The Growth of Christianity in East Asia John Mark Terry
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The Growth of Christianity in East Asia John Mark Terry IntroductIon The Gospel “to” China issiologists and missions adminis- Christianity first came to China through the Mtrators focus much of their attention on East efforts of Nestorian missionaries. The Nestori- Asia. This is natural because East Asia contains ans entered China in the seventh century, travel- about 25 percent of the world’s population. China’s ing along the ancient Silk Road from the Middle population alone represents 20 per- East. They were welcomed by the emperors of the John Mark Terry is Adjunct Professor of Evangelism and cent of the people on earth. What Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907) and were allowed Missions at The Southern Baptist is the status of Christianity in East to build monasteries and establish churches. The Theological Seminary. Asia? This article will survey the Nestorian monks continued their work in China In addition, he also serves as a progress of Christianity in these for two hundred years until Emperor Wu Tsung professor at a seminary in the Pacific nations of East Asia: China, Japan, ordered the monks and their monasteries expelled Rim. Previously, Dr. Terry has Korea, Mongolia, and Taiwan. in A.D. 845. The fate of the Nestorian converts in served as a professor of missions As will be shown, much has been China is unknown, but a Nestorian monk, sent to at Philippines Baptist Theological Seminary, Asia Baptist Graduate accomplished, but much remains ascertain the state of the church in China in A.D. Theological Seminary, and as to be done. 987, reported that he did not find any Christians professor of evangelism and missions in China.1 at Clear Creek Baptist College, in chrIstIanIty In chIna Christianity re-entered China after the visit of addition to serving 15 years as a missionary in the Philippines. Dr. A noted Chinese Christian Marco Polo in 1266. His account of his adventures Terry is also the author or editor leader, John Ong, often speaks in China prompted the Vatican to send a Francis- of a numbers scholarly works, of—The gospel “to” China, the can monk, Giovanni of Monte Corvino, to China including Missiology: An Introduction (B&H, 1998), Church Evangelism: gospel “in” China, and the gospel in 1294. The emperor welcomed him and gave Creating a Culture for Growth in “from” China. Those helpful des- him freedom to build a church and evangelize. Your Congregation (B&H 1997), and ignations provide an outline for By 1305 he had six thousand baptized believers. Evangelism: A Concise History (B&H, this brief survey of Christianity The Roman Catholic mission prospered in Bei- 1994). in China. jing and on the southeastern coast in Quanzhou. 42 SBJT 15.2 (2011): 42-51. Again, a change of dynasty brought persecution He became so disgusted with that agency’s poor for the Christians. When the Ming dynasty came administration that he resigned. Bad health forced to power in 1372, the Ming emperors favored Bud- Taylor to return to England in 1860. While he was dhism and suppressed Christianity.2 recovering, he prayed and planned for a new type The Roman Catholics again sent Jesuit mis- of mission organization. In 1865 he founded the sionaries to China in 1582. They entered China China Inland Mission. He was determined to pen- through the Portuguese colony in Macau. Mat- etrate all of China with the gospel, thus the name, teo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, learned the Chinese Inland. Hudson Taylor was one of the great mis- language and culture in Macau and then trans- sionary recruiters, and the China Inland Mission ferred to Beijing, the capital city, in 1601. Ricci grew rapidly. One reason for its rapid growth was had been trained as a clock maker. He made a his openness to appoint single women as mission- beautiful clock and presented it to the emperor. aries. He also accepted missionaries with little for- The emperor liked the clock and named Ricci the mal schooling. He insisted that all his missionaries imperial clock maker. This gave Ricci both pres- live by faith, forbidding them to solicit financial tige and access to the emperor’s court. With these support. Thus, the China Inland Mission became freedoms Ricci and his fellow Jesuits were able to the first and prototypical “faith mission.” Taylor baptize two thousand converts by 1610.3 also required all his missionaries to adopt Chinese While the Jesuits prospered in Beijing, the dress, master the Chinese language, and identify Franciscan and Dominican missionaries fumed with the Chinese people as much as possible.5 in Macao. They envied the Jesuits’s access to the Hudson Taylor’s determination to evangelize capital, and they disagreed with the Jesuits on all of China, especially the interior, was achieved. accommodation to the Chinese culture, especially By 