Chapter 14 Chapter 6 New Development Trends

The Boxer Rebellion was called the "Gengzi Cult" by some church history works.Foreign aggressive forces and Christian churches have been severely hit in the resistance struggles of the people everywhere.Although the Boxer Movement was suppressed, the aggressors were awed by the revolutionary spirit of the Chinese people.In his speech at the London crusade, the British Foreign Secretary asked missionaries to "always be cautious" when going to China.The British Governor in India also said: "According to 1890, there were 1,300 missionary men and women, and only 37,300 Chinese followers. One priest only accepts 30 believers. Based on the total Chinese household registration, there is only one believer per 10,000 people. Fifty years and nothing more, it is useless.” He exhorted the Anglo-American churches to “choose priests carefully” and missionaries to “love themselves to prevent future troubles.”Among the missionaries there was also deep dissatisfaction with aggressive missionary methods and attitudes and their role as accomplices and tools of colonialism.Dade was born in 1895 and wrote to the newspaper. He advocated that missionaries should not appeal to the government of their own country under any circumstances, so as not to cause resentment and misunderstanding among Chinese people.Any appeal and request for compensation is neither unreasonable nor contrary to the teachings of the Bible.An American missionary once said with emotion: "The preaching (teaching) is all sent by heaven, and there is no need for the world to show pity on it. In short, the religious affairs cannot be discussed within the covenant, and it is a matter of covenant. It is also a matter of personnel, a matter of teaching, and a matter of heaven.” Therefore, since 1900, there has been a new trend in Christian missionary activities, which is mainly manifested in the fact that foreign missionaries use the huge indemnity money from the Qing government to set up hospitals, schools and other cultural institutions. Charities to advance missionary work.

Before 1900, there were only a hundred hospitals run by the church, and most of them were clinics attached to the church.By 1920, there were 246 Protestant mission hospitals and 380 clinics.There are also more than 200 Catholic church hospitals and nursing homes.Church schools, especially universities, have made great progress. Before 1900, there were more than 1,100 church schools, 90% of which were primary schools and 10% were middle schools. There were no universities, and only some middle schools had college classes. Suzhou Soochow University, established in 1900, is the first Western-style university in the history of our country.In the following 20 years, Protestantism established Shanghai St. John’s University, Hangzhou Zhijiang University, Chengdu West China Union University, Wuchang Huazhong University, Nanjing Jinling University, Fuzhou South China Women’s College of Arts and Sciences, Changsha Xiangya Medical College, Nanjing Jinling Women’s College of Arts and Sciences, Shanghai Hujiang University, Guangzhou Lingnan University, Fuzhou Union University, Beijing Yenching University and Jinan Qilu University.The Catholic Church has also established Fu Jen Catholic University in Beijing, Aurora University in Shanghai, Tianjin Industrial and Commercial College, etc.By 1920, there were 7,382 Protestant educational institutions of various kinds, including 14 universities.There are more than 210,000 students in the school, including more than 2,000 college students.Under the cover of cultural philanthropy, Christian missionary activities quickly resumed their original foundation and began a period of comprehensive development that lasted for more than 20 years. Before 1900, Protestants were mainly concentrated in a few provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. By 1920, Protestants had spread all over the country except Tibet.According to statistics in the book "Christian Occupation of China" published at that time, among all the cities with a population of more than 50,000 in the country, only 18 have not yet seen the footprints of missionaries.6,204 foreign missionaries belonging to 130 mission associations have established 1,037 missionary bases in various places, and there are more than 10,000 churches and places of worship.The number of Chinese pastors increased from 345 in 1906 to 1305, surpassing the number of foreign pastors.The number of Chinese serving in the church also increased from 9,961 in 1906 to 28,396, more than four times the number of foreign missionaries at that time.Protestants nationwide increased dramatically, from 80,000 in 1900 to more than 360,000 in 1920.Catholicism developed more rapidly.After being hit hard in the Anti-Western Religion Movement and the Boxer Movement, the missionaries of various religious orders changed their missionary methods. On the one hand, they used the Qing government’s indemnity to recruit believers by issuing silver dollars or providing food as bait; Some areas practice medicine and start schools, and organize charities to expand social influence. In 1900, there were 740,000 Catholics nationwide, and by 1920, the number had soared to 2 million.In contrast, the development of the Orthodox Church was slow. After the Russian October Revolution in 1917, a large number of Orthodox Christians flowed into my country, causing a sudden increase in the number of Christians. Dioceses were successively established in Harbin, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Xinjiang. The missionary group in Beijing was renamed the Chinese Orthodox Church in Beijing.There are 300,000 believers in the Diocese of Harbin alone, but almost all of them are Belarusian exiles.After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Belarusian exiles left one after another, and the number of believers dropped sharply.

