Talk:Protestant missions in China

Use more neutral language
lovely article, but I've put up a "tone" template there, as the narrative tone of the ariticle can be adjusted. Now it reads more like a personal account of something. For example (my bold), "In 1807, Robert Morrison of the London Missionary Society reached Canton via America despite the opposition of the British East India Company and the ship's captain (or owner) with his famous sally: "And so, Mr. Morrison, you really expect to make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese empire?." Morrison's reply is worth noting: "No, sir, I expect God will." After twenty-five years of intense work he translated the whole Bible and baptized ten Chinese. We associate with him such giants as William Henry Medhurst and Milne (the printers), Samuel Dyer (Hudson Taylor's father-in-law), Gutzlaff (the Prussian linguist), and Parker (China's first medical missionary)."--K.C. Tang 04:01, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've made numerous editing changes to try to create more neutral tone; the article has too highly colored and "editorial" language, discouraged by Wikipedia style policies. See WIKI MOS.  It also needs more specific sourcing for its quotations and assertions, not just references to a large book.Parkwells (talk) 23:19, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

== 19th Century Medical Missions in China ==

Here is a request for a new article that hasn't been fairly addressed: Medical Missions in China. There are already a number of medical missionaries to China who have articles: John G. Kerr, Peter Parker (physician), Hudson Taylor, Frederick Howard Taylor, James O. Fraser, just to name a few. If anyone is interested, this would be a great topic to explore that deserves its own article.Brian0324 20:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC) Work in progress.Brian0324 (talk) 21:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Christianity WikiProject Assessment
I just dropped by to check out the article, and I'm (at this point) giving it a Start/Mid rating (same as the China WikiProject did). Nswinton 14:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Time limitations
Why is this limited to 19th century missions? The template implies it is part of a series on Protestant missions generally. Wouldn't 1841 and 1949/1951 be wiser cut-off dates? Obviously 1900 is significant because of the Boxers, but this did not prompt any change in Protestant mission activity in the way that the 'opening' and 'closing' of China did. 79.73.45.86 01:11, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello. Each time period in the development of missions in China has it's own article as you might have noticed (Nestorianism in China, Medieval Roman Catholic Missions in China, Jesuit China missions). We could change the title of the article to "Protestant Missions in China" if more is added to speak about the events of the 20th Century, such as the exodus of missionaries during the warfare as well as the final departures of the early 1950's. There are several notable articles already such as The Murder of John and Betty Stam and Eric Liddell from this time period, among others. Also James O. Fraser, Alfred James Broomhall, Gladys Aylward do not fit into the 19th Century scope. I would go ahead and add a new section at the end of this article, and then we can change the title if no one objects.Brian0324 14:02, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * More to the point, we can move to Protestant missions in China (✅) per until there's any other article on Protestant missions at another time to dab. I'd be against that as an unhelpful fork: just deal with it here until there's enough material to warrant period divisions. —  Llywelyn II   11:39, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Bible Translations
I agree with Brian's point, but the grammar makes it unclear. Would it be ok to say "unlike the earlier Roman Catholic translations, which were not published or publicly distributed"? ch (talk) 00:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Eric Liddell
Should there not be more about Eric Liddell in this article, as in, at least a mention? Invmog (talk) 20:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Needs NPOV language
Have made considerable editing changes to introduce more neutral, factual language. See comments above. Article needs more specific sources to justify its assertions in many places. It seems much too intent on making a point.Parkwells (talk) 23:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Sources are dated
There appears to be an over-reliance on dated sources and some primary sources, which might explain the bias in language. Editors are supposed to use valid (preferably academic), third-party and secondary sources, not be doing original research and interpretation of quotes from primary sources. Surely more has been written on the missionaries in China. Suggest editors should make more use of the later 20th-century historians of China.Parkwells (talk) 23:45, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Citations need work
The citations are irregular in form and most need to be redone as inline citations to conform to Wiki policies.Parkwells (talk) 23:45, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem
Following on an OTRS complaint of copyright infringement by the contributor who founded this article (with content evidently copied from a print source), it has been discovered that this article was created as a liberal copy of at least one print source:. (For instance, example one; two; three) While the article has evolved since its creation, it still contains extensive content from the foundational edits by User:Phillip J and will need to be rewritten. Ideally, the article should be rewritten from scratch. Alternatively, the temporary space can be used to host a modified version of the existing article where any content from this contributor, or any content that is built on material added by this contributor, has been excised. Given the growth of the article since then, this may be possible.

The article has been blanked to permit interested contributors an opportunity to determine how to best salvage the situation. It will be visited by an administrator after about a week. At that time, if no rewrite has been proposed, it may be deleted or stubbed.

This is unfortunate, but our policies do not permit us to host content that has been previously published elsewhere unless we are able to verify that this content is public domain or compatibly licensed. This is the second book from which copying has been discovered by this contributor, and there is no evidence at all that he did so with authorization. If this evidence is supplied, of course, the content can and will be restored. Given that in the previous case the author protested, this may be unlikely. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:33, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Protestant missions in China 1807–1953
Hi --

I'd be willing to try to fix the problem. It should be pretty simple if the only offending passages are the three you mention on the talk page. The section on "Missionary Activity, 1860-1900" should be revised in any case, since it puts way too much emphasis on Hudson Taylor. This is pretty straightforward.

But how can I tell whether there is bad material elsewhere? I can't get WikiTrust to work on the old versions.

Thanks for any help.

ch (talk) 20:52, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi. Your help would be most welcome! :) Sadly, they're not the only three issues; for instance, looking at the earliest edits, I immediately find hits on this and this. We have to assume that everything that was added by User:Phillip J needs to be rewritten from scratch, if it is to be retained. That would mean that everything that is in this version of the article needs to go. Anything added after that in this series of edits can stay, but only if we can make sure that it's original and didn't build off of anything in the original article. For instance, comparing the last version of the article edited by Phillip J with the version as it existed right before blanking, the lead seems to be okay (though it needs a more thorough read-through than I have time for at the moment), but the next section begins with copied content and may have other material that still recognizable mixed in it. In the next section, I can see at a glance that there is some derivative content; for instance "By the Treaty of Nanking (1842) they were force to grant Western nations five ports for residence and trade plus several other concessions, including Hong Kong to British rule, indemnity for opium destroyed, and British monitoring of tariff rates" has been altered to "By the Treaty of Nanking (1842), the British forced the Chinese to grant Western nations five ports for residence and trade, plus several other concessions, including Hong Kong to British rule, indemnity for opium destroyed, and British monitoring of tariff rates." The changes to this are minimal; it is still quite obviously copied from the book. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC) (This response Copied from my user talk page on 31 March 2012)


 * I've done a fairly thorough rewrite of this article, hopefully resolving any remaining copyright problems and attempting to achieve a neutral tone. However, the 1901-1945 section of the article gives undue weight, in my opinion, to only a couple of missionary initiatives.  But, for the moment, I'll leave that section to another editor.Smallchief

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Deletion of POV tag
I deleted the POV tag on this article as there is no explanation of what may be non-neutral in the article. Admittedly, this article needs a lot of work -- whole sections give far too much credit to the activities of a few missionaries who don't really stand out that much from the crowd. There are also a few peacock words scattered around the article, but without more justification, I don't think the article deserves a POV tag. Maybe I will undertake to clean it up as nobody else seems interested in doing so.Smallchief (talk) 01:30, 1 April 2024 (UTC)