From World Religion to World Order Confucianism in the Straits at the Turn of the 20th Century

By Ivana Prazic

Introduction

This essay explores the impact of the emerging scholarly discipline of the “science of religion” on the Confucianist movement in Singapore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anna Sun’s recent study on the modern origin of Confucianism as a “world religion” foregrounds the role of James Legge, a missionary and an Oxford University professor, in the establishment and dissemination of the scholarly category of “Confucianism” in the period.¹ However, her study is limited to an exploration of the impact of Legge’s scholarship on the study of world religions in the Western academic and missionary circles.

The author hardly mentions Legge’s career in Malacca and the influence his study of Chinese classics had on missionary and Confucian reformist circles in Singapore at the turn of the 20th century. While it delineates a historical arc that connects mutual contestations between the secular and religious interpretations of Confucianism from the 19th century British Empire to present-day China, her book neglects analogous debates articulated in the Confucianist and Christian intellectual circles in the Straits of Malacca.

This essay is an attempt to include the voices of Confucian reformers in the Straits of Malacca in the study of the history of Confucianism in its modern, global format. It will highlight the formative role of intellectual exchanges, between Western scholars and/or missionaries and local Confucianist thinkers, in the conceptualisation of Confucianism as, simultaneously, a national (Chinese) religion and transnational (global) political force. Apart from East Asian societies and states, Confucianism has also played an important role in Southeast Asia. Historical trajectories behind the relatively recent (2006) acknowledgement of Confucianism as a state-sponsored religion in Indonesia, and Confucianism as an ethical regime that governs the conditions to sociability in postcolonial Singapore, deserve comparative studies of their own.

As an initial step in that direction, this essay discusses the articulations of Confucianism through the perspective of the comparative study of religions, as it was understood by the Confucian reformers in Singapore – led by Lim Boon Keng – at the turn of the 20th century. I will argue that the debates between the Chinese reformists and the Straits-based British missionaries on the religious status of Confucianism cannot be properly understood without taking Legge’s academic and missionary/theological authority into consideration. This argument is supported by an analysis of a series of essays and notes written by Lim during the period. By placing Legge within the history of the Confucian reformist movement in the Straits of Malacca, I aim to foreground the constitutive role of Southeast Asian reformers in the modern history of Confucianism in its global dimension.

Missionaries and scholars of world religions played a role in the debates where Confucianism was introduced onto the world map as a religion and promoted as a leading force in a new, China-centred global order as it was imagined from within the Straits of Malacca. The religion-related debates in the Straits of Malacca were no exception in the period under consideration. According to Peter van der Veer, religions in the Chinese and Indian modern contexts were transformed into “moral sources of citizenship and national belonging” – rather than marginalised or eliminated – through their contact with the emerging political project of secularism as a colonial governing tool of religious and cultural difference.²

Apart from playing a crucial role in the formulation of “national imaginaries”, the encounter with the imperial West enabled religions to be utilised to form – or imagine – supranational alliances and “alternative visions of the moral state”.³ This essay will show that the case of Lim Boon Keng’s articulations of Confucianism, as a religion and source of transnational moral citizenship, is an excellent example of the contradictory effect of secularism in a colonial setting, in van der Veer’s sense. In the spirit of the times, Legge conceptualised Confucian religion as a defining element of the Chinese race/nation. It was through a critical study of Legge’s translations, conceived from within the imperial context of Britain and related global missionary aspirations, that Lim developed his perspective of Confucianism as, simultaneously, a national (Chinese) and supranational (global) social and historical force, fit to form the basis of a new world order. In other words, Lim conceptualised the new world with a reformed China as its leader.

This essay will show that Lim’s personal engagement in, or substantial proximity to, the mutually opposing/constitutive social and historical projects – i.e. Christian proselytisation and the Confucianist movement, were, in van der Veer’s sense, responsible for the formation of a neutral cognitive space. That space was contained in the newly established “science of religion” which, with its authority anchored in rationality and “scientific objectivity”, had a pacifying effect on the debate between missionaries and Confucian reformists. In other words, the authority of deciding about the religious or secular/philosophical nature of Confucianism was placed in the realm of science, at a distance from ecclesiastic authorities. Lim’s multiple political alliances (to Britain and a reformed China) also decidedly marked his image of Confucianism as compatible with liberal democracy. In short, Lim embraced the lessons learned from his reading of the scientific approach to the study of world religions and used them to build his view of a new world history with Confucianism as its progressive goal. In this process, Lim adopted, contested or elaborated on Legge’s translations of the Confucian classics and views on Confucianism in relation to Christianity.

Lim’s crucial role in the Confucianist movement in the Straits has already received substantial scholarly attention.⁴ However, his engagement with Legge’s scholarly work is noted only in passing.⁵ In addition, Lim’s knowledge of the science of religion and its impact on his articulation of Confucianism as a world religion has entirely evaded the attention of the scholars working on the topic.

This essay, in turn, foregrounds the historical entanglement, between Protestant contestations and scholarly world-religion consolidations of Confucianism, in the construction of Lim’s view of this religion, and its place in the new world order as a political form of universal humanity, and a condition to modern, transnational and moral citizenship. Apart from van der Veer’s study, my approach to the study of the emergence of Confucianism, as a religion and global ethos in the Straits of Malacca, is also indebted to Tomoko Masuzawa’s study of the history of the concept of “world religion” within the discipline of science of religion and, in particular, the epistemic formation of this concept’s universalistic, supraethnic, or transnational, character.⁶

As Masuzawa shows, during the 19th century, the category of “world religion” emerged to help articulate the self-image of Europe as an ideal model of universal history, or leader of an international, global order on the one hand. On the other, this new category also served to (self) portray Europe as the sole custodian of harmonious regulation of internal differences within nation-states.⁷ Stated otherwise, world religions through their study within the new discipline of science of religion were approached as defining elements of non-European nations.⁸ The study presented in this essay, like those of van der Veer’s and Sun’s, acknowledges the ultimate intellectual legacy of Talal Asad’s enquiry into the mutual formation of the religious and the secular through the colonial encounter.⁹

Only when approached as a singular analytical field of enquiry can Lim’s views of Confucianism, simultaneously a religion and global political force, be understood as an effect of mutually transformative historical exchanges between the opposing social movements of Christian proselytisation (and related global domination) and Confucianist Chinese emancipation.

