Introduction
What has Christianity to do with socialism? This question used to be one that both missionaries and Chinese Christians had to address in the early twentieth century, particularly after the nation-wide spread of socialist thought since the end of the 1910s. This issue has been dealt with in previous scholarship on Christianity in China. The first type of related research belongs to the “mission history” paradigm. One historian has pointed out that the emphasis under this paradigm was mostly on how missionaries in China, rather than Chinese Christians, perceived the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter CCP) or communism.Footnote 1 Creighton Boutelle Lacy's Ph.D. dissertation at Yale University, “Protestant Missions in Communist China” (1953), is a typical example.Footnote 2
The second type of research involves case studies of some well-known Chinese Christians, such as Wu Yaozong (Y. T. Wu 吳耀宗, 1893–1979), Liu Liangmo (Liu Liang-mo 劉良模, 1909–1988), and Deng Yuzhi (Cora Deng 鄧裕志, 1900–1996).Footnote 3 Wu, among them, is the one most studied. Kevin Xiyi Yao 姚西伊, for example, analyses how Wu thinks about the relationship between pacifism and communism, Ying Fuk-tsang 邢福增 discusses Wu's struggle with the compatibility of Christianity and communism, and Chin Ken-pa 曾慶豹 focuses on Wu's “materialistic Christianity”.Footnote 4
The third type has to do with the issue of “Christian socialism” in China. Some historians explore from a macro perspective the spread and influence of Christian socialism in modern China,Footnote 5 while others focus on two of the most explicit advocates of Christian socialism: Zhang Shizhang (Hottinger S. C. Chang 張仕章, b. 1896) and Shen Sizhuang (J. Wesley Shen 沈嗣莊, 1894–1973).Footnote 6
These afore-mentioned studies have laid a foundation for interpreting the relationship between Christianity and socialism in Republican China. One significant issue, however, has been mostly neglected so far: How did Chinese Protestant intellectuals since the 1920s, facing up to the challenge of socialism, interpret and appropriate the Mandarin Union Version of the Chinese Bible 官話和合本聖經 (hereafter UV)—especially its Gospel texts—to reconceive the image of Jesus? This issue is worth examining because Protestant intellectuals of the time often converted the question of the relationship between Christianity and socialism into another one: How would Jesus—the core of Christian belief—perceive socialism? In other words, what were the commonalities and differences between socialism and Jesus’ personality, sayings, and deeds? Protestant intellectuals’ use of the UV should be explored to deepen our understanding of the thought of these religious intellectuals. In the meantime, studying the interpretation and appropriation of the UV will enrich the “Wirkungsgeschichte” (history of influence/effect) of the Bible in general.
In what follows, I propose to argue that Protestant intellectuals’ political use of the Chinese Bible remade a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. This article includes five main sections. The first section discusses the socialist-influenced anti-Christian discourse and Protestant apologists’ counter-discourse. The second section deals with the ways Protestant intellectuals explored Jesus’ “proletarian-like” identity and the relation of Jesus with both the “proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie” of his time. In the third section, we will look at how Protestant intellectuals clarified Jesus’ attitude towards private property. The fourth and fifth sections study two issues—materialism and class struggle—that had long perturbed Christians in Republican China when they attempted to reconcile Christian belief with socialism.
