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McGavock, Willie Elizabeth Harding (1832-1895)

Co-Founder Of The Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society Of The Methodist Episcopal Church, South

Willie Elizabeth Harding McGavock was a Tennessee resident whose life centered in her family, her home and the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of which she was a founder. In 1875, when she heard Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Lambuth speak of their work in China, she secretly gave her wedding jewels to assist in the building of Copton School in Shanghai, the place to which Lochie Rankin, the first single woman missionary of the Southern church, was sent. Willie McGavock worked to form a Woman’s Missionary Society in Nashville’s McKendree Church, and later joined forces with Mrs. Juliana Hayes of Baltimore to organize a Woman’s Missionary Society for the denomination. She sent a petition to General Conference of 1874 requesting such a group. It was rejected but in 1878, when she sent the second petition, Lochie Rankin was already recruited to go to China and there was money on hand to send her. General Conference approved the petition and appointed Mrs. Hayes national president and Mrs. McGavock national corresponding secretary of the Society.

Taken from They Went Out Not Knowing… An Encyclopedia of One Hundred Women in Mission (New York: Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 1986). Used with permission of United Methodist Women.

Rench, Millicent “Billie” (?? – 2017) 

Passionate Spokesperson For Mission

Millicent Rench, fondly known to those who loved her as “Billie,” was a passionate spokesperson for mission in her local church and throughout United Methodism in eastern Michigan, an area known during her life as the Detroit Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Rench was also passionate about her church family. Toward the end of her life, she shared her belief that growing up as a single child in a loving family laid the foundation for her fervent love for her church family.

Her family as she grew up did not attend church, so she began attending a local church herself as a child, one which her friends attended, a neighborhood United Brethren church. It was that church which helped her obtain a scholarship at Bible College in Naperville, Illinois. She joined the Methodist Church at the time that she married Douglas Rench and moved to Chesaning, Michigan. She would later remark that she merged the United Brethren and Methodist churches in her own faith journey before the denominations themselves merged.

She had no hesitation when she described her church family as being present to celebrate the joys of life as well as to cry tears when personal tragedies emerged. As a result of her love for her church family, doubled with an ardent support of missions in the United Methodist Church, she became known throughout the conference for her avid promotion of United Methodism’s involvement in the lives of those in need around the world.

Her love of mission entered her life strongly and in surprisingly new ways after the Rench’s family of three sons grew up and moved forward with their adult lives. As chair of mission ministries at First United Methodist Church, her home church in Owosso where the Renches later moved, she attended the conference’s annual Christian School of Mission at Adrian College. Hearing Dr. George Sommers, a presenter there, describe an upcoming seminar in India where he was actively serving in the mission field himself, she was moved to meet him personally following his presentation. Her own church had recently covenanted for salary support of yet another United Methodist mission couple serving in India, and Rench promised to pray that he would find the right 30 people to take part in the seminar which was planned for the following year.

“Why don’t you go?” was the response she received when she expressed her pledge to be in prayer for the project. Rench remembered how she put her reservations into words. “I’m not qualified…..I have no talent or skill… I have no money.” The money was a big hurdle, as the Renches had just finished putting their three sons through college, all three at the same time.

“You’re going to go. I want you to go,” Sommers replied. “You’re the kind of person this was planned for. I will pray about it.”

Rench agreed to pray about the possibility of attending this event herself.

She went home with a new fire burning in her heart. After a search of resources in her local church and district, she discovered that there were no scholarships available to support her in this endeavor. About the same time, another member of her local church, Joan Melzow, aware of Rench’s determination to attend the five week long seminar in India, contacted her with some exciting news. Melzow said that while she was attending an executive committee meeting of the United Methodist Women at Owosso First UMC, a decision had been made to direct $500 in their scholarship fund to support Rench’s participation in that seminar, known as “Journey of Understanding”.

With the financial support of this scholarship, Rench was able to attend the seminar. During those five weeks in India, Rench learned about the history and culture of India, about its early political structure of kingdoms, its status as a former British colony, its caste system and culture of many faiths, only two percent of the faiths Christian. She also experienced what would prove to be a highlight in her life, spending a day with Mother Teresa.

“This opportunity changed me completely,” Rench later observed about her participation in the seminar.

She would come back home to serve as secretary for eight years of the Detroit Conference Board of Global Missions, and to become Director of Global Ministries for the United Methodist Church for another eight years. Through this latter role, as her family and church friends would recall, she visited many third world countries in order to observe firsthand the needs around the world and the help being supplied through United Methodist programs. She also communicated directly with many missionaries. Locally, she continued in her home church as chair of Missions, a position she filled for over 30 years.

During her last 20 years of active mission work in what was then the Flint District of the Detroit Conference, she organized and chaired the Liberia /Haiti Covenant Committee. She also was instrumental in leading the district to raise over $100,000 for a special year of mission emphasis. The Liberia and Haiti mission outreach will continue in the Michigan area as the Detroit and West Michigan conferences merge, a direction currently underway. She also organized numerous Volunteers in Missions trips.

During her lifetime, she visited all 50 states in addition to 50 countries.

It was this collection of experiences that fueled her passion and drive as she advocated within her local church and around the Detroit Conference for support of missions in the United Methodist Church.

She once observed, “God chooses unqualified people to reach out with His love and serve the least of these….”

Rench left her passion for mission in the hands of others in her beloved church family in March of 2017 when she was called home to be present with the Lord she served so diligently throughout her life.

Yu, Dora (Yu Cidu) (1873-1931) 

Chinese Evangelist And Missionary To Korea

Dora Yu is one of the earliest preachers to have cut financial support from the West and completely “lived by faith.” She founded the Bible Study and Prayer House, which later became Jiangwan Bible School in Shanghai, as well as winter and summer Bible Study classes, and trained many qualified preachers for the Chinese church. The results of her spiritual fruit played an important role in the twentieth century Chinese church revival movement. In one of her revival meetings in Fuzhou, Watchman Nee, hearing her messages, became a reborn Christian and fully dedicated himself to serve God.

Dora Yu was a native of Zhejiang whose paternal grandfather, a devout disciple of Confucius and Mencius, was a rich, prestigious squire. Her father, originally a surgeon, served in the army of Qing Dynasty as a military doctor until he was taken captive by the Taiping Rebellions wherein he stayed to heal the sick. After the demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, her father abandoned medicine and entered a seminary in Hangzhou, subsequently becoming a pastor of the Presbyterian Church, established by the American missionaries.. Dora Yu later recalled, “Thank God, for it was His doing that I was born and brought up in a Christian household.” Her father’s love had a great impact on her life, fostering her charitable and humble character. She was kindhearted, especially towards the elderly, and had a heart for the weak and poor. She was solemn and plain, humble and honest, and despite being derided as unsophisticated, she felt that she was simply a fragile earthen vessel, believing that God would fill her with the Holy Spirit and give her great power.

