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The West Looks East: The Influence of Toyohiko Kagawa on American Mainline Protestantism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2011

David P. King
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Abstract

Toyohiko Kagawa served as the leading Christian voice in Japan from the 1920s through the 1940s. While nationally respected throughout Japan, he also became a hero among American Protestants. Kagawa's popularity in the West rose during a time of transition for mainline Protestantism. The American mainline's optimism and dominance as the religious “establishment” began to falter. It faced both religious and economic depression, internal theological divisions, and a reassessment of their mandate for missions. In the 1930s, mainline Protestants in America were searching for a voice, and Kagawa provided one. Long before the recent scholarship on the rise of global Christianity, the mainline had turned to World Christianity as a model. It was not simply Kagawa's message as a world statesman, however, that drew American Protestants. They also employed him as a symbol for their own aims and ambitions. At a time of reevaluating the foreign mission enterprise, Kagawa and an indigenous Eastern church reminded the mainline of past success while promising hope for the future. As an interpreter of social issues, Kagawa likewise spoke a contemporary idiom. For a short time, the Japanese Christian Toyohiko Kagawa became a Western hero, but a hero shaped through a particular Western lens.

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Type
Research Article
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Church History , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 302 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2011

“Church communities, no less than communities of other kinds, run to fads,” wrote the Christian Century in 1931. “They have their heroes, who for a time ride high . . . and then too often are allowed to slip back into obscurity. . . . At present the hero is Toyohiko Kagawa.”Footnote 1 In the 1930s, American mainline churches embraced this Japanese Christian hero. Preachers hailed his name from pulpits and laity invoked it from the pews. Kagawa became a Protestant celebrity of mythic proportions, and because the mainline churches so often employed his popularity for their own aims and ambitions, Kagawa impacted American Christianity in his time. This article uses Kagawa's story to examine a particular moment when the American Protestant mainline celebrated and engaged world Christianity. Long before scholars such as Andrew Walls and Phillip Jenkins demonstrated the rise of global Christianity, American mainline Protestants had acknowledged its growth.Footnote 2 Beyond acknowledgement, however, the mainline employed world Christianity for its own purposes. Amidst a flagging foreign mission enterprise, world Christianity offered new hope. In a perceived religious depression, Eastern Christianity served as inspiration to revive American faith. The Japanese Christian Toyohiko Kagawa became a Western hero, but a hero received and shaped through a particular Western lens.

Kagawa had previously ascended to the heights of religious fame among Christians in Japan. Converted by Presbyterian missionaries at the age of fifteen, he became a street preacher with an oratorical flair. As a seminary student in Japan, he moved into the slums of Kobe to live with the poor. After study at Princeton from 1914 to 1917, he returned to his native country to work for organized labor, economic cooperatives, and universal suffrage. When Japan's labor movement became Marxist and violent, he turned away from it to become a fulltime evangelist. From 1930 to 1933, his “Kingdom of God” evangelistic campaign reached out to both the urban and rural poor whom he felt missionaries had largely ignored, and he attracted over one and a half million Japanese to his crusades. He became a national figure, publishing over two hundred books in fields from theology, poetry, and fiction to the social sciences. His royalties as an author served to finance his social ministries. Combining social action with evangelism, Kagawa sought to Christianize Japan.Footnote 3

A nationally recognized figure in Japan, Kagawa became a superstar among American Protestants. Missionaries recapped his story in one hagiographic biography after another.Footnote 4 His work received praise in such mainline Protestant journals as the Christian Century as well as in denominational papers. The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time exposed him to mass audiences. Kagawa also made five international speaking tours, which at the height of his renown in 1936, included a six-month tour of 150 U.S. cities attracting 750,000 people.Footnote 5 Kagawa occupied a secure place within American Christianity because of both his message and his charismatic personality, but his popularity also grew as mainline Protestantism focused his image with its own lens.

In the 1930s, mainline Protestants in America were searching for a voice, and Kagawa provided one. As a product of the mainline missions movement, he reminded them of glorious achievements. As an interpreter of social issues, he spoke a contemporary idiom. As a symbol of the indigenous church in the East, he gave them hope for the future. He offered American mainline Protestantism an opportunity to engage a growing world Christianity, and in a period of perceived religious depression and division, he served as a uniting force.

I. The Making of the Kagawa Myth

Americans admired Kagawa even as they also inevitably used him for their own purposes. His tours to America, his popularity in the press, and accounts of his life preached in pulpits and published in Sunday school quarterlies made him “magic in the west.” His name became a Protestant mainline symbol.Footnote 6 As a symbol, he was many things to many people, but above all he was a product of mainline missions. Mainline writers referred to him as a “missions byproduct” or a “missionary trophy.” At a time of questioning and self-doubt in mainline missions, Kagawa served as a bright light. Mission boards clamored to persuade him to endorse their work. The Christian Century remarked that his endorsement always brought fundraising success. Although a shrewd man himself and never naive to the role he served for the American mainline, Kagawa often played the part. He referred to himself as a “mission product,” designating the Presbyterian missionaries he met in his youth as the “fathers of his faith.” He modeled the methods that the mainline leaders idealistically wanted to adopt: a mix of both evangelism and social reform. “The Kingdom of God Movement,” his nationwide evangelistic campaign in Japan, illustrated the success of indigenous Christianity. As American progressive Protestants embraced world Christianity rising from the East, Kagawa could speak to the West. The Christian Century commented: “Whether Kagawa really represents this leadership is rarely asked. He is taken to represent it, and multitudes throng to hear him in hope they will hear . . . a more vital message than the church leadership of the West.”Footnote 7

His image also transcended any group or issue. Kagawa was indifferent to ecclesiastical politics and moved in and out of favor with organized Christianity in Japan, where some missionaries often viewed his methods as out of step. Hoping to build on the success of his “Kingdom of God Movement,” mainline missionaries praised it, but when they sought to temper his social reform, Kagawa abandoned the official campaign to the missionaries. In America, the press sided with Kagawa, chiding the mainline churches for moving too slowly. While retaining his Presbyterian ordination, he also created his own religious order, the Friends of Jesus. His American supporters established the interdenominational Kagawa Committee to fund his social activism in Japan. Time referred to him as Japan's “no. 1 Christian” who need not be Japan's “no. 1 churchman.” The “ecumenical” churches idealized his indifference to denominational divisions.Footnote 8

While portraying Kagawa as Eastern, the mainline boasted of the impulses that formed him. His admirers recounted Kagawa's Princeton education and his Western role models: St. Francis, John Wesley, and George Fox. The Christian Century reported that “many of his ideas he credits to Occidental sources. He is hungry for the latest developments in Western thought and activity.”Footnote 9 The mainline claimed that Kagawa found the best of the Western Christian heritage as his guide, and they depicted him as a special link between Japan and America.

