Isobel Miller Kuhn

Isobel Selina Miller Kuhn, born Isobel Selina Miller (December 17, 1901-March 20, 1957), was a Canadian Protestant Christian missionary to the Lisu people of Yunnan, China, and northern Thailand. She served with China Inland Mission (In 1954, renamed, "Overseas Missionary Fellowship.")

Early Life and Education

Isobel Kuhn was born on December 17, 1901, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and later moved with her family to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Kuhn's father was a roentgenologist and a Presbyterian lay preacher. Her grandfather was an ordained Presbyterian minister. She had one older sibling, a brother. Kuhn was raised in a loving home, with Christian influences. Yet, after experiencing just a "pitying sneer" from a disapproving University of British Columbia English professor intended for those freshman students who may have been predisposed to Christianity, Kuhn decided that she didn't need to know or need to seek God anymore. She became an "agnostic," as other modernists of her day were calling themselves. Popular and vivacious, even though she didn't drink or smoke, this well-thought-of young woman was always with the right people and invited to the right parties and dances. She had even become part of the university drama group as a freshman, which was a rare honor. Yet, after a crisis in which the now college senior found out that her mother-approved man she was secretly engaged to not only was cheating on Kuhn, but told her to expect him to cheat in their marriage, she was having sleepless nights and was on the verge of suicide. However, instead of drinking a bottle of poison from the bathroom medicine cabinet, which she intended to do, she gave over that impulse to the sound of her father's sleeping groans from his bedroom. Conflicted and unsure what to do, Kuhn went back to her bedroom and cried out to God to make Himself real to her and she would give her life to Him, no matter what He asked of her. Although she had then become a Christian at that moment, Kuhn was very much a secret Christian in the beginning, testing out her new faith in small ways and renouncing worldly pursuits a little at a time. However, she didn't return to church for a long time.

In May 1922, Kuhn graduated with honors in English Language and Literature from the University of British Columbia. From there the graduate had to attend five months of Normal School in order to obtain her teaching certificate. Her intention was to become a dean of women and teach at a university. She first taught third grade at the Cecil Rhodes School, in Vancouver, for one year. When she became a teacher, it was the first time Kuhn had lived on her own. The reason for this move was necessity. Her family had decided to pick-up and move to Victoria, B.C. Kuhn stayed at a boarding house in Vancouver.

After attending a missions conference at The Firs, in Bellingham, Washington, and meeting the missionary-speaker and the man who would become one of her greatest spiritual mentors and friends, James O. Fraser, Kuhn began studying at Moody Bible Institute, in 1924, in Chicago, Illinois. Her intent was to be a missionary to the Burmese Lisu people, in China. Kuhn graduated from Moody as valedictorian, in 1926, after an illness put her one semester behind in her studies. While at school, she had participated in open-air preaching, prison and neighborhood visitation ministries. For the most part, Kuhn also worked through school to pay her way, though she also received some unexpected financial support when it was needed. She also met her future husband at Moody, John Becker Kuhn, who graduated before his future wife and went on ahead to China alone.

Kuhn's mother, who loved her daughter though was clingy, at one time had told Kuhn that the only way she would become a missionary was over the mother's dead body. Kuhn's mother died of cancer while Kuhn was at Moody. Before she died, however, Kuhn's mother acknowledged to a woman friend that her daughter had chosen the better way.

Once she graduated from Bible school, Kuhn applied to the China Inland Mission, but was rejected at first because of a single character reference who gave a negative report. But after some time and further review, her desire to become a missionary was fulfilled.

During the time she was made to wait for her passage to China, Kuhn lived with her father and brother again, who had both moved back to Vancouver and rented an apartment after Kuhn's mother's death. Now, Kuhn definitely needed to earn some money. But, she was afraid that if she signed a contract to teach again, she would be bound until the end of the contract and not be able to quit at a moment's notice to leave for China. So, on a lark she took an unpaid speaking engagement in front of a women's group, and, much to her surprise, was asked one week later to be the superintendent of what was then called, "Vancouver Girl's Corner Club." The club was an evangelistic outreach to business and professional women who met during the work week to talk and eat bag lunches together. Various soft drinks were provided by the club. One night a week there was a supper served for .15 cents a person and an evangelistic program that followed. Kuhn's responsibilities included being available for the women at noontime to meet them and to evangelize when possible. For the newly-minted Bible school graduate, it was a paid position that she grew to love, but could resign from on a moment's notice.

