 52f. 38. VM no. 2 (August) 1912, 17. 39. For a summary account of the Lixian curriculum, see Chun-Shik Kum, Deutscher Kulturimperialismus in China: Deutsches Kolonialschulwesen in Kiautschou (China) 1898–1914 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), Missionsgeschichtliches Archiv: Studien der Berliner Gesellschaft für Missionsgeschichte, Band 8, 194–99. 40. A report Wilhelm sent to the home board about this strike, dated end of May 1912, can be found in DOAM, acta 19, 481–85. 41. In May 1909 it became obvious that Richard Wilhelm would not receive an offer to join the new university planned for Qingdao. See letter, RW to August Kind, dated Qingdao 29 May 1909; DOAM, acta 19, 55–56. But the future of the school was still uncertain. Later in 1909, the annual convention of the Weimar Mission (21–22 September 1909 in Bremen) had actually voted to close the Lixian Shuyuan, mostly in order to avoid conflicts with the colonial administration over its own school plans. Letter, home board to Qingdao missionaries, dated Berlin, 8 October 1909; DOAM acta 244, 3. Yet Wilhelm was ultimately able to avoid school closure. In his response, he treated the convention’s decision only as a recommendation, and announced that he was trying to engage the colonial administration in a dialogue on possible adjustments in the school’s curriculum to avoid competition. In the same letter, he also argued that the student fees at the new university were too expensive for most families in the area, which made it unlikely that the Lixian school would suffer a decrease in enrollment. Letter, Wilhelm to home board, dated Qingdao, 2. December 1909; DOAM, acta 19, 153–58. 42. Richard Wilhelm, “Unser Deutsch-Chinesisches Seminar in Tsingtau (China),” in Unsere Schulen in Tsingtau (Berlin: Flugschrift des Allgemeinen Evangelisch-Protestantischen Missionsvereins, n.d.), 3–11, 6. According to Richard Wilhelm’s letter to

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Witte, dated 25 November 1912, DOAM, acta 19, 508, Benjamin Blumhardt was the actual author of this piece. 43. Letter, Richard Wilhelm to August Kind, dated 4 September 1911. DOAM, acta 19, 303–6. 44. Letter, Richard Wilhelm and Wilhelm Seuffert to home board, received 22 September 1913. DOAM, acta 258, 204–16, 211. 45. “Benxiao xiaoshi” 本校小史 (A brief history of this school) in Lixian zhongxue ershiwu zhounian jiniance 禮賢中學二十五週年紀念冊 (Qingdao 青島, n.d.), 13–16, 13–14. The classes devoted to the study of German were not subject to those guidelines. 46. “Benxiao xiaoshi,” 14. 47. By comparison, the German Catholic school in Jining was registered, even though religion was a regular part of the curriculum. Its location in the interior may have played a role; it is also possible that Anzer’s well-known aggressive stance was more successful in gaining privileges than Wilhelm’s role as a peacemaker. 48. C. Blumhardt, letter to RW, 22 September 1909, Christus in der Welt, 207ff. 49. “Einleitung zu der ‘Geschichte des Namens Gottes,’” in VM no. 1 (April 1910), 17–22, 17. 50. Wilhelm alludes here to Lunyu XIV, 38; Mencius VI A, 11; the Daxue; and Matt. 5:16 and 13:43. 51. Matt. 22. 52. The Analects of Confucius, translated and notated by Simon Leys (New York: Norton, 1997), 101. 53. VM (April 1910), 21. Since this German text is a translation of the introduction from the Chinese, it is very likely that he expected his students to read the quote in its original Chinese form. 54. VM no. 1 (February 1911), 3–4. 55. Letter, RW to Kind, 13 January 1913, DOAM, acta 258, 16–18. 56. Letter, C. Blumhardt to RW, 12 November 1911, Christus in der Welt, 238f. 57. RW “Jahresbericht 1912,” DOAM, acta 19, 521. 58. He discussed this project in some detail with Rudolph Otto; see, for instance, letter to Rudolph Otto from 11 September 1912 (Wilhelm Nachlass, box 247). 59. VM no. 3 (September 1913), 28. 60. Kiautschou Post 1901, no. 12, 220f. For a brief analysis of the data, see Gerber (2002), 217. 61. VM no. 1 (February 1909), 4. 62. VM no. 3 (September 1913), 26. 63. Of one hundred students, exactly forty were reported to be Christians. Martin Schlunk, Die Schulen für Eingeborene in den deutschen Schutzgebieten am 1. Juni 1911 (Hamburg: L. Friedrichsen, 1914; Abhandlungen des Hamburgischen Kolonialinstituts 18), 352–53. Thoralf Klein and Stefan Knirsch, 163, and Kim, 229, reprint Schlunk’s findings. 64. See 50 Jahre evangelischer Arbeit im Fernen Osten 1884–1934, 35–41. 65. Lixian zhongxue ershiwu zhounian jiniance, page 2, column 11. 66. Lixian zhongxue ershiwu zhounian jiniance, page 13, column 1.

SEVEN Catholic and Chinese Folk Religion during the Republican Era in the Region of Taiyuan, Shanxi Liu Anrong

Once Roman Catholicism entered China, missionaries began to interact with local folk religion; 1 in areas where Catholicism was comparatively powerful, Christianity had a larger impact on the religious views, life, and faith of the native Chinese. Local folk religion also influenced Catholic practice in China, as Chinese relied on native folk beliefs to understand and accept Catholic belief in God and the saints. Catholic belief inherited constituent elements of popular religion and was transformed by folk beliefs. While Catholicism’s entrance into China precipitated an era of cultural interaction, we might ask more specifically what types of cultural exchange occurred once this religion had presented itself at the village level, especially as it encountered Chinese folk religion. In order to confront this question, I have conducted research on the interchange between Catholicism and local folk religion in thirty-five local villages near Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, during the Republican Era (1911–1949). VILLAGES: PROPORTIONS OF RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION I selected the following villages as the venues for my research. Wangjiazhuang is located to the west of Taiyuan city. Other villages to the west include Nanshe, Dongshe, Beihan, Shagou, and Shentanggou. To Taiyuan’s east is Naoma village, and to the city’s south reside Guyi, Beishao, 145

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Yaocun, Zaoyuantou, Tiancun, Gaojiabao, Guchengying, Jinyuan, Wufuying, Wangguocun, Sanxiancun, Dongpu, Xiliulin, Donglijie, Yangjiabao, Xiwenzhuang, and Gaozhong. And finally, the villages I researched north of Taiyuan included Xijianhe, Dongjianhe, Xizhangcun, Beigunian, Nangunian, Shejiafeng, Shuigoucun, Fengxi, Yangqucun, and Huanghuayuan. When selecting these villages, not only did I consider their conditions, location, and terrain, but I also focused principally on the scale of folk religious practice in the villages. I investigated the proportional difference between folk religion and Roman Catholicism, the development of popular beliefs, and the different exchanges between local beliefs and Catholicism in these villages. By analyzing the sources of these distinctions, scholars shall be better informed about the situation and characteristics of local beliefs. In Dongshe, Xizhangcun, Beishao, Zaoyuantou, Wangguocun, and Donglijie, about 95 percent of the villagers believe in folk religion, whereas around 5 percent are Catholic; Yangqucun is roughly 6 percent Catholic. Guyi, Jinyuan, Dongpu, Guchengying, and Sanxiancun are roughly 90 percent folk religion and 6 percent Catholic; Gaojiabao is around 16 percent Catholic. Villages in which 71–80 percent of the residents adhere to folk religion and 20–29 percent are Catholic include Yangjiabao, Beihan, Yaocun, Tiancun, and Wufuying. Villages with 60–70 percent followers of folk religion and 30–40 percent Catholics include Wangjiazhuang, Xiazhuang, Nangunian, Shejiafeng, Xiwenzhuang, and Xijianhe. Villages in which Catholics and folk religion followers are divided 50/50 include Shuigou, Shentanggou, Huanghuayuan, Gaozhong, and Xiliulin. Villages in which the percentage is 21–40 percent folk religion and 60–79 percent Catholic include Nanshe and Naoma. Villages with 10–20 percent believers in folk religion and 80–90 percent Catholic Christians include Beigunian and Dongjianhe. Finally, villages that consist of 10 percent folk religion followers and 90 percent Catholics are Shaogou and Fengxicun. Table 7.1 better elaborates the proportion of religious affiliation in each village.

Table 7.1. Representative Proportion of Catholics and Non-Catholics in Villages Near Taiyuan Non-Catholics

Village

Roman Catholics

Non-Catholics

Wangjiazhuang

52 persons (30%)

120+ persons (70%)

Xiazhuang

70 persons (35%)

~130 persons (65%)

Nanshe

250+ persons (63%)

150 persons (37%)

Dongshe

30 persons (4%)

700+ persons (97%)

Xijianhe

300+ persons (30%)

700+ persons (70%)

Dongjianhe

400+ persons (80%)

100 persons (20%)

Xizhangcun

50+ persons (5%)

~900 persons (95%)

Beihan

~150 persons (27%)

~400 persons (73%)

Naomacun

200+ persons (74%)

70+ persons (26%)

Guyi

50+ persons (10%) 500+ persons (90%)

Beigunian

~800 persons (80%)

~200 persons (20%)

Nangunian

100 persons (33%) 200+ persons (67%)

Beishao

30+ persons (3%)

~900 persons (97%)

Yaocun

200+ persons (20%)

800 persons (80%)

Zaoyuantou

40 persons (5%)

700+ persons (95%)

Tiancun

100+ persons (22%)

~350 persons (78%)

Gaojiabao

130 persons (16%)

~650 persons (84%)

Guchengying

200 persons (10%) 1800 persons (80%)

Jinyuan

90 persons (9%)

900+ persons (91%)

Wufuying

200 persons (25%) 600 persons (75%)

Wangguocun

80 persons (4%)

1900+ persons (96%)

Shejiafeng

~70 persons (35%) 120+ persons (65%)

Shuigoucun

100 persons (50%)

100 persons (50%)

Shaogoucun

380 persons (95%) 20 persons (5%)

Shentanggou

80 persons (50%)

80 persons (50%)

Sanxiancun

80 persons (10%)

Dongpucun

200+ persons (10%)

1800 persons (90%)

Xiliaolin

750 persons (50%) 750 persons (50%)

Donglijie

30 persons (3%)

1000 persons (97%)

Fengxi

200+ persons (98%)

1 household (2%)

Yangjiabao

100+ persons (25%)

300 persons (75%)

Xiwenzhuang

300+ persons (38%)

500 persons (62%)

Gaozhong

200 persons (50%)

200 persons (50%)

Yangqucun

200+ persons (6%) 2800 persons (94%)

Huanghuayuan

200+ persons (50%)

200+ persons (50%)

720 persons (90%)

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Roman Catholics

Catholic and Chinese Folk Religion during the Republican Era

Village

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ROMAN CATHOLIC INFLUENCES ON FOLK RELIGION Ancestral Worship Shanxi’s society during the Republican Era adhered to China’s traditional patriarchal system, and ancestors were prioritized over the gods. As John L. Stuart has suggested, “The true religion of the Chinese is ancestral worship.” 2 Of the thirty-five villages studied in this project, all of those villagers that followed popular folk religion made sacrificial offerings to their ancestors. It was common for such households to include ancestral tablets displayed in the main hall. Households of means and larger estates displayed a hanging scroll of cloth or paper with the name(s) of the clan ancestor(s), called a shenzhang (spirit cloth) or zuzongtu (ancestral chart). After a household had converted to Catholicism, the practice of ancestral sacrifices was discontinued, and the shenzhang was removed, though some Catholic households continued to possess a clan lineage. The Liu family from Yaocun is an example of this, though we only have a written account. In mostly Catholic villages, such as Fengxi and Naoma, only non-Catholics recalled the memory of their deceased ancestors in New Year commemorations, and no longer believed that they could provide protection as spirits. Household Gods The term jiatingshen (“household gods”) refers to any gods other than the ancestral spirits that were worshiped in a particular household. 3 As Yang Qingkun suggests, “In a sense, all Chinese households included a spirit altar, which reserves the spirit tablets of deceased clansmen, as well as paintings or scrolls of gods worshiped by the family.” 4 The folk religious beliefs in the thirty-five villages in this study include the following gods: the Earth God, the Heaven and Earth God, the Kitchen God, the Wealth God, and the Immortal God. Among these villages, very few posted the Door God images on their doors; indeed, the screen wall just inside the main door or beside it often featured an image of the Earth God rather than the Door God. It was commonly asserted in Shanxi that residents, “in the household Earth God Hall, offer incense in the morning and evening,” and when the villagers pass the New Year or celebrate New Year’s Day, they make fifteen sacrificial offerings invoking the Earth God to safeguard family harmony. Guchengying had a custom of setting out an Earth God shrine in front of a large coal pile. 5 Among the villages included in this research, only one household in Dongpucun did not make offerings to the Earth God or Kitchen God, but rather pasted on the principal wall a placard dedicated to the jiatangye (family hall gods). One villager reported that what is called jiatangye is inclusive of all gods and all of one’s forefathers, but often a placard

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dedicated to the God of Heaven and Earth is pasted on a subsidiary wall. 6 Thus, jiatangye incorporates all of the omnipotent gods or ancestors that should be worshiped in a household, gods and ancestors that are worshiped in a single comprehensive god. This is an original discovery in my work, and other regions do not have such a comprehensive god. In other instances, villagers worshiped bodhisattvas in their households, posted an image of Lucky Auntie in the daughter’s room, venerated an image of the God of Wells beside the courtyard well, and honored the Horse King God near where they raised livestock. In a few of the more educated households Confucius was venerated. Catholics worshiped none of these gods, and one non-Catholic who had been influenced by Catholicism likewise did not venerate these gods. Particularly in villages where Catholics comprised the majority, especially in larger, predominantly Catholic villages, it was mainly the case that non-Catholic villagers did not worship popular gods. In Naomacun, for example, three households of non-Catholics venerated only their ancestors, and did not believe in any other gods. In one household there was an image of the Kitchen God, but no other gods were honored. One such person of the village described this practice thus: “To say you’re a Catholic and not recite prayers or to say you’re a folk believer and not worship gods, this is not being what you say you are.” 7 Village Temples and Temple Gods While the village forms the geo-organizational locus of life for villagers, patriarchal consanguinity is the principal system for relationships on the household level. As Zhang Deyi suggests, “Temples function as a site within which peasants gather into a closely-knit community, and unlike other similar types of locations . . . temples encompass all aspects of social life, while having a specific organizational name, and are generally acknowledged to have an authentic place in society.” 8 In villages all manner of temples are constructed to furnish various forms of good fortune. According to Yang Qingkun, temples may be divided into six principal categories. The first centers on the organization and improvement of society; the second on universal virtue and order; the third on economics; the fourth on health; the fifth on private and public prosperity; and the sixth includes monastic communities of men and women. 9 These six functions may be further distinguished into even more specific categories. In summary, village temples satisfied all the biddings of the villagers who followed popular religious belief. The types of temples found in the thirtyfive villages included in this study are enumerated in figures 7.1 and 7.2. 10 Several factors played an influential role in the temples and villages, such as the terrain of their location, population, and economic conditions; these figures, however, illustrate the important role that Catholicism

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Figure 7.1. Census of Temple Types in the Thirty-Five Villages Near Taiyuan

Catholic and Chinese Folk Religion during the Republican Era

Figure 7.2. Census of Temple Types in the Thirty-Five Villages Near Taiyuan (continued)

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played in affecting the number of temples located in the thirty-five villages studied here. In villages with a large number of Catholics, the influence that Catholicism had upon popular beliefs was greater, and the number of popular temples was comparatively small. The condition of these temples was extremely poor, and non-Catholics on the whole did not venerate gods. Fengxi, for example, with only one non-Catholic household in a total population of more than two hundred villagers, had just one temple, which was popularly called lanmiao, or “Tattered Temple”; no one currently knew the original name of the temple. Indeed, when residents from the nearby villages, Caijiagang and Xiezizhai, had come to Fengxi to make entreaties for rain, the local villagers said that it might be a Temple of the Dragon King. Shagoucun, a village of four hundred people, likewise had only one non-Catholic household, and it is said to have had two temples, including a wudao, or “Five Ways Temple”; the villagers refer to these temples as the “three turns.” The non-Catholic villagers here, under the influence of the Catholics, did not make offerings in the temples, nor did they seek protection from the gods. 11 In villages with a Catholic majority of roughly 60–80 percent, there was found to be a percentage of non-Catholics that followed popular religious beliefs, which were influenced by the Catholic population, and in such villages there were relatively few temples. Nanshecun, for example, had three temples. There were more temples in villages where there were more believers in folk religion and where popular beliefs had proportionally more village influence. For example, in Gaozhongcun there were seven temples, and in Xiliulin there were eight. In villages with very few Catholics, Catholic influence was limited. Not only did such villages contain more popular temples, but their architecture was also more luxurious. Notable examples include Dongshe, which had thirteen temples, and Guchengying, with eighteen. THE CATHOLIC INFLUENCE ON THE RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES OF FOLK BELIEVERS After conversion to Catholicism the practice of rendering sacrificial offerings to ancestors was discontinued; the example of the Han clan in Beishaocun will serve as an example of this. The Han clan consisted of three different households. Each home retained an ancestral chart that recorded the male lineage; each family was entrusted with the management of its respective genealogical tree. Every Chinese New Year all three units of the Han clan suspended their ancestral charts together in Longtian temple, and sacrificial offerings were made. Additionally, all of the households performed ancestral rites each year during the Qingming festival, but after one of the Han families had converted to Catholicism they