Part of Kagawa's mystique came from an American infatuation with Eastern exoticism. Many admitted coming to hear him out of curiosity, seeking entrée into the Japanese mind.Footnote 10 Americans trusted what he said about the future of Japan. In the face of growing nationalism in Japan, he assured them that nearly all Japanese intellectuals wanted peace. After Japan's invasion of China, he reassured Americans by personally asking the Chinese people for forgiveness. His support of democracy, pacifism, and internationalism often aligned him with the mainline against his own government. His views fell into disfavor in Japan by the late 1930s, but for the mainline in America, he offered a comforting idealism. He was their hope for the “Japan that is to be.”Footnote 11

The mainline churches described him as a modern saint. In contrast to other such Asian Christians as China's Chiang Kai-shek or Korea's Syngman Rhee, Kagawa did not seek political office. He was first a spiritual figure. When the labor movement he established turned violent and political, he reframed his mission as evangelism to the poor. His admirers recounted his years in the slums of Japan, living as the “modern St. Francis.” The saints of the age for the mainline always seemed to include Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Kagawa, but the mainline never viewed Kagawa as a mere imitation of their other saints. After hearing him speak, one American observer replied: “He is neither a ‘Japanese Tolstoi’ nor a ‘Christian Gandhi,’ nor is he a ‘modern St. Francis’; he is Kagawa—a spiritual genius in his own original right.”Footnote 12

Kagawa's renown allowed him to speak to America as a prophet. During the Great Depression, he said that America had yet to experience difficult times: “Unless you learn to know tragedy, you can never become a great nation.”Footnote 13 Kagawa saw two Americas: “the heaven America and the hell America.” The same economic inequities, racism, and secularism he battled in Japan he found in America, and he challenged the churches to commit themselves so that “heaven America would wipe out your hell America.”Footnote 14 He attacked church disunity. Playing on his lack of English proficiency, Kagawa referred to American “damnations” instead of “denominations.” He challenged the mainline to ecumenism. They took his words to heart with an openness rarely offered to other outsiders.Footnote 15

II. Mainline Protestantism: The Rise and Fall of “Christian America”

To understand Kagawa's image in America, one must understand the mainline Protestant “establishment.” The mainline consisted mainly of Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, the white divisions of Baptist and Methodists, the Disciples of Christ, and United Lutherans. Sixty percent or more of American Protestants identified themselves with these denominations, and despite their diversity, they gave the appearance of a monolithic force. Public perceptions of their dominance strengthened their cultural power, and the “establishment” basked in the attention of the press, politicians, and the social elite. In American religious historian William Hutchison's words, “Exaggerated estimates, in other words, were to some extent self-fulfilling.”Footnote 16

The mainline had long sought to establish a “Christian America,” and its outlook fused with an “American way of life.” Church leaders had connections to politicians, entrepreneurs, and diplomats, and in such movements as the Social Gospel, mainline Protestants exhibited an optimism that associated democratic and spiritual ideals. They viewed the Christianizing of America as an attainable goal.Footnote 17

By the mid-1920s, the vision of a “Christian America” began to falter.Footnote 18 Mainline churches lost status as fewer Americans joined, and the drop in new members continued through the mid-1930s. Internal squabbles between fundamentalists and modernists internally divided Protestants, and the mainline could no longer presume to provide American culture a united vision. Unease within the churches, moreover, replaced the idealism of the Social Gospel movement at the turn of the twentieth century. The horrors of World War I and the slump in mainline cultural dominance raised doubts about their ability to create the kingdom of God on earth. The rise of neo-orthodox theology tempered the notions of human ability. Should the churches be so closely connected to American culture? Was it not time to disentangle the culture and the church? As one mainliner remarked, “We do not call the world to be like ourselves, for we are already too like the world.” A “Christian America” seemed to some a dubious goal.Footnote 19

Despite losses that have led some scholars to speak of “the American religious depression,” the mainline did not give up.Footnote 20 It remained the chief religious voice for America, and some still pursued a revived Social Gospel to address economic and labor issues stemming from the Great Depression. It also embraced a renewed ecumenism, which brought a sense of renewal and hope that flowed into issues of internationalism, pacifism, and missions. Without abandoning issues “at home” in America, many mainline Protestants turned their gaze outward to the world.Footnote 21

III. From Missions to World Christianity

In 1930 the Christian Century proclaimed that “for some time it has been clear that the foreign missionary enterprise was approaching a fork in its road.”Footnote 22 Mainline Protestants who doubted the prospects of a “Christian America” also questioned the efficacy of exporting American civilization.Footnote 23 Christian institutions abroad—schools, hospitals, and publishing houses—prospered, but in no area of the “mission field” did indigenous Christians make up more than 1 percent of the population.Footnote 24 So the mainline began to re-evaluate their missions. Liberals supported social amelioration while tempering evangelism. Convinced of the values in other world religions, they elevated service over conversion. Conservatives, viewing Christ alone as the way to salvation, aimed at winning as many converts as they could. The majority stood in the middle, aware that the road forked, unsure which path to take and unhappy about having to choose.

