With the collapse of Koxinga's resistance movement and the establishment of Manchu control over Taiwan in 1683, the last missionaries were driven from Taiwan. Missionary work did not begin again until 1859 with the arrival of several Catholic Dominican missionaries.
The Protestant mission was brought back to Taiwan by the English Presbyterian, Dr. James Maxwell, who arrived in southern Taiwan in May, 1865. Canadian Presbyterians entered northern Taiwan in 1872, the pioneer being Dr. George Leslie MacKay. Today a large memorial hospital stands in Taipei as a reminder of his outstanding work in the community.
When Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895, another time of trouble began for the island's Christian population, for the Japanese government was basically hostile to the young Taiwanese Church. Beyond Presbyterian work on Taiwan, several other churches also labored and proselytized the length of the island. For example, the independent True Jesus Church was established by several of their evangelists from the Chinese mainland in 1926, and the Taiwan Holiness Church was started in 1929 under the leadership of a Japanese missionary. With the defeat of Japan after World War II, Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China in 1945. Only three years later, there were 30,429 baptized Presbyterians reported in the island's population.
Almost one million Chinese people moved to Taiwan from the mainland in 1949 to escape the Communists, and some of these were already Christians. Meanwhile, the Communists started to persecute all religions, Christianity included, and foreign missionaries either left or faced possible imprisonment. Some missionaries, like their Chinese brethren, became martyrs.
When religious liberty in mainland China was suppressed by the Communists, Chinese Christians sought it in Taiwan. Likewise, the majority of the missionaries who had labored in China transferred to Taiwan after 1949, and as a consequence a large number of denominations have been established on the island.
There are at least 57 known Protestant denominations in Taiwan. A few that have a local membership of over 5,000 are as follows: The Presbyterian Church has about 210,000 members in 1,043 congregations, the Assembly Hall has around 50,000 members, the True Jesus Church has 25,000, the China Baptist Convention has approximately 15,000 members, and the Seventh-Day Adventists' membership is about 5,500.
Except for the Presbyterian Church, the congregations of most denominations are located in urban areas. The total number of Christians in Taiwan (Catholics not included) is estimated at around 310,000, or 1.6 percent of the entire population of about 19 million in Taiwan.
The small percentage of the Christians in the total population of Taiwan raises questions about the difficulties of Christianity becoming culturally accepted by the Chinese people. Aside from the rapid growth of the Christian movement in South Korea, Christianity has been very slow in gaining converts among Asian peoples. A quick look over the introduction of Christianity to China in the past shows that the Chinese people would accept Christianity only after cautious consideration, and the same phenomenon is observable in Taiwan.
The earliest appearance of Christianity in China was the arrival of the Nestorian missionary Alopen in 635, who entered Sian, then the Tang dynasty capital. But this form of Christianity disappeared from China by the end of the 10th Century. In the 13th Century some Franciscan missionaries came to the China of the Yuan Dynasty, but they also failed in gaining a spiritual foothold. By the end of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368, Christianity had again vanished from China.
Then came some moderate success. In the 16th Century, the Jesuits arrived in China, with the well-known Jesuit Matteo Ricci reaching Peking in 1601. He was eventually able to win a hearing from the Chinese court and intelligentsia because of his learning and complete adoption of Chinese culture. But after Ricci's death in 1610, severe persecutions of Christianity began gaining momentum, and lasted until the end of the Ming Dynasty.
While the early Ching emperors were more sympathetic toward Christianity, in 1717 Emperor Kang Hsi ordered the banishment of all missionaries, and persecution continued for a hundred years.
Protestant missionaries began entering China almost simultaneously with the encroachment of Western imperialist powers in modern China. An unfortunate result was that Christianity was regarded as a kind of Western imperialism, which proved detrimental to the introduction of the faith to China.
Nevertheless, the Protestant Church continued its efforts, and made some in-roads through providing education as a means to influence the country through its future leaders. Excellent universities, medical schools, and high schools were established as part of this effort. In 1927 there were reportedly 8,518 Protestant missionaries in China and three million baptized Christians. With the rise of Communism in China, however, the freedom of preaching and practicing the Gospel in China was abolished.
The melody and text are Western, but the language is Chinese.
But Taiwan remains a bastion of religious freedom for Chinese Christians, and is very much unlike the environment across the Straits. The Christian churches in Taiwan nevertheless face difficult challenges.
