An oracle in China: on the history of the West China General Conference Mennonite mission Paoki and Chengtu, 1947-1951.

Abstract

For what seemed to be one of history's shorter interludes, the Christian mission movement to China resurrected itself after World War II. As resurrections go, it did not appear much, for just as quickly, its subject died again, this time the victim of Chinese, not Japanese, hands, and this time rebuffed not for Confucious, but for Mao. Along with other denominations, General Conference Mennonites watched the denouement of that Western Christian effort which had actually begun thirteen centuries before, and also like the others, they wondered how well their message would survive out on its own. The West China General Conference Mennonite Mission, first to Paoki, Shensi, then to Chengtu, Szechwan, was a Mennonite attempt to give that message a chance; in its brief tenure from 1947 to 1951, it experienced the confrontation of East and West under wartime duress. It has been said that people only recoil in horror when Christianity is attacked or practiced, and a recent upsurge of Christian following in China has given cause for a reexamination of the mission era. Indeed, however far from China those missionaries fled, their legacy remains--for good or ill--and their story sometimes rings of tales they used to tell themselves.