Grant Wacker indicates throughout his
account of the exploits of West Virginian female foreign missionary to China,
"Pearl S. Buck and the Waning of the Missionary Impulse" that
missionary fervor fueled by the revivals of the Second Great Awakening were
doused by a sense of disillusionment, secularization, and apprehension towards
the imperial elements and abuses of the Christian faith which peaked by the
1930s. Coinciding with international militant and economic effects of WWI and
the Great Depression, such disillusionment may stem from the fatigue of
continual warfare and the insurmountable fiscal and moral cost of unjust
bloodshed, rather than a simple attribution to the ineffectiveness of Christian
missionaries. Despite external factors, Buck’s reflective account regarding her
ministry in China reveals how, though well-intentioned, many American
missionaries were obliviously unaware and insensitive to the cultural practices
of those they sought to reach. Her commentary and publishing later in life on
the effectiveness of American foreign missions is brought to the forefront of
conflicting debate that hotly rages today as in Buck’s life – a debate which
simultaneously praises and critiques the expanse and benefits of capitalism and
Christendom, but a debate nonetheless regarding the demands such a venture cost.
Receiving the Literature Nobel Prize
Laureate (1938), Buck’s use of Chinese idioms and Biblical parallels fill her
literary fiction, such as displayed through her famed The Good Earth. The novel’s style and intentionality derives from
her own experiences growing up in China. Paul Doyle’s analysis regarding her
narrative suggests that Buck believed “these good, solid farmers formed the
heart of China. Her interest in them as people gave her a starting point, and
love and affirmation for the Chinese peasant became one of the principal
ingredients of her thought and writing"[1] as well as in her
ministry. After reaping the prestige from being the first US woman to be awarded
the Nobel Prize for literature, the novelist became a recognized political
Christian activist who founded the East and West Association “to aid the Allied
war effort in Asia by helping Americans understand the culture and concerns of
the people of China and India.”[2] She later formed a
scholarly movement known as “critical internationalism” – a “perspective working
against colonialism and racism in Asia and in the United States during World
War II; [an organization which would later] expand that world to include a
critique of the Cold War.”[3] Her social activism
highlights concerns stemming from her earlier days as a missionary serving in
China, bearing witness to the ill effects of racial and national superiority being
entwined with the Christian message by well-intentioned missionaries.
Though a controversial public figure,
Buck's courageous critiques on imperialism met with admiration and resentment.
She functioned as an expert on Chinese diplomacy and internal affairs while
also serving as a "popular authority on the truthfulness of Christianity
and the validity of the Christian missionary enterprise in China."[4] However, her earlier
writings revealed her contempt for the wickedness and depravity she witnessed
in Chinese society and especially the "absolute corruption of the official
class. Family life riddled with opium addiction, drunkenness, [how daughters-in-law
were treated like a slave of the family], foot-binding, and female
infanticide."[5]
Most missionaries operated for decades in the area in which they were assigned
and yet, “the enterprise in which they were involved was heavily influenced by
imperialist assumptions regarding the West’s superiority, including ideas about
the superiority of women’s status in Western civilization. American Protestants
imagined that the United States most closely reflected God’s kingdom on earth
and that their country should therefore serve as a model for all the world.”[6] Female missionaries banded
together to create the first denominational foreign mission board in 1819 (the
General Board) as well as the most successful female agency, the Woman’s
Foreign Missionary Society, directly formed to aid and assist women in living
in scenarios which they viewed as oppressive. Buck’s writing aligned with the
accounts of barbarism other missionaries encountered. With renewed
justification and a millennial sense of immediacy, they were determined to
purge the sinfulness from their lives with the light of the gospel coupled by
Western social graces.
