China: The Gospel and Opium

Zhoushan – AD 1840

As dawn broke on July 4, 1840, the still waters of Zhoushan harbor, a stone's throw from the bustling life of Shanghai, were disrupted by an imposing sight. More than forty Royal Navy warships, a thunderous display of British imperial power, sliced through the morning mist. Beside the captain stood a missionary interpreter.[1] Together, they delivered an ultimatum to the small, overwhelmed Chinese garrison of the port city: Surrender the city and its ancient fort, or face the wrath of the Royal Navy. The garrison, outmatched and outnumbered, stood their ground.

The next morning, the British struck. The H.M.S. Wellesley blasted the fort with relentless broadsides. Onshore, red-coated marines advanced through the gunpowder-laced air. By sunset, the Union Jack fluttered above the city gates. This act of aggression had one insidious purpose: to force open China’s doors to British opium traders.

This was among the first battles of the Opium Wars, one of the British Empire’s darkest chapters. The war ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the first of the “unequal treaties” that scarred China’s national memory. Five major ports were forced open to British trade, and Hong Kong was ceded as a naval base.

Missionaries sometimes became entangled in these events, particularly as interpreters. To many Chinese, they were indistinguishable from the foreign machine reshaping their land—an association that would shadow the missionaries’ work for generations. Yet this had not always been the case.

Christianity in China: A Long History

The earliest record of Christianity in China is a 7th-century tablet found in Xi’an, chronicling Nestorian missionaries who brought the Gospel east through Persia. Hidden during a 9th-century wave of persecution, the tablet, written in Chinese and Syriac, documents their fledgling church network.

One of the first Western missionaries to China was the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, born in 1522, who is among the most respected foreigners in Chinese history. China, under its imperial dynasty, was a realm of splendid isolation. It viewed itself as the center of the world, a belief reflected in its moniker 'Middle Kingdom.' Foreigners were often dismissed as uncouth outsiders, unworthy to step onto the sacred soil of China. But Ricci, a scholar of mathematics, geography, and astronomy, won favor by embracing Chinese culture. Invited by a provincial governor, he began an extraordinary journey that led him to the Chinese Emperor’s court.

In his first audacious but humble appeal to the Emperor, he wrote, “Fame told me of the remarkable teaching and fine institutions with which the Imperial Court has endowed all its peoples. I desired to share these advantages and live out my life as one of your Majesty’s subjects, hoping in return to be of some small use.... If Your Majesty does not reject an ignorant, incapable man and allows me to exercise my paltry talent, my keenest desire is to employ it in the service of so great a prince.”[2]

Ricci displayed remarkable cultural sensitivity, showing that missionary appreciation for culture is not a modern innovation—it’s a theme throughout missionary history. “Allowance being made for the flowery style of petitions written in the Chinese language, Ricci was doubtless sincere in what he wrote. He had come to have a high regard for the many excellences of the Chinese culture; his one desire was to live out his days in China in the service of the people he had come to love. He had so far identified himself with them as to be almost indistinguishable from them.”[3]

“Ricci’s primary aim was not to bring Western learning, but to bring the Gospel. To make that point, he and Ruggieri [his fellow missionary] shaved their heads and took on the garb of Buddhist monks.”[4] Looking to influence the Chinese intelligentsia, he later changed his garb to match Confucian scholars. “As he studied and translated the Chinese classics, he developed great respect for what this ancient culture had to offer.”[5]

Under his ministry, a small church emerged, including many Chinese intellectuals. Among them was Xu Guangqi, a brilliant polymath who became a passionate Christian apologist, risking his career for his faith.[6] His legacy endured—two of his descendants became first ladies of China. By the next century, the Catholic community had grown to nearly 200,000 Chinese believers.[7]

The Gospel and Opium

As the 19th century dawned, European imperial ambitions swept across China. Though China avoided direct colonization like India, it fell prey to foreign trade, especially opium. To control these interactions, the Chinese government restricted merchants to Canton. Yet opium—lucrative, lightweight, and easy to ship—became the backbone of British trade, with China as the perfect market for the East India Company’s India-grown crop.

Amid this upheaval, Protestant missionaries arrived in greater numbers. The first was 25-year-old Robert Morrison, who landed in 1807. Like their counterparts in India, these missionaries often clashed with European powers. The East India Company exhibited a pronounced hostility to their presence. Yet to many Chinese, Christianity and the opium trade became inseparable, a stigma that would haunt missionary efforts for decades.

