This article is Part 3 of a seven-part series adapted from a lecture delivered at Harvard Law School, on May 1, 2025, at the Program on Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies. Reproduced with permission from Dr. Ruth Okediji, faculty director.
In Part 2, we set the premodern frame: Confucian governance, Daoist and folk practice, Buddhist devotion, and an imperial habit of classifying “heterodoxy.” Here, we enter a modern crucible—roughly 1862–1927—when China wrestled with foreign power, internal revolt, and the search for meaning. Across these decades, Christianity was alternately tolerated, utilized, suspected, and opposed. The labels changed—from “heterodox” to “imperial tool,” from “foreign” to “anti-modern”—but the ambivalence remained.
1862–74: Order, Trauma, and Suspicion
In the late Qing, officials faced the debris of war and rebellion. The priority was order. Under the unequal treaties, mission schools and hospitals expanded with foreign protection; tolerance, however, did not translate into trust. Local authorities, charged with stability, could treat unfamiliar teaching as a disturbance to be managed. The result was a wary coexistence: Christian institutions served publicly, yet the faith itself was read as not indigenous and potentially disruptive.
At the popular level, rumors—about foreign medicines, rituals, or intentions—could fuel flashpoints. When the state’s legitimacy was shaken, scapegoats were not far behind. A religion carried by foreigners and associated with new privileges was easy to blame when communities were already on edge.
A Library Arrives: the 1910s and 1920s
By the 1910s, intellectual life shifted from crisis management to idea import. Students and writers brought home a library of “isms”—liberalism, socialism, pragmatism, positivism, evolutionism, individualism, and anarchism—hoping these tools could rebuild China. The May Fourth milieu elevated science and democracy and often treated “religion” as superstition. Even as some scholars engaged Christianity’s moral vision, the public mood tilted skeptical: if modernity meant reason and nation-building, what role did churches—especially treaty-protected ones—play?
The Anti-Christian Movement, 1922–27
In this climate, protests targeted Christian schools and organizations, casting them as obstacles to national renewal. The critique had layers. One layer was nationalist: a foreign religion using foreign protection. Another was ideological: Christianity allegedly opposed science or democratic awakening. A third was institutional: in a crowded field of new associations, why should Christian groups wield outsized influence? Not all opponents were hostile to faith itself; many simply believed the nation could not afford divided loyalties.
Christians answered in different ways. Some emphasized public service, arguing that schools, clinics, and charities were for China’s good. Others insisted that the gospel cannot be reduced to utility—that faith speaks to truth and salvation, not merely social uplift. In both responses, Chinese believers emerged with sharper voices, translating Scripture and theology into Chinese moral and intellectual questions, and insisting the church in China must be truly Chinese.
Chen Duxiu’s Turn and the Logic of Salvation
A pivotal figure is Chen Duxiu. Early writings championed liberty and cultural reform; in April 1920 (in New Youth) he turned decisively toward Marxism. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was organized in 1921, with Chen serving as its symbolic head. The imagined path to renewal shifted—from personal and cultural transformation to structural revolution. In that telling, Christianity appeared as yesterday’s solution or as Western cultural baggage. The judgment was not only about doctrine; it was about what saves—ideas, virtue, institutions, or class struggle.
How to Read the Moment: Levenson and Cohen
Two historiographical lenses help us avoid caricature. Joseph Levenson saw modernity pressing Confucian meaning past breaking, while Paul Cohen presented a China-centered history that resists simple “impact–response” narratives. Hold them together and a pattern appears: Chinese critiques of Christianity were not mere xenophobia. They were part of a profound effort to reassemble meaning amid humiliation and change. Christianity could be rejected as foreign or embraced as resource—often both at once.
Scapegoats and Gifts
Even as polemics rose, lives were changed. Christians translated and taught; they cared for orphans and the sick; girls and boys studied in mission schools; workers heard Scripture in market-town chapels. These were gifts offered in a suspicious age. At the same time, anti-Christian rhetoric gathered force in newspapers and on campuses. Crisis cut both ways: it hardened suspicion and deepened faith.
Why it Matters
Between 1862 and 1927, the terms of debate moved from imperial categories to modern ideology. Christianity was not only “heterodox” but “anti-science,” not only “foreign” but “anti-national.” Yet the older pattern persisted: Christianity could be useful (education, medicine) even when its truth claims were dismissed. Understanding this pattern helps us hear present-day arguments with historical ears.
What to Watch
Three diagnostics carry forward.
- The label problem. When “Christianity” is defined by outsiders’ categories—superstition, imperial tool, Western culture—it becomes a straw man. Clarifying terms is not pedantry; it is mission.
- The utility temptation. Welcoming Christian service while averting one’s eyes from the cross is an old habit. Churches must love the city and confess the faith.
- The scapegoat cycle. In seasons of anxiety, minorities pay. Christians must refuse bitterness and continue quiet good work, knowing that watchfulness often outlasts disgust.
Next in the series (Part 4): Two tracks in China—how the liberal–fundamentalist divide was transplanted; Yenching University and Chinese YMCA vs. China Inland Mission (CIM); revivalists John Sung and Wang Mingdao.