James Legge and the Study of Confucianism

James Legge (1815–1897) was the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University, where he worked from 1876 until his death. Before becoming a professor, Legge spent a large part of his life (1839–1873) as a missionary for the London Missionary Society, with postings in Malacca and Hong Kong.¹⁰ In the contemporary academic world, Legge is best remembered for his English translations of the Chinese classics, as well as his engagement in the scientific study of Chinese religions in general – foremost of which was Confucianism.¹¹ His lasting scholarly reputation was instrumental in shaping the current global perception of Confucianism as a defining element of Chinese culture, nation and politics.

Legge’s first missionary posting in Malacca only lasted four years, from 1839 to 1843. Nevertheless, by the time of his death, Legge was a well-known Christian proselytiser, scholar and educationalist in the Anglo- Chinese circles in Singapore. Early in his career, Legge personally financed the education of Song Hoot Kiam, who was to become one of the most prominent English-educated Christian Chinese intellectuals in Singapore, and two other boys in Hong Kong and Scotland.¹²

Song commemorated Legge’s life in a few obituaries¹³ published in The Straits Chinese Magazine: A Quarterly Journal of Oriental and Occidental Culture upon Legge’s death in 1897.¹⁴ This periodical, in circulation between 1897 and 1907, was co-founded and co-edited by Song’s son, Song Ong Siang, a Chinese Christian community leader and an English-educated intellectual. Along with Lim, Song Ong Siang was a recipient of the Queen’s Scholarship, the award that enabled both men to study in Britain.¹⁵ During his studies in Britain in the late 1880s or early 1890s, Song Ong Siang visited Legge at his home in Oxford, where the latter was working on his translations of Chinese texts.¹⁶ Although this visit did not prompt Song Ong Siang “to take up the study of Chinese classics”,¹⁷ his fellow Chinese reformist Lim showed great interest in Legge’s translations and views of Confucianism.

The Straits Chinese Magazine, or SCM, was intended, among other goals, to encourage debate among the Straits intellectual elite of “all nationalities who are in every respect better educated than those of a former generation”.¹⁸ Lim, one of the most vociferous Singaporean Confucian reformists of the period, who was also a founder and co-editor of the SCM,¹⁹ published his critiques of Legge’s understanding of Confucianism and proposed a different picture of the religion’s role in facilitating the overall progress of the Chinese people. In so doing, Lim made an invaluable contribution to the then emerging concept of “objective” or “scientific” study of religion, which explored Confucianism as a “world religion” within the new scholarly discipline of comparative religion.²⁰

Masuzawa shows that one of the fathers of the science of religion – known today as comparative religion – Friedrich Max Müller, developed this discipline based on his expertise in Sanskrit philology and language.²¹ Specifically, between 1861 and 1870, Max Müller formulated his science of religion upon his previous field of expertise, the science of language. His comparative study of religion was, in fact, based on comparative philology. The analytical connection between race/nationality, language/culture and religion, which has endured to the present, has been attributed to Max Müller. This despite the fact that, as Masuzawa argues, Max Müller was openly against establishing a relationship of biological or physiological causality between languages and races.

In other words, Max Müller opposed, unsuccessfully, the development of racialist philology.²² His opposition was directed at the anthropological prescriptions for “race” prevalent at the time, which suggested discrepant origins of different races, where “difference” was treated as a biological fact. Instead, Max Müller was in favour of a shared origin of humankind, supported through his comparative study of the family of languages.²³ Apart from this particular racial or national aspect of religion, Masuzawa notes that the imperial conquest and aspirations of Christianity, and also encounters with Buddhism, simultaneously shaped the transnational or supra-racial character (or aspirations) of religions.²⁴

Max Müller’s concept of “universalistic humanity”²⁵ and the historical entanglement between the Chinese race and Confucianism all made a decisive impact on Lim’s articulation of a Confucianist world order, as discussed later in this essay. Whereas the intellectual connection between Max Müller’s science of religion and Lim’s Confucianism remain unexamined, academic collaboration between Max Müller and Legge is a well-studied phenomenon.

Legge in Malacca and Early Years in Hong Kong

In the preface to his first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge made a comment on his posting in “the East” (i.e. Malacca), where he arrived “equipped with… a few months’ instruction in Chinese from the late Professor Kidd at the University of London”.²⁶ egge was to assume his duties as the principal of the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca. This position meant that he had an unhindered access to the college library. Dissatisfied with the then-existing state of translations of classical Chinese texts into European languages, Legge made an outline of his prospective study and translation of these texts before 1841, planning to publish his work in seven volumes. From the onset of his stay in Malacca and having the required books and dictionaries within his reach, Legge engaged in the study of a set of works he translated into English as “Confucian Analects”.²⁷ These translations were included in his first volume of The Chinese Classics, published in 1861 while he was in Hong Kong. There, Legge offered his definition of the “classical” Chinese texts:

The Books now recognised as of highest authority in China are comprehended under the denominations of “The five King”, and the “The four Shoo”. The term King is of textile origin, and signifies the warp threads of a web, and their adjustment. An easy application of it is to denote what is regular and insures regularity. As used with reference to books, it indicates their authority on the subjects of which they treat. “The five King” are the five canonical works, containing the truth upon the highest subjects from the sages of China, and which should be received as law by all generations. The term Shoo simply means Writings or Books.²⁸

