Absalom Sydenstricker

Childhood and youth

Absalom Sydenstricker was born on August 13, 1852, the eighth of nine children, in West Virginia, USA. Influenced by his family, he became a devout Christian in his youth. Remembering his childhood, he wrote, “one of my fondest recollections to this day was the morning and evening family altar” (Zetzsche 29). He was brought up in the south as a Presbyterian. He later almost always  mistrusted the north for its liberal Christianity, which was already becoming clear. 

The first words which he remembered spoken were words which he never forgot so long as he lived. A close friend of his mother said that he wasn’t handsome, to which his mother replied, “Well, he ain’t so handsome, maybe, but he’s awfully good” (Buck 14). Pearl comments, “All his life he was good. It was better to be good than pretty… . Goodness was best. On that day he made up his mind he would always be good” (Buck 15). Girls never looked at him, because he wasn’t handsome. The words that had been said to him “kept him secretly shy all his life. He withdrew further and further into passionate personal religion” (Buck 21).

His father, a deeply pious man, read the Bible through to his family every year.  The house was “full of religion. There were seven sons and six of them were ministers. Religion was their meat and their excitement, their mental food and their emotional pleasure. The quarreled over it as men quarrel over politics. It was a quarrelsome family… .Father and mother were quarrelsome together” (Buck 19).

His father was a dominating man at home, in the school of which he was chairman of the board, and in the church. The father taught the sons, including Absalom, that the man was the head of the household. Like his father and brothers, Sydenstricker was always very thin, even then. He did not respect people who got fat.

He received a call to be a missionary sometime when he was sixteen years old. A visiting missionary had challenged his father to dedicate one child to the mission field, and he felt that God had spoken to him. He kept this a secret, however, until the time came for him to decide whether to remain on the farm. Like all his brothers, he also received a call to be a preacher. An attraction of being a preacher and a missionary was that he could go to seminary and have plenty of books for the rest of his life. The only thing his daughter remembers him saying that he loved was books.

He was physically very timid and loved being at home. In his old age he told his daughter, “I never left home without an inner struggle.” His daughter goes on, “but I never knew him to postpone the hour of his going or shirk the most difficult or dangerous journey… . And because he was so rigorous with himself, he was unmerciful in his judgment upon lesser men… . He was invincible toward weakness … He was strong enough for the greatest conflict of his life – the conflict of his sense of duty with his strange physical humility” (Buck 31). He was quite strong and hardy from his labor on the farm, but he had a tremor in his right hand because of sunstroke he had suffered one time.

The father set an example of absolute authority in the home. Sydenstricker ruled his family likewise, not cruelly but, according to Pearl, usually without the tenderness and awareness of the emotional needs of his wife and daughters.

Like all the other sons, when he was twenty-one, he was given the choice of staying on the farm and receiving the wages for all the work he had done there for free, or to be given a horse and $100 and to ride away. When the time came, he followed all the other boys in the family and rode away.

Though his father wanted him to take over the family farm, Sydenstricker still believed that he had received a call from God to become a missionary in China when he was a boy. When he had served the obligatory time on the farm and chose to ride away, he announced that he was going to university so he could become a preacher and then a missionary. His father tried to dissuade him, but he would not yield. His daughter comments, “He was by all odds the most stubborn man I ever knew when God called him to do a thing” (Buck 41).

University and Seminary

He enrolled at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he focused on classical languages and earned a bachelor’s degree with high honors. He then joined one of his brothers at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virgina, graduating in 1880 with the B.D. degree (the equivalent of the M.Div. today). 

He expected the same kind of academic performance from his daughter Pearl. Once, when she received a very high mark in geometry, a difficult subject for her, he said, “It’s a good mark, but 100 would be better” (Buck 36).

He was so nearsighted that he couldn’t see people unless they passed right in front of him. But he loved his books. He had no social life, probably because he didn’t want society. He wanted only “to get the meat out of his books” (Buck 37).

He was brokenhearted when, the night that he graduated from college, a fire in the house in which he’d been living consumed all his beloved books, which he had bought at such expense. Pearl writes, “He loved his books. He was buried along with his little New Testament” which, his daughter says, “was more a part of him than any of us ever were” (Buck 46).

He needed money and so he tried to sell Bibles for a while, but he was just not a salesman.

In the summer, he went to study biblical languages and other subjects with his brother David. He also obtained opportunities to preach, which earned him some money and gave him practice in preaching. “He could never throw off wholly that shrouding mantle of shyness. A certain secret doubt of himself as a man was always mingled with a certainty of himself as God’s messenger. There was never any doubt of his divine guidance, never any doubt of his rightness” (Buck 46).

While in seminary, he solidified the commitment made in his youth to go to China as a missionary of the Southern Presbyterian Church.

Although he was not especially interested in girls, his parents required him to get married before he left for China, so he found a woman who met the basic requirement of wanting to be a missionary in China, Caroline Stulting (whom he does not name in his autobiographical material).

