The Quest for the Root: Which is the Oldest Baptist Church in Hong Kong History?

　　In 2019, I joined the faculty of the Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary, teaching the history of the Baptists in Hong Kong. To prepare the lessons, I started researching relevant historical sources two years ago, but found that there are many contradictions among the sources. For instance, various sources provide different dates in response to the question “When was the first Baptist church founded in Hong Kong?” Also, controversies still endure over the question “Which is the oldest Baptist church in Hong Kong?” I recall that thirty years ago when I was first introduced to the history of Christianity as a subject at Regent College in Canada, my professor emphasized that we need to take history seriously because how accurately we know history will influence how we respond to history; and our responses today in turn are shaping the history that our descendants will read. For this reason, with a rigorous attitude, I hope to clarify the early history of my own denomination in Hong Kong and thus also help Baptist ministers and believers in Hong Kong to learn accurately about the origins of the Baptists in Hong Kong.

The First Baptist Church in Hong Kong

　　According to Kenneth S. Latourette’s classical and authoritative work on Chinese church history, A History of Christian Missions in China, the first Baptist church in Hong Kong, named “Queen’s Road Baptist Church,” was established in May, 1843 on Queen’s Road. ¹ Latourette stated that his source is Lida S. Ashmore’s The South China Mission of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society: A Historical Sketch of the First Cycle of Sixty Years. ² I fact-checked this piece of information and found that Latourette mistook a Swatow Baptist church founded on May 28, 1843 for the Queen’s Road Baptist Church. Since then, this incorrect date has been quoted in different publications, including Lau Yuet-sing’s History of Hong Kong Protestant Churches, Princeton Hsu, ed., A History of Chinese Baptist Churches (vol. 2: Hong Kong and Macao Area), The 55th Anniversary Commemorative Publication of Hong Kong Baptist Church, 1901-1956, and the official webpage of the Baptist Convention of Hong Kong. Moreover, Lila Watson, an American Southern Baptist missionary and historian, mentioned in her Brief Historical Sketches of Baptist Missions in China (1836-1936) that the Queen’s Road Baptist Church was established on May 5, 1842. ³ As her work was published in 1936, the date she cited probably came from Thomas S. Dunaway’s Pioneering for Jesus: The Story of Henrietta Hall Shuck published in 1930. ⁴ The date Watson quoted was recited later in the works of Princeton Hsu, Christopher Tang and the Hong Kong Baptist Church. Furthermore, some historians like Lee Chee-kong and Huen Hoo-wing suggest that the Queen’s Road Baptist Church was founded in July 1842. ⁵

　　So, when was the Queen’s Road Baptist Church founded? According to Baptist Missionary Magazine, 1843, the correct date should be May 15, 1842. This magazine was the American Baptist Missionary Union’s annual report of 1842, announced in its 29th annual meeting on April 26, 1843 in New York. Among the extant primary sources, its date of announcement was the closest to the establishment date of the Queen’s Road Baptist Church. It is impossible that the church was established as late as May, 1843, that is, after the publication of this annual report. Additionally, Dunaway said that the establishment date was May 5, 1842, which was Thursday, an unlikely day for a church to start its first meeting. The Queen’s Road Baptist Church, therefore, should be founded on May 15, 1842 (Sunday) .

　　The argument for July 1842, cannot stand either. It is because the second Baptist church, the Bazaar Baptist Church, was founded on June 26, 1842; and the first Baptist church must be established earlier than the second one. Lee Chee-kong and Huen Hoo-wing probably mistook the completion date of the new premises of the Queen’s Road Baptist Church for its establishment date. The Queen’s Road Baptist Church, thus, was in fact the first Baptist church in Hong Kong.

Baptist Mission in Hong Kong

　　Jehu Lewis Shuck was the first Baptist missionary who came to China. In 1836, he and his wife Henrietta Hall Shuck arrived in Macau from America through Singapore and came to Hong Kong on March 19, 1842. In order to do missionary work via the school, they started the American Southern Baptist Missionary School at Circular Pathway in Sheung Wan. They also established a church on Queen’s Road. Issachar J. Roberts arrived in Macau one year later than Shuck, but he moved to Hong Kong one month earlier than Shuck. Soon after his arrival, Roberts was assigned to serve in Stanley on the southern Hong Kong Island where he started a chapel and a school. In October of the same year, William Dean also moved to Hong Kong.

　　Apart from serving English-speaking congregation, the primary evangelical target of Shuck and Roberts was Cantonese-speaking people. Dean, with several years of ministry experience with Swatow-Chinese in Bangkok, was familiar with Swatownese, the Chaozhou dialect; he, therefore, started the Swatownese ministry in Hong Kong promptly. He first started the Hong Kong Swatow Baptist Church within the Queen’s Road Baptist Church on May 28, 1843. In addition to preaching the gospel on the British-ruled Hong Kong Island, Dean also traveled to places ruled by the Qing Dynasty in Kowloon peninsula such as To Kwa Wan, Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok and the island of Cheung Chau, and shared the gospel with the Swatownese there.

