Chiang Kai-shek's Bishops: The Methodist Church and the Chinese Nationalist State, 1930–1975

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and the Methodist Church from his baptism in 1930 to his death in 1975—the first sustained study of the reciprocal relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and an organized Christian denomination, and the first to trace the relationship as a single institutional story across the 1949 divide.It argues that while Chiang sought to domesticate Methodism and harness it to his party-state’s nationalist project—in part by leveraging the church’s American ties—the Methodist church pursued its own evangelistic and social goals by cultivating close relations with the Chiang regime while striving to preserve ecclesial autonomy. That dual strategy was ultimately undercut by post-1949 political constraints in both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan: on the mainland, Communist rule rendered American ties politically toxic; in Taiwan, Chiang’s party-state pressed the church to sever its Western ties and accept subordination. The dissertation draws on Methodist denominational records held at the United Methodist Archives and History Center at Drew University and the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary; Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries and related presidential documents at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; and the Walter Judd and Myers Lowman Papers, also at the Hoover Institution. In Taiwan, the research draws on the Academia Historica 國史館, the Kuomintang Party History Archives 黨史館, and the National Archives 國家檔案館. The analysis also draws on Chinese and English-language Methodist periodicals, including the Chinese Christian Advocate 興華, the China Christian Advocate, and Christian Advocate, alongside the Chinese Recorder; published memoirs; and two original oral history interviews conducted by the author. Where the archival record is thin, the argument proceeds from institutional outputs: conference journals, public statements, and organizational decisions visible across collections. The dissertation makes three contributions. For the study of Chiang Kai-shek and modern Chinese history, it shows that his Christian faith was not merely personal but also institutional—he worked with and through an organized church, and that relationship shaped his governance; this brings Chiang back into the study of church–state relations in modern China as a Christian ruler, not just a political backdrop. For Chinese Christianity, it offers a continuous narrative across 1949 and across the Taiwan Strait, crossing the temporal and geographical boundaries that have fragmented the field. For world Christianity and global history, it shows how the fate of a church in China was determined by both domestic politics and the shifting alignment between Washington, Chongqing, and Taipei—placing Chinese actors within a wider story of global religious circulation and revealing their agency within it.