The Hunan Bible Institute (Biola-in-China): A Stronghold of Fundamentalist Bible Training in China, 1916—1952

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-144
Author(s):  
Kevin Xiyi Yao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Fundamentalist Movement ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Bible Schools

The Protestant Church in China has been deeply shaped by the fundamentalist movement of the early twentieth century. As happened in America, Bible schools featured very prominently in the movement in China. The Hunan Bible Institute (HBI) was one of the most important Bible schools, and thus constitutes a good case study for this kind of key fundamentalist institution in China. By tracing its historical trajectory from 1916 to 1952, this study argues (1) that HBI embodied the vision and rationale of the fundamentalist theological training and (2) that HBI was not just a school, but also a platform where some of the most influential figures and ministries of the Chinese fundamentalist camp converged. It became a hub of spreading dispensationalism within China, and a powerhouse of the revivals sweeping across the country in those decades. This fact highlights the critical roles and significance the Bible schools held for the fundamentalist movement in China of the early twentieth century. (3) HBI’s identity as ‘Biola-in-China’ demonstrates a deep interrelationship between the fundamentalist camps in China and America. The strong, but troublesome relation between HBI and Biola attests to intensifying tension between the Chinese Church’s independence and foreign missions’ control. By training church leaders and providing a fundamentalist ministry platform, HBI exerted considerable influence on the formation of conservative Protestant Christianity in China.

Wellspring of Inspiration: TheMandarin Union Versionand Modern Chinese Poetry in the Early Twentieth Century

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-177
Author(s):  
JOHN T. P. LAI
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Modern Chinese Literature ◽  
Chinese Poetry ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
May Fourth

Coinciding with the May Fourth new cultural and literary movement, the publication of theMandarin Union Version, the vernacular Chinese translation of the Bible, in 1919 had a profound impact on the formation of modern Chinese literature. This paper examines the ways in which theUnion Versionprovided a novel source of imageries, poetic genres and worldviews for the experimentation of modern Chinese poetry during the Republican period, particularly between the 1920s and 1940s. Revering the Bible as the Holy Scripture, young Christian poetess Bing Xin (1900–99) spontaneously expressed her religious sentiments and commitment by composing a series of “sacred poems” as her own poetic response to the striking beauty of biblical images. Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967), a renowned May Fourth Chinese writer and intellectual, regarded the Bible as a treasured anthology of Jewish literature and appreciated the humanistic values embodied in the teachings of Jesus. Placing the biblical references of the wilderness, Jesus's universal love and Moses's legalistic position in the forefront, Zhou Zuoren's poem“Qilu,”or “Crossroads,” captured the perplexity of his contemporary intellectuals, Zhou himself included, in their sabbathless search for cultural rejuvenation and national salvation during the transitional and tumultuous Republican era. An ardent admirer of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, Chinese modernist poet Mu Dan (1918–77) studied their poetry at the Southwest United University in Kunming during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). Imbued with biblical allusions, for instance, the fall of humankind and the loss of paradise, Mu Dan's poems, like“She de youhuo,”or “The Temptation of the Serpent,” articulate his penetrating critique of modernity. These works of poetry represent the multiple voices and diverse reactions of the early twentieth-century Chinese poets towards theUnion Versionwhich had not only firmly established its canonical status as the predominant Chinese translation of the Bible used by the Protestant Church, but also emerged as a literary tour-de-force to propel the evolution of modern Chinese poetry.

Global Visions and Patriotic Sentiments: The Rise and Fall of Ecumenical Reputations, 1890–1922

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 236-247
Author(s):  
Stuart Mews
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Modern Form

Two names stand out in the wealth of young talent which forged the networks which came together in what has come to be called the ecumenical movement, John R. Mott (1865–1955) and his contemporary Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931). For his fellow American Robert Schneider, Mott was ‘undoubtedly the most famous Protestant ecumenist of the early twentieth century’. To his fellow Swede Bengt Sundkler, Söderblom provided the spark of innovation in 1919–20 which was ‘the beginnings in embryo of what later became the ecumenical movement in its modern form’. The purpose of this paper is to consider their contributions in the period from 1890 to 1922, and the overlap and divergences of their roles in the movements contributing to ecumenical thinking and action. Amongst those disparate though sometimes overlapping strands were the concerns of foreign missions, students and peace. A subsidiary theme is that of mischief-making, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes by design of the press.

