There has been a strong element in Australian colonial historiography that views the Chinese presence, especially on the goldfields, in terms of racism and exclusion, with the Chinese being represented as victims. In the last twenty-five years much research has documented a more complex set of interactions between Chinese and European settlers. This work has revealed the power of Chinese agency not only within the Chinese community, but more generally in settler society. Furthermore, the trope of anti-Chinese sentiment has been balanced by the documentation of many instances of positive Chinese-European interaction. Perhaps the predominance of a Eurocentric perspective, drawn from contemporary newspapers, may have been the main cause of negative interpretations – a case of ‘bad news’ trumping ‘good news’ in the media. Perhaps, too, the strong anti-Chinese sentiment in the late nineteenth century expressed by the emerging labour movement, and which contributed to the successful implementation of the White Australia policy, has discoloured our historical perspective.Footnote 1
The historiography of the Churches’ interaction with Chinese settlers suffers from the same press. In a definitive work documenting racism and exclusion towards Chinese settlers, Kathryn Cronin wrote sceptically:
Viewed overall, the colonists' mission efforts to Chinese were not successful. They won few converts, the majority of the Chinese continuing to be hostile or indifferent to their efforts … though the missions continued, church groups likewise agreed. Their aim was to exclude, not to amalgamate, the Chinese remnant.Footnote 2
Cronin's study was principally concerned with revealing the racism of colonial society, a case she put very convincingly, but in doing so tended to read her sources from that perspective only.Footnote 3
Another view of Chinese conversions was that they were somehow an accommodation to the prevailing British culture, and that such conversions may not have been sincere, the suggestion being that Chinese immigrants ‘accepted Christianity as a form of accommodation to make them more acceptable in the wider Australian community’. It is easy to see the pragmatic basis for such a claim, but Denise Austin, while not rejecting the accommodation thesis altogether, makes a convincing argument based on substantial evidence for sincere conversion. She argues for a strong connection between the new religious identity and a pro-active desire of converts to share the new faith with other Chinese.Footnote 4 Keith Cole, citing the work of C. F. Yong,Footnote 5 also notes the importance of Christian converts returning from Australia to China to evangelise their countrymen.Footnote 6
Recent research has established a much more textured view of colonial society that provides solid evidence for much positive interaction between Chinese and European settlers, including a much more positive assessment of the Churches’ relationship with the Chinese population.Footnote 7 Keith Cole explicitly refuted Cronin's conclusions on the basis of his research into Anglican missionary efforts amongst Chinese immigrants on the central Victorian goldfields, based on Anglican sources which Cronin did not use or of which she may not have been aware, such as the Melbourne diocesan records, and the magazine The Missionary at Home and Abroad. Cole points out that, in 1891, 16.2 per cent of Victoria's Chinese were Christian and that by 1901 the figure had risen to 28.5 per cent. Furthermore, the very fact that the Anglican Church was active in evangelising Chinese settlers (as were Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Salvationists) weakens Cronin's claim that church groups sought to exclude, rather than welcome them. However, there is little evidence that the evangelisation was designed to incorporate Chinese Christians into existing settler congregations. The tendency was to establish mono-ethnic Chinese congregations in which Cantonese was the main medium of communication.Footnote 8
In his concluding chapter, Cole identified several distinctive facets of the evangelisation of Chinese settlers that facilitated the Anglican missionary endeavour:
1. Chinese converts showed considerable initiative in seeking instruction in the faith, and then were active local agents of evangelisation of their countrymen.
2. Chinese catechists were the key people ‘at the coalface’ of missionary activity in their teaching, preaching, holding services and organising English language classes.
3. Anglican clergy provided oversight to the Chinese catechists and were the link between the Chinese mission and local congregations and the institutional church.Footnote 9
This article is written with this background in mind in order to explore some of these themes of evangelisation of Chinese colonial settlers in southern Queensland by Anglicans in the diocese of Brisbane.Footnote 10
Australia was not the only place where Protestant missionaries were active in trying to convert Chinese settlers. The Canadian studies by Jiwu Wang are written from the perspective of the institutional Church and draw heavily on church records.Footnote 11 Wang provides a very clear picture of how the anglophone population perceived the Chinese presence, both positively and negatively. However, Chinese Christians themselves tend to get lost in the story and are represented as having little historical agency. Chinese opponents of Christian missions have a voice, but Chinese Christians are not so obvious. We rarely meet individual Chinese Christians and their stories. The overall impression is that the Chinese missions were conceived and run by European Protestants, and were not very successful.Footnote 12
Peter Ward has also written of the Canadian missions to the Chinese from the perspective of the institutional Church, but he claimed that ‘Each denomination relied increasingly upon leadership recruited from among recent converts, some of whom were ultimately granted ordination.’Footnote 13
The language of this quotation, and of other parts of the article, make it clear that the anglophone missionaries were in control. In this Eurocentric telling of the story, Chinese Christians are referred to collectively or tangentially, but not individually. They are afforded little historical agency.
Although the Chinese population of New Zealand was not very great in the nineteenth century, the Churches, especially the Presbyterian Church, saw the Chinese as an important target for home mission. The Revd Alexander Don looms large in this story, spending most of his ministry working with the Chinese settlers. Don is a somewhat divisive figure in New Zealand historiography. James Ng assessed the relative lack of success of his mission in terms of his personal shortcomings,Footnote 14 claiming that Don saw himself as the ‘superior European teacher’.Footnote 15 This view is challenged by Moloughney and Stenhouse,Footnote 16 who acknowledge his somewhat prickly personality, but claim that it was outweighed by a genuine concern and affection for the Chinese to whom he ministered. Whether or not Don's ministry was successful, and however that success may be measured, the mission was conceived and controlled by anglophone Protestants. Susan Chivers, in writing an institutional history of the Chinese mission, does pay more attention to the Chinese Christians and there are brief portraits of Timothy Fae Loie, William and Paul Chan and Matilda and Joseph Lo Keong, but still the Chinese voices are muted and Chinese agency is not substantially addressed.Footnote 17
Like James Ng, Stevan Eldred-Grigg and Zeng Dazheng have documented the lives of many New Zealand Chinese.Footnote 18 By drawing on diverse sources they have been able to bring the Chinese community to life with names and faces and family stories. The further recovery of the New Zealand stories of the Chinese converts, and of catechists and clergy awaits such an historian.
