China Inland Mission Research Articles

Modern missionary work and Chinese women’s literacy: Amy Moore in China 1930–1949

ABSTRACT This article analyses the early work of the Australian missionary Amy Moore, who worked for the China Inland Mission for twenty years. Moore aimed to develop local Christian women leaders who would contribute to China’s spiritual and moral evolution, under the continuing guidance of the colonialism of the European powers. Moore was critical of much of the colonial interventions of Britain and others, but she did not consider that China had yet reached a state of spiritual and cultural maturity, particularly in its treatment of women. Her plan was to improve adult women’s literacy, combining her evangelical passion with influences from international movements for women’s emancipation, and campaigns to improve the condition of Chinese women. Moore’s work was also framed by international and progressive changes in the world mission movement in the interwar years. At the same time Moore responded to modernising changes within contemporary China. Improvements in health, education, and gendered relations for rural women influenced missionary women’s work. Moore shared many life experiences as young woman with Chinese colleagues and friends, yet always the bonds of affection and emotion were cut through by colonial and racial divides.

A Passion for China: Norwegian Mission to China Until 1949 ed. by Tormod Engelsviken, Notto R. Thelle, and Knut Edvard Larsen

Reviewed by: A Passion for China: Norwegian Mission to China Until 1949 ed. by Tormod Engelsviken, Notto R. Thelle, and Knut Edvard Larsen Richard Carter A Passion for China: Norwegian Mission to China Until 1949. Edited by Tormod Engelsviken, Notto R. Thelle, and Knut Edvard Larsen. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2015. 202 pp. An introduction, an overview, and nine chapters, like facets of a jewel, each enriched with documented detail and bibliography, offer a substantial view of Norwegian-grounded missionary activity in China through the mid-twentieth century. The style of writing ranges from pious to precise. Alongside the Norwegian passion one catches the passions of particular authors, for example, for feminism and equal rights. The commitment to documentation and the deep Norwegian roots of this text—translations of Norwegian terms are given—can mean that a reader is slowed down in understanding the content. [End Page 108] "Saving of Souls and the Return of the Lord …" describes an almost distracting array of mission agencies, including the Mission Covenant Church of Norway (MCCN), the China Inland Mission, the Free Mission Association, the Scandinavian Alliance Mission, the Christian Missionary Alliance, the Norwegian Missionary Alliance, and the Norwegian China Mission. At the same time, in particular following the biography and work of Swedish-American Fredrik Franson, this chapter narrates the impact of pre-millennialism in some Norwegian mission work. This includes the choice of MCCN to work as a faith-mission, so as "to avoid criticism from the older mission boards … [and] not compete for funds" (29). "Relationships—The Heart of Mission: The Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Norway's Mission to China 1916–1949" first provides a brief history of the work of the ELFCN, including the numbers of missionaries, of schools and churches, and of Chinese workers. The chapter then works through a range of relevant relationships: with God, the Chinese community, Chinese Christians (in general and with co-workers), with other missions, between missionaries of the ELFCN, within the missionary family, and with the sending church and its members. The last portion moves beyond the title of the book: "Relationships after 1949." "Marie Monsen's Achievement" acknowledges the policy of the China Inland Mission to accept both men and women, and then details the significant work of Marie Monsen (1878–1962). The writer proposes "that God must be a supporter of women's liberation as well as modern Western civilization, since he directs his obedient female followers to become professional teachers and nurses …" (92). She adds "Marie Monsen's feminist commitment seems to have been largely overlooked when she lived as an elderly woman in Bergen" (108). One paragraph of "Diakonia" describes the turbulent era in China covered by all the chapters. During the fifty years within which the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) "was engaged in its work in China the country went through great political changes. The empire lasted until the revolution in 1911 "[with] both the internal conflicts [three are listed] and externally between the Chinese and the Japanese [and then] the communist takeover [which] resulted in [End Page 109] the establishment of the PRC on October 1, 1949 [sic]" (135). The chapter documents many facets of NMS diakonia: medical missions and the prevention of foot-binding of Chinese girls, discussions on women's work, promoting "human rights … by widely promoting the art of reading and writing" (137), overcoming and preventing social diseases, hospital work, sustainable development and respect for the patients' human worth, a school for the blind and an orphanage for abandoned children. Having served six years in Hong Kong, there catching glimpses of the major work of Karl Ludvig Reichelt (1877–1952), I much appreciated the closing chapter: "The Beginnings of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in China." It documents clearly the long, deep "second fiddle" work of Notto Normann Thelle (1901–1990) that supported Reichelt. The chapter makes it possible first to honor the famous missionary and then to honor all who contribute to and support the great workers, including all those Norwegians whose passion for the Good News moved them to serve in mission in China, to 1949 and beyond. Richard Carter Concordia University Saint Paul, Minnesota Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and...