First years in China

In the autumn of 1880, Sydenstricker, accompanied by his new bride, was sent by the Southern Presbyterian Church to China. At that time, their mission had two stations, in Hangzhou (Hangchow) and Suzhou (Soochow), with twelve missionaries. After thirteen years, they had less than fifty members in their churches, mostly connected with the boys and girls boarding schools. “It was but the beginning of things, the force was very small, the time for reaping had not yet come. It seems that in every part of China a very considerable amount of sowing, or preparation work must be done before much in the way of results can be expected” (Sydenstricker 19).

He first studied Chinese intensively for several months in Hangzhou, “working at it  eight hours a day for seven months” (Zetzsche 32), then moved to Shanghai, where he hired a teacher of the local dialect of Suzhou, which he continued after they moved there in 1881. While he studied Chinese, he also had charge of the mission boarding school for boys. Concerned for their spiritual life, he talked privately with each boy. He preached his first sermon in Chinese after only six months of study – a feat considered remarkable at the time and rarely found in missionary history. His sermons had impact: Two members were added to the church that year, one of whom was their cook and the other a student in the boarding school. The cook later became a faithful evangelist. 

They spent the summer in Shanghai, where their first child, Edgar Cornelius, was born. They also had their first experience with cholera, which taught them to wash fruit thoroughly before eating it. An awful case of heatstroke left him prostrate and unconscious for several weeks, but he eventually recovered. During their first seven months they read through the entire Chinese New Testament - another remarkable achievement.

They returned to Hangzhou in 1883, where he was able to acquire the help of a  man named Yu, whose assistance greatly increased the effectiveness of the ministry. Yu’s son later joined them, further expanding the depth and extent of their outreach in the city and surrounding countryside. Thus, Sydenstricker learned how vital was the role of Chinese in spreading the gospel; from this developed his lifelong passion to train and educate these men.

After a while, however, the hot and humid southern climate affected them both: He contracted malaria and she came down with tuberculosis. Doctors urged them to return to the United States, but his wife knew how much he would hate to leave the work, so she asked to be allowed to move to northern China.

In 1884, they moved to the cooler and healthier climate of Zhifu (called Chefoo by foreigners), Shandong. His wife paused her missionary work to focus on regaining her health. She also hired a Chinese woman (“Wang Amah”) to help with childcare and housework. Wang became a faithful and beloved member of their household until the youngest child went to college. To make up for lost income, Caroline took on boarders. A second daughter, Edith Lodelia, was born in May 1886.

Meanwhile, Sydenstricker engaged a tutor in Northern Mandarin as soon as possible. In addition to his very hard study of the Chinese language in his first few years, which he continued throughout his career, he also became friends with John Livingstone Nevius, a missionary from the Northern Presbyterian Church in Shandong Province, and Hunter Corbett. Their friendship exemplified the cordial relationships between missionaries belonging to the Northern and Southern Presbyterian missions at that time.

Close observation and study of their methods shaped his missionary strategy for the rest of his career. Long journeys, requiring months away from home, formed a central part of his ministry. Basing himself in a central city, where he would establish a church, he would go into the surrounding countryside with a Chinese assistant. Together, they would disseminate the gospel widely, selling Bibles and Christian tracts, and setting up preaching outstations staffed by Chinese. 

When he and Caroline returned to Hangzhou, they requested the Southern Presbyterian Church headquarters to arrange for him to work in northern Jiangsu Province, planning to expand missionary work there and connect the churches in Jiangsu and Shandong, where his friends Nevius and Corbett labored. The mission approved his plan, and in 1886, Sydenstricker was sent to Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province. In 1887, the Sydenstricker family, along with the Edgar Woods family, traveled by small boat through Zhenjiang to cross the Yangtze River northward, establishing the Jiangbei District in Qingjiangpu (Huaiyin), northern Jiangsu. They purchased a house on Ximen Street and set up a church, named “Gospel Church”; they also assisted the Christians in Jiashan and Lin Jiamei in founding the Renci Hospital.

They had with them a Chinese elder trained by Nevius. Caroline had a Bible woman to help with women’s work. “In order not to be conspicuous they dressed in Chinese clothes.” They were joined by the Henry Woods family, then Dr. Edgar Woods with his wife Francis Smither and then a third Woods brother, James Baker Woods, in 1894. The team was enlarged by the arrival of The Rev. and Mrs. James Graham and Miss Ellen Emerson (Brown 112-113).

He thus began his own missionary career in 1887. Before setting out on this new phase of work, he studied his field very thoroughly, as he did everything else he undertook. It was an area the size of Texas. When they first arrived, he wrote, “many came to see us, and we gave ourselves up to entertain them after the Chinese fashion and took occasion to tell them why we had come to live among them. Our visitors were almost invariably kind and courteous” (Sydenstricker 24).

The following spring, he began regular visitation of the surrounding countryside. He had first identified the market towns, where there was always a tea shop. With a Chinese evangelist, he would visit those towns – about thirty in his district – twice a year. They would preach the gospel, distribute literature, and gather a few believers. Once enough people had showed interest in Christianity or had made a commitment, they would the develop the work, usually founding a primary school, which could be a meeting place for the church, a small library with Christian reading materials, and a school for adults that was mainly aimed at teaching them to read. To these towns he would return about twice a year to preach. Each town or group of them had a Chinese evangelist who was responsible for the new church. 