One of the difficulties in researching the stories of Chinese settlers in Queensland is that the sources are invariably in English. Diligent searches of archives for Cantonese language sources touching on the subject of this paper have turned up nothing. This should not be a surprise. Most Chinese men coming to Australia were poor labourers and not literate in their own languages. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Cantonese sources would have been collected by repositories in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the movement to exclude them was at its height and the Chinese community was being actively marginalised by anglophone culture. There are no local contemporary Cantonese newspapers to be drawn upon. All this means that the historian depends on English-language sources, especially newspapers. Generally, the Queensland newspapers represented partisan interests and reflected and shaped the attitudes of their readership. For example, the radical newspaper The Boomerang and the labour newspaper The Worker vociferously supported the anti-Chinese movement. On the other hand, the Brisbane Courier was more likely than most to publish positive material about Chinese settlers.Footnote 19 That is not to say that they never published anti-Chinese material, but that other views could be published there. Here the historian has to be wary, and be prepared to read against the grain, or tangentially, to weigh the evidence of these sources.
Another difficulty is the paucity of information available in the Brisbane Anglican diocesan archive. This is a systematic problem, not one that just affects sources on Chinese ministry in the diocese. It has been suggested that early records were destroyed in the floods of 1893, but it is also possible that there was no active programme to preserve diocesan records. It is surprising, for example, that the records of the Diocesan Board of Mission have not survived. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of clerical ego-documents – collections of letters, diaries and memoirs. This means that material published in the public sphere assumes a much greater importance. Often newspapers are the only source for particular events.
Hugh Morrison has discussed the value of struggling to tell a story when we have only sources from the dominant culture in a cross-cultural encounter. It is, to use his phrase, a ‘one-sided’ story, in this case derived from English-language sources only.Footnote 20 The story of Anglican ministry to Chinese settlers in Queensland is such a one-sided story. Its value is in the insight that it gives into the lives of the members of Queensland's Chinese community, enabling us to identify and name individual people; it is a contribution to the process of embodying that community, and of giving it substance and personality.
We also see Anglicanism in colonial Queensland in a new way, bringing to light this story of missionary endeavour, a slice of history that has been obscured by the subsequent hegemony of ‘White Australia’. That nineteenth-century Anglicans were involved in this kind of cross-cultural evangelism within Australia bears testimony to the fact that a good many Anglicans did not share the White Australia outlook. The approach to the task was distinctive – the evangelists themselves were Chinese, and Cantonese was the language used in evangelism. In spite of the dependence on English sources, it is quintessentially a Chinese story, and in spite of the fragmentary nature of those sources, there is enough to provide a fairly coherent view of an Anglican mission to the Chinese.
Early ministry in pastoral districts
Chinese indentured labourers began arriving in New South Wales from about 1848 onwards. Most were indentured to pastoralists and worked as shepherds, shearers, domestic servants and gardeners and began arriving on the Darling Downs in what was later to become part of Queensland when that colony was separated from New South Wales in 1859.Footnote 21 At that time the Revd Benjamin Glennie was the Anglican clergyman working on the Downs from a base in Drayton.Footnote 22 Glennie was an indefatigable priest who covered the huge area on foot and on horseback, visiting the squatters’ stations and the villages on the Downs on a regular basis.Footnote 23 He was a diligent pastor who ministered to all people regardless of whether or not they were ‘signed-up’ Anglicans, including Chinese pastoral workers. Among these was George Arthur Keong. George had come to Sydney in early 1850s, where he soon met and married an Irish girl by the name of Julia Hoolahan. The marriage ceremony was performed by the high-profile Presbyterian minister, the Revd John Dunmore Lang, in Sydney on 5 February 1856.Footnote 24 George and Julia then settled on the Downs, where their first child, Mary, was born later that same year. Their second child was born at Goomburra station. According to the child's birth certificate, Keong was a cook. The following year, 1858, Keong was baptised by Benjamin Glennie and in the Drayton parish records, he is designated ‘servant’.
