"A highly readable account of one of the oft-neglected aspects of the Christian mission enterprise in China, namely, what impact did it have on the missionaries and their home churches. . . . Lian's work is recommended for all those interested in the history of Christian missions in China."-The Journal of American History

"This is an excellent book, which I recommend highly to all with an interest in China missions, the course of liberalism in American missions theology and American Protestantism in general, or the subtle relationships between foreign missions and theology on the home front. Lian Xi . . . has given us a thorougly researched, well argued, and elegantly written monograph."-Catholic Historical Review

Like many of her fellow missionaries to China, Pearl Buck found that she was not immune to the influence of her adopted home. Some missionaries even found themselves "convert[ed] . . . by the Far East." In this book Lian Xi tells the story of Buck and two other American missionaries to China in the early twentieth century who gradually came to question, and eventually reject, the evangelical basis of Protestant missions as they developed an appreciation for Chinese religions and culture. Lian Xi uses these stories as windows to understanding the development of a broad theological and cultural liberalism within American Protestant missions, which he examines in the second half of the book.

The rise of missions in nineteenth-century America was an overflow of America's religious and nationalist spirit. The development of liberalism in the mission field in the twentieth century, however, precipitated a major crisis within the American missionary enterprise. It also generated what Lian Xi calls a "reverse missionary impulse" as the liberal missionaries transmitted their own theological and cultural insights to their religious base at home. This development, he argues, became one of the chief ironies in the American Protestant efforts to penetrate and convert China. The untraditional, and often syncretic, religious and cultural views that emerged out of the missionaries' experience in the East enriched Protestant thought in America and contributed to the Modernist search for a broadened interpretation of Christianity.

John Hersey observed more than a decade ago that "Americans will probably never wholly understand themselves until they understand the missionary impulse so deeply embedded in the American psyche." This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the vulnerability of that missionary impulse.