Unity, Comity, and the Numbers Game
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Vol. 36, No. 1 January 2012 Unity, Comity, and the Numbers Game f the quest of the church is for unity in Christ, the on-the- Iground reality has been kaleidoscopic fragmentation. And the kaleidoscope is spinning with increasing speed. In the past On Page dozen years, formal organizational diversity among Christians 3 Comity Agreements and Sheep Stealers: has grown by 26 percent, swelling from an estimated 34,100 The Elusive Search for Christian Unity denominations in the year 2000 to a projected 43,000 by mid- Among Protestants in China 2012 (see “Status of Global Mission, 2012, in the Context of ad R. G. Tiedemann 1800–2025,” by Todd Johnson, David Barrett, and Peter Crossing, line 41, on p. 29 of this issue). 10 Botany or Flowers? The Challenges of The tensions between ecclesiastical aspiration and achieve- Writing the History of the Indigenization ment are evident in the Protestant mission enterprise of the past of Christianity in China two centuries as well. The number of foreign mission sending Gloria S. Tseng 14 Cheng Jingyi: Prophet of His Time Peter Tze Ming Ng 17 Matteo Ricci: Pioneer of Chinese-Western Dialogue and Cultural Exchanges Jean-Paul Wiest 22 Attrition Among Protestant Missionaries in China, 1807–1890 Jessie G. Lutz 28 Christianity 2012: The 200th Anniversary of American Foreign Missions Todd M. Johnson, David B. Barrett†, and Peter F. Crossing 30 David B. Barrett: Missionary Statistician Spirit of Missions 37 (February 1872): 137 Todd M. Johnson Lydia Mary Fay and “Her Boys” 33 Lydia Mary Fay and the Episcopal Church Mission in China agencies has more than doubled in the past four decades (p. 29, Ian Welch line 44). That development should perhaps give one pause— 34 Noteworthy who has measured the level of redundancy, competition, ill- 38 Eugene A. Nida: Theoretician of Translation coordination of efforts, and striving to establish organizational Philip C. Stine identity or “brand” that this level of multiplication entails? 39 The Waning of Pagan Rome: A Review Essay Yet, madcap as it sometimes seems, this development is not Alan Kreider necessarily all negative. The founding documents of the church, 40 Worldwide Increase in Catholic Population, and hence of Christian mission, speak of diversity of gifts among Deacons, Priests, and Bishops individuals and concordant differences in their function. If indi- viduals vary in capability, expertise, cultural context, and social 42 Book Reviews conditioning, is there any reason why organizations should not 54 Dissertation Notices Continued next page 56 Book Notes be similarly conditioned? Perhaps organizational diversity in places these pressures in sharp relief as she tabulates shifts in the itself bears witness to the multifaceted love of God! rates of missionary attrition throughout the nineteenth century. While it may be questioned whether diversity and fragmen- The quest for relevant ministry was not only organizational tation are precise synonyms, it is a historical fact that the ways and denominational but at times deeply personal. Ian Welch these tensions have played out in mission practice and in the recounts the life of Lydia Mary Fay. She eventually found stable wider Christian movement have frequently been less than edify- footing overseeing the school where she nurtured “her boys,” ing. How often has failure in the quest for unity been papered seen with her in the etching on page 1. An accomplished teacher over with a mask of comity? How frequently has a Christendom and administrator who would have preferred the domestic life mentality sacrificed complementarity and functional diversity of a married woman, she volunteered for missionary service in on the altar of territorial or quasiterritorial separation, as though China, where she devoted the last twenty-eight years of her life. Christ’s followers could be sufficient in themselves and did not She applied herself with diligence to study of the language, gain- need each other? ing a fluency that eluded others. But in mid-nineteenth-century As the articles in this issue by R. G. Tiedemann, Gloria Tseng, China she chafed under mission policies that put her under the and Peter Ng show, the planting of the Protestant church in China authority of less gifted males who served only short-term in her provides an excellent case in point. Turfs—territorial, intellectual, school. In 1878, upon her death, the school that passed to her spiritual, and above all denominational—were carved out. When successor was unquestionably “her school,” which was a credit the call of Cheng Jingyi came, giving voice to the desire in China to her resolve, hard work, and innate administrative capabilities. for “a united Christian church that was freed from denomination- But one suspects that, in the end, she won the day in large part alism” (Ng, p. 15), many heard and followed his lead. In 1927 as because the day itself had changed. Single and married women much as a quarter of the Chinese Christian community joined in themselves had begun to be counted on the rolls of mission forming the Church of Christ in China. The majority, however, societies. held aloof. Tseng argues convincingly that the seeds of discord Tributes to two individuals who placed their mark on planted then continue to bear bitter fruit to this day. twentieth-century Christian scholarship appear in this issue. Whatever their shortcomings, missionaries to China in the The ways each of us thinks about Bible translation, as well as the nineteenth century were sacrificial. They bore in their bodies translations themselves, bear the impress of Eugene Nida. And the truth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s dictum that, when Christ calls David Barrett, a contributing editor whose summaries of missional a person, he calls that one to come and die. In the early years statistics have appeared annually since 1985 in the January issue particularly, many died, large numbers fell ill, most suffered of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, was heartache with the loss of spouses, children, and colleagues. They our era’s foremost statistician of the world Christian movement. endured loneliness, suffered from depression, and ached with We look forward to ongoing annual statistical updates from the social isolation in a land where they were often not welcome and hands of his longtime colleagues Todd Johnson and Peter Crossing. whose language they rarely adequately mastered. Jessie Lutz —Dwight P. Baker Editor Jonathan J. Bonk InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research Senior Associate Editor Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin Dwight P. Baker of Missionary Research in 1977. Renamed International Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1981. Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511 Associate Editor (203) 624-6672 • Fax (203) 865-2857 • [email protected] • www.internationalbulletin.org J. Nelson Jennings Contributing Editors Assistant Editors Catalino G. Arévalo, S.J. Darrell L. Guder Anne-Marie Kool Brian Stanley Craig A. Noll Daniel H. Bays Philip Jenkins Mary Motte, F.M.M. Tite Tiénou Rona Johnston Gordon Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D. Daniel Jeyaraj C. René Padilla Ruth A. Tucker William R. Burrows Jan A. B. Jongeneel James M. Phillips Desmond Tutu Managing Editor Angelyn Dries, O.S.F. Sebastian Karotemprel, S.D.B. Dana L. Robert Andrew F. Walls Daniel J. Nicholas Samuel Escobar Kirsteen Kim Lamin Sanneh Anastasios Yannoulatos Senior Contributing Editors John F. Gorski, M.M. Graham Kings Wilbert R. Shenk Gerald H. Anderson Books for review and correspondence regarding editorial matters should be addressed to the editors. Manuscripts Robert T. Coote unaccompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope (or international postal coupons) will not be returned. Opinions expressed in the IBMR are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. 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