Gilbert Reid

Early Life and Coming to China

Gilbert Reid was born in 1857 in New York State, USA, and graduated from Hamilton College and Union Theological Seminary in New York. In 1882 he was sent to China by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern Presbyterian) and first served in Yantai and Jinan, Shandong, working deep in the Shandong interior for many years. He was familiar with the Confucian classics and with official etiquette, and had direct dealings with senior Qing officials such as Li Hongzhang (李鸿章), Zhang Zhidong (张之洞) and Weng Tonghe (翁同龢).

Petitions for Reform

After China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, he submitted proposals to Li Hongzhang and Weng Tonghe urging that religion, education and social reform advance together on three tracks to help China reform. In 1897 he founded the International Institute of China (尚贤堂) in Beijing, a forum for interreligious dialogue and social discussion open to Chinese gentry and foreign residents, which he himself directed. The Institute regularly held lectures and ran a reading room, medical work and famine relief. After it moved to Shanghai in 1903 it grew further, with separate departments for religion, politics, education and charity, and it is regarded as a representative case of the "upper-class approach" to mission.

Religious Dialogue

He held that Christianity should enter into dialogue with China's Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism rather than simply rejecting them. This position caused controversy among evangelical missions, and he debated with fellow missionaries who held different views. During the Boxer Uprising of 1900 he was trapped in the besieged Legation Quarter in Beijing and was wounded during the siege; afterwards he led the re-establishment of the Institute in Shanghai. During the First World War, from a pacifist standpoint, he opposed the entry of China and of the United States into the war, and Allied opinion branded him pro-German. At the end of 1917, after proceedings in the American consular court, the Chinese government under diplomatic pressure deported him, and he did not return to China until 1921.

Later Years at the Institute

In his later years he continued working for cultural communication between China and the West in Shanghai and edited the International Institute Monthly (尚贤堂月刊). He died of illness in Shanghai on September 30, 1927, and was buried in the Hongqiao Cemetery in Shanghai. He is an important case for the study of Christian social engagement and of the history of Sino-Western cultural dialogue in modern China, and his "upper-class approach" stands in contrast to contemporaries such as William Scott Ament (梅子明) and W. A. P. Martin (丁韪良).