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no longer participated in these rites. 12 In predominantly Roman Catholic villages, the frequency of ancestral offerings conducted by non-Catholics was reduced, and followers of folk religion in such villages as Shagou, Naoma, and Fengxi only performed ancestral rites on New Year’s Eve. Catholics also did not sweep graves on Tomb Sweeping Day; they were reproached by non-Catholics, who accused them of lacking respect for, and attention to, their family ancestors, and of treating their own generation the same as previous generations. Catholics were viewed as people who neglect their family lines and were nicknamed “those who cut clanship lines.” Because some Catholics did not tend to the tombs of their clansmen for extended periods of time, ancestral graves collapsed from neglect and would not be repaired. Non-Catholics had difficulty comprehending Catholic behavior vis-à-vis ancestral tombs, and they held a critical view of Catholic practice. There was also the practice in some Catholic families of the husband and wife being buried separately, which was contrary to traditional Chinese custom and solicited the condemnation of non-Catholics. Despite the fact that Catholics received criticism for neglecting ancestral tombs and not performing traditional sacrifices, there were nonetheless some non-Catholics who understood the Catholic view, and, as one stated, “Catholics believe that after death the souls of the departed ascend into heaven, so they don’t attend to their graves.” 13 In villages where non-Catholics had been influenced by Catholicism, they also did not attend to graves and rarely made incense offerings or kowtowed before ancestral images. Even though the number of Catholics in Wangjiazhuang was relatively small, about 30 percent, non-Catholics were influenced by Catholicism and tombs were at times neglected as they considered them unimportant. 14 At Fengxicun, non-Catholic villagers only made offerings at family graves on New Year’s Eve, and when they did make offerings they only attended to newer tombs, overlooking the older ones. 15 Prior to 1949, all of the villagers at Zuoyun County’s Que’erling Village, in Shanxi, were Catholics, and none of them made sacrifices at clan graves. Once the missionaries were expelled after 1949, however, atheist officials were sent to this remote village to oversee the people, and none of the villagers born since that time have been baptized. Today there are two hundred villagers, and only seven elderly persons remain Catholic. Nevertheless, the villagers still do not attend to their clan graves. 16 In Catholic-majority villages, not only did the practice of ancestral sacrifices diminish, but offerings to household spirits also decreased, and in some villages the practice of sacrificial offerings has completely disappeared. In Shagoucun, for example, the few non-Catholics who occupied the village mainly performed ancestral sacrifices and pasted an image of the Kitchen God. Belief in popular deities gradually lessened. Fengxicun only contained a single non-Catholic family, and the household featured

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images of the Earth God and Tiandi God; yet they burned no incense, nor did they kowtow during the New Year, as if the existence of the spirits was not certain. After Catholicism entered the village, the veneration of popular deities disappeared. 17 In such villages the practice of offering incense and performing kowtows was completely eradicated. Just south of Shagoucun there was a temple dedicated to Zhenwu with three households nearby; the center home performed rites to Zhenwu while the two peripheral Catholic households did not venerate popular deities. Non-Catholic villagers recounted that once the families had converted to Catholicism they no longer entered the temple, sought the intercession of the deities, or performed rites of veneration. 18 Naomacun has 270 villagers, with only three non-Catholic households; Zaohua Temple is the only temple in the village. Very few people visited the temple, and even during the New Year no one performed rites to the spirits there. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month no offerings were presented to Sanguanye or Datouye, two deities that are popularly venerated on that day in and around Taiyuan; no festivities were celebrated. In villages with very few Catholics, however, the influence of Catholicism is rather inconsequential; not only are there more temples in such villages, but kowtows and incense offerings were also comparatively more frequent. Indeed, there is hardly a discernable difference between a village with very few Catholics and one with no Catholics in the number and frequency of popular religious activities. THE CATHOLIC INFLUENCE ON THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF FOLK BELIEVERS In villages with a Catholic majority, even though Catholics were unable to convert the followers of folk religion, they nonetheless had a deep impact on their religious views. When folk believers performed the ancestral rites during the New Year, referring to the ancestors as “elders,” the emphasis was on commemoration, and did not imagine the ancestors to have powers that enabled them to protect or bring prosperity to later generations. These folk believers were unlike their co-religionists. Even though these followers of popular religion pasted up a few images of popular deities in their homes, they nevertheless claimed no belief in their actual existence. According to such villagers, images of popular deities and common New Year images that depict auspicious themes are more or less the same; they are merely, so they say, pasted as a matter of custom. It is like pasting an image of the Kitchen God in the kitchen as a matter of course. While these villages may have popular temples and temple gods, villagers still do not visit the temples and venerate religious images. They consider statues of deities to be nothing more than fabricated clay im-

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ages, and believe that there are actually no such gods in existence. The villagers had become atheists without any belief in gods or spirits, and this is indeed how the non-Catholic villagers of both Naomacun and Shagoucun describe themselves. One such villager at Naomacun exclaimed, “I don’t believe in gods. I don’t believe in any gods at all.” 19 Not only did the non-Catholics of Shagoucun not believe in gods, but when the elders of their household finally died, they only wore the customary white garb; they did not kneel in the mourning hall, make spirit offerings, or select an auspicious day to carry the coffin to the cemetery. Nor did they employ the services of a specialist in divination. 20 They held that after a person’s death there remains no soul; there are no ghosts or spirits. In addition, they did not practice fortune telling, discuss fengshui, or wear a red belt for good luck in the years that correspond to the animal of their zodiac sign. They rejected comprehensively such Chinese customs and beliefs in popular deities, nor did they retain a belief in such customs as using apotropaic charms or employing the exorcism of evil spirits. To restate my assertions, once Catholicism had been long entrenched in a village, and in such villages in which the majority was Catholic, the impact of Catholicism on village life was comparatively large. Evidence supports the claim that the presence of Catholicism transformed the religious views of followers of folk religion—the practices of venerating deities and making offerings to ancestors were diminished, and belief in spirits likewise weakened. In some cases the non-Catholic villagers became atheists and abandoned all activities related to folk belief in gods or spirits. In villages where Catholicism had only been present for a short period of time, and where Catholics were the minority, the influence of Catholicism was more limited. In villages where the majority of villagers were non-Catholic, Catholicism had no impact on the village and, moreover, Catholicism in these instances was influenced and encumbered by the non-Catholic majority. THE INFLUENCE OF POPULAR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS UPON ROMAN CATHOLICISM After Catholicism had entered China’s villages, it established itself within the vast realm of popular folk belief, and those who encountered it and converted were traditional Chinese, and, thus, many folk beliefs, worldviews, and activities were absorbed into Roman Catholicism. Catholicism and local village culture merged together. No matter what the proportion was, Catholicism was nonetheless deeply influenced by popular folk religion.

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VARIOUS FORMS OF CATHOLIC BELIEF There are several areas relevant to the principal points of belief, ritual, and prayer as these are manifest on the village level. Other than a single villager from Tiancun, all of the Catholic villagers I interviewed stated that God and Jesus are the same as what was called “Old Man Heaven” by non-Catholic believers in folk religion. One Catholic noted that “God is the creator of all things and the ruler of all spirits; Old Man Heaven is the great Jade Emperor. These two are the same person, and his name is Zhang.” 21 Other Catholic villagers held similar beliefs—that God and Old Man Heaven, also called “Heavenly Father,” were indeed the same bearded old man (it is worth noting that Catholic depictions of God represented him visually as an old, bearded man). God/Old Man Heaven was believed to have created all things and all humans, to be all-knowing and all-powerful, and to be the ruler of all ages. The village Catholics believed that God was the ultimate hope and arbiter of the myriad things. Regarding Jesus, Catholics understood him to be the Son of God and asserted that he had been sent by God to live among humans, was later crucified on a cross to pay the price for all human sins, and was shortly afterward raised from the dead. Shanxi’s Catholics also understood that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit consisted of one, Holy Trinity, noting that God is Jesus and Jesus is God, but that in reality they rely on Jesus. Because Jesus had become a human being and had performed many miracles, he was easier to understand, accept, and take hold of. Because the Blessed Virgin Mary had given birth to Jesus and was the honorable mother of all people, the Catholic villagers venerated her and turned to her most often for intercession. They apprehended that she is only a single person, but is nonetheless the Mother of Jesus, and understood that she thus can more conveniently intercede for them. They included all kinds of intentions in their veneration of the Holy Mother and considered her to be an all-capable and comprehensive spirit. Mary was given responsibility over childbirth, and if a Catholic family had not yet borne a child, or if it had only girls, the family would go to a church and pray to the Holy Mother for a male child; most Catholics believed her to have this ability. The Holy Mother was moreover viewed as the protector of children, and one Catholic family in particular illustrates the belief that Mary has a special role in this area. Wei Cuimei, eighty-five years old at the time of this research, had lost four children. During her fifth pregnancy a coreligionist from her village pitied her and took her to the Holy Mother shrine at Banquanshan to ask for Mary’s protection. She went to the church, with the result that the child was successfully born, and five more children were born consecutively and grew up without incident. 22 Additionally, the Holy Mother also helped to solve all manner of household difficulties, and even functioned as a kind of “rain spirit.”

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Protection was also sought from the apostles and saints. The apostles are understood to be those whom Jesus selected after his resurrection to bear the responsibility of transmitting his teachings, while the saints are those who, in the advancement of Roman Catholicism, are distinguished by their great contributions; together they have been conferred with holiness. These village Catholics believe the apostles and saints to be closer to Jesus, and are thus able to speak to him directly, and they consider their intercession more effective; the most commonly venerated saint in the region of Taiyuan is St. Anthony. The saints are believed to protect dioceses, churches, and individuals—each of these is assigned a saint. A particular Catholic person’s objective is to learn from the saint assigned to his or her protection, and Catholics believe that everyone in a region may rely upon the specific saint assigned to a certain place. Shanxi’s Catholics also accept that each person has his or her own guardian angel, a powerful angel commissioned by God to protect humans. These spirits are believed to consist of spirit without physical substance, and although they are powerful, more powerful than human beings, their effect still does not compare with God’s. This spirit remains always attached to the person to whom it is assigned, protecting and advising him or her. Even though all village Catholics venerated these angels and sought their assistance, they still understood that God was the creator of all things, the director of all other spirits, and was comprised of the Trinity (three in one). They venerated and sought the intercession of the Holy Mother, apostles, and saints, whom they asked to present their petitions before God the Father and Jesus, his son. These Catholic villagers all recognized that Mary, the apostles, and the saints are subordinate to God, the Holy Trinity. THE OBJECTIVES OF FAITH We can divide the objectives of the faith held by these village Catholics into five categories. First, a large number of Shanxi’s peasant population lived in abject poverty and miserable conditions, and many converted to Catholicism to receive material assistance from the church (see figure 7.3). These people were commonly referred to as “rice Christians” or “millet Christians.” Some among this group slowly grew apart from Catholicism after they had received aid, ultimately leaving the church. Some families remained Catholic, but their faith grew somewhat indifferent, and subsequent generations no longer practiced Catholicism. This group did not have a thorough catechetical understanding of the faith, and thus did not accept the church’s teachings, and from the start did not have a spiritual objective. The Wang family from Guyicun was one example of this category. 23

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Near Taiyuan there are several old Catholic villages, and a large number of the believers in these villages have received their faith from their fathers or ancestors; they are part of a “patrilineal faith” or “matrilineal faith,” and some from this category are not aware of why they believe in Catholicism. One Catholic in Yaocun recounted, “I’m not sure why I believe in religion; the older generation believed, so I believe it too.” 24 This Catholic was illiterate. One Catholic from Huanghuacun admitted straight away to being illiterate and thus unable to read catechetical books, not knowing the reason for believing in religion. Another Catholic from Yaocun stated, “Uncultured Catholics know that they’ve inherited their faith; before Liberation uncultured Catholics were the majority.” 25 Based on the interviews I conducted with illiterate Catholics, I learned that only those who had given personal reflection to their religious belief actually had a religious objective. Uncultured village Catholics who had given no thought to their faith, however, merely followed along with the activities of other believers, and had no discernable religious objectives. Second, among this group of Catholic believers, one person reported an objective of acting in accordance with the heart of God and trusting in Jesus, receiving the spiritual salvation of the Holy Spirit, and rising to

Figure 7.3. Poor Catholics from Shanxi’s capital city, Taiyuan (c. 1940). Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

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heaven after death. 26 This person had graduated from Taiyuan Normal Academy, had been a teacher at the Taiyuan convent, and can be compared to the clergy in terms of catechetical understanding. Another Catholic stated that even though illiterate Catholics are only able to recite prayers, they still comprehend that they are speaking to God and rendering good petitions. 27 Yet another Roman Catholic asserted, “God responds even to your thoughts, and it doesn’t matter if you understand the prayers or not; it’s a matter of faith.” 28 Third, six Catholics claimed that they believe because their faith offers true spiritual and eternal life. For these Catholic believers, their faith functioned as a kind of culture, which included frequent reading of the Bible. Zhang Linhu from Beizhangcun, for example, enjoyed reading the Bible as a leisure activity; Zhang was a retired teacher and graduate of Wufuyingcun’s Liutong Normal Academy. Fourth, two Catholics noted their support of Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline, while more than ten others said that starting from the character “love” 愛 causes people to behave well rather than poorly. Among this group, a large number of Catholics noted that Catholic faithful and the more numerous Buddhists share the same ideals; both promote good behavior and share the same objectives. They note, however, that Catholicism and Buddhism employ different methods. They recite different prayers, Catholics do not offer incense or kowtow, and Catholics believe there is only one lifetime in which to fulfill life’s objectives. Some other Catholics indicated that virtue and good acts are how one ascends into heaven. Guo Ying from Dongpucun stated, “We believe so that we can later return to God, but whether or not one actually makes it there depends on one’s goodness.” 29 This category of Catholics views the object of faith as salvation, though good actions have good results regardless of whether one’s goal is to go to heaven. The belief in heaven as one’s ultimate goal even transcends ritual. In Gaozhongcun, for example, the sons and daughters of a deceased Catholic follow the popular customs of burning incense, kowtowing, and carrying the coffin to the cemetery. But one Catholic there said that, ultimately, “Whether one ascends to heaven or not is decided by one’s actions before death, and carrying the coffin and other rituals really don’t matter.” 30 One elderly Catholic even went as far as saying, “The followers of popular religion, if they only do good things, will not go to hell. Even if they don’t know God, God has made provisions for them.” 31 This group considers a person’s actions to be the final arbiter of where one’s soul goes after death, setting aside his or her actual beliefs or what rituals are performed. And fifth, some Catholics held that the objective and expectation of religion is to receive blessings and protection during one’s life, to receive the salvation of the soul, to go to heaven after one dies, and to avoid hell. Of fifty Catholics I interviewed, thirty noted that religion is to save one’s

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soul and ascend into heaven. When I asked why Catholics believe differently from other religious believers, one believer replied, “Catholics want to go to heaven.” 32 And this was further elaborated with the assertion that all Catholics fundamentally know that Catholicism posits a belief in God, Jesus, and heaven after death, though many Catholics cannot say for sure if they will go to heaven, so they merely emphasize more mundane (worldly) objectives. On the whole, fewer people understood that Catholicism believes in the one, true God, whom believers are linked to and communicate with; rather, the majority only believed that their soul would be saved and would ascend to heaven—the religious objectives of these village Catholics were extremely simple, and their manner of religious practice was similarly simplistic. THE ESSENTIAL PRACTICES AND ACTIVITIES OF BELIEF Reciting prayers is the main spiritual practice of the Catholics considered in this study, and it is what many viewed as that which distinguished them from believers of other religions. They considered intercessory prayer and prayers of gratitude to be the principal substance of their religious activities. Before 1949, most of the Taiyuan diocesan clergy were foreign missionaries whose Chinese-language abilities were limited; they were only able to impart a basic explanation of the Bible. Also, the area of the Taiyuan diocese was quite large, which included a comparatively large number of Catholics and a shortage of clergy. Pastors were only able to make brief visits to villages without permanent priests, when they would hear confessions, give Communion, and facilitate the Four Precepts of the church. 33 The spiritual daily lives of Catholics consisted of the recitation of morning and evening prayers, and on Sundays they would attend mass at the nearest church with a priest to “hear mass” (see figure 7.4). Accordingly, these Catholics reported that the recitation of prayers was their primary spiritual activity. Most of these Catholics were illiterate, and of these, half recited prayers for the dead. The main prayers recited in the home were the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary,” which were both in classical Chinese; for morning and evening prayers they read the Tonggongjing (Tonggong Classic), also in classical Chinese. 34 In addition, they received catechetical question-and-answer instruction from priests and chanted Latin prayers. Such recited prayers were orally transmitted and early on became habitually recited at various times. Catholics understood only half of the prayers that were transmitted in classical Chinese, and even though the actual meaning of the Latin prayers was not well comprehended, after frequent recitation their general implications became better understood.

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Figure 7.4. Shanxi Catholics of Geliaogou Village kneel during adoration following mass at the village church (1947). Credit: ACGOFM, Archivio Curia Generalizia Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Rome).