The story of the Keongs is well-documented, dating back to Glennie's own diary. In an 1857 entry, he noted that Keong had come into town, staying at Dr Armstrong's hospital so that Glennie could prepare him for baptism. Another entry, ten days later, indicates that the preparation of Keong for baptism was still under way. Clearly both Glennie and Keong took the preparation for baptism seriously. On Whit Sunday, Keong was baptised at Drayton church along with one of his children in the presence of a congregation of fifty-one.Footnote 25
Keong took his new faith seriously, and in his turn took the message of the Gospel to other Chinese in the Warwick district. The Revd James Matthews, who assisted Glennie in his ministry at Warwick in the 1860s, has left us a record of Keong's work. On Easter Day 1864 three men were baptised by Archdeacon Benjamin Glennie during Evensong, after the second lesson. They were Benjamin Ingham, named after the archdeacon; James George Ooi, named after his two godfathers, the Revds James Matthews and George Arthur Keong; and Robert Lym, after the police sub-inspector Robert Grayson. Again, their preparation for baptism was thorough as the Revd James Matthews records:
These three men had for a long time been under a course of daily instruction. [None] of them could read English, and therefore the only way of teaching was really and essentially catechetical. Much use was made of good illustrations of Scriptural subjects, and by means thereof the minds of the catechumens were impressed in such a manner as not likely soon to be erased; for they were quick at learning and retained what they learnt.Footnote 26
Eventually these men were confirmed by Bishop Tufnell and, according to Matthews, were regular communicants to the days of their deaths, their ‘simple, child-like faith and devout reverential demeanour’ being an object lesson to many. Glennie's ministry to these Chinese men was simply a part of his overall ministry in what was then a remote, undermanned and under-resourced part of the huge, sparsely-populated diocese of Newcastle.Footnote 27
Glennie was not the only early clergyman to engage with Chinese indentured labourers. There were Anglican clergymen serving from the 1850s in Ipswich and in the Wide Bay and Burnett districts, based at Gayndah and Maryborough. We do not know the full extent of their ministry to Chinese settlers, but sources available do provide a little insight into their Christian faith. Baptismal records are very useful in this regard, though often terse. The child of Thomas and Thomasina Delong was baptised by the Revd Lacy Rumsey in Ipswich in September 1860; Rumsey noted that Delong was a Chinese labourer.Footnote 28 The earliest Anglican clergymen to minister in the Maryborough and Gayndah areas baptised many children of Chinese men married to European women.Footnote 29 One of the first baptisms recorded was that of Grace Ashney, the daughter of Thomas and Jemima (neé Wood), by the Revd R. Postlethwaite. Ashney (Ah Seah) was an interesting man who prospered: he arrived aboard the Nimrod in 1848; married Jemima in Sydney in 1854; was naturalised in 1860; and by 1867 was the owner of the Mechanics Arms Hotel in Gayndah. He was elected as an alderman of the Gayndah Council in 1877.Footnote 30
There are also multiple registrations for some couples, suggesting a continuing connection between interracial couples and the Anglican Church at Gayndah over a considerable period of time, and through the ministry of several different clergymen. For example, John and Anne Maria Shue/Sue had children baptised in 1866 (Revd W. H. Dunning), 1869 (T. V. Alkin) and 1870 (T. V. Alkin); and James and Ellen Yappa had children baptised in 1870 (T. V. Alkin), 1874 (Charles West) and 1876 (Bishop Hale).
It was a little surprising to find the records of the baptism of a good few children of Chinese men and their Aboriginal wives on ‘Ideraway’ station. The officiating minister was the Revd T. V. Alkin. Between April 1870 and April 1874 six children of John and Mary Ann (Annie) Sinn were baptised at Ideraway, and in September 1877 Annie was godparent to Frances Maude, the daughter of Katie and Ah Jin Law, baptised by the Revd Frederick Richmond. Ah Jin Law may be one and the same as a man simply referred to by T. V. Alkin as ‘a Chinaman Law’ who, with his Aboriginal wife, brought children for baptism in 1870 and 1871. This glimpse of interracial marriages complicates understandings of the ministry of Anglican clergymen to both the Chinese and Aboriginal communities and is consistent with the revisionist perspective of Anglican clergy proposed by Michael Gladwin.Footnote 31
Margaret Slocomb's work on indentured Chinese labourers in the Wide Bay and Burnett region has identified some Chinese Christians through a close reading of newspaper reports of cases brought before the law courts. These were men who were employed as interpreters or men who chose to take a Christian oath before giving evidence. For example, Charles Dean, who interpreted at criminal trials in Brisbane, satisfied the presiding judge ‘not only as to language but the Christian Faith’.Footnote 32 That such men were Christian and that they were competent enough in English to act as court interpreters should not be surprising. Slocomb also makes the point that many were already Christians before they married Christian women, countering Dundas Crawford's claim that Chinese men became Christians in order to have their children baptised. She cites the example of Tan Chan, a friend of James Chiam. Chan and Chiam were close friends, and Slocomb suggests that their shared Christian faith was an element of that relationship.Footnote 33
James Chiam was an especially interesting man who briefly served as a Maryborough town councillor.Footnote 34 Twice, Chiam claimed to be a baptised member of the Church of England. The first was when he gave evidence at a murder trial in Brisbane in November 1861.Footnote 35 The second was in 1863 when James Chiam and his wife Sophia separated and there was a very public ‘stoush’ over Sophia Chiam's possessions. Chiam bought space in the Public Notices section of the Maryborough Chronicle to explain himself. In a kind of footnote to the advertisement, Chiam felt it necessary to point out that he was a naturalised subject of Queen Victoria, and that he had been christened in the Church of England. James Chiam's adherence to the Church of England (Anglican Church) can be supported. His baptism by the Revd Duncan Mackenzie is recorded in the baptismal register of the parish church in Maryborough on 30 November 1862; the baptism itself likely happened well before that date. It may be significant that he had been married to Sophia Gorton some weeks earlier, on 14 October. As Mackenzie had a reputation as a strict High Churchman it is unlikely that he, like Benjamin Glennie, would have taken Chiam's conversion and baptism lightly. Furthermore, the same register records the baptism of Chiam's son Joseph in 1864.Footnote 36 In the end, whether Chiam's conversion is attributed to his accommodation to Anglo-Celtic social mores or not, it is his self-perception as a baptised member of the Church of England which needs to be respected. If nothing else it further demonstrates the extent to which Chiam had identified with the community of which he was an active citizen. More painstaking research on the baptismal and marriage records of all denominations would undoubtedly fill out this story a great deal more.
