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ABSTRACT
This essay traces the language of sacrifice used in a series of articles in the Protestant church magazine Tian Feng in the early 1950s to explore the ways in which sacrifice was demanded of Christians by church leaders, both to create an autonomous, indigenous church freed from imperialist association, and in service of the new nation. It explores the biblical tropes utilised to link sacrifice and nation, and the role of the Korean War in catalysing demand for physical martyrdom alongside ideological sacrifice. The essay suggests that the radical vehemence of the period masks continuities in theological expression with the earlier twentieth century and that much closer attention needs paying to the Chinese construct of ‘nation’ and its historic connotations in addressing the question of Chinese Christian nationalism.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 ‘Day of Prayer is Decreed for Chinese Nation’, The China Press, Saturday, April 19, 1913, 1.
2 ‘Day of Prayer is Decreed for Chinese Nation’, 1.
3 S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 153–4.
4 See discussion in Ban Wang, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture and World Politics (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017), ‘Introduction’.
5 See Mark Edward Lewis and Mei-yu Hsieh, ‘Tianxia and the Invention of Empire in East Asia’, in Chinese Visions of World Order, ed. Ban Wang, 25–30. As Lewis and Hsieh note, later narratives and historiographies have conflated the core people (now defined as the ‘Han’) of the Han state with the region itself, but the early Chinese polity as tianxia should be seen as a cosmopolitan empire governed by one ruler, and different to a modern nation state.
6 See Ban Wang, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order, 6.
7 That is, in autonomy and ethnocentrism. Wang Hui, ‘From Empire to State: Kang Youwei, Confucian Universalism and Unity’, in Chinese Visions of World Order, ed. Ban Wang, 56. Kang’s proposed sovereign state revolved around a monarch and aimed to preserve a centralised unity while retaining the multi-ethnic nature of the empire.
8 Cf. Prasenjit Duara’s argument that western scholars overplayed the distinction between the pre-modern and modern nation state in China, and the ‘culturalism’ of the late Qing reformers was difficult to distinguish from ethnic or national identification; see Duara, ‘De-Constructing the Chinese Nation’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (July 1993): 1–26, esp. 1–2. For a helpful summary of different Chinese nationalisms in the period and their recent proponents, see Jue Wang, Zhang Yijing (1871–1931) and the Search for a Chinese Christian Identity (Carlisle: Langham, 2021), 204–06.
9 See Huaiyin Li, ‘From Unitary Plurality to Plural Unity: The Politics of Writing about the Beginnings of Chinese Civilization’, Journal of Asian Studies 82, no. 4: 594–619. Like Christianity, archaeological views were deemed a tool of Western imperialism in the Republican era. There are interesting parallels in the manner and timing with which archaeological and Christian scholars have responded more recently to debates in their field that relate to nation, whether archaeological discussion of ‘Zhongyuan-centrism’ (or the unitary/polycentric origins of Chinese civilisation in the central plains area) or Christian responses to Sinicization initiatives.
10 Ryan Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
11 Ryan Fisk Dunch, ‘Piety, Patriotism, Progress: Chinese Protestants in Fuzhou Society and the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927’ (PhD diss, Yale University, 1997), 207.
12 See Dunch, ‘Piety, Patriotism, Progress’, 218.
13 Ibid., 220.
14 See Jesse Sun, ‘The Turn of an Apologist: Zhang Yijing on the Foreign Association of Christianity in China’, in Modern Chinese Theologies 1, ed. Chloë Starr (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2023), 41, on Zhang Yijing and the Christian basis for ‘patriotic vengeance’ (報復式的愛國).
15 T.C. Chao, ‘The Significance of the National Christian Council to the Chinese Church’, The Chinese Recorder 55 (1924), reproduced in The Collected English Writings of Tsu Chen Chao, 5 (Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua, 2009), 143.
