Claiming Our Heritage: Chinese Women and Christianity

Kwok Pui-lan

he history of Protestant Christianity in China has been Christian women in passing, or tell the stories of a few notable T interpreted largely from the missionary perspective. Christian women, such as the Song sisters, Li Dequan, Deng KennethS.Latourette,in his monumentalstudyof more than900 Yuzhi, and Wu Yifang, without offering many details about the pages, A History of Christian Missions in China, records compre­ time and context in which they lived. hensively the work and contribution of the missionaries.' The Scholars in women's history have paid more attention to memoirs of both male and female missionaries, such as Robert women's writings, autobiographies, letters, diaries, private pa­ Morrison, Timothy Richard, Harriet Newell Noyes, and Welthy pers, and other unpublished works. Treating women as subjects, Honsinger, fill out the details of the activities and private lives of missionaries in China.' When Chinese scholars such as Ng Lee-ming and Lam Wing-hung began to study mission history from the Chinese The relationship of Chinese side, they focused on the lives and thought of Chinese male Christian women to the Christians and their responses to the social change of China.' But thestoryof Chinesewomenin Christianityhas seldombeentold. unfolding drama of the Their relationship to the unfolding drama of the missionary missionary movement has movement has never been the subject of serious academic study. never had serious academic This oversight is hardly justifiable, since according to a national report of 1922 women constituted 37 percent of the Protestant study. communicants, and the number of women sitting in the pew certainly was far greater.' they have attached more importance on how women have expe­ rienced and interpreted their lives rather than what has been On Writing Women's History in the Church written about them. The major difficulty of doing research on Chinese Christian women in the earlier period of the missionary Scholars have not paid attention to Chinese women in the study movement is that the majority of them were illiterate. The first of the history of Christianity in China for many reasons. Until school for girls was opened by an English woman missionary in women's history became a respectable field several decades ago, 1844 in Ningbo, and Christian colleges for women were not the contributions of womenin history have been largelyignored. instituted until the early twentieth century. The lives and work of women missionaries have been taken up There are very few resources by Chinese women in the as serious subject matter only fairly recently. Several books nineteenth century, except some short articles in [iaohui xinbao published in the past few years, including Jane Hunter's Gospel (Church News) and Wanguo gongbao (Globe Magazine). In the of Gentility and Patricia R. Hill's The World Their Household, early twentieth century, when Chinese women's journals and contribute to our knowledge of the public and private lives of newspapers mushroomed in Shanghai and Beijing, Christian American women missionaries." womenalso beganto publish more in the two Christianwomen's Chinese womenwere often assumed to be passive recipients journals: Niiduobao (Woman's Messenger) and Niiqingnian rather than active participants and were treated more as (YWCA magazine). Several books and pamphlets were written missiological objects, rather than as subjects in the encounter by Christian women, such as Hu Binxia's study of the history of between China and Christianity. They did not leave behind the Chinese YWCA, the autobiographies of Cai Sujuan and Zeng many books and writings, their voices were seldom recorded in Baosun, and a study of Chinese women's movements by Wang reports and minutes of church gatherings, and they were not Liming. KangCheng(Ida Kahn), JiangHezhen, andZengBaosun ordained until more than a century after the first Chinese man contributed English articles to the Chinese Recorder, Woman's wasordained. Theircontributions wereregarded as insignificant Workin the Far East,and the International Reviewof Missions." and trivial compared to those of their male counterparts. Besides thesewritten materials, the papers of a few Christian Even when one decides to research the lives of Chinese women leaders, such as Shi Meiyu (Mary Stone) and Kang Christian women, the difficulties of locating resources and de­ Cheng, are preserved in the General Commission on Archives veloping a workable methodology are formidable. Scholars who and History of the United Methodist Church. The papers of the have worked on the history of Chinese women, including Ono United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, located at Kazuko, Elisabeth Croll, Kay Ann Johnson, and Phyllis Andors, Yale Divinity School, contain invaluable resources on female are not particularly interested in Christian women and their Christian educators and graduates of the Christian colleges for involvement in society. Other books and studies might mention women. Other helpful resources in reconstructing the lives of Chi­ KwokPui-lan isvisitingtheologian atAuburn Theological Seminary andlecturer at nese Christian women include the Chinese sermons of mission­ UnionTheological Seminary, New York. Shereceived herdoctorate from Harvard aries and Chinese preachers, church yearbooks, national church Divinity School and teaches theology at theChinese UniversityofHongKong. She surveys, and even obituaries of women. The reports to the is the authorof Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860-1927 and coeditor of various denominational women's boards of foreign missions Inheriting Our Mothers' Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Per­ and the private correspondence of women missionaries contain spective. rich data and often interesting materials on the "native women"

