ABSTRACT
Between the 1920s and the 1940s, a new force entered the religious life of Kaifeng with the work of the Catholic Sisters of Providence from St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. They sought to create a social space in which to launch the mission of salvation, its religion and practices steeped in a culture of different origins. This space, one might argue, came to serve a local timeline and political agenda for modernization that would ultimately subvert the Sisters’ attempt at nativizing girls and women for their needed participation in the missionary field. In this chapter, we explore the evolution of their work and the challenges it posed during a time of considerable political turmoil in China as they experimented with an array of strategies to nurture faith through education, welfare and career opportunities for local women. In this they added to opportunities for change that, as preceding chapters have shown, were starting to open up for local girls and women as an integral part of the national and local drives for modernization.
