Gloria Shuhui Tseng, ed. Cross-Cultural Encounters: China and the Reformed Church in America. In Studies in Chinese Christianity, G. Wright Doyle and Carol Lee Hamrin, editors. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2021.
What was it like to be a Christian missionary in China? What were the missionaries like as people? How did they relate to the Chinese among whom they lived and with whom they served? Were they tools of foreign imperialism, or humble servants of Christ and ambassadors of his kingdom? How did they cope with the devastating wars and tumultuous political and social changes that swept over China in the modern period? And what did they do, in actuality?
Cross-Cultural Encounters offers insightful answers to these questions through biographies of the lives of a few American missionaries in one province of China.
This is one of the latest additions to the now twenty-volume Studies in Chinese Christianity series published by Wipf & Stock. (Search Results | Wipf and Stock Publishers). (Disclosure: As co-editor of this series, I read and commented on an early draft of these chapters.)
Editor Gloria Tseng is Associate Professor of History at Hope College, Holland, Michigan. Under her supervision, students wrote the essays that comprise the book, for which Dr. Tseng contributed an Introduction and co-authored one of the chapters.
Hope College is connected to the Reformed Church in America, whose historical archives are stored there. The student authors mined this rich collection of original material to pen studies of RCA missionaries to China from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to 1951. These missionaries were all part of the Amoy mission, which the early RCA missionary David Abeel pioneered in 1842. Thus, like three other volumes in the Studies in Chinese Christianity series, this book describes the work of a single denomination. (The others are On the Road to Siangyang: Covenant Mission in Mainland China 1890-1949, by Jack R. Lundbom; Through the Valley of the Shadow: Australian Women in War-Torn China, and Children of the Massacre, both by Linda and Robert Banks.)
Unlike some books about missionaries, these chapters highlight not only the ways in which missionaries tried to communicate the Christian message to Chinese, but also those in which Chinese culture impacted them. As Dennis Voskuil says in the Foreward, “It is evident that cultural influences always moved in two directions. The Chinese certainly embraced many of the ideals and practices introduced by those from the West, but it was just as true that the missionaries were also absorbing and embracing the ideas and practices of the Chinese.” Thus, the reason for the title, Cross-Cultural Encounters.
Reflecting the numerical majority of women in Protestant missions, Cross-Cultural Encounters contains chapters on “Missionary Wives,” missionary nurses, and “Single and Female in the China Mission of the Reformed Church in America.” Seven of the twelve women discussed in this volume are women.
Almost from the beginning, Protestant missionaries combined both word and deed in their efforts to share the love and truth of Christ with Chinese people. Cross-Cultural Encounters highlights this balance. It opens with the story of a medical missionary who considered his healing ministry as auxiliary to his basic call to make known the Gospel. One chapter focuses on the role of missionary nurses, while the last chapter provides a survey of “Faith and Humanitarian Aid in Wartime China.”
The Contents
The editor’s concise and comprehensive introduction begins by noting that during the period in which RCA missionaries worked, “war was almost a permanent reality, and China underwent significant transformation” as industrialization affected first treaty ports and then the whole nation, gender and family roles changed; and Confucian values sustained powerful shocks. “Through all this, the RCA mission was both a historical witness and a historical actor” (xi).
Tseng points out that “the issues raised and topics covered in this volume – medical missions, gender and family, education, racial relations, cultural exchanges, modernity, and humanitarian aid – are all subjects of interest to the scholar or student of the history of Christian mission and the history of world Christianity” (xii). One doesn’t need to add that these themes are of interest also to all students of modern Chinese history, in which Christian missions have played such an influential role.
All except one of the missionaries featured in the book experienced the terrible traumas of the Sino-Japanese War. “In the vast human misery caused by this undeclared war . . . Christian missionaries exhibited great compassion and courage by offering relief to as many as they could in the midst of wartime shortages” (xiii).