150 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH they worked with. When using materials by the missionaries, readily than did women in the cities, since rural populations special care must be taken to contrast and verify the accounts to tended to be less bound by the dominant Confucian tradition and avoid a one-sided interpretation. Missionary reports and writ­ since rural women were less secluded. Also, young girls and ings must also be analyzed and evaluated in the Chinese social older women, being situated somewhat at the margin of the and cultural context. family system, had more time to participate in church activities After the collection of data, the process of reconstructing the and more freedom to explore new identities. In the beginning, lives of Christian women from the pieces and sometimes frag­ some of them had to overcome family prejudice and disapproval ments of materials gathered is equally demanding. First, we when they attended worship services or Bible studies of a "for­ should emphasize that Chinese women were integral partners in eign religion." the historical drama, and we have to place them at the center of For those who overcame various barriers to become Chris­ our historical reconstruction. Women's responses to mission tians, Christianity offered them new symbolic resources to look work and the barriers forbidding them to participate in Christian at the world and themselves. In the process of adapting to the activity influenced the policies of Christian missions and the Chinese context,there was a process of "feminizationof religious organization of local congregations. Their participation in con­ symbolism" in Christianity, especially in the nineteenth cen­ gregationallife and in wider society needs to be analyzed. More tury." Missionaries emphasized the compassion of God, used important, their subjective interpretation of their own faith and both male and female images of the divine, downplayed the sin experiences inthe life of the church has to be clarified. This latter of Eve, and stressed that Jesus befriended women. In a land aspect should be the special task of scholars in religious studies, where both men and women worshiped strong female religious since most historians do not pay much attention to it or do not figures such as Guanyin and Mazu, the feminization of Christi­ have the theological background to interpret it. anity made it more appealing. Later on, as more single women Chinese Christian women did not exist in a vacuum, and missionaries arrived in China, the total number of female mis­ their history must be interpreted in the wider historical and sionaries exceeded that of the male missionaries. The feminiza­ social transformations of modern Chinese history. In particular, tion of the mission force sometimes gave the impression that their responses to social changes need to be compared with those Christianity wasprimarily for women and children. of the vast majority of women who did not share their faith. The Similar to the Chinese popular religious sects, the Christian influence of Christian women on the feminist movement in congregations offered channels to women in which they could China and vice versa has to be closely studied. Their social analysis and strategyfor social change should be contrasted with those of the socialist feminists and other secular feminists. Victorian ideals of women's The womenmissionaries, too, did not act in a vacuum. An understanding of gender relationships and roles in the church domesticity and and society they came from would help to clarify their motiva­ subordination influenced tion and work in China. The Victorian ideals of womanhood, stressing women's domesticity and female subordination, influ­ the outlook of many enced the outlook of many women missionaries, and their evan­ women missionaries. gelical upbringing reinforced their belief that women's God­ ordained place is in the home. The study of Chinese Christian womenmustbe a cross-culturalstudybecausewhathappened to form bonds with their peers and that could provide group women on both sides of the Atlantic affected mission strategy supportin times of personal andfamily crises. Manywomenfirst and women's work in China. learned to read in church because some knowledge of the Bible was required for baptism. The literacy rate of women church Chinese Women and Christianity members far exceeded the rate in the general female public. Since social propriety at the time made it inconvenient for women and In 1821the wife of the first Chinese Protestant pastor, Liang Fa, men to have Bible studies and prayer groups together, women nee Li,was baptized by her husband using waterfrom a Chinese organized their own meetings. The segregation of the sexes in bowl instead of a baptism font? In 1842, when the Treaty of congregational life allowed women to form their own groups Nanjing opened the five treaty ports to the missionaries, only six and develop their own leadership, enabling them to experiment Protestant Christians were reported, and we do not know if any with new social roles besides the familial ones. Some of the more of them were women. In 1877 the first missionary conference learned women served as teachers, counselors, and arbitrators in estimated the number of female communicants to be 4,967.8 The their localcommunities,anda few wereemployedby the churches national survey of 1922reported that there were 128,704female as Bible women, teaching women to read and visiting them in communicants, with a heavy concentration in the two coastal their homes. provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. The early female church Since the 1890s, Christian women experienced a growing members were drawn from the relatives of the Chinese helpers participation in church and society, based on the creation of a and converts, as well as the domestic servants of missionary separate women's sphere and the affirmation of the role of households. Later on, when Christian missions opened schools women in reproducing and nurturing strong and healthy off­ for girls, the churchescould reachgirls from poorerhomes, along spring. In their reform programs, leading Chinese intellectuals with their mothers. Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao advocated abolition of It is difficult to generalize the class and social background of footbinding and the establishment of schools for girls. Although female Christians because of limited information and scanty efforts of reform in 1898were unsuccessful, in 1901the Empress statistics. From missionary reports and the obituaries of Chris­ Dowager issued an edict permitting the establishment of schools tian women, we can see that Christianity attracted particular for girls. At the turn of the century, members of the rich class and groups of women. In general, rural women responded more the literati responded more favorably to girls' schools, and a