To circumvent the obstacles the East India Company posed, Morrison came to China on an American ship. He dedicated himself to quickly mastering the Chinese language. Morrison's efforts did not go unnoticed by the Company, which begrudgingly acknowledged his utility. Few foreigners in China took the initiative to learn the language. Subsequently, he found himself on the payroll of the Company, employed as a translator.

This provided Morrison with legal residence and financial independence, affording him the freedom to embark on the most significant project of his life: translating the entire Bible into Chinese, a project he kept secret from his employers. Chipping away during his days off and evenings, he completed the New Testament within two years. Six years later, he completed the Old Testament. When Company officials discovered his work, they ordered his dismissal—but never followed through.

It’s difficult to fault Morrison for taking the only available opportunity to support himself and establish a legitimate platform in China, but his alliance with the East India Company was a perilous one.

Other missionaries made riskier compromises. Karl Gützlaff, the same missionary in the opening story, arrived shortly after Morrison. He actually traveled with an opium-smuggling company to reach China’s interior. There are stories of him passing out Gospel tracts from one side of a boat while the smugglers sold opium from the other side. This exceedingly unwise (to say the least!) strategy surely confused many Chinese about the true nature of the Gospel.

Seeing the harmful effects of the drug, Chinese leaders demanded an end to the opium trade. The British government had been looking the other way, claiming no responsibility for the actions of British traders. Lin Tze-hsu, commissioned by the Chinese government to oppose the trade, penned a poignant letter to Queen Victoria. His efforts culminated in a dramatic act of defiance: the seizure and destruction of a million British pounds’ worth of opium. This move incited the wrath of the British government and ignited the flames of the First Opium War.

Opium sales were crucial to British rule in India, and when China resisted, Britain responded with force. But many Christians in Britain condemned the war. “The Christian conscience in Britain was deeply stirred and shaken by all these events.”[8] Before the war, W.E. Gladstone argued in Parliament, “That [British] flag is hoisted to protect an infamous contraband traffic... we, the ‘enlightened and civilized Christians,’ are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion.”[9]

Lord Shaftesbury, an evangelical leader in Parliament, was a champion of abolition and many other social causes. In 1842, after Britain’s victory, he lamented, “We have triumphed in one of the most lawless, unnecessary, and unfair struggles in history... Christians have shed more Heathen blood in two years than Heathen have shed of Christian blood in two centuries.”[10]

A year later, Shaftesbury proposed a resolution to abolish the opium trade, calling it “utterly inconsistent with the honour and duties of a Christian kingdom.” Parliament ignored him. As one historian put it, “The attention of statesmen was directed to other and, in their opinion, more important things.”[11] The opium trade persisted for three more generations—enriching individuals, disgracing governments, and haunting the Christian conscience.[12]

The First Opium War ended with the Treaty of Nanking, which forced China to open more ports to foreign trade—and, indirectly, to missionaries. While the treaty didn’t mention missionaries specifically, it granted foreigners the right to reside in five newly opened cities.

Missionaries, who had long yearned and prayed for an open door, found themselves with an ethical dilemma: to advance through this door now swung wide by conflict, or to stand back? It isn’t easy to know what they should’ve done. Many saw this as providential, transforming an adverse circumstance into hope. Yet their stance was fraught. “However innocent the missionary might be of national prejudices and imperialist aspirations, his position in Chinese eyes was, to say the least, ambiguous.”[13]

The treaty also placed foreigners above Chinese law. If they committed crimes, they would be tried by their home governments, not by China. And since missionaries were often the only foreigners fluent in Chinese, they became intermediaries in negotiations between Western nations and the Chinese government—further complicating their role.

Mission work continued to expand in the second half of the 19th century, with some success, but it also witnessed growing Chinese resentment of foreigners. Sometimes, this turned violent. In 1856, a new magistrate in Kwangsi province incited an anti-foreign movement. Chinese Christians were attacked—25 tortured, two killed—and a French missionary was arrested, flogged, and beheaded.

At the same time, China’s seizure of the British trading vessel Arrow reignited war. France and Britain retaliated, culminating in the burning of the Chinese Summer Palace—a devastating blow to imperial dignity. When peace negotiations began in 1860, missionaries once again served as translators.

The resulting Treaties of Tientsin and Peking granted foreigners free travel in China’s interior and opened ten more port cities. For the first time, Christianity was explicitly legalized, and Chinese converts were guaranteed religious freedom.

“For the first time, both Christianity and the Christian missions obtained legal existence in China—at the point of the bayonet.”[14] Christianity, like the opium trade, now existed under foreign protection, further entrenching its association with imperial power. Once again, missions entangled with government agendas suffered for it. Yet a new approach was on the horizon.

A Humbler Way

In 1853, at just 21, Hudson Taylor arrived in Shanghai from Yorkshire. His passion for reaching all of China and his gift for organization would leave a lasting legacy. From his teenage conversion, he systematically prepared for mission work—studying medicine, practicing self-denial, and even ending an engagement when his fiancée didn’t share his calling.

Settling in Shanghai, Taylor endured loneliness and struggled with the complexities of the Chinese language. Unlike many missionaries who remained in foreign enclaves, he set his sights on China’s interior. Within a year, he traveled up the Yangtze River, visiting villages no foreigner had seen.

Like Matteo Ricci before him, Taylor sought to blend in, adopting Chinese dress and even dyeing his blonde hair black—a process that nearly blinded him when an ammonia bottle exploded in his face. Fellow expatriates mocked him, but he persisted through these trials, enduring erratic support from his mission board and even a romantic rejection.

In 1857, he met Maria Dyer in Ningpo—the ministry partner he had long sought. They married the following year, and Taylor took charge of a local hospital. Around this time, he baptized Wang Laiquan, who became a close collaborator. In 1860, exhausted and ill, the Taylors returned to England for furlough, bringing Wang with them to assist with their children and Bible translation work.

In England, the Taylors crafted their blueprint for the China Inland Mission (CIM). Unlike other missionary societies, the CIM’s headquarters would be in China, not England. Its missionaries would integrate into Chinese culture, serve without European government protection, and even include single women—an uncommon practice at the time. Taylor believed they would win Chinese hearts through love and service, not foreign power.

Wang returned to China with Taylor and became a pastor, using his own funds to open a small chapel. Over time, he led a growing network of self-governing, self-supporting Chinese churches in Hangzhou—churches that, remarkably, helped finance the CIM.

Meanwhile, the missionary community was struggling desperately to deliver China from its opium epidemic. To their credit, they stood united in condemning the trade, fully aware of the stain it cast upon their work in the eyes of many Chinese. It was a source of intense embarrassment for many that they had arrived aboard the opium ships. “The missionaries are absolutely one on this question,” said the Rev. Silvester Whitehead.[15]

They rallied churches back home. Medical missionaries in China were the first to amass a trove of scientific evidence on the crippling effects of addiction. Other missionaries became activists—publishing articles, launching newspapers, and speaking at church conferences. Those on furlough armed themselves with data and photos, spreading awareness back home. Eventually, they formed an anti-opium league to pressure politicians, with Hudson Taylor and the CIM at the forefront.

At an 1880 London missions conference, Taylor declared, “The opium traffic is doing more evil in China in a week than missions are doing good in a year.”[16] He proposed a resolution condemning the trade as an “incalculable evil” that had poisoned China against Christianity.[17] It passed unanimously.

Some missionaries took direct action, establishing refuges for recovering addicts. The crisis was severe—one CIM doctor reported preventing an opium-induced suicide nearly every day.[18] At an 1888 conference, missionaries issued a stark condemnation of the opium trade:

For generations to come, China will be worse for what we [meaning the Western powers] have done. It is impossible to consider the condition of China through our action in these matters without feeling that one has not words to express our sorrow, that the land we love should have any connection with a business so fearful. We have to reckon with divine judgment if we neglect this matter. We have wronged China as we believe no other has wronged another.

Nearly 50 years after Lord Shaftesbury’s first plea, missionary advocacy finally bore fruit—Parliament declared the opium trade “morally indefensible.”[19] But by then, China was producing more opium domestically than it imported. The fight continued until the Chinese government banned opium in 1907. Yet the missionaries' tireless efforts, their constant rallying cry, kept the issue in the public eye, finally compelling politicians to enact change.

They [the missionaries] were the ones who gathered the medical evidence to demonstrate that opium was a pernicious drug. They campaigned for decades to convince the British government to end its involvement in the opium trade from India.... More than any other group at the turn of the twentieth century, the Protestant missionaries in China truly understood the nature of opium addiction and had the courage to pursue their campaign against the drug until they finally convinced others of the correctness of their position.... The Protestant missionaries alone had an altruistic interest in the issue; everyone else—poppy farmers, opium traders, government officials—had a monetary interest in continuing the trade.[20]

In this story, we find a paradox: missionaries had arrived on the opium ships, yet if they had not come, there would’ve been far fewer voices speaking out against the trade.