16 See T.C. Chao, ‘Fulfilling China’s Spiritual Inheritance’, The Chinese Recorder, November 1923, repr. in The Collected English Writings of Tsu Chen Chao,” 125–26. Particular traits which Zhao lists include ideals of heroism and a simple life, a devotion to persons, idealistic ethics and a stern realism that transcends the politeness of ‘face;’ such traits, synthesised and combined in Christianity will result in an ‘indigenous Church’ (and could counter ‘the forces of Western learning, Bolshevism, superstition, socialist democracy, political bankruptcy and other ills contending to smother the inherent spiritual vigor of China’).
17 T.C. Chao, ‘The Relation of the Chinese Church to the Church Universal’, repr. in The Chinese Recorder, June 1923.
18 See Jesse Sun, ‘The Turn of an Apologist’, 37–40.
19 Jue Wang, Zhang Yijing (1871–1931) and the Search for a Chinese Christian Identity, 214.
20 Sun, ‘The Turn of an Apologist’, 41.
21 The Chinese Recorder Vol. LXVII (June 1936) No 6, Editorial, 1.
22 North China Herald, November 9 (1938), 218.
23 Stephanie Wong, ‘Yu Bin and Vincent Lebbe’s Theology of Resistance’, in Modern Chinese Theologies I, ed. Starr, 109. See also Henrietta Harrison, The Missionaries’ Curse (University of California Press, 2013) on how Lebbe aligned himself with a younger generation of Roman Catholic thinking.
24 Wong, ‘Yu Bin and Vincent Lebbe’s Theology of Resistance’, 123.
25 Quoted and translated in Wong, ‘Yu Bin and Vincent Lebbe’s Theology of Resistance’, 125.
26 For an account of these years of Catholic sacrifice, see Paul P. Mariani, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
27 This section draws on and expands a discussion of the militarisation of society and the Korean War in Chloë Starr, Chinese Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press), 168, 171–72.
28 See e.g. United States Congress House Committee on Un-American Activities. Communist persecution of churches in Red China and Northern Korea. Consultations with five church leaders: Rev. Peter Chu Pong, Rev. Shih-Ping Wang, Rev. Tsin-tsai Liu, Rev. Samuel W.S. Cheng, Mr. Kyung Rai Kim. Eighty-sixth Congress, first session. 26 March 1959 (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1959).
29 The magazine Tian Feng itself offers an important insight into this period. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, scores of widely circulated apologetics journals had offered a collective editorial vision of Christian truth. During the war years, these presses often relocated to the west of China with their authors. With the establishment of the Peoples’ Republic and the coerced amalgamation of denominations and creation of two oversight bodies, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, came new journals that operated not just within a collective Christian ambit, but within a vertical framework too; under the auspices of the state-permitted religious bodies, and in dialogue with the (real or presumed) ideological guidelines of the state. Tian Feng, created in 1945 by Wu Yaozong and others, became the official TSPM magazine in 1949. The attrition of journals and institution of new, authorised ones signals a theological pivot, a new mode of doing theology.
30 See e.g. Wu Yaozong’s 1950 article in Tian Feng ‘共產黨教育了我’ [What the Communist Party Taught Me], discussed further in Starr, Chinese Theology, 171–72.
31 Editorial, ‘醞釀聲中的中國教會改造’ [Chinese Church Reforms Brewing] Tian Feng No. 176, August 20, 1949.
32 ‘慶祝第一次國慶紀念’ [Celebrating the First National Day], Tian Feng, September 30, 1950
33 ‘Celebrating the First National Day’.
34 Yang Liyi杨立義, ‘愛國反帝和基督教徒’ [Patriotic Anti-Imperialism and Christianity] Tian Feng, 9 September 1950
35 Wu Yaozong, ‘展開基督教革新運動的旗幟’ [Unfurl the Flag of the Christian Reform Movement]. Tian Feng 233–34, September 30, 1950, 148.
36 Gao Tian’en, 高天恩, ‘基督教革命與革命基督教’ [Christian Revolution and Revolutionary Christianity], Tian Feng 237, 28 October 1950. Gao proclaimed that the church longed for and needed ‘a great reform like that of Martin Luther’.
