Liang Fa: the first Chinese Christian priest
2022-07-18
The introduction of Christianity into China was a major event in modern Chinese history. It brought not only a new form of religious belief, but also a heterogeneous culture. It was also an extremely complex social event, which not only brought many new things to modern China, but also created countless disasters in Chinese society. Compared with Buddhism, which is also a world religion, the introduction of Christianity is too intense, which is not a good thing for Christianity and Chinese society. Cultural exchanges are like drizzle. Buddhism has spent hundreds of years quietly integrating into Chinese society, while Christianity wants to open the "door of the soul" of the Chinese people with the guns of the colonists. Therefore, Christianity in China once fell into the extreme contradiction of holding a gun in one hand and the Bible in the other. Liang Fa, the first Chinese priest in history, was born in Xiliang village, luojun Township, Gaoming County, Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province in the 54th year of Qianlong's reign (1789). When he was a child, he had studied in a private school for more than three years. At the age of 15, Liang Fa dropped out of school to make a living in Guangzhou because of poverty. He first learned to make pens, and then changed to lettering and printing. In 1810, Liang Fa worked in a printing office in Guangzhou, which was near Guangzhou thirteen foreign firms and often undertook the printing business of foreigners in foreign firms. Among these foreigners, an Englishman named Morrison. Morrison was the first Christian missionary to come to China. In September 1807, Morrison first traveled from Europe to the United States, and then sailed across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to Guangzhou. He secretly lived in the warehouse of an American businessman in the thirteen foreign firms. While learning Chinese, he imitated the Chinese lifestyle and prepared for missionary work. In the following years, Morrison has been shuttling between Macao and Guangzhou, during which he married in Macao and joined the British East India Company as a Chinese translator. In his first few years in China, his missionary career was mainly to learn Chinese and try to translate the Bible into Chinese. After translating acts in the Bible, he sent the translation to the printing house near the firm for printing, and Liang Fa, who was working in this printing house at this time, was in charge of the specific engraving and printing. In 1813, the British missionary Mi Lian came to China to work with Morrison, but Mi Lian failed to settle in China. At the suggestion of Morrison, Milly went south to Nanyang and found a foothold in Malacca, which was controlled by Britain at that time. Missionaries set up colleges and printing plants here, and built Malacca into a base for Christian missionaries to China. In 1815, Liang Fa was employed by Mi Lian, left Guangzhou and came to Malacca. He worked in a newly opened printing factory, and gradually became interested in Christianity through continuous contact during his work. It was difficult to carry out missionary work during this period. Morrison and others focused on translating the Bible, compiling the Chinese English dictionary, and writing various sermon manuals. The sermon manuals written by missionaries were printed by Chinese workers, who became the first audience. On the Double Ninth Festival in 1814, a Chinese printer named Cai Gao was baptized by Morrison in Macao and became the first Chinese Christian. Two years later, on November 3, 1816, Liang Fa was baptized by Mi Lian in Malacca and converted to Christianity. Five years later, Liang Fa won the recognition of Morrison with his excellent work and was established as a priest. Liang Fa worked with MI Lian in Malacca until she died of lung disease in 1822. In addition to his daily translation and printing work, Liang Fa also wrote some Chinese sermon manuals. In his report on his work, Morrison said that there were as many as 12 kinds of sermon manuals written by Liang Fa, the main content of which was to answer the religious issues of concern to the Chinese people. Morrison also said that Liang Fa had annotated the Hebrews and the Romans in the Bible. Writing sermons and interpretation of scriptures in Chinese is the main work of Liang Fa. Some of his works were later collected and named "good advice to the world". Early Christians often published Taoist books through four punishments to achieve the purpose of missionary work, and literate scholars became the primary target audience of these works, so every imperial examination became the busiest time for Christians. In 1836, a young man named Hong Xiuquan came to Guangzhou Gongyuan from Hua county to take part in the government examination. Liang Fa, who was distributing missionary manuals outside the examination room at that time, gave Hong Xiuquan a copy of good advice to the world. The later story has been well known to the world. The candidate named Hong Xiuquan later launched the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement that swept half of China and shocked the world. His Christian knowledge used to create "worship God" was originally from this book of good advice to the world. Liang Fa also has a special cause that will be remembered by later generations. In 1815, Milly and Morrison agreed to establish a Chinese publication to help preach. The publication is called the monthly unified biography of chasecular, which is the first Chinese publication in modern history. Liang Fa was not only responsible for the engraving, printing and distribution of the journal in the early stage, but also participated in the writing of manuscripts and the compilation of articles. When Mi Lian returned to visit his relatives, he also acted as the editor in chief. Later, another German missionary, guoshili, relied on the printing technology of Liang Fa and others in Guangzhou, and founded the monthly unified biography of the eastern and Western examination in 1833. The journal was suspended after the 10th issue in 1834 until it was resumed in February 1835. Liang Fa was considered to be the main Chinese Editor after the resumption. Although these publications were founded to spread Christianity, many of them involved advanced western knowledge at that time, as well as some contents related to the comparison of eastern and Western cultures, so they played a role in cultural exchange and knowledge dissemination to a large extent. Liang Fa stood at a special historical juncture because of fate. He was actually the intermediary of Sino Western exchanges at that time, and he was also one of the first people in China to open their eyes to the world at that time. Although he is a nobody, he has to face this great conflict between China and the West. Converting to Christianity is a religious choice caused by his personal special life experience, but the Chinese feelings of home and country are still clearly visible in him. There are two things that bear witness to his national position in this conflict, one is to call for a ban on smoking, and the other is to try to stop the British aggression. At this time, opium was flooding in China, causing more and more serious consequences, which not only led to the outflow of silver in China, but also harmed the health of the Chinese people. Between 1834 and 1835, Liang Fa and the American missionary Du Lishi wrote a pamphlet named "Opium quick reform article". On the one hand, the article publicized the dangers of opium, exhorted the Chinese people not to smoke opium, and on the other hand, called on the missionaries to write back to prevent the opium trade between western countries and China. In March, 1839, Lin Zexu, the imperial envoy, arrived in Guangzhou to ban smoking. He soon saw Liang Fa's "Opium speed amendment", so he specially summoned Liang Fa and decided to stay with him. Liang Fa gave his thanks for his busy missionary work and recommended his son Liang Jinde. Liang Jinde participated in the anti smoking movement in Lin Zexu's shogunate, and under the auspices of Lin Zexu, he compiled the first systematic world geography book in modern China, the chronicles of the four continents. After Lin Zexu's anti smoking campaign, Liang Fa was worried about how ridiculous it was that someone tried to spread a religion called love through war and killing, through swords and guns. On the eve of the Opium War in 1839, Liang Fa returned to Guangzhou from Nanyang and met with Ma Ruhan, the then Secretary of the supervision office of the British commercial Embassy in China, and said, "if the British government sends troops to China to kill the Chinese, the Chinese will never accept the Bible or listen to the gospel of Christ preached by British missionaries." Maruhan was the son of Morrison, the first missionary to come to China. Morrison died in China in 1834. His son followed his father's footsteps and continued to preach in China. Liang Fa's warning to Ma Ruhan did not help, but predicted the fate of Christianity in China. The missionaries could not wait to conquer China, and even did not hesitate to take the initiative to tie up with the invaders. Through wars and unequal treaties, they got deeper and deeper in the quagmire of aggression. Christian missionaries who call themselves "messengers of love" have become the makers of humiliation and suffering of modern Chinese people. While shouting to destroy China with war, they are wondering why the Chinese people so reject the religion they preach, and conveniently label the Chinese people with xenophobia. Liang Fa's warning pointed out the situation that Christianity will face in China. In the following hundred years of Chinese Christian history, how to get rid of the image of invaders has become its main problem, which also inspired the hundred year localization movement of Christianity, trying to get out of this historical dilemma. In 1855, Liang Fa died in Guangzhou and was buried in xinhuanggang, Henan Province, Guangzhou. Later, he was buried in the Banshan Pavilion on the campus of Lingnan University. Today, we can still see his tombstone in the showroom on the first floor of Sun Yat sen University Library. This humble figure in history, fully aware of the difficulties that Chinese Christianity will face, triggered a hundred years of thinking of Chinese Christianity. (outlook new era)
Edit：Yuanqi Tang Responsible editor：Xiao Yu
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