The crisis of missions compelled the mainline to rethink its methods. Some missionaries now saw the West—no longer understood as deeply Christian but as prone to imperialism—as an embarrassment. They tried to divorce themselves from Western culture and find their inspiration in the ministries of Christians in “the East.”Footnote 25 They emphasized an indigenous church, celebrating its ability to translate the gospel into local culture and tradition.Footnote 26 Kenneth Scott Latourette, preeminent historian of world Christianity, found the missions movement's greatest success in “the growth in the maturity, size, and leadership of the indigenous or younger churches.” While America sent fewer mainline missionaries abroad, nationals employed in church ministries increased. Younger churches still needed the West for finances and direction, but the older churches now became mere advisors. The mainline began to reinterpret missions as an “international Christian enterprise.”Footnote 27

The shift led some to envision a “world Christianity.” In 1933 the New York Times claimed that “Christianity has become a world religion, for it has taken hold in every land.”Footnote 28 Mainline Protestants still wanted a “universal Christendom,” but they wanted to divorce it from westernization. Conceding that national variations would persist, the missions movement sought “a worldwide Christian commonwealth” that could unite all Christians.Footnote 29

Three large mission conferences exhibited the move toward a “worldwide mission.” At the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, Britain and North America dominated, but Edinburgh redefined the “mission field” as the whole world rather than non-Western countries. Its opening report claimed, “Some Christian communities are younger and some are older, but that is all the difference.”Footnote 30 In the Jerusalem Conference of 1928, representatives from the younger churches had risen from less than 2 to 25 percent, and the conference urged Protestants to stop talking about “sending” and “receiving” churches. In 1938 the conception of a “worldwide mission” culminated at the conference in Tambaram, India.Footnote 31 The first conference held in “a missionary land,” Tambaram divided its delegates evenly, 50 percent each from Western and non-Western countries. Its motto was “the world mission of the church,” and it praised the younger churches as equals and examples to the West. Some mainline Protestants even went from praising the younger churches to learning from them.Footnote 32

The recognition of Eastern churches encouraged an American mainline that was worrying about its own decline. In 1932 the Christian Century reported on an Indian missionary to England—the first example of reverse missions—and it saw the event as a sign of the future.Footnote 33 On Christmas Day 1938, Time said that Americans should look for Christ today in the “star in the east.”Footnote 34 Western hope rested in Eastern vitality. Western vigor had shifted to Eastern churches. Mission leader John R. Mott exemplified the new hope: “If Christianity dies out in Europe and America, it exists in such vitality and propagating power in the younger churches of India, China, Japan, and Africa, that sooner or later it would spread from those bases and reestablish itself among us.” The East would save the West.Footnote 35

IV. The Mainline Tightens Their Focus: Asia Takes Center Stage

The mainline churches looked with special affection at Asia. They had sent missionaries there for years and dominated the Christian scene, especially in the three largest “mission fields,” China, India, and Japan. In those countries in 1910, mainline Protestants comprised from 70 to 74 percent of the missionary force. Even in the 1930s, when religious depression and decline hit the mainline, their missionary force outpaced conservative Protestant groups ten to one.Footnote 36 And Asia called for revised missionary methods. As a result of modernization and nationalism in the 1930s, China, India, and Japan demanded an indigenous Christianity. Politically, as well, Asia asserted itself. In the 1930s, Japan went to war with China, China fought a civil war, and India tried to overthrow British colonial rule. Asia gave Christianity a world stage.Footnote 37

In Japan, the mainline counted a greater percentage of adherents, missionaries, institutions, and resources.Footnote 38 Japanese Christians increased fivefold from 1900 to 1939. Even though this amounted to only 1 percent of the population, some in the West admired the country's respect for Christian principles. They saw Christian influence on Japan's society, culture, and politics that far outstripped the number of converts.Footnote 39

Japanese politics, however, prompted caution. By 1934 the New York Times claimed that Japan was “neither a friend to be admired or a foe to be denounced, but it is a problem to be solved.”Footnote 40 While leading the way in calling for indigenous churches, Japan also evidenced a nationalism that diminished mainline Protestant support.Footnote 41 But Kagawa brought reassurance. American missionaries knew him well, and as they listened for a message from the East, they found it in Kagawa. He bore the mantle for Japan and Asian Christians while speaking in terms the West could understand. He was a “world citizen,” and his opinions took on worldwide significance. Maybe Protestants did not have to abandon their goals in the wake of Japanese nationalism and militarism. A world Christianity that could create a Kagawa would surely triumph.Footnote 42 When whispers of suspicion about Japan lingered “in the ears of Western Christians,” the Christian Science Monitor proclaimed in 1935: “You mustn't forget Kagawa.”Footnote 43

V. The Theological Middle Way: Kagawa and the Laymen's Report

In the debates over missions, no document created greater passions than the Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry of 1932. Sponsored by seven mainline denominational mission boards and underwritten by liberal layman John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the report's conclusions questioned the prospects of the older mission enterprise. The new idea was social improvement over conversion. Shockwaves rocked mainline churches.Footnote 44

The Presbyterians mounted their debating platforms. The popular author and liberal Protestant, Pearl Buck, in China, lauded the Laymen's Report, calling for an end to the prideful scramble to convert “pagans.”Footnote 45 Conservative J. Gresham Machen called the Laymen's Report “a public attack against the very heart of the Christian religion.”Footnote 46 Robert Speer, head of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, waffled, cautiously admitting that the Laymen's Report had sound advice, but holding on to evangelism. He brokered a tenuous compromise, but Presbyterian missions looked shaky.

Just as the Americans were taking aim at each other, Kagawa stepped into the fray. The Christian Century, publishing his response to the Laymen's Report, described him as “in some respects . . . the most significant Christian leader in the world today.”Footnote 47 Liberals appealed to his social reforms. Conservatives called him a preacher and “enlister of Christian converts.” Kagawa stood somewhere between them. While missions were right to respect the world's religions and to indigenize Christianity in local culture, he drew the line at dismissing evangelism. He excoriated “missions without the cross.”Footnote 48 And his views carried the day. By 1935 Protestants tucked the Laymen's Report away on their bookshelves. They had listened to Kagawa.

Kagawa rose above the theological divisions. He admitted his lack of interest in theological minutiae, and instead modeled a practical Christianity. The New York Times remarked: “Here is a man who has been acting while we have been debating.”Footnote 49 Some Americans knew him as an evangelist, others as an activist. Mainliners across the theological spectrum celebrated his work. His practical Christianity united the mainline above its internal differences.Footnote 50

Kagawa's use of language exemplified a striking ability to extend himself across the theological spectrum. “I believe in the virgin birth, resurrection, ascension, and divinity of Christ,” he testified, “but I believe in much more.”Footnote 51 He preached on the atonement to the satisfaction of conservatives while he proclaimed the Social Gospel for the liberals. The Christian Century claimed if churches really grasped the radical message nestled within his evangelism, they would revolt. The Century joked that his followers shattered the status quo and never even knew it. Conservatives and liberals both claimed to know the real Kagawa. In reality, he belonged in the middle.Footnote 52

VI. The Economic Middle Way: Kagawa's Christian Cooperatives in America

While the mainline church debated theology and mission, it also concerned itself at home with the economic implications of the Great Depression. Poverty diminished church budgets and evoked compassion. Mainline Christians re-engaged social issues to such an extent that Time could write in 1936 that “most men of God are fascinated with the economic implications of religion.” But easy answers remained out of reach.Footnote 53

