Red Bishop
By Robin T.W. Yuan
Red Robin Publishing, 414 pages, $31.95
This book is a charmer. The narrative is beautiful, the depiction vivid, the dialogue terse, the events stunning, and the characters interacting in marvelous tapestry. It reminds the reader of Pearl Buck, author of The Good Earth (1931) and Nobel Prize laureate (1938), known for “her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China.”
A daughter of missionaries, Buck spent every summer in her parents’ villa in Kuling on Lushan Mountain, where the Rev. Robin Chen once organized an emergency escape for hundreds of missionaries and refugees from Japanese attack. The extraordinary life, family, and ministry of Bishop Robin Chen, the last Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church in China, is movingly revealed with a masterful use of historical documents, sermons, memories of friends, and family letters.
This is an inspiring biography of Bishop Chen, shedding light on his conversion in mission school, his ministry as a young priest under Bishop Daniel Huntington in Wuhu, his episcopacy negotiating with the political parties of KMT and CCP in Anking, his trying term as Presiding Bishop with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in Shanghai, and finally his home arrest, humiliated by the Red Guards and denied medical treatment.
In all these events, Bishop Chen’s resourcefulness, resilience, and reflective mind jump out of the pages. His faithful leadership of the church and patriotic hope for a better life for the poor in China are impressively demonstrated in the way he ran mission schools, cared for refugees, and spoke truth to power, be it the Archbishop of Canterbury, Generalissimo Chiang, or Premier Chou. Is he a man of God or a tragic hero? From a postcolonial perspective, Bishop Chen’s life story also shows how important it is to train and trust native leaders if the church is expected to be truly self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating.
The remarkable life of Bishop Chen coincided with a tumultuous history of China in the middle of the 20th century. The Chinese people suffered incessantly from natural disasters of floods and famine, military aggression of imperial Japan, civil wars among the warlords, and protracted fighting between KMT and CCP. Many lives were lost, and many hopes dashed.
Facing violent political campaigns of the new China, everyone was forced to make consequential choices of allegiance to faith or patriotism, to church or party. Consistently, however, the patriotic Anglican Bishop held on to his idealism and believed both Christianity and Communism shared the same goal to liberate the poor, so he was not offended to be called the Red Bishop.
Do not overlook the heart-wrenching story of a lovely family experiencing so much love and grief, joy and sorrow, hardship and survival, and difficult choices about family and country in a time when powerful political forces kept striking on everyone. They seemed to have choices, but did they really?
Very touching is Bishop Chen’s persistent longing for his daughter Grace to return to China to serve the people as a well-trained doctor, even in his unconscious muttering in the final days of illness. “They never told him Grace was not in the room; that it was just the fog of his failing liver clouding his mind. They allowed him that one pleasurable dream among his nightmares. It was his way to keep his daughter alive.” Not being able to see her father and family for 27 years, Grace in Boston also went through lingering agonies and self-blame. It is painful to be separated from beloved family.
This story invites deep reflection on faith, life, family, and country. And beware: it may induce tears.
The Rev. John Y.H. Yieh, Ph.D., is the Molly Laird Downs Professor of New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary.
