User:JohnFitz/sandbox/John Richard Wolfe

John Richard Wolfe

Wolfe, Archdeacon John Richard served as a missionary with the Church Missionary Society in Fuzhou, Fukien, China from 1862 until his death in 1915, a period of fifty-three years. The following brief account of his life and work needs to be prefaced with the acknowledgement that he and all missionaries settled in an ancient and sophisticated Chinese culture which did not necessarily see any need to welcome proselytising Western Christians into their midst. However, the strongly evangelistic missionaries believed it was their right and Christian duty to take the gospel to China yet having little knowledge of its structure, beliefs and values. The European trading community had been permitted to open up five ports by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 after China’s defeat in the First Opium War- a treaty now acknowledged to have been unequal and much disliked by the Chinese. Another treaty in 1858 concluded with Britain, the United States and France, gave Protestant and Catholic missionaries official permission to settle and propagate their faiths in any part of that vast empire. John Wolfe was therefore to spend his life in a culture not only different from his own but not necessarily receptive to Western ideas and religion. One major incident which illustrates the extent to which cultural misunderstanding could arise was the Wu Shih Shan affair. This was a dispute between Chinese mandarins and the missionaries over land leased by the latter which was triggered when the missionaries apparently went too far in adding to their buildings already on the site. Similar, though smaller difficulties frequently arose over obtaining land to rent or own. John had been born in 1832 to Richard and Susan Wolfe nee Croston who lived on a small tenanted farm in the townland of Mallavonea and the parish of Aghadown near Skibbereen, county Cork in what was then the south of Ireland, now the Republic of Ireland. He had an older brother, Thomas and sisters Elizabeth, Anne, Sarah, Frances and Mary. It is of interest to note that Thomas, a fervent member of the Protestant Church of Ireland, after serving with the Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics, had been appointed as curate at Templecrone in the far northwest of Ireland following his ordination as deacon in1858 in the Diocese of Raphoe. He died in the same year on December 22nd after a short illness. Evidence suggests that John, studying at the Church Missionary Society College in London, attended the funeral. There is little or no information on John’s early life. He would presumably help with the work on his father’s farm, go to the local school and most certainly attend the Protestant Church of Ireland. He was obviously strongly committed to Christianity in its Protestant form and became, like his brother, a Scripture Reader for the Irish Church Mission to Roman Catholics. He did not receive a university education but in1857 at the age of 26, he entered the Church Missionary Society College in Islington, London and studied there for 3 or 4 years. On 26 May, 1861 John was ordained a deacon in St Paul’s Cathedral by the Bishop of London. In December of the same year he set sail for Hong Kong, a journey of up to six months by sailing ship. It is not known why or if he chose China. He was most likely assigned to serve there by his superiors. On his arrival in Hong Kong he was sent to Fuzhou as a Missionary Minister. In December,1863 he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Smith of Victoria, Hong Kong and the next year he was married in St John’s Cathedral to Mary Ann Margaret Maclehose. Mary Ann was the daughter of a Hong Kong businessman, James Maclehose. She was to die in 1913 in Fuzhou just one year short of fifty years in the mission field. After their marriage, John resumed his work in Fuzhou and over the next eleven years, six children were born: Mary Elisabeth (Minnie), 1865-1956; Thomas Henry (Harry), 1866-1940; John Richard, 1868-1947; Annie Muriel (Annie ), 1870-1956; Charles, 1874-1943; and Amy Kathleen (Amy ), 1875-1962. All the children received an education at the CMS Children’s Home in Islington, London. Each of the daughters became CMS missionaries in Fuzhou or nearby areas. Charles gained some medical qualifications and worked in a hospital or hospitals in or close to Fuzhou. Harry and John, as young men emigrated to California where they married and had children. The CMS had first sent missionaries to Fuzhou in 1850. There were already Presbyterian and American Methodist Missionary Societies established. Progress for the CMS missionaries was so slow that there was some talk of closing down. John Wolfe asked the authorities for another year. In an article in The Church Missionary Gleaner in 1894 he wrote of the bleak outlook for the Mission in 1862. One of his first successes was the opening of a church in Back Street in the centre of Fuzhou in 1865. Other churches followed. He continues in the same article to describe the progress of the Mission thus: “ by 1893 the Mission had extended its operations into five of the largest prefectures of the Fukien Province, covering an area as large as one half of England, which at the present moment has170 churches and places of worship in 17 large counties with nearly 11,000 Christian adherents. During my residence here since 1862, 15 native clergymen have been ordained. There are at present 125 catechists and 38 theological students training in our theological college in Foo Chow. There are 106 schoolmasters teaching in elementary schools all over the counties. There are two or three boys’ boarding schools in the country stations and a high school for advanced boys in Foo Chow in which young men are being trained for entrance to the theological college to become well-trained future pastors and teachers of the Native Church. The Mission has four boarding schools for girls and three schools for training the wives of catechists, students and other women for Christian work whether as voluntary or as paid Bible-Women. The system of Church Councils is carried out...” “Two Medical Missions are in operation in the prefectures of FuNing and Kiong-ning, carried out by two Medical missionaries from home, assisted