Clay Burell's Library tagged missionaries →  View Popular

The spread of Christian missionary activity in China was directly associated with China's military humiliation in the 19^th century, as
a result of which the interior of the country was opened to foreigners. The missions offered medical support, particularly in ameliorating the
worst effects of opium addiction, thereby gaining converts. This was perceived as the height of duplicity by Chinese officials, who also
understood Christian teaching to be a direct attack on Confucianism.

The culmination of the distrust the Chinese felt for foreigners came in the form of the attacks perpetrated by the ‘Boxers', rural nationalist
groups formed into militias. Beginning as attacks on Christian missions in several cities in the north of China, the unrest graduated, with the
support of the authorities, to attacks on all foreigners, particularly in Peking, where the foreign legations were besieged in 1900.

By this time the imperial government was corrupt and, weakened by the repeated incursions of foreigners, unable to defend itself against
western military arsenals. The military attack and unequivocal victory in Peking of the combined foreign forces in response to the Boxer
Uprising, was devastating, and led to a punitive peace protocol and contributed to the ultimate collapse of the Empire in 1911.

The British government decided to take a very passive role within the Ching Empire after the disturbances of 1868. These
disturbances in Taiwan, which had seen fatal attacks on foreign missionaries and the burning of foreign missions as well as
disputes over the camphor monopoly rights of the local circuit intendant (Tao-tai), had led to the very real use of gunboat
diplomacy by the local British authorities. This confrontation was deplored by the British Foreign Office and
led to the curbing of any such
provocative actions in China. The British already had their hands full, and resources at full stretch, in containing a vast empire
that included the vast Indian sub-continent and had no wish to precipitate the collapse of the Ching Dynasty. 

Although
most everyone has heard of the Boxer Rebellion
in China in 1900, few know that this rebellion
was directly a reaction of the Chinese people
to the Christian missionaries
who swarmed into the country in order to convert
the poor, illiterate, and defenseless Chinese.
The rebellion was of course suppressed by the
countries that were patronizing the converting
missionaries.

 

In October of
2000, over twenty Chinese scholars, experts on
history and religion, held a symposium, exposing
the crimes committed by the then recently "canonized" foreign
missionaries and their followers. Scholars listed
a number of facts to illustrate that in modern
history the activities of Catholic missionaries
were closely linked with the invasion of China
by foreign forces.

 

Prof.
Dai Yi said, "Lots of foreign missionaries
followed the warships of foreign aggressors to
China in and after the Opium War, and actually
foreign aggression and missionaries' activities
are combined into one. That is, missionaries'
activities were an integral part of invasion,
missionaries acted as guides and tools for foreign
aggressors and in return, aggressors paved the
way for the missionaries' activities." It
is the foreign missionaries that should answer
for the consequences to their actions because
their monstrous evils exasperated the Chinese
people and eventually fused the outburst of the
Yi He Tuan (known as Boxers) Movement.

 

Participants in
the symposium pointed out that foreign missionaries
executed in certain "religious cases," such
as Auguste Chapdelaine, Franciscus de Capillas
and Albericus Crescitelli, had only themselves
to blame for still being hated by people today,
because they had stopped no evil.