title

:

Taking Christianity to China : Alabama Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom, 1850-1950

author

:

Flynt, J. Wayne.; Berkley, Gerald W.

publisher

:

University of Alabama Press

isbn10 | asin

:

0817308334

print isbn13

:

9780817308339

ebook isbn13

:

9780585273105

language

:

English

subject

Christianity--China, China--Church history--19th century, China--Church history--20th century, Missions--China--History.

publication date

:

1997

lcc

:

BR1287.F58 1997eb

ddc

:

266/.023761051

subject

:

Christianity--China, China--Church history--19th century, China--Church history--20th century, Missions--China--History.

Page iii

Taking Christianity to China

Alabama Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom 18501950

Wayne Flynt and

Gerald W. Berkley

Page iv

Copyright © 1997

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper on which this book is printed

meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard

for Information Science-Permanence

of Paper for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flynt, Wayne.

Taking Christianity to China : Alabama missionaries in the middle

kingdom, 1850-1950 / Wayne Flynt and Gerald W. Berkley.

p.   cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8173-0833-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. ChristianityChina. 2. ChinaChurch history19th century.

3. ChinaChurch history-20th century. 4. MissionsChina-

History. I. Berkley, Gerald W. II. Title.

BR1287.F58 1996

266'.023761051-dc20              96-12145

CIP

British Library

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available

Page v

TO LYNN

AND

JERRY BARRETT

TO MELINDA

AND

REGAN BERKLEY

Page vii

Contents

Preface

ix

1. The Light of Science and Revelation

The Mission

1

2. You Can See All Nations Here

Alabama Culture and the Missionary Enterprise

21

3. The Intense Longing of My Heart

Preparing for China Missions

32

4. One of the Hardest Things I Ever Undertook

First Contact with China

54

5. The Peculiar Customs Are So Bewildering

Understanding Chinese Culture

72

6. The Best Way Is to Live One Day at a Time

Missionary Life in China

103

7. Oh, for One Day's Quiet Retreat

Reporting Home about China

129

8. A Trip of Preaching, Healing, and Teaching

Missionary Work

148

9. I Was a Different PersonMy Girlhood Was Past

Woman Consciousness among Alabama Missionaries

191

10. Error Is Propagated Along with Truth

Conflict among Alabama Missionaries

238

Page viii

11. Jesus Christ Had Nothing to Do with the French

Missionaries and Chinese Politics

281

12. You Who Drink the Water, Do Not Forget the Person Who Dug the Well

The Legacies of Alabama Missionaries in China

329

Appendix: Missionary Biographies

349

Notes

359

Bibliography

405

Index

416

Page ix

Preface

The idea of a book on Alabama missionaries who served in China germinated in the early 1980s. At that time I was teaching Asian history at Auburn University at Montgomery. AUM assisted the project with several research grants, which allowed me both to conduct interviews and to visit archives in the region. In 1984 I presented a paper titled "Alabama Missionaries in China: An Historical Survey" at the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies meeting held at Emory University. One year later I approached The University of Alabama Press. Press director Malcolm MacDonald was most receptive and encouraging. In 1986, just before I left AUM to pursue a law degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I turned over to Wayne Flynt the two boxes of material that I had collected. Since that time Wayne has done the vast majority of work on this project. Our paths have crossed at a couple of conferences, we have corresponded by mail, and we have spoken on the phone. I wish to make clear, however, that Wayne is the person most responsible for seeing this project to completion, and I wish to express my thanks for his willingness to list me as coauthor. Finally, I wish to thank both my wife, Melinda, and my daughter, Regan, for the love, the help, and the humor.

GERALD BERKLEY

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

As my wife and I winged our way across the Pacific Ocean toward Hong Kong I could not put out of my mind an earlier crossing. The trip that would take us only fifteen hours had taken Martha Foster Crawford three and a half months. Her journey by sailing ship in 1852 was so arduous that she returned home only four times during her fifty-eight years in China.

Our arrivals were in some ways quite similar. At our destination two

Page x

missionary couples from Alabama greeted us warmly, took us to our flat in the New Territories, guided us through the maze of procedures needed for survival in a strange culture, and carefully watched over us during our first days. Vivien C. Chan, a vibrant Chinese Christian, introduced us to English-speaking Chinese vendors in the open street markets that abound in China. A similar supportive network of Christians greeted Martha and T. P. Crawford in Hong Kong.

Like the Crawfords we encountered a babble of languages (Cantonese and Mandarin) that we could not understand and customs that seemed even stranger. Like the Crawfords, we sometimes felt overwhelmed by Chinese culture and longed to hear southern accents and eat a bowl of grits or a pone of corn bread. Although we met many Christians, they were after all Chinese Christians with differences in theology and practice from our own Baptist congregation in Auburn, Alabama. We met educated Chinese not unlike the nineteenth-century mandarins who believed that the Crawfords sought to subvert Chinese culture with radically different Western notions and who deeply resented the patronizing superiority of Americans.

The theological disputes over missionary strategy and tactics that the Crawfords helped instigate are alive still in China. One missionary group argues that missionaries should primarily preach the gospel, distribute tracts, and start churches. Another group insists that such a strategy did not work in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and will not work in the twenty-first. Missionaries, they insist, are more effective as teachers, physicians, social workers, and agronomists. By giving their lives in service, missionaries offer compelling testimony to their religious faith. Jerry Barrett, academic vice-president of Hong Kong Baptist College, preaches to a congregation of English-speaking Chinese on Sunday mornings. But during the week he presides over a sophisticated academic community whose students are only 15 to 20 percent Christian when they enter college compared to 45 to 50 percent when they graduate. More converts are made in the college than at the chapel. Lynn Barrett, whose "call" to missions preceded her husband's, uses her excellent Cantonese to train medical technicians at a clinic in Macao. Their sponsoring agency before their resignation, the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board, has wavered between these strategies during the past century and a half, emphasizing preaching and a centralized approach to evangelism, then adopting a more localized direction containing various institutional ministries, mainly medicine and teaching. By the end of the twentieth century the board had

Page xi

returned to a strategy of church establishment and evangelism that diminished institutional missions, demoralized institutional missionaries, and threatened to create renewed hostility from Chinese Communist officials who seemed finally willing to tolerate the indigenous Chinese Christian Council but were unalterably opposed to Western missionaries and cultural imperialism.

So our three-month Asian journey to explore more fully the lives of the people about whom we wrote taught us that much had changed in travel and technology. But much remained the same in terms of cultural confrontation and internal missionary disputes.

Obviously the readers of this volume will bring their own values and cultural awareness to the reading. That is as it should be, and they will not all agree on a single conclusion. We have tried to examine these issues in two ways. We sought to understand the world of China and the imperative and urgent sense of Christian duty as Martha Crawford, Willie Kelly, Mary Stuart, T. W. Ayers, and their cohorts saw it. We asked how all of their prodigious and dedicated efforts changed them. We also sought to discover the limited but important ways in which these same efforts changed a small part of China.

We tried to achieve the detachment of historians. Where and why did missionaries fail? What mistakes of judgment did they make? As readers will quickly discover, the heroic image missionaries had back home and the romantic denominational notions of missionary harmony and domestic tranquility distort their real lives and make parody out of tough, life-and-death reality. We believe that accurate recounting is far more compelling than the hagiography that constitutes too much of missionary history.

But historian critics have not been without their own blemishes. An age of academic secularism and cultural modernism has portrayed missionaries as patronizing do-gooders. Missionaries become naive and unknowing agents of Western economic and political imperialism, introducing the Bible right behind the buck and the battleship. In rethinking the missionary experience through the lives of forty-seven Alabamians, we have tried to be fair and critical to both sides of this dispute.

Although coauthorship of a book involves problems, we believe that the present work minimizes these and maximizes our varying strengths. Professor Berkley, a sinologist with extensive experience in Asia, conducted much of the initial research for the project. Professor Flynt, a specialist in Alabama history and southern evangelicalism, did

Page xii

most of the writing. But each of the authors ultimately contributed to all phases of the project.

Writing collective biography is never easy, but this task has proven particularly formidable. The lives of the forty-seven missionaries that we have identified fit no particular pattern, nor were we able to obtain uniform information about them. For some we have complete data on family, education, conversion, call to mission service, types and places of occupation, complete correspondence, and substantial literary output (memoirs, published autobiographies, diaries, novels, dissertations). But almost all these data came from American sources. What Chinese thought or felt is largely unavailable and constitutes a major gap in knowledge about these people. For other missionaries we have very little with which to reconstruct their lives even from American sources. We know that our list of missionaries from Alabama is incomplete. But we doubt that additional names or data would alter conclusions, which are well established by the extensive evidence we already possess.

Even the issue of what constitutes an Alabamian was confusing. For our purposes birth in Alabama or residence there for a significant time qualified one for inclusion.

From a literary point of view the most serious problem with collective biography is the inability of the reader to identify with individuals. If the central purpose of biography is to make the life of another person come alive, collective biography often fails. To try to avoid this intrinsic problem we have resorted to a literary device that we hope will enliven and personalize these people. Within chapters that develop generalizations we have included illustrative materials drawn from the experiences of individual missionaries. These illustrations come from lives that we have been able to reconstruct most fully. In this way we invite readers not only to understand the broad collective experiences that missionaries shared but also to explore the interior lives where issues were never quite so simple as they appeared. We have also included an appendix that summarizes data about each of the forty-seven Alabama missionaries. We chose a topical approach to this study because chronological eras defined missionary lives less than the overlapping issues of how they lived, worked, coped with a different culture, reacted to political change, and differed according to denomination, gender, and theology. But within these topical chapters we have used chronology to show how attitudes, policies, and ideology changed over time. To assist

Page xiii

readers, we have listed dates of service in China beside the names of missionaries whenever we devote substantial discussion to them.

An additional problem involved the spelling of proper names. Because few of our readers could identify persons and places using Chinese characters it was easy to eliminate that possibility. But two Westernized options remained: the Wade-Giles romanization introduced by the British and widely used between 1800 and 1950, and pinyin spelling introduced by the Communist regime that utilized a phonetic system that makes the English spelling approximate the actual Chinese pronunciation in Mandarin (pinyin Beijing replaced Wade-Giles Peking, Guangzhou replaced Canton). In order to remain as faithful as we could to the world in which the missionaries functioned (and the one most familiar to our readers), we have primarily relied on the older spelling that prevailed during their years of service.

Years of research have left us indebted to many persons. At the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville we have received efficient and courteous treatment that extends well beyond technical competence. Bill Sumners, Pat Brown, Lynn May, and Charles DeWeese deserve special recognition for their assistance. At Samford University, archivists Elizabeth Wells and Shirley Hutchins made available Alabama's most extensive religious archives. Alex Woodall, archivist of the North Alabama Conference, United Methodist Church, and George Schroeter, head of local history and genealogy at Mobile Public Library, were also helpful.

In addition to archivists and librarians we also express gratitude to Jeff Walters, a graduate student at Auburn University who spent two summers as a research assistant helping index articles about China in the Alabama Baptist. Wickham Henkels served as more than merely an editorial assistant. Her birth to Episcopalian missionary parents in Shanghai gave her a special interest in this manuscript that was reflected in her critical and constructive reading.

We are grateful to Auburn University, both main and Montgomery campuses, and to Hong Kong Baptist College for generous financial support during various phases of research and writing. Auburn's support of Professor Flynt through funding of the Distinguished University Professorship and Hong Kong Baptist College's provision of a visiting scholar's position were invaluable. That gratitude partly explains the dedication of this book to Jerry and Lynn Barrett. Their lives as missionary teacher and medical technologist illustrate the theme of love

Page xiv

for and service to China; furthermore, Jerry in his capacity as professor of chemistry and academic vice-president provided the opportunity for Professor Flynt to spend a term at the college as Visiting Scholar. Contact with history chairman Danny Paau (Shiu Lam) and departmental colleagues Barton Starr, Don McMillan, Wong Wong Yin Lee, Clara Wing-chung Ho, and others deepened insights, changed conclusions, and focused ideas. As with all scholarly projects we acknowledge many who blazed the way before us or helped on our journey. Only the authors bear blame for any mistakes of fact or judgment found within these pages.

Finally I wish to acknowledge my companion on all journeys, both demanding physical ones to Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China in 1982 and 1992 and intellectual ones such as this book. Always ready for an adventure, this research tested even her mettle. As always, she was worthy of the challenge. My wife Dorothyintrepid explorer, careful proofreader, constructive and tenacious criticbears more credit for this book than anyone but she will ever know.

WAYNE FLYNT

Page xv

Page 1

1

The Light of Science and Revelation:

The Mission

British missionary Robert Morrison, dispatched to China in 1807 by the London Missionary Society, defined his goal directly: ''the light of science and revelation will . . . peacefully and gradually shed their lustre on the Eastern limit of Asia and the islands of the rising sun." 1 Just so simply did he explain for himself and succeeding generations of Christians the imperative beckoning them to Asia.

At the core of Morrison's vision was the truth revealed in Christ. His gospel proclaimed a merciful and loving God who, through the person of his son, Jesus Christ, sought to save all people at all times and in all places. This gospel contained revolutionary power to change both individuals and society. Once converted, disciples assumed the sacred duty of converting others. The task might take them to the ends of the earth or to their neighbors next door, but each Christian bore the grave responsibility of responding faithfully to God's call wherever it might lead.

This theology did not exist in a vacuum. It occurred in the context of two rich though quite different cultures, one rooted in Hebrew, Greek, and Christian thought, the other anchored in rich oriental values. One of those cultures was vigorously expansive during the nineteenth century. The other was defensive. The United States confidently boasted of its vigorous democracy. China's government was declining into the final and decadent stages of a long dynastic cycle. The United States was rapidly accumulating wealth with which to finance its economic, military, and cultural adventures abroad. China experienced grinding and pervasive poverty. American society championed rugged individualism and democratic values. Chinese society was organized around the family and retained hierarchical and authoritarian institutions. Americans pioneered new and exciting technologies, especially in transportation and medicine, that hastened the efficient movement

Page 2

of people over long distances and revolutionized health care. Chinese enthroned tradition, resisted technology, and paid a frightful price in deadly epidemics and stultifying inertia.

New theological currents coursing through Western thought also influenced missions. The rise of evangelicalism in the eighteenth century and the spread of millennial expectations in the nineteenth spawned reform movements both in Britain and in the United States. The belief in Christ's imminent return and the end of time lent great urgency to the work of conversion. Revivals swept the United States at the beginning. middle, and end of the nineteenth century, energizing the church, winning millions of converts, and attracting enormous riches. Lay movements mobilized masses of Christians, both men and women, as they had seldom been inspired before in Christian history.

If China and the United States were unlike in many ways, they were remarkably similar in one critical regard. From ancient times Chinese had regarded themselves as the most civilized of peoples and their land as the "Middle Kingdom." Other races and nations had to be tolerated patiently, tutored in the ways of civilization, and encouraged to adopt Chinese ways. To assume that such an advanced civilization would deign to borrow from barbarians or to covet their lands, technology, social organization, or religion was ludicrous and incomprehensible to the Chinese.

Americans, having just cast off imperial dominion and established a republic founded on democratic values, believed that they were a chosen race, a special people ordained by God for some great purpose. Their references to themselves and their nation as a "New Zion," a "holy city set on a hill," a ''New Jerusalem" squared with their own expansive notions of divine destiny but made them disgustingly self-righteous to others. Although they did not refer to the United States as the "Middle Kingdom," that is nonetheless the way they understood their nation's destiny. Freed from the petty despotism of autocratic monarchs and corrupt priests, they envisioned their land as a new chance for humanity. And events in Europe and Latin America lent credence to their vision by spawning democratic revolutions inspired by the U.S. example.

The rapid territorial expansion and economic growth of the United States convinced its citizens that both divine Providence and secular enlightenment favored its mission in the world. Thus the natural reaction to so favored status was the desire to share the fruits of democracy, technology, and Christianity with less favored peoples; or, as Robert

Page 3

Morrison put it so well, to shed the lustre of science and revelation on the eastern limits of Asia.

Obviously, when a group of influential people moved to China believing that the true interests of the Chinese people could best be served by forsaking their traditional religion and reorganizing their culture around Western values, disharmony resulted. All missionaries, whether Catholic or Protestant, fundamentalist or liberal, agreed on the ultimate goal of replacing Chinese religions with Christianity, even if they crafted different strategies to achieve this objective. The goal of Christianizing China produced conflict with governing officials and traditional elites, especially in the cities.

The missionaries' task would have been simpler had they come by themselves. Unfortunately, they did not. They came in the vanguard of a colonist migration to China that brought merchants, diplomats, soldiers, and sailors. Although all were Westerners, their impact on China varied widely. Diplomats and their military cohorts, together with businessmen, viewed themselves as short-term residents. This fact made them reluctant to learn the difficult language, which in turn limited their access to Chinese residents. They were unlikely to know much about Chinese history, culture, or customs. Nor did they venture beyond the treaty ports along the coast. In all these ways, missionaries increasingly diverged from their colleagues.

This divergence came in gradual stages. During the early decades of their effort missionaries frequently turned to their governmental cohorts for protection and support. Pioneer missionary Robert Morrison served as translator for the British East India Company and often accompanied British diplomats to Peking as interpreter. Many American missionaries served similar quasi-economic and political roles. This might be a natural response to Chinese violence and provocation, but it portrayed British and American missionaries as pawns of Western political and economic colonialism. As generations passed, missionaries grew more independent and critical of the West's governmental presence and policy.

This change over time is a critical component in the missionary experience. Missionary attitudes were not static. As change occurred they adapted both strategies and methodologies to new circumstances.

Although no simple periodization exactly fits the Protestant missionary experience in China, three broad epochs help define it. The first began with Morrison's arrival and lasted until greatly expanded efforts began about 1880. This initial period was characterized by slow growth

Page 4

of the missionary force and of its converts. Attention centered on evangelism, although rudimentary educational and medical work began as well. Building the missionary infrastructure was critical: these pioneers gradually established patterns of residency (the missionary compound), translated the Bible into Chinese, pioneered work in lexicography, and created organizational structures. Only three of the forty-seven Alabama missionaries discussed in this work served most of their careers during these years, although one of these, Martha Foster Crawford, became a central figure on both sides of the Pacific.

The second period began with a greatly expanded lay movement and the accelerating influence of millennial theology in the 1880s and exploded after the turn of the century. Fueled by enormous growth in wealth of the United States as well as endorsement by its most prestigious statesmen, the missionary effort in China took on aspects of a national crusade.

At the same time, both strategy and tactics subtly changed. Although individual conversions remained the keystone of mission work, the influence of social Christianity found its way to China. Educational, scientific, medical, and other social ministries attracted a larger share of the missionary force and funding. Chinese officials changed from a position of open hostility to Christianity before 1900 to one of growing acceptance and support, albeit for oftentimes self-serving and pragmatic reasons. Coincidentally, the success of the mission enterprise as judged by numbers of converts matched the growth of new missionaries and ministries. Twenty-three Alabama missionaries ministered in China primarily during these four decades.

The decades after 1920 saw the slow but steady decline of Protestant missions. The rapid growth of Chinese nationalism resulted in increased criticism of Christian missionaries, who were often indistinguishable from other kinds of Western imperialists. Three cycles of civil war interrupted by a decade-long Japanese invasion disrupted China internally. Debates between fundamentalists and modernists crippled mission support back home, and combatants often exported their intramural disagreements to mission fields. Women, who had become more assertive of their own sexual rights and more frequently wed into companionate marriages, were less inclined to undertake single and isolated careers as missionaries. Secularists and religious liberals increasingly proclaimed that all religions contained elements of truth, Taoism and Buddhism no less than Christianity. Embarrassed by the intellectual presumptuousness of a religion that proclaimed exclusive

Page 5

loyalty and millennial urgency, mainstream American denominations began to back away from missions. Furthermore, the expanding wealth of three decades ended in the most severe depression in American history. By the time the Great Depression ended and funds were again flowing into mission coffers, Japanese aggression had cut lines of communication and blocked access to China's interior. Civil war between Nationalists and Communists followed the Japanese war, ending the century-long Protestant mission effort by 1950. Although this final period provided the most introspective missionary critique of U.S. policy, the most sympathetic analysis of Chinese culture, and the most radical effort to reform economic and social conditions, it also experienced disruptive battles with mission agencies over the role of Chinese Christian leadership in churches and schools. Twenty-one Alabama missionaries labored during these tumultuous times.

Within each of these three periods complex political, economic, and cultural issues interacted. Although the first American missionary agency, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, began in Boston in 1810, the first American Protestant missionaries arrived later. During these first decades most China missionaries came from New England and located in the city of Canton in southern China. Not until the 1842 Treaty of Nanking were foreigners allowed to settle elsewhere. At this historic juncture a generation of labor by their little company had netted American missionaries only six Protestant converts. 2 The British acquisition of Hong Kong and the opening of five so-called treaty ports by the Treaty of Nanking (Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Amoy, and Ningpo) provided new possibilities for Protestant missions. The treaty specifically permitted the erection of churches within these five cities and exempted foreigners from Chinese law.3

Additional treaties forced upon China during the 1840s and 1850s opened the country's interior to colonialist penetration. James Hudson Taylor, energized by his belief in Christ's imminent return, established the China Inland Mission in 1866. Concentrating exclusively on evangelism, his interdenominational and millennialistic missions moved beyond the port cities and into China's interior.4 This movement took missionaries beyond sophisticated cities with their hostile mandarins (the name Westerners gave to Chinese officials) into rural towns and villages where simple and illiterate farmers frequently interpreted Christianity as just another sect of traditional folk religions and welcomed the strange people who proclaimed a message of goodwill.

During these first decades missionaries established five types of

Page 6

activities: preaching, teaching, healing, publishing, and distributing tracts. Chapel preaching became the central form of proclamation. Educational activities consisted primarily of teaching English, the Bible, and other Christian materials. Western merchants supported educational efforts through the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge among the Chinese. The first Western-style hospital, an ophthalmic facility in Canton, admitted patients in 1835. Missionary hospitals and dispensaries provided the only Western medicine available in China during most of the century. Book and tract distribution relied on the same system of colporteurs who hawked such materials for a small fee in the United States. They usually gave away religious tracts or charged a nominal amount for them and for books. 5

Translation and printing absorbed enormous time and energy during this first epoch of missions. Missionaries completed several translations of the Bible between 1819 and 1823, as well as tracts and a catechism. The American Bible Society issued a simplified vernacular Chinese version in 1871. Between 1833 and 1914 all or portions of the Chinese Bible reached circulation of more than twenty million copies. So valued was this work that several professionally trained printers were appointed to China among the earliest missionaries.6

Although conversion was the object of all these activities, missionaries were cautious about converts. They realized that Chinese could and did take advantage of their gullibility. One exceptionally naive missionary, Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff, employed a number of converts as native evangelists and colporteurs operating out of Hong Kong. Despite their inflated reports of souls converted and sermons preached, many of them turned out to be unscrupulous hustlers who never left the island, spent their expense money on opium, and sold the literature supplied by their employer to a printer who promptly resold it to Gutzlaff.7 This scandal became public just as missionaries Tarleton Perry (T. P.) and Martha Foster Crawford arrived in Hong Kong in 1852 from Alabama, and it profoundly influenced their notions of the proper relationship between missionaries and their Chinese converts.

As a consequence of such incidents, missionaries usually designated a lengthy period of discipleship training for "inquirers." During this probationary period applicants studied tracts and Bible passages and demonstrated conversion by forsaking idolatry, gambling, opium smoking, concubinage, and other practices viewed by missionaries as sins.8

As this first stage of the missionary enterprise in China came to an end, Christianity had achieved a beachhead along the coast and in scat-

Page 7

tered inland locations, but little more than that. In 1857 American missionaries in China numbered 88; by 1870, they had increased only to some 200. The total of Protestant missionaries from all countries in 1870 was only about 400, and total converts numbered about 5,0000. 9

The last two decades of the nineteenth century were momentous ones in the United States. As the nation emerged from a serious depression during the 1870s, the economy boomed. The era was marked by confidence and optimism as well as an innocence that assumed American civilization to be the purest and noblest. Religious revivals swept the nation and lay movements thrived. The Student Volunteer Movement began in 1886 to recruit missionaries, and its first winter of work on campuses netted 2,000 volunteers. Between 1886 and 1936 the movement enrolled 50,000 college students; 13,000 of these served as foreign missionaries, constituting half of all those sent abroad. The movement worked in conjunction with the YMCA/YWCA, which also became active in China. The Laymen's Missionary Movement began twenty years later and united 100,000 men in prayer meetings, conferences, and mission study groups. They brought notions of efficiency and planning as well as financial resources to missions. Women's missionary societies also flourished. By 1915 they enrolled three million women in some forty denominational societies, making the missionary enterprise the largest mass women's movement of the time. Their focus on converting secluded Chinese women emphasized the need for more female missionaries.10

In 1910 Helen Barrett Montgomery wrote an interdenominational textbook for missions titled Western Women in Eastern Lands for study in local churches. The book became an important part of the Woman's Missionary Jubilee of 1910-11. The jubilee sponsored two-day meetings in forty-eight major cities, with Montgomery as featured speaker to most of them. She became the major spokeswoman for missions during the early twentieth century. Although she was deeply influenced by the social gospel ideas of Walter Rauschenbusch, she warned against reducing missions to settlement houses and schools. Social reform was a duty of disciples, but a personal experience of redemption was the primary object of missions.11

A balance of social justice and personal salvation became the method of China missions during this second era. The focus on education, medicine, and social work reduced the reliance on preaching. By 1911, 50 percent of American missionaries in China no longer engaged in direct evangelism as a primary responsibility. Most missionaries by that

Page 8

date were teachers. 12 Missionaries organized the Medical Missionary Association of China in 1887 and the Educational Association of China in 1890, which paralleled creation of such professional structures in the United States. In 1877 a special committee established texts for mission schools. Enrollment in such schools climbed from 6,000 in 1877 to 16,836 by 1890, fueled by rising Chinese interest in science and English. By 1906 enrollment reached 57,683. That year missionaries also operated some 400 higher-level institutions, some of them fine colleges. As opposition to education within the missionary communities declined, missionaries called on their sponsoring agencies to appoint more professional teachers. These requests in turn led to the appointment of many single, female missionaries. The number of women teachers increased from 63 in 1877 to 316 in 1890.

Medical missions experienced the same kind of expansion. In 1881 only 34 missionary doctors labored in China; by 1890, loo served there. Hospitals increased from sixteen to sixty-one, dispensaries from twenty-four to forty-four, patients treated from 41,281 to almost 350,000. By 1906 dispensaries and hospitals treated 2 million patients annually. By 1890, 23 American female physicians served in China, all of them appointed after 1877. It is fair to conclude that China's major source of knowledge about the West arrived via the missionaries.13

Not only did U.S. religious leaders emphasize the significance of China as the centerpiece of missions, so did many of the nation's political leaders. Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson identified foreign missions with American idealism and humanitarianism. Wilson, himself the son of a southern Presbyterian minister, was particularly enthusiastic about the crusade to evangelize China. Of course missions also served as a cultural dimension of American imperial aspirations during these administrations. U.S. imperialism was a complex amalgam of idealism, economic exploitation, and racism born of Darwinian notions of racial superiority then current in Western intellectual circles.14

Changes in China made this second era far more successful than the first. During the nineteenth century, Chinese opposition to missions came from many sources. At midcentury the Taiping Rebellion had nearly brought down the ruling dynasty, and the leaders of that revolution claimed to be Christian even though the missionary community considered them heterodox or even heretical. The traditional intellectual leaders of China considered Christianity superstitious and a threat to their status. Certainly the social and ethical values of Christianity

Page 9

subverted such Chinese traditions as the seclusion of women, foot binding, and concubinage. But the gospel was far more threatening to gentry than to common folk. The growth of antiforeignism in general and to missionaries in particular that culminated in the Boxer Rebellion of 1898 drew heavily from official sponsorship of a government bureaucracy whose political authority seemed under siege from foreign ideas. 15

The failure of the Boxers proved a decisive turning point in Chinese history. In a sense it was the decisive struggle of traditionalists to stem the tide of modernization. Power began to shift from conservatives whose base of power was in China's interior to reformers whose strength was along the seaboard.

The reformers were tolerant of missionaries and eager to learn from the West. Until 1911 graduates of mission schools were ineligible for government jobs, but after 1900 an increasing number of Chinese leaders were graduates of mission schools. By 1915 such institutions enrolled 170,000 students, and 420 missionary physicians staffed nearly 200 hospitals and dispensaries. The Rockefeller Foundation, created by wealthy Baptist layman John D. Rockefeller, took over Peking Union Medical College in 1914 and seven years later began training Chinese doctors in what most observers considered the nation's finest medical school. 16

Symbolic of the new leadership were Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who is considered the founder of the Republic of China (1912-49), and Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), who led the Nationalist (Kuomintang) Party from the mid-1920s until his death in Taiwan. Dr. Sun was baptized by Jehu Lewis Shuck, whose second wife was an Alabama missionary. Sun's wife, Soong Ch'ing-ling, was the daughter of a Methodist pastor and revolutionary, Charlie Soong, who left southern China for North Carolina. Ms. Soong's more politically conservative sister, Meiling, married Chiang Kai-shek in 1927. She was a graduate of Wellesley College and in 1930 persuaded her husband to be baptized, thus tempering nearly a decade of rising anti-Christian nationalism.17 Missionary emphasis on education, medicine, and social work fit the perceived needs of republican Chinese, who desired a mission effort to train and equip leaders of a modernized China without so much emphasis on evangelicalism, which threatened Chinese values and social order.

Yet the very social ministries that a new generation of Chinese nationalists welcomed represented a source of internal discord among missionaries and their American constituencies. Social ministries represented a new way of thinking about Christianity that owed much to

Page 10

the liberal theology emanating from Germany and lodging in American seminaries and universities. Many orthodox Christians viewed liberal emphasis on social ministries, ecumenism, and deemphasis on biblical literalism to be heretical. They organized a powerfully fundamentalist movement to counter modernism, arguing for the primacy of evangelism over social service and for inerrant Scripture as opposed to the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. Fundamentalism was strongest in denominations that tended to be highly sectarian and rejected formal connections with other groups.

All these theological battles found their way to China through the thousands of new missionaries responding to the call. Conflicts deepened among conservatives who focused on evangelism and modernists who relied more on education, medical, and social ministries. Liberal missionaries sought ways by which traditional Chinese religion might be harmonized with Christianity, adapted themselves more fully to Chinese society, and cooperated with like-minded missionaries across denominational lines. 18 They not only accepted women missionaries in new roles but even encouraged them. Fundamentalists and conservatives warred against inroads being made by the social gospel, refused ecumenical efforts to eliminate duplication and sectarian competition, and tried to restrict the role of women missionaries.

The mixture of new theological and social currents, a more receptive Chinese environment, vastly increased financial resources, unofficial U.S. governmental encouragement, and an army of new volunteers propelled this second epoch of Protestant missions in China to unparalleled heights. In 1905 nearly 3,500 Protestant missionaries labored in China. In 1914 the total reached 5,409 (2,143 men, 1,652 wives, 1,614 single women). Missionary departures for China peaked in the United States in 1920. That year some sixty-five American mission societies were active in China work. Although only 800,000 Protestant Christians were numbered among China's estimated 440 million people, the work had exploded since 1880. But the treaty ports created in the nineteenth century still dominated the work. An estimated 71 percent of the Chinese Protestants in 1920 lived in seven coastal regions.19

The final period of the Protestant effort in China extended from 1920 until the Communist victory over the Nationalists and the expulsion of Western missionaries in 1950. This period was characterized by internal missionary divisions, growing Chinese opposition, political chaos, and declining American support. The total Protestant missionary force peaked at 8,158, located in more than 1,100 mission points; of these mis-

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sionaries some one-third were unmarried women. The movement continued to be based in the cities, in which only 6 percent of the Chinese population lived but in which 66 percent of all missionaries worked. 20 In 1900 Americans constituted about 35 percent of all Protestant missionaries; by 1917 the number had increased to 50 percent, where it generally remained until expulsion began in the late 1940s.

Although internal divisions deepened during the first two decades of the new century, they peaked in the 1920S. Fundamentalist-modernist disputes demoralized the missionary force, confounded Chinese Protestants, and wrecked cooperative ministries. The 1922 Shanghai Conference of Missions (whose attendance was half Chinese) pronounced doctrinal and denominational feuds as Western and cultural in origin and expressed no interest in them. The conference also proposed to adapt churches to Chinese traditions and establish autonomy in finance and ecclesiastical governance.21 By the 1920S mainstream American denominations began to question the entire mission enterprise, which seemed to many liberal American Protestants to be about the superiority of Western religion over Eastern faiths. With so many social problems at home to solve and with depression-wrecked budgets, many mainline denominations trimmed their mission efforts.

Patterns of social change in the United States weakened missions as much as theological conflict. Between the 1880s and the 1920S women's sphere had been broadened to include certain forms of public life deemed consistent with their family and nurturing roles. Chief among such opportunities were various kinds of mission work. Many women who rejected hierarchical marriages in which they were expected to be submissive minor partners found the independence and opportunities of a single missionary in China to be exhilarating. Even the most conservative evangelicals affirmed this entirely appropriate and sacrificial act of womanly service. But with the arrival of franker views of female sexuality, the birth control movement, and increasing sensitivity of some males to female aspirations, many women who in earlier decades might have headed for China decided during the 1920S to enter companionate marriages where they were considered coequal partners rather than secondary persons.22

Changes in China as well as new currents in American life changed the mission movement. A Chinese cultural resurgence, begun as the May Fourth Movement in 1919, demanded that mission schools and hospitals hire more Chinese staff and faculty and place Chinese administrators in charge. The mission school curriculum became more secular

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and scientific, and the proportion of students who were Christian declined from more than half to only 20 to 30 percent in the 1930s. 23

In an attempt to move away from the cities, missionaries began a rural reform movement about 1930 that sought to win the hinterland by restructuring agriculture. The Rockefeller Foundation adopted rural reconstruction as its central task in China between 1934 and 1942. Despite such high-minded intentions, advocates of rural reform among both missionaries and Chinese officials tended to impose on peasants the values of urban China and to a lesser extent Western values. They ignored the more radical need to change the system of tenancy that divided the interior into wealthy landlords and impoverished peasants, even though they often recognized the inherent injustices of such a system. Compared to the Communist effort to mobilize peasants to help themselves and construct their own reforms, the rural reconstruction movement was too little and much too late.24

Most missionaries supported the nationalist revival, partly because many of its leaders identified with Christianity and partly because its values theoretically derived from the same egalitarian assumptions underlying American democracy. In fact the revolution of 1925-28 deeply divided the foreign enclave of some four thousand Americans who lived in Shanghai. Missionaries who sought to infuse Christianity with Chinese values joined like-minded American journalists, scholars, and businessmen. They began to meet with similar groups of moderate Chinese, consisting mainly of merchants engaged in international trade and those who had studied in mission schools or attended colleges in the United States. Missionaries often chided their fellow residents for refusing to learn the language or for lack of appreciation of Chinese culture. The American Community Church became the only place where Americans and Chinese could meet in complete equality and cultural acceptance. In this role many missionaries became increasingly impatient with their own government's insensitivity to China and foreign exploitation of the land and its people.25 During the 1930s this squeak of criticism about U.S. policy became an outraged roar as missionaries ripped American reluctance to act forcibly to stop Japanese aggression against China.

As important as internal missionary disputes to the decline of missions was internal Chinese chaos. A cycle of revolutions and civil wars began in 1925 and continued with ever-increasing ferocity until 1950, punctuated by Japanese invasion in the mid-1930s. Virtually no continuity of effort was possible during these years. Some mission stations

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closed, and many missionaries fled for their lives. Only their amazing courage and commitment kept mission stations functioning at all. Long after diplomats and businessmen left hot spots, missionaries remained behind to tend their flocks and proclaim their gospel.

Unlike Catholics working in China, Protestants operated a decentralized effort fractured by 1905 into sixty-three separate societies, boards, and agencies. Three of these groups sponsored most Alabama missionaries in China: the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which sponsored thirty-six; the Presbyterian Church of the United States (PCUS), which sent six; and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (ME Church, South), which dispatched five. All three denominations were intensely sectional, having split from their national bodies before the Civil War. All were evangelical, emphasizing the centrality of conversion. And all three were highly conservative, furnishing a hospitable environment for fundamentalism and hierarchical concepts about the role of women. Within these broad patterns the ME Church, South, furnished the most liberal missionaries, the SBC the most conservative.

The first denomination to arrive and the largest of the three was the Southern Baptist Convention. During the twentieth century the SBC became the largest American Protestant denomination and the most devoted to foreign missions. By the mid-1920s the SBC numbered 12.7 million members and boasted the nation's largest foreign missions program. As one Baptist minister's son noted, Baptists in the South were a lot like Chinese: ''there are immeasurably more of them than anybody else, and they tend to regard themselves as the center of the universe." 26

The most famous professor of missions produced by the denomination, Dr. William O. Carver of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, summarized the Baptist vision for Asia: "Either Christianity must succeed in China or, failing there, be proved unequal to redeeming humanity."27 With such a compelling mandate Baptists entered the work with apocalyptic urgency.

From the denomination's beginning in 1845, China became its primary mission field. China remained the central focus of Southern Baptist missions until its last missionary was expelled in 1951. Its Foreign Mission Board appointed more than 620 missionaries to the country between 1845 and 1948. The number peaked at 287 in 1924, divided almost evenly between men and married and single women. That figure represented more than half of all missionaries under appointment by the board. The total declined to 178 in 1937, but by 1948 the force recovered to 220. Chinese church membership reached 123,000. Ala-

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bamians always represented a significant part of the total SBC mission force. In 1905 when the denomination sponsored 88 missionaries, 9 of them (10.2 percent) were from Alabama. As with Protestant missions generally, the greatest Southern Baptist growth occurred between 1900 and the early 1920s. 28

Southern Baptist missionaries were organized into four geographical missions: the South China Mission begun in 1836, located mainly in Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces; the Central China Mission, 1847, centered in Kiangsu Province; the North China Mission, 1860, based in Shantung Province; and the Interior China Mission, 1904, centered in Honan Province.

The first American Protestant missionary, J. Lewis Shuck of Virginia, actually arrived in Macao in 1836, sponsored by the Baptist Triennial Convention headquartered in Philadelphia. He spent ten years in Canton where his wife died, leaving him a widower with several small children. His southern origins caused him to seek appointment from the Southern Baptist Convention when it was established in 1845. When he returned to China from furlough in 1847 he brought with him a new bride, Eliza Shuck, who had been a professor at Judson College in Marion, Alabama. The couple helped begin new work in Shanghai.

Just as Canton served as center for the South China Mission, Shanghai served as nucleus for the Central China Mission. And the work there soon attracted T. P. and Martha Foster Crawford (she from Tuscaloosa, Alabama), in some ways the most enigmatic of all Baptist missionaries.

The Crawfords left Shanghai in 1863 for health reasons and joined work just beginning in Shantung Province. The Crawfords dominated the Baptist mission there, complemented by two other remarkable missionaries with Alabama ties, Charlotte Diggs ("Lottie") Moon and Dr. Thomas Wilburn (T. W.) Ayers.

The Interior China Mission was begun in 1904 just after the Boxer Rebellion ended; and in 1924 a fifth mission was begun in Manchuria. Wayne W. and Floy (White) Adams (she from Brooklyn, Alabama) opened work in Dairen, Manchuria, in 1925.29

Each of the missions developed its own organization, with separate treasurer and headquarters. There was little communication or coordination between them until the 1920s. After the 1920S a single treasurer served all SBC missionaries from Shanghai, and the Foreign Mission Board provided coordination through a secretary for the Orient. South-

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ern and Northern Baptists worked together to establish the China Baptist Publication Society in Canton in 1899, beginning a period of increased ecumenical contact by Southern Baptists. In 1905 the two Baptist groups established Shanghai Baptist College and Seminary, which was later named the University of Shanghai.

As sectarian and doctrinal feuds made their way across the Pacific, such cooperation declined. In 1937 the publication partnership was dissolved. One objective of the publication society had in fact been sectarian, to publish Bibles with the correct Baptist word for "baptism" in Chinese, meaning to immerse. Southern Baptists were also reluctant to transfer leadership to the Chinese. Not until 1948 was the China Baptist Convention created, although Chinese had long provided most of the pastors, teachers, and staffs of Baptist institutions in China. 30

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, reached the China field two years after the first Southern Baptist missionaries arrived. Like Southern Baptists, Methodists centered their work in Shanghai. Never as numerous as Baptists, they concentrated on the southern portion of Kiangsu Province and the northern part of Chekiang Province. The Methodist mission was more centrally organized than the Baptist and was more ecumenical.31

As with Baptists, success came slowly. Southern Methodist missionaries did not baptize their first convert until 1852, five years after their arrival. By 1905 the ME Church, South, had a missionary force of forty-eight, about half the SBC strength, including a small contingent of Alabamians. Their converts totaled about 3,300, their schools thirty-one, and their hospitals and dispensaries three.32

The American Civil War disrupted both Baptist and Methodist missions in China and delayed southern Presbyterianism's entrance until August 1867. The PCUS had issued a ringing declaration of missionary purpose at its inception, but an effective federal blockade of the southern coastline made the boast hollow. Like Southern Baptists, the first southern Presbyterian on the field was a missionary formerly under northern appointment. Elias B. Inslee arrived in China in 1856 under sponsorship of the New York board. He returned in 1867 under the sponsorship of the southern church, opening a boarding school in Hangchow. Like Baptists and Methodists the PCUS exported the Presbyterian method of governance, organizing the Hangchow Presbytery in 1874. The General Assembly of the denomination in the South vowed early to propagate only the principles and doctrines of the church,

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not the cultural distinctiveness of southern Presbyterianism. This decision, though not altogether successful, gave the Presbyterian mission in China a more ecumenical posture than that of the Baptists. 33

As with the two other denominations, Presbyterian progress was slow. By 1905 the PCUS had two more missionaries than the Methodists but a third less than Southern Baptists. Several Alabamians were among this number, including Mary Louisa Stuart of Mobile, whose fifty-one years of service and distinguished family would make her a legend. The denomination's converts, nearly 3,200 strong, almost exactly matched the number of the ME Church, South, though Presbyterians, with only eleven schools, trailed a bit in educational ministries. Their seven hospitals and dispensaries ranked them close behind Baptists. Their mission reached a peak of 200 missionaries just before the Sino-Japanese war. Some 80 Presbyterian missionaries returned to China after the Second World War ended, 2 of them to positions of great distinction. During the eighty-five years of PCUS work in China. Presbyterians founded a dozen hospitals, a college, many schools and orphanages, several theological seminaries, and they baptized nearly 20,000 converts.34

Together the three denominations experienced similar patterns: slow growth at first; accelerated expansion after 1880, peaking in the early 1920s primary emphasis on evangelism but with strong secondary attention to education and medicine, especially after 1900; increasing tension because of fundamentalist-modernist controversies. Baptists resisted ecumenism and cooperative ministries more than the other two denominations but made grudging concessions to change after 1900.

Attempts to interpret the meaning of this complex mission enterprise have fallen into predictable patterns. At first denominational historians extolled the idealism, courage, and self-sacrifice of China missionaries. This favorable view prevailed also in the first academic evaluations, partly because so many early American sinologists were themselves children of China missionaries. Yale historian Kenneth Scott Latourette, the dean of American China specialists and himself a China missionary, wrote a massive History of Christian Missions in China in 1929 that depicted the effort in generally favorable terms, though he recognized elements of cultural condescension and imperialism. Although Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl S. Buck was a missionary child, she was much more critical of the cultural imperialism of American missionaries.35

During the middle third of the twentieth century religion began to

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seep out of American history. For an increasingly secular American culture, theology ceased to be a central way of making sense out of the nation's past. The missionary ideology of earlier times seemed increasingly quaint to a new generation of intellectuals. At first they merely ignored the subject. As former Harvard historian John King Fairbank announced in 1969, in the writings of academics the missionary had become "the invisible man of American history." 36

As it turned out the missionaries were better off invisible than maligned, which increasingly became their fate. The initial charge against them was cultural imperialism. According to this notion, China and the United States had separate and different institutions, values, and mores, each meaningful and satisfying to its own people. American culture could not be transmitted successfully to China unless the Chinese found their own culture inadequate and American culture a preferable substitute.

American Christians tried to force their cultural views of women, marriage, alcohol, individualism, health, education, and medicine on reluctant Chinese and predictably failed. Never more than 1 percent of Chinese became Christians, and far less than that became Protestants. Missionaries threatened deeply rooted Confucian orthodoxy by challenging the authority of the family and emperor and the subordination of women. When Chinese tried to sinify Christianity, as in the Taiping Rebellion, both Chinese gentry and missionaries rejected the attempt. Had missionaries been satisfied to create a Chinese Christian movement instead of an American Christian Church in China, the outcome might have been different.

Missionaries compounded their cultural problems by social aloofness. They lived in foreign compounds, ate American foods, dressed in American clothes, celebrated American holidays, taught American notions of hygiene, organized schools, hospitals, and churches in American ways, and often attacked Chinese culture and its value system.37 This "two cultures" interpretation became particularly influential to an America far more tolerant and less sectarian than it was between 1850 and 1950. Expressed in its popular cultural form (as in James Michener's novel Hawaii), missionaries appeared as silly, repressed Puritans trying to impose clothes on seminaked islanders in order to tame their own libidos.

A second charge leveled against missionaries was even more damaging. Whether knowingly or not they became agents of American economic and political imperialism. Behind the warm rhetoric of evangeli-

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calism was the steel-cold reality of exploitation. American imperialism needed moral justification; it required well-informed, Chinese-speaking people who could assist wars of aggression and expedite commerce. To all these roles missionaries lent their services. A substantial number of them became U.S. consular agents or ambassadors, while many others assisted foreign businessmen or engaged in profitable businesses themselves. Predictably, missionary association with Western policy led to anti-Christian nationalism and anti-imperialism. President Theodore Roosevelt acknowledged the nation's political debt to missionaries "because their work helped to avert revolutionary disturbances in China and to lead her into a position of peace and righteousness." One American minister to China, Charles Denby, elaborated: "For nearly a century the missionary men and women have labored to carry our prestige, our language, and our commerce into China. . . . If we turn them adrift, our national fame will be dimmed. It cannot be doubted that by their disappearance our commerce would greatly suffer, and our diplomacy would lose its chief support." 38

A third indictment focuses on the evangelical emphasis of missionaries. Historians concede that China before 1950 contained plenty of institutions that needed reforming: exploitation of landless peasants, wretched health, inadequate education especially for women, hunger, poor housing, and lack of job skills. By accepting the existing social framework as the context of evangelism, missionaries concluded that they could change people without changing society. By the time they evolved a broader social agenda, mainly after 1920, it was too late. China's neglect of its poor, the class-based exploitation by landlords and businessmen, had already plunged China into a devastating cycle of civil wars that would not end until Communists prevailed and expelled all Westerners.39 Thus missionaries were more successful as mediators of American culture than as evangelists of Christian religion.

The 1970S and 1980s brought a more balanced view of missionaries. Part of the change resulted from criticism of the presumptions of secular intellectuals. Gary Wills has documented the inadequacy of journalistic and intellectual understanding of even the most rudimentary issues of fundamentalist and evangelical theology.40 Others have questioned how otherworldly and disengaged American Christianity was. They deny that Protestant missionaries were culturally arrogant or politically naive. They particularly insist that missionaries should not be treated as if they were a single unit with uniform opinions and ideas over an entire century. Many of the criticisms of the "two cultures"

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school, with its charge that missionaries were agents of American imperialism, fit early nineteenth-century missionaries better than their twentieth-century colleagues. And the notion that missionaries evangelized to the exclusion of social service certainly ignored the last half century of missions. They increasingly sought to make their work self-sufficient and to transfer leadership into Chinese hands.

China missionaries defied historical stereotypes. They had above-average educations and spoke and understood Chinese to some degree, an example of acculturation not characteristic of American businessmen, diplomats, and military personnel. Many of them were amazingly open to and impressed by Chinese culture and adapted to Chinese social norms (preaching to women separately so as not to offend Chinese men, dressing in Chinese clothes and eating Chinese food, and praising the family loyalties of Chinese). Only missionaries among Americans in China sought contact with ordinary people in remote villages and rural areas. Missionaries appointed during the 1920s and 1930s were especially tolerant and culturally relativistic. Many missionaries wrote theses and dissertations that reveal an enlightened vision of gospel work in China. They did not ignore politics on either side of the Pacific, criticizing the Chinese government for abusing or neglecting its people and their own government for timidity in the face of Japanese imperialism. They were neither blindly critical of Chinese communism nor naively loyal to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party. Their written reports as well as frequent speeches while home on furloughs played a major role in shaping U.S. attitudes toward China and against Japanese aggression. 41

Most historians ignored the impact China had on the missionaries themselves, how service there changed them even as they sought to change China. Perhaps it is on this point that we most need to rethink the missionary experience. By concentrating on a limited number of white missionaries from a single state widely reported as one of the most homogeneous and provincial in the United States, we propose to test the "two cultures" thesis.

It is true enough that Alabama missionaries brought their own evangelical culture to China and attempted to impose it on a Chinese culture they regarded as heathen and inferior. But it is equally true that their inability to do so forced them to change. They became more ecumenical, more culturally tolerant, more politically astute and assertive, and less accommodating of denominational authority and policy. Single women missionaries especially took advantage of new opportunities to

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define their lives and religious functions in ways that were not acceptable back home in Alabama.

As a result, we believe that three cultures emerged. Alabama missionaries tried to impose their culture on China, largely failed in the effort, and consequently adapted a synergistic third pattern that was neither a carbon copy of evangelical Christianity from Alabama nor a replica of China.

A series of questions directed our research. Did Alabama missionaries seek to impose the evangelical Christian values of their own culture on Chinese? How did they interpret Chinese culture? How did they adapt to Chinese society? How did their attitudes change over time? What sorts of denominational differences existed? Did service in such a different and hostile environment force modifications in theology, doctrine, and policy? How did Chinese realities confound American mission theory and lead to conflicts and change? How did secular and denominational politics shape mission strategies? How did missionary reports shape Alabama opinion about China? How did missionary work in China redefine gender relations and change female Alabama missionaries? And finally, what was the end result of their arduous century of labor?

To begin answering these questions we must turn our attention to the world from which missionaries came, for it was that world which furnished the first culture central to the story, the culture of evangelical Alabama Protestantism.

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2

You Can See All Nations Here:

Alabama Culture and the Missionary Enterprise

In order to comprehend fully the missionary enterprise one must understand the evangelical culture that produced it. During the autumn of 1887 a lonely teenaged boy, newly arrived at Baptist-affiliated Howard College and sorely missing his rural Wilcox County home, wrote to a relative his first impressions of Birmingham. Both he and his cousin Willie Kelly had "surrendered" to God's call to become China missionaries. But his initial experience with the ethnic diversity of large cities and particularly with a Chinese person caused him to recant: "I boarded in the Magic City two days, and I don't believe I ever saw as many people in all my life as there are in Birmingham. You can see all nations here. I saw my first Chinaman the first day I landed here, and I think that I shall back out of going to China. You can see thousands of people coming in here every day. I remarked the other day that I believed the world was nigh to an end and that all nations were gathering in Birmingham." 1

The Christian apocalypticism of young J. E. McClurkin was not unusual for the times, though not many millenarians believed the Ascension would begin from Birmingham. But the innocent idealism of a young Christian in rural Alabama willing to surrender his life for a career of self-sacrifice in China was not uncommon. Nor was it unusual for the first bloom of missionary ardor to wilt in the searing reality of a threatening big city with its teeming multitudes, ethnic diversity, and babble of languages. As Alabama's evangelicals were fond of saying, "many are called but few are chosen." McClurkin changed his mind and stayed home. His cousin Willie Kelly persisted in her course and spent forty-four years as a missionary in Shanghai.

Perhaps that first "Chinaman" whose presence dissuaded McClurkin

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from the missionary enterprise came to work on the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad. Less than half a decade after the Civil War ended, nearly a thousand Chinese laborers arrived in the state, brought to connect rail links between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Meridian, Mississippi. Half of them were assigned to Greene County in western Alabama and the other half to Saint Clair and Jefferson Counties to the east.

During the winter of 1870 and the spring of 1871 the Reverend Brayfield W. Whilden preached at the Chinese camps near Tuscaloosa. Whilden, a South Carolina native, had been a Southern Baptist missionary in Canton between 1848 and 1855. He spoke Cantonese, the dialect of most of the southern coastal Chinese who first emigrated to the United States. Whilden's first wife died in China, and when his second wife became ill the family returned to the South. Whilden began work for the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention then headquartered in Marion, Alabama, just south of Tuscaloosa. No doubt he knew Eliza G. (Sexton) Shuck, who had been a professor at Judson College in Marion before becoming a missionary contemporary of his in Shanghai. Another China acquaintance doubtless would have been missionary Martha (Foster) Crawford, daughter of a Tuscaloosa County planter, who came to Shanghai with her husband in 1852.

Whilden's stay in China had been short. Many missionaries found that even their noblest intentions and deepest piety were no match for the cultural isolation, meager results, frequent epidemics, and political turmoil of the Middle Kingdom. But Whilden had found a way of continuing his China ministry in the United States. His daughter Louisa ("Lula") became the first single woman sponsored by the SBC after an abortive effort early in the century. She accompanied her sister, Jumelle, who left for China with her husband, Wetumpka native Nicholas Butt Williams, in 1871. Back in the United States their father continued his work among the Chinese of Alabama. He preached to them, distributed religious tracts, and visited their sick and injured in the hospital.

In June 1871 the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad entered bankruptcy, causing a polyglot mob of workerswhite, black, and yellowto stop and seize trains in an attempt to force payment of overdue wages. More than 300 Chinese workers lived in a camp outside Tuscaloosa not far from the plantation where Martha Foster Crawford grew up. They foraged for berries and waded creeks for crawfish in order to prevent starvation. In time, labor agents relocated the Chinese, many to

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arduous labor on Louisiana sugar plantations. The failure of the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad resulted in the largest dispersal of Chinese to occur in the South. 2

Provincial, Alabamians may have been; unaware of China, they were not. In 1835, ten years before creation of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Alabama Baptist Convention concluded that China was ''crumbling into dust" and predicted that the day was fast approaching when Chinese would "call upon us louder than we may imagine."3 During subsequent years the Alabama Baptist, journal of the denomination and one of the most widely distributed newspapers in the state, paid careful attention to China and meticulously chronicled the progress of Christianity there. In 1845 the editor printed the bylaws and constitution of the newly formed Vet Tung Baptist Church of Canton. Four years later the paper described a proposal to use balloons to distribute religious tracts across the surface of China. In 1880 the editor pronounced China to be "the most important and inviting" of all mission fields.4

Regular articles about Chinese history, geography, and society appeared in the newspaper's columns. They described the origins of the ruling Manchu dynasty as well as Chinese opposition to such foreign rule. Articles appeared concerning the Chinese monetary system and industrialization; Chinese geography and agriculture, including cotton production; the difficulty of learning the language; the size of the population; the use of opium; the extent of the Great Wall; and the Chinese diet, with emphasis on exotic dishes such as dog, cat, and rat. A regular feature of the paper concerned women's work in China.5

Analytical articles explained to Alabama Baptists the intricacies of Chinese culture and society, often from a parochial and uninformed perspective. The editor emphasized the inadequacy of Chinese religion and its tendency toward superstition and idolatry ("It seems strange that a people so intelligent . . . should be so superstitious"). Chinese notions of beauty tended toward corpulence in men and delicacy in women. Reflecting the increasing American nativism of the late nineteenth century, the editor depicted an expansionist China in 1890, its "hordes" rapidly settling the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines before becoming "a terror and a menace to Australia and the United States."6

Other articles contained more enlightened attitudes. Although traditional China had been "a hoary strong-hold of Satan," progressive China afforded better opportunities for the gospel. In 1888 the editor

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equated modernization with openness to Christianity. The "spirit of progress"which he equated with equipping a first-class army and navy, importing Western jurisprudence, and introducing Western-style educationaugured well for missionary work. During the next four years the editor used such adjectives as learned, proud, shrewd, patient, industrious, frugal, temperate, enterprising, polite, peaceable. and skillful to describe the Chinese people. Although lie scolded Chinese conceit for conceiving of their country as the center of the earth and all other people as inferior, he acknowledged that the Chinese were "an intellectual race" that had to be dealt with as such. Protestant missions should not be established "in a spirit of ambitious rivalry," and China could be evangelized only by Chinese Christians. The handful of missionaries there should be content to form relationships between Christians of the West and of the East. 7

The little band of Chinese who arrived in Alabama in 1869 might well have viewed Alabama with equal ambivalence. Their new home was not altogether strange to them. Like the population they had left in southern China, most Alabamians were rural people. As late as 1950 more than half of the state's population lived on farms. Most of them grew cotton, peanuts, fruits, and vegetables common to China. Both climates were hot and humid in the summer and mild in the winter. As in China, public health had made little progress. Epidemics of smallpox, malaria, and typhoid fever periodically raged through towns and cities along rivers and coastlines. Education was valued by the gentry but held in low esteem by the masses. Illiteracy rates among blacks approached half the population and in some counties soared to a quarter of whites as well. Folkways and superstitions provided order for their existence. "Haints" (ghosts) inhabited their world, and impending death might be announced by "fetch lights" or banshee screams. Coal miners and commercial fishermen believed that women in a mine or on a boat brought bad luck. Herb doctors brewed magical elixirs to cure ailments, and midwives birthed babies. Like China, Alabama had launched a course of modernization and industrialization during the last half of the nineteenth century, with mixed results. By century's end Alabama was the most industrialized southern state. Coal, textile, timber, iron, and steel industries furnished alternative employment to a rural peasantry increasingly ground down into tenancy and sharecropping. Development of a burgeoning international export market in these products through the port of Mobile connected Alabama to the world economy and heightened interest in far-flung regions of the globe.

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Alabama women might not be as secluded as women in China, but neither could they vote, serve on juries, or control their own estates once they married. Marriages might not be arranged by parents, but the frequency with which China-bound female missionaries wed men they hardly knew made it clear that marriages more of convenience than romance were not unknown either. Separate spheres for women were only marginally less rigid in Selma than in Shanghai, and a male hierarchical society thrived no less in Prattville than in Peking.

Of course Alabama was quite different from China in many ways. At the core of its social order was a rugged individualism that must have confounded the little band of Chinese immigrants. Reluctant to acknowledge superior obligations to family, community, or nation, citizens fiercely asserted their individual rights. In its most extreme form this individualism was manifested in the states' rights rhetoric of William L. Yancey, whose fierce rejection of central authority helped precipitate the Civil War and sever his state from the Union. In its milder form it helped explain the multitude of religious sects and church splits that flourished on the Alabama frontier. The democracy spawned by such individualism permeated church and state, reducing the role of authority and glorifying the vote of the majority.

The religious life of Alabama reflected such values, and it was this aspect of culture that perhaps most puzzled the band of Chinese stranded near Tuscaloosa. Folk beliefs certainly played a role in Chinese religion, just as they did in Protestant Christianity. But in other ways Western Christianity mystified them. Doctrines such as the substitutionary atonement, immortality of the soul, and the physical resurrection had no parallel in Chinese religion. Although Confucius often referred to heaven, he meant by the doctrine no more than a vague force at work in the universe on behalf of good persons. His teachings were more the proverbs of a wise man than a systematic religion. Far more important to the sage was the way a person lived or what Christians called ethics. But even on this matter substantial differences existed. Pessimistic Alabama Protestants traced the source of social discord to original sin. Confucius attributed it to selfish and stupid refusal to follow the way of Li, the path of nobility and uprightness that separated humanity from animal species. Discipline, responsibility, and the obligations of being a "gentleman" constricted personal conduct in China; fear of the devil and eternal damnation controlled it in Alabama. Both Chinese and Alabama Protestants believed that a divine presence shaped history, but the Chinese understood that presence to be impersonal and

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history to be cyclical. Alabama Protestants perceived God to be personal and history to be linear, that is, proceeding sequentially toward some cataclysmic end of time. Whereas three of the five classic Confucian relationships involved kinship, Christianity made the fate of one's soul a terrifyingly private matter. Christ died for the individual, not for some corporate entity. At the root of Chinese religion was the family. 8 At the root of Christianity was a transcendent God. Whereas Chinese Buddhism taught tolerant acceptance, Western Christianity proclaimed exclusive devotion.

As millennial concepts of Christ's return spread throughout the nineteenth century, the salvation of souls took on greater urgency. Revivals spread across the Alabama frontier, giving way in time to the more systemic religious exuberance of the camp meeting and protracted revival. Although not as escapist and otherworldly as many of its critics have claimed, southern evangelicalism was far more concerned about the world to come than was Chinese religion.

Evangelical urgency moderated frontier society. By 1860 Alabama Baptist churches enrolled 65,000 members; Methodists, 56,000. Presbyterians established rigorous educational and doctrinal requirements that were not congenial to frontier life. As a result their churches trailed far behind with only 5,800 communicants on the eve of the Civil War.9

A "southern church" clearly developed that shared broad doctrinal and structural similarities. Alabama Protestants agreed on the nature and destiny of humanity, on the urgent necessity for a personal response to God's invitation to be saved, on the need for upright moral conduct, and even democratic church governance (though Methodists and Presbyterians tended to construct a more representational system than the direct congregational democracy characteristic of Baptists). In some mill villages and rural areas denominations shared the same meeting place and alternated services on successive Sundays.

These broad areas of agreement about essentials of the faith left plenty of arguing room around the periphery of denominationalism. All three groups contained elements of intolerance, sectarianism, and exclusiveness. Predestinarian Primitive Baptists, who believed that only the specially elected could be saved, waged fierce war against missionary Baptists, who believed that all who sought salvation could be saved. New School and Old School Presbyterians battled. During the nineteenth century and occasionally into the twentieth, congregations rigorously applied church discipline to nonconformist members, excluding them

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from fellowship until they changed offending conduct. Although individual Protestants and even entire congregations might occasionally attend each other's revivals or cooperate in some good work, each denomination remained suspicious of the others. They tended to emphasize doctrinal differences such as predestination and whether the proper method of baptism was sprinkling, dipping, or total immersion.

Sectarianism found one expression in the rapid growth of denominational colleges. These institutions not only trained youth in the particular version of truth held by the college's sponsors, they also influenced impressionable young people toward full-time Christian vocations. Baptists founded Judson and Howard colleges. Methodists established women's colleges at Athens, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, Tuskegee, and Auburn and men's colleges at Florence, Greensboro, and Auburn.

Racism permeated Alabama religion. Although blacks and whites raised their voices in adulation to God within the same antebellum churches, whites made the rules and dominated leadership positions. Whites found in a literal reading of Scripture more than enough biblical justification for slavery before 1865 and for black subordination afterward. Jesus might love all the little children of the worldred, yellow, black, and whitebut the course of Alabama history and the way white Alabamians treated Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, blacks, and even the little band of Chinese who tried to stop the trains near Tuscaloosa left no doubt that he loved whites the best. Once the Civil War ended, blacks wasted no time before withdrawing from white-controlled churches in order to establish their own congregations.

The same hierarchical ideas expressed in racial matters defined a subordinate sphere for women. In 1853 a Methodist minister from Montgomery, the Reverend Oliver Rufus Blue, happened to be in New York City during a women's rights convention. Curiosity got the best of him, and he wandered into the assembly hall where feminist Lucy Stone, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and other "notorious infidels, abolitionists, and bloomers" were speaking. Blue described the outrageous event for friends in Alabama: "To me it was a very disgusting sight. They looked like so many fools, sitting around the table, voting, etc. I thought that those who had children had better be at home attending to them. The husbands of a good many of them sat in the 'background' and sanctioned everything that was done and said. Miss Lucy Stone is very little above a common strumpet in my opinion. She

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is as brazen as a." 10 Imagination soars with the unprintable words that must have passed through Blue's mind before he decided better of it and left the end of that sentence meaningfully blank.

Male Alabama opinions about the proper sphere of women did not change much during ensuing years. A correspondent to the Alabama Baptist wrote an article on the "New Woman" in 1895. Actually she was not new at all. The prophet Isaiah had described her thousands of years earlier: "The daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet." The Reverend H. C. Hurley, pastor of the Baptist church at Jasper, wrote a twenty-five-page pamphlet entitled "The New Woman and the Church," arguing that women should stay home and keep quiet. In articles filled with scriptural proof texts Baptist laymen and ministers admonished women against speaking or praying in public. A Baptist seminary president warned that "reason and history" taught that when ''women pressed into public places there followed shortly the substitution of copartnership, dissoluble at will, for the bonds of holy matrimony, the withdrawal of men from attendance on churches to frequent lodges and clubs and saloons, and the loss of 'woman's queenly power.' "11

Such theological opinions were dusted off for new service in 1919. During the struggle over whether or not the Alabama legislature would ratify the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote, a letter writer penned his religious beliefs for the Montgomery Advertiser. Woman suffrage violated the ordinances of God, he believed. Citing appropriate Scripture, he argued that the rule of man over woman "was ordained by an infinitely wise, holy, and just God, and is the law today according to the Old and New Testament . . . ; hence to advocate woman suffrage is anti-scriptural, is unnatural, and if persisted in . . . will lead to the moral corruption, confusion, degeneracy and final downfall of this nation." Only atheists, skeptics, infidels, and "so-called higher critics" denied this "infallible law on the subject of marriage." 12

Such religious notions permeated Alabama society and caused the Alabama legislature to reject woman suffrage in 1915 and again in 1919. But evangelicals were not of one mind on the subject. The small Methodist Protestant church allowed women to vote in all ecclesiastical matters in 1887. In 1918 the Alabama Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, extended the same rights to women. The Alabama Baptist Convention had allowed women delegates to vote at its 1913

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meeting. Despite such concessions to modernity, however, neither Baptists, Methodists, nor Presbyterians ordained women or allowed them to preach. Some congregations even forbade them to teach men, pray in public, or hold any office within the church. In short, female Protestants in Alabama confronted a culture that circumscribed their world in ways similar to that of their Chinese sisters, if not to such an extreme degree. 13

The Civil War did not change attitudes toward women, but it did launch a new era in the history of Alabama evangelicals. Racially it separated blacks and whites into different denominations. Theologically it required an explanation for the Confederacy's defeat. In the years leading up to war, evangelicals had defended slavery as ordained by God. Once war began, ministers vowed that God would vindicate the South's cause and bring victory to its armies. But as casualties mounted and the fortunes of war turned against them, disillusion set in. As early as 1862 the East Liberty Baptist Association began to see the chastening rod of God's judgment: "the cruel war which has been inaugurated by our enemies (though entirely just on our part) must be regarded [as] a Providential visitation upon us on account of our sins." 14

After the war ended, soul-searching introspection began. Why had the South lost? Why had so much of its prosperity and way of life been destroyed? The theological answer hung heavy on their souls. They had sinned against God by refusing to evangelize blacks, by refusing them literacy and thus knowledge of Scripture, by tolerating injustice and moral degradation. All this must end.

So they set their hands toward the renovation of society. Theirs was not so much a crusade of social reform as of moral purification. 15 They built orphanages and entered politics on behalf of Prohibition and what modern society terms "family values" (antiprostitution, antifeminism, anti-child labor, proeducation). Baptists and Methodists entered such crusades with greater confidence than Presbyterians, who were hobbled by their doctrine of the "spirituality of the church." Conservative Presbyterians maintained that the church was a spiritual, not a temporal, institution and that it should collectively seek no reform beyond the salvation of individual souls. By saving the souls of sinners they instilled righteous values that the redeemed then carried into politics. It was not the proper role of the church to prohibit alcohol consumption or even prostitution, worthy as such goals might be. Methodists and Baptists were untroubled by such tortured distinctions. As distinguished

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church historian Martin Marty has emphasized, Baptists became the "Catholic Church of the South," mediating public policy and imposing their values on society as best they could. At least in this regard they worked closely with their Methodist colleagues, making common cause to end alcohol use and lobby for legislative reform.

By 1900 their investment in evangelizing both sinners and society had paid handsome dividends. Alabama was an evangelical Zion. Its church population was 97 percent Protestant. Of those, 46.2 percent were Baptists, 43.4 percent Methodist, and 3.8 percent Presbyterian. Together the three denominations enrolled more than 93 percent of Alabama church members. By 1915 Baptists had increased their margin to 55 percent (compared to the Methodists at 31 percent). 16

Paradoxically, this growth occurred during a time of much greater sensitivity to the problems of society. Not only did Alabama evangelicals become more supportive of women, they also became more engaged with society. Many Baptists and Methodists began to work in the settlement house movement. These facilities provided not only English language and social hygiene training for immigrants but also literacy classes, medical care, gymnasiums, and free libraries. Birmingham's Independent Presbyterian Church became one of the premier social gospel churches in Alabama, employing the state's first public health nurse, creating a fresh-air farm that offered poor children free summer vacations, and hiring a job counselor for the unemployed.17

Many urban pastors also came under the influence of "modernist" theology during these years. They disputed the inerrancy of Scripture, particularly in realms of history and science. They urged reform of society in order to construct the Kingdom of God on earth, and engaged in various ecumenical ministries. Their challenge stirred a furious debate between traditionalists and liberals that helped give rise to fundamentalism. Religious dissenters might be well represented in Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian history, but they were not welcome in the tightening orthodoxy of the times. As fundamentalism took hold in the early twentieth century, each denomination conducted purges of college and seminary faculties, dismissed and sometimes defrocked liberal clergymen, and demanded theological conformity.

Each denomination experienced internal turmoil. Within Baptist circles distinguished pastors such as Dr. Alfred J. Dickinson of Birmingham's First Baptist Church and Leslie Lee Gwaltney, editor of the Alabama Baptist, tried to reconcile science and biblical revelation by defending theistic evolution and other recent scientific theories. Only

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shrewd maneuvering by Baptist leaders prevented biblical orthodoxy from becoming a test of faculty at Howard College during the 1920s. Dr. Henry M. Edmonds's commitment to "higher criticism" of the Bible resulted in his challenge of Sunday closing laws, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, and scriptural inerrancy. His dismissal as pastor of South Highlands Presbyterian Church for heresy led a remnant of his congregation to withdraw and establish the Independent Presbyterian Church. 18 The 1914 state conference of the ME Church, South, expressed alarm "at the silence of our church press in the face of . . . relentless propaganda of higher criticism in print and in school." So outraged at continuing apostasy were delegates to the 1918 conference that they resolved: "Let us have a book burning.'' The 1923 North Alabama Conference condemned modernism, and the 1929 meeting adopted a memorial that prevented "any man or woman from preaching or teaching in our institutions of learning, churches, training schools, or Sunday Schools, or from editing any of our connectional literature, or from holding any other place or position in our church, who does not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, the Virgin Birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible statements."19

Tensions between those who sought to harmonize traditional evangelicalism with the changing patterns of American thought and their coreligionists who brooked no compromise strained denominations and split friendships. Inevitably such tensions reached China. But as with so many other elements of Alabama culture, the necessities of China filtered, refined, and altered the faith once delivered to the saints. The hostile environment of China, unlike the security of Alabama, forced compromises and new departures even as it provided a worldwide stage for the playing out of the bitter drama exported from home.

In defining whether or not China missionaries were "successful," historians have focused nearly exclusively on the effect of their efforts on the Chinese. They have paid less attention to the impact of China on the missionaries themselves or on the complex interactions between the world in which they served and the world from which they came. By neglecting this subject they have substantially narrowed the range of issues as well as the definition of success.

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3

The Intense Longing of My Heart:

Preparing for China Missions

In 1891 the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, one of the South's most influential newspapers, pondered why Chinese disliked missionaries. Chief among the reasons, the editor speculated, was that missionaries were men who possessed little practical knowledge. Though decent and pious, they were incapable of making a living in their own land. Religious societies, acting from a mistaken sense of charity, appointed such persons "to foreign lands to point the way to heaven." The miffed editor of the Alabama Baptist responded to the editorial by correcting the Kentuckian on two points. Both men and women served as missionaries. Furthermore, evangelicals selected persons of proven ability to represent them, individuals who often had attained distinction before their departure for China. 1 In this journalistic dispute the historical evidence from Alabama favors the Baptist editor.

Most China missionaries did not come from the generic Alabama society described earlier, which might have supported the Kentuckian's case. Rather, a majority of the forty-seven whose lives we studied came from a social structure atypical of the state. Of the twenty-four for whom we have specific family data, only seven had fathers who were small farmers, and only two were offspring of planters. A single missionary came from an industrial working-class family. Ten fathers were professional men. Among this group, ministers led with six, but there were also a physician, a dentist, a lawyer, and a teacher. Four more had fathers who were businessmen, including three merchants and the president of a railroad. So the nine missionaries with rural, farming backgrounds typical of Alabama's population were outnumbered by the fifteen who descended from professional, business, or industrial families.

Nor did the occupations of future missionaries reflect a pattern typical of the state. Not a single one was a farmer so far as we could deter-

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mine. Teachers led the way with eleven, followed by physicians (six), ministers (four), nurses (three), businessmen (two), journalists (two), and bookkeepers (two).

Their educations were even more eclectic than their occupations. Based on formal education, they were among the best and brightest people that Alabama produced. Six of them did indeed become authors who wrote two published autobiographies, six religious books, a Chinese grammar, a novel, and four books of missionary history. Others kept extensive diaries or wrote unpublished autobiographies. Most of them would be considered remarkably talented people by the standards of their times. 2

In some ways their lives reflected the typical patterns of evangelical Alabama culture. Their childhoods and conversions held few surprises. In other ways they were quite different. Their unusual sense of calling set them apart. And their educations and marriages were often exceptional. The journey to China was not only a great adventure; it was an event that severed them from family, friends, and familiar society.

If some profound psychological guilt, inadequacy, deprivation, obsession, or inner need warped their psyches in childhood and propelled them to China as a form of expiation, there is little evidence of it. Their families were mainly middle class, stable, loving, deeply religious, and kindly remembered. Although not always supportive of their children's commitment to China missions, most parents and siblings reluctantly came to terms with the decision. After their child departed, parents furnished unflagging financial and emotional support.

Like other Alabama children of the time, most missionaries were part of large families. Ruth (Rice) Berckman was one of six children; Mabel Elsie (Williams) Woodward one of eight; Herbert Winston (H. W.) Provence, Willie Kelly, David Bryan, James Toy Williams, and Sanford Emmett Ayers, each one of nine; Mary Louisa (Horton) Stuart one of twelve; Cynthia Adaline Miller one of fourteen; and Irene Jeffers one of fifteen.

Although stability was the norm, childhood was not without trouble. Virginia M. Atkinson's mother and stepmother died. Her minister father and second stepmother decided they could not raise Virginia. When she reached her eighth year they sent her to live with relatives in Rock Mills, Alabama. Her adoptive father managed a textile mill and raised her amid a warmly supportive family. Many other missionaries lost parents early in their lives.

Although nearly all grew up in emotionally nurturing families, not

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all missionaries possessed material wealth. The fathers of James D. Hollis, Clarabel Isdell, Cynthia Miller, Earl Parker, and James Toy Williams struggled on small farms to provide for their children. Cynthia Miller (1905-36) was born in mountainous terrain near Talladega in 1868, the eldest of fourteen children. At age seven she began school in a small log building. After a tornado destroyed the school, her father, who was determined that his children should be educated, sold his remote farm and moved to the plains where Cynthia obtained two years of consistent schooling. When she reached the age of ten, her mother required help with the growing brood of children, so Cynthia attended school no more than three or four months a year after that. Furthermore, her Democratic father clashed with his daughter's Republican principal and withdrew his children from the public school. Despite severe asthma Cynthia began teaching her siblings. When her father's Democratic friends heard about her home school they withdrew their children from Republican influence, fixed up a sharecropper's cabin on the Millers' farm, and added their offspring to Cynthia's class. The total enrollment finally reached thirty-two. 3

James Toy Williams (1913-52) was born in 1882 in a log cabin in Chilton County near the center of the state. The second of nine children born to poor parents, he began to pick cotton on the family farm as soon as he was big enough and continued to help until he was nineteen. His mother became his first teacher, instructing him from a blueback speller. At age seven he began to attend a log schoolhouse a mile from the family farm. The school met only a few months in the winter and six weeks in the summer, allowing children ample time for farm chores. The Williamses' church was eight miles away and required an arduous journey by ox-driven wagon.

After a common school education most boys in James Toy Williams's community married in their late teens or early twenties, settled on a farm, and began to rear their own families. He resisted the pattern, explaining that "other thoughts and dreams laid hold upon me. Something made me want 'to go off to school,' and get better education than the home community provided. This became the intense longing of my heart."

His family's poverty prevented their help, so Williams prayed that some way would be found to continue his education. Following one particularly earnest prayer at daylight on the edge of the woods near his house, he heard his father walking in the fields near where he knelt.

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Whether his father heard his prayer or merely sensed his desire, the very next day the elder Williams offered to sign a note so his son could pay a year's tuition at Clanton High School. After that year the young man taught in a rural school for eight months in order to repay the money he had borrowed. By alternately teaching and studying, Williams managed to obtain his high school diploma, complete his bachelor's degree at Howard College, and earn a seminary degree. While home on furlough from China he later completed his doctorate in theology. 4

Not all Alabamians struggled as hard as Miller and Williams. Martha Foster Crawford's father was a substantial planter in Tuscaloosa County. T. W. and Willie Ayers both came from prosperous professional families (his father was a merchant and judge, hers a dentist). Mary Stuart's father was a probate judge and mayor of Mobile. The father of fellow Mobile physician-missionary brothers Richard V. and Adrian S. Taylor was president of a railroad company.

Conversion

Whatever their family status, there came to every one of the missionaries one significant moment of spiritual enlightenment. For some, conversion was a cataclysmic event of confronting the divine and surrendering to an omnipotent presence. For others, it consisted of a gradual recognition that some dimension was missing from their lives. For all of them conversion was the essential first step in a journey that would take them much farther than a thousand miles.

Cynthia Miller described her conversion in great detail. She was fourteen; her mother had prepared dinner and was waiting for her husband to come in from the fields. As she sat by the window watching for him and knitting, she sang a gospel song based on the Eighth Psalm, which she had helped Cynthia memorize: "When I can read my titles clear to mansions in the skies, I'll bid farewell to every fear, and wipe my weeping eyes." Cynthia began to weep, then ran outside into the darkness. There she knelt and cried to God for salvation. At once she felt a sense of forgiveness, joy, and peace.5

Most future missionaries experienced similar conversions in their teenage years. Of the nineteen missionaries whose conversions are recorded, three were "born again" at age nine, three more when ten, one at eleven, three at twelve, three at fourteen, another three the following year, and one each at sixteen, seventeen, and nineteen. Seventeen of the

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nineteen had "repented" before the end of their sixteenth year, reflecting the nurturing influence of family and church rather than the traumatic guilt spawned by a life of profligacy.

Nicholas B. Williams (1871-76) represented a different pattern. Born into a Presbyterian family in Wetumpka in 1845, he worked as a clerk, journalist, postmaster, and surveyor after the Civil War. He was converted as an adult while working as an engineer on a Coosa River bridge near Rome, Georgia, in 1867. That same year he entered seminary to prepare for the ministry. 6

The Call

If their childhoods and conversions were conventional, it was their sense of mission that most distinguished future missionaries from peers. Some profound sense of purpose impelled them to leave their homeland on a journey that was as dangerous as it was farfetched. Virtually none of them committed easily or glibly to a life in China. Many initially resisted the call. Some spent decades struggling, preparing, applying, and being rejected. Only a compelling sense of divine purpose afforded the patience necessary to learn a difficult language or accept isolation from families, repeated health crises, bureaucratic snafus, controversies, inept mission board policies, and the painfully slow Chinese response to their efforts.

The call to China missions came in complex ways. Few attributed their decision to some extraordinary supernatural event. God usually worked through people to persuade them. Of the twenty-two who describe the sources of their decision, five were first moved by hearing a China missionary speak. Four initially responded at a revival or religious meeting. Three discerned the will of God through reading missionary literature. Two cited the primary influence of a family member who was already a China missionary, and two others detected a call in the illness or death of a relative or friend. Many first felt the call to mission while in college, and several Alabamians mentioned the influence of the Student Volunteer Movement, which swept college campuses between 1880 and 1920. Those who mentioned ages when they first sensed God's purpose listed nineteen, twenty-one, and twenty-two; three others cited no specific age but listed college years; three more mentioned teenage years. Obviously most of them were at a critical juncture in their lives: still impressionable; still filled with the ardor of their conversions; not yet bound to a life of domesticity by marriage

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or occupations; unsure about profession; full of the idealism and naiveté of youth.

Cynthia Millerwho was struggling with asthma as well as a school full of siblings and children of Democratic neighborsbegan to consider the life of a missionary while a teenager. After struggling with the decision for days, she decided that she would "just have this out with the Lord, that he knew how ignorant, poor, and physically unfit she was and that she had not even the spiritual power to lead one of her Sunday School class to Christ." So into her father's sugarcane field she went to pray that if God wanted her as a missionary he must empower her to win souls in her Sunday school, cure her asthma, and provide a way for her to obtain education. God answered all her prayers in time. When she told her mother of her decision Mrs. Miller burst into tears. She had prayed for years to have something to give for missions, but her antimission husband refused her requests. Now she could offer her daughter to the cause. 7

James Toy Williams (1913-52) became a twice-called man. In the solitude of a pine forest he understood God to say "Yield yourself to My will" to preach. During his freshman year at Howard College he heard a missionary speak. Though largely ignorant of China, he had heard of the huge population of lost souls there and "somehow or other China got much on my heart." At the 1906 Southern Baptist Convention he finally responded to an appeal by the head of the Foreign Mission Board.8

Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25) was the divine instrument for four China missionaries. He used his furloughs as much to recruit new prospects and educate constituencies as to rest and renew acquaintances with friends and family. Mary Alice Huey, who was teaching school in Scottsboro, heard Ayers speak at First Baptist Church and immediately expressed interest. Ayers inquired about her health, which seemed fine, then began to recruit her to his North China Mission. The town of Chao Yuan, he explained, contained forty female converts and many inquirers but had no missionary. Within weeks she filed application with the Foreign Mission Board and was appointed in 1907. Ayers also recruited David Bryan of Choctaw County to direct college work in northern China.9 On a September Sunday during the same furlough that netted Alice Huey, Ayers spoke in Mobile where Dr. Adrian S. Taylor fell under his spell. Son of a railroad president and already through medical school, Taylor seemed destined to a distinguished career in the port city. He was engaged to Annie May Cox, daughter of Dr. W. J. E.

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Cox and member of a prominent Mobile family. Taylor was so moved by Ayers's plea on behalf of China that he spent all afternoon with the missionary. Ayers argued that Taylor's experience in the marine hospital would be invaluable in China. His Christian consecration was obvious, as was his experience in all phases of church life. Ever watchful for his own mission field, Ayers wrote the head of the Foreign Mission Board that Taylor was "just the man for Tungchow. . . . I feel that we can't afford to fail to secure him to our work in China. He is willing to go at once." Ayers urged Taylor to marry quickly and take his bride with him to China. 10

Irene Jeffers (1923-51) experienced one of the most unusual calls. Though her family was Baptist, they visited the Methodist church in Roanoke when their own pastor was absent. Irene was ten years old and tremendously affected by the Methodist preacher's sermon about "countless millions in China" who had never heard of Christ: "I felt he was preaching to me, and yet how could I go and tell them. The spirit began His work in my heart. A burden was laid upon me to give the Gospel to some in China who had never heard. So I promised the Lord (in my heart) . . . that if he would let me live until I am grown, I would go to China and tell the lost about Jesus." She later earned a teacher's certificate and began teaching at a public school in Jasper. But she could not escape the call that had come to her so many years earlier. Finally an evangelist at a revival in her Jasper church stirred the memory of her childhood commitment, and she publicly announced what had previously been only a private and long-delayed commitment. She explained all this to her parents, who reluctantly supported her. While attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at Fort Worth, Texas, she talked with the head of the Foreign Mission Board and narrowed her focus to China.11

Floy White Adams (1909-43) answered her father's appeal for sacrificial living by making him the object of his own sermon. After her graduation from college she taught in public schools for four years, during which time her mother died. When her father came to preach a revival in the town where she taught, he preached a soul-stirring appeal for "cross-bearing."12 Then and there she surrendered to become a missionary. Together father and daughter learned the full implications of a call to cross bearing.

Mary Stuart Bissett, James Montgomery, and Louise Robinson experienced less dramatic calls. Bissett was first moved to missions at a

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Christian Endeavor meeting, Montgomery at a YMCA summer encampment after he finished college, and Robinson at a YWCA convention in North Carolina. 13

Education

Possessing a sense of chosenness did not alone guarantee that a mission volunteer would serve in China. Each of the three denominational mission boards had standards for missionaries that varied in restrictiveness. The first missionaries needed few qualifications beyond a sense of call and a sponsoring agency with sufficient resources to send them. But as time passed standards tightened. By the turn of the century the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board required extensive medical examinations, letters of recommendations from pastors and coworkers, and a confidential evaluation of the candidate's general character, involvement in church activities, ability to adapt to uncongenial people and situations, propensity to depression, and personal eccentricities.14 Methodists and Presbyterians were equally thorough.

Once converted, called, and accepted, missionaries faced the hurdle of specialized training and study. No educational information exists for eight of them, but of the remaining thirty-nine more than three-fourths completed high school and 74 percent finished college. Most attended denominational colleges. Nine graduated from Howard, the state Baptist college, and four took degrees at Judson, the denomination's college for women. Some finished degrees at out-of-state Baptist institutions: Blue Mountain (Mississippi), Wake Forest (North Carolina), the University of Richmond (Virginia), and the University of Chicago. Methodist colleges attended by China missionaries included Birmingham-Southern, Athens, LaGrange (Georgia), and Vanderbilt. Other missionaries attended the University of North Alabama, Troy State University, Tulane, Washington and Lee, and Peabody.

Many missionaries continued their education beyond college, some obtaining multiple degrees. More than 40 percent obtained seminary diplomas, including seven single women who attended the Woman's Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, which was associated with Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. At least ten of the thirty-eight (26 percent) took master's degrees, six (16 percent) earned medical degrees, and four (11 percent) earned doctorates (three in theology from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one in

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psychology from Columbia University). 15 Two others pursued graduate work at Vanderbilt and the University of Chicago but apparently did not earn a degree.

Women struggled as hard as men to obtain education that would equip them for their tasks. Cynthia Miller's poverty slowed her educational progress. Shortly after her call, she met a nursing school graduate and became convinced that nursing afforded her the best way to earn money for further education. She applied to her acquaintance's alma mater, the Galveston Nurse Training School associated with the University of Texas. But the school required applicants to have a high school diploma and turned her down. That disappointment might have dissuaded a less dedicated woman. But not Miller. She explained her problem to the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Talladega. He wrote Annie E. Eager, wife of the pastor of Montgomery's First Baptist Church. The Eagers were advocates of the social gospel, which sought to relate Christian discipleship more closely to social ethics. One of their many efforts to reform Montgomery's social order was establishment of an infirmary with a nurse training school. Although the institution never gained accreditation, Miller was able to enroll (over the strong objections of her father, who ridiculed her for going "out into the world to make her living and of all things to be a hospital nurse!"). After Miller completed eighteen months of clinical and educational training, Annie Eager and influential members of First Baptist Montgomery interceded on her behalf with the Galveston Nurse Training School, and she was finally admitted. Miller vindicated her supporters by graduating as valedictorian of her class; she then began a private nursing practice to earn money for theological study. But family matters intruded. One of her sisters came to live with her in Texas and attend college. Miller obtained a job as college nurse to pay her sister's tuition. Unfortunately the college soon closed, and she had to return to private nursing. By then her entire family had moved to Texas, and Miller helped pay college tuition for two additional sisters.

Finally in the autumn of 1904 Miller launched her long-delayed theological education. She enrolled in the newly opened WMU Training School in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. George B. Eager had left Montgomery to join the faculty at the Baptist Theological Seminary to which the training school was attached, and Annie Eager was on the board of managers of the WMU institution. "Mother Eager," who had opened her Montgomery home to Miller earlier, once again served as her sponsor. Miller studied there only one year before receiving her appointment to

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China in May 1905. Nursing had been nothing more than a vehicle by which Miller planned to obtain the education necessary for evangelizing Chinese. But the mission field desperately needed nurses, and this profession gained her an appointment. Because the only diploma she possessed was a nursing degree, she seemed trapped. Miller was rescued from her dilemma during her first tour of duty. Her initial assignment was to help a physician whose wife was determined to manage medical work for women. She took over Miller's work, forcing the single woman to give up nursing in favor of other duties. Miller particularly liked house-to-house visitation of women, and after her first furlough she returned to China to engage in full-time evangelism. 16

Other women prepared for China in a variety of ways. Floy White Adams and Addie Estelle Cox followed Miller to the WMU Training School, taking degrees in 1909 and 1913. Adams worked with the poor in the city hospital while a student. Methodist volunteer Louise Robinson responded to her call while in college by obtaining the required two years' teaching experience at Etowah County High School in Atalla, then studying for a year at the Scarritt Bible and Training School in Kansas City, Missouri. Presbyterian Mary Stuart Bissett studied two years at the Birmingham Kindergarten Training School, spent four years directing the Birmingham Free Kindergarten, then left for Texas, where she administered the Dallas Free Kindergarten and the training school. She left Texas to study for three years at the Presbyterian Hospital Training School for Nurses in Chicago. Two years of work as a nurse in the Dallas Infant Welfare and Milk Station completed her preparation for China. She believed that ''all this variety of service . . . unconsciously" prepared her for mission work.17

Marriage

The final stage of preparation for most missionaries was marriage. The ratio of married men, married women, and single women almost exactly matched the distribution of American Protestant missionaries in China. Of the forty-two persons for whom we have data, twenty-nine were married and thirteen were single women. All male missionaries were married.

What makes these unions particularly intriguing is the large number of marriages of convenience. Such marriages occurred frequently in Alabama. Widows or widowers with children needed financial or emotional support and often married the first available candidate. Women

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without educational or job skills viewed marriage as an economic necessity. But among middle-class and well-educated Alabamians such marriages were less frequent. Yet they were common among China volunteers.

Most mission boards in the mid-nineteenth century discouraged single missionaries of either sex and refused to appoint single women. So a single woman who believed herself called to missions was first of all called to obtain a husband. Furthermore, furloughing married missionaries emphasized how essential a spouse was on the China field, thus heightening the urgent pursuit of wedlock, especially by male missionaries. Of the twenty-nine married missionaries, ten married another China volunteer within months of departing for China. Five others married China missionaries on the way to China or just after arriving. More than half the marriages occurred immediately before departing for China or immediately after arriving and were to another China volunteer.

Fairly typical of parental advice was the reaction of Ruth Rice's (1921-51) mother when told that the Athens College junior had surrendered to the call to missions: "When I told my mother this, she said she would pray for a good man for me to marry so he would take care of me wherever I might have to go." The prayer was answered shortly. While Rice worked that summer at the Methodist Conference Center in Blue Ridge, North Carolina, she met James Hart Hoadley Berckman, the son of a New York Congregational minister. Although courting was officially forbidden, Berckmnan began to help Rice wash dishes and wait tables when he completed his duties registering guests. By the end of summer the two mission volunteers were engaged. They married six weeks before their ship sailed for China, spending their honeymoon en route. 18

Mabel Elsie (Williams) Woodward (1924-37) also honeymooned on her way to China. She committed her life to China missions at age nine and never wavered from that decision. After graduating from Judson College she taught school in order to earn money to enroll in WMU Training School. While attending that institution she met Frank T. Woodward, a native of North Carolina and a seminarian. They fell in love; he committed to the mission field and proposed, but she delayed her answer in order to gauge whether his commitment to China was genuine or merely a consequence of his love for her. She graduated and became a missionary to the Choctaw Indians in Washington County, Alabama. This taste of missions reinforced her earlier call to China,

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and she applied to the Foreign Mission Board. She became convinced that Woodward's call was genuine when he completed his application. So her husband-to-be and Williams were appointed on July 10, 1924, married in Alabama on August 20, and sailed for the land of her childhood dreams on September 11. 19

While attending seminary in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1871, Nicholas B. Williams (1871-76) was attracted to Jumelle Whilden, daughter of a former China missionary who was then evangelizing Chinese railroad workers in Alabama. She was teaching at the Female College in Greenville. They fell in love, but Williams's commitment to China threatened their romance. After passing his physical he wrote the Baptist mission board that he could depart for China as soon as he arranged "a few preliminaries." The chief "preliminary" was "to secure a partner in my work": "I have in mind a lady here in Greenville who is well fitted for the work spiritually and mentally, but of whose health I am afraid. I will make the necessary inquiries into her physical condition before involving myself in any way.'' Should she not pass the physical, Williams inquired, could the Foreign Mission Board secretary recommend "a lady who would make a good wife as well as missionary?" Either Williams's love overcame his reservations or Jumelle Whilden convinced him that her health was adequate, because they married just before leaving for China. Ironically the Williamses were forced to return to the United States five years later because of Jumelle's health problems, though she left her sister Louisa to carry on the family missionary tradition.20

Lois Davie (1906-32), a sixteen-year-old Judson College student and the daughter of a prominent Clayton, Alabama, merchant, visited First Baptist Church in Auburn during a summer vacation early in the new century. After church the bachelor pastor talked with her, and "it was a simple case of love at first sight." Two barriers stood in the way of their romance: her age and his commitment to become a missionary. The young lovers resolved their dilemma by deciding that he would follow his call to China and she would remain in school in Alabama. A year later Davie bade farewell to friends and family, joined a mission volunteer couple in Nashville, and traveled to Seattle where the three embarked for Nagasaki, Japan. There Lois Davie and Augustus Young (A. Y.) Napier were married before a small company of Americans. Then they set out on a thousand-mile honeymoon across the moonlit Yellow Sea, up the Yangtze River to Nanking, then overland to their mission station at Chingchow in remote Honan Province.21

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Mary Jane Thornton (1889-92) traveled to China as a single missionary. But once in the North China Mission she met and married the Reverend George P. Bostick, whose first wife had died. 22

The Journey

Whether taken just before or long after marriage, the journey to China was a watershed event in a missionary's life. On one side of that watershed was familiar Alabama society: family, friends, supportive religious community, familiar habits of the heart, and customs well understood. On the other side of that watershed was an exotic, unfamiliar, and foreboding land that provided enormous possibilities as well as daunting problems. The journey by ship was the transition between these two worlds.

In the mid-nineteenth century the dangers of the trip matched or exceeded the perils of life in their new home. Newly married Martha Foster Crawford (1852-1909), her husband, and a single male missionary from another state sailed from New York for Hong Kong on November 17, 1851, aboard the trading ship Horatio. The crossing took 102 days. Built of oak prior to the era of sleek, well-proportioned clipper ships, the Horatio groaned and creaked its way across the Caribbean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and across the Pacific. Although the Crawfords vowed to make the salvation of the small company aboard ship the prime object of their voyage, their own survival soon took preeminence.

Martha Crawford turned her considerable literary talents to recording the trip in her diary. As the ship sailed out of New York harbor, she wrote: "I took my last view of the land of my birththe scene of my childhood's hopes, joys, and tearsthe hope of the dear ones I have left forever." Before dark the Crawfords were seasick and miserable. Fierce autumn winds rolled the ship from side to side and sent waves crashing over the quarterdeck. Only the reassurances of the ship's captain convinced the Crawfords that the boat would not capsize. Days of vomiting and misery drove them to their beds. Frequently she feared she would be called to meet "my judge." As the sea calmed, the newlyweds settled into a routine of daily conversation with the ship's captain and nightly devotionals with each other. Flying fish amused them, and they dispatched letters home aboard a British barge bound for Charleston, South Carolina. In the Pacific the Horatio's captain called them above deck to view a "tide riffle,'' a line of white-capped waves extending in

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each direction as far as eye could see: "tumbling, foaming billowsand such a whistling, roaring noise they made! Steadily, firmly as a well-trained army the upheaving water approached usand when it reached us it lashed our sides and sent us to pitching and rolling so as almost to make me sea-sick." The beauty and grandeur did not end her nausea, and she rejoiced when they finally encountered Chinese junks that announced their approach to Hong Kong. 23

Other missionaries experienced similar troubles. Eliza Shuck (184751) traveled to China by ship four years before Crawford. Her voyage was so traumatic that she never desired to repeat the crossing.24 By 1890 Mary Thornton's Pacific voyage took only sixteen days from the west coast of the United States. Although storms still created dangerous passage, she had such a pleasant trip and made such good friends among fellow passengers that she regretted the journey's end.25

One generation later the voyage still assumed mythic proportions. Irene Jeffers (1923-51) sailed with a party of thirty-four Baptist missionaries from Seattle on August 30, 1923, aboard the SS President McKinley. Kathleen Mallory, head of the Baptist Woman's Missionary Union, sent fresh flowers to each departing missionary. Twenty-five of Jeffers's family and friends prepared a long "steamer letter" to occupy her idle time. She toured Victoria, British Columbia, while the boat docked there, but once at sea she experienced the fate of so many of her predecessors. Heavy seas churned both her ship and her stomach. Luckily her sickness lasted only a day and a half. Although most passengers enjoyed ship dances, Jeffers and her Baptist compatriots preferred worship and song services. One of the hymns, "Jesus Savior Pilot Me," could not be fully appreciated, she wrote her family, until sung at sea during a fierce storm. Lectures, movies, lifeboat drills, and stunt nights helped pass the time. After an eight-hour typhoon, which veteran travelers pronounced the worst they had ever experienced, the President McKinley made port in Yokohama thirteen days out of Seattle.26

Missionary Lives: Eliza G. (Sexton) Shuck and Martha (Foster) Crawford

Although Alabama missionaries shared common experiences in their lives and journeys to China, such events provide only the structure for historical reality. Their collective experiences of conversion, calling, education, and marriage depict the missionary process in lifeless terms. To fully appreciate the magnitude of the venture requires understand-

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ing of these elements of collective experience. Toward that end we offer two case studies from the forty-seven lives represented. They both arrived during the earliest years of missionary activity before 1880. Shuck left the barest fragments with which to reconstruct her life. Crawford bequeathed the largest treasure of documents with which to reconstruct hers.

Eliza Sexton (1847-51), member of the Judson College faculty, focused Alabama's attention on China when she became the first Baptist missionary from the state appointed to any country in 1847. Her appointment resulted from her marriage to widower J. Lewis Shuck, who had become the initial Baptist missionary appointed to China by the Baptist Triennial Convention in 1835.

Shuck and his seventeen-year-old first wife Henrietta Hall were married only two days before their commissioning. They arrived in Macao in 1836. When the Opium War began in 1842 Shuck took his family to Hong Kong, where Henrietta became the first resident Western woman. She died during the final month of her fifth pregnancy in 1844. 27

Following his wife's death Shuck returned to the United States with his children, Yong Seen-sarng, his first convert and language teacher, and Mecha, an orphan who assisted as nurse and traveling companion to his children. On an Alabama speaking tour, Shuck visited Montgomery, Greensboro, Tuscaloosa, and Marion. In the latter town he spoke at Judson College, where students donated five hundred dollars for his proposed chapel in Canton. More importantly, he met Eliza Sextona native of Philadelphia and Judson art instructor who was skilled in geometry, botany, drawing, painting and Frenchand asked her to return to China as his bride. College president M. P. Jewett performed the wedding before one hundred Judson students.28

Judson students had organized the Ann Hesseltine Judson Missionary Society about 1840, so Sexton's mission interest was not surprising. But her sudden marriage to Shuck cemented the school's long relationship to missions in general and to China in particular.

Shuck, a native of Virginia, decided to cast his lot in 1845 with the newly formed Southern Baptist Convention, and the newlyweds returned to China under Southern Baptist sponsorship. Shuck had met Matthew T. Yates and his wife, and the two couples had become fast friends. They decided to begin their work together in the port city of Shanghai. Their six-month voyage was difficult and their captain was "an outspoken infidel, . . . coarse, vulgar, and brutal toward the missionaries."29

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In Shanghai the Shucks and Yateses established Old North Gate Baptist Church (later First Baptist Church of Shanghai, the oldest continuously operating Baptist congregation in China) and the first Baptist school. Eliza Shuck followed the pattern of service among women established by her husband's first wife, and she especially kept in touch with Judson College. She solicited money to educate several Chinese girls. She even bestowed "Judson" names on two of them, Julia Barron and Jane Jewett, though whether the Chinese considered this an honor or Western patronizing is unknown. When his early convert Yong joined Lewis Shuck in Shanghai in 1847, a wealthy deacon at Siloam Baptist Church in Marion offered to pay three thousand dollars to educate Yong's fourteen-year-old daughter, Ah Wun, at Judson. Eliza's contact with Judson ended in 1851 when she died in childbirth, but her memory and influence continued to inspire interest in China among generations of Judson students. 30 Shuck could not continue after this second blow. He packed up his family, returned to the United States, and resigned from the Foreign Mission Board in 1853. But he did not desert the work that he and his two wives had begun. Between 1854 and his death in 1861 he worked with Chinese immigrants in California, organizing the first Chinese Baptist church in America from among his converts. Judson College students and faculty continued to support his efforts in tribute to their fallen sister.31

With a career of only four years before her death, Eliza Shuck had one of the shortest terms of Alabama missionaries. Her contemporary Martha Foster Crawford labored in the Middle Kingdom for fifty-eight years, from 1852 until 1909, compiling the longest span of service of any Alabamian.

Crawford's ancestry placed her among Alabama's planter elite. Four Foster brothers settled along the banks of the Warrior River in Tuscaloosa County between 1818 and 1832. They bought several thousand acres and established an agricultural community of plantations called "Foster's Settlement" some eleven miles from Tuscaloosa. The numerous offspring of the family played significant roles in Alabama history. Some became successful planters owning numerous slaves. Others became well-educated and distinguished Baptist ministers. The family furnished a county solicitor, a Tuscaloosa mayor, members of the legislature, a state judge, and officers for the national guard. Martha's cousin, Joshua Hill Foster, became a planter, Baptist minister, and distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama.32

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Foster attended a country school presided over by an erudite Baptist teacher-preacher, E. B. Teague, then boarded at LaFayette in eastern Alabama in order to attend the female institute located there. Financial difficulties interrupted her studies but not before she experienced both conversion and romance. She was converted in September 1845 in a revival at the LaFayette Baptist Church. Though vaguely religious in the past, she never before had "felt its great importance not only in a future world but in this [one]." For a few weeks conversion and new life absorbed all her energy, but then her "mind began to be taken up by things of this world and of late I enjoy very little religion." 33 This spiritual turmoil lasted until her sudden marriage and departure for China.

Admitting "a romantic turn of mind," teenage Martha Foster fell in love for the first of many times while a student in LaFayette: "I loved . . . with all the passionate ardor of my nature." Though her beau did not express his love in words, he did so in glances, "and I returned it blindly, ardently, with a devotion that few are capable of feeling." Shortly thereafter the subject of her affection courted her more beautiful cousin, boasting that he already had won Martha Foster's heart.

After her return to Tuscaloosa, Foster fell in love a second time. But once again a man toyed with her loving nature, making her thoroughly miserable. Following this rebuff, she was soon enamored for a third time. In her diary she mused about the topology of love. Her new romance was not "the passionate ardor I felt for Mr. H. nor the pure, calm love I felt for Mr. Fitts. I cannot describe its nature and suppose it was what is commonly meant by love."

Each romantic attachment sent her spirits soaring, and each rejection plunged her into despair. "What a weak, changing creature I am! I cannot trust even myself," she confided to her diary in 1846. She scolded herself for neglect of Scripture and prayer. In a fit of adolescent melancholy, she looked forward "to happiness only in death. Oh I desire death so much that I almost murmur that I cannot have my wish. O that the Lord would give me strength to bear the cross." A June 1846 entry in her diary explored one of the reasons for her unhappiness: "Feelings exist in my bosom which no one shall ever know. I even blush to own them. Yes I love. Yet why do I regret it. . . . I heard an able debate whether love proceeds from the heart or a diseased imagination. Such love as mine must proceed from a diseased imagination, or at least what I called love, I do not love now at all."

Amid the teenage angst and awakening sexuality of her diary appears an increasing sense of self-discovery. Severed from her teacher in

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LaFayette, she felt more sharply "my burning thirst for knowledge." She determined to become "at least a tolerably easy writer." To accomplish this goal she set out to read the works of distinguished authors and to exercise "a great deal in composition." Her superbly written diaries demonstrate how well she succeeded. Within these hundreds of pages, interspersed with adolescent pique at the neglect of her boyfriends, are perceptive essays on the differences between principles and axioms, on the nature of consciousness and being. While religion struggled to hold her interest, politics absorbed her attention. She noted the onset of war between the United States and Mexico in 1846 and commented on the local excitement that spurred residents of Tuscaloosa to raise a company of volunteers.

Nor were her insights confined to the exterior world of politics and natural philosophy. Portions of her diary reflect psychological introspection. She acknowledged not only her immature romanticism but also "a very quick temper" and a tendency to "yield too easily to despair." She lacked patience and perseverance: "I find also that unless I can excel all others in every respect I am not satisfied." She was not a skilled conversationalist and was too impulsive. Considering the emotional roller coaster that carried her from romantic heartbreak almost immediately to some new flirtation, she admitted: "My disposition is such that without someone to love I should be utterly miserable. I had just recovered from my other love, and oh how my heart yearned for an object until it met with one. Yet oh my foolish heart; will it never learn to be controlled?'' In the same mode she wrote: "I am so fickle that I am changed by every light breeze, every turn of fortune no matter how inconsiderable will change my mind. I must govern my passions and affections before anything else can be done."

Amid all this self-analysis she began to contemplate her future. She desired to return to school, but her funds were insufficient. 34 Teaching afforded the bright young woman a salary that permitted her to enroll at the Mesopotamia Female Academy in Eutaw, where she completed her studies in 1849. After she completed the institute, her old country schoolteacher, E. B. Teague, then a Baptist pastor at Clinton, employed her as a teacher in the school he had established. She became active in his church and helped establish a Sunday school.

It was at this juncture of her life that she felt called to China, and the elements of that call took on mythical proportions. In her diary she recorded November 14, 1849, as a night of spiritual wrestling that left her pillow and bedclothes wet with tears and perspiration. On the first an-

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niversary of her call, in 1850, she recalled praying: "0 Lord, Thou hast apparently closed the door of usefulness in this teaching, the only department of labor for Thee that I can see. Thou hast other work for me. I beseech Thee to show me, and whatever it may be, I gladly obey." Barely had the words been spoken "when a powerful conviction, like a flash of lightning, darted across her mind, that God's will for her was to take the gospel to the heathen. She saw no light, heard no audible voice, but the impression was as deep and vivid as if there had been both. She sprang to her feet aghast. This was not the field she had sought, but the command seemed irresistible. In vain she tried to reason herself into the belief that it was a passing fancy which the light of morning and the sight of other faces would dissipate." 35

A year of teaching in Clinton in no way dissuaded her, and on the anniversary of Foster's call she wrote her parents of her decision and conversed with her pastor, the Reverend E. B. Teague. He wrote the Foreign Mission Board on her behalf, inquiring as to whether the agency would appoint a single woman missionary. Though maintaining anonymity for her in order to avoid embarrassment, Teague certified her earnestness on the matter and attributed it to God and not romantic whimsy. He extolled her fine education and quick mind. She felt particularly called to China, he reported. The head of the mission agency replied that the board had commissioned one single woman as an experiment but had not adopted such a policy. He did not encourage her solo missionary aspiration, because he had a solution to the impasse in mind.36

At the very same time the letter from Teague arrived at the Foreign Mission Board, T. P. Crawford was in Richmond to state his own interest in China missions. A native of Kentucky, Crawford had been converted and called to preach, though his family's modest means afforded him only a rudimentary education. He had worked as a farm manager and schoolteacher and finally completed Union University, a Baptist college in Tennessee, in 1851, graduating at the head of his class. Having already committed himself to China, he received the enthusiastic endorsement of Tennessee's Big Hatchie Baptist Association and made his way to Richmond to apply.

Dr. James B. (J. B.) Taylor, corresponding secretary of the board, earnestly advised him to marry before launching such a rigorous and lonely undertaking, but Crawford had no prospect in mind. Taylor showed the young minister Teague's letter. Crawford read it carefully, made a copy, and set out in February 1851 for Alabama to inquire of the

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Reverend Mr. Teague the name of the remarkable woman he had described. After days of travel by horseback across swollen streams and nearly impassable roads he arrived at a blacksmith's shop near a country church in western Alabama. Asking a black man the name of the church and its principal member, he made his way to the home of Martha Foster's uncle. The man directed him to Teague's residence and, delayed by a flood on the Tombigbee River, he met many of the Foster family. On the evening of February 16, 1851, he traveled to Clinton and finally met Martha Foster. They initially talked only generally about foreign missions. Then he came directly to the point. He had a copy of Teague's letter and had come to talk to her about accompanying him to China. After their discussion she left for home to discuss the matter with her parents and siblings. "Several days of agony passed" as she received cautionary and conflicting advice. After ten days of discussion and dispute, Foster and Crawford agreed that they did not love each other, that marriage ought to be more than a business transaction, and decided not to marry.

Crawford left for Tuscaloosa, allowing Foster time to evaluate her emotions. When he returned, both of them had changed their minds. They concluded that "there were no regrets in other quarters and no personal objections" and that there was "a beginning of mutual attachments, which must be developed in the future." This modest agenda provided them "cogent reasons for a speedy marriage.''

Considering the absence of a proper courtship, they vowed to continue it throughout their lives. The vow was romantic; the reality of their marriage made it difficult to fulfill. Their personalities and temperaments were quite different, and their careers in China often brought them into conflict. Perhaps a normal engagement would have kept both of them in the United States, although Martha Crawford vowed near the end of her life that their unusual courtship both lowered their expectations of marriage and "secured for them more than the ordinary share of wedded happiness." 37

Martha Foster's preparations for the wedding were accomplished amid soul-searching doubts and constant weeping. One week after their engagement, on March 12, 1851, at the age of twenty-one, Martha Foster married T. P. Crawford at her home. Dr. Basil Manley, a Baptist preacher and president of the University of Alabama, performed the ceremony. Almost immediately the new couple departed for New Orleans, Tennessee, and Kentucky, where the bride met her new in-laws and acquired necessities for their life in China. Almost exactly two

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years after her dramatic calling, the couple departed New York on November 17, 1851, aboard the Horatio.

Her cousin, the distinguished physicist and preacher Joshua Hill Foster, provided an essentially similar but even more specific account of her call. Amid one of her earnest prayers for direction, she was "interrupted by a suggestion, the source of which she did not apprehend, 'In China you may find ample work.' " This message came from no audible voice yet was surely a "semblance of divine guidance." She resisted the summons, but it came repeatedly to her until finally: "Had an index board, inscribed 'To China,' stood before her, the impression would scarcely [have] been more vivid, nor the direction more definite." 38

Although her own description was clearly the basis for both these accounts of her call, courtship, and marriage, neither of them corresponds to the context that she recorded in her diary.

During the year of Foster's call, her cousin informed her that based on two months of firsthand experience marriage was "not the thing it's cracked up to be." Foster concluded that "there must be some horrible something to be found out after marriage which I don't dream of. It makes me feel sort o' queer . . . But it's only a choice between two levelswedlock and old maidendom." She had already opted for the level of wedlock, having become engaged to her cousin, Robert S. Foster.

Then Foster, like so many males before him, trifled with her emotions. He joked to his mother that he was bringing home a bride from one of his trips. Though he wrote in jest, it was on that very night, November 14, 1849, that "the finger of God first directed" Martha Foster toward "a heathen world." Just after her betrothed told her that they could not marry for seven years, she asked the Reverend Mr. Teague to write the Foreign Mission Board on her behalf. Within three days of her first encounter with T. P. Crawford, she described him in her diary as a "self-made easy, every day kind of fellow."

But if God's will seemed clear in November it seemed murky in February. She felt keenly the intense pressure to make a quick decision before Crawford sailed in June. This pressure only heightened her feelings of inadequacy. "And oh! how unfit for the work! How cold, dead, wandering are my feelings. We have made no definite agreement," she wrote in her diary on February 19, 1851, "though I think we are both pleased. If I consent, what will become of my school of Sue and Sallie? However, that is not the questionwhat is duty?"39 On March 11, the day before her wedding, she confided anxiously to her diary: "Tomor-

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row I am to become his wifeam to bid a final adieu to home. My heart is sick with anguish, yet faints not. I cannot weepweeping cannot relieve such grief, the responsibilities that gather thick and fast around me." 40

Martha Foster's call consisted of a complex amalgam of religious idealism, frustrated romance, and an intense sense of duty. Once she had reached a decision about her goal in life, a marriage of convenience became the vehicle for her commitment to China missions.

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So it was not with iron-sure confidence that Alabama missionaries came to their task. Instead they brought a fallible combination of faith, commitment, anxiety, frustration, disappointed love affairs, and even frustrated sexuality. For some who study their lives, this quite human source of missionary interest may seem incompatible with a life of high-minded idealism. To others it will humanize and make believable a mythic group of people whose very humanity makes their willingness to risk the dangers of China on behalf of their faith that much more impressive.

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4

One of the Hardest Things I Ever Undertook:

First Contact with China

After 102 days at sea, Martha and T. P. Crawford finally arrived at their destination. As the Horatio dropped anchor in Hong Kong harbor, Chinese junks surrounded the ship. Crewmen offered to wash clothes or sell fresh oranges and bananas. The ship's captain alighted to inform the local missionary committee that the Crawfords were aboard. Within the hour, the Reverend John Johnson and Dr. William Dean, both missionaries sponsored by the American Baptist Convention, arrived to welcome the Crawfords to China. After eating together aboard ship, the party disembarked for Johnson's house, where the Crawfords remained for several days.

From the security of that lodging they sallied forth to gain impressions of China and the Chinese. Their initial foray took them to an English store by way of a sedan chair carried by coolies ("Felt so odd!"). Martha was appalled at the high prices of Western-style sundries and became melancholy.

The following day the Crawfords attended their first Chinese service in an American Baptist church with Dean preaching in Cantonese. They did not understand a word, but the service restored Martha's sense of mission. She also noted the presence of a few women in the service.

Following this brief visit to Hong Kong, the Crawfords departed for Canton, where they booked passage on the schooner Minna for their final destination. They arrived at their mission station in Shanghai on March 30, 1852, after battling a strong northeast monsoon for seventeen days. Scarcely had they anchored in the river opposite the foreign settlement than the Reverend Matthew T. Yates, a Southern Baptist minister, came aboard to take charge of the two neophyte missionaries. He had a sampan ready to transport them ashore and sedans prepared to carry them a mile or so to the North Gate area of the city. As twilight

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settled over Shanghai, the coolies carrying their sedan chairs splashed through the rainy evening down narrow streets where the dim light of smoking lamps cast weird shadows. The coolies screamed warnings at the top of their voices in order to be heard above the babble of sounds. Throngs of people divided to make way for the "foreign devils." Soon the procession emerged into an open field of grave mounds, and beyond the cemetery the Crawfords saw the bright lights of the mission compound, which drove away much of their "feeling of loneliness in a strange land." As the sedans lowered their passengers at the front gate, they heard the cheery greeting of Mrs. Yates: "Are they really here?" 1

That evening the Yateses served dinner to the new arrivals, and the company was joined by recent widower Lewis Shuck and two of his children. Three other Baptist missionaries from outlying districts had waited most of the day for the Crawfords' arrival, but the approach of darkness forced their return home. After dinner the Crawfords left for Shuck's house, where they would live temporarily.

During their first two months in Shanghai the Crawfords lived with Shuck and his three motherless children. Before Eliza's death in November 1851 she had told her husband that she wanted the newly appointed Alabama missionaries to live with them until they became established. Shuck honored her request, though no doubt Martha Crawford's soft west Alabama accent compounded the pain of his recent loss. Shuck's eleven-year-old daughter became the Crawfords' interpreter and guide during those first months.

Martha Crawford began almost immediately a ritual common throughout the nineteenth century among missionary wives. First the husband would call upon resident missionaries. Then resident missionaries visited the newly arrived wife. This ritual was simple enough in the small mission.

Yates and Shuck had established the Baptist mission. In addition to the Southern Baptist contingent, Shanghai contained eight American missionary families: two southern Methodist, two northern Presbyterian, two Seventh Day Baptist, and two Episcopalian families. The Protestant mission was augmented by two single men, three single women, and a number of British missionaries. Martha Crawford worried about whom to visit first because it was so important that they begin "right."2

The first two months of the Crawfords' residence in China were typical of the experience of most missionaries. At least one missionary and usually several greeted new arrivals when their boats dropped anchor.

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They immediately took the neophytes in tow, transporting them to the missionary compound where they would live for varying periods in the home of another missionary. The veterans would show them the city, arrange for a language teacher, introduce them to English-speaking Chinese, and patiently shepherd them through the bewildering maze of Chinese social customs.

In time the former newcomers, now veterans, would reciprocate this sponsorship in a cycle that characterized all denominations and spanned all periods of missionary effort in China. In July 1889 G. P. Bostick and his wife arrived in Tengchow and temporarily became members of the Crawford family. Later when Bostick's cousin, Addie Estelle Cox, came to China as a missionary he arranged for her also to live with the Crawfords. 3

Others experienced a similar greeting. Lois and A. Y. Napier spent their honeymoon in the Shanghai home of fellow Alabama missionary Willie Kelly in 1905, then moved on to their permanent station in Chengchow, where the missionary community greeted them with "open arms."4 Mabel and Frank Woodward were greeted by fellow Alabamian James Toy Williams in Shanghai in 1924. The Woodwards stayed in the Williamses' home for several days.5

There seems to have been a pattern of matching veteran and newly arrived missionaries by home state, as this sample of Alabama missionaries demonstrates. Many times they knew each other from home or at least had common acquaintances. They were often matched also by marital status. When single missionary Clarabel Isdell arrived in 1935, a single missionary nurse met her and her companions and escorted them to Willie Kelly's home, which served many single female missionaries as a first residence.6

The most profound result of this ritual of welcome was the bonding that occurred. Far from home, plunged into an incomprehensible culture with which they could not communicate and which they did not understand, encountering a population of radically different customs and values for the first time, newly arrived missionaries were understandably overwhelmed. Consequently those who met and befriended them appeared as delivering angels and protectors. The short-term sharing of housing, time, food, and knowledge bound missionaries into lifelong friendships. Especially was this pattern important for the first generation of missionaries who received no formal orientation. Martha Crawford remembered half a century later the "tender, fatherly advice" of Dr. William Dean-despite the fact that Dean was a Northern and

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presumably abolitionist Baptist, whereas Crawford was a Southern Baptist who defended her region's right to own slaves. 7 Cynthia Miller remembered with great affection another single missionary who befriended her upon arrival in China. Frank and Mabel Woodward developed a lifelong friendship with James and Laurie Williams and helped them on many occasions through the years.8

Temporary Housing

Of the many services that veteran missionaries rendered, it was sharing homes that most mattered. The lodgings they shared were often inadequate even for their own families. But in a spirit of cooperative sharing, they usually piled additional persons in tiny rooms and made the best of a bad situation.9

The initial generation suffered the greatest inconvenience because of insufficient advanced planning by mission agencies. When Lewis and Eliza Shuck (1847-51) arrived in Shanghai with Matthew and Eliza Yates, the two women shared more than a common given name. They rented the former residence of the Danish consul, where they lived as joint tenants. The large European-style house just outside the walls of the native city provided front and back yards and suited the couples nicely.

As weeks turned into months such arrangements often became unsatisfactory. Eliza Yates later wrote the Foreign Mission Board her gratitude for permission to rent a separate house:

We are still lodging in Brother Shuck's house. Since the middle of May, however, we have furnished our own meals. In this unfriendly climate, it is putting more upon a housekeeper than she is able to bear to provide for boarders any considerable length of time. It was, therefore, a double relief to us when we ceased to be dependent upon our good Sister Shuck's table. We did not expect, when we moved here, to remain longer than should be necessary for building another house, which period we fixed at six or eight months. Our situation is still one of real inconvenience. The chief difficulty is that of exposure to all kinds of weather in passing to and from an outhouse [building] where we take our meals. As we occupy the only two spare rooms in Brother Shuck's house, we have the comfort of knowing that, so far as room is concerned, we occasion them no inconvenience.10

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The Crawfords (1852-1909) also shared a house with a single missionary. It was spacious and modestly priced because of a murder that had occurred there, causing many Chinese to believe the house to be haunted. 11

Later the Crawfords moved to Shantung Province in the northeast and opened their home to several generations of missionaries. Writing an invitation to a young single missionary to stay with her, Martha Crawford offered the renovated old mill across from her study. It was there that the Crawfords had begun housekeeping many decades earlier. Then the mud building had gloomy walls, a dirt floor, and a thatch roof that had once collapsed on her bed. Chinese homemade furniture had lacked in comfort what it boasted in durability.12

Despite the discomfort and inconvenience, residence with veteran missionaries could be filled with excitement for newcomers. Willie Kelly (1893-1937), a member of the second generation of Alabama missionaries, discovered that she would spend her first weeks in the home once occupied by legendary Baptist missionaries Matthew and Eliza Yates and was filled with a sense of awe. Alabama Presbyterian missionary James N. Montgomery and his wife lived in the home of another Alabamian, Mary Louisa Stuart, while attending language school in Nanking in 1919. The Stuarts were one of the most influential missionary families in central China, having arrived nearly half a century earlier. There the Montgomerys met some of the leading Christian figures in China, both Chinese and foreign: "What an inspiration it was to hear these men talk, who gave us a bird's-eye view of this great nation!"13

Frequently the joy of new friendships compensated veteran missionaries for the inconvenience of such arrangements. During 1895 while Willie Kelly resided with the E. F. Tatum family, Mrs. Tatum had a son. She experienced a difficult pregnancy and delivery and for four months could not care for her child. During that time the infant slept in his bassinet in Willie Kelly's room. She cared for the child, supervised his amah (nurse), fed him at night, and assumed many of the burdens of motherhood. When the Tatums were forced to return to America so the mother could recover, Kelly and a single missionary companion maintained their house and enjoyed the freedom to entertain missionary friends and conduct Bible study for Chinese women. Later, when she became a renowned missionary herself, Kelly provided three weeks' lodging to a new missionary family who had a two-year-old child. When the family found separate quarters, Kelly found herself missing the family and especially their son.14

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Exploring China

After acquiring temporary housing most missionaries were eager to venture into their new communities, to catch a glimpse of the people, places, and work that would occupy them. Willie Kelly spent her first day in Shanghai in 1893 riding through the city in a rickshaw, glancing at great stacks of porcelain decorated in intricate patterns or at embroidered pictures and exotic teas. Though she was unable to take in all the sights and sounds, the streets evoked a carnival-like spirit. She compared the throngs of people to a market Saturday in the little Wilcox County town of McKinley. And she loved it. This initial enthusiasm helped her to adapt quickly to the customs and manners of the Chinese.

Kelly's contemporary, Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25), could hardly wait to begin his medical clinic at Hwanghsien in Shantung Province. He and his family remained only briefly in Shanghai before departing for their new home. Not until they started inland from the port city of Cheefoo and spent a night in a Chinese inn did he consider himself to be in the real China: "It is a large wagon yard with rooms around it, with no floors, ceiling, or furniture, looking about like the ordinary horse stall on the Southern farm. While all in our party were exceedingly tired from a very uncomfortable day's ride, not much sleeping was done in the inn." Though given a military escort by the governor of the province to ensure their safety in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, Ayers found the citizenry along their route quiet and peaceful. Once at their destination, he visited the horse market, where he was well treated. The Chinese Christian community was delighted to have a medical missionary among them. 15

Ayers brought no equipment with him but paused long enough in Shanghai to purchase a small supply of drugs. Arguing that he had arrived on the field too late to master the language or waste time (he was over forty years old and had nine children), he commenced his medical practice immediately.16

Newly arrived missionaries not only sampled the streets, markets, and aromas but also observed the physical landscape, so unlike what they had left behind in Alabama.17 Most of them, were from farms, towns, or small cities. Nothing had prepared them for huge urban centers such as Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, or Nanking. A few of the Alabama missionaries moved into the interior, where the landscapes they encountered more nearly resembled the ones they had left, but

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most remained in urban areas near the coast, where the size of the population was overwhelming.

Dr. T. W. Ayers left the sleepy little industrial town of Anniston for the small city of Hwanghsien. When he arrived in 1901 the Chinese city contained an estimated 100,000 people. Ayers described its location as being on a large plain of extraordinary fertility. Within sight of the city were mountains, yet it was only six miles to the sea. The prosperous county in which Hwanghsien was located supported a population of half a million in some 800 villages. 18

The province of Shantung in northeastern China where he and many other Alabamians labored was one of the nation's most productive agricultural regions. According to the 1903 Chinese census it was also the most densely populated province with thirty-eight million people. Its port of Cheefoo was a prominent resort city that contained a large European population. Baptists and Presbyterians tended to dominate work there. Baptist ministers James Landrum Holmes and Jesse Boardman Hartwell began work in 1861, establishing the first church the following year. The province was also home to the legendary Lottie Moon, a single missionary who came to symbolize Southern Baptist mission work worldwide.

By 1903 Shantung Province contained twenty-one Southern Baptist missionaries and served as the center of the denomination's North China Mission. At least eight Alabama Baptist missionaries served in Shantung between 1890 and 1925, partly due to T. W. Ayers's recruiting.

The city of Shanghai (Kiangsu Province) is located on the west bank of the Whangpoo River twelve miles from where it empties into the Yangtze River and sixty miles from where that great river spills into the Yellow Sea. The city dominated central China. On a latitude slightly north of Mobile, it was renowned for hot, humid summers. A walled city located on a wide fertile plain, it had an estimated population of 700,000 in 1880. Foreign businessmen located there in large numbers, carving out an entire Western settlement with separate police and legal jurisdiction. Many of the missionaries lived in the international settlement and cultivated a life not markedly different from Paris, London, or New York. A mixture of bankers, merchants, exporters, and diplomats made Shanghai China's chief entrepôt. It was also the headquarters of many missionary groups such as the Baptist Central China Mission and boasted fine missionary schools and colleges. Twelve Alabama

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missionaries served in Kiangsu Province (five Baptists, five Methodists, and two Presbyterians), most of them in Shanghai (eight) and Soochow (three).

Canton (in Kwangtung Province) dominated the economy of southern China in much the same way Shanghai did the central region. Located on the Pearl River, the city is at the head of a huge estuary some seventy miles from Macao and ninety miles northwest of Hong Kong. In 1880 the city contained 1.5 million people, making Canton the fourth largest city in China. But in wealth it was second only to Peking. Three Alabamians spent their careers in this center of the Baptist South China Mission.

Learning to Speak Chinese

Although early nineteenth-century missionaries usually studied Chinese from a private tutor wherever they located, denominations gradually centralized language study in major cities, notably Peking, Shanghai, Soochow, Nanking, and Canton. As the years passed the language schools became ecumenical, creating the first of many interdenominational relationships experienced by sectarian Alabama missionaries. 19

The difficulty of learning Chinese was best revealed in the almost universal complaints against the language. Of all the cultural differences missionaries encounteredcrowded housing, different foods, lack of sanitation, strange customsthe one item uniformly discussed in autobiographies and letters home was difficulty learning the language. With the passage of time the expectation of foreign mission agencies about the time needed to obtain bare literacy in written and spoken Chinese increased from a year to two years. By the early twentieth century two years of exclusive language study was generally mandatory with a four-year course recommended. For those who desired to become truly fluent, language study was a lifelong commitment with regular tutorial sessions. Alice Huey noted that after one had studied diligently for two years it took another twenty-four months out among the Chinese to be able to employ with confidence what missionaries had learned in school. Otherwise missionaries stored up phrases in their minds that they could not utilize when face-to-face with Chinese. Many times she had used her academic language with an elderly woman only to see puzzlement and incomprehension. Her Bible woman would translate into the vernacular, and a smile of recognition would accompany

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such a comment as ''O when you talk I understand. When she talks not one bit do I understand." "Happy is the missionary," Huey wrote, "who can take such punctures with a smiling face." 20

Of course mastery of Chinese posed a double challenge. The written language, which was uniform across China, contained thousands of characters instead of the familiar Western twenty-six letters. Although only l0,000 or so characters were in ordinary use, even this number posed a colossal challenge. For instance, the Gospel of John contained 12,000 Chinese characters. Transmission of Christian ideas into Chinese further complicated matters. There was no equivalent Chinese concept for the Christian notion of "sin." And they had several terms for "God," none meaning precisely what Christians meant by the word.21

Spoken Chinese contained dozens of dialects that could not be understood from region to region. All were tonal in that the same word took on different meaning depending on whether it was used with a downward, upward, or level tone. But that is where similarities ended. Speakers of Mandarin in the north could not understand native Cantonese speakers in the south. Missionaries therefore tried to attend language school within the region where they would serve and had to learn virtually a new language when they left one region for another. The best insights to the formidable barriers of language can be found in the memoirs of five Alabama missionaries.

The first generation experienced the greatest problems because there were so few lexicons, grammar books, or even translations of the Bible. Lewis Shuck had the advantage of years of experience and study in Canton before returning with his new bride Eliza to Shanghai, where a dialect different from Cantonese was spoken. Shuck and his two Chinese assistants had to change their tones and the names of characters, but Eliza had to start from the beginning. He adapted quickly and became recognized for his skill in both written and spoken Chinese. He printed tracts in native characters and was invited to serve on an interdenominational translation committee to revise the Bible. This undertaking carried him beyond the narrow sectarianism of the mid-nineteenth century because conflicting theological interpretations were involved in translating such words as "God" and "immersed." Shuck spoke the language well enough that the American consul sometimes asked his help as a translator. Eliza Shuck (1847-51) plunged into language study passionately, writing the Foreign Mission Board that such learning was vital to a missionary's success. She hoped to use her teach-

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ing experience at Judson College to open a school employing Chinese teachers. That way the children could learn Christian doctrines at the same time she improved her pronunciation. 22

T. P. and Martha Crawford (1852-1909) came as close to mastering the language as any missionaries during their half-century career in China. Matthew T. Yates explained to Martha early in their career that most missionaries were deficient in language skills, and this inadequacy kept them from "mixing with the people. They hold themselves aloof from the natives." Properly admonished, Martha Crawford plunged into language study.

The Crawfords' first language teacher was a disaster. Martha described him as a "fat, lazy, thick tongued man without wit or teaching ability." He would "sit stupidly waiting for us to lead the way, though we could neither ask a question nor frame a sentence." Their second teacher, though more resourceful, exposed the cultural problems inherent in linguistic differences. Noting that T. P. Crawford governed his life by his watch, Mr. Nee asked if Crawford had another watch. The missionary, completely misunderstanding that Nee desired a watch of his own, found his wife's watch and handed it to Nee. The Chinese teacher bowed, offered "ten thousand thanks," gave him a worthless copper incense pot in return for the "gift," and departed with his new watch.23

Finally the Crawfords acquired a teacher who measured up to their standards. As he taught them Chinese, they taught him Christian doctrines. In a pattern that happened with amazing frequency, strong ties between teacher and missionary led to professed conversion and an influential role for the teacher. He was baptized, became a deacon, and afterward was ordained as the first native pastor of the Shanghai Baptist Church. He wrote many hymns, one of which was judged by some to be the best Christian hymn in the Chinese language.24

Practical necessity as well as Christian commitment impelled missionaries in their study. Immersed in her classes, Martha Crawford left kitchen duties to a Chinese cook. Her attempts to communicate southern American culinary tastes led to ludicrous mistakes that occasionally convulsed them with laughter upon arriving at their table and discovering what awaited them.25

But Martha Crawford's private diary reflects little of the humor contained in articles she wrote for Alabama Baptists. One helpful missionary explained to her that anyone could learn Chinese to some degree. Thus inspired, she and her husband began studying radicals (the basic

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building units of written Chinese), learning fourteen on March 19 and 20, 1852. By the following February she was using her halting Chinese to converse with children in her Sunday school class. After a year of language study she believed another year would allow her easy use of the Shanghai dialect, but she had not begun visiting Chinese women in their homes yet: "I find myself shrinking from the task. I continue to hope it will be better when I learn the language, but I must make a beginning sometimes." Months later the mixture of language inadequacy and personal timidity had turned into serious depression: "Shall I always mourn and repine over my dullness? . . . I long to be mistress of this language [in order] to be engaged in active usefulness. Yet, when I shall have acquired the language will it entirely overcome this timid shrinking? That I fear will always be in my way." 26

Despite her initial anguish, Crawford did learn the language and learned it well. In time other missionaries reported that the Chinese considered her to "speak like a native." Few Westerners actually attained this level of expertise, and such attribution to Crawford is probably part hyperbole and part comparison of their own limited language skills to hers. Nonetheless she did become by all accounts one of the best foreign speakers of the language in Shantung Province.27 When arranging language study for newly arriving missionaries decades later, she imposed rigorous standards. She refused to allow missionaries to speak a word of English during their lessons. She insisted that they plan their own work, and when they had absorbed all they could she taught them the Chinese phrase meaning, "Please, honorable teacher, go home." That meant school was dismissed. She believed an average student could acquire a working knowledge of Chinese in two years.28

Unfortunately for Crawford's marital harmony, her language skills greatly exceeded her husband's. While she made progress in her study, he mainly acquired terrible headaches and a gloomy disposition. He came to resent the ease and skill with which his wife progressed. She even began to pray that he would outstrip her progress so as not to resent her. Fortunately for the marriage, Crawford began to improve so that he had "no occasion to be ashamed of his Chinese speaking abilities," and within a year he was preaching in elementary Chinese. His problems with the written language caused him to try to simplify the "hieroglyphs" (which were "doomed to the tomb and the antiquary," he predicted) with an easier script. With the assistance of Chinese associates, he devised the Crawford Phonetic System, which he believed

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could quickly educate either Chinese or foreigners in the written language. But both Chinese and Western scholars considered the scheme nothing more than a curiosity. 29

Although Willie Kelly was thirty-one years old when she arrived in 1893, she was not, as she feared, beyond the "golden memory period" that allowed her to master Chinese. Unlike the timid Martha Crawford, Kelly enjoyed language study and flourished in class. She met her teacher four days after arriving in Shanghai and used Dr. Yates's small primer of one thousand words and expressions as a text. She soon decided that the best strategy for her was total immersion, so she left Shanghai for Pootung, where there were no other missionaries and she could spend weeks hearing and speaking only Chinese. The fact that she was single allowed her a level of immersion that was difficult for married couples.30

Progress was slow but steady. After three days' work Kelly wrote home to Alabama that she could not "give a very glowing account" of her study "of this outlandish language. The characters are so difficult," she reported, "and the tones, my! they are abominable!" Three months of study changed her opinion. She was studying six days a week: "I love the language, and it is no trouble for me to study, but some trouble for me to learn." She had a splendid teacher who became one of her first converts, although her initial enthusiasm turned to despair when he failed to measure up to her standards of discipleship.31 Although she arrived before language exams were required of missionaries, Kelly regularly asked a Seventh Day Baptist missionary to critique her progress and weaknesses. After three years of study she passed an examination conducted by a committee of senior missionaries, and she was able to supervise a day school after only three months of study.32

Twelve years after she arrived, Kelly continued to study with a private tutor. In fact, she wrote the director of the Foreign Mission Board pleading for a supplement for her tutor's salary. She and another single missionary each studied half a day each week with him. She insisted that three years of language study produced only rudimentary speaking skills. Her teacher wanted more than the five dollars per month she paid him. She could not afford the sum but would have to pay even if the denomination provided no help. She reminded her supervisor that legendary Shanghai missionary Matthew T. Yates had used a tutor as long as he lived. Even after a dozen years Kelly preferred to have her teacher present when she taught Bible to her women's class. Although in time

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she came to believe that short-term teachers could help in her school without formal study, for career missionaries she believed that lifetime language study was essential. 33

Kelly's efforts clearly paid huge dividends. During nearly half a century in Shanghai her language skills became as legendary as Crawford's. It was said by one biographer that over the telephone Chinese could not recognize her as a foreigner. Although one usually takes such testimony with a grain of salt, it is harder to dismiss the Chinese pastor of her Shanghai church. In a centennial history of the congregation he contended that Kelly did indeed speak Chinese like a native. His supporting anecdotes included an incident where Chinese in adjoining rooms to her could not distinguish her accent from that of native Chinese. Her flowing white hair and flawless accent attracted attention wherever she went. The consequence of her lifetime study, the Reverend S. U. Zau wrote, was that "she mastered to a marvelous degree" the "intonations and the idioms of the language."34

T. W. Ayers (1901-25) agreed with Kelly that the SBC Foreign Mission Board should continue to fund language study beyond the initial period. When Ayers arrived in China he was eager to begin his hospital. Reminding board officials that he was more than forty years old when he arrived in 1901, he complained that he was too old to master Chinese. Therefore he should not have to conform to the requirement that all missionaries study Chinese for two years. He proposed to begin medical work each afternoon after studying with a teacher each morning. He asked for an interpreter to assist him in the hospital as well as to teach him Chinese. A confidant in Hwanghsien, though sympathetic to his dilemma, warned that the demands of establishing a hospital would hinder his ability to learn the language. Ayers responded that he believed that such a course was God's plan for him and that he would try his own scheme anyway. His supervisor expressed disappointment but agreed to support this unorthodox arrangement.35

By 1905 Ayers had changed his mind about the importance of language fluency. He requested that the board pay for a private tutor beyond the two-year formal course. His own study had often been interrupted, leading him to advise the board never to allow another missionary the option that he had demanded. But he believed that even uninterrupted language study for three years could not equip a pastor to preach without constant tutoring. That same year he praised the board for requiring a physician-missionary to study full-time for at least a

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year. Now older and wiser, he wrote: "From my experience I do not believe any doctor can study the language uninterruptedly when sent directly to his station when there is no other doctor there." 36

When Methodist missionary Ruth Berckman arrived in China with her husband in 1921, language work had been systematized. The central language school for all missionaries in Kiangsu Province was at Soochow University. The Berckmans spent six periods a day in language study. During the first session they worked with an individual teacher in a separate room. The second period brought all students together, where they received the day's lesson and new vocabulary. The third period featured drills together with reading and listening to the teacher talk. The fourth session contained a writing lesson. After dinner the missionaries again met their teacher separately for drill. The day ended with a reassembly where they used their new vocabulary in sentences and conversation. The older hands advised that study of Chinese must be a lifelong enterprise.37 The first year they took an examination on 450 characters. Ruth Berckman did better speaking than writing but found both difficult. Her vocabulary was limited, enough to converse with women, children, and servants but inadequate for Bible teaching. Her husband had to preach in English and use an interpreter.38

By April 1923, nearly two years after their arrival, the Berckmans still were studying with a teacher in their home four hours a day, five days a week ("an everlasting job," they called it). Hoadley Berckman had begun preaching in Chinese, but two years later Ruth was still studying an hour each day with a private tutor ("Chinese character study must go on no matter what else stops"). Even while back in the United States during the Second World War, Ruth Berckman studied Mandarin at Yale University.39 But even after twenty-nine years of study with a tutor she conceded that they never mastered the language.40

After 1900 nearly all Alabama missionaries were officially required to study Chinese for two years without interruption, but few actually did so. As in the case of Dr. Ayers they were too eager to get on with their work. For such dedicated people the study of Chinese was a maddening distraction. When Baptist missionary Cynthia Miller arrived in 1905 she had to be pressed into teaching and nursing duties. The furlough of the physician whom she assisted further delayed language study. In letters to her board she expressed frustration at study requirements that kept her from soul winning. Reading Chinese came quickly, but learning to speak it was "one of the hardest things I ever under-

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took." Two years later she studied with a Bible woman two afternoons a week but still could not be understood. 41

Dr. A. Y. Napier experienced a similar problem when he arrived in 1906. The Chinese language is very confusing," he wrote two decades later, "and I was never able to master it as I wanted to." His wife Lois did better. She picked up the language more easily through her housewoman. They were about the same age and became close friends because the Chinese woman was interesting and companionable.42

Presbyterian missionary James N. Montgomery arrived in 1917 after language study had been supposedly simplified. The theory was that students learned to speak first through the ear like a child and only later to write. Continual repetition and recitation strengthened their study. But he still found written Chinese as difficult as Greek, Hebrew, and Latin combined. His wife made faster progress because of her contact with house servants. Like Miller's and Ayers's, their study was often interrupted by teaching and religious duties.43

When Clarabel Isdell arrived in 1935 she spent two years in language school and continued studying with a teacher as long as she remained in China. Isdell was single and enjoyed language study: "I realized that for every character I learned, there was one more thing that I could use to spread the Gospel and it was just a great challenge to learn it."44

Actually a combination of fierce commitment to their ultimate goal of evangelism and a sense of self-deprecating humor turned most southern-accented Alabamians into fair linguists. But they realized that the tonal structure was always fraught with peril. Many humorous stories derived from missionary embarrassment when they incorrectly used tones. One missionary set out in 1911 to purchase a donkey but instead bought a pig. Addie Estelle Cox laughed when her English students found it impossible to make the "th" sound; they repeated after her, "My tongue is in my mouse." She discovered that the "shih" sound for persimmon, without the proper tone, was the exact word for "lice" and took delight in telling the story of a missionary acquaintance who asked his astonished gateman to purchase for her "200 cash worth of lice.'' Another missionary moaned that when the languages were confounded at the Tower of Babel, Chinese became the most confounded of all; and many a beginner pondered why a merciful God would create such a linguistic barrier between his message and its intended audience. Nicholas B. Williams found a simple but diabolical explanation for his problem understanding Chinese: "the invention of the Chinese

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language is one of the remarkable exhibitions of the wiles of Satan in resisting the advance of the gospel in the world." 45

Missionary Lives: Virginia Atkinson

Perhaps of all the missionaries who tried to comprehend this strange language, Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson had the greatest incentive. Her unhappy childhood made China less forbidding than it was for others. Following the death of first her mother and later her stepmother, her minister-father tied a tag on eight-year-old Virginia's clothing, kissed her good-bye, and had her older brother take her to the station in Covington, Georgia, buy a ticket, and put her on the train. The tag read: "Jennie M. Atkinson. Via West Point, Georgia to Rock Mills, Alabama, Care of Mr. Fountain P. Randle." Raised by her cousins in a textile mill home, Jennie understandably forsook the denomination of her father for Methodism. She graduated from LaGrange College with first honors and began teaching back home in Rock Mills. Her introduction to China missions came by way of the Methodist newspaper, and when a call went out in 1884 for nine unmarried women missionaries to evangelize the women of China, Atkinson responded. In those days Methodist missionaries received little preparation, and she was soon on her way to the Orient.

Childhood trauma left Atkinson with a sense of personal inadequacy, and she deeply regretted the lack of orientation for mission work. Timid by nature and uninformed about her duties, she nonetheless forsook the tiny world of Rock Mills for a different and intimidating land. On her way to San Francisco her missionary party stopped in Colorado, and on the streets of Denver she met her first Chinese man. She was so shaken by the experience that she "had to slacken my pace and let others meet him first."

In October 1884 Atkinson sailed with a party of Methodist missionaries on the City of Peking. The company, which included the distinguished Methodist laywoman Laura Haygood, sister of a Methodist bishop, intimidated her still further. Physically she was afraid of everything: strange people, storms, wind, water, and boats. Hers was not a good psychological profile for a missionary traveling across the Pacific to China!

Atkinson's first impression of Shanghai was how "foreignized" it was. With three other single women she moved into a large renovated

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hundred-year-old house in the French Concession. The house contained forty rooms and housed the four missionaries, their Chinese coworkers, and four day schools. When she arrived in 1884 language study was largely a private tutorial affair. She was expected to assume her teaching duties as soon as her knowledge of the spoken language permitted. She asked permission to begin immediately to reform the dark, unsanitary schoolrooms presided over by untrained teachers. But her supervisor insisted that she stick with language study. She persisted for a while, but long hours with her somber teacher were finally too much for her youthful spirit. She slipped away to visit her school. There she found an inattentive Chinese teacher holding a cup of tea in one hand and a stout ruler in the other. In front of him stood a small boy, his back to the teacher, his body swaying from side to side to the rhythm of the Confucian classics he recited. If he stumbled the teacher gave him a rap with the ruler. Though she did not approve the teacher's method, the incident was a revelation to Atkinson: "There was no attempt at explanation; it was like teaching Plato in the original to first-graders, as memory works." Despite the futility of the method, she was "fascinated by the coordination of sound and movement as the child, chanting at the top of his voice, stepped from foot to foot." The episode provided new insight to the language: ''So Chinese was a matter not of sounds only but also of rhythm." She resolved to practice her own lessons in private to the rhythm of her feet. 46

As Atkinson's hours with her teacher declined, he marveled that she was nonetheless acquiring more Chinese. Her American supervisor told Atkinson that she must soon pass her first examination and to beware of such an unorthodox system. On her examination she proved the worth of her new rhythm method by winning the highest score ever obtained.

This success gave her greater freedom, but Atkinson's moodiness provoked resentment in the older companions with whom she shared lodging. They resented her mood swings from youthful playfulness to gloomy introspection. But the same spirit that seemed to confound her associates endeared her to the Chinese who enjoyed her gaiety and were amazed at her skill with their language. They especially appreciated her musical abilities, and she became the first music teacher among the Methodist missionaries.47 Apparently her mixture of language skills and personality traits suited her mission well, for Atkinson remained in China fifty-seven years, among the longest of all tenures of Alabama missionaries.

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Straddling Two Cultures

The first contact with China tended to drive Alabama missionaries inward on American values, experience, and community, supporting the notion that they preserved southern ways and customs and sought to impose them on the Chinese. By and large this is a fair judgment of their initial reactions and helps explain the "two cultures" conclusion reached by historians. When their boats arrived they were greeted by fellow missionaries, not Chinese. They were taken to missionary houses often located in denominational compounds where American families of similar faith lived together. In Shanghai at least, many of the compounds were located in the international settlement, further extending the missionaries' spatial separation from Chinese. While they struggled with language study they lived with missionaries of their own denomination, often from their home states.

Their reaction to Chinese society varied widely. Many first impressions tended to be critical of poor sanitation, filth, and exotic foods. Some missionaries found the new environment exciting and electrifying.

The same mixed reactions greeted language study. Some plunged into the strange language with gusto and made rapid progress, especially with spoken dialects. It helped to be extroverted or a woman forced to deal daily with Chinese servants, cooks, nurses, and children. Younger missionaries and single women seemed to learn the language quicker than older, married ones, but motivation, temperament, and contact seemed to be more important than age or marital status. The most self-critical missionaries admitted that they never learned Chinese as well as they preferred, and they remained lifetime students. All of them experienced the tension of desiring to move on with their missionary careers but being unable to do so until they spent years in formal study or with a tutor. In almost every case the degree to which they mastered spoken Chinese determined the degree to which they transcended their own world and entered Chinese culture.

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5

The Peculiar Customs Are So Bewildering:

Understanding Chinese Culture

Most Alabama missionaries brought with them to China a disparaging estimate of Chinese culture. It was an evaluation forged by centuries of Western Christianity but especially refined in the atmosphere of Alabama parochialism. French novelist-philosopher Andre Malraux expressed the issue abstractly: "Europeans never understand anything of China that does not resemble themselves."' The editor of the Alabama Baptist warned in 1878 that missionaries must respect racial differences when evangelizing the "heathen." 1 The "elevation of a gross people' must be accomplished by raising them to civilized standards, not descending to their level. Catholic missionaries had established an unfortunate example by adopting chopsticks and Chinese dress and customs. But Protestant missionaries properly retained their own Western traditions and lived in Western-style houses. Back home in Alabama, missionaries would not tyrannize or abuse blacks, but neither would they put themselves on their social level or eat or fraternize with them. Nor would they bother to teach school in order to convert them when the New Testament and Baptist model was preaching. The editor admonished, when in China act as they did in Alabama. Missionaries Hoadley and Ruth Berckman described the issue quite concretely. They wrote their family that when they left a Chinese home it was the custom for hosts and guests to compete with each other in bowing and smiling. In the same way Chinese would keep a waiter standing for minutes while each emphatically insisted on paying the check. Tile new missionaries feared, "We have not half begun to meet with embarrassing situations where the peculiar customs are so bewildering and entangling. Oh, it will take some memory to know what to do!''2

The Bercklmans thus encountered the most fundamental challenge of their missionary career: how to relate Alabama culture to indigenous Chinese traditions. Was there value to be found in Chinese history, cus-

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toms, and traditions? How could any aspects of Chinese religion be reconciled with Christianity, thereby affording common ground for a Christian-Chinese dialogue? Were missionaries the agents of Western political and social values as well as Western religion, or could they surmount their culture to discover the good in Chinese ways and the flaws in their own traditions? How could missionaries effectively relate to the Chinese masses by living in separate Western-style compounds, dressing in Western clothes, eating Western foods, and celebrating Western holidays? To what degree did they have to abandon familiar patterns of life and adopt nonreligious aspects of Chinese culture in order to reach indigenous peoples with the gospel?

These were not easy questions to answer even in the abstract. And when missionaries arrived in China they did not confront issues in the abstract. They confronted them in painfully concrete and disruptive ways. Predictably, missionaries from Alabama approached these issues from a wide variety of perspectives and resolved them in a bewildering array of compromises, rationalizations, and outright capitulations. Indeed it is the complexity of their response and its change over time that demands that historians rethink their often negative estimate of the missionary engagement with Chinese culture.

Traditional Chinese Culture

Complicating missionary understanding of China was the fact that Westerners confronted one of the richest cultural traditions in the world without much initial appreciation of it. At the core of this culture were three ancient philosophies.

Confucianism dated from the writings of Confucius (551-479 B.c.) and his follower Mencius (372-289 B.c.). At the heart of this ethical system was the family, the foundation of Chinese society. The individual was not only subordinate to the family unit, but loyalty actually focused upon the family at the expense of other social and political organizations. The eldest male in the family was to have absolute authority. He made all decisions regarding finances, education, and marriage. Confucianism clearly defined the web of relationships within the family, and each person knew exactly where he or she fit into this structure and behaved accordingly.

Everything in Confucianism depended upon correct behavior, which, to be effective, reflected the inner person. Hence, Confucianism emphasized the need for self-discipline and self-examination and the continu-

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ous cultivation of the inner virtues of righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and goodness. Such values did not necessarily run counter to Christianity, although its vagueness on the nature of heaven (God) and immortality caused missionaries to consider Confucianism wholly inadequate as a religion.

One negative aspect of Confucianism was the low position it assigned to women in the familial and social hierarchy of status. Confucianism stressed that women were inferior and subservient to men. A virtuous woman was to be subordinate to her father before marriage, to her husband after marriage, and to her son after her husband died. Men could remarry and have concubines, whereas women were expected to resume a chaste life if their husbands died. The practice of binding women's feet when they were young girls so that the feet would be only four to five inches long, while not directly attributable to Confucianism, probably was made more palatable because of the lack of respect for women inherent in the philosophy. 3 Christian practice in the West originally assigned women a status only marginally higher than did Confucianism. But Western women had begun to redefine Christian attitudes toward women whereas no such reassessment was under way in nineteenth-century China.

Although Confucianism was a way of life for virtually all Chinese officials of the nineteenth century, Taoism, the second philosophy, was essentially an escape valve. It allowed one to defy authority, to question conventional wisdom, to pursue aesthetics, and to accept the relativity of things. It was preeminently a philosophy of individual liberation. Where Confucianism stressed others, Taoism stressed self. Where Confucianism stressed ritual and self-control, Taoism stressed spontaneity and naturalness. Where Confucianism stressed hierarchy, Taoism stressed equality.

Buddhism, the third way of wisdom, came to China when the Han dynasty was collapsing, near the time of Christ. It was the first organized religion the Chinese had encountered. In addition to timingit appeared during a period of strife and disunity, which made Buddhism, with its elaborate rituals, its explanation of suffering in this life, and its promise of paradise after death, very appealing to the massesBuddhism found acceptance because of the Chinese tolerance for other concepts and because it was perfectly willing to compromise with Confucianism and Taoism.

At the height of its popularity, Buddhism maintained some 30,000 monasteries and thousands of pagodas and temples and was served by

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more than two million monks and nuns. Buddhism touched in one way or another virtually every aspect of Chinese life. In addition to religion and philosophy, Buddhism enriched Chinese art, music, and literature and contributed to Chinese science and mathematics. 4

Alabama Missionaries and Chinese Culture

Alabama missionaries initially understood little about traditional China and almost nothing about these three influential ways of Chinese wisdom. Their "calls" to missionary service owed much to divine intervention and little to thoughtful consideration. In time they would learn much; but at first they knew little or nothing. This was especially true of the advance guard that arrived between 1847 and 1900. Their individualistic ideology stressed immortality, faith, and the authority of Scripture. When they encountered Confucian tradition, which valued none of these particularly, missionaries provoked hostility from the gentry that they could not understand. When they ridiculed Taoist folk beliefs and superstitions they often offended common people who believed that it was the "foreign devil" who lived in a world of magic and superstition rather than they.

The argument of historians that most missionaries were essentially uninformed about the world is certainly true of Alabama missionaries. But their larger contention of cultural insensitivity once they arrived is at best simplistic. In 1927 a speaker at the Institute of Pacific Relations warned that missionaries often carried their religious message encased in Western culture that was not essential to its meaning. Though sympathetic to missions, he admonished missionaries to study the culture and social customs of the country where they ministered so as not to challenge or destroy aspects of that culture that were "neither hurtful [n]or contrary to the principles of Christianity." For instance, some China missionaries had attacked the Chinese custom of bowing three times in reverence to Confucius, arguing that it was an act of Confucian worship. The critic considered such narrow-mindedness merely an instance of missionary prejudice, not a genuine expression of Christianity.5

Despite his admission of such mistakes in judgment, the speaker, who was secretary of the National Christian Council of China, rejected secular charges that missionaries engaged in cultural imperialism by seeking to substitute Western for Chinese culture. But he did admit that there was sufficient truth to the claim to cause missionaries to dif-

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ferentiate carefully between the "essence" of their faith and "its accessories." As an antidote he suggested that mission schools teach the Chinese classics and agree to register with the government as Chinese law then required; mission agencies should establish schools for the study of Chinese culture in the United States and China; missionaries needed to differentiate clearly what was essential from what was peripheral in Christianity. 6 This critical though constructive evaluation of the missionary effort affords an excellent standard by which to evaluate Alabama missionaries.

Later historians, much more secular than those writing in the 1920S, were harsher in their criticism. A historian writing in 1968 noted the unfavorable descriptions of the Chinese penned by one missionary: "The Chinese are vile and polluted in a shocking degree: their conversation is full of filthy expressions and their lives of impure acts. . . . The universal practice of lying and dishonest dealings; the unblushing lewdness of old and young; harsh cruelty toward prisoners by officers . . . all form a full unchecked torrent of human depravity [and] . . . moral degradation of which an excessive statement can scarcely be made."7

Two of the most distinguished historians of China agreed with this negative depiction of missionaries in whole or in part. John K. Fairbank, writing in 1978, concluded that the vast majority of missionaries refused to adapt to Chinese culture, which they viewed with contempt. Only a small contingent of Protestant missionaries came to appreciate any aspect of Chinese culture. The following year Jerome Ch'en compared "the utter blindness of the missionaries to Chinese values and norms," which caused them to regard the Chinese as barbarians and children, to "Chinese bigotry . . . towards the Christians." The difference was that Chinese did not dispatch missionaries to Confucianize the West.8

A Southern Baptist historian, Robert N. Nash, Jr., recently compounded this indictment by noting the double cultural identification of missionaries from the South. They exported both American and southern culture. Heady with the success of both imperialism and material prosperity, Americans elaborated their age-old faith in "Manifest Destiny" (the right of the United States to expand its borders) into a national belief in their unique "chosenness." God had selected them to civilize, Christianize, and uplift backward peoples. By combining millennialistic and messianic religious thought with humanitarianism, racism, imperialism, and materialism, American Christians forged a powerful engine of expansion that southerners helped steer. At their

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1890 national convention Southern Baptists resolved that because they held "the true doctrines of the Bible in their greatest purity, the South, with its large majority of Baptists, is the center of that center." James Franklin Love, the secretary of the SBC Foreign Mission Board between 1915 and 1928, reasoned that the superiority of Anglo-Saxons over other peoples was jeopardized by the women's rights movement, which kept women from having babies. Once in China, SBC missionaries emphasized southern aspects of Protestant missionary culture: the blood atonement of Christ, the power of Satan in the world, individualism, personal evangelism and soul winning, the authority of the Bible, and personal piety (by which they meant the southern variety of piety: Sabbath observance; abstinence from gambling, alcohol, and tobacco; strict submission of women to their husbands). Preoccupied as they were with sin, salvation, and a personal devil, they largely ignored social problems and racial inequality. 9

Not all recent historians of missionaries agree with this generally negative view of their cultural imperialism. Bruce S. Greenawalt insists that there were vast differences between the attitudes of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century missionaries. Although many early missionaries were both ignorant and contemptuous of Chinese culture, that was not the prevailing view by the 1920S and 1930s. Among later appointees, notions of cultural relativism and tolerance were more characteristic. Furthermore, even many earlier missionaries were amazingly open to and impressed by Chinese culture. In fact, they often became more culturally comfortable in China than in the United States. Greenawalt's emphasis is upon locating cultural sensitivity along a time line. Many missionaries were ignorant, condescending, and arrogant when they arrived in China; but as decades passed they became increasingly sensitive. By the 1920S missionaries routinely received orientation that left them favorably impressed with the accomplishments of Chinese culture. Though Greenawalt conceded that a minority of missionaries always failed to appreciate the culture they encountered, he denies that most missionaries serving between 1930 and 1950 were culturally arrogant or politically naive.10

Historian Grant Wacker has recently argued the same point though with greater differentiation. Like Greenawalt he insists on an evolutionary understanding of cultural interaction. The typical missionary perception of foreign cultures "moved from abhorrence to grudging admiration to varying degrees of approval of the ethical and religious ideals of the peoples among whom they worked." The stimulus for this change

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was a profound theological issue. Was the difference between Christianity and indigenous religion absolute or a matter of degree? If there could be no compromise with or adaptation to the native faith, must indigenous religions be entirely uprooted and replaced? If the differences between religions were matters of degree, could Christianity incorporate some elements of traditional culture within a new synthesis? This synthesis would be neither entirely Chinese nor Western but a Chinese variant of Christianity. 11

Although Wacker's categories are general, he correctly understands that missionaries whose theological views were conservative, liberal, and moderate differed fundamentally in the way they perceived and appropriated Chinese culture. Conservatives generally argued that Christianity was unique and exclusive and offered the only hope of salvation. Although liberals believed that Christianity contained a revelation of God infinitely superior to all other religions, they did not believe this revelation to be either unique or exclusive. Moderates argued the inherent superiority of Christianity to all other world religions but stopped short of proclaiming it the only path to truth. Most Protestant missionaries were moderates, according to Wacker, with conservatives constituting a large minority and liberals a small but influential element.12 Using Wacker's religious topology, the majority of Alabama's Protestant missionaries fell within the conservative camp rather than the moderate group. But regardless of their theological orientation, they struggled mightily with the temptation to fuse Christianity with Western civilization.

The best evidence for the disparaging view of Chinese culture expressed by Alabama missionaries is also the most misleading. They often described Chinese as "heathen" people whose backwardness was rooted in the decadence of their religion. T. P. Crawford (1852-1902) used such a conceptthe "long pull [of] dull, monotonous heathenism"to explain his alternating moods of despair and euphoria.13 Nearly all nineteenth-century Alabama missionaries described their destination as "the heathen field."

But nineteenth-century missionaries meant both more and less by the term "heathen" than modern Americans. The concept meant more because of its origins in Victorian notions of moral discipline that were instilled in children by family and education. Victorians were trained to keep their emotions in check. The function of culture was to refine, inspire, and elevate the moral life of the individual, and it found expression in good manners, a code of honor, acquaintance with the arts, and

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a sense of duty. "Civilized" people possessed culture; "savage" people did not. The "heathen" then were an assortment of lower-class people who were not European in origin and whose skin was not white. 14 Civilized people bore a heavy burden of responsibility for their underprivileged cousins, but an unbridgeable barrier of culture separated them.

The concept meant less than modern Americans assume because "heathen" carried less inference of inferiority. The concept of heathenism worked well to mobilize Christians to their duty and to spur them on their way. In stages of anticipation, justification, initial contact, and reporting home, they used "heathen" as a code word for the benighted masses whose eternal fate was the responsibility of moral (that is, "cultural") Westerners. But once they came fully and continually into contact with the Chinese, their notions steadily changed. They discovered that Confucianism was in many ways like Victorianism in its emphasis upon the way of the gentleman, the path of moral duty, the necessity to control one's emotions, and emphasis upon learning and the arts. Furthermore, they discovered that Chinese society was no less patronizing than their own. To many Chinese intellectuals there were only two kinds of people: civilized people who had adopted Chinese culture and "barbarians'' who for whatever reason had not experienced the good fortune of being "sinified."

In making the worse possible case against Alabama missionaries, one finds many examples of cultural insensitivity and patronizing arrogance even among the third generation of missionaries who arrived after 1900. Methodist missionaries Hoadley and Ruth Berckman arrived in 1921, late enough to represent a more enlightened generation. And they had been indoctrinated well in cultural relativism. Their first letter home began with a proclamation of their lack of prejudice and the difficulty of understanding the Chinese. But the remainder of the letter reflected little of the objectivity with which it began. Whereas the history of America was Christian, the "background of the Chinese is heathen to the extreme. Comparatively we of America are freewe have the liberty to accept Christ and not suffer the consequences which are inevitable today in China for the Chinese are bound by custom, by rule, by ancestral ties, ancestral worship, and tradition so that the step is a great step entailing many things." They were especially puzzled by the "prevalent anti-foreign feeling" of both Christian and non-Christian Chinese.15

The Berckmans particularly emphasized the inscrutability of the Chinese. They quickly concluded that what mattered most was not what the Chinese said, admitted, or did, so much as what they thought.

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No component of American experience had prepared them for this characteristic: "An interpretation of this with American thoughts and knowledge is well nigh an impossible task. . . . He [Chinese] smiles and says yes and agrees but this is your Sphinx. An American unbares his soul to you and when he tells you the secret of his heart you know that you know. 16

Baptist missionary H. W. Provence also served in the early twentieth century. On his first trip into the interior he described a countryside that would have been lovely except for the grave mounds that disfigured every landscape. The boat that transported him was propelled by oars that made progress slow, "but that does not worry the Chinese, for they do everything slowly."17

If not the inscrutability or lassitude of the people, missionaries commented on the corruption of government and society. Presbyterian missionary James Montgomery arrived in 1917. Within months of his arrival he wrote an article for the Missionary Survey describing the graft of his cook and the corruption of the government.18

Chinese folkways drew even greater scorn. Folk medicine attributed illness to spirits inhabiting the world. Baptist nurse Cynthia Miller brought a Westerner's scientific knowledge and skepticism with her to China in 1905. Three years later she described the parental explanation for the illness of a mute child brought to her for examination: a devil had taken possession of the child. Still later, in 1911, she wrote about a plague invading Shantung Province from Manchuria. Her physician supervisor had asked the provincial governor to impose a quarantine. But after patiently listening to the American, the governor handed the physician a list of remedies: take a horse bone, wrap it in a piece of red cloth, and wear it in a pocket on the left side of the body (women should wear it on the right side). The disgusted physician closed the mission school and quarantined the missionary compound.19

Such disparaging descriptions by missionaries ignored the universality of folk beliefs. In Clay and Talladega Counties, among the mountain people of Cynthia Miller's childhood, folk remedies also thrived. And even sophisticated nurse Miller was not as liberated about the spirit world as she sometimes pretended. After recounting the Chinese explanation of devil habitation to explain a child's muteness, Miller offered her own remedy to the head of the FMB. When all her medical knowledge had failed to cure the child, a Chinese evangelist suggested that the missionary sing "Jesus Loves Me." Miller sang the comforting song while bathing the child in cold water and rubbing alcohol on her nose.

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The child finally sighed, sat up, and spoke, fully recovered. The Chinese evangelist concluded that this was surely a case of demon possession. When the demon heard the name of Jesus in the song, it departed. Miller's own reaction to this explanation is revealing: "I didn't know what to say but I had a very strange feeling. I knew it was something I had never seen before." She pondered whether devils did assume human form: "Being so completely under the influence of the evil one" perhaps ''he takes possession of them in this way sometimes. This is certainly a strange and interesting people." 20 Hers was an explanation as bizarre by the standards of modern Western science as the conclusion of the Chinese parents whom she scorned.

Fellow Baptist missionary Addie E. Cox had been in China for nineteen years when she described Chinese folk remedies in 1937. When a bat came into her room through a hole in the wall, her Chinese Bible woman killed it. Cox started to dispose of the creature when her Bible woman protested that a friend could use it for eye medicine. She sent the FMB another account of a convert who tried an equally bizarre cure for her daughter's insanity: "You have to kill a cat, let it lie till maggots are eating the decaying flesh; take these and cook them with food and let the insane person eat them without knowing it."21

No single aspect of Chinese culture drew more fire from Alabama missionaries than traditional attitudes about women. Ironically missionaries from a state that rejected woman suffrage and from denominations that did not ordain women, permit them to preach, or even allow female delegates to state meetings until well after 1900 denounced the subordination of Chinese women. They correctly traced the inferiority of women to Confucius's attribution of lower status to females. Expressions of such inferiority included the seclusion of women, the preference for baby boys over girls, foot binding, and arranged marriages.22

Addie Cox arrived in China in 1918 and like many single Alabama women missionaries had been influenced by the arguments of Alabama suffragists. She noted that not only was the "idea of equality" making progress in the United States, it was even gaining ground in China. But more typical of Chinese treatment of women was the barbaric practice of foot binding.

Chinese men found dainty feet a sexual stimulant and a symbol of high status. As a result, loving parents who desired advantageous marriages for their daughters bound the youngsters' feet in painful bondage that gradually deformed them.

Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) was horrified

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when she first caught sight of tiny girls hobbling around on bound feet. Children often arrived at her school transported on the backs of servants who deposited them directly in their seats, where they remained in pain all day. Baptist missionary Willie Kelly (1893-1937) recounted for Alabama "Sunbeams," a Baptist missionary organization for small children, the horrible story of a seven-year-old whose feet rotted off because of improper binding and whose mother then disowned her. She was given to a missionary who enrolled the girl in the Baptist school in Shanghai. Kelly and her missionary colleagues organized the "Natural Foot Society" to prevent the practice and to persuade girls to unbind their feet. Many mission schools refused to accept female students with bound feet. 23

Martha Foster and T. P. Crawford Confront Chinese Culture

No missionaries better reflected the ambivalence toward Chinese culture than Martha and T. P. Crawford. Martha Foster Crawford spent fifty-eight years (1852-1909) observing Chinese culture in both central and northern China. One of her biographers detected no positive expression about Chinese culture in the missionary's voluminous writings. Crawford substituted the Bible for the Chinese classics in her boys' school despite their vigorous opposition. She criticized Chinese religion and filled her diary with demeaning terms: Chinese were "superstitious," "stupid," "cowardly," untrustworthy, and had a distinctive smell: "The smell is different from that of the negro but where the person is not kept clean the smell is sickening in the extreme."24

Crawford's husband reflected the same late nineteenth-century racist notions. In lectures delivered to American audiences late in the century, T. P. Crawford used a series of similes to differentiate Caucasian, Mongolian, and African races. Orientals were like Indian rubber balls, gracefully yielding to pressure but then returning to their original shape when the pressure relented. African culture was like wax, retaining its new shape even after the pressure was removed. The Caucasian was like iron, yielding to no outside pressure. Chinese were like a reed, bending before the force of wind and storm, then straightening when the winds abated. Africans were like a vine incapable of standing without support. Caucasians were like a "majestic oak, standing strong in all the storms." Orientals were the race of the past enslaved by their traditions; Africans were the race of the present, "having no past his-

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torically and caring nothing for the future if he has plenty to eat and drink in the present"; Caucasians were the "race of the future, laying . . . plans . . . while not ignoring the claims of the present nor disregarding the lessons of the past." In literature, Orientals were the race of prose, lacking both music and poetry; Africans were the race of music and dancing; Caucasians were the race of poetry and "all those fine conceptions and beautiful imagery which contribute to the highest intellectual enjoyment." God's plan required all three racial strands for completeness, Crawford explained, but his lectures left no doubt which strand contributed most to civilization. 25

Both in her private diary and in written reports home to Alabama Martha Crawford depicted Chinese culture in unflattering ways. Her early diaries depict a woman busily imposing her "advanced civilization" on the benighted heathen. She taught her pupils that suicide, the "prevailing crime here, is murder and thereby breaks the sixth commandmenta suicide cannot go to heaven." Upon encountering missionaries who accepted arranged marriages and child betrothals, she was outraged: "O how every true feeling of my soul loathes the system! What is the history of Chinese domestic life but a catalogue of miseries, of wrongs." Such loathing seems especially remarkable in light of her own marriage of convenience two weeks after first meeting T. P. Crawford, a marriage contracted both from her romantic rejections and from their mutual desire to come to China.

Crawford's relationship with a young Taiping rebel during the 1850s best reflects her cultural imperialism. The Taipings claimed to be Christian. Indeed their leader, Hung Hsiu-ch'uan (1814-64), had been "converted" by an American, perhaps by the Reverend Issachar J. (I.J.) Roberts, a Baptist preacher and acquaintance of the Crawfords. Unfortunately, Hung preferred Old Testament militancy to New Testament grace. He fashioned his new faith into a heretical doctrine that Roberts tolerated, although he refused to baptize the Taiping leader. The presence of the Taiping envoy in her home while he parlayed with her husband tested Crawford's cultural sensitivity. Her presence in the company of males offended Chinese propriety, and at first the Taiping officer would not remain in the room unless her husband was present. Nor would she make any concessions to his sensibility. She sat through meetings though he would speak not a word to her. The slight was quite premeditated on her behalf: "By a firm and gentle course I hope to be able to exert a good influence upon him. I never push myself in his way, nor avoid his company; act just as I would if he were a foreign youth

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only have less to say to him directly on account of his apparent repugnance to me." 26

In time her strategy broke down his resistance, and they began to discuss theology. He conversed enthusiastically as he placed New Testament prophecies within the context of Chinese history. Christ's second coming was near, he believed, and the Messiah would establish the Kingdom of Heaven in China. The twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew described policies of the projected new Taiping regime. Crawford was not impressed. She confided to her diary: "If he be a fair sample of his party [the Taipings] . . . I fear they are strongly set in their enthusiastic prejudices, and would be hard to move from the sentiments under which they have fought and gained so much."27

The envoy thought he understood the Bible better than did the Crawfords. When her husband chided him with a verse designed to insult"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit; there is more hope of a fool than of him"the Chinese convert was more confused than offended. He did not pretend to wisdom, he protested. But even depth of conviction, usually a trait to be prized, failed to convince Martha Crawford: "He displays great independence of mindthe danger is that he will prove unteachable. . . . He reads the Bible for himself, emperor or no emperor. He wants the sense of the Bible and fully commits himself to its teachings so far as he can understand. O that the Holy Spirit may guide him in the way of truth."28 Unfortunately the Spirit seems to have led him to a truth separate from Martha Crawford's, which of course meant heresy and not truth at all. Even years after this encounter Crawford wrote in the Alabama Baptist that firsthand contact with the "raw heathen, no matter how highly civilized and educated, will soon convince one that their conversion under a few sermons . . . might be called an impossibility."29

During the first years of Martha Crawford's tenure, all heathen ways must be attacked head-on in the way that she had challenged her young Taiping acquaintance. As for children of Chinese converts who violated the Sabbath, she blamed uninformed parents: "We must gradually undermine these things by teaching the truth without, in many cases, making personal application."30

Such opinions fully comport with allegations of cultural imperialism and reveal Alabama missionaries in the worst possible light. But another and less negative argument can be made, and the evidence is equally weighty and convincing on this side. Missionaries often changed their attitudes as they learned more about China and its culture.

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Although Martha Crawford's diaries from the 1850s provide ample evidence of her cultural imperialism, subsequent events substantially modify this simplistic estimate of her life. 31 By the 1880s and 1890s a different attitude toward the Chinese emerges from Crawford's writings. She reflected with amusement on her husband's initial efforts in Shanghai to attract women to preaching services. She recalled accompanying him to meetings and taking her place in the women's empty gallery in the vain hope that her presence would attract women. Of course no women came because, as she discovered later, respectable Chinese women avoided public assemblies. Had they known more about Chinese culture, she mused, the missionaries would not have wasted valuable time and money erecting a women's gallery and stationing her as a lone sentinel to Western ideas Sunday after Sunday.32

Perhaps it was that incident that opened Crawford's eyes to an alternative approach to Chinese culture. Missionaries must "lay down their Anglo-Saxon fancies, study the genius of Christianity and the approaches to the native heart, leaving civilizing methods, as such, alone." Preaching "after the American manner" was an impossibility in China. The most successful missionaries had discarded altogether street-corner attempts to preach to "crowds of heathen." The best methods of evangelizing were not those exported to China by distant mission boards but those that evolved from firsthand experience with the Chinese: casual conversations, house-to-house visitation, and receiving them in one's own house: "In these [ways] women can engage as freely as men with the advantage of easier access to native homes.33

Nor did she consider traditional southern preaching successful among Chinese men. Crawford scorned Western-style sermons building point by point in logical order. Careful logic was necessary in private conversation but required "long practice and close study of the Chinese mind." The most effective sermon borrowed from Chinese patterns: assert a single principle or truth supported by a striking illustration.34

Despite Crawford's continued use of the word "heathen," the context of her correspondence and essays suggests a sharply modified meaning. By the 1890s her articles for the Alabama Baptist praised the morality of Chinese, the stability of the country's institutions, the learning of Chinese civilization, and the nation's reverence for law and order. Unfortunately, American missionaries had entered China after a humiliating war in which the Chinese thought of themselves as subjugated by a barbarous race. From the lofty heights of their own civilization, she

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wrote, Chinese looked with disdain upon a people who excelled them only in military technology. As for herself, she not only tried to recast Christianity in indigenous terms but even believed her life had improved as she moved further from her home and more toward her "non-speculative and intensely practical" Chinese acquaintances. Although she could have returned home on regular furloughs, she chose to leave China only four times during her fifty-eight-year career. 35

As for serving as the agent of Western cultural values, Crawford had become only too aware of the danger. She commented favorably upon a single woman missionary who had insisted on proclaiming the gospel "in its purity without those 'adjuncts' which she saw would have a secularizing and corrupting influence." In her own work she sought to evangelize without introducing unnecessary Western customs. The tension between cultures, between the strategies she brought to China and the new synergistic culture emerging from her personal experiences, appears clearly in her essays for the Alabama Baptist: "In short, we tried to make the New Testament Christianity our model rather than its modern typeyet without yielding any essential article of faith and practice as held by our Baptist churches, fully believing these to be in accordance with the divine teachings."36

Shifting Alabama Attitudes toward Chinese Culture

Crawford's changing conception of Chinese culture occurred amid shifting Southern Baptist opinion about appropriate cultural interaction. Woman's Missionary Union literature by the 1890s described Chinese civilization in flattering terms. The Chinese were a literary people presided over by an "aristocracy of learning." Even though the Foreign Mission Board was not changing fast enough to satisfy the Crawfords, it was developing new attitudes toward Chinese culture. Henry Allen Tupper, the board's director, portrayed China as a sophisticated nation with a rich heritage of art, science, and technology. He recalled the testimony of one of the earliest Southern Baptist missionaries in Canton who insisted that Chinese were not barbarians, as many Americans believed, but people of high culture. To be effective, the missionary argued, American missionaries must "cast off . . . foreign style, speech and thought, and put on the . . . spirit of . . . Chinese literature." In his own work he tried to strip away his language in order to speak and even meditate only in the Chinese language.37

In another book written eleven years later in 1891, Tupper again em-

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phasized the significance of cultural adaptation. He noted that missionaries ignorant of Chinese customs unnecessarily offended their intended converts. One board appointee traveling by horse courteously inquired directions but received a surly response, causing him to conclude that the Chinese were a rude people. In fact the missionary's ignorance of the custom of dismounting when asking a favor constituted the insult. Missionaries to be successful must study Chinese customs, etiquette, and thought in order to avoid offense. The fact that a southerner was a talented, well-educated, and eloquent seminary graduate and successful in large American churches meant little in China: "His Western learning will not place him among the scholars of the East . . . Missionaries claim to belong to the literati, but . . . native scholars, seeing most of them below the ordinary standard in the Chinese classics, only acknowledge them as 'foreign scholars,' far beneath their own attainments." Actually the most successful missionaries were not necessarily the brightest, Tupper wrote, but the ones who mastered the language, "adapted to their own surroundings, and fit themselves for acceptable intercourse with the natives." The uneducated rural masses were more responsive than the well-educated anyway. So, successful Christian theology must be indigenous and must develop its own nomenclature and phraseology. Chinese Christians would develop their own interpretations of biblical teachings based on their own experiences, not the experiences of Westerners who were wholly different from them. Chinese must acquire theology firsthand from the Bible, not secondhand from American missionaries. 38

Crawford's contemporary and closest friend, Lottie Moon, incorporated many of Tupper's theories or may even have inspired them. She dressed, ate, and spoke Chinese in her remote station in Shantung Province. While home on furlough in 1893, she spoke to many Baptist women's groups. Central to her speeches was an admonition to stop using the concept of "heathen Chinese." Although she had used the term herself when she arrived in China and had disparaged Chinese culture as uncivilized, such negative opinions had harmed her work. China was the most civilized nation in the world, she argued, and southern Christians must learn to speak respectfully of non-Christian peoples. She bemoaned that she was the only Western missionary in her region to dress exclusively in Chinese clothes.39

Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson was a contemporary of Moon and shared her opinions of the value of Chinese culture. She quickly learned that her childhood timidity and self-deprecation, so

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much a liability back in Alabama, were an asset in China. As she matured, her solid white hair, considered the badge of an aging spinster in her home state, earned her the appellation of "Honorable Elderly Teacher of Teachers" among the Chinese who venerated old age as much as Americans disparaged it. She quickly learned that in China it helped to conduct affairs in the Chinese way: Trying to assist one of her young converts, she employed an intercessor to negotiate a betrothal. 40

Atkinson also deferred to Chinese thought patterns in a potentially divisive debate within indigenous Methodist women's societies. A fellow missionary advised the Chinese women to adopt a constitution, bylaws, and parliamentary procedures. She urged the Chinese president of the societies to ask if anyone had corrections to the minutes after the secretary had read them. The president thanked the missionary for her advice, which she ignored. When the missionary repeatedly demanded that the president follow the proper procedure, the Chinese woman finally explained that it would be a breach of etiquette to suggest that the secretary had made a mistake, thereby causing her to lose face. Atkinson proposed a new and different structure that stirred lengthy debate among the Chinese, a dispute that some missionaries felt they should end. But Atkinson refused to intervene, allowing compromise to emerge in the Chinese way. Because she respected the Chinese and their way of resolving conflict, she waited until they had reached their own decision. Indeed Atkinson's biographer, who related these events, was herself a Methodist missionary so impressed by the older woman's appreciation of Chinese culture, psychology, traditions, and customs that she made it a major theme of her biography.41

The following generation of missionaries that arrived between 1900 and 1920 profited greatly from their predecessors' hard-earned experiences with cultural sensitivity. Dr. T. W. Ayers came at the turn of the century with a favorable view of Chinese culture. He believed the Chinese to be far more intelligent than was supposed by most Americans. In reports home he recounted their success in Western-style banking and business. They demonstrated more gratitude for his Hwanghsien hospital than had Alabamians for his medical work. Though he still referred to them as "heathen," his descriptions of their child-rearing practices and their culture reflect few pejorative assumptions usually associated with that word.42

Ayers's 1930 autobiographical book, Healing and Missions, contains many examples of his cultural enlightenment about his adoptive

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country. When a man beaten nearly to death was left at his gate, Ayers sought to help him. But the missionary's Chinese teacher warned against such action. Under Chinese law Ayers would become responsible for the wounds if the injured man died and would have to pay for his funeral. Ayers asked the teacher what he should do and meticulously followed the advice. When he constructed his hospital, he honored the preference of his Shantung patients for ground-floor buildings by placing three structures one behind another instead of stacked on each other. In this way he was determined to make the buildings "homelike and inviting to Chinese patients." 43

Fellow Baptist missionary Willie Kelly arrived in 1893 with considerable admiration for Chinese culture. Like Ayers she followed Chinese practice wherever possible, refusing to violate their prohibition about single women traveling alone about the countryside. She attempted always to take a Chinese Bible woman with her on such journeys. In fact she believed that the success of a missionary depended upon her Chinese coworker more than upon any other factor: "Every missionary needs at least one congenial, wise, and spiritual Chinese helpmate." In her case Kelly lived with her assistant, ate with her, and prayed and worked with her "as sisters in the Lord." Of the eighteen women who lived in her China residences, most of them Americans, "none has ever been more thoughtful, easy to live with, and helpful" than the Chinese woman. After her arrival Kelly worked in a town that had no other foreigner, and she received no Western food, mail, or newspapers. Completely cut off from the outside world, she visited the homes of Chinese women and children who became her dearest friends. And in times of personal tragedy and anguish Kelly turned for comfort to her beloved Chinese Bible woman, not to other missionaries.44

Methodist missionary Louise Robinson arrived in Soochow in 1914. The most valuable advice she received came from a fellow missionary who had been in China since before the American Civil War. He was fluent in the language and advised her to adjust fully to her Chinese surroundings. She should visit local temples where she should be "quiet, unobtrusive, unassuming, and respectful." She followed this advice carefully. When she began language study, she admonished her tutor to teach not only from manuals and the Bible but also from Confucian texts. As for her, "It was natural to be respectful toward the Chinese" because "we had a high regard for them." Even though she recalled occasions when a fellow missionary was culturally insensitive

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or even arrogant toward Chinese, she believed such instances were less frequent than among American journalists, diplomats, and business people. 45

The full flowering of this synergistic culture occurred during the next generation, the 1920s and 1930s. By then southern mission boards representing Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians instilled cultural sensitivity as a routine part of missionary orientation and policy. The Methodist missionary journal in 1932 described missionaries as "revolutionists." They could not stop change in China and must not fear it; instead, they should study and direct it. Asians were practical and perceptive thinkers who would not be satisfied with obscurity, compromises, and theoretical solutions. Missionaries needed carefully to think through what they believed about war, capitalism, American nativism, and exclusionary immigration policies. What did they think about American imperialism? Did natural resources belong to all humanity or only to those countries that had seized them?46

Presbyterian spokesman Frank Price admonished fellow missionaries in similar tones. He quoted Confucius as saying that when he arrived at a new place he first of all inquired about the customs of that place. Each Chinese region had its own traditions, practices, and ways of thinking: "The East is East and the West is West and it requires no small time and effort to reach a common ground of congenial intercourse."47

Such admonitions had a profound impact on all aspects of missionary experience but perhaps nowhere greater than in matters of race. Dr. H. A. Tupper warned that a missionary with racist notions-who insisted that because Chinese were in some superficial way offensive, they were therefore inferiorwould not win the Chinese to faith in Christ. In the sight of God Chinese were equals to Caucasians whether or not they might be so considered by Westerners. Successful missionaries must admit Chinese into their lives as equals, not as servants, must relate to them socially and not just officially.48

Missionary experiences reinforced such advice. Ruth and Hoadley Berckman arrived in 1921 and the following year found their American racial notions challenged. Hoadley received a telegram from a YWCA secretary to meet Dr. Willis J. King, a native Texan and professor of Old Testament and sociology at Georgia's Gammon Theological Seminary. As they traveled across Soochow by rickshaw, Berckman observed the amazement of Chinese who gazed upon their first black person. Although they expressed bewilderment in typically open Chinese fash-

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ion, none matched King's experience in Peking where a mystified rickshaw driver reached up and rubbed King's face with a finger, then inspected it to see if the black had come off. The evening of King's arrival in Soochow, Alabama missionaries and the black man sat at a table eating together. Berckman described the dinner to his in-laws in Alabama as ''naturally right but in the midst of prejudices that arise a strange thing." The next day King and Berckman visited Laura Haygood School, where the faculty consisted of southern missionaries (including two Oklahomans, one of whom was an American Indian). Dr. King spoke to the Chinese students, then sang spirituals they requested. The missionaries, recognizing "old Southern melodies" from their past, joined in. After the service the missionaries and King shared dinner. Berckman described to his Alabama relatives the unprecedented occasion of black, red, yellow, and white Christians breaking bread together. 49

While on furlough in 1922, Baptist missionary A. Y. Napier completed a doctoral dissertation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Entitled "The Challenge of China to America," the work depicted Chinese culture in flattering terms. A brilliant civilization thrived in China, he wrote, at a time when Britain and Germany "were peopled by half-naked barbarians." Chinese contributions to technology, architecture, horticulture, literature, and art were unsurpassed. Chinese intellectuals were fully equal to their European counterparts. If they were adverse to foreigners, their bitterness resulted logically from resentment to the Western opium trade and imperialism. Abuses resulting from unequal treaties that forced open port cities created the Chinese perception of missionaries as an extension of Western colonialism. Missionaries were largely to blame for this misperception because they relied on intervention by their governments to ensure their privileges.50

Like the Berckmans, the Napiers also learned profound lessons about race. Whatever racist preconceptions they might have brought from Alabama soon died amid the necessity to accept the Chinese. Their two sons returned to the United States with racial attitudes considered so radical by the standards of the 1930S that they were both fired from pastoral and teaching positions in the South.51

John Leighton Stuart, like Davie Napier, was the son of Alabama missionaries who were infected by a new cultural virus. Mary Louisa and John Linton Stuart served half a century in China, from 1874 until 1925. Their son Leighton carried on the family tradition by returning

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to China as a Presbyterian missionary and later served as U.S. ambassador. He insisted that the aim of Christianity must always be to evangelize by adapting to Chinese circumstances. He distinguished between the predominant nineteenth-century notion of missionaries hostile to Chinese culture and the more enlightened views of his parents. 52

Ambivalence toward Chinese Religion

Of the many aspects of Chinese culture that challenged Alabama missionaries, the one posing the most formidable barrier was indigenous religion. All three ways of Chinese wisdomConfucianism, Taoism, and Buddhismhad to be found wanting before a convert could discern any need for salvation. Implicit in the missionary enterprise was the necessity to attack and undermine these ancient value systems. Unfortunately, they were so integral to all aspects of Chinese thought that it was impossible to separate Chinese religion from other aspects of civilization. In particular, ancestor worship provided the cement binding generations of families. Though separated by distance, clans returned to ancestral temples to pay homage. To the educated upper class such rituals might be merely a matter of ancestral respect not unlike a southern family reunion or decoration day; but to the Chinese masses the rites carried important religious meaning as part of the filial piety that encompassed not only reverence for one's ancestors but also honor of one's living parents. Proper observance of such rites determined the happiness of the dead and the well-being of the living.

The first missionaries wasted no time addressing the issue. Eliza Shuck praised the politeness of the Chinese but condemned their widespread idolatry. Even the cooking area had its peculiar god, she complained. As she visited the homes of her students she admonished parents to discard their idols.53

Later generations were pretty much of one mind on this issue. Baptist missionary H. W. Provence arrived in 1904 and concluded that Chinese were "steeped in idolatry." Traveling in the countryside, he passed shrines and ancestral tablets where the masses prayed to images of the dead. Lois Napier came to China two years later but also interpreted her work as eradicating Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam and substituting Christianity for them. When Presbyterians James and Aurie Montgomery arrived in 1917 they dedicated themselves to the same task. In 1932 they sent Alabama friends "the latest thing in ances-

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tor worship," paper bills on the "Bank of West Heaven, Spirit Country" that became worth many dollars in the spirit world. "It seems impossible,'' they wrote, "that such practices should exist in a civilized country today, but this is just one of the superstitions that bind the Chinese. Those related to ancestors seem to find it hardest to escape." 54

Baptist missionary Addie Cox wrote friends in 1931 about her conversion of the best-educated and most influential citizen of a town in Honan Province. Despite his excellent mind, he had gate gods, a kitchen god, ancestral tablets, and a god of wealth. He burned incense and prayed to each of them.55

Nor did missionaries leave any doubt about the form that a transcendent Christianity should take. The constitution adopted by the first Baptist church in Canton, constituted in July 1845, established the same sort of exclusionary church discipline common in Alabama but added a unique Chinese twist: article six prohibited opium smoking. A tract written in Chinese by Baptist missionary Thomas O. Hearn in 1921 called for repentance of sin and thirst for righteousness, warned about "the evil one," and called Jesus the "Bread of Life." One wonders how many of these Western theological concepts had meaning to the Chinese who read them. Willie Kelly even deplored the substitution of cigarette smoking and whiskey drinking for opium use. She warned that these new sins were "a thousand times more harmful to the people than opium."56

Despite such denunciations, not even Chinese religion inspired uniform missionary scorn. Martha Crawford, representing the first generation of missionaries, realized how hard it was for Chinese to comprehend Christian theology and what foolish mistakes emanated from the cultural provincialism of missionaries. She recounted an embarrassing conversation shortly after she arrived in China in 1852 between her husband and a Chinese carpenter who refused to apply varnish to a piece of furniture. Not understanding that the varnish had to be applied in rainy weather in order to dry properly, T. P. Crawford insisted that his translator tell the craftsman that such a lame excuse reminded him of the way Adam "when he sinned threw the blame on his wife." His missionary interpreter patiently translated the response to the dazed carpenter. He explained who Adam and Eve were, how they had been created by the true God and placed in the garden of Eden, how the devil had tempted them to eat forbidden fruit, and how Adam, when confronted by God for an explanation, had blamed his wife for his own sin. The Crawfords, puzzled that such a simple comment should take five

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Mary Alice Huey, a single missionary who served for

twenty-nine years (1907-26, 1933-41) in Laichow as an

evangelist to rural women.

(Courtesy of Photo Library, Foreign Mission Board, SBC)

minutes to translate, asked: "Does the Chinese language require such circumlocution to express so simple an idea?" "No," their translator replied, "but the hearer needs a great many introductory explanations before he can comprehend your meaning." 57

Baptist missionary Alice Huey did not stereotype Chinese religion either. She wrote a friend in 1911 about a Taoist priest who was exceedingly kind to her. When her Bible woman persuaded a friend that it was wrong to burn incense to the idols at the temple, she changed to drawing an outline of the idol in the street and burning incense there. At least the Chinese woman understood part of the lesson, Huey sighed: "They know in a vague way that there is a Supreme Being but they do not know Him as a loving Father and Sin Bearer."58

By the 1920s most missionaries sought ways to harmonize Chinese and Christian religions. Baptist Mary Raleigh Anderson, who earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology at Columbia University, expanded the curriculum of her school to include geography, mathematics, and more instruction in Chinese, less in English. Such changes reflected her

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emphasis that Christianity was not "a foreign religion" but a "worldwide faith . . . as natural in Chinese as in English." Presbyterian John Leighton Stuart applauded Christian conferences recognizing that "some nobler elements might be found in other religions which were reflective of God's influence." Although the most evangelical missionaries still were interested only in conversion, more liberal ones, especially teachers, tried to reconcile Christianity and Confucianism. Stuart believed that certain elements of Chinese culture were compatible with Christianity. Among these elements were Chinese ideals about personality and society such as loyalty, reciprocal love, sincerity, right behavior, social obligations, and wisdom. Chinese concern for the welfare of society approximated Christian social reform. Obviously Chinese religion contained no equivalent to the Christian doctrine of Christ's substitutionary atonement. But at least there was ample ground for a Christian-Chinese dialogue on religion. 59

Chinese Reaction to Alabama Culture

In the process of understanding the reaction of Alabama missionaries to Chinese culture, it is important to remember that the Chinese were also reacting to Alabama culture. No better example exists than the mystified response of Chinese to the presence of a southern black man in their midst. But among the Chinese masses outside the large cities every meeting with a qweilo (pale ghost or foreign devil), one of their words for Westerners, was a cultural confrontation. Martha Crawford remembered one trip into the countryside when she was followed by a long train of curious women and children. Wheeling suddenly about and retracing her steps, she created general panic as the crowd dispersed in frantic retreat, shouting to the gods for help at the top of their voices. On another occasion two rustics discussed her group of missionaries without knowing that they understood the Chinese language. One commented: "How white they are!" The other, priding himself on superior knowledge, explained: "Yes and if you lived on cow's milk like they do you would be white too." In one village a Chinese woman explained her reaction to her first meeting with Martha Crawford eighteen years earlier on the day of her husband's funeral. Crawford wore on her head what appeared to be a copper wash basin (it was in fact a straw hat). Her sleeves and waist were tight fitting but her skirt spread into an enormous arch (she wore a crinoline petticoat beneath her skirt). "What

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a fright you gave me," the Chinese woman confided: "I trembled from head to foot . . . and I thought [my husband] . . . must have died on an unlucky day and the gods had come down." 60

Years later Willie Kelly encountered the same mistaken mixture of curiosity, fright, and affection. When she and missionary friends held picnics, they became public spectacles. Chinese would crowd around to ask questions about the strange utensils (knives, forks, spoons, plates) or to gawk at Kelly's Chinese Bible woman who always ate with her. One observer marveled that Kelly drank so much cold water yet lived so long. Chinese friends liked her cheery personality and bestowed upon her a Chinese name (as they almost always did for foreigners) fitting her personalityTowikee. Kelly misspelled the word phonetically, but knew that it meant "happy" and was intended as a compliment.61

The urban literati reacted to missionaries both with greater knowledge and with more hostility. Threatened especially by the pretensions of missionary teachers and physicians, they felt their status endangered. Their counterattack took a form that must have been ironically familiar to missionaries though they had seldom been the object of such subtlety and circumlocution. How could it be, a mandarin asked, that a virgin could conceive a child? Could missionaries do that? If not, how were they so certain it happened? Such an event seemed both illogical and contrary to the science that the Westerners themselves proclaimed. As for the social practices of missionaries, they were scandalous. When men and women socialized in the same room, the Chinese believed that sex must be on their minds. Worse still, single women newly arrived lived in the homes of married couples. This practice had an equivalent in Chinese culture: concubinage. Such conduct was not immoral to the Chinese but certainly contradicted the high-minded teachings of the missionaries. But even among the educated, Alabamians sometimes found a defender. One wealthy Chinese woman befriended Martha Crawford when the missionary and her American friend were criticized for traveling without male companions across the countryside like common whores. The woman, perhaps envious of the unprecedented freedom available to the two Western women, offered them refreshment and lodging, then defended them according to the standards of her own religious tradition: "I have great respect for those who are spending their lives teaching others to be good. You are like our own sage, Confucius, who went in his cart from village to village exhorting the people to morality."62

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Most of the missionaries realized full well that their civilization posed not just a threat to Chinese religion but a challenge to the entire structure of society. They comprehended as fully as the most perceptive of the mandarins that the issue was one of modernization versus tradition, not just of Christianity versus Confucianism. Missionary schools and hospitals posed new challenges that could not be entirely assimilated into traditional society. Martha Crawford rejoiced in 1898 that China at last was stirring from its long slumber. Poised on the precipice of the Boxer Rebellion, Chinese had discovered "that times are changed and they can no longer hold onto their antiquated ways." Missionaries had labored for such recognition, and now she believed that even the imperial government could not escape the escalating pace of political change. Classic literary exams must be altered. Western sciences and arts should replace the classics. Chinese armies armed with bows and arrows must give way to Western military technology. Temples should become schoolhouses and universities should be patterned after Western models. "Some who are more enlightened and have long seen China's weakness are rejoicing," she wrote, while "others are scowling and hating the foreigners, as the moving cause, with more intensity than ever." 63 Few Americans better contrasted the forces of modernization and tradition that were struggling for China's soul at the end of the century.

Missionaries were not always sensitive to the feelings of those caught in the enormous pressures of such change. School principal-nurse Cynthia Miller (1905-36) rejoiced that her school in Shantung Province was receiving many applications from young women "who are not at all helpless or dependent" on their husbands or families. One young bridegroom was so anxious for his wife to be able to read that he brought her to the school as he left for a job in Manchuria. Miller watched as they parted, the husband bowing low and thanking the teacher for taking his "stupid stick to try to teach her something," his wife bowing even lower, the two of them retreating from each other all the while bowing and expressing gratitude to the bearer of such modern opportunities for women. "They are," Miller wrote, ''such funny people."64

Missionary Life in a Chinese Bubble

Missionaries' attitudes toward Chinese society found expression in the physical separation of missionaries from their charges. One example was the preference of missionaries for life in the missionary compound.

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Not surprisingly they disliked typical Chinese houses and missed Western conveniences. But beyond the understandable preference for familiar lodging they often isolated themselves in separate compounds walled off from surrounding Chinese. Within these compounds missionaries from the same denomination virtually replicated their lives back home, reading hometown or state newspapers, eating imported food, and celebrating American holidays. At first the impetus for compounds was partly safety from mobs or marauding armies. But even more frequently cited in their letters and books was their aversion to the filth of the Chinese. Willie Kelly, who lived in a huge European-style home built especially for her, welcomed her Chinese Bible woman to live with her but wrote Alabama relatives that they could not imagine "the filth there is in China." Baptist missionary Thomas M. Thomas described the streets of Soochow as "reeking with foul odor amidst the surging throngs of humanity." 65 Missionaries defended the preference for compound living by noting that even Chinese lived in compounds if they could afford them in order to protect themselves from noise, epidemic diseases, and crime.

Missionary inadequacy in speaking Chinese dialects complicated their isolation and at the same time was a product of it. Because they could not communicate with Chinese for years after their arrival, they drifted toward compound living where they spoke mainly English with other missionaries. This isolation in turn slowed their acculturation. It is no surprise that those who seem to have learned the language best and fastest were single women and couples in remote areas where there were no other Americans with whom to live and talk. Forced to interact with Chinese, many missionaries developed genuine affection for them and appreciation of their ways.

It may seem a small item in retrospect, but the willingness to dress and eat Chinese-style seemed to impress their hosts as much as Western willingness to live among them. The best existing evidence for this problem is the way senior missionaries sometimes chided their peers for maintaining such unimportant Western habits.

Although Martha Crawford resisted Chinese food because older missionaries had warned her that it was injurious to health, she adapted Chinese dress. Other missionaries made similar compromises. When called to treat a wealthy man who was seriously ill, Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25) patiently accepted the elaborate social ritual that preceded his examination. The wife of the ill man brought him a bowl containing two poached eggs in the water used to boil them. Because she had

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heard that Americans liked sweets, she had stirred brown sugar into the water. Ayers was "not only expected to take it down, but to hold it down. It was a dose." When he returned home, Ayers's teacher applauded his good judgment in the matter, explaining that had he refused to eat, the family would have concluded that he believed himself too superior to eat Chinese food. 66

Cynthia Miller (1905-36) described an evangelistic journey during which she lived in a tent with her Bible woman. It was spartan living at its worst: cooking on a small oil stove, eating Chinese food, drinking unclean water, sleeping with her Bible woman, repelling terrifying dogs. This clearly was not Miller's notion of the good life. But she added in a letter to her director that she would not exchange places with anyone in America because the trip had brought her the "greatest joy since coming to China."67

Another single Baptist missionary, Clarabel Isdell (1935-45), lived in a compound with similarly situated teachers, and they had a cook who prepared American-style dishes when requested. But most of the time they ate Chinese foods, and Isdell always dressed in Chinese clothes.68

No matter how thoroughly they adjusted to China, however, there was always part of their culture they would not surrender. For most of them it was American holidays. The Fourth of July was especially important. On the Fourth, Presbyterians Hoadley and Ruth Berckman (1921-51) prepared dinner for all their missionary friends complete with a patriotic program and American flags. They celebrated "not because we needed it for rest but because we are Americans and this is our Independence Day, and anything that will add to an American feeling that is wholesome, we want it." T. W. Ayers agreed with this sentiment. "While many thousand miles away from America," he wrote, "we are yet Americans." He invited every American in Hwanghsien to his house for a celebration.69

If they preserved a bit of Alabama in a faraway land, if they preferred grits to snake and the Fourth ofJuly to Chinese New Year, that need not brand missionaries as cultural imperialists. The story is far too complex for such a simplistic conclusion, as the lives of Mary Louisa, John, and Leighton Stuart demonstrate.

Missionary Lives: The Stuart Family

Mary Louisa Horton Stuart is best known as the mother of Leighton, the distinguished liberal Presbyterian missionary, university president,

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and U.S. ambassador to China. But it was her own life that focused most sharply the conflicting and shifting images of two cultures in collision.

A decade following the Stuarts' arrival in 1874, Mary Stuart wrote her mother that the Chinese were far better informed about the outside world than when she arrived. Newspapers were read in Hangchow with the same interest as in Mobile. Many decades later Ambassador Leighton Stuart recalled that he had experienced the wonderful advantage of having been born in China, where his parents had exposed him to the point of view of Chinese preachers, teachers, and physicians, all of whom treated him as a sort of younger brother. Rather than extol the Fourth of July as the Berckmans did, John Stuart was attracted by the Chinese New Year. In 1892 he sent his son Leighton, then studying in the United States, a fascinating four-page description that revealed his interest in things Chinese. This parental respect for Chinese ways afforded him insights into Chinese "thinking, presuppositions, grievances, and misunderstandings of mission policy." It also convinced him that thoughtful missionaries sought the confidence of their Chinese associates. Such efforts had resulted in Chinese acceptance of him as one who understood them. Indeed, so highly was he regarded that even Communist leaders approved his appointment as U.S. ambassador after the Second World War. 70

But the fond memories of sons are not always to be trusted, and the universalist views of Leighton Stuart bear little resemblance to the conservative views of his parents when they arrived from Mobile in 1874.

Mary Louisa Horton was nineteen years old when the Civil War began in 1861. Her father was a founder of Mobile public schools, a probate judge, a former city mayor, and an elder in the Government Street Presbyterian Church. The war dealt her a cruel blow in August 1864 when her fiancé was killed during the naval Battle of Mobile. She became contemplative after her loss and plunged into a career as teacher, city missionary, and nurse. As a teacher she introduced physical education and gymnastics for women. All this activity did not entirely replace her grief. Friends believed that the emotional trauma she had suffered helped explain her decision during the early 1870s to devote her life to foreign missions.

Her life then followed a course remarkably similar to young Martha Foster's. She applied to the Presbyterian mission board for appointment. The board's secretary instead invited her to attend the next annual conference in order to meet a Princeton Theological Seminary

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graduate and bachelor missionary recently returned from a five-year term in China. After their first meeting, John Linton Stuart accompanied Horton and her brother back to Mobile, where he preached a revival at the Government Street church. He boarded with the Hortons for two weeks, after which the young couple announced their engagement. Weeks later, in October 1874, they exchanged wedding vows, then visited his parents in Kentucky on their way to San Francisco and passage to China. On Christmas Day, barely two months after their wedding, the honeymooners arrived in Hangchow. 71

The cultural baggage that the Stuarts carried off their steamer was far heavier than the trunks they deposited on the wharf at Hangchow. The young couple filled their correspondence with denigrating accounts of idol worship. Mary Stuart could not remain indifferent to "the degraded idol worship of this people," believing that ancestor worship was "the strongest citadel of the evil one in China." John Stuart also ridiculed Chinese veneration for idols: "It does seem supremely ridiculous to us, and so it would to them . . . if they only knew any better way." In his street preaching he ridiculed "the folly of worshipping idols made of mud and wood, with ears that cannot hear, eyes that cannot see and they laughed heartily at the picture; but they will go right off and worship again the next time they have occasion to do so."72

Chinese customs designed to fool the gods, such as calling a son by a girl's name to protect him against evil spirits, struck the Stuarts as ludicrous superstition. One Chinese acquaintance of Mary Stuart explained that she had already lost four sons; so she called her newborn son by a girl's name to deceive the gods. The Stuarts described a boy with a ring through his nose who was named "Little Calf" to accomplish the same deception. After relating all this to his mother-in-law in Mobile, Stuart concluded: "But this is quite as much as you will care to read about Chinese stupid people and stupid idols." Mary added that by Victorian standards the Chinese had no sense of propriety. They talked quite openly of "things that we consider most improper, and their children know all that their elders do. They live in [a] state of native simplicity, and the Old Testament passages which seem somewhat immodest to us, are just a matter of course to them." She had warned her Chinese nurse to watch her tongue around male missionaries. She regretted the Chinese rejection of new ideas and customs, their devotion to tradition, their cunning and filth ("I think they are the filthiest people I ever saw"), their sloth and indolence (''even our illustrious preceptors, who would not be allowed to do any work, have habits that

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would shock an ordinary person at home"), their addiction to opium, and their frightful odor. 73

Her first impression of foot binding filled her with abhorrence and inspired a sermon on the "wickedness of the fashion." But even Christian Chinese clung to the tradition with surprising tenacity. Mary refused to allow girls with bound feet to enroll in her school and chided other mission schools for compromising on the issue. Her school also insisted on the right to veto the marriage engagements of any of its students.74

The passing years softened the Stuarts' exclusionist views. Mary Stuart realized that a crowd of Chinese children who shouted "foreign devil, foreign devil" as she walked through the streets of Hangchow meant little by the epithet, perhaps no more than she meant by "heathen." When she visited a gentleman with two wives, the younger with two children and the older with seven, she did not apply her Victorian notions to judgment. She had tea with them and regretted only that though both were favorably disposed toward the gospel their husband would not allow them to listen to her when he was present in the home. Later when a criminal was publicly beheaded she not only watched but applauded the verdict: "The man was old and wicked, and had heaped up an immense fortune from taxing the people unjustly. I suppose this is a fair specimen of Chinese justice, sometimes exacted very speedily."75

John and Mary Stuart had begun a long theological journey. It would carry them beyond the parochial southern missionaries who arrived in Hangchow in 1874 and who expressed criticism of Chinese culture. In time they would become the parents whom Leighton Stuart so warmly described in his autobiography, respectful of Chinese associates and generous in praise of Chinese culture. Like most American missionaries who spent substantial time in China, the people who arrived from Alabama were changed by the Chinese whose souls they sought to win.

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6

The Best Way Is to Live One Day at a Time:

Missionary Life in China

Missionaries troubled by the vicissitudes of Chinese culture found refuge in the familiar patterns of home life. As much as it was within their power, they turned home, family, and the rituals of daily life into familiar and supportive institutions that fortified them against the battering of strange dialects, religions, customs, and traditions.

Invariably missionaries whether married or single began housekeeping in someone else's home, as we have already seen. Even if they were bound for an isolated interior station where no other missionary lived, they boarded in a city during language study. Couples usually obtained a separate house when they completed language study or had a baby.

Boarding often caused trouble even among the most helpful and nurturing missionaries. Martha Crawford opened her home for various lengths of time to virtually every Baptist missionary who located in Shanghai or Shantung Province. Most thrived under her tutelage, and many women regarded her as a confidante and second mother. 1 The presence of children with their inevitable noise and irritation compounded conflict. Furthermore, Chinese considered such arrangements immoral.

Single women missionaries usually lived together. Alabama Baptists Cynthia Miller and Alice Huey lived with a third woman. When Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson moved into the missionary compound, she invited her Chinese secretary to live with her because she felt safer "with another grown woman in the house." Her cook's daughter also stayed in one of the guest rooms. When she moved out of the compound over the objection of males anxious about her safety, she moved into a Chinese-style house. The huge house of forty rooms was large enough to accommodate her boys' school, provide her an apartment, and furnish facilities for the Chinese teacher and his family, the Bible women, an adopted Chinese infant, and another missionary. The

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local Chinese newspaper criticized the degeneration of the neighborhood: "An unmarried woman with a Chinese baby has brazenly moved into the heart of this proud and conservative city. There can be but one explanation: the woman is immoral." Despite such criticism the move proved fortuitous to her work, allowing extensive contact between Atkinson, her students, and their parents. The Berckmans opened their home to refugees, as did most other missionaries during political unrest. In 1939 they took in a fifteen-year-old Jewish refugee from Austria. 2

Finding a Permanent Place to Live

The second stage of housing usually involved a contained missionary compound. Some missionaries moved so frequently that they hardly had time to unpack. Ruth and Hoadley Berckman moved four times in three years, inspiring Ruth to write her parents that a Methodist preacher should be prepared to do three things immediately: to die, to preach, and to move.

Martha (1852-1909) and T. P. Crawford first lived in a Chinese house in Shanghai that they found unsuitable. The dark, gloomy walls depressed Martha because of their prisonlike quality. She even blamed her incessant headaches on "confinement" within the house. After a few months there, she confided to her diary that the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board should provide each missionary funds for building a house. But she added that every new arrival should live in a Chinese house awhile in order to appreciate fully a foreign-style dwelling.3

Their Shanghai experience left the Crawfords passionately concerned about housing when they moved to Tungchow in Shantung Province. When residents of the city discovered that an agent had purchased a spacious Chinese house for the Westerners, crowds posted placards demanding the Crawfords' expulsion. So threatening did the mob become that T. P. Crawford appealed to the U.S. consul at Cheefoo for help. He came to parley with Chinese officials and helped the missionaries occupy the house, placed a U.S. seal on the door, and hoisted an American flag. But someone in the streets began beating a gong and a large crowd gathered. Crawford and another Baptist missionary pulled out pistols and retreated to the house. They finally arranged a compromise whereby they abandoned the house for ten days after an assurance that Chinese officials would help them repossess the

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building. 4 The fact that the two Baptist missionaries carried pistols and were prepared to use them suggests that the martial aspect of southern culture died slowly in China.

Most missionaries remained at one station for years and usually lived with others of the same denomination in a walled compound. Presbyterians Mary and John Stuart (1874-1925) lived in an acre-large enclosure in Hangchow together with one other couple and three single or widowed missionaries. Their compound contained five Western-style buildings, including two dwellings, a church, and two schools. The area seemed like a paradise after passing through "dirty streets and dingy houses."5

Other missionaries took a less belligerent approach. A few years later Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25) sought to avoid such conflicts in Shantung by building missionary compounds so as not to invade Chinese neighborhoods. When Clarabel Isdell arrived in the 19305 she lived with other missionaries in the school compound where she worked. Baptists Cecil and Margaret G. Ward did not arrive until 1940 and stayed only a few years before war forced their evacuation. By the time of their residency the compounds were elaborate, and they remembered their wartime home as "one of the very few bright and hopeful places in Canton."6

One value of the compounds was greater security against burglars. Especially during periods of political upheaval, theft became a major problem. The home of Mary and John Stuart was burglarized five times in one year, so often that they felt helpless to prevent it. Burglars even took the wall gates off their hinges along with most of the chickens that Mary Stuart raised.7

Western critics have emphasized that the compounds isolated missionaries from Chinese. But such criticism is not entirely fair. Chinese also lived in such compounds if they could afford them. During the hundred years between 1850 and 1950, China was a dangerous, chaotic place in which to live, with weak central authority, local hooliganism, and intermittent civil war. Furthermore the compounds prevented missionaries from invading Chinese neighborhoods and provoking incidents such as the one that nearly led to violence against Martha and T. P. Crawford.

Martha Crawford left the most vivid description of the missionary compound. The Chinese-style house in Tungchow that they occupied at gunpoint was like most houses in northern China. It consisted of a single story with a number of small rooms arranged in four successive

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rows, each separated by a courtyard. The courts were small and enclosed by walls as high as the eaves of the house. Some courts were paved with stone. Two years after they occupied the house, the Crawfords bought the adjoining lot, pulled down the walls, and enlarged their house and courtyards. Although their original house had a large apple tree, it was not mentioned in the title deed. According to Chinese custom this omission allowed the previous owner to cut the tree down and sell it for wood. After the Crawfords enlarged their dwelling, they planted trees in the courtyards to provide summertime shade. They also used one portion of the enlarged building as a school, which improved the students' minds but not the Crawfords' solitude.

Gardens were equally important to Americans and Chinese, who especially valued flowers. The Crawfords planted locust, mimosa, and elm trees as well as Virginia creeper to cover the walls of their house and various kinds of flowers in the courtyards. By such efforts they turned their unpretentious dwelling into "a lovely and dear home where we expected to spend the remainder of our earthly days." 8

Mary Stuart began planting trees as soon as construction work began on their compound in order to imprint her personal touch. Ruth Berckman nurtured a kaleidoscope of color in her garden: sweet peas, nasturtiums, orange dahlias, hollyhocks, brown-eyed susans, blue cornflowers, large white daisies, and roses. Her passion for gardening was a good deal more than an idle hobby: "With streets so narrow and far from clean our yard with grass, trees, shrubs and flowers is a real oasis in the wilderness." James and Aurie Montgomery also prided themselves on their fall garden of asters and chrysanthemums.9

House furnishings consisted of a mixture of American and Chinese construction. At first, furnishings from home seemed to ease homesickness. Dr. T. W. Ayerswho recruited, sheltered, and shepherded many new Baptist missionaries bound for Shantung Provincesent elaborate instructions about what to bring: iron bedsteads and bedding, bedsprings (too expensive to buy in China), cook stove, cooking utensils, crockery, glassware, heaters, pictures, books, eyeglasses, personal wall hangings, heavy clothes, shirts and underwear, hose, pins, needles, towels, slop basins, and tools. Other than matting, chinaware, and men's suits, he believed virtually all Chinese-made materials were either more expensive or inferior in quality to American-made products. Better to pay the freight to transport such items, especially personal mementos, than to sell or leave them behind and later regret the decision.10

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Housework

Housework fell primarily to women. But Chinese servants were cheap, and nearly all married missionaries employed cooks. Because so many Alabama missionaries came from relatively affluent families that employed black servants, the transition to Chinese domestics was a natural one. Employing a cook was the easy part. Teaching the cook to shop for and prepare American-style meals was another matter.

Cuisine was a philosophical undertaking to the Chinese. The elements of a meal, like the male and female elements of the universe, must be made to harmonize. The use of sweet and sour dishes, as well as contrasting colors and textures, made the preparation and enjoyment of food an important enterprise. Alabama missionaries appreciated neither the philosophical origins of Chinese cooking nor most of its exotic dishes. They considered dogs to be pets, not entrees. They did not see the humor in the allegation that Chinese ate everything on four legs except tables and everything that flew except airplanes. There were exceptions. Hoadley Berckman ate Westernstyle meals at home but enjoyed Chinese food so much while traveling that his chief nutritional problem was gaining excess weight. The Berckmans' cook usually prepared meals using local productsgreens, carrots, turnips, water chestnuts, chicken, pheasant, and fish. The Berckmans refused to eat local pork except liver. Pheasant was cheaper than chicken and a mainstay of their diet. On special occasions when Hoadley traveled to Shanghai he would return with beef, bacon, boiled ham, string beans, English peas, beets, eggplant, cucumbers, Irish potatoes, cauliflower, and other delicacies. 11

Fresh milk was highly prized in a country with few cows. Cynthia Miller obtained fresh buttermilk from nearby Germans who kept cattle. Mary Stuart obtained two quarts of milk a day for her four boys and made her own butter. Virginia Atkinson avoided shopping in the Soochow market and had all of her food shipped from Shanghai.12

Once the appropriate ingredients were purchased, Chinese cooks did their bestwith mixed results. The Crawfords, who employed a cook and two servants, trusted their chef both to purchase ingredients and to prepare meals. Mabel and Frank Woodward taught a fifteen-year-old boy how to cook for them, converted him to their religion, and helped him negotiate for a wife. Like many of the cooks, he lived with his employers. H. W. Provence and Virginia Atkinson came to rely so heavily on their cooks that they even took them on vacations.13

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Although mealtime did not carry the same meaning for Americans that it did for Chinese, the taste of home cooking was a treat. Martha Crawford regretted her initial inability to make old-fashioned "evil-genius bread" but soon managed to bake an acceptable substitute. She only wished her mastery of the language equaled her progress in baking. Single missionary Cynthia Miller missed an eating companion more than she missed Western food. Meals were the worst time for her because of loneliness, and she developed the habit of taking a paper or a book to the table with her. 14

When not cooking or caring for children, missionary women spent much of their time doing housework. Most mission boards could barely afford decent housing, and dwellings came without modern conveniences. Having to maintain large homes without conveniences posed special problems. Hoadley Berckman helped his wife cope with chores when servants were unavailable by washing and ironing clothes, making beds, cooking, and mopping floors.15

Providing clothing once their initial supply wore out was a constant problem. Mary Stuart had sewn her own clothes back in Mobile, but servants could be obtained so cheaply in China that she confined her sewing to machine work. The Berckmans and the Bosticks purchased Chinese clothes, which were plain but warm. Hoadley Berckman even purchased a silk-padded long gown despite fumbling with his hands as he reflexively sought missing pockets.16

Children

Central to missionary life among couples in China was the bearing and nurturing of children. Before the widespread use of birth control in the twentieth century, married missionary women usually had babies at regular intervals throughout their child-bearing years. The first Alabama missionary, Eliza Shuck (1847-51), died in childbirth after only four years in China. The second in arrival, Martha Crawford (18521909), bore no children but adopted a boy and girl after their English mother died in Japan. Although the children caused her "care and anxiety," they also helped her relate to the Chinese who considered children a blessing "and their absence an evidence of divine displeasure." Presbyterian missionaries James and Aurie Montgomery experienced a different aspect of Chinese cultural notions toward children when their third child, born in 1921, was a girl. Chinese friends viewed the birth of a third daughter as a calamity; but Montgomery explained that he

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and his wife "fail to see this matter from the Chinese view, and think that little Aurie with her smiles and rolls of fat couldn't be beat even by a boy." 17

T. W. Ayers (1901-25) congratulated one of his Mobile recruits, Adrian S. Taylor, upon the birth of a daughter in 1909: "I am glad that you are not to have the charge of racial suicide laid at your door," he joked, then added more seriously that "those who have not these little ones know not the joy and sunshine they bring into the home." Ayers certainly knew. He and his wife Willie had nine children, although their health problems in China brought the Ayerses as much grief as joy.18

Frank and Mabel Woodward (1924-37) married at First Baptist Church in Maplesville, Alabama, on August 20, 1924, and sailed for Shanghai on September lo. A child was born near the end of their first year, allowing them to obtain a separate house after earlier residing with another missionary couple. As they ended their second year of language study, they had a second child. Mabel Woodward had just begun "women's work" at their new station when she became pregnant for the third time in six years. Even though they had servants, trying to raise three daughters in a home without running water while continuing private study of Chinese with a tutor left her little time for mission activities. 19

When her second and third pregnancies neared their end, Mabel Woodward traveled to Hong Kong for delivery. Unless a missionary physician was available, this was a familiar pattern. Ruth Berckman's first son was born with the assistance of a missionary physician and nurse at her station in Kiangsu Province. But for the birth of her second son she traveled to Shanghai, where he was born at the municipal hospital.20

Initial care for infants depended on the era and the preferences of families. Martha Crawford believed that infants should be turned over to Chinese nurses. Having seen many of her colleagues die in childbirth or shortly thereafter, she feared that new mothers were too feeble to nurse their infants and risked death'by trying. Entrusting the nursing and care to a "strong healthy Chinese woman" was a measure of protection for both mother and child.21

As the testimony of Ruth Berckman and Mabel Woodward makes clear, the early years of childbearing left them little time to perform the functions of missionary, the task that had brought them to China. Temporarily at least their responsibilities as wives and mothers eclipsed

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their missionary duties. Jumelle Williams, whose own missionary mother had died in China, explained that she could do "no work outside of the duties of my home." And even those duties proved beyond her strength, forcing her husband Nicholas to return with his family barely five years after they arrived in China. 22

As children grew older the focus of domestic life changed to education. Initially the mother often supervised formal study, especially in areas with a small foreign community. Ruth Berckman used the Calvert correspondence system preferred by many overseas Americans whose children did not have access to English-speaking schools. When the family later moved to Shanghai, her two sons attended the Shanghai American School, an institution that educated children of twenty-four nationalities in 1948. Mabel Woodward enrolled her three daughters in an interdenominational mission school in Hong Kong despite the anguish of family separation. There her youngest daughter was converted and asked to be baptized in the Pacific Ocean because it touched both the United States and China; she felt that she belonged to both nations. Like many missionary children the Woodward girls became bilingual because their friends were Chinese and even their parents spoke Chinese in their home.23

The effect of missionary family life on children is not an easy subject to reconstruct, but records allow access to the childhoods of two missionary families in some detail. Following the whirlwind romance and marriage of John and Mary Stuart, they traveled to China in 1874 and had John Leighton, the first of five children. One of the five died in infancy. Mary Stuart experienced anxiety about Leighton's digestion but praised her husband for sharing parental chores. He was "very fond of nursing him when he has time to spare." Eight months later her son had learned his first Chinese word, Lai-the, the name of their cook who prepared his milk. Any time the baby became hungry he cried "Lai-the" in a variety of tones. As he grew older he understood both the English of his parents and the Chinese of the cook and servants.

When young Leighton reached the age of two, Mary Stuart allowed his amah (nurse) to supervise his play. During a vacation in an apartment atop a Buddhist monastery, she came downstairs one morning to discover her son in the temple hall emulating worshipers, his head bowed down before the largest idol. In rhythm with other worshipers he bumped his head on the inclined bench in front of him. His Chinese nurse was convulsed with laughter, humor not shared by his outraged mother.24

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Mary Stuart reconciled herself to the preeminence of the Chinese language for her children because they were the only youngsters in the Presbyterian mission and were among the few English-speaking children in Hangchow. But she feared that they would learn more bad than good from Chinese children, as Leighton's experience at the Buddhist temple seemed to confirm. 25

As their children reached the age of four or five, the Stuarts tried to neutralize Chinese influence by infusing them with American traditions. Mary Stuart had the children write notes to Santa Claus and hang Christmas stockings. She could afford only a few Chinese toys for them, but that shortfall seemed to make little difference because in the absence of other children's talk about the holiday season they demonstrated only limited interest anyway. Regretting that her two sons had limited contact with other Western children, she manufactured such occasions. To celebrate Leighton's fourth birthday she invited all the foreign children in the city, a total of only eleven, to his party. After her eldest turned four and her youngest three months, she began to leave them occasionally with a nurse so she could begin mission work. Like Ruth Berckman she later educated her sons at home.26

Leighton Stuart remembered from the early years a few carefully selected Chinese playmates, delicious Chinese fruits and feasts, and boat trips on the West Lake. He confirmed his mother's success at isolating him from the corrupting influence of Chinese playmates. The four Stuart boys mainly entertained themselves playing in the courtyard of the mission compound. Although Mary Stuart began to teach the boys in her Chinese school when they were older, the strain of instructing them plus her other students took its toll. By the time the Stuarts took their first furlough in 1887, their four sons were eleven, nine, seven and four. After the furlough ended, the two oldest boys were left in the care of Mary Stuart's sister in Mobile, who had children of about the same age. With their cousins they attended Barton Academy, where they eventually graduated from high school.

During the year that the Stuarts spent in Mobile, the boys were often forced to dress in Chinese costume, eat with chopsticks, and sing hymns in Chinese, especially ''Jesus Loves Me, This I Know," and otherwise exhibit themselves with things Chinese for the edification and inspiration of Alabama Presbyterians. They did not enjoy the task.

When their parents returned to China, Leighton and David remained behind clothed in unfashionable British clothes and ignorant of Alabama customs, standards, and juvenile meanness. They talked like

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serious-minded adults, who had been their primary associates. Their Alabama cousins expressed equal parts of shame, amusement, and pride in their quaint relatives, but classmates in "this little provincial town of the deep South" subjected them to unending grilling about whether Chinese really ate rats, which country they liked best, and how the Chinese language sounded.

Their guardians were strict Presbyterians who dragged them across Mobile each Sunday morning and evening to a mission church that the two boys disliked. They also forced them to memorize Bible verses all Sunday afternoon. They prohibited attendance at movies and dances because the Stuart boys were children of sacrificial missionaries, a prohibition made more galling by the fact that their aunt and uncle did not deny such wicked pleasures to their own children. Compensation came in the form of another, more worldly aunt who invited the two boys to spend summers at her house on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay where Leighton and David fished, crabbed, swam, and sailed like normal children.

Leighton left Mobile at age sixteen for Pantops Academy, an elite private school in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was known only as a boy from Mobile, not as a missionary kid from China. The new environment was a relief to a child who was in full-scale rebellion against his missionary background. After finishing college and seminary, Leighton, like both surviving brothers, returned to China to join his parents as a missionary. 27

For the Stuart family the parting in Mobile was painful. On birthdays each parent sent a separate letter filled with affection, admonitions, and advice. "The best way is to live one day at a time," Mary wrote in one of her letters; "do your very best in the moment that is passing, and then you will not have to mourn over wasted opportunity." Cultivate politeness, she urged in another letter: "true politeness springs from a kind heart, but a habit of politeness only comes by constant practice." When she sensed her oldest son's growing interest in the opposite sex. she encouraged him: "Well, I like to have you in the company of nice girls. You must always be kind and polite to them. I do so want you to be a little gentleman, both in heart and manner."28

The coming of age of the nine Ayers children contained similar bittersweet elements. Hardly had they arrived in northern China in 1901 than T. W. Ayers was anxiously inquiring of the Foreign Mission Board whether it could pay an American governess to teach his children so he would not have to send them to boarding school in Cheefoo. He pre-

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ferred to keep them home for school even if he had to teach them himself at night. When the children grew older he urgently requested appointment of an educational missionary who could spend three years teaching Latin and algebra to the eldest children of Hwanghsien missionaries in order to prepare them for college. If the board would pay transportation, he and another missionary offered to pay the teacher's salary for three years. Then the teacher could assume the duties of a regular missionary. His younger children were too numerous for him to afford the nearby Cheefoo school and too young to board in Shanghai. Two years later, in 1915, he wrote the board again for funds to send his older children to school in Tungchow or Shanghai. When Ayers's daughter Lucy returned to China as a missionary, he beseeched the board to send her to Hwanghsien where she could teach missionary children.

Lucy was the eldest Ayers daughter and had to assume adult responsibilities early. When her mother returned to Alabama with the other children because of the critical illness of son William, Lucy stayed behind to continue her language study and tend her father. It was a terribly hard and lonely year for both of them. Lucy wrote that her father was "such a domestic man it will be especially lonely for him." 29

Lucy's brother Sanford, a robust boy who thrived in China and refused to answer to any name except "R. Squealer," began making rounds with his father in the hospital when only six years old. He witnessed surgery and traveled with his father on preaching/healing trips into remote areas of Shantung Province. When he returned to the United States to attend Wake Forest College, he brought the same passion for missions as his sister Lucy. In time both joined their father as educational missionaries, though Sanford later obtained a medical degree and took his father's place in China as a physician.30

Despite the religious ardor of Lucy and Sanford, being a missionary kid was never easy. At the age of nineteen, the Ayers's son Carey rebelled. Once back in the South he went on a spending binge and wound up deeply in debt and an embarrassment to his family. Ayers had to cut off his son's assistance from the mission board and seek help from another son, Harry, who lived in Anniston. Dismay nearly overcame his parents: Carey's "conduct is more painful to us than would his death be"; "We are distressed almost beyond endurance over the way he is doing, and at this long distance feel so utterly helpless." T. W. Ayers blamed the problem on an earlier bout of typhoid fever, which had mentally unbalanced Carey, and urged the board to pay his way back

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to China. The misconduct of this one son grieved his parents so much that it was difficult for them to concentrate on their work in Hwanghsien. 31

Such unhappy episodes were scarce enough to be a rare exception. They were probably no more frequent than had the families remained in Alabama, but distance compounded parental anxiety. More common was a vigorous and healthy family life with ample opportunity for socializing and fun.

Recreation, Vacations, and Furloughs

Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson loved to picnic and shop on Saturday afternoons and taught novice missionaries the fine Chinese art of haggling, refusing to pay more than a fifth of the original asking price for anything. Part of her shopping ritual included purchasing hot chestnuts from roasters along City Temple Street in Soochow.32

Atkinson also enjoyed cooking American-style for visitors, a common interest of many female missionaries. Martha Crawford quickly adapted to the elaborate British afternoon teatime prevalent in Shanghai and developed skill in the art. Ruth Berckman used household help to entertain Chinese and missionary friends. Mary Stuart invited all the Americans in Hangchow to dinner each Christmas, sympathizing not at all with English friends who preferred a holier day of religious services.33

Private time was important also. Ruth Berckman entertained herself by traveling on foot across the city of Soochow, a city known as the "Venice of Asia" because of its canals and bridges. Martha Crawford read three chapters of the Bible each morning and evening with her husband and read books every day. Most days she also refined her literary skills by writing in her diary. 34

Vacations and furloughs furnished more extensive leisure. Many areas where missionaries served were miserably hot and life-threateningly unhealthy during July and August, so they escaped to the mountains. H. W. Provence left humid Shanghai for Mokanshan Mountain, some forty hours' travel up the Yangtze River. He pronounced the scenery magnificent and the peace and quiet a welcome respite from the noise, heat, and bustle of the huge city. T. W. Ayers temporarily manned the Presbyterian infirmary in Tungchow to get his family away from the humid coastal summers.35

Mary Stuart (1874-1925) knew the perils of coastal zones from her

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youth in Mobile, where she nursed victims of yellow fever. So following two malaria-debilitating summers in Hangchow, she supplemented quinine with a vacation on a mountain beyond the West Lake. She persuaded reluctant Buddhist monks to allow her family to live in an apartment atop a temple if they would bring no meats along. (She violated the prohibition by smuggling in tins of meat.) The room was filthy, but the fresh air and scenery restored her health. The Stuarts later found a less fundamentalist Buddhist temple that rented them a guest room on a 1,000-foot high mountain where couriers brought fresh food and milk daily. The family spent each summer for ten successive years at this monastery. They grew so fond of the place that following their furlough in Mobile they built a six-room bungalow on the mountain as a summer retreat, which they shared with fellow missionaries. The Stuarts later helped develop a summer resort area at the 3,000-foot level on a nearby mountain. Their Presbyterian mission agency granted money for construction of their vacation house in an effort to boost both health and morale. 36

Single Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) also discovered the benefits of Mokanshan Mountain near her station in Soochow. In 1899 her mission developed a summer resort on the bamboo-covered mountain, building inexpensive houses and a small church. The single women of the Methodist mission occupied a large rambling house with wide verandas and took perverse pleasure in the presence of so many single Methodist missionaries from across China. One Western Shanghai businessman, needing to contact one of the vacationers, allegedly instructed his Chinese messenger in pidgin English: "You go house. Be'long plenty missy [who] no catchee master." Atkinson so loved the mountain that she and an associate built a two-story house for themselves out of stone quarried on the site. They named their retreat "Alabama Terrace" in honor of one translation of the Indian word that gave name to her state, "here we rest."37

Formal furloughs provided extended vacations. By late in the nineteenth century or early in the twentieth, denominational boards paid the way of missionaries back to the United States. Earlier there had been neither adequate replacement nor money to do so. But as missionaries collapsed beneath the emotional and physical strain of work in China, their sponsoring agencies reckoned release time a wise investment. The Stuarts remained in China thirteen years before taking their first furlough in 1887, but they came home again in 1894. Martha and T. P. Crawford returned home only four times in more than fifty years.

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"Alabama Terrace" (marked with an X) on Mokanshan Mountain ("China Hill"),

Virginia Atkinson's Methodist summer vacation house. Mokanshan Mountain also

served as a vacation haven for H. W. Provence and other missionaries from Alabama.

(Courtesy of Denson Family Papers, Auburn University Archives)

Their sponsoring agency, the SBC Foreign Mission Board, lagged behind other denominations both in providing money for summer retreats and in establishing a reasonable furlough policy. T. W. Ayers, whose family had to return to the United States frequently for health reasons, compared his denomination's policy unfavorably to those of northern Presbyterians and English Baptists. He urged a five-year limit before furloughs. 38

Vacations within China were often more restful than furloughs in Alabama. Denominational boards, local churches, and mission societies hounded furloughing missionaries for speeches, programs, and sermons. Many missionaries also pursued furloughs to work on advanced degrees or refresh their medical knowledge. They added these burdens to exhausting travel to visit relatives in other states. As a consequence, furloughs often left them more exhausted than did their work routines in China.

Despite such demands, their correspondence makes clear that con-

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tact back home was a chief source of strength and inspiration. Nearly every missionary experienced bouts of homesickness, especially during the first years of service. News from home hastened adjustment. But during the early decades such encouragement came infrequently. When Martha Crawford arrived in the 1850s, letters traveled three and a half months overland to Hong Kong, thence by steamer through the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, by land across the Isthmus of Suez, by ship again through the Mediterranean Sea to England, and finally across the Atlantic to America. The postage charge was forty-five cents for a half-ounce letter. Because mail often disappeared, Crawford believed that some anticlerical ship masters routinely dumped missionary mail overboard. Eliza Shuck complained during the same era about lost mail that delayed news from her family for months at a time. 39

Such delays particularly upset Mary Stuart, for whom mail from Mobile was an essential link to a beloved family. Months after arriving in 1874 she complained to her mother that foreign mail had arrived with not a single item for her. Her husband wrote in another letter that Mary "looks forward to the arrival of the mail and then reads and rereads the home letters." Responding to this chiding, her mother became Mary Stuart's most faithful correspondent, scarcely ever missing the biweekly mail that arrived in Hangchow. Her daughter applauded this effort "to never let the China mail go empty." Three years later Stuart still thanked her mother for including a letter in every batch of mail. By then mail from Alabama arrived in only two months.40

By the mid-1920s mail from Alabama still took six to eight weeks to reach Mabel and Frank Woodward, almost as long as it had taken half a century earlier. And the mail was just as highly treasured. Baptist missionary Irene Jeffers complained about receiving so little news from home ("It is so hard to go without news!") and feared her letters were being lost. James and Aurie Montgomery rejoiced when one batch of mail brought them twelve letters together with magazines and papers. Cynthia Miller was not a faithful correspondent herself but admonished her family that "I do get so hungry to hear from all of you." Missionaries read letters over and over, then often filled trunks with them to carry into retirement.41

Nor was such contact unrelated to the practical necessities of living in China. Mary Stuart used family correspondence to request calico, linen, stockings, children's shoes, photo albums, and pictures to hang in her house. Return packages brought such treasures from home. Virginia Atkinson received handkerchiefs, scarves, a collar, and money

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on her birthday. Addie Cox opened a box containing sweaters, children's clothes, sweets, and Snowdrift shortening, which she used for cooking as well as a substitute for cold cream. 42

Unfortunately the same mails that brought treasured parcels also announced tragedy. The Berckmans lost both parents and were unable to attend their funerals. Addie Cox also learned of her mother's death from a letter. Early in 1937 Frank Woodward's mother wrote, pleading that he return home if he desired to see her again. He could not leave because the mission desperately needed him. In late February his father died, and seventeen days later he received news that his mother had died as well.43

Health

Not all bad health news crossed the Pacific traveling west. Life in China challenged even the strongest constitutions. Many Alabama missionaries literally gave their lives to the cause. At least four women and two men resigned their appointments because of ill health. Married couples with children suffered the greatest perils; single women fared best.

Conditions were especially grim during the nineteenth century. Mission boards only slowly appointed physicians, and in their absence no Western-style medicine was available. Of the first three missionaries appointed by Southern Baptists, all died or experienced debilitating health problems that terminated their service. During the fourteen years following Lottie Moon's appointment to Shantung Province in 1873, Southern Baptists sent eight new missionaries to the North China Mission. By 1887 three of them were dead, three more had nervous breakdowns, and one resigned to become U.S. consul. Work in Hwanghsien alone broke the health of seven missionaries.44

Health problems certainly affected Alabama missionaries. Eliza Shuck (1847-51) knew that her husband's first wife had died in childbirth and feared for her own life. She wrote the Foreign Mission Board that the Shanghai mission desperately needed a physician missionary, adding discreetly but firmly: "Perhaps we ladies feel [the need] more than the gentlemen." On November 21, 1851, her worst fears were realized: she died following the birth of a baby. The board was so appalled at the mortality rate among wives that it suggested that Shuck search for another wife among women already in China. He instead chose to bring his children home.45

Hot and humid Shanghai summers took a frightful toll on missionar-

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ies. Martha (1852-1909) and T. P. Crawford were more fortunate than the Shucks, although both of them experienced health problems. Martha Crawford returned home for health reasons in 1857 and her husband the following year. She recorded in her diary the case of a Baptist missionary wife in Shanghai who became deranged, threatened to kill herself, and would not allow her husband out of her sight. Although Martha Crawford was a plucky woman who refused to become paranoid about the threat of rape that terrified other Shanghai missionaries during the Taiping upheaval, she did fear illness and death for herself or her husband. 46

When Crawford and her husband became ill in 1863 with a liver disease prevalent in the Shanghai region, they decided to move north to Shantung Province in hope of a healthier climate. But the move was only partially successful. Poor health forced them to recuperate in Japan in 1876 and in the United States two years later. Thus began a downward cycle for T. P. Crawford, whose symptoms included extreme melancholy, depression, deviousness, cruelty, and temporary spells of paralysis. This period of his life corresponded to growing conflicts with other missionaries and the Foreign Mission Board as well as tension within his marriage. Another furlough temporarily renewed his strength. But the return of paralytic seizures and a nervous breakdown forced him to return home again in 1889. His wife tolerated these disorders as best she could, all the while managing her school and carrying on her own ministries.47

When John and Mary Stuart arrived in 1874 conditions were so primitive in Hangchow that when she lost a filling it took two weeks to find a dentist to repair it. Although she constantly reassured her mother about her health, she contracted malaria early in her service and soon filled her letters with requests for quinine and bottles of "Spirits of Turpentine," both of which were extremely expensive in China.48

Nicholas Williams (1871-76) knew the perils of China before sailing: His wife's mother had died there in missionary service. He had worried about his fiancée's fragile health and even contemplated not marrying her because of it. Twice after arriving he barely escaped death, once when a robber attacked him in his bedroom and again when a typhoon swept over Macao, where he was visiting. The Williamses had two children in China, which broke Jumelle Williams's health and forced them to return home in 1876 only five years after they arrived.49

Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) suffered a variety of ailments, some routine but others life-threatening. The hot, humid Soochow summers

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proved a hospitable environment for malaria, typhoid, dysentery, and cholera. Not long after arriving in China in 1884 she experienced a severe allergic reaction to varnish, when her penchant for shopping caused her to examine too closely an intricately carved table that had just been finished. An entire litany of ailments followed: high blood pressure, chronic bronchial infections, severe arthritis, typhoid fever. So determined was she to remain in China that she sought relief from her crippling arthritis by following an American folk remedy. While home on furlough she consulted several dentists about reports she had heard that removing teeth cured arthritis. Several dentists dismissed the rumors and refused to pull her teeth; but one finally agreed that the extractions might help. He removed all her teeth and replaced them with a plate. The arthritis was just as bad, but Atkinson returned to China satisfied she had done everything within her power to prolong her missionary career. 50

The twentieth century brought improvements in health care partly due to the appointment of large numbers of medical missionaries. Modern Western medicine became available in all but the most remote districts. But the presence of physicians by no means ended the crisis. Baptist missionaries H. W. and Mary Hall Provence arrived in Shanghai from the Ensley Baptist Church near Birmingham in 1904. They took one child with them, and, after the birth of a second in 1908, Mary Provence began to suffer from nervousness and insomnia. During their furlough in 1912 her symptoms worsened. They resigned rather than return to China. Hoadley Berckman nearly died from appendicitis and a gastric ulcer. Clarabel Isdell developed chronic bronchitis that still plagued her half a century after she left China.51

Of all the Alabama families that suffered calamities in China none matched the T. W. Ayers family (1901-25). In 1905 eight-year-old William developed typhoid fever. When an enlarged spleen threatened his life, Willie Ayers and all the children except Lucy returned to Alabama. T. W. Ayers arrived just before William died in June 1906. The Ayerses returned to China, leaving their seventeen-year-old son Carey to start college. One daughter had married and several other children stayed behind to attend school. Back in China, Dr. Ayers became so enfeebled by rheumatism and overwork that he had to walk with the assistance of crutches.

In 1907 the Ayerses received word from the United States that their son Stokely had died, their second loss in little more than a year. Their

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son Carey also had typhoid fever, causing them to pass through ''the darkest waters we have ever gone through." 52

In 1912 Willie Ayers developed an abscess on her liver that required another trip to Alabama. She also contracted sprue, an intolerance to protein in wheat and other grains that damages the lining of the intestine. In December 1916 their daughter Mary Lee, who was then studying in Peking, caught tuberculosis, requiring yet another trip home. Ayers wrote in desolation: "It looks as if my family is going to pieces. Mrs. Ayers sick, a son [Carey] in America probably [with] incurable heart trouble, my daughter in Peking sick and going home . . . with what I fear is tuberculosis." Carey, who had caused his parents such grief with his reckless extravagance, died inJuly 1917 while his parents were in Alabama on furlough. To that time the Ayers had buried a child on each furlough. A bout with cholera nearly took T. W. Ayers's life in 1920.53

The decade of the 1920s was no kinder to the Ayers family. The worsening health of Willie Ayers forced them home again in 1923, and two years later their son-in-law N. H. Pitman, then also a missionary in China, died. Finally in 1925 the Ayerses had lost enough. T. W. Ayers resigned to return to the United States where his wife could receive better care. But their pain had not ended. Their son Sanford, after barely escaping death several times during Japanese bombings of his hospital in China, had to return to the States in 1939 with a serious illness.54

This ill-fortune would have tried even the fortitude of Job. But the Ayers family reacted with remarkable equanimity and faith. As single Presbyterian missionary Mary Bissett wrote from China in 1920 after a series of health crises: "We cannot but wonder what God wants His children to learn from these many hard lessons, but we must pray and work and not worry, for He is at the helm and can make no mistake."55 Such religious faith (or fatalism) was perhaps the missionaries' argument of last resort in a world they little controlled.

Family Finances

Added to the woes of poor health were constant financial problems. The decades between 1850 and 1950 were generally not good economic times for Alabama or the South. The rate of farm tenancy soared and industrial wages hovered near a dollar a day. The middle class grew slowly and even the upper class was not extravagantly wealthy by

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American standards. Mission boards relied heavily on women's missionary societies to raise funds, but contributions tended to mirror economic conditions. Periods of prosperity such as the 1880s, the years from 1900 to 1925, or the 1940s were interspersed among decades of disastrous upheaval and depression: the 1860s and 1870s, the 1890s, the late 1920s, and the 1930s. Southern mission boards struggled to maintain stable funding during extreme gyrations in contributions.

The SBC Foreign Mission Board supported nearly three-fourths of Alabama missionaries in China, so its salary policies offer the clearest examples of inadequate support. The board depended on the voluntary mission contributions of independent congregations until the coordinated budget plan known as the Cooperative Program began in the mid-1920s. Salaries of missionaries varied over time but in 1900 amounted to $600 per missionary or $1,200 for a couple. Annual supplements to their salaries included $100 per child, $50 for a language teacher (for the first two years), $50 for house rent, and $100 for incidentals (a total of $1,500 a year for a couple with one child). Although Baptist missionaries could manage on this stipend in normal times, it allowed for no crises. No money arrived during some years of the American Civil War. Exchange rates from dollars to local currencies fluctuated wildly. During the 1890s and 1930s the board cut salaries severely (to half the normal $600 during the 1890s). Other denominations experienced similar problems. In 1933 Presbyterians Ruth and Hoadley Berckman suffered a salary cut of 35 percent." 56

Further complicating low salaries were inadequate project budgets. Mission boards understandably put what resources they had into personnel salaries and expenses, leaving facilities and programs chronically underfunded. Missionaries responded during stable years by expending funds from their own salaries on churches, converts, students, and patients. This practice was especially common among single women missionaries. Clarabel Isdell in the 1930S preferred not to give money directly to individual Chinese for fear of creating "rice Christians" whose conversions depended on financial reward. But she did contribute through a foundation that helped Chinese. Cynthia Miller (1905-36) used Christmas gifts from friends and family in 1931 to support the entire salary of one Chinese teacher at her school and the partial salary of another. When civil war damaged her school buildings at Laichow in 1932, the depression-wreaked board had no emergency funds. So she withdrew her retirement annuity to repair the facilities.

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In 1936 she made additional repairs from her savings and continued to pay the salary of a Chinese teacher. She also paid tuition for two of her former students to attend school in Hwanghsien. She provided support through a no-interest loan to be paid back at the rate of one-third their salaries after graduation. During the eighteen years that she provided loans to students, she helped establish the careers of many Chinese Baptist leaders. 57

Such generosity during good times made bad times worse. In 1911 the Chinese bank where Miller kept her small personal savings account as well as mission funds failed. She paid the funds back out of her own salary and contributions from her sister. But by 1933 her sister no longer worked and was caring for their eighty-three-year-old mother. Miller began sending part of her salary to them in addition to contributions sent to another sister and a niece in college. She even sent funds to reduce the debts of her sponsoring mission agency. Months later she wrote a furious letter when the FMB substantially cut appropriations for her work. The reductions, she complained, meant that she would have to subsidize her schools while Baptists in the South lived in luxury and spent money on clubs and banquets. She angrily canceled contributions toward the board's debts and was even forced to eliminate contributions to her niece's college tuition. Her salary was $768 a year in 1935, only $168 more than her predecessors had received half a century earlier.58

Other missionaries experienced similar crises. Eliza Shuck (1847-51) tried to pay a language teacher but had insufficient funds even for support of her family. Martha Crawford confided to her diary in the mid 1850s that she and her husband had only $50 and had no prospect of obtaining more from an empty mission treasury; but they trusted in God's providence. Like so many other missionaries their impoverishment resulted partly from spending part of their salaries on mission work. When Nicholas Williams took his wife Jumelle home in 1874, the family had no money. The FMB supported them for five months after their resignation for health reasons, but they had no funds for medicine or an operation. Jumelle repaired holes in her husband's clothes because he could not afford a new suit. They had neither horse nor buggy, and he had to walk miles to preach in rural Alabama churches. The board responded to their letter by sending $100. T. W. Ayers spent most of his 1920 salary on three children attending college in the United States.59

Missionaries coped with such exigencies in a variety of ways but

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none so strangely as in the case of the eccentric T. P. Crawford. The American Civil War interrupted board appropriations, forcing Crawford to begin unorthodox fund raising. When one of the mission buildings burned, he collected contributions door to door in Shanghai's foreign settlement, enough to replace a $12,000 building. He also began to dabble in Chinese real estate. His knowledge of the Chinese language allowed him to serve as middleman between Chinese owners and foreigners who wished to purchase land near the foreign settlement. He used his commissions ($6,600 during an eighteen-month period of 1862-63) to buy rental property that generated income throughout the remainder of his career in China. He also taught nightly English classes to Chinese merchants for a charge of $10 each per month. By the end of the Civil War, income from his private ventures were three times his board salary, though his wife admitted that such activities detracted from time available for mission work. Later in life the conflicts resulting from such business dealings poisoned his relations both with Chinese Christians and with fellow missionaries. 60

The result of a combination of inadequate board support and selfless missionary generosity was a perilous retirement. Chinese friends built a house for Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) so she could remain in her beloved China after her retirement. She received no Methodist mission money for vacations or other special activities, but her small stipend as an emeritus missionary plus a favorable foreign exchange rate provided for her needs and left a small surplus for helping Chinese friends.61

T. W. Ayers (1901-25) was not so fortunate. In 1925, when the health of his wife forced his retirement at age sixty-seven, he lamented that "after having given the best years of my life here it is not a pleasing prospect to look forward to going home and battling with the world for an existence. . . . I go out to battle for an existence without having saved a dollar." He had long urged the board to create a retirement program to begin at age seventy, but to no avail. T. Bronson Ray, executive secretary of the FMB, dealt with the crisis by urging Ayers to take medical leave, so his salary could continue, rather than retire, which would cut off funding. He then employed Ayers as a board fund raiser working the Alabama/Georgia/Florida region. At age seventy-five, suffering from a severe kidney ailment and with his wife near death, Ayers finally gave up his work when the board implemented his decade-long call for a pension plan.62 Despite his near indigence and years of unheeded complaint, he expressed no bitterness toward the board.

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Missionary Lives: Willie Kelly

Willie Kelly's experiences offer one of the best insights into the daily life of a China missionary. The daughter of a once-wealthy Wilcox County planter who lost his land after the Civil War, Kelly attended the University of North Alabama. She gave up a promising teaching career to become assistant to Dr. W. B. Crumpton, the influential missions secretary of the Alabama Baptist Convention. Crumpton had been her pastor earlier and had first shown her a foreign mission magazine with letters from Lottie Moon that whetted Kelly's appetite for service in China; she applied for appointment in 1892. A major depression drained the board's funds, causing it to delay action on her request. Crumpton interceded repeatedly on her behalf and finally promised that Alabama Baptist women's missionary societies would guarantee funding if the board would appoint her. Upon receiving this assurance the board complied with her wish, and she sailed for China in 1893 over her father's strenuous objections. He was elderly, his wife had died, and Kelly had helped tend and educate the younger siblings. She was thirty-one years old, which he considered too advanced for beginning a strenuous new life in China. 63

Like so many other missionaries, she experienced homesickness and eagerly awaited each mail delivery. Once when the mail brought five letters, four issues of the Alabama Baptist, and other denominational literature, she wrote Crumpton that she was too overjoyed even to read it. She just sat and held it in her lap. When the U.S. Post Office in Shanghai closed, she urged the FMB to publicize her new address in " big lines" as well as the new cost of postage. She wrote Alabama friends complaining about the seven-year term of service required before her first furlough. She believed such a term was too long.64

Almost from the time she arrived in Shanghai to teach and work with women of Old North Gate Baptist Church, Kelly lobbied for a house where she and other single teachers could live. She first asked Crumpton to approach Alabama and North Carolina WMU women about funding the project. Although Kelly's public reports obliquely called for separate housing for single missionaries so that Chinese women would feel more comfortable visiting them, her private letters to the FMB were more frank: "Any missionary can tell you that it is not best for single ladies to live with married people." When her mission voted to sell the house in which she had lived, she rejoiced that a new house for single

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missionaries would provide privacy as well as a place to entertain Chinese friends. 65

Her dream of independent housing moved forward when she returned home for furlough in 1900. Early in her teaching career she had lived in the Alabama home of lumber baron W. T. Smith while tutoring his children. While she was home on leave he invited her to tutor his children, which she did, mentioning the need for better missionary housing. Although Smith was Baptist he did not believe in contributing through mission boards. So he gave Kelly $2,500 directly to construct a house sufficient to accommodate Chinese women coming from the interior for Bible study and also to house single women missionaries. The house was finished in 1904 and named "Smith's Training School" in honor of her benefactor.66

Unfortunately the house, though enormous, contained neither courtyard nor garden and opened onto a canal. It was as drab as it was functional. So a decade after she first occupied the house, Kelly demonstrated her business acumen by selling it at a considerable profit. One of the persons who understood best her aspirations for a different kind of lodging was Annie Yates Seaman, daughter of pioneer China Baptist missionary Matthew T. Yates. Annie Yates had married a successful American businessman in Shanghai. Though a Quaker, he placed his fortune at the disposal of his philanthropic wife, who became a close confidante of Willie Kelly. The Seamans gave her a valuable tract of land along the Great Western Road. Kelly sold it for a huge sum and planned her dream home. Seaman wanted her to build a house with a separate bedroom and private bath for each of the single missionaries who would occupy the house and supplemented her funds as needed. The result was construction of two large three-story houses with all the modern conveniences at No.466 Rue Lafayette in the affluent French Concession. Kelly built high brick walls around her compound and constructed elaborate gardens. It became one of Shanghai's showplaces and housed generations of single women missionaries, refugees from the interior, and Chinese women who attended Kelly's Bible training schools. From her garden she supplied baskets of flowers for events at Old North Gate Baptist Church and became renowned for her gardening ability.67

When the Baptist mission in Shanghai voted in 1922 to sell its existing property and consolidate all personnel in a compound where they would be safer from revolutionary disorder spreading across Shanghai, Kelly left no doubt about her opposition. She had no intention of leav-

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Willie Kelly's western-style home, No. 466 Rue Lafayette, in the French

Concession, Shanghai. It was a Shanghai showplace and often housed a

dozen new, mainly single, female Baptist missionaries. Parked at the right

side of the house is her beloved but controversial car. Photo taken in the 1920s.

(Courtesy of Wayne Flynt)

ing her house on the Rue Lafayette and testily reminded the FMB that Annie Seaman had deeded the property to her, not to the board. Kelly had agreed to let the board have the property only after a guarantee that she could remain there so long as she lived in China. And remain she did through the Chinese civil war and the Japanese invasion. While she was home in Alabama on furlough in 1938, she allowed fifteen missionaries and forty Chinese refugees to occupy the houses at one time or another. When the Japanese occupied her residence they stole private furnishings of Kelly's worth $4,500. By the time of the Japanese occupation the property was estimated to be worth $250,000. 68

Kelly's health remained remarkably good throughout her forty-four-year career. She once boasted that she had spent less than a month in bed sick and refused to retire when she reached age seventy in 1932. Although her health fared better than that of most Alabama missionar-

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ies, five close relatives died while she was abroad, including her father who had so resisted her leaving. That blow was devastating because he had not been reconciled to her call. When he died before her first furlough, she prayed for strength to "bear these afflictions as becometh a child of God." 69

Despite the elegant life she lived on Rue Lafayette, Kelly experienced the same kind of financial woes as her associates. In the late 1890s severe agricultural depression in Alabama caused contributions to her salary to fall substantially. So bad did conditions become that when she had to return for furlough in 1900, her Chapman, Alabama, benefactor, W. T. Smith, had to pay her way. Friends and relatives sent her money regularly in addition to the large contributions of Smith and Annie Seaman. She briefly allowed herself the luxury of an automobile in 1922 but sold it because of the mission's financial problems. Kelly lost all the money she had invested for her retirement when a trust company failed in 1935. Although the FMB usually required missionaries to retire at age seventy, it made an exception with Kelly. It allowed the indefatigable woman to keep her house and salary so long as she did not tell other missionaries about the arrangement. In turn Kelly agreed to allow the proceeds from the sale of her house to finance a new seminary, but only if the board assured her a permanent house in China that after her death would "revert to the single ladieswe mustn't forget them. So keep that in mind."70

Over nearly half a century Kelly took only five summer vacations from her work; but she was not reluctant to insist on furloughs. Nor was she hesitant to use W. B. Crumpton to pressure the board on her behalf when occasion demanded. When she returned home she did not appreciate being hounded to speak, and she soon longed to go back to Shanghai.71 As it had for so many other long-term Alabama missionaries, China had become Kelly's true home.

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7

Oh, for One Day's Quiet Retreat:

Reporting Home about China

That the twentieth-century South was the most parochial region of the United States seems axiomatic. Southerners by and large obtained less education and spent fewer dollars on books and travel than people in other regions. Although Alabama's export economy of cotton, wood products, and coal tied the state to a world economy and made many of its business people international in outlook, the stereotype of parochialism had basis in fact. Alabama had perennially ranked near the bottom of all states in the percentage of high school and college graduates in its population.

Although economic and military contacts abroad softened the impact of parochialism for some males, the most important source of international awareness among Alabamians came from missionaries. This situation was especially true for women, who formed organizations within their churches in order to study foreign countries where missionaries served, to raise money for them, to keep in touch by mail, and occasionally to see and hear their heroines and heroes firsthand while they were home on furlough.

Interaction between missionaries and their supporters occurred primarily in three ways. Missionaries publicized their impressions of China to their constituents back home. The intelligence was not always objective or even accurate, but it was influential in shaping Alabama impressions about the far-off Orient that few of them would ever see firsthand. For the handful of Alabamians who traveled to China, a missionary almost always awaited them at the end of their journey to transport them, translate for them, and introduce them to exotic, romantic, and religious dimensions of Chinese life.

The second function was that of recruiter. China missionaries used letters, reports, and furloughs to interest new volunteers in the hard work of spreading the gospel to the "uttermost parts of the earth."

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Often they used harsh tactics, scolding Christians who rested safe and secure at home while they risked all in China. Usually they were less censorious but nonetheless firm in advancing the claims of their adopted land.

Finally, missionaries became adept fund raisers. Not until the 1920s did any of the three denominations have a unified approach to funding missions. During that decade Southern Baptists established the Cooperative Program, which made individual fund raising unnecessary and even disruptive. Before that time, and to some degree even after it, Southern Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians relied on targeted appeals from a specific missionary for salaries, expenses, or projects. Some China missionaries became skilled at such tasks. Others performed poorly and had to rely entirely on agency support. In time, conflicting appeals back home for money became disruptive.

Although the title of "publicist" did not appear in the job description of missionaries, that function consumed much of their time. The role included two responsibilities: publicizing China to supporters back home; entertaining Americans who visited China. Both functions were imperative if missionaries were to receive adequate funding, communication, and reinforcement.

Writing about China

Missionaries sent thousands of letters to family, friends, church members, and denominational missionary journals describing history, literature, political events, landscapes, poverty, cultural patterns, food, weather, geography, and virtually anything else that attracted their attention. Often such descriptions contained distortions. Almost always missionaries designed their public reports to fulfill specific functions: to attract volunteers with desperately needed skills; to persuade correspondents to favor one side over another in China's unending political struggles; to understand the monumental slowness of converting Chinese to Christianity, and thus to be patiently supportive of the missionary enterprise.

Historians generally agree that whatever opinions most Americans had about China between 1850 and 1950 they formed from the writings and sermons of missionaries. 1 Their books, tracts, theses, dissertations, and especially their articles in missionary journals and denominational newspapers literally provided Americans fundamental literacy about China. Pearl Buck, daughter of China missionaries and a Nobel Prize-

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winning novelist, used her fiction to acquaint Americans with her adopted country. Although some historians have criticized missionaries for their political naiveté, others have concluded that their letters, books, and articles were neither culturally arrogant nor politically naive. 2

Well-educated Alabama missionaries possessed considerable literary skills. Martha Crawford (1852-1909) especially was a gifted essayist. She wrote six books in English, including a novel, and volumes on doctrine. One of her historical essays contained a thoughtful section on the importance of cultural adaptation to China, the need to make Christianity as indigenous as possible, and the imperative that wives feel as strong a call as their husbands.3

The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board produced dozens of study course books on China to be used primarily by women's missionary society groups and in Sunday night Training Union courses. China missionaries wrote many of these studies, and they were extremely influential in molding Baptist impressions of China. Some were superficial and culturally condescending; others were objective and informative.4 Two of the best were written by T. W. Ayers (1901-25) and Addie Cox.

Ayers's book, Healing and Missions, was a thorough, informative study of medical missions. Although the volume focused mainly on China, brief chapters dealt with Africa. The central argument of the book was that healing opened doors to evangelism not possible by either preaching or teaching ministries. Ayers also emphasized the importance of adapting to Chinese cultural patterns.5

Addie Cox (1918-51) coauthored a study course volume entitled Glimpses of Missionary Life. The work provided a relatively balanced view of traditional Chinese religion and society. Cox considered Taoism a degraded religion that encouraged nature worship, but she found redeeming elements in China's other value systems. The teachings of Confucius were ''interesting and uplifting" insofar as they dealt with ethics and civic duty, but they contained little metaphysics. Buddhism contained worthy admonitions against taking life, stealing, lying, and adultery. Islam, the religion of China's western provinces, also stressed moral purity in its teachings. Cox believed that no nation without Christ could escape "the burden of superstitious beliefs," but she at least found some ethical common ground between traditional Chinese religion and Christianity.6

Even more enlightened were three doctoral dissertations by A. Y. Napier, James T. Williams, and Frank Woodward, discussed earlier. The three studies, all written at Southern Baptist Theological Semi-

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Addie Estelle CoxBaptist teacher and evangelist to

womenspent thirty-three years in China, mainly in

Kaifeng area. (Reprinted from Missionary Family

Album, edited by Marjorie E. Moore and Inez Tuggle,

published by Foreign Mission Board of the

Southern Baptist Convention, Richmond, Virginia, 1948;

(courtesy of Samford University Archives)

nary by career missionaries while home on furlough, praised the richness of Chinese culture, extolled the merits of medicine and education as more effective forms of evangelism than preaching, and denied that Chinese were a "heathen" people. 7

Mission reports published in the Alabama Baptist revealed changing opinion over time, as generation after generation of Baptist missionaries from the state sought to educate their brothers and sisters in the ways of China. Martha Crawford (1852-1909) invited Alabama Baptists who sought information about China missions to correspond with her. She sometimes concentrated on the bizarre and exotic and wrote detailed accounts of Chinese internal politics, especially well-publicized events such as the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions. After initially challenging men to come to China so women could pursue traditional feminine spheres, she began to advocate forcefully the imperative of women to proclaim the gospel. It was entirely possible, she wrote in 1891, for a woman to maintain a "modest, ladylike deportment" and still perform all the functions of an evangelist to Chinese women.8

Regarding politics, Crawford was one of the first missionaries to sense the contagion of nationalism spreading through the countryside. She wrote in 1894 that "the days of foreigners carrying out their purposes in China by force and threats are now, thank God, rapidly

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passing away." She denounced Western militarism as a violation of the spirit of Christ. And, when her husband split with the FMB over various policy disputes, to be discussed later, she used the pages of the denominational journal to argue their case. 9

Both Eliza Shuck (1847-51) and Martha Crawford tried to lower the expectations of Alabama Baptists about work in China. Shuck wrote in 1850 that she and her husband could name few converts from their three-year efforts, but God valued faithfulness and even a single soul saved from perdition. Crawford emphasized the same theme. "In this stronghold of heathenism," she wrote in 1886, "results necessarily develop slowly." Alabama Baptists must expect "a long and difficult work," a work of "silent preparation'' rather than large numbers of converts. She was fond of the biblical parable of the seed that emphasized that the sower had to wait to experience the harvest.10

As denominational work began in China, the Alabama Baptist tended to publicize exotic, bizarre, and eccentric aspects of Chinese life. Articles in 1843 described superstitions and dietary habits, including the use of rats, cats, and dogs in Chinese cuisine. The following year an essay on Chinese society emphasized the predominance of corpulent men with large pendant ears and petite women with tiny feet. Articles on the massive extent of the great northern wall, the widespread use of opium, and the practice of idolatry explored the same themes of eccentricity and exoticism.11

As missionaries worked longer in China, their reports during the late nineteenth century moved sharply away from focus on the exotic to more informative and historically accurate accounts. China contained a highly educated and literate society, rich in history, making rapid progress in modernizing its army and navy. The Chinese people were polite, peaceable, skillful, and industrious.12

After 1900, the Alabama Baptist featured much more balanced and diverse reports from China. A great many of these articles contained urgent appeals for more money and missionaries as the extent of the missionary enterprise rapidly expanded.13

When reporting on their work, most of the articles dealt with hospitals, clinics, and schools where most of the missionaries ministered. In fact, the annual reports that became a staple part of missionary service were often formally divided into three sections: evangelistic efforts; schools; and medical missions. With many more single female missionaries in the field, women's work received larger attention. Dur-

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ing China's periodic famines, reports home described conditions of starvation, complete with photographs of emaciated children, and appealed for emergency contributions. 14

Chinese politics, which had figured only casually in earlier reports when missionary lives were imperiled by the Taiping or Boxer Rebellions, now moved to center stage. Missionaries identified the cause of Christ with the progress of Chinese republicanism. They sent biographical accounts of Chinese revolutionary leaders and even invited them to speak at Baptist schools in China. They reassured Alabama friends and relatives that the 1911 revolution did not endanger foreigners. Accounts of the fighting clearly favored republican forces against imperial armies. Although they tried to maintain some degree of impartiality, they seldom succeeded, as when Willie Kelly wrote in 1913: "it is just grand to be in China now in these wonderful times." Having undermined China's traditional society, missionaries believed that Christianity could shape its emerging republican institutions.15 Undoubtedly, most of Alabama's favorable view of the republican revolution resulted from these hopeful accounts.

Even as their estimation of internal political conditions soared, missionaries reported the increasing tensions within China's Christian community. On issues such as ecumenical cooperation, the negative effects of theological modernism, and growing Chinese control of churches and institutions, Alabama Baptist missionaries sent back conflicting opinions.

Willie Kelly (1893-1937), Cynthia Miller (1905-36), and Alice Huey (1907-26, 1933-41) propounded traditional, antiecumenical views. Miller and Huey wrote in 1914 that perhaps the major Southern Baptist advantage over the YMCA was its independence from other groups of Christians. Kelly wrote the following year that God would overrule the materialism of Christian "higher critics" of the Bible in favor of more spiritual and literal values. In 1928 Huey returned to the battle, warning against the 1922 Shanghai conference proposal for a union of missionary groups working in China.16

During the same era, other Alabama Baptist missionaries advised a different course. Dr. Adrian S. Taylor (1906-16), who ultimately resigned his SBC appointment to work for the ecumenical China Medical Board, wrote in 1911 that "a new spirit of union" was transforming China missions for the better. The main work of missionaries, he wrote, was to train native Chinese and turn the work over to them. Baptists lacked the resources to operate their own medical colleges and

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should undertake such ventures in cooperation with other denominations. Both Frank Willis Barnett, editor of the Alabama Baptist to 1919, and his successor L. L. Gwaltney sided with Taylor and those who sought to build an indigenous church. In 1907 Barnett advised Alabama Baptists not to fear an ecumenical conference in Shanghai that sought to coordinate mission efforts. And in 1929 Gwaltney praised efforts by the Congregational National Council to transfer all its mission activities to Chinese control. There was sufficient work, he believed, to occupy the full energies both of native converts and of foreign missionaries. It seemed to him a sensible course to turn established work over to indigenous Christians and relocate missionaries to unreached areas. 17

As China descended into civil war during the 1920S, 1930S, and 1940s, Alabama Baptist missionaries became increasingly discouraged. Alice Huey wrote in 1925 of growing secularism and anti-Christian radicalism. Editor L. L. Gwaltney responded to missionary jubilation at the conversion of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek by predicting that communists would then have a harder time depicting Christianity as a foreign religion. After communists won control of China in the 1940s, Alabama missionaries moved quickly from a position that they could maintain their ministries because even communists needed Christ to a full-scale attack on communist depredations, atrocities, and persecution of Christians. 18

Talking about China

Although many missionaries were skilled orators, few relished the exhausting speaking circuit that greeted them on their furloughs. Usually they returned to Alabama in poor health and anxious to see family and friends. Instead they often found themselves besieged by requests to preach or speak to women's missionary societies or at state denominational meetings. Their denominations expected them to accept as many such invitations as possible in order to generate enthusiasm for missions, raise money, recruit volunteers, and educate congregations. At the same time agency officials often admonished them to rest and recover their health. The result of this contradictory advice was some level of bitterness.

While Lewis Shuck was home on furlough in 1846, he spoke constantly. He had returned with a Chinese convert who proved to be a popular attraction at Baptist meetings. During one such speech at Judson College, Shuck met a young female instructor who would become

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his wife. But despite this happy encounter, he complained about the unreasonable expectation that he speak so often: "I lack private religious culture and enjoyment. Oh, for one day's quiet retreat, where not a sound of the human voice nor a tread of the human footsteps could be heard!" 19

Shuck's contemporaries, Martha and T. P. Crawford, chose not to use their furloughs extolling SBC policies. They developed serious disagreements with the FMB, disputes that they incorporated into their reports home. Martha Crawford used the pages of the Alabama Baptist to defend her husband's iconoclastic ideas. Her husband returned frequently to the United States in order to promote his ideas of self-support by Chinese Christians. In 187879 he spoke to many churches against using FMB funds to hire individual Chinese converts or subsidize their work. In 1886 he returned for a series of lectures, discussed earlier, on the "Races of Man." Although the lectures were billed as an attempt to remove race prejudice (and the Crawfords were amazingly tolerant by the standards of their times), the lectures actually incorporated the predominant Social Darwinism of the era. Crawford maintained that each race had dominant characteristics, with the Caucasian race being the most advanced. The lectures and his philosophy of Chinese self-support were well received among his wife's Tuscaloosa relatives and in area churches.20

The next generation also complained about spending furloughs speaking. Though few performed better in front of an audience than Willie Kelly (18931937), she privately resented the imposition on precious time with her family. When the head of the FMB scolded her for not resting more, she bristled that the only reason she accepted so many engagements was inadequate furlough pay by the board and its pressure to speak constantly. Most missionaries dreaded "this part of the homecoming," and had she adequate money she would avoid Alabama for a quiet place where she could rest. Because low salary forced her to live with sisters and friends, churches "worry the life out of me wanting me to talk about China. I have received over five hundred letters since I came inviting me to go to places and the ladies of the State (while they insisted that I rest) thought I ought to do this work." She had returned to Alabama in good health, but the burden of speaking was so heavy she feared that she would return to China exhausted. Her longtime friend and sponsor W. B. Crumpton, who headed Alabama's state mission board, implored the FMB either to raise her salary or at least offer her travel expenses.21

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Hoadley and Ruth Berckman (1921-51) avoided such a crisis by obtaining strict instructions that they were to furlough in Albertville with only a minimum amount of speaking. A physician insisted that rest was essential if Hoadley was to regain his strength. 22

Perhaps Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) experienced the worst problem with furlough. She was by nature an introspective woman who disliked speaking in public. She had delayed her first furlough partly because of this dread. The reality of that experience caused her to spend twelve years at her post before a physician finally ordered her home for only the second time in twenty-two years. Although she gradually overcame some of her fear of speaking to audiences in English (curiously a fear she did not experience when speaking to Chinese audiences in Chinese), she never became comfortable behind a lectern.23

By far the most effective speaker among Alabama missionaries was T. W. Ayers (1901-25). As the first Southern Baptist medical missionary he was something of a curiosity. And as a layman he appealed especially to business and professional people.

During his first furlough in 1906-07, Ayers established what was to become a familiar routine. He preached before three packed congregations at his home church, Parker Memorial Baptist Church in Anniston. Then he launched a whirlwind speaking tour through Arkansas, Mississippi, and Georgia before settling in for a steady round of sermons on China preached throughout Alabama. His popularity extended beyond his own denomination, and he spoke to a summer gathering of southern Presbyterian young people as well as to the Alabama State Medical Association. During his 1912 furlough he repeated this successful tour, speaking to associational WMU meetings and to local churches.24

After his 1924 furlough his wife's poor health compelled him to remain in the United States. But he merely transformed his part-time furlough job into a permanent full-time position for the FMB, speaking to state conventions, churches, and WMU meetings about China, raising money, and recruiting volunteers. He pioneered "Schools of Missions," which brought Baptists together in a central location for intensive orientation on mission work. In 1932-33 his schedule included such schools in Montgomery, Birmingham, Dothan, Mobile, and at Judson College. So many invitations to speak poured in that he found it impossible to accept them all. Usually he talked about medical missions, the incredible opportunities to spread the gospel in China, and his own family experiences.25

Ayers's female equivalent was the indefatigable Willie Kelly. Al-

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though she privately disliked the whirlwind speaking tours that deprived her of rest and the fellowship of family, she gamely performed her duty. Forced to return to Alabama by the Boxer upheaval in 1900, Kelly used her time productively. She dressed in Chinese costume, described her own call to missions, and urged Baptist support. At the Prattville Baptist Church more than 150 women braved a January storm to listen to her speak. In Tuskegee the pastor's wife reported that one could not listen to Kelly without "catching the enthusiasm" she felt for Chinese; "she has made us feel that they are indeed our neighbors." At Auburn First Baptist, Kelly displayed shoes worn by Chinese women whose feet were bound, demonstrated Chinese dresses, and exhibited idols to an audience of churchwomen from several different denominations. In Birmingham she gave a lengthy interview to a newspaper reporter about China. By the time she returned to her field in 1901, she left behind a strong cadre of faithful supporters. The state's mission secretary described ovations that greeted her everywhere and summarized letters describing how mission societies had expected a ''prim, long-faced old maid" and instead had encountered a vivacious, confident spokeswoman for China. One WMU leader testified: "I shall always love her, and it seems to me I can only think her my substitute in China. Her visit here will bear fruit, I know." By the 1920s the Montgomery Advertiser called Kelly "the best known and loved Baptist missionary" and advertised her series of lectures on China to a citywide audience. Her fame had spread to such an extent by 1938 that SBC officials invited her to speak to the annual Southern Baptist Convention. 26

Patterns established by Ayers and Kelly were typical of all Alabama Baptist missionaries. Cynthia Miller (1905-36) did not consider herself an effective speaker but strove mightily to present China mission work in an exciting way. During one furlough in 1913 she spoke fourteen times during a two-week period.27

James T. Williams (1913-52) added the experiences of Japanese internment to his routine descriptions of China. When he returned in 1942 he was deluged with invitations to speak in churches about his hardships. The FMB even scheduled a special conference for missionaries home from the Orient at the Baptist assembly center at Ridgecrest, North Carolina. Williams shared his vision of Baptist work in China after the war ended.28

One unique feature of reporting home was inclusion of Chinese converts. Lewis Shuck began the tradition when he spoke at Judson College in the 1840s accompanied by a Chinese Christian, Yong Seen-sarng,

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who later became a prominent pastor in Shanghai. Through the years Alabama Baptists continued the practice. At the 1930 WMU state convention in Mobile, Dr. Princeton S. Hsu, president of Shanghai's Cantonese Girls' School, spoke on "Prospects, Products, and Problems of Missionary Work in China." Six years later the state WMU convention welcomed Fok Wu Ling, the daughter of one of Shanghai's most prominent Baptist families. 29

Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries followed procedures similar to their Baptist colleagues. Ruth and Hoadley Berckman spent furloughs speaking to Methodist young people's conferences and churches.30

Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) was to Alabama Methodist women what Willie Kelly was to Baptist. On her infrequent furloughs, she sufficiently overcame her dislike of speaking to become a feature at missionary societies and North Alabama Conference meetings. In 1919 she brought a Chinese woman with her to speak at the Methodist Centenary Celebration in Columbus, Ohio. Then they traveled through the South, attending state conferences and ending their tour in Alabama. In 1927 Atkinson made an important address to the southwide Woman's Missionary Council meeting in Shreveport, Louisiana. She discussed the improving social status of Chinese women, the development of modern coeducation, the growth of Chinese national consciousness, and the progress of the Chinese church toward self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. During the Second World War she bombarded Alabama friends and relatives with anti-Japanese pamphlets and urged them to publicize atrocities among influential leaders and politicians. Upon her retirement after nearly sixty years in China, she used her status as the dean of Methodist women missionaries in China to speak frequently to the Alabama and North Alabama Conferences and to the Women's Society of Christian Service.31

Presbyterians John and Mary Stuart (1874-1925) spent their furloughs in Mobile preaching and teaching. They involved the entire family in their presentations about China, dressing their four sons in Chinese clothes and forcing them to eat with chopsticks and sing hymns in Chinese to the considerable amusement of congregations. But the embarrassment of the Stuart boys was not in vain. The historian of Presbyterian women in the Synod of Alabama credits Mary Horton Stuart with mobilizing women on behalf of China missions. Wherever she and her husband spoke, there grew up Mary Stuart Missionary Societies to raise money and generate support for foreign missions.32

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The influence of such speeches went well beyond the speakers' personal knowledge. When Eliza Sexton married Lewis Shuck in 1847 and returned with him to China, she left behind at Judson College a fervent band of supporters. As the first Southern Baptist missionary appointed from Alabama, she endeared herself to the Ann Hesseltine Judson Missionary Society. She wrote the society frequently and enlisted its help in educating several Chinese girls. The society later adopted Willie Kelly, who had desperately wanted to attend the school though she could never afford tuition. The society met once a month, discussed foreign missions, wrote Shuck and Kelly, and contributed money to their work. In time Judson College sent ten of its graduates to China in the footsteps of Eliza Shuck and Willie Kelly. When Mary Essie Stephens attended Judson between 1941 and 1945, she was so profoundly influenced by Sexton's marriage, her service and death in China, and student support of the Shucks that she considered it the central experience of her college years ("out of that story, we had the influence of that first life"). 33

The Alabama Baptist convention and state WMU meetings not only heard returned missionaries speak, they also placed primary mission focus on China. At the 1891 state convention, a large world map provided the backdrop for a sermon on the heroism of Lottie Moon. The 1893 WMU convention also spotlighted China. The history of the East Liberty Baptist Association WMU contains tributes to Eliza Yates (a contemporary of Eliza Shuck and Martha Crawford), Lottie Moon, and east Alabama's own Virginia Atkinson as the three women who most inspired local interest in China missions. So closely bonded was the WMU to its missionaries that beginning in the 1920S the organization sent each woman a free subscription to a secular magazine such as Ladies'Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, or American Magazine at Christmas as a personal gift. 34

Alabama Missionaries as Hosts and Tour Guides

Missionaries not only publicized China in Alabama, they also hosted the few intrepid Alabamians who traveled to the Orient. In 1907 T. W. Ayers showed three visiting Southern Baptist officials denominational work in Hwanghsien. In his report to the FMB about their visit, he urged the board to send editors of state denominational newspapers to China. Having once been a publisher himself, Ayers understood the influence that journalists had on Baptist opinion. He believed that if they and in-

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fluential laymen visited northern China and saw the work and needs of that field, Baptists would be more responsive to appeals for help. H. W. Provence agreed. He wrote his seminary instructor W. 0. Carver that the FMB should bring prominent laymen to China so they could see for themselves the inadequate equipment and facilities with which Baptists had to struggle. 35

Cynthia Miller entertained WMU director Kathleen Mallory, a native Alabamian, in 1923. She spent a week organizing receptions and showing Mallory Baptist work in the Laichow region of Shantung Province.36

Irene Jeffers and James T. Williams recorded similar visits. Jeffers took time in June 1926 to show an Alabama visitor a new Baptist church, a boys' school, and the Baptist hospital. The woman then left for Chinkiang, where she was the guest of Lois Napier. In 1934 Williams hosted a visiting SBC official who stayed with him while preaching in Shanghai-area churches and visiting Baptist work.37

These visits informed Baptist leaders about work in China and cemented lay support. As T. W. Ayers predicted, many returning editors wrote glowing reports of the work there.

Missionary Recruiters

Another task of missionaries on the home front was recruiting volunteers. Martha Crawford, Eliza and Lewis Shuck, and many other Alabama missionaries responded to the isolation and overwork of their China fields by chiding fellow Alabamians for resting secure in the United States when so many souls awaited their attention in China. Lewis Shuck wrote a letter to the Alabama Baptist in 1850 scolding Howard College for sending no one to help convert the Chinese. Among the many ministers serving forty thousand Alabama Baptists, he believed that at least one could be found willing to preach to "the wretched and the lost [in China] the unsearchable riches of Christ."38

Although all missionaries used their furloughs to advance the urgency and priority of their work in China, the acknowledged champion of missionary recruiting was T. W. Ayers. More than half a dozen China missionaries attributed their careers directly to the invitation he offered when he spoke to their churches, conventions, WMU meetings, or state assemblies. The true extent of his influence is probably many times greater. He won his first recruit during a 1906 furlough when Dr. Adrian S. Taylor heard him at the Baptist state convention and

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agreed to come to China as a physician. His last recorded recruit, nurse Margaret Collins, came in 1946 only years before China was closed. 39 Of the forty-seven Alabama missionaries who served in China, seven of them (Addie Cox, Clarabel Isdell, Irene Jeffers, Mary Stuart, Adrian and Richard V. Taylor, and James T. Williams) cited the appeal of another China missionary who spoke at a meeting they attended as the primary factor in their decision to go to China.

Missionary Fund Raising

The final major function of missionary communication was fund raising. All three denominations relied heavily upon direct missionary contact to generate funds from lay people. Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson frequently appealed to the North Alabama Conference for help. After years of teaching in Soochow, Atkinson realized that the successful Nationalist Revolution of 1911 created enormous demand for mission schools. But she needed to expand her staff of teachers to accommodate this growth. So she asked the Alabama Conference to construct a teacher-training school. Not only did the conference fund construction, but Atkinson publicized the need for one of her Chinese converts to come to the United States to study elementary education. An American woman responded with a check for $2,000. In subsequent years, the Alabama Conference (consisting of Methodist churches in southern Alabama and western Florida) built a structure to house Atkinson's embroidery mission for women. During the late 1930S Atkinson's urgent letters to friends and relatives in the Opelika area condemning Japanese aggression and requesting financial aid brought a steady stream of money for China relief.40

Atkinson's experiences reflected a long-standing tradition of direct Methodist support for China missions. Although the ME Church, South, provided missionary salaries, individual and conference female missionary societies raised much of the money. As early as 1856 the Alabama Conference raised nearly $8,000, much of it through local church mission societies. In 1852 the conference agreed to pay passage to China for one of its missionaries who addressed the assembly. At the 1901 Alabama Conference, delegates pledged more than $600 to send Albert C. Bowen to China. Like Atkinson, Bowen became a regular speaker at conference meetings when he was home on furlough. By 1912 foreign and home missionary organizations were united under the Woman's Missionary Society, and women provided much of the fund-

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ing for China missions. Indeed, an acquaintance of Virginia Atkinson from Opelika became the first president of the united WMS. 41

Baptists followed much the same pattern until the mid-1920s. Individual appeals to churches, state conventions, and especially women's missionary societies generated most mission funds. Some agents were especially assigned the task of raising money for missions and regularly visited churches, as did furloughing missionaries. In 1877 the FMB appointed Nicholas Williams, recently returned to Alabama because of his wife's poor health, as its agent to collect mission funds in Alabama and Tennessee. When the First Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, agreed to pay the entire salary of a China missionary in the 1890s, the Alabama Baptist suggested that one of the wealthier churches in Montgomery, Mobile, or Birmingham should follow this example. As the number of Alabama Baptists serving in China expanded, their combined influence significantly increased the level of financial support. In 1894 Alabama Baptists contributed only $7,500 to foreign missions. Ten years later the figure had risen to $18,000, and in 1905 the goal was $22,500. The editor of the state denominational newspaper attributed this increased support to the high visibility of Willie Kelly, T. W. Ayers, A. Y. and Lois Napier, and H. W. Provence.42

Many Baptist missionaries profited from these gifts. When Lewis Shuck came to Marion, Alabama, in 1846 he not only found a wife but also received $500 from Judson College students and another $300 from townspeople, the largest contribution given anywhere on his southern tour. Mary Thornton Bostick tried a different and more confrontational appeal in 1894 for her schismatic Gospel Mission, formed by a group of disgruntled Baptist missionaries. She chided Birmingham's Southside Baptist Church for endowing stained-glass windows in its new sanctuary instead of sending the money to China missionaries. Her appeal fell largely on deaf ears. Martha Crawford, who also frequently appealed for money through the Alabama Baptist, spoke to the southwide 1883 WMU convention. She reported her work in China so effectively that the women donated $200 on the spot.43

As the 1883 episode with Crawford demonstrates, the WMU constituted the funding base for Baptist missions until the organization of the Cooperative Program in 1925. The women's organization made it possible for Willie Kelly to go to China in 1894. The depression of the 1890s dried up FMB funds, and though the board appointed her, it had no money to pay her salary. Alabama's WMU stepped into the breach and promised sufficient funding. Although it took Baptist women a decade

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to pay her full salary, they consistently paid more than four-fifths of her annual wage. 44

Kelly quickly learned to translate the enormous respect that Alabamians had for her into financial support. First she began to lobby for the Alabama WMU to provide funds to build her house. When this appeal did not succeed, she approached wealthy Butler County lumberman W. T. Smith and Shanghai philanthropist Annie Seaman. Smith, a prominent Baptist layman, not only contributed $2,500 for a house but also funded Kelly's passage home on furlough. When publicizing Smith's generosity, the editor of the state denominational journal noted perceptively that returning home every seven years paid financial dividends for missionaries. Kelly's efforts not only set aflame hundreds of women for the cause of missions but had gained the large contribution from Smith.45

The independent-minded Kelly often bent FMB restrictions against soliciting money for private projects. She received many small donations from Baptists as well as Methodist and Presbyterian friends for student scholarships, construction of a chapel, and salaries for Bible women. The Searchlight Women's Bible Class of Montgomery's First Baptist Church pledged the salary of a Chinese teacher. By 1934 Kelly had become such a fixture in Alabama Baptist life that the WMU's professional and business women's circles alone paid her annual salary. The state WMU, which at first had been unable to pay even Kelly's salary, supported six missionaries through the annual Lottie Moon Christmas offering. During the late 1930s the WMU raised $5,000 in Kelly's honor to build Old North Gate Baptist Church a new sanctuary.46

When the Second World War forced Kelly to come home, she devoted her forced retirement to China relief. She raised $500 from Birmingham's Southside Baptist Church and an equal amount from the state WMU for her beloved Old North Gate Church in Shanghai. An anonymous donor who was not even Baptist gave her an additional $300, and the husband of a woman who heard her speak contributed 25 more. Additional relief offerings came to her from Birney Points Baptist Church, Covington Associational WMU, First Baptist of Mobile, Southside Baptist WMU, and the Alabama Baptist Executive Committee. Kelly also made large personal contributions to Old North Gate relief. Despite her distaste for speaking to women's groups during furloughs, such efforts had so endeared her to Baptist women that she ranked second only to Lottie Moon in Alabama's Baptist missionary pantheon.

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The outpouring of love that greeted her when she returned to Montgomery to retire matched that normally reserved for military heroes or sports stars. 47

Baptist women assisted many other missionaries as well. They provided Clarabel Isdell (1935-45) with a scholarship both to Howard College and to the WMU Training School in Louisville. Then they underwrote her expenses when the Great Depression crippled the FMB so that it could not appoint her. During Isdell's tenure the WMU provided everything from her salary to chewing gum. In 1926 the WMU purchased Addie Cox an automobile to speed her to interior stations. Cox dubbed it the "Gospel Ford" and reported conversions that resulted from her enlarged field of service. Encouraged by that success the WMU next donated money to purchase a number of bicycles for her mission. The women's organization also paid her medical bills when she was hospitalized and the salary of a Bible woman to assist her.48

Like Willie Kelly, Cynthia Miller (1905-36) spanned the era from solicitation of private support to Cooperative Program. And like Kelly, she bent FMB rules in her search for money. Board rules prohibited private solicitation of funds. During a 1922 furlough, however, Miller so persuasively presented the needs of her Shantung work that one woman removed a $400 diamond ring and gave it to Miller for her embroidery school. Later the woman sent $4,000 more for the project. Miller also used relatives, friends, and WMU women to market linen handkerchiefs made by Chinese women at her school.49

Along with Willie Kelly, the most effective fund raiser among Alabama Baptist missionaries was T. W. Ayers. As a native of Georgia, who had lived in Alabama, Ayers could tap resources in both states. In 1903 he persuaded First Baptist Church of Macon, Georgia, to build a hospital for him in Hwanghsien. After he spoke at Montgomery's First Baptist Church, several women offered to pay the salary of a female schoolteacher for Hwanghsien. When Ayers addressed the 1900 Alabama Baptist Convention, J. C. Bush, the mayor of Mobile, offered to pay or supplement his salary. Half a decade later Ayers found an appropriate project for Bush. The Mobilian contributed $10,000 to purchase land and erect a school and teachers' residence for Hwanghsien. A Sunday school class at Anniston's Parker Memorial Baptist Church paid the salary of a Chinese evangelist who worked at Ayers's hospital. During his 1906 furlough, Ayers spoke at a church in Mobile that tripled its mission gifts. First Baptist Huntsville gave him $500 after a

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sermon there. During his thirty-day tour of smaller north Alabama churches, he received pledges of $100 from each to support twelve Chinese preachers. Individuals gave him hundreds more. Later during the First World War, Ayers's home church, Parker Memorial, contributed $1,300 for hospital equipment. Tuskegee Association donated $1,000 for a women's hospital. After every furlough, Ayers returned to China with enough money to erect a new building for his sprawling Hwanghsien ministries. In 1924 he proposed to the FMB a $50,000 project to build a missionary sanitarium for Shantung Province. 50

So confident was Ayers of his ability to fund Baptist work that he recruited Mobile physician Adrian S. Taylor with a promise that Baptists in Mobile and Anniston and in Macon, Georgia, would build and equip whatever hospitals he needed. And Ayers's self-confidence was not misplaced. In 1912 at the state WMU convention in Tuscaloosa, Kathleen Mallory resigned as corresponding secretary to become head of the southwide WMU. Ayers delivered the missionary address at the meeting, and at the conclusion of his speech suggested that he had the ideal project to honor Mallory's service. Alabama's WMU should build a women's hospital in her honor at Laichow in Shantung Province where Taylor ministered. The WMU president immediately endorsed the suggestion, and through the decades Alabama Baptist women contributed money each year for equipment and furnishings. Dr. Jeannette E. Beall, the only female Baptist physician working in the North China Mission. later directed the Kathleen Mallory Hospital and made frequent visits to Alabama to report on her work.51

Although Ayers and Kelly were the premier fund raisers among Alabama Baptists, others performed admirably in the same role. H. W. Provence spoke to the 1900 state convention and inspired it to appropriate more than $3,000 for missions. In 1921, T. 0. Hearn reported that a small country church at Nicholasville, Alabama, had contributed $500 to foreign missions. Alice Huey, home on furlough in 1940, made a special appeal for the Lottie Moon offering when the Alabama WMU fell $200 short of its goal.52

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Missionaries would have preferred a quieter and more restful reunion with friends and families than reality afforded them. They often returned to China from furlough at least as tired as when they arrived.

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But they usually departed with firm confidence that they had enlarged the knowledge of Alabamians about China, that they had recruited new volunteers, and that they had enlarged their funding base. Such functions were not an official part of their job but were a major by-product of their ministries.

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8

A Trip of Preaching, Healing and Teaching:

Missionary Work

It was the work of missionaries that allowed them to tolerate difficult living conditions and arduous furloughs. They were committed to a mission of transcendent importance. Perilous living was the price of such commitment.

Although all forty-seven Alabamians were missionaries, they expressed their calling in different ways. Considering the variety of personality among them, there was surprising uniformity in their occupations. Some of them engaged equally in several activities or switched from one to another during different periods of their terms. But all of them worked in one or more of five careers: preacher/evangelist, physician, nurse, teacher, or housewife.

The ultimate goal of all their professions was conversion. That being the case, it is surprising that only eleven of the forty-seven engaged primarily in evangelism (six married men, one married woman, and four single women). It seems likely that this focus on strategies other than direct evangelism resulted more from the practical responses of the Chinese than from the arbitrary assumptions missionaries brought with them from Alabama. Simply put, Western medicine and teaching rather than traditional preaching and tract distribution most often opened channels of communication for the gospel.

Preaching

Missionaries initially relied on methods that had proven reliable back in Alabama: evangelistic preaching in churches and tents and on street corners, plus personal face-to-face witnessing. The Alabama Baptist reported as early as 1846 that Baptist work in Canton had not caught fire because the streets were too narrow and the uproar of the ''heathen

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rabble" was too loud to block a street for preaching. Lack of results had caused missionaries to abandon street preaching in favor of constructing a chapel. 1

Acquiring a building usually became the central task of evangelism. Lewis Shuck turned immediately to this work when he arrived in Shanghai with his new bride Eliza in 1847. Once the building was completed he alternated with other missionaries, preaching, witnessing to his faith house to house, and traveling into the countryside to preach. Like many missionaries he found rustic rural people more responsive than sophisticated urbanites. Friendly peasants enjoyed his visits and listened patiently to his impromptu sermons, no doubt considering him an exciting curiosity. Such preaching posts soon became outstations with regular services. Shuck longed for the day "when Christian chapels and chapel bells, sabbaths and sabbath services shall add their finishing touches to this lovely landscape."2

Martha Crawford (1852-1909) believed that missionaries must adopt different strategies. Her husband's first attempts to address "great crowds of raw heathen" failed, she believed, because the Chinese would not remain still long enough to understand the speaker; nor could they "fix attention" for very long. In such circumstances Alabama-style formal services with singing, prayer, and preaching were out of the question. A more likely Chinese explanation for the inattention was that her husband attracted a crowd just by his presence but spoke Chinese too poorly to be understood. T. P. Crawford explained that the Chinese did not appreciate ''oratorical gifts and showy talents. The eloquence of Spurgeon or Beecher would fall as flat as a 'pan-cake.' Nothing but 'dogged' work will meet their case."3 This explanation is entirely plausible. Traditional Chinese scholars spoke quietly and without the animated gestures and loud voices typical of nineteenth-century southern evangelicals.

Crawford's alternative strategy became a pattern for many others as well. For years Crawford and his language teacher preached regularly at the Baptist chapel or in a rented hall. Martha Crawford would accompany him to the hall, and after services they would spend the remainder of the day talking with inquirers. This informal witnessing seemed to work better than structured services, although the few converts the Crawfords mention by name include as many Europeans from the foreign settlement as Chinese.4

After leaving Shanghai, Crawford encountered an equally tough field

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at Tengchow. The city church grew slowly, with only eight baptisms during his first two years. Crawford admitted that "the people . . . treated my labors with so much indifference that I turned to the country," shaking "the dust from my shoes as a witness against the city." With his teacher he trekked into the countryside where he found a warmer response. In a village sixteen miles from Tengchow the head of a large clan accepted Crawford's invitation to become a Christian, evicted the local Buddhist priest from the village, and turned his house into a Baptist outstation. Within the next few years he led nineteen friends and relatives into the new faith, enough to organize a thriving church. Another elderly man whom Crawford converted was a lineal descendant of the ancient sage Mencius, who was a disciple of Confucius and a native of Shantung. He provided Crawford with instant credibility. At the end of the missionary's first year of evangelism in Shantung Province, he could count twenty-two baptized believers. But this rate of increase did not satisfy the Crawfords. So discouraged had they become by 1889 that they contemplated withdrawing from the field rather than keeping ''on longer at this poor dying rate." 5

Other missionaries persevered in the face of equally unpromising results. Alice Huey spoke in 1934 of semiannual Bible schools and revivals that attracted disappointing numbers of people.6 Presbyterian preacher James N. Montgomery (1917-42) followed the leads of Shuck and Crawford into provincial towns and rural areas, and like them he took along a Chinese companion to translate and preach. Upon approaching a town he would ring a bell and unfurl a gospel flag, which almost always attracted a crowd of children who would follow the "foreign devil" to a tea shop or inn. Soon the entire town population would gather, allowing Montgomery to preach as long as his strength held out. He enjoyed beginning new work and starting chapels. Willie Kelly (1893-1937) extolled the value of traditional "protracted revivals" in her Shanghai Baptist church. During one such six-week period of meetings an estimated 16,000 heard the gospel proclaimed. But of the 1,379 inquirers from the services only 42 accepted baptism.7

Evaluating a quarter century of his father's evangelistic efforts, newly arrived missionary Leighton Stuart doubted the wisdom of the Presbyterian "Forward Movement" promotion with its "feeble results." This effort to evangelize China using traditional preaching made little headway. Like so many others, both he and his father found greatest satisfaction in rural work. After language study he returned to his father's rural district north of Hangchow, where he successfully imple-

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mented revivals and house-to-house contact. The closer the association with Chinese life, the more successful was evangelism. 8

Those who engaged in urban evangelism usually developed alternatives to routine Sunday morning worship, although such services remained the mainstay of church life. Frank and Mabel Woodward (192437) opened a reading room under their porch for university students and welcomed 250 a month. Each Sunday Frank Woodward preached in Chinese in the morning, in English during the afternoon, and again in Chinese at night. During his years as pastor of a number of Methodist churches, Hoadley Berckman attributed many conversions to initial contacts made through Methodist hospitals and schools.9

Although pastors, preachers, and evangelists devoted primary duty to proclaiming the word, they often spent nearly as much time administering the mission bureaucracy. Running a variety of schools, colleges, hospitals, and printing agencies, managing budgets, assigning missionaries, supervising language study, communicating with denominational boards and interested American churches, and hosting foreign visitors sapped valuable time and demanded coordinated efforts. In the years after 1900, A. Y. Napier not only pastored both Chinese and Russian Baptist churches in Shanghai, he also served as secretary of the Central China Mission and taught in the Baptist Bible School at Chungking and at a boys' high school. H. W. Provence led a Mandarin-speaking church, an outstation, and two chapels; he served as treasurer of a seminary, a college, and the Baptist mission; he also chaired the building committees for a girls' school and a church. James T. Williams preached, taught at a seminary, translated Sunday school materials into Chinese, served as mission treasurer, and assisted publication work. Hoadley Berckman preached and taught in a government middle school. Because he had been a bookkeeper and accountant before becoming a missionary, he also served as treasurer for all Methodist work in China.10

Women's Work

Traditional Chinese society restricted male contact with women, so male missionaries were officially not permitted to speak with them nor were women permitted to attend religious services. "Women's work" therefore became a distinct and separate sphere of evangelism reserved to female missionaries. Because mission agencies were reluctant to appoint single women missionaries during the first three-quarters of the

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nineteenth century, evangelizing women became the chief enterprise of married women such as Eliza Shuck, Martha Crawford, and Mary Stuart. Later it became the primary task of single women missionaries.

Eliza Shuck (1847-51) transformed her house into a chapel, inviting Chinese women to participate in services each Friday afternoon. Crowds of Chinese women and children responded, perhaps as much curious about her house as her message. 11

Martha Crawford (1852-1909) agreed with her husband that street preaching accomplished little in China. She believed missionaries should select a small territory, then hammer away at the foundation principles of Christianity. She found no precedent in the Bible, she reported to Alabama Baptists, for apostles preaching to crowds of heathen. She often witnessed to women in their homes, sometimes while their husbands eavesdropped from adjoining rooms. She held meetings exclusively for women while living in Shanghai but reported no converts from such gatherings.12

Once relocated in Tengchow, Crawford used her house as a chapel. She removed all the furniture from one room and seated the Chinese women on mats. She led weekly Bible study for half an hour, then taught simple remedies for the sick. So many women attended that they filled the room, and she began scheduling two shifts in order to accommodate the audience. Demand continued to grow so fast that she finally conducted daily sessions. If men attended, her husband would preach to them in a separate room. She also conducted a weekly prayer meeting for women and visited door to door. On these visits she provided medical advice from books she had brought to China.13

When T. P. Crawford took long trips his wife would usually stay behind. But on shorter trips Martha Crawford would often accompany him. She frequently traveled into the interior without him, either accompanied by another missionary wife or by a single woman missionary. Her companion on many such journeys was Lottie Moon, whom she also assisted in Pingtu where Moon was stationed. On her tours of rural areas Crawford would typically leave on a Tuesday and remain in a town until the following Saturday. She returned home to rest, then traveled to a different town the following Tuesday. Often she worked twelve hours a day, sometimes teaching men separately if there was no male to preach. Usually adhering to her philosophy of not overextending work, she concentrated on 8 towns about a mile apart near Tengchow. But only she and Lottie Moon were available to minister to women in a county that had 803 such towns and villages of one thou-

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sand to seven thousand people each. So the needs would sometimes overwhelm her better judgment, and she would extend her normal itinerary of three or four stops to as many as thirteen.

Despite variations in Crawford's schedule, her strategy remained consistent. She began a visit in a new village by announcing that she was a woman teacher. This introduction brought an immediate gathering of women amazed that a foreigner could speak their language. Chinese tended to express their curiosity quite openly, and her audience was soon peppering her with questions: "How old are you?" "What is your name?" "Where did you come from?'' "How many in your family?" "Are your parents living?" "Where do you get money to live on?" At some point she would interrupt the questions to explain that she had come to tell them something very important and request that they listen carefully. They had trouble with this request because they had not cultivated the habit of careful attention to long speeches. They would often interrupt with trivial comments or chatter. Her presentation completed, Crawford and her companion would move on to another village, where they might provoke a more hostile and threatening reaction from male hecklers. Sometimes she also took a book of pictures depicting shepherds, the birth of Christ, the miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to help hold women's attention. She also sold books and Bibles. In one village a woman accosted Crawford because her son and brother-in-law had purchased such books on an earlier visit. The woman and other villagers denounced the publications, warning that those who learned the foreign doctrine would become bewitched and engage in bizarre conduct. The son and brother-in-law invited Crawford to their house to refute such slanders, and she spent all afternoon explaining the gospel. They were even joined by six companions of the two men during her conversation. 14

Mary Stuart (1874-1925) tried personal evangelism. She recounted a conversation with several women who lived in a carpenter's shop. As she related "the story of the wonderful carpenter's son," she noticed that the craftsmen became so engrossed in her narrative that they put down their tools in order to listen more carefully. On another occasion she witnessed to five women over tea above a temple while drums engaged in Buddhist worship beneath them. She accompanied her husband on his trips to rural areas, selling books and witnessing as they traveled. 15

Although Crawford and Stuart thrived on personal evangelism, missionary women working in cities often relied on familiar American pat-

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Irene Jeffers, Baptist teacher/women's evangelist who served in

Yangchow for twenty-eight years, standing outside her house.

(Courtesy of Wayne Flynt/Gerald W. Bertley)

terns of mass evangelism. In 1926 single Baptist missionary Irene Jeffers took a Bible woman and a Chinese teacher to a nearby town in order to help a Chinese pastor conduct special evangelistic services. Nearly a decade later she participated in another evangelistic rally among the outstations near Yangchow. Two men and a woman accompanied her. They visited individual homes, talked with the curious, and distributed tracts. They held services in the afternoon, one for women in a home, the other for men in a chapel. In one such service a dozen women accepted Christ as savior. 16

Baptist missionary Alice Huey (1907-41) shared her faith in both formal and informal ways in the city of Laichow. One Christmas Eve she joined an egalitarian crowd of a hundred fellow ChristiansChinese preachers, Bible women, missionaries, nurses, sewing women, cooks, coolies, teachers, pupils, and orphanswho serenaded the city with Christmas carols. Each person carried a Chinese lantern. People

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crowded the streets to witness this strange assembly. She also took advantage of a fortuitous meeting with a washerwoman on the way home from a day of hard labor for which she received two meals and five cents. The woman appeared so tired and "careworn" that Huey told her how Jesus had compared himself to an ox who bore the burdens of humanity. As their paths parted the elderly woman muttered more to herself than to Huey, "In all my life I never dreamed there is a burden-bearer like that." Huey regretted that she might never see the woman again, but at least she had "sown seed trusting Him to give the increase." 17

Cynthia Miller (1905-36) gave up nursing and teaching to spend all her time on evangelism. She assisted Peyton Stephens and his wife, a missionary couple who conducted American-style tent revivals. Stephens was sometimes referred to as "China's Billy Sunday," and he tried to fulfill the role. He erected his tent in villages through which he passed. His wife had trained a small brass band of Chinese converts who used their amazing if not always harmonious instruments to summon a crowd. While men met in the tent, Miller and her Bible woman went house to house witnessing. After Stephens moved to the next village, Miller remained behind to do follow-up work with converts. Miller admitted that her life was spartan, but she insisted that it provided the greatest joy she had experienced since arriving in China.18

Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941), a single Methodist missionary, witnessed regularly to children in her school but did not begin regular women's evangelistic work until at age fifty-six she temporarily replaced a friend. The work did not fit Atkinson's personality; she was shy, liked to stay home, and did not enjoy Chinese food, which often made her ill. Nonetheless she traveled across a wide region by houseboat and wheelbarrow. Although she gamely stuck with the work until retirement at age eighty, she obviously did not relish it.19

Willie Kelly (1893-1937) split her time between teaching and evangelism, focusing on the former during her first decade in China but devoting most of her time to women's work after 1904. Even during the 1890s Kelly, her fellow teacher Lottie Price, and two Chinese Bible women spent Friday afternoons speaking to women in rural areas. Kelly conducted Bible classes for women and visited house to house. In Shanghai she held summer Bible schools for children and preached to their mothers. Once the Smith Bible School for Women was completed about 1904 she brought in large numbers of Chinese women to study

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Virginia M. Atkinson of Rock Mills, Alabama, and missionary

in Soochow 1884-1941, reading at home silently to her cat.

(Courtesy of Auburn University Archives)

there. As administrator of that school, principal of a kindergarten, and director of the Bible training program, she had enough to keep her busy. In her Bible school she practiced the exegetical method popular with Dwight L. Moody, who conducted Bible study by simply reading verses and explaining them. These duties by no means constituted Kelly's entire ministry. She visited all the female members of her Shanghai church once a month as well as non-Christian wives of male church members. In addition to her other work she utilized her bookkeeping skills from Alabama days as Dr. Crumpton's financial assistant to serve as cotreasurer of Old North Gate Baptist Church. 20

Evangelistic work also fit the personality of Addie Cox (1918-51). The single Baptist missionary labored in Honan Province's capital city, Kaifeng. This was home to the Baptist Interior China Mission, which had thirteen outstations where she conducted services. Sometimes walking and at other times riding donkeys, wheelbarrows, carts, camels, or bicycles, Cox visited hundreds of villages each year. One fall she spent sixteen weeks on a single trip, returned home to rest, then left for another three weeks. For four years she was the mission's only mission-

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ary engaged in full-time evangelism among women and children. In her work she visited homes, preached to women, conducted Bible classes, and examined inquirers (the missionary term for those who sought to become Christians) to determine whether they understood Christianity well enough to be baptized. By the time Cox began her work in the 1920S, the Chinese response to the gospel was much better than it had been to earlier efforts. Before she left for her initial furlough, 75 women had accepted Christ. Because few of them could read, Cox and her two Bible women tried to convert them primarily by personal tutoring. So successful was her work that she sometimes saw 35 baptized at one service, and the membership of the Interior China Mission she served reached 2,000 members by the mid-1920s with another 3,000 inquirers. 21

Even their largest successes were modest. In fact so slowly did they progress that missionary morale suffered. Even the indomitable Willie Kelly grieved in 1914 at how slowly her evangelistic work went. Though her kindergarten was thriving and had become self-sufficient, soul saving did not keep pace: "In humility I record the financial success and with bitter heart-searching and upbraiding I have to report not many visible results; yet we are beginning over again with the hope that God will be gracious to us."22

Impatience at the slow response to evangelism appears in most missionary reports. In 1877 Nicholas Williams summarized his five years in China before his wife's health forced their return permanently to Alabama: "Eleven converts from heathenism seems to be a small yield for the labor spent upon the field. But the Christian teaching is that there is joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Who can tell the part they may take in the establishment of Christianity in China?" But Scripture could not eliminate the sense of discouragement that permeated his letter. Alice Huey labored in Laichow for seven years before seeing her first convert. The entire Baptist mission, she wrote, was "burdened on account of the condition of [the] city."23

Missionary Wives and Mothers

The task of buoying spirits was not in the job description of missionary wives. But then neither were most of the other jobs they performed. In addition to running homes, cooking, supervising servants, bearing and nurturing children, and encouraging husbands, many wives found places of mission service. As the examples of Eliza Shuck and Martha Crawford make clear, they often functioned as full-scale missionaries

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even if mission boards regarded them only as "missionary wives." Most of them, like Martha Crawford, proclaimed a separate and distinct "call" that preceded their husbands. Regrettably they seldom got many chances to follow their calls. Martha Crawford complained that her husband's fragile emotional health took him away so often that she was obliged to neglect her own duties to tend his. "I have so many interruptions," she wrote in 1879, "that there is no hour in the twenty-four in which I can feel secure from them." Because her house's courtyard adjoined her pupils' schoolyard, the incessant noise disturbed her. Ruth Berckman, like many missionary wives, taught English in addition to her family responsibilities. Aurie L. Montgomery, wife of James Montgomery (1917-42), taught fifth and sixth grades each morning, conducted a Bible class on Tuesday afternoons, held a women's meeting on Thursday afternoons, led a women's Sunday school class on Sundays, served as chairman of the program committee for the women's society, entertained guests constantly, kept house, mothered her children, tended her husband, and studied Chinese in her spare time. 24

Social Ministries

Although the conversion of souls was central to the missionary enterprise, the means to that end varied according to the theology and sensitivity of each missionary, the generation and denomination she represented, and the internal conditions within China at the time. As historians have long acknowledged, the overwhelming focus of China missions during the nineteenth century was evangelism. The establishment of schools and hospitals was largely the institutional manifestation of that goal. In fact the early schools often taught more Bible and religion than anything else. Southern Baptists in particular emphasized personal salvation to the near exclusion of social ministries. But by the end of the century this emphasis began to change. Especially after the Cheefoo Convention of 1876at which evangelicals decided to send missionaries into the interior of China where floods, famine, and plagues demanded immediate attentionmission boards became more responsive to physical needs.25 The absence of institutional work before 1900 corresponded to patterns in Alabama, where Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians spent more time defending the social order than trying to change it. Yet after 1900 Alabama evangelicals became substantially more involved in social ministries, establishing settlement houses that offered a variety of educational, medical, and social services. They

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also began "institutional churches" that were designed to minister to the whole person through weekday literacy classes, physical education, job training, craft, medical, hygiene, and home economics programs.

It is no surprise then that Alabama missionaries after 1900 began to establish social ministries in China. Many of these activities involved traditional charity work: feeding beggars, housing orphans, treating injuries and diseases. But increasingly after 1900 humanitarianism became institutionalized as "social gospel" activities. One expression of this changing emphasis was the increasing number of teachers, physicians, and nurses sent to China by mission agencies. This increased emphasis on institutional work reflected board response to the steady stream of pessimistic reports from street preachers, evangelists, and practitioners of women's work about how slow and difficult their progress was using traditional evangelism.

Although missionaries had always sought some social reformsfrom earliest times they had attacked infanticide, foot binding, female slavery, concubinage, and exploitation of the poorit was not until the 1920s and 1930s that they launched a full-scale movement aimed at the social reformation of China. This effort culminated in the rural reconstruction movement. Some missionaries sought nothing less than eradicating the economic and social conditions, including landlordism, that oppressed the Chinese peasant. Although none of the Alabama missionaries were professionally trained social workers, as was increasingly the case with the delegations from northern and western states, they became more involved in that work.

Baptist missionary A. Y. Napier (1906-32) laid out the biblical and theological rationale for this changing agenda while home on furlough. His 1922 doctoral dissertation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, entitled "The Challenge of China to America," reflected the influence of the social reform emphasis within American religious circles. Although he included the obligatory evangelical rejection of what he termed "social salvation" and insisted that individual conversion remained the central task of missionaries, his thesis included a compelling argument for the social gospel. In a chapter devoted to China's physical needs, he discussed such problems as poverty, the subordination of women, inadequate housing, poor health, famine, the dominance of superstition in traditional medicine, opium addiction, and prostitution. He acknowledged that physical needs could not be separated from intellectual and spiritual concerns, but he argued for the primacy of medical missions in China. Even though he was not a physician, he be-

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lieved the profession of medicine served the interests of evangelism better than his own did (he had spent thirteen years as an evangelist). 26

Many fellow Baptists reached the same conclusion. Thomas 0. (T. 0.) Hearn (1907-25) left his work in Laiyang in 1921 to help organize a famine relief drive in drought-stricken Shantung Province. In his appeal to Americans for funds, he described starving people trying to survive by eating chaff, corncobs, and tree bark. Hearn put together a team of Chinese pastors who distributed vouchers that could be cashed for food on market days when grain arrived from Manchuria. Never forsaking evangelism, Hearn distributed the vouchers door to door to famine victims and at a central location where he preached the gospel before handing out the vouchers. He also organized a program of work relief, employing one hundred Chinese on road repairs. In all he visited 148 villages and distributed nearly 4,500 food vouchers.27

Prison ministries also took on new importance. Prisoners may well have been the most despised and rejected population. Prison conditions were abominable even by the nation's low standards of nutrition and health care. T. 0. Hearn reported preaching to 40 prisoners who appeared before him shackled by chains. They had been chained to the walls of their cells for several days and had not been allowed to enter the courtyard for exercise. Methodist missionary A. C. Bowen (190132) organized a prison ministry through two churches in Chungking. He described his efforts to change penology from a concept of inflicting misery and punishment to one of mercy and reformation. The government provided no bathing facilities, no way for prisoners to wash clothes, and no physician to treat diseases. Trachoma was epidemic and resulted in blindness for many prisoners. Bowen took eye medicine when he preached each Sunday to 175 prisoners. His firsthand contact made it difficult "to shake off the sense of horror that seizes upon one entering" the prison, a horror so great that few Chinese would accompany him. But he found that "tender, helpful service in a practical way begets confidence," and from this medical and social expression of Christianity came many conversions. Addie Cox (1918-51) began a prison ministry for women. At first she conducted only religious services but then began to carry food because the prisoners were so malnourished.28

As civil war and Japanese invasion descended on China during the 1920S and 1930s, conditions among the general population approximated that of prisoners. Atrocities, famine, flood, and war loosed an avalanche of displaced persons. The population plunged from its

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normal subsistence existence into a life-and-death struggle for survival. Nanking University, one of the best mission colleges, began American-style cooperative extension work in agriculture and forestry. This initial contact led missionaries deeper into the agrarian world of tenancy and poverty and culminated in creation of the China International Famine Relief Commission. By 1936 the commission had collected some $50 million for China. Using the model of the American New Deal work relief programs, it funded construction of 5,000 wells, 2,000 miles of roads, and hundreds of miles of canals. Beginning in the late 1920s the rural reconstruction movement introduced new technology to villages and established literacy programs. 29

Many Alabama missionaries became involved in famine relief and rural reform. Methodist missionaries Hoadley and Ruth Berckman carefully recorded their odyssey of social involvement. Upon arriving in 1921 they commented favorably on the orphanage at Loongwha jointly sponsored by Christians and non-Christians. The specter of hunger on the streets of Shanghai left them shaken. They supported a mission in a neighborhood of working-class and poor Chinese with their own personal contributions and by fund-raising efforts in the United States. They regretted how little social service work Methodists were doing, and they helped with such efforts conducted by Shanghai's Carriger Memorial Church. By 1932 Carriger Memorial sponsored a mission to poor rickshaw drivers and conducted tuition-based primary schools, a kindergarten, a business school, a free school for poor children, and health programs. It also raised money to make quilts for poor refugees who were flooding into Shanghai.30 By 1937 the Berckmans were conducting "welfare schools" in rural villages, stressing health, homemaking, agriculture, and religion ("it is all very much religious"). They conducted ten of the three-to four-week schools that year.

During the 1930s Willie Kelly and Addie Cox also became deeply involved in refugee ministries. As Japanese offensives drove hundreds of thousands of displaced persons into Shanghai, Kelly's church spent $300 a month to provide refugees two meals per day. That same year, 1937, Addie Cox reported from interior Honan Province that 160 beggars greeted her at one outstation. She dispensed the gospel before distributing food and declared that she had decided to follow the model of Zaccheus and give half her goods to the poor. "There is a blessing in it," she explained, "for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." A year later poor Christians besieged her from morning till night. She insisted on witnessing first to each of them, then provided assistance.