Dora Yu was born in 1873 at the American Presbyterian Mission compound while her father was still a preacher in training. When she was two and a half years old, her father was sent to a village near Hangzhou as a pastor, but he was shortly transferred back to church ministry within Hangzhou. When Dora was five years old, she began to study at the Presbyterian Day School for Children with her elder sister. From that time on, she began learning to pray and approach God with a simple faith. Some time later whilst giving her testimony, she recalled, “ever since I can remember, I prayed every day to God, rarely forgetting. For me, Christ was a really personal God. My sister was often afraid of the dark at night, but I said to myself, ‘Since Jesus is with me, why be afraid?’”

In 1888, when Dora was fifteen years old, she left home to attend medical school in Suzhou, during which time she was known as Yu Lingzhi. Within two years time, her parents died of illness. While at medical school, she also experienced the pain of spiritual struggle. During events that transpired in 1895, she felt a strong sense of conviction, saying, “…I feel in my soul this horrible feeling that I couldn’t tell others; I believe that I am one convicted by God, that I seem to be standing at the edge of hell and may be pushed in at any time.” Whether day or night, when she was alone, she wept loudly, pleading for God’s mercy, but the feeling of guilt lingered. This feeling troubled her for more than two weeks, causing her extreme pain, to the point of near spiritual collapse. Finally, after thorough repentance, her soul was completely opened to God, “until one night after two weeks, just before the lights were put out, God suddenly opened the heavens to me and I was filled with the love of God Himself.” She cried out to the Lord, saying, “Oh Lord, is this your love? It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced! …at that time, although I didn’t hear God tell me that he had already forgiven all of my sins, I still felt his love fill my heart in that way. Those old feelings of conviction and fear suddenly disappeared without a trace.” So she knelt on the ground and, giving thanks to the Lord, was unable to utter anything else but to say, “Human words cannot express the joy and gratitude that fill my heart.” The next day, she writes, “it seems that the face of the whole world has changed; even the sun shines more brightly.” For the next year and a half, she lived in a state of heavenly joy.

Dora Yu studied at medical school for eight years, after which in 1896 she and another female student Shi Fumei became the first female graduates of the school of medicine. She was 23 years old. After graduating, she stayed at the Suzhou (Soochow) Women’s Medical School, working in women and children’s health services and sometimes being invited to preach at a girls’ school run by the American Methodist Episcopal mission.

In 1892, Dora Yu became engaged, but due to her temperament and faith and for the sake of her ministry, the engagement was annulled and thereafter she never married. She was assiduous in her faith, lived strictly, and pursued a godly, holy Christian life.

Dora Yu was one of China’s first cross-cultural missionaries. As early as October of 1897, she accompanied Mrs. Josephine P. Campbell of the American Southern Methodist Episcopal Church’s “Women Overseas Evangelism” as a missionary to Korea. During Yu’s time in medical school, Mrs. Campbell tended profoundly to the spirituality and livelihood of Dora Yu, and the two became like mother and daughter. In Seoul, she and Mrs. Campbell practiced medicine and preached the gospel to the local women, working fruitfully. In April of 1899, for health reasons, Dora Yu returned to China for medical treatment, eventually being healed of her illness through prayer. In January of 1900, she returned to Seoul in order to continue her educational, medical and evangelical work as a missionary. Due to the increase in church attendance, she and Mrs. Campbell’s daily workload increased threefold. Dora Yu helped Mrs. Campbell to found Barwha Girls’ School and in spring of 1901, they established the Louisa Walker Chapel, where Dora served as the primary preacher for a year and a half. Enduring such taxing labor took its toll on her body, and at the urging of the Holy Spirit, she was led to return to China in October of 1903.

At that time, the Chinese church was experiencing wave after wave of revival. After returning, Dora Yu spent the first four years working only in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang in revival evangelism. In 1904, Dora Yu gave up practicing medicine and devoted herself to full-time ministry, becoming the first twentieth-century missionary in the Chinese church to cut funding from the West and live as an evangelist relying completely on faith. After a Spirit-filled experience in winter of 1907, she threw herself into the tides of revival. She called the year of 1908 the new phase of her calling from God as her travelled for evangelism throughout the southern provinces. In May of 1909, she published one of the earliest hymn books of the Chinese church, entitled A Hymn Book for Revival and Evangelistic Meetings. In the late 1910s, the situation of the revival movement developed such that it is often said that “the North had Ding Limei and the South had Dora Yu.”

Dora Yu was a messenger of God’s work of revival, well aware of the importance of spiritual gifts, but her focus on “the life of God” surpassed her focus on “God’s gifts.” She said, “We must use the various gifts of the Holy Spirit to serve God, but if a gift isn’t under the control of the life of love of Jesus Christ, it can become a dangerous thing. Many people overemphasize spiritual gifts, causing the loss of the function of their work as being service to God, like a ship run aground.”

Dora Yu’s abilities in preaching and service were born of a desire to pursue union with Him who is the head, that is, Christ. Her goal was to live continually in the presence of God, so that, as she wrote, God would “purify my thoughts and words,” so as to maintain “consistency between my life before God and my life before people.” In prayer she asked God to: “1) keep me living in the heavenly realm; 2) keep me dead to sin and alive in God; 3) give me a spirit of obedience and childlike compliance with God’s will; 4) possess my life and prompt me to take into account the needs of others; 5) soak me with his love, so that I might be like God in my love towards others; 6) help me see the things of this world from God’s point of view and always watchfully await the return of the Lord of glory.” Dora Yu often guided believers in the perspective that a Christian should not only deal with past sins committed, but should daily overcome everyday sins. Although she was a powerful evangelist, she would humbly and honestly say, “although I am still very naive in many ways, and ignorant as well, yet God has nonetheless used my feeble witness to bless His people.”

In 1909, Dora Yu saw the growing needs of the church and, by her own fundraising, founded in Shanghai the “Bible Study and Prayer House,” a Bible school which was characterized by a curriculum built on the foundation of the Bible and prayer. The school was finished in 1916 and was officially renamed the Jiangwan Bible School. In 1923, to meet the needs of worship gatherings, “Bethlehem Hall” was completed within the school campus, at which the famed revivalist evangelist, Jonathan Goforth, presented and delivered a speech in person. In addition, Dora Yu also started Bible Study classes in the summer and winter. Dora Yu’s education and training in ministry increased the strength of many churches, but also prepared many leaders for the Chinese church, especially considering the general lack of qualified female preachers. In December of 1910, she participated in the first conference of the national evangelism association held in Hankou, making the keynote speech on women’s work.

