Series 1: Audio Tapes

J. Herbert (T1) and Winnifred M. (T2) Kane were interviewed by Galen R. Wilson at the Billy Graham Center Archives on April 20, 1982. J. Herbert Kane (T3) was interviewed by Craig Alexander on November 11, 1987. The time period covered by the interviews is 1932-1950.

Series 2: Paper Records (Box List)

Collection 182 consists of the following kinds of written records: correspondence; articles, address and interview texts; lecture notes; Herbert Kane's master's thesis and some of the research materials he used in writing it; runs of China-related periodicals; newspaper clippings; and news releases.

Correspondence

The correspondence (folders 1-34 through 3-2 and 4-5) is more fully dealt with in a calendar which follows in Appendix 2 of this guide. The Kane letters, written wholly to family members at home in Quebec, document the Kanes' mission work from the time of their departure in 1935 through their arrival in California from China in 1950. There is no correspondence from March, 1945, to July, 1946, during which time the Kanes were home on furlough. It is evident from the correspondence that not all of the letters written are extant in this collection. For instance, some letters written in June, 1947, concerning the Communist occupation of Fuyang, China, are referred to in other missives, but are themselves missing.

Often the letters were written over several days' time. Such letters appear in the calendar under the earliest date noted. Recipients of the letters are not noted in the calendar, unless there are two of the same date. Many one-page notes with minimal informational value, which were enclosed in longer letters to the family in general, have not been separately noted. One interesting aspect of the earlier correspondence is the overlapping which occurs when Herbert and Winnifred Kane each report the same incidents, affording readers two separate views.

Fellow missionaries frequently mentioned in the correspondence, but not often in conjunction with any specific item worthy of calendaring, are Carl and Anne Glittenberg, George and Ruth Steed, Ruth Nowack, Gordon Dunn, Marvin Dunn, and Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Mair. Also continuously mentioned in the 1935 and 1936 correspondence are language teachers Mr. Yien and Mr. Wong.

Circular letters (folders 3-1 and 3-2) were prepared for mass distribution to the Kanes' prayer partners in North America and elsewhere. Their style is different from the personal correspondence, for obvious reasons; they describe in capsule form what the family letters discuss in great detail. It should be noted that Circular Letter #13, dated February 18, 1949, was never sent out, according to the family correspondence of that year.

Correspondence from the 1970s (folder 4-5) includes an overview of non-Caucasian membership of Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), and a letter from Senator Mark Hatfield regarding revised CIA regulations for the use of missionaries as information sources. Also contained in the folder are address lists of CIM alumni and OMF personnel in the United States and an OMF position paper regarding spiritual gifts and their use, particularly in regards to speaking in tongues. Note: All the items in this folder were found in books donated by the Kanes to the Evangelism & Missions Collection of the Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections.

Articles, Addresses, Interviews

The second type of record in this collection is the texts of addresses (folders 1-1 to 1-5), articles (folders 1-6 to 1-33), and interviews (folder 3-8). The addresses and articles will be considered in this guide as a unit; in some cases (eg. folders 1-11 and 1-13) it is questionable whether a text was intended for speech notes or as a draft for publication. They address a wide spectrum of religious issues and secular concerns. Some of the topics are:

The Bible - Box 1, folders 2,6

China - Box 1, folders 8,9,10,12,13,25,33

Christian Education - Box 1, folders 5,23,29

Christian Living - Box 1, folders 4,11,19

Communism - Box 1, folders 9,10,12,13,25,33

India - Box 1, folder 24

Missions - Box 1, folders 3,6,8,10,12,20,21,22,23,24,25,30,31,32

Politics - Box 1, folders 1,3,9,10,11,12,13,18,22,25,33

Theology - Box 1, folders 4,7,14,15,16,17,26,27,28

Special note is given to the following addresses/articles. Folder 1-4 is a series of radio (?) addresses for the New Life Hour, all on the subject of witnessing, using Acts 1:8 as a text. Folder 1-5 appears to be the keynote address for a leadership workshop. Folder 1-6 concerns Bible translation and the American Bible Society. Folder 1-12 contains a chapter from "a new book to be published at Moody [Press]"; it is heavily edited and annotated by the Kanes' son, Douglas, who became an economist in the employ of the Illinois state government. Folder 1-24 is a research paper prepared for a class at Brown University, where Herbert Kane received his M.A.

The two interviews (folder 3-8) both concern missions. One was conducted for radio station WNAC in Boston and the other for the Lancaster School of the Bible in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when Kane was a member of the faculty there.

Lecture Notes, etc.

This series of records (box 3, folders 3 through 7 and 9 through 11) concern Kane's career as a professor of missions. While he taught at Barrington College, Lancaster College of the Bible, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the course of his career, the only school specifically noted in the material as being the scene of the lectures is Trinity.

