Gender, Christianity, and Peace in Chinese Women's International Thought 1914–1953

Abstract

This paper uncovers the various understandings of peace formulated by Chinese Christian women in the period from the First World War to the Korean War Armistice (1914–1953). In both the literature on Christianity in China and the histories of the national and international women's movements, Chinese Christian women have been subjected to multiple exclusions based on their race, class, gender, and religious identity. Drawing on the memoirs and writings of key Chinese Christian women thinkers active in international women's and Christian networks such as Deng Yuzhi 鄧欲志 and Zeng Baosun 曾寶蓀, as well as all less well-known female students writing in missionary school yearbooks, I dissect how Chinese Christian women variously constructed and deployed their own understanding of peace. How did they appropriate, adapt, or reject the rhetoric of “sisterhood” and maternalist arguments about women's supposed peace-making faculties circulating in the international women's movement for their own purposes? How did they fuse Christianity with early twentieth-century interpretations of Confucian ideas about peace and racial harmony? In what ways did Chinese Christian women active in Communist and Nationalist networks seek to deploy their own understanding of a “Just Peace” during the Second Sino-Japanese War and Korean War? Chinese Christian women's formulations of peace can help us to critically rethink European-centered chronologies of the women's movement and history of women's international thought.