History of Baptist Christianity in Sichuan

[1] Numerous mission properties and native church leaders in Sichuan were respectively destroyed and killed by communists in the mid-1930s.

The remote character of the province and its need of Christian missionary labors lent a romantic and unusual interest to the work of the West China Mission, especially since that was the nearest approach of American Baptists to reaching the people of an unevangelized country, Tibet.

According to Missionary Cameralogs: West China, "this stirred up opposition and vile placards were posted abusing the foreigners.

However, the tide was turned in favor of the missionaries after successfully treating the servant of an official bitten by a snake, they were allowed to stay.

Although this unrest did not affect Sichuan so much as some other parts of China, missionaries were obliged by consular orders to retire to the coast.

The local Christians later told of Mrs. Openshaw's bravery during the siege of Yazhou, how she would play the organ and sing while bullets whizzed about the house.

This led her to the city of Huili in southwestern Sichuan at the end of 1947, where she worked until 1950, when foreign missionaries were driven out of China by the newly established communist government.

In 1946, he entered the territory of the Independent Nosu (Nosuland) in southwestern Sichuan, with a team to establish a sustained Christian witness among them.

He was only able to live among the Nosu people from 1947 to 1951, and spent his last few months under house arrest before being expelled from China by communist regime; but his team was able to plant seeds that were going to bear fruit in coming decades.

[26] In 2018, the detention of 100 Christians in Sichuan, including their pastor Wang Yi, raised concerns about religious crackdown in China.

[27] The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) and Hua Mei International (a non-profit Chinese Christian organization) provided critical relief supplies such as food, blankets and other necessities after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Two CBF field personnel Bill and Michelle Cayard also helped three pastors at a Protestant church in Bazhong with its growing congregation, which was ill-equipped to meet the needs of an increasing number of converts.