Were Christian Members of the Yenching Faculty Unique?: An Examination of the Life Fellowship Movement, 1919–1931

Abstract

AbstractThe May Fourth Movement and the later Anti-Christian Movement of the 1920s posed severe challenges for the Christian church in Republican China. The major elements in that context—science, anti-imperialism, and nationalism—exerted a strong impact on the indigenous Christian community, causing its members, both individually and collectively, to reexamine their respective positions. Christian intellectuals and educators encountered difficulties in that they were obliged to accommodate the conflicting demands of science and Christianity, while also having to deal with the differing demands of loyalty both to the nation and to their religion, whether adopted or inherited, which seemed in the eyes of their contemporaries to be imbued with imperialist values. This latter problem was especially acute in the larger cities and on the campuses of Christian colleges which often became centers of anti-Christian sentiment.