While Sydenstricker spent months away from home, itinerating in the Chinese countryside, Pearl’s mother ministered to Chinese women in a small dispensary she established.

In 1893, they were reassigned to Suqian, along with two newcomers B.C. Patterson and Mark Grier. In 1897, Sydenstricker was “reassigned to Zhenjiang, having worn himself and his family out in the pace he had set in pioneer itineration” (Brown 114).

Converts were few in the early years, of course. He knew that growth would come slowly. Education played a crucial role for him. Believers must be taught to read, and he sought to provide evangelists and pastors with a very solid education in the Bible, theology, and evangelistic methods. 

He later emphasized the importance of “local support, especially in the renting or furnishing of local chapels and schools,” but also “in regard to salaries for evangelists or teachers,” believing that the “Chinese church had no chance to shake off the stigma of being a ‘foreign church’ if it ‘depended on’ foreign finances” (Zetzsche 37). This idea became the central plank of the “Three-Self Protestant Movement” of the 20th century. 

Sydenstricker frequently traveled to rural areas to preach. As one of the earliest foreigners to arrive in rural northern Jiangsu, he was often chased by locals who shouted, “Foreign devil!” and they “welcomed” him with stones, branches, and even spit. Sydenstricker paid a heavy price for his missionary work in rural northern Jiangsu. 

All three of his children tragically died from cholera shortly after birth, two of them (Edith and Arthur) in 1890. After the second death, he writes, “we had a full cup of sorrow.” His daughter Grace added, “The deaths of these two children coming so closely upon each other almost deranged our mother” (Sydenstricker 25). By this time, they had already been in China for ten years. Due to his devout faith, missionary zeal, and tireless efforts despite difficulties, the Southern Presbyterian Church’s missionary work in northern Jiangsu finally began to take off. 

In 1891, when his wife became pregnant again, she insisted on returning to the United States to give birth to ensure a safe delivery and the baby’s survival. Only then did Sydenstricker agree to make this sacrifice of his work for the family. 

Because his wife “was always desperately seasick,” they returned by way of Europe rather than crossing the Pacific again. After a voyage by steamer to Italy, they travelled by rail much of the way.

Sydenstricker had been extremely reluctant to leave “the work” for such a long time and agreed to go on furlough mostly because his wife virtually demanded to “go home,” but his narrative of the trip, especially their time in Europe, shows that he fully enjoyed the experience. They were most happy to see their family in West Virginia again. He writes, “We had a most pleasant vacation visiting relatives and friends and felt that we were in need of the rest and change after ten years of labor and very severe experiences in China” (Sydenstricker 27). One thinks of Paul’s words, “He who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28).

He also spoke in churches and presbyteries to stir up interest in the work among Chinese. “The number of missionaries in our mission, as in other missions, had increased considerably during the ten years of service, but up to the time of our leaving China the number of Christians in connection with our mission was still less than one hundred. I could count only ten converts for the ten years of work” (Sydenstricker 28).

Demonstrating his eager desire to learn he attended classes in the seminary at Hampden-Sydney University.

In October 1892, three months after the birth of his youngest daughter, Pearl Comfort (Buck), Sydenstricker eagerly returned to China with his family. In 1893, he chose to establish a missionary base in the more remote and impoverished city of Suqian. They lived in a thatched and adobe house, leading an ascetic life. Soon after, his wife, Caroline, contracted pneumonia and nearly died, forcing her to return to Zhenjiang with their daughter. 

For two years, because of local opposition, they experienced great difficulty in finding places to live for themselves and their missionary colleagues. Later, various developments, including personnel changes in their mission and – his daughter Grace writes – increasing opposition among his fellow missionaries to his “individualistic ways of working,” led to another reassignment.

At this time, he admits, results of their labors were very meager. “But a great deal of seed sowing and other preliminary work had been done, which seems to be a prerequisite for gathering much harvest. The field of labor had been very much enlarged and three new stations had been added since our arrival in China and a fourth one was very soon opened in Hsuchowfu (Xuzhou)” (Sydenstricker 35).

Looking back many years later, he wrote: “We had spent ten years of busy life in the northern end of the province engaged largely in pioneering and opening work and preparing the way for our successors to enter in and occupy the land. The results of all this have been very satisfactory. We began work in that region when there were no other missionaries. No Chinese evangelists and scarcely more than a dozen Christians in all that wide field. Now there are five central stations, many outstations, a large number of Christian workers and thousands of Christians …  It seems that in China a large amount of preliminary work is necessary before large results can be expected” (Sydenstricker 29-30).

In 1894, Sydenstricker was transferred to Zhenjiang (Chinkiang) to help found Runzhou Middle School, a boys’ school. Although Runzhou Middle School was small, it produced many notable figures, such as Li Gongpu, a democratic fighter and one of the “Seven Patriotic Gentlemen.” 

