Bishop from China

A month ago China's Bishop Chen Wenyuan, steaming across the Pacific on a U.S. hospital transport, was thrilled when the ship sighted two Japanese submarines. This week in Manhattan U.S. Protestant leaders welcomed the 45-year-old Methodist Bishop ("China's No. 1 Protestant") as the unofficial ambassador of another famed Chinese Methodist, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.*

Through Bishop Chen, the Generalissimo invited U.S. Protestant Churches to send missionaries to postwar China, not as guests, but as comrades in the gigantic spiritual and material reconstruction that the nation will face. He was especially appreciative of the recent modification of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the U.S. Congress.

Said Bishop Chen, speaking at an interdenominational service in Manhattan's Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church:

"Never before was there a larger Christian force in the Chinese Government than at present. Most of the outstanding important offices in the Government are held by Christians. . . . One of the fundamental objectives of the Christian movement is to bring men and women into such vital contact with the life-changing power of Jesus that their lives will be reintegrated around Jesus and around His great aim of doing God's will on earth. China certainly needs more military equipment, including bombers for the defense of her country, but she also needs a new dynamic, the power of God."

Son of a Chinese magistrate in Foochow, Chen Wenyuan was born a Buddhist. At Foochow's Anglo-Chinese College he learned about Christianity from Methodist Bishop John Gowdy,* adopted the faith, promptly converted his mother (his father was dead), several cousins. In 1917 he came to Syracuse University (he helped pay his way by teaching Chinese) later took a Ph.D. at Duke, followed by summer courses at Cambridge University, the University of Berlin. After a year of European lecturing, Dr. Chen, who had been ordained to the Methodist ministry, returned to China to be Dean of Fukien Christian College. Five years later he became General Secretary of the National Christian Council, China's equivalent to the U.S.'s Federal Council of Churches.

Later Chiang Kai-shek asked him to help organize China's Youth Corps, and for 20 years he has been one of the leaders of Chinese youth. Bishop Chen is a strong nationalist and internationalist.

Three years ago Dr. Chen became Bishop of the Methodist Church's Chungking Area. (Only other Chinese Methodist Bishop: Dr. Z. T. Kaung of Pekin.) Chungking's population ebbs & flows with so many refugees that even the Bishop does not know how many Methodists are there. In all China there are not more than five million Christians. But Bishop Chen is more than a Methodist leader. He is a great interfaith leader, and Chinese of all beliefs know of him and his work for Chinese unity. He is a prime force in the Fellowship of Religious Believers, a group which includes not only Chinese Christians but Buddhists, Confucianists, Mohammedans. Their aim: brotherhood among all China's millions.

*Last year Bishop Chen baptized the Generalissimo's second son, Captain Chiang Wei-kuo. 29. *Three weeks ago Retired Bishop Gowdy now living at Winter Park, Fla., received the Special Order of Brilliant Stars medal from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.