A Historical Examination of Westerners’ Pro-Confucianism in China During the Early Republican Years

Abstract

During the early Republican years in China, through the publication of several prominent Western individuals’ view with respect to the Confucian religion in materials like Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion) and 孔教会杂志 (The Confucian Association Monthly), Chen Huanchang, the director of the Confucian Association, appeared to have successfully enlisted the support for the Association from some renowned Western figures in China, including Timothy Richard, Gilbert Reid, Hermann Graf Keyserling, Hiram Stevens Maxim, and Reginald Fleming Johnston. Notwithstanding the Confucian Association’s propaganda, Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid’s patronage of the Confucian Association in fact stemmed from their concept of “uniting all religions”. The praises heaped on Confucius by Hermann Graf Keyserling and Hiram Stevens Maxim were totally unrelated to the Confucian Association but were cleverly packaged by Chen Huanchang as an ideal resource through his ingenious translation. Reginald Fleming Johnston’s laudatory remarks with respect to the Confucian Association were inevitably motivated by his political speculation. The superficial respect for Confucius among Westerners in China belied more complex and nuanced attitudes towards making the Confucian religion the state religion of China. Such attitudes reveal the multiple facets of Confucianism in the early Republican era in response to some of the challenges posed by modernization.

1. Introduction

Following the Xinhai Revolution and the concomitant disintegration of the traditional political order, the Republican government introduced the Provisional Constitution, which guaranteed religious freedom of worship. In line with this, the Chinese Ministry of Education abolished the veneration and worship of Confucius in schools. These changes shook traditional Chinese culture to its core, which had been based on millennia of Confucian classics. Heated debates arose over whether Confucianism constituted a religion and whether it should be preserved or abolished. In response, various pro-Confucian organizations dedicated to upholding traditional morality emerged, amongst which was one actively organized by Kang Youwei (1858–1927). Kang was a prominent reformer who had petitioned the Guangxu Emperor to establish Confucianism as China’s state religion during the Hundred Days Reform period. Acting on Kang’s instructions, his student Chen Huanchang 陈焕章 (1881–1933) founded the Confucian Association in October 1912 with several Qing loyalists residing in Shanghai, including Shen Zengzhi 沈曾植 (1850–1922). When the National Assembly convened to draft the Constitution the following year, the Confucian Association took the opportunity to petition the Constitution to establish Confucianism as the state religion, thus setting off the State Religion Movement.

Cultural nationalism has long been the key to interpreting Kang Youwei’s Confucian thinking (Hsiao 1975, p. 543). When the Confucius Association initiated the State Religion Movement, Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1869–1936), a revolutionary who “in addition to lecturing devoted himself to criticizing Kang Youwei, Chen Huanchang, and others” (Huang 1924, p. 225), commented that Kang’s “advocating of Confucianism as a religion” was intended as a “counterweight” to Christianity (T. Zhang 1913). Notwithstanding Kang’s calls to “preserve Confucianism”, he imitated Christian institutions and rituals to rejuvenate Confucianism. Kang’s tolerance towards the impact of Western culture was evident in the propaganda of the Confucian Association during the Republican era. Joseph Richmond Levenson (1920–1969) argued that, during the early years of the Republic of China, “not foreign missionaries”, “but Chinese secularists were making the really wounding assault on Confucianism”. According to him, when Kang Youwei and Chen Huanchang “deliberately initiated religious comparisons, they were trying to reach the secular iconoclasts. For, as long as the adjective ‘Confucian’ was simply pinned on to Chinese culture, it was hard to escape the cultural critics in the harsh times of the early twentieth century” (Levenson 1968, p. 16). Perhaps it is thus understandable that one of the major publicity gimmicks of Chen Huanchang, who preached Confucianism outside China both before and after the founding of the Confucian Association, was to cite the remarks of Westerners who lauded Confucianism.

Chen Huanchang began his Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion) with a preface by Timothy Richard (1845–1919), Gilbert Reid (1857–1927), and Spurgeon Medhurst (1860–1927), missionaries who had lived in China for a long time and were familiar with Chinese society and culture. Following the founding of the official journal of the Confucian Association, The Confucian Association Monthly 孔教会杂志, in 1913, Chen continued to translate the pro-Confucius speeches of Westerners like Hermann Graf Keyserling (1880–1946), a Russian philosopher; Hiram Stevens Maxim (1840–1916), a British designer of small arms; Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874–1938), the District Officer of Weihaiwei; Alfred Westharp (1882–1952), a German educator; and Ariga Nagao (1860–1921), a Japanese jurist. Not only did these writings help amplify the influence of the Confucian Association but they also left later generations with the impression that it received support from Westerners. However, to this day, the motivations behind Westerners’ admiration for Confucius remain unclear, let alone the extent to which Chen Huanchang might have selectively adapted their statements to serve his promotional goals. In light of this, this article examines Timothy Richard, Gilbert Reid, Hermann Graf Keyserling, Hiram Stevens Maxim, and Reginald Fleming Johnston as case studies to analyze the context in which these primary foreign supporters of the Confucian Association expressed their respect for Confucius. It further outlines the completeness and diversity of how Western observers in early Republican China perceived Confucianism’s response to modern transformations.

2. Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid’s Strategy of “Uniting All Religions”

The Confucian Association, from its early stages to its establishment as a formal organization and its efforts to shape public opinion, maintained a deep connection with the International Institute hosted by missionary Gilbert Reid. In the spring of 1912, Chen Huanchang returned from his stay in the United States and liaised with Chinese citizens and foreigners in Shanghai for the purpose of organizing the Confucian Association. On 1 September, Chen was invited by Gilbert Reid to the International Institute to deliver a speech entitled “Confucianism, a Religion”, which Chen later traced as the origin of the Confucian Association. In his speech, Chen cited Timothy Richard, Gilbert Reid, and Spurgeon Medhurst, “all of whom were Distinguished Sons of Christianity, they considered Confucius to be a Patriarch” (H. Chen 1912a, p. 12), thus arguing that Confucius was a “religionist” and Confucianism was a religion by extension. On 8 September, Chen went to the International Institute again and delivered another speech entitled “China under the Republic Still in Need of Confucianism”. In October, when the Confucian Association was formally established, both of Chen’s speeches were published as Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion), with prefaces by the “Distinguished Sons of Christianity”. As this book was widely printed and distributed through channels beyond the local branches of the Confucian Association, even Lu Xun, at the time working at the Ministry of Education of the Republican government and who regarded the rituals of Confucius worship as utterly absurd, received a copy of Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion) that year.

Because these remarks made by Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid were published under the auspices of the Confucian Association, they were regarded as the “foreign supporters” of the Association. For example, in June 1913, the Chinese and Foreign Ethics Association in Peking 北京中外伦理会 mentioned in a notice that its members were “particularly touched” after reading Timothy Richard’s and Gilbert Reid’s “admission that western ethics are not as good as those of China” (Compilation of Chinese Studies (国学荟编) 1914, 8:35). However, what has been overlooked is that behind their ardent support of the Confucian Association, Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid were always advocating the philosophy of “uniting all religions”, which was an imperative part of their missionary work.

