The Church Militant

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago, Illinois · Jun 28, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 25.

The Church Militant.

(Chicago, Journal, June 19.)

Quite the most surprising deliverance upon the Chinese question comes from Bishop Earl Cranston, who declared, in a sermon at Denver on Sunday, that it is worth any cost in money or bloodshed if we can make the millions of Chinese true and intelligent Christians. “I would,” he continued, “cut all the red tape in the world, and break all the treaties ever made, to place the armies of the United States in the fore next to Great Britain. We must not be the tail end of everything.”

Bishop Cranston was, we believe, elected to his present position at the Cleveland conference of ’96, and is now stationed at Portland, Ore. During the past three or four years he has traveled abroad, and travel seems to have enlarged—or perhaps “expanded” is the better word—his views.

The moral obloquy discovered by many men of many minds in discussing the Chinese is one of the most astonishing phenomena of a turbulent and strenuous age. Commerce, imperialism, and the followers of Christ, widely apart on many other questions, have been singularly unanimous in denying to the Chinese the common attributes of humanity, white, black or yellow. Hath not a Chinaman eyes? Hath not a Chinaman hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Evidently not. Commerce would force trade upon him, even though the trade be opium; imperialism would cut up his empire, upon this or that pretext; and the followers of Christ—the Christ that stands for peace on earth, good will toward men—would make the Asiatic empire run red with blood, transform its rice fields into shambles, ensanguine every river and tributary, if thereby, as Bishop Cranston says, “we can make the millions of Chinese true and intelligent Christians.” For the Denver exponent of the church militant does not stand alone in his views. He perhaps stands alone in audacity and bloodthirstiness; but others secretly believe what he has the shamelessness to avow.

The missionary question is a question upon which we hesitate to pronounce opinion. Much may be, much has been, said upon all its sides. It is not a question upon which an opinion can be passed at once sweeping, intelligent and final. Yet one can, with a clear conscience and a conviction of right, protest against any such monstrous, immoral declaration as that credited to Bishop Cranston. It is unspeakably odious.

Nor is it necessary that one should have any genuine sympathy with the Chinese to appreciate the shameful bullyragging that that peaceful people has put up with for more than half a century. The powers, one and all, but England in especial—the England that Bishop Cranston would like to see, with drawn sword, marching side by side with the United States—have outraged, abused and robbed China systematically. Every concession of importance that they have obtained from China has been such a concession as the victim of a highwayman yields at the point of a pistol. When Europe has advanced another foot on Chinese soil the foot has been set down in blood.

And we, the lovers of Liberty, the writers about liberty, the orators on the subject of Liberty, and her sister, Justice—what have we done to help the cause along? We have denied the Chinese entrance to this country, and demanded entrance to theirs. At the same time we have opened our gates to the riffraff of

Europe, and for fear that this might be contaminated by contact with the Chinese population already inside the country, we have, in one way or another, done our best to kill off the “pigtails.” We have been as unjust and cruel to China as almost any other power has been, but we have done it in another way, and have been a shade more gentlemanly in the doing.

It has been bad enough to watch commerce and imperialism holding up and slashing at the Chinaman; but now that Religion frets for the highway, the mask, and the blunderbuss, it is rather time to call a halt. What has come over the church lately? Sword and fire flash and curl around half the pulpits in the land. Here’s the New York Independent, which has long been suspected of religious leanings, clamoring for another Egypt under a joint protectorate of seven powers, including your Uncle Sam, of no-entangling-alliance fame. Verily, brethren, as the rural editor loves to inquire, “Whither are we drifting?”