OcroBER1992 151 growingnumberbeganto send theirdaughters to missionschools Some historians have attributed the rising consciousness of to learn English and Western subjects. The establishment of Chinese Christian women and their participation in social re­ Christian colleges for women in the first two decades of the forms to the influences of women missionaries. Women mission­ twentieth century led to a new generation of trained Christian aries indeed served as role models, introduced new ideas from female leaders. the West, and provided financial and institutional support for Chinese women first organized themselves to address the women to organize. But it seems farfetched to suggest that they oppressionof womenin 1874,whennineworking-class, illiterate were champions of women's rights, since most of them lived in women formed an antifootbinding society in a church of the patriarchal missionary households and subscribed to the Victo­ London Mission in Xiamen." It was not surprising that the first rian ideals of female subordination. It is more convincing to women'smovementin Chinatookthe form ofan antifootbinding argue that Christian women were living in a time when the program, because the practice of tightly binding the feet to traditional gender roles in society were being called into ques­ produce the desired three-inch lotus feet symbolized the oppres­ tion, and they were significantly influenced by the secular femi­ sion of women in a most concrete and tangible way. In the 1890s nist movementin the earlytwentiethcentury. The criticism made the movement spread to many cities, supported by girls in by the 1922-27 anti-Christian movement that Christianity is mission schools and women in local church groups. The Bible patriarchal further challenged Christian women to reflect on women often took the lead in taking off their bandages, encour­ their religious faith. aging other women to follow and to pledge never to bind the feet The writings, religious testimonies, and autobiographies of of their daughters again. Christian women suggested that they had begun to reflect on the Western medicine was introduced to China to relieve suffer­ relationship between China and Christianity from the women's ing and to serve as a "handmaid to the Gospel." Chinese women perspective. On the one hand, they argued that Christian mis­ gained access to medical education in 1879 at the first hospital sionshadprovidedthe opportunitiesfor the educationofwomen established in China, the Canton Hospital. Women doctors, and various social reforms. Christian women, they acknowl­ together with the female nurses, were ardent supporters of edged,hadservedas leavenin society throughthe antifootbinding antifootbinding, women's health care, and the welfare of chil- movement, the temperance movement, the publication of women's journals, and the campaigns against concubinage and domestic servants." On the other hand, they criticized the dis­ criminatory practices of the church, which prohibited women Chinese women responded from preaching from the pulpit, from being ordained, and from to the figure of Jesus who exercising other leadership roles." Theologically, they emphasized the compassion and love of respected women, taught God, who is merciful to all human beings, both male and female. and healed them, and God was also described as the creator of the universe, sustaining the world and giving it meaning and purposefulness. WhenGod praised their faith. wasdescribed as "thefather," it wasnot intendedto reinforce the patriarchal Chinese household but to challenge all kinds of patriarchal and hierarchical relations. God as the ultimate father dren. Later, students of the women's colleges organized health relativized all forms of authority on earth, since all were equal campaigns and promoted social hygiene in the community. before the eyes of God. Chinese women also positively re­ These efforts introduced scientific knowledge about female biol­ sponded to the historical figure of Jesus, who respected women, ogy and physiology, shattering the centuries-old myths and taught and healed them, and praised their faith. Zeng Baosun taboos surrounding menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. came close to writing a women's creed by saying: "Chinese The Woman'sChristianTemperanceUnion(WCTU),formed women can only find full life in the message of Christ, who was in the United Statesin the 1870s,was introduced to China in 1886. born of a woman, revealed His messiahship to a woman, and Modeled after the American unions, the Chinese WCTU was a showed His glorified body after His resurrection to a woman.t" kind of "organized mother-love" committed to save the home from various evils, including opium and cigarette smoking." When leadership was passed on to the Chinese, the new genera­ Conclusion tion ofleaders recognized the limitationof the ideologyof "home betterment" and began introducing other programs to target The story of Chinese Christian women testifies to how their faith larger social problems such as poverty, illiteracy, and the eco­ has empowered them to struggle for dignity as women and to nomic dependence of women. reformtheir society. Chinesefeminist theology, rooted in women's In 1890 a small branch of the YWCA was established in historical experience with Christianity, will be different from Chinaat a Presbyterian girls' school in Hangzhou. With chapters thatdeveloped in the West. ManyChristianwomenin China and in the cities and branches in schools, by the 1920s the YWCA in other parts of Asia experienced Christianity not as an oppres­ developed into the largestwomen's organizationin China. In the sive instrument but as a liberating force challenging some of the beginning, the YWCA provided religious instruction and social indigenous patriarchal practices. They are interested in further activities for middle-class, urban women and girls in mission exploring the liberating potentialof Christianfaith to address the schools. In the late 1920s,the Chineseleadersof the YWCAbegan problems women face today, so that women can share greater to recognize the need to work among the poorer sector of the responsibility toward building a j1.1St and humane society. populace, especially among rural women and female factory The heritage of the lives and thought of women in the workers." The literacy classes among workers of Shanghai cot­ Chinese church has to be reclaimed so that we can broaden our ton mills had a long-term effect of raising the consciousness of understanding of how Christianity influences women's lives in female workers and nurturing female leaders in the labor move­ a cross-cultural context. Following the footsteps of their ment. foremothers, many contemporary Christian women in China

