The Legacy of Irma Highbaugh

Highbaugh’s background and leadership in China’s Christian home movement

Highbaugh was born in Hammond, Illinois, on January 29, 1891. Her Kentucky-born parents, George and Phoebe, had married in Indiana in 1888. Their first child, Charles, was born the same year. Daughter Irma came in 1891; Swan, another son, came along in 1892. ³ The family moved to Coffeyville, Kansas, when Irma was fifteen years old. A tall brunette, with spirit and dreams, Irma finished high school and then headed off to Cottey College (Nevada, KS). ⁴ Cottey, a woman’s college founded in 1884, was (and continues to be) proud of its identity as “the only nonsectarian college owned and supported by women.” ⁵ It was the perfect place to nurture a woman whose own life would demonstrate such a commitment to women and education.

After Cottey, Highbaugh went to Southwestern College (Winfield, KS) for a year and then took her first job back in Coffeyville as a middle school teacher. It must have been rough, or at least it must have ignited her desire for more education, for she next enrolled in Baker University (Baldwin City, KS) in 1914. She then taught high school in Alma, Kansas, for two years. During this time, Highbaugh attended First Methodist Church with her family. She was captain of the Gospel team and an officer with the YWCA, taught Sunday school, and belonged to the Epworth League, a Methodist youth organization. Highbaugh had a vibrant faith and soon decided to direct her passion to foreign missions. She applied to be a missionary with the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was accepted, and in November 1917 she sailed for Changli, North China, to teach at a woman’s training school. She was twenty-six years old.

One year after her thirtieth birthday, Highbaugh attended the inaugural meeting of the National Christian Council of China (NCC). It was likely this event that ignited her lifelong dedication to the missiology of the Christian home. Delegates at the NCC conference in 1922 believed that Christian homes were a necessary precursor to establishing a truly self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting church. ⁶ They called for the development of family life literature, the implementation of “Home Sunday,” and maternal training in “child nurture, hygiene, [and] the art of home-making.” ⁷ The language of hygiene suggests that the Anglo-American constituency at the conference was large and vocal, seeking to apply their own countries’ social hygiene movements to their missionary context. ⁸ However, the idea of eliciting social change by starting with the home was also an element of early twentieth-century Chinese reform. ⁹ Throughout the rest of the 1920s and into the 1940s, the NCC pursued the Christianization of the home with great energy.

Right after the NCC conference Highbaugh went home on furlough, where she obtained a master’s in religious education degree from Boston University. When she returned to China, she took a post at a rural school in Changli, where she worked into the 1930s. During this time, she also joined the newly formed Christian Home Committee of the NCC. She helped promote the annual Christian Home Week by distributing “material for lectures and discussions, songs, plays and pageants, posters, pictures and slogans” to participating churches and schools in her region. ¹⁰

In 1931 Highbaugh and two other members of the Christian Home Committee, Ortha M. Lane and Liu I. Hsin, prepared an outline entitled “Standards for Christian Homes,” which eventually became a five-book series to be used in small-group settings. ¹¹ Each book contained several lessons designed to generate discussion about biblical and Chinese attitudes toward marriage and parenthood. Some lessons offered reflections on how to Christianize Chinese reverence for ancestors and asked participants to think about how they could modify traditional ceremonies so as to accommodate their Christian faith. ¹² Other lessons issued a more direct challenge to Chinese culture. For example, the lesson titled “Is the Purpose of a Christian Home to Bear Sons?” presented a case study of a man whose relatives were urging him to take a second wife because his current wife had not borne him any sons. The study ended with Mr. Wu telling his friends and relatives, “This is a new era and my daughters shall be my sons. They shall inherit my property.” ¹³

