Ch'eng Ching-yi (22 September 1881-15 November 1939), Protestant leader, devoted his life to encouraging the growth of an independent, unified Chinese Protestant church. He instituted the China for Christ Movement, helped to found the Chinese Home Mission Society, and served as general secretary of the two leading Chinese interdenominational organizations, the National Christian Council and the Church of Christ in China.

At the time of his birth, Ch'eng Ching-yi's family was living in north China. His father, who had been converted to Christianity through the influence of the London Missionary Society, was one of the society's pastors. After receiving an early education along traditional Chinese lines, Ch'eng Ching-yi entered the Anglo- Chinese Institute of the London Missionary Society in Peking, from which he was graduated in 1896. In 1900 he completed the course at the theological branch of the institute at Tientsin. Ch'eng's graduation preceded the Boxer Uprising by only two weeks. His family was among the besieged in the Legation Quarter in Peking, and a number of his fellow students lost their lives in the massacres of 1900. Ch'eng himself, serving as interpreter and stretcher bearer for the Allied forces on their march to Peking, narrowly escaped death several times. After the siege was over, he participated in relief activities in the capital.

In 1903, when Ch'eng Ching-yi was 22, he assisted the Reverend George Owen of the London Missionary Society in preparing a revised translation of the New Testament into Chinese. When Owen, for health reasons, had to return to England, he invited Ch'eng to accompany him and to continue the work there. Ch'eng accepted and spent the next five years in England. The period abroad gave him an opportunity to become fluent in both written and spoken English, an accomplishment which was relatively rare even among educated Chinese of that day. More significantly, the years in England led to a basic revaluation of his religious thought and faith. After being assailed by doubts to the point of repudiating many of his early religious convictions and devotional habits, Ch'eng came to a deeper faith, with the help of former missionary friends from China, Dr. and Mrs. Eliot Curwin, with whom he lived in England. The New Testament translation was completed in 1906, and Ch'eng entered a theological course at the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow. Although he was graduated in 1908, he chose to postpone ordination until after his return to China. Once ordained in his home church, Ch'eng Ching-yi, then 27, undertook the first assignment of his pastoral career in the newly formed independent Mi-shih Hutung Church in the East City of Peking. This church drew a number of Chinese academic and professional people who were attracted to it, at least in part, because of its independence from mission jurisdiction. Ch'eng's growing reputation was indicated by his selection as one of three Chinese Christian delegates to attend the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910. It was significant that Ch'eng received this appointment despite his Manchu background at a time when anti- Manchu sentiment was steadily rising throughout China. He made a strong impression at Edinburgh both through personal contacts and through a notable seven-minute speech to the predominantly Western conference in which he declared: "speaking plainly, we hope to see in the near future a united Christian Church without any denominational distinctions . . . denominationalism has never interested the Chinese mind . . . ." Ch'eng's forthright plea for a united church in China became a classic statement in Protestant missionary annals. At the conclusion of the conference, he was elected to the continuation committee of the International Missionary Council. In 1912 Ch'eng became secretary of a Chinese advisory council (the counterpart of a London Missionary Society council) which represented five fields of mission work in China. In this capacity, Ch'eng traveled widely with his English counterpart, Dr. Thomas Cochrane, and became a familiar figure to Christian groups in many parts of China . These groups responded to Ch'eng's leadership and came to regard him as an effective spokesman for their aims of selfsupport and self-government. In his insistence that denominational labels and divisions be transcended in united allegiance and programs, Ch'eng both stimulated and crystallized the aspirations of many Chinese Christians. When John R. Mott, a founder and the leader of an international student Christian movement, visited China in 1913, Ch'eng Ching-yi accompanied him, sharing interpreting duties with another able young Chinese, David Yui (Yu Jih-chang, q.v.). As a result of the Mott visit, a continuation committee of the National Missionary Conference in China was organized, with Ch'eng as secretary. In that capacity Ch'eng visited England and the United States, where through conferences and addresses he contributed to the growing interest in the ecumenical movement and in the work of the Christian church in China. By 1916 his talents were already sufficiently recognized in the West that Knox College in Toronto granted him an honorary D.D. degree. In 1923, he received an honorary LL.D. degree from the College of Wooster in Ohio, and, in 1929, a D.D. degree from St. John's University at Shanghai. During the early turbulent years of the republican period in China, Ch'eng was moved by the vision of a unified and independent Christian church acting as a vital center of integration in the national life of the Chinese people. In 1917 groups intent upon the perpetuation of traditional values attempted to force insertion of a clause in the Peking constitution stipulating that only Confucian teachings could be used in the schools as the basis of moral instruction. This effort was defeated in a brief but vigorous campaign in which Chinese Protestants, under Ch'eng Ching-yi's direction, played a leading part.

Ch'eng knew that the Christian movement in China was just beginning to develop and that its later character and form could be determined to a great extent by the actions and decisions of its current Chinese leaders. All endeavor, he insisted, should be centered in the church, not in the essentially transient interests of the missionary program. During this period, Ch'eng Ching-yi worked tirelessly to realize his ideals. In 1919 he instituted the China for Christ Movement, a nationwide attempt to expand and invigorate the Protestant church. And he helped to found the Chinese Home Mission Society, a group which sought, as an indigenous and interdenominational movement, to spread Christian influence among non-Chinese ethnic groups in the hinterland, especially in the southwest of China.

In 1922, when the National Christian Council was organized in Shanghai, Ch'eng Ching-yi was chairman of its first meeting, and he served as its general secretary until 1933. He was also prominent in the attempt to promote closer cooperation among Protestant groups in China. That effort led in 1927 to the initial meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Christ in China, where Ch'eng was unanimously elected the first moderator. This union of 1 6 denominations, including Presbyterian, Congregational, Reformed and English Baptist, in a cooperative Protestant program was a major tribute to Ch'eng's efforts, which had long been directed toward overcoming divisive barriers within the church. In the international sphere, Ch'eng was a leading member of the Chinese delegation which attended the 1928 Jerusalem conference of the International Missionary Council and was elected vice chairman of that meeting. At the same time he was appointed to the executive committee of the council; he served on the committee until the 1938 meeting at Madras, India. At that meeting he was a member of the Chinese delegation.

The pace of Ch'eng's crowded life strained his energies, however. By the early 1930's he had found the extensive travel required by his position in the National Christian Council to be an increasing burden. Thus, after a period of more than ten years as secretary of the Council, Ch'eng resigned this position in 1933. Early in 1934, he became general secretary of the Church of Christ in China. However, he continued to suffer from high blood pressure and heart trouble. The outbreak of war between China and Japan in 1937 was a great personal sorrow to Ch'eng and further weakened his health. He felt that the war would damage irreparably the entire fabric of international brotherhood, as well as his personal ties with many Japanese Christians.

In 1939, during the last months of his life, Ch'eng traveled through west China to observe two projects in which he had deep personal interest: mission work among tribal groups in the southwest, and the mission church program at Kweiyang in Kweichow province. Friends said that he returned to Shanghai with a renewed sense of challenge and hope. His health soon failed, however, and he died in the Lester Chinese Hospital at Shanghai in November 1939. From the time of his memorable speech at Edinburgh in 1910, Ch'eng Ching-yi was the foremost advocate of interdenominational cooperation and of an independent Chinese church. While principally identified with the administration of two leading cooperative Protestant bodies, he exerted a personal influence—as initiator, director, and counselor on virtually every significant Protestant undertaking in China during the 30 years of his active career. Ch'eng She-wo T. P'ing