"We Must Christianize Them, or They Will Heathenize Us"
Rev. Osgood Church Wheeler and the Religious Framing of Chinese Exclusion - Biblical Imagery, Domestic Anxiety, and Visual Culture in California’s Anti-Chinese Debates, 1879–1882
Osgood Church Wheeler. The Chinese in America. A national question (1880).
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
In the winter of 1879, beneath the soaring arches of San Francisco's Metropolitan Temple and shortly thereafter within the authoritative chambers of California’s State Capitol in Sacramento, Reverend Osgood Church Wheeler delivered two influential speeches, collectively titled "The Chinese in America: A National Question." Wheeler, a revered Baptist missionary who founded California’s first Protestant church amidst the tumultuous fervor of the 1849 Gold Rush, was a key religious leader whose voice significantly influenced societal norms and policy decisions. Explicitly invited by California’s governor, Wheeler’s addresses did not merely reflect but actively reshaped the debates around immigration, morality, and American national identity.
Wheeler's speeches arrived at a historical juncture characterized by escalating anxiety regarding Chinese immigration and shifting attitudes within Protestant communities. Initially, many Protestant missionaries perceived Chinese immigrants as ideal converts and promising exemplars of evangelical success. Wheeler, however, articulated a striking departure from this early missionary optimism, using language of dramatic moral urgency and alarm. He powerfully declared:
“For every one Christian we have gained from their ranks, they have utterly ruined the morals and led into infamous ways fifty of our sons and daughters” (Wheeler, 1880, 9)
This stark numerical rhetoric repositioned Chinese immigration from an evangelical mission into a moral threat, radically redefining Protestant approaches and anxieties surrounding assimilation.
Picture of Osgood Church Wheeler, appeared in the obituary of him in Oakland Enquirer
“Death of California’s First Protestant Minister.” Oakland Enquirer. Fri, Apr 17, 1891
Central to Wheeler’s argument was his evocative critique of Chinese domestic laborers within American homes. By portraying these domestic spaces as compromised by moral contamination, Wheeler vividly illustrated this perceived threat:
“Twenty years ago, hundreds of our families thought it ‘the nicest thing in the world’ to have a Chinese domestic ‘to take care of the baby.’ And that same nurse... instilled into its mind a total disregard of the Bible and its teachings” (Wheeler, 1880, 7).
Wheeler here strategically leveraged deeply intimate and private fears, connecting household purity directly to broader national stability and morality. His rhetoric transformed domestic workers from innocuous caretakers into active agents of moral degradation, effectively channeling private anxieties into a shared public imperative.
Moreover, Wheeler emphatically underscored the impossibility of Chinese assimilation into American Protestant society, categorically asserting that cultural and religious barriers were insurmountable:
“They utterly refuse to assimilate...they persistently adhere to all the rites and ceremonies of their debasing forms of religion” (Wheeler, 1880, 8).
Wheeler’s language carefully and explicitly constructed a moral binary that delineated American Protestant values as inherently incompatible with Chinese cultural practices, culminating in his stark warning: "We must Christianize them, or they will heathenize us" (Wheeler, 1880, 11). Such apocalyptic framing elevated immigration debates beyond practical policy discourse into existential moral crises, significantly influencing public opinion and political attitudes.
Perhaps the rhetorical pinnacle of Wheeler’s speeches was his powerful invocation of biblical plague imagery, dramatically comparing Chinese immigrants to the “locusts of Egypt” (Wheeler, 1880, 12). This metaphor resonated deeply with American audiences steeped in biblical literacy and conscious of recent devastating agricultural calamities from actual locust invasions in the American Midwest during the mid-1870s. Wheeler masterfully interwove biblical symbolism with immediate economic fears, strategically mobilizing theological authority to amplify anxieties about immigration as both moral contagion and economic catastrophe.
George Frederick Keller. Uncle Sam's Farm in Danger. The San Francisco Wasp. March 9. 1878
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Critically, Wheeler’s metaphorical depiction found vivid visual confirmation and amplification in contemporary popular culture, particularly George Frederick Keller’s influential 1878 cartoon, "Uncle Sam’s Farm in Danger," published in the widely read San Francisco Wasp. Keller’s depiction grotesquely anthropomorphized Chinese immigrants as swarming locusts descending upon American farmland, graphically embodying Wheeler’s rhetorical assertions. Keller's evocative imagery, featuring grotesque faces on insectoid bodies, solidified Wheeler’s abstract warnings into visceral, tangible representations. This reciprocal reinforcement between textual rhetoric and visual culture served as a powerful cultural feedback loop, effectively shaping and consolidating public perception of Chinese immigrants as threats.
Yet beneath the surface of Wheeler’s powerful rhetoric and Keller’s provocative imagery lay a profound historical irony. The agricultural prosperity Wheeler ardently sought to safeguard depended heavily on the labor of the very Chinese immigrants he depicted as destructive pests. Historian Ronald Takaki illustrates how Chinese workers significantly boosted California’s agricultural productivity, raising land values dramatically—from $28 per acre in 1875 to $100 per acre by 1877 (Takaki, "Strangers from a Different Shore"). Wheeler’s discursive framing systematically obscured and diminished these critical contributions, effectively rewriting the narrative to justify exclusion and exploitation under a moralistic guise.
Furthermore, Wheeler strategically redirected missionary energies away from domestic Chinese communities toward evangelistic outreach in China itself, asserting unequivocally that missionary labor overseas had proven "vastly more productive of conversions than similar labors among the Chinese here" (Wheeler, 1880, 14). This tactical shift reveals an implicit ideological dynamic prevalent within American Protestantism, wherein Chinese individuals were deemed acceptable as distant subjects of missionary paternalism but problematic as domestic inhabitants seeking equal status. This differentiation underscores the intersection of race, empire, and missionary ideology, illuminating the broader global dimensions of American Protestant thought during this era.
Wheeler carefully maintained a self-presentation as a compassionate religious authority who possessed genuine understanding and concern for the Chinese. He emphasized his extensive engagement, declaring himself “the Chinaman’s friend” who had studied their character “with earnest fidelity for over thirty years” (Wheeler, 1880, 4). This nuanced rhetorical posture effectively masked underlying racial biases and subtly legitimized exclusionary policies within a veneer of paternalistic benevolence and religious authority. Wheeler’s sophisticated rhetorical approach thus provided crucial ideological support for anti-Chinese sentiment and legislation, directly influencing pivotal legislative outcomes, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Ultimately, examining Wheeler’s rhetoric in conjunction with broader cultural and historical currents provides historians with a rich analytical framework to explore the intersections of religion, race, visual culture, and immigration policy. Wheeler’s speeches and Keller’s visuals collectively illuminate how deeply embedded moral and cultural narratives shaped perceptions of immigration and national identity.
By carefully unpacking these historical complexities, scholars can better understand not only the rhetorical mechanics of exclusion but also how such narratives continue to inform contemporary understandings of belonging, citizenship, and national character. Wheeler’s legacy, therefore, invites a sophisticated, critical engagement with history, challenging us to thoughtfully interrogate enduring religious and moral narratives that delineate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within American society.