Illiterate Catholics could not read the prayers, and some of the prayers grew out of use by those who could read characters; thus the meaning of the prayers that were no longer recited or read was forgotten. A villager from Wufucun, Liu Tong, stated, “Previously, most Catholics were unable to read the Tongguojing, did not understand the catechism, and all they could do was recite transmitted prayers; the majority couldn’t understand the Latin prayers, either.” 35 Moreover, the language priests used in mass was Latin; in actuality, the priest said mass in front while the people recited their own prayers without a sense as to what the priest was saying or doing. Only during transubstantiation, when someone would ring or strike a bell, did the people respond by kneeling in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. After some time these habits grew instilled, and the actions of the liturgy became rote, though they still did not understand what was happening. All they were able to do was recite prayers. One Catholic reported, “Every day we recited prayers in the morning and in the evening, and we recited prayers during feast days, illnesses, natural calamities, or on days when there was a special occasion.” It was as if the substance of their religious belief and method of coping with problems was the recitation of prayers. Many Catholics even asserted that what separated them from others was the recitation of prayers. One elderly Catholic noted that “Old Man

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Heaven is the same as God, but while those who follow folk religion burn incense and kowtow, we recite prayers.” 36 I once encountered a Catholic in a church in the Taiyuan diocese who unexpectedly exclaimed, “All people are God’s children; some believe in Old Man Heaven, some believe in God, and both of these are the same, it’s just that their rituals are different. While some burn incense and kowtow, others recite prayers.” 37 What is more, several followers of popular religion also made the same claim. Du Yingzhen, a resident of Dujiafengcun, located south of the local folk temple of the Three Holiness Mother, stated that “God and Old Man Heaven are the same; Catholics who recite their prayers and others who worship Three Holiness Mother employ different practices, but their objectives are both to promote good behavior.” 38 Catholics without a good grasp of Catholic doctrine, along with those followers of popular religion who likewise cannot explain their folk beliefs, assert that their respective religious traditions differ only in custom. Prayers of intercession and gratitude were the principal concerns of Catholic religious prayer in these villages; Catholic faithful began their days with the recitation of morning prayers that thanked God for granting them peace through the night, and every night evening prayers were recited to thank God for the day of peace and to ask him for another peaceful night. This cycle was repeated day after day. For pious Catholics, daily religious life also consisted of the intonation of prayers if there was a difficulty, illness, or natural calamity. In regard to the objects of intercession outlined, even though these religious believers understood that the ultimate decision rests only with God, the objectives of intercessory prayer changed according to the circumstance of what was requested. Owing to the belief that each person has a guardian angel, these Catholics turned first to this angel for help during times of anxiety. They believed that when they were deceived by evil persons their guardian angel would appear, but if they did not heed their angel’s guidance and performed bad acts instead, their angel would depart from them. 39 Perceived as people’s guardians, these angels are a direct source of personal assistance. The guardian angel of a church was also a source to which Catholics turned for aid. According to the custom of these village Catholics, one seeks help from the most convenient place, and in all cases of seeking aid they sought the most expedient method of solving their problems. The saint these village Catholics most frequently requested aid from was St. Anthony; indeed, some of the churches in the region of Taiyuan had assigned St. Anthony as the church patron. The Catholics of Dujiafeng, Xiliaolin, and Ziwenzhuang, for example, prayed to St. Anthony once every week, and on particularly important matters many made special requests to St. Anthony for his help. In many cases, these Catholics would seek St. Anthony’s assistance, even if he was not their personal

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guardian or the guardian of their church. Because of St. Anthony’s reputation as a “helper saint,” the great sanctity of his spiritual presence, and the saint’s fondness for looking after the affairs of others, he was asked to accomplish their objectives. One Catholic from Shagoucun reported that St. Anthony was sought to help locate lost items. Due to his care for personal needs, his privileged position before God, and his ability to speak directly to God, St. Anthony was also called upon to help conclude material and spiritual goals. 40 The Holy Mother was, however, the most popular saint to whom these Catholic villagers went for general intercessions. If the Holy Mother was the guardian of a particular church, the Catholics of that church went to her for intercession. The church at Shuigou was named Holy Mother Immaculate Conception, and Catholic parishioners there commonly went into the church to petition the Holy Mother, asking her to transmit their requests to Jesus. I asked why they did not petition Jesus directly, and one person responded as follows: “Approaching a son directly is ineffectual, whereas the hearing of a woman is compassionate; with the Holy Mother’s sympathy, and with her being the Mother of Jesus, she can speak to Jesus as a mother to a son on our behalf, and more easily bring about our requests.” 41 Even if the Holy Mother is not the guardian of their particular church, these villagers still held these sentiments regarding her, and if they had a special need in their own household, they sought her aid even more. One Catholic informed me that “Catholics customarily seek the help of the Holy Mother, just as they would seek the help of a person; if one has a need he first goes to his mother, for mothers are kind and forbearing. When going to the Father one should go through her, allowing the Holy Mother to intercede, for she has no need to go through others.” 42 North of Taiyuan is the Holy Mother Church at Banquanshan, and to Taiyuan’s south is the Holy Mother of Seven Sorrows Mountain Church at Dongergou; these two churches are pilgrimage sites for the Catholics in the area of Taiyuan. There they ask for rain and sons, and seek deliverance from difficulties. Droughts are common in Shanxi Province, and after these droughts Catholics gathered to recite the Qiuyujing (Rain Prayer)—if this was to no avail, the Catholics south of Taiyuan went to the Holy Mother Church at Dongergou, and the Catholics north of Taiyuan went to the Holy Mother Church at Banquanshan to pray for rain. The route to Banquan was historically quite distant and difficult, a three-day affair. The first day was spent travelling there, the second day was spent praying to the Holy Mother, and the third on the road returning home. If rain did not fall after they had returned, these Catholics would return again and again. If after several trips the drought still persisted, they would make the trip barefooted. And if at last this was ineffectual, they again made the trip while striking themselves with flagellums, which was called fakugong, or “the discipline.” The intention of this practice was

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to offer reparation for faults (sins) that had been committed, thereby soliciting the Holy Mother’s pardon and the merciful gift of rainfall. Through such efforts, according to one Catholic, rainfall was certain, and showers would at times fall the very day they performed them. 43 It was common practice that these Catholics visited a Holy Mother church to render thanksgiving for rain, which was done during the “white dew” period, around early September, for it was during the white dew period that crops had already ripened and the Holy Mother’s help could be acknowledged. The dates of 2 and 15 August and 8 September were prescribed days during which Catholics routinely visited a Holy Mother pilgrimage church to venerate Mary. Before 1949, owing to the great distance of these locations and the difficulties of travel, very few Catholics were actually able to visit the pilgrimage sites, but those who did make the pilgrimage, in addition to their sentiments of veneration, brought with them all kinds of hopes and desires. While pilgrims note their intention to seek favors and offer thanks to the Holy Mother, some went for the purpose of making promises or fulfilling vows. Once a promise was actually fulfilled, a gesture of gratitude was necessary, and this appreciation was demonstrated through offering money and igniting firecrackers. PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS OF CATHOLIC VILLAGE FAITH EXPRESSIONS At first, Shanxi Catholics relied on local worldviews to explain God, Jesus, the saints, and the Holy Mother. Whether one was Catholic or nonCatholic, everyone considered God to be essentially the same as Old Man Heaven. I have discussed this above. As far as I know, all of China held this same belief, and it was not an exclusive conviction of the Catholics in the area of Taiyuan. Chinese society early on gave birth to the belief in and worship of heaven. The popular belief in Old Man Heaven, also called the Great Jade Emperor, holds that this deity takes overall responsibility for the three worlds, the ten directions, the four births, and the six ways; he is the emperor of all the other gods, and the highest spirit worshiped by the common people. Despite this, popular belief never considered this deity, Old Man Heaven (or the Jade Emperor), the creator of the world or myriad other things, and he was never imagined to consist of three beings in one. After 1949 commoners began to receive a common education. Previously most people were either illiterate or semi-illiterate, and, having accepted the essentials of their religious beliefs, they were able only to recite a few prayers. They originally could not read catechetical books, and additionally did not understand the actual function of China’s Old Man Heaven, nor did they apprehend the concrete distinctions between

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God and Shangdi. They had no way of knowing the differences of God and Old Man Heaven, but only knew that these two reigned over all of the spirits of the world, and thus they muddled the two together into the same being. God, or Tianzhu, is the lord of all people, a view that emerged from China’s traditional patriarchal system, in which God was imagined in the same way as the head of a household. He was envisioned as a stately male elder, who was not at all formless or without outward signs. Cheng Xiao and Xu Lei assert: China’s social custom and the otherworldly realm of the numinous envisioned in Catholicism are contradictory. They are incomparable views of “God” that resulted from the Catholic view being combined with the standard Chinese understanding. The myriad objects of heaven and earth are microcosms of family and nation, and the Lord of Heaven (God, Tianzhu) the Lord of the Family, and the analog of the Lord of the Nation. A believer’s understanding of God derives from what one experiences in life from birth. Juxtaposing God (Tianzhu) with the Lord of the Family and the Lord of the Nation is the result of logical inference based on the force of custom. 44

The villagers lacked a general understanding of these distinctions, and all they could accept was the actual person of Jesus who had lived before. Even though they knew about the Trinity, all they grasped was that God was Jesus and that Jesus was God; they did not understand what this implied, nor did they apprehend the differences between these two positions. The distinctive positions of God the Father and Jesus were completely missed. The church assigns to each person, as well as to each church, a saint who functions as the person or church’s patron. The principal goal is for Catholic faithful to emulate his or her given saint and to propagate the gospel, and for the saint to render protection of the Catholic individual or church placed under his or her care. During the Republican Era, all of the households of common people worshiped spirits—every village featured a temple—and these deities functioned to protect homes and temples. Catholics inherited this view and considered saints to likewise function as the protectors of persons and villages. Catholics also applied their own view of women to how they perceived the Holy Mother. Cheng Xia and Tan Huosheng note, “Women are the protectors of life and symbolize the elimination of death anxiety.” 45 Not only do women bestow peace and protection onto their sons and daughters, but they also hear the supplications of their children and fulfill all entreaties. They eulogize the Holy Mother as the “mother of divine creation and mother of saving help” and the “physician of the ill and comfort of the afflicted.” 46 The perception of the Holy Mother’s benevolence, unselfishness, and compassion for those

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who are troubled is similar to widespread popular devotion to the Bodhisattva Guanyin. In addition, the religious objectives of Catholicism were efficacious on conventional and soteriological levels. Catholic doctrine holds that original sin caused a separation from God, and sin recurrently erects a wall between God and humanity, obstructing communication between the two. Baptism washes away original sin and removes the barrier between God and humankind. In addition, prayer functions to open communication with God, and the object of faith is to join God at the moment of death. As I stated, Shanxi’s Catholics knew only a few prayers, intended to acquire eternal life and God’s protection, to ascend to heaven after death, and to avoid hell. These Catholic goals are similarly shared in the characteristics and practices of local beliefs. Whereas Shanxi’s Catholics only considered the whereabouts of the soul after death, there was no discussion of the belief in bodily resurrection. According to Catholic belief, God judges the soul of each person after death according to his or her acts during life; based on his verdict of the soul’s merits and demerits, the placement of the soul in heaven or hell is decided in what is called “personal judgment.” God descends from heaven at the end of time, and all the souls, now resurrected, undergo his final judgment. The souls of good persons enjoy eternal life with God, while the damned descend into hell for eternal punishment. It is not only souls that enjoy eternal life or eternal punishment in hell; their resurrected corporal bodies also exist in these states. These villagers only imagined that souls continue to exist after death, and did not apprehend that there is also a resurrection, believing only that there is a personal judgment. Either they did not know about the Final Judgment or they only acknowledged or paid attention to the personal judgment. They sought to avoid the punishment of hell, and hoped to go to a pleasant place and be with God. The religious objective of Shanxi’s village Catholics can be summarized as the enactment of altruism and good behavior, which are comparable to the objectives of Buddhists and followers of popular folk religion. Some Catholics held that particularly virtuous believers would indeed ascend into heaven. According to Catholic belief, the innate abilities of human nature allow humans to perform good acts, and even those who do not believe in Catholicism do not always default to evil behavior. Depending on one’s inborn abilities, one is not necessarily certain to be in accord with moral principles, as the harmful effects of original sin enfeeble human will and facilitate the free expression of carnal impulses, causing the loss of one’s moral bearing. There are some whose behavior excels in goodness, and who from beginning to end rely on sacred assistance, assistance that is bestowed by God. 47 Catholic teaching does not, however, assert that salvation is bestowed based only upon meritorious action, but rather emphasizes that salvation originates from faith in God. 48 As

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Luo Guang notes, “Human redemption completely relies on the merits of Jesus . . . but, an individual must also believe in Jesus, repent and reform, and resolve to do good.” 49 In the religious consciousness of Shanxi Catholics, good acts get one into heaven. The predominance of these Catholics who believe that one ascends into heaven after a life of good acts perceive the traditional Chinese cultural view of karmic cause and effect and the Catholic view of spiritual salvation to share the same essential form. 50 Matteo Ricci unequivocally points out three motives for performing good actions: “The lowest may be described as doing good acts to ascend to heaven and avoid hell; the second may be described as doing good by way of repaying the favors of the Lord of Heaven; and the highest is called doing good in order to obediently follow God’s sacred will.” 51 Indeed, the highest level of good action is obedience to God. Moreover, the religious objectives of Shanxi’s Catholics of the Republican Era are merely derived from their fear of the pains of hell and the blessings that come from God, a view that is immersed in the traditional Chinese cultural notion of karmic retribution. They hold this in light of the adage that “goodness precipitates good, while evil precipitates evil”: by performing good acts, one ascends into heaven. This is an efficacious outlook. Furthermore, these Catholics combined Catholic and native religious activities. Non-Catholic Chinese peasants who believe in China’s popular religions—the religious practices of which are utilitarian and pragmatic—did not pursue sacred religious experience and paid no attention to moral or spiritual advancement, but rather held to improving their lives in terms of livelihood and contentment. Their religious aims were principally directed toward solving life’s problems. Shanxi Province experiences frequent droughts, and among the thirty-five villages in this study, the majority of the people’s religious rites were related to the desire for rainfall. Some villagers sought rain at their village temple. The people of Gaozhong, for example, asked for rain in the Buddhist temple, though most villages requested rain outside of the village. 52 The villagers at Nanshe, for example, sought rain in the Five Dragons Temple behind Baizhuang, to the northwest of their village; their reason for doing so was because this temple was located on high ground and was thus closer to the origin of the rain. 53 One of the more important activities of these villagers is making entreaties for sons, and several villages erected a Nainai temple (Old Dame Temple). Dujiafengcun, for instance, had three Holy Mother temples, and Beizhangcun’s Nainai temple featured three Old Dames to worship. 54 Villagers went to Nainai temples to request sons and seek harmony for their children, and when the children turned twelve they were admitted to the temple to render gratitude for being granted serenity. In addition, these villagers had numerous apotropaic incantations that they directed toward spirits to ward off calamities. Every year Wangjiazhuang’s villag-

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ers made offerings at Liulang Temple on the eighth day of the first month, which included five chicken eggs and some meat and millet that were inserted into the soil as a sacrifice to check armyworm attacks on crops and hailstorm disasters. Because of the renown of the spirit in Liulang Temple, the villagers from Zhouweicun went there to carry the deity to be conjoined with the spirits of Wangjiazhuang and four other villages. 55 To restate my points here, these villagers had regular activities to honor gods and seek felicity, and they, at certain times, made requests to spirits they considered particularly effective. But their fellow villagers who were Catholic did not participate in these rites, but rather adopted them into their church activities. Each year during times of drought, Shanxi Catholics joined in their church with their priest to offer prayers for rain; alternatively, they went to the churches of Banquanshan or Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Mountain to ask for rain. Each year a religious festival was held at the churches of these two places, where the faithful made vows or fulfilled oaths. Catholics did not believe in local gods, and when they encountered threats or difficulties where they lived, they had recourse to God, the Holy Mother, and the saints for help; moreover, they entrusted their spiritual requests to nonbelievers, whom they in turn expected to pray for them. In this way most of the non-Catholics in their villages were able to apprehend their practices, and thus after several of Wei Cuimei’s children had died prematurely in Xizhangcun, nonbelievers allowed her to go and ask the Holy Mother for help. At the same time, Catholics felt that their Catholic faith was more or less the same as the belief of non-Catholics. One Catholic stated, “Go to Seven Sorrows Mountain to ask for help or to take an oath if your child is ill, and if your child’s illness is cured make an offering of money or set off firecrackers to fulfill your oath. This is more or less the way unbelievers do things; it’s just that our religious practices are different.” 56 Thus, in my interviews with numerous Catholics and non-Catholics, I was told that while Catholic and non-Catholic methods are not the same, their respective goals are the same. Catholics adopted non-Catholic religious customs into their own religious activities, employing the religious efficacy of these traditions. In summary of this research, my work suggests that after Catholicism had entered China’s rural villages it began a process of interaction with indigenous folk religion, and looking at this history holistically, it appears that popular religion had a larger influence on Catholicism than the reverse. Catholicism had a significant impact only in areas where it was more powerful, but popular folk beliefs affected Catholic belief in all areas. The religious views of local Catholics in regard to popular religion had been transformed—Catholic religious activities had absorbed the content of popular beliefs. Catholics adopted the religious syncretism of

