UC Berkeley

This dissertation makes two broad claims about the enduing imprint of the European missionary enterprise on the modern world. The first is self-evident: European missionaries made Christianity a global religion. By pushing and spreading Christianity beyond the boundaries of Europe into every single corner of the globe, missionaries laid the foundation for the transformation of Christianity from a predominantly European religion in the nineteenth century to one that is largely non-European in the twenty-first century. Drawing on previously unopened and unused archives in Germany, Italy, Taiwan, and China, I argue that globalization and indigenization were two sides of the same coin: from the stand-point of German missionaries, their religion became more global, while for Chinese Christians, this already global religion became particularly "Chinese."

The second argument flows from the first: European missionaries helped to usher in a new secular age; they laid the seeds for the Christianity's own secularization. Through their encounters with the world, I argue, the European missionary enterprise self-secularized. The missionary experience in China pushed German missionaries and theologians to re-think, and in some cases, renounce, the religious convictions that they once held. As a result of this re-thinking, they devolved and gave up the religious control and authority that they once wielded.

Finally, my dissertation revises the view of the German missionary enterprise in China as a "debacle," which has long dominated the historical narrative of Christianity in China. I uncover the history of their work, and locate some its successes, showing how the German model laid the foundation for much of the current religious revival in China. The German Protestant and Catholic models of missionary work, considered "conservative" in their stress on individual conversion and evasion of politics, proved remarkably sturdy in the face of a hostile regime, providing the model that drives Christian conversion in China today.