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Visions and Realities in Hong Kong Anglican Mission Schools, 1849–1941

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2021

Tim Yung
Tim Yung*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
*
*Department of History, 10.63, 10/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. E-mail: timyung@connect.hku.hk.
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Abstract

This article explores the tension between missionary hopes for mass conversion through Christian education and the reality of operating mission schools in one colonial context: Hong Kong. Riding on the wave of British imperial expansion, George Smith, the first bishop of the diocese of Victoria, had a vision for mission schooling in colonial Hong Kong. In 1851, Smith established St Paul's College as an Anglo-Chinese missionary institution to educate, equip and send out Chinese young people who would subsequently participate in mission work before evangelizing the whole of China. However, Smith's vision failed to take institutional form as the college encountered operational difficulties and graduates opted for more lucrative employment instead of church work. Moreover, the colonial government moved from a laissez-faire to a more hands-on approach in supervising schools. The bishops of Victoria were compelled to reshape their schools towards more sustainable institutional forms while making compromises regarding their vision for Christian education.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 57: INSPIRATION AND INSTITUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY , June 2021 , pp. 254 - 276
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Ecclesiastical History Society

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References

1 Robert, Dana L., ed., Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History, 1706–1914, SHCM (Grand Rapids, MI, 2008), 5–6Google Scholar. On indigenous churches being shaped through mission and empire, see Lewis, Donald M., ed., Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century, SHCM (Grand Rapids, MI, 2004)Google Scholar; Ward, Kevin and Stanley, Brian, eds, The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799–1999, SHCM (Grand Rapids, MI, 2000)Google Scholar.

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4 The trend depicted in this article also applies to other mainline Protestant denominations, who likewise established mission schools with a view to growing indigenous churches but encountered similar challenges. However, the scope here is limited to Anglican schools in Hong Kong. For other mission schools in Hong Kong, see Anthony Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, Pre-1841 to 1941: Fact and Opinion. Materials for a History of Education in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1990); Patricia P.-K. Chiu, A History of the Grant Schools Council: Mission, Vision and Transformation (Hong Kong, 2013). For an overview of schools in China, which followed an alternative trajectory since they were under different government, see Lutz, Jessie G., Chinese Politics and Christian Missions: The Anti-Christian Movements of 1920–28 (Notre Dame, IN, 1988), 27–54Google Scholar; Curran, Thomas D., Educational Reform in Republican China: The Failure of Educators to Create a Modern Nation, Chinese Studies 40 (Lewiston, NY, 2005)Google Scholar.

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10 CERC, OBF/5/2/7/3/16, ‘Prospectus of Missionary Plans for the Benefit of the Chinese’, June 1849, 1.

11 Ibid. 2.

12 Brown, S. R., ‘Report of the Morrison Education Society, 1844’, Chinese Repository 13 (1844), 632–4Google Scholar, cited in Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 20–2. The Morrison Education Society School was established as an Anglo-Chinese mission school in Malacca in 1820, moving to Hong Kong in 1843.

13 London, LPL, Fisher Papers, vol. 46, fol. 40, St Paul's College Old Boys Union to Fisher, 3 December 1947.

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16 Hong Kong Public Records Office [hereafter: HKPRO], HKMS94/1/1/9, Stanton to Alford, 21 March 1867; Hong Kong Blue Book for the Year 1871 (Hong Kong, 1872), 130. A Hong Kong silver dollar (issued by the Royal Mint) was then worth about 4s 3d: Hong Kong Blue Book for the Year 1871 (Hong Kong, 1872), 130. For further information on currency and exchange in Hong Kong, see the annual Hong Kong Government Reports.

17 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/1/5–6, ‘St Paul's College: Early History’, n.d.

18 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/1/9, Stanton to Alford, 21 March 1867.

19 Kew, TNA, CO129/2/251, Pottinger to Stanley, 23 August 1843, in Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 167–8; Dates and Events connected with the History of Education in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1877), 19.

20 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 152–3.