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folk religion, and by blending Catholic gods and saints into that local folk religious culture, Shanxi’s Catholicism has become a local religion. NOTES 1. This chapter is translated from the original Chinese by Anthony E. Clark; all modifications and elaborations of the original text have received the approval of Liu Anrong. 2. John L. Stuart 斯圖爾特, Zhongguo de wenhua yu zongjiao 中國的文化與宗教 (Chinese Culture and Religion) (Chanchun長春: Jilin wenshi chubanshe吉林文史出版社, 1991), 77. 3. See Wang Shouen 王守恩, Zhushen yu zhongshen: Qingdai, Minguo Shanxi Taigu de minjian xinyang yu xiangcunzhuang shehui 諸神與眾神：清代、民國山西太谷的民間信仰 與鄉村莊會 (Various and Inclusive Spirits: Folk Belief and Village Societies in Taigu, Shanxi, during the Republican Era) (Beijing 北京: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe 中國社會科學出版社, 2009), 30. 4. Yang Qingkun 楊慶堃, Zhongguo shehui zhong de zongjiao: zongjiao de xiandai shehui gongneng yu qi lishi yinsu zhi yanjiu 中國社會中的宗教：宗教的現代社會功能與其歷 史因素之研究 (Religion in Chinese Society: Research on the Contemporary Function of Religion and its Historical Antecedents) (Shanghai 上海: Shanghai renmin chubanshe 上海人民出版社, 2007), 31. 5. Zhang Deyi 張德一, Taiyuanshi Guchengyingcun zhi 太原市古城營村志 (Taiyuan City and Guchengying Village Gazetteer) (Taiyuan太原: Shanxi chubanshe jituan/sanjin chubanshe 山西出版集團/三晉出版社, 2009), 545. 6. Interview with Gao Fengshan 高風山, aged seventy-seven, on 25 May 2009, Dongpocun. 7. Interview with Guo Zhigang 郭志剛, aged seventy-three, on 14 November 2008, Naomacun. 8. In Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, Jiangcun jingji 江村經濟 (Jiancun Economics) (Shanghai 上海: Shanghai renmin chubanshe上海人民出版社, 2006), 12. 9. C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 8–11. 10. [Translator’s note: For a study of popular religion in northern China that includes descriptions of the temples mentioned in this chapter, see Daniel L. Overmyer, Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Note that both the graphs miao 廟 (temple) and ge 閣 (hall) are used in this table’s list of “temple names.” In all cases I have translated the names as “temple,” as they both fulfill the same religious and social function.] 11. Interview with Guo Zhigang. 12. Interview with Han Qiji 韓旗吉, aged eighty-two, on 28 November 2008, Beishaocun. 13. Interview with Wang Changqing 王常青, aged 73, on 15 November 2008, Beishaocun. 14. Interview with Wang Xiaorong 王孝榮, aged seventy, on 15 November 2008, Wangjiazhuang. 15. Interview with Zhang Chune 張春娥, aged seventy-four, on 4 June 2009, Fengxicun. 16. Interview with Fan Shilin 樊世林, aged seventy-seven, on 12 May 2005, Que’erlingcun. 17. Interview with Zhang Chune. 18. Interview with Zhang Quangui 張全貴, aged seventy-eight, on 25 March 2009, Shagoucun. 19. Interview with Guo Zhigang. 20. Interview with Niu Wenyu 牛文玉, aged seventy, on 30 April 2011, Shagoucun.

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21. Interview with Wei Cuimei 韋翠梅, aged eighty-three, on 10 November 2008, Beizhangcun. 22. Interview with Wei Cuimei. 23. Interview with Han Haiquan 韓海全, aged seventy, on 16 November 2008, Guyicun. 24. Interview with Jia Yuhu賈玉虎, aged seventy-seven, on 28 November 2008, Yaocun. 25. Interview with Liu Liancheng 劉連成, aged sixty-nine, on 28 November 2008, Yaocun. 26. Interview with Zhao Fu 趙富, aged seventy-one, on 18 November 2008, Guniancun. 27. Interview with Wang Xiaorong 王孝榮, aged seventy, on 3 March 2010, Wangjiazhuang. 28. Interview with Liu Haiwen 劉海文, aged sixty-six, on 17 October 2009, Gaozhongcun. 29. Interview with Guo Ying 郭英, aged seventy-eight, on 24 May 2009, Dongpucun. 30. Interview with Liu Haiwen. 31. Interview with Dong Yunlong 董雲龍, aged eighty-three, on 15 November 2008, Wangguocun. 32. Interview with Jia Yuhu. 33. [Translator’s note: The Four Precepts, or sigui 四規, are unique to China, and consist of four Catholic obligations: annual communion, annual confession, attendance of mass on Sundays and days of obligation, and following the rules of fasting and abstinence. All other countries acknowledge Seven Precepts, which include the obligation of all Catholics to support the church with financial tithes, obey the church’s laws concerning marriage, and participate in the church’s missionary role to evangelize. The most politically “sensitive” of these precepts are omitted from the list in Mainland China.] 34. [Translator’s note: The Tonggongjing was a popular prayer book used by Shanxi Catholics during the Republican Era. One popular edition was published in Taiyuan in 1915.] 35. Interview with Liu Tong 劉通. 36. Interview with Dong Yunlong 董雲龍. 37. Interview with Wu Bianzhen 武變貞, aged seventy-seven, on 10 March 2010, Dongergou. 38. Interview with Du Yingzhen 杜營貞, aged sixty-nine, on 24 March 2009, Dujiafengcun. 39. Interview with Wang Xiaorong. 40. Interview with Zhang Mingming 張明明, aged seventy-six, on 25 March 2009, Shagoucun. [Translator’s note: Shanxi’s particular devotion to St. Anthony is explainable by the fact that Shanxi was part of the Franciscan mission, and St. Anthony, as a Franciscan, was and remains a popular patron among Franciscan churches and mission areas.] 41. Interview with Guo Yan 郭宴, aged seventy-six, on 24 March 2009, Shuigoucun. 42. Interview with Zhang Jinshan 張進山, aged sixty-three, on 25 March 2009, Shagoucun. 43. Interview with Liu Zhiwen 劉志文, aged seventy-seven, on 9 November 2008, Jianhecun. 44. Cheng Xiao 程歗 and Xu Lei 許蕾, “Zhongguo jindai tianzhujiaomin xinyang yanjiu 中國近代天主教民信仰研究 (Research on Contemporary Catholic Belief in China),” in Hubei daxue xuebao 湖北大學學報 no. 1 (1996), 19. 45. Cheng Xiao 程歗 and Tan Huosheng 談火生, “Linghun yu routi: 1900 nian jiduan qingjing xia jiaomin de xinyang zhuangtai” 靈魂與肉體： 1900 年極端情景下教民的 信仰狀態 (Spirit and Flesh: The Condition of Religious Faith among the People during the Extreme Conditions of 1900), in Wenshizhe 文史哲 no. 1 (2003), 140.

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46. Cheng and Tan, “Linghun yu routi,” 140. 47. Luo Guang 羅光, Tianzhujiao jiaoyi 天主教教義 (Catholic Doctrine) (Hong Kong 香港: Xianggang shengming yiyi chubanshe 香港聲明意義出版社, 1955), 121–23. 48. God provides those who are Catholic with additional ability to perform good acts, for they have been freed of the effects of original sin in baptism and their resolve has been buttressed. Catholics view such merit to be a condition of salvation, as written in Matthew 16:27: “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what he has done.” 49. Luo Guang, Tianzhujiao jiaoyi, 312. Also see Sun Shangyang 孫尚揚, Jidujiao yu Mingmo ruxue 基督教與明末儒學 (Christianity and Confucianism During the late Ming) (Beijing 北京: Dongfang chubanshe 東方出版社, 1994), 77–78. 50. [Translator’s note: Liu’s assertion here bears interesting connotations regarding Catholic soteriology vis-à-vis Chinese Buddhist assumptions regarding the nature and function of karma. One sees here an example of doctrinal accommodation, if not assimilation.] 51. Matteo Ricci 利瑪竇, Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義 (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), quoted in Sun, Jidujiao yu Mingmo ruxue, 77–78. Also see Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, 312–13. 52. Interview with Zhang Weide 張維德, aged seventy-five, on 17 October 2009, Gaozhongcun. 53. Interview with Cao Yungui 曹雲貴, aged seventy, on 3 November 2008, Nanshecun. 54. [Translator’s note: The goddess Nainai 奶奶 is a popular deity associated with Mount Tai and with, as is seen here, fertility, especially as it pertains to the acquisition of male heirs.] 55. Interview with Wang Mingyu 王明玉, aged eighty-seven, on 3 November 2008, Wangjiazhuang. 56. Interview with Han Haiquan.

EIGHT Church-State Accommodation in China’s “Harmonious Society” Joseph Tse-Hei Lee

China is still governed by a powerful one-party state even though it has the fastest-growing economy in the world. 1 Within this context, the resurgence of Christianity reflects a broader phenomenon of growing interest in religion and spirituality that has taken place since the early 1980s. People in China today are caught in the space between collapsed traditions and discredited Communist ideology, on the one hand, and the pursuit of wealth and the Western lifestyle, on the other. They are struggling in an exciting yet highly competitive free-market economy. They are disillusioned by repressive politics and bewildered by conflicting values. This raises the level of social anxieties and drives people to seek solace within these confusions and ambiguities. Some people are turning to Chinese traditional religions and others are seeking salvation in Christianity. The reasons for mass conversion to Christianity are extremely complex. Some explanations for this resurgence of religious fervor have been suggested, such as the crisis of faith (xinyang weiji) resulting from the collapse of Maoism as a compelling ideology and the strong human desire for salvation in times of uncertainty. But it remains unclear why people subscribe to Christianity specifically, and why Chinese converts in urban and rural areas actively proselytize, establish churches, and engage in different forms of religious activism. This chapter looks at the growth of Christianity and its integration into the fabric of Chinese society during the Reform Era (1978–present). It focuses on two parallel phenomena. The first phenomenon is the transformation of Christianity from a heavily persecuted and marginalized 173

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religion in Maoist China into a fast-growing indigenous movement. Both Catholics and Protestants did not merely survive religious persecution throughout the turbulent period of Mao’s rule (1949–1976)—they thrived. They refused to be subject to the control of the state. They ignored what they could not change in national politics and took advantage of the situation to preserve their strength. They used their limited resources to organize highly autonomous and diffused worshiping communities, which laid the foundation of religious revival during the reform period. They skillfully adjusted their faith to the new ideological, political, social, and economic climates of the 1980s and 1990s, even though they each developed at a different pace and in a variety of directions. The second phenomenon is the construction of a new value system of Christian spirituality among individuals and groups in a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized environment. Many people who have felt insecure in the free-market economy and who are disillusioned with the repressive political system have turned to Christianity for consolation. As Yang Fenggang points out, large numbers of people become Christians because this religion advocates the idea of one God and eternal salvation, a vision of the end of the world as well as the cultivation of virtues. 2 In this respect, Christianity becomes an attractive system of religious worldviews that provides people with strong spiritual, psychological, and material incentives. It also addresses the challenges of social and economic inequalities, the unpredictable risks in a free-market economy, and the uncertain interactions with a socialist state that remains hostile to religious ideas and practices. Thematically, the current relationship of Chinese Catholics and Protestants with the state authorities, especially the Catholic Patriotic Association and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, has become more ambiguous than some advocates of civil society would permit. This development has to do with the reconfiguration of state power in the religious sphere during the Reform Era. Seen from this perspective, it is not feasible to apply the conventional paradigms of “state dominance” and “churchstate separation” to contemporary Chinese Christianity. The first paradigm cites two entities, state and religion-controlled-by-the-state, and tends to concentrate on the state’s policies of control and suppression. Shifting the focus of attention to the church, the second paradigm looks for details on the religion side of the equation. But to accentuate one side as opposed to another represents more of a temperamental or political choice: to emphasize the state’s (“nefarious”) control or the Christians’ (“brave”) resistance or negotiation. This chapter has moved beyond such a dichotomy to reconceptualize the church-state interaction as a delicate mediating act undertaken by the various Catholic and Protestant groups to maintain their autonomy in a fast-changing society. I suggest that the process of church-state encounter varies from place to place and exhibits different patterns and results, and that such interac-

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tion is often filled with angst, violence, confusion, and disillusionment. This study draws on my fieldwork observations among Christian communities over the last ten years and the latest scholarly literature on Chinese Christianity. 3 Generalizing about “Chinese Christianity” only makes sense at the conceptual level because there is no typical pattern of Christianity in any locality. Explaining the reasons for conversion to Christianity requires a closer look at the specific circumstances in which the interactions take place. Thus religious identification will be the focus of discussion. Throughout this chapter, “Chinese Christianity” refers to both Catholics and Protestants in China, whether they are the registered churches or the unregistered ones that were founded by the Western missionaries; the pre-1949 traditions of Protestant independent churches such as the Little Flock, the True Jesus Church, and the Jesus Family; and, after 1949, the pro-government and pro-Vatican Catholics as well as a wide range of newly emerged Christian-inspired sectarian groups in the 1980s and 1990s. Equally problematic are the definitions of “open churches” (dishang jiaohui), “underground [Catholic] churches” (dixia jiaohui) and “[Protestant] house churches” (jiating jiaohui). These terms do not accurately describe the reality of Chinese Catholicism and Protestantism today. Churches in China are either registered or unregistered. The contemporary Chinese government requires places of worship to be registered, whether they are churches, temples, monasteries, or mosques. 4 The officially approved Three-Self Patriotic churches are all registered. The “underground church” is not underground in a literal sense. Nor does the “house church” mean a religious meeting in a single household. Officially the terms “underground church” and “house church” mean an unregistered religious body that is subject to the state’s surveillance and crackdown. But the official treatment of both registered and unregistered churches varies from region to region. In Hebei Province, which contains at least one quarter of China’s Catholic population, most live in predominantly Catholic villages. In this province, there have been frequent reports of the official crackdowns on religious activities. In some inland provinces such as Hunan, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia, the unregistered Catholic churches are built in the middle of the villages, market towns, and cities, and they operate quite publicly. The scale, operation, and networks of many unregistered Protestant groups have grown beyond the limits of any individual household in the coastal provinces of Auhui, Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian, and Guangdong. In some remote areas where there are no officially approved churches, the unregistered churches are the only Christian communities. 5 For the purpose of discussion, I will use the term “unregistered church” or “autonomous church” to refer to both a house meeting not recognized by state authorities and a group of believers who choose to worship in an

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unregistered building. 6 For those Catholic communities loyal to the Holy See, the term “pro-Vatican church” will be used. Methodologically, this study relies on in-depth case studies to illustrate the local, national, and global linkages in the Chinese Christian movements. For instance, the underground Christian communities in Beijing and on the North China Plain are constantly involved in their disputes with the Communist state because of their closeness to the political center of government. By comparison, the various dialect-speaking Christian communities along the southeast coast have long been part of the maritime networks across the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, which transcend national boundaries and exist beyond the state’s control. Thus, the Christians in coastal areas tend to avoid any involvement in politics and focus on their entrepreneurial activities. This chapter focuses on the social mechanisms, accommodationist or otherwise, of conversion among the Catholic and Protestant populations and follows up with an in-depth analysis of the transformation of Chinese Christianity from a heavily persecuted into a fast-growing religious movement in the Reform Era. It then discusses the Christians’ strategies for survival and expansion, and the emergence of new Christian sectarian groups. It concludes with an analysis of the shape of Chinese Christianity in the early twenty-first century. AN OVERVIEW OF THE CHINESE CHRISTIAN POPULATION The total number of the Chinese Christian population is difficult to establish because there are no comprehensive nationwide church membership records from the official and underground churches. The official statistics about the Christian population are unreliable because they do not include the number of believers who gather in countless unregistered churches. Another problem is the definition of what constitutes membership in the Protestant circle. The official data only count those baptized in the registered churches. In some unregistered churches, they regard as members those attending church regularly, and in some congregations, baptized Christians ask to be kept off the record for personal protection. In other cases, families rather than individuals count themselves as church members. 7 The ethnic status of Christians constitutes another problem. Members of the ethnic minorities may not be counted as Christians because the Chinese government officially defines ethnic identity in terms of affiliation with a particular religion. It is impossible for the ethnic minorities in the Muslim-dominated provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, and Ningxia and for the Tibetans to be counted as Christians. It was not until 2004 that ethnic Mongolians who had been officially regarded as Lamaist Buddhists could be counted as Christians in the official statistics. 8

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Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence from the official and unofficial sources about the rapid growth of Christianity. In 1993, Alan Hunter and Kim-Kwong Chan estimated that the official figure of 5 million Protestants was too low and that the figure should be around 20 million. 9 Recently the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement estimated the figure of the Protestant population for the year 2000 to be 15 million. They gather in 13,000 registered churches and 35,000 meeting points. The leaders of another state-controlled body, the China Christian Council, put the figure as high as 25 million. 10 Meanwhile, the Catholic Patriotic Association considers the total number of Chinese Catholics to be around 5.3 million. Nevertheless, many scholars and church watchers in the West are skeptical of the official sources. In 2003, David Aikman stated that out of China’s total population of 1.3 billion, 70 million were Protestants and 12 million were Catholics, and that the overall number of Catholics and Protestants were around 80 million, a figure much higher than the official combined Catholic-Protestant figure of 21 million. 11 Based on these figures, Aikman speculates that within the next thirty years, one-third of China’s population could become Christians, making China the largest Christian nation in global Christianity. These Chinese Christians could become political and economic leaders in the most populous country and the largest economy in the world. Thomas Alan Harvey optimistically echoes the same opinion: “With some thirty to seventy million souls and a growth rate of seven percent annually, the number of Christians in China dwarfs the number of Christians in most nations of the earth. Like Christians throughout the developing world, Chinese Christians represent the vanguard of the Church in the twenty-first century.” 12 Aikman and Harvey’s optimism about the future of Chinese Christianity has yet to be proven by empirical evidence. 13 And there is still a long way to go before Christianity becomes a major force of change in Chinese politics. The discrepancy in the “numbers game” between the official and unofficial sources reveals Western church observers’ discontent with the Communist state’s intervention in Chinese church affairs. Until Mainland Chinese scholars are officially permitted to conduct a nationwide survey of the overall Catholic and Protestant population, one will have to take the official and unofficial statistics as unreliable. The same criticism applies to the statistics used regarding other aspects of church life such as age structure, gender composition, and social and economic backgrounds. This information is even harder to obtain than overall church figures. Both official and unofficial statistics reveal, nevertheless, a remarkable revival of Christianity and unprecedented growth in both the registered churches and the unaffiliated autonomous groups. Aikman’s estimates put the number of Protestants at 70 million (Chinese official estimate: 25 million) and Catholics at 12 million (Chinese official estimate: 6 million).