Sydenstricker immediately “collected a small group of Christian young men and began to teach them regularly in preparation for evangelistic work.” But “men of this sort were scarce at the time and material was not good and the results meager. However, I persevered in this department of work and gradually was able to get more promising men” (Sydenstricker 35). Grace remembers: “One of these men was Mr. Ma, a Muslim who became a disciple, a follower of my father, though by becoming a Christian he was disowned by his family. As the years went by, he spent more and more time in my father’s study. I remember him as a tall, handsome, almost silent man” (Sydenstricker 36).

Sydenstricker taught these sorts of classes until the Nanjing seminary was opened. “My wife and myself by private teaching and by sending young Christians to schools prepared about thirty-five men and women, mostly young, a few middle aged, for Christian work” (Sydenstricker 36). These classes later played a major part in the establishment of the Union Seminary in Nanjing and reflected his passion for educating Chinese Christian workers. Sydenstricker, along with Nevius and Corbett, was a pioneer in this critical aspect of missionary strategy.

Continuing his former practice of wide itineration, he joined with two other men “Messrs. Beare and Woodbridge” in traveling throughout the area, preaching the gospel and establishing outstations.

Later, the Southern Presbyterian Church of America specially built a two-story East Indian-style villa for his family on the top of Dengyun Mountain in Zhenjiang, which is still well-preserved today.

In 1895, at the invitation of the Rev. Alfred G. Jones of the Shandong Baptist Church, Sydenstricker, along with another missionary, Mark Grier, went to Xuzhou for missionary work. Sydenstricker’s last itineration took place during the Sino-Japanese War, and when conditions were quite unsettled. He and fellow missionary Hugh White were nearly killed by a mob, and “he returned home, having walked thirty miles barefoot and in his underwear. On his back were three large open cuts, which his wife washed and bound,” forcing him to sleep on his stomach for weeks. His daughters commented that “it was typical of him to take such scant notice of the ordeal in his own account of the episode. He seemed to view any physical obstacle as unworthy of note” (Sydenstricker 33, citing Buck 88-90).

Later, due to declining health, Sydenstricker handed over the missionary work in Xuzhou to Mr. and Mrs. Grier and Mr. and Mrs. Hugh White.

“In January 1899, Hermanus Clyde died of diphtheria, the fourth child they had lost in China. Grace Caroline was born May 12 of that year. At that time Edgar, the oldest child, was a college student in the United States. Pearl was seven. Only these three, of the seven children, survived infancy” (Sydenstricker 36-37).

The Boxer Uprising 

In the year 1900, the famous “Boxer” uprising broke over the land like a tremendous tornado and all work was more or less suspended while it raged… . This organization was essentially hostile to foreigners of all nationalities and, since missionaries were scattered far and wide over the interior, they became the chief victims. The Empress Dowager, opposed to progress and very anti-foreign, made use of this organization to clear the country of the hated intruder. The great mistake which the foreign powers made was to recognize her as ruler of the empire [instead of the young emperor, who was strongly in favor of various reforms and had he been permitted to remain in power, we should have had a very different China long ere this date].

Like other missionaries, Sydenstricker and his family found refuge in Shanghai until danger was past. Nevertheless, Sydenstricker “was able to venture back to Chinkiang after a few weeks and encourage” the Christians there. By the autumn, they felt safe enough to return and resume their work. Sydenstricker comments that the martyrdom of thousands of Chinese Christians showed that “the work which had been accomplished was not merely on the surface, but a genuine fruit that would stand the severest test” (Sydenstricker 37).

Sydenstricker had a profound understanding of Chinese culture. In 1902, he hired a learned descendant of Confucius to teach Pearl S. Buck classic Chinese texts, laying a solid foundation for her in Chinese language and culture.

Division of the Southern Presbyterian Mission

While the missionaries were all gathered in Shanghai, they decided to divide their single China field, which extended six hundred miles from Hangzhou in the south to Xuzhou in the north, into two: The Mid-China Mission (MCM) and the North Jiangsu Mission (NJM). Xuzhou became the central station of the NJM.

Henceforth, Sydenstricker became one of the theological leaders in the conservative faction of the North Jiangsu Mission (NJM), which was itself more theologically conservative than the MCM. This group included (with dates given for their time of service in China): “A. Sydenstricker (1880-1931), Henry M. Woods (1883-1928), J.R. Graham (1889-1937), B.C. Patterson (1891-1939), Hugh White (1894-1940), and W.F. Junkin (1897-1943). [They] were later joined by some younger but equally conservative missionaries such as Nelson Bell (1916-48). Father of Ruth Bell Graham, H. Kerr Taylor (1917-33), and Martin Hopkins (1917-51)” (Yao 110).

Note that Sydenstricker’s name comes first in this list. 

More theologically liberal missionaries included John Leighton Stuart, a member of the Mid-China Mission, who taught at the Nanjing seminary. In fact, that school later became the focus of controversy between liberal (modernist) and conservative (fundamentalist) missionaries and their mission boards. Sydenstricker’s advocacy of the seminary and service on its faculty despite the presence of modernists on the faculty set him apart among his fellow conservatives.