37 Yang Liyi, ‘Patriotic Anti-Imperialism and Christianity’.
38 See Wallace C. Merwin, Francis P. Jones, Documents of the Three-Self Movement: Source materials for the study of the Protestant church in Communist China (New York: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1963), 19, and discussion in Starr, Chinese Theology, 164.
39 Cai Zhizhuan 蔡智傳, ‘福音是恥辱? 是光榮?’ [Is the gospel humiliation? Or is it glory?] Tian Feng, September 9, 1950, 6.
40 Cai Zhizhuan, ‘耶穌啟示的為人服務’ [The Service that Jesus reveals] Tian Feng 238, 4 November 1950, 219.
41 ‘Weekly Bible Study’, Tian Feng, September 16, 1950, 8.
42 See Shen Yuehan 沈約翰, ‘Learn from St Paul’, Tian Feng, January 27, 1951. Paul was commended not just for his life of sacrifice but also as a model worker who did not draw a church salary but relied on his own manual labour.
43 Zhi Xian 祉咸, ‘燃烧的荊刺’ [The Burning Thornbush], Tian Feng, September 16, 1950.
44 ‘抗議美帝侵略我領土,’ [Protest Against US Imperialist Invasion of Chinese Territory] Tian Feng, September 9, 1950, 4.
45 Chen Chonggui, ‘从死复活的大能’ [The Power of Resurrection from the Dead], Tian Feng, September 23, 1950.
46 See e.g. Deng Yugui 鄧玉桂, ‘中國基督教的展望’, [The Outlook for Chinese Christianity]; and Wang Mengqi 王孟起, ‘揭穿戰爭販子的真面目’ [Expose the True Face of the Warmongers] Tian Feng, November 18, 1950.
47 Zhao Zichen 趙紫宸, ‘基督徒要抗美援朝’ [Christians must Resist America, Aid Korea] Tian Feng, December 30, 1950, 317.
48 While Zhao’s patriotism may have passed muster, his anti-Imperialism was questioned during the Three-anti Campaign, and his two self-criticisms rejected as insufficiently sincere; in 1952, he was censored by the National Christian Council and dismissed to ‘ponder his crimes’, while the Chinese Anglican Church suspended his clerical privileges.
49 Wan Fulin, ‘基督徒!快快捐献武器, 打败敌人.’ [Christians! Hasten to Donate Arms, to Defeat the Enemy], Tian Feng, July 7, 1951, also quoted in Starr, Chinese Theology, 171.
50 Translation from Merwin and Jones, Documents of the Three-Self Movement, 59.
51 See Merwin and Jones, Documents of the Three-Self Movement, 49.
52 Ibid., 71–72.
53 Helen Ferris, The Christian Church in Communist China to 1952 (Lackland Airforce Base, Texas: Airforce Personnel and Training Research Center), 11.
54 See Wu Yaozong, ‘Unfurl the Flag of the Christian Reform Movement’.
55 Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China, 176.
56 J. Sheehan, ‘When a Sacrifice is Not a Sacrifice’, in Opfer in Leben und Tod, ed. Walter Schweidler (Sankt Augustin: Academia-Verlag, 2009): 82–101, 99.
57 For a discussion of the policies embedding the state in the church in the 2010s and a constructive theological vision to overcome the dichotomy of Chinese culture and Christian faith and thus ongoing antagonism towards a ‘Western’ religion, see Kwok Wai Luen, ‘The Chinese Church and its Mission: in Dialogue with Moltmann’s Ecclesiology’, in eds., Jason Lam and Naomi Thurston, Moltmann and China: Theological Encounters from Beijing to Hong Kong (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 65–85.
58 Philip A. Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 54.
59 On the meanings of ‘civilisation’ and e.g. its relation to global leadership, see e.g. Alison Kaufman, ‘China’s Discourse of Civilisation: Visions of Past, Present and Future’, Asan Forum, Open Forum, February 19, 2018, https://theasanforum.org/chinas-discourse-of-civilisation-visions-of-past-present-and-future/
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Chloë Starr
Chloë Starr is Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology at Yale Divinity School.