Protestant Episcopal Church Mission

The Protestant Episcopal Church Mission (PECM, also known as the American Church Mission)^[1] was a Christian missionary initiative of the Episcopal Church that was involved in sending and providing financial support to lay and ordained mission workers in growing population centers in the west of the United States as well as overseas in China, Liberia and Japan during the second half of the 19th Century.

Establishment

The establishment of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS) by the 1821 General Convention of the

theological motivation, as expressed at the time by George Washington Doane

, bishop of New Jersey, to the DFMS directors:

In an address of great power, he argued "that by the original constitution of
Christ, the Church as the Church, was the one great Missionary Society; and the Apostles, and the Bishops, their successors, his perpetual trustees; and this great trust could not, and should never be divided or deputed." The duty, he maintained, to support the Church in preaching the Gospel to every creature, passed on every Christian via the baptismal vow, and they could never be absolved from it.^[3]

Mission

Legislating that every Episcopalian was a member of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society emphasized that the Church as a whole was called to mission, which defined the church's nature. Thus, the argument ran, mission could not be delegated to one part of the Church, still less to the purely voluntary inclinations of some of its members. Instead it must be embraced by the whole church and expressed through the missionary activity of each of its baptized members. This view constitutes the precedent for today's emphasis in many denominations on baptismal mission and on the missional nature of the church.

Reinforcing also the contemporary recognition that local and global concerns are inter-related and equally important, the 1835 DFMS constitution declared the unity of the mission field:

For the guidance of the Committees [for Domestic Missions and for Foreign Missions] it is declared that the missionary field is always to be regarded as one, THE WORLD — the terms domestic and foreign being understood as terms of locality adopted for convenience. Domestic missions are those established within the United States, and foreign missions are those established without.^[4]

This insistence on the unity of mission contrasted with the exclusive emphases of British societies, with some devoted to domestic concerns and others to foreign.

Duty

Creating the office of

Missionary Bishop

, a senior ordained clergyman sent to establish the church in a particular area, was the third major contribution of the 1835 General Convention. Laying the theological foundation of this innovation, Doane declared that a missionary bishop

. . . is a bishop sent forth by the Church, not sought for of the Church; going before to organize the Church, not waiting till the Church has partially been organized; a leader not a follower, in the march of the Redeemer’s conquering and triumphant Gospel . . . sent by the Church, even as the Church is sent by Christ.^[5]

In addition to stressing the

episcopate

should be the culmination, not the foundation, of church growth and that, in any case, the first bishop should be an indigenous Christian, not a missionary.

The 1835 convention employed the new office first to build the Church's work on the western frontier and elected missionary bishops for the northwest and southwest.

consecrated

at convention as the first missionary bishop, and through his constant travels he laid the foundations of the Church in Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas.

Mission work in China

The first missionary bishop with a non-US jurisdiction was

Amoy and Other Parts of China”, where Episcopal missionaries had first arrived in 1835.^[1]

The Protestant Episcopal Mission had its headquarters in Shanghai. Following Mr. Lockwood, Rev. W. J. Boone,

communicants.^[6]

An extraordinary missionary bishop was

Presbyterian ministry before becoming an Episcopalian and graduating from the General Theological Seminary in New York in 1859. Responding to Boone's call for helpers in China, he learned to write Chinese on board ship across the Pacific and translated the Bible and parts of the prayerbook into Mandarin before he was elected bishop of Shanghai in 1877. Paralyzed by a stroke, he resigned his see in 1883 but over the next twenty years completed, with the help of his wife, a translation of the Bible into Wenli (classical Chinese

), typing some 2,000 pages with the middle finger of his partially crippled hand. Four years before his death in 1906, he said, “I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”

Mission work in Liberia

Liberia, where the DFMS sent missionaries in 1835 and 1836. Revd. John Payne consecrated in 1851 as the first missionary bishop of Liberia. First African American missionary bishop, Samuel Ferguson<source? /wrong person linked>, was consecrated in 1884.

Mission work in Japan

In Japan, was the third major area of 19th-century Episcopal mission. The Revd.

Roman

Christian missionaries in that country's history. Channing Moore Williams (commemorated on 2 December) was consecrated missionary bishop of China and Japan in 1866.

References

^
ISBN 9780199699704
, retrieved 2018-11-21

^ "Constitution of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society," in Journal of the Proceedings of the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America in General Convention (New York: Protestant Episcopal Press, 1835): 129.
^ Walter Herbert Stowe, "A Turning Point – General Convention of 1835," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 4 (September 1935): 176.
^ "Constitution of the DFMS," in Journal, 131.
^ Stowe, "A turning Point," in Historical Magazine, 171.
^ Townsend (1890), 236

v t e Protestant missions to China
Background	Protestantism in China Protestantism in Sichuan Chinese history Missions timeline Christianity in China Nestorians Jesuits Protestant missions in China 1807–1953
People	David Howard Adeney Mary Ann Aldersey Roland Allen Thomas J. Arnold Gladys Aylward Joseph Beech John Birch William Jones Boone Pearl S. Buck John Burdon Thomas Cochrane Hunter Corbett Jonathan Goforth Frederick Graves Karl Gützlaff Francis Hanson Laura Askew Haygood Elizabeth G. K. Hewat Jennie V. Hughes Robert A. Jaffray Carl C. Jeremiassen Griffith John Walter Judd James Legge Eric Liddell Robert Samuel Maclay Lottie Moon Robert Morrison George Moule Gideon Nye David Paton Karl Ludvig Reichelt Timothy Richard Issachar Jacox Roberts Charles Scott Cambridge Seven George Smith Vincent John Stanton John and Betty Stam John Leighton Stuart Elwood Gardner Tewksbury Hudson Taylor Thomas Torrance William C. White (more missionaries)
Missionary agencies	American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions American Methodist Episcopal Mission Canadian Methodist Mission China Inland Mission Church Mission Society London Missionary Society National Christian Council US Presbyterian Mission Protestant Episcopal Church Mission List of Protestant missionary societies in China (1807–1953)
Colleges and universities	United Board University of Shanghai Cheeloo University Ginling College University of Nanking Soochow University Yenching University St. John's University Hangchow University Fukien Christian University Lingnan University College of Yale-in-China Huachung University West China Union University Peking Union Medical College Methodist Episcopal Church Hwa Nan College English Presbyterian Mission Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association Reformed Church in the United States
Impact	Bible translations into Chinese Medical missions in China Manchurian revival Chinese Christian colleges Chinese hymnody Chinese Roman Type Minnan Roman Type Foochow Roman Type Anti-footbinding Anti-opium
Pivotal events	Taiping Rebellion First Opium War Second Opium War Unequal treaty Yangzhou riot Tianjin Massacre Kucheng Massacre Boxer Crisis 1911 Revolution Chinese Civil War Second Sino-Japanese War People's Republic
Publications	The Chinese Repository Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal The Christian Occupation of China Journal of the West China Border Research Society The West China Missionary News