The Life and Thought of Henry Gerhard Appenzeller (1858-1902) (review)

BOOK REVIEWS127 miss the cogent and delightfully forthright opinions of David I. Steinberg , who commented on the original manuscript. Forrest R. Pitts University of Hawaii at Manoa The Life and Thought ofHenry GerhardAppenzeller (18581902 ), by Daniel M. Davies. Studies in the History of Missions, vol. 1. Lewiston, Maine: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988. Henry Gerhard Appenzeller of the American Methodist Episcopal Church (North), was a founding father of the Protestant missionary effort in Korea in the late nineteenth century. He and his wife EUa landed at Chemulp'o (Inch'ön) on Easter Sunday 1885, and along with Presbyterians Horace Allen and Horace Underwood created the earliest missionary institutions in Korea. Appenzeller's biggest contributions were the Chongdong First Methodist Church, Paejae Haktang, the boys' school in Chongdong that became such a center for the Independence Movement beginning in the late 1890s, and a circuit of Methodist churches in the countryside around Seoul. His life was cut short in 1902 by a ship accident on the Yellow Sea, but two of his children, Alice and Henry D., returned to Korea as adults and served until World War Two, Alice as president of Ewha, and Henry D. as principal of Paejae. Two significant studies of Henry G. Appenzeller's life already exist, the classic one by William Eliot Griffis (A Modern Pioneer in Korea: The Life Story ofHenry G. Appenzeller, 1912) which was something of a testimonial , and a more recent missiological study by Everett Nichols Hunt (Protestant Pioneers in Korea, 1980) that is based in part on new research in the Appenzeller papers in the Methodist archives at Drew University. Daniel M. Davies, now a teacher in Korea, used the Appenzeller papers as the basis of his doctoral dissertation at Drew, and the result is this thoroughly documented monograph. Davies's book is a much deeper character study than either of its predecessors. In fact its main value may lie in its powerful presentation of the motivations of missionaries who risked (and sometimes lost) life and limb in remote corners of the world, usually for no other reason than to live out the Biblical commandment to spread the Gospel. Appenzeller was a quintessential product of the late nineteenth-century Protestant revival in America, living in a time when religion (including civil religion) 128BOOK REVIEWS was directing American interests overseas—with a mandate to action. Appenzeller embodied the belief of his time, that a great civilization (or church) lives by advancing and dies by standing still. In this respect Davies's early chapters on Appenzeller's youth and the shaping of his ideas are especially illuminating. Most of the book, however, is about working in Korea between 1885 and 1902. The chapters are topical rather than chronological. One narrates Henry and Ella Appenzeller's journey and arrival in Korea via Japan. One covers the founding and development of Paejae Haktang. Another describes the slow and sometimes dangerous establishment of Christianity through churches and the dissemination of literature at a time when proselytizing was virtually illegal. And a final chapter returns to Henry Appenzeller's "missionary theology." All the chapters carry secondary threads of storytelling about the couple's experiences. Appenzeller 's encounter with Korea emerges as a very personal Odyssey, therefore , full of challenges and opportunities. Though Davies is not particularly critical of Appenzeller and sometimes falls into the trap of revering his subject too much, his portrait generally rings true. Davies is a good writer and keeps dissertationese to a minimum so that the book reads well. And the documentation is a delight. He has rich content footnotes that reward the reader with immensely interesting details about the Appenzellers and what they experienced. As a book, Davies's biography of Henry G. Appenzeller suffers from having one foot in each missionary environment: the sending culture and the receiving culture. Davies shares with other cross-cultural writers the problem of having too much Korea detail to interest general American readers, even missiologists, and a Western point of view (two points of view, actually—his own and Appenzeller's) that prevents the book from being a work of Korean studies. Nor is it really a finished work of biography, since it is less...