Just as some in the mainline questioned the possibilities of a “Christian America,” they also looked askance at capitalism. Some European churches in the ecumenical movement had enumerated the failings of democracy and capitalism by the late 1920s. So also some Americans questioned whether democracy was the only Christian polity. By 1932 such publications as the Christian Century were exploring communism, though none could tolerate what they saw as its atheism, violence, and class warfare.Footnote 54 Christian socialism, however, offered a middle ground. Such organizations as the Fellowship of Socialist Christians made inroads, especially with the clergy, and a 1934 poll of mainline clergy showed that 51 percent supported a “drastically reformed capitalism” while 28 percent supported socialism. Only 5 percent preferred capitalism to a “cooperative commonwealth.” In the 1930s, the mainline church still preferred democratic capitalism, but the support was wavering.Footnote 55

Kagawa's work for the cooperative movement in Japan illustrated one form of “Christianity in action.” The first cooperative appeared in Britain in 1844. Kagawa found in the cooperative ideal the blueprint for a Christian economic system. Cooperatives allowed producers and consumers to share resources and profits. They sought equality and supported democratic principles. Kagawa introduced cooperatives into Japan with great success, which did not go unnoticed in America.Footnote 56

With the Depression, the cooperative movement drew renewed interest, and American progressives looked to Kagawa. In 1936 the Federal Council of Churches sponsored Kagawa on a six-month barnstorming tour to promote cooperatives. American Christians flocked to see the “apostle of the Christian cooperative.” He spoke six times a day, drawing capacity crowds, discussing Japan, missions, and his own life, but also drumming up support for the cooperatives. From Southern Baptist youth conferences, to prestigious seminary lectureships with audiences of preeminent civic leaders, he spread his economic gospel.Footnote 57 Biographies and translations of his books appeared on American bookstands. The press treated Kagawa as news, and in each city of his tour the newspapers retold Kagawa's story. At the end of his tour, interest in cooperatives mushroomed, and the press debated them for years after he left. On a large scale, however, cooperatives barely made a dent in the American economy, but in mainline churches Kagawa left a mark.Footnote 58

Kagawa was practical, and he confirmed the mainline middle way. For years he had opposed communism as “Christianity's most dangerous enemy,” but he also criticized capitalism. His cooperative society offered the compromise of Christian socialism. A few mainline churches followed him all the way, most demurred.Footnote 59 Yet Kagawa's cooperatives opened possibilities for a mainline democratic critique of capitalism.Footnote 60

The Christian cooperative served as a metaphor for Kagawa's larger goals. He sought a cooperative economy not only in Japan or America but also as the solution to the world's problems. The mainline listened. In 1935 the Christian Century reiterated that all countries are connected. In 1936 the northern Methodists called for ecumenism and internationalism: “we must be one or we will soon be none.”Footnote 61 Threats of war in Asia and Europe required new initiatives. Kagawa pronounced an economic solution: “If we have cooperative trade, we can abolish war.” It was an answer that resolved for a time the mainline's questions.Footnote 62

VII. Enemies in America

Despite wide appeal, Kagawa had his enemies. A few anti-immigration groups decried him as an alien propagandist. The lumber, coal, and insurance interests attacked him as his cooperative movement gained ground. They accused “the Jap”Footnote 63 of undermining capitalist society, and challenged his supporters to save souls and avoid economics. Progressive Protestants ignored the critics.Footnote 64

The loudest foes were the fundamentalists. The Reverend Dr. Harold Strathearn, Executive Secretary of the Interstate Evangelistic Association, whipped up the opposition during Kagawa's 1936 tour. He accused Kagawa of a “sinister plan to advocate consumers' cooperatives and socialism under the cloak of the Christian Church.” Strathearn also enlisted Baptist fundamentalist J. Frank Norris. As Kagawa preached in New York City, Norris held a rival crusade. Kagawa attracted three thousand listeners to Norris's twenty-five hundred. “Do we need to import the Japanese,” Norris asked, “to tell us how to run our business, our homes, our churches?” Kagawa made light of the attacks and carried the day in the press's coverage of the competing events. Later that year, when Kagawa spoke to a joint meeting of the Northern and Southern Baptists, Norris tried to have him removed from the program, but the Baptists refused. Former Southern Baptist president Monroe Elmon Dodd followed Kagawa on the Baptists' program and remarked: “I can only say I wish we were as good Christians as that man.” Even the Southern Baptists found Kagawa a convincing voice. The fundamentalist response galvanized mainline support. If the fundamentalists opposed him, the mainline loved him even more.Footnote 65

VIII. Kagawa's About Face: World War II

While Kagawa's Western reputation grew, Japan's faltered. In 1933 Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, and in 1937 they plunged into war with China. Governmental pressure on Christian churches to preach nationalism reached new heights. The indigenous churches discussed merging into one Protestant church, but the government made this decision for them in 1941. With the creation of the Kyodan (The United Church of Japan), Christianity came under government control.Footnote 66

Some Americans attempted to celebrate the move as a sign of an indigenous and ecumenical spirit, but most questioned whether Christian accommodation and the required practice of the state Shinto religion compromised Christians. The Christian Century captured the popular mainline opinion: “when interests of the emperor and Christ collide for the Japanese Christian, the emperor too often wins.”Footnote 67 By the end of 1941, almost all missionaries had pulled out of Japan or faced imprisonment. Skepticism replaced the idealization of Japanese Christianity.

Kagawa was the only hope. The Christian Century and the secular press praised his work for peace. But mainline churches soon lamented that he had become strangely silent and less active within Japan. Was he still a prophet? In early 1941, Kagawa came to the United States to plead for peace. His two-month American tour met with a warm but muted reception. He found it increasingly difficult to disentangle the tensions between his loyalty to Japan and his American supporters. The Christian Century remarked as he returned to Japan: “the tragedy is that [Kagawa] is lonelier in Christian America than in Shinto Japan.”Footnote 68

During World War II, Kagawa came to support Japan's war effort. In several wartime radio broadcasts, he accused the United States of atrocities and chastised them as the aggressor, a racist and capitalistic empire striving to dominate the Orient. He lamented that “the war had removed the Far East from Christ forever.”Footnote 69 When news of his words reached America, some mainline Christians denied the reports. Others gave up on him.

