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Church and State: the International Missionary Council and Affiliates in Nationalist China

Sun, June 26, 8:30 to 10:20am, Shikokan (SK), Floor: 1F, 107

Abstract

The World Wars did considerable damage to ideas of Western moral superiority in China and the West. Tugs between democracy and fascism on the world arena led members of the international Christian community to question how to construct moral relationships between nations. In China, leaders of the National Christian Council of China (NCC) looked to the International Missionary Council for leadership, and sought involvement with their worldwide community through international church-led discussions and conferences. Meanwhile, NCC churches were embroiled in negotiating their relationship with the expanding Nationalist state.

This paper will look at institutional changes made in the NCC in the late 1930s in response to trends and changes within the International Christian Council, and will thus reveal one aspect of the interplay between international religious and intellectual concerns on the one hand, and administration of on-the-ground public services on the other. Seeking to trace trends and discussions through transnational organizations, this paper will consider certain Christian public service efforts in China as connected to worldwide Christian governing organizations. In a time when church organizations in China were fighting to continue to provide public services, and the growing state was seeking to exercise control over those services, a view of worldwide church institutions is important in that it expands our understanding of the influences of transnational communities and organizations in China. The church-affiliated service organizations that coordinated efforts through the NCC were certainly some of many players that auditioned, albeit for bit parts, on the stage of Chinese governance.

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