Christianity in China

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Hayford
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
The Bible

In the early 21st century, Christianity in China is a diverse, growing, and small but resilient force. Estimates vary, but one informed report speculates that the number of Christians is perhaps 5 percent of the population, in any case giving China one of the largest Christian populations in the world. Historically, like Buddhism in earlier times and Marxism in the 20th century, both of which also came from outside China, Christianity has become Chinese in many forms: as doctrine and theology, as institutions, as communities, and as spiritual experience. In the 16th century, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci argued for a Sino-Christian synthesis based on the natural theology that God had placed in Confucian classics as well as the Bible. After the emperor proscribed Christianity and expelled foreign missions in 1724, Catholic village communities grew by melding Christianity into local Chinese religions. In the century after the Opium Wars of the 1840s, Protestant and Catholic missionaries and Chinese Christians established a network of churches, seminaries, schools, universities, hospitals, and publishing houses, which all made key contributions to the emerging Chinese nation. At the same time, independent Chinese evangelicals attracted large followings based on their own readings of the Bible. After 1949 the new People’s Republic of China once again expelled foreign missions and campaigned to suppress or control all religions except officially sanctioned groups. Yet the number of Christians still rose, mainly in the countryside. When the post-1978 reforms brought a loss of faith in Marxism and a spiritual crisis, Catholic and mainline Protestant churches thrived, as did “underground churches,” but the fastest growing groups were independent evangelicals and Pentecostals, again especially in the countryside. In short, over the centuries there have been many and often competing Chinese Christianities. For many millions, Christianity was a spiritual experience and daily practice which gave meaning to life. Doubters saw Christianity as a foreign religion incompatible with Chinese culture, while China’s rulers, both before and after the 1949 revolution, assumed that it was their responsibility to regulate all religions, especially ones they saw as foreign. Nationalists charged that Christianity entered China by what they called imperialist “gunboat diplomacy,” accused converts of being “rice Christians,” and charged that “one more Christian is one less Chinese.” In recent decades, perhaps no other field in Chinese studies has changed more than the study of Christianity. The earliest scholars, often missionaries or their sympathizers, wrote reverentially of struggles to create a Chinese church and plant the seeds of Christianity. Recent scholarship centers on Chinese Christianities as independent and authentic entities, not as versions of western Christianity; on missions as part of Chinese society; on grassroots communities that practice Christianity as a Chinese folk or popular religion; on Christianities which enlarge rather than replace Chinese identities; and on lived experience as much as on orthodoxy and doctrine.

G. K. Chesterton and Islam

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Tom Villis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Scholarly Attention

G. K. Chesterton's anti-Semitism has attracted much scholarly attention, but his views on Islam have largely passed without comment. This article situates Chesterton's writings in relation to historical views of Islam in Britain and the political, cultural and religious context of the early twentieth century. Chesterton's complex and contradictory opinions fail to support easy conclusions about the immutability of prejudice across time. His views of Islam are at times orientalist and at other times critical of imperialism and elitism. As well as drawing on medieval Catholic ideas about the “heresy” of Islam, Chesterton also links Islam with Protestant Christianity. From another perspective, his views of Islam draw on liberal traditions of humanitarian interventionism and democratic patriotism. Finally, he also used Islam as a symbol of a corroding modernity. This study suggests the need for a historically sensitive genealogy of the evolution of anti-Muslim prejudice which is not predetermined by the politics of the early twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Christianity and Religious Syncretism in Early Twentieth-Century China

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxuan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Chinese Religion ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Religious Syncretism

AbstractChristianity in China is known to have been influenced by Chinese popular religion. Yet it is less known how much Christianity has influenced other religions in China. This article examines the syncretic trend of the early years of Republican China, which aimed at reinventing Chinese religions. I argue that as early as the 1920s, followers of Chinese religious traditions were appropriating various aspects of Christianity – from its symbols and institutions to its values – for their own ends. This trend was crucial for Christianity to become a part of Chinese religion and society.

