James Hudson Taylor (; 21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905) is regarded as one of the most "important and influential missionaries of all time." He was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM, now OMF International). Taylor visited or lived in China over a period of 51 years. The CIM that he founded in 1865 became the largest of many missionary organizations in China. By 1910, it had more than 800 missionaries to the country, created 125 schools, and converted more than 20,000 Chinese to Christianity, as well as establishing more than 300 stations of work with more than 499 local helpers based in all 18 provinces.
Taylor was known for his zeal for evangelism and for mimicking Chinese culture. He adopted wearing native Chinese clothing even though this was very rare among missionaries of that time. Under his leadership, the CIM was singularly non-denominational and accepted members from all Protestant groups, including individuals from the working class and single women as well as multinational recruits. Historian Ruth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life: "No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor."
Taylor was able to preach in several varieties of Chinese, including Mandarin, Chaozhou, and the Wu dialects of Shanghai and Ningbo. The last of these he knew well enough to help prepare a colloquial edition of the New Testament written in it.
Youth and early work
Taylor was born on 21 May 1832 in Barnsley, Yorkshire, the first child of a chemist (pharmacist) and Methodist lay preacher James Taylor and his wife, Amelia Hudson. Hudson Taylor was a small, sickly child. According to legend, James Taylor instilled in his son a desire to evangelize China. Wigram, 'The Bible in J. Hudson Taylor's Spirituality’ (2007:79-115) As a young man he doubted the Christian beliefs of his parents, but at age 17, he experienced a religious conversion and a year later felt a call from God to become a Christian missionary in China.
In spring 1851, he began working with a medical doctor in Hull. He studied Chinese, Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. In November 1851, he moved into modest dwellings and began denying himself luxuries. He spent his spare time as a medical missionary working with people in the slums. He gave away much of his money to the poor. He fell in love with a Miss Vaughan, a music teacher, but his lifestyle was too austere for her, and she denied his affections. He wrote to the London Missionary Society offering his services but received no reply. First published in 1962.
In fall 1852 Taylor began studying medicine at the London Hospital Medical College in Whitechapel, London, as preparation for working in China. The interest awakened in England about China because of the Taiping Rebellion which was then erroneously supposed to be a mass movement toward Christianity, together with the glowing but exaggerated reports made by German missionary Karl Gützlaff concerning China's accessibility, led to the founding of the Chinese Evangelisation Society (CES). Hudson Taylor offered himself as its first missionary. The Society paid for his medical training. He attempted to rekindle his romance with Miss Vaughan, but her family objected to his plans to go to China, and the couple mutually broke off the engagement.
First visit to China
Taylor left England on 19 September 1853 as an agent of CES without completing his medical studies, and he arrived in Shanghai on 1 March 1854. He was immediately faced with the civil war raging in the vicinity. W.A.P Martin, a veteran missionary, characterized Taylor as "an odd sparrow." He was often destitute as the funds promised him by the CES did not arrive. He dressed as a Chinese, shaved his head, and grew a pigtail, scandalizing the foreign community in Shanghai. Veteran missionary Joseph Edkins took Taylor under his wing and schooled him in Chinese customs. Missionary William Chalmers Burns accompanied him on tours to the countryside. Among his experiences he was robbed twice, losing his medical equipment and personal items. In 1857 he resigned from the CES, along with medical doctor William Parker, and moved to Ningbo as an independent missionary. There he made his first convert to Christianity.
In 1858, Taylor fell in love with Maria Dyer, the orphaned daughter of the Reverend Samuel Dyer of the London Missionary Society. Maria was working in Ningbo at a girls' school run by Mary Ann Aldersey. Aldersey regarded Taylor as a "poor unconnected Nobody!...without education and without position." Nevertheless, the couple were married on 20 January 1858. Taylor adored Maria who was "almost constantly pregnant." The couple had nine children in the 12 years of their marriage of whom four survived to adulthood.
Both Taylors were in poor health, and they returned to England in 1860 along with their daughter, Grace, and a young man, Wang Laijun, who would help with the Bible translation work that would continue in England.
China Inland Mission
The Taylors remained in England almost six years. Taylor completed his medical training, was ordained as a minister, and translated the New Testament into the Ningbo dialect of Chinese. He wrote a book titled China's Spiritual Need and Claims. He travelled around Britain speaking at churches and generating support for missionary work in China.
On 25 June 1865 on Brighton beach, Taylor had a "heavenly vision." He dedicated himself to the founding of a missionary society to undertake the evangelization of the "unreached" inland provinces of China. He founded the China Inland Mission (CIM) together with William Thomas Berger shortly thereafter. He opened a bank account for the CIM with 10 pounds of his own money.
