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Front cover (above):

The Nestorian Monument in China and a rubbing of its top that shows the cross rising out of the lotus flower. Shown is frequent IBMR contributor Dr. Jean-Paul Wiest, director of the Jesuit Beijing Center, Beijing, China, who provided both photographs.

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International Bulletin of
Missionary Research

APRIL 2008 [32:2]

Asian Light, Asian Fruit

On Page 57 / Jonathan J. Bonk

The Nestorian Monument, featured below with frequent contributor Jean-Paul Wiest standing in the foreground to provide some sense of the replica’s scale, is one of the most recognizable symbols of early Christian missionary efforts in Asia. Careful examination of the inset picture, a rubbing of the original monument, shows the cross rising out of the lotus flower (symbol of Buddhism), shrouded by clouds and set with a flaming pearl (yin and yang, symbols of Taoism). The inscription reads, “Memorial to the Entrance into China of the Religion of the Light from Persia.” According to the epigraph on the tablet below the cross, this monument was erected in 781 during the Tang Dynasty (618–907).

Most of the articles in this issue explore aspects of Christianity’s long, if sometimes tenuous, link to Asia. The articles show that, although for several centuries Christian missions were sometimes deeply compromised advocates, or at least beneficiaries, of Western military and economic intrusion in that part of the world—which left behind a legacy that will take many more generations to purge—nevertheless the church in Asia not only survived but thrives.

This issue’s lead article provides a snapshot of what is surely one of the most astounding mission stories of the last thirty years. Steve Sang-Cheol Moon and his colleagues at the Korea Research Institute for Missions (KRIM) conducted an extensive survey between January and August of 2007. The results and analysis confirm what has been anecdotally asserted: Koreans are in the forefront of Christian missions today, with nearly 15,000 known Korean missionaries working in 168 different countries under the auspices of 174 mission agencies. While some of these mission agencies are international with roots in the West that have been around a long time, by far the majority of Korean missionaries (81.4 percent) serve in Korean agencies, which run the gamut from mega- to mini-agencies. The largest Korean mission agency is the Global Missionary Society, with more than 1,800 missionaries.

One hundred years ago, as Kevin Yao’s insightful study of the great Shanghai conference of 1907 marking one century of Protestant missionary presence in China reminds us, the Opium Wars were over, the Boxer Rebellion had been quelled, and Protestant missionaries were enjoying a time of unprecedented freedom to live and move and work throughout most of that great country. The number of Chinese Protestant Christians associated in one way or another with Western missionary activities numbered nearly 750,000. Missionary reports were infused with optimism and confidence at the prospect of China joining the rest of the “civilized” world, thanks partly to missionary educational and medical efforts. Although foreign missionaries continued to enjoy the extraordinary privileges vouchsafed them by the so-called Unequal Treaties, some were troubled by the impropriety of trying to accomplish righteous ends through unrighteous means. Still, so great were these benefits that the debate mostly dealt with whether or not Chinese believers should be placed under these treaty protections as well.

The missionaries’ optimism, as it happens, was warranted—though the growth of the church in China, both Protestant and Catholic, did not correspond in any way with their triumphalist prognostications. Today in China, estimates of the combined number of Protestant and Catholic believers range from the government’s conservative figure of 21 million to presumably more realistic estimates that range from 50 to 80 million Protestants (Christian Science Monitor, March 9, 2006) to 110 million total Christians (World Christian Database, figures for 2005). As John Tsz-pang discusses in his article, the production of Christian literature, so key a dimension in Western missionary strategy, has in China become an avalanche, yielding its fruit both in the churches of the Protestant China Christian Council and in the unregistered and Roman Catholic churches.

As the “Guidelines for Doing Theologies in Asia” that were hammered out between October 2006 and November 2007 clearly show, the thirty-year-old “Critical Asia Principal” (CAP), which has served as a basis for ATESEA and SEAGST in theological education, is a tree whose branches are now laden with the fruit of uniquely Asian Christian theology, born of the Asian soil from which I write the lines of this editorial.

This issue of the IBMR opens with an in-depth survey of a vigorously growing Asian missionary movement and showcases the historical depth of Western missionary investment in the world’s most populous continent. At the other end of the spectrum, Notto Thelle’s moving reflection about his own father’s willingness to be “number two” speaks to us of a humility for the sake of Christ that represents the best that Christian missionaries have ever had to offer.