R. A. Hardie

R. A. Hardie
Born Robert Alexander Hardie
(1865-06-11)June 11, 1865
Haldimand County, Ontario, Canada
Died June 30, 1949(1949-06-30) (aged 84)
Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
Nationality Canadian
Education Toronto School of Medicine, M.B., 1890
Occupation Missionary and physician
Years active 1890–1935
Known for Wŏnsan Revival Movement
Great Revival
Spouse(s)
Margaret "Matilda" Hardie (née Kelly) (m. 1886)

Robert Alexander Hardie (Hunminjeongeum: 하리영; Hanja: 谮翠薇; RR: Ha Riyeong; June 11, 1865 – June 30, 1949) was a Canadian physician and Methodist evangelist who for 45 years served as a missionary in Korea.[1]:1 He is recognized as the catalyst for the Wŏnsan Revival (1903) and also inspired the Great Pyongyang Revival (1907) in North Korea.[2][3][4]

Early life and education

Hardie was born on June 11, 1865 in Haldimand County, Ontario. He was the first of six children born to James and Abigail Hardie. Both his parents died before he turned ten years old. Hardie went to live with his aunt and uncle, Thomas and Fannie Shaw. He attended a school in Seneca, Toronto and earned a teacher's certificate in 1884, and for two years worked as a teacher in his hometown.[5]:265

In 1886, Hardie enrolled at the Toronto School of Medicine.[5]:265 On December 27, 1886, he married Margaret "Matilda" Kelly of Hamilton, Ontario.[5]:269, 297 As a medical student, Hardie studied with Oliver R. Avison, who also later travelled to Korea as an evangelist.[6] He was also impressed by the writings in the university papers about the work of James Scarth Gale, another evangelist in Korea.[7] Hardie graduated from University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1890.[5]:265

Career

Physician to missionary

In the summer of 1890, Hardie moved his family to Korea to serve as an independent and nondenominational medical missionary.[5]:269–271 The Toronto University Medical Student’s YMCA (MS–YMCA) had funded his endeavor for the next eight years.[6] For six months in late 1890 and early 1891, Hardie served as a physician in the Chaejungwon (Extended Relief House: Royal Hospital) in Seoul.[5]:270 On April 14, 1891, Hardie moved to Pusan and was later joined by his wife Margaret and two daughters at his residence which also served as the location of his medical practice. In 1892, the Hardies briefly moved to Nagasaki, Japan on account of his poor health, only to return to Pusan later that same year.[5]:272

When James Gale resigned his supporters from the University College's YMCA (UC–YMCA) in order join American Presbyterian Mission, the UC–YMCA lost its only representative in Korea. At Hardie’s suggestion, the MS–YMCA and the UC–YMCA decided to join forces to form The Canadian Colleges' Mission (CCM) with Hardie as their representative and beneficiary in Korea.[5]:276[8] However, in November 1892, facing financial hardship due to his meagre support from his backers in Toronto and facing competition from other missionaries in the Pusan area, Hardie decide to move his mission to Wŏnsan where Gale and Malcolm C. Fenwick were then located.[5]:274–75 In Wŏnsan, Hardie began to emulate Fenwick’s survival techniques by supplementing his living with farming: "feeding cattle and growing fruit." The Hardie family stayed in Wŏnsan until 1896.[5]:275

In July 1896, Hardie relocated his family back to Canada, only to return alone to Wŏnsan in October 1897.[5]:275, 497 In 1898, Gale moved to Seoul, and Hardie joined the American Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC,S),[6] when his contract of support from the CCM ended.[5]:275, 278, 497 With the American Methodist mission, Hardie was first tasked with establishing a medical practicing in Songdo, Hwanghae Province, in present-day North Korea.[5]:278–79 He remained there for less than a year before relocating again to Seoul in August 1899. It was in Seoul, on November 11, 1900, Bishop Alpheus Wilson ordained Hardie as a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.[5]:279

Revival movements

Sometime after 1900, Hardie stopped practicing medicine altogether to concentrate on his missionary work.[6] From 1902 to 1909, Hardie was charged with the task of proselytizing to the people of Wŏnsan and the greater Kangwon Province.[5]:279, 281 In August 1903,[4] during a small Bible study among seven missionaries which included Hardie, he spoke of prayer and the Holy Spirit,[9] confessing his low spirits and "the failure of his mission in [the Kangwon Province]."[2] During later meetings with larger congregations across Northern Korea, Hardie made similar confessions that inspired many western missionaries and native Koreans alike to confess their own sins, leading thousands of congregates to accept the missionaries’ Christian teachings.[2][9] From 1901 to 1909, new Korean converts to the Christian faith numbered at just under 100,000.[5]:282

Hardie’s confessions became the catalyst for the Wŏnsan Revival which later inspired the Great Pyongyang Revival of 1907 in Northern Korea.[2][3][4] His expression of the feeling of "humiliation" at his failings in evangelizing people in the Kangwon Province had the paradoxical effect of inspiring a religious awakening that would infect the entire nation.[5]:280–82 Alfred Wasson, an American Methodist missionary to Korea, wrote in the Church Growth in Korea (1934):[10]

[The revival movement] spread until it became a conspicuous feature of the life of the entire Korean Church, and was widely commented on in distant parts of the world. The leader of the movement was the Reverend R. A. Hardie, M. D.