Alongside the anti-opium crusade, the CIM continued to grow, but not without its share of heartache. In 1867, the Taylors’ 8-year-old daughter died suddenly. In 1870, Maria fell gravely ill late in pregnancy, delivering a son who lived less than two weeks. Days later, she died at 33. Seeking solace, Hudson threw himself into his work, returning to England to recruit more missionaries. By 1895, the CIM had missionaries in every Chinese province, numbering over 650.

Even more impactful than the hundreds of CIM missionaries at this time were the famous Chinese “Bible women.” One cannot tell the story of Christianity in China without highlighting their pivotal role. Partly through the ministry of the CIM’s single female missionaries, scores of Chinese women embraced the way of Jesus beginning in the 1860s. Many were never married or widows, giving them freedom to travel. Churches hired some, and others devoted their lives to volunteer evangelism.

Viewed as less threatening than men, they spread throughout China to places where missionaries, and even Chinese Christian men, could not go. They started churches, ran clinics, and taught in mission schools. In 1893, a group of them formed their own missionary society. By 1910, there were 5,782 known Bible women mentioned in missionary records, and there were likely many more who are unknown today.[21]

One of the most famous of the Bible women was Yu Cidu (or Dora Yu), one of the first female Chinese medical doctors. In addition to her work as a physician, she led Bible studies and revival meetings throughout China. She is considered the foremost Chinese evangelist, male or female, of the early 20th century. Another of the first female doctors in China, Shi Meiyu, founded schools, a chapel, a hospital, a nursing school, and an orphanage alongside the American missionary Jennie Hughes.

Crisis and Change

Despite the efforts of these Bible women and the success of missions like the CIM, undercurrents of anti-foreign sentiment in China continued to swell as the 19th century ended. In 1900, this animosity erupted in the form of the Boxer Rebellion. The Rebellion, named for its members' practice of martial arts (colloquially referred to by Westerners as “Chinese boxing”), began as a localized uprising in a few northern villages. It rapidly mushroomed into a national movement, reaching the gates of Beijing with furious momentum. The Boxers, seething with resentment, pointed fingers at foreigners for the nation’s troubles. While their wrath was not exclusively directed at missionaries, Christians became targets, viewed as accomplices of imperialist powers.

With Chinese government backing, the Rebellion escalated, prompting Western military intervention. Before the conflict ended, 239 missionaries—including 53 children—were killed, along with 1,912 Chinese Protestants and thousands more Catholics. The CIM lost 79 missionaries.[22] Taylor, in England at the time, was devastated and never fully recovered from the trauma.

Yet in the face of tragedy, the Christian response finally began to change Chinese  perceptions of Christianity. Missionaries and Chinese believers chose forgiveness over vengeance, continuing their work with renewed love and service. Their prayers for China only deepened, and a fresh wave of volunteers stepped forward to carry on the mission.

To the credit of the missionaries and the missionary societies, it must be said that in no single case did they allow the massacres to awaken any sentiment of hostility against the Chinese people as such; the troubles were taken as the occasion for much soul-searching and re-thinking of missionary policy, and for a renewed self-dedication to the service of the Chinese people. Not a single missionary society withdrew from its field in China; not a single missionary recruit hesitated to take his place in any field to which he might be sent.[23]

The Western powers imposed massive reparation burdens on China to recoup their losses in property from the Rebellion. The missionaries would have none of it. Taylor’s CIM, “which had suffered far more gravely than any other, both in loss of life and destruction of property, went even further; Taylor laid down categorically that no compensation was to be asked for, and, even if offered, was not to be accepted.”[24]

Moreover, the missionary community continued to fight the opium trade, refusing to let the issue fade from public consciousness, even in the emotionally charged atmosphere following the Uprising: “To the missionaries goes the credit for not allowing the opium issue to die even in the days after the Boxer Uprising in 1900 when emotions against the Chinese ran high.”[25]

When missionaries follow in the footsteps of Christ rather than availing themselves of worldly power, when they suffer for people, exercising “power under” them rather than power over them, it changes the world. Over the next fifty years, missionaries built 429 middle and high schools, 16 universities (the first in the country), and 538 hospitals the length and breadth of China.[26] The first orphanages in China, the first home for the blind, the first schools for the deaf and mute, the first modern schools for women, the first psychiatric hospital, and the first leprosy treatment center—all were started by missionaries and mainly staffed by Chinese Christians.

