晚清至民初英国传教士所撰华人基督徒传记论略

The Biographies of the Chinese Christians Composed by the British Missionaries in the Late Qing Dynasty and the Early Republican Period of China:An Overview

晚清至民国初年,在华英国传教士撰写了许多华人基督徒传记。传教士撰写、出版华人基督徒传记有多种意图,既是为了激励基督徒,也是为了自身教育,同时,在中国民众强烈排外的社会背景下,也是用于教外的自辩。英国传教士所撰的华人基督徒传记,充满了对儒、道、释的批斥以及与中国民间信仰的强烈对立。这是因为,与明清耶稣会士'合儒''超儒'的策略不同,大部分新教徒传教士持严格的独断论,认为中国历史一团漆黑,出路只有基督教化。这是这些传记的思想偏狭之处。虽然如此,这类文献仍具有多方面的价值,表现在:1.叙写了华人基督徒的动人事迹,歌颂了他们献身宗教的崇高精神;2.以丰富的细节,记载了基督教传播的一段特殊历史;3.揭示了基督教对中国近代文化转型的贡献;4.对中国传统传记有所矫正。

From the Late Qing Dynasty to the early period of the Republic of China, the British missionaries in China composed and published miscellaneous biographical writings for their Chinese converts. Such doing is for not only the encouragement of the followers but also the enhancement of their own work. Moreover, under the circumstances of the native people’s stronganti-foreignism, it is also a kind of self-defending. These biographies are characterized with the deep animosity towards Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and the rural superstitions, a feeling supported by the rigid dogmatism held by most of the Protestant missionaries who, unlike the Late Ming and Early Qing Jesuits who adopted the strategy of ‘coalescing’ & ‘transcending’ Confucianism, believe that the Chinese have been groping in total darkness since the beginning and the hope for China lies only in the Christianization. This belief demonstrates the biographies’ parochialism that is born with Christianity. Nevertheless, these documents have values in various respects. 1. They describe the moving acts of the Chinese Christians and laud their sublime religious spirit;2. They record with vivid details the history of spreading Christianity in China in a special period;3. They reveal the contributions of Christianity to the transformation of modern Chinese culture;4. They have some amending effects on the writing of traditional Chinese biography.