Gilbert Reid originally belonged to the American Presbyterian Mission and became an independent missionary in China after 1894, working on strengthening ties between the East and the West. In 1897, he founded the International Institute, a cultural institution in Peking which aimed at promoting exchange between China and the West. In early 1910, the International Institute, which had by then moved to Shanghai, was reorganized to consist of three committees, namely, the Commercial, Education, and Religious committees, the last of which was chaired by Timothy Richard at Gilbert Reid’s nomination. It was at the regular weekly meeting of the Religious committee that Chen Huanchang delivered his two speeches mentioned above. Gilbert Reid pointed out on behalf of the International Institute at the third meeting of the United States Peace Conference in 1911 that all major religions, including Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism, were represented in the committee. As Reid put it, they could then study the truth “in order to eliminate contempt for and ostracism of each other, and thus promote the right way regardless of creed” (The Institute Record (尚贤堂纪事) 1912, 5:12). Compelled to solicit financial support from multiple organizations, including the Carnegie International Peace Foundation, Gilbert Reid stressed empathically that “the committee of our Education section and of our Religious section is not constituted so much in the way of representing different nationalities as different religions and religious policies” (Gilbert Reid to CIPF 23 March 1911).

As for Timothy Richard, as early as 1879, he had “drafted a scheme for world federation”, which suggested “China should seek to unite with other Powers to form a Universal Arbitration Court, by which international wars and militarism might be ended” (Timothy 1916, p. 367). After that, Timothy Richard lobbied influential political figures both in China and abroad, such as Prince Ch’ing 奕劻 (1838–1917) and Prince Ito Hirobumi (1841–1908), for his “World Federation” plan, but ultimately they did not take it seriously. It is worth noting that the “World Federation” proposed by Timothy Richard was essentially an alliance of religions. He once pointed out that “political union generally follows religious union” (Timothy 1907, p. 168) and that the lack of a unified religious foundation was at the heart of the conflict between East and West. This foundation that Timothy Richard referred to as universal “righteousness” was in fact Christianity:

“It is Christianity’s task to wake up the latent forces of these great historical religions once more and weld them into one universal voice of righteousness, as our Lord and his chief apostles Peter, Paul and John, united Jews and Gentiles. Instead of Europeans teaching the Asiatics to go in for force—for the militarism which is crushing Europe—let Christianity set itself to unite all the religious people of Asia and make righteousness triumph instead of force, and when that is done in Asia let her carry it on into Europe and America till the whole world agrees to put all force in the hands of Jesus Christ who only uses it to love, to save and to bless the world”.

(Timothy 1907, pp. 180–181)

In addition, Timothy Richard’s memoirs, which were completed in 1916, make it clear that he and Gilbert Reid, as the flag-bearers of the religious community in Shanghai, encouraged the reorganization of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in China to cope with the new situation after the founding of the Republic:

“After the Revolution of 1911 there was a strong public opinion not only that the Government had failed to rule the nation aright, but that the religions of China had failed. A public meeting was called by leading Reformers and was held in the largest hall in Shanghai. Dr. Reid and I, together with some Chinese orators, were asked to speak. The ground floor was packed with men, the galleries with women, while many hundreds could not get into the building at all. When we urged the nation to reform in religion as well as in other matters the response was most hearty”.

(Timothy 1916, p. 355)

Putting aside the self-aggrandizement in his memoirs, Timothy Richard’s idea of “rebuilding” the religions in China echoed Reid’s proposal to promote solidarity between Eastern and Western religions to ensure world peace while attending the Peace Conference in the United States. With few contacts in the city and no instructions from Kang Youwei on how to run the Confucian Association, Timothy Richard was already interacting with Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist organizations when Chen Huanchang first arrived in Shanghai.

In March 1912, the World Religious Association was founded in Shanghai with the aim of “uniting all religions, seeking truth, cultivating morality, and benefiting the people” (Shen-pao (申报) 1912, 4 March, p. 7). In addition to Timothy Richard, the founders of the organization also included representatives of other religions, such as Dixian 谛闲 (1858–1932), a Buddhist, and Halin 哈麐 (1876–1934), a Muslim. It is particularly noteworthy that Shen Zengzhi 沈曾植, who later played a key role in the establishment of the Confucius Association, was also one of the founders of the World Religious Association. Although the origins of this Association remain unclear, it was reported at the time that Timothy Richard was the “president” of the association. (Shen Zhou Daily (神州日报) 1912, 22 November, p. 11). In addition, through Timothy Richard’s conversations with Shen Zengzhi and other Confucianists, both the Christian and Confucian founders of the World Religious Association shared common grounds on the issue of “uniting all religions”.

On 13 June 1912, in his speech entitled “the problems of the various Religions” delivered at the International Institute, Timothy Richard reiterated that “the greatest problems of the world today are industrial unrest and anarchy, and that a universal religion is the one thing needed to disseminate a spirit of peace in all classes of society in all lands” (The China Press 1912, 14 June, p. 1). These discourses are almost indistinguishable from the preface he later wrote for Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion). A careful examination of Shen Zengzhi’s remarks before and after the founding of the Confucian Association in October 1912 reveals that he had echoed Timothy Richard’s concept of “universal religion”. For example, the International Institute invited Shen Zengzhi 沈曾植 to give a speech on “the trend towards a common religion” in November 1912. Shen mentioned in his speech that “the saints who love and save the world in the west, the saints who love people and things and the saints who are compassionate and generous in the east, meet each other and inspire the public” (The Institute Record (尚贤堂纪事) 1913b, 2:6–7), which is virtually identical to Timothy Richard’s proposal of founding a “Universal religion” at the World Peace Conference. In addition, Chen Huanchang wrote Kong jiao hui xu 孔教会序 “Preface to the Confucian Association” (H. Chen 1913a), which was published on the occasion of the founding of the Confucian Association. In concluding Chen explained that “There is no such thing as a religion, but it combines Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Mohammedanism into one. Founded in China, promoted overseas” (The Confucian Association Monthly (孔教会杂志) 1913, p. 7). Again, Chen’s words are uncannily similar to those of Timothy Richard.

Regarding Shen Zengzhi’s cooperation with missionaries such as Timothy Richard, Qiu Chenjiang noted that Shen wrote, in a 1914 letter to Chen Huanchang, “Christianity in China, in order to develop, must make friends with the ancient Chinese religion, and then can get the credit of the upper class. We have certainly been engaged in the religious union of nations, and Christianity, instead of helping those who oppose it, should help us in order to show the Christian’s ecumenical goodwill” (Qiu 2023). Based on this finding, Qiu surmised that Shen proposed inter-religious solidarity to convey the magnanimity of Confucianism in allying itself with Christianity. However, if Shen Zengzhi’s endorsement of the strategy of “uniting all religions” was intended to capitalize on Christian support to boost the power of the Confucian Association, then the core demand of the Confucian Association—the establishment of Confucianism as the state religion—was clearly at odds with Timothy Richard’s and Gilbert Reid’s proposal to “unite all religions”.