Taylor established the core values of the CIM, quite different from those of the dozen or more missionary organizations then operating in China. The organization would not appeal for funds, but "rely on God alone" for sustenance. The focus would be on the inland provinces of China, unreached at that time by Protestant missionaries. CIM missionaries would dress, eat, and live as Chinese to better fulfill their mission. The missionaries would be non-denominational, selected for their beliefs and dedication, not their affiliations and credentials. People of all social classes and levels of education plus single women would be selected as missionaries. Finally, the CIM would be governed from China and headed by a general director (Taylor), not a board or committee in its homeland, unlike other missionary organizations.
Return to China In late 1865, Taylor sent out the first two missionaries of the CIM. On 26 May 1866, he boarded ship at the head of the "Lammermuir Party." Aboard were Hudson and Maria Taylor, their four children, and 16 missionaries, including nine single women. After a four month voyage (and two typhoons) they arrived in Shanghai on 30 September. They were the largest group of missionaries that had ever arrived in China.
Dissension among the missionaries began while on board the ship and continued in China. Taylor stipulated that all the missionaries wear Chinese dress, which included the men shaving their foreheads and wearing a pigtail. The group was called the "Pigtail Tribe" by European residents of Shanghai who found their adoption of Chinese clothing to be ridiculous. Moreover, rumors began to circulate that it was inappropriate for "young unmarried females" to share a home with Taylor. Missionary George Moule advised Taylor to "put a speedy end" to the CIM.
Moreover, in 1868 Taylor and his CIM associates were accused of causing a riot in Yangzhou. The Taylors had taken a party of missionaries to Yangzhou, but their mission premises were attacked, looted, and burned during the Yangzhou riot. The international outrage at the Chinese for the attack on British citizens (and the subsequent arrival of the Royal Navy) caused the CIM and Taylor to be criticized for almost starting a war. Taylor never requested military intervention, but British officials asked "what right have we to send missionaries to the interior of China?"
Personal problems also dogged Taylor. Two of his children died, and he sent one of his missionaries, Emily Blatchley, back to England with his surviving three children. On 23 July 1870, Maria died.
Problems Two developments in the late 1860s facilitated the missionary enterprise in China. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the use of the steamship rather than sailing ships reduced travel time from England to China from four months or more to less than two months.
Grief from Maria's death, health problems, and the need to reorganize the home office of CIM caused Taylor to leave China in August 1871 to return to England. Accompanying him on the voyage was CIM missionary Jennie Faulding. The two fell in love and were married on 28 November 1871 in London. In late 1872, the couple returned to China. They had four children, two of whom grew to be adults.
In June 1874, Taylor injured his spine and was paralyzed for six months. Jennie and he returned to England. From his bed, he conducted CIM business, wrote articles for CIM publications, and recruited missionaries. In author Austin's view, this was the nadir of the fortunes of the China Inland Mission. Fifty-three missionaries had been sent to China, but only 22 remained. The others had died or resigned. Of the 22, "only four or five men and three or four women were much good."
In his state of crippling physical hindrance, Taylor confidently published an appeal for 18 new workers to join the work. When he did recover his strength, Jennie remained in England with the children, and in 1876 Taylor returned to China, followed by 18 additional missionaries. Meanwhile, in England, the task of General Secretary of the China Inland Mission in England was undertaken by Benjamin Broomhall, who had married Hudson's sister, Amelia.
CIM strategy
Taylor's initial plan was to open up a mission station in an inland city remote from the temptations and foreign influence in Shanghai and Ningbo. He would then use that mission as a base to send workers on foot in the surrounding area to evangelize, distribute religious tracts, and seek converts and native leaders. His first effort to carry out that plan failed in Hangzhou. Instead, he began sending out missionaries to itinerate in villages and towns untouched by other missionary societies and foreign influence. The theory was that when the locals became accustomed to CIM missionaries, opportunities to convert people to Christianity would open up; Chinese converts would carry the message to new areas; and permanent missions could be established. All this was to be done in secrecy without informing British diplomats and officials in port cities and risking interference, as had happened in Hangzhou.
The response CIM missionaries got in their itinerations was "coldness, indifference, carelessness" The Chinese people were "proud, crude, callous, and annoying to the last degree...The Christian message fell on stony ground."
The Chefoo Convention forced on China by Britain in 1876 made it legal for missionaries and other foreigners to travel to inland China. The CIM was quick to take advantage of the convention. The travels of James Cameron illustrate the itinerations undertaken by CIM missionaries, Between 1876 and 1882, Cameron travelled thousands of miles to nearly every province of China. Usually accompanied by Chinese Christians and sometimes other missionaries, he preached and sold bibles and tracts. On one eight-month journey he sold 20,000 bibles and preached to tens of thousands of people. He travelled with a mule, a bedroll, and a "minimum of necessities." Growth and prominence