Robert Morrison

Life

Morrison was born in Britain on January 5, 1782. He is said to have initially hoped to serve as a missionary in Africa before turning his attention to China in 1804. He began studying Chinese in England before leaving for the mission field.

In 1807 he was sent out by the London Missionary Society. He traveled from London to New York and then sailed on an American merchant ship by way of Macau, arriving in Guangzhou (Canton), China, in September of that year. At the time, the Qing dynasty forbade its subjects to associate with foreigners and treated teaching Chinese to foreigners as a grave crime punishable by death. To secure his right of residence and to support himself, Morrison took a position as a translator with the British East India Company while continuing his missionary work.

After some twenty-five years of work in China beginning in 1807, he died on August 1, 1834. He is buried in Macau, which is also home to the Morrison Chapel.

Ministry and Achievements

• Bible translation: In 1813 he translated the New Testament into Classical Chinese, and he went on to translate the Old Testament as well. The work required coining biblical terms for which no equivalent yet existed in the languages of the Chinese-character cultural sphere.
• Dictionary compilation and literature ministry: The principal tasks assigned to him by the London Missionary Society were Bible translation and the compilation of a Chinese–English dictionary. He published a dictionary and also printed large numbers of evangelistic tracts for distribution among the Chinese.
• Collaboration and training: He worked alongside missionaries who came after him, such as William Milne and Karl Gützlaff. He also sought out and trained promising Chinese believers, raising them up as evangelists.
• He reportedly labored for about seven years before gaining his first convert. He is also reported to have been a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Influence on the Korean Church

Morrison never worked in Korea himself. Nevertheless, the Classical Chinese Bible translation he initiated has an indirect connection to the Korean church. Because early Korean Bible translations are said to have been based on the Classical Chinese Bible, Korean Christian media sometimes present Morrison as a distant forerunner of the Korean Bible. Some Korean sources state that the Bible first reached Korea in 1816 through the British party led by Basil Hall and that this was connected to Morrison. However, this route has not been definitively established.

The year 2007 marked both the centennial of the Pyongyang Great Revival and the bicentennial of Protestant missions in China, dated from Morrison's arrival.

Assessment

As the first Protestant missionary to China, Morrison is credited with laying the foundation for subsequent missions in China through Bible translation, dictionary compilation, the distribution of Christian literature, and the training of local leaders.

Some take a more critical view. Because he was directly involved in trade as a translator for the East India Company, critics argue, he found himself caught in the middle of the mutual distrust and conflict between Britain and China. A 2020 article in the Korean journal Gaehyeok Nonchong addressed this issue and also discussed the challenges Morrison's ministry poses for missions in China today. The broader question of the relationship between missions, commerce, and state power is also treated in the article Colonialism and Missions.