Jack Voelkel
George Mackay: Canadian Pioneer to Taiwan Part 1
by Alex MacLeod
Jack Voelkel, ed.
(With this guest article on George Mackay, we continue our series on Protestant missionary pioneers. The author, Alex MacLeod, is a Canadian Presbyterian minister, who is researching and writing his PhD thesis on Mackay. He has incorporated some biographical material written by Michael Stainton.)
George Leslie Mackay was the first overseas Christian missionary sent out from Canada. He arrived in China in 1871 and lived there until his death in 1901. Still today, Mackay is viewed as a national hero by the Taiwanese and is regarded as the most famous Canadian missionary of his generation.
Founder of InstitutionsMackay was born March 21, 1844 in Zorra, Oxford County, Ontario. He was the eldest son of Highland Scots refugees from the Sutherland Clearances. Brought up in the strict Free Church evangelical tradition, he was the best known of 40 ministers who came out of the Zorra church. After study in Princeton Seminary and Edinburgh University, he was sent to begin the first Canadian Presbyterian mission overseas, in Formosa, then part of the Qing Empire.
Arriving in Tamsui in northern Taiwan on March 9, 1872, Mackay began a one-man mission that continued for 30 years. That date is still observed as the anniversary of the schools and hospital he founded. Mackay is credited in Taiwan today as the founder of the first hospital, the first modern school, the first school for women, and the first museum in Taiwan. Alone of all missionaries who worked in Taiwan, he is remembered in school textbooks and a commemorative stamp, issued in 2001 on the centenary of his death, June 2, 1901.
Early Pioneering EffortsYet it was not so much Mackay’s institutional contributions to Taiwan that made him so effective, but his peculiar methods and total identification with the people of Taiwan, which while they made him controversial in Canada, endeared him to the Taiwanese people, including those who did not become members of the 60 churches he established.
Working alone and reviled as “the black-bearded barbarian”, Mackay learned the Amoy dialect through intense study and spending the days in the hills with herd boys watching water buffalo and after only five months began to preach in Amoy Chinese. Visited by the local educated elite who debated the merits of Confucianism and Christianity with him, Mackay immersed himself in the Chinese classics, and reported that he was soon able to hold his own in discussion with them. One of these early conversation partners, Giam Chheng-hoa, became his first convert.
Mackay would walk through northern Taiwan, preaching in front of temples, the public squares of the day. Despite the rain of garbage and abuse that first met him, he soon had a small band of followers – his famous peripatetic school – who traveled with him and learned on the job. Perhaps no other China missionary of the late 19th century so deeply immersed himself in the local culture and life. Once trained Mackay’s disciples were assigned as pastors of the new churches.
Converting Enemies into Friends
In the early years after his arrival in Taiwan, he was followed by a hostile group of Qing soldiers assigned to keep an eye on him. One of them once suffered a painful tooth abscess. Mackay improvised a pair of pliers and pulled out the tooth. Enemies became loyal friends and Mackay was thereafter preceded with his reputation for “ho sim” (a good heart), and tooth pulling. Sneered at in Canada for his amateur dentistry, Mackay defended his work as “doing good” in the pattern of Jesus.
He would not limit himself to teeth either. Mackay taught himself basic medicine and then, in turn, passed that knowledge on to the itinerant preachers he sent out into the countryside. These evangelists were also healers who set bones, provided some medicine, and even performed minor surgery, stitching up wounds and so on.
MacKay Marries Tiun Chhiong-miaConcerned that his efforts were only reaching men and wanting a life partner who would most ably complement his missionary calling, Mackay in 1878 married a Taiwanese woman, Tiun Chhiong-mia, the granddaughter of one of his strongest local supporters.
He must also have been persuaded to seek out a Chinese wife by his observations of how few Western missionaries who came to Taiwan, whether male or female, had the stamina to endure and flourish in a completely strange environment and the motivation to properly learn the language and get as close as possible to the local culture.
In Canada all of his supporters opposed this interracial marriage, predicting that he would regret it. Indeed, Mackay was the first China missionary ever to marry locally, and remains one of only a handful to have done so. Mackay defended his marriage by saying that as his Lord made no distinction neither did he. He also defended it by its results, a rapid increase of women in his growing church.
By the time he and his wife, “Minnie”, returned to Canada in 1881, Mackay, and his methods, were famous not only for their uniqueness, but also for their results, the most rapidly growing mission in the whole China field, and one led by local pastors whom Mackay treated as equal partners in his work.
Contributions poured in and they returned to Taiwan with enough to build a clinic, and a school, Oxford College – named after his home county in Ontario. Both buildings still stand as historic sites. They are surpassed by their successor institutions – Mackay Memorial Hospital, one of the largest in Taiwan, and Tam Kang high school, Aletheia University, and Taiwan Theological College, which grew out of Oxford College. All of these are part of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, the largest protestant church in Taiwan.
Mackay’s strong sense of justice and dedication to Taiwan also continues in the work of this church, which played a key role in the forty-year struggle for democracy in Taiwan, a democracy which was achieved under the presidency of Tam Kang graduate and devout Presbyterian, Lee Teng-hui.
Part 2 will look at Mackey's legacy and draw lessons for today.
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