Legacy and Future: A Chinese Story

The practical, non-religious effects of missionaries on China are manifold, including far-reaching impacts on medicine, education, women’s rights, and economic development. In the 1860s, one of the most significant social reforms influenced by missionaries was the movement against women’s foot-binding. This practice, deeply ingrained in Chinese culture as a symbol of status and beauty, involved the painful binding of young girls' feet to prevent them from growing.

The missionary community initiated a campaign against this practice. They found allies in Chinese Christian women and men, who vowed not to bind their feet or those of their children. This coalition of voices gradually turned the tide, leading to the eventual eradication of the practice. Kwame Anthony Appiah eloquently captured the story of this transformative social change in his New York Times article "The Art of Social Change," illustrating the power of cross-cultural collaboration in effecting societal reform.

Recent studies by Chinese economists highlight missionaries’ role in China’s economic growth. A 2012 study by Ying Bai and James Kai-Sing Kung found that between 1840 and 1920, just one additional Christian conversion per 10,000 people increased urbanization rates by 18.8%. They attributed 90% of this effect to the spread of education and healthcare through missionary-founded institutions, even after accounting for other factors.[27]

Missionaries were legally allowed in China from 1858 until their expulsion by the Communist government in 1949. Another 2012 study by Chinese economists found a surprising correlation: regions that experienced floods or droughts before 1858 or after 1949 saw lasting economic decline, but those affected during the missionary era showed greater prosperity today.

Did you catch that? Paradoxically, a historical flood or drought was actually good for your region today—if it happened while missionaries were in China. Why? Missionary involvement in disaster relief during this period had a lasting positive impact. By staying to rebuild, through the construction of schools and hospitals, long after the immediate crisis had passed, missionaries laid the groundwork for enduring economic improvement.[28]

As in India, missionaries dominated 19th-century printing in China, helping to foster civil society.[29] Many of China’s first modern reformers emerged from missionary schools, including Sun Yat Sen, the nation’s first post-imperial leader. Sun was a Christian and is often called “China’s George Washington.” He is still revered today by most Chinese regardless of their political affiliation—a hero both to the communist party in China and to their democratic adversaries in Taiwan. It is no exaggeration to say that missionaries and Chinese Christians were one of the leading causes of China’s modernization.

Some critics of missions claim that culturally respectful missionaries like Matteo Ricci were rare exceptions, but this evidence suggests otherwise. Following Ricci’s pattern of cultural respect, Hudson Taylor’s CIM became the world’s largest mission organization at the time.

Other Protestant missionaries not with the CIM also followed in Ricci’s footsteps: James Legge, who lived in Hong Kong for nearly thirty years, felt that mission work would only succeed once missionaries appreciated the breadth of Chinese cultural achievements. He deeply admired Confucius, referring to him as “the Sage,” and spent much of his life translating Chinese literary classics into English.[30]

Despite the association in many Chinese minds at the time, the missionary community was not involved in starting and perpetuating the opium trade. They were unanimous in fighting it. The above statistics on China’s growth demonstrate that missionaries’ average effect on China was overwhelmingly positive, whatever negative examples of individual missionaries that could be cited.

When the Japanese invaded China during World War 2, many missionaries stayed there in solidarity with the Chinese. “When vast numbers of Chinese, including students, moved westwards to start a new life in areas which the Japanese could not reach, hundreds of their missionary friends pulled up stakes and went with them. Others stayed, at considerable danger to their own lives, to care for the wounded and to feed the hungry.”[31]

Among these missionaries were individuals whose actions would echo through history. Minnie Vautrin, whose name would be etched in the annals of wartime heroism, is credited with saving the lives of ten thousand Chinese women and girls during the Japanese onslaught on Nanking. Her bravery and unwavering spirit in the face of unimaginable horrors made her a guardian angel to those under her protection.

Also present at this time was Eric Liddell, immortalized in the film Chariots of Fire for his Olympic triumphs. Liddell had been serving as a missionary in China since 1925. When the war broke out, he stayed, and he spent his final years in a Japanese internment camp, finally succumbing to a brain tumor.

When the Communist government took power in 1949, all missionaries were expelled. Many feared this would crush the Chinese church. Instead, Chinese believers proved their faith was their own. They had laid the groundwork for one of the most stunning movements in the entire history of Christianity. These believers owned their faith, denying that they followed an alien Western religion. One of the patriarchs of the 20th-century Chinese church, Wang Ming Dao, was imprisoned for refusing to sign a document calling Christianity a tool of Western imperialism. He had worked independently of foreign missionaries his entire life.[32]

Over the following decades, Wang Ming Dao and other exceptionally courageous Chinese believers continued to share their faith, all with no missionaries in sight. Today, conservative estimates place the number of Chinese Christians upwards of 50 million, with some estimates approaching 100 million. This places China in the top ten most Christian countries in the world.