By the early 1860s, Legge had already been engaged in the preaching to and teaching of the Chinese for 21 years. The substantial experience he gained convinced him that he would have remained unqualified for his missionary job unless he “had thoroughly mastered the Classical Books of the Chinese”.²⁹ In those books, Legge believed, the sages of China established “the foundations of the moral, the social, and the political life of the people”.³⁰ His translations of the Classics were intended foremost for the benefit of missionaries and students of Chinese language and literature, though Legge hoped that they could also be of use to the general public.³¹

At the age of 11, Song Hoot Kiam became one of the boarders of the Anglo- Chinese College in Malacca when Reverend James Legge was its principal.³² More than half a century later, Song was still able to recall his years in Malacca under Legge’s supervision in great detail.³³ Written in memory of the recently deceased Legge, Song’s recollections of the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca were intended for the “friends of the late Professor all over the globe who would be interested to hear anything relating to any, the shortest, part of his long and useful career”.³⁴

According to Song, Legge managed to gather around 45 Chinese boys as boarders in the college. This was quite an accomplishment, as most Straits Chinese at that time ascribed little value to an English education for their children, while some viewed missionaries with suspicion. Song recalled that most inhabitants of Malacca were engaged in fishing or growing rice, with little commerce going on in the town. He remembered Legge as a strict but righteous principal and teacher when in college, and a friendly playmate during the few daily excursions he organised for his students.³⁵

From Malacca, Legge relocated to Hong Kong to take charge of the Anglo- Chinese College there. When he left Malacca, he took two Chinese girls and a Chinese boy with him. In the meantime, Song’s father placed him and his elder brother in a private Chinese school in Singapore. Unwilling to give up on their English education, Song and a fellow student soon managed to “escape” from Singapore and take an adventurous trip to Hong Kong, where they continued their studies at the Anglo-Chinese College, with financial support provided by Legge himself.³⁶

In 1846, Legge, Song and two other Chinese students arrived in London after a six-month sea voyage. They were subsequently located in Scotland where they received further education as well as baptism in 1847.³⁷ The following year, the three Chinese students returned to Hong Kong and Singapore respectively. Song married and settled down soon after that, thus establishing “the oldest family of Straits Chinese Christians in Singapore”.³⁸ The two men kept in touch until Legge’s death.³⁹

Legge’s Missionary and Academic Careers

Legge continued working on the Chinese texts over the great number of years he spent as a missionary educator in Hong Kong.⁴⁰ Even though his work did not always progress at the desired pace, the third volume of his Chinese Classics appeared in 1865⁴¹. Legge’s The Chinese Classics were well-received in the contemporaneous academic circles. He retired from his missionary duties in 1873 and returned to England, where he was widely recognised as “one of the first and best translators of Chinese classics”.⁴² In 1876, he became a professor of Chinese language and literature at Oxford, where he taught and worked on translations until his death in 1897.

In 1875, Max Müller contacted Legge expressing his admiration for the latter’s translation of The Chinese Classics. In this period, Max Müller identified and approached potential academic collaborators for an ambitious project entitled The Sacred Books of the East, published in 50 volumes between 1879 and 1910.⁴³ Max Müller’s desire had been to study religions in a scholarly, “scientific” manner.⁴⁴ To achieve this, he relied on the method of mutual comparison of doctrinal texts or canons of various religious traditions in Asia.

In his preface to The Sacred Books of the East, Max Müller identified eight “great and original religions which profess to be founded on Sacred Books”.⁴⁵

Apart from the interest which the Sacred Books of all religions possess in the eyes of the theologian, and, more particularly, of the missionary, to whom an accurate knowledge of them is as indispensable as a knowledge of the enemy’s country is to a general, these works have of late assumed a new importance, as viewed in the character of ancient historical documents.⁴⁶

Max Müller’s list of “world religions”, as they are called at present, included what are known today as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.⁴⁷ The Sacred Books of the East were intended to provide translations of the books of all the mentioned religions, with the exception of the first two.⁴⁸

Legge’s contribution to The Sacred Books of the East project consisted of his translations of the “Sacred Books of China”, which comprised four volumes on Confucianism and two volumes on Taoism.⁴⁹ Although the English-language term “Confucianism” was not used in scholarly circles or outside of them during this period, Legge was the one who defined and promoted its academic usage. According to Sun’s research, the term “Confucianism” was first recorded in 1862, independent of Legge. However, it was Legge who first used it in a paper presented in his absence before a Protestant Missionary Conference held in Shanghai in 1877, where he compared Confucianism with Christianity.

The reaction of his fellow missionaries was to reject the proposed comparability between the two – Christianity was understood as the only true religion and was thus beyond comparison. Legge used his collaboration with Max Müller to further his views of Confucianism as a “world religion” and support his translations of it to related theological concepts in terms hitherto reserved for Protestant Christianity.⁵⁰

In his preface to The Sacred Books of the East, Legge noted that there were three religions in China – Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism – and viewed the former as “the religion of China par excellence”. Unlike Buddhism, both Confucianism and Taoism were native to China.⁵¹ This classification of certain spiritual, ritualistic and philosophical traditions into the three religions of China has had a lasting scholarly and popular influence on current perceptions of what counts as religion in the Chinese context. Importantly, Legge’s promotion of Confucianism as the defining concept of Chinese identity was undertaken not only by Western academics and missionaries, but also by the most prominent Singaporean Confucian reformist, Lim Boon Keng, which will be discussed shortly.

In 1880, Legge delivered a series of lectures at the Presbyterian College in London, which were subsequently published in the same year as The Religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism Described and Compared with Christianity. In these lectures, Legge defined Confucianism as “the ancient religion of China”, which comprised views of Confucius, “the great philosopher himself”, written directly by the sage or narrated in the writings by his disciples. He thought it erroneous not to regard Confucius as a religious teacher.⁵² At that time, the missionaries working in China rejected Legge’s attempt to view both Christianity and Confucianism as religions that could be compared. To the majority of Protestant missionaries working to convert the people of China, the proposal of comparison itself was unacceptable and “too liberal”.⁵³

Although he regarded Confucianism as a religion and compared it with Christianity, Legge thought this religion was inferior to Christianity due to the latter’s individually accessible worship of God. Confucianism, Legge explained, still allowed for the worship of spirits, unlike the only proper religion – i.e. Protestant – Christianity.⁵⁴ Legge thought that this aspect of Confucianism developed over time due to the monopolisation of the worship of God by the Emperor, which prevented ordinary people from worshipping God.⁵⁵ Legge had personally experienced this insight during his visit to the Temple of Heaven in Peking⁵⁶ where he stood barefoot and, together with his Christian friends, sang a doxology in praise of God:⁵⁷

I rejoice in the imperial worship of God, but I can never sufficiently regret that this shaped itself even in prehistoric time into a representative worship by the head of the state, instead of being extended throughout the nation, and joined in by the multitudes of the people.⁵⁸

Legge thought that the lack of individual access to one’s worship of God helped the spread of sin among the Chinese people, thus preventing their growth and development.⁵⁹ He saw Confucianism as an ethical regime exclusively focused on the regulation of social relations. Its goal was to prescribe conditions to sociability through defining five types of relational duties perceived to uphold all social structures. These entailed the relationship between sovereign and subject, father and son, husband and wife, brothers and friends.⁶⁰ According to Legge, lacking in this scheme was the relationship to God as the central defining element of humanity, conceptualised through “[o]ur Christian catechism”.⁶¹ This particular aspect of Legge’s theological assessment of Confucianism apparently had a lasting effect on Singaporean missionary circles.

In fact, Legge’s missionary work in and on China was celebrated in the Singapore press long after his death.⁶² Another obituary commemorating Legge’s missionary achievements, besides Song Hoot Kiam’s, was also published in the SCM.⁶³ It was written by Legge’s fellow missionary J.A.B. Cook, who had the opportunity to personally attend Legge’s Presbyterian College lecture series in 1880. Cook assured readers that Legge was a zealous missionary and that all his scholarly work was “to bring the stores of his learning to the service of Christ”.⁶⁴ He went on to support Legge’s understanding of Confucianism as a religion inferior to Christianity, in that it focused on ethical regulation of social relations and failed to prioritise – or even introduce – a relationship between God and believer.⁶⁵

Reverend W. Murray relied on Legge’s writings in his outline of reasons as to why he regarded Confucius as a failed religious teacher in comparison with Jesus Christ. Murray quoted Legge’s essay on “Christianity and Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching of the Whole Duty of Man”, which was included in a missionary-sponsored publication called The Religious Tract Society from London, and issued throughout the 1880s and later. There, Murray quoted Legge’s opinion of Confucius’ “untruthfulness” as the mark of a standard of morality lower than the impeccable morality of Christ’s.⁶⁶

A note to the article states that it was originally delivered in the format of a lecture given at the Young Men’s Christian Association of Singapore on 20 May 1905. Murray noted that within a short period of time, “a student of Confucianism” had published a profound critique of the lecture in The Singapore Free Press. Hence, Murray revised the original lecture and published it as the SCM article under current discussion, erasing those “portions of the material not relevant to the argument” but leaving its conclusion intact. In fact, the process of revising the article enabled Murray to overturn the main line of the “student’s” critique. To recall here, the latter insisted that Legge abandoned his early conviction in Confucius’ untruthfulness as the cause of the low state of morality in China. It was then that Murray turned to “Christianity and Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching of the Whole Duty of Man” in which Legge had expressed his doubts about Confucius’ truthfulness.⁶⁷

Lim Boon Keng: Confucianism, Christianity and World Religion

There is little doubt, in turn, that the “student of Confucianism” was Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957), who at the turn of the 20th century often wrote articles published in the press, including the SCM, using one of his many pseudonyms.⁶⁸ The nature of the comments and critiques in the mentioned newspaper article, published on 1 June 1905, are equally revealing of its author.⁶⁹ Here, Lim was inclined to differentiate between “Professor Legge’s” mature, more balanced ethical assessment of Confucius and “Missionary Legge’s” disparaging of Confucius as the founder of “Naturalistic Ethics”. Murray’s essay on Confucius, however, shows that Lim’s acknowledgement of the emancipatory effect of Legge’s scholarship on Confucianism was not yet, in practice, an accomplished fact at the turn of the 20th century.

Such unrelenting missionary zest in using the authority of Legge to belittle Confucian ethics and its conduciveness to a progressive social order were countered by Lim’s closer review of Legge’s scholarly interpretations of Confucianism. At the same time, Lim developed an interest in and acquired knowledge of Max Müller’s comparative study of religion.

As Sun’s study shows, Legge’s attempt to translate “Shang Ti” as “God” suggests an analytical, if not theological, equality between Confucianism and Christianity. Hence, it was strongly rejected in British missionary circles, particularly after the 1877 missionary conference in Shanghai.⁷⁰

The legitimacy of Legge’s claim that Confucianism was a religion, and thus comparable to Christianity, was acquired through his collaboration with Max Müller in the latter’s newly established “science of religion” discipline. It was within the realm of authority of this new scholarly discipline, placed at a distance from missionary and Sinologist circles, that it became possible to compare religions of the world, including Confucianism, with Christianity..⁷¹

As we saw earlier, Legge’s scholarly opinion was that Christianity was superior to Confucianism. Thus, Straits missionaries at the turn of the 20th century, such as Murray, relied on Legge’s scholarly authority to dissuade the Chinese from following the emerging modern Confucian religion. However, Lim deployed the authority of the comparative study of religion to rearrange the hierarchy between Christianity and Confucianism to the advantage of the latter.

In the British imperial context, reformed Christianity was seen as the only religion that would unite humanity of different religions under the Christian God..⁷² Lim adapted this liberal-theological view of Christianity as the pinnacle of progress and morality of humankind to argue for a global-scale unification of nations under reformed Confucianism. For him, the study of science, rather than Christianity, was the basis of European progress..⁷³ He elaborated this view in the 1905 newspaper article contesting Murray’s views on Confucianism, where he argued against global Christian progressive teleology..⁷⁴

Again, Lim noted that it was “science, rationalistic philosophy, and education” rather than Christianity, that enabled European progress and modernity. These principles, embodied in the concept of the “secular power”, as he called it, stopped the otherwise incessant wars between Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians that marked a long period of European history. “The religious ideal” written most probably by Lim under the pen name “Mayo” is equally secularist in spirit, arguing against the “narrow sectarianism of ‘religions’” and in favour of a moral code that would enable “each man” to live “at peace with his neighbour”.⁷⁵

In 1907, Lim called for a unification of nations by universal deployment of the Confucian principle of friendship. This, in his opinion, was the only ethical principle able to remove the impediment to achieving the goal of global unification of nations, which he identified as conflicts based on religious difference.would enable “each man” to live “at peace with his neighbour”.⁷⁶

Apart from being the most prominent Confucian reformer in the Straits of Malacca, Lim was a well-known Singapore medical doctor, Chinese intellectual and educationalist, businessman and moderniser, just as he was a proud subject of the British Empire and liberal constitutional democracy it came to represent.⁷⁷ Lim left many traces of his loyalty to the British governing modality. For Lim, as “the subjects of the Queen-Empress” who governed the Empire on “the constitutional principles”, the Straits Chinese were “free men” with “all the liberty and privileges” that such citizenship entailed.⁷⁸ In his obituary on Queen Victoria in 1901, Historicus (one of Lim’s pen-names) mourned the end of her rule, which turned the British Empire into a “pure”, i.e. constitutional, democracy.⁷⁹

In a 1905 “Editorial”, which discussed the way the colonial administration treated the empire’s different races, we learn that the SCM editors were in support of the liberal principle of the rule of law and legal equality for all subjects. Noting some biased treatment of Asian subjects of British colonies, the editors called for “the strict and impartial administration of justice” for all colonial subjects.⁸⁰ At the turn of the 20th century, Lim was apparently a staunch supporter of liberal democracy as the ideal governing format. Nonetheless, during the revolution in China, he would support the newly established republic and grow a beard as a sign of his support.⁸¹

In the period under consideration (c. 1890s–1910s), various Chinese associations were established across the Straits of Malacca. The aim of their gatherings was to discuss questions of social reforms, morality, religion, education and other issues related to the overall progress of the Chinese.⁸² Lim engaged in the Confucianism-related debates almost immediately upon his return to Singapore from Edinburgh, where he had earned his medical degree in 1892. In August 1893, he gave a lecture entitled “The Ideal Citizen” in the Chinese Christian Association.

In “The Ideal Citizen”, Lim argued that the two most salient characteristics of an ideal citizen were his religion and ethics. At this point, he left the rubric of religion unspecified by name but defined by its practice of love, social justice and charity. Lim was clear in his lecture, nonetheless, about the ideal citizen’s Confucian “code of morality or ethics”.⁸³ Shortly thereafter, Lim acted as one of the founders of the Chinese Philomathic Society established in March 1896. Lim’s inaugural lecture was on the “Teaching of Confucius”, but the society also held discussions on a wide range of health- and science-related topics.⁸⁴ As Song Ong Siang reported, members of the society met regularly to jointly study “English literature, Western music and the Chinese Language”.⁸⁵

Lim’s efforts to articulate a reformed version of Confucianism and establish it as a modern religion entailed a good knowledge of the reformed Christian doctrine and practice. Lim would have gained his initial knowledge of Christianity through the English-language education system he had been exposed to from his childhood. According to Khor Eng Hee’s study of Lim’s life, however, it was during Lim’s years as a student in Britain that he became “inclined” towards Christianity.⁸⁶ In 1896, Lim married an English- and Chinese-educated Christian woman, Huang Tuan Chiung.⁸⁷ Hence, Lim’s close connection with Christianity continued even as he started working on reforming Confucianism and turning it into a modernising social movement among the Chinese in and across the Straits. As noted earlier, his fellow co-founder of the SCM, Song Ong Siang, was a devout Christian.

The relationship between Lim and Christianity entailed his contestation of the moral, doctrinal and, later, historical – in other words, secular – evidence of its superiority. For instance, in July 1896, Lim publicly reacted against missionary work in proselytising Christianity among Chinese school children.⁸⁸ In 1899 he published a series of newspaper opinion articles, writing under two of his pen names Amicus and Historicus.

In “The Advancement of the Straits Chinese”, Amicus was full of praise for the SCM as a means of spreading knowledge about Confucius and his doctrines, as well as Western knowledge of science and history of religion, among the Straits-born Chinese.⁸⁹ Historicus responded by claiming that if Christianity would lose its mythology (i.e. Biblical stories), it would be able to equate its doctrine with the Confucianist Golden Rule.⁹⁰ He also went on to claim that a reformed Confucianism would prove to be the remedy for China’s progress. A few days later, Amicus highlighted the similarity between the movements to reform Buddhism in Ceylon, Shintoism in Japan, as well as Hinduism in the Brahmo Samaj movement in India, and the Confucian reformist movement in the Straits.

All these movements attempted to “neutralize the effects of Christianity by adopting its methods” but failed to accomplish this task, Amicus argued.⁹¹ For him, Christianity was still beyond any competition in offering a superior morality fit for all nations. Historicus replied by reminding the reader of “Dr. Legge’s” favourable academic views of Confucius as a religious teacher, developed before the 1877 Shanghai missionary conference, but considered too liberal and bold by his fellow missionaries to be accepted at the time.

The main argument Historicus developed in this text was that Confucianism was not only compatible, but also doctrinally superior to Christianity in providing guidelines for a new, Asia-inclusive or “global” historical order.⁹² He did so by relying on Legge’s academic authority and his introduction of Confucianism into the family of world religions.

In contrast, the Straits missionaries saw Christianity as the only mode of sociability conducive to a just management of religious difference in the multi-racial British colony.⁹³ They also saw Christianity as a means to, in contemporary terms, achieving peaceful and mutually prosperous relations with other sovereign states of the period.⁹⁴ Thus, Cook warned the reader to “[b]ehold the ever-growing moral triumphs of Christ in the councils of the nations [characterised by] the earnest repression of the warlike spirit [and] the amelioration of the depressed races and classes”.⁹⁵ Apparently, missionaries claimed that an egalitarian and inclusive society conducive to a peaceful world order was attainable only through the embracement of Christianity.

In order to make his critique stronger and more convincing for his Confucianist cause, Lim needed to know the missionary claims to Christianity’s moral and political superiority in the modern world. Therefore, the Confucian-Christian debates were learning instances for Lim. A vigorous debate was a means to gaining public attention and winning over Chinese readers to join the reform movement and modernise through adopting Confucianism. Hence, the SCM abounded in articles written by missionaries in which Confucianism appeared morally inferior to Christianity.⁹⁶ In fact, to keep the debate going, Lim himself wrote articles in which he rejected or supported Biblical teachings and Christian practice.⁹⁷

As we saw earlier, Confucianist counter-arguments, most often authored by Lim, were published in the SCM. Lim’s opinion on the socio-political superiority of Confucian ethics also appeared in the Singaporean press during this period. Consistent with the ideas that he developed in his lectures and SCM articles, Lim argued in his newspaper articles that Confucianism was the “moral code of a democracy”, which proposed filial piety as the basis of good government. In Lim’s opinion, it was through the self-cultivation of a sufficient number of “ideal citizens”, based on the practice of filial piety and Confucianist regulation of other societal ties, that a good state could be informed. Ultimately, all such states would join the “federation of the world” marked by “all-embracing benevolence” and mutual cooperation of all nations. Only when Confucian ideals were embraced by all countries would the “dream of Confucius that a Great Peace will unite the nations” be fulfilled.⁹⁸

To Lim, Confucian ideals were open to all nations in the world, not only the Chinese. In making this claim, Lim adopted the scientific, comparative or “evolutionary” view of a shared kinship for all world religions and associated nations (or races, as these two categories were interchangeable at the time) in Masuzawa’s sense. Lim was quite persistent in this argument, which he developed at the onset of his reformist career. For instance, he claimed, as early as 1897, that Confucianism was both “the best religion for the Chinese” and “the religion of humanity” – once all superstitions had been removed from its practice.⁹⁹

In his 1898 reflections on “The Renovation of China”, Lim identified three reasons that enabled the progress of Europe.¹⁰⁰ These were the emergence of science (i.e. the study of nature and inductive philosophy), cultural regeneration and religious reformation.¹⁰¹ He thought that the reform of China could not be undertaken from within the country.¹⁰² A year later, Lim suggested where to look for the agents of a reformed China. He wrote that “the Chinese system of thought and social polity must be changed or adapted to the newer needs of international intercourse”. What this meant was a Confucianism that could only be successfully reformed for its application in China by the “free” subjects of the constitutional, liberal-democratic British Empire – i.e. the Straits Chinese – so as to facilitate a new world order.¹⁰³

The evangelical missionary view of the world, or a global order as a historical effect of Christian teleology, prompted Lim to devise his vision of a Confucian global order. He did so under the methodological auspices of the comparative science of religion. Confucianism was not, however, restricted to the Chinese nation alone and, as a model of governance, could enable not only China, but all other countries (or “nation-states” in contemporary parlance) which embraced it, to join a peaceful and prosperous world family of nations. Lim saw his goal of global Confucianist world order achievable through education, which, in the spirit of his time, was deemed the most efficient method of social engineering. Thus, in his later academic career (1921–1937) at the University of Amoy in China, Lim insisted on the inclusion of the comparative study of religion in the curriculum intended to educate “national leaders” as “ideal Confucian gentlemen”.¹⁰⁴

The Science of Religion in the Straits

In the Straits of Malacca, as elsewhere in the British empire, Legge’s translations of the Chinese classical texts enabled a persistent diagnosis of Confucianism as inferior to Christianity. In the translations, Legge identified doctrinal and ritualistic issues that he thought were the defining concepts of Confucianism. In order to change the negative views of Confucianism, Lim engaged in an elaboration and/or contestation of Legge’s definitions and approached the task as a matter of interpretive and comparative accuracy. In other words, Lim acted as a scientist of (Chinese) religion, adopting the methodology developed in the field of comparative study of religion. It relied on the identification of those theological concepts that maintained the Protestant Christian theology as a norm for all other religions.

Lim’s science of religion adapted the then-dominant standard for what counted as a reformed religion to place Confucianism at the pinnacle of world religions. In particular, Lim developed his standard from the Protestant ideology of rational religion, but turned it against the doctrine of Christian piety as its core principle. As we saw earlier, it was precisely through the perceived lack of individual piety structured through the worship of God that Legge saw Confucianism as inferior to Christianity.

Lim, in turn, prioritised rationalism as the main religious standard and used it to further question the necessity of belief in an anthropomorphic God. For instance, he compared Confucianism, imagined as a philosophy, to the work of the Stoics and other Hellenic thinkers. This, as well as his comparison of Confucianism to other world religions, attributed “purity” from any form of superstition, where Lim included belief in a “man-like” God or gods, to Confucianism alone.¹⁰⁵

Masuzawa notes that the 19th-century discussions of the Hellenic prehistory of Christianity, located in the world of late antiquity, enabled some scholars to claim its Aryan, rather than Semitic, origin. Such views were fairly popular among the intellectuals of the period, despite Max Mü ller’s rejection of such theories as unsound.¹⁰⁶ This may suggest that Lim’s list of readings went beyond the science of religion in his attempt to draw a genealogy of Christianity from religions of ancient China, through similarities with ancient Greek beliefs and philosophical teachings.¹⁰⁷

Many of Lim’s texts on Confucianism were published in the SCM, in line with this publication’s foundational, comparativist motive of being a journal of Oriental and Occidental culture. This goes to show that the SCM was a product of the time, which saw the rise of Max Mü ller’s and Legge’s scientific study of religions through mutual comparison of their textual traditions. In 1900, regular SCM columns listing the works on China in the Raffles Library¹⁰⁸ also included the works of Max Mü ller on the religions of China, identified as Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity.¹⁰⁹

A few months after Max Mü ller’s death in 1900, the SCM published a lengthy obituary commemorating the life and brilliant academic career of this “champion of the cause of the misunderstood Asiatics” and “the young science of Comparative Philology”.¹¹⁰ Kong Tian Cheng, who authored this as well as the previously quoted article, gave a comprehensive overview of Max Mü ller’s scholarly projects and achievements. Kong commented on Max Mü ller’s lectures on the new discipline of science of religion, and duly mentioned the collaboration between Max Mü ller and Legge.¹¹¹

During the next few years, Lim published a series of texts in which he contested Legge’s interpretation of the inferior position of Confucianism in relation to Christianity in the hierarchy of world religions. Lim’s critique of the great missionary-Sinologue reveals that he was closely familiar with the scholar’s 1880 work on Confucianism (and Taoism), The Religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism Described and Compared with Christianity. Lim agreed with some of Legge’s definitions of Confucian religious concepts, but expressed his critique of their assessment as inferior to Christianity. This point is best illustrated in Lim’s discussion of the Confucian concept and worship of God in relation to Legge’s treatment of these subjects. In The Religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism Described and Compared with Christianity, Legge proposed the following definition of the Confucian concept of God:

Heaven is styled Shang Tî, and as frequently Tî alone without the Shang. […] Since its earliest formation, Tî has properly been the personal name of Heaven. T‘ien has had much of the force of the name Jahve, as explained by God Himself to Moses; Tî has presented that absolute deity in the relation to men of their lord and governor. Tî was to the Chinese fathers, I believe, exactly what God was to our fathers, whenever they took the great name on their lip.¹¹²

In his 1904 article on Confucian cosmogony and theism quoted earlier, Lim directly responded to Legge’s definition of a Chinese God through comparison with the God of the Israelites. Although Lim admitted some similarity between Jehovah and Shang-ti, he disagreed that missionaries used this perceived similarity to attract the Chinese to Christianity.

Confucian theism grew out of the old belief in Shang-ti; just as the Christian God is an evolution of the Jehovah of the Jews. It seems clear from the Shu and the Shih that Shang-ti was the tribal God of the ancient Chinese just as Jehovah was the Lord of the Israelites.

[…] There does not seem to be any vital difference except that the two tribes, Chinese and Jews, are quite distinct. Missionaries, however, forgetting the possibility of independent tribal religions, claim that Shang-ti and Jehovah are synonymous.¹¹³

Lim’s argument against the fulfilment of Confucianism through the conversion of the Chinese to Christianity relies on the academic authority of the results of Max Mü ller’s science of religion. As Masuzawa shows, Max Mü ller’s concept of three language and religion families – i.e. Aryan, Semitic and Turanian (which included the Chinese) – makes it difficult “to make the case that Christianity was the culmination and the fulfilment of all other religions, as many contemporary theologians did, or that Christianity was the embodiment of what was inherently universal”.¹¹⁴ That Lim was familiar with the potentially emancipatory effect of Max Mü ller’s epistemology is illustrated in Lim’s claim to “tribal independence” of Confucianism as the religion of the Chinese.

More evidence of Lim’s deployment of the science of religion is his effort to develop a concept of universalistic Confucian humanism, or “brotherhood”, in the process of articulating Confucianism as a world religion and global ethical order. Thus, Lim also commented on Legge’s visit to the Temple of Heaven in Peking:

Dr. Legge was moved by the contemplation of Chinese history and religion at the Temple of Heaven at Peking. There under the awful canopy of the heavens, the learned Christian, moved by a touch of human sympathy, saw that after all mankind was, as the Confucianists say, but one vast brotherhood. Dr. Legge repeated the doxology to – it must have seemed to him – the unknown God. Yet he had persuaded himself that he was addressing the Heaven, the philosophic ideal of Confucianism, Shang-ti, the God of the semi-civilized Chinese, or Jehovah, the God of the nomadic Jews.¹¹⁵

Lim’s view that Heaven is an abstract Confucianist concept introduced to unite people was developed in an article published several years earlier.¹¹⁶ There, Lim already compared Shang-ti with the God of the Israelites and argued that Confucianism alone, among the great world religions, was based on “pure monotheism”, devoid of any mythologies and superstitions. He also explained that there in the worship of Heaven, “the people will be united” while “their thoughts will be lifted up and their hearts rectified”.¹¹⁷ Apparently, Lim’s interest in the science of religion can be traced back to the 1890s, but could have been triggered earlier, during his studies in Edinburgh.

In contrast to Legge, who argued against the exclusive right of an emperor to worship God, Lim was in favour of this practice. Lim’s opinion of a Christian interpretation of the worship of God as Legge had performed at the Temple of Heaven was, in turn, unfavourable.

As for worshipping Heaven as the grand ideal of humanity, we [the Confucianists] reserve it for an Emperor. The worship of God of Heaven at Peking is not a sacrifice in the Christian sense but a religious rite.¹¹⁸

In his 1899 article on religion, Lim already argued against the worship of Heaven as an act of sacrifice, explaining that it was “a service of thanksgiving for the Divine mercy and goodness”.¹¹⁹

In his article “The Confucian Ideal”, Lim offered his view of the superior place of Confucianism among other world religions.¹²⁰ Whereas Legge saw Confucianism as an impediment to the progress of the Chinese, Lim discussed Confucianism in a global, transnational context. Thus, Lim thought it was a religion compatible with modern science and world progress:

In conclusion, it may be remarked that, after all, the ideal of Confucianism is not very far from that of the great religions of the world. On the contrary, it is one that is acceptable to every educated man in Europe and throughout the world. The discoveries of modern science destroy none of its doctrines, and the progress of the world should in time hasten its extensive propagation; for it is certainly the most ancient as well as the most successful religion of humanity.¹²¹

Clearly, then, within the first few years of the last century, Lim’s conceptualisation of Confucianism as a world religion capable of facilitating a new world order in Masuzawa’s sense, of peace and prosperity for all the nations united under the Heaven, was complete. In Lim’s writings, the inauguration of Confucianism into a world religion meant that Confucianism had a competitive and complementary, rather than radically alternative, prospect in a progressive world order, in which a reformed China would play a central role. In other words, Confucianism would not overturn the achievements of Western civilisation, but would enhance them since, unlike Christianity, it was a purely rational, “science-like” religion.

Conclusion

A Confucian Democracy?

Lim’s transfer of morality and piety outside of the realm of godliness and worship was empowered by his knowledge of the science of religion. That religions could be compared meant, apparently, that they could compete for their place in the world hierarchy of religions and the nations which, in Masuzawa’s sense, they defined. As we have seen, Lim occasionally used Legge’s scholarly authority to argue in favour of the comparability between Christianity and Confucianism. But he also contested Legge’s authority when it came to the latter’s interpretation of the key theological concepts of Confucianism. Ultimately, Lim used Legge’s academic treatment of Confucianism as a religion to reorganise, rather than reject, the hierarchy among the world religions and the nations they defined.

Academic approach to the study of religions relied on the method of comparison of religions as objects of study. However, both Max Mü ller and Legge gave a good head-start to Christianity by placing it beyond comparison or establishing its moral and analytical superiority by signifying it as a subject of study, rather than an object.¹²² Missionaries, in addition, insisted on the argument of Christianity’s moral superiority in organising not only a just inter-racial (hence inter-religious) order in the empire, but offering an ethical basis for the development of a just world order.

Lim contested such views and instead argued for a perfect compatibility between Confucianism and democracy. In the closing years of the 19th century and the initial years of the 20th century, Lim clearly identified “democracy” with the British constitutional monarchy of a liberal kind, which entailed a normative – if not factual – racial equality. Again, he elaborated these arguments within the methodological field of science of religion. In retrospect, it seems that Lim’s Christian-Confucian debates served to prove that Confucianism was not a radical social or political force incompatible with ideals of liberalism and democracy.

On the contrary: according to Lim, Confucianism was a historical condition of democracy. For Lim, a reformed Confucianism could modernise the Chinese in China and in their many settlements outside of it, indicating this religion’s simultaneous national and transnational dimensions. This was another one of Lim’s adaptations of Legge’s views of Confucianism as a core element of Chinese race/nation, primarily imagined as a target missionary population of China.

Lim’s articulations of Confucianism as a world religion and the foundation of the new world order is a good illustration of the formation of the secular in Asad’s sense. The secular in the Straits of Malacca, as elsewhere in the colonial world, was historicised in an imperial encounter between the Christian missionary and Confucian reformist movements through mediation of the “neutral/secular”, scientific category of “(world) religion”.

Once it entered the global arena, Confucianism won its place in the history of humankind and was inaugurated into the realm of the secular. By becoming a world religion, thus becoming a legitimate constituent of the “world”, which is a secular, mundane concept, Lim believed that Confucianism stood a historical chance to form an ethical basis of religiously tolerant governance. Thus, Lim saw Confucianism as the ultimate ethical force in facilitating peaceful inter-religious relations, both on a nation-state and transnational level.

On hindsight, Lim’s promotion of Confucianism as a means to overturn the hegemonic imperialist order that privileged the West was strikingly farsighted. Remarkably reminiscent of the missionary imperialist contestations of the place of Confucianism among world religions and order, today’s Western contestations of China’s legitimacy as a world leader are organised around the tropes of the country’s allegedly Confucianist authoritarianism. In other words, depicted as insufficiently democratic, China’s governing order as an alternative to liberal democracy is frequently contested at the level of its foundational Confucian ethics.¹²³

This line of critique of China and Confucianism, however, is based on a prescriptive reading of history, which precludes an understanding of the intertwined histories of (post)colonialism and democracy. As we saw earlier, at the turn of the 20th century, it was not impossible to claim that colonialism and democracy were compatible political projects. It was through Legge’s engagement with the science of religion, within its 19th century imperial context, that the Chinese identity was anchored in a newly codified Confucian textual tradition. However, it was through the work of reformists and modernisers from the Straits – foremost of whom was Lim Boon Keng – that Confucianism was turned not only into a national, Chinese and modernising movement, but translated into a transnational political and historical force.

This essay attempted to shed new light on the contribution of Straits Confucian reformist, Lim Boon Keng, to the historical development of Confucianism conceptualised both as a world religion and world order. By treating Lim’s proximity to Christianity and Confucianism, as well as his loyalty to the empires of Britain and China, in the singularity of their intertwined historical trajectories, it is possible to see the formation of Lim’s simultaneously religious and secular vision of Confucianism as well ahead of his time.

About the Author
Originally from Serbia, Ivana Prazic obtained her Master of Arts in Art History from Bangalore University (India) and recently completed her PhD thesis in the Asian Studies Program, University of Sydney (Australia). Her thesis, Cheng Ho-Related Piety in Post-New Order Indonesia: Theologies of Emancipation, focused on Indonesia’s democratic modality, the role of religion in Indonesia’s political philosophy and contemporary cultural politics of Chinese-Indonesians.