chapter five

Timothy Richard: Christian Attitude towards Other Religions & Cultures

In October 2006, when Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Can- terbury was paying a two-weeks visit to , he gave a lecture in the city of Nanjing where he made the following remarks: China is emerging as a senior partner in the fellowship of nations; a country whose economy is changing so fast and whose profile in the world has become so recognisable and distinctive that we can’t imagine a global future without the Chinese presence . . . (And he said to the stu- dents there) Yours is a society which will have messages to give to the rest of the world . . .1 About a year ago, in November 2005, Lord David Wilson, the Master of Peterhouse spoke as the Lady Margaret Preacher at the Commemo- ration of Benefactors Sunday at the University Church, the Great St. Mary’s Church of Cambridge. He also reminded his audience that what was happening in China then and in the years ahead would be very significant for the rest of the world. It was indeed a very appro- priate time for Cambridge scholars to commit a series of lectures on the China Mission for their Seventh Henry Martyn Lectures in 2007. For the three lectures I offered there, I chose a theme, namely: ‘Three Prophetic Voices in China’. I focused on the life and the work of , David Paton and K.H. Ting as three prophetic voices from the twentieth century China. They would indeed give us not only prophetic voices from their work and experiences in China, but also good illustrations of the interactive relationship between the ‘global’ and ‘local’ perspectives on the development of indigenous Christianity in the twentieth century China.2 Robert Morrison (1782–1843), the first Protestant missionary was sent to China by the Missionary Society in 1807. When Morrison

1 for reference, see http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/ 061010.htm. 2 i have included all the three chapters in this volume, namely ch. 5, ch. 9 and ch. 11. 112 chapter five went to China, he could not go directly, because at that time, China was still adopting a closed door policy and the British East Com- pany dared not take Morrison to China, fearing that this would upset the Chinese government. Morrison had to go to New York and took another boat from America to China. So, in the very beginning of the Protestant Missionary to China, the missionary had already known that it was not an easy job to evangelize in the Far East. A hundred years after Robert Morrison’s arrival in China, Protestant missionaries held a Centenary Conference in Shanghai in 1907. In the same year, Timothy Richard published his biographies and articles, sharing his experiences and his new vision on Christian mission.3 Now in 2007, another hundred years have passed by and it is definitely the most proper and significant time for us to do similar work to that of Timo- thy Richard and review the work of Christian missionaries from our experiences in the past 200 years. Prof. Andrew Walls once reminded us that the ‘the missionary movement was a great learning experience for Western Christianity’.4 It could be a great challenge to review some basic assumptions about our Western theology and about our concep- tion of Christian mission. Hence, I shall bring to our attention these prophetic voices of Timothy Richard, David Paton and K.H. Ting, all valuable voices in our rethinking of Christian mission today.

What is a ‘Prophet’?

Before we turn to the story of Timothy Richard, we may stop for a while to consider the question of what constitutes a prophet. In his book, The Shaping of Prophecy: Passion, Perception and Practicality, Adrian Has­ tings remarked that “Prophecy is an old-fashioned, biblically grounded concept which is still valid today—provided it contains two essential elements. The first is a clear, rational and sophisticated understanding of the world . . . The second is fidelity to a tradition, a faith, a shared

3 see Timothy Richard. Conversion By the Million in China, in two volumes. (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society, 1907). 4 see Andrew Walls. The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History. (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2002), 258.