“His Dominion” and the “Yellow Peril”

Jiwu Wang

Description

A history of Chinese immigrants encounter with Canadian Protestant missionaries, “His Dominion” and the “Yellow Peril”: Protestant Missions to Chinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859-1967, analyzes the evangelizing activities of missionaries and the role of religion in helping Chinese immigrants affirm their ethnic identity in a climate of cultural conflict.

Jiwu Wang argues that, by working toward a vision of Canada that espoused Anglo-Saxon Protestant values, missionaries inevitably reinforced popular cultural stereotypes about the Chinese and widened the gap between Chinese and Canadian communities. Those immigrants who did embrace the Christian faith felt isolated from their community and their old way of life, but they were still not accepted by mainstream society. Although the missionaries’ goal was to assimilate the Chinese into Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, it was Chinese religion and cultural values that helped the immigrants maintain their identity and served to protect them from the intrusion of the Protestant missions.

Wang documents the methods used by the missionaries and the responses from the Chinese community, noting the shift in approach that took place in the 1920s, when the clergy began to preach respect for Chinese ways and sought to welcome them into Protestant-Canadian life. Although in the early days of the missions, Chinese Canadians rejected the evangelizing to take what education they could from the missionaries, as time went on and prejudice lessened, they embraced the Christian faith as a way to gain acceptance as Canadians.

Sujets

• Religión
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 25 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554588152
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

His Dominion and the Yellow Peril
Editions SR / ditions SR
Editions SR/ ditions SR is a general series of books in the study of religion, encompassing the fields of study of the constituent societies of the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/Corporation canadienne des sciences religieuses. These societies are: Canadian Society of Biblical Studies/Soci t canadienne des tudes bibliques; Canadian Society of Church Historic Studies/Association canadienne des tudes patristiques; Canadian Society for Study of Religion/Soci t canadienne pour l tude de la religion.
G ENERAL E DITORS : Theodore de Bruyn, Mary Ann Beavis, and Joanne McWilliams
Editions SR Volume 31
His Dominion and the Yellow Peril
Protestant Missions to Chinese Immigrants in Canada 1859-1967
Jiwu Wang
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wang, Jiwu, 1956-
His Dominion and the Yellow Peril : protestant missions to Chinese immigrants in Canada, 1859-1967 / Jiwu Wang. (Editions SR; v. 31)
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-88920-485-0 ISBN-10: 0-88920-485-3
1. Chinese-Missions-Canada-History. 2. Protestant churches-Missions-Canada-History. 3. Chinese-Canada-Religion-History. I. Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion II. Title. III. Series.
BV2810.W35 2006 266 .022 089951071 C2006-901363-2
2006 Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/ Corporation Canadianne des Sciences Religieuses and Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Cover image: The Heathen Chinee [ sic ] in British Columbia, from Canadian Illustrated News , April 26, 1879. JohnVerelst/Library and Archives Canada/C-092414.
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.