The crucial role of friendships in effective cross-cultural missions shows up often. In her book, Faithful Friendships: Embracing Diversity in Christian Community, Dana Robert draws our eyes to this critical component of the missionary task, one that has not received enough formal attention. The missionaries described in Cross-Cultural Encounters built friendships that included both joy and sorrow. These relationships between peers “mitigated the impact of colonialism and sowed the seed for the remarkable growth of world Christianity we have witnessed in the postcolonial era” (xiv-xv).
Finally, Tseng rightly observes that the study of Christianity in China has grown rapidly since the 1960s. “The current volume of essays joins this widening stream of scholarship as a small piece in the intricate and vast puzzle of the history of Christianity in China” (xv). By its combination of individual portraits and treatment of larger themes, Cross-Cultural Encounters offers readers a significant treatment of the beginnings of what has become the fastest-growing church in the world.
Chapter 1: A Visionary Mission: The Life and Work of Dr. J.A. Otte
By Rebekah Llorens
“The study of Christian missionaries and their work enhances many different fields of inquiry,” including cultural history, the life of the church, and how modern missionaries might understand their predecessors (1). In particular, the “life of one missionary, Dr. John A. Otte, and his service in China give insight into two realms of mission work. As a medical missionary, Otte provided healing to the Chinese people in both their bodies and their hearts. He sought to bring holistic healing without forcing his patients to become Christians” (1).
Two things are worthy of note about Otte: first, “he applied his faith to his practice. For him, the work of the Gospel took priority, and medical work was simply a means to further it.” Rather than expecting Chinese to conform to Western ways of living, he “changed his personal lifestyle to better relate to the people whom he served” (1-2). That is, he “was determined to help the Chinese remain Chinese, and not become westernized in their Christianity” (2).
Almost as soon as he arrived in Amoy (now called Xiamen), Otte began building a hospital, to be followed soon by another one for women. He served not only as physician and chief administrator, but also as an evangelist to his patients. He did not require that they believe, but he did insist that they listen to a simple gospel presentation before they received treatment. In time, he enlisted the help of Chinese Christians to do the work of evangelism, knowing that they would be far more effective than he would. Many conversions resulted from successful surgeries. Some of the converts returned to serve as evangelists. He constantly asked supporters at home to pray not only for the medical side of his ministry, but even more for the Holy Spirit to come into the lives of his patients. Facing the opium habit that plagued China, Otte found the those addicts who truly trusted in Christ could find deliverance; others usually relapsed into their habit.
“Otte was a doctor with a variety of talents useful in mission work: he was a good surgeon, a personable manager, and a passionate follower of Christ” (13). Early on, he took the time to learn the language well as the first step in breaking down cultural barriers. He and his wife “kept their door open to anyone who needed them and often hosted Chinese neighbors for dinner and Bible study” (15). He studied hard to find ways of reaching both wealthy Chinese and the poor effectively. Honoring Chinese rules for relationships between men and women, he brought out an American woman to teach Chinese nurses how to care for members of their sex. He successfully fought to make the hospital financially self-sustaining, so that Chinese Christians would not depend on foreign funds. He handed leadership over to Chinese doctors as soon as he could, though he discovered that in times of crisis the hospital fared better under Western leadership than Chinese.
At several points, the author draws a parallel between J.A. Otte and L. Nelson Bell, the Presbyterian medical missionary who began his missionary career about six years after Otte died. Both men sought to provide excellent medical care, and both longed even more for the spiritual healing of their patients; they managed their institutions with impeccable integrity; and they did all they could to empower Chinese to assume leadership.
Chapter 2: Cultural Exchange: The Story of William Angus and His Poetry
By Eric Dawson
William Angus served as a missionary in China from 1925 to 1951. During that time, he composed over three hundred poems, which he collected into five separate books. They were not published until 2015, however. Eric Dawson is the first to have made use of them for research.
Dawson deploys these poems for his nuanced analysis of the cultural exchanges that marked Angus’ career in China. Unlike most foreign missionaries, Angus spent most of his time among the Chinese, eating, traveling, and living in their homes as he engaged in itinerant ministry. He thus came into close contact with the people he had come to serve. These close encounters exposed the vast differences between the two cultures and challenged both the missionary and the Chinese.
