Abstract
Developing Mission is an original, thoroughly researched, and nicely written study of the visualization of Chinese Christianity in the transnational and local contexts of evangelistic exchange. By consulting several family collections and institutional archives, Joseph Ho weaves together stories of missionaries’ photographic encounters into an engaging account of the church in wartime China and provides us with supplementary images on the University of Michigan Library’s website (https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/1259).
Composed of an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue, the introduction conceptualizes the advent of photographic modernity as a vital part of the American missionary presence in China. Thus, understanding the background and experience of missionary-photographers is essential for interpreting their intention to visualize China and the perceived meaning of their images across temporal and spatial settings.
Chapters 1 and 2 refer to the photographic efforts of American Presbyterians and Passionists in their mission fields. Behind their photographs is the fascinating process of cross-cultural adaptation. In some commemorative pictures, nursing students and married couples looked straight into the camera. In some causal ones, the congregants were relaxed and paid little attention. Either way, the photographic moments enabled the Chinese to present their visual selves to the outside world. Chapter 3 focuses on films. Ho brings to life the sixteen-minute “Church Tour” film (1934), featuring a public parade in which Chinese Christians carried national flags of the Republic of China and vertical church banners. Capturing the Christians’ civic and religious identity, the film was “a public demonstration of their faith, a performative spectacle” for local viewers (135).
The next two chapters show how missionaries captured daily life in wartime China. John Magee documented the gruesome Japanese war crimes in occupied Nanjing. Catholic priest Bernard Hubbard, SJ celebrated the postconflict reconstruction after WWII, and Presbyterian missionary Harold Henke filmed the early days of the Communist takeover of Beijing.
The concluding chapter reflects on the changing meaning of missionary photographs. The afterlives of the photographs, mostly kept in albums, enabled the missionaries to come to grips with their emotions toward China. Unfortunately, in Maoist China, any personal albums that depicted friendships with foreigners were condemned as “evidence of subversive connections” (238). Nursing intern Liu Ju and the friendship of her Cornell-educated husband Li Qinghai with their Presbyterian missionary mentors, the Henke family, caused much stress and anxiety during the Cultural Revolution. Only after the normalization of US-China relationships did the old photographs resurface as “emblems of a quietly hoped-for future,” allowing everyone to reevaluate the transformative impacts of Christianity (239). These images thus embody a vastly different personal and collective meaning, not necessarily the visual depictions of the past.
In short, Developing Mission is a groundbreaking contribution to the historiography of Chinese Christianity. Joseph Ho not only offers us a new and exciting methodology to incorporate photographic evidence into the study of mission history but also preserves the ever-receding memory of China’s missionary era. Even though the Sino-Western Christian partnership in evangelism and modernization came under attack after 1949, such rich history prompts Chinese readers today to appreciate the contributions and sacrifices of their Christian ancestors.