American Southern Methodist Episcopal Mission was an American

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

missionary society operated by the

Methodist Episcopal Church, South The Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC, S; also Methodist Episcopal Church South) was the American Methodist denomination resulting from the 19th-century split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Disagreement ...

that was involved in training and sending workers to urban centers in the U.S. as well as to other countries. The Board of Foreign Missions approved those missionaries who were sent to work in evangelical projects. Missions began in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

during the late

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

. Local missionary initiatives by the Methodist churches in the South started as early as the 1820s. After creation in 1844 of the

, the Southern Methodist Church leadership took a different path than the Northern. It was not until 1878, for example, that the Southern Methodist General Conference formally recognized the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. Lochie Rankin of Tennessee went to China as their first missionary, and she was the first unmarried woman to be sent abroad as a missionary by the Southern Methodists. Martha Watts was the second unmarried woman to be sent abroad by the Board of Foreign Missions; after arriving in Brazil in 1881, she established four schools.

Lucinda Barbour Helm Lucinda Barbour Helm (pen name, Lucile; December 23, 1839 – November 15, 1897) was a 19th-century American author, editor, and women's religious activist from Kentucky. She wrote sketches, short stories, and religious leaflets. Helm published o ...

started the Woman's Parsonage and Home Mission Society, with a Central Committee reporting to the Southern Methodist Board of Church Extension which was led by men. This group was separate from the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society which had started twelve years earlier and had missionaries in China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba by that time. In 1906 the General Conference created the Woman's Missionary Council, merging the two women's groups despite frictions between the leaders. The leadership skills of

Belle Harris Bennett Belle Harris Bennett (December 3, 1852 – July 20, 1922), led the struggle for and won laity rights for women in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. She was the founding president of the Woman's Missionary Council of the Southern Methodist Chur ...

gradually drew the various factions together. Another important contribution by Bennett's presidency was that Southern Methodist women gained full laity rights in 1919. By 1910 the General Conference merged three mission boards into the Board of Missions (1/3 preachers, 1/3 laymen, 1/3 women, with all the Bishops and all the Officers as ex-officio members). Some notable medical missionaries from the American Southern Methodist Episcopal Mission include

John Abner Snell John Abner Snell (28 October 1880 – 2 March 1936), also known as Soo E. Sang, was a missionary surgeon and hospital administrator in Suzhou (Soochow), China. Snell was a devout Christian, and as early as age 14 he stated: "I aim to devote myself ...

and Walter Lambuth.

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