21 Fung and Chan-Yeung, To Serve and to Lead, 11–12.

22 CERC, OBF/5/2/7/3/55, Bishop Alford to Archbishop Charles Longley, 6 December 1867, 1.

23 Ibid. 1.

24 TNA, CO129/342, 80, Eitel to Stewart, 5 July 1889, in Chiu, ‘“A Position of Usefulness”’, 795–6.

25 Endacott and She, Diocese of Victoria, 20.

26 Dates and Events, 4.

27 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 89–90, 138.

28 John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 13–15; Christopher Munn, Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong 1841–1880 (Richmond, 2001), 367–73. Munn explains the incorporation of Chinese gentry into the colonial polity as a turning point in colonial government, which previously struggled to manage crime and punishment among the Chinese population.

29 Fung, ed., Devotion to Plurality, 32. For a detailed study of Wu's public service and political activity, see Linda Pomerantz-Zhang, Wu Tingfang (1842–1922): Reform and Modernization in Modern Chinese Society (Hong Kong, 1992).

30 聖保羅書院同學會 [Shengbaoluoshuyuan Tongxuehui; St Paul's College Alumni Association], 中國・香港・聖保羅: 165 年的人與時代 [Zhongguo, Xianggang, Shengbaolo: 165 Nian de Renyushidai; China, Hong Kong, St Paul's: 165 Years of People and Times] (Hong Kong, 2016), 47.

31 ‘Hongkong's Diocesan Conference: Striking Address by Bishop Lander’, South China Morning Post, 15 September 1910, 10.

32 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/5/73, ‘The Victoria Home or Orphanage: Reminiscences by M. J. Ost’, c.1889.

33 鍾仁立 [John Y. L. Chung], 莫壽增會督傳 [Moshouzeng Huidu Zhuan; The Life of Bishop Mok Shau Tsang] (Hong Kong, 1972), 3–4. Only a handful of students opted to pursue theological training at St Paul's College after secondary schooling. Even some of those dropped out, preferring the financial stability of a professional career over the pastorate.

34 ‘Conference’, From Month to Month 61 (November 1905), 2.

35 W. T. Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys School and Orphanage Hongkong: The History and Records, 1869 to 1929 ([Hong Kong], 1930), 101.

36 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/5/41, Extract from letter of Edward Davis, 10 May 1899.

37 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 209.

38 Ibid. 209–11; Fung and Chan-Yeung, To Serve and to Lead, 25. The 1873 Hong Kong Blue Book indicates that HK$1 was now equivalent to around 4s 2d.

39 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 153.

40 LPL, Frederick Temple Papers, vol. 50, fols 375–6, ‘Statutes of St Paul's College, Hongkong’, 26 July 1875.

41 Fung, ed., Devotion to Plurality, 41.

42 Featherstone, Diocesan Boys School, 1; Fung and Chan-Yeung, To Serve and to Lead, 19–25.

43 Featherstone, Diocesan Boys School, 25, 34–5, 102.

44 Fung and Chan-Yeung, To Serve and to Lead, 22; Featherstone, Diocesan Boys School, 25.

45 Featherstone, Diocesan Boys School, 2.

46 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/5/65, Hoare to Sharpe, 25 September 1898.

47 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/5/66, W. Banister, ‘Memorandum on the Hong Kong and Kwangtung Mission’, 12 August 1898, 16.

48 LPL, Frederick Temple Papers, vol. 50, fols 373–4, Hoare to Temple, 5 December 1900.

49 ‘Conference’, 2.

50 Ibid. 4.

51 LPL, Frederick Temple Papers, vol. 50, fols 377–8, Agreement between Hoare and CMS regarding St Paul's College, 1900.

52 ‘St Paul's College, Hongkong’, From Month to Month 36 (May 1903), 2–4.

53 Ibid. 4.

54 聖保羅書院同學會 [Shengbaoluoshuyuan Tongxuehui; St Paul's College Alumni Association], 165 年的人與時代 [165 Nian de Renyushidai; 165 Years of People and Times], 120–1.

