THE CHURCH AS A FACTOR IN RACIAL RELATIONS
BY
REV. SIDNEY L. GULICK
The human race is entering upon a new era of development. Space has practically collapsed bringing into immediate relations races and civilizations that have come into being through milleniums of divergent evolution. The impact of Christendom on Asia has at last started into new activity those long torpid peoples comprising more than one-half of the human race. Asia is awaking, is learning: she is acquiring our modes of thought and life and organization.
These two facts, the collapse of space and the awakening of Asia are creating a new world-situation. To adapt herself to the conditions created for her by the West, the East has found herself forced to abandon her isolation and to reorganize the entire scheme of life and thought which she has been developing for not less than four thousand years.
But Asia’s awakening and acquisition of Western modes of political, industrial, commercial and intellectual life, and particularly her development of military power, and national ambitions, and her insistence on national rights, are creating a new world-situation for Western lands.
Twenty-six years of life in Japan have colored my brain with the Orient. It is widely assumed that the white race is, and is to remain dominant, the supreme factor in the world’s history; and that our primary problem is concerned with the establishment of such arrangements between the white nations as will produce peace here. We little realize, however, the mighty significance of the new factors that are coming into our lives because of the rise of other parts of the human race.
The white man little appreciates the Asiatic. He suspects, dislikes, scorns, despises him, and is not willing to treat him on the basis of equality, justice and courtesy. To this day even in this Christian land, we are not dealing justly with the alien, especially the alien from Asia. And this is creating a serious situation.
Now the Church has been an important factor in creating the new world-situation. Through its missionary activity, entirely devoid of desires for territorial aggression, the Church has sent into every nation men without a particle of racial ambition. They have become friends of individuals of other races; they have come to understand those lands and their peoples and these in turn have come to understand, trust, and love the missionaries. In these ways there have been imparted to Japan and China ideals, conceptions, and ambitions which are proving to be mighty forces in those lands. Japan would not be what she is to-day had it not been for those early missionaries who went to that land in the sixties and seventies. The few young men who were taught by them in Western ways became the leaders of Japan; they saw and helped their fellow-countrymen to see that Japan must learn what the West had to teach her. Japan humbled her proud head. In the last forty years she has employed more than five thousand white men to come to her land to teach, and no one can tell how many thousand of her young men have traveled and studied in foreign lands, and returned with treasures inestimable. In a single generation Japan has taken her place as one of the leading nations.
One thing I would like to impress upon peace workers, is this: Japan is tired of having peace lecturers come to tell her about the horrors of war and the importance of peace. What Japan asks is justice. If we do not give her justice she cares nothing for peace. Peace lecturers, as a rule, little realize that Japan is no longer a child. She is pretty well grown up, and is better acquainted as a whole with the political conditions of the world than any other nation. She has sent her young men into every nation and they have returned speaking the languages of all the civilized peoples of the world. They can read the newspapers of every land and know what is going on. The news of the world is better presented in the newspapers of Japan than it is in the majority of our papers in this country. Japan is no longer a child. She understands the world situation and realizes it.
But because Japan is Asiatic, we suspect and fear her; we even get hysterical about her. Once when the anti-alien legislation of California was the cause of international tension one of our Generals is reported to have asked for four hundred and fifty thousand troops with which to patrol the Pacific coast, fearing an attack from Japan. This reveals an extraordinary misunderstanding. Japan desires friendship with America and will do anything consistent with national dignity and honor to maintain friendship. During the last five years she has consistently carried out the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement because of which there are some seven thousand less Japanese in America to-day than there were when the arrangement went into operation. California, however, ignoring that fact, went ahead with invidious race-discriminating legislation. Japan does not want any more preachers of peace. She wants preachers of justice.
For sixty years now we have had relations with Japan and they have been remarkably friendly. To-day we have China’s unqualified friendship. We returned a few years ago to China the Boxer indemnity; in the seventies, we returned the Shimonoseki indemnity to Japan. These splendid acts have been highly appreciated. But do you realize that we are losing Japan’s friendship and in turn will surely lose that of China, because we are not keeping our treaty pledges? Do you realize that we are continuously subjecting the Chinese in our land to indignities that deeply wound their feelings? We are confronting a serious situation, serious because we are so ignorant and so indifferent.
So much in regard to the problems. Turning now to the solution. Ought not the Church to be a main factor in solving the problems of the new era in race relations? It should teach us with new insistence that God is no respecter of races; all alike are His children and beloved by Him. It is so easy for a people to think of themselves as God’s pet child, even as the Jews thought of themselves as the elect race. We white people regard ourselves as inherently superior to all others. We are, however, profoundly ignorant of the Asiatic and therefore we scorn and despise him. We easily fancy that a gulf divides us.
There is indeed a difference between us, but it is not such a difference as is generally assumed, nor is it insuperable. My life in Japan has brought me into such relationship with Japanese that I am perfectly clear on this point. To talk about an insuperable obstacle, a profound gulf that separates the East from the West is the result of insufficient experience. One of the important things, therefore, which the Church can do and is doing through its thousands of foreign missionaries is to gain wide and real knowledge of the East as it has been and as it now is, and then to impart that knowledge to the nations of the West.
The second great thing which the Church can and should do is to insist that our laws shall be so framed and administered as to do justice to Asiatics in this land. Until we do that, can we claim that ours is a Christian land? As a matter of fact, we do not grant the Asiatic a square deal in this country nor give them an open door; yet we demand them for ourselves over there. We do not even give them the courtesy which we secure. The Asiatic is more sensitive to slight or insult than we are. We are thick-skinned. In their civilization courtesy is a highly important element. But we go on in our blunt ways wounding their feelings, and even disregarding their rights. Is it not time for our churches to insist that our laws shall be so modified, framed, and administered as to do them justice and to deal with them courteously?
The Church is facing a new testing time and a new time of opportunity with regard to the relation of the races. The first great testing time of the churches occurred immediately after Pentecost when Jewish Christians thought that Gentiles had to become Jews before they could be Christians and brothers. But the Holy Spirit led them to see that all men are brothers, without becoming Jews, and those early Christians learned even to eat with Samaritans and with Gentiles; they welcomed them into their brotherhood. Now it is the white man who feels that he is the elect race and has special hold upon the grace of God; he looks down upon other races as inferior. But God is teaching us our error. The Asiatic is indeed our equal. I would just as soon sit at the feet of competent Japanese professors as I would at the feet of professors of German or American extraction. We are discovering that Asiatics are as brainy as we are; and that they produce men of splendid character. But it is a question to-day whether and how far our churches are willing to accept the fact that men of other races and colors and even with almond eyes, are our equals. This is a new testing time for the churches and also a time of rare opportunity.