Tracking the Gospel of Christian Civilization
And the Curious Case of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese
At my house we’re on a “Vera” kick, working our way through the British TV series featuring the doughty Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope. Vera, rumbling about in her old Land Rover Defender, tracks down the mysteries of murder in a distinctive “trad” style. She’s a keen observer, finding case-turning patterns and clues in the little details missed by others. A scrap of scarf, a trace of blood, a random note, a curious turn of phrase.
I can’t lay claim to Vera-level insights as I rumble about nineteenth-century China, inspecting the remaining traces of Western missionaries and their activities. And I’m not trying to solve crimes. But she—along with the historian Veras that I read and follow—encourages me to inspect, to look for patterns, and hope to find little clues—and perhaps surprises—along the way.
A Christian Civilization?
Lately we’ve had a resurgence of interest in cultural Christianity and what we might call Christian Civilization. I have in mind a broad sweep that extends from atheist intellectuals converting (e.g., Ayaan Hirsi Ali), or recognizing their indebtedness to Christianity (e.g., Richard Dawkins), to Tom Holland’s celebrated book Dominion, to—obviously—some in the MAGA Political Complex, who (by various means and orientations) are seeking to make Christian Civilization Great Again by exerting political power. As I said, it’s broad. But you get the idea. Something is going on. And, interestingly enough, “cultural Christian” is also a thing in today’s China.1
In October 2024, Paul Kingsnorth, a British writer and public intellectual, and a recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, stirred the pot of Christian/Western civilization. In his Erasmus Lecture for First Things, he argued—as a Christian—“Against Christian Civilization.” It’s a stimulating piece of thinking, and it has stirred up some conversation among Christian intellectuals.
In a recent follow-up to his lecture, Kingsnorth summarizes his argument: “Firstly, it was a critique of the rising tide of ‘Christian civilisationism’, in which people hijack the Christian faith as a political instrument.” Secondly, “When we look at the life and teachings of Jesus, we see him issuing us instructions which are precisely the opposite of those we would need to follow to do such a thing. Western civilisation at present is built upon valorising the Seven Deadly Sins.”
Then this:
The point of the talk, though, was not to argue that civilisation per se is a bad thing. Though this is the side-argument that many critics have since focused on, it was incidental to the main point. The main point was to suggest that, in Ohiyesa's words, 'Christianity and modern civilisation are opposed and irreconcilable.' In his 1986 book The Civilisation of Christianity, Catholic priest and theologian John L. McKenzie put the same point even more sharply. ‘There is a deadly and irreconcilable opposition between Western civilisation and Christianity,’ he wrote, ‘and one of them must destroy the other.’ If that’s true, then wielding the Christian faith as a weapon to defend this thing called ‘Western civilisation’ is a lost battle from the start. Our culture may have been nominally Christian five hundred years ago, but for a long time now it has been the culture of the Enlightenment, of modernity, of the Machine, of Mammon. It valorises not God but the world.
I recommend reading the whole thing (which includes a link to the original lecture). It’s the sort of conversation that’s worth having, I think.
Ernst Faber and the SDCGKC
And it comes at a time when I’ve been reading and thinking about the annual reports of the Society for the Distribution of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese. I’ve referred to this Society in my earlier posts about Kang Youwei. The SDCGKC got underway in 1888 as an outgrowth of the Book and Tract Society of Glasgow. And it carried on into the early twentieth century. The leadership and membership of the Society represented the Western missionary, commercial, and administrative community.