IX. Saving Face: Kagawa's Comeback

After the war, Kagawa tried to recover his reputation in America. Admitting his anti-American speeches, he claimed he had no choice. The American government claimed that upon victory it would make him Premier of Japan. That statement made him and all Japanese Christians traitors. “I was sorry I had to come down from international Christianity to national Christianity,” he proclaimed, “but I did so as a last ditch attempt to preserve the Christian church in Japan.”Footnote 70 As rumors swirled about his potential role in the U.S. occupation of Japan, Kagawa withdrew from politics and revived his reputation as a social evangelist. He advocated for the return of missionaries to Japan. He preached that Christianity offered Japan the opportunity to rebuild a morally upright nation.Footnote 71

In America, mainline churches debated what became known as the “Kagawa question.” The military newspaper Stars and Stripes claimed Japan used Kagawa to infiltrate America. By reprinting the article, the popular and religious press gave the accusation broad coverage. The article's sources proved unfounded and the newspaper fired the reporter, but the damage was done. The St. Louis Dispatch's caption pronounced the verdict: “More Jap than Christian.” Other religious newspapers chastised the churches for introducing him to America. But in some quarters his reputation recovered. He remained the most influential Christian in Japan and now embodied America's hope for a Japanese Christian revival. The majority in the mainline churches gave him the opportunity to reclaim his reputation.Footnote 72

The mainline still saw Japan as a “laboratory test” for Christianity. “The clock of destiny,” wrote the Christian Century, “has struck for the Christian movement in Japan.” Some predicted the Japanese Christian community would become “one of the vital spots in the religious world to watch during the next five to ten years.”Footnote 73 They saw Japan as a blank slate on which missions could inscribe new methods, ecumenism, and indigenization. The Christian Century encouraged denominations to send missionaries under the United Church of Japan. But optimism evolved into disappointment. Most denominations pulled back from the United Church and reverted to competition among one another. A rising evangelical missionary force in Japan further complicated mainline efforts. By 1949 the Christian Century lamented: “American Christians did not rise to meet the challenge, and the opportunity for missions is passing in Japan.”Footnote 74

X. Kagawa Who?: A Forgotten but Significant Legacy

In 1951 Kagawa returned to America on a revival tour. The press spent more time reminding America of his past popularity than they did reporting his message. To a postwar generation, Kagawa was a minor curiosity. The mainline that created his identity had changed. Emerging from religious and economic depression, it prospered again in numerical growth and public presence. The old issues of missions, ecumenism, internationalism, social Christianity, and pacifism faded into the background. World Christianity had once seemed the prize, but now American progressives focused on their own interior growth. Many now bought into an American exceptionalism that combined religious idealism and patriotic enthusiasms. The Cold War now defined all international issues and reduced everything into two categories: American democracy and an atheistic communism. A “respectable conservatism” descended on mainline churches. On returning to America in 1951, Kagawa seemed no longer necessary.Footnote 75

In 1931 the Christian Century wrote that church communities “have their heroes, who for a time ride high… and then too often are allowed to slip back into obscurity… . At present the hero is Toyohiko Kagawa.”Footnote 76 A charismatic figure, the American mainline churches took him and made him their own. In the 1930s, Kagawa became a symbol. As missions moved to embrace a world Christianity, Kagawa became its first hero. As churches sought Christian solutions to economic problems, Kagawa's cooperatives became a model. In a time of theological divisions, Kagawa was a uniting figure who more often than not allowed mainline churches to work together. As the churches shaped his identity in America, he restored their faith in themselves. But the mainline moved toward religious revival and pride in American dominance. They forgot that a Japanese Christian had sustained them along the way.

References

1 Quote found in “Toyohiko Kagawa,” Christian Century 48 (September 16, 1931), 1135Google Scholar. The Christian Century lists previous fads of the recent past as the leadership of the missionary movement (John Mott, Sherwood Eddy, and Robert Speer), the leadership of the Interchurch World Movement of the 1920s, and missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones. See also Fowler, Betram B., “Apostle of Brotherhood,” Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 1935Google Scholar, WM3; Fey, Harold E., “Play Fair with Kagawa!” Christian Century 50 (October 11, 1933), 1271Google Scholar.

2 Walls's, Andrew most well known works include The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996)Google Scholar and The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2002)Google Scholar. Jenkins's, Phillip work includes The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See Schildgen, Robert, Toyohiko Kagawa: Apostle of Love and Social Justice (Berkley, Calif.: Centenary, 1988)Google Scholar; Furuya, Yasuo C., “Who Was Toyohiko Kagawa,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 23, no. 3 (2002): 301–12Google Scholar; Fukada, Robert Mikio, “Toyohiko Kagawa: A Mosaic Artist for God,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 10, no. 1 (1989): 23–38Google Scholar as places to start for a critical biography of Kagawa.

4 Axling, William, Kagawa (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932)Google Scholar was by far the most popular biography. See also Baumann, Margaret, Kagawa: An Apostle of Japan (New York: Macmillan, 1936)Google Scholar; Bradshaw, Emerson O., Unconquerable Kagawa (St. Paul, Minn.: Macalester Park, 1952)Google Scholar; Davey, Cyril J., Kagawa of Japan (New York: Abingdon, 1960)Google Scholar.

5 See “Tour's End,” Time (July 6, 1936)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives/. Kagawa's tours were well orchestrated by American supporters of Kagawa to provide maximum exposure of his ideas. Often publication of a biography of Kagawa or translations of Kagawa's own books preceded his arrival. His tours were sponsored by such organizations as the Kagawa National Committee, the Federal Council of Churches, and the YMCA.

6 Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 2.

7 Hutchinson, Paul, “Kagawa: Proletarian Saint,” Atlantic 157 (May 1936): 597Google Scholar; “Can Christian Missions Be Saved,” Christian Century 47 (March 12, 1930), 327Google Scholar; “What Is Kagawa's Trip Accomplishing,” Christian Century 53 (March 4, 1936), 349Google Scholar.

8 For Christian Century's coverage of Kagawa versus the missionaries in the Kingdom of God Movement, see “Kagawa Out of Japan Movement,” Christian Century 50 (September 13, 1933), 1152Google Scholar; “Kagawa's Position,” Christian Century 50 (November 22, 1933), 1463–65Google Scholar; Brumbaugh, T. T., “Letter to the Editor,” Christian Century 50 (November 22, 1933), 1475Google Scholar. See also “Kagawa, Toyohiko, 1888–1960,” Christian Century 77 (May 4, 1960), 533Google Scholar; Hutchinson, “Kagawa: Proletarian Saint,” 597; Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 132, 140; “Peace Talk with Japan,” Time (April 21, 1941)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives/.