Some of the most powerful testimonies in church history are from Chinese Christians, including The Heavenly Man (about a believer named Brother Yun), I Stand With Christ by Zhang Rongliang, and Blood Letters by Lian Xi.[33] The Chinese are now working out a genuinely Chinese expression of Christianity. In a beautiful and poetic reversal, the Chinese church is now sending thousands of its missionaries worldwide.[34]

Chinese hymns have even been sung in Western churches.[35] Two years ago, I used part of a Chinese house church statement of faith when crafting a discipleship program for Muslim-background believers.[36] The story of Christianity in China is not so much a missionary success story as it is a story of Chinese Christians, through centuries of hard work and suffering, finally demonstrating to their fellow countrymen and women that one can follow Jesus and be authentically Chinese.

[1] The missionary was named Karl Gützlaff, a German Lutheran. His presence at this event is attested in two primary sources.

[2] Vincent Cronin, The Wise Man from the West (New York: Image Books, 1957), 169-170.

[3] Stephen Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions (London: Lutterworth Press, 1966), 120.

[4] Tucker, Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 68.

[5] Ibid., 69.

[6] Xu adopted the nickname “Paul” for himself, so you will sometimes see his name written as Paul Hsü (based on a different system for spelling “Xu” with English letters).

[7] Kathleen L. Lodwick, How Christianity Came to China (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016),12.

[8] Neill, Colonialism, 133.

[9] Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London: Putnam, 1964), 100.

[10] Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014, first published 1886), 440.

[11] Ibid., 134.

[12] Ibid., 135.

[13] Ibid., 136. The more things change, the more they stay the same. When the Western powers invaded Afghanistan in 2001, scores of Christian aid workers followed in their wake. It was an incredible open door. They were meeting real, desperate physical needs of the Afghan people. But it’s easy to see how their work could be confused with the wider agendas of Western governments. This undoubtedly led to some attacks on aid workers. Whether a soldier, a Christian aid worker, or a secular aid worker, all were agents of Western culture in the eyes of some Afghans.

[14] Neill, Colonialism, 139.

[15] Kathleen L. Lodwick, Crusaders Against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874-1917 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 30.

[16] Ibid., 50.

[17] Ibid., 50.

[18] Ibid., 46.

[19] Ibid., 182.

[20] Ibid., 8.

[21] Patricia Chiu and Wai-Ching Angela Wong, eds. Christian Women in Chinese Society: the Anglican Story (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018), 243-244. Cited in Christy Chia, “The Lasting Impact of Chinese Bible Women, 1860-1949,” WCIU Journal, December 6, 2020. https://wciujournal.wciu.edu/women-in-international-development/2020/12/4/the-lasting-impact-of-chinese-bible-women-18601949.

[22] Neill, Colonialism, 158.

[23] Ibid., 159.

[24] Ibid., 159.

[25] Lodwick, Crusaders, 3.

[26] David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2003), 52.

[27] Ying Bai & James Kai-sing Kung, “Diffusing Knowledge While Spreading God’s Message: Protestantism and Economic Prosperity in China, 1840-1920,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 13, no. 4, August 1, 2015, 669-698, https://doi.org/10.1111/jeea.12113.

[28] Yuyu Chen, Hui Wang & Se Yan, “The long-term effects of Protestant activities in China,” Journal of Comparative Economics, 50, no. 2, June 2022, 394-414, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2021.12.002 .

[29] Ryan Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of Modern China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). Cited in Woodberry, “Missionary Roots,” 271; Xiantao Zhang, The Origins of the Modern Chinese Press (New York: Routledge, 2007). Cited in Woodberry, “Missionary Roots,” 274.

[30] Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, 40.

[31] Neill, Colonialism, 161.

[32] Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, ch. 6.

[33] Xi Lian’s Redeemed by Fire has been recommended to me as the best overall book on the Chinese church, but I have not read it. See Lodwick, How, 43.

[34] Mary Ho & Rudolf Mak, “The Uniqueness of the Chinese Mission Movement—Past, Present, and Future,” International Bulletin of Mission Research, 46, no. 1, December 22, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1177/2396939321102644.

[35] Lodwick, How, Loc 108.

[36] China for Jesus, “Statement of Faith of Chinese House Churches,” http://www.chinaforjesus.com/StatementOfFaith.htm.