55 Mrs Hoare to J. E. Hoare, 21 September 1906, online at: <http://www.spc.edu.hk/upload_files/na/103_assembly0918.pdf>, accessed 21 January 2019.

56 ‘CMS Baxter Mission’, From Month to Month 54 (January 1905), 5–6.

57 Endacott and She, Diocese of Victoria, 158.

58 ‘St Stephen's College, Hongkong Constitution’, From Month to Month 35 (April 1903), 2.

59 Birmingham, CRL, CMS/G/AZ/4/172, ‘Memorandum regarding St Stephen's College, Hong Kong’, 1910.

60 New Haven, CT, Yale Divinity Library Special Collections, HR114, General Statistics of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, 1915, Table 5, ‘Educational Work’; General Statistics of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, 1918, Table 5, ‘Educational Work’.

61 Kathleen E. Barker, Change and Continuity: A History of St Stephen's Girls’ College, Hong Kong, 1906–1996 (Hong Kong, 1996), 12–13.

62 W. S. Pakenham Walsh, ‘The Native Ministry’, From Month to Month 56 (March 1905), 1–3.

63 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 343.

64 ‘An Ordinance to Provide for the Registration and Supervision of Certain Schools’, Ordinance no. 26 of 1913, Hongkong Government Gazette, 8 August 1913, 344–8.

65 John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2007), 96–105.

66 TNA, CO129/489, 179, Colonial Office minute, J. Paskin, 16 September 1925, in Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 398.

67 CRL, CMS/G1/CH1/L5/189-91, Thornton to Blanchett, 8 May 1929.

68 Curran, Educational Reform in Republican China, 236–40.

69 Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions, 110. For the impact of Chinese republican nationalism on Christian schools, see Jennifer Bond, ‘‘The One for the Many’: Zeng Baosun, Louise Barnes and the Yifang School for Girls at Changsha, 1893–1927’, in Morwenna Ludlow, Charlotte Methuen and Andrew Spicer, eds, Churches and Education, SCH 55 (Cambridge, 2019), 441–62; Marina Xiaojing Wang, ‘Western Establishment or Chinese Sovereignty? The Tientsin Anglo-Chinese College during the Restore Educational Rights Movement, 1924–7’, ibid. 577–92. On the way political changes in the 1910s and 1920s influenced the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, see Tim Yung, ‘Keeping up with the Chinese: Constituting and Reconstituting the Anglican Church in South China, 1897–1951’, in Rosamond McKitterick, Charlotte Methuen and Andrew Spicer, eds, The Church and the Law, SCH 56 (Cambridge, 2020), 383–400.

70 E. A. Irving, The Educational System of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1914), 8–13, in Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 361–7.

71 CRL, CMS/G/R/1, ‘Memorandum on Educational Committee’, 1916.

72 Ibid., ‘Memorandum on Education Policy Committee’, 2 February 1921.

73 CRL, CMS/G/R/1, J. H. Oldham, ‘The Crisis in Christian Education in the Mission Field: Papers on Educational Problems in Mission Fields’, November 1921, 50–1.

74 Ibid. 52–3.

75 Ibid. 62–3.

76 Hong Kong, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Archive [hereafter: HKSKH], 1234, ‘St Paul's College Scheme of Management’, 1925; John Stewart Kunkle, ‘History of the Canton Union Theological College 1914–1924’, in Canton Union Theological College: The First Ten Years 1914–1924 (Hong Kong, 1924), 15–38.

77 LPL, Fisher Papers, vol. 46, fols 40–2, McLeod Campbell to Eley, 19 January 1948.

78 CRL, CMS/G1/CH/1/L3/153, Baylis to Barnett, 11 December 1914.

79 Fung, ed., Devotion to Plurality, 59–61.

80 CRL, CMS/G1/CH/1/L3/153, Baylis to Barnett, 11 December 1914. The University of Hong Kong was established in 1911 as ‘a beacon of Western modernity’ for China: see Peter Cunich, ‘Making Space for Higher Education in Colonial Hong Kong, 1887–1913’, in Laura A. Victoir and Victor Zatsepine, eds, Harbin to Hanoi: The Colonial Built Environment in Asia, 1840 to 1940 (Hong Kong, 2013), 181–206.