The Socialist-Influenced Anti-Christian Discourse and Protestant Apologists’ Counter-Discourse
Socialist ideas became known in China at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.Footnote 7 Some Protestant intellectuals began to debate the relationship between Christianity and socialism in the mid-1910s. Reverend Zhu Youyu (Y. Y. Tsu 朱友漁, 1885–1986) of Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui 中華聖公會 published in 1916 an English article, “Christianity and Socialism”, in which he introduced the origins of socialism, analysed Marxist socialism in particular, and compared it to Christianity in terms of their differences, the shortcomings of each, and how they could complement each other.Footnote 8 He noted that Christians could learn from socialists regarding “their social view-point and their wide-awakeness and interest in social problems”.Footnote 9
Zhu was a Protestant intellectual who recognised very early the deficiency of Christianity compared with socialism and the latter's challenge towards the former. Later on, many others would also take up the task of discussing and evaluating such socialism-related issues as materialism. Yenching University 燕京大學 professor Xu Baoqian (P. C. Shu 徐寶謙, 1892–1944), for example, once recalled how socialism impacted Yenching students: “I used to teach at Yenching, and there were thirteen students in a class. When they discussed religious issues, seven of them were left-leaning; they advocated historical materialism and intensely attacked Christianity, accusing Christianity of being an opiate that objected to class struggle and escaped from reality”.Footnote 10
The challenge of socialism on Christianity, however, was far from that. In 1922, the Anti-Christian Movement 非基督教運動 broke out under the secret leadership and participation of the Communist International, and Christianity was severely criticised by a “Manifesto of the Anti-Christian Students’ Federation in Shanghai” (published on 9 March 1922) from the perspective of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. One month later, Jian Youwen (Timothy Yu-wan Jen 簡又文, 1896–1978), secretary of the Editorial Division of the National Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in China, identified the Anti-Christian Movement as “the Boxer Uprising within the intellectual community of China in 1922”. He had observed the close association of those who attacked Christianity with socialism:
Those returned students from Japan object religion most vigorously, while most of them are under the influence of the socialist attitudes of past days towards Christianity. Harbouring socialism in their hearts for a very long time, they have recently been influenced by Russian Bolshevism. Such people make up the majority of academics who argue that Christianity embraces capitalism and thus attack Christianity for its perceived allegiance to capitalism”.Footnote 11
This type of socialist-influenced anti-Christian discourse would have a profoundly detrimental effect on the development of Christianity in twentieth-century China.
Before the outbreak of the Anti-Christian Movement of 1922, some Christians had begun to defend their religion by advocating that either Christianity did not contradict socialism or Christianity could be reconciled with it. In the winter of 1919, for example, He Lichen (Ho Leison 何麗臣), associate general secretary of YMCA of Hong Kong, stated in a public speech that “if one calls for socialism, he or she has to do it according to the doctrine of Christianity”, and that “there is true socialism in Christianity”.Footnote 12 Next year, China Christian Advocate 興華報, the Chinese organ of both of the Methodist Episcopal Church 美以美會 and the Methodist Episcopal Church (South) 監理會, published an article titled The Socialism of Christ, in which the author claimed that Jesus “is the first great socialist in the world”.Footnote 13
During the Anti-Christian Movement of 1922, The True Light Review 真光, a Chinese Baptist journal with Zhang Yijing (張亦鏡, 1871–1931) as its editor-in-chief, became a stronghold for the defence of Christianity. One author, for instance, distinguished two types of socialism: one was “our moderate Christian socialism that originates from love”, and another “your socialism that originates from hate”. He then continued to admonish the anti-Christian socialist: “Christianity indeed is the origin of socialism. Instead of the enemy of socialism, Christianity can only help spread socialism”.Footnote 14
From the year 1922 onward, the discourse of the compatibility of Christianity with socialism continued throughout the Republican period. In 1923, the Baptist editor Zhang Yijing argued that socialism was not inherently atheistic: apart from “socialism without religion”, there was also “socialism with religion”.Footnote 15 In the same year, Xu Shigui (徐式圭, 1892–1963) even claimed that most of the world's religions such as Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Islam had socialistic characteristics and that Christianity was no exception. In Xu's eyes, Jesus “wants to pacify the competition of economic classes”: “If one reads in the history of socialism Christian endeavours involving those social movements, he or she will understand that Jesus Christ has something to do with socialism”.Footnote 16
In 1927, when Reverend Wu Jingxing (吳景星, 1891–1933) from Zhangzhou City 漳州, Fujian Province, attended a convocation commemorating Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), he found that many speakers at this meeting “misunderstood the doctrine of Christianity”, therefore “deriding and criticising Christianity and pastors”. Reverend Wu worried that Christian believers, due to those speakers’ anti-Christian discourses, “might conceive of the relationship of Christianity and socialism as contradictory and irreconcilable”. For this reason, Reverend Wu wrote this article titled “Christianity and Socialism” to argue not only that Christianity and socialism “are not contradictory”, but also that “the essentials of socialism are all contained in the Christian classics”. “It is not too exaggerative to say”, Wu averred, “that Christianity is the source of socialism”.Footnote 17