Establishing the Church's Chinese mission in Brisbane
The Anglican diocese of Brisbane came into being in 1859, its first bishop being Edward Wyndham Tufnell. Tufnell's episcopate of nearly sixteen years coincided with the rapid spread and growth of the settler population across the colony. The diocese was always struggling to provide ministry to this scattered and mobile population.Footnote 37 There was never enough money or men to do more than try to provide a patchwork ministry in the towns along the coast and inland service towns for the pastoral industry. Nevertheless, much was achieved, especially the creation of synodical government in 1867. This devolved much of the power previously held by the bishop to a responsible body of clergy and laity. Initially much of its time was taken up in creating a constitution, developing principles for financial management and establishing procedures for diocesan administration.Footnote 38
During the sixties and seventies, the population of Chinese in Brisbane diocese grew. Men who had served out their indentures as labourers were moving into more lucrative employments and men who had been attracted to Australia in the search for gold were doing likewise. They found an important niche as market gardeners in Brisbane and other Queensland towns. Others became butchers, bakers, cabinetmakers, shopkeepers and merchants. Whereas the indentured labourers were mainly from Amoy (Fukien), the gold-seekers were mainly from Canton in the vicinity of the Pearl River delta (Zhong Shan, Kao Yao, See Yap and Sam Yap).Footnote 39 It is likely that most of the Brisbane Chinese were from the latter group.
It was not till the episcopate of Bishop Mathew Blagden Hale (1875–85) that any serious consideration was given to ministry to the non-English-speaking population.Footnote 40 In South Australia, somewhat earlier, Hale had developed a very successful mission to indigenous Australians on the Eyre Peninsula, at Poonindie.Footnote 41 So it is not surprising that in Hale's first public speech in Queensland he spoke of the duty of Christians to preach the Gospel to Aborigines, but also to the Kanakas and Chinese.Footnote 42 In a sermon before synod in 1877 he reasserted that commitment, but in a new context, as Hale had become the chairman of the executive council of the Australian Board of Missions of the Anglican Church.Footnote 43 With respect to local missionary efforts amongst Chinese settlers, he pointed out that there was no need to go abroad to evangelise the Chinese: ‘what a door is opened to us, which we may use without stirring from our homes’. Their very presence was an open invitation to share the Gospel with them. Noting that some Chinese had already become Christian and that new converts were already working among their fellows, Hale was pointing to what was already the preferred missionary strategy among the Chinese, that is, to employ Chinese catechists for the task. The Church Missionary Society of Victoria was employing five Chinese catechists on the central Victorian goldfields in 1874.Footnote 44 The success of that mission was underwritten by the dedication of two Chinese converts, William Ching Wah of Golden Square, and James Lee Wah of St Arnaud: ‘They had been touched by the Holy Spirit in different ways, had come to the European clergy in these places, had been baptised and had then started the work of evangelism in a voluntary capacity.’Footnote 45
On the Victorian goldfields the pattern of ministry was well-established. The catechists were usually supported by a competent translator who worked with them. Evangelisation was done in Cantonese, with the assistance of Scriptures in Cantonese, provided by the Bible Society. The difficulty was that it was not always possible to cover all the Cantonese dialects being spoken in the district.Footnote 46 An important aspect of the missionary work was to provide opportunities for the Chinese men to improve their command of the English language.Footnote 47 Some of the catechists were provided with an income by the Anglican missionary body, the funds being raised in part from the Chinese community and in part by the missionary organisation. The ministry had fairly wide support from both Anglican clergy and Anglican laity, locally and in Melbourne.Footnote 48
It is not surprising then, that when the Church in Brisbane was looking for a catechist to work amongst Chinese in Brisbane they should look to Victoria for such a person. It seems as if the Revd T. Holme of Daylesford recommended the catechist Timothy Ah Chee for the position.Footnote 49 Timothy Ah Chee was among the first converts of the Anglican mission to the Chinese in central Victoria and was already working as a catechist at Daylesford.Footnote 50 Ah Chee accepted the post, but it was eighteen months before he was able to depart for Brisbane. Footnote 51
Ah Chee established a mission house in the parish of Kelvin Grove; it was his home and the place where he conducted Sunday services and provided English language classes. In a letter to the Chinese Mission Board in Melbourne, relating the circumstances of the commencement of his ministry, he indicated that of the 300 Chinese living in Brisbane, there were about 150 Chinese gardeners in the area. He was supported in his ministry by the Revd J. K. Black, whose parish included Kelvin Grove and Milton, and who helped him in the preparation of English lessons for his congregation.Footnote 52 At this early stage of his ministry he had been encouraged by the numbers attending his Sunday services and that ten men were attending the English classes. He was also strongly supported by Bishop Hale in the work.Footnote 53 There is little in the sources documenting Ah Chee's day-to-day ministry, though his ministry to a condemned Chinese man in the Brisbane Gaol reached public notice. He prepared the man, Jemmy Ah Fue, for baptism, which was administered by the Revd J. K. Black. Ah Chee accompanied him to the scaffold, where Ah Fue besought Ah Chee to write to his brother in Victoria and ‘tell him to believe in Jesus’.Footnote 54 One gets the impression that Ah Chee may have been closely supervised by Black, and a conversion story such as this would have helped in the mission's public relations within and beyond the diocese.