Leipcigas un Lībencellas misijas: Hildegardes Procelas un Lilijas Otīlijas Grīviņas kalpošana

Until the 19th century, women were not considered suitable for mission work. However, when Leipzig mission started its work in India, it came to the realization that to reach Indian women with the Gospel, women missionaries were needed. Soon, other German mission societies that sent missionaries to China, Indonesia and Africa also came to the same conclusion, opening the doors for ministry for the first women from Vidzeme (Livland). Baltic-German Hildegard Prozell, from Jaunmārupe, was sent in 1896 through Leipzig to India and Lilija Otilija Grīviņa, (in German Grihwin, Griwing, Griewing) from Riga, were sent in 1913 through Liebenzell to China. Each of these societies had different theological understandings about mission. Leipzig was based on the traditional Lutheran understanding of ministry and tried to create a universal Lutheran church worldwide, including in the mission fields. Liebenzell was the German branch of China Inland Mission, which was considered a “faith” mission that was more open to co-working with others. This impacted the way the mission societies selected their candidates, prepared them (a few months for Leipzig, 3–4 years for Liebenzell with male and female candidates training together), and sent them on the missions (solid salary for Prozell, not so with Grīviņa). Both missionaries had to learn the local languages and pass language exams. They both served as teachers, did evangelism with local women, and had to be administrators and local health care specialists. Prozell was the first to establish women’s work in Mayavaram, while Grīviņa was the first to take Chinese women to a local evangelism outreach (together with other teaching staff of the Hunan Bible Institute). Prozell, being a Baltic-German, received extensive support from her home church. Since her ministry took place before World War I, there are plenty of publications about her ministry in both Latvian and German newspapers in Riga. Grīviņa came from a humble background, going with almost no support, and as her ministry in China happened during WWI, there were almost no publications about her work. Both women have been equally forgotten in Latvian church history and deserve to be remembered.

Translation as Conversion: Richard Wilhelm’s Bekehrung and the Bekehrter

Translation as Conversion: Richard Wilhelm’s <i>Bekehrung</i> and the <i>Bekehrter</i>

