Presbyterian Mission Agency is the ministry and mission agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Founded as the Western Foreign Missionary Society by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1837, it was involved in sending workers to countries such as China during the late Qing dynasty and to India in nineteenth century. Also known as the Foreign Missions Board in China, its name was changed by the Old School body during the Old School–New School Controversy to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. [1]
Notable for bringing up Bamba Muller who was a latter day "Cinderella" marrying the Black Prince of Perthshire. [2]
The Presbyterian Board of America transferred two of their missionaries from Singapore to China in 1843. It had four great centers. Guangzhou was entered in 1845, but it was sixteen years before they were able to baptise the first convert to Christianity. A medical hospital was a very important factor in the work of the Mission. Missions in Macau and Hainan were sustained from this center. Hospital work had been a prominent feature in this Mission. Dr. Peter Parker commenced a hospital in 1835, which was transferred to this society in 1854, and placed under the care of Dr. John G. Kerr. The Central Mission had five main centers which branched out in many directions. These included Ningbo, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, and Anqing. At Shanghai the extensive printing operations of the Society were carried on. These comprised not only several presses which were constantly at work, but a foundry where seven sizes of Chinese type, besides English, Korean, Manchu, Japanese, Hebrew, Greek and others, were cast. There was also complete apparatus for electrotyping and engraving. Much translation work had been done by this Society, and hand books of Christian history and doctrine prepared by it were in use on most of the Protestant missions in China.
Hunter Corbett was a Pioneer of an American missionary to Yantai, Shandong China, he served with the American Presbyterian Mission. He was a powerful advocate of the missionary enterprise. He founded the Yi Wen School (Boy's Academy/ Hunter Corbett Academy) known as Cheeloo University, The first university in China. Hunter Corbett ministered in China for 56 years. [3] Chester Holcombe was among the missionaries who went on to join the American diplomatic service, following S. Wells Williams as secretary to the American legation in 1884.
The Shantung (Shandong) Mission extends from the capital city, Chi-nan-foo Jinan, northwards to Yantai, and had many stations which reported about three thousand members in 1890. The Peking Mission was of latest date, and was doing much work in diffusing throughout a wide district a knowledge of the Gospel by its proclamation to the vast numbers who crowded from all the surrounding regions to the imperial city. The totals of the mission in 1890 were, forty-eight missionaries, eighteen lady agents, twenty-three ordained native pastors, eighty-four unordained native helpers, and nearly four thousand communicants. [4]
In 1838, the Fiske Seminary was founded the American Presbyterian Mission in Urmia, Qajar Persia (now Iran). [5]
The first missionary of the American Presbyterian Mission board was William Buell, who arrived with his wife in Bangkok in 1840. Due to his wife's health problems, the couple returned to the United States in 1844. In 1847, Samuel Reynolds House and Stephen Mattoon and their wives arrived in Bangkok to begin mission work. These two couples, together with missionary Stephen Bush, founded Samray Church in 1849, the first Presbyterian church in Thailand. In 1863, missionaries Daniel McGilvary and Samuel Gamble McFarland opened work in Petchburi province, about 100 km east of Bangkok.
In 1867, McGilvary moved to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, where he pioneered Christian work in the north. First Church in Chiang Mai was founded in 1868. The work in Northern Thailand was called the Laos Mission, and the work in Bangkok, Central Thailand, and Southern Thailand was called the Siam Mission.
In 1879, Belle Caldwell Culbertson sailed for Indo-China as a missionary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions. For two years, she was principal of the Harriet House School for Girls in Bangkok. In January, 1880, in Siam, she married Rev. John Newton Culbertson, who was serving there with the same Board of Missions, and in 1881, they returned to the U.S. [6]
In 1913, the Laos Mission counted approximately 6000 Thai Christians converts in the North, and the Siam Mission counted approximately 600 Thai Christian converts in their jurisdiction.
Missionaries in both the Siam Mission and Laos Mission founded schools and hospitals, as well as carrying on evangelistic work. American Presbyterian missionaries helped to found the Church of Christ in Thailand in 1934, an indigenous Thai denomination which eventually took over responsibility for both mission and social work when the American Presbyterian Mission in Thailand was dissolved on August 19, 1957.
The American Presbyterian Mission was opened at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, in 1836.
In 1864, Forman Christian College was founded in Lahore by a Presbyterian missionary Charles William Forman.
The Wanless Hospital had its beginning as a small dispensary started in 1890 in the Miraj (Meer’-udge) Bazaar by Dr. William James Wanless pioneer Presbyterian medical missionary. The first of the present buildings was opened in 1894. [7]
In 1893, Presbyterian mission established Gordon College in Rawalpindi and was named after Dr Andrew Gordon who was the head of the mission. [8]
The Ewing Christian College, managed by the American Presbyterian Mission was opened in 1902 and had 70 pupils in 1904. [9]
In 1910 John Lawrence Goheen and Jane Goheen accepted an appointment from the American Presbyterian missionaries for missionary service in Sangli in the state of Maharashtra, India. John Lawrence Goheen and Jane Goheen arrived in India in 1911 and soon after he was placed in charge as the Principal at Sangli Boys School in Sangli. He transformed the school into an Industrial and Agricultural Educational Institute and instituted an extension service as The Sangli Moveable School. This brought improved agricultural techniques to the villages surrounding Sangli. He was appointed as a member of Bombay Literacy mission.
OMF International is an international and interdenominational Evangelical Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.