9 Fisher, Galen M., “Kagawa Returns to Japan,” Christian Century 54 (June 9, 1937), 742Google Scholar; Fey, Harold E., “Looking at Life with Kagawa,” Christian Century 47 (March 12, 1930), 331–32Google Scholar.

10 Kagawa's English pronunciation remained difficult to understand, and he always accompanied his speeches with cryptic chalkboard drawings in attempt to illustrate his message. These drawings accentuated the curiosity of Western audiences.

11 “Kagawa Scoffs at War,” New York Times, January 25, 1936, 16Google Scholar; Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 197; LaRoe, Wilbur Jr., “Kagawa Appraises Modern Japan,” Christian Century 53 (February 5, 1936), 225Google Scholar; “Notes on Kagawa Tour,” Christian Century 53 (February 19, 1936), 304Google Scholar.

12 “‘Gandhi of Japan’ Put Under Arrest,” New York Times, September 5, 1940, 5Google Scholar; Hutchinson, “Kagawa: Proletarian Saint,” 596; Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 2. For the American observer's quote, see “Southern Cities Greet Kagawa,” Christian Century 53 (February 5, 1936), 242Google Scholar.

13 “Kagawa Foresees New Depression,” Christian Century 53 (March 4, 1936), 373Google Scholar.

14 “Dr. Kagawa Finds Nation in Tragedy,” New York Times, January 27, 1936, 2Google Scholar.

15 Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 187.

16 Hutchison, William R., “Protestantism as Establishment,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960, ed. Hutchison, William R. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4–5Google Scholar. Hutchison also recounts the historiographical issues involved in labeling mainline Protestantism as an establishment.

17 Mead, Sidney, “American Protestantism since the Civil War. I. From Denominationalism to Americanism,” Journal of Religion 36 (January 1956): 2Google Scholar. See also Handy, Robert, “The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935,” in Religious American History: A Reader, ed. Butler, Jon and Stout, Harry S. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 375Google Scholar; Hutchison, “Protestantism as Establishment,” 9.

18 In his first book, Reinhold Niebuhr, pessimistically noted “a psychology of defeat has gripped the forces of religion.” See Niebuhr, , Does Civilization Need Religion? A Study in the Social Resources and Limitations of Religion in Modern Life (New York: Macmillan, 1927), 2Google Scholar.

19 Quote found in Carter, Paul A., The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel: Social and Political Liberalism in American Protestant Churches, 1920–1940 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1971), 191Google Scholar. See also Handy, “The American Religious Depression,” 373, 379.

20 Robert Handy's research is the most well known in arguing for an American religious depression. While noting a decline in mainline Protestantism, evangelical and fundamentalist groups continued to grow. Pointing to their numerical, institutional, and cultural growth raises questions whether the 1920s and 1930s were a religious depression or a transferring of loyalties. See Carpenter, Joel A., “Fundamentalist Institutions and the Rise of Evangelical Protestantism, 1929–1942.” Church History 49, no. 1 (March 1980): 62–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For tracing mainline memberships trends in the 1920s, see Weber, H. C., Evangelism: A Graphic Survey (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 181Google Scholar. See also Handy, “The American Religious Depression,” 373; Carter, Decline and Revival, 200.

22 “Larger than a Man's Hand,” Christian Century 57 (October 29, 1930), 1302Google Scholar.

23 The missions movement debated the civilization/evangelization question throughout its history. At various times, either side held the upper hand. Under the leadership of Rufus Anderson in America and Henry Venn in Great Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, the predominant strategy was to avoid replicating Western civilization in missions. At the height of missions in the mainline (ca. 1880s–1920s), however, the civilizing impulse figured prominently. Among histories of the American Protestant missions movement, see especially Hutchison, William R., Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Stanley, Brian, “Christian Missions, Antislavery, and Claims of Humanity (1813–1873),” in Cambridge History of Christianity: World Christianities, c.1815–c.1914, vol. 8, ed. Gilley, Sheridan and Stanley, Brian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 443–57Google Scholar. This debate has continued. In the American neo-evangelicalism in the 1950s and 1970s, new evangelicals identified themselves against the mainline by shifting the dualities from civilization and evangelization to the debate the relationship between evangelization and social action.

24 Hutchison, Errand to the World, 100. I employ the term “mission field” here as it was used by mainline Protestantism at the time. Scholarship has since found this term inadequate as did the mainline missions movement itself. See discussion to follow.

25 Throughout the literature in the Christian and popular presses, writers employ the term, “the East” to refer to any culture outside of America and Western Europe.

26 While far predating Lamin Sanneh's groundbreaking study of translation as central to the spread of global Christianity, missionaries, and mission, thinkers already turned to themes of translation and indigenization as models of the successes of foreign missions. See Sanneh, , Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989).Google Scholar

27 Latourette, Kenneth Scott, The Emergence of a World Christian Community (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949), 11Google Scholar. In comparing the numbers of Western missionaries to national Christians through the 1920s and 1930s, see Fahs, Charles H., “Missionary and National Personnel,” in Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Missions of the Christian Church, ed. Parker, Joseph I. (New York: International Missionary Council, 1938), 243Google Scholar; “The Missionary's Conscience,” Christian Century 54 (October 13, 1937), 1254Google Scholar. See also a Stanley, “Christian Missions, Antislavery, and Claims of Humanity,” 457; “Larger than a Man's Hand,” Christian Century 57 (October 29, 1930), 1303Google Scholar.

28 “Finds Christianity Gaining in the World,” New York Times, July 17, 1933, 11Google Scholar.

29 Thomas Sieger Derr, “The Political Thought of the Ecumenical Movement, 1900–1939,” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1972), 290.

30 For a full report on these three mission conferences, see Shivute, Tomas, The Theology of Mission and Evangelism in the International Missionary Council from Edinburgh to New Delhi (Helsinki: Finnish Missionary Society, 1980), 67Google Scholar; Hutchison, Errand to the World, 179–80.

31 Since Indian independence, this 1938 conference is now most commonly referred not as Madras but as Tambaram. However, historical documents describing the text often refer to Madras.