Academic career

In 1905, Hardie also started a mobile theological school named Sinhakdang (Hall of Theology). The school initially had no defined physical location as he instead travelled between Inchŏn, Kongju, Pyongyang, and Seoul to teach several months-long sessions.[5]:292 In 1909, he moved to Seoul and began teaching at the Pierson Memorial Bible School and the Methodist Biblical Institute.[5]:498 In 1913, Hardie founded the Hyŏpsŏng sinhakkyo (Union Theological School) in Seoul.[5]:292 He served as the president of the school until 1922[5]:498 and left the school in June 1923.[5]:292 From 1916, he also published a magazine entitled Sinak saekye (The World of Theology). In 1923, Hardie became the editor-in-chief of the Chosŏn Yesukyo Sŏhoe (now known as Korean Christian Literature Society).[5]:447

Family and later years

When the Hardies arrived in Korea, they had with them a two-year-old daughter named Eva, their second child.[5]:269, 297 Their first son Arthur Sidney had died as an infant in 1888. Their second daughter Annie Elizabeth was born in Seoul during the first year of their missionary life.[1]:9[7] The Hardies' third daughter Marie Mabel died only a day old but they had two more daughters, Gertrude Abigail and Sarah Grace, who lived to adulthood. Their seventh child Robert and youngest daughter Margaret Joy both died in their youth. The Hardie family also adopted a Korean girl named Chuponia.[1]:9, 13, 15

In 1935, Hardie retired from missionary work and moved with his wife to Lansing, Michigan, to live with their youngest daughter Grace. In total, he had served as a medical and then an evangelical missionary for about 45 years of his life. Margaret died in 1945 and Robert on June 30, 1949.[5]:294, 498

References

  1. 1 2 3 Kim, Chil-Sung (October 2012). The role of Robert Alexander Hardie in the Korean great revival and the subsequent development of Korean Protestant Christianity (Ph.D. thesis). Asbury Theological Seminary. OCLC 828189401.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Jang, Jung Eun (November 9, 2016). Religious Experience and Self-Psychology: Korean Christianity and the 1907 Revival Movement. Springer. pp. 78–81. ISBN 978-1-349-95041-6.
  3. 1 2 Kang, Paul ChulHong (2006). Justification: The Imputation of Christ's Righteousness from Reformation Theology to the American Great Awakening and the Korean Revivals. Peter Lang. pp. 156–157. ISBN 978-0-8204-8605-5.
  4. 1 2 3 Yang, Daniel Taichoul (December 17, 2014). Called Out for Witness: The Missionary Journey of Grace Korean Church. Wipf and Stock Publishers. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-1-4982-1724-8.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Yoo, Young-sik (1996). The Impact of Canadian Missionaries in Korea: A Historical Survey of Early Canadian Mission Work, 1888–1898 (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis). University of Toronto. pp. 265–303, 445–447, 497–99. ISBN 978-0-6122-7810-3. OCLC 46560264.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Ion, A. Hamish (May 28, 1990). The Cross and the Rising Sun: The Canadian Protestant missionary movement in the Japanese Empire, 1872–1931: The Canadian Protestant Missionary Movement in the Japanese Empire, 1872–1931. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-88920-977-0.
  7. 1 2 Jost, Roman; Jost, Daniela (March 2015). "Dr. RA Hardie, Arzt und Missionar in Korea". Asien-zuhause.ch. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
  8. ↑ MacDonald, Laura (February 2000). 'Minister of the Gospel and Doctor of Medicine': The Canadian Presbyterian Medical Mission to Korea 1898–1923 (PDF) (MA thesis). Queen's University. pp. 15–21. ISBN 978-0-6125-4471-0. OCLC 84371776.
  9. 1 2 Burgess, Stanley M.; van der Maas, Eduard M. (August 3, 2010). The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Revised and Expanded Edition. Zondervan. ISBN 9780310873358.
  10. ↑ Wasson, Alfred Washington (1934). Church growth in Korea ... Rumford Press. p. 29. OCLC 590106784.
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