The author quotes from Angus’s poetry to address some of these differences: political power, financial status, whether to leverage superior status and money to benefit Christians and the church, attitudes toward women, and everyday customs, including cuisine.
We see that the usual criticisms of foreign missionaries as arrogant, separated from the people; intent on exploiting their greater power, status, and wealth; imposing their views and customs on the Chinese; and generally acting as cultural imperialists – all must come under more careful scrutiny. Angus, and many others like him, did all he could to avoid these faults.
He did not always succeed, of course. Often, greedy or manipulative Chinese, including Christians, tried to use him for their own benefit. Much of the time, he simply could not change the power equation. Still, in his poetry we see a man who grew in his cultural understanding and in his own radical discipleship of Jesus Christ. We also gain a sharper vision of how two cultures interacted with each other, leaving neither of them the same as before.
This is a rich chapter, especially because of the extensive quotation of Angus’ poems.
Chapter 3: The Dual Calling of Missionary Wives: Married Women Missionaries of the RCA in China, 1917-1951
By Victoria Longfield
“This chapter tells the stories of three remarkable married women of faith but also echoes of others whose stories are lost and not recorded. Stella Veenschoten, Joyce Angus, and Ruth Holleman were women who vibrantly lived out their roles as wives and missionaries in China” (42). They represent thousands of others who tried to balance their domestic responsibilities with the call to serve the spiritual needs of the Chinese among whom they lived.
Their contribution to the overall ministry was immense, but researching them poses difficulties, because records of their lives are usually contained in archives filed by their husbands’ names, and their labors did not receive special attention in reports home, as did that of men and single missionary women.
“The work of missionary wives was powerful because it spread the Gospel to people whom their husbands could not reach” – that is, Chinese women and children. Records about them “detail the challenges women faced as wives, mothers, and missionaries in a foreign country. Two roles emerged – one operating in the household and the other in ‘China’ – and evident tension existed between the two,” especially when the children were younger and demanded more time. (46). Each wife contributed to the ministry in her own unique way.
After studying the Amoy dialect of Chinese, Stella Veenschoten “steadily became more and more involved in teaching music in school and at home to both missionary and Chinese children. She also spent time arranging music for choirs” and directed the music in their Chinese church (47). After her children had grown older, she visited churches in other villages “to sing and play music” during worship services (56). Nevertheless, her obituary stated that she was also known throughout her life as an “ideal homemaker” (47).
Agnes J. Buikema Angus, who went by “Joyce,” was the wife of William Angus, the evangelist-poet. With her husband often on the road, she managed the home and children while also teaching English. When her children had grown up a bit, she taught more English classes and went with William on evangelistic journeys. She and William continued their ministry to Chinese after returning permanently to the United States by opening their home to international students, especially those who spoke the Amoy dialect.
Ruth Vanden Berg Holleman, the wife of Dr. Clarence Holleman, “set up a girls’ school but often acted as a nurse for her husband during surgery” (49-50). During the war against Japan, she assisted her husband in “running a clinic that provided milk for refugee babies” (55).
In other respects, all these women were expected to fulfill the same four essential “household” tasks: moving or relocating the entire family, managing the household staff, homeschooling the children, and maintaining an “American” home. The missionary wife also had to deal with the pressure of completing these tasks alone while her husband was away from home during times of unrest, often not knowing if he might be captured by bandits or suffer a worse fate.
The description of these four tasks sheds a great deal of light on missionary life in China, even as it dispels some myths about foreign missionaries. Moves took place for summer vacations to a cooler location, when going home on furlough, and when fleeing danger. Household servants were essential for life in China, and they freed up the wives for teaching their children and more interaction with the local people, but dealing with them required great tact, wisdom, and patience because of the differences in culture. For example, the “amah” would often indulge and spoil the young boys while treating the girls strictly, as in a Chinese home. Many missionary wives also felt uncomfortable employing servants.