Four and a half years later, early in 1882, Ah Chee left Brisbane for China, carrying a letter of introduction from Bishop Hale to Bishop Burdon of Hong Kong, with the aim of doing theological study at St Paul's College. It was hoped that Ah Chee would become involved in missionary activities there.Footnote 55 Addressing the diocesan synod in June of that year, Bishop Hale took the opportunity to critique the state of missionary activity in the diocese among Aborigines, Chinese and Kanakas:
Until the last few years I have been among people who have, to a certain extent, sympathised with me in my views and feelings. In Queensland the case is different. There is here in the minds of a large proportion of the colonists not only a prejudice against missionary efforts in connection with the Chinese, the islanders, and the aborigines, but a positive aversion to the men of these races except so far as they can be made materially useful, and their labour turned to profitable account … What are we, and who made us what we are, that we should look so contemptuously upon other members of the human race and should refuse to communicate to them the message of salvation which our blessed redeemer has sent to them, and which he has commissioned us to deliver. I this day, for myself, plead guilty to the charge of having given way too much to feelings of disappointment and distress in connection with this matter, and to the charge of having allowed the feelings to almost paralyse my efforts in this great cause. May God in His mercy forgive this, and grant that we may, from this meeting of synod, pursue a different course. Footnote 56
This confession of failure to try seriously to evangelise non-English-speaking people in the diocese was heavy on his own conscience, but to convince unsympathetic colonists to change their attitude was probably harder to achieve than the conversions he sought. There was a measure of cynicism in the public sphere about any attempts to evangelise the Chinese, as the account of Timothy Ah Chee's ministry to Jemmy Ah Fue reveals. That same kind of cynicism re-emerged in 1889, with the appointment of King Tem as catechist in Brisbane.Footnote 57
In 1884 Bishop Hale announced to synod his intention to retire, effective from 31 March 1885. Within four months of Hale's departure the Right Revd W. T. T. Webber had arrived to take up office, and a new chapter in missionary work among the Chinese had begun.
With the departure of Ah Chee, the ministry amongst the Chinese seems to have continued in some form, though the sources are meagre. In his reminiscences of the Brisbane ministry of the Revd Bernard Wilson, the Revd Manley Power credited Wilson with the re-invigoration of ministry to the Chinese.Footnote 58 It may have been Wilson who managed to get some funding from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), in England, for a Chinese catechist, reported in Brisbane's The Church Chronicle of August 1887; it may also have been partly due to the enthusiasm with which Webber took up his episcopal duties. The following month, classes for Chinese were commenced in the Mission Hall, with the double purpose of teaching English and of introducing them to the Christian faith. It was also announced that it was hoped that the Revd George Soo Hoo Ten from Sydney would be able to undertake a missionary visit to Brisbane in the foreseeable future.Footnote 59 The purposes of the mission were three-fold: to increase the number of Chinese who were attending the English classes and religious instruction; to increase awareness of the ministry to the Chinese amongst the local Anglican population; and to kindle interest and zeal for foreign missions.Footnote 60
George Soo Hoo Ten emigrated from China to California as a sixteen-year-old. It was there that he experienced his conversion. Subsequently he moved to Sydney where he worked as a tea-blender. He then began to evangelise his countrymen from the schoolroom of the York Street Wesleyan Church. The work was centred in teaching the men English and introducing them to the Christian faith.Footnote 61 At the time of his visit to Brisbane he was thirty-two years old and had been ordained deacon by Bishop Barry of Sydney. His two-week mission to the Chinese gave the Chinese mission a considerable boost. The programme began with his commissioning by Archdeacon Thomas (always ‘Tommy’) Jones at evening prayer at St John's Church on 6 October.Footnote 62 This was followed by a tea meeting presided over by Archdeacon Nathaniel Dawes on 13 October and attended by some of the locally prominent Chinese men including Chick Tong, Nam Yo, Lung Hing and Way Hop. The Parish Chronicle records that 121 Chinese adults were present, ‘the best-known merchants of our city, waiters and cooks, cabinet makers and gardeners’. Archdeacon Hawes and the Revd Bernard Wilson both spoke at the meeting, as did some of the Chinese who attended. The Revd Soo Hoo Ten also addressed the group in Cantonese. The biggest mission meeting, on the following Sunday, was attended by over 130 men, and twenty-nine men sought further instruction in the faith. In the wake of the visit two English classes and a class for catechumens (those seeking baptism) were established at the Mission Hall (St Luke's, near the church).Footnote 63 Three of these men were baptised in June the following year.Footnote 64
It was not till the beginning of 1889 that a catechist became available to follow up on Soo Hoo Ten's work. Paul Sue King Tem was Cantonese and converted to Christianity in Sydney, where he was baptised and confirmed by the Bishop Barry. He had been trained as a catechist by Soo Hoo Ten. He was commissioned on 16 February and began work the following day with a congregation of eighty. Leading members of the Chinese community supported him, including Leong Lung Hing and Jam How, both of whom spoke at a well-attended tea meeting and invited the Chinese audience to attend the classes and services that King Tem would provide.Footnote 65
King Tem's arrival and commissioning was very widely reported in the press, including a very full report in the Queenslander.Footnote 66 Archdeacon HawesFootnote 67 preached on that occasion, pointing out, with reference to Leviticus xix.33, 34, the Christian duty to be welcoming to strangers: ‘not on one hand to vex or oppress, and on the other to love as ourselves’. He went on to present the Chinese people in positive terms, commenting on some of their ‘moral characteristics’ to show that ‘they were susceptible to deep impression’, and that, accordingly, the conversion of the Chinese nation to Christianity was achievable.Footnote 68 Only one of the newspaper accounts hit a sour, or perhaps a bemused note, when the writer questioned how Christ could be adequately communicated to a Chinese audience:
King Tem must be a good-hearted man, of wonderful courage and hope, if he expects to turn any of his countrymen into Christians of the British type … it may be queried if Mr. King Tem has any clear idea of what the Hebrew Christ was, and it is doubtful if he can form for his countrymen a fairly well-rounded character who might be accepted as a Chinese Christ of Anglican complexion.Footnote 69