In 1929, a student at Fukien Christian University 福建協和大學 named Qiu Daogen 邱道根 completed an article, “Jesus of Socialism”, probably under the guidance of Professor Wang Zhixin (T. S. Wong 王治心, 1881–1968). Qiu in this piece called himself “a believer of Jesusism 耶穌主義” who also “studied socialism a little bit”. As a Christian, he firmly believed that Jesus was a socialist, who launched an “earth-shaking movement of social revolution”.Footnote 18
Shen Sizhuang, who was a Methodist and who used to be deputy director of the National Christian Literature Association中華基督教文社 founded in 1924, completed a book titled A New History of Socialism from the perspective of Christianity. One of its target readers would be those “non-Christians who defame Christ as anti-social and anti-revolutionary”. Shen drew attention to the history of British Christian socialism, giving special emphasis to the fact that the year 1848 not only marked “the rise of scientific socialism of Karl Marx”, but also witnessed “the founding of Christian socialism in Great Britain”. For Shen, the existence of Christian socialism reminded people that “socialism and Christianity are not completely different”.Footnote 19
Even in the year 1949, before the imminent establishment of the CCP's new regime, Ma Honggang 馬鴻綱, the editor-in-chief of the organ of the National Christian Council of China 中華全國基督教協進會, called upon the Chinese Church henceforth to direct itself to “achieve Christian socialism”. Ma believed that “Jesus and his disciples formed the very first community that practiced a communistic life in the history of socialism”. One weakness haunting the contemporary Chinese Church, nevertheless, lay in its failure to live up to the socialism established by Jesus himself: “The whole world nowadays is leaning towards socialism, but the church has fallen behind”.Footnote 20
Throughout the whole Republican era, we may see the coexistence of both the anti-Christian discourse influenced by socialism and Protestant intellectuals’ counter-discourse. Chinese Protestant intellectuals’ socialistic interpretation and appropriation of the Chinese Gospel texts have to be understood in this discursive context.
“A Left-Leaning Religion”: Jesus, the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie
As previously mentioned, one argument of the socialist-influenced anti-Christian discourses concerned the close association of Christianity with capitalism. In refutation to this accusation, Protestant intellectuals tried to appropriate (1) the “proletarian” family background of Jesus and (2) Jesus’ attitude towards the “proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie” of his time. For one thing, Jesus was identified as one among the proletariat. For another, Jesus was considered not only as standing together with the proletariat (the oppressed) of his time and speaking up for them, but also as opposing the bourgeoisie (the oppressor). In this manner, Protestant intellectuals, through interpretation and appropriation of the UV, moulded a “left-leaning” image of Jesus.
Jesus’ identity as a proletarian was supported in two ways: his background of upbringing and his life since the beginning of his career as an evangelist. Arguments as to his background focused on interpreting Jesus’ birth in a manger (Luke 2:7), his father's career as a carpenter (Matthew 13:55), or Jesus himself as a carpenter (Mark 6:3). Xu Zuotong (T. T. Hsu 許佐同), for example, a lay Christian of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South), made a speech titled “Several Fundamental Issues concerning Modern Chinese Christianity” at the Methodist Moore Memorial Church (Shanghai) 慕爾堂 in May of 1927. In this speech, he argued that Jesus as the son of a carpenter was neither God's favoured one nor the king (as some fundamentalist/evangelical Christians would have claimed), but instead “a proletarian revolutionist 無產階級的革命家”: Jesus “determined to fight for a revolutionary cause”.Footnote 21
Jesus’ impoverished living as an evangelist was also a focus of Protestant intellectuals. Another Methodist intellectual Shen Sizhuang opined that it was out of his own choice that Jesus became a proletarian. Jesus could have been one among the petty bourgeoisie 小資產階級, Shen continued, because he was not only a carpenter but also a physician, who could have lived a better-off life. Jesus nevertheless was said to give up this opportunity voluntarily; a case in point pertained to the fact that Jesus healed the masses’ illnesses without asking for a charge. Shen then quoted from Matthew 8:20 to indicate Jesus’ proletarian status: “Huli you dong zhu, feiniao you chao su, ren zi que meiyou zhentou de defang 狐狸有洞住，飛鳥有巢宿，人子卻沒有枕頭的地方” (The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head).Footnote 22
Another common discursive strategy adopted to shape Jesus’ socialist image was the interpretation that Jesus identified with the proletariat of his time. Fan Zimei (Fan Tzu-mei 范子美, 1866–1939), a long-time editor of the National YMCA, once commented that Luke 4 demonstrated a Jesus identifying with “the poverty-stricken and wronged class”: “when starting his mission, therefore, Jesus read out in public the gospel from the Book of Isaiah and pleaded on behalf of the distressed and the oppressed in society”.Footnote 23
The other side of Jesus identifying with the proletariat was, of course, Jesus’ opposition and criticism of the bourgeoisie and the oppressor. Protestant intellectuals took it as evidence of the incompatibility of Christianity with capitalism. Take, again, the Methodist Shen Sizhuang as an example. In his book, A New History of Socialism, Shen quoted from Foundations of Christianity (written by Karl Kautsky) to demonstrate Jesus’ class consciousness. The Gospel of Matthew, according to Kautsky, mitigated the strong proletarian hate for the bourgeoisie initially inherent in the Gospel of Luke. “The sayings scolding the rich people severely” in the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6), for instance, were said to be deleted from the revisionist Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). Agreeing with Kautsky's argument, Shen added a comment of his own: “How fierce this kind of resistance towards the propertied class was!”Footnote 24
In sum, Protestant intellectuals in Republican China applied the class theory of Marxian socialism to the interpretation of the Chinese Gospels. They searched for the Gospel texts of relevance to prove Jesus’ love for the proletariat as well as his criticism of the bourgeoisie, therefore reshaping a left-leaning religion with a left-leaning Jesus at its centre.
