Christianity is a minority religion in Xinjiang, an autonomous region of China, formerly known as Chinese Turkestan. The dominant ethnic group, the Uyghur, are predominantly Muslim and very few are known to be Christian. [1] Christianity in Xinjiang is the religion of 1% of the population according to the Chinese General Social Survey of 2009. [2] According to Asia Harvest, estimates from 2020 suggest that of the entire population (24,992,119) about 3.77% is Christian (942,897). [3]
The Church of the East, commonly known as Nestorians, reached Central Asia, Mongolia and China by the seventh century CE. The Turpan texts dating to the ninth and tenth centuries include translations of Christian sacred texts into several languages, including Christian Old Turkic. The tribe of the Keraites was known to be predominantly Christian from the 11th century and to the time of Genghis Khan. Likewise the Naiman and Ongud tribes were evangelised from the 11th century. The Uighur people were later Islamised.
In 1904, George W. Hunter with the China Inland Mission opened the first mission station for CIM in Xinjiang. [4] But already in 1892, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden started missions in the area around Kashgar, and later built mission stations, churches, hospitals and schools in Yarkant and Yengisar. [5] In the 1930s there were several hundreds of Christians among this people, but because of persecution the churches were destroyed and the believers were scattered. The missionaries were forced to leave because of ethnic and factional battles during the Kumul Rebellion in the late 1930s. [6] [7]
Christian missionaries, such as British missionary Hunter, Johannes Avetaranian, [8] and Swedish missionaries [5] Magnus Bäcklund, Nils Fredrik Höijer, Father Hendricks, Josef Mässrur, Anna Mässrur, Albert Andersson, Gustaf Ahlbert, Stina Mårtensson, John Törnquist, Gösta Raquette, Oskar Hermannson, and Uyghur convert Nur Luke studied the Uyghur language and wrote works on it. A Turkish convert to Christianity, Johannes Avetaranian went to China to spread Christianity to the Uyghurs. Yaqup Istipan,. [9]
There were several hundred Uyghur Muslims converted to Christianity by the Swedes. Imprisonment and execution were inflicted on Uyghur Christian converts and after refusing to give up his Christian religion, and the Uyghur convert Habil was executed in 1933. Ultimately in 1938, Sheng Shicai's pro-Soviet regime banished the Swedish missionaries after the East Turkestan Republic tortured and jailed Christian converts, who were made out of Kirghiz and Uyghurs. [10] [11] The openly Islamic East Turkestan Republic forcibly ejected the Swedish missionaries and espoused hostility to Christianity while espousing a Muslim Turkic ideology. [12] The East Turkestan Republic subjected former Muslim Christian converts like Joseph Johannes Khan to jail, torture and abuse after he refused to give up Christianity in favor of Islam. After the British intervened to free Khan he was forced to leave his land and in November 1933 he came to Peshawar. [13]
Alimjan Yimit (Alimujiang Yimiti) is one of several Uyghurs who have more recently converted to Christianity, who was arrested in 2009 and is serving a 15-year prison sentence for being a pastor. Wu'erkaixi (Örkesh Dölet) may also be a Christian, but this has not publicly confirmed this. According to ChinaAid, six more Christians were arrested in 2019 for preaching. [14]
The Swedish missionaries observed the conditions of Uyghur Muslim women in Xinjiang during their stay there. [15] The lack of Han Chinese women led to Uyghur Muslim women marrying Han Chinese men, These women were hated by their families and people. [16] Unmarried Muslim Uyghur women who married non-Muslims like Chinese, Hindus, Armenians, Jews, and Russians if they could not find a Muslim husband while they were calling to Allah to grant them marriage by the shrines of saints. [17] The Muslims also attacked the Swedish Christian mission and Hindus resident in the city. [18] Lobbying by the Swedish Christian missionaries led to child marriage for under 15-year-old girls to be banned by the Chinese Governor in Ürümqi. Uyghur women converts to Christianity did not wear the veil. [19] Uyghur Muslims rioted against Indian Hindu traders when the Hindus attempted to practice their religious affairs in public and also rose up against the Swedish Christian mission in 1907. [20] [21]
Mullahs directed violence against the missionaries from Sweden since 1894 and it was only due to action taken by Chinese officials that a Uyghur Muslim apostate who became a Christian named Omar was saved from execution at the hands of mullahs. [22] In 1899, the headquarters of the Swedish missionaries was violently obliterated by a mass of rioters. This anti-Christian riot was incited by the landlord of the property who argued with his Swedish renters. [23] [24] The Swedish missionaries welfare was one of the concerns by the British during the Xinhai Revolution. [23] The residences of the Swedish missionaries were attacked by mobs and violent outbreaks resulted in a garden becoming their home since nobody would rent to them. [25]
An anti-Christian mob broke out among the Muslims in Kashgar against the Swedish missionaries in 1923. Violence and tensions brewed by Muslims who were stirred by Muslim apostates becoming Christian due to the Swedes in Ramadan of 1923. Orders to stop rioting were given to the Muslim Qazis and merchants by the Chinese Tao Tai after British diplomats contacted him. [26]
The Bughras applied Shari'a while ejecting the Khotan-based Swedish missionaries. [27] They demanded the withdrawal of the Swedish missionaries while enacting Shariah on March 16, 1933. [28] In the name of Islam, the Uyghur leader Amir Abdullah Bughra of the First East Turkestan Republic violently physically assaulted the Yarkand-based Swedish missionaries and would have executed them, except they were only banished due to the British Aqsaqal's intercession in their favor. [27] There were beheadings and executions of Muslims who had converted to Christianity at the hands of the Amir's followers. [29]
Werner Otto von Hentig during the Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition was assisted by a tip off from a Swedish missionary. [30] Along with British diplomats, the Kashgar-based missionaries from Sweden were prominent among European expatriates in the area. [31] Eleanor Holgate Lattimore met the Swedish missionaries and British diplomats in Kashgar. [32]
The Swedish Mission Society ran a printing operation. Life of East Turkestan was the state run media of the rebel First East Turkestan Republic in the Kumul Rebellion. The Bughra lead government used the Swedish Mission Press to print and distribute the media. [33]
East Turkestan or East Turkistan, also called Uyghuristan, is a loosely-defined geographical region in the northwestern part of the People's Republic of China, which varies in meaning by context and usage. The term was coined in the 19th century by Russian Turkologists, including Nikita Bichurin, who intended the name to replace the common Western term for the region, "Chinese Turkestan", which referred to the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang or Xinjiang as a whole during the Qing dynasty. Beginning in the 17th century, Altishahr, which means "Six Cities" in Uyghur, became the Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin. Uyghurs also called the Tarim Basin "Yettishar," which means "Seven Cities," and even "Sekkizshahr", which means "Eight Cities" in Uyghur. Chinese dynasties from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty had called an overlapping area the "Western Regions".
The Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET) was a breakaway Islamic republic centered on the city of Kashgar, located in the far west of China's Xinjiang Province. It is often described as the First East Turkestan Republic to differentiate it from the Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1946), but "first" was never a part of its official name.
In the early 19th century, Western colonial expansion occurred at the same time as an evangelical revival – the Second Great Awakening – throughout the English-speaking world, leading to more overseas missionary activity. The nineteenth century became known as the Great Century of modern religious missions.
Magnus Bäcklund was a Swedish missionary to Chinese Turkestan with the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden.
Johannes Avetaranian, born Mehmet Şükri was originally a mullah in Turkey who converted from Islam to Christianity, and later became a missionary for the Swedish Mission Covenant Church in Southern Xinjiang (1892–1938). He translated the New Testament into the Uyghur language. He preached Christianity in Xinjiang and at a Swedish Protestant mission. He died in 1919, aged 58, in Wiesbaden.
Gustaf Albert Ahlbert was a Swedish missionary and linguist. He served with the Mission Union of Sweden in Chinese Turkestan.
Rikard Nyström (1884–1943) was a Swedish missionary. He served with the Mission Union of Sweden in Chinese Turkestan.
Stina Mårtensson was a Swedish missionary. She served with the Swedish Missionary Society in Chinese Turkestan and India.
Rachel Orde Wingate was an English linguist and missionary to Xinjiang. She served with the Swedish Missionary Society.
John Törnquist was a Swedish missionary. He served with the Swedish Missionary Society in Chinese Turkestan.
Adolf Bohlin was a Swedish missionary. He served with the Mission Union of Sweden in Chinese Turkestan. Born Adolf Fredrik Persson in Tived, Skaraborg, Sweden, he was the ninth child of 12 for Per Erik Persson and Maja Cajsa Jacobsdotter. In late 1920 he moved to Los Angeles, California in the United States where he worked as a gardener until his retirement.
Gustaf Adolf Arell was a Swedish missionary and linguist. He served with the Mission Union of Sweden in Chinese Turkestan.
Like women in many other cultures, women in China have been historically oppressed. For thousands of years, women in China lived under the patriarchal social order characterized by the Confucius teaching of "filial piety". In modern China, the lives of women have changed significantly due to the late Qing dynasty reforms, the changes of the Republican period, the Chinese Civil War, and the rise of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Albert Andersson was a Swedish missionary to Chinese Turkestan with the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden. He also worked in Northern China with the Fransonska Mission.
Elin Karolina Svensson was a Swedish missionary. She served with the Mission Union of Sweden in Chinese Turkestan.
Hilda Lovisa Nordquist was a Swedish missionary. She served with the Mission Union of Sweden in Chinese Turkestan.
Anna Nyström-Mässrur was a Swedish missionary. She served in the Caucasus and in Persia, and in 1894 moved to the Xinjiang region of China.
The Kumul Rebellion was a rebellion of Kumulik Uyghurs from 1931 to 1934 who conspired with Hui Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying to overthrow Jin Shuren, governor of Xinjiang. The Kumul Uyghurs were loyalists of the Kumul Khanate and wanted to restore the heir to the Khanate and overthrow Jin. The Kuomintang wanted Jin removed because of his ties to the Soviet Union, so it approved of the operation while pretending to acknowledge Jin as governor. The rebellion then catapulted into large-scale fighting as Khotanlik Uyghur rebels in southern Xinjiang started a separate rebellion for independence in collusion with Kirghiz rebels. The various groups of rebels were not united. The main part of the war was waged by Ma Zhongying against the Xinjiang government. He was supported by Chiang Kai-shek, the Premier of China, who secretly agreed to let Ma seize Xinjiang.
The Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China ruled over Xinjiang from the late 1750s to 1912. In the history of Xinjiang, the Qing rule was established in the final phase of the Dzungar–Qing Wars when the Dzungar Khanate was conquered by the Qing dynasty, and lasted until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The post of General of Ili was established to govern the whole of Xinjiang and reported to the Lifan Yuan, a Qing government agency that oversaw the empire's frontier regions. Xinjiang was turned into a province in 1884.
In the 18th century, the Qing dynasty conquered the Junggar Basin (Dzungaria) and the Tarim Basin, uniting them under the name Xinjiang. Qing rule in Xinjiang is said to have negatively affected the position of women in the society of Turkic Muslims now known as the Uyghurs.