The Eurocentric tone of the article as a whole questions the tenor of Archdeacon Hawes's sermon without referencing it. The commissioning service is reported elsewhere in the paper, so the reader would be well aware of the archdeacon's views. In a political climate in which there was growing opposition to the Chinese presence in the colony, the Church's message as presented on this occasion was a challenge to the Christian community to live up to its high calling.Footnote 70
The later work of the Brisbane Chinese mission
King Tem followed the pattern established by Ah Chee's ministry. He rented a house and shop in Kelvin Grove where he held Sunday afternoon services and night school on two week nights. Sunday evening services were held at the diocesan chambers in the city and there was a Chinese service at St John's Church in the city once a month. There was a class once a fortnight in suburban Lutwyche and a Saturday Bible class at St John's School. King Tem had the assistance of some city-based clergy and lay helpers, both European and Chinese.Footnote 71 The English language classes were free; this probably explains their popularity; in 1890 he was holding classes on four evenings a week at Kelvin Grove.Footnote 72 He was obviously having some success, as The Week reported the confirmation of ‘15 boys, 36 girls, 5 South Sea Island boys and 11 male Chinese’ in St John's Church.Footnote 73 The same month, The Church Chronicle reported the baptism of two Chinese men, Low Yow and Chong Chee, at the Chinese language evensong in November, bringing the number baptised during the year to thirteen.Footnote 74
Like his predecessor, King Tem also travelled to Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Gympie and Maryborough as part of his mission. The Gympie Times noted his presence in that town where in June 1892 he held two services in the parish church, one on a Friday evening and another on the following Sunday afternoon – there was a good roll-up, with a congregation of between thirty and forty on the Sunday, and ‘nearly as many’ on the Friday:
The service consisted of choral evensong, intoned by the catechist, several hymns, and a remarkably eloquent address, which was listened to with rapt attention. The prayer book has been translated into Chinese, and all of the men present had a copy, and were thus enabled to follow the service, which they did with great heartiness.Footnote 75
This was a very Anglican approach, introducing the catechumens to the Anglican liturgy in their own language. It also indicates that King Tem was very much in touch with other Chinese Anglicans to access resources, such as the Cantonese-language prayer book, probably through church contacts in Hong Kong.Footnote 76 His ministry continued to meet with success, with the Church Chronicle recording another ten confirmations and twelve baptisms in November that same year.Footnote 77
The big problem was how to find the wherewithal to pay the catechist's stipend. In late 1892 his pay was in arrears, and the writer for the Church Chronicle claimed that because he worked quietly and unobtrusively, church people were not supporting the ministry to the level that it deserved; donations towards the stipend could be paid to the secretary of the diocesan Board of Missions.Footnote 78 This became something of a refrain in reports of King Tem's work over the next couple of years.Footnote 79 In spite of the Church's slowness in supporting him, King Tem's catechumens helped as much as they could. The Church Chronicle records that ₤3 7s. 9d. was collected on a visit to Gympie and Bundaberg in February 1893 and a similar sum in June when he did a return visit and also visited Toowoomba.Footnote 80 The Church Chronicle published a subscription list of Chinese contributors to the Chinese Mission in November that year, undoubtedly to reassure churchmen that the Chinese were contributing to the work in their midst.Footnote 81
At the end of 1894 King Tem took leave of absence from his work for six months to return to China to visit his relatives ‘and, it is whispered, to bring back a Chinese lady as his wife’. In his absence Jack Fan continued the work. Fan had also been trained in Sydney by the Revd George Soo Hoo Ten.Footnote 82
At this point the historical sources for Anglican ministry among Chinese in southern Queensland dry up. Clearly King Tem returned to Brisbane to continue his ministry. He is mentioned in the report of the Diocesan Board of Missions in 1898 and in an item in the Church Chronicle of the same year. He was receiving assistance from the Revds S. C. Harris and G. H. Frodsham.Footnote 83 King Tem returned to China in 1899 after eleven years in Brisbane, on account of his wife's poor health, but hoping that he might be able to return to Australia. This did indeed occur, and he developed a successful ministry in Townsville, where he was ordained by Bishop Frodsham, who had become bishop of North Queensland.Footnote 84
King Tem's place was taken by Leong Bong, who arrived in Brisbane with his wife before King Tem left. Samuel Leong Bong came with good credentials, having established a steady ministry at Hay and Narrandera in the diocese of the Riverina in south-western New South Wales.Footnote 85 His ministry in Brisbane was short-lived, as he resigned his post after a little more than year because of his ill-health.Footnote 86 Difficulty was experienced in finding a trained catechist, so Fang Hung/Fan Hoong was appointed as honorary catechist, initially for three months, so that there would be no break in the ministry to the Chinese community.Footnote 87 Fan Hoong was a local man, who had become a Christian through the work of the Brisbane mission.Footnote 88 Like his predecessors, he worked consistently and unobtrusively, maintaining the busy schedule of activities established by King Tem and Leong Bong, including visits to Bundaberg, Maryborough and Gympie.Footnote 89 The silence of the sources concerning his ministry does not reflect his success. There is almost nothing concerning his four-year ministry in either the Diocesan year book or The Church Chronicle, and virtually nothing in the secular press. The report in the Brisbane Courier of the farewell tendered to him on his resignation of the position testifies to a job well done, but also suggests that his ministry at the Chinese mission had been well-accepted outside Anglican circles. Those attending included some of the senior clergy such as Archdeacon A. E. David, and the Revd Tommy Jones who had been in the diocese for nearly forty-five years. There was a strong contingent of Brisbane's Chinese and Japanese merchants, including Leong Hing Leong, who had been supportive of the mission for many years. Interestingly, Paul King Tem, Fan Hoong's predecessor, was there, as was his successor, Matthew Ah King.Footnote 90 This implies a well-organised and coherent community gathered to celebrate a significant transition in its life. On a personal level what is more significant is that the reason for Fan Hoong's departure was to study for the ministry in Hong Kong, at the same college attended by his predecessor, King Tem.Footnote 91