Historians and sociologists like to speak of “knowledge production.” And that is a fitting description of the SDCGKC. They were producing Western knowledge for the Chinese, with the aim of changing China. Or perhaps we should call it an import and distribution business. And in this they were self-consciously and unapologetically wedding the commercial with the missional. They say precisely this—and with enthusiasm—in their annual report of 1889. At their annual meeting, it was reported that Mr. Drummond had expressed the view that:
Commerce and missions were the two great forces which were to effect this end [the enlightenment of China]. There was a time when the two were more or less separated; but as one came to look at the affair it could be seen that the regeneration of China would come from these two sources; the two, united, could do a tremendous work.” (Applause.)2
In 1888, its first year of publishing, the SDCGKC produced a Chinese edition of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, a foundational Western work on the production of scientific knowledge. It’s intriguing to see Bacon’s work leading the way. Obviously, they saw Francis Bacon as essential for charting a new course for China. This would be all of a piece with my previous observations of nineteenth-century missionaries advancing scientific knowledge alongside the gospel.
Also in that first year, the Society produced, in seventeen parts, the work of one of their own, the prolific German missionary Rev. Ernst Faber’. It was called “Civilization,” and was also known as “The Fruits of Christianity.” It was in Mandarin, of course. And Faber had developed it over several years and editions. On its completion it embraced seventy-four chapters. In 1888 the SDCGKC published the chapters separately in “small pamphlet form.” Presumably, this would allow it to be distributed widely by topic, to targeted audiences. Subsequently, a five-volume edition was produced, and 2,000 copies were distributed to China’s “high officials.”
The thrust of Faber’s work was to demonstrate the good and remedial effects of Christianity on “all the main departments of life” of society and civilization. The work begins with an introduction entitled “Christianity as the Root of the Civilization of the West.” It ends with a chapter on the “Adaptability of Western Civilization to China.” This approach, Faber had found, was a more effective way of presenting Christianity to the Chinese, who took less direct interest in doctrine than they did practical matters. And Faber pressed the case for the virtuous effects of Christianity over the social evils and diverse shortcomings of Chinese society.3
At the 1890 Protestant missionary conference in Shanghai, Faber outlined three ways of producing Christian literary works in China. First, by translating existing Western works into Chinese. Second, by rendering Western ideas into classical Chinese modes of thought and expression. Third, by fostering “the regeneration of the Chinese mind by Western learning and the mind of Christ.” It is striking how closely and uncritically Faber associates Western learning and ideas with “the mind of Christ.”
It is only fair to point out that Faber was no armchair ruminant on the civilizing virtues of Christianity. He was intimately acquainted with the realities of life in China, he was a serious student of the Chinese classics, and he had published studies of them. For eight years he had lived as the only European in a Chinese city, and he had observed things that shocked him. By his report, his landlord, a mandarin, had killed one of his young daughters. This same man killed one of his servant girls, then cooked her flesh and fed it to one of his favored daughters as a cure for leprosy.4
Faber’s presentation of the benefits of Christian, or Western, civilization is familiar today, when the notion of Cultural Christians is having a late resurgence in the West. I applaud the recognition of the enduring cultural force of Christianity (I’m a fan of Tom Holland’s book), and I’m an admirer and consumer of much that Western culture has produced. It’s my first culture. But I’m also critical of it. And I believe that it is deeply mistaken to join it to Christian mission.
The Christian Occupation of China
Not fifteen years after Faber died in1899, “Christian” Europe descended into an absolutely brutal Great War (World War 1). China watched and took note. But even through that war, the cultural imperialist wick was not snuffed out. And Western self-awareness seemed to have been in short supply.
Shortly after the war, the Special Committee on Survey and Occupation, China Continuation Committee, went to work (1918-1921). And in 1922 they published the results of their findings, which they called The Christian Occupation of China. That’s right. Its subtitle was “A General Survey of the Numerical Strength and Geographical Distribution of the Christian Forces in China.” And the 600-page report was crammed full of statistics, maps, and essays supporting the case. It is a fascinating work, and so emblematic of its time. And I plan to return to it in due course
.