Nanjing Seminary

In 1902, Sydenstricker was appointed by the NJM to chair a committee “to cooperate with similar committees appointed by the Mid-China Mission … and the Northern Presbyterian Mission to meet and make arrangements to open a union theological seminary at some convenient center” (Sydenstricker 40). Nanjing was chosen as the location. In 1904 the first buildings were erected and the first classes opened, taught by a few faculty. Student numbers were small at first but gradually increased.

Sydenstricker was given charge of the correspondence course, which had been his passion for many years already. At the time he wrote his autobiography, two hundred students had matriculated in this department of the seminary, which he taught and administered.

Since this was to be a union seminary, other missions later joined as full participating members. Doctrinal differences among the mission societies became a source of friction and then contention, especially as the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy developed. Despite his very strong conservative opinions, these conflicts did not lead Sydenstricker to withdraw from the seminary, largely because he was so happy with the correspondence course.

Summer vacations at Guling

At about the same time, the great need for missionaries to escape from the oppressive heat and diseases during the summer led to the creation of a resort in the mountain area called Guling (Kuling), in Jiangxi. Sydenstricker and his family were among the first to spend the summers there. Grace recalls: “My memory of the beauty of that spot is unmatched by any other place I have ever seen” (Sydenstricker 42).

Missionary methods

As we have seen, he believed strongly in self-support for the churches that were founded, and for their pastors and evangelists. He greatly desired to provide useful Christian education during the time when Chinese farmers were free.

For new missionaries, he “emphasized the urgent necessity of mastering colloquial Chinese.” Ideally, the student would have a Chinese teacher for learning the spoken language and a western teacher for grammatical questions. Of greatest importance, in his opinion, was “the correct pronunciation and the idiomatic use of the language” (Zetzsche 33). He acknowledged that some knowledge of the Chinese Classics and written language could be very useful, but he thought also that an excessive use of learned phrases and quotations would make missionary communication hard for the ordinary person to understand.

Pearl commented: “He was a man of genius in all languages, and he delighted in the intricacies of Chinese … He spoke Chinese as few white men ever do, with feeling and literary precision. It came at last to be more native to him than his own tongue – he spoke it far more” (Buck 51-52).  In 1911, he was teaching Mandarin to new missionaries in Shanghai.

Despite his zeal, he “never established a church or a chapel in a place where the people did not want it … (and) they always did want it after I talked to them and told them what it meant to refuse God” (Sydenstricker 23). In fact, as time went on, almost all the chapels and outstations were started by local Chinese.

Sydenstricker continued his missionary work in rural northern Jiangsu, understanding the difficulties faced by the Chinese lower classes in understanding Christianity. He lived in 20 different places during his missionary career. This exposed him to different kinds of Mandarin, which showed him that Mandarin was spoken throughout much of China, and he advocated for the use of Mandarin in Bible translations, hymnal, textbooks and tracts as one of the main themes of his missionary career” (Zetzsche 32). 

Bible translation

Seeing that ordinary people couldn’t understand the existing Chinese Bible translations, Sydenstricker decided to retranslate the Bible and publish one that the Chinese people could understand. However, this was opposed by the Southern Presbyterian Church in northern Jiangsu. Undeterred, Sydenstricker devoted himself to retranslating the Bible for several decades after 1894, making it one of his most important tasks. He persevered through hardship, publishing his translations in separate volumes to suit the reading habits of the Chinese people, and personally funding the entire publication cost through frugal living. 

In the latter half of 1908, he was invited to join the Union Version Bible Translation Committee led by Chauncey Goodrich but resigned after only three months because of differences with F.W. Baller, who was the chairman. They disagreed about several matters, but primarily for the reason that Baller didn’t know any Hebrew and Sydenstricker believed that they had to translate the Old Testament directly from Hebrew to Chinese. In addition, it seems that he was a hard man to get along with because he didn’t know how to compromise. Neither did Baller, apparently, for his biographer M. Broomhall wrote, “Those who knew him in later life will not be surprised to learn that as a lad he was something of a handful to manage” (M. Broomhall: F.W. Baller: A Master of the Pencil, cited in Zetzsche 50).

In general, Sydenstricker did not consider existing translations acceptable, with the exception of the Old Testament version done by Samuel Schereschewsky, which became the basis for the Union Version, still in use today. Sydenstricker constantly criticized the union Mandarin version of the New Testament “as unintelligible to the uneducated listener” (Zetzsche 40). His New Testament translation theory is on page 42: “While relying on the Greek text … he tried to be extremely intelligible by using language that was colloquial and logical as well as indigenous, and he employed a translation technique that could be called dynamic equivalence. To enhance the readability of his Bible he added numerous explanatory notes … which had not been permitted by the Bible societies that published most of the other Bible translations” (Zetzsche 42).

Thereafter, he continued to work independently on his own translation, completing a new translation of the New Testament in 1929 with the help of Zhu Baohui.