“Property Is Theft”? Jesus, Private Property, and Collective Property
Related to the previous issue of how Jesus perceived what was called the bourgeoisie of his time was Jesus’ attitude towards private property, a core subject in the theory of socialism. In the previous section, Protestant intellectuals tried to prove Jesus’ sympathy for the proletariat and opposition to the bourgeoisie. However, did Jesus, as Christians may further ask, oppose the institution of private property and support that of collective property? Chinese Protestant intellectuals did not agree upon this issue, as we shall see.
Some of them firmly held the belief that Jesus himself was opposed to the institution of private property. A Christian student of the National Peking University 國立北京大學 compared Christianity with socialism, observing that one of the commonalities between them would be “egalitarianism”. This commonality was embodied in the notion of “public ownership-ism 公有主義” on the part of Christianity and that of “collective property” on the part of socialism. One of the proof texts he paraphrased from the Chinese Gospels came from the teaching of Jesus in Luke 12:33: “Nimen yao bianmai yiqie suoyou de, fen gei qiongren 你們要變賣一切所有的，分給窮人” (Sell all that you have, and distribute it to the poor).Footnote 25
Yenching University Professor Wu Leichuan's (L. C. Wu 吳雷川, 1870–1944) work, Christianity and Chinese Culture (1936), illustrated another case of calling for the abolition of private property. Profoundly influenced by the Social Gospel protagonists such as Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963), Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), and Bishop Charles Gore (1853–1932),Footnote 26 Wu took the idea of “establishing the Kingdom of God on earth” as the kernel of Christianity. In one chapter titled “the Outline of Jesus’ Teachings”, Wu contended, the system of private property must be abolished to eliminate the hierarchical difference between the poor and the rich. A wealth of teachings of Jesus from the Chinese Bible, particularly the parables he used, was then quoted to make a point that Jesus himself opposed this system. One parable from Matthew 19 that “You qiancai de ren nan jin tianguo 有錢財的人難進天國” (a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven) was referred to by Wu as an example testifying to Jesus’ claim against “the propertied class”. Another parable in Luke 15 about “langzi huitou 浪子回頭” (the return of the prodigal son) was said, as far as Wu concerned, to imply the futility of private property, because it was due to the dependence of private property that the younger son became dissolute and displaced.Footnote 27
There were some other Protestant intellectuals, however, such as the Methodist Reverend Wang Zhaoxiang 汪兆翔 in Zhejiang Province, who, although acknowledging Jesus’ objection of “too much difference between the rich and the poor”, firmly believed that Jesus “did not oppose the private ownership system entirely”.Footnote 28 Qiu Daogen, the afore-mentioned student at Fukien Christian University, opined that Jesus “also approved the right and utility of the minimum private property”. This argument could be made, Qiu reasoned, through excavating both the teaching of Jesus and the status of Jesus’ disciples. First, the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:11) was quoted to confirm that “He [Jesus] taught people to pray for daily bread and the necessity of living”, which meant for Qiu Jesus’ being in favour of the retaining of private property. Second, Qiu pointed out that Jesus’ disciples still kept their properties even after following Jesus: Peter, for instance, “seemed to retain his house and appliance as before” (Qiu referred here to Mark 1:29 and John 21:3). Because “Jesus did not require some disciples of wealth to sell their properties”, some women could still use what they had to provide for Jesus and his other disciples (Luke 8:3), and Joseph of Arimathea was able to give his tomb to Jesus after Jesus’ death (Matthew 27:57).Footnote 29
In sum, some Protestant intellectuals in Republican China interpreted the Chinese Bible to argue for the abolition of private property and to support the establishment of the institution of collective property, while some others demonstrated that Jesus in the Chinese Gospels did not absolutely oppose private property.