Not long after this report, there was another in the Brisbane Courier, accompanied by a photograph of Fan Hoong, which fills out the story:
Sincerity and brightness were the two factors which mainly helped to win for Mr. Fan Hoong, the late Chinese catechist, to the Church of England Mission, the respect and friendship of his countrymen and of his European assistants and teachers. The warmth of that friendship was shown recently, when at the gathering assembled to bid him farewell ere he left for Hongkong, two purses of sovereigns were handed to him, containing contributions from Chinese, Japanese, and English men and women. One secret of his success in mission work was that he was previously well-known in Brisbane, and worked amongst old friends, having the assistance of his brother-in-law, Mr. Leong Hing Leong. Though in the first place he arrived in Queensland from Hongkong, he had lived here for some years, and was a storekeeper when he first became connected with the mission some six years ago. He soon attracted attention for his earnest work and ability, and when Mr. Leong Bong the Chinese catechist, was sent further afield, the church authorities made a new departure, and instead of sending to Sydney for a teacher, they chose the enthusiastic local worker, then almost in his thirtieth year … In the mission records it will be found details of the night classes four times a week, of the Sunday evening gatherings, of the visits paid in and around the city, and of the social work done, but the secret of the work achieved lies to a great extent in the two qualities of brightness and earnestness. By the one he attracted, by the other he taught, by the union of the two he exercised a personal charm as indefinable as it was pleasing … And now that Fan Hoong has gone back to his homeland to study in the Victoria College for the Christian ministry, his portrait will awaken many memories in days to come; for those who have gone are always with us in memory.Footnote 92
This report draws attention to the fact that Fan Hoong was a ‘local’ in the sense that he had come into the life of the Church through the ministry of Brisbane Christians, both European and Chinese.Footnote 93 The community which had nurtured his vocation could now celebrate his intention to take the next step in his ministry by study in Hong Kong. He was the third Chinese catechist in Brisbane to go to Hong Kong for further training for ministry, following in the steps of Timothy Ah Chee and Paul King Tem. The article also paints a picture of a sincere and dedicated pastor who had won hearts and minds through his ministry. Having had a good reputation in the Chinese community and having strong support within that community could only have benefited his transition from storekeeper to catechist.Footnote 94 This report seems at odds with the strong anti-Chinese sentiment that was prevalent at the time. It is evidence of an alternative narrative among the Churches that was far more sympathetic to the Chinese, and more likely to be reported in the mainstream newspapers.Footnote 95
Fan Hoong's successor was Matthew Ah King, whose very long ministry is not well-documented. Reports in the Diocesan year book are terse and simply indicate that the English language classes, catechesis and the Cantonese-language services were continued by Ah King with the help of a good many assistants. Interestingly, it is at this time that there are references to work by the Chinese mission amongst Japanese residents in Brisbane.Footnote 96 There are a couple of references to Ah King's collection of funds among the Chinese community for the Brisbane Hospital and the China Famine Fund.Footnote 97 There are two newspaper reports that give evidence for continuity in the pattern of ministry in the Brisbane Chinese community. The Queenslander reported on the marriage of Lee Cheong, a bookkeeper for the merchant On War Tai, and Lo See. Before the wedding the bride and groom were baptised by Archdeacon Le Fanu, with Ah King interpreting for the congregation. The wedding service followed, with the bride and groom following the service in Cantonese-language prayer-books.Footnote 98
The only other newspaper reference to Ah King's ministry is tantalising in its glimpse of the work of the Chinese mission; the account also acknowledges the ‘hidden’ nature of the work of the mission. Ah King had gone to Bundaberg for a three-week visit to the Chinese community there. In his absence the work of the mission in Brisbane was continued by Lum See, assisted by the Revd Godson and a Mr Miles. In this report, it is revealed that Godson spoke Cantonese, and was therefore a ‘tower of strength’ to the mission.Footnote 99
A poignant obituary published in 1937 gives just a little more evidence for the faithfulness of Ah King's pastoral ministry:
The death of Mr. Matthew Ah King a Chinese catechist of the Church of England for 34 years, robs the city of a well-known personality who was a welcome visitor to the General Hospital and other institutions for many years and who ministered to Europeans and his own countrymen. He was popularly known as ‘Father’ at these institutions.Footnote 100
As a young man Ah King began market gardening at Toowong, and it was this group of Chinese settlers which received his especial attention. Ah King was trained as a catechist in Brisbane and was assisted by the Revd W. P. B. Miles and Mr James Li Yiu. The obituary also reveals that Ah King had been married; that his wife had died a few years previously in China; and that a son had been an Anglican clergyman in China. Ah King had been held in affectionate remembrance by both European and Chinese residents of the city in spite of the restrictions imposed by the White Australia policy.
Once the White Australia policy had been enacted with the Immigration Restrictions Act of 1901, the Chinese population in south-east Queensland dwindled.Footnote 101 Many Chinese families returned to China and restriction of new Chinese immigration meant that their numbers were not replaced. The population decreased further as the elderly folk who stayed on in Australia died.Footnote 102 Over the ensuing years the reports in the Diocesan year book become shorter, and there is a clear loss of interest on the part of the Church as the Chinese population declined and the work of the Chinese Mission lost its high visibility. The report of 1916 made it explicit: ‘the number of Chinese in Brisbane is decreasing very much, only about 10 attending services now. Mr King reports that they leave Brisbane for China mostly, but they also move to other parts of the State’.Footnote 103 In a sense Ah King presided over the demise of the mission.