Folders 3-3 through 3-6 concern a class taught at Trinity, "Missions and the Ecumenical Movement." Topics included in the lecture notes, lecture outlines, and background articles and clippings are:

World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, 1910

International Missionary Council (IMC)

IMC 1st World Assembly, Jerusalem, 1928

IMC Ghana Conference, 1957-58

Whitby (Ontario) Missionary Conference, 1947

Willengen Missionary Conference, 1952

Faith and Order Movement

Life and Work Movement

World Council of Churches (WCC)

National Council of Churches (NCC)

Roman Catholicism/Vatican II

WCC General Assembly, Uppsala, Sweden, 1968

Cooperation among evangelicals

Church of Christ Uniting (COCU)

United Bible Societies

Student Christian Movement

Ecumenism in Protestant missions

Ecumenism in the Roman Catholic Church

International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC)

Church Union Movement

Intermission conferences of the nineteenth century

Church of South India (a union formed from six previously independent denominations)

Intercommunion

Southern Presbyterian (PCUS) possible merger with the Reformed Church

Overseas Missionary Fellowship and ecumenism

Visser 'T Hooft

E. Stanley Jones

Church of England

Arthur P. Johnston: addresses to WCC general assemblies, Bangkok, 1973, and Nairobi, 1975

Mission Executives Retreat, Winona Lake, 1967

WCC "Faith and Order Conference," Montreal, 1963

Faith missions

World Methodist Council

Folder 3-7 contains a syllabus for an independent study on the history of missions. While entitled a syllabus, it is in fact a textbook which brings together notes and articles on the history of Christian missions from the first century to the present day, following this order of themes: Rome; Europe; clash with Islam; Roman Catholicism; origin of Protestant missions; expansion of the same in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and contemporary mission endeavor in Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Central America, Oceania, and Europe.

An historical synopsis of Islam is the topic of folder 3-9; it includes copies of Evangelical Mission Information Service's publication Muslim World Pulse. Folder 3-10 concerns a course taught at Trinity on "Missionary Public Relations and Administration," which covered how missionaries should package their programs when reporting for newspaper/ magazine publicity, for speaking engagements, and for government relations. It included the topic of evangelical missions' relations to American foreign policy, colonial governments, sovereign foreign governments, the Roman Catholic Church, and each other. Another Trinity course was "Missions in a Revolutionary Age" (folder 3-11); it covered missions with respect to colonialism, nationalism, communism, and third-world developing nations. Individual case studies were made of China and the Soviet Union. Attention was also given to the question of whether humanization or salvation was the goal of mission work.

Master's Thesis

This consists of J. Herbert Kane's master's thesis and some of the research materials he used in writing it. The thesis, The Protestant Church in Communist China, 1949-1958, was completed in 1960 and presented to Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. The Archives' copy of this book was Kane's personal copy and is available in the Rare Book Room of the Graham Center Library (see Location Record: Books).

China-related Periodicals

Also transferred to the Library were significant runs of China-related periodicals. China Bulletin was published by the Far Eastern Joint Office, Division of Foreign Missions, National Council of Christian Churches, U.S.A. It was edited by Francis P. Jones. This set of issues is nearly complete from late 1951 to the last issue published in June, 1962 (when it was replaced by China Notes), a total of 218 issues extant in this collection. Another periodical transferred to the library is The Canadian Far Eastern Newsletter

(twenty-one scattered issues, 1953 to 1962). This was edited by James G. Endicott and was published at Toronto. Endicott, one-time evangelical missionary to China, became very bitter against missions, which he perceived to be thinly-veiled imperialism.

Other materials which remain with the Archives are in box 4 of the collection. Folder 4-1 contains four Chinese paperbound books, with titles roughly translated as follows:

New Democracy, New Times Study Series, Vol. 1

The People, the Political Association, and Three Important Documents, New Times Study Series, Vol. 3

What is the United Battlefront? New Times Study Series, Vol. 7

The International View of Today's Mainland China. Overseas Publishers

[Taiwan], December, 1956.

Newspaper Clippings

Folder 4-2 contains newspaper clippings concerning the Church in China, 1957, a typescript report by Rev. R. Sommerville about his impressions of the Protestant Church in China gathered during his 1956 visit to China as part of the New Zealand Cultural Group, and two news releases from New China News Agency, London. Folder 4-3 contains pamphlets entitled:

"Christianity in Free China (Formosa)" by Hollington K. Tong

"What is Ahead for China?" by Hollington K. Tong

"New China as we Saw It" by Homer G. and Muriel J. Brown, 1956.

"The Impact of the October Revolution of 1917 on the International Missionary Movement" by James G. Endicott

"Report of the Japanese Christian Delegation to China" by Walter Freytag

"How Red China Tortures Protestant and Catholic Missionaries" by Francis Cardinal Spellman

"Quakers Visit China" by members of the British Quaker Museum

News Releases

Folder 4-4 consists of eleven "news releases" by Thomas I. Lee, former missionary and now private citizen of Minnesota. These mimeographed releases are addressed "To friends interested in the Christian Church in China," and include translations of many articles published in Peking in the Spiritual Food Quarterly (Wang Ming Tao, editor) and The New Church, a periodical published in Hankow. The issues covered are relations between the Communist state and the Protestant Church and how the Church was forced to acquiesce in government policies. The Geneva Conference of 1954 is discussed in its relation to the Church. Thomas I. Lee was a missionary under the Evangelical Lutheran Church to China 1924-27, 1929-38, and 1945-49. He severed connections with the Evangelical Lutherans in 1955 at their request when his insistence on speaking publically concerning China was held to be embarrassing and potentially dangerous to the Church.