The Pigtail and Chopsticks Man: The Story of J. Hudson Taylor and The China Inland Mission
Jim Cromarty
Auburn, Massachusetts and Darlington, England: Evangelical Press (2002)
206 pages

In the second half of the nineteenth century a group of missionaries from England and the United States evangelized parts of inland China. Their goal was to bring the Christian gospel to parts of China not served by the Church Missionary Society and other major Protestant missionary societies, who generally remained stationed on the eastern coast. The leader of what came to be known as the "China Inland Mission" was J. Hudson Taylor. As a young man, Taylor dedicated himself to service as a missionary to China. He obtained training as a physician, primarily as a strategy for gaining acceptance from the Chinese in order to promote evangelization.

Distinctive about Hudson's missionary activities and those of his fellow workers is not only their goal of bringing the Christian gospel into the interior of China but their willingness to identify with the Chinese people by wearing Chinese clothing and, for the men, to wear a pigtail. In retrospect, one of the most lasting of Taylor's and the China Inland Mission's achievements was witnessing to the gospel among many of China's minority peoples, e.g. in China's southwest Yunan Province. Today, many of China's Christians are found among that country's minority peoples

Taylor and his fellow-workers, like most Christian missionaries in China during the second half of the nineteenth century, faced enormous challenges. The heat and unsanitary conditions brought sickness and death. Hudson and his wife, Maria, lost a child to illness. Maria also died of illness, while pregnant, in China.

Jim Cromarty, retired Presbyterian minister in Australia, tells the story of the China Inland Mission primarily by focusing on its leader, J. Hudson Taylor. Cromarty recounts in thirty, brief chapters facets of Taylor's upbringing, the development of his sense of call, his preparation for missionary work in England, and his many decades of work and family life in China itself.

Cromarty tells this story in simple English and concludes each chapter with three or four questions for discussion. Cromarty's Forward implies that he envisions a believing parent reading these chapters to his or her children and discussing the contents using the questions Cromarty provides. Cromarty's purpose is not to provide a critical or academically rigorous biography and history but rather to inspire and edify the reader in a manner that will seem to most college-educated American readers as uncritical and simplistic. Cromarty does not inform the reader about where he obtained his information about Hudson and the China Inland Mission. The author recounts many specific events and tells the readers of Hudson's inner thoughts and feelings. Perhaps Cromarty obtained this information from diaries Hudson kept or letters Hudson wrote that have been collected. Cromarty refers in passing to one book authored by Hudson himself, which may have been a source.

Cromarty refers often to the fear and hostility that many in government and the circles of the educated Chinese directed toward all Westerners, and to which the workers in China Inland Mission were particularly victim. Usually Cromarty states that the cause of this fear and hostility was the hatred of the Christian gospel from the unbelieving Chinese. At several points, e.g. on page 148, Cromarty does mention the opium trade forced on China by western nations, especially England. But Cromarty never acknowledges that Christian missionaries were implicated in anything wrong done by Europeans to the Chinese.

A more critical account of nineteenth-century Christian missionary work in China, including that of the China Inland Mission, would have to address at least two themes. One is the relation between Christian missionary work in the nineteenth century in China and the actions of European Nations toward China, especially England, France and the U.S., from where most foreign missionaries came. A second issue is the missionary theology which informed the missionary work of the nineteenth century, and particularly that of the leaders of the China Inland Mission.

Regarding the first, it would be fairer to the historical facts had Cromarty acknowledged that permission to enter the interior of the country and to receive whatever protection from hostile Chinese foreigners did receive was extorted from the Chinese by the threat of military attack from European nations. Cromarty, in his questions following his chapters does not ask the reader how an Englishman might react if the Chinese government used superior military capability to require the English population and government of England to receive and protect Chinese Buddhist missionaries in England.

Before Taylor began his missionary work in 1854 the British started the First Opium War (1839-1842) and forced upon the Chinese Government the Treaty of Nanjing. In this Treaty, England appropriated Hong Kong and required the Chinese government to open five cities for foreign trade, including the opium trade. In 1876, the British demanded, in the "Chefoo Convention," that the Chinese grant free access to any foreigner in any part of China. This was the England from which Taylor and most of his fellow-workers came.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, when Taylor and other missionaries were most active in China, France went to war against China in 1870; Russia went to war against China in 1874; and Japan went to war against China in 1894. After each of these wars China was forced to relinquish more and more of its sovereignty to European powers. In 1900 the Chinese, humiliated by the European powers for sixty years, instigated attacks against foreigners in China. This so-called Boxer Rebellion was crushed by an expeditionary force composed of Russians, French, British, German, American and Japanese soldiers, who massacred the Boxers and others, not involved in the "Rebellion." These western powers then forced on China the "Peace of Peking" which required China to pay an indemnity of 330 million dollars. Thus, the evangelizing work by European missionaries, like Taylor, occurred in the context of and was in part enabled by European, especially British, military aggression against the Chinese. Had Cromarty written a historically more accurate and critical account of the China Inland Mission, he would have had to make this link between European military aggression against China and Western Christian missionary work in China clearer.

A second issue in a critical account would be the theology that helped motivate and inform Taylor's evangelization efforts. Cromarty informs the reader often that Taylor believed that anyone who did not make an adult confession to Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior was doomed to suffer eternally in Hell. This conviction, as Cromarty reports the story, gave Taylor and other CIM missionaries the sense of urgency that enabled them to face their hardships. Cromarty reports that great Chinese hostility to China Inland Mission missionaries arose when one of the CIM missionaries insisted that Confucius, the sixth-century B.C. teacher most revered by Chinese people, was suffering in Hell and would stay there forever. So central was this conviction as a motivating factor to the culture of the CIM that one officer of the China Inland Mission felt he had to step down from his post when he began to doubt this doctrine.

Cromarty, in his end-of-chapter questions, does not ask the reader to reflect on the soundness of this teaching. Should Christians teach that the God and Father of Jesus Christ eternally punish anyone who does not in their earthly life confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior even if they died centuries before Jesus Christ lived? Indeed, should Christians teach that God condemns to hell anyone who does not confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior even if he lives after the Christian era, but has never heard the gospel? Taylor seems to have held both teachings. A more critical account of the story of the China Inland Mission would have to deal with these questions.

However, Cromarty's purpose is to inspire and edify his reader by describing Taylor as a Christian hero. He does so by highlighting the single-minded dedication Taylor and others brought to their missionary endeavors, especially Taylor's unwavering confidence that God would provide for the needs of the missionary work. He does so also by highlighting the sacrifices and losses--spouses, children, and health-which these missionaries accepted as the cost for the privilege of proclaiming Christ. He does so by highlighting the enormous physical, administrative, spiritual and personal burdens that Taylor assumed in his work. He does so by not describing in any detail objections some raised to Taylor's leadership, and by not addressing the historical and theological issues mentioned above.