Presbyterian missionaries in Southern Manchuria, 1867--1931: Religion, society, and politics

This dissertation examines the ways in which the Irish, Scottish, Korean, and American Presbyterian missionaries in Southern Manchuria represented the gospel, discovered the needs of the converts and other people in the area, and transformed their mission methods in the late Qing and the early Republican period of China.;The first chapter surveys the home-base of the missionaries from the four different nationalities and suggests that the common theological orientation of the missionaries was orthodox Presbyterianism and Evangelicalism. Some other formative factors from the home-bases were the emphases on education, commerce or development, social responsibility, and the sense of duty in the spread of "civilization." Those features, in general, shaped the "superiority" of both Christianity and Western civilization in the mind and practice of the Presbyterian missionaries.;The second chapter shows that the missionaries pursued unity within the Presbyterian tradition, cooperation and comity along with the churches in other traditions and the missionary societies, and the development of an indigenous Presbytery or Church both in Manchuria and the rest of China. The missionaries, however, also maintained their narrow-mindedness in unity, a reluctance in divesting themselves of the responsibilities for the Church of Manchuria, and a hostile attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church. In encountering Chinese religions, they generally held the position that the Chinese religions were "pagan" or "superstitious" and that Christianity was superior to them. However, a few missionaries tried to understand those religions from an historical point of view and affirm some aspects of their spirituality. They thereby hoped to see the emergence of a Chinese Christianity with Chinese religious and cultural characteristics.;The third chapter investigates the ways in which the missionaries worked among immigrants, refugees and the sick. The period that the missionaries worked in Southern Manchuria was also a time in which massive migrations from North China, Korea, and Japan to Manchuria were made. It was also a time when China, Russia, and Japan were competing with one another for the dominance in East Asia. This resulted in a couple of international wars mainly in Southern Manchuria. The missionaries were faced with a considerable number of immigrants and refugees as a result of the wars. The desperate needs of the people in Southern Manchuria helped the missionaries change their mission methods and dedicate themselves to relief, development, and some other types of activities to improve the conditions of the people's life. Whereas the other three nationalities dealt mainly with the marginalized, the American missionaries who worked among the Japanese in the Kwantung Leased Territory in Manchuria had a different context in encountering the (semi)-colonizers.;The last chapter analyzes the missionaries' political and 'politically neutral' stances made in response to national events. Experiencing the Boxer Uprising of 1900 and the May Thirtieth Incident of 1925, the British missionaries came to be sympathetic to Chinese nationalism and expressed their willingness to abandon the political rights of Christian missions coming out of the unequal treaties. Korean missionaries joined the anti-colonial movement in Manchuria as contributing to nationalistic education. In addition, facing the crisis of the Korean immigrants' survival in the midst of the competing Chinese and Japanese nationalisms in Manchuria, some Korean missionaries participated in the naturalization movement for Chinese citizenship. Some American missionaries saw the bilingual and bicultural ability in many Koreans residing in Manchuria. They hoped to mobilize them for the evangelization of the Chinese. The American missionaries among the Japanese in Manchuria had the attitude of 'political neutrality.' However, they were, especially in the early period of their work, considerably dependent on the financial support of the Japanese Kwantung Government.;In the conclusion, the author suggests that the direction for the future study of Christianity in Manchuria should be indigenization and contextualization of the Church. He also suggests the direction for trans-nationality in encouraging the study of Christianity among the minority ethnic groups in Manchuria and the study of the transnational expressions between and among the different groups.