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Compared to China’s huge population of 1.3 billion, both Catholics and Protestants make up about 4–6 percent of the total figure. However, this is a significant increase over the total figure in 1949. The Christians accounted for 1 percent of the total population in 1949 with only 3 million of Catholics and 1 million of Protestants at that time. Most of them were connected to Western Catholic religious orders and Protestant denominational churches. Today, there are more Protestants than Catholics in China. Thus, from a global perspective, Chinese Christians make up a significant proportion of world Christianity today, especially when including the large numbers of overseas Chinese converts in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the British Commonwealth, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. 14 Much of the church growth in recent decades has taken place in rural areas. It is the countryside that has become the center of Christian movement. This phenomenal church growth is even more impressive if one considers the fact that all the Western Catholic and Protestant missionaries were expelled from China after the outbreak of the Korean War, and the Chinese Christians were left alone to manage the churches and face the state’s harassment by themselves. If one wants to visualize a “typical” Chinese Christian, one should think of a man or woman living in a remote but densely populated village. The picture becomes more complicated if one acknowledges that large numbers of people in nearly every ethnic minority have converted to Christianity. Actually, there has been a historical tradition for the highly marginalized minorities to turn to Christianity for protection in their struggles against the dominant Han Chinese settlers. Their faith thus became the focal point of a new ethnic and social identity and a form of resistance to the Maoist state. 15 In particular, Christianity has grown remarkably fast among the Lisu people in Yunnan Province since the 1980s. Tetsunao Yamamori and Kim-Kwong Chan reported that in 1997 about 70 percent of the Lisu people in the Fugong district of Nujiang prefecture were Christian. This is probably the first predominantly “Christian district” in China. In recent years the Lisu Christians sent their missionaries to evangelize and plant churches among the neighboring Dulong minorities, who are not readily accessible to the outside world. 16 Christianity has planted deep roots among the ethnic minorities in the peripheries of China. It is also worth mentioning that the Russian Orthodox Church did not resume its presence in Harbin in northeast China until the mid-1980s and the Harbin Orthodox Church remains the only state-recognized Russian Orthodox community in the country. But there are dozens of Orthodox communities in Beijing, Shanghai, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang with a number of ordained Chinese Russian Orthodox priests who have yet to be recognized by the state. 17 On the whole, Christianity has done extremely well indeed in rural rather than urban areas.

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THE CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS IN POST-1949 CHINA Coinciding with the phenomenal church growth, a complicated readjustment of church-state relations took place after 1949. In recent years, Anthony C. Yu has called for more attention to be given to state control of religion throughout imperial and contemporary times: “There has never been a period in China’s historical past in which the government of the state, in imperial and post-imperial form, has pursued a neutral policy toward religion, let alone encouraged, in terms dear to American idealism, its ‘free exercise.’ The impetus to engage religion, on the part of the central government, is for the purpose of regulation, control and exploitation whenever it is deemed feasible and beneficial to the state.” 18 As with the imperial states of the past, the Communists continuously pursued a “united front” policy of engaging Christians in order to sever their ties with foreign missionary enterprises, to place the churches under the control of a Leninist mass organization, and to purge reactionary forces and class enemies from the churches. But underlying the Communist religious policy is the theological clash between state and religion. According to C. K. Yang, the Maoist ideology was a non-theistic “faith” that manifested distinctly religious characteristics. The essence of its ideology is expressed in the aspirations of Chinese nationalism and materialistic progress. All reforms and revolutions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sought to promote progress and establish a strong nation. The Maoist state made the same claim and demanded from people the unconditional subordination of all personal concerns. This appeal was based on the premise that the Maoist ideology was the only guide to China’s ultimate destiny—the only means of national independence and modernization. 19 The Communists were determined to emancipate the common people from religion and “superstition” and to propagate a secular, scientific, and rationalistic worldview. 20 They denounced religion as “the opiate of the people” and an obstacle to the ultimate socialist transformation of China. The effort to control Catholic and Protestant communities finally led to a coercive assimilation of all Christian institutions. Against this background, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Catholic Patriotic Association have to be discussed respectively. The term “Three-Self,” originally coined by Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Henry Venn of the Church Missionary Society in the nineteenth century, describes a mission policy that organized native Christians in Africa and Asia into self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches. After the Communist Revolution of 1949, the Chinese government manipulated the “Three-Self” slogan to “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” (sanzi aiguo yundong) in order to legitimatize the state’s takeover of the Protestant church. Politically, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement was a mass organization

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along the Communist Party’s united front policy. It was launched by the one-party state to politicize the religious sphere and to control the Protestant communities. On 28 June 1949, Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaozong, 1890–1979), the general secretary for publications of the National Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in China, acted as a middleman between the Communist Party and National Christian Council (see figure 8.1). He urged church leaders to support the Communist movement. Many leaders of the YMCA and Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) assisted him in pursuing a pro-Communist agenda in the Protestant circle. The collaboration between the Communist Party, YMCA, and YWCA dates back to the revolutionary movement during the 1920s–1940s, when the Communist Party had successfully co-opted some of the YMCA and YWCA leaders. In July 1950, Y. T. Wu led nineteen Protestant church leaders to meet with Premier Zhou Enlai and draft a public statement known as “The Christian Manifesto,” which expressed Chinese Christians’ loyalty to the Communist state. At that time, the Korean War broke out and anti-American sentiment ran high. The Manifesto urged Christians to support “the common political platform under the leadership of the [Communist] government.” It also formally established the Three-Self

Figure 8.1. Wu Yaozong meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong (June 1960). Credit: History of Christianity in China Archive (Spokane, Washington).

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Patriotic Movement. On the surface, the movement called for the indigenization and ecclesiastical autonomy of Chinese churches. But its fundamental goal was to force the Christians to sever their institutional ties with foreign missionary enterprises in particular, and with foreigners in general. Change in global politics affected the Christians in China. After the outbreak of the Korean War, all the Catholic and Protestant missionaries were expelled from China. All the mission properties were confiscated by the state and Chinese Christians were forced to cut ties with foreign churches. The expulsion was a nationalistic act and symbolized the end of foreign imperialism in modern China. 21 In the midst of the Korean War, the “Preparatory Committee of the Oppose America and Aid Korea Three-Self Reform Movement of the Christian Church” was founded to conduct denunciation campaigns against Western missionaries. After a series of denunciations, the first National Christian Conference sponsored by the Preparatory Committee was held in the summer of 1954, in which Y. T. Wu was elected chairman and assigned to take charge of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The officials of the Bureau of Religious Affairs served as “advisors” to the movement. 22 American missionary M. Searle Bates characterized the Three-Self Patriotic Movement as “the one overarching structure, ecclesiastically loose and formless, yet powerful with arbitrary interventions of the force of the [Communist] state.” 23 Within less than a decade, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement ended the missionary era in China and marked the beginning of the Communist takeover of Christian church affairs. 24 Clearly, the leaders of the ThreeSelf Patriotic Movement had served as mere agents of the state to control and reshape Christian churches according to the Communist Party’s designs. Under the tremendous pressure for absolute loyalty to the Maoist state, political neutrality was not an option, and the churches could only exist in limited scope and precariously. 25 The Three-Self Patriotic Movement clearly conflicted with the missionaries’ initial goal of creating selfsupporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches on Chinese soil. The Communists used the same tactics of coercion to intimidate the Catholics. The one-party state considered the Catholic Church to be a serious threat because of its hierarchical structure, its nationwide networks, and its ability “to block effective government penetration, regulation and control of its organization.” What the state demanded from the Catholics was “not only the public obedience of key Church figures, but also their sincere total allegiance.” 26 In 1951, the state launched the Catholic Three-Self Movement to get rid of the Vatican’s influence. In 1957, the government created the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to control the Catholic population. The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association recognized the pope’s spiritual authority over Chinese Catholics but it denied him the right to interfere in the Chinese church. In 1958, this state-

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controlled Catholic body consecrated new bishops without approval from Rome. In response, Pope Pius XII condemned the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association as a rebellious church and urged faithful Catholics to oppose it. 27 At the same time, all Catholic and Protestant church leaders were required to accuse the foreign missionaries whom they had known and worked with for many decades. This was a regular procedure throughout China. The church leaders who refused to cooperate had to attend political study sessions. While the state appeared to have co-opted the urban church leaders in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the socialist transformation of rural China threatened Christian village communities. The land reform designed to break landlords’ dominance had the added impact of undermining the socioeconomic basis of Christian villages. The Christian villages failed to protect their properties and all the rural congregations ceased to function after the land reform. The church buildings were converted into local schools, warehouses, village factories, and government offices. The most intense period of persecution was probably the 1960s. The Socialist Education Movement (1962–1965), which took place before the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), put tremendous pressures on local church leaders. The provincial and municipal authorities exploited the Socialist Education Movement to attack the Catholics and Protestants in the interior. The church leaders were severely persecuted. If the church leaders happened to come from landholding and merchant families, they would be labeled as landlords and capitalists. There was no future for them and their children. This explains why many young Christians voted with their feet by escaping to Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the state’s persecution, the faith was kept alive in the Christian families and conversion followed the social hierarchy—that is, the Christian patriarchs and matriarchs, mostly older men and women, instructed the younger members of the family in the faith because family and marriage ties involved a sense of loyalty to the household leaders. This hierarchical social structure bore witness to the impact of traditional Chinese culture, which required that junior family and community members obey senior ones. It also guaranteed a steady church growth and maintained the continued adherence of Christians to the faith. When Christianity became a family religion, Jesus Christ publicly replaced the ancestor as the focus of worship and created a new religious and social identity to hold the different generations of a Christian family together. The Christian patriarchs saw conversion, baptism, and church affiliation as essential filial duties for their children. 28 The overlap of kinship and religious identities is a key to understanding the indigenization of Christianity. Where churches are erected outside the walled villages and surrounded by Christian households, they are often misunderstood as independent Christian settlements. In fact,

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these Christian households constitute an essential part of the local community, as they identify themselves with a particular denomination and their own lineages or villages. This remarkable overlap of religious, kinship, and territorial identities characterizes most of the Catholic and Protestant communities in rural China. 29 One intriguing feature of this social structure is the lack of individual consciousness. Because the Christian family itself is a strong social unit, there is a lack of individual choice in order to keep the family members as cohesive as possible. In that case, the Christian identity is a collective one for the family members. These findings confirm Richard Madsen’s view that the strong family ties held the Catholic communities together and prevented them from falling apart under the state’s persecution during the Maoist era. 30 Furthermore, Catholics and Protestants employed a wide range of strategies for survival. The first strategy was to create a diffused network of support. Because Christianity was an integral part of the kinship and lineage structures, many Catholics and Protestants relied on the longstanding social network to maintain internal unity among their church members and to carry on religious activities. Another strategy was to shift the center of religious operation from urban to rural areas in order to avoid direct confrontation with the expansive Communist state. Because in the late nineteenth century the center of Christianity was the countryside, the success story of rural church implantation inspired the church leaders to return to their roots. An additional strategy was to proselytize and recruit members among victims of Mao’s land reform and political campaigns (mainly landlords, capitalists, and officials of the Nationalist regime), because Christians could easily appeal to them with a promise of salvation and an explanation for their suffering. For these new converts, their religious experience coincided with their desires for support in the midst of political and social upheavals. This phenomenon of Christian conversion solidified an ideological resistance to the Maoist state. Equally important was the strategy to educate the children of Christian families and to organize them into youth groups in support of each other. Because the state monopolized the educational institutions and propagated its Communist ideology, church leaders sought to counter the state’s education of youth. Moreover, the Communist state remained a closed system to the Christian youth. The strong political pressure on individual Christians made it difficult for them to adjust to and assimilate into the socialist order. The final strategy was to rely on the overseas Chinese Christian networks for support and protection. Remittances sent by the churches in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia proved beneficial to the local Christian communities throughout the Maoist era. This South China Sea maritime network was a factor in understanding the social and religious dynamics of Christian movements in coastal China. It created a maritime highway that channeled resources from overseas Chinese Christians into their homeland. 31

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On the whole, the Christian communities refused to be controlled by the Communist state. Their religious activism revealed the failure of the state to control ecclesiastical affairs. Both Catholic and Protestant church leaders were reluctant to accept the subservient role that the state had assigned them. They used their limited resources to organize religious activities to cater to the needs of their followers in a socialist state. Though the state had imprisoned most of the church leaders by the mid1950s, it failed to control individual Christians in the cities and countryside. In response to political pressures, many Christians interpreted their troubles theologically, uniting in suffering and trusting a transcendental God who would deliver them from persecution. That they saw their sufferings as a test of their faith demonstrates their remarkable courage and theological insight. These Christians, in fact, followed a pattern of religious activism common to many independent Chinese Protestants and pro-Vatican Catholics throughout the Maoist era. They kept a very low profile and organized cell groups and home meetings at the grassroots level, which later formed the backbone of the so-called house church movements and sowed the seeds of religious revival during the reform period. 32 If a single lesson emerges from this religious development, it is that these Christians had successfully established highly autonomous and diffused worshiping communities according to their needs, despite persistent interference and systematic control from the state. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and “open door” policies after 1978 marked a radical departure from the anti-religious ideology of the Maoist era. Many Catholic and Protestant church leaders were eventually released from labor camps and prisons and cautiously took advantage of the new political climate to organize religious activities. They received visitors from Hong Kong and the West, answered religious questions from faith-seekers, and provided pastoral services to their followers. An explosive growth of Christianity was widely reported across the country, especially in areas not previously visited by the missionaries. 33 Coinciding with the “Christianity fever” in the 1980s, the newly released church leaders expressed a strong sense of suspicion toward the state-controlled Catholic and Protestant church organizations. The state founded two parallel ecclesiastical structures with offices at the national, provincial, and district levels to regulate public religious activities. In 1978, the Bureau of Religious Affairs supported the pro-government Catholics in order to revive the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. In 1980, the government created the National Administrative Commission of the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese Bishops’ College to handle pastoral concerns. In reaction, the pro-Vatican Catholics established contacts with Rome and proceeded to organize religious activities without the state’s approval. The pro-Vatican Catholics rejected the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and secretly consecrated new bishops

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and ordained new priests. According to Beatrice Leung, “The fundamental difficulty [in Sino-Vatican relations] rests in the ideological incompatibility between the dialectical materialism embedded in Marxism-Leninism and religious idealism.” 34 This ideological conflict cannot be easily reconciled. A similar pattern of development can be seen among Protestants. In 1980, the Bureau of Religious Affairs appointed Bishop K. H. Ting to revise the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. In the same year, Bishop Ting was instrumental in forming the China Christian Council in order to manage the internal affairs of the church. The bishop chaired both organizations from 1981 to 1996. 35 In reality, both organizations served as the state’s arm in ecclesiological affairs. As with the established churches in England and much of Continental Europe, the pro-government Protestant church leaders challenged the autonomy of the church. In opposition, the autonomous churches remained critical of the state’s religious interference. The relations between the officially registered churches and the autonomous Christian groups remain extremely complex. The story of George Bernard Wong, SJ, one of the Jesuit priests who spent many decades in jail, is illustrative. After his release from the labor camp in the early 1980s, Wong maintained a subtle relationship with the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. At the same time, he was connected with the pro-Vatican church leaders. He taught English at the state-run Catholic seminary and was in contact with pro-government bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian. Wong urged Catholics inside and outside China to acknowledge Bishop Jin’s contributions in the state-controlled Catholic circle. There is indeed a certain degree of mutual tolerance between the public and underground Catholic hierarchies. 36 The case of Bishop Jin suggests that practicing one’s faith, serving the church, and supporting the socialist state in Maoist China was a painful process of adjustment. Both George Bernard Wong and Bishop Jin manifested their Catholic faith in two different approaches under the same socialist government. As Robert E. Carbonneau, CP, points out: Analysis and interpretation of this dual Chinese Catholic experience from 1949 until 1976 is complex and emotional. Oftentimes, the ordinary worldwide Catholic commentators become trapped by terminologies such as “open church” and “underground church.” In reality, the definitions of these terms have remained fluid and vague. With a heart open towards future reconciliation of both these registered and unregistered churches, I would like to suggest that we see this period of suffering as a time when the Chinese Catholic Church had one faith expressed in two different ways. 37

What have emerged from the Maoist era are large numbers of devoted Catholics seeking reconciliation with the universal Catholic Church.

