THE JOYS AND TROUBLES OF A MISSIONARY LIFE

A man surveys the life of his father, a British missionary to China, in this biography.

From its opening chapter, which introduces readers to Jowett Murray as he studies Confucianism and Taoism on a ship bound for Asia, this biography centers on the nearly 40 years the Oxford-educated Christian missionary spent in China from 1909 to 1945. Mostly written by Jowett’s son, David, the book was completed by Ruth Finnegan, the author’s wife, following his deteriorating health in 2022. And while written by David, the book emphasizes that it “is no hagiography” and is careful to balance its overall favorable analysis with examples of times when the missionary engaged in “unpleasant personal feuding.” Jowett’s evangelism, readers learn, included academic immersion in the Chinese language (so much so that Oxford invited him to join the university as a professor of Chinese), as he helped spearhead the translation of the New Testament for The New Mandarin Bible. A central theme of the biography is its acknowledgment that while 20th-century missionary activity, including from Jowett’s London Missionary Society, is accurately associated with Western imperialism, the label cannot be applied to every missionary unilaterally. Indeed, according to the author, his father could be described as “one of the original post-colonial thinkers” among his cohort of fellow missionaries, as he often butted heads with the sometimes elitist and ethnocentric leaders of his mission’s London office. The author, a former professor of government, balances his personal admiration for his father with scholarly underpinnings. Drawn largely from primary source material—including oral histories and unpublished material held by the family as well as archival research conducted at multiple libraries—the book does an admirable job of placing Jowett within his cultural, historical, and theological context, even when doing so may not be flattering from a contemporary perspective. Beyond its foundations in original sources, the work is accompanied by a 10-page scholarly bibliography. Dedicated “to the Christian community in China,” the volume doesn’t shy away from its religious underpinnings. Nevertheless, it provides balanced commentary and intellectual rigor.

A well-researched, nuanced account of a 20th-century British missionary.