晚清国家基督教治理中的官教关系

State-Missionary Relations in the Control of Christianity in the Late Qing

第一次鸦片战争后,不平等条约使在华西教成为有相对独立地位的民间团体,迫使官方对教会从查禁变为保护和治理。因长期禁教及缺乏对西教的清晰认知,清廷仍从异端角度笼统地处理基督教问题。道咸两朝官教渐有接触,双方关系因当时战局时松时紧。第二次鸦片战争后,清廷被迫全面开放传教,民教冲突频发,多数官员同情反教、治理消极。天津教案后,教会迎合中国发展需要,改善自身形象,部分官员渐以务实态度处理民教事务。长江教案后,朝廷肯定教会"善举",双方沟通加强,官方政策随内外形势的震荡,从过分向教会倾斜突变为激烈排教。庚子反教双方创巨痛深,促使官教双方合作治理寻求共识,建立起区分矛盾、各负其责的制度安排,尽管无法摆脱条约束缚,但从国家治理角度初步纾解基督教问题的困局。

After the First Opium War,the unequal treaties made Western religion in China a relatively independent part of civil society,forcing local government to protect and manage it rather than banning and proscribing it.Because Christianity had long been proscribed and little was known about Western religion,the Qing court dealt with it under the all-embracing category of heresy.During the Daoguang and Xianfeng reigns,the state and the missionaries began to come into contact,and the relations between them changed accordingly.After the Second Opium War,the Qing government was forced to completely open up to missionary work,and conflicts between the populace and the missionaries escalated.Most officials sympathized with anti-missionary feeling and did little to restrain the people.After the Tianjin missionary incident,missionaries responded to China's development needs,improving their image,and some Chinese officials took a pragmatic attitude to incidents between missionaries and the people.After the Yangtze River missionary incident,the court approved missionaries' 'good deeds, 'strengthening communication between the two sides.Following internal and external disturbances,official policy shifted from an excessive bias in favor of the missionaries to a burning anti-missionary stance.The 1900anti-missionary 'Boxer Rising' was a disaster for both sides,prompting the court and the churches to cooperate in shared governance and respectively set up institutional arrangements for distinguishing between contradictions and assuming responsibility.Although this approach was still tied to the treaties,from the perspective of national governance it was a preliminary step in easing the dilemma posed by the problem of Christianity.