China/Hong Kong, continued
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| These excerpts are from a reflection written for the Mission Yearbook in 2005 by Jean and Franklin Woo. Jean Woo is the China consultant to the PC(USA)’s East Asia and the Pacific office. “Until the mid-nineteenth century Imperial China was essentially a self-sufficient culture, closed to foreigners from the West and their influence. The first Protestant Christian missionary, Robert Morrison, arrived in China from Scotland two centuries ago, in 1807. He was confined to Guangzhou (Canton) at the periphery of China. By the 1830s more missionaries, including American Presbyterians in the 1840s, had followed, but they were also confined to the coast of China. The rest of the nineteenth century was spent building chapels, medical clinics and hospitals, schools and colleges, and centers for social uplift as the necessary adjuncts to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ in a society of scarcity. Slowly a Chinese church was emerging, along with Christian colleges and universities established by the missionaries.
“The missionaries brought new ideas with a central focus on the individual, which was in tension with China’s time-honored communitarian emphasis on family, community, and a nation out of which individuals came and were nurtured. The intrinsic worth of the individual as individual was new to China and attracted many Chinese who experienced their great culture as suffocating. Unsuccessful reforms led to rebellions against an inept social order, and rebellions led to revolution. In some real sense the missionary movement was subversive to China’s self-satisfied social system. The Christian gospel that God loves all peoples brought dignity to the individual, especially the women and national minority peoples of China. Seen in this light, reform and revolution were ‘inevitable,’ as suggested by John King Fairbank, the doyen of modern Chinese history in the English-speaking world. “The revolution that began in the first decade of the twentieth century culminated in 1949 with the victory of the Communists, who saw the entire Western presence in China as exploitative. Dramatic changes came rapidly after Chairman Mao Zedong died in 1976. The churches that met their demise in the mid-1960s were resurrected and restored and are flourishing today. Though the history of modern China (not to mention the missionary movement) is fraught with complexity and contradiction as well as surprise and grace, the Presbyterian mission as part of the larger Protestant missionary enterprise in China can claim a part in being the outside catalyst to a changing China. As Presbyterians we have a great legacy: to continue our presence as God’s agents of reconciliation, working for peace with justice in the world for which Christ died.” |
 PC(USA) People in Mission Korean Vocational School: Rev. Ho Ban, computer science teacher, Min Young Ban, team ministry • United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA): Susan Lloyd Boone, professor of English, Thomas Judge Boone, Jr., professor of Law • Rev. Judy Chin Chan, communications specialist, Hong Kong Christian Council • AMITY Foundation, Church World Service: Jon Dean Hilton, English teacher, Phyllis Lynne Hilton, English teacher, Donald Eugene Lindsay, English teacher, Kathryn S. P. Lindsay, English teacher, Gretchen Elise Reynolds, English teacher, Thomas Betz Reynolds, English teacher, Rachel Elizabeth Sterrett, English teacher, John Remington Strong, public relations, Kimberly A. Strong, training specialist • Worldwide Ministries: Dr. Donald B. Snow, regional liaison and faculty, Nanjing University, Wei Hong Snow, regional liaison, China/librarian • Korean Teacher School: Andrew Chang-Hyun Yoo, English teacher, Sunhee Yoo, team ministry PC(USA) General Assembly Staff Sonia Neves, WMD Christopher Nicholas, OGA Dulrum Nicholas, CMD |
 The Lord is good; [God’s] steadfast love endures forever, and [God’s] faithfulness to all generations (Ps. 100:5). |
 Ps. 63, 100, 122, 149 Job 9:1; 10:1–9, 16–22 Acts 11:1–18; John 8:12–20 |
