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When Religious Freedom Was Under Attack: A Study of Four Christians’ Responses in Modern China

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Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice

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Abstract

In this chapter, I have selected two Chinese Christians, Mingdao Wang and Y. T. Wu, and two missionaries Hudson Taylor and Timothy Richard to illustrate Christian leaders’ various approaches to ensuring religious freedom protection. Theology, political capital and personal experiences of church-state encounters are used to examine their various positions on protection of rights as regards religious freedom. The study shows turning to political authorities was a common approach for addressing these rights. Both Richard and Taylor believed without external pressure, the Chinese officials would not stop their hostility, nor will they take any action to protect religious rights. Both Wu and Wang considered the state as a potential helper who can turn to because they believed there was common ground between Christianity and Communism. Theology played a very limited role in shaping their approaches. In contrast, political capital and previous experiences in church-state encounters had a much larger impact.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ying [28], Cao [3].

  2. 2.

    For more information, please see Bohr [1], Evans [7], Soothill [16], Stanley [17, pp. 567–568].

  3. 3.

    Cohen [5].

  4. 4.

    Gu [8], Pfister [12], Ying [26, 27].

  5. 5.

    There are three most important series of missionaries' biographies: (1) The Protestant Missionaries Series edited by Zhenhe Zhou, (2) the Salt and Light Series edited by Carol Lee Hamrin; (3) and the Cosmic Care Biographical Series edited by Lin Zhiping.

  6. 6.

    Lyall [11].

  7. 7.

    For more detail information about this event, please see Steer [18, pp. 156–164].

  8. 8.

    China Inland Mission [4].

  9. 9.

    For more information of the Boxer rebellion see Esherick [6].

  10. 10.

    Taylor [19, p. 135].

  11. 11.

    Steer [18, pp. 258–262], Broomhall [2].

  12. 12.

    Reeve and Glover [13], Johnson [9].

  13. 13.

    Richard [14, pp. 206–207, 234–241, 256–260].

  14. 14.

    Ibid., pp. 84–85.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., pp. 295–296.

  16. 16.

    Richard [14, pp. 279–280]; Soothill [16, pp. 244–252].

  17. 17.

    Wu [24, p. 211].

  18. 18.

    Wu [23, p. 380].

  19. 19.

    Zhao [29, pp. 494–495].

  20. 20.

    Shen [15, p. 86].

  21. 21.

    Jun [10, pp. 114–115].

  22. 22.

    Wu [25, p. 231].

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Wu [23, p. 380].

  25. 25.

    For more detail, see Ying [27, pp. 6–37].

  26. 26.

    Wang [22, p. 148].

  27. 27.

    For more information about this episode please see Wang [21].

  28. 28.

    Ying [27, pp. 54–55].

  29. 29.

    Ibid., p. 157.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 160.

  31. 31.

    Wang [20, p. 122].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China, Rm. 3051, Qingnian Gongyu, 100872, Beijing, China

    Zhifeng Zhong

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai, China

    Zhibin Xie

  2. York, UK

    Pauline Kollontai

  3. Pasadena, CA, USA

    Sebastian Kim

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Zhong, Z. (2020). When Religious Freedom Was Under Attack: A Study of Four Christians’ Responses in Modern China. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_4

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