In the late 1930s Highbaugh developed Christian home training programs in rural North China that included literacy, nutrition, handicrafts, premarital counseling, maternity welfare, parenting, and homemaking. ¹⁴ The aim of these programs was to “help rural families to improve their daily living and to enable them to become Christian in their attitudes and relationships.” ¹⁵ In 1939 Highbaugh helped Ginling Women’s College set up a rural service center in Sichuan at Renshou (Jenshow). Wu Yifang, the president of Ginling and the new chair of the NCC, was pleased to have secured Highbaugh’s services. ¹⁶ Wu would later repudiate both her Christianity and the kind of social service work promoted by Highbaugh. During the 1930s and 1940s, however, the two were united in believing that the “uplift” of Chinese women would happen through rural education focused on improving domestic life. It was a vision that was supported at the highest levels of government. “After 1934 chairman of the National Military Council Chiang Kaishek and his wife appealed to Christian missionaries to plan rural restoration projects in areas that had been cleared of Communist bases. Rural social service became an important goal that aligned Nationalist government and Christian interests.” ¹⁷

During the 1940s Highbaugh and other members of the Christian Home Committee focused on West China. Prior to initiating any Christian home programs, however, Highbaugh and her colleages traveled throughout the region and spoke with families, gathering information about their needs. They focused on two communities in Kien Yang—Liu Chia Ho and Ling Chia Hua Yuan—where families told them it would be nice to have some kind of childcare available while they worked all day in the fields. ¹⁸ Thus Highbaugh began organizing what she called Nursery Play Groups. She supervised the children in “a borrowed place,” such as a family home or shop, and asked that parents provide food for their children. ¹⁹ She invited young people from her literacy classes to serve as teachers for the play groups. She invited parents to observe the play groups and even attend lectures held in the evenings, where they could learn about child development, nutrition, hygiene, and health. ²⁰

Highbaugh’s Kien Yang Service Station developed many other programs, including a three-day Christian home exhibition. ²¹ For this event, Highbaugh recruited college students to help her develop exhibits about children’s clothing, interior decorating, Christianity, child nutrition, toys and games, and world events. The students also prepared songs and skits. In the end, some four thousand people (from a city of twenty thousand) came to view the exhibits. It was so successful that the group presented the exhibition five miles west in Kang Chia Ho and then five miles north in Wu Chia Hua Yuan. ²²

Highbaugh’s leadership in the ecumenical Christian home movement

In 1943 deteriorating health forced Highbaugh to return to the United States, where she began a doctoral program in the College of Home Economics at Cornell University. ²³ Soon after completing her doctorate in 1946, Highbaugh published Source Book on Home and Family Life, which had two primary aims: (1) to present “a philosophy of home and family life work” and (2) to share “programs for putting into effect such work.” ²⁴ The next year, Highbaugh published Family Life in West China, a revision of her Cornell doctoral thesis. Both texts highlighted her belief that the best strategy for effecting positive social change was to focus on the family.

Highbaugh’s Source Book filled a real need in the field. ²⁵ Ever since the discussion about the Christian home at the meeting of the IMC in Tambaram, India, in 1938, there had been a general consensus in the ecumenical missionary community that cultivation of Christian homes should be an important component of the missionary enterprise. At Tambaram, both the NCC of China and North American missionary women had given reports on the topic, and the IMC had appointed a committee for continuing to develop programs relating to the Christian home. ²⁶ Because of World War II, the committee did not meet until 1943, at which point it decided to create a “manual on the Home.” ²⁷ Although the committee discussed many people who might be qualified to write such a manual, it seems that no one was immediately selected, and the project did not get off the ground. Whether Highbaugh was aware of this history when she prepared her Source Book on Home and Family Life in 1947 is not clear. What is clear is that her Source Book constituted a major contribution to the ecumenical Christian home movement. People around the world obtained copies of it and used it to develop Christian home work in their various regions. ²⁸

In 1949 Highbaugh traveled to Bangkok to attend a meeting of the East Asia Christian Council. She was then serving as secretary of the Christian Home Committee of the NCC of China, a position she had assumed upon returning to China after finishing her doctorate. ²⁹ Delegates at Bangkok shared Highbaugh’s passion for the Christian home and asked her to visit their countries to help develop Christian home programs. Knowing that the Communist government in China made her own future there uncertain, it seemed to Highbaugh a good suggestion.