“Paying Equal Attention to Mind and Matter”? Jesus and Materialism
If Chinese Protestant intellectuals disagreed over the abolition of private property, the divergences also arose over two of the following core propositions in the theory of socialism: (1) materialism that put an emphasis upon the material instead of the spiritual things; (2) class struggle or violent revolution as the means of achieving the ideal society. This section and the last one will discuss how Protestant intellectuals viewed these two issues.
Socialism was criticised by some Protestant intellectuals for its overemphasis on the material life and accordingly overlooking the spiritual life. Christianity, by contrast, was seen as giving consideration to both matter and spirit and in this regard surpassing socialism; as Methodist pastor Reverend Wang Zhaoxiang put it: “She [Christianity] has the merits of all kinds of -isms 主義 and is not unbalanced, she confirms that life is not entirely materialistic, and she is more comprehensive than any other socialism by dealing with both people's material life and spiritual life through agapeism 唯愛主義!”Footnote 30
Another similar case in point was provided by a Zhan Wei 詹渭 from Shanghai Baptist College 上海滬江大學. The primary conflict between communism and Christianity, as Zhan contended, was that “while communism is materialistic, Christianity pays equal attention to mind and matter”. Marxian communism is founded upon “the necessity of the economy”, Zhan continued: “Communist theorists take economy so seriously that they attribute the transformation and progress of social institutions to no other reason but the force of material economy”. In “the -ism of Christ 基督主義”, however, the importance of mind is no less than that of matter. Zhan's proof texts for this argument came from Matthew 4:4 (or Luke 4:4) and Matthew 6:25 and 6:33:
Jesus says that “bu dan kao shiwu 不單靠食物” ([Man shall not live] by bread alone); he does not say that “bu kao shiwu 不靠食物” ([Man shall not live] by bread). This saying henceforth reveals the significance of paying equal attention to mind and matter on the part of Christianity. Since a human being is an animal of flesh and tends to stress one-sidedly the material life by leaving the spiritual life behind, however, Jesus repeatedly admonishes us: “Nimen buyao wei shengming youlü, chi shenme, he shenme; wei shenti youlü, chuan shenme. Shengming bu sheng yu yinshi me? Shenti bu sheng yu yishang me?…. Nimen yao xian qiu ta de guo, he ta de yi… 你們不要為生命憂慮，吃甚麼，喝甚麼；為身體憂慮，穿甚麼。生命不勝於飲食麼？身體不勝於衣裳麼？……你們要先求他的國，和他的義……” (Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?…. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness…)Footnote 31
In Zhan's view, therefore, Jesus did not overlook the material life; it was out of the material-oriented tendency of human nature that Jesus laid more emphasis on the spiritual life.
These Chinese Gospel texts mentioned above were the ones frequently utilised by most Protestant intellectuals when it came to dealing with the materialistic element in socialism. Wang Zhixin, the editor of the National Christian Literature Association, provides another case in point. In his article titled “What Is Jesus?”, Wang claimed one of the identities of Jesus as a socialist. According to Wang, socialists in general “tend to focus on the material life but not on the spiritual life, even to the extent that they deny the existence of the spiritual life. Karl Marx's historical materialism, among others, takes the economic distribution as its centre so that it consequently evolves from distribution to robbery”. Jesus, Wang argued, was different. Jesus claimed that “Ren huozhe bushi dan kao bing, shi kao shangdi de yiqie hua 人活著不是單靠餅，是靠上帝的一切話” (Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God). In this saying, according to Wang, “bing 餅” (bread) referred to the material life, while “shangdi de yiqie hua 上帝的一切話” (every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God) to the spiritual life. Although the former included basic human needs of clothing, eating, and housing, the latter was far more critical.Footnote 32 In a similar vein, Wu Yaozong in 1936 also unpacked the dual character of this same saying: “Whereas shallow idealism understands the second half of this saying only, shallow materialism the first half only”.Footnote 33
There were also some other Protestant intellectuals pointing out that the emphasis upon material things in socialism affected the orientation of some pastors’ preaching. Reverend Wang Mengyuan 王孟淵 of Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, when staying in Nanjing in 1948, had heard across this city's churches three types of sermons, the third of which referred to sermons preached by socialist-influenced pastors to advocate for people's material needs: “Social gospel in social thought caters to the trend of socialism and faces up to the poverty-stricken and homeless masses. It requires [Christians], being motivated by the will of Jesus that “Zuozai yige zuixiao dixiong shenshang jiushi zuozai wo shenshang 做在一個最小弟兄身上就是做在我身上” (Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me), to start from the requests of the material life before cultivating the spiritual life”.Footnote 34 The Chinese Gospel text quoted here was from Jesus’ parable about separating the sheep from the goats in the final judgement (Matthew 25:31–46). The sheep and the goats referred to those people whom Jesus affirmed and denied, respectively. The sheep were acclaimed by Jesus, according to Reverend Wang, because they gave the hungry meat, the thirsty water, and the stranger accommodation, all of which corresponded to socialism's emphasis upon material elements. This story was later on appropriated by Wu Yaozong to demonstrate that “although denying Christ orally, the CCP practices love [taught by Jesus] in reality”.Footnote 35
Is it the case, however, that Christianity was “not unbalanced” or “more complete than any other socialism”, as Methodist Reverend Wang Zhaoxiang believed? The answer is “no” for some Protestant intellectuals. For instance, Reverend Zhu Youyu of Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui had criticised Christians for the latter's ignoring the material factor in human wellbeing. Alternatively, as Wang Jianyou (王建猷, 1899–1976) put it, those “fossil Christians” “have despised the material and economic life because they misunderstood the saying of ‘Ren huozhe, bushi dan kao bing 人活著，不是單靠餅’ (Man shall not live by bread alone)”.Footnote 36
In sum, Protestant intellectuals differed on the issue of materialism. Some claimed Jesus’ teaching in the Chinese Bible as superior to socialism since Jesus, unlike his socialist counterpart, paid equal attention to mind and matter. Some Chinese pastors in the 1940s were influenced by the contemporary prevalence of socialism. There were also some other Protestant intellectuals criticising Christianity for its failure to take the material and economic life seriously.
“Not to Give Peace on Earth, but rather Division”? Jesus and Class Struggle
Apart from the issue of materialism, the other of the two issues of socialist theory—class struggle as a necessary means of achieving the ideal society—was, for the most part, denied as legitimate by most Chinese Protestant intellectuals then. They either repudiated class struggle as incompatible with Christianity or interpreted it quite differently from the approach of secular socialists.
One fundamental conflict between communism and Christianity, as Zhan Wei of the Shanghai Baptist College put it in 1926, lay in the fact that the former preached class struggle whereas the latter resisted violence. On the one hand, in order to prove the consistency of communist insistence on class struggle, Zhan gave an example of Karl Marx's statement to the Communist League in 1850 that “the policy of compromise of the bourgeoisie democrats” should be opposed. On the other hand, by taking the passion of Jesus in the Chinese Bible as a paradigm, Zhan opined that Jesus did not approve class struggle and revolution but saved the individual and transformed the society through love and forgiveness: “Christians, once understanding the meaning of Christ dying on the cross, will know that Christ did not resist his enemies. He possessed a tremendous faith in the truth of forgiveness and universal love. This is the principle he has laid down for the world, not only for the salvation of the individual but also for the transformation of the society”.Footnote 37
Following this line of reasoning, Zhan also believed that communism and Christianity manifested their difference in the former's “retaliatory nature” of the “dictatorship of the working class” and the latter's “anti-retaliatory nature” of the “love of enemies”. The class struggle for Zhan referred to the proletarian retaliation towards the propertied class. After the success of a revolution, as Zhan saw it, the previously propertied class was deprived of their property, became the proletariat, and would finally unite themselves to retaliate in return. Instead of retaliation, Zhan continued, the fundamental principle of Jesus was love: even the enemies must be loved.Footnote 38
Similarly, Reverend Wu Jingxing of Zhangzhou City also stated the different reform methods in socialism and Christianity: the former took as a method “the coercion of force”, whereas the latter “the influence of virtue”. The “Golden Rule” of Jesus in the Chinese Bible—“Nimen yuanyi ren zenyang dai nimen, nimen ye yao zenyang dai ren 你們願意人怎樣待你們，你們也要怎樣待人” (Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them) (Matthew 7:12)—was then employed by Reverend Wu in order to attest that Jesus’ teaching about “persuading human being to help each other and seasoning through peace” was to be adopted “in case violent struggle between classes occurred and tragedy happened”.Footnote 39 A similar argument can also be found in pieces written by Reverend Wang Zhaoxiang and the editor Wang Zhixin.Footnote 40
There were other Protestant intellectuals, however, who adopted the term “class struggle” to describe some of Jesus’ standpoints, adding their new connotations to it (different from Marx's original usage). Wu Yaozong provides a case in point. In 1930, the pacifist Wu acknowledged that social classes would persist as long as inequality exists in society; equality had to be achieved through struggling. Yet he made a distinction between “peaceful struggle” and “violent struggle”: the advocators of the former included Jesus, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), and Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960); Marx, nevertheless, supported the latter.Footnote 41
Four years later, in one public speech at Canton 廣州, Wu claimed that most young people who cared for the issue of social reconstruction inclined themselves to “the trend of class struggle and violent revolution”. He was still willing to describe his idea of pacifism using the concepts of “revolution” and “class struggle”, but what Wu really meant by “revolution” and “class struggle” were a kind of “non-violent revolution”, “a revolution shedding one's own blood [‘instead of others’]”, and a kind of class struggle based on love (instead of hate).Footnote 42 In another article published in the same year discussing the relationship between Christianity and communism, Wu affirmed again that Christianity and communism shared the same “method of reconstructing society”: class struggle. Although the Bible did not include the exact terms such as “jieji douzheng 階級鬥爭” (class struggle), Wu believed that the teaching of Jesus implicitly contained “the meaning of class struggle”. He in this regard quoted two Gospel texts in the Chinese Bible as the evidence of his argument. One text came from the combination of Luke 6:20–21 and 6:24–25: “Pinqiong de ren he ji'e de ren shi you fu de, yinwei tamen jiang yao baozu; fuzu de ren he baozu de ren shi you huo de, yinwei tamen jiang yao ji'e 貧窮的人和飢餓的人是有福的，因為他們將要飽足；富足的人和飽足的人是有禍的，因為他們將要飢餓” (Blessed be ye poor and that hunger: for ye shall be filled…. But woe unto you that are rich and you that are full: for ye shall hunger). Another text was from Luke 12:51: “Wo lai, bushi jiao dishang taiping, naishi jiao ren fenzheng 我來，不是叫地上太平，乃是叫人紛爭” (I am come not to give peace on earth, but rather division). These sayings of Jesus, in Wu's view, “obviously indicate the direction of class struggle”. Having said that, however, Wu still needed to remind the reader that while the attitude of communism towards evil doers was hate, the attitude of Christianity was love.Footnote 43
In sum, Chinese Protestant intellectuals either believed that Jesus strictly countered the notion of class struggle, or claimed that while Jesus affirmed this notion, what it meant was quite different from the Marxist interpretation.
Conclusion
Seen from the perspective of the reception history of the Bible, this article has examined how Protestant intellectuals responded to socialistic anti-Christian discourses. By interpreting Chinese Gospel texts, they refashioned on Chinese soil a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. Christianity was accused of its close relationship with capitalism in the anti-Christian turmoil of the 1920s. Protestant intellectuals in Republican China, in response to the challenges of the socialist-influenced anti-Christian discourse, attempted to claim that Jesus in the Chinese Gospels not only stood as a proletarian but also identified with the proletariat and even criticised the bourgeoisie of his time. Some Protestant intellectuals explicitly proposed a Jesus who abolished the institution of private property, while others argued for the distinction between the agapeistic communism of Jesus and the bandit-like communism of Russia. Finally, Protestant intellectuals held differing opinions on how Jesus viewed the notions of materialism and class struggle. To conclude, both the reading of the Chinese Bible and the interaction of Chinese biblical texts with the socio-political milieus dramatically influenced the textual practice of Chinese Protestant communities in the Republican era.