　　Roberts was the first western missionary who went to the island of Cheung Chau; he, with his Chinese assistant Heng Hok, first visited Cheung Chau on July 6, 1843. Soon, on July 18, Dean and Hok visited Cheung Chau. Dean was fluent in the Swatow dialect, and he soon shared the gospel with the Swatownese locals. Since July 22, 1843, Hok led services in Cheung Chau every week. Six months later, he rented a house in Cheung Chau and used it as a church. According to Watson, Dean moved to Cheung Chau in 1842 and established a church there in May 1843. But Watson may probably have mistaken this Cheung Chau church for the Swatow Baptist church established within the Queen’s Road Baptist Church. Lau’s record that the Cheung Chau Baptist Church was found in 1842 ⁶ is also incorrect.

Decline of Ministry

　　Shuck and Roberts left Hong Kong and moved to Guangzhou respectively in 1844 and 1845. Meanwhile, the Baptist congregations in the United States were divided into Northern Baptists and Southern Baptists because of their disagreement over the issue of slavery. Dean remained in the Northern Baptists while Shuck and Roberts joined the Southern Baptists. Started from 1845, the Hong Kong mission was left to the Northern Baptists. Since most Northern Baptist missionaries spoke Swatownese, they gradually stopped providing the Cantonese ministry. Moreover, after the departure of Shuck and Roberts from Hong Kong, the Cantonese ministry suffered a serious setback. The Bazaar Baptist Church was closed in 1848, and the Cantonese ministry in the Queen’s Road Baptist Church also ceased in 1857. Only the Swatownese ministry on Hong Kong Island and Cheung Chau island remained.

　　In 1848, Rev. and Mrs. John W. Johnson of the Northern Baptists arrived in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Mrs. Johnson died soon after their arrival. In 1860, Johnson and his second wife, a Dutch woman, accompanied by four Chinese assistant workers, moved from Hong Kong to Double Island in Chaozhou. When Johnson left Hong Kong and moved to Chaozhou, the Northern Baptists decided to shift their missionary base from Hong Kong to Chaozhou as well, and thus sold all their properties in Hong Kong. Since then, Hong Kong became an outstation of the Swatow Missionary Station of the American Baptist Missionary Union.

　　After the western missionaries departed from Hong Kong in 1860, the ministry works left behind by them were to be continued by the Chinese assistants employed by the mission board. For a time, A Tui was the only person to minister to the Baptist congregation in Hong Kong. At the lowest point, there were only eight or nine church members in Hong Kong; the station in Stanley almost vanished, with only one member; the church in Cheung Chau had only two or three members, with one of them passed away, and A Sun thus had to sustain the ministries in both Stanley and Cheung Chau Baptist churches alone. There was a small chapel in Cheung Chau and A Sun led services there once he took up the ministry. After 1860, the station in Cheung Chau could only hold services occasionally. Dean revisited Hong Kong in 1864 and found that there was a dramatic decline in church membership after the missionary base was moved to Chaozhou; nevertheless, the Swatow church he established in May 28, 1843 was still operating. The 51st annual report of the American Baptist Missionary Union (which reports on its ministry in 1864) only mentioned the Swatow church on Hong Kong Island, and that the total number of church members in Hong Kong area was ten. As there was no mention of Cheung Chau and other stations, the church on Hong Kong Island was most likely the only church that still held regular meetings.

　　Tong Siu-yuen once mentioned in his article that there were still two churches in Hong Kong, one on Hong Kong Island and one in Cheung Chau, by the late 1860s. ⁷ I believe that Tong may have misread the primary sources and mistaken the two churches mentioned by the American Baptist Missionary Union in the whole South China area for the churches on Hong Kong Island and in Cheung Chau; in fact, the Union was referring to the churches in Tang Leng and Tie Chiu Hu. There was merely one station in Hong Kong at that time without any church. The American Baptist Missionary Union’s annual report of 1873 (which reports on its ministry in 1872) mentioned Hong Kong again, and stated that the church established in 1843 still existed. However, the report did not mention any outstations or chapels which were related with Hong Kong; hence, it is likely that there only remained one church gathering venue in the entire Hong Kong area.

Signs of Revival

　　Johnson served in Chaozhou until he died in 1872; two years later, Mrs. L. W. Johnson left American Baptist Missionary Union and intended to return to the United States. When she passed through Hong Kong in 1875, she decided to stay and became a self-supported independent missionary. To resume the missionary work that Rev. Johnson started years ago, she rented a premise on Hollywood Road and started a girls’ school. She employed Tang Si-deng from Swatow Ling Tung Baptist Church as the teacher of the Hollywood Road girls’ school and as a preacher; and she also borrowed the premises of the London Missionary Society every Sunday to hold church activities. By then, the Baptist ministry in Hong Kong was showing signs of revival. According to the 66th annual report of 1880, Mrs. Johnson engaged in missionary work in Hong Kong after she left the missionary union, and achieved fruitful results. Since she returned to Hong Kong in 1875, seventy-three people joined the church.