1882 the China Inland Mission had deployed in regard to the veneration of ancestors. This “rites missionaries to all of China’s provinces, and its controversy” continued for a century until the Vat- total number of missionaries had risen to 641. This ican ruled in favor of the Franciscans and Domini- made it the largest mission agency in China, and cans. The pope’s ruling angered the emperor, and the largest Protestant missions organization in he ordered the expulsion of all the missionaries the world.6 and the closure of all the churches in 1724.4 China was the first foreign mission “field” The next phase of missions in China saw the for Southern Baptists. When the Southern Bap- entry of the first Protestant missionary, Robert tist Convention was established in 1845, its first Morrison, in 1807. Morrison served under the Lon- action was to establish the Foreign Mission Board don Missionary Society. He had to study Chinese (FMB). One of the first actions of the Foreign Mis- secretly because it was illegal for Chinese to teach sion Board was to make China its initial field of their language to foreigners. Morrison only made ministry. China was Southern Baptists’s main mis- twelve converts during his twenty-eight years in sion field until 1949. In the beginning Southern China, but his great achievements were the Chi- Baptist missionaries focused much of their work nese Bible and his Chinese-English dictionary. in southern China, specifically in and around After the Opium War of 1840 the Chinese Canton. Rosewell Graves, a missionary physi- government was forced to open five treaty ports cian, served in Canton for an amazing period of for western commerce and missionary activity. A fifty-six years. His faithful ministry contributed number of missionaries went to China, but most to the development of what the FMB called the confined their work to the ports and nearby dis- South China Mission. Later, the FMB established tricts. Hudson Taylor arrived in China in 1854, work in Shanghai. Matthew Yates led this work for serving under the China Evangelization Society. many years. This work became known as the Cen- 43 tral China Mission. Southern Baptist missionaries deployment to China came in 1925. In that year established the North China mission in Shandong there were 8,158 Protestant missionaries serving. Province in northeastern China. Prominent mis- That number declined in the 1930s due to the sionaries in that mission included J. B. Hartwell, world economic depression and in the 1940s due T. P. Crawford, and, of course, Lottie Moon. In to World War II.10 1910 the FMB, inspired by the example of the In 1911 a Christian physician, Sun Yat-Sen, led China Inland Mission, opened its Interior China a revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty Mission in Hunan Province, and the Manchuria and installed a democratic government. Sun’s Mission was opened in 1924.7 weak government struggled and soon failed. There were 49 Southern Baptist missionaries in Regional warlords controlled much of China. China in 1900, but by 1918 the number increased From this chaos emerged two strong political to 172. The highest number recorded was 287 in forces, the Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai Shek 1924. The effects of the Great Depression and and the Communist Party, led by Mao Tse Tung. World War II caused the number to decrease They both fought the Japanese, who invaded steadily except for a brief increase between 1945 China in 1937, but after World War II they fought and 1948. When the Communists won the Civil each other. The Chinese Civil War brought even War, they gradually forced the missionaries out, more devastation to China, which had suffered and by the end of 1951 all Southern Baptist mis- greatly during the world war. Finally, in 1949 the sionaries had exited. The close of the China mis- Communist armies defeated the Nationalists, and sions did not mean that Southern Baptists ceased Chiang Kai Shek escaped with his army to Taiwan. to work with Chinese. The FMB reassigned the missionaries to work with diaspora Chinese all over The Gospel “in” China Asia, and, indeed, “the old China hands” opened When the Communists gained control of Baptist work in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malay- China in 1949 there were, perhaps, 750,000 Prot- sia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea.8 estant Christians in China and 4,062 foreign The missionaries of the China Inland Mission missionaries. The Roman Catholics numbered and the Roman Catholic missionaries suffered about 1,500,000, and there were 5,682 foreign greatly during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The priests and nuns. That was not many in a country Boxer Rebellion was a nationalistic movement of approximately 400 million.11 The missionaries that aimed to remove foreign influence from began leaving China during 1949, but they had no China.