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The main challenge facing Chinese Catholics today is how to live a religious life in an increasingly modernized society. Many Catholics reside in the countryside and dominate certain occupational groups such as fishermen in the lower Yangtze River and along the southeast coast. They are impoverished, poorly educated, and largely influenced by traditional culture. The church can act as a barrier that separates them from the outside world, and yet the church is the social center for the faithful with several masses and prayer meetings a day. It promotes marriages among Catholics in surrounding villages and preaches that other religions such as Protestant Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Taoism are erroneous. Richard Madsen describes this type of inward-looking mentality as an “ethnic religion” because the Catholic identity is transmitted primarily through kinship, lineage, and intervillage networks. He argues that geographic isolation and limited mobility have enabled the Catholic villagers on the North China Plain to maintain their “corporate identity” and religious practices. 38 But this enclosed environment makes it difficult for Catholics to adjust to the modern world after they migrate to the cities. Without the same support mechanism in urban areas as in their home villages, the Catholics find it difficult to integrate their faith with modernity. But there are some highly mobile and successful Catholics who do not fit into Madsen’s characterization. A good example is Eriberto P. Lozada’s anthropological study of “Little Rome,” a Hakka Catholic village in Guangdong Province. These Hakka Catholics actively engage in entrepreneurial activities and successfully integrate their faith into the ancestral traditions and modern lifestyles. They also establish transnational contacts with other believers in Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia, and the West for support and protection. 39 These Hakka Catholics in South China have long been exposed to the outside world and they are more likely to embrace social and economic changes than the land-bound Catholics in Madsen’s study. Another good example is the Zosé incident. In May 1980, more than ten thousand Catholic fishermen, most of them descendants of converts from the eighteenth century, visited the shrine to the Blessed Mother in Zosé (Sheshan) outside of Shanghai. It has been a traditional ritual for Catholic pilgrims to go to Zosé in May, asking for blessings for their marriages and receiving the sacraments. Although the Bureau of Religious Affairs anticipated the revival of this tradition in 1980 and sent agents to the scene, they failed to stop the fishermen from rushing to the shrine. Some pilgrims even professed to have seen visions of the Holy Mother. These fishermen’s religious enthusiasm underscores the strength of the Catholic kinship, lineage, and occupational networks for religious transmission and mobilization. 40 By comparison, there is a diverse pattern of the Protestant responses to state authority and to modernity in the Reform Era. In the early 1980s, several respectable Baptist and Presbyterian ministers from the Chao-

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zhou-speaking region of northeast Guangdong Province were invited to join the Three-Self Patriotic Movement after their release from the labor camps. Since then, these church leaders have mediated between the local authorities and the Christians in the region. They take advantage of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement to support the unregistered churches. In Shantou, the Three-Self Patriotic church leaders even allow the Seventhday Adventists to hold Sabbath, and the followers of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) to meet in the registered church premises. 41 This pattern of mutual support is not unique in Chaozhou. According to Daniel H. Bays, there was a mixture of the different traditions of Protestant liturgy within the Three-Self Patriotic churches across China. Members of the pre-1949 independent Chinese churches, such as the Little Flock, the Jesus Family, and the True Jesus Church, often worship in the officially registered churches. The Little Flock still practice the breaking of bread on Sunday evenings and require women to cover their heads during services. 42 The Three-Self Patriotic churches with many members from the Little Flock tradition often hold separate Sunday night services. And members of the True Jesus Church and the Seventh-day Adventists observe the Sabbath on Saturday. The social landscape of Chinese Protestantism is characterized by the combination of the Western missionary denominations and the pre-1949 independent Chinese churches. 43 As memories from the political campaigns in the Maoist era fade, most of the Three-Self Patriotic and autonomous church leaders have refrained from attacking each other. But the autonomous churches still oppose the idea of merging with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and reject the state’s intervention into the spiritual affairs of the church. Nevertheless, in some extreme cases, the Three-Self Patriotic church leaders resent the rapid expansion of the autonomous churches and are pleased to see the latter being suppressed by the state. 44 One ecumenical concern of many Chinese church leaders today is to develop a common religious platform that enables them to articulate the experience of religious persecution under the Maoist state. Remembering the experience of religious persecution is the most important means by which contemporary Chinese Christians commemorate those martyrs and events that inspired them. As Edward Shils notes, “Memory is the vessel which retains in the present the record of the experiences undergone in the past and of knowledge gained through the recorded and remembered experience of others, living or dead.” 45 Thus the Christians draw on the memory and narrative of suffering to create a common bond among themselves and fight against the state’s anti-religious propaganda. All Christians believed themselves to be united in suffering throughout the Maoist era. The content of the suffering narrative may change in time, but the knowledge of a resurrected faith in this narrative remains unchanged. The Christian communities had identified, understood, and perceived themselves as religious entities over a long period of time.

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When the Chinese Communist state became strong, it was fearful of the Christians’ adherence to this suffering narrative because it reinforced the memory of suffering. Many Christians were thus ready to challenge the state’s ideology and claim to legitimacy. Because China was totally shut off from the outside world during the Cultural Revolution, people in the West assumed that the Chinese church had disappeared. When China was opened up in the late 1970s, people were surprised to see that the Chinese church was still alive. Chinese Christians did not perceive their faith as incompatible with their culture. They simply followed the Confucian ritual of learning by preserving the Christian doctrines and practices that they had inherited from the Western missionaries. Many elderly Catholic and Protestant church leaders used the word chiku, literally translated as “having tasted bitterness,” to refer to their experience of persecution. One Catholic clergyman recalled, “When we were bombarded with the anti-Christian propaganda, we had tasted the bitterness. We did not swallow it. We survived.” 46 His remark indicates that the memory of suffering had a sacramental aspect, as it revealed the power of the resurrected faith in a crisis situation. When the Communist state forced the Christians into a suffering mode, it transformed religious persecution into a unique opportunity to gain heavenly rewards. This narrative of suffering brings all Christians together as a community of believers and enables them to easily identify with other victims of the socialist transformation during the Maoist era and to face persecution bravely. RECENT TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE CHRISTIANITY The current landscape of Chinese Christianity covers a wide range of groupings, from the Catholic Church and the Euro-American Protestant denominations to the pre-1949 Chinese independent churches and the newly emerged sectarian movements that borrow loosely and selectively from Christianity. Although extremely diverse in ideas and practices, these indigenous churches have adapted Christianity to local cultures and traditions. Unlike the urban followers of the mainstream denominational churches, most Chinese Protestants come from rural areas where knowledge of Christianity differs considerably from that of their brothers and sisters in the cities. 47 Many Catholics and Protestants have reported experiencing strong feelings of repentance and forgiveness at the time of their conversions. In a comprehensive survey of the Christian villages, Leung Ka-Lun states that many converts are likely to be poor, less educated, and, frequently, elderly women. Their attitude toward Christianity is syncretic, as they seek religious salvation in the form of miracles and healing. 48 They are

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more concerned with the literal interpretation of the Scriptures than theological speculation. They see Jesus Christ as holy and fearsome, healing the sick, casting out demons, and performing miracles. Their strong belief in healing and miracles is an adaptation of the popular religious belief that sickness and suffering result from evil and that health and healing stem from repentance and divine forgiveness. He Guanghu and Gao Shining are concerned that Catholicism and Protestant Christianity might lose their authenticities and become totally integrated into Chinese folk religions. 49 Using Christianity as a key to physical recovery and spiritual salvation is common in many parts of the world, as shown in Amanda Porterfield’s insightful study of the power of Christian healing. 50 This pragmatic understanding of Christianity expresses the concerns of ordinary people to access divine power, to seek physical and spiritual security, and to lead a holy life in the times of chaos and uncertainty. 51 In fact, as Richard Madsen argues, a close connection between Catholicism and the folk religious tradition gives the church enormous vitality and enables the faith to be entirely melded with the structures of family, village, and lineagebased life. 52 The close linkages between Christianity and folk religions are manifested in dozens of Christian-inspired sectarian movements. Seeking salvation in miracles, healing, and exorcism, the believers harbor syncretic attitudes toward Christianity. 53 For example, Wu Yangming, a peasant, founded another movement called the Established King (Beili Wang) in Anhui Province in 1988. Wu proclaimed himself to be the Messiah and declared that the end of the world was imminent. He bitterly opposed the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and strongly criticized the Communist state as anti-Christ. In 1995 Wu was arrested and executed. But his loyal followers continued to expand the Established King into the interior. 54 The well-organized movement Eastern Lightning (Dongfang Shandian) was founded in North China during the early 1990s and has spread across the country and abroad. 55 The term “Eastern Lightning” implies that the salvation of mankind will come from China. This group rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, renamed the God of Christianity as “Lightning,” and claimed that a female Christ had come to Henan Province in central China. Stressing the second coming of Jesus Christ in a manner similar to the advent of Buddhist saviors, these sectarian groups had in common a strong belief in millenarianism. In areas far from metropolitan cities, people could appropriate certain Christian doctrines to establish new teachings. But after the assault on Falun Gong in 1999, the state labeled these Christian-inspired sectarian movements “evil cults” (xiejiao) and banned their activities. 56 According to Eric R. Carlson, Bryan Edelman, and James T. Richardson, the government put in place many new measures against “heretical activities” and “feudal superstition.” 57 Although the state never intended to turn the clock back and to impose the

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Maoist mechanisms of control on religious activities, it recast religious activities along lines of prosperity and stability and criminalized members of some Christian sectarian groups. The execution of two leaders of a fundamentalist group called the South China Church in December 2001 and the arrest of a Hong Kong businessman who smuggled 33,000 Bibles to a house church reveal the state’s intolerance of popular religious movements. 58 Fenggang Yang further points out that the Chinese authorities banned dozens of Christian sectarian groups with strong supra-provincial networks during the 1990s. The police arrested the leaders and active members, forced them into the reeducation program, and confiscated their properties and sectarian literature. 59 Most of these Christian-inspired sectarians belong to lay-led religious groups seeking the religious and spiritual salvation of its members. The sect leaders draw on certain Christian traditions to interpret the current social and economic problems in rural China as a form of divine punishment and urge their followers to prepare for the coming doomsday. Their hardships and sufferings today determine their fate on the Day of Judgment. The Christian sectarian scriptures exert more influence among the semi-literate than the illiterate peasants, but through the extensive rural market, transportation, and book-trading networks, the texts reached the hands of popular religious specialists. In areas far away from metropolitan cities and well-developed coastal provinces, it is always possible for the recipients to appropriate certain Christian doctrines and establish their new teachings. This development exemplifies Susan Naquin’s description of the teacher-disciple relationship and the proliferation of religious sectarian networks in nineteenth-century China. 60 In urban areas, a gospel of prosperity and success has emerged among merchants and professionals. As China’s economy progressed, people sought prosperity and security in a fast-changing world. A group of “boss Christians” (laoban jidutu) emerged in the cities. Boss Christians attribute business success to their faith in Jesus Christ and claim to work for God in the commercial sector. They believe the sources of human tragedies to be one of many spiritual evils that can be effectively overcome by believers. The Christian faith is expected to produce real and tangible results in this world. The believer’s life in this world is transformed by conversion and the change in one’s fortune touches on every aspect of life, from work ethics and career aspirations to family and gender relations. Therefore they respond enthusiastically to the religious message that provides them with blessings in this life and the next. These boss Christians are entrepreneurs, executives, factory owners, salesmen, contractors, managers, and employees in urban areas, all of whom are involved in the private commercial sector. Several hundred boss Christians are known in Wenzhou. Because of their economic accomplishments, the boss Christians can withstand pressures from the local government over the Christian communities. They often mediate between a

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church and the authorities in cases of property disputes. 61 These affluent Christians are not just demonstrating their status, power, and influence through active involvement in church and community affairs but also exploiting the liberalized social climate to their advantage. Equally significant is the growing number of Christian intellectuals, writers, artists, publishers, lawyers, and scientists, who play an active evangelistic role in the metropolitan cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Since the 1990s, there have been a group of scholars known as “Cultural Christians.” 62 They use Christianity to critique traditional Chinese values (particularly Confucianism) that are thought to be lacking a transcendental understanding of the world. Through the introduction of Christian theology into Chinese academia, they argue that the cultivation of personal faith and individuality constitutes an integral part of modernity and is a key to personal and national salvation. They consider Christianity useful for creating a new ethical system in China’s struggle for modernization. Today, Chinese intellectuals often subscribe to Christianity because of its experiential piety, its concern for salvation and for tangible blessings in this life, and its expression of a highly individualized faith. Most of them are converted by their peers at universities. There are many Christian meeting points for intellectuals and students around all major university campuses. I once visited a four-story unregistered church building next to the campus of Xiamen University in Fujian Province in 2005, where I was surprised to see the Bible study sessions and evening worships filled with young professors and students. Unlike the boss Christians, these well-educated converts are genuinely concerned with the development of Chinese theology, Christian literature, music, and the arts. They have taken advantage of the modern communication technology to proselytize and recruit new adherents. They create websites and discussion forums on the Internet to share news about church activities and to comment on the local religious affairs. This electronic form of religious activism not only breaks through the geographical barriers and the state’s surveillance but also creates an invisible highway on the Internet that enables Christians inside and outside China to form an informal alliance for support. There are other examples of the effective use of modern communication technology. In one of the unregistered churches that I visited in Beijing in 2004, the junior pastor, who was a historian by training, digitized all the church publications, membership records, and archival materials for future historical research. In another unregistered Christian meeting point in Guangzhou, a seventy-five-year-old Chaozhou-speaking pastor, who was jailed for more than twenty years during the Maoist era, recorded all his sermons on cassette tapes, CDs, and DVDs to be used for Bible study sessions among the Chaozhou migrants in the area. On another occasion, I visited a Christian bookstore adjacent to the largest

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Three-Self Patriotic church in the city center of Shantou, where one could buy many religious sermons and documentaries on cassette tapes, CDs, and DVDs, some of which were highly critical of the Communist religious policy and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The bookstore owner, who belonged to the Little Flock tradition, told me that his business catered to the spiritual needs of both Three-Self Patriotic and unregistered church members. Ryan Dunch best summarizes these features of Chinese Protestantism as “a warm, experiential piety, centered on a concern for salvation and for tangible blessings in this life; literal faith in the Bible.” The rapid growth of Christianity is “accompanied by institutional diversity and fragmentation, expanding with China’s market economy.” 63 These examples suggest that many Chinese Christians in the cities have employed the modern communication technology to bypass the state’s surveillance and create an electronic frontier for evangelization and mutual support. While younger Catholic and Protestant church leaders are still critical of the state’s intervention in church affairs, they have explored the public role of the church as a mediator between state and society. Besides encouraging church members to be actively involved in social services, church leaders are keen on safeguarding the constitutional rights of the Christians, and they are critical of the state’s harsh policies toward religious minorities. Some intellectuals, lawyers, and activists have even appropriated Christianity as a new political force and used it to reconnect with the West in order to critique the authoritarian state. The best example was a group of Christian intellectuals and social activists from Beijing who met President George W. Bush in the White House in mid-May 2006. 64 David Aikman speculates that “[when] the Chinese dragon is tamed by the power of the Christian Lamb,” the country will transform “from the one-party political dictatorship of today to the desirable multiparty democracy of tomorrow.” 65 Aikman embraces the ideology of right-wing Christian fundamentalism and believes that the Christian West should liberate the rest of the world. Whether there is a correlation between the growth of Chinese Christianity and democratization and whether Christianity is a shortcut to modernity and democracy are debatable. 66 The democratization of China will be determined by many political factors rather than by the change of religious culture alone. Nevertheless, the rise of political activism has driven many urban Christians to defend their constitutional rights. Despite the state’s efforts to promote a new vision of overall societal balance under the rhetoric of building a “harmonious society” (hexie shehui), many Christians are critical of the ethical disconnect between this rhetoric and the reality of authoritarian power. Although the state has tightened its control of the religious sphere, the forces of marketization create new online space for people to bypass government censorship. In this brave new world, many pro-Vatican Catholics and autonomous Protestant groups have used the

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Internet to propagate their ideas, strengthen their national and transnational networks, and organize their struggles online and offline. 67 The widely reported example is that of an autonomous urban congregation in Beijing, called Shouwang Church. For years, Shouwang Church has been prohibited by the government from holding Sunday service outside the constellation of state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic churches. In November 2009, prior to President Obama’s visit to China, its church members worshiped outside Haidian Park in central Beijing, braving a snowstorm and attracting global media attention. In October 2010, leaders from Shouwang and other independent churches were prohibited from attending an international congress of evangelical Christians in South Africa. Caught in an official crackdown on political dissent in April 2011, the Shouwang Christians were forbidden to take possession of a property they had just purchased legally. The congregants protested by praying and worshiping outdoors, but the church leaders were put under house arrest and the church website was blocked. 68 The recent crackdown reveals the proliferation of religious and political dissidents throughout Chinese society. These dissidents have publicly denounced the authoritarian government and pursued what Robert P. Weller calls a new and “alternate civility,” which would foster dramatic political change and defend the civil society against complete incorporation by a powerful state. 69 Unless Beijing comes to grips with these endogenous forces of change, it will never be able to keep the Christian population in check (see figure 8.2). CONCLUSION Entering the twentieth century as a minority religion, Christianity has in the early twenty-first century become a fast-growing indigenous religious movement in China. The failure of the state’s control and the diffusion of church authority into the hands of lay leaders have given rise to a “Four-Self” church (i.e., self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating, and self-theologizing) on Chinese soil. While critiquing the official rhetoric of building a “harmonious society,” many Catholics and Protestants emphasize that Christianity has become a powerful force of transcending the world, stabilizing the society, and cultivating people’s morality. Politically, the Christian presence and progress in recent years points to the utter failure of the state to exercise absolute control in the religious sphere. The pro-Vatican Catholics and the unregistered Protestant churches are reluctant to accept the subservient role that the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement have assigned them. They ignore what they cannot change in state politics, while making use of the situation to preserve their strength. They have defended the independence of the church from state control. They