152 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH See It In Their Eyes

Wednesday mornings, Asbury's ESJ students and faculty gather as a community of believers bent on making disciples.

See it in theireyes...vision that looks beyond borders, .M.A. in World Mission and Evangelism over barriers, to fulfill Christ's call to mission. .Th.M. in World Mission and Evangelism Hearit in their voices...the burden of rigorous study .Doctor of Ministry enhancing their effectiveness. .Doctor of Missiology Feel it in theirhearts...God preparing them at Asbury to Cooperative programs with go forth to minister to their own people and to other The University of Kentucky: cultures. .M.S.W. (U.K.) and M.Div. or M.A. (Asbury) .Doctor of Philosophy (U.K.) Now, do more than see it in their eyes...discover how you can learn to make strong disciples. Call Admissions TOLL FREE in the continental U.S.: 1-800-2-ASBURY Write or call for information. or (606) 858-3581 in Kentucky ~rY (Eastern time). WILMORE, KY 40390-1 199

The E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism volunteer their service for the church and serve as leaders espe­ developmentof their society. Bringing to lightthe stories of these cially in the house churches and meeting points. Some are model Christian women in the Third World can only enrich the shared workers and members of model families, contributing to the memory of the worldwide church. Notes------­ 1. KennethS. Latourette, A HistoryofChristian Missions inChina (New York: bibliography in my book Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860-1927 Macmillan, 1929). (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 195-220. 2. Eliza A. Morrison, comp., Memoirs oftheLifeandLabour ofRobert Morrison, 7. Mai Zhanen (George H. McNeur), Liang Fa zhuan(Hong Kong: Council 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1839); Timothy Richard, Forty-five years in on Christian Literature, 1959), pp. 24-25. China (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1916); Harriet Newell Noyes, A 8. Records oftheGeneral Conference oftheProtestant Missionaries ofChina, Held Lightin theLandofSinim:Forty-five Years in theTrueLightSeminary (New at Shanghai, May 10-24, 1877 (Shanghai, 1878), p. 486 York: Fleming H. Revell, 1919); and Welthy Honsinger, Beyond theMoon 9. For a fuller discussionof the topic, see my Chinese Women andChristianity I Gate: Beinga DiaryofTen Years in theInterior oftheMiddle Kingdom (New 1860-1927, pp. 29-64. York: Abington, 1924). 10. John Macgowan, How England Saved China (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913), pp. 53-66. 3. Ng Lee-ming, ]idujiao yu Zhongguo shehuibiangian (Hong Kong: Chinese 11. SaraGoodrich, "Woman'sChristianTemperanceUnionof China," China Christian Literature Council, 1981); and Wing-hung Lam, Chinese Theol­ 7 (1916): 489. ogy in Construction (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1983). Mission Yearbook 12. YWCA of China, Introduction to theYoung Women's Christian Association 4. M. T. Stauffer, ed., The Christian Occupation of China (Shanghai: China of China, 1933-1947 (Shanghai: National Committee of the YWCA of Continuation Committee, 1922), p. 293. China, n.d.), p. 1. 5. Jane Hunter, TheGospel ofGentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn­ 13. For instance, Shi Meiyu (Mary Stone), ''What Chinese Women Have of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Done and Are Doing for China," China Mission Year Book 5 (1914): 239-45. Patricia R.Hill, TheWorld Their Household: TheAmerican Woman's Foreign 14. Ding Shujing, "Funii zai jiaohui zhong de diwei," Niiqingnian 7, no. 2 Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: (March 1928): 21-25. University of Michigan Press, 1985). 15. Zeng Baosun, "Christianity and Women as Seen at the Jerusalem Meet­ 6. For an extensive bibliography of the writings of Chinese women, see the ing," Chinese Recorder 59 (1928): 443.