The wives were to homeschool their children and maintain an “American” home, not from a sense of cultural superiority, as is commonly asserted, but to prepare their children to re-assimilate to American culture when they returned home. Missionaries did not assume that their offspring would follow in their footsteps to China – though a remarkable number did – but wanted to ready them for life in their home country and give them the freedom to make their own career and marriage decisions.
By setting their husbands free to engage in direct missionary work, educating their children, and serving in their own unique ways, missionary wives “were an indispensable part of the greater story of the Gospel in China” (56). (As a lifelong missionary, I would affirm that my wife has been an essential partner with me in our common service of God’s kingdom among the Chinese since 1975.)
Chapter 4: Hope and Wilhelmina Hospital School of Nursing: The Role of Missionary Nurses in Xiamen, China
By Katelyn Dickerson
This chapter traces the history of the Hope and Wilhelmina School of Nursing from its beginning in the early 1920s to its dissolution after the Communists forced missionaries to leave China in 1951, with special emphasis upon its formative years. During this crucial time, a trio of American missionary nurses ran the school while also providing nursing care in the men’s and women’s hospitals. They were Jean Nienhuis, Jennette Veldman, and Jessie Platz.
The spirit of these dedicated servants of God is well captured by the response of Jennette Veldman to those at home “who questioned her decision to practice and teach nursing in China”:
Is Christian nursing in China worthwhile? When God fills your heart so full of His peace and love that it fairly bursts, is it worthwhile? When a body is saved, is it worthwhile? When a new soul grasps the meaning of the free gift of love, is it worthwhile? Broken bodies repaired, broken hearts mended, lost hopes replenished, lost souls brought to Christ. Friends, those are the results of the work of yours and my hospital (58).
Founding of the nursing school
Shortly after Hope Hospital was opened, two nurses from the Netherlands arrived to serve the patients, who were mostly men. Soon, the need for a separate women’s hospital led to the founding of Wilhelmina Hospital, aided by a generous grant from the queen of the Netherlands. When the Dutch nurses returned home, they were replaced by the three American women named above.
At this time, nursing as a profession was still in its infancy in the West, and hardly existed in China. Very gradually, the American missionaries, with strong support from the missionary doctors, gathered and trained a group of young Chinese women, whom they put to work in the wards. Naturally, they encountered a variety of obstacles, including traditional views of women and of male-female relationships, in medical care. Chinese ethical norms forbade contact between men and women, so it took a long time to get the nursing students and nurses to participate in the care of male patients. Furthermore, there was no tradition of nursing. Families took care of the non-medical needs of hospital patients.
The American nurses were strong, independent, single career women, and thus represented a stark contrast to the traditional ideal of women as those who lived and served in the home only. Over the years, the nursing school provided not only an education to young Chinese women, but opportunities to work outside the home in a profession that eventually gained respect in society.
Though the strict hierarchy necessary for efficient medical care was observed in the school and the hospital, with the American nurses clearly in authority over the younger Chinese nurses and students, the missionaries broke through national, social, and racial barriers by living with the students. Outside the work setting, “socially and religiously, all the nurses were on an equal footing” (67). The missionary nurses created an environment that allowed for cross-cultural interactions. They even tried to form friendships with the Chinese, who initially felt quite shy but sometimes responded with true friendship. It was particularly hard to persuade the Chinese that they could address their “superiors” by their first names, but some accepted the challenge.
The hospital and nursing school were Christian institutions, with the main purposes being to glorify God, serve the patients, and attract people to the Christian faith. The morning began with Scripture reading and common prayers for students and nurses. At first, only Christians were admitted to the school, but this requirement was later changed to allow non-Christians to receive training also. “The dedication of doctors and nurses to Christian ideals made mission hospitals a location where many conversions took place” (64). Over the years, many patients and nursing students became Christians through the influence of the missionaries and the Chinese Christian nurses and students, as well as the missionary doctors.
The missionaries envisioned a day when Chinese would take over leadership, and they sought to prepare Chinese medical students, doctors, and nurses for leadership roles. Some senior nurses were given administrative responsibilities. Nevertheless, throughout the history of the hospitals and nursing school, the foreign missionaries retained leadership. Despite this, “the lack of Chinese leadership never developed into a contentious issue” (66).