In Timothy Richard’s discussion of the “task” of Christianity in Asia cited above, that is, to integrate the East Asian religions into the “righteousness” of Christianity, his advocacy of Christian supremacy is self-evident. In his speech, “the problems of the various Religions”, Timothy Richard also said bluntly, after comparing Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity, that “All these marvels which the Taoist religion sought after and which the Confucianists discussed are all made known by Christendom, therefore Jesus Christ is most appropriately call the Truth” (The China Press 1912, 14 June, p. 1). Although the “universal religion” depicted by Timothy Richard appears to be a union of the religions of the Eastern and Western worlds, Christianity reigned supreme in his hierarchy of religions. Shortly after the founding of the Confucian Association, Timothy Richard, in his capacity as president of the World Religions Association, invited the general organ of the Taoist Association in Shanghai to join the Association in November 1912. He regarded Confucianism, together with the Buddhist and Taoist religions, as equal partners in his efforts to bring about a union of all the religions in China:

“At present in Shanghai, in addition to the World Religious Society, there are also Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and other societies, established one after another, all hoping to promote the teachings of their own religions, which is very good, but taking into account the confrontation with each other, each acting in its own way, cannot be united, and may stir up disputes”.

(Shen Zhou Daily (神州日报) 1912, 22 November, p. 11)

To the extent that Timothy Richard opposed the “rivalries” between the various religions, he naturally did not want to see Confucianism being exclusively honored as the state religion or being superior to Buddhism and Taoism.

In marked contrast to Timothy Richard, Gilbert Reid openly supported the designation of Confucianism as the state religion in August 1913, during the State Religion Movement. At that time, Chen Huanchang, together with Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 (1863–1924) and others, submitted a petition to the Parliament to make Confucianism the state religion. Some Christians were horrified and joined with other Buddhists and Taoists to oppose Confucianism. Gilbert Reid refuted these detractors by claiming that “If China rejects Confucianism as its state religion, the vast proportion of its officials from the President down will be left to plunge into the whirlpool of immorality, lawlessness, and godlessness” (Reid 1913). Previous studies based on his statements at the time have concluded that Gilbert Reid was a supporter of the State Religion Movement (Han 2007, p. 246). It is important to note, however, that while supporting the Confucian Association, Gilbert Reid emphasized his opposition to absolute Confucian supremacy. Proposing that “in the government schools, no precedence should be given to a particular religion, but that teachings common to all religions should be taught and enforced”, Reid interpreted the Confucian Association’s petition to mean that religious freedom was the prerequisite of the promotion of Confucianism as a state religion (Reid 1913). In other words, the subtext of Gilbert Reid’s support for the Confucian Association was that Confucianism should not have its predominance over other Chinese religions as the state religion. In fact, in early 1913, when the Confucian Association was campaigning for the establishment of Confucianism as the state religion, Gilbert Reid had already objected to the monopoly of national education by Confucianism in a speech at the International Institute. On 29 March 1913, when discussing “the relationship between morality and religion and the national education policy” at the International Institute, Gilbert Reid separated the opinions of those who advocated the adjustment of the education policy in the early years of the Republic of China into three factions: first, the “Conservatives”, who advocated that the religion could not be changed along with the political system; second, the “innovators”, who advocated the adoption of Christianity; third, the “syncretists”, who “[sought] an appropriate approach” between Confucius and Jesus. Gilbert Reid favored the third group:

“Although Christianity is well developed, the number of Confucianists is even greater, and if A is forced to subordinate B, or B to subordinate A, it can only be harmful and unprofitable. Therefore, as a compromise, it is best to take the essence of the two religions and inject it into the national education policy, but we should seek common ground while reserving differences”.

(The Institute Record (尚贤堂纪事) 1913a, 4:12–13)

The “syncretism” here is consistent with Gilbert Reid’s opposition to the “predominance” of Confucianism in the Provisional Constitution. Put bluntly, it is essentially an attempt to destroy traditional Chinese veneration for Confucianism in the Republican era under the pretext of promoting religious freedom. Ultimately, Gilbert Reid aimed at the pernicious infiltration of the doctrines of various religions, including Christianity, into Chinese religion, morality, and education.

It should also be pointed out that the Confucian Association was merely one of many pro-Confucian organizations that emerged in the early Republican era, and that Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid did not only support the Confucian Association in their capacity as foreigners in China. For example, on the eve of the founding of the Confucian Association in 1912, Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid attended a meeting of the Shanghai National Association on the theme of “Preserving Confucianism”. Kong she 孔社 (The Confucius Society), another pro-Confucian organization established in Peking, also invited Gilbert Reid to deliver a speech (Zong sheng hui zhi (宗圣汇志) 1914, 1:15–17). It can be said that pursuant to their efforts in “uniting all religions”, Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid actively supported various pro-Confucian organizations, including the Confucian Association. However, the Confucian Association was clearly the most radical amongst all other pro-Confucian associations during that time, since it advocated making Confucianism the state religion, to which Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid were opposed. In particular, the “universal religion” outlined by Timothy Richard implies a hierarchical framework, with Confucianism playing a subordinate role in enhancing Christian predominance within the “universal religion”, and Gilbert Reid was only willing to tolerate Confucianism to the extent that it could bolster Christian supremacy. In other words, these so-called “Distinguished Sons of Christianity” who were ostensibly Chen Huanchang’s allies merely followed the footsteps of missionaries who came to China after the Ming and Qing dynasties to Westernize China under the guise of managing state–religion relations during the early Republican era.1

3. Attitudes of Hermann Graf Keyserling and Hiram Stevens Maxim Towards the State Religion

Among the so-called “foreign supporters” of the Confucian Association, the Russian philosopher Hermann Graf Keyserling and the British engineer Hiram Stevens Maxim were completely unassociated with the Confucian Association. Because of Chen Huanchang’s translation of their comments on Confucius in the Association’s journal, they were included in his list of Westerners who supported the Confucian Association. Even Hermann Graf Keyserling, who strongly opposed the idea of a state religion, was mistakenly regarded as a supporter of the Confucian Association’s advocacy for a state religion (X. Chen 1959; Han 2007, p. 193).

In early 1913, The Confucian Association Monthly 孔教会杂志was founded, and the inaugural volume contained three translations on the theme of Westerners’ veneration of Confucius. Two of them were speeches and interviews given by Hermann Graf Keyserling during his activities in Shanghai, namely, Keyserling’s speech at the International Institute held on 2 May 1912, “The East and the West and Their Search for the Common Truth” (Keyserling 1912a); Keyserling’s interview in The China Press on 26 April 1912 entitled “China’s New Life Must Be Founded on Confucianism” (North-China Daily News 1911, 13 April, p. 1);2 and a letter from Hiram Stevens Maxim published in The Republican Advocate of China, an English weekly in Shanghai (Maxim 1912).

Hermann Graf Keyserling was born in Russia and was an aristocrat who admired Oriental culture. In 1911, during his trip to China from Ceylon and India, he happened to witness Chinese society after the Xinhai Revolution. According to Keyserling’s memoirs completed a few years later, he imagined himself as a “reactionary” hostile to the republic, who admired the Confucian ethos practiced by Qing loyalists who sought refuge in the Qingdao Concession and could not bear to witness the demise of traditional Chinese morality along with the old order (Keyserling 1925, p. 56). During that period in China, Hermann Graf Keyserling had a meeting with Shen Zengzhi and commented that “he was the one man in his country that I have come across, whose personal presence was symbolic in the right sense of all that China has stood for far, in the eyes of mankind” (Xu 2007, p. 366). In Hermann Graf Keyserling’s remarks made during his stay in Shanghai, he called for the preservation of the Chinese national essence and opposed the superficial emulation of Western culture and mores. He criticized some Chinese who had studied abroad for their superficiality in learning about Western thoughts and in particular their calls for all their compatriots to give up Chinese traditions entirely. On 2 May, Hermann Graf Keyserling gave a speech on “The East and the West and Their Search for the Common Truth” at the International Institute, in which he warned China that “No one can live a life foreign from his own… In China this means that all reformers, all improvements, must be made in the in the spirit of its own world civilization, and not after the pattern of a Western one” and that if China “breaks from the ancient root its apparent progress will mean nothing less than disintegration. The great culture of the past will be lost and there will be no other culture to replace it” (Keyserling 1912a, p. 226). These remarks beneficial to the Confucian Association were translated by Chen Huanchang and published on The Confucian Association Monthly 孔教会杂志. It is interesting to note, however, that a letter sent by Hermann Graf Keyserling in The Republican Advocate of China, which appeared almost concurrently with the letter from Hiram Stevens Maxim, was completely ignored by Chen.

The correspondences from Hermann Graf Keyserling and Hiram Stevens Maxim in The Republican Advocate of China are related to a discussion initiated by the editor. On 4 May 1912, Ho Heng-hwa 何兴华 (dates unknown), the chief editor of The Republican Advocate of China, solicited readers’ responses on the issue “Should China have a State Religion and what should be this Religion?” (The Republican Advocate of China 1912, v.1, Pt. 1, p. 193). Initially, Ho had expected enthusiastic responses from his readers but was disappointed to receive only a handful of responses. As a result, the call for responses was thus extended from June to September. During this period, the Reader’s Round Table column published letters from nine readers, including Spurgeon Medhurst, John Durroch of the General China Tract Society, Hermann Graf Keyserling, and Hiram Stevens Maxim. Among them, only three, including Hiram Stevens Maxim, supported the idea that China should have a state religion and that Confucianism should be the state religion; the rest of the readers, such as Hermann Graf Keyserling and Spurgeon Medhurst, were either against the idea that China should have a state religion or against the idea that Confucianism should be the state religion. This dismal result was conveniently omitted in Chen Huanchang’s translation of The Republican Advocate of China’s discussion of the state religion issue.

In his letter to Ho, Hermann Graf Keyserling wrote that he had already traveled to Japan in August 1912 when he saw the call for responses in The Republican Advocate of China on the question of the state religion. He wrote to the editor with considerable interest:

“The state is the organized body of a nation, that is to say, it is an aspect of its soul, and the same is true of its religion. Both are bodies, but different bodies, and bodies in a different sense: and there is no more necessary connection between the two than between a man’s philosophy and the outlines of his face. Where an intimate correlation between State and Religion exists, it is well and, it should be preserved at any cost, for in this case they mutually strengthen each other. But I do not think it possible to create such a correlation, where it does not pre-exist. And, were it possible. I should not think it advisable, as the opposition against the artifice, sure to arise, especially in countries where there are several religious systems in power, would most probably weaken, splitting it, the real thing, and so indirectly damage the State. So, to my mind, the question for China, as a country in the process of formation, cannot be whether or not it should have a State religion: the question should be: “what attitude the State should assume towards religion”.

(Keyserling 1912b, p. 744)

As a philosopher, Hermann Graf Keyserling argued that at an abstract level, the very concept of a state religion was untenable, and that the state should not interfere in matters of religious faith. “The one and only side of religion which immediately touches the life of the State, is its moralizing influence on the citizen”. Therefore, the State should support religion, but not by declaring a particular religion as the state religion, since all higher forms of religion, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, are good religions without any difference in their fundamental moral values. On the question of how the state could promote Confucianism, Hermann Graf Keyserling believed that the Chinese government “could interfere actively by laying the greatest possible stress on the intelligent study of his books, by exalting his greatness in the schools, by referring and relating to him everything that is high and great, even if this be not Confucian in the historical sense” (Keyserling 1912b, p. 744). Keyserling believed that such encouragement would have a much more profound effect than declaring Confucianism to be the state religion.

Hermann Graf Keyserling’s views resonated strongly with missionary Spurgeon Medhurst, who wrote the preface to Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion) mentioned above. Medhurst, when participating in a discussion on the state religion issue in The Republican Advocate of China earlier, pointed out that the concept of the state religion was difficult to define. Since the absence of a state religion did not prevent the United States’ rise to become a global power, Medhurst reasoned, China had scant need for a state religion. He added bluntly: “China will only become a strong nation as she becomes a Christian nation. Yet I should oppose the State recognition of Christianity” because “religious liberty must be absolute” (Medhurst 1912, pp. 431–32).

It is very likely that Chen Huanchang deliberately refrained from translating Hermann Graf Keyserling’s letter because the latter supported Confucianism as a means of maintaining the national spirit of the Chinese people but opposed the establishment of any form of religion, including Confucianism, as the state religion. Instead, Chen selected a letter which Hiram Stevens Maxim sent to The Republican Advocate of China and published it upon translation into Chinese. While Maxim supporting making Confucianism China’s state religion, it is likely that Chen had twisted Maxim’s remarks to better suit his own needs during the course of translation.

Born in the United States in 1840, Hiram Stevens Maxim worked as an electrical engineer in his early years. After travelling to London, England, in 1881, he gained fame as a small arms designer and manufacturer. Hiram Stevens Maxim later mentioned in his memoirs that his grandfather was a devout Puritan, but he, like the scientist Thomas Edison, “never had any use for [any religious faith]” (Maxim 1915, p. 213). Existing scholarship has yet to trace the detailed trajectory of Hiram Stevens Maxim’s activities in China. What is certain is that around the first year of the Republic of China (1912), he caused public furor when he wrote an article attacking missionary groups in China. In response, Hiram Stevens Maxim wrote: “the religions of China at the present day bear a closer resemblance to primitive Christianity than the perverted form which the missionaries attempt to force upon the Chinese… The missionaries, he concludes, had nothing better to offer the Chinese than the ‘Golden Rule’ handed down from generation to generation in China from the time of Confucius” (North-China Daily News 1911, 13 April, p. 7). On 23 July 1912, Hiram Stevens Maxim responded to the call for readers’ opinions on the issue of China’s state religion issued by the editor of The Republican Advocate of China, opening with the following statement:

In reply to your question “Should China have a State Religion” I should say “Decidedly Yes”. Not however that Religion as such can do a Nation any good but still I would recommend a small dose of a very mild form of Religion as a species of vaccination to ward off a malignant attack (Maxim 1912, p. 862).

Chen Huanchang’s translation is as follows:

“Should China have a state religion? I will answer this question directly by responding with an empathic “Yes.” Indeed, I may answer this question with absolute certainty. Despite this, I contend that not all religions can benefit the people. The one I wish to recommend today is a tiny dose of one of the most neutral religions. It may be regarded as a kind of vaccination, for the sole purpose of warding off malignant influences”.

(The Confucian Association Monthly (孔教会杂志) 1913, 1:8)

Hiram Stevens Maxim had argued that religion per se does not do a nation any good in his statement “Religion as such can do a Nation any good”. Yet Chen Huanchang translated it as “Not all religions can do a nation any good”, which suggests that Chen twisted Maxim’s logic to hint subtly that Confucianism could do good for China. If we read Maxim’s letter in its entirety, it is clear that he recommended making Confucianism the state religion only for want of a better alternative. In order to counteract “some extremely bad religions in Europe and America”, which had caused much senseless bloodshed during the Middle Ages in Europe, “Certainly the Chinese should have a religion of their own in order to keep the foreign article out” (Maxim 1912, p. 862). With the exception of Hiram Stevens Maxim, most of the readers of The Republican Advocate of China who discussed the issue of state religion, drawing from the trend in Europe since the Middle Ages of separating church and state and prohibiting state interference in religion, were similarly opposing to all religions, including Christianity, to become China’s state religion. Among them, a reader who gave his name as “Tatung” was especially pointed in his criticism of a state religion:

“Should China have a state religion? Of course not... Should one sect be favored at the expense of others, what would become of those who have no religion?... China had traditionally been tolerant of various religions; would this give rise to religious persecution in China? The hierarchy of priests was the greatest curse to Europe (cf. Leck’s ‘Rise of Rationalism in Europe’), and when Europe, now alive to its errors, is discarding state Religions, will China put on her worn-out cast-off garments?”

(Tatung 1912, p. 556)

Since Chen Huanchang’s selective translation of Hermann Graf Keyserling’s and Spurgeon Medhurst’s letters to The Republican Advocate of China was clearly intended to suit his propagandistic ends, we are now unable to discern Chen’s response to his readers’ general opposition to the establishment of a state religion. However, in his speech “China under the Republic Still in Need of Confucianism”, Chen averred that “Confucianism has not eroded the power of the state, and the state has not had a disagreement with Confucianism.” In rebuttal of what he considered to be a “baseless accusation,” Chen pointed out that “the fuss made by European and American politicians over the separation of church and state” was completely irrelevant to China (H. Chen 1912b, p. 4). It is thus clear that Chen loathed those Westerners who opposed China’s establishment of a state religion. After Chen’s speech was published, an editorialist with the pen name 知难 “Zhi Nan” countered in an article published in Du li zhou bao 独立周报 (Independent Weekly), a publication managed by Zhang Shizhao 章士钊, that the article on freedom of religion in the Provisional Covenant of the Republican Government was in line with the written constitutions of Europe and the United States and that there was nothing wrong with it:

“Article I of the Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ‘Congress shall not establish a religion by law, nor impair the freedom of religion......’ and our Provisional Covenant provides that ‘the people shall have freedom of religion’, both have the same meaning”.

(Zhi 1912, p. 16)

In early 1913, Chen Huanchang delivered a speech at the Confucian Association titled “The Establishment of the Existing State Religion as the State Religion Does Not Contravene the New Terminology of Freedom of Religion” (H. Chen 1913b). Apparently, this was Chen’s response to “Zhi Nan”, since he further discussed whether the establishment of a state religion might infringe upon the freedom of religion. Chen Huanchang pointed out that after suffering from religious wars, Europe enacted “new laws” to guarantee the freedom of religion, something which had long existed in ancient China. However, in Chen’s opinion, the Chinese Republican government omitted one key fact in modeling the “Provisional Constitution” directly after the constitutions of Europe and the United States:

“Since ancient times, China has adopted Confucianism as its state religion, and since ancient times, it has allowed its people the freedom of religion, both of which are unwritten constitutions that have been in force for thousands of years. Last year, when the new Constitution was enacted, the new term ‘freedom of religion’ was invoked, but it was not explicitly stated that ‘Confucianism was the State religion’”.

(H. Chen 1913b, p. 2)

At that time, Chen’s claim that Confucianism had always been China’s state religion was a controversial issue. On the one hand, Zhang Dongsun 张东荪 (1886–1973) believed that “Confucianism represents the essence of thousands of years of Chinese civilization, so Confucianism has always been China’s de facto state religion” (D. Zhang 1913, p. 8). On the other hand, Zhang Taiyan believed that “there has never been a state religion in China” (T. Zhang 1913, p. 1). While Chen Huanchang never involved himself in this debate, he claimed that the separation of church and state in Europe and the United States was irrelevant to the issue of China’s state religion. In other words, China’s establishment of Confucianism as the state religion did not go against global trends; hence, the allegation that pro-Confucian individuals were picking up the “worn-out cast-off garments” that Europe had thrown away was totally moot. This was because “Chinese society is entirely based on Confucianism”, and there was thus no Chinese political system which was independent of Confucianism. Therefore, “China cannot expel Confucianism from politics unless Chinese civilization is completely destroyed” (H. Chen 1912b, p. 4).

In both of Chen Huanchang’s speeches discussed above, he repeatedly stressed that Chinese society was unique and distinct from that of Europe and the United States. In their zeal to align the Provisional Constitution with the written constitutions of Europe and the United States, Chinese revolutionaries during the early Republican era had neglected the fact that Chinese culture and customs were derived from Confucianism, which had served as an “China’s unwritten constitution.” As a result, the erstwhile sacrosanct status of Confucianism was shaken. As for the consequences of Confucianism’s demise, Chen Huanchang, befitting his status as the archetypal cultural nationalist, claimed that the preservation of Confucianism in the form of a state religion was a matter of survival as far as the foundations of traditional Chinese culture were concerned. It is worth noting that Chen seems to have conveniently ignored the point made in the editorial by “Zhi Nan” that the U.S. Constitution explicitly states that “Congress shall not establish a religion by law, nor impair the freedom of religion”. In an oblique reference to this issue, Chen commented that while the United States indeed lacked a formal state religion, Americans were in fact united by a common religion which served to underpin their moral values and social mores. Precisely for this reason, Christianity alone had enjoyed the endorsement of politicians and society in general. While the American people may have enjoyed religious freedom, ultimately the status and influence of other religions was a far cry from that of Christianity (H. Chen 1913b, p. 2).

To a large extent, Chen Huanchang’s ambiguity on the issue of state intervention in religious worship is suggestive of the conundrum faced by the Confucian Association in campaigning for making Confucianism China’s state religion. Given that the constitutions of Europe and the United States had explicitly prohibited state intervention in religious worship by the early twentieth century, Chen was no longer able to draw on Western precedents to strengthen his case. Not only was this dilemma made apparent by the purported Western supporters of Confucianism like Hermann Graf Keyserling in The Republican Advocate of China, it also played out in the nationwide debates triggered by the Confucian Association’s push to establish Confucianism as the state religion. As Zhang Taiyan said in his “Refutation of the Establishment of kongjiao as China’s state religion”, “To revere one religion at the expense of others is to be partial” (T. Zhang 1913, p. 1). Chen Duxiu 陈独秀 (1879–1942), who campaigned vigorously for destroying Confucianism in the May Fourth New Culture Movement, wrote in “Constitution and Confucianism”: “Should the state force ordinary Chinese to worship Confucius, we would go down the path of Europe’s religious wars in no time” (D. Chen 1916, p. 2).

4. Reginald Fleming Johnston’s Motives for Supporting the State Religion Movement

Unlike other Westerners lauding Confucianism, not only did Reginald Fleming Johnston join the Confucian Association, he also wrote a widely-read article in support of the adoption of Confucianism as the state religion. Indeed, Johnston was the most ardent Western supporter of the Confucian Association. At the beginning of 1913, Johnston, who was then the District Officer of Weihaiwei, which was under British lease at that time, wrote a letter to Chen Huanchang stating that he was “in full agreement with the aims of the Confucian Association” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to Chen Huanchang 5 March 1913 (Johnston 1913b)) and even sent the membership fee for joining the Association. When Johnston read the official mouthpiece of the Confucian Association, The Confucian Association Monthly 孔教会杂志, he wrote again to Chen Huanchang on 31 March: “I am in entire sympathy with the movement to make Confucianism the 国教 of China, or rather to preserve it as such. The followers of other religions will have no rightful cause for complaint… ” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to Chen Huanchang 31 March 1913 (Johnston 1913c)). These two letters, together with “The Religious Future of China” (Johnston 1913m) written by Johnston during the State Religion Movement in 1913, might seem to be irrefutable evidence of his unwavering support for the Confucian Association. However, why did Johnston respond to the State Religion Movement in such a high-profile manner? What were his motives for supporting the Confucian Association? For a long time, these questions have been left unanswered in the scholarly circle.

Born in Edinburgh in 1874 to a Christian family, Reginald Fleming Johnston was baptized and given the Christian name John as a child (Airlie 2012, p. 4). However, judging from the writings of Johnston after he joined the British Hong Kong Government in 1898, he was already filled with animosity toward Christianity and called himself “a Buddhist” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 26.07.1906). Johnston’s writings are replete with his criticism of Christians’ antagonism toward Confucianism. Under the pseudonym of an overseas Chinese named “Lin Shao-yang”, Johnston once wrote a book attacking the missionaries in China for promoting a religious system which was “morally defective, intellectually absurd, and historically untrue, and one which has been discarded by capable theologians as well as by nearly all educated laymen in the West” (Johnston 1911a, p. 29). Existing research suggests that Johnston’s travels around Laos and Burma in 1902, following a major family tragedy, prompted him to embrace Buddhism (Airlie 2012, p. 34). During his time in the Hong Kong Government, Johnston struck his colleagues as being eccentric, as he was only dissuaded from taking the tonsure with much difficulty (Airlie 1989, p. 171). On his return trip to Burma in 1906, Johnston privately confided to a friend that if he were to remain in the employment of the Hong Kong government, which he had grown tired of, he might as well follow the Salween River in search of “a hermitage in the South Shan States”(Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 26 July 1906). Johnston’s predilection to retire from worldly pursuits would repeatedly surface in his later life, as he suffered multiple setbacks in his career.

In addition to favoring Buddhism while degrading Christianity, Reginald Fleming Johnston initially viewed Confucianism as a rigid ethical system. In April 1904, Johnston was seconded by the British Colonial Office to Weihaiwei (under British lease) and visited the Shandong government that year (Johnston 1904a). In a confidential report to the British authorities, Johnston made the following observations about the Confucius Temple in Qufu: “Confucius was a political philosopher and a moralist and a profound student of men and manners and old literature, but no founder of a religion in the Western or Indian sense of the word” and that the only legacy of Confucianism consisted of “narrow moral maxims, his elaborate doctrine of forms and ceremonies, his sententious saws on the human relationship” (Johnston 1904b, pp. 38–39), which were far less profound and subtle than the doctrines of the ancient Greek philosophers and the Buddha Sakyamuni. In his later years, Johnston defined Confucianism as “a Life”, or more precisely, a way of life (Johnston 1934, p. 97). Apparently, he never agreed with the religious nature of Confucianism, and was not as “fully in agreement with the aims of the Confucian Association” as he had claimed when he joined the Association.

However, Reginald Fleming Johnston’s opinion of Confucianism changed for the better within a matter of months. In Johnston’s 1905 report on the governance of the British-leased Weihaiwei, he wrote highly of the Confucian patriarchal system as well as the Confucian model of rural self-government, so much so that he concluded, “The headmen are a result of the natural evolution of Chinese village life, and the solidarity of that village life as it exists in this part of China would be severely shaken by their removal” (CO873/163). In Johnston’s analysis of the ill effects of China’s learning from the West since the late Qing, he consistently expressed his hope for a “return to Confucianism” among Chinese reformers and rejected a wholesale Westernization approach. According to Johnston, should the ancestral halls which served to maintain ties of kinship in rural grassroots society be destroyed, then thousands of rural police stations would emerge to replace them, since “the collapse of Confucianism would undoubtedly involve, for example, the partial or total ruin of the Chinese family system and the cult of ancestors” (Johnston 1910, p. 11).

At the time of the founding of the Republic of China, the anarchy and rampant banditry in the neighboring counties of Wendeng and Rongcheng brought unrest and larcenies into the British settlement. Johnston described the collapse of social order to the British Colonial Office as follows:

“The breaking-up of the old intellectual traditions, the weakening of the reverence for the authority of family and clan, the growth of the influence of a doctrinaire and irresponsible press, the spread of new theories of social organization, these and many other influences are contributing towards the evolution of a new China which if more progressive than the old is not likely to be so law-abiding and so easily governed”.

(James Stewart Lockhart to Colonial Office 13 December 1912)

Around this time, Johnston wrote an article “Political Sovereignty in China”, which implicitly questioned “the wisdom of abolishing the monarchy altogether and the establishment of a Republican Government in its stead” and reminded “the architects of the New China” that change in China had never detracted from the old traditions and the ways of the sages throughout China’s long history (Johnston 1912a, pp. 44–53).

These observations, which reminded the early Republic reformers that they should not abandon Confucius and Mencius, and that Confucianism was compatible with the new Republican polity, were quite compatible with the Confucian Association’s call for the preservation of Confucianism and the salvation of the people’s hearts and minds. Chen Huanchang, in particular, argued that competition between nations was not limited to force of arms. “Civilization, religious morality, verbal art and political art are all evidence of civilization”, and to discard “China’s most refined Confucianism” would be tantamount to “destroying the very foundation of our civilization” (H. Chen 1912b, p. 4). As Chen saw it, this alone was ample justification for the Provisional Constitution to make Confucianism the state religion. However, Johnston’s reasons for aligning himself with the Confucian Association, along with a host of other pro-Confucian organizations, as well as the timing of his proclamation of support for the Confucius Association, deserve further inquiry.

As mentioned above, Johnston was deeply steeped in Buddhism. Since beginning his activities in interior China, he has visited Buddhist monasteries such as the Mountain Putuo on multiple occasions. In early 1909, Johnston even wrote a book entitled Buddhist China. As the Qing government at that time planned to recover Weihaiwei for use as a naval training base, Johnston felt that his career had come to a dead end. It was in this context that he “considered settling down on Mt. Putuo and subsisting on vegetables” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to Cecil Clementi 19 January 1911 (Johnston 1911b)). Shortly afterwards, he mentioned several times in his private letter that he planned to choose a famous mountain to go into seclusion and set up an organization for the study of Chinese and Western cultures—“the League of the Sacred Hills” (Johnston 1913a). Subsequently, Johnston made moves to win the support of Chinese elites, including businessmen and politicians, such as 辜鸿铭 Gu Hongming (1856–1928), an aide of Zhang Zhi-dong 张之洞 (1837–1909), the former governor of Hubei and Guangdong in the Qing Dynasty, and Hardoon, a wealthy Jewish businessman in Shanghai. In particular, Johnston went to great lengths to win Hardoon over.

Because his wife Liza 罗迦陵 (1864–1941) was a devout Buddhist, Hardoon purchased hundreds of acres of land and built the Hardoon Garden in 1909, with a goal to build a prayer hall in the garden and invite monks to teach Sanskrit (Feng 1947, p. 172). He also financed the printing of the Pin jia jing she jiao kanda zang jing 频伽精舍校刊大藏经 (Tripitaka). Johnston purchased a copy of this sutra and was immediately captivated by Liza’s portrait on the title page, so much so that he referred to her as 非常人 “The extraordinary Lady” in private. He even fantasized over the day when Mr. and Mrs. Hardoon would build a private study for him on Mt. Putuo, which would allow him to tour the mountain whenever he pleased, as long as the Hardoons did not drop by for visits (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 29 March 1911). According to the famous Buddhist practitioner Gao Henian’s Ming shan you ji 名山游访记 (Visits to Famous Mountains), in November 1912, Liza invited Venerable Yuexia to “preach the sutras of Lotus, Vimalakirti and Lankavatara at the Hardoon Garden, with hundreds of male and female listeners”, including Johnston, Timothy Richard, Gilbert Reid, and other Westerners (Gao 1995, p. 185). Since Johnston’s schedule in Shanghai was extremely tight, he wrote to Liza immediately upon returning to Weihaiwei, requesting for permission to sing praises of Hardoon’s sponsorship of the reissue of the 大藏经 (Tripitaka) in the preface of his Chinese Buddhism (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 9 December 1912 (Johnston 1912c); (Lockhart 1912)). This was clearly a deliberate gesture of goodwill.

In February 1912, Johnston published “A League of the Sacred Hills” in Nineteenth Century, in which he called for the establishment of the Sacred Hills League. In this article, Johnston claimed that the civilizations of both East and West were in danger of losing their souls through immersion in the sea of materialism. Therefore, the Sacred Hills League was founded for the salvation of the spiritual civilization of both the East and the West. An overview of Johnston’s plan reveals that it was nothing more than a research society and library, which would allow Chinese and Western scholars to study “archaeology and epigraphy, ethics and sociology, folklore and comparative mythology” together (Johnston 1913a, p. 314) and was largely indistinguishable from the cultural organizations founded by Westerners in China at the time, such as the International Institute. In addition, Johnston proposed to set up an organization for the promotion of cultural exchanges between China and the West in a secluded mountainous area, which was essentially another search for a “hermitage”.

After “A League of the Sacred Hills” was published, the response from both Chinese and Western circles was lukewarm at best. Yang Jinsen 杨锦森, editor of the Shi bao 时报 (Time Newspaper), translated this article into Chinese and submitted it to Oriental Magazine 东方杂志. Unexpectedly, Yang’s translation attracted much criticism, and an editorial in the Ya xi ya ri bao 亚细亚日报 (Asiatic Daily) criticized the Sacred Hills League for its hidden motive of plundering the mineral deposits of China’s famous mountains. The editorial expressed the fear that “in a few years’ time the famous mountains and beautiful scenery will fall into the hands of the Europeans, and us Chinese will not even be able to take a single step into those enclaves” (Wu 1913, p. 1). Reflecting on the lack of general interest in his proposed Sacred Hills League, Johnston wrote in a private letter dated 24 February 1913 that “The ‘League’ has fallen quite flat. I don’t think it matters much except that I cannot now hope for the British public to build my mountain-quarters for me—so probably I shall have to do without a bath-room and a ting” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 24 February 1913 (Johnston 1913l)). Johnston’s words of frustration here unveiled that “the Sacred Hills League” was essentially his personal retirement plan. More importantly, because this letter was written around the same time as his other letter to Chen Huanchang, this suggests that Johnston’s contact with Chen Huanchang stemmed from his realization that it was unrealistic to set up the “the Sacred Hills League” by means of the British public’s fundraising efforts. Coming to terms with the impracticality of using the British public to raise funds for the establishment of the “the Sacred Hills League”, he turned to celebrities in Shanghai religious circles to salvage what was left of his grandiose plans.

On 17 April, Reginald Fleming Johnston wrote to Gilbert Reid inquiring about the subject of the speech he was supposed to deliver at the International Institute. On 8 May, Johnston wrote to Gilbert Reid again upon receiving Reid’s reply, stating that he was “glad to become an associate member of the Institute” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to Gilbert Reid 8 May 1913 (Johnston 1913e)) and enclosed a cheque for the two-year membership fee. On that day, Johnston remarked to Lockhart that Gilbert Reid’s Institute “[included] the Taoist Pope and a Buddhist abbot and a Confucian Hanlin” and that he believed that the “league should also be represented” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 8 May 1913 (Johnston 1913g)). Obviously, Johnston’s joining of the International Institute was motivated by his desire to bring his “Sacred Hills League” proposal to fruition. In order to further raise funds for the League, Johnston set off from Jinan Prefecture to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in June under the pretext of searching for a suitable location for the headquarters of “the Sacred Hills League”. Before Johnston conducted a detailed survey of Tianmu Mountain, the site favored by 非常人 “the extraordinary lady” Liza, he paid a special visit to the Hardoons and their disciples Huang Zongyang 黄宗仰 (1865–1921) and Ji Pan 姬盘 (1887–1964), among others in Shanghai. Whether Johnston requested for Liza’s support in founding his “Sacred Hills League” remains open to conjecture. We know from a farewell poem written by Huang Zongyang that Johnston sought refuge from the summer heat at Tianmu Mountain upon leaving Shanghai. In late August, Johnston wrote in resignation to his friend James Stewart Lockhart “Ti’en-mu is beautiful, but as a permanent place of it would not suit me, partly because the summer climate is very trying and anopheles around” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 7 August 1913 (Johnston 1913f)). Thus, he decided to return to Britain via Peking and Siberia to seek a change of career.

During his stay in Peking, however, Johnston had a sudden change of heart regarding his “Sacred Hills League” project, toward which he had nearly lost all hope. With renewed vigor, he wrote an article of more than ten thousand words, “The Future of Religion in China”, in response to the State Religion Movement, which aroused much interest among Chinese circles. However, it seems that Johnston’s renewed solidarity with the Confucian Association had little to do with his utopian “Sacred Hills League” project but was motivated by pragmatic considerations regarding his future career. In his frequent correspondence with Lockhart, Johnston omitted all mentions of his meetings with Chen Huanchang and other Confucianists. On the contrary, Johnston repeatedly mentioned his meeting with George Ernest Morrison, a then advisor to the Republican government, and his admiration for President Yuan Shikai. Morrison, with whom Johnston became acquainted by 1907, was hired as a political adviser by President Yuan Shikai in the summer of 1912. Despite Johnston’s reservations about the suitability of the Republican government for China, he congratulated Morrison for being able to work for “the most suitable man to govern China” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to George Ernest Morrison 7 August 1912 (Johnston 1912b)). Johnston’s attitude towards Yuan Shikai underwent a most dramatic shift: in the spring of 1913, when Johnston heard rumors that Yuan Shikai supported the restoration of the deposed Qing emperor, he privately remarked that Yuan “is going off his head” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 19 April 1913 (Johnston 1913k)). While travelling to Tianmu Mountain, Johnston noticed that “the whole Buddhist fraternity seems to be decidedly pro-north in the present struggle”, as they believed that Yuan would adopt a more moderate stance toward Buddhism than the southern revolutionaries (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 7 August 1913 (Johnston 1913f)). (Ironically, in 1915, Yuan Shikai issued the “Regulations for the Management of Temples”, which abolished the Chinese Buddhist Association.) Apparently, Johnston’s negative impression of Yuan was completely reversed as a result of this erroneous observation. At the time of the Second Revolution, while the north and south were still at war, Johnston, after hearing the news of the engagement at Wusong, wrote in a letter on 11 August, “I am very glad the north is sweeping away the southern rascals from the path” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 11 August 1913 (Johnston 1913h)), which suggests that he admired Yuan. During his stay in Peking, Johnston also found that Barton, the British consul in Peking, “seems to think very highly of Yuan Shikai’s abilities. He says Yuan really does things himself and is by no means effete” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 18 September 1913 (Johnston 1913j)).

It is highly probable that Morrison, in a conversation with Johnston, took the initiative to offer him a position in the Chinese government, which in turn prompted Johnston to attract Yuan’s attention by honoring Confucius. As pointed out by a scholar, in the early years of the Republican era, “The struggle and divergence between the old and new political and cultural forces had always existed. The restoration of the old order was also backed by political forces,” and Yuan Shikai indeed spared no effort in this regard (Wang 2011, p. 247). After Yuan Shikai became president, he issued a decree in June 1912 to restore the worship of Confucius, the political implications of which were obvious. If Johnston’s flattery towards “President Yuan himself and by some of the most influential statesmen” (Johnston 1913m, p. 912), who were promoting the inclusion of Confucianism in the constitution, was not particularly conspicuous, Johnston became even more vocal in expressing his wish to serve as Yuan’s advisor after his return to London, where he was met with a rather cold reception.

In early October 1913, Reginald Fleming Johnston submitted his name card to the Colonial Office shortly after arriving in London. He received a rude shock when the officials in charge of Weihaiwei affairs refused to grant him an audience. At that time, Johnston learned by chance from the newspapers that his old colleague had been promoted to the governorship of Honduras, and thus poured out his sorrows to Morrison in writing:

“I have been thinking over what you suggested to me—that I might get some sort of employment under the Chinese government, and I appreciate visit what you said about it; but it is difficult to see what sort of job I should be competent to undertake. Perhaps I might do occasional odd job for them: I should be glad to do so for nothing if the work were congenial”.

(Reginald Fleming Johnston to George Ernest Morrison 9 October 1913 (Johnston 1913d))

On 13 October, Johnston wrote to Lockhart again, complaining privately that Morrison was “a poser”, since he considered himself ill-qualified for the job suggested by Morrison. Perhaps grudgingly, he reminded Lockhart that “if you happen to see Morrison or to write to him perhaps you might suggest the advisability of his finding me a billet which would allow me to carry out my “league” schemes without too much interruption” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 13 October 1913 (Johnston 1913i)). At the end of the letter, Johnston mentioned that the Republic of China had been recognized by Britain. It seems that this diplomatic recognition further assuaged Johnston’s concerns about serving the Chinese government. In March 1914, after his return to China, Johnston went north to the suburbs of Peking and stayed in the vicinity of Dajue Temple. While Johnston continued to make preparations for “the Sacred Hills League,” he also waited for the opportunity to seek a career change.

In short, whether Reginald Fleming Johnston, in his naivete, sought to raise funds for “the Sacred Hills League” or was motivated to his desire to serve as Yuan’s advisor, his purported support for the Confucian Association cannot be considered in isolation from his wish to improve his career prospects. If we study the details of Johnston’s later dealings with Chen Huanchang, we can clearly observe his ambivalence towards Chen. When Johnston became the English tutor of the deposed Xuantong Emperor in early 1919, Chen Huanchang approached Johnston twice to persuade him to fund the construction of a prayer hall by the Confucian Association on Dongxie Street and also to solicited donations from Lockhart in Weihaiwei. Always wary of Chen’s motives, Johnston reminded Lockhart that foreigners ought to keep a low profile on such matters before the Chinese government’s official attitude was made clear and complained about Chen Huanchang’s harassment: “indeed I am inclined to agree with those who regard him as slightly cracked” (Reginald Fleming Johnston to James Stewart Lockhart 13 May 1919 (Johnston 1919)). Clearly, Johnston had developed a cool-headed assessment of the political situation and deliberately distanced himself from the Confucian Association. In his later years, Johnston reflected on the veneration of Confucius and the restoration of the old order during the early Republican era: “to have defied Confucius would have turned Confucianism into a ‘religion’ in the usually accepted sense of the world, which it is not and never was, in spite of the fact that a few twentieth-century Confucian scholars (such as the late Chen Huanchang) tried, without success, to turn it into a ‘religion’ in order that as such it might (as they mistakenly thought) be better equipped to contend with such alien cults as Christianity” (Johnston 1938, p. 88). Here again it is clear that Johnston did not agree with Chen Huanchang and other Confucianists who packaged Confucian thinking as “Confucianism” in the Christian fashion. All in all, Johnston’s support for the Confucian Association was motivated partly by pragmatism and speculation on his part and partly by his wish for Confucianism to act as a counterbalance to Christianity in a rapidly Westernizing China.

5. Conclusions

In the 1920s and 1930s, Westerners’ praise for Confucius, starting with Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion) and The Confucian Association Monthly 孔教会杂志, were compiled into a booklet titled Kong jiao wai lun 孔教外论 (Westerners on the Confucian Religion) by Cheng Yu (1870–1940), who had served as the Chinese assistant to Timothy Richard. In 1936, its circulation was said to have reached over 30,000 copies, as it was a “must-have book for reference on all education-related issues” (Y. Chen 1938, p. 73). Indeed, many conservatives at that time cautioned against following Western learning blindly by citing Kong jiao wai lun 孔教外论 (Westerners on the Confucian Religion). For instance, the editor of Guo guang za zhi 国光杂志 (Guoguang Magazine) cited Kong jiao wai lun 孔教外论 (Westerners on the Confucian Religion) to remind readers that “Since the May Fourth Movement, many Chinese who have studied abroad and ignorant Chinese who follow others blindly have campaigned fiercely to destroy Confucianism, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Westerners admire Confucius a hundred times more than China envies Westernization” (Guoguang Magazine (国光杂志) 1935, 8:83).

As events later developed, many conservative Chinese exploited Kong jiao wai lun 孔教外论 (Westerners on the Confucian Religion) to justify their defense of Confucianism, which was in line with Chen Huanchang’s original intention to borrow from the West to boost the Confucian Association’s prestige. However, Chen Huanchang’s selective borrowing of Western rhetoric on the merits of Confucianism obscures the complexity and diversity of Western attitudes towards Confucianism as well as the struggles of Confucianists’ adaptation to modernity. Among the so-called pro-Confucian Westerners, Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid opposed the exclusive preservation of Confucianism primarily from a religious standpoint. The philosopher Hermann Graf Keyserling, on the other hand, opposed the enshrinement of Confucianism in the Chinese Constitution by extrapolating from the separation of the church and the state in the modern age. Hiram Stevens Maxim and Reginald Fleming Johnston, who were not favorably disposed towards Christianity to begin with, were motivated by their own ideals, which approximated the cultural nationalism of Kang Youwei and Chen Huanchang and regarded the preservation of Confucianism as the prerequisite for the continued survival of traditional Chinese civilization. These studies of Confucianism from different perspectives are useful to our understanding of critiques of Confucianism during the May Fourth New Culture Movement, which broke out shortly after these debates. This can in turn offer new insights into the complex challenges faced by Confucianism in the construction of a modern state.