Frank Joseph Rawlinson (9 January 1871 – 14 August 1937) born in Langham, Rutland, England, was an American Protestant missionary to China from 1902 to 1937 known for his theologically liberal views, openness to Chinese culture, and support for Chinese nationalism. From 1912 to 1937 he was editor of The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, published in Shanghai, the leading English-language journal of the Protestant missionary community.
Early life and the "Call to China" Frank and his younger brother came to the United States in 1889 as steerage passengers and settled in Baltimore. Frank joined a Southern Baptist church, where he met Carrie Mae Dietz. He graduated summa cum laude from Bucknell University, in Pennsylvania in 1899, and quickly married Carrie Mae. In 1903 he graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary, was ordained, and became an American citizen. In 1894, when the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) organized campaigns, he had stood up at a meeting organized by a missionary from China and said "Here I am Lord! Send me!" In 1900 when John R. Mott of the SVM spoke, he heard "The Call" again, and successfully applied to be appointed as a missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention. He, his wife, and his son arrived in Shanghai on October 16, 1902 and began work with the Central China Mission. In June 1911, Rawlinson was appointed Assistant Editor on the editorial board of The Chinese Recorder, and in 1914, joined the executive committee of the China Continuation Committee, which was formed to carry out in China the work of the 1910 World Missionary Conference. In 1913 he became editor-in-chief of the Recorder, a post which he retained until his death.
In 1916, the family returned to American on the Japanese steamer Shinyo Maru for furlough. Shortly after Christmas, Carrie Mae slipped on the ice, fractured her hip, and on January 7, 1917, died from a blood infection. Frank's grief was compounded when the family Baptist church refused to allow a non-Baptist friend deliver the eulogy. On the steamer from Shanghai, the family had struck up a friendship with Florence Lang, who was herself returning from Bombay, where she worked as General Secretary of the YWCA. Florence and Frank renewed their friendship, and Frank soon wrote her that he thanked God for his "resurrection." Although the Southern Baptist Board had reservations as to whether she was capable of representing Baptist values in China, they were married July 29, 1917. Their son, John Lang Rawlinson, was born in 1920.
During the furlough year, Frank earned an M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University, where he took courses on schools and religious education. Bucknell awarded him an honorary D.D. Upon his return to China in 1918, he resumed a busy schedule. He lectured at the Nanking University School for Missionaries, and after 1921 was a lecturer at the North China Union Language School in Beijing. Lecturing to new missionaries on how to adapt to Chinese culture led Rawlinson to read the Chinese classics. In addition to Confucius and Mozi he read modern Chinese scholars such as Liang Qichao and Hu Shih. Physically and spiritually happy in his new marriage, he began to develop a more favorable understanding of Chinese religions, especially Buddhism. Although he was often away from home, Frank and Florence conducted extensive discussions on family, their relationship, and theology by letters. In one letter he compared her to "the smile of God," but explained that he found his faith moving away from its evangelical foundations. He described his Call as "a vision of human need that has never left me..., (but) it is true that I have changed my ideas on how to meet it."
Social Gospel, nationalism, and revolution
After World War I, the New Culture Movement advocated a scientific approach to politics and religion, and began to oppose foreign influence in China. At the same time, an influential group of Protestant missionaries in China worked to build what the historian Daniel Bays calls a "Sino-foreign Protestant Establishment" which saw Chinese nationalism and Chinese Christianity as working together to build a modern and independent nation. Rawlinson was a leader in this group.