 Anglican Church in Sichuan | |
|---|---|
Clockwise from upper left: seal of the Diocese of Szechwan; Trinity Church, Langzhong (formerly known as Paoning; first Anglican church built in Sichuan); St John's Cathedral, Langzhong. | |
| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Anglican |
| Scripture | Protestant Bible |
| Theology | Anglican doctrine |
| Polity | Episcopal |
| Bishop of East Szechwan | last: Tsai Fuh-tsu |
| Bishop of West Szechwan | last: Song Cheng-tsi |
| Region | Sichuan and Chongqing |
| Language | Sichuanese, English |
| Headquarters | East Szechwan: Langzhong West Szechwan: Chengdu |
| Founder | William Cassels, James Heywood Horsburgh et al. |
| Origin | 1887 Langzhong, Sichuan, Qing Empire |
| Branched from | Church of England |
| Merged into | Chinese Three-Self Patriotic Church |
| Defunct | 1954 |
| Members | 10,000+ (1926)[1] |
The history of Anglicanism in Sichuan (or "Western China")[a] began in 1887 when Anglican missionaries working with the China Inland Mission began to arrive from the United Kingdom. These were later joined by missionaries from the Church Missionary Society and Bible Churchmen's Missionary Society. Or according to Annals of Religion in Mianyang, in 1885, a small mission church was already founded in Mianyang by Alfred Arthur Phillips and Gertrude Emma Wells of the Church Missionary Society.[2] Missionaries built churches, founded schools, and distributed Chinese translations of Anglican religious texts. These efforts were relatively successful and Anglicanism grew to become one of the two largest denominations of Protestant Christianity in the province, alongside Methodism.[3]
Nonetheless, missionary activity in China generated controversy among many native Chinese and faced armed opposition during both the Boxer Rebellion and the later Chinese Communist Revolution. Although the former did not affect Sichuan so much as some other parts of China, the province was one of the hotbeds of anti-missionary riots throughout its ecclesiastical history.[4]
Numerous mission properties and native church leaders in Sichuan were respectively destroyed and killed by communists in the mid-1930s.[5] After the communist take over of China in 1949, missionaries were expelled and activity ceased. Under government oppression in the 1950s, Anglicans and other Protestants across China severed their ties with overseas churches and their congregations merged into the Three-Self Patriotic Church. Since 1980, services for Chinese Protestant churches have been provided by the China Christian Council.
- ^ Broomhall 1926, p. 356.
- ^ Mianyang Bureau of Religious Affairs 1998, pp. 432–433.
- ^ Stauffer 1922, p. 228.
- ^ Lü 1976, p. 282.
- ^ Plewman 1936, pp. 11–18.
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