The hospitals and nursing school were not exempt from the turmoil and hardships of early twentieth-century China. They treated refugees and wounded soldiers. Supplies were sometimes cut off by hostilities. The war with Japan led to the internment of all foreigners until they could be repatriated as part of prisoner exchanges. When the missionaries returned after World War II, they found the hospital in a shambles. The rebuilt institutions were then able to treat the sick and train doctors and nurses for a few years until all missionaries had to leave China in 1952.
Nevertheless, the Chinese women who had been trained at the nursing school did not forget their former teachers and fellow-nurses. In the 1980s, when some of the Americans were able to visit the hospital, they received a warm welcome, testimony to their place in the hearts of the Chinese whom they had served and loved, and for whom they had continued to pray for many years.
Chapter 5: Tena Holkeboer: Single and Female in the China Mission of the Reformed Church in America, 1920-1948
By Gloria S. Tseng and Madalyn DeJonge
Continuing the study of women missionaries, this chapter follows the career of Tena Holkeboer, an outstanding RCA missionary for twenty-eight years. By drawing heavily upon her letters, the authors weave a rich tapestry portraying the development of Holkeboer from a fresh new worker to a veteran with impressive accomplishments as a teacher, evangelist, administrator, and mission leader. We receive insight into her joys and sorrows, successes and trials, and her gradual maturity as a person and as a missionary.
“In Holkeboer’s missionary career, one sees that singleness both liberated a woman to achieve remarkable accomplishments in the mission field and exacerbated the loneliness caused by prolonged separation from one’s family of origin. She was part of a close-knit missionary community in China and deeply devoted to the people whom she served, but all her letters home – they were numerous and lengthy – repeatedly spoke of her longing for her family and revealed an unflagging interest in the details of home life” (79).
“A graduate of Hope Preparatory School, Holkeboer taught for several years at Holland Christian School prior enrolling at Hope College in preparation to become a missionary” (79). Thus, she was well-qualified to serve as a teacher of Chinese children as part of the RCA Amoy Mission’s educational ministry in Fujian Province. Later in her career, she augmented her academic credentials by earning an M.A. from Columbia University.
She had an unusual gift for acquiring languages, and she completed the required Chinese language study course quicker than most of her peers. By spending a lot of time among the Chinese and boldly taking on tasks that posed new linguistic challenges, she became proficient in the written language and the spoken Amoy (Xiamen) dialect, which is one of the harder varieties of Chinese to learn. (I know from experience. Before my last furlough, I labored to master the eight different tones under very capable instruction but had to give up the project after returning to the United States.)
On the ship to China, she became friends with a fellow RCA missionary, Jean Nienhuis, forming a relationship with would last for decades.
“In her heart, Holkeboer was an evangelist,” seizing every opportunity to accompany senior missionaries as they visited Chinese homes. She wrote, “Oh, to see these heathen women drink in, as it were, every word you say, to see their eagerness to listen, and to know that there is a message for these thirsting souls, is such an inspiration to me that I long to get to the stage where I, too, can speak to them” (82). Many years later, she used almost the same words to express her thrill at seeing Chinese women listen intently to the gospel and, gradually, come to faith in Christ. Her zeal for personal evangelism manifested itself in her care for the spiritual condition of her students, speaking in churches, and letters home, and only increased as the years passed, to the point that this form of ministry was all that she really wanted to do.
She began teaching in the girls’ school and accompanied fellow missionary William Vander Meer as they organized a Sunday school for Chinese of all ages and educational levels. Her training and experience bore fruit when she devised a system of teaching women and girls with no exposure to formal education, assigning them to different classes according to their ability and knowledge. Over the years, as a teacher and later as an administrator, she made a major contribution to the RCA’s educational ministry.
Initially based in Amoy (Xiamen), she was later assigned to serve in Tong’an, a town farther inland. Here, in addition to teaching, she also helped in the hospital, where she saw firsthand the physical effects of poverty, ignorance, malnutrition, and warfare. Throughout the chapter, extracts from her letters provide detailed information on the day-to-day life of a missionary in China.
