Last Methodist Out

After almost two years in a Communist jail (including 14 months in solitary confinement), the last U.S. Methodist missionary in China* came home last week. The Rev. Francis Olin Stockwell, 52, of Perry, Okla., first went to China in 1929, and for 15 years was treasurer of the West China Methodist Conference, with headquarters at Chengtu. In the fall of 1950, the Communists arrested him for "espionage." From then on, he was subjected to a determined "brainwashing" treatment.

When the Communists tried to indoctrinate him in a Chungking prison, Missionary Stockwell noticed that it did little good to refuse to listen to their arguments. Those who did so were simply chained and beaten. Accordingly, he pretended to give serious thought to the prison course for the re-education of "counter-revolutionaries." Because he seemed to be paying close attention to his questioners, he was never tortured, or even manhandled. "I told them," he said, "that I could never agree to their dialectical materialism when it conflicted with my own Christian concepts, and the Communists said they didn't mind that."

But when Stockwell insisted that he had spent his time in China preaching the Gospel and working for charitable institutions, the Reds sent him back to his cell for more "self-reflection." They wanted him to confess to "crimes against the state," e.g., working for UNRRA.

Between interrogation sessions, Stockwell found time to write four books in his cell. Two of them--a volume of religious poetry and one of devotional talks--he memorized, down to an index for each. Two others, a diary and a study of the Gospel of St. John, he wrote in fine handwriting on the margins of a poetry anthology which the Communists allowed him to keep. He also composed and memorized some 70 limericks. Sample:

We eat white rice, steamed to the

minute,

Bean curd, vegetables and meat within

limit,

And soup with a savor,

An Oriental flavor,

For the guard always sticks his finger

in it.

Stockwell passed the Reds' course for counterrevolutionaries: he "confessed" to his sins. He was released on Nov. 17 at the Hong Kong border. Some of his captors thought they had made a convert. Missionary Stockwell, weakened by his captivity but still unconverted, plans to continue his work elsewhere in the Orient, after a year's sabbatical.

*Of 276 Methodists in the China mission field in 1948, three were imprisoned, 15 put under house arrest. Although all were released, one woman died from the effects of her captivity.

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