Dora Yu continued to be invited to lead revivals in various regions of the country: in Suzhou in 1911 and in Ningbo in 1912 and 1913. In 1919, Dora Yu and a well-known female missionary Ruth Paxon joined the China Domestic Mission. Their common pursuits and ministry knit them close together. In 1920, Dora Yu went to Fuzhou for two months to start revivals there and was met with great success. It was at these revival meetings that Watchman Nee’s mother Lin Heping (Peace Lin) was born again. Shortly thereafter, a seventeen-year-old Watchman Nee also heard Dora Yu’s messages, resulting in his dedicating his life completely to Christ and attending her Bible school in Shanghai. It could be said that without Dora Yu, there would be no Watchman Nee. In addition to Nee’s mother, Dora Yu also had a spiritual impact on brothers Wang Zai and Wang Zhi and many young people. In 1924, an American missionary, Mrs. Henry Woods, set up a multi-church joint committee of church leaders to launch a “Global Revival Prayer Movement,” in which Dora Yu was one of the only Chinese participants. During the great Shanghai church revival of 1925, Dora Yu and Wang Zai worked together, stirring up revival in churches that had been lukewarm for many years; hundreds of people in the revival meetings burst into tears and repented. Furthermore, more than 50 young believers decided to devote their lives to mission work, including Chinese and foreign ministers and church leaders, such as Ji Zhiwen (Andrew Gih), Zhou Zhiyu, Lan Ruxi, Shi Meiyu (Mary Stone), Jennie V. Hughes, Zhao Shiguang and others.

In 1927, Dora Yu was invited to England to attend the famous Keswick Convention and serve as the main speaker. Since the Keswick Convention was committed to the pursuit of a Christian life of holiness and sanctification, to the promotion of a global missionary movement, and the restoration of the unity of the Body of Christ, it was regarded as a symbol of the universal church’s pursuit of the highest spiritual life. Dora Yu appealed to the congregation to be wary of the dangers of liberal theology, also calling on the Western church to stop sending missionaries preaching liberal theology to China. Her speech was published in the prestigious English church journal China’s Missions and The Christian. Through long-term cooperation in ministry, she also established a close relationship with the China Inland Mission (CIM). Dora Yu left England in 1929 and returned to Shanghai via the United States.

Many years of travel and toil overworked Dora Yu such that in her later years she was unable to bear much work. In the spring of 1931, when the torch was passed from her hand to China’s new generation of missionaries, Dora Yu was finally freed from many years of disease, finding permanent rest in Shanghai. Through her faith, though she died, she still speaks (cf. Hebrews 11:4). At Dora Yu’s memorial service, Hu Yunlin, a female evangelist of the ‘thirties and ‘forties, moved by Dora Yu’s life and story, dedicated her whole life to the Lord.

By Yading Li, Senior Associate, Global China Center; Chinese Editor, Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.

Translated by Conner McCarthy. Conner McCarthy is a translator for BDCC project. He received a B.A. in Music and East Asian Studies from the University of Virginia in 2014. He is currently a member of the 2014 Trinity Fellows program at Trinity Presbyterian Church.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/y/yu-dora.php

Sources:

Wu Xiuliang, Yu Cidu: A Twentieth Century Chinese Church Revival Pioneer. Pishon Publishing House, 2001.

Yu, Dora, God’s Dealings with Dora Yu. A Chinese Messenger of the Cross. Shanghai: Mission Book Co., 1916.

Songsan (Zs Zia) (1900-1989)

Methodist Pastor In Turbulent Times

Born in Yin County (near Ningbo, Zhejiang Province) in 1900, Xie grew up in a Presbyterian family. He graduated in law from Soochow University in 1924 and then studied in the United States, being ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in New York in 1927. After his return to China in 1928, Xie taught at Soochow University and subsequently worked in the education department of the Methodist Church. His office was moved to Moore Memorial Church following the outbreak of war against Japan in 1937. In 1941, after Jiang Changchuan was elected Bishop and moved to Beijing, Xie took over as pastor-in-charge at MMC, then the largest Protestant church in China. At that time, his wife ran the primary school attached to the church and there were many other social programs, such as evening classes, health clinics and youth groups.

Most of the institutional work at the church at that time was run by the American missionaries, Sid Anderson and Lucy Webb. The Japanese marched into MMC within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbour, taking the building over and using it as the headquarters of their military police. The Americans had to keep a very low profile from then on and were eventually interned in 1943. Xie was now left in charge, with no building to operate from and no foreign missionary board to help. Using his connections with the YMCA, he organised to use their premises to hold services and evening classes. He arranged for many of the staff to seek temporary work elsewhere. Those who did stay on had to be paid in rice, which had been purchased prior to Pearl Harbor.

Following the surrender of the Japanese in 1945, Xie again played a lead role in negotiations to re-open the church, and took charge of activities until the return of the American missionaries the following year. Xie went back to study again in the United States, between February 1948 and April 1949.

When the missionaries were forced to leave in 1950, Xie was sad to see them go and he and his wife came to the railway station to farewell them. Former MMC pastor and now Bishop Jiang Changchuan chose to embrace the new regime, participating in major political campaigns and accepting positions of national leadership. Xie Songsan, a much quieter man who preferred to stay out of politics, chose to retreat from the new regime and try to let things run their course, attempting whenever possible to keep the ordinary parishioners out of harm’s way. Sensing the political trends, he moved quickly to dismantle the church’s educational and social work. When told to urge his congregation to sign the “Christian Manifesto,” he simply sent in a list of names, a tactic also used by Watchman Nee, perhaps not co-incidentally.

Xie was not one of the original forty signatories to the “Christian Manifesto” and did not play a role on the national stage in the same way that Jiang Changchuan did; nonetheless, he still took part in the accusation movement in 1951, speaking out against the American missionaries that had formerly been his colleagues and friends. He attended the conference held in Beijing in April 1951 to deal with institutions that had previously received American funding, sharing a room with Shen Derong, Qi Qingcai, Watchman Nee and several others. The bedtime discussion must have been fascinating, with roommates from such diverse theological backgrounds! He signed the declaration from that meeting and was also one of five people who later spoke out against the evangelist Gu Ren’en, accusing him of raping his daughter.

After the introduction of “united worship” in 1958, Xie increasingly took a back seat, as he was seen by the authorities as not sufficiently “progressive” in his thinking. Sent into semi-retirement, he was made a member of the historical materials division, headed by Anglican Bishop Zheng Jianye. Until his death in August 1958, Jiang Changchuan had preached most weeks at MMC. After that, Sun Yanli took charge of organizing the weekly schedule for the district, leaving Xie in the background.

A large group of Red Guards arrived at MMC on August 23, 1966. According to Xie, “These people smashed the church! All the windows! They burned all the books! They burned the cross! They smashed our Hammond electric organ!” Xie himself was beaten and placed under house arrest, confined within the church building. Because of his study in the United States and his close connections with the American missionaries, they accused him of being a foreign spy. He steadfastly refused to renounce his faith. After almost three weeks of constant interrogation and more than the occasional beating with belts and whips, he was allowed to go home, but was later imprisoned for two years. The Red Guards came five times to ransack his house. They dug holes in the floor to see if anything was hidden, took away Bibles and anything at all written in English, even harmless propaganda such as Beijing Review. He was treated more harshly than the younger ministers and remained “under the supervision of the masses” with very low pay for a number of years. The family had to sell off their few remaining possessions to survive.

