American Religious Liberalism

Fourteen: Protestant Pragmatism in China, 1919–1927

f o u r t e e n Protestant Pragmatism in China, 1919–1927 G r e t c h e n B o g e r The teachings of Jesus can be best brought to our people by appealing to our mind and intellect in addition to our heart. Their usefulness and reasonableness should be demonstrated along with their power. —Chengting T. Wang, 1921 The missionary press itself reveals a profound ferment, a passion to justify faith by works. —Lewis S. Gannett, 1926 In May 1919 John Dewey arrived in China for what he imagined would be a brief visit. Chinese scholars eagerly anticipating the arrival of the great pragmatist philosopher met him at the docks. Dewey intended to stay for two months and wound up staying over two years, during which time attendance at his lectures regularly was in the thousands. Some enthusiasts followed him from city to city; others read the translated texts of his talks published in hundreds of daily newspapers and literary journals. His lectures on educational philoso­ phy, democracy, and the experiential approach to the acquisition of knowledge all were of keen interest to Chinese intellectuals engaged in a cultural reform effort known alternately as the Chinese Renaissance, the New Thought Movement, or the New Culture Movement.1 The initiative had begun several years earlier among scholars at Peking University who believed that overhaul314 Protestant Pragmatism in China, 1919–1927 315 ing Chinese society’s cultural foundations might be the means to erecting a vital modern state. Though the ideas it encompassed were diverse, the movement put its greatest emphasis on rational inquiry as the means of liberating the Chinese people, struggling un­der unstable rule since the 1911 overthrow of the Ch’ing (Qing) dynasty.2 New Culture founding mem­ ber Chen Tu-­Hsiu (Chen Duxiu) declared science and democracy the keystones of reform and saw them as related: people who were educated to use the scientific method in the pursuit of knowledge would be freed from submission to tradition and empowered to develop and sustain democratic institutions. Scientific inquiry, applied to human relationships as well as to the physi­ cal world, thus assumed a central role in the movement. One manifesto declared, “We believe that politics , ethics, science, the arts, religion, and education all should meet practical needs in the achievement of progress for present and future social life. . . . We believe that it is requisite for the progress of our present society to uphold natural science and pragmatic philosophy and to abolish superstition and fantasy.”3 This was not the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake: it was aimed always at invigorating a fractured, weakly governed, economically distressed Chinese state.4 Despite the manifesto’s mention of religion among potentially useful fields of knowledge, movement intellectuals in general were suspicious of religious faith as a hindrance to progress. Even as they embraced Dewey, as well as Darwin , Spencer, and Huxley, movement leaders largely rejected West­ern spiritual traditions. As one scholar puts it, “For many Chinese Nationalists the acquisition of West­ ern science and technology did not mean the embrace of facets of West­ern culture deemed morally bankrupt or unscientific.”5 In 1920 the Young China Association, founded to increase national unity through scientific inquiry , questioned whether religion was of any use in the modern age. Devoting both a lecture series and multiple issues of its journal to the question, the association answered resoundingly in the negative. Religion was “superstitious,” a vestige of a prescientific era incompatible with the rational methods that would govern the modern age.6 Other movement leaders sounded similar judgments. Though it began as an elite endeavor, the New Culture Movement gained momentum with the eruption of a student strike on May 4, 1919—just days af­ ter Dewey’s arrival—that brought it into contact with the nascent nationalist sentiment of a wider public. The demonstration began in Peking in response to news from the peace talks at Versailles that the Allied Powers had secretly agreed to grant Japan control of former German concessions in ­ Shantung 316 Gretchen Boger (Shandong) Province in northeast China, rather than return them to Chi­nese sovereignty. Furious at their country’s betrayal by its wartime allies, three thousand university students turned out in the streets of Peking to declare themselves opposed to further West­ ern influence in China. Strikes spread to cities nationwide in the next couple...