Highbaugh discussed her situation with the IMC’s general secretary, Charles W. Ranson, who invited her to partner with the IMC and to contact fellow IMC secretary Glora Wysner to work out the details. Thus in 1950 Highbaugh became the IMC field representative for Home and Family Life. The IMC handled negotiations for Highbaugh’s loan from the NCC of China to various Christian councils in Asia and covered her travel expenses. Highbaugh’s salary continued to be paid by the Methodist Women’s Board of Foreign Missions. ³⁰

Throughout the next decade, Highbaugh traveled throughout Asia to help establish and expand Christian home movements. ³¹ Highbaugh was clear that the IMC should send her to help with developing family life programs only if the request for help came from indigenous Christians, rather than missionaries. She also felt that her efforts would be worthwhile only if she was allowed to stay in a particular region for a period of at least three to six months. ³²

Highbaugh’s experience organizing a national family life institute in Japan in 1950 informed her next book, We Grow in the Family, which she wrote as a guide for developing family life institutes. The book contained descriptions of “games, songs, Bible passages, and reference materials.” She included outlines for use with Christian couples’ groups, youth groups, older singles, Sunday school classes, and premarital counseling. ³³ Family life institutes, she argued, could help families respond to the disruptions caused by war and industrialization in a Christlike manner and could even draw new people to the faith.

Before continuing her tour of Asia, Highbaugh went to England to generate support for her Christian home work and to Germany to attend the 1952 meeting of the IMC in Willingen. In England she gave speeches to some three hundred students and missionaries affiliated with the Church Missionary Society, the Methodist Women’s Missionary Society, and Selly Oak College, and she had forty-two private interviews with various leaders of churches, missionary societies, and colleges. She was absolutely tireless in her promotion of family life training for missionaries headed to the field. She insisted that family life training was just as important for men as for women. Her frustration with those who felt otherwise was evident in her report: “The old attitude of Western men [is] everywhere met. The problem of family life is a woman’s problem. As I talked with men, a great many of them were eager that their women secretaries should hear this good news. Too few of them recognized that husbands or fathers on the mission field would need trained men missionaries to help them on achieving Christian family life.” ³⁴ At least at Willingen she had the satisfacation of hearing male delegates from New Zealand, Jamaica, Mexico, India, Burma, Brazil, and Iran express just as much passion for “Christianizing the family” as she herself had. While in Willingen, she also began to strategize with representatives from Burma about how to proceed with the family life work in that country.

Highbaugh had quite an impact on the development of family life work in Burma. She headed there right after Willingen and stayed there for an entire year. Prior to her visit, a Christian Home Committee had been established, and goals had been developed. Highbaugh promoted the fledgling Burmese Christian home movement at various denominational meetings. Although she was pleased to speak at these meetings, she also believed that “few results [come] from the large meetings.” Thus, she dedicated most of her time to “the slow leadership training” of some 950 people who met in small groups throughout the year. ³⁵ One of the most significant training institutes took place at Mandalay for four weeks in the spring of 1953. The Mandalay Institute brought together “the most largely representative group of Burmans yet encountered in the family life work.” ³⁶ Parents and youth were in attendance, and fruitful conversation about some of the issues faced by Burmese families ensued. For example, Highbaugh reported that Burmese parents realized it was beneficial to take time to eat together as a family in order to build family unity and to talk to their kids about sex, rather than letting kids gather the information from their peers. ³⁷ As her time in Burma was drawing to a close, Highbaugh was pleased that a Mrs. Ha Maung Chain had volunteered “to chair the Christian Home Week Festival” and that several other leaders from various denominations had become key proponents of the Christian home movement. ³⁸

