Smylie, Romert F.

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BOOK REVIEWS 127Morris has written a fascinating account of some popular religious move-ments in our time which is simultaneously entertaining and disconcerting. Moredescriptive than analytical, it leaves most of the psychological, theological andsociological questions that it may raise in the reader's mind unanswered. Theimpression is conveyed, however, that many of these contemporary Americanevangelists may be more of a bane than a blessing.University of California, RALPH L. MOELLERINGBerkeleyThe West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in ModernTimes. Volume 1: Russia 1472-1917; Volume 2: China 1582-1949. By DON-ALD W. TREADGOLD. Cambridge: University Press, 1973. xxxix -f- 324 pp.;xxi + 251 pp. $12.95; $11.95.Professor Treadgold brings extensive credentials in Russian and Chinesestudies to these volumes comparing the sources and influences of Western ideasin two dissimilar, yet similar cultures. Chronologically comparable time periodsare established, beginning with European ties inaugurated by Moscovy uponachieving independence from the Mongols, and the Jesuit arrival in China, endingwith the communist victories in both countries. In Russia the western influenceis exclusively European. In China American sources appear only late in thenineteenth century. Treadgold's valuable contribution to the study of "Western-ization" (used instead of modernization) questions whether the process of accept-ing western doctrine necessitates the destruction of native culture, or whetherwestern ideas can coalesce with significant aspects of traditional culture to reflectthe unique genius and history of the peoples involved.The Russian volume is a chronological presentation, with its chapters fairlyevenly divided over the time periods. Careful descriptions of intellectual cross-currents and vignettes of key personalities reveal competing influences of westernthought, reaching a climax in the triumph of Communism. Treadgold beginswith the ideological struggle of the late fifteenth century: the Judaizers (proto-protestants) dominant under Ivan III and the Josephites (Romanizers) dominantunder Vasily III who subordinated the Church to autocracy. The "Third Rome"idea emerges assuming the transference of cultural supremacy from Constantinopleand Rome to Moscow.Lutheranism expanded to Russia through Poland and Lithuania, only tobe devastated by the counterreformation climaxed when Poland's King Sigis-mund III acknowledged papal supremacy over orthodoxy. Schism in the mid-seventeenth century led to greater secularization and to solidification of statecontrol over the church. Peter the Great reversed the Catholic trend and secured theascendancy of western Protestant thought (Scholastic and Pietist) which remaineddominant until 1917. Under Peter the state guided the westernization of Russianculture. Catherine the Great embraced the Enlightenment, yet saved the Jesuitorder. Alexander I banned the Jesuits and sought under Pietist influence to establisha theocratic utopianism. Nicolas I, though autocratic, initiated reforms, fosteringa doctrine of "official nationality'" involving orthodoxy, autocracy and nation-ality, while the Slavophile movement syncretized the German philosophies andorthodoxy.Late nineteenth-century Russia witnessed nihilism (loss of faith in all butscience), populism (varying forms of socialism), pan-slavism (Russian na-tionalism-imperialism) and the syncretists (individuals seeking recovery of Rus-sia's heritage in combination with the best western thought). With the failureof reform three trends emerged: Marxism, appealing to the intelligentia becauseof its intellectual demands, its conception of man and its western origins; anesthetic revival—a "Silver Age" of the arts; and an attempt to revitalize andliberate orthodoxy. The revolution of 1905 revealed the intellectual dependenceavailable at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/3164120Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 16:38:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,128 CHURCH HISTORYon the West for both parliamentary institutions and revolutionary action. TheRevolutions of 1917 totally subjected intellectual life to the state, but did notterminate it.The China volume is thematic, with representative figures and events se-lected to convey the competition of ideas. The Christian Humanism of theJesuits, seeking during a two-hundred year mission to build a Chinese Christiancivilization on an existing Confucian tradition through conversion of an elite,came to an end in 1773. Renewed western contact came through ProtestantPietist missionaries, primarily British, in the nineteenth century. The Tai-pingrevolution is characterized as a Chinese reproduction of the Protestant fundamen-talism brought by Robert Morrison and James Legge. Timothy Richard's cru-sading zeal is credited with much of the reform activity in China at the end ofthe nineteenth century.Nearly half of the volume concentrates on the period from 1890 to the1920s, when three overlapping attempts were made by Chinese to work outcultural solutions under western impact. Christian modernism-social gospelismis seen in Sun Yat-sen, strongly influenced by American protestants. Syncretistsrejected the assumption that westernization meant Christianization, and soughtreinterpretations of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, in conjunction withwestern thought. Secular liberals, influenced by Dewey and Russell, sought toadapt western science and democracy without the preconditions for them. Allthree approaches failed, but stimulated change and the growth of nationalism.Finally, Chinese anarchist groups in Tokyo and Paris, emerging in the 1920s,introduced Marxist-Leninist doctrine. This was quickly picked up by the in-telligentsia and spread through the literary societies. By the end of the thirtiesCommunist thought had carried the day.Treadgold concludes that Russia and China both discarded (at least tem-porarily) their own cultural traditions in favor of an imported western doctrine,violently exclusivist and totalitarian. In choosing Communism as the western-izing vehicle they rejected Protestant and Catholic influences, scholastic, pietistand modernist. Liberalism and democratic socialism also failed. These formsof western thought failed to capture the elites, the decision-makers. Treadgoldfeels Russia and China lost the most appropriate alternative for modernizing:the pluralist or syncretic method. The irony for the religiously concerned isthat Communism was the "child . . . of the Christian tradition as developed inthe West", indeed, a secular religion. Future developments may be more sur-prising. These books are worth careful study.Ecumenical Institute, ROBERT F. SMYLIEGeneva, SwitzerlandThe Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief1919-1922. By STANLEY E. KERR. Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1973. xxv + 318 pp. $15.00.The Armenian Question of the pre-and post-World War I period has broughtforth several books in recent years. Some are memoirs of Armenians who livedthrough the horrors and emphasize the acts as purposeful genocidal plans ofthe "awful Turk." Others are by Turkish writers pointing to the unrest of theareas with large Armenian populations and that stability and Turkish indepen-dence could be obtained only by eliminating these "quizlings of the great powers."This book is of quite a different genre. It is a careful study of a microcosmof the Question: the happenings in the city of Marash, Turkey during the resi-dence of the author, 1919 to 1922. Dr. Stanley E. Kerr retired in 1965 afterforty years as a professor in biochemistry at the American University of Beirut.In 1919 he had been recruited from the laboratory of the Walter Reed Hospitalto serve as a clinical chemist for the Near East Relief base hospital in Aleppo,but soon found himself in Marash administering five orphanages with 1,400available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/3164120Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 16:38:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,

Book Review: The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times. Volume 1: Russia. 1472-1917; Volume 2: China 1582-1949: The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times. Volume 1: Russia. 1472-1917; Volume 2: China 1582-1949. By TreadgoldDonald W.. Cambridge: University Press, 1973. xxxix + 324 pp.; xxi + 251 pp. $12.95; $11.95

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