Christianity in China

Christianity is staging a comeback in China this year--a comeback almost unbelievable to those who remember its plight there in 1927. The change is due entirely to the war with Japan and the part missionaries have played in the struggle. But no amount of missionary heroism could have revived Christianity so quickly if Chinese nationalism had not done a complete about-face in its reaction to the white man's religion.

In 1927 the Chinese revolutionaries hounded churchmen from one end of the Yangtze to the other as "running dogs of imperialism"--and the imperialism they hated was largely Anglo-American. Today England and America, no longer hated, are two Christian friends on whose support Christian Chiang Kai-shek is counting to free China from the non-Christian Japanese invaders. And the popular identification of Christianity with the Nationalist cause has gone so far that the China-trained head of the world Y.M.C.A., Eugene E. Barnett, has actually called it a "disastrous danger," fearing that religion may become the lesser half of the partnership.

Fifteen years ago Christianity in China was in flight. Missionaries, their wives, children and chattels, were pouring out of the interior of China in terrified streams, seeking safety in Shanghai. In Chungking they took refuge with foreign businessmen in a frightened huddle on the South Bank. In Chengtu they gathered on the spreading campus of West China Union University while a few friendly Chinese paced back & forth at the gates to ward off anti-Christian mobs. Of the 8,250 Protestant missionaries in China in January 1927 only 3,183 were left at their posts a year later--and most of these stations were on the coast.

But in 1941 the Governor of Szechwan Province comes each Sunday morning to worship at the once-beleaguered university chapel in Chengtu. In Chungking, the Christian leader of China rules with his Christian wife, aided by a Christian Finance Minister and a host of other Christian officials.

The precipitous outward flow of missionaries has been reversed. Chiang Kai-shek not only invites all missionaries forced to leave Japanese-held areas to come to the interior, but his Ministry of Finance makes all arrangements to fly them free of charge from Hong Kong to Chungking. Businessmen, officials, visitors wait bookings on the crowded planes but missionaries are given seats. Last week eight more U.S. and Canadian churchmen reached the capital from Occupied China; well over 100 have arrived since January. Four-fifths of the Americans now in Free China are church workers.

Government money subsidizes Christian colleges, Christian hospitals, Christian service councils. Government appropriations are made for Christian evangelists who go to the tribal districts of China's Far Western frontier. Mission universities are now backed in every possible way so that they may train brains for the new China. Their 1940-41 enrollment is a record 7,734, up 20% from peacetime 1937. Once forbidden by law to require religious study, they can now make the weekly compulsory Sun Yat-sen memorial meetings a forum for religious education.

In 1940 the National Christian Council alone treated almost 300,000 wounded Chinese soldiers. The Y.M.C.A. has put 120 stations into operation in war zones. Here soldiers find people who will write their letters for them, magazines and newspapers to read, hot baths, tea, occasionally one of the Y's three mobile sound-movie units. Impressed by such omnipresent faithfulness, even China's Communists have become friendly towards Christianity.

One American woman evangelist who stayed at her post when the Japanese occupied that region sheltered several hundred Chinese women in the mission compound. The sex-hungry Japanese told her to turn the women over "for protection against bandits." She refused and kept the soldiers out of the compound, even though she herself was beaten and stripped. When the Japanese retired after a month's occupation, she was the first to follow them on the retreat. She tucked a basket of medical supplies under her arm and went up into the hill villages, dressing wounds at every place she stopped. Says TIME'S Chungking correspondent: "She had more guts, more love of humankind, and more fun in her than any other person I've met in China yet."

For a century, the U.S. has supplied two-thirds of the Protestant missionaries, and it now provides over half the overseas financial support for Catholic and Protestant missions alike. These Americans have been the spearhead of Chinese social change. They were the first to penetrate the interior, taking Western ideas, clothes, techniques, medicines, preparing desires and attitudes that opened the way for Western commerce. In every Chinese change of the past generation--with the exception of the 1926-27 revolution--the share of the missionaries has been large. They led the movements for famine relief and Western agricultural methods, led in the attacks on opium, foot-binding, daughter slaughter, concubinage.

In China, Christian institutional and educational work looms as large as evangelism. The 271 Protestant hospitals and the 267 Catholic hospitals and asylums have in the past generation worked themselves into the consciousness of Chinese of every class. The humblest rickshaw coolie knows where to go to have his mucus-draining eyes treated, or who will help when his wife has childbed fever. The 13 Protestant colleges. 255 Protestant middle schools, six Protestant medical schools and three Catholic colleges today are some of the chief sources of Government leadership. The best engineers, doctors and scientists come from mission universities.

As elsewhere in the world, the war has at least brought closer cooperation and a friendlier understanding between China's different Christian groups. On Easter Sunday Chungking Christians celebrated their first interdenominational service at the American Grace Community Church. Catholic Bishop Paul Yu was the preacher. In Canton, Roman Catholics, Protestants and Salvation Army officers have combined their refugee work.

In China the Catholics count 3,500,000 communicants. Since the war began in 1937, the number of converts has jumped from 50,000 a year to 100,000. The Protestant denominations count 687,000 Chinese Christians (all adult communicants, while the Catholic membership includes the families of adult Catholics). In all there are some 4,000,000 Chinese Christians--less than 1% of the nation's population. But there is no doubt that the roots of Christianity are more firmly planted in the good earth of China today than ever before.

Converting 1% of the Chinese in 100 years is not in itself a cheering statistic for the missionaries, but the time may be riper than they realize for a far broader acceptance of their faith. China is today the only great non-Christian State with a Christian head. The conversion of Constantine is not the only case where through political events Christianity has come into sudden power after long years of struggling growth. After the victory at Tolbiac 1,445 years ago, heathen Clovis and his army of 3,000 Franks were baptized in gratitude. Something not far different might occur in China. If anything should happen to bring the U.S. and Britain into active shooting war at China's side, enthusiasm for their allies might make millions of Chinese receptive converts to Christianity.

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