When MMC was finally re-opened, on September 2, 1979, Xie came out of retirement, offering the welcome and reciting the benediction at the very first service. The invocation stated: “The Lord has re-opened this holy Church, bringing together sons and daughters that have been dispersed. The Lord heals the distressed, binding their wounds.” Although advanced in years, he continued to attend services throughout the 1980s, assisting with the visits of distinguished guests from abroad, such as Archbishop Robert Runcie (December 1981) and the Reverend Billy Graham (April 24, 1988). Xie passed away quietly in 1989, survived by his wife, two sons and numerous grandchildren.

By John Craig Keating. He holds a Master’s degree in Chinese Studies and a PhD in Chinese History. He has recently published A Protestant Church in Communist China (Bethlehem PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012), a case study of Moore Memorial Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in China. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and four daughters.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/x/xie-songsan.php

Sources:

Unpublished

Oral interviews with Xie Chongguang and Gao Tianyu in Shanghai (son and daughter-in-law of Xie Songsan), 2002, 2004, 2006.

Huangpu District China Christian Council, Muentang gaikuang [The general situation at MMC], unpublished manuscript, Shanghai, 1994.

Peng, Shengyong, Yuan Moertang shilue [A history of the original Moore Memorial Church], unpublished manuscript, Shanghai, 1950.

Xie, Songsan, Moertang shilue [A summary of the history of Moore Memorial Church], unpublished manuscript, Shanghai, 1950.

Published

Edwards, Mike, “China’s Born Again Giant”, National Geographic, July 1980, p.33.

Patterson, George N, Christianity in Communist China, London: Word Books, 1969.

Keating, John Craig William, A Protestant Church in Communist China, Bethlehem PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012.

Woolston, Buelah (1828-1886) and Sarah (?? – 1910) 

Pioneering Female Missionary Teachers In China

The Woolston sisters graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Wilmington, Delaware, and became teachers. Answering an appeal from the mission board of the Methodist Episcopal Church to begin “woman’s work” in China, they sailed for Foochow (Fuzhou) in 1858.

They were supported by the Ladies’ China Missionary Society of Baltimore, founded in 1848 as one of the earliest women’s missionary societies in America. The Woolstons in 1859 founded a girls’ boarding school in Foochow to train teachers. Known as Uk Ing, the school continued through the Nationalist period, graduating many physicians, teachers, and pastors’ wives. In 1871 the Ladies’ China Society merged into the Methodist Episcopal Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society and the Woolstons became its first missionaries.

After their furlough, they led other single women missionaries to China. They itinerated and supervised day schools in the country and edited the Child’s Illustrated Paper in Chinese. In 1877 the Woolstons attended the Shanghai Missionary Conference, where Sarah’s paper “Feet Binding” was read and the women missionaries resolved that missionaries should discourage the practice. They resigned from the mission in 1883 because they opposed the introduction of English and the Chinese classics into the curriculum of the boarding school. The Woolstons believed that learning English would render the pupils unfit for return to village life as mothers and day-school teachers. The Woolston sisters returned to the United States for their final years.

By Dana L. Robert, Professor of International Mission, Boston University School of Theology, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of The Gale Group; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved. It is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/w/woolston-beulah-and-sarah-h.php

Sources:

The Woolstons contributed articles to Heathen Woman’s Friend.

A sketch of Beulah Woolston appears in Eminent Missionary Women by Annie Ryder Gracey (1898).

See also Frances Baker, The Story of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869-1895 (1896, 1987).

Webb, Lucy Jim (1895-1987) 

Missionary Youth Worker In Shanghai

Lucy Jim Webb was born on July 15, 1895 in Forsyth, Georgia, one of six children born to Thomas and Sarah Webb. Her parents were small town shopkeepers and devout Christians. She studied at LaGrange and Scarritt College, graduating in 1922. She worked first as an assistant principal of a high school in Florida and then YWCA secretary in Chattanooga, but longed for the challenge of a “hard piece of work where I was needed.” Having made friends with a Chinese girl named Katherine Woo at LaGrange, China seemed like a very apt choice to her.

Arriving in Shanghai in August 1922, she was sent to study the Chinese language in Suzhou (Soochow). Posted to Moore Memorial Church (MMC) Shanghai in 1923, she worked there until 1950, mainly taking charge of young adult work. In 1937, she received a citation from Chiang Kai-shek for her relief work among refugees during the Sino-Japanese War. According to her report to the China Conference in January 1940, a total of $18,300.91 had been spent during the past year on relief work. She was also instrumental in the founding of the nursery school and the Social Service Unit of the Women’s Club at MMC, as well as the establishment of an annual health day and baby contest.

Miss Webb’s greatest achievement was the founding of the Wesleyan Youth Fellowship on February 25, 1940. After a few years, this group was so successful that she was asked to prepare a handbook on young adult organization, for distribution to other churches. The income of this group for 1946 amounted to almost three million Chinese dollars.

Interned by the Japanese at a camp in Zhabei (Chapei) in February 1943, Lucy Jim was repatriated to the United States in September that year. As soon as the war was over, she was anxious to return to China. She secured a place on the Marine Lynx, which carried 408 missionaries from 29 denominations and was the largest number of missionaries ever to sail from America at one time, arriving in Shanghai on December 31, 1946.

Miss Webb generously brought back clothes for the entire church staff and tried to carry on as before, but life was difficult in the dying days of the KMT regime. Moore Memorial Church was at the forefront of refugee and humanitarian work, but inflation made it virtually impossible to fund their many programs. Lucy Jim wrote that they suffered from “one part frustration, one part inflation, and two parts speculation, shaken well together, the end result being Shanghailation.”

After the communist “liberation” of Shanghai on May 25, 1949, Miss Webb attempted to carry on the work of the church, shifting some activities to her own home, before eventually being forced to leave on August 21, 1950. In the 1950s, she worked in San Francisco, but found the work beyond her emotional and physical strength and, after some wrangling with the church authorities, was granted a pension in 1954. Retiring to Brooks Howell Home in Asheville, North Carolina in 1965, she passed away on March 3, 1987.

Miss Webb work tirelessly for the cause of Christianity in China and was a great believer in devolution. She concluded her memoirs with this statement: “Christian seeds have been sown in China. They were well-tended, and in this century we have been permitted to see the plants mature and bear vigorous fruit. The greatest wish for China is that there might grow up in that land a truly indigenous church with sure foundations laid on the strength of God but giant roots sunk deep down into the native soil.”

By John Craig Keating. He holds a Master’s degree in Chinese Studies and a PhD in Chinese History. He has recently published A Protestant Church in Communist China (Bethlehem PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012), a case study of Moore Memorial Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in China. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and four daughters.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/w/webb-lucy-jim.php

Sources:

Unpublished

Webb, Lucy Jim, My Chinese tapestry, unpublished memoirs, Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville NC, 1977.

Xie, Songsan, Moertang shilue [A summary of the history of Moore Memorial Church], unpublished manuscript, Shanghai, 1950.

Published

Baker, Richard Terrill, Ten Thousand Years: The Story of Methodism’s First Century in China, New York: Board of Missions of the Methodist Church, 1947.

Keating, John Craig William, A Protestant Church in Communist China, Bethlehem PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012.

