John Richard Wolfe

Early Years and Coming to China

John Richard Wolfe was born in 1832 near Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), the son of a farmer. In 1857 he entered the Church Missionary Society (CMS) College in Islington, London. In 1861 he was ordained deacon at St Paul's Cathedral, London, and in December of that year he sailed for China, arriving in Fuzhou in the spring of 1862. He was ordained priest in Hong Kong in 1863.

Holding the Fuzhou Mission Alone

The Anglican mission had already been at work in Fuzhou for ten years, but the gentry opposed it fiercely, and renting premises and gaining converts were both hard; when he arrived there were only a handful of believers in Fuzhou. In October 1863 the missionary in charge died, and Wolfe took sole charge of the work; two months later he himself fell dangerously ill and was sent to Hong Kong to recover, leaving Fuzhou for a time with no CMS missionary. Early in 1864 riots broke out in Fuzhou. The mission's preaching chapel, schools, library and the homes of its Chinese workers were destroyed and believers were injured, yet not one baptized member turned back. On his return Wolfe obtained compensation for the mission and rebuilt at once.

A "Haunted House" Becomes Cuixian Church

According to local Fuzhou sources, with gifts from British merchants in Fuzhou Wolfe bought two houses at the head of Huang Lane on Nanhou Street in the city, houses people believed to be haunted, and turned them into Cuixian Church, the first Anglican church in Fuzhou. Early in 1864 it was set on fire and burned down. He raised funds again from the merchants and rebuilt it; the new church, finished in 1865, was Gothic outside but hung inside with Chinese scrolls and black-and-gold inscribed boards. In 1868 Wong Kiu-taik, the first Chinese deacon of the Anglican church in Fujian, was ordained at Cuixian Church.

Into Eastern and Northern Fujian

Soon after reaching Fuzhou, Wolfe travelled up the Min River and on foot over the mountains deep into northern Fujian, as far as Pucheng on the provincial border, and also reached Yanping and Jianning (today's Jian'ou). In the years that followed the mission opened stations at Lianjiang (1864), Luoyuan and Gutian (1865), Ningde (1866) and other places, and also received the believers of Fuqing. The prefectural cities of the north resisted most: Jianning did not have a station until 1875, and the next year the catechist was driven out. In the city, in 1876 he put up buildings at the Daoshan temple on Wushi Hill, and the gentry objected that they spoiled the feng shui; in 1878 the mission's college buildings on Wushi Hill were torn down and burned, an event known as the Wushishan Incident, and the mission afterwards moved to Nantai.

Building Up the Chinese Church

Wolfe valued his Chinese co-workers, and early Chinese preachers such as Wong Kiu-taik worked with him for many years. Twice ill health sent him home (1870–1872 and 1879–1881), and in his absence the churches were kept going by Chinese preachers and his colleagues. By 1889 the Anglican church in Fujian had more than 7,500 Chinese adherents and more than 2,100 communicants. In 1887 he was appointed Archdeacon of Fuzhou.

The Fuzhou Bible and Prayer Book

In 1874 his Fuzhou dialect translation of the Book of Joshua was published, among the first books of the Old Testament that the Anglican, Congregational and Methodist missions translated together into the Fuzhou dialect; from 1887 he and four others, among them C. C. Baldwin, revised the Fuzhou dialect Bible, and in 1891 the first complete Fuzhou dialect Bible in one volume was printed. According to the English Wikipedia, he also translated the Book of Common Prayer, several catechisms and the Gospel of Matthew into the Fuzhou dialect. The Fuzhou Prayer Book was in constant use at the stations, and in 1870 he wrote: "Its constant use in all our stations I have found of the greatest advantage to these poor ignorant people. It helps them to pray; it gives them ideas, and appropriate words to express them."

Later Years and Family

In 1864 he married Mary Ann Maclehose in Hong Kong; they had three sons and three daughters, and the daughters Minnie, Annie and Amy all became missionaries and served in Fuzhou. His wife died in 1913. In his later years he was elected a Vice-President of the CMS. Wolfe died in Fuzhou on 2 December 1915, after fifty-three years in Fujian. According to scholarly research, Christ Church in Cangxia, Fuzhou, completed in 1927 as the cathedral of the Diocese of Fukien, was also built in his memory.