English Presbyterian Mission was a British
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
missionary society that was involved in sending workers to countries such as
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 ...
.
English Presbyterian Mission work in China
The
Presbyterian Church of England The Presbyterian Church of England was a late-19th century and 20th century Presbyterian denomination in England. The church's origins lay in the 1876 merger of the English congregations of the chiefly Scottish United Presbyterian Church with vario ...
resolved to establish a mission in China in 1847. The Rev.
William Chalmers Burns went first to
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and then to
Amoy. Ten years later he was joined by the Rev. George Smith. Mr. Burns laid the foundation of what became one of the most extensive and prosperous Christian missions in the Chinese Empire. Its principal centers were
Shantou
Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census (5,391,028 in 2010) and an administrative ...
,
Amoy, and
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
. It had several establishments, combining churches, mission houses, hospitals, and schools, and spent money freely in carrying out every department of operation. The senior missionaries in the field were Rev. H. L. Mackenzie, M.A., of Shantou, and Rev. W. McGregor, M.A., of Amoy. Rev. George Smith, the coadjutor of Mr. Burns, died February 1891. This Society was greatly aided by a women's association, by which female agents were sent out from England. Several of these had certificates for the practice of
midwifery, and possessed a general practical knowledge of medicine, being thus able to alleviate the sufferings of the native women to a very considerable degree. In 1890 it had one hundred and six stations in China and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
, and employed fifteen ordained missionaries and medical workers. It had nine lady agents, five ordained native pastors, and ninety-three unordained native helpers. It numbered nearly three thousand six hundred members, and had four hundred scholars in its training schools.
[Townsend (1890), 243-244]
See also
*
James Laidlaw Maxwell, missionary to Taiwan sent by the Presbyterian Church of England
*
Robert Kerr, missionary to Morocco
*
References
*
*
Notes
External links
The Amoy Mission
Presbyterian missionary societies
Christian missions in China
British expatriates in China
Presbyterianism in England
Religious organizations established in 1847
1847 establishments in England
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