p. 7 | Why China Resists Christianity

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 27, 1906

Why China Resists Christianity

What is without doubt the real reason for the popular Chinese dislike of Christianity is set forth by Mr. J. Carey Hall, in The Positivist Review (London). Mr. Hall is the British consul in Japan, and speaks as one acquainted with the conditions he discusses. The Chinese believe that the protection of missionaries and native converts by foreign governments, forced on China by treaty, is only a screen under which foreign countries are marching upon the Flowery Kingdom with a view to its dismemberment and absorption.

In Japan the circumstances are very different. Missionaries are not persecuted; there are no uprisings against Christianity. This, Mr. Hall claims is due wholly to the fact that the missionaries were not forced upon Japan by treaties. Therefore the work of the missionary was not looked upon as having any political significance whatever. It is another witness to the fact that Christianity is not helped by the sword or by legislation. Mr. Hall asks the reason for the different attitude assumed toward Christianity by Japan and China, and answers his own question thus:—

The chief, if not the sole cause of China’s hostility to Christianity is that foreign governments are its propagandists. Had the Christian powers assumed or attempted to assume the same rôle in Japan as they play in China, the converts to Christianity in Japan would hardly be numbered by units, instead of by tens of thousands as they now are.

In 1858 Lord Elgin concluded treaties with China and Japan. In the treaty with China was incorporated a stipulation that persons teaching or professing Christianity should be entitled to the protection of the Chinese authorities, and that England would hold China responsible for their safety. No such clause appeared in the treaty with Japan. The consequences of this Chinese treaty stipulation Mr. Hall outlines as follows:—

Other powers followed the lead of Great Britain in hoisting a propaganda clause into their commercial treaties; but they have not all followed Great Britain’s lead in the moderate manner in which that objectionable clause has been made to work. In their hands it has been expanded and made the basis for further exactions. It has been interpreted to include in express terms native Chinese converts, as well as their foreign pastors, clothed as the latter are with the privilege of extraterritoriality. It has been the means of obtaining for Catholic missionaries and prelates the rank and dignity of state officials. It has afforded to Germany the fulcrum of her pretext for the seizure of Kiao-Chow.

The seizure of Kiao-Chow by Germany in 1898 was promptly followed by the enforced concessions of Port Arthur and Talienwan to Russia, of Weihaiwei and the Kowloon expansion to Great Britain, and of Kwangchouwan to France; and even Italy, backed by other powers, laid claim to the port of Sanmun. The approaching “break-up” of China was openly announced; and “spheres of influence” were mapped out by the powers who had shown themselves so solicitous in their commercial treaties to foster the spread of the religion of Jesus.

In many cases the uprisings in China against the foreigners have originated in the interference of Catholic missionaries between their native followers and the Chinese magistrates, in which these missionaries have assumed civil rank and authority. The outbreak, once started, has not ceased with those who figured in its cause. “The conduct of European governments toward China,” says Mr. Hall, “their greed, aggression, the general attitude of domination, long prejudiced both officials and people against missionaries, who were popularly believed to make use of their professedly philanthropic work only as a cloak, and to be, in fact, spies of their own governments, whose aim was the seizure of the empire and the subjugation of its people.” The fact that the missionaries had the backing of their respective governments gave color to the charge.

How much better it would have been if governments had kept their hands off the work of God in foreign lands, and missionaries had gone forth as did Jesus Christ and Paul and Silas and others, claiming the protection of heaven only. When the Christian missionary looks to earthly governments for protection, he has a shield which the darts of the enemy can pierce at will, and he lays in his own path stumbling-stones to block the way of the cause he came to advance.