In the years to come, Highbaugh visited the Philippines, Malaya, Korea, Ceylon, and Indonesia, working with the NCCs in each country to further the Christian home work. In each country, she saw a need for trained leaders in the area of Christian family life, so she began planning a regional family life training seminar. With the help of other members of the IMC and representatives from NCCs throughout Asia, Highbaugh organized a two-week seminar that was held in Manila in 1954 in conjunction with the Philippine Federation of Christian Churches. Churches from throughout Asia sent 120 delegates to attend. The primary goal of the seminar was to prepare delegates “to organize leadership training institutes and to act as teachers in training leaders of Christian family life.” ³⁹ Delegates did leave feeling better equipped, but they also felt that the program had been too rushed and there had not been adequate time for critical reflection. Thus, Highbaugh began planning a more intensive program, which eventually took place in Chiengmai, Thailand, for three months in 1958. The 20 delegates (of whom 11 were men) came from Burma, Ceylon, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. ⁴⁰

Highbaugh’s legacy

Irma Highbaugh played a key role in the development of mid-twentieth-century Christian home movements throughout Asia. During her thirty years of involvement with China’s Christian home movement, Highbaugh developed Christian home literature, publicized Christian Home Week, organized Christian home plays, exhibitions, and workshops, and founded schools and nursery groups to train rural families in maternity welfare, parenting, premarital counseling, and homemaking. ⁴¹ She drew on this experience in her work throughout Asia. By the end of the 1950s, “Christian Home committees [were] active in the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Burma, Malaya, Thailand, Indonesia, [and] Ceylon.” ⁴² People from these committees were leading Christian home workshops and conferences, holding annual Christian Home Week celebrations, and developing Christian home literature.

Prior to Highbaugh’s work for the IMC, various departments of the IMC had addressed Christian home life, but no department had given it sustained, deliberate attention. Highbaugh’s work in Asia made the Christian home a missiological priority of the IMC. Her publications and her presence at international missionary conferences stoked the interest in Christian home missiology, which had been building since the 1920s. In 1955 Agricultural Missions Inc. recognized the significance of Highbaugh’s books, articles, and advocacy for the Christian home by giving her its Certificate of Distinguished Service award. ⁴³

When Highbaugh retired in 1957, she left a palpable hole in the structure of the IMC. David and Vera Mace, a British couple who had been active in family life work since the 1930s, were invited to take Highbaugh’s place as IMC field representatives for Home and Family Life. ⁴⁴ The Maces turned their attention to Africa and the Caribbean, working with national and regional Christian councils to develop family life conferences and literature. ⁴⁵ Thus, one could argue that during the 1960s, Highbaugh’s legacy, her commitment to and ideas about the Christian home, extended beyond Asia into Africa and the Caribbean.

Highbaugh not only pushed the Christian home to the center of missiological attention but also put her stamp on the shape of IMC-sponsored Christian home training programs. Highbaugh believed Christian home programs should be initiated by indigenous Christians rather than by missionaries. This criterion became the official position of the IMC. ⁴⁶ Highbaugh believed that both men and women should be involved with Christian home work, a policy that also became the official position of the IMC. ⁴⁷

Cultivation of Christian home life has always been an important aspect of Protestant mission work. ⁴⁸ It has usually been carried out quietly and in the background, most often by missionary wives. Highbaugh insisted that the Christian home be at the center of the missionary movement. She argued that mission institutions should not simply assume that training in Christian home life will take place automatically or that missionary wives will always be responsible for ensuring that families learn about Christian family life. Instead, significant funds and professionally trained personnel should be dedicated to Christian home work.

In the initial years after the 1961 merger of the IMC and the WCC, Highbaugh’s passion for the Christian home lived on, both at the international level and in the various national Christian home committees that she had helped to found. However, by the late 1970s, much of the energy that had been directed toward the Christian home was instead being directed toward women’s rights in church and society. This shift was even more apparent at the end of the 1980s, when the WCC proposed an ecumenical decade of the churches in solidarity with women. According to Musimbi Kanyoro, the Lutheran World Federation’s secretary for women in church and society, the WCC’s decade of solidarity with women was primarily about “the removal of the obstacles which hinder the full participation of women in church and society.” ⁴⁹ Thus, wherever national councils of churches participated in the WCC’s decade of women, they typically emphasized women’s issues in church and society over the issues of the Christian home.