Chinese
Missions
in California
The
Chinese were connected to the Methodists in 1866 as a Bible Study in
Sacramento. In 1868, Gibson
was officially authorized by the California Annual Conference of the
Methodist Church to
establish missions to the Chinese
in California. The home base for these missions
began
in San
Francisco, and then missions were extended to Los Angeles, Oakland, San
Jose, and Chico.
In the
initial stages, the two primary ministries
provided by these missions were schools and a refuge for women escaping
slavery
and prostitution. In parallel, the
Methodist Church was expanding outreach ministries to Asian populations
through
the Japanese Gospel Society, Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific
Coast,
and the YMCA.
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Mainstream
views of Chinese and Chinatown
Oakland
Herald, April 27, 1906
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The mid- to-late
1800’s were rife with anti-Chinese discrimination and persecution. At the Federal level, the Chinese
Exclusion
Act of 1882 was enacted, barring immigration of Chinese to the
United States. The State of California
went even further
with its own legislation: a miners tax enforced primarily against
Chinese
(1850); disallowing Chinese to testify in court (1854); barring Chinese
immigration into California (1858); anti-Coolie tax (1862);
anti-prostitution
act (1870) designed to stem the immigration of Asian women in general;
the Page
Law
barring the entry of Chinese prostitutes, felons, and contract laborers
(1875); Article XIX of the Second
California
Constitution barring Chinese from being employed (1879). It is in this context that
Chinese were pushed into small neighborhoods that eventually became
Chinatowns. It was here that the early
missionaries struggled to offer safety, education, community, and God
[ARMSMEC-1890,
page
338].
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The
San Francisco Call, April 10, 1890
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The Christian
church was not immune to this prejudice either. Within
the
dominant ethnicities, there were debates
whether people of
Chinese heritage could even grasp Christianity and be converted. Our
early
Chinese
Mission preachers rose to
publicly challenge this anti-Chinese discrimination in faith and
political
settings.
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Under the Superintendency of Otis Gibson and
then Frederick J. Masters, the Chinese Missions persisted.
A handful of Euro-American missionaries,
missionary wives, and teachers dedicated themselves to sharing God’s
love to
the Chinese people in the area. Chinese
lay members such as Lee Tong Hay, Fung Sui, Cheng Game, and Loy Yan
offered
their skills by preaching and teaching in Chinese language [ARMSMEC-1884,
page 204]. Many
of these would become
the mainstay that kept these missions going and growing.
Each year, the Northern California Chinese
Missions would gather for worship and mutual support.
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