Spreading the intellectual gospel : a study of the American educational missionaries at Yenching University

Abstract

Scholars since Jessie Lutz and John Fairbank have investigated American Christian projects in Asia from the perspectives of cultural imperialism and ideological accommodation in transnational interactions. Often overlooked in the historiography, however, is the question of missionary intentions, of what American student volunteers aimed to bring and why they came to the Far East to teach. A complement to current scholarly debates, this dissertation shows that American educational missionaries during the Progressive Era were unconsciously indoctrinated into a belief in disseminating the gospel of intellectuality abroad. Through a case study of Yenching University, the thesis attempts to bring to the fore the rarely known inner experience of faculty members in Protestant institutions of higher education. Chapter one sketches out the formative years of prospective missionaries via an “ideas in context” approach. By mapping a network of transatlantic cultural and theological exchange at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines the distinctive shift from religious salvation to social and intellectual salvation in American Protestant discourse that paved the way for educational missionaries’ subsequent participation in Chinese national salvation. Chapter two explores the extent to which local responses to the mission affected Yenching faculty members’ perception of self-identity and doctrinal reorientation. Through a detailed analysis of educational missionaries’ activities in China, this part further challenges the predominant scholarly depiction of Christian universities as passive victims of Chinese nationalism. The final chapter reveals the work of Yenching missionaries in China after the Second World War and the impact of the gospel of intellectuality on the rise of cultural relativism after the repatriation of American missionaries. This study not only contributes to our understanding of U.S.-China relations in the 20th century, but also brings attention to the triangular liaisons of secularization, imperialism and the eastward expansion of Christian higher education. (297 words)