by a band on native assistants.” “ Last, but not least, a number of lady missionaries connected with the C.M.S., F.E.S., and the C.E.Z.M.S. are working all over the Mission among the women, and conducting girls’ schools and training institutions for women connected with the Mission.” In addition, it should be noted that by 1894 there were a dozen ordained European clergy serving across Fuzhou and the five prefectures opened up by John Wolfe. He had early, and throughout his missionary work, visited and preached in towns often many days journey from Fuzhou. Within a decade of his arrival Lieng-Kong, and Lo-Nguong, to the north and Hok-Kiang (where Minnie worked for twenty years), and Hing Hwa to the south were established as centres of Mission while further north he had visited Ning-taik, Fu-ning and Kien-Ning-Fu and founded small Christian congregations. Early converts often came from the poorest people though not exclusively. Throughout his ministry and for all missionaries, their wives and children, pestilence and plagues such as cholera and smallpox were an ever present danger. Other hazards and difficulties included destruction from hurricanes and droughts as well as banditry, roaming lawless gangs and attacks on missionaries, Chinese Christians, and their buildings. Maintaining good health in crowded, and poorly drained, insanitary living conditions was always a major problem. Missionary letters make frequent reference to such difficulties. Many dialects were spoken across Fukien and mastering the local dialect was a skill all missionaries had to acquire. Eugene Stock gives a full account of the development of the Mission from 1860 to 1896 and the Revd T McClelland takes the story to 1904 by which time there were many more women missionaries. In the CMS Register of Missionaries, John Wolfe is described as “ the chief instrument in the remarkable ingathering in the Fuh-kien Province.” John Wolfe had the distinction of being the prime mover and for many years the senior missionary of the CMS in Fuzhou and beyond. He became known by his fellow Chinese as “the Fukien Moses”. Wolfe, himself, showed a great deal of liking and respect for his Chinese brothers and sisters in his letters. For example, in1900 he wrote “A poor uneducated labourer stands up in a meeting and startles you with a speech full of spiritual thoughts worthy of your learned professors at home, the difference being that these thoughts are expressed with greater simplicity and warmth by these Chinese Christians.” A year after John Wolfe’s death in 1915, Revd Llewelyn Lloyd wrote of changes that had taken place since the early days. The number of missionaries was fiftyfold what it had been in 1876 and a Provincial Synod complemented Church Councils. He acknowledged that numbers were still not commensurate with the need of the densely populated province however. He makes particular mention of the work among women. The Fukien Mission had the largest staff of women missionaries of any CMS Mission in the world working in schools, hospitals, homes for blind children and institutions training teachers. Wolfe always acknowledged the worth of women’s work. Lloyd also singles out for mention and emphasises changes in the attitude of the people towards foreigners and missionaries in particular, since the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. It is true that there was a lessening of hostile attitudes for a period though by the 1920s dislike of and opposition to, foreigners had reasserted itself. Lloyd believed that the missionary work on behalf of the sick, the lepers, the blind and to outcast children had been recognised. Much had changed politically since the massacre of Hwa-sang near Kuching in 1895 when eight missionaries were murdered. John Wolfe had been appointed Archdeacon of Fuzhou in 1887. In 1910 the CMS honoured him by making him a Vice-President of the Society, the first and only Vice-President not to be a bishop. In 1917 at the 8th Diocesan Synod at Fuzhou the bishop announced his appointment of the Revd Ding Ing-Ong as the first Archdeacon of Fukien. The Chinese delegates promised gifts amounting to 1773 dollars and expressed their hope to raise in all, 20,000 dollars for the purpose of building a cathedral as a memorial to the late Archdeacon Wolfe. At the same time the European members of the Synod pledged to collect 10,000 dollars. Christ Church Cathedral was consecrated on November, 13th 1927 a Sunday morning when “ the sun shone forth in all its glory, as the sun can shine in Fuhchow, lighting up the beautiful hills, clearing away all the mist from the river and flooding the plain...” Archdeacon Wolfe’s Chinese name is made up of two characters which translate into English as Ancient Moon. On the right hand side of the main entrance to the Cathedral an inscription in Chinese characters and marked in stone reads in translation as “With the ancient moon shining upon modern men we commemorate Archdeacon Wolfe who ministered in this cathedral.”  John Wolfe had indeed taken services in a smaller church, on the site and knew the people of the neighbourhood in an area today called Cangxia. His daughter Amy also worshipped in the smaller building and worked with women and children in the vicinity. Today, the cathedral still stands though it was threatened with demolition a few years ago. A Christian congregation yet worships though the building is not known as a cathedral. William Banister, Bishop of Kwangsi and Hunan in his obituary to John Wolfe writes: “I saw him first in the summer of 1880, at Bath, when he was home on furlough and I was preparing to come out to China. The impression I then received of his strong, wholehearted devotion to the missionary cause has never left me. To my mind he was the greatest missionary personality of his generation; and the one thing I most regretted when I left Fukien in 1897 was the separation from his fellowship... his name will be green and fragrant for many generations in Fukien.” Indeed, when my sister and I visited Fuzhou in 2012 and attended services in the old cathedral and the 120th celebrations of the not far distant Shangjie church he had founded, we found people referring to him by his name. He is certainly not forgotten this “Fukien Moses” from Skibbereen.