Chinese fortunes as the War Cry pushes political boundaries
- deansimpson7
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
BY BARRY GITTINS
The Salvation Army is an apolitical, nonpartisan group that once referred to its members as ‘comrades’ engaged in a movement.
Whether you prefer to see ‘the Salvos’ as a church or a denomination, or a para-church body, an NGO (non-government organisation) or a FBO (faith-based organisation), a social welfare campaigner, a not-for-profit corporation competing for government contracts, a tireless advocate for the underprivileged, or all of the above, the general principle remains that The Salvation Army does not mess with party politics or push any political candidate or side.
That doesn’t stop some strange bedfellows from appearing in Australian Salvation Army publications from time to time.
In the 31 May 1975 edition of its national newspaper, the War Cry, The Salvation Army carried the self-written life story and testimony of ‘Madame Chiang Kai-shek’.
She was the second wife of her hubby, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek; the rebel, general and politician who led the Republic of China (ROC) until his death in April 1975. (The revolutionary had headed up the Allied forces in China as ‘supreme commander of the Chinese theatre’ during WW2 and had ruled China on the mainland, and then led the ROC in exile on Taiwan when the Communists booted him out in 1949.)
Choosing to publish copy from the former leader’s missus, a month after the generalissimo’s death, was both a controversial and a political decision, if perhaps unintentional or naïve on The Salvation Army’s part. (Like other Christian groups, the Salvos had also been kicked out by the Communists and lamented their forced departure.)
Being seen as maintaining the enmity towards communist China was an odd stance for a non-political group like the Salvos, considering the geo-political shift ‘Down Under’.
In 1971, four years before the article’s publication, the then opposition leader Gough Whitlam toured ‘the People’s Republic of China’ and the next year, as Prime Minister, Whitlam duly ‘recognised’ China diplomatically (US president Richard Nixon had done the same earlier that year).
Whitlam made another visit there in 1973, the first time an Australian PM had made the journey into what had formerly been enemy territory in the Cold War.
After Whitlam was sacked in November 1975, six months after that War Cry article, in November 1975, his successor as prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, continued to mend Australia’s fences with China.
So, what was Madame Chiang Kai-Shek writing about? Ostensibly setting the scene as the daughter of Christian missionaries who’d been forced as a child “to listen to very long sermons”, the writer shared her conversion to Christianity while describing her husband’s struggles “against the intimidation of Japanese aggression, [an] internal revolt in China and … hunger [caused by] the Yellow River floods”.
For many years, she wrote, “Mr Chiang and I worked closely together to build a united, modern China.” While the Madam was revered in US evangelical circles, many international media outlets and historians described her as a pitiless politician. The Los Angeles Times obituary described her as “Madame Dictator … ruthless, corrupt and unmoved by the miseries of the Chinese people.”
Being an apolitical organisation does not stop groups from swimming in murky waters, and the expression of faith – in and of itself, a thing of joy – does not mean the living of that expressed faith.
It brings to mind the words of Jesus himself, who had hoped that his followers would be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
