A LAYMAN'S EXPERIENCE TEACHING IN CHINA + RICHARD WILSON + Professor of Political Science Samford University This article humbly describes a commonplace idea. Taking up valuable space in a scholarly journal for these ideas may be thought of as arrogant, but I am emboldened by the willingness of Faculty Dialogue to discuss the possibilities that what may seem commonplace may in fact be unique. Ted Ward, Co-Editor of Faculty Dialogue has addressed this question eloquently in Faculty Dialogue in the Fall/Winter issue 1986/87.1 I am further encouraged by the fact that even significant scholars are occasionally challenged by the notion of the commonplace. Theodore Lowi and Benjamin Ginsberg both address the issue of the commonplace in the introduction to their book, American Government. Despite his recent service as an elected president of the American Political Science Association, Lowi feels compelled to write: . . . all Americans are to a great extent familiar with politics and the government of their own country. All the facts are commonplace. Even unfamiliar facts become commonplace the minute they become familiar. No fact is ever intrinsically difficult to grasp, and in an open society facts abound. In America, many facts are commonplace that are suppressed elsewhere. The 1 ubiquity of political commonplaces is indeed a problem, but it can be in turn turned into a virtue.2 Indeed, any discussion of an important Christian theme with a biblical base can be construed as commonplace because its textual source may seem so ancient. What can one say in the Christian experience about salvation for example, that someone could not construe as commonplace?3 I would like to discuss the benefits that may flow from the experience of lay faculty members who teach in foreign countries. Going into all the world to preach the gospel is an ancient, important, and timeless command not restricted to the clergy. It is a command for all Christians, yet in the contemporary age this injunction falls far too frequently on missionaries alone. Although commonplace, it may be useful to set out some advantages that may come to the faculty member from such an experience and to share a particular experience which may be unusual, if not unique, in its reversal of the usual role. This article is prompted by a conversation I had recently with a faculty member at Samford University, a school with a special relationship to the Alabama State Baptist Convention. The faculty member averred, properly enough, that there was a philosophical problem with a faculty member teaching in a foreign country and giving witness to his or her Christian character if the country had a policy of not accepting Christian missionaries as a matter of course. On one level, I had no problem accepting any 2 other faculty member's philosophical reservations to doing so, since there is an element of misrepresentation implied in going into a country to teach while really intending to preach the gospel. If, indeed, the purpose is a deliberate, conscious misrepresentation, this may well be improper. Nonetheless, as a Christian faculty member who spent two years teaching in the People's Republic of China, a country which rejects acceptance of missionaries with attachments to foreign government as a matter of course, this philosophical objection gave me pause. Could I really justify the two years of my life spent teaching in China? Although I felt that I had no ulterior motive, I believed I should reflect on the questions again. This led me to review several benefits that occurred and caused me to recall one very special incident that happened. In this article I want to lay my reasons and experience before the readership of Faculty Dialogue to judge for themselves whether the benefits might be of value. Of course it should be admitted that there are many benefits from the experience of teaching in a foreign country, commonplace as they are, which lead faculty members to do so. The broadening of horizons, addition of new information-particularly for a political scientist such as myself trained in comparative government-is hard to gainsay. Beyond the academic and professional, there was the personal growth that was a response to a moving backward to a more primitive society and a simpler life. The experience of 3 living in a much poorer country, led me on one level to discard layer after layer of the materialism that characterizes modern Western life. Indeed the simple life actually led to a retrogression so strong that it reminded me of my youth. I took comfort in the fact that a major scholar, John G. Stoessinger, could write in his now classic, The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time, that: In fact, people may feel more "at home" in a spot in a foreign land that reminds them of their youth than in an unfamiliar locale in their own country.4 I found in meeting Chinese peasants growing crops, street vendors selling their wares, cobblers with a primitive shoe repair stand, and bicycle repairmen with their parts and tools laid out on a blanket on the ground, a closeness to the basics of life reminiscent of my own upbringing in the rural Midwest. I could also relate a whole series of experiences and transformations that were a product of my own efforts to teach government and international relations to students in a university elected by a government whose principles were antithetical to my own. However, my real purpose is to describe an incident in which I taught nothing but learned a great deal, an incident in which the Christian witness and message came not out of my own mouth but out of the mouth of someone who presumably had no foreknowledge or basis to offer it. This too, may be 4 a commonplace representation of the thesis that God has the power to witness in unusual ways and through unusual purposes. While this may be a commonplace, I still hope it may be of value. In 1986, while I was teaching at Foreign Affairs College in Beijing, I was assigned a group of middle school English teachers from the remote provinces who had been sent to Beijing for a special study program to help them become more effective English teachers. They were one of the most unusual and rewarding groups that I taught while I was in China. As middle-aged Chinese (30- to 40-years old), a number of them had their education disrupted by what the Chinese called their "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."5 Learning the life and language of foreign countries was very much suspect during this period. Since all of these students had learned English, they were naturally suspect as people who might listen to English language broadcasts, like the BBC or Voice of American. Some had real horror stories to tell. One of the most remarkable stories involved a young English teacher about 35-years old who had managed to avoid some of the harshest of the cultural revolution but still had been affected by the prevailing uncertainty and chaos of the period. My encounter with her began when I assigned these English teachers a small project early in the course asking them to relate in a page or two, or at least a couple of paragraphs, one of their favorite passages of English 5 literature. This interesting project taught me how much English literature had managed to reach to the heart of China. I got Shakespearean sonnets, essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, short sections from Walt Whitman, and a few brief essays from John Dewey. One of the most remarkable paragraphs came from this woman who said that she could not identify the author of her selection. She had a passage that obviously came from a bilingual reader, probably the kind routinely published by the United States Information Agency (USIA). As an American government reader, it had been torn into sections and burned in one of the "Cultural Revolution" attacks on Western literature. By chance, a page, a mere fragment really, of this essay had accidentally fallen into the hands of this teacher who found the passage remarkable. She asked if she could submit this fragment as her project and I agreed even though she said she could not name the author whom she asked me to identify. The passage was clearly from the American Civil War period, but I did not recognize the author. After class I returned to my quarters to begin my research. Since the essay appeared to be the kind that may have been included in a bilingual reader published by USIA, I consulted a copy of documents in U.S. History published by USIA in 1985. I did not expect to find the exact page in the book because I knew that these bilingual readers went through successive editions and my recent edition was most unlikely to have been the source of this particular 6 fragment. The teacher's selection I received read as follows: Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men sould dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 7 mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."6 By now it may be clear to you that this fragment is the center part of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. Because of the way in which the document had been torn and burned, missing were the first few paragraphs which explain that this address is a presidential inaugural address along with the well-known lines with which it concluded: "With malice toward none, with charity toward all . . . ." I was delighted to have found the answer to her question so quickly and read the essay over again so that I might be prepared to give her some helpful suggestions on how she might use it in teaching English. I must say, sitting in the capital of a Confucian Leninist state,7 that I was moved more than when I read it originally as a high school student in the 1960s. I thought the document was remarkable, but I did not know what a remarkable experience was about to ensue. The student and I planned to meet before our next class so I might answer her question and discuss the essay with her. Because I was so pleased with my discovery, I was 8 unusually early in going to class that morning. The classroom was, as usual, freezing cold. The Chinese do not have a sufficient amount of fuel to heat both dormitory space and classroom space and obviously living space must be given priority. Thus the classrooms are always either underheated or entirely unheated. Because it was mid-January, by now I had gotten rather used to wearing two layers of long underwear, two pairs of pants, a pair of ski pants and ski jacket, heavy ski gloves and a fur hat. Despite the gray cold which was made all the grayer by the gray brick cement walls of the classroom, I felt particularly buoyed that morning by the warmth of this particular presidential address. When my student came in, I smiled brightly and explained to her that I had been very fortunate to have found the author of her paragraphs. I told her the author was Abraham Lincoln and I explained the context of the Second Inaugural Address, how it came in the closing days of the Civil War shortly before Lincoln was assassinated, and provided a thumbnail sketch of Lincoln's conception of the causes of the Civil War in a broader historical and philosophical sense. I also explained that one could learn a great deal about American history from this simple address. I recounted Lincoln's view of a mild approach to Civil War reconstruction and his conflict with some of the hard-nosed members of his own party who wanted a harsh military reconstruction of the South. I told her how after Lincoln's 9 assassination, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's vice president, had taken over and tried to carry the slain president's plans into effect only to be frustrated by members of Lincoln's own party who opposed his mild plans for reconstruction. I expounded on the philosophical and historical points of view to explain my view that this speech reflected Lincoln's deep Christian religious values and beliefs. I concluded by handing her a brand new copy of Documents in American History8 (an extra copy of which I had received from the U.S. Embassy) and a copy of the New Testament. Although she had shown interest in each of the successive stages of my historical, philosophical and religious commentary on the speech, I was absolutely stunned by her next question: to which Christian denomination did Lincoln belong? I was silent for a moment because I did not know exactly how to explain to her that Abraham Lincoln had never actually joined any particular Christian denomination. I pointed out that there were some denominations that liked to claim Lincoln as one of their members because he had, at one point or another in his life, attended one of their local churches, but that historians had carefully researched the question and concluded that Lincoln had never joined any particular denomination. Further, Lincoln had some religious views that made it difficult for any of the particular denominations to actually claim him as one of their own. She seemed satisfied with that explanation and since 10 the other class members had arrived, we began our class which lasted for another two hours. However, I was distracted throughout the class period because of our moving exchange. As I read the speech again I noticed several things I had previously overlooked. At some points Lincoln had quoted scripture exactly; at other points he had merely paraphrased it; at still other points he had mixed verses from one part of a scripture verse with ideas from other sources. What struck me as particularly odd was that there were no footnotes, not even the kinds of references which one would expect even in a speech. As an academic who has been taught and trained to respect the scholarship of footnotes, I marveled at this. Here was a political document, written by an active, practicing politician whose career was replete with political maneuvers, patronage, and war. Yet he spoke so comfortably of his religious faith that he felt no need to apologize, no need to be defensive, no need to hide his religious convictions. His religious convictions were so strong that he could speak easily and comfortably from a wide variety of passages of scripture. He could call on an almost intimate knowledge of the scripture as he might call on anecdotes or another orator might make classical allusions. There was no separation between ordinary political thought and deep religious conviction. All this from a man who never managed to select a particular Christian denomination as his own. 11 In mentioning this, I do not wish to suggest that it is not important to examine religious and theological questions and to seek a denomination of one's own, to join with a church community and to receive its various blessings. But there may be a narrowness in insisting on a denominational choice that may overlook people of deep religious convictions honestly questing for a denomination and never finding one that is completely acceptable to them. I also do not want to urge scholars or students to skip footnotes. Once a student asked me, "If Lincoln was free to write his essays without footnoting scriptural references, am I allowed to do the same in my forthcoming paper." I replied that he could skip the footnotes if had been elected President of the United States twice, had fought a civil war with more casualties than any other in American history, and was moved in his heart to speak with deep conviction in his second inaugural address. My point in this article is to relate a story that had a tremendous impact on me. I decided that my own difficulty in finding exactly the right Protestant denomination was simply because my spiritual quest was not yet finished. I did not learn this because Chinese Christians moved me by sharing their experience of great persecution, although I did have experiences of this kind. I did not forge a strong Christian character in the fire of great personal adversity. I did not perfect my witness by my skillful testimony to my own faith. I did not even receive a great truth by reading 12 scripture directly. A non-Christian who found a page of a political speech asked me a simple question, and God worked through that. If there are some who have read through this article hoping for an incredibly dramatic story from a land where the people tell so many tragic tales, then surely this story is commonplace. Still, I believe there is value in recognizing that inspiration may come through the commonplace. Beyond all of the standard reasons why foreign teaching is valuable for a Christian lay faculty member there may be a commonplace occurrence with a transforming effect. Even if a faculty member were to eschew any missionary role and go abroad simply to teach, he or she may find that the witness is no more and no less than the simple answer to a question. Confident or complacent in their own faith, they may find that Saul is not the last person to travel on the road to Damascus. Notes 1Ted Ward, "Commonplace or Unique?" Faculty Dialogue, Vol. 7, Fall-Winter 1986-87, pp. 1-4. 2Theodore J. Lowi and Benjamin Ginsberg, American Government (New York: Norton, 1990). 3William E. Hull, The Christian Experience of Salvation (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987). 4John G. Stoessinger, The Might of Nations [9th ed.] 13 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990). 5The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution lasted for three years from 1966 to 1969 in its most intense phase, but is also dated from 1966 to the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. It was characterized by a great deal of xenophobia and the kind of "witch hunts" of so-called "capitalist roaders" and enemy agents. 6Donald M. Bishop, Living Documents of American History (Hong Kong: United States Information Agency, 1985), 120. 7Lucian Pye argues that true Marxist-Leninist thought is not an appropriate description of the ideology followed by the government of the People's Republic of China because of the many elements of traditional Chinese Confucian thought incorporated in it. Thus, he has coined a new phrase, "Confucianist Leninist" thought as he explains in Lucian W. Pye, The Mandarin and the Cadre: China's Political Cultures (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1988), 31-35. 8Bishop, op. cit. 14