Encountering China: the evolution of Timothy Richard’s missionary thought (1870-1891)
View/ Open
Kaiser2015.docx (732.2Kb)
Date
27/06/2015Author
Kaiser, Andrew Terry
Metadata
Abstract
In pursuit of the conversion of others, cross-cultural missionaries often
experience their own “conversions.” This thesis explores the ways in which one
particular missionary, the Welshman Timothy Richard (1845–1919), was
transformed by his encounter with China. Focusing specifically on the evolution of
his understanding and practice of Christian mission during the first half of his career
with the Baptist Missionary Society, the study is structured chronologically in order
to capture the important ways in which Richard’s experiences shaped his adaptations
in mission. Each of Richard’s adaptations is examined within its appropriate
historical and cultural context through analysis of his published and unpublished
writings—all while paying careful attention to Richard’s identity as a Welsh Baptist
missionary. This approach reveals that rather than softening his commitment to
conversion in response to his encounters with China, Richard was driven by his
persistent evangelical convictions to adapt his missionary methods in pursuit of
greater results. When his experiences in Shandong and Shanxi provinces convinced
him that Christianity fulfilled China’s own religious past and that God’s Kingdom
promised blessings for souls in this life as well as in the next, Richard widened his
theological horizons to incorporate these ideas without abandoning his essential
understanding of the Christian gospel. As Richard adjusted to the realities of mission
in the Chinese context, his growing empathy for Chinese people and their culture
increasingly shaped his adaptations, ultimately leading him to advocate methods and
emphases on the moral evidences for Christianity that were unacceptable to some of
his missionary colleagues and to leaders in other missions, notably James Hudson
Taylor.
As the first critical work of length to focus on the early half of Richard’s
missionary career, this thesis fills a gap in current scholarship on Victorian Protestant
missions in China, offering a challenge to the simplistic conservative/liberal
dichotomies often used to categorize missionaries. The revised picture of Richard
that emerges reveals his original understanding of “the worthy” in Matthew 10, his
indebtedness to Chinese sectarian religion, his early application of indigenous
principles, his integration of evangelism and famine relief work, his relative
unimportance in the China Inland Mission “Shanxi spirit” controversies of the 1880s,
and—most significantly—his instrumental rather than evangelistic interest in the
scholar-officials of China. By highlighting the priority of the Chinese (religious)
context for Richard’s transformation, this thesis also contributes to the growing
volume of historiography on Christianity in modern China that emphasizes the multidirectional
influences present in the encounters between Christianity and Chinese
culture and religion. Finally, connections between Richard’s evolution and changes
taking place within the larger missionary community are also explored, situating
Richard within wider discussions of accommodationism in mission, the rise of social
Christianity, and evangelistic precursors to fulfillment theology.