Christianity: a missionary religion, Part XIV: China

Were missionaries an integral part of the colonial enterprise? Were they simply swept up in it? Or were they on-the-ground critics? Those are the themes that engage most books on the topic, often from academic presses, these days.

Those works are valuable; I have covered many of them in my ‘Christianity: a missionary religion’ series – but it is also good to see that the lives, and sacrifices, of individual missionaries are still being remembered in print.

I will survey six books about remarkable missionary pioneers in China before looking at two others which assess missionary influence more generally.

• Gladys Aylward with Christine Hunter: Gladys Aylward: My Missionary Life in China (Moody Publishers, 2024)

Gladys Aylward may no longer be a household name, but it is safe to say that she was for several decades.

She was featured in Time magazine in 1949. The article (‘Religion: The Virtuous One’) pointed out that the one-time downstairs maid in London had spent many years in obscurity as a missionary in China, where she had given up her English passport to become a Chinese citizen. Now, back in the United Kingdom, she was widely recognized for her good work, drawing crowds when she spoke.

Life as a missionary must have seemed foreign to the young working class girl. Gladys Aylward: My Missionary Life in China begins with these words:

My one big ambition in life was to go on the stage. I had nothing much in the way of education, but I could talk, and I loved to act. I was brought up in a Christian home and went to church and Sunday school as a child, but as I grew older I became impatient with anything to do with religion.

But, “for some reason I can never explain,” she went to a religious meeting and accepted Jesus as her Saviour.

The Time article in 1949 described her journey:

What About You? One day Gladys Aylward, deeply troubled, picked up a mission pamphlet which said: “There are millions in China that have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. What about you?” She knew, then, what she must do.

The Protestant nondenominational China Inland Mission accepted her for a three-year training course, though, at 26, she was a year over the age limit. But her education was not good enough, and she flunked out miserably in the first term of the course.

Determined to serve in China, she went back to London and took on two maids’ jobs at once. She wanted to earn enough money to go to China on her own and work with Mrs. Jeannie Lawson, an old China missionary who had grown tired of retirement and, at 74, had returned to China. . . .

When Mrs. Lawson died a year later, Gladys went on alone. Once her converts were formed into groups, Gladys Aylward, who belongs to no denomination, saw to it that they joined the nearest Christian mission. Some became Baptists, some Methodists. Says she: “I work kind of alongside everyone. We’re all after the one thing – souls for Jesus Christ. I don’t care if they’re sprinkled or immersed.” . . .

When the Japanese invasion drew nearer, Ai Wei-teh [she was named by the Chinese “The Virtuous One”] shepherded more than 100 homeless children on foot to a representative of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek’s, a 27-day journey away. But Gladys Aylward has no memory of their safe arrival. She collapsed from exhaustion just before the end, and was taken delirious to a hospital.

This year, the China Inland Mission, which once told the London parlormaid that she was unfit to be a missionary, bought her a round-trip ticket to England.

A movie based on her life was released in 1958; The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman as Gladys, has been very well received (with a 100% / 84% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes).

The publisher says the movie was “a somewhat fictional account that Gladys disliked. She viewed her book with Christine Hunter as the authorized account of her life.”

This excerpt from her book gives a sense of what Aylward’s life was really like in China. She wrote:

From 1938 onward we were in the middle of the fighting. Four times Yangcheng changed hands. First the Nationalist armies would take it, then the Japanese and each time we had to flee to the hills and live where we could, in caves or holes in the ground, and eat if we were lucky. . . .

My mule inn was a complete shambles, but I continued to use the courtyard as a sort of first-aid station. I had sent some of my children to various Christian homes in the surrounding villages, but I was needed in Yangcheng. . . .

< style=”padding-left: 40px;”>Often as many as 40 wounded men – sometimes Japanese, sometimes Chinese – would be carried into my courtyard during the day. There were no organized field hospitals, and the suffering was terrible. . . .

