Women at the frontlines of faith : Christian service and rural reconstruction in wartime Sichuan / Yi Aixin

Published in the Journal of the Study on Religion and History No. 2

Abstract:

This paper investigates how Ginling Women’s College, one of China’s leading Christian institutions for women, engaged in rural reconstruction during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Focusing on its rural service stations in Renshou and Zhonghechang, Sichuan, this paperexamines how Christian women educators translated ideals of social service, citizenship, and domestic reform into local practice. Drawing on missionary archives, Guomindang (GMD) administrative documents, and local records, the paper reconstructs both the institutional design and the lived experience of these wartime experiments.Ginling’s initiatives reveal how Christian social work became intertwined with GMD programs of rural reconstruction and moral reform. Through literacy classes, nursery programs, and citizenship training courses, urban-educated women sought to improve ruralwomen’s lives while cultivating civic and moral order. Their efforts exposed tensions between their Christian, urban-informed visions of social improvement and the daily constraints of rural wartime life.By foregrounding everyday encounters between reformers and villagers, this study highlights the social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of Christian women’s activism. It argues that Ginling’s wartime rural service redefined the relationships amongChristian social engagement, gender roles, and the GMD-led reconstruction initiatives, offering new insightsinto how Chinese Christianity adapted to and participated in the transformation of rural society during the war