Taiwan at that time was part of the Qing empire and so missionaries started work in Taiwan. The first such mission was from the British Presbyterians in Tainan in 1865, the second was Canadians Presbyterians around Taipei in 1873. Dr. George Leslie Mackay was the first Canadian Presbyterian missionary and the MacKay Memorial Hospital is still famous in Taipei.
Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell was the first Presbyterian missionary in Tainan and many of his accomplishments are still going strong here in Tainan. There is a local park named after him.
When Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese in 1895, these two Presbyterian churches were the only Christian churches in Taiwan. Japan had had trouble with missionary rivalries in Japan, so they prevented further missionary work from other religions in Taiwan until 1925. So the Presbyterians had a monopoly on missionary work in Taiwan for 65 years. By that time, the Presbyterian church had become indigenous and strong. Lee Deng Hui, the first elected president of Taiwan, was a Presbyterian. (Chiang Kai-shek the first unelected president of Taiwan, was a Methodist).
The writing on the front of this Presbyterian Tung-Men Church is the romanization of one of the aboriginal languages in Taiwan. When the missionaries came, they worked with the aboriginal people rather than the immigrants from China(Fujian) who were Buddhists and Taoists.
This church is also from that time but I don't know its story.
No comments:
Post a Comment