Reflections on the Church's position on Chinese ministry
The broad picture of ministry amongst the Chinese in Queensland is similar in its patterns to the mission to the Chinese in Victoria described by Keith Cole. New converts were keen to evangelise their fellow-countrymen.Footnote 104 It is notable that Chinese evangelists chose to undertake their work in Cantonese rather than English, even though English language classes were an integral part of the ministry of Chinese catechists. This respect for their own languages as the medium of conversion by the institutional Church may have been a sign of encouragement to potential ‘hearers’, who could have been very sceptical of the Church's motives had it insisted on English-language acquisition by Chinese converts. The driving force of the ministry among Chinese settlers was provided by the Chinese catechists whom the Church employed. Available evidence suggests that Chinese catechists had a strong commitment to the tasks that they undertook whether it be teaching, catechising, leading worship, pastoral visitation or public relations. It was this commitment that recommended the work of the catechists to the wider Church.
The support given by the institutional Church varied. Under Bishops Hale and Webber, much was achieved, but subsequent bishops (Donaldson and Sharp) did not give the mission as much attention. This is understandable as ‘White Australia’ became hegemonic, the Chinese population in and around Brisbane declined fairly rapidly and the Chinese Mission lost its impetus. However, throughout its life the Brisbane Chinese Mission always had strong supporters among the senior clergy and among the Brisbane laity, who worked effectively and amicably with the catechists, supervising, facilitating and funding its ministry.
There is a strong link between the picture painted by Keith Cole of ministry among Chinese in central Victoria and that outlined here – and there is a connecting thread. Timothy Ah Chee was an early convert in Victoria who then became a very capable catechist at Daylesford under the supervision of the Revd T. Holmes. As the first catechist employed by the Church in Queensland, he brought with him the experiences and practices of the central Victorian mission on the goldfields, creating a unity of missionary practice amongst the Chinese population. Recent work on Anglican ministry amongst the Chinese in New South Wales, not presented here, confirms these patterns in the older colony. The pivotal place of the Revd George Soo Hoo Ten in the Chinese Anglican community in New South Wales, and especially in Sydney, deserves further research.
However, what is striking is the ambivalence of some Anglican Queenslanders – and probably most Australians – to this work. The Canadian historian Jane Samson has drawn attention to some of the tensions inherent in much of the missionary activity of the Christian Churches; the tension between what she terms ‘othering’ and ‘brothering’. Some had reservations about whether there should be missions to ethnic Others; whether there was any sense in putting resources into the conversion of ‘heathens’ who could not be raised to the same level of civilisation as ‘Europeans’.Footnote 105 On the other hand, there was the theological and humanitarian view that people were all ‘Brothers’ in God's eyes, and there was a divine imperative to take the Gospel to all people.Footnote 106 This tension is acknowledged in Bishop Hale's address to synod in 1882. Keith Cole recognised the same dynamic operating in the efforts of Christians to convert Chinese settlers in Victoria.Footnote 107
These tensions were also present in the ministry of Anglicans to Chinese people in Queensland. It was not always easy for the Church to raise funds for ministry to Chinese settlers.Footnote 108 Near the turn of the century Bishop Frodsham of North Queensland, in writing to Bishop Montgomery (formerly of Tasmania), alluded to the difficulty that the Church faced: ‘You know what the average Australian thinks about missionary work among Chinese.’Footnote 109 There is a subtlety in Frodsham's remark: the impression is that Churchmen – both clerical and lay – were generally sympathetic to the Chinese both in Brisbane and in the provincial towns, as the quoted evidence from newspapers cited attests. Nevertheless, they were not necessarily in step with the general population, ‘the average Australian’, and those who were advocates for the White Australia Policy. The anti-Chinese rhetoric, which demanded restrictions on Chinese immigration, was part of a larger working-class struggle for wage justice and improved working conditions. The Chinese were believed to accept a lower standard of living than white workers, and would undercut white men's wages. Labour also opposed the use of indentured Pacific Islander labourers, especially on Queensland's sugar plantations. The situation was exacerbated by the severe economic recession of the 1890s.Footnote 110 On the other hand, the mission to the Chinese was conceived by middle-class clergy and laity and sought to integrate the Chinese into white settler society, based on the theological notion of the equality of all races – the ‘Brotherhood of Man’. Ian Welch expressed the matter diplomatically when he wrote that ‘Christians tended to charity on the Chinese issue but the tide of public opinion was against liberality.’Footnote 111 The cultural gap between the Chinese and the majority of European settlers was wide.
The Revd Frederick Richmond was an Anglican priest who worked in Queensland in the 1870s. His memoirs provide some insight into these dilemmas from his perspective as a parish priest.Footnote 112 He seems to have been well-disposed towards the Chinese, but draws attention to the discrimination against them on the part of labourers and miners.Footnote 113 Nevertheless, in the end he betrays his own anxiety about the future of Australia should Chinese immigration be allowed to continue unchecked (his memoirs were published well after the beginnings of the ‘White Australia’ policy):
Now Chinese labour is cheap, they would absorb the country by the endless flow of immigrants as much as they could had they won it by conquest. If he fulfilled the conditions prescribed for naturalisation there would be a practical proof of his morality and attachment to the soil. Let him be restricted to the less profitable occupations, be prevented from benefit in mining, or land owning, be a hewer of wood and drawer of water until he can make some real claim to form part of the nation and share its privileges.Footnote 114
Nevertheless, Richmond ministered to the Chinese as part of his daily ministry without making any special attempt to evangelise them, giving them instruction in the faith and having them attend services in the church. Some ‘even asked to be baptised’ by him, something of which we have a record. That the Chinese could be serious about their faith bemused him somewhat when he wrote that, ‘contrary to what is fashionable to assert of converts, they appeared to be true and pious men’.Footnote 115 This understates the importance of Chinese agency; in his ministry it was the initiative of the Chinese who sought him out seeking baptism and who participated in parish worship. Chinese agency in evangelisation is what needs to be acknowledged. It is the strong undercurrent of this whole story. The Chinese were, indeed, true and pious men.