Wang, Liming (1896-1970) 

WCTU Leader And Social Reformer

Wang Liming (also known as Liu-Wang Liming) was the leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in China for over thirty years and one of the nation’s leading female social reformers of the Republican period. She was born on the first day of January 1896 in Taihu county of Anhui Province. Her father, Wang Langzhong, was a Chinese doctor from a long line of locally renowned physicians, but sadly he passed away when Wang was only nine years old, reducing the family to poverty. This tragic development was followed by a stroke of good fortune the following year when American missionaries who had recently founded Taihu Gospel Church decided to open a free girls’ school called Chengmei nüxue (Become Beautiful Girls’ School). Wang’s mother, despite her Confucian outlook, decided to send her daughter to the school, opening up a whole new path for her.

Wang Liming was shaped in powerful ways by her mission school education. For one thing, she became a Christian, though there is no clear record of exactly how this happened. As a result of what she learned there, she refused to have her feet bound any longer. In addition, Wang developed strong convictions about the value of women and a desire to improve their position in Chinese society. As an exceptional student, Wang qualified for a scholarship to continue her education at Ruli Academy, a Methodist girls’ high school in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. At one point, a guest speaker representing the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union—a women’s group started in the United States in 1874 and devoted to protecting the family against alcohol and tobacco abuse—addressed the students on the threat of opium to Chinese society. Wang and other students were so moved by the speaker that they decided to form a student chapter of the WCTU. Wang, because of her leadership abilities and upright character, was chosen to head the group, and thus her lifelong tie with the WCTU was born.

Wang Liming won a scholarship from the organization to attend Northwestern University in Chicago at a time when there were almost no opportunities for women in China to gain a university education. From 1916 to 1920, Wang earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in biology. During this time, she also became engaged to Liu Zhan’en, a Chinese Christian who was studying for a master’s degree in education at the University of Chicago. In 1920, Wang returned to China, where she turned down many lucrative job offers in order to continue her work with the WCTU. Liu Zhan’en stayed to complete a Ph.D. in education at Columbia University under renowned educator John Dewey and then returned to China to work with the YMCA. Liu and Wang were married on 1 September 1922.

Wang started a student division of the fledgling WCTU and for two years traveled all across China to challenge both women and men to embrace temperance. Of the more than 100,000 people she addressed, ten thousand signed temperance pledges and she increased the number of student members from two thousand to five thousand. When the WCTU formed a new national structure in 1922 to unite its disparate local chapters, Wang was chosen head of youth work, while the American-trained physician Shi Meiyu was president. Then in 1925, Shi Meiyu resigned, along with her main associates, as part of a larger philosophical and generational shift in the WCTU. Wang was chosen to lead the restructured WCTU with a broader vision. Instead of focusing only on fighting against the vices of alcohol, opium, tobacco and gambling, the group adopted as its slogan “promoting the blessing of the family” and made issues such as poverty and illiteracy part of its enlarged mission. By the late 1920s, the WCTU had expanded to well over ten thousand members, making it the largest Christian women’s organization in China during the Republican period, and second in influence only to the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Wang’s marriage to Liu Zhan’en was a strong one. Despite her many responsibilities with the WCTU, she raised three children with Liu—a son named Guangsheng born in 1924, a second son named Guanghua in 1926, and a daughter named Guangkun in 1928. Wang found great enjoyment in motherhood, though often not easy to balance with other duties. She credited the support of her husband with making it possible to be so actively involved in women’s causes while still having a family. Wang also had a very close relationship with her mother-in-law, who lived with the family from 1923 until her death in 1926.

Wang’s work with the WCTU sought practical reforms of Chinese society, advocating monogamy and strongly opposing the practices of polygamy and prostitution. She rejected the Chinese tradition of arranged marriage as a source of many broken marriages, believing that young people should be free to marry the person of their choice, with guidance from their families. Wang argued for the adoption of a nuclear family structure on the grounds that it would reduce the constant conflict associated with the Chinese extended family structure. Finally, while she believed that women should make family their priority, she also encouraged them to work outside the home.

Under Wang’s leadership, the WCTU became a powerful force for building civil society in China during the 1920s and 1930s. A network of local chapters conducted temperance activities, with occasional large-scale activities such as a three-day anti-smoking campaign in the city of Ningbo in 1923 that involved parades, open-air lectures, and public rallies, all conducted by women. The founding of the Settlement House in Shanghai in 1924 was a pioneering effort to tackle the problem of begging in the city by providing shelter and training in basic skills to poor women and children.

Wang Liming was also an important leader in the general women’s suffrage movement in China. In 1922, she joined the Women’s Suffrage Association (WSA), which sought to have women’s rights enshrined in the nation’s new constitution, then under discussion. Later, she turned the WSA’s Shanghai branch into the Chinese Women’s Suffrage Association, one of the women’s groups responsible for getting the equality of men and women written into the Tutelary Constitution adopted by the Nationalist Party in 1930.

Together with her husband Liu Zhan’en, Wang Liming was active in leading resistance to Japanese aggression. She helped to organize the Women’s National Salvation Alliance after Japan annexed Manchuria in 1931, and along with Liu signed a public proclamation rejecting Japanese demands on China as part of the December Ninth protests of 1935. After Japan invaded in 1937, Liu and Wang continued their efforts, working out of the International Settlement in Shanghai, which was still under the control of the Western powers. As one of the leading anti-Japanese intellectuals, Liu was a major target of the Japanese, and in 1938, to Wang’s great grief, he was assassinated.

Wang fled with her three children to the wartime capital of Chongqing and continued her activities with the WCTU, though on a much smaller scale, starting a childcare center and orphanage. She was also appointed one of the few female members of the People’s Political Council (PPC), a quasi-democratic consultative body founded by the Nationalists to promote public support for the war effort. Wang helped get a guarantee written into the Double Fifth Constitution (adopted after the war) that women would have at least ten percent of the seats in the National Assembly. She was very critical of the Nationalist war strategy, however, so much so that she was expelled from the PPC in 1943. She joined the Chinese Democratic League, a political party favoring democracy and socialism.

When the war ended in 1945, Wang moved back to Shanghai to continue her work with the WCTU and CDL, but had to flee to Hong Kong during the civil war. After the Communists took control in 1949, Wang returned to China and was appointed to high posts in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) and the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF). But rather than get heavily involved in politics, she continued to make the WCTU her main focus. This state of affairs continued until 1957, when during the Anti-Rightist movement, Wang was attacked for refusing to criticize two of Mao Zedong’s main targets. She was removed from all her posts.

In 1966, while Wang was staying with her daughter in Shanghai, the Cultural Revolution broke out. On 1 September, Wang was arrested as a spy of the CIA. The “evidence” consisted of letters she wrote to her “Rightist” son when he was in labor camp and also a typewriter alleged to be a secret transmitter. As she was taken away, Wang said to her daughter in English, “I am carrying the cross of Jesus Christ.” Her family never saw her again. After three years and eight months of suffering in a labor camp, she died on 15 April 1970.

In 1980, a memorial service was held for Wang that was organized by the CPPCC, CDL, and AWCF and which recognized her as a patriot. She was also given a Beijing burial plot in Babaoshan, a cemetery reserved for important leaders. Since the family had never received any of Wang’s possessions, or even her ashes, the only thing they could put in the tomb was a comb that Wang had left behind at her daughter’s home.

Wang Liming was a woman of courage whose Christian convictions led her to devote her life to improving the lot of women and the weak in Chinese society. She did this with great effectiveness as leader of the WCTU and in cooperation with other organizations. That she was able to do so much and still raise a family of three testifies not only to her abilities, but also her commitment to family and motherhood. The sacrifices she made to serve were significant, from giving up lucrative career options to her constant toil to the loss of her husband. In the end, her unjust and tragic death highlights even more the honorable reality of a life well lived.

By John Barwick, Ph.D., Research Associate with Global China Center and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/w/wang-liming.php

Sources:

John Barwick, “Wang Liming: Promoting a Protestant Vision of the Modern Chinese Woman,” in Carol Lee Hamrin with Stacey Bieler, eds. Salt and Light 3: More Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 136 – 157.

Sun, Yanli (Henry Sun) (1914-1995) 

Methodist Pastor And Three-Self Patriotic Movement Bishop

Sun Yanli (Henry Sun) was a minister in the Methodist tradition. He worked at Moore Memorial Church (MMC) in Shanghai from 1947 to 1995 and was pastor-in-charge between 1958 and 1989. In June 1988, he was made one of two new Bishops in the Chinese church, the first to be consecrated since the beginning of “united worship” in 1958.

Sun was born in Changzhou in 1914. In 1934, he entered the Nanjing Jinling Theological Seminary, but did not formally graduate until ten years later, due to the disruption of the war. He was ordained in Sichuan in 1941, working at the church on Shaanxi Road in Chengdu. Arriving in Shanghai in 1945, he became involved in the so-called “student church” at the Community Church, together with future leaders of the TSPM (Three Self Patriotic Movement), such as Ding Guangxun, Luo Guanzong and Yin Xiang.

Sun first arrived to work at MMC in 1947, as a young assistant pastor, taking over much of the youth work previously run by American missionary Mary Ellen Hawk. He was active in the Wesleyan Youth Fellowship, founded by another American, Miss Lucy Jim Webb. After his first wife, Yuan Hongxiu (a doctor) passed away in childbirth, Sun married a parishioner from MMC that he met through the Fellowship, Ye Xuqin (1920-1997). The ceremony took place at MMC on June 24, 1950, with Sid and Olive Anderson present, just before they left for Hong Kong.

After the departure of all of the American missionaries, Xie Songsan was left in charge of the church, with Sun Yanli as his assistant. Sun was not one of the original forty signatories to the “Christian Manifesto” but his name was listed among the first 1527 published in the People’s Daily on September 23, 1950. During the 1950s, he gradually made his way up the ladder, gaining positions such as assistant secretary of the Shanghai TSPM. By 1958 Xie Songsan had fallen out of favour and Sun was placed in charge of the United Worship Committee for the Huangpu District. He was responsible for drawing up the weekly schedule of sermons for the four churches left open in the district, with Yu Mingjian from the Anglican Church acting as his deputy. In 1959, the Sun family moved to live inside the actual building at Moore Memorial Church, remaining there until the closure of the church in 1966.

On August 23, 1966, a large group of Red Guards arrived at MMC. Sun and his family were confined within the building for just under three weeks, suffering constant interrogation, as well as beatings with whips and belts. Once they were allowed to leave the church, Sun and his family moved to a small apartment near Xinzha Road. The Red Guards shaved his head and made him report to “work” every day at the church, sweeping and cleaning. Later, he was given a menial job at a cardboard carton factory, alongside other ministers and people from Catholic and Buddhist backgrounds.

When MMC was the first church in Shanghai to be re-opened, on September 2, 1979, Sun presided over the first service, attended by an estimated two thousand people. At the conclusion of the service, he announced to the emotionally charged congregation that, because the attendance was so good, another service would be held the following week and a second church would also be re-opened soon in the city. It was the beginning of the re-birth of the official church in China.

As he did in the 1950s, Sun once again accumulated a number of titles. He was made Chairman of the Huangpu District First Protestant Congress in July 1981 and again for its second meeting in December 1986. He was made President of the East China Theological Seminary when it re-opened on September 11, 1985 and was chosen to lead the closing service at the Fourth National Christian Conference in Beijing in August 1986. On June 26, 1988, in Moore Memorial Church, Sun Yanli and Shen Yifan (from the nearby Community Church) were both consecrated as bishops, the only two to be chosen since the early 1950s.

Sun took part in a number of delegations, visiting countries such as Australia, the United States and Malta. During the student protest movement of 1989, Sun, together with Cao Shengjie and other church leaders in Shanghai, sent a letter to the Chairman of the National people’s Congress, Wan Li, urging restraint, but generally he avoided speaking out, choosing to work with the communist authorities, rather than against them.

Sun Yanli’s greatest contribution to church life in China was in the musical area. Together with Shi Qigui (another pastor at MMC), he was a key member of the committee that produced a new hymnal in the early 1980s. As far back as 1949, he wrote a Chinese translation for the German hymn “Gelobt sei Gott” by Melchior Vulpius. Some of his hymns reflect Chinese culture and its sense of community. For example, in 1982, he wrote the words and melody to Jinglao Zunzhangge (“Honour the Elderly”). Others follow more standard religious themes, such as Song Zhu Shengyinge (“Thank you Lord, for Voice to Praise”) and Shenghuo Meihaoge (“Happy is our Life”), both of which he wrote the words for in 1982. Perhaps his most famous work is the unashamedly patriotic hymn he wrote with Shi Qigui in 1981/82, entitled Qiu Zhu Fuyou Zhonghuage (“May God bless China”):

God is pleased with Three-self spirit, Showing we love our homeland and our faith. Beauteous China! Glorious China! How her children love her so. We petition to our Saviour, asking Him to bless China.

One of his sons, Sun Jiandong, lives in Yunnan Province and is a quite well known artist. Two large paintings of his hang in the foyer of MMC, to commemorate his father’s work. Another son, Sun Jiancheng (born 1957), still lives in Shanghai with his family. Sun Yanli passed away quietly on April 4, 1995.

By John Craig Keating. He holds a Master’s degree in Chinese Studies and a PhD in Chinese History. He has recently published A Protestant Church in Communist China (Bethlehem PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012), a case study of Moore Memorial Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in China. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and four daughters.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/s/sun-yanli.php

Sources:

Unpublished

Oral interviews with Sun Jiancheng in Shanghai (son of Sun Yanli), 2006.

Huangpu District China Christian Council, Muentang gaikuang[The general situation at MMC], unpublished manuscript, Shanghai, 1994.

Published

China Christian Council, Zanmeishi [The New Hymnal], Shanghai: China Christian Council, 1999.

Coulson, Gail, The Enduring Church, New York: Friendship Press, 1996.

Keating, John Craig William, A Protestant Church in Communist China, Bethlehem PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012.

Snell, John Abner (Soo E-Sang) (1880-1936) 

Leading Missionary Doctor In China

During his lifetime, John Abner Snell achieved an almost mythic stature. His siblings proudly described themselves as the brothers or sisters of Dr. John Snell, “the famous missionary doctor.”[1] Among his colleagues, he was considered to be “one of the most progressive and capable surgeons of modern times.”[2] Vanderbilt University honored him as “one of its illustrious alumni.”[3] Many of his Chinese patients considered him to be nothing less than a miracle worker.[4]

He was in the prime of his life; he seemed to be indomitable, when fate intervened. He died unexpectedly March 2, 1936 at age 55, of pneumonia—many would say a martyr’s death.

His Beginnings

John Abner Snell was the son of Leonidas Snell and Amy Jarrett. He was likely named for his two grandfathers, John Snell and Abner Jarrett, and represented a unique amalgamation of two very different families. His paternal grandfather, John Snell, emigrated to the United States from Germany around 1836 as a young man. During his exceptionally long life, he hop-scotched across the young nation, from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and finally to central Minnesota. Brief accounts of his life indicate he was a proud, independent man who would rather die than ask for help.[5]

The family of his mother, Amy Jarrett, included early Dutch and English immigrants. Her maternal family settled in the colonies long before the American Revolution and later descendents accompanied Daniel Boone across the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky. A generation later, these ancestors moved on to west-central Indiana. Not much is known of Amy’s father, but he likely was also a strong-willed man: he raised and sold mules to supplement his income as a farmer.

Amy Jarrett grew up near Crawfordsville, Indiana, an early college town known at the time as the “Athens of Indiana.” Her family had strong fundamentalist religious leanings and her uncle was a famous frontier preacher. While she was a teenager, Amy’s family moved from the relatively civilized region near Crawfordsville to McLeod County, Minnesota, then on the edge of the frontier. Amy was quiet and strong—she displayed her strength and determination not in her words, but in actions.[6]

The families of Leonidas Snell and Amy Jarrett were neighbors in McLeod County, Minnesota. The young couple married September 2, 1870 and soon moved to a small settlement near Duluth, Minnesota. John Abner Snell was born in Knife Falls, Minnesota on October 28, 1880, the fifth of eight children. When he was around five, his parents made the long trek from northern Minnesota to central Florida, then a swampy, insect-infested frontier.[7]

John was brought up in a Christian family and received training both at home and at Sunday school. At eleven, he decided to “accept Jesus as my personal savior and join the church.” At fourteen, he later wrote there came into his “life a desire to devote myself to God’s service. It was what I considered a call.”[8]

Education Became the Key

It was John’s mother Amy who insisted her children obtain the best education possible. She felt so strongly about the importance college that she left her husband sometime in the late 1890s and took her boys to Nashville, Tennessee, where college was more readily available.[9]

John completed his undergraduate education at Peabody Normal College in Nashville Tennessee on May 27, 1903.[10] During college, he was active in the Student Volunteer Movement, an organization that promoted foreign missions among the young, educated Protestants. Members were attracted to the movement by a combination of religious fervor and a continuation of the American frontier spirit.

Marriage and Missions

During his junior year at college, John met his future wife, Grace Evelyn Birkett, who was also a student. After completing his undergraduate degree and two years of work, John entered Vanderbilt Medical College in 1905. He and Grace were married on November 1, 1907.[11] In 1908, with graduation approaching, John applied to the Methodist Episcopal Church – South to work in the foreign missions. He must have impressed Walter R. Lambuth, who chaired the selection process and had earlier co-founded Soochow Hospital in 1883.[12] The new doctor was approved and assigned to work at the hospital in Soochow (Suzhou).

Soon after arriving in Soochow, John received his Chinese name, Soo E-sang.[13] While he was still learning the language, Dr. Park, the co-founder of the hospital, left for a one year furlough.[14] When Dr. Park returned, the two doctors divided the hospital duties, with Snell assuming responsibility for surgery and general administration. In 1920, Snell obtained financing from the Rockefeller Foundation for a major expansion to the hospital.

During his many years of practice, Snell earned the respect and admiration of both his patients and colleagues. One story tells of his medical skill and compassion:

A little girl about eleven years old was brought in with tuberculosis of the left hip with discharging sinus. She was an orphan. … No one came to visit her. Dr. Snell … thought her curable and set to work to prove it. Throughout twenty months – 609 hospital days – he labored to save her. He operated three times; he x-rayed her five times; he was so impressed with what a fine sport she was that he came to love her as though she were his own child. Imagine his great joy when he discharged her on December 31, 1930 as cured. [15]

Medical Research

In addition to his regular hospital duties and outside interests, Snell conducted many scientific and public health investigations and was a regular contributor to professional journals. Among his subjects, he assisted in discovering the snail which acts as the intermediate host of oriental blood fluke, a debilitating and sometimes fatal disease.[16] He tested every patient entering the hospital for syphilis and compiled the first accurate information on the prevalence of the disease.[17] He also promoted an anti-tuberculosis campaign.[18]

John Snell’s Legacy

John Snell and his wife Grace had seven children, all born in Suzhou: Lura Evelyn (1910), Dorothy May (1911), John Raymond (1912), Martha Amy (1915), Grace Birkett (1917), Walter Arthur (1920), and Fred Manget (1921). All are now deceased.

During the last few months before his unexpected death, Snell seems to have crystallized his spiritual philosophy. In one of his last letters, he wrote to his children, “You will think your old dad has gone crazy on the subject of LOVE. … But too much emphasis cannot be put on this word.”[19]

Fred Snell, his youngest son, recalled that while he was growing up, he and his father would occasionally visit the country side. “We visited points of interest like Buddhist temples where we were always welcomed and served tea. I would listen to my father talk to the priests and they to him. He was always respectful of their beliefs.”[20]

He wrote to his children that “although Love is the very core of Christ’s teachings, [we Christians] do not yet realize or know the real meaning of the word.” He explained that Love was too abstract to be useful as a concept; it must be “illustrated in concrete terms and examples.” He charged each of his children to find a way to live and work to demonstrate Love.

The death of John Snell came unexpectedly, but in the line of duty. The following tribute describes his last hours:

“On March 2, 1936, Soochow Hospital and the Methodist Mission suffered an irreparable loss in the death of Dr. John A. Snell. On Monday, February 24, he had half a dozen operations scheduled. After the first he had to call for a chair and rest a few minutes. In spite of a temperature of 102, he drove through with the second. The next morning he was removed to the hospital and a fight began for his life, the local doctors calling in their colleagues from Huchow and Chanchow Hospitals of the same mission. But all efforts to save his life were in vain.[21]

Dr. Snell’s death left the community in shock.[22] His family, friends, and colleagues walked around and asked in disbelief, “Is Dr. Snell dead? What will we do? Is Soo E-sang dead? How can that be?”[23]

In 1994, Soochow Hospital celebrated its 110th anniversary. Two of John Snell’s sons, John and Fred, attended the official ceremony as honored guests.