Theologically, the churches still need to present the Christian truth in ways that can reach all members of the population; ecclesiastically, they are still seeking for the best kind of church organization so that the mission of the churches can be more efficiently accomplished. In a more anthropological sense, the churches also have to adjust to the rapid changes that are so profoundly transforming society in Taiwan.
As mentioned earlier, the growth of the Christian population in Taiwan is very slow. Protestant missionaries and pastors feel frustrated because of this and have held frequent seminars on how better to increase the number of local Christian believers. The emphasis, of course, is on effectively communicating the message of the gospel to the Chinese people, which is best done by building upon local congregational strengths and their weekly worship together.
But the situation in Taiwan presents a different cultural atmosphere, one contrary to Christian worship services. Traditional Chinese customs and concepts have ingrained different ideas about the form and content of worship. While Christians, following the teaching of both the Old and New Testaments, maintain that God is invisible and should be worshipped in spirit and in truth, the traditional customs of the Chinese people have led the people to worship man) "visible gods" in association with temples and shrines.
In the Christian churches no icon is provided for people's eyes to see, nor is there an) thing similar to what is found in the temples or shrines. Therefore when a Chinese person happens to go into a Christian church, a certain kind of negative reaction automatically occurs. Sometimes the walls of a church building can literally fence the people away from Christianity.
Therefore, in order to provide an environment more favorable to Chinese sensitivities, and help attract more people to the Christian faith, some churches in Taiwan arc constructing their buildings along traditional Chinese architectural lines. By so doing, they are not violating the teaching of the Bible, but are simply trying to make the faith of the Bible understandable to the Chinese people. They realize that although church architecture is important in the sense of beauty and cultural identification with the Chinese culture in Taiwan, even more important is the culture Biblical teaching which the churches try to pass on to the people.
The most commonly used Bible among the Christian churches in Taiwan is a product of several missionaries who worked in mainland China at the turn of the century. At a time when classical Chinese was heavily used in writing, the missionaries were wise enough to use the vernacular in their translation of the Bible into the Chinese language. Their contributions in this respect will always be remembered and appreciated by Chinese Christians.
East meets West on Christmas eve at a local Christian church.
But languages change with time, and the Chinese language is no exception. Therefore, the United Biblical Societies successfully published Today's Chinese Version of the Holy Bible in 1979. One of the special phenomena involved in the process of translation is that the main scholars who translated this version are Chinese. Contributions were made by Westerners, but they served only as advisers. The main responsibility of translation was carried by the Chinese Biblical scholars. This new version of the Chinese Bible is gradually gaining acceptance among the Chinese Christians. Meanwhile, it is reaching more Chinese people who are not yet Christians, because it is written in a style more closely related to the language spoken and written by contemporary Chinese.
The question of leadership is another key issue in local Christian churches. Generally speaking, the churches will face a leadership shortage within twenty years, when many of the current pastors will reach retirement age. The churches need to take more action in training qualified pastors, and they must encourage capable young men to devote their lives to the service of the churches.
There are eleven qualified seminaries or Bible colleges in Taiwan, but these institutions have to recruit better students as well as train more Chinese professors. It is not easy to make converts among the Chinese people, and even more difficult to persuade young people to enter the ministry.
Taiwan's rapid economic and social change has produced significant challenges to all religious faiths. As people become better schooled, have more disposable income, and become more urbanized, the earlier forms of social arrangement and of personal expectations have rapidly altered. Belief systems are also undergoing greater scrutiny. There are indeed serious needs for religious expression and belief, despite the rapid pace of contemporary life. The question remains, however, whether or not Taiwan's churches can meet these challenges.
Traditional folk religions seem to be unable to meet the spiritual emptiness of the people, but how can the Christian churches meet this need? To fulfill their task of preaching the Good News to the people in Taiwan, the churches have to develop a theology that is Biblically sound as well as culturally suitable for the Chinese people in Taiwan. If this is adequately done, then the expansion of the churches and the spiritual enhancement of the whole community can be accomplished. Perhaps even one day there will be missionaries sent by the Christian churches in Taiwan to preach the Good News to peoples other than the Chinese people. But before that can be done, it is necessary for the Christian churches in Taiwan to fulfill their responsibilities in the Republic of China. — (Dr. Gwo Yun-han is currently pastor of the Grace Baptist Church in Taipei, and also teaches at the Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary).