The Gospel of intellectuality: indoctrinating Yenching Educational Missionaries in the Progressive Era

Abstract

Scholars since Jessie Lutz and John Fairbank have investigated American Christian experiments in Asia from the perspectives of cultural imperialism and ideological accommodation in transnational interactions, yet often overlooked in the historiography is the question of missionary intentions, of what American student volunteers aimed to bring and why they came to the Far East to teach. A complement to current scholarly debates, this paper argues that American educational missionaries during the Progressive Era were unconsciously indoctrinated into a belief in disseminating the gospel of intellectuality abroad. Through a case study of Yenching University, this paper attempts to sketch out the rarely known formative years of prospective missionaries via an “ideas in context” approach. By mapping a network of transatlantic cultural and theological exchange at the turn of the twentieth century, this research unravels how America’s Third Great Awakening was intertwined with the rise of liberalism and evolutionary theory in Europe. This study thus contributes to our understanding of secularization and modernity, a key episode in European intellectual development. By comparing the historical accounts of Student Volunteer Movement in the United States with China Inland Mission founded by British missionaries, this paper further examines the distinctive shift from religious salvation to social and intellectual salvation in American Protestant discourses that paved the way for educational missionaries’ subsequent participation in Chinese national salvation. Additionally, the paper highlights the role of Rockefeller Foundation in promoting secularism among prospective Yenching educational missionaries and suggests how capitalist expansion at home informed missionary work overseas.