China

On October 11, 1928, Isobel Kuhn sailed on a passenger ship out of Vancouver to China, as a missionary with China Inland Mission. She then married John Kuhn, in Kunming, China, on November 4, 1929. For the next three decades they served together like her mentor, James O. Fraser, who came before them and who also worked along side of them until 1938. Although John Kuhn was separated from his wife by leadership duties and eventually by CIM superintendent duties for sometimes as long as a year, the Kuhn's ministered in Chengchiang, Yunnan, from 1929-1930, and in Tali, Yunnan, from 1930-1934. While in Tali, she had a baby girl, Kathryn Alice-Ann, in 1931. Kuhn had her second child, a son, Daniel K., while in Lisuland, in 1943. The Kuhn's ministered in Lisuland from 1934 until 1950. The blight of a Communist take-over forced the Kuhn's to leave China; but, they continued their ministry in northern Thailand among the Lisu people until 1955, when they retired.

With the Lord

Isobel Kuhn was diagnosed with cancer in 1954 and died battling it with her husband at her side in 1957, in Wheaton, Illinois.

Quotes

About Isobel Kuhn's life early on she wrote, "At the end of my walk home, I came to the conclusion that I would henceforth accept no theories of life which I had not proved personally. And, quite ignorant of where that attitude would lead me, I had unconsciously stepped off the High Way where man walks with his face lifted Godward and the pure, piney scents of the heights call him upward, on to The Misty Flats. The in-between level place of easy-going - nothing very good attempted, yet nothing bad either - where men walk in the mist, telling each other that no one can see these things clearly. The Misty Flats where the in-betweeners drift to and fro - life has no end but amusement and no purpose - where the herd drift with the strongest pull and there is no reason for opposing anything. Therefore they had a kind of peace and mutual link which they call tolerance."

One of Kuhn's most entertaining quips was this: "When I get to heaven they aren't going to see much of me but my heels, for I'll be hanging over the golden wall keeping an eye on the Lisu church!"

Legacy

In her day, Isobel Kuhn called a "legacy" what we refer to today as an, "inheritance." What a rich inheritance the Kuhn's have left.

Christianity is thriving in the Salween River valley where the Lisu live, 50 years after the death of Isobel Kuhn. Of the 18,000 Lisu who lived in Fugong in 1950 - 3,400 professed faith in Christ. As of 2007, there are estimated to be 80-90 percent of the 70,000 making the same profession. In Yunnan, it is estimated that there are between 100,000-200,000 total Lisu Christians. More than 75,000 Lisu Bibles have been legally printed in China following this explosive growth.

Today, this strong Christian presence in the Lisu communities of China and beyond can probably be attributed at least in part to Isobel Kuhn and her idea to start what she called the, "Rainy Season Bible School." This was a school born from the fact that in the heavily agricultural area that the Kuhn's ministered, the rainy season disrupted all normal life of the people. So, what better plan for a missionary to implement than to have classes to preach the historic Christian Gospel and to teach people the basics of the Christian faith during down time. These classes were taught by Kuhn and others. From these classes, countless men who became evangelists and pastors were called to take the Christian message to untold numbers of people throughtout China.

Not only this, there is still a very strong market for Kuhn's numerous autobiographical missionary writings.

Works

• By Searching: My Journey Through Doubt into Faith, Moody Publishers (August 8, 1959)
• In the Arena, OMF Books (1995)
• Green Leaf in Drought, Harold Shaw Publications (June 1994)
• Stones of Fire, Shaw Books (June 1994)
• Ascent to the Tribes: Pioneering in North Thailand, OMF Books (2000)
• Precious Things of the Lasting Hills, OMF Books (1977)
• Second Mile People, Shaw Books (December 1999)
• Nests Above the Abyss, Moody Press (1964)
• Whom God Has Joined, OMF Books

Bibliography

• Carolyn Canfield, One Vision Only (1959)
• Lois Headley Dick, Isobel Kuhn (1987)
• Isobel Kuhn, By Searching: My Journey Through Doubt into Faith (1959)
• Gloria Repp, Nothing Daunted: The Story of Isobel Kuhn (1995)

Further reading

• Historical Bibliography of the China Inland Mission

Links

• Chicago, Illinois
• Moody Bible Institute
• OMF International
• The Firs
• People's Rebublic of China
• Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada