Ch 3: Phase 1 - The Setting and the Call
This marks the beginning of the phases of missionary life. In this initial phase, would-be missionaries in sending communities identify themselves, or are identified by their faith communities, as people who were “called” to go to China under the auspices of a Christian church.
These personal calls emerged from a specific set of historic circumstances. Making the leap from a general predisposition to helping the needy in China to an individual determination to become a missionary oneself required the mediation of a set of church and para-church organizations, including not only the missionary societies of different denominations but also the YMCA, the church-affiliated colleges and universities, and interdenominational organizations oriented to youth and young adults, such as the Young People’s Forward Movement and the Student Volunteer Movement.
The people who heard “the call” also tended to have certain demographic commonalities – second- or third-generation white settlers, largely but not entirely descended from immigrants from the British Isles, comparatively well-educated, overrepresented among the aspiring professional middle class in smaller urban centres, but also including members of politically and economically elite families as well as families who contributed several generations to missionary work.