Dai Wenguang

In 1848, Dai Wenguang was persuaded by Karl (Charles) Gützlaff 郭 to join the Chinese Union 汉会 of evangelists. Basel missionary Theodor Hamberg 韩 retained him as language teacher, and subsequently many of Dai’s relatives in the Xin’an district新安县joined the church. 

Dai helped Reverend Rudolf Lechler 黎 and Reverend Philipp Winnes 韦 to write a Hakka dictionary in Romanised Hakka and Chinese characters, and he translated religious literature into Hakka. 

In 1858, after serving the mission for 10 years, he left the church, resumed ancestor veneration and burned all his Christian books. In his earlier works he emphasized the compatibility between Confucianism and the Christian faith, claiming that Christianity fulfilled the promise of Confucian teachings. He was probably offended by Westerners, but finances were also a consideration in his return to tradition: he wanted to share in the Dai ancestral properties. According to J. Lutz he wrote a work on early Christian martyrs, the Yesu xintu shougu zonglun《耶稣信徒受辜总论》. His biography is in: Lutz – Lutz, Hakka Chinese Confront Protestant Christianity, 1850-1900, (1998).