32 Higdon, E. K., “From Main Street to Madras,” Christian Century 55 (September 7, 1938), 1057Google Scholar; “Kagawa in America,” Christian Century 52 (December 4, 1935), 1542Google Scholar.

33 “Is This a Turning-Point in Christian History?” Christian Century 49 (September 28, 1932), 1155Google Scholar.

34 “Where is He,” Time (December 26, 1938)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives/.

35 “Mott on Missions,” Time (June 26, 1939)Google Scholar. See also Latourette, The Emergence of a World Christianity, 14; White, Hughes Vernon, “End Mission Imperialism Now!” Christian Century 51 (February 14, 1934), 220Google Scholar; Axling, Kagawa, x.

36 In addition to missionary personnel, the movement invested millions of dollars in Asia. In 1939 the mainline invested over 2.5 million dollars just in Japan and Korea. See “God and the Emperor,” Time (September 9, 1940), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives/.

37 Latourette, Kenneth Scott, “The Real Issue in Foreign Missions,” Christian Century 48 (April 15, 1931), 506Google Scholar; Hutchison, Errand to the World, 128, 175; “Nationalism is Throttling Missions,” Christian Century 50 (September 13, 1933), 1140Google Scholar; and Speer, Robert E., “True and Abiding Basis of Foreign Missions,” Missionary Review of the World (October 1929): 757Google Scholar.

38 Of Japanese Christians in 1940, the largest groups were Presbyterian (55,372), Methodists (50,505), Congregational (33,523), and Episcopalian (28,587). See Parker, F. Calvin, The Southern Baptist Mission in Japan, 1889–1989 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 155Google Scholar.

39 While the numbers of Christians remained small, the mainline boasted there was one Bible in Japan for every family. See Latourette, , “The Church on the Field,” in Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Missions of the Christian Church, ed. Parker, Joseph I. (New York: International Missionary Council, 1938), 241Google Scholar.

40 “A Native and a Foreigner Appraise Japan's Issues,” New York Times, September 2, 1934, BR9Google Scholar.

41 “The Japanization of Christianity,” Christian Century 56 (August 2, 1939), 944Google Scholar; Brumbaugh, T. T., “Religion in Japan Today,” Christian Century 53 (August 5, 1936), 1060–61Google Scholar; Howes, John F., “Two Types: Kagawa and Uchimura,” Theology Today 23 (April 1966): 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Speer, Robert E., “True and Abiding Basis of Foreign Missions,” Missionary Review of the World (October 1929): 757Google Scholar; and “The Dilemma of the Missionary in Japan,” Christian Century 54 (November 3, 1937), 1352Google Scholar.

42 The mainline began referring to Kagawa as a “world citizen” by 1934. See “Kagawa Messages Stir Filipinos,” Christian Century 51 (May 9, 1934), 642Google Scholar; “Toyohiko Kagawa,” Christian Century 48 (September 16, 1931), 1135Google Scholar; “An Appeal From Japan,” Christian Century 58 (September 17, 1941), 1136Google Scholar.

43 “Apostle of Brotherhood,” Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 1935Google Scholar, WM3.

44 The Laymen's Report itself was published as Rethinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry After One Hundred Years, ed. Hocking, William Ernest (New York: Harper, 1932)Google Scholar. Hutchison, Errand to the World, describes the impact of the Laymen's Report in detail, 159–75. In addition to religious periodicals, the popular press also covered the response to the Laymen's Report on the mood of missions at home. See “Re-thinking Missions,” Time (November 28, 1932), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives.

45 On Pearl Buck's larger role in the mainline missionary experience, see Wacker, Grant, “The Waning of the Missionary Impulse: The Case of Pearl S. Buck,” in The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History, ed. Bays, Daniels H. and Wacker, Grant (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 191–205Google Scholar.

46 Machen's quote found in Hutchison, Errand to the World, 172.

47 “Kagawa and the Missions Report,” Christian Century 50 (May 24, 1933), 680–81Google Scholar.

48 Kagawa, Toyohiko, “Missions Without the Cross,” Christian Century 50 (May 24, 1933), 685–87Google Scholar.

49 “Dr. Kagawa Offers Plan to Halt War,” New York Times, January 28, 1936, 5Google Scholar.

50 Fukada, Robert Mikio, “The Legacy of Toyohiko Kagawa,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 12 (January 1988): 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Mikio Fukada, “Toyohiko Kagawa: A Mosaic Artist for God,” 23.

51 Kagawa was aware that these basic theological tenets had created a major struggle in the fundamentalist–modernist debates of the 1920s. He hoped and intentionally worked in order that his global Christianity would be able to rise above these Western divisions.

52 “What is Kagawa's Message,” Christian Century 53 (May 13, 1936), 714Google Scholar; Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 187; Hutchinson, “Kagawa: Proletarian Saint,” 600; “This Kagawa is Dangerous,” Christian Century 47 (May 21, 1930), 643Google Scholar; and “Kagawa Messages Stir Filipinos,” Christian Century 51 (May 9, 1934), 642–43Google Scholar.

53 “Social Gospel,” Time (February 3, 1936)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives/; “Is the Cooperative Movement Christian?” Christian Century 53 (March 11, 1936), 390Google Scholar; “Religion,” American Journal of Sociology 38 (July 1932–May 1933), 907Google Scholar. For the best overview of mainline Protestantism's interaction with social questions in the Great Depression, see Miller, Robert Moats, American Protestantism and Social Issues 1919–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958)Google Scholar. See also Handy, “The American Religious Depression,” 378.

54 Along with the early Reinhold Niebuhr and other influential Christian theologians, entire denominations explored the economic implications of Christianity and socialism. The Northern Baptists went on record in 1932 saying, “all wealth and all labor power are intended by the Creator for the highest good of all people … and no person can establish a rightful claim upon or within the community for more than a normal living.” See Carter, Decline and Revival, 151.

55 Derr, “Political Thought,” 628, notes American interaction with economic systems in Europe. For the mainline's reactions to communism, see Havelock, E. A., “Must Christians Reject Communism?” Christian Century 52 (October 16, 1935), 1307–8Google Scholar; “The New Attack on Americanism,” Christian Century 52 (March 20, 1935), 360Google Scholar. The 1934 poll conducted by Kirby Page surveyed 20,870 clergymen from ten different Protestant denominations and Jewish movements, but his poll probably focused on the more liberal wing of the mainline. See also Miller, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 101, 118.