Though the evangelistic desire to witness
weighed heavily on her mind, the concept that "evangelists focused too
much on saving souls and too little on saving bodies"[7] increasingly disturbed
Buck and caused her to vocalize the need to first minister to the physical
detriments of the people they were trying to convert. The tone of her evaluations
changed in the 1930s which showed an appreciation for the distinctiveness of Asian
culture as well as China’s development as a nation. Due to this reevaluation,
her pen turned toward critiquing the leviathan of Western imperialism as well
as the traditional and dogmatic aspects of Christ's followers. Buck
emphatically noted throughout her writings of how early Protestant missionaries,
“although they produced a good number of conversions, were [ultimately] rejected
by the Chinese, especially by the intelligentsia, for they were regarded as
imperialistic enforcers of sweeping disapproval of Chinese culture. Those who
opposed ancestor worship consisted [largely of missionaries apart of] the China
Inland Mission - the largest Protestant mission group. They had received basic
theological training and brought with them not only their Christian beliefs but
also Western social and cultural symbolism. They sincerely believed that only
their religious system was appropriate to express the true Christian faith, and
they failed to understand Chinese culture.”[8]
Pearl’s frustration was not unwarranted.
Missionary effectiveness in China became dampened by dissident factions which
spurred sociopolitical uproars, such as the Taipei Rebellion and seeded other
forms of unrest due to the “international treaties imposed on the Chinese,
[including] the 1858 Toleration Clauses. These placed not just the missionaries
but all Christians under the protection of the foreign powers. While that made
persecution less likely, it was a situation open to abuse. Most Chinese viewed
westerners as oppressors and had no way of distinguishing missionaries from the
rest. In the course of the Boxer Rebellion, which lasted until 1901, 230
foreign missionaries and over 32,000 Chinese Christians lost their lives.”[9] The cost of evangelizing
and converting was high for all parties; jeopardizing not only social standing
and economic stability, but also one’s reputation as well as life.
However,
Buck never rejected the usefulness of foreign missions and greatly admired the
first missionaries, realizing their ventures out from European shores and into
a vast unknown would understandably be fraught with errors and their practices
in great need of revision. She considered figures such as her missionary father,
Absalom Sydenstricker, as "willful conquerors, proud and quarrelsome,
brave and intolerant and passionate, nonetheless good and innocent because they
were blind”[10]
to the destructiveness to their ideologue-like nature. Instead, her wrath fumed
over the behavior of contemporary missionaries who “seem weak and despicable”
in comparison, “shot through with doubt and distrust of themselves and their
message."[11]
Buck appears to have looked regretfully over the past, disillusioned with the initial
approach to missions work as well as the ineffectiveness of current
missionaries, but it also can be projected that the famed author and activist came
to see to the beauty and purpose of missions, including the movement’s imperfections.
Although
attacking denominations for their common inability to integrate Christian
teaching respectfully through their evangelization methods, Buck clearly asserted
that there is indeed a "Case for Foreign Missions," despite offering
a disclaimer that the "authoritative, unchangeable, and exactly phrased
body of doctrine" may need to become more fluid and that the presentation
of the gospel ought to allow flexibility in reaching the hearts of the
intended.
[1] Paul
A. Doyle. "The Good Earth." In Pearl
S. Buck, Rev. ed., 29-41. Twayne's United States Authors Series 85. Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1980.
[2] R. Schaffer.
"Pearl S. Buck and the East and West Association: The Trajectory and Fate
of “Critical Internationalism,” 1940–1950." Peace & Change 28, no. 1 (January 2003): 1-36.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Grant Wacker. "Pearl S. Buck and the Waning of
the Missionary Impulse1." Church
History 72, no. 4 (12, 2003): 856.
[5] Ibid., 857.
[6] Karen K. Seat. Providence has Freed Our Hands: Women’s
Missions and the American Encounter with Japan. Syracuse, New York:
Syracuse University Press, 2008.
[7] Wacker, 858.
[8] Paul de Neui. Family and Faith in Asia: The Missional
Impact of Social Networks. Pasadena, California: William Carey Library,
2010, 188.
[9] John Pritchard. Methodists and their Missionary Societies
1760-1900. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2013, 125.
[10] Wacker, 872.
[11] Ibid.
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