Writing

Aside from his Bible translations and his post-retirement memoir, Sydenstricker’s only book-length publication was An Exposition of the Construction of Chinese Sentences as Found in Colloquial Mandarin, which was “the first analytical grammar by a Protestant missionary” (Zetzsche 33). On the other hand, he contributed many articles to the Chinese Recorder, for which he became the unofficial reviewer of new translations of the Scriptures.

In 1909, recognizing his accomplishments as a linguist and translator as well as his pioneering work as an evangelist, church planter, and educator, his alma mater Washington and Lee University bestowed upon him an honorary Doctor of Divinity (DD) degree.

Later years

On October 19, 1921, Sydenstricker’s wife, Caroline, passed away at Guling and was buried in Zhenjiang. 

In 1922, Sydenstricker’s forty-second year of missionary work in China, the Southern Presbyterian Church in Northern Jiangsu issued a new regulation requiring missionaries aged seventy and above to retire. As a result, Sydenstricker was forced to leave his post. By this time, he had become a pioneering figure in the Jiangbei Diocese of the Southern Presbyterian Church. Through his years of effort, numerous churches, orphanages, schools, and mission sites were established in Zhenjiang, Qingjiangpu, Suqian, Xuzhou, and other areas, attracting tens of thousands of believers. 

Relationships with other missionaries

His daughter writes: When they returned from a furlough,

‘He found no great welcome from his fellow missionaries,’ who had let their house fall into disrepair and their belongings be consumed by mildew and ants. ‘At first they claimed that they didn’t think he was coming back,’ but ‘then the story came out, but by bit. He was, he was told, heretical in his views. He believed too much in human knowledge - else why did he spend time educating pastors? Why did he not, as the other missionaries did, trust to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost? … They had written to the home board and to the supporting churches urging that he not be retained because of his unsound views’ (Buck 127).

The other missionaries told him to follow his desires to preach the gospel in the interior, where no other missionaries had gone. According to his daughter,

[T]hey wanted to be rid of him at all costs – rid of his indefatigable energy, to be rid of his undying determination to be worthy of the calling which to him was holy, to be rid of his singleness of heart in his duty. Most of all they wanted to be rid of his sympathy for those whom he had come to save. He grew to love greatly the Chinese [whom he trusted more than he did white people]. He was rewarded by their devotion to him, and this did not make him better loved by his fellows.

On the other hand, it does seem that he was often too naïve in believing all the professions of faith that his “converts” made. His daughter Pearl later agreed that her father was too easily fooled by insincere and self-seeking Chinese, not realizing that they knew he would give credence to almost any evidence of interest in Christianity, often without due examination of how sound was the conversion of those who presented themselves for baptism or applied to become church workers. The large numbers of baptisms among his hearers did not always reflect genuine repentance and faith, his critics said.

The truth was that [he] was completely intolerant of the policies of missionaries. It was the policy of the missionaries to stand together at all costs against the ‘natives.’ … And many a humble Chinese pastor, struggling in a little village church at ten dollars a month, had [him] to thank that he had even so small a place of security. That miserable wage! [He] battled for wages all his life – though never for his own. And when he could get nothing, he squeezed out a dollar or two himself for the man who had been refused.

Yes, they wanted to be rid of [his] intolerance of race superiority and priestly authorities. ‘A prince of the church! … There’s no such thing possible’ (Buck 127-128).

Fellow missionaries tended to reject him because of his views on Chinese clergy education and his conviction that Chinese voices should have equal weight with missionaries in decisions about policy. Later, His colleagues detested his opposition to liberal theology, which he thought was coming from the missionaries to the Chinese. 

But he became increasingly involved in the committee work of the Southern Presbyterian mission. Despite his strong opinions in favor of conservative theology, he also worked very hard for the union of Presbyterians in China and for the union of Protestant missions and churches in China. The so-called “Fundamentalist-Modernist” controversy was raging fiercely during those years. His mission increasingly questioned the doctrinal orthodoxy of other Presbyterian bodies in China and raised strong objections to the formation of a union seminary, but Sydenstricker believed that conservatives should stay within the system and seek to change it. History proved the “fundamentalist” critics right as the seminary drifted farther and farther from orthodoxy, but that was after his death.

He held what would later be termed “fundamentalist” views, even though he did not use that label for himself. Eventually, most missionaries in China from “mainline” denominations were liberal in their theology. Those who adhered to traditional theology, including the China Inland Mission, the largest missionary society, eventually formed the Bible Union to resist modernist theological trends in China.

The cleavage between modernist (or liberal) theology and missiology was fundamental. Traditionalists accepted the Bible as the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by men, without error and fully authoritative for faith and life. They adhered to the tenets of the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, which affirmed the full deity of Jesus Christ; his atoning death; his bodily resurrection and ascension to God’s right hand, and his promised return to judge the living and the dead. To be saved from God’s eternal wrath, people must repent of their sins, trust in Christ, be born again by the Holy Spirit, and follow Christ as members of the Christian movement. 