Samuel Wells Williams was a linguist, official, missionary and Sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century.
Griffith John was a Welsh Christian missionary and translator in China. A member of the Congregational church, he was a pioneer evangelist with the London Missionary Society (LMS), a writer and a translator of the Holy Bible into the Chinese language.
Frederick William Baller was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, Chinese linguist, translator, educator and sinologist.
Joseph Edkins was a British Protestant missionary who spent 57 years in China, 30 of them in Beijing. As a Sinologue, he specialised in Chinese religions. He was also a linguist, a translator, and a philologist. Writing prolifically, he penned many books about the Chinese language and the Chinese religions especially Buddhism. In his China's Place in Philology (1871), he tries to show that the languages of Europe and Asia have a common origin by comparing the Chinese and Indo-European vocabulary.
The Protestant Episcopal Church Mission was a Christian missionary initiative of the Episcopal Church that was involved in sending and providing financial support to lay and ordained mission workers in growing population centers in the west of the United States as well as overseas in China, Liberia and Japan during the second half of the 19th Century.
English Presbyterian Mission was a British Presbyterian missionary society that was involved in sending workers to countries such as China during the late Qing Dynasty.
Robert Henry Mathews (1877–1970) was an Australian missionary and Sinologist, best known for his 1931 A Chinese-English Dictionary: Compiled for the China Inland Mission by R. H. Mathews, which was subsequently revised by Harvard University Press in 1943. He served with the China Inland Mission from 1906, before retiring to Australia in 1945.
Medical missions in China by Protestant and Catholic physicians and surgeons of the 19th and early 20th centuries laid many foundations for modern medicine in China. Western medical missionaries established the first modern clinics and hospitals, provided the first training for nurses, and opened the first medical schools in China. Work was also done in opposition to the abuse of opium. Medical treatment and care came to many Chinese who were addicted, and eventually public and official opinion was influenced in favor of bringing an end to the destructive trade. By 1901, China was the most popular destination for medical missionaries. The 150 foreign physicians operated 128 hospitals and 245 dispensaries, treating 1.7 million patients. In 1894, male medical missionaries comprised 14 percent of all missionaries; women doctors were four percent. Modern medical education in China started in the early 20th century at hospitals run by international missionaries.
Carstairs Douglas was a Scottish missionary, remembered chiefly for his writings concerning the Southern Min language of Fujian, in particular his Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy.
The Chinese Baptist Convention is a Baptist Christian denomination in Taiwan and the territories administered by the Republic of China.
John Lawrence Goheen was an American missionary, educator and administrator, agriculturist, social worker, and writer who spent most of his career working in India. He made a major contribution to literacy through the Bombay Literacy Campaign of 1939. He established Adult Education Associations in various parts in India with a slogan "Every home a literate home". He promoted religious organizations for literacy conferences.
Sir William James Wanless FACS was a Canadian-born surgeon, humanitarian and Presbyterian missionary who founded a medical mission in Miraj, India in 1894 and led it for nearly 40 years. As part of this mission, Dr. Wanless founded Maharashtra's first missionary medical school in 1897, and helped to establish a leprosy sanatorium as well as a tuberculosis hospital, now known as the Wanless Chest Hospital.
A dudou is a traditional Chinese form of the bodice, originally worn as an undershirt with medicinal properties. With the opening of China, it is sometimes encountered in Western and modern Chinese fashion as a sleeveless shirt and backless halter-top blouse.
A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language: Arranged According to the Wu-Fang Yuen Yin, with the Pronunciation of the Characters as Heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai or the Hàn-Yīng yùnfǔ 漢英韻府, compiled by the American sinologist and missionary Samuel Wells Williams in 1874, is a 1,150-page bilingual dictionary including 10,940 character headword entries, alphabetically collated under 522 syllables. Williams' dictionary includes, in addition to Mandarin, Chinese variants from Middle Chinese and four regional varieties of Chinese, according to the 17th-century Wufang yuanyin 五方元音 "Proto-sounds of Speech in All Directions".
A Chinese–English Dictionary (1892), compiled by the British consular officer and sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), is the first Chinese–English encyclopedic dictionary. Giles started compilation after being rebuked for criticizing mistranslations in Samuel Wells Williams' (1874) A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language. The 1,461-page first edition contains 13,848 Chinese character head entries alphabetically collated by Beijing Mandarin pronunciation romanized in the Wade–Giles system, which Giles created as a modification of Thomas Wade's (1867) system. Giles' dictionary furthermore gives pronunciations from nine regional varieties of Chinese, and three Sino-Xenic languages Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Giles revised his dictionary into the 1,813-page second edition (1912) with the addition of 67 entries and numerous usage examples.
A Chinese–English Dictionary: Compiled for the China Inland Mission by R. H. Mathews or Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary, edited by the Australian Congregationalist missionary Robert Henry Mathews (1877–1970), was the standard Chinese–English dictionary for decades. Mathews originally intended his dictionary to be a revision of Frederick W. Baller's out-of-print An Analytical Chinese–English Dictionary, but ended up compiling a new dictionary. Mathews copied, without acknowledgment, from the two editions of Herbert Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary.
Teochew Romanization, also known as Swatow Church Romanization, or locally Pe̍h-ūe-jī, is an orthography similar to Pe̍h-ōe-jī used to write the Chaoshan dialect. It was introduced by John Campbell Gibson and William Duffus, two British missionaries, to Swatow in 1875.