18: Christianity in China

Introduction

We start a section of the class today that focuses on the history of the church in parts of the world outside Europe and North & South America. God has a plan to save a people for himself from every tribe and tongue and nation. But he does not promise to save people from every tribe and tongue and nation during every era of history. There are some places on this earth where generations of people were born, lived and died apart from any gospel witness at all. We are called to go and tell those who have not heard but God, in his sovereign plan, determines where his word will be preached and who will respond.

Notice

Acts 16:6–10 ESV

6 And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. 8 So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

For hundreds of years, Europe, and later North America, was the fertile ground where the gospel germinated and grew and from which it spread. And before that, we saw that North Africa was the cradle of Christianity until Islam swept through. And in our day, another shift is taking place, the locus of faithful Christianity seems to be moving once again, and we’ll talk about the history of the church in some of those places in the next several lessons beginning this week with China.

This lesson was originally called “The Protestant Church in China.” However, I wanted to broaden it a bit because the history of the church in China didn’t begin with the 19th century missionary movement.

To start that story, we need to go all the way back to Genesis 10.

When the Ark rested on dry land and its inhabitants came out, the eight of them, were the entire population of the earth. So, for a brief moment, every inhabitant of the earth knew who the One true God of the universe was and had personal experience with both his justice and his mercy.

From Noah’s three sons and their wives came all the nations of the earth.

Later at Babel, those nations were given unique languages and spread out to multiply and fill the earth as God had commanded.

Some have said the Chinese people descend from Japeth and others say from Ham. Henry Morris believed the latter:

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“Descendants of Ham included the Egyptians and Sumerians, who founded the first two great empires of antiquity, as well as other great nations such as the Phoenicians, Hittites, and Canaanites. The modern African tribes and the Mongol tribes (including today the Chinese and Japanese), as well as the American Indians and the South Sea Islanders, are probably dominantly Hamitic in origin.” - Henry Morris (1)

Of course, over time, this knowledge of the One true God, possessed by Noah and his family, was forgotten. This was true of all the nations. It was not until the Lord called Abram out of the city of Uz, where he was worshipping idols, that a people began again to know God rightly.

However, many of the other nations retained a collective memory of this God.

We find, for example, flood legends among almost all the nations of the world. They have a collective memory of a time when God or gods destroyed the earth by water because of people’s wickedness.

There are other examples of this.

We read in Acts 17:23

Acts 17:23 ESV

23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

This is while Paul was in the city of Athens.

The Chinese as well, from very early on, worshipped their version of an “unknown god,” the god “Shang Di” which means “Heavenly Ruler.”

In something called the Border Sacrifice, every year, the emperor sacrificed a bull in honor of Shang Di. This was first recorded having been done around 4,000 years ago. In recent times, recent meaning 450 years ago, it was done at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. This went on uninterrupted for 4,000 years until the last emperor was overthrown in 1911.

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Listen to what was recited about Shang Di as the emperor participated in this rite:

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“Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The five elements [planets] had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine. You, O Spiritual Sovereign, first divided the grosser parts from the purer. You made heaven. You made earth. You made man. All things with their reproducing power got their being”

Source: The Original ‘Unknown’ God of China | Answers in Genesis

Sounds somehow familiar, right? If you read the first few chapters of Genesis, you hear echos of that in this.

So, when did Christianity first come to China?

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First Contacts with Christianity

Let’s do some audience participation…what year do you think the area we now call China first had contact with any form of Christianity? We’ll do this like the Price is Right, whoever gets closest without going over wins - nothing in particular but you do win.

How about the year 635 A.D.

In the early fifteenth century, something now called the Nestorian Stele was discovered:

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“The stele describes Christ’s birth, Christian doctrine, a short history of Nestorianism in China from the arrival of the first missionary in 635, a eulogy and a list of names of clergymen. The erection of the tablet is given using three calendrical systems (Chinese, Persian and Greek-Seleucid). The stele mentions a total of twenty-seven books, which corresponds to the number of New Testament writings.”

Source: The Luminous Religon: Nestorian Christianity in China | James Ford (patheos.com)

If you remember from our earlier lessons on church councils and the various heresies they addressed, Nestorianism was an heretical belief regarding the nature of Christ - that his divine and human natures were completely separate. He was two beings inhabiting one body. This was resolved at the council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. where Nestorianism was declared a heresy and what we call the hypostatic union was affirmed. Christ is fully God and fully man existing in one, indivisible person. But the Nestorian version of Christianity persisted in some parts of the world. Essentially, when Nestorianism was declared a heresy by the church in the west, those who refused to conform to orthodox teaching moved east.

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It seems that this form of Christianity had a following in China for a while and that it kind of merged with Buddhism. A guy named Martin Palmer wrote a book called “The Jesus Sutras, Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity” advocating that position.