Maryknoll's Fifty Years in Latin America

Ellen M. McDonald, M.M.

eflection on 1992 as the five hundredth anniversary of We go to South America-not as exponents of any North American R the arrivalofEuropeanson Americanshoreshas brought civilization-but to preach the Catholic Faith in areas where priests aboutmuchmissionary concernand dialogue. This is duelargely are scarce and mission work is needed. As far as the elements of true to the "discoveries" within the Americas during the last half civilization are concerned, we expect to receive as much as we give.' century that have increased our sensitivity to the needs of all In fact, not only was Maryknoll going out to a new geographic Americans, North and South. Nowhere does this seem more true thanat Maryknoll,NewYork, homeof the Catholic,U.S.-founded location, but its missioners would soon find themselves at sea in a whole new construct of what mission was all about. mission-sending organization that began to direct missioners to Latin America in April of 1942.The story of these missionaries is preserved in the Maryknoll Mission Archives, which houses the The Pre-1940 History recently combined historical collections of the two branches of At the turn of the century, the United States itself was still the organization, the Catholic Foreign Missionary Society of America (more commonly known as the Maryknoll Fathers and officially a missionary country, according to Rome. By the time Brothers), founded in 1911,andthe Congregationofthe Maryknoll this status changed in 1908, the paths of three mission-minded Sisters of St. Dominic, founded in 1912. persons were already coming together. In Boston in 1907,a new "...toreceive asmuchaswegive."These wordsof Bishop James publication had appeared called TheField Afar,with the express purpose of creating interest in and support for foreign missions. E.Walsh, thensuperiorgeneralof the MaryknollSociety, spoken on April 5, 1942, at the first departure ceremony for Latin Fr. James A. Walsh, director of the Boston office of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, was involved in this effort along America, are seen in retrospect as prophetic: with three other priests and the person he called his coworker, Ms. Mary Josephine Rogers. Rogers was a student and later an instructor at Smith College who had been edified and motivated by the interest shown by Protestant women from the college in SisterEllen M. McDonald, M.M., entered theMaryknoll Sisters in 1959. Assigned totheRepublic ofPanama in1964,sheremained there until1991 , working invarious the missions of their churches. The rich collection of The Field positions with theCatholic Archdiocese. Shealso served assecretary oftheEcumeni­ Afar,which eventually became the Maryknoll Magazine, the offi­ calCommittee of Panama from 1987 to 1991. Sheis nowCurator oftheMaryknoll cial organfor the Maryknoll movement, is a major resource of the Sisters'collections in theMaryknoll Mission Archives. Maryknoll Mission Archives.

154 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH