Jessie G. Lutz

This book looks at the Anti-Christian Movements of the 1920's. Lutz argues that the movements emerged from both nationalist and modernist movements. WWI represented the turning point for China, crystallizing the emergence of Japan and the United States as the dominant faces in east Asia, with Britain and France moving to a secondary place. The May Fourth Movement was anti-establishment and anti-tradition as it looked for a model to return China to prominence. Missionaries (and by extension Chinese Christians) were the most common faces of the imperialists. They represented a confluence of the things the May 4thers found dangerous, so the growth of a movement against Christianity seemed natural.

Lutz argues that the movement fizzled because of its May Fourth foundation. It was largely about individualism and iconoclasm, but was taken over by the more organized May 30th Movement, which put nationalism over individual rights. The GMD's reunification (of a sort) of China meant that it could establish its ideology in the educational systems of China. Missionary schools were not exempt from this. In one since, this was good. The GMD valued mission schools and hospitals so they could function within the GMD's boundaries. It limited the freedom of missionaries, but it also limited their vulnerability to popular anti-Christian campaigns.

This is a book about China first that involves westerners. It does not discuss some of the changes in Protestantism in the United States during this period. It does not go into much detail on how those changes affected missions. It looks largely at what was happening in China and the forces that pushed the Anti-Christian movement as well related movements that gripped China in the 1920's. It's a good book that makes me want to look at others by the same author.

Lutz argues that the anti-Christian movement was the not complete break from the past it tried to be. Instead it maintained some aspects of Imperial Chinese culture, particularly the emphasis on elite leadership and that practice and education are determiners of character.… (más)