Growth of Ministry

　　Mrs. Johnson retired and went back to the Netherlands in 1881. Initially, she wished that the Northern Baptists could take over her work in Hong Kong; however, they declined her request due to their lack of resources. At last, Rosewell H. Graves and Ezekias Z. Simmons of the Southern Baptists accepted the responsibility. After March 1881, the Hong Kong mission was transferred from the Northern Baptists to the Southern Baptists, and a place was rented as a gathering venue. One year later, when Graves visited Hong Kong, there were twenty-five people who attended the Lord’s Supper service held by him and three people were baptized.

　　In 1884, there was a significant change in the Hong Kong Baptist congregation: the language used in services was switched from Swatownese only to Swatownese and Cantonese bilingually. This was because a lot of Cantonese from nearby provinces as well as overseas Chinese chose to live in British-ruled Hong Kong, and they gradually became a new segment within the church. Besides, the development of the churches in Hong Kong was assisted by the continuous support of individual missionaries and the monetary donations from overseas Chinese believers. In 1886, for the very first time, the Baptist congregation in Hong Kong hired their own pastor, Rev. Fung Wood-chuen, from America; after that, the Baptist ministry was developing rapidly.

　　Regarding Cheung Chau, after Tang Si-deng left Hong Kong and went back to Chaozhou, the records of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention rarely mentioned the church in Cheung Chau for the entire nineteenth century. Even if there were meetings in Cheung Chau, they were held occasionally at most, and not regularly. Moreover, regarding the dialect issue, the Baptist church in Cheung Chau was originally a Swatownese church; however, the 1891 annual report of the Southern Baptist Convention mentioned that “…at Long Island we have a good chapel, but no preacher who speaks the dialect of the people.” This shows that the dialect the Cheung Chau Baptist church used at that time was not Cantonese which the Southern Baptist missionaries fluently mastered. As a matter of fact, the Southern Baptists focused on the Cantonese missionary ministries after they took over the Hong Kong mission field, and they were incapable of taking care of the Swatownese church in Cheung Chau.

Conclusion

　　To sum up, the Queen’s Road Baptist Church, established on May 15, 1842, was the first Baptist church in Hong Kong. Then, the Bazaar Baptist Church, the How Wan Baptist Church, the Stanley Baptist Church and the Hong Kong Swatow Baptist Church were also founded, and the Swatownese ministry in Cheung Chau was started in July 1843. Of these churches, all have ceased to hold meetings. By 1860, there was only one Swatownese gathering venue remaining. Since the original premises of the Baptist churches in Hong Kong was sold, the congregation could only borrow the premises of the London Missionary Society or rent a place for church activities. Hence, we are not sure whether the Baptist churches continued to operate between 1873 (when A Tui left Hong Kong) and 1875 (when Mrs. Johnson came to Hong Kong). As for Cheung Chau, it is believed that after the withdrawal of the Northern Baptists (American Baptists Missionary Union), the church there stopped running for over a decade in the early 1860s until it resumed operating after the arrival of Tang Si-deng and Mrs. Johnson. Whether there was still meeting among the Baptist congregation in Cheung Chau after Tang Si-deng’s departure until the end of the nineteenth century (especially in the late 1890s) is still questionable. Therefore, a more reliable conclusion would be: the origin of the present Hong Kong Baptist Church on Caine Road can be traced back to 1875 when Mrs. Johnson resumed the missionary work in Hong Kong and the Baptist congregation grew and developed ever since then.

　　Unless we can find further historical evidence about the Cheung Chau Baptist Church, proving that she had never stopped operating, her reappearance would be in the early twentieth century. Maybe we still need to search for more historical sources before we can determine which one is the oldest Baptist church in Hong Kong history. However, we are certain that the Baptist churches in Hong Kong today are built upon the foundation of our many faithful predecessors.

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¹ Kenneth. S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York : Macmillan, 1929), 251.
² Lida Ashmore, The South China Mission of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society: A Historical Sketch of the First Cycle of Sixty Years (Shanghai: Methodist, 1920), 6.
³ Lila Watson, ed., Brief Historical Sketches of Baptist Missions in China, 1836-1936 (Shanghai: Baptist Press, 1936; Hong Kong: Baptist Press, 1970), 6.
⁴ Thomas S. Dunaway, Pioneering for Jesus: The Story of Henrietta Hall Shuck (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1930), 118.
⁵ Lee Chee-kong says that the Queen’s Road Baptist Church was founded on July 21, 1842. Cf. Lee Chee-kong, A Study of Hong Kong Christian Churches (Hong Kong: Taosheng, 1987), 22. Moreover, Huen Hoo-wing mentions that Jehu Lewis Shuck has been preparing to start the first Baptist church in Hong Kong since May 15, 1842 and it was finally established in July of the same year, when both Chinese and English services were held. Cf. Huen Hoo-wing, Chinese Christianity History in Pictures (Hong Kong: Tien Dao, 2011), 305-306.
⁶ Lau Yuet-sing, History of Hong Kong Protestant Churches, 2nd ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Baptist Church, 1996), 161.
⁷ Tong Siu-yuen, “The Origin of the Cheung Chau Baptist Church,” in 160th Anniversary Memorial Booklet of Cheung Chau Baptist Church (Hong Kong: Cheung Chau Baptist Church, 2004), 15.