Notes

1. Biography of Maud Snell prepared by her daughter Grace Snell in 1952. The obituary of Leonidas Snell notes that he was the father of “the late John Snell … chief surgeon in the Soochow Hospital.”
2. Comments of Dr. W. G. Gram, general secretary of the Board of Missions, upon hearing of the death of Dr. Snell.
3. “John Abner Snell: 1880-1936,” The Vanderbilt Alumnus, 1936
4. At the time, the Chinese had no equivalent to western surgery. As a result, relatively routine procedures such as appendectomies were viewed as miraculous.
5. Dailey, Dale J., Unpublished biography of “The Original John Snell.”
6. Dailey, Dale J. Jarrett family.
7. Biography of Maud Snell, self published.
8. Snell, John Abner, Letter of January 16, 1908 to W. R. Lambuth applying for missionary work., (Drew University Archive)
9. The exact year is not known, but it was likely around 1898. The 1900 and 1910 Federal Census show Leonidas living by himself in Dade County Florida. 1910 Federal census lists Amy Snell and her twin sons, Robert and Harry, living in Nashville.
10. “John Abner Snell: 1880-1936”.
11. Ibid, p. 10.
12. Walter Russell Lambuth (1854-1921) was born in Shanghai, the son of the founding missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
13. Grace Birkett letter dated March 21, 1909.
14. Ibid.
15. From a March 12, 1931 report of “The Park Memorial Charity Fund.”
16. Meleny, Henry. Tribute to John A. Snell, 1936.
17. Gamble, Sidney David, Á Social Survey Conducted under the Auspices of Princeton University in China, pg 259 cites the work of J. A. Snell of Soochow.
18. Manget, Fred, p. 319 Snell, John letter #1 dated February 16, 1936.
19. Snell, Fred, Chapter 2.
20. The China Christian Advocate, “Dr. John A. Snell of Soochow,” April, 1936, pg 18
21. Many lengthy and appreciative tributes were published in both China and the United States.
22. Snell, Grace, p 71.

By Dale J. Dailey. Dailey is a retired automobile engineer from DeWitt, Michigan who now serves as family historian. Both of his wife’s parents were born and grew up in China, the children of missionaries.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/s/snell-john-abner.php

Sources:

Snell, John A., “Report of Feces Examination of 424 Cases in the Surgical Service of Soochow Hospital,” China Medical Association, Shanghai, 1913.

Snell, John A., “Cholera in Soochow, 1919,” The China Medical Advisor, May, 1920 (Drew University Archive)

Snell, John A. M.D., “Exercise and Health,” The Chinese Recorder, December, 1921. (This article was also published as a separate pamphlet.)

Snell, John A., “A Modern Mission Hospital at Soochow, China,” Modern Hospital, April 1924, Vol. 22, No. 4.

Snell, John A., “Chinese Copper Coins of the Twentieth Century,” The Numismatist, June, 1932.

Snell, John A., An Enquiry into the Present Efficiency of Hospitals in Chine with Special Reference to Recent Growth, China Medical Association, Shanghai, 1934.

Dr. Snell also prepared the annual reports for Soochow Hospital while he served as superintendent.

Shi, Meiyu (Mary Stone) (1873-1954)

One Of The First Chinese Medical Doctors

Shi Meiyu, also known as Mary Stone, a name she adopted while studying in the United States, was born into a Christian family in Jiujiang (Kiukiang), Jiangxi province in 1873. Her father was a Methodist pastor and mother was the principal of a Methodist school for girls. Defying Chinese tradition, her parents refused to bind her feet. She was taught the Chinese classics and Christian literature by her mother. Impressed by the work of American medical missionary Dr. Kate Bushnell, her father, decided that she should become a doctor.

Having graduated from the Rulison-Fish Memorial School under the guidance of Gertrude Howe, an American Methodist from Lansing, Michigan, she left for the United States with Howe in 1892 to study medicine at the University of Michigan. In 1896, she graduated together with her friend, Kang Cheng (Ida Kahn), the first two Chinese women to receive medical degree from an American university. Upon graduation, they returned to China as medical missionaries of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church and set up a one-room hospital in Jiujiang. In the first 10 months, Shi and her associates treated more than 2,300 outpatients and made hundreds house calls, and their hospital was always filled.

During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Shi lost her father, causing both her and Kang Cheng to seek refuge in Japan. They returned in 1901 and, with the support of Dr. Isaac Newton Danforth, opened the Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Hospital, a 95-bed, 15-room hospital. For some 20 years, Shi worked there as superintendent, taking care of patients, training nurses, and promoting public hygiene. Grown up with unbound feet, she was enthusiastic in opposing footbinding. During busy periods, Shi’s hospital was treating around 5,000 patients per month. She supervised the training of more than 500 Chinese nurses and translated training manuals and textbooks for their use. She also supervised a home for cripples and adopted for boys. Even, as she herself underwent surgery in Chicago in 1907, she took this as an opportunity to raise funds for her hospital. A Rockefeller Foundation scholarship enabled her to do postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University from 1918 to 1919. Her sister, Phoebe, also a doctor and a graduate of Johns Hopkins, took charge of the Danforth Hospital in her absence.

Upon her return to China in 1920, Shi severed her ties with the Methodist Board of Missions and moved to Shanghai. She established the Shanghai Bethel Mission with the assistance of Jennie V. Hughes, an American missionary. In less than 10 years, the Bethel Mission had developed a hospital, primary and secondary schools, an evangelistic training department, and an orphanage. She conducted Bible classes for the nurses, intending to produce nurse-evangelists. From 1920 until the Japanese invasion in 1937, Bethel was well known for its training program for nurses. The Japanese invasion forced Bethel members to move inland and to Hong Kong, resulting in new Bethel churches. Shi went to the United States to raise support for the Mission.

Shi was also a prominent evangelist and women’s leader of the Chinese church. She served as a member of the China Continuation Committee of the National Missionary Conference after the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910. She was the first Chinese Christian woman to be ordained in central China. Recognizing the importance of carrying out mission work by the Chinese, she cofounded the Chinese Missionary Society in 1918. This society aimed at supporting and sending Chinese missionaries to work among the Chinese. She was also the first president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in China (1922), an organization committed to fighting alcoholism and the use of opium and cigarettes. In the 1930s, she was one of the organizers who formed the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band. In 1948 the Bethel hospital built a surgery ward in her honor.

Shi spent her last years in Pasadena, California. In 1954, she died at the age of 82.

This article is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/s/shi-meiyu.php

Sources:

Boorman, Howard L., ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Vol. 3 (1970).

Connie Shemo, “Shi Meiyu’s ‘Army of Women’ in Medicine,” Carol Lee Hamrin, ed. with Stacey Bieler, Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, Pickwick Publications, 2008)

Shi’s biography can be found in Margaret Burton, Notable Women of China (1912).

She is the author of “What Chinese Women Have Done and Are Doing for China,” The China Mission Year Book 5 (1914): 239-245.