 She was determined to stay where she had begun her work, but she heard that the children for whom she was caring might be safe in Free China. She wrote a letter to Madame Chiang, who urged her to bring the children and wrote that she would send money for the work in Yangcheng.

Aylward decided the children could no longer be safely kept in the war zone. The mayor of the town agreed to give her enough grain to get them to the next town, warning her, “I admire your courage, but it is very foolish.”

Early the next morning we set off – 100 children whose ages ranged from three to 16.

Braving rough terrain, the danger of Japanese attacks and serious hunger, they marched on for almost a month. Gladys was near death by the time they arrived at safety.
Gladys Aylward was a modest hero and her story still deserves to be read, and told, widely.

• Catherine MacKenzie: Hudson Taylor (Christian Focus, 2025)

The latest in the Christian Focus Hall of Faith series covers the life of the founder of China Inland Mission (the group which turned down, and then supported, Gladys Aylward as a missionary).

The publisher of Hudson Taylor states:

Step into the remarkable journey of Hudson Taylor, one of history’s most influential missionaries, whose unwavering faith transformed countless lives across China [where he spent more than 50 years between 1854 and 1905].

This captivating biography follows Taylor from his humble beginnings in Barnsley, England to becoming a pioneering force in Chinese evangelism.

Discover how Taylor broke convention by adopting Chinese dress and customs to reach those who had never heard the gospel. Experience his personal triumphs and heartbreaking losses as he establishes the groundbreaking China Inland Mission against overwhelming odds.

Catherine Mackenzie masterfully brings to life Taylor’s extraordinary adventure – from his early spiritual awakening, to medical training, to navigating dangerous riots and personal tragedy while spreading Christianity throughout China’s interior.

This inspiring narrative showcases Taylor’s revolutionary approach to missions and his unshakable trust in God’s provision, even when facing seemingly impossible challenges. 

Catherine MacKenzie comes from Scotland and has written several biographies for young teens in the Trail Blazer series as well as other titles for younger children. She is Editor for Christian Focus’ children’s imprint, CF4Kids. Another book in the series related to the west of China is due out in May: Mildred Cable: Adventure on the Silk Road.

• Patrick Fung: Live to be Forgotten: Dixon Edward Hoste, China Inland Mission and the Indigenous Chinese Church in the Early 20th Century (Langham Academic, 2024)

Hudson Taylor is still remembered as a pioneering missionary. His successor at China Inland Mission – now Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) – much less so.

A more recent leader of OMF has attempted to remedy that situation in Live to Be Forgotten.

Following is a comment by Eunice Au, posted on the OMF International site, with a couple of interjections:

Patrick Fung, who served as the 10th General Director of CIM / OMF [2005 – 2023], is keenly interested in understanding the contributions made by previous General Directors of the mission.

In this book, he focuses on D.E. Hoste, who, as the second General Director of the CIM, expanded its vision to empower the Chinese church to be self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.

Dixon, who served in China for 40 years, was converted in Brighton, England in 1882 during a D.L. Moody evangelistic meeting. He was a member of the Cambridge Seven, a group of missionaries which included C.T. Studd and Stanley Smith, both star athletes at Cambridge.

In an era when many mission organizations fostered dependency on foreign workers or foreign-supported workers, Hoste de-emphasized the role of the missionary and instead focused on the health and growth of the indigenous Chinese church.

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Hoste and his early work under the renowned Chinese leader, Pastor Hsi.

Chapter 2 explores Hoste’s leadership in responding to the Boxer Crisis in an unexpected and unconventional manner. Though he was just learning to wear the mantle of leadership recently placed upon him, he displayed meekness in response to the violent aggression and harm suffered by many CIM missionaries. 

Fung wrote a good article about Hoste for Christianity Today in which he stated: “The CIM faced one of its most severe crises in 1900 during the Boxer Incident when 58 CIM missionaries and 21 of their children were martyred.

“Though other missions organizations in China sought monetary compensation from the Qing government for the lost lives of the missionaries killed by the Boxers, CIM decided to forgo that option, choosing instead to look to God for provision.”

Chapters 3 and 4 articulate Hoste’s vision for the indigenous Chinese church and how that naturally led to the focused policy of developing self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating churches. Fung concludes the book by describing Hoste’s legacy to both the CIM and the Chinese church. . . .

Fung added in CT: “After the Boxer Incident, Hoste wrote an article titled ‘Possible Changes and Developments in the Native Churches Arising out of the Present Crisis.’

“Instead of focusing on the suffering of the missionary community due to the Boxer Incident, Hoste emphasized the future of the Chinese church, believing that the Chinese church could mature only without the control of foreign missionaries.

“His article insisted that the sole authority the missionaries should display was of a spiritual nature – and even there only as guides and exemplars. At all costs, they should seek to avoid dependency.”

Fung carefully explores how the CIM’s founder, Hudson Taylor, and Hoste were aligned in their thinking. He also highlights the growing question of women’s leadership in CIM during Hoste’s term as General Director and states that although Hoste supported the advancement of women in leadership, the mission was not yet ready to fully embrace it.

Fung also helps the reader consider the ways that the anti-Christian movement during the 1920s in China spurred Hoste to solidify his commitment to fostering the indigenization of the Chinese church.

Patrick Fung was born in Hong Kong and has a PhD in church history from the University of Hong Kong. He trained as a physician in Australia, with subsequent specialist training in the UK, before taking on the role of General Director of OMF. He continues to serve as OMF Global Ambassador and was program chair for the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization at Seoul, Korea in the fall of 2024.

• Andrew Montonera: By Life or By Death: The Life and Legacy of John and Betty Stam (Moody Publishers, 2024)

Another recent Moody Publishers book covers the tragic death of two China Inland Mission workers. They were kidnapped by Communist Chinese soldiers and killed December 8, 1934.

They write of By Life or By Death:

As a young boy Andrew Montonera stumbled upon a cabinet of books in his grandparents’ house. He was captivated by what he discovered – the library of his distant relatives.

John Cornelius Stam and Elisabeth Alden ‘Betty’ Scott [the daughter of missionaries to China] met at Moody Bible Institute in fall 1929. A few years later, their paths crossed again – this time in China. The two were united in marriage and in their love for the Chinese people.

Using family scrapbooks and unpublished sources, Montonera takes a fresh look at a famous story. By Life or by Death looks at the legacy of the Stams, including new testimonies of those shaped by their commitment to the gospel.

Shortly before his death, John Stam mailed a letter to the mission authorities. He wrote, “May God be glorified whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20).

Thirty-two pages of photographs, mainly from the Wheaton Archives, accompany this rather slim (159 page) volume.

One particularly touching moment, in a book not short of tragedy and courage, came as the Stams were being marched to the town where they would be killed. Along with their daughter Helen, they were taken to a local prison enroute for the night. Some prisoners were released to make room for the Stams.

Montonera writes:

More than 20 other locals had also been taken captive and held for ransom. As gunshots rang aloud through the city Helen began to cry. Held in the comfort of her parents’ arms, the soldiers guarding the Stams discussed whether they should kill the infant to save the army the trouble.

An elderly male prisoner who was just released overheard and objected to the soldiers. Believed to be a simple farmer, the man argued that the innocent baby had done nothing worthy of death.

“Then it’s your life for hers!” a soldier threatened, and the man replied, “I am willing.” There on the spot he was hacked to pieces, and as a result Helen was spared.

Several reports afterward stated the man was a Christian, but there has never been proof for this claim as he was never identified.

Two days later John and Betty Stam were dispached by a young soldier with a large sword. Helen “lived out the majority of her youth as a missionary kid with her adoptive parents in China and the Philippines before returning to America.”

• Robert Banks, Linda Banks: In the Province of the Dragon: A Pioneer Deaconess in Southern China from the Boxer Uprising to the Communist Insurgency (Pickwick Publications, 2025)

Women made up a very large part of the missionary movement in China, and In the Province of the Dragon tells the story of one Australian woman who lived there from 1897 to 1931.

The publisher writes:

This book provides a close-up account of a singular woman’s life and work. Sophie Newton’s desire to serve God led her to the forefront of missionary work in Southeast China from the last years of the Imperial Dynasty.

She lived through the tumultuous events of the Boxer Rebellion, the Nationalist Revolution, the Warlord Conflicts and the rise of the Communist Movement.

Newton spent her life empowering females through establishing schools, training Bible-women and adopting children as well as challenging infanticide, child marriage, foot-binding and the opium trade.

Drawing on a wide range of family journals, personal letters, archival records, newspaper reports and personal interviews, this book tells her story: one that shows how personal conviction, selflessness and single-minded compassion can make a real and lasting difference to people in a village, provincial city, capital or province.

Robert Banks and Linda Banks have co-written three earlier mission biographies: They Shall See His Face (Pickwick, 2017), Through the Valley of the Shadow (Pickwick, 2019), and Children of the Massacre (Pickwick, 2021).

• Gideon Elazar: Christian Missionaries, Ethnicity and State Control in Globalized Yunnan (Penn State University Press, 2023)

While Gideon Elazar was studying in southwestern China in the early 2000s, he was surprised to come across quite a few missionaries.

He decided to look into the situation and then wrote about his findings in Christian Missionaries, Ethnicity and State Control in Globalized Yunnan.

The publisher writes:

Following the Communist Revolution of 1949, missionaries were kicked out of China and proselytizing was outlawed.

However, since the beginning of the reform era, China has witnessed a massive return of missionary workers. Today there are more Christians in church on a given Sunday in China than anywhere else on the globe.

This book investigates the interaction of Western missionaries, ethnic minorities and Han Chinese converts with the Chinese state in an increasingly globalized China.

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan, it tries to make sense of the disparity between official state rhetoric and everyday reality.

Examining morality in the context of the free-market system, spatial practices, linguistic activity and Christian welfare organizations, Gideon Elazar reveals the ways in which the previously conflicting Communist Party and Christian ‘civilizing projects’ have reached a measure of convergence, enabling local authorities to treat missionaries with a degree of tolerance.

Elazar shows how this unofficial arrangement relates to the social realities and challenges of the reform era, including ethnic culture and identity, Yunnan’s many social problems and the integration of ethnic minorities into the state system.

By exploring the continuously shifting social and religious borders negotiated by converts, missionaries and state authorities in Southwest China, this book sheds light on the larger issue of contemporary religion in China’s global era.

Elazar wrote in the Introduction:

I dispute the claim that the spread of Christianity in China should be viewed essentially as a form of resistance to the state and a way in which believers are able to create a nonstate sphere of identity and a rejection of Marxist ideology: “Protestantism . . . is providing millions of Chinese with a frame of reference for their lives that is unconnected to or at least distinct from the state and its ideology.” 

Such perceptions are not necessarily shared by local state authorities. The paramount position of the Chinese state and its modernization project or its efforts in the realm of ethnic culture and identity remain unchallenged by evangelicals, despite their attempts at social reform. . . . My purpose here is to suggest that what may appear to be a story of diverging and conflicting agendas can in fact be theorized as a convergence of interests and carefully negotiated harmony.

He does note, referring to a speech by Xi Jinping in 2017, that since the time of his research, “China has undergone significant changes . . . tolerance of unsanctioned religious activity had diminished throughout China.” That trend has intensified over the past few years.

Gideon Elazar, a Lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, seems an unlikely – or at least unusual – author of such a book, and he was initially concerned that he might have trouble connecting with missionaries and local Christians in Yunnan.

He writes:

I was an easily recognizable Orthodox Jew: a clearly marked outsider. . . .

However, to my great surprise, it turned out that my specific form of foreignness was actually an asset. Virtually all missionaries in Kunming are evangelicals, and many of them can be cataloged as Christian Zionists with a strong affinity for Israel and a keen interest in Judaism and Jews.

There is one brief local connection in the book. Elazar says it “was not uncommon for missionaries in southwest China to worker as ethnographers.” Among those he mentions are Isobel and John Kuhn. Isobel grew up in Vancouver and attended UBC before going to China.

I wrote about the couple in ‘Pioneer missionaries are honoured where they devoted their lives in China.’ That article also discusses Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China – which also happens to be published by Pennsylvania University Press.

Another article (“Chinese human rights writer inspired by ‘heroic Christians'”) considers the book God is Red, in which Liao Yiwu – not a Christian himself – describes his appreciation of missionaries during a period of internal exile in Yunnan.

Here is one brief portion, with another local reference:

“I was struck by the dedication of the missionaries,” Liao says. Jessie McDonald (born in Vancouver) arrived in China in 1913, and worked at a hospital in Kaifeng. When the Japanese took over that city, she moved the hospital to Dali, in Yunnan. She carried on until Communist officials seized the hospital and forced her out of China in 1951.

• Leopold Leeb: Missionaries to China: A Historical Dictionary (Lehigh University Press, 2025)

The publisher writes:

In this monumental reference work, Leopold Leeb provides biographical accounts of over 1000 missionaries in China, beginning in the year 635 and continuing through the mid-20th century.

Missionaries to China: A Historical Dictionary is distinctive for its wide historical range, its emphasis on Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missions, and its many entries on women and lesser-known figures in the missionary history of China.

Based on sources in several languages including Chinese, German, French and Latin, Leeb’s dictionary is a wellspring of historical and cultural information. The book’s biographical entries are contextualized by an introduction to the history and historiography of China missionaries.

Enhancing its functionality as a research tool, the dictionary provides the English and Chinese names of both the missionary figures and the titles of works that they published. The dictionary lists all place names in China in both English and Chinese, and it features a bilingual index of names and a topical index.

Given the book’s scope of information and user-friendly design, Missionaries to China: A Historical Dictionary is an essential resource for scholars studying Christianity and missionary activity in China.

• John R. Haddad: Cultures Colliding: American Missionaries, Chinese Resistance and the Rise of Modern Institutions in China (Temple University Press, 2023)

The publisher writes of Cultures Colliding:

As incredible as it may seem, the American missionaries who journeyed to China in 1860 planning solely to spread the Gospel ultimately reinvented their entire enterprise.

By 1900, they were modernizing China with schools, colleges, hospitals, museums and even YMCA chapters. In Cultures Colliding, John R. Haddad nimbly recounts this transformative institution-building – how and why it happened – and its consequences.

When missionaries first traveled to rural towns atop mules, they confronted populations with entrenched systems of belief that embraced Confucius and rejected Christ. Conflict ensued as these Chinese viewed missionaries as unwanted disruptors.

So how did this failing movement eventually change minds and win hearts? Many missionaries chose to innovate. They built hospitals and established educational institutions offering science and math. A second wave of missionaries opened YMCA chapters, coached sports and taught college.

Crucially, missionaries also started listening to Chinese citizens, who exerted surprising influence over the preaching, teaching and caregiving, eventually running some organizations themselves. They embraced new American ideals while remaining thoroughly Chinese.

In Cultures Colliding, Haddad recounts the unexpected origins and rapid rise of American institutions in China by telling the stories of the Americans who established these institutions and the Chinese who changed them from within. Today, the impact of this untold history continues to resonate in China.

David Hollinger, author of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (which I wrote about here) said of the book:

In this exceptionally well-argued and carefully documented study, John Haddad shows that many of the American missionaries to China were anything but uncritical agents of empire, capital and churchly authority. Transformed by their direct experience with the Chinese people, missionaries became major institutional players in modern Chinese history within terms set largely by the Chinese themselves.

Cultures Colliding received positive reviews from a number of sources, including Pacific Historical Review, The China Review, The Journal of Religion and Choice.