Cautious Confidence: A Close Reading of the Anglican Sheng Kung Hui Bao, 1908-1913

This paper combs through the Chinese Anglican periodicals, Sheng Kung Hui Bao (“SKHB”), from its first publication in January 1908 to the year immediately after the setting up of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (“CHSKH”), 1913. Little, if any, studies have been devoted to these important primary sources widely circulated across all Anglican [/Episcopalian] dioceses in China at the time. A major reason is that the SKHB are collected and carefully preserved in the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Archives (“HKSKH Archives”) in Central, Hong Kong SAR. The author of this paper is grateful to the HKSKH Archives for granting access on 22nd April, 2024, allowing the author to pour over hundreds of documents of tremendous historical value. The SKHB contain the voices of the local Christians, who wrote commentaries on ecclesiastical and political happenings. They also submitted essays to express their theological and social views. This paper thus attempts to fill the scholarly lacuna by attending to the SKHB as indispensable sources to reconstruct Anglicanism in China during the tumultuous years of the early twentieth century.

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The CHSKH was set up in 1912, after a series of conferences and deliberations with historical records stretching back to at least 1897. The CHSKH was unique even to non-Anglicans. It was the first “national” church outside of Roman Catholicism. This paper covers the period leading up to the birth of the CHSKH, with a focal interest to hear the local Chinese Anglican voices. These local Christians played pivotal roles in transforming missional outposts, educational endeavors and medical services into a Chinese church of national scale. Considerable scholarly attention has been directed towards writings by missionaries and mission societies during 1900s and 1910s. However, the voices of the Chinese Anglicans have received significantly less treatment. This paper thus seeks to fill this gap as well. Through a close reading of the SKHB, this paper brings to light the unique perspectives of these Chinese Anglicans – specifically towards the establishment of the CHSKH, and, on a more general level, towards the development of Anglicanism and Chinese Christianity.

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This paper will argue for three points. First, local Anglicans in the early twentieth century displayed a cautious confidence in Anglicanism. It was a “confidence” because they appreciated the rich heritage of the Anglican tradition and a well-articulated, theologically informed identity. Yet it was “cautious” because such confidence led to conflicts among Anglicans, and unnecessary silos and misunderstandings between Anglicans and other Christians in China. 

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Second, there was a strong undercurrent during those years advocating for an independent Chinese church – the first step towards what would become a Chinese Anglican church. This yearning manifested in the form of a shockingly harsh rhetoric by Chinese writers against the immaturity of other Chinese Anglicans. Such yearning was also reflected in the arguments over ministry effectiveness. According to these Chinese voices, the time has finally arrived for an independent Chinese Anglican church. The foreign missionaries in China gradually responded and even sided with the locals. The reactions from the West, though, were ambiguous. Even after the CHSKH was established, the election and consecration of bishops – the very sign of an autonomous Anglican body – suffered delays for two decades. 

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Third, the wider socio-political landscape at the time has unmistakably shaped the formation of the CHSKH. When Western missionaries recounted the heroism and concerned themselves with the rebuilding of the church after the Boxer Uprising, Chinese Anglicans astutely pointed out the “what if”. What if there came another Boxer incident? What if all Western clergy were to be evacuated again? Important issues were raised, such as the involvement of Chinese clergy and lay leaders in the governance of the church, and the use of Chinese language in church affairs. The Chinese Anglicans were thus interrogating the extent to which the Chinese Anglican church was indeed Chinese. The public enthusiasm towards constitutionalism in the new Republic also left a detectable mark on Chinese Anglicanism in the early twentieth century. The local voices recovered from the SKHB not only accepted the need for a constitution and canons for the emerging Chinese Anglican church. They took great pride in the CHSKH constitution, matching their enthusiasm for the constitution of the new Republic. The rule by constitution was regarded as a mark of modern progress, be it in secular or ecclesiastical setting.