John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man by Daryl R. Ireland

Reviewed by: John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man by Daryl R. Ireland T. H. Barrett Daryl R. Ireland, John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2020. xix, 248 pp. US$49.95 (hb). ISBN 978-1-4813-1270-1 To most readers interested in Chinese Christianity, John Sung (to give the historically more usual form of his name; September 27, 1901–August 18, 1944) will be little more than a brief entry in reference works; to a smaller number he will be fondly remembered as the fountainhead of a rich stream of Chinese Protestant revivalism that flows strongly to this day. To Daryl Ireland, this man has been initially and perhaps is even now something of a puzzle, but he also proved the starting point for a narrative that cannot but grip the attention of anyone capable of responding imaginatively to the turbulent world of a Republican China yearning for something new, and something better. Ireland clearly shows how these yearnings in Sung’s case prompted a sequence of reinventions by himself and by others that subverts any easy expectations of definitive biography. Instead, we are treated to a fine characterization of the period followed by a startling sequence of vignettes, taking us from a young student beset by mental health issues in a strange land, through journeys hither and yon within China and overseas, and finally on to the tragedy of a successful spiritual physician unable to heal himself, succumbing to illness well before his time, and yet once more far from his native place. In some respects, the author has foreshortened the narrative of Sung’s life in a way that is not entirely helpful. We learn little of his Fujian childhood with his pastor father, whereas by contrast the first English-language biography of his subject, by Leslie T. Lyall,1 follows a more predictable trajectory, including an intriguing photograph of Sung senior using visual aids on an easel to preach to a crowd. Lyall also appends a provisional chronology of his life, covering his departure for Ohio Wesleyan University in 1920 (BA 1923), his graduate work at Ohio State University (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1926), the mental crisis he experienced at Union Theological Seminary in 1927 (given by Lyall, in accordance with the narrative formerly prevailing, a rather bland spiritual interpretation), his 1928 marriage and then meeting with the Shanghainese preacher Andrew Gih (though Sung eventually mastered some Mandarin, one suspects their common language was English), followed from 1930 by frenetic evangelistic activity. By 1931 he had reached as far as Manchuria, followed in 1932 by Canton and Hong Kong, and Shandong, Shanxi, Guangdong, and back north to Inner Mongolia in 1933. After splitting from Gih and his fellows in 1934, he branched out in 1935 not only through the provinces of China but also to the Philippines and Malaya, including Singapore, with 1936 seeing him return to the Nanyang, after first spending a week or so in Japanese-controlled Taiwan. Though for 1937 he confined his activities to China, in 1938 he was off again to Thailand, back to Yunnan, and then in October once more in Singapore, plus Kuala Lumpur and Penang, In 1939 two trips to Java were followed by excursions to Makassar and Ambon, combined with further visits to Singapore; from 1940 onwards his declining health kept him in Beijing.2 Ireland is probably right in abandoning Lyall’s solely China Inland Mission view of China and the Chinese diaspora and, cutting to the chase, trying to read the key aspects of Sung’s life against the tides of early twentieth century Chinese history taken as a whole. But an update of Lyall’s appendix at least might have helped the reader to navigate the largely implied rather than clearly signalled chronology. [End Page 328] There is, in any case, much to be gained from reading this book. First, the author does not disguise the way in which he has crafted a compelling narrative from very disparate materials. In the United States he has found records that give us access to the mind of...

“Translated” or “Transformed”: The Use of Western Hymns in the Evangelization of the Lisu of Southwest China

Translated western hymns have a bad reputation in missiology. The term “translated” seems to convey a less than authentic expression of Christian faith. However, that was not how it happened when the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized by missionaries from the China Inland Mission in the 1920s and 1930s. The Lisu people exerted much more agency over their translated western hymns than the term “translated” implies. While the kernel of melody and message remained intact, four-part harmonies replaced unison singing. A cappella replaced piano or organ accompaniment. Phrases meaningful in a Victorian context were transformed into phrases meaningful in a Lisu mountain context. Abstract theological terms were replaced by concrete phrases. Western rhyming schemes were laid aside and Lisu poetic couplets were used instead. The end result is that in the everyday arena, in the practical living out of what it means to be a Christian for a communal and still largely oral-preference people such as the Lisu, the Lisu Christian hymns are the centerpiece of worship and devotion, of prayer and penitence. In other words, in the process of cross-cultural transmission, the Lisu hymns were not so much translated, as they were transformed.

Reimagining the Protestant Missionary Family: The Malcolms of the China Inland Mission

This article considers how to meaningfully discuss or understand the missionary family, focusing on the longer life and potential adjustments of family members beyond the mission‐field experience. It argues that the post‐missionary years were an important transitional space, that were just as formative as the original mission spaces occupied elsewhere. In that new liminality of place and time, there was the potential for other things to occur: re‐orientations of life direction, reconfigurations of modes of thought or belief, and reconstructions of identity and of purpose. It does so through a case study of the Malcolm family (Anna, William, and son Ronald) from Australia/New Zealand, who worked with the China Inland Mission between the 1890s and 1920s but then returned to New Zealand and eventually to a different set of outcomes for each family member. Their story moves from traditional, normative colonial evangelical Protestantism to a more complicated and differentiated story of juxtaposed divergent narratives either maintaining or discarding the religious status quo. As such, this article draws attention to the dynamic nature of the missionary family as a crucible for change and its essentially emotional role as a place of safety and security in the midst of profound intra‐ and extra‐familial disruptions.