The ‘Three Crosses’ of Mission Work: Fifty Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Angola, 1880-1930

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-357
Author(s):  
Jeremy Ball
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
Western Education ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Mission Work ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

AbstractIn 1930 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) commemorated fifty years of mission work in central Angola with a celebration that sought to unite thousands of Umbundu Christians into a community. Rituals such as the singing of hymns, daily church services, and bold performances of religious music by the 540-voice Jubilee Choir aimed at reinforcing Christian identity. A historical pageant dubbed the ‘Three Crosses’ was created in order to present a missionary perspective of Angolan history, one that juxtaposed Christian societal improvement with indigenous scenes of death, violence, and ignorance. This paper provides an account of the pageant and argues that its program also transmitted prominent subtexts associated with colonial discourse. Theories of social evolution and racism were widespread among early twentieth-century Americans, and ABCFM missionaries used this rhetoric to preach self-improvement through Christianization by disparaging indigenous Umbundu beliefs. Although providing Western education proved an effective tool for attracting converts and a lasting measure of the ABCFM’s influence in Angola, the legacy of the mission preserves these contradictions of colonial missionary work.

“Monkeying with the Bible”: Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Bryan Bademan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American English ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Language

AbstractDevotion to the Bible remains an underappreciated aspect of American religious life partly because it fails to generate controversy. This essay opens a window onto America's relationship with the Bible by exploring a controversial moment in the history of the Bible in America: the public reception of University of Chicago professor Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation (1923). Initially, at least, most Americans flatly rejected Goodspeed's impeccably credentialed attempt to cast the language of the Bible in contemporary “American” English. Accusations of the professor's irreligion, bad taste, vulgarity, and crass modernity emerged from nearly every quarter of the Protestant establishment (with the exception of some card-carrying theological modernists), testifying to a widespread but unexplored attachment to the notion of a traditional Bible in the early twentieth century. By examining this barrage of reaction, “Monkeying with the Bible” argues that Protestants, along with some others in 1920s America, believed that traditional biblical language was among the forces that helped stabilize the development of American civilization.

Protestant Missionary Thought in India

1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-347
Author(s):  
David Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Religion ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Protestant Christianity

The contribution of J. N. Farquhar to Protestant missionary thought is the central theme of a recent important book. Not to Destroy but to Fulfil is, however, much more than a study of one of the most distinguished apologists and students of comparative religion in the early twentieth century. It is a vigorous and thorough investigation of the missionary encounter of Protestant Christianity with Hinduism from 1858 to 1914, in which the theological dialogue in its various phases is set before the reader. The book will have a further special appeal to Scotsmen, for whom many of the names cited will evoke personal memories from the past.

Managing Worship, Mothering Missions: Children’s Prayerful Performances Linking the United States and Angola in the Early Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Ann W. Ellis Pullen ◽  
Sarah Ruffing Robbins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Limited Knowledge ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Woman's Work

In writings by Nellie Arnott, who taught for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Angola from 1905 to 1912, we find a complex interplay between affiliation and distancing in portrayals of her students and their communities. A somewhat different version of Arnott and her students appears in narratives written by editors and contributors to her main publication venue, Mission Studies: Woman’s Work in Foreign Lands. This essay investigates discursive tensions between her own narrative stance and that of her magazine managers, whose views on racial issues often displayed stereotypical bias against, and limited knowledge about, Angola.

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