스코틀랜드 연합장로교회의 만주(滿洲)지역 제나나선교

Abstract

This study aims to describe the origin of the zenana mission and its practice in Manchuria that the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland unfolded in the nineteenth century and to examine the practice’s missiological and historical meanings. Despite the fact that the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, a non-established Church, had made the Board of Foreign Mission unfold all the missionary activities of the Church, it newly introduced the concept of ‘zenana mission,’ which was ‘women’s mission for women,’ launched a ‘zenana mission’ and approved to get a separate ‘zenana mission fund’ collected from the local churches. The church’s women established Congregational Committee, Ladies (Zenana) Committee, and Ladies (Zenana) Conference and promoted women's leadership in the mission world and politics of the Church. Zenana missionaries began to go to Manchuria in the early 1880s. Home visitations that the zenana missionaries attempted received a favorable response from the Chinese society and greatly contributed to mitigate the imperialist image of Christian missions attached with Western male missionaries. Education through boarding girls’ schools proceeded from the nature of church schools to that of Chinese schools by adopting traditional Chinese subjects and provided the lower class and impoverished women with education and the place to live in. Zenana medical missionaries were sent to Manchuria since 1894 and they unfolded a considerable amount of medical activities, especially getting in charge of the women hospitals in several years. In summing up, United Presbyterian Church’s zenana mission in Manchuria suggested a new mission method to the Christian mission world and greatly contributed to improving women’s rights in Manchuria.