Fredrik Franson (1852-1908) Friend, Mission Promoter and Partner of the China Inland Mission

Fredrik Franson (1852-1908) Friend, Mission Promoter and Partner of the China Inland Mission

From Missionary Translation to Local Theological Inquiry: A Narrative History of the Lisu Bible

The Lisu are a largely Christian minority group in south-west China who, as an oral culture, express their faith more through a set of Christian practices done as a group and less through bible reading as individuals. Even so, the Lisu practice of Christianity specifically, and Lisu culture more generally, was profoundly impacted by the written scriptures. During the initial evangelisation of the Lisu by the China Inland Mission, missionaries created a written script for the Lisu language. Churches were constructed and organised, which led to the creation of bible schools and the work of bible translation. In the waves of government persecution after 1949, Lisu New Testaments were hidden away up in the mountains by Lisu Christians. After 1980, the Lisu reclaimed their faith by listening to the village elders tell the Old Story around the fires and reopening the churches that had been closed for twenty-two years. And they reclaimed their bible by retrieving the scriptures from the hills and copying them in the evening by the light of a torch. The Lisu bible has its own narrative history, consisting of script creating, translating, migrating, and copying by hand. At times it was largely influenced by the mission narrative, but at other times, the Lisu bible itself was the lead character in the story. Ultimately, the story of the Lisu bible reflects the Lisu Christian story of moving from missionary beginnings to local leadership and, ultimately, to local theological inquiry.

Guns and Gospel: Imperialism and Evangelism in China by Ambrose Mong

Reviewed by: Guns and Gospel: Imperialism and Evangelism in China by Ambrose Mong Christina Wong Wai-Yin Ambrose Mong, Guns and Gospel: Imperialism and Evangelism in China. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2016. 183 pp., £25 (PB). ISBN 9780227176252 In Guns and Gospel: Imperialism and Evangelism in China, Ambrose Mong analyzes the complicated and ambivalent attitudes with which Protestant missionaries treated imperialism in their missions. Examples of several famous Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are cited, including the Anglo-Scottish Presbyterian, Robert Morrison (1782–1834); the German Charles Gützlaff (1803–51), first Lutheran missionary to China; the non-sectarian British evangelist, James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905); the Welsh Baptist, Timothy Richard (1845–1919); and Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973), a daughter raised in China by Southern Presbyterian missionaries, to demonstrate their varied theological and philosophical concerns in reacting to Western imperialist powers. To present the context in which tensions arose between guns and gospel in Chinese Christianity, Chapter 1 briefly illuminates the relationship of imperialism and evangelism in the Catholic mission in the sixteenth century and the British and American Protestant missions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Christian missions connected with colonial powers shared a biased view that regarded the West as civilized and the East as backward. However, the attitudes of missionaries were complex and ambiguous, dependent on time, individual disposition, and institutional context. The second chapter discusses the background of the first unequal treaty during the First Opium War. The first group of Protestant missionaries to China expediently made use of imperialist forces in gaining entry for the missionaries, which eventually led to the Chinese people’s association of Christian [End Page 88] missions with colonial powers. In Chapter 3, Mong discusses the uprisings in China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from the Taiping 太平 (1850–64) to the Boxer (Yihetuan 義和團) rebellions (1899–1901). With the exception of the Taipings, who combined local anti-Qing religiosity and Christianity, there was a strong sentiment of “anti-foreignism” among the Chinese. This also led to resistance against Christianity as a foreign religion. Mong has made great efforts to show the personalities of the above-mentioned Protestant missionaries and pinpoint their ambiguous roles in imperialism and evangelism. Their diverse responses are attributed to their denominations, socio-political contexts, and individual factors. Both Morrison and Gützlaff worked for imperial powers, namely, the East India Company and the British government. Gützlaff in particular was very controversial because of his implicit support for the opium trade and his work in military intelligence. In contrast, the founder of the China Inland Mission, Taylor, was explicitly against the opium trade and turned down indemnities after the Boxer Rebellion. To him, Christianity emphasized forgiveness and reconciliation. He worried that such compensation would associate his mission with Western imperialist powers. In contrast to the above three, Richard, from the American Baptist Missionary Society, was more eager to engage with Chinese Buddhism. Lastly, Buck, a missionary kid raised in China, was influenced by a critical view of the Christian missions by the American left wing. She strongly critiqued the previous missions which implicitly embraced Western civilization and superiority. She proclaimed that humanistic missions should promote “friendship and understanding between nations … [by]mutual respect and equality” (p. 155). This indeed opened up a new paradigm of missiology. My critique of Mong’s project is that he fails to address the subtlety and complexity of imperialism and evangelism between and among missionaries and local Chinese. He adopts a broad and universal missionary narrative of the tension between guns and gospel from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries by focusing on five well-known and well-researched missionaries. More could be done in Mong’s project to make it a significant study in Chinese Christianity. Differences between missionaries related to their nationalities, denominations, ethnicities, classes, and genders should be analyzed as well. The book also fails to articulate how regional and ethnic differences, denominational affiliations, diverse theological positions, as well as faith expressions in China worked together with missionary efforts in local interactions. As Ryan Dunch proclaims, it is important to question how local Chinese (including Chinese Christians) participated in and/or selectively appropriated...