Their missionary methods followed accordingly: People must hear the gospel to repent and believe. Someone must preach to them, teach them the Scriptures, and incorporate them into a church. For this, the Bible must be translated into the vernacular and disseminated as widely as possible.

Sydenstricker’s missionary career thus followed a typical pattern for evangelical missionaries: Preaching, teaching, planting churches, training pastors and evangelists, and translation of the Scriptures.

Towards the end of his career, his increasingly liberal colleagues rejected this entire program and did what they could to marginalize him. It is hard, therefore, to determine how much his relational difficulties with them stemmed from a rigid personality, as some have charged, and how much came from irreconcilable clashes of basic beliefs. He did not relish conflict but eventually plunged into this theological battle with all his strength. “He labeled the liberal missionaries ‘enemies of the Gospel and the Church in China’” and wanted them sent home from the field. These words “reflect his despair about the mission field and his life work that he saw threatened by the new theology” (Zetzsche 46).

In addition, his ability to mobilize other missionaries for pioneer evangelism and church planting, as well as his close relationships with Chinese Christians and church workers, demonstrate that he could not only labor harmoniously with others of like mind but also lead them as a team.

He rejected all Chinese faith systems as idols, including Confucianism, which many newer missionaries considered to be a preparation for Christianity.

Relationships with Chinese

When Sydenstricker left Zhenjiang in 1922, local gentry and churches erected a monument in his honor at the South Gate of the city, inscribed with the words 

‘Sai Zhaoxiang’s (Sydenstricker’s Chinese name) Meritorious Service in Zhenjiang.’ The inscription, written by his student Ma Pangbo, reads: ‘Those who achieve extraordinary feats must possess extraordinary talents, and those with extraordinary talents must become extraordinary people—this is a fundamental principle. Pastor Sai Zhaoxiang preached in Zhenjiang for over thirty years, braving hardships and toil. Although people were stubborn and prone to slander at the time, Pastor Sai treated everyone with sincerity, loved them as himself, helped those in need, and relieved those in danger. Ultimately, the church spread from city to town, and from town to village, like a river flowing downstream, unstoppable. Could it be that Pastor Sai, with his extraordinary talent and extraordinary person, could have accomplished such extraordinary feats? Now, due to the passing of his wife, he is moving to Nanjing, I cannot stay. Deeply moved by her passing, I cherish the memory of her immortal achievements, and my longing for her is only intensified. Therefore, I inscribe this stone to preserve her memory, as a token of my love and devotion. These few words are a testament to her enduring legacy.’ 

Final years

As the years passed, his body finally began to show signs of age and fatigue. Once he suffered a slight stroke. The time for another furlough had passed, but he didn’t want to leave “the work.” Only when Pearl persuaded him that it was his duty to take her back to America so she could enter college did he consent to leave China for a few months in 1911.

After he was forced to leave the mission, he moved in with his daughter Pearl and her husband who were by then living on the campus of Jinling Seminary (Nanjing Theological Seminary), the institution he had so vigorously promoted. She found him a position teaching New Testament Greek and encouraged him to develop the correspondence course for ministerial training, something he always had believed in. Those who couldn’t meet the standards for acceptance in an academic program could receive a solid biblical and theological education in this way. Through this course, Sydenstricker trained thousands of Chinese Christians and church workers.

During this time, he wrote his memoir, My Life and Work in China, detailing his experiences as a missionary in China. 

He and his family nearly perished in the so-called “Nanjing Incident” in 1927. As Communist troops advanced, their artillery shelled the city. Tales of barbaric atrocities inflicted on Western women preceded them. Consuls urged foreign nationals to flee to safety, as did Chinese Christians. Sydenstricker, however, would not leave his post. He had seen revolutions before and was not swayed by fear of danger. When Communist troops entered the city, he and his family were hidden for several days by faithful Chinese Christians but were eventually discovered and marched under guard to waiting foreign gunboats, which took them to Shanghai. He went to Korea for a while, where he worked among Chinese there. Later, he returned to Nanjing to resume street preaching and then at the seminary and on translating the New Testament.

On August 31, 1931, Sydenstricker passed away at his villa in Guling, Lushan, at the age of eighty. His family buried him on the mountain, accompanied by a Greek copy of the New Testament. 

Counting from his departure from his homeland in 1880, Sydenstricker served in China for a total of 51 years. He was buried alongside his wife Caroline, two daughters, and two sons. Pearl Buck later became a world-renowned author. Her novel The Good Earth, based on life in rural Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. After returning to the United States in 1934, Buck wrote several more outstanding works, culminating in her The Good Earth trilogy, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.

Evaluation

As a missionary, Sydenstricker achieved notable successes over a long career of faithful service, despite many and great obstacles. When he began his evangelistic work, progress was slow and converts were few. After decades of patient traveling, preaching, teaching, and training, during which he endured much hardship, in Chinkiang he could count twenty outstations, all manned by Chinese who were supported by donations from local Christians, not missionary funds. Both in classes and by spending time with individuals, he trained many young Chinese men for the work of ministry, thus multiplying himself many times over.

His hard and diligent study of various forms of the Chinese language placed him among the top rank of missionary linguists and earned him a place on the Union Version translation committee. Primarily an evangelist at heart, he insisted that colloquial Chinese should be used both in preaching and in Christian literary works, including translations of the Bible and hymns. This commitment to putting the Scriptures into a language that ordinary people could understand, as well as his insistence that the Old Testament should be translated from the Hebrew, led him to resign from the translation committee.

In addition, like most missionaries, especially those from America, he thought that that the best Chinese equivalent for the Hebrew and Greek words for “God” was “Shen.” He was strongly against the use of Shang Di as the translation of the word “God.”

He was a pioneer in many ways, not only in his ceaseless and far-reaching evangelistic journeys over large parts of China, but in his belief that Chinese pastors and evangelists should receive a solid biblical and theological education. That is why he worked so hard to have a good seminary established. He differed from many in his profound respect for, and trust in, Chinese Christian workers.

On the other hand, he seems to have been insensitive to the value of women and their needs. According to his daughter Pearl, he always put “the work” ahead of his wife and children. His long itinerations for evangelism and training kept him away from home for months at a time. Even when he was at home, he did not, according to Pearl, evince much care and concern, much less affection, for his family, especially the female members of it. He was too busy with his translation work.

Pearl’s biography of her father, Fighting Angel, gives credit to him for his utter devotion to God and to the gospel; his heroic journeys, which often involved not only hardship but danger; his brilliance as a linguist; his dedication to the truth as he understood it; his courage in standing for his principles; his self-discipline and patient enduring of pain and suffering; his physical strength and stamina; and many other outstanding qualities. And, despite his stern devotion to his duty, he possessed a sense of humor that occasionally flashed forth in a smile, quickly to vanish.

All his life he exercised strict self-discipline in rising and retiring, eating and drinking, working and resting. “And his magnificent body remained a miracle of vigor, his eyes clear and vivid, and his skin, where it was not burned, as white and smooth as a little child’s. Nor was his face tortured by lines. He was never wrinkled, even when he grew really old. His high smooth brow was still tranquil, his lean cheeks unlined… . He was a perfectly happy soul, living in a strong and subdued body” (Buck 219).

He was “a flame of integrity … He was always in complete control of himself. His duty was done to the last ounce of its demand. Even his enemies never questioned that burning integrity. As for the Chinese, they trusted him like children” (Buck 221).

But the overall impression of her biography of her father is negative.

Why was this so?

For one thing, she said that he was sometimes arrogant and domineering. “It did not seem so, his bearing was of such gentleness and dignity, his step quiet, his voice soft, his manner always restrained and controlled except for those rare strange sudden furors, when something he kept covered deep in him broke for a moment its leash. Everyone was afraid of him in those moments.” He mellowed as he aged, however. When he was older, he was always ashamed of himself for his outbursts of temper. He thanked God for forgiveness but, she adds, “I think it never occurred to him to beg forgiveness of any man” (Buck 55).

Mainly, perhaps, it is obvious that she felt deeply hurt by his absences and his emotional distance. The pain of this lack of warmth and closeness clearly left profound wounds in her heart.

As an adult, Pearl increasingly rejected her father’s orthodox theology and embraced the liberal views that swept “mainline” Protestant missionary ranks from the mid-nineteenth century on into the twentieth century. Thus, her father’s unbending adherence to traditional doctrines struck her as signs of self-righteous stubbornness rather than as fidelity to the gospel. Her sister Grace also embraced modernist theology and missionary emphases and likewise wrote extensively not only about China, but about advocating for a fundamental shift from evangelism, church planting, and the education of ministers to medical and educational work.

In the end, they joined the loud chorus of criticism of traditional missionaries, including their theology, their strategy, their practices, and their firmness of purpose that came to full expression in the Laymen’s Commission (or Inquiry) led by William Hocking. While in China, Hocking consulted with Pearl Buck, who was developing a similar critique of missions and who threw her support behind the Commission’s report. The two reports were combined to create the final report, Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry After One Hundred Years, which was published in November 1932. Subsidiary reports on individual countries were published the following year.

Pearl wrote and spoke energetically in the United States to promote this report, which represented a total repudiation of all that her father had worked and stood for. 

How much his two daughters’ opposition to Sydenstricker’s theology and missionary efforts reflects their personal pain over the lack of a close relationship with their father cannot be known. The lasting impact of their books and speeches, however, stands as a stern warning to all missionaries and pastors who, in their zeal to promote “the work,” ignore their prior call to love their wives and children.

Still, we must remember that after she took her father into her home in Nanjing, the two became extremely close, bound to each other by a deep affection. In the end, it is clear that she greatly admired him, despite his emotional coldness.

Authors

Qi Yujie. https://www.bdcconline.net/zh-hant/stories/sai-zhaoxiang. Qi Yujie was a student at the Christian Workers Theological Seminary in California, USA, and wrote his parts of this article under the guidance of Dr. Yading Li.

G. Wright Doyle is the General Editor of the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity. Bdcconline.net