81 HKSKH, 1339, ‘Deed of Foundation of St Stephen's College in Hongkong’, 1912; ‘St Stephen's College: Appeal to Government for Site’, 1921.

82 Ibid.

83 Fung and Chan-Yeung, To Serve and to Lead, 252–5, 337.

84 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/7/1921/1, ‘Prayer for Diocese’, 1921.

85 Featherstone, Diocesan Boys School, 52–3.

86 Ibid. 58.

87 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/7/1923/29, Bishop's Prize-Giving Day speech at Diocesan Boys’ School, 1923.

88 CRL, CMS/G1/CH1/L3/115, Baylis to Lander, 16 July 1914.

89 HKSKH, 1234, ‘St Paul's College Scheme of Management’, 1925.

90 HKPRO, HKMS94/1/7/1923/33, Bishop's Prize-Giving Day speech at St Paul's College, 1923.

91 CRL, CMS/G1/AL/A–BA, Edna Atkins, Annual Letter, August 1927.

92 E. S. Atkins, ‘New Developments in the CMS Associated Schools’, Outpost 21 (January 1930), 15–16.

93 CRL, CMS/G1/CH/1/L3/11, Baylis to Lander, 3 September 1913; CMS/G1/CH/1/L3/31, Baylis to Barnett, 19 December 1913.

94 CRL, CMS/G1/CH/1/L4/125, Saywell to Barnett, 15 December 1921.

95 CRL, CMS/G1/CH/1/L4/211, Manley to Barnett, 6 July 1923.

96 HKSKH, 2138/63, E. J. Barnett, ‘Diocese of Victoria Hong Kong’, 1925, 3.

97 CRL, CMS/G1/AL/A-BA, Edna Atkins, Annual Letter, 14 November 1923.

98 Fung and Chan-Yeung, To Serve and to Lead, 216.

99 Ibid. 217.

100 CRL, CMS/1917–1934/G1/AL/MA–MD, E. W. L. Martin, Annual Letter, 11 August 1927.

101 LPL, LC168, no. 10, ‘Governments and Religious Education’, 6–7.

102 Ibid. 10.

103 Ibid. 12 (emphasis added).

104 CRL, CMS/G1/CH1/1/File 9, CMS Day Schools Report for 1940. Out of over a thousand students, only ten were preparing for baptism and confirmation.

105 CRL, CMS/1917–1934/G1/AL/A–BA, Mary Baxter, Annual Letter, 23 August 1930.

106 ‘The Annual Reunion’, Outpost (October 1974), 11–12; CRL, CMS/ACC821/F3, ‘Li Luk Wa’, n.d. The available CMS sources do not indicate the year of Beatrice Pope's death, but it occurred in September 1977. See Free BMD Entry Information, online at: <https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=VlaZNMXsDIBAVx5mNjRc6Q&amp;scan=1>, accessed 4 February 2021.

107 CRL, CMS/1917–1934/G1/AL/A–BA, Edna Atkins, Annual Letter, 17 November 1925.

108 Ibid., 24 July 1929.

109 Ibid., August 1927.

110 CRL, CMS/ACC821/F4, ‘Chan Shuk Ching & Family’, n.d.

111 Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 344, 405–6.

112 CRL, CMS/G1/CH/1e7, ‘Memorandum on Hong Kong Education’, 25 July 1939.

113 LPL, Fisher Papers, vol. 46, fols 33–5, St Paul's College Old Boys Union to Fisher, 3 December 1947.

114 The arguments presented in this article constitute part of my forthcoming PhD thesis on Chinese Anglican identity in the South China Diocese, c.1850–1950.