Hudson Taylor

Life

Taylor was born in 1832 in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England. He studied medicine and Chinese in preparation for becoming a missionary. In 1853 he sailed for China under the Chinese Evangelisation Society and arrived in Shanghai in 1854. From 1855 to 1856 he worked alongside William Chalmers Burns, and from 1857 he carried on an independent ministry in Ningbo. In 1858 he married the missionary Maria Dyer. In 1860 he returned to England with his family, and around this time he left the Chinese Evangelisation Society.

While in England, he became burdened for the people of inland China who had not yet heard the gospel. On June 25, 1865, he therefore founded the China Inland Mission (CIM). In 1866 he set out again for China with his wife, their children, and sixteen missionaries. In 1867 he lost his daughter Grace, and in 1868 he endured the Yangzhou riot. He traveled between England and China many times on the mission's behalf, and he died on June 3, 1905, in Changsha, Hunan Province.

Ministry and Achievements

• Inland mission: Taylor devoted himself to evangelism beyond the coastal port cities, reaching deep into the Chinese interior. Between 1854 and 1860 he is reported to have made ten journeys through Zhejiang Province, distributing Chinese New Testaments and gospel tracts.
• Embracing local culture: Rather than wearing Western dress, he adopted Chinese clothing and a Chinese way of life as he preached the gospel. The China Inland Mission also adopted this principle.
• Faith missions: He established the financial principle of making no appeals to people for support and instead asking God for provision through prayer. Locating the mission's headquarters in China rather than in Europe also set it apart from the mission agencies that had preceded it.
• Growth of the mission: During his lifetime the mission's missionary force grew to several hundred (some records put the number as high as 800). He also helped establish mission headquarters in North America and Australia.

After his death, the China Inland Mission passed through crises such as the Boxer Uprising and the Communist takeover of China. In 1951 it withdrew from China and moved its headquarters to Singapore, and in 1964 it changed its name to OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship). It continues its work in East Asia and other regions.

Influence on the Korean Church

In the Korean church, Taylor is commonly called the "Father of China Missions." His principles of faith missions and his approach to mission, which respected local culture, are frequently presented in sermons, pastoral columns, and mission education. OMF, the successor to the China Inland Mission, is also active in Korea under the name OMF Korea.

Assessment

Taylor is regarded as a figure who opened a new era of mission in inland China. He is counted among the leading representatives of nineteenth-century Protestant missions, a period known as the Great Century of Missions. However, Western missionary work in his time took place amid the advance of the Western powers into China following the Opium Wars, and there were clashes with local inhabitants, such as the Yangzhou riot. For this reason, some take a critical view of nineteenth-century missions in China as a whole, linking them to the expansion of the Western powers.