ABSTRACT
Parochial education was viewed by both the Basel home board and its representatives on the field as an aid to evangelization, particularly for the training of assistants and the creation of Christian families. As with other mission societies, however, education opened up divisions between the Western sponsors and Christians in China. At the core were differences over the extent to which academic requirements should be subordinated to evangelistic purposes and over the concept of schools as instruments of conversion. The home board wanted concentration on preparing Chinese catechists and preachers, on assuring that the children of Christians were educated in a Christian environment, and on providing the Christian community with the minimal literacy necessary to read the Bible.