Schofield and the first spread of western medicine in Shanxi

After the Second Opium War, the signing of the Tientsin Treaty and the Peking Treaty legitimized the missionary activities and authorized the missionary the rights to enter inland China for propagating their religious doctrines. In the late 1870s, the"The extraordinary famine of the Ding Wu year"and the subsequent epidemic provided the opportunity for missionaries to enter Shanxi. Dr. Schofield, sent by the China Inland Mission, arrived in Taiyuan in 1880, set up clinics and practised there. He died of typhus after treating a typhus patient in the summer of 1883. Schofield stayed and practised in Taiyuan for 2 years and 8 months. Later, the China Inland Mission and other missionaries donated to establish a Shanxi's first western medicine Hospital to commemorate Schofield. The medical activities of Dr. Schofield enlightened and promoted the Shanxi people's understanding of western medicine.

From Holy Striving to Wholly Abiding: Mystical Transformation in James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905)

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), founder of the China Inland Mission in June 1865, was one of the most influential 19th century British Protestant missionaries in China. His writings, sermons and personal letters are suffused with spiritual insights and mystical nuances, notably Union and Communion,1 his short devotional work on the Song of Songs which was published in 1894. This article focuses on his mystical or transformative experience of 1869 which effected a profound experiential union with Christ and a new consciousness of soul rest. Captured here as a transformation ‘from holy striving to wholly abiding’, the significance of this pivotal moment is elucidated in terms of its immediate personal effect and its lasting impact on Taylor’s mission vocation. The relevance of Taylor’s mysticism for contemporary missionary spirituality is briefly delineated.

Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives by Peter Tze Ming Ng

Reviewed by: Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives by Peter Tze Ming Ng D. E. Mungello (bio) Peter Tze Ming Ng. Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2012. xiii, 258 pp. Hardcover €108.00 ($144.00). isbn 978-90-04-22574-9. The history of Christianity in China since 1949 has been marked by deep divisions in both the Protestant and Catholic churches over the question of state control. This governmental control was initially part of a campaign to eradicate Western imperialism, but it has evolved in more recent times into a reassertion of a Chinese tradition of highly centralized political control over religious expression. China is a large country with many divergent segments and a fear of national disintegration (most recently experienced in the years 1912–1949) drives this control. This struggle for political control has manifested itself in the government-initiated Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) to control Protestant churches and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) to control Catholic churches. However, because of resistance to the state control of the TSPM, [End Page 349] many Protestant groups have refused to register with the government and have continued to meet as unregistered “house churches” (jiating jiaohui 家庭教會). Likewise, Catholics who have maintained an ultimate loyalty to Rome rather than Beijing in spiritual matters have formed an underground church. Writings on the subject of Christianity in China since 1949 tend to express a sympathy for one or the other of these divisions, although few authors are explicit about their sympathy. The subject of this book by Peter Tze Ming Ng 吳梓明 is the historical evolution of Protestant Christianity in China from a missionary-imposed Western Christianity, which was resisted by Chinese as alien and foreign, to the development of genuine regional/local forms of Chinese Christianity which have thrived as a more authentically Chinese experience. Ng uses the neologism “glocalization” to describe this blending of global and local forces. The term was promoted at a conference “Glocalization and Christianity” sponsored by the government think-tank the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Research Institute of World Religions, Chinese Academy of Social Studies (CASS), Beijing, in December 2003 (p. 31-32). Although the term “glocalization” is new, the thesis is not, and it is well presented by Ng’s focus on several important figures in the idea’s evolution. The first was the evangelist Cheng Jingyi 誠靜怡 (C. Y. Cheng, 1881-1939). Ng presents Cheng as a pivotal figure in the development of an indigenous Protestant church. He was one of only three Chinese delegates to attend the 1910 Edinburgh Conference where at the youthful age of twenty-eight he gave two presentations in which he appealed for the development of indigenous Chinese churches (p. 79-80). Cheng helped to enunciate the idea that European Christianity, American Christianity and Chinese Christianity were all localized and indigenized parts of World Christianity. In 1922 the theologian Zhao Zichen 趙紫宸 (C. T. Chao, 1888-1979) echoed Cheng in calling for the removal of foreign, Western denominational divisions to create an indigenous Chinese Christianity (p. 87). Ng cites three “prophetic voices” (p. 111) to illustrate the relationship between global and local perspectives in the development of indigenous Christianity in China: Timothy Richard, David Paton, and K. H. Ting. Richard was a Baptist missionary who arrived in China in 1870 and would spend forty-five years there before retiring in 1914 (p. 114-116). He began by using the evangelistic methods of daily preaching and distribution of Bibles favored by the China Inland Mission, but over time modified these methods to a more accommodating approach. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Chinese officials charged Richard with the task of using Boxer indemnity funds returned by the United States government and several Protestant missionary boards to establish Shanxi University (p. 50-55). When he refused to use the university as a tool for evangelization, some missionaries complained. On the other hand, in the face of anti-Christian opposition from some Chinese officials and gentry, Richard insisted that teachers would [End Page 350] be free to offer Christian theology classes to students as elective rather than required courses. David...

This Life of Mortal Breath

This Life of Mortal Breath Joyce H. Munro Alice didn't go with him to China that spring, though she wasn't against his going. In fact, some afternoons she was the one to bring it up, as they sipped tea on the veranda at La Paisible or walked the hill to Maison de Pomme. After all, his wife was gone now, her spirit freed from earth's binding chains. His grief was ebbing. And in its place, concern, profound and ardent, for China. Only the fragile state of his health had kept him from returning. Now that he was feeling so much stronger, why remain in Switzerland? When Alice nudged him like this, she always called him “my dear,” never by his first name. A great man, revered around the world, in his seventies. It would be unseemly. Alice Thomson was so very kind and bright, so good for him during those days. Even Mary, Hudson's niece, had to admit it—Alice never seemed to vex him. “Here, my dear, let me take your muddy boots off.” “Time for a nap, let me cover you up.” “Let's get you out of that wet coat.” She could handle him better than Mary. Alice had never been to China. He had been ten times. Pardon the interjection: These three—the elderly mourner and his caregivers—are not at Audrey Hepburn's La Paisible. But at a pension in the hills above Vevey. It is important to clarify this, for Vevey figures in Alice's life later. Paisible = peace. Peace, according to the dictionarians at Oxford University, means freedom from disturbance. Those who christen their homes La Paisible are looking for a place to while away distress and anxiety. A haven, sanctuary. In such a place, the presence of the eternal can break through the walls, Paul Tillich wrote. Walls of pinkish stucco, windows with fretwork balconies, cloistered verandas. All designed for curing what ails you, for meeting the eternal. Breakthroughs can happen here. Alice was part of the cure. I want to see kind and bright and good in Alice. I look for it in her face, her eyes. In a photograph I love, there sits a young woman at her mother's feet. She sprawls on the grass in a dressy dress, lavish ruffles at her wrists and neck. A healthy woman. Big‐boned, like her Sinclair ancestors from the north‐most Highlands. Elbow on her mother's knee, she props her head up with her fist. Other relatives in the photo are dour‐faced, stiff, although I can't figure out why—this is going to be a lovely tea party. Maybe it's because they're Scots Baptists and merriment is not in their religious genes. They sit properly in bent‐willow chairs or stand by the tea table. Obviously a nice day, cause for celebration, with Alice's half sister visiting from Lausanne. Alice alone is relaxed. Her coy smile a magnet, pulling my gaze, telling me she's someone worth knowing. What's her secret? What has she done to put that smile on her face? Certainly not told a joke because the rest of them aren't laughing. Only she knows. The title below the photo is not instructive: Picture taken in the garden of the T.M. Thomson home at Jarvis and Bloor streets in Toronto. About 1903. Which turns out to be incorrect. It was earlier. And this is important because Alice's mother, second wife of Thomas McLerie Thomson, merchant, money manager, immigrant, died in 1902. After that, Alice went to Switzerland. Something tells me Alice was a groupie, the kind who's devoted to someone in the limelight, gets his autograph, follows him everywhere. In Alice's case, he was a band leader, but not that kind. James Hudson Taylor, M.R.C.S., F.R.G.S., surgeon, missionary, Bible translator, founder of China Inland Mission. One of the most beloved, quoted individuals of all time—among evangelical Christians, that is. Bible colleges and institutes have been established as a result of Taylor's influence, where students learn things vital to missionaries. Taylor's vision and dedication have...