Printed in Canada
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For my parents
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Tables
Introduction
Chapter One Chinese Immigrants and Their Lives in Canada
Chapter Two Individual Missionary Efforts to Reach Chinese Immigrants in Canada since 1859
Chapter Three Establishment of the Missions: The Organized Work among the Chinese from 1885 to 1923
Chapter Four Crisis and Development: Missions from 1923 to 1967
Chapter Five Response to Chinese Immigrants and the Motives and Methods of the Protestant Missions
Chapter Six Chinese Response to the Protestant Missions
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
I would like to take this opportunity to thank many archivists at the United Church Archives, the United Church of Canada B.C. Conference Archives, the Archives of the Anglican Provincial Synod of B.C. and Yukon, and Library and Archives Canada, whose generous assistance facilitated my research.
Thanks are due to Theodore de Bruyn of Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion for his encouragement and invaluable suggestions throughout the manuscript s review, to three helpful reviewers, and to the Journal of Ecclesiastical History and the Journal of Canadian Ethnic Studies for permission to include material that appears in chapters 4 and 6 . I am also grateful to Evan McIntyre for his proofreading and Ian MacKenzie for his meticulous copy editing of the manuscript.
I would like to add a special word of thanks to my dear friends Tim Fletcher, Kim Fletcher, and their three children, who are the first friends I made in Canada. Their hospitality and kindness helped through those lonely days when I first came to Canada.
My greatest debts are to Professor Robert Choquette, who supervised this project in its first incarnation as a doctoral dissertation, and whose unequalled knowledge, sympathy, and patience have significantly improved the value of this study. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to study with him over the years of my doctoral studies in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
My wife, Yahong Sui, gave me the support that is beyond measure and price, for which my simple thanks seem most inadequate recompense. This book is dedicated to my parents, who first taught me to write and instilled in me a sturdy sense of purpose that sustained me during the long and often difficult writing process.
List of Tables
Table 1.1 Numerical and Percentage Distribution of Chinese Population for Canada, 1871-1967
Table 1.2 Numerical Distribution of Chinese Population by Provinces, 1881-1961
Table 1.3 Chinese Immigrants Admitted to Canada by Intended Occupation, 1950-1959
Table 1.4 Chinese Immigrants Admitted to Canada by Intended Occupation, 1960-1967
Table 1.5 Percentage Distribution of Chinese Population in Canada by Religious Affiliation, 1901-1941
Table 3.1 Chinese Membership in Major Protestant Churches
Table 4.1 Chinese Population in Canada by Religious Denominations for Provinces, 1931
Table 4.2 Chinese Population in Canada by Religious Denominations for Provinces, 1941
Table 4.3 Geographical Distribution of Chinese Population by Major Cities, 1881-1961
Table 4.4 Percentage Distribution of the Chinese Population by Major Canadian Religious Denominations, 1931-1961
Table 6.1 Percentage Distribution of Chinese Population in Selected Provinces by Religious Denominations in 1931
Introduction
Chinese were among the earliest non-white immigrants to enter Canada. The first influx of Chinese immigrants occurred in British Columbia between 1858 and 1868, when they were attracted to Canada by the opening of the Cariboo goldfields. In the early 1880s, the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway brought more immigrants from China to the province. Following this second wave of mass immigration, Chinese immigrants began to move east and settled in most provinces across the country. The Chinese population in Canada continued to grow steadily in the following years, except between 1920 and 1940 when Chinese immigration to Canada was forbidden in the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923.
Most Chinese brought their traditional religions with them when they immigrated to Canada. However, they soon became the targets of Christian missions. Protestant missionaries, mainly those from the Methodist Church of Canada, began their efforts to evangelize Chinese immigrants in the late 1850s. In 1885, the Methodist Church launched the first organized mission to Chinese immigrants in Victoria, British Columbia. A few years later, the Presbyterian Church also started its organized missionary work among the Chinese in Montreal, Toronto, and Victoria. Following these pioneering missionary activities, other Protestant denominations and organizations, such as the Anglicans, Baptists, and YMCA , entered the field of missions to Chinese immigrants. The Protestant endeavour to convert the Chinese bore considerable fruit in the following years. According to the Census of Canada in 1961, over half of the 58,197 Chinese immigrants in Canada had become affiliated with a Canadian Protestant denomination.
The mission to Chinese immigrants was an extraordinary experience for the Canadian Protestant churches. While anti-Chinese sentiment was broadly shared among other Anglo-Canadians, the Protestant clergy-mainly those from Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican churches-challenged this public hostility. They not only viewed the Chinese more favourably than most other Canadians, but also began to work directly among Chinese immigrants. Yet, like many of their contemporaries, most Protestant clergy were influenced by unflattering Chinese stereotypes. They believed that the presence of the Chinese in Canada was a threat to the realization of their vision of Canada as his dominion -an evangelical zeal and earnestness to make Canada white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. 1 They saw their missionary work among Chinese as part of a campaign to defeat the Yellow Peril. Thus, contradictions were always apparent in the thought and missionary activities of the Protestant clergy. On the one hand, they shared anti-Chinese sentiment with other Anglo-Canadians; on the other, their sense of Christian humanitarianism and enthusiasm for evangelizing the world significantly influenced their response to the Chinese immigrants in Canada. Instead of excluding the Chinese from the country, the Protestant clergy attempted to convert them to Christianity and strove to bring them into Canadian society.
Notes to Introduction begin on page 151
Since most of the Protestant clergy were preoccupied by ethnocultural prejudices when they evangelized Chinese immigrants, some of their work isolated the Chinese from