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Figure 8.2. Large outdoor Christian memorial service in Beijing’s suburbs (2008). Credit: Anthony E. Clark, photographer.

have liberated themselves from official religious institutions and established highly autonomous and diffused worshiping communities according to their needs, despite persistent interference and systematic control from the state. Their commitment to the Christian faith, their active involvement in evangelization and church implantation, and their willingness to share the gospel message with others help to spread Christianity into the areas not formerly reached by the missionaries. In an authoritarian country where the state equates religious identification with political and ideological loyalty, the act of conversion is a challenge against the authorities. Chinese Communists have always been hostile toward any ideology and effective organization outside the oneparty state’s control. Given the impetus to place religious communities under state control, tension and conflict always remain an integral part of church-state relations in China. But since the Communist state reduced its control over religious communities in the 1980s, the preternatural, pragmatic, and politicized modes of Christianity have flourished and coexisted with each other. The Christian millenarian ideas provide the destitute with access to divine protection and a sense of security in the times of chaos. The prosperity gospel attracts large numbers of followers in urban areas and satisfies their cravings for materialistic, worldly desires. The social gospel of change inspires intellectuals and activists to defend their rights and to mediate between the state and society. These various modes of religious practices have made Chinese Christians less

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vulnerable to state persecution and allowed them to respond quickly and flexibly to changes in contemporary China. NOTES 1. I would like to thank the Center for Christian Studies at Shantou University in China for fully supporting this project through a generous research grant (Project Code: CCSRF1112-A). 2. Yang Fenggang, “Lost in the Market, Saved at McDonald’s: Conversion to Christianity in Urban China,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 4 (2005): 423–41. 3. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “Testing Missionary Archives against Congregational Histories: Mapping Christian Communities in South China,” Exchange: Journal of Missiological and Ecumenical Research 32, no. 4 (2003): 361–77. 4. Michael Dillon, A Minority Rights Group (MRG) International Report: Religious Minorities and China (London: Minority Rights Group International, 2001). 5. Betty Ann Maheu, “The Catholic Church in China: Journey of Faith—An Update on the Catholic Church in China in 2005,” paper presented at the 21st National Catholic China Conference, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington, 24–26 June 2006. 6. Xu Xuchu, “To Register or Not to Register? Unregistered Christians in China under Increasing Pressure,” Religion, State and Society 25, no. 2 (1997): 201–20, especially endnote 7. 7. Elinor Wong and Francis Wong, “Just How Many Christians and Communists Are There in China?” Ecumenical News Information, 14 September 2005. Available at http://www.eni.ch/articles/display.shtml?05-0691. 8. Caroline Fielder, “The Growth of the Protestant Church in China,” paper presented at the 21st National Catholic China Conference, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington, 24–26 June 2006. 9. Alan Hunter and Kim-Kwong Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 66–71. 10. Daniel H. Bays, “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today,” China Quarterly, no. 174 (June 2003): 491–92; Kim-Kwong Chan, “Religion in China in the Twentieth-First Century: Some Scenarios,” Religion, State, and Society 33, no. 2 (June 2005): 96. 11. David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2003), 7–8. 12. Thomas Alan Harvey, Acquainted with Grief: Wang Mingdao’s Stand for the Persecuted Church in China (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 159. 13. Betty Ann Maheu, “The Catholic Church in China: Journey of Faith.” 14. R. G. Tiedemann, “China and its Neighbours,” in A World History of Christianity, ed. Adrian Hastings (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 369–415. 15. See T’ien Ju-K’ang, Peaks of Faith: Protestant Mission in Revolutionary China (Leiden: Brill, 1993); Ralph R. Covell, The Liberating Gospel in China (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995). 16. Tetsunao Yamamori and Kim-Kwong Chan, Witnesses to Power: Stories of God’s Quiet Work in a Changing China (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2000), 96–109. 17. Kim-Kwong Chan, “Religion in China in the Twenty-first Century,” 98–99; Dina V. Doubrovskaia, “The Russian Orthodox Church in China,” in China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, eds. Stephen Uhalley Jr. and Xiaoxin Wu (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), 163–76. 18. Anthony C. Yu, “On State and Religion in China: A Brief Historical Reflection,” Religion East and West 3 (2003): 1–20. 19. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society.

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20. Steve A. Smith, “Talking Toads and Chinless Ghosts: The Politics of ‘Superstitious’ Rumors in the People’s Republic of China, 1961–1965,” American Historical Review 111, no. 2 (April 2006): 405–27. 21. Oi-Ki Ling, The Changing Role of the British Protestant Missionaries in China (London: Associated University Presses, 1999), 148–80. 22. Beatrice Leung, “China’s Religious Freedom Policy: The Art of Managing Religious Activity,” China Quarterly 184 (December 2005): 894–913. 23. Richard Bush, Religion in Communist China (New York: Abingdon Press, 1970), 196. 24. Philip L. Wickeri, Seeking the Common Ground: Protestant Christianity, the ThreeSelf Movement, and China’s United Front (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 117–53; K. K. Yeo, Chairman Mao Meets the Apostle Paul: Christianity, Communism, and the Hope of China (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2002), 152–62. 25. Deng Zhaoming, “Indigenous Chinese Pentecostal Denominations,” China Study Journal 16, no. 3 (December 2001): 5–22. 26. Eric O. Hanson, Catholic Politics in China and Korea (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1980), 36–37. 27. Alan Hunter, “Chaos in Heaven: The Roman Catholic Church in China Today,” Leeds East Asia Papers, no. 12 (1992): 1–3. 28. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860–1900 (New York/London: Routledge, 2003), 29, 83. 29. Wu Fei, Maiwang shang di shengyan: Yige xiangcun tianzhujiao qunti zhong di xinyang he shenghuo (Sacred Word above the Awn of the Wheat: Faith and Life in a Catholic Village) (Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma Press, 2001), 121–38; Peter TzeMing Ng, Tao Feiya, Zhao Xingsheng, and Liu Xian, Shengshan jiaoxia di shizijia: Zhongjiao yu shehui hudong gean yanjiu (Christianity at the Foot of Mount Tai: A Study of the Interplay between Religion and Society) (Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma Press, 2005), 159–211. 30. Richard Madsen, China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 31. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 74, no. 1 (March 2005): 68–96. 32. Kim-Kwong Chan and Alan Hunter, Prayers and Thought of Chinese Christians (Boston: Cowley, 1991); May M. C. Cheng, “House Church Movements and Religious Freedom in China,” China: An International Journal 1, no. 1 (March 2003): 16–45. 33. P. Richard Bohr, “State and Religion in China Today: Christianity’s Future in a Marxist Setting,” Missiology: An International Review 11, no. 3 (July 1983): 321–41; Franklin J. Woo, “The Political Challenge of China to Western Christianity and Chinese Religion,” Missiology: An International Review 13, no. 3 (July 1985): 347–52; Tony Lambert, The Resurrection of the Chinese Church (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1994). 34. Beatrice Leung, “Sino-Vatican Relations at the Century’s Turn,” Journal of Contemporary China 14, no. 3–4 (May 2005): 370. 35. Siu Chau Lee, “Towards a Theology of Church-State Relations in Contemporary Chinese Context,” Studies in World Christianity 11, no. 2 (2005): 251–69; Xing Fuzeng, “Church-State Relations in Contemporary China and the Development of Protestant Christianity,” China Study Journal 18, no. 3 (December 2003): 19–48. 36. Claudia Devaux and George Bernard Wong, SJ, Bamboo Swaying in the Wind: A Survivor’s Story of Faith and Imprisonment in Communist China (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 2000), 156–62. 37. Robert E. Carbonneau, “China: Ecclesiastical History, 19th–20th Centuries,” Studies on Passionist History and Spirituality, no. 31 (Rome: Passionist Generalate, 2005): 9. 38. Madsen, China’s Catholics. 39. Eriberto Patrick Lozada, God Aboveground: Catholic Church, Postsocialist State, and Transnational Processes in a Chinese Village (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).

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40. Devaux and Wong, Bamboo Swaying in the Wind, 122–23. 41. This is based on my fieldwork observation at several Protestant congregations in Shantou in 1998, 2002, 2004, and 2006. 42. Grace Y. May, “Watchman Nee and the Breaking of Bread: The Missiological and Spiritual Forces that Contributed to an Indigenous Chinese Ecclesiology,” ThD dissertation, School of Theology, Boston University, 2000. 43. Bays, “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today,” 495. 44. Zhong Min and Kim-Kwong Chan, “The ‘Apostolic Church’: A Case Study of a House Church in China,” in Christianity in China: Foundations for Dialogue, eds. Beatrice Leung and John D. Young (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1993), 255–56. 45. Edward Shils, Tradition (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981), 50. 46. I thank Fr. Robert E. Carbonneau, CP, of the Passionist Historical Archives in Union City, New Jersey, for sharing with me this information based on his extensive interviews with many Catholic leaders in China. 47. Daniel H. Bays, “Independent Protestant Churches in China, 1900–1937: A Pentecostal Case Study,” in Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity, ed. Steven Kaplan (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 124–43. 48. Leung Ka-Lun, Gaige kaifang yilai de Zhongguo nongcun jiaohui (The Rural Churches of China since the Reform Era) (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1999), 411–27. 49. Gao Shining, “Chinese Christianity in the 21st Century,” in Christian Theology and Intellectuals in China, Centre for Multireligious Studies Occasional Papers, no. 5 (Aarhus, Denmark: Centre for Multireligious Studies, University of Aarhus, 2003), 52–53. Available at www.teo.au.dk/cms/forskning/publikationer/as-oc5.pdf. 50. Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 51. Daniel L. Overmyer, Religions of China: The World as a Living System (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1986); “Chinese Religions as Part of the History of Salvation: A Dialogue with Christianity,” Ching Feng 40, no. 1 (March 1997): 1–14; and “Convergence: Chinese Gods and Christian Saints,” Ching Feng 40, no. 3–4 (December 1997): 215–32. 52. Richard Madsen, “Beyond Orthodoxy: Catholicism as Chinese Folk Religion,” in China and Christianity, eds. Uhalley Jr. and Wu, 233–49. 53. Francis Ching-Wah Yip, “Protestant Christianity and Popular Religion in China: A Case of Syncretism?” Ching Feng 42, no. 3–4 (1999): 130–75; Deng Zhaoming, “Indigenous Chinese Pentecostal Denominations,” and Edmond Tang, “Yellers and Healers: Pentecostalism and the Study of Grassroots Christianity in China,” in Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, eds. Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang (Costa Mesa, CA: Regnum Books, 2005), 437–86. 54. Leung, Gaige kaifang yilai de Zhongguo nongcun jiaohui, 175–76; Deng, “Recent Millennial Movements,” 50–53; Wu, Xiejiao di mimi, 66–67. 55. Cheng Hiu-chun, Zheng ye Henan, Xie ye Henan? (Why Is Henan a Christian Province Full of Evil Sects?) (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 2006). 56. Jason Kindopp, “China’s Wars on Cults,” Current History 100 (September 2002): 259–66; Kim-Kwong Chan and Eric R. Carlson, Religious Freedom in China: Policy, Administration, and Regulation—A Research Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: Institute for the Study of American Religion, 2005), 14–16; Maria Hsia Chang, Falun Gong: The End of Days (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 57. Eric R. Carlson, “China’s New Regulations on Religion: A Small Step, Not a Great Leap, Forward,” Brigham Young University Law Review, no. 3 (2005): 747–97; Bryan Edelman and James T. Richardson, “Imposed Limitations on Freedom of Religion in China and the Margin of Appreciation Doctrine: A Legal Analysis of the Crackdown on the Falun Gong and Other ‘Evil Cults,’” Journal of Church and State 47 (March 2005): 243–67. 58. Edelman and Richardson, “Imposed Limitations,” 254.

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59. Yang Fenggang, “The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China,” Sociological Quarterly 47 (2006): 93–122. According to Yang, the Christian sectarian groups banned by the Chinese state include the Shouters or Yellers, Established King, Eastern Lightning, the Lord God Sect, the Spirit Church, the Full-Scope Church, the South China Church, the Disciples Sect or Narrow Gate, the Three Ranks of Servants, the Cold Water Sect, the China Gospel Fellowship, the China Fangcheng Church, the China Blessings Church, the China Truth Church, the Commune Sect, the Disciple Faith Church, and the Resurrection Sect. 60. Susan Naquin, “Connections between Rebellions: Sect Family Network in Qing China,” Modern China 8, no. 3 (July 1982): 337–60. 61. Chen Cunfu and Huang Tianhai, “The Emergence of a New Type of Christians in China Today,” Review of Religious Research 46, no. 2 (2004): 183–200; Nanlai Cao, Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christians, Power, and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). 62. Fredik Fällman, Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China (Stockholm, Sweden: Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, 2004); Pan-Chiu Lai and Jason T. S. Lam, eds., Sino-Christian Theology: A Theological Qua Cultural Movement in Contemporary China (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010). 63. Ryan Dunch, “Protestant Christianity in China Today: Fragile, Fragmented, Flourishing,” in China and Christianity, eds. Uhalley Jr. and Wu, 195–216. 64. “Chinese House Church Leaders Met with US President,” May 12, 2006. Available at http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=3585. 65. Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, 289–92. 66. Zhou Jinghao, “The Role of Chinese Christianity in the Process of China’s Democratization,” American Journal of Chinese Studies 13, no. 1 (April 2006): 117–36. 67. Siu-Keung Cheung, Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, and Lida V. Nedilsky, eds., Marginalization in China: Recasting Minority Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 68. Sharon LaFraniere and Edward Wong, “Even with Protests Averted, China Turns to Intimidation of Foreign Journalists,” New York Times, 17 March 2011, A4 and A9; “Repression and the New Ruling Class: China’s Crackdown,” and “China’s New Rulers: Princelings and the Goon State,” Economist, 16 April 2011, 12 and 43–44; Andrew Jacobs, “Illicit Church, Evicted, Tries to Buck Beijing,” New York Times, 18 April 2011, A4 and A9; Andrew Jacobs, “Chinese Christians Detained after Attempt at Easter Rites,” New York Times, 25 April 2011, A6; David Barboza, “Truck Drivers in Shanghai Plan to Resume Protests,” New York Times, 25 April 2011, A6. 69. Robert P. Weller, Alternate Civilities: Democracy and Culture in China and Taiwan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).

