Issachar Jacox Roberts

Issachar Jacox Roberts (1802–1871) was a Protestant missionary of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Roberts was born in 1802 in Sumner County, Tennessee, in the United States, and was ordained after studying at Furman Academy in South Carolina. In 1837 he came to China at his own expense, first preaching to leprosy patients in Macau. In 1841 he joined the American Baptist mission board, and in 1842 he became the first Protestant missionary to reside long-term in Hong Kong. In June of that year he baptized the first Chinese believer. In 1844 (the 24th year of Daoguang) he went to Guangzhou (Canton), where he was the first Protestant missionary to live outside the foreign factories district. In 1845, when the American Baptists split, he belonged to the Southern Baptist mission board. Later, in 1855, he was dismissed by the Southern Baptist Convention for certain reasons.

Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全), the founder of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, came to Roberts's chapel in Guangzhou in the spring of 1847 (the 2nd month of the 27th year of Daoguang) and studied the Bible there. He asked to be baptized, but Roberts did not agree with Hong's understanding of the “visions” he had seen during a serious illness some years before, or with his other misunderstandings, and refused to baptize him. After studying for about two or three months, Hong left (in July 1847 he left Guangzhou for Guangxi to look for Feng Yunshan).

Before Hong Xiuquan founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Roberts had a rather poor opinion of him. But in 1853 (the 3rd year of Xianfeng), after the Taiping army had taken Nanjing, a special envoy brought Roberts a letter in Hong's own hand. When Roberts learned that the Hong Xiuquan he had known had become the leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, his attitude changed at once. He worked hard to win Western acceptance of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, so that Christianity could spread within Taiping territory, and he even described Hong Xiuquan as “more handsome than I imagined, with a very pleasant voice.”

He tried many times to enter Taiping territory to preach but did not succeed until 1860 (the 10th year of Xianfeng), when the Taiping army took Suzhou and approached Shanghai, and it became easier than before for foreigners to enter areas under Taiping rule. Roberts travelled from the south by way of Shanghai to Suzhou, and in October reached Tianjing (天京, the Taiping capital, Nanjing), where he stayed in the residence of Hong Rengan (洪仁玕), the Gan Wang (干王) and chief of staff of the Taiping army.

Hong Xiuquan received him, appointed him head of the interpreters and gave him the title Jietian Yi (接天义). Contrary to the etiquette already established between the Qing court and the West, Roberts knelt and kowtowed to Hong Xiuquan, though he said afterwards that he had simply heard gongs and drums sounding loudly, did not know for a moment how to respond, and so knelt down. At first relations between the two were reasonably good, and on 13 March 1861 Roberts was given authority over the Heavenly Kingdom's foreign relations (as “Minister of Foreign Affairs,” 外事丞相), to manage affairs between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and foreigners.

However, the chief aim of Roberts's journey to Nanjing was to correct Hong Xiuquan's idea of Christ, whereas the God-worshipping religion that Hong had created by borrowing from Christianity was fundamentally different from Western Christianity. Roberts found that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom he had long championed was in fact only Hong Xiuquan's theocratic dictatorship carried on in the name of God. In January 1862 (the 12th month of the 11th year of Xianfeng) he left Tianjing in anger and sought refuge on a British gunboat anchored in the Yangtze.

After leaving, Roberts changed his attitude for the third time and promptly wrote in the North China Herald that Hong Xiuquan was “a madman, wholly unfit to rule, and his government has no organization at all.” But foreigners at the time had little sympathy for Roberts. The North China Herald, reporting his departure from Nanjing, mockingly called him “His Grace the Archbishop of Pudong” and “a sham Diogenes,” and even joked that he was about to become the Plato of missionaries. Roberts was also personally unpopular: his American wife and two children insisted on staying in the United States, and the marriage was one in name only; of his Chinese assistants, one died and the other could not bear him and left; and when his house in Guangzhou was destroyed he went to law for years demanding compensation from the Qing government, until the officials, worn out by the trouble, decided to pay him 2500 US dollars, which became a talking point of the day.

After leaving Tianjing in January 1862, Roberts returned to the Guangzhou area to continue preaching and practising medicine. In 1866 (the 5th year of Tongzhi) he went back to the United States and settled in Upper Alton, Illinois. On 28 December 1871 he died at his niece's home of complications of the leprosy he had contracted years before in Macau.

Writings

• Zhenli zhi Jiao (真理之教) [The Doctrine of Truth], 1840, Macau
• Wenda Suhua (问答俗话) [Questions and Answers in Colloquial Speech], 1840, Macau
• Jiushizhu Yesu Xin Yizhao Shu (救世主耶稣新遗诏书) [The New Testament of Jesus the Saviour], 1840, Macau
• Lujia Fuyin Zhuan Zhushi (路加福音传注释) [Commentary on the Gospel of Luke], 1860, Guangzhou
• Jiayong Liangyao (家用良药) [Good Medicines for Household Use], Guangzhou
• Yesu Shengjing (耶稣圣经) [The Bible of Jesus]