Abstract
Who would want to retire to Shanxi, Taiyuan? A northern industrial city southwest of Beijing in the People’s Republic of China, Taiyuan is hardly an ideal location for a former business leader and missionary. The air quality due to pollution and sandstorms is bad. In 1900, in front of the Provincial Governor, 77 unarmed missionaries were martyred during the Boxer Rebellion in China. Yet, a Norwegian by the name of Edvard P. Torjesen, PhD, lived out his remaining years in this city on the great plain west of the Taihong Mountains. Why? He clearly had a passion for China.
A Newsweek article in June 2008 describes how the Torjesen family grew attached to China. No doubt, they were influenced by a Scandinavian (Swedish) American by the name of Frederik Franson (Torjesen wrote his biography: Frederik Franson: A Model for Worldwide Evangelism). Ingrid Eskelt, in one of the many fascinating essays in this edited volume called A Passion for China—“Saving Souls and the Return of the Lord: Frederik Franson’s Role in Interesting People for China Mission among Norwegian Free Church Christians at the Turn of the Former Century”—describes how Franson created a “zealous passion and motivation for missionary work” (p. 21) amongst the Mission Covenant Church in Norway.
The Mission Covenant Church in Norway as a “free” church is not the only group that is presented, however. After a helpful introduction to the landscape with a piece by Frode Steen entitled “Norwegian Mission Agencies in China before 1949: An Overview,” there are descriptions of the work of the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Norway (by Nora Margaret Bratveit Gimse) and the Norwegian Missionary Society (one by Gustav Steensland and another by Thor Strandenaes). And, then, particularly fascinating as examples of contextualization are the essays dealing with “a Norwegian missionary who compiled a Chinese hymn book “ (p. 41) by Erik Kjebekk, a Chinese Lutheran Liturgy by Arne Redse (p. 131), and “the beginnings of Buddhist–Christian Dialogue” by Notte R. Thelle. Two individuals are the focus of study: Sverre-Holth—Missionary and Sinologist by Ole Bjorn Rongen; and, Marie Monsen by Lisbeth Mikaelsson.
The passion for China evidenced in this collection of essays by Norwegian scholars is surpassed only by the devotion and sacrifice of the missionaries to China of which they write. I met the Norwegian Edvard Torjesen in Shanxi in April 2008. His strong love of China was still present even as he was losing his faculties. A decade before our meeting the US Congregational record for June 10, 1997, notes that the Committee on Finance held meetings on issues with regard to the Administration’s renewal of the Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) trade status with China, receiving testimony from Madeleine K. Albright, Secretary of State and Edvard P. Torjesen. He, like the many Norwegians described in A Passion for China, clearly consider China a most favored nation.