The Next contact seems to be Roman Catholic missionaries in the 13th century:

Atlas of Christian History Missions to the Mongols

In 1294 an Italian Franciscan, John of Montecorvino (1247–1328), arrived at the court of the Khan in Peking bearing a letter from the pope. He remained for 30 years, building churches, translating the New Testament, and winning converts.

John translated the New Testament and the Psalms into the Mongolian language so the Chinese had the scriptures in their language as early as the late 1200’s. He also built a large church and by 1305 reported 6,000 converts.

Source: Christianity in China - New World Encyclopedia

Interestingly, in Beijing these missionaries discovered Nestorian Christians as well as others who considered themselves Christian who’d been taken captive by Mongol raids on Europe. So, there were already Christians or people calling themselves Christians, in Beijing when these missionaries got there.

Atlas of Christian History Missions to the Mongols

However in 1368 the Mongols were overthrown and the Ming dynasty once again closed China to foreigners.

In 1362 the last Catholic bishop of Quanzhou, Giacomo da Firenze, was killed by the Chinese who seized control of the city. The Chinese rose up and drove out the Mongols, establishing the Ming Dynasty in 1368. By 1369 the Ming Dynasty had expelled all Christians, Roman Catholic and Nestorian.”

Source: Christianity in China - New World Encyclopedia

But, the pendulum swung again during the Manchu Dynasty which began in 1644.

There’s also a record of the existence of a Christian presence in China in 1692 from an Edict of Tolerance issued by Emperor K’ang Hsi:

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“We decide therefore that all temples dedicated to the Lord of Heaven, in whatever place they may be found, ought to be preserved, and that it may be permitted to all who wish to worship this God to enter these temples, offer him incense, and perform the ceremonies practised according to ancient custom by the Christians. Therefore let no one henceforth offer them any opposition.” (2)

However by the early 1800s...

Christian History Magazine—Issue 52: Hudson Taylor & Missions to China Did You Know?

In the early 1800s, evangelism and printing Christian literature were capital offenses in China. It was even forbidden for foreigners to learn Chinese. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China (who arrived in 1807), paid exorbitant fees to study Chinese. His two tutors lived in fear of torture by the Chinese officials. They carried poison so that if in danger, they could end their lives in Morrison’s home rather than in a Chinese prison

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So, Protestant missionary efforts began in a small way in 1807. It was not until later in the 19th century that it became a much bigger enterprise.

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The Taiping Rebellion

Fast forwarding a few years we come to a hugely significant event both for China and the church in China - the Taiping Rebellion also known as the Taiping Civil War.

It was fought between the ruling Qing Dynasty and a group known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

In 1837, so thirty years after Robert Morrison began his missionary efforts, a man named Hong Houxiu, after failing the imperial civil service exam multiple times, cutting off access to the career he wanted, had a nervous breakdown. During his recovery he claims to have had a dream or a vision where he went to heaven and was told that the Qing dynasty were worshipping demons and not the true God and that Confucius was being punished by God (presumably in hell) for leading the people astray.

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He claims God then changed his name to Hong Xiuquan.

In 1843 he was given some Protestant Christian evangelistic literature and became convinced that the God of Christianity was the God he has seen - he equated the Christian God with the Chinese god Shang Di. In 1847 he went to the city of Guangzhou and studied the Bible with Issachar Roberts, an American Baptist missionary. Roberts, however, was skeptical of Hong and refused to baptise him, saying he believed Hong was "bent on making their burlesque religious pretensions serve their political purpose". Roberts saw Hong as an opportunist seeking to use Christianity for his own ends. And it turns out Roberts was very discerning.

However, Roberts’ rejection didn’t deter Hong. In 1851 he founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and made himself “Heavenly King” of the kingdom claiming also to be the brother of Jesus Christ.

He accrued many followers to his “kingdom” and it eventually became a huge force to be reckoned with, actually taking over large parts of China with its own army and becoming the government in those areas.

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Finally, in 1860, with the help of American and British military leaders, the Qing dynasty defeated the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom once and for all in a battle for the city of Shanghai. The British and French had heavy artillery, something the Chinese did not possess at the time.

In the end the rebellion cost some 20,000,000 lives (to put it in perspective, the American Civil War cost about 600,000 lives). Even though the Qing dynasty prevailed the rebellion weakened the Chinese government in the face of western imperialism and made Chinese rulers even more suspicious of foreign influence on Chinese culture, particularly religious manifestations of culture.

Source: Taiping Rebellion - Wikipedia

They equated this with Christianity and said ‘we don’t want any more of that.’ Christianity being seen as a foreign religion, dangerous to Chinese culture, will be the catalyst for much persecution of the church and Christians going forward in China.