She was not immune to health difficulties, either. This chapter describes several serious illnesses, one of which may have delayed her return from her first furlough in 1927, during which she studied at Columbia University. The authors graphically relate how God used a miracle to heal a large tumor right before surgery was to begin.
After she became principal of the girls’ school, her responsibilities increased, as did her need for quiet time alone, but she moved into the school dormitory so that she could draw closer to students and teachers. Meanwhile, she was appointed to various committees of the RCA mission and served as the RCA delegate to several inter-missionary gatherings, necessitating travel to meetings, often by sea.
Holkeboer’s passion for evangelism only grew as the years passed. When she rejoined the work at the Tong’an station in 1946, “remarkably, now in her fifties, she embarked on a new initiative to strengthen rural churches and evangelize the countryside.” She did this with two Chinese women workers, though it “involved much traveling and physical hardship” (103).
As noted earlier, Holkeboer’s joy in her missionary work did not prevent her from being stricken by grief when members of her family died. The authors give us poignant quotations from her letters home throughout the chapter to show us this very human side of a very successful missionary.
Chapter 6: Faith and Humanitarian Aid in Wartime China, 1937-1941
By Claire Barrett
This well-organized, fast-paced, and fact-filled chapter forms a fitting conclusion to Cross-Cultural Encounters by narrating the ways in which RCA missionaries put their Christian faith into action during China’s great crisis, the war against Japan.
The Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 called for the creation of foreign settlements in five Chinese port cities. Xiamen (Amoy) was one such city; Gulangyu, an island not far from the city, was the site of one of the foreign settlements. Here, merchants, diplomats, bankers, and missionaries lived and worked under the government of their own committee. Foreign nationals had full freedoms, which made the island not only an ideal base for RCA missionary work in the region but also a safe haven for them and for Chinese refugees in the first three years of the war.
The day after the Japanese invaded Xiamen, thousands of panicked citizens fled the city, many going to nearby Gulangyu. All communications with the rest of the world were severed by the Japanese. Food and medical supplies became scarce, creating a humanitarian crisis overnight.
Immediately, the foreigners on the island, including missionaries, organized an International Relief Committee to replace the Chinese committee that had ceased to function. Four Westerners and five Chinese served on the committee, with a missionary as chairman. “Working together with the Japanese military, Chinese remaining on Gulangyu and in Xiamen, Chinese expatriates in Southeast Asia, and the American and British governments, members of the Amoy Mission would provide extensive aid in the form of medical care, food, shelter, schooling, and spiritual instruction” (110).
Two other important facts: Though “only five percent or less of the population on the island . . . were Christian, more than 90 percent of the leadership and relief work was conducted by them” (110). Furthermore, though under foreign leadership, the Chinese, many of them Christians, organized themselves into work teams to perform essential tasks like cooking, cleaning, and interpretation for foreigners.
The rest of this chapter tells a remarkable story of efficient cooperation, creative innovation, worldwide communication, and sacrificial service. RCA missionaries were at the center of efforts to provide food, medical care, housing, and education. They helped to teach hundreds of refugee children, not omitting Christian instruction in the process. Many Chinese, seeing the love of the missionaries, became open to the Christian faith. Finally, with missionaries all over China, they served as essential witnesses to the barbaric atrocities inflicted by Japanese soldiers on helpless civilians.
The selfless service of the missionaries helped to combat the prevailing propaganda that missionaries were simply agents of imperialist governments. At least for a few years, that old narrative could no longer be foisted upon the facts of 150 years of history to the contrary.
Some Chinese still remember what really happened, however, and remain grateful to the foreigners who came, not as emissaries of their governments, but as servants of Christ.
Conclusion
Professor Gloria Tseng and her capable students have given us a well-edited volume that answers the questions posed at the beginning of this review, which, though very long and detailed, only offers a sampling of the wealth contained in the book’s pages.
G. Wright Doyle