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One youthful regular mastered her system. He would appear with a cadre of friends and ask her to show them Bible pictures and "preach" to them. She would "explain" how much Jesus loved them, then distribute the rations for which they had come. 31

When the Japanese attacked, Canton Baptist missionaries Frank and Mabel Woodward helped establish and supervise refugee centers at eight churches and at the Baptist hospital. He acquired huge brass pots that could hold twenty gallons of rice and water. The Woodwards purchased salt and rice with FMB funds and fed eight to ten thousand people a day. Despite their efforts, five hundred people died daily of starvation. Canton's Baptist churches added to their food distribution program a macabre new ministry: they sent a truck through the city each day to pick up and cremate bodies in order to prevent plague. Frank Woodward preached with care because so many were starving that they feigned conversion in order to improve their chances of food, even though the refugee center fed Christians and non-Christians without distinctions. Cecil and Margaret Ward ministered in the same refugee program three years later in 1940 when rations were reduced to one bowl of rice gruel per day.32

Both the Berckmans and Virginia Atkinson worked in Shanghai's refugee ministry. The Berckmans ministered through the Emergency Committee for the Shanghai Christian Federation, an ecumenical association that operated fifteen refugee centers in 1932 serving 3,900 people a day. A medical clinic provided health services three times a week. The Berckmans attempted to mobilize the entire Chinese Christian community in such efforts by proclaiming that the church should forget its own problems and help those who had greater needs. Atkinson staffed the "rice lines" at feeding stations.33

When the war finally ended in Asia, Hoadley Berckman took the logical final step in his theological pilgrimage. He put his extensive bookkeeping and accounting experience to good use, returning to China under the auspices of United China Relief. As controller for the organization he dispensed $1 million a month in U.S. government assistance. All educational and religious relief funds were also channeled through the United Clearing Board, which he served as treasurer. He also served as temporary treasurer for four other relief funds. Relief was the initial concern of Addie Cox and James T. Williams as well when the war ended.34 The weight of poverty, hunger, and refugees had finally broken the structure of even the most fiercely evangelical denomi-

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nations and forced them to place human suffering on a par with soul winning.

Although few Alabama missionaries were technically social workers, seven (Floy Adams, Mildred Thorne Bryan, Addie Cox, Mary Alice Huey, Clarabel Isdell, Cynthia Miller, and Mabel Woodward) had attended the Woman's Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, which focused on social work both in its academic preparation and in its internships. Several other Baptist women (including Margaret Ward and Irene Jeffers) had attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where they may have received similar training. Methodist missionary Louise Robinson had attended Scarritt Bible and Training School, which also emphasized what was then called ''institutional" or "industrial" work. The function of such work varied but generally included adult education and alternative job training, especially for women. Although the technical job description of these women was not "social worker," that profession best describes how many of them actually functioned in China.

Southern Baptist missionaries from Alabama were not unaware of institutional and industrial work in their own state, particularly in the Birmingham District. Such work flourished between 1900 and 1920. Missionaries arriving in China during those years created similar ministries in China.

Cynthia Miller arrived at Laichow in Shantung Province in 1905. She brought with her the heightened social consciousness of the WMU Training School. Though fiercely devoted to personal evangelism, a varied career as nurse, teacher, school principal, and evangelist afforded her ample opportunity to construct a unique strategy for ministry. When she discovered that young married women and widows could not attend her school, she began an industrial department for anyone unable to pay board. In this program women worked half a day and attended school the other half. She believed that without job training the poor widows had few alternatives to selling themselves to a man or committing suicide. So committed was Miller to industrial education that she funded it for the first two years out of her own salary. Once the industrial school was adequately equipped, it would allow widows to earn their own living, prevent "slave traders" from preying on them, and make the work self-supporting. She later proposed expanding her school by purchasing knitting and sewing machines, adding equipment to make soap, and building dormitories for women. She even sent testi-

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monials from a fellow missionary who proclaimed women's industrial work "the most urgent missionary work I know of." By November 1923 Miller had her facility in operation. 35

David and Mildred Bryan arrived in Shantung Province in 1914. Both were extremely well educated (he had a doctorate in theology and she had attended Denison University and the WMU Training School). In Louisville Mildred Bryan had spent an internship working in a settlement house. As a teacher at Pingtu Christian Institute, David Bryan became interested in agricultural education and persuaded the Foreign Mission Board to purchase a large demonstration farm for $15,000. Most students at the institute were poor, and the farm would allow them to pay their way by working. Bryan then began to lobby for an agricultural and industrial arts teacher for the school. The farm was soon a prosperous operation that furnished fruits and vegetables for school use as well as surplus for sale. Shortages in missionary personnel forced Bryan to take over the program. It was a task for which his farm upbringing in Alabama had well prepared him. He installed a can-making operation that allowed the farm to preserve and sell its produce. Next he introduced brick making and building construction to the curriculum. Bryan cited in 1918 as precedent for his work a source that must have surprised white Alabamians: "There is a great possibility . . .  to work exactly along the line that Booker Washington worked in building Tuskegee Institute for Negroes. And further I believe conditions are much the same as under which he worked."36 Although such attitudes may be interpreted as patronizing to Chinese students, his agrarian reforms anticipated by a decade elements of the rural reformation movement of the 1920S and 1930s.

When war ravaged China two decades later, Addie Cox sought to deal with the physical needs of refugees in Honan Province in the same way that Miller had helped widows. She began an industrial school for women that taught spinning, weaving, shoe making, and other crafts. She trained boys to make covers for Bibles.37

Willie Kelly also began social ministries about the same time as Cynthia Miller and the Bryans. Annie Seaman's 1918 gift of $20,000, combined with contributions of nearly that much from Chinese members of Old North Gate Baptist Church, allowed Kelly to construct a large building that she conceived from the beginning as an "institutional church." It housed schools, industrial classes, a gymnasium, and other facilities that allowed its utilization seven days a week. Kelly immediately began to lobby the SBC mission board for an institutional

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church worker to oversee this ministry. She also began a night class that enrolled fifty young men. By the 1930s Old North Gate Baptist Church of Shanghai had institutionalized the social ministries she had begun in the form of a "Good Will Center." She organized three such centers in the congregation's five evangelistic stations. Each center contained regular schools, an evening school for adult men, and a charity office. One of the centers was built entirely by a philanthropic Chinese member of the church. When First Baptist decided to erect a new building in 1939, the congregation retained the old facility as an evangelistic and Good Will Center. 38

Old North Gate responded well to such ministries partly because its own congregation was a microcosm of Shanghai society, enrolling some of the city's wealthiest and best-educated residents as well as some of its poorest. One affluent woman provided shoes and Chinese gowns for three men who attended services despite their thin clothes, unshaven faces, and odoriferous bodies. Two of the wealthiest members commissioned a poor church member to make one hundred warm suits to donate to poorly clad members. They also provided vouchers for rice worth $40 each.39

As the oldest Baptist work in central China, Old North Gate Church flourished as a result of this mixture of evangelistic, educational, and social ministries. In 1935 the church boasted a Sunday school with thirty-two teachers, fifteen committees that guided its work, and a board of deacons that consisted of three men and three women (including Willie Kelly). The church employed a pastor, two evangelists, and a secretary. It conducted five evangelistic stations, three of them with Good Will Centers attached, operated three schools with 850 pupils, sponsored two women's missionary societies, published a church newspaper, and enrolled 978 members. During that same year the church added 42 members by baptism and 2 more by transfer from other churches.40

Methodist missionaries were even more likely than Baptists to have become involved with industrial and institutional missions in the Birmingham area. Methodist women in particular were active in beginning and staffing settlement houses and other social ministries. Although Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) came to China before such involvements became widespread, she quickly directed part of her work toward industrial classes. The idea first occurred to her when she encouraged pupils to invite their mothers for tea. They explained that their mothers took in piecework and embroidery and worked too hard to attend. From

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this revelation the Industrial School of Soochow (later called the Moka Garden Embroidery Mission) came into being. Atkinson rented a large building capable of housing a Bible woman's home and an industrial school as well as her girls' school. At first another woman ran the school, but when she married, Atkinson ("I did not know how to sew on a button!") took over. With the beginning of the Chinese Revolution in 1911, Moka Garden took on additional responsibilities. Soochow had been the center for weaving ornate imperial brocades and elaborate embroidery on the robes of mandarins. This cottage industry collapsed after the revolution dried up the market for such vestiges of China's imperial past. Atkinson enlarged her industrial school to employ many professional embroiderers. Instead of embroidering sumptuous robes for the wealthy, they produced table linen and underwear. Like Cynthia Miller, Atkinson marketed her products in the United States to eager consumers. Orders poured in and production was limited only by the number of embroiderers who could work in the floor space available. Women earned the princely salary of $7.50 a month. Their day began at 8:30 A.M., followed by a recess and chapel service, lunch, another break in the afternoon, and a half-hour Bible study. The day ended at 5:00 P.M. By Chinese standards, it was an easy regimen. Later the embroidery school was incorporated into a new and larger institutional church. But it was the industrial school that largely advanced the church by relieving Soochow's unemployment and creating evangelistic opportunities for Methodist missionaries. 41

Ruth and Hoadley Berckman (1921-51) were two Methodist missionaries greatly impressed with Atkinson's embroidery program. They helped organize institutional church work in Changchow that sought to help the impoverished of the city. Later they worked at Moore Memorial Methodist Church in Shanghai, generally considered to be the largest Protestant church in China in 1934 with nearly 1,400 members. The facility was organized as an institutional church complete with clubs, a kindergarten, children's and women's work, schools, a gymnasium, and adult education courses enrolling 1,000 young Chinese. The church provided cooking and sewing classes, sanitary toilets, and a clinic operated by registered Chinese nurses and physicians. The physical education program produced tremendous enthusiasm for a new American import. So popular was basketball that the director organized fourteen teams into leagues that played from seven in the morning until nine at night. The church also maintained a hostel for sixty women working in

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Shanghai and a fully staffed kitchen. The church employed a staff of twenty-eight to manage its extensive ministries. Like Old North Gate Baptist, Moore Memorial Methodist Church thrived on the diverse ministries, adding 131 new members in 1933. 42

Teaching Ministries

The largest group of Alabama missionariesnineteen people, including nine single women, three married women, and seven mentaught school. At no point in East-West contact did missionaries so threaten traditional Chinese elites as in this profession. Mandarins, who were thoroughly educated in the Chinese classics, art, calligraphy, philosophy, and ethics, represented the ancient Confucian ideal of a political aristocracy of the intellect. Perhaps no class more resisted Christianity or had more to lose from its spread. Their education was based on memorization of classical literature and extensive formal examinations, a system that afforded them the broadest social mobility and the highest social status to be found in China. Into this hidebound system came the mission schools. At first the schools mainly provided Bible study in English combined with the classics taught by a Chinese teacher. But later, American teachers combined Bible study with science, math, geography, and literature. Not only was the curriculum different, so was the opportunity afforded girls and the poor.

It was in the educational sphere that missionaries ultimately made their greatest contribution to China. By 1925 China contained more than 300 Protestant middle and high schools, teaching 26,000 students. Many of these students continued their studies in one of the sixteen Protestant colleges or universities. More importantly, the universities were concentrated in the Yangtze River deltaespecially in Nanking, Soochow, Hangchow, and Shanghaiwhich had long produced China's economic and political leadership.

During the early phases of the missionary enterprise, education was almost wholly subservient to conversion. The major Western addition to school curricula was the Bible, and many times it was taught to the exclusion of Chinese classics, which students regarded as essential to their future careers. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese reformers expressed growing interest in Western learning. The abolition of the examination system in 1905 sent applications for mission schools soaring, and creation of the Republic of China in 1911 spurred

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interest in the modernizing capacity of Western education. 43 The interest coincided with the steady expansion of the mission school curriculum toward stronger technical courses.

Higher education made equally rapid strides. By the 1930s at least thirteen Christian colleges had attained genuine Western-style standards. Enrollment in these institutions reached 3,500 in 1926 and 12,000 in 1947. The latter figure represents between 12 and 20 percent of China's total college enrollment at the time.44

Criticism of mission education came from two sources. Fellow missionaries complained about a perceived deemphasis on evangelism. By 1935-36 for every dollar raised in China for mission work, 42 cents went for education, 33 cents for medical work, 15 cents to support local churches, and only l0 cents for other mission, evangelistic, and outreach efforts. Conservative evangelicals considered this far too little spent on the central task of conversion.

Many Chinese criticized mission education for remaining too Western. Only American administrators and teachers held the highest and most influential positions. Too much of the curriculum consisted of courses in Western religion. The rising tide of Chinese nationalism during the 1920S resulted in demands that religion courses and chapel services in mission schools be voluntary. After 1928 the Nationalist government mandated that the chief administrative officer of mission colleges must be Chinese and also a majority of the boards of managers. As government-run schools and colleges rapidly improved, they attracted many of the brightest Chinese students away from Christian institutions. This was especially true of students with strong nationalist sympathies. Nonetheless, the best Christian universities continued to compete favorably, especially in medical education and nursing and in all areas of women's education. The University of Nanking, Yenching University, Huachung University, Ginling College, Canton Christian College, the University of Shanghai, SaintJohn's University, Yale-in-China, and Shantung Christian University enrolled some 3,500 students in the mid-1920s and were considered among the finest institutions of higher education in China.45

The three southern denominations that furnished most Alabama missionaries supported substantial numbers of schools by 1905. Southern Baptists boasted forty-three primary schools with 1,214 pupils and nine higher schools and colleges with 432 students. The ME Church. South, claimed eighteen lower schools and twenty-one higher institutions enrolling a total of 1,527 students. The Presbyterian Church of the

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United States sponsored five lower schools with 93 students and six higher schools with 169. 46

Despite early resistance to educational missions, Alabama Baptist missionaries generally viewed schools as integral parts of the evangelical effort. H. W. Provence left the pastorate of Ensley Baptist Church for China in 1904 carrying with him impressive academic credentials: recipient of the Greek Medal from the University of Richmond, from which he took undergraduate and master's degrees; master's and doctoral degrees in theology from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. After a stay of eight years, his wife's failing health forced their return to the States. He subsequently became a professor of religion at Mississippi College, head of the English Department at Furman University, and president of Greenville Woman's College in South Carolina. While in China he served as treasurer of the University of Shanghai, which was supported jointly by Southern and Northern Baptists, and as a member of the school's building committee. Although devoted to Baptist orthodoxy, he believed that education furnished a major opportunity to convey the gospel. Asked by the Foreign Mission Board to write a pamphlet on Southern Baptist work in China, Provence showcased education. If evangelism was to be effective, he wrote, "the school must go hand-in-hand with the church" in order to train indigenous leaders.47

T. B. Ray, head of the Foreign Mission Board, agreed that schools broke down prejudices and were "tremendously effective Gospel agencies." He particularly praised China's flagship Baptist institution, the University of Shanghai.48

A. Y. Napier and James T. Williams wrote dissertations at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1921 and 1922 exploring the role of social ministries in the conversion of Chinese. That fact alone suggests changing Baptist attitudes. Napier took the most traditional view. Though acknowledging that Chinese respect for learning opened important doors for missionaries, he warned that secular learning left Chinese with much knowledge but little faith. Christian education must continually seek conversion as its goal. He believed that the Foreign Mission Board spent too much on education, which reached only a tiny fraction of China's vast population. All this notwithstanding, he endorsed educational missions as an important instrument with which to reach the Chinese and praised mission schools for producing many of China's finest leaders. He also favored greater ecumenical cooperation in mission education.49

Williams championed a much more aggressive plan of education as

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central to evangelism. Evangelistic sermons meant little to uneducated Chinese, he wrote. Most Christian theological notionsGod, sin, and so forthwere unknown in China. Schools became the primary agency of conversion and were especially important for Chinese women. He justified such efforts with biblical references and advocated a kindergarten-through-university system of Christian education. Industrial schools also played a key role by providing better jobs, dignifying labor, and undermining the resistance of Chinese intellectuals to manual work. Furthermore, Christian colleges educated political leaders for the new Republic of China, especially in such areas as law, medicine, economics, education, and social work. Like virtually all Baptist missionaries, Williams warned that education and social service were never ends in themselves but were means to conversion: "Social service is one of the products of Christianity, and a large program of vitally Christian social service should have a prominent place in the future mission work in China"; but such work "can never be a substitute" for conversion, which alone could redeem China. 50

Alabamians played a role in all these educational changes. Even the earliest Alabama Baptist missionaries saw the wisdom of Williams's argument. Eliza Shuck (1847-51) came to China from the faculty of Judson College and immediately established a school in 1847. She transformed a Sunday preaching station into a weekday school that attracted an overflow crowd interested in learning English. But she quickly rejected this approach to mission education, preferring to hire a Chinese teacher who could teach the skills necessary to understand "religious truths," especially how to read Chinese characters. Her husband agreed that in Asia boarding schools for both sexes constituted a major tool of evangelism, and he lobbied the Foreign Mission Board for permission to establish such institutions.51

Eliza Shuck's contemporary, Martha Foster Crawford (1852-1909), entered educational work with equal enthusiasm but soon had second thoughts. At first Crawford operated her school from a room in her house, bribing students to attend by paying them two-thirds of a cent per day. School opened with a dozen girls, most of whom were members of wealthy Shanghai families. She visited the parents of each student and convinced herself that all was going well. She hired a male Chinese teacher who could translate her scriptural catechism, but the arrangement did not work. She discovered that the teacher smoked opium and embezzled school funds. The Crawfords fired him and hired a second teacher, who subsequently became their first convert

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and later pastored Old North Gate Baptist Church for forty years. He also was to become the subject of a biography by Martha Crawford. 52

When the Crawfords moved north to Shantung Province in the 1860s, she began a school with six boys. Without a specific text or pedagogical technique she simply took the students as far as their intellects permitted. They demonstrated proficiency in mathematics, astronomy, and classics as well as in New Testament and biblical history. Her husband not only supported her school during these early years but even proclaimed its value in attracting favorable attention to the gospel. By the end of the 1870s the school was thriving and producing Christian leaders for the Tengchow region. But then her husband turned against mission education and denounced schools as a form of bribery to win converts. He demanded that she close the school, an ultimatum that led to marital strife before she finally consented. She tried to compromise by dropping study of the Chinese classics in favor of the Bible as her primary text, but her Chinese students rebelled against the strategy because it denied them a chance to pass government exams and become officials.53

By 1889 her husband's erratic behavior and increasing tension with fellow missionaries and the Foreign Mission Board persuaded Martha Crawford to abandon her school. At the time the Crawfords considered their lifetime work largely a failure and blamed it on board policy. They believed that the numerical success of Presbyterians and Methodists resulted from their hiring Chinese as teachers and hospital assistants, thereby creating a parasite band of disciples more interested in material security than spiritual rebirth. Martha Crawford renounced her earlier policy of providing lodging, board, bedding, books, and stationery for her students. Finally the Crawfords "became fully aware that the school was fostering a sentiment threatening most disastrous consequences to the purity of the church and the conversion of the massesthat it was a hot-house system cutting off the Christians from the community around them, and cultivating dependence upon American churches."54 In a matter of three decades the Crawfords moved from a declaration that mission schools constituted one of the most effective methods of evangelism to a denunciation of them as a heretical incubator of "rice Christians."

The Crawfords' contemporaries, Jumelle and Nicholas Williams (1871-76), had no such reservations. They opened a boys' boarding school in 1873, and it grew rapidly from twenty-five pupils to forty-one. Jumelle taught in a girls' school as well as performed women's work.

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Summarizing their first term after his wife's poor health forced their return, Williams wrote the FMB that schools constituted an important element of evangelism. 55

Alabama Baptist missionaries became increasingly involved with and committed to education as a primary agent of evangelism after 1900. Willie Kelly (1893-1937) spent her entire forty-four-year career in what can best be termed educational evangelism. Such an investment is ironic in light of the fact that during her early years of teaching and language study she could not decide on a field of service. While she awaited this vision she began a school for boys under the auspices of Shanghai's Old North Gate Baptist Church. She employed a Chinese Christian teacher, but it was Kelly who heard the students' recitations, taught them songs, furnished Christian literature, and managed the school's finances. She began a Bible class for mothers and sisters of her pupils and visited their homes. Gradually her life's work took shape and she reported to Alabama friends: "We find schools to be of great service to us along the line of making friends with the women."56 Women's evangelism became her lifelong passion, and schools the vehicle for its execution.

Kelly proved to be an exceptional educational administrator with remarkable management skills. By 1910 the girls' schools she supervised in Shanghai had to turn away students. Four years later Shanghai officials placed her on a committee to visit and teach in all government girls' schools. In this era before nationalism swept the city she was allowed to invite the 3,000 girls enrolled in government schools to examine Christianity as a religious option. The following year she began a night school for Bible and business studies. Soon responsibilities for administering five schools overwhelmed her, and she was forced to close some of them. Her favorite, the Smith Bible School for Women named for her south Alabama lumberman-benefactor, remained in operation for nineteen years. It brought women from throughout central China to her compound, where they lived and studied with Kelly. Not until the University of Shanghai began a coeducational seminary and Bible program did she agree to close down this school. As late as 1936 she still supervised three large schools operating at Shanghai's First Baptist Church.57

Kelly's Baptist contemporary, Cynthia Miller (1905-36), worked to the north in Shantung Province but shared Kelly's experience. She arrived as a nurse but found that work not to her liking. The mission urged that she help in a mission school, but Miller's interest increas-

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ingly focused on women's evangelism. She finally found a vehicle for combining what the mission wanted her to do and her own evangelical zeal. She began a school for women in the early 1920s, raised money in the United States for buildings and equipment, and supervised construction. She insisted that the school reflect her vision of its purpose: to provide poor women literacy so they could read their Bibles and domestic skills so they could create stable Christian homes. An industrial class allowed women to work half-time and study half-time, made the school self-supporting, and provided occupational skills. She unilaterally rejected introducing Western science and ''higher learning" because it would "Americanize" the women. After her 1933 furlough, financial shortages forced the mission to combine her women's school with a girls' institution. She fired teachers, combined recitations, taught, paid half the schools' budget out of her own salary, and kept the schools open. But three years of international financial depression left her in anguish. One end of the girls' dormitory caved in, forcing her to move the girls into the women's school. She spent $200 of her own money to repair tiles and buildings. Though physically and mentally exhausted, she refused to return to Alabama until help arrived to replace her. 58

Addie Cox (1918-51) experienced less personal trauma during her brief two-year teaching career in Honan Province before entering fulltime rural evangelistic work. This brief teaching experience convinced her of the merit of mission education. Few children who graduated from Baptist schools failed to make a profession of faith, she wrote. The schools produced the evangelists, Bible women, and pastors necessary to staff an indigenous church. In many China mission fields, she wrote, schools provided more converts than did direct evangelism. She favored using Chinese teachers, especially those who were alumni of the schools in which they taught or had received further education in the United States.59

Baptist missionaries David and Mildred Bryan (1914-26) taught in Pingtu (Shantung Province). David Bryan came to northern China to teach in a college, but disputes within the mission delayed construction of the school. So he took over Pingtu Christian Institute, a boys' boarding school. From the beginning he believed education was the most effective form of Christian ministry, superior even to medical missions. He began the agricultural and industrial programs described earlier and made his school largely self-sufficient. Most of his 110 students came from poor families and had earned their own room and board. So

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popular was the school that he had to turn down applicants. Confirming Cox's notion that mission schools produced much of the church's leadership, Bryan reported that Pingtu Institute produced three-fourths or more of the Chinese teachers and evangelists working within the Baptist North China Mission.

Financial problems plagued Bryan's school as they did Cynthia Miller's. Except for his mathematics class, none of his rooms had desks. Students knelt on the floor and used their benches as desks. The school had no library, no encyclopedias or reference books. It was located in a "backwoods" part of the world where a well-equipped library with several newspapers and periodicals would have made students informed citizens and constituted "one more Christianity-given boost to this poor country." He tried to raise money to establish a memorial library. Unfortunately the American Great Depression decimated mission schools within the North China Mission. Many Chinese teachers left mission schools for public schools where they spread their faith. But the arduous labor of many years was largely destroyed in Shantung. 60

The onset of the Great Depression delayed Clarabel Isdell's journey to China until 1935. After two years of language study she became principal of the Julia McKenzie School for girls in Yangchow. By then the Chinese government had issued instructions that the Bible be taught only in English and that all other classes be taught in Chinese. Her school taught mathematics and other "secular" topics, but Isdell believed that education and evangelism complemented rather than contradicted each other.61

Perhaps the most authoritative Baptist spokesperson on mission education was Mary Raleigh Anderson (1917-35). Product of a Baptist family of educatorsher grandfather had founded Blue Mountain Baptist College for Women in Mississippi, her mother was one of the college's first teachers, and her aunt, Janie Lowrey Graves, was a missionary teacher in China for half a centuryshe graduated from Blue Mountain College, completed a master's degree at Peabody College in Nashville, and took a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Columbia University. Following eighteen years of teaching at Pei Tao Academy for girls in Canton, she returned to Alabama after a dispute with the FMB over Chinese participation in administration of schools. In 1943 she wrote an encyclopedic study of Protestant girls' schools in southern China. Based on nearly twenty years of experience as a teacher, assistant principal, and director of teacher training, she urged the continua-

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Clarabel Isdell, Baptist teacher/principal in Yangchow for ten years,

handing out tracts in 1938.

(Courtesy of Solitude Baptist Church, Albertville, Alabama)

tion and expansion of Christian boarding schools even as she criticized some of the philosophies and methods they employed. She considered nineteenth-century Christian schools little more than Bible classes where pupils memorized Scripture and received religious instruction in English. Although these early schools benefited all classes, she believed that they mainly served wealthier families.

The rise of Chinese nationalism in the early twentieth century changed schools dramatically, Anderson wrote. Requirements that mission schools register with the Chinese government reduced religious content and transformed them from foreign-financed to self-supporting under the auspices of Chinese churches. By maintaining high academic standards, her own school had survived so well that most of its students came from non-Christian homes. Although the schools continued to convert students and family members, they gradually raised academic standards as well.

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Anderson developed a carefully thought-through philosophy of mission education. Christian schools needed to be more innovative in their curricula and spur the imagination of students. Christian schools enjoyed the ability to experiment, a key advantage over government institutions both in China and in the United States. Moreover, mission schools should construct an "indigenous curriculum" more adapted to Chinese cultural patterns and less foreign-dominated. Schools should teach not only Western learning but the importance of preserving Chinese culture. The curriculum should emphasize health, civic problems, international relations, industrial education, and community activities. Mission schools should aim more at helping gifted, maladjusted, and abnormal students. Second in importance only to conversion of students should be raising students' standards of living, which she defined in terms of "cleanliness, elegance, and culture." She illustrated this philosophy from her own pedagogical practices at Canton's Pei Tao Academy. She developed a lecture on malaria, the role of mosquitoes in transmitting the disease, and effective public health strategies for combating it. Pei Tao also offered courses in Chinese cooking, painting, embroidery, and the Chinese classics in order to develop student pride in Chinese traditions. Anderson defended mission schools from the criticism that they taught too much in English by countering that Chinese students themselves insisted on mastery of English as an important instrument of social and economic mobility.

Like almost all missionaries, Anderson emphasized the critical role of Pei Tao Academy in preparing leaders for the Christian churches, YWCA, and Girl Scouts. In 1913, her students opened a free school for poor children and a night school for servants. During summer vacations, students began such schools in their home villages. In 1921 they began the first Girl Scout troop in southern China. By the 1920s many of her graduates were going on to Chinese and American universities, teaching in rural schools and assuming positions of leadership within churches. One 1922 graduate attended the University of Shanghai and two from the 1923 class attended Lingnan University in Canton and Baylor University in Texas. Both received bachelor's degrees in 1927. Anderson claimed that the girls' school had become the pride of south China Baptists by the 1920s, even though the Foreign Mission Board had not funded the school adequately. 62

From the beginning Methodists emphasized education more than Baptists, though they too experienced stages of growth. Like Baptist mission schools, Methodist ones relied mainly on the Bible with the

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goal of conversion. Later they added traditional Chinese classics to Bible study. By the twentieth century they adopted a modern, comprehensive curriculum and became coeducational.

Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) spent fifty-seven years as a teacher primarily in Soochow, a city some fifty miles inland from Shanghai, and left a lengthy memoir describing her schools. When she first arrived in China in 1884, Methodist mission schools were drab, Chinese teachers were cruel to students, and the curriculum was stultifying. When she moved to Soochow in 1889, she began supervising the city's five Methodist day schools. Average attendance was only thirteen per school despite free tuition and other inducements. Landlords disliked renting buildings to foreigners, and parents saw no reason to educate their daughters. During the next forty years she began four innovative and different types of schools: a modern kindergarten; the Davidson School; an industrial school for women specializing in embroidery, discussed earlier; and the Laura Haygood School, the first teacher-training institute in central China. She modernized curriculum, offered the first physical education and music courses for girls, and eased transition into the nationalistic era of the 1920S by recruiting a Chinese coprincipal for Davidson School before the Chinese government required such action. 63

Atkinson also recruited Louise Robinson (1914-46), another Alabama Methodist woman, as principal of Davidson School. Robinson became a confidante and key Atkinson lieutenant, pioneering the joint American-Chinese principalship of Davidson School and then becoming principal of the newly established Laura Haygood School. Together Atkinson and Robinson produced much of the indigenous Methodist leadership in central China through their schools. One of Atkinson's students, Carrie Hong, became a teacher, married a physician, and after her retirement continued to correspond with the missionary whom she called "my mother." Atkinson's classes also produced physicians, preachers, and Bible women.64

The Presbyterian Church, U.S., also placed heavy emphasis on education. It helped organize the Educational Association of China in 1890 in order to coordinate Christian educational efforts. In 1917 the denomination proposed that all mission schools be organized into a unified system. This suggestion proved too ecumenical for sectarian American Protestants and died from lack of support.65

Birmingham native James Montgomery pastored Presbyterian churches, conducted evangelistic work, and taught school in Kiangsu Province

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during his twenty-five-year career that began in 1917. He helped establish and administer a middle school that became so respected by the mid-1920s that it had a long waiting list for admission. He relied on a Chinese Christian staff, believing he could use his time better in rural evangelism. He believed that his school was an excellent agent of evangelism and noted that many of the pupils made professions of faith. 66

The most important contributions to Presbyterian education came through the Stuart family. Both John and Mary Stuart (1874-1925) came from education-oriented families. John Stuart's grandfather had been a key figure in the development of Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, and his father had established Stuart Female Academy in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Mary Stuart had been a teacher and principal at a girls' school in Mobile. Upon arriving in Hangchow in 1874, Stuart founded a boys' school. But the Presbyterian mission felt his time could be better spent in evangelism. Under some pressure from his peers, he closed his school and spent thirty-nine years preaching in one of the poorest parts of the city.67

Mary Stuart began a girls' school six months after she arrived and made a lasting impact with her educational work. The mission already had boarding schools but had little contact with Chinese living in the poorest area of the city. She proposed to reach this population through a coed day school. Toward this end, she and a Chinese Christian teacher tramped up and down the streets of her neighborhood trying to recruit students. By offering free tuition she finally recruited three girls and three boys and began her school in 1875. She hired a Chinese Episcopalian teacher and devised a curriculum remarkably advanced for the times. In the morning her pupils studied Chinese classics and written characters. In the afternoon they studied a Chinese catechism consisting of the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and Bible verses. She also used an organ that she had transported from Mobile in order to teach music.68

By 1878 Stuart's coed institution had grown to seventeen students, and she began transforming it into a girls' school. She utilized the Chinese method of individualized recitation but also drew upon her Mobile experiences. She introduced gymnastics and calisthenics for girls and taught music on her organ. Later her school became the ecumenical Christian Union Girls' School of Hangchow, although the presence of her son Warren kept it from being solely of one gender. Family tradition claimed that his female classmates elected Warren H. Stuart president of the YWCA^69

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Reminiscing forty years after she established her first school, Stuart wrote that day schools constituted the most effective way of opening new missionary work. Children led the way to the hearts of their parents. 70

The Stuarts profoundly influenced their son, John Leighton Stuart, who returned to China to elevate Christian higher education to its greatest level. He headed the New Testament department of the theological seminary in Nanking, but it was as founder and chief intellectual architect of Yenching University that he made his major contribution. He constructed what many believed to be the finest Christian university in China. He and publishing magnate Henry R. Luce raised most of the money for the university, and Stuart insisted that it be equally committed to Chinese culture and to Christianity. Its Harvard Yenching Institute of Chinese Studies became the first Protestant missionary center devoted to Chinese history and culture. Nor did Stuart neglect more practical matters that had gained his attention while growing up in the hinterland. He established an industrial farm where the university could demonstrate the best agricultural technology as well as provide employment for indigent students. After John Stuart's death, Mary Stuart came to live with her son and no doubt marveled anew at the power of education to transform lives.71

Medical Missions

Physicians (six) and nurses (three) were second in number only to teachers among Alabama missionaries. Few areas of traditional Chinese culture seemed as outmoded to Westerners as medicine. In determining credentials for physicians, Chinese valued heredity more than education. Herb medicine, acupuncture, and other forms of folk medicine thrived. Surgery violated Confucian beliefs forbidding a person from voluntarily submitting the body to harm, and male physicians did not examine women, making diagnoses instead from women's descriptions of their ailments on a carved figurine of the female anatomy.72

Life-threatening illnesses both for missionaries and for Chinese were so obvious and compelling that medical missions became a central part of the missionary enterprise. By 1890 more than a hundred missionary physicians, twenty-three of them female, treated 350,000 patients. By 1925 China contained three hundred missionary hospitals, half of them run by Americans. In 1905 Southern Baptists operated four hospitals and five dispensaries, the ME Church, South, two hospitals and one dis-

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pensary, the Presbyterian Church, U.S., three hospitals and four dispensaries. 73

Whereas missionaries often quibbled about the emphasis and resources committed to education, virtually none questioned the importance of medicine. Perhaps their own lives and those of their families depended too heavily on accessibility to Western-style medicine for esoteric theological debate. As noted earlier, Eliza Shuck implored the Baptist mission board in vain to send a physician, for the women's sake if not the men's.74

Most early missionaries utilized whatever modest medical skills they possessed despite absence of formal medical training. Alabama women in particular were the carriers of medical lore, remedies, and patent medicines, which they brought with them to China and used as necessity required. Martha Crawford (1852-1909) recorded numerous instances in her diary of applying ointments and salves, or drugs, to suffering Chinese inquirers. Presbyterian Mary Stuart (1874-1925) found that her small reservoir of medicines rendered such relief that she was besieged by Chinese neighbors seeking this relief.75

Nor were Alabama Baptist missionaries slow to justify medical missions theologically. H. W. Provence (1904-12) wrote a pamphlet arguing that many Chinese who would listen to no other testimony paid careful attention to a physician who had healed their diseases or restored their vision. A. Y. Napier in his 1922 doctoral dissertation argued the primacy of medicine over all other mission endeavors. "The Christian hospital is one of the mighty factors for the building of the Kingdom of God in China," he wrote. Every aspect of Baptist medical missions should be strengthened, he said, particularly the number of women physicians. Christian physicians could most easily win the heart of the Chinese to the gospel, he believed.76

Methodist missionaries Hoadley and Ruth Berckman helped introduce her brother, Edmond Lee Rice (1934-47), to medical missions. Following his graduation from Birmingham-Southern College, he entered Emory University Medical School, completing his M.D. degree in 1931. His participation in the Student Volunteer Movement inclined him to China missions. The Great Depression made funding by the Methodist denomination impossible, so Rice spent his first two years in a mission hospital earning his own way from private fees. He did not let economic necessity dissuade him from charity work, which constituted a large part of his practice. Rice teamed with his brother-in-law, Hoadley Berckman, in 1938 to open a clinic and evangelistic work in

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Changchow within the Japanese occupation zone. They used Red Cross relief funds to operate a free clinic for three months, then began charging small fees. Much of Rice's practice consisted of caring for wounded Chinese civilians and soldiers. He also treated sick Chinese in a Salvation Army refugee camp containing 15,000 persons. Finally forced out of China by the Japanese, Rice returned with his brother-inlaw to organize medical relief as soon as the war ended. 77

Missionary Lives: T. W. Ayers

Of the six Alabama missionary physicians who served in China, the most influential was T. W. Ayers (1901-25). During a twenty-four-year career he pioneered medical missions for Southern Baptists and personally recruited more than half the physicians and nurses from Alabama who served in China. Ayers was a Georgia native and journalist. He married Willie Mindora Skelton of Jacksonville, Alabama, in 1878. Ayers was a deacon and active member of the Hartwell, Georgia, Baptist church when he first felt called to missions. He sold his newspaper and moved to Augusta, where he briefly attended the University of Georgia School of Medicine. In 1883 he left medical school and moved his family to the newly established town of Anniston, Alabama, where he opened a drugstore. With the profits from his business he attended the Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons from which he graduated in 1886. Ayers then returned to Anniston to practice medicine.

Early in his career he demonstrated the enormous energy and wide-ranging interests that characterized his China career. He began newspapers in Jacksonville and Anniston, founded and edited the Alabama Medical Journal with his physician brother-in-law, J. C. LeGrande, was elected first president of the Alabama Good Roads Association, founded the Anniston Chamber of Commerce, and worked for the election of Democratic political candidates. Nor did he neglect his early religious interests. He served as deacon at Parker Memorial Baptist Church, as the church's Sunday school superintendent, and as first president of the state Baptist Young Peoples Union.78

Shortly after his fortieth birthday Ayers urgently renewed his commitment to missions. Perhaps the catalyst for this rejuvenation was the influence of his pastor at Parker Memorial, Dr. Samuel C. Clopton, himself the son of China missionaries. Realizing that the Baptist Foreign Mission Board was reluctant to appoint missionaries beyond age

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Dr. T. W. Ayers,

Baptist missionary in Hwanghsien

for twenty-four years, bedecked

in decorations given him by the

Chinese government for his service

during various epidemics in Shantung

Province.

(Courtesy of Brandt Ayers, Anniston, Alabama)

forty, Ayers pushed for quick action. Willie Ayers was not so certain. She had spent all her young womanhood tending seven children and supporting her husband's ever-changing careers. She was deeply devoted to her Jacksonville family, and a decision to go to China meant leaving their three oldest children behind in Alabama to attend school. But she also had a simple faith. If God "called her husband, He meant for her to go too. That settled the matter. She was ready." So off they went, arriving in Hwanghsien in northern China in 1901. 79

From the outset of his work Ayers became a major figure in the SBC's North China Mission, which boasted such legendary figures as T. P. and Martha Crawford and Lottie Moon. Ayers actively supported the educational efforts of the mission, especially the industrial programs that provided job skills, as well as institutional church work. He spent his own career in medical missions. But central to all programs and to his life's work was evangelism, which he pursued with exhausting vigor.80

Despite the constant health problems of his wife and nine children (two were born in China), he developed the first Southern Baptist missionary hospital and won enormous respect from the Chinese. The SBC

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Foreign Mission Board had appointed physicians before Ayers, but they had died or failed to establish permanent work. Convinced that his call was as important as that of any evangelist, he found medicine to be the entry point for successful evangelism. When he first arrived in Shantung Province he paid a visit to the U.S. consul in Cheefoo, who confirmed his vision: ''I have been in China many years and have learned the value of the medical missionary and I always welcome him. You will find by the help of a medical missionary you will have a hundred converts at Hwanghsien where you have had one before." The prophecy came true faster than even the new missionary could have imagined. 81

Ayers began work in a small Chinese building almost as soon as he arrived in Hwanghsien. Arguing to his board that someone over the age of forty could not learn the language anyway, he studied irregularly with a tutor and plunged into a sea of illness and disease. Refusing to charge poor patients, he survived on fees paid by wealthy Chinese who brought him wives, children, and concubines. Almost immediately he began a never-ending campaign for more staff and money with which to erect a hospital. By 1902 he had purchased land and received $3,000 from First Baptist Church of Macon, Georgia. With these funds he constructed E. W. Warren Memorial Hospital. Thus began a series of building projects that did not end until his retirement in 1926. First came a hospital with separate men's and women's wards. Expansions followed in 1909, 1913, and 1919. Baptist women in Georgia provided money for a brick double-story building named the "T. W. Ayers Memorial Hospital for Women."82

Although Ayers practiced nearly every kind of surgery, it was the removal of cataracts that seemed the most miraculous to the Chinese. In 1903, the first year of operation, Warren Memorial Hospital treated 4,000 patients; at its peak in the 1920S the patient load reached 16,000. Although he attempted to make the medical work self-supporting, the number of charity cases prevented that goal.83

Ayers's medical work was grueling. In 1912 his schedule called for surgery six mornings a week from 8:00 to 9:30. From 9:30 until 12:30 he worked at the dispensary downtown. After 5:00 he met with a staff of ten Chinese evangelists, five Bible and tract distributors, and two schoolteachers whom he supervised. Always there was the preaching by a Chinese evangelist to crowds gathered in the waiting room.84

To handle a larger facility and an exploding caseload, Ayers relied on expanding his nursing staff. He added missionary nurses in 1902, 1907, 1916, and 1917. But a longer-range solution depended on medical edu-

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cation of the Chinese. His first class, begun shortly after arriving in Hwanghsien, consisted of three men and the wife of one of his medical students, all of whom were Christians. They took a three-year program patterned after his own medical education. The graduation ceremony for Ayers's first medical class attracted Hwanghsien's wealthiest citizens and most of the city's officials. They took a lively interest in the examinations, which he incorporated into the ceremony in keeping with Chinese tradition. One mandarin in attendance even joined in the questioning. The entire assemblage adjourned to Ayers's home for tea after the ceremony, and the North China Mission hired his first four graduates. As the years passed and his curriculum became more rigorous, his medical graduates often attended distinguished medical and dental schools for additional work, and some returned to assist Ayers in Hwanghsien. One of his first graduates, Dr. Chu Pao Ch'in, became administrator of Warren Memorial Hospital and took over during Ayers's frequent absences. Chu spent decades in Hwanghsien, turning down a quadrupled salary as an army surgeon.

The dispensaries that Ayers had begun as branches of Warren Memorial Hospital provided an opportunity to obtain closer contact with the poor and with blind children whose sight could usually be restored by simple surgery. They also provided employment for medical students such as Chu Pao Ch'in. Though less well educated than Western medical school graduates of the time, they were better than no physician at all. These assistants filled a critical staffing gap and freed Ayers to multiply his own usefulness many times over. They could render preliminary diagnoses and administer simple treatments. Ayers became a fierce advocate for the best of them, such as Dr. Chu, urging that they continue their educations at full-scale medical or dental schools, then lobbying the Foreign Mission Board to hire them and bring them back to Shantung Province. In 1920 during the Russian civil war, he even tried to export his mission work to Siberia, where one of his medical students had gathered a congregation of Russian and Chinese Christians. Ayers urged the Foreign Mission Board to begin work immediately in northern Manchuria and Siberia "with the determination of entering Russia" in order to support his former Chinese student. 85

The crowd of officials who gathered for Ayers's first graduation ceremony was indicative of the growing interest in his medical work. Twice in eight years cholera epidemics swept through Shantung Province. Thousands died in the Hwanghsien district in 1911, but Ayers and his family remained at their posts, treating all who sought help. So im-

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pressed was the governor of Shantung that he made a large contribution to the hospital in gratitude for the courage and devotion of its staff. The incident so endeared Ayers to residents that in 1914 twenty-four leading men of the city sent silk scrolls of recognition and an engraved wooden table for the hospital's new chapel. Carved on the table were the Chinese characters meaning "A blessing to the people of Hwanghsien." In 1919 another cholera epidemic descended on the city, and Chinese officials immediately turned to Ayers for help. They contributed money and staff to provide disinfectants and bought drugs for nine hundred patients a day who flooded the hospital. For these efforts both Yuan Shih-k'ai and Li Yuan-hung, first and second presidents of the Republic of China, bestowed on Ayers the Chinese Medal of Honor, the first American to be so honored. The Chinese Red Cross Association and Hwanghsien Chamber of Commerce gave him their highest awards as well. 86

Such crises furnished the physician another avenue for evangelism. Each patient he treated heard the gospel preached, and some began to come as much to hear the message as to acquire healing. In 1908 conversions among Ayers's patients doubled over the previous year. That same year the Hwanghsien Baptist Church baptized 149 converts, a phenomenal ingathering.87

Not content merely to plant gospel seeds in the city of Hwanghsien, Ayers used his medical practice as the wedge for a vast ministry of outstation evangelism. In 1904 he reported on a week-long trip through two counties of Shantung Province where he treated 150 patients. On a 1905 trip he treated 121 patients in a single day. During a twenty-day medical tour in 1908 he cared for 620 patients and performed 33 baptisms. In the wake of each visit he left behind the nucleus for a church. For forty years the work of the Crawfords and their associates had made painfully slow progress. Only 479 Chinese were baptized by their North China Mission during those four decades, an average of fewer than 12 a year. But during the first ten years of Ayers's service in Shantung, more than 2,000 were baptized. In 1910, Baptist churches in the region that he served baptized more people than the churches had members the previous year.88 Ayers baptized more people in a single year than the Crawfords won in their lifetimes. At first he preached through an interpreter, but gradually he mastered the language sufficiently to preach himself.

Typical of the new congregations spawned by Ayers's medical practice was the chapel in an outlying county some thirty miles from

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Hwanghsien. It developed from his early practice, and when he returned in 1907 from a furlough he preached in the small building that could seat only loo people. He counted 117 Chinese in the chapel. When he called on those present to reconsecrate themselves at the end of his sermon, "they literally prostrated themselves on their breasts, and a number prayed aloud at the same time. The Holy Spirit came down in great power, and we had a glorious time together that day." 89

Such scenes created considerable ambivalence in Ayers. His correspondence is filled with the tension caused by demands on his time to preach, teach, and heal. Believing each ministry to be an entirely valid expression of evangelism, he vowed that he would give them equal attention. Following a successful twenty-day journey in 1908, he insisted that it had been "a trip of preaching, healing, and teaching, and of healing, preaching and teaching, and of teaching, healing and preaching." Not even the order of their appearance in his correspondence, he felt, must be allowed to prejudice American readers toward one ministry over another. In a letter seven years later to the Foreign Mission Board he concluded that division of Baptist work into categories of evangelistic, medical, and educational had created the wrong impression. Some Southern Baptists had concluded that medical and educational work was not evangelical. But "the Lord held differently," and Ayers insisted that all three functions were evangelistic.90

In reality such balance was difficult even for Ayers to maintain. After a marvelously successful trip through villages in rural Shantung in 1905, he proclaimed: "The more I see of the work of the . . . medical missionary, the more am I impressed that it is second in importance to no other work that he can do." The success of his hospital and dispensary work in Hwanghsien reinforced this conclusion. In 1923 he opened a clinic in his church building where he practiced two hours each morning and afternoon, six days a week. The free clinic for children that he held there caused many Chinese "to see and understand the benevolent side of our Christian religion." Such institutional church work through the clinic was "now the joy of my life."91

At the same time Ayers constantly lobbied the Foreign Mission Board for a physician who could replace him in the hospital and allow him to devote his full time to evangelism. In 1909 he reported that Chinese Christians were urging him to spend all his energy on evangelism, and he urged the board to send a second doctor. The next year he wrote that he had put evangelistic work first in his mission career and wanted to give all his time to it. In 1918 he was still appealing for such an assign-

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ment, but an official of the board admonished him to put the idea out of his head: "NO, NO, you must not resign, your work in Hwanghsien above all places." 92

If Ayers could not perform all three roles, he decided that his function should be to begin new work, then recruit staff to continue it. In 1905 he urged the board to open work in Manchuria. In 1922 he volunteered to move to Tsingtao in order to establish medical missions in that area.93

Among the most important contributions of Ayers to China was his recruitment of other physicians. His skill at that task matched his other gifts. From his first furlough he returned with Dr. T. O. Hearn (190725) of Brooksville, Alabama, who, like Ayers, had graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore. Hearn followed Ayers to Shantung Province where he practiced in Pingtu and Laiyang. He was in fact as much a clone of T. W. Ayers as was possible.

Hearn struggled with the multiple dimensions of his call just as his mentor had. He even began referring to medicine as "my sideline." Moved by human suffering as deeply as Ayers, Hearn gave much of his time to famine relief during the 1920s, calling it "the hardest and I feel the most important work I have ever done." Like Ayers he delved deeply into evangelistic work, pastoring five churches and supervising eighteen rural schools. He also relished the work of medical itinerant. During 1918 he traveled 1,200 miles in 128 days on wheelbarrows, donkeys, and foot, preached 326 times, and baptized ninety-one, all the while maintaining his medical work. Like Ayers, he urged Chinese Christians to enter medical school in order to heal their own people. Unlike Ayers, however, Hearn officially gave up his medical practice in Pingtu in order to engage in evangelistic work at Laiyang. But the demands there on his medical skills never let him entirely escape his initial profession.94

The brother/physician team of Adrian S. and Richard V. Taylor, Jr., was another recruiting coup of Ayers's first furlough in Alabama. They had grown up in Mobile, sons of a railroad president who was a leader in the Saint Francis Street Baptist Church. Adrian went to Yangchow in 1906, to T. W. Ayers's considerable displeasure. Richard followed his brother there in 1912. Ayers had different plans for both of them. He intended that they would operate Warren Memorial Hospital in Hwanghsien so he could spend his time as a medical itinerant. Although Ayers urged Adrian to "be directed by the Spirit," he obviously believed the Lord had revealed Taylor's destination as Hwanghsien and

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wrote Taylor accordingly. Three years later Ayers was still trying to recruit Taylor to northern China, offering him all the medical work at Hwanghsien: "I can't rid myself of the impression that this is the place for you; and this too after much prayer over the matter."

The surgical reputation of the Taylor brothers spread across China. Richard spent his first furlough with the Mayo Brothers Hospital refining his surgical skills. Upon his return Ayers claimed that the gifted Taylor brothers were to China what the Mayo brothers were to the United States. 95

If unable to attract the Taylors to Hwanghsien, Ayers had better luck with his son Sanford. Born in Anniston a year before his parents sailed for China, the extroverted boy grew up in Shantung Province. After an initial mission tour with the North China Mission as a teacher, Sanford returned to Wake Forest College and earned a medical degree. The Great Depression delayed his return until 1934, but by then Willie Ayers's health had forced his parents into retirement, or as close to retirement as the frenetic T. W. Ayers would ever come. Sanford returned to the hospital his father had founded at Hwanghsien for a year to relieve a physician on furlough. The memories for both physician and Chinese were warm and wonderful, and it was an idyllic year. In 1935 he transferred to Chengchow in Honan Province where he opened a clinic. He charged fees to wealthy Chinese so that he could accept a large load of charity cases. His wartime service in a province racked by civil war and Japanese invasion made him as much a hero to the Chinese as his father had been. His father at first regretted his son's decision to switch from education to medicine and the decision to leave Hwanghsien, but soon Ayers became an enthusiastic supporter of both decisions.96 After all, the boy was in some sense just another of T. W. Ayers's many recruits.

Alabama Missionary Nurses

In many ways the three Alabama nurses who served in China suffered the most frustrating vocational experiences. Cynthia Miller ministered in Shantung Province for thirty-one years, from 1905 until 1936. But Miller felt inadequately trained for medical work, especially while her supervising physician was on furlough. At first she considered extending her 1913 furlough to take clinical training at Dallas Medical School. But she had already begun to criticize what she considered the FMB'S

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excessive attention to educational work and finally decided that evangelism was her calling. Although she considered educational, medical, industrial, and even kindergarten work evangelical, she bemoaned the lack of emphasis on soul winning and devoted the remainder of her career to women's evangelism. Jo Carr, a single registered nurse from Tenela in Monroe County, arrived in Yangchow in 1915 and resigned four years later. 97

Presbyterian missionary Mary Bissett (1919-27), also single and a registered nurse, worked at a hospital in Haichow. When her supervising physician was on furlough, the hospital where she worked closed. She and the staff decided that two Chinese male nurses whom they had trained would provide better care than no assistant at all, and so they kept the dispensary open, compounding drugs, dressing wounds, and dispensing quinine and aspirin. Before her missionary service, Bissett had spent four years as director of the Birmingham Free Kindergarten, a similar term supervising the Dallas, Texas, Free Kindergarten, and two years as a nurse at the Dallas Infant Welfare and Milk Station. These experiences reflected an unusually sensitive conscience for poor children. She lobbied Presbyterians to establish a children's hospital in Haichow. She explained that many of her pediatric patients suffered as much from malnutrition as illness and needed to be nourished back to health. She also helped a Chinese Bible woman run a Sunday school for "little street urchins," "the dirtiest, cutest little fellows," who fairly swarmed into Bissett's room full of colored magazines, post cards, and Sunday school books.98

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Despite differences of denomination and profession, one overwhelming concern united Alabama missionaries in China. Whether male or female, single or married, young or old, physician, nurse, teacher, or evangelist, they were in this distant land to proclaim the gospel. There might be many ways to earn a hearing, and there were diverse and often contradictory audiences. Men and women, poor and rich, could not be reached in the same place by the same missionaries or tactics. But none of the forty-seven Alabama missionaries wavered from a central commitment to proclaiming the gospel and calling Chinese to faith in Christ. Some of them believed the most effective proclamation occurred through social ministries, schoolrooms, and medical dispensa-

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ries. Others believed the most effective witnessing occurred under revival tents or in chapels. Some were moderate conservatives, others were fundamentalists, and a few were liberals. But theology, education, mission strategies, and profession mattered less than a shared faith in the transforming power of personal salvation.

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9

I Was a Different PersonMy Girlhood was Past:

Woman Consciousness among Alabama Missionaries

Without the presence of women no substantial Protestant missionary effort would have occurred in China. Few single Protestant male missionaries served there. Virtually every male missionary and sponsoring agency believed that a wife was essential to his success, but after 1880 missionary boards did not assume that female missionaries needed to be married. Chinese cultural restrictions on women made the presence of female Protestant missionaries imperative. Officially, Chinese women were discouraged from traveling about in public, conversing with males, attending school, or receiving intimate examinations by a male physician. If Chinese women were to be saved, Western women would have to do the evangelizing.

During the hundred years between 1850 and 1950, Western and Chinese attitudes toward the proper sphere of women changed dramatically. Christianity contributed substantially to that change both in the United States and in China. For the first half of the period, Victorian beliefs about women's separate spheres prevailed in the West. Females exercised an appropriate sphere of influence as chief guardians of family values, as queens of their homemaking empires, and as architects of their children's character and cultural refinement. Not only was the home their throne, but the public arena was an appropriate extension of womanly influence when family and moral values were threatened. When Helen Barrett Montgomery wrote her influential women's missionary society study book, Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman's Work in Foreign Missions (1911), she began the work by drawing parallels between missionary interests and the desire of women to become educated, to gain the right to vote, and to abolish slavery. In the antebellum South, women's colleges placed

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strong emphasis upon service to humanity in general and missionary service in particular. Many graduates served distinguished careers as missionaries. 1

Following the Civil War, American women formed thousands of missionary societies. The societies spread so quickly that by the early twentieth century the women's missionary movement was the largest female reform effort in the United States. Missionary societies' membership lists contained three times as many names as the various woman suffrage associations. Although the movement reflected changing gender roles in the United States, met resistance from men, and paved the way for the enfranchisement of women within both denominational and national politics, most members of mission societies were decidedly traditional women. Believing that Christianity uplifted the status of women everywhere, they proposed to export it to China as a way of helping "heathen" women. Assuming the superiority of their own culture, they sought to transplant its social order, church structures, gender roles, and Victorian notions to Asia. Most female missionaries in China in the nineteenth century, whether married or single, conformed to Victorian values by deferring to men, confining their evangelism to women, and working in professions deemed appropriate to their gender, such as teaching or nursing. Nonetheless their influence grew with the passage of each decade. Women constituted 49 percent of American missionaries in 1830 compared to 60 percent by 1890. By 1919, American Protestant missionaries were divided into three nearly equal parts: married men, married women, and single women.2 Of the Alabamians for whom data are available, fifteen were married women, fourteen were married men, and thirteen were single women.

The China missionary experience differed according to gender. Men found few opportunities in China that were denied them at home. Women found many. Men had almost no success evangelizing Chinese women. Often their wives were too busy to evangelize because they were tending families or falling victim to illnesses associated with childbirth and child rearing. Successful evangelizing of Chinese women thus depended heavily on single female missionaries.

Complex social changes in the United States explain the lengthening list of single women mission volunteers. Although mission salaries were modest, women could survive on them. Life abroad fit the romantic notions of many late-nineteenth-century American women, and China was a particularly exotic destination. Missionaries, especially those who served in China, were heroic figures in an age of business and po-

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litical corruption. The death of parents or the breakup of romances propelled some women to China. College educations and contact with the Student Volunteer Movement brought others. All testified to a divine summons to mission work.

Far more single women committed their lives to China missions than actually served. As we have seen already, ten Alabama missionary women married on the eve of their departures, and five more married on the way to China or shortly after arriving. That pattern was typical of all states and regions.

Single women missionaries did not go to China with feminist intentions to pioneer different roles for women, but that was often the effect of their lives. Often incorrectly perceived as ugly, mannish, or unstylish and ignored in determining mission strategy, they formed close relationships with other single missionaries in a sisterhood of necessity. By and large they had fewer medical problems than their married sisters and served longer terms in China. They tended to spend more time within the Chinese community than did married women. They were also more likely to ignore evangelical restrictions on women speaking in public.

Married women shared the same initial sense of mission as their husbands and single colleagues. But for many of them marriage, the honeymoon, the voyage to China, first contact with Chinese, locating a home, language school, and pregnancy all occurred within a matter of months. These collective experiences reduced or blurred their sense of mission and occasionally inclined them to bitterness. Their chief purpose became the creation of a supportive family environment for their husbands, Americanizing their children, and shaping their home life as a Christian model for the Chinese.

Although American women did not intend to disrupt either their own cultural patterns or those of Chinese women, they accomplished both. The process of altering roles for Chinese women often resulted in new roles for themselves. 3

The Status of Chinese Women

The women to whom female missionaries took their message occupied a low rung in Chinese society. Confucianism and Buddhism shared a common disdain for women. A woman served first her father, then her husband, her sons, and her mother/father-in-law. In domestic disputes her husband would normally side with his mother rather than with his

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wife. Any open display of affection for his wife would subject him to ridicule. Although women sometimes occupied the imperial throne, such episodes were rare.

Traditional customs toward women often shocked Western missionaries. Families ambitious for good matches for their daughters bound their feet around age six. For the next few years they tied the bandages tighter and tighter until they achieved the most desirable foot size of four inches. Tiny feet emphasized a woman's aristocratic status and indicated that she did not perform the chores common among lower-class women. By the age of ten or twelve such a girl might be engaged to a man she did not know and whom she might not meet until her wedding day. Betrothal was a family business transaction arranged by parents. Mistresses were common among those who could afford the expense, especially in cases where the wife did not bear a son. Missionaries frequently reported cases of spousal abuse. Education for women was generally considered a waste of time, although during some dynasties Chinese poets and intellectuals did accept female students. Given such conditions, it is no surprise that missionaries from Alabama believed they offered a superior way of life to women.

Female Missionary Sexual Identity

To a considerable extent the gender concepts that missionary women brought with them depended upon their own experiences with courtship, sexuality, and marriage back in Alabama. Four patterns emerge from the lives of these women.

Some women were so absorbed in their own family lives that they contributed little to mission work. Mildred Thorne attended Denison University and the WMU Training School in preparation for a ministerial career. At seminary in Louisville she specialized in settlement house and mission work. Her interest in China missions resulted from the appeal for more workers for Shantung Province. After completing her work at the training school she accepted a staff position at the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida (in her correspondence she defined her job as ''pastor's assistant" although few Southern Baptist churches in 1913 allowed women staff more than secretarial functions). While in seminary she became engaged to David Bryan of Yantley, Alabama. They married in 1914 just before leaving for China. The birth and nurture of three children during the twelve years they served in

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China left her little time or energy for the original object of her missionary zeal. 4

Other married women missionaries never felt a call. They simply accompanied their husbands and children. Willie Ayers disappeared almost completely into the world of her hyperactive physician husband and nine children. Very much the product of Victorian notions of a woman's domestic role, she was described by a loving son as having a "childlike faith" and a sense of sacrificial living. However much later generations might dismiss or even belittle such notions of personal sacrifice, they allowed her to cope with leaving three children behind when she departed in 1900, raising four in China, bearing two more after she arrived, and burying three before her own collapsing health forced retirement.5

A third category of women served missionary terms as vigorous as any man's. Willie Kelly never let distractions deter her from a single-minded commitment to mission work in China. She insisted upon appointment from a Foreign Mission Board reluctant to act because it had no funds to pay her salary. She rejected all delaying tactics, persuaded her pastor/adviser/boss, influential Alabama Baptist leader W. B. Crumpton, to intervene on her behalf, and with his assistance won a pledge from the Alabama Woman's Missionary Union to pay her salary.

One reason for reluctance by the Foreign Mission Board in her case was concern that she might marry. Crumpton tried to reassure the board in a letter revealing that a young man had tried to court her. Following a visit from him she received a letter proposing a date. Kelly confided to Crumpton's wife that "she was going to stop that at the start, that she didn't come [to Marion] to go into society but to attend to her work" and hopefully to enroll in Judson College. As Crumpton's bookkeeper and treasurer during his years as executive secretary of the Alabama Baptist Convention, Kelly handled the finances of the entire state denomination "with a devotion unsurpassed." The head of the FMB was not convinced. When he examined her in 1893 he asked if she had any romantic entanglements, if she loved any man. Her hazel eyes twinkled as she replied sardonically, "Many. But not one." "And I am sure that many love you," Robert Josiah Willingham replied, obviously missing the theological meaning of her reply. When Willingham inquired of Crumpton why Kelly had never married, he explained that she had ''accepted her call from God with the seriousness of a wedding vow"; it had become the "compelling, constraining, controlling power

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of her life. She has never let herself look at any man. And the men are so awed by her unusual attitude and superior cleverness that most of them are actually afraid of her." Unable to transcend his own Victorian notions of femininity, Crumpton added that "she displayed a man's mind of clever and poised independence." 6

Not all effective female missionaries were single. Although Martha Foster allowed herself to look at many men, she also displayed a mind "of clever and poised independence." As mentioned earlier, during her adolescence in the 1840s she suffered emotional anguish suspended between her love for God and her own budding sexuality. Searching desperately for a deeper spirituality that would bring her peace of mind, she instead spent much of her time fearing that she might become an old maid. Relishing the stilted romance of the times, including its passionate communication with diary and girlfriends, she apparently maintained a chaste life physically. She was terrified of sexual intimacy, which she described in biblical terms as "a serpent, a fiend intruding on me."

Complicating her life even more was a growing sense of religious mission. She believed herself destined to make the world better, whether by the teaching career she began in western Alabama or by the mission career in China that beckoned her after a broken engagement to her cousin.

Foster's unfortunate encounters with men left her embittered and fearful of marriage. After her first love affair ended she wrote bitterly:

Will I ever place unbounded confidence in another man? No. I have learned that men consider themselves superior to women and for that reason are perfectly indifferent whether a heart is broken or not. Women . . . have all the physical pain to endure, then in every newspaper we see thousands of articles headed "Duties of Women""A Wife's Duty,""The Marriage Vow." They have ita marriage vow binds a wife to obey her husband, and whenever she contradicts him she forswears herself, perjures herself. But we never see "A husband's duty" or anything of that sort. He never perjures himself. He never treats unkindly the wife he has sworn to protect. . . . A wife remains at home all day, and has more to vex her in one day than a man does in a year. Yet when her husband comes home it is her duty to meet him with a smile, to cheer him if he is in a bad humor, to smooth his temper. She is never ruffled herself, in fact she has

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no right to be. What right has a woman to do anything but smile and prattle when her husband is at home? When her husband is sick the wife does not leave his bedside, is all grief, all anxiety. But I have seen a woman enduring the greatest agony, worse ten thousand times than men can feel, and her husband, who sits in another room, now and then comes to the door and asks "How do you feel now my dear?" 7

Martha Foster's early naiveté had been replaced, she confided to her diary, by certain knowledge that men were deceitful, wicked, and selfish. Her cousin, newly married, merely confirmed Foster's suspicions that "marrying is not the thing it's cracked up to be." Foster feared there must be "some horrible something to be found out after marriage, which I don't dream of. It makes me feel sort of queer." But life seemed a choice between two evils, "wedlock and old maidendom." Because she was engaged at the time, she vowed to try the first, which appeared to her to be "the most contented and useful" evil and certainly the ''oftener tried."

One must allow for a measure of teenage angst flowing into her diary. Each cynical passage is followed by reports of another giddy flirtation. Two days following her pronouncement that men were deceitful, wicked, and selfish, her head was fluttering wildly, her cheeks crimson, her "whole frame" shaking with emotion and "strongly agitated" over the beginning of another romance.8

Foster's ultimate sense of call to missions incorporated a good deal more than temporary reaction to failed romances. A keen observer of American politics, she wrote in 1850 that northern women were "going crazy," holding conventions, and resolving that they would not submit to male rule so long as women had no political rights. Such radical pronouncements made Foster "blush for my sex." She did not deny that women suffered disadvantages. But the reform that would solve these problems was equal educational opportunity for women. She expected the gradual extension of educational equality "as I expect the millennium." As evidence of her optimism she cited a female medical college in Philadelphia that had just been chartered (and where one of Lottie Moon's sisters would soon earn a medical degree). Such developments "made my heart swell with joy and gratitude!" They also launched her into a new study of the differences between the sexes.9

Two weeks after T. P. Crawford and Martha Foster met, they were married. To obtain her consent he assured her that he considered her

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work in China "as essential to success" as his own. Perhaps it was best that their marriage occurred in such an unusual fashion. A relative later reported that near the end of her life she believed their tumultuous marriage had brought her more happiness than grief. He added that given the fact that their temperaments were so different"he daring and progressive, she conservative and cautious; he quick-tempered and nervous, she slow and contemplative""the course they pursued would be more apt to bring them happiness than if they had been madly in love." 10 It was a telling characterization of a marriage that endured enormous turbulence.

American Evangelical Attitudes toward Female Missionaries

Whichever one of these four patterns women followed, they received mixed reactions from fellow Christians. The hesitancy of the SBC Foreign Mission Board to appoint both Willie Kelly and Martha Foster was an all too familiar story. There may be no second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God, but there certainly were in the earthly empire of mission boards.

The board appointed its first single female missionary, Harriet A. Baker, to Canton in 1849 to open a school for girls. When Eliza Shuck heard that a single woman had volunteered she was jubilant. She wrote the board from Shanghai, urging Baker's appointment and pledging assistance: "we do feel that such a one would be a great acquisition to our number and would make herself in a school extremely useful." Shuck's husband agreed but thought it well that the woman proposed to come to China accompanied by her brother, who would afford "that protection which every lady seems here to require and at the same time have her time almost entirely devoted to missionary work."11 For a variety of reasons Baker soon resigned and returned to the United States. Martha Foster's application arrived at the board during this unfortunate episode and explains the lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy.

There matters stood for twenty-three years until Lula Whilden and Edmonia Moon challenged the board's policy of exclusion. Both women had strong Alabama connections. Lula Whilden's father had been a missionary to China. He returned after the death of his wife and developed a ministry among Chinese building a railroad across northern Alabama. Her sister Jumelle married Alabama mission volunteer

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Nicholas Williams in 1871. Lula volunteered to go with her sister to help in whatever ministries she could establish.

Edmonia and Lottie Moon of Virginia were both strong-willed, independent women who received fine educations and championed women's rights. An older sister, Orianna, was influenced by the feminism of the 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention (which Martha Foster excoriated in her diary) and enrolled in the newly established Female Medical College of Philadelphia in 1854 (the very school that elicited such praise from Foster). Orianna Moon became one of the first two southern women to earn a medical degree and served with distinction as a military surgeon in the Confederate army. After the war "Orie" Moon married a physician and moved to Lauderdale County in north Alabama. The attraction of being nearer to her sister brought Edmonia ("Eddie") to Greene County, Alabama, to teach school in 1870. Perhaps it was there that she first began reading the fascinating reports that Martha Foster Crawford regularly sent to the Alabama Baptist. In gifted prose Crawford described the Taiping Rebellion, the terrible plight of Chinese women as their feet were bound and their marriages arranged, and the urgent need for more missionaries. Eddie and her sister Lottie became interested in China missions while corresponding with Martha Crawford. They even sent forty-five dollars in gold for Crawford's school in Tengchow. Crawford urged Eddie to apply, sent a letter on her behalf to the Foreign Mission Board, and offered her a place to live in the Crawford home. In 1872 Eddie Moon joined Lula Whilden as the first single SBC missionaries appointed in nearly a quarter century. The next year Eddie Moon and Crawford persuaded Lottie Moon to come as well, and they met her in Shanghai when she arrived. Lottie lived with her sister in the Crawfords' home at Tengchow. 12

Mary Anderson's appointment was quite different. In 1881 Anderson's widowed aunt, Janie Lowrey Graves, had requested appointment. But the FMB had so frowned on such appointments (despite the fact that only ten Southern Baptist missionaries remained in China at the time) that it had rejected her application because there was "no special call for a single woman." Instead Graves had moved to California where she worked among Chinese in San Francisco for seven years before reapplying. This time, in 1888, she was appointed and sent to Canton, where she married another missionary and led the prestigious Pei Tao Academy for forty-seven years. It was to this station that Mary Anderson was called from her father's church near Mobile in 1917.13

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Anderson deplored the prejudice that she experienced as a single woman missionary. Official records of denominational mission boards either ignored single women altogether or referred to them as "female missionary assistants." Her own Baptist board paid no more than lip service to the examination of missionary wives and extended them no official standing. If their husbands died they were generally expected to return to the United States, apparently because the board assumed that married females were in China to tend husbands and children rather than to engage in ministries. 14 After eighteen years of service in China, Mary Anderson resigned because of a dispute with the board over Chinese control of the school, which she favored, and lack of adequate funding.

Many women missionaries felt the sting of mission board insensitivity. Martha Crawford recorded in her diary that James B. Taylor, corresponding secretary of the SBC Foreign Mission Board, never addressed missionary correspondence to her or even to the Crawfords jointly. In a peevish mood more hurt than bitter she wrote: "He perhaps does not know the value of a word addressed especially to one person. One word spoken to the individual is worth a long lecture addressed to someone else. I don't want him to neglect those more properly called missionaries; but when I was just come I needed a word of comfort. This was never given more than 'tell sister C. to take care of herself,' or something like it. Perhaps he does not regard me as a laborer, but a man's wife; but even at that he ought to remember I am a missionary's wife." 15

She had put her finger on precisely the problem. A married female missionary was considered just "a man's wife," not a true missionary. For some Alabama women, notably Willie Ayers, this assumption seems to have been correct. For most, especially Martha Crawford, it was not.

Nor were other southern denominational agencies much different. The southern Methodist Woman's Board of Foreign Missions sparked harsh male criticism when it created a separate training program for single women missionaries. And when women were appointed, their "women's work" was specified to include only evangelism of women and children, teaching, and medical work.16

Forces Changing Attitudes toward Female Missionaries

Given so many official barriers to women missionaries it is worth noting the forces that were about to burst upon China missions. First was

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the profound sense of divine call that women received. Male denominational leaders were in the untenable position of urging women to follow the call of Christ wherever it might leadexcept for single women who believed themselves called to China.

A second factor was the growing spirit of independence among American women, especially after 1900. Martha Crawford was by no means the only southern female keeping a diary filled with questions about female subordination and the rights of women. The movement for woman suffrage and equal rights had strong support among churchwomen. They reasoned that if Christ could liberate the captive and the slave, perhaps he also sought their emancipation.

An offshoot of this growing self-consciousness was greater educational opportunity. One common denominator among Alabama women missionaries was the remarkable level of education mentioned earlier. Judson College was a breeding ground for them. Many young Baptist women continued their education at the WMU Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, after it opened early in the new century. Before the school even had separate buildings, four women filed into previously all-male classes at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Two of those pioneers in the autumn of 1904 were from Alabama, Cynthia Miller and Alice Huey. Both became single missionaries to China, Huey for twenty-nine years and Miller for thirty-one. 17

Supporting and encouraging mission volunteers by 1900 was a vast network of women organized into forty-one American women's missionary societies and boards. In fact, when Miller arrived at Louisville she found a familiar face. Annie E. Eager, the wife of her former pastor in Montgomery, who was then on the seminary faculty, was one of the primary advocates of the WMU Training School and a member of its managing board. Once before Annie Eager had befriended Miller when the young woman arrived penniless in Montgomery with no place to live. Now Eager and the Woman's Missionary Union befriended Miller again, easing her way from nursing to the study of theology and evangelism.18 Though appointed as a nurse-missionary by the FMB in 1905, Miller was never happy in that role and once in China became a gifted evangelist.

Baptist women organized the WMU in 1888 as a wholly independent auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention. Rebuffed by men despite the vast sums they raised for missions, the women brought together their various state mission societies under an umbrella organization. Its primary functions were to provide mission literature (its monthly maga-

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zine bore the unfortunate but revealing title, the Heathen Helper) and to raise money for missionaries. Beginning with its initial Christmas offering in 1888, an offering later named for Lottie Moon, the WMU became the mainstay of Baptist missions. It also organized mission groups for children that later produced many of the women missionaries appointed between 1890 and 1950. In fact, FMB leaders became increasingly alarmed after 1920 at the preponderance of single women mission volunteers and the lack of males. The WMU Training School played a central role in this trend, led by legendary professor of missions W. 0. Carver. Some 300 of Carver's female students became missionaries, and he rejected the "separate spheres" argument that had largely confined women to secondary mission roles. 19

Women Missionary Impressions of China

After Alabama women navigated the treacherous shoals of preparation and appointment, they sailed for China determined to liberate and uplift Chinese women. What they observed and dutifully reported authenticated for them both the "heathen" nature of Chinese culture and the obvious superiority of their own Christian values. Their attacks on foot binding, concubinage, forced prostitution, arranged marriages, spousal abuse, the sale of wives and daughters, and female suicides became standard fare in denominational journals. Proclaiming a direct correlation between the "purity of Christianity held by a people" and the "elevation of its women," the Alabama Baptist exaggerated that in China wives had no rights. They lived a life of drudgery. Thousands of Chinese women committed suicide each year, and many others killed their daughters to spare them a similar fate. As a consequence of such repression and mistreatment, the newspaper announced, Chinese women received American missionaries gladly.20

In a book designed for mission study by young Baptist women, Addie Cox wrote that the status any religion gave to its women might serve as a valid measure by which to judge it. And by that standard Chinese religions failed. Foot binding, the superior status granted male babies over females, and arranged marriages all denied full personhood to women.21

Martha Crawford (1852-1909) wrote a fictionalized autobiography entitled The Chinese Bride to educate Americans about similar aspects of Chinese culture. She declared that the degradation of women was one of the most distressing outward "features of heathenism" and a cen-

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tral issue in the proclamation of the gospel. She encountered evidence of such degradation even before arriving in China. The servants on her ship, the Horatio, included "Chinese, negroes, Malays, and Manilamen [Filipinos]all despisers of my sex." Their presence reminded her of the sad condition of women in Asia. She had not been in Shanghai long until events confirmed her opinion about the low status of women in Asia. An elegantly dressed woman came to talk with her about Jesus. When the woman left, her husband was waiting at the door, knocked her down, and beat her. To counter such patterns the Crawfords vowed to establish a different Christian model, to "go hand in hand in their labors," believing that "the sexes must advance in Christianity together." 22

Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) also recorded evidences of discrimination toward girls. She had all the boys she could manage in her school but few girls. So she visited parents of male students, begging them to allow their daughters to attend. One father explained that it made no sense to educate girls: they were destined to marry and become the responsibility of their husbands, whose ancestors they would worship. Another father told her more pointedly that her teaching about women violated Chinese custom. A mother rationalized that the school was too far away for her daughter to walk on bound feet. Her husband interrupted with his own explanation: "Why discuss the matter? All girls are stupid and unfit to receive instruction." Such abrupt dismissal only strengthened Atkinson's resolve to reform so wicked a culture.23

Presbyterian Mary Stuart (1874-1925) also criticized Chinese treatment of women. She wrote extensive accounts of foot binding that appeared in Presbyterian mission magazines, and she composed rules for her school that restricted the practice. She also demanded the right to veto arranged marriages involving her female students. Stuart recorded stories of her students' mothers being beaten by their husbands and a thirteen-year-old girl who was sent to live with and work for her future mother-in-law. "Poor things," Stuart wrote her mother in Mobile, "they know nothing of child-life." She helped organize a Presbyterian Woman's Conference in 1901 at which China women missionaries presented papers on the abuse of Chinese women. Their research convinced them of China's need for Christianity "especially for her women."24

Baptist missionary Willie Kelly (1893-1937) also recorded her version of abusive Chinese males. The father of one of her converts stopped the girl from attending Kelly's school and arranged her marriage to a

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non-Christian. But the young convert was prepared "to eat this bitterness for Jesus." Occasionally Kelly received a taste of bitterness herself. Chinese frequently asked her why she was single. "Could not your father provide you a husband?" they asked. When she explained that arranged marriages were not the custom in the United States, they often responded with genuine sympathy. Once her male teacher inquired if women were scarce in America. "No," Kelly replied; "there are plenty to go around. Why do you ask?'' "Well," he answered, "I thought they must be hard to get as your men are so good to them." 25

Cynthia Miller (1905-36) reported an incident in which a widow's former father-in-law planned to sell her and his three granddaughters. Miller took them in and helped the mother learn nursing. She asked Baptists to consider establishing a home for such abused women "where they can be given a chance not only in this life, but for the life to come."26

If missionary women did not much appreciate Chinese males, the hostility was mutual. One elderly Chinese peasant reacted to a missionary's suggestion that he educate his daughters by placing his glasses on a cow and urging that the meddling missionary educate the cow as well.27 Obviously the gospel proclaimed by American women threatened hierarchical Confucian family values. The Chinese government issued a circular in 1872 requesting that foreign governments abolish girls' schools in the treaty ports they controlled and send female teachers home. Officials claimed that these women disrupted the peace of Chinese life and undermined family values. The edict also forbade Chinese women from appearing in public to attend foreign religious services. Female missionaries ignored the order and continued crusading for change.28

Although no Alabama missionaries denied the pervasive subordination and abuse of women in Chinese society, at least Mary Anderson (1917-35) understood that China had a more positive tradition as well. Well versed on Chinese history and representing better orientation to China by mission boards, she wrote in a book on mission schools for girls that, long before Protestantism reached China, individual women had achieved renown and political power. Even ordinary women had excelled in handicrafts. If traditional social custom kept women in the home, it also instilled in them values of dignity, reserve, modesty in dress, and gentle manners that were positive aspects of Chinese culture. It is significant that the single missionary who was the harshest critic of

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her own southern hierarchical evangelical culture was the only one to offer a positive word on behalf of traditional Chinese social values. 29

It is also worth noting that missionary agents of change not only tried to eliminate foot binding, concubinage, and arranged marriages but also tried to persuade Chinese Christians to adopt white as the preferred color in wedding dresses instead of traditional red. White, they argued, symbolized moral purity. But on this issue even their converts resisted. White was the Chinese color for death and at best the brides were willing only to compromise on pink. Such disputes over peripheral issues reveal how much Western women threatened Chinese culture both on large issues that really mattered and on small ones that did not.

Victorian Roles in China

To the Chinese women, whom they considered benighted, Alabama missionaries brought not generic models of Christian womanhood but specific Victorian models. They argued that Christian women, whether Chinese or American, should strive for fulfillment as wives, mothers, and homemakers.

Shaping these opinions were the values that women brought with them from Alabama. Lewis Shuck's first wife, Henrietta, began to study the Chinese language in Singapore. Five other missionary wives explained to her that the Chinese language was too difficult "for the weak mind of a female." Yet, Shuck observed, one woman missionary in the city spoke Chinese fluently. "I suppose," she wrote her sister, "what woman has done, woman can do." In time she became quite fluent in the language. Martha Crawford also became a gifted linguist, so skilled in fact that her ability both surpassed and embarrassed her husband. But when she began language study she rationalized that if she failed in the task, it made little difference because she was only a missionary's wife. If she could not proclaim the gospel in words, she would live it in her marriage as a worthy example.30

Many women could not cope with such pressures, especially during the nineteenth century. Martha Crawford (1852-1909) described a missionary wife during the 1850s who could not tolerate the constant tensions of living in Shanghai during a military siege. The woman became so nervous that she could neither eat nor sleep. Crawford described another Baptist missionary wife whose nervousness gave way to deep de-

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pression. The woman refused to venture out of her husband's sight. As a teenager in Alabama, Crawford had disdained nervous females and prided herself on being too strong for such a flaw. But in China, after experiencing an earthquake and an invasion of Shanghai, she had become frightened herself. She particularly feared being alone or apart from her husband. She struggled to hide her emotions, fearing that if she manifested alarm her husband would insist she leave for a safer place. She was, she confided to her diary, far more composed than she had expected to be: "The excitement [of the imperial siege of Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion] is only enough to steady my nerves and keep me in good spirits."

Crawford's acculturation to China definitely occurred on her own cultural terms. She intruded into conversations that her husband conducted with Chinese officials, in violation of local custom. She explained such impertinence as a way of "setting forth the duties of a Christian woman, firm but never obtruding myself." She sensed a gradual decline in the repugnance that such conduct inspired in Chinese men. Her teacher came to understand her independence, though he considered it a foreign eccentricity entirely inappropriate for Chinese. 31

Mary Stuart (1874-1925) learned the language quickly but only slowly surmounted her Victorian upbringing. On one visit into the countryside with her husband in 1875, a number of Chinese invited them to sit down. She asked her husband to take the men aside to make the gathering more respectable to the Chinese. But her real reason for the request was the initial timidity she experienced speaking Chinese in the presence of her husband.32

Although the conduct of missionary women seemed scandalous to the Chinese, the women actually envisioned their work in culturally conservative terms as defined by their own society. Some single women would become more iconoclastic later, but during the nineteenth century they sought to impose Victorian models of womanhood on Chinese females. By urging upon them submissive Christian conduct as wives, mothers, and homemakers, missionaries inadvertently reinforced patriarchal Chinese values. Within their girls' schools they emphasized ladylike behavior rather than academic performance. In so doing, this first generation of female missionaries became in many ways a culturally conservative force even within Chinese society.33 Of course that was neither the way Chinese males viewed them nor the way they viewed themselves.

Evidence of such Victorian patterns abound in the records of nine-

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teenth-century Alabama women missionaries. Eliza Shuck insisted that boarding schools should be separated by gender. She justified educating women so that Christian men could marry brides of the same faith. Martha Crawford agreed that a central function of girls' schools was to keep educated male Christians from marrying non-Christians. 34

The queenly role of women in the home and their influence over children made their conversion even more urgent than the salvation of men. James B. Taylor, corresponding secretary of the SBC Foreign Mission Board between 1871 and 1893, wrote that the conversion of one Chinese woman was more influential than that of two men. Cynthia Miller agreed that nothing was more important in the work of her girls' school than evangelizing China's future mothers. She wrote that her task was to educate "real Chinese Christian home-makers." This was "China's greatest need, to bring her people to Jesus as Savior and Lord." An obituary for Willie Ayers emphasized that conducting her home with love, cleanliness, and dignity became a model for Chinese Christians.35

Although both single and married women agreed on the Victorian objectives of their work, they pursued missionary service in different ways. Missionary wives generally observed the traditional Christian notion of wifely submission to their husbands. But many of them also felt a distinct and separate call to evangelize Chinese. The tension between these roles often caused conflict between mission and marriage.36 Domestic responsibilities left the women little time for Christian ministries no matter how deeply they felt called to them.

Nicholas Williams (1871-76) concluded from the experiences of his wife Jumelle that missionary wives had insufficient time for women's evangelism because of their duties as wives, mothers, and homemakers. He also observed astutely that many wives came to China not because they felt called to mission service but because their husbands felt such a call. He did not in any way denigrate such women. As role model, a happy Christian family "presents a picture nearest akin to Heaven of anything else on earth." He believed that this function of missionary wives within the home often exceeded any good done by single missionaries.37

Martha Crawford was not complimentary of one new Baptist missionary couple. The husband seemed to think his wife should stay home and tend babies and keep house: "Beyond that he thinks God has no work for women to do." But Crawford conceded that the wife had "but a small quantity of missionary spiritshe came only as a wifenot as a missionary too." In the woman's defense, however, Crawford won-

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dered what could be expected of her when she already had one infant and was expecting another, was often sick, and had no time to study Chinese. Crawford concluded that most of the woman's work in China would consist of nursing babies. Years later Crawford made an interesting insertion in her diary, admitting that she had misjudged the couple and that the wife had made a fine missionary. For all her critical comment about other wives, Crawford was at first not confident of her own role; she was frightened that she could not learn the language and unsure of her missionary skills. 38

Crawford later proclaimed her gift to be women's work and drew a typical Victorian distinction that exempted her from contact with men. When Lottie Moon inquired about life as a missionary in the 1870s, Crawford assured her that the work would be strictly confined to females. This advice seemed to contradict the Crawfords' bold marital proclamation that they planned "to go hand in hand in their labors." But as they defined their roles over the years, it became obvious that Martha Crawford accepted the separate spheres of service common to her generation. They might be colaborers, but he would do the preaching while she met separately with women and "told them privately about Christ." In a family biography the author made a point of emphasizing that whereas T. P. Crawford "preached the Gospel" Martha Crawford "presented the Gospel."39

In a long letter to the Alabama Baptist in 1891 Martha Crawford reassured readers who might have gained inaccurate impressions of "foreign missionary ladies" from newspaper accounts. Just the fact that a woman felt called to missionary work did not mean she "must forget her sex and perform the labors appropriate only to men." From her observations of forty years in China she assured readers that missionary women of all denominations, but especially Southern Baptists, maintained "the same modest, ladylike deportment they maintained in the homeland." They taught mainly women and children, did not preach or lead public worship, and worked with Chinese women who were separated in worship from men. Although they might witness to men privately in rural areas, in cities they would tell an inquiring male that such conversation between the sexes was improper. In letters home, she explained that women sometimes referred to "itinerating" and "preaching'' when in fact what they meant was "going from place to place to teach the Gospel," a pattern of conduct considered proper both by Alabamians and by Chinese.40 Such advice squared with prevailing Ala-

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bama attitudes of the time, discussed earlier, that women should not speak or pray where men were present.

As much as was within her power, Crawford adhered to these Victorian principles. When receiving Chinese callers seeking medicine she would dispense to the women and her husband to the men. But she was aware that Chinese reality did not always allow for rigid adherence to Alabama's cultural patterns. She wrote in another letter that her work could not always be so sharply divided between men and women, adding that "no missionary ever confines his or her labors to one sex." And when her husband left her to recover from a nervous breakdown, she had to conduct all the work alone. 41 Victorian principles might furnish the theory for her wifely duties as a missionary, but Chinese realities challenged and altered those abstractions.

Redefining Victorian Roles

Chief among the realities redefining women's work was the inability of male missionaries to evangelize Chinese females. Years of Baptist effort in Canton during the early nineteenth century failed to produce a single female convert because women would not attend the chapel with men.42 When Willie Kelly arrived in Shanghai in 1893, nearly half a century of Baptist work at Old North Gate Baptist Church had produced less than a dozen female converts. The task of women missionaries then was to devise strategies for reaching Chinese women.

Henrietta Shuck pioneered women's work strategy for American Protestants. As an eighteen-year-old bride of a man she hardly knew, she was the first American evangelical woman missionary in China and the second to open a school for Chinese children. Her strategy was to visit Chinese women in their homes, provide rudimentary medical advice and assistance, informally teach English in her home, and then formalize this effort by opening a school for boys. Although she died in childbirth at age twenty-seven, she provided the pattern for Shuck's second wife, Eliza. In their visits, missionary wives discovered that Chinese women were extremely curious about them. How much did they make? How old were they? How many children did they have? Why were they so proud of their daughters? Curious Chinese women would sometimes touch their hair, or finger the material of their dresses, or rub their hands. In time missionaries began telling simple Bible stories, discovering that Chinese, who reserved a special place in their folk

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culture for storytellers, preferred illustrations to theology. Musically inclined missionaries introduced music to such informal gatherings, sometimes teaching and singing hymns. They left simple prayers written in Chinese characters in anticipation that, though few women could read, perhaps they would have their sons read the prayer to them. 43 The fact that women shared something in commonmarriage, husbands, childrenprovided an advantage over single missionaries whose work was more likely to be institutional in nature.

Not all such efforts were successful. Mary Stuart reported that urban women were unwilling to talk with her when their husbands were present. But Stuart also related that men constituted a significant portion of her audience in the countryside despite the fact that their presence contradicted Chinese custom and made her feel uneasy.44

Dr. T. O. Hearn's wife Elizabeth ("Lizzie") became an invaluable aide in his itinerary across northern China. She held separate meetings with women while he spoke with men. During 1918 she spent three months in meetings with women in country churches. Together with another missionary wife she opened a chapel in Laiyang. Hearn's annual reports summarized his wife's work as well as his own. And she persuaded him that no one needed "to be freed from the cruel oppressions and evil customs" of society more than Chinese women.45

A key similarity in the extensive ministries of Elizabeth Hearn and Martha Crawford is the fact that neither had children. In a sense this accident of biology allowed them latitude to exercise their call that other married women did not share. Of course some wivesWillie Ayers notablyfelt no special calling to China missions. But because so many married women from Alabama experienced calls separate from their husbands' and married partly as a convenient way to reach China, the level of frustration attendant to childbirth, wifely duties, and housekeeping must have been extreme.

If married women seemed best suited for home visitation and Victorian family modeling, single female missionaries thrived in institutional settings, typically a school or hospital. In light of the oftentimes negative view of single women missionaries held by nineteenth-century mission boards and male missionaries, it seems strange to read so many urgent appeals for them. The apparent contradiction is easily resolved. Division of duties dictated the gender needed in new missionaries. When Baptist mission board corresponding secretary H. A. Tupper asked Nicholas Williams his opinion about the board's new policy of appointing single women as missionaries, Williams responded that

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single women filled an important sphere of evangelism. Because of the seclusion of women in cities, men could not witness to them. Married female missionaries were too involved with their families to do so and sometimes felt no special call to missions anyway. Therefore single women performed an imperative function. He admonished Tupper not to send single women in the pioneer phase of missions because the "presence of helpless females" would make the work more difficult and dangerous. Even when they came during a more developed stage, single females must be provided lodging either with missionary families or in separate homes where they could live together. They should not live alone. After they had been in the field awhile the "brethren" could determine whether they were fit for the work. 46 Williams expressed a contradictory acceptance of single missionaries while defining their function in traditional Victorian ways. This ambivalence was not unusual.

Dr. T. W. Ayers and Mary Thornton (who arrived in northern China as a single missionary in 1889 but married a widower a year later) expressed similar contradictory notions. Thornton continued to use her maiden name while reporting to Alabama Baptists that the North China Mission had an excess of women missionaries and needed more men. Her Shantung colleague, T. W. Ayers, filled his reports between 1908 and 1912 with pleas for more male missionaries. But he also applauded the evangelical ministries undertaken by single female missionaries. Within Hwanghsien's world of gender-specific hospital buildings and chapels, single women provided primary access to Chinese women.47

Although most single Alabama women taught or worked in hospitals, four single Baptist missionaries left the work they were sent to do in favor of personal evangelism among women. All were appointed as teachers or nurses. But Addie Cox, Alice Huey, Irene Jeffers, and Cynthia Millerwho averaged more than thirty years each in Chinaengaged in full-time evangelism during most of their careers. Addie Cox noted in her autobiography that she was the only woman missionary so engaged in a field of 50,000 Chinese. As we will see shortly, all four of them developed ministries that violated the "ladylike" separate spheres described by Martha Crawford. And even single missionaries who stayed within the fold of institutional work often engaged in extensive evangelism. In fact, schoolteacher Willie Kelly fashioned her own unique tabernacle in the Smith Bible School for Women where she evangelized and trained adult female converts from across central China. She left the details of running her boys' and girls' schools to others.48

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Whatever disadvantages single women suffered in China, they avoided the marital tensions that seemed to be common there. Some missionary marriages were uncommonly strong. Others collapsed under the stress. Either way, Alabama women were neither prudish nor oblivious to the special problems posed by sexuality in China.

Many Alabama women believed it better for single missionaries to marry as soon as possible. Hardly had Martha Crawford arrived than she began to psychoanalyze a single male colleague. She believed that he would have been much happier had he married before setting sail for China. He had courted women, but his affection for an old flame prevented commitment. He had also wooed several women who were not religious. Crawford judged him to value beauty more than "quality of mind or heart." Two single Episcopalian missionaries in Shanghai were far more fortunate in her view. She believed that their marriage to each other would make them "happier and more useful" than if they remained single. 49

When bachelor Wayne W. Adams arrived in Tengchow to help Lottie Moon, he was engaged to Floy White of Alabama. White was completing her studies at the WMU Training School. Their wedding in Tengchow had a decidedly Alabama flavor to it, with Dr. T. O. Hearn of Brooksville performing the ceremony and Alice Huey of Birmingham serving as soloist.50

Missionaries who decided to remain single were not so certain about the efficacy of all this matchmaking. Virginia Atkinson rejoiced when five new Methodist missionaries were dispatched by the Methodist mission board in 1887. The presence of five energetic single women would allow her to expand her school. Unfortunately, single men who arrived in the same year took three of them as brides, depriving the woman's board of more than half its anticipated new staff. Baptist missionary Willie Kelly experienced the same problem. In 1921 a ship bound for Shanghai carried Kelly plus a single woman designated for Kelly's school and a young man assigned to the North China Mission. When Kelly noticed the amount of time the two young people spent together, she prayed that the incipient romance would falter. When she realized that her prayer would not be answered as she hoped, Kelly revised her request. If the woman was destined to be married, Kelly prayed that God would change the man's destination to Shanghai. She also decided to assist God in carrying out this task. When the woman informed Kelly that she intended to marry her suitor in Peking, Kelly informed her that such a journey for a newly arrived single woman would be in-

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appropriate. Her fiancé must come to Shanghai. Kelly arranged a welcoming party and hosted the wedding in her home, complete with piano and violin wedding music and a list of prominent guests, including the American vice-consul. Not surprisingly the newlyweds decided to remain in Shanghai and the woman assumed her intended job in Kelly's school. 51

Actually Kelly was quite the realist when it came to sexuality. Perhaps her own rejection of Alabama suitors provided her special insight into the problem. Whatever the source, her frankness about sex reflects a pattern atypical of Victorian America. In a 1909 letter to an FMB executive she examined the temptations that Shanghai posed for single American women. Avoiding sexual temptations constituted one reason why single female missionaries should work exclusively with women, she wrote. As a result of this strategy she did not know of a single case "where a [missionary] woman has been ruined" as had happened in a widely celebrated secular scandal. In her opinion Chinese males were generally more moral than Western men living in Shanghai.

Three years later in 1912 she wrote R. J. Willingham about a male colleague. Kelly had become a surrogate mother to this young man and urged him to return to the United States. Although she considered him to be a man of exceptional intellect and good judgment, he was lonely and overly sensitive. He had " old fashioned views about marrying," believing that he must know the woman well before marriage. Such intimacy was impossible amid the conditions prevailing in Shanghai. He " needs a wife," she wrote, but she dare not advise him that he should return home to find one because "he wishes to be brave and stick it out." If she advised him, he would wonder why he needed a wife more than Kelly needed a husband. The difference, thought Kelly, was that single women could make a home together whereas single men could not "in the nature of the case do such a thing." If he lived with a missionary family he would be an outsider, and if he lived alone he would be lonely. "Woman,'' she reasoned, "is a home maker, not man." If he returned home, she was confident that God would provide him a worthy spouse, and he could return to China happier and more effective. She even contrived a reason to give for his sudden furlough.52

Many missionary wives testified to the reality of such happy marriages. Ruth Berckman frequently wrote parents and friends about how her husband Hoadley helped clean house, wash, and cook. He sometimes stayed home with their sons so she could attend conferences for pastors' wives. Ruth commented that such a companionate marriage

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Martha Foster Crawford, Baptist teacher/missionary in

Shanghai and Shantung Province for fifty-eight years, 1852-1909.

(Courtesy of Photo Library, Foreign Mission Board, SBC)

"set a good example to the other pastors." Mary Stuart also wrote to her parents in praise of her spouse. Although they married as a convenience to gain appointment to China, their marriage was a remarkably happy one. She explained to her mother in one letter: "You all at home must not get tired of my husband's praises, but the fact is I daily find out more to love and admire in him. . . . The more intimately he is known, the more is there cause for continued affection." 53

Missionary Lives: The Feminism of Martha Foster Crawford

In the first years of her marriage, Martha Crawford filled her diary with similar opinions about her husband, although she also recorded the musings of an independent woman seeking a companionate marriage. But within days of their marriage Martha Crawford began to discover a side of her husband she did not like, information no doubt made more alarming by her nearly complete ignorance about him. On their way to New York where they would depart for China, he became impatient with her. She attributed his comments to impulsiveness and his incli-

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Tarleton Perry Crawford, controversial founder of

the Gospel Mission and Baptist missionary in

Shanghai and Shantung Province for half a century.

(Courtesy of Photo Library,  Foreign Mission Board, SBC)

nation to speak his mind rather than to unkindness. She also considered herself overly sensitive. She was obviously hurt by his curtness. In Kentucky where she met his relatives she assumed responsibility for all their provisions and equipment, a job she believed herself unprepared to do. She moaned that she had "never superintended anything. . . , had always followed instead of leading." But she knew she must overcome "this retiring disposition" and made a mighty effort to organize their domestic affairs.

By the time of their voyage to China she combined bouts of melancholy with praise for her husband. He was "all noble. How much I owe him; if I am a good wife, it is through his means." He was a "self-made, easy, every day kind of fellow" whom she liked better every day. Once

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in China she panicked at her husband's first illness: "I always tremble when the least thing goes wrong with himthen I see how all my earthly happiness is so twined around him." When he recovered she rejoiced to "have so kind, so dear a friend in this dark land." 54

Part of the deepening bond between the Crawfords was their isolation. T. P. Crawford had trouble learning the language and Martha Crawford made few friends among Baptist missionaries. Only a single bachelor missionary came with them aboard the Horatio, the one who became the object of Martha's pity for his bachelorhood and superficial judgment of women. But her evaluation of Baptist missionary marriages made one sympathize with the bachelor. She met the A. B. Cabaniss couple before sailing from the United States, but their journey was delayed by the wife's pregnancy. According to Martha Crawford the wife had no "independent wish" to become a missionary. The rumor that her reluctance might prevent her husband from serving in China provoked Crawford to ruminations about wifely duties and Godly calls: "I know it is commonly thought that a woman need have no such convictions of duty; if she be an obedient, affectionate wife, that is sufficient. And so it would be, if a woman's conscience be lost in that of her husbandif he be her godif she own no higher duties to God. Such convictions forced themselves upon me, much against my own will; and I therefore conclude that God sometimes gives direction to a woman's mind, independent of her husband. My husband desired such a wife. God grant he may never regret it."55

While in Lexington, Kentucky, Crawford also met relatives of I. J. and Virginia Young Roberts. Roberts's first wife had died not long after their marriage, and he had married again in 1849. Crawford's conversations with Virginia Roberts's Kentucky relatives convinced her that all was not well in the marriage. She concluded that Virginia Roberts had married "only for the sake of going on a mission," which "certainly cannot be an acceptable sacrifice." The comment is certainly disingenuous given her own contrived courtship and marriage during the previous seven months.

In this case, however, contact with the Robertses proved even more convincing than family rumor. In Shanghai, Martha Crawford concluded that Virginia Roberts was mentally unbalanced. While the Robertses stayed in the city the two couples lived together. Virginia Roberts refused to be left alone with Chinese, so Martha Crawford became her constant companion. When Crawford left the parlor to write letters, Roberts became emotionally distraught and said she must have

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someone in the room at all times. She loathed the sight of Chinese with "their insolence and impertinence." In succeeding days she threatened to commit suicide, and the Crawfords found her beating her head against a wall.

Months later Martha Crawford confided to her diary that the Robertses "live very disagreeably together." Virginia Roberts vowed that if her husband took her home, she would not return to China whether or not he came back. Crawford described a row that began when I. J. Roberts sought to leave his wife at home surrounded by Chinese servants. As he departed she vowed to accompany him even though she was not dressed properly. She clung to him so tightly that in pushing her away he knocked her down. She repeatedly tried to clutch him; he repeatedly threw her down, tearing her clothes. Her screaming and his violence alarmed the Chinese servants. Roberts subsequently told the Crawfords that he did not strike his wife, that he remained calm and "in a prayerful spirit" during the entire episode, and that he only sought respite from her "vile tongue." He planned to spend the night in a hotel to get away from her.

Martha Crawford switched loyalties after this violent incident. She no longer emphasized Virginia Roberts's derangement; instead she criticized her husband's cruelty. She counseled Virginia Roberts that because her husband would not likely change his conduct, her only hope was to place greater confidence in herself and in God. In her diary she blamed Virginia Roberts's "advanced state of insanity" on her husband's neglect of his wife and child, his absorption with the Taiping cause, and his devotion to working among the Chinese. In 1855 Virginia Roberts returned with her two children to the United States. Her husband remained behind and lived for a year with the Taiping rebels in their capital at Nanking. He returned to the United States in 1866 and lived with a niece in Illinois until he died of leprosy months later. 56

Martha Crawford came to know a missionary couple from Loochoo in later years. The woman was exhausted from eight years of missionary work and the care of three children. Only one other foreign female lived in Loochoo, and she lived there only briefly. During a period of more than two years the woman had not seen a ship or received a letter. Crawford blamed the woman's depression on "an eccentric and not very pleasant husband; what a life she must have had." Although the children "look almost wild," she admired the mother's devotion to have brought them up so well under such trying circumstances. In the social

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atmosphere of Shanghai, where she could cultivate friends, the woman quickly recovered. 57

Crawford reread her diary in later years and corrected many of her negative and caustic initial opinions of missionary wives. She must have done so with a sense of greater understanding. Then it was her own husband who was deranged, and it was her dilemma to follow the dictates of husband or of conscience.

By 1878 the Crawfords sensed a drift in their relationship. Then located in Shantung Province, T. P. blamed their estrangement on his wife's absorption with her school. He admonished her that as a missionary she should spend time on direct evangelism and required that she choose between him and her school. She protested such unfairness. Of his demand that she close her school, she retorted: "I should deplore this. The very thought of it seemed like amputating all my limbs. I hardly think it necessary." She declined to do as he requested. There are multiple explanations for T. P. Crawford's behavior. His business reversals, lack of success in gaining converts, strife and thievery among Chinese servantsall these factors left Crawford depressed ("trouble with his brain of years standing," he explained). In May 1878 chronic numbness in his limbs became full-blown paralysis. When he regained movement in June he deserted his wife, going "he knows not where."

Some months later Martha Crawford received word that her husband was in San Francisco, where he remained through 1878. It was his first furlough in twenty years and led him to conclude that his mental problems resulted from isolation in Tengchow. He had no male friends in whom he could confide.

When he returned with restored health in 1879, he determined to change his marriage. Martha, who had been left to tend the Tengchow field with only Lottie Moon to help, gave up her medical work altogether and reduced her involvement in her school. She devoted this time to an hour's daily Bible study with her husband, and she accompanied him more frequently on evangelistic tours into the country. During the past decade there had been no repetition of her early diary accounts of marital bliss. Discussions of her school, pupils, and their parents had replaced him as an object of attention. She complained of constant constipation and worsening health, of depression and loneliness. No sacrifice she made seemed to satisfy her husband. Then in 1881 she left Tengchow as suddenly and alone as had her husband three years before. Like him she returned to San Francisco and to extreme

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culture shock. She traveled to Alabama, where she remained for two years, virtually separating from her husband. She slowly recovered her health and equilibrium and may even have contemplated not returning to China or to her husband. In her absence T. P. Crawford closed her school, though his action raised such a storm from Chinese patrons and other missionaries that he finally consented to reopen it upon the guarantee that parents would pay fees sufficient to make the school self-supporting. In 1882 Martha Crawford relented, writing her husband that she would return to China, "be a good wife," and cooperate with his plan to make all mission work self-supporting. Many poorer students withdrew from the school even before her return. When she arrived in Tengchow in 1883, she formally closed her beloved school and dismissed its Chinese teachers.

The loss of the school was a turning point in both her ministry and her marriage. Lottie Moon, who had encouraged T. P. Crawford's notions of self-support and remained a confidante to Martha, resented having to give up her school due to his opposition and became alienated from him, as did other missionaries. Martha Crawford not only renounced her educational work but also changed her ministry dramatically, adopting Chinese dress for the first time, traveling constantly into the interior, and concentrating exclusively on female evangelism. It was this period of her life that produced the 1891 missive to the Alabama Baptist on the proper "ladylike," Victorian ministry of women missionaries in China. By spending most of each week in her evangelistic itinerary and by adopting Chinese dress and customs to such an extent that one missionary believed it had "a somewhat sinister effect" on her, Martha Crawford ironically spent far less time with her husband than before. 58

It was also during this phase of her life that Martha Crawford wrote a remarkable essay designed for Southern Baptist women concerning missions in northern China. After an early career trying to rush single missionaries to the altar as she had rushed herself, Crawford advised prospective missionaries of both sexes to follow their own convictions in the matter of marriage. If a man desired a wife more than he did a fellow missionary, Crawford pointedly advised the couple to remain in the United States. A wife who possessed no personal call would not be willing to sacrifice her own needs for the gospel's sake. Family responsibilities left wives less time for mission endeavors than single women anyway. In addition, if they felt no personal commitment they would

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come to resent their husbands' absence and their own loneliness "among an alien race." They would become discontented, a hindrance to their husbands, nervous and depressed, and physically ill, and they would want to return to the United States. Crawford could have provided names from her diary for every condition of woman she described. But if women felt their own separate call, even mothers and wives could find a way to spread the good news of Christ. 59 The advice was sadly personal. After T. P. Crawford died in Georgia in 1902, Martha Crawford returned to China. Seventy-two years old and feeble, she stationed herself most days at the foot of a sacred mountain where for seven more years she stopped pilgrims who would listen and told them the story of salvation. She died at the age of seventy-nine and was buried in Tengchow as she requested.

Sisterhood in China

Just as her husband sought male confidants, Martha Crawford understood the need for companionship among those of her own sex. In fact, developing a sense of missionary sisterhood was an important survival technique in a difficult and often hostile environment.

Hardly had Crawford disembarked in Hong Kong in March 1852 than she experienced isolation from the company of females. Although two of her husband's missionary friends were married, she had nothing in common with either wife. Crawford confided to her diary that she did not believe that a woman's husband should constitute her entire world: "I need a female friend. O my mother! O my sister! How I yearn for one hour's weeping on your breast, even though not a word could be spoken." The journey by ship from Hong Kong to Shanghai merely reinforced her sense of isolation. No other women were aboard the ship, and the oriental crew treated her with contempt. It was a lonely, sad voyage that she would not forget.60 Her husband's constant quarrels did not make social relations with missionary wives easier once they arrived in northern China. But in Tengchow she found companionship in a stream of missionaries, many of them single, whom she welcomed into her home. She especially developed a bond of affection for Lottie Moon. The two lived together for awhile when Moon first arrived, taught together, and shared many trips through the backcountry of Shantung Province. Their friendship survived Moon's disagreements with T. P. Crawford and the Crawfords' eventual resignation from the Foreign Mission Board. Moon frequently summoned Martha Crawford to help

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evangelize her congregation after she moved to Pingtu. It may have been Moon who inspired her to adopt Chinese clothing and life-style.

Lucy Ayers, daughter of T. W. Ayers, returned to China after college and endeared herself to her aging parents with her quick humor. Alabamians Floy White Adams and Cynthia Miller enlarged the circle of friendship surrounding the two grandes dames of the Baptist North China Mission. In fact, Cynthia Miller accompanied Lottie Moon on her final voyage to the United States and ordered her burial at sea when the ship's officers refused to return her remains to the United States. 61

Blanche Rose Walker, another of the single missionaries befriended by Crawford, was the recipient of the very attention Martha Crawford had so sorely missed. While living in the Crawford home, Walker would watch until no one was with the elderly missionary and then would slip across the courtyard to spend evenings with her. One evening Crawford summoned her, invited Walker to be seated, then astounded the young woman with an intensely personal speech of gratitude. As Walker recalled the words, Crawford explained: "I want to tell you one thing that I have been saving for you. I feel that you have become the answer to my prayer for help. You know I was soon to be left alone at this station; I needed companionship, yet deeper than that, I yearned for someone, called by God, to . . . begin work with these women and girls."62

Willie Kelly (1893-1937) experienced less isolation in Shanghai nearly half a century after Crawford's sojourn there, but sisterhood was no less important to her. She had the good fortune to travel to China with another single missionary, Lottie Price, who became her closest companion. During forty-four years in Shanghai, Kelly shared her home with eighteen different housemates, treating each to her own unique orientation to China, and she never altered her opinion about the social efficacy of housing single women together. When temporarily evacuated to the Philippines during the Japanese siege of Shanghai, she rejoiced that she and other single women were to be housed in a Baptist college for women: "We are more fortunate than we had ever dreamed of: no children or men are allowed."63

Although Kelly and Price reported to Alabama that their desire for separate housing resulted from the urging of other missionaries and the greater accessibility such housing afforded them to Chinese women, they primarily resented the inconvenience of multiple families in a single house. Once settled in their own house, the two friends thrived. A missionary who lived with them recalled Kelly as candid, straightfor-

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Willie Hays Kelly, Baptist teacher/women's worker/

deacon in Shanghai for forty-four years, 1893-1937.

(Courtesy of Photo Library, Foreign Mission Board, SBC)

ward, and a bit austere. Price was kindly, affable, and gentle. Price established the Eliza Yates School for Girls and served as its principal for three years.

Kelly became Price's advocate and sponsor, the beginning of a female missionary "network" within the SBC Foreign Mission Board. In a 1902 letter to the board's head she referred to her friend as "the best missionary in Central China." 64

When Price contracted tuberculosis in 1905, Kelly tried to nurse her back to health. When Price's condition worsened, Kelly booked passage for the two of them back to the United States. Price had no relatives, so Kelly arranged for her care in California and continued to nurse her until alternative care could be found. Price was able to return to China in 1907 but was never well again.65 She died in 1917, an event that caused Kelly enormous grief.

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Sallie Priest took Price's place as Kelly's confidante. Priest was the first to occupy the home Annie Seaman built for Kelly in 1919. Once again the Alabamian assumed the role of advocate, recommending Priest for dean of women at the University of Shanghai. The following year Priest had a cancerous breast removed and tragedy again befell Kelly when her friend died.

Kelly herself always preferred one of three missionary women doctors in Shanghai as her physician. One of them, Dr. Elizabeth Reifsnyder, had become renowned for her successful surgery on tumors. But the three physicians all tended large hospitals for the Chinese and would not accept Kelly as a patient, though informally they did dispense medicine to her. 66

Kelly did not confine her affection to Price and Priest. She constantly requested single women from her mission board, and once they arrived she carefully supervised their orientation, work, and mental health. When one of her recruits, Hannah Fair, became exhausted, Kelly demanded that an assistant be sent at once. After a perfunctory apology for yet another request (''Guess you are saying, 'When will Miss Kelly stop?' "), she demanded immediate action, warning that otherwise Fair would "break down."67

Of course sisterhood can easily be romanticized. Kelly's candor could sometimes be cruel, even though she proffered it from what she considered high-minded motives. Not long before Kelly left China in 1937, a young missionary living in her house discovered that someone had been in her bathroom, had carefully pushed all the toothpaste to the opening end of the tube, and had evenly folded the empty bottom. Resentful at this violation of her living space, she demanded to know who had meddled in her bathroom. When they were alone Kelly admitted the intrusion but chided her for poor management of such costly resources as American-made toothpaste. On another occasion she offended a sensitive new missionary by offering a jar of deodorant and some advice about hygiene: "Now, don't squirm. Instead, let's be sensible and realistic. Racial odors are more offensive to one of another race. In the States we think the sweaty Negro stinks. Here if we are careless, the Chinese will think we stink. Sunday morning I saw several people moving away from you. Being tall makes your arm pits come about even with the average Chinese nose. And you had better not put your arm around the girls in the choir. You didn't understand them Sunday but they were whispering about your odor." The younger woman was mor-

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tified and furious. She accused Kelly of heartless cruelty. Kelly merely dismissed the woman, advising her to reflect about the matter and assuring the neophyte that such motherly advice would help her become a better missionary. Some of her young guests considered such incidents the result of Kelly's "superiority complex." 68

Cynthia Miller (1905-36) also became embroiled in sisterly conflict. The wife of the physician for whom she worked decided while Miller was on furlough that she would take charge of nursing. She offered Miller a position as her assistant, but the proud young nurse interpreted the usurpation as a clear sign from God that she should abandon nursing for women's evangelism, which few missionary wives were willing to do.69

Whatever support missionary women could not gain from each other they often received from home. Most important was a circle of family and friends that faithfully encouraged them with letters and packages. Beyond this group they received praise and generous contributions from women organized into missionary societies. The Alabama Baptist Woman's Missionary Union made it possible for Kelly to go to China during the depression-wreaked 1890s by pledging to pay her salary. Kelly even tried to recruit the longtime leader of Alabama's WMU, Kathleen Mallory, to China as a missionary. The Ann Hasseltine Missionary Society of Judson College, to which Kelly had belonged while living in Marion, both studied the lives of women missionaries and supported them financially.70

The Ethnic Limits of Sisterhood

The interaction of female missionaries was only one part of female bonding that occurred in China. Although gender relationships between Alabama missionaries and Chinese were seldom as close as missionary ties to each other, they nonetheless created a new dimension to women's lives. Alabama women came from a biracial culture that often provided close physical association with black women in subservient roles as slaves, nurses, maids, and cooks. Such relations were governed by codes of paternalism and condescension that left no doubt about proper conduct or white superiority.

Paternalism also dominated American-Chinese female relationships. Beginning with the premise that Chinese females were heathen and that their inferior status resulted from corrupt and exploitative native religions, missionary women concluded that they functioned as liberators.

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For women who chose to be liberated, however, special bonds of affection and cooperation emerged quite unlike any cross-racial, black-white relations in Alabama.

The best example of such contact came with Bible women. These Christian converts received small salaries to help missionary women convert Chinese females. Because they knew the dialects and customs of their neighbors, Bible women were invaluable. Among Chinese they developed the closest bonds to women missionaries. Their journeys together through the countryside were similar to camping trips in arrangement and to circuit riders in strategy. But the nature of their journeys often implies more intimacy than actually existed. Most Bible women were no more than semiliterate, especially during the nineteenth century. They were often poor women. Their notions of hygiene and sanitation differed from their American "sisters." 71 So did their concept of Christian propriety. Having already crossed the boundaries that Chinese society considered appropriate conduct for women, they recognized few of the limitations imposed by conservative Alabama culture. They led public meetings (some nineteenth-century American evangelicals called them "promiscuous meetings" because males and females met together in violation of the social norms of both societies at the time). They sometimes preached in the streets. At other times women served as deaconesses or treasurers of churches. Missionary women, who certainly would not have been permitted by males to do such things back in Alabama and who oftentimes vigorously opposed such conduct themselves, proved remarkably tolerant of these practices among their converts.

Despite limitations in their acceptance of Chinese, women missionaries crossed many racial barriers. Lucy Ayers's friendship not only enriched the last years of Lottie Moon and Martha Crawford, but she also applied her ebullient personality to the Chinese. After two years of language study she wrote the head of her missionary agency: "It will indeed be a delightful change to begin mixing with the women more, for I have learned to love the Chinese." Of course Lucy grew up in China and so had fewer barriers to cross than most missionaries. Not so Virginia Atkinson. The circumscribed world of an Alabama textile mill village with its rigid class, race, and gender boundaries did not prevent her from becoming close friends with her Bible woman. They discussed intimate aspects of their family lives. The woman, who had been a poor widow when converted, began to weep while explaining how she had been forced to sell a daughter in order to survive. Atkinson

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was so moved by the story that she traveled to Shanghai and bought the girl back. The redeemed girl became a Christian and later took over Atkinson's educational work. 72

Such acts of generosity occurred frequently between missionaries and Chinese women. Cynthia Miller used her own salary to educate a number of children and abused women. If personally unable to help, missionaries often contacted Alabama women's missionary societies, churches, or individuals. In the mid-nineteenth century Judson College provided free education to the daughter of Lewis Shuck's first convert. Willie Kelly obtained a $500 scholarship for the daughter of her first language teacher (a convert, who also became head teacher of her Shanghai boys' school). The Fairfax, Alabama, Baptist Church befriended Moonbeam Tong, a student who studied theology for three years at the Baptist Bible Institute in New Orleans before returning to China. Virginia Atkinson accepted the gift of a daughter from a dying Chinese woman in the Soochow Woman's Hospital, paid a Chinese to care for the baby during the day, but tended it herself at night. When Methodist women in Alabama learned of Atkinson's new family member, they sent money for the baby's support and later paid for her education.73

Willie Kelly developed a special relationship with her Bible woman and female students. The Bible woman lived in Kelly's home and won her praise as "my dear co-laborer, . . . my human stay and comfort, boat companion, wheelbarrow opposite, . . . and table companion: thus we have worked and prayed together." Like many missionary teachers, Kelly praised the ability of Chinese female students; they responded with deep affection for their Doo-I (auntie). On one occasion a male missionary chapel speaker at the Shanghai girls' school prayed that Kelly might have wisdom to handle the heavy burden of financial and administrative responsibility attendant to operating the school. The students, believing that Kelly possessed all the wisdom she needed already and that the prayer thus insulted her, held special prayer meetings for several days to thank God for giving Doo-I so much more wisdom than he had given male chapel speakers. Kelly also noted that Chinese women were willing to share with her their personal problems after she developed long-term friendships with them through her home visits.74

One key piece of evidence to the relationship between Alabama women missionaries and their Chinese sisters-in-Christ was the level of acceptance and even enthusiasm for the expanded roles occupied by

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Chinese converts. Obviously missionary women rejoiced at the liberation of their cohorts from foot binding, ignorance, and isolation. Ruth Berckman believed that missionary women had been the major force in liberating Chinese women from foot binding, even though both Nationalist and Communist governments gave their support to the reform during the 1920s and 1940s. Mary Stuart rejoiced that the partitions dividing Christian men and women in worship during the 1870s disappeared as women began demanding greater rights. 75

The educational progress of Chinese women received similar praise. Both missionary and Chinese women generally opposed the coeducational movement that threatened to end girls' schools. Although the Nationalist government endorsed education for women after 1911, even Nationalist Chinese historians credit women missionaries with introducing women's education to China. The first government school for girls did not open until 1906, some fifty years after missionaries began such work. Missionaries opened a college for women thirteen years before the first government university accepted women. Mary Anderson traced the emancipation of Chinese women in every aspect of their lives to women's education. The initial educational focus on converting girls gradually broadened to include "uplifting Chinese womanhood." Whereas female students in nineteenth-century missionary schools came mostly from professional and business parents and from Christian families, twentieth-century missionary schools emphasized academic content and drew students primarily from non-Christian families. Such schools played a key role after 1911 in the emergence of a "new woman" in China who was a full coworker with men.

By the twentieth century, women's missionary colleges opened higher education to them as well. The first woman was admitted to medical school in Canton in 1879, only thirty years after the first medical degree was conferred on a woman in the United States. Chinese women were admitted to theological schools on equal terms with men during the 1920s. The Bible School for Women founded in Swatow in 1873 began eight years before the first such training school opened for women in the United States, and according to Mary Anderson it was the first such school in the world to train women professionally for Christian work.

Anderson noted that Chinese women received education for socialwork careers and that Christian mission schools did not discriminate against women in teachers' salaries, as was common in the United States. Whether or not all of Anderson's claims were true is less impor-

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tant than her conclusions that missionary education for girls and women had been a liberating force in Chinese society. Chinese historians confirm the judgment, although they emphasize the role of women missionaries as "stimulators" rather than initiators of education for women. 76

Anderson attributed the emergence of Chinese women into public roles to educational opportunities furnished by mission schools, and she praised their activities in business, industry, the professions, and politics. She applauded the enfranchisement of Chinese women in 1912, more than five years before all American women could vote. She even endorsed women's combat roles in the Nationalist army during the Second World War.

Virginia Atkinson agreed that mission education went hand in hand with expanded opportunities. In a speech to the southwide meeting of the Methodist Woman's Missionary Council in 1927, she listed first among the changes that had occurred during her forty-three years in China the expansion of women's rights. Chinese women had moved from "a position of nonentity" to positions of leadership as nurses, physicians, evangelists, school principals, lawyers, and business executives.77

Historian Jane Hunter agrees with Anderson and Atkinson. Denying that mission activities distanced Chinese women from their society, Hunter maintains that such education helped integrate them into a modernizing China. Girls' schools provided Chinese women with supportive peers and led to a collective sense of nationalism. Many graduates of the schools remained single, entered professional careers, and became important leaders of the nationalist movement. Among the graduates of Martha Crawford's school, one became a teacher in Shanghai, another in Manchuria, a third in Shantung Province, and a fourth in Chingchow. Another became editor of the Scientific Magazine in Shanghai. According to No Yong Park, writing in 1930, nearly half of the early Nationalist leaders received at least part of their educations at missionary schools. Of the twenty-one women mentioned in the 1930 edition of Who's Who in China, sixteen were educated in mission schools and thirteen were active Christians.78

Although it is surprising to discover Alabama women praising political and economic reforms for Chinese women that were advanced over those in their own homeland, it is even more startling to discover their enthusiasm for ministerial and ecclesiastical roles not available to Alabama women. Atkinson encouraged and was venerated by Chinese Methodist deaconesses, Bible women, and Christian female workers.

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Baptist missionary Willie Kelly suggested that her Old North Gate Baptist Church appoint the wives of deacons as deaconesses. The suggestion, about which she boasted to a biographer "with a twinkle in her eye," resulted in a board of deacons at the church consisting of three males and three females. In time the church also elected single women. One of the deaconesses in 1933 was a single woman and a sister-in-law to a deceased but beloved pastor of the church. One of her sisters had attended the WMU Training School in Louisville and frequently wrote for WMU magazines. Another was principal of the church's girls' school. A third was secretary of the Chinese national WMU. Kelly described the single deaconess as "really the mother adviser of the whole church." The Alabamian had also manipulated a woman into the position of church treasurer, a particularly nontraditional job for a woman in Chinese society. Perhaps in her praise of the woman's financial and bookkeeping skills she was thinking of her own role as financial secretary and bookkeeper of the Alabama Baptist State Convention during the 1890s. Under Kelly's leadership the church employed two women evangelists supported by monies contributed by female members who reached the age of seventy. As she reported the scheme to American associates, "You see, we Chinese do things just a bit different from you people at home." When a particularly successful principal at her school, Ming Yung, decided to marry a wealthy widower with many children, Kelly bemoaned the loss except for two factors: the woman's new financial resources would strengthen the church's social service center, and she would become a deaconess because her husband was already a deacon. 79

Some missionaries endorsed even more controversial roles for Chinese women as preachers and evangelists. Kelly encouraged women evangelists at her Shanghai church and wrote two books in Chinese on the role of women in the Old and New Testaments. Martha Crawford commented in her diary about a young eclectic Christian woman who burned incense, bowed to her knees before candles, and proclaimed the gospel on street corners. The Alabamian commented that men did not do such things. Her unimpressed convert responded: "No they don't often do such thingsthey are not very religious." Methodist missionary Hoadley Berckman attended a 1923 revival at McTyeire School for girls where his wife taught. The Chinese evangelist was a woman graduate of Virginia Atkinson's Laura Haygood School in Soochow. Berckman summarized her sermon to his in-laws and noted that the Chinese girls were much interested. The following year his wife Ruth

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described another Chinese woman evangelist's revival at the school. The meeting was a spectacular success, wrote Berckman, that produced forty-six conversions. Their descriptions of Methodist women evangelists were so enthusiastic and nonchalant that two conclusions seem obvious: having women evangelists preach Methodist revivals was a routine occurrence, and the two missionaries approved both evangelist and message. 80

One historian contends that even though American and Asian women overcame some cultural barriers, made tours together, lived in the same houses, or worked in the same hospitals and schools, they did not share a sense of sisterhood or common identity as women. Only their common bond in Christ united them.81 Perhaps in a literal sense such a judgment is accurate. They did not entirely transcend their cultures. But what is remarkable is how close many Alabama women came to that Christian ideal and how they constantly held such a goal before them. Their support of greatly expanded roles for Chinese women, even some roles that the missionaries did not enjoy themselves in the United States, makes clear that sisterhood is not an entirely inappropriate concept to use when describing their relationships.

Creating New Spheres in China

Some of the barriers women missionaries confronted came from their own denominations. By challenging these restrictions they established models for their Chinese sisters and redefined their own roles as Christians.82 In fact, this challenge inspired by their China experiences constitutes one of the best arguments for the creation of a third culture that was neither entirely Chinese nor entirely American.

Typical of the cultural norms of their homeland were the severe restrictions on how women missionaries were allowed to function in China. Presbyterian station meetings, for instance, did not allow women to speak until the 1920s. Presbyterian Mary Stuart wrote to her mother in 1875 about the approaching mission meeting "when all the male members meet to discuss the affairs of the mission." Many Alabama women resented such treatment. Single Presbyterian missionary nurse Mary Bissett satirized such anachronistic policies in a letter to an American missionary magazine in 1920. When she and three male colleagues had a meeting about how to keep their hospital open in the absence of its only physician, Bissett's vote did not count "as I was not old enough to vote."83

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Baptists were no more open to women than were Presbyterians. Males often read the reports of females during the nineteenth century so as to prevent women from speaking before audiences that contained men. As with their Presbyterian sisters, Baptist women missionaries often resented such restrictions and tried to find ways around them. During 1849 Eliza Shuck and her wife-colleagues in Shanghai began to meet regularly. Some afternoons they conducted prayer meetings, and on others they made items for sale to support the school they had established. Because their husbands controlled mission policy and refused to appropriate funds for the school, "we ladies have determined monthly to lay by a certain sum from that allowed for our daily expenses" and use it to operate the school. But diverting money seemed not to be their husbands' chief objection, according to Shuck. The men believed that the life of a married woman was so precarious that it was "too great a task upon a house keeper's strength to give that attention which a boarding school requires." The women also encouraged appointment of a single woman missionary for Shanghai. 84

Half a century later, changes had occurred among Southern Baptists. Willie Kelly was elected the first secretary of the Central China Mission in 1896. As such she handled the mission's financial business and correspondence with the FMB, and she was not hesitant to protest board policy when she believed it to be wrong. In 1919 she complained that when the mission suggested a couple to assume the work she had begun with fifty young men, the board instead sent an earnest, serious, timid man who had no fun-loving qualities and did not appeal to Chinese youth. Appointment of a couple would allow the husband to assume the work she had begun with men and the wife to begin institutional work in the Good Will Center. On another occasion she wrote the board that one of her male colleagues "has tried me very much, but I'm trying to be patient." She also clashed with a mission committee seeking to buy land because the male members would not buy the land that she recommended.85

Challenges to and changes in local mission policy are significant examples of the way in which women missionaries influenced China missions. But it was the opportunities that the entire missionary enterprise afforded women that made lasting differences in their pride and independence.

Willie Kelly epitomized the way such opportunities changed women's lives. At one time or another in her forty-four-year career she functioned as teacher, principal, secretary, bookkeeper, banker, lawyer,

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counselor, preacher, deaconess, nurse, and mission administrator. As the chief architect of women's work in Old North Gate Baptist Church, Kelly transformed a congregation with only a dozen or so women members when she arrived in 1894 into one with an overwhelming majority of women making up its leadership. She became a deaconess herself and successfully lobbied for the appointment of Chinese women as well. She served four times as church secretary and was a continuous member of the congregation's finance and building committees.

Her straightforward demeanor and candor did not make her universally popular within the Southern Baptist mission. When she returned to the United States to nurse her friend Annie Seaman, she accepted the pain of criticism that she had deserted her post and persisted with what she viewed as her duty to a friend. When she reached retirement age she not only continued to live in the palatial home that Seaman had built for her, but she also drove a private automobile. When mission criticism of the automobile ownership reached her, she sold the car. But even after her retirement she tenaciously held on to her house and refused to return to the United States, in violation of board policy. 86

Lottie Moon and Martha Crawford became quite different women as a result of their experiences in China. Moon wrote that her isolation and responsibilities transformed her from "a timid self-distrustful girl into a brave self-reliant woman." Crawford could have written identical sentiments. In many ways she and Moon pioneered the strategy of adapting to Chinese culture as the most effective way to conduct missionary work. Both began their careers as teachers and ended them as itinerant evangelists. Rather than be intimidated by Chinese culture, they melted into it to a considerable degree. Both of them were rankled by board and local mission policies. During the Taiping Rebellion Crawford feared that male missionaries in Shanghai would send wives away from their spouses to a safer location. Although some wives seemed willing and even eager to leave, Crawford flatly refused. Admitting that she was "not silly enough" to remain in Shanghai under any circumstances, she believed the danger greatly exaggerated. When she did not agree with male missionaries, she felt "very much like rebelling." Nor was she complimentary about women who escaped to the safety of ships in the harbor. After 1854 Crawford interrupted her diary for ten years. When she resumed she began: "I was a different personmy girlhood was past. By the end of . . . 1854, though I was twenty-four years old, I was still a girl. I was slow in maturing."87

Virginia Atkinson also resented the attempt of males, who were im-

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mersed in Victorian notions about the helplessness of females, to order women about in times of crisis. When antiforeign riots erupted in Shanghai in 1905, Methodist male missionaries in Soochow, fearing the spread of the rebellion to their city, sent their wives and children to Shanghai, where they came under the protection of the international settlement. Dr. D. L. Anderson, president of the Methodist university at Soochow, insisted that single women missionaries relocate to Shanghai because ''if an emergency comes" the men could "run better if . . . not burdened by you ladies." The single women decided to confer with their most respected leader, Dr. Margaret Polk, a women's rights advocate and native of Kentucky. When the women arrived at Polk's house, the physician was furious: "The idea of the men of this mission talking to themselves to decide what we shall do! They have never burdened themselves for me yet. This time I propose to give them a chance. If the crisis comes they'll have to run with me and the one I want to team up with is Dr. Anderson himself." Atkinson was not so brave and had decided to leave, but the bravado of Polk so emboldened her that she decided to stay behind with the others. 88

In the adventuresome environment of China not all males were as cautious as Dr. Anderson. T. W. Ayers not only exposed his family to enormous (and for four of them lethal) health risks in Shantung Province, he also concluded that at such a spiritual frontier women could be entrusted with new responsibilities. He became a vigorous advocate of girls' schools. He recruited women staff for his hospital. He selected a Chinese woman to admit to his first medical school class. When nurse Jessie L. Pettigrew arrived to assist him, he gave her wide latitude. She not only handled traditional nursing but also organized evangelism within the hospital and conducted home visitation. He praised her empathy with Chinese and dutifully reported their affection for her. In 1919 he welcomed appointment of Dr. Jeannette E. Beall to the hospital at Laichow because he believed separate hospitals for men and women necessitated male and female physicians to staff them. Beall became chief administrator, with a male surgeon on her staff. Ayers rejoiced in similar fashion upon rumors that a woman dentist would be appointed, and he suggested that she be urged to teach dentistry to his medical students as well as practice her profession. In 1922 he begged for appointment of two nurses to administer the nursing department of his hospital.89

The most iconoclastic departure for Alabama women missionaries was preaching. Back home this role was strictly forbidden them, and

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there is no evidence that they were nascent radicals who left their southern homeland so they could exercise such gifts in China. The belief that only males should preach seems to have been one that they universally accepted when they arrived. But in China two realities quickly dawned on them. Men were not allowed to preach to women, and there were far more women missionaries than men. They begged and entreated men to come to China to preach so that they could confine their own ministrations to women; few men accepted the challenge. So they either had to preach to males or reconcile themselves to the damnation of Chinese men. Many decided reluctantly to preach. Others did so with greater enthusiasm and frankness.

The strangest case was that of Martha Crawford. One of the few women who specifically renounced preaching as an "unladylike" role for women, she in fact preached on many occasions. Perhaps her 1891 renunciation in the Alabama Baptist, mentioned earlier, reflected her attempt to placate her husband and reassure conservative Alabama Baptists. But whatever her motive, evidence from her own life contradicted the article. When Lottie Moon summoned Crawford to help teach the Bible to inquirers at Sha-ling, most of the "inquirers" turned out to be men. Each evening Crawford "instructed'' the congregation, which was separated according to gender by a makeshift screen of grain stalks. On Sunday morning before a mixed audience, the two women conducted a traditional worship service of prayer, songs, Bible reading, and some sort of speech. Moon reported to the Alabama Baptist that "Mrs. Crawford read and commented on the third chapter of John's Gospel," which received the "earnest, thoughtful attention" of the congregation. As she watched Crawford "instruct" crowds of men, Moon wrote: "My memory was haunted by the words of Scripture: 'That no man take thy crown.' It seemed to me that here was a woman doing the work of some young man among Southern Baptists in the United States who ought to be here and that when the harvest should be garnered in heaven and the laborers receive their reward, the Master would place on her head the crown that should have been his!" Even Crawford sometimes slipped and referred to the "ladies" of the North China Mission "preaching in the chapels, on the streets of villages and market towns, at great fairs, by the wayside, as opportunity [is] offered." When Baptists in Virginia rejected a request from women to organize a mission support group, Moon and Crawford wrote a joint letter to the state denominational newspaper asking how they should respond when Chinese men asked them to teach and conduct worship services. Inasmuch as no men vol-

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unteered, should the women reject such requests or allow unbaptized Chinese men to conduct services so as to prevent women from speaking before men? No Virginia males responded to their query. The following year the convention reversed itself and the Virginia WMU joined the national organization. 90 In her last and perhaps most telling act of theological independence, Martha Crawford ended her husband's secessionist "Gospel Mission" movement after his death by urging its remaining supporters to return to the SBC Foreign Mission Board.

Baptist women of the next generation made little effort to conceal or rationalize their preaching. Addie Cox, her Bible women, and evangelists preached to crowds gathered in villages through which they passed. During one visit to a rural area, a man came to her chapel and asked Cox to come and preach in his village. Using a text from Matthew she spoke of the power of Jesus to give rest and freedom. Four women were so impressed with her preaching that they walked all the way to her chapel for more instruction. When Inabelle Coleman penned a eulogy for Willie Kelly, she referred to Kelly's "preaching" as well as to her service as a deaconess. So highly did the Chinese of Old North Gate Baptist Church regard Kelly, Coleman reminded Alabama WMU women, that they referred to her as "our friend and mother in God." So highly did Alabama Baptist women regard Kelly that they dedicated the 1945 annual meeting to her.91

Irene Jeffers belonged to the same generation as Cox and was also single. In her 1934 annual report she referred several times to her preaching services. She and two Chinese women helpers took turns preaching to one large crowd. In another village she preached on ten consecutive days and nights, "only stopping long enough to sleep at night." In the morning she preached to women and children. During the afternoons she preached in outlying villages. In the evening she preached to crowds of mainly men with some women present. Jeffers left a full account of one 1921 journey, including texts and summaries of her sermons. She also preached at chapel services for her girls' school. Although Baptist schoolteacher Clarabel Isdell did not preach, she and Jeffers left Alabama for China at the same time and became close friends. Isdell recalled that Jeffers considered herself a "preacher missionary."92

Even Alabama missionaries who did not consider themselves preachers found other ways of exercising their creative energies; many became writers. First among them was Martha Crawford. Her seven volumes of diaries contain marvelous accounts of her childhood, marriage, voy-

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Irene Jeffers (left, under dot) preaching to a crowd of Chinese in streets of Tien Tsang.

She was one of the female missionaries who actually described her work as "preaching."

(Courtesy of Wayne Flynt/Gerald W. Berkley)

age to China, the Taiping Rebellion, mission conflicts, and ministries. In both style and content the diaries are worthy of far more literary attention than they have received. She also published a book on Western cooking, an infant's catechism, a stilted but revealing autobiographical novel entitled The Chinese Bride, and a book entitled The Chinese Daughter-in-Law that was published anonymously. Her "History of Missions in [Tengchow] for the First Thirteen Years" is a lively account of early Baptist history in China. At the 1877 general conference of Southern Baptist missionaries in China, both Crawfords were invited to present papers. Her paper on "Woman's Work for Woman" called for more attention to Chinese women, especially the creation of good literature for them, and helped inspire establishment of a Baptist women's magazine, Woman's Work in China. Through this outlet Crawford materially influenced the philosophy of women's work for decades. 93

Mary Anderson lacked the ambivalence of Martha Crawford. She

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never aspired to preach, whatever the practice be termed. She came as a teacher and spent two productive decades at Pei Tao Academy, one of the best girls' schools in Canton. After a dispute with the FMB led to her resignation, she wrote perhaps the best history of Chinese missions, entitled A Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom. This encyclopedic study of Protestant girls' schools in southern China between 1827 and 1937 was thoroughly researched and judiciously balanced. It contained neither obvious denominational bias nor parochialism. The book was often critical of mission policies, especially emphasis on soul winning to the neglect of academic standards, and exhibited a strong feminist undertone. Anderson analyzed prejudices against single women missionaries, described their second-class treatment, and summarized their influence on Chinese women and society. She noted in detail the history and contribution of each mission school for girls in southern China, detailing literally hundreds of examples (such as Thora Feng, who completed a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan before teaching physics at Lingnan University, or Lingnan's dean of women, Edith T. Chih, who graduated from True Light Middle School, Lingnan University, and New York's Union Theological Seminary). 94 A Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom constituted the published literary equivalent to Martha Crawford's unpublished diary.

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Whatever the intent of women missionaries may have been, whether to extend Alabama's Victorian values or to convert the heathen through the preaching that men would not do, they were ultimately subversive of Chinese gender relations. Most Chinese men believed that all women missionaries had abandoned proper female roles to become "sexless agents of change."95 To become a manly or warrior woman was certainly not the objective of Alabama women missionaries who went to China. But when forced by circumstances into such nonfeminine roles, Alabama women performed them marvelously well.

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10

Error Is Propagated Along with Truth:

Conflict among Alabama Missionaries

Just as the notion of sisterhood evaporates in the heat of female conflict, so too the notion of holy purpose wanes with all-too-human conflicts. Missionaries fought other Westerners and each other over a variety of issues. Pragmatic businessmen saw moralistic missionaries as interfering with commercial relations. Sectarian missionaries regarded varieties of Christianity other than their own as more dangerous to the eternal welfare of Chinese than even the hellish paganism of their traditional religion. When not fighting each other, missionaries often fought sponsoring mission boards. When satisfied with the policies of their agencies, they often clashed over the currents of modernism and fundamentalism coursing through the veins of twentieth-century American Protestantism.

Denominational histories tend to sanitize and de-fang mission efforts. It is as if the enormous sacrifices that missionaries made transformed the strong personalities required for service in China into spiritual wimps. Or perhaps the missionaries themselves understood that, given the requests for volunteers and money they constantly sent back to the United States, they could not afford to appear contrary and quarreling. At other times the sectarian proclivities of sponsoring denominations, especially Southern Baptist, forced both mission board and missionaries to be less ecumenical than Chinese reality and personal disposition inclined them. Whatever the cause, missionaries often fought each other as fiercely as they warred against Satan.

Conflicts between Missionaries and Other Westerners

If, as many historians claim, missionaries were merely the religious manifestation of economic colonialism, they had a curious way of show-

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ing it. Although many China missionaries had previously engaged in business (T. W. Ayers and Nicholas Williams come immediately to mind) and they had no quarrel with capitalism (T. P. Crawford earned a tidy sum from his Chinese real estate transactions), their cause was not one with foreign merchants. Inherent in the relationship between American businessmen and American missionaries were numerous points of tension. Indeed the late-nineteenth-century editorial in the influential Louisville Courier-Journal accusing China missionaries of being misfits and do-gooders, discussed earlier, which so infuriated the editor of the Alabama Baptist, expressed the tension between New South industrial boosters and idealistic religious leaders. By and large New South evangelicals shared the material assumptions of New South businessmen. But in China they clashed as often as they agreed.

At the root of the conflict was a single issue. Businessmen were primarily interested in making money. Missionaries were primarily interested in saving souls. When businessmen shared the priorities of missionaries, they reinforced each other's endeavors. John F. Seaman, Sr., the wealthy Shanghai businessman and Quaker philanthropist whose wife funded many of Willie Kelly's missionary projects, is the best example we have seen. But where teaching Christianity threatened to disrupt harmonious business relations, secular materialism quickly turned into anticlerical fanaticism. 1 Martha Crawford and Eliza Shuck accused secular ship captains of throwing missionary mail overboard because of their disgust for the way in which missionaries challenged Chinese social and cultural values, thereby allegedly stirring up resentment against all Westerners.

Although missionaries were the beneficiaries of Western political intervention that opened Chinese port cities and protected their lives during periods of internal unrest, these same missionaries increasingly criticized imperialism, especially after 1900. During the Opium War (1839-42), Western businessmen took full advantage of the illegal trade as a source of exchange for products they sought from China, such as tea and silk. Missionaries denounced the opium trade. During the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) Western businessmen often sided with imperial forces because the rebels condemned the opium traffic and demanded reforms that potentially would have disrupted commerce. Many missionaries sympathized with the Taipings both because their leader Hung Hsiu-ch'uan (1814-64) claimed to be a Christian convert and because they often sympathized with the broad reformist agenda of the Taipings. Conversely, businessmen often blamed such disruptive

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upheavals as the 1900 Boxer Rebellion on missionary intrusions into interior regions and misguided confrontations between well-meaning but naive Christians and local Chinese political and cultural leaders who resented both their presence and their presumptive gospel. As Chinese nationalism gained momentum after 1900, most missionaries reacted with enthusiasm, believing that the elemental thrust of nationalists toward modernization promised a more hospitable environment for Christianity. American businessmen and diplomats were not so sure and reacted much more cautiously to the nationalist movement. 2

Beyond conflicting political attitudes, businessmen and missionaries often differed in private life and moral conduct. Missionary correspondence contains frequent reference to the decadence and bad example set by American businessmen. They used and sold tobacco products, which many missionaries scorned as addictive and harmful to health. Missionaries accused many businessmen of alcohol abuse. They denounced the debauchery of businessmen who kept Chinese mistresses and engaged in promiscuity.

Businessmen often returned this sort of attack with cunning aim. Unable to win their argument on moral grounds, they accused their antagonists of squandering the gifts of gullible parishioners on opulent missionary residences. They chided the religious pretensions and stuffy puritanism of missionaries. And in a charge that anticipated the conclusion of many historians, they accused missionaries of cultural imperialism for presuming that Christianity was superior to Chinese religion, that Western values, ecclesiastical architecture, and denominational rivalry were preferable to Chinese traditions.

The best expression of this controversy between "saint" and "sinner" appeared in the Alabama Baptist in 1902. Missionary F. W. Williams acknowledged that his colleagues might be subjected to appropriate scrutiny but warned of "insincere drivellers" whose motives entitled them only to scorn. Most such criticism, Williams wrote, came from foreign merchants who operated in Chinese port cities, men who knew nothing about the missionaries' work, particularly in the interior. Businessmen accused missionaries of disturbing the peace when Chinese committed some outrage against them. They observed well-built and amply furnished urban missionary compounds and concluded that missionaries lived lives of ease and even luxury. They ignored the arduous climate and exhausting journeys to the interior that made such dwellings imperative to the health and morale of longtime residents of China.

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Many foreign businessmen had their own quarrel with Christianity because it stood in judgment of their dissipated moral conduct and business ethics: "It is well known that the manner of life of some of these self-constituted critics of our missionaries is among the greatest obstacles to mission progress. 'The Chinese cannot be converted,' say they; certainly not if their [foreign businessmen's] lives count for anything. Testimony so incompetent would be turned down in any police court in the land." Such charges directly influenced Alabama religious leaders. Delivering a paper on "Problems in Foreign Missions" to an interdenominational theological discussion group in Birmingham in 1942, Dr. James C. Stivender contrasted the values of missionaries and businessmen in ways nearly identical to Williams's 1902 article. Stivender, pastor of Ruhama Baptist Church and a former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, noted that missionaries preached Christianity, not Western civilization. Businessmen hurt the mission cause by their ethics. They cheated Chinese businessmen, conduct that led to charges that there was a wide gap between the Christian ethics preached by American missionaries and those practiced by American businessmen: "The commercial interests often do not send a very high type of manhood to foreign countries, and such companies as Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company have sent men . . . whose lives and work give the lie to all that the missionaries are preaching. They are often immoral, profane, drunken and unjust in their business dealings." 3

One of the objectionable businessmen whom Williams encountered may have been Mark L. Potter, shipmaster and Birmingham entrepreneur. Potter spent much of his time in China operating an export-import business. He criticized American missionaries for precisely what Stivender denied: ignoring Chinese traditions and trying to impose Western customs. For instance, missionaries erected American-style church buildings that contained tall spires with sharp points. Many superstitious Chinese objected to needlelike spires raised to the heavens, believing that they impaled the spirits of ancestors flying through the air.4 Whether or not American ecclesiastical architecture did in fact alienate Chinese, Potter's broader point that missionaries tried to superimpose their own patterns of Christianity on China, at least initially, is correct. But this internecine squabble between an Alabama businessman and Alabama missionaries suggests that God and mammon struggled for supremacy of Christianity in the United States, with no clear victor.

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Missionary vs. Missionary

However much businessmen and missionaries might disagree, their differences were only preliminary to the main event, which was a head-to-head contest between missionary and missionary. At the most superficial level, missionaries fought because of differences in personality and temperament. Despite subsequent denominational efforts to deify China missionaries because of their courage and self-sacrifice, they were after all fallible instruments of divine grace whose foibles, like the rest of humanity's, often contradicted and compromised the message they proclaimed.

Eliza (1849-51) and Lewis Shuck both found relations with fellow Baptist missionaries stressful. When Lewis Shuck agreed to serve in Shanghai with his new bride, it was with conditions: he would have no connection to I. J. Roberts. He had fought angrily with the eccentric Roberts earlier when both served in Canton. Shuck referred to Roberts as "that Baptist Jesuit" who might be useful but for his maniacal ego. He even coined a word that became widespread among Canton missionaries: "to Robertsize," meaning a statement made on any subject that was contrary to truth. He criticized Roberts for soliciting funds for a chapel of his own and ignoring policies of the Baptist mission. The FMB dispatched the Shucks to Shanghai in 1847 to get them as far away as possible from Roberts and Canton. 5

Paradoxically Shuck's other conditions to return to Chinaa chapel of his own and the freedom to collect funds to support his workwere similar to the very policies he criticized in Roberts. Even before the Matthew T. Yates, Thomas W. Tobey, and Lewis Shuck families arrived in Shanghai, they had a falling-out. After they became established, Shuck began soliciting money from the foreign community to build a school on mission property in contravention of board policy. Yates and Shuck argued for two months over Shuck's plan for the chapel. Yates forwarded his criticism to the FMB, arguing that conflict in the Shanghai mission would continue so long as Shuck served there. Shuck in turn criticized the poor language skills of a Baptist missionary newly arrived from Canton. But even with his linguistic ineptitude, Shuck pronounced him more useful than Yates in "missionary spirit and zeal." As for Yates's constant protestation of ill health, Shuck wrote that his colleague would feel better if he engaged in more country work and spent less time in Shanghai's foreign settlement. Yet in the long run

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Yates became the mainstay of the Baptist effort in Shanghai and Shuck soon returned to the United States. In a sense Shuck, like his Canton antagonist Roberts, preferred to dominate and found it difficult to work cooperatively with peers. Some missionary associates also spread the rumor that he had sex with his Chinese maids after the death of Eliza. 6

The Shucks' contemporaries, Martha (1852-1909) and T. P. Crawford, fell into conflicts at all levels. Martha recorded in her diary a petty conflict with another missionary wife over which of them would lead singing at a prayer meeting: "After dinner . . . she called me to the window and said she believed she would lead the singing herself, as she had always been accustomed to it at home! Was it such an honor that she should so desire, unrequested, to make herself conspicuousand in such a petty affair! Poor girl, she is really deficient in every day, practical sense, and, I must bear with her. Leading in singing is a place that confers no honor and my only recommendation to the place is a tolerable degree of self-possession with a rather masculine voice; if I am envied that honor I cheerfully yield."7 But of course her diary entry made it clear that leading the singing was an honor that she coveted and that she was hurt by her acquaintance's high-handed conduct.

Other conflicts followed. Crawford chided the Shanghai Baptist mission for ignoring her husband's new Chinese phonics system. She accused other missionaries of jealousy of her husband's schools and resentment at his administration of benevolence funds. Crawford interpreted the refusal of a departing missionary to sell her household items to pique over T. P. Crawford's superior command of Mandarin. Crawford congratulated herself for her Christian attitude toward this woman's "weaknesses and follies" and her ministrations to the woman's vanity, "which is the greater part of her." Crawford and yet another female missionary clashed over which one of them would employ a talented Chinese servant.8

Outspoken Willie Kelly (1893-1937) disagreed stridently with her Shanghai Baptist mission on numerous matters. When the mission purchased property some distance from her home and asked her to give up her beloved house on Rue Lafayette, she flatly refused, causing the mission to be "very much put out with me." She also advised the FMB not to send the widow of a China missionary back to Shanghai. Reflecting a single woman's bias, she protested that the widow had children to care for and could not therefore assume the work that had to be done. Furthermore, Kelly's Chinese students could not understand the woman's

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pronunciation, making her an ineffective teacher. Kelly urged the FMB to find the woman a matron's job in the United States and keep her away from China. 9

Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25) sent the board similar advice about a missionary couple that had served in Shantung Province. The Baptist mission opposed their return both because the husband had ''acted unwisely" in his relation with a woman (though "there was nothing criminal in their relations") and because he was "personally not liked by some of the members of our mission."10

Ayers's son Sanford (1921-26, 1934-41, 1946-49) was himself the target of criticism from fellow Alabamian David Bryan. Although a close associate of the boy's father, Bryan reported Sanford's disastrous financial management of Pingtu Christian Institute to the FMB. The financial chaos resulted from Ayers's deficiencies in bookkeeping and his absentmindedness. He was "a fine fellow in every other way," Bryan wrote, "far ahead of the rest of us in his love for the Chinese and in their love for him." Although he advised the FMB to be charitable and merciful with the young man, Bryan advised that he return to the United States. 11

Clarabel Isdell (1935-45) remembered fellow Alabamian Irene Jeffers as a fine missionary with strong convictions. But she also recalled that Jeffers was dogmatic and sometimes offended fellow missionaries as well as Chinese leaders. This personality flaw made her less popular than other missionaries.12

Not all controversy stemmed from differences in personality and temperament. Many resulted from disagreements about substantive issues of policy and theology. In this regard few issues exceeded sectarian denominational differences as a source of controversy.

Back in Alabama, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians had long argued over the proper method of church governance, the role of an educated clergy, the proper mode of baptism, and other matters. None of those issues disappeared once missionaries arrived in China.

Arguing about church polity and sectarian doctrine was more pronounced in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth. This was true partly because the ecumenical movement spread across American Protestantism at the turn of the century and confirmed theologically what many China missionaries had already discovered from their own experience. Amid a great sea of paganism, the tiny band of Christians had to cling to the same raft of faith despite minor differences in doctrine. By 1890 nineteen different Protestant denominations worked in China.

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Some (notably Methodists and Presbyterians) cooperated in joint educational or medical endeavors and even agreed to divide the vast Chinese landscape into denominational spheres of influence. Others, notably Southern Baptists, rejected ecumenical overtures and, at most, grudgingly coordinated work only with other Baptist groups. Chinese converts were often confused by all this sectarian competitiveness, uncertain as to whether it was sufficient just to become a Christian or whether the brand of Christian they became counted most. Many Chinese Christians drifted from denomination to denomination, targets in a sort of spiritual range war between sects.

Noncooperation had long been a major tenet of Southern Baptists. Sectarian aloofness, defensiveness toward other denominations, and orthodoxy shaped the denomination's history. As early as 1849 the Foreign Mission Board announced that though it rejoiced at the success of other evangelical groups, "our joy suffers some abatement from the consideration that error is propagated along with truth. We are Baptists, and because we are such, it is natural and proper that we should prefer to see our principles spread throughout the world." 13

During the nineteenth century the FMB was small, the number of mission appointments tiny, and the financial support weak. So the opinion of local Baptist missionaries counted for more than board policy. Some cooperated in an ecumenical spirit. Many, probably most, did not.

Lewis Shuck made it a practice not to agitate other missionaries by writing tracts concerning the proper mode of baptism. He would speak on the subject but not otherwise inflame opinion. But he complained to the head of the FMB about "five distinct Pedobaptist" pamphlets in Chinese that taught "the rankest errors on the subject of Baptism." Pedobaptists had begun "the Baptismal controversy in China," he insisted, which required Southern Baptists "to enter the field of conflict and fight over again upon the vast plains of China the like battles so often fought and won in Europe and America." Sabbatarians also sought to lure Baptist converts into their ranks by offering higher pay and prestige. He resented this unchristian conduct and believed that such persons were "our enemies.''14

Martha Crawford also reported bitter contention over the souls of converts. Like most Protestants, she abhorred Catholics. But upon observing the rapid deployment of missionaries to Nanking after its fall to the Taiping rebels, she noted that each denomination sought "to put its own doctrines in the rebels' apple-dumplings."15 The Crawfords

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insisted on their own doctrines for a village near Shanghai that they claimed as their own territory, though they had opened no work there. Episcopalian missionaries finally opened a school in the village to block Baptist efforts to establish a beachhead. 16

Under the leadership of FMB corresponding secretary R. J. Willingham, who assumed office in 1893, Southern Baptists drifted into a more cooperative stream of mission endeavor. Until his death in 1914, Willingham cautiously explored a number of joint ventures, especially with other Baptists. But following his death the FMB reverted to exclusivism. A number of factors drove this reaction: resistance to the U.S. War Department's efforts to reduce denominational distinctions in chaplaincy programs during the First World War; the SBC's fund-raising efforts that emphasized unique denominational doctrines and programs; a localism and ecclesiology that prohibited membership in the Federal and World Council of Churches; and resistance to social gospel and modernist theological inroads from other denominations.17

The new FMB secretary, James F. Love (1915-28), emphasized Baptist distinctions and believed union with other groups diluted the vitality of SBC evangelism and hindered its mission efforts. He believed that the Foreign Missions Conference of North America and the Federal Council of Churches expended too much of their funds on administrative bureaucracy. Messengers to the annual SBC meeting endorsed his position of nonalliance, an act that intensified the denomination's sense of evangelical urgency. If they would not cooperate with others to win China, they assumed a heavy burden of responsibility to reach all of China themselves. In the short run this emphasis paid rich dividends. By 1945 the FMB employed more than five hundred missionaries in nineteen areas of the world and received $2.7 million, making it the largest Protestant mission agency in the world.18 But as we will see shortly, not all Alabama Baptist missionaries agreed with this separatist strategy.

Ecumenism in China

Baptist sectarianism fits easily into the presumption that American missionaries exported their culture to China. But the realities of life there tended to knock the edges off exclusivist and separatist denominationalism and erode its hold on missionaries.

Even fundamentalistic Protestants sought cooperative arrangements with each other that transcended denominational lines. The best exam-

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ple of such interdenominational evangelicalism began in 1866 when Englishman Hudson Taylor organized the China Inland Mission. Taylor's emphasis was exclusively on the salvation of people who lived inland, far from coastal cities where most Protestant missionaries congregated. The China Inland Mission recruited volunteers from all evangelical groups in Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, and the United States. Missionaries pledged to venture into the interior without a guarantee of salary, trusting God, their home congregations, and hospitable Chinese for sustenance.

Mainstream Protestants moved more broadly into ecumenical relationships, reflecting patterns already well established in the United States. In 1877 the first general conference of Protestant Missionaries assembled to survey conditions in China and chart future strategies. In 1890 a second general conference met. By then Protestants had established the Medical Missionary Association of China and the Educational Association of China.

By and large Alabama Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries entered enthusiastically into such cooperative ventures. Joint meetings of northern and southern Presbyterians during the 1870s and 1880s produced a plan for cooperation on mission fields, including China. They would unite to evangelize the Chinese and to establish Presbyterian doctrine and institutions, but they would not vie with each other or seek to link Chinese churches to either regional denomination. 19

Mary Stuart (1874-1925) provided a perfect model of this ecumenical spirit. In 1915 she wrote an article rejoicing that the narrow sectarianism of Chinese Christians was melting away and being replaced by so much unity that it was hard to tell one Chinese Christian from another. The Union Evangelistic Committee of Hangchow, which coordinated Christian work in her city, was making "level in the desert a highway for our God." Mission chapels in Hangchow followed the practice of designating themselves by their location in the city rather than by distinctive denominational names. All were known by the Chinese as branches of the Church of Christ. The Church Missionary Society of England provided all medical care for missionaries and Chinese. One of the "sweetest compensations" for her forty years of work in the city was the relationship with "my fellow missionaries and the formation of friendships which will not end with this life." When she arrived from Mobile shortly after the Civil War ended, some of the sectional bitterness of that conflict remained. But common service for Christ had

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erased the differences between northern and southern, between the United States and Britain, between creeds and nationalities. 20 Her son Leighton manifested the same broad ecumenism.

Methodist missionaries Ruth and Hoadley Berckman (1921-51) shared this ecumenical vision. Hoadley had pastored a Presbyterian church in Nashville, Tennessee, before his marriage and appointment as a Methodist missionary. While furloughing in Alabama, he often visited sponsoring Methodist churches as well as his old Presbyterian congregation.21 In China the Berckmans worked cooperatively with all Protestants in their efforts to convert and uplift Chinese.

Even Southern Baptists adopted a more inclusive spirit late in the century. When Dr. R.J. Willingham took over the FMB during the early 1890s, he encouraged SBC support of the Student Volunteer and Laymen's Missionary Movements, both interdenominational evangelical efforts to recruit volunteers. In 1900 the board appointed twenty-five delegates to an Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions. The board even agreed to divide territory with other Baptist denominations, though not with others. Cooperative relations with the Northern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance became particularly strong. At Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, two of the denomination's most respected and beloved leaders, President E. Y. Mullins and mission professor W. 0. Carver, participated extensively in ecumenical activities.22

Under the triple stimulus of Willingham, Mullins, and Carver, Southern Baptists cautiously expanded their joint ventures. Some thirty Northern and Southern Baptists attended the 1890 Shanghai General Conference of Protestant Missionaries and issued a joint appeal for more volunteers. In 1904 representatives of the American Baptist Missionary Union, the new Gospel Mission (made up of SBC missionaries), and the FMB met in Shanghai to discuss cooperative publication and educational efforts. Southern Baptists described the interests of Northern Baptists as "so near identical that it was most desirable that we have frequent meetings in the future." The following year they established the China Baptist Publication Society, based in Canton, to print literature. The announcement of this joint printing effort in 1905 specifically rejected such agreements with any other denomination because of conflict over the proper translation of "baptize" ("to immerse" was the proper rendering, according to Baptists).23

The most extensive inter-Baptist educational effort was creation of the University of Shanghai by Southern and American Baptists in 1905.

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They jointly operated a seminary in the city that opened in 1906 and a university that began in 1909. 24

Individual Baptist missionaries reacted to this new cooperative spirit in a variety of ways. Martha Crawford wrote in 1894 that during her forty years in China she had developed warm and lasting friendships with many American Baptist missionaries. Willie Kelly welcomed both Presbyterian and (American) Baptist women to teach Bible in her Shanghai school, and many of her graduates served Methodist-, Presbyterian-, and London Mission-sponsored institutions. Such diverse service was to her a source of pride, not of remonstrance. Irene Jeffers accommodated Presbyterian missionaries who impressed her with their devotion to Christ and knowledge of the Bible. Clarabel Isdell worked cooperatively during the 1930s with Catholics, Episcopalians, and the China Inland Mission: "My personal feeling [was] that they were just good friends; by that I [mean that I] recognized their value and what they were contributing to the Lord's cause."25

Baptists Frank and Mabel Woodward arrived in Nanking in 1924 to enter language school at the university with one hundred other missionaries of many denominations. While Woodward attended language school, the pastor of an interdenominational church in the city with more than one thousand members asked him to assist part-time. After some hesitation, Woodward agreed. There he came to know Pearl Buck and her father and developed an ecumenism that influenced his 1934 doctoral dissertation on the indigenous church in China.26

A. Y. Napier used his doctoral dissertation to argue the same point. Although the SBC had resisted interdenominational efforts in education, he urged cooperation especially among various Baptist missions in China.27

Both Napier and Woodward studied at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and no doubt bore the imprint of Southern Baptists' most influential mission strategist, W. 0. Carver. Dr. Carver urged more ecumenical connections, and one of his most enthusiastic converts was his younger brother David. During a 1907 tour of China in preparation for his own mission career there, David Carver sent his brother a scathing critique of Baptist sectarianism. The Baptist effort was enormous, he wrote, but the effect amounted to nothing. The problem was the dissipation of energy that resulted from sending missionaries to every region: "If we would set ourselves to uplifting humanity and teaching Christianity, instead of promulgating Baptist doctrine, the world would be a great deal better off." He urged division of China between denomi-

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national spheres so as to reach each section effectively. The world, he believed, was likely to become nondenominational long before it became Baptist. 28

While touring China, David Carver stayed with two of his father's Alabama students, H. W. Provence and David Bryan. Although Dr. and Mrs. Provence were "two of the finest people I ever met," they were also among the most orthodox. Dr. Bryan was "much more liberal but not so strong a man in some ways as Provence." Bryan tried to recruit young Carver to teach in his college. Although Provence served as the first president of the China Baptist Conference, which represented all British and American Baptist missionaries in China, he did not respond favorably to David Carver's ecumenical vision for China. He believed that young Carver's education at Baptist-affiliated Richmond College in Virginia had tended to "unsettle" his religious faith.29

How all this controversy played out in Alabama depended on the missionary and the issue. Alabama Baptists often feared the dilution of their meaty message in the watered-down broth of denominational union, but they did not scorn evangelicals of differing affiliation who shared a sense of biblical urgency. The women of the East Liberty Baptist Association claimed Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson as one of their own. She had once belonged to the Rock Mills Baptist Church, and Baptist women corresponded with her throughout her career. In fact, her work in China helped inspire Baptist women to organize a Woman's Missionary Union within their own Baptist association.30

Missionary Lives: T. W. Ayers

Perhaps the most fascinating shift of opinion about denominational relations occurred in the Ayers family. When he arrived in China, Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25) was a typically sectarian Southern Baptist who resisted agreements to divide territory with other denominations. He frequently used SBC jealousy over intrusion by missionaries from other denominations to pressure his own board for additional staff, facilities, and funds. But as time passed his letters regarding the Presbyterian menace to Baptist territory assumed elements of charade. Indeed, at the very same time that he used Presbyterians as leverage to force action by the FMB on proposed Baptist expansion, he was cooperating with other denominations to coordinate higher education and medical care. Ayers's attitude toward other denominations is a classic example

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of the way in which Chinese realities changed Alabama assumptions, of how contact with Chinese culture created a new synergistic Protestant culture.

Hardly had the Ayers family arrived at their Hwanghsien station than Dr. Ayers warned the FMB that if Baptists did not expand medical work rapidly in Shantung Province, northern Presbyterians would do so. In 1908 Ayers rejected arguments by Presbyterians that Baptist emphasis on baptism by immersion made SBC missionaries "disturbers of the peace." Their real objective, he believed, was to confine Baptists to a small enclave in Shantung. He had supported creation of a comity committee to study cooperation, but Presbyterians were "getting unduly nervous" over Baptist incursion and proselytizing among their converts. At the same time that Ayers rejected a comity agreement with Presbyterians, he opposed opening Southern Baptist work in a city already occupied by English Baptists. Presbyterians lodged similar complaints four years later in 1912, but Ayers reminded the board that this denomination had opposed every expansion of Baptist work in a province where Baptists had actually first begun missions. Furthermore, disagreements over territory had not harmed fraternal relations between individual missionaries of the two denominations. 31

In time Ayers found additional fault with Catholics and even with English Baptists. In 1909 he warned his board that French priests had arrived in two Shantung counties. The following year he denounced English Baptists for accepting Christian converts from nonimmersing denominations without requiring rebaptism. Ayers was so disturbed at this practice, proposed by one of the ecumenical Shanghai conferences, he suggested that new Baptist missionaries who came before the board for appointment should be questioned as to whether or not they favored a division of territory or exchange of members with other denominations. Federationists were pressuring Baptists for such actions, and both Northern and English Baptists favored these overtures. Indeed even some Southern Baptists responded favorably. The Interior China Mission (Baptist) had endorsed sending delegates to the federation meetings, and the North China Mission to which Ayers belonged had split over sending representatives. Attempts at federation with other denominations, Ayers wrote, would split Southern Baptists both in China and in the United States and would undermine financial support; federation posed the greatest danger to SBC missions of any question during his tenure in China.32

Longer service in China brought a cautious and pragmatic transfor-

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mation in Ayers. At one level the change was intensely personal. He met, admired, and worked with missionaries who sprinkled instead of immersed converts, who held different theological ideas, but who nonetheless proclaimed the gospel with great power. In 1910 he encountered Jonathan A. Goforth, a legendary Canadian Presbyterian missionary who preached a revival in Hwanghsien that "surpassed any demonstration of the Spirit I ever saw": "There were about four hundred persons present, and the Spirit came down in such power that nearly every man and woman was either praying, weeping, confessing sins and pleading for mercy or praising the Lord. . . . It was indeed a wonderful scene and lasted for more than two hours. I have never seen anything like it. It was glorious, but can't be described." 33

Cooperative arrangements increased through the years. When the FMB questioned Ayers about how many North China Mission schools employed Presbyterian teachers, Ayers responded that the principal teacher in all three boarding schools was Presbyterian because there were no eligible Baptist applicants. In outstation schools most of the teachers were Baptist, he wrote, but many were also incompetent. In 1912 Ayers presided at a meeting between his North China Mission and representatives of Presbyterians about new work in Laiyang. Although Baptists rejected division of territory, they agreed to a set of cooperative principles. Ayers initiated the effort, worked cooperatively with Presbyterians, and invited them to preach at his clinic. Although they realized that he did not believe in federation or comity, as did Presbyterians, they respected him and invited him to spend a month with them practicing medicine. "We are not only brethren," Ayers wrote, "but friends who are working together harmoniously." Following six months of cooperative efforts in Laiyang, Ayers wrote his board that he had changed his mind about cooperation. Although he continued to reject the principle of comity agreements, he had concluded that Presbyterians should be given exclusive possession of the city, and Baptists should begin work elsewhere in the county where no other mission effort existed. In fact, he added, Baptists could learn a good deal from Catholics about how to live and work in the villages of Shantung Province. He even drew a map containing a proposed division of the county, a direct violation of his earlier principles against such a policy. Missionaries in his Hwanghsien station endorsed his new position, but their brethren in nearby Cheefoo angrily denounced Ayers's proposal and submitted a petition to the FMB opposing such a division. They even reported the fracas to vitriolic Baptist racist/religious bigot Tom Wat-

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son of Georgia, who publicized it in his newspaper, the Jefersonian, which circulated widely throughout the South. Ayers penned the response for the Hwanghsien faction, denying that an agreement with Presbyterians violated Baptist principles. By 1914 the North China Mission seems to have concluded that in locations where other denominations had already established medical facilities there was no point in Baptists duplicating their work. 34

By the 1920s cooperation had expanded further. Presbyterians invited Ayers to spend the summer of 1922 operating their hospital in the beach resort town of Tungchow while their own physician was absent. This arrangement allowed them to continue their medical services and allowed the Baptist missionaries to vacation on the coast. Furthermore, Ayers began to cite Presbyterian and English Baptist furlough and retirement policies as far superior to FMB procedures, and he urged his own board to adopt these more enlightened guidelines.35

It was Ayers's commitment to medical evangelism that drove his changing notions of cooperation. During 1915 he became deeply involved with the Peking Union Medical College organized by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was the most modern and best-equipped medical school and hospital in Asia, and its administrators moved quickly to assist other mission hospitals in the vicinity of Peking. The college resulted from reports that criticized American medicine for emphasizing primary care through clinics and hospitals. The foundation linked modern Western medicine to university-based medical education and research. Beginning in 1915, the foundation spent one-tenth of its expenditures on Peking Union Medical College and a million dollars a year more on denominational medical schools in China. It also funded medical missionaries for two years of retraining in the United States.

John D. Rockefeller was a Baptist layman, philanthropist, and supporter of foreign missions. But institutions supported by him, including the University of Chicago, had a decidedly liberal and ecumenical cast. Many evangelicals viewed that university as a fount of heresy, as well as a progenitor of left-leaning rural reforms in China, and criticized Peking Union Medical College for being more devoted to medicine than evangelism.

Such an unsavory reputation among Southern Baptists did not dissuade Ayers from seeking assistance from the foundation through its China Medical Board. He met with a delegation from the agency in Peking in 1915 and requested salaries for a nurse and physician, a residence, and equipment for his hospital at Hwanghsien. He urged that

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funds for these improvements be given through the FMB. Within months Ayers more than doubled his requests for staff and even suggested that the foundation pay his salary as well. But he insisted that Southern Baptists retain the right to select all staff in order to prevent non-Christian Chinese physicians from joining his staff. The FMB agreed with this strategy because the foundation had agreed to allow it complete control over money and staff decisions. The China Medical Board immediately granted Ayers's request for an additional physician and nurse but denied or deferred his other recommendations. Grace McBride, graduate of a Philadelphia training school and New York's Bellevue Hospital Nursing School, was soon on her way to Hwanghsien to augment Ayers's staff. 36

No sooner had this cornucopia of riches engulfed Ayers than fellow missionaries raised the same issues about autonomy and control that he had directed toward Presbyterians. Would the China Medical Board be able to assign Methodist physicians to Baptist hospitals? Might the board even assign non-Christian Chinese doctors trained in its Peking medical college? Suddenly Ayers began to have second thoughts himself and asked the FMB for clarification. Baptist hospitals must be "thoroughly Christian" and "thoroughly Baptist," he warned. His superiors at the FMB reassured Ayers and his colleagues, reporting that all administrative decisions would be controlled by the FMB. The China Medical Board would evaluate only the actual medical competence of any FMB appointee it supported.37

Thus reassured, Ayers entered enthusiastically into the cooperative arrangement. In fact he even endorsed the request for transfer of a Southern Baptist missionary physician, identified only as Dr. Evans, who wanted to join the North China Mission and work in an interdenominational medical school in Tsinan. Ayers explained that he had long favored the North China Mission uniting with the union medical facility and had introduced such a resolution in his mission meeting. It had lost by one vote. Two years later a similar resolution was referred to the FMB without the North China Mission endorsing or opposing it. Ayers explained that he now favored uniting denominational medical work but no other aspect of missions. The FMB, stung by criticism of union activity at the recent Southern Baptist Convention, did not approve his ecumenical proposal.38

One reason for Ayers's openness to union with other denominations on medical issues was the appointment of his good friend, fellow Alabama Baptist, and recruit, Adrian S. Taylor, to the faculty of the China

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board's new medical school. The board offered Taylor a position in 1915. It paid for a year of special study at Harvard Medical School and another year of residency at Johns Hopkins. Officials at the FMB viewed the appointment with ambivalence. They were sad to lose a skilled missionary physician, but Taylor was thoroughly evangelical, committed to missions, would bring these emphases to his students, and could funnel resources to Southern Baptist medical facilities. That is precisely what he did. 39 In 1918 his brother, Dr. Richard V. Taylor, received a large grant from the China Medical Board for his hospital in Yangchow. So three Alabama Baptiststhe two Taylor brothers and Ayerstempered sectarianism with the necessity to find resources for their underfunded hospitals.

Such compromises came at a price. When Roger S. Greene, head of the China Medical Board (CMB), visited Ayers's hospital, he was highly critical. The hospital, he wrote, was ''conducted on the old lines," contained inadequate equipment, and was badly underfunded. Nurse McBride initially refused assignment there because of the poor equipment and threatened to resign from the FMB and work for the CMB. Ayers reacted angrily. He admitted that conditions were primitive because of underfunding by the FMB. He complained of overwork, understaffing, and lack of FMB support. Greene's critical report and meddling with nurse McBride confirmed his fears that the CMB intended to exercise control over denominational hospitals where it financed their staff. Although he promised not to mention this fact to other missionaries or Southern Baptists in the United States, he warned that such information would ignite a fire storm. He actually resigned in protest, although reassurance of support from the FMB and urgent appeals from Chinese associates and patients persuaded him to remain.40

Nine months later in December 1918, Ayers's mood had changed dramatically. He reported to the China Medical Board that he had obtained funds in the United States for improvements demanded by the board. The CMB had helped Ayers by funding postgraduate study while he was home on furlough. McBride had decided to remain in Hwanghsien, and the FMB had appointed a second nurse. Soon in fact, Ayers was extolling the standards demanded by the CMB and already met by Presbyterian hospitals in order to dislodge more money from the FMB. Rockefeller funding continued to roll into his hospital during the early 1920s, providing new staff, X-ray machines, and other equipment.41

By 1921 Ayers was again fudging on his principles of cooperation. He persuaded his Baptist North China Mission to approve unanimously a

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proposal to contribute to a joint tuberculosis sanitarium, all the while assuring his superiors that this action would in no way involve the issue of union with other denominations. He also introduced a resolution to the North China Mission asking the FMB to appoint a Southern Baptist physician to the faculty of the union medical college at Tsinan. The Chinese government required that a medical school must have a Western faculty of at least twelve in order to receive official recognition. No Baptist school could possibly obtain that size. Other denominations were contributing to the Tsinan institution while Southern Baptists, the second largest mission in Shantung Province, did nothing. Ayers recognized that the Southern Baptist Convention had recently opposed union initiatives, did not desire to embarrass the board with its constituency, and stated his customary fealty to "our distinctive Baptist schools." But he then immediately called for FMB support of the interdenominational medical college in violation of that very principle. 42

Paradoxically Ayers had led a movement during 1912-13 to establish a Baptist college-seminary in Shantung. The Baptist Central China Mission, led by Alabamian A. Y. Napier, and the Interior China Mission had allied with him. They used a characteristically expedient strategy, urging the FMB to withdraw from its union with American Baptists in Shanghai and relocate the University of Shanghai to northern China. The North China Mission had also considered joining with the Union Christian College for liberal arts and medical education. But their commitment to "distinctive denominational institutions" prevented that affiliation. They feared that in not many more years only three groups of Christians would remain in China: Catholics, Federationists (a union of Protestants), and Baptists. By late 1913 the majority within the North China Mission, led by Ayers, reversed themselves. They urged Baptist converts to enter government schools or the union college so as to save FMB money. The FMB would build a dormitory at the interdenominational school and provide two men to supervise the religious instruction of Baptist students. Thus Baptists would reap "the benefit of cooperation without cooperating." The mission sought to implement the policy by means of a committee consisting of ten missionaries and ten Chinese converts. Whereas the missionaries saw the value of a pragmatic compromise of Baptist principles, the Chinese "did not see that our Baptist cause can be best advanced by union" and convinced the mission to return to its original scheme of constructing a denominational college in Hwanghsien. Half a decade later this debate between sectarian and union philosophies raged on.43

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Ayers's frequent gyrations on the subject of ecumenism can be viewed as crass expediency, and indeed there was opportunism in his stance. But careful reading of his voluminous correspondence permits a kinder interpretation. When he first arrived he remained loyal to a typically southern, sectarian view of denominationalism. As he rationalized events, he remained philosophically loyal to "Baptist principles of distinctiveness and non-cooperation." But two experiences modified his ideology. Firsthand contact with Presbyterian missionaries in Linyang convinced him that they were filled with evangelical zeal and capable of building and sustaining effective institutions. His contact with the China Medical Board demonstrated how primitive his hospital was and how inadequate were its staff and equipment. If Southern Baptists would not fund their own institutions adequately, then necessity drove him to seek assistance elsewhere. Just as Alabama Baptist women began to preach in violation of their deepest theological inclinations because men would not volunteer to come to China, so Ayers compromised his sectarianism for the same pragmatic reasons.

His son, Sanford, had no such scruples to violate. Educated at Wake Forest and influenced by the ecumenism and religious liberalism of the 1920s, Sanford plunged into cooperative missions from the beginning of his service with the FMB, first as a teacher, then as a physician at Chengchow. During the 1930s he recruited an interdenominational staff for his hospital (one wonders what his father thought of such heresy). So diverse was his staff in denomination and nationality (American, British, Canadian, New Zealand, and Chinese) that a Nationalist general suggested that the hospital be renamed the International Hospital of Interior China. Sanford Ayers wrote relatives in the United States this straightforward advice in 1938: "It will be hard in the future for me not to believe in union work." 44

Missionaries vs. Their Boards

When not quarreling with each other, missionaries often argued with their sponsoring boards. Although governing agencies often appointed former missionaries to administrative positions in the twentieth century, this practice was less common in the nineteenth. Therefore administrators and policymaking trustee boards were vulnerable to the charge that having never been missionaries themselves they could not possibly understand the problems missionaries encountered. Conflicts between financially strapped boards and understaffed, underfunded

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China missions were inevitable. Although such disputes occurred within all denominations, the more hierarchically organized Methodists and Presbyterians handled them with minimum grumbling. The fiercely democratic Baptists, who experienced a deep split in the late nineteenth century over a trend toward denominational centralization, bore the brunt of controversy.

The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board promulgated various official and unofficial rules and guidelines for its missionaries. For instance, the 1900 "Amended Rules" warned missionaries not to engage in secular business ventures that might harm the reputation of Christianity. They could not change stations without approval of both the local mission and the FMB. Each missionary had to submit a quarterly report and each mission an annual report. Each mission would meet annually to conduct business and adopt budget requests. Decisions were technically made by majority vote of the male missionaries but practically required a broad consensus. The appointment of unmarried women missionaries required permission of the mission to which the board sent them. Wives of missionaries were considered "assistant missionaries" and were expected to instruct "natives of their sex" insofar as their ''domestic duties" permitted. The board stipulated no specific term of service before furlough and required its permission before a missionary left the field even if funded by the missionary's own money. 45

Informally other guidelines applied as well. The board discouraged missionaries from soliciting money directly. Such practices, administrators argued, benefited articulate missionaries home on furlough while handicapping less effective colleagues back in the field. Better to have all the money come undesignated to the FMB where it could be distributed according to need. Furthermore, the board discouraged special pleading for one's own station or mission. Many Baptist missionaries ignored all these financial guidelines.

During most of the nineteenth century, Southern Baptist missions experienced financial trouble and conflicts between nationals, missionaries, and the board over the issue of selfversus SBCsupport. Not until the administration of R. J. Willingham (1893-1914) did the FMB establish a relatively harmonious, adequately funded, and denominationally mainstream SBC effort in China. Willingham in 1907 became the first corresponding secretary (director) of the FMB actually to visit China, although successors routinely followed his example (Dr. James F.

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Love traveled to China in 1918; T. B. Ray followed in 1922; Dr. Charles E. Maddry arrived in 1935). 46

Missionaries in the field did not hesitate to criticize policies they believed to be crafted in Richmond (home of the FMB) without firsthand understanding of Chinese realities. Hendon M. Harris, a missionary in Honan Province, wrote W. O. Carver in 1926 that Baptists needed a new conception of missionary. The board should take greater care in selecting China missionaries because Chinese Christians were better educated and less willing to follow the lead of temperamentally unsuited Americans. As a consequence, large numbers of missionaries had resigned because they could not cope emotionally with the demands of service in China. Furthermore, the seminaries should provide more detailed and specific preparation for work in China. Finally, Baptist theological institutions should be combined into a single strong seminary.47

Often the FMB responded sympathetically to such entreaties as well as to changing circumstances. In response to persistent complaints by T. W. Ayers and Lottie Moon about lack of furlough and retirement policies, the board adopted both. Despite decades of admonition against individual churches and lay persons supporting specific missionaries, Charles Maddry actually employed retired missionary T. W. Ayers to raise money in precisely this fashion in order to save the SBC mission effort during the Great Depression.48

Evasions of FMB rules and guidelines were as old as its China missions. Lewis Shuck criticized I. J. Roberts in 1844 for violating board policy by soliciting funds to build his own chapel. Years later in Shanghai, missionary associates accused Shuck of the same practice. Martha Crawford, who in the 1890s would resist board policy to the point of joining her husband in a new mission effort, in the 1850s criticized Roberts's wife for condemning the board: "She is quite mistaken if she supposes either I or my husband will take sides against the action of the Boardeither directly or indirectly."49

One generation later Willie Kelly (1893-1937) continued to evade and ignore FMB directives. The strong-minded woman denied that she solicited money while home on furlough; she explained disingenuously that she merely presented opportunities to wealthy Alabama Baptists. In 1909 Kelly returned to China with money contributed as a private gift from Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian friends. Six years later corresponding secretary James F. Love allowed her to keep a gift of five

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hundred dollars to buy a motorboat, but he chided: "Of course, such things as this will occasionally happen, especially if the missionaries talk a great deal about particular things they wish their friends to take care of. . . . Our belief is that the conversation and the public addresses of the missionaries should be filled with these objects for which we are making appropriations rather than certain specific things that are not included in the budget. We are exceedingly anxious from now on to have the missionaries use their influence to help us secure the money for the items included in the budget. This is our first duty." 50

A month later the same official telegraphed Kelly emphatically that the board would not allow her to solicit the salary of a mission volunteer from a church in Fort Worth, Texas. Kelly, deeply offended, believed that an article appearing about the same time in the Foreign Mission Journal was aimed at her. The essay charged that often the most effective missionary speaker while home on furlough was not the most cooperative when back in the field. Kelly angrily wrote board officials to inquire if the article had been aimed at her. In time her temper cooled and she apologized. But a year later she was back to her old ways, soliciting funds from a Shanghai patron.51

This disagreement over fund raising was not the only point of tension between Kelly and the FMB. She objected to its attempt to dictate where she lived, the disposition of property given directly to her as a consequence of her solicitation, and its rejection of her direct intervention on behalf of staff for her station.52

Cynthia Miller (1905-36) experienced conflict with the FMB similar to Kelly's, and like her contemporary she pleaded a combination of innocence and divine necessity. In 1918 Miller left her station as a nurse in the North China Mission without approval of the board. Then she solicited funds for the new women's training school, which she proposed to build without the endorsement of her new mission. The board's secretary allowed her to keep the money but admonished her that such special gifts created difficulties for the FMB. Her mission had not included the school in its proposed budget, creating tension with fellow missionaries.53

Like Kelly, Miller did not recant; she only retreated and bided her time. Four years later she became embroiled in a similar controversy over the same issue. While home on furlough she related an emotionally wrenching story of the transformation of the lives of women who enrolled in her women's vocational school. A wealthy friend was so moved that she gave Miller her diamond ring and four thousand dollars to as-

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sist the women. Again the board's secretary complained about Miller's solicitation. Miller denied that she sought private contributions to her work, arguing that because board policy prohibited American church support of individual Chinese students she had established a revolving loan fund in order to provide scholarships. The only reason her local mission had not approved the fund, she argued, was the bookkeeping that it would involve. Unfortunately her mission did not perceive her actions as a mere technical disagreement and refused to transfer the funds to her, causing an anguished plea for support to the FMB secretary whom she accused of deserting her. He tried to reassure her about the worth of her project but urged that henceforth she work within the policies of her mission. Chastened but unrepentant she continued to accept gifts from private sources into the 1930s. 54

Dr. T. W. Ayers (1901-25) clashed with his supervisors as fiercely as Kelly and Miller. Like them he constantly sought FMB favor for his own station. He especially resented the assignment of missionary physicians and nurses from Alabama, whom he personally recruited, to stations other than his own. He loaded such recruits with guilt and accused the FMB of neglecting his hospital.55

On policy matters, Ayers urged the FMB to endorse local mission decisions. Even when the FMB seemed inclined in another direction, Ayers emphasized that "practically unanimous" votes by missionaries on the scene ought to carry more weight than theoretical decisions made in the United States.56

When opposed to FMB policy, Ayers said so without equivocation. He chided the board for allowing missionaries desperately needed in China to take two-year furloughs in order to earn graduate degrees. Many of his letters to Richmond admonished the board to adopt a realistic retirement policy to allow elderly and feeble missionaries to return to the United States with dignity and financial security.57

Ayers only threatened to resign because of his disagreements with the FMB; Mary Anderson actually did so. One of the best-educated Baptist missionaries, Anderson (1917-35) perceived herself as a teacher working for a denomination that little understood modern pedagogical or philosophical issues in education. Although initially content with FMB policies, graduate degrees from Peabody College and Columbia University provided her a philosophy of mission education not compatible with SBC practice in Canton. She was comfortable with Chinese control in a denomination resentful of such regulations. Although she kept her opinions reasonably private, she seemed to believe that Bap-

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tists mangled sound educational practices as much as the Chinese government did. With war clouds gathering in 1935, she resigned and returned to Mobile. 58

Of all the controversies between missionaries and their sponsoring agencies none provoked more divisiveness or had greater long-term impact on China than the concept of self-support. The concept of developing an indigenous self-supporting Chinese church was from the beginning the goal of all mission groups. The church should be self-financing. Such independence was essential to American agencies that possessed only limited money with which to fund seemingly endless requests. The church should be self-controlling. As congregations became large, attracted Chinese pastors, and generated their own finances, they should also make their own ecclesiastical decisions. The church should be self-propagating. No matter how committed and talented foreign missionaries might be, they would always be foreigners, people with different cultures and loyalties. The issue of self-support, then, was not so much whether Chinese churches reached a stage of sufficient maturity to become independent of missionary control as when they did so. Many Chinese congregations desired to make decisions for themselves but sought continued mission financing. Such churches had to be weaned of their dependence carefully.

Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson (1884-1941) sought to persuade her church to pay the salary of its pastor. Because the Chinese pastor would lose face had he appealed for money, Atkinson led the congregation to increase its gifts. But she did so using Chinese methods of indirection rather than Western-style pressure. The tactics worked, as each Chinese member pledged to increase contributions.59

Presbyterians adopted a similar approach. The General Assembly of the PCUS sent missionaries as evangelists, not as settled pastors. Regular clergy should come from among Chinese converts because only Chinese could effectively evangelize China. Churches should quickly become self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating.60 Leighton Stuart confirmed in the mid-twentieth century that such status had always been the goal of Presbyterian missionaries. But he also noted the inherent dilemma facing them. An independent Chinese church meant that missionaries must return home. Judged by any measurement, the Chinese church failed to be self-supporting as late as the 1930s. But one suspects that many missionaries would never have conceived of a Chinese church so mature that it no longer needed them.61

Southern Baptists expressed the same ambivalence. In theory the

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goal was a self-sustaining native church. In practice Chinese congregations never seemed quite ready. The 1900 FMB rules for missionaries declared plainly that one of their major functions would be the training and ordination of a native ministry supported so far as possible by native Christians. One former FMB head announced in 1939 that Baptists were "approaching . . . that goal which has been long set before us, . . . the building up of a self-supporting native constituency which will take care of itself and press toward the preaching of the Gospel amongst the heathen roundabout." 62

The defining moment for Southern Baptists on the issue of self-support had occurred many years earlier, and the catalysts for that definition were T. P. and Martha Crawford. The source of conflict owed much to T. P. Crawford's mercurial temper and unwillingness to compromise. But it also stemmed from deep philosophical differences within Southern Baptist thought.

The personal dimension of the controversy involved Jesse B. Hartwell, a native South Carolinian who, like Crawford, had strong Alabama connections. In 1836 the Hartwell family had moved to Alabama. In 1843 young Jesse began school in Marion. Ten years later he returned to his home state for college at Furman University. In 1859 he and his wife Eliza traveled to Shanghai as part of a major new Baptist infusion that included the Holmes and Crawford families. The Crawfords and Hartwells lived in the same house for a while in Shanghai, an unfortunate arrangement because neither the wives nor their spouses got along. But their lives continued to follow common patterns. Both were severed from SBC financial support during the Civil War and had to find secular employment, Hartwell as an interpreter and Crawford as an English teacher/real estate developer. In 1865 Hartwell left Shanghai for Tengchow in northern China. Soon the Crawfords moved there also in search of a more healthful climate. Again they initially lived and worshiped together. But Eliza Hartwell disliked T. P. Crawford, whose actions she considered often unchristian and ungentlemanly. The two families decided that they should live in separate houses and attend different churches. Crawford began Monument Street Baptist Church, but it did not prosper. He soon forsook the town for rural preaching, but he never gave up his various economic interests: buying real estate, recruiting contract labor for American companies, and speculating in coal mines. His bitterness toward Hartwell increased as the latter's church grew, due, Crawford believed, to an energetic staff of lay preachers paid by the FMB. Furthermore, Crawford began experiencing

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bouts of despondency and depression as well as conflicts with his wife over her successful boys' school. Conflicts with Hartwell and Chinese converts who had business dealings with Crawford deepened the personal estrangement. In fact, Martha Crawford was the precarious balance wheel allowing her husband to function. And during the 1870s and 1880s he deserted her for lengthy speaking trips to the United States. 63

In addition to personality clashes, real philosophical differences divided T. P. Crawford from other Baptist missionaries. The Crawfords arrived in China just as the scandal involving Karl F. A. Gutzlaff, discussed earlier, became common knowledge. The scandal involved paid Chinese assistants who swindled their employer and spent his money on opium and prostitutes while reporting amazing conversions resulting from their preaching and tract ministries. "Whether Gutzlaff was duped, or a duper," Martha Crawford wrote in her journal, she did not know. But that Chinese charlatans were attracted by missionary salaries seemed beyond question, and such policies corrupted the entire missionary enterprise. Although the Crawfords were not the first missionaries to comprehend the dangers of "rice Christians" who were attracted to Christianity more by its financial rewards than by its theology, they certainly were among the most vituperative critics of such abuse.64

These experiences in China reinforced notions then spreading throughout the South. The Landmark ideas (so called because such practices were "landmarks" of Baptist belief and practice) of J. R. Graves permeated much of Tennessee and Kentucky, Crawford's home area and home of his sponsoring association. Graves attacked what he perceived as growing Baptist centralism in such agencies as the FMB and proclaimed instead the primacy of the local church. No board, agency, or convention, for which there was inadequate scriptural authority anyway, should decide issues that rightly belonged to the local church. Churches and not the FMB should send missionaries. Denominational bureaucracies absorbed huge amounts of money that otherwise could be used to send more missionaries. The FMB also violated the autonomy of local congregations by questioning missionaries about their beliefs and assigning them to specific missions. T. P. Crawford borrowed generously from such ideas and fashioned an ideology that challenged FMB policy at a number of points: whether the board had authority to select fields for missionaries; whether it or individual churches should support missionaries financially; who should distribute funds that missionaries privately solicited; whether they should rely on American subsidy and

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salary or become financially self-supporting through secular employment in China; whether they should retain American social customs or adopt Chinese dress, diet, and housing; whether they should divert energy into education, medical, or other tangential ministries or concentrate exclusively on evangelization. 65These were fundamental and defining questions and led Crawford and the FMB in quite different directions. Because so many Baptist missionaries agreed with all or part of Crawford's agenda, he might well have carried away most Southern Baptist missionaries but for his volatile and unpredictable temper.

One can argue that the Landmark movement coincides at many points with Crawford's notions that southern religion primarily shaped his ideology. But most careful students of his new Gospel Mission movement believe that Crawford's views owed more to actual experiences in China than to what was happening in the South.66The Civil War severed his support and forced him into secular pursuits, in which he prospered sufficiently to generate a considerable personal income. Initially he supported Baptist educational efforts, including his wife's. But when schools employed Chinese teachers and provided scholarships for students, the line between genuine converts and cynical opportunists became blurred. The board's authority to assign missionaries to certain locales might make sense from the perspective of Richmond, but it did not allow for local health, sanitary, and political conditions in China. Although the FMB talked much about self-support, it could never persuade most missionaries or itself to turn off the spigot of gold and silver, thus truly forcing Chinese churches to become self-propagating, self-governing, and self-financing. Hence the realities of Chinaand not the theories of Landmarkismdrove Crawford from one set of Baptist assumptions to a radically different set between 1863 and 1890.

Actually the FMB proved remarkably tolerant of Crawford's rapidly diverging mission strategy. Inclined as it was to allow wide latitude to missionaries who were on the site, board officials permitted Crawford to determine pretty much how he would perform his task.67Besides, in his battle with Jesse Hartwell he had the support of most members of the Baptist North China Mission. Furthermore, the FMB was on record as favoring self-support in theory, so Crawford did not conceive of his position as running counter to FMB policy until the mid-1880s.

In 1878-79 Crawford spent his regular furlough propagating his theories across the Southwest. He even addressed the 1879 session of the Southern Baptist Convention on behalf of an ideology espoused

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twenty years earlier by J. R. Graves. In 1885 he returned home again, this time without the permission of the board and with the intention of confronting his employers directly. He refused to discuss his disagreements with the FMB until months and dozens of speeches after his arrival, and he appealed against its policies directly to the president of the convention. He told that official that his travels had convinced him that Baptists across the South were rebelling against the autocracy of the FMB. But Crawford's case had been substantially weakened both by his own insubordination and by the desertion of most of his former allies in the North China Mission. His bouts of depression, eccentric behavior, and demands that his wife, Lottie Moon, and other missionaries close their schools and conform to his principles provoked Moon to denounce him as a dictator and write that he represented no missionaries other than his wife. The board demanded that he cease unauthorized speeches in southern churches and return to his station. Crawford ignored these instructions and denounced the FMB "gag resolution." He did return to China after a nearly two-year absence during which his paralytic seizures became worse, his mental problems reappeared, and the tensions within his marriage threatened a permanent rupture. Martha Crawford returned home for a protracted visit to consider permanent separation. 68

When she finally returned to China, Martha resolved to follow her husband's bidding, close her school, and defend his views. Beginning in 1888 she launched a full-scale offensive both in private correspondence with the FMB and in frequent reports to the Alabama Baptist. Writing to fellow missionaries, she acknowledged that differences of opinion were inevitable. Baptist respect for freedom of conscience, a cooperative spirit, and mutual fellowship could maintain unity despite philosophical differences. But she warned ominously that if "opposing methods and principles are ruthlessly carried on" the "consequences cannot fail to be disastrous." In 1888 she wrote FMB officials a private letter denouncing the board's intention to open new work in Japan while China missions were so understaffed. She also pointedly announced that she had not written articles for the Foreign Missions Journal since the publication had attacked her husband during his 1886 dispute with the board.69

In a long series of articles for the Alabama Baptist, she defended her husband and the principles of self-support he espoused. In the process she articulated a persuasive approach to missions that called for mis-

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sionaries to sever their ties with southern values and to identify more fully with Chinese. The aim of evangelism was to create a "native form of Christian education and civilization." The most successful evangelization such as the China Inland Mission did not rely on foreign chapels or schools. Better that missionaries wear Chinese clothes and live as simply as possible and as much as they could like the Chinese. China had a brilliant civilization of its own and did not need Western learning. The best American missionaries were neither seminary trained nor educated; they possessed practical good sense, consecration, a spirit of sacrifice, and the willingness to "lay down their Anglo-Saxon fancies, study the genius of Christianity and the approaches to the native heart, leaving civilizing methods, as such, alone." She admitted that her husband was also correct about the corrupting influence of mission schools on the "purity of the church''; they cultivated dependency on American missionaries and filled churches with rice Christians. 70

Despite all her efforts she could neither attract a ground swell of denominational support for her combative husband nor dissuade him from his course. T. P. Crawford officially retired in April 1889, citing his age (sixty-nine) as a major factor. His announcement and the board's response were both amicable. He stressed in his resignation that Martha desired to remain under board appointment, an unusual procedure that the FMB nonetheless honored. But he could not long keep his peace. Retirement provided time for him to write a tract entitled Churches, to the Front, a scorching attack on FMB "centralization and ring-government." The FMB considered the vituperative tract a direct challenge and a threat to SBC missions. When he mailed a thousand copies of the pamphlet to Southern Baptist churches, the board denounced "the self-support idea run mad" and deleted his name from its roll of missionaries, though it retained his wife's. Southern Baptists even coined a word, "Crawfordism," to express religious eccentricity, noncooperation, and pigheadedness.71

Such opprobrium did not phase Crawford or his followers. Proudly christening themselves Crawfordites, six northern China Baptists, most with ties to Alabama, left the FMB for Crawford's independent Gospel Mission. Martha Crawford, under intense pressure from her husband, resigned in July 1892. Two years earlier T. P. Crawford had persuaded the eleven missionaries of the North China Mission to sign an "Articles of Agreement," which endorsed the broad principle of self-support. The resolution, drafted by G. P. Bostick, the husband of another Ala-

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bamian, defined their task as primarily evangelistic. They agreed to use no mission money beyond their personal and travel expenses, which meant no funds for Chinese converts. They pledged not to become pastors, teachers, social workers, or "meddlers in Chinese lawsuits." Bostick released the resolution to state Baptist newspapers, which publicized it. Having identified so closely with his principles, it was not surprising that most of his northern China colleagues resigned from the FMB in 1892 in order to join Crawford's Gospel Mission. In fact, only one couple and two single women (including Lottie Moon) remained loyal to the FMB. 72 The Crawfords and Bosticks resigned. G. P. Bostick and his first wife, as well as Mary J. Thornton of Greene County, Alabama (who became Bostick's second wife), all lived in the Crawfords' home after arriving in Shantung Province, and they all fell under the Crawfords' spell. As Crawford's unofficial chief of staff, the red-bearded Bostick actively solicited support for the Gospel Mission in Alabama. Mary Bostick chided Baptist churches in her home state for the "sumptuous self-indulgence" of endowing stained-glass windows while ignoring the Gospel Mission. In 1893 she wrote that only a few Baptist churches in Alabama's Union Association had sent funds directly as she had requested.73

To prevent personal clashes with other Baptists, Crawford and Bostick decided to move their work to new locations in Taian and Tsingchow in western Shantung Province. They tried unsuccessfully to persuade Tengchow's Chinese Christians to accompany them. By the end of 1893 their band of missionaries had doubled to twelve, and eleven more joined them between 1894 and 1900. After some resignations, the Gospel Mission peaked at twenty-one missionaries at the turn of the century, with most of the financial support coming from Landmark Baptist churches in North Carolina, Arkansas, and Missouri.74 Little support came from Alabama.

The FMB stymied the Gospel Mission with an effective counterattack. H. A. Tupper, weary from his struggles with finances and T. P. Crawford, resigned as corresponding secretary in 1893. His aggressive, forward-looking young replacement, R.J. Willingham, launched an era that would become one of the most prosperous, progressive, ecumenical, and successful in FMB history. He sent Jesse Hartwell back to his house in Shantung Province along with a supporting team often young, enthusiastic missionaries. Upon hearing this news, Crawford and Bostick decided to withdraw to new work rather than defend their territory. Opening new work was much harder than cultivating settled

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fields, and the Gospel Mission found tough going in western Shantung. 75

Alabama Baptist leaders reacted to the Gospel Mission controversy with restraint and caution. Unwilling to criticize Martha Foster Crawford or Mary Thornton Bostick, the state Baptist paper opened its columns to both women. Both defended their cause with passion and skill. The editor of the Alabama Baptist endorsed the principle of self-support if not the particular instance of the Gospel Mission. Other leaders considered the idea of relying on individual churches to fund missions dangerous because of financial fluctuations. Influential Montgomery pastor George B. Eager refused to dispute their principles but did question Martha Crawford's and Mary Bostick's appealing for money through the pages of the Alabama Baptist. As an official organ of Alabama Baptists, why should it be utilized against the FMB, he inquired. But the hardest blow of all came from Martha Crawford's aging teacher, E. B. Teague. He traced the origin of their doctrine to J. R. Graves's Landmark movement of the 1850s and concluded that independent church support of missions was impractical. However sincere the Crawfords were in their cause, he predicted that they would "endure hardness" and "come to grief." In a sad postscript he wrote that such a tragedy would distress their friends and prayed that heaven might afford them wisdom and shelter their old age.76

Teague's prediction proved remarkably accurate. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 drove the Gospel Mission away from its inland stations. The Crawfords returned to the United States, where they traveled and spoke for eighteen months. Baptists did not receive their message kindly, and the couple settled in Dawson, Georgia, with some of Martha Crawford's relatives. There T. P. Crawford died of pneumonia in 1902. Although seventy-two years old and in poor health, Martha Crawford returned to Taian where she continued "pure evangelism" for another seven years. "The Lord called me to labor in China," she explained simply, ''and that call has never been revoked." Just as Teague had warned, contributions from churches came in sporadically and were insufficient. Trying to live like the Chinese placed extra stress on evangelists' health, compounding the problems of low salaries. Finally Crawford advised her followers to return to the FMB, which most did. In August 1909, after fifty-eight years in China, death finally ended her labors. Both those who had supported the Gospel Mission and those who had supported the Foreign Mission Board mourned her death. Her passing loosened whatever loyalty remained to the Gospel Mission, and

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by 1910 the movement had collapsed. Before her death she requested that the FMB assume her Taian station so that Southern Baptist work could continue there. The Bosticks returned to the board in 1912, and by 1916 only one family remained from the secession. After Martha Crawford's death the two organizations worked in harmony. 77

Southern Baptist historians consider the loss of Martha Crawford the most severe repercussion of the Gospel Mission movement. The great respect that both Americans and Chinese had for her extended credibility to her husband's principles. It also kept FMB officials and Alabama Baptist leaders from attacking the Gospel Mission and thus made ultimate reconciliation possible.78

Nonetheless the Crawfords left an important legacy. Their emphasis on evangelism, on adjusting Western culture to Chinese realities, their refusal to pay Chinese converts, their demand for Chinese self-support and reliance on local churches combined many of the most farsighted with many of the most impractical aspects of China missions. They forced the FMB to tolerate a wide variety of local missionary practices and strategies despite a revision of its rules in 1900 that aimed to correct many of T. P. Crawford's practices. After the Gospel Mission withdrew, a more homogenous missionary staff allowed R.J. Willingham to support actively Baptist schools and hospitals. While Dr. T. W. Ayers's medical evangelism thrived in northern Shantung Province, the Crawfords' Gospel Mission, relying solely on preaching and evangelism, languished in western Shantung. The message of the conflicting models was not lost on missionaries or the FMB. Indeed, Ayers's appointment to Hwanghsien in 1901 played a key role in rebuilding FMB work in northern China. Thus the Gospel Mission secession helped steer Baptist work into a more ecumenical and social direction and sharpened Southern Baptist consciousness.79

Paradoxically the following generation of Alabama Baptist missionaries expressed opinions concerning self-support that almost exactly paralleled those of the Crawfords and Bosticks. Cynthia Miller, Alice Huey, and T. 0. Hearn warned that existing mission practices produced rice Christians. Willie Kelly was equally adamant on the subject. Like Miller she warned her Chinese congregation to accept converts carefully lest they joined only for financial gain. She tirelessly lobbied the FMB to transfer ownership of the Old North Gate Baptist Church to its Chinese congregation; she finally won her case during the 1930s. Nonetheless, for all her belief in Chinese independence, she never en-

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tirely escaped paternalism toward her charges. In 1940 she predicted that within ten years the Old North Gate Church would be entirely self-supporting. But in business meetings Chinese members were still too timid. They needed "pushing out on their own and no one can do that but someone who has a vision." 80

Most of Kelly's Alabama colleagues agreed. T. W. Ayers tried to place his hospital on a self-financing basis. H. W. Provence and David Bryan concurred.81 Although Ayers and Provence approved paying Chinese converts, Bryan expressed a philosophy of self-support close to Crawford's convictions. He believed that paying Chinese workers was a mistake and that Chinese churches should be forced toward self-support. Chinese could perform "pioneer evangelistic work infinitely better than we," he said. Once independent of FMB financing, churches could "propagate the Gospel better apart from us than with usthis because of the suspicion and hatred with which we are still regarded by the masses of China." The Chinese still regarded missionaries as "foreign devils" and their converts as "devils number two.'' Few American missionaries articulated the issue so forthrightly. In 1926 during the civil war Bryan wrote:

The present crisis, with its . . . criticism and hatred against the foreigner . . . has abundantly proven that we are "in China but not of China." The only tie in common between us and the Christians is the cross of Christ. As between us and the masses there is nothing. We never master their language, for which they hold us in contempt. Nor do we ever bring ourselves to appreciate their social customs. We can't live on the same domestic or economic plane. This fact makes it impossible for us to exemplify the Gospel we preach. On more than one occasion I have felt the sting of the missionaries' representing the rich at whom Christ hurled his anathemas and that not alone to the heathen. We may live as simply as the laws of health and respectability will allow, from our standpoint, and still be high enough above the ordinary Chinese to be a Dives [rich man].82

With that missive Bryan resigned without rancor from the FMB. He had taken Crawford's logic to its final conclusion. If Chinese Christianity ever was to be self-supporting, missionaries must return home. Few followed his model until the Communists compelled them to do so in 1950.

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Missionaries and Chinese Nationalism

The primary force driving missionary concern for self-support was rapidly expanding Chinese nationalism. Particularly during the 1920S nationalist aspirations pressured Westerners to turn over more of their work to Chinese in preparation for ultimate Western withdrawal from China. Alabama missionaries reacted to this pressure in diverse ways.

The Nationalist government decreed in 1926 that all schools and colleges must register with its education bureau. In order to be accredited by the government, certification that was necessary for graduates to obtain government employment, a school must be directed by a Chinese principal. Two-thirds of its trustee or management board must also be Chinese.

Some missions moved rapidly to implement this new directive. Methodist missionary Virginia Atkinson had long favored this transfer of authority. In 1923 she installed coprincipals of Davidson School, one a missionary, the other a Chinese convert. When the government subsequently required appointment of a Chinese principal, the transition was smooth. Atkinson's foresight allowed her school to become the first in the East China Methodist Conference to come under Chinese administration. 83

Southern Baptists at first refused to register their schools because the government edict, they believed, trampled on free religious exercise. The Chinese government forbade compulsory Bible classes and chapel services in certified schools. The FMB was able to sidestep a crisis over the University of Shanghai. Although it was jointly operated by Southern and Northern Baptists, the institution's board of managers consisted of a majority of Chinese among its twenty-six members. The FMB left the matter of registration with this board although it admonished trustees to preserve the "Christian character" of the college. To avoid further controversy, the board rented the college from the two mission agencies in order to mollify mission complaints about government control. The college continued to teach Bible though it no longer could compel students to attend such classes or chapel.

The FMB instructed missionaries neither to register their schools nor voluntarily close them. Rather they should wait to see what the government would do. Dr. T. B. Ray wrote angry missionaries that though lie disagreed with Chinese policies, Baptist schools had entered an "experimental stage" and missionaries must be patient and "see if we can't come through this unpleasant period to a policy that will be satisfac-

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tory to everybody." If it turned out ultimately "that we cannot be true to our Baptist principles and conduct our schools in China we will close the schools. But war times [civil war between Nationalist, Communist, and warlord factions] are not very good times to work out seasoned policies." In practice Southern Baptists began to conform to government policy rather than close their schools. 84

Despite this transfer of power during the late 1920s the number of ordained Chinese workers did not exceed the number of ordained Westerners during that decade. As late as 1935-36 missionaries still constituted one-third of the ordained work force in China. The Chinese church was still in a prolonged infancy, one largely dictated by refusal of missionaries to transfer authority to their new converts.85

Not surprisingly, many Alabama missionaries changed their minds about the role of Chinese converts as decades passed. The first missionary generations expressed grave reservations about Chinese coworkers. But by the second and third decades of the twentieth century many adopted a more favorable view of Chinese leadership. Lewis Shuck was typical of the first generation of missionaries. When he returned to China in 1847 he brought two of his earlier converts from Canton to Shanghai to assist him. Although Shuck was convinced of their sincerity, he believed that they required "constant and anxious oversight." One of them, Yong Seen-sarng, later became a key figure in the Shanghai Baptist community.86

By contrast, Presbyterians James Montgomery, who arrived in 1917, and Leighton Stuart, who returned to join his distinguished family, both enthusiastically endorsed this transfer of power. The Presbyterian Church, U.S., had favored using Chinese converts for ministerial roles wherever possible, and both Montgomery and Stuart tried to implement this policy. Montgomery increasingly turned his school over to competent Chinese Christian professors so he could spend more time in country evangelism. He reported through the pages of a denominational missionary magazine that Chinese pastors launched innovative evangelistic projects that were so effective that he copied them in his own rural work. And during the 1920S and 1930s Leighton Stuart became one of Protestantism's chief advocates of transforming the missionary role from one of direction and supervision to one of partnership among coequals.87

Methodist missionary Hoadley Berckman (1921-51) also advised a "servant" model for missionaries. He deplored the notion of the missionary as "lord of all he surveys." As a consequence of such attitudes,

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churches often overemphasized leadership roles both in the United States and in China: "We have gone 'nuts' on making leaders which is a little too unchristian to suit me." Attitudes of humility and servant-hood set better standards for Chinese Christians. 88

Although Southern Baptists most resisted transfer of authority, many of them agreed with Montgomery, Stuart, Atkinson, and Berckman. Mary Anderson taught at Canton's prestigious Pei Tao Academy for girls for most of her tenure from 1917 until her resignation from the FMB in 1935. She complained that Southern Baptists did not fund the school adequately until the mid-1920s. In 1930 the FMB transferred the school to Chinese Baptists so it could conform to the recently promulgated government guidelines and gain certification. Anderson enthusiastically endorsed the transfer of control and worked harmoniously under Chinese supervision. By the early 1940s most of Pei Tao's teachers and administrators were Chinese graduates of the school, and its function had changed from conversion to education. Meanwhile Anderson had joined David Bryan in resigning as an expression of her belief that missionaries were no longer central to the Christianizing of China, a view not shared by the FMB.89

Other Baptist missionaries did not take the issue of self-support so far but did appoint Chinese to leadership positions. Willie Kelly not only worked with a beloved Chinese Bible woman as a coequal, she also employed a large number of Chinese teachers in her school. As she wrote: "I am convinced that the scope and success of a missionary is dependent upon her Chinese co-worker more than upon any other human asset." Kelly also rejoiced at the growing independence of her Shanghai church.90

At other times, Kelly doubted that her church could stand alone without missionary support. Cynthia Miller, James T. Williams, and T. W. Ayers were equally ambivalent. Without missionary guidance of Bible study, Miller warned the FMB, Satan would lead Chinese converts astray into foolish beliefs. Her vision of Chinese converts was as paternalistic as that of any Alabama mill owner toward his hands or any planter toward his sharecroppers: "They are a mighty fine people, and loyal to their Lord and His cause when they are trained right, but when missionaries are so scarce, and no funds to employ our best trained native workers either, you can readily see the danger of them being led astray." James T. Williams wrote in his 1921 doctoral dissertation that the Chinese were too close to heathenism to control their own institutions.91

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Perhaps T. W. Ayers best captured this change over time as well as the continuing ambivalence about the role of Chinese leadership. Early in his career he expressed the same paternalistic opinions as Miller. He wrote in 1909 that the time had not yet come to turn over evangelistic work "to the natives." When Dr. Adrian S. Taylor read a letter to the 1924 Alabama Woman's Missionary Union convention from an unidentified Baptist missionary in China expressing the opinion that the need for foreign missionaries had ended, that Chinese wanted to direct their own evangelistic work, and that young mission volunteers could spend their time better in the United States than in China, Ayers reacted emotionally. This letter set off a furor in the convention with one Persian speaker agreeing that natives did resent foreign missionaries. Ayers, who was home on furlough, and other Alabama Baptists denied the charges. An FMB official blamed the letter on the church unity movement that was "half crazy with the idea that the Boards must shortly turn over all their mission work to the native Chinese, and that missionaries who stay on the fields must work under natives." Obviously that was not the goal of the FMB. 92

Yet Ayers later led the way among Baptist missionaries in transferring work to Chinese converts. As early as 1910 he wrote the FMB that it need not send new missionaries into an area of Shantung Province because the "Chinese brethren" had assumed the work: "It is indeed encouraging to see how our Chinese brethren have recently reached the point where they are willing to assume responsibilities which they have feared to undertake heretofore. This does my soul good, and I am in favor of pushing them to the front, as they are capable of doing splendid work." In 1914 he informed the FMB that northern China did not need as many missionaries to operate a station as it once had because of the large number of well-trained native Christians. Using Chinese workers could save thousands of dollars, and they could perform many functions as well as missionaries. The following year he requested FMB funds to employ three Chinese physicians and two native nurses in his hospital. When the mission had to decide whether to begin a Baptist college or support an ecumenical school, Ayers favored appointing a committee consisting of ten missionaries and ten Chinese Christians to decide the issue. When the board had to reduce its funding in 1926 because of the embezzlement of FMB funds by an employee, Ayers believed the cuts might work to the betterment of missions by promoting native Christians to more authority. In his own hospital he transferred much of the leadership to Dr. Chu Pao Ch'in, a second-generation

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Christian and graduate of a missionary medical school in Tsinan, whom he regarded as "the finest Christian character I had ever known." As an adviser to the FMB after his retirement, Ayers continued to recommend Chinese for administrative leadership of hospitals. And his son continued and enlarged Ayers's practice, employing six Chinese physicians in his hospital at Chengchow, including one female. 93

Theological Disputes

Missionary divisions over Chinese self-support and inclusion in positions of authority merged into a broader controversy that centered on theology rather than polity. As the winds of change blew from Germany to the United States and thence to China, conflicts over the social gospel, fundamentalism, modernism, and pentecostalism divided missions and generated bitter disputes.