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Index

aboveground church (dishang jiaohui). See registered church accommodationism, 5–9, 10, 14, 15, 22–23, 24, 31, 36, 44, 93–94, 109–110, 137, 171n50, 176 AepMV (Allgemeiner evangelischprotestantischer Missionsverein), 118, 120, 121, 123, 124–125, 126, 128, 130–132, 135, 138, 139, 140n6, 141n21, 141n25, 141n30, 142n32, 142n41 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 179 ancestor: tombs, 7, 153; veneration, 2, 148–149, 152–153, 154, 155 Anderson, Rufus, 179 Ang, Chang, 108 Anthony of Padua, 109, 157, 162–163, 170n40 anti-: American, 180; Christian, 2, 3, 12, 64–65, 93, 97–98, 101, 102, 104, 188; dogmatic, 128; foreign, 41, 93, 101–102, 104, 105; religious, 117, 184, 187 apotropaic charms, 155, 167 Aquinas, Thomas, 43, 48 Aristotle, 47, 48, 49, 52 Augustine of Hippo, 39, 46, 48 autonomous church. See unregistered church Balat, Théodoric, 105, 107, 114n57 baptism, 14, 29, 30, 117, 119, 120, 123–124, 125–127, 129, 133–134, 138–139, 153, 166, 171n48, 176, 182 Baptists, 7, 93, 99, 101, 102, 105, 108, 186–187 barbarian, 28, 29, 31, 65, 67, 68, 97, 122, 126 Basset, Jean, 60, 64

Bates, M. Searle, 181 Bégin, Louis Nazaire, 107, 109, 114n57 beheading. See decapitation Bellarmine, Robert, 43, 46 Bible, reading of, 82–83, 118, 119, 133, 135, 137, 138, 159, 191 Bixiejishi (A Record of Facts to Ward Off Heterodoxy), 3, 97, 101 blasphemy, 13, 79–80, 86, 87–88, 89 Blessed Virgin Mary. See Holy Mother Blumhardt, Benjamin, 132 Blumhardt, Christoph, 14, 117, 118, 119–121, 123, 125–126, 127, 128, 129–130, 131, 134, 135, 138, 139, 139n1, 139n3, 140n6 Blumhardt, Johann Christoph, 119 Blumhardt, Salome, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 132, 139n3 Bohner, Hermann, 132 Boie, Friedrich, 128, 129, 141n25 Bölsche, Wilhelm, 127, 141n22 Boone, William, 83, 84, 85, 91n17 boss Christians (laoban jidutu), 190–191 Boxer: leaders, 105; Uprising, 3–5, 93, 94, 95, 103, 108, 109, 117, 122; violence, 98, 99, 101, 107, 110. See also Taiyuan incident Buddhism, 2, 29, 34–35, 52, 81, 90n4, 119, 159, 166, 186; bodhisattva, 13, 149, 166; deity, 31; karma, 167, 171n50; Lamaist, 176; monks, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34. See also Guanyin Bureau of Religious Affairs, 181, 184, 185, 186 catechism, 2, 26, 27, 61, 94, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164 Catholic Patriotic Association, 174, 177, 179, 181–182, 184, 193 Chen Longzheng, 41 215

216

Index

Chen Lüzhang, 64, 66 Chen Tianhua, 98, 101 Chen Zixue, 70 China Christian Council, 177, 185 China Inland Mission, 99 Chinese New Year, 148, 152, 153, 154 Chinese Rites controversy, 52, 59, 60, 71n3, 91n16 “Christian Manifesto,” 180 Church Missionary Society, 179 church-state separation, 174 civilized, European as, 14, 26–27, 35, 97, 122, 136 Cixi, 102 clan families, 28, 148, 152–153 Communism/Communist, 76n67, 173, 176, 177, 179–181, 183, 184, 188, 189, 194 Confucian: character, 108, 121, 191; classics, 11, 49, 52, 81, 83, 87, 133; junzi, 15, 119, 136, 137–138; literati, 6, 11, 41, 55n3, 81, 108, 131; rites, 2, 23, 117, 119, 124, 188; society, 119, 124–125, 135, 136–137; spirituality, 14–15, 139; tradition, 8, 34, 80, 130, 134 Confucius, 6, 8, 22, 49, 65, 71n3, 136, 137, 149 conversion/converts, 2, 3, 5, 11, 22, 23, 24, 31–32, 36, 47, 55n3, 55n9, 94, 102, 109, 110–111, 125, 130, 138, 152–153, 173, 175, 176, 182, 183, 188, 190, 194 Coombs, Edith, 99, 102, 113n39 Costa, Girolamo, 2, 110 Council of Trent, 47 crisis of faith (xinyang weiji), 173 Cultural Revolution, 182, 188 Dainichi, 31 damnation, eternal, 50, 88, 135, 159, 166, 167 decapitation, 14, 92n32, 93, 101, 103, 108, 110 deities. See Buddhism; folk religion demons/devils: exorcism of, 112n25, 155, 189; foreigners as, 4, 98, 104–105; idols as, 85–86, 95–96 Deng Xiaoping, 184 dialogue, 6, 23, 24, 25, 53, 130

dissidents, 193 divination (fengshui), 4, 155 Doctor Fu Manchu, 96 drought, 63, 163–164, 167, 168 Dufresse, Gabriel-Taurin, 71 Duval, Mary, 102 Eastern Lightning (Dongfang Shandian), 189 Ecclesia Militans, 96 Edwards, Eben, 102 eschatology, 16, 118, 127 Established King (Beili Wang), 16, 189 ethnic minorities, 176, 178, 186 evil cults (xiejiao), 189. See also Falun Gong Faber, Ernst, 121–122, 131, 140n5 Falun Gong, 189 famine, 101, 104, 110. See also drought Farthing, George, 99, 101 Favre, Peter, 25 feudalism, 35, 136, 189 filial piety, 55n9, 64–65, 108, 182 Fogolla, Francis, 105, 106 folk religion, 2, 15, 84, 145–146, 148–149, 152, 153–155, 159, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 189, 190. See also Kitchen God; Old Man Heaven “Four-Self” church, 193 Franciscans, 93, 102, 103–104, 105, 106–107, 113n48, 170n40; Missionaries of Mary, 109 free market economy, 173, 174 fundamentalism, 190, 192 German leased territory, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122–123, 131, 133, 137 Geschäftsausschuss (GA), 131 globalism, 23, 24, 174, 176, 177, 178, 181 Glover, Archibald, 101 God, naming of. See Shangdi; Tianzhu gods, lesser. See folk religion Goforth, Jonathon, 108 Good Words to Encourage the World (Quanshi liangyan), 82 good works. See salvation Goyau, Georges, 106–107, 109, 114n55

Index

217

Grassi, Gregory, 104, 105–106, 107, 109, 113n47, 114n55 grunting pig religion, 3, 97 Guanyin, 13, 166 guardian angels, 157, 162 Guo Qizi (“Old Star of Longevity”), 105 Gützlaff, Charles, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 91n14

Jesus Family, 175, 187 jiatangye (family hall gods), 148–149 jiatingshen (household gods), 148–149 Jing shi zhong (Alarm Bells), 98, 101 Jin Luxian, Aloysius, 185 Johnson, Charles F., 103 judgment, 45; final, 166, 190; personal, 166 junzi. See Confucian

hagiography, 25, 93, 95, 102, 109 Hakka Catholics, 186 harmonious society (hexie shehui), 192, 193 von Harnack, Adolf, 130 healing. See miracles heathen, 9, 126, 131, 137 heaven, views of, 13, 22, 50, 77, 81, 84, 88, 107, 153, 159–160, 166–167 hell. See damnation, eternal heterodoxy, 1, 12, 67, 68, 70, 89, 92n33 Hipwell, W. E., 95–96 Holy Mother, 109, 156, 157, 163–164, 165–166, 167, 168, 186 Holy Trinity. See Trinity Hong Xiuquan, 13, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 85–88, 89, 90n3, 91n14 house church (jiating jiaohui), 175, 184, 190. See also unregistered church Huangdi, 13, 79, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90n2, 92n30. See also Shangdi; Tianzhu Huang Tinggui, 63, 64, 66, 67–68, 70, 71

Kant, Immanuel, 139 Kind, August, 125, 126, 131 Kitchen God, 148, 149, 153, 154. See also folk religion Kranz, Paul, 131

iconoclasm, 85–86 Ignatius of Loyola, 11, 25–26, 42–43, 45–46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56n19, 57n40, 57n43 illiteracy, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164, 190 indirect missionary method, 14–15, 124–125 intercessory prayer, 107, 109, 154, 156–157, 160, 162–164, 168

labor camps, 184, 185, 187 Landeskirche, 120, 125, 141n31 Landor, Arnold Henry Savage, 103 Latin, 31, 46, 57n36, 160, 161 Lefebvre, Urbain, 12, 61–64, 65, 66–68, 69–70, 71 Leninism, 179, 185 Liang Afa, 82 Li Di (Li Wenyu), 107 Li Guishu, 63, 68 lineage, 6, 7, 148, 152, 158, 183, 186, 189. See also clan families Little Flock, 175, 187, 192 Liu Dapeng, 104 Lixian Shuyuan School for Boys, 118, 124, 132–135, 138–139, 141n21, 142n36, 142n41 Li Zhi, 8, 41 local religion. See folk religion London Missionary Society, 84 Lovitt, Arnold, 99, 102 Lunyu (Analects of Confucius), 136, 137 Lutheranism, 35, 120, 124, 128 Ly, Andreas (Li Ande), 12, 60, 61–63, 64–65, 66, 67, 68, 69 Ly, Lucas (Li Shiyin), 60, 63, 72n10–72n11

Jade Emperor, 88, 156, 164 Jesuit, 1, 2, 8, 21–23, 26, 28, 65, 71, 93, 107, 110, 185; Constitutions, 42–43, 50; Figurists, 6–7, 14, 137; formation, 11–12, 39–53

magic, 4, 97, 105 Maoist era, 16, 173–174, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191 Mao Zedong, 174, 180, 183 Maria della Pace, 109

218

Index

Marie Amandina, 109 Marshman, Joshua, 82 martial arts, 105 martyrdom/martyrs, 3, 9, 14, 30, 70, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102–103, 104, 105–108, 109, 110, 187 Medhurst, Walter, 83–85, 86, 87, 91n18 Mencius, 11, 137 Messianic, 16, 189 Mie gui ge (Exterminating the Demons Song), 98, 101 Minor, Luella, 103, 107 miracles, 26, 108, 141n24, 156, 188, 189 morality, 8, 29, 49, 97, 132, 166–167, 193 Morrison, Robert, 82 Müllener, Johannes (Mu Tianchi), 67, 72n9, 75n55

187–188, 195 Pig Head Alley, 102, 105 Pigott, Thomas, 108 pilgrimage sites, 163–164, 186 Planchet, Jean-Marie, 110 polytheism, 7, 84 population of Christians, 15, 59, 175, 176–178 Porter, Henry D., 103 preaching, 21–23, 26, 30, 36, 65, 68, 77, 107, 108, 120–121, 129, 186 Presbyterians, 103, 133–134, 139, 186–187 pro-: Communist, 180, 184–185; Vatican, 175, 176, 184–185, 192–193

National Administrative Commission, 184 National Christian Council, 180 National Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 180

Rain Prayer (Qiuyujing), 156, 163 registered church, 15, 175, 177–178, 185, 187. See also Three-Self Patriotic Movement Ricci, Giovanni, 109 Ricci, Matteo, 1–2, 5–6, 7–8, 10, 11–12, 16–17, 21, 23, 24, 36, 39–53, 54, 77, 80–81, 93–94, 98, 110, 167; intellectual suitcase, 11, 12, 42, 45, 47, 49, 53 rice Christians, 110, 157 Richard, Timothy, 124 ritual, 3, 53, 71n3, 156, 159, 162 Rohmer, Sax, 96 Roman College, 42, 43, 46, 47, 51, 56n15 Ruggeri, Michele, 44 rural China, 16, 168, 173, 178, 182, 183, 188, 190. See also village life

obedience, vow of, 11–12, 49–51, 52, 57n43, 167 Old Man Heaven (Laotianye), 15, 156, 161–162, 164–165 Old Master Guan, 105 one-party state, 173, 180, 181, 192, 194 open church (dishang jiaohui). See registered church open door policy, 184 Opium Wars, 83 Ordo Fratrum Minorum. See Franciscans original sin, 166, 171n48 orthodox, 89, 92n33, 117; Christianity, 14, 178 Ouang, Jacobus (Wang Shangzhong), 62, 63, 64, 66, 67–68, 75n56, 188 Ouang, Marcus, 63 patriarchy, 148, 149, 165, 182 Pe, Petrus, 62, 64 peasants. See village life persecution, 12, 35, 61, 67, 71, 74n37, 101, 107, 173–174, 176, 182, 184,

Qin Shi Huangdi, 13, 86

sacrificial offerings, 84, 85, 92n30, 95–96, 148, 152, 153–154, 155, 168. See also ancestor, veneration salvation, 11, 22, 35, 46, 158–159, 166–167, 171n48, 173, 174, 183, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192 Sanz, Pedro, 70, 73n19 Satan, 3–4, 96, 97. See also demons/ devils Schall von Bell, Johann Adam, 21, 54, 65, 75n49 Schofield Memorial Hospital, 99, 102

Index Schrameier, Wilhelm, 132 Schüler, Wilhelm, 122, 127, 132, 140n6 Seuffert, Wilhelm, 132 Seventh-day Adventists, 187 Shangdi, 13, 78, 79, 80–89, 90n2, 165. See also Tianzhu Shen (gods), 82–85 Shouwang Church, 193 Simpson, James, 99 Siu, Stephanus (Xu Dewang), 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 72n9 Social Democrats, 120, 125 socialism, 16, 174, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188 Socialist Education Movement, 182 Société des Missions Étrangères, 2, 12, 60, 61, 64, 67, 69, 72n9 Society of Jesus. See Jesuit Society of the Divine Word, 96 South China Church, 190 spirits. See ancestor, veneration Spiritual Exercises, 11, 42, 45–46, 49, 51, 52, 55n12 state surveillance, 175, 191, 192 Stenz, George M., 96–97 Stokes, George, 99 Stuttgart Parliament, 120, 127 superstition, 2, 179, 189 Swiss Federation, 130 Taiping: Heavenly Kingdom, 77, 87; Rebellion, 5, 13–14, 77–80, 85–89 Taiyuan incident, 14, 93–111 Tan Yufeng, 134, 142n36 Taoist/Daoist, 2, 90n4, 92n33, 117, 186 Taylor, James Hudson, 99 Tching, Basilius, 64 Te Deum, 93, 107 temples, 35, 85, 89, 95, 149–152, 154, 165, 167, 168, 169n10, 175 Tertullian, 11, 48, 95, 111 Three Character Classic (Sanzijing), 87 Three-Self Patriotic Movement, 174, 175, 177, 179–181, 182, 185, 187, 189, 192, 193 Tianzhu (Lord of Heaven), 15, 81, 82, 97, 165. See also Shangdi Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), 2, 8, 17, 52, 81

219

Tibetan Christians, 176 Tonggongjing (Tonggong Classic), 160, 170n34 Treatise on Friendship (Jiaoyoulun), 5, 52 Trigault, Michel, 98 Trigault, Nicolas, 98 Trinity, 6, 31, 156, 157, 165 Troeltsch, Ernst, 130 True Jesus Church, 175, 187 uncivilized. See barbarian underground church (dixia jiaohui). See unregistered church united front policy, 179, 180 unregistered church, 15, 175–176, 177–178, 184, 185, 187, 193 Valignano, Alessandro, 21, 42, 43–44, 45, 93, 110 veneration, 2, 31, 124, 148–149, 152, 153, 154–155, 156–157, 164. See also ancestor, veneration Venn, Henry, 179 Verbiest, Ferdinand, 10, 21, 23 village life, 103–104, 145–169, 178, 182, 186, 188–189, 190 Virgil, 48 Virgin Mary. See Holy Mother virtue, attainment of, 22, 49, 97, 98, 108, 149, 159, 174 Wang, Gabriel, 63 Wang Lanlan, Paola (Van Lan Lan), 109 Watchman Nee, 187 Weimar Mission. See AepMV Weissinger, Johannes, 125 Whitehouse, Silvester, 99 White Lotus, 12, 63, 69, 74n38 Wilhelm, Richard, 14–15, 117–139 Wilhelm, Salome. See Blumhardt, Salome Witte, Johannes, 130, 132, 135, 138 Wong, George Bernard, 185 wordless teaching, 129, 134, 136 worship of ancestors. See ancestor, veneration Wu, Y. T. (Wu Yaozong), 180, 181 Wuerttemberg Pietism, 119

220

Index

Wu Yangming, 16, 189. See also Established King Xavier, Francis, 10–11, 16, 21–37, 44, 45, 54, 56n22 Xu Guangqi, 69 Xu Guodong, 66 Yajiro (Paul of the Holy Name), 27, 28, 29, 31, 37n11 Yang Guangxian, 65, 75n49 Yangwu Yundong, 139 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 180 Yuan Shikai, 123, 134 Yue Zhonghuang, 66, 67–68, 71, 74n44

Yue Zhongqi, 71, 74n44 Yuxian, Governor, 99, 100, 101–103, 105–107, 108, 109, 110, 114n55, 114n69 Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft (ZMR), 123, 124, 130 Zhang Dejian, 88 Zhou Cang, 105, 114n51 Zhou Enlai, 180 Zhou Fu, 134 Zhou Wan, 64, 66 Zhou Xuejian, 70 Zosé (Sheshan) incident, 186 Zuo Yuezhang, 63

About the Contributors

Anthony E. Clark is associate professor of Chinese history at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. He offers courses on the history of Christianity in China, as well as ancient through contemporary Chinese history. Some of Clark’s previous publications include China’s Saints: Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing; Beating Devils and Burning Their Books: Views of China, Japan, and the West; and Ban Gu’s History of Early China. Eric P. Cunningham is associate professor of Asian history at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He offers courses regarding Japanese and East Asian history and civilization as well as world history. Some of Cunningham’s previous publications include Zen Past and Present and Hallucinating the End of History. Robert Entenmann is professor of history and Asian studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he teaches East Asian history. His research focuses on the social history of Chinese Catholics in eighteenth-century Sichuan. Entenmann’s publications include studies of the history of Chinese Catholicism, several of which have been translated into Chinese. Lydia Gerber teaches in the Department of History at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. Her research interests include Protestant missions in China and Sino-German relations, with a special focus on Richard Wilhelm. Gerber has published in both English and German regarding missionaries in North China after the Boxer Uprising, including her book Von Voskamps “heidnischem Treiben” und Wilhelms “höherem China”. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is professor of history at Pace University in New York City. He offers courses on Asian history and film and on Christianity in China. His latest publications include The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China (2003); Marginalization in China: Recasting Minority Politics (2009); and China’s Rise to Power: Conceptions of State Governance (2012). Liu Anrong teaches at Shanxi Administrative College in Shanxi Province in the People’s Republic of China. Her research especially considers the 221

222

About the Contributors

oral histories of Catholic villagers in northern China who lived during the Republican Era. Liu has published Shanxi Tianzhujiao shi yanjiu (Research on the History of Shanxi Catholicism) on the subject of folk religion in northern China. Michael Maher, SJ, is associate professor of history and the director of Catholic studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He offers courses in early modern European and Catholic intellectual history. Maher has also published widely on the impact of Jesuit thought and practice in various historical contexts. Thomas H. Reilly is associate professor of Asian studies at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He offers courses on Asian traditions and modern Chinese history and thought. Among his previous publications, Reilly has written The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire.