The Worship of Ancestors—How Shall We Deal With It?
By A. C. SELMON
The above is the title of an article which appeared in a recent issue of the Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal. It is of interest because it shows a trend that can be noticed in the missionary work in China at the present time. The writer cites the fact that it has now been a century since the first Protestant missionaries entered China, and as yet less than one per cent of the people have been gathered in, and not one of the rulers. He gives as one reason for the lack of success, the suspicion on the part of the rulers as to the purposes of the churches, and the blunders of the missionaries in the methods used. As illustrating the blunders on the part of missionaries, the author mentions how firmly ancestral worship is woven into the life of China. And then he puts the pertinent question, “How shall we deal with the worship of ancestors in receiving and instructing converts?” The hope is expressed that no convert will be expected to give up his ancestral tablet before being baptized. And, citing as a parallel case, he asks what we would think if, on applying for admission to some church, we were required to give up the pictures of our parents? He could also excuse these converts if in their ancestral worship they chose to make offerings to the tablet, stating that this would be no more reprehensible than the setting of a plate for a deceased friend, of which we sometimes hear; better let the young convert take part with the rest of his clan in the temple feasts and the ceremonies connected with these feasts, than to forbid ancestral worship, and so lessen his chances of winning other converts from the clan. The writer would excuse the worship of the emperor’s tablet as being simply a civil ceremony; the worship of Confucius, although it might be accompanied with an offering of meat, ought not in any way to affect the Christian conscience. In order to get into the state schools, and eventually to secure government positions, these forms of worship must be indulged in; and they are excusable on the ground that when the students of the Christian schools secure government positions, they can exert a wide influence in favor of the church. In closing he asks, “Is it essential to the purity of Christian faith that every trace of the old ritual be abolished?” He answers this question in the negative, and states that even if it were deemed best to do away with these old forms held by the people, still the readiest way to do it would be by a temporary conformity to them. This article shows the growing tendency to compromise the truth. If Christianity is to adopt all the vices of Chinese idolatry, why spend further effort in trying to evangelize this nation? The second commandment of the decalogue very clearly shows that ancestral worship and the worship of Confucius is idolatry. If the truth is thus knowingly to be mixed with error, it ceases to be truth. To those who hold the orthodox view of the natural immortality of the soul, this is not so great a compromise as might at first appear. There is a striking similarity in many points of the Chinese belief as to the state of the dead and the belief of those who hold that the soul is naturally immortal.