Chinese Women and Christianity in the Late Imperial Era

Christianity has not gained a large number of adepts in China, if compared, for example, with Japan. But Christianity in China, in the late Imperial Era, had a number of particularities. Moreover, Christianity sometimes influenced Chinese women’s lives but only in conjunction with other cultural elements and only if we take into consideration the broader context of the situation. Other times it did not influence women’s lives at all. Thus, this paper will focus on the context in which Christianity found itself in China, the way it adapted to Chinese culture, and the significance it had for Chinese women. Specifically, this paper will show how Christianity helped women find a way to escape the existing gender relationships, and that the male authority and many communities were resistant to this trend.

Christianity in the early Late Imperial Era

Since Matteo Ricci obtained permission, in 1582, to penetrate into mainland China, Christianity saw a steady, and sometimes even astounding growth as a religious denomination in the secular state that was China.1 A year later, missionaries received for the first time the permission of residence.2 In the 1630s, the foreign Christian missions increased in number, to about 30-40, and the missionaries tried to attract especially the learned elite, which controlled the bureaucratic system on which China’s social and political structure was built.3 In this way, a top-down conversion was hoped for. Only a small minority of the literati actually converted to Christianity, while the majority was neutral.4 What particularly attracted the learned elite was the connection they saw between Christianity and Western science, and in approaching Christianity, they actually tried to gain as much practical knowledge as possible from the missionaries.5 Thus, in 1636, almost 38, 300 Catholics (among which 140 of the Emperor’s family members, along with some court women, could be counted) were to be found in China.6 This shows that the vast majority of the Chinese Christians were illiterate. What it does not show is the way Christianity was shaped by the Chinese people and the Chinese culture. Although there were some tensions, namely about some rites, such as the cult of ancestors7, Christian belief in sin and retribution fit with the general morality promoted by Confucianism, and anyhow, in order to be accepted by the Chinese authorities it had to prove being on the side of Confucianism.8 Thus, the newly arrived religion emphasized the moral side of it, showing it was complementary to and even a kind of monolithic Confucianism. What was also essential was that the practice of Christianity had to respect the norms of Chinese society, especially the separation of believers according to sex, age, and social background.9 In addition, preaching was done in Chinese and the printing culture, already well developed in China, influenced Christianity by spreading its dogmas but also furthering a variety of commentaries and views about it.10

Thus, we find Chinese Christian communities in cities and villages, organized around certain rituals, which gave meanings and a sense of salvation to people, but with their specific Chinese religiosity shaping the religion and the way of practicing it.11 Prominent among these was the existence of special congregations for women.12 In Hangzhou, as part of a Christian college, there was also the Church of the Savior, and this church had a separate chapel designed for women, which respected the strict gender segregation practiced in the society at large and especially in the literati elite.13 In Shandong, women chapels existed as well,14 or some alternatives for sex segregation were found, such as having two separate rows for men and women,15 or having two separate services at different times for men and women.16 And although certain aspects of the Christian religion did reinforce the sex segregation, such as the cult of the Virgin Mary,17 other aspects of Christianity came into conflict with Chinese traditions. One of the most conspicuous was the presence of male priests among the women’s congregations, which aroused suspicion18 and sometimes ended in foreign priests being accused of touching women during the administration of Communion.19 This, but also the presence of Chinese secret societies such as the Natural Sect, which drew heavily on Christianity and had members worshipping together, without respecting the customary separation by age and sex,20 brought persecution upon Christians, to the point where women’s chapels were specifically being targeted.21 In this view, Christianity was a sect, and a dangerous one for that matter, because of the taboos (e.g., both sexes worshipping together) being broken by Christians. Another reason for conflict was the fact that many of the Chinese women that converted to Christianity remained unmarried, mostly in order to preserve their own independence, away from any male control, which tended to aggravate the non-Christians.22 However, even then it was recognized that women were essential in transmitting rituals and traditions in the family,23 and this came down from the time of their practicing Confucianism.

The Influence of Catholicism on Chinese Women’s Lives: The Case of Jiangxi (1860-1900)

 As can be inferred from above, Christianity in China was viewed both as a heterodox sect, but also as a religion associated with the West24. Between 1807 and 1906, Catholicism missions and converts declines, due to the lack of foreign leadership and sect rebellions such as the White Lotus25, but after the Opium War, foreigners could again travel and Catholic missions increased in number. A nefarious consequence of this was the suppression of Chinese clergy and lay leadership.26 Another rebellion, the Taiping rebellion, heavily influenced by Christian thought, although refuted by foreign missionaries, helped to set Chinese authorities against Christians and to view them as agents of social disorder and sedition.27

Nevertheless, from 1860 to 1900, through the Sino-French Treaties (1858, 1860), missionaries obtained the right to purchase land and built on it,28 which helped Catholics organize local communities in a more cohesive way. But the peaceful competition for resources and influence in the local society threatened the literati and the gentry class. In addition, Christians built schools, clinics and intervened in lawsuits on the behalf of converts, and many Christians refused to pay the fee for the temple festivals. Thus, attacks ensued on churches, Chinese Christians, and foreign missions.29 Finally, between 1900 and 1914, after the Boxer Uprising (anti-foreign and anti-Christian), Chrisitanity flourished, although in the case of Catholicism, little development in terms of modern schools, medical works, publishing, and involvement in reforms and modernization of the higher education was done. Catholic communities tended to be more self-contained, although expanding, and most of the leadership positions were occupied by foreigners. Three important Catholic Universities did exist, one founded by a Chinese Jesuit priest, Ma Xiangbo.30