Christian Hymns as Theological Mediator: The Lisu of South-west China and Their Music

The Lisu of south-west China were evangelised a hundred years ago by missionaries from the China Inland Mission and adopted Christianity in a people movement that permeated nearly their entire society. The missionaries recognised that the Lisu were a singing people, and translation of a hymnbook proceeded apace together with translation of the New Testament. Further, many Western hymns were translated using Lisu poetic forms. These translated Western hymns not only became the centrepiece for worship, but were also part of the daily rhythm of life for Lisu Christians. Though the missionaries departed more than seventy years ago, the hymns, still sung a capella in four-part harmony, have remained. While the bible remains somewhat out of reach for the vast majority of Lisu peasant farmers with low reading and writing skills, the hymnbook is well-known and well-worn, its contents easy to find and many of its most familiar hymns memorised. The various functions the hymns provide for Lisu Christians overlap and intersect at various levels of meaning and experience, which can be encapsulated into one central understanding: the Lisu hymns serve as a theological mediator for Lisu Christians, bridging the gap between the text-intensive religion that is Christianity and the oral world of Lisu culture. In the everyday arena, in the practical living out of what it means to be a Christian for a communal and still largely oral-preference people such as the Lisu, the Lisu Christian hymns are the centrepiece of worship and devotion, prayer and penitence.

Orality, literacy, and the Lisu linguistic borderlands

The Lisu, one of China’s 55 ethnic groups, converted to Christianity nearly 100 years ago through the evangelistic efforts of the China Inland Mission (CIM). The CIM missionaries constructed an orthography, translated the Bible, and stressed the importance of Scripture for individual religious devotion. However, in the course of five months of fieldwork in the Nujiang Valley, I rarely encountered a Lisu engaged in personal Bible study. I contend that this situation has less to do with the level of faith or commitment, and more to do with the interplay of literacy and orality, of individual and community, and the overall Lisu linguistic situation. While the Lisu Bible provides the overall frame for Lisu Christian society, it does not sustain Lisu Christianity in the everyday arena: the practical living out of what it means to be a Lisu Christian. While Scriptures provide the necessary framework, something needs to fill in the frame, to provide sustenance to nurture faith in an oral context. For societies and ethnic groups existing in the linguistic borderlands between the oral and the written, this is the missiological task that will remain once Bible translation is complete.

