Mission Church And Sino-Western Interaction:a Study On American Baptist Missionary Union Mission Churches In South China,1858-1903

From 1858 to 1903, Christian mission churches have been built up by interaction between American Baptist Missionary Union (hereafter referred as ABMU) and East Guangdong. These mission churches not only belong to China, but also belong to western world. And this special being has a salient intermediate feature, which makes it being an important sample to study the Sino-western relationship, in a special time-and-space background.Mission church is identified as "mission" or "church" generally in study of history of China Christianity. These two names can not reflect its actual conformation. Except few independent churches, most of Christian organizations are existed as mission church in Modern China. This research introduced "mission church" from western missiology to analyze ABMU mission churches in East Guangdong by the perspective of interaction and Sino-western relationship in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on original church archives, diplomatic archives and missionary family papers, this paper analyzed five interactive relationships by the use of history, anthropology, sociology and other subject methods. The five interactive relationships are between missionary and American society, ABMU and missionary, missionary and native convert, missionary and East Guangdong society, and mission church and East Guangdong society.The interactive relationship between missionary and American society mainly reflected in gender, politic and economy aspects. In gender aspect, single lady missionary and doctor anomie has been re-normed under social gender frame, which predominate by man, in mission circle. This alternation has been a part of change of norm for female in America. And female doctor and Bible woman who trained by single lady missionary has provided Chinese image to the change. In political aspect, conflicts between populace and church pushed missionary impose influence to American diplomat designation by the way of home base. In economic aspect, board encourage missionary to publicity their preach activities for the purpose of mission fund and missionary use article and speech consciously as well. Lots of conditions and customs of East Guangdong have been disseminated to America by missionary.The interactive relationship between ABMU board and missionary mainly reflected in board operation, missionary rule, missionary recruit requirement, and mission church organization. Along with increasing mission experiences, ABMU board tried to control missionary activity by the way of delegate part power to mission church and adjusted missionary rules and recruit requirements constantly. Board changed organization frame of East Guangdong mission churches from Kakchieh church as the center of the.vertical of power frame to Conference of the South China Mission. The new frame has many power centers and committees which avoided station act on its own will totally.The interactions between missionary and native convert mainly on administration, mission church enterprise and rites. Missionary used communion to deal with whole mission church affair which can training native preacher and building up community imagination. Native convert can’t violate the Ten Commandments, gambling and smoke opium, not including foot-binding, ancestor worship, marriage and funeral rites.East Guangdong Baptist mission church has set up large scale of enterprises. In theological education, missionary change western teaching method to adopt the background and leveling of student and deeply influenced by traditional Chinese culture and local culture from students. In secular education, missionary and native convert interactive directly in housework, foot-binding, marriage, teaching method and English teaching topics. Many native converts and language teachers played a important role in literature enterprise. In translating process, missionary explain the English meaning and Romanizing part and native assistant responsible the Chinese character and Tie-Chiu dialect parts.If missionary always accepted China cultural instructions in Late Ming and Early Qing, the missionaries, who arrived China after the first opium war, were contempt to instruct China with a culture conquer mentality obviously. Nevertheless, after a detailed analysis on marriage and funeral rites of Chaoshan Baptists, we found China society background still is the main reference substance of them and missionary just instructed based on some Christianity basic stand. Rites of native convert are not simply mingled by the East and the West elements, but have a clear origin and orderly procedure. Local rite some being kept, some being dropped, some being replaced by Christian elements and some is being retained original notion with a new form. Christian elements add in by the way of inset and centered in some stage which kept Christian core part.Interaction between missionary and East Guangdong Society contains many aspects. After arrived East Guangdong, ABMU missionary built gospel boat, developed summer resort, compiled dialect learning materials and Bible, and divided preach area. The relationship of missionary and local society always been described as confrontation relation by previous studies. Actually, we found many cooperation cases not only in mission archives, but also in church case study with a new perspective. Local gentry classified western knowledge and import parts with pragmatic value to their own mode. In the interaction of missionary and populace, previous studies showed missionary enable to predominate the relation. In actual fact, there are many cases which missionary fell into the trap settled by indigene.Scholars have paid little attention to the topic of missionary private business. Missionaries of South China Mission had engaged draw works, painkiller, American ginseng, clock trade intensively. They used their direct relation with populace, which foreign businessman can not, to sell goods to second level local merchants who have Christian background or produced some Christian merchant. This made a big change of former trade network. But there is another way that is local merchant used missionary to import goods from foreign countries and still use their former network to sell them.William Ashmore, Sr.’s Sun Bue fishery revealed many complicated faces of missionary buying real estate in Late Qing. Not only missionary and native convert involved the transaction, but also American consul and Yamen clerk. Treaty port extent, missionary inland purchase problem and jurisdiction scope of district government had been concerned in the diplomatic negotiations. Moreover, Ashmore had many disputes with Swatow Guild Hall or Wan Nian Feng Hui Guan, who played city hall role in Swatow, in the process of buying and filling. The filling enlargement of the land has a synchronous development step of Swatow city.Baptism in East Guangdong has two ways to disseminate. One is districts propagation, and the other is community propagation. Districts propagation centered as Kakchieh church and formed reticular formation. And Christianity used the already existed native social network, such as clan, family, female network, to propagate itself in communities. Church network had been given some new content in its enlargement and challenged old power frame in local society. Some laities use their own kindred, geographical relations to implant Christianity in community structure.Mission church enterprise, as a kind of entity, had a more direct related interaction with East Guangdong society. The real estate transactions got involved in local practice of treaty and arose many troubles which compelled local government enacted many provisions. But in the most of the time, missionary bypassed the provisions and native convert bought the estate then transferred to missionary or church. Mission church enterprise economy had two ways to influence East Guangdong society. On the one hand it increased employ opportunity for traditional careers and strengthened or introduced some western careers which impacted local career structure and gender notion hugely. Certainly, local society is not a passive receptor. According to "Gui Mao Education System", official schools introduced western knowledge courses and competed with Baptist school which made the former incompact mission secular education became unified administration and introduce western knowledge systematically and positively. The western knowledge found its best way to disseminate to local society through the Chinese and church education systems.