At about the same time, in order to get rid of the control of foreign missionary organizations, some Chinese Christians launched the Chinese Christian (Protestant) Self-reliance Movement, also known as the Church Self-support and Autobiography Movement, on the basis of Chinese believers running their own churches. In 1873, Chen Mengxin, a believer from Guangdong, initiated the establishment of the Guangdong Guangzhao Chinese Missionary Association in Zhaoqing, which was the first of its kind in China for believers to run their own church.At first there were only two churches, but by 1897 it had grown to more than 50 churches, which had spread to the Northeast. In 1903, Yu Guozhen, a Christian from Shanghai, first opposed the inclusion of the "Baojiao Section" in the unequal treaty, and relied on Chinese Christians to establish a self-supporting Presbyterian Church. In 1906, he advocated the establishment of the China Jesuit Self-Independence Association, advocated the abolition of the unequal treaties protecting the church, and called on "aspiring believers to seek self-reliance, self-support, and self-propagation... and will never be under the jurisdiction of the Western Church."In the same year, the Self-reliance Association was established, with the purpose of loving education, patriotism, self-reliance and self-government.Many localities responded to the call of the church. Pingyang and Zhenhai in Zhejiang Province, Luodian in Shanghai, Putian in Fujian Province, Changde in Hunan Province, Tianmen in Hubei Province, and Nan'ao in Guangdong Province successively established independent churches. In 1910, Xu Junhui, Zhang Boling [lingling] and others united five churches in Tianjin to establish the China Christian Church, which was composed of believers from various sects and was completely independent.At the same time, a self-supporting Christian Church in China was established in Beijing. In 1912, Shandong Chinese Christian Church was established on the initiative of Liu Shoushan, an apostle from Qingdao. After the "May 4th Movement" broke out, the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles became more and more intense. Many patriotic Christians joined the movement and demanded to withdraw the right to teach, break away from foreign missions, and become an independent Chinese church.Since then, the number of independent churches in the country has increased year by year, reaching 150 in 1921 and 330 in 1924.By 1927, the self-reliance movement reached its climax and expanded to Ningbo, Changsha, Xuzhou, Hong Kong, Taiyuan and other places, and more than 600 self-reliance churches sprang up all over the country.After the failure of the Great Revolution, the patriotic forces within Christianity were hit, and the self-reliance movement fell into a trough. In 1933, the Chinese Jesuit Self-Reliance Church was forced to abandon its original stand of demanding independence. In 1935, the number of self-supporting churches decreased sharply, leaving only about 200 churches, which were left to fend for themselves.

At the same time, in the face of the rising patriotism and nationalism among the Chinese people, missionary organizations from various countries have turned to promote the true church movement of Chinese Christianity.By the 1920s, some patriots in the church began to advocate the construction of true churches. In 1922, the National Congress of Chinese Christians was held in Shanghai. The meeting elected the All-China Council of Christians with Cheng Jingyi as the president, and issued a declaration: "The time has come. We Chinese believers should use careful research and bold experiments. I delete the church's etiquette and ceremony, the church's organization and system, and the church's evangelism and promotion methods, so that everything can guide the current church to become a Chinese church." Advocates of the true church have repeatedly stated that they are not exclusive, The self-reliance movement is somewhat critical.The purpose of building a real church is to "make Chinese believers take responsibility on the one hand, and on the other hand, promote the inherent civilization of the East, so that Christianity can eliminate the ugly name of foreign religions", and gradually realize the Sinicization of Christian churches in terms of form, personnel, and ideology. .In practice, they emphasize the cultivation of church leaders in China. Chinese believers should have the right to manage the church and use funds. Western missionaries have relegated to an auxiliary position, but they still accept financial support from Western missions. They advocate the combination of Christianity and Chinese culture. For example, building Chinese temple-style churches, adopting hymns of Chinese tunes, observing traditional Chinese festivals, formulating church etiquette suitable for China's national conditions, etc., and trying to interpret and express teachings with traditional Chinese cultural concepts.In addition, they advocate the spirit of tolerance in Chinese culture and promote the great unity of churches of different denominations.The movement of the True Color Church has received the response of patriots in most denominations, and some attempts have been made to eliminate the stigma of foreign religions.However, because the economy is still dependent on the Western missions and often interfered by foreign missionaries who oppose the naturalization of the church, although the church has improved in form, it cannot completely get rid of the control of the Western missions in essence. After 1926, the Bense Church Movement decided to shift its focus to the countryside, that is, to promote the Bense Church throughout the country through rural construction.Ultimately, due to insufficient funds, the plan could not be implemented nationwide.After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the true color church movement came to a standstill.The Bense Church Movement is different from the Self-Reliance Movement. It advocates maintaining cooperation with Western Missions and gradually realizing the combination of Christianity and traditional Chinese culture.

The patriotism of Chinese Catholics was also on the rise at this time. In 1916, Catholics in Tianjin rose up to fight against France’s division of the old Xikai area into the French Concession under the pretext of protecting the Catholic Church. In 1919, patriotic Christians in Tianjin, Shanghai and other places proposed to change the colonial system of the Catholic Church in China, advocated that Chinese bishops preside over the diocesan educational affairs, and opposed the phenomenon of underestimating Chinese culture in religious education. In 1922, the Holy See appointed Italian Bishop Gang Hengyi as the first Apostolic Representative in China to handle China's religious affairs. In 1924, the National Conference of Bishops and Episcopal Conferences formulated the "Current Laws of Catholicism in China" and decided to establish the National Educational Affairs Committee, directly under the Office of the Apostolic Representative in China. In 1927, the Holy See appointed six Chinese bishops for the first time. In 1946, the Holy See announced its establishment in China. There are 137 dioceses in the country, which belong to 20 archdioceses.Among the senior clergy, there are three Chinese archbishops and 17 bishops. In 1947, the Catholic Association for the Advancement of Academic Affairs was established in Shanghai to replace the National Academic Affairs Committee. Bishop Hua Lizhu of the Maryknoll Church in the United States served as the secretary-general, led by Li Perry, the first Vatican Minister to China.

Since the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Christian missionary activities have been in a state of decline due to the continuous impact of wars.Although the number of believers has increased, the scope of activities of the church has tended to shrink.By 1949, there were about 3.28 million Catholics in the country and 140 dioceses.There are more than 700,000 Protestants belonging to more than 130 missions, of which the American missions account for about half.The number of Orthodox Christians is still decreasing. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Christianity in China entered a new historical period.

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