Upstream Odyssey: An American in China, 1895-1944 by Daniel W. Crofts (review)

Reviewed by: Upstream Odyssey: An American in China, 1895-1944 by Daniel W. Crofts Phillip A. Cantrell II Upstream Odyssey: An American in China, 1895-1944. By Daniel W. Crofts. (Norfolk, Conn.: Eastbridge, 2008. 253 pp. Paper $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59988-004-4.) Daniel W. Crofts offers a delightful account of the life of his grandfather, Daniel Webster Crofts (1866-1960), a Protestant missionary with the China Inland Mission (CIM) from 1895 until 1944. The book Upstream Odyssey: An American in China functions on two levels, and the author handles the balance with skill. First, it is a moving biographical account of the author's grandfather and of the ups and downs faced by a family descended from a man utterly committed to his mission. Second, and of more value to the historian, it offers insights into the travails and experiences of the Chinese people during a tumultuous time in their country's history. Drawing heavily on the elder Daniel Crofts's correspondence and family reminiscences, the book begins with the Crofts's roots in East Liverpool, Ohio. [End Page 148] The subject of the book grew up in a religious home and earned a degree at the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1894. There, he was evidently swept up by the missionary enthusiasm coming out of several Chicago schools in that era, when thousands of young Americans committed themselves to preaching the Christian Gospel overseas. The author speculates that in Chicago his grandfather likely encountered J. Hudson Taylor, founder of CIM. If so, the impression was deep and lasting, as Crofts departed for China in 1895 and spent his adult life with the organization in Guizhou Province in the southwest part of the country. The book alternates between chapters retelling the life story of the elder Crofts and its effects on his family and chapters connecting his life to contemporary historical circumstances. The personal chapters engagingly present a committed missionary who genuinely sought to immerse himself into his adopted culture and who nearly always put the welfare and advancement of the Chinese people first. They also tell of the death of two spouses and of the birth and coming of age of four children in China. The reader will not help but come away with respect for the personal depth of commitment held by such families. From a broader historical standpoint, the book is a worthy endeavor as well. The author also used Crofts's frequent contributions to the Shanghai North-China Herald, the primary English-language newspaper, to illustrate how his work as a missionary brought into daily contact with the struggles of the nao bai xing ("old hundred names"), or the common Chinese peasantry. One sees, for example, how the near constant conflict and war between Chiang Kaishek's Nationalists and the numerous warlords of the era generated great hardship and suffering, all of which presaged the communist victory a few years after Crofts was extracted from the country in the midst of World War II. As a skilled historian, the author demonstrates a keen eye for context and professionalism. Each chapter is followed by endnotes, and this reviewer was pleased to see the use of secondary sources by established scholars of Chinese history. In addition to offering ground-level insights into life in this period, the book illuminates the complex and at times imperial relationship between American missionaries and the Chinese people among whom they worked. While this reviewer wanted more commentary on how the Christian missionary effort informed the so-called China lobby in the United States, the book is nonetheless a very worthwhile read. Phillip A. Cantrell II Longwood University Copyright © 2013 The Kent State University Press

‘Equipped to serve’: The British Pentecostal Movement's early attempts at training for mission work

Training for mission in early British Pentecostalism was a ‘norm’. With Cecil Polhill, a member of the China Inland Mission (CIM) and one of the famed Cambridge seven who went to China in 1887, as their leading coordinator, the principles and practice of Faith Missions were inculcated into the early Pentecostal Missionaries. Indeed some principles were more radical than even those of the CIM.2 See L. Goodwin, ‘The Pneumatological Motivation and Influences of the Cambridge Seven’,JEPTA 30.2 2010 pp. 21-38 Within the first years of establishing the Pentecostal Missionary Union (PMU), there were two schools, one for men and one for women. We trace here their development and influence on long term mission.

On the Front Lines with the China Inland Mission: A Review Essay

On the Front Lines with the China Inland Mission: A Review Essay

The Pneumatological Motivation and Influences of the Cambridge Seven

James Hudson Taylor's legacy upon early British Pentecostal missiOnary activity in the form of Cecil Polhill's Pentecostal Missionary Union (PMU) and Willie Burton's Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM) was substantial. Taylor believed that missionary work should be done in total reliance upon God. ‘If our hearts are right, we may count upon the Holy Spirit's working through us to bring others into deeper fellowship with God - the way the work began at Pentecost. We do not need to say much about the C.I.M.’2 Dr. & Mrs Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God (London, Lutterworth, 1949) p. 53 Taylor believed that it was sufficient to have Spirit filled missionaries and God would meet the financial needs of those missionaries He had empowered.3 Taylor, Hudson Taylor, p. 64 He exemplified a successful model of faith mission in China both at a personal and organisational level that influenced early Pentecostal missionary praxis.