The Dialogue between Islam and Christianity in the Republican Era from the Perspective of Christian Missionaries: a Study of Isaac Mason’s “Conciliatory” Strategy of Literary Evangelizing

Abstract

During the late Qing and Republican Era, Christian missionaries from the West encountered Chinese Muslims. Missionaries and Muslims engaged in deep discussion and communication surrounding the topic of Christian missionary writings. Initially, the missionaries distributed Arabic and Persian literature that had been effective for missionary efforts in such Islamic lands as Egypt and India to Chinese Muslims, which were welcomed and respected by regular Muslim communities in many locations around China. However, in the effort to explain the distinctions between Christianity and Islam, towards the end of the nineteenth century some missionaries began producing Christian tracts in Chinese to proselytize Muslims, which were criticized from the traditional Islamic standpoint as overly aggressive and quickly aroused the resistance and condemnation of Muslim intellectuals in China. After 1917, with the establishment of the Special Committee for Work on Muslims and the flourishing of the Chinese Muslim cultural movement, the British missionary Isaac Mason of the Society of Friends (Quakers) proposed a “conciliatory” strategy for literary evangelizing that involved the collection, reading, and deep research of Chinese Islamic writings aimed at Muslims and the production and translation of special Christian literature for Muslims using less criticism, more conciliatory language, and Chinese Islamic terminology to lessen Chinese Muslims’ aversion to Christian missionary writings. Mason’s missionary strategy directly influenced wider Christian literature and missionary efforts of the 1920s and ‘30s in China. After the Society of the Friends of Muslims in China was established in 1927, Mason further developed his missionary strategy towards the aim of “establishing friendly contacts with Muslims.” He acknowledged that the foundation for dialogue between Christianity and Islam rested on their similar beliefs, advocated the acceptance of the differences between them, and promoted the active pursuit of friendship with Chinese Muslims with an attitude of sympathy and tolerance. These ideas were all included in the program of the Society of the Friends of Muslims, which provided the basic approach to handling relations between Christian missionaries and Chinese Muslims during the Republican Era and propelled Western Christian missionaries and Chinese Muslims towards peaceful dialogue and engagement. Mason’s strategy of “conciliatory” evangelical literary work demonstrated a clear shift in Christian missionaries’ attitude towards Chinese Islam, revealing that missionaries in China had reflected on the problem of handling relations between the two faiths and demonstrating their tolerance. It was precisely this kind of reflection that made the Christian missionary movement more reasonable and develop more stridently in the direction of dialogue over time.