56 There were many books of the day articulating defining the cooperative movement. See Fowler, Bertram B., Consumer Cooperation in America: Democracy's Way Out (New York: Vanguard, 1936)Google Scholar; Sorenson, Helen, The Consumer Movement: What It Is and What It Means (New York: Harper, 1941), 1–6Google Scholar; and Schmiedeler, Edgar, Cooperation: A Christian Mode of Industry (Ozone Park, N.Y.: Catholic Literary Guild, 1941)Google Scholar. For Kagawa's implementation of the cooperative concept in Japan, see Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 18, 63–64.

57 President Roosevelt himself was interested in the prospects of cooperatives within his New Deal legislation.

58 The Christian Century as well as the popular press ran scores of articles updating the progress of Kagawa's tour in 1935 and 1936. See especially “Kagawa-Apostle of the Christian Cooperative,” Christian Century 52 (September 25, 1935), 1197Google Scholar; “Kagawa's Itinerary,” Christian Century 52 (October 23, 1935), 1354Google Scholar. For the continued debate on co-ops in America, see “Co-ops” Time (July 13, 1936)Google Scholar. Three million Americans were members of cooperatives through the Great Depression, but they produced only one percent of U.S. business. In Britain, cooperatives represented an eighth of business over the same time period.

59 Some churches did not publicly support their clergy's endorsement of socialism. Within the denomination, the Methodist Protestant Church and the Southern Baptists censured socialism in 1936 and 1938 respectively.

60 Kagawa noted the loss of freedom of religion and ethics and its bent toward violence as his objections to communism. Regarding capitalism, Kagawa claimed despite its strengths, it currently “has produced evils which now threaten to overbalance all the advantages.” See Brumbaugh, T. T., “Kagawa on Cooperatives,” Christian Century 52 (February 27, 1935), 267Google Scholar; “Lost Leader,” Time (October 2, 1933)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives/.

61 “Address at the Methodist General Conference (North),” 1936, quoted in Carter, Decline and Revival, 186

62 “Kagawa, Toyohiko, “Peace by World Cooperatives,” Christian Century 53 (April 29, 1936), 627Google Scholar; “Dr. Kagawa Offers Plan to Halt War,” New York Times, January 28, 1936, 5Google Scholar; “End of War Seen in Cooperatives,” New York Times, January 26, 1936Google Scholar, N1.

63 The derogatory term was often employed by Kagawa's opponents. “Insurance Agents Asked to Fight Cooperatives,” Christian Century 53 (June 24, 1936), 893Google Scholar.

64 “Kagawa Entry Protested,” New York Times, December 25, 1935, 3Google Scholar; Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 182–84. The Attack Opens on Kagawa,” Christian Century 53 (April 7, 1936), 523; “Attacks Upon Kagawa Continues,” Christian Century 53 (June 3, 1936), 787–88Google Scholar.

65 Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 191–92; “Kagawa: A Japanese Christian Starts an American Church War,” Newsweek 7 (April 28, 1936), 42Google Scholar; “Tour's End,” Time (July 6, 1936)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives.

66 For a step-by-step analysis of the government's victory in gaining control over Christianity, see Ion, Hamish A., “The Cross Under an Imperial Sun: Imperialism, Nationalism, and Japanese Christianity, 1895–1945,” in Handbook of Christianity in Japan, ed. Mullins, Mark R. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 88–93Google Scholar.

67 For the debate whether to pull the missionaries out of Japan or allow them to stay, see the reports in the Christian Century, issues March 5, March 10, March 12, and April 9, 1941. For the mainline's interpretation of the current state of Japanese Christianity, see Howard, Henry, “The Plight of Japanese Christians,” Christian Century 54 (December 22, 1937), 1592Google Scholar. In 1942 the Christian Century ran six articles debating the nature of Japanese Christianity and Shinto Nationalism. See especially, Holtom, D. C., “What Have Japanese Christians Surrendered,” Christian Century 59 (January 28, 1942), 111Google Scholar; Brumbaugh, T. T., “Is This the End of Missions?” Christian Century 58 (March 12, 1941), 355Google Scholar; Axling, William, “Japan's Christians Unite,” Christian Century 58 (June 25, 1941), 826Google Scholar; “Nationalism and Missions,” Christian Century 57 (March 20, 1940), 275–76Google Scholar; and Fey, Harold E., “The Emperor Who Plays God,” Christian Century 57 (August 28, 1940), 1049Google Scholar.

68 “God and the Emperor,” Time (September 9, 1940)Google Scholar, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives; Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 215; Furuya, “Who Was Toyohiko Kagawa,” 309; Fey, Harold E., “Kagawa Revisits America,” Christian Century 58 (May 21, 1941), 684, 686Google Scholar. Not only did Kagawa advocate peace, he partnered with missionary E. Stanley Jones to attempt to broker a political peace agreement by arranging for a meeting between the Japanese government and Franklin Roosevelt. The event never fully materialized before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. See Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 222–24.

69 “Kagawa on the Radio,” Christian Century 62 (June 6, 1945), 671Google Scholar; “Japanese Talks Reconciliation,” Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 1945, 11Google Scholar; and Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 229–30.

70 “Through Christian Eyes,” Time 46 (September 24, 1935), 26–27Google Scholar.

71 “I Would Rather Be Dead,” Christian Century 62 (September 26, 1945), 1088Google Scholar; Mackin, Thomas, “As Kagawa Sees Japan's Future,” Christian Century 62 (October 10, 1945), 1154–55Google Scholar; and Schildgen, Toyohiko Kagawa, 238–39.

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73 Hutchinson, Paul, “Japan – A Laboratory Test,” Christian Century 64 (January 8, 1947), 39–41Google Scholar; Kirk, Walter W. Van, “The Future of Christianity in Japan,” Christian Century 63 (February 6, 1946), 169Google Scholar.

74 “Students, What Now?” Christian Century 65 (January 14, 1948), 40Google Scholar; “Now or Never in Japan,” Christian Century 65 (January 21, 1948), 70–71Google Scholar; “Two More Missions Ships to Sail,” Christian Century 63 (December 11, 1946), 1492Google Scholar; Hessel, R. A. Egon, “Paganism Unshaken in Japan,” Christian Century 66 (September 21, 1949), 1103Google Scholar; and “Opportunity Is Passing for Missions in Japan,” Christian Century 66 (September 21, 1949), 1093Google Scholar.

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