Many conservative evangelicals believed that too much priority in funds and staff was given to education. By the 1920s education had become the most influential aspect of the missionary enterprise, and many evangelicals believed it absorbed too many resources. Cynthia Miller, herself a teacher, criticized missionary educators who made education an end rather than a means to conversion. T. F. McCrea, a combative Baptist missionary stationed at Cheefoo in Shantung Province, penned a broadside against educational missions in 1912. He sent an open letter to Southern Baptist leaders, newspapers, and ministerial associations denouncing such efforts as wasteful and even destructive. Mission schools may have helped Westernize China, but they had not Christianized the country. Furthermore, Christian higher education had actually pulled Chinese students away from their churches and faith: "Just as the kind of education that was given to the freed negroes after the war by enthusiastic but misguided Northerners took the negro away from farm and shop and made him 'too smart to work,' so our western learning is weaning the children of our Christians away from the churches."94 Baptist missions professor W. O. Carver sent McCrea a note gently chiding him for the divisive letter. But Alabama Baptist missionaries were less restrained in their criticism. David Bryan denounced McCrea and his brother for lack of commitment to their duties, nonobservance of the Sabbath, lack of consideration for Chinese converts, and noncooperation with fellow Baptist missionaries. T. W. Ayers accused the McCreas of creating friction within the North China Mission and denied that any intrinsic conflict existed between educa-

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tional, medical, and evangelistic missions. He enthusiastically endorsed plans to build a Baptist college/seminary in Shantung Province and announced that only the McCreas among all SBC missionaries in northern China opposed the project. 95

Conservatives and modernists divided over many issues other than Scripture and miracles. They argued over the extent of mission work that should be transferred to the Chinese, the degree to which Christianity should be adapted to Chinese culture, and the emphasis on social and economic reform instead of conversion. In 1920 conservative southern Presbyterians organized the Bible Union of China to combat modernistic heresies. Although liberals never gained a majority among China missionaries, by the 1920S they had become an influential minority.96

The Bible Union launched a withering attack on the ecumenical National Christian Council of China and Nanking Theological Seminary. The seminary had been founded by northern and southern Presbyterians early in the century. In 1911 Methodists and Christian denominations joined to make the institution interdenominational. By 1921 the seminary had become the largest and most influential theology school in China with ten faculty members and 158 students. One professor acknowledged that some teachers were more liberal than others and admitted that one controversial book had been assigned as a text. But he denied that modernism prevailed among seminarians. "Some men have got modernism on the brain," he complained: "They go 'bughouse' on the subject."97

Such denials did not satisfy conservative Presbyterians who were stirred to new frenzy by an article in the October 1921 issue of the Princeton Review. The article, entitled "Modernism in China," accused Leighton Stuart of heretical views on Scripture and church doctrine. Stuart was home on furlough and requested an examination by his presbytery, which exonerated him of heresy. But southern Presbyterians renewed the charges, and the controversy soon spilled over to China.

A careful reading of Stuart's writings reveals that so far as orthodox evangelicals were concerned, the charges of heresy had considerable merit. He believed that ancestor worship consisted more of filial respect and veneration than idolatry, and he criticized missionaries who insisted on its repudiation for "needless harsh aggravation of the difficulties for the Chinese convert." He chided evangelicals for their austere worship, which lacked the pageantry, ritual, artistic adornment, and

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sensual appeal "which are instinctive among Chinese." According to Stuart, evangelicals advanced a severe, repressive, formalized religion that little appealed to Chinese. 98

Baptists were even more hostile to liberalism than were southern Presbyterians. Although the imperatives of the mission enterprise had forced Southern Baptists to moderate their extreme individualism and even allowed some ecumenical and social gospel ideas to win a place among them, most reacted fiercely to the threat of modernism.

Their criticism focused mainly on mission professor W. O. Carver at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It is fair to say that Carver did become receptive to liberal ideas, though he was hardly a modernist. Many of his former students became convinced that ecumenical and social ministries were imperative if China was to be won for Christ. One wrote Carver about the popularity of sociology among Chinese students and announced his plans to attend the University of Chicago, a center of modernistic teaching, in order to expand his knowledge of the subject.99

Despite such occasional enthusiasm for new theological learning, most SBC officials denounced modernism. The secretary of the FMB wrote Willie Kelly that one reason the board refused to grant her request to transfer ownership of Old North Gate Baptist Church to its Chinese congregation was the board's desire to promote orthodoxy. Many Chinese preachers were infected with the modernist virus, he believed. As a result it might be useful "for the churches to know that while their pastors may go off after modernism, the church property, title of which is held by the Foreign Mission Board, is going to be kept for the preaching of the old fashioned Gospel as represented by our Baptist expression of it." A subsequent secretary threatened to withdraw support from the University of Shanghai if Northern Baptists attempted to consolidate it with other denominational schools. He wrote Kelly: "I have a hard enough time trying to hold our people in line for cooperation with Northern Baptists in the support of the University without attempting to get them to support a union university in Shanghai." The Alabama Baptist carried a plea for orthodoxy from a Baptist missionary who denounced liberal emphasis on philanthropy and social reform rather than evangelism and proposals to compromise with Chinese religion rather than repudiate it.100

On this issue Alabama Baptist missionaries spoke with nearly one voice. And that one voice rejected "modern theology." In 1919, T. W. Ayers, who was progressive on many other issues, drew the line at mod-

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ernism. After listening to Leighton Stuart, newly elected president of Peking Union University (later renamed Yenching University), warn of impending fissures in the church over changing theology and plead for teaching "modern theology" in mission schools, Ayers challenged Stuart to define "modern theology." No one at the meeting ventured a definition. Alice Huey also warned against liberal heresies infiltrating Chinese Christianity. 101

Cynthia Miller described the threat more precisely. Many SBC missionaries were not well grounded in "the good old Baptist doctrine of the Bible." They omitted the necessity of atonement for sin, the requirement of a new birth, and belief in the supernatural, replacing these with the social gospel. Missionaries spread Bertrand "Russellism," annihilation, and other "issues and schisms." The best antidote to heresy in the schools, she believed, was a principal who believed in the "infallible Word of God." In contrast to Leighton Stuart's admonition not to make rejection of ancestor worship a litmus test for conversion, Miller admonished the FMB to do precisely that. Chinese Baptist churches must not accept women who proclaimed faith in Christ while continuing to worship ancestors.102

Even as Miller denounced modernism to her left, she pronounced equal judgment on pentecostalism to her right. During the early years of the 1920s a revival gathered momentum across northern China. Centered in Shantung Province and fueled by Baptist and Presbyterian preaching, the Shantung revival provoked controversy for its pentecostal aspects. Many of those stirred by the winds of renewal began to speak in tongues. Although such charismatic practices were not essential evidence of the movement of God's spirit, many evangelicals believed the outbreak of tongues was a powerful clue to God's presence in their midst. The Alabama Baptist carried a firsthand report of a pentecostal outpouring in Chengchow, and missionaries in northern China communicated similar reports.103

Subsequent historians, as ignorant of pentecostalism in the United States as in China, defined the movement as "bizarre manifestations of Christianity's pentecostal wing." In fact this outbreak of tongues-speaking coincided with a renewal of Christian interest in pentecostal renewal and divine signs. Cynthia Miller worked amid a 1930S outpouring and was as negative as later historians. Encountering a young convert who refused medical help for a frozen, gangrenous foot because she had "trusted the Lord to heal it," Miller insisted on applying "some of the Lord's good medicine for frozen feet," put the student to bed for

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a week, and required her to study scriptural passages designed to provide a more balanced view of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The student "came out of that sick-room a greatly changed girl." To Miller this event confirmed the need for missionaries to guide Chinese in the study of Scripture lest they "be led astray into doing foolish things by Satan." She acted quickly to begin Bible study classes for those "saved and revived" in the Shantung revivals in order to neutralize the "excesses of Pentecostalism on the one hand and Modernism on the other." 104 To Miller, one excess was as bad as the other.

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Whether Christian excesses in China stemmed from personal conflicts, sectarian differences, intradenominational conflicts, clashes with sponsoring boards, or theological controversies, Christianity often struggled as much with itself as with heathen forces of darkness. If Chinese sometimes wondered which of the many conflicting claims of Christianity were the true doctrines of the Church universal, they can be forgiven. American missionaries were no closer to answering that question. And the missionary model of controversy, conflict, and confrontation was not the ideal representation of their faith.

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11

Jesus Christ Had Nothing to Do with the French:

Missionaries and Chinese Politics

Southern Evangelicas have often been accused of excessive piety, of being so concerned with the hereafter that they ignore the here. Paradoxically in China the charge was reversed. Critics accused them of being too much one with their culture, of being willing participants or unwilling dupes of Western imperialism. Neither view is entirely correct. Evangelicals never disengaged from politics, either in Alabama or in China. As for their endorsement of imperialism, the story is complex and it changed over time. One issue is certain. Their service in China forced them to consider political questions new to most of them and provoked conclusions sometimes at variance with historical expectations.

At the core of these political questions is a simple issue. What relation did Christian missionaries play in the colonial conquest of China? As we have seen earlier, it was difficult for Chinese to separate secular and religious penetration of their country. In 1792 the British government sent a consular mission to the Chinese emperor in order to establish trade and other contacts. That same year the Baptist Missionary Society dispatched the first missionary to Asia, thus launching the modern missions movement.

Chinese Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The foreign powers were at first mainly interested in commerce. They wanted more of China opened to trade, which the government rejected. The British in particular were upset over the fact that the Ch'ing dynasty provided no option but to pay silver for Chinese tea and silk. By 1800 the British had found a solution to the imbalance of trade. Opium, produced in India, arrived in China on vessels technically independent of the British East India Company, the only agency authorized by the

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British government to conduct trade in Asia. Hence the British could deny official complicity in a trade declared illegal by the Chinese government.

In 1839 war broke out between China and England over the issue of the opium trade. The Chinese government had sent in Lin Tse-hsu (1785-1850), an upright official, to southern China to suppress the trade. Lin first confiscated and then destroyed the British merchants' opium stock, an act that sparked the beginning of the Opium War of 1839-42. Because China had no navy in a modern sense, British ships operated without resistance. In 1842 the Chinese government was forced to sign the first of a series of ''unequal treaties" with the West. The Treaty of Nanking opened five Chinese port cities to British trade, residence, and missionary activity. The first missionaries from Alabama settled in these ports. The treaty also granted Hong Kong Island to England in perpetuity and required the Ch'ing dynasty that ruled China to pay some 21 million Mexican silver dollars to London. The treaty did not mention opium at all. Two years later the Chinese government signed treaties with the United States and France giving both countries additional trading rights in China. 1 There is little doubt that the war and subsequent peace treaties dealt a devastating blow to the dynasty. A small foreign force had attacked and defeated the Central Kingdom, and the emperor had to yield concessions and territory to the invaders. Missionaries who condemned the opium traffic nonetheless interpreted British victory and the subsequent opening of treaty ports as evidence of God's work in history to use tragedy to accomplish his purposes.2

On the heels of the Opium War came the Taiping Rebellion (185064), a Western-influenced reaction to dynastic deterioration. The Taiping Rebellion reflected the traditional pattern of dynastic change in its enlistment of peasants and famine and flood refugees, whose profound unrest emanated both from natural disasters and from a troubled econonly. But the Taiping also clearly reflected foreign impact. Hung Hsiuch'uan (1814-64), the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, claimed to be a Christian convert. He did not belong to any regular Western sect or church, but he had read an early translation of the Bible and experienced visions during which he was cleansed by an elder woman, the Heavenly Mother, who told him: "Son of mine, you are filthy after your descent to Earth. Let me wash you in the river before you are permitted to see your father."3 Hung was supposedly taken to heaven where a golden-bearded, venerable old man in black robe gave him a sword with

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which to exterminate demons and a seal to overcome evil spirits. During similar visitations, he saw a middle-aged man, whom he called his Elder Brother, who instructed him in the annihilation of demons.

After some forty days of such visions, Hung believed that he had been chosen by God to convert the Chinese people, overthrow the Ch'ing dynasty, and establish a Christian empire in its place. His movement began as a religious sect and turned into an armed rebellion as it gathered followers and incurred the hostility of authorities.

The fact that the Taiping Rebellion considered itself Christian reinforced conservative fears about the danger of foreign contacts and influence. Conservative Ch'ing officials perceived Christianity as a new subversive creed and Western missionary endeavors as a threat to temples and the authority of the scholar class. The missionaries themselves, however, were by no means sure that the Taipings represented the fruit of their labors. Hung's claims to be a prophet in his own right, to have direct inspiration from God, and to have his own interpretation of the Bible troubled most missionaries.

The end of the Taiping Rebellion was both tragic and pathetic. The national army had once again proven its ineptitude, and the Ch'ing had been forced to rely upon a combination of regional and foreign forces. They were successful only after the Taiping leadership had descended into in-fighting and corruption. The rebellion had affected sixteen of the eighteen provinces in China proper, taken twenty million or more lives, and turned some six hundred cities into rubble. 4

The Ch'ing dynasty had other troubles with which to contend in addition to the Taiping Rebellion. A second war with England, joined this time by France, broke out in 1856 over disputes concerning trade and shipping. This time northern China was the target. England and France forced the entrance at the Tientsin River and captured Peking. The terms of the peace treaty, signed in 1860, included the opening of eleven new ports and freedom of movement in all China for missionaries.

The generation of scholars who served the Chinese government had come to know firsthand that Western military power far outweighed that of the Chinese Empire. It was also clear to many that the West did have useful technology and advanced science. Some individuals began to consider how China might cope with a changing world situation. Many advanced ideas, but the policy that the government adopted in the late 1860s and early 1870s was the ti-yung concept. Chinese learning and culture would serve as the base (ti), and Western learning

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would provide practical application (yung). China would utilize Western science and technology but reject Western ideology, religion, political thought, art, and literature.

Although conservative officials regarded ti-yung with considerable suspicion, it opened the way for some advances in China. Telegraphs and railways began to connect the major cities. Foreign experts advised on the construction of steamships. Unfortunately, most of the financing for these enterprises came from foreign sources, which plunged China further into debt. 5

Throughout this period, as some officials struggled to adjust to the new situation that China faced, violence by Chinese against Western missionaries formed a harsh accompaniment. In various locations in China, missionaries were harassed, beaten, and occasionally killed and their property threatened or destroyed. Chinese considered Christianity to be a heterodox faith, antithetical to Confucianism. And its practice of mixed congregations, which ran counter to the Chinese custom of avoiding open contact between men and women, instigated rumors of immoral and perverted behavior. Missionary protection of Chinese converts from local justice and the construction of churches in disregard of time-honored concepts of geomancy (the study of wind and water in order to determine the most propitious time and location for important events) caused endless irritation to Chinese sensibilities. Anti-Christian tracts appeared frequently and circulated widely.

Finally in the summer of 1870 in Tientsin, a city in northeastern China, antimissionary violence burst into hideous prominence. For months rumors had spread through the city that missionaries from the Notre Dame des Victories Church, who ran an orphanage constructed on the site of a razed Buddhist temple, maimed and tortured children and practiced every kind of sexual perversion. The French consul went to the local Chinese official's office to demand protection for the missionaries. Shots were fired and a crowd of hostile Chinese, assembled outside the office, exploded into rage. Mobs killed the consul and his assistant, burned the church and orphanage, and murdered ten nuns and two priests.6

The French demanded redress and punishment of the rioters. After an investigation with interrogations conducted under torture, officials found sixteen Chinese guilty of the attacks and executed them. The Chinese government also agreed to a compensation of 400,000 taels (one tael equals 1.3 ounces of gold) for the loss of lives and property and agreed to send a mission of apology to France.7

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The "Tientsin Massacre," as the incident soon became known in the West, was the bloodiest example of a series of clashes that continued throughout the century. This violence revealed the deep fissures that lay between the Christian effort at conversion and Chinese confidence in their own beliefs and culture. Behind the exaggerated depictions of Christian excesses in the antimissionary posters and pamphlets lay a complex web of truths that made their exhortation effective: Christianity was a doctrine at variance with much of Confucianism; missionaries did demand access to all of China; missionaries did protect Chinese converts involved in legal issues against non-Christian Chinese; and missionaries did stress Western values in the schools they opened in China. 8

The emperor of China during most of the Taiping Rebellion was Hsien Feng (1830-61). On his deathbed he named his four-year-old son Tsai-ch'un the heir apparent. Tsai-ch'un's mother was the imperial concubine Tz'u-hsi (1835-1908). A woman of remarkable ability and sinister schemes, the dowager empress proved ruthless, ambitious, and strong-willed. She served as regent for her son until his death at age eighteen in January 1875.

With the death of her son, the legal heir, the only way for Tz'u-hsi to preserve her own power was to continue in her role as regent. Accordingly, she appointed her three-year-old nephew as emperor. The accession of the infant Emperor Kuang Hsu (1875-1908) began a pattern in which Tz'u-hsi, the former imperial concubine, contrived to maintain her power by the exploitation of Chinese family obligations and by systematic and single-minded intrigue, securing the succession of one child emperor after another so that imperial authority remained in her hands from 1861 until 1908.9

During Tz'u-hsi's second regency, conditions went from bad to worse. War with France resulted in the loss of the northern part of Vietnam (Annam). Russian ambition led to the cession of parts of Manchuria and Central Asia. The dynasty ran short of money; foreign loans increased; foreign capital funded new railways, and their management came under foreign control. Foreign powers concluded that China was ripe for partition: few thought that the Ch'ing dynasty could long survive.

In 1894 war with Japan broke out over the control of Korea. Chinese armies fared no better in this war than in earlier ones. The terms of the ensuing Treaty of Shimonoseki, made final on April 17, 1895, again humiliated China. The treaty provided for recognition of Korean inde-

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pendence and termination of tribute to China; an indemnity of several million dollars; cession of Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaotung peninsula; the opening of four additional ports; and the right of Japanese nationals to open factories and engage in industry and manufacturing in China.

The defeat of China by Japan and the frightful prospect of dismemberment precipitated a reform movement in 1898. The young Emperor Kuang Hsu, encouraged by two radical reformers, K'ang Yu-wei (18581927) and Liang Chi'i-ch'ao (1873-1929), initiated a program of sweeping changes. The traditional examination system to select bureaucrats must be revised and modernized, the army updated, the school system Westernized, and the government reconstructed.

Three months after the reform movement began, the dowager empress Tz'u-hsi acted to stop the program. She viewed the proposed changes as an attack on the Confucian ethical code, particularly the concept of filial piety upon which her position and authority rested. Accordingly, Tz'u-hsi persuaded Yuan Shih-k'ai (1859-1916), commanding officer of the most modern army in China, to seize her nephew, the emperor, and arrest and execute reform leaders. K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao managed to escape to Japan. 10

Two years later, when foreign pressure had grown even more acute, the Boxer Rebellion broke out. The "Righteous and Harmonious Fists" or Boxers were first and foremost an antiforeign sect. Half a century of foreign humiliation, in war as well as in peace, had deeply wounded Chinese national pride and self-respect. The presence of haughty foreign ministers and consuls, aggressive missionaries, and self-seeking traders constantly reminded the Chinese people of their humiliation. This gnawing sense of injustice generated a burning desire for revenge that burst forth as the Boxer Rebellion.

In June 1900, with Tz'u-hsi's tacit support, the Boxers attacked foreigners and Chinese converts to Christianity. In reaction, several foreign governments organized an international force to suppress the Boxers. On August 14, allied troops charged into Peking. The dowager empress, the emperor, and a small entourage fled in disguise. The Boxers were soon dispatched.

After substantial argument among themselves, the allies finally agreed on peace terms. Some 119 government officials, not including the scheming Dowager Empress Tz'u-hsi, received punishment ranging from death to reprimand. China had to pay some $333 million in indemnity. Foreign troops were to be stationed at key points from Peking

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to the sea. And no arms could be imported into China for a period of two years. 11

The emperor, the dowager empress, and the rest of the court returned to Peking and for the next eight years vainly attempted to check the rising tide of revolution by enacting limited reforms. It was now too late. When Tz'u-hsi finally died in 1908 she took the precaution of arranging for the emperor to die at the same time. The throne then passed to the dowager's three-year-old grandnephew, P'u-i.12

Sometime before Tz'u-hsi's death, a new generation of young Chinese, mainly from south China, decided that the Ch'ing dynasty had to be overthrown if China was to survive as a nation. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a new type of "rebel" in Chinese history, led the movement. Sun had neither a bandit, nor a military, nor a government background. He was, in education and upbringing, an "overseas Chinese."13

Although born in south China, Sun had attended school in both Hawaii and Hong Kong. What he saw in these places, and the contrasts they presented to his native area, made a deep impression. Hawaii provided the experiences of democracy and a modern school and legal system. Hong Kong provided the experiences of an extremely efficient government, economic prosperity, and orderliness. Sun's desire to have these things and more for China kindled a burning desire to overthrow the inefficient and corrupt Ch'ing government and establish a democratic republic.

Sun's revolutionaries made several unsuccessful attempts to raise a revolution against the Ch'ing, but when the coup actually did take place in October 1911, it came about almost by accident. When some revolutionaries in Wuchang, in central China, accidentally exploded a bomb, local authorities raided the house and found in it a list of those involved in revolutionary activities. Realizing that they had to act immediately, the revolutionaries seized the city, forced a high-ranking military officer to assume the leadership of their movement, and proclaimed a republic in Sun Yat-sen's name. Throughout south China, within weeks of the Wuchang incident, province after province declared for the republic.14 In north China, the court, in panic, turned to the military commander with the strongest army, General Yuan Shih-k'ai (18541916).

Yuan wanted power. His goal was to create a new dynasty. First he bargained with the court, which on November 1, 1911, named him premier. Yuan then began to flirt with the revolutionaries. He offered to force an abdication of the Ch'ing government in exchange for the presi-

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dency of the republic. The revolutionaries agreed, and on February 12, 1912, the government issued an edict of abdication ending 268 years of Ch'ing rule. On March 10, Yuan Shih-k'ai was inaugurated in Peking as president of the Chinese republic. 15 Missionaries rejoiced, believing this to be a transition to democracy and religious freedom.

Once in office, Yuan acted immediately to consolidate his power. He appointed a cabinet in which the premier and the ministers of foreign affairs, war, and navy were all his henchmen. He then had one of Sun Yat-sen's chief lieutenants assassinated and dismissed the Parliament. Within two years he attempted to reestablish a monarchy. He decreed that 1916 would mark the start of his new reign. Opposition to Yuan's abject betrayal of the republic proved substantial, and soon much of south China revolted, leaving him no choice but to forsake his monarchical dream. Overcome by disappointment, on June 6, 1916, at the age of fifty-six, Yuan Shih-k'ai died.16

During Yuan's brief rule the First World War had broken out, and Western powers became preoccupied with killing each other. The Japanese military, in contrast, saw the war as the perfect opportunity to expand its power in Asia. With formal ties of alliance that dated back to 1902, Japan declared war on Germany in August 1914 and immediately thereafter attacked the German-controlled port of Tsingtao in northeast China. In 1915, the Japanese followed up their conquest of Tsingtao with the so-called Twenty-one Demands. If accepted, the demands would have reduced China to the position of a Japanese protectorate. To his credit, Yuan Shih-k'ai resisted the most debilitating of the demands. 17

After Yuan's death, the situation in China worsened. Racked by civil wars and plundered by warlord armies and bandits, the country's position in the world declined even more. The 1919 Peace Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, awarded Tsingtao to Japan. This act provoked an important political development that was to have far-reaching consequences. On May 4, 1919, after news of the fate of Tsingtao had spread, 3,000 students from thirteen Peking universities held a massive patriotic demonstration. This movement soon spread to other campuses and cities and to other classes of the population.18

It would be difficult to exaggerate the ramification of the May Fourth Movement in Chinese history. It created an unprecedented wave of nationalism in China. Strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations erupted all over the country. This nationalist activity in turn gave rebirth to Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and birth to the Chinese

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Communist Party. It also launched a movement to reduce the Western presence in China and transfer foreign institutions to Chinese control.

Before 1912 and the downfall of the Ch'ing dynasty, Sun Yat-sen had given little attention to formulating a detailed or consistent ideology; he gave voice to vigorous anti-Ch'ing and prorepublican sentiments, broad socialist principles, and a general hope for making China a strong modern state; but he was vague on the specifics of his program. Only after Yuan Shih-k'ai came to power and forced Sun to flee China did he have time to define his ideas more precisely. Once his party achieved power, there would be a period of tutelage under the Kuomintang's guidance. After the general population had achieved a measure of wisdom and responsibility, reformers could implement genuine self-rule under a republican constitution. As for social reform, Sun rejected Marx's emphasis on class struggle. Instead he sought to improve the standard of living for the mass of the population through industrialization and economic modernization. Sun advocated the regulation of capital, which he believed could be achieved through state ownership and development of industries, and the reduction of the exploitative potential of land ownership, which he thought could be accomplished by funneling to the state the increase of land value produced by social improvements. 19

Immediately following the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Sun was invited by a progressive warlord to establish a base in south China where he could begin rebuilding his party. Between 1920 and 1922 Sun did just that. But, when he began actually planning an expedition to the north to unite the country, his warlord sponsor objected and forced Sun to look elsewhere for support.20 Elsewhere proved to be the Soviet Union.

Chinese reformers and revolutionaries had neither admiration nor interest in Russia before 1917. Tsarist Russia had been among the most repressive and aggressive countries in the world. When the Bolshevik revolution first broke out in 1917, few in China had any clear idea about the nature of communism. Civil war followed in various parts of the old Russian Empire, and not until 1920 did the new Russian government begin to promote its revolutionary program in China. The Soviet Union insisted that it wanted only equal relations with China and offered to abrogate all of the "unequal treaties" between the tsars and China. It also offered to surrender the special rights and privileges that Russia had obtained by force in the nineteenth century. These actions made a deep impression on many Chinese, including Sun Yat-sen.21

In the spring of 1921 a Soviet agent met with Sun and came away

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much impressed with his nationalist spirit. Toward the end of 1922 a second agent arrived in China and began negotiating with Sun. In January 1923, China and Russia signed an agreement that, while declaring that communism was not possible in China at present, contained a promise of economic assistance and political advisers from Russia. One stipulation in this aid package required that members of the fledgling Chinese Communist Party be allowed to join Sun's Kuomintang as individuals. 22

Anti-imperialism constituted one major aspect of the extreme nationalism of China's May Fourth Movement. Lenin, the leader of the communist revolution in Russia, had developed a two-stage theory of revolution that particularly appealed to countries such as China that were plagued by foreign aggression. The first stage was national revolution, when the party representing nationalistic sentiments would, in cooperation with the Communist Party, drive outsiders from the country and reestablish a strong, independent nation. The second stage consisted of social revolution, when the Communist Party would take over and create the communist utopia-an egalitarian society.23

For China, Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang Party represented the stage of national revolution. But the Soviet Union also urged creation of a Communist Party. With Soviet encouragement and assistance, the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party occurred in July 1921. Twelve delegates representing fifty-seven members established the party at a secret meeting in the French Concession of Shanghai.24 Initially some Communists resisted cooperating with the Kuomintang, a party they viewed as bourgeoisie. But by 1923 the Chinese Communists came to see the wisdom of Lenin's plan.

In January 1924 the First National Congress of the newly reorganized Kuomintang met in Canton, in south China. Sun Yat-sen explained to the 165 delegates that, because both Kuomintang and Chinese Communists endorsed anti-imperialism and antiwarlordism, it behooved them to join hands in the common struggle. At this time some 28,000 members belonged to the Kuomintang and only 300 or so to the Chinese Communist Party.25

The immediate task of this new coalition was to strengthen its base in south China in preparation for launching a drive to reunify the entire country. Two areas became crucial in this effort. The first was the development of the National Revolutionary Army. In August 1923, Sun had dispatched a young general, Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), to Russia to study firsthand the Soviet military system. After a three-month

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visit, Chiang returned home, where he was soon commissioned to head the Whampoa Military Academy outside Canton. 26 The second critical area was to create mass organizations to bring China's peasants and workers into the revolution. Chinese Communists undertook this task, led by the youthful Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976).27

By the end of 1924 the government stood poised for the Northern Expedition, the drive to reunify China. Unfortunately, Sun Yat-sen's death on March 12, 1925, delayed the campaign. By the end of 1925, Chiang Kai-shek, who controlled the party's military power, had taken up Sun's political mantle and inJuly 1926 finally launched the Northern Expedition.28

The campaign achieved rapid success, overrunning all south China in a few months. Those who supported radical social change in China established a coalition government in Wuhan, in central China. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek conducted a successful military campaign along the southeastern coast of China. Once Chiang had captured the city of Shanghai, he opted, with the support of both the Shanghai business community and the Shanghai underworld, to eliminate the communists. What followed was a massive purge of the political left in China.29

Chiang proceeded to set up a purely nationalist, anticommunist government, with its capital at Nanking in eastern China. A civil war between him and what remained of the Chinese Communist Party followed. The war provided the opportunity for Mao Tse-tung to assume leadership of the communist movement in China. By 1930 he had established a Communist-controlled area in the interior of south China, along the borders of Kiangsi and Fukien Provinces, a rural region with six million people.30 Civil strife disrupted the missionary effort and forced it to confront the deep injustices within Chinese society.

Chiang Kai-shek became preoccupied with a vain attempt to root out this last vestige of communism. Japan, fearing that China might finally unite and move against the growing Japanese presence in China, seized Manchuria in 1931, attacked Shanghai in 1932, and began encroaching on the area around Peking in 1933.31 In 1934, Communists broke out of an encirclement campaign launched by Chiang's forces and began what has become known as the "Long March." Leaving some 20,000 behind as a vanguard force, nearly 80,000 Communists, including thirty-five women, began a 6,000-mile trek to the northwest. During this extraordinary event, the Communists suffered great losses but eventually established a much more secure base.32

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In 1936 Chiang traveled to Sian, in northwest China, to organize a new campaign to ''exterminate" the Communists. There some of his own forces kidnapped him and forced him to agree to a second coalition with his enemies. This coalition vowed to stop Japanese aggression in China. But Japan acted first. In July 1937 the Japanese military, after provoking a minor incident near Peking, began World War II in Asia with a general attack on all of China. The Japanese forces, better equipped and enjoying complete air and naval supremacy, overran most of coastal China with relative ease. They drove Chiang Kai-shek's government from Nanking in eastern China to Wuhan in central China, and then to Chungking in far southwest China. The Communists, from their base in the northwest, conducted a fairly effective guerrilla war against the Japanese behind the lines. 33 Missionary activities left intact by civil war fell victim to the Japanese war.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and their subsequent invasions of Guam and the Philippines, China found itself with an American ally. Both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists began to limit their efforts against Japan in preparation for what both realized would be a resumption of the civil war between them once Japan had been defeated. When, in August 1945, the Japanese surrendered, Kuomintang troops numbered some three million men. Communist troop strength stood close to one million.

In addition to a superiority in numbers, Chiang Kai-shek also enjoyed American support. In 1927 Chiang had married Soong Mei-ling, a Wellesley College graduate and the sister of Sun Yat-sen's widow. The Soongs were Christian and Westernized. The father had been taken by his uncle to the United States as a child and was baptized and educated there. He returned to China as a Methodist missionary. By 1927 he had become one of Shanghai's most successful entrepreneurs. Shortly after he married Soong Mei-ling, Chiang Kai-shek became a Christian. This act and Soong Mei-ling's presence in the government influenced Washington to assist the Kuomintang and won favorable support from the missionary community. The fact that the Kuomintang was fighting communism also helped.34

The Chinese Communists received little external backing, but the fight against Japan had greatly increased their prestige within the country. Many Chinese regarded Communist forces as courageous and incorruptible, capable social reformers, and democrats. The Kuomintang did not project such an image. Government repression had grown throughout the war, and the Kuomintang had become identified with

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the denial of basic human rights. By 1948, fiscal policies resulted in prices that were five and a half million times those of 1937. The consequence was universal corruption. 35

China by 1947-48 stood on the precipice of monumental change. The ruling party, the Kuomintang, had lost the confidence of the people. In 1945 the Kuomintang, with American assistance and Japanese cooperation, had regained control of nearly all important cities in central, east, and south China, while the Communists had temporarily retreated to the countryside. By 1947, when the Communist army regrouped, the Kuomintang had overextended itself. Less than a year of fighting assured Mao Tse-tung's victory, due in large measure to corruption, demoralization, and massive defections in Chiang's military.36

Mao proclaimed the new People's Republic of China in T'ien-anmen Square, Beijing (Peking), on October 1, 1949. He announced from the rostrum that "China had stood up." Many in China rejoiced at this successful nationalistic message. Foreigners, including missionaries, were no longer welcome.37 The century-long Western effort to win China's soul had ended in failure, or so it seemed at the time.

Missionaries, Taipings, and Boxers

The first generation of Alabama missionaries in China came from a society torn by its own political conflicts over slavery, states' rights, secession, and civil war. Once in China they found themselves plunged into a different civil war, but one even longer and bloodier than the one back home.

In 1844 the Alabama Baptist Convention addressed a resolution to the General Baptist Convention demanding that it endorse equal privileges to slaveholders and nonslaveholders. The General Convention responded that it would not appoint a slaveholder as a missionary unless he freed his slaves. This decision infuriated southerners and led to formation of the Southern Baptist Convention the following year.

When T. P. and Martha Crawford arrived in Shanghai in 1852, sectional feelings ran high among missionaries. In 1853 Uncle Tom's Cabin became a topic for animated debate. Martha Crawford's brief tenure in China had already turned her against slavery ("a stigma, a disgrace to our country which retards the progress of the whites as well as keeps souls as chattels. The time [for emancipation] cannot be distantthe blaze of the nineteenth century is too great for such a thing to live"). But while she endorsed emancipation in theory, she did not support it

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in practice. Because she discerned no practical way of implementing emancipation, she concluded that liberating slaves to a life of "starvation, vice, nay oppression" was as sinful as owning slaves in the first place. When a fellow missionary, having just read Uncle Tom's Cabin, opened a mission meeting with prayer for slave families separated and abused by their masters, the Crawfords reacted strongly to what they interpreted as criticism of southerners, who constituted more than half the missionaries present at the meeting. 38

The Crawfords soon had more urgent and local political conflicts to occupy their time. The Taiping uprising, aimed at overthrowing the Ch'ing dynasty and installing a new heavenly order, was inspired in equal parts by millenarian Christianity, indigenous socialism, nationalism, and gentry oppression of impoverished peasants. We have seen earlier the self-proclaimed influence of Baptist missionary I. J. Roberts on Hung as well as the rebel leader's claim to represent a new Christian order. Although Roberts was insufficiently convinced of Hung's comprehension of Christianity to baptize him, the American did write stories highly favorable to the Taipings for American religious journals. He urged foreign governments not to aid the imperial forces although he stopped short of endorsing the rebellion. Expressing his Calvinistic confidence in the "wise dispensations of Providence," Roberts drew an analogy to the Opium War. Hung and the Taipings might be wrong, but God still could use the rebellion to spread the gospel. In 1860 Roberts moved to Nanking where Taiping leaders accorded him official status. Other Baptist missionaries, notably J. L. Holmes, remained skeptical. Holmes, T. P. Crawford, and Jesse Hartwell were granted an audience with rebel leaders. They queried the officials about their religious beliefs and attitudes toward the West and came away from the meeting impressed with the biblical knowledge and democratic vision of the Taipings. One rebel even quoted a doxology written years before by Lewis Shuck. Like Roberts, the missionaries concluded that the rebels acted "not according to knowledge" but were nonetheless instruments of God's judgment.39

These ambivalent political estimates of the Taipings found their way back to the United States and into the pages of the Alabama Baptist. Although the editor of the paper declined to speculate on the rightness of the rebellion, he did report Roberts's evaluations of the leaders and likened the rebels to the Cromwellian armies that had battled a despotic government in Great Britain. When four foreign powers took advantage of the civil war to negotiate treaties with the Chinese government that

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assured the right of missionaries and their Chinese converts to proclaim the gospel, the editor rejoiced. But in 1861 the editor reported J. L. Holmes's conclusion that the Taipings had so distorted the idea of God that it was inferior even to that of "other Chinese idolaters." 40

Martha and T. P. Crawford shared these ambivalent opinions. At first Christian elements of the Taipings fascinated and encouraged them despite the fact that political upheaval forced them to close their school and abandon their house. They helped I. J. Roberts hide two Taiping princes and sought to educate them more fully about the Bible. Martha Crawford criticized the American commissioner in Shanghai as a hotheaded man without dignity who disgraced the U.S. government by his dismissal of the rebels as only "a band of marauders." Officially the foreign powers in Shanghai maintained neutrality during the conflict, but, according to Martha Crawford, foreign residents other than missionaries favored the imperial forces. She, on the other hand, favored the Taipings and deplored foreign breaches of neutrality. The Crawfords also deplored the new treaties forced on a weakened government by foreign powers despite the concessions they gained for Christianity. When European and American mercenaries assisted imperial forces in putting down the rebellion, they reacted with bitterness. Later Martha Crawford wrote a lengthy and balanced account of the Taiping episode in order to educate Alabama Baptists to the issues.41

Even as Martha Crawford deplored the foreign intervention that helped defeat the Taipings, she denounced the excesses of the rebels. After the rebels entered Shanghai she observed an undisciplined band of youthful soldiers firing pistols at a mutilated gilt idol taken from a temple. The sight "was not less loathsome to a Christian than to sincere heathen; not that there could be any veneration for the wooden image; but the act indicated that in those young men's minds all the old landmarks had been removed without any equivalent in their stead. The idols which their fathers worshipped they despised; not because they had found the true God, but because they had cast away the old government, the old ways, and everything their ancestors held sacred."42

The Crawfords' criticism of U.S. policies involved a specific incident and not a broad principle. They certainly did not renounce the right or appropriateness of missionaries' appealing for help to their own governments. In fact when they moved to Tengchow in 1863, they did precisely that. They encountered popular hostility inspired by local Chinese officials who did not want foreigners living in the city. When the Crawfords purchased a house for a residence and school, rioters

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provoked Crawford and a missionary associate to threaten the hostile crowd with pistols. The incident caused Crawford to seek assistance from the American consul in Cheefoo. The American official warned Tengchow officials that the U.S. government would not tolerate a repetition of such incidents and dispatched a naval force to arrest the riot's instigators. In 1884 Martha Crawford applauded another U.S. naval intervention on behalf of missionaries. 43

Missionaries were not always scrupulous about obeying even those treaties that extended them rights within the treaty ports. In 1850 the Shanghai Baptist mission established a station some twelve miles outside the city. This violation of the Treaty of Nanking, which prohibited foreigners from operating outside the treaty port, bothered Lewis Shuck not at all. He boasted that by this action the FMB became the first Protestant agency to obtain property and a permanent foothold in China's interior.44

Missionaries easily rationalized such attitudes. The predominant Calvinism of Alabama missionaries allowed them to conclude that whatever events or policies advanced the gospel were God-ordained. Just as earlier missionaries had interpreted the Opium War as a vehicle of God's providence, Nicholas Williams wrote a friend in 1877 that the best way to advance missions would be another confrontation between China and the foreign powers such as the Opium War. As that conflict had opened treaty ports to Christianity, a new confrontation might open the interior. Martha Crawford agreed. Governmental corruption had become so debilitating by 1884 that she believed only political revolution could save China.45

Presbyterian missionary Mary Stuart (1874-1925) shared a similar Calvinist theology. Like Crawford she filled her reminiscences with accounts of political turmoil and life-threatening violence. She concluded that, although the coming of the Kingdom of God would seem to depend on peace, perhaps it required instead "just such a great shaking as can only be accomplished by war." Whatever the source of Christ's return, she mused, "we know it is right and [I] am perfectly willing to leave it all in the hands of the Lord." She and her husband attributed the need for such severe chastisement to the instability and corruption of the imperial government. But like others their political notions were often contradictory. John Stuart wrote his father-in-law in Mobile that they prayed "for kings and all in authority that we may lead a peaceable and quiet life: 1Tim.2:1-2." Although they recognized the sources of revolution in the weakness of the Ch'ing dynasty, they preferred no

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change lest it propel a Moslem regime to power in China. They did not hesitate to ask for U.S. protection during antiforeign uprisings, but they blamed such violence on Chinese officials' jealousy for the political authority the Catholic Church exerted on its converts. Although Chinese tended to lump all foreignersBritish, American, Protestant, Catholicinto the single category of "foreign devils," the Stuarts believed that Catholics invited violence by their hierarchical structure and loyalty to Rome. 46

Martha Crawford and Mary Stuart learned to live amid constant political turmoil and physical danger. The same Calvinism that caused them to interpret unjust war as an instrument of God's purpose led them to trust God for their personal safety. Crawford recalled in 1891 that during her residence in China "a state of general rebellion" had prevailed, "but God reigns and will accomplish his purposes." By 1894 she had concluded that "the days of foreigners carrying out their purposes in China by force and threats are now, thank God, rapidly passing away." ''The spirit of Christ," she wrote friends in Alabama, "is more in accord with our aims than the spirit of the military age."47

Stuart reached similar conclusions. During the 1880s when the French invaded Vietnam, which was part of China's empire in Southwest Asia, antiforeign sentiment surged in China. She hoped the U.S. consul would take steps to protect American missionaries, but "our times are in His hands. No evil can befall us without His knowledge." The local magistrate in Hangchow received orders from Peking to protect foreigners, and Stuart sought to convince the Chinese that "Jesus Christ had nothing to do with the French." In 1891, placards appeared throughout Hangchow denouncing foreigners and urging attacks on them. Rumors of imminent violence spread across the city. But she continued her usual routine, moving freely about Hangchow. She wrote home: "I think it takes just such a crisis as we have passed through to make us fully realize that sweet sense of God's protecting love." Recalling nearly a half century of conflict that included the French war, fighting between China and Japan, and the Boxer uprising, she wrote in 1915 that even in times of greatest danger "we have had such a sense of God's love and protecting power that we felt the most perfect peace and willingness to meet death, if that should be God's will."48

Willie Kelly (1893-1937) believed that much antiforeign feeling resulted from actions of foreigners themselves. She wrote in March 1895 that three hundred American sailors "just painted the town red." Chinese blamed missionaries for such conduct because they mistakenly be-

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lieved Christianity to be a product of Western culture. And as Kelly pointed out to Alabamians, not even heathen Chinese acted as wicked as foreigners living in China. 49

Mary Stuart could also adopt a pro-Chinese viewpoint. She warned Americans, in an 1892 article for a Presbyterian missionary magazine, against passing a Chinese exclusion bill. Such nativist legislation by Congress, she argued, violated treaty agreements with China and indicated that American lawmakers had lost all sense of responsibility. How could missionaries expect Chinese to treat them politely or allow them even to remain in China when they observed such outrages in "our 'honorable country' "?50

Despite periodic nineteenth-century conflicts, nothing prior to 1899 prepared missionaries for the Boxer Rebellion. Unable to control local mandarins and driven by nativist superstition and rumors that spread among the populace, the central government finally gave way before a torrent of pent-up resentment. Once unleashed, nativist violence spread out of control.

Martha Crawford reported from Shantung Province in December 1899 that the wildest sort of rumors were sweeping through northern China, rumors of impending massacre of missionaries and their followers. Converts had gone into hiding and missionaries were no longer welcome in Chinese homes. The following month, news of a massacre at Taian reached them, and by June the American consul in Cheefoo had ordered all Americans out of the country. The Crawfords left for home, where T. P. Crawford died.51

Other Alabama missionaries were also evacuated. Virginia Atkinson closed her school and left for Japan. Willie Kelly opened her spacious Shanghai home to Baptist missionaries from the interior, including the Bosticks, who had left the SBC for the Gospel Mission.52

Mary Stuart recorded the most vivid political account of the uprising. The Boxers attacked a town near the Stuarts' station at Hangchow, murdering local Chinese officials and nine foreigners, including a missionary, his wife, and their two small children. The massacre was particularly appalling for the Stuarts. The martyred missionaries were personal friends, and John Stuart had begun work there before turning the facilities over to the China Inland Mission. Lack of Western response caused local Chinese to express contempt for foreign troops and drove the Stuarts out of Hangchow to Shanghai.53

In the face of such atrocities Mary Stuart reacted with the sort of belligerence one might expect from an Alabamian whose honor was ques-

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tioned and whose life was threatened. The same woman who had denounced nativist American politicians and exclusionist legislation eight years earlier now called for the use of decisive military force. Chinese were "arrant cowards when there is danger, but brag very loudly when they are on the 'topside.' " She could not comprehend why her own government refused to intervene when other nations demanded retaliation for crimes against missionaries. "As missionaries," she wrote, "we expect nothing, but as American citizens we do claim the protection which is accorded to the meanest of her subjects in foreign lands." She denied that missionaries were particularly vindictive and bloodthirsty in their demand for punishment. They simply knew that Chinese officials had made no effort to control the uprising. The Chinese minister in Washington had duped American officials into believing that missionary reports of Chinese depredations were hysterical and exaggerated. The imperial courtdominated by the dowager empress, her head eunuch, and two conservative ministersretained its power and had "hoodwinked" the allies into premature withdrawal of troops. Without severe punishment the Boxers would simply bide their time and strike again. 54

In the absence of American will to wring punishment and guarantees of protection out of the imperial court, Stuart believed that the best hope for China was reform from within. Enlightened Chinese officials must wrest control of the government from reactionaries. In Stuart's religious cosmology the Boxer uprising was the final spasm of the old Manchu order "against the incoming tide of . . . new Western civilization which is now on them with resistless force." China's reformers welcomed a new regime and would cooperate with the allies if only they had a coherent policy. And in all this "shaking China to her very foundation" Stuart again saw the hand of God. Using militant Old Testament language, she reminded American readers that "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth" even over "the wicked Empress Dowager and her bloodthirsty clique of advisers."55

Half a world away in Montgomery, Alabama, a minister outlined the meaning of the Boxer uprising to the local ministerial association. The affair had authenticated the sincerity of so-called rice Christians by demonstrating that fifteen thousand of them would die rather than renounce their faith. Missionaries had also served courageously throughout the violence. With the crisis ended, China must pledge to protect missionaries, atone for atrocities, and permit "our religion and the commerce of the world." He predicted that a "regenerated China" would

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emerge from the Boxer tragedy, one in which Christianity "will soon move with gigantic stride." 56 For reasons quite beyond his reckoning, this prophecy would soon be fulfilled. As Mary Stuart perceived, the greatest hope for change was the Chinese reform movement, and the nationalist revolution waited barely a decade in the future.

Many missionaries described the years after the Boxer uprising not as an ominous period of uncertainty but as an optimistic time. The Ch'ing government had discovered once again how impotent its armies were in the face of Western technology. Forced to pay large reparations and humiliated by the ease with which Japanese and allied forces defeated their armies, government officials belatedly enacted reforms designed to head off revolution. Missionaries saw in the Western-style reforms the dawning of a new age.

The Nationalist Revolution

Officially missionaries remained neutral in the intramural struggle for power that broke out following the collapse of the Boxers. The 1907 conference that celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Protestant missions in China urged missionaries to avoid involvement with the "present national awakening." Otherwise the Christian Church might become an instrument of revolution, and Chinese Christians might be led into acts subversive of their government. The 1910 Edinburgh Conference warned missionaries to "keep clear of all party and faction" because "political agitation" would only harm their primary efforts, which were spiritual.57 Such admonitions were solidly grounded in the notions of the "spirituality of the church." Whereas individual Christians might properly engage in political activity, many Western churchmen believed that politics was an inappropriate sphere for the church.

Historians have been misled into thinking that such official statements represented the opinion of local missionaries. If individual Alabama missionaries are any indication, they largely ignored this demand for impartiality and neutrality. Mary Anderson pronounced the six years following the Boxer Rebellion as a time of unprecedented progress both for China and for the church. In 1903 the government drafted a plan for nationwide education based on European and Japanese models. Although these reforms reduced mission school enrollment, she viewed the changes as a positive step for China. And she believed such Western-style educational reforms contributed to the progress of Christianity. During the six years following the Boxer uprising, she wrote,

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more Chinese were converted to Christianity than during the previous sixty years of Protestant effort. 58

H. W. Provence (1904-12) wrote a pamphlet for the SBC to be used in mission study programs. The publication, entitled Southern Baptist Work in China, briefly summarized progress made by the denomination in China, then peered into the future. He reported that political change was occurring with amazing rapidity. Driving this change was "the voice of the people" that proclaimed "the right of the governed to a share in the conduct of the government." Abolition of the traditional examination system, educational reforms, establishment of Western-style schoolsall provided unparalleled opportunities for missionary teachers. Secular newspapers ridiculed idolatry and religious superstition. Such reforms prepared the way for the "speedy enlargement of all Christian efforts." But Provence also recognized that American evangelicals often became too optimistic about symbolic gestures. Many reforms reported in American missionary journals were untrue. Furthermore, local officials opposed to change often sabotaged genuine reform efforts by Peking leaders.59

The clearest indication of missionary enthusiasm for political reform was their reaction to the 1911 nationalist revolution that toppled the Ch'ing dynasty and brought the Republic of China into being. The leader of that revolution, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, had been baptized by Lewis Shuck in Macao. Sun's wife, Soong Ch'ing-ling, was the daughter of a convert to the ME Church, South, who had made a fortune in the rice business. Her sister Mei-ling married Sun's successor as leader of the Nationalist cause, Chiang Kai-shek, in 1927.60 As noted earlier, the 1911 revolution installed a compromise candidate as first president of the republic, Yuan Shih-k'ai, whose military background and personal proclivities produced a form of autocracy as undemocratic as the government he replaced.

First news of the 1911 revolution brought unfettered joy to Alabama missionaries. Cynthia Miller wrote the FMB that the revolution would leave Chinese more open to the gospel. A. C. Bowen (1901-32) traced the causes of the revolution to many factors: the inherent democratic tendencies of the Chinese people; anti-Manchu feeling; Manchu exploitation of the Han Chinese. But chief among the sources of revolution were "the force of truth" and "the Spirit of God." Bowen mistakenly identified revolutionary leader Li Yuan-hung as a Christian who had "the Christian sentiment of the nation to his support." Li was in fact a reluctant rebel at best. A brigade commander for the imperial army in

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Wuchang, he reportedly hid under his bed when the revolt began and became leader of the rebellion when his mutinous garrison dragged him out and offered him a choice of leading their revolt or being shot. Bowen instead depicted the Chinese revolutionaries as fighters for "religious liberty and equality," and he predicted that their revolution would promote "the Kingdom of God in China." Even their choice of a republican form of government reflected American influence. Bowen scorned Columbia University professor F. L. Goodnow, who advised president Yuan Shih-k'ai that the best government for China would be a constitutional monarchy. Such monarchial assumptions, Bowen believed, demonstrated Goodnow's poor understanding of both American and Chinese aspirations for democracy. Chinese Christians favored democracy, he believed, and any compromise short of that would merely plunge China into civil war. Bowen apologized for dwelling so exclusively on political revolution in his correspondence to Methodist mission officials but explained that it was "difficult to think about anything else." 61

Bowen's Methodist colleague Virginia Atkinson also rejoiced at news of the revolution. The effect of the revolt, she believed, was the beginning of emancipation for women and educational reform.62

The Presbyterian Stuart family was no less restrained in its endorsement of republicanism. John Stuart set the record for hyperbole, terming the revolution "probably the most wonderful event that ever took place in the history of the world." He, like Bowen, attributed the causes of revolt to a multitude of factors. But "the real great, tap-root cause" was "the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," which emphasized principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality. His son, Leighton, described the revolution in Nanking, where his seminary was conducting a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a new dormitory when word arrived that the government had surrendered to republican forces. "There was a thrill in the audience" as they consecrated the building ''to the new China being born . . . in bloodshed and the pulsing of a . . . new life." All present broke into singing the words to a Chinese version of "My Country 'tis of Thee." The Chinese dedication speaker changed his speech to reflect the news, maintaining that the success of the new government depended on adopting Christian ethical principles of liberty and brotherhood. Whether the revolution succeeded depended on whether Chinese students dedicated their lives to the service of Christ. Leighton's brother, Warren, carefully followed the course of the revolution from the Stuarts' Hangchow home then wrote exuberantly for an American missionary journal: "Long live the Republic of China."63

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Although some of the missionaries were able to distinguish between empty platitudes and genuine reform, a fair number of Alabamians were taken in by pseudoreformers such as the first two presidents of the republic, Yuan Shih-k'ai and Li Yuan-hung. Baptist missionary T. O. Hearn reported with absolute credulity Yuan Shih-k'ai's 1913 proclamation of a Day of Prayer when all Christians were asked to pray for the new government and its leaders. Hearn thought it unprecedented that a non-Christian head of state would make such a gesture for Christian support. Cynical American and British diplomats and businessmen considered the proclamation "a piece of perfectly gratuitous hypocrisy" and marveled at the gullibility of pious Western missionaries like Hearn. But according to some historians, missionary support of republican China tilted U.S. foreign policy toward a favorable opinion of the new government. 64

During the years following the revolution, years that corresponded to the First World War in the West, missionaries rendered whatever service they could to republicanism. In 1916 an official in Shantung Province asked T. O. Hearn to intercept and negotiate with Japanese military expedition sent to retrieve five Japanese soldiers who had been arrested for shooting Chinese citizens.65 A. C. Bowen used the onset of war and Chinese missions as a platform for his antiwar sentiment. He wrote an article for a Methodist missionary journal in 1915 urging the United States to stay out of the European conflict. He praised President Woodrow Wilson as a man "too great and too wise" to plunge the nation into war over a trivial offense to honor. Fighting in Europe had already disrupted continental mission efforts in China and confused Chinese Christians. Chinese converts were asking hard questions. If Christian nations waged war against each other, how were they superior to non-Christian nations? Did Christianity teach people to kill one another? Could Christianity remove the causes that led to war?66

Missionaries, Communists, and Civil War

Once plunged into the abyss of Chinese politics, missionaries found it difficult to extricate themselves. Yet the deeper they descended into political issues the more complicated it became to sort out good from bad. Between 1924 and 1927 Communists (CCP) and Nationalists (Kuomintang Party or KMT) cooperated in common attempts at reform. As missionaries planned a conference of the World Student Christian Federation in April 1922 in Peking, Chinese students organized an Anti-

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Christian Student Federation in March, which quickly spread from Peking to other large cities. In the summer of 1925 an upsurge in anti-imperialism and anticapitalist agitation led to confrontation. British-controlled police in Shanghai killed thirteen Chinese demonstrators on May 30, launching the "May Thirtieth Movement," a wave of student protests, anti-imperialist demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts. The Chinese Communist Party exploited this agitation for its own purposes. The Kuomintang had difficulty holding its disparate factions together, ranging as they did from Communists on the left to anti-Communists on the right. The new leader of the KMT, Chiang Kai-shek, staged a coup in March 1925 and ousted Communist leaders in Canton. At almost the same moment that Chiang tried to purge the left wing of the KMT, he launched a military offensive against northern warlords who controlled much of China above the Yangtze River. In April 1927 Chiang began a massive purge of the Communists within territory he controlled. An August uprising by Communist troops plunged China into a civil war: the KMT against the warlords; the KMT right, center, and even some leftists against the CCP. Chiang, together with right-wing KMT elements, bankers, and businessmen, especially those in Shanghai, established a government at Nanking and began trying to build a modern nation by reasserting national dignity and demanding that foreign nations recognize Chinese sovereignty, renounce extraterritoriality, and abandon the unequal treaty system that had governed Chinese foreign relations for three-quarters of a century. Many Chinese had difficulty deciding which faction of the nationalist movement best satisfied their demands for sovereignty and respect. Alabama missionaries were even more confused.

Some aspects of Chinese nationalism definitely did not appeal to them. For instance, demands that missionary schools register with the government, appoint Chinese principals or presidents, select Chinese trustees, and refrain from teaching compulsory Bible classes or holding required chapel services infuriated many missionaries. But others, notably Mary Anderson of Mobile, applauded these actions as a necessary step to improve the quality of underfunded missionary schools. James T. Williams advised in his 1921 doctoral dissertation that mission schools should produce a new generation of political leaders in law, medicine, economics, education, and social work who could lead China through the transition from monarchy to republicanism. 67

By 1926 a substantial number of China missionaries, perhaps even a majority, had decided that the unequal treaties that allowed them spe-

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cial privileges should be abandoned. In the United States the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ endorsed treaty revision as did the national Christian Council of China in 1926. American diplomats in China opposed the missionaries, expressed reservations about the nationalist movement, and tried to steer U.S. policy toward a defense of the status quo that perpetuated China's dependence and inferiority. 68

Virginia Atkinson advanced the argument for Chinese sovereignty during one of her furloughs. Speaking to the Methodist Woman's Missionary Council in Shreveport, Louisiana, in March 1927, she presented conclusions based on forty-three years of service in China. After reviewing China's long struggle for sovereignty, the history of foreign encroachment, and the rise of national consciousness, she concluded that the time had come when Western nations "must heed China's cry for freedom before it is too lateif, indeed, it is not already too late."69

Dealing with the theoretical issue of Chinese sovereignty was the easy problem. Coping with KMT expeditions against warlords and Communists was harder. The 1925 Shanghai uprising by students and workers threatened China with chaos and anarchy. Ruth and Hoadley Berckman resided in Shanghai at the time and sent relatives meticulous accounts of the upheaval. They had a Chinese preacher holding revival meetings at McTyeire School for girls on May 31, but students followed the sermon with a hard question: "If the foreigners love us as they profess to how can they kill us as they did yesterday?" Ruth Berckman could not answer the question. Why had not besieged police called for reinforcements instead of firing on demonstrators, she wondered. As bitterness deepened, rumors spread that students wanted their own service instead of one conducted by the Berckmans. But when Hoadley Berckman attended services to let them know of his support, students welcomed him warmly. Ruth wrote her parents that she did not blame Chinese for their resentment toward Westerners, given a century of injustice. Although Frank and Mabel Woodward, like the Berckmans, were confined to their house by the 1925 violence, they praised Christian students in Nanking who became active in the nationalist cause.70

Other missionaries were not so charitable. Cynthia Miller blamed the 1925 disorder on "Russian Bolshevism," which was "anti-Christian and anti-law and anti everything that stands for righteousness." These radicals, she believed, would furnish the anti-Christ and precipitate the Apocalypse. A. C. Bowen blamed civil war in 1928 on "the virus of Communism that works mightily in the hearts of many people, particularly the student element."71 Not since the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 had

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anti-Christian activity been so widespread as in the years from 1925 to 1930.

As unrest spread, more Alabama missionaries were displaced. The Woodwards arrived at their station in Kweilin in the fall of 1926 amid heavy fighting between CCP and KMT forces. After eight months of fighting the U.S. consul urged them to move nearer Canton for their safety. Addie Cox escaped Communist forces besieging Kaifeng in a coal car attached to a freight train. The U.S. consul ordered A. Y. and Lois Napier out of Chinkiang in 1927, but they missed a rendezvous with their sons who were being evacuated from their school at Nanking. By the time the parents reached Shanghai, the boys had been placed aboard a ship for Japan, where the family was finally reunited. Hoadley and Ruth Berckman acknowledged their fear to relatives in Mobile and considered not returning to China when their furlough ended. But finally they braved the chaos and danger in order to rejoin their congregation at Changchow. 72

Writing for the Methodist Missionary Voice in 1927, Hoadley Berckman traced the upheaval in China to a simple striving for justice. He reminded readers of Western aggression against China beginning with the Opium War. The marvel was not that China so patiently bore these impositions on its sovereignty as that so-called Christian nations could engage in such policies. He reviewed military intervention after the May 30 incident when Western nations placed Shanghai under martial law and positioned machine guns on major avenues. He criticized the American government for insisting on extraterritoriality, foreign concessions, unfair treaties, military intervention, and external control of China's tariff policies. No longer could "an unchristian, militaristic, and imperialistic policy hold the awakened liberty-loving Chinese in disgraceful submission." As a Christian nation, the United States must recognize China's rightful claim for justice or lose whatever goodwill and respect the nation still had among Chinese.73

A. C. Bowen agreed that politically China was adrift on a stormy sea. Warlords ripped the nation apart while Nationalists and Communists fought each other. Despite civil war, China was slowly overcoming its problems and building a native church independent of foreign control that would be self-propagating and self-supporting. Thirty years earlier China was a melon to be carved up among foreign powers. By 1931, he argued, Western nations must surrender political control so that China could be "mistress in her own household." He believed that Christian leaders were in charge of many departments of the KMT government

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and that they were harmonizing national laws with the teachings of Christ. One reason for this optimism among Bowen, Berckman, and other Methodist missionaries was the decision of Chiang Kai-shek to convert to Christianity and join Shanghai's Allen Memorial Church where the Berckmans were members. 74

Chiang's opportunistic conversion cemented most missionary sentiment in favor of the KMT. Increasingly their correspondence home contained a simple message that was as strongly political as religious. Soon China would be either Communist or Christian. Cynthia Miller denounced Communists for their depredations against Chinese Christians and sanguinely rejoiced that President Chiang, now professing to be a Christian, had launched a campaign to force Communists either to surrender or "be shot without mercy." Clarabel Isdell also recounted Communist atrocities.75

Not all missionaries saw the issue so simply. Some came to respect certain aspects of CCP policy, especially its concern for peasants and after 1936 its opposition to Japanese aggression. Although not many Alabama missionaries reached that conclusion, some were at least ambivalent. They described China's descent into banditry, anarchy, and chaos. James Montgomery attributed such conditions to KMT corruption and malfeasance. His wife, Aurie, blamed starvation and floods in 1930 on the Nationalist government's lack of concern for its own citizens. Hoadley Berckman contrasted the poverty, unemployment, and extremes of wealth in the United States during the early years of the Great Depression with the equality and abundance of the USSR. Many Chinese saw this favorable side of communism but not the bloody side. How could Chinese be impressed by the alleged Christianity of the United States when it tolerated such extremes of wealth and want? A Chinese Christian asked Berckman in 1931 if the Soviet Union was not closer to New Testament Christianity than the United States. The missionary feared there was "enough truth in all this to make Communism appealing to China." Although he hoped level-headed reformers prevailed, he had never seen China in greater peril.76

Despite the enormous upheavals of the 1920s, not all Alabama missionaries were caught up in the political excitement of the time. T. W. Ayers, who had eschewed politics in China after a career of political activism in Georgia and Alabama, returned home in the mid-1920s because of his wife's health. No longer able to observe firsthand the nationalistic fervor spreading across China, he chided furloughing missionaries who filled their speeches with such discussions. Reporting

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the proceedings of a Baptist School of Missions in Birmingham in 1928, he scolded three missionaries for devoting their talks "largely to the political situation in Europe and China." His boss at the FMB urged Ayers to talk kindly but candidly to the offending missionaries. Southern Baptists would learn enough about international politics from newspapers. The Schools of Missions represented their only opportunity to learn about missions. Hence missionaries should resist the temptation to discuss politics. 77

The War against Japan

Such advice was hard for China missionaries to follow during the 1920s. By the early 1930s it was impossible. Japanese aggression and American timidity infuriated them and caused many to become fierce critics of their own government.

During the 1930S missionaries helped shape U.S. public opinion toward Japan. With increasing shrillness they called on their government to impose embargoes, quarantines, and sanctions against Japan. Congregationalist medical missionary Walter H. Judd resigned his appointment in the late 1930s and between 1939 and 1941 delivered 1,400 lectures across the United States on behalf of the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, a group that sought to end the sale of U.S. scrap iron to Japan. This effort effectively began the so-called China lobby, an effort by various pro-KMT Americans to influence U.S. policy favorably toward the Nationalist government. The boldest among them even urged the United States to declare war on the aggressor. Missionaries accurately reported conditions in China despite the possibility that such reports might discourage contributions or dissuade timid mission volunteers from coming to China. Nor were they uncritical of Chiang Kai-shek and his unwillingness to focus Chinese nationalism against the Japanese instead of his Communist Chinese opponents. And they were heard. For instance, southern Presbyterians through their Missionary Correspondence Department in Nashville maintained a mailing list of 3,000 addresses during the 1930s and 1940s and dispatched an estimated 120,000 letters from China missionaries describing conditions. Some letters were purely descriptions of spiritual matters.78 Others were filled with accounts of Japanese atrocities and pleas for the United States to intervene in order to stop the carnage.

The Alabama Baptist played a similar role for that denomination.

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By way of keeping Alabama Baptists informed, the journal clearly molded denominational opinion against Japanese aggression. In 1938 a former Baptist missionary with close ties to Alabama, Inabelle Coleman, blamed Japanese for the assassination of the president of the University of Shanghai, the flagship Baptist university in China. She also reported rumors that Japanese authorities maintained a list of two hundred additional Chinese nationalist leaders targeted for extermination. A letter from a China missionary to the paper that same year warned that reports of Japanese atrocities in American newspapers underestimated both their frequency and their brutality. The following year a missionary described a Japanese air raid on a refugee camp, concluding that if Americans who sold the Japanese scrap iron and other vital war materials could see the carnage for themselves they might halt the practice. In 1940 the Baptist journal reported a speech by Colonel Claire L. Chennault, who commanded a volunteer group of U.S. pilots. Chennault described attacks on Chinese civilians by planes whose engines were built in the United States and whose bombs were constructed from U.S. scrap iron. The article, written by Alabama Woman's Missionary Union staff, concluded: "All who desire to do their part in stopping the participation of the United States in this horrible war of aggression in China should write at once to senators and representatives from Alabama as well as other executive officials of the United States government urging them to do all possible to effect an embargo on Japan, not as an antagonistic measure against the Japanese people, but because the war is harming the people of Japan as well as those in China." 79

Methodists Ruth and Hoadley Berckman agreed. In 1932 they sent their denomination a strong protest against a Japanese raid on Shanghai. Chinese parishioners asked them what the United States would do to prevent such attacks. Although they had no idea what their native country would do, they believed it should demand that the Japanese stop their aggression. The following day the Berckmans forwarded a petition to U.S. officials signed by eighteen Americans residing in Shanghai expressing outrage at Japanese atrocities and demanding the withdrawal of its military forces from China.80

That same year the Berckmans' Methodist colleague, Virginia Atkinson, sent influential relatives in Opelika a pamphlet describing a Japanese assault on the pastor of Fitch Memorial Church in Shanghai as well as attacks on his wife and members of their congregation. The pastor's

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wife had been one of Atkinson's students for four years and her coworker for seven. Atkinson's note accompanying the pamphlet implored relatives to publicize Japanese atrocities as widely as possible. 81

Under pressure from Western diplomatic sources and surprisingly stiff Chinese resistance, the Japanese agreed to an armistice after a month-long undeclared war at Shanghai in February 1932. But the Japanese Empire did gobble up Manchuria. That morsel was so tasty that the Japanese military soon came back for a larger banquet. In 1933 Japan acquired Jehol Province north of the Great Wall and two years later succeeded in establishing a neutral belt south of the wall. Finally, in July 1937, Japanese forces attacked Peking and a month later opened an offensive against Shanghai, effectively launching the Second World War in Asia. During these years Chiang had largely ignored Japanese aggression, believing correctly that his adversary's appetite was so large it would finally lead Japan into a fatal blunder that would bring the United States into the conflict. Instead he concentrated on domestic Communists, arguing that the Japanese were a danger only of the periphery whereas communism was a threat to China's vital center. Despite the long-term vindication of his strategy, many nationalistic Chinese deplored KMT offensives against the CCP at a time when it mounted only feeble resistance against Japanese attacks that ravaged coastal China and penetrated the heartland up the Yangtze River valley.

Japanese offensives between 1937 and 1940 turned Alabama missionaries into even fiercer partisans of the Chinese nationalists. In October 1938 Hoadley Berckman sent his mission director in Nashville and other ME Church, South, leaders a form letter. He expressed that their sympathies were with China. Berckman claimed that 54 percent of Japan's munitions came from the United States, which also purchased 85 percent of Japan's silk. Berckman noted the inconsistency of U.S. foreign policy whereby the government strongly condemned Japanese aggression while at the same time it provided indispensable economic assistance to the aggressor: "Let us face it: instruments of death and destruction are being made by Americans largely paid for by Americans through the silk and other trades, and sold to Japan to help carry forward a barbarous invasion that these same Americans are anxious to see defeated and would be willing to restrain, if they realized that they could." Berckman then suggested a strategy by which Methodist officials could halt Japan's march across China. They should write key government officials as well as mobilize their congregations on behalf of

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House Resolution 527, which made the shipment of arms and war materials to aggressor nations illegal under U.S. law. 82

Virginia Atkinson also grew bolder in her denunciations of Japan. By July 1939 she was the sole foreigner living in the Methodist compound in Soochow. The emeritus missionary wrote Opelika relatives regarding deteriorating U.S.-Japan relations and vowed that whereas she had once spent vacations in that Asian neighbor, "no self-respecting person who loves justice and humanity could think of going to Japan now." Forced to return to Alabama in 1941 after nearly sixty years in China, she used her retirement, like Walter Judd nationally, to mobilize Alabamians against Japan. Despite the weariness of her seventy-nine years, fifty-seven of them spent in China, she frequently addressed women's groups. In one speech to the North Alabama Conference of the Woman's Society of Christian Service, she described courageous Chinese resistance and predicted that their "indomitable spirit" would eventually prevail.83

Margaret and Cecil Ward described endless lines of refugees in a form letter to American supporters and the Alabama Baptist, then recalled that the American ship that transported them back to their station from furlough carried five hundred tons of scrap iron off-loaded in Japan. That scrap iron furnished the raw materials for bullets and bombs. "Oh that America would wake up and be convicted of her sin of murder and disgrace for the sake of filthy lucre," they wrote.84

Missionaries waged their campaign against Japanese aggression in an often hostile American environment. Public opinion before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was strongly isolationist, especially in regard to Asia. Furthermore, American businessmen, just recovering from the Great Depression, favored profits over principle. A 1940 survey by Fortune magazine reported that 40.1 percent of American businessmen polled favored appeasement of Japan, compared to only 19.1 percent who favored an embargo or other U.S. action hostile to Japan; another 35 percent proposed a policy of continuing the status quo without favor or penalty.85

Missionaries' passion stemmed not only from concern for Chinese but also from threats to their own safety and disruption of their work. Fighting closed down many stations, forcing missionaries to retreat inland or return home. Others were interned, some for years before they were released. Nearly all found the focus of their work shifting from salvation of souls to refugee, medical, and aid ministries.

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Appeals for China relief filled the pages of the Alabama Baptist from 1937 until 1942. The FMB designated January each year as China Relief Month. Piling guilt on the United States for shipping twenty million tons of scrap iron to Japan during the years before the Pearl Harbor attack, a missionary from Hwanghsien, where T. W. Ayers had built the first FMB hospital, pleaded for relief funds. Between 1937 and 1941 Southern Baptists contributed $800,000 to China relief, and they far exceeded the 1942 goal. Some of that money came from Ruhama Baptist Church in Birmingham where Mabel Woodward was a member in 1942 while living as a refugee from China. Her pastor, J. C. Stivender, reflected her enthusiasm for China relief. In a 1942 speech to a group of Birmingham Protestant ministers, Stivender also warned of ''nationalism run-wild" in Europe and China that threatened the missionary enterprise in the postwar world. 86

The problem was finding Southern Baptist missionaries to administer relief funds. When a Japanese attack on the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking precipitated full-scale war in 1937, the FMB began immediately to plan the evacuation of Baptist missionaries. A strategy adopted in October 1937 by all foreign mission boards in the United States and Canada called for immediate evacuation of missionaries from dangerous interior stations, of all elderly or ill missionaries, and of mothers with young children. The agencies allowed able-bodied missionaries to choose either to return home or to remain at their stations.87 Incredibly the vast majority of Alabama missionaries remained at their posts. And even those who returned to the United States did so under duress.

Typical of them was Willie Kelly. Although officially "retired" at age seventy-six, Kelly continued to live in her beloved home on Rue Lafayette in Shanghai and performed all the functions of a full-time missionary. When the Japanese launched their attack on Shanghai in August 1937, she fit perfectly the profile of an evacuee: officially retired and elderly. The American consul forced Kelly and her longtime housemate and colleague Roberta Pearle Johnson to leave the city over their "vigorous protest." They were allowed to carry only one suitcase, a blanket, and a pillow. Kelly described the city she left as a place where thousands of refugees crowded streets, posing an easy target for Japanese bombers. More than 400 people crowded into the compound of her church. As she departed the city for temporary sanctuary in the Philippines, she warned the FMB that the war would be a long death struggle because neither side would surrender.88

After her refuge in a cold mountainous region of the Philippines with

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only summer clothes to wear, FMB officials ordered Kelly home. Characteristically she refused to obey the cable, writing officials that she must return first to Shanghai to retrieve winter clothes, arrange her financial affairs, and supervise church finances. Otherwise her Chinese friends would "feel that I valued my own life more than my real duty to them!" Had she thought through the FMB evacuation order, she protested, she would never have left her congregation in the first place. She had remained in Shanghai during the Boxer Rebellion with no ill effects, and now she begged to return to her people: "Please, please do not misunderstand me! I know I told you I'd leave when you said so, but this is no time to leave the Christians to themselves . . . we are not in any real danger . . . so let me go back and make it all clear to my fellow workers in the Church." 89

The FMB firmly rejected her request and demanded that she return home. Furthermore, the U.S. commissioner in the Philippines refused to grant her a new passport to return to China because of her age. Reluctantly and with some bitterness she boarded a ship bound for the United States. But the indomitable Kelly was not through with the board. As soon as she arrived in Alabama she began hounding officials for a passport. Finally the FMB persuaded the State Department to issue a new passport based on her ownership of property in Shanghai, and she sailed back in the late 1930S to the Japanese-occupied city. Alabama WMU women raised $5,000 to allow her to assist Chinese Christians.90

Soon Kelly was her old self, scheming with Old North Gate Baptist Church to buy new property at war-depressed prices and bombarding the FMB with requests to finance the purchase. She used her automobile to transport Chinese Christians about the city because they were too afraid of occupation forces to walk.91

In December 1940 a third evacuation order arrived from Richmond. Nearly eighty years old, Kelly knew this summons would be her last. The thought of leaving her home, Chinese friends, and church-"all that was my joy and life"-overwhelmed her. She proclaimed the day of departure the saddest of her life. After a stormy passage, she joined a long line of missionaries marching single file by a State Department official who took their passports. "It seemed like cutting our life lines to China," she recalled. ''No way to get back until the war clouds are lifted. It breaks my heart." She had to leave behind furnishings worth nearly $4,500-items that she had accumulated during nearly a half century in Shanghai.92

China had seen the last of Willie Kelly. But from her home in Mont-

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gomery she waged her own war against Japan. At age eighty-two she received a letter from the local navy recruiting station inviting her to join the WAVES. She responded in a public letter, noting that the navy probably did not know her age. But she wished she were young enough to fight. She reminded all eligible Alabama women that they had "an opportunity such as never before existed . . . to take a stand for our country and righteousness." 93

Kelly's longtime friend T. W. Ayers had retired years earlier. But his son, Sanford, remained in China, continuing the medical work that his father had begun. Like the Stuart boys, Sanford Ayers's decision to follow in the footsteps of his parents involved him in life-threatening perils that required personal courage and political action.

By 1937 Sanford Ayers served as head physician at the Southern Baptist Hospital in Chengchow, Honan Province. Apparently, years in medical school and greater maturity had resolved his earlier inability to manage a budget. At any rate he had just completed a major building program when the Japanese attacked Peking in 1937. As the Japanese advanced on the Yellow River, his new hospital quickly filled with wounded Chinese soldiers and sick civilian refugees. The northern front moved to within forty-five miles of his hospital, close enough so that he could hear artillery fire. Only the Yellow River separated him from the invaders. United Press and New York Times reporters covering the war actually lived in his house and brought news of home. He found journalists "nice fellows and an interesting bunch."94

The excitement of being in the war zone soon wore thin. Fighting transformed his hospital from a civilian facility to an emergency station where wounded soldiers and civilians were treated before evacuation to the south. In mid-March 1938 Chengchow came under heavy aerial bombardment. One day Ayers and his staff awakened to air raid sirens and had only ten minutes to reach their stations before bombs rained down on the hospital/mission compound. He described the cacophony to relatives: "We had hardly gotten to these places when it started sounding as if all hell had broken loose. Bombs began dropping all around, anti-aircraft and machine guns started firing, people screaming, dogs howling." Eight bombs landed in the mission compound, one in the hospital compound, and others on adjacent streets and missions. Of four hundred casualties in the raid, some were patients and staff. A female patient was killed and shrapnel wounded a nurse. The hospital quickly filled with a hundred wounded. Some terrified patients decided they would be safer at home than in the hospital and vacated beds that

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were soon filled by the badly wounded. A piece of shrapnel lodged above Ayers's bed, and bomb percussion dislodged all the ceiling plaster in his house and blew doors off their hinges. 95 The raid was only a preliminary baptism of fire.

As the raids intensified, his Chinese physicians moved south, leaving only Ayers and another American to tend the hospital. All the city's private hospitals closed. For one stretch of ten days his staff labored night and day with throngs of wounded before they could recruit another Western doctor, a Chinese male physician, and a single Chinese female doctor. Their case load reached three hundred a day, an average of seventeen requiring immediate surgery. Operations began at 8:30 in the morning and continued until nearly 11:00 o'clock at night. As casualties mounted and Japanese armies advanced to within twelve miles of the city, the Ayerses evacuated their children to Hong Kong. Only a thin strip of railroad line remained under Chinese command, a tiny corridor preventing complete Japanese encirclement. Mail ceased arriving, as did most medical supplies. Still the Ayerses refused to evacuate. In fact, the physician became a celebrity in March 1938 when American newspapers carried a story about his delivery of twin babies during an air raid. The Chinese mother decided to name one of her new sons "Bombarder" in honor of the bizarre circumstances of his birth. The FMB despaired of evacuating Ayers, but one official wrote his father in obvious pride that "the day of missionary heroes is not over." Despite the near total destruction of Chengchow during two years of siege, twenty-four bombs exploding in the hospital compound, and $6,000 in damage, not a single major hospital building was destroyed, only one of the staff was killed, and only seven were wounded. Ayers lost weight and experienced high blood pressure and near exhaustion, but he kept functioning. His theology provided an explanation for these events. He wrote that so little damage from so lengthy an assault could only be considered a miracle of God's grace.96

Although the tragedy that befell Chengchow left no marks on his body, it aroused in Ayers a fierce hatred of Japan. He raged at Japanese in articles for the Alabama Baptist, accusing them of spreading opium and heroin addiction to the civilian population of occupied China through prostitutes. And when the Ayers family finally did evacuate to Georgia, arriving in 1942, Ayers refused a leisurely and safe furlough. When the U.S. Navy inquired about his volunteering for military intelligence, Ayers jumped at the chance. He was one of sixty selected for a program that commissioned intelligence officers. The military sent him

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to Columbia University for a year of training, then assigned him to a military unit. With the enthusiastic endorsement of his superiors at the FMB, Ayers found his own way to pay back the trauma of the past five years. Soon he experienced Japanese air raids again, this time in a foxhole with the Tenth Army in Okinawa, where he could return blow for blow. Within months of victory over Japan, he and his wife, Pat, were back at the hospital in Chengchow coping with hyperinflation and yet another civil war. 97

T. W. Ayers, by this time a widower, tried to keep up with war news of his son through Associated and United Press, the New York Times, and FMB reports. Inabelle Coleman, who worked for the FMB, kept Ayers informed of his son's activities and Baptist efforts on behalf of China Relief. She wrote Ayers of her anguish over how little Southern Baptists gave for China and how much they rested content in their own freedom and safety. In 1944 a Chinese pastor in Hwanghsien sent word that Japanese forces had looted and burned Ayers's hospital. Nothing remained of the facility that had served Hwanghsien for nearly a half century except "waste of broken tiles to hurt one's heart and sadden one's eyes." The elder Ayers refused to become despondent. He requested that the Georgia WMU begin raising $100,000 to rebuild the T. W. Ayers Memorial Hospital for Women.98

Other Alabama missionaries experienced adventures to match those of Sanford Ayers. Addie Cox's station, also in Honan Province, shifted back and forth between Chinese and Japanese forces during 1938. Soldiers looted outstations of bicycles, clocks, watches, fountain pens, furniture, books, and anything else of value. Japanese air raids killed her neighbors. Chinese attempts to slow Japanese progress by cutting the Yellow River dikes spread waters across the floodplain, and in 1942 famine swept across the province. Starving families left babies outside her gates. Japanese soldiers invaded the compound seeking cigarettes, wine, oil, flour, chickens, medicine, and other items. She spent three days trying to explain that no one there smoked, but they abused elderly Chinese men by twisting their beards and interrupted worship services with drawn swords. Finally she won their cooperation with kindness. She prepared a reading room for the soldiers, and when they scaled the walls of the compound, she invited them to the guest room where they could read the Bible and drink tea. But she also commanded the young boarding school girls to lie down where the soldiers could not see them. By offering southern-style hospitality downstairs, Cox denied them access to upstairs. In this fashion she protected the girls,

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fed, clothed, and housed more than a thousand refugees, and held two or three Bible classes a day until forced to flee in April 1942. Although her caravan was bombed constantly during evacuation, she reached Chungking safely and took up work again there. 99

Cecil and Margaret Ward were two of at least seven Alabama missionaries who were imprisoned by the Japanese. The Wards landed in occupied Canton before the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were appalled at the devastation in the city. Thousands of Chinese had died in bombings, and thousands more were starving. The Wards plunged into refugee work, dispensing a sermon and a single bowl of rice gruel to throngs of refugees once a day. Retreating to Hong Kong afforded the couple only temporary sanctuary. A Japanese air attack the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor drove them out of their home and into a ditch for cover. They fled from their home in Kowloon across the harbor to Hong Kong Island under attack by Japanese planes. For seventeen days until the island fell they took refuge in shelters against air attacks. Robbed first by Chinese looters and then by Japanese soldiers, they were imprisoned in a filthy, vermin-infested former Chinese brothel and were treated as criminals. Herded five to a room that contained only a single bed, they took turns sleeping and received meals of poor-quality rice twice a day. When transferred to a barbed-wire concentration camp farther out on the island, they had to bury the decaying bodies of Canadian troops inside the camp. They were not allowed to bury corpses outside the wire. They boiled pine needles and cooked alfalfa in an effort to avoid contracting beriberi. They were finally exchanged for Japanese detainees in June 1942 and allowed to return to the United States. Once home they serialized their saga in three articles for the Alabama Baptist, providing Alabamians an eyewitness account of Japanese atrocities.w^100

Frank Woodward was also interned, although his wife Mabel and their daughters had been evacuated earlier. When their home in Wuchow was destroyed by Japanese bombs, Woodward went to Canton, where he supervised eight refugee feeding stations. Despite loneliness for his family, the death by starvation of an estimated five hundred Chinese a day, and constant danger, he remained in the city until after the Pearl Harbor attack. Then he and other missionaries who had stayed behind were interned. Unlike the Wards, he was treated kindly by the commanding Japanese general, whom he had earlier befriended. The officer allowed Woodward to continue to operate his refugee centers as a "trusty." He also smuggled letters to his family through a Chi-

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nese laborer. Woodward was repatriated during the spring of 1942. Like the Wards, he then recounted his experiences in a series of articles for the Alabama Baptist. 101

Other Baptist internees left similar accounts. James T. Williams wrote an entire manuscript concerning the sack of Shanghai and his evacuation and imprisonment. Irene Jeffers ate wild dandelions to survive house arrest before repatriation.102

Hoadley Berckman also spent time in a Japanese prison camp. He became involved in a variety of ministries during the war, especially relief for European Jews pouring into Shanghai. Ruth Berckman and their two sons departed Shanghai on January 1 1941, amid weeping by all of them. Hoadley stayed behind to tend his work. She and the boys returned to Boaz, Alabama, for the rest of that year where Howard, their elder son, finished high school. Her brother, Edmond Rice, who had joined his sister and brother-in-law as a Methodist medical missionary in Kiangsu Province in 1934, also returned to Boaz after evacuation. They spent the year speaking to Methodist audiences across Alabama on behalf of United China Relief. In early December 1941, Ruth read in the Birmingham News that her husband was among sixty-five Americans interned by the Japanese in Shanghai. She did not hear from him until late August 1943, although Chinese friends sometimes sent letters saying that he was safe. In October of that year she received word that he was being repatriated via the Swedish liner Gripsholm, which transported a large number of missionaries back to the United States. The family was finally reunited on December 1 in New York City but not for long. Within a year Hoadley had determined to return to China. With most of coastal China still occupied by Japanese armies, the only civilians allowed to enter the country by the U.S. State Department were medical or relief personnel. So the ME Church, South, mission board agreed to "loan" him to United China Relief. The relief agency needed a businessman as comptroller of its China office located in Chungking. His last job as missionary had been treasurer of the Methodist mission in Shanghai, so he possessed ideal credentials. Furthermore, no other businessman volunteered for the hazardous duty. After a briefing in New York City, Berckman began gathering clothing, medicine, and other relief supplies. A U.S. Army transport plane flew him and the supplies to Chungking, capital of free China, in May 1945. While in Chungking he had a chance to dine with President and Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek, which led him to denounce "those nasty lies about the leader of this country and his wife." Four months later the war ended, and

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Berckman's wife and son sailed for Shanghai. During their separation Ruth had studied Mandarin at Yale University to sharpen her language skills. 103

Ruth Berckman's brother, Edmond Rice, was not detained but did view the war up close. He and his wife Mary were in Peking when the Japanese attacked at the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937. They returned to their hospital at Soochow near Shanghai, but Mary Rice left for Shanghai after the first aerial attack on the city. Edmond Rice began working in a refugee hospital in Shanghai, sometimes obtaining passes through Japanese lines so that he and his brother-in-law could open a clinic in Changchow. Ironically this effort behind Japanese lines alienated some Chinese who criticized them for entering occupied China. But Rice explained to his mission supervisor that though the new clinic might "not be in line with their spirit of nationalism," it was in line with Christian ministry. In August 1938 Rice also organized a hundred American businessmen and missionaries to cable President Franklin Roosevelt, denouncing the hypocrisy of State Department condemnation of Japanese military aggression at the same time it permitted shipments to Japan of gasoline, trucks, scrap iron, and cotton. The cable called on Roosevelt to declare a complete economic embargo of Japan. Rice implored his mission director and bishop to mobilize southern Methodists to write or wire the president and key U.S. senators calling for similar action.104

This atypical southern evangelical expression of political opinion, together with the courageous decision of so many Alabama missionaries to remain at their posts up to and even beyond the attack on Pearl Harbor, opened doors to Chinese that no amount of preaching and prewar social ministries had provided. The Second World War was a sort of refiner's fire that burned away the cultural dross of Christianity and allowed a bonding between missionary and Chinese. Their new relationship was grounded not in theology but in the faithful service of missionaries who remained at their posts among people they had come to love long after businessmen and diplomats had returned home to the United States. A delegation of KMT army officers, city officials, businessmen, and ordinary Chinese citizens from Chengchow wrote the FMB in April 1939 after months of air raids about the heroism of Dr. Sanford Ayers. His treatment of wounded Chinese troops, his care for the poor of Chengchow, and his attention to refugees reflected the finest characteristics of a "good Christian . . . and a great citizen of the United States." When he left Chengchow because of exhaustion and ill

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health, citizens honored him with a huge farewell reception and begged him to return to their city as soon as possible. 105

Alabama Baptist missionaries believed that the war was a pivotal event in establishing their credibility while many Chinese perceived them as emissaries of a "foreign religion" so deeply committed that they were willing to sacrifice their own lives in service to their adopted country.106 Hoadley Berckman wrote that sharing years of warfare, bombing, flight, and prison cemented missionaries to the Chinese people. 107

Communist Victory and Missionary Expulsion

The China to which Alabama missionaries returned in 1945 was soon plunged into an all-too-familiar crisis. Nationalist and Communist forces launched yet another civil war. American missionaries immediately grasped the significance of the struggle and quickly took sides. One article in a mission journal summarized the view of most missionaries that when communism took control of China it would mean the end of missions and the Christian Church. The author reminded readers that from its first contact with China, communism had been a politically disruptive force. It had inspired social and political change in the country, had created friction between the Chinese government and Western powers, and had fomented internal unrest and conflict.108

New missionaries filled with idealism unleashed by victory over European fascism and Japanese imperialists flooded into China. By October 1, 1949, when the CCP officially announced the establishment of the People's Republic of China, some four thousand missionaries resided in the mainland. However sharply they might be divided into Catholic and Protestant, one denomination or another, fundamentalist or modernist, social gospel or otherworldly, all missionaries represented to the communists an alien presence. To a socialist regime, they owned sizable property; to advocates of a secular, godless ideology, they were proselytizing, evangelical Christians; to a nationalist movement, they were foreigners.

When CCP forces occupied territory where missionaries worked, they practiced a variety of policies. In the short term they imposed order, even protecting missionary property. They especially courted medical missionaries who often cared for wounded CCP soldiers. In September 1949 the convened a national People's Consultative Conference that included a guarantee of religious freedom in Article V.

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Actual conditions were not so tranquil as this high-sounding official statement. Inexperienced, often illiterate local officials responded more to Communist rhetoric that identified missionaries with imperialism, capitalism, and exploitation. Especially in isolated rural stations missionaries came under censure and restrictions. They could not move about the countryside freely and their activities were strictly controlled. Even accommodationist missionaries who naively considered Communist cadres to be socialist agrarian reformers found themselves scorned and despised.

Some American mission organizations tried to deflect this criticism by lobbying Congress to discontinue aid to the KMT and officially recognize the new CCP government. One cablegram from 330 leaders of 180 Christian organizations in China protested U.S. aid to Chiang Kaishek. The opening of the Korean War in 1950 ended any possibility of compromise and hardened relations between the two countries. The U.S. government froze Chinese assets in mid-December 1950, and the People's Republic retaliated thirteen days later by ordering all Christian groups in China to sever relations with U.S. mission agencies. 109

Alabama missionary Sanford Ayers discerned a predictable pattern within CCP territory. At first Communists imposed few restrictions. For instance, initial reports in the Alabama Baptist from Kaifeng after it fell to Communist forces indicated that officials intended to safeguard hospital and mission property even to the point of assigning guards to prevent looting. Reports from Chinese Christians in rural areas indicated little interference with their work. But as soon as civilian officials established regular authority, conditions changed. They harassed missionaries and disrupted work however they could."110

Paradoxically, the man selected to bridge the chasm between the KMT, the CCP, and the United States was himself a product of Alabama missionaries, Leighton Stuart. Son of Presbyterian missionaries John and Mary Stuart, he was born in Hangchow, briefly rebelled against his eccentric Chinese heritage, and returned to Mobile for schooling. After study at Hampden-Sydney College, Union Theological Seminary, and Princeton University, he returned to China where he and his brothers carried on their family's missionary tradition. One of the most theologically liberal of the Alabama contingent, he tried to find ways to harmonize traditional Chinese culture with Christianity. The gentle-mannered and humane missionary became one of the most respected Americans in China. In 1937 when the Japanese occupied Peking, they ordered him to run up a Japanese flag and thank the Japanese for liber-

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ating Yenching University where he was president. Stuart refused both demands, replying that a college had no way of compelling the political belief or activity of its students. After the Pearl Harbor attack he was interned for thirty-nine months by the Japanese.

After the war President Harry S. Truman offered the job of U.S. ambassador to China to Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who would try to work with Secretary of State George C. Marshall to obtain a compromise peace acceptable to both the KMT and the ccP. But Mao Tse-tung rejected Wedemeyer. The only person on whom both parties could agree was Leighton Stuart, and in July 1946 Marshall recommended Stuart's appointment. For the following three years Stuart strove in vain to establish a coalition government acceptable to both sides. Failing in this effort, he did induce Chiang Kai-shek's government to effect economic and political reforms. But reform came too late to win the confidence of the Chinese people or prevent a Communist victory. When the country finally fell to the CCP, Stuart sought to redeem a lifetime of mission work through politics. He urged the U.S. government to oppose admission of the new government to China's seat in the United Nations. 111

Most Alabama missionaries had despaired of a settlement long before Stuart. Dr. Sanford Ayers probably offered the most astute prognosis of the future from his hospital in Honan Province, which was a Communist stronghold. While his father bombarded the FMB with anxious letters about his son's welfare, Sanford Ayers sent the board a series of brilliant reports on the future of missions in what certainly appeared to be an impending Communist China.112

By the end of 1947, Communist troops had completely surrounded Chengchow and Kaifeng in Honan Province where Ayers conducted his medical work. Another Alabamian, Addie Cox, who worked in Weishih, was already behind Communist lines. Ayers wrote the FMB that if the Communists occupied Chengchow he did not believe it possible to continue his hospital. To continue employing Christian Chinese in such circumstances would endanger their lives. The anti-American and antichurch prejudices of the CCP would result in confiscation of their facilities and disruption of their work. The entire hospital staff had told him they would escape if possible because otherwise they would be imprisoned, killed, or forced to work for the new regime. He asked the FMB what would become of his staff if all the missionaries agreed to be evacuated.113

The FMB decided to evacuate Ayers in 1948 to Kweilin Baptist Hos-

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pital in Kwangsi Province, where he resumed his work. In fact, the board planned to build a medical training program around him. To this proposal he strenuously objected on a number of grounds. No program should be built on a single person. His wife, Pat, was in poor health, and they might have to return to the United States at any time. The Communists were winning the civil war and would force out all missionaries anyway.

By January 1949 Ayers had become the board's medical adviser on work in China. In this capacity he sent the FMB a lengthy, detailed report. He summarized three divisions of thought within SBC circles regarding medical work in Communist-occupied zones: missionaries should stay regardless of what happened; they should stay until they could not be effective or until they endangered the lives of Chinese coworkers; they should evacuate as soon as a Communist takeover began. Unlike optimistic missionaries who insisted that Chinese Communists were different from their counterparts in Eastern Europe and would tolerate Christianity, he believed experiences in occupied territory were a useful barometer of CCP policy in areas not yet under their control. Short-term relaxation of anti-Christian restrictions should not mislead Americans into false optimism. Whatever leniency the CCP demonstrated resulted from political expediency and would soon end. Next would come toleration with tight controls; facilities and churches would be closed or converted into state operations. The last phase would be active hostility with preaching prohibited and missionaries expelled. The whims of local CCP officials determined the severity and type of persecution. In some special cases missionary hospitals had operated for a year or longer in CCP territory, but there was no standard pattern. In time local officials cut off essential drugs and supplies and forced hospitals to rely on local herbs and medicines. Nor could the missions accept foreign funds or charge fees, making it impossible to staff the facilities. His conclusion followed logically from this analysis. The FMB must confront the reality that the era of missions in China had ended. By April of that year he and Pat had acted upon this logic. They retreated to Hong Kong where they awaited passage to the United States. 114

Ayers's colleague in Honan Province, Addie Cox, came to the same conclusion. In 1946 she returned to Weishih with high hopes and mountains of clothes donated by Alabama's WMU. But almost immediately the Eighth Route Army (CCP) invaded the province and engaged KMT forces. Five times the CCP gained control of the town only to be

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forced out. Twice they occupied her mission compound. Each time she preached to them. Many soldiers were natives of the province where she had preached for so many years. She reported that the Communists took grain and land from the rich and gave it to the poor. But they also committed atrocities. When they permanently occupied the city, they restricted her preaching to the area within her own courtyard and buildings, not allowing her to venture out. Although students, soldiers, and officials no longer came to listen, ordinary Chinese braved the CCP to come hear her proclaim the gospel right up to the time she left. At her last service a woman confessed faith in Christ. Cox left that service for the truck station and began a six-day journey over rugged mountain roads to Chengchow, witnessing at every Chinese inn where she stopped. Then she caught the train for Hong Kong and from there moved to a new life among Chinese Nationalists who had escaped to Taiwan. 115

James T. Williams recorded his account of these events in a long manuscript for the FMB that it never published. Well before the Communists occupied his station at Shanghai, he began hearing reports from T. W. Ayers's old bases in Shantung Province-Pingtu, Laichow, Hwanghsien and Cheefoo. In Shantung, Communist forces accepted the Japanese surrender in some areas, preventing missionaries from returning after the war ended. Chinese pastors from these areas warned Williams that living under Communism was much worse than living under the Japanese. Like Sanford Ayers, Williams became convinced that continued mission work under Communism was impossible. Within its realm the CCP confiscated land, tried landlords before trumped-up people's courts, and executed many of them. Williams's own sympathies were clear. He referred to the landlords as ''able and honest men" who were murdered because "they had accumulated a little of this world's goods and had influence in the communities where they lived." As for merchants, they too were innocent victims of Communist oppression. When the CCP first occupied a city, it expressed affection for the welfare of the people. But in practice its policies were inspired "of the devil himself, without any consideration for the value and dignity of the individual."116

Williams's Baptist colleague Clarabel Isdell was not so sure about the sole attribution of blame to the Communists. Although at the time she believed the Communists did little to alleviate poverty, she concluded in retrospect that the Nationalists did little to help either. And in time conditions did improve for ordinary people."117

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Irene Jeffers escaped the Communist occupation of Yangchow for Shanghai where she watched Communists liberate the city in May 1949. After occupation forces settled into a routine, she and a single female colleague asked ccP officials if they could return to Chinkiang near Yangchow. The officials agreed to this proposal, and the two women spent the following eighteen months ministering to churches in and around Chinkiang. But pressure finally became too great, and they returned to Shanghai to live in Willie Kelly's old home on Rue Lafayette until Communists confiscated it. They also returned home through Hong Kong. Roberta Pearle Johnson, Kelly's longtime associate and housemate, was the last Southern Baptist missionary to leave China. Like Jeffers, she was willing to stay behind and continue her work even if it had to be done under a Communist government. But when Jeffers and Johnson left in the spring of 1951, the final chapter closed on Baptist work. 118

The Berckmans had hardly reunited in Shanghai when they began to discuss with Methodist colleagues what they should do if the CCP won the civil war. Some decided to evacuate as soon as their mission agency and U.S. officials advised them to do so. But when word finally came down for Ruth and their younger son to leave, they remembered their traumatic 1940 separation and Hoadley's internment. Determined not to be parted again, they decided to remain in Shanghai. Like Irene Jeffers and some other Alabama missionaries, they observed firsthand ccP armies entering the city in May 1949. From the roof of their apartment, they watched the KMT rear guard set fire to fuel and other supplies that could not be carried to Taiwan. For three days they did not venture out, and for weeks afterward they watched from their flat as demonstrators denounced the United States and Great Britain. In time Hoadley returned to his duties as treasurer of the Methodist mission, and they experienced no persecution. Their furlough was scheduled for June 1950, and with a son in the military in Korea and growing Communist pressure in Shanghai they decided to return to the United States. The process was complicated. Officials required that they apply for an exit visa. After application, the police published their names in the paper for three days. If no one lodged charges against them during that time, they could leave. Unfortunately, many Chinese knew that Hoadley was mission treasurer and requested that he transport money out of the country for them. Such action was illegal and would have jeopardized his family's exit. But by refusing their requests Berckman feared one of them would report him falsely to the police. No one did.

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Ruth took her jewelry, photographs, and documents to the police station where they were sealed until the family's departure from Chinese waters. They left their books, sewing machine, and other personal items with Chinese friends. Their cabin aboard ship was a huge room crammed with army cots and seventy-five people. They hung a rug on a string to provide a bit of privacy and departed for Hong Kong. Finally in late June they departed Hong Kong for San Francisco and home." 119

By the close of 1951 no Alabama missionary remained in China. For decades missionaries had proclaimed the eventual establishment of a self-supporting, self-proclaiming, self-governing Chinese church. But they had never quite managed to find the right time to detach mother from infant. Now in the span of two years the Communists had severed the lifeline for them. For better or worse the sharp edge of politics had cut the Chinese church adrift in a bitter sea.

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Evaluating the political impact of missionaries on China is a complicated task. Although historians on both sides of the Pacific now concede that American missionaries left an important and positive cultural legacy (schools, colleges, medicine, modern journalism, intercultural contacts), they chide missionaries for political meddling. They point especially to missionary support for the unequal treaty system after the Opium War, reliance upon Western military protection, and support of KMT against CCP forces during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. As missionaries and their children returned to the United States during periods of unrest, they often took positions of influence within the government.

By the 1940s nearly half the foreign-culture experts shaping U.S. policy were missionary offspring, including such powerful opinion shapers as Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck and Time and Life magazines' editor Henry R. Luce. Missionary children John Davies and John S. Service played prominent roles in determining U.S. State Department policies toward China, and both men became disgusted with KMT corruption and lack of social reform. One careful historian of this missionary influence concludes that "attitudes of good will toward China" epitomized by missionaries and their children offered the best prospect for an American foreign policy that was enlightened and appreciative of Chinese realities and points of view. Had such advice been followed during the 1950s, Chinese-American relations would have been far less acrimonious than they were.120

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Other historians have been more critical. Zhou Xinping, professor at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, offers a Chinese perspective on missionary political activity. Though he praises their cultural contributions to China in education, medicine, journalism, and interpersonal contacts, he blasts their political activities. They gave rise to strident anti-Christian nationalism in both the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Even well-meaning and respected missionaries such as Leighton Stuart misunderstood China's need for fundamental change. The American mission succeeded in China largely because of American political power and suffered from the same source as such intervention alienated Chinese nationalists. Even as missionary culture gradually brought confluence with China and greater respect for Chinese traditions, missionary politics led to collision. 121

Many American historians have made the same point. But the problem is the selectivity of the argument. While it is obvious that missionary support of Western imperialism during the 1840s to 1900 generated anti-Christian reactions and that their clear bias for the KMT after 1930 against the CCP poisoned U.S.-People's Republic relations, that is only part of the story. Their support of the nationalist movement between 1910 and 1930 furnished key U.S. sympathy for Chinese nationalism. And their vociferous lobbying of their government against Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s endeared them to the Chinese people even if it did not change U.S. policy. Their courageous decision to stay at their posts during the Japanese invasion, despite considerable risks to their own lives and those of their families, led to perhaps the most amicable period of Chinese-missionary relations in their long and stormy history. It is difficult to praise the political involvement of missionaries in regard to nationalism and anti-Japanese aggression and condemn them for being too politicized.

Perhaps it is better to view Alabama missionaries in terms of a continuum. In the nineteenth century, when they little appreciated Chinese culture and constantly feared for their lives, they regularly appealed to gunboats and diplomats for support. But as the twentieth century dawned with the promise of a nationalistic, modern democracy, they became increasingly secure and supportive of China's political order and more willing to abide by its regulations. As this nationalism fragmented into Communist and anti-Communist segments, most of them predictably supported the anti-Communist cadre. When Japanese aggression began, they forcefully and actively intervened with

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their own government to support anti-Japanese forces whatever their ideology. When that war ended, they sided with the KMT for the understandable reason that Communism proclaimed an atheistic and antiforeign doctrine that inevitably would have led to their exclusion. As in Alabama, where their critics accused them of being otherworldly despite the conflicting evidence of their activity on behalf of prohibition and other reform movements, so Alabama missionaries in China were not of one mind on a Christian's role in politics. Their opinions changed over time and defy easy generalization.

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12

You Who Drink the Water, Do Not Forget the Person Who Dug the Well:

The Legacies of Alabama Missionaries in China

The politics of Western imperialism opened the door for Christian missions in China. The politics of Marxism/Maoism closed that door a century and a half later. The sudden and dramatic expulsion of all missionaries between 1949 and 1952 brought down the curtain on the most ambitious missionary drama in American history, a drama that included a cast of thousands and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to perform.

At first glance the effort seemed a colossal failure. That was most assuredly the conclusion of Chinese Communist leaders. More surprisingly, it was also the conclusion of most American historians and even many Protestants. But the remarkable resurgence of Christianity during and after the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 and the eclipse of Maoism in recent decades demand reassessment of the missionary effort.

The 1949 Communist victory in China's civil war forced Nationalist forces to evacuate to the island of Taiwan and brought an anti-Christian regime to power. Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the spiritual founder of the new government, made clear how he felt about Christianity as early as 1939: "The important powers have never slackened their efforts to poison the minds of the Chinese people. This is their policy of cultural aggression. And it is carried out through missionary work, through establishing hospitals and schools, publishing newspapers and inducing Chinese students to study abroad. Their aim is to train intellectuals who will serve their interests and to dupe the people." To Mao, Leighton Stuart was no more acceptable than the most condescending nineteenth-century missionary. When Stuart departed China, Mao called him a "loyal agent of U.S. cultural imperialism in China." 1

Chinese Christian leaders reacted to such hostility in a variety of ways. A large group tried to accommodate themselves to the new re-

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gime, arguing that radical New Testament Christianity had lost its reformist zeal by becoming a tool of capitalism and imperialism. Communism could become the vehicle of Christian renewal. In May 1950 a group of Protestant Christians met with Premier Chou En-lai and worked out a Christian Manifesto. It declared that Christianity whether "consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly" became an instrument of Western imperialism. All Chinese Christian churches or organizations should become self-reliant. No new missionaries would be accepted and no former missionaries would be allowed to return from furlough. The Korean War began a month later, further hardening relations between China and the West.

In subsequent months many Chinese Christian leaders denounced their former missionary associates as tools of imperialism. One Southern Baptist missionary, Dr. William Wallace, died in prison. By the end of 1951 virtually all other missionaries had left China. The government began to take over missionary schools, colleges, orphanages, presses, and other institutions. Although Chou En-lai had welcomed the appointment of Leighton Stuart as U.S. ambassador to China in 1946 because he trusted the longtime missionary president of Yenching University, that attitude did not prevent government takeover of Yenching in February 1951. The Chinese chancellor's fate was typical of many Protestant leaders. He tried to save himself by confessing that the university so beloved by Stuart had been manipulated by American imperialists. But his confession did not go far enough, and his own daughter denounced him as "a Christian who is without political feeling for the Communist Party." 2

Rice Christians quickly disappeared. One secular student at Peking University recalled how Christian groups on campus withered as mobs ransacked churches across China. Some former Christian students renounced their faith and denounced the missionaries who had imparted that faith. One source estimated that church membership declined by 40 percent during the early years of Communist rule before recovering in the mid-1950s during the relative freedom of the Hundred Flowers Movement. From that time the fortunes of the church followed the ragged terrain of political upheaval. During the Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, a time of ambitious but unsuccessful collectivization of agriculture and forced industrial modernization, church membership again declined. Popular reaction against disastrous government programs and the rise of intellectual dissent in the early 1960s led to growth again before the cataclysmic Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and

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lasted nearly a decade until Mao's death in 1976. During this period of disruptive Maoist fanaticism and xenophobia, the regime tried to blot out all vestiges of Western influence. What remained of the church went underground, and rice Christians, if any remained, gave up their faith to save their bodies. Christians went to prison by the thousands along with party bureaucrats, technocrats, intellectuals educated in the West, and ultimately even the Red Guard fanatics who had launched the revolution in the first place. There in prison, according to Chinese Christians, their faith prevailed while Maoists wilted under the oppression of a regime they had faithfully served only to have their service rewarded by humiliation and imprisonment. As Chinese Christians interpreted history, Christianity, figuratively speaking, thrived in the fiery furnace where persecution scourged away the contaminants with a purifying fire and left faith hard as steel. 3

During this succession of crises, China's Protestant church divided into two parts. The official church recognized by the regime was organized into the Chinese Christian Council based on the Three-Self Principles of making Chinese Christianity self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. The movement began with the Christian Manifesto of May 1950, though its ideology of self-rule had Western missionary advocates as early as the mid-nineteenth century. By 1952 more than 400,000 Chinese Christians had allegedly signed the manifesto that criticized Christianity's close association with imperialism and vowed to create a purely Chinese form of the faith. This Chinese church took form over the following four decades and consisted of social service, nondenominationalism, anti-imperialism, antifeudalism, and anticapitalism. Initially the Three-Self Movement plunged into a masochistic phase of accusation, denunciation, and self-criticism that alienated fellow Christians and led many of them to renounce the movement. These critics of what they perceived as an accommodationist Christianity created a second movement of family and underground churches.4 A legacy of hostility and mistrust between these two branches of Protestantism survived into the 1990s, with the Chinese Christian Council working as closely as possible with the government while the underground church denounced accommodationism and resisted restrictive official policies.

The same turmoil that split the church over policy divided historians who attempted to understand the historic role of Christianity in China. Most of them differed only marginally from Mao's own 1939 perception of the missionary enterprise as a form of cultural imperialism. During

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the 1960s and 1970S, American historians largely condemned the entire missionary enterprise. Perhaps the criticism was as reflective of the secularization of American intellectual life as it was of new trends in the profession, but whatever the source the effect was chilling. Some historians divided the attempt to propagate foreign religious values from attempts at social reform (such as the establishment of hospitals, medical schools, colleges, Western education, and rural reform). The first they condemned; the latter they considered laudable. It is worth noting, however, that Mao found Western medicine and education no less imperialistic than Western religion, Leighton Stuart no different from Martha Crawford. And during the Cultural Revolution he led a movement to restore traditional Chinese medicine. Some American historians agreed with Mao's assessment, condemning even the modest social reform advocated by missionaries as puny attempts at gradual reform that ignored the deep systemic sources of China's problems. 5

More intriguing than the historical fusillade aimed at the mission enterprise was the second-guessing by missionaries themselves. Beginning in the 1930s, many missionaries and their academic offspring agreed that they had engaged in cultural imperialism. Pearl Buck wrote her apologia in 1934. Others confessed their complicity during the 1950s. Still other apologias came later.6 Many missionaries, including some from Alabama, left China in the 1940s and 1950S convinced by the paucity of conversions and the renunciations of the Communist era that their lives of sacrifice and diligent service had been largely wasted.7

All of these perceptionswhether of Communist functionary, historian, or missionarytended to be based on a single assumption: that the seed planted by the missionaries had fallen in shallow soil. In time it had sprouted sufficiently to promise a good harvest. But when the heat of oppression seared China after 1950 the new plants wilted and died. Cut off from contact with China for nearly a half century, little conflicting information seeped out. And when rumors spread about the survival of Christianity, they could easily be dismissed as too minimal to matter or as exaggerated by Christians desperate to discover a flicker of light in the otherwise black hole of China.

As China began to modernize its economy, adapt to aspects of a market economy, and allow expanded cultural exchanges during the 1980s, it became increasingly obvious that the judgment about Christianity's survival in the country had been much too pessimistic. The first New York Times Peking bureau chief, Fox Butterfield, described a cautious but impressive religious revival that began after Mao's death. Churches

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that were closed during the Cultural Revolution reopened and quickly filled to overflowing. By 1992 thirteen Protestant seminaries had reopened. The Chinese government reluctantly agreed to massive Bible publication projects. As soon as new churches were built, they immediately filled. Elderly Chinese Christians referred to the revival as "the spring of Christianity in China." Official Chinese sources conceded that the 900,000 Protestants of 1949 had grown to 5.5 million by 1992. The Chinese Christian Research Center estimated 63 million total Christians in China, and some pentecostal groups claimed as many as loo million. Although the lower estimates seem more believable, some single provinces were estimated in 1992 to contain more Protestants than all of China held in 1950. By 1989 China contained more than six thousand functioning churches and more than twenty thousand house churches. One of these churches, Mu'en Church in Shanghai, was the old Moore Memorial Methodist Church where Ruth and Hoadley Berckman ended their careers in 1951. The Chinese Christian Council began the Amity Foundation as a conduit through which overseas Christians could legally channel funds and volunteers to reopened churches. In addition to the Chinese Christian Council that was organized around the Three-Self Principles, an independent, anti-Three-Self Principle movement rejected nondenominationalism and government collaboration and refused to denounce missionaries. It distrusted government overtures and maintained a secretive structure. 8

Chinese Christians explain this remarkable tenacity in much the same way the last generation of departing missionaries rationalized their careers. Within the atheistic darkness, James T. Williams professed to see the flickering candles of small groups of Christians meeting across China. Though he perceived no foreseeable time when religious freedom would return to China, neither did he believe that the light could be extinguished.9 Sanford Ayers reminded the FMB as he departed China in 1949 that Christianity had always thrived on martyrdom, and Communist persecution might actually make China's church stronger. Chinese sources confirm that this consequence did indeed occur. The courageous suffering of Chinese Christians authenticated their faith and earned the respect of non-Christians.10

The form of modern Chinese Christianity has certainly changed. The Chinese Christian Council eschews denominationalism. Many of its pastors are women. It remains self-consciously independent of Western influence. But the missionaries obviously planted the seed well and it now flourishes. Traditional hymns punctuate services that contain as

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many young people, who have no memory of the missionaries, as old ones who first learned the hymns. Older members still identify their church structures according to the denomination of the missionary who helped build them. 11

Not all the innovative aspects of contemporary Chinese Christianity differ markedly from the final generation of missionaries. When Bishop K. H. Ting, the director of the Chinese Christian Council, endorsed the Three-Self Principles and called for a de-Westernized church in China, he did not violate the spirit of missionaries who had long argued for an indigenous Chinese church. Unfortunately, many advocates of such a church in principle, such as Willie Kelly and T. W. Ayers, never foresaw a time when Chinese Christians would seem ready for independence. But in this regard T. P. and Martha Crawford were well ahead of their times. The Crawfords' demand for self-support and refusal to subsidize Chinese churches or converts anticipated the Three-Self Movement by a century though they had nothing to say about self-governing or self-propagating. Indeed, many Alabama missionaries expressed serious reservations about the ability of the Chinese to lead and govern their own churches. But such reservations declined with the passing of time. When Virginia Atkinson spoke to the ME Church Woman's Missionary Council in 1927 she forthrightly endorsed all three principles of national church sovereignty, then concluded: ''The Orient has its own contribution to make to the Christian religion, which was born in the Orient. Let us give the Orient a chance [to govern itself]." She, like most Alabama missionaries, regretted Western political domination of China.12

Ruth Berckman lived long enough to evaluate these new events. In 1981 she endorsed the Three-Self Principles and the creation of an indigenous Chinese church. She understood why Chinese believed Christianity to be a foreign religion and why they no longer desired missionaries. She and her husband and the ME Church, South, had been transferring leadership of mission institutions to Chinese before the Communist revolution, but not fast enough. The task of missionaries, she conceded, was to work themselves out of jobs.13

The Missionary Diaspora

One powerful but largely overlooked consequence of China's closing was the dispersal of missionaries throughout Chinese-speaking regions of Asia. Following a furlough in Albertville, Hoadley and Ruth Berck-

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man went to Singapore in 1951 where the population was three-quarters Chinese. Ruth's brother, Edmond Rice, also returned to Asia after a six-year medical practice in Gastonia, North Carolina, serving as medical director of the United Christian Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan. 14

The Berckmans' Methodist colleague, Louise Robinson, entered administration, serving as executive secretary for China and Southeast Asia for the Methodist Mission Board. In this capacity she charted denominational strategy and traveled extensively throughout the region.15

James T. Williams retired to Alabama but devoted his leisure to writing a book about the experiences of Southern Baptist China missionaries during the Japanese war and the civil war that followed. He chronicled the dispersion of SBC missionaries to Korea, Taiwan, Macao, Hong Kong, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia, and Hawaii. All these except Hawaii were new mission fields for the SBC. He saw the closing of China as a way of opening new fields of service and predicted, correctly as it turned out, that in time Christians from these countries might spread the gospel to China.16

These 1940s refugees continued their service to China when they returned to Alabama. Their work continued a long tradition. After Eliza Shuck died, her husband Lewis brought their children back to the United States in 1851. Three years later the SBC Home Mission Board asked him to move to California to minister to thousands of southerners who had moved there during the gold rush. He assumed the pastorate of a small mainly southern church but immediately began helping Negroes organize a congregation as well as working among Chinese. When Chinese immigrants discovered that he was fluent in their language, they called on him to help them with legal and health problems. This assistance resulted in the formation of the first Chinese Baptist church in the United States in January 1860. He gave up his pastorate to devote all his time to the new ministry, and one of his converts returned to Canton, where Shuck had first served, to become a renowned Chinese preacher.17

B. W. Whilden left China after his wife died in the 1870s to invest his life among Chinese railroad workers in northern Alabama. He also pastored churches in Alabama and lectured on China, taking up an offering for the FMB after each lecture. He once boasted that he had raised more money for Chinese missions while in the United States than he would have had he finished his career in China. Nor did he consider his American career greatly different from his missionary service in China. His oldest daughter, Jumelle, married Nicholas Williams and went with

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him to China. Whilden's younger daughter, Lula, accompanied her sister and thus became the first single woman on a foreign field since the unsuccessful SBC attempt to place a single woman in Canton before the Civil War. When Jumelle Williams became too ill to remain in China, the family returned to Alabama in 1876 where Nicholas Williams became pastor of Gadsden's First Baptist Church. The couple desperately wanted to return to China and even inquired about pastoring a Chinese congregation in California if her health forced them to remain in the United States. Even though they finally remained in Alabama, Williams became an extremely effective agent for the FMB, preaching frequently about China missions as well as raising substantial amounts of money. 18

T. W. Ayers probably set the record for money raising after retirement. Although he refused to retire until his seventies, he lived to age ninety-six and remained actively involved on behalf of the FMB for most of two decades. His work for the board organizing Schools of Missions not only educated Southern Baptists about foreign missions but also became a powerful institution for raising money. He also recruited Alice Huey to coordinate the schools in Alabama. Although he officially discussed all SBC mission fields at the meetings, he wrote his book Healing and Missions to be used as a text in the schools, and it focused on China. Given his influence as field representative for the FMB, his effectiveness as a speaker, and the veneration in which Southern Baptists held him, it is no wonder that by the late 1930s more than half of all SBC foreign missionaries served in China.19

Other missionaries spent their retirements just as effectively. Willie Kelly retired to Montgomery where she lectured and raised money for China relief and Old North Gate Baptist Church. Virginia Atkinson finally retired to live with relatives in Opelika after fifty-seven years of service and spent her last years promoting China missions. Cynthia Miller refused to retire until her niece, whose way she had paid through college, was ready to replace her. David and Mildred Bryan returned to Alabama in 1926 after twelve years in China to lead the Eutaw and Livingston Baptist churches. In 1940 they applied for reappointment to China but were rejected because of health problems. They reconciled themselves by turning their Alabama congregations into firm supporters of China missions. Mary Anderson left her girls' school in Canton for years of service as a teacher in Texas and Mobile. Before she died at the age of 104, she lectured and wrote extensively about China. A. Y. and Lois Napier brought their enthusiasm for China to the pastorate of the Centerville Baptist Church and also served on the state mission

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board. H. W. Provence returned to his native South Carolina where he pastored and taught English and religion at Furman University. Later he became president of Greenville Woman's College. 20

In addition to their speaking and money raising on behalf of China, many Alabama missionaries advanced the cause of missions by their writing. Most of them were well educated, and while home on furloughs they sensed the enormous amount of interest in their China careers. The country remained an exotic fascination for Americans throughout the twentieth century. Many missionaries began to write their reminiscences both to educate fellow citizens about China and to preserve their experiences for their families. At least eleven of the forty-seven Alabama missionaries wrote books, pamphlets, unpublished manuscripts, or other extensive accounts of their experiences. At least four of themMartha and T. P. Crawford, Willie Kelly, and H. W. Provencealso wrote books in Chinese. A number of them became subjects of mission study books distributed by their denominations. The Baptist FMB selected Kelly as part of its "Much to Dare" series of books for Baptist youth, and the resultant volume, Willie Hays Kelly of China: White-Haired Lady of Shanghai, educated an entire generation of preteenage Baptists about her life.21

Their Children after Them

Another extension of missionary lives came through relatives. Ten of the forty-seven Alabama missionaries had children, cousins, brothers, or sisters who also served as missionaries in Asia, all but one of them in China.

Although missionaries influenced a wide circle of Alabamians, their legacy to their own children was most dramatic. Nine children of the families served as missionaries to China: three each from the Stuart and Ayers families, two from the Whildens, one adopted child from the Crawfords. For these families, the decision of a child to enter mission work was a profound affirmation. T. W. Ayers wrote the head of the FMB when he heard that his son Sanford had been appointed physician to Ayers's old hospital at Hwanghsien: "I know of nothing over which I would rejoice more than the going of this boy of mine to take up the work I had to lay down on account of the health of his mother."22

The three sons of Mary and John Stuart who survived to adulthood all returned to China as Presbyterian missionaries. David, a physician, was killed in a hunting accident not long after his return. But Warren

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and Leighton both served distinguished careers in their own right. Warren lived with his parents in Hangchow after completing seminary and a Ph.D. program at Yale, serving as evangelist and later as teacher at Hangchow Christian College. In 1924 he became professor in the interdenominational Nanking Theological Seminary. After he was nearly killed and his house and possessions were destroyed in fighting between Communist and Nationalist forces during the late 1920s, he and his wife returned to the United States where he pastored and taught in a series of Presbyterian institutions. In 1943 he went to Washington where he worked for fourteen years in international development, using his Chinese language skills to improve U.S.-Asian relations. There he also developed a close association with his brother, Leighton, who had remained in China as president of Yenching University until he became U.S. ambassador in 1947. A scholar as well as a minister, Warren Stuart's doctoral thesis at Yale was published in 1932 by Oxford University Press. 23

Leighton Stuart was delighted to leave the preaching ministry, a role that his liberal theology made difficult, for education. For a while he also taught at Nanking Theological Seminary. Then he went to Peking where he merged a group of small missionary colleges into combined, interdenominational Yenching University. With the fund-raising assistance of Henry R. Luce, himself a son of missionaries and founder of the vast Time-Life publishing empire in the United States, Stuart built Yenching into China's premier missionary college. The Harvard-Yenching Institute of Chinese Studies was the first such department at any of the Western-founded schools. Dr. Hu Shih, president of Peking University and Chinese ambassador to the United States between 1946 and 1949, considered Leighton Stuart to be one of the most remarkable and enlightened missionaries ever to serve in China. And although Stuart did not share the evangelical enthusiasm of his parents, he did praise more fundamentalist missionaries for their intellect, high purpose, and unselfish devotion to the Chinese people. Although he acknowledged the presence of rice Christians, he believed that Christianity had profoundly affected China, not so much in the numbers converted as in the faithfulness, even to martyrdom, of many Chinese Christians and their influence within the government and professions.24

Of course the vast majority of missionary children chose not to join their parents in China. But none escaped the profound influence of that country. Most were bilingual, speaking a dialect of Chinese. And they thought of themselves very differently than if they had grown up in Ala-

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bama. The agony experienced by the Stuart children when the family returned to Mobile on furlough was not unusual. Missionary children often felt more comfortable in China than in Alabama.

Whether or not they shared their parents' evangelistic goals, offspring oftentimes adopted their social values. 25 Notions of racial equality, service to humanity, cosmopolitan social values, and internationalism characterized missionary children and shaped their lives.

Harry Ayers grew up in Hwanghsien, where he was deeply influenced by Lottie Moon. He used her library, and she taught him Greek and Latin. He traveled with her to Japan and the United States and later wrote: "To know her was not only a liberal education. It was a spiritual benediction." Ayers returned to Calhoun County for his education at Jacksonville State University, then began working for his father's old newspaper. In time he became editor and publisher of the Anniston Star, which he transformed into one of the most international newspapers in the state. Although he remained intrigued by China all his life, he extended his interests to other countries and to Alabama politics. He managed the successful gubernatorial campaign of progressive reformer Thomas E. Kilby and later served as delegate to and member of the platform committee at the 1928 Democratic National Convention. After Harry S. Truman upset Thomas E. Dewey for the presidency in 1948, the president allegedly offered Ayers an ambassadorial post in Italy because of the Alabamian's loyalty to the Democratic Party and lifelong interest in foreign affairs.26

The two sons of Ruth and Hoadley Berckman attended Wofford College in South Carolina. Edward served for two years with the Methodist Mission Board in India before continuing his education in Boston and Chicago. He then became an Episcopal priest, preaching and teaching at Indiana State University. Their other son, Howard, served in the U.S. Army, which sent him to study linguistics at the University of Michigan where he earned a master's degree. He learned Japanese to supplement his Chinese and spent many years in Okinawa, Japan, and Korea with U.S. occupation forces.27

Ruth Provence studied at Greenville Woman's College in South Carolina, Peabody College, and the WMU Training School. She then served as an administrator for the WMU, providing money and support for missionary families like her own.28

N. Campbell and Bunyan Davie Napier were both powerfully and radically affected by their parents' twenty-seven-year sojourn in China. Davie attended Howard College (now Samford University) before earn-

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ing his Ph.D. at Yale. The racial notions of their parents, typical of China missionaries but unacceptable in the South, caused problems for both of the boys when they returned to the United States. Both became Baptist ministers, but Campbell was mercilessly hounded from a long pastorate in Virginia for being a "nigger-lover," and Davie was virtually put on trial by the 1940 Alabama Baptist Convention for his alleged heretical teachings at Judson College. Switching to the Congregational ministry, he pastored in New York before beginning a series of university chaplaincies at the University of Georgia, Stanford University, and Yale. He also served as president of the Pacific School of Religion, wrote widely, served as a Fulbright fellow in Germany, and lectured at Rice, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale Universities. At the end of his career he held the Holmes Professorship of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale. 29

The Legacy

Of course in the long term the influence of these forty-seven lives depends not upon their children but upon their own accomplishments. Such historical judgment is not easy or simple.

The initial problem is the definition of "success" and "failure." To historians and even to many Christians, missionary success carried a quantitative meaning: how many Chinese became Christians? To the missionaries success was more frequently a qualitative definition: how profoundly did their new faith change the lives of Chinese converts and how profoundly did Christianity change China? As survivors returned to China in the 1980s and discovered an indigenous Chinese Christian church alive, vital, and thriving, they interpreted this reality as their vindication. The question of whether 1, 5, or 50 percent of all Chinese were Protestant Christians was not their measure. But historians, like many fundamentalist evangelicals, are far more likely to insist on a quantitative measure of success, and by that standard even extravagant Protestant claims of loo million Chinese Christians in 1993 represent only a small fraction of China's population.

One must also weigh the limited success of missionaries against the daunting challenge. Learning Chinese dialects was certainly one of the most formidable linguistic challenges of their time. Living in China, especially bearing and rearing children, was a life-threatening challenge.

Whatever else one can say about these people, one cannot accuse

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them of shirking responsibility or lack of will. They tested themselves against one of the most challenging societies in the world. Tolerant, synergistic Chinese culture allowed people to claim Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist, and Christian values, all at the same time. Preaching exclusive fidelity to Christ within such a culture was not likely to win numerous converts. Such a challenge caused French existentialist novelist André Malraux to write of a China missionary in one of his novels: "This man lived his idea. He was something more than a restless bundle of flesh."

To charges of cultural imperialism, missionaries could respond that Marxism, like Christianity, was a Western import seeking Chinese roots. Its imposition of agricultural collectives that divided families by generation, its birth-control and child-planning policies, its advocacy of women's rights and industrial modernization struck at China's cultural traditions in ways not unlike Christianity. Mao Tse-tung's attempts to adapt an alien ideology to China are not entirely dissimilar to Chinese Christian Council Bishop K. H. Ting's post-1950 efforts to do the same for Christianity. Certainly all Western ideas filtering into China were, and still are, altered by Confucian values, Taoist folkways, and Buddhist notions of history. And in light of the political and religious events transpiring in China after 1988, Christianity may have as much staying power as Marxism/Maoism. It appeared certain by the 1990s that Marxism/Maoism was a beleaguered, authoritarian, and corrupt ideology on the defensive, while Christianity was an expansionist, attractive philosophy on the offensive. But no one familiar with the abrupt cycles of Chinese history would dare speculate on the likely outcome of such a brief moment in China's long cycle of centuries.

There are some quite concrete ways of measuring the success of missionaries in China. Only a fraction of 1 percent of Chinese became Christians between 1850 and 1950. But that tiny percentage badly underestimates the impact because converts tended to be concentrated in urban and coastal areas that furnished much of China's leadership. Christians played key roles in the Nationalist revolution, as well as in educational, medical, and scientific reform. Lewis Shuck baptized Sun Yat-sen, father of the Republic of China. In 1934 China contained 2 missionary hospitals for each Chinese facility. The 300 missionary hospitals, half of them American, contained 75 percent of all civilian hospital beds in the country. Missionaries established schools of agriculture, forestry, and agricultural extension programs. Three missionary universitiesYenching, Saint John's, and Tsing Huaranked among

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the best in China. In 1934 China had twenty-six medical colleges, fourteen of them operated by missionaries. The most renowned centers of Western medicinethe Peking Union Medical College established by the Rockefeller Foundation and closely related to the work of Adrian S. Taylor and T. W. Ayers, the Medical and Dental Schools of West China Union University at Chengtu, the Yale-in-China Medical College in Ch'angshawere all missionary or foreign sponsored. By 1936 missionaries had raised $50 million for China famine relief. In 1925, thirteen Protestant colleges received graduates from 330 middle schools that enrolled 25,000 students. By the 1940s more than a quarter of all Chinese college graduates held degrees from mission-supported colleges. Four of the five Chinese delegates to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 had studied in mission schools, as had sixteen of twenty-one women mentioned in the 1930 edition of Who's Who in China (and thirteen of the sixteen were professing Christians). Mary Anderson boasted in her history of southern China Protestant girls' schools that of 333 women graduates of four Christian colleges, 215 entered the professions. Ironically many of these mission school graduates played an equally significant role in the Communist government. Lu Ping, China's leading official on Hong Kong affairs in the 1990s, graduated from Saint Johns, as did Rong Yiren, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress; Bishop K. H. Ting of the Chinese Christian Council; Wu Shun-wen, Taiwan's auto tycoon; Daniel Koo, Hong Kong's department store billionaire; and world-renowned architect I. M. Pei. When Saint Johns held its first alumni reunion in 1992, 1,700 of its 6,500 graduates returned to Shanghai from throughout the world. 30

Alabama's China missionaries contributed their share to these institutions. One graduate of Martha Crawford's Shantung school became editor of Scientific Magazine published in Shanghai. Another of her students, Chu Yuan Shiun, became T. W. Ayers's lifelong language teacher, hospital evangelist, and devoted friend. One of his sons, Chu Pao Ch'in, became a physician and worked with Ayers at the Hwanghsien hospital for twenty-five years, then took Ayers's place upon his retirement. Ayers called him the finest Christian he had ever known on either side of the Pacific. A second son, Chu Pao T'ien, became one of Ayers's first medical students, completed a degree in dentistry in Peking, and became a member of the faculty there. A daughter, Lillian Chu, came to the United States where she became a successful concert pianist.31

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Proud as they were of such triumphs, Alabama missionaries tended to write more about ordinary people. Emma Boardman remembered a blind girl whose father physically abused her. Boardman rescued the adolescent and taught her Braille, how to knit, and how to teach other blind people. So renowned did Boardman become for such acts of kindness that the Chinese in Hangchow called her Kuan Yin, goddess of mercy. T. W. Ayers rejoiced in the inscription on a monument erected to him by the people of Hwanghsien: "He treated the rich and poor alike." The monument, allegedly only the second ever erected by Chinese to a foreigner, came after he remained at his hospital during two frightful cholera epidemics. The first two presidents of the Republic of China presented him with Medals of Honor, as did the Chinese Red Cross. His correspondence contains enough personal and collective tributes to validate the deep affection that Chinese felt for him. 32

One evidence of the respect in which both Chinese and Alabamians held missionaries was the number who had churches and institutions named in their honor. An Ayers building appeared in Hwanghsien's hospital compound. Stuart Memorial Church in Hangchow honored the Mobile missionary family. Alabama's WMU contributed $25,000 in 1947 to build a memorial chapel in honor of Willie Kelly. South Roebuck Baptist Church in Birmingham named a mission scholarship fund in honor of Mabel and Frank Woodward. Converts often corresponded with them after their retirements, and a number visited the couple in the United States.33

The impact of missionaries on Alabama is perhaps even more significant than their influence on China. They furnished whatever perceptions most Alabamians had not only of Chinese religion but of its politics, foreign policy, and culture. They inspired many fellow citizens to volunteer for missions and hundreds of thousands to contribute money, time, and prayers on behalf of this enterprise. The SBC Lottie Moon Christmas offering raised hundreds of millions of dollars for missions during the twentieth century.

Through people such as T. W. Ayers, Davie Napier, and Leighton Stuart, Alabama missionaries reached a national audience. Historians have long acknowledged that missionaries pioneered the academic study of China in both the United Kingdom and the United States.34 Even American historians who are generally critical of the missionary enterprise acknowledge that missionaries played a central role in shaping American attitudes toward the country. Henry Luce, Leighton Stuart, and Pearl Buck especially left lasting impressions on American

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public opinion and foreign policy. The mission movement became a model for U.S. policy in developing countries, affecting foreign aid programs and the structure of the Peace Corps. 35

The final consideration in the evaluation of missionary success or failure is the impact China had on missionaries. Every mission enterprise involves two cultures, the sending one as well as the host culture. Alabama's Protestant culture was parochial, sectarian, racist, conversion oriented, and hierarchical. China's culture was parochial, tolerant, synergistic, and hierarchical. The collision of these two cultures cannot be understood if the only pattern is that favored by historians on both sides of the Pacific, the model of American cultural imperialism and Chinese cultural resistance. Although most missionaries left Alabama with precisely such intentions, the longer they stayed in China the less certain they were of the exclusive efficacy of their own values. Like Lottie Moon, they began to cringe when thoughtless colleagues or uninformed Americans referred to Chinese as ''heathens." Mary Anderson, Ruth and Hoadley Berckman, A. Y. and Lois Napier, John, Mary, and Leighton Stuart, and James T. Williams especially came to see China as a culturally rich civilization superior in many ways to the United States, and they sought ways to harmonize traditional Chinese thought with Christianity rather than wipe out indigenous culture. Virtually all Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries and even a few Baptists (notably T. W. Ayers and A. Y. and Lois Napier) surmounted their Alabama sectarianism for a more unified and ecumenical vision of China. Overwhelmed by the vast size of China's landscape, population, poverty, and deprivation, threatened constantly by its civil strife and anarchy, missionaries who insisted on strict observance of denominational doctrine and polity while in Alabama welcomed cooperation and unity when in China.

A majority of Alabama missionaries also departed from the strict evangelicalism of their homeland. Virtually all proclaimed the primacy of preaching and evangelism when they departed for China. But years of trying to master the language and Chinese indifference to their sermons convinced many that Christ could minister through their actions as well as through their words. The preponderance of women missionaries further complicated the task of preaching. So in time the vast majority of Alabama missionaries spent most of their time not in preaching, as their culture suggested they should, but in social ministries, which their home denominations often disavowed. They conducted their most effective evangelism through schools, hospitals, vocational

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programs, and institutional churches. Even those who most urgently felt called to full-time evangelismCynthia Miller, T. W. Ayers, and Martha Crawfordspent more of their careers as physicians and teachers than as preachers. But it is important to realize that they saw social ministries and evangelism as complementary not contradictory.

Gender played a primary role in this redefinition of function. In Alabama none of the three denominations allowed women to preach. Yet in China, Southern Baptists Martha Crawford, Addie Cox, Alice Huey, Irene Jeffers, and Willie Kelly did just that. Kelly even endorsed the selection of women deacons and served in that role herself. What she experienced in China would not have been permitted by her Wilcox County home church. Perhaps this freedom from the societal strictures of Alabama explains why so many single women especially came to think of themselves as Chinese and their home as China. Certainly Virginia Atkinson, Martha Crawford, Willie Kelly, and Mary Stuart fit this pattern. Stuart asked to be buried in Hangchow. When Virginia Atkinson died, she had her ashes buried in Opelika until they could be transferred to China. Willie Kelly never felt at home in Montgomery after leaving her beloved home in Shanghai. Martha Crawford, in a decision that revealed much about her troubled marriage, declared that she wished to be buried in Shantung, where she labored for so long, rather than beside her husband in the United States.

Women forced by circumstance to survive the rigors of China did not long remain dependent and subservient. Like pioneer women in all societies, they discovered their own capacity to cope with all circumstances. Willie Kelly might well be described as overpowering, and she tended to ignore or resist FMB decisions that she disliked. Cynthia Miller became an assertive and sometimes acerbic missionary. Martha Crawford and Mary Thornton Bostick joined their husbands in full-scale rebellion against the FMB. China transformed Virginia Atkinson from an insecure, shy teenager into a confident, successful missionary. Her dread of furloughs because she feared speaking gave way to an effective and compelling public personality. After her thirty-two-year career in China, Louise Robinson traveled by herself throughout the Orient as a Methodist Mission Board administrator. One of her trips to Borneo took her alone up miles of river to confer with women in a house decorated with sixteen human skulls, trophies of the tribe's recent history as headhunters. Everywhere she went, men asked why an unescorted woman took such risks. For her the risks were trifling compared to her years in China. 36

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Louise Robinson, Methodist

teacher/principal, who served

for thirty-two years in Soochow

and Shanghai.

(Courtesy of Wayne Flynt/Gerald W. Berkley)

Certainly such women were motivated by a sense of call, a feeling of divine destiny. But they also experienced adventures not available to women in Alabama and attained heroine status when they returned home. Fellow Alabamians listened to them at state religious conventions, allowed them to speak (not preach, although the distinction between speaking and preaching was never very clear) in churches, and acknowledged their wisdom in matters of Chinese foreign policy, geography, history, linguistics, and comparative religion.

One concludes the study of their lives convinced that China changed them more than they changed China. Davie Napier confirmed the creation of a third culture that was neither Alabamian nor Chinese but some fusion of the two: "My parents' China years moved them increasingly away (and probably more than they even knew) from 'typically Southern Baptist culture.' Through all my life with them they were outraged by 'our' treatment of American Indians and Afro-Americans . . . ; and, in another manner of departure, they advocated several times the merger of duplicated schools run by Southern Baptists and some other denomination." He also attributed his own racial tolerance as well as that of his brother to their years in China. Harry Ayers described his

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father's experience in similar fashion: "It was in China that Father really came to himself." 37

T. W. Ayers's journalist grandson, Brandt, discovered both dimensions of his famous grandfather on a nostalgic 1985 trip to Hwanghsien. He had long marveled at his grandfather's transformation in China. The Ayers family had always been addicted to politics, and T. W. Ayers had been active and astute both in Georgia and in Alabama politics before he left the United States. Ayers had arrived in China during the Boxer Rebellion and had lived through the 1911 revolution and establishment of the Republic of China. He had survived civil wars and received government decorations. Yet his letters and books made no mention of politics. Instead he plunged into a world of incredible diseases, lost three of his nine children and his wife to them, administered a large medical complex, created and taught in his medical school, preached continuously, dominated the Baptist North China Mission, and sent a cascade of letters and reports to the Foreign Mission Board. China, in short, created a different sort of man with altered priorities.

Brandt Ayers also discovered what his grandfather received in return. When he arrived in Hwanghsien he was greeted at his hotel by a delegation of community dignitaries: the county supervisor, mayor, a television crew, and numerous ordinary citizens. An eighty-five-yearold woman whom T. W. Ayers had treated for tuberculosis when she was fourteen described him as a man who always smiled and joked with patients in order to persuade them to take their medicine. Brandt Ayers quickly recognized that the demands of ministry in China left no time for politics.

Hwanghsien contained only shadows of T. W. and Willie Ayers. Their church and the monument to him were damaged by a Japanese dive-bomber during the Second World War. In 1957 both were leveled for a new road. The Communist government later occupied what was left of the hospital. The family piano from the old Baptist church accompanied hymns in the new church completed in 1983. One of T. W. Ayers's former students was deacon in the new 600-member congregation. Another of his converts pastored a large church in Shanghai. The well he dug to provide pure water for his hospital remained. And that well furnished an opportunity for the mayor to place all missionary lives in context. Toasting the legacy of Dr. T. W. Ayers, he quoted a Chinese proverb: "You who drink the water, do not forget the person who dug the well."38

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Appendix

Missionary Biographies

Floy (White) Adams. Baptist. Evangelist. Born in Brooklyn, Ala., 1883. Father a Baptist minister, descended from long line of Baptist ministers. Mother died three years before Floy's call to China. Educated at Orville Academy, Dothan High Sch., Judson Coll. (graduated in 1903), WMU Training Sch. (graduated in 1909). Converted at age 12; called during revival in Georgia after four years teaching in Alabama and Georgia. Married Wayne W. Adams, a China mission volunteer and seminary classmate. Served in Tungchow and Dairen (Manchuria), 34 years, 1909-43.

Mary Raleigh Anderson. Baptist. Teacher. Born in Blue Mountain, Miss., 1878. Lived in Mobile 80 years before and after her China service. Grandfather began Blue Mountain Baptist Coll.; mother taught there; father a Baptist minister, began Prichard Baptist Church in Mobile, 1909. Strong, stable family life. Conversion at age nine. Education: city schools in Memphis, Blue Mountain Baptist Coll. (graduated in 1900), M.A. from Peabody Coll., Ph.D. from Columbia Univ. Single. An aunt, Janie Lowrey Graves, who taught over 50 years in China, founded Baptist girls' school in Canton, where Mary later came to teach. Taught college for 10 years in USA before going to China; taught at Pei Tao Academy, Canton; later taught at Murphy High Sch., Mobile, and Wayland Baptist Coll. Served 18 years in China, 1917-35. Published a quasi autobiography and history of education for women in southern China.

Virginia M. Atkinson. Methodist. Evangelistic missionary, educator. Born in Georgia, 1861. Came to Rock Mills, Ala., 1869. Father a minister (not Methodist); adoptive father who raised her managed a textile mill. Unstable family life. Mother and stepmother died; given to relatives by father and second stepmother. Converted at age 14; "always" wanted to be a missionary in China. Graduated from LaGrange (Methodist) Coll., Ga., 1880, with first

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honors. Single. Served in Shanghai and Soochow; 57 years in China, 1884-1941. Subject of a denominational biography; wrote a book about day schools in Soochow.

Sanford Emmett Ayers. Baptist. Physician, teacher, high school principal. Born in Anniston, Ala., 1899. Parents were Thomas Wilburn and Willie Mindora (Skelton) Ayers, China missionaries. Stable, strong family. Converted at age 11 in China; felt called at age 17. Graduated from Wake Forest Coll., 1921; Medical Coll. of Univ. of Louisville, 1931. Single when appointed to missions; met and married while in language school in Peking. Served in Pingtu, Hwanghsien, Chengchow; total of 15 years in China, 1921-26, 1934-41, 1946-49.

Thomas Wilburn Ayers. Baptist. Physician, pharmacist, evangelist, newspaper owner. Born Ayersville, Ga., 1858. Moved to Anniston, Ala., in the 1880s. Father a merchant, judge. Strong, stable family. Converted at age 15; called to preach while a young deacon. Educated in Carnesville, Ga.; attended a year of Univ. of Georgia Sch. of Medicine; Coll. of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore, Md., 1886; postgraduate work at New York Polyclinic, N.Y., 1917. Married Willie Mindora Skelton; nine children, three became China missionaries. Served in Hwanghsien; 24 years in China, 1901-25. Resigned because of wife's health. Wrote autobiography and one other book.

Willie Mindora (Skelton) Ayers. Baptist. Mother, wife. Born Calhoun County, Ala., 1869. Father a dentist. Did not graduate from high school. Married T. W. Ayers; nine children, three became China missionaries. Served in Hwanghsien; 24 years in China, 1901-25. Resigned because of poor health.

Ruth (Rice) Berckman. Methodist. Women's worker, wife, mother. Born in Covin, Ala., 1900. Father a Methodist minister. Second of six children; strong, stable family. Graduated from Athens (Methodist) Coll., 1921. Married to mission volunteer to China Hoadley Berckman, who was born in New York, educated in Tennessee; two sons, one a missionary in India. Served in Shanghai, Changchow; 30 years in China, 1921-51.

Mary Stuart Bissett. Presbyterian. Registered nurse. Born in Bowling Green, Ky.; moved to Decatur, Ala., at six months, then to Birmingham. Educated in public schools; two years, Birmingham Kindergarten Training Sch.; three years, Chicago Presbyterian Hospital Training Sch. for Nurses. Single. Background in Christian Endeavor, read Christian Observer; called at a

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Christian Endeavor meeting. Served at Haichow; eight years in China, 1919-27.

Emma Boardman. Presbyterian. Born in Greensboro, Ala., 1851. Godly family, large number of sisters. Single. Did preaching and personal work among women and children in Hangchow; 31 years in China, 1894-1925.

Albert Crossland Bowen. Methodist. Teacher, principal. Born in Lawrenceville, Dale County, Ala., 1865. Educated at Birmingham-Southern (Methodist) Coll., Vanderbilt Univ., and Univ. of Chicago. Called during college. Teacher and principal of Laura Haygood Sch. Served in Soochow and Shanghai; 31 years in China, 1901-32. Subject of a denominational biography.

David Bryan. Baptist. Teacher, evangelist. Born at Yantley, Ala., 1884. One of nine children: three brothers, five sisters; father a farmer. Converted at age 15. Educated in public schools of Yantley; B.A., Howard Coll. (Baptist); Th.M., Th.D., Southern Baptist Theol. Sem.; ordained to preach in Yantley in 1907. Married Mildred Thorne, 1914; two sons and one daughter born in China. Worked in Hwanghsien and Pingtu; 12 years in China, 1914-26.

Mildred (Thorne) Bryan. Baptist. Wife, mother. Born in Furman, Ala., 1887. Family from Norfolk, Va. Attended Denison Univ. one year; WMU Training Sch. two years. Married David Bryan, China missionary, same year they went to China; two sons and one daughter born in China. Worked at Hwanghsien and Pingtu; 12 years in China, 1914-26.

Jo Carr. Baptist. Registered nurse. Born in Tenela, Monroe County, Ala., 1887. Single. Four years at Yangchow, 1915-19.

Addie Estelle Cox. Baptist. Teacher, evangelistic worker. Born in Providence, Ala., 1885. Father prosperous; stable, strong family; solid Christian education. Converted at age 14; called during college (influenced by Martha Foster Crawford, who belonged to the same Baptist association). Graduated from Central Coll., Tuscaloosa; WMU Training Sch., 1913. Cousin was George P. Bostick, a China missionary. Single. In Alabama a "pastor's assistant"; four years as a WMU field worker. In China two years as teacher, then country evangelistic worker. In Kaifeng area 33 years, 1918-51. Wrote autobiography and cowrote book.

Martha (Foster) Crawford. Baptist. Teacher, women's evangelistic worker, wife. Born in Jasper County, Ga., 1830. Moved to Tuscaloosa County, Ala., in 1832. Distinguished, stable Alabama family; father a Baptist deacon and

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large Tuscaloosa County planter. Converted at age 15; at age 19 called during a revival in 1849. Educated at LaFayette Inst., Chambers County, Ala.; Mesopotamia Female Academy, Eutaw, Ala. Married missionary Tarleton Perry Crawfordjust before leaving for China; adopted two English children, no natural offspring. Adopted daughter became a China missionary. In Shanghai, Tungchow, 58 years, 1852-1909. Subject of two theses, several chapters in books. Multivolume diary/journal; wrote six books in English (including two books of catechism, a cookbook, a fictionalized autobiography, several books of Christian doctrine).

Mary Elaine Crotwell. Baptist. Born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1922. Single. Two years in China, 1948-50.

Lora (Nabers) Head. Presbyterian. Born Red Bay, Ala., 1905. Married Walter H. Head. One year at Hwaian, 1926-27.

Walter H. Head. Presbyterian. Physician. Born Blountsville, Ala., 1899. Graduated from Tulane Univ. Married Lora Nabers. One year at Hwaian, 1926-27.

Thomas 0. Hearn. Baptist. Physician, teacher, evangelist. Born Brooksville, Ala., 1877. Father a farmer. Converted at age 17. Four years of Blount County public schools; one year Blount County Coll.; in medical school president of YMCA; attended missions conferences; medical schools Nashville, Baltimore, graduated 1904. Taught school two years in Alabama. Married at the time he applied to the Foreign Mission Board. Elected president Marshall County Medical Society. In Pingtu, Laiyang, 18 years, 1907-25. Resigned because of wife's health.

Emma C. (Dickson) Hollis. Baptist. Wife, mother. Born in Huntsville, Ala., 1923. One parent a teacher; strong, stable, supportive family. Alumna of Howard Coll. Married James D. Hollis. One year in Canton, 1948-49; expelled by Communists; went on to Macao and Hong Kong.

James D. Hollis. Baptist. Evangelist. Born in Cullman, Ala., 1922. Father a small farmer; solid, secure, sympathetic background. Graduated from Howard Coll.; Southern Baptist Theol. Sem., Th.M. Married Emma Dickson. One year in Canton, 1948-49; expelled by Communists; went on to Macao, Hong Kong.

Mary Alice Huey. Baptist. Country women's evangelistic worker. Born Jefferson County, Ala., 1877, of godly parents. Degree from Judson Coll., 1902; WMU Training Sch. Single. In Laichow 29 years, 1907-26, 1933-41.

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Clarabel Isdell. Baptist. Principal of girls' school, teacher. Born in Albertville, Ala., 1902. Strong, stable family life. Father a small farmer (50 acres) and Baptist pastor. Converted at early age. Educated in public schools; Howard College; WMU Training Sch. Called to China when her youth group heard talk by female missionary. Taught English in Alabama high school during Great Depression; summer WMU field worker while waiting to go to China. Single while in China. Ten years in Yangchow, 1935-45; resigned when she married.

Irene Jeffers. Baptist. Teacher, girls' school supervisor, country women's evangelistic worker. Born in Roanoke, Ala., 1892. One of 15 children; stable, Christian home. Father worked for a railroad. Called at age 10 when Methodist minister spoke on missions. Graduated from Roanoke High Sch.; Univ. of North Alabama, B.A., 1919; Peabody Coll.; Southwestern Baptist Theol. Sem. Influenced to go to China by Willie Kelly. Single. At Yangchow 28 years, 1923-51.

Willie Hays Kelly. Baptist. Teacher, women's worker. Born in Wilcox County, Ala., 1862. Father, Presbyterian, a planter who lost his large plantation after the Civil War. Mother died, and Willie had to raise eight siblings. Converted at 19; called to missionary work by reading missionary letters and literature; father opposed her mission decision. Graduate of Wilcox County schools; Univ. of North Alabama. Single. Had to wait seven years for placement because of lack of funds. In Alabama taught school, was assistant to the missions secretary of the Alabama Baptist Convention. In Shanghai 44 years, 1893-1937. Two biographies of her, both denominational (one for adults, one for children); she wrote two books in Chinese, one on women in the Orient and one on the New Testament.

Joseph G. Meadows. Baptist. Physician. Birthdate, place unknown. Went to medical school. Seven years in China, 1904-11; died of typhoid fever.

Cynthia Adaline Miller. Baptist. Nurse, teacher, principal, women's evangelistic worker. Born in Clay County, Ala., 1868. Eldest of 14 children; lived on small farm in foothills of Talladega Mountain in Clay County. Mother in poor health; raised by grandparents; two brothers, two sisters died. Converted at age 14. Instructed at public schools in Talladega County; Montgomery Infirmary; Galveston Nurse Training Sch., valedictorian; Baylor Univ. summer school; WMU Training Sch. Called at age 22 during mother's illness; father opposed to her mission decision. Served 31 years in Laichow, 1905-36.

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James Nelson Montgomery. Presbyterian. Pastor, evangelist, teacher. Born in Birmingham, Ala., 1887. Strong family, active members of Central Presbyterian Church (which later became Handley Memorial Presbyterian). Went to high school in Birmingham; Washington and Lee Univ.; began law school; graduated from Columbia (S.C.) Theol. Sem. in 1916; M.A., Univ. of South Carolina. Left law school to become a minister; volunteered for missions at Lake Forest summer school. Married, three children. In Hwaian 25 years, 1917-42; in Taiwan from about 1947 to early 1950s.

Lois (Davie) Napier. Baptist. Mother, housewife, college nursing instructor, private nurse in Texas. Born in Clayton, Ala., 1888. Father a prominent merchant, active in Baptist church. Educated at Eufaula District Academy; Judson Coll. Single when appointed, but engaged to China missionary Augustus Young Napier. In Chinkiang 27 years, 1906-32.

Earl Parker. Baptist. Pastor, evangelistic worker. Born in Lineville, Ala., 1888, of godly parents. Converted at age 10; felt called to China in college. Lineville Coll. (prep.); Howard Coll., A.B., 1908, M.A., 1915; Southern Baptist Theol. Sem., Th.M., 1922. Licensed to preach at college at 21. Rural schoolteacher in Alabama, three years. Married woman who also felt called to China just before sailing. Stayed in Pingtu, 30 years, 1922-52.

Herbert Winston Provence. Baptist. Pastor. Born in Greenville, S.C., 1873. Father a Baptist minister, mother a homemaker-teacher. One of four brothers; five sisters; taught at home by mother. Educated at Bethel Coll. (Russellville, Ky.); Univ. of Richmond, B.A., M.A., 1894; Southern Baptist Theol. Sem., Th.M., Th.D., 1898. Married Mary Hall of Virginia, 1898; had one son and one daughter. Came to Alabama as a young preacher, served as pastor to Ensley Baptist Church near Birmingham, state vice-president of FMB and member of Alabama State Mission Board. In China first treasurer of board of trustees of Univ. of Shanghai and first president of China Baptist Conference (representing British and American Baptist missions). Eight years in China, 1904-12. Because of Mary Provence's health doctors advised them not to return to China. Wrote life of Christ in Chinese; pamphlet for FMB, Southern Baptist Work in China.

Edmond Lee Rice. Methodist. Physician. Born in Boaz, Ala., 1905. Father a Methodist minister. One of nine children; strong, stable family; his sister, Ruth (Rice) Berckman, a China missionary. Went to high school in Albertville; Birmingham-Southern Coll., A.B., 1925, and B.S., 1927; Emory Univ. Medical Sch., 1931. Called while in college and working with Student

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Volunteer Movement. In Changchow 13 years, 1934-47; later a missionary in Pakistan.

Louise Robinson. Methodist. Teacher, principal. Born in Morgan County, Ala., 1888. Went to high school in Decatur; Athens Coll., 1906; Univ. of Alabama, B.A.; Scarritt Bible and Training Sch. Single. Called at YWCA convention. Taught school in Alabama. In Soochow and Shanghai 32 years, 1914-46. Later executive secretary for China and Southeast Asia for ME Church, South.

Eliza G. (Sexton) Shuck. Baptist. Teacher, wife, mother. Born in Philadelphia, Pa. Married China missionary Jehu Lewis Shuck. Taught at Judson Coll.; in China conducted women's work. In Shanghai four years, 1847-51; died in childbirth.

Harriett (Campbell) Stout. Baptist. Born Scottsboro, Ala., 1891. Married. At Hwanghsien 15 years, 1914-29.

Mary Louisa (Horton) Stuart. Presbyterian. Teacher, principal, cofounder of school. Born in Mobile, Ala., 1842. Parents originally from New England, had 12 children. Father was mayor of Mobile, an originator of Mobile schools, active Presbyterian elder, probate judge. Converted at age nine or l0. Attended Mobile schools. Taught at girls' school in Mobile. Fiancé was killed in the Civil War; felt called to China after his death. Met and married another mission volunteer, John Linton Stuart; four sons, one daughter. Three sons became China missionaries; one of these, Leighton, also became U.S. ambassador to China (1946-52). Helped establish a school at Hangchow; in China 51 years, 1874-1925. Biography of her written by Chinese Christian.

Adrian S. Taylor. Baptist. Physician. Born in Mobile, Ala., 1883. Father president of railroad company; family active in Saint Francis Street Baptist Church, Mobile. Recruited by Dr. T. W. Ayers. Graduated from medical school; engaged when he volunteered for China; married the year he went to China. Ten years in Yangchow and Peking, 1906-16; resigned to work with China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Richard V. Taylor, Jr. Baptist. Physician. Born in Mobile, Ala., 1886; younger brother of Adrian S. Father president of railroad company; family active in Saint Francis Street Baptist Church, Mobile. Received medical degree; while on furlough in USA interned at Mayo Brothers Hospital. Also recruited by Dr. T. W. Ayers. Worked in Yangchow hospital after his

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brother left, resigned after 15 years there, 1912-27, following Chinese civil war that badly damaged his hospital.

Annie Laura Thomas. Baptist. Educator. Born in Comer, Ala., 1894. Converted at age 12. Troy State Univ. graduate; attended Univ. of Alabama and Howard Coll. Married to Isaac T. Thomas. Two years at Yingtak, 1920-22.

Isaac T. Thomas. Baptist. Principal of boys' school. Born in Greenville, Ala., 1889. Educated in rural schools and Troy State Univ.; Univ. of Alabama, B.S.; Howard Coll., M.A. Married to Annie Laura Thomas. Two years at Yingtak, 1920-22.

Thomas Moses Thomas. Baptist. Born in Union Springs, Ala., 1874. In Soochow four years, 1904-08.

Mary Jane Thornton. Baptist. Teacher. Born in Greene County, Ala., 1862. Father died when she was an infant. Converted at age 14; brother was a missionary. Attended Central Coll., Tuscaloosa. Influenced by Martha (Foster) Crawford, who was from the same Baptist association. Single, married a widowed missionary, George P. Bostick, after her arrival in China. In Shantung Province three years, 1889-92; resigned with her husband to become members of T. P. Crawford's Gospel Mission.

Cecil S. Ward. Baptist. Pastor. Born in Greene County, Ala., 1909. Joined Methodist church as a boy. Went to Bessemer High Sch.; one year at Auburn Univ.; Howard Coll., B.A.; Dallas Theol. Sem. two years; Southwestern Baptist Theol. Sem., Th.D. In Alabama worked for Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. Was minister for seven years in Alabama and Texas churches. Married to Margaret G. Ward. Called in 1939, several months after his wife's call to China. Served in Hong Kong four years, 1940-44.

Margaret Gertrude (Craig) Ward. Baptist. Born in Bessemer, Ala., 1909. Father a merchant; family actively religious. Converted at age nine. Went to Bessemer High Sch.; one year at Montevallo Coll.; Howard Coll., B.A.; Southwestern Baptist Theol. Sem.; read Latin, Spanish, and French. Married to Cecil S. Ward; called to China in 1939, influenced by Prof. W. O. Carver and books she had read. Worked as bookkeeper at Dallas Gas Co. In Hong Kong four years, 1940-44.

James Toy Williams. Baptist. Seminary teacher, organizer, preacher. Born in Clanton, Ala., 1882, one of nine children. Family were poor cotton farmers; parents had strong religious convictions. Converted at age 12. Educated in

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rural schools of Chilton County; Clanton High Sch.; Howard Coll., A.B.; Southern Baptist Theol. Sem., Th.M., Th.D. Called to preach as a teenager; called to China at Howard Coll. at a missionary lecture. Rural schoolteacher in Alabama schools; married a home missionary. Spent 39 years in Canton and Shanghai, 1913-52. Wrote unpublished manuscript entitled ''War, Communism and Mission in China."

Nicholas Butt Williams. Baptist. Teacher, principal, treasurer of Baptist mission. Born in Wetumpka, Ala., 1845. Presbyterian family; mother later joined Baptist church. Father died; one brother. Worked as a clerk, engineer, surveyor, journalist, postmaster in the USA. Converted as young man, called to preach, became missionary soon after his conversion. Attended Southern Baptist Theol. Sem. Just before leaving for Asia, he married Jumelle Whilden, the Canton-born daughter of a missionary; two children. Five years in Canton, 1871-76; resigned because of wife's poor health.

Mabel Elsie (Williams) Woodward. Baptist. Teacher, wife, mother. Born in Maplesville, Ala., 1895. Father farmed a small parcel of land. Conversion at age nine; called while reading mission literature at age 12-13. Attended public schools of Maplesville; Newton Baptist Inst.;Judson Coll., A.B. During her last year in college her mother died, so Mabel helped care for four brothers and three sisters. First cousin was a China missionary. WMU Training School, 1924. In Alabama taught school three years, worked as a missionary to American Indians living in the state. Single when appointed; married another volunteer, Frank T. Woodward, 21 days before sailing for China. Bore three children in six years. Helped teach in girls' school, Wuchow. In China 13 years, 1924-37. Her husband wrote his autobiography.

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Notes

1

The Light of Science and Revelation: The Mission

1. Quoted in Jerome Ch'en, China and the West: Society and Culture, 1815-1937 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 94.

2. Yu-Ming Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart: The Mind of an American Missionary in China, 1876-1941" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1975), 1; Paul Monroe, China: A Nation in Evolution (Chautauqua, N.Y.: Chautauqua Press, 1927), 301-02.

3. John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China, vol. lo, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, pt. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 550.

4. Ch'en, China and the West, 113; William A. Brown, "The Protestant Rural Movement in China (1920-1937)," in American Missionaries in China: Papers from Harvard Seminars, ed. Kwang-Ching Liu (Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1970), 219.

5. Murray A. Rubinstein, "Zion's Corner: Origins of the American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1827-1839" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1976), 388-92, 424, 444.

6. Ch'en, China and the West, 103; Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, 10:548.

7. Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, 10:551.

8. Ch'en, China and the West, 103.

9. Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 2; John K. Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions: A Historical Summary (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 24, 33.

10. Charles W. Forman, "Evangelization and Civilization: Protestant Missionary Motivation in the Imperialist Era: Part II, The Americans," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 6 (April 1982): 54; Patricia R. Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 1-5.

11. Hill, The World Their Household, 161, 183.

12. Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Tur-nof-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 9-10.

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13. Irwin T. Hyatt, Jr., "Protestant Missions in China, 1877-1890: The Institutionalization of Good Works," in Liu, American Missionaries in China, 87, 98-107; Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, 10:574-81.

14. Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 3-8.

15. Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, 10:559-73.

16. Paul A. Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats: The American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890-1952 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 90-94.

17. Ch'en, China and the West, 109; Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 265, 285-86.

18. Forman, "Evangelization and Civilization," 55-56.

19. Carol Berg, "Margaret Thompson in China, 1917-1939," Historian 53 (Spring 1991): 457; Valentin H. Rabe, The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880-1920 (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1978), 79-81; Brown, "Protestant Rural Movement in China," 219.

20. Monroe, China: A Nation in Evolution, 303; Ch'en, China and the West, 135.

21. Ch'en, China and the West, 114-15.

22. Hill, The World Their Household, 170-75.

23. Ibid., 127, 129.

24. Ibid., 135-37; Brown, "Protestant Rural Movement in China," 220-32.

25. James L. Huskey, "The Cosmopolitan Connection: Americans and Chinese in Shanghai during the Interwar Years," Diplomatic History 11 (Summer 1987): 227-37.

26. Irwin T. Hyatt, Jr., Our Ordered Lives Confess: Three Nineteenth-Century American Missionaries in East Shantung (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 3; Marshall Frady, "Growing Up a Baptist," Mademoiselle 70 (March 1970): 225-29.

27. Quoted in Frank K. Means, "Southern Baptist China Mission History Project," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 9 (April 1985): 64.

28. Baker James Cauthen et al., Advance: A History of Southern Baptist Foreign Missions (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1970), 93; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 3-4; Donald MacGillivray, ed., A Century of Protestant Missions in China, 1807-1907 (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1907), 316, 322, 329; T. B. Ray, Southern Baptists in China (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1939), 23.

29. For the growth of SBC work in China, see MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, 313-31; Cauthen et al., Advance, 79-87; and Foreign Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists and Their Far Eastern Mission (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1922), 63--261.

30. J. T. Williams, "China, Mission in," Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, vol. 1 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958), 253-55.

31. MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, 411-28; Adrian A. Ben-

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nett, Missionary Journalist in China: Young J.Allen and His Magazines, 18601883 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), ix; Marion Elias Lazenby, History of Methodism in Alabama and West Florida (North Alabama Conference and Alabama-West Florida Conference of the Methodist Church, 1960), 297-99, 309-11, 458-59, 552, 592, 653, 678, 833, 915; Harlan P. Beach, Dawn on the Hills of T'ang, or Missions in China (Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1898), 183-213; Walter N. Lacy, A Hundred Years of China Methodism (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1948), 34-61, 315; James Cannon III, History of Southern Methodist Missions (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1926), 83-121.

32. MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, 426-28; Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats, 6.

33. Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, vol. 2 (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1973), 37, 301-02.

34. Ibid., vol. 3, 426-30; P. Frank Price, ed., Our China Investment (Nashville: Executive Committee of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in the United States, 1928), 2; MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, 404-05.

35. All of the denominational histories cited above fit this pattern, though Ernest Trice Thompson's three-volume history of the PCUS is remarkably balanced in its treatment. See also Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmillan, 1929), and Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats, vii.

36. John K. Fairbank, "Assignment for the '70's," American Historical Review 74 (February 1969): 877.

37. For examples of this "two cultures" interpretation, see Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats, esp. vii-viii, 35-51, 104-40; Jessie G. Lutz, ed., Christian Missions in China: Evangelists of What? (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1966), esp. vii-xviii.

38. Quoted in Ch'en, China and the West, 139. Such a view of missionaries as agents of American imperialism also dominates Kenton J. Clymer's Protestant Missionaries in the Philippines, 1898-1916: An Inquiry into the American Colonial Mentality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), Lutz's Christian Missions in China, and Varg's Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats.

39. Lutz, Christian Missions in China, xii-xiii, xviii; Ch'en, China and the West, 150.

40. Gary Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).

41. The best examples of this more favorable interpretation are found in Bruce S. Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China: American Protestant Reports, 1930-1950" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1974); and Suzanne W. Barnett and John K. Fairbank, eds., Christianity in China: Early

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Protestant Missionary Writings (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1985). In the latter work see esp. the essay by John K. Fairbank, "The Place of Protestant Writings in China's Cultural History," 113. James L. Huskey, "Americans in Shanghai: Community Formation and Response to Revolution, 1919-1928" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1985); and Shaw, ''John Leighton Stuart."

2

You Can See All Nations Here: Alabama Culture and the Missionary Enterprise

1. J. E. McClurkin to Mrs. M. E. Miller, October 8, 1887, Willie Kelly Papers, Samford University Archives, Birmingham, Ala.

2 B. W. Whilden to Rev. James B. Taylor, June 6, 1871, in B. W. Whilden Files, Foreign Mission Board Papers (hereafter cited as FMB Papers), Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tenn.; ibid., October 18 and December 19, 1870, November 9, 1871; Lucy M. Cohen, Chinese in the Post-Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 92-95.

3. Minutes, 1835, Alabama State Baptist Convention. In 1861 a Reverend Cabiness, serving as an SBC missionary in China, attracted throngs to Montgomery's First Baptist Church to hear a series of lectures on China. See the Montgomery Daily Advertiser, April 6, 1861.

4. Alabama Baptist, February 21, 1846, November 27, 1850, May 20, 1880.

5. Ibid., September 2, 1843; October 5, 26, and November 2, 1844; September 30, 1858; January 5, 1860; January 1, 1891; January 28, 1892.

6. Ibid., June 17, 1843, July 20, 1844, July 16, 1857, December 11, 1890.

7. Ibid., January 1, 1880, May 24, 1888, December 11, 1890, January 28, 1892.

8. For a brief but useful survey of Chinese ethical systems and religions (Confucianisin, Taoism, and Buddhism) as well as the folk offshoots of each, see H. G. Creel, Chinese Thoughtfrom Confucius to Mao Tse-tung (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Ch'u Chai and Winberg Chai, eds., The Humanist Way in Ancient China: Essential Works of Confucianism (New York: Bantam Books, 1965); Nancy Wilson Ross, Three Ways of Asian Wisdom and Their Significance to the West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966); and Epiphanius Wilson, ed., The Wisdom of Confucius (New York: Avenel Books, 1982). An unexcelled fictional account of Chinese folkways is found in The Good Earth (New York: John Day Co., 1931). The novel's author, Pearl S. Buck, was the daughter of missionaries to China and won the Nobel Prize for literature for this and other fiction set in China.

9. For histories of each denomination, see: A. Hamilton Reid, Baptists in Alabama: Their Organization and Witness (Montgomery: Paragon Press, 1967); Lazenby, Methodism in Alabama and West Florida; James W. Marshall, The

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Presbyterian Church in Alabama (Montgomery: Presbyterian Historical Society of Alabama, 1977).

10. Oliver Rufus Blue to Brother, September 6, 1853, M. P. Blue Papers, Alabama State Archives, Montgomery, Ala.

11. Alabama Baptist, August 29, 1895; April 16, October 29, and March 5, 1896.

12. Clipping, "Alabama Woman's Anti-Suffrage League Scrapbook, 1919-1920," Alabama Woman Suffrage Organization Papers, Alabama State Archives.

13. For a brief survey of Alabama religion, see Wayne Flynt, "Alabama," in Religion in the Southern States: A Historical Study, ed. Samuel S. Hill (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983), 5-26.

14. Basil B. McGinty, History of East Liberty Baptist Association, Chambers County, Alabama, 1836-1961 (Alexander City: Outlook Publishing Co., 1963), 64.

15. Daniel L. Cloyd, "Prelude to Reform: Political, Economic, and Social Thought of Alabama Baptists, 1877-1890," Alabama Review 31 (January 1978): 48-64.

16. Flynt, "Alabama," 17.

17. For the influence of social Christianity in Alabama, see the following articles by Wayne Flynt: "Dissent in Zion: Alabama Baptists and Social Issues, 19001914," Journal of Southern History 35 (November 1969): 523-42; "Organized Labor, Reform, and Alabama Politics, 1920," Alabama Review 23 (July 1970): 163-80; ''Alabama White Protestantism and Labor, 1900-1914," Alabama Review 25 (July 1972): 192-217; "Religion in the Urban South: The Divided Religious Mind of Birmingham, 1900-1930," Alabama Review 30 (April 1977): 108-34. For similar activity among Methodists, see John Patrick McDowell, The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman's Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1886-1939 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

18. Henry M. Edmonds, A Parson's Notebook (Birmingham: Elizabeth Agee's Bookshelf, 1961), 72-88.

19. Lazenby, Methodism in Alabama and West Florida, 685.

3

The Intense Longing of My Heart: Preparing for China Missions

1. Alabama Baptist, September io, 1891.

2. See appendix for more complete information on each individual.

3. "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller," in Cynthia A. Miller Files FMB Papers.

4. Inabelle Graves Coleman, Ruth Carver Gardner, and Florence Thomasson, comps., Gospel Messengers from Alabama (n.p.: Alabama Woman's Missionary Union, [1937?]), 124-25.

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5. "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller," in Cynthia Miller Files.

6. H. A. Tupper, The Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1880), 133.

7. "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller," in Cynthia Miller Files.

8. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 126-27.

9. Dr. T. W. Ayers to Rev. R. J. Willingham, April 20, 1906, T. W. Ayers Files, FMB Papers; David Bryan application form, June 19, 1913, in David Bryan Files, FMB Papers.

10. B. F. Riley, A Memorial History of the Baptists of Alabama (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1923), 319; T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, September 18, 1906, T. W. Ayers Files.

11. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 96100.

12. Ibid., 72.

13. Price, Our China Investment, 118-25; Leon S. Robinson, "Louise Robinson," copy in possession of Wayne Flynt, Auburn, Ala.; Edmond Lee Rice Papers, Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church, Lake Junaluska, N.C. (hereafter cited as ME Church, South, archives). The archives were subsequently moved to Drew University in New Jersey.

14. See Foreign Mission Board "Confidential" evaluation form in Cynthia Miller Files.

15. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 127.

16. "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller," in Cynthia Miller Files.

17. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 72, 80; Leon Robinson, "Louise Robinson"; Price, Our China Investment, 118-25.

18. Birmingham News, February 12, 1979; oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman, by Gerald W. Berkley, Albertville, Ala., July 1981.

19. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 134; Frank T. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China (n.p., 1990) 11-15.

20. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 132, 151; Nicholas B. Williams to James B. Taylor, May 3, 1871, Nicholas B. Williams Files, FMB Papers; B. W. Whilden to James B. Taylor, October 18, 1870, B. W. Whilden Files.

21. Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 12, 1934.

22. Riley, Memorial History of the Baptists of Alabama, 258.

23. Martha Foster Diary, 1846, Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1851, 1867, Martha Foster Crawford Papers, Duke University Archives, Durham, N.C.

24. Ms. in Eliza G. Shuck Files, FMB Papers.

25. Alabama Baptist, November 6, 1890.

26. Irene Jeffers Trip Journal, August 30 to September 1923, Irene Jeffers Papers, in possession of Wayne Flynt.

27. Margaret Morgan Coughlin, "Strangers in the House: J. Lewis Shuck and Issachar Roberts, First American Baptist Missionaries to China" (Ph.D. diss.,

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University of Virginia, 1972), 67-71; "J. Lewis Shuck," in Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, vol. 2 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958), 1201-02.

28. Cohen, Chinese in the Post-Civil War South, 14; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Conventio 82; Thelma Wolfe Hall, I Give Myself: The Story of J. Lewis Shuck and His Mission to the Chinese (Richm n, ond: Thelma Wolfe Hall, 1983), 64, 74-78; Alabama Baptist, October 23, 1846. The name of Shuck's convert is spelled in a variety of ways, Yong Seen-sarng in some sources, Yang Seen Saang in others.

29. S. U. Zau, A Brief Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church (Shanghai: Zih Zung Press, 1947), 8-9.

30. Margaret Kine Eubanker and Una Roberts Lawrence, These Were First (Atlanta: Home Mission Board, 1948), 9-10; Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, Eliza Shuck Files; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 82; Frances Dew Hamilton and Elizabeth Crabtree Wells, Daughters of the Dream: Judson College, 1838-1988 (Marion, Ala.: Judson College, 1989), 51.

31. "J. Lewis Shuck," Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2:1201-02.

32. A. B. Moore, History of Alabama and Her People, vol. 3 (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1927), 772-73.

33. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1846-50 and 1867; Virginia M. Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford, 1852-1854" (master's thesis, Duke University, 1952), 7-8.

34. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1846-50. Virginia M. Thompson emphasizes the parochial elements of Crawford's education and intellect. But within the context of the times, the range of Crawford's curiosity and the quality of her writing were remarkable.

35. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1846-50; Lovelace Savidge Foster, Fifty Years in China: An Eventful Memoir of Tarleton Perry Crauford, D.D. (Nashville: Bayless-Pullen Co., 1909), 30-35.

36. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 36-44.

37. Ibid.

38. Alabama Baptist, March 10 1892.

39. Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851.

40. Ibid. For a marvelously insightful analysis of the complex cultural/religious/sexual sources of Crawford's China missionary commitment, see Carol Ann Vaughn, "The Early Life of Martha Foster Crawford in Antebellum Alabama, 1830-1851" (master's thesis, Auburn University, 1994).

4

One of the Hardest Things I Ever Undertook: First Contact with China

1. Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1852; Alabama Baptist, June 8, 1893; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 51-53.

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2. Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1852.

3. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 210; Blanche Rose Walker and Addie Estelle Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1925 [?]), 11, 13.

4. Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 12, 1934.

5. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 23.

6. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell, by Wayne Flynt, Birmingham, Ala., October 1991.

7. Alabama Baptist, June 8, 1893.

8. Cynthia A. Miller to R.J. Willingham, January 1, 1906, Cynthia Miller Files; Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 23.

9. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

10. F. Catharine Bryan, At the Gates: The Life Story of Matthew Tyson and Eliza Moring Yates of China (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1949), 78, 101

11. Alabama Baptist, June 22, 1893; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 56.

12. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 13-14.

13. Inabelle Graves Coleman, One of Us: The Story of the Life of Willie Hayes Kelly (Durham: Christian Publishing Co., 1959), 30; Missionary Survey 9 (January 1919): 17.

14. Coleman, One of Us, 39-40; Alabama Baptist, January 14, 1903.

15. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, April 1o and May 4, 1901. T. W. Ayers Files.

16. T. W. Ayers, Healing and Missions (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1930), 32-36; Alabama Baptist, June 20, 1901.

17. Zau, Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church, 9.

18. Alabama Baptist, June 20, 1901; T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, January 29, 1905, T. W. Ayers Files.

19. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 25.

20. Alice Huey to Dr. W. H. Smith, September 16, 1911, Alice Huey Files, FMB Papers.

21. James C. Thompson, Jr., Peter W. Stanley, and John Curtis Perry, Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 53.

22. Bryan, At the Gates, 78; Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 132; Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, Eliza Shuck Files.

23. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 66; Alabama Baptist, June 22, 1893.

24. Alabama Baptist, July 5, 1894.

25. Ibid., June 22, 1893.

26. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1852-54.

27. Alabama Baptist, March 9, 1893.

28. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 14-15.

29. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1852-54; Alabama Baptist, September 7,

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1893; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 8-9. Hyatt's work is especially perceptive about the Crawfords.

30. Coleman, One of Us, 31; Zau, Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church, 30.

31. Alabama Baptist, March 7, May 2, September 5, December 5, 1895, and June 4, 1896; Willie Kelly to Mrs. Hutchinson, November 30, 1910, Willie Kelly Papers.

32. Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, August 15, 1895, and April 23, 1896, Willie Kelly Files, FMB Papers.

33. Ibid., January 21, 1905; Kelly to Dr. Ray, October 21, 1922; Willie Kelly Files.

34. Coleman, One of Us, 33-35; Zau, Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church, 30-31.

35. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 32-33.

36. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, January 29 and April 8, 1905, T. W. Ayers Files.

37. Hoadley Berckman to Mother and Father Rice, September 9, 1921, Ruth and Hoadley Berckman Papers, in possession of Ruth Berckman, Albertville, Ala.

38. Oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman.

39. Ruth Berckman to her parents, January 6, 1923, December 8, 1935; Hoadley Berckman to Father and Mother Rice, January 15, 1924, June 12, 1929; "A Brief Report on Adult Education Work, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, China Conference, April 16, 1937," and "1945-A Brief Summary"; all in Berckman Papers.

40. "Margaret Ruth (Rice) Berckman," October 23, 1978, biographical sketch, Berckman Papers.

41. Cynthia Miller to R. J. Willingham, January 19, May 2, and October 5, 1907, and May 15, 1909, Cynthia Miller Files.

42. Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 12, 1934.

43. Missionary Survey 9 (January 1919): 17, and lo (December 1920): 839; Christmas letter, November 1932, James N. Montgomery Papers, Archives, Historical Foundation, Presbyterian Church of the United States, Montreat, N.C. (cited hereafter as PCUS Archives).

44. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

45. Ch'en, China and the West, 147; Addie Estelle Cox to FMB, February 1937, Addie Estelle Cox Files, FMB Papers; Price, Our China Investment, 15; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 133.

46. Mary Culler White, Just Jennie: The Life Story of Virginia M. Atkinson (Atlanta: Tupper and Love, 1955), 1-ll.

47. Ibid., 12-13; Virginia M. Atkinson, "My Work in China," World Outlook 27 (October 1937): 27, 39; Virginia M. Atkinson to Carrie Denson, July 29, 1939, Denson Family Papers, Auburn University Archives, Auburn, Ala.

Page 368

5

The Peculiar Customs Are So Bewildering: Understanding Chinese Culture

1. Quoted in Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess.

2. Alabama Baptist, June 6, 1878; Hoadley Berckman to Mother and Father Rice, September 9, 1921, Berckman Papers.

3. See Howard S. Levy, Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom (Taipei: SMC Publishing, 1966).

4. See Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).

5. Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 52-53.

6. Henry T. Hodgkin, "Memorandum on Missions," in Problems of the Pacific: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Honolulu, Hawaii, July 15 to 29, 1927, ed. J. B. Condliffe (New York: Greenwood Press, 1928), 295-97.

7. Quoted in Robert F. McClellan, "Missionary Influence on American Attitudes Toward China at the Turn of This Century," Church History 38 (December 1968): 476-77, 482.

8. Ch'en, China and the West, 95-96.

9. Robert N. Nash, Jr., "The Influence of American Myth on Southern Baptist Foreign Missions, 1845-1945" (Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1989), 74, 135-43, 149-51, 162, 166, 172, 214-19.

10. Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China," 2, 11, 20.

11. Grant Wacker, "A Plural World: The Protestant Awakening to World Religions," in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960, ed. William R. Hutchinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 256-57.

12. Ibid., 257-75.

13. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 32.

14. Daniel J. Singal applies this argument brilliantly to the modernization of the South. See The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, 1919-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 5.

15. Hoadley Berckman letter of September 1, 1921, Berckman Papers.

16. Ibid.

17. H. W. Provence, "Traveling in China," ms. in possession of Ruth Provence, Laurens, S.C.

18. James N. Montgomery, "Experiences of New Missionaries," Missionary Survey 9 (January 1919): 18.

19. Cynthia Miller to R.J. Willingham, June 10, 1908, February 11, 1911, Cynthia Miller Files.

20. Ibid., June 10, 1908.

21. Addie E. Cox to Foreign Mission Board, February 1937, Addie Cox Files.

22. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 30-35.

Page 369

23. Atkinson, "My Work in China," 27; Alabama Baptist, December 12, 1895, and May 31, 1900; Virginia M. Atkinson, "Reminiscences of Early Days in China," ms. in Denson Family Papers.

24. For a negative estimate of Crawford's view of Chinese culture, see Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford," 11-15, 128-33.

25. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 310-11.

26. Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Alabama Baptist, July 2, 1891.

30. Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851.

31. Adrian Lamkin, Jr., "The Gospel Mission Movement within the Southern Baptist Convention" (Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1979), 52.

32. Alabama Baptist, September 7, 1893.

33. Ibid., April 26, 1888.

34. Ibid., November 16, 1893.

35. Ibid., April 10, 1884, July 2, 1891; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 73.

36. Alabama Baptist, January 25, 1894, September 5, 1895.

37. Ibid., January 1, 1891; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 70-71, 113

38. H. A. Tupper, A Decade of Foreign Missions, 1880-1890 (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1891), 668-70.

39. Catherine B. Allen, The New Lottie Moon Story (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1980), 93, 201-04.

40. White, Just Jennie, xi, 36, 38-39.

41. Ibid., 63, 65-66, 71.

42. Alabama Baptist, June 20, 1901; T. W. Ayers, "Have the Chinese Appreciation," April 1903, and idem, "Child Life in China," December 1906, mss. in T. W. Ayers Files.

43. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 23-24, 30-31, 37-42, 69.

44. Coleman, One of Us, 45, 48-50.

45. Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China," 19-20.

46. Fletcher J. Brockman, "The Foreign Missionary of Today and Tomorrow," Missionary Voice 22 (February 1932): 11.

47. Price, Our China Investment, 15.

48. Tupper, Decade of Foreign Missions, 672.

49. Hoadley Berckman to "Folks," May 19, 1922, Berckman Papers.

50. Augustus Young Napier, "The Challenge of China to America" (Th.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1922), 17-26, 32-41.

51. Davie Napier to Wayne Flynt, July 8, 1992.

52. Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," lo.

53. Alabama Baptist, November 20, 1850.

Page 370

54. Provence, "Traveling in China"; Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 12, 1934; James N. and Aurie L. Montgomery to friends, November 1932, James N. Montgomery Papers.

55. Addie Estelle Cox to friends, March 23, 1931, Addie Cox Files.

56. Alabama Baptist, July 11, 1846; translation of a tract prepared by T. O. Hearn, February 1921, T. 0. Hearn Files, FMB Papers; clipping in Willie Kelly Papers; Willie Kelly to her cousin, August 7, [1920?], Willie Kelly Papers.

57. Alabama Baptist, June 22, 1893.

58. Alice Huey to W. H. Smith, September 16, 1911, Alice Huey Files.

59. Mary Raleigh Anderson, A Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom: or, Protestant Mission Schools for Girls in South China (1827 to the Japanese Invasion) (Mobile: Heiter-Starke, 1943), 282; Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 11-15.

60. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 90; Alabama Baptist, August 18, 1892.

61. Alabama Baptist, June 4, 1896; unidentified clipping in Willie Kelly Papers.

62. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 151.

63. Alabama Baptist, December 15, 1898, July 16, 1902.

64. Cynthia Miller to Family, November 15, 1920, Cynthia Miller Files.

65. Willie Kelly to Carrie, April 9, 1896, Willie Kelly Papers; Alabama Baptist, December 21, 1904.

66. Alabama Baptist, April 1, 1890; Ayers, Healing and Missions, 19-20.

67. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, March 5, 1918; Miller to J. T. Love, August 5, 1915; Cynthia Miller Files.

68. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

69. Hoadley Berckman to "Folks," July 4, 1922, Berckman Papers; Alabama Baptist, August 29, 1901.

70. John Stuart to Leighton Stuart, January 30, 1892; Mary Stuart to Mother, September 11, 1884; John Linton and Mary Stuart Papers, PCUS Archives; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 36.

71. Mrs. Charles K. Hartwell, "Mobile to China: A Valiant Woman's Mission," Alabama Review 31 (October 1978): 243-48.

72. Letters from Missionaries, June 1875, 136-37; Missionary 33 (May 1900): 221; John L. Stuart to Mary Stuart's mother, August 13, 1875; all in Stuart Papers.

73. John L. Stuart to his mother, August 13, 1875; Mary Stuart to Sister Carrie, September 18, 1877; Mary Stuart to Father, June 7, 1875; all in Stuart Papers.

74. Mary Stuart's Diary, 1875, Stuart Papers; Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 249.

75. Mary Stuart to her mother, September 29, 1875, and July 6, 1880, Stuart Papers.

6

The Best Way Is to Live One Day at a Time: Missionary Life in China

1. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 111.

2. Cynthia Miller to Dr. Maddry, November 15, 1933, Cynthia Miller Files;

Page 371

Virginia Atkinson to Carrie Vernon Denson, June 23, 1939, Denson Family Papers; White, Just Jennie, 24-25; Berckman letters, 1939, Berckman Papers.

3. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

4. Martha Crawford, "History of Missions in Tung Chow [Tengchow] for the First Thirteen Years," ms. of paper read to Tungchow Literary Association, July 14, 1874, in Martha Foster Crawford Papers.

5. Ruth Berckman to her parents, November 1, 1936, Berckman Papers; Christian Observer, October 25, 1922.

6. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, August 16, 1924, T. W. Ayers Files; oral history with Clarabel Isdell; Cecil S. Ward, "What I Saw in Canton," ms. in Cecil S. Ward Files, FMB Papers.

7. See Missionary 31 (February 1898); Mary Stuart to Carrie, September 18, 1877, Stuart Papers.

8. Alabama Baptist, July 10, 1879, February 7, 1895.

9. Mary Stuart, "Reminiscences of Forty Years in China," Missionary Survey 5 (August 1915): 581; Hoadley Berckman to his wife's parents, June 12, 1929, Berckman Papers; James N. and Aurie L. Montgomery to friends, November 1932, James N. Montgomery Papers.

10. W. Ayers to J. G. Meadows, April 23, 1904, T. W. Ayers Files.

11. Hoadley Berckman to his wife's parents, December 16, 1936; Ruth Berckman to Mildred, January 23, 1929; Berckman Papers.

12. Cynthia Miller to relatives, July 2, 1919, Cynthia Miller Files; Mary Stuart to her mother, September 29, 1875, Stuart Papers; Virginia Atkinson to Carrie Vernon Denson, June 23, 1939, Denson Family Papers.

13. Alabama Baptist, April 3, 1890; Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 59; Virginia Atkinson to Carrie Vernon Denson, April 29, 1939, Denson Family Papers; Provence, "Traveling in China."

14. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54; Cynthia Miller to relatives, July 2, 1919, Cynthia Miller Files.

15. Hoadley Berckman Journal, October 16, 1950; Ruth Berckman to Mildred, February 11, 1930; Berckman Papers. John Stuart to his wife's mother, August 13, 1875, Stuart Papers.

16. Mary Stuart to Julie, June 19, 1879, Stuart Papers; Alabama Baptist, December 21, 1893; Hoadley Berckman to his wife's parents, December 16, 1936, Berckman Papers.

17. Alabama Baptist, May 9, 1895; Missionary Survey 11 (July 1921): 503.

18. T. W. Ayers to Adrian Taylor, August 27, 1909, T. W. Ayers Files.

19. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 25, 28-29, 38-39.

20. Ibid., 38; "Margaret Ruth (Rice) Berckman," Berckman Papers.

21. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

22. Jumelle Williams to H. A. Tupper, May 11 1875, Nicholas B. Williams Files.

23. "Margaret Ruth (Rice) Berckman," Berckman Papers; Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 39, 76.

Page 372

24. Mary Stuart to her mother, September 5, 1876; Mary Stuart to her sister Carrie, September 18, 1877; Stuart Papers.

25 "Autobiography of 'Mother' Mary H. Stuart," Christian Observer, November 15, 1922, copy in Stuart Papers.

26. Mary Stuart to her mother, December 20, 1883, Stuart Papers.

27. Unidentified clipping dated 1888 in Stuart Papers; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 14-21.

28. Quoted in Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 252.

29. T. W. Ayers to Brother Pruitt, May 23, 1901; Ayers to R.J. Willingham, August 3, 1913; Ayers to T. B. Ray, December 29, 1913, and March 24, 1915; Ayers to Willingham, April 25, 1907, and October 2, 1908; Lucy Ayers to R.J. Willingham, June 8 and November lo, 1905; T. W. Ayers Files.

30. T. W. Ayers Files; and Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 73-74.

31. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, May 9, 1908; Ayers to W. H. Smith, May 11, 1908; Ayers to Willingham, March 9, 1909; Harry M. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, April 28, 1909; Harry Ayers to John C. Williams, March 31, 1909; T. W. Ayers Files.

32. White, Just Jennie, 67.

33. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1851, 1857, 1884; Birmingham News, February 12, 1979; Mary Stuart to her mother, December 20, 1883, Stuart Papers.

34. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54; Birmingham News, February 12, 1979.

35. Provence, "Traveling in China"; T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, July 13, 1922, T. W. Ayers Files.

36. "Autobiography of 'Mother' Mary H. Stuart"; Missionary 25 (November 1892): 463.

37. White, Just Jennie, 68-69. For photographs of "Alabama Terrace" see File 29, Box 2, Denson Family Papers.

38. Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 250, 253; T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, December 9, 1923, T. W. Ayers Files.

39. Birmingham News, February 12, 1979; Bryan, At the Gates, 101-02; Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, Eliza Shuck Files.

40 John L. Stuart to his wife's mother, August 13, 1875; Mary Stuart to her sister Carrie, September 18, 1877; Mary Stuart to her mother, July 6, 1880; Stuart Papers. Missionary Survey 5 (August 1915): 583.

41. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 21; Irene Jeffers to her sister, June 5, 1949, Irene Jeffers Papers; Missionary Survey 10 (December 1920): 839; Cynthia Miller to family, November 15, 1920, Cynthia Miller Files; oral histories with Clarabel Isdell and with Ruth Rice Berckman.

42. Mary Stuart to Julie, June 19, 1879, and to her mother, July 6, 1880, Stuart Papers; Virginia Atkinson to Carrie Vernon Denson, undated but probably in

Page 373

1939, Denson Family Papers; Addie Cox to friends, December 20, 1949, Addie Cox Files.

43. Birmingham News, February 12, 1979; Addie Cox to friends, August lo, 1936, Addie Cox Files; Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 63.

44. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 162-63, 169, 176; MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, 313.

45. Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, November 18, 1848, Eliza Shuck Files; Bryan, At the Gates, 105; Coughlin, ''Strangers in the House," 133-34.

46. Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 25, 53; Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 137, 174, 181.

47. Alabama Baptist, December 6, 1894; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 32, 35-36, 44, 55.

48. Missionary Survey 5 (August 1915): 583; Mary Stuart to Julie, June 19, 1879, and Stuart to her mother, July 6, 1880, Stuart Papers.

49. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 132, 136, 151.

50. White, Just Jennie, 13, 17, 76-77, 83.

51. Ruth Provence to Wayne Flynt, November 17, 1991; "Mary Hall Provence," ms. in possession of Ruth Provence, Laurens, S.C.; H. W. Provence to W. O. Carver, June 14, 1912, in W. O. Carver Papers, Southern Baptist Library and Archives; Ruth Berckman to relatives, January 6, 1923, Berckman Papers; oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

52. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, October 3, 1905; telegram, Ayers to Willingham, June 1, 1906; Ayers to Willingham, March 24, 1907; T. W. Ayers Files.

53. Ayers to Willingham, December 9, 1916; Ayers to Ray, March 14, 1917, February 27,1917; ibid.

54. Ayers to Ray, May 16, 1923, March 7, 1925; Ayers to FMB, January 26, 1926; ibid. Sanford E. Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, April 21, 1939, Sanford E. Ayers Files, FMB Papers.

55. Missionary Survey lo (September 1920): 582.

56. Alabama Baptist, July 16 and August 27, 1891, March 9 and December 21, 1893; Letter from Hoadley Berckman, February 4, 1933, Berckman Papers.

57. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, January 11, 1931; "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller"; Cynthia Miller to C. E. Maddry, March 14, 1936; Cynthia Miller Files.

58. Cynthia Miller to R. J. Willingham, March 29, 1911; Miller to Charles E. Maddry, November 15 and December 28, 1933; Miller to Buxton, November 22, 1934; Cynthia Miller Files.

59. Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, November 18, 1848, Eliza Shuck Files; Jumelle Williams to H. A. Tupper, January 18, 1878, Nicholas B. Williams Files; Ayers to J. F. Love, July 10, T. W. Ayers Files; Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1853.

Page 374

60. Alabama Baptist, August 30, 1894; Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 4952; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 11.

61. Virginia Atkinson to Carrie Denson, July 29, 1939, Denson Family Papers.

62. W. Ayers to. F. Love, March 7, 1925; Ayers to T. B. Ray, September 9, 1925, January 26, 1926; Ray to Ayers, February 27, 1926; Ayers to Ray, April 2, 1926; Ray to Ayers, May 25, 1926; Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, October 16, 1933; Maddry to Ayers, October 12, 1933; T. W. Ayers Files.

63. W. B. Crumpton, A Book of Memories, 1842-1920 (Montgomery: Baptist Mission Board, 1921), 165. Willie Kelly to H. A. Tupper, May 25, 1893; W. B. Crumpton to Brother Harris, August 23, 1893; Crumpton to Tupper, June 10 1893; Kelly to Tupper, June 19, 1893; Tupper to Kelly, September 2, 1893; Willie Kelly Files.

64. Alabama Baptist, December 23, 1894, June 4, 1896, September 28, 1899. Willie Kelly to T. B. Ray, October 21, 1922; W. B. Crumpton to R. J. Willingham, undated; Willie Kelly Files.

65. W. B. Crumpton to R. J. Willingham, May 27, 1895, Willie Kelly Files.

66. Alabama Baptist, June 11, 1902, February 3, 1904; W. B. Crumpton to R. J. Willingham, August 31, 1900, Willie Kelly Files; Coleman, One of Us, 24, 61.

67. Alabama Baptist, May 2 and September 5, 1895; Coleman, One of Us, 38-40, 50, 68-69; Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, July 2, 1898, Willie Kelly Files; Charles E. Maddry, Christ's Expendables (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1949), 122-24.

68. Foreign Mission Board to Willie Kelly, November 24, 1922; T. B. Ray to Kelly, April 9, 1923, November 26, 1924; Kelly to Dr. and Mrs. Ford, October 10, 1938; Kelly to M. T. Rankin, January 17, 1944; Willie Kelly Files; Maddry, Christ's Expendables, 124.

69. Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, August 19, 1908; Kelly to T. B. Ray, July 20 and December 1, 1931; Kelly to Willingham, February 18, 1897; Willie Kelly Files.

70. Alabama Baptist, March 3, 1898. W. B. Crumpton to R. J. Willingham, November 23, 1900; Willie Kelly to her cousin, June 3, 1910; Kelly to T. B. Ray, October 1, 1922; Kelly to Charles Maddry, September 23, 1937; Maddry to Kelly, November 23, 1935; Kelly to Maddry, December 8, 1935; Willie Kelly Files.

71. Willie Kelly to T. B. Ray, December 1, 1931; Kelly to R.J. Willingham, July 19, 1901; Willie Kelly Files; Coleman, One of Us, 65.

7

Oh, for One Day's Quiet Retreat: Reporting Home about China

1. There is extensive historical literature on the influence of missionary writing and speaking on American perceptions of China. John K. Fairbank, the dean of American sinologists, contended that what most Americans thought about

Page 375

China they learned from the writings and speeches of missionaries. Historians James Reed, Bruce S. Greenawalt, and Robert F. McClellan agree about the extent of the influence, though not necessarily about its accuracy or balance.

2. For instance, see: John K. Fairbank, "The Place of Protestant Writings in China's Cultural History," in Barnett and Fairbank, Christianity in China, 23, 14; James Reed, The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy, 19111915 (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983), 24-25; Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China," 2-11; McClellan, "Missionary Influence on American Attitudes," 475-76, 485. For a case study of a Methodist missionary's influence through her extensive writing and correspondence, see Berg, ''Margaret Thompson in China," 458.

3. Martha Crawford, "Northern China," in Tupper, Decade of Foreign Missions, 667-75.

4. For a sample of Southern Baptist tracts on China, see: Southern Baptist Missions in China, 1909; Southern Baptists and Their Far Eastern Mission, 1922; A Century of Baptist Missions to the Chinese, 1935; A Century for Christ in China, 1836-1936, 1936; Southern Baptists in China, 1939 (?). Copies of all these titles can be found in the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives.

5. See Ayers, Healing and Missions.

6. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 18-22.

7. For a thorough discussion of these dissertations, see chap. 5, "Understanding Chinese Culture."

8. Alabama Baptist, September 6, 1888; March 21, June 20, and September 12, 1889; August 27, 1891; September 5, 1895.

9. Ibid., October 6, 1892; June 15, 1893; December 13, 1894.

10 Ibid., November 20, 1850; May 6, 1886; March 3, 1887; November 27, 1890; July 2 and November 26, 1891.

11. Ibid., June 17 and September 2, 1843; July 20, October 5, and November 2, 1844; July 16, 1857; September 30, 1858.

12. Ibid., January 1 and May 20, 1880; May 28, 1888; December 11, 1890; January 28, 1892.

13. Ibid., April 4, 1906; August 7 and 14,1907; December 9, 1908; December 15, 1909; April 13, 1910.

14. Ibid., January 27, 1909; August 15 and December 5, 1917; February 27 and April 3, 1918; April 3, 1919; for famine relief, see ibid., April 10, 1907; October 27, 1915; January 13, February 17, May 5 and 19, 1921; October 12, 1922; February 9, 1928; August 4, 1930.

15. Ibid., April 11, November 15, and December 6, 1911; January 10, February 7 and 21, 1912; September 3, July 16, and December 3, 1913; November 1, 1916.

16. Ibid., November 27, 1919, May 13, 1920, January 5, 1928.

17. Ibid., April 24, 1907, November 22, 1911, November 14, 1929.

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18. Ibid., April 16, 1925; October 30, 1920; May 5, 1947; May 19, November 17 and 24, 1949; August 3, September 28, and October 12, 1950.

19. Quoted in Hall, I Give Myself, 71.

20. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 44; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 310, 33335.

21. Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, July 19, 1901; W. B. Crumpton to R.J. Willingham, November 23, 1900; Willie Kelly Files.

22. Summary of correspondence for 1926, in Berckman Papers.

23. White, Just Jennie, 21-22, 49.

24. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, March 6 and 12, 1906, February lo, 1908; Ayers to J. F. Love, September 14, 1917; T. W. Ayers Files.

25. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, August 16, 1924; Ayers to. F. Love, December 5, 1924, August 20 and November 4, 1927; T. W. Ayers Files.

26. Alabama Baptist, February 14 and 21, March 7 and 28, 1900; January 31 and March 21, 1901. Montgomery Advertiser, undated clipping in Willie Kelly Papers. Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, March 26 and April 5, 1938; Maddry to Kelly, March 30, 1938; Willie Kelly Files.

27. Cynthia Miller to R.J. Willingham, April 16 and January 30, 1913, Cynthia Miller Files.

28. James Toy Williams, "War, Communism and Missions in China," 42-44, ms. in possession of Wayne Flynt.

29. Woman's Missionary Union of Alabama, 1930 Annual, 18; Alabama Baptist, March 5, 1936.

30. Ruth Berckman, annual reports for 1925, 1941, 1943, and 1944, in Berckman Papers.

31. White, Just Jennie, 6, 53, 72, 76-77, 97; Minnie Reynolds Mowry to Virginia Atkinson, undated, and copy of pamphlet, "A Virile, Self-Supporting Church Crippled by Japan's Undeclared War," both in Box 3, Denson Family Papers; unidentified clipping in Box 1, Denson Family Papers.

32. Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 250; Aleathea Thompson Cobbs, Presbyterian Women of the Synod of Alabama, U.S. (Mobile: Woman's Auxiliary of the Synod of Alabama, U.S., 1935), 24.

33. Hamilton and Wells, Daughters of the Dream, 51, 81, 283; oral history with Mary Essie Stephens, by Clyde Presley, Montgomery, Ala., September 23, 1985.

34. Alabama Baptist, November 12, 1891, May 4, 1893, April 20, 1922, April 19, 1923, February 14 and 21, 1924; "History of the Woman's Missionary Union of East Liberty Association," ms. in Box 3, Denson Family Papers.

35. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, May 30, 1907, T. W. Ayers Files; H. W. Provence to W. O. Carver, April 15, 1907, W. 0. Carver Papers.

36. Cynthia Miller to her sister, November 3, 1923, Cynthia Miller Files.

37. Irene Jeffers to relatives, June 6, 1926, Irene Jeffers Papers; Alabama Baptist, November 8, 1934.

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38. Alabama Baptist, November 20, 1850.

39. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, September 18, 1906; Ayers to M. T. Rankin, March 14, 1946; T. W. Ayers Files.

40. White, Just Jennie, 61, 74, 90; Lazenby, Methodism in Alabama and West Florida, 298, 552, 678.

41. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 89; Alabama Baptist, January 4, 1877, December 3, 1891, February 8, 1905.

42. Hall, I Give Myself, 75; Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, Eliza Shuck Files; Alabama Baptist, November 27, 1890, June 16, 1892, March 9, 1893; Fannie E. S. Heck, In Royal Service: The Mission Work of Southern Baptist Women (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1915),113.

43. Alabama Baptist, November 22, 1894, March 3, 1898, May 31, 1900, and February 21, 1901.

44. Ibid., May 2, 1895, August 23, 1900, June 11, 1902, April 20, 1904. Willie Kelly, annual report for 1902; Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, January 29, 1903; W. B. Crumpton to R.J. Willingham, April 4, 1904, and May 27, 1895; all in Willie Kelly Files; Crumpton, Book of Memories, 185-87; Coleman, One of Us, 24.

45. Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, March 17, 1909, and December 1909; Kelly to Mrs. Hutchinson, April 7 and November 3, 1910; Kelly to T. B. Ray, May 20, 1915; Kelly to W. H. Smith, April 22, 1915;J. F. Love to Kelly, June 23, 1916 and May 10, 1917; all in Willie Kelly Files; Alabama Baptist, November 8, 1934, December 1, 1938.

46. Alabama Baptist, February 5, 1942; Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, January 8 and October 19, 1942, Willie Kelly Files.

47. Willie Kelly to friends, January 1, 1934, Willie Kelly Files.

48. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell. Alabama Baptist, December 8, 1932, September 6, 1934, January 30, 1936.

49. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, September 5, November 9, and December 5, 1922, October 24, 1923, January 11, 1931; Miller to her sister, November 3, 1923; "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller"; all in Cynthia Miller Files.

50. Alabama Baptist, July 2, 1902. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, January 30, 1901, December 24, 1900; T. W. Ayers, annual report for 1903; Ayers to Willingham, November 11, 1905, Sepember 18, March 12, and June 21, 1906, April 25, 1907, February 16, 1909, May 25, 1910; T. B. Ray to Ayers, April 22, 1919; Ayers to Ray, September 9, 1925;J. F. Love to Ayers, February 27, 1924; Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, February 7, 1934, December 16, 1942; in T. W. Ayers Files.

51. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 82-84; Alabama Baptist, June 17, 1937, June 27, 1940, and June 11, 1942; T. W. Ayers to Adrian Taylor, October 11, 1906, Adrian Taylor Files, FMB Papers.

52. W. B. Crumpton to R. J. Willingham, November 23, 1900, Willie Kelly Files;

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T. O. Hearn, "T. O. Hearn in the Famine Field," February 1921, T. 0. Hearn Files; Alabama Baptist, December 19, 1940.

8

A Trip of Preaching, Healing, and Teaching: Missionary Work

1. Alabama Baptist, June 22, 1846.

2. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 131.

3. Alabama Baptist, November 16, 1893; quoted in Foreign Mission Journal 12 (February 1881): 3.

4. Alabama Baptist, August 23, 1894.

5. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 12, 15-17, 55.

6. The Baptist and Reflector, October 11, 1934.

7. Missionary Survey 11 (April 1921): 290-91; Price, Our China Investment, 118; annual report from Willie Kelly for 1935, Willie Kelly Files.

8. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 35-37.

9. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 59-60; Birmingham News, February 12, 1979.

10. Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 12, 1934; Biographical Questionnaire of James Toy Williams, James T. Williams Files, FMB Papers; Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 128-29; oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman.

11. Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, November 18, 1848, Eliza Shuck Files.

12. Alabama Baptist, July 2, 1891, August 23, 1894.

13. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 89, 93, 124-25, 139, 140-41, 149, 151-52, 184; Alabama Baptist, October 9, 1884.

14. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 206-07; Alabama Baptist, July 31, 1879, September 6, 1888, October 9, 1884, June 20 and November 21, 1889, February 7, 1895, January 30, 1896.

15. Letters from Missionaries, April 1877, 77; Mary Stuart to her mother, September 29, 1875; both in Stuart Papers.

16. Letter from Irene Jeffers, June 1926; annual report for 1934 by Irene Jeffers; Irene Jeffers Papers.

17. "A Happy Christmas in Laichow," ca. 1935, ms. in Alice Huey Files; Alice Huey to W. H. Smith, September 16, 1911, Alice Huey Files.

18. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, December 11, 1920, March 5, 1918; Miller to J. F. Love, August 5, 1915; Cynthia Miller Files.

19. White, Just Jennie, 71-75.

20. Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, April 23, 1898; Willie Kelly to her cousin, August 7, (19??); annual report for 1902; Kelly to Willingham, January 1, and April 6, 1905; Willie Kelly Files; Alabama Baptist, March 15 and July 19, 1900, June 15, 1904; Coleman, One of Us, 34, 64-65, 76-77.

Page 379

21. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 86-87; letter from Addie Cox, August 10, 1936, Addie Cox Files; Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 42-44, 51-54, 57-59.

22. Annual report for 1914, Willie Kelly Files.

23. Alabama Baptist, November 20, 1850, May 6, 1886, March 3, 1887, August 29, 1889, November 27, 1890, April 13, 1893; Nicholas B. Williams to James B. Taylor, August 29, 1877, Nicholas B. Williams Files; Huey ms., October 2, 1913, in Alice Huey Files.

24. Alabama Baptist, July 10, 1879; Ruth Berckman to Mildred, January 23, 1929, Berckman Papers; James and Aurie Montgomery to friends, November 1932, James N. Montgomery Papers; letter from Hoadley Berckman, Winter 1931, Berckman Papers.

25. Hyatt, "Protestant Missions in China," 95-107; Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 219-23; Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 50-51.