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Hudson Taylor

Five years after the conclusion of the Taiping rebellion, a British man named Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission.

Despite 50 years of missionary activity in China, by 1860, there were only 351 Chinese Protestant church members[38] and 91 Protestant missionaries in China. Taylor sought to change that.

“While taking a medical course in Hull, England, as part of his preparation for missionary service, young Hudson Taylor once gave away his very last coin to aid a desperately poor family. Consequently, he did not know how his own food would be supplied the very next day. But within twelve hours the Lord provided him four times the amount he had given away through an anonymous source. That was one of several faith-building experiences Taylor had before he left England for China.”

Source: China Inland Mission Archives - VanceChristie.com

This helped guide his approach to ministry in China. Taylor’s China Inland Mission was founded in 1865 on the premise that it would never solicit funds from donors but simply trust God to supply its needs. Today, 150 or so years later, though the organization has changed its name (to Overseas Missionary Fellowship [International]), it has not changed this policy.

Samuel Chao, “Did You Know?,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 52: Hudson Taylor & Missions to China (1996),.

SLIDE TAYLOR QUOTE

The CIM was different in other ways as well. Missionaries in China until this point lived in enclaves unto themselves and maintained western customs and traditions within those enclaves, having limited contact with the populace. Taylor took to heart Paul’s teaching in...

I Corinthians 9:20-23 “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

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Taylor believed unless the foreign missionaries entered into Chinese culture to the extent that they could, they would not be as successful as they could be. To that end, he insisted that CIM missionaries adopt Chinese dress, something unheard of at the time among Protestant missionaries (Roman Catholic missionaries had been doing it for some time).

But, because Chinese dress was complicated, sending signals about a person’s status and occupation, it wasn’t a simple matter to “dress like the Chinese.” One had to be careful which form of dress was adopted.

Taylor and CIM chose to adopt the dress of poor school teachers.

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This allowed them access to parts of China that were dangerous for other foreigners.

By 1880, the number of Chinese missionaries with CIM eclipsed the number of Western missionaries outside of CIM (100 to 96)[50]and by 1893, there were 1,323 Protestant missionaries in China.[51] Hudson Taylor would spend most of his time in China despite painful health challenges.[52] In the final days of his life, Taylor, back in England and facing badly failing health, insisted on returning to China one final time. He arrived in Changsha, China, twice widowed and 73 years of age, on June 1, 1905. He died two days later in the country he loved and had poured his life into.[53]

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The Boxer Rebellion

Christian History Magazine—Issue 52: Hudson Taylor & Missions to China Fury Unleashed

On the last day of 1899, Chinese reactionaries abducted Sidney Brooks, a 24-year-old missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. They tortured him for hours and then murdered him. British authorities acted swiftly; two culprits were executed and an indemnity was demanded.

However, the British action, rather than quelling the unrest led to more. What followed is known as the “Boxer Rebellion” and the targets of the rebels were Christians, both indigenous Chinese believers and foreign missionaries.

Many of the so-called Boxers (The Society of Harmonious Fists) wore banners with the following words: “By imperial command exterminate the Christian religion.”[56]

One of the bloodiest events happened in the province of Shansi when the local governor rounded up all Protestant and Catholic missionaries on July 9, 1900.

A convert who survived the ordeal described what happened. "The first to be led forth was Mr. Farthing. His wife clung to him, but he gently put her aside and going in front of the soldiers knelt down without saying a word, and his head was struck off by one blow of the executioner's axe. He was quickly followed by … Doctors Lovitt and Wilson, each of whom was beheaded by one blow of the executioner. Then Yu Hsien grew impatient and told his bodyguard, all of whom carried heavy swords with long handles, to help kill the others . …

"When the men were finished, the women were taken. Mrs. Farthing had hold of the hands of her children who clung to her, but soldiers parted them and with one blow beheaded their mother. … Mrs. Lovitt was wearing her spectacles and holding the hand of her little boy even when she was killed. She spoke to the people saying, 'We all came to China to bring you the good news of the salvation of Jesus Christ, we have done you no harm, only good, why do you treat us so?' A soldier took off her spectacles before beheading her, which needed two blows."

Source: Fury Unleashed | Christian History | Christianity Today

Scores of people were killed, including many Chinese Christians. They were all beheaded and their heads place in cages and hung on the city gates.

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Among the indigenous Chinese Christian population, the massacre was far worse. It’s estimated the the Boxers killed 30,000 Chinese Christians.

This was driven by the belief that Christianity was a “foreign” religion and that to allow it to flourish in China was unpatriotic and detrimental to Chinese culture - a sentiment that would later be taken up by the Communists in China.

Christian History Magazine—Issue 52: Hudson Taylor & Missions to China Fury Unleashed

They circulated thousands of handbills and proclamations. One, referring to the current drought that was causing great suffering, said, “[Because] the Catholic and Protestant religions are insolent to the gods, extinguishing sanctity, rendering no obedience to Buddha, and enraging Heaven and Earth, the rain clouds no longer visit us. But 8 million Spirit Soldiers will descend from Heaven and sweep the Empire clean of all foreigners!”

Rumors also spread that Christians engaged in human sacrifice and using the organs of their victims to make secret potions.

The enemy’s playbook doesn’t change much. We’ve heard things like this before.

Remember back to one of the first lessons in this class about persecution under the Roman Empire? Third century apologist Tertullian wrote:

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“If the Tiber reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky does not move or the earth does, if there is famine, if there is plague, they cry at once, "The Christians to the lions!"

The rebellion was eventually put down by foreign troops in September 1901 after the Chinese government began to support and encourage the Boxers.

Many missions agencies afterwards demanded reparations for the damages they’d suffered. Many buildings, churches and hospitals had been destroyed. Hudson Taylor, however, refused to accept any compensation even when it was offered to him.

Christian History Magazine—Issue 52: Hudson Taylor & Missions to China Fury Unleashed

Tertullian’s comment, “The blood of Christians is seed” proved accurate in China. The courage of the martyrs, both Chinese and missionary, inspired three-fold church growth in the next decade.

Unfortunately, Chinese indignation would continue to build for another fifty years—until the communists successfully expelled all “foreign devils.”

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Mao & Communism

The story of John and Betty Stam is a chilling foreshadowing of what was in store for Christians under Communism that would consolidate in China under Mao Zedong by 1949.

John and Betty Stam (1906/07–1934). One of the most dramatic missionary martyr stories of 20th-century China was the public beheading of the Stams, a young CIM couple who had graduated from Moody Bible Institute, by Communist soldiers in 1934. Their baby daughter Helen was hidden in blankets and rescued by Chinese Christians. The courage of the Stams inspired many others to become missionaries.

Daniel Bays, G. Wright Doyle, and Yading Li, “From Foreign Mission to Chinese Church,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 98: Christianity in China (2008),.

(video) 3:42

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After the Second World War, the Chinese Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek were defeated by the Communist forces under Mao Zedong and a Communist state was established in China in 1949.

Initially all Christians, both Chinese and foreign were identified and had their activities restricted. However, in 1951, all remaining foreign missionaries were expelled from China.

So, for the first time since 1808, there were zero Protestant missionaries in China. Would that mean an end to the Church there?

Absolutely not! Christ will build his church and he doesn’t need any particular group of people to do so. The foreign missions movement planted a seed in China and that seed continued to grow after their departure. I’m reminded of Christ’s words in the Gospel of Luke:

Luke 13:18-19 “He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

Foreign missionaries in China, which at their height were only about 8,000 among a population of many millions, were the mustard seed that the Holy Spirit used to grow the church there until by 2030 Open Doors estimates there will be over 300 million Christians in China.

The Church in China Today

Information from Open Doors:

“China’s growing Christian community currently stands at around 96.7 million – just under seven per cent of the country’s total population.”

“Surveillance in China is among the most oppressive and sophisticated in the world. Church attendance is rigorously monitored, and many churches are being closed down—whether they are independent or belong to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (the officially state-sanctioned Protestant church in China). It remains illegal for under-18s to attend church. All meeting venues had to close during the COVID-19 crisis, but some churches were forced to remain closed once restrictions began to lift, and were quietly phased out. The old truth that churches will only be perceived as being a threat if they become too large, too political or invite foreign guests, is an unreliable guideline. Christian leaders are generally the main target of government surveillance, and a very small number have been abducted. "They are simply snatched away,” says an Open Doors source, “only to appear months later in a kind of house arrest, where they get re-educated.’’ If someone is discovered to have converted from Islam or Tibetan Buddhism, their family and community will usually threaten or abuse them. Their husbands may be pressured to divorce them, to persuade them to reconvert. Neighbors may report any Christian activities to the authorities or the village head, who would take action to stop believers.”

From the Open Doors China report:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has helped the authorities suspend the operation of many churches, unnoticed by the majority of the general public. While other sorts of meeting venues were gradually opened to the public again in 2021, many church venues were forced to remain closed, pushing congregations to meet online or dissolve into cell groups. Since the Christian community is arguably the largest organized social force not controlled by the Communist authorities, it is natural that Christians are generally regarded with suspicion by them, especially since religion in general is seen as something which should be overcome by Communism.

Open Doors, China: Full Country Dossier,.

Open Doors ranks China 17th on its list of the 50 worst persecutors of the Church.

WNG Article on Christian Missionaries.

(1) Out of which of Noah’s three sons did the Chinese race come from? | Bible.org

(2) A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450 - 1990, p.39

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