In this historical context comes the analysis of Christianity in the Jiangxi Province.31 The analysis is mainly focused on Catholic rural Christians, giving an insight not only in how Catholicism influenced the lives of women in the Late Imperial Era, but more specifically on how it influenced rural women’s lives. Women converts are usually mentioned in sources as following their husbands’ conversion. Sometimes even concubines are mentioned to follow this practice, but it is never mentioned how the Church dealt with these cases, since Christianity allows only monogamy.32 Unfortunately, there is little data as to how many rural women actually converted, because many times they would be registered upon the conversion of their husbands, and if they converted independently from them, many times they were omitted from the Church registries. This lack of good organization was a rather pervasive trait of Catholicism in China. Notwithstanding this, women were seen favorably by priests since they were affecting their families and neighbors, and bringing them to the faith. Others were even “consecrated virgins,” who did not marry, but lived with their parents, due to a lack of convents in the area. Abandoned and orphan girls, raised by the Church, were supposed to marry non-Christians and bring them to faith, and if they could not persuade their husbands, most at least baptized their children.33 This practice sometimes got out of hand, when in the XIX century, poor Catholic families sold over 200 girls to non-Catholic families for marriage.

Thus, Catholicism in rural China brought about local conflicts but was also accommodated. There were various reasons for these conflicts: financial34, sacrileges such as moving a missionary’s coffin35, but the most prominent were those involving women. The society did not look with sympathy to the fact that men and women worshiped together in churches, since even in this later stage of the Imperial Era, the norm of sex segregation was still valid.36 Also, women were somewhat empowered because they could invoke religion and go to church, where many times they were taking care of the orphans, and if they were dissatisfied with their own marriage they could complain about it. For example, a woman with the last name Zhang, married Deng, but the latter took a concubine (neé Rao) and Zhang complained about it.37

The cases of widowed women emphasize the conflicts and the fact that the religion invoked sometimes made no difference when it came to the moral standards and traditions of local society. For example when the widow Wu hired and had an illicit affair with Zhang, who was Catholic, she still had to marry him so to “save face” and was forced to give her property deed to her son in order to keep it away from her new husband.38 Also, in a lineage with both Catholics and non-Catholics, when two of the members committed adultery and were found out, they had to suffer the consequences of their action, being killed when they refused to come before the law.39 Moreover, when in the Huang lineage, a young widow was forced to remarry by her in-laws, Catholicism did not seem to make much difference, but the lineage connections and women’s chastity were very important. Other problems, such as the refusal to pay temple fees and women’s independence are clear in the example of the four women (probably widows, since Father Tamet-the one who relates about them-does not mention their husbands) who set up a retail business. When they refused to pay the fee for the temple’s festival, their store was set on fire and many other stores burnt because of it. When one of the widows complained, the magistrate arrested and beat the Catholics, who still would not pay, until the French minister intervened and pointed out that Catholics should not be forced to pay for local deities’ festivities.40 These individual cases illustrate the accidental role Christianity (and specifically Catholicism) played in Chinese women’s lives. They do not seem to have been affected much because they pertained to this denomination, and if the men around them were the Christians-it still did not seem to make a difference. What seemed of crucial importance were the old traditions and customs. The Catholic Church, in its turn, did not seem to create a special space or special opportunities for women. If any such opportunities appeared, they were mostly a by-product of the regular activities of the Church.

A good example is the case of Chinese orphan girls. Catholics would educate them in the faith, and used the relationship between orphans and their wet nurses to attract the latter into converting and permitted adoptions only after conversion. When the girls would become women, the priests would agree to marry them off to men who were new Catholic converts and encouraged marriages with men from the surrounding area. In this way, they created a local Catholic community.41 Thus, by building schools and taking care of orphans, Catholics did attract the admiration of the Chinese society. Also, they created employment opportunities, and some of these jobs were occupied by women, who in this way could get out of the house without being criticized for it (e.g., women working as wet nurses).42 Female catechumens gained in dignity when becoming Christian because they achieved a level of self-esteem and self-confidence. Chinese Catholic women were also the ones to contribute to the increase in the number of the conversions, by converting their husbands and children. They also could escape from the household duties, achieve education, and refine their devotional practices by participating in lay retreats. Another way of gaining a measure of independence, women would become “consecrated virgins,” and live communally, with other women, away from the male control they would have experienced had they married.43 Some of them (e.g. the consecrated virgins in Sichuan) did evangelization work, while others organized themselves in “sworn sisterhoods,” through which they could gain some financial independence and mobility, and played an important role in churches, as well. By 1900 there were about 500 Chinese sisters in missionary orders and between 3,000 and 4,000 lay women evangelizing in the countryside.44

This shows that, although Chinese women were sometimes empowered through conversion to Catholicism, this empowerment was a by-product of the Church’s extensive conversion policies. The primary goal of the Church was to attract as many people as possible to the faith, and taking care of the orphans, or providing some educational opportunities were ideal ways to attract the respect and admiration of the community, and thus more converts. The fact that Chinese women actually were empowered and gained a level of independence that they could not reach previously was only a consequence of these actions of the Church. Of course, Christianity did not always bring advantages. Chinese men usually treated women much like before: selling girls in marriage, getting concubines, considering them property and sexual objects, good at producing male heirs. Even after they converted, Chinese men continued this pattern of behavior, and priests had a hard time eliminating these beliefs. The priests also knew that the behavior of Christians would influence non-Christians in converting or at least in the way they looked upon this foreign religion. In some cases, they had to mediate these conflicts. An example is the Catholic man who married a non-Catholic woman who was already married, and the priest recognized the marriage between the Catholic and the woman and baptized her, when her first husband refused to convert.45