26. Napier, "Challenge of China to America," 70-91, 115, 117-27.

27. Hearn, "In the Famine Field," T. O. Hearn Files.

28. "Notes from Laiyang," May 13, 1916, ms. in T. O. Hearn Files; Albert C. Bowen, "Carrying the Gospel to Chinese Prisoners," Missionary Voice 20 (March 1930): 13, 47; A. C. Bowen to 0. E. Goddard, July 11, 1929, A. C. Bowen Papers, ME Church, South archives; Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 70.

29. Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions, 46-47.

30. Hoadley Berckman to relatives, April 30, 1923, January 3, 1925, September 4, 1929, December, 1931, March 1, 1932, and August 27, 1932; "A Brief Report on Adult Education Work"; all in Berckman Papers.

31. Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, December 5, 1937, Willie Kelly Files; Addie Cox to Foreign Mission Board, February 1 and 4, 1937, Addie Cox Files. Emphasis on the "preach" and "explain" is by Cox, who obviously felt uncomfortable describing her function as a ''preacher" to male supervisors at the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

32. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 68, 72-74; Ward, "What I Saw in Canton."

33. Hoadley Berckman, "War Time News," October 27, 1932, Berckman Papers; unidentified clipping in Box 1, Denson Family Papers.

34. Hoadley Berckman's report for 1946, Berckman Papers; oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman; Addie Cox to Foreign Mission Board, February 22, 1946, Addie Cox Files; James T. Williams, "Rough Draft of Notes Prepared Autumn 1945, "James T. Williams Files.

35. Cynthia Miller to family, November 15, 1920; Miller to T. B. Ray, December 5, 1922, June 19, 1923; Miller to her sister, November 3, 1923; Cynthia Miller Files.

36. Mildred Thorne application form, in Mildred Virginia Thorne (Bryan) Files,

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FMB Papers. David Bryan to T. B. Ray, July 27, 1918; Bryan to Foreign Mission Board, September 27, 1921, March 7, 1922; David Bryan Files.

37. Addie Cox to friends, September 24, 1940, Addie Cox Files.

38. Alabama Baptist, August 17, 1904; Crumpton, Book of Memories, 187-88. Willie Kelly to T. B. Ray, September 14, 1919; Kelly to C. E. Maddry, March 4, 1934; Willie Kelly annual reports for 1902 and 1935; Kelly to M. T. Rankin, October 4, 1939; Willie Kelly Files.

39. Willie Kelly to friends, January 21, 1935, Willie Kelly Files.

40. Willie Kelly annual report for 1935, Willie Kelly Files.

41. White, Just Jennie, 26-27, 37, 59, 74; letter from Hoadley Berckman, May 19, 1922, Berckman Papers.

42. Ruth Berckman to relatives, January 25, 1928; Hoadley Berckman to his brother, February 19, 1934; Ruth and Hoadley Berckman annual report for 1949; Berckman Papers.

43. Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions, 46, 49; Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 51.

44. Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 18-19.

45. Ibid., 19-21; Jessie G. Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, 1850-1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 130, 203, 494.

46. MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, charts.

47. H. W. Provence application form, H. W. Provence Files, FMB Papers; H. W. Provence to W. O. Carver, February 15, 1907, W. 0. Carver Papers; H. W. Provence, Southern Baptist Work in China (Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, n. d.), 4.

48. Ray, Southern Baptists in China, lo-ll.

49. Napier, "Challenge of China to America," 94-113.

50. James T. Williams, "The Place of Education in the Religious Redemption of China" (Th.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1921), 40-43, 55-57, 63-65, 108, 112, 117-19, 127-31.

51. Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, November 18, 1848, Eliza Shuck Files; Alabama Baptist, November 19, 1851.

52. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 66-67, 82-84, 124-25, 184.

53. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 16, 45; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 235; Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 122.

54. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 55; Alabama Baptist, March 2, 1889.

55. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 135-36, 151; Nicholas B. Williams to James B. Taylor, August 29, 1877, Nicholas B. Williams Files.

56. Alabama Baptist, September 5, 1895, June 4, 1896, April 20, 1904.

57. Willie Kelly to her cousin, June 3, 1910, November 14, 1914, Willie Kelly Papers; Coleman, One of Us, 67-68; Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, November 29, 1936, Willie Kelly Files.

Page 381

58. Cynthia Miller to James F. Love, February 19, 1923; Miller to Charles E. Maddry, March 14, 1936; "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller"; Cynthia Miller Files.

59. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 65-66, 69.

60. David Bryan to Foreign Mission Board, September 8, 1924, September 27, 1921; Bryan to Mrs. Cross, January 4, 1920; David Bryan Files. Alice Huey annual report, January 13, 1935, Alice Huey Files.

61. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

62. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, xi, 71, 109-14, 117, 151-56, 206, 290-92, 317-20, 335, 347-48.

63. Leon Robinson, "Louise Robinson"; White, Just Jennie, 16-18, 24, 28-29, 36-37, 48, 54, 61-62, 73, 76-77; Atkinson, "My Work in China," 27; idem, "Reminiscences of Early Days in China."

64. Leon Robinson, "Louise Robinson"; Carrie Hong to Carrie Vernon Denson, April 7, 1926; Virginia M. Atkinson to Carrie Vernon Denson, April 29, 1935; Denson Family Papers.

65. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 343-45.

66. James N. Montgomery to friends, April 28, 1925, James N. Montgomery Papers.

67. Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 248-49; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 14.

68. Mary Stuart, "Reminiscences of My Life in China," Christian Observer, November 8, 1922; Letters from Missionaries, December 1875, 282-83; Mary Stuart to her father, June 7, 1875; all in Stuart Papers.

69. Letters from Missionaries, August 1878, and Eugene Barnett to friends, undated, Stuart Papers; Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 249.

70. Stuart, "Reminiscences of Forty Years in China," 583.

71. Foster, Fifty Years in China, xiii, xiv, 14; Missionary Survey 10 (September 1920): 604.

72. Ch'en, China and the West, 130-31.

73. Hyatt, "Protestant Missions in China," 103-07; Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 50; Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions, 46; MacGillivray, Century of Protestant Missions in China, chart.

74. Alabama Baptist, April 3, 1890, April 3 and 4, 1891.

75. Ch'en, China and the West, 130; Mary Stuart, "Medical Work at Hangchow," Missionary 40 (June 1907): 290-91.

76. Provence, Southern Baptist Work in China, 4-5; Napier, "Challenge of China to America," 81-91.

77. "Edmond Lee Rice," undated ms.; Edmond Rice to brethren, February 4, 1933; Rice to Bishop Moore, August 1, 1938; Rice to friends, November 27, 1937; all in Edmond Rice Papers; Ruth and Hoadley Berckman, "1947," Berckman Papers.

78. Harry Mell Ayers, "T. W. Ayers," ms. in Box 138, Harry Mell Ayers Papers, University of Alabama Archives, Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Page 382

79. Ibid.; Willie Mindora Skelton Ayers, "Biography Data Form," in T. W. Ayers Files; Miriam Higginbotham and Ralph Higginbotham, Upon this rock I will build my church . . . : Parker Memorial Baptist Church, 1887-1987 (Anniston: Parker Memorial Baptist Church, 1987), 53.

80. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, March 14, 1919; Ray to Ayers, March 17, 1921, August 11, 1924; Ayers to R.J. Willingham, June 17, 1912; T. W. Ayers Files.

81. Cauthen et al., Advance, 91; Ayers, Healing and Missions, 11, 26, 31-32; Alabama Baptist, June 20, 1901.

82. Harry Mell Ayers, "T. W. Ayers." T. W. Ayers, "The Important Needs of a Great Field," February 14, 1902; idem, "Need of a Hospital," October 22, 1902; idem, "A Fine Lot for the Hospital,'' November 27, 1902; all in T. W. Ayers Files. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 66-70.

83. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 71. T. W. Ayers to W. H. Smith, May 28, 1908; Ayers to R.J. Willingham, October 21, 1908; T. W. Ayers, "Quarterly Report," July 6, 1909; T. W. Ayers Files.

84. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, July 6, 1909; Ayers, "A Busy Man Begs for Help," October 1911; Ayers to Willingham, October 6, 1904; T. W. Ayers Files.

85. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 45-47, 71-73. T. W. Ayers, "Annual Report, 1903"; T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, December 29, 1905; Ayers to T. B. Ray, February 27, 1917, February 20, 1925; Ray to Ayers, December 9, 1924; Ayers to J. F. Love, July 10, 1920; Ayers, "The Beloved Physician," December 31, 1902; T. W. Ayers Files.

86. T. W. Ayers, "The New Warren Memorial Hospital," February 1914; T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, August 8, 1919; T. W. Ayers Files. "Operation Baptist Biography Data Form for Deceased Person, Ayers, Thomas Willburn," Alabama Baptist Historical Society Papers (hereafter cited as ABHS Papers), Samford University.

87. T. W. Ayers, "The Practical Working of Medical Missions," July 15, 1904; T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, January 3 and December 24, 1908; T. W. Ayers Files.

88. T. W. Ayers to J. G. Meadows, April 23, 1904; Ayers to R.J. Willingham, April 27, 1908; T. W. Ayers, "Progress of the Kingdom in Shantung," December 1910; ibid.

89. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, April 22, 1907, ibid.

90. T. W. Ayers, "Glorious Success in North China," April 24, 1908; T. W. Ayers to J. F. Love, October 18, 1915; ibid.

91. T. W. Ayers, "Itinerating by Medical Missionaries," October 1905; T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, June 23, 1923; ibid.

92. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, August 21, 1909, July 7, 1910; Ayers to W. H. Smith, June 16, 1908; Ayers to Willingham, July 28, 1908; T. B. Ray to Ayers, February 12, 1918; ibid.

Page 383

93. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, May 3, 1905, April 3, 1906; Ayers to James F. Love, March 13, 1922; ibid. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 84-85.

94. T. 0. Hearn, "Report Laiyang Schools, 1916"; idem, "T. O. Hearn in the Famine Field"; idem, "A Few Words about Our Year's Work in Laiyang," undated; idem, "A Glorious Harvest for Our King," November 12, 1912; all in T. O. Hearn Files. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 78.

95. T. W. Ayers to Adrian S. Taylor, October 11, 1906, August 27, 1909, both in Adrian Taylor Files; Ayers, Healing and Missions, 94.

96. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 73. Sanford E. Ayers to M. T. Rankin, July 12, 1948, April 30, 1945; Sanford E. Ayers to T. B. Ray, August 9, 1924; Sanford E. Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, October 20, 1934; Sanford E. Ayers Files. T. B. Ray to T. W. Ayers, January 6, 1925; T. W. Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, November 20, 1934; T. W. Ayers Files.

97. Cynthia Miller to R.J. Willingham, January 1, 1906; J. F. Love to Miller, April 17 and November 1, 1918; Miller to Willingham, December 21, 1911; Miller to T. B. Ray, April 15, 1914; Miller to Willingham, December 14, 1912; Miller to R. R. Gwaltney, October 8, 1913; Cynthia Miller Files.

98. Mary S. Bissett, "Letter from Miss Mary Bissett," Missionary Survey lo (September 1920): 582-83.

9

I Was a Different Person-My Girlhood Was Past: Woman Consciousness among Alabama Missionaries

1. Helen Barrett Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman's Work in Foreign Missions (New York: Macmillan, 1911), xv, 1-18; Shirley Ann Hickson, "The Development of Higher Education for Women in the Antebellum South" (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1985), 272.

2. Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), xii-xiii; Leslie A. Fleming, "Studying Women Missionaries in Asia," and Marjorie King, "Exporting Femininity, Not Feminism: Nineteenth Century U.S. Missionary Women's Efforts to Emancipate Chinese Women," in Women's Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Africa, ed. Leslie A. Fleming (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 3-4, 117.

3. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, xvi, 11, 31-40, 42, 52, 55, 64, 69, 70-77, 87-89, 90, 92, 100-101, 115, 175, 190-91, 223. Hunter's book is a superb study of feminism and women missionaries in China, and her perspectives heavily influence this chapter.

4. Mildred Thorne application, Mildred Thorne Files.

5. Harry Mell Ayers, "T. W. Ayers."

Page 384

6. W. B. Crumpton to brother Bill, June 4, 1892, Willie Kelly Files; Coleman, One of Us, 37-38.

7. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 7; Martha Foster Diary, dated March 3, 1846.

8. Martha Foster Diary, dated March 3, 1846, entries for May 27 and 29, 1847.

9. Ibid.

10. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 44, 92.

11. Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, November 18, 1848, Eliza Shuck Files; Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 164. For a fuller description of what happened to Harriet A. Baker, the first single SBC missionary, see Hall, I Give Myself, 150-58.

12. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 98-99; Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 29-31, 46, 61-71.

13. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 164.

14. Ibid., 162; Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 66; T. B. Ray to Willie Kelly, May 2, 1923, Willie Kelly Files.

15. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54. Emphasis is Crawford's.

16. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 13.

17. Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 88.

18. "A Sketch of the Life of Cynthia Adaline Miller," in Cynthia Miller Files.

19. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 231, 244, 246, 252-54.

20. Alabama Baptist, July 27, 1876, July 11, 1889, and January 14, 1892.

21. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 30-35, 41; Martha Foster Crawford, The Chinese Bride: A Story of Real Life (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, [1868?]), 11-18, 50-52, 70-77.

22. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 231-32; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 62-63; Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851.

23. White, Just Jennie, 19, 46.

24. Mary Stuart, "Notes from Hangchow," Missionary 34 (August 1901): 360; Letters from Missionaries (October 1875): 242; Hartwell, "Mobile to China," 249; Mary Stuart to her mother, September 29, 1875, Stuart Papers; Mary Stuart, "Times of Trial in China," Missionary 34 (January 1901): 27.

25. Willie Kelly to her cousin, June 3, 1919, Willie Kelly Papers.

26. Cynthia Miller to Charles E. Maddry, November 15, 1933; Miller to T. B. Ray, September 5, 1922; Cynthia Miller Files.

27. King, "Exporting Femininity, Not Feminism," 130.

28. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Empire, 167-68.

29. Ibid., 30-31; Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 176.

30. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 62; Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851.

31. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

32. Mary Stuart to her mother, September 29, 1875, Stuart Papers.

33. King, "Exporting Femininity, Not Feminism," 123-29.

Page 385

34. Alabama Baptist, November 19, 1851; Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1852.

35. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 152. Cynthia Miller to R.J. Willingham, April 16, 1911; Miller to James F. Love, February 19, 1923; Cynthia Miller Files. L. P. Newton to Inabelle Coleman, 1934, T. W. Ayers Files.

36. Grimshaw, Paths of Duty, 77.

37. Nicholas B. Williams to H. A. Tupper, March 29, 1875, Nicholas B. Williams Files.

38. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

39. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 68; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 62-63, 149, 151-52; Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

40. Alabama Baptist, August 27, 1891.

41. Alabama Baptist, January 31, 1895, and April 26, 1888; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 140.

42. Alabama Baptist, June 27, 1846.

43. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 70-71; "J. Lewis Shuck," Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2:1201-02; Alabama Baptist, July 15, 1886.

44. Mary Stuart to her mother, July 6, 1880, and September 29, 1875, Stuart Papers.

45. Hearn, "A Few Words about Our Year's Work in Laiyang"; idem, annual report, 1918; idem, "Two Weeks Meetings in Laiyang, China," August 12, 1918; idem, "Report Laiyang Work for 1917"; T. O. Hearn Files.

46. Nicholas B. Williams to H. A. Tupper, March 29, 1875, Nicholas B. Williams Files.

47. Alabama Baptist, January 8, 1891. T. W. Ayers to W. H. Smith, June 16, 1908; Ayers to R.J. Willingham, July 21, 1909, June 8, 1912, July 21, 1909, March 9, 1910, December 19, 1910, June 8, 1912, and May 2, 1914; T. W. Ayers Files.

48. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 51; Coleman, One of Us, 63.

49. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1851, 1853-54.

50. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 257, 264.

51. White, Just Jennie, 13; Coleman, One of Us, 51-52.

52. Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, July 26, 1909; Kelly to Willingham, December 12, 1912 (the emphasis is Kelly's; fortunately Willingham did not burn this letter as she requested); Willie Kelly Files.

53. Ruth Rice Berckman to friends, November 9, 1937, Berckman Papers; Mary Stuart to her mother, September 5, 1876, Stuart Papers.

54. Martha Foster Diary, dated March 3, 1846; Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1851, 1853-54.

55. Martha Foster Diary, dated March 3, 1846.

56. Ibid.; Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention.

57. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

Page 386

58. The best account of this period of the Crawfords' marriage is found in Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 40-49.

59. Martha Foster Crawford, "Northern China: A Call to North China," in Tupper, Decade of Foreign Missions, 672.

60. Martha Foster Diary, dated March 3, 1846.

61. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 88-89, 92-93, 130-35, 171, 177, 197, 247, 251.

62. Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 18.

63. Coleman, One of Us, 52-53, 59-61, 81; Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, August 29, 1937, Willie Kelly Files.

64. Coleman, One of Us, 93; Alabama Baptist, May 2, 1895; Crumpton, Book of Memories, 187; Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, April 20, 1902, Willie Kelly Files.

65. Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, August 19, 1905, Willie Kelly Files; Zau, Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church, 28; Coleman, One of Us, 52-53.

66. Coleman, One of Us, 68-69. T. B. Ray to Willie Kelly, July 25, 1922; Kelly to Ray, April 8, 1923; Willie Kelly Files. Alabama Baptist, December 24, 1896.

67. Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, December 27, 1909; Kelly to T. B. Ray, May 7, 1914, October 21, 1922; Ray to Kelly, November 24, 1922; Willie Kelly Files.

68. Coleman, One of Us, 70-72.

69. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, September 17, 1918, Cynthia Miller Files.

70. W. B. Crumpton to Brother Harris, July 14, 1893; Crumpton to H. A. Tupper, June lo, 1893; Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, December 27, 1909, and December 1909; Willie Kelly Files. Hamilton and Wells, Daughters of the Dream, 81, 283; Crumpton, Book of Memories, 185.

71. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 72-73.

72. Lucy Ayers to R.J. Willingham, June 8, 1905, T. W. Ayers Files; White, Just Jennie, 19-20. For an example of an Alabama Baptist woman's approval of a Chinese woman preacher, see Alabama Baptist, April 23, 1936.

73. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, undated, Cynthia Miller Files; Mary Stuart, "Story of Ah-Vong; One of the Girls in Our Hangchow School," Missionary 27 (February 1894): 73-75; Willie Kelly to Mrs. Hutchinson, Spring 1910, Willie Kelly Files; Moonbeam Tong to Annie Grace Smith, February 15, 1940, in possession of Wayne Flynt; White, Just Jennie, 23.

74. Willie Kelly to her cousin, June 3, 1910, Willie Kelly Papers; Willie Kelly annual report for 1902, in Willie Kelly Files; Coleman, One of Us, 63-64, 80.

75. Birmingham News, February 12, 1979; "Autobiography of 'Mother' Mary H. Stuart," Stuart Papers.

76. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 22-26, 250-51; Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 154-56, 173, 202-03, 210, 222-23, 235-40, 242, 251, 282, 286-90, 308; interviews with Clara Wing-chung Ho and Wong Wong Yin Lee, by

Page 387

Wayne Flynt, Hong Kong Baptist College, Hong Kong, October 1 and 13, 1992.

77. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 22-23; White, Just Jennie, 76.

78. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 244-48; Alabama Baptist, July 10, 1879; Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 348-52.

79. White, Just Jennie, 87; Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 105. Willie Kelly to T. B. Ray, February 15, 1933; Willie Kelly annual report for 1935; Kelly to friends, July 5 and January 21, 1935; Willie Kelly Files.

80. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54. Hoadley Berckman to relatives, May 18, 1923, and Ruth Berckman to relatives, May 3, 1924; Berckman Papers.

81. Fleming, "Studying Women Missionaries in Asia," 5-6.

82. Ibid., 5; Sara W. Tucker, "A Mission for Change in China: The Hackett Women's Medical Center of Canton, China, 1900-1930," in Fleming, Women's Work for Women, 137-55.

83. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 101-02, 115; Bissett, "Letter from Miss Mary Bissett," 582; Mary Stuart to her mother, September 29, 1875, Stuart Papers.

84. Eliza Shuck to James B. Taylor, May 28, 1849, November 18, 1848, Eliza Shuck Files.

85. Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, January 27, 1897; Kelly to T. B. Ray, September 14, 1919, February 21, 1923; Willie Kelly Files.

86. Willie Kelly to friends, January 21, 1935, Willie Kelly Files; Crumpton, Book of Memories, 186; Coleman, One of Us, 51, 54, 70, 75, 96.

87. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 223; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 69-74; Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

88. White, Just Jennie, 47.

89. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, November 11, 1905, July 7, 1910; T. W. Ayers, "Need of a Hospital"; Ayers to T. B. Ray, September 3, 1919, January 12, 1921, February 11, 1922; Ray to Ayers, June 13, 1919; T. W. Ayers Files. Ayers, Healing and Missions, 84.

90. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 171-73, 186, 251; Alabama Baptist, September 6, 1888; Crawford, "History of Missions in [Tengchow]."

91. Addie Cox to friends, March 1, 1933, and Thanksgiving Day 1938, Addie Cox Files; Walker and Cox, Glimpses of Missionary Life, 51-53; "Book of Reports, Woman's Missionary Union of Alabama," 1945.

92. Irene Jeffers, annual report for 1934, April 10, 1935, Irene Jeffers Files, FMB Papers; Irene Jeffers to her mother, sisters, and other relatives, June 6, 1926, in possession of Wayne Flynt; oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

93. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 204; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 69.

94. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 213.

95. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 264-65.

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10

Error Is Propagated Along with Truth: Conflict among Alabama Missionaries

1. Historian James L. Huskey both in his dissertation and in an article in Diplomatic History admirably differentiates the complex relationship between the 4,ooo American missionaries, journalists, businessmen, and diplomats living in Shanghai in 1925. He distinguishes between a "cosmopolitan elite"of both Chinese and Americans that included journalists, scholars, enlightened missionaries, and some businessmenand a much larger group of American businessmen who knew little about China, its language, or its people and who exploited the Chinese and cheated them whenever possible. See Huskey, "Cosmopolitan Connection," 227-37.

2. For historical interpretation of missionaries as the religious manifestation of economic colonialism, see McClellan, "Missionary Influence on American Attitudes," 475-85. For conflicts between businessmen/diplomats and missionaries over the Opium War, Taiping Rebellion, Boxer Rebellion, and Chinese nationalism, see: Frederick Wakeman, Jr., Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966); Franz Michael and Chang Chung-li, The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents, 3 vols. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 196671); Joseph Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987); Mary Clabaugh Wright, ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).

3. F. W. Williams, "The Chinese Foreign Merchant and the Missionaries," Alabama Baptist, November 26, 1902. J. C. Stivender, "Problems in Foreign Missions," ms. of paper presented to Birmingham Protestant pastors theological discussion group, 1942, in ABHS Papers.

4. "Reminiscences of Julius C. Greene," undated, but probably late nineteenth century, Julius C. Greene Papers, Auburn University Archives.

5. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 129, 131.

6. Ibid., 129-31, 134; Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford," 15.

7. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

8. Ibid.

9. Willie Kelly to T. B. Ray, October 1, 1922, February 21, 1923; Kelly to Ray, undated but sometime in 1923; Willie Kelly Files.

10. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, March 24,1915, T. W. Ayers Files.

11. David Bryan to T. B. Ray, May 2, 1925, David Bryan Files.

12. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

13. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 225-26.

14. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 132-33.

15. Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford," 14.

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16. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 85-86.

17. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 115, 218, 226-27.

18. Ibid., 129-30, 227-28.

19. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:259, 302.

20. Stuart, "Medical Work at Hangchow," 291; idem, "Reminiscences of Forty Years in China," 584-85.

21. Summary of mission activities for 1926, in Berckman Papers.

22. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 109, 113-15, 121.

23. Alabama Baptist, August 14, 1890, September 7, 1904, September 6, 1905.

24. Cauthen et al., Advance, 92-93.

25. Alabama Baptist, January 25, 1894, July 19, 1900; Coleman, One of Us, 63; Irene Jeffers's "Running Letter," June 1926, in possession of Wayne Flynt; oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

26. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 25, 55.

27. Napier, "Challenge of China to America," 107.

28. David Carver to W. O. Carver, February 24,1907, Box 4, W. O. Carver Papers.

29. Ibid.; Ruth Provence to Wayne Flynt, November 17, 1991; H. W. Provence to W. O. Carver, February 15, 1907, Box 4, W. O. Carver Papers.

30. "History of the Woman's Missionary Union of East Liberty Association," Denson Family Papers.

31. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, March 28, 1904, May 22, 1906, December 2, 1908, December 3, 1912; Ayers to. F. Love, March 13, 1922; T. W. Ayers Files.

32. T. W. Ayers, "The Outlook Simply Glorious," August 1909; Ayers to R. J. Willingham, July 2, 1910; Ayers to William H. Smith, July 15, 1908; ibid.

33. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, December 19, 1910, ibid.

34. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, June 19 and 25, 1912; Ayers to T. B. Ray, December 26, 1912; Ayers to Willingham, December 29, 1912; Ayers to Ray, July 20, 1914; Ayers to Willingham, August 16, 1913; ibid.

35. T. W. Ayers to James F. Love, July 13, 1922; Ayers to T. B. Ray, December 9, 1922; ibid.

36. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, October 19 and 11, and November 15, 1915; Ray to Ayers, December 16, 1915; Ayers to Ray, January 27, 1916; Roger S. Greene to Ayers, January 31, 1916; Ray to Ayers, October 21, 1915; ibid.

37. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, September 16, 1916; Ray to Ayers, October 18, 1916; Ayers to Ray, December 19, 1916; ibid.

38. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, October 16, 1916; Ray to Ayers, November 21, 1916; ibid.

39. T. B. Ray to T. W. Ayers, October 18 and November 21, 1916, ibid.

40. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, March 4 and 9, 1918; Ray to Ayers, March 6, 1918; ibid.

41. Report by T. W. Ayers to China Medical Board, December 20, 1918, copy in

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ibid.; T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, August 28 and September 3, 1919; Ayers to FMB, May 1921; Ayers to Ray, July 13, 1921; ibid.

42. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, July 17, 1914, ibid.

43. T. W. Ayers to Brother Yarborough, July 6, 1912; Ayers to R. J. Willingham, July 17 and September 19, 1913; Ayers to T. B. Ray, July 13, 1918; Ayers to J. F. Love, February 25, 1919; ibid.

44. S. E. Ayers to Pat, Billy, and Virginia, April 3, 1938, Sanford E. Ayers Files.

45. "Amended Rules Revised and Approved by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richmond, Virginia, June, 1900," in FMB Papers.

46. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 98-99, 109-1o, 114-15; Alabama Baptist, April 11, 1935; Charles E. Maddry to Willie Kelly, May 4, 1939, Willie Kelly Files.

47. Hendon M. Harris to W. O. Carver, May 4, 1926, W. O. Carver Papers.

48. T. W. Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, December 1, 1933, T. W. Ayers Files.

49. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 129-30; Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

50. Willie Kelly to R.J. Willingham, March 17, 1909, and December 1909; James F. Love to Kelly, April 27, 1915; Willie Kelly Files.

51. James F. Love to Willie Kelly, May 25, 1915; Kelly to T. B. Ray, February 15, 1916; ibid. Coleman, One of Us, 66-68.

52. James F. Love to Willie Kelly, April 23, 1921, July 25, 1922, Willie Kelly Files.

53. James F. Love to Cynthia Miller, April 17, and November 1, 1918, Cynthia Miller Files.

54. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, November 9, 1922, September 17, 1918, September 5, 1922, October 24, 1923; Ray to Miller, December 6, 1923; Miller to Ray, January 11, 1931; ibid.

55. T. W. Ayers to Adrian S. Taylor, October 11, 1906; Ayers to R.J. Willingham, February 28 and May 24, 1907, October 13, 1908, September 20, 1909, June 21, 1910; Ayers to T. B. Ray, March 24, 1915, February 27, 1917; T. W. Ayers Files.

56. T. W. Ayers to James F. Love, July 12, 1921, ibid.

57. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, January 1, 1925; Love to Ayers, March 5, 1925; ibid.

58. Personnel file of Mary Anderson, FMB Papers.

59. White, Just Jennie, 40-42.

60. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:302.

61. Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 15-18.

62. "Amended Rules" of FMB, June 1900; Ray, Southern Baptists in China, 23.

63. Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 204-05, 223-27; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 17-68; Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 60.

64. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 9; Martha Foster Crawford Diary, 1851.

65. Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," x, 27-38.

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66. Ibid., 52, 161-62; Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford," 130.

67. Cauthen et al., Advance, 85-86. For a sympathetic and detailed statement of Crawford's doctrinal views, see Foster, Fifty Years in China, 299-309.

68. Marty G. Bell, "James Robinson Graves and the Rhetoric of Demagogy: Primitivism and Democracy in Old Landmarkism" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1990), 252-55; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 54; Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 106-07; Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 96-107.

69. Tupper, Decade of Foreign Missions, 673; Martha Foster Crawford to T. Bell, September 29, 1888, Martha Foster Crawford Files, FMB Papers; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 190-91.

70. Alabama Baptist, April 26, 1888, March 2, 1889, November 6, 1890, November 26, 1891, March 3 and December 22, 1892, December 7, 1893, May 2 and 9, 1895, March 8, 1900.

71. Ibid., August 15, 1889; Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 117-20; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 57.

72. Foster, Fifty Years in China, 227, 229-41; Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 187-97.

73. Foreign Mission Journal 23 (May 1892): 293-94. Alabama Baptist, September 1, August 11, and June 16, 1892; March 9 and December 21, 1813; June 21 and October 11, 1894; April 4, 1895.

74. Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 154-74.

75. Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 108-15; Foreign Mission Journal 23 (May 1892): 291-92.

76. Alabama Baptist, January 21, 1892; March 23, June 15, and December 14, 1893; February 14 and April 9, 1895. Teague ended his sad letter: "In acutest sorrow. If this is . . . blotted and blurred, you can account for it."

77. Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 58-59, 68.

78. Foreign Mission Board, Southern Baptists and Their Far Eastern Missions, 172; Ray, Southern Baptists in China, 10.

79. "Amended Rules" of FMB, 1900; Lamkin, "Gospel Mission Movement," 192205.

80. Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, September 17, 1918; Ray to Miller, November 1, 1918; Cynthia Miller Files. "A Happy Christmas in Laichow," in Alice Huey Files. Hearn, annual report, 1918, in T. O. Hearn Files. Willie Kelly to T. B. Ray, May 20, 1915; Kelly to Mrs. Hutchinson, November 30, 1910; Kelly to Ray, May 7, 1914; Charles E. Maddry to Kelly, November 30, 1934; James F. Love to Kelly, November 26, 1924; Willie Kelly Files. Alabama Baptist, March 7, 1895, May 7, 1902; Coleman, One of Us, 77; Kelly to Maddry, January 30, 1940, Willie Kelly Files.

81. T. W. Ayers, annual report for 1903, T. W. Ayers Files; H. W. Provence to W. O. Carver, February 15, 1907, W. 0. Carver Papers.

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82. David Bryan to the Foreign Mission Board, September 1, 1926, David Bryan Files.

83. White, Just Jennie, 73-74, 76, 79.

84. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, February 11, 1931; Ray to Ayers, February 13, 1931; Ayers to Ray, December 24, 1932; Ray to Ayers, December 27, 1932; T. W. Ayers Files.

85. Shaw, ''John Leighton Stuart," 16-18.

86. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 133; Bryan, At the Gates, 102-03.

87. James N. Montgomery to "Friends," April 28, 1925, James N. Montgomery Papers; idem, "Moving, Preaching and Other Things," Missionary Survey 11 (July 1921): 503; Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 18.

88. Hoadley Berckman to A. W. Wasson, April 13, 1939, Berckman Papers.

89. T. B. Ray to T. W. Ayers, February 13, 1931, T. W. Ayers Files; Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 113-18, 154-55.

90. Willie Kelly to R. J. Willingham, October 15, 1912, Willie Kelly Files; Coleman, One of Us, 45.

91. Cynthia Miller to Charles E. Maddry, December 28, 1933, Cynthia Miller Files; Williams, "Place of Education in the Religious Redemption of China," 72, 79.

92. T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, May 26, 1909; Ayers to J. F. Love, December 5, 1924; Love to Ayers, December 8, 1924; T. W. Ayers Files.

93. T. W. Ayers, "Assuming Responsibilities," August 1910; T. W. Ayers to R.J. Willingham, January 24, 1910; Ayers to T. B. Ray, July 20, 1914, November 15, 1915; Ayers to Willingham, July 17, 1913; Ayers to Ray, March 11, 1926; Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, April 16, 1934, November 8, 1939; all in ibid. Sanford E. Ayers to M. T. Rankin, October 11, 1937; Sanford E. Ayers to Pat, Billy, and Virginia, April 3, 1938; Sanford E. Ayers Files.

94. Hyatt, "Protestant Missions in China," 95-101; Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, January 11, 1931, Cynthia Miller Files; T. F. McCrea, "An Open Letter to Southern Baptists," November 1, 1912, copy in W. O. Carver Papers.

95. W. 0. Carver to T. F. McCrea, December 31, 1912, W. O. Carver Papers; David Bryan to Foreign Mission Board, September 29, 1923, David Bryan Files. T. W. Ayers to R. J. Willingham, December 14, 1912, August 16, 1913, January 12, 1914; Ayers to T. B. Ray, February 7, 1914; Ayers to J. F. Love, October 18, 1915; T. W. Ayers Files.

96. Sarah R. Mason, "Missionary Conscience and the Comprehension of Imperialism: A Study of the Children of American Missionaries to China, 1900-1949" (Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1978), 16-27.

97. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 3:317-20; John K. Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 305-06.

98. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 3:320-23.

99. Hundley Wiley to W. O. Carver, June 6, 1925; W. O. Carver Papers.

Page 393

100. James F. Love to Willie Kelly, November 26, 1924, May 4, 1939, Willie Kelly Files; Alabama Baptist, July 6, 1933.

101. T. W. Ayers to J. F. Love, August 8, 1919, T. W. Ayers Files; Alice Huey to FMB, November 1, 1935, Alice Huey Files.

102. Cynthia Miller to Charles E. Maddry, March 14, 1936; Miller to. F. Love, May 12, 1920, and June 12, 1919; Miller to R.J. Willingham, April 16, 1911; Cynthia Miller Files.

103. Alabama Baptist, December 22, 1932, and March 29, 1934.

104. For an altogether simplistic description of pentecostals, see Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 49. Cynthia Miller to Charles E. Maddry, December 28, 1933, and March 14, 1936, Cynthia Miller Files.

11

Jesus Christ Had Nothing to Do with the French: Missionaries and Chinese Politics

1. See Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951); Peter W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840-42 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).

2. Peter W. Fay, "The Protestant Mission and the Opium War," Pacific Historical Review 40 (May 1971): 160-61.

3. Hsiang Ta et al., eds., T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo [The kingdom of heavenly peace], 2 vols. (Shanghai: People's Press, 1952), 2:632.

4. See Eugene Boardman, Christian Influence upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952).

5. See Mary Clabaugh Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862-1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957).

6. John K. Fairbank, "Pattern Behind the Tiensin Massacre," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20 (December 1957): 480-511; see also Lu Shih-ch'iang, Chung-kuo Kuan-shenfan-chiao ti yüan-yin, 1860-1874 [The causes of the anti-Christian movement among Chinese officials and gentry, 1860-1874] (Taipei: n.p., 1966), and Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Antimissionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

7. Lu Shih-ch'iang, Chung-kuo Kuan-shenfan-chiao ti yüan-yin.

8. See Cohen, China and Christianity.

9. See Marina Warner, The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi, 183.51908 (London: Sphere Books, 1974).

10. For this short-lived attempt at reform, see Luke Kwong, A Mosaic of the Hundred Days: Personalities, Politics and Ideas of 1898 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).

11. See Esherick, Origins of the Boxer Uprising.

12. See Warner, Dragon Empress, and Paul Kramer, ed., The Last Manchu: The

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Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China (New York: Pocket Books, 1987).

13. See Harold Schriffin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970).

14. See Wright, China in Revolution.

15. See Ernest Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai: Liberalism and Dictatorship in Early Republican China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977).

16. Ibid.

17. See John E. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism: Germany in Shandung (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, The Rise of Modern China, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 479, 491.

18. See Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), and Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, 3 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958, 1964, and 1965).

19. Martin C. Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 198-207.

20. Ibid., 30-31.

21. Ibid., 114-15.

22. Ibid., 118-65.

23. Hsiao Tso-liang, Chinese Communism in 1927: City vs. Countryside (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1970), 2-9.

24. James P. Harrison, The Long March to Power: A History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921-1971 (New York: Praeger, 1972), 18-35.

25. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 336; and Martin C. Wilbur, The Nationalist Revolution in China, 1923-1928 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 13-18.

26. Wilbur, Nationalist Revolution, 13-18.

27. Ibid.; and Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 33-94.

28. See Donald A. Jordan, The Northern Expedition: China's National Revolution of 1926-1928 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976).

29. Spence, Search for Modern China, 341-60.

30. Lloyd Eastman, The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 19271939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), and Harrison, Long March to Power, 189-217.

31. Hsii, Rise of Modern China, 545-52.

32. Harrison, Long March to Power, 218-59.

33. Hsii, Rise of Modern China, 464-565 and 578-613; Harrison, Long March to Power, 271-365. Also see Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and

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Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).

34. Spence, Search for Modern China, 362. Also see Seagrave, Soong Dynasty.

35. See Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978); Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 284-86.

36. See Lionel Chassin, The Communist Conquest of China: A History of the Civil War, 1945-49, trans. Timothy Osata and Louis Gelas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).

37. See Derk Bodde, Peking Diary: 1948-1949 (New York: Alelard-Schumn, 1950), and Jack Belden, China Shakes the World (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1949).

38. Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54.

39. Prescott Clarke and J. S. Gregory, Western Reports on the Taiping: A Selection of Documents (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1982), xiii, 19-21, 61-62, 225-31.

40. Alabama Baptist, August 26, September 9, October 28, and November 4, 1853; December 2, 1858; December 13, 1860; January 9, 1861.

41. For Martha Crawford's account of the Taiping Rebellion, see Martha Foster Crawford Diaries, 1853-54, and articles by her in the Alabama Baptist, August 3, and September 7 and 28, 1882, and May 10, 1894. See also Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 189; Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford," 20-24; Foster, Fifty Years in China, 77; Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 10-11; see also Caleb Carr, The Devil Soldier: The Story of Frederick Townsend Ward (New York: Random House, 1991).

42. Alabama Baptist, September 28, 1882.

43. Crawford, "History of Missions in [Tengchow]"; Alabama Baptist, November 20, 1884.

44. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 131-32.

45. Nicholas B. Williams to Brother Taylor, August 29, 1877, Nicholas B. Williams Files; Alabama Baptist, October 9, 1884; Mary Stuart to her "mother," September 29, 1875, Stuart Papers.

46. Stuart, "Reminiscences of Forty Years in China," 582. John L. Stuart to Judge G. Horton, June 8, 1876; Mary Stuart to her mother, September 5, 1876; Stuart Papers.

47. Alabama Baptist, August 20, 1891, December 13, 1894.

48. Mary H. Stuart to her mother, December 20, 1883, September 11, 1884, Stuart Papers. Mary Stuart, " 'Hiding under the Shadow of His Wing,' " Missionary 24 (October 1891): 394-95; idem, "Reminiscences of Forty Years in China," 582.

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49. Alabama Baptist, March 7, 1895.

50. Mary Stuart, "China," Missionary 25 (November 1892): 463.

51. Alabama Baptist, March 1, 1900; Thompson, "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford," 130.

52. White, Just Jennie, 32; Alabama Baptist, August 23, 1900.

53. Mary Stuart, "Letter from Shanghai," Missionary 33 (November 1900): 504; idem, "Dark Days in China," Missionary 33 (September 1900): 413.

54. Stuart, "Dark Days in China," 413; idem, "Times of Trial in China," 25-26; idem, "Notes from Hangchow," 362.

55. Stuart, "Letter from Shanghai," 505; idem, "Times of Trial in China," 27; idem, "Notes from Hangchow," 363.

56. Alabama Baptist, February 7, 1901.

57. Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions, 51.

58. Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 170-75, 195.

59. Provence, Southern Baptist Work in China, 7. H. W. Provence to W. O. Carver, February 15, 1907, W. O. Carver Papers.

60. Ch'en, China and the West, 109.

61. Cynthia Miller to R.J. Willingham, December 21, 1911, Cynthia Miller Files; A. C. Bowen to brethren, November 14, 1911, A. C. Bowen Papers.

62. White, Just Jennie, 59-60.

63. J. Leighton Stuart, "The Revolution and Our Work in Hangchow," 275-76; idem, "The Revolution in Nanking," 277-78; both in Missionary Survey 2 (February 1912); Warren H. Stuart, "The Revolution at Hangchow," Missionary Survey 2 (May 1912): 493-94.

64. T. 0. Hearn, "China's Day of Visitation," May 5, 1913, T. 0. Hearn Files; Reed, Missionary Mind, 35-36, 95-97.

65. Hearn, "Report Laiyang Schools, 1916," T. O. Hearn Files.

66. Albert C. Bowen, "Chinese Asking Hard Questions," Missionary Voice 5 (January 1915): 32-33.

67. T. B. Ray to T. W. Ayers, February 13, 1931; Ayers to Ray, February 11, 1931; T. W. Ayers Files. Williams, "Place of Education in the Religious Redemption of China," 117-19.

68. Paul A. Varg, "The Missionary Response to the Nationalist Revolution," in Fairbank, Missionary Enterprise, 311; Hodgkin (Secretary, National Christian Council of China), "Memorandum on Missions," 292, 297-98; Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 23.

69. White, Just Jennie, 77.

70. Ruth Berckman to her parents, May 31 and June 10 and 13, 1925, Berckman Papers; Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 25.

71. Cynthia Miller to Mrs. R. N. Miller, September 25, 1925, Cynthia Miller Files; A. C. Bowen to Rev. O. E. Goddard, March 30, 1928, A. C. Bowen Papers. An article in a Methodist missionary journal warned against just such at-

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tribution of all protest in China to Communist inspiration: S. R. Anderson, "When Is 'Red'?" Missionary Voice 17 (April 1927): 10-11.

72. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 36; Coleman, Gardner, and Thomasson, Gospel Messengers from Alabama, 85; Birmingham Age-Herald, copy in George Petrie Clippings, RG 192, Auburn University Archives; Hoadley Berckman to Father and Mother Rice, Berckman Papers.

73. J. H. H. Berckman, "As the Missionary Sees It," Missionary Voice 17 (April 1927): 4-5.

74. A. C. Bowen to 0. E. Goddard, July 11, 1929, January 14, 1931, A. C. Bowen Papers; Hoadley Berckman to Ruth's family, November 24, 1930, Berckman Papers.

75. Hoadley Berckman to brethren, February 4, 1933, Berckman Papers; Alice Huey, "Laichoofu," January 13, 1935, Alice Huey Files; Cynthia Miller to T. B. Ray, January 11, 1931, Cynthia Miller Files; oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

76. Fox Butterfield, "A Missionary View of the Chinese Communists, 19361939," in Liu, American Missionaries in China, 278, 280-83, 287-88; James N. Montgomery to friends, April 28, 1925, James N. Montgomery Papers; Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China," 52, 80-81, 207; Hoadley Berckman to relatives, December 12, 1931, Berckman Papers.

77. T. W. Ayers to J. F. Love, February 16, 1928; Love to Ayers, February 18, 1928; T. W. Ayers Files.

78. Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China," 3-5, 10-41. Greenawalt's important study examines six denominations, two of which (Presbyterian Church, US, and ME Church, South) were well represented by Alabama missionaries. Our research indicates that his conclusions are equally applicable to Southern Baptists, though they were not one of his six. Greenawalt correctly challenges the conclusions of Paul Varg (Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats, 248) and Barbara Tuchman (Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 [New York: Macmillan, 1971], 188) that missionaries distorted true conditions in China during the 1930s and 1940s and uncritically supported Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. See also Patricia Neils, "Missionary Influence on U.S. China Policy in the 1930s and '40s," 13-14, ms. presented in McMinnville, Oregon, at a conference on "American Missionaries and Social Change in China: Collision and Confluence," July 14-17, 1994, sponsored by the Northwest Regional China Council.

79. Alabama Baptist, April 21, 1938, January 5 and August 31, 1939, January 18, 1940.

80. Hoadley Berckman to Ruth Berckman's parents, February 2, 1932; petition "To the Editor," February 3, 1932; both in Berckman Papers.

81. "A Virile, Self-Supporting Church," Denson Family Papers.

82. Hoadley Berckman to Dr. Wasson, October 10, 1938, Berckman Papers.

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83. Virginia Atkinson to Carrie Denson, July 29 and June 23, 1939, and unidentified clipping in Box 1, Denson Family Papers.

84. Cecil and Margaret Ward to friends and fellow workers, September 28, 1940, Cecil S. Ward Files; Alabama Baptist, October 31, 1940.

85. Neils, "Missionary Influence on U.S. China Policy," 16.

86. Alabama Baptist, November 18 and December 30, 1937, January 5 and 13, 1938, August 6, 1942; Stivender, "Problems in Foreign Missions."

87. Alabama Baptist, September 23, October 14 and 21, 1937.

88. Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, August 29, 1937, Willie Kelly Files.

89. Roberta Pearle Johnson to Charles E. Maddry, October 18, 1937; Willie Kelly to Maddry, September 23, 1937; ibid.

90. Roberta Pearle Johnson to Charles E. Maddry, October 18, 1937, ibid.; Alabama Baptist, March 2,1939.

91. Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, April 4, 1939, Willie Kelly Files.

92. Willie Kelly to Charles E. Maddry, December 15, 1940; Kelly to M. T. Rankin, January 17, 1944; ibid.

93. Alabama Baptist, June 1, 1944.

94. S. E. Ayers to M. T. Rankin, October 11, 1937; S. E. Ayers to Pat, Billy, and Virginia, March 15, 1938; Sanford E. Ayers Files.

95. S. E. Ayers to Pat, Billy, and Virginia, March 15, 1938, ibid.

96. Alabama Baptist, March 3, 1938. S. E. Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, November 19, 1938; S. E. Ayers to Pat, Billy, and Virginia, April 3, 1938; S. E. Ayers to Maddry, April 21, 1939; Sanford E. Ayers Files. Charles E. Maddry to T. W. Ayers, March 18, 1933, October 27, 1938, October 27, 1939, T. W. Ayers Files.

97. Alabama Baptist, January 23, 1941. S. E. Ayers to M. T. Rankin, December 29, 1942; Pat (Mrs. S. E.) Ayers to Rankin, April 30, 1945; S. E. Ayers to B. J. Cauthen, October 16, 1947; Sanford E. Ayers Files.

98. T. W. Ayers to Jessie R. Ford, March 25, 1938; Ayers to Ford, 1938; Inabelle G. Coleman to Ayers, March 2, 1938; Ayers to M. T. Rankin, November 15, 1943; Ayers to Charles Maddry and M. T. Rankin, August 5, 1944; Maddry and Rankin to Ayers, August 8, 1944; T. W. Ayers Files.

99. Addie E. Cox to friends, July 23, 1938, Addie Cox Files; Alabama Baptist, September 29, 1938, June 27 and December 12, 1940, July 8, 1943, February 22, 1945; Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 350.

100. Ward, "What I Saw in Canton"; Cecil and Margaret Ward to friends, August 5, 1941; Cecil S. Ward Files. Alabama Baptist, May 29, 1941, and October 1, 8, and 15, 1942.

101. Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 63-68, 81, 87-89, 92-93; Alabama Baptist, November 3, 1938, and September 10 and 17, 1942.

102. Williams, "War, Communism and Missions in China"; unidentified clipping in possession of Wayne Flynt.

103. Hoadley Berckman to A. W. Wasson, April 13, 1939; Ruth Berckman memoir

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for 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945; Berckman Papers. Oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman. Hoadley Berckman, "United China Relief," November 19, 1945, in Berckman Papers.

104. E. L. Rice to friends, November 27, 1937; Rice to Bishop Moore and Dr. Wasson, August 1, 1938; Edmond Rice Papers.

105. Wartime Work Committee of Various Bodies in Chengchow to Dr. Rankin, April 8, 1939, Sanford E. Ayers Files.

106. Alabama Baptist, August 14, 1941.

107. J. H. H. Berckman report, October 16, 1950, Berckman Papers.

108. Gerald F. Winfield, "Will Communism Destroy Christianity in China?" World Outlook 39 (March 1949): 11.

109. The preceding summary is found in Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, "An Unlikely Peace: American Missionaries and the Chinese Communists, 1948-1950," Pacific Historical Review 45 (February 1976): 97, 102-05, 107, 112-14.

110. Alabama Baptist, July 22 and August 12, 1948.

111. New York Times, September 21, 1962; Foster, Fifty Years in China, xx.

112. T. W. Ayers to M. T. Rankin, January 13, 15, and 21, November 19, 1948, T. W. Ayers Files.

113. Sanford E. Ayers to B. J. Cauthen, December 19, 1947, Sanford E. Ayers Files.

114. Sanford E. Ayers to M. T. Rankin, July 12, 1948, April 18, 1949; Sanford E. Ayers, "Crisis of Medical Missions in China," January 17, 1949; ibid.

115. Alabama Baptist, July 18, 1946, January 30, 1947, April 1, 1948. Addie Estelle Cox to friends and coworkers, December 24, 1947; Cox to friends, August 22, 1951; Addie Cox Files.

116. Williams, "War, Communism and Missions in China," 71, 133, 138-39.

117. Oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

118. Irene Jeffers to her sister, June 5, 1949; Jeffers to her mother, June 21, 1949, March 27, 1951; Irene Jeffers Files. Williams, "War, Communism and Missions in China," 143,153.

119. Ruth Berckman memoir for 1948, 1949, and 1950, Berckman Papers; oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman.

120. Neils, "Missionary Influence on U.S. China Policy," 16-25.

121. Zhou Xinping, "The American Missionary Impact on Chinese Society: A Chinese Perspective," ms. presented at McMinnville, Oregon, conference July 14-17, 1994.

12

You Who Drink the Water, Do Not Forget the Person Who Dug the Well: The Legacies of Alabama Missionaries in China

1. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 4 vols. (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965-67), 2:31-32; Zhou Xinping, "American Missionary Impact," 5-9.

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2. Richard C. Bush, Jr., Religion in Communist China (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), 42, 75, 79-81, 89-90; for an example of a prominent Chinese theologian who renounced his faith in favor of Communist social reform, see Winfried Glüer, "The Legacy of T. C. Chao," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 6 (October 1982): 165-69.

3. Maria Yen, The Umbrella Garden (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 77, 122; interviews with Benjamin Chen Zhi Ping, October 23, 1992, and with Rev. Feng Kao, October 24, 1992, by Wayne Flynt, in Guangzhou, China.

4. Bush, Religion in Communist China, 170-99, 210, 219, 242--55.

5. Professor Yu-Ming Shaw's 1975 dissertation on John Leighton Stuart, published in 1992, contains a useful essay on the historiography of the mission movement in China (Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 346-53). Additional examples of historians who have written works essentially critical of missionaries are: Ch'en, China and the West, 139, 147-50; Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions, 18-19; idem, Cambridge History of China, 10:544, 573, 581-83, 586, 590; Sidney A. Forsythe, An American Missionary Community in China, l895-1905 (Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1971), vii-viii, 87-88; Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, 490-529; McClellan, "Missionary Influence in American Attitudes," 485; Reed, Missionary Mind, 35-36, 59, 95-97, 197-200; Berg, "Margaret Thompson in China," 465-66; Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats, 319-25. Grant Wacker is generally supportive of what missionaries tried to do in conversion but believes the heroic effort to convert China was spoiled by heretical forces within Christianity itself such as biblical higher criticism, the academic study of comparative religion and other forces that undermined the absolutist Christian belief in the necessity of conversion. See Wacker, "A Plural World," 253-56.

6. Pearl S. Buck, "Missionaries of Empire," in Empire in the East, ed. Joseph Barnes (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1934), 241-44, 253-63; Shaw, "John Leighton Stuart," 343-44; Nash, "Influence of American Myth," 141-43, 166-72, 196-209, 262; Britt Towery, Churches of China: Taking Root Downward, Bearing Fruit Upward, 3d ed. (Waco: Baylor University Press, 1990), 28.

7. Interview with Paul Cherney, by Wayne Flynt, Gulf Shores, Ala., July 11, 1992; "A Missionary Recalls," Birmingham News, February 12, 1979.

8. Fox Butterfield, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea (New York: Times Books, 1982), 7-8, 202, 422--26; New York Times, February 7, 1993, 10Y; South China Morning Post, October 17, 1992; Britt Towery, "Toward an Understanding of China Christians," Baptists Today, February 6, 1992; idem, "Meeting the Demands for Chinese Bibles," Baptists Today, February 20, 1992; idem, "A Personal Perspective on Christianity in China," Baptists Today, March 19, 1992; idem, Churches of China, 42-50, 69-71, 91-99, 106, 112-16, 120-21; Alabama Baptist, January 14, 1993; Philip L. Wickeri, Seeking the Common Ground:

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Protestant Christianity, the Three-Self Movement, and China's United Front (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988), 185-217; oral history with Philip Wickeri by Wayne Flynt, Hong Kong, November 1992.

9. Williams, "War, Communism and Missions in China," 166. Sanford E. Ayers to FMB, January 12, 1949, Sanford E. Ayers Files.

10. Yen, Umbrella Garden, 77; Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (New York: Grove Press, 1986); interviews with Benjamin Chen Zhi Ping and Rev. Feng Kao; interview with Paul Cherney.

11. These impressions result from visits to churches in Canton (Guangzhou), Ching-tu (Chengdu), and Peking (Beijing) during 1992. Congregations sang traditional Western hymns such as "To God Be the Glory, Great Things He Hath Done," "All to Jesus I Surrender," and "God Be with You 'til We Meet Again." Worship services overflowed and included a large number of young people.

12. Bishop K. H. Ting, "Christian Sharing across National Boundaries," May 15, 1986, in Towery, Churches of China, 123-27; Ray, Southern Baptists in China, 23; White, Just Jennie, 77.

13. Oral history with Ruth Rice Berckman.

14. "Margaret Ruth (Rice) Berckman"; Ruth Berckman report for 1951; Berckman Papers.

15. Leon Robinson, "Louise Robinson"; Louise Robinson, "Informal Report of a Visit to Southeast Asia, August 26 to December 22, 1951," Louise Robinson Papers, ME Church, South, archives.

16. Williams, "War, Communism and Missions in China," 154-58; idem, "China, Mission in," 256.

17. Coughlin, "Strangers in the House," 134-35; "J. Lewis Shuck," Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2:1201-02; Eubanker and Lawrence, These Were First, 9-15.

18. B. W. Whilden to James B. Taylor, December 19, 1870, B. W. Whilden Files. Nicholas B. Williams to H. A. Tupper, November 12, 1878, Nicholas B. Williams Files; Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, 136.

19. T. W. Ayers to J. F. Love, December 1927; Love to Ayers, December 31, 1927; Ayers to T. B. Ray, October 14, 1929; Ayers to M. T. Rankin, March 26, 1945; T. W. Ayers Files. Ray, Southern Baptists in China, 23.

20. White, Just Jennie, 46; Zau, Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church, 33. Cynthia Miller to Charles E. Maddry, March 14, 1936, Cynthia Miller Files. David Bryan to Charles E. Maddry, September 9 and 19, 1940; Maddry to Bryan, September 12 and 23, 1940; David Bryan Files. Mobile Press Register, March 6, 1983; Birmingham News-Age-Herald, August 12, 1934; "Mary Hall Provence," ms. in possession of Ruth Provence.

21. For a list of the Crawfords' published works, see Foster, Fifty Years in China, 314-18. T. W. Ayers to Inabelle Coleman, October 10, 1939; Coleman to

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Ayers, October 13, 1939; T. W. Ayers Files. J. T. Williams to fellow missionary, May 13, 1963, James T. Williams Files. Inabelle Coleman to Charles E. Maddry, April 6, 1940, Willie Kelly Files. Johnni Johnson, Willie Hays Kelly of China: White-Haired Lady of Shanghai (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1953).

22. T. W. Ayers to Charles E. Maddry, January 16, 1934, T. W. Ayers Files.

23. Hartwell, ''Mobile to China," 253-54; Eugene Barnett, "Eulogy to Warren Stuart," in Stuart Papers.

24. New York Times, September 21, 1962; Foster, Fifty Years in China, xi-xx, 3839; see also Patricia Neils, Chinese Images in the Life of Henry Luce (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990).

25. Mason, "Missionary Conscience and the Comprehension of Imperialism," 2. Mason studied the children of selected American missionaries who served in China between 1900 and 1949. She found that many rejected their parents' evangelical goals. Unfortunately the missionary parents she selected are mainly liberal and northern. Because most China missionaries were more conservative and many came from the South, it is hard to apply Mason's generalizations to this study.

26. Allen, New Lottie Moon Story, 230-31; Harry Mell Ayers, "T. W. Ayers."

27. "Margaret Ruth (Rice) Berckman," in Berckman Papers.

28. "Mary Hall Provence," ms. in possession of Ruth Provence.

29. Davie Napier to Wayne Flynt, July 8, 1992; résumé of Davie Napier, in possession of Wayne Flynt.

30. Randall Gould, China in the Sun (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1946), 281-291, 299-300; Ch'en, China and the West, 109, 133; Fairbank, Chinese American Interactions, 31, 41-43, 46, 49-50, 53; Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 44-60; Winfield, "Will Communism Destroy Christianity in China?" 11; Anderson, Cycle in the Celestial Kingdom, 350; South China Morning Post, October 18, 1992; Window 1 (October 30, 1992): 24-25; Wickeri, Seeking the Common Ground, 32-35.

31. Alabama Baptist, July 10, 1879; T. W. Ayers, "The Chu Family," ms. in T. W. Ayers Files.

32. Harry Mell Ayers, "T. W. Ayers." "Operation Baptist Biography," ABHS Papers. T. W. Ayers to T. B. Ray, April 29, 1914; "Dr. T. W. Ayers Files," press release, January 6, 1954; Ayers to. F. Love, July 13, 1918; Resolution to FMB from Lung K'eo Baptist Church, March 19, 1917; all in T. W. Ayers Files.

33. J. Mercer Blain, "The Stuart Memorial Church, Hangchow, China," Missionary Survey 8 (February 1918): 95-97; Alabama Baptist, November 20, 1947; Woodward, True Hearts for God in China, 113; "A Tribute to Miss Addie Cox," Addie Cox Files; oral history with Clarabel Isdell.

34. James Legge, the initial professor of Chinese at Oxford University and the most influential sinologist of the nineteenth century, had earlier been a missionary to China. The Times (London) editorialized during the First World War: "We must admit that we are indebted to the missionaries for much of our

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knowledge of the Orient"; quoted in Home and Foreign Fields 1 (February 1917): 21.

35. Leon Robinson, "Louise Robinson."

36. Thompson, Stanley, and Perry, Sentimental Imperialists, 58-59; Neils, Chinese Images in the Life of Henry Luce; and Greenawalt, "Missionary Intelligence from China," 3-11.

37. Davie Napier to Wayne Flynt, July 8, 1992; Harry Mell Ayers, "T. W. Ayers."

38. Brandt Ayers, "Journey to Meet a Grandfather," Anniston Star, January 13, 1985.

Page 405

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Lazenby, Marion Elias. History of Methodism in Alabama and West Florida. N.p.: North Alabama Conference and Alabama-West Florida Conference of the Methodist Church, 1960.

Levenson, Joseph R. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate. 3 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958, 1964, and 1965.

Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 1966.

Liu, Kwang-Ching. American Missionaries in China: Papers from Harvard Seminars. Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1970.

Lodwick, Kathleen L. The Chinese Recorder Index: A Guide to Asian Missions, 18671991. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1986.

Lu, Shih-ch'iang. Chung-kuo Kuan-shenfan-chiao ti yüan-yin, 1860-1874 [The causes of the anti-Christian movement among Chinese officials and gentry, 18601874]. Taipei: N.p., 1966.

Lutz, Jessie G. China and the Christian Colleges, 1850-1950. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.

, ed. Christian Missions in China: Evangelists of What? Boston: Heath, 1966.

MacGillivray, Donald, ed. A Century of Protestant Missions in China, 1807-1907. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1907.

Maddry, Charles E. Christ's Expendables. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1949.

Marshall, James W. The Presbyterian Church in Alabama. Montgomery: Presbyterian Historical Society of Alabama, 1977.

Michael, Franz, and Chang Chung-li. The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents. 3 vols. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966-71.

Neils, Patricia. Chinese Images in the Life of Henry Luce. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990.

Orr, Robert G. Religion in China. New York: Friendship Press, 1980.

Peck, Graham. Two Kinds of Time. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967.

Pepper, Suzanne. Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978.

Porter, S. J. Southern Baptist Missions in China. Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1909.

Price, Frank W. The Rural Church in China: A Survey. New York: Agricultural Missions, 1948.

Price, P. Frank, ed. Our China Investment. Nashville: Executive Committee of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in the United States, 1928.

Provence, H. W. Southern Baptist Work in China. Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, n.d.

Page 411

Pruitt, Anna Seward. The Day of Small Things. Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1929.

Rabe, Valentin H. The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880-1920. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1978.

Ray, T. B. Southern Baptists in China. Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1939.

Ray, T. B., et al. Southern Baptist Foreign Missions. Nashville: Sunday School Board, Southern Baptist Convention, 1910.

Reed, James. The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy, 1911-1915. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983.

Reid, A. Hamilton. Baptists in Alabama: Their Organization and Witness. Montgomery: Paragon Press, 1967.

Riley, B. F. A Memorial History of the Baptists of Alabama. Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1923.

Ross, Nancy Wilson. Three Ways of Asian Wisdom and Their Significance to the West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.

Schram, Stuart. Mao Tse-tung. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.

Schrecker, John E. Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism: Germany in Shandung. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Schriffin, Harold. Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970.

Seagrave, Sterling. The Soong Dynasty. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

Shaw, Yu-ming. American Missionary in China: John Leighton Stuart and Chinese American Relations. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992.

Shuck, Henrietta Hall. Scenes in China; or, Sketches of the Country, Religion, and Customs of the Chinese. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1852.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.

Thompson, Ernest Trice. Presbyterians in the South. 3 vols. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1973.

Thompson, James C., Jr., Peter W. Stanley, and John Curtis Perry. Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia. New York: Harper and Row, 1981.

Tuchman, Barbara. Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

Tupper, H. A. A Decade of Foreign Missions, 1880-1890. Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, 1891.

. The Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1880.

Ussery, Mrs. Gordon. History of First Baptist Church of Roanoke, Alabama. Roanoke, Ala.: Roanoke Leader, 1951.

Varg, Paul A. Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats: The American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890-1952. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.

Wakeman, Frederick, Jr. Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 18391861. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966.

Walker, Blanche Rose, and Addie Estelle Cox. Glimpses of Missionary Life. Richmond: Foreign Mission Board, n.d.

Page 412

Warner, Marina. The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi, 1835-1908. London: Sphere Books, 1974.

Wehrle, Edmund S. Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 1891-1900. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966.

West, Philip. Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

White, Mary Culler. Just Jennie: The Life Story of Virginia M. Atkinson. Atlanta: Tupper and Love, 1955.

Wickeri, Philip L. Seeking the Common Ground: Protestant Christianity, the Three Self Movement, and China's United Front. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988.

Wilbur, Martin C. The Nationalist Revolution in China, 1923-1928. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

. Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.

Williams, Frederick Wells. The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, Ll.D., Missionary, Diplomatist, Sinologue. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1972.

Wills, Carry. Under God: Religion and American Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.

Wilson, Epiphanius, ed. The Wisdom of Confucius. New York: Avenel Books, 1982.

Woodbridge, Samuel Isett. Fifty Years in China. Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1919.

Woodward, Frank T. True Hearts for God in China. N.p., 1990.

Wright, Arthur F. Buddhism in Chinese History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959.

Wright, Mary Clabaugh. The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862-1874. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957.

, ed. China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

Wu, Chao Kwang. The International Aspect of the Missionary Movement in China. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1930.

Young, Ernest. The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai: Liberalism and Dictatorship in Early Republican China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977.

Zau, S. U. A Brief Centennial History of the Shanghai First Baptist Church. Shanghai: Zih Zung Press, 1947.

Chapters in Anthologies

Buck, Pearl S. "Missionaries of Empire." In Empire in the East, edited by Joseph Barnes. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1934.

Flynt, Wayne. "Alabama." In Religion in the Southern States: A Historical Study, edited by Samuel S. Hill. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983.

Jones, Susan Mann, and Philip A. Kuhn. "Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion." In The Cambridge History of China, edited by John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Williams, J. T. "China, Mission in." Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists. Vol. 1. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958.

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Dissertations and Theses

Coughlin, Margaret Morgan. ''Strangers in the House: J. Lewis Shuck and Issachar Roberts, First American Baptist Missionaries to China." Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1972.

Greenawalt, Bruce Stephen. "Missionary Intelligence from China: American Protestant Reports, 1930-1950." Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1974.

Huskey, James L. "Americans in Shanghai: Community Formation and Response to Revolution, 1919-1928." Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1985.

Lamkin, Adrian, Jr. "The Gospel Mission Movement within the Southern Baptist Convention." Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1979.

McCutcheon, James M. "The American and British Missionary Concepts of Chinese Civilization in the Eighteenth Century." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1958.

Mason, Sarah R. "Missionary Conscience and the Comprehension of Imperialism: A Study of the Children of American Missionaries to China, 1900-1949." Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1978.

Napier, Augustus Young. "The Challenge of China to America." Th.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1922.

Nichols, Ethel Othelia. "A Study of Martha Foster Crawford." Bachelor's thesis, Howard College, 1929.

Rubinstein, Murray A. "Zion's Corner: Origins of the American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1827-1839." Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1976.

Souik, Anne. "Church and State in Republican China: A Survey History of the Relations Between the Christian Churches of the Chinese Government, 1911-1945." Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1952.

Thompson, Virginia M. "Extracts from the Diary of Martha Foster Crawford, 18521854. Edited, With Notes, an Introduction, and Some Historical Comments on the Role of Mrs. Crawford as a Christian Emissary from the United States to China." Master's thesis, Duke University, 1952.

Vaughn, Carol Ann. "The Early Life of Martha Foster Crawford in Antebellum Alabama, 1830-1851." Master's thesis, Auburn University, 1994.

Williams, James Toy. "The Place of Education in the Religious Redemption of China." Th.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1921.

Documents and Newspapers

Alabama Baptist, 1843-1950.

Minutes, 1935, Alabama State Baptist Convention.

Interviews and Oral Histories in Possession of Wayne Flynt

Interview with Louise Robinson, by Gerald W. Berkley, Asheville, N.C., 1983.

Oral history with Mary Essie Stephens, by Clyde Presley, Montgomery, Ala., September 1985.

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Oral history with Clarabel Isdell, by Wayne Flynt, Birmingham, Ala., October 1991.

Interview with Paul Cherney, by Wayne Flynt, Gulf Shores, Ala., July 11, 1992.

Interview with Clara Wing-chung Ho, by Wayne Flynt, Hong Kong, October 1, 1992.

Interview with Wong Wong Yin Lee, by Wayne Flynt, Hong Kong, October 13, 1992.

Interview with Benjamin Chen Zhi Ping, by Wayne Flynt, Guangzhou, China, October 23, 1992.

Interview with Rev. Feng Kao, by Wayne Flynt, Guangzhou, China (translated from Chinese), October 24, 1992.

Oral History with Philip Wickeri, by Wayne Flynt, Hong Kong, November 3, 1992.

Manuscript Collections

Alabama State Archives, Montgomery, Alabama:

Alabama Woman Suffrage Organization Papers

M. P. Blue Papers

Archives, Historical Foundation, Presbyterian Church of the United States, Montreat, N.C.:

James N. Montgomery Papers

John Linton and Mary Stuart Papers

Auburn University Archives, Auburn, Alabama:

Denson Family Papers

Julius C. Greene Papers

George Petrie Clippings

Committee on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church (Methodist Episcopal Church, South), Lake Junaluska, N.C.:

Virginia Atkinson Papers

Albert C. Bowen Papers

Edmond Lee Rice Papers

Louise Robinson Papers

Duke University Archives, Durham, N.C.:

Martha Foster Crawford Papers

Privately held:

Ruth and Hoadley Berckman Papers, Ruth Berckman, Albertville, Ala.

Irene Jeffers Papers, Wayne Flynt, Auburn, Ala.

Patricia Neils, "Missionary Influence on U.S. China Policy in the 1930s and '40s," ms. presented at conference on "American Missionaries and Social Change in China: Collision and Confluence," McMinnville, Ore., July 14-17, 1994, Wayne Flynt, Auburn, Ala.

H. W. Provence ms., "Traveling in China," Ruth Provence, Laurens, S.C.

Leon S. Robinson ms., "Louise Robinson Papers," Wayne Flynt, Auburn, Ala.

James T. Williams ms., "War, Communism and Mission in China," Wayne Flynt, Auburn, Ala.

Zhou Xinping, "The American Missionary Impact on Chinese Society: A Chinese Perspective," ms. presented at conference on "American Missionaries

Page 415

and Social Change in China: Collision and Confluence," McMinnville, Ore., July 14-17, 1994, Wayne Flynt, Auburn, Ala.

Samford University Archives, Birmingham, Ala.:

Alabama Baptist Historical Society Papers

Willie Kelly Papers

Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tenn.:

W. O. Carver Papers

Foreign Mission Board Papers:

Sanford E. Ayers Files

T. W. Ayers Files

David Bryan Files

Addie Estelle Cox Files

Martha Foster Crawford Files

T. O. Hearn Files

Alice Huey Files

Irene Jeffers Files

Willie Kelly Files

Cynthia A. Miller Files

Eliza G. Shuck Files

Adrian Taylor Files

Mildred Virginia Thorne (Bryan) Files

Mary Jane Thornton (Bostick) Files

Cecil S. Ward Files

B. W. Whilden Files

James T. Williams Files

Nicholas B. Williams Files

University of Alabama Archives, Tuscaloosa, Ala.:

Harry Mell Ayers Papers

Page 416

Index

A

Adams, Floy White, 14, 38, 41, 163, 212, 221, 349

Adams, Wayne W., 14, 212, 349

Alabama: 111, 112, 121, 122, 128, 129, 163, 224, 225, 268, 299, 328, 332, 336, 338-39;

culture, 25, 26, 149, 204-5, 208-9, 225, 228, 230, 234, 281, 293, 294, 296, 344, 345;

Methodists in, 26, 142, 143, 144, 158, 226, 244, 259, 318;

missionary furloughs in, 116, 127, 128, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 143, 144, 145, 146, 219, 248, 259, 260, 266, 337, 346;

perceptions of China, 129-47, 241, 337, 343;

Presbyterians in, 26, 111, 112, 139, 144, 158, 244, 259.

See also Missionaries: contact with Alabama; Women: in Alabama

Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, 21, 22, 23

Alabama Baptist, 30, 32, 86, 125, 132, 133, 135, 136, 141, 143, 148, 199, 202, 219, 234, 240, 266, 269, 278, 279, 294, 308, 311, 312, 315, 317, 318, 321;

perceptions of China, 23, 24;

and women, 28

Alabama Baptists, 26, 30, 38, 86, 132, 133, 135, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 269, 275;

perceptions of China, 23, 24

Alabama Baptist State Convention, 28, 140, 141, 145, 229, 241, 293, 340, 353

Alabama Conference (ME Church, South), 28, 142

Albertville, 137, 334, 353

American (Northern) Baptist Convention, 54, 56-57, 248, 249, 272, 278

Anderson, Mary Raleigh, 94, 174, 199, 204, 236, 261, 274, 300, 304, 336, 342, 349;

conversion, 349;

educational work, 174-76, 227, 228, 349;

family, 174, 349

Ann Hesseltine Judson Missionary Society (Judson College), 46, 140, 224

Anniston, 60, 137, 145, 181

Atkinson, Virginia M., 69-70, 81, 87-88, 103, 107, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 124, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143, 155, 156, 162, 165, 166, 177, 203, 212, 225, 226, 228, 232, 233, 250, 262, 272, 298, 302, 304, 309, 311, 334, 336, 345;

call to China, 69;

conversion, 349;

education, 349;

family, 33, 69, 117, 349

Ayers, Carey, 113, 114, 120, 121

Ayers, Harry M., 113, 339, 346

Ayers, Lucy, 113, 120, 221, 225

Ayers, Mary Lee, 121

Ayers, Sanford Emmett, 121, 188, 244, 257, 276, 314, 315, 316, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 333, 337;

conversion, 350;

education, 188, 350;

family, 33, 113, 350

Ayers, Stokely, 120

Ayers, Thomas Wilburn (T. W.), 14, 37, 38, 59, 60, 66-67, 88, 89, 98, 99, 105, 106, 109, 116, 123, 124, 131, 137, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 181-88, 211, 233, 239, 244, 259, 261, 270, 271, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 307, 308, 312, 314, 316, 324, 334, 336, 342, 343, 345, 346, 347;

call to China, 181, 183, 350;

conversion, 350;

ecumenism of, 250-57;

education, 181, 350;

family, 35, 112, 113, 114, 120, 121, 181, 337, 347;

honors, 185

Ayers, William, 113, 120

Ayers, Willie Mindora Skelton, 109, 113, 181, 188, 200, 207, 210, 347;

call to

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China, 182, 195;

family, 35, 112, 113, 114, 120, 121, 182, 195, 337, 350

B

Berckman, Edward, 339

Berckman, Howard, 339

Berckman, James Hart Hoadley, 42, 67, 72, 79, 80, 90, 91, 99, 103, 104, 107, 108, 117, 118, 120, 122, 137, 139, 151, 161, 162, 166, 180, 229, 230, 248, 273, 305, 306, 307, 309, 31, 318, 320, 325, 333, 339, 344

Berckman, Ruth Rice, 67, 72, 79, 80, 90, 99, 103, 104, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 122, 137, 139, 158, 161, 162, 166, 180, 213, 227, 230, 248, 305, 306, 309, 318, 319, 325, 326, 333, 334, 339, 344, 350;

family, 33, 110, 111, 114, 117, 118, 350;

marriage, 42, 350

Bible women, 61, 81, 89, 94, 96, 98, 99, 103, 154, 155, 157, 173, 177, 189, 225, 226, 228, 235, 274

Birmingham, 21, 120, 138, 163, 165, 189, 212, 241, 350

Birmingham Kindergarten Training School, 41

Birmingham-Southern College, 39, 180, 354

Bissett, Mary Stuart, 121, 189, 230, 350;

call to China, 38, 39, 350;

education, 41, 350

Boardman, Emma, 343, 351

Bostick, George P., 44, 56, 108, 267, 270, 298, 351

Bostick, Mary Jane Thornton, 108, 143, 211, 268, 269, 270, 298, 345, 356

Bowen, Albert C., 142, 160, 301, 302, 303, 305, 306, 351

Boxer Rebellion, 9, 14, 97, 132, 134, 138, 240, 269, 286, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 305, 313, 347

Bryan, David, 164, 173, 174, 194, 244, 250, 271, 274, 276, 336, 351;

call to China, 37;

family, 33, 351

Bryan, Mildred Thorne, 163, 164, 173, 194, 336, 351

Buck, Pearl S., 16, 130, 249, 326, 332, 343

Buddhism, 74-75, 92, 110, 111, 115, 131, 150, 153, 193, 284, 341

C

Canton, 5, 6, 14, 15, 22, 23, 46, 61, 62, 86, 93, 105, 148, 162, 174, 176, 199, 237, 242, 248, 261, 273, 290, 304, 306, 317, 335, 336, 349, 357

Cantonese, 22, 62

Carr, Jo, 189

Carver, William O., 13, 141, 202, 248, 249, 259, 276, 278

Catholic missionaries, 13, 72, 245, 249, 251, 252, 297, 320

Central China Mission (SBC), 14, 60, 151, 222, 231, 256

Cheefoo, 59, 60, 104, 112, 113, 158, 183, 252, 276, 298, 324

Chengchow, 188, 257, 276, 279, 314, 315, 316, 319, 322, 324

Chiang Kai-shek, 9, 19, 135, 290, 291, 292, 301, 304, 307, 308, 310, 318, 321, 322

China Inland Mission, 5, 247, 249, 267, 298

China Medical Board, 134, 253, 254, 255, 257, 355

Chinese:

in Alabama, 21, 22, 23, 24;

culture, 25, 26, 71, 72-102, 193, 251, 282-84;

language, 61-69, 70-71.

See also Missionaries: language study; Women: Chinese; Women: Chinese attitudes toward

Chinese Christian Council, 331, 333, 334

Ch'ing dynasty, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 294, 296, 300, 301

Chu Pao Ch'in, 184, 275, 342

Colleges:

missionary, 8, 16, 168, 170, 173, 176, 179, 227, 272, 277, 332, 342

Colonialism, 3, 281-88, 299.

See also Imperialism; Missionaries: cultural imperialism of

Communists (CCP), 5, 10, 19, 135, 227, 271, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 303-8, 310, 320-26, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 334, 338, 341, 342, 347

Compounds, 4, 17, 56, 71, 80, 97-98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 111, 240, 314, 316, 323

Confucianism, 17, 25, 26, 73-74, 75, 76, 79, 89, 92, 95, 97, 167, 179, 193, 204, 284, 285, 286, 341

Confucius, 73, 75, 81, 90, 96, 131, 150

Conversion, 1, 4, 7, 15, 16, 29, 81, 93, 122, 130, 133, 138, 141, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 155, 157, 159, 165, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173, 175, 178, 185, 189, 190,

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204, 207, 209, 218, 225, 227, 230, 239, 241, 245, 262, 264, 270, 272, 273, 274, 277, 279, 282, 285, 301, 343.

See also Missionaries: conversions of

Cooperative Program (SBC), 130, 143, 145

Cox, Addie Estelle, 56, 68, 81, 93, 118, 131, 132, 142, 156, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 173, 174, 202, 211, 235, 306, 316, 322, 323, 345, 351;

education of, 41, 351

Crawford, Martha Foster, ix, 6, 14, 22, 47-53, 58, 63-64, 65, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 114, 115, 117, 119, 123, 131, 132, 133, 136, 140, 141, 143, 149, 152, 153, 157, 158, 171, 180, 182, 185, 196, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 208, 211, 212, 214, 225, 228, 232, 234, 235, 239, 243, 245, 249, 259, 263, 264, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 293, 295, 296, 297, 332, 334, 337, 342, 345, 351;

arrival in China, 54-57;

attitude toward Chinese culture, 82-87;

call to China, 49-50, 53, 158, 196, 210, 351;

conversion, 48, 351;

family, 35, 47, 51, 117, 351;

feminism of, 214-20;

marriage, 48, 49-53, 196-98, 214-20, 352;

travel, 44, 45

Crawford, Tarleton Perry, x, 6, 14, 50-53, 54-57, 63-64, 78, 82-83, 84, 93, 94, 104, 105, 106, 107, 114, 115, 119, 124, 136, 149, 152, 182, 185, 215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 239, 243, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 293, 294, 295, 298, 334, 337

Crotwell, Mary Elaine, 352

Crumpton, W. B., 125, 128, 136, 156, 195, 196

Cultural Revolution, 329, 330, 332, 333

D

Davidson School, 177, 272

Dean, William, 54, 56

Diplomats, 3, 19, 60.

See also Missionaries: differences from U.S. diplomats, businessmen, military

E

Eager, Annie E., 40, 201

Eager, George B., 40, 269

East China Methodist Conference, 272

Ecumenism, 5, 10, 15, 16, 30, 134, 162, 169, 177, 178, 238, 244, 245, 246-57, 269, 270, 275, 277, 278, 344

Evangelism, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 30, 41, 68, 86, 94, 95, 99, 131, 132, 133, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 178, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 201, 207, 211, 218, 219, 221, 224, 229, 233, 235, 246, 247, 248, 253, 262, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 273, 275, 278, 338, 344, 345

E. W. Warren Memorial Hospital, 183, 187

F

Fairbank, John K., 17, 76

Foot binding, 9, 194, 199, 202, 203, 205, 227

Foreign Mission Board (Southern Baptist Convention), x, 13, 14, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 47, 50, 52, 57, 62, 65, 66, 77, 80, 81, 86, 104, 112, 113, 116, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 162, 164, 169, 171, 174, 176, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 189, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 207, 210, 213, 220, 222. 231, 235, 237, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275, 278, 279, 296, 301, 308, 312, 313, 315, 316, 319, 322, 323, 333, 335, 336, 337, 345, 347

Fundamentalism, 4, 10, 11, 13, 16, 18, 30, 31, 238, 246, 276, 279.

See also Missionaries: theological disputes

G

Gospel Mission, 143, 215, 235, 248, 263-70, 298, 356

Graves, Janie Lowrey, 174, 199, 349

Gutzlaff, Karl Freidrich August, 6, 264

Gwaltney, Leslie Lee, 30, 135

H

Hangchow, 15, 100, 101, 102, 104, 111, 114, 115, 117, 119, 150, 167, 178, 247, 297, 298, 302, 321, 338, 343, 345, 355

Hartwell, Jesse B., 60, 263, 264, 265, 268, 294

Head, Lora Nabers, 352

Head, Walter H., 352

Hearn, Elizabeth (Lizzie), 210

Hearn, Thomas 0., 93, 146, 160, 187, 212, 270, 303, 352

"Heathen," 72, 78-102, 132, 133, 148-

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49, 152, 202, 224, 263, 274, 295, 298, 344

Hollis, Emma C. Dickson, 352

Hollis, James D., 34, 352

Holmes, James L., 60, 294, 295

Honan Province, 14, 43, 314, 316, 322, 323, 324

Hong Kong, ix, 5, 6, 44, 45, 46, 54, 109, 110 117, 220, 282, 287, 315, 317, 323, 324, 325, 326, 335, 342, 352, 356

Hospitals, 6, 8, 11, 15, 16, 66, 88, 89, 97, 109, 113, 133, 141, 146, 151, 158, 171, 179, 180, 182, 183, 186, 188, 210, 211, 223, 230, 233, 253, 257, 261, 270, 271, 276, 312, 314, 315, 316, 319, 322, 323, 329, 332, 337, 341, 347.

See also Missionaries: medical

Howard College, 21, 27, 35, 37, 39, 141, 145, 339, 351, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357

Huey, Mary Alice, 37, 61, 62, 94, 103, 134, 135, 146, 150, 154, 155, 157, 163, 201, 211, 212, 270, 279, 336, 345, 352

Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, 83, 239, 282, 283, 294

Hwanghsien, 59, 60, 66, 88, 99, 113, 114, 118, 123, 140, 145, 146, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 211, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 270, 312, 316, 324, 337, 339, 342, 343, 347, 350, 351

I

Imperialism, 4, 8, 16, 17, 18, 19, 91, 238, 281, 282, 290, 296, 306, 321, 327, 329, 330, 331, 332.

See also Nationalism

Inquirers, 6, 157, 234

Inslee, Elias B., 15

Interior China Mission (SBC), 14, 156, 157, 251, 256

Isdell, Clarabel, 56, 68, 99, 105, 120, 122, 142, 145, 163, 174, 175, 235, 244, 249, 307, 324, 353;

family, 34, 353

J

Japanese invasion, 12, 19, 127, 139, 160, 161, 162, 188, 221, 291, 292, 308-20, 321, 324, 327, 347

Jeffers, Irene, 141, 142, 154, 163, 211, 235, 236, 244, 249, 318, 325, 345, 353;

call to China, 38, 353;

family, 33, 117, 353

Judson College, 14, 22, 39, 42, 43, 46, 47, 63, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143, 170, 195, 201, 226, 340, 349, 352, 354

K

Kaifeng, 132, 156, 321, 322, 351

Kelly, Willie, 21, 56, 59, 65-66, 82, 89, 93, 96, 125-28, 134, 136, 137, 138, 140, 143, 144, 145, 150, 155, 156, 157, 161, 164, 172, 195, 198, 200, 203, 209, 211, 212, 213, 221, 222, 224, 226, 229, 231, 243, 244, 249, 259, 260, 270, 271, 274, 278, 297, 298, 312, 313, 334, 336, 337, 343, 345, 353;

call to China, 125, 353;

family, 33, 125, 128, 353;

housing, 58, 98, 125, 126, 127, 128, 221, 232, 243, 260, 312, 313, 325

Kiangsu Province, 14, 15, 60, 61, 67, 109, 177, 318

Kwangsi Province, 14, 323

Kwangtung Province, 14, 61

L

Laichow, 94, 122, 141, 146, 154, 157, 163, 324

Landmarkism, 264, 265, 268, 269

Laura Haygood School, 91, 177, 229

Laymen's Missionary Movement, 7, 248

Liberalism. See Modernism

Love, James F., 77, 246, 258-59

Luce, Henry R., 179, 326, 338, 343

M

Macao, 14, 61, 119, 301, 335, 352

Manchuria, 14, 160, 184, 187, 228, 291, 310, 349

Mandarins, x, 5, 96, 97, 166, 167, 184, 298

Mao Tse-tung, 291, 293, 322, 329, 331, 332, 341

Marion, 14, 22, 47, 143, 263

May Fourth Movement, 11, 288, 289, 290

May Thirtieth Movement, 304, 306

McBride, Grace, 254, 255

McCrea, T. F., 276, 277

McTyeire School, 229, 305

Meadows, Joseph G., 353

Mencius, 73, 150

Merchants:

role of U.S. in China, 3, 6, 18, 19;

Chinese, 12, 60.

See also Missionaries: differences from U.S. diplomats, businessmen, military

Methodist Episcopal Church, South (ME Church, South), 9, 13, 15, 16, 29, 30, 31, 38, 39, 41, 69, 88, 89, 90, 104, 124, 130, 139, 142, 144, 151, 155, 158, 161, 165, 166, 168, 171, 176, 177, 179, 180, 200, 212, 228, 230, 233, 245, 247, 258, 301, 302, 303, 309, 310,

Page 420

318, 319, 334, 335, 344;

hospitals, 15;

number of missionaries in China, 15;

schools, 15

Millennialism, 2, 5, 21, 26, 76

Miller, Cynthia Adaline, 57, 67, 80, 97, 99, 103, 107, 108, 122, 123, 134, 138, 141, 145, 155, 163, 164, 166, 172, 174, 188, 204, 207, 211, 221, 226, 260, 261, 270, 274, 276, 279, 301, 305, 307, 336, 345, 353;

call to China, 37, 344, 353;

conversion, 35, 353;

education, 34, 40, 201;

family, 33, 34, 37, 117, 122, 123, 353

Missionaries:

arrival in China, 54-57, 59;

calling to China, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 49, 50, 53, 75, 129, 130, 148, 181, 187, 193, 195, 201, 207, 210, 211, 216, 219, 220, 346;

changes in attitudes, 3, 18, 19, 31, 72-73, 75-102, 169, 200-202, 209-14, 228-37, 250-57, 262, 264-76, 281, 308, 309, 327, 328, 344, 345, 346;

children of, 108-14, 120-21, 122, 123, 178, 179, 182, 192, 194, 195, 210, 217, 326, 337-40, 347;

and Chinese politics, 134, 139, 281-328, 347. See also Nationalists; Nationalism: Chinese;

conflicts among, 119, 124, 126, 134, 135, 136, 167, 169, 171, 174, 175, 177, 180, 200, 231-32, 237, 238-80, 293-94;

contact with Alabama, 116, 117, 125, 129-47, 224, 250, 269, 275, 294, 306, 308, 309, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318, 335, 336, 337, 346. See also Alabama;

conversions of, 35, 36, 48;

criticism of U.S. policy, 12, 19, 295, 298, 299, 306, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 319, 327, 328;

cultural imperialism of, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 32, 72-73, 75-102, 167, 193-95, 202-9, 224-25, 230, 240, 241, 246, 262, 271, 274, 281, 285, 297-98, 329, 331, 332, 341, 344;

daily lives, 103-28, 148-90;

deaths, 46, 47, 120, 121, 179, 195, 222, 223, 269, 298, 345;

differences from U.S. diplomats, businessmen, military, 3, 19, 124, 238, 239, 240, 241, 297-98, 303, 311, 319;

educational, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, 33, 38, 47, 49, 70, 76, 94, 100, 102, 113, 123, 124, 132, 133, 142, 148, 155, 156, 158, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167-79, 182, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 196, 200, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 218, 219, 226, 227, 228, 231, 237, 252, 260, 261, 262, 265, 267, 270, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277, 285, 300, 301, 329, 332, 342, 344;

educations of, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 112, 113, 116, 124, 174, 201;

health, 113, 115, 116, 118-21, 124, 127, 135, 137, 143, 172, 180, 182, 193, 216-19, 222, 223, 233, 240, 242, 263-64, 265, 266, 269, 319-20, 336, 350, 354, 357;

and historians, xi, 16, 17, 18, 19, 73, 76, 77, 130, 131, 158, 228, 230, 238, 270, 279, 300, 303, 326, 327, 329, 331, 332, 340, 343;

housing, 4, 17, 55-58, 71, 97-98, 103-6, 108, 109, 122, 125, 126, 143, 221, 226. See also Compounds;

influence of China on, 31, 344-47;

language study, 59, 61-69, 70, 89, 93, 98, 108, 109, 122, 123, 149, 153, 174, 183, 185, 205, 206, 208, 216, 225, 226, 242, 243, 244, 249, 340, 344;

loneliness, 108, 218, 220, 221, 317;

marriages, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48-53, 193, 195, 212, 213, 214-20, 266;

medical, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 59, 113, 118, 120, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 148, 158, 159, 160, 162, 166, 167, 173, 179-89, 200, 210, 218, 227, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 265, 270, 276, 277, 320, 323, 329, 342, 344, 347. See also Hospitals; Physicians;

numbers in China, 7, 10, 179, 192, 246, 320, 336;

nursing, 40, 41, 80, 97, 142, 148, 155, 166, 167, 183, 188-89, 192, 201, 204, 211, 224, 233, 254, 260, 261, 275, 314, 350;

opposition to, 104, 105, 283-87, 295, 296, 297, 298, 327;

perceptions of Chinese culture, 72-102, 131, 132, 133, 139, 202-9, 216-17, 224-25, 232, 267, 274, 277, 344;

preaching, 148-50, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, 178, 279, 323, 338, 344, 345, 347. See also Conversion; Evangelism; Preaching; Women: preaching of;

retirement, 124, 128, 188, 195, 232, 253, 259, 261, 267, 312, 336, 342, 343;

salary and finances, 121-24, 128, 130, 136, 142, 143, 144, 145, 173, 183, 195, 224, 225, 226, 231, 244, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 269, 275, 313, 323, 335, 336;

and social gospel, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 19, 30, 40, 95, 158-67, 169,

Page 421

170, 176, 179, 186, 227, 231, 246, 276, 277, 278, 279, 311, 320, 332, 344, 345;

theological disputes, x, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 30, 31, 62, 77-78, 84, 87, 95, 134, 190, 238, 250, 251, 253, 27680, 320, 321;

travel to/from China, 44, 45, 46;

vacations, furloughs, 114-18, 120, 121, 124, 125, 127, 128, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 173, 186, 187, 189, 213, 218, 248, 253, 258, 259, 261, 265, 266, 277, 304, 306, 307, 311, 315, 325, 337, 345;

women's work, 23, 109, 133, 151-57, 158, 163-64, 166, 171, 189, 200, 207, 208, 211, 222, 224, 229, 230, 236. See also Women

Mobile, 15, 24, 37, 38, 100, 101, 108, 109, 111, 112, 115, 117, 139, 145, 178, 187, 199, 262, 321, 336, 349, 355

Modernism, 4, 10, 11, 13, 16, 30, 31, 238, 246, 253, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 321, 338. See also Missionaries: theological disputes

Mokanshan Mountain, 114, 115, 116

Montgomery, Aurie, 92, 106, 108-9, 117, 158, 307

Montgomery, Helen Barrett, 7, 191

Montgomery, James N., 58, 68, 80, 92, 93, 106, 108, 117, 150, 158, 177, 273, 307, 354;

call to China, 38, 39

Moon, Charlotte Diggs ("Lottie"), 14, 60, 87, 118, 125, 140, 144, 146, 152, 182, 197, 202, 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 225, 232, 234, 266, 268, 339, 343, 344

Moon, Edmonia, 198, 199

Moore Memorial Methodist Church (Shanghai), 166, 167, 333

N

Nanking, 59, 167, 217, 245, 249, 292, 294, 302, 304, 305, 306

Nanking Theological Seminary, 277, 302, 338

Napier, Augustus Young (A. Y.), 43, 56, 68, 91, 131, 143, 151, 159, 169, 180, 249, 256, 306, 336, 344

Napier, B. Davie, 91, 339, 343, 346

Napier, Lois Davie, 56, 68, 92, 141, 143, 306, 336, 344

Napier, N. Campbell, 339, 340

Nationalism:

Chinese, 4, 9, 11, 18, 132, 134, 135, 142, 167, 172, 175, 177, 228, 240, 272-76, 287-93, 300 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 327, 347

Nationalists (Kuomintang), 5, 9, 10, 19, 135, 142, 167, 170, 227, 228, 272, 288, 289, 290, 291, 293, 301-3, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 310, 319, 320, 322, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 338, 341

North Alabama Conference (ME Church, South), 31, 139, 142, 311

North China Mission (SBC), 14, 60, 118, 146, 174, 182, 184, 188, 211, 212, 221, 234, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 265, 266, 267, 276, 347

Nurses. See Missionaries: nursing

O

Old North Gate Baptist Church (First Baptist Church, Shanghai), 47, 63, 66, 125, 126, 144, 150, 156, 164, 165, 166, 171, 172, 209, 229, 232, 235, 270, 271, 274, 278, 313, 336

Opelika, 142, 143, 309, 311, 336, 345

Opium, 6, 91, 93, 102, 133, 159, 170, 239, 264, 281, 282, 296, 315

Orphanages, 16, 161, 284

P

Parker, Earl, 34, 354

Parker Memorial Baptist Church, 137, 145, 146, 181

Pei Tao Academy, 174, 176, 199, 237, 274

Peking, 121, 286, 287, 288, 291, 292, 293, 297, 303, 304, 310, 312, 321, 338, 355

Pentecostalism, 276, 279, 280, 330

Physicians:

as missionaries, 8, 33, 59, 66, 67, 80, 118, 120, 141, 148, 179-88, 224, 230, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 261, 275, 276, 314, 315, 316, 318, 335, 337, 342, 350;

women, 8, 146, 179, 180, 223, 227, 233, 276, 315.

See also Missionaries: medical

Pingtu, 173, 187, 221, 324, 350, 351, 352, 354

Pingtu Christian Institute, 173, 174, 244

Preaching:

centrality of, 6, 7, 85, 131, 132, 148-50, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 162, 183, 186, 208, 344.

See also Evangelism; Missionaries: preaching; Women: preaching of

Presbyterian Church of the United States (PCUS), 13, 15, 16, 29, 30, 39, 90, 92, 99, 100, 105, 111, 112, 114, 115, 121, 122, 130, 137, 139, 144, 150, 158, 168, 171, 177, 178, 180, 189, 203, 230,

Page 422

245, 247, 250, 252, 253, 258, 262, 273, 277, 278, 308, 344;

hospitals, 16;

numbers of missionaries in China, 15

Price, Lottie, 155, 221, 222

Provence, Herbert Winston (H. W.), 80, 92, 107, 114, 115, 120, 141, 143, 146, 151, 169, 180, 250, 271, 301, 337;

family, 33, 354

Publishing:

as missionary enterprise, 6, 15, 151, 248

R

Racism, 27, 72, 76, 77, 78-79, 82, 83, 90, 91, 136, 223, 224, 252

Ray, T. Bronson, 124, 169, 259, 272

Rice, Edmond Lee, 180, 318, 319, 335

Rice Christians, 122, 171, 264, 267, 270, 299, 330, 338, 354

Roberts, IssacherJ. (I. J.), 83, 216, 242, 259, 294, 295

Roberts, Virginia Young, 216, 217

Robinson, Louise, 89, 90, 163, 177, 335, 345, 346, 355;

call to China, 38, 39;

education, 41, 355

Rockefeller Foundation, 12, 253, 254, 255, 342, 355

Rock Mills, 33, 69, 349

S

Schools of Missions (SBC), 137, 308, 336

Seaman, Annie Yates, 126, 127, 128, 143, 164, 223, 232

Sectarianism, 27, 238, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250, 256, 257, 344

Self-support:

Chinese churches, 262, 263, 265, 266, 267, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 306, 326, 331, 333, 334;

missionaries, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270.

See also Three Self Movement; Chinese Christian Council

Settlement houses, 30, 158, 164, 165, 194

Shanghai, 5, 12, 14, 15, 21, 22, 46, 47, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 69, 71, 82, 85, 103, 104, 107, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 125, 126, 134, 135, 139, 141, 143, 149, 155, 161, 162, 165, 167, 170, 172, 177, 198, 203, 205, 206, 209, 212, 213, 215, 218, 221, 222, 226, 228, 231, 232, 233, 242, 243, 246, 256, 259, 263, 273, 291, 292, 293, 295, 298, 304, 305, 306, 309, 310, 312, 313, 318, 319, 324, 325, 333, 342, 345, 346, 347, 350, 351, 355, 357

Shanghai Baptist College and Seminary. See University of Shanghai

Shantung Province, 14, 58, 59, 60, 64, 80, 87, 89, 97, 103, 104, 105, 106, 113, 118, 119, 141, 145, 146, 150, 160, 163, 164, 171, 172, 173, 174, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 194, 215, 218, 220, 228, 233, 244, 251, 252, 256, 268, 269, 270, 275, 276, 277, 279, 298, 303, 324, 345, 356

Shantung revivals, 279, 280

Shuck, Eliza G. Sexton, 14, 47, 55, 57, 62, 92, 108, 117, 118, 123, 133, 134-35, 140, 141, 149, 152, 157, 170, 180, 198, 207, 209, 231, 239, 242, 243, 335, 355

Shuck, Henrietta Hall, 46, 205, 209

Shuck, Jehu Lewis, 9, 14, 46, 47, 55, 57, 62, 118, 135, 138, 140, 141, 143, 149, 226, 242, 245, 259, 273, 294, 296, 301, 335, 341

Smith, W. T., 126, 128, 143

Social Gospel. See Missionaries: and social gospel

Soochow, 61, 89, 90, 91, 98, 107, 114, 115, 119, 142, 156, 166, 177, 229, 233, 311, 319, 346, 350, 351, 355

Soong Mei-ling, 9, 292, 301

Soong Ch'ing-ling, 9, 301

South China Mission (SBC), 14, 61

Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), 13, 14, 15, 30, 46, 60, 77, 86, 90, 105, 118, 122, 123, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 158, 165, 168, 174, 176, 179, 180, 182, 186, 201, 202, 208, 219, 231, 236, 238, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 261. 262, 263, 265, 266, 267, 270, 272, 273, 274, 276, 278, 279, 293, 301, 312, 323, 335, 336, 343

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 13, 39, 40, 131-32, 159, 169, 248, 249, 278, 351, 352, 354

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 38, 163, 353, 356

Spirituality of the Church, 29

Stephens, Peyton, 155

Stivender, J. C., 312

Stuart, David, 111, 112, 337

Stuart, John Leighton, 91, 92, 95, 99, 100, 102, 110, 1, 112, 150, 179, 248, 262, 273, 277, 278, 279, 302, 321, 322, 327, 329, 330, 332, 337, 338, 343, 344

Page 423

Stuart, John Linton, 91, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 110, 112, 119, 139, 178, 179, 296, 297, 298, 302, 321, 337, 344

Stuart, Mary Louisa Horton, 15, 58, 91, 99-102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119, 139, 152, 153, 178, 179, 180, 203, 206, 210, 214, 227, 230, 247, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 321, 337, 344, 345, 355;

call to China, 100, 142, 355;

family, 33, 35, 99-102, 117, 139, 355

Stuart, Warren H., 178, 302, 337, 338

Student Volunteer Movement, 7, 36, 180, 193, 248, 354-55

Sun Yat-sen, 9, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 301, 341

Superstitions, 24, 75, 80, 81, 93, 96, 101, 131, 159

T

Taiping Rebellion, 8, 17, 83, 84, 119, 132, 134, 199, 206, 217, 232, 239, 245, 282, 283, 285, 294, 295

Taiwan, 324, 325, 329, 335, 354

Taoism, 74, 75, 92, 94, 131, 341

Taylor, Adrian S., 109, 134, 141, 142, 146, 187, 188, 254, 275, 342, 355;

call to China, 37, 141-42;

family, 35

Taylor, James B. (J. B.), 50, 200, 207

Taylor, James Hudson, 5, 247

Taylor, Richard V., 35, 142, 187, 188, 255, 355

Teachers. See Missionaries: educational

Teague, E. B., 47, 49, 50, 51, 269

Tenancy, 11, 18, 159, 161

Tengchow, 56, 150, 152, 171, 199, 212, 218, 220, 236, 263, 268, 295

Theological disputes. See Missionaries: theological disputes; Fundamentalism; Modernism

Thomas, Annie Laura, 356

Thomas, Isaac T., 356

Three-Self Movement, 331, 333, 334. See also Self-support; Chinese Christian Council

Treaty of Nanking, 5, 282, 296

Treaty ports, 3, 10, 282, 283, 286, 296

Tungchow, 104, 105, 113, 114, 253, 352

Tupper, Henry A. (H. A.), 86, 87, 90, 210, 268

Tuscaloosa, 14, 22, 25, 27, 47, 48, 49, 51

T. W. Ayers Memorial Hospital for Women, 183, 316

Tz'u-hsi, 285, 286, 287, 299

U

United China Relief, 161, 162, 312, 318

University of North Alabama, 39, 125, 353

University of Shanghai, 15, 168, 169, 172, 176, 223, 248-49, 256, 272, 278, 309, 354

W

Ward, Cecil S., 105, 162, 311, 317, 356

Ward, Margaret G., 105, 162, 163, 311, 317, 356

Whilden, Brayfield W., 22, 335, 337

Whilden, Louisa (''Lula"), 22, 198, 199, 336

Williams, James Toy, 56, 131, 138, 141, 151, 162, 169, 170, 274, 304, 318, 324, 333, 335, 344, 356;

call to China, 37, 357;

education, 34, 35, 357;

family, 33, 34, 35, 356

Williams, Jumelle Whilden, 22, 110, 119, 123, 171, 172, 198, 207, 335, 336

Williams, Nicholas Butt, 22, 36, 68, 110, 119, 123, 143, 157, 171, 172, 198, 207, 210, 239, 296, 335, 336, 357

Willingham, Robert J. (R.J.), 195, 213, 246, 248, 258, 268, 270

Woman's Missionary Union (SBC), 86, 125, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 195, 201, 202, 224, 229, 234, 235, 250, 275, 309, 313, 316, 323, 339, 343, 351

Woman's Missionary Union Training School, 39, 40, 41, 42, 145, 163, 164, 194, 201, 212, 229, 339, 351, 352, 353

Women:

in Alabama, 25, 27, 28, 29, 81, 137, 138, 139, 143, 165, 191, 194, 197, 201, 208-9, 225, 233, 235, 314;

Chinese, 9, 85, 88, 89, 97, 101, 102, 107, 125, 126, 151, 152, 153, 163, 164, 165, 166, 170, 172, 173, 179, 183, 184, 191, 193-94, 203, 205, 209, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229;

Chinese attitudes toward, 74, 81-82, 97, 177, 191, 204, 227, 237;

denominational attitudes toward, 13, 77, 81, 157-58, 198, 200, 210-11, 222, 230-37, 258;

housework, 107, 108, 114, 148, 157, 158, 191, 207, 210, 213, 231;

missionary relations of, 103, 126, 191-237, 243, 244, 259;

preaching of, 132, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 173, 193, 208-9, 225, 229, 230, 233-37, 257,

Page 424

324, 333, 345;

rights of, 4, 10, 11, 201, 228, 302, 341;

single missionaries, 11, 13, 19, 20, 22, 42, 50, 71, 86, 94, 96, 98, 103, 105, 108, 115, 118, 121, 122, 125, 126, 128, 133, 148, 151, 152, 155, 167, 189, 191-93, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201, 204, 206, 207, 210-13, 219, 220, 221, 223, 230, 231, 235, 237, 243, 258, 336, 345.

See also Bible women; Missionaries: women's work

Women's missionary societies, 7, 88, 122, 125, 129, 135, 142, 143, 165, 201, 224, 226

Woodward, Frank T., 42, 43, 56, 57, 107, 109, 117, 118, 131, 151, 162, 249, 305, 306, 317, 318, 343

Woodward, Mabel Elsie Williams, 56, 57, 107, 109, 110, 117, 151, 162, 163, 249, 305, 306, 312, 317, 343, 357;

call to China, 42, 43, 357;

family, 33, 357

Y

Yangchow, 154, 174, 187, 189, 255, 325, 355

Yates, Eliza, 46, 47, 55, 57, 58, 140, 222

Yates, Matthew T., 46, 47, 54, 55, 57, 58, 63, 65, 242, 243

Yenching University, 168, 179, 279, 322, 330, 338, 341

YMCA, 7, 39, 134, 352

Yong Seen-sarng, 46, 47, 138, 273

Yuan Shih-k'ai, 286, 287, 288, 289, 301, 302, 303

YWCA, 7, 39, 90, 176

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