The Chinese Clergy and Church Autonomy in the Diocese of Kwangsi-Hunan, 1909-1950

Abstract

The Church Missionary Society initially focused its evangelical work in China on those areas that were close to the treaty ports where British influence was strongest, but from the early-1890s new mission stations were established in the more distant interior provinces of Sichuan (1891) and Guangxi (1899). In Sichuan, the CMS soon began co-operating with the China Inland Mission and several other Protestant societies that were already in the field, but by 1942 only 1,500 Chinese had been baptised, with eight of those ordained to the ministry. In Guangxi-Hunan, the CMS was more successful. Although this isolated mission remained the smallest of the CMS outposts in China, by the late 1930s more than 2,000 had been baptised. Even though the mission had no Chinese clergy for its first twenty years, a number of lay workers, both men and women, became involved in evangelisation. By 1940, eleven Chinese priests and seventy-four lay workers were active in the diocese, in addition to the seventeen European missionaries employed by the CMS. The local mission synod entertained high hopes that the diocese would soon achieve self-sufficiency with the aid of such a large number of Chinese workers, but by 1941 Bishop Percy Stevens worried about the lack of Chinese clergy in training and the reduction in the number of lay-workers due to wartime cost-cutting measures. Likewise, early hopes for a Chinese women’s diaconate bore no fruit. This paper charts the growth of a large corps of Chinese mission workers in the diocese of Kwangsi-Hunan between its elevation as a diocese in 1909 and the departure of the foreign missionaries in 1950, when eight Chinese clergymen were left in charge of the mission. The role of these Chinese clergy, together with other Chinese workers and foreign missionaries, in moving towards the autonomous governance of the church is examined.