But this framing of Protestant missionary work—I’m tempted to call it a fantasy—as a “Christian Occupation of China” had a short run. By 1927 an anti-missionary movement in China had forced a retreat. Many Western missionaries departed in a “hegira,” and many did not return.5 And while the 1930s saw a resurgence of missionary work, with a notable reception of Christianity among the upper and political classes, the missionary movement in China underwent stringent criticism in the West. And Japan’s invasion of China would gradually put a choke hold on the “Christian Occupation.”
As I was considering Faber and the SDCGKC , I thought I should revisit Jonathan Spence’s book To Change China: Western Advisers in China. Spence looks at sixteen individuals who, over more than three centuries, set out to bring Western knowledge and technology to China. They included astronomers, physicians, soldiers, engineers, administrators, translators, and a revolutionary organizer. In the end, Spence concludes, “every technique that Western advisers had brought had eventually been assimilated.” But there was a caveat:
“The Westerners had presented their expertise as a wrapping round an ideological package … and had tried to force the Chinese to accept both together. It was this that the Chinese refused to tolerate; even at their weakest, they sensed that acceptance of a foreign ideology on foreign terms must be a form of submission.”6
As Spence points out, an air of superiority had clung to these Western efforts. And it “sprang from two elements: The possession of advanced technical skills and a sense of moral rightness. Convinced that their goals were good and that their advice was sorely needed, the Westerners adopted a proprietary air toward China.” The result was that the Americans, in particular, left with a sense of having “lost China.” But in reality, it was not theirs to lose. In their mission to help China, “help meant making China more like the West.”7
What’s This in Barnsley?
In our day, it’s easy to take a smug view toward those efforts and attitudes of a century ago and more. But the 1920s enthusiasm and rhetoric of a “Christian Occupation” was not the full story. And the rest of the story is something I plan to explore in the future.
But for the moment, consider a long view from the twenty-first century. If you were to visit Barnsley, England, today, you might be surprised to find a number of Chinese tourists, some of them in organized tours. What’s up with that?
Well, they are on a pilgrimage. Barnsley is the birthplace of James Hudson Taylor, a pioneer missionary to China and the founder of the China Inland Mission (now OMF). Someone has said that the number of Chinese Christians who today trace their spiritual lineage to the work of Hudson Taylor, and his leadership of the China Inland Mission, exceeds the population of modern-day Great Britain.8 I don’t suppose this was calculated with social-scientific rigor. But even as a rough calculation—if you know anything of the number of Chinese Christians in mainland China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and around the globe—this does not sound improbable. In fact, it sounds about right.
And to his credit, at the 1890 Shanghai missionary conference, Hudson Taylor argued against aligning missionary proclamation of the gospel with Western science and technology. Their missionary work was evangelism, he argued, the saving of souls.
Barnsley is a good distance from Vera Stanhope’s bailiwick on the Tyne. Still, maybe she’d reckon me a “good lad” for having followed the evidence and seen a pattern. But she’s a tough old nut. And I can hear her now: “Love, you need to go back to work on it.”
Alexander Chow, Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in Chinese Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018). He has a chapter on “Cultural Christianity.”
Second Annual Report of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese: For the Year Ending October 31, 1889 (Shanghai, 1889), 16.
P. Kranz, The Works of Rev. Ernst Faber, Dr. Theol. (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1904), 62-65.
Kranz, Works, v. I should add that I have a prim little editor, circumspect in all her ways, who sits on my right shoulder. She sucks in her breath and clutches her red pencil whenever I insert something like this. “Offset this with something about racism and lynchings in Virginia,” she says. I listen. And then I reply, “It’s called ‘The China We Never Knew.’”
I don’t know how widely the term hegira was used at the time, but my missionary grandfather refers to it as such in a letter from that period. And it cleverly captures the mood.
Jonathan D. Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China (Penguin, 1980 [1969]), 289-290.
Spence, To Change China, 290-291.
I’m indebted to Renie Chow Choy’s wonderful book, Ancestral Feeling: Postcolonial Thoughts on Western Christian Heritage (SCM Press, 2021), 18.