The Field and the Cave

A Brief History of the First Group of American Jesuits Missioned to China

an e-monograph by Glen Butterworth, SJ

Almost seventy American Jesuits served in the China missions from 1928 until 1957. This brief history introduces the first group of five who were missioned to China by the Superior General of the Society of Jesus in 1928. Three of those five men called California home while the other two hailed from the northern cities of Portland, Oregon, and Butte, Montana.

At the time, the vast region that stretched from the Rocky Mountains in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west belonged to a single administrative body of the Jesuits known as the California Province. In 1932, when the province officially split into the independent provinces of Oregon and California, only four of the original five missionaries remained in China. Two belonged to the Oregon Province and two to the California Province. The lives of these four Jesuit missionaries are woven into the fabric of the twentieth century; they lived through the chaos of Chinese civil war, the cruelty of Japanese expansionism, the end of European colonialism, and the rise of Maoist Socialism. This is the story of four men who obediently carried out their mission for the greater glory of God.

Part I – From East and West

Part II – Chosen for China

Part III – So this is Shanghai

Part IV – Education

Part V – An American Martyr

Part VI – On Pilgrimage

Part VII – The Cost of Liberation

Part VIII – Epilogue