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Communism and Christianity: Missionaries and the Communist

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Communism and Christianity: Missionaries and the Communist COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANITY: MISSIONARIES AND THE COMMUNIST SEIZURE OF POWER IN CHINA By Stephen Harrison Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In History December 2013 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Thomas A. Schwartz, Ph.D. James P. Byrd, Ph.D. Sarah Igo, Ph.D. Paul Kramer, Ph.D. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1. The Changing Nature of Protestant Missions in China in the First Half of the 20th Century ............................................................................................................................... 17 2. Protestants will be Protestants: The Split of Missionary Opinion on the Chinese Civil War ........................................................................................................................... 56 3. Communist or Nationalist: Asking the Wrong Question .................................................. 90 4. Success of Failure: Missionaries Debate Their Legacy .................................................. 134 5. "Losing to the Cold War Consensus: The Marginalization of Dissenting American Missionaries in China in the 1950s" ............................................................................... 174 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 213 WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................................... 223 Introduction In July 1946, the President of the United States appointed John Leighton Stuart as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China. This appointment was a surprise to many, particularly General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who was so sure of the appointment for himself that he had bought a new civilian wardrobe in preparation. Both men had experience in China, Wedemeyer as an advisor to Chinese President Chiang Kai-Shek and Stuart as a career missionary. The choice of Stuart over Wedemeyer was not meant to symbolize a shift in US policy, but was tacit recognition that the missionary presence in China was a large asset in a chaotic situation. President Truman’s personal envoy to China, General George C. Marshall, recognized that he needed Stuart’s knowledge and personal contacts across China to prevent a Chinese Civil War. Prior to World War II, the American presence in China was largely made up of missionaries. The United States Government had a very small presence on the ground in China, so missionaries like Stuart were largely better informed on the day-to-day life of the Chinese people, as well as the political climate of the country. When Marshall and Stuart later failed to prevent the Chinese Civil War, American reticence to become involved in the conflict further reduced the official American presence, putting missionaries in a surprisingly important position. These missionaries represented the front lines of the Sino-American relationship, but they were very different from the average American. Many of them had been in China for decades. A few, like Stuart, had been born in China during their parents’ time as missionaries. Despite this prolonged absence from their native land, many of them carried American assumptions with them, such as the importance of separation of church and state, the ideal of religious freedom and the value of 1 representative government. Yet they were also missionaries, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their primary purpose was to bring the Chinese to Christ, which their doctrine said they should do with no bias towards race or nationality. This put them in a position of being caught between the competing ideas of nationalism and religion. Nationality, by its definition, separates those in a nation from those outside of it. Because of its history as a nation of immigrants, American nationalism can be more inclusive than many forms of nationalism, but it still contains the belief that the American system is the best one. Christianity, at least in theory, is universally inclusive. American missionaries in China often struggled between their feelings of nationalism, which drew a distinction between themselves and the Chinese, and their devotion to Christianity, which had a more Universalist approach. Of course, it is difficult to generalize about missionaries as a whole, especially Protestant missionaries. Their motivations, backgrounds and religious beliefs varied widely. Some were evangelicals who saw proselytization as their core mission. Others had a more liberal view of Christianity, which believed that putting Christ’s work into action in the world was their primary duty. Each missionary was shaped by the churches or mission organizations that sponsored them, but also carried their own individual beliefs with them. Even before World War II, these missionaries had faced decades of upheaval in China, but the Chinese Civil War created an unprecedented crisis for them. Unprecedented is not used lightly here. While their history had been a very rocky road, from early restrictions on their movement to repeated uprisings against their influence, the challenge of the Chinese Communists was something entirely different. Even so, most missionaries did not realize it immediately. Prior disturbances, even including the Japanese invasion, had been restricted in geographic scope and were 2 limited in duration. Although there were many casualties, missions were able to retreat to safe areas and wait the disturbances out. Missionaries had the backing of foreign governments and guarantees of protection through the “Unequal Treaties” of the 19th Century, so the threats were always dealt with quickly. The Chinese Communists, however, presented an existential threat to missions. The Communists were avowedly atheist. Communist doctrine stated that religion was one of the many ways that capitalists distracted the poor from their exploitation. Removing religion was necessary for the class consciousness needed for a revolution. Previous Chinese organizations had been anti-Christian, some violently so, but unlike those groups, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was gaining the power to enforce it. By 1948, it looked poised to gain control of the entire country, something that no group had been able to do in the 20th Century. Just as dangerous, its program called for control over all aspects of Chinese society. The CCP was not only anti-religious, it was gaining the power to implement its policies. This type of threat was something new to missions. If the CCP gained power, as looked likely by 1948, how would missions survive? This spawned some new questions: Was the CCP dogmatically Communist or was it a nationalist party with Communist leanings? How anti-religious was it? Experience from Eastern Europe showed that a Communist takeover meant wholesale persecution of the church. But if the CCP was really nationalist first, would it follow a different plan? Some reports from the areas it controlled in northern China suggested that it was less dogmatic than its Eastern European brethren. This dissertation looks at how missionaries understood and reacted to the Communist victory in China. They were a key source for most Americans for understanding what was happening in China. This project is primarily interested in 3 how they interpreted the events of the Chinese Civil War and what they communicated in these interpretations back to the American public. What divisions of opinion were there among missionaries on how to deal with the Communists and what caused those divisions? How did their experience both before going to China and during the Chinese Civil War affect that interpretation? Finally, how did they participate in the larger American debate over Communism and China? This dissertation has discovered that there was a forgotten voice among liberal Protestant American missionaries in China. Those missionaries went against what would seem conventional wisdom by seeking accommodation with the atheist Chinese Communists during and immediately after the Chinese Civil War. They were primarily from liberal denominations, usually doing service work rather than evangelization, and possessed an ecumenical perspective toward both religion and politics. They focused more on the universality of their religious beliefs than on the particularities of the nationality. Ironically, they were counting on the CCP’s nationalist tendencies to be stronger than its Communist ones. In this judgment they were proven correct, but it did not get them the outcome they wanted. They did not understand that the hyper nationalism of the CCP would force them out of the country not because they were Christians, but because they were Americans. Once they were back in the United States, they again took a less popular stance by remaining open to dealing with the Communists, both in terms of accepting that Chinese Christians must make accommodations to the CCP and then by advocating better relations with the People’s Republic. Yet they were out of touch with mainstream America in the 1950’s and their voices were drowned out. Even worse, their stories would be used by anti-communists for Cold War purposes even as they argued against